"How to Suppress Women's Writing" By Joanna Russ University of Texas Press: 1983
This is a library book that I have read before. I am reading it again because it scared me the first time I read it. It scared me because it was true. It should scare most women when they read it because they will notice this very well researched and readable book is absolutely true.
I have a graduate degree in Education with an emphasis in journalism and English from the University of Kansas(KU). I did a lot of my undergraduate work at San Diego State University. I graduated from KU in 1989. I grew up in the public schools in San Diego, California from 1950 to 1964 and then went to KU off and on until my graduation in 1989. Everything Russ said about the education system in her book was very accurate from my experience in California and Kansas.
I have always been an avid reader and held a public library card. Everything she said about books and women's writing are right on point. The author states that she did not see the attempts to suppress women's writing in her early years. It continues to this day. The book was published in 1983 but there is enough in the book and in current publications to show the trend continues.
Why should this information be scary? Because for most women, many of the people in our lives are men. Most of the pillars of our education that we let into our lives unedited are full of the prejudice that passed for unbiased information. The people we let into our lives, into our beds, read their books, take their classes, not only don't value us but try very hard to make sure we don't value ourselves. Then you have to ask the obvious questions: why? Why do men do this? Why do women participate in this devaluation of ourselves? These questions are frightening because everything we have valued as true isn't true at all. The people we looked to in admiration don't admire women at all.
Last year I read a series of books on Virginia Woolf's life. I had started with the assumption that her husband was her best friend and supporter. I ended up with a different idea. He was not such a supporter. He was always in the background weakening the supports under her. She could not see that the closet person in her life was not necessarily her best friend. She was in conflict all of her life. He helped turn the screws on occasions.
The truth of the matter is that women need to stand on our own two feet. No one is going to take care of us no matter how many fairy tales society tells us. The proof is all around us. I don't have to present the facts here. The book does an excellent job in that it quotes long passages from books I myself read when young and absorbed without question of opinions that were very sexist. I did not question as I do now.
When I was married to the father of my children, I did not want to question the motives of my husband as I was very ill and he was my life support. He did save my life so I did not lose out, but there were so many things I should have questioned but didn't. I even went to see a therapist at the Veterans Administration who said I should ignore my feelings and trust my husband more. The therapist was an idiot. I learned to always consider one's feelings as valid.
We, as women are not taught to trust ourselves. There are other examples in which other people are taught to trust the government, religious leaders, certain religious books and on and on and not themselves. The older I get the more I learn that I need to unlearn what I was taught as a child. This is because I live in a democracy and there is a free exchange of ideas. There are countries that if Russ had written and published her book there, she would have been imprisoned or worse. The lesson is learned: Trust yourself. Heck with what some people want on government buildings such as "Trust in God" . The self is the first one to trust.
