Protection Racket

“Protection Racket” Journal Entry (from April 13th, sometime in the ‘70s)

April 13th

Many people – including other women – fearing women who dare to love women protect themselves by saying, “There’s something wrong with you,” to us. Since the feminist movement, we have learned to see men who say this as oppressive. We see that they have a problem, and we believe them less. The women who protect them hurt themselves. I call this “The Protection Racket.” And yet, there is a Protection Racket among women. For us, the mother has always been important. Women have always been important. So if women say, to lesbians, “There’s something wrong with you,” we are either in danger of rejecting those women, or of believing what they say.

Homophobia is everywhere. We were taught it too. Heterosexual women say, “There’s something wrong with you,” rejecting a difference they fear does not validate themselves in the insecurity they feel because of the conditions of their lives with men, they look to women for the understanding they have to fight for from men. Their need is great, so their fear of not being validated is great. “Difference” sounds to them like a condemnation of themselves, and they react with fury, feeling betrayed. Lesbian women say the same thing if they seek the approval of the heterosexual woman. And, knowing her response, feel they must be like her to get her approval. “Difference” feels to them like danger, their cover is threatened. They may join the heterosexual woman, being critical of an out lesbian, thinking to protect themselves.

And when a sister criticizes me and tells me there’s something wrong with me, or tells me I’m way out in left field, or supply-your-own-words… I may protect her from my pain and anger to protect myself. I protect her out of dependence on her validation of me, under conditions when I know she cannot give me what I need. I think I do not know this. I think I do not know that she cannot give me what I need. I think I am simply afraid to find out that she cannot give me what I need. I fear rejection. I think I fear rejection. So I keep needing she who feels she can’t validate me. Thus, she becomes my mirror. I need her to validate me if I can’t validate me. So I need to learn to speak my reality without asking anything from her, either because she can’t give it and will reject me and I don’t want to set myself up for rejection, victimhood… or because she will be threatened and reject me feeling I ask for – or expose – too much.

But, mainly because no matter whether she gives or does not, I must survive.

I must know I can survive.

I need to learn to depend upon myself for validation. Everything I get beyond that is a gift, is moving beyond forgiveness. I need not to need a mother to do for me.

I need to grow myself up. To trust myself. To depend on myself. To believe in myself. To love myself. To be myself.

Then, I can mother, in an equal way, that does not smother, control. I can be mothered, in an equal way, that does not rely on dependency, or inadequacy.

To be. To be centered. Sow from myself.

I need to speak my reality.

To know myself. To be visible to myself.

Not to ask anyone for anything, but to learn how to do for myself, to be strong, and be a woman, too. To be strong, and to be a woman, and to be vulnerable. To be a woman, to be strong and vulnerable. Being a woman, loving women, to be vulnerable is to be strong. To be open is to be strong.

To state my existence gives me strength.

To rely on myself for validation, to believe in myself whether the world does or not, gives me strength.

For if I can believe in me, then others can learn to believe in me. If I can believe in me, then that can’t be taken from me. Others can try to put trips on me, but I don’t have to buy them. Don’t have to be devastated. Be devastatable. I can make myself more valuable. I can put myself first. I can keep my good name by naming myself and finding it good. Thus I can begin to release my own creative energy, to free myself, to use my transforming power. I can transform what has been dangerous for me into what is safe for me. I can transform those negatives with which I have been identified – which I have tried to bury, as in darkness, as dark, too dark, for their light – into positives which define me.

Psychic strength in a female. Self-reliance in a female. Physical strength in a female.

Our female strengths have been labeled our weakness, they have been called monstrous, they have been called dark; I will stop using my strength to keep my strength down. I will stop paralyzing myself with their ease. I will find beauty in my dark, in my strength, in my loving. I will no longer make my strong, dark, beautiful loving bad.

I do not need to be punished, to be found guilty, so that I can live and love.

I can separate them. I can have life without punishment. I can have love without guilt. I need neither myself nor another to keep me down, to keep me virtuous. Keep me down. I need neither myself nor another to put down for virtue. To put down to earn love. Earning, putting down, are not my systems. I can reject them. They are not natural to me. They were taught to me to keep me down. I will not keep myself down the rest of my life. I will not hate myself for the sake of others, or in the name of others.

I will learn to love. I will reclaim myself. Name myself.

I will become visible.

Transcribed by Hadley Smith, 2010. Brooklyn, NY. Spacing and line breaks made by transcriber. <comments />

To read a 2010 response to this journal entry, please click here