__________________________________
Skinny Love(s)
and (Other) Liminal Spaces
By Stephanie Kemp









I am in the mountains again. Ready for 20 inches of snow and the (next) Atmospheric River. I am here because my daughter wanted to come. (Her school district is on strike again.)  I will never say no to my daughter if she wants to come to the mountains with just me. Especially if and when she is about to turn 15 (and even if I have barely just recovered from the last Atmospheric River).

Yesterday’s car ride was only harrowing for twelve minutes (of the three hours), with near zero visibility (and near zero other cars) coming up the side of the mountain that I don’t know in my bones or hands on the wheel. The post-dusk timing was an accident - we didn’t anticipate such a long line at the drive through for our root beer floats. (Please don’t judge me, I am not reckless. I am just trying to live life on the planet Earth in the state of California on the first day of Spring of 2023. Plus, I am from Michigan. We are good drivers.)

We listened to that Bon Iver Skinny Love song three times in a row, as it helped me through my white knuckling/forced calm. (Well, at least this part did):

And I told you to be patient
And I told you to be fine
And I told you to be balanced
And I told you to be kind

Ah, Bon Iver……….(Whatever that means).

Once I could see again, we talked about Liminal Spaces (which my daughter had to explain to me and list hers before making me excited to have made it through the Liminal Mist to make a list of my own):

“Liminal Space refers to the place a person is in during a transitional period. It's a gap, and can be physical (like a doorway), emotional (like a divorce) or metaphorical (like a decision).” - Forbes

“You can’t live in a liminal space, Mom. That’s the whole point.” - My daughter 

After this we talked about People. No one was spared.

And now, before shoveling (and after having made an initial list of my Liminal Spaces), I need to write this about People:

The other day I was procrastinating and looking at some long lost friends’ son’s bar mitzvah pictures on Facebook when Facebook decided I needed to see a post by a woman I’ve never met featuring a little video of Germaine Greer being interviewed instead. (I don’t know what I would have clicked on to get me to Germaine Greer, but that will have to be tackled separately...or not.)

This is what Germaine said, in an undated clip, with a seemingly nice man, somewhere in the world, on Channel 4*:

(I share this in case you want to have a conversation about it, but not if you want to yell at me - about this and/or driving up a mountain during an atmospheric river. But I will share it with my daughter/s no matter what you want to do):

Germaine:
Now gender can be anything you like. It’s…entirely cultural. But unfortunately, sex is not entirely cultural. It’s something you’re born with, whether you like it or not. And most of us who grow up to be women, who have our first periods 12, 13, 14, whatever, traumatizing otherwise, a body we thought we knew becomes smelly and dirty and different? And then the boys come along and have been watching pornography and say that we’re not groomed, we have to remove our body hair and so on. We’re going to spend our lives removing body hair. THAT’S femininity, which is the fake version of femaleness. FEMALE is real and it’s sex, and femininity is unreal, and it’s GENDER, and it’s a role you play. And for that to become the given identity of women is a profoundly disabling notion.

Seemingly Nice Man:
Don’t you feel, though, you’d be able to spend more time on all of those questions if you just moved on from this trans question….

Germaine:
But I’m not……!

Seemingly Nice Man:
…and said, “Ok! Fine! If you want to join us as women, then you’re women. Come and join us in the bigger struggles.”

Germaine:
Well, they’re not going to help us much with postpartum psychosis, are they? Or even with menstrual discomfort, or um………..I think we can manage, you know? We are 51% of the population, and we’re being held to ransom by a handful of people who are extremely vocal and aggressive, and that’s no surprise to any of us. I mean, I don’t understand why we have to make a mockery of OLDER women, and that’s universal.  You say to me - I’m offending people - every time you get vilified because you’re an “old” woman, and you only have to be 50, not very old. I’m now 80, I’m as old as you like. And you can call me senile and anything else you want to call me, but I’m not going to be hijacked for this question of sexual identity, of gender identity.

Look, I wrote a book a long time ago, about how you get made into a woman. In those days we called it conditioning, and you could see it. It happens from birth. Little baby girls are left to cry for longer than baby boys. They are fed for shorter periods than baby boys. We want them to be smaller than baby boys and so on and so on and so on. And it goes right through our entire lifespan where we’re learning Femininity. And it’s a masquerade, it’s not who we really are.

There is nothing feminine about being pregnant. It’s almost the antithesis of that. There’s nothing feminine about giving birth. It’s a bloody struggle and you’ve got to be strong and brave. There’s nothing feminine about breast feeding. God knows it drives everybody mad. They want to see nice big pumped up tits, but they don’t want to see them doing their job. And it just goes on and on.

That masquerade is what is now being presented to us back as the real deal - with the hair extensions and the false eye lashes, and you think, why do you think that’s real?

______________________

The way that I feel about People currently feels like a liminal space, which is unsettling (but at least I know that it is also transitional).

Thoughts?

I would also be happy (I wonder if this is true) to discuss:


…Breast Feeding and Chest Feeding (I don’t believe it has to be an Us v. Them situation).

…The AMA’s decision to call Pap Smear Receivers, “Individuals with Cervixes.” (My doctor told me this during an actual pap smear, so I was a little distracted but will look into it and circle back………..Or not.)

...Your List of Liminal Spaces

But for now, I have to get shoveling….

After I have breakfast with my kid, who’s still sleeping.

I can’t wait. 

For both.

______________________


* WAYS TO CHANGE THE WORLD / Krishnan Guru-Murthy, Presenter