Thank you for writing this. Jesus Christ. Thank you.
I’m a senior in college now, studying English and math. I’m eight years into recovering from an eating disorder, into not thinking about it. There is so much life to live. There is so much math to do and so many books to read. I know a lot of things; I can do a lot of things; I think, if I chose something, if I really put my mind to it, I could do anything at all. I go to my Measure Theory class and there are three women, and one of them is our professor (who I can’t talk to without wanting to cry — I’m writing my thesis with her and it’s a battle every week to sit in her office and talk to her about complex, difficult mathematical issues without bursting into tears thinking about how hard she has worked to get to where she is, and aren’t I sick of that desire? How patronizing those tears would be). But I sit in the classroom and sometimes I find myself wishing my body was made of marble instead of listening to her speak. While I’m working on problem sets I get up and walk around my room, setting my camera up at different angles, trying to trick my body into looking like nothing but clean white bone. And people ask me what I write about and I don’t have a good answer — I write all the time, all I do is write and write, and everything I say comes back to the wish that I could peel off my skin and be nothing but sharp angles. I read feminist theory and I believe it and I think about the subjugation of women and I place myself and my own thoughts within this long history of oppression and I continue doing math because I love it and I talk loudly and I don’t hold my tongue for the sake of the men I sleep with and I talk about queer theory over brunch and I read and think and write and write and write and everything, it seems, comes down to my body and its relationship to me. I am powerless in the face of it. I need to write it down or I will not be able to get around it. But that’s just the thing: I have been writing it down, and I haven’t gotten around it. I am pinned underneath it. Trapped, by the weight of my own desires, the weakness of my body to resist.
LOVE this. As someone who was always shit at math, I’ve always had kind of a fantasy of being some sort of mathematician or physicist—partly because of the beautiful tantalizing mysteries of those fields and partly because it always seemed like one thing you could do as a woman to sort of be intellectually beyond anyone’s skepticism, lol. And it frustrates me to not know where the one fantasy ends and the other begins/to feel that inward, ego-driven logic eclipse the outward intellectual curiosity. Also, on another note, the things you do with parentheses in this piece completely delighted me. Thank you for this one!!
ugh thank u eleanor!!! "be intellectually beyond anyone's skepticism" is such a good way to put it, I still wonder sometimes if I am going to be chasing that pipe dream forever... & actually so grateful to hear u liked the parentheses moments lol bc I was so on the fence about whether or not to cut like half of them
i read this as soon as i woke up and cried twice then read it out loud to my best friend on the floor of her bedroom and started tearing up again. talked to her a couple weeks ago while i was drunk about how i feel like a bad feminist because my filmmaking influences for my latest project are mainly masculine (but what even is "masculine" except for Not Feminine). rayne you are the voice of a generation!! i feel so seen in every single thing you write.
i have more responses to this piece, but in the meantime, austin is my hometown! i moved away for college when i was 18, but i still love it, it's a wonderful place. i recommend going to barton springs or deep eddy to swim, chill, and (mostly) people watch, it's the best people watching/swimming i've ever experienced. go see live music in austin! i like the mohawk as a venue, a ton of restaurants will have live music, and it's touristy but i also recommend the outdoor bar/stage by guero's downtown, when i was 10 i met a lady who danced beautifully and gave out flowers to people she danced with. she was so beautiful that i was afraid when i danced with her. i hung the mini roses she gave me upside down to dry and they are still in my childhood bedroom. the austin film society cinema is one of my favorite places, they show arthouse and foreign films, and you might see richard linklater in the lobby. go see the bats fly when the sun sets on the 6th street bridge, go for a walk by lake travis, go for a paddleboard at texas rowing club. also, for shopping, there's a massive incredible goodwill and a half price books on n lamar blvd, i went there so many weekends in high school. and buy a good pair of cowboy boots! heritage boots if you have a bigger budget and are looking for a shoe that is also a piece of art, or allen's boots if you want something less expensive.
glad it's helpful! i'm not the world's no 1 foodie lol, but elizabeth's cafe has great vietnamese food, el chilito is my favorite breakfast taco in the city (bfast tacos are essential, they are the number one thing i crave when i come home), and fresca's also has great tacos. those are all cheaper, there are a bunch of fancier restaurants downtown. austin has amazing mexican/tex mex food, not as good on the italian or seafood front. get a margarita on the rocks at a mexican restaurant in austin, it's a special experience. and if you want a fast food burger or milkshake, the correct choice is P Terry's, it's a texas only chain.
This hurtttttt Rayne "I spend all this time trying desperately not to think about my body but it hunts me like a dog." - but kind of in a good way. A 'seen' way.
I'm currently a 'woman' in 'physics' and this made me think so much about the weird pressure of being found out as a girl in journal clubs and what not. I would never wear makeup to a meeting with a prof or dress feminine (although i don’t do that much anyways). It's such an act that we can end up putting on, being born a woman is okay but you can never *be* a woman. (also when i [if ever] finish my degree I'm planning on pursuing writing for a bit and it always brings me a lot of comfort to see/hear of people that have followed similar paths so thx haha)
rayne have you listened to bull believer by wednesday? i feel like you have since I think it was you who turned me on to them when i was like 16. anyway that song gives me the same feeling as a lot of parts of this post did, it makes me feel seen in a way that hurts in my chest and my throat. i can't wait for your book <33
Glad to see you getting on the Friendship wave. Maybe the way to transcend the category of woman is to try to think about it less. Have you read Mating by Norman Rush? Among the best female narrators I've read, paradoxically written by a man, who knows deeply that gendered inequality must be cultural rather than essential but struggles to feel the extent of intellectual equality in a heterosexual relationship.
Totally … which is why it’s so funny that it sometimes feels like it’s my job to think about it all the time Lol.. but I’m getting better! & no I haven’t read Mating but it’s come on the highest recommendation from many people i trust so maybe it must be next
It's a good book for being alone in a new city -- at least for me, the protagonist was a comforting voice who accompanied me throughout my days. Enjoy Austin!
this stopped me in my tracks: "I only realized after I dropped out of school that while I honestly did like physics — I actually even loved it, sometimes — I think some part of my attraction to the field was a fantasy I’d cooked up in the anxious anticipatory muck of pre-puberty that if I could get smart enough, smart enough in the right way, then I might be able to escape the functional category of girl."
I just got done talking to my therapist a few days ago about how I live in an eternal unchanging present, because my past is terrible or a blank and so is the future as I can imagine it. I don't know if that's healthy, but I live, so. There's a line from a biography of the paralyzed songwriter Doc Pomus that I've been thinking about recently: 'he developed the ability to forget something painful or embarrassing the instant it happened, and in this way later came to feel that he had forgotten most of his childhood.' That's pretty accurate, for me.
I don't think that you're more interested in your own dysfunction than most other troubled people (is there any other kind of person?) - you've just come into the ability to verbalize it, particularly through other women's writing and feminism and so forth. There's pluses and minuses to that - it's not an inchoate feeling in the back of your head that's driving you without realizing it, but it also doesn't go away just because you can figure it out. Maybe this is also an OCD thing - I can analyze and pick apart my own fixations and fears and resentments towards myself better than almost anyone, but is that better than being able to just stop playing tug-of-war with them? Maybe.
There's a limit to how much you can resolve anything - as the physicist Phillip Anderson said, 'You never understand everything. When one understands everything, one has gone crazy.' The question is, what is worth trying to resolve and what isn't? And we'll spend the rest of our lives trying to figure that out.
One more thing I wanted to add - when you write about yourself noticing a self-loathing, 'shallow', non-feminist thought at the back of your head even when otherwise in the grip of something else: how much of that is classic 'woman watching herself' socialization (which you appear to consider it as) and how much of that is the OCD? That is, you could be at the very least 'a woman watching herself watch herself', or even 'a woman realizes what the most damning thought would be to think right now, then thinks it'. I say this as a cishet man with it whose inner voice is often preoccupied with my being A) pitifully insufficient as A Man (and therefore a failure), or B) damnably too much of A Man (and therefore irredeemable and evil)
Clarifying - I wasn't trying to make you question your own conclusions, just suggesting you give yourself a little more slack about the thoughts you hate. It's taken me decades to reach some kind of equilibrium with my intrusive thoughts, and I'm still working on it (and will probably always be)
Austin used to be a bastion of interesting subcultures — many of them have been driven out. Natures Treasures just closed their iconic old location but apparently moved so they aren’t gone. There’s a really vibrant goth pole dancer scene — Shelbi Aiona if she’s still there is a great teacher. More stuff that may or may not still exist — Church of the Sacred Womb. Various vampire themed stores & events. Casa de Luz. Sukha Yoga. Half-priced books on south Lamar always had the strangest spread of stuff. I acquired a huge library of weird books from there. Vibrant film scene — more watching than making. Also lots of good nature. There’s a weird mansion in hill country that offers yoga classes, or there was. Lots of good indie theater in warehouses.
as a the only female engineer at my job who often feels uncomfortable with the existence of my tits while sitting at my desk, thank you for this. "if I could get smart enough, smart enough in the right way, then I might be able to escape the functional category of girl. " this really resonated with me. along with the contradicting powerlessness/privilege. i often had men in my classes tell me i only received certain opportunities because i was a woman, while i felt like i didn’t get others for the same reason.
Thank you for writing this. Jesus Christ. Thank you.
I’m a senior in college now, studying English and math. I’m eight years into recovering from an eating disorder, into not thinking about it. There is so much life to live. There is so much math to do and so many books to read. I know a lot of things; I can do a lot of things; I think, if I chose something, if I really put my mind to it, I could do anything at all. I go to my Measure Theory class and there are three women, and one of them is our professor (who I can’t talk to without wanting to cry — I’m writing my thesis with her and it’s a battle every week to sit in her office and talk to her about complex, difficult mathematical issues without bursting into tears thinking about how hard she has worked to get to where she is, and aren’t I sick of that desire? How patronizing those tears would be). But I sit in the classroom and sometimes I find myself wishing my body was made of marble instead of listening to her speak. While I’m working on problem sets I get up and walk around my room, setting my camera up at different angles, trying to trick my body into looking like nothing but clean white bone. And people ask me what I write about and I don’t have a good answer — I write all the time, all I do is write and write, and everything I say comes back to the wish that I could peel off my skin and be nothing but sharp angles. I read feminist theory and I believe it and I think about the subjugation of women and I place myself and my own thoughts within this long history of oppression and I continue doing math because I love it and I talk loudly and I don’t hold my tongue for the sake of the men I sleep with and I talk about queer theory over brunch and I read and think and write and write and write and everything, it seems, comes down to my body and its relationship to me. I am powerless in the face of it. I need to write it down or I will not be able to get around it. But that’s just the thing: I have been writing it down, and I haven’t gotten around it. I am pinned underneath it. Trapped, by the weight of my own desires, the weakness of my body to resist.
this is so beautiful, thank u for sharing it .. <3 I rly feel like I understand all of this
“my impending
womanhood could be a trick I pulled instead of a trick that got pulled on me” thank you rayne
❤️❤️
you pulled the best card from this deck <3
LOVE this. As someone who was always shit at math, I’ve always had kind of a fantasy of being some sort of mathematician or physicist—partly because of the beautiful tantalizing mysteries of those fields and partly because it always seemed like one thing you could do as a woman to sort of be intellectually beyond anyone’s skepticism, lol. And it frustrates me to not know where the one fantasy ends and the other begins/to feel that inward, ego-driven logic eclipse the outward intellectual curiosity. Also, on another note, the things you do with parentheses in this piece completely delighted me. Thank you for this one!!
ugh thank u eleanor!!! "be intellectually beyond anyone's skepticism" is such a good way to put it, I still wonder sometimes if I am going to be chasing that pipe dream forever... & actually so grateful to hear u liked the parentheses moments lol bc I was so on the fence about whether or not to cut like half of them
i read this as soon as i woke up and cried twice then read it out loud to my best friend on the floor of her bedroom and started tearing up again. talked to her a couple weeks ago while i was drunk about how i feel like a bad feminist because my filmmaking influences for my latest project are mainly masculine (but what even is "masculine" except for Not Feminine). rayne you are the voice of a generation!! i feel so seen in every single thing you write.
i have more responses to this piece, but in the meantime, austin is my hometown! i moved away for college when i was 18, but i still love it, it's a wonderful place. i recommend going to barton springs or deep eddy to swim, chill, and (mostly) people watch, it's the best people watching/swimming i've ever experienced. go see live music in austin! i like the mohawk as a venue, a ton of restaurants will have live music, and it's touristy but i also recommend the outdoor bar/stage by guero's downtown, when i was 10 i met a lady who danced beautifully and gave out flowers to people she danced with. she was so beautiful that i was afraid when i danced with her. i hung the mini roses she gave me upside down to dry and they are still in my childhood bedroom. the austin film society cinema is one of my favorite places, they show arthouse and foreign films, and you might see richard linklater in the lobby. go see the bats fly when the sun sets on the 6th street bridge, go for a walk by lake travis, go for a paddleboard at texas rowing club. also, for shopping, there's a massive incredible goodwill and a half price books on n lamar blvd, i went there so many weekends in high school. and buy a good pair of cowboy boots! heritage boots if you have a bigger budget and are looking for a shoe that is also a piece of art, or allen's boots if you want something less expensive.
this is soooo helpful thank u so much omg. my final question .. do u have a fav restaurant
glad it's helpful! i'm not the world's no 1 foodie lol, but elizabeth's cafe has great vietnamese food, el chilito is my favorite breakfast taco in the city (bfast tacos are essential, they are the number one thing i crave when i come home), and fresca's also has great tacos. those are all cheaper, there are a bunch of fancier restaurants downtown. austin has amazing mexican/tex mex food, not as good on the italian or seafood front. get a margarita on the rocks at a mexican restaurant in austin, it's a special experience. and if you want a fast food burger or milkshake, the correct choice is P Terry's, it's a texas only chain.
PLAYIN RESIDENT EVILLLLLL
U get it
but you truly Get It
This hurtttttt Rayne "I spend all this time trying desperately not to think about my body but it hunts me like a dog." - but kind of in a good way. A 'seen' way.
I'm currently a 'woman' in 'physics' and this made me think so much about the weird pressure of being found out as a girl in journal clubs and what not. I would never wear makeup to a meeting with a prof or dress feminine (although i don’t do that much anyways). It's such an act that we can end up putting on, being born a woman is okay but you can never *be* a woman. (also when i [if ever] finish my degree I'm planning on pursuing writing for a bit and it always brings me a lot of comfort to see/hear of people that have followed similar paths so thx haha)
rayne have you listened to bull believer by wednesday? i feel like you have since I think it was you who turned me on to them when i was like 16. anyway that song gives me the same feeling as a lot of parts of this post did, it makes me feel seen in a way that hurts in my chest and my throat. i can't wait for your book <33
Oh wow what an honour to be compared to that song. ❣️thank u
Glad to see you getting on the Friendship wave. Maybe the way to transcend the category of woman is to try to think about it less. Have you read Mating by Norman Rush? Among the best female narrators I've read, paradoxically written by a man, who knows deeply that gendered inequality must be cultural rather than essential but struggles to feel the extent of intellectual equality in a heterosexual relationship.
Totally … which is why it’s so funny that it sometimes feels like it’s my job to think about it all the time Lol.. but I’m getting better! & no I haven’t read Mating but it’s come on the highest recommendation from many people i trust so maybe it must be next
It's a good book for being alone in a new city -- at least for me, the protagonist was a comforting voice who accompanied me throughout my days. Enjoy Austin!
you’re unreal this is incredible
this stopped me in my tracks: "I only realized after I dropped out of school that while I honestly did like physics — I actually even loved it, sometimes — I think some part of my attraction to the field was a fantasy I’d cooked up in the anxious anticipatory muck of pre-puberty that if I could get smart enough, smart enough in the right way, then I might be able to escape the functional category of girl."
I just got done talking to my therapist a few days ago about how I live in an eternal unchanging present, because my past is terrible or a blank and so is the future as I can imagine it. I don't know if that's healthy, but I live, so. There's a line from a biography of the paralyzed songwriter Doc Pomus that I've been thinking about recently: 'he developed the ability to forget something painful or embarrassing the instant it happened, and in this way later came to feel that he had forgotten most of his childhood.' That's pretty accurate, for me.
I don't think that you're more interested in your own dysfunction than most other troubled people (is there any other kind of person?) - you've just come into the ability to verbalize it, particularly through other women's writing and feminism and so forth. There's pluses and minuses to that - it's not an inchoate feeling in the back of your head that's driving you without realizing it, but it also doesn't go away just because you can figure it out. Maybe this is also an OCD thing - I can analyze and pick apart my own fixations and fears and resentments towards myself better than almost anyone, but is that better than being able to just stop playing tug-of-war with them? Maybe.
There's a limit to how much you can resolve anything - as the physicist Phillip Anderson said, 'You never understand everything. When one understands everything, one has gone crazy.' The question is, what is worth trying to resolve and what isn't? And we'll spend the rest of our lives trying to figure that out.
(I'm sure you know who Phillip Anderson is, of course - I'm writing from my own ignorance of the subject. I can do math - I just hate it....)
One more thing I wanted to add - when you write about yourself noticing a self-loathing, 'shallow', non-feminist thought at the back of your head even when otherwise in the grip of something else: how much of that is classic 'woman watching herself' socialization (which you appear to consider it as) and how much of that is the OCD? That is, you could be at the very least 'a woman watching herself watch herself', or even 'a woman realizes what the most damning thought would be to think right now, then thinks it'. I say this as a cishet man with it whose inner voice is often preoccupied with my being A) pitifully insufficient as A Man (and therefore a failure), or B) damnably too much of A Man (and therefore irredeemable and evil)
Clarifying - I wasn't trying to make you question your own conclusions, just suggesting you give yourself a little more slack about the thoughts you hate. It's taken me decades to reach some kind of equilibrium with my intrusive thoughts, and I'm still working on it (and will probably always be)
Austin used to be a bastion of interesting subcultures — many of them have been driven out. Natures Treasures just closed their iconic old location but apparently moved so they aren’t gone. There’s a really vibrant goth pole dancer scene — Shelbi Aiona if she’s still there is a great teacher. More stuff that may or may not still exist — Church of the Sacred Womb. Various vampire themed stores & events. Casa de Luz. Sukha Yoga. Half-priced books on south Lamar always had the strangest spread of stuff. I acquired a huge library of weird books from there. Vibrant film scene — more watching than making. Also lots of good nature. There’s a weird mansion in hill country that offers yoga classes, or there was. Lots of good indie theater in warehouses.
My moods do not believe in each other!!! This line hits too hard
as a the only female engineer at my job who often feels uncomfortable with the existence of my tits while sitting at my desk, thank you for this. "if I could get smart enough, smart enough in the right way, then I might be able to escape the functional category of girl. " this really resonated with me. along with the contradicting powerlessness/privilege. i often had men in my classes tell me i only received certain opportunities because i was a woman, while i felt like i didn’t get others for the same reason.