Damaged Goods or Powerful Woman (Big Ole Dyke)
�"Now, don'�t take this the wrong way. �I don'�t want you to take offense, but we see this all the time. A person faces a life-threatening illness and has to leave work for a period of time. When that person returns to work, her superiors view her as less than her former self. They see her as �damaged goods'.�"
My lawyer offered this explanation of my workplace experience after my cancer diagnosis and treatment. I was not offended; in fact, it rang true. It felt correct. That is how I was viewed when I returned to work: damaged goods. It actually was just a reinforcement of how I felt about myself, despite my efforts to view the situation otherwise. Part of me is missing. It will never come back. I will never be the same person that I was before this happened; parts of this are good and interesting, but other parts are bad and painful.
My therapist said that, despite all of my study of theory, I believe in the myth of the hysterical woman. That'�s what I really believe in--�not what I think is correct, but what holds me hostage with faith. I think that he is right. Foucault does not hold a candle to Freud or Charcot in my self-definition. This is and has always been my greatest fear: embodying the hysterical woman trope. I have spent much of my life fleeing the hysterical label. I deny my emotions and I hide my sensitivity. Imagine my surprise when hysteria caught me cold with the cancer in my uterus.
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I use the term �big ole dyke� to describe powerful lesbian women. I am trying to find a way to be powerful, to be a big ole dyke. I find it difficult, if not impossible, to stand up for myself when certain injustices are perpetrated upon me. These injustices usually invoke my internal dialogue that finds that I might potentially be hysterical. I stop and hold myself back when I clearly should stand up for myself. I do this because I am afraid, afraid that I will be perceived as the hysterical (emotionally out of control) woman. My intellectual ability to critique and deconstruct power structures does not help me to give myself a god damn break.
I want to be a powerful woman, not damaged goods.