Now, what? Standing in one’s generation, taking consultation

ABSTRACT

I situate myself in the context of an evolving conversation in relation to what it means to be a woman. In my mother’s generation, the first wave of feminism forced a collision between traditional western female values grounded in a subversive authority and the desire to emerge from that type of repressive position. From the standpoint of my daughter’s generation, I may be tilting at windmills, trying to find my own authority in relation to a paternal authority that I feel deauthorises and devalues the voice I am trying to find. I take that consultation seriously, inviting me to think about relationships between what can and cannot be seen from any particular vertex. Given that maturation requires our ability to come to terms with difference and with limit, how can women more effectively enact and pass along the process of becoming oneself as a fundamental value?

KEYWORDS:

• Psychoanalysis
• difference
• diversity
• women
• identities

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.