Undercurrent-Issue-Fall-Winter-2014-3

Creating The “Femimonster”: A Reflection on InternalizedHypermasculinities and Building Community in The Campos of TheDominican RepublicBy: Courtney VaughanAbstract - The purpose of this paper is to explore how the author has internalized hypermasculinities, andhow she was forced to confront this reality during her experience learning and volunteering abroad in theDominican Republic through the Canadian non-profit, Intercordia. The reflection elaborates on how thisinternalization affected relationship building. The author explores the social construction of gender, therelationship of the “masculine” to power, drawing upon Jean Vanier’s understanding of weakness andvulnerability in order to transcend these social constructions and create a more holistic self andcommunity. She concludes that embracing vulnerability and weakness, which are often feminizedqualities, are paramount in transforming the social structures of today.We’re this mixture of incredible beauty, capacity to do incredibly beautiful things andalso this incredible fear of being crushed so we have this tension inside of us somewhere toprove that I am the best and at the same time this fear that maybe I don’t exist. I have todiscover inside myself all those powers where I’m pushing people away to prove that I am okay(Vanier 2009).“For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be someone else’s first, but I have never hadthat one best friend that everyone else had. I had a lot of great friends, but was always number two. Ithink it scares me to open myself to that again: to make someone my first only to be their second. I don’thave one incredibly good friend, I have many good ones. I have never had a serious relationship, andquite frankly, have avoided them for the last four years. There is not one person who I make an effort tosee every single week, let alone every day. It appears that I have subconsciously avoided creating strong,dependent, vulnerable relationships because I fear being hurt, being rejected: letting someone becomemy first only to be their second. If I give my all to someone, and they only give me half of what they can, Iam left needing. It is scary to be unfulfilled. It is scary to lose the comfort of control.”As is evident from the above excerpt from my journal, I have been and am currently workingthrough a process of understanding my own relationship with weakness and vulnerability. Although thecurrent Euroamerican society in which I live promotes the discourse of strength, power, andindependence as that which is good, I have recently been given the opportunity through my experiencewith the Canadian non-profit, Intercordia, to reflect on the validity (or lack thereof) of this discourse.Intercordia is a non-profit organization that partners with Canadian universities to provide students with auniversity accredited and engaged learning experience. As a participant, I was sent to one of theirinternational partners, in the mountainous region of the Dominican Republic, to live for three months witha campesino family and volunteer within the reforestation brigades initiated by the local campesinocooperative, La Federacion de Campesinos Hacia el Progreso (the Federation of Rural Farmers towardsProgress). Intercordia, which was founded with Jean Vanier’s philosophy in mind, encourages studentsto rethink their relationship with weakness, vulnerability, and community. As Vanier writes, we humyns 1are an “extraordinary mixture of weakness and strength, ignorance and wisdom, light and darkness, loveand hate” (2012). By placing them in situations of dissonance and vulnerability, students are encouraged!"I choose to spell “human” as “humyn”to repudiate the male centeredness of the English language. It iscrucial to recognize the effects language has on our way of knowing. The goal is to perform a breachingexperiment of sorts which disrupts the male centeredness within the word ‘human’In doing so, I hope toencourage people to question unidentified, patriarchal norms of Euroamerican society.65