12 12 2000
Andrea Hapke: re: Aktuganova (Translation from Russian)


Dear Larisa, Irina, Valentina, Irina and Jana,

it has been a few hours now, and now I am answering to you, Irina (Aktuganova).
You have written:
""Of course constructions exist (stereotypes, hierarchies and similar), but, above all, these constructions are in our head and maybe even in our own unconsciousness.""

I agree with you that they are in our heads, but as it seems to me, we conclude different things out of this. I also agree with you that one has to start with oneself. But for me it is very important to know and to understand that it is not only me who is guilty (about 'I cannot speak', 'I do not feel myself in the right place', etc.) - here, many discussions in different groups, social, and cultural theories helped me a lot. This is refering to many things, not only to the fact that I am seen as a woman. I started to look at the context, historical and social. It is also connencted with my not believing in "pure beginnings". In my opinion, definitions already begin before birth, when (at least here) the parents to be are offered to find out by technology, whether they will get a girl or a boy, or whether the child will be healthy. Here, there are discussions about these possibilities of diagnostics and its consequences (unfortunately not in wide public), also concerning the discussion about intersexuality. The informations by these groups and the sad biographies of the people who are being allocated a definite gender during birth, which is is being enforced during the whole live by medical means, these informations and examples show in the extreme, how society and one's sociocultural surroundings "stand in interaction" with identities or personalities.

Somehow, I also have to think all the time of the experiences with identity and constructions in Russia.
Larissa has written in her letter from today:
""Until today it seems to me that my fellow citizens have solved the problem of inner conflict with the system by stopping to take themselves and the system seriously."" and further:
""To make a successful feminist politics is agonizingly hard in a society where practically no democratic subjects exist. In such a society the run into cyberspace (i.o. English) is a welcome and blessed relief. If I would live in Russia now, I probably also would say with joy that I am a cyberfeminist, and if in Russian this word sounds idiotic, even better."" I would like to ask you (what I somehow can read in your letter): could it be, you simply have enough of dealing with and thinking about these circumstances, and now you would like to go on a rather joyful way?

I am of course writing this on the ground of what Irina Aristarkhova has written, who reminded us of what you are doing, of the work in the cyberfeminclub. Already in my second letter and now again I want to articulate my respect for what you are doing and admiration for your website. Maybe this got a little lost in my last letter, because I rather focused on your texts.

But an uncomfortable feeling remains from what you (Irina Aktuganova) are writing about your fellow-country-women.
What you are writing about the way of feminism, is it an obstacle to possibilities to share with others or to communicate about it?
Well, as Irina Aristarkhova has remarked, we are already communicating.
And what do you mean by the word "chosen"?

""Actually, to sum up this chain of thoughs in a simple equation, a truely consequent feminism in Russia would be the spiritual female way. And as any way our spirit is following it is a way for the chosen.""

Who are these chosen ones? What do they need for being chosen?
In my opinion this must rather be social and cultural capital, to have the time and the possibility; in the sense as Jana and I already have written...

""In Russia women traditionally are being ascribed the most breathtaking qualities as courage, manlyness, noblemindedness, self-sacrifying, wisdom, determination, avangardism etc.""
My first reaction: Are these so good qualities? Self-sacrificing never has been very useful for women. It seems to me that an articulation of such qualities could motivate people for other interests, e.g. nationalistic ones. Being a saviour or eternally guilty, but never thinking of yourself or at least about what you want yourself. I want to say that such an understanding is quite apt to discriminate women.
Hereby the notion of discrimination is broadening.
The day before yesterday, I wrote already about the interaction of such allocations and of real women in my letter to Irina Aristarkhova. And also how these schemes and allocated qualities are changing, although they are quite rigid.
To answer the question by Irina Aristarkhova: yes, under extreme circumstances qualities like manlyness, noblemindedness, self-sacrifying, determination are also being ascribed to german women.
If you are asking, which qualities else, I will have to think about this. But maybe this is leading too far... It would be interesting to look at the qualities which are connected with out topic, to play around with them, as already doing.

And it is not cyber-, because cyberspace is inavoidable breaking into our lives, but because we bore this space a long time ago, before it became a fact and an attribute of our existence.

Yyour thoughts about cyberfeminism were very interesting to me as I have a wholly different approach. Are you also connecting this with art and with self-reflection and with the specific situation of subculture or "informal community" in the last years ot the Soviet Union?
I remembered a text by Sylvia Sasse, where she is writing about virtual worlds without computers. And she is referring to the experiences of Soviet people. She is writing that the "ability to see was the ability to change from one world to another and to master the code." (my translation, unfortunately I have this text in German only, http://www.diss.sense.uni-konstanz.de) Are you also thinking about such an everyday and existential experience?

And now I also change my position and switch off my computer at last.

Best greetings to all
Andrea


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