The Inner is Political: Imposter syndrome as patriarchal legacy
I’m a hellish fussy perfectionist. I’m the most tireless persecutor, heavy judge, uncompromising parent, when it comes to myself and my work. This is not a personal opinion: it’s a fact. I can feel the material effects of this aptitude when I’m about to speak during a public discussion or write and publish on the web. In those circumstances, I feel like the content I’d like to express is not (or not enough) smart / relevant / accurate / appropriate, etc. So, after that, the most frequent reaction that I have is to withdraw, which is a direct consequence of a constant process of depreciation that I set in motion almost automatically. Thus, the result is that those familiar tyrannies of silence win. Needless to say, such a mechanism drains out a lot of precious energy and makes me feel constantly outgrown in that microscopic space in which I allow myself to be.
After 12 months of coexistence with the pandemic and a lot of time spent on my own, this systemic automatism appears to be every day more burdensome. So I started reflecting critically about why it is so lively in my daily life. Notwithstanding that its presence depends greatly on personal disposition, I wondered if — apart from my nature — there could have been something else. How come this imposter syndrome turns up so powerfully? To what extent it is a character thing and not culturally-induced?
So, here’s what I thought: feeling not good enough is a patriarchal legacy. That inferiority complex is a tool of the patriarchal system to discourage not only women’s ability to speak up and achieve their potentiality and goals occupying leadership positions, but also, more broadly, women’s political agency. In this sense, quoting Audre Lorde, imposter syndrome is a “piece of the legacy of hate which we are inoculated from the time we were born by those who intended it to be an injection of death. But we adapted, learned to take it in and use it, unscrutinezed. Yet, at what cost!”.
Plus, being good doesn’t mean being perfect: that’s what a man wants from a woman, and he has never been victim of the same expectation. Whereas, I’m allowed to screw up something, just as a man does. And I’m allowed to get-the-shit-done even if I’m not an expert, just as a man does. I like AOC’s empowering advice to “be brave, not perfect”.
Back to my tendency toward perfectionism and low self-esteem, I’m doing my best (even though failing quite often) to acknowledge that if I challenge myself doing something complex, it’s because I want to do that thing properly and carefully, not because I need to show or convince someone that I’m good and I’m not an imposter. I’m here because I dare to think out of this box. Yet sometimes I feel I’m still part of such a toxic subliminal social pattern.
We all know that personal is political. Though, I believe the inner is political too. A wise woman once said freedom is a constant struggle. Today is another day, and I keep fighting.
