Today I feel numb; I have been packing things all day, and that’s a lot for someone my age. Still, it’s good exercise and maybe I’ll survive it if I allow rest every few hours. I am keeping my promise, though, to write every day. Tonight I have an essay on the subject of humiliation, especially as applied to women.

HUMILIATION

 If you’ve ever had to ask someone for money, you probably know how humiliating it is. You dread the moment. You stand with deference and respect, hoping they won’t say no, hoping they won’t mock or deride you. You don’t feel comfortable in your own skin. It’s one of the worst things you can face.

Throughout much of human history, women have had to rely on their husbands to give them money. If they need more than he is giving them, they have to ask for it. Special occasions might need special money. Christmas club accounts were once popular; a woman could save part of her household allowance and not have to ask her husband for money to buy him a gift. Still, she was dependent. And the very word – allowance – is the same one used for the money kids receive from their parents for chores, or bribes, or just for breathing. Like so many other ways in which women are treated, it is infantilizing.

My mother used to have to ask my father for money. I often wondered why she almost never did, because there were times we needed something badly. She would try to squeeze it out of the household money, but her monthly ‘allowance’ wasn’t sufficient for much, certainly not for six children. She used lay away and Christmas club because to do otherwise would require the humiliation of asking my father for money.

I finally understood after I was married, the first time I had to ask my husband for money. He kept cash on hand, and I tended more toward using checks or credit, but I needed cash for a purchase for his birthday. He gave me the cash he usually gave me each week, but I asked him if I could have another…whatever amount. It’s been a long time, I’m not even sure anymore. It wasn’t a lot, something like forty five dollars, but it felt like I was asking for the moon. This, in spite of the fact that I worked longer hours and made more money than he did. Why did he give me money in the first place? Well, he worked for a bank. It was ten times easier for him to get cash than it was for me, since I was at work before the bank opened and didn’t leave until after it closed. He kept banker’s hours…literally.

Fast forward. I have a different husband, a different life, but he still has the schedule that allows him to go to the bank. I have the debit card, but sometimes you need cash, so he keeps me supplied. When he goes to the bank, he asks if I need money. If I say I do, he gives me some of what he took out. Not a problem, really…until he hands me the cash in public. Paying at the grocery store, he remembers I needed cash, so he hands me a couple of bills. I nearly shrivel up in embarrassment. What must people be thinking? I am a kept woman…I don’t have money of my own…I need someone to look after me.

It’s easy to say what do you care what some random stranger in the store thinks of you? It shouldn’t, should it? But all my life I’ve had a strange relationship with finances. I can work myself into all sorts of convolutions trying to decide what is the best way to pay. If I use cash, will people think I can’t qualify for a credit card? If I use a credit card, will they think I can’t afford to buy groceries? What about a check? Does that solve it? Not really, because then everyone is mad at you for holding up the line. I know it’s silly, but when you grow up poor, you don’t want people to think you are poor.

For a long time, I just sort of thought I was hyper-sensitive. Over time, I’ve realized that the humiliation factor might be intentional. Treat a woman like an infant, and you have her in your control. I don’t think that was the motivation for my husband…or for my ex…it was just convenient for both of us. But the practice of man having money and woman receiving it from him is so entrenched in popular culture we don’t think anything about it. We just play the game, and live with the humiliation. Better than making a scene, right?

Why am I focused on this, you might ask. Isn’t it sort of trivial? Not really. The whole idea of humiliation is a charged one. Keeping women controlled has been the goal of men for a long time, and humiliation is a good way to do it. Intimidation, humiliation, and fear. These three factors control a lot of female behavior, and are accepted by society as the normal relationships between a man and a woman.

When a man rapes a woman, it is an act of humiliation…for her. When a man interrupts a woman in a business meeting or at the dinner table…when a man asks a woman to make the coffee or bring him a sandwich…when he asks her to tend to his needs rather than her own, it has the potential to humiliate her. When you have a long-term relationship with another, it is possible to ask these things, or do these activities, without problem because she may understand you are just asking a favor, not seeking to humiliate. Not all such actions are automatically humiliating.

Nonetheless, humiliation is not an uncommon feeling in relationships. Men feel it, too, so they should understand when women explain that what they do is humiliating. The thing is, most women never say that. I have never told my husband it’s humiliating for him to hand me money in public. Why? Because women have been taught to submit, and even those of us who have moved beyond submission to assert our independence sometimes find it hard to question or to stand up for ourselves. So we suffer humiliation rather than say anything.

If you are ready to leave humiliation behind, speak up and speak out. Tell someone their behaviors are infantilizing and humiliating. It’s not easy, is it? I imagine men don’t find it easy, either. In spite of the difficulty, take charge of your life. Speak up. Don’t be humiliated just so you don’t rock the boat. Saying something might make all the difference. I can’t promise it will work; I won’t know how it works until after my husband reads this essay. I just hope he understands…I imagine he will.