CAROLYN GAGE
What if it turned out that our problems as women were much simpler than we thought? What if much of the bewildering — and proliferating — array of seemingly unrelated symptoms and pathologies that afflict women could be viewed as the effect of one single syndrome? And what if that syndrome had a single cause: heteropatriarchy? A staunch reductionist, I am intrigued by the possibility, and in the interests of furthering this line of inquiry, I propose a name for this phenomenon: The Ugly Duckling Syndrome.
As you probably remember, in the fairy tale the Ugly Duckling was tormented by her so-called peers for being different, until the happy day when she discovered that she was really a swan and not a duck at all. In other words, her “differences” were normal and she could stop beating up on herself for not fitting in.
In my own experience, the Ugly Duckling Syndrome has provided an explanation for many of my “maladjustments.” First and foremost, I am a lesbian, and although I lived as a heterosexual for many years, I believe I have always been a lesbian. My earlier relationships with men were wildly dissociative. And all the time I kept wondering what was wrong with me. In retrospect, I am proudest of the behaviours that caused me shame and embarrassment as a heterosexual. These “aberrant” behaviours were bearing witness to my swaniness, my lesbianism.
I had a terrible time with periods, hating my body and hating my womanhood. This was because duck culture doesn’t make allowances for swan cycles. My moon time was a nuisance, a time when my body would exercise a will of its own and when I would have to fight it, drug it, or surrender to it.
Duck culture is linear, based on a definition of progress as steady accretion. Swan culture is cyclical, spiralling. We move forward in rhythmic circling motions that seem to double back to the beginning periodically. Our bloods ebb and flow, our possessions ebb and flow, our relationships ebb and flow. We adopt a grace about our losses and our gains, knowing that the process, not the results, is the focus. Because we live in spirals, not lines, we move in a third dimension and our progress is manifest in upward motion, rather than in forward or backward lines on the material plane.
Not only does duck culture violate the swan need for moon time withdrawal, but it also does not allow for adjustment to different seasons, climates, or weather conditions. In fact, duck culture has even pathologized the natural tendency of most life forms to slow down in winter! The duck name for this evolutionary adaptation is “Seasonal Affective Disorder!”
Linear duck culture also pathologizes grief, rage, and depression, all of which are necessary circling-back flight patterns essential to swan reconnaissance.
At thirty-six, I developed Chronic Fatigue Immune Deficiency Syndrome. In recovering from this devastating illness, I have had to study up on swan nutrition because, for most of my life, my eating habits reflected duck culture. I also had to notice that duck activities were meaningless and draining to me as a swan, sapping my will to live. I learned that I had been taught social patterns that invited victimization by ducks. I have had to train in swan self-defence. If my natural instincts about territory, environment, and feeding had not been so severely disrupted by exile from my native culture and by a resocialization process that amounted to brainwashing, I am convinced that I never would have contracted the disease.
And now here I am, facing menopause. The “symptoms” look suspiciously familiar: depression, mood swings, irritability, crying jags, suicidality, panic attacks, hypersensitivity, splitting headaches, fatigue, sleep disturbances. Are these really the effects of natural hormonal changes (proof of our ugly duckdom!), or are these traumatic responses to a sudden paradigm shift, as the body throws off the last constraints of an artificially imposed identity?
Could these disorders more accurately be termed the symptoms of captivity? Of exile from a beloved homeland? Of inability to protect or support one’s children or one’s art? Of identification with other forms of life that are being wiped out? Responses to forced labour? Repressed knowledge of trauma? Systemic poisoning? Pain of reintegrating parts of oneself that have been split off? The agony of remembering the unthinkable? The backlash of terror for breaking a taboo?
Menopause, as I see it, is not so much “The Change” as it is the “End of Denial.” For better or worse, at menopause, it is no longer possible to believe that one is a duck. Depending on one’s relationship to swanhood, menopause can either be a time of intense disorientation or of profound homecoming.
As lesbians, we began our journey with our coming out. Those same tools that enabled us to resist the institutions of compulsory heterosexuality will stand us in good stead as we sort through the myths and lies about menopause. And who knows? Maybe death, too, is just a final throe of the Ugly Duckling Syndrome.