Open the book "Her World: A Unique Picture of Women's Spiritual Growth" and see such a shocking and frustrating text:
To achieve equal rights for men and women, the task is still very arduous. The number of women killed by their partners has not decreased (in 2019, on average, one woman was killed by a partner every two days in France). According to the World Health Organization, violence in intimate relationships affects 1 in 4 women in Europe. Anthropologist and sexologist Philip Burynott pointed out that femicide is a phenomenon peculiar to human society:
Through anthropological research, Ashtier points out this reality that we should all know: that violence between two genders is a special landscape of human society. Humans are the only species in which males kill females. (Her World: A Unique Illustrated Picture of Women's Spiritual Growth, p. 54)
Reading this, I believe that many readers will think of those shocking wife killing cases in the past few years: the case of Xu Mou's wife in Hangzhou, the case of The Net Red Ram being burned to death by her ex-husband, the case of Zhu Xiaodong's murder of his wife and the refrigerator case of the corpse in Shanghai, the case of Fang Mouyang, a woman in Dezhou, Shandong Province, who was abused to death by her husband's family for a long time, and so on. You can also make a long list.
The reason why these cases are known is because the cases are too peculiar or tragic to attract public attention, what about those who do not have such a unique mark? - Definitely more, that's the hidden part of the iceberg.
Indeed, humans are inferior to animals when it comes to killing women. As Ashtier said:
Although there is also violent killing in the animal world, it is by no means this kind of violent killing between the sexes.
Her World: A Unique Illustrated Catalogue of Women's Spiritual Growth (hereinafter referred to as "Her World"), published by the People's Post and Telecommunications Press, is a new book co-authored by French scholars Elisabeth Cardoch and Anna de Montallo. Elisabeth Cardoch is a writer and documentary filmmaker, and Anna de Montallo is a psychotherapist.
The two authors attended a sharing session with an outstanding woman, a beautiful woman with a bright mind who was a model of success. But in the speech of this successful woman, a surprising sentence unexpectedly appeared: "At that time, I was very weak-minded and felt like an impostor." ”
Such an insightful and knowledgeable woman can also face the problem of lack of confidence?! The two authors want to go back to the source of the problem – why are women so lacking in self-confidence?
So there was Her World, a book about how women can develop self-confidence. In this book, the two authors carefully analyze the phenomenon of impersonator syndrome, trace its historical roots, and make suggestions on how to enhance women's self-confidence.
The phenomenon of femicide, which is common in human society, cited above, is a phenomenon discovered by the author of this book when he traced his historical roots. The authors argue that after thousands of years of evolution in human society, the trait of "lack of self-confidence" has been engraved in the genes of women.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="14" >. Why is women's lack of confidence? </h1>
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="15" > first and foremost historical reasons. </h1>
For a long time, women have grown up and been subject to the fragility of patriarchy. In the West, not only since the days of ancient Greece and Rome, in all known social formations in the West, women have been dominated by men, but in the ancestral or pre-civilizational societies, the situation of women is not optimistic.
The author argues that there has never been a society in history that was entirely dominated by women. They never found any true matriarchal society—an organizational form in which women had supreme dominance over society and men. Such a society does not exist.
For centuries, women could only exist by virtue of status conferred by marriage and motherhood. Their education is limited to the whole family. In Ibsen's Doll's House, when Nala moves from her father's house to her husband's house, her husband reminds her to remember her sacred duty: "First of all you are a wife, a mother. Later, Nala ran away and became a symbol of women's liberation.
In the field of thought, many well-known philosophers are no different from ordinary people when it comes to the topic of women:
In Plato's view, women are transformed from the most despicable men: "Those cowardly men are in a miserable situation... So they became women. (Timaieu)
Aristotle believed: "Women are like mutilated men, their menstruation is a dirty sperm, they lack principles, they have no soul." (Zoology)
Napoleon I believed: "We In the West treat women too well and spoil them... Never think that they can sit on an equal footing with men, when in fact they are just tools for having children... They'd better do more needlework and don't chew on the root of their tongue. ”
Schopenhauer believed that "women should only be full-time housewives in the family and devote themselves to housework." Young girls should follow this example, and we must not make them proud, but teach them how to work and obey. (On Women)
Oscar Wilde said: "Women are pure decorative items. They are hollow-minded, uncultured, and only clever. ”
There are many more, and I will not list them.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="26" > followed by social discipline. </h1>
In contemporary society, women have removed many obstacles to their own freedom and emancipation. They have the same glorious academic resume as men, and they are free to marry, divorce, pursue love, and take full responsibility for their choices.
So why are you always not confident? The author points out the second reason: the multifaceted discipline of women in society has led to women's lack of self-confidence.
"Discipline" is a key term coined by Foucault in his book Discipline and Punishment. In French, English and Latin, the term has multiple meanings of discipline, education, training, correction, and discipline. The discipline of women in today's society includes:
Discipline of the body: Today's women are in a society with a strong sense of connection, and they are always subject to the demands of perfection, performance and appearance in social discipline.
Social networks are full of perfect creatures — all-powerful women, super entrepreneurs, contented wives, model mothers of happy children, and so on— with flat bellies and slender legs that make many women lack self-confidence in their bodies.
The discipline of beauty: The unspoken rule of society is to regard beauty as a virtue of women, so that most women lack self-confidence.
The Discipline of Love and Family: Another social discipline exists in the ideal construction of partnership and family.
When the relationship is regarded as the norm and the norm, single women often become the object of discussion by others. They face rash questioning, sharp rhetoric, and pressure from family and society: "How can you always be single?" "You don't have a life partner?" "Do you have a date now?"
Faced with such social pressure all day long, what confidence can a single woman have?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="36" > there are also native family influences. </h1>
The harsh criticism and conditional love of parents are often another factor in the impersonation syndrome of children: "If you grow up listening to all kinds of criticism and negative evaluations, and there is a critical or negative narrative in your head, then the way you do things will not be satisfactory." 」 If you are a perfectionist, then nothing will live up to your expectations. Even if you succeed, you will continue to shift your goals, and you will never be able to fully realize your expectations of yourself as a result. ”
In families with a tradition of son preference, parents expect differently from their sons. Boys are thought to be able to play more combative games, and girls are called "tomboys" if they are among them. This kind of education will naturally make girls more likely to have self-doubt than their younger brothers or older brothers.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="39" > second, impersonator syndrome</h1>
Even if they are very good, women often lack self-confidence, which is a common phenomenon. In 1978, American psychologists Pauline Rose Cranes and Suzanne Ames defined this peculiar phenomenon of extreme self-doubt as impersonator syndrome.
What is it like to have "impersonator syndrome"? Her World lists some of the following features:
The more successful you are, the more self-doubt you become; not only does it persist, but it can make the situation worse as one accumulates achievements. The result is that the more successful a person is, the more anxious they feel.
Another characteristic of impersonator syndrome patients is that they don't think they deserve success, and instead attribute success to luck or random events.
Impersonator syndrome is not a mental disorder, but it does reveal a feeling of powerlessness in the way of thinking.
This way of thinking leads to individuals being confident in only a few ways, and often produces personal judgments that "I'm still not good enough" and feels that they are not worthy of the name. They often ask themselves, "Am I really qualified to apply for this position?" Am I really eligible for a promotion? ”
Impersonator syndrome is a mixture of self-criticism, self-doubt, and fear of failure, which causes impostors to overwork or procrastinate.
Impersonator syndrome, patients have their own characteristics, but first they have a common feature, that is, to put forward a series of paranoid doubts and harsh demands on the self, believing that their success is due to chance and luck. In addition to these common features, Dr. Valerie Young also found in her investigation that there are five different types of impersonator syndrome patients:
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="48" >1, perfectionist</h1>
If a person is continuously or from time to time affected by impersonator syndrome in his life, he trembles with fear that "my incompetence will soon be exposed to broad daylight", and in order to dispel the worry, he spends all his energy to "compensate" for it, so as to avoid possible shameful situations.
This is why perfectionists demand too much or even unrealistic high demands on themselves.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="51" >2</h1>
Perfectionists are critical of the quality of their work, while women with an expert mindset demand a lot of quality knowledge.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="53" >3, "Lone Woman"</h1>
Women of the "lone woman" type often persist to the end after setting a task for themselves. They do not ask for help, because asking for help from others means showing weakness and being ashamed.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="55" >4</h1>
Some are stuck in a state of self-imposed security. "For self-absorbed people, the level of ability depends on how easy and fast the problem is solved. When they try to learn a discipline or skill, they always want to succeed on the first attempt, and if they don't, they will see it as a failure and feel ashamed of it. ”
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="57" >5</h1>
The typical mentality of the Almighty Supergirl is: "I am an all-powerful woman, and naturally I should be omnipotent!" "In the end, I made my life too hard and a mess!"
The consequences of impersonator syndrome are so severe that the authors note:
The first risk posed by impersonator syndrome is burnout. Avoid the smallest mistakes as much as possible, so the senseless effort will further reinforce the feeling of self-doubt and "impersonator".
The second risk posed by impersonator syndrome is a deep sense of powerlessness. The embodiment of this sense of powerlessness is procrastination—a bad tendency to push everything off later.
The third risk is to make professional life boring, because impostors neither allow themselves to taste success nor prevent themselves from moving in the ideal direction.
How can modern women crack impersonator syndrome?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="64" >3. </h1>
"Her World" makes an in-depth analysis of the choices and challenges that women will face in the critical period of life, revealing the truth of the situation and inner growth of women in modern society.
The authors emphasize that a lack of confidence is not irreversible. People are in a state of ups and downs, and as long as they change their ideas and transcend the restrictions imposed on themselves by others or themselves, they can complete the goal step by step.
"Her World" points out that life is not a static river. Self-confidence changes as your life circumstances change. If we believe that life is a process of continuous improvement, then we must know how to step out of our personal comfort zone and learn to take risks.
Having self-confidence doesn't mean never making mistakes; on the contrary, having self-confidence means accepting mistakes and being able to learn from them.
When women grow up, they are easily swayed by the eyes of others and judged and condemned by others. The vision of society determines their development trajectory and affects their choice of direction. Social judgments shape their self-confidence even more. However, even if women can't control other people's opinions, they can try to change their own opinions, be more tolerant of themselves, be less critical, and be braver.
True equality between men and women is only possible when women no longer emphasize themselves as women and radically change their consciousness.
If you also suffer from the "impersonator syndrome", "Her World" will give you a thoughtful guide to accompany you out of the quagmire of lack of confidence.
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