Rewards For Showing Yourself
Show yourself more.
That’s something that comes up again and again in my left-hand writing and the pages I write on first waking.
People who are blocked or projecting may read that and say I’m already showing myself too much — narcissism is what people accuse women of, women who stake out the same space for our thoughts and feelings that men do.
White men seem to have no problem showing themselves, most of them. They do the emotional equivalent of manspreading. Their ideas and opinions are spread through jobs they get and podcasts they’re on and media interviews they do like dandelion seeds.
In a study, men perceived the conversation as being equal if women talked only 15% of the time. They perceived the women as dominating the conversation if they talked just 30% of the time.
Everything in our culture encourages women to show themselves less. Sexually, yes, we’re slightly incentivized in that direction. But even that’s debatable. We’re always punished for others’ projections, punished for holding others’ thoughts and feelings in our images and bodies.
A test for how you know what the culture wants you to do is — what are your trolls telling you to do? They’re losing their fucking minds trying to get you to shut up? That’s the culture.
Show yourself more.
I was writing yesterday — and listening to a podcast — and I suddenly had this inspired idea which I wrote down on the back of an old journal:
Rewards for showing yourself.
Which box do I put this in? I’m not sure.
Do I incentivize users of our VR product to show themselves? What would those incentives be? Are the rewards — connection, friendship, networks, reach — a natural function of sharing who you are or who you want to be?
Is this more an abstract idea to implement in my screenwriting — are my characters secretly dying to be seen? (Yes.) But they don’t want to show themselves — this is the tension in most drama. Their dramatic partners have to bait them to try to draw them out or trick them into showing themselves.
Am I looking for rewards for showing myself? (Yes.) Like what?
Feeling seen, understood, witnessed, cherished, cared for, important. Connection, friendship, network, reach.
All the feelings I would seek from a partner.
Show yourself more.
