The Secrets Young Women Keep

9 secrets women keep from men

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I have held the secrets of artists, filmmakers, musicians, and actors who use their studio or residency spaces as revolving doors for young, creative women and then go home to their Indigenous girlfriends or wives. I have held these secrets, but I have also endlessly shared knowledge with my women friends, comparing notes about well-known Indigenous personalities, beyond those who I can publicly name, because I know these are not my stories to tell.

30 secrets every woman keeps from her man

We warn each other about the rock-star scholars who for years have reputations for being sexual predators and tyrants within their departments. These men are the perfect picture of professionalism in person but bully, antagonize, and berate women, queers, and trans people away from the prying eyes of the Canadian public and Indigenous colleagues.

Indigenous women and gender-variant and sexually diverse people have been unwilling flies on the wall to a whole host of toxic behaviours and actions enacted by Indigenous men. As long as I have been participating in industries associated with Indigenous thought, I have been holding secrets for Indigenous men at an appalling frequency.

The Indigenous feminists who take to digital worlds to cry out for help amid pressure from Canadian publics, Indigenous communities, and toxic masculinist cultures have been pushed to unnatural levels of stress, exhaustion, and exposure within the Indigenous creative industries they entered out of love for their crafts.

We have been told these industries were self-sustaining, supportive communities—only to be met with the same toxic cultures we were fleeing within settler institutions.

If women and queer and trans individuals do respond to antagonizing behaviors within the Indigenous community, even if only to set a boundary, I have seen them isolated and their careers hurt. I have seen individuals who speak out targeted with tactical bullying campaigns, fuelled and supported by other Indigenous community members. These campaigns mirror the most toxic parts of settler industries that make up commercial and commodified Indigenous thought. In it, I described a web of industries and institutions that support the production and dissemination of Indigenous knowledges—such as publishing, academe, and not-for-profits.

The challenge with this web is that it we are told there are limited opportunities, and so we are forced into constant competition with one another, which we then internalize in our actions and relations to one another. But there are also community spaces wherein knowledge is produced and shared, spaces that help generate future worlds for peoples who cannot attain institutional privilege and class mobility to participate in Western industries. It can get complicated and confusing—hence the need for rigorous attention to the term.

In what world are these the individuals I would build kinship and community with? Like queer feminists of colour before me, I find myself caught between two worlds and identities: And yet Indigenous thought needs queer ethics.

We still need more transformative spaces for dealing with intracommunity conflict such as homophobia, transphobia, misogyny and difference such as class, gender, colourism. Queer Indigenous ethics sees feminist transformation as happening at the relational level, arguing that the Indigenous revolution is done, enacted, and felt, not said, performed, and speculated. An Indigenous scholar I respect recently told me the predominant ethical issue within the Indigenous thought of the previous generation was whether Indigenous peoples should publish their knowledges and reproduce them for settlers.

Of utmost importance among this older guard was solidarity in the face of colonial and institutional actors, understandably so, considering the extractive and exploitive histories of the industries that sustain Indigenous thought. Perhaps there was a fear of discovery, as well. I understand what led to silence around unethical behaviors in Indigenous thought: However ironically, though, I still believe in our mutual survival.

Solidarity, togetherness, and community have always been part of my ways of being in the world as an Indigenous person. As Paula Gunn Allen has poeticized,. The commodification of that Indigenous self, however, is something else altogether. Of course, there are absolutely ethical ways to participate in industries associated with Indigenous thought.

But the space where Indigenous peoples make themselves a product, and make money off the sale of said product, is fraught, to say the least. One can also proclaim and make themselves an Indigenous celebrity with little actual accountability to how they relate back to the communities they purport to represent.

Secrets Of Women Who Look Younger Than They Are

This is, in part, how figures like Joseph Boyden can rise to prominence without having to explain their ties to Indigenous communities. Indigeneity in the form of identity politics is regularly performative and made for Canadian publics.

The issue with reductive Indigenous theory is that is creates a discursive space wherein individual Indigenous careers can be framed as political activism, regardless of the actions one perpetuates within our Indigenous communities. Indigenous identity politics become problematic when Indigenous peoples gain institutional privilege but are shielded from critique because of their status as marginalized peoples, which can lead to abuse of that power.

Who do Indigenous peoples serve, besides themselves, misogyny, and colonial institutions, by silencing intracommunity Indigenous critique? I have been the emotional surrogate, stand-in mother, and, at times, even the victim of men kin. I should support our mutual survival as a people and consider it a part of my duty to the overall social order of our kinship networks. Colonization has poisoned my relationships with men kin.

This manifests in legal orders, such as the inherent heteropatriarchy of band registration, and a violent social culture, as is the case on many impoverished reserves, ranging from normalized abuse to the frequent burning down of rez housing. I fully recognize the problems that face Indigenous men. Too many have been have been caught up in the prison-industrial complex. Too many Indigenous men have had to beg cops not to give them starlight tours, a term for cases in which police pick up an Indigenous person, drive them to a remote area, and abandon them.

Toxic masculinities have been in our communities since the first moniyaw burrowed the seed of white colonial masculinities to decimate Indigenous life, land, and love. No wonder many Indigenous feminists are questioning why Indigenous communities repeatedly return to this violent movement. Indigenous thought is similarly guilty of that propping up of individual egos, predominantly those of cisgender Indigenous men, as if it were their genius alone and not the misogynist structures within the industries they work that ensured their upward mobility.

I know about expressions of toxic masculinities within Indigenous thought because it has happened, is happening, and will continue to happen to me, and to my relations as well. Transformative justice in our communities would mean eventually allowing men who have hurt others back into community life.

We must make sure the question does not become, What are we doing to ensure these men are welcomed back? It puts responsibility on those hurt to mediate abusive relations.

We must focus on what these toxic men—who have hurt and might continue to hurt—are measurably doing within their relationships before we allow them back into community spaces. And a lot of makeup can get stuck in crows feet and wrinkles, actually accentuating those. If you must wear makeup which I understand many women do go with super light stuff. There is some makeup designed not to sink into fine lines.

And after applying it, grab a sponge and soak up excess in those lines. The moment you smile, you look youthful—you let the child inside of you come out. Oh, and frowning leads to frown lines. One tip has been true across the board for these fabulous older women: It just sucks up your vitality.

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Always wear a big rim hat, sunscreen, and sunglasses, and ask for the table under the umbrella. The women I know who have been heavy drinkers unfortunately, look older than they are. My mom has maybe three glasses of wine a week—in total. Being stressed out just contributes to looking older in a lot of ways. The key is opting for higher quality clothes that highlight the right things and cover up the other things.

Limp, thin hair makes anyone look older, while full, voluminous hair makes a woman look youthful and energetic. Brush your hair with your head upside down, and invest in shampoo and product that promotes growth. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed is the saying because when our eyes are open and happy, we look young! So, apply some powder or foundation under your eyes that is a bit lighter than that on the rest of your face. It opens up your eyes.

As we get older, our eyebrows begin to thin out. But a good brow mascara can add both depth and color to those brows, and help re-frame your face and make your eyes pop.

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