When silence is mistaken for progress
Source: NEOS KOSMOS
A woman of the same generation as me second-generation migrant, recently expressed to me that she’s “over” the activism in the Greek community when I told her about my new symposium, Greek Women Speak. She’s “outgrown” it. Things have changed, evolved, she said. The younger generation has taken the reins. They are smarter, more progressive.
All of this is true, in some ways, but in other ways, not at all. Let me explain.
My parents, for example, have definitely changed. When I first left my marriage over 15 years ago, they were angry, upset, and couldn’t understand.
Carrying shame
The shame of ‘ti tha pi o kosmos’ overpowered their logic. Originating from poor Cypriot villages, everything was about survival. They had to travel to foreign lands to maintain it.
I can understand why they reacted the way they did. Survival isn’t just physical, it’s social too. One needs a community to survive, especially in foreign Australia. Norms are enforced on a community level to protect it from external threats. A strong, cohesive community is paramount. I am often labelled as a trouble-maker because I shine a light on topics many don’t want to look at, because they are afraid it might shatter the perfection they try to maintain to survive.
But having a daughter who exploded out of the good Greek girl mould to be wildly independent and vocal, my parents were forced to adapt. Now, when they hear of parents feeling ashamed and thinking it’s the end of the world if their child is getting divorced, they are able to provide comfort, reassurance and understanding to affected parents through lived experience and learned lessons.
But having a daughter who exploded out of the good Greek girl mould to be wildly independent and vocal, my parents were forced to adapt.
There have been times when I have been made to feel like I am the only one who experienced repression and a strict upbringing. I recall that after I performed my first theatre show at La Mama, “I say the wrong things all the time,” in 2018, a first-generation migrant Greek woman said she enjoyed the show but my story wasn’t her experience of Greek culture.
I also had many women who said my show was like an autobiography to their life, but this singular conversation stayed with me. I remember feeling annoyed, snubbed by her, that she was looking down on me, but today, I wonder if she said it because she really felt it, or if she was, in fact, trying to ‘protect the community’.
Performing for the mainstream
To stay safe in Australia, the Greek community has had to play ‘the appreciative migrant’. When first-generation migrants say they have ‘never experienced racism’, I find that impossible to believe, considering the racism I experience in literary circles. Not only are we supposed to appreciate what we have after fleeing war and poverty in Greece or Cyprus, but we have to protect the community’s image at all costs, as any cracks provide ample opportunity for “danger to infiltrate”. If you don’t follow the rules, you are an outcast because you are not doing what is best for the community.
Another reason I thought she may have said it is possibly due to class. Perhaps some migrants were not farmers but those who lived in the city, and were thus more urbane, educated, possibly even progressive. So, when they came to Australia, they were better able to adapt. However, I still believe that, despite class, there is a fundamental characteristic in our culture to maintain a strong image.
It is this kind of feminism that I aim to challenge in my work. ‘Good Greek Girl feminism’ is a feminism that places cultural norms above the activism women require for things to really change. It is a feminism that falls on itself and will actively try to trample on and exclude any woman who places women’s rights activism before community appearances.
I was once a woman who conformed, a woman who would have been critical of women like me. I would have perceived her as not being normal. Yet, it is this very perception that keeps our culture trapped in the past, with patriarchy alive and reigning.
Repression lives in the shadows
Repression still lives in the shadows of our culture. Every year, I attend the Greek Lonsdale Street Festival to sell and sign my books and talk to members of the community. I am often horrified when I get third-generation Greeks complaining to me about how strict their parents are and how their parents are still being controlled by their grandparents.
While some in our community may be more liberal, due to lived experiences like my parents’, others are not. Domestic violence rates are still high, and much of it is hidden. Similarly, other taboo subjects like substance abuse, incarceration, the effects of dementia on a repressed woman’s mind, queerness and bullying, within the workplace, family and friendship circles, and even in arts and advocacy spaces, are not often spoken about in open forums within multicultural spaces.
Taboos not talked about
By having events such as Greek Women Speak, we bring these taboo subjects out in the open and normalise conversation around them. We need to drop the fear that we must present a ‘perfect Greek culture’. It’s our imperfections that make us beautiful. Greeks and Cypriots arrived before many other cultures. We can be a role model for newer migrants who are still finding their feet in a foreign world.
There is a section in the program dedicated to Greece, featuring the screening of the film TACK, the first #MeToo film from Greece. We can dissect how our homeland culture impacts our way of life in Australia today. Despite Australia’s western influence, the norms of where we came from are embedded, and can sometimes contradict.
It is due to this resistance within the community to talk about such topics in open forums that I believe contributes to a lack of feminist writing and art in mainstream Australia. If our own culture doesn’t support it, if our own culture punishes it and excludes it, why would mainstream gatekeepers get behind it?
Greek Women SpeakWhen: Sunday, 15 February, Greek Centre 168 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne, VIC 3000
*Koraly Dimitriadis is a poet and activist
The original article: belongs to NEOS KOSMOS .
