Elise Loehnen

'A stunning, big and bold encyclopedia of how to live' LISA TADDEO'A guide to liberation and a return to the authentic feminine self' GABOR MATÉ'Astute, radical and utterly compelling' KATHERINE MAY_______________Why do women equate self-denial with being 'good'?We congratulate ourselves when we resist the donut in the office breakroom. We celebrate our restraint when we hold back from sending an email in anger. We put others' needs ahead of our own and believe this makes us exemplary. Journalist and podcast host Elise Loehnen explains that these impulses - often lauded as distinctly feminine instincts - are actually ingrained in us by a culture that reaps the benefits, via an extraordinarily effective collection of social mores:Lust. Gluttony. Greed. Sloth. Wrath. Envy. Pride. These so-called 'deadly sins' have been used by the patriarchy to control women throughout our history. For instance, a fear of gluttony drives us to ignore our appetites and an aversion to greed prevents us from negotiating a better salary at work. So, what would happen if we stopped trying to be 'good'?Provocative and bold, On Our Best Behaviour is a probing analysis of history and contemporary culture that explains how women have internalised the patriarchy, and how they unwittingly reinforce it. By sharing her own story and the spiritual wisdom of other traditions, Elise Loehnen shows how we can break free and discover a path toward a more balanced, fulfilled way to live._______________'This is a really important book' CHELSEA HANDLER'Half historical docent, half big sister with a hot cup of tea, read this and change your life' TERRENCE REAL'Brilliantly reframes our toxic cultural programming' LORI GOTTLIEB

The Price Women Pay to Be Good

On Our Best Behaviour

Storm

We can denounce religion and reject its beliefs at a literal level, but its traditions, these tenets of “good” and “bad”, are woven into the fabric of society. They don’t need our approval or subscription to hold us captive.

Our culture has little tolerance for or interest in women past their procreative prime, and certainly we have no reverence for them. While we have sanctified old men and propped them up as the ultimate authorities— the priests, lawmakers, judges—we have exiled their counterparts.

Professor Silvia Federici reminds us that gossip originally meant god-parent. It was a positive term, suggesting a close, emotional bond. But in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, gossip became a negative, reason enough for murder. She writes, "In I547, 'a proclamation was issued forbidding women to meet together to babble and talk' and ordering husbands to 'keep their wives in their houses." Professor Maria Tatar elaborates in The Heroine with 1,001 Faces, "What is gossip's greatest sin? One possibility is that gossip knits wonmen together to create networks of social interactions beyond patriarchal control and oversight. It can be seen as counter-discourse that operates against prevailing communal norms, a strategy for collecting talk in the form of compelling stories that can be parsed and analysed to turn into useful sources of wisdom and knowledge."

We are all trying to show the world that we have done enough; we are all searching for safety, security, an expression of our value. We work, strive, and perform from a defensive position, trying to prove to the world that we're earning our keep, that by doing enough we are enough.

The reality is, when men have access to paternity leave but refuse to take it, they're reinforcing the enduring story that babies need their mothers and not their fathers. This myth is insidious: Not only does it shortchange the bonds between fathers and children, asserting that fathers will never be the most primary, but it piles additional pressure onto moms.

"I always say to people, Follow your envy. It tells you what you want…Instead of sitting there saying, ‘Oh, I wish I had what that person has'—and then denigrating them to make yourself feel better—say, ‘What is this telling me and how can I get it?"

Envy is often an arrow, pointing me to a breadcrumb on my own path, my future self, tapping me on the shoulder to say, “Pay attention to this.”

In Untamed, Glennon writes: "Strong. happy, confident girls and women are breaking our culture's implicit rule that girls should be self-doubting, reserved, timid, and apologetic. Girls who are bold enough to break those rules irk us. Their brazen defiance and refusal to follow directions make us want to put them back into their cage." Our response to women and girls like this is to say things like "I just don't like her.”

Fat-phobia is the last bastion of acceptable bias, disguised in the morality of health.

There’s the assumption that she’ll get over it, so why derail some man with plans. This idea is entrenched in patriarchy, and it is wildly disturbing: Women are always deemed less essential, less important than men, even when these men are abusers.

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