Great, Now I Hate Everybody
A reader recently emailed me asking for some advice. She’s having her feminist “click” moment, and now finds that she is incompatible with almost everybody around her. Suddenly, the presence of rape apologism, racist jokes, sexist sneering, and other such Socialization Aids is inescapably fucking gross instead of invisibly malforming. She finds she can’t talk to anybody without finding out they believe something that is offensive, oppressive, and/or horrifyingly inhumane. She asked me, to briefly summarize: What the fuck do I do now?
I’m guessing this isn’t an unfamiliar situation to most of you. It’s a deeply complicated, personal situation, because it involves negotiations, compromises, and sometimes a lot of guts. It also involves terrible, terrible mistakes that embarrass you for a lifetime, as in, “Oh, yeah, back when I thought that guy was cool.” I don’t have great experience to offer here, because I am, as referenced in my most recent meltdown, psychologically friendless (that is, I do have friends, really, I do, but that doesn’t make me feel like I have friends because I have some sort of goddamn neurosis). But it’s still something I’ve had to navigate, so I thought I’d offer what I have done, what’s worked for me. If some of you want to offer advice or your own experience, I’m sure she’d appreciate it.
I became friendless specifically because I was attempting to isolate myself from an abuser and his many, many arms – not necessarily because feminism made me ANGRY – but in truth, avoiding abuse and being a feminist were inextricably linked. That is, if I didn’t live in a rape culture, I wouldn’t have had so many friends who minimized, rationalized, denied, or were apathetic toward my rape and/or my rapist. And if I didn’t find that unacceptable, unsafe, and just fucking disgusting, I would have stayed friends with those people.
Now, when considering making new friends, I’m unwilling to go back to that place where abuse was okay. Combining that with a more vocal and applied feminism (because I wasn’t applying it when I was getting abused, believe me), I find I now have standards and needs that seem to weed out the majority of the population. Oh, you there, you seemed so cool, until you sent me that email forward that was obviously racist, or a joke about prison rape. I’m sure that most people who make these offensive gaffes consider them harmless or benign. Because I have seen these behaviors escalate into direct, active, and conscious denials of my right to humanity, I tend not to differentiate between the benign misstep of correctable ignorance and the seed of future horrors. It all adds up to shit I don’t feel like dealing with today. And that makes me less likely to engage people in the chitchat that sometimes leads to friendly conversation that sometimes leads to coffee and fun and hanging out and friends. If I can’t tolerate a few minutes of you, what’s an hour going to do to me? It’s sure as fuck not going to make me somebody you want to be around.
There’s a larger social/political/cultural structure at work when you try to live your feminist ideals, something bigger than you and your relationship with another individual. Sometimes the structure and your daily life can’t be separated viably. But other times, it’s just you and another person, and you want to know how to get along with them without considering your Feminist Value Points, or ethical consistency, or a life philosophy. The desire for positive human contact can easily outweigh all cerebral considerations, and that’s a good thing; without it, I don’t think any of us would even be able to get out of bed long enough to give a shit about feminism. I, personally, am invested in feminism and anti-oppressive ideas because I see these ideas as ways to create a world where more people are willing to connect with each other, because there are less artificial, constructed, hierarchical fault lines keeping them apart. So it’s not good enough for me to decide that my feminism just means I have to be lonely from now on. If I don’t connect with and care about people — real individual people — what the hell is feminism for?
I have to start with myself, because you clean your own backyard first. I have to learn my limits, and respect them. Later, this is how I learn to respect other people’s limits, but first, it has to be about me. I generally know the days when I feel too tired to speak up or speak out. I’ve learned to trust my gut when it’s telling me a situation is actively dangerous instead of just awkward or difficult. I’ve learned to congratulate myself on little steps, and stop being internally abusive (“Jesus Christ, you fucking coward, wah wah wah, get over your shit”) after my failures or perceived failures. I know that I need to practice everything. I set aside time and energy for practice, and I don’t give myself shit for being so imperfect as to need practice. I make an active effort to educate myself by myself first, choosing to ask another person for help only after I have exhausted my own reserves. Basically, I know myself. I follow my own personal cues, I respect my limits, and I communicate with myself actively, consciously, and as positively as possible.
So, for example, I have a very strict limit when it comes to rape. If I don’t feel comfortable telling a person I have been raped, I don’t let them in my life (as much as possible). If somebody believes Polanski did not commit rape, or that it wasn’t a real rape, or that he shouldn’t be charged for it because he makes movies, I don’t let that person in my life (or watch their movies). If somebody refuses to stop making rape jokes, I don’t let that person in my life. Rape is a sensitive issue for me. I have learned to accept that without (usually) letting the “thin skin whiny baby oh my god get over it” critic go off in my head. I’ve learned to respect that I have a reasonable fire alarm that goes off in my brain and body, and that I need to listen to it, because it’s not telling me to panic/fear/rage for no reason. In my mind, I am unable to separate a person’s beliefs about rape from their ability or willingness to rape me. I don’t think that’s unreasonable or unwarranted — I mean, people who don’t accept rape ever aren’t likely to rape me, leaving one big segment of the population left as potential rapists. Anybody who does think that’s unreasonable isn’t going to like me, and I am not going to like them. This all works out nicely, because they go off in a huff elsewhere, and I don’t have to be on red alert that a potential rapist is hanging out with me while being hostile at my uppity opinions.
I have less of a strict limit with abuse. If somebody voices out loud that some woman or another probably likes/deserves/wants abuse, that’s a warning sign, but not necessarily a “dead to me” sign. That’s because I know where they’re coming from. I used to believe that, too. I believed it about myself. I know how easy it is for ordinary, decent people to have their heads full of horrible, evil thoughts they didn’t ask for, actively seek out, or ever want. I find I am capable of swimming around in the grey area with people who don’t understand abuse, because I spend so much time swimming there myself – I sincerely, truly enjoy thinking about and dissecting and analyzing abuse and our attitudes toward it, so it’s not incompatible to me to find a friend who is willing to do this with me. But that’s the rub: they’ve got to be willing. If somebody says something ignorant about abuse, and then indicates a complete unwillingness to have a conversation about their statement, that’s a “dead to me” sign. Not because of their opinion on abuse, but because of their inflexibility and rigidity when it comes to considering the humanity of women.
Granted, you could say the same stuff about abuse as I did above about rape: somebody willing to excuse abuse is potentially somebody who is willing to abuse me. I feel I can withstand one instance of abuse with somebody – and end the relationship quickly thereafter – without necessarily incurring lifelong damage. I feel this because I know myself and what I can handle, and because I took the time to practice cutting people off, telling them off, or various safety plans for bad vibes getting out of hand. Also, I know a lot about abusive behavior, which rarely deviates. Abuse is an escalating behavior. It starts small, and as boundaries and borders get destroyed, it gets bigger and bigger. If I experience one instance of abuse from a person, it is less likely to be immediately dangerous. The same isn’t true of rape. I can’t withstand one instance of rape with somebody, ever, full stop. There is nothing in the world worth that to me. If the magic rape fairy of evil came down tomorrow and said, “You either have to get raped occasionally by acquaintances, or even just once, or you have to go your life never having human contact again,” I would choose the latter. I respect that about myself, and I don’t push it. I’m willing to accept a lifetime of loneliness if it means I never get raped again, so that tells me I take this seriously enough to just disengage from fuckwits who engage in dim-witted apologism.
I also have a less strict limit with casual sexism, the things that “everybody” engages in and are completely invisible to most people. The word “bitch,” for example. I don’t like it. I don’t use it. But I don’t shut down everybody who does. Though the problematic nature of “bitch” seems apparent to me now, I know that it took me a long time to get there. I know that I considered myself a feminist long before I stopped using the word “bitch.” I know that it’s become a very acceptable word, culturally, to the point where people don’t believe it has any kind of impact at all. So I know that people who have no ill intent will use it. That’s a sign to me that they haven’t done a certain degree of homework, but it’s not a sign to me that they’re unwilling or unable to do that homework. Only if I asked them not to say “bitch” around me and they refused would I start to consider ending my relationship with them, not because of the word, but because of their unwillingness to respect my boundaries. The word “bitch” doesn’t necessarily signify a misogynist, but the continued use of it when a woman has told you she finds it sexist, obnoxious, and offensive (or the mansplaining away of her offense) is plainly hostile, and that definitely signifies misogyny.
It takes practice to identify my limits. And that practice necessitates getting hurt a lot. The most important thing for myself here is to stop treating myself like shit every time I get hurt. It’s not wrong or bad or weak that I feel pain, and it’s not always something to be “gotten over.” I have to start from the premise that I am acceptable as I am, at this exact moment in time, that limits are not bad things, that selfishness is a good thing, that what I want or need is okay to want or need for no reason other than I want or need it. Only when I’m able to do this for myself do I feel comfortable moving into relationships with other people. If I know myself, and treat myself well, I’m the best role model for how I need to be treated ever. People only respect me as much as I respect myself. I can tell a person how to treat me, but they will treat me as well as I treat myself, so my words barely matter here. If I can’t identify the importance of my limits, my boundaries, my needs, I find I also tend to dismiss other people’s stated preferences. As in, “Well, I don’t have the luxury of giving up, so I don’t see why you do.” My expectations are my own, and they apply to nobody but me.
This gets into something my bear and I were talking about the other day: expectations. My bear is very Daoist. He believes in letting go (though he also believes that at some point, you need to let go of letting go, which is a whole different blog post for a maybe day). When you release, let go, let things flow, there isn’t room for expectations. Everything happens as it happens; the universe does not need your iron fist of control to move about on its axis properly. It will move in the way that is “right” to it, and your version of right is just so much weird little dust annoying its path. When you eliminate expectations, you eliminate disappointment. Every time I find myself hurt or disappointed, I look within myself first. Something I have done has failed. I need to find what that thing is, and decide if that failure is something that needs to be fixed or changed (not every failure does).
I compare this to good management in the workplace. If you are a manager, and you expect 90% productivity every day, and you consistently only achieve 70%, that is not the fault of your workers. If you set yourself up as a leader, whatever goes wrong in your sphere of influence is due to your mismanagement. Perhaps all your workers are lazy – that’s your fault for hiring and later not firing them. Perhaps the equipment is shoddy. That’s your fault for not maintaining or replacing it. Perhaps everybody is always out sick. That’s your fault for not providing enough sick time, thus creating presenteeism, thus making all employees far sicker for far longer. Perhaps there is one department that is always slow, or one troublemaker who always gums up the works. That’s your fault for not managing personnel according to their strengths. Workers don’t organize or run themselves. The only person responsible for a system failure is the person who put the cogs together, not the cogs.
So, for myself, when I find myself in a lot of pain, I consider this my responsibility. I failed to manage my resources appropriately. I created expectations that obviously cannot be fulfilled the way I currently run things. I have two options here: change my expectations and avoid those consequences, or decide the expectations are acceptable and thus the failure is acceptable. I do not get a third option. I do not get to keep my expectations and then blame others for not meeting them, for continually disappointing me. I don’t get to treat other people like disappointments if I am the one who consistently sets them up for failure. Others are responsible for their own behavior – this doesn’t excuse them from fucking up, perhaps egregiously – but I am responsible for continually choosing to expose myself AND for choosing to continually be disappointed by what I know is going to happen. You know, that whole definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over, waiting for a different result. This is how your life becomes unmanageable.
I apply this to my feminist expectations of behavior. If I am disappointed, if I am hurt, I reinvestigate my expectations. This is one of the places in my life where I find failure acceptable. I am willing to be hurt and disappointed, because feminism is a crucial part of my identity and something I am unwilling to part with. So that means I have to accept the consequences without continually being an asshole to people who failed to meet expectations I knew they likely would not meet. I have to stop being surprised. I have to stop thinking that being publicly feminist, day after day, is going to have a different result. I will be hurt. I will be disappointed. Part of my feminism is a constant fight to accept this, to accept that the world I live in is not the one I want. If it was, I wouldn’t have to be a feminist anymore. This isn’t to say that the hurt and disappointment of rejecting or being rejected by people you wish to connect with is appropriate, normal, okay, or excusable. I find it terribly wrong, at a bone-level. I am not saying that I have to accept this wrongness. I am saying that I have to accept that it is and will be a part of my life for as long as I choose to identify as a feminist, and there is no other way to be a feminist and live in this world. That is one of the consequences of feminism, and that’s a choice I made and continue to make. Accepting it doesn’t make connecting with other people easier – mostly – but it makes it easier for me to have compassion, empathy, and be generally filled with less pain and hate. If somebody disappoints me, I deal with the disappointment, but I no longer deal with betrayal or shattered illusions or a broken view of the world. This is how it is. It’s wrong, and I want it to be another way, and I will actively work to make it another way. But until then, I will stop being surprised that this is the way it is. I will stop taking it personally, as something another person has done specifically to hurt me. This is something that happens between people who live in a patriarchy, whether or not they like or love each other, whether or not they want to hurt one another. The patriarchy causes me disappointment and hurt from the people I love or would like to love. On their end, it causes them to lose a potential friend. We’re all in the same boat, and we’re all suffering. My choice to expect this hurt and disappointment is a choice to be conscious of the boat, conscious of my suffering, conscious of other people’s suffering, despite the load this adds to my daily life.
That’s a lot of blather. Here’s what this means in my actual day-to-day life. If somebody I like says something sexist, I do not necessarily decide that they are a Bad Person Forever based on that. I understand where they’re coming from. I’ve been there. I still unearth that badness in my head. If I’m not discovering new caches of ugly hatred in buried in my brain, I’m Doing Feminism Wrong. So it’s hypocritical and arrogant for me to apply a higher standard to those around me. Other People Are Sexist. Other People Are Racist. I go through my day expecting this, and I no longer feel a personal pang when somebody proves me right. You, I think. You are in my boat. I know where you are, what you’re thinking. You have not done something so unreasonable that I cannot tolerate you further. You have done something I can reasonably expect from a racist, sexist culture, because my expectations are in line with the world I live in. I am now able to create reasonable expectations for my interactions with you. I know that if we talk about these certain topics, I will find you impossible to tolerate. I know if we talk about these other topics, I will be able to interact with you. I can now decide if those other topics are important enough to me to outweigh any potential benefit of our relationship. I can now decide if I can expect the shit that comes out of your mouth and still be around when it hits the ground with a splat. Maybe I can, maybe I can’t, but I know I have a choice and I know I have control. Friends, coworkers, relationships aren’t being stripped from me against my will. I choose what to expect from others, and choose to accept those consequences.
For example, at my last job, my boss was sexist. He was sexist in a very chauvinistic sort of way – the kind of guy who makes the word “lady” sound like a blessed infirmity – and that was generally tolerable. It was tolerable because he didn’t make rape apologies, he didn’t actively bar women in the office from certain activities, and he didn’t bring it up every day. It was also tolerable because I was in a workplace that brooked little to no dissension, and I was at the target age for Doom Unemployment during a recession. I adjusted my expectations. I did not expect a workplace free of sexism. I did not expect to not be patted on the head, or treated as dumb sometimes. I did not expect fairness or an AfterSchool Special Moment. I did not expect that I had the strength or courage or conviction to make myself unemployed during a recession. I did not expect these things, and I stopped being a seething, boiling volcano of disappointment and rage every day. I found my current circumstances tolerable. Now I am in a new job. The culture here is very different. I can complain without retaliation. So I find myself saying things, to my higher-ups, like “I don’t think that’s fair; somebody could apply the same standard to you,” when one of them starts talking about what one celebrity wife or another deserves from her plainly abusive husband. I find keeping my mouth shut intolerable, because I expect to be given the freedom to open it. In a perfect world, I wouldn’t have to change my expectations to be able to tolerate some degree of abusiveness in my day-to-day life. But we don’t live in that perfect world – that’s why feminism exists as a concept, and why I identify as one – so in the meantime, I change my expectations when I need to survive.
Another theme in my personal relationships is separating out small steps, and applying small solutions, rather than taking a small problem and hitting it with the solution to a BIG problem. A long while back, I wrote a post talking about something I’d read in an Al-Anon manual that really resonated with me. It was an anecdote from a wife who was trying to find a way to live with her alcoholic husband. She had tried making multiple ultimatums to get him to stop drinking, and none of them had worked. So she began to focus on other things, unrelated things, but these things were obviously emotional replacements. If she couldn’t get him to stop drinking, she would take all her anger and disappointment at that and make it about the dishes instead. She asked dishonest questions, and got dishonest responses. That is, if she asked her husband to vacuum, what she really meant was, “Submit to me in our eternal power struggle.” He would give an equally dishonest response. “I’m busy, maybe later,” when what he really meant was, “I will not submit to you because I resent your need to control me, even though the floor is really gross right now and I was actually just thinking about vacuuming.”
So, she issued a dishonest ultimatum. She told her husband that to fix their marriage, he would need to shoulder more domestic tasks. That’s a reasonable expectation, a reasonable boundary, provided you have a reasonable marriage. But they did not, so this was an unreasonable pile. She wasn’t saying, “Please do the dishes – I am sick of doing them and becoming resentful of you that you do not do them, and that is making it difficult to enjoy our marriage, which I would like to do because I love you.” What she was actually saying was, “Your performance with domestic tasks is a bargaining chip; if I can make you do this, I can control some part of you, and I need that to tolerate you as a human being, because I do not think you’re lovable as you are. If I can’t make you do this, you don’t really love me and you are a worthless, irredeemable monster.” That’s a lot of consequences to put on the fucking dishes, consequences that don’t really have any natural connection with the dishes, which negates the possibility of any real solution. If her husband did the dishes, would she really have control of him? Would it make things better? If her husband did not do the dishes, would he really not love her? Would it really make his alcoholism any less tolerable? The answer to all these questions is probably no. So why make dishes the solution to all these separate problems, if the dishes cannot actually solve any of them?
Anyway, back to the actual story. The first night after her ultimatum, her husband did the dishes. The next night, he just fucking left the house after dinner. So now she’s got a big pile of dishes. If she does them, her husband wins. If she doesn’t, she doesn’t have any clean dishes. This is what happens when you attach other consequences, feelings, needs, or desires onto items that have no connection: doing the dishes becomes about winning and losing, rather than about clean dishes and dirty dishes. She called her sponsor and explained the situation, telling her that if she did the dishes, her husband would think he didn’t have to do the dishes. “So don’t do them,” her sponsor said. But if she didn’t do them, the dishes wouldn’t get done! “So do them.”
This leads to a statement you might hear a lot, if you do 12-steppy things: you don’t have a problem, you have a solution you don’t like. This woman had a solution to her problem. She could do the dishes, or she could not do the dishes. The problem doesn’t really exist anymore; it has a solution. It can be solved. The problem can go away at any moment. If her issue was with the problem – if the problem was really the dishes – then she would solve it. Since she doesn’t, obviously, the dishes aren’t the problem. Something else needs to be solved for this problem to go away, since solving the dishes isn’t going to provide any relief. That’s because having clean dishes wasn’t ever going to solve the problems of needing to continually win power struggles, alcoholism, or an unsatisfying marriage. But she didn’t want to solve those problems, either. She wanted the problems to have never existed in the first place. There’s no future in that line of thinking, no way to accomplish that. To move forward, there needs to be a solution. To stay stuck in one place, there needs to be an obsessive wish for something that can never happen through longing alone.
And yes, her husband could effect the solution. He could do the dishes. But he has obviously come up with his solution already: he is not going to do the dishes. He could change his mind. He maybe should change his mind. But if you are not him, you have no control over that. If you want the dishes done, you have to do them. If you want him to do the dishes, you have set up an expectation. By necessity, an expectation can make you disappointed. So, you accept your potential for disappointment, or you change your expectations. If you expect your husband to do the dishes, you must be prepared to be disappointed when he doesn’t. If you can’t tolerate that disappointment, don’t create the expectation. If you can’t tolerate the dishes not getting done, do the goddamn dishes. Choose which thing you can tolerate more, and go with that.
I often try to break my conflicts down into those simple bites. You either do the dishes, or you don’t do the dishes. There is no third option. When I first posted that story, commenters left a lot of potential third options, which actually helped clarify why this anecdote resonated with me so much. The third options offered didn’t, in any way, avoid the dishes dilemma. Somebody said, “Leave your husband!” Well, yes, okay. Are you leaving right this minute? The dishes don’t get done: you have decided not to do the dishes. Are you leaving in a week? You still need to decide what to do with those dishes. Leaving your husband in a week doesn’t make the dishes get done, and it doesn’t make the problem of the dishes disappear. Another commenter said, “Break the dishes!” Yes, okay. You have decided not to do the dishes. Neither of those decisions actually circumvent the dishes dilemma. There are still only two options to the dishes: they either get done, or they don’t get done.
This, to me, is comparable to people making personal decisions by “not choosing sides.” What is perceived to be a third option is, in effect, only one of the two options; it’s just masked in a way that feels ethically, morally, or vindictively better. If I have told you that one of your friends raped me, and you tell me you are not taking sides, you have taken a side. Your decision was to support me or not support me. There was no third option. “Not taking sides” is “I don’t support you,” dressed up like morality and the higher ground. If “sides” was the problem, further discussion, introspective consideration, and information-seeking would effect a solution. I perhaps could have accepted a friend who said, “I believe you, and I believe Flint is a rapist. But condemning all rapists as people who should never have friends or family or happiness probably won’t stop them raping, or change what happened to you. I would like to continue trying to speak to him and support him because I still care about him, and I think he needs help to change. How will that affect my relationship with you? What do you need from me?” If “taking sides” was the problem, finding out if I was requiring sides-taking would have been the first step to finding a solution. But nobody asked this of me. Nobody asked this of me because “taking sides’ wasn’t the problem: “I don’t want to deal with your rape” was the problem. And defining a rape victim discussing her rape as “forcing sides” is the solution, because now you’ve made the rape victim never want to talk to you again. Congratulations! Sides have been forced, and you have chosen one, while successfully covering your tracks. Now you don’t have to deal with rape, which was the actual problem you were seeking to solve.
Likewise, “I am leaving you” is “I am not doing these dishes,” dressed up in a different solution to the actual problem. If dishes were the problem, doing or not doing the dishes was the solution. If the problem is, “I am sick of this fucking marriage and every aspect of it, down to the barest of domestic chores,” then “I am leaving you” is the solution. If “I need to win this power struggle no matter what” is the problem, “break the dishes” is the solution. But using “break the dishes” or “leave your husband” as the solution to “the dishes are dirty” is using the wrong solution on the wrong problem. It’s using a chainsaw where you need a screwdriver. It’s cutting the Gordian knot. In any given problem, there are two solutions: “I will deal with this” or “I won’t deal with this.” Burning a problem down to the ground isn’t a third solution; it’s choosing “I won’t deal.” And it’s choosing “I won’t deal” using a disingenuous, overbearing method. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But it does have consequences, and sometimes those consequences are more than you might want to deal with.
So, let me get into real life here. Mickey. Mickey of the rape joke heard round the internet. Mickey, “guys are programmed to cheat” Mickey. I still hang with Mickey. I like Mickey. I like him a lot, actually. He’s got oodles of good qualities. But every now and again, Mickey opens his mouth and shits out something egregious. I am faced with multiple problems at once, every time this happens. Trying to cope with them all at once – trying to view them as one problem, with one solution – fucking sucks and doesn’t work for me. Turning all these issues into one looks like this:
ENORMOUS COMBINED PROBLEM: I am a feminist and feminism is good and Mickey is not a feminist so Mickey is bad and if I hang out with a bad not-feminist person I am not a feminist and that will also make me bad but then I will be lonely forever because I don’t know anybody else who is a feminist and I will never get to hang out with Mickey who I like but if I hang out with Mickey I am betraying THE CAUSE.
ENORMOUS COMBINED SOLUTION 1: FORCE MICKEY TO BE A FEMINIST. YELL AT HIM. CONFRONT ON EVERY POSSIBLE OCCASION. MAKE HIM EXTREMELY UNCOMFORTABLE AT ALL TIMES. JUDGE HIM MERCILESSLY. MAKE HIM FEEL LIKE A BAD PERSON. LET HIM KNOW THAT I AM A GOOD PERSON, AND I AM THE SOLE JUDGE OF HIS GOODNESS. IF HE CAN’T TAKE THIS, IT’S BECAUSE HE’S BAD. I WILL STILL BE GOOD.
ENORMOUS COMBINED SOLUTION 2: TELL MICKEY OFF, FOR GOOD, BECAUSE MICKEY IS BAD. I AM GOOD AND I DON’T HANG OUT WITH BAD PEOPLE. I MUST NOW SNIDELY GOSSIP ABOUT THIS TO OTHERS TO ESTABLISH MY SUPERIORITY IN THIS SOCIAL CONFLICT THAT IS REALLY ABOUT SOMETHING BIGGER THAN HURT FEELINGS, REALLY.
Neither of these are very good, helpful solutions. They both require enormous sacrifices – either I lose a friend completely, or I put an endless amount of my time and resources and energy into forcing another person to be my ego-enforcing puppet, which both Mickey and I will obviously enjoy SO MUCH. In both solutions, I lose the thing I want to keep: my positive human interaction with another human being.
So I break the problems down, step by step, and find solutions for each individual problem.
Problem 1: I am hanging out with somebody who says misogynist things.
Solution 1a: Hang out with him anyway.
Solution 1b: Do not hang out with him.
I like Mickey 90% of the time, so I choose Solution 1a. Now I have a new problem.
Problem 2: He is still saying misogynist things.
Solution 2a: Put up with it.
Solution 2b: Do not put up with it.
This problem is now separate from whether or not I will stay friends with Mickey. I have already made that decision. That removes a lot of weight from this problem. The solution I find here does not necessarily have to be entangled with whether or not I will stay friends with Mickey. That makes the way I enact these solutions much more flexible.
I choose not to put up with it. One of my options for this solution is to drop Mickey as a friend entirely, but I’ve already decided not to do that. So I find other options to enact this solution, and I change them depending on the day and my personal limits. Sometimes I greet Mickey’s misogyny with stony cold silence. Sometimes I argue. Sometimes I end the day with him, right then and there. Sometimes I directly ask him why he said what he said, what he means by it. Sometimes I tell him, directly, “Do not say that around me.”
Mickey has chosen to react to this by not saying so many misogynist things around me. My bear, who hangs out with Mickey when I am not around, says that Mickey has not really reduced the amount of misogynist things he says in general, but he doesn’t do it around me. So, now I have another problem.
Problem 3: I am hanging out with somebody I know says misogynist things, and this makes me feel like a bad feminist.
Solution 3a: Change my expectation of good and bad feminism.
Solution 3b: Stop hanging out with Mickey.
I still want to hang out with Mickey. That decision hasn’t changed. So, I redefine what is good and bad about a feminist. In fact, I toss out the whole “good/bad” thing, because in the history of feminism, when have binaries ever been helpful? I replace “good/bad” with “what works for me” and “what doesn’t work for me.” Hanging out with somebody who says misogynist things doesn’t work for me. However, hanging out with somebody who says misogynist things but has illustrated an ability and desire to respect my need not to hear those things does work for me. It’s not perfect. In my perfect world, Mickey would never say misogynist things. He’d never believe them enough to say them, and/or he’d never feel social pressure to say them in order to fit in with others. I don’t live in that world. I work toward it, but I don’t live in it. And right now, I have somebody who I generally like, who I would like to spend time with, and who is able to respect me. I wish he could generalize that respect to a larger, more political framework, but the personal is where things start, and the personal is what I have determined I need – and expect – from others. If I can meet somebody who politically aligns, well, goddamn, aren’t I lucky. But I don’t expect perfection from friendship. I could – it’s in my right to expect whatever I want – but I don’t want to put up with the constant level of disappointment and hurt I would feel by having an expectation that high. Getting comfort and friendship from imperfect people outweighs the isolation I would feel by waiting for a perfect (or mostly) perfect blend.
So! That is how I navigate my feminist principles with a non or less feminist population of people:
- I know and respect my own abilities and limits
- I create reasonable expectations whose consequences I am able to endure (change as necessary)
- I try to honestly review whether or not my problem has a solution. If it does and I am able to take that solution, I do. If it does and I am unwilling to take that solution, I accept that I have chosen to maintain this problem and any lasting consequences.
- I break problems down into smaller, individual problems with two possible solutions.
- I apply the correct solution to the correct problem. As in, not being friends with Mickey isn’t a solution to the worldwide patriarchy, my ego, or my identity. Not being friends with Mickey is a solution to whether or not I like hanging out with Mickey – it does not solve anything else.
There is one more thing I do in my interpersonal relationships to help me navigate my feminism vs. their not-so-feminism. I take breaks. If I can’t deal with A Very Serious Conversation, if I don’t want to debate my right to my uterus, if I don’t want to hear it, I opt out. I say, “I don’t want to talk about this right now,” or “I don’t want to hang out right now.” The ability to opt-out is indicative of privilege; some people never get to opt out of certain conversations. The way I maintain my need to opt-out and negotiate that with my need to identify as a feminist is by relinquishing my right to opt-out around others. I may opt-out of a conversation about racism with white peers on a day when I just don’t fucking feel like it. If I see that same conversation happening within earshot of a PoC, or being directed at a PoC, I don’t get to opt-out today. I don’t get to opt-out because they don’t. I no longer get to opt-out of hearing rape jokes, like I no longer get to walk around without having rape be a part of my life, and that is bullshit enough that I don’t want to let anybody else have that privilege I no longer have. Because that is an expectation I have chosen to maintain, I need to apply it to myself, respect it in others, if I want to keep calling myself the kind of feminist I want to be.
That got all wordy. I wrote this over the entire day (ENTIRE DAY). It’s been a long one.
What I would like to know: How do you guys deal with it? Offer your advice to the newly clicked among us. How do you deal with the fact that jesus, suddenly everybody is a blazing asshole?
Discuss this post on the Fugitivus Discussion Board.
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- And another thing… « Thagomizer.net Thagomizer.net
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- Hey! I hate everybody too! « Hypocritical Hyperbole
- Feminism: The Thing About Becoming a Feminist » {blog}
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Dear Harriet: I would like to be you when I grow up.
I’ve been going through burn-out like no one’s business recently. Mostly, the ways I’ve been trying to cope:
* I deliberately spend time outside, by myself. Even if it’s just walking and reading some book or another. (If so, I make sure to read a book I’ve already read, so I know where all the -ist pitfalls are already.) Just some time, out in the fresh air, not around people and expectations both out- and inbound.
* I commiserate with other like-minded people.
* I try to improve things in other areas of my life, like I learn how to knit clothing on size US 0 needles, or I learn electrical work so I can make a 1:12 smoke detector that goes blink.
* I remind myself of what I got from Shakesville, the concept of the teaspoon. I am Extremist Cat, and so sometimes it takes several repetitions, but it helps.
This post is total win. Thank you so much for writing it.
You are the best!
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I think my approach is similar to yours, but less mindful. In my head, I call it, cutting the poison from my life. Sometimes the poison can only be cut by cutting a person from my life, and I am willing and able to do that when necessary. Sometimes the poison can be cut by saying ‘Don’t say that around me.’ ‘That’s horribly offensive.’ ‘Don’t use that word in that way.’
I try to remember that most people aren’t actually bad people, although that gets hard when I’ve been reading feminist rhetoric all day and then someone comes around all ‘bitches’ this and ‘stop overreacting’ that.
I find it hardest when people who are ‘allies’ fuck up really badly. Those who aren’t interested/don’t read anti-oppression stuff, I expect that they will fuck up and hurt me, but when someone claiming to fight by my side says fucked up things, and then when called out on it tells me that I’m hurting the movement by calling them out? That hurts a hell of a lot more.
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You know, I feel like this touched on a lot of things in the margins of some of your more anecdotal posts, things that I’ve been wondering about since I started reading, but was unsure how/where they’d be good to bring up. Really good post, really appreciate you taking your time with it. Those blogs which take an entire day [or more] to write can really be monsters.
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I’m not sure what my framework is. I’ve definitely become quite mouthy and belligerent on, say, Facebook. And I’ve cut one person from my life as well, because I didn’t care to agree to disagree with him.
I guess maybe it’s mostly based on “how much energy do I have to pick at this?” Sometimes I decide I don’t, because it may well end up a long, painful, draining mess (as it was with the person I cut from my life), but sometimes I do because the potential good outweighs the painful.
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Nice post – very nuanced, which is difficult. A lot of these pieces take such a hard line “ALWAYS CONDEMN X BECAUSE IT IS YOUR DUTY”, which simply isn’t possible/practical.
One tactic I’ve found helpful for weeding out assholes and warning my friends against their less than socially responsible conversation: I have evidence of my feminism very prominently in my space. I have a wall of Bitch magazine covers and a Rosie the Riveter poster on my wall. People come in, they see that, they get the message – which is helpful because I usually don’t talk about feminism in non one-on-one social situations. It’s also helped get the message across to my partner’s family. Occasionally, folks’ll still say offensive shit, but having established my feminism they are much more sensitive to their own language and much more likely to respond well to a gentle rebuke – a reminder that I am not down with that. It’s not perfect and I’m sure won’t work for everyone – I still struggle without to respond to very common ableist language – but it’s helped a lot in adulthood.
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I deal with it by accepting that sometimes people are misguided douches. I speak up when they say something ridiculous and at times it leaves me in a group of guys that feel as though I am about to lop off their genitalia BUT others it sparks a conversation about how or why they feel the way they do and said what they said.
I am looking at this now and wondering if calling someone a douche is infact sexist….I just like the word. *shrugs*
Anyway, I am referred to as the feminazi by a few of my close male friends and I am OK with that. I would like to think I made them think a little about the things they view as acceptable in interacting with the opposite sex and if not, well they at least know that I won’t sit there and smile dumbly while they let turds fall out of their faces.
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Thank you thank you thank you. Resonates. Hard.
Love your work.
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Oh, I have so many ways of dealing with it. If someone is joke-y about rape, they are done. If they show a SMIDGEN of the beginning of abusive behaviors or really invest in defending, minimizing, or excusing abusive behaviors, they are done. And that is because in my experience, the people who most excuse abuse are the ones who will be the abusers later. So, I am jumpy around anyone who will ever discuss abuse like anyone “deserves” it. And I just got out of an abusive friendship. So. I will give folks very little leeway on this right now.
For me, I choose friends who listen. I don’t rule out anyone who fucks up because of sexism or racism or whatever per se – we’ve all been there. It is their response to me pointing it out that will decide for me if I can continue to be friends with this person. If the person listens, and doesn’t just get defensive or go on the offensive, if they consider it, if they are thoughtful and mindful, then it’s ok. Because the people who aren’t perfect but want to try to be better people, I will happily be friends with them. We’re all trying to get better. It’s the willingness to listen and think and work to get better that I think is the most important thing for me.
I also usually let someone just be better around me, too, like Mickey, because I usually have found if that person is good folks, something will eventually click, or get through, or matter. Maybe not. But it does start with the personal, and if that friend respects me and what I think, then perhaps they will eventually let it challenge what they think.
OH. Also. Guys who won’t concede that there might be things that they just can’t see or recognize because they are guys who don’t experience sexism in the same way? Or white people who think they there is no racism because they don’t see any and can pretend to be colorblind and totally above race (Hi, Kathleen Parker)? People of privilege who believe they know ALL THE THINGS ALWAYS and nothing else can exist that they can’t see, we are not friends. I cannot deal with that kind of person. We will never be able to play nice, because they will be telling me I am crazy and wrong for seeing and calling out what I see. As a feminist, I often have to defend against society telling me I am oversensitive and hysterical for getting mad about my own oppression (or someone else’s). I don’t need my friends doing that.
You are the best!
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Wow. Thank you so much for this. I found this post via The Sexist; it’s the first post I’ve ever read on your blog, but I’m so blown away that I’m going to start following you on Google Reader immediately. I especially like what you say here about reexamining your expectations – I often have to argue with myself about whether this is an ok thing to do, because isn’t feminism partly about expecting better of the people around us? but I also have this mantra, influenced by Daoism, that I must choose the appropriate course of action for the specific situation. Not the “right” course of action. The appropriate one. What is appropriate can change from situation to situation and I can respond to that change without betraying my values by not doing what is “right.” Sometimes it’s appropriate for me to opt-out of a situation, even if I can’t bring myself to say that it’s “right” to do so.
Anyway, I really love what you have to say here, I’m saving it for future reference in times of crisis-of-feminist-conscience, and I do have one thing to add: in answer to the question, “What the fuck do I do now?” I answer: Accept that you are going to go through an angry, confused period. You are readjusting everything you know about interactions with everyone around you. You must try to form new habits of interaction. Those habits may resemble the ones described in this post, or they may be different. But you have a lot of work to do. (It’s not fair. If the world were fair, you wouldn’t have to do this work, because you should not have to bear extra burdens just because you believe misogyny is wrong. But the world is not fair, and if you are becoming a feminist, you have to do this work.) However, you can know that it will get easier. Know that you are going through a period where you hate everybody, but that if you work through that period, you will begin to develop strategies for being a feminist in the world that will be less difficult.
Or so I tell myself
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Advice for recently jaded feminists:
1.You made it sister, and brother. Now pamper yourself.
It sounds cliche, but do it. Take long walks, get a facial, meditate, get a massage if it’s not going to trigger memories of abuse. Give yourself little gifts according to your time and budget – they don’t have to cost money, just stop and admire a bird singing on a street lamp. I KNOW IT’S HOKEY. Just do it. You’ll be glad for those tiny gifts.
2.You’re going to be jaded for a long time.
There are many, many unfortunate reasons to be disgusted with people now that the wool has been removed from your eyes. It is the bitterest pill, but you don’t have to let it make you angry. Once the edge wears down, you’ll still have the same drive and determination to end rape culture and abuse. Your head will clear. You’ll find ways to educate people without screaming at them.
Until then, don’t respond to the things that make you angry. I’m not advocating denial – but don’t reply to the asshole who just made a joke about two hookers. Let him, or her, be an asshole. Walk away. Find a place where you can tell that dickbrain off. Write letters you’ll never send. Start a secret blog (and take precautions to protect your identity.) Write rant after rant until you feel better.
The aim is cathartic release; once you’ve achieved it, allow yourself to let go of the things that made you angry. You don’t have to forgive, and you don’t have to forget. Allow yourself to relax.
3.Join a pro-women organization actively working toward change.
Go to meetings, join a center, help at a shelter if it doesn’t trigger for you. March in parades. Offer to make graphics for pamphlets or help with a women’s website if you know HTML. Help with fundraisers. If you are of legal age in the U.S., REGISTER TO VOTE and follow feminist issues in politics. Donate money to feminist organizations and causes, if you can.
4.Think of the good things about others
This is important. I know it sounds like grade school.
Make a mental list of reasons to continue talking to a woefully ignorant, blissfully unaware misogynist. Find redeeming qualities. The truth of it is, the people propagating hatred toward women (and gays) are doing so because of a long chain perpetuating hate. Someone taught them to behave this way, and an entire culture makes it okay for them to carry on in their assholery. It is likely they don’t know that they’re doing wrong. If you can accept that they are flawed individuals, it’s possible to find a way later to open dialog about what it means to treat women with respect and dignity.
In the case of a rapist or abuser, I don’t know – I’m still working on how to be zen about these people, myself.
5.Make friends with homosexual men.
I’m serious. Befriend the gays. Their struggles are kith and kin to ours, and it’s such a relief to hang out with a man who is never going to steal away your dignity by raping you.
6.The anger and disillusionment doesn’t last forever.
You’ll reach a point when you’re still strong in your feminist convictions – perhaps stronger – but you’re able to navigate the maze of lunacy without wanting to punish every douchebag you come across. There are small strides made every day. We just have to keep fighting.
This comment is hotly debated.
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This cuts right to the core of a lot of stuff I’ve been coping with in the last few years, I really appreciate it. Thank you.
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Thank you for this post. I’m not ready to be done with certain people yet, and there’s others I possibly will never want to be done with, no matter how aggravating certain topics can get.
But this helped me clarify my thoughts on that, and will help me figure out how to engage, or not engage, as appropriate for each situation, and without hating myself.
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I have a friend who knows that I was raped and knows the man in question. She’s a great friend, absolutely terrific, very funny, supportive, loving. But she still greets him in front of me when he passes us, and she has never once spoken about the rape to me, although I know she knows.
In a way, I’m glad. Because if all my friends were suddenly to cold shoulder him at once, he’d know I’ve told them, and then god knows what he’d do, and it would be really very scary for me. But at the same time, every time it happens, it feels like being stabbed.
I can’t be as clear-cut as you, Harriet – I used to think I was, and I really wish I could be. But my friendship with her is more important to me than her attitude about the rape, even though it’s painful for me. And that’s the responsibility I have to accept in continuing the friendship.
You cope by following the way that causes the least harm to people, yourself included, and sometimes that means yelling and screaming – I’m pretty vocal myself a lot of the time – and sometimes it just means shrugging and moving on fast.
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I’ve cut a lot of people out of my life because I find their obliviousness to abuse/abusiveness too much to handle. I’ve also dropped a lot of people because I can’t ever have a real conversation about the things I care about with them. That leaves a few acquaintances back in Vancouver (I moved away recently) I could talk about superficial things with when I ran into them, and a few people on the internet who probably aren’t close friends either. Being disabled as well as abused probably doesn’t help. Needing to talk about things that scare the heck out of just about everyone (or are too far out there for them to have time for) is a bigger problem. On the one hand, it’s better to not wear myself down with people who will turn on me at some point. On the other hand it’s really lonely, since I deal with issues most feminists don’t want to have to deal with, so I’m isolated even in feminist circles.
On the other hand, years ago I asked my brother to take sides and he refused, but still wanted to maintain contact. I eventually refused for a long time because I felt like a charity case. More recently, we started talking a bit here and there on the internet, and I met him again in February, and he has aged a lot (I was shocked). I hear he has no one he talks personal stuff with at all – he just swallows it. So not taking sides has taken its toll on him. At one time where he was at wasn’t good enough for me, but now I’m wondering if I can sort of keep him in my life at a safe distance, since it looks like, even though he won’t take my side, he’s unlikely to turn on me either. I can’t be close to my brother, but I have borrowed money from him recently, and it does sort of feel good that I have at least that to turn to, even though at the same time it bothers the heck out of me that that’s all it will ever be.
I guess it’s a question of how unsafe a person is versus how much choice you have when it comes to company.
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I know that if we talk about these certain topics, I will find you impossible to tolerate. I know if we talk about these other topics, I will be able to interact with you. I can now decide if those other topics are important enough to me to outweigh any potential benefit of our relationship.
This put very clearly and succinctly something I’ve been trying to figure out for a month, ever since a discussion about ‘colorblindness’ and racism went pear-shaped with someone I considered a friend. Thanks for giving me the right tools to look at the problem.
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: I know that some people who aren’t, you know, “down with the cause” will perceive “douche” to be an insult because it has a relationship with dirty, dirty female genitalia, which is not cool. But I still use it as an insult, because to me, a “douche” is a rancid, useless, horrible, worthless item of evil. Maybe not everybody gets that finer distinction, and probably plenty of people don’t even care, but that’s how I deal with that word for myself.
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& : Douche is the best insult for males ever, I think. In both cases, it describes something that is at best worthless, and at worst toxic, which is marketed to women to solve a problem they don’t have. Sadly, I think Harriet’s explanation is the reason why it’s popular, though.
I really liked this post, and it feels like something I’m going to be absorbing for a while. So far, I’ve managed to avoid most of the real obvious shit – my friends are, at least on the surface, all quite enlightened folk. The few times I’ve found otherwise, well, I backed off liked they’d farted mustard gas. But then, when everyone’s all enlightened on the surface, the stuff underneath is much harder to dig out and talk about. I hope to get better, but I’m not there yet.
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This piece has been on my mind all day. I like how organized and thoughtful you are in dealing with people who are problematic at times. I love how you give yourself the space to handle or not handle things in the moment as appropriate. It helped me give myself this same permission.
Your description of the Not Taking Sides when there is evil about is spot-on. Just watched my loved one get called on it, and it was pretty awesome.
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This, for me, is one of your overwhelming posts. (And I mean that in a good way.) I’m going to have to digest it some and come back and re-read and go hmmmm some more.
And also I’m thinking it should be subtitled ‘How to Deal with Life’. Just ’cause it’s resonating so strongly with my (not necessarily feminist parts of)life right now.
Wow. Just wow.
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I just wanted to put out there that douche is a really triggering thing for some people. I hate that people think it is funny or apt. When I hear the word douche or douchbag I want to vomit every time. Everyone irl I have asked not to use it thinks Im overreacting. I will keep telling people it makes me uncomfortable.
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I do appreciate how articulate you are in your postings. I am new to reading your blog, a friend sent me the link the other weekend and I want to thank you for having it. It provides a lot of clarity for all these things that I think about but am not able to translate to words.
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What Gayle Force said, I think – a friend who says dumb shit because they fucked up, and who’s willing to hear and acknowledge that they fucked up, and to do better next time? I can be OK with that.
I, uh, am actually a big fan of ‘burn the problem to the ground’ iin certain situations. Which I think of as different from applying a chainsaw when you need a screwdriver; more like applying a chainsaw when you could have used a butter knife. Burning the problem to the ground means getting rid of the problem and making it blazingly, absolutely clear to everyone related to the problem exactly how you felt about it, which can be a solution to all kinds of other things. So, no, breaking the dishes does not fix “My husband is a drunk and an asshole,” but it certainly gets the message across to him that the dishes issue is not just some silly female thing about wanting the husband to be more domestic and shit.
YMMV, of course.
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Haley: feminazi is one of the words that I am absolutely not cool with at all, and when people around me use it I have a habit of saying, brightly, and with excessive sarcasm, ‘right! I forgot for a second that wanting not to be raped is directly comparable to genocide.’
You are the best!
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: I don’t think burning the problem to the ground is a wrong solution, but it is if you’re looking for it to solve the wrong problem. As in, if you’re still stating that the problem is the dishes, burning the house down isn’t a solution to the dishes, though once you have made the decision to burn down the house, you have obviously already jumped far over the solution to the dishes, which was “don’t do them.” If the problem is actually that you hate your husband, your marriage, your life, and everything in your house, then the solution is totally to burn down the house. It may be that the dishes problem helped clarify this for you, but what I’m saying is that when the fire squad comes and asks you why you did it, “He didn’t do the dishes and I didn’t want to do them,” really is not the actual reason there.
Sometimes taking the big, all-encompassing solution is what works. At the end of my marriage, I had to step back from the daily, petty grievances and stop trying to figure out solutions to those, and just dump everything in a box called “I am leaving you.” That was the right solution for everything, but because it was such a sledgehammer of a solution, it kept me from addressing other issues that needed more nuance or attention. I had to let go of a lot of problems I had wanted to solve differently (who gets our stuff? who gets our friends? who gets to win this argument? how do I explain what a fuck-up you’ve been?), because I couldn’t stay to solve those problems AND burn our marriage down — it’s a lot of wasted effort to be doing dishes in a burning house. I just had to let all that burn.
But there are situations where the “burn it down” solution isn’t what I want, like with Mickey, whose friendship I do want to keep if I can. So I use the “do the dishes” solution instead, which helps me to break things down into little, manageable problems with little, manageable solutions, which allows me more flexibility, time, and resource management.
Basically, what I’m saying is, if you’re using a chainsaw instead of a screwdriver, it’s because you’ve stopped caring about the thing you’re supposed to be screwing — it’s not a solution to the screw, but who the fuck cares? You’re done with the screw and everything it’s attached to. If what you really want is a solution to the thing you’re supposed to be screwing, because you still care about that thing and keeping it intact, then you’ve got to use the screwdriver.
You are the best!
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: You have a very valid point there, I didn’t really think of it in those terms at all, I am guessing my friends didn’t either. I will make a point of pointing that out as well. The more I do think about it it comes across as a mockery to what I believe in anyway.
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I really appreciate the length and logical breakdown of your posts. Halfway through, I stopped, and started taking down notes for personal application. The careful identification of each individual problem seems really helpful. One of the most important tenets of my life is ‘calling each thing by its true name’ – I feel like a lot of personal growth might come from this. And the ‘not choosing sides’ part felt like an important recognition/description/clarification of something painful for me. Thank you.
Regarding hanging out with Mickey (or my own Mickeys) – it’s a confusing and troubling idea for me. Sometimes I feel like it weakens my personal integrity, and sometimes I feel like personal integrity is an egoistic privilege I only get because I live in a Western, wealthy, peaceful (uh, that is, doesn’t have a war on its own soil) nation. Or is THAT belief just a cop-out? I am not that important – valuable to remember! – therefore what I do doesn’t matter much – denying moral responsibility? I just don’t know. It confuses me.
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Cayt:
There’s a lovely Livejournal userpic for this sentiment:
http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/90899468/9357847
“Feminazi: Because wanting to be treated like a human being is just like invading Poland.”
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/Xtina
Give me reproductive rights or I will annex the Sudetenland! I swear I’ll do it!
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Once again, your blog saves the day in the world of me. I’m currently struggling with an issue that is actually a non issue. My father has told me that I don’t respect him and that if I don’t do x then I will have proven that I don’t respect him.
I don’t want to do x. I don’t think x has anything to do with my father and the amount of respect I do or do not have for him. I think x has a lot to do with him placing the significance of our entire relationship onto a completely unrelated issue so that he can address problems in our relationship without really ever addressing them.
Before I read this post I had no idea how to articulate that, or how to tell my father that what he was asking of me was unreasonable. This kind of ultimatum (if you do not do this, you do not love me and you are terrible) is unreasonable, but I have become conditioned into thinking that these demands make sense. Of course I’m an asshole if I don’t complete this unrelated task. He’s done so much for me so why can’t I do this one thing to show him that I appreciate him? Come on, Erin, WHY ARE YOU INSISTING ON PERSONAL AUTONOMY AND A RELATIONSHIP WITHOUT ULTIMATUMS. YOU DON’T HAVE THE RIGHT TO MAKE YOUR OWN DECISIONS.
So what started out as a simple, insignificant and easily completed task has really become another way for my father to demand that I surrender control of my life over to him in the name of love and respect.
Thanks for writing this post out, it’s really helped me organize my thoughts and understand why this was bothering me so much.
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Oh man, I want to print this post out and hand it out every time someone asks me for advice, because it’s like, the heart of 90% of all my advice-giving – “figure out what it is you can get, figure out which among those things, and ONLY among those things, you would pick if you had to, which you do or we wouldn’t be having this conversation, and then do that” – except said way better than I usually say it.
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Late on this, of course–I’ve fallen behind on teh internetz–but I have to chime in and say how perfect this post was for me right now. I’m in the same position: suddenly, everyone’s a jerkwad!
It’s particularly frustrating as one of the big things my boyfriend and I have always had in common is an extremely dark and twisted sense of humor, which used to include a lot of horribly sexist/racist/ableist/etc. jokes. (Never homophobic, though, perhaps because as privileged young white wealthy liberal university students with a fair number of LGBTQ friends, discrimination against LGBTQ people is the most present and obvious discrimination issue in our lives and the one we’re supposed to be constantly on about.) The thing is, that while I can still appreciate my boyfriend’s jokes when they’re really good–he’s extremely funny, in our school’s super-competitive/prestigious creative writing for the media program and everything–and I still know that much of his humor is the way it is because he’s had the notion that “edgy/dark/raw comedy is the only truly funny and creative comedy” pounded into his head by the culture he’s grown up in, I also am now extremely uncomfortable with the tropes upon which he relies in lazier, casual, off-the-cuff jokes that get tossed into our conversation so often.
It doesn’t help that I’m noticing a mild resistance to confronting his own privilege when I start to bring up the things I’m thinking about due to reading feminist, anti-racist, anti-ableist, anti-classist, fat-accepting, LGBTQ rights blogs. I think we’re going to have to have a serious talk about the fact that he always insists “I’m not racist!” (his four best friends are Indian, of Jewish heritage, black and half-white/half-Chinese, respectively) if I even begin to call him out, or simply fail to laugh/give him that “really, you’re pulling that one out?” when he makes a stupid joke. He won’t even listen to me long enough to hear my explanation that I’m not ‘accusing’ him of racism and therefore saying he’s a ‘bad person’ but rather that I want to point out that I’m racist, he’s racist, we are fish swimming in the same pond here so let’s talk about why we need to work to counter the effect of the pollution on our gills and how we can help to clear the water.
This may be because I’ve never tried to have a conversation with him about it when it wouldn’t be interrupting the flow of another conversation (one that spawned the offensive humor in the first place). I think we need to discuss some of these things soon, because I love him, so I’ve chosen solution a to problem 1, but I can’t continue relying on solution a to problem 2.
In summation: friendship while feminist is hard. BEING A PERSON IS HARD. Grar. Poor me. But as always, your writing has helped me think about my issues in a much clearer and more helpful way.
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Shoot, I should’ve noted that I mention the races/ethnic heritages of his best friends in a possibly-unsuccessful attempt to ironically point out how he would definitely use those facts as a parry to accusations of racism, as so many of us idealistic liberal privilege-blind white people do–not because *I* think that makes him any more or less racist. Stupid of me to toss that in there with no reasoning attached. Sorry.
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@Suz: Maybe this would help:
How To Tell People They Sound Racist
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I’m curious, how do you guys handle said assholes when you can’t avoid them? E.g. there’s a lot of sexist/homophobic remarks made at my current workplace. I really don’t have the option right now to find a new job. It’s starting (ok beyond starting) to wear on me pretty badly, but it doesn’t seem that management is particularly interested in curbing the issue.
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Thank you, thank you, thank you. Blown away. So well put. Thanks again.
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I am printing this out for my internet-less friend.
She and I were just talking about this last night; she is trying to date after years of psychologically abusive marriage and boyfriends.
Thank you for this work that you are doing; it has helped me so much.
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Thank you so much for this. I just wish it could have been written two years earlier, when I was going through my feminist “click” moment and no longer knew how to interact with other people without ending up hating them or myself. Reading this, I realized that this is essentially how I’ve come to deal with things now, though I wouldn’t have been able to put it so clearly.
This is such a valuable post, and I hope that it will help other new feminists learn to deal with the world in the way I’ve had learn by going through 2 years of depression and angst.
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I just tell’em.
I had a conversation with two of my male co-workers the other day that started off with one thing, then suddenly segued into how Nelly Furtado isn’t the ideal female celebrity.
It pretty much went like this:
1st boy: I like this song, even though I didn’t like much of Nelly’s last album.
2nd boy: Oh, you mean the one where she made all that money from singing about being a whore now that she’s a single mother?
1st boy: … What does THAT have to do with anything?
2nd boy: I’m just sayin!
Me: Hey, listen, she’s still doing much better for herself than you are!
1st boy: YEAH!
2nd boy: Sure, if you can call being a SINGLE MOTHER better than what I’ve got!
Me: Listen you, you’re bordering on some seriously dangerous conversation right now, and I suggest you keep your mouth shut before this gets any worse.
1st boy: Yeah! Really man, you gotta watch yourself.
2nd boy: ….
He didn’t say anything to either of us for the rest of the day that wasn’t about packing or shipping orders.
(I work in a warehouse, and while there is lots of “male conversation” they’re both usually pretty subdued. This is the first time I’ve heard an outburst from #2 like that, and I promptly let him know that I don’t appreciate it and it better not happen around me again.
I might not change his mind ever, but at least I don’t have to put up with his shit.)
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You know, it’s been such a relief to have validation that the world reallyis wrong, I’m not imagining it, that it’s been a pretty quick step to go from being bummed about it to just setting about winning hearts and minds.
All the niggling kyriarchal crap that’s bugged me since I was a kid just left me feeling miserable, like I didn’t fit in anywhere except with a few like-minded people. So from the time I was about eleven I read everything I could get my hands on.
When the internet came along, it was easy to find people who agreed with me. And they’re bright, articulate people, who THINK about this stuff, who come up with brilliant analyses and explain why X is wrong, why Y is not the answer, and how to explain Z so that other people we talk to can finally get it.
So, Harriet’s reader, remember that there really are other people out there who get it, and you don’t have to immediately pull the plug on your friendships to be a good feminist. You can if you want to but it’s not required. I don’t like to say “this is a stage” because it sounds patronizing, but that’s not how I mean it. I mean this is a necessary step. You’ll find your feet again. Some days will be worse than others, but if you accept that it sucks and you’re NOT accepting it but working on improving it, it really does help.
I think we all create the best serenity bubbles we can so we can go on functioning in this world. We find pockets of our lives and people with whom we feel safe so we can go out and fight another day.
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Regarding your question about how I deal with non-feminists that I bump into in life recently not very well- and I’m OK with that. I think over the years I have tried too hard to see the other side of the issue/understand where folks are coming from/frame responses in ways that will be enlightening for others. Recently I’ve become more comfortable with rolling my eyes or being snarky. I know it’s not helpful. It’s not really my ‘best self’ but I’m discovering that some parts of my life have required more energy to get from point a to point b and right now I’m just too tired. OTOH I feel like I’m more fully living my feminism than I have at any other time in my life. I do believe though that in order to live a life in balance it is going to sometimes be out of balance. I’m hoping that my life will calm down so I can return to being a person that is more interested in building bridges but right now I have to attend to what I need to attend to period. For me right now that means not having many non-feminists around.
On a side note, your article expressed something that I have had a very hard time expressing to others although from a very different angle than you were coming from. My abusive ex tried to make a lot of issues out of whether or not the dishes (and other things) were getting done. When I tried to explain what we were going through to other people frequently they would ask why I just wouldn’t do the dishes. As if that was clearly my fault because he had defined it as being my fault. I knew it was about control and I knew that if I ‘improved’ in one area a new area would become a zone of contention and clearly my fault because he had declared it to be so. Some folks just found it easier to believe that I was lazy than he was controlling and playing power games. When we did reach a point where it got physical (I was lucky-I just got knocked over 2x) all of a sudden those same folks were irate that I had taken it for years. Drs and the like would explain to me how I needed to be educated so it didn’t happen to me ever again. I needed to stop ‘being a victim’. Anyway, before I start rambling here I just want to say thank you for posting that. It was helpful.
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Hey, I’m the reader who asked for your advice, and the reason why I haven’t responded until now was because I wanted to take time to let everything you all said sink in, and put a few things to the test.
So first of all, thank you Harriet for taking the time to write such a detailed and long post, and thanks to everyone who responded, you guys have been great help.
I know I’m late to the party, but I would like to share with you what I have learned in the past two weeks, and I hope this could be relevant to other people as well.
I stopped thinking about my friends and family as “good” or “bad”, and started thinking in terms of “are they hurting me or not”.
I feel a lot more comfortable with my emotions like this and a lot less like an asshole when I decide to take a time off from a certain friendship, or cut one out all together.
I also discovered that I have a few awesome friends, who are able to recognize and call out a sexual harassment when it happens, and also recognize when a guy is dangerous and when rape is a possibility, and that they will try to keep away the drunk dangerous guy from me and my female friends, which should be a pretty basic thing in a male-female friendship, but I don’t think that it’s common enough.
I also discovered that my friend can be sort of jerks at times, and tell jokes that I find offensive and hurtful, but if I say “dude, not funny” they will make a face or tell me that “it’s not like that”, but they will still stop telling the joke or jokes like that for the entire evening.
My family turned out to be a lot more complicated subject, but I don’t feel like I can or want to disconnect myself from them for now, so for the time being I will just leave the subject alone.
Thanks, everybody, you really helped me sort things out, and I would have probably kept going with a nasty felling if it weren’t for you.
p.s sorry for the poor grammar and language, English is not my first language.
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:
Okay, this:
That is just, like, the healthiest thing I have ever heard. Way to go.
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I really like and appreciate your blog entry. It made me think about myself and my own actions and words and how I do or do not treat language and its meanings and consequences. I also enjoyed your other thoughts as I feel the same in a lot of ways.
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Thanks for this article. Navigating relationships with coworkers/aquaintances/anyone where you don’t necessarily want to invest your energy in breaking opression down for them step by freakin step. Though once you call someone on it, they’ll bring up other times when behaviour was ignored or “wasn’t a big deal”, BLEH.
& : What is it about the dishes? me too.
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“How do you deal with the fact that jesus, suddenly everybody is a blazing asshole?”
I AM THERE. Right now, that’s where I am, and it’s been rough. Your post will help me, in some way, I am sure. How, I don’t know yet. I’ll need to read this again tomorrow, and next. And next month. Thanks. (This is such a hard place to be. My mind is spinning.)
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This nicely sums up where I am at this point in my life. When I began college I became very interested in feminism and feminist literature, which I read avidly. This impacted my worldview in a lot of ways that I found both instructive and enriching, and I definitely feel like I have been clued in to something I knew nothing about before.
But, I now find that I can barely associate with anyone without being incredibly offended by one thing or another that I never found offensive before, but now that I understand where it stems from, I can barely stand it, and having to choose whether or not to “make a scene.” Although, I do believe the trade-off to be well worth it. I just don’t see why we should have to live in a culture that forces so many people to make this kind of trade-off daily.
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