In the past week two more women I love disclosed histories of abuse to me. One found God and the other gumption and both the guts to up and walk away.
The words are like ash on my tongue: I am so sorry that happened to you. You did not deserve that. You deserved so much better. They are the lyrics of a song overplayed and become meaningless, a fabric frayed to threadbare. How can I live in a world where I am compelled to repeat this mantra to the best and most beautiful women I know, over and over again? How is it that my coming to know and love individual women leads so surely to this almost universal disclosure of harm done them?
I love my friends for their humor and intelligence, their snark and pluck, their faith and irreverence. I love to sweat with them and drink coffee with them and grow our trust and mutual respect through conversations snatched among the children or savored on a wild free morning ramble on the mountain. I love how Facebook makes us privy to one another’s every day and collapses the years, bringing those I knew long ago into my present and mingling me with my new friends’ forever friends.
I hate that intimacy among women so often comes to this: how I was hurt, what was taken from me, what I gave up to get free.
Maybe it’s not an accident these stories are finding me now as with shaking hands and a resistant heart, I unpack my own past, the injuries done me at the hands of someone I only ever wanted to love.
I don’t want to tell that story. I don’t want to claim the name survivor or let that history see the light of day, even as I know that sunlight sanitizes and telling—and telling, and telling, and telling if need be—is the final finger of the self-defense fist. Sometimes the not-wanting to tell takes the tack of boot-stomping, temper-tantrum resistance. Sometimes it takes the tack of minimizing, the big brush off. It’s not really all that bad, so many women have faced so much worse.
It’s here I hear the infinitely kind and infinitely wise voice of Katy Mattingly, breaking with emotion. The worst thing that ever happened to you, she says, is the worst thing that ever happened to you.
Keeping this story close to my chest is the last gasp of deniability, the last best hope at rolling my history up behind me like a road no longer open for passage.
So why is it that the words of the great American bard Utah Phillips rise in my mind unbidden?
The past didn’t go anywhere, did it? It’s right here it’s right now.
I always thought that anybody who told me that I couldn’t live in the past was trying to get me to forget something that would get them in serious trouble.
Time is an enormous long river. And I’m standing in it and you’re standing in it.
The past didn’t go anywhere.
Self defense finger #5: Tell someone you trust.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Monday, October 25, 2010
mind body mama: I am the egg
Almost 20 years ago a therapist told me her theory of the human body’s resilience to stress. We are born with more reserve than we need, she said. In youth our abundantly wasteful bodies absorb whatever overload—athletic, emotional, chemical—we put upon them. It’s just a matter of time before we run through these reserves. Eventually, inevitably, the demands we heap upon our mortal flesh take a toll.
I got it. I was twenty-five and rippling with vigorous, impervious youth, but I understood the image. I saw my nervous system cushioned by layers of black rubber, like a thick truck tire or a shoe’s crepe sole. I knew that she was right, that my habit of somaticizing stress would wear that springy protection right down to the nub. But in nearly twenty years, I have yet to figure out what else to do. And now, facing down 42, I feel every bump in the road.
***
“I’m not good at time management,” I told Birth Pie recently.
“No, you’re excellent at time management,” she countered. “You can fit fifteen things in the space a normal person would do two. But then you feel overwhelmed and miserable. It’s balance you’re not good at.”
Last year I accepted an unconscionable number of volunteer posts. Each, taken in isolation, had the potential to be easy and fun. But heaped together they were nearly insurmountable. There were weeks when every chore I did—washing the dishes, making Small’s lunch, filing my clients’ charts—was a race against time. Every sliver of time was packed with duty. I would look at my “to do” list and feel trapped and short-of-breath. I would breathe my way out of the panic, strap myself in to the harness of obligation and knuckle down to the tasks at hand.
More than one smart-aleck has said, “Can’t you say ‘no’? You’re supposed to be a self-defense teacher.”
“Honey-pie,” I think, using my finely-honed de-escalation skills to keep from smacking them upside their smart-ass heads, “Trust me when I tell you I can say ‘No’.”
The problem is that I don’t know when to say “No.” My discrimination, my judgment, is impaired. I am missing a skill of discretion. I can do fifteen things in the time someone else would do two. But how many should I do? Is three the right number? Seven? One and a half? I have had no earthly idea.
***
One hot night in the late spring I came home from teaching self-defense and found that Small had the stomach ‘flu. Moments later, we lost our electricity. I was up hourly with a small, puking girl through a fevered, airless night. The next day was that shimmering misery of discipline over sleep deprivation, of mind over exhausted matter that parents know so well.
That day offered itself to me as an assessment protocol for taking on new projects. It’s a rough and arbitrary measure, but it’s a clue. My aching anxious body is screaming at me to stop saying “yes” to all the things that look easy and fun from a distance. So here’s my new rubric: I say “yes” to things I’ll still want to do after I’ve been up all night in a heat wave with a puking kid. If I really believe that an opportunity will hold its appeal in that special hell, I’ll take it on.
***
A few weeks a client arrived a few minutes late for her appointment. She was flustered, rushing. “I’ve decided,” she told me, “that everything takes fifteen minutes. Going to the bathroom: fifteen minutes. Going around the corner to get something: fifteen minutes. I need to allow fifteen minutes for each and every task.”
“Wow,” I said. “That explains a lot. Like why it’s so hard to eat breakfast and make my daughter’s lunch and pack the car with my work my things and hang out the laundry when I’ve only got ten minutes before we leave for school.”
“Oh, no,” she said seriously. “Each one of those things takes fifteen minutes.”
And thus I inherit another rubric for establishing balance. I am desperate in my need for remediation and so I accept this awkward, artificial way of being: each task takes fifteen minutes, each fifteen minutes holds only one task. I adhere to this rule like an acolyte. I carry myself carefully, almost ceremonially though my mornings, as if I am the egg in an egg-and-spoon race. Each task takes fifteen minutes. Each fifteen minutes hold only one task.
It’s when I arrive early at nature camp, with a child fully outfitted and unguented, instead of flying in at the last moment with my hair on fire and already late for work, that I am startled by my own calm. I feel like a wide-eyed toddler, off balance and full of wonder. Who knew that my life had a slow lane? Who knew that I could shift into it? What next?
***
I got it. I was twenty-five and rippling with vigorous, impervious youth, but I understood the image. I saw my nervous system cushioned by layers of black rubber, like a thick truck tire or a shoe’s crepe sole. I knew that she was right, that my habit of somaticizing stress would wear that springy protection right down to the nub. But in nearly twenty years, I have yet to figure out what else to do. And now, facing down 42, I feel every bump in the road.
***
“I’m not good at time management,” I told Birth Pie recently.
“No, you’re excellent at time management,” she countered. “You can fit fifteen things in the space a normal person would do two. But then you feel overwhelmed and miserable. It’s balance you’re not good at.”
Last year I accepted an unconscionable number of volunteer posts. Each, taken in isolation, had the potential to be easy and fun. But heaped together they were nearly insurmountable. There were weeks when every chore I did—washing the dishes, making Small’s lunch, filing my clients’ charts—was a race against time. Every sliver of time was packed with duty. I would look at my “to do” list and feel trapped and short-of-breath. I would breathe my way out of the panic, strap myself in to the harness of obligation and knuckle down to the tasks at hand.
More than one smart-aleck has said, “Can’t you say ‘no’? You’re supposed to be a self-defense teacher.”
“Honey-pie,” I think, using my finely-honed de-escalation skills to keep from smacking them upside their smart-ass heads, “Trust me when I tell you I can say ‘No’.”
The problem is that I don’t know when to say “No.” My discrimination, my judgment, is impaired. I am missing a skill of discretion. I can do fifteen things in the time someone else would do two. But how many should I do? Is three the right number? Seven? One and a half? I have had no earthly idea.
***
One hot night in the late spring I came home from teaching self-defense and found that Small had the stomach ‘flu. Moments later, we lost our electricity. I was up hourly with a small, puking girl through a fevered, airless night. The next day was that shimmering misery of discipline over sleep deprivation, of mind over exhausted matter that parents know so well.
That day offered itself to me as an assessment protocol for taking on new projects. It’s a rough and arbitrary measure, but it’s a clue. My aching anxious body is screaming at me to stop saying “yes” to all the things that look easy and fun from a distance. So here’s my new rubric: I say “yes” to things I’ll still want to do after I’ve been up all night in a heat wave with a puking kid. If I really believe that an opportunity will hold its appeal in that special hell, I’ll take it on.
***
A few weeks a client arrived a few minutes late for her appointment. She was flustered, rushing. “I’ve decided,” she told me, “that everything takes fifteen minutes. Going to the bathroom: fifteen minutes. Going around the corner to get something: fifteen minutes. I need to allow fifteen minutes for each and every task.”
“Wow,” I said. “That explains a lot. Like why it’s so hard to eat breakfast and make my daughter’s lunch and pack the car with my work my things and hang out the laundry when I’ve only got ten minutes before we leave for school.”
“Oh, no,” she said seriously. “Each one of those things takes fifteen minutes.”
And thus I inherit another rubric for establishing balance. I am desperate in my need for remediation and so I accept this awkward, artificial way of being: each task takes fifteen minutes, each fifteen minutes holds only one task. I adhere to this rule like an acolyte. I carry myself carefully, almost ceremonially though my mornings, as if I am the egg in an egg-and-spoon race. Each task takes fifteen minutes. Each fifteen minutes hold only one task.
It’s when I arrive early at nature camp, with a child fully outfitted and unguented, instead of flying in at the last moment with my hair on fire and already late for work, that I am startled by my own calm. I feel like a wide-eyed toddler, off balance and full of wonder. Who knew that my life had a slow lane? Who knew that I could shift into it? What next?
***
Saturday, October 16, 2010
One of these days, one of these days
Mad Men’s bad little Betty Draper is a character Sweetie and I love to hate. We’re in the midst of season three on DVD (no spoilers, please!) The other night we watched a scene in which Betty, the alternately despicable and pitiable upper middle class white Ossining housewife, cleans up in the kitchen with her African-American housekeeper Carla. As Betty enters the room Carla switches off her radio program: the funeral service of the four little girls who died in the Birmingham church fire.
“It’s horrifying,” says Betty. For a long moment we believe that she might exhibit real empathy. “Are you ok?” she asks. “Do you need a day off?”
Then she adds,
“I hate to say this but it’s really made me wonder about civil rights. Maybe it’s not supposed to happen now.”
A few days later I heard an historian on Teri Gross talking about Abraham Lincoln, quoting from the President’s Peoria Speech. Apparently, President Lincoln used this epic oratory to explore his own feelings and positions on slavery and abolition. His position was not as cut-and-dried as we might like to think and it evolved over time.
The quote that struck me was this:
What next? Free [the slaves]…, and make them politically and socially, our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not. Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound judgment, is not the sole question, if indeed, it is any part of it. A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, can not be safely disregarded.
The past few weeks have seen an astonishing spate of anti-gay violence. Five young men, gay or perceived to be gay, have taken their own lives after experiencing anti-gay bullying. A friend in Knoxville reports a gay bar being burned and a lesbian couple being burned out of their house. In New York City gay men were attacked on the street and at the Stonewall Inn, and a group of young men reportedly tortured and beat two teens and an adult man who admitted to having sex with one another.
This violence is springing up as the nation debates—in the courts, the media and the conscience of the average citizen—the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell; marriage equality for queerfolk, and the Defense of Marriage Act.
There seems to be a strong feeling in our country against the advancing of civil rights for queer people. Polls aside, it’s hard to know how many share this feeling. It’s even harder to know how many, like bad little Betty, might be compelled by this tide of violence to think it’s just not time for us yet.
To that I say, Betty and Mr. Lincoln, you could not be more wrong.
If one is interested in electability and political expediency, perhaps it is true that a popular feeling, whether or not it “accords with justice and sound judgment,” cannot be ignored. Obviously the presence of this sentiment must be brought into consideration, as those who worked unsuccessfully to defeat California’s Prop 8 learned too late, to their bitter disappointment and our country’s great shame. We can’t ignore the feelings of those who oppose justice. We must take their opposition into great account as we plan our strategy.
But if one is interested in doing what is right, in advancing justice and dignity and equality, we cannot be set back by hate and fear. It is senseless and indefensible to be swayed by violent tactics. Right doesn’t bow to intimidation.
The fictional Carla and the real women she represents knew that the death of those four little girls—and the deaths of the Freedom Summer volunteers and Dr. King and so many others who go unnamed and unremembered in our national story—were all the more reason to press forward for Civil Rights. With the wisdom of history and a black man in the white house, Mad Men’s viewer knows this too. We know that Betty’s hesitance reflects ignorance and privilege and a stunning refusal to honor the full humanity of the woman who stands beside her, close enough to take her hand.
History demonstrates the flaw in Mr. Lincoln’s logic too: the fact that a feeling can hardly be considered “universal” if it reflects only the opinion of a group already enjoying a given right and not the will of those to whom the right is being denied.
At the City University of New York in the early 1990s we discussed intersectionality and the similarities and differences between movements. Some of my colleagues advanced the sentiment that queer civil rights could not be compared to black civil rights, either because queerness is a “choice” while race is an inherent quality (an argument known in common parlance as “homophobia”) or because the wrongs perpetrated against people of African descent by our nation are so unique and egregious that no other group should claim affinity or parallel.
I’ll leave it to the students still sitting around the 17th floor conference table to discuss these lofty philosophies. Right now, living through the epicenter of the queer civil rights movement, I am seeing parallels and drawing inspiration from the century-long struggle for black civil rights in America. This struggle is far from over; it is a spiraling discourse that will run through our nation’s fabric forever. But most Americans have moved from the time of Mr. Lincoln, in which white people could actually consider—discuss, legislate, debate—whether or not African Americans were fully people. Most of us are stunned by Betty Draper’s casual cruelty and unrepentant racism.
I know that there are those who heard Dr. King speak in Washington in 1963 and returned to our nation's capital for Barack Obama’s inauguration four decades later. I wonder if we will see such a sea-change in queer civil rights in my lifetime. I wonder if the good people who seriously consider whether justice is best served by honoring queerfolk as their full legal equals will have the grace to be horrified by their own cruelty and privilege as they peer back in fifty years.
I think we must take inspiration from those who went before us fighting for justice, even and perhaps especially if their struggles were different from ours. This morning I heard Tavis Smiley talking about the inspiration Dr. King took from Mahatma Gandhi and the non-violent movement for Indian liberation.
When my heart is longing for peace and freedom, I need to know that others have fought for equality and recognition of their full humanity. It reminds me that the quest for justice is bigger than me; it reminds me that I have common cause with people different from me. It reminds me that I unwittingly play a role in denying others their rights, out of my privilege and fear and place in this world, and it calls me to be my best self. When I despair of being able to change the hearts of others, I can work to change myself.
And it gives me solace, as when I cue up Dan Zanes and the Blind Boys of Alabama, and sing some freedom songs with Small.
I’m gonna sit at the welcome table, we sing. One of these days, all God’s children gonna sit together. And I’m gonna tell God how you treat me.
“It’s horrifying,” says Betty. For a long moment we believe that she might exhibit real empathy. “Are you ok?” she asks. “Do you need a day off?”
Then she adds,
“I hate to say this but it’s really made me wonder about civil rights. Maybe it’s not supposed to happen now.”
A few days later I heard an historian on Teri Gross talking about Abraham Lincoln, quoting from the President’s Peoria Speech. Apparently, President Lincoln used this epic oratory to explore his own feelings and positions on slavery and abolition. His position was not as cut-and-dried as we might like to think and it evolved over time.
The quote that struck me was this:
What next? Free [the slaves]…, and make them politically and socially, our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not. Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound judgment, is not the sole question, if indeed, it is any part of it. A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, can not be safely disregarded.
The past few weeks have seen an astonishing spate of anti-gay violence. Five young men, gay or perceived to be gay, have taken their own lives after experiencing anti-gay bullying. A friend in Knoxville reports a gay bar being burned and a lesbian couple being burned out of their house. In New York City gay men were attacked on the street and at the Stonewall Inn, and a group of young men reportedly tortured and beat two teens and an adult man who admitted to having sex with one another.
This violence is springing up as the nation debates—in the courts, the media and the conscience of the average citizen—the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell; marriage equality for queerfolk, and the Defense of Marriage Act.
There seems to be a strong feeling in our country against the advancing of civil rights for queer people. Polls aside, it’s hard to know how many share this feeling. It’s even harder to know how many, like bad little Betty, might be compelled by this tide of violence to think it’s just not time for us yet.
To that I say, Betty and Mr. Lincoln, you could not be more wrong.
If one is interested in electability and political expediency, perhaps it is true that a popular feeling, whether or not it “accords with justice and sound judgment,” cannot be ignored. Obviously the presence of this sentiment must be brought into consideration, as those who worked unsuccessfully to defeat California’s Prop 8 learned too late, to their bitter disappointment and our country’s great shame. We can’t ignore the feelings of those who oppose justice. We must take their opposition into great account as we plan our strategy.
But if one is interested in doing what is right, in advancing justice and dignity and equality, we cannot be set back by hate and fear. It is senseless and indefensible to be swayed by violent tactics. Right doesn’t bow to intimidation.
The fictional Carla and the real women she represents knew that the death of those four little girls—and the deaths of the Freedom Summer volunteers and Dr. King and so many others who go unnamed and unremembered in our national story—were all the more reason to press forward for Civil Rights. With the wisdom of history and a black man in the white house, Mad Men’s viewer knows this too. We know that Betty’s hesitance reflects ignorance and privilege and a stunning refusal to honor the full humanity of the woman who stands beside her, close enough to take her hand.
History demonstrates the flaw in Mr. Lincoln’s logic too: the fact that a feeling can hardly be considered “universal” if it reflects only the opinion of a group already enjoying a given right and not the will of those to whom the right is being denied.
At the City University of New York in the early 1990s we discussed intersectionality and the similarities and differences between movements. Some of my colleagues advanced the sentiment that queer civil rights could not be compared to black civil rights, either because queerness is a “choice” while race is an inherent quality (an argument known in common parlance as “homophobia”) or because the wrongs perpetrated against people of African descent by our nation are so unique and egregious that no other group should claim affinity or parallel.
I’ll leave it to the students still sitting around the 17th floor conference table to discuss these lofty philosophies. Right now, living through the epicenter of the queer civil rights movement, I am seeing parallels and drawing inspiration from the century-long struggle for black civil rights in America. This struggle is far from over; it is a spiraling discourse that will run through our nation’s fabric forever. But most Americans have moved from the time of Mr. Lincoln, in which white people could actually consider—discuss, legislate, debate—whether or not African Americans were fully people. Most of us are stunned by Betty Draper’s casual cruelty and unrepentant racism.
I know that there are those who heard Dr. King speak in Washington in 1963 and returned to our nation's capital for Barack Obama’s inauguration four decades later. I wonder if we will see such a sea-change in queer civil rights in my lifetime. I wonder if the good people who seriously consider whether justice is best served by honoring queerfolk as their full legal equals will have the grace to be horrified by their own cruelty and privilege as they peer back in fifty years.
I think we must take inspiration from those who went before us fighting for justice, even and perhaps especially if their struggles were different from ours. This morning I heard Tavis Smiley talking about the inspiration Dr. King took from Mahatma Gandhi and the non-violent movement for Indian liberation.
When my heart is longing for peace and freedom, I need to know that others have fought for equality and recognition of their full humanity. It reminds me that the quest for justice is bigger than me; it reminds me that I have common cause with people different from me. It reminds me that I unwittingly play a role in denying others their rights, out of my privilege and fear and place in this world, and it calls me to be my best self. When I despair of being able to change the hearts of others, I can work to change myself.
And it gives me solace, as when I cue up Dan Zanes and the Blind Boys of Alabama, and sing some freedom songs with Small.
I’m gonna sit at the welcome table, we sing. One of these days, all God’s children gonna sit together. And I’m gonna tell God how you treat me.
Friday, October 8, 2010
mind body mama: Getting Better
"Nobody's free until everybody's free."—Fannie Lou Hamer
Last week the Friend of a Facebook Friend posted this in response to mention of the Target boycott:
“Why boycott for a single error in judgment? When the CEO admits it was a mistake and publicly announce changes to better vette candidates before making donations? I don't understand this modern knee jerk reaction to boycott? All your [sic] doing is affecting the local store sales. And all that is doing is reducing the hours of the hourly employees at location, making it harder for them to make a living.”
While I was trying to formulate a response appropriate to the Facebook format, I heard about Tyler Clementi’s suicide. And Oak Marshall’s rescinded homecoming crown. And saw Anderson Cooper interview the reptilian twit Andrew Shirvell, an A.D.A. for the state of Michigan, about his online harassment of openly gay U of M student council leader Chris Armstrong.
Insert deep breath here.
By the time Sweetie and I touched base about Jender’s invitation to contribute to Dan Savage’s It Gets Better campaign I was pretty well beat down by the news of the day. I didn’t fault Sweetie’s cynicism at all as she hissed,
“Really, Dan? When does it get better?”
So, Friend of Friend, I’d like to say this about that:
I wish I could describe for you what it feels like to live in a world where alliance with those who would see me dead can be seen by a nice, reasonable man such as yourself as nothing more than “an error in judgment.”
Where people who call for “death and violence to gay people” [Human Rights Campaign] claim the moniker Christian without challenge or irony.
Every time the TV heads talk about what they like to call gay marriage and I like to call my life I am reminded that my right to live and love are in question. That I move unharmed through the world only through the power of a patchwork grace: the laws of my Commonwealth but not my nation; the goodwill of my neighbors and not the consensus of my culture. Every day the debate about my right to be underscores my expendability, my vulnerability, my lack of value.
Friend of friend, imagine your culture discussing your worth and dignity as if it were a question.
I wish I could describe how it feels to live in a society where my rights are open for debate and diminution in order to appease the religious zeal of others. In which the condemnation of someone else’s clergy has more real impact on my life than my own minister’s blessing.
I wish I could explain the psychic strength it takes to withstand this insidious attack day-in and day-out. How the constant condemnation of those that hate me, and even the apparently fair-and-balanced examination—Is it acceptable? Or is it perverse?—of my way of love, carries the stink of shame. How some days, when the death-toll is high and the good news sparse, I can forget that it is not my shame. It is the shame of those who imagine that any human has greater value than any other.
Those are the days I think of Fannie Lou Hamer.
Mrs. Hamer was born a sharecropper to the children of slaves. She was sterilized against her will and terrorized and beaten for her work in the Civil Rights movement.
I think of the degradation heaped upon her, the shame and humiliation, the theft of her labor and progeny, the denial of her humanity, the injury to her body and soul.
Then I think of her legacy and her courage and her voice for justice. I think of her clarity of purpose and her refusal to accept second-class citizenship or compromise her tactics. I remember that human dignity is something that cannot be stolen.
I take a deep breath and I take a stand.
Oh, Friend:
If you knew me, you would know that my decision to boycott Target was anything but “knee-jerk.” Careful readers of these pages will recall that I once went three years without new underpants because Target did not have my size and I could not think of anywhere else to shop. So it is with a heavy heart and great trepidation that I walk away from the big box.
It is not lost on me that I am forced every day, by virtue of our corporate culture and the hatred ranged against me, to do business with those who would agree to disagree with me about my rights to equality and existence. My hands are not clean and I know that.
It was the example of my straight allies that brought me to this anything but jerky decision. Their unquestioned devotion to the cause of my equality—“Target, you are dead to me!” charged the incomparable Jaz Tupelo—was both balm to my broken heart and call to arms.
Even this day Jender is curled under the metaphorical comforters with a pumpkin latte (or perhaps a single malt scotch) trying to heal her heart from the loss of five gay youth in the last few weeks. Not to mention the upholding of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the indignity of DOMA and the use of anti-miscegenation laws to ensure that our right to marry remains conscribed only to those areas of the nation where our neighbors can tolerate it.
Friend of Friend,
I wish I could explain how it feels to give voice to this outrage and be met with bleeding heart pity from those who love me, my friends and friends of friends. We’re going to stumble under this onslaught, Jender and Sweetie and the queers and me. We’re going to hit hard times, and how are you going to help?
It helps to hear affirmation from our fellows during these times of healing, sure it does. Bring on the love, oh, I’m so sorry you have to face this discrimination and pain, blah blah blah.
You know what helps me even more? A good beat-down in my name.
Live up to Jaz’s example. Don’t make me explain why you should be mad. Explain it to someone else so I don’t have to. Don’t ask me to lighten up or let it go or live and let live. Don’t tell me that the right to marry can be approximated by purchasing life insurance (true story, different Friend of Friend.) Don’t ask me to agree to disagree whether I should be dead for being me. Don’t ask me to lay down my hard-earned cash in a place content to call it an error in judgment when they crawl into bed with homophobes.
We’re under attack and some days I’m inclined to think you’re part of the “we” or you’re part of the “attack.”
To your other points, Friend of Friend:
If my tri-annual panty purchase is all that stands between my local Target and insolvency, the economy is worse off than I thought. Perhaps we’d better all start planning for the zombie apocalypse.
I’m inclined to think that my dollars are of greater benefit to my neighbors if I shop locally. I’m somewhat abashed that it’s taken this national hue and cry to motivate me out of my Target stupor and force me to live my values.
But that takes us to the realm of economic philosophy. On that score, I am willing chalk up our difference of opinion to the great diversity of thought and belief that makes our nation strong.
Read more about it!
Target boycot
Tyler Clementi
Andrew Shirvill
my underpants
Fannie Lou Hamer
Shop locally
Jaz Tupelo
Zombie apocalypse
Last week the Friend of a Facebook Friend posted this in response to mention of the Target boycott:
“Why boycott for a single error in judgment? When the CEO admits it was a mistake and publicly announce changes to better vette candidates before making donations? I don't understand this modern knee jerk reaction to boycott? All your [sic] doing is affecting the local store sales. And all that is doing is reducing the hours of the hourly employees at location, making it harder for them to make a living.”
While I was trying to formulate a response appropriate to the Facebook format, I heard about Tyler Clementi’s suicide. And Oak Marshall’s rescinded homecoming crown. And saw Anderson Cooper interview the reptilian twit Andrew Shirvell, an A.D.A. for the state of Michigan, about his online harassment of openly gay U of M student council leader Chris Armstrong.
Insert deep breath here.
By the time Sweetie and I touched base about Jender’s invitation to contribute to Dan Savage’s It Gets Better campaign I was pretty well beat down by the news of the day. I didn’t fault Sweetie’s cynicism at all as she hissed,
“Really, Dan? When does it get better?”
So, Friend of Friend, I’d like to say this about that:
I wish I could describe for you what it feels like to live in a world where alliance with those who would see me dead can be seen by a nice, reasonable man such as yourself as nothing more than “an error in judgment.”
Where people who call for “death and violence to gay people” [Human Rights Campaign] claim the moniker Christian without challenge or irony.
Every time the TV heads talk about what they like to call gay marriage and I like to call my life I am reminded that my right to live and love are in question. That I move unharmed through the world only through the power of a patchwork grace: the laws of my Commonwealth but not my nation; the goodwill of my neighbors and not the consensus of my culture. Every day the debate about my right to be underscores my expendability, my vulnerability, my lack of value.
Friend of friend, imagine your culture discussing your worth and dignity as if it were a question.
I wish I could describe how it feels to live in a society where my rights are open for debate and diminution in order to appease the religious zeal of others. In which the condemnation of someone else’s clergy has more real impact on my life than my own minister’s blessing.
I wish I could explain the psychic strength it takes to withstand this insidious attack day-in and day-out. How the constant condemnation of those that hate me, and even the apparently fair-and-balanced examination—Is it acceptable? Or is it perverse?—of my way of love, carries the stink of shame. How some days, when the death-toll is high and the good news sparse, I can forget that it is not my shame. It is the shame of those who imagine that any human has greater value than any other.
Those are the days I think of Fannie Lou Hamer.
Mrs. Hamer was born a sharecropper to the children of slaves. She was sterilized against her will and terrorized and beaten for her work in the Civil Rights movement.
I think of the degradation heaped upon her, the shame and humiliation, the theft of her labor and progeny, the denial of her humanity, the injury to her body and soul.
Then I think of her legacy and her courage and her voice for justice. I think of her clarity of purpose and her refusal to accept second-class citizenship or compromise her tactics. I remember that human dignity is something that cannot be stolen.
I take a deep breath and I take a stand.
Oh, Friend:
If you knew me, you would know that my decision to boycott Target was anything but “knee-jerk.” Careful readers of these pages will recall that I once went three years without new underpants because Target did not have my size and I could not think of anywhere else to shop. So it is with a heavy heart and great trepidation that I walk away from the big box.
It is not lost on me that I am forced every day, by virtue of our corporate culture and the hatred ranged against me, to do business with those who would agree to disagree with me about my rights to equality and existence. My hands are not clean and I know that.
It was the example of my straight allies that brought me to this anything but jerky decision. Their unquestioned devotion to the cause of my equality—“Target, you are dead to me!” charged the incomparable Jaz Tupelo—was both balm to my broken heart and call to arms.
Even this day Jender is curled under the metaphorical comforters with a pumpkin latte (or perhaps a single malt scotch) trying to heal her heart from the loss of five gay youth in the last few weeks. Not to mention the upholding of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the indignity of DOMA and the use of anti-miscegenation laws to ensure that our right to marry remains conscribed only to those areas of the nation where our neighbors can tolerate it.
Friend of Friend,
I wish I could explain how it feels to give voice to this outrage and be met with bleeding heart pity from those who love me, my friends and friends of friends. We’re going to stumble under this onslaught, Jender and Sweetie and the queers and me. We’re going to hit hard times, and how are you going to help?
It helps to hear affirmation from our fellows during these times of healing, sure it does. Bring on the love, oh, I’m so sorry you have to face this discrimination and pain, blah blah blah.
You know what helps me even more? A good beat-down in my name.
Live up to Jaz’s example. Don’t make me explain why you should be mad. Explain it to someone else so I don’t have to. Don’t ask me to lighten up or let it go or live and let live. Don’t tell me that the right to marry can be approximated by purchasing life insurance (true story, different Friend of Friend.) Don’t ask me to agree to disagree whether I should be dead for being me. Don’t ask me to lay down my hard-earned cash in a place content to call it an error in judgment when they crawl into bed with homophobes.
We’re under attack and some days I’m inclined to think you’re part of the “we” or you’re part of the “attack.”
To your other points, Friend of Friend:
If my tri-annual panty purchase is all that stands between my local Target and insolvency, the economy is worse off than I thought. Perhaps we’d better all start planning for the zombie apocalypse.
I’m inclined to think that my dollars are of greater benefit to my neighbors if I shop locally. I’m somewhat abashed that it’s taken this national hue and cry to motivate me out of my Target stupor and force me to live my values.
But that takes us to the realm of economic philosophy. On that score, I am willing chalk up our difference of opinion to the great diversity of thought and belief that makes our nation strong.
Read more about it!
Target boycot
Tyler Clementi
Andrew Shirvill
my underpants
Fannie Lou Hamer
Shop locally
Jaz Tupelo
Zombie apocalypse
Friday, October 1, 2010
Self defense snap shot: Brooklyn, 1991
I did not want to go to visit K. at the ass-end of Queens that night, to see the basement apartment she lived in with her new girlfriend, admire the embroidered table-cloth with its plastic cover and meet the many kittens. She was so proud of her new life—out of the projects, out of the closet—that I could not say “No.” I knew that our brief, collegiate connection had faded; I knew that we would never be close friends. This was an obligatory good-bye. My dread was social dread, much more than travel dread, although the trip would take more than an hour and several busses in each direction.
When the evening finally came to a close and she suggested the subway would get me home faster I did not think twice about taking her advice. She was a native New Yorker who knew the outlying neighborhoods far better than me. I took her instructions about where to transfer trains.
It was late when I walked down the stairs to my platform. Two women sat on the single bench, not together, waiting for the train.
I walked past the bench to the middle of the platform mid-way between two broad staircases. It was an express station where the platform stands like an island between two tracks. Too late I realized that I had come down the only open staircase; the second was barricaded against public access. Walking midway between them I had moved away from the only exit to the station proper, where the token clerk sat in his bullet-proof fish bowl.
Where did the young men come from? They must have come down the same stairs I did. I knew in an instant my error: positioning myself in the middle of the platform where I could be blocked from the only exit. Even before they moved around me I was surrounded: tracks to the right and left, inoperable staircase now behind me as I turned to face them.
Were there four of them? Six? I only remember the one. I looked right into his stony eyes as he walked around me, assessing. How did I know that he was the leader? I matched his calm and we looked at each other wondering what would happen next.
How did they decide to surround me? I don’t remember sound or speech as they came down the stairs, as they walked towards me, took their formation on all my sides, their eyes flat as slate. Did they move slowly or did time itself slow in those moments, drawn out like my breath in counterpoint against my beating heart, as I knew my mistakes, as I wondered when the train would come?
Did they only ever mean to scare me? Or were they wondering how fast they could take me down? Did the train come too soon for their next move? Or were they finished with me?
Were they wondering, as I was wondering, if anyone would help me?
I looked to the bench and neither of those tired women met my eyes.
How did they scatter when the train came? Did the engineer put his head out the window and stare them down? Did another silent consensus, like the one that inspired them to surround me in the first place, inspire them to suddenly let me be?
I walked unencumbered into the car. And they did not follow me and they did not move from their car to mine and they did not get off in my neighborhood. And unlike so many women that night and every other night, I got home safe.
But these men scared me. They scared me on purpose. Without words they told me that I did not belong there, on that platform, in that neighborhood, in the night.
Why did they need to tell me this?
My memory of this night is a litany of questions, a recitation of things I do not know, will never know. But there are some things I do know.
I do know that is not normal to silently surround someone in a public place, unsmiling, and look them up and down while pacing a circle around them.
I do know that this is a story about gender. I do know that it is a particular thing to be a young woman surrounded by a group of men in an isolated place in the middle of the night with no easy escape and no one willing to help you. I do know that the fact they were men and many, and I was a woman alone, gave them the power to scare me. And more power than that.
I also know that this is a story about race. But I don’t know how to tell that story, or what it means about me, and the men, and the City and the time in which the story took place. Without race it is a simple and old story: many versus one, men against woman. But with an eye to race and context it is a more complicated story.
In 1991, a traffic accident in Crown Heights, Brooklyn ignited tension between African- and Caribbean-Americans and their Orthodox Jewish neighbors and erupted into three days of violence and hate. Five years earlier, an African-American man was killed, his friends beaten, when they stumbled into the white enclave of Howard Beach. In 1990, five African-American teenagers were convicted of raping and beating a white woman in Central Park—a crime and trial of the highest profile and sensation. It would take until 2002 to vacate their convictions on the strength of another man’s confession and DNA-evidence that conclusively determined that he was the only perpetrator.
What would you have thought if I titled the story this way? Self Defense Snap Shot: East New York, 1991.
Or told it like this? One night a group of black men surrounded me and stared me down in the subway station of one of the most violent neighborhoods in New York City.
Can we hold the paradox of these many truths: I brought privilege onto that platform. The privilege of race and class and unfettered imagination, the white skinned arrogance to believe that the racial tension splashed on the pages of the New York Times had nothing to do with me. This night took place in a city and a time where violence and the law conspired to control and intimidate young black men. To keep them in their place.
And also: They brought privilege onto that platform. The privilege of their manhood, the masculine arrogance to trust that they could travel the city without sexual violation. This night took place in a city and a time where violence and social norms conspired to control and intimidate women of all races. To keep us in our place.
And this too: When one person chooses to harm—or scare, or harass—another person, the responsibility for that choice is his alone. No one deserves to be hurt, and no action short of imminent danger justifies damage to another human.
But still, these years later, I want to apologize to those tired black women on the bench. For blundering down those stairs, for being white and clueless and there at all. For that desperate glance that they had to look away from.
Of all the things I don’t know, I still wonder what passed through their minds in those long moments.
Did one think: That bitch is going to get herself killed.
Or did she think: They’re just playing.
Did she think: Lord, I don’t want to see her die.
Or: What the fuck does she think she’s doing here?
Did she think: Whatever it is, she’s got it coming.
Or: Does his momma know he’s pulling this shit?
Did she think: I should help her but I am just so scared.
Did she think: I just want to get home safe.
Or remember: When he held me down I fought and fought and fought but I couldn’t get away.
Or did she pray?
Help us, God. Please help us. Help us all.
When the evening finally came to a close and she suggested the subway would get me home faster I did not think twice about taking her advice. She was a native New Yorker who knew the outlying neighborhoods far better than me. I took her instructions about where to transfer trains.
It was late when I walked down the stairs to my platform. Two women sat on the single bench, not together, waiting for the train.
I walked past the bench to the middle of the platform mid-way between two broad staircases. It was an express station where the platform stands like an island between two tracks. Too late I realized that I had come down the only open staircase; the second was barricaded against public access. Walking midway between them I had moved away from the only exit to the station proper, where the token clerk sat in his bullet-proof fish bowl.
Where did the young men come from? They must have come down the same stairs I did. I knew in an instant my error: positioning myself in the middle of the platform where I could be blocked from the only exit. Even before they moved around me I was surrounded: tracks to the right and left, inoperable staircase now behind me as I turned to face them.
Were there four of them? Six? I only remember the one. I looked right into his stony eyes as he walked around me, assessing. How did I know that he was the leader? I matched his calm and we looked at each other wondering what would happen next.
How did they decide to surround me? I don’t remember sound or speech as they came down the stairs, as they walked towards me, took their formation on all my sides, their eyes flat as slate. Did they move slowly or did time itself slow in those moments, drawn out like my breath in counterpoint against my beating heart, as I knew my mistakes, as I wondered when the train would come?
Did they only ever mean to scare me? Or were they wondering how fast they could take me down? Did the train come too soon for their next move? Or were they finished with me?
Were they wondering, as I was wondering, if anyone would help me?
I looked to the bench and neither of those tired women met my eyes.
How did they scatter when the train came? Did the engineer put his head out the window and stare them down? Did another silent consensus, like the one that inspired them to surround me in the first place, inspire them to suddenly let me be?
I walked unencumbered into the car. And they did not follow me and they did not move from their car to mine and they did not get off in my neighborhood. And unlike so many women that night and every other night, I got home safe.
But these men scared me. They scared me on purpose. Without words they told me that I did not belong there, on that platform, in that neighborhood, in the night.
Why did they need to tell me this?
My memory of this night is a litany of questions, a recitation of things I do not know, will never know. But there are some things I do know.
I do know that is not normal to silently surround someone in a public place, unsmiling, and look them up and down while pacing a circle around them.
I do know that this is a story about gender. I do know that it is a particular thing to be a young woman surrounded by a group of men in an isolated place in the middle of the night with no easy escape and no one willing to help you. I do know that the fact they were men and many, and I was a woman alone, gave them the power to scare me. And more power than that.
I also know that this is a story about race. But I don’t know how to tell that story, or what it means about me, and the men, and the City and the time in which the story took place. Without race it is a simple and old story: many versus one, men against woman. But with an eye to race and context it is a more complicated story.
In 1991, a traffic accident in Crown Heights, Brooklyn ignited tension between African- and Caribbean-Americans and their Orthodox Jewish neighbors and erupted into three days of violence and hate. Five years earlier, an African-American man was killed, his friends beaten, when they stumbled into the white enclave of Howard Beach. In 1990, five African-American teenagers were convicted of raping and beating a white woman in Central Park—a crime and trial of the highest profile and sensation. It would take until 2002 to vacate their convictions on the strength of another man’s confession and DNA-evidence that conclusively determined that he was the only perpetrator.
What would you have thought if I titled the story this way? Self Defense Snap Shot: East New York, 1991.
Or told it like this? One night a group of black men surrounded me and stared me down in the subway station of one of the most violent neighborhoods in New York City.
Can we hold the paradox of these many truths: I brought privilege onto that platform. The privilege of race and class and unfettered imagination, the white skinned arrogance to believe that the racial tension splashed on the pages of the New York Times had nothing to do with me. This night took place in a city and a time where violence and the law conspired to control and intimidate young black men. To keep them in their place.
And also: They brought privilege onto that platform. The privilege of their manhood, the masculine arrogance to trust that they could travel the city without sexual violation. This night took place in a city and a time where violence and social norms conspired to control and intimidate women of all races. To keep us in our place.
And this too: When one person chooses to harm—or scare, or harass—another person, the responsibility for that choice is his alone. No one deserves to be hurt, and no action short of imminent danger justifies damage to another human.
But still, these years later, I want to apologize to those tired black women on the bench. For blundering down those stairs, for being white and clueless and there at all. For that desperate glance that they had to look away from.
Of all the things I don’t know, I still wonder what passed through their minds in those long moments.
Did one think: That bitch is going to get herself killed.
Or did she think: They’re just playing.
Did she think: Lord, I don’t want to see her die.
Or: What the fuck does she think she’s doing here?
Did she think: Whatever it is, she’s got it coming.
Or: Does his momma know he’s pulling this shit?
Did she think: I should help her but I am just so scared.
Did she think: I just want to get home safe.
Or remember: When he held me down I fought and fought and fought but I couldn’t get away.
Or did she pray?
Help us, God. Please help us. Help us all.
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