Touch the ground. Crouch down. Scrunch like Mario charging up, kneel like a sprinter finding your mark, one palm against the earth. Draw your power. Consider your trajectory. Prepare. To launch.
Go.
Thursday, May 8, 2014
Super Mario?
Isn't there some cartoon character, comic hero, video game avatar that pulls power from the ground? I have a memory, foggy and indistinct, like an image I glanced at without much thought, but recurring and recurring like something deeply familiar. The image swims up to the front of my consciousness about once a month, bringing with it a sense of invincible power, a burst of tireless energy and optimism. My soldier soul, one of the many casualties of artificially regulated hormones.
Sunday, May 4, 2014
The persistence of romance
I was in a philosophy class once, Philosophy of Sex. We were talking about the feeling of being in love, the way it consumes you, the way it doesn't last. I said something about how it is good that it doesn't last, because it wasn't real life. I was married at the time, had been married for years, was at the point where I'd given up waiting for my husband to lead, given up being a good wife who nurtures his ego and had instead marched back to school and found the quickest path to a degree and a middle-class job so I could stop crying over my taxes. I loved him, but he was a child for whom I had decided to care, no longer did he impress or thrill me. There were lots of romance-killing emotions in our relationship by that time - my pity for him, a bit of shame, a sense that I was more powerful than him. I still saw the marriage lasting at that point, I still shared everything with him, came home from school and teased out all the intellectual discussions with him, talking for hours, analyzing everything, sharing my reading assignments and pulling his viewpoints into my own, carrying them back as pollen on my legs to my classes, where my instructors wondered in comments scrawled across my papers about whether they should be giving him a grade.
My philosophy professor smiled, asked me to explain. I thought back to when I was in love, really consumed by my husband. I thought about how nothing else mattered, how school and making money and talking to other people were exhausting chores. You can't live like that, I said. We'd starve to death.
Even as I said it, some little voice inside my heart, young and idealistic, was gagging at myself. Are you 85 years old?? What is more important than pleasure, intimacy, joy? Who gives a crap about getting anything done? Think of pre-contact Polynesians, eating fruit and having sex and laughing and totally unprepared for getting-shit-done Europeans to show up - do you really want to argue that that's NOT your ideal?
But there was another part of me that did feel very righteous for my "getting shit done" attitude - plowing through my degree requirements, summa cum laude, thank you very much, working full time, check check check. No time for being in love. That leads to weeping over the taxes.
After the divorce, there was a while when I thought that I'd just have to keep rotating partners so that I'd always have some new prospect of "in-love"ness on the horizon. The romance only lasts a few years, so keep 'em coming.
I started to notice that after a while, almost without thinking about it, I would take a new romance and start trying to mold it into Something Traditional. Something Responsible. Without really considering whether I wanted Responsible. And then I'd get bored, and miss my romance, and start looking for excitement. And the personal growth that comes from me reconnecting with my messy emotional self.
I don't know if I want Responsible. I don't know what I have, if it has Responsible potential. I still have lots of freakouts, about Expectations and The Future and Worst Case Scenarios and Someday I Will Be Old and lots of other fun channels with similar names.
I'm beginning to think that part of what kills romance for me is a sense of having conquered. Being more powerful. And yet somehow at the same time also, surrendering. Not the scary deep bits, but the parts I like, the messy emotions. Halting my growth. Setting up, settling down, leaving the road. Ceasing exploration. Getting shit done instead of figuring shit out.
I've told him before that one of the parts I most love about him is his strength, the way he pulls against me. He says he knows what I mean, though I do fear that he interprets it as "Don't make a commitment" or "Don't ever give in to me or show weakness." He smiled and said, "I got it." I hope so.
Because it is different. It is how he is always himself, how well he knows himself, how he is always internally consistent, how I can pull against him to find my way and trust that the line is always going to be taut. He changes, he adapts, he listens. But he doesn't give up, let go of the line. He doesn't accept everything I say - he makes me prove it. It enrages me, because it makes me vulnerable. I can't just blow smoke at him. He demands my best work. It forces me to know myself better, to go back to my core, to stop taking the easy way through.
Learning, learning. The growth is a good place for me. Ask me about the status of my relationship and what can I say? It doesn't fit into the categories I thought I knew. Laura said that relationships made of two whole individuals will always look strange from the outside, because we aren't trained to see the union of whole people as romantic, because individual growth can seem "bad" for a relationship, because we value self-sacrifice, togetherness, advancing lockstep at the same pace. Because if you are individuals, you'll be independent, apart, and yet if your relationship is healthy you will also have a persistent intimacy - which must surely confound observers trying to determine if you are either estranged or a storybook. It confounds me. This isn't how it is supposed to be, I thought. Am I being lazy, or fearful, that I don't feel like doing anything to fix it? That I'm not taking charge and commanding my battlefield?
I know I really like myself a lot more than I ever have, and I know I'm having a hard time getting shit done, though its not always because I'm with him but also because I'm exploring alone. Sometimes the fruit knocks me on the head, and sometimes it falls right into my hand. But if I can make peace with my fear of invading conquistadors, I am standing where I wanted to be. Or rather, lounging.
My philosophy professor smiled, asked me to explain. I thought back to when I was in love, really consumed by my husband. I thought about how nothing else mattered, how school and making money and talking to other people were exhausting chores. You can't live like that, I said. We'd starve to death.
Even as I said it, some little voice inside my heart, young and idealistic, was gagging at myself. Are you 85 years old?? What is more important than pleasure, intimacy, joy? Who gives a crap about getting anything done? Think of pre-contact Polynesians, eating fruit and having sex and laughing and totally unprepared for getting-shit-done Europeans to show up - do you really want to argue that that's NOT your ideal?
But there was another part of me that did feel very righteous for my "getting shit done" attitude - plowing through my degree requirements, summa cum laude, thank you very much, working full time, check check check. No time for being in love. That leads to weeping over the taxes.
After the divorce, there was a while when I thought that I'd just have to keep rotating partners so that I'd always have some new prospect of "in-love"ness on the horizon. The romance only lasts a few years, so keep 'em coming.
I started to notice that after a while, almost without thinking about it, I would take a new romance and start trying to mold it into Something Traditional. Something Responsible. Without really considering whether I wanted Responsible. And then I'd get bored, and miss my romance, and start looking for excitement. And the personal growth that comes from me reconnecting with my messy emotional self.
I don't know if I want Responsible. I don't know what I have, if it has Responsible potential. I still have lots of freakouts, about Expectations and The Future and Worst Case Scenarios and Someday I Will Be Old and lots of other fun channels with similar names.
I'm beginning to think that part of what kills romance for me is a sense of having conquered. Being more powerful. And yet somehow at the same time also, surrendering. Not the scary deep bits, but the parts I like, the messy emotions. Halting my growth. Setting up, settling down, leaving the road. Ceasing exploration. Getting shit done instead of figuring shit out.
I've told him before that one of the parts I most love about him is his strength, the way he pulls against me. He says he knows what I mean, though I do fear that he interprets it as "Don't make a commitment" or "Don't ever give in to me or show weakness." He smiled and said, "I got it." I hope so.
Because it is different. It is how he is always himself, how well he knows himself, how he is always internally consistent, how I can pull against him to find my way and trust that the line is always going to be taut. He changes, he adapts, he listens. But he doesn't give up, let go of the line. He doesn't accept everything I say - he makes me prove it. It enrages me, because it makes me vulnerable. I can't just blow smoke at him. He demands my best work. It forces me to know myself better, to go back to my core, to stop taking the easy way through.
Learning, learning. The growth is a good place for me. Ask me about the status of my relationship and what can I say? It doesn't fit into the categories I thought I knew. Laura said that relationships made of two whole individuals will always look strange from the outside, because we aren't trained to see the union of whole people as romantic, because individual growth can seem "bad" for a relationship, because we value self-sacrifice, togetherness, advancing lockstep at the same pace. Because if you are individuals, you'll be independent, apart, and yet if your relationship is healthy you will also have a persistent intimacy - which must surely confound observers trying to determine if you are either estranged or a storybook. It confounds me. This isn't how it is supposed to be, I thought. Am I being lazy, or fearful, that I don't feel like doing anything to fix it? That I'm not taking charge and commanding my battlefield?
I know I really like myself a lot more than I ever have, and I know I'm having a hard time getting shit done, though its not always because I'm with him but also because I'm exploring alone. Sometimes the fruit knocks me on the head, and sometimes it falls right into my hand. But if I can make peace with my fear of invading conquistadors, I am standing where I wanted to be. Or rather, lounging.
Saturday, April 26, 2014
A woman walks into a bar
I like knowing what I want. Being decisive is a quality I find exciting in others, and thrilling in myself. The very fact of having choice is pretty amazing, and decisiveness is the best way I've found to revel in this luxury. It is so easy to become overwhelmed by choices, and to allow the beautiful wonder of plenty and freewill become a burden. I see it in my students, frustrated that they cannot choose a library book, or a sticker, or a bookmark. I see it in adults, torturing themselves to make perfect choices. I see it in myself sometimes, when I have reduced myself to a puddle of angry inertia-tears. With children, taking most of the options out of sight usually decreases the amount of time they require to choose, and increases their pleasure with their choice. Harder to do this simple trick with adults, or oneself.
What I have found I can do is to practice. I create a game, called "What do you most want at this moment?" (WDYMWATM is a terrible title for a game. I guess in my head I don't refer to it by name much.) I play the game when I am sad also - its good for reminding oneself how awesome life actually is, by making plain how much agency one has. But the game is particularly good for building skills in decision-making. Maybe because when you know what you most want, you have, in effect, thrown out the vast array of choices, and can hone in on finding something similar to this one thing.
In any case, it makes me happy to not pick up menus and just ask for what I want. It is less fun in a retail environment - I've breezed by racks to find salesclerks and ask for particular items, but usually the item isn't available. Kitchens are different - magical places of transmogrification where things can be turned into other things and approximations become victories of creative power on a very different level than settling for a blue dress when you wanted an aqua one. But kitchens (my own or an eatery's) are ideal settings to play the game - the stakes are low, the occasions for practice numerous, and the end result is near immediate.
Decisiveness is not always successful. I decisively declare I don't want things before I have actually considered whether I want them or not. If I am startled by an offer or a sales pitch, my answer will always be no, just to eliminate the unwelcome intrusion into my space. Pretty frequently I find myself looking at the back of some boy who asked me to coffee after class or a vendor hawking the exact thing I was looking for, thinking, "Well, crap." Shooting from the hip means failure, sometimes.
But most of the time it makes me pretty happy. And sometimes it makes me ecstatic. It might make me a super annoying person to date, but in casual relationships nothing is more liberating than exiting situations that cease being fun. Oh, here's this environment turning to crap, it's going to be a big bummer, if I was in this relationship long term I'd have to stay and clean this up, but I'm not! So I can just leave and be with my awesome self. Ta-da! I have a vivid memory of driving away from a man's cottage one morning when I was bored and unhappy and he was ignoring me, until he turned around and I was waving goodbye, listening to Norah Jones for several hours on the sunshiney drive home. I felt guilty about it later and sent him flowers (which of course confused him because he'd already forgotten the whole thing), but that was a rock star moment for me, when it dawned on me that I was an adult and did not have to stay.
I'd rather meet people at a place within walking distance than do almost anything else, because it gives me the most agency (when I arrive and depart) with the least responsibility (how much I can drink, how simple it is to find my way home, what obligations I have to others). Other options have to be evaluated on a graph where providing my own transportation (increased agency) is weighed against joining others for transportation (less responsibility). This means I am on my own a lot, among strangers, which is not always ideal, since I also value friendships and intimacy. But I love being on foot. I love the freedom. I listen to old poems romanticizing the sea and its lures to sailors - that's me, on my feet in a metropolis.
I am in love with myself on foot. In love with my agency and decisiveness, even if I am blowing off things I want because I don't think before speaking. The offer will come back, or it won't. Whatever. The sun is shining, my feet are walking, and I'm hopping onto the stool, making eye contact with the barkeep, "What reposados do you have?...This one, in a margarita. Grand Marnier. Lime juice, no sour mix. Rocks, salt." In this one small area, I am queen. I am discriminating and difficult. "Is this okay?" the barkeep nervously hands me a glass. I am a bitch. Sorry. I am in love with myself and my decisiveness. The only thing sexier than watching a self-possessed man is hearing my own voice ringing with assurance as I ask for exactly what I want.
What I have found I can do is to practice. I create a game, called "What do you most want at this moment?" (WDYMWATM is a terrible title for a game. I guess in my head I don't refer to it by name much.) I play the game when I am sad also - its good for reminding oneself how awesome life actually is, by making plain how much agency one has. But the game is particularly good for building skills in decision-making. Maybe because when you know what you most want, you have, in effect, thrown out the vast array of choices, and can hone in on finding something similar to this one thing.
In any case, it makes me happy to not pick up menus and just ask for what I want. It is less fun in a retail environment - I've breezed by racks to find salesclerks and ask for particular items, but usually the item isn't available. Kitchens are different - magical places of transmogrification where things can be turned into other things and approximations become victories of creative power on a very different level than settling for a blue dress when you wanted an aqua one. But kitchens (my own or an eatery's) are ideal settings to play the game - the stakes are low, the occasions for practice numerous, and the end result is near immediate.
Decisiveness is not always successful. I decisively declare I don't want things before I have actually considered whether I want them or not. If I am startled by an offer or a sales pitch, my answer will always be no, just to eliminate the unwelcome intrusion into my space. Pretty frequently I find myself looking at the back of some boy who asked me to coffee after class or a vendor hawking the exact thing I was looking for, thinking, "Well, crap." Shooting from the hip means failure, sometimes.
But most of the time it makes me pretty happy. And sometimes it makes me ecstatic. It might make me a super annoying person to date, but in casual relationships nothing is more liberating than exiting situations that cease being fun. Oh, here's this environment turning to crap, it's going to be a big bummer, if I was in this relationship long term I'd have to stay and clean this up, but I'm not! So I can just leave and be with my awesome self. Ta-da! I have a vivid memory of driving away from a man's cottage one morning when I was bored and unhappy and he was ignoring me, until he turned around and I was waving goodbye, listening to Norah Jones for several hours on the sunshiney drive home. I felt guilty about it later and sent him flowers (which of course confused him because he'd already forgotten the whole thing), but that was a rock star moment for me, when it dawned on me that I was an adult and did not have to stay.
I'd rather meet people at a place within walking distance than do almost anything else, because it gives me the most agency (when I arrive and depart) with the least responsibility (how much I can drink, how simple it is to find my way home, what obligations I have to others). Other options have to be evaluated on a graph where providing my own transportation (increased agency) is weighed against joining others for transportation (less responsibility). This means I am on my own a lot, among strangers, which is not always ideal, since I also value friendships and intimacy. But I love being on foot. I love the freedom. I listen to old poems romanticizing the sea and its lures to sailors - that's me, on my feet in a metropolis.
I am in love with myself on foot. In love with my agency and decisiveness, even if I am blowing off things I want because I don't think before speaking. The offer will come back, or it won't. Whatever. The sun is shining, my feet are walking, and I'm hopping onto the stool, making eye contact with the barkeep, "What reposados do you have?...This one, in a margarita. Grand Marnier. Lime juice, no sour mix. Rocks, salt." In this one small area, I am queen. I am discriminating and difficult. "Is this okay?" the barkeep nervously hands me a glass. I am a bitch. Sorry. I am in love with myself and my decisiveness. The only thing sexier than watching a self-possessed man is hearing my own voice ringing with assurance as I ask for exactly what I want.
Monday, April 14, 2014
unscumbled
I watch Libby hold Naomi
Take off the shade
Burn at full brightness
Be it exhausting, trouble, a tangle of yarn, this is my beauty
I scream fun
I sparkle
I hold on with both hands
not your problem
I know myself - just listen
These are my colors, unscumbled
Maybe this is intimacy, too.
The learning
The falling down
The conversations on texts and voice mail and through eyes that aren't meeting that seem just as awful as these talks always have been
And yet aren't
A bit of patience
A bit of apology
Awareness
A breath
A glimmer
I'm not more trusting
I'm still me
I don't trust men, I won't, that won't change
Except I think that even though I don't trust you to come back because you're a man
I think you might
because you did before
I think I might be able to count again instead of spewing
protective venom shell around me
I think
maybe
no supernova this time
Maybe no gravel flying out from under my tires
Naomi is crying. The moment is private, painful.
I should help, I should leave.
But I watch
I should help, I should leave.
But I watch
because the moment is also beautiful, this picture of what love is,
what it is at its most basic.
Intimacy
Someone to hold you
Someone to let you fall apart, be strong when you are vulnerable
Someone who sees the pain that makes others uncomfortable, drawing near anyway,
not to exploit - no solutions, no demands
just a witness beside you
what it is at its most basic.
Intimacy
Someone to hold you
Someone to let you fall apart, be strong when you are vulnerable
Someone who sees the pain that makes others uncomfortable, drawing near anyway,
not to exploit - no solutions, no demands
just a witness beside you
And all my complicated thoughts fall away
my angst and tortured prevarications
my inability to articulate what the fuck I am looking for
This is it, I think. This is what I most want.
I want someone to love me like this.
I want to trust someone enough to be this weak
my angst and tortured prevarications
my inability to articulate what the fuck I am looking for
This is it, I think. This is what I most want.
I want someone to love me like this.
I want to trust someone enough to be this weak
To stop protecting partners from my emotions
Like I can't really be me
Like I can't speak at full volume
Or share what I am really thinking
Being polite all the time
because the messiness displeases others
Like I can't really be me
Like I can't speak at full volume
Or share what I am really thinking
Being polite all the time
because the messiness displeases others
Take off the shade
Burn at full brightness
Be it exhausting, trouble, a tangle of yarn, this is my beauty
I scream fun
I sparkle
I hold on with both hands
not your problem
I know myself - just listen
These are my colors, unscumbled
Let me crackle
or let me radiate
or let me radiate
no distaste
no retreat
no retreat
Make the small talk I can't at the funeral, so the walls can melt over my face
Answer my left-out petulance simply, "Just dance with me."
Hear someone throw the gauntlet, catch my eye, slip keys back in pocket
"You're missing her point," at my flank, with relish
No fear of me
my face out to the sun, yours a smile
You are this.
"You're missing her point," at my flank, with relish
No fear of me
my face out to the sun, yours a smile
You are this.
But you are also deliberate separateness, stinging silence, vague uncertainty
I am a place that you visit.
You leave and are fine, shaking it off, while I am wrung out, and empty
Looking for reassurance
So perceptive...but you don't see this
I am a place that you visit.
You leave and are fine, shaking it off, while I am wrung out, and empty
Looking for reassurance
So perceptive...but you don't see this
And Libby said the best thing in the world
She said,
"Do you know how long it took me to learn to do that?"
She said,
"Do you know how long it took me to learn to do that?"
Maybe this is intimacy, too.
The learning
The falling down
The conversations on texts and voice mail and through eyes that aren't meeting that seem just as awful as these talks always have been
And yet aren't
A bit of patience
A bit of apology
Awareness
A breath
A glimmer
I'm not more trusting
I'm still me
I don't trust men, I won't, that won't change
Except I think that even though I don't trust you to come back because you're a man
I think you might
because you did before
I think I might be able to count again instead of spewing
protective venom shell around me
I think
maybe
no supernova this time
Maybe no gravel flying out from under my tires
And maybe this is intimacy
Not the kind I'm aiming for
Not the kind with smiles and laughter
Not the kind that makes me smug
But maybe the kind that I'd recognize from outside
If I wasn't crying
If you weren't learning how to hold me
If I weren't learning to respond to your, "Ouch."
I'm not receiving comfort now
Not the kind I'm aiming for
Not the kind with smiles and laughter
Not the kind that makes me smug
But maybe the kind that I'd recognize from outside
If I wasn't crying
If you weren't learning how to hold me
If I weren't learning to respond to your, "Ouch."
I'm not receiving comfort now
But I might be ready,
soon
Saturday, March 8, 2014
A personal day
The city is waking up as you walk to the bagel shop for a sandwich and coffee on your way to the garage. Chipper 20something students in fresh eyeliner. Vigorous adults hustling to work, muttering about traffic and construction. Delivery trucks. Someone hums a tune. The barrier gate arm won't raise when you flash your remote, so you call the help desk and they radio the arm to let you out. Fill up the tank on your way to the repair shop, where either the desk staff or fellow customers can direct you, with gestures and precise distance measures, to the bus stop. Climb over the 3 foot crown of ice on the sidewalk and wait 3 minutes for the next bus, feeding your $5 into the vending machine as the driver politely explains and hands you a transfer card. Relocate your seat 2 minutes later as he chats up the next passenger and folds up the seats to make room for the wheelchair. Get off at the first stop downtown, and walk home in the sunshine, listening to the birds above.
Cozy up near the window, blue skies at your shoulder as you skim over the news. A phone call from your mechanic, informing you that "it would be criminal" to replace the part the dealer said you needed, since apparently you do not. The only disappointment is your unspent bus fare.
Its easier to fill up with love when it isn't being siphoned out of you by the needs of others. I am a really happy person who sometimes gets sucked dry, but who also knows some magic. One of my most potent spells: "Take a Personal Day." Nothing makes me feel richer or more pampered. My own company is this pretty amazing thing. Some exercise, some creature comforts, a small challenge or two over which to feel mastery. I find new treasure rooms full of sparkles. I can offer you care and patience as a transmogrifier of the love that is poured into me, from my town, from the earth, from my self.
Valentine's Day, postponed
He takes a box out of his pocket and sets it on the table. A small box. A box for jewelry. I love jewelry, I love gifts, I love small surprises men carry home for you. I love looking in his face as he looks at me bouncing in my chair because there is a jewelry box in front of me. That perfect face only clouds over for a moment, when he considers my glee might arise from a belief that the box contains something rather more Significant than a mere piece of jewelry. It doesn't. This is just my "I have a jewelry box from the most handsome man in town" face. I love this moment so much I almost don't want to open the box, because then the box ceases to be important and becomes extraneous. But of course I do open it, because a jewelry box is irresistible. And inside is a bubbly lustrous pair of "I love yous" to frame my face. He thought they looked like me. He was right.
Thank you, Michael, for the smorgasbord of delight.
Thank you, Michael, for the smorgasbord of delight.
Saturday, February 8, 2014
On believing victims
Endless stuff about Woody Allen recently. On and on. Every day some new update in my feed. And what the world needs less than anything is to know what I think about anything. So I move along, avoiding conversations, because getting involved in any of them is likely to do almost zero good and nearly guaranteed to piss me off.
But only a few weeks before I read this http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2013/12/read_the_stomac.php
And just a few days ago I read this http://gawker.com/who-wants-to-remember-bill-cosbys-multiple-sex-assaul-1515923178/@Jessica
And over the summer read this http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/01/showbiz/elmo-suits-dismissed/
And holy crap this, ugh http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/07/16/the-party-of-rape-culture-40-republican-rape-quotes-everyone-should-remember/
Which is all horrible and sad and makes me feel bad about humans.
But it has me thinking, too. About what it takes for us to believe victims. About standards of proof that would move us from, "Well, that's just her story - what does he say?". About dragging these kinds of stories through months and years and decades of innuendo and scandal and nothing of substance actually happening that brings change or makes vulnerable people safer or holds powerful people to higher accountability.
We don't believe victims. We don't want to. It makes us feel icky and requires us to do things.
Is it ever possible that people not in power make false accusations? This is the wrong question. It is already setting us up to fail. To make it easier to shut the victims up.
A better question is: If the victim is telling the truth and we don't believe her, what do we lose? How does that loss compare to the alternative?
An even better question is: What would it take for us to believe her, absolutely and without question?
When I ask myself that question, I realize how far gone I am in this mess as well. I realize, well, there is no way I can believe her absolutely. There will always be a sneaky way my mind can create a scenario in which she is lying and this public figure is innocent - because I don't want to believe that people are wretched, that those in power abuse those without it, that people who make things I like can hurt and shame others and are part of the darkness. The darkness is scary and threatens to overwhelm. It is much safer to believe that this one (or so) woman (or teenage boy) is a liar, out for money or fame, which is disgusting but not a tidal wave of darkness.
The tidal wave of darkness is my own issue to overcome. To learn that there is no tidal wave of darkness, there are only challenges and things that hurt and things that can be worked through. There is no jumping off point, past which redemption or forgiveness or love or healing is impossible. There is just stuff. Stuff that sometimes looks like a mountain of straw that you will never be able spin, but reality has this funny way of shifting a little bit when the sun comes up or your hormones balance out or a friend walks in the room. But outside of myself and my own personal growth, what would I like to see in my world that would help this situation? I'd like to see us trying to believe victims. I'd like us to put the bulk of the work on the shoulders that are in power, to avoid the appearance of misconduct.
http://www.litigationandtrial.com/2012/11/articles/the-law/federal-claim-sexual-abuse-kevin-clash/
But only a few weeks before I read this http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2013/12/read_the_stomac.php
And just a few days ago I read this http://gawker.com/who-wants-to-remember-bill-cosbys-multiple-sex-assaul-1515923178/@Jessica
And over the summer read this http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/01/showbiz/elmo-suits-dismissed/
And holy crap this, ugh http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/07/16/the-party-of-rape-culture-40-republican-rape-quotes-everyone-should-remember/
Which is all horrible and sad and makes me feel bad about humans.
But it has me thinking, too. About what it takes for us to believe victims. About standards of proof that would move us from, "Well, that's just her story - what does he say?". About dragging these kinds of stories through months and years and decades of innuendo and scandal and nothing of substance actually happening that brings change or makes vulnerable people safer or holds powerful people to higher accountability.
We don't believe victims. We don't want to. It makes us feel icky and requires us to do things.
Is it ever possible that people not in power make false accusations? This is the wrong question. It is already setting us up to fail. To make it easier to shut the victims up.
A better question is: If the victim is telling the truth and we don't believe her, what do we lose? How does that loss compare to the alternative?
I think we lose much more as a society by creating a hostile culture for victims than we do by holding those in power to high expectations. If we make a culture that leans toward believing victims, we are demanding the powerful be above reproach, that they work hard toward avoiding even the appearance of wrongdoing. Is this such a bad thing? I think about what we demand of teachers, because an accusation by a student is taken deadly seriously. It should be. And teachers are wary, and they should be. But there are also very good expectations in place to keep everyone safe, expectations about how teachers and students can and cannot interact, not because there is anything wrong with the interaction per se, but because of how it might appear. And this is a GOOD thing. Yes it creates some annoying side effects occasionally. But we need to believe children. And so teachers have to do the work ahead of time, to prevent situations (being alone with a student, for instance) that could create an appearance of impropriety.
Sure, an accusation is not the same as truth. Absolutely, the accused deserve to have due process. But when we reduce everything to "she can't REALLY prove that this happened, so maybe it didn't" we are avoiding dealing with the real problem.
When I ask myself that question, I realize how far gone I am in this mess as well. I realize, well, there is no way I can believe her absolutely. There will always be a sneaky way my mind can create a scenario in which she is lying and this public figure is innocent - because I don't want to believe that people are wretched, that those in power abuse those without it, that people who make things I like can hurt and shame others and are part of the darkness. The darkness is scary and threatens to overwhelm. It is much safer to believe that this one (or so) woman (or teenage boy) is a liar, out for money or fame, which is disgusting but not a tidal wave of darkness.
The tidal wave of darkness is my own issue to overcome. To learn that there is no tidal wave of darkness, there are only challenges and things that hurt and things that can be worked through. There is no jumping off point, past which redemption or forgiveness or love or healing is impossible. There is just stuff. Stuff that sometimes looks like a mountain of straw that you will never be able spin, but reality has this funny way of shifting a little bit when the sun comes up or your hormones balance out or a friend walks in the room. But outside of myself and my own personal growth, what would I like to see in my world that would help this situation? I'd like to see us trying to believe victims. I'd like us to put the bulk of the work on the shoulders that are in power, to avoid the appearance of misconduct.
http://www.litigationandtrial.com/2012/11/articles/the-law/federal-claim-sexual-abuse-kevin-clash/
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