Victimhood Isn’t Shameful, Permanent, or Absolute

Fuck Tony Robbins. When he literally, physically pushed a woman repeatedly to prove that she was hurting herself with her #metoo anger and “victim mentality,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmkiqfmobqI the world (or at least the world that shares my algorithms) was horrified, and he was indeed a terrible monster, but he was also pushing a belief that runs throughout all throughout pop psychology. Even though a crime happened to us, a terrible act of aggression and chaos that may have (or may not have!) jarred our lives onto a new course, we are not allowed to call ourselves victims. (Except Roxane Gay. She said at the beginning of Hunger that she doesn’t feel like she owes the world a heroic narrative, and it was SUCH a relief to read that sentiment.)

Watching Tony Robbins be a gaslighting creep onstage reminded me of the time (Waaaaaay before I’d ever thought about trauma work or survivorship or PTSD) my poor Aunt Melinda accidentally sent me to triggertown by quoting another pop psychology patriarch: Dr. Phil. “You teach people how to treat you,” she said, frustrated after listening to a relatively minor tale of roommate woe. I was speechless with anger, feeling the weight of every abuse I’d even been blamed (or blamed myself) for. I’m sure I said nothing helpful or articulate. I still feel the weight of that rage, that mute fury, but luckily there’s blogs and Twitter and being a street artist now, so I find the words. I’ll be finding the words for the rest of my life.

***PLEASE NOTE*** My beautiful anxiety brain is about to take us on a journey, in several leaps, from my personal trauma to the global trauma of history. I don’t equate my trauma to ANYONE else’s. This paragraph is to show the way my trauma helps connect me to the other much more serious pains of the world, and how gaslighting and victim-blaming helps perpetuate the smallest harms and the largest.***

I have never been able to separate “You teach people how to treat you,” from “you were asking for (rape, abuse, terror, etc.)” Did I somehow “teach” the group of teens who drugged, conspired to rape, and assaulted me that that was the kind of treatment I deserved? Did Trayvon Martin TEACH George Zimmerman that he deserved to die, or was that CENTURIES OF COLONIALISM, WHITE SUPREMACY, AND NRA INFLUENCE? For that matter, did the nations and cultures that were colonized, tortured, and sometimes even erased by Europe “teach us” that they wanted to be dominated and oppressed? No. We dominated and oppressed them because we wanted to. That’s what abusers do.

Aside from the abusive aspect of victimhood-stigmatizing, we do it to ourselves as well. God forbid I should accidentally call myself a “victim” instead of a “survivor” in a feminist thread—I’d be accused of demeaning myself and others, but why? Why should it be demeaning to admit that something bad has happened to us? (I’m worried that I’m accidentally plagiarizing Roxane Gay here. Seriously, read everything she’s ever written.)

I think it comes back to an ancient and stultifying thread of magical thinking. To calm the chaos of the world around us, humans still believe deep down that if something bad happens to you, you must be bad. On that idea is built every atrocity, every erased voice, every abuse from personal to global. Because of that magical thinking, we suffer instead of getting treated, we are pressured to perform heroic survivorship or at least general okayness, we try to empower ourselves with self-blame, we shut off every tributary of empathy. I was seriously once told by an opponent of Obamacare that I got hit by a car in the crosswalk because having insurance invited injury. That is how desperate people are to find order by placing blame, but why not place it on, I DON’T KNOW, the person who was driving?!

If we’re hurt, we must be bad, and if we care for the hurt, we just invite more badness, goes the magical thinking. Teaching the Universe how to treat us. Primal. Understandable, maybe, but the root of every violence and oppression.

Because I’ve had a bajillion years of cognitive behavioral therapy, I can occasionally question my own false absolutes, the labels we place on ourselves and others that can obscure the bigger picture. A few weeks ago, a teenage white supremacist facebook troll told me that minorities should “let go of (our/their) victimhood and be stronger.” He was wrong on every level and I told him why, but his ignorance helped make something clear for me: Victimhood can’t change anyone’s value—why would it? How could a thing that happened to us reduce our worth? A trauma or oppression may change our outlook, it may give us new insights and growth, or it may not. Victimhood may change us, but I don’t think I ever realized before, it isn’t us. The things that happened to me are not the same as what I am. (Pause for two decades of therapists to rejoice.)

The crimes and oppressions that influence us, our various forms of victimhood are not fixed or permanent. Engaging with them doesn’t make us worse or invite more misfortune. Recognizing the ways I am oppressed doesn’t take away my power, it gives me more. Understanding the obstacles that I and my fellow humans face can burnish us to alchemist’s gold, help us change the world, or just help us empathize with our own shitty/miraculous fate as we head off to conquer another day.

If I could take away one idea from the world’s consciousness, it would be the idea that if something bad happens to you, you must deserve it. It’s a toxic, rotten, compelling idea, a holdover from the time when we believed that illness came from demons, that misfortune must reveal some secret sin. It would be especially be good to get rid of this idea because THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO DO THE BAD THINGS! WHERE IS THE COMFORT IN BLAMING THE VICTIMS INSTEAD?

While we work on eradicating victim-blaming, I’m happy to be a little more free of victim-shaming, to see trauma as a shifting influence, survivorship as multifarious and not something at which I have to be amazing. It reminds me of when my BFF/ex-wife were watching Kesha’s Grammy Performance  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buM8OErfvu0 and Amy, eyes full of tears at Kesha’s monumental, beautiful, grumpy transcendence said “She’s too nice!”

“It’s only one song on the album,” I said, and that’s how I feel about all of this. Kesha’s survivorship is a diamond-brilliant facet of her artistic identity, but so is her goofiness, her feverish dance beats, her sly romance. For anyone to reduce her or the #metoo movement to stigmatized victimhood is only to see a very, very narrow part of the picture. Everything I make will be an attempt to break that narrow lens.

What America Owes Hillary Supporters (Besides an Apology)

This story starts with a #janeworldproblem that would surely make Roseanne Barr think I deserve whatever abuse I’ve gotten, but nonetheless: On my way to my monthly get-the-Trump-out massage appointment on Saturday, I got triggered by one of my favorite and usually-most-comforting podcasts, Pop Culture Happy Hour. Without any kind of disclaimer or warning, they lead off a review of the (fascist propaganda) reboot of Roseanne with a quote from the show’s rotten-to-the-core title character. The line was a contemptuously delivered slur against Hillary Clinton, calling our rightful president a “liar, lair pantsuit on fire.” I’ve been writing a lot lately about feeling the chill of real evil, and the horror of it hit my spine before I banged on the button to turn off the car stereo.

And so, I drove the rest of the way to my appointment steaming with frustration, feeling hurt and betrayed that a trusted podcast would inject something that awful into my afternoon. Remember when John Oliver told everyone to write a sticky note that said “NOT NORMAL” to help keep us from getting sucked into a moral cesspool after Trump’s (stolen) election? DID POP CULTURE HAPPY HOUR LOSE THEIR STICKY NOTE? Is that why they were reviewing Roseanne as if it were a regular sitcom and not a love letter to the fictional “white working class” whom we’ve somehow excused for voting for a racist, misogynist monster because being poor somehow entitled them to their hatred? (Please read Ta-Nehisi Coates’s The First White President for the history of the “white working class” as it is used to support racism throughout American history. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/the-first-white-president-ta-nehisi-coates/537909/)

The Roseanne line triggered physical fear and anxiety because of the abuse that I and my friends took when we were working our asses off to get Hillary Clinton elected. Unfortunately, as I’ve written about many times, that abuse did not just come from the right. In fact, the worst hatred I encountered during the 2016 election was during the primary, in the form of the (We now know it’s Russian troll farm fueled https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/16/bernie-sanders-russia-2016-election-interference-415691) openly misogynist, fanatic zeal of Bernie Sanders supporters.

Primary flashbacks had resurfaced a few days before when a local feminist educator and spoken word leader I’ve admired for a decade posted a “Bernie 2020” themed article on her facebook page. In the conversation that followed, I learned that she hadn’t known about the Russian interference or about the misogyny. https://theserotoninfactory.blogspot.com/2016/05/being-woman-in-time-of-hillary-haters.html (Admittedly, the troll farms part doesn’t prove he was a bad candidate, just that Russia saw him as destabilizing. I can’t really see destabilizing as an inherently bad thing.)

My friend kindly asked for some articles to send her in the direction of my viewpoint, and I sent them. (Remember how Roxane Gay at one point felt afraid to endorse Hillary?! ROXANE GAY! https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/opinion/sunday/hate-that-doesnt-hide.html ) But honestly, I was a little frustrated, because so many of us have been telling this story for TWO YEARS and my friend had somehow missed it. Algorithms, probably, but still. I kinda wish that instead of sending articles, I had just asked her to believe me.

Hillary-trolling abusiveness has a much more important effect than bumming me out on the way to my massage appointment or making me misogyny-splain on facebook. Though I’m with the Women’s March for life and I believe we’re much bigger than our (often hateful-dude-admiring) leadership, many of us were inspired to fight the patriarchy off of our march last year when they tried to make Bernie Sanders one of the lead speakers of our conference. http://time.com/4981357/bernie-sanders-womens-march-convention/ This week, the Women’s March partnered with Bernie voters’ “Our Revolution” group, which is the opposite of intersectional in that it views economic injustice as the only valid form of injustice.

To me, Hillary-bashing is partly “identity politics”--both Trump supporters and Bernie Bros seek to erase the importance of identity in the struggle for justice, while Hillary’s campaign was built upon acknowledging ALL forms of disparity. Many of her speeches include some variation on this sentiment:

“And we Democrats agree on defending all of our rights – civil rights and voting rights, workers’ rights and women’s rights, LGBT rights and rights for people with disabilities.” (PA primary victory speech, 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjjPDHAQxLU)

When people on the right and left dismiss “identity politics,” they’re trying to erase one of the few political candidates who made me feel fully included in her speeches, who cared about the struggles of the children I teach and the children in my family.

            In addition to the all-identities-but-straight-white-male-erasing ethos of Bernie and Trump, the horror my body feels about that Roseanne quote comes from the good old fashioned gaslighting of it all. Because of the erasure that comes from the right and from the (mostly white male) far-left, I’ve had to check the numbers many times to remind myself that we won. We chose her. We voted. We won. And then I watched formerly peace-loving friends go off the rails entirely, accusing us of theft, defending the chair-throwing, doxing, vicious homes-of-delegates-calling entitled white voters in the name of being “progressive.”

            Other than the physical toll that it took to watch Bernie and then Trump gaslight Hillary/America in rallies and on debate stages, other than the troll-trauma that still lives in my body, why is this still important? Why not just let it go in the name of unity?

            Mostly, I do. I’ll defend the Women’s March to anyone who questions them, even as their leaders make misogynist alliances. I’ll canvas alongside neighbors who would have called me a stupid shill if they’d known me in 2016, I’ll join marches with local justice groups who have carried “Killary” signs in the past. I continue to participate in a political system that defaults to punishing women who get involved, because the only way it’ll get better is if people like me stay involved. But the compromise costs me, it takes a physical toll no matter how much I prioritize self-care.

            To Pop Culture Happy Hour, I would say, for those of us deep in the struggle, you weren’t just sharing a quote from a mean lady saying a stupid thing. You were placing into my otherwise pleasant afternoon one of the most poisonous, vicious, damaging ideas to ever hit the American airwaves: that women, especially ambitious women, cannot be trusted. We are not liars. It’s past time to believe us. To America, I would say, hear us and take our side. It’s time for you to stop punishing us for trying to save your asses from Trump.

Fat and Happy and a Little Befuddled

Inspired by this Radiolab episode about an artist who is creating and island of fat in appreciation for the substance itself.

            I tend to forget (at least consciously) for long spates of time that there’s supposed to be anything wrong with the size of my body. In the past twenty-five years, since reaching adulthood, I’ve wavered between size 18 and size 24, with a brief Southern California stopover at size 14. I’ve always loved clothes and love them even more now that there’s more cuteness available in my size(s). In general, I forget to not feel beautiful, assuming anyone who thinks otherwise is just a creep. My Aunt Connie always told me that “fat is jerk repellant,” and although I wish it were truer than it is, it’s comforting advice.

            I never really thought about Fat Liberation or saw myself as having a marginalized body until the last few years’ deep dive into trauma work and feminism. Two of my favorite sources for body-positive fat advocacy are the She’sAll Fat Podcast and Lindy West’s book Shrill. These and lots of other sources have helped me to clarify my view of how body positivity fits into the overall project of justice.

            Although I’ve never been all the way convinced (at least as an adult) that my body isn’t beautiful, there’s one insidious societal message that did get in there: “Fat women need to take what they can get when it comes to men.” When I first (polyamorously) returned to dating men back in 2011, one of my first guy-loves was someone who terrified me. I went almost immediately into an abusive not-relationship with a (not always consensually) sadistic jerk partly because I was so shocked and delighted to find a man attracted to me. Luckily at the time I was still with Amy who has always thought that I’m perfect (even when I’m really, REALLY not) and had a lovely FWB who treated me like a Mystery-Science-Theater-watching goddess. Still, the “you’re lucky to have anything” mentality was my accomplice in many, may nightmare scenarios with men who were more than willing to take advantage of that vulnerability—that was their fault, not mine, but I’m happy to be in a kinder-to-myself place.

            Of course, my reluctance to have standards and boundaries was tied to the trapped-and-helpless residue of trauma, but a lack of general worthiness, especially when it comes to men, has made the trauma harder to come to terms with.

            After a powerful year of trauma work, I feel fully entitled to decide my own body size, but I’m not sure my actual body agrees. There have been so many years when I’ve resolved to lose 40 pounds, and it has always been the most elusive (and honestly, least-cared-about) goal. They say if you keep not doing a goal, you don’t really want it, so I dropped it. Kept exercising and eating lots of produce and mostly forgot about it.

            Then at a doctor’s appointment last fall, I found out that I weighed almost 300 pounds, and a few weeks later at the follow-up appointment, I was at 303. That’s the highest weight I’ve ever had measured. I gained 25 pounds last fall (I’ve been half-jokingly calling it my #metoo weight…) and I am freaked. I’m also freaked that I am freaked, because it feels like I’m letting my body positive sisters and brothers and non-binary siblings down.

            Nonetheless, there’s that stupid goal on the list again—lose 40 pounds. I chose 40 because it feels like a reasonable amount to lose in a year, but it also feels impossible and stupid and embarrassing. I eat pretty well, just more than I am supposed to, but putting ANY restrictions on food makes me feel deeply anxious, like I’m holding myself up for judgement and taking my own privacy away. Mostly food is just delicious, and I don’t know why it feels like privacy, but also maybe I do.

            Friday night on the way home from yoga I was listening to this interview with Roxane Gay  that reminded me she also sometimes thinks of her body as “unruly” and that rang a bell. The 25 #metoo pounds made me feel out of control and made me worry that I had lost touch with myself.

            So that’s where I’m at right now, just asking my body what it needs from me and doing my best to listen. I love my body so much for always being with me through this not-always-easy life—though trauma and bad classrooms and a housefire and those GODDAMNED election results, but also for niece-and-nephew hugs and gorgeous adventures and ramen at Morimoto and a long marriage and a wonderful time taking back the term “spinsterhood.” I’m proud of myself for keeping alive, for keeping safe, and I hope that my body knows I’m grateful. 

What the G.O.P. Gains from Campus Rape

Every once in a while, I look at the Trump administration’s policies and ask the somewhat futile question of “Why?” Mostly the only answer I can come up with is “pure contempt for life itself,” but a trip down the Betsy DeVos rabbit hole gave me a little more specific (though no less alarming) answer.

DeVos has decided to frame campus rape as a crime that victimizes both the survivor and the rapist. Her stated goal is to minimize the damage to “the accused,” apparently having missed the movie with that title.

I feel like for the most part society at least has acknowledged that rape cases generally put the victim on trial, asking her to demonstrate enough “innocence” in herself to prove that she is somehow virtuous enough for rape to be possible, rather than her very female existence being, in itself, a kind of consent.

But to DeVos and the Men’s Rights Advocates, rapists are the real victims when it comes to campus rape. (It hurts to even type that sentence.) Along with the rest of our rape culture-steeped society, Trump’s deplorables set out not to preserve women’s right to learn safely, but to preserve the “bright futures” of campus predators. It would seem like the only possible aim here is to shore up the structures of rape culture itself—but why? Why advocate for members of society who feel entitled to the bodies of others without consent? What possible function could that serve?

My assertion is that the aim of making campus rape easier is to drain resources from women and make it harder for us to live independently and advocate for ourselves politically. Though my rape stories didn’t happen on a college campus, I can offer some insight as to what being a rape survivor costs. Like many women, I decided to get my PTSD treated after Trump was elected. I go to exposure therapy every Monday afternoon, drawing out and reliving rape and abuse stories in order to help my brain heal. It takes a long time to bounce back from the sessions, so time off work costs me about $100 per week. I am generally too exhausted to participate in political or artistic activities on Mondays or Tuesdays. A little less than 2/7 of each week is given over to treatment for rape and abuse. That adds up to about $5200 per year, and would be much more if I weren’t lucky enough to be treated at a free clinic. (Women Organized Against Rape! Call them!)

With all that said, I am probably among the luckiest rape survivors in human history. I have the money, time, and support necessary to devote myself to healing, and I have the spiteful and sassy temperament that it takes to stay positive and productive for the other five days of the week, to stay self-actualized and part of the Resistance.

But it’s still time theft. Because of my status as a survivor, I have less time and money to devote both to my own freedom and to the causes that I care about. Multiply that by every well-cared-for survivor, and it’s a lot of days, a lot of money, a lot of women’s physical, emotional, and political resources being siphoned off to recover from rape, and that’s just those of us who are lucky enough to be treated.

The damage done by rape can’t be quantified, and women emerging from college should have the right to devote their full selves to the life they want to lead. My littlest cousin just entered college this week, and my nieces aren’t far behind. I want them to have sovereignty over their own bodies so that they can build whatever life they choose.

So back to my original question of “Why?” Though I fully believe that the Rapist-in-Chief would love nothing more than to create an apocalyptic Handmaiden-scape, I think that everyday Republicans are after something that to them, seems more benign. I think that they want to save us by keeping us in what they think should be our place, and that means protecting male dominance no matter what the cost. I think the landscape the average Republican is trying to create is a whites-only 1950s suburb, where women are happily enslaved in the home and ever more willing to produce white, conformist children, all the while feeding the economy by purchasing ever more expensive kitchen supplies.

The good news, I think, is that that landscape never existed, and that the young women of today don’t want it. No matter what happens to Title IX, the young women of today will not support the G.O.P’s white supremacist misogynist heteronormative ideal. They deserve to own their bodies and their futures, and I hope they won’t have to fight as hard as I did to heal.

Prozac and Me: A Love Story

As you know, I broke my arm at the beginning of last summer, so I spent a lot of time Rear Window-ing the internet. Like all of my LGBT friends, I shared a million sorrows and liked a million rainbows for the Pulse shooting victims. I paid brokenhearted witness to the grisly murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. It was a bloody, broken summer for everyone.

Around the same time, my landlord decided to landscape the weedy side yard I loved so much, wiping out my forget-me-nots and all of the jillions of wild purple morning glories. Coming home to a starkly pretty and mulched yard instead of the overgrown area I liked to keep in pleasing chaos should not have been a big deal, but it was. I tried to let the weeds grow back, but the landlord sprayed them with weed killer. Because she owns the property and they are weeds.

I marched and vigiled for the murdered people all summer, and I went back to canvassing as soon as I could, but I couldn’t move on from the morning glories. I transplanted them as soon as they popped up, enlisted the cute neighbor in re-cultivating them, bought a new trellis, and bought seeds upon seeds upon seeds, but it all seemed hopeless, I couldn’t stop checking vigilantly to see if the weed killer had come, if it had encroached on the green space I’d just started to cultivate. It seemed that the weed killer was the law of the land, the only thing true, and I felt helpless against it.

I wrote to my (very kind, thorough, and attentive) landlord about it and she predictably (and as nicely as possible) said that it’s her property and she’ll use weed killer if she needs to. Perfectly reasonable, but I couldn’t stop myself from seeing hate in her landscaping choices, from feeling that she was trying to force me out along with the lost weeds/flowers. Her email came the night before my 42^nd birthday and resulted in me crying on the floor and insisting that the world was trying to push me out.

I have suicidal ideation once or twice a year, when I ruminate too far and can’t climb out of deep depression fast enough. It never goes as far as planning or action, but the “I have to die” thought does come. More often, I have the feeling that I don’t exist, wasn’t supposed to be born, or that I have to erase my personality completely to be loved. It usually passes within a few hours when I stop talking about it.

After poor Amy calmed me down and I had a pleasant birthday doing voter registration in Wissahickon Park, I realized that if I was going to cultivate a life, if I was going to hang on to the work and connections I’d already accomplished, I was going to need help. I felt too raw and defensive to try talking to a new therapist, so I took my primary care doctor up on a years-ago offer of a prescription. Since I was a teenager, I’ve stubbornly refused to be medicated for depression, but I realized that my brain was not going to be able to help me on its own.

And it was like a miracle. I’m still sensitive, defensive and insecure, but I have new resourcefulness and hope. Sometimes, for seemingly no reason, joy surges out of me in laughing bursts and I feel closer to the best version of myself. After a year or so of dressing invisibly and forgetting about the possibility of romance, I started to feel pretty and feminine and inclined to get dolled up like I used to be.

But I still didn’t understand depression’s toll on my life until a couple of weeks ago. I was talking to my peer counselor at William Way LGBT Community Center (CALL THEM! They are amazing and you can have eight weeks free counselling per year, in person or by phone.) I was making 100% of a problem out of 5% of information, filling in the other 95% with self-defeating worst-case scenarios. Once she helped me realize that math, she simply said “That’s depression.”

Oh.

I never really saw it that way—depression is the weed killer. It tries to destroy whatever I’ve managed to cultivate and even tries to un-happen wonderful things that have totally already occurred! I always saw the sadness as inextricably linked to the rest of me, and in some ways it is, but it’s such a relief to see it as something that’s separate from me, something that can be treated.

So treating depression is my main theme for this year. I’ve signed up for counselling at Women Organized Against Rape and I plan to attend their support group as well. I want to be generous and kind and loving and understanding toward myself, and of course I’ll keep taking the Prozac as long as insurance exists. Thank you for coming with me on this ongoing journey to serotonin. I couldn’t do it without your loving support.

Twenty Things that Made Me Happy in September 2010

1. My awesome birthday beach trip, getting pummeled by the waves.
2. My awesome birthday games night where I got everyone to answer really personal questions.
3. Making myself a birthday mix.
4. Starting Intermediate Algebra. (Math credits so I can apply to teacher-certification programs.)
5. Starting my new job at the LIBRARY.
6.Two of my favorite poets moved into town!
7.Two great features at the FUZE.
8. Writing a lot.
9. I graduated myself from therapy.
10. Reading Bright Sided, Blue Bird, and Freedom. Curmudgeonly goodness.
11. My pretty new chapbook, Adventures of a Lazy Polyamorist.
12. Said adventures.
13. Light and Honey Festival: got to perform with and hear some great writers.
14. Getting my copy of Apiary, with my poem Twilight Meals in it.
15. Addressing all of my chapbooks and putting (mostly) love letters in them.
16. It smells like Fall.
17. The new Radiolab about falling.
18. I’ve got a great poetry tutoring student.
19. Pumpkin Pancakes!
20. Making a Thanksgivingy dinner for some poet pals.