Focus On Your Empathy, Not Your Anger

Early yesterday morning, this picture crossed my feed and I thought about it. Then a different image of the same event popped up yesterday evening. And I want to talk about it.

The background here: on Tuesday, a right wing nationalist in Paris shot himself at the altar of Notre Dame. He had been a member of a militant nationalist group in France, had recently been focused on France's recently passed law legalizing same-sex marriage and adoption, and left a suicide note on the altar that was "political," and is quoted as saying,

"I believe it is necessary to sacrifice myself to break with the lethargy that is overwhelming us. I am killing myself to awaken slumbering consciences."

Yesterday, a FEMEN activist was arrested at Notre Dame. FEMEN says the act was a call for the death of fascism, and that "It is a message addressed to all those who support fascism and those who have expressed sympathy for the extreme-right militant who killed himself in Notre Dame[.]" I was uncomfortable when the image appeared in my timeline because it felt wrong. It felt exploitative and as if the point was merely to get attention. But then I read and realized there was a point, and the point was far worse: that expressing sympathy at the sad loss of another person, even a vile person, makes one a fascist. Sympathy makes one a fascist? I wonder what empathy makes one.

Three days ago a massive, mile-wide, utterly devastating tornado ripped through Moore, Oklahoma. Very quickly I started seeing tweets about Oklahoma's senators, conservatives both, that opposed relief packages after Hurricane Sandy. Some were neutral; some were taunting. And then today I saw a blog that literally spelled out, "No relief funds for Oklahoma. If they can't help, they don't get help." The author even acknowledged that people would see that as cruel, although he had some clever reason why it didn't actually apply to him.

I guess "an eye for an eye" is a popular idea. The thing about it, though, is that it's not justice. It's retribution, but retribution and justice are not the same thing. The people of Oklahoma didn't cause the destruction wrought by Sandy any more than they caused the destruction they're facing now. Some of them didn't even vote for these senators, and even the ones that did are still people, still living breathing utterly devastated people. How does not helping them solve anything? How does not helping them make anything better? It doesn't. It might make you feel better about not being able to control the world. It might make you feel as if you can control it. It might make your anger lessen. But it doesn't help. 

The progression, from pointing out the votes of Oklahoma's senators in a seemingly neutral way, to taunting Oklahomans about their senators, to advocating for denying aid is so clear to me. They grew out of each other. I watched it happen. I tried to tell someone why it was wrong to be talking about the votes of the senators instead of any number of other things, why can't you talk about the importance of fully funding the National Weather Service or promote mutual aid relief efforts or anything constructive, why this wasn't helpful, and I don't think I made myself understood because I'm sometimes not eloquent at all, but I did try. 

Hurting people helps no one, whether you're hurting one person or a thousand people or a million people, whether you're torturing them or bruising their feelings. Clearly, there are worse hurts and minor hurts, but even the smallest ones matter. The big ones should make you sick. The small ones should make you stop. And when you've stopped, you should think about what you're doing. Let the knowledge you're hurting someone wash over you, and you'll feel sick then, too. 

Hurting people is never okay.

I can also see a line from this "an eye for an eye" conception to FEMEN's comment. "Anyone expressing sympathy at the death Dominique Venner." Anyone expressing sympathy for suicide. For feeling so trapped you see no other way than to end your life. If you're not with us, if you don't hate our enemies, you are against us, and you are our enemy. It's the same feeling fueling Islamaphobia and the EDL and the American media's narrative of everything. If you aren't with us, completely and in all things, you're against us. You will conform in all things or we will destroy you. Sounds like fascism, doesn't it?

So FEMEN employed the tactics of fascism to denounce it. Because sometimes you internalize all the awfulness of the world and to protect yourself you get angry and lash out. You become harder than the thing that's trying to crush you and end up crushing everything in your path. But the point shouldn't be to crush anything. The point is to live, and be happy, and for everyone to have that same experience. To live. And be happy. Without fear. Without reprisal. Without being hurt.

Hurting people is never ok, whether a large hurt or a small hurt, whether they've hurt you or someone else or never hurt anyone at all. Deliberate harm is never ok. 

Don't hurt each other. Don't destroy. Be gentle. Be patient. Help. Build. Heal. Offer comfort. These are the things worth doing. Focus on your empathy, and not your anger.

"I Do It For Me"

This morning, for no good reason, I shaved my legs. And then I put lotion on them. I almost never manage to  do both of these things at the same time; I'm too easily distracted and there are a lot of shiny things in my living space. So I'm generally either hairy and well-moisturized or clean-shaven and ashy as hell.

Sometimes this bothers me. Like, yesterday. Riding my bike in all my shorts-wearing glory I was pretty embarrassed about my legs. So this morning I shaved AND moisturized.

And then I got to work and was all, "Fucking patriarchy."

It's real easy to say that it's "totally fine" for women to go through grooming procedures "for themselves" but how, exactly, do you tell what you're doing for yourself when everything you do and don't do is scrutinized and judged? I was embarrassed about the state of my legs so I did something to relieve that embarrassment and that is certainly making me more comfortable and confident today rocking out in my bright orange dress but the real question here is "Why was I uncomfortable in the first place?"

Fucking patriarchy, that's why.

My somewhat stubbly legs with their scratches of white against the fading tan I picked up over a week of vacation are NOT ATTRACTIVE. Doesn't matter that they're sort of oddly proportioned with all the muscles I've built up by using them combined with my weirdly tiny joint structures. Doesn't matter that they're my legs and I use them for things. Doesn't matter at all. All that matters is hairlessness and consistent color and making a dude think that rubbing on them would be a pleasant aesthetic experience.

My vanity is well-documented. The fact of the matter is that I am more comfortable when I know that I can be considered attractive, so I do things to be attractive. I'm more comfortable this way, so it can be argued that I'm doing them "for me." But I'm also doing them to be more comfortable in a system and a culture that will always judge me on my appearance, so it's impossible to actually do anything "for me."

This is the inherent problem of patriarchy. No matter what you do, you're in it and you can't get out. Any choice you make is influenced by it, whether you conform or rebel, because you have no way of knowing how you'd feel about anything without the constant and omnipresent system indoctrinating you.

I cannot define myself without patriarchy. And that makes me so depressed I sit and stare slackly at my computer screen for awhile until someone walks by and I realize I'm at work.

Apparently, even self-medication methods are subject to patriarchy, because smoking weed makes you skinny, and we all know that skinny is desirable. Now there will be hordes of neurotic girls toking up to get skinny instead of enjoying their lives. And if you can't even get high without pressure, what do we have left in the world? I ask you. WHAT IS LEFT.

Leave Angelina Alone

On Tuesday, the New York Times published an op-ed written by Angelina Jolie on the subject of her recent pre-emptive double masectomy. And then everyone went nuts. In at least three different ways.

Some of the crazy was entirely predictable and almost too cliche to even mention, except that objectification of women is still a very serious problem, so I'll mention it. Over at Public Shaming, you can get a round up of all the awful people offering condolences to Brad Pitt on the loss of Angelina Jolie's boobs. Do I need to break down why this is wrong? One, it's Jolie's body, not Pitt's. He doesn't actually own her. They're not his boobs. If you're going to offer condolences, offer them to *her.* But (and this is two), maybe think twice about offering condolences at all. Because, you see, Angelina Jolie is not merely a pair of breasts. Honest. There's a whole body attached to those breasts, and a head and a brain and AN ENTIRE PERSON with complex thoughts and feelings and the ability to make choices. She made a choice. She exercised her agency, and lamenting the pieces she lost to retain that life and that agency is pretty despicable.

Just a brief tangent, because I find people that feel like they have the right to hold forth on other women's bodies to be hilarious in their rationalizations for why they get to opine at all: I do wonder what the "Natural Beauty!" criers will have to say. Jolie did elect to have reconstructive surgery after her masectomy. But, like, is that wrong, Natural Beauty Aficionados? She's now got not-natural breasts. Should she not have done that? Or is it ok because she just went back to the way she was? But isn't natural supposed to be totally natural? Oh, right, except for all the false eyelashes cleverly and permanently glued on your eyes and the impossible skin care routine for the dewy-fresh look and 6 hours a day at the gym to tame whatever your natural body shape is into a perfect temple of "Natural" Beauty Male Gaze Aesthetics.

Wait, but now I really do want to know what the Natural Beauty Aficionados have to say. Please, define "natural" for me. Because I'm pretty sure you don't actually mean "However a woman finds herself." Pretty sure without that reconstructive surgery, none of you'd find Jolie attractive anymore. BUT WAIT. Those aren't real, so she's not attractive anymore anyway. CATCH-22. Getting sick means you're a worthless person, right? Yeah, maybe you should just not talk about "what's beautiful." It always backfires, no matter how nice you think you're being because guess what? Beauty isn't everything. So quit making it everything. Just. Shut. Up. Women do not need your validation.

But, there were other kinds of crazy. There was the ubiquitous, seemingly endless stream of commenters that wanted to talk about the fact that most women don't have access to and can't afford even the test for the gene mutation that Jolie found she had, much less the treatment option she chose.

"Can we talk about how most women can't afford to make the same choices she did now?" I feel like I heard 100 times in about an hour. "The choices SHE made." Maybe I'm just projecting, but there seemed to be a petulant quality to the question, a grudge held. But what I don't understand about this is that Jolie up-front and matter-of-factly acknowledged that most women don't have access to the gene test. And she said we have to do better.

So, yes, guys: We can talk about this. LET'S TALK ABOUT THAT. Jolie kick-started that conversation for us! Someone pat that woman on the back! I get that she's pretty and rich and a celebrity and so that makes it really hard to give her credit for anything because everything is just so easy for rich, pretty celebrities, but the woman has spent three month having her breasts removed and reconstructed because there was an 87% chance she would develop breast cancer (which she watched her mother die from) and maybe, JUST MAYBE, we could cut her a little slack and give her credit for proactively managing her health, being open about her decisions and what they mean to her, AND ALSO advocating for every woman to have the same access to healthcare she does as a result of being rich (and pretty and a celebrity)?

It can't be that hard. I know everyone wants to hate rich, pretty people. But even rich, pretty people are just people. So maybe try to contain your jealousy and treat her like a person? Just a thought. Maybe you could try it.

But maybe my favorite bit of insidious, awful misogyny that got flayed out there in the world for everyone to see were the "This is such a distraction!" people.

A conversation about the things that we value women for, the inequities of the healthcare system in the US, and a discussion of the fact that human genes inside of human bodies are patented is a "distraction?" Fucking really? Private corporations are patenting our genetic material and barring us from access to life-saving information, and now there's a floodlight on that, and still this is a "distraction?" Look, I get that maybe none of these issues are your pet issues. We all have the things we care about more than other things, even broad-spectrum activists. I, for example, rarely blog about things that aren't related to feminism or compassion. But I still pay attention to other things, even ones I have only a tenuous grasp on. I still think they're important. I don't call them "distraction" when they push my pet issues to the background for a day or two. I lend my tiny voice to support them and the people that know about them.

Try returning the favor. I don't know why you would be so dismissive of a woman's lived experience, and the actual life-or-death choices that is healthcare in our country. I don't know why you'd be so dismissive of a spotlight on the reality of corporate power, patent law, and blocking the free-flow of information. I suspect it's because you don't like Angelina Jolie, or you don't like celebrity culture, and that's fine. But *this* is still not a distraction. It's a serious conversation that Jolie graciously started for us by sharing a series of experiences that she took great pains to hide from prying eyes while they were happening because they were PAINFUL, both physically and emotionally. That's an act of generosity that you could try to respect. At least a little. At least enough to keep your mouth shut if you have nothing nice to say.

Check your biases, world. And think about why you're heaping so much hate on a woman that's doing her best to navigate between her privilege and her life. Maybe you don't agree with all her choices, but they're still hers to make, and she's not doing a horrible job of it.