The Revolution of Nonmonogamy

There's been a lot of talk about nonmonogamy recently, what with Laurie Penny's piece in the Guardian and this somewhat horrifying bit of commodification at Jezebel. As earnest and elegantly stated and nuanced as Penny's piece is, it still presents nonmonogamy in light of the heteronormative standard: "Just another way of organizing life, love, and who does the dishes" which replaces old relationship problems with new ones, of terminology and how to "make sure you're spending enough time with each of your partners."

Penny herself acknowledges that this isn't the point of nonmonogamous relationships: "The truth is that there is no magic set of rules for love, sex and home economics that works for everyone – and that's why it's so important that there are other options out there." Presenting nonmonogamy as just another set of rules to follow is severely limiting in its possibilities. "Polyamorists and monogamists alike," she notes, "fall prey to the delusion that their rules are the only proper way to organize relationships[.]"

The revolutionary nature of nonmonogamy comes not from being a new and exotic, esoteric set of rules to follow (because, let's face it, that's vaguely racist) but in the idea of creating your own rules. Creating your own rules *in concert with other people.* Creating rules that work mutually for both of you, so that everyone gets what they need. It's not about doing "whatever you want" because no one wants to hurt people that they care about. But it's never assuming the emotional state of someone else; it's always letting them tell you whether they're ok or whether they're hurt, and then listening to the answer. It's respecting the answer. It's working towards a better way of doing things if hurt happens. Between the two of you, to the benefit of both of you so that no one gets hurt and no one unintentionally hurts anyone else.

All of this sounds like some pretty standard, run-of-the-mill couples therapy stuff. Because I keep saying "the two of you" as if it is a couple, two people, and that's not nonmonogamy, right? As if relationships between just two people didn't exist in nonmonogamy. But that's not true. I say between the two of you because no matter how many people are in your relationship, or in a relationship with you, you have to think of them as just themselves, each one person, an individual being with thoughts and feelings and features unlike any other that are completely irreplaceable because this person is a person, a whole person, a single person.

(sidebar: You should view everyone this way, not just people you're sleeping with. Being sexually attracted to someone shouldn't be the deciding factory in whether that someone is a complete human being, because everyone is, regardless of whether you want to sleep with them.)
(secondary sidebar: You have to view yourself this way, too. You, also, are a unique and complete human being that deserves a complete life like any other, in ways that make you happy.)

If you start to falter in this unassailable belief that each of your partners is a whole person, a complete person, an individual human being with feelings and thoughts and dreams unlike any other, what happens is that you gradually cease to weigh their own feelings and pains equally with yours and then you end up "doing whatever you want" which (inevitably) causes pain and suffering for someone, usually not yourself the worst. You cease to care about your partner, because they're not a whole person, just a thing you use. And maybe you're sorry about that thing becoming worn because you're using it because it's not a person anymore, it's an it.

The thing about pre-made rules for interacting with people is they create whole systems that revolve around people not being people, not being individual and complete human beings.They replace individuals with characters, with scripts to follow. You're supposed to wait three days before calling. You're not supposed to talk about your dreams. Or your period. Be thin, white, symmetrical, of normal neuro-functionality, secure in your gender and seeking an opposite gender as if gender were binary. Find one mate to raise children with according to those nonexistent gender binaries. Make lots of money.

These are the rules, right? Those are the people that are held up as beacons of success, of stability, of doing-it-right-ness. This is the script. There are so many people that don't even *get to be in the play* because they're not thin or white or symmetrical or neurotypical or cis or hetero or rich. So, like, hey, even if you're thinking about nonmonogamy as a way to be all those things because you think it's possible to play out the script, that's cool. I guess. I'd sort of like to meet you, because it must be nice to never feel as if there are parts of yourself that just don't fit and that's got to be a weird experience because I don't think I know anyone that wouldn't cop to feeling like a square peg in a round hole sometimes no matter how wedged into their round holes they are.

But inevitably, some people don't follow the script. And rules mean that even when the script doesn't work for you, you're supposed to follow it instead of change it. Rules mean that when you're not in the script at all, you're not supposed to trod the stage of life, complete life, fully human life.

How terrible. Terrorizing.

So throw out the rules. Throw out the roles. Work out your own rules. Be nonmonogamous.

And then, when you've tried that for awhile, you can start to blow apart all your relationships. Monogamy and nonmonogamy are for sexual partners, specifically. But what are the other things we're supposed to be doing with sexual partners? Or not doing with them? Raising children, living together, working. Why should those be tied to who you sleep with? Why should you have to live with someone you're fucking? Why should you have to live with someone you're raising kids with? Why should you have to raise kids with the person you're fucking? Why shouldn't you work with a sexual partner? Does the kind of work matter? What about the rules for relationships between work and parenting? 

Pick all of your relationships apart and put them back together in the ways that work best for you. And demand a system that lets everyone do that. Pretty revolutionary, that.

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.

Doubt

I have been struck by a terrifying thought: How much of my morality is simply gender-socialization?

I can talk quite prettily about how love will save the world, about the need to build communities that care about each other by building individual connections between people who care about each other, about learning to care for your neighbor and your neighbor's neighbor and on and on and on. And all of that is without a doubt the basis of my moral understanding. Everyone is a human being, and simply by virtue of being a human being they are deserving of dignity and respect.

But the real world is messy, and real human beings are complicated, and you can't love someone punitively. Therefore the other underlying tenet of my moral understanding is a well of infinite forgiveness, side-by-side and co-mingled with that bottomless well of compassion I try to cultivate. Without question this is influenced by my Catholic upbrining; people make jokes about "Catholic guilt" because of confession and a whole host of other things, but what is missing from those pithy understandings of Catholicism is that the guilt is not the point. The point is forgiveness. God is infinitely forgiving if we are sincerely contrite, and He will go on forgiving no matter how many times we screw something up.

The process of institutionalization took this incredibly noble ideal and turned it into the doctrine of dispensation, which was the straw that broke Martin Luther's back. And we all know where that went. On the whole, the Lutherans and the Calvinists and their doctrinal brethren are far, far more into guilt than Catholics ever were, but that's neither here nor there.

The point is: Forgiveness. You cannot love punitively. You cannot love and fail to forgive. If you want to teach someone that they matter as a human being, love and forgiveness, not guilt and shame, is the way to go. Jesus was down with this. He spent most of his time wallowing in the gutter with all those poor people that broke all kinds of social and even legal conventions, because: forgiveness.

But the practical effects of my understanding of these moral imperatives have the interesting, terrifying side effect of making me sometimes indistinguishable from that most perfect feminine form, the doormat.

I can rant and rave and rail against instutionalized misogyny (and I do) but when it comes to individuals, I have a hard time condemning. Because, forgiveness.

I can talk a big game about the need for personal responsibility in relationships, but I have a hard time implementing it because my moral understanding always, always leads me to undervalue my own needs and desires and over-emphasize someone else's. Like any good helpmeet, I'm quite willing to submerse myself in someone else's goals. The Quiverfull people could probably brainwash me in about two days flat.

There's no answer. Now that I've come face-to-face with the realization, I am always going to be living in the tension between my desire to be recognized as a full human being despite my gender and my belief that it is my duty to recognize everyone else as such. As long as there are people willing to take advantage of others, I will be a ripe target. And worse than the gullible fool with the wool pulled over their eyes, I know what I'm walking into, at least some of the time. But if I don't walk into it, the guilt of having failed torments me. Rock, meet hard place. Let someone else hurt me, or inflict an equally painful wound on myself.

I wonder if men that have similar conceptions of moral good feel emmasculated? Or effeminate.

Worst of all, the tension makes me question my beliefs. It makes me wonder if I'm not just creating an elaborate rationalization for behaving in exactly those ways that society expects me to behave. Maybe I should just shut up and sit down and look pretty, too. I do that pretty often, anyway, because you can't change anyone's minds by yelling at them or forcing them to confront things they're not ready to confront. So why, exactly, am I bothering with anything, again?

I've been unable to abandon either my moral principles or my belief that I can make a difference, so I guess living in the tension is working out. But it's stressful, and I am full to bursting with doubt that's spilling out over every decision I make. I doubt everything these days, myself most of all.

Practice Radical Compassion

I've been listening to people ask the question, "What now?" a lot.

"What now?"
"What next?"
"Where do we go?"
"Where do we start?"

Everyone I know has been inspired by big things -- myself included! make no mistake! -- and all those big things have been happening fast and piled on top of each other. Protests, recalls, elections, occupy, marches, even one brave girl standing against her culture: it's all one giant source of motivation and strength for anyone with an eye on changing the future.

And those moments, those big moments, are important. It's important to know that you're not utterly alone in wanting a different world, and it's important to know what it feels like to stand with 100 or 10,000 or 100,000 of your fellow human beings, voices raised together. It's important to know what that feels like, for an individual, and it's important for the world at large to know that there are so very many individuals working in concert.

But the big moments are demonstration, not change.

Politics will never change the world. I'll say it again: Politics will never change the world. Part of this is the nature of politics as compromise. Perhaps we've all lost sight of this, so here's a reminder. Politics is the art of compromise through persuasion. But that means you are never going to get everything you want, and your opposition is never going to get everything they want. Even a majority must compromise with the minority in a representative, nominally democratic system.

(Side note to everyone involved in politics: Could you maybe start compromising? Just a little? It's your job, so do your job, please.)

But politics imposes a consensus compromise on people from the outside. To change the world, you have to change the people. The only way the world will get better is if we make humanity as a whole better. The only way to stop people from doing awful things to each other, either actively by waging war and murdering and raping, or passively by ignoring the hardships they suffer, is to make every person in the world acknowledge the humanity of every other person.

Overwhelming. It's an overwhelming thought. Are you overwhelmed?

Don't be.

No one, no one in the world, can alone effect change of that scale. No one. It's not possible.

Here's what you can do: you can change one person. You can reach out to one person and show them that you're human, and they're human, and that you respect their humanity. You can show one person the effects of the decisions they make. You can show one person that you respect them, that you love them, despite any and all differences, and you can hope that such a demonstration inspires them to change even a little.

Here's another thing you can do: live humanely. Live your life to the best of your ability such that you respect and care for other people. Think about how you define "people." Then think about how you define "people who deserve respect." Are these two definitions the same? Probably not. What can you do to make them the same?

Who are your neighbors? Do you know their names? Do you know what they value? Do you know what they dream of? Can you help them? Who are their neighbors? What do they dream of? Can you help them? Build a community based on personal relationships; the larger community will build itself, so long as you maintain the long view of respect for all people simply because they are people. Those people don't have to have the same values you do; they don't even have to agree with you on anything. Your job is to respect them anyway. Your job is to care about them anyway. Your job is to love them anyway. Lead by example. It's the only leadership that works.

Politics in America, and everywhere, has long been the art of defining "The Other" for one group or another. Most of human history, in fact, can be viewed through the lens of power pitting groups against each other to maintain power. Reject that history. Reject it forcefully. Refuse to think of anyone as The Other, as unlike yourself. Refuse to accept that you have to denigrate and degrade another person, no matter how far away and no matter how strange their life seems, just to make yourself feel better.

After all, you are the scary, frightening Other to someone else. What would you prefer they do, when you meet: kill you or listen to you? Don't conjecture about what is LIKELY to happen. Don't rationalize shooting first, or cutting someone off, because of what you think they will do, or even are likely to do, or what they've done in the past. Stick to this alone: which would you rather happen? Then you have to choose to do the thing that you would like to happen despite whatever fear, rational or irrational, you feel.

You want to be a radical? You want to be a revolutionary? Here's the ultimate radical act: Love the Other. Love them like you'd love your own child. Endure deprivation for them, live with the knowledge they might take advantage of you, forgive them when they do, and go right on loving. Love them until they cannot but recognize your humanity, and love you back. It takes courage, and forgiveness, and a deep sense of self, and a firm commitment to the worth of the future being built. But you can do it. And if you mess up, if you can't do it, if you're too scared or too dazzled by the world, forgive yourself, too: you're human.

And then, try again. Pick yourself up and try again. And again. As many times as it takes.
Love will change the world, and the world will change one human being at a time.

Going With The Flow

I have come to the conclusion that (as I am apt to do) I have crossed the line into buying too deeply into my own bullshit. Not that love and compassion and the need for human connections and serving each other is bullshit. It's all very real and true and I believe in all of it absolutely and without reservation. But I am prone to Taking Myself Too Seriously Syndrome and it's about time I called myself on it.

The crux of it is that I've been feeling for a while now that most of my relationships are unbalanced in some way: the two-way street doesn't flow with equal force in both directions. Problematic, for a dyed-in-the-wool idealist like me. But I talked myself down from it! I really did! I was all,

"Self. Nothing is perfect, Self. You have to look at flow over time, Self, and I'm sure that over time everything shakes out even, so don't get so upset. Relax. Go with it."

The first remarkable thing is that this ridiculous pep-talk actually worked. It's possible that the actual language I used when talking to myself in my head was somewhat different from the words above, but the gist was the same, and no one really wants to know how pretentious and pedantic I am to myself in my own head. It's positively precious, how hoity-toity my tone can get. I probably don't need to tell you that, dear Reader, since you're reading this and you know perfectly well how pretentious I am.

But over days and weeks of meditating on the concept of flow and time, I came to what I thought was a very determined peace with the fact of lopsidedness in relationships. I was OK. I was on an even keel.

It didn't last, clearly, or I would have nothing to write about. Everything is fodder for more words, dripping from my fingers like lovely and useless petunias. (Gilded lilies? I can't decide whether I prefer the continued alliteration, or the hilariously arcane allusion.)

But I've been snippy and mean and generally uncomfortable for a few days (sorry, Mom/Dad/Baby) and last night (yesterday? last week? It's hard to know whether the moment of epiphany occurs at the moment of verbalization or some time before that) I realized that I'm still struggling with the idea of all my lopsided relationships.

You see, I am unbelievably, unutterably, indescribably lucky. I am privileged beyond your wildest imaginings to have really amazing, awesome, awe-inspiring people in my life. These people are also ridiculously generous with me. I have been plagued by the sense that I am getting so much more from them than I am giving them, and that makes me so uncomfortable I can't deal with it. In fact, it makes me so uncomfortable I become a raging anger ball and kind of (a little bit) a bitch.

This is selfishness. I'm only ok with lopsided relationships if I get to play the martyr, be the selfless giving monolith? Not cool. Not cool at all. I believe absolutely in the power and the value of love and compassion and serving others. But it goes too far when you won't let other people have compassion for you, or love you, or serve you. Because if the purpose of a life is to do these things for other people, you're denying other people purpose by refusing their generosity.

Not ok, Self. Not. At. All. Knock it off, raging megalomania.

Why am I so uncomfortable? Because I don't credit the idea that me, myself, is enough for my friends the way that they, themselves, are enough for me. This kind of thinking denies these amazing, wonderful people that I love so dearly any agency. They don't get to make determinations for themselves; my determination of "not good enough" or "not enough" or even "lopsided" supercedes whatever they feel. Everyone is an adult capable of managing their own lives; I do believe this. So if they feel cheated by me, they'll tell me or they'll drop me, and until such a thing happens, I have got to stop worrying. I have got to let go of the idea that I'm getting more than my share, because my "share" is whatever is willingly given. The more we all share, the more there is to go around.

Flow is a multi-directional thing. And my perspective is not the only perspective. And if I'm going to love the whole world, I have to let the whole world love me, too. I have to let go, and just go with the flow.

Rejection is a Lesson

I think the hardest lesson in compassion is this: accepting that not everyone will want you. And, that's ok.

My struggles with trust and intimacy remain ongoing, and probably will for the rest of my life. These are not things that you ever stop really wrestling with, once you've started. Maybe they'll simmer on the backburner more often as years go by and I become more comfortable with the terrifying notion of letting someone else in on my life, but they'll still need to be revisited. I know this, I've known this, I was prepared for this.

What I was not fully prepared for was rejection. In my hubris and megalomania, I glossed over the fact that other people are people and will have feelings and ideas of their own, and needs and wants of their own, and I am not guaranteed to be something that anyone else either desires or needs. In  fact, odds are I will not be someone that even most people want or need in their life.

It makes perfect sense, when I see it in black-and-white like that.

But still, but still, but still.

When you're struggling through just the idea of letting your guard down, it's really hard to do it and then be rejected. It's really hard to let someone in only to have them walk right back out. It hurts. A lot.

But hurt is not a reason to lash out. Sadness is not a reason to stop exercising compassion. Other people get to do what they need to do, and be with the people they need to be with, in order to make their own lives better, in order to round out their own internal spaces. Other people, also, get to build airy light palaces in their hearts and minds and populate those glass castles with the people that bring them the most joy.

And I don't get to assert that I have to be one of those people, simply because I want to be.

And if I want to bring someone deep into the heart of my airy light glass castle, but they'd prefer I remain in the outer ring of theirs, I don't get to smash things because I'm not getting my way. Compassion is being there for people in the ways that they want, and the ways that they need, at the times of their choosing. I get to make my choices, yes, but others get to make their own, and if there's a mismatch or a disconnect, compassion demands that we continue to do what we have done, even if we wanted more.

Rejection is the right of every person. Every person is self-determining. And no matter how much it aches, respect for those determinations is the heart of compassion. Self-determination is not an excuse for wretched self-centeredness.

My palace is dimmed, but I'll find another way to light it up. And in the meantime, I will not throw stones. I will practice compassion.

The Depths of Toddler Despair

My three-and-a-half-year-old is deep in the pit of an existential crisis. I know that sounds adorable and precocious and like a good opportunity for personal growth for a Mama that purports to be mindful, and it is all those things. It is.

But, no jokes, no funny business, it's also hell. A three-and-a-half-year-old existential crisis involves some pretty horrendous temper tantrums. You can't really blame her, really: it's got to be awful to be in the grips of angsty ennui when you don't even know the words "angst" and "ennui." As nebulous and imprecise as they are, they at least provide some sort of structure for your feelings.

It's been a really tough week for us, these past seven days or so. She's been moody, operating on a hair-trigger that sends her from smiling and delightful to anger ball monster in a matter of seconds. There have been lots of thrown toys, lots of screams, lots of "NO!" regardless of what is being offered.

After her angry outbursts, she always starts to cry and then tries to burrow into me. If I ask her to stop crying, she'll look up at me with tear-stained cheeks and whimper, "But I'm really sad, Mama. I'm really sad."

It's heartbreaking.

But for seven days, I have been unable to get her to tell me what it is, exactly, that she's sad about. She's either ignored the question completely when its been asked, or mumbled some throwaway answer along the lines of  "I don't know."

Yeah, yeah, I know: she's my kid. She's MY daughter. This behavior makes perfect sense when you think about it that way, right?

Last night, after the fourth straight dinner-table meltdown, I took her upstairs to calm down. Time-outs weren't working, obviously, so I sat with her, instead - the two of us cuddled up in the rocker in her room.

And she said to me again, "I'm sad, Mama. I'm just really sad."

"What are you sad about?" I asked, again, with no hope or expectation of a response.

She lifted her chin, and the lamplight glinted on her wet, mottled cheeks. "I don't know who I am, Mama!" she wailed confessionally. "What's my fourth name?"

I was taken aback. What did she mean, fourth name? What was this about not knowing who she is?

"You're Genevieve Anne Findley. You're my snugglebug, and you are my best girl, and you are clever and strong and big and beautiful," I said to her. "Mama gave you three names. Genevieve, for St. Genevieve; Anne for Anne Shirley; and Findley, just like Mama."

She wasn't sobbing anymore, but there were still tears making tracks down her face, and her grip on my shirt was compulsively tight.

"But what about my fourth name, Mama? I should have four names," she choked out.

"Well, you think about what you want your fourth name to be. You think about all the names you know, and all the names you've heard, and when you find the perfect fourth name, you let me know, and we'll add it, ok?" This is me trying to be supportive in my absolute bafflement.

She snuggled deeper into my chest and stared at the wall. I stroked her hair. We sat and rocked, gently, back and forth, back and forth.

After what felt like an eternity, she straightened up and looked me dead in the eye.

"Bookwriter," she said. "My fourth name is Bookwriter."

"Absolutely," I replied. "Genevieve Anne Bookwriter Findley."

She squeezed out a tiny smile, and back we went to the dinner table, where she still didn't eat anything, but at least she didn't howl the whole time.

My three-and-a-half-year-old, who can't write her own name yet, wants to be a bookwriter. And is deep in the pit of an existential crisis. Perhaps some stereotypes exist for good reason. And perhaps all writers really are crazy, right from the very beginning. It would sure explain a lot about me.

On Generosity

There was an interesting, albeit tantalizing short, column in Sunday's New York Times Magazine entitled The Generous Marriage. The social value of generosity is well known and well-documented, but a new study about the value of generosity in intimate relationships was just released, and the column touches briefly on most of the conclusions therein.

Those conclusions are exactly what you'd expect. There are no surprises here: couples that both rank highly on the generosity scale are far, far more likely to both report being very happy in their relationship.

Duh, right?

But as the researchers point out, it's hard to be generous with a romantic partner. The lead researcher for the study had this to say about the difficulty of generous romanticism:

"In marriage we are expected to do our fair share when it comes to housework, child care and being faithful, but generosity is going above and beyond the ordinary expectations with small acts of service and making an extra effort to be affectionate."

And he's right: that's hard. There is so much expectation about what a partnership between two people is that you can get lost in all of that and never ever go above and beyond. And that would certainly make me feel unloved. But I would submit that generosity, true generosity, is making those extra efforts without expectation of return. Much like altruism, generosity requires a negating of the self to be genuine, real, and have the intended effect.

And I realized: my generosity is not genuine. When I do nice things for people, I want them to do nice things for me in return. Perhaps that's fair, but generosity is not about fairness. It's about the above and beyond.

I've been being a bad Buddhist. I have not been being truly generous.

I think that what I need to find true generosity in my soul is first a much, much greater sense of self-sufficiency. I need to be much more self-contained. I need to be much less of a selfish mess, in other words. I've not been doing so great at my resolution not to be selfish in my messiness. I think it's not possible not to be selfish when you're a personal mess on the inside.

So, I need to clean up. I need to not be a mess. I need to be able to satisfy all my own needs. I need to identify what those are, and which of the things I'm currently classifying as needs are actually wants, and having them satisfied would fall into someone being generous with me.

But mostly, I need to be more self-contained and self-sufficient. I need to need less. I need to make do with my own internal resources. No one owes me their time or attention or energy. It is nice to get, sometimes. It's nice to be cared about, and it's nice when people are generous with me. But it's not to be expected. It's not my due.

And I think, perhaps, this is the greatest personal breakthrough I've had in years, because it rather neatly resolves the tension I've always struggled with between being open and generous and being cold and closed off. I can be open and generous, truly generous, without needing anything, or becoming needy. In fact, the only way to truly be generous is to not be needy.

New resolution: clean up my insides. Scrub my soul. Neat, tidy, self-contained. And then, truly generous with the people I meet.

Low Ebb

I'm at low ebb. The lowest of low tides. I have nothing, nothing going on. I've been reading a lot of blogs focused on dating and relationships and sex and the interplay of stereotypes and expectation in each and all of these things and thinking about the interplay of all those stereotypes and expectations with both sexual ideas and loving ideals and the ways we conduct relationships.

But I don't have any conclusions from any of that.

At a certain point, reading something like The A(n)nals of Online Dating crosses a line from funny to abusive, and as a friend of mine said about It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: "You can only watch people be assholes to each other for so long." In the end, somewhere between nine and eleven pages in, I only end up feeling sorry for these people, these people that have no idea how to get what they want. Or even, that don't know what they want. It's heartbreaking. And I want to take each of them by the shoulders and give them a gentle shake and tell them to get it together, that life is full of disappointments, and that the only real guarantor of happiness is a long perspective.

I was talking about perspective this weekend, too, trying to sort out at what point altering your perspective on an emotional reaction become rationalization instead of healthy adjustment. Or, more accurately, I was trying to make a case for pure feeling that just wasn't happening. No matter how true I feel a rush of joy or a rush of sadness, it is just a perspective, and there's nothing sacred about anything.

I'm not as smart as I think I am.

Two weeks ago, I became completely embroiled in Susannah Breslin's Letters From Johns, for surprisingly similar reasons. There is enough there to disgust me, to turn my stomach and make me doubt the goodness of men in general, but there's also enough vulnerability, thinly veiled, and enough genuine confusion to make me want to do something. There's enough yearning and searching there, among those johns, to make me think that someone ought to be taking them by the hand and putting them on a different path. Maybe that's what the working girls are doing. Maybe that's what the working girls are hindering. It's hard to say. Sex is so fraught with terror.

Isn't it sad we're all so terrified of something that ought to be simple and uncomplicated and full of love? Or at least, trust.

But there I go again, wanting that pure emotional experience. That doesn't exist. It's all a matter of perspective. I speak from my perspective, and it is distinct and defined and I can try and adjust and that may change my emotional reaction. Maybe I don't want to change my reaction. Maybe I like compassion. It's a form of power, after all. All that caring.

What I mean to say is, I'm at low ebb. I have a thousand thoughts and there's a thread somewhere but I can't grasp it and I can't pull it and I can't spotlight it and make it easy to follow. I have nothing to say because I have everything to say. I can't bring any clarity to anything.

So I try and be oblique. You should see the backlog of half-started and absolutely atrocious poetry I've got catalogued. "Weave me a crown of ruby-colored leaves, and I will keep you against the winter..."

I don't know how I'm going to get through the winter.

Bad Mommy

Today's inescapable and cringe-inducing conclusion:

I'm a bad parent.

No, really. If you'd seen the tantrums I've had to deal with in the last three days, you'd know. Good parents don't have to deal with those kinds of tantrums, because good parents know how to head them off at the pass, one way or another. Good parents don't end up in screaming matches with their kids because they can neither continue to speak calmly nor simply walk away.

Good parents don't have to fight to do nice things with their kids.

So there it is. The reason mommy drinks is that she has a toddler and there's really just no way to get through the day with a toddler that doesn't involve liquor. Not when you're a bad mommy, anyway.

Honestly, though: How do you deal with a kid that won't pick out bedtime stories for you to read, won't let you pick them out, and screams bloody murder when you try to sit and wait it out? Then screams louder when you leave the room, then even louder when you come back in and tell her that unless she picks out books to read, you can't read her any stories?

Every choice simply leads to more screaming.

Oo, oo! How about breakfast? Simple, right?

"Would you like Cheerios or Raisin Bran?"

"NO!"

"Ok, well, if you get hungry and want something, let me know what you want and I'll get you something then."

"I AM HUNGRY!"

Then do you want *Cheerios* or *Raisin Bran*?

"CHEERIOS. NO RAISIN BRAN."

"Which is it? You have to PICK one or I can't get it for you."

"NO! I DON'T WANT TO PICK ONE. YOU CAN'T MAKE ME."

"Should I put some of each in your bowl?"

"NO! I WANT BREAKFAST. YOU'RE NOT GIVING ME BREAKFAST."

"Well, I can't GIVE you breakfast if you don't tell me what you want, so please PICK SOMETHING so I can give it to you."

"NO! I WANT BREAKFAST NOW!"

(ad nauseum, ad infinitum)

This is my life. I can't fucking deal with it. I am going to lose my shit. Bad mommy.

The Gender Politics of Internet Trolling

I can be pretty obnoxiously political. As a general rule, I've kept most of it off this particular venue of expression of mine and focused here on my personal experiences of things, but really. I can be pretty obnoxiously bleeding-heart, far-left political.

Mostly this comes through on Twitter, where it was the protests against Governor Scott Walker and his union-busting that made me truly appreciate the medium. I was looking at a picture of the court order re-opening our state Capitol an hour and twenty minutes before it hit any local news site. (And yeah, I timed it.) I have made some really wonderful friends while tweeting about politics. And had some fascinating discussions.

So when I tell you that I've never been trolled, not seriously, you should understand that I do go through pretty long jags of political commentary. It's not that I've never been trolled because I stay away from that sort of thing. But, back in March when I starting getting the first inklings, I definitely did circle my wagons and clam up for a few days. And that's a strategy that's worked very well for me ever since. I am obnoxiously political for (at maximum) five days, and then I go back to tweeting about my love life or clothes or food or something safely domestic for a period of time that is at least three days longer than however long I spent tweeting exclusively about politics and current events.

This has had the interesting (and hilarious) effect of getting me on some really interesting public lists. Like "Almost Worth Following." I laughed pretty hard at that one. There was another one that was simply titled Liberal/Retard/Spam/Troll, which I thought was an interesting grouping of things to be. I didn't laugh so much at that as I did wince.

But my strategy of just never going for too long without backing off and becoming nonthreateningly girly again seemed to work. Aside from the most glancing, easy to identify, and non-personal trolling that exists, I've never had to deal with vitriol from strangers.

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine (one of those wonderful Twitter pals I met through politics and #wiunion) dropped a comment along the lines of "Remember when I didn't have my real name here and people thought I was a guy? That was fun."

And it made me think: I'm pretty obviously female, even on a gender-neutral platform like Twitter. My handle is "TheGirlOne" for crying out loud, and for a long while I had a picture of my actual face up there as an avatar, and I'm clearly female. What if the reason I never get trolled is less to do with my careful curated strategy, and more to do with my gender? A woman in politics isn't "worth" trolling?

I don't think that's seriously the case; I think it might be some combination of gender roles and my strategy, but after having read this piece, and this one, and this one, I am pretty convinced that my being a woman hasn't been the driving force in not being trolled, either on Twitter or here. Because there are, apparently, a lot of men out there, and a lot of people out there in general, that are willing to aim a lot of pent-up rage at women on the Internet.

And I think that the quote at the end of the Time article is intensely relevant to anyone that's about to tell me that it's *just* the Internet:

"This is 2011. It’s not “just” the Internet. It’s our culture. At this moment in time, you can work, socialize, date, learn, communicate and debate online. There is no longer a divide. What is happening online is happening in real life. This type of abuse reflects real-life attitudes, real-life misogyny and it’s prolific. It’s about time we started discussing it."

The Internet is, for better or worse, a part of the way we live these days. It is our culture. It's no longer a subculture, or an underground culture, or any other negating adjective you want to throw on it. The Internet is pop culture. We inhabit these spaces as surely as we do our bedrooms, apartments, cubicles, cars. And what happens here is real.

I've been lucky. Startling, beautifully, terrifyingly lucky. I have blogged about gender relations, and gender bending, and patriarchal political pundits, and my own sexual history. I have been, at times, uncomfortably personal. I have been, always, lucky that all of you that read this or have stumbled upon it have been kind and supportive.

I worked for a political office in Milwaukee for a year when I was in college. When the then-governor of our state, Jim Doyle, vetoed concealed carry legislation, a lot of people were understandably upset. Several of them called into the Mayor's office to express their disapproval. (Don't ask me why people upset with the governor were calling the mayor of a city. I don't know. People are dumb.)

One of the interns answering phones during that period was a lovely young woman, a friend of mine, and she took a call in which the man on the other end of the phone told her, after she tried to explain to him that the Mayor had no control over what the governor did and it wasn't under our purview, that he "hoped she got raped on her way home tonight, so [she'd] understand that carrying a gun is a good thing."

I cried when it was directed at her, and I certainly looked over my shoulder the entire walk from City Hall to my busstop, the whole bus ride home, the whole walk from that busstop to my apartment.

I have been (for me, anyway) remarkably open here, and I have been lucky. And I have been consistently supported in that. I hope that never changes. But I would be lying if I didn't tell you that putting this piece out there is taking slightly more courage than I probably have.

We should all be more compassionate. Telling that to a mysogynistic, scared little man in his basement spewing hate at all the women he can find on the Internet is probably a bit like spitting in the storm's eye, but I'll do it anyway. We should all be more compassionate. We should all be working to understand the ways in which we're all vulnerable and scared, and we should all be working to change those conditions. Life doesn't have to be nasty, poor, solitary, brutish, and short. We can be better than that. So, let's be better than that.

And let's start by all being as civil to everyone as you've all been to me.

A Mini Me.

While I may still be a little apprehensive of this whole motherhood thing, I must confess: I love my baby.



She's not really a baby anymore, which might account for the outpouring of affection I feel for her at this particular juncture. She's a toddler now, a tiny little person, with enough personality for something 10 or 15 times her size. And it's a personality I like.



My baby is brash and assertive and fearless. She runs, she jumps, she climbs, she recites at the top of her lungs without the least hint of timidity or caution.



My father is the one that spends the most time with her, and he took her to the playground last week. The weather is finally getting warm enough for that to be a pleasant experience again. Thank god. This child needs about the same amount of space a wild horse needs to be truly happy.

Anyway, they're at the park, and she's on the swings, swingingswingingswinging and giggling with delight. When, all of a sudden, her giggles give way to spontaneous recitation. At the top of her lungs, while her grandpa continues to push her in rhythm, my not-yet-two-year-old (apparently) recited her alphabet (only missing three or four letters) and the first two verses of "Rock-a-bye Baby In A Treetop" (without missing a word).

What. The. Hell.

According to my father, other parents within earshot stood agape. I don't blame them; I would have, too. (I have since had the pleasure of hearing her recite "Rock-a-bye Baby In A Treetop." It is a thing to be hold, I'll have you know.)


And I believe the alphabet bit of the story, too, after this weekend. We get home from grocery shopping, we're putting the groceries away. My mom is having a medical test done this week and she's going to be on a broth-and-jello diet for few days, so we bought lots of Jell-o. Lots. We never have Jell-o in the house.

Genevieve has never seen a box of jello before. But she picked one up and announced to me (again, at the top of her lungs- we're still working on the "inside voice" concept) that is was "jelly."

I think my jaw actually dropped.

Yeah, she got it wrong, but she was damn close. SHE'S NOT TWO YET.

What. The. Hell.

My baby is brash and fearless. My baby takes no prisoners, asks for what she wants (ok, she demands it, but we're working on needs first, manners second), likes to be read to, dances, and has begun to try to sing along with me when I sing nursery rhymes at her. This is a child that I can get into.

And she's sweet. Despite the brashness and the boldness and the demanding, she's so incredibly loving. We've been dog-sitting for a friend's black lab; her and the dog have become fast friends. She has spent the last 24 hours announcing that "Moonpie needs a hug" and then proceeding to walk up the dog, wrap her arms around whatever part she can get to, and lay her had on Moonpie's back. She does it with particular alacrity whenever Moonpie cries, which is frequently, since she's been dumped in this strange house for the weekend.

Her empathy takes my breath away.

She knows when I need a hug, too. And she usually brings tears to my eyes when she wraps both her little arms and her little legs around me and squeezes and tells me "Don't be sad, Mama."

Indeed. What on earth do I have to be sad about? I have the best little girl in the world.