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| Photo courtesy of Prof.Bizzarro/Flickr |
Wednesday, I was subbing in special ed. The students were playing this game that was supposed to help refresh them on different conversational skills. They played in pairs – one partner would hold a card up on their head that said something like “eye contact” or “ask a question” or “body language” – and they’d have to guess what their card said based on clues given by the other person.
During the second round of the game, one of the students – a girl– got increasingly frustrated when she failed to figure out the words on the card. The other student was trying (the best she could) to use different ways of describing them but the girl just could not get the answers. I figured the game would be tough for her. These social skills she was working on were ones she in particular had to work really hard on and the abstract thinking needed for the game added an extra layer of challenge.
She eventually stood up and shouted that she was stupid. Slammed her chair into her desk and began pacing the room. She kept repeating that she was crazy.
I tried calming her down. I told her it was just a game and that I knew it was hard and it was OK that she didn’t get the words. None of that had any affect. She kept pacing and yelling. Started punching a metal filing cabinet. I looked her in the eyes. I asked her to try to take deep breaths with me. She tried, but then would get upset again.
I was calling the front office for help when she told me she would stop. That she could calm down before her next class. And she did. Thank goodness.
But I understood her frustration. And I felt frustrated for her. I know she knows she is different. Like she realizes that she doesn’t quite fit into this world the same way as most of her peers seem to. When she was saying she was crazy, I think that’s what she meant. Not that she’s crazy, but that her perspective, her experience in this world is just so, so different from the rest of ours. I wish the world could offer her a softer place to land. Like we could offer a place for her to be herself among us.
I know that feeling of not being able to properly express what it is that makes you so angry. That’s driving you to pace and yell and punch. Because there are so many times I want to do all three, but I’ve managed to adapt to life as a grownup who just swallows it all down. That frustration though, it can still live right underneath your skin. Even when it can’t be named.
And when it is named, your brain starts churning.
Have you ever had someone says something that speaks some visceral truth you didn’t even realize was hiding in you? Like, it wakes you up. It’s your subconscious grabbing you by the shoulders, shaking you and saying “Pay attention. This! THIS is what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
Last week, while walking the dog, I was listening to an interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates (author of the new excellent “Between the World and Me” and “We Were Eight Years in Power”) during which he discusses Malcolm X and how the human rights activist offered him the closest thing to hope Coates had experienced in his life.
And I had this moment. I had to stop walking (both to listen better and to wipe the snot and tears that unexpectedly started pouring out of my face holes).
Here’s the excerpt from the interview (it’s long, I’m sorry):
“So for Malcolm — to me, it was: I can speak about the world in a way that is reflective of my life and my community. I can do that. I don’t have to calibrate my speech. I don’t have to calibrate how I look. I don’t have to calibrate how I walk to make other people feel a certain way. I have that right.
And so that was big for me, as a writer. When I started writing, there was a school of writing that says: Given that the audience is obviously — when you reach to any size, is not gonna be majority-black — that you have to hold people’s hands. You have to explain to them. And the Malcolm influence on me said: No, you don’t. Write as you hear it. Write as you hear it.
And in fact, I don’t even think that’s a particular black thing, because if you’re black in this world, and you are gonna become educated on the — what is considered mainstream art in this world, mainstream traditions — nobody slows down for you. Nobody is gonna hold your hand [laughs] and explain ‘The Brady Bunch’ to you. Nobody’s gonna do that. Catch up.
Catch up. Some people live like this. I know it’s not what’s around you, but some people live like that. Catch up. [indistinct] And that’s just how it is. You gotta be bilingual. You gotta figure it out. So if they have the right to talk and write like that, I have the right to write about Wu-Tang like that…
I can do that. I can say, ‘Catch up. Catch up.’
You know what I mean? I can do that, and that’s a kind of freedom.”
Did you get all that?
“I don’t have to calibrate how I look. I don’t have to calibrate how I walk to make other people feel a certain way. I have that right.”
And see, I feel kind of guilty for identifying with this so much. Because I’m not a black person. And I have not endured the generations of trauma that black people in our country have endured. And I hope I’m not somehow appropriating an idea that is not mine to have here.
But even now as I’m re-reading what he says, I’m tearing up. Not as a black person, but as a woman.
As a woman this speaks to me. This sings to me. This shouts at me. This rages in me.
As a woman who feels my voice is valued at just 80 percent of a man’s voice. As a woman who often feels only 80 percent ownership of her person (the rest belongs to my children, my spouse, elected officials who make laws legislating what I can do with my body and the world at large that judges my person or whistles at it or comments on it or forces it to be smaller in public spaces).
I feel as if I’m perpetually calibrating myself based on the space I’m in and the people I’m with. That I’ve always deferred to men or yielded to men or been preemptively and overly apologetic to men.
And I understand this might be surprising from someone who apparently has so much to say. Who is always sharing and opining about whatever it is she fancies. Who assumes the world needs to hear any of it.
The truth is, I’m always dismissing what I think. Always apologizing for it. I’ve always felt that because it is coming from me, it’s probably kind of quaint and obvious and worth less than the thing the next person says.
I’m a terrible feminist. But then, I wonder, how else am I supposed to feel in this world?
The other day while subbing, I was doing puzzles with a student. We’d completed a map of the world puzzle and a map of the United States puzzle. The only one left was a puzzle of all the U.S. presidents. We got it out, spread all the pieces around and just sort of stared at it. So many white men. Forty-three white men. And one black man.
The student looked a bit overwhelmed by all the pieces. I just felt depressed. After five minutes of half-heartedly shuffling pieces around,I asked the student if he wanted to play a game instead. He nodded. We cleaned up the puzzle. I Shoved all my frustration and sadness right back in that box.
And I guess I’m supposed to feel empowered, now right? Like with our Pussy Hats and #MeToo hashtags and the ongoing takedown of all these influential men women are having their moment.
But I don’t know. I’m just kind of sad. I’m kind of over it, too.
Like, it’s pretty damn awful that there are so many men who have been allowed to be so abusive for so long. But it’s also not that surprising is it? I mean, none of us are really shocked to find out that major Hollywood producers, directors and actors have used their positions to take advantage of women are we? Or even that any person in any role of influence might have felt empowered or even entitled to making inappropriate advances on women solely because of who they are in their industry?
Why do we continue to be shocked and dismayed when people in prestigious positions, abuse those prestigious positions? History hasn’t exactly shown us that becoming wealthy and powerful inclines people to be benevolent do-gooders.
I was really bummed out to hear about Louis C.K. I love his comedy and always thought his perspective on how we should treat each other as human beings was spot on. I was going to invite him on my celebrity cruise even! And I hate what he did. Ugh. It grosses me out so much. It angers me.
I wanted better from him. But I mean, should I really have expected better from him? Why should he be immune to siren call of male privilege? Where in society and when in history has there ever been a time when men stopped themselves before taking off their bathrobes or asking for back rubs or grabbing breasts and asses and pussies (and I hate that word, but hey, if it’s good enough for our president …)?
I’m not saying all men, obviously. I don’t like blanket statements. I don’t believe all men are serial abusers or harassers. I don’t hate men (for real … though boys did use to accuse me of that in high school. In their defense, it probably had to do with me saying that I thought their penises should be taken away from them until they’d demonstrated that they were capable of making rational decisions using an alternative organ. Or that they were capable of going more than five minutes without making comments about or related to sex. In my defense, if you’ve been around high school boys and their raging hormones, I feel like you might understand where I’m coming from. Right? Anyone? Anyone? Am I alone on this one? Touche).
I am mostly speaking of the type of men who are written about in history books or who achieve some level of prominence or prestige in their field– whether it’s entertainment, politics or business. Though it’s not just those men. Anyone, who, for whatever reason, feels “untouchable” in their work or their position– whether as the owner of a small company or a high school coach or a manager at the local big box store. Really, I guess it can be anyone. But not really everyone.
At one of my last jobs there was an older man who routinely stopped by my female boss’s desk before he left work each day and rubbed her shoulders (something she neither requested nor consented to). She took to hiding out in a conference room when she knew he was leaving in order to avoid the encounters. He once commented on the fact that I had a bra strap sticking out from under a shirt I was wearing and reached to put it back in place- before I quickly spun out of his reach. “It used to be that women didn’t have their bra straps out,” he lectured me. Not realizing it was a camisole top and it was none of his damned business to begin with. The man was in upper management, he’d been with the company for decades. The fact that he behaved the way he did in the middle of the office with no disregard to who was watching, suggests to me that it never occurred to him that his behavior was inappropriate. Which then suggests to me that there had been a certain level of acceptance of it. Or at least no outward disapproval. Like, in his mind, it was part of the culture.
And maybe that’s the case for so many of these people. Maybe they just thought it was how things were done. “It’s cool, right? Wait. What? Oh? You’re saying we’re not allowed to just grab at the ladies anymore? Really? Because, I thought that was going to be allowed from now until forever. So that’s a hard ‘no’ on that?”
Why am I all the sudden looking up clips from “Anchorman”?
I hate that every day there are more headlines about this. And I hate that there are so many victims. And I hate that I’m not surprised that there are so many victims. Because I know so many victims of sexual assault, abuse, harassment, etc. that are just regular people. Friends. People I love. I hate that this is our culture.
I also kind of hate that when it comes to these moments of exposing these mass, serial abusers, we’re kind of likened to an angry mob with torches and pitchforks. Woody Allen warned against there being a witch hunt after the news of Harvey Weinstein came out. As if the women who’ve been victims of this culture are witch hunters. As if the abusers are like those women and men accused of witchcraft in Salem in 1692. Victims of hysteria.
Hysteria.
“Behavior exhibiting overwhelming or unmanageable fear or emotional excess.” (Merriam-Webster.com)
“Originally defined as a neurotic condition peculiar to women and thought to be caused by a dysfunction of the uterus.” (etyomline.com)
You want to know why women are angry? Why women are furious? It is this. The language of women, the language rooted in women always suggesting that we are somehow unsound. Somehow unbalanced. Somehow not to be trusted.
The language assigned to us as a way of discrediting us somehow magically, absurdly being used to defend our abusers.
“Stop explaining yourself to the world. Stop calibrating yourself to fit other people’s expectations about who you should be, how you should live, what you should write.”
Let’s set one thing straight. Women do not go on witch hunts. Women know better. Women know those who are called witches are most often the people who are the most misunderstood. The outliers. The oddballs. The people more in tune with Earth than with society. And women know well what it’s like to be misunderstood.
These men are not witches. This is not a witch hunt.
These men are rational human beings who wanted something and took it without consent and without regard for the person or people they stole from.
Their victims are not asking for their abusers to be burned at stake or hung in gallows or crushed under stones.
They want the abuse to stop. They want their voices to be heard. They want to take their power back.
And I think taking our power back is deeper than these headlines. Deeper than all the hashtags. Deeper than the hats and women’s marches. It’s about reclaiming our agency. Allowing ourselves to take up more space in this world. It’s about not worrying about calibrating ourselves to fit to a society that’s failed to make room for us. It’s about all these intangible things we’re still figuring out. Those things we still don’t have names for.
This world has not been a soft place to land for women.
We’re tired of trying to explain why the hell we’re so angry. Why we’re so damn hysterical all the time. You can’t see it?
Catch up.
—-
P.S. I know I kind of took a winding road here. And that maybe my conclusion wasn’t wrapped up all pretty in a box. It’s so much more satisfying when the end is like that, isn’t it? I’ve been writing for hours though. Brad wants to talk about the Christmas budget. It’s 10:15 p.m.. I have to move on for now. Brad’s cousin sent me the kindest note this week- which I really needed. I’ve been feeling drought-like conditions in the writing department recently. She thanked me for, “For showing the process of thinking out loud and trying to figure something out, rather than just taking a stance.” This week, I took that as permission to write freely.