The Confession of Lot's Wife

Look out, York!

The end of a great day in York, the night crisp-cold, sharp lines cut by the full moon down every building and around every tree.  We get a late train home, full of people with the same plan.  The Butler and I find seats across the aisle and facing each other.  Not a long trip home, so we don’t care.

I sit at a table next to a young woman reading.  Across from her, a muscular young man checks his camera.  When he asks her to tell him which of his photos are crap, an American accent comes out of his mouth. 

I’m not fond of American accents that don’t come from former Confederate states.  Nothing political in that sentiment; my Civil War ancestor got disowned by the family because he fought for the North.  It's just what fits in my ear better, accents from the south of the country.

So, on the train, Annoyance #1, this Yankee sitting across from me, going over his holiday snaps.  Then comes Annoyance #2, their conversation.  Specifically, the way he intrudes on the woman’s reading with a near childish request for assurance that his photos are great, the woman’s dignified enthusiasm for his work, like a fond mother for a child.  This guy is hard work.  I have sympathy for the woman.

Annoyance #3 is what tips things off.  After repeatedly telling the woman that she should say if a photo is lousy – and it takes her a while to get there – she says she prefers one shot of a location over another shot of the same location.  That gives him permission to say how angry she looks in the next photo, but then she always gets angry with him when he tries to take pictures and how could he take good pictures when she’s nagging at him, and picking fights?  In fact, now that he thinks about it, all of these photos are of arguments. 

Annoyance #3 isn’t so much annoyance as that o-shit feeling in the pit of the stomach.  In my former life as a trauma therapist, I met lots of people in relationships where conversations like this always led to a box canyon called, It’s Your Fault I Hit You. 

The woman must have that o-shit feeling, too, because her comments on his photos now parrot his own, and if he changes his mind, she changes her mind, too.  There’s no enthusiasm in her voice.  She quite artistically monitors his level of emotion and adjusts hers to save herself.

So the photos gone through, she turns back to her reading.  He sits for about 3 seconds, then asks if she’s done her homework.  She closes her book and looks at the table.  He asks if she understood him.  She nods, continues to look at the table.  He makes her repeat the question to him so that he knows she did in fact, understand.  He then keeps asking questions about her homework and does she understand why she should do her homework and does she understand why he asks if she has done her homework.  By this time, it’s clear that the homework is her ESL course, which surprises the hell out of me.  The woman has an accent, but there’s nothing in her spoken English that leads me to believe she isn’t fluent.

Slowly, slowly, slowly, the woman stops looking at this man and looks out the window where it’s so dark, she can’t see anything but her own face.  What her expression says, I can’t see.  Maybe she doesn’t trust it to anyone but herself.  I stare at the Butler across the aisle who cannot hear this smiling man at my table speaking in a very low voice like he’s a normal human being, telling this woman that he’s putting her through all this in public because he’s her husband and he loves her and I’m still staring at the Butler to keep from leaning over and telling her that this guy’s an asshole or that she should run fast and far or come with us to safety.  I don’t say any of this because the worst thing I can do for her is say anything.  Speaking up for her would be another reason for him to hit her later.

‘I’m your god,’ he says to her.

The o-shit feeling ratchets up several degrees.  My little pea brain goes into overdrive trying to think of something I can do for this woman, some way to help her without making it worse.  But it’s a short train journey, my expertise has always been at cleaning up the mess, not stopping the mess.  I’m not smart enough to come up with something that'll do more than ease my conscience while at the same time, not anger this woman’s god.

Our stop comes.  The Butler and I get up to go, but there’s a bottleneck at the exit.  And there’s me, Lot’s wife, turning back to stare at that guy, everything I feel right there on my face.  I know it’s there because our eyes meet and his face reacts to mine.  The people in front of me move.  I turn around and walk off the train, no pillar of salt, just a conduit of social condemnation that this man can take home with him and take out on his wife.

Bootleg Shame

Whitney Thore

Whitney Thore is a dancer who, in her late teens, inexplicably gained a lot of weight.  By the time she received a medical explanation, the emotional damage had been done.  She did overcome it, though.  Still obese, she puts videos of herself on You Tube and does street dancing to promote positive body image.  In this interview, she said she didn’t know loving oneself could be so subversive for a fat person. 

http://uk.screen.yahoo.com/video/playlist/barcroft-media-videos/fat-dancer-campaigning-body-positivity-105804392.html?vp=1

I postulate that society considers self love subversive for all of us.

I thought myself clever, giving up self doubt for Lent, even concluded in my last post that it made me a better person.  As the Lent Prohibition progresses, however, shame speak-easies crop up all over my psyche, remind me of how many times I fell flat on my face.  It’s actually shocking, the negative messages contained in one human skull, and how few come from actual Bad Things I Have Done. 

F’rinstance. 

After a party we gave, a guest apologised for not spending more time with me.  I smiled that sweet smile Appalachians give when someone says something stupid.  Although he’d spent most of the party in another room, he’d managed to criticise my weight three times. 

His rude comments, exhaled breath that I inhaled. 

Speak not of Tuilleries

I run into a friend after spending my birthday in Paris.  She pushes my trip aside so she can talk about her life.  Not particularly interesting aspects of her life.  The same old, same old.  Whether she considers me a bore or is a crap friend, her message is clear. 

Shut up, Lora.

I am silenced.  I am erased. 

Then there’s the mother of three special needs children that folk around here say mollycoddles her kids.  They also call a man weak because his mentally ill ex-wife keeps taking him to court.  This mother and ex-husband, victims of circumstance yet unable to evoke sympathy from their neighbours.

Why?

We’re not weak.  We don’t molly coddle.  Who cares if you went to Paris when I had a nice ramble across the moors? 

Too fatolduglyskinny

The unfortunate consequence is that some people stop talking because we can’t be bothered to listen.  Other people won’t be in family photos because they’ve been told too many times how fatolduglyskinny they are.  Folk in dire circumstances stop asking for help because they’ve come to realise it was their fault anyway.

This has been one of my most difficult Lents, trying to fight the demon Self Doubt.  I’m not able to say what is true about myself and what is protective salt thrown over someone’s shoulder to land in my open wound.  For the moment, I feel displaced from my life, from my Self. 

Silenced.

  

Relation-tweeps

I broke up with a follower after less than 24 hours.  The breakup was quiet, yet it has its place in the queue for this week’s blog.  First, some other loosely connected items. 

According to The Bookseller, Jonathan Franzen feels writers are being 'coerced' into social media, and that new writers are told they won't be considered without 250 Twitter followers.

http://www.thebookseller.com/news/franzen-writers-coerced-social-media.html

Some people find this overstated, but I did hear an agent tell an audience that if he couldn’t find a link to a new writer through Google, he didn’t bother reading their submission.  

I later had a private meeting with him and, if there’s a word for people who hate writers, (mis-scribonist?), I suspect that’s what he is.  Hopefully, he's not standard agent material.  Regardless of his psychopathy (sorry, had the wrong hat on for a moment), he’s the reason I started blogging and Tweeting. 

Writers in the 21^st century aren’t in Kansas anymore and I, for one, am glad.  Electronic cut and paste alone make it all worthwhile for me.  However, virtual social engagement sometimes is devoid of virtual social graces.  If we’re truly coerced into social media, we need to consider the impact of a place without niceties.  In descending order from horrific to my experience, let’s discuss bad examples.

Lauren Mayberry (Chuvches) wrote a Guardian Music Blog about cyber abuse directed at her solely for being a woman.  In response to her previous posting, one of the trolls said he knew where she lived and would come rape her anally so she knew what rape culture really was.

http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2013/sep/30/chvrches-lauren-mayberry-online-misogyny

Then there’s Writer One who went into vocabulary meltdown on Twitter, fuck being spread fairly thick.  Why?  Because a journalist used a negative word about Writer One, a descriptor not nearly as bad as the meltdown proved to be.  The journalist had to block the writer. 

Writer Two also challenged a negative comment made by a journalist, and they had a short exchange.  The journalist stayed rational yet unwavering in the face of Writer Two’s slightly aggressive but civilised comments.  Two sane adults, right?

Although Writer Two didn’t disembowel the journalist, Writer Two RTed every one of the journalist’s comments and 60,000 followers did the job instead.  One of them reported the journalist to an employer.  In the end, Writer Two got a Tweeted apology.  I imagine it was heartfelt.  

Okay, so what about my Twitter bust up?  Not quite so sensational.  One of those situations when someone who follows someone you follow, ends up following you.  Ray, let’s call him, was unusually witty, so I followed him back.  He happened to be caught up in trans-Atlantic travel that day and kept me smiling with his funny Tweets.  And then he wrote this:

'And I'm not all that keen on Americans in America, but put 'em in an airport and I'm all like Tina, bring me the axe.'

The difference in these examples is the degree.  Each of them is an assault on the recipient's sense of inviolate well-being, and certainly out of proportion.  They come from a deadening of empathy, which is the only thing that separates you from bullies and trolls.  Once you stop feeling it, then you're on your way.

The internet, and social media especially, really let us off the empathy hook.  We live in a world that no longer gives you three chances.  You have a bad day, I have a bad day, I don’t think before I type, you don’t think before you hit ‘send’ . . . the next thing you know, what you are thinking about is an axe.  When you say it out loud, you convince yourself it’s a joke.  Because we all know how American (Black, Asian, female, disabled, poor, LGBT) people are.  They ask for it.

I have to admit that I do a very good impression of an asshole myself from time to time.  When I do, I hope to be forgiven and because of that, because Ray has good traits, I wanted to turn the other cheek.  But the thing about using aggression, even if that aggression is garbed in humour, is that people stop listening to you.  All they can think of is how to stay safe.  When we are sexist or racist or use celebrity to squash the small fry, we silence not only the other person; we silence ourselves as well. 

There are people on the other side of our cyber actions.  There are consequences.  Be kind.  When you’re not, say you’re sorry.  It isn’t rocket science, guys.  Just play nice.

Trolls Among the Phlox

There’s a garden outside my window, and it’s had a weird summer.  The cosmos has grown into great hulking brutes of foliage, the dahlias long spindly stems with a few leaves, the begonias tiny hirsute curls close to the ground.  The only sign of colour, the brilliantly pink phlox, usually part of the chorus, now the soloist. 

Whatever balance is needed to do their job, the plants didn’t get it this year.  If you’re a gardener, you may understand what’s happened, but I find it extraordinary.  I’ve watched the Butler incessantly water, feed and weed these ingrates, so what more could they want?  Their picture on a ten pound note?

Ah yes, that’s where I’m going this week.  You see, I really can’t grasp why anyone would bust a gasket over a woman’s picture on the ten pound note.  Whose quality of life is worsened by Jane Austen’s face giving them a fleeting glance as she’s pulled from a wallet and handed over the counter?  Can you imagine women getting their knickers in a twist every time a man’s face appeared on a banknote?

No.  Women don’t often have the luxury of behaving like trolls, although admittedly, trolldom isn’t exclusively male.  Not perhaps because we’re a less aggressive gender but because we’re used to not being top dog.  Society has long been structured to keep women from getting what they need to bloom on their own.  Like the garden in front of me, we have the periodic pink phlox, the anonymously published Jane Austen, the male pen name producing Middlemarch so that the myth of the lesser gender prevails.  And when some woman has the audacity to say, let’s honour our pink phlox, all hell breaks loose.

I could turn to gender theories and sociological essays and psychological explanations for trolls getting stuck in early developmental stages, which would give me an intellectual understanding for what’s happened the last few weeks.  In its bare bone analysis though, somewhere along the way, someone hasn’t been taught to share.  Or learned that it’s wonderful watching someone else open their birthday presents.  Or if my face is on the ten pound note, it doesn’t mean your face isn’t worth looking at.

I don’t confine that lack of learning to trolls.  Our male politicians don’t blush at the sexist remarks they make to subdue their female counterparts.  Our sportscasters openly call women’s games boring.  Our children are raised on Legos for boys, princess slippers for girls.  Male leisure activities are a sublimation of natural aggression waiting in the wings to keep the species alive.  Female leisure activities are well, stupid.

The practical part of my brain imagines a mother overseeing a play date between pre-schoolers.  Her child doesn’t want to share, doesn’t want to play the other child’s game, and if things get too equal, may even give the kid a swat.  The mother intervenes, tells her child to play nice.  Yet every day, that same woman walks through a world that treats her the way she has taught her own child not to behave.  Somehow, that immature egocentricity survives preschool and is directed towards women, people of colour, the disabled, the LGBTQ community. 

That’s where my confusion comes in.  I don’t understand why that behaviour isn’t immediately seen as wrong.  Why do advertisers have to be pressured into withdrawing their money from social media sites before rape jokes and bullying are dealt with?  How can a thirteen year old sexual abuse victim be considered a predator?  Who in their right mind thinks it’s okay to drive the Racist Van through British streets?

I understand that some people are so badly damaged, they’ll grow up to become trolls.  What I don’t understand is why the supposed non-trolls sometimes don’t act any differently.  What I really don’t understand is why, when the supposed non-trolls don’t act any differently, they aren’t carted offstage to where those of us who know how to share, won’t be swatted by them anymore. 

If you’ve got answers for me, I’d love to hear them.

Currency of Hate

In a Galway pub on 11 September, 2001 , the punters in the seats near the telly got up to let the Americans sit down.  I’d been excused from work after the attacks and so it was from a high stool that I watched the world change.  As George Bush waxed imbecilic and Tony Blair gave a well enunciated battle cry, I made what I knew was a useless prayer.

Dear God, don’t let us go to war.  Dear God, please tell these assholes that killing’s not the answer.  Dear God, don’t let them blast out the ghetto to get the drug dealer.  Whether or not God listened isn’t the issue.  What I hoped wouldn’t happen, had already started.

I’m not going to debate the pros and cons of war.  I see both sides and am a proponent for accepting reality.  As long as there are people who will take what isn’t theirs or will toss kittens into walls for sport, we need a military.  What I’m thinking of is how we haven’t progressed much from the days of the coliseum.  A certain proportion of our population still enjoys watching others get ripped to bits.  Those of us who don’t, are told to take the moral high ground lest we be ridiculed as wooses.

The MEP for Northwest England criticises a gay couple for wanting the same rights as straights, then purportedly suggests that activists ‘confront Muslims instead of picking on meek & forgiving Christians.’  And he still has his job.  Two university students in Dublin sustain a savage knife attack for stopping a woman from getting her head stomped into the pavement and are advised by the gardaí not to press charges because their attackers will retaliate on the victim’s families.  After eighteen months of harassment by his ex-wife, a man quits his job of 12 years, moves across the country and is still forced by the court to pay expenses the ex unilaterally racks up in the name of his children.  A woman is murdered by her ex-husband and the court awards custody of her children to his parents who keep them away from their dead mother’s relatives.

We have religion and we have legislation but both are ineffectual in changing the gladiator mentality.  And so we respond in a currency of hate because no one thinks that giving members of the Westboro Baptist Church a hug is going to change things.  We raise voices and sometimes fists in outcry against MPs using taxpayers’ money to build duck houses and ride in chauffeured cars.  We hack into Twitter accounts, carry placards, hurl epithets, teach our children the standard exchange rate for bigotry, racism, sectarianism.

Hate begets hate.  A newly qualified teacher recently told me she was taught, when faced with a rowdy class, not to go for the ring leaders, but to seek out the weakest member of the pack, get them under control and work her way up the status chain until she got big dog.  While that’s probably an effective way to get things under control, that straggler in the pack is learning that the way to survive is to align with the strongest bully in the environment, rather than being taught that anti-social behaviour sucks.

A blog by Amanda Palmer is making the Facebook rounds and causing a blogging sensation.  (Go read it and her follow-up ‘plot thickening’ blog entries!)

 http://t.co/YPc03TLZ

She asked victims of internet bullying to tell her their stories and she’d write a subsequent entry with practical solutions to help them survive.  That’s a helluva commitment from a complete stranger to the universe at large and I’m not sure how many of us could sustain that.

BUT . . .

One hand reached out is more effective and more REAL than all the legislation, riot gear and fists in the air can be.  Do something practical.  Do it for one person outside your normal sphere.  The stressed parents down the street.  That dough-faced kid who doesn’t make eye contact.  The woman wearing sun glasses who keeps walking into doors.  Commit to only what you can sustain.  Do it for real, not for show.  Do it for the long haul.

I’m a realist.  We need legislation, military strength, bad ass teachers and maybe even churches.  Yet every time you ask how someone is but don’t listen to the answer; every time someone inconveniently seeks your help and you say you don’t want to be involved; every time you hear about injustice and all you do is raise your voice but not lift a hand, you’re complicit.  I’m complicit.  Nothing changes.

Do it.  Do it now.