Category — social laquer

Original Essay: The Not Rape Epidemic

I was not-raped, once when I was twelve, and several times when I was (barely) fourteen.  The details of those events are not part of this post, which is “squick safe”.  The article linked above is awesome, but might squick you, fyi.

At the time those incidents happened, I didn’t know how to say “this is coercion”, “that was sexual assault”.  I’d never heard those phrases used in context, in spite of having lawyers in my family, and I’d never been told who to tell them to or how.

In spite of the fact that I barely knew what the words meant, I did know that they weren’t really important, to adults or to society. Rape was important, or at least usually important enough to sue over (but not if it was just “your word against his”, because then you wouldn’t win and the attorneys would make you look like a slut in front of everyone — I knew that at that age, as did everyone who owned a TV).  But if it wasn’t rape — if you weren’t held down and penetrated, in front of witnesses, all while screaming “no” and wearing conservative clothes — then it wasn’t worth mentioning, or rather mentioning it would only make you look bad.  Talking about incidents of harassment or assault, other than in whispers to your closest (female) friends, was somewhere between needless bitching and outright slander of the men involved.  Other men, and sometimes teenage boys, sternly looked down upon such talk, especially if it involved naming names.

I had nearly fifteen therapists during my teenage years.  None of them ever asked me if I’d been not-raped.  Well, one did, but she meant by my dad — the context of which question is quite enough to put anybody off the topic, you know?

My daughter will know what not-rape is.  She’ll know what “assault”, “harassment”, “coercion” and “statutory rape” are, and she’ll know that all of them are illegal and who she can talk to if any of them happen.  (Oddly, she won’t be told to go to the police, whom I feel I can trust completely to make such a situation worse.  She’ll be told about the relatives and friends of the family who are trustworthy, and how to spot other adults and groups who might be.)

And she won’t know when she’s sixteen, when it’s more comfortable for me to raise the topic.  She’ll know before she’s twelve, because that’s the first time a man held me down and groped me in the public swimming pool.  Parents who suppose that they’ll keep their daughters safe by keeping them away from “drug parties” and the like are fucking morons, I think.  As if predators don’t ever go seek prey.

And lest you think, out of ignorance I hope, that not-rape doesn’t ruin lives, I suggest you think again.  Not-rape leads to phobias, deep trust issues and relationship problems, and shattered self-confidence (usually at exactly the time in a person’s life when the shattering is most profound).  It took me years upon years to even begin to feel that I was on my way to being over it.

Hell, this is the first time I’ve ever spoken of it “in public”.

See what power having the words, and a place to speak them, can be?

My daughter will also know kungfu — and believe me, my experiences in not-rape do play into that — but if I could give her only one thing to help her prevent and deal with not-rape, it wouldn’t be self-defense lessons, which can only help some of the time.  It would be knowledge of the words, and where to speak them.

What about your daughters, sisters, nieces, friends, students? Will they struggle through it alone for decades, unable to think anything other than that they deserved it somehow, or will someone give them the words?

And what about the boys and men — the only people who can realistically stop not-rape?  Will they ever be taught how harmful those actions can be, and that they’re not acceptable even a little, and that the victims are never to blame for them?

I guess time (and words) will tell.

(That’s not to say that I am orderly.)

I am:

Conscious first.
Alive (physically embodied) second.
Human third.

Those are what I see as my primaries.  When I have to “side”, I take the highest (most inclusive) side I can.

When I think, I try as often as I can to think of myself as one of the Consciousness (the category isn’t dependent on having a view, like mine, that all consciousnesses are one Consciousness, but it’s certainly compatible with it).

I find that the higher the level I’m able to consider myself on in any situation, the better my decision-making tends to be. Thinking of myself as alive makes me more widely compassionate and understanding than thinking of myself as human does.

Of course, it’s not always possible to think that big.  Thinking from consciousness doesn’t help me pick groceries (though gods willing, one day it will!).  And of course, sometimes in the course of living, one has to “drill down” even farther than being human.  (Personally, even thinking about things from an anthrocentric perspective makes me nervous — somebody’s going to have to be understanding and compassionate about aliens someday!  …But I fully admit that that’s probably just me.  ;)

I used to really resist smaller-group thinking, but since it can be legitimately necessary at times, I’m trying to get the hang of doing it — without deteriorating into us-and-them thinking, if possible, since that almost never seems to produce much good.  (Usually, if I find that an issue is presented as having an us-or-them binary solution, the middle way is usually a function of seeing things from a level or two higher.  Neat, huh?)

So, since humanity is first divided in half, it would seem that I’m also:

Female fourth.

…Okay, I can do that.  It means that it’s my job to consider my gender when issues are raised that affect women as a group, and to speak up when they’re being ignored, and if necessary, side with women when women and men side against each other (which I wish they’d stop doing).  Note that that doesn’t always mean I’ll agree with “most women”, but it does mean that what’s good for women as a group will inform my decisions about what I do agree with.

Er.

But then it gets tricky.

(Read more for the enumerating of race, nationality, and other trickiness.  …But anyway, think about yourself…do you agree with me so far?  Is categorizing that widely useful to you?  Would it be for everyone?  How do you “Order” yourself?)

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First, I want to apologize for being a repeated shit.  This is the Internet and it says something when one violates even the etiquette here.  But I have — I’ve been making posts periodically about the rather hot topic of home foreclosures, and then to some degree (sometimes that degree is “totally”) ignoring the comments.

It’s not that I don’t want to hear what anybody has to say.  It’s that I hear what everybody has to say, pretty much all day every day — because if I’m not at work then I’m just as likely to get cornered by random strangers who find out what I do for a living, or called at home by friends of friends or anybody who needs help and knows or runs into somebody who has my number.  I try to have those conversations whenever I possibly can.  If I’m in my office, I try to always answer the phone, even though much of the time it means having a long conversation, often filled with really sad or difficult questions and answers.  And those things are really draining for me, for reasons I’ll touch on below.  (And on top of it, part of my job is to read about & research the issue every day!)

So what happens is, stressed-out, I overflow, especially when I hop online to read about things like people with jobs and money griping about having to contribute, however insignificantly, to helping others; and of course the perception encouraged by much of the media, that the people who need help are somehow “bad”.  Those two things absolutely enrage me; I won’t lie.  I firmly believe that hard times are when compassion matters most, both to the givers and the receivers, and it drives me crazy to see the selfish point of view getting so much more air-time.

And then I vent it on you.

But then I’m all wiped out from venting, and when people leave their excellent, often very insightful comments here, I usually read them but often can’t muster the oomph to respond.

I always appreciate comments (well, except when they suck, but I think in all the time I’ve posted here I’ve only gotten a small handful that did); and if I don’t respond to them and you really would have liked me to, please do take the extra step of shooting me an email and nudging me.  Or if you don’t want to bother, that’s fine, but please accept my apology and know that I’m not ignoring you deliberately — I’m just a bit worn out, and not terribly great with people to begin with.

Fun fact, if you didn’t know it:  Psychologically, an extrovert is simply someone for whom the company of other people is refreshing, and to some degree recharges their energy; whereas being alone or isolated drains them.  Most people are extroverts; this is why parties and bars and card-games and whatnot are fun for them, and help them relax.  (Also why we say things like “man is a social animal”.)  I’m an introvert; for me, the company of others is draining, and I need to spend time alone to recharge.  So if I’m going to go out somewhere that has people, say, after work (even to relax or have fun), it’s rather like extending my workday in terms of energy spent, and the fact that my sleep schedule allows me extra time in the evenings to chill out by myself is really the only reason I can comfortably go out at all, except on weekends.  When I wasn’t polyphasic, I literally went out about once a week, if that.  Now I can handle multiple out-of-the-house classes during the week, and activities with my (very extroverted) kid, etc., all because I have several hours in the late evening and early morning to just chill with a book or hobby.  Yet another reason I wouldn’t give it up for nothin’!

About 1/4 of the population, depending on where you are, are introverts like me.  Some don’t know it, or think there’s something wrong with them because they’d rather stay home.  And of course it’s not black and white; there are middles and extremes here.  I’m a pretty solid introvert, but my husband is even moreso.  (We look out for each other!)  Obviously being an introvert doesn’t prevent someone from doing a people-oriented job; neither does being an extrovert preclude working alone — it just requires knowing yourself and making sure to compensate in healthy ways.

Which do you think you are?  And if you’d like to share, what tips do you have for the “care and feeding” of your intro- or extro-verted brain?

(I promise I’ll read the comments!  ;)

Do you not just LOVE that feeling when you’ve hit a clear path?  It may not be obvious where it goes, but every few steps you find another rare feather or insistently-yelling crow, letting you know you’re definitely going in the right direction, wherever that leads.

On Sunday I was practicing piano, which is next to a bookshelf mostly occupied by books that aren’t mine.  Some of the ones at eye-level are about conflict resolution, something I’ve never taken much of an interest in.  In the middle of trying to hammer the eff’d up timing from the middle of Bolero into my fingers and brain, something went off and I found myself holding one of those books, a slim, totally boring-looking volume on a method called “consensus”.

I opened it and over the next few hours, read the entire thing.  Couldn’t stop.

And it wasn’t some tour-de-force of writing or anything.  It was just that suddenly I found myself sucked into this topic — non-litigative, cooperative conflict resolution — and feeling like it was the entire missing piece I’ve been looking for, the whole time I’ve been pondering what the heck to do with a career that can’t remain “foreclosure counselor” forever and can’t rely on philosophy or fiction or taiji to put food on the table, but needs to leave room for all of those.

I’ve been studying mediation for only about 24 hours now, but all along the way there’ve been these feathers, these birds.  Cool phrases I need to keep, like “escape fire”, and awesome articles about insight (and all that can be extrapolated from here about intuition), like this one:

Many continue to believe that the manifestation of insight is a largely subjective occurrence that is mysterious and idiosyncratic, and unique to the personality of an individual practitioner. It is not thought to be easily susceptible to formal training and many courses and programs relegate the study of insight into the art of practice, not science. Now there is the strong beginning of that science.

Lehrer’s article describes the current work of Mark Jung-Beeman, a cognitive neuroscientist at Northwestern University. Studying the brain, he observed that the left hemisphere appears to be responsible for the functional denoting, or storing the primary meaning of a word or act, while the right brain deals with connotation, the emotional charge of the word or act. The brain, he observes, needs both functions to effectively “see the forest and the trees.” (p. 41). Interestingly, the emergence of insight can be inhibited by a pre-occupation with the denoting function; asking people to explain their thought processes logically. Termed “verbal overshadowing,” insistence on analysis shifts the brain functioning to the left hemisphere, ignoring the more subtle associations coming from the right hemisphere.

I think I’m calling it my “birthday present from the Universe”. ;)

EDIT:  Okay, I had my minute, and I’m done now.  Getting ranty and judgmental is fun for a little while, but I always get sick of it fast.  ;)  The original post is behind the cut, if you really want it.

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M. LeBlanc at Bitch. Ph.D. makes a point I’ve been trying to put words to for a while now, and failing…it concerns the gross feeling I get in my stomach when someone accuses someone else of "playing the [race / gender] card" — an accusation that was common before the US Presidential primaries, but is now absofreakinglutely everywhere.

So, what’s gross about it? Simply this:

"I’ve been astonished at the degree to which "playing the race/gender" card has flourished as a phrase and concept in the conversation about this primary race. I’ve heard it from so many bloggers, pundits, straight-up newscasters, and even some of my personal friends. I want to be as absolutely clear as I can: it’s a bogus concept, and using it makes you part of the problem.

But I’ve never understood what’s so unfair about bringing up race and gender. It’s like those who decry it as card-playing are annoyed by the fact that we all won’t play by their rules of pretending that everything is equal now, since we can all vote and everyone will pay lip service to racism and sexism being Bad. But now that we’ve placated you by agreeing that they’re Bad, how dare you accuse anyone of being racist or sexist? Especially someone who is supposed to be your political ally/friend/co-worker/acquaintance?"

Yup…yup, that’s it exactly. It’s the implication that to point out racism or sexism is to "play dirty", to be somehow unfair.

I think I know why. I think they’re worried because they consider racism and sexism undiscussable. It’s not that they would lose an argument by default as soon as someone accused them of racism or sexism — usually there’s room to argue in those cases, and I’ve seen many that I don’t think actually are racist or sexist, at least not in intent. Even if the statement or whatever is racist or sexist, usually it’s nothing so bad that simply apologizing wouldn’t get rid of it anyway. But no, the problem is that as soon as the topic is turned to include the race or gender issues involved, these good ol’ fashioned "normals" will voluntarily shut down, giving up their argument in favor of saving themselves the embarrassment of talking about ways in which, I’m sure they realize on some level, they might be unintentionally racist or sexist.

So they fear the slapping of the "race card", and the "gender card", not because it’s actually an automatic win for the other guy in their case, but because it forces the conversation onto such an uncomfortable track that they’ll forfeit, and they know it. Racism and sexism have become such loaded words (as M. LeBlanc also points out) that they’re no longer welcome on the conversational table, like a Scrabble piece worth 1,000 points.

What would fix this?

Maybe — this is just an idea — maybe it could be fixed if we took some of the black-and-whiteness out of racism (no pun intended, seriously) and sexism; if we bled them of some of their poison, and forgave at least those of us who really don’t mean it, giving people room to understand, apologize and move on.

How to start? Maybe by admitting to it now and again. If more brave people, in more public conversations, began admitting to their occasionally racist or sexist tendencies, with language like, "But I tend to think less of women who don’t have kids…it’s something my mother taught me; wow, am I being sexist?" or "I blamed a neighbor kid for spray-painting my garage when it wasn’t him at all…he was black, and I totally didn’t realize at the time that I was being racist." Nobody (nobody reasonable, anyway) can look at those statements and deduce that the speaker is OMG! 100%! RACIST! SEXIST PIG! AUGH! –and it pries open some room, at least in that case, to actually have a bit of discussion about whether some of the little things we do are sexist or racist, without treating the words themselves like a banhammer.

I guess what I’m saying is that the next time someone plays the race/gender card, maybe someone else should have the courage to keep betting? The game doesn’t have to end there, and surely, after all this time, it’s not such a scary topic that it can’t ever be discussed openly.

Anyway, the racism and sexism that are still around in the developed world are the kind that will never go away until we can discuss them…so if you really don’t want to "be" racist or sexist, then get the courage to start thinking about the ways in which your actions could be informed by wrong ideas, and admitting to them.
 

Augh, I slept worse yesterday — all darn day — than I have in months. Every nap was some combination of interrupted, late, or impossible. I woke up this morning still feeling like crap, but a 45-minute morning nap seems to have corrected things a bit. ::shudder::

Anyway.

The "Mind Hacks" blog asked Robert Burton, author of the new philosophy book "On Being Certain", to name some underrated things. I love his answers:

——————–

Name three under-rated things.

The beauty of silence.
During last week’s power outage I was stunned by the lovely sense of space that rises up only in the absence of background electrical hum.

Older women and wrinkles.
I prefer history to re-invention, so please don’t push the botox delete button.

Kid speak.
During a recent fireworks show, a four-year-old girl pointed to a brilliant multi-colored pinwheel and said, “Loud flower.” Now that’s real language.

———————

Yup, I completely agree with all of those.

Also, his thoughts on belief seem to be pretty useful, and I love his description (in the same article) of how stating your beliefs as such (rather than saying "I know"), and admitting to uncertainty where you have it, can make the people you’re talking to much more comfortable. I’ve done this consciously for a few years now — it goes along with the whole philosophy-nut trying-to-be-totally-honest thing — and he’s absolutely right. People are generally relieved when they can be part of a conversation that doesn’t require constantly bolstering their feelings and beliefs to make them seem firmer than they are. (Of course, some rather dim individuals will also take the linguistic cue to mean that they must know more than you, because they use the word "know" and you don’t! Fortunately, this doesn’t seem to actually win them many points with anybody else.)

Think I’ll have to get this book! Thanks to Psuke* for the link!

*Yes, to all you polyphaser people, that’s the Psuke Bariah, the other "very first Ubersleeper". She’ll annoy the crap out of you by having many more interesting traits than that, though.

…

Just for fun, here are my "Three under-rated things", too:

1. Concentration. Being completely enmeshed in just one thing, one single point of focus, not an iota of multitasking anywhere; the world disappears. But you don’t.

2. Assholes. As in assholish people: loud-mouths, humbugs, cussers-in-public. They say the things no-one else wants to, are not afraid of bucking authority, and will not change a damn thing to suit your precious feelings. They’re like walking lessons in patience and fortitude; plus, you can’t have a revolution without ‘em.

3. Confusion. That gut-deep feeling of just having no freaking idea, whether it’s trying to make sense of something you’re looking at, being unable to hear how the noise your friend is blasting at you is supposed to be music, or the meaning and direction of your whole life. The feeling of being mentally adrift is uncomfortable at first, but out of it come all the best and wildest possibilities…I used to hate being confused when I felt it all the time; now that I don’t so often, I miss it. The moments when I accepted my confusion have all been some of the best in my life.

This planet, this Universe, produces a hell of a lot of beautiful things.  It would be hard to even vote for one as "Most Beautiful", but if I had to nominate something myself, it would be…insanely creative people.  Insanely creative people just give me soulgasms, not kidding, cheesy made-up word intended.  Now, true insane-creativity can be difficult to distinguish from mere insanity, or worse, mere social posturing a la made-up shit.  But today, I have an example for you, of true, grade-A, wowee zowee, batshit whackaloon genius. 

Ladies and gentlemen…Tom Waits’ press conference.  [very many thanks to matthewgood.org for the link!]

Of course, Matt Good is no slouch in the borderline-crazy borderline-messiah category either…If you’re not sure, check out his proposed cult religion, which has a better plan and tells a better story than Scientology, all in one leaflet-sized rant. 

That’s one of those things you look back on and say, "Hmm, maybe I should have been concerned that it was so easy for me to come up with something like that…?" 

Nice.

Ah, boredom.  If you’re not polyphasic, you’ve probably whiffed it now and again; if you are polyphasic, you’ve learned to hate and fear it as a formidable enemy.  For, even once you’re adjusted, getting good and bored reeeeal late at night can be just icky.  Even if you aren’t physically tired, you’re staring at the clock at 11 p.m. with, say, two hours left until bedtime, and nothing much to do…and sleep just starts to sound nice.  Easy. 

On a personal note (y’know, because the Internet needs more personal notes), I was bored a lot as a child, so boredom has been a nemesis of mine for quite a while.  I have many, many ways around it, but unfortunately I’m human, so sometimes I get stuck with it anyway.  Sometimes, say, it’s late on a Tuesday night and I’m already overexposed to the computer, mom’s got the TV, and a raging case of poison ivy is making it tough to do much of anything else.  (Blessedly it stops at the wrists, so I can type.  …Figures it would find a way to make sure I didn’t need a day off work, though!)

Anyway, at such times, you become glad that you have the Internet to blather at.  Hi, Internet!  I’m bored!  Have a picture!  (It’s part of a foreign sign, courtesy of Engrish.com)

What a wonderful sentiment.  If only!

…In other not-very-newslike-news, someone from the building I work in caught me today and asked why I’m always going to sleep in my car.  I gave the short version, and nothing major happened, but I’ll confess, when he first said something, I was initially terrified.  I’m starting to wonder how long until I run into someone who’s heard of this, and I have to fess up to this being my blog.  o.0

I confess, under such circumstances, I may lie.  Or run away.  There’s a reason the ‘Net and I get along so well:  It lets me shoot my mouth off without coming out of the corner.  Every nerd’s dream.  (Make no mistake, generally I’m very loudmouthed for a nerd, but that’s just because shooting my mouth off is so often the stronger of the two desires.  Here, in Magic Diginonymous Land, I can have both!)

So there, you’ve been warned:  If you ever find me (now I feel like a living version of Where’s Waldo?), just don’t say anything.  Or say something benign, like, "Hey, aren’t you that nerd who used to sit in the back of the really rowdy club in Detroit and take notes while everyone else got their freak on?".  I would happily fess to that.  ;)

Okay, ya’ll have helped me kill enough time now — I can read for the rest, or, worst comes to worst, pull out my sword and reclaim the TV.  I’m almost done with the first episode of the Xenosaga game, darnit, and the suspense is…well, confusing me.  But in a good way.