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letterstoleia · 4 years ago

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Important Lessons Learned from Gabby and Brian

As an author and advocate for survivors of domestic violence, I’ve learned a lot about the predictable patterns of unhealthy relationships. After years of personal experiences, research, and outreach, I’ve learned to recognize the tell-tale signs of abuse. I am not a licensed therapist, social worker, police officer, or minister. So please understand I shared my thoughts as 3 a.m. musings. When a few people asked me to make the post public, I agreed, reluctantly. I had no idea this message would resonate with so many people. I've worked back through the original post to explain a bit better how I'm feeling. I realize not everyone will agree with me, and I respect all opinions and views. All I ask is that we engage in respectful discourse on all sides. Thank you all.

In recent days, the tragic events involving Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie have given us a lot to learn. This case is still under investigation, and I can only make assumptions based on the textbook patterns of abuse I’ve witnessed too many times to count. I also recognize that multiple families are grieving, and I have tremendous empathy for everyone involved. However, many survivors will resonate with at least some of the following insights, and I’m hoping we can use this tragedy to shift the way we as a culture approach the complicated issue of domestic abuse.

Let’s examine 30 important lessons this couple teaches us:

1. Followers on social media saw a smiling, happy couple, full of love and wanderlust, setting out for a cross-country adventure while documenting all the joys of young life. In many cases, targets become very good at smiling through the pain.

2. When the public was shown body camera footage captured by Moab City Police officer Daniel Robbins, (who pulled Laundrie and Petito over after the 911 call on August 12), some viewers assumed Petito was suffering from mental illness and Laundrie, while nervous, was the steadier of the two.

3. Other viewers assumed both partners were equally at fault—the old “it takes two” myth that doesn’t really apply to most abusive situations.

4. Some people even assumed Petito was the abuser and Laundrie was the victim.

5. These three assumptions probably crossed everyone’s mind as a possibility (they did mine). Healthy minded people tend to give others the benefit of the doubt, especially when someone is being accused of a negative act. Also, we can all understand that mental illness is a difficult situation and can tax even the kindest most gentle of souls (and the people who love them). Unfortunately, in many cases, this thought pattern leads us to assume the victim is mentally ill or that the victim is to blame for an altercation.

6. “Victim blaming” can happen even in the worst cases of abuse because we don’t see the longitudinal story unfolding. What we don’t see is that the target has managed to keep things together until she reached her threshold, at which time we may see her crying, yelling, or breaking down emotionally. By exhibiting those behaviors, many might assume the target is “crazy,” and it’s natural for us to feel as if the more stable person is more trustworthy.

7. If we listen carefully to Laundrie’s conversation with the officers, he even laughs and says, “She’s crazy.” (17.09) Then he dismisses it as a joke. Of course, he’s already put this claim in the officers’ minds (and by the nonchalant way he says it, many might assume it’s not the first time he’s said these words.)

8. So while viewers (and officers) start wondering if perhaps the target is “crazy,” the abuser plays the part of the poor, patient partner who has to deal with this irrational person. In the video, Laundrie mentions Petito’s anxiety and her OCD, painting her as an unstable partner. (Please note: I’m not at all justifying any physical violence against either party. No one should intentionally harm any other person. Period.)

9. A typical abuser would be skilled at convincing people that he’s innocent, while in fact he’s been acting very differently behind closed doors, pushing his target to this point intentionally and feeding on her emotional break. Many abusers LOVE to see evidence that they’ve hurt their target. They LOVE to see their target in pain. For this reason, “breaking” the target is usually the goal from the start. In cases of abuse, it may take an abuser hours, weeks, months, or even years to break the target, but he won’t stop until he gets that reaction, and then he’ll point the finger and say, “See? She’s crazy. I’m just trying to keep her calm.” And then he’ll do it again. And again. And again.

10. As a result, some people will buy into that false narrative. Even the target can be brainwashed to doubt her own truth. Which may be one reason we see Petito making many excuses for Laundrie’s behavior and taking the blame for everything.

11. In contrast, we see Laundrie blaming Petito, insisting he never hit her and saying he was just trying to keep her calm. He’s charming. He comes across as the loving and loyal partner. He’s joking around with the officers and even gives one a fist bump in the end. All the while, his fiancée is at risk of being charged with domestic assault and possibly spending the night in jail.

12. Later, we’ll hear the 911 recording that (it seems) the responding officers were not fully informed of at the time: “I’d like to report a domestic dispute.” The 49 second audio recording continues as the caller says, “The gentleman was slapping the girl.” When the dispatcher asks him to confirm that the man was slapping the girl, the caller responds, “Yes, and then we stopped, they ran up and down the sidewalk, he proceeded to hit her, hopped in the car, and they drove off.”

13. But long before the 911 call was made public, many survivors could already see through the spin playing out on the video footage. They easily recognized the “red flags” because these cycles become the norm for victims of long-standing abuse. Many targets eventually become conditioned to believe everything the abuser does is her fault. Covering for the abuser, accepting all the blame, trying harder to make the abuser happy—this warped reality becomes the only truth a target knows.

14. Also, it seems clear that Petito doesn’t want her fiancé to be in any trouble. She’d rather pay the price and protect the man she loves. And because she probably believes he only acted this way because of her mood/behaviors/anxiety/OCD/job, she doesn’t want him to be blamed. This is also the norm in abusive relationships.

15. Many experienced and well-trained officers see right through this typical pattern. Others buy the cover-up story. And, sadly, because some officers are also abusers, some side with the abuser even when they know exactly what’s going on. Throughout the video, we get the sense that Officer Robbins senses there’s more to the story.

16. I credit the police in Petito’s situation, especially Officer Robbins. The four responding officers (two of whom were park rangers) remained calm, they separated the couple, they interviewed them individually, they split them up for the night, they consulted the domestic violence shelter … many would say they did everything right considering the information they had at the time.

17. I imagine the officers involved may be suffering from tremendous guilt and wondering if they could have prevented Petito’s death, but I want to give credit to the officers in this case. While it’s easy to look back and say maybe they should have handled things differently, knowing what we now know, I was impressed with how well they treated both Laundrie and Petito (and, sadly, I was thinking how rare it is to see that level of respect and professionalism in most cases of domestic violence, particularly in the South where I’ve been most involved with survivors’ stories.)

18. After Petito was reported missing, many people expressed shock in response to the Laundrie family’s refusal to cooperate early in the investigation. Petito reportedly lived with the Laundrie family for more than a year. Anyone can see that this family will do anything to protect their son, even at the cost of an innocent young woman who was a real part of their family and soon to be their daughter-in-law. While most of us can certainly understand parents wanting to protect their son, most would agree they crossed a moral line when his fiancée went missing.

19. But perhaps it goes deeper than that. Perhaps what we’re seeing is a system of enablers who not only allowed their son to abuse Petito (which may have been a factor in her reported anxiety) but also a system of gaslighters who may have always been shifting the truth to keep Petito confused and make her believe she was the problem.

20. It’s not a far stretch to assume Petito was caught in a system of abuse. And once a target is caught in that psychological web, it’s extremely difficult to see a way out. Reality becomes flipped.

21. It’s also worth noting that Petito and Laundrie had been involved in various levels of a relationship since their teens. This is also commonly observed in dysfunctional partnerships.

22. These immature relationships work beautifully when both partners grow together and mature emotionally. But when one wants to keep the other down, naïve, and under his control … and the other is growing, learning, and maturing … it doesn’t work.

23. We hear Petito tell the officer that Laundrie didn’t think she could succeed with her travel blog (3.25). It seems clear that he didn’t believe in her and that he was trying to make her doubt herself.

24. Throughout the conversation, he implies that he locked her out of the van because she wouldn’t calm down. But when we listen to the full video, it seems he was upset because they’d spent too much time at the coffee shop with her working on her website when he wanted to go hiking. This suggests that because she wasn’t in the van when he was ready to leave, he lost his temper.

25. In the moments that followed, the altercation became physical. Reportedly, Laundrie squeezed Petito’s face with his hand, cut her down verbally, and criticized her.

26. Some would argue that this escalating abuse typically persists until the target reacts emotionally and/or physically. If this case follows the norm, Laundrie may have been trying to break her spirit, intentionally.

27. Why? Again, if this case follows the typical situation, it would likely be because Petito’s focus wasn’t 100% on Laundrie. She had found this new job she enjoyed. She was succeeding at it, and it was allowing her to connect with other people. (Remember, she’d already left her job as a nutritionist to travel around the country with Laundrie.)

28. In a healthy relationship, the new job might be considered a positive opportunity for Petito. Especially considering Laundrie admits they have very little money (not even enough to afford a hotel room to prevent his fiancée from going to jail). But in an unhealthy relationship, the abuser wants the target all to himself. And when that doesn’t happen, he can become increasingly violent.

29. Petito now had this one little piece of her life that Laundrie couldn’t control, so if we’re looking at textbook patterns, perhaps her blog angered him. Perhaps he didn’t like all the attention she was getting on social media. Perhaps he punished her for it. And then a cycle developed. Even though she was doing nothing wrong by building a new career.

30. The next thing we know, we have a missing person, a recovered body, a young man on the run, and several families destroyed. Too much grief to measure. And the truth is, it will happen again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, until we learn to recognize and respond to abusive situations in healthier ways.

The overall takeaway?

When we see someone at her emotional end during a domestic dispute, we shouldn’t assume she’s crazy. We shouldn’t buy into the false narrative given by the abuser. We shouldn’t believe the cover-up story by the target who has been conditioned to carry all the blame and shame. And we shouldn’t assume they’re going to be okay.

Instead, we should all learn the difference between healthy and unhealthy relationships. We should learn to recognize the warning signs of abuse. We should engage in respectful, fact-based conversations about trauma bonds, abusive cycles, and emotional intelligence. We should be familiar with terms like gaslighting, hovering, love bombing, enabling, triangulating, and projecting. We should stop blaming targets and help them reclaim their truth. And we should stop repeating the age-old myths that keep targets trapped in these dangerous and all-too-often deadly cycles.

Finally, while I’ve used the most common scenario of male-on-female violence in this article, we should recognize that abuse crosses all barriers and can impact anyone regardless of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, religious affiliation, age, or socio-economic level. And we should stop assuming these situations will get better in time. Personally, I haven’t heard of one abusive relationship that became healthier. Not one. Not with therapy. Not with church. Not with prayer or forgiveness or complete surrender. When an abuser is determined to destroy his target, he will not stop until that target is erased from this world or stripped from her life. And in many cases, he’ll walk away without any consequences, often taking the target’s finances, home, vehicle, reputation, or even her children with him.

Please don’t let the next statistic be you or someone you love. For support, contact the Domestic Violence Hotline. From a safe phone, call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) or text “START” to 88788.

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chibimyumi · 6 years ago

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Sexism against men

【Reponse to this post】

Dear @nunted,

✬Hello, first of all, men have to suffer getting their suffering under sexism denied :)))

✬ When a man is being sexually harassed or bullied in general, he gets victim-blamed by being shamed for his lack of masculinity, and cannot expect compassion from others.

✬ Especially in the 19th century, men were sent into the most dangerous jobs (the sewers, the mines, the battlefields etc.), and this exposure to danger was glorified as ‘manly duty’.

✬ Men were sent into death or a return with PTSD, and have to be happy about “being a hero of the country!!!”

✬ Men’s emotions were and are still being denied. Men are not allowed outlet for their grief, fears, and what not. Men have to either swallow these pains, or be swallowed. The only outlet men were really allowed was anger.

✬ Young boys were already being told that they cannot cry when they’re hurt, because “boys don’t cry”.

✬ Men were denied the chance of actually raising their children and form meaningful bonds with them, because “it’s a WOMAN’S JOBBBB”.

✬ A man’s value is defined by his productivity in a job that society chose FOR HIM. Anyone who did not live up to those arbitrary social expectations is made out to be a ‘lesser man’.

✬ The phrase “be a man” or “man up” is just a way of saying: “if you don’t live up to social expectations, YOUR identity is invalid.”

✬ Men are shamed for physically under-performing. “Can’t you lift that? You’re a man, right?”

✬ Boys who bully or misbehave are not sufficiently corrected, because “boys will be boys,”, and so boys have a greater risk of becoming socially loathed adults (from assholes to outright criminals).

✬ Men are made to bear the full financial burden of a family, and when he cannot he is seen as incompetent.

✬ Men are being pitted against each other in a futile battle of being acknowledged as ‘the alpha male’, of who is worthier of getting X, Y, or Z (often women), resulting in a longstanding tradition of masculine competition. (e.g. dick comparing is not something just done for fun; it reflects a very unhealthy psychology of lack of self-esteem.)

✬ A man’s success in ‘getting the girl’ is made into a measure standard of his value as human. Men who were not interested in ‘getting the girl’ for whatever reason were therefore considered less valid.

✬ Men are assumed to be ‘less refined’, which is glorified as ‘appropriately masculine’. But men were first denied the opportunity to hone such ‘refined skills’, and miss out on options that might otherwise have become their hobby or passion.

ET CETERA

I could go on, but I really hope that by this point you got the point.

I find it very ironic that you should respond in this way to a post where I never mentioned whether men did or did not suffer, on top of having explained why it is foolish to play Oppression Olympics.

Before anyone is going to respond with: “yeah but women......” I will say it again; we should NOT be playing Oppression Olympics.

“People want to appear clever by nominating the victim-champion, but perhaps it is best to ‘actually’ be clever, and lend our ears and compassion to multiple people’s pains.” (quote from earlier post)

I hope more people will learn to compute a higher number than one (1) group of victims.

Sexism is a systematic oppression mechanism that hurts literally everyone for different reasons in different ways. For the greatest part of history, women and/or ““lesser men”” have been made to suffer to accentuate the artificial superiority of men. Men meanwhile, have been made to suffer in a race based on unrealistic standards.

People would naturally find out that the expectations society prescribed for them is not right, and so sexism - or ‘gender roles’ - has been reinforced through centuries in the shape of a punishment-and-reward system. In this system EVERYONE is being punished and rewarded based on qualities that were arbitrarily decided by society.

Please do NOT continue this Oppression Olympics, because by doing so we are falling right back into this formula of: “pushing down others so one can artificially stand on top”.

I case you or anyone else is wondering why I posted this ⇊ picture and called this sexist, please allow me to explain.

The psychology behind narratives wherein a woman bullies a man, and that being played as humorous, is that it revolves around the (subconscious) sexist assumption that:

1. a woman can’t be a threat, so we don’t need to take her seriously. She is very infantilised and considered funny in the same way many find a baby looking murderous funny.

2. a man who is being bullied is inferiour, and should therefore also not be taken seriously. A man who is unsuccessful in deflecting harm or too “gentle/weak” to fight back is considered the clown - funny.

The moment we turn this formula around where we see Nino (♂Nina) bullying the female Phantomhive staff, he would automatically be called out for being a sexist, ‘a man who ignores and shit-talks women’.

If it were Elliot (♂Lizzie) who saw Ciella (♀Ciel) on top of Siegfried (♂Sieglinde), and immediately launched into a spin-attack for Ciella’s head, he’d automatically be considered a territorial dick.

The atmosphere would change quite dramatically. Why? Because we ARE taught to consider men a threat.

I could go on forever about the mechanisms of sexism and how everyone is a loser, but I don’t want to find the upper limit of Tumblr’s wordcount, or give them reason to introduce one.

I trust this has been enough to inform you a bit, but if you still wish to argue you are very welcome. But I advise you to consider your arguments or claims for a little longer before presenting them to me.

My Ask box has already been temporarily closed for a bit because it is a bit flooded now. But you contacted me through comment, so I trust you also know how to contact me again if need be.

#Kuroshitsuji #Black Butler #Sexism #oppression olympics #Sexism is for everyone #EVERYONE is a loser

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possiblyimbiassed · 6 years ago

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John Watson and The Abominable Bride

After reading this brilliant analysis and the following interesting discussion about gay subtext in Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, also commented by @thepersianslipper, I felt inspired to explore a bit further what Mofftiss might have made of Holmes’ and Watson’s relationship in the episode The Abominable Bride - TAB - of BBC Sherlock. TAB, which is supposed to mainly take place in 1895 (albeit inside Sherlock’s head), seems to be focused on Mofftiss’ take on the Victorian original of their work. In particular I wanted to explore the role of John Watson in this episode, which I suspect is a commentary on ACD himself. I interpret TAB’s Watson as ACD’s alter ego in this context, since he’s (supposedly) the storyteller. What kind of stories did ACD actually write, what did he put in, what did he leave out and what did he leave obvious only to people approaching the story with ‘queer’ glasses?

TAB raises some questions that I think aren’t found - or at least aren’t that very obvious - in the rest of the show. There are similarities, of course, but I think TAB is a rather different display, and not only because the story seems to be re-told from a 19th century perspective. TAB has lines that seem to refer directly to literary criticism of ACD’s work, rather than being meaningful elements of the plot line in Mofftiss’ adaptation. It’s all disguised as Watson talking about his published works in The Strand, which was actually ACD’s own publisher IRL. But I think that’s a bit different from modern John publishing entries on his own blog, which is not Mofftiss’ principal channel of publishing, even if they’ve made it accessible to all viewers who have Internet.

So how is Watson depicted in TAB? For one thing, he starts out clean-shaven by the time he first meets Holmes, but as soon as we see him married, he wears a mustache. Not like the dull, ill-fitting one from TEH, but a ‘virile’, Victorian version which is far more similar to ACD’s own mustache (X).

But in TAB Watson also appears like a man attempting (but failing) to keep up a ‘manly’ facade by trying to lord over the other sex. His treatment of his wife is one example, which gets more contradicted and opposed by Mary the more the episode advances. Watson is rather condescending when she asks him - as opposed to her behaviour in canon - not to leave her behind, and he responds by basically telling her to go back to the kitchen.

MRS WATSON: And am I just to sit here? WATSON: Not at all, my dear. We’ll be hungry later!

Then he runs off with Holmes as usual.

Watson wonders why on earth Mary is trying to be a client. But in ACD’s stories, Watson’s wife has only a role to play as long as she is a client. After that, she’s reduced to some kind of silent support-base for Watson’s relationship with Holmes, who repeatedly encourages her husband to rather spend time with his dear friend Holmes than with her. Not very convincing if you ask me. ;)

An example from FIVE: “My wife was on a visit to her mother’s, and for a few days I was a dweller once more in my old quarters at Baker Street”. (At this point ACD conveniently ‘forgets’ that Mary Morstan is an orphan in the earlier story The Sign of Four (SIGN)). And why would her journey mean that her husband automatically should sleep at 221 B anyway? ;))

Another example from The Naval Treaty (NAVA): “My wife agreed with me that not a moment should be lost in laying the matter before him, and so within an hour of breakfast-time I found myself back once more in the old rooms in Baker Street.” This was supposedly in the month that immediately followed on their wedding. Hmm...

ACD literally wrote Mary out of the story by marrying her with Watson, rather than doing the opposite, which would have seemed more logical to me. Why create a character whose interesting story we’re allowed to know, only to push her out of sight as soon as she marries one of the protagonists? To me this seems almost too wasteful, even with Victorian (sexist) standards of depicting women. Even when Mary is dead and gone, Watson’s ‘wife’ is still referred to every now and then, but without offering her even a name. Which leaves it pretty obvious, in my opinion, that this wife is merely a facade - but apparently important as such.

Mary in both HLV, TAB and TST seems reluctant to accept this role (except when Sherlock reveals her as a facade by projecting her picture on a real, empty facade), but in TLD ghost!Mary encourages John to go and solve crimes together with Sherlock: “make him wear the hat”. In other words, John and Sherlock are allowed to spend most of their lives together, but only as long as the ghost of Watson’s wife still hangs over them as a heterosexual alibi, and as long as the Work can be used as an excuse. This comes directly from Doyle, as far as I can see.

In the case of TAB’s Mrs Hudson, she has very few lines; all she does is serving breakfast or tea, and the literary critic’s perspective is even spelled out by ACD Watson: “Well, within the narrative, that is – broadly speaking – your function“. Which is later, when the character refuses to talk at all, backed up by Holmes: “I fear she’s branched into literary criticism by means of satire. It is a distressing trend in the modern landlady”. And to be honest, I can’t think of many lines from Mrs Hudson in canon, in spite of her being Holmes’ landlady for a very long time. She must certainly have seen a lot of ‘these gentlemen’. :) In the rest of BBC Sherlock she plays a far more important part, to the point that I believe even her more off-hand remarks are actually significant to the story.

Watson’s housemaid in TAB is also treated badly: he rants at her, and when she observes (probably to really rub it in for the audience) that his marriage doesn’t seem to be very happy and fulfilling, and then asks why she is never mentioned in the stories, he orders her out of the room, and then immediately goes running after Holmes.

(Isn’t it interesting, by the way, that the greenish tiles in Watson’s fireplace are so similar to those at modern 221B? ;) This scene is confirmed to happen inside Sherlock’s head, but very similar tiles also appear in the drug den of HLV...)

As for [Molly] Hooper (a John mirror, I believe, created specifically for BBC Sherlock), there’s the morgue scene where her appearance is very similar to Watson’s; the colour scheme, the clothes and even the ACD-style mustache is there.

And that’s exactly when Watson starts talking about a possible ‘secret twin’ in the murder case.

But if Watson and Hooper are metaphorical twins here, one of them is the one who otherwise in the show has made it quite obvious that they’re in love with Sherlock Holmes, while the other one tries (but hopelessly fails) to hide this fact. I also think it’s significant that for the first time in BBC Sherlock, Molly Hooper is recognised as a doctor (a pathologist) in charge of the morgue, rather than any kind of assistant working at a lab. But then Watson ‘outs’ Hooper as a woman, taking his hat off for her while still being dismissive. Is it his own bisexuality he’s dismissing?

Just one more reflection upon Watson and the women in TAB. Lady Carmichael, whose husband Eustace is mocking her and looking down on her, is called Louisa. ACD’s first wife was also named Louisa. They married after knowing each other only for a few months, which is even less than the time between John meeting Mary and their marriage in BBC Sherlock. Louisa died of consumption (chronic tuberculosis) at the age of 49. Watson states in the morgue scene of TAB that Emelia Ricoletti, the ’Abominable Bride’, was already dying from consumption when she committed suicide.

Ghosts are a recurring theme in TAB (as well as in TLD). Holmes makes it clear that they don’t exist - ”save those we make for ourselves” - and that ’the abominable bride’ as a vengeful ghost is created by trickery.

But Watson in TAB is also more superstitious than John ever gives us reason to think he is in the modern show. And according to several sources, ACD was a fervent believer in the spiritual world and life after death (X, X, X).

Speaking of vengeful ghosts, I think one of the names Holmes suggests for this case, before Watson decides to call it “The Abominable Bride”, is quite interesting: The League of Furies. The furies in Greek mythology were vengeful goddesses. One of their explicit purposes was punishing oath breakers and marital infidelity - they were jealousy personified. It’s hard to see the logics in TAB of this cult of women seeking revenge by murder, for crimes that are not actually specified. Or committing suicide merely to prove a point. Vengeance seems more apt in the case of the victims of Charles Augustus Milverton’s blackmail (CHAS), but in TAB the crimes aren’t revealed. All they tell us about Emelia’s husband, for example, is that he “had his way with her”. But since this is all happening inside Sherlock’s mind palace, I think it makes far more sense (as someone has suggested - was it @ebaeschnbliah? @raggedyblue? Sorry for my bad memory) that what we’re actually seeing is Sherlock beating himself over the head with metaphors for emotions. It’s not about the actual women of the show, but rather about the fury of neglected emotions. The vengeful ‘furies’ are over him and John and their mirrors, for having been repressed for such a long time.

Another interesting topic in TAB is the five orange pips that Eustace Carmichael receives, apparently from the women of the cult (who bear pointy hoods like the KKK). Eustace is terrified by the threat and believes that his old sins are coming back to him, while still trying to keep up a brave facade, outwardly blaming his wife for being hysteric. But soon he’s stabbed to death. While the five ‘pips’ also appears as ‘Greenwich pips’ already in TGG (which some brilliant people have pointed out resembles a five-act play, where S5 might be the unresolved final ‘pip’), these real pips are from ACD’s The Five Orange Pips (FIVE).

Doyle’s story is about a rather unpleasant uncle of Holmes’ client, who was a racist and member of the KKK in the States. Following his escape back to Europe after the civil war, the remnants of the Klan seek him out and threaten him with orange pips as a signal, and later kills him. When the client visits Holmes and Watson, the following dialogue occurs, which is exactly the same as the conversation between Louisa Carmichael and Holmes in TAB:

“I have come for advice.” “That is easily got.” “And help.” “That is not always so easy.”

The same threat and killing happens also to the client’s father and eventually to the client himself (who is named John, by the way). Holmes figures out who the culprits are, but by then their sailing ship has already left London. The story ends with Holmes and Watson being reached by the news that parts of the wrecked ship have been found drifting in the Atlantic, but the destiny of the crew is unknown. Un unsolved case by ACD that is still waiting for its solution in Series 5?

Transcripts from Ariane De Vere (X). Screen-caps (partly) from here.

@sarahthecoat @gosherlocked

#BBC Sherlock and ACD Canon #the five orange pips #the league of furies #the abominable bride

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c-is-for-circinate · 6 years ago

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Caleb's attitude about "using" his friends (Ep 49) seems interesting in light of his feelings about Scourgers & the BAE this episode. He responds to Beau with "It's me and my friends", so he's willing to admit an emotional connection. later he says they could "take hold of some of these Scourgers and use them to reach deeper" (into the Empire). Of course there's more Scourgers than the BAE, but I'm interested if he thinks he can fully divide Astrid & Eodwulf from the dangers they pose...

I wonder about this a lot!

Like, there is a way of reading those facts that says ‘Caleb still considers Astrid and Eodwulf his friends, deep down, on a level he doesn’t even put the rest of the Nein’. Likewise, I’m very curious about the possibility that Caleb might in some small measure hope that Eodwulf or Astrid could be salvageable, rescuable, redeemable, even. I don’t think that’s quite where his head is at--I don’t think it’s anything like as simple as that, for one--but if either of those things turns out to be part of the bigger, multi-faceted picture of Caleb, I’d be into it for sure.

I also wonder if instead, there’s sort of a...mental shift based on timeline and setting? Ugh, let me find the words for this...

So I think that, at age 16 and 17, Bren had friends, and those friends were Astrid and Eodwulf. I think that their lives were hellish and complicated, but if you asked them to name truths about their world, that friendship being a solid and real and maybe even unbreakable thing would probably have been one of the first, one of the core truths. A cornerstone of Bren’s life, even. I think Bren was probably very, very sure of that friendship. Bren was good at being sure about things.

And then Bren’s life fell to pieces, and Bren died in so many different ways, so many different times, all at once and slow over the course of years, and now there’s Caleb standing in his place. Caleb doesn’t do surety like that. Caleb does doubt, and self-recrimination, and sits alone in a basement with a skeleton or in the middle of the night on watch arguing out loud with himself because he’s not sure about anything. Which includes friendship.

Caleb in episode 49 talking about how he’s using the Nein is very much a Caleb who just isn’t fucking sure, even of himself and of his own intentions. What’s the difference between love and selfishness? What’s the difference between a healthy relationship and codependence? What’s the difference between a friendship and a business transaction, a friend and a tool, a person you care about and your next victim? Caleb doesn’t know, not at this point, not in this life. Bren knew, at age seventeen on top of the world, but that certainty died with him. Caleb these days has no fucking clue. He can love the Nein, care for them, act and try to be in all practical ways a friend to them, and still remain unsure of himself and the term because he doesn’t trust it or himself any more.

It doesn’t surprise me to hear Caleb say, without equivocation or hesitation, “me and my friends” when he talks about himself and Astrid and Eodwulf, because “me and my friends” is exactly who the three of them were, back when they were. Vollstreker was Bren and Astrid and Eodwulf, and they were friends. But in terms of how he thinks about them now, how Caleb thinks of Scourgers in the world before him in this day and age?

You know it’s funny, but it’s only just occuring to me now that, for all we’ve gotten plenty of Caleb guilt and regret over what he did to his parents, I don’t remember seeing any ‘I wish I could have saved my friends’ alongside it. I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if Caleb now files Astrid and Eodwulf away in the same mental place as himself/Bren: terrible, unforgivable people who did horrific things and do not deserve redemption or salvation. And I sort of wonder if his desire to use Scourgers to get deeper isn’t so much a desire to turn/save/redeem his previous friends, as it is a sort of recognition: I know how these people work. I know how to work like that. They may be terrible but they can be made into tools, just as I am terrible but my own skills can be made into tools, to accomplish a good end.

I think I’d very much be up for a narrative where Caleb, who has so little faith in his own ability to be redeemed, is ready to absolutely write off Astrid or Eodwulf when we meet them, and it’s the rest of the Nein--who know, in spite of everything, that Caleb has good in him--who start saying ‘hey, wait a second now’. I’m also absolutely on board for Caleb full of yet more of that constant inner turmoil and conflict, who still cares for these people and begins to wonder if maybe he can save them, while at the same time hating them and himself and everything they ever stood for, trying to figure out how to resolve blame for things too many people deserve blame for. Knowing the game/knowing Liam, I’d put money on that being the story we get--but whichever the dimensions of the eventual inner conflict, I’m definitely on the edge of my seat for Astrid and/or Eodwulf to finally make it onscreen.

#asked and answered #celestialily #critical role

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omenapologist-moved · 5 years ago

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I stopped responding to additions to @yakuwuza’s callout for me because there is absolutely no point, as she will always try to find a way to twist the narrative so that I am never, ever in the right and she is the victim always. She’s 27 years old and LET ME REMIND YOU, this all started last year over kin drama. This shit is fucking ridiculous.

But I’ll respond to bits and pieces here. (CW: mentions/discussion of pedophilia)

I’m not a fucking pedophile. I’m literally not attracted to kids. I’m a fucking csa survivor for christ’s sake. It’s fucking insane that you would accuse someone of pedophilia based on 2 (two) tumblr posts by them talking about:

1. Two teenage characters having their first sexual act together, which Nico claimed to be “child erotica”:

The vaguely sexual nature of this post is pretty clearly not the point. Were you ever a teenager in love? Were you ever a teenager that had (consensual and loving) sex for the first time? Bc I sure was a teen who experienced all that once, and I fucking relate! This is literally not child erotica. You literally had to reach so hard and twist so much shit around to claim it is.

2. A fucking ecchi anime. Seriously it’s a goddamn cartoon. I literally watch it because it’s really fucking goofy and lighthearted and makes me laugh, which is what I need rn considering all the shit I’m going through (that I no longer talk about anywhere on the internet because you will find a way to literally victim blame me for it, every single time. because that’s what abusers do. they try to make their victims look like the “REAL” abuser. that is exactly what nico does.)

The anime in question is Ishuzoku Reviewers, an anime about some dudes visiting brothels run by different fantasy species/with different gimmicks and reviewing them:

I’m not claiming it’s woke. It’s a horny ecchi anime! But literally every single character is 18+. For what it is, it’s pretty self aware- and again, fucking funny. Nico ADMITS to never having seen it for herself or looked into it at all, she literally just looked at the art style and went “must be lolicon!” when it’s not. Styles can be cutesy, characters can be drawn cutesy, and they aren’t automatically children. Like fuck dude, I get told I look like a 16/17 year old pretty often! Chronic baby face problems. Does that mean that anyone who has fucked me is a pedophile because clearly they want to fuck 16/17 year olds? No.

Nico constantly refuses to accept any ounce of nuance about any given situation. Nico constantly rejects the idea that she could ever be wrong about anything. Nico is a fucking dangerous person, not only because of her obsessive and frankly abusive tendencies, but because of her ignorance and ability -and willingness- to twist things around so violently.

There’s more coming from a few different fronts here soon. I’m not being silent anymore, I’m not just going to wait for this to roll over- bc it clearly won’t. We’ve collected enough info to let everyone know the sort of person she and the people in the group chat with her are. The sort of people that dox, obsess, stalk, manipulate, abuse, and harass.

#\\\^◊^///

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lindyhunt · 6 years ago

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Everything That Upset the Internet This Week

What is the web-o-sphere angry about this week? A pop star who claimed her lyrics will solve racism, the meaning behind the MAGA hat and a Latina actress who’s being called “anti-black.” Here’s everything you need to know.

Ariana Grande Responds to “7 Rings” Backlash With a Fan Comment

THE STORY: Everyone from 2 Chainz to Soulja Boy to Princess Nokia has taken issue with the lyrics, beat and video for “7 Rings,” Ariana Grande’s recently released single about popping Champagne, splurging at Tiffany’s and being unapologetically rich.

“Does that sound familiar to you? ‘Cause that sound really familiar to me. Oh my god!” Princess Nokia said in a since-deleted video. “Ain’t that the lil’ song I made about brown women and their hair? Hmm… sounds about white.”

Grande then (seemingly in response) reposted a fan’s Instagram Story about why the “7 Rings” hair lyric—’You like my hair? Gee, thanks, just bought it…’—was justified: “White women talking about their weaves is how we’re gonna solve racism,” wrote the Instagram user. Grande added that she had “so much love” for the fan, finishing the sentiment with a signature Ari black heart emoji.

View this post on Instagram

This #PostAndDelete by #ArianaGrande has fans upset because they feel she’s missing the point of the backlash. Meanwhile, #ScooterBraun says #7Rings has hit a record on #Spotify (See previous posts)

A post shared by The Shade Room (@theshaderoom) on Jan 19, 2019 at 11:32am PST

Grande’s story was quickly taken down—but not before it was screen capped and shared across the web.

THE REACTION:

When black women wear weave it’s ghetto and trash and we’re bald but now miss Ariana says that corny ass line everyone and their mom is hype ab it. I love Ariana but bitch NO. @arianagrande

— oh k . (@xchancelorswife) January 19, 2019

Soo i show up to twitter seeing that Ariana grande said white women talking about weaves will end racism….. pic.twitter.com/5emt6Inrdz

— Amen & Gin (@_HeavensAngel_) January 20, 2019

@ArianaGrande please delete ur story and apologise. it was really insensitive. if it was meant seriously or sarcastically, it doesn’t matter, it was wrong of u to post something like that.

— lola (@styIesdrew) January 19, 2019

RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE RAGE: Grande slid into the comments section of The Shade Room’s post, leaving a heartfelt apology. “Hi hi,” she wrote. “I think her intention was to be like… yay a white person disassociating the negative stariotype [sic] that is paired with the word ‘weave’… however I’m so sorry my response was out of pocket or if it came across the wrong way. Thanks for opening the conversation and like… to everyone for talking to me about it. It’s never my intention to offend anybody.”

A quick delete, apology and statement of appreciation for the communal conversation when she missteps—she has this whole backlash response thing down to a formula, doesn’t she? Besides, was there really ever any doubt that Ariana Grande’s hair is real…

Fox News Compares Judging MAGA Hat to Blaming Rape Victims’ Outfits

THE STORY: So you know those MAGA hat-wearing Kentucky teens who taunted an indigenous elder at a Washington protest? Of course you do. They’ve been the centre of the news cycle for the past week: the clip went viral, different narratives were spun on each side of the political spectrum and Nicholas Sandmann, “The MAGA Hat Boy,” was invited to share his non-apology on the Today Show. And then, Fox News’ The Five hopped in on the conversation to state that judging these young boys based on their Trump-affiliated merch is comparable to judging a victim of sexual assault based on their outfit at the time of the crime.

“What kills me is the idea [that], if you’re wearing something, you had it coming. We’ve learned that that’s not what you say to people,” said host Greg Gutfeld.

THE REACTION:

Aren't the Fox viewers and pundits usually the people that would do that anyways?

— Area Man | UTE (@veggiescott) January 24, 2019

#FOXNews used rape victims to defend RACIST #MAGA teens

The MAGA hat is an open embrace of #Trumpism and everything he stands for — which is BIGOTRY, XENOPHOBIA, ETHNIC CLEANSING, CORRUPTION, and HATRED.

LIKE DONNING a SWASTIKA#MOG https://t.co/3Sx79N2cf2

— Michael O'Grady (@mog7546) January 24, 2019

What does a MAGA hat signify? Does a pair of “provocative clothes” scream racism, misogyny, and other bullshit? Just say you’re a rape victim-blamer and go.

— 권치용 | 秋 (@californiaaki) January 24, 2019

RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE RAGE: The commentators are right on one thing: you should never judge a woman’s choice of clothing when a violent crime is committed against her. What they’ve done here, however, is set up a false equivalence. The MAGA hat is not a meaningless piece of apparel—and as far as I’ve heard, a mini skirt or tube top isn’t widely perceived to express hateful views towards marginalized people. (A Zara jacket with the words “I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?” scrawled on the back, however, shares its message loud and clear.)

When people put on that red cap, they know the message they’re sending. It’s really no different than any other baseball hat: when you’re wearing a blue Maple Leaf on your forehead, you’re signalling to those around you that, for whatever reason, you’re a fan of Toronto’s hockey team. Wearing a MAGA hat aligns you with the president’s exclusionist policies and hateful rhetoric, and if you’re putting one on, you should know that—even if you’re a 17-year-old high school student.

Gina Rodriguez Addresses Accusations of Being Anti-Black With Tears

THE STORY: Back in November, Porter‘s “Women in Television” roundtable with actresses Gina Rodriguez, Gabrielle Union, Ellen Pompeo, and Emma Roberts went viral online. Pompeo was praised for calling out the lack of diversity in the room, while Rodriguez caught heat for commenting on the intersectional aspect of the gender pay gap in America.

“White women get paid more than black women, black women get paid more than Asian women, Asian women get paid more than Latina women,” Rodriguez said. “It’s like a very scary space to step into.”

Her statement sparked backlash, with many accusing the Golden Globe-winning Jane the Virgin star of being “anti-black�� and pitting POC women against one another. Months later, during an appearance on Sway in the Morning, she broke down into tears as addressed the controversy.

“The backlash was devastating, to say the least,” said Rodriguez. “The black community was the only community I looked towards growing up. We didn’t have many Latino shows and the black community made me feel like I was seen. So to get anti-black is to say I’m anti-family.”

THE REACTION:

Listen @HereIsGina I really wanted to empathize I did but you’re just deflecting instead of being accountable. Instead of rationalizing what you said (re: white & asian community didn’t get offended) look at the moments that the black community DID. pic.twitter.com/nyjXMziuiu

— 🍯 COME GET YOUR HONEY 🍯 (@SUGGADADDY) January 23, 2019

Gina Rodriguez on Black Panther vs Crazy Rich Asians….she really is terrible pic.twitter.com/BYDIJS1bhh

— tk (@foswina) January 23, 2019

gina rodriguez: *is anti black, constantly puts black women down to favor “all women”, probably doesn’t know the difference between race and ethnicity*

gina rodriguez when she gets called out on it: pic.twitter.com/7RhSPp46Gu

— skinty (@KIMPOSSIHOE) January 23, 2019

RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE RAGE: Cancel culture is toxic, and it pushes people to become defensive. But regardless of intention, Rodriguez’s words hurt, and she should have done was listened to that and taken accountability for her comments—rather than making excuses.

“Gina Rodriguez is really really really really ignorant, socially unaware, dismissive with black issues, and entitled,” writes Twitter user @culieatumami, “BUT I don’t think she’s necessarily hateful. I think she needs to talk less and listen more.”

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sivemqikela · 7 years ago

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Sangomas and Struggle Heroes: Art after the Fees Must Fall moment - Sive Mqikela

“Day to day reality is therefore itself any illusion created by the mass of our needs, our ideas, our wants. Transform the needs, the ideas, the wants, and at once, as though with a magic wand, you transform the available reality. To write as though only one kind of reality subsists in the world is to act out a mentally retarded mime, for a mentally deficient audience. If I am an illusion, then that is a delusion that is very real indeed.” – Dambudzo Marechera, Black Sunlight

In July 2018, a group of art students under the name ‘Wits Stash’ set out to the Grahamstown (now Makhanda) National Arts Festival (the festival) to present the best of art that the University of the Witwatersrand School of Arts (WSOA) has to offer. The entourage comprised of four plays - Amabali Amandulo, Indodakazi Yakho, Vuselela and The Last Respect, and one musical act, the Afro-jazz ensemble - iPhupho L’ka Biko. This was the first time that WSOA sent students to the festival to showcase their works under its banner. I was asked by the collective to write a review of the works presented, for the purposes of the group being able to read itself and its artistic effectiveness, so as to make the trips to the festival a tradition that will continue for years to come. This review is mainly my reading of the plays, not only because they constituted the majority of works presented by the collective, but also because the music has been engaged lengthily elsewhere; although my observations here are not in exclusion of the music. The plays were in different styles and theatre genres, but in the main addressed themes of protest, historicism, existentialism and feminism (Indodakazi yakho). Although this is a review of the aforementioned plays, it is also a de facto reading of the whole contemporary South African theatre scene as witnessed in the festival.

In all the freshness that a particular work of art may possess, artistic works are the always-already-present fragments of our realities, organised and given coherence as narrative anew. In this terrain, the stage does not become a mere mimicry of life, but life and history are laid bare in creative and imaginative form. What should a representation of a life in chaos, confusion, betrayal and spiritual bankruptcy, such as is life in South Africa look like? The formulation of the ‘Wits Stash’ is perhaps a clue to this rhetorical question. After the festival it became apparent to me that contemporary theatre is very much interested in the classic black theatrical themes of protest, spirituality and tragicomedy. This is no coincidence, owing to our very own little affair with history – the Fees Must Fall (FMF) moment.

This trip to the festival was an opportunity to witness the sediments of a post-FMF arts and culture scene. One was left wondering and imagining what the post-1976 artistic scene looked like; it probably looked something like this ‘Wits Stash’ moment in Makhanda.

Pause….

The contemporary arts and cultural scene owes itself to the enthusiasm and indecision, doubt and confusion, chaos and order, of post-1994 South Africa. From everyone, there is a burning need to respond, to kick and scream, to take to the streets, to battle with history fair and square; all the necessary tools are available (arguably), we just do not know how to use them. After chaos there is confusion; everybody has something to say but there is just no way of corroborating its validities. With so much information available to us, how do we use it in the most creative and sustainable manner? Where do we go from here?

This I imagine to be the dilemma in the aftermath of 1976, save for the fact that post-1976 was probably approached with more ideological clarity, perhaps because there was a more visible obstacle to black liberation – apartheid.

We are in no position to tell right now – only time will.

If not to elope to Europe or swell the ranks of the liberation front; to join the picket line or wish for a miracle; where did the 1976 generation go in the aftermath of crisis? If they did art, what kind of art did they do?

While there are such great works in the South African black theatre repository to work from, contemporary theatre seems unable to respond to the problems of our time in the same compelling and poetic manner that great works of ‘protest theatre’ like Woza Albert (1981) and Sizwe Banzi is Dead (1972) did for their ‘time’. While we can detect the influence of these classics and others on the plays presented by the ‘Wits Stash’, their imaginative and artistic impact is however overlooked and misunderstood. For example in Vuselela the powerful trope of the invisible and omnipresent character as seen in both Sizwe Banzi is Dead and Woza Albert, is attempted to allude to the omnipresence of black suffering in the face of domination; but as the play unfolds this character is revealed haphazardly on recurring dance scenes; and as a result the work of this metaphor is rendered banal, all for the sake of being multidisciplinary.

The problem with contemporary theatre is its obsession with ‘the spectacle’, in the same sense that Njabulo Ndebele observed with black South African literature during apartheid. In what felt like the newspaper headlines from The Dailysun and Sowetan, we see on signposts and street lamps around Johannesburg roads, the plays go for the overly dramatic and ‘spectacular’ element of social life in South Africa: police and state brutality; politicians and lies ; violence of all kinds, ancestors haunting the living etc.

These plays are not only concerned with a generalised display of ‘the spectacular’ but they are also very intentional with asserting political positions – ‘the spectacle of politicking’. In The Last Respect, as the protagonist ‘Goodman Moswaswi’, an apparently schizophrenic ‘direct victim of apartheid violence’, goes on his episodes of remembering the gruesome suffering endured at the hands of apartheid, all experience and memory communicated by him are channelled through a stream of incoherence and absurdity, but only one thing is coherent, his instinct to politick. We see ‘Goodman’ moving from ‘economic freedom’ and ‘expropriation’ talk to statements about ‘sell-outs’ and ‘askari’.

One could argue that politicking is nothing reprehensible in the creative process; but what happens when art is sacrificed for pure political undertones. What do we make of the arbitrary calling out of struggle heroes’ names – “viva Nyerere, viva Lumumba, viva Biko…” whenever we see fit, even when the context demands otherwise? Do we use the authority and stature of these figures so that no one disagrees with us? Without being prescriptive, I am of the view that when one has interacted with certain texts and ideas, we can always discern his/her influences without the help of ‘name-dropping’. We saw and heard enough moving speeches and amandla awethu during the FMF, and the ‘stage’ requires a more artistically persuasive and inspiring political commentary, if one seeks to do protest theatre.

Is it not possible to have creative imagination take the centre ‘stage’, even when representing real situations about social and political life in South Africa?

How do we create art that not only confirms what we know, but also offers challenges and critical engagement with what is being presented?

This being said, I am cognisant of the fact that the political narrative has shifted into our social culture as a nation. Politics has not only permeated our personal and public lives, but also our cultural production and imaginative labours. It is probably inescapable for the contemporary cultural worker; hence it is not surprising to find the political narrative central in many works of theatre and other literatures. While we cannot blame writers and cultural workers for centring the political thematic or using political vocabulary in their work, we can however be more careful with the style and aesthetics of the political narrative we choose to employ. We need to be more critical and reflexive about the forms that we choose to use in order to convey the political.

In ‘the spectacle’ of postcolonial discourses sits the grandfather of all rhetoric – the notion of the African past. Yes – that mystical world of speculation; of apparent harmony and inherent rhythm; a world of sangoma’s and ancestors. The problem with this discourse, even well-meaning ones, is that it fails to acknowledge that all discourse on the (post)colony is a product of domination, and the ideas we have of an African past and Africanity are actually inventions of colonial discourse, which serve as a ‘subtle operation of temporal distancing’. Amabali Amandulo (stories from the past), in what appears to be an innocent story devised in ‘township/physical theatre’ style, is engaged with notions of the African past. In terms of the synopsis the play “speaks back to the politics of family, power dynamics and gender inequalities”, based on family life of the past. The play employs common tropes of the myth of ‘Africanity’: ancestors with gnarled bodies gyrating and speaking to the living in the most literal and arbitrary manner; freaks of nature with hoarse voices; friends capriciously turn into enemies; and uncontrollable sexual desires – smells like colonial imagery to me. Through cursory scene changes, the play denies us a sense of spatiotemporal coherence and causality (Africa with no time); and instead of stories from the past the play feels more like an assemblage of stereotypes about rural life in South Africa. The play gets one thing right though: this African past is a very strange past if we are to take the myth serious.

Overall, all the plays were well directed and outstandingly performed. Elegant amalgamations of different artistic forms were employed in all the plays in the service of accompanying the acting. No one can deny the artistic wholesomeness of each play. The actors are undoubtedly some of the best actors in the country. My concern is just with the conceptual development involved in the making of the stories. After all, whatever the artistic validity a certain work of art may possess, in trying to make sense of it there are, in Hayden Whites words “always legitimate grounds for differences of opinion as to what they are and the kinds of knowledge we can have of them”. These are but my observations. If we are to return to the epigraph from Dambudzo Marechera and listen to his caution, we ought not to create art as though only one kind of reality exists. In conclusion, I am of the view that collectively as art students and cultural workers we should not only revisit the classical texts that continue to shape our work and imagination, but we should also familiarise ourselves with theoretical work from other disciplines such as literature and social sciences in order to widen our worlds and enrich our imaginative force.

Yours Truly

BLK Thought

(work in progress)

#Art after the FMF

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jed-thomas · 7 years ago

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Why do you hate Betty Draper?

--SPOILERS--

In my opinion, Betty is as essential to Mad Men’s narrative mission as Don. Although it is unfortunate that her screen-time decreases as the show progresses, I do not think that her character’s journey was, in any way, inadequately depicted. She is, to me, one of the show’s most terribly real characters, and it was her fraught relationship with her daughter, Sally, that, as the show progressed, gave rise to some of the show’s most emotional scenes. There are no words in Betty��s final moment in Mad Men - in fact, it is a very simple panning shot, reminiscent of those we have seen in the final moments of many previous episodes - but it is so piercing that little else in the show is as achieved.

You will therefore understand my surprise when, reading through all the opinions online after I finished the show, Betty was constantly referred to as one of the least-liked main characters. Constantly, I would see positive opinions on Betty prefaced with an assertion that they could not forgive her treatment of Sally or some reference to her emotional unavailability, hypocrisy or immaturity. In a community where praise for characters like Don, Joan, Roger, Pete or Peggy is rife, why is Betty thus criticised?

I honestly do not think that these criticisms have anything to do with misogyny, because anyone who watches Mad Men is coaxed into unravelling the fallacies which support sexist attitudes. Instead, I think it has something to do with the general tendency within the Mad Men fan-base to afford the social conventions of the time far too much importance in determining characters’ actions. It is, to my mind, part of the genius of the show that it refuses its audience the opportunity to wholly absolve any of the characters with any assertion of such things as ‘X was only adhering to social expectations’ or ‘X was influenced by societal convention to act such a way.’ Unfortunately for us, it seems to me that many of the characters, by virtue of their personalities and personal histories, would have a tough time operating even in today’s vastly less oppressive world. (I understand that there is nothing perfect about our current state, but we might agree that much has been improved upon since the 1960s.) It is not simply the social conventions that effect the development of characters but the relationship between these conventions and a character’s emotional drives.

For example, would the barriers to Peggy’s ambition have mattered to her if she was not ambitious? And is she, like Joan, not uniquely ambitious, even by male standards? Would Don’s impulsive promiscuity be considered much less of a destructive habit in today’s post-marriage world? Is the confusion that consumes all the characters regarding their priorities in life not simply a perennial problem? Sometimes, we genuinely do not know what we want, and it is not social conventions which confuse us but ourselves.

This focus on the influence of social conventions appears to me to lie at the heart of the criticism surrounding Betty Draper. She is not simply, as some would have you think, the subversion of the “perfect housewife myth,” frustrated by the limited opportunities afforded to her and driven to the point of insanity by boredom. Of course, she is those things and, I will admit, she was raised to value the life that she came to hate but, much like Don and Peggy, she is consumed by an innate yearning for completeness that leads her on an endless search for that mythical something-else and, whilst this feeling may be particularly American, it is not alien to the emotional world of any person. It might therefore be instructive to view Betty’s dissatisfaction with married life as being partly the product of a jealous, perennially-dissatisfied temperament, complexly formed by her upbringing, subjective experience and the social conventions of the time, rather than the sole cause being the external realities of marriage and the specific realities of being married to Don Draper. Betty Draper is as sympathetic as someone struggling to realise themselves can be - which is to say, not often all that much, given the mistakes one often makes.

As the show progresses, Betty becomes so deeply entangled in a web of a sad confusion that she is not emotionally-mobile enough to navigate her increasingly complex circumstances. Self-hatred, betrayal and grief all conspire to ensnare Betty Draper and therefore, in attempting to escape or rectify, her actions need not be allowed but they can easily be understood. She mistreats Sally and, much like the fans that this post is criticising, I do not forgive her for that, but what she sees in Sally is the person she was before she was blunted by her own confused sadness. Sally still has the ferocity that Betty sacrificed on the altar of her own beauty. To her, it is a hateful sight and she becomes resentful, treating her daughter with alienating contempt.

Betty loves Sally. There is no question of that. She just does not know how to communicate that love. Partly it is because she, like Don, was not given parents from which such a lesson could be derived. At a loss, she upholds their values, despite her own understanding of the ways in which they left her so sad and confused. Partly it is because, at that time, a mother was required to raise a daughter to be a certain way, namely physically beautiful and feminine. Sally, prematurely perceptive of the hell that results from an extreme observation of these rules which bred secrecy and alienation in the marriage of her parents, rages against these conventions until such time as they become important to her. Partly it is because Betty cannot love herself in any sustainable way for she has little access to the areas of herself that would enable such an ability. Her self-worth revolved around her beauty, and despite being successful in other areas - amongst others, we learn of her degree in anthropology -, it was first and foremost for her outstanding beauty that she was admired. As sexual creatures, we cannot help but respond to beauty and thus men act as differently towards Betty as women towards Don. That is not a malleable convention but a fixture of human society. She cannot be blamed for wanting to preserve that which sets her apart from the crowd. But what happens when that isn’t enough to keep her husband faithful? What crippling self-doubts so deep beneath the surface are confirmed? What hell does betrayal release on poor Betty Draper?

She is no innocent victim, no one in Mad Men can be viewed this way, all are complicit in the horrid game, but Betty Draper is no malicious monster. It is a horrific experience to see her fade from a life that brought her such misery and despair, but it is even more of a terrible marvel to see her finally reconcile with her own pain, to see her eschew her dependence on her sexual attractiveness and to find contentment in the striving for, not the achievement of completeness. And as the final light drew closer, finally she could see her poor daughter for all she was and not reject her. In her final moments, she found herself at peace with her loved ones and at peace with her life, miserable as her experience of it was, knowing finally her own blindness and feeling, at last, that no one so dangerous or spiteful was out to get Betty Draper as herself.

#Mad Men #jon hamm #don draper #January jones #Betty draper #amc #amcthewalkingdead #criticism #television #TV #drama #netflix #feminism #female character #social justice #progressive television

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forsetti · 7 years ago

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On Defending Misogyny: Ross Douthat Edition

Ross Douthat’s latest nonsense in the New York Times is quite the pile of crap, even when compared to other piles of crap written by Douthat. Here is my take on the article (Douthat’s article in bold.) One lesson to be drawn from recent Western history might be this: Sometimes the extremists and radicals and weirdos see the world more clearly than the respectable and moderate and sane. All kinds of phenomena, starting as far back as the Iraq War and the crisis of the euro but accelerating in the age of populism, have made more sense in the light of analysis by reactionaries and radicals than as portrayed in the organs of establishment opinion. Not one single person with an ounce of credibility thinks that extremists and radicals and weirdos see the world clearly because SEEING THE WORLD CLEARLY IS ANTITHETICAL TO BEING AN EXTREMISTS, RADICAL, OR WEIRDO. The ONLY way Douthat's statement makes any sense is if he thinks people with enough common sense to know invading Iraq on bogus reasons with zero plan on what to do after the initial invasion was a fucking horrible idea, were extremist, radical, weirdo.

This is part of why there’s been so much recent agitation over universities and op-ed pages and other forums for debate. There’s a general understanding that the ideological mainstream isn’t adequate to the moment, but nobody can decide whether that means we need purges or pluralism, a spirit of curiosity and conversation or a furious war against whichever side you think is evil.

For those more curious than martial, one useful path through this thicket is to look at areas where extremists and eccentrics from very different worlds are talking about the same subject. Such overlap is no guarantee of wisdom, but it’s often a sign that there’s something interesting going on.

A classic Douthat move-lay out a completely bogus claim right out of the block and then construct a whole argument on top of it.

Which brings me to the sex robots. People having opinions about the Iraq war and the European Union logically leads us to sex robots because of course it fucking does.

Well, actually, first it brings me to the case of Robin Hanson, a George Mason economist, libertarian and noted brilliant weirdo. Commenting on the recent terrorist violence in Toronto, in which a self-identified “incel” — that is, involuntary celibate — man sought retribution against women and society for denying him the fornication he felt that he deserved, Hanson offered this provocation: If we are concerned about the just distribution of property and money, why do we assume that the desire for some sort of sexual redistribution is inherently ridiculous?

If you use “libertarian,” you don't get to follow it up with “brilliant.” Never....fucking ever. As crazy as that juxtaposition of terms is the casual acceptance by Douthat of what “incel” means is even more disturbing. The idea that women in society have to have sex with men is repulsive on every level. That someone gives voice to this notion and give it its own term is fucked up beyond reason. Sorry men, women are not here for you to have sex with. Here's a thought, if men want to have sex with women, then maybe, just maybe, they should behave in ways that women deem appropriate enough to where they will give up their bodies willingly to them. Anything short of this is misogyny at the least and rape a the most. After all, he wrote, “one might plausibly argue that those with much less access to sex suffer to a similar degree as those with low income, and might similarly hope to gain from organizing around this identity, to lobby for redistribution along this axis and to at least implicitly threaten violence if their demands are not met.” Let me de-fuckify this statement because it is a Ceasar's Word Salad of nonsense. “Men who don't get as much sex as they want, think they deserve, need to band together to find ways, even through violence, to get women to fuck them against their wills.”

This argument was not well received by people closer to the mainstream than Professor Hanson, to put it mildly. A representative response from Slate’s Jordan Weissmann, “Is Robin Hanson the Creepiest Economist in America?”, cited the post along with some previous creepy forays to dismiss Hanson as a misogynist weirdo not that far removed from the franker misogyny of toxic online males.

I can't understand why the “mainstream” would find the unionization of violent, horny men hell-bent on making women their sexual subjects offensive. But, see what Douthat has done. He has already constructed his argument where the mainstream is the ones who don't “see the world clearly.” Since the mainstream has been pigeon-holed as not seeing reality for what it really is, then it logically follows for Douthat that their view cannot be correct.

But Hanson’s post made me immediately think of a recent essay in The London Review of Books by Amia Srinivasan, “Does Anyone Have the Right To Sex?” Srinivasan, an Oxford philosophy professor, covered similar ground (starting with an earlier “incel” killer) but expanded the argument well beyond the realm of male chauvinists to consider groups with whom The London Review’s left-leaning and feminist readers would have more natural sympathy — the overweight and disabled, minority groups treated as unattractive by the majority, trans women unable to find partners and other victims, in her narrative, of a society that still makes us prisoners of patriarchal and also racist-sexist-homophobic rules of sexual desire.

There is a lot to unpack here. First, Douthat uses a philosopher, in order to bolster the credibility of his argument. As someone with two degrees in philosophy, I can tell you that there are a lot of batshit crazy people with philosophy degrees who throw out outlandish arguments for no other reason than to be controversial and get their shit published in order to placate the Publish or Perish Gods. Second, having sympathy for how a culture views and treats groups outside the accepted norms like “overweight,” “trans,” “disabled,”... who have a difficult time having sex for a host of reasons is, to quote Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction, “...ain't the same fucking ballpark. It ain't the same league. It ain't even the same fucking sport.” Third, Douthat, a devout Catholic who has carried water for the patriarchy, for misogynists, for homophobes...for years now doesn't get to pretend he is worried about the very structure he helped build.

Srinivasan ultimately answered her title question in the negative: “There is no entitlement to sex, and everyone is entitled to want what they want.” But her negative answer was a qualified one. While “no one has a right to be desired,” at the same time “who is desired and who isn’t is a political question,” which left-wing and feminist politics might help society answer differently someday. This wouldn’t instantiate a formal right to sex, exactly, but if the new order worked as its revolutionary architects intended, sex would be more justly distributed than it is today.

Not only did Douthat use a philosopher to bolster his argument, he completely misused their words in order to do so. Notice how he uses Srinivasan's comment, “who is desired and who isn't is a political question,” and dovetails his own comment “which left-wing and feminist politics might help society answer differently someday,” as if they were one and the same statement. Every culture has their own ideas of what is/isn't sexually desirable. It has nothing to do with “left-wing” or “feminist” politics. Some cultures sexually value heavier companions, those with smaller feet, those with longer necks, those with fairer skin... We can argue the rationality of all of these but none of them are based on leftist or feminist beliefs. In fact, left-leaning and feminists would argue the fuck against these arbitrary sexual values.

A number of the critics I saw engaging with Srinivasan’s essay tended to respond the way a normal center-left writer like Weissmann engaged with Hanson’s thought experiment — by commenting on its weirdness or ideological extremity rather than engaging fully with its substance. But to me, reading Hanson and Srinivasan together offers a good case study in how intellectual eccentrics — like socialists and populists in politics — can surface issues and problems that lurk beneath the surface of more mainstream debates.

By this I mean that as offensive or utopian the redistribution of sex might sound, the idea is entirely responsive to the logic of late-modern sexual life, and its pursuit would be entirely characteristic of a recurring pattern in liberal societies.

Shorter Douthat: “Smart people reacting honestly to the arguments of a libertarian nut job don't know what the fuck they are doing but I, a dyed-in-the-wool social conservative does because of some magical reason that is never explained.” If you think placating angry, resentful, horny men is the way to utopia, I'm pretty sure you are either stupid as fuck and/or just about the most intellectually dishonest person I've ever read.

First, because like other forms of neoliberal deregulation the sexual revolution created new winners and losers, new hierarchies to replace the old ones, privileging the beautiful and rich and socially adept in new ways and relegating others to new forms of loneliness and frustration. Douthat's use of “neoliberal” was done on purpose and as meaningless as the term itself. What Douthat really means by this statement is, “In the past, men could do whatever the fuck they wanted to women, whenever they wanted and women had to take it because that is the fucking way it was. Now men can't do this and they are having a sad about it so we need to blame the women and those who support them instead of the fuck wad misogynists who were morally wrong 50, 100, 200... years ago for their behaviors.”

Second, because in this new landscape, and amid other economic and technological transformations, the sexes seem to be struggling generally to relate to one another, with social and political chasms opening between them and not only marriage and family but also sexual activity itself in recent decline.

“The sexes seem to be struggling generally to relate to one another, with social and political chasms opening up between them.” Holy Both-Fucking-Siderism! NO!!! The “sexes” are not having a problem. MEN caught up in an archaic belief system are having a problem-a big fucking problem. Douthat doesn't get to lay the responsibility and consequences of men not adapting to women's rights on the doorstep of women.

Third, because the culture’s dominant message about sex is still essentially Hefnerian, despite certain revisions attempted by feminists since the heyday of the Playboy philosophy — a message that frequency and variety in sexual experience is as close to a summum bonum as the human condition has to offer, that the greatest possible diversity in sexual desires and tastes and identities should be not only accepted but cultivated, and that virginity and celibacy are at best strange and at worst pitiable states. And this master narrative, inevitably, makes both the new inequalities and the decline of actual relationships that much more difficult to bear …which in turn encourages people, as ever under modernity, to place their hope for escape from the costs of one revolution in a further one yet to come, be it political, social or technological, which will supply if not the promised utopia at least some form of redress for the many people that progress has obviously left behind.

There is an alternative, conservative response, of course — namely, that our widespread isolation and unhappiness and sterility might be dealt with by reviving or adapting older ideas about the virtues of monogamy and chastity and permanence and the special respect owed to the celibate.

So let me get this straight, the problem with sex in America is because of feminists and leftists but, “ the culture’s dominant message about sex is still essentially Hefnerian.”? I've never known a single feminist or leftist who was not only okay with the views and attitudes about sex espoused by Hugh Hefner but who used them as the basis of their sexual ethics. In fact, it has been the direct opposite. Douthat's view of feminism and left-leaning is comical and beyond conservative stereotyping.

But this is not the natural response for a society like ours. Instead we tend to look for fixes that seem to build on previous revolutions, rather than reverse them.

In the case of sexual liberation and its discontents, that’s unlikely to mean the kind of thoroughgoingly utopian reimagining of sexual desire that writers like Srinivasan think we should aspire toward, or anything quite so formal as the pro-redistribution political lobby of Hanson’s thought experiment.

By defacto argument, the sexual revolution was bad so men trying to come to terms with how to really treat women as equals would be a misguided approach to the problem. We need to go back in time to when women had limited rights and almost none with regard to their bodies, their sexuality, and start from there in order to build a more perfect union where men get to get laid when they want by whomever they want.

But I expect the logic of commerce and technology will be consciously harnessed, as already in pornography, to address the unhappiness of incels, be they angry and dangerous or simply depressed and despairing. The left’s increasing zeal to transform prostitution into legalized and regulated “sex work” will have this end implicitly in mind, the libertarian (and general male) fascination with virtual-reality porn and sex robotswill increase as those technologies improve — and at a certain point, without anyone formally debating the idea of a right to sex, right-thinking people will simply come to agree that some such right exists, and that it makes sense to look to some combination of changed laws, new technologies and evolved mores to fulfill it.

Whether sex workers and sex robots can actually deliver real fulfillment is another matter. But that they will eventually be asked to do it, in service to a redistributive goal that for now still seems creepy or misogynist or radical, feels pretty much inevitable.

So, for Douthat, the need to address and placate incels is important but we shouldn't do it with legalizing prostitution or other means. What Douthat is really saying is, “If men cannot dominate and be in control of women, then any sexual solution won't be acceptable. Not legalized prostitution. Not sex robots. Nothing short of actual, real women being subservient to men will do.”

At no point in this entire article by Douthat are men held responsible for their beliefs, for their actions. NOT ONE SINGLE FUCKING TIME! “Feminists” and “left-leaning” people are the real reason behind backward thinking, immoral. egotistical men for behaving the way they do towards women. GTFOH!

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amwritingmeta · 8 years ago

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13x04: Peel Back the Layers, Dean Winchester

So, many of us - if not all - have been flailing over this image, hoping against all hope that it would be tied somehow to Dean shedding his performing side and allowing himself to just be himself. BAMF dirt under his fingernails caring loving soft hunter that he is. And, of course, that is EXACTLY what this image is tied to. I say this way way way too much on this blog but here it comes for the nosebleed section: mind fucking blown to bits.

*they are giving us everything* *prostrate position on the floor*

Let me extrapolate and dig into the the feminine/masculine theme, which has always been present on this show, but that is focused on in interesting ways this season.

So, I realised how closely linked this theme is with Dean’s character progression when I wrote my 4x05 meta and in that episode - Monster Movie - the entire narrative, as I see it, revolves around this theme, and the thematic question of Who Am I? Yeah, not much has changed since those days, has it? (thank goodness) (because they’re about to let Dean answer that question for himself) (*tap dancing across tables*)

Here’s how I see it -->

The Feminine, simply put, is Dean’s non-performing side

The Masculine - the toxically so - is Dean’s performing side

When these two find balance with each other that balance will cancel out the toxic masculinity and Dean will be free to be himself, which is a combination of the good qualities of his feminine side and the good qualities of his masculine side. Dean will always be Dean, but he’ll be able to embrace his feelings, his inner nurturer and caretaker: his mothering side, if you will. This while rejecting the toxic masculinity that keeps his need for control so prevalent, that keeps him from trusting, putting his faith in others and believing himself worthy of others putting their trust and faith in him, of good things happening to him, of salvation and a long and happy life.

So, then. What does all this have to do with a shifter peeling his face off?

Well, ironically it’s a shifter that first brought the masculine/feminine theme to my attention, because a shifter with a skewed sense of self takes the focus of the 4x05 narrative, where he’s one of the prominent representatives of toxic masculinity. In 13x04, our shifter - Buddy - takes on that role in an even more on-the-nose portrayal as Buddy literally embodies everything that makes toxic masculinity so... toxic.

Buddy is controlling, selfish, compulsive, obsessive, violent, destructive. Poisonous. I mean, they could not have made it clearer that this male figure is not someone to emulate. He ruins lives for the fun of it. He dresses himself in the skin of loved ones, pretending to be someone to be trusted, only to get close to his intended victim in order to kill them, which to me rings out like a gong of a metaphor for Dean’s self-blame, as Dean’s reliance on Cas and inability to be open and honest with him about where that reliance stems from - to Dean - is most likely the reason Cas is dead. (and narratively it kinda is) (sorry Dean) (tell the people you love that you love them) (or show them) (or make sure they know you want them to stay with you) (and they’re not just a weapon)

So what made me think of Buddy as a Dean mirror - apart from the face peel?

Well, let’s take a look at two Dean Winchester moments in this episode that stand out to me in this context:

*sloth slow eyebrow raise*

These two distinct moments are both all demonstrative of how Dean is utterly rejecting his feminine side.

Both times - no, let me repeat that - BOTH TIMES in direct relation to a mention of John, when Sam calls Dean out for “starting to sound like dad”, Dean responding “is that a bad thing?” (!!!YES IT IS DEAN!!!), and then Sam mentions John in relation to keeping a journal, which John did, and Dean rejects as not the same thing [because John’s journal was for fact keeping, not jotting down girly feelings].

He not only separates himself from the feminine - but John, too.

I mean, obviously he would do that.

But what is this season doing if not forcing Dean to take a good, hard, long look at exactly why he’s putting up a facade, at exactly how his idolatry of his father has informed his personality to such a degree that its become an armour to dress himself in? This season is about deconstructing John as much as it is about deconstructing Dean, but it’s the John inside Dean’s head that needs deconstructing, just as Mary did in S12. Mary was allowed to become flesh and bone, a real human being, a person, with wants and needs of her own.

“I am your mother - but I am not just a mom.”

It’s time for the ghost of John that Dean has kept alive in his head - however subconscious the keeping alive has been - to have its bones salted and burned.

Realising that his mother is her own person, no matter how much she’s still searching for her true identity as well, is the stepping stone for Dean realising the same of his father. That the ghost traces of John kept alive inside Dean is kept alive through Dean’s perceptions, and misconceptions, of John Winchester.

As children, we rarely actually know our parents. We know them as our parents, but it’s always hard to view their flaws as part of their humanity, their mistakes and bad choices as part of their struggles, their life journey, their life progression - a progression that, fundamentally, is actually separate from our own. Just as it can be equally difficult for a parent to remember this about their child. Well, to simplify something as complex as this topic, because, of course, there are as many different circumstances informing the parent-child bond as there are parents with kids, so all I can really draw on here is my reading of Dean and where he’s at right now in his individual arc.

And where he’s at is needing to see that his convictions of who he needs to be in order to keep Sammy safe - and, by extension, the world - which has been the root of Dean’s whole sense of self, the root for his identity up until now, is based on the influences of his father, absolutely, but that Dean is choosing to perpetuate this conviction. It’s Dean’s choice to put on this suit of armour because he’s been brought up to believe that feelings are weaknesses, and without the suit of armour he not only feels things too damn acutely (too big a heart and all that), but he also fears that not wearing this armour - this performance - means he can’t protect anyone, which leaves him not knowing who he is or how to behave or what his purpose is or what his worth could possibly be.

He has to realise that he was brought up to be the hammer, but innately he’s the shield - and just as much the protector because of it.

Dean has to understand that he can choose not to put on that armour and it will not affect who he is, because the armour was always a facade, it does not inform his personality in the slightest. He has always been him, he’s just been tied down by fear and insecurity and doubt. He’s allowed others (the influence of his father, as influenced by his marine background, heavily influenced by societal norms) to dictate who he can be, who he should be, and yes, this exact thematic focus keeps being hit on again and again this season.

Again and again and again.

There is no weird, everyone’s normal in their own way.

You are who you choose to be.

You try to force it down to make someone else happy, you’ll only make yourself miserable.

Dean is by 13x04 in a glorious place. I do so love it here. I like to call it the Cusp. He is right on the Cusp, peeps. And I’m dancing.

Anyway, back to the episode.

We have the Toxic Masculinity Representative, right?

Oh, yeah. Big time.

And what else do we have? We have the strong, kickass, smart, no-nonsense representative of awesomeness. (oops I mean Femininity.) Because Mia takes one look at Dean, at his performance, at his anger, his bottled up emotions, his rejecting his brother because Sam is consistently being open and honest and pushing for openness and honesty, for Dean to take the healthy approach, Mia sums all of this up in about ten seconds flat, tries to prod Dean into opening up and when he lashes out (”ever since I was a little girl” he says to the narrative representative of his feminine side and it’s fucking beautiful, to my mind) Mia doesn’t waste a beat before she calls him out on his behaviour.

On how he’s taking his anger out on Sam and how his performance, his armour, is making it impossible for him to relate to Sam, and how his brother truly is grieving as well. And she calls him out on how his performance is rendering Jack - aka the representative of change and reaching balance - petrified of him. (oh yeah Dean is fighting this transformation) (because it is scary as all hell) (because there’s no reason for this transformation anymore) (because Cas is gone) (so there is no long and happy future) (well... wait for it, Dean... wait for it... have a little patience...)

Now let’s move into the most significant moment of this episode, which just serves to hammer all of the feminine/masculine theme home to me -->

Not only is Mia empathic, nurturing and caring (she wants to help) - she also gets to visually step into the good mother role (one of the strongest symbols of positive femininity throughout this show) as she shifts into the shape of Kelly, allowing Jack one final moment with his mother and telling him that even monsters can do good, allowing Jack to have a newfound sense of faith in himself - of course leading right to him being able to save Sam.

Then, after shedding the outer layer of Dean Winchester - very, very visually tying himself to Dean Winchester - Buddy the Shifter begins to spew his poison, focusing primarily on how he resents her for leaving him, believing she could make a life for herself without him, and now he’s there to destroy that life. He’s going to make her kill again.

Translation: the toxic masculinity is telling the strong, kickass femininity that she’s worthless without him, dictating to her who she is and that she will never be rid of him, and all this, we know, is because of the mistakes she’s made in the past, where she let him rule her life, guide her onto the wrong path and influence her.

Yeah, Dean. Suck on that. LOOK AT HIS FACE! (I love his face)

And what does the strong, kickass femininity do? She does this -->

She says Hell No. You will not tell me who I am, not ever again. I will not listen to you, be beaten down by you or succumb to you, not ever again. I would rather die - wholly myself - than follow you anywhere ever again.

This effectively does what? It nullifies Dean’s performance-fuelled notion that all things female are associated with weakness, with being submissive and taking orders - never doling them out, because look at this BAMF female, standing up for herself like a goddamn warrior.

Now, what is truly intriguing to me is that Dean stays cuffed in this scene - cuffed by Buddy, no less - and Jack can’t get him loose, Jack can’t do anything, until Sam’s in danger. Sam, who is representative of what? The supportive, empathic, increasingly balanced guardian figure, whose honestly caring about Jack, trying his best to guide him. Here’s the most intriguing part: Sam is the one to shoot the toxic masculinity representative.

Back in good old 4x05, the Girl of the Week - Jamie (representing strong, kickass femininity) - shoots the shifter (toxic masculinity), but in that episode the shifter also puts Dean in bonds that he can’t get out of, needing Sam’s help. I’m getting the increasingly overwhelming feeling that Dean truly needs Sam to push him into the next stage of his character development, and it’s small wonder - Dean has functioned as Sam’s parental figure, but Sam is an adult now, and isn’t it time Sam got to confront his childhood influence as much as it’s time for Dean to confront John?

Sam providing Dean with the final bolt in the machinery that sets him on a path of no return, where Dean will have to face the questions Who am I? and Who do I want to be? head on makes absolute sense to me. Protect Sammy has been Dean’s inner motto since Dean was four years old. Sam doesn’t need protecting anymore, Sam is stepping up to be Dean’s equal, so it would make for a rather beautiful bookend to Dean’s internal journey if the root motto, instilled in him by John, is shattered and left behind thanks to Sam’s good influence.

But I’ll dig into that in another post.

Oh, also, I just love these blues, purples and pinks (and the fact that the only real splash of colour in the first scene set in Mia’s office is a bright pink flower) (yeah they’re going all out with the pink and blue makes purple symbolism) (with splashes of yellow thrown in for good measure) (wonder why...) -->

There’s a bald eagle in a child’s drawing on the wall (unless my eyes deceive me). The eagle represents freedom and the courage to look ahead, and not only is it - as a national symbol - such a fantastic tie-back to the US itself, where equality, acceptance and democratic freedom is under attack at the moment, but it’s also related to this:

During the Sun Dance, which is practiced by many Plains Indian tribes, the eagle is represented in several ways. During the dance, a medicine man may direct his fan, which is made of eagle feathers, to people who seek to be healed. The medicine man touches the fan to the center pole and then to the patient, in order to transmit power from the pole to the patient. The fan is then held up toward the sky, so that the eagle may carry the prayers for the sick to the Creator.

I just thought this ^^^ was lovely - related to this painting or not - because this season feels like it’s so, so much about healing, about becoming whole.

M’kay, byeeeeeee.

#spn 13x04 meta #spn feminine masculine #spn symbolism #dean winchester #I love him so so so much #sam winchester #I love him so so so much too #these brothers deserve to be happyyyy #balance #jack the nephilim #dean is bi #blues purples pinks

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clawfootpress · 4 years ago

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Dear Mr. Met:

The other day I was riding my bike and I blew right through a stop sign. Didn’t even slow down. Didn’t even see it. I blame the Mets, partly. I was listening to a Mets game on my phone and they were winning but the Orioles had the bases loaded in the eighth and I was getting nervous. It was only my second day as a dog walker, so the part of my brain that wasn’t worried about the Mets was worried that I’d left a dog outside or a door unlocked or maybe the owners thought my notes were weird and they didn’t want me walking their dog again. With my brain full of such thoughts and feelings, I blew right through the stop sign.

I don’t mean I saw the stop sign, slowed down, looked both ways, and rolled on through without coming to a full stop. I do that all the time. No, I’m talking about blowing right through it, not even knowing it was there.

I don’t normally listen to my phone when I’m out biking, running, or walking. I don’t like things in my ears, for one, and I genuinely like hearing the sounds of the city. I thought I might be okay listening to the game since I wasn’t wearing ear buds. I had the phone mounted on my handlebars, the volume turned all the way up. It worked right up until the bases were loaded and I got nervous and blew right through the stop sign.

A guy in a truck honked at me and called me an asshole. It could have been worse, he could have also been distracted, maybe also by the Mets. Who knows? It’s a big city in a big world. Maybe it was his second to last day on the job. Maybe it had been too many days since his last day on the job. Maybe his daughter was in the hospital. Maybe his daughter wasn’t talking to him. Maybe his daughter finally called him that morning after twenty-eight years. Maybe his boyfriend broke up with him. The multiplicity of possibilities boggles the mind.

The point is, the guy could have also been distracted and blown right through the stop sign and then I really would have been in a jackpot. I still didn’t like being called an asshole, though, so I hit my brakes and turned around.

Oh, he said, yeah?

Yeah, I said, and rode right back at him.

You know how there’s this idea that if we put energy out into the world our desires can manifest? I believe that to be true. I’m not sure exactly how it works, I just know it works because I’ve seen it work. Rather, I’ve seen the inverse work. The energy I put out disintegrates the objects of my desire, which Buddhists say is good, I think, but I don’t know. I find it to be frustrating more than anything.

It makes sense when you think about it. If there is a law of attraction, then there has to be a law of repulsion. No light without dark. No day without night. No hot without cold. No pleasure without pain. No sweet without salty. No joy without sorrow. No life without death. No attraction without repulsion. Imagine someone out there setting an intention for something. As the thing is moving toward them, it has to be moving away from someone else. In order for them to attract, someone else must repel. That’s physics.

Even the great Jacob deGrom is not immune. In a game against the Rockies, he struck out nine batters in a row. Ten, as you know, is the record, held by the greatest Met of all, The Franchise, Tom Seaver. deGrom looked untouchable. He looked inevitable. I got excited. I texted my friends. The next batter got a hit.

Boy, was the guy in the truck mad. Understandably. I broke the law and put myself and others in danger, including him. He honked and yelled at me, which was freedom of expression at its finest. I stopped and turned back toward him and rode right back at him. I did that because he called me an asshole. I was wrong to blow through the stop sign, but I’m too proud to let someone call me an asshole.

God and Ben Franklin gave that man every right to shoot me dead in the street (Freedom of Worship), but he didn’t shoot me, even though I charged at him like a wild beast.

Instead of shooting me, he said, Oh, yeah?

Instead of apologizing, I said, Yeah. You don’t get to call me names.

I said this because I’m a man and deserve to be treated as such, even when I fuck up. I dared to look the man in the pickup truck in the eye and demand he treat me with basic dignity. To which he responded, You’re right. I was wrong about that.

Organized religion is dying but religiosity is alive and well. Prayers of Confession are all the rage.

Everybody wants confession, everybody wants some cathartic narrative for it. The guilty especially. I’m watching True Detective, Season One.

Look: Ellie Kemper should not have been in that Veiled Prophet debutant ball mostly because debutant balls are dumb, but raking her over the Twitter-coals until she apologized did nothing good. She was nineteen. At nineteen she was just as much a Victim of the Patriarchy as a Perpetrator of White Supremacy, but the crowd demanded atonement. Atonement for what? For being born into and participating in the life of a particular place with particular people at a particular time?

Maybe you never had to navigate growing up with racists. Maybe you never had to navigate the complexity of loving racists. Or being loved by racists. Maybe you never had to do the emotional labor of depending on racists to drive you to the hospital. Of knowing racists are more than their racism. Knowing they are capable of great acts of love, which make them beautifully human, but makes their racism more stark, more deliberate, more sinful, awful, frustrating, heartbreaking. Of having to choose as a child, then as an adolescent, between participating or feeling completely alone. In a time and a place where there were no counselors, or the counselors were also racist. Maybe you’ve never had to parse out different subcategories of racism as you try to discern which relationships are worth it, whatever that might mean, and which are completely irredeemable, and then finding the courage to act accordingly. If you haven’t, you’re lucky. Privileged, even.

Twitter got its confession, but neither you, nor I, nor Ellie Kemper, nor America is any less racist for it. I submit that Twitter only got its confession because Ellie Kemper was already prone to introspection, has been introspecting most of her life, and has done more introspecting than the average Twitter-activist. She didn’t change her mind, she was forced to dig up her past shit and lay it on the table to be picked over by people who only just took a seat. The new arrivals took a look at the shit and said, Boy that stinks. Then they felt better, and Ellie Kemper felt worse, and nothing else changed and that’s called progress.

My tension and adrenaline drained away. I saw his face, his particular face. He wasn’t a Man In a Pickup Truck, representative of everyman in a pickup truck; he was who he was. He had a round nose and bags under his eyes. Two or three days of stubble on his cheeks and chin. I wonder if he has grandchildren who complain about how scratchy it is? He looked scared, like a tired man who’d almost hit a careless cyclist. He didn’t to kill anyone and he was angry that I almost caused him to kill someone. I didn’t want this man to kill anyone, and I certainly didn’t want him to kill me.

It was then that I apologized for blowing right through the stop sign. Well, I was wrong about that.

He looked a little confused. It was a confusing situation. So, he said, we’re good then?

I felt a little confused. Weren’t we supposed to keep yelling?

We’re good then, I said.

His last words to me were either, I love that, or I love you. I’m 99% sure he said, I love that, but isn’t it pretty to think that he said, I love you?

Listen: it’s not that I’m anti-confession, but I’m wary and increasingly wary of proforma Prayers of Confession, especially when they are religiously proscribed by a demographic that claims to be Not Religious. (In the words of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Ask them a question and you are told the answer is to repeat a mantra.) Public confessions do, for better or worse, what religion does, for better or worse: tell us a story, give us a sense of control, shape our experience, and help us think we’re actually doing something – Look what we did, we extracted a confession! Private confessions don’t provide narrative, characters, or catharsis. All they offer is humanity, complexity, intimacy, vulnerability, and, occasionally, transformation.

I’m working on non-attachment, and, accordingly, on non-judgment, judgement being a form of attachment to the story we tell ourselves about how things should be.

It’s difficult. I remain attached to the story that thirteen-year-old boys should be allowed to grow up, no matter how much they fuck up when they are thirteen-years-old, therefore I judge the officer who killed Adam Toledo. I judge the adult who gave the boy a gun and showed him how to shoot. I judge the people who made the gun and all the hands that carried the gun to the boy. I judge people who love guns more than they love thirteen-year-old boys.

I ‘preciate you, I said, clipping the first syllable like I was someone I’m not. If this was fiction, I’d strike that dialogue as sounding untrue, not in character, but real life is messier, real people are inconsistent, and that’s really what I said.

I’m not great at talking to people. I was kind of hoping to get this one job with a delivery company because it was closer to home and paid more. The interviewer asked how I’d heard of their company. I said a friend had used them to move a large machine. I should have stopped there, but there is a word-gremlin inside me that likes to blow through stop signs. I said I’d moved that machine before and boy was I glad I didn’t have to move it again. I said that to the guy interviewing me about moving machines.

So I’m walking dogs.

What I want to do is write stories. I desire to never sit through another interview. I want my stories to be my interview and you, the reader, the one who says, You’re hired, you can start immediately, you’ll never have to move machines or walk dogs ever again.

I hesitate to say this too loud, lest the Inverse Laws of Attraction hear me. I also say this with an acute awareness that what writing does, for better or worse, is tell a story, give me a sense of control, shape my experience, and help me think I’m actually doing something. The obligation I have, then, is to tell good stories, to the best of my ability, populated with characters full of humanity, complexity, intimacy, vulnerability, who, at their best, offer the possibility of transformation. No cartoon villains.

Unless I’m writing a cartoon. And there are villains.

Is it possible for me (or anyone) to privately apologize for something I say or write, but publicly defend the right – and even the necessity – of saying it? It is. Is it possible for each to be equally true? It is.

Fully human/fully divine. Very well then, I contradict myself.

In the meantime, the world keeps shouting. It’s really difficult to talk when people are shouting all the time, especially when they are shouting the same thing over and over again, which is, BANG BANG BANG!

I don’t know what to do with that. It feels like I either have to shout or ignore it. Shouting makes me tired but ignoring it feels as reckless as blowing right through a stop sign. So I work on my stories and let them try to make sense of this absurd world.

Speaking of absurd, just when I thought I had this letter all buttoned up and ready to send out the door, my wife was in a car accident. Another driver blew right through a stop sign and slammed into the driver’s side of our car. My wife is okay; our car is not. The woman who hit her was not distracted by the Mets because the Mets were rained out that day. I don’t know much about her other than she was driving on a suspended license without insurance. God and Ben Franklin gave her that right (No Quarter Without Consent). Who are you or I to tell her how to live?

Equally, my wife could have shot her right between the eyes (Redress of Grievances) and of course that would have solved everything, except my wife doesn’t carry a gun. She probably never will. Can you believe that?

The guy in the pickup truck nodded and drove away. Such things can happen, even in America, depending on the characters, and when they don’t the story seems more stark, more deliberate, more sinful, awful, frustrating, heartbreaking.

#LFGM,

Matt Lang

PS –While I was naming and claiming my desire to watch Jacob deGrom strike out ten batters in a row, in another part of space-time Aaron Nola struck out nine batters in a row, and he looked untouchable, he looked inevitable. Someone got excited, someone texted their friends. On June 25th Aaron Nola, pitching for the Phillies, against the Mets, in New York, struck out ten Mets in a row, tying the record held by the greatest Met of all, The Franchise, Tom Seaver. I listened to all ten while riding my bike.

Be careful what you wish for.

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kingofthenorth49 · 5 years ago

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Enemy of the State

I woke up on November 4th allegedly an enemy of the people.

Now I didn’t do anything differently than I did on the 3rd, but that morning when I awoke I knew things were going to get weird based on what I was seeing in the media.

Now keep in mind I haven’t any trust in the mainstream media. Zero. None. Zilch. They have eroded that trust over the last decade or so for me, to the point I realize they are no longer news outlets, but rather 24 hour a day propaganda machines.

By now, many of you reading likely thought “Conspiracy theorist” or his tin foil hat is on too tight again. Didn’t you.

You don’t have to answer, I know that’s exactly what 50% of you are thinking as you read this. That’s how you have been programmed to think over the past 20 years, you are part of a cult you didn’t realize you had joined. Think about it. As North American’s (and I have to use that term because sitting here in Canada today my reference group is so enthralled with US politics they aren’t even watching what is going on in their own country) we are equally divided in our thinking.

And that is exactly what they want. A society divided is easier to conquer, and right now we are ripe for the picking. The last bastion against Marxism is fighting a death match I never believed I’d get to see during my short stint on this planet.

While the Coronavirus is real, the plandemic is not. It’s manufactured. I’m not talking about the virus, that’s beyond the edges of my aluminum chapeaux, I’m talking about the world’s approach to managing it. It’s all part of a plan to convert the world over to a One World Government.

Fear is the greatest motivator know to the human species and beyond. A field mouse being stalked by a hawk is acutely aware of everything going on around him as he literally runs for his life. Every action and reaction is measured against the knowledge that one wrong move and he becomes the object of desire of a stronger power. It’s the fight or flight response that has kept species alive for millions of years.

We’ve just had our fight response beaten out of us by those who wish to possess us, or rather possess the output of our labor.

Power is the drug of the greedy. Just look around you to see it. You only need look at the likes of Nancy Pelosi to see it. It’s for thee, but not for me. I say that a lot because I see it a lot. I see our elected officials set two levels of standards as they rule. One set of standards is for us, the working class, and the other set of standards are for them, the ruling class. Nancy’s trip to the beauty salon is one example that comes to mind. Let’s break it down for the people in the back.

For those who don’t know Nancy, she’s the 80+ year old speaker of the house, and one of the most powerful democrats in the United States. Nancy’s been in Washington a long time, she knows where the bodies are literally buried. She’s powerful, wealthy, and doesn’t give a rats-ass about you. She’s all about Nancy. So in the middle of this plandemic, Nancy needs to get her hair done for her next ice cream photo op and even though beauty salon’s are ordered closed under public health order, Nancy’s staff arrange for a salon to open to touch up the speakers locks.

Now as someone who cut their own hair for almost 3 months, I can understand the desire to have the professionals take care of things, but at the same time as a leader I understand the need to lead with integrity and not set a double standard. Nancy, not so much. Somehow a video gets released showing Nancy waltzing thought the salon between the shampoo and color, not only in direct contravention of the law shutting down these services, but sans face mask.

Now a little lapse in safety decorum amongst co-conspirators could be overlooked had it not been that Nancy had just days before been on the news berating the President for not wearing a mask and selfishly endangering the lives of others’. It was carried by every network for days.

Get it yet? It’s for thee, not for me. A double standard isn’t a double standard if your in power. They feel they are above the rest of us. But it gets worse.

When the mainstream media is forced to pick up the story a day later, the response from the Pelosi people is that Nancy was set up by the salon owner.

Are you fucking kidding me? This is how the 3rd most powerful leader in the United States responded to being caught in the act violating the very laws she enacted? The worst part of all of this was most of you all accepted it because it fit the narrative you’ve been programmed to accept. Be honest with yourself. You simply accepted that Nancy was the victim in this situation because Trump.

This is but one example of this type of entitlement. The Governor if Michigan’s husband got caught going boating during a lockdown. Prime Minster Trudeau got caught breaching ethics rules twice, and is under investigation for two more. No other sitting Prime Minister in the history of Canada has ever been chastised for lacking ethics except for the current returning resident of 22 Sussex Drive. They destroyed all the evidence of the WE scandal and it never really even made the news.

I’ll make you a bet right now, that if I refuse to pay my taxes this year, I’ll not collect $200 and I’ll go directly to jail. If you’ve ever stood before a judge accused of a crime, it’s the most sober humbling moment of your life. Our problem is getting them in front of one.

Am I making sense yet?

Hillary had a private email server. She deleted 30,000+ emails as Secretary of State. Her and her husband Bill made hundreds of millions of dollars as public officials. Bill raped a woman in Arkansas and paid her off with $400,000.00. But there’s no one holding them to account.

Barrack Obama and Eric Holder ran fast and furious. They put guns into the hands of drug cartels that eventually wound up back in the USA used to kill innocent Americans. Over a billion dollars in cash on pallets was flown to Iran in the middle of the night. But there were no scandals in his White House. Are you fucking kidding me? He used the intelligence community to spy on Trump’s campaign for Gawd’s sake, Richard Nixon had to resign as President for doing the same thing, does no one remember Watergate?

Jesus people, when will you wake the fuck up and realize you are being manipulated by those in positions of power. What is it going to take for people to stop accepting this type of behavior from those they entrust with the public purse and our freedoms.

I read The Rise of the 3rd Reich last year. It was a very sobering read to see how the Nazi party rose to power and committed atrocities against their fellow humans in the name of a better planet. I’ve seen images of the holocaust that sadden me to the very core of my being. I have always wondered how humans could treat each other like that, to strip people of their dignity, their world possessions, their families, and finally their very existence. And for what. For one persons hatred of another race. One person was able through persuasion to convince an entire population of a country to hate a group of people because they were different. They worked hard. They ran shops and factories. They worshipped together, they built strong communities. They gave back to their country and made is better. But because those in power despised them, they created hate against them and let the people turn on their fellow countrymen.

You all know the rest of the story.

Or at least I hope you do, because if you don’t, its going to happen again because it’s already happening the exact same way it did in the 1920’s in Germany. If you don’t believe me, read the book. Read the history of one example of how mankind is one of the ugliest species on the planet. Read about how they divided the country and made people hate the Jews. Hitler blamed the loss of the war, the economic downfall of Germany and the bad decisions of the Weimar Republic on Jewish capitalism. Does this sound familiar? It should.

Churchill said “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it”. Now while he didn’t invent that quote, he certainly had reason to use it. As the one person who stood up against Hitler (Thank Gawd he did) he understood completely the threat to humanity that existed in the ideology of the Nazi party.

Fuck we are stupid. That all happened in our generational life time. Our grandparents fought in that war. Our communities lost thousands of good men and women to the effort to combat the rise of Marxism and hate and protect the world against the likes of Hilter, Stalin, and Lenin.

Yet here we are.

I woke up on November 4th to hear people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calling for a “Truth and Accountability commission” to ensure Trump and his supporters are held to account. The talking heads were spitting vitrol and hate against 72 Million Americans who voted for Trump. On example, Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin tweeted that morning, “Any R now promoting rejection of an election or calling to not to follow the will of voters or making baseless allegations of fraud should never serve in office, join a corporate board, find a faculty position or be accepted into ‘polite’ society. We have a list.”

We have a list? Seriously?

Hitler had a list too.

While Trump should have had a filter between him and his twitter feed, the man did nothing to rise to the level of a dictator who had women stripped naked and shot in front of their children, before they were shot next. Are you kidding me? Are people really that stupid?

I lived in the USA during Trump’s four years. I also lived there during Obama’s eight. By any measurable metric Trump’s four years brought more prosperity to the average American than Obama’s double term, and even if you take the economy out of the equation, Trump still made life better through his approach to governance. He got three noble prize nominations for crying out loud

But no one sees that.

But this isn’t about Trump, it’s about us.

We are failing as citizens to hold our leaders to account, and when you fail to check power, well, you get what you deserve. Our leaders, both elected and self-appointed (Think Zuckerberg, Gates) are running amok and have contempt for we the people. I believe in the next 6 months those in power are going to use the pandemic as a tool to move their agenda forward and attempt to go full Marxism around the globe under the guise of a One World Government. We are already seeing our own governments in Canada moving towards that end, the death of Freedom of Speech is just one indicator. Don’t believe me? Prime Minister Trudeau recently told the country “Freedom of expression is not without limits. We do not have the right, for example, to shout ‘fire’ in a movie theatre crowded with people.”

Well dumbass, actually we do, or at least we did. The cornerstone of any free person is the right to say what ever he/she/(Insert your preferred pronoun here) wants. If you cannot say whatever you want, you are oppressed. It’s just that fucking simple. He was wrong, but he wasn’t apologetic about being wrong. He thinks he is right, and his ideology supports that, which is the ideology of the left. You can say whatever you want as long as it agrees with our ideology, otherwise we will cancel you. We will public shame you. Call you racist, a bigot, etc until you shut up.

This is where we are today, a society afraid to speak up in fear they will be cancelled, ridiculed, or shamed. This is right where they want us, in fear, alone, and waiting for the other shoe to drop. Wear your mask, stay home, be a good citizen. Make sure you keep an eye on your neighbor to ensure they are being good citizen’s too. After all, we are all in this together, at least until we aren’t.

Maybe I’m wrong, and I hope I am. Maybe AOC really meant those lists were to send out holiday cards thanking all those 72,000,000 American’s for doing their civic duty by voting for the person they best perceive to leader their collective ideals, to further democracy and make their country the best it can be.

It’s just too bad they picked the wrong horse.

Or did they. Will we ever know for sure? I doubt it.

In the end, a polite society who are open to freedom of speech, even if it flies in the face of our beliefs is critical to a progressive society. If we suppress thought, fail to encourage debate, and dismiss the ideas of differing opinions we will fail as a society, and when a democratic society fails, tyranny rises.

When tyranny rises, the cost to humanity is great. We cannot afford this journey again.

Anyway, I need to go spend some time with my dog. I’m pretty sure he’s a liberal, but I love him just the same. I feel the same way about my liberal friends, they just don’t drool on me as much.

Enjoy the day, but think about what you are willing to accept from our governments. If we remain quiet we have no one to blame but ourselves. Sometimes yelling fire means things are actually burning.

#trudeaumustgo Agenda21 maga plandemic

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lettersfromthepandemic · 5 years ago

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Letter Eleven; It’s only been 6 months. July, 13, 2020

Dear Future Generations,

I’ve been asked to write you a letter to give my account of life during the year 2020. I’ve spent a month trying to write these letters to you, unsure of where to begin and end. The first half of this year has been so tumultuous it’s hard to accept that it’s only been 6 months. A letter that was started assuming that we would see an end to this pandemic before the year is over, now feels overly optimistic. This may well drag on into next year—the year after that? I can’t even begin to imagine what you be told about this moment in history. There isn’t much that people can agree on these days, but the one thing that most can at least agree on is that good or bad history is being made. Buckle up kiddos, this is a long one.

The months in the “before-time”

COVID-19 January: 9,846 cases 213 deaths

When society counted down to midnight on New Years Eve, everyone was celebrating the beginning of a new decade. There’s always an unspoken amount of hope that lines the beginning of new milestones. It’s why new years resolutions, and birthday celebrations have always been such a staple of the human existence. By celebrating the passing of time, we’re also looking forward to the promise of what the future brings. The past ten years have been hard. Many of us were ready to wash our wounds of the past decade and move forward. I stood in a crowded concert hall with hundreds of other people. I ate, drank, danced and sang my way into the new year as I have many years past. I had my own list of hopes for the upcoming year. As I made my way home through the city that I’ve lived in my whole life, I too clung to the hope that the imaginary line we had just stepped over would, in fact, be the beginning of bigger and better things to come. I had no idea.

We are slowly beginning to learn the story we are now living through actually began in 2019. I, myself, had my own concerns following a smattering of news headlines about how particularly bad the flu season has been the past couple years. These headlines caught my attention because these strains of the flu had proven particularly deadly. I wondered how it could be possible, with all of our technology, that we haven’t gotten better at fighting off something as common as the flu. I worried about the vulnerable amongst my own social group. Cold and Flu season is a part of midwestern life when the weather turns frigid. We do our best to practice healthy habits to stave off infection. We get bombarded with yearly reminders to get a flu vaccine. Our prime time TV is littered with commercials in which gross blobs of talking snot are fought off by cold medicines promising miracles. It’s our modern day snake oil salesmen brought into our living rooms nightly. After making it through most of this season with everyone I knew unscathed, there started to be rumors and rumblings of something else happening. Something more. But it was somewhere else. Far away. So it didn’t concern us. It was the problem of foreign people in foreign places. Why should we worry?

As of right now it is widely accepted that the COVID-19 outbreak originated in China. What is not agreed upon is exactly when, where or how it began to infect people. According to the official WHO timeline China began to document clusters of Pneumonia in December 2019. By January it was then identified that those clusters were actually a new coronavirus - what we now know as COVID-19. I remember talking to family members about the images we were seeing on the news coming from China. Doctors and nurses in hazmat suits tending to patients. Other people in hazmat gear spraying down streets and buildings with disinfectants. It was something out of an apocalyptic movie. But it was still all the way over there. Across the big ocean. Far away.

Before the disease had been publicly confirmed of spreading outside China — we were already pointing fingers and placing blame. In what began as an effort to explain where it came from, people began to pick apart the customs of those that lived on the other side of the world. We blamed the population density of their cities. We reacted in disgust at their cultural practice of buying live animals for food at street markets. We spoke about the people as if they were dirty, barbaric, uneducated and superstitious people who held onto old world beliefs. We painted the entire country as the proverbial leper that we wanted to cast out of society. Political leaders insisted on referring to the disease as the Wuhan virus in order to make no mistake who was at fault for the outbreak. Wuhan, China.

For me it was infuriating how quickly a human crisis became a political agenda. Prior to the outbreak our country’s relationship with China was on rocky ground at best. American’s distaste for Chinese politics was a hot topic. Our President had been waging a trade war on China for the better part of a year. We were told they were taking advantage of our country. We were told they were stealing our jobs. Most importantly we were told that they couldn’t be trusted. In true American fashion, the virus outbreak was an opportunity to further attack and humiliate our adversary. So while the world watched in fear as hospitals became overwhelmed and people died by the dozens, the narrative here removed the human element from the story. We didn’t respond with concern. We stated numbers and statistics. We accused and criticized. Socially, we people poked fun —calling the virus the “Kung-Flu”. We didn’t look to see the faces of the people that were living through a nightmare. After all it was the problem of foreign people in foreign places. Why should we worry?

By the end of January the virus had been confirmed to have made it’s way to the United States. The city of Wuhan in China was under strict government mandated quarantine. We continued to watch on our televisions and think to ourselves how we’ll never let it get as bad as it was “over there”. That denial even existed within the White House amongst the people who should have been preparing our country for worse case scenario. They simply weren’t. I wish I could offer you a good explanation as to why. I honestly don’t know. From my point of view, it appeared to be simply American arrogance that allowed our leaders to think that our country would be safe, that we were somehow better than those foreigners from across the ocean. They failed to see that the virus doesn’t care if you’re Chinese or American. At the end of the day the virus infects human beings. In spite of how different we may all seem…we are all people just the same.

COVID-19 February: 75, 287 cases 2,012 deaths

In February I went to have dinner with a group of friends in China Town. It was eerily empty. I saw people wearing medical masks in the streets, something up until this point I never really experienced in this country. Many of the restaurants were closing early for a Friday night. It didn’t occur to me until after we parked our car that people were afraid to go there, thinking that they would catch the virus from the Chinese Americans that frequented the area. It made me sad. Not long after I began to hear in the news about Asian Americans being the victims of hate crimes. In one case, a man stabbed a woman and her two children in a Sam’s Club while screaming that they should go back to their country. They were all born here. He said he did it because he thought they were Chinese and didn’t want them to spread the virus. This is just one example of the type of fear and hatred that was born out of our 24 hour a day news coverage - it perfectly illustrates the dangerous side effects of the narratives we chose to push and the words we choose to say publicly.

The following weeks can only be described as chaos. Nations began closing their borders to outsiders. Flights were getting canceled at rapid pace. People were getting stranded in countries away from their own. Cruise ships were being denied access to ports and were becoming hot beds of infection. Xenophobia was being excused if not encouraged as no one wanted their country to be responsible for increasing the spread. Governments were sending rescue planes to bring people home and then quarantining those people on military bases and in hotels. It was on March 11th that the World Health Organization formally categorized COVID-19 as a pandemic. I wish I could tell you exactly everything that happened between January and March. Truthfully, so much happened that it’s hard for me to keep it all straight. What I can say is the situation escalated very quickly.

Clorox Wipes, Hand Sanitizer and Toilet Paper - Oh My!

COVID-19 March: 175,282 cases 7,399 deaths

By the time March was around the corner, many people had a strong hunch that we would start to see disruptions to our every day lives. No one was quite sure what that would look like for Americans. We certainly didn’t think that we would be under a strict quarantine like what we were seeing happen in other countries. None the less, that seed of fear had been planted and so Americans did what we do best —we went shopping!

It started off slowly with people buying up cleaning supplies and hand sanitizer. It was an honest response to the fear of a virus, and I can’t say it was entirely unreasonable. I personally took stock of what I had in the house and felt that I had more than enough to get by. The talking heads on the news encouraged people to make sure they were well stocked in home essentials. Soon enough, whenever you’d go to the store there were no cleaning supplies. Gone were the days when small pocket sized bottles of hand sanitizer could be found in almost every check out lane. The shelves that typically housed the Clorox wipes and lysol spray were bare and adorned with signs from store management apologizing for the low stock “due to high demand”.

The most talked about phenom of those early days is still one that I can’t comprehend. People went out in droves, they stood in long lines, they got into fights, they trampled one another all so that they could stockpile and hoard…toilet paper. The paper good aisles at big box stores appeared as though they had been ransacked. The prices of toilet paper skyrocketed online. People were posting packages of toilet paper on E-bay for 3x what it should cost. It was the butt of the joke for every late night talk show, and the subject of a million memes on social media. I’m not sure what it says about Americans that one of our biggest fears during a global crisis is not having enough TP to wipe our rear ends with.

I did my best to do a reasonable amount of shopping for whatever “just in-case” scenario might happen. I was starting to believe with every day that passed, we were heading closer to a situation in which we would probably need supplies to stay at home for a while. I made a couple of trips to the store. In one such trip I was standing in line behind a woman who had grabbed one of EVERY kind of over the counter medicine the store had to offer. I giggled to myself as I wondered how useful 4 different kinds of laxatives would be against COVID. At the grocery store people were swarming the fresh meat section and stalking the store clerks to find out when they would be stocking more. I shrugged my shoulders and moved along to buy canned beans - I had been a vegetarian for 5 years, a meat shortage was the least of my concerns.

I had heard the term “shelter in place” thrown around a few times, and hearing it kind of scared me. When I think of taking shelter I think of going to the basement because a tornado is coming, or heading into a bunker because of a bomb. I didn’t know what sheltering from a virus would be like. My brain pictured a scene from a TV show in which men in dark clothing and gas masks drove giant trucks down quiet suburban streets spraying radioactive looking green fog. Suburbanites peered through their windows terrified that they were being poisoned. I wondered if that was the dystopian future we were headed for. I shook off the nightmarish visions that had been floating around my head only to then think that reality might not be much better. The world was going to shit, and the new currency was toilet paper.

COVID Confusion

One of the hardest things for me to personally navigate during the pandemic has been the misinformation, and the blatant lies told and the disagreements this shoddy stream of information has fostered. I’ve done my best to fact check the information I’ve included in these letters because I even doubt myself and the information I believe to be true. That’s how confusing this has all been.

After the genetic sequence of the virus was determined by scientists in China, scientists from all over the world began to study it. At this point we weren’t even sure what kind of disease it was. Even now there is still some debate about if it is a respiratory virus, or possibly a blood vessel virus or maybe both. One of the earliest objectives was to discover how the virus spreads. Is it airborne? Does it live on surfaces? Does it survive in bodily fluids? These questions were then answered, and then sometimes re-answered. Information was being shared before it could be 100% confirmed. And then mis-information was having to be redacted, but the damage had already been done. There was such a frenzy to feel like we were going to beat this thing quickly that the typical scientific process, which is inherently slow, was being tossed aside and anyone who seemed even slightly qualified to speak on the matter was given a platform to share their opinions, findings and speculative thoughts.

-We were first told that the virus could live on surfaces for over 14 days. This lead to people not wanting to accept their mail, leaving their shoes outside their homes and refusing to handle cash amongst many other things.

-We were told to sanitize everything that came into our homes, including our groceries. There were youtube videos and TV segments about the most appropriate ways to sanitize everything from your countertops down to your car keys. The CDC now states that the virus can survive on certain surfaces up to 3 days, a far cry from the terrifying two weeks they were shouting about before.

-There were some reports of people catching the virus from their dog. This then caused people to abandon pets en-masse at shelters that were already stretched too thin. As a result new outlets ran stories saying it was highly unlikely for a pet to transfer the virus to a person, however I’m not sure if this was ever proven or not.

-They said that children were not at risk of getting infected. As of this writing, THOUSANDS of children have been diagnosed with COVID-19. Fatalities have been low, but children have died as a result of this virus. In my opinion, one child fatality is one too many.

The list of conflicting information feels endless. The back and forth created a lot of confusion and fear as to what the best safety practices were. A lot of people experienced anxiety as a result. Others simply felt it was easier to give up on what seemed like a losing battle. The “powers that be” were just as scared and confused as we were. They stirred the pot so strongly that it created a roaring ocean.

We were instructed to wash our hands and not touch our faces ad-nauseam. We were told that average citizens who were healthy did not need to wear masks. This would be one of the most damning lies told early on. News outlets and politicians repeated this misinformation over and over again. The truth was that our government had no where near the supply that they needed to ensure that all hospital workers could have the protection they would need to treat the number of patients they were anticipating. They had already seen how people were hoarding other household supplies, and knew it was only a matter of time before the same happened with items crucial to our healthcare workers. So they lied, and told us that washing our hands would be enough. This month long crusade to dissuade people from buying PPE would then become a sticking point for others later on, but we’re not there yet. We still have a LONG way to go.

A Broken System

We’ve been arguing about healthcare in this country for a long time. I have to be honest. Our healthcare system is broken. The only thing it is truly good at is bankrupting the poor and helping greedy corporations make more money. We are the only developed nation to not have some form of universal health care. THE ONLY ONE. How the hell did we let that happen? I’m not arguing that other countries are perfect. But that’s the beauty of our situation- we have so many examples to learn from. We can ask tough questions, and then to come up with our own plan that works for us as a nation. Instead we’re too busy living in fear that taking care of our people would tear at the fabric that built “the American way”. That’s a bunch of bullshit and we’re now reaping what we’ve sowed.

Here’s the real kick in the pants - we’re in the middle of a pandemic that is not only putting our health at risk, but it’s also affecting our economy. Unemployment is at an all time high. More people are getting laid off and furloughed every day. On top of that, prior to this economic down turn, a vast majority of people in this country were part time workers whose companies denied them full time hours in order to avoid providing benefits. Many of the people who are not eligible for workplace healthcare simply cannot afford to purchase their own plans. The point is: a person’s access to health care should NOT be tied to their employment status. Think about it, this virus has caused MILLIONS of people to lose their jobs due to no fault of their own and therefore their access to health care. An already bad situation has been made devastating by how we’ve chosen to structure our health care.

Adding to the problem is the financial impact that this will have on those who get sick. The President said that private health insurance companies had agreed to waive all co-payments and extend insurance coverage for COVID treatments. That was a lie. He also stated over and over again that any person who wanted to get tested for the virus could. That was also a lie. There were not enough tests to go around. In truth, the Insurers agreed only to absorb the cost of coronavirus testing—waiving co-pays and deductibles for getting the test. A bill passed by Congress later mandated that COVID-19 testing be made free. The federal government has not required insurance companies to cover COVID treatments. The costs of other non-coronavirus testing or treatment incurred by patients who have COVID-19 aren’t waived either. We know that COVID is particularly brutal for people who have existing medical conditions. These people are very likely to end up with hospital bills in the tens of thousands if not millions. Mitigating the cost would require the cooperation of hospitals and insurers. Insurance companies have never been willing to cooperate or do anything in the best interest of a patient, they’ve always chosen profit over people.

Only in the past few weeks have testing sites been opened up to the general public. Early on when the president claimed that everyone could get tested, tests were only available to the elderly or people who had a doctor’s note because they were showing symptoms or had been directly exposed. There was so much confusion about how to get tested. There were insanely long lines that stretched down city streets of people sitting in their cars hoping to get tests. Many people were denied tests and turned away, thus increasing the possibility of those people infecting someone else. The tests were vastly ineffective in the beginning. There were many reports of people getting false positive results. At once point large batches of tests were mishandled and the wrong results were given to the wrong people. Our early numbers were also incredibly skewed because of lack of tests, and ineffective tests. In spite of those failings there were those who still wanted to use those early numbers as proof that the infection rate was low. It was an easy way to manipulate public opinion using real numbers as long as you were willing to omit the inconvenient truth that the data was incomplete because the method of collection was incompetent.

Perhaps watching these politics play out on the TV daily hurt so bad because of what my generation has already experienced in our adult lives. It’s no secret that my generation got fucked in the “living the American dream” department. I was in High School when September 11th happened. Our country then spent ungodly sums of money on a war that was never about what they told us it was. We took advantage of a tragedy and ushered in a generation of loss in more ways than one. Our country prioritized a war because it meant big profits for an elite few.

Then I graduated college in 2009. During the recession. There was no work. Those first few pivotal years out of college in which I should have been building a career were spend barely scraping by. Millions of people were like me, taking any job they could find. I got to use my fancy expensive college degree to work at Blockbuster, The Gap, and run Children’s birthday parties for $9.00 an hour while rent was $1,200 a month and my student loan payments were more than that of a car payment. I worked multiple jobs, I babysat on evenings and weekends. I forewent going out, wore clothes with holes in them, didn’t travel and lived off of canned and packaged food. I worked through holidays and missed family get togethers. I never went to the doctor for preventative health screenings, and had to “tough it out” every time I got sick. My peers and I daydreamed about getting married and having families just like our parents did, but the notion seemed idiotic when we couldn’t even dig $2.50 out of a change jar to get on the bus. Many of us still live with the wounds of that time. Many are still digging out from under student debt, still trying to save up enough to own a home or start that business or chase after a dream. A middle class life with a home, a functioning car and a yearly vacation is a pipe dream for many people my age. And no - it’s not because of avocado toast brunches and Starbucks coffee. It’s because of the hand we were dealt when we came of age. It’s because of the broken systems we inherited that we now need to fix.

People might like to poke fun at Millennials and say that we’re an entitled, whiny, lazy generation looking for handouts. It couldn’t be farther from the truth. We’ve learned a thing or two from the bullshit we’ve lived through and we’ve worked our asses off to barely get by. Here we are, a little over ten years after the last economic crisis and we’re right in the middle of another crisis. Enough is enough with bad policies. Once again we are light years behind other developed nations that have mandatory sick leave policy, living minimum wage, guaranteed maternity leave, flexible work hours, childcare benefits, mental health initiatives and more. The current Pandemic proves why so much of this is important.

According to one survey, 69% of Americans said they had less than $1,000 in savings in 2019. Most Americans were one emergency away from wiping out their savings completely. The age old advice that you should have enough cash savings to sustain yourself for a few months in case of job loss or illness is not a realistic goal. For most U.S. workers, real wages have barely budged in decades. When you take into account inflation, the reality of what people are actually earning vs. what it costs to live is bleak at best. We now have policy makers issuing $1,200.00 COVID relief checks to individuals claiming that it should sustain them through 3 months of joblessness. The ultra wealthy in this country are so out of touch with the actual value of a dollar that they fail to realize that $1,200.00 doesn’t even cover the rent, let alone buy groceries or keep the lights on. If we want our economy to be robust we need to pay our people better. If more people had savings they could dip into right now, we might not have 22 million people clamoring for unemployment benefits while they wait to find out if they will still have a job when this is over.

The argument that we could bankrupt our country trying to restructure healthcare and taxes to favor individuals is a lazy argument at best. The US just gave a contractor with a history of GOP donations $569 million to build parts of the border wall. They decided not to use the money to produce more ventilators, or secure more protective gear for our health care workers. They didn’t divert that money to help cover the costs of treating the sick or to pay our furloughed doctors to come back to work. Instead our government thought now would be an appropriate time to spend money building a border wall. That GIANT sum of money only builds about 18 miles of wall. On average our government has paid $20 million dollars per mile to construct the wall (although for this segment we’re paying closer to $30 million). We have 1,954 miles of land that borders Mexico. At 20 million dollars per mile that’s $39,080,000,000.00 (thirty-nine billion eighty million). This is just one example of the many ways in which politicians have chosen to spend our tax money chasing personal agendas rather than investing in the things that really matter: education, infrastructure, healthcare and public services.

We were so ill prepared to handle this virus it would almost be laughable if it weren’t so sad. Experts both inside and outside the federal government have expressed their concerns many times in the past decade about the potential for a devastating global pandemic. We’ve had plenty of dress rehearsal situations. SARS, H1N1, Ebola. In spite of the fact that all of these diseases hardly impacted America- it revealed how greatly unprepared we were to handle a full scale pandemic. But nothing was done. We didn’t replenish supplies, we didn’t put systems in place, we didn’t secure funds, we didn’t come up with a unified plan. We stuck our heads in the sand and leader after leader kicked the can down the road for the next guy. When the dust settles from this disaster- if we don’t do anything to be better prepared for the future, we’re setting ourselves up for massive failure. Because it’s not a matter of IF this happens again, but when? We have to do better than this. I hope we do better than this.

Shelter In Place

I know up until this point my letter has been quite impersonal. That is because up until this point in the sequence of events, it wasn’t personal. In February I began to work for a very small company in which I only come in contact with 3 other employees throughout my day. I had very little concern over exposure. Aside from watching the news or talking about the virus conversationally, my life was unchanged. That is, until March 21st. The governor of Illinois declared that we must shelter in place until April 7th. All non-essential businesses were to close. You were only to leave your house if you worked in an essential job, or had an essential errand to run such as grocery shopping. No gatherings of any kind were permitted. This, we were told, was what we had to do to save lives.

The concern with how rapidly the virus was spreading was largely in part due to how ill prepared our hospitals were to handle the huge influx of patients. We were told we needed to “flatten the curve”. A phrase that turned into somewhat of a battle cry to describe lessing the amount of new cases. Such that if you were to graph out the virus, the line would stop going up, and would simply sustain a straight trajectory or even better go down. This cry became even more important as we watched our government and hospitals scramble to acquire supplies that simply weren’t there. We heard doctors from other countries talk about hospitals being so over run that they had to make life or death choices about who they would treat and who they would not. Our nurses and doctors would post on social media and do interviews pleading with the public to not put them in a position in which they would have to do the same.

The day before Illinois stay home order went into effect my husband and I stood in our kitchen telling each other our “quarantine wish list”. I had been laughing at him pretty hard when he declared that he would use his extra time to learn Norwegian. I had told him I wanted to clean out closets and finish some digital photo albums I have been putting off for years (as of right now I have not completed a single one of those tasks). We talked about things around the house we could try to fix ourselves and how we could better prep for the projects we planned on completing once life went back to “normal”. I was naive to think that normal was anywhere near by. We were still in the cold and gloomy grasp of March which helped keep us content with quiet evenings at home. I’ve dealt with hardship and uncertainty before. It wasn’t that difficult for me to adjust to this new reality of sheltering in place. I think we settled in a lot easier than most people that we knew.

COVID-19 April: 2,248,329 cases 162,436 deaths

We were some of the lucky ones. I was furloughed from my job, but my husband was able to work from home. He is the primary earner for our family and was still getting paid, therefore, we weren’t worried about missing mortgage payments or not being able to afford groceries. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that we got to ride this out at home, safe, healthy and with our finances intact. My husband and I made a point to remind ourselves often of the gratitude that we felt. We were acutely aware that we were better off than a large portion of the population who were simply devastated. That’s not to say that this virus hasn’t affected me or that I wasn’t struggling. I just did not feel that I had the right to complain all things considered.

I had made the conscious choice to be as cheerful as possible about this insane thing we were experiencing. Even on social media I stuck to sharing live stream concert info, pretty landscape pictures, and cute animals. I knew that my family and friends were exhausted by the over abundance of bad news being broadcast 24 hours a day. I did not want to add any more weight to that burden. However, there were quite a few times where I’d retreat to my room and cry quietly while my husband rubbed my back. The first night we were officially placed on lock down— I woke up around 4am in a full blown panic attack. My husband had to hold me down while I sobbed hysterically because my fight or flight response was making me want to run circles around our bedroom. In his concern he asked if I needed an ambulance, which then set me into a completely different type of panic. In-between hyperventilating and crying I was able to say that there was no way in hell I was stepping foot into an emergency room. I can look back at it now and laugh, but at the time it was scary. I hadn’t realize how much I had taken all of the bad news to heart.

I quickly began to look for ways to make my days feel useful and important. Some days that meant cleaning the house furiously. Other days it meant visiting deceased family members in the cemetery and tending to their gravestones. I found a sense of purpose and peace in long walks alone. Even in the cold or the rain, it made sense to keep moving. The world was a sleeping giant and people were nothing more than eyes that would occasionally peer through window blinds. I walked my neighborhood daily acquainting myself with the houses, the flowers and the trees. There really is no way that I can think of to describe what that was like. A city that is normally boisterous and deafening was quiet and still. There were no children playing, no commuters commuting, the bars and restaurants were dark. Some days it felt like the world had ended and I didn’t get the memo. The only sign of life was the constant blaring of sirens from the ambulances that went to and from the hospital that is four blocks from my home. Each time, the sirens would make you stop in your tracks you wondered if there was a COVID patient inside.

Impatiently Waiting

One of the unspoken consequences of COVID is the effect it has had on people like me who need help from their doctors to start a family. Two years ago, in April 2018, I suffered a miscarriage at 12 weeks pregnant. Arguably one of the most devastating moments of my adult life. We didn’t tell many people because it’s one of those things...people just don’t know how to talk about it. Currently, the accepted statistics are that 1 in 3 pregnancies end in a miscarriage and 1 in 8 couples suffer from infertility. I would argue that those numbers are actually much higher, but the taboo nature of the topic makes it difficult to record with accuracy.

It took me almost a year to physically feel normal after my loss. It was a slow process that I found tedious and exhausting. Then, in Sept 2019, I suffered a second loss of what is commonly known as a chemical pregnancy. This term describes a pregnancy that is lost very early on. I think a part of me will always separate my life into the before and after. Before I was blissful about starting my family. Afterward, I will always be aware of how I’ve changed. It’s this ever present pain that makes me burst into tears in public when I hear a baby cry. It’s anger, and rage and grief that come and go in waves. I find it interesting that I have compartmentalized my mind into the before and after regarding my loss. That is what many people have done in regard to the virus outbreak. Many people will call the time before COVID as “the before-times”. No matter the trauma, we all seem to respond the same way. Whether it be a global pandemic or a deeply personal loss…we all feel the need to try and make sense of a situation. Even if there is no sense to be made, we are at least connected in the aspect of trying.

After it became glaringly obvious that we still needed help conceiving, we decided to start our fertility treatments in June 2020. It was a long wait, but I really needed the mental and emotional break. I took this time to really try and get my shit together— for possibly the first time in my adult life. Mentally I was in a really good place. I finally landed a job I loved, I had the space in my home for a family, my health was consistently good. It seemed that a little bit of the fog of my “life-after loss” started to lift. I was finally ready to move on. However, COVID had other ideas.

Once doctor’s offices and hospitals were mandated to suspend all unnecessary procedures, the fertility clinics had no choice but to shut their doors. All appointments for the next few months were canceled and were to be rescheduled at a later date. No one knew when that later date was going to be. No one was even able to make an educated guess as to how long we would have to wait. It was out of everyone’s control and there was no choice but to just….wait…

We’ve been trying to get pregnant for three years and waiting can be a torturous game. After getting word that the fertility clinics were closing, I sat at my computer with tears streaming down my face as I read about women who were half way through their IVF cycles and were unable to complete them. This meant they had used up their very expensive supply of drugs for nothing. They had no way of getting reimbursed for them either. I read other stories about women who only had one chance left because of their age, or a lack of healthy eggs or a lack of funds. They all ran into the hurdles of being somewhere in the process and then were suddenly forced to come to a screeching halt. The only comfort I had was that we hadn’t begun. I hadn’t wasted any of the precious fertility drugs that would eat away at our budget. I wasn’t close to aging out of treatment nor was I at a risk of running out of viable eggs. These small comforts were enough to keep me from falling apart, but they were just that— small comforts. In a big way my heart still worried and ached over the big question; when will it be safe to begin?

As of my writing this I still don’t have an answer. Doctors offices and hospitals have slowly started to reopen their doors for what they consider elective procedures. The fear that impedes me from rescheduling my appointment is the whispering that there will inevitably be a second wave of contagion coinciding with our usual cold and flu season. Many people believe that in the fall, unless a vaccine or cure is discovered, we will have to enter another period of sheltering in place. The stories of those women I read about are in the back of my mind like a cautionary tale. I do not want to start the process only to be forced to stop at a pivotal moment. What many people don’t realize is how long of a process IVF actually is. You don’t get to just walk in the door and a week or two later have the procedure. It’s weeks worth of tests, and meds to work up to the actual procedure. It all has to be perfectly timed and carefully orchestrated to have the best possibility of success. The success rate in the IVF world sucks—it’s less than 40%. Even if I were to begin now, I most likely wouldn’t be ready for the procedure until the fall. That timing couldn’t be worse.

I tried to keep my eyes on smaller prizes— small things that I can look forward to. But one by one those things went away. Concerts were canceled, vacations were called off, everything was shut down. The more time that went by the farther away we seemed to get from the end of COVID. Even as things have slowly started to reopen, I know it could be a game of one step forward and two steps back. It’s no longer a matter of pep-talking myself through the next few weeks. It’s allowing myself to accept that a whole year will be lost whether I like it or not. 2020 is not going to be the year that I thought it would be and I have to be OK with that.

We’ve all had a price to pay in COVID times. I think that the thing you’ve had to give up certainly dictates your perspective on the pandemic. So while socialites and suburban moms whined about not being able to go to brunch or get their hair cut, I cried about the extra room in our house that was meant to be a nursery. For me, this time has been an epic lesson in patience as I impatiently wait for the one thing I want most in the world.

Moving on to the “new normal”

COVID-19 May: 5,021,115 cases 342,311 deaths

I think everyone has been ready to go back to “normal” way before it was actually possible. Where I live, our original stay home order was extended from the two weeks that it was intended to be to an additional month. We were now going to be staying home til the end of May. I’m not going to lie, at this point it started to feel pretty helpless. The numbers at the hospitals were grim. Our situation acquiring supplies hadn’t improved. Health care workers were being asked to wash and reuse their protective gear - an idea that would have sounded like pure lunacy prior to the pandemic. But this is where we were at. We had to make the most of what we had to just keep trying to push ahead. What else could we do?

Because there was nothing to do and nowhere to go, the groceries stores were always packed. People shopped and filled up their carts day after day because it made them feel like they were doing something.

I didn’t want to be out there amongst the crowds, but when I had to, I would. I’d put on my mask, strap my hand sanitizer to my purse and would subconsciously pray that I’d see an empty parking lot when I’d pull into the store. As soon as I’d be forced to touch anything in a public place: a door handle, a shopping cart, a credit card machine, my hands physically felt dirty, as if I could actually feel the germs. Every chance I got, I would scrub my hands sometimes to the point of bloody knuckles. I know it was all in my head, but it felt real and washing my hands obsessively made me feel like I was doing something.

I got called back into work in early May- technically before the stay home order was lifted. We were able to create a schedule in which only one or two people were in the office at a time. I would go in to the office early in the morning and work alone for a few hours until the next person would come in. She would work in the back and we hardly saw each other except for perhaps shouting a question through a doorway every now and again. Those first few days back didn’t feel real. I commuted on an empty highway and practiced in my head how I would make my job sound essential if I got pulled over. I would sit in the parking lot of my office building and stare at the door making sure that I wouldn’t run into anyone on my way in. It was the same routine every morning - put on your mask, check no one was coming, sanitize your hands, run from your car into the office, close and lock the door behind you, wash your hands, sanitize the desk, the phone, the keyboard and mouse, take off your mask. After a day or two of this routine —when I realized that I wouldn’t be interacting with anyone, I was able to relax. I was actually grateful to be back at work. I enjoyed working in the quiet office. In spite of how strange everything seemed, at least it felt like a small step towards progress and I was OK with that.

I was hesitant to tell anyone that I had gone back to work. The social etiquette that has been created during this time has been weird to say the least. There are a lot of feelings of guilt every time you possibly bend a rule, or push a boundary. There’s guilt in those actions because you can be a carrier of the COVID-19 virus, but show no symptoms. For reasons that still baffle scientists, some people become deathly ill, some people, although infected, do not get sick at all, and others experience something in between. So even if you don’t feel sick, you can pass the virus on to a loved one and potentially be the reason they end up in the hospital. Because of this—there is a lot of self righteous judgement about how people have chosen to conduct themselves. No one wants to be the silent carrier that brings illness, but everyone is quick to point the finger at someone who they think might be putting them at risk. I didn’t want anyone to feel that I was making poor choices. I was being as careful as I could be while still living my life. I would hope that no one would judge me for that, but considering how sensitive everyone is right now…I just couldn’t be sure.

I have said many times that you could almost pin-point the exact moment when everyone started to give up. It was shortly before memorial day weekend. The weather was starting to get warmer and everyone was agitated and restless. I started to see more and more people gathering in back yards, and parks. More people going out to do things that were not essential. Traffic was getting heavier. People were breaking quarantine and posting on social media about the friends they saw or the people they allowed into their homes. Prior to this shift, everyone had been championing “flattening the curve” and “staying home saves lives” but after a while it seemed people were more willing to wave their white flags of defeat made of toilet paper and say “fuck it! I can’t do this anymore”. Earlier in the year, I’d go for my evening walks and wouldn’t see a soul. Now, I’d go for evening walks and have old women scoff at me and say I looked like a bank robber in my mask, and teenagers would fake cough in my direction and laugh loudly about how they gave me the virus. It was no longer cool to be cautious. I was no longer seen as being courteous to my fellow neighbors. I might as well been wearing a tin foil hat and ranting about aliens as crossed the street to avoid sharing a sidewalk with strangers. It felt awful to be trying so hard to do the right thing when everyone around you couldn’t have cared less.

This is also about the time in which people in other states started to show up at government buildings to protest the shutdown. They demanded to be allowed to get their hair cut, to be able to go to a tattoo parlor, to be allowed to get drinks at the bar. Some states caved and began opening up their businesses too soon (something they would pay for later in spikes in infection rates). Other states, like mine stayed the course. People were demanding their lives to go back to normal, consequences be damned. In truth, I don’t think things will ever go back to how they were before. How could they? This is one of those life changing events that influences policies to try to prevent it from happening again. Look at how much airport security changed post 9-11. Same idea, different type of catastrophe. I wish I could tell you what our new normal is going to look like, but we’re still in the thick of this thing so honestly, I don’t know.

The MOST Important Thing

COVID-19 May: 5,957,665 cases 367,405 deaths

On Memorial Day weekend, something unimaginable happened. George Floyd, a black man, was murdered by a white police officer during an arrest. The officer pinned George to the ground and kneeled on his neck for over 8 minutes. It played out in front of a group of onlookers who pleaded with the officer to stop and George himself cried out that he couldn’t breathe. There were multiple videos taken of the incident that proved that it was murder. However, the officers involved were not immediately disciplined or charged criminally for their appalling behavior. The videos taken spread on the internet like wildfire. It was an incident that illustrated the racism that exists in this country. It forced us to talk about something that’s happened too many times since the birth of this country — how people in positions of power abuse people of color. How police officers get away with murder because of a system that doesn’t care about black people. The lack of an appropriate response to George Floyd’s death set off protests across the country, and protests turned into riots.

COVID barely on their minds, people rushed out in numbers. In an expression of raw emotion, protestors burned down entire city blocks. In Minneapolis, where George Floyd was murdered, they burned down the police station amongst many other things. The rioting and looting lasted for days. In an effort to contain the unrest, curfews were issued and stores were closed. Business owners boarded up windows and stood vigil outside with their guns in hopes of protecting their property. Everyone stopped talking about COVID-19. There was something so much more important to talk about. What were we going to do about our racism problem in this country?

The first night that rioting broke out in the city, I as glued to my phone. I refreshed my twitter feed every five minutes to read the live coverage of what was happening. In the distance I heard sirens, helicopters and what sounded like explosions. I felt a lot of guilt for being home, safe in my bed. Should I have gone out there? Should I have been documenting this with my camera? I saw pictures on my feed of buildings downtown on fire. Police cars being smashed. I saw videos of children who showed up to protest with their parents being maced. Day after day, 2020 seemed hell bent on out-doing itself. It was the first time I had ever seen anything like that happen and it’s a weekend that I’m sure many of us will never forget.

After days of unrest, the officers were officially charged with the crimes they committed. As we swept up the glass and boarded up the broken windows—the rioting turned into marches, vigils and peaceful protests. However, the problem was far from solved and the debate continued to be on the lips of practically every person that lived in this country. Once again we were choosing sides. Racists were standing firm in their beliefs, while hoards of others were doing their best to humble themselves, acknowledge their privilege, educate themselves and become allies to the black community. For the first time that I can recall in my entire life people hit pause on their own dialogs to listen to the people of color in their lives—to let black people shout at the top of their lungs about the generations of abuse and hate they’ve been subjected to. It’s been an eye opening experience. Every time I think I finally begin to understand, I hear another story and realize that I have no fucking idea what it’s like.

For those who didn’t go out into the streets, there was activism happening on the internet. Places to donate money, places to get and share information, places to lift up black artists, black owned small businesses, and black organizations. It was a flood of activity in which people felt compelled to make a statement, make art, give opinions and have debates…just anything to feel like they were doing something.

What we all saw happen to George Floyd in that video is something you can’t un-see. It’s the type of thing that reaches inside and unsettles you at your core. What happened that day set off a shock wave and kindled the fires of a movement. It’s been 5 weeks since then, and it’s still on the lips of most people most days. The knee jerk passionate reactions may have died down, but the heart of it still remains. What are we going to do about our racism issue in this country?

Whatever answers we come up with will end up being the most important thing that will have happened this year. I wish that I had more to say on what should be done. I’ve been trying to wrap my head around the fact that I live in a country in which not all people are seen or respected the same. I live in a country in which white men feel they have every right to kneel on the necks of black men and take their lives. I live in a country in which people hate others because of their skin. I mean—FUCK, what do you even say about that?

Right now we’re seeing old confederate monuments being brought to the ground. States are changing their flags to rid them of associations with the confederate army. Companies are changing old racist branding that was once thought of as being innocent. Lots of small steps are being taken to create a more inclusive and sensitive world. However—the big stuff, the stuff that really matters. Those are the things that are still up in the air. The small things will only feel like consolation prizes if we don’t get the big stuff right. So now, as I wait for answers about when and how a seemingly unending pandemic will end, I also wait for answers about how we’re going to proceed when faced with a movement that should have happened decades ago. My typical inclination to search for a silver lining is being challenged heavily. It’s hard to see a silver lining when carrying the weight of such heavy things. 2020 is challenging the fuck out of us all and I’m not sure who we’ll be when we step out on the other side.

I’ve tried time and time again to think of an appropriate way to end this letter. There is none. There is still such a long way to go before we can look back on the pandemic as a thing of the past. I have no doubt that you’ll be reading more letters from me, and others like me, who are doing our best to make it through. If I’ve learned anything at all in my life, it’s that these big challenges are the things that mold us. These are the things that give us strength and perspective. We’re earning our strength in spades right now, and I hope that the perspective we gain from living through this will help create a better world for you in the future.

COVID-19 To Date: 3,225,950 cases 566,355 deaths -Anonymous Writer / Photographer in the Southwest Suburbs of Chicago

#lettersfromthepandemic #chicago #photography #history #covidtimes

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