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Benjamin Franklin on Virtue

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The Obamas

Until now, I didn’t know how much I appreciated them. I never quite realized how much they were providing an example of graciousness, level-headedness and fairness, keeping the bullies in check by showing how to be black in a white house. Grace under pressure.

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On Corset Pain (1869)

“Many a school-girl, whose waist was originally of a proper and healthful size, has gradually pressed the soft bones of youth until the lower ribs that should rise and fall with every breath, become entirely unused. Then the abdominal breathing, performed by the lower part of the lungs, ceases; the whole system becomes reduced in strength; the abdominal muscles that hold up the interior organs become weak, and the upper ones gradually sink upon the lower....

Corsets, as usually worn, have no support from the shoulders, and consequently all the weight of dress resting upon or above them presses upon the hips and abdomen....

When these muscles are thrown out of use, they lose their power.... The stomach begins to draw from above instead of resting on the viscera beneath. This in some cases causes dull and wandering pains, a sense of pulling at the centre of the chest, and a drawing downward at the pit of the stomach. Then as the support beneath is really gone, there is what is often called “a feeling of goneness.”

....How very common these sufferings are, few but the medical profession can realize, because they are troubles that must be concealed. Many a woman is moving about in uncomplaining agony who, with any other trouble involving equal suffering, would be on her bed surrounded by sympathizing friends....

And, if these dreadful ills were not enough, there have been added methods of medical treatment at once useless, torturing to the mind, and involving great liability to immoralities.” 

Harriet Beecher Stowe and Catherine E. Beecher, American Woman’s Home or Principles of Domestic Science; Being A Guide to the Formation and Maintenance of Economical, Healthful, Beautiful and Christian Homes. The Stowe-Day Foundation, Hartford, Connecticut 1991

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This, too, is Bullying: Locker Room Talkback

Trump’s locker room talk reveals something ugly about his psyche and, understandably, his words have been triggering women who have been sexually assaulted.  

The fact is that we have all gotten it in some form or another. We’ve all been accosted by some more-or-less towering personage who felt entitled to grope us or refer to us as specimens. The women who have come forward to testify to the fact that Trump groped them have all been making this point again and again. And it’s a significant one, that it happens all the time. Sure, it doesn’t always happen that it’s a psychopath doing the groping. There is a type of man who feels entitled to sample what he sees as at a candy store and, as a women -- man, trans person -- you will come across them.

When I was a young woman, I occasionally would tell my mother about my experiences with being groped in public arenas, even while I was with her -- on the subway, at a street fair. She would just shake her head and shrug. It’s part of life, she would say, and I look back now and realize that it has been a part of life. As a product of the 1950s, my mother didn’t see an alternative. So maybe we should be grateful for our current psychopath, whose gross indiscretions are being so blatantly exposed. In the 50s, there was no real hope of catching the kind of language we heard on the Trump video. Today we have our surveillance society to thank for putting it all out there and on the record. 

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Men Explain Things to Me

I love Rebecca Solnit. This is why:

Her essay “Men Explain Things to Me” starts with an anecdote from her own experience: after learning that she is a writer, and a writer of a book about x, a slightly older guy insists on informing her about a *very important book* on x that had recently had a favorable review in The New York Times. When he finally is brought to understand that that is the book she had written, he turns ashen and can’t stops talking. 

She writes:

“I like incidents of that sort, when forces that are usually so sneaky and hard to point out slither out of the grass and are as obvious as, say, an anaconda that’s eaten a cow or an elephant turd on the carpet....Every woman knows what I’m talking about. It’s the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men’s unsupported overconfidence.” 

(Haymarket Books 2014, 4-5)

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Towards a New Definition of Obscenity, Al Carmines 1965

”For Christians the truly obscene ought not to be slick-paper nudity, nor the vulgarities of dirty old or young literati, or even “weirdo” films showing transvestite orgies or male genitalia. What is obscene is that material, whether sexual or not, that has as its basic motivation and purpose the degradation, debasement and dehumanizing of persons. The dirtiest word in the English language is not “fuck “ or “shit” in the mouth of a tragic shaman, but the word “NIGGER” from the sneering lips of a Bull Connor. Obscenity ought to be much closer to the biblical definition of blasphemy against God and man...

I do not conceive that a picture is “dirty” because sex is its dominant theme. (The tragic disservice of slick-paper sex magazines is not that they display nudes in suggestive poses but that they become anti-sexual by pushing sex to the point of satiety, thus making it a deadly bore.) A picture is not direty that shows a man and woman in one of the 57 recommended positions for intercourse (unaesthetic perhaps, possibly bad taste, but hardly obscene!). The dirty or obscene is the one that shows the police dogs being unleashed on the Negro demonstrators in Birmingham. The “lewdest” pictures of all - more obscene than all the tawdry products of the “smut industry” -- are the pictures of Dachau, the ovens, and the grotesque pile of human corpses.

Let us as Christians write a new definition of obscenity based on the dehumunanizing aspects of our contemporary culture. Can we not see the hypocrisy of our prudery when we spend time, words and money trying to prevent the magazine Eros from going through the mails and never raise an eyebrow about the tons of material that vilify human beings and consign whole ethic groups to the lowest kind of animality?

Al Carmines was the Assistant Minister at Judson Church and a playwright and champion of the arts. 

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The Definition of “Gaslighting”

Gaslight, v.

Etymon: English. Gaslight. the title of George Cukor's 1944 film Gaslight (a remake of Thorold Dickinson's 1940 version, in turn based on a play by Patrick Hamilton, first performed in 1938), in which a man psychologically manipulates his wife into believing that she is going insane.

The title refers to the husband's adjustment of their home's gaslights to flicker and dim at unexpected times.

Trans. To manipulate (a person) by psychological means into questioning his or her own sanity.

Oxford English Dictionary

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“...There are all kinds of societies in which shunning is the punishment of choice for those who have broken social codes. Today with the ubiquitous beheadings by ISIS in Syria and elsewhere ostracizing seems a relatively mild form of vengeance--even when we consider what happened to Hester Prynne in The Scarlett Letter. But if Dante was to create circles just related to vengeance then things like banishment and ostracizing might occupy the first circle of this hell. To take someone’s life, particularly in a painful manner such as beheading or live burial or stoning would obviously fall into the 9th circle category. But what about eradicating an individual's existence without necessarily terminating their life. This would probably fall under the category of what the psychoanalyst Leonard Shengold terms Soul Murder. There’s something particularly invidious about this method of torture. It’s not waterboarding or sleep deprivation, but it attacks the deepest level of humanity, to the extent that it denies one's being and identity. The victim of such reprisal suddenly finds him or herself forcibly estranged from some person or persons he once knew. He or she no longer sees him or herself reflected in their eyes and a little bit of him dies. Maybe you don’t care if the person cleaning your teeth refuses to acknowledge your existence, but these things can become viral and you soon may find yourself faced with such a degree of assumed indifference to your presence that you begin to wonder if you really do exist.”

by Francis Levy, aka The Screaming Pope

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Friendship illnesses

Some people want to be everybody’s friend, and their pain comes from the impossibility of this.  They are constantly hurt because they feel rebuffed, but they also hurt others because they can’t possibly keep up with everyone.

Some people want love, but they’d rather hide than try. They’re always asking to be excused. They’re timid people with psychic pain that registers easily on their faces. You see the pain in their eyes.

Then there are people who are less timid, but similarly retiring. They tend to shout to compensate for their shyness, thinking that no one can hear them or that no one cares to hear them.

And there are those who seem utterly independent, refusing friends, not because they feel afraid, but because they don’t know they’re afraid. They don’t have the time or energy for other people. They maintain an impenetrable interpersonal barrier.

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HOW TO TELL IF SOMEONE ISN’T YOUR FRIEND EVEN IF SHE ACTS LIKE SHE IS

-she always wants you to do things for her.  

-she breaks appointments at the last minute

-she never asks you how you are doing

-if there’s something really important going on, she excludes you.

- she prefers it if you are less successful than she is

- She prefers it if you are dependent

- she only calls you when she wants something from you

- she talks to you as if you are stupid

- she puts you down jokingly; so if you complain, she can say she was just joking

- she buys things for you like you’re a child

- she doesn’t come when you have a show or special occasion

- she expects you to come when she does

- she is too busy to call you on your birthday

- she chides you sharply for wanting attention

- she tries to bond with your other friends over how silly and ineffectual you are.

- she tries the same with your parents

-she expects you to listen to her problems

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YIK YAK FAQ

Query: I’m being bullied/targeted.

Answer: We are sorry you are experiencing bullying on the app. We take bullying very seriously and are constantly working on eliminating it.

Also found in the FAQ:

The message, "Hmm.. Looks like you’re at a high school or middle school, which means you won’t be able to use Yik Yak (for safety reasons). If you think there’s been a mistake, please contact us," does not mean you're suspended from Yik Yak. We simply block the app from middle and high schools to combat bullying. As soon as you are not near a geofenced location, you will be able to use the app again!

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Are you a mouse or a snake?

What I’ve learned over the years is that being the victim of a bully has a lot to do with your state of mind. What do I mean? Only that, if you have the type of mind that absolutely requires the mirror of another mind to feel real, you are in trouble, and you are prime targeting material for any passing bully. 

That type of ungrounded personality starts in childhood. When I was a kid, I used to think of other girls in two categories. There were the mice who, invited over to your house, would get so nervous and unsure of themselves that they would freeze. If a parent asks if they want a snack, they don’t know what to say so they say no. They sit waiting for directions and are happy and relieved when it’s time to go home.  

How different that type is from the snake, who is the kind that takes every offered treat, even asking for a different one if she doesn’t like whatever snack is being offered. She’ll ask in a charming way, hands in her lap, seemingly so respectful of grown-ups. But, after your mom closes the door, everything changes. Then she’ll jump up and start checking out your room, going through your stuff and messing everything up in her path.

The snakes and the mice need each other, it’s the master-slave dialectic.

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“Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories. The first -- the story of our quest for sexual love -- is well known and well charted....The second -- the story of our quest for love from the world -- is a more secret and shameful tale.”

Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety

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Invitation to Submit Stories about Adult Female Bullying

I’m collecting other people’s stories about subtle and not-subtle modes of bullying and aggression among women to be published here on tumblr. Interested? Email me using gmail at chaoticdreamkitty.

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Forgiveness

If we’re never forgiven for the wrong we’ve done, we get stuck in what we did. We can’t stop mulling it over, worrying it, and bringing it back up for painful review. As Hannah Arendt said:

“Without being forgiven, released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would... be confined to one single deed from which we could never recover; we would remain the victims of its consequences forever.”

The wrong has to be acknowledged, and then forgiveness can come from others, from God, or from you. 

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Types of Unethical Communication

Gossip, lies, rumors, innuendo, ridicule, belittlement, disparagement, humiliation, false information, dissemination of such information, failure to correct false information, leaks of personal and confidential information, not providing information necessary for a worker to complete the requirements of his or her job, isolating a worker, ignoring an employee, giving an employee the cold shoulder, excessive writing up by a supervisor, disciplinary action and reprimands without obtaining information from all parties, inaccurate or abusive performance evaluations, withholding of job reference to obtain other work.

(from Heinz Leymann via Maureen Duffy and Len Sperry’s Overcoming Mobbing: A Recovery Guide for Workplace Aggression and Bullying (Oxford, 2014)

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Adult Bullies Are Good At What They Do

“Adult bullies are far more astutely strategic than children, more likely to use indirect aggression because indirect is easy to deny, and are excellent at managing up--appearing completely innocent to upper-managers or other organizational authorities.” 

Pamela Lutgen-Sandvik, Adult Bullying: A Nasty Piece of Work: Translating a decade of Research on Non-Sexual Harrassment, Psychological Terror, Mobbing, and Emotional Abuse on the Job