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sleepingfancies · 6 years

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We Need to Talk About SJM

I was recently anonymously asked what exactly my issue with Sarah Jane Maas is, and ended up writing what was essentially a thesis paper about it. Unfortunately, Tumblr pulled a Shitty Website move and deleted everything I wrote under the ‘read more’ tab, so I’m compiling my reasons here on a masterpost, for your reading leisure.

EDIT: Read more tab continues to not work for me, so I apologize to all of you who have to suffer through this. I’ll tag is as a long post accordingly.

Let’s get started

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Reason 1: She preaches messages that no young girl needs to (or should) hear.

Granted, I know the a lot of the YA genre are adults who are no strangers to smut and aren’t phased by toxic behavior in characters. But on the same token, a lot of the YA genre is fueled by young girls age 12-20. Now I’m not going to sit here and pretend like girls in that age range aren’t reading/writing smutty fanfiction or dating. I know they do, I did, most of my friends did. But at that age, young girls are still trying to figure out who they are and who they want to be, including in terms of relationships. That’s where my problem with Maas comes in.

Maas writes, almost exclusively, toxic relationships - at best. Straight up abusive at worst. At one point in ACOTAR, I had to put the book down because I was so disgusted by what happened. Rhysand assaulted Feyre. I’m not kidding. He kissed and groped her against her will, telepathically asked whether she was wet about it, and wondered aloud what she looked like naked. The entire goal of doing this was to piss Feyre’s then-boyfriend off, and for Rhysand to assert his dominance as a Fae lord or whatever the fuck (y’know, like rapists do). Feyre was left shaking, nauseated, and scared for her life. But the worst part? It was written like this was something sexy and desirable. Literal penetration was all that stopped this from being a horrifying rape scene, and I couldn’t believe Maas wrote about it like some hot erotica. It wasn’t romantic. It wasn’t cute. It was disgusting, violating, and I was furious when I read it (especially given Feyre actually ends up with Rhysand eventually. What the fuck).

In Throne of Glass - and subsequent sequels - there are couples (namely Rowan and Aelin) who quite literally spit on each other, punch each other, and bite each other. No, not “love nip” bite, I mean “I’m trying to tear your skin off” bite. But we’re meant to believe they’re endgame, meant to be, and a totally healthy relationship. Let’s not even get into emotional abuse and manipulation, because holy fuck does every single character in these books act like a goddamn villain if we were to go over that in detail. All you need to know is that “if you don’t do xyz then I’ll leave and never come back” “what made you think I cared about you? You’re nothing to me. Just kidding, I love you” and similar sentiments are rampant in these series.

While we’re here, what is up with this “mates” nonsense? Every character pairing we see by the end of the ToG series has a “mate,” and swears off everyone they’ve had before, claiming them to be “false mates.” This whole “mates” business sounds a lot like somebody desperately trying to reassure their insanely jealous partner that they don’t still have feelings for their ex. That’s not healthy! That’s not okay! Your exes helped you narrow down your search. They helped you understand yourself more and what you want (or don’t want). And y’know what? It’s okay to have happy memories with an ex. It’s okay to not hate your ex. Telling young girls that all that matters is their future husband (which erases LGBT+ girls, as well as straight women who don’t want to get married) is harmful as hell, and contributes to the idea that a girl is only “complete” when she finds her “soulmate.”

Girls 12-20 really do not need to be given the message that it’s normal - nay, romantic - for their partners to hit them, humiliate them, or assault them. You may be saying, “Clara, come on, girls know fiction isn’t reality and no girl is actually going to stand for that kind of thing in real life.” But I can’t tell you how horribly my own view of relationships was corrupted for several years after all the books I read as a tween where the protagonist had to defend her flirty boyfriend from the advances of other girls. I didn’t trust boys not to cheat on me. I didn’t trust my girl friends not to try and steal a boyfriend. I thought girls who dressed up and wore makeup and dated a lot were sluts. It took me years of conscious effort to unlearn those ideas. Fiction can and does influence the reader. So again I say: teaching girls that it’s “hot and sexy” when men literally abuse you is not a message a 12-20 year old should be hearing. Ever.

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Reason 2: What exactly does Maas want her readers to be?

Y’know, Maas thinks Caelena/Aelin is a role model for young girls. But here’s a brief list of things Celery/Alien has done throughout the Throne of Glass series:

1. Tried to smash a flower pot over a girl’s head for showing interest in courting Prince Dorian. Despite said girl literally being present at the castle for that purpose and Caelena was not.

2. Very nearly murdered Dorian for absolutely fuckall reason, and then she got mad at Chaol for trying to stop her (keep in mind: Chaol and Dorian are supposed to be best friends. So like... yeah, he’s gonna come to Dorian’s defense).

3. Straight up said, “if I get bored being queen I’ll just go and conquer more lands for my kingdom.” Imperialist there much, Aelin?

This is Maas’ role model material? Half the shit she does from Heir of Fire onward could be described as “war crime” and the other half could be described as “selfish.” Maas seems to think that a shit ton of half-baked “witty” lines and a few “badass” fight scenes completely makes up for having an amoral character as the protagonist you want to flaunt around as an icon for young girls.

It would be one thing if Maas said, “I don’t want anyone to be like Celery/Alien. She’s not a good person and I want my readers to be able to identify how and why she isn’t a good person. The moral is what not to be like.” But she does the opposite and claims time and time again that Celery/Alien is some kind of feminist warrior, when in fact Celery/Alien is the very epitome of white feminism and false feminism. She’ll be all kinds of gung-ho for herself, but as soon as another woman mentions her own unique problems or lifestyles, Celery/Alien thinks she’s a “whiny bitch,” “dumb slut,” or something similar. Celery/Alien ends up looking down her nose at basically every other female character. The lack of female friendships in Maas’ books is frankly astounding.

No girl needs to be Celery/Alien. Celery/Alien is not a role model, she is not a feminist, she is not a figurehead of a well developed female character or even a compelling antihero. She’s sexist, she’s misogynistic, she has serious anger issues, she’s manipulative, she’s abusive. This is not who young girls should be looking up to.

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Reason 3: Maas has no place in the YA genre.

I’m not really sure I need to elaborate much on this. Let me give you a scenario:

Imagine you’re at a book signing for your fans. They’re mostly girls 15-20, so you kind of just sign their copies without thinking much about it. But then a smaller girl comes up to the table, you ask her age, and she says “I’m ten.” A 10 year old girl is standing in front of you, clutching her copy of your book where you wrote and published the scene, “he buried in to the hilt and roared. Over and over he spilled inside of her, the lightning outside flashing soft and lovely long after he stilled.”

Look me in the eye and tell me that shit is appropriate in the YA genre. At all. Ever.

You wanna write romance? Go for it. It can be cute! It can be healthy! It can be intriguing! But this? This? This is just... erotica. If you’re publishing stuff like this in the YA genre, in a book that isn’t even on the ‘tween/teen romance’ shelves, then you better be ready to take full responsibility for teaching 10 year olds what a blowjob is, what an orgasm is, what BDSM is, what a fucking foot fetish is.

I know JK Rowling isn’t the most popular right now, but even she did better than this. The first 3 Harry Potter books you can generally find on the children’s/middle grade shelves. They were cute, fun little adventures about wizards and magic and fantastic creatures. Books 4-7? Those are on the YA shelves. People are dying, magic is dangerous, fascist organizations are on the rise -- it isn’t fun for Harry anymore. It isn’t about the wonders of magic. It’s about life or death, war, and fear. So yeah, of course those book aren’t going to be on the children’s/middle grade shelves! They’re dark! They’re scary! That kind of material shouldn’t be advertised as appropriate for younger kids!

Maas never extended that courtesy. Maas took her books full of badly written erotica and plopped them down right where all the rest of the completely tame YA books went, because she wanted the sales. She didn’t care if she was exposing kids who were too young to explicit sex scenes. She never posted a disclaimer, she never posted any kind of warning on social media when the books came out. Nope. She just silently took advantage of the market knowing she’d get more sales in YA. But it has no place in YA. It’s not YA. And I don’t think I’m ever gonna be okay with that.

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Reason 4: Diversity? Never heard of it!

Maas’ books are so incredibly white and straight that it’s painful. Rowan and Aelin? White and straight. Feyre? Rhysand? Chaol? Dorian? Manon? Hey, you guessed it! They’re all white and straight (despite Chaol, Dorian, and Manon being heavily LGBT+ coded for like, the entire series till the last book)!

“He looked at his friend, perhaps for the last time, and said what he had always known, from the moment they met, ‘I love you.’” (Queen of Shadows)

Hello? Sarah Jane? I’m all for male friendships, but there’s male friendships and then there’s actual romance. Chaol and Dorian are about as gay-coded as they could fucking get. And this isn’t even the only time this happens! Check this out:

“Dorian surged from his chair and dropped to his knees beside the bed. He grabbed Chaol’s hand, squeezing it as he pressed his brow against his. ‘You were dead,’ the prince said, his voice breaking. ‘I thought you were dead.’” (Queen of Shadows)

But wait, there’s more!

“‘I’m not leaving you. Not again.’

Dorian’s mouth tightened. ‘You didn’t leave, Chaol.’ He shook his head once, sending tears slipping down his cheeks. ‘You never left me.’” (Queen of Shadows)

I mean come on, Sarah!

Also, Manon. My girl Manon hated men, pretty explicitly, for the entire series. In case you don’t believe me:

“There were few sounds Manon enjoyed more than the groans of dying men.” (Heir of Fire)

Oh, and other characters even imply Manon has never had a heterosexual relationship in her fucking life. See:

“‘That golden-haired witch, Asterin...’ Aelin said. ‘She screamed Manon’s name the way I screamed yours. How can I take away somebody who means the world to someone else? Even if she is my enemy.’” (Queen of Shadows)

Tell me that’s not gay as fuck. I dare you.

Manon had a whole lot of love to give women! She was always affectionate towards other women. Particularly Elide. This is a woman who was about as lesbian as you could get. Had no interest in men, every interest in women, rejected typically expected roles for women (getting married and having kids, etc.) but guess what happened? Guess what fucking happened?

This warrior who was friends with and rode on a big fuckoff wyvern completely and totally submits to Dorian as her lover. I don’t mean that metaphorically. They literally do some BDSM shit where he’s her “master” and she “kneels to him” or whatever the fucking fuck. This entire thing pissed me off more than Chaol and Dorian being all “no homo bro,” because Maas used every possible symbol and subtext for Manon being gay, and then said “just kidding!” Her relationship with Dorian came out of nowhere. All of a sudden she was just as thirsty for mediocre dick as Aelin.

At this point I honestly have to wonder if Maas is really this ignorant or if she’s - dare I say it? - taunting her readers who have complained about the lack of LGBT+ representation. Maas has, historically, not reacted well to people criticizing her work. I would not put it beyond her at all to intentionally queer-code characters only to turn around and rip the rug out from under her readers by pairing them up in heterosexual relationships. And not only is that shitty writing, but it’s... really malicious and rude.

Of course then there’s the issues with racial representation. Again, Maas doesn’t even try. She includes 13 characters of color only to immediately kill off all of them in a suicide pact. So there’s that. Not sure I need to say more than that.

Maas knows what diversity is, but as per her famous quote, “I just don’t want to force diversity into my books.” So. Y’know. Writing a black or gay character (or!! God forbid, both black and gay!!) is asking a little too much of her, apparently. She doesn’t want to force anything as unbelievable as someone who isn’t white or straight, don’tcha know? In these books about fae people and dragons and gods fighting mortals and explicit erotica, an LGBT+ character or a character of color is high fantasy, not YA. *Sarcasm*

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Reason 5: The woman can’t write.

This is pretty straightforward. She cannot write. My proof? She plagiarizes the living fuck out of everything she can to avoid actually writing her own original work.

1. “You’re gonna rattle the stars.” - from Disney’s Treasure Planet

2. “The Queen Who Was Promised” - from GRRM’s ASOIAF, where Dany Targaryen is often toted as the exact same thing. Oh, and The Prince Who Was Promised prophecy in ASOIAF also mentions Azor Ahai being “the Heir of Fire” so, uh.... yeah.

3. Aelin basically being Aragorn. Lost royalty spends years as an outcast, denies their claim, teams up with elves (fae in Aelin’s case) to defeat a greater evil, becomes known as the people’s champion, falls in love with an elf (fae) and makes them their consort, crowned by the people, ends their coronation scene with a “you bow to no one” (I’m not kidding).

4. Nehemia dying for Aelin and it later being revealed that Nehemia was “grooming” Aelin to face great evil, and potentially give her life to stop it. How much you wanna bet Maas tried to give Aelin a name as close to “Harry Potter” as she could get?

5. Manon lighting a series of beacons across a mountain range to call for aid during war. I mean seriously? This is one of the most iconic scenes in Peter Jackson’s rendition of Lord of the Rings. It’s moving, it’s powerful, it’s awe-inspiring. And Maas knew it. So she just... took it. I don’t have a lot of respect for writers who can’t write their own moving scenes.

6. Kingsflame blossoms, which only bloom when the rightful monarch is on the throne. So... the White Tree of Gondor. Got it.

7. The Hand of the King being a royal court position. Like... jesus. GRRM, come get ya world-building, SJ stole it again.

8. A paralyzed Chaol has a specialized saddle made for him, because he wants more than anything to ride a horse again. GRRM! Please! She’s taking Bran Stark’s story now!

And besides all of these horribly plagiarized points, there’s nothing even slightly compelling about these books. There’s literally zero substance, and the last few books in both the ACOTAR and ToG series have been nothing but a smut-fest. Plot who? We don’t know her.

Trauma, both physical and mental, is erased at the drop of a dime (Aelin lost physical scars, Chaol’s paralysis was basically cured, series of events that should’ve left characters absolutely fucked just... didn’t phase them). The battles are rushed and sloppily written, and Maas has a particularly nasty habit of focusing on exactly the wrong people in the middle of what should be an action packed scene. Instead of showing alliances forging and plots being made behind people’s backs, instead of showing us people gearing up for battle by saying tearful goodbyes to their infants and spouses, Maas shows us Rowan and Aelin banging on a beach, or a tree, or a ship, or wherever the fuck they happen to be at that moment.

None of these characters lose jack shit. There is no sense of urgency or stakes, because we knew since Heir of Fire that Aelin and her precious uwu fae “mate” would be just fine. Why? Because nobody shipped Rowaelin as hard as Sarah Jane Maas did. Consistently the only people who suffer in these books are background characters (who, coincidentally, are almost always the characters of color and LGBT+ characters). By the end of Kingdom of Ash, literally everyone is fine. And paired off to be married, too! Because a happy ending isn’t a true happy ending if it doesn’t end with Babies Ever After and everyone in a heterosexual relationship, of course, right?

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Reason 6: World-building doesn’t even go here! Sorry, she just wanted to be a part of something.

Maas’ world-building is... how do you say... shitty. New lore pops up in every book, having never been mentioned before, and is for some reason of utmost importance (but only for this book. It’ll be forgotten again as soon as it isn’t relevant). Religions who? Culture where? History what? None of these things exist in Maas’ world. None.

Now before anyone jumps down my throat with “but The World of Throne of Glass is coming out this year!!!1!1!!” let me gently establish something. Speaking as a fantasy author: if you do not have your most basic world-building - that being religion, culture, language, and history - already established, then you have no business making a “world of” book to cover all the bases your ass never bothered with in the original series.

I said what I said.

Tolkien and GRRM are masters of world-building because they spent decades working to forge their worlds before they ever put a pen to paper and wrote their stories. Not to toot my own horn, but my own fantasy series has been developing for almost 7 years now. What am I doing with it? I’m outlining governments in different societies, why people came to worship what they do, and I’m making a fucking world map on my bedroom floor (that now has cat paw prints on it, so it’s not exactly final product material anyway).

I give not a single hoot for Maas’ “The World of Throne of Glass.” She could be saying anything she wanted to and it would all just have to be canon, because she’s establishing what this world is after already finishing her series. Yes, it does piss me off, because it’s pretty obvious she didn’t have a clue what her world was, or who was who, or why things were the way they were. She made shit up as she went along, nothing more. There was no grand scheme. There was no planning, and it shows.

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TL;DR: I have a lot of issues with Sarah J Maas’ writing, including her world-building and handling of diversity. But most of all I despise the potential impact she has on the YA genre and on the young girls reading her work. They deserve better than this. They deserve better than Sarah Jane Maas.

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stoweboyd · 6 years

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Work Futures Daily - Equal Pay Day

Women in the US earn 80 cents for every dollar earned by men.

2018-04-09 Beacon NY - I am dedicating the newsletter today to Equal Pay Day. We'll be back to our normally scheduled broadcasting tomorrow.

On Equal Pay Day

Lilly Ledbetter was the plaintiff in the US Supreme Court discrimination case Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., and her name is attached to the Fair Pay Act of 2009. This is an excerpt from her column in the NY Times on this year's Equal Pay Day:

When I am on the road, speaking and sharing my pay discrimination story with women’s rights groups, students and lawmakers, the women who come up to me after my speech don’t just tell me about how their male co-workers doing the same job are making more — they share stories of losing their job, being demoted or not advancing in the workplace because they didn’t submit to sexual harassment or because they reported it. Of being pushed out of higher-paying male-dominated jobs into lower-paying female-dominated jobs because of near daily harassment. Of how their productivity and health suffered.

All of this decreases women’s earnings relative to men’s, increasing gender pay gaps. In turn, when women are denied the pay we deserve for our hard work, when we have to fight for the raise our male counterpart gets automatically, when we struggle to pay our bills because we are being shortchanged at work, we are left more vulnerable to harassment, because we literally can’t afford to risk our paycheck by challenging it. It is a vicious cycle.

That’s why this year’s Equal Pay Day is not just about pay — to be honest, it never was. It has always been about calling out how our workplaces value women less.

…

Sandi Toksvig is the co-founder of the Women's Equality Party in the UK, and she recently gave the annual Adam Smith lecture, the first time a woman had do so, solo, She chose as her topic the exclusion of women from the formal economy, as shown not only by the pay gap, but they undervaluing of unpaid work. Here's some thoughts:

The pay gap isn’t the choice of women. It is both a cause and consequence of gender inequality. In many respects it is more important than pay discrimination because it shines a light on the deep structural inequalities in every part of our society and economy.

On my way to the lecture, I stopped in at the Cottage Family Centre in Kirkcaldy. This wonderful community service was set up by a group of local parents in 1987 and provides a lifeline to poor families in the area. In 2016 its Christmas appeal provided food and presents to 300 children. By last year as many as 800 children and families needed its help. When they recently learned that they had lost one of their funding streams, the extraordinary women who work there offered to take a pay cut so that their community wouldn’t suffer.

The Cottage is a stark reminder that poverty is gendered. Most of the people it serves are women and children who have been first in the line of fire for austerity. Because, as Sophie Walker, leader of the Women’s Equality party, has repeatedly pointed out, “while tax cuts are benefiting men, benefit cuts are harming women”. Research carried out by the House of Commons library in 2017 revealed that it is women who have borne 86% of the burden of austerity since 2010. The brilliant staff who work at the Cottage are overwhelmingly female, no doubt encouraged by an education system that says caring jobs are for women, and the scarcity of flexible working in other sectors.

The relegation of women in our economy means that these sectors are always undervalued and lower-paid, despite growing demand. Successive governments have prioritised investment in physical infrastructure (jobs for the boys) while social infrastructure (nurses, for example) is still seen as an expense to be cut.

Note that the 'caregiver' profession of primary and secondary school teaching has, at least in the US, raised up on its hind legs after years of austerity and benefits cuts, and is marching for an end to business as usual. I expect we will see the nurses joining the picket lines, soon.

…

Claudia Goldin is a Harvard economist who wrote Understanding the Gender Gap, in which she made the argument that the root cause of unequal pay wasn't, as Leah Fessler put it, outright sexism,

Instead, the underlying issue was that women with kids are more likely than men to seek out “temporal flexibility“—that is, jobs with more flexible hours or remote-work options. These roles tend to pay less, even when they require the same amount of work. Closing the gap ultimately requires that employers take the need for work/family balance seriously, and change their pay structures.

In an interview, she offered this (which seems so pertinent relative to the theme of having to look into the rearview mirror to see the future):

History matters. The past is always with us; there is no issue of importance that can be solved without considering the past.

Fessler asked her a number of questions, but this is most pertinent, I think:

If there’s one thing men can do to improve women’s life at work, it would be…

To which Goldin replied:

Want what women want. If men wanted to take more responsibility at home (real responsibility), then workplaces would be structured differently, and men and women would be treated and paid more equally in the labor market. It’s that simple.

Word.

…

The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that employers can't pay women less than men just because they made less at a previous job:

Citing studies that show American women lose some $840 billion annually because of the wage gap, the court wrote, "If money talks, the message to women costs more than 'just' billions: Women are told they are not worth as much as men."

The court's interpretation of the Equal Pay Act overturns a ruling that had stood since 1982. That precedent viewed an employee's pay history as one of the federal law's catchall exceptions that are "based on any other factor other than sex," but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed.

The point of the Equal Pay Act, the court's opinion said, is to eliminate long-standing pay disparities, not to preserve them.

Yay!

Question or comment? (Can be private, or public: your choice. I occasionally publish public comments or questions.)

Follow me on Twitter.

More media, politics, and social commentary on stoweboyd.com, including bio.

#equal pay day #claudia goldin #equal pay act #sandi toksvig #lilly ledbetter #work futures #Work Futures Daily

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paige-s-pages · 5 years

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15 Feminist Artists Respond To The Censorship Of Women’s Bodies Online

“n March, artist and poet Rupi Kaur uploaded an image to Instagram, depicting Kaur curled up on the bed in sweats and a t-shirt. She’s also on her period, and the blood has dripped through her pants onto the sheets. The image was flagged and removed from Instagram — twice.”

thank you Instagram for providing me with the exact response my work was created to critique. you deleted my photo twice...

Posted by Rupi Kaur on Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Kaur responded to the act of censorship on Facebook and Tumblr; her posts on both of these platforms were shared over 11,000 times. “Their patriarchy is leaking. Their misogyny is leaking. We will not be censored,” she wrote. Instagram eventually responded, explaining the image was “accidentally removed” — twice.

The incident speaks to a larger issue, the way women’s bodies are sexualized and silenced, shaved and shamed by the mainstream media. We reached out to a group of feminist artists we admire, all of whom use their work to address in some way this so-called “feminine grotesque” — the conversion of the female body into something monstrous, abnormal, obscene. The artists graciously shared their responses to Kaur’s image, and the wider problems surrounding women’s bodies online.

Below, 14 other artists respond to the way women’s bodies are still judged and muffled in 2015:

1. Ellie Hunter

“It’s interesting that Kuar’s image would ‘violate’ Instagram’s terms and conditions, when women and women’s bodies are violated on social media thousands of times every day.”

Ruin Aesthetic, 2014, 60 x 28 x 12 inches, Cement, steel rod, tulle, fabric, and natural dye

“The online world is constantly morphing and updating, and creating new systems of power along the way. While it’s positive that Kuar was able to rally enough activists for Instagram to restore her photo, it’s so typical of Instagram’s hetero-fascist technocracy to sidestep the issue with the excuse that it’s removal was a mistake. I’m interested in work that’s exploring the so called ‘feminine grotesque’ as it addresses everyday, low-level anxiety I feel about my inherent attributes as a human woman, despite my constant efforts to counteract this shame. For me, exposing these tensions is a dual gesture of intimacy and of aggression or activism.”

2. Katya Grokhovsky

“There is a clear message here: cover it up, erase it, shut up, be pretty and clean, don’t show us you are a human woman. In fact, we prefer you were a hairless, ageless, oh-so-cool-sexy, tiny, easily-manipulated, shiny machine-object, not a visceral, bleeding, odor-and-noise-and-fluids-producing, food-needing, bathroom-going, valuable, capable, ambitious, smart, emotion-and pain-feeling, gloriously human being.”

Katya Grokhovsky, One Fine Day, 2014, photo Yan Gi Cheng

“The issue of censorship of women’s bodies in general makes me VERY ANGRY. Bear with me, as I clear my thoughts, whilst scampering around the block, amidst the smoke fumes spattering out of my scorching volcano of fury, quickly filling up my breathing space. The persistent, relentless, frightening removal of the reality of women’s bodies by the media and society at large is simply another tool of misogynistic oppression. Thank you for your work, Rupi Kaur. This is important, and we need to consistently bring this problem to light. Ruthlessly. Please excuse me, as I lie down, due to another volatile bout of extreme, nauseating patriarchy fatigue. “

3. Marilyn Minter

“The culture industry creates these impossible robotic ideals through Photoshopping and editing the human body. I think what Rupi Kaur and others are doing is really kind of a punk rebellion against these images, and it’s about time.”

“I think the work of Rupi Kaur and Petra Collins, as well as anyone else who’s work is involved in the feminine grotesque, is a backlash to the cultural ideal that is perpetuated on women, especially young women. The culture industry creates these impossible robotic ideals through Photoshopping and editing the human body. I think what Rupi Kaur and others are doing is really kind of a punk rebellion against these images, and it’s about time. This type of work is an important counterweight to the images we’re inundated with every day.”

4. Rhiannon Schneiderman

“Why is everyone still so terrified of vaginas?”

“I’ve always loved period-themed photographs. I just love having that mutual understanding with another woman of ‘holy shit, my body does this, we are superior!’ To have that connection with the earth, that natural rhythm — that’s a pretty big fucking deal. These women, like Rupi Kaur, are recognizing that cycle and how important it is and how powerful they are for experiencing it. For Instagram to remove those images is over the effing top — I’ve seen blood before, I’ve definitely seen it on Instagram. How can you censor blood? Because the implication is that it fell out of someone’s vagina? Really?? Then maybe you should censor newborn babies, too. Why is everyone still so terrified of vaginas? I hope Rupi fights this, because it’s bullshit. And if she needs help, give her my contact info.”

5. Rebecca Morgan

“I think the larger scope of the problem comes with the long held taboos of women’s bodies and menstruation, seeing them as something dirty we should hide or be ashamed of. The problem is a societal one.”

Show Off, 2014 Ink on vellum 12.75” x 11”

“There is a lot of creative freedom for women artists within our often insular art world; some of the most challenging and interesting work that is being made on both large and small scale is being made by women artists, some even using the language of femininity, craft, gender roles and subverting and reclaiming it. It’s a powerful and exciting thing to see. [...] It is when images like Rupi and Prabh Kaur’s reach the masses that the subjugating and stigmatizing of women is so glaringly obvious and discouraging. The photographs serve as examples reminding women that they have a voice, a vision and a mark to leave, as well as a reminder that they have nowhere to leave it, and no ears to listen. The more that images like Rupi Kaur’s cross over with social and mainstream media and the more this conversation is articulated publicly, the more normalized and de-stigmatized the female body will hopefully be.”

6. Carolee Schneemann

“Many cultures have envied or demonized this bleeding, which is not of an injury, but rather embodies the power of maternity.”

Blood Work Diary (Detail), 1972 Menstrual Blottings on Tissue, Five 29x23” Panels. Photo by Anthony McCall. Courtesy of the Artist.

“‘Blood Work Diary’ [seen above] was a 1972 sequence of menstrual blottings which established the structural form of a fluid physiological process. Through their repetition I developed a visual continuum which charted the permutation of this bleeding over time. Menstruation is often subject to overflow, noting the commonality of menstrual occurrence, women would tell each other, ‘Once again, I’ve just left my mark!’ Many cultures have envied or demonized this bleeding, which is not of an injury, but rather embodies the power of maternity. Profound taboos sustain traditions of cultural revulsion, which attempt to make women’s biology the site of shame.”

7. Melanie Bonajo

“Perhaps I have become lost in a world so technologically advanced and impersonal that, without me noticing, we reached the point where nobody is born naked anymore.”

“As [I am] so often censored, flagged and deleted after showing a naked female body — which for me speaks of nothing more then trust and innocence, humor, play — the only thing I can add for now is: We are taught there is nothing more normal to watch than executions which look like they are produced by Hollywood’s best production teams without blinking an eye, while at the same time we need to be protected from the sight of a nipple, because such a thing can shock us so greatly we might end up on the psychiatric couch. All this just raises one question to me. Perhaps I have become lost in a world so technologically advanced and impersonal that, without me noticing, we reached the point where nobody is born naked anymore.”

8. Audrey Wollen

“I think there is something very powerful about being labeled monstrous. Perhaps an alternative feminist strategy might be to reframe Instagram’s censorship as a positive thing — because it reveals the point at which we exceed the limits of the status quo.”

“I think the censorship of certain parts of women’s bodies [...] is complicated, because our initial reaction is to insist on the ‘naturalness’ of those parts, to insist on our own normalcy. We end up begging to be assimilated. But I think there is something very powerful about being labeled monstrous. Perhaps an alternative feminist strategy might be to reframe Instagram’s censorship as a positive thing — because it reveals the point at which we exceed the limits of the status quo. Instagram (and other social media) is an inherently normalizing, policing force and our exclusion from that is a sign that the female body still has the ability to horrify, to disrupt. Our very existence, in its unedited, embodied form, is threatening, and I think that is something to revel in, rather than resist.”

9. Zhu Tian

“I think my work says better than I.”

Babe’, 2013, Rubber, human hair, pigment

10. Lessa Millet

“People need to keep speaking up about their Facebooks being shut down, or their images being flagged, to encourage others to ask questions about who is deciding what is ‘offensive,’ and inspire conversations about how that reflects on our society.”

“Both women and art have been censored for centuries. But now, because of the internet — and the fact that we have access to multiple channels of communication where we can share our thoughts — we are able to bring attention to who is censoring us and what is being censored. People need to keep speaking up about their Facebooks being shut down, or their images being flagged, to encourage others to ask questions about who is deciding what is ‘offensive,’ and inspire conversations about how that reflects on our society. To me, one of the fundamental functions of art is precisely that: starting conversations, asking challenging questions, and helping us understand the society and moment we live in. I don’t think censorship is going to disappear, but neither are people going to stop fighting it and standing up for our freedom of expression.”

11. Kenya (Robinson) — as CHEEKY LaSHAE

“That’s how you can tell someone is a feminine. Period. Oh, and birthing a baby, who, not coincidentally, also has a powder named after them, an honor that is shared with foot.”

CHEEKY LaSHAE + The Red Bath Mat, Performance at Mike Shultis Studio, Photo by: Jackson Ray Petty, 2014

“I suppose CHEEKY should be up in box about the Instagram reaction to period blood poetics. CHEEKY prefers to turn the focus on itself — reminiscing about its own menarche — which actually looked like melted chocolate in the crotch of its pantydraws. Having mistaken those first cramps for diarrhea, made for a temporarily confusing discovery. Fortunately, Mama LaSHAE had prepared young CHEEKY with a toolbox of all things menstruation –- tampons, flightless pads, ibuprofen, vaginal (b)itch cream, disposable douches, moist towelettes, newspaper (for disposal) and, of course, feminine powder — because CHEEKY was most certainly a feminine now. ‘Cause of the period. That’s how you can tell someone is a feminine. Period. Oh, and birthing a baby, who, not coincidentally, also has a powder named after them, an honor that is shared with foot.”

12. Casey Jenkins

“The reality is that no one censors dominant cultures, no one censors the most powerful and prevalent points of view — they’re the ones who censorship panders to and minorities and those less powerful just have to cop it while having their own expressions silenced.”

“In theory I’m all for people having the choice to either view or avoid viewing whatever they choose. A whole plethora of things might be triggering and traumatic for people and giving advance notice about the nature of content about to be viewed seems to be a considerate and humane thing to do. There are certainly days when I would rather be prepared before having the visages of either of the leaders of the major political parties in my country slapped in my face, or endless reports about male-dominated sports, all of which I find offensive and depressing. The reality is though that no one censors dominant cultures, no one censors the most powerful and prevalent points of view — they’re the ones who censorship panders to and minorities and those less powerful just have to cop it while having their own expressions silenced.

“All of this just perpetuates and strengthens the positions of already powerful cultural norms. Recently the news report of my ‘Casting Off My Womb’ performance work, posted to YouTube by TV station SBS2 as ‘Vaginal Knitting’, had restrictions around it tightened and it’s now available for viewing only to those 18 years or older (this is after almost 6.5 million views though so it’s probably fair to say that ship has sailed). Most other news reports about the piece had big ‘Warning!’ banners plastered across them also and I’d be curious to hear exactly what it was that self-appointed censors considered so potentially harmful about the piece — the fleeting shot of my pubic hair? The stain of my menstrual blood? [...] When artwork is wrapped in a censorship banner people gear themselves up for horror and tend to see what they’re primed to, rather than what it actually there.”

13. Jenny Sharaf

“Politics aside, this is pretty good marketing on Rupi Kaur’s part. People aren’t usually writing about poems and period art in the breaking news category.”

14. Doreen Garner

“The idea of feminine and grotesque in the negative sense existing as a combined term encourages us to despise biological truths regarding physical progress into womanhood which includes pubic hair, stains, menstrual blood, secretions, and other pungent qualities.”

The Observatory, 2014, Video, Hour Performance inside Glass Box

“Originally, grotesque as a 15th century term is a style of elaborate curves and decorative elements of paintings found in the ruins of Roman caves or grottoes. Today we use it to describe qualities of a person place or object that is repulsive, strange or disgusting. Grotesque as a descriptive element functions in a space of perversion which is simultaneously occupied by my creative practice. The feminine grotesque is a term that I am very much confused by as a woman and as an artist. Constructed by White American misogyny, the idea of feminine and grotesque in the negative sense existing as a combined term encourages us to despise biological truths regarding physical progress into womanhood which includes pubic hair, stains, menstrual blood, secretions, and other pungent qualities. All of which coexist with publicly embraced signifiers of beauty.”

BEFORE YOU GO

Twin Blue Ribbon (diptych), 2011 Graphite and gouache on masonite 6” x 6” and 6” x 6” RM020

Sweet Jug, 2014 Porcelain 7” x 5” x 5” RM015-cer

Internet Creep, 2011 Ink on paper 8.25” x 5” RM050-wop

Prize Jugs, 2011 Graphite and oil on panel 22” x 30”

Hunter or Hipster, Male, 2012 Graphite and oil on panel 26” x 22”

Patina Jug, 2014 Terracotta 7” x 5” x 6”

Self-Portrait as Prisoner, 2012 Graphite and oil on panel

Self-Portrait wearing my favorite scarf and sweater/my face the fattest it’s ever been, 2013 Graphite and oil on panel

Tourist Bumpkin at Dusk, 2011 Graphite and oil on panel 12” x 9”

Bride, 2014 Ink on vellum 14” x 11” RM132-wop

Precious Jug, 2014 Porcelain 7” x 5.5” x 5.5” RM019-cer

Silver Shock Jug, 2014 Porcelain 6.5” x 5” x 5”

Homecoming Picnic, 2012 Graphite and oil on panel 62 x 69”

Hippie Witch Man, 2014 Graphite and gouache on masonite 6” x 6”

Beauty Jug, 2014 Porcelain 7” x 5” x 5”

I Love New York, 2009 Graphite on paper

Small Grey Jug, 2014 Porcelain 6.5” x 4” x 5” RM021-cer

Butt, 2014 Ink on vellum 12.75” x 11”

Untitled, 2014 Ink and gouache on paper 5.5” x 3.5”

Mountain Love, 2013 Ink on Color-aid 9” x 6”

Show Off, 2009 Porcelain 6” x 4.5” x 5.5″

Frank, Priscilla. “15 Feminist Artists Respond To The Censorship Of Women's Bodies Online.” HuffPost. HuffPost, December 7, 2017. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/artists-respond-female-body-censorship-online_n_7042926.

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htarletondigitalmktg · 5 years

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Glossier

Semi-Humble Beginnings

In 2010, Emily Weiss began the blog Into the Gloss in her spare time while she worked as a Vogue styling assistant. Into the Gloss started as a way to open the dialogue about women’s beauty routines. It was a result of discovering that people believed “admitting you have a beauty routine must mean you’re frivolous or maybe shouldn’t be taken too seriously” — something she’d observed in her time working in the fashion industry (Giacobbe). Very quickly, this venture that began from a $500 investment turned into something more — and Weiss wanted to take advantage of the community.

Just four years after her blog’s beginnings, Weiss hinted at a product launch through the reveal of the Instagram account, @Glossier. Then in October, she released four products under this brand name, to be sold exclusively online at glossier.com (Weiss). Glossier’s advertising was equally exclusive on digital mediums, though 70 percent of online sales came from “peer-to-peer referrals, a number that’s remained constant” (Giacobbe). Even though the company spent no money on advertising (“it was all social-driven”), by the end of 2015, waiting lists for products reached 10,000 people long (Giacobbe). Social media and organic marketing had proven to be significantly effective with Glossier, and continue to work today with Glossier’s 40+ product lineup. In fact, without the power of social media, Glossier would be nowhere near as successful as it is today.

Let’s Get Social

Weiss says Instagram is Glossier’s most powerful social platform — which may answer why they have two accounts (or three, if you count Into The Gloss as a branch). This February, Glossier launched a new brand by posting three animated logos on a separate Instagram account, @GlossierPlay. Immediately, commenters tried to guess what was next in store for the company. @sophia.cari wondered if it was “maybe an app/game???” while @issy.seigel asked “is it a subscription box??”. Through carefully teased and distorted images of products, swatches, and disco clubs, it was revealed that Glossier Play was a colorful new makeup line — a step away from the “barely there” makeup that Glossier had previously been selling. After just over a month, this new account gained over 115 thousand followers, which is still only a piece of the 1.9 million follower pie @Glossier’s Instagram boasts.

Glossier’s @GlossierPlay account

The traditional Glossier social media accounts remain consistent across platforms. On Instagram, the brand mostly reposts content from fans: images of beauty looks, “shelfies” (an industry term for an image of someone’s product shelf), and even memes. Each post gets an average of 30,000 likes. Glossier’s Because the majority of content is user-generated, consumers and followers fell as though they have a stake in the company, which makes them feel less like customers and more like fans. As a result, their Instagram does not feel like outright advertising — and instead a fanpage for the brand. The voice they capture is friendly, as if it’s just a good pal sharing some beautiful images. This voice allows the brand to feel level with its consumers.

Glossier’s Instagram Page

The Glossier YouTube page comes in second with most interaction. Similar to Instagram, this page feels less like advertising for the brand and more like a community and fanpage. On Glossier’s YouTube (referred to cheekily by the handle @GlossierTV), they often post “Get Ready With Me” videos and makeup tutorials, mimicking the content of a beauty vlogger. These videos often feature trendy female and male influencers, or even regular people. This page has 139k followers and the average amount of likes on a video is about 90k.

Glossier also has a Twitter, with 83.3 thousand followers, but the majority of its content is shared from their Instagram. Occasionally, like on Instagram, they will retweet a user’s image of products, but for the most part it’s used to answer fans’ concerns. Typically a Tweet will get under 100 likes.

In addition to these three social platforms, they use Pinterest as an aesthetic representation of the brand and collection of relevant Into the Gloss articles. Their Pinterest account has 11k followers.

Taking it straight from the consumer

Dave Evans, in his article “The Social Web and Engagement”, argues that “engagement is central to the effective use of social technology and the creation of social business”. I believe that Weiss would agree with this statement. Shortly after Glossier’s launch, “the company announced $8.4 million in Series A funding led by Thrive Capital” (Giacobbe). This funding lead to the creation of technology that allowed Weiss and Glossier to study social platforms in order to measure how well Glossier posts and products were doing across mediums. Weiss wanted to study which user-generated posts were most effective to promote engagement with the brand and, of course, consumption. This innovation reflects on why Weiss herself sees Glossier as “a pretty unique kind of beauty company, that’s also a tech company” (Johnson). It allowed this research and development department to take full advantage of Instagram as their own marketing tool without too much effort. In a huge way, this technique has developed Glossier’s growth, and in turn consumer engagement.

Evans offers a social feedback cycle in his article that I believe Glossier has followed almost identically, albeit a little bit backwards. Glossier has a unique beginning which, in turn, gives them a unique relationship towards this cycle. Because they began with a blog, the company essentially based itself off user-generated articles, posts, and discussions about other products. It was this community that sparked the idea in Weiss’ head to begin Glossier, after all. In her Glossier launch essay on Into the Gloss, Weiss writes:

Beauty, like fashion, touches everyone in different ways and offers you endless choices about how you’d like to feel and act and appear. But you already know this, because you’re here, which means you most likely have a Top Shelf of your own that’s been informed by this website. Which is incredible. The sheer fact that there’s a place on the internet that celebrates women’s brains and beauty, fosters community, and brings to light the best products in the world, is enough to make me retire, take up golf, and sleep 8-10 hours a night.

In this essay, Weiss talks about how she literally tapped into the social feedback cycle in order to create a brand that feeds off of it. Her observation of readers taking information given to them from her blog not only revealed issues in other products’ features, but also showed her that there was a space for her own products to blossom.

Henry Davis, Glossier’s previous President, discusses how important the company takes user-generated content and social feedback when dealing with marketing, “When your friend says, ‘you have to try this thing’, you listen. You cannot buy that much goodwill with all the advertising and the best creatives in the world. That’s what we’re focused on” (Rogers). Glossier is very much aware that no amount of advertising money can trump the power of social feedback. Thankfully, this focus has paid off.

In an interview with Kara Swisher from Recode Magazine, Weiss shared that, “...70 percent of our growth so far has been through peer to peer or organic, because people just fundamentally want to share that they enjoyed their Boy Brow.” An example of how the company has capitalized on peer to peer marketing is how Glossier handled their latest product launch. Glossier gifted product to “500 superfans”, who the company saw were engaging the most on social media, instead of popular influencers. That ended up being their most successful launch to date (Rogers).

Engagement is key

In his article, Evans offers a Structured Engagement model which has four steps towards achieving what he believes is ideal engagement: consumption, where the customer is, well, consuming the product; curation, where the consumers begin to interact with a company through reviews, likes, etc.; creation, which requires “community members [to] actually offer up something that they have made themselves”; and collaboration, which “occurs naturally between members of the community when given the chance” (Evans). I believe Glossier has achieved all of these, which places them at the final step of collaboration.

Many times Weiss has discussed how social media easily allows the brand to collaborate with consumers — and also the huge benefit of doing so. As one example, when Glossier was looking to release a face wash, they reached out on social media to ask a strange question: Who would play your dream face wash in a movie? Shockingly, people actually responded, and the top three choices were Eddie Redmayne, Emma Stone, and Julianne Moore. Weiss remembers feeling like, “What? Like, you guys are really answering this? They did, and I thought that was very interesting, because they all had sort of fair skin and red hair, and we thought like, ‘Okay, maybe this is about like sort of like a sensitive skin wash, or something that’...” (Swisher). These answers inspired the sort of pale, milky formula that their Milky Jelly Cleanser (now the best selling product of the Glossier line) became.

It helps that Glossier also reads and responds to every single direct message they receive, even though it’s time consuming. In the same interview, Weiss discussed how one comment changed the formula of one of their products. They received a direct message inquiring them to maybe “cut the water with 50 percent rose water” because it would make it more hydrating and add a nice smell. And in the end, Glossier did just that — all from a simple message.

Weiss knows the value of the social feedback cycle and the engagement process. She’s an intelligent beauty guru, turned beauty woman, turned tech CEO. “...You can be an incumbent beauty company and pay Google, like, I don’t know, $100,000 to serve the top beauty search terms or trends, or you can read one of the five DMs that Glossier gets in a minute. There might be one nugget in there that says, “Hey, why don’t you cut the rose water, have 30 percent rose water?” And that is like an aha moment for us” (Swisher).

https://intothegloss.com/2014/10/emily-weiss-glossier/

https://www.marketingweek.com/2018/06/25/glossier-ripping-up-marketing-playbook/

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/298014

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allonevoice · 5 years

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Paper Two: The Oppositional Gaze

With an unprecedented degree of available media content for consumers to view, it is worth considering how these near-incessant streams of information impact us as well as our vision of the world and those who inhabit it. Television, Film, Radio, Music and literature are not only reflections of the world but more importantly they are subjective representations of their creators’ reflection of the world. They are a template from which all observers must assess the world as well as themselves and their lived experience. The viewers and consumers of media, especially during this plugged-in era of the hypnotic, ever-present smartphone and earbuds, are rapaciously gathering data and ideas about the world they inhabit from curated fiction and non-fiction at an increasingly frenetic pace. The desire to keep this autobahn-paced intake of entertainment harvesting and maintain the endorphin-high chaotic feasting of novelty has put a pressure on content creators to truncate nuance, in a world where more than ever, conversations of increasing complexity are necessary for progress and survival. I mention this to emphasize the gravity of influence that media has over listeners and viewers as well as to underline the casual way that messages are consumed. This casual, constant absorption of stories and ideas (be they fictional or non-fiction, a distinction that matters very little when talking about the very-real consequences that these influences can have) can leave the modern bewildered listeners susceptible to the subliminal (as well as the conspicuous) bedlam of messages they are bombarded with in their daily lives. These points are made to exhibit that any forthcoming evidence or argument made for inequality-prompting trends in media are far from trivial and are more pertinent to observe and address than ever, not just for their pernicious nature but their pervasiveness.

Issues of representation for People of Color have always been problematic in news/entertainment media and advertising in the U.S. The Anglocentric and patriarchal representation of artists, entertainers, models, musicians, business professionals, scientists, actors is rampant. Much of this comes about from majority white ownership of media and advertising companies. Entman and Rojecki suggest, for the most part, outright intolerance and racism of the many individuals, the moving parts and people in media businesses, be they newspapers or television companies, is probably not to blame. More plausible is that the systems in which they are cogs, are flawed on this point. Regardless of who is to blame, it is a white-majority and white perspective bias that result in People of Color being withheld opportunities to be on television shows despite having a wealth of talent, vision and intellect. So too is it a belief in this racist system when historically and presently, Black filmmakers cannot get funding for serious projects discussing racial figures, or plights specific to the Black community, or non-comedic/action films that feature majority Black casts. These decisions discussed as recently as Spike Lee’s post-2000’s struggle to get significant funding for a Malcom X biopic are the results of white-owned production companies’ misguided and racist conviction that there is no profitable majority audience for these films. Not only does that assume that white audiences have no interest in learning about Black figures, and assumes that the emotional, psychological experiences of Blacks are so alienating to white people (a deeply dividing notion) as to be disinteresting, it also presumes that the only audience, and the most important audience to consider, is a white audience to begin with. This presumption, when viewed in the reverse, negates the validity and existence of Blacks entirely. In much of early radio, well into the 50’s until the Carter administration endeavored to amend the issue, the FCC wouldn’t greenlight Black radio stations or programs and wouldn’t fine any stations that exhibited blatantly discriminatory practices. Sadly, there are countless examples of these sorts of exclusionary racially motivated acts over the decades.

A lack of representation creates a disservice to those who go unrepresented as entertainers but also as consumers, not just for the inequality that the media is maintaining within the confines of its business practices, but also in the message that it sends to consumers. To white consumers, with no Black-owned, black culture featured media, this insulates them and creates no understanding or available empathy or tolerance. When Blacks are represented by white writers and curators of media, they are likely to be misrepresented when they are depicted at all. For consumers, this normalizes whiteness to the point of invalidating the existence of Blackness, it creates a latent hostility from whites and a wrongheaded presentation of the world. For Blacks, there is a great and terrible othering that occurs, either by misrepresentation or exclusion. The writer of “The Oppositional Gaze” bell hooks talks about how Black female spectators would deal with the pain of this omittance, of this complete erasure of their existence, at times to attempt to “ignore race”, other times to ignore cinema altogether, as it obstinately decided it wouldn’t represent People of Color either at all, or accurately and honestly. Bell hooks says,

“Not all black women spectators submitted to that spectacle of regression through identification. Most of the women 1 talked with felt that they consciously resisted identification with films--that this tension made moviegoing less than pleasurable; at times it caused pain. As one black woman put, l could always get pleasure from movies as long as I did not look too deep." For black female spectators who have "looked too deep" the encounter with the screen hurt. That some of us chose to stop looking was a gesture of resistance, turning away was one way to protest, to reject negation.” (bell hooks, The Oppositional Gaze, Chapter 7, page 121, paragraph 3).

Fictional media creates inequality by presenting inequality, by creating a false reality bereft of complex People of Color as written and represented in good faith by employed people of their own culture to do their stories justice. What is a person to do but, as some of those that bell hooks has interviewed, but to either turn away, or to swallow the pill that society rejects your experience, your history and your narrative, and you must engage on the most detached level with these white-majority pieces of biased media? There is of course the alternative that she suggests elsewhere in the text; resisting, critiquing and fighting to change these systemic problems that create a lack of relatability and accuracy for Blacks, a painful and exclusionary scenario, as well as engenders more division and lack of empathy from uninformed (and woefully uncultured, uninstructed) white viewers.

On another front, news media often (either out of cynicism or laziness, the maligning result is the same) perpetuates harmful stereotypes for men and women of color. Whether representing issues of poverty with deriding image clusters equating poverty with violence and Blackness or the local-news media tendency to replicate biased police reports and announcements of arrests without any nuance or consideration to the alleged criminal, (statistically more likely to be shown in cuffs, in mugshots, and unnamed if they are Black) there are plenty of systemic habits that do nothing but to depict a negative (and wrong) view of people of color to the nation as a whole. These misrepresentations are pervasive and harmful, they communicate an adversarial and dangerous picture of people of color which does nothing to show reality. These blunt-force misdirected and wrongfully-presented ideas in news stories are not trivial, as I argued in the opening paragraph. They have great consequence, people interact with others based on this media-born information, these harmful racial stereotypes. People like Trump get into office on racist dog-whistling propaganda, on hate-speech genocidal language references to helpless refugees, because ideas have power, because representation matters a great deal. When news shows use euphemistic language to describe white nationalist statements, or don’t lead a quote where Trump is being entirely dishonest or inventing statistics with statements that point out that lie, that matters a great deal when you consider that 60% of people stop ingesting a news story after reading a headline.

The realm of ideas, concepts and conceits matters a great deal, as these things catalyze our perception of the world and the people that inhabit the world around us. The out-of-context soundbite that we “learn from”, the catchy click-bait-motivated headline that we skim over, may just influence the hand that pulls the lever in the voting booth. This sobering reality reminds us that Media, our pseudo-oracle, the influencing ever-blaring window to the “outside world”, is deeply influential in forming our opinions on public policy, our view on religion, our political outlook and more locally, our tolerance of a new neighbor, who we are likely to hire in the workplace, if we would grant a loan to a person whose name or race seems unfamiliar, or whom we suddenly associate with an alarming and unflattering news story.

In the era of Youtube, Vine, Twitter, Instagram and even higher-profile companies like Netflix, Hulu and so on, the broadened media ecosystem has given more people than ever are given a voice, which is great when it comes to representation, where on streaming sites and social media, comedians, artists, and models of all backgrounds are given a fair chance to represent and share their work and stories. Conversely, again though, the trouble of curation comes in as Youtube and many news and social media sites have also given platform to nefarious thinkers and content creators. Interestingly, the system breaks down when advertisements create click-motivated ad revenue, and sensational stories, misleading headlines and the “trolling” aspect of many content creators enter the fold. Youtube specifically has been shown to have algorithms that the suggested video content will lead most people to more right-wing leaning and white-nationalist or conspiracy-oriented videos. Only terrifying and depressing motivations can be assumed from not just the creation of these venomous or at the very least, patently false and time-draining clips, but from a multi-billion-dollar companies’ impetus to promote content like this. These systemic structures still exist, and they are inherently evil influences and perpetuators of white supremacy.

These days, with media rampant, it is so important and difficult to communicate the power of a president’s words, or the angle that a writer would take, or the negative influence that a stereotyping or racialized character in a show would do to people young and old, of white or of color. As we attempt to navigate this space, free speech ideologues who doubt in the power of words and ideas or who ignores the malevolent nature of dog-whistling and historical context take pleasure in smugly feigning ignorance (or exhibiting true ignorance) as they rebuke attempts to call out blatant racist pundits and propaganda. Even centrist self-proclaimed liberals and generally rational/logical thinkers decry events of Twitter de-platforming of people like Alex Jones of the Far-right Infowars media site once he incited violence (aside from the appalling transgression of spreading hate speech and lies for years on his website) or refusing to give admitted nazis and white-supremacists such as Richard Spencer an opportunity to speak publicly or on campus as attempts to destroy “the first amendment”. You can safely bet that most of these thinkers and skeptics are white men who have no (colored) skin in the game. Media and those powerful people who manipulate it (in front of or behind the camera/the computer/the writing desk), greatly, terrifyingly shapes the world by shaping our understanding of it. Media puts thoughts in our heads, opinions in our hearts, feelings in our psyche, and subsequently puts our action into motion, which if we aren’t careful can put our children into cages, our bodies into illness, our parents into addiction, our siblings into prisons, our families into poverty, our environments and our communities into disrepair, all of this and more culminates in our very humanity and moral, unifying aspirations into shambles.

#afs363

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melvabarlee4-blog · 7 years

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createadaptprogress · 7 years

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#MeToo or #WitchHunt – a level of analysis problem

I like tackling easy issues. A while back, I pretty much solved racism. So, yeah, you’re welcome.

Let’s try something else that should be easy and uncontroversial: the reaction to the last centuries (millennia) of sexual predation, which for the vast majority of cases (not saying all, only a mere 95-99%) is male predation on female-let’s call this reaction the #MeToo movement for obvious reasons. Let’s contrast this to the fear sometimes expressed that #MeToo is going too far and that innocent men (mostly, not exclusively) risk being scapegoated unjustly—let’s call that the fear-of-witch-hunts movement (#WitchHunt for short). I suggest that we try to address this, by first accepting that there is some legitimacy to both movements, and restating that legitimacy upfront. I see the pitchforks rising already, so let me clarify: saying that two movements have *some* legitimacy does not mean that *all* elements of the movements are legitimate, or that their legitimacy is comparable and equal in all ways. But diving in these terribly murky waters requires to be ready to deal with tensions and address boundary issues about legitimacy of each case, without fear of losing one’s principles and convictions.

[I’m following a very classical (dialectical) but forgotten way to look at an argument: understand what each side seeks to say, before jumping in.]

As an icebreaker, and acknowledging the perils of the effort, I recommend this clip from SNL.

youtube

Now, let’s dive in.

The #MeToo Argument

This one seems like an easy one. We have centuries, millennia, of sexual aggression, rape, all the way down to daily cat calls, innuendos, insults, harassment, professional quid pro quos offered or forced, on and on and on.

[You might personally fear that normal and appropriate human interactions, including flirting, could be caught in the wave of #MeToo response—that is very much part of the #WitchHunt response, which we will look at next. But right now, remember that we try to first acknowledge the value of each side of the argument. So, stay in this space for a moment.]

Let’s be clear: What we’re talking about are unsolicited and inappropriate remarks, calls, touches, down to the criminal act of rape (footnote 1). The stats are hard to produce, but where they exist they go from 20% to 40% of women being victims of sexual aggression (a man putting his unsolicited hand on a woman’s buttocks, George Bush Sr style), to power abuses in the workplace (Bill Clinton receiving fellatio from an intern in the oval office), to forced quid pro quos (3 trillion cases reported and counting since Abraham offered his wife to pacify the new neighbors, all the way to Weinstein), all the way down to rape (which, according to the current’s US president former wife, is sometimes not “technically” or “legally” a rape, police affidavits notwithstanding), and yes murder.

On top of that, we must acknowledge that silence, victim shaming, sweeping under the rug, mockery if not complicity have been the dominant social responses to this phenomenon. I am assuming that this is an acknowledged reality, and that I don’t have to provide links, book references, or statistics right now.

And where are we today? In a small part of the world (the “West” but not only), where human rights have been heralded and feminism has made headway, a quarter of a century after the Anita Hill–Clarence Thomas controversy, after a man was elected president in spite of boasting about his sexual aggressions against women, and after women and men marched in Washington and U.S. cities, finally women with some power (Hollywood elites) found the courage to step forward. An ‘enough is enough’ movement was born at a time when social media amplifies voices (and where traditional media spend half of their time reporting on social media). Let’s remember – another painful topic – that priests’ abuses against children started being addressed only once the Internet took the control of public voice away from organized structures. (See ‘Here comes everybody.’) Social media can generate unwanted noise from the mob and the trolls, but have this for them that isolated voices can also rapidly find peers, echo, and scale.

This collective ‘enough is enough’ moment is the legitimacy of #MeToo. A revolution against the silence and denial, that have been part and parcel of centuries of victimization.

But… here comes the tension, the fear of a proverbial pendulum swing...

The #WitchHunt argument

I’ve known a couple of people who have been wrongly accused at some point of sexual harassment or worse. Imagine a single individual—you or me—being wrongly accused of an act that they did not commit, and seeing their name publicly tarnished for something lewd, vile, or criminal. This has happened, this can happen, and this will happen again. It is certainly a terrible thing for the victim, in this case the wrongly accused.

[Now, if you followed wholeheartedly the #MeToo argument, this point may strike you as unbalanced. But that’s the name of the game in this blog. Put that aside for a second, to try and acknowledge that even if there was only one person--your father, your brother, your friend--,accused wrongly for an innocent act, it would be a painful and unfair event. Right?]

Liberal, progressive, rule-of-law societies seek to err on the side of ‘innocent-until-proven-guilty’ for good reasons. It is not trivial to be accused of gender violence, lewdness, sexual violence, or rape. That’s why it cost Rolling Stone Magazine $1.7 million to settle a wrongful accusation case.

So, we have two powerful fears in front of us. I did not say equal, but we should be able to acknowledge that these two fears are opposed to each other, and both can reasonably strike reasonable human beings. So where do we go from here?

Moving forward—a level of analysis problem

We do not want metaphorical ‘public lynching’ taking the place of justice (footnote 2). On the other hand, given the role of silence and a permissive culture, which we just described for the #MeToo argument, how can we work this out? Is the law always enough? Is it enough that the law exists, when societies develop a tacit understanding that the law can be distorted or ignored? Sometimes society needs to steer justice toward courage. So, how do we reconcile the legitimacy of both claims and movements?

I see two lenses through which we can answer that question, and both are heavily dependent on context:

First there is the quantitative, numerical element. Since all actions have unintended effects, very few actions perfectly solve a problem. A big task for policy makers, arbiters of justice, and yes collective conscience, is to ask whether our actions lead to better outcomes for more people, along with fewer people affected by unintended effects. I will add a quantitative post-scriptum to this post. But numbers are not the focus here.

The lens that I want to focus on could be called the level of analysis problem (footnote 3). Simply stated, the level at which a problem is analyzed (micro or macro; individual or aggregate; personal or social) changes the nature of the problem (footnote 4). I recommend the quotes inserted in the footnote, but let’s summarize as follows:

When numbers (of people, of things, of events) increase, complexity increases at some point. Let’s take an example outside of our debate, just to be clear, then we’ll get back to it. One student late for a class is one kind of a problem. Two students late for a class is just twice the one student late problem. But 20/30 students late for a class is a different type of a problem.

We can look at a problem at different scales, with different tools of analysis, and derive different lessons. Are we addressing the problem of ‘Jules is always late for classes,’ or ‘most students in this class show up late?’ Not being clear about the level of analysis can lead to using the wrong tools for understanding what is happening, and drawing the wrong conclusions for what needs to be done about it.

#MeToo versus #WitchHunt is in part a level of analysis problem, mediated by the context in which we live.

While victims are individuals, and each aggression is a terribly individual story, the gist of my argument for the legitimacy of #MeToo was the massive historical number of abuses, insults, and crimes, and the overwhelming waves of silence, which have allowed these numbers to endure (and still do in most of the world). And the #MeToo movement, as symbolized by the hashtag of a social media tool, is a collective response to a collective problem (footnote 5). Breaking the silence, changing social mores and societal norms, is all about aggregating experiences and voices. #MeToo is collective action for social change to create the space for individual protection and justice currently denied.

But to make the #WitchHunt case, I switched to a focus on the individual. Innocent until proven guilty is not about groups, but individuals. ‘He said - she said’ is framed as a conflict between two individuals. This understanding needs to guide the future of our response to sexual aggression and violence.

At a collective level, we must continue to break a deadly silence (and seriously, ‘deadly’ is not hyperbole; murder and rape are incestuous cousins in the family of gender-based violence). An endemic crime against nature and our human identity has fed on silence, complicity, and on eyes turning away from discomfort and pain. We need far more #MeToo on a larger global scale and timeline in order to change the norms and festering environment that have allowed this to go on.

And yet, at an individual (case-by-case) level, we must hold firm to two fundamental principles, which are in tension but not in contradiction: (1) immediate recognition and protection of alleged victims, and (2) energetic but due-process for the alleged culprits, innocent until proven guilty.The grey zone and terribly complex space to maneuver is represented by this simple word, “alleged”, and in considering with growing intelligence the wide scale of offenses, which I am lumping together in this blog.

Consider context

Balancing the trade offs between #MeToo and #WitchHunt requires an understanding of the importance of context. Let’s consider a somewhat absurdist thought experiment to make the point:

A company hires a new Chief Financial Officer, and the head of human resources tells a board member, “you know, she’s been known to commit bank robberies on weekends.” Can you imagine the board member responding, “Well, you know, these things are complicated. We need to give her the benefit of the doubt. What’s bank robbery, what’s making a withdrawal? Those things are hard to sort out. Let’s not create a mountain out of a molehill here.”?

This isn’t even vaguely plausible because there is no widespread social tolerance for bank robbery. Whether the comment was a stupid joke or factual would be assessed and addressed very quickly. There would be no reason for the HR director to take the story to the media, or start a social media campaign -- #EnoughBankRobberies. The process for dealing with this individual suspected crime would be a legal individual process. Because the cultural context is different for bank robberies and for violence against women, there would be no collective call for a solution, only due process.

For sexual predation, however, we know as a fact that there have been a multitude of cases when someone said, “you know that [anchor, movie producer, president, famous politician, powerful business man, small business manager, supervisor, artist, scientist, chef] has a ‘history’ with women”, and that ‘history’ was allowed to endure. Silence has over and over again led to a repeat of the crimes and to escalation. So, maybe yes, sometimes, the court of public opinion may rule before the justice system takes action, because it has too long encouraged the same justice system to take no action. Here you go Mr. Weinstein, Mr. Strauss-Kahn, Mr Trump, Mr Lauer, and consorts. A context of complicit silence is forcing a cart before the horse response – public sanction is coming to weigh in before justice does. It’s unfortunate, but it is necessary. For now. It is indeed dangerous, and so is surgery. But sometimes it is lifesaving.

Conclusion

In the current context, I have to agree with Margaret Sullivan of the Washington Post when she writes: Is sexual harassment just a witch hunt now? That’s absurd, and here’s why. Over time, if we don’t lose sight of the goal and challenges to overcome, we might one day see a world where the context has drastically changed. I am looking forward to the day, when I can disagree with Sullivan, and when we have the same level of tolerance for sexual aggression as for bank robberies. But we ain’t there yet. There are laws and guiding principles as old as the book of Leviticus precisely about balancing #MeToo and #WitchHunt arguments. The rest of the bible and human history indicate that the #MeToo problem has not yet been solved. Maybe we’re getting a second chance at tackling the problem seriously. Evolution?

Of course, companies, justice, and employers must do their job and engage in due-process with respect for the principle of innocence until proven guilty. Some innocents will sometimes be unfairly treated, and it is the job of all of those in power and positions of decision-making to react early, effectively, and justly, so that these cases remain few and far between. We must ensure just redress and yes, avoid overreaction. Serious journalists will need to do what Rolling Stone did: retract, apologize, and make amends. So will employers. In some cases, we may need to learn how to replace dismissals with institutionalized steps protecting alleged victims and providing due process for alleged victimizers. But we must continue to turn dominant norms and status quo upside down. The few, the proportionally very few people, who make false claims need themselves to be taken through due process. On an individual case, authorities (legal, institutional) must bear the #WitchHunt risk in mind, but the #MeToo movement, if anything, needs to grow and scale globally. The fear that one person could make a false claim cannot justify silencing 10,000 women who have suffered for too long the impunity of the predators. (see the post-scriptum if you are interested in the numbers.)

Let’s support #MeToo, and whatever comes next to change our culture, wreck the status quo, make complicit silence unacceptable, make justice more just, and create a climate where victims dare to speak out without fear of retribution, shame, and further victimization. Let’s continue our collective evolution toward progress, and let’s have determined and intentional case-by-case due process responses. It’s not ‘either-or’; it’s a battle to fight on two levels in a complementary manner. That’s the only way for progress and slow healing from this millennium-old malady.

Peace --

Eric

PS: Follow this link for a quantitative illustration.

Footnote 1: Flirting, infatuation, or romance should have little to do with all this, except that it may not be the case in the neural connections of some people. I am not going to go into this. [A good friend commented on this footnote, and helped me realize that it could be misconstrued. I meant that flirting should have little to do with all this, because I was talking about abuses of power, crossing verbal and physical space boundaries, things that are NOT ‘flirting’. Now, the neural connections of some people fail to connect the fact that if you are someone’s boss, or are in a position of power and influence, it’s really not appropriate to switch codes and bring flirting to the office. Yes, making a compliment once, depending on the culture, may be just fine. If there is no power differential, no way to be misconstrued, and if it happens once in a rare blue moon. If you cross that boundary every day, if you cross that boundary repeatedly, if you cross that boundary without noticing that it is not welcome, if you cross that boundary when you’ve been asked not to, then it’s not flirting - it’s becoming harassment. And since some people’s neural connections don’t allow them to make that difference themselves, that’s why there’s a #MeToo movement pushing employers to make sure that they get the point. And entering someone’s physical space uninvited, or in a work context, certainly in a work power differential, that is not flirting, that is aggression. Flirting is telling a peer: “this looks really nice on you”, once, at a proper time and place. And yes, it will be a cultural gray zone. But nothing in the following articles about Weinstein here, or the MSU dean here, meets that standard.]

Footnote 2: I’m uneasy with my own metaphor, because very real lynchings based on race have taken place not so long ago, and still do in the form of ‘honor killings’ in some parts of the world, targeting women exclusively for sexual behaviors shared with men, or for sexual crimes of men.)

Footnote 3: The ‘level of analysis problem’ is borrowed from an excellent political science paper by David Singer in 1961. Here’s a quote from the introduction of his paper:

In any area of scholarly inquiry, there are always several ways in which the phenomena under study may be sorted and arranged for purposes of systemic analysis. Whether in the physical or social sciences, the observer may choose to focus upon the parts or upon the whole, upon the components or upon the system. He may, for example, choose between the flowers or the garden, the rocks or the quarry, the trees or the forest, the houses or the neighborhood, the cars or the traffic jam, the delinquents or the gang, die legislators or the legislative, and so on. Whether he selects the micro- or macro-level of analysis is ostensibly a mere matter of methodological or conceptual convenience. Yet the choice often turns out to be quite difficult, and may well become a central issue within the discipline concerned. The complexity and significance of these level-of-analysis decisions are readily suggested by the long-standing controversies between social psychology and sociology, personality-oriented and culture-oriented anthropology, or micro- and macro-economics, to mention but a few. In the vernacular of general systems theory, the observer is always confronted with a system, its sub-systems, and their respective environments, and while he may choose as his system any cluster of phenomena from the most minute organism to the universe itself, such choice cannot be merely a function of whim or caprice, habit or familiarity. The responsible scholar must be prepared to evaluate the relative utility—conceptual and methodological—of the various alternatives open to him, and to appraise the manifold implications of the level of analysis finally selected.

Footnote 4: A seminal work, for those interested in the scientific view of different scales of analysis is P.W. Anderson’s ‘More is Different’ published in Science in 1972. This brilliant paper basically explains how when number of units increase in the analysis of a phenomenon, complexity increases, and that ‘at each level of complexity entirely new properties appear.’

Footnote 5: The #MeToo meme is literally the attachment of individuals (”Me”) to a collective wave (”Too”) through a shareable technology (#) to break the cycle of invisibility and isolation of the individuals, and force a societal reckoning through the power of numbers.

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theblognoonewillread-blog1 · 7 years

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Preface

It’s been a hard year for a lot of people. The current administration has been full of fraud, ill will, open bigotry, and more. That has weighed down on my mind, as it has with many others. But in my case, I already had a fairly full dance card in terms of personal issues that can exarcebate the clinical depression I was diagnosed with decades ago.

I do not fit the profile of the average American today, at least according to social media. I’m in my 50’s, I am a man of color, I’m gay, and I’m single. I am also currently unemployed and do not have a permanent dwelling thanks to Hurricane Harvey, which has complicated the matter – no job, no proof of income, how does one get a place without having to turn to horror-style properties on Craigslist?

I am also not “hot”, not “uneducated” (a four-year degree seems to be of little use to all but the most business-driven in America now), not carrying rippling abs or sporting a huge member, the lack of reputation meaning getting it on with anyone is practically impossible.

For some time I have had a hard time finding my “tribe” - that group of people, that community, with which one should be practically inseparable because they’re so alike, so together, so similar in energy. I’m a Midwesterner who relocated to the Gulf Coast over 30 years ago – for work, of course. For maybe 6 or 7 years I had a sort of built-in community but it was never a completely square fit. Then I found a gay-friendly community in town but ran into a variety of issues there also. Gay America has many of the same problems straight America has – just a matter of degrees.

So, the complicated nature of my things not working out left me, this holiday, with no invites to dinner, no home to go to, and – even more annoying – no permanent place to call home. For over four months now, an extended-stay hotel has been my “apartment.” The morning light comes in too early, and I often hear the roar of a highway nearby. It is a utilitarian place, not a personal one.

As an alternative to sleeping in the entire day – a depressing prospect unto itself – I decided to drive to a casino one state over and enjoy their sumptuous buffet. The annoying thing was, thousands of other people had the exact same idea. It made the casino aisles crowded with people aimlessly drifiting about, walll-eyed and (in some cases) predictably tipsy. It occurred to me that casinos have become a sort of adult day-care center. A younger adult child can drop his aging mother or father at the door, then drive off while the parent drifts around, entertaining himself/herself with the prospect of getting rich, or at least the occasion thrill of hitting a win on the slots.

So here I was, sitting among them, practically speaking with nothing in common with them except our need to distract ourselves. My distraction had a purpose – to get through the day, to survive it. When contacts on social media said they hoped I was having a great day I left it open, silence. I didn’t want to risk disapproval by telling them the truth. Miss Manners might say that not “dumping” on friends is good social policy for holidays, but I have to wonder if she’s ever had bouts of depression or loneliness.

Coincidence and, perhaps, universal cruelty – as I was typing this I heard Gloria Lynne singing a song I’d not heard. I used SoundHound to identify it - “All Alone.” Thanks, universe.

There is a fine line in America between letting others know what downers are going on in your life and being labeled a “drama queen.” I feel perpetually like I have to do a Herculean editing act on what I say to (as I thought earlier today) present my situation in a palatable fashion so as not to send others running. The problem is that in doing that, I don’t get the benefit of just dumping it all out there, of letting raw emotion drive how I communicate. I resent having to edit what I say. And it’s worse on social media like Facebook – when I admit I’m not having a good time I get crickets. One guy who asked about my job situation today, when I looked at our message feed, I realized we hadn’t spoken in two months. I sent a quick holiday greeting and got one back. I can only imagine he’s tired of bad news so maybe I’ll do what I’ve done with so many others in recent years – add him to my Restricted List: we have a connection in form only, but little else. On such a list, no one sees my warts – they see the edited “media feed” to entertain.

It has been said that depression is the fastest growing disease in America today. I can absolutely see why – no one feels like they’re being heard. No one feels anyone gets them in the workplace, in dating, in their communities, in their families, anything. And the authority and moral leaders we used to have, they’re all on the take in various ways so no one is there to do anything for us when we hurt.

This situation, of course, is worse for folks like me – older, black and middle-aged are three whammies today’s society can’t relate to. It’s never happened that anyone has ever asked me point-blank, “Why don’t you go to a coffee house with people your own age?” That’s because no one has opened such a place. Not many businesses market to the middle-aged, it’s assumed we’re washed up, don’t spend any money and are set in our ways. And we’re not sexy – so no one presumably wants to look at us. I think a coffee place where anyone over 35 was made not just to feel tolerated, but appreciated. Right now, the closest we have to that is either Starbucks or the bars – nothing in between.

I’d love a middle-aged friendly place. I wouldn’t want it to be exclusively that age group, I like diversity, just be interesting is all I ask. Boring people come in all ages, classes, education levels.

I am a bit of a complicated person. Those complications are part of why I think I have largely been a social misfit. I don’t act like anyone else (less superficial). I don’t carry myself the same way as others. The whole migration to typing messages rather than actually talking is part of my depression – a female friend of mine I’ve known for years, we don’t even really talk on the phone! I don’t like this! Years ago a guy I worked with, he and I used to talk on the phone and get together once a week to watch TV at his apartment. We did that for YEARS. He was the first guy I came out to.

Since then I have had “relationship” (I guess you could call it) fall apart for a variety of reasons. One guy is a bad listener. Another has no time (too “busy”) - that is almost always the kiss-off. It gets worse when it comes to business or getting a job hookup – I know NOBODY. Guys I worked with at previous jobs? No support. Not the way it happens for others. It has occurred to me that for the 30-plus years I spent in my last city, only TWICE did anyone else ever offer to walk a resume in. The results both cases were nil, but at least I had that. The irony of that is that I work in the information technology industry – I’m supposed to be connected to other smart people. Sadly, the industry has become commoditized so everyone’s disposable. Even my colleagues at a consulting place I used to work for, I have nearly zero contact with – that should have been gold.

About the name of this blog: I chose it because I have the idea that the average American right now, and the younger, the more pertinent this is, feels entitled to be happy. They don’t want to hear about anyone else’s issues, they don’t want to learn to be a part of a larger whole like a multi-aged community or coalition – they want their gaming systems, their movie and TV services, and they want their social media. And that is ALL. I really wish I could be around in 30 years to see where many of these folks are at – whether the depression we have now is worse then because that generation never bothered to learn from others, because they chose to separate themselves.

I met a guy at an art show several months ago. Showed him my business card and he made some comment about how millennials are supposed to be more open-minded and carefree. Then he did a sprint away from me, figuratively, that would have made Carl Lewis jealous. Tried to contact him on social media and got partially blocked. That was enough for me to drop it at that point.

The people I wish would read this blog almost certainly won’t. They’re too “busy”, too “distracted”, too “happy.” Perhaps some of my resentment is little other than envy. Maybe I’m seeing something that isn’t real, that isn’t there. But it’s so … uneven. So that is why, in my tag line, I say that if you’re already happy, this blog is not for you. This is for the rest of us who you studiously avoid being involved with because you feel our adversity would contaminate your life and lifestyle.

I may not post here often, and I actually tried doing a blog like this years ago. Maybe someone out there will see himself in this blog. I wish I had a positive message to share but right now, I don’t.

One of my big resentments right now is with the so-called universe. I jokingly have said that because there’s only one universe, it doesn’t have any competition and – like any monopoly – can afford to be sloppy. That is not a completely original idea; I actually stole it from a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon when he was telling his father about Santa Claus – not entirely unrelated.

I have found myself in recent years railing against the universe, feeling that it is – intentionally (it seems) – withholding good things from me. Why, for example, am I in one of the ten largest cities in the U.S. but not getting “run into” smart people, connected people, whatever? I would be disgusted to find out IT thinks the problem is entirely mine. Really? A group of people take a 400-year headstart and you can’t make any corrections for that down the line? We have to wait centuries for social justice to come? How powerful are you?

And then – as we’re repeatedly told ad nauseam – we’re not the center of the universe, so much so that the message is almost, “Don’t want anything, ever.” Were human nature based exclusively on Buddhism with its concept of detachment it might have something there. But right now? Not so much.

I am not asking to be the “center” of the universe. I am just wanting to be the center of a tribe – to be connected, celebrated, loved. It is sorely lacking and between my emotional depression and my inability to earn money, it is costing me a FORTUNE.

By the way – if you’re a fundamentalist or an evangelical, TUNE OUT. Way too many of you folks could have changed the result of the last election but you didn’t. You harp on the same issues over and over – sexual minorities, racial minorities, all you’re about is separatism and punishment. I daresay if Christ returned to earth you’d run him in as a Middle-Easternerner and bitch about him on AM talk radio.

That is it for the moment. This is an experiment. If it doesn’t work I could wind up living on the streets – that is, if I can’t get all my ducks in a row and the universe doesn’t give a shit.

Stay tuned.

#depression #middle age #aging #racism #homophobia

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