White Postscript, or, Toda Tu Rechingada Madre

1. It took me about 24 hours to recover from a comment from a certain “Nice” White Lady [hereafter NWL]. I am irritated at this and also embarrassed about it. It is not how I want to spend my time. But that is how long it took to bounce back from the blow because this was a comment from a (probably former, by now) friend.

I have accused myself of using the comment as an excuse to “procrastinate.” I have reminded myself that the episode would not have taken place had I not posted to the Internet in the first place. I have thought I should not be so open to friends. I have thought I might be wiser never to reveal anything to anyone. I have considered all the possible ways in which this person’s actions could be my fault or could be something I merely projected or “imagined.”

2. It is possible to spend a lot of time and get very convoluted. But I believe the simple and true answer is that the NWL was gratuitously mean and needed to be swatted back, tout court. And it has taken me up to 72 hours to recover from other things that have happened in terms of insults to my face in real life this semester. So I am actually getting faster at recovery, and this is my accomplishment. But I want this episode to be the last one it takes a whole day to recover from. I really do.

3. Who are these people, anyway, whom I appear to have trusted this semester more than they deserved? All are creative, smart, kind, committed, active, and interesting. So I had not focused on it but all of them have murky backgrounds in one way or another, and all have been rejected from PhD programs. Most have some sort of history of drug abuse as well as mental health issues and/or at least one abusive marriage — not just an abusive dating situation, but one or more abusive marriages — behind them.

Now, in Reeducation it was considered “elitist” to believe one had not engaged in all of these behaviors oneself. Yet it is a fact that I did not fail in school, get addicted to drugs, or engage in a series of losing marriages. I am not saying this in a “prideful” way or suggesting it makes me better than these people. I am only saying that my challenges in life have been somewhat different from theirs.

Looking at the track records of these people I am led to wonder: should I perhaps become more elitist? Mistrust people who have been rejected from PhD programs? Keep at arms length anyone who has ever had any kind of addiction, abuse or mental health problem? This goes against my politics but I am wondering whether it might not be a necessary form of self defense.

I do not like to think in this way because I myself have alcoholics and schizophrenics in the family. I was mildly anorexic in high school. In my thirties I got involved in an abusive relationship with a psychotherapist, which reflects poorly upon me according to some theories of life, and the fallout from this greatly hobbled me for some time. I allowed my colleagues to browbeat me into staying in academia. I got into an abusive romantic relationship later on. I am too chicken to seriously abuse nicotine, alcohol, or drugs, or to really overeat or really starve myself. This, however, is because I am chicken, not because I am above it.

So I am definitely not trying to say that I am perfect, that I do not make errors, or that I am better than the people with whom I have just had it.

4. I repeat: I am not trying at all to say that I am perfect. I am saying something completely different, something which has nothing to do with perfection. It is that NOBODY, no matter how imperfect, deserves mistreatment.

And subscribing to 12 step ideology is not a license to mistreat people.

And my life has been rough in its own way and I feel solidarity and kinship with people who have had rough lives. But a lot of my friends who have had rough lives are still not mean. And the people I have trouble with are exhausting because they are like adolescents (this being my illumination for today). And I know plenty of other people with problematic backgrounds who do not behave that way.

5. I do not know why this is the case but it is since I have been a professor that I have periodically run into people — other academics — who want to pull me into a psychologically alien world. Every few years I have an altercation with someone in which I feel as though I am trying to escape from their clutches, literally kicking and screaming. What I imagine myself to scream is, “I want an adult life! I want an adult life!”

I did not meet people like this when I was a student. Everyone seemed — well, was so much mature then. I do not know why it is, but it is what I mean, what I am nostalgic for, when I say I am tired of the South, tired of the East, tired of every form of Yanqui, and that I want to go home.

What I mean when I say I want to go home is that I do not want to stoop to be kind to another overgrown adolescent, or subject myself to their power because I know their adolescence is harder than mine was. Reeducation, of course, used to say to me directly, “But don’t you understand, I have had a harder life than you have?” and did its best in other ways as well to engage and argue in its muddy world view, its muddy world.

6. I believe I know what the NWL may say about all of this — because I have heard it before (heard it evenings, mornings, afternoons, measuring out my life in coffee spoons, yes). The line is more or less this: I seek abuse and conflict because I “need to” due to my “dysfunction.” I am a flawed person, so I attract flawed persons to myself, so they mistreat me, so rather than send them to Hell I should “work on myself.”

Well as a side note, observe that I have not contacted her to send her to Hell, or named her, or linked to her blog, and I am writing out my thoughts. But more to the point: look how useful that rhetorical strategy is to people who want to hit and run and weasel out of it.

More importantly, I would say that I live in an abusive culture — and you cannot tell me we are not in one — and I am learning to stand up for myself. And to deserve to stand up for myself, I do not have to become perfect first. Nobody needs to earn the right to stand up for themselves, and nobody deserves mistreatment.

Some would say my non acceptance of the NWL’s assessment is “resistance.”  But the NWL has no professional role with me or any professional license that might possibly qualify her to make such an assessment. I am truly, truly amazed at the arrogance of those who have in the past attempted such moves on me.

If anyone tries to play the “resistance” card at me in the present matter I will say they can bet their rechingada madre I am resisting them. I will say I have every right and every intention to resist patriarchal garbage.

And I have heard the NWL’s kind of spiel many times before, especially when I was trying to get support and backup for leaving the Relationship whose discussion ignited the current debate.  It is an abusive spiel. It is sometimes a misery-loves-company spiel. “The problem is you.” “Don’t leave because you will only find a worse situation.” These ideas are absolutely ridiculous.

7. I sometimes see a man who at one point went through some sort of self help course. He has learned a few of these conformist platitudes at well. Like many, he uses them in ways which are sometimes liberating and generous, but sometimes self serving.

Lately he has been jealous of my cat Krishna, who has many affectionate human friends. He called Krishna a “man whore” the other day. I told him not to refer to Krishna in those terms within earshot of me. He said it was not an insult, it was a compliment, and he himself wished he were a man whore like Krishna. I said that could be left between him and the cat, but that “man whore” was not a term I would like him to use to describe my charming, delicate cat around me.

Do you see the parallel? “It’s all in the interpretation,” said this man. Meaning he feels he can use whatever words he wants, and make it my responsibility to give them a more benign interpretation than the standard one. If something is offensive, it is only because I choose to take offense. He gets himself off the hook completely this way. I said my interpretation of it all was that he was not a pleasant enough person to spend an evening with, and that was that for that day.

“It all happened because you were ‘codependent'” — the NWL’s sentence  — has the same structure as this man’s argument. You imagined it. You dreamed it into being. You “made it up,” then made it become real. In terms of content the NWL’s sentence is much more pernicious than merely referring to my cat as a “man whore.”

8. And I suppose the exhortation to look at oneself is useful to people who are not accustomed to doing so. However, most people I meet are accustomed to doing so. The place I’ve met the most people virtually addicted to blame, judgment, and power over others is Reeducation.

The exhortation to look at oneself is also a major distraction when the issue is elsewhere. Positive thinking alone will not keep Obama from bombing Afghanistan tonight, people — although we can of course say, if we truly wish to join the Right, that “everything happens for a reason.”

And I am leaving this topic because I want an adult life, and I am so envious of the people who go right ahead and lead such lives without worrying about these kinds of things. But it is completely within my power to go pick my very own adult life back up, so here I go.

9. Finally, most obviously and most importantly: anyone who has read this weblog for any length of time ought to know by now that they, even if a friend (and especially if they are a friend they will know that they are), just a random passer by as far as my writing here is concerned. They have no business — and I mean no business at all — justifying Reeducation at me.

Everyone is welcome to point out that I became involved with a certain Person out of weakness. But if they try in troll like fashion to tell me that my efforts to stand up to a this really violent person with allies all over my workplace in such a way as not to provoke them, and my work to plan a breakup strategy that would not backfire into danger to me or disabling fear of danger to others, were THE DESIRE TO STAY IN A BAD SITUATION and at the same time tell me that I SHOULD NOT HAVE LEFT BECAUSE I WOULD JUST FIND ANOTHER BAD SITUATION then they can expect me to call them Whitemen. Because they will be whitemen at that point and there is no other POLITE description for the lack of consciousness I describe (unless, of course, they would rather be identified as lacking in logical skills, abusive, and so on).

10. In case anyone has any doubts: Twelve Stepping (I am renaming that Twelve Stoning, by the way), Self Help (which replaced philosophy as capitalism rose and the bourgeois aspiration grew), and Mainstream Psychotherapy (a major oppressor of women) are tools of the Right because they reduce societal and political problems to issues of individual “adjustment” and redefine everything as an “internal battle.” I repeat: perhaps I have merely led a privileged life, but most people I know do not lack the capacity for introspection.

Now, in Twelve Stones theory, people not “in denial” will admit that they are low entities who spend their days pointing fingers at other people and blaming them for everything that goes wrong in their own life. Coming out of denial, they will realize that all their problems are caused by themselves. I have recently learned that people like this do in fact exist. Still I say that as a generalization, it is such a cartoonish view of people and the world that it does not even deserve a passing glance — let alone a comment.

ADDENDUM

Alcoholic Family: Y0u should be able to calmly step around this mess and be a high achiever despite it. Do not think things would be easier or better in a non alcoholic situation — you will find that the outside world is worse.

12 Stoners: You must prove your worthiness to leave this very destructive situation by first becoming within it the person you could become in a good one. Do not think you would be able to find a better situation, anyway — this is already the best you can do.

Conclusion A: I have eighteen years’ experience now  with the Twelve Stoners. The Twelve Stones have their time and place. But many Twelve Stoners have NOT moved beyond the psychology of addiction, and their management strategies for it tend to replicate the problem. Far worse, however,  are the 12 Stone Derivatives, which like credit derivatives are built upon nothing or very little. These are the snake oil prophets who market superficial versions of the Twelve Stones to cure every ill, without any knowledge, even, or actual respect for the ills the Twelve Stones were created to address and with which the Twelve Stones are at least familiar and which they, unlike the 12 Stone Derivatives, are able to discuss with at least some comprehension and empathy.

Conclusion B: This is important. In Twelve Stone theory, you cannot “bargain” with your addiction. To say, for instance, as I did for decades, I do not use much nicotine, does not cut it, because it the issue is not the quantity, it is the dependency. But the 12 Stone Derivatives do want people to at least dabble with them. If you tell them you do not want any such derivatives in your life at all, they come back and say, but if you “drew a better boundary” you could hold us closer to you. They utterly miss the point. The boundary has been drawn — just not in a place that is convenient to them. For people who talk about the importance of humility and “acceptance,” they are most arrogant.

Axé.