kvetches

[blogathon] Shit People Say To Future Therapists

Miri, , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Today’s my blogathon for the Secular Student Alliance! I’ll be posting every hour starting now until 6 PM central. Don’t forget to donate! To start, you get a rant!

Sometimes I wish I’d kept my career plans a big secret. Maybe if I had, I wouldn’t constantly be having conversations that go like this:

Me: “Wow, I just don’t understand this person.”

Them: “You don’t understand a person?! But you’re going to be a therapist! How can you be a therapist if you don’t understand people?!”

Me: “Sometimes I just don’t have the energy to listen to someone talking about their problems.”

Them: “But you’re going to be a therapist! How could you run out of energy to listen to people talking about their problems?”

Me: “Huh, I really don’t know what you should do in this situation.”

Them: “But you’re going to be a therapist! How could you not be able to give me advice?!”

I understand why people sometimes feel compelled to say these things. I think they stem largely from a misunderstanding of what therapists do and also from what therapists are like as people.

Firstly and most glaringly, these comments are amiss because, clearly, I am not yet a therapist. I have many years of training to go. So the fact that I have not yet developed certain skills that I will need is not, in and of itself, cause for alarm. Either I will develop them over the course of my training, or I will fail to develop them and I will realize that I need to pursue a different career (I have a few backups). But I doubt that that’s the case.

For now, I am trained in just a few specific things: active listening, conflict resolution, sexual health, referring callers to mental health resources, and a suicide prevention protocol known as QPR. That’s it.

I don’t think people realize that while there probably is a certain “type” (or more) of person who becomes a therapist, we’re not born being able to do these skills. We develop them through training and experience. Nobody would ever demand that an undergraduate in a premed track be able to diagnose them with diabetes or cancer. Why should I be able to fix someone else’s emotional troubles?

Second, I think people have this view of therapists as calm, self-assured, eternally tolerant saints who always understand everyone and never feel frustrated with anyone and never tire of listening to painful and difficult things. The reason people have this view is probably 1) this is how good therapists typically behave in therapy sessions, and 2) this is how therapists are typically portrayed in the media, even though there are many styles of therapy that don’t look like this at all. Some are even confrontational!

But that’s not really how it is. Therapists get bored. Therapists get annoyed. Therapists get frustrated. They get overwhelmed and exhausted from listening to people. If they are good at what they do, they don’t show this in therapy–like a good dancer doesn’t show the pain they feel, or a good salesperson keeps smiling and being enthusiastic. Sometimes people doing their jobs have to act in ways other than how they feel. This is normal.

But for therapists, it’s especially important to be mindful of these feelings in oneself rather than trying to tamp them down, because otherwise they can affect how the therapist treats their client. In traditional psychoanalysis, this is called “countertransference,” and while psychoanalysis is quite outdated, the term is still used by respected therapists like Irvin Yalom.

So, personally, if a therapist told me that they neeever get bored or frustrated or annoyed with their clients, that would be a red flag. Nobody that I’ve ever met is such a saint. I would probably conclude that this person is either trying to make themselves look good, or–worse–that they’re not very aware of the negative emotions they sometimes experience during their work.

Of course, I might be wrong. Maybe some people really are like that.

Another misconception is that therapists “just get” people or “just know” the solutions to their problems. This is also false. While therapists are probably more perceptive than the general population, that only really helps when it comes to understanding how a person is feeling, not why they feel that way or what might be the best way for them to change how they feel, as there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to this.

That understanding, if it ever happens, happens after a period of time during which the therapist has gotten to know their client, learned a lot about their background, and started to discern their patterns of thinking. That thing you see in the movies where a therapist “just knows” what’s wrong with you after ten minutes? Nope.

It’s also worth pointing out–as callous as it may seem–that once I become a therapist I will be doing this for money. I will expect to be paid for doing it. When I’m not at work, doing work for free will seem like…not the best use of my time. While I’m sure that I’ll always enjoy listening to my friends talk things out and try to help them feel better, being expected to do so just because I happen to be a therapist is unfair.

I will not be the same person with my friends and family as I am with my clients. This is normal and okay, and it’s the case for basically anyone who has a job that involves working with people. If you want to avoid needlessly annoying and frustrating your friends in the helping professions, try not to expect them to essentially work for free and to act saintly and perfect while doing it.

~~~

Liked this post? Why not donate to the SSA?

[blogathon] Shit People Say To Future Therapists
{advertisement}

A Rant About People Who Smugly Inform Me That My Career Will Not Make Me Very Much Money

Miri, , , , , 23 Comments

Warning: this will be a rant. So it’s not very nice.

When you’re about to graduate from college, people tend to ask you what you’re planning on doing with yourself afterwards. So I often tell people that I’m going to grad school to study social work.

Most people respond to this positively or at least neutrally, but there is a substantial minority of people do not. Every so often I’ll run into a dude (it’s usually a dude)–he might have an MBA or plans to get one, and he sneers at me, flashing his Rolex, and says, “Social work, huh? Not gonna make a lot of money with that, are you?”

For starters, I just want to point out that this is a really quick way to reveal yourself to be a douchebag. You might not care that you’re revealing yourself as a douchebag, but then again, you might, especially since the way that this usually goes is that you’re flirting with me and perhaps hoping I’ll be impressed with your business acumen and earning potential. Nope!

In any case, though, I don’t understand why people think this is appropriate. How much money someone makes is a private matter, and you’d never think to make a comment like this to someone who’s already well into their career. But young people, apparently, do not deserve that sort of courtesy, so you should definitely feel free to pry into our financial situation at any time.

(To be clear: unless you are my parents, or other people from whom I might ever conceivably ask to borrow money, how much I make currently or in the future is none of your business.)

And I know everyone who makes these comments probably thinks they’re being incredibly original and edgy, but actually, people who go into fields like mine meet these douchebags all the time, so we’re quite aware of what people think about our earning potential. Even if we didn’t, though, it might shock you to know that people research these things when they make decisions about their career! Yup, college students planning for the future. Imagine that. When I was deciding about grad school, I checked starting and median salaries for people with the degree and license I hoped to get, including specifically in New York City. I also figured out how much my education will cost and now know how much and for how long I can expect to pay back my grad school loans.

Is this information pleasant? No, not really. But I already know it, and you don’t need to remind me. I’ll do just fine without your (random stranger’s) advice.

What’s funny is that some people seem completely incapable of realizing that not everyone cares all that much about how much money they make. I mean, yes, people should probably plan to be able to live on what they’ll be making. But that’s about all I care about that. Will I be able to live reasonably on it? Will I be able to occasionally buy myself nice things or take trips? Yup. It’d be nice to have more money, but I’m sure there are plenty of high-powered doctors and lawyers who would say that it’d be nice to work a few less hours. Just like they chose to make that tradeoff, I’m choosing to make this one.

It’s also important to note that I get very different responses when I say that I’m getting a degree in social work than when I say I’m going to be a therapist. In fact, I’m doing both; I’m getting that degree in order to be a more effective and more intersectional therapist. But when I tell people that I’m studying to become a therapist, that conjures up images of helping middle-class white ladies deal with their divorces. When I tell people I’m studying social work, that conjures up very different images. And generally they involve not making very much money.

There are, in fact, many things you can say when someone tells you they’re going to study social work that are not “Pfft, not gonna make a lot of money with that, are you?”. Here are a few:

  • “Wow, that must be a difficult job. What made you decide to go into that field?”
  • “Which populations would you want to work with?”
  • “Do you want to open a private practice someday?”
  • “Would you ever want to do social work research?”
  • “So what is social work, exactly?”

Yes, you can have a conversation that’s not just about money! So if the first thing you can think of to say about my career plans is that, surprise surprise, they won’t make me much money, I feel sorry for you. Because not only are you a douchebag, but you’re a pretty unimaginative one at that, since it’s apparently impossible for you to even entertain the notion that there’s more to choosing a career than choosing how much money you’d like to make.

A Rant About People Who Smugly Inform Me That My Career Will Not Make Me Very Much Money

Not All Beliefs Deserve Respect

Miri, , , , , , 9 Comments

“I’m not trying to be ‘that douche’ but it kind of pisses me off that people here accept other’s beliefs only if they’re liberal. What if I tried to post advertising all over about why ‘I’m not an ally’ or why I think abortion is about the most disgusting crime someone can commit? I hate that I feel like I have to hide who I am, because I know I will be judged. Probably won’t even get this posted for that reason exactly.”

This is from a Facebook page at my partner’s school where people anonymously submit confessions. In the comments, people trip over themselves to assure the OP that they respect conservative beliefs and that it’s “ironic” how closed-minded some liberals are towards conservatism.

It’s definitely not the first time I’ve come across this sort of sentiment. Many people of all political orientations seem to think that being a liberal means “respecting” and “accepting” everyone regardless of their beliefs or actions. I can see how they might get that impression, given that liberals sometimes try to frame themselves as more caring and accepting than conservatives (hence the “bleeding-heart liberal” stereotype).

However, liberalism actually has nothing to do with accepting anyone’s beliefs. Traditionally, it meant valuing ideals such as liberty and equality, replacing monarchy and feudalism with democracy and private property, and so on. (Note: this is intentionally simplistic.)

Nowadays liberalism admittedly has a broader meaning. At least in the United States, liberals tend to see a role for the federal government in ensuring that everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed and that vulnerable people receive assistance, and they tend to be associated with the Democratic Party.

When it comes to the opinions and beliefs of others, American liberals (like most Americans) tend to believe that everyone should have the right to express their opinions. The government may not infringe on that right, and while others are not required to listen to your opinions or allow you into their private spaces in order to express them, most people would agree that a healthy society encourages the expression of all sorts of differing views.

But none of that means that I, an individual, am required by virtue of my political orientation to respect and accept everything you think and believe.

Now, it’s important to draw a distinction between respecting/accepting people and respecting/accepting opinions. Political orientations, like all labels, take on a lot of value for us, and sometimes when someone rejects your labels it feels like they’re rejecting you. But that’s not necessarily the case. I reject conservatism but I do not reject my conservative friends and family; I reject all religion but I do not reject my religious friends and family. The reason I am able to keep up relationships with these people despite our vast disagreements is because I am able to see them as more than just their labels, and they are able to see that my rejection of their beliefs and opinions does not constitute rejection of them as people.

At this point a hypothetical conservative might ask why “rejecting” homosexuality doesn’t work the same way. Here’s why. I don’t reject conservatism and religion because I find them icky and weird; I reject them because I think they’re harmful to society. Politics and religion affect us all, so it’s reasonable that we might have opinions about the political and religious beliefs of others.

But someone else’s homosexuality does not affect you in any way. If you find yourself having strong opinions about what someone does in their bedroom with consenting adults, that’s a problem with you, not with those people and their behavior. If anyone ever managed to present a strong argument based on evidence and reality for why homosexuality is harmful, I’d reconsider that position, but I’ve yet to see one. In contrast, there are strong arguments based on evidence for why conservatism and religion are harmful. You might still disagree that they’re harmful and find contradictory evidence showing that they’re helpful, but you can’t deny that good arguments against them exist.

I can divide opinions into three general categories: the ones I agree with, the ones I disagree with but can still accept as valid, and the ones I disagree with and cannot accept whatsoever. The latter category includes opinions such as these: same-sex couples should not have the right to marry. Racism is no longer a thing. Women who dress revealingly or drink alcohol are “asking” to get raped. There is no climate change currently occurring. Homeopathy works. Abortion is murder. People with mental illness should just snap out of it. I refuse to “respect” or “accept” these opinions because they are either barely-concealed attempts to impose religious ideology onto a supposedly secular society, and/or because they are contradicted by all of the available evidence.

That middle category, though, are opinions that I definitely disagree with, but I can sort of understand where they come from and appreciate the thought process that led to them. For example: the government should not mandate insurance coverage. People shouldn’t eat animals or animal products. Government intervention is inherently problematic. That soda ban in NYC was a good idea. We should ditch the Constitution. We should ban third-trimester abortions. Libertarianism and socialism tend to fit into this category for me, except when taken to extremes.

The reason I mention this is just to illustrate that disagreeing with an opinion doesn’t necessarily mean finding it ridiculous and dangerous. It’s entirely possible that someone would look at different evidence, or look at the same evidence in a different way, and come to conclusions that I disagree with but can accept and even respect. But you can’t just throw out any opinion, no matter how ridiculous, and demand that it be taken seriously and respected, not even by liberals who you think are supposed to be “open-minded” and “accepting.”

To bring it back to the anonymous comment that spurred this post, I cannot respect someone who wants to proudly state that they’re not an ally to LGBTQ people. (You don’t have to be an ally, sure, but that’s nothing to shout from the rooftops, you know?) And as for abortion, if you really think that’s “the most disgusting crime someone can commit,” you need to check your priorities. What about sexual assault? What about child abuse? Sorry, I do not “respect” those two opinions. I refuse to.

It’s worth noting, too, that it’s much easier to “respect” dissenting opinions when they do not have an immense detrimental effect on you personally. As I wrote in my post about ending friendships over political differences, sometimes what someone considers “just an opinion” hits too close to home. A straight person may be able to disagree but still respect the opinion that marriage should be between a man and a woman only, but a queer person may not be able to respect that. A neurotypical person may be able to disagree but still respect the opinion that mental illness is a sign of weakness, but a non-neurotypical person may not.

With this issue, as so many others, the difference often comes down to privilege.

I have complete sympathy for anyone who is bullied, harassed, or made to feel subhuman because of their political beliefs, even if I disagree with them. (Not only do I think that treating people this way is morally wrong, but it’s also a terrible way to get them to change their minds.) It’s difficult to be a minority of any sort, including political. I know because I’ve been that awkward conservative kid at a liberal school, wondering if everyone’s going to judge me the second I open my mouth about politics.

I have sympathy for those who feel that way, but I do not have sympathy for those who expect others to “respect” and “accept” their beliefs no matter how ill-considered, dangerous, hurtful, and unrelated to actual reality they may be.

Not All Beliefs Deserve Respect

More About Justice and Less About Revenge: On Reading the Steubenville Coverage Too Early in the Goddamn Day

Miri, , , , , , , 47 Comments

[Content note: sexual assault]

I don’t want to hear anything more about the “ruined futures” of Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond. The verdict did not ruin their futures. They ruined their futures, when they made the decision to rape someone.

I don’t want to hear anything more about how you shouldn’t drink if you don’t want to get raped. One could get blackout drunk every single day for a lifetime and they still wouldn’t get raped unless someone decides to rape them.

I don’t want to hear anything more about how Jane Doe didn’t “affirmatively say no” and how Mays and Richmond thought they had consent. They said, “She is so raped right now.” They knew exactly what they were doing.

I don’t want to hear anything more about how Jane Doe has been known to lie. Her rape was caught on video.

I don’t want to hear anything more about how it’s only rape if there’s a penis involved. It’s rape if someone is made to participate in sexual activity without their consent.

I don’t want to hear anything more about how hopefully girls and women will “learn from this.” No. Hopefully those who think they can assault others with impunity will learn from this.

I don’t want to hear anything more about how hopefully Mays and Richmond will get raped in prison. This is rape culture.

I don’t want to hear anything more about how “dangerous” partying is for young women. 40% of rapes occur in the victim’s home; an additional 20% occur at the home of a friend, relative, or neighbor. Only 24% happen in the early morning hours between midnight and 6 AM.

I don’t want to hear anything more about how “remorseful” Mays and Richmond were. They cried and begged for forgiveness only after the verdict came down. Sorry, that really doesn’t mean much.

I don’t want to hear anything more about how we need to crack down on teenage partying. Sure. But what we really need to crack down on is rape culture, violent masculinity, and the glorification of sports.

I don’t want to hear anything more about where Jane Doe’s parents were looking while she was out partying. Where were Mays’ and Richmond’s parents looking? Where was their coach looking? Oh, right, he said he “took care of it.”

I don’t want to hear anything more about how Mays and Richmond were “just kids.” Kids may not be ready for adult responsibilities and rights, but that doesn’t mean they don’t know what they’re doing when they assault someone.

I don’t want to hear anything more about how Mays and Richmond are just “sick,” how they’re “monsters,” how nobody you know would ever do something like that.

I don’t want to hear anything more about justice being served. I mean, yeah, let’s give credit where credit was due. But what will happen in just a few years when Mays and Richmond are released? Will they have changed? Is Jane Doe getting the help she needs? Are we doing everything we can to make sure this never happens again? That would be justice. Our work is not done.

Here’s what I want to hear more about:

What will this community do to support Jane Doe? What will it do to impart better values not just to its children, but to its adults? What will it do to ensure that being a football player gets you absolutely no special privileges? What will it do to try to help Mays and Richmond become productive members of the community without letting them off the hook for what they did?

I want to hear more about rape culture, violent masculinity, and the glorification of sports.

I want to hear more about how rapists rape because they know they’ll get away with it, not because the victim was “asking for it” or because men are too pathetic and driven by sexual urges to control themselves.

I want to hear more about what makes you a rapist and less about what makes you a victim, more about structures and less about individuals, more about justice and less about revenge.

More About Justice and Less About Revenge: On Reading the Steubenville Coverage Too Early in the Goddamn Day

I Really Strongly Dislike Valentine's Day!

Miri, , 24 Comments
The only good thing about VDay: condom roses.
The only good thing about VDay: condom roses.

Hey everyone! I’m going to poop on your parade. Don’t worry, I’ll be cheerful about it.

I’m not going to say I hate Valentine’s Day, because hate is a strong word and I reserve it for things I really mean it for, like coffee and misogyny. I was going to just let today go by without writing about it, but then I realized that I really want to dispel the notion that everyone who dislikes Valentine’s Day is just bitter/jealous/single/all of the above. I’m none of the above; I’m happily taken (well, insofar as a person in an open relationship who is also an autonomous human being can be “taken”) and I wouldn’t trade my love/sex life for anyone else’s. And I still really strongly dislike Valentine’s Day! Imagine that.

First of all, as many happy couples will tell you, I think it’s superfluous. The way you stay in a fulfilling long-term relationship is, among many other things, showing love to each other every day in whatever little ways you each find meaningful. If you save it all up for one big day of the year, y’all are probably going to break up. Just saying.

That’s not really the reason I dislike it so much, though. If that were the case, I’d merely be ambivalent.

The bigger reason is that romantic love (a very small and specific subset of the vast number of human experiences that can be called “love”) is already so glorified and celebrated in our culture that it actually seems very odd to me to have a special holiday just for its sake. It’s like having a Christianity Awareness Day or Straight Pride Day or something, although without the added bigotry.

Romantic relationships are already presented (and largely considered) something that everyone should aspire to and something that everyone should feel miserable without. They don’t need a special day of appreciation. Contrast that with, say, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, which celebrate relationships that we do often take for granted in this society (as opposed to, say, in Russian culture, where you cannot go a damn day without being reminded of your parents, for better or worse). Unfortunately, it often really does take a special occasion to make us sit down and think, “Wow, I really wouldn’t be half the person I am today without my mother/father.” Who the hell needs a special day to remember the fact that sex and romantic love are important?

Add to that the fact that even little children are expected to participate in VDay by bringing cards to class. What’s actually super creepy about that is they have to bring cards for every classmate, not just the ones they actually like and are friends with. While I understand that the point is so that kids don’t feel left out, 1) that doesn’t justify faking affection (or, worse, attraction) for people, and 2) that problem would be solved entirely if we either didn’t make such a big show of VDay or, even better, didn’t have it at all. Pretending to want someone to “be my Valentine! <3 <3 <3” when you really don’t is creepy. We should be teaching kids to get their guard up about something like that rather than institutionalizing it.

And in high school, VDay is an even bigger deal, with themed dances and flower deliveries during class and everything. At the time when it’s most important for people to focus on developing their own identity and becoming independent, these lavish observances encourage them to think of themselves in terms of their ability to find a romantic partner. If you think being single on VDay as an adult sucks, imagine (or remember) how it would feel in high school.

Even for the most traditionally romantic and “into” VDay of us, it’s probably sobering to remember that this holiday really wouldn’t be nearly as big of a deal as it is without the forces of commercialism and consumerism. Producers of greeting cards, chocolate, jewelry, and so on have driven popular perceptions of VDay for decades now. Many people celebrate it because it’s what their partners have come to expect, or because, honestly, what else are you going to do if all your friends are out on dates? Might as well.

There’s a certain amount of lip service now paid to the idea that VDay is about all kinds of love, not just romantic love, that you should take this opportunity to express love to your friends and family, or practice “self-care,” or whatever. But while I think it’s nice that a conscious effort has been made to correct for the fact that tons of people get left out by VDay, these exhortations to “celebrate love in all its forms” seem kind of shallow to me. In fact, they seem like advertisers’ attempts to get more people to buy stuff.

We tend to measure people’s worth by how much other people like them–as people, as sex objects, as romantic partners. This is especially true for women, but really it’s true for everyone. As someone who’s recovering from Chronic Feeling-Like-I-Have-No-Worth-As-A-Person-Unless-I-Have-A-Boyfriend-itis, I’m very aware of how VDay can exacerbate that state of mind for people.

Many of you probably like VDay and that’s fine. You’re not a bad person if you like it. I don’t particularly care if you do or not. My aim here isn’t to convince anyone of anything, but just to rant about my opinion for a while and also show that not everyone who finds today annoying and pointless is sitting around at home putting pins in a voodoo doll of their ex or something.

Anyway, VDay isn’t all bad. I’m going to CVS tomorrow for some cheap-ass chocolate. Simple pleasures.

I Really Strongly Dislike Valentine's Day!

Evangelical Apathy

Miri, , , , 8 Comments

You might think that the people who annoy me the most are those who hold views I strongly disagree with. Actually, though, it’s the people who don’t really care one way or the other, and–this is the important part–who insist on inserting themselves into every single political debate to yell at us for having opinions.

I call these people evangelical apathists, because they feel the need to spread their apathy like evangelicals.

Typical mating calls of evangelical apathists include:

  • “I mean, I get that [politician/policy/status quo] really sucks, but why do you have to make such a big deal about it?”
  • “Complaining about it won’t change anything.”
  • “Things will just get better on their own, anyway.”
  • “Well, I’m a [insert group/identity here], and I’m not offended.”
  • “Honestly, both sides are equally bad.”
  • “Don’t you have more important things to worry about?”
  • “It’s just a joke, stop being so sensitive.”

I’ve found that in my personal life, I tend to have a much harder time getting along with these people than I do with conservatives. With the latter, while we disagree, we can have a good time debating each other or at least bond over our mutual concern for what’s going on in the world. But with evangelical apathists, the very fact that I care about stuff seems like a thorn in their side.

These are the people who whine about “too many” political posts on Facebook. These are the people who loudly proclaim that politics is “boring.” These are the people who don’t vote–and not out of protest against the two-party system, but because they just can’t be bothered.

For example, during the Markwell controversy at my school last spring, the loudest voices–aside, of course, from the moronic anti-religious trolls who made the rest of us atheists look bad–were the people shouting “But why do you guys care if they proselytize?” without bothering to listen to our answer. (The reason we care, by the way, is because proselytism is condescending, insensitive, and annoying, and because Campus Crusade for Christ is an offensive reference to an act of Christian barbarity.)

The same thing happens with controversies like Chick-Fil-A and Daniel Tosh. There are those who defend them, there are those who criticize them, and then there are those making apathetic noises in our general direction and proclaiming how above these petty arguments they apparently are.

Except, of course, it’s ironic–if you really don’t care, why bother commenting?

I’d blame evangelical apathy on several causes. First of all, the internet does lower substantially the barriers to expressing your opinions, however inane they might be. It takes all of five seconds to leave a comment saying “hurrr I don’t see what the big deal is why do you guys even care lol.” This is much easier to do online than in person, because thankfully, it’s still considered rude to interrupt two people having a conversation to tell them that you find their conversational topic to be uninteresting. Online, on the other hand, this is par for the course. (For what it’s worth, though, I still think the internet is absolutely awesome and a wonderful medium for expressing opinions.)

Second, apathy is our cultural default. Apathy is cool, mature, “appropriate.” Passion is uncool, immature, and “inappropriate.” This is why apathy is something that so many people are so desperate to show off. In proudly displaying yourself as someone “above” such petty issues as racial slurs, rape jokes, and LGBT rights, you are tapping into our cultural ideal.

Third–and this is the one I can somewhat sympathize with–our political climate is toxic. People attack each other rather than ideas, and facts (what are “facts” nowadays?) are basically unobtainable. It’s all too easy to get burned out, throw up your hands, and declare neutrality.

And that’s the part I don’t begrudge anyone. If you’ve had enough, you’ve had enough. Get out and keep your sanity.

But respect the choices of those of us who are staying in the ring. If our political debates annoy you, don’t read our blogs and Facebook statuses. Don’t make us defend our decision to give a fuck. Don’t evangelize your apathy.

Get out of our way.

Evangelical Apathy

On Identifying as a Feminist

Miri, 10 Comments

[Snark Warning]

It’s fashionable these days to align yourself with virtually every feminist cause but to shun the label “feminist.” It’s not “cool,” people protest. We don’t want to be associated with those mannish lesbians. We don’t want to ruin people’s fun. We don’t hate men. Blahblahblah.

Okay, here’s the thing. There is no identity out there, no label or group, that doesn’t have some negative stereotypes associated with it. Unless you’ve decided to forgo all labels entirely, you’re singling out feminism for some very special treatment if you refuse to call yourself a feminist, feminist beliefs notwithstanding.

For instance, if I tell people I’m agnostic, they may assume that I just don’t have the guts to pick a viewpoint. If I tell them I’m atheist, they may assume that I’m selfish, inflexible, and intolerant. If I tell them I’m Jewish, they may assume that I’m privileged and cliquey.

Or, they may not.

I’ve identified as all three of these things at one point or another, fully aware of the negative connotations that they sometimes have. But did I hesitate to call myself these terms? No!

Some liberals are whiny and naive, but I still consider myself a liberal. Some Israelis are harsh and uncompromising, but I proudly tell people where I’m from. Some Northwestern students are snobby, but I never hesitate to tell people where I go to school. Some psychologists are annoying and try to psychoanalyze you, but–guess what–I’m still going to become a psychologist, and I’m still going to tell people what I do.

If someone judges you based on one word that you use to describe yourself, that person is probably an idiot. It’s not your responsibility to ensure that no idiot out there ever misjudges you, because what idiots do is misjudge people.

To say, “Yes, this word describes me perfectly but I’m not going to use it lest anyone judge me idiotically,” is letting those people win. Because, unsurprisingly, the people who will still have the courage to call themselves feminists will be the radical ones. Love them or hate them, they don’t represent the majority of people who hold feminist views.

In other words, when you disassociate from an identity that describes you just because you don’t want to be associated with some of the people who share that identity, you create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Feminists are not all alike, just as atheists, Jews, Muslims, Christians, vegetarians, liberals, conservatives, Israelis, Americans, Democrats, and Republicans are not all alike. You can’t understand a person in their entirety just by knowing that they belong to one of these groups.

I am a feminist. I am not identical to every other feminist you have ever met, studied, or heard about. If I tell you that I am a feminist and your response is to smirk, roll your eyes, or ask me if I hate all men, then I’m probably going to consider you an idiot. Why? Because you haven’t bothered to take me seriously. You haven’t learned about my beliefs, but you’ve already decided that learning about them is a waste of your time. Because you’ve disagreed with me without knowing what you’re even disagreeing with. That’s idiotic.

If you actually learn about what I believe and then decide that you disagree, that’s fair. But that’s completely different. And don’t worry, I won’t think you’re an idiot.

As for people like my younger self, who refused to call herself a feminist for fear of ridicule, I only have this tiny suggestion–stop fearing people’s judgment so much. They can’t do anything to you. They come and go. Your beliefs are the core of your character and, although they may change with time, they will always matter to you. They will always matter more than some idiot who sneers at you and asks if you’ve burned your bra yet.

On Identifying as a Feminist

My Facial Expression is None of Your Business

Miri, , , , , , , 26 Comments

I am not a cheerful person. I don’t wear my happiness on my face, and I do not consider it my moral duty to brighten the day for perfect strangers.

I am an introvert despite the fact that I’m usually pretty friendly and sociable when spoken to. Most of the time, I inhabit a world that nobody really knows. When you see me sitting still with a facial expression that is technically neutral but that many would characterize as “glum”, I’m actually anything but. Usually I’m making up music, writing my next blog post, planning out my love life or my career, or analyzing people I know, all silently in my mind.

But most people don’t bother to ask what I’m doing that’s taking up so much of my attention that I haven’t bothered to plaster a smile onto my face for others’ benefit. Instead, they assume.

And so it begins. “What are you looking so miserable about?” “What’s wrong with you?” Or, simply, “Smile!”

Some of these responses are passive-aggressive attempts to chastise me for not doing my womanly duty to keep everyone around me happy at all times. Others are genuine attempts to understand me, or genuine concern that I might be in a bad mood.

What they all have in common, though, is the shared assumption that underlies them–that there is something “wrong” with my facial expression and that this fact is anybody’s business but mine.

It’s not only people that I choose to associate with who claim the right to dictate what should be on my face. What woman hasn’t walked down a city street, perhaps on the way to work or to run errands, and encountered a random man yelling at her to “Smile!” or “Put a smile on that beautiful face!”?

Such remarks, which feminists call “street harassment” and most non-feminists call “a compliment,” represent the most glaring and offensive of non-physical intrusions into a person’s private self. My facial expression is even less the business of a total stranger on the street than it is of a person who does know me.

(Speaking of feminism, my inner feminist compels me to ask: how often are men publicly berated for the arrangement of their facial features? Quite the contrary, moody, brooding men are often considered very sexually appealing in that mysterious way. A moody, brooding woman, on the other hand, is usually called “difficult” euphemistically, or just “a bitch” if we’re really being honest.)

This issue is intimately related to something I wrote about just recently, on the concept of Debbie Downers and how sad or negative people are constantly accused of “bringing people down.” In contrast, this situation is even more absurd because the facial expressions in question usually aren’t even negative; they’re just neutral. They’re just missing that socially mandated smile. But if you read my argument for why people shouldn’t allow themselves to be “brought down” by “Debbie Downers,” you’ll see that it applies just as well for those of us who, for whatever personal reason, choose not to go about grinning like maniacs.

Furthermore, lest anyone attempt to feed me platitudes about how people who concern themselves with my facial expression are just worried about my mental wellbeing, let me ask you this: when you’re concerned about someone, do you ask them privately if everything’s okay, or do you draw attention to them in a group setting and demand to know why their face looks the way it does?

(For the sake of your friends, I hope you choose the former.)

What strikes me as most ironic about all of this is that, for all the constant blather I hear about how the unappealing configuration of my face means I’m “selfish” and “don’t care” that I’m “upsetting” people and whatnot, I’ve chosen a life that’s infinitely more helpful to those around me than many other possibilities. I’m going to be a therapist, which means that, yes, it’ll be my actual job to help people feel happy. If that’s not more important than my transient facial expression, I honestly don’t know what is.

Moral of the story (or tl;dr, for my fellow internet nerds): If you don’t like what my face looks like, don’t fucking look at it.

An example of my neutral facial expression. No, it is not a personal insult to you.
My Facial Expression is None of Your Business

On People Who Think They're so Damn Funny

Miri, , , , , , , 10 Comments

[Snark Warning]

Like many depressives, I have a love-hate relationship with humor. A well-crafted joke, anecdote, or cartoon can cheer me up during the worst times, but because of the various cognitive deficits associated with depression, I have a lot of trouble processing humor when it’s directed at me or my life.

Enter another thing I have a love-hate relationship with: Facebook. As one of those rare people who’s “out” about having a mental illness (to shamelessly borrow terminology from the LGBT community), I occasionally post something related to my current troubles on my Facebook. Most of the people who bother reading it are fairly good friends of mine who know what’s going on and often stop by and leave a nice comment or a simple “<3” on those posts.

But then there are people who insist on trying to force a joke about the situation. These well-intentioned but insufferably clueless people are the bane of any depressive’s life. They’re our friends, sometimes even pretty good ones, and as much as we know that they mean well, it can be very painful to have a really difficult aspect of your life reduced to a dumb joke like that. And it’s nearly impossible to find a way to respond–any suggestion that the joke was out of place is inevitably met with “but I was just trying to lighten the mood” or “I just wanted to cheer you up.”

Here’s the thing, though–you can’t fix a depressed person anyway. (Sometimes, you can’t even fix a depressed person if you’re a psychiatrist or psychologist.) The most you can do is offer a message of support and refrain from trying to turn a depressed person’s misery into a big huge joke.

Honestly, I doubt that even healthy people are actually “cheered up” by jokes made at their expense. I can’t imagine that’s pleasant for anyone who’s already in kind of a bad mood. But it’s especially unpleasant for a depressed person and can trigger all sorts of nasty stuff.

I think people have a huge fear of others’ unhappiness. The moment you see a sad person, you immediately want to drag them, kicking and screaming, out of their sadness, whether they asked you to or not. This is understandable, but it should be avoided, not only because there’s so little you can really do, but because you should try to understand people before you try to help them.

If anyone ever bothered to ask me what they could do to help me feel better, you can guarantee I wouldn’t say “crack a dumb joke at my expense.” And, don’t worry, I wouldn’t say “sit here for hours and listen to me cry,” either. I would probably ask you to have a conversation about something interesting, like politics or culture, with me. Or I’d ask you to come over and bring a good movie. Or I’d ask you to bake some cookies with me. Or, I’d say, “Nothing, but thanks for asking.”

What people don’t understand about depression is that it’s different from normal sadness not only in quantity, but in quality. To put it more simply, it’s just a different kind of sadness. When someone has a depressive episode, they go to a really dark place that healthy people don’t go to ever. Not even when their significant other breaks up with them or something like that. It’s a darkness that can’t be lit up by a stupid joke. Really, it can’t be fully lit up by anything. But human connection, love, and support can sometimes help.

Obviously, not everybody is willing to provide that for everybody else. That’s fine, and that’s how it should be. But if you can’t give me what I need to feel better, don’t give me something that makes me feel worse, either.

Like many problems that I come across in my life, this turns out to be something that’s actually a much larger issue. I believe that the reason people are so desperate to immediately try to “lighten the mood” the instant they see something unpleasant is because our culture has an extreme fear of negative emotion. We avoid it like the plague, and it comes as no surprise to me that most of our culture’s solutions for achieving happiness seem to focus on eliminating things like fear, sadness, and anger entirely, rather than incorporating them into one’s life in a normal, healthy way. Clearly, what I have isn’t healthy, but it’s only the extreme end of spectrum. I see this sort of blind and terrified avoidance of anything that’s sad, whether it’s severe like depression or totally normal, everywhere I look.

If you’ve just read this and realized that what I’m describing sounds exactly like you, I hope you’re not offended. If you are, my apologies. But I hope you trust that behind all this snark is a lot of pain.

And, if you’re still reading, I have a challenge for you. Next time you come across a post from a friend that’s unhappy in some way, don’t rush to make a joke about it. Don’t try to drag your friend away from what they’re feeling. If you absolutely need to comment on it somehow, say “I’m sorry, that really sucks,” or “I hope you feel better.” I guarantee that unless you happen to be Jon Stewart, that’ll work better than any joke.

I’ll leave you with a quote by Dutch priest and writer Henri Nouwen:

“The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion… that is a friend who cares.”

On People Who Think They're so Damn Funny

Difficult ≠ Impossible

Miri, , , , , , , 9 Comments

I’m going to come out of my cave and write about something that pisses me off. (OK, so I could start any blog post this way, but whatever.)

Here’s something that I consider one of the most glaring cultural problems in America today–it’s the idea that just because something is difficult, it is impossible and not worth trying. Our culture has become a deeply pessimistic one, and the message that it sends these days is “Oh, forget it, we could never change that anyway.”

Don’t believe me? Well, you should, because I’m right. There’s a reason that the issues that land on the political agenda are fairly simple–go to war, or not go to war. Allow gay marriage, or not allow gay marriage. Raise the debt ceiling, or don’t raise it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying these issues aren’t fraught with difficulties of their own. But they are very simple–yes or no. Right or wrong. Do, or don’t.

The issues that don’t really get talked about much are the complex ones. How to fix our education system. How to achieve equality between women and men, and between whites and people of color. How to create a more just and sustainable food system. How to end our addiction to oil. How to end the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. How to encourage democracy to take root in other parts of the world without shoving it down people’s throats.

To be sure, our government does things to try and ameliorate these issues somewhat, but they’re always band-aid solutions to broken-bone problems. For instance, George W. Bush tried to “fix” our schools with No Child Left Behind. President Obama issued empty threats to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to stop settlement building, with no regard for the religious and political complexities that the settlement issue dredges up. Then there’s that little Iraq thing. As for our screwed-up food system, racial justice, and ditching the oil habit, I don’t think anything’s being done at all.

Try coming up to an older person (by which I mean, someone old enough to have their own kids) and talking to them about these issues. About education, about food, about the racism still embedded deep within our society. Ten bucks says they tell you something like, “Yeah, it’d be great if that could get fixed, but face it–it’s never gonna happen.”

Why? Why the hell not?

Well, because it’s hard.

People think that these things are never gonna get fixed because it’s so hard to fix them. And by hard, I mean like when you’re trying to do a math problem and you don’t even know where to start. You’re completely stuck. Nothing you’ve ever learned is going to help you here.

The stuff that gets in the news, like gay marriage, the debt ceiling, and all of that sort of stuff, is different from these issues because, despite our disagreement on them, we know what to do. We either vote yes, or no. But you can’t vote “yes” or “no” on education reform or on ending racism, because you have to figure out what the hell to actually do about it.

Note what a clusterfuck occurs when our government actually tries to take on a complex and nuanced issue–for instance, healthcare reform. It nearly stops functioning. Our culture is terrified of complexity.

Usually when young people like me talk about fixing some of these complicated problems, older people call us “idealists.” (And that’s at best–sometimes they use less charitable labels.) To me, all that’s saying is that we’re willing to think about and talk about things that are hard, and “realistic” people are not.

Well, realism is dooming this country. Realists are people who don’t think we can stop global warming, who don’t think we can have just and efficient healthcare, education, and food systems, who don’t think we can ever achieve equality between sexes, races, socioeconomic classes, or sexual orientations.

And guess what? If you tell yourself you can’t do something, it’s not going to get done.

And anyway, isn’t that a terribly demoralizing thing to say? I think we’re selling ourselves short when we say that we can’t solve complex problems like these. After all, the human race invented democracy, finance and agriculture, created the Mona Lisa, painted the Sistine Chapel, put a man on the moon, eradicated polio, and set up the Internet. Do our accomplishments really end there?

Just because something is difficult does not mean it’s impossible. Things that are impossible, at least with our current knowledge and technology, are traveling through time, sprouting wings and flying, curing cancer, and turning lead into gold. But things that are merely difficult? Well, that’s just about everything else.

Difficult ≠ Impossible