A Good Man at the Good Men Project!

I love waking up to something I love! *grumps* Nevermind that it's almost 2 in the afternoon - I've done enough today without being awake and got enough going on besides! Okay, I'm still in the process of reading this one, so give me just a minute to think on it and process it. Wait a tic! I'm being a mite selfish! Here! Y'all read it too!

It's called "Why Women Aren't Crazy" - go read it!!!

You know, just a few paragraphs in - get to the bit about the Bergman/Boyer picture - this stuff already makes a lot of sense! Yashar Ali recognizes and points out with no bones about it, how people (of ALL genders!) constantly berate women about their emotions. Let me level with you on something very, very personal that is quite relevant to this article and its subject:

My dad is not at all well. He's been in ICU in the hospital here in my home town since Monday, July 8th. Given that I don't have my mom's official okay on how much to post here, I'll be brief. Long story short, we've got a 50/50 chance of celebrating Father's Day next year. Things are not looking good. This turn of events is coming after my mom enacted a legal separation with my dad - one that has been very long in coming. ALL of this is coming after watching my dad deal (very poorly at that) with his alcoholism since he retired when I was a junior in high school - 7 years ago.

Now, it seems to me that I should be expected to be a touch wonky during this exceptionally trying time. However, I have discovered that 90% of everyone I deal with seems to think they know how I should handle it, because obviously I'm doing it wrong. I keep hearing from all sides "You're just being over-dramatic - he's not THAT sick" and "Aren't you blowing things a little out of proportion?" (That one always comes with this disgusting tone of faux-sympathy.) My personal favorite is "Aren't you making this all about you?" - that one's the tune and refrain every single time I express anger.

I realize my situation is quite extreme at the present moment and not everyone is dealing with something like this or WILL deal with something like this. I pray to every god in existence that you, my beloveds, never ever do. However, I feel the point is valid in sharing it with you because of one reason: no matter what it is, if a woman expresses ANY negative emotion, she's "nuts."

Here's the problem with all of that, quoted direct from the article above.

"Gaslighting can be as simple as someone smiling and saying something like, “You’re so sensitive,” to somebody else. Such a comment may seem innocuous enough, but in that moment, that person is making a judgment about how someone else should feel."

Oh, and don't even get me started with "What, are you on your period?" Loath as I am to resort to violence, with how short my fuse is recently, that phrase is an instant trigger to a punch in the teeth. If you're a man (assuming you were born male), you've never had one, so you don't get to say that. If you're a woman (assuming you were born female), you've had one, so you don't get to either. Actually, I'd say woman-on-woman gaslighting is worse. We expect it from men - fathers, boyfriends, brothers, guys at school/work. If you're female, please do not contribute doubly to the problem by gaslighting other women and diminishing the possibility for healthy female relationships.

But refer to the last sentence of that block-quote again (and be proud of me for figuring out how to use the block-quote feature). And here's another block-quote for you that actually sums it up better than I could. I'd tip my hat to Mr. Ali, but I haven't got a hat.

I don’t think this idea that women are “crazy,” is based in some sort of massive conspiracy. Rather, I believe it’s connected to the slow and steady drumbeat of women being undermined and dismissed, on a daily basis. And gaslighting is one of many reasons why we are dealing with this public construction of women as “crazy.”

Y'all... This is a man who gets it, and gets it good. It isn't something one person dreamed up one day to "keep us down." It's something that our society does day in and day out, month after month, year upon year, and generation to generation. Well, you may ask, where does it stop?

Go look in a mirror. Yep! YOU. I don't care if you're male, female, whatever gender you happen to identify yourself as. Forgive my total lack of filter, but I don't bloody care if you identify as a spayed English Sheepdog! YOU, YOU, YOU, have the power to help stop societal gaslighting. "Oh, but Marigold!" you may exclaim. "How can I do that with society as a whole standing in my way?"

Here we go: next time someone expresses a negative emotion (don't care about THEIR gender either, come to that), and you open your mouth to say "You're being too dramatic/sensitive/selfish/whatever"... DON'T! You might think they truly are being a nut about it. When a person is upset is not the time to put in your two cents unless they directly ask you for help. Oh, and don't tell them to "Calm down" either. Just don't. (Read that in Captain America's voice.) Yep, it's as simple as that. When a person is upset, it kinda doesn't matter how you think they should feel about it. It matters how they feel about it and that it needed to come out. Try words like:

"I'm so sorry."

"Is there any way I can help?"

"What do you need?/Is there anything you need?"

"Would you like to talk?"

I don't care if you're the "fixer" kind of personality. A lot of the time, what you need to understand is that someone coming to you with a problem is not asking for help. Most people, when they want help, will ask for it. In the situation of "not asking for help," generally what they want is for you to listen. A lot of this societal gaslighting thing seems to come from a general refusal to listen to anybody at any time ever. Everybody wants to be heard, but nobody wants to listen. To a person dealing with a negative emotion like anger, sadness, or frustration, a general refusal to listen boils down in its purest form to "I don't matter."

Yeah, when you're telling someone that they're "dramatic" or "sensitive" or "crazy" or "out of proportion" or what have you, you are telling them "YOU DO NOT MATTER." Can you do that to someone in good conscience? If you can, I feel sorry for you. If you didn't realize that's how it came across, I want to give you a hug. Now you know and you can fix it! This one, like every other problem, starts getting fixed with you.

Oh, by the way... I don't normally do things like this, but I'm going to ask that all of my readers please pray for me and my family. I don't particularly care what deity you pray to or how you pray to them. Just... please... We're having a really hard time and we could use all the prayers and love and good energy and hugs that we can get.

Marigold, sending out love and good energy cos you gotta give 'em to get 'em, wishing you well!

Breaking down "Schrodinger's Rapist"

Recently, I read an article on WordPress and posted it to my Facebook page. No, I'm not posting my Facebook page on this blog, sorry! There has been a great deal of debate going up on my page about the article. First thing I'm going to do is post a link to the article itself.

The Schrodinger's Rapist Article. Please read before commenting.

From what I've seen on Facebook, a great deal more women agree with the article than do men. The argument I've been hearing from men on my Facebook is this: "How dare you speak of all men as if 50% of them could be rapists?" While I do understand the indignation, I maintain that it is impossible for a cisgender male to understand the absolute terror that can come with being born female. I asked my friend P. [name withheld] to read the "Schrodinger's Rapist" article again from a different perspective.

If you haven't yet, please read the article presented in the link above. The commentary to follow is directly related. I was born female, so I feel pretty qualified to explain this. I know I do not speak for all females ever, but I have heard enough assenting commentary/conversation that I am confident in what I say.

Guys, I need you to use your imaginations. Tomorrow morning, you wake up and you were born female. You get out of bed and you go to your closet. You run over in your head where all you're going today and try to dress accordingly. Simple, right? There's different clothes you wear to different places, right? Well, right... to an extent. Are you driving or walking or using public transportation? Let's say you're using public transportation. That affects how you dress today. Say you want to wear that adorable pencil skirt you bought last week... Do you get to? Depends on if you want to run the risk of everything from leers and stares to having obscenities shouted at you to actually being touched.

Congratulations - you haven't even left your BEDROOM and you've just encountered the Schrodinger's rapist concept. A THEORETICAL man you have never even laid eyes on just affected your wardrobe choice. You put the pencil skirt back in the closet and choose some slacks. You get on the bus and you go to work. When you get there, the air conditioner is broken, but you leave your jacket on anyway, because you don't want to get blamed if your male coworkers stare. If one of them complains, YOU are going to be reprimanded - you could even lose your job.

Back on the bus after work. You pull a book out of your purse and try your best to radiate "leave me alone" to every other human being in the near vicinity. There's this one guy. He starts trying to talk to you. He might be a homeless man. He might look like he's in college. He might be Robert Downey Jr. The fact that he's talking to you makes you wonder what he wants. You heard about the incident where a man started screaming and berating and cursing at a woman who didn't want to talk to him on a subway in New York - it circulated through most of your Facebook friends. You can't tell this guy on the bus, "Look, I'm really not interested in conversation right now - please let me read." If you do, 1. you're a horrible bitch and 2. you have no way of knowing if this guy's going to do like the guy in the blog incident.

This guy on the bus... Again, he may be a Nobel Peace Prize winner AND a doctor AND a lawyer AND an Indian chief. The fact that he won't leave you alone makes you nervous. He is now, no matter how good a person he may be, Schrodinger's rapist. You are making it non-verbally clear that you do not want to talk to him, yet he insists. If you talk to him, you feed the behavior and he talks more, making you more uncomfortable. If you don't talk to him, you run the risk of him pushing more, possibly starting to shout, maybe causing a scene. To boot, by social "law", any adverse reaction on his part is your fault. You weren't "nice" enough. You were a "bitch."

And you have no idea how fast or how far this guy's behavior may escalate if he decides he doesn't like something about you.

Doesn't it sound paranoid? Doesn't it sound extreme? Yeah, yeah it does, when you weren't born female and haven't actually had these experiences before, many more than you are even physically capable of documenting because they happen so frequently. Maybe they're not the scale or intensity of the guy on the bus. There's the guy leering at you in the Barnes & Noble - maybe today's the day he'll follow you to your car. There's the way your lady friend's boyfriend makes you uncomfortable when he drinks too much at parties, and how it's YOUR responsibility to excuse yourself away from him - and it happens time after time. There's the icky feeling you get in your stomach when you're working closing shift and you have to take inventory of all your male coworkers. Which one of them is it safe to ask "Will you walk me to my car?" Because remember, if you didn't have someone walk you to your car and something bad happens, it's your fault. If you ask the wrong male coworker and something bad happens, it's still your fault. Maybe you could have asked a female coworker, or maybe you're the last woman to leave the building.

There are a thousand and one little instances of the Schrodinger's rapist concept in a woman's life every freaking day - many of them do not even involve a flesh-and-blood man. That theoretical man who might leer, stare, holler, grab... or rape? You don't even have to see him. You just have to know he's out there. And he affects your life in such intimate ways that if you were not born female, you can never understand what it's like to live without him.

Go read the original article again. Try to read it from the perspective of a woman who's sitting on her couch going, "This makes me sick because I know that guy." Understand that the article is not meant to alienate or bad-mouth anyone. It's meant to communicate a permanent state of mind because whatever horrible things happen to women, it is our fault. Our bodies are public property. Understand that when we say "No man comes with a zero risk factor," we aren't trying to condemn you personally - we're just trying to protect ourselves. Understand how "boys will be boys" and how it permeates every thread of the fabric of our society leaves women perpetually unsure of their personal safety. Do not take it personally.

But please, please be angry. Please be angry at guys you see pestering women who clearly do not want to talk. Please be angry when you hear girls being told how to prevent their own rapes. Please be angry at examples of male entitlement - street harassment, "boys will be boys". Please be angry at how the "rape schedule" (look it up) governs every moment of  life as a woman. Please be angry that articles like "Schrodinger's Rapist" NEED to be written to communicate how terrifying the experience of being female can be! Please be FURIOUS!

Please get angry enough to DO something... besides attack us.