search for what's not lost

Continuing the trend of writing when upset. Ha.

I've lost some weight recently. It sucks, to be perfectly blunt. I'm trying to learn how to deal with depression and anxiety without slipping back into old toxic patterns, but I'm a work in progress. Right now, progress is slow. And I guess it's becoming sort of obvious.

I work a desk job, so I am no stranger to weird office culture as it intersects with food and body issues. I doubt I need to elaborate, right? Diets and weight change and food morality are constant topics of conversation. Women bond over body hatred, as we're socialized to do. It's a nightmare for anyone who has ever had an eating disorder (it's a nightmare anyway, I would imagine, but I can only speak to my own experience).

Today has been especially rough. A former coworker came in for a visit and made a few weird comments to me, ending by jovially asking me if I quit eating, wink wink nudge nudge. I wish I could say I rebuffed her in a calm but firm fashion, but I didn't. I froze up. I shut down. I'm still thinking about the million things I could have said, but didn't.

A few minutes ago, three coworkers sitting near me started to talk about how thin I am, and what must I be eating, and aren't I so LUCKY. Even after explaining that I owe this weight loss to depression and anxiety, and that being thin does not make me happy, they continues with a barrage of back-handed "compliments" and judgments ("That's true, you never seem upset when you get really heavy!!" hey cool that's not a mindfuck. Thanks.) One woman actually said, "Trade places with me, I'd LOVE to be skinny and depressed!"

I'd love to be skinny and depressed. Marinate on that for a second.

I have to stress that this is not unusual. These conversations take place all the time. It's just that much more difficult to deal with them at your place of employment. I tend to get defensive, and my default retort is something along the eloquent lines of "Fuck off!" Which is obviously not an appropriate response in this context.

So I freeze up. I shut down.


It's SO tricky, and it evokes in me such a complex and overwhelming internal response. I feel weird and embarrassed about the fact that I didn't come up with an effective way of shutting down that toxic conversation. I feel scrutinized and exposed, because this intensely personal, private struggle of mine manifests itself in a highly visible, public way. I feel betrayed by my own perceptions, because I really can't tell what I look like; though I know logically that I have lost a significant amount of weight, that isn't what I see when I look at myself in the mirror. Hearing other people assess my body like this is startling. Perhaps worst of all, I feel really frustrated and angry that so many women have internalized the belief that their health is worth less than conforming to an arbitrary impossible standard. I'll get better, my weight will stabilize, and I'll be ok, and I'll...still be living with the knowledge that people thought I was lucky that my mental health issues were once severe enough to impact my physical health.

That is fucking gutting.

And we get to live with it every fucking day.

I don't think I have an insightful spin to put on this one.

full of your regrets

The difficult and painful truth is that the body and the brain aren't separate. I like to pretend as though there is a divide. Things are neat, like a TV dinner. Your peas don't have to touch your mashed potatoes, ever.

I think this illusion is very comfortable for a person whose borders are daily invaded, or who has suffered an occupation of her internal landscape. If brain and body are separate, there is always something to keep safe for yourself in every interaction. Which means that in every interaction, you must believe that people are out to overwhelm and conquer you. Me. I should say me. This is my illusion.

The difficult and painful truth is that boundaries have to be established without relying on a stark, polarized interpretation of reality. Grey area is terrifying, but it is also real. It makes for hard work. Navigating it involves risk and vulnerability and, inevitably, fucking up. A willingness to be brave and whole, and to believe that there might be other brave and whole people out there, too.

what it's like feeling occupied

Obama sez:

“I have been to this point unwilling to sign on to same-sex marriage primarily because of my understandings of the traditional definitions of marriage,” he said. “But I also think you’re right that attitudes evolve, including mine. And I think that it is an issue that I wrestle with and think about because I have a whole host of friends who are in gay partnerships. I have staff members who are in committed, monogamous relationships, who are raising children, who are wonderful parents. And I care about them deeply. And so while I’m not prepared to reverse myself here, sitting in the Roosevelt Room at 3:30 in the afternoon, I think it’s fair to say that it’s something that I think a lot about. That’s probably the best you’ll do out of me today.”

link

so I guess, if you're a queer who cares about getting married, it actually DOESN'T get better! Imagine. Thanks a lot for your thoughts, you fucking asshole.

slightly cheaper rate

Hey guys, It Gets Better. Totally. Every young queer person is gonna rise above and have a fancy job and a stable income and a family that loves and accepts them, because no one in the adult world is bigoted or violent or ignorant and queers definitely don't face routine discrimination, a stunning paucity of cultural representation, limited access to resources, or the burden of living with damaging effects of growing up as a target of hatred, which often includes a heaping dose of self-hatred. It Gets Better. We're all gonna be rich white guys who escape to France on ski trips when we simply can't stand the pressure of glamorous life in the Castro for one more moment. It's especially true now that Obama said so! I mean, he'd know, right?!!?!

typical girls

Even though this blog has a readership of only ten people or so, writing in it is still really stressful. Part of it is that I'm admittedly very, very self-conscious about my lack of formal education, and I think women especially are constantly told that their own thoughts, feelings and ideas are Not Important. Or at least, Not Important Enough to stand on their own. It's hard to fight against that, and to make myself believe that I actually am articulate enough to talk about the things I experience and place them in a larger context. I'm always afraid that I'm simply stating the extremely obvious, and that that has no real value. I'm always sure that someone else has already said it, and said it better than I can. As a result, I lapse into silence.

I'd like for us ALL to believe that talking about these issues is never a problem. We can't talk too much; we can't talk ENOUGH. There is no statement too obvious and no idea so simple that it isn't novel for SOMEONE out there.Or maybe it just needs to be said by us, FOR ourselves.

So I'm just going to write. I am just going to say what I think and feel and believe that it is good enough, and that I am an authority on my own experience. It's sad to me that this is such a radical act. So many women internalize the notion that they haven't the right to speak authoritatively. We are all supposed to believe that someone else, maybe someone smarter or more experienced, more educated, can say it better than we can. HAS said it better than we can, surely. We are always so fucking careful to qualify our voices. 'But that's just what I think.' 'But I don't think I'm expressing this the way I want to.' 'I might be wrong.' God help us if anyone ever thinks we are wrong. I want to know why. Maybe it's because we understand what it feels like to be annihilated, and so we take extra pains not to crush anyone else with our words. Maybe it's because being socialized as female in our misogynistic culture means never, ever, ever, EVER being good enough, no matter what. Maybe it's because, when we raise our voices and demand some fucking space, we're suddenly no fun. Negated, just like that. It happens so fast. Maybe it's because we know how much it fucking hurts to realize that people you care about are more invested in having a good time than in addressing the things that are killing you slowly every single day. Maybe it's all of that, and more. Or maybe it's just me, and maybe I'm not articulating this as well as I'd like...

ha.

Listen. Please, TALK. Please, demand space. I will if you do, and each of us will make the other person's existence feel a little less lonely. 'Cause aren't we all terribly, terribly lonely? I am. I feel myself getting more and more radical as my peers are, for the most part, growing less and less so. We get older and we're supposed to have more of a stake in maintaining the status quo. But I don't, and I WON'T. And I feel fucking alien. Alienated and alienating. I'm shutting my mouth, and maybe you're shutting your mouth, too, and maybe we're sitting side by side without a damned clue that we're on the same side.

Please, give yourself permission to get upset. I don't know about you, but I'm very fucking tired of forcing myself to shut down my emotions when I get upset. Like right now, I am upset. I don't let myself write or talk to people when I'm upset, usually, and I've been thinking about why that is. It's not that I'm afraid I'll say or do something I don't mean. It's just that when you're a woman, getting emotional is one of the ultimate sins you can commit. It makes you feel like JUST a girl. Just a girl. Just a creature who can't be logical, whose emotions are something to be embarrassed by because they run so deep. They get in the way, we are made to think, of logic and reason. But it isn't true. They don't. And I am tired of trying so fucking hard not to feel anything. I am tired of retreating from the thing that makes me feel most human and vulnerable. I'm tired of the burden of macho pressure; the burden of proving I can be more than JUST a girl. Sometimes I think macho pressure is harder to deal with as a woman than it would be if I were a man. I am expected to do the impossible- to transcend my sex. I can't and I won't and I don't want to. I don't.

I don't want to believe that I don't matter because I'm a woman, or because I am radical, or because I am queer, or because I sort of kind of fit into any number of tiny, inaccurate boxes. The energy I expend shutting my mouth for the sake of keeping the boat on an even keel is fucking wasted. Every fucking day I bite back so much. Don't you? Every day these small barbs get under my skin. That fucked up thing your friend said that I heard. That fucked up thing my boss did that I had to witness. That fucked up person who invaded my space or your space or anyone's space and this fucked up culture that encouraged and allowed it to happen and all those people who looked the other way. The things I never, ever, ever talk about because they're too awful. I'm swallowing them every day, and every night I lay awake forever thinking about them. I can't sleep for all the times I've bitten my tongue.

And even while I'm writing this I'm thinking, do I sound unhinged? Is this too emotional? Should I do what I usually do? I write so much. So fucking much. I write until I can't anymore, and then I go back and read everything through the cold, critical lens of every possible detractor, and I whittle away. I pare down every thing that might possibly be stupid or obvious or too revealing, until there is nothing. Until I believe I have nothing worthwhile to say. Someone else has said it better. But you know, it must still need to be said, I think. Because I still can't sleep at night.

so be dear to your friends

Ok, I only have a few minutes, so- extremely quick hit:

I want to talk about something that I notice happening a lot when discussing street harassment with men.

Whenever I try to have these conversations, there is a tendency on the part of men to dismiss it as an incident reflective only of the personal idiocy or lack of couth of the specific harasser in question. In contrast, most of the women I talk to who have routine experience with street harassment seem to have an intrinsic understanding of the fact that it is a systematic problem.

So this is what I would like men to understand: it isn't just about individuals. I understand that this is an uncomfortable concept. Acknowledging that our culture is misogynistic and that cultural attitudes toward women allow for and encourage things like street harassment makes street harassment every man's problem. It isn't just about that one jerk who said that one mean or fucked up thing. At the root, it's about the power and privilege that, setting aside all other factors, all men have vis-à-vis all women. Things like street harassment are expressions of that power. And it takes consistent work to examine one's own actions and beliefs honestly and to work against the internalization of those damaging cultural messages. I would like for all people in positions of privilege to commit to that work, rather than scrambling to point out the ways that THOSE privileged people are the bad guys but I'M different!!! No. It's work we ALL have to do, and it requires us to check our defensiveness and be open to the possibility that we need to come correct.

if you think the world is a machine with one cog

Hey, here's something I can't believe I have to talk about in 2010*.

I'm really, really, really tired of straight people ignorantly joking about wishing they could be gay- ie 'Men suck, I wish I was a lesbian', sexual comments aimed at women by women who'd never actually have sex with a woman, and the like.

I'm just going to go ahead and repost something I wrote elsewhere in response to a comment like the above: being a queer woman is cool until you have to deal with realities like bigotry, hatred, tokenization, harassment, cultural invisibility, a lack of civil rights, not being able to display affection in public, being treated like a joke, having your sexuality appropriated by straight men while simultaneously being told that your sexuality must be a last resort born of your inability to land a man, not having a cohesive community, discrimination in every arena, and little things like straight people telling you that you have it easy and joking about wishing they could be gay.

One thing I declined to mention in that laundry list is dealing with internalized homophobia and misogyny, which is something I've felt really uncomfortable discussing in general. I've been struggling a lot with the pressure to live up to Model Minority Standards. Being a Model Minority means not complaining about your oppression or pointing out other people's privilege when it would make them uncomfortable. It means letting your concerns take a back seat until it is convenient for everyone else, and then being grateful and gracious when you are permitted a chance to speak out. It means being convenient, period. It means being invisible. If you dare to grumble, you're just bitter, and you're too angry and too sensitive, and you won't have earned the right to be heard. If you dare to like yourself too much, you're self-absorbed or myopic; if you dare to not like yourself enough or have quarrels with members of your community, you're a sellout, or you're someone to be pitied and there's something wrong with you.

These pressures are partly why I haven't been writing here as much as I'd like to. I have to contend with each of them every time I speak. It's a lot of effort to expend, especially considering that what I have to say tends not to be terribly crowd-pleasing.

*just kidding, of course I can believe it