Wanting to burn it all down (confronting the climate of harassment )

Hi Ladies,

There are many who believe 2017 is the year of the goddess Kali and it's hard not to look around and see why. These are some rough days right now, I’m not gonna lie. Sexual harassment, inequality, racial injustice on so many levels it makes we want to scream, gun violence, corporate corruption (that is only being enabled by the people voted into office to protect us), healthcare, the ability for me to control my own body, tax reform… When the battle for net neutrality came across my news feed, it was like the turd cherry on top of my shit sundae. Dig IN!  I’m really working on maintaining a sense of balance and calm but this is really fucking hard these days. My nature has become more of a quiet rage glossed over with kindness and kisses. I’m identifying with, and cheering on, the rebels and matriarchs who have moved mountains. The goddess Kali and all her destructive glory is who I’m putting my money behind these days. And at the same time, I wish I didn’t feel this way. I wish I wasn’t so angry. I wish I could just let the state of current events just wash over me like the tide. So as I mull over my toxic emotional state which is mostly focused on the behavior of men right now; I’m realizing I’m once again confronting similar themes I’ve been struggling with my entire life. Disappointment, anger, fighting for equality and validity, these are all struggles I have a long history with. And yet, another piece of this complicated puzzle is my inseparable affinity with hope. It’s hope that keeps me on the rusted out Ferris wheel that cycles through the same emotional struggles over and over again. So in another déjà vu moment, I return to the cyclical struggle of what I can possible do that will earn me validity and equality with men. Hoping the answer may end the cycle once and for all.

So why have the recent allegations been so draining for me? Well, maybe it has something to do with the fact that for my entire life my relations with men have required me to confront, and reconcile with disappointment. The men I’ve been raised to cherish, admire, see as a hero, and love unconditionally are humans and are flawed. Our fathers have cheated on our mothers, our brothers have turned out to engage in locker room behavior and our boyfriends have put us in difficult situations forcing us to make life-altering decisions alone. For most women, there comes a point where we must routinely confront a disappointing revelation about a man we call Dad, Bro, babe… and it breaks our heart. Some of us never move past the disappointment. Those of us who choose reconciliation are tasked with an incredibly difficult road that requires us to move emotional mountains in order to find a level of compassion that allows us forgiveness. Having gone down this road in my own life I can attest to how difficult this is. In truth no matter which road is taken, condemnation or forgiveness, we are left struggling to wonder whether all me are like the ones who wounded us.

So many of us cope with disappointment by lowering our bar of expectations, I still maintain hope for kindness, respect and courtesy. Sadly, I no longer expect most men to be loyal, honest or dependable and I’ve adjusted. I’m more self-reliant and independent, so I’ve turned my disappointment into a positive wealth of self-sufficiency. And I also have daily mantras reassuring me that not all men should be defined by the actions of a few. So as allegations of harassment and assault are coming down at a torrential pace the mantra is being repeated franticly, and that buffer of hope is getting worn down. My hope is down quite a bit these days, and like any addict (hope being mine), I’m hopeful my coffers will one day be filled.

I’ve largely settled with my disappointment, quietly lowering my expectations after certain conversations or encounters. Having to suffer mansplaining during conversations when I’m sharing my own emotional perspective, has done wonders to annul my belief that I’m a respected equal, entitled to my thoughts. Clearly, there are a large number of men who are more than eager to rewrite my narrative for me. Thank god they’re here to help, because my current narrative was painting them as controlling ass bags that don’t like being confronted by women demanding the bar be raised. So for the most part, I’ve reconciled with my disappointment. I’ve found an uneasy truce that allows me to be a productive member of society and function well with others and just expect less.

  If only reconciling with disappointment lead to tranquility, but it doesn’t, it only asks more questions and confronts more wounds. One major wound I seem to constantly come up against is confronting that we must fight for own validity. For all the strides we’ve made towards equality we still confront a large dismissiveness when discussing our own experiences. There is a powerful tendency to invalidate a woman’s emotions. We’re labeled as hysterics, deranged, unstable, and so on, when we speak truth to our unpleasant emotions. When women walk through an empty parking lot alone at night they confront an experience men are largely immune from. For men who don’t know the experience first hand, it is often easily dismissed with a comment such as,  “Are you sure you’re not overreacting?” Or, “I’m sure it’s not as scary as you think it is…” or some other such bullshit that is meant to put a clean button on a conversation where a similar male experience is nonexistent.

Okay, so clearly the validity of female experiences isn’t an area where we can find common ground. No matter what the situation is, there will always be a male justification for diminishing what we’ve felt. Feeling violated? Well, what were you wearing? Concerned for your safety? I’m sure it’s no big deal. So the validity of our experiences is another area where many of us have relinquished our own narratives in the hopes that it might gain us more equal footing, and yet it’s only set us further back. We stay quiet, reserve our opinion, down play our experiences and watch as it happens to other women around us.  So now we’ve learned to settle for disappointment and being invalid, what’s the next compromise that might lead us to equality?

Welcome to learned helplessness. The decision to cope with our misogynistic patriarchal society by continually settling and diminishing ourselves comes at a huge price. Depressions, hopelessness, loss of passion or sense of self, are all symptoms of succumbing to a state of learned helplessness. If we were to really examine the results of the 2016 election where Trump gained a large percentage of the white female vote I would not be surprised if there was a correlation between women who exhibit learned helplessness, with women who voted for Trump. I cannot help the feeling that this is by design. As women continue to stay complacent in their lives, the people who benefit are those in power within the patriarchy. The irony being that the system is so weak it’s dependent on the suppression of others for it’s strength.

Many of us have learned to survive within the patriarchy by functioning in a state of learned helplessness. We quietly tolerate berating behavior, we alter our appearances with the hopes of finding acceptance, and we turn on each other when whistle blowers stand up and speak out. At no point do any of these actions result in our empowerment or equality. These actions reduce us down, making us weaker and easier to control. It’s enough to provoke wrath, which may explain why we are where we are at this moment in our society. More women are waking from the slumber of being helpless, we’re pissed and this is exactly what is needed to move forward.

When accusations against Weinstein came out, he was an easy villain to despise. My anger felt justified, clearly directed, and necessary. He’s had a long history of being a bully but it was still a surprise to hear just how much he abused his power. Still, when women heard of his behavior there was no love lost. He was clearly evil and a monster. But with some of the accusations it has not been as easy. Some of these public figures were admired, even well liked by many and the pain of that realization was a forced revisiting of past disappointments. It has left me stammering in anticipation of when the next shoe will drop, and will it a hero of mine? Will I once again be forced to do the work required to recover from disappointment? Work that seems to rarely be required of men and that thought raises a deeper anger in me. That anger is heavy and filled with a painful history.

The first notion that raises my fury, is the perception that men seem to collectively accept a lowered bar for themselves. The grey areas of our society that elicit pleasure, such as sexually suggestive advertising and pornography, go largely unchallenged by most men.  Women rarely see males speaking out against objectification, harassment, and strong sexual content. In fact most women see men increasingly invigorated by these topics. Our anger is the consequence of confronting the failed attempts at a sustained standard for men, which is not contingent on the suppression of women. And the more often this behavioral bar is lowered, women are forced into two choices: either get on board or fight like hell against it.

Symptoms of learned helplessness aren't unusual in women who go along with the lower standards men have set for themselves. “Boys will be boys” and “That’s just how men talk when they’re alone” were common phrases uttered by a few women after the ‘grab ‘em by the pussy’ tape came out. These women feel all they can do is shake their heads, helpless to effect any meaningful change. We are still seeing women protecting Roy Moore as I write this article. For the women who choose to enable this behavior, it leaves them stuck in a cycle of their own servitude towards men.

For the women who choose to fight, there are few victories here either. Demanding male accountability forces women to be at odds with a number of levels in society. Questioning the necessity of objectifying women to reap profits, pits women against a larger capitalistic society. It’s easier to play to the base level of desire and sex drive rather than restructure an industry to be more compassionate with their marketing. And so women who continue to fight for respect and equality, adjust. We must exert more effort to not let the negative effects bleed into other areas of our lives such as dating and relationships. Or we just give in to our anger and disappointment, becoming full-fledged misandrists. I just recently had to go on a dating hiatus when the harassment accusations left me wondering if all men were guilty of this behavior. I felt it was better just to burn it all down. My inner Kali is prepared to do a lot of damage these days. And yet, I want to believe in hope. I want to believe that from the ashes comes the phoenix. So, again I’m forced to dig deep and do the work toward finding compassion… and it’s still a fucking mystery to men why we get so angry.

So here is where I’m finding hope these days… In confronting the tsunami of allegations one thing stands out: WE ARE NOT ALONE. Women who are victims are not in a void. We are not isolated, we are a large number and we are learning to be vocal and to listen to each other. By the sheer acknowledgement of each other’s pain we have validated ourselves, as well as our experiences and that is incredibly powerful. And women need to apply this solidarity to each other regardless of race, religion, education, income, sexual orientation or identification. Secondly, male allies are out there and these are the men who give me hope. The number of allies may feel small at times but I never discount that there are supportive men in my life. I am lucky to have men around me who can hold and hear my anger with understanding and support. I’m lucky that my current work environment is protective, supportive and encouraging. I’m lucky that my living environment is a safe and secure, allowing me a sense of trust and community.

In my moments of full fledge Kali anger, I remember my male allies and I take a deep breath because I want to believe in hope. I want to hope that that the men I love and admire uphold the basic requirements for human decency. I want to hope that when I treat a man with respect and admiration he will treat me the same because he sees me in the same light. I want to hope that the men who make overtures towards equality when I’m in the room continue to do so once I have left. But mostly I want to hope that my ride on the rusted-out Ferris wheel of emotional struggles with men can finally come to an end, and a better ride in a safer park is in our future together. Right now I’m clinging to hope because I'm too angry to deal with disappointment anymore.

To readers who may be suffering from assault or harassment please find a resource here: https://www.rainn.org/articles/sexual-harassment