Are you just dying to hear the petty complaints of an fringe alternative ed adherent? Well anyway, Idzie Desmarais let me guest post, if you ever change your mind on that account!
Meanwhile. Fancy chocolate drinks at a new deli:
Elizabeth from My Milk Spilt was kind enough to publish me at her site; my piece “Missing the Mark” went live today. If nothing else, Michelle Allison’s linked-to piece is a go-to for some sense and sensibility regarding the USian (and AUian, at very least) “War on obesity”, etc.
Meanwhile, here’s a picture of a BLT with homemade bread and lovely summer tomatoes.
Like all reviews in The Film Feministe, I strive to reveal a brief synopses of a film or television series as well as an analysis. Occasionally my reviews include plot spoilers; caveat emptor.
My nine year old daughter and I have a penchant for pleasantly creepy, supernatural television and film. We usually end up watching a lot of documentaries involving cryptozoology or ghost-hunting. In the realm of self-identified fiction it can be quite tricky to find programs that aren’t predominately heaping lumps of horror and violence, often with sexual overtones, on young women and children. So in answer to a question no one asked – No, I won’t be watching the latest gore-fest with cut-up babies delivered to doorsteps or women getting raped (by demons or humans), tortured, murdered, et cetera (P.S. please watch this).
On that note and without further ado… I give thee Film Feministe: Adolescent Lycanthropy!
“Teen Wolf” (TV, 2011)
Grrr.
You know what, I have no business writing this review for a few discrete reasons. One, I grew up in a house without television, so it’s not as if I had the typical vast body of pop culture innundation. Two, I hardly watch any television now, and I certainly do not afford myself the time consuming, synthesizing, and analyzing the vast, sticky-gooey wads of it available. If a program is lucky I’ll watch through a few seasons, but usually things jump the shark big time and I move on.
So as mentioned, the oldest child and I stumbled on last year’s “Teen Wolf”, just ending its first season this summer, and last night we finished the last episode via Netflix instant. Apparently this is from MTV? Can anyone remind me of any other MTV offerings, besides the vintage “Ren & Stimpy”? I’m not sure how much MTV television programming I’ve seen.
You could guess at the story and be about right. Nerdy/shy young man is unwittingly attacked by a werewolf and transformed: now he has a secret to keep while living life as a “normal teenage boy”. What does that mean? I wonder. Anyhoo there is of course the hero’s buddy, a love interest, conniving characters out to expose the Big Wolfy Secret, and a plot involving a family who’s been werewolf hunting (on the DL, natch) for centuries.
Let’s meet our cast of characters. We have first the Wolf Boy himself (there are other wolves but, they are mostly boring), played by Tyler Posey. I think the character’s name is Scott. Anyway, he’s pretty cute. And he’s a nice guy. He takes his shirt off a bit, and no one complains.
I've spent a lot of time in the woods, but never come across one of these.
Then there’s Stiles. He’s Scott’s best friend. He has almost literally no life except helping Scott and running around trying to fix stuff.
"I respond to situations by hanging my mouth open alot. I deliver 50% heart and 50% *BOOOIIIING* comedy."
Stiles drives a really cool vintage Jeep, but the show calls it a “piece of crap”, because another young man improbably drives a Porsche Cayman (pick one up used if you can’t afford new), and that would be:
"Hi, I'm really handsome, but don't worry, the script will keep reminding you of this so you won't forget. I am your basic soap opera good-guy-or-am-I-a-really-a-villian? character."
Jackson. He’s the guy that we’re supposed to wonder, is he a Good Guy or a Bad Guy? I don’t really wonder, because I know each episode the show will just change it around for convenience. One thing I like about Jackson is he has freckles. You don’t see guys-cast-as-hunks with freckles often. h/t Paul Bettany.
I almost forgot to mention. The love interest. But of course, ladies do come far down the list here. They’re still mostly girlfriends and moms. Twelve-ish hours of the show and it barely passes The Bechdel Test, I mean it really really barely squeaks by on that. So anyway here’s the main ladyness:
"I spend most time doing a really good job on my hair and makeup and being alternatively misled by everyone, menaced, and then rescued. Toward the end of the season I get marginally competent, but don't worry, my subplot is only predicated on the hero's."
There are several other characters of course, good guys, bad guys, people who are confused, a few who get eaten.
So, everyone is really really handsome. Moms, dads, kids. Everyone is really really good-looking. Maybe it’s because I watch a lot of British television, foreign indie films, and your occasional HBO – I’m used to seeing people onscreen who look like the people you see day-to-day. Anyway, I’m sure this Good Lookingness business is typical in television, still, it just kind of makes me laugh.
I forgot to mention, there’s one subplot character who looks to be more important in season two, played by the talented and, surprise, really really handsome:
"Hey, I'm pretty sure this picture of me is from 'The Wire', because in 'Teen Wolf' I no longer have the 'stache... I'm rockin' an extended soul patch/chinstrap combo. Anyway I'll be playing your rather unconvincing vet/perhaps-witch-doctor type."
So yeah, most everyone, everyone, in the show is white as the driven snow… a few exceptions in abovementioned Seth Gilliam and minor character Danny as played by Keahu Kahuanui, a Hawaiian actor who interestingly (but not really that interestingly) stands in as the show’s only gay character. You know, kind of a nicely, inobtrusively gay character, used occasionally as foil for the comedic antics of our main hero set, Stiles and Scott.
There are wolfy and a few human murders, but the show is light on the gore by today’s standards, and there’s about four hundred percent less virginal-maiden-killing than I’d expect with a werewolf plotline.
A notable device I liked, besides the light drama and entertaining running-around-at-night hijinx, is the sweetness by which the high school romance is developed. Scott and Allison (that is the love interest’s name, BTW) have to do their courting while being bitched at and bossed around by parents and teachers, in a way I remember from my own adolescence. When it comes to romance, interestingly it is Allisonwho is the more adventuresome and sexually frank, while Scott is developed as a very sweet high school boy as interested in sex as she. This is a subtle but pretty welcome change from the teen dramas I remember seeing on my friends’ tellys: girls were allowed to be sexed but not allowed to be sexual (unless they were Sluts).Whatever desire they operated is to this day not shown onscreen, whereas the expression of male libido is dumbed down and practically lampooned – well, you know how it is. In “Teen Wolf”, Allison is open and playful about sex, and Scott is reserved and romantic (but hardly platonic).
So in Casa del Hogaboom, will “Teen Wolf” get our second season fidelity? I don’t know. On the one hand instead of piling up like a bajillion secrets-upon-secrets and double-triple-betrayals (as USian television shows often do, to my dismay), the end of season one solved a few mysteries and united a few factions. On the other, as far as I can tell the show is just typical television, dialing down on the sex and gore in favor of a more tender storyline. If things stay that way we’ll probably enjoy popping the popcorn and settling in for another season.
***
This piece is featured in Squat! Birth Journal‘s Spring Issue. I encourage an exploration and/or support of this lovely zine (available in paper or digital form); certainly a great gift for an expecting family-to-be! It’s a wonderful publication.
Over my twitterstream my friend Wendy links to a piece of, once again, sex discrimination against a woman feeding her child1). We’ve all heard it before. A woman is feeding her baby in a shop or a library or wherever, when an employee approaches and tells the woman she must leave, often invoking (their fallacious understanding of) the law and – at least in North America – usually in violation of protected rights. And certainly counter to common sense, compassion, and an understanding of public health.
It’s too bad more people don’t seem to see it that way.
Breastfeeding discussion is continually ignored and/or marginalized by the mainstream, made into a fringe issue although it concerns us all – our progress toward an egalitarian society, our support of families, our stewardship of the environment, and our county’s medical costs and spiritual, emotional, and physical well-being. Even movements self-identified as pro-woman often pick and choose which reproductive rights they support and advocate for, ignoring the societal edifices concerning birth, babies, and fulltime care of children – which necessarily ignores the women involved. If you Google “breastfeeding and feminism” you will see communities concerning the former subject discussing the latter, but rarely the reciprocal; mainstream pro-feminist discussions in general do not concern themselves with breastfeeding even though something like eighty percent of USian women do become parents at some point.
Keeping breastfeeding peripheral to social justice discussion contributes to extremely low breastfeeding rates in the so-called developed world (which are lower still in marginalized groups such as black mothers, teen mothers, and native or indigenous mothers, etc.). After all, anyone remedially-versed in the experiences of infant care and feeding understand that support, or lack thereof, is a major if not the major factor in aggregate breastfeeding success rates.
While some without children, or some with older children, or some men believe they can continue to ignore the health and well-being implications of poor breastfeeding rates and the compounded lack of choice afforded to already-stressed marginalized populations, such a luxury is not experienced for the child nor the child’s carer. These peoples’ daily realities are put under additional stressors. Thus when an individual receives repeated shaming messages or policing language and repressive strategies against her, she is most likely to experience discouragement, uncertainty, and isolation; she is at a very real disadvantage. Or as the author of “A tired hungry baby” writes:
I knew the law. I knew my rights. But I was still upset. And not the angry, self-important, righteous kind of upset. The teary, scared, “they”‘re going to kick me out of the store”, “I”‘m here with my kids” type of upset. It was clear I was about to be thrown out, and I was pretty sure that if I was going to be forced to justify feeding my baby, I was going to cry. And I felt truly alone.
This experience and this sentiment could have been written by so many of my friends – and many of these are “educated” women with class, hetero-, cis-, and racial privilege. Which puts the question: at what point does our mainstream dithering about “public decency” get real, and admit the costs we are requiring so many others to pay? “Gross, I shouldn’t have to see that!” seems incredibly trite and inhumane when considering our socioeconomically-classist culture, to put it frankly, requires black, brown, poor and working-class mamas and families pay multifaceted costs – and by heaping on body-shaming and gender-policing we’re just making it harder. “Gross, I shouldn’t have to see that!” tweeted by a white Portland hipster without children is such a disheartening and ignorant response when I consider, for instance, the lived reality of a child up all night screaming from a painful ear infection (and the work/sleep missed by carers and the stress for all involved). To get a little 101, ear infections, which account for thirty million trips to the doctor each year and are experienced by an estimated 75% of babies, is a risk decimated by a factor of at least two for a breastfed child2. And that’s just one real-life health issue and one potential pragmatism for parents, and it makes me irritated enough to knock that Stumptown out of said urbanite’s hand.
“Gross, I shouldn’t have to see that!” hurts real-life families, real-life people.
“Gross, I shouldn’t have to see that!” is something that should have been eliminated from our public discourse a long, long time ago.
This is why it is key that those who are not at this moment stuffing a nipple into a baby’s face – including men, including formula-feeders, and including those without children – support breastfeeding and stand up for families’ rights and for mothers to young children. When the mainstream frames breastfeeding an issue that the individual mothers should be fighting, all on their own, it throws the game (especially considering the corporate power and cultural reach held by formula producers: phdinparenting.com has some great information on this). Concomitantly, framing infant feeding as solely individualistic and “choice”-based is also at heart of those who shame individual formula feeding families (moms) for “not trying/caring hard enough”, too (sadly, there are many of these voices, although for the purposes of this piece I should note bottle feeding mothers are generally not asked to leave public spaces based only on their method of feeding).
So while there are many breastfeeding mothers who stand up to pressure and have a generally positive feeding career, the vast majority of breastfeeding mothers have been pressured to stop feeding and most have been shamed explicitly or implicitly while others stand silently by or dismiss the topic as a “women’s issue” (because, you know, those aren’t important).
This means often, as in the above-cited author’s case, at the point an episode of discrimination is most acute and immediate, she is likely extremely disadvantaged in her response. Consider also that mothers who breastfeed:
* are expending 300 – 500 extra calories a day per breastfeeding child (yes, some women are breastfeeding more than one child), and those are just the calories required to produce milk, not those needed to care for, comfort and nurture, clean for, etc. anyone else in the family.
* are often severely sleep-deprived (personally, I cannot overstate this effect on my life when I had infants).
* are usually dealing with hormonal and physical changes while they:
* are also under endemic body-policing and -shaming pressures including scrutiny of their weight, the state of their skin or hair, and their changed or changing body shape.
* are often under cultural policing as well; this is levied at mothers of color, those without class privilege, those outside the heteronormative spectrum, those with multiple children, etc.
* are usually constantly segregated and policed in subtle and not-so-subtle ways by virtue of having children, by our adultist and child-unfriendly cultural norms.
* are often under-supported by their family, friends, neighbors – and, too-often, their partners (even well-intentioned ones), if they have one.
* are in the throes of what many would identify as one of the most life-changing experiences they’ve had - the twentyfour-seven care and responsibility for another human being, and an incredibly vulnerable one at that.
It is my position that any restriction of breastfeeding should be taken as sex discrimination - whether legally promoted or de facto by policy, societal attitudes, etc. As such, I haven’t yet heard a compelling argument to support it. A disdain for a function of women’s bodies doesn’t seem meritorious enough to warrant prescriptive measures.
It’s time for others to adopt that standard as well.
Because in North America, fighting for the unrecognized humanity of these women, babies, and families, often seems a never-ending job against a seemingly bottomless pit of ignorance and oppression. Today, as I finish this piece, a blogreader sends me an article from The Root, in which a woman nursing in the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. was hounded twice by security and told she must enter the bathroom and sit on the toilet to feed her child3.
So, yeah. “Gross, I shouldn’t have to see that!” needs to go.
* Photo credit: 3º Lugar – 2º Concurso Fotogra¡fico Regional “Fotografiando la Lactancia”. Released under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Sorry y'all, but your parents should have thought about that before they had you.
People of Color, People with Disabilities, LGBTQAI People, plenty of marginalized persons have movements behind them, and yet in social justice circles people feel free to openly say “I hate children” without repercussions. Children are routinely beaten in the name of “good order and discipline” (and parents are blamed for not doing so in the name of “not being attentive parents”) and no one pays attention. We expect children to be silent unless spoken to, and we often walk around and talk around them as if they aren”‘t even there. And possibly more importantly, like our little friend, they notice when we don”‘t notice them. They notice when we fail to take them into consideration. They notice when they don”‘t matter. They notice when the world, when those who are meant to love them, don”‘t fucking see them or hear them. – from “Children Take Up Space (and Notice When We Don’t Notice)” by Ouyang Dan
Young people are scary because they are a social group whose rights we are reluctant to recognize. They are human beings with personalities, attitudes, opinions and needs. Just like misogyny arises out of a fear of women exercising their human rights; hatred of children arises from our wish to subordinate children. – from “We Hate Children” by Feminist Avatar in Scotland
Today, after reading an incredibly awesome piece of rad fem by a stellar author, I put forth a genuine and heartfelt question: Why do so many (not all) feminists exhibit vitriol and/or a non-inclusive attitude for children and their carers? Specifically, with regard to carers, I find there is a huge void where sensitivity, inclusivity, and a valuing of nurture-work and mothers is needed – even more specifically, mothers usually excluded and/or belittled are those non-white, non-middle- or upper-class, child- and home-oriented, disabled, neurologically atypical, gay, queer, or trans.
Two from the commentariat weighed in. The upshot of their responses: it’s “ridiculous” to say feminists hate mothers*, and anyway feminists have no real power so they’re just angry (and hey, understandably so, from my perspective) but their words only “sting” and have no real-life repercussions.
My charges of child-hate sentiment in the feminist sphere and resultant oppressions went unacknowledged and unaddressed.
One comment contained the following, which really has me chewing over it. See, I’ve heard this sort of thing before. Lots:
“Many radical feminists question why women wish to become mothers, because the planet is overpopulated and children are men”‘s all-time favorite weapon of choice to use against women. Not to mention that having a child ensures that you”‘re either raising another potential victim or another potential perpetrator.”
Here’s the thing: I’m dashing this off while being tugged at by my kids, mother, partner, and cats. Here I’m deciding to write to my readers – not the Haters, not the developed rad fems or those who want to discuss or ‘splain theory whilst ignoring lived realities of mothers/carers and children, and frankly, not those who hold anti-child views (sadly many of them don’t even know who they are). But if you find yourself generally wondering if you have any anti-child lingering sentiments (hint: yes you do), please read on and more importantly, read the links supplied.
I’ve written before, briefly (F-word example), of the unwillingness of some feminist discussion to acknowledge deeply-entrenched adultist tenets. These worldviews simmer under the surface but make themselves known in commentstreams of any article daring to defend children and their carers, especially one supporting their rights to be out in public at their levels of need (hey listen… I simply couldn’t bring myself to link to multiple vitriolic examples of breastfeeding hate, which are endemic in the US). One of the reasons I don’t self-identify as a feminist (although I absolutely support many feminist goals, and read and support many self-identified feminist activists) is because of the many ways feminist discussion has let down so many groups and continues to do so: today’s mainstream feminist discussion is often rife with demonstrations of racism, ableism, psychophobia, transphobia, adultism, and classism.
When discussing children the conversation – in mainstream and social justice spheres alike – is usually two-dimensional and frankly, played out: it seems we divide children into two classes: children parents can afford to feed – so parents have a duty to raise them “well-behaved” (regardless of the costs and pro-oppression indoctrination) and forcefully educated according to the institutional system – versus poor families with children. The solution in the latter case is – you shouldn’t have had them in the first place. In these often class-stratified discussions, pregnancy is often only discussed in terms of abortion rights (which are absolutely under attack) but not birth rights or holistic child-stewardship and nurture practices (including, shocker, the right to raise children without by-rote institutionalism). Like many in the self-identified right-wing, prominant progressives concern themselves with the care and quality of life – the life of babies or mothers (or non-babies and the right not to be a mother, which I unreservedly support) – concern which ends abruptly if a child emerges from the womb. I’m thinking of a progressive behemoth site with thousands of readers that describes itself as staunchly feminist; on this site a single author has posted merely two articles – out of thousands, scores of which concern abortion – that discuss birth culture and attendant realities in America (more dismal than you might imagine; yet it is still only considered fringe to advocate for revolution therein). There is – wait for it – one article discussing breastfeeding. One. In my opinion a feminist schema worth its salt would hold breastfeeding as a reproductive right and would, y’know, tackle birth reform. I won’t hold my breath.
The abovementioned rad fem comment seems to place a lot of value in asking WHY a woman would reproduce given how shitty things are. First of all, I commend objections to the multifaceted and ubiquitous narratives that a woman’s sole function is to reproduce. And things are pretty bad – and not only that, many people don’t even know it nor concern themselves. However, the reality is in having these same 101 social justice queries ad infinitum without deeper explorations of mother-and-child life we are letting down the women who do breed (something at present count, around 80% of women) as well as their children and (if they have them) partners.
Most women who feel and exercise what they believe is free choose to have children, even the “educated” (or seemly or middle class or whatever) ones, likely had little idea just how hollow the promises of “equality” (socially or within heterosexual partnerships) really are today. In my opinon this is largely due to misogynistic and kyriarchal mindsets – and in no small part also fallout from a child-segregationist culture. Many first-time parents have had little to no experiences caring for or being around well-nurtured children nor exposed at length to healthy child environs; almost every adult has moved from the position of child-as-oppressed to adult-in-privilege, and often will enact the damaging scripts they were forced into for so many years. The concepts of happy, celebrated, and idyllic motherhood are promised but ill-supported once baby arrives (although many mothers and fathers and carers manage to find genuine enjoyment and meaning from parenting). Our culture still functions to make many women choose between the family life she’d like and meaningful or respected paid work and financial support (and note: routinely criticizing and belittling traditional “women’s work” skews our ability to find meaning therein), even while we criticize these women for ever making sacrifices of one for the benefit of the other. We sentimentalize family life and mothering, but we also continue to frame parenting as huge drain that is less meaningful than Statusy Career or material acquisition, which of course erases the millions for who Statusy Career is not an option, a current reality, and/or a life-calling. More to the point, the needs of children are routinely, routinely ignored and the child class is raised while often being relegated to – still! – being seen, or not, and not heard – and often ill-protected (child abuse – verbal, physical, emotional, spiritual, and sexual – another endemic and tragic occurrence that our school systems and supposedly progressive American ideals have not done nearly enough to halt or stem). On the subject of child-raising anyone with an opinion weighs in and often gets a clown-horn for the front pages, while those who continue to successfully advocate and care for babies and children largely outside oppressive schema are relegated to the fringe or downright vilified.
I think I can understand a lot of feminist anger regarding children and motherhood, although I wish those vocalizing anger would consider their words carefully. Many women without children are tired of the oft-fed line that one’s life is not fulfilled unless one reproduces and that without kids a life is empty or sad or even “selfish”. And I agree, this seems like a lot of bullshit. But that is precisely my point – the promises and Hallmark-sentiments surrounding “motherhood” are deeply problematic and when many women step into this role – for reasons and in quantities that are no one’s business to be prescriptive about – the reality is quite shocking.
As for the arguments against marriage, motherhood, etc. due to these institutions functioning as patriarchal tools – yes, I get it (although find me an institution that never does function thusly). But here’s my thing – once the child is on the premises Planet Earth is it really appropriate and helpful to discuss how they shouldn’t have been born in the first place – or espouse a glum scenario that the child is destined to be either “victim” or “perpetrator” (that is they are a cipher and academic subject – not a whole, multi-faceted human being with a heart, mind, integrity, and a future full of mistakes and triumphs)? In asking for feminist responses to mother and child, to be told another version of “women shouldn’t become mothers/children should think about that before existing” is not addressing living mothers and children; it’s requesting we just have fewer mothers and children. Very, very tolerant, supportive, helpful, and on point (tongue planted firmly in cheek).
Where is the acknowledgment that if the world is ever going to experience positive change – either episodically or by the whole – it is precisely the raising of children outside oppressive regimes and mindsets that will make this happen?
While discussing the wretched state of Child, where is the attendant activist discussion and pragmatic approaches to treat the living and breathing children, here and now, who need adult advocacy and increased agency?
Bizarrely, sometimes social justice conversation indulges in the make-believe that each person (or nuclear/bio-family) is an island. Self-sufficient and all that. This framing ignores the fact our lives began with others caring for us – however many mistakes our carers may have made, the vast majority of us received an incredible amount of work and nurture – and most of us will have a period of vulnerability bookending the end of our lives, too (those with disabilities or extenuating circumstances may not have the luxury of the normative but false “self sufficiency” narrative often promoted). It’s incredible to me how many grownups pretend they are separate, apart, do not rely on others, never did, never shall.
Author Naomi Aldort, who I’ve referenced here, wrote a book called Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves. I’ve found it to be absolutely true that in the vocation of caring for other human beings my spiritual, emotional, and intellectual life has benefitted. My reality – mine – is that until I had children my activist mentality was almost non-existant and my passions were self-focussed; I rarely thought about how many others needed help, how many others had fewer privileges and resources and abilities than I. I am a flawed human being and continue to do my work, including self-improvement while trying to increase my stewardship for other people, for animals, for the planet. I am not perfect, but I will probably never support a worldview that doesn’t make it an active discussion point: helping those who need help and compassion, whatever population or class they belong to. Using such populations merely as theoretical entities (not human beings) might be necessary to get the ball rolling sometimes – but runs the risk of being a very underdeveloped and condescending strategy.
Some reading:
“On Hating Kids” at Feministe
“On childhate and feminism” at the Noble Savage
“My Child Takes Up Space” at Womanist-Musings
“The Ethics of Representing Childhood in Western Culture” by Naomi Aldort
And finally, “Children Take Up Space (and Notice When We Don’t Notice)” at Random Babble (quoted above), from which I offer this summation:
“[W]e as feminists, womanists, and social justice activists (and I”‘ll let you know where I fall on that scale when I figure it out) really fail hard at seeing children as what they truly are; a marginalized class of people who need their rights fought for and protected.”
Absolutement.
On FB today my partner Ralph shared a wee video from an author and self-styled relationship guru named Greg D. – the proprietor of a website, DVD, etc. with a tagline cited as “Pure Attraction – The Art of Christian Social Dynamics”. I’ll let you watch for yourself.
Although Ralph’s resultant commentstream was full of people expressing revulsion for this man and his condescending yet cringeworthy and inept “tactics” to make himself seem approachable and relaxed and, mostly, to meet his goal: getting closer to a woman – I mean “a girl” – for his own purposes of relationship, I would imagine many people in our social sphere are likely to mock this as a symptom of Christian dysfunction instead of examining, you know, men and masculine culture in totality. It’s easy (and occasionally fun, to some) for many of my peers to make fun of this man because of his stated goals of helping Christian men and his unabashed identity within a Christian church (or other targets, like his appearance), but of course there are so many secular approaches to “dating strategies” for men that involve condescencion, “openers”, inauthentic performance, predation, stereotyping of women (much of it misogynistic or even trigger-warning worthy), and a bevy of extremely problematic approaches to women – including, as in this video, a complete insensitivity to women’s lived realities. To wit, a stunning ignorance that the supposedly refreshing and straightforward, “You’re adorable/beautiful/sexy/hot” and/or big brother/little sister approach upon a first-time meet is not universally experienced as complimentary, welcomed, charming, and/or desired, however a woman may respond in the moment she’s confronted by it. See, many people call-out these dating gurus and “How To Meet / Bed Ladies” as being inept and dehumanizing but kind of silly and harmless and ha-ha, no one actually uses these (oops, some people do!, p.s. did you know when you kill women specifically because they’re women we don’t call it a “hate crime”, whee!); conveniently these same people simultaneously ignore the misogynistic root of most approaches and their disturbing prevalence in mainstream magazines, media, etc. that make money hand over fist and adorn the landscape of public life (oh hai Maxim!).
Departing from the mainstream media and back to the personal, in watching this video tonight with our small dinner-guest group I felt deflated. Partly it was my mood, but partly it was mentally living out my history and memories. At some point I grimly identified aloud having had all these approaches levied at my person (including, verbatim, “You’re adorable,” etc., the video opener that bothered me most), and this took me on a mental trip through the many nuances of incredible Assery I’ve experienced, like the much-older coworker who told me over our first lunch in the breakroom that he hoped we could be “fuck buddies” – a particular record-scratching moment that immediately precipitated a soul-cocktail of simultaneous tedium and mild despondency - the persistant fellow at the meetup who upon my rejection threatened to hit me, the fellow that staggered up to my friends and I (ah… StaggerPuss has happened to me so, so many times) and asked if there was truth in the whole, bears-can-smell-menstruation myth (answer: Fuck. Unbelievably. Off. also: no. Also: Fuck Off, have I mentioned? Also: Steve Carell is hilarious).
At my brief omission at being on the receiving end of “openers”, our male friend (who, like my partner, is able to participate in discussion of human rights issues for women without suddenly having his Man Card revoked) said, “I’m sorry you’ve experienced that.” Even then my kneejerk response is that whole, “I’m nothing special” bit I always feel like pointing out: I believe a lot of women have experienced a lot worse or more frequent than I have and of course, some women who’ve experienced what I’m naming might tell you these behaviors don’t bother them (and some women are often labeled as “undesireables” in a myriad of ways and they get a whole bevy of other Assery I’m not even touching on here). But the desire to quickly deflect attention from my protestations of mistreatment, or my knee-jerk impulse to say, “Oh it’s not that bad”, is precisely what I’ve been Feminized to do – my whole life.
My friend can’t apologize for things he didn’t do to me, personally, although (I think?) I appreciate his sentiment. See, what is more important to me is we quit the bullshit that sex is some kind of predatory evo-psych reality and the oppositional sexist dictum that women categorically withhold sex and physical affection (which is shitty and manipulative of them to do) and men cheerfully and/or aggressively should pursue these goals (which is only their right, after all). Men need to decide for themselves if women are people as opposed to male-fable plot-points or sexual receptacles or ego-fodder. Me personally, just tonight anyway, I’m a bit tired of trying to convince people of the former, even if I know it deep down in my guts to be the truth and the lived reality we should aspire to.
When any writer objects to some of the predatory, problematic, rape-apologist, patriarchal, oppositionally sexist (P.S., read this book) and/or patriarchal axioms of a man’s actions or a masculine institution (traditions and behaviors that often include and/or support the practices of racism, homophobia, ableism, ageism, transphobia, and classism, to name a few), inevitably someone steps in with their “What About The Mens?” wail. You know, Hey these guys are just trying to start a conversation and they get nervous too! AND/OR not every guy who tries to talk to a lady is a would-be rapist and you are totally saying that about all guys right now! AND/OR what’s a guy to do these days, one time I opened a door for a lady and she got all upset about it!
And yeah, I get it. I understand men are human and exhibit frailty and clumsiness and they want love (yay!) and of course, I am partnered with a man whom I love and respect and I cook for him and and sometime mend his clothes and I even let him touch my goodies and everything! I understand and believe patriarchy really, really does hurt men too (and please do read that previous “WATM” link). That doesn’t excuse the repeated derail into making conversations about women’s experiences ALL about men and their rights to sex/hurt feelings, etc. But I get that men are hurting too.
Because, on a less social justice bent, I think often of the many men and women who suffer social anxieties; the many men and women are lonely and want connection. It is also true that many people are afraid of loneliness and vulnerability and, sadly, those of us who can help will often shy away from such people. I think of the twelve year old girl visiting the other day who routinely worries about “creeps” following her and I tell her, Well most men aren’t dangerous creeps. And I know it sucks to be called or considered a Creep when you’re not. But it also sucks for so many men to put themselves in the Not Creep category and lift nary a finger or think nary a thought about the fact that while they’re all busy being the Not Me & Not My Problem they’re making sure things stay exactly the same way for everyone else.
I hope there are a few fellows who read here and understand that seriously, I am not going to personally mock them for making clumsy pickup attempts or having really crappy or ill-formed ideas about ladies because heck, lots of ladies have the same. It isn’t really a man-vs.-woman thing at all (but many want you to believe it is) since so many women have internalized misogynistic and sexist worldviews. But men benefit from male privilege and don’t always see the hurt their sisters have had (and continue to have) wreaked upon them. It hurts these totally-decent men when they realize they’ve been authors and conspirators. And yeah, I know that’s a hard realization to have. I do.
But if they let their injured ego stand in the way of a commitment to doing better, it’s a huge shame. For all of us – including people these men deeply care about, no matter if their gurus and “dating” self-styled experts demonstrate a bottomless void where Awareness, Wisdom, and Compassion should be in evidence.
And now, in closing, I give you the world of fiction – which is, sadly, not all that fictional – and a wonderful scene performed by Tom Cruise from the film Magnolia:
Few insights gained in the last twenty years are so securely established as the realization that what we do to children when they are small – good things and bad things – will later form part of their behavioral repertoire. Battered children will batter others, punished children will act punitively, children lied to will become liars themselves, protected children will learn to be protective, and respected children will learn to respect others weaker than themselves.
- from Isa Helfield’s paper ”Poisonous Pedagogy”, International Conference on Women and Literacy, January, 20011
***
About three weeks ago I wrote about the limitations of the Good Parent model – the Good Parentâ„¢ who raises the Good Childâ„¢ – and the suffering these concepts necessarily inflict (briefly, on everyone – but especially women, children, babies, families with disabilities, those living in poverty, and any marginalized group or minority).2
I’ve thought a lot about how I needed to see the subject through. I want to edify, instruct, and help – not merely deconstruct and analyze – so a follow-up seemed necessary. The task is not simple. See, I’ve been elaborating on better models for parenting and better village practices, from the general to the specific, for some time now. I can say with authority the ideas I express, now matter how clearly and circumspectly and appropriately I put them forth, upset a lot of people. Our culture is so built on the necessity of child-as-second-class there is an immediate and vitriolic response to those of us who challenge these edifices. I’m reminded of a quotation I recently read by Dresden James, British novelist and scriptwriter: ”A truth’s initial commotion is directly proportional to how deeply the lie was believed.” This, in short, is why people get so angry if you identify “spanking” as merely a special word for the practice of hitting children. This is why if one writes about the abstention of domination in parenting strategy, people trot out very old, unimaginative, and tired-out examples of “What if a child tries to run into the street?” and “Why don’t parents control their children in restaurants?” This is why so many try to frame any discussion of best practices for children as a cultural war between parent vs. non-parent, even though it is absolutely not (many parents enforce unhelpful and authoritarian – and failing – models of child-stewardship while many without children have some of the best and most creative ideas for a better society), which inevitably creates a rather terrifying and depressing cultural concept of “every man for himself” – an ethos singularly toxic and horrifying to thrust on our young ones as we wholly do.
I’m tired of some of these rather predictable conversations, and I’m disappointed in individuals and groups that should be doing better. This site was started as a social justice project within the blogosphere, but the current grassroots activist field therein has been an utter disappointment – and that’s an understatement – in discussing the rights of children and our responsibilities toward and treatment of the child class. Children are not “choices” (as so many other normally-astute activists frame them) but are a part of all of us; furthermore our commitment to bettering the world means recognizing they are our most vulnerable, most exploited, and suffering populations, across all racial and socioeconomic groupings, faith models and belief systems, class strata, and community models. I’ve discovered many social activists if not most are not willing or able to commit to a greater intersectionality in their efforts (probably because they don’t want to examine their own adult privilege).
So today I’m going to speak to a rather small group, I think. Those who already know we’re failing – who already see the “boiled frog”3, the troubling results of our practices invested on children. I’m speaking to those who know we need to do better but aren’t sure exactly how. I’m speaking, mostly, to parents/carers who feel haunted and amiss – and to compassionate and intelligent adults who care about our future. I’m speaking to those who want to parent their hopes, not their fears, and the non-parents who are ready and willing to be a part of this.
I’m going to talk about Tenderness.
We don’t much value tenderness in our world. It’s one of those optional and circumstantial things, an occasional indulgence rather than a commitment to a way of life. We think of tenderness as a feeling, not a practice – something akin to the experience of affection. But tenderness is an exercise, a way of life, and functioning in our larger communities I might call it a discipline. It only improves with practice and wisdom.
When it comes to children many like to talk about the Real World (whilst they work at creating or supporting singularly artificial institutional environs for said children, like compulsory schooling). And of those who invoke the looming spectre of this Real World, many are ready with talons out to dash apart an enthusiastic practice or promotion of tenderness. You see, in their worldview “soft” or “permissive” parenting will result in a Failure in the Real World (or Spoiled Children). Usually those quick to criticize don’t even bother reading, with any critical or considered analysis, the most humane and deeply rugged practices put forth by stellar authors, thinkers, and spiritual teachers. Critics of more humane treatment of children create strawmen (sometimes straw-hippies, ha!) as fast as they can to tear them down. Their words are filled with deep-seated cynicism, pain, anger, and fear.
Of course, in the longest view, how we raise our children – and we are all raising the children around us, whether we admit it or not – is instrumental in creating the Real World. We have been doing a fairly poor job, as shown by our failing educational system, the endemicity of youth anxiety disorders, eating disorders, depression and suicide (the recent bullycides4 have called attention to some of these very serious problems) – and just the garden-variety symptoms of misery I see in so many children today: duplicity, unhappiness, suppressed authenticity, and fear.
Besides, even if we were to pretend this rather dismal “hard guy” view of You Need To Learn To Cope in the Real World wasn’t a perpetuating cycle of dominator culture5, poisonous pedagogy6, and a rationalization of sadism7, “tough love” parenting strictures actually countermand healthy functioning and growth in children – in other words, we end up seeing more aggressive, angry, fear-based behaviors and children who learn very quickly to behave differently depending on who’s watching or Who’s In Charge (as opposed to growing their intrinsic moral center)8. We are, in short, growing Bullies and those who will be hurt by them – not compassionate citizens and heroes.
Most parents/carers/adults want children to survive. Whatever my differences from USian mainstream parenting practices, we have this in common. It’s my view and experience that treating children with tenderness and protecting them while they are under our care prepares them supremely for the nasty aspects of this Real World (that is, if you believe Nature didn’t screw up when she built us, the most successful ape on the planet) and in fact positions them best to be the change we need in this world.
Many parents, carers, teachers, and adults without children intuit the need for better models for child-caring than our recent history affords; there are swelling movements, sometimes fragmented, to reclaim humane parenting and save not only our children but ourselves. You can see this burgeoning awareness in communities that align themselves with principles of Consensual Living, Non-Violent Communication, Natural or Authentic Parenting, Attachment Parenting, Attraction Parenting, Radical Unschooling, Life Learning, and Autodidacticism, etc. Still, even well-intentioned adults have a hard time releasing models of coercion and control with regard to children: hence you see discussions of “positive discipline” and “gentle discipline” (in other words, for example, a rejection of hitting alongside laboriously-crafted defenses of “time-outs”). These concepts of “gentle” discipline make no sense or at least are only cosmetically or by-degree different from those who use more loaded or violent words, strategies, and physical responses. Discipline is discipline and there’s nothing gentle or positive about it; that is, an authority big and strong and (to most children) scary who will Have Their Way whether they sugar-coat it with words like “bummer” or enforce by a systemic removal of “privileges” and loved possessions or time spent doing the things they want to. “Discipline” has nothing to do with safety – keeping our children safe and occasionally keeping others safe from our children – but it is an almost universally-accepted lie that it does.
Authoritarian and authoritative parenting (more hair-splitting of dominator culture) are exhausting battlefields we lay out. The skirmishes are grim or heated and brief moments of triumph are soon eclipsed in bouts of fear and shame and anger and confusion. Eventually our children move across town or the country or the world. Walls are set up. Parents are left lonely and uncertain and brittle. Children are left wounded and have cut themselves off from their parents; children, now grown, carry childhood injuries. They have lost even the desire to repair the lost connection with their parents.
Authoritative/authoritarian parenting propagates suffering.
But tenderness is life-changing.
From here on in this piece I’m going to refer to parenting, but really the concepts can be applied to any adult in relationship with a child.
What is tenderness? Tenderness is a spiritual practice: for those few individuals who do not believe we have souls, I suppose one could call it a logical one as well as it generally serves our health and herd relationships. It’s hard to articulate the practice of tenderness in a thorough, quantified way here in a short article; spiritual and humanist teachers have written entire tomes on similar concepts. I identify with concepts learned through studies of Christian and Buddhist works so my practice and concepts around tenderness are thus informed.
Briefly and significantly with regards to caring for other human beings, in the pursuit of the practice of tenderness I first must acknowledge my own suffering. I must – at least temporarily – abandon my scripts of blame and rehearsed anger and recrimination (note I am not offering a judgment on the validity or invalidity of such scripts) and instead simply see my suffering for a moment, with clarity, feel the shape of it – observe it and see it is not Me (“I” am who is doing the observing). This is the beginning.
Now for many if not most of us, our suffering is often such we cannot simply wish it away or banish it. Yet our suffering is at root of why we cling to worldviews and behaviors that are dysfunctional – and harm others. This is deeply relevant to the practice of parenting as the relative helplessness (enforced legally and socially in almost every way) of our world’s children puts us in power positions; we inflict deep damage. This is both an awesome and a scary responsibility, and one reason many are fearful at the thought of having children or even disgusted by the idea (such individuals also often want to believe they can just “opt out”, that they aren’t in fact participating in the larger village of child-rearing by their silent support of the status quo). On the other hand, this mission can be incredibly transformative; it is why, for some, having the care of another human being, a dependent – often their own child, but not always – can be the catalyst to a spiritual awakening unlike any they’ve yet experienced.
When we have the presence and space from our mind’s rehearsals of suffering and anxieties – that’s when we are best equipped to care for another human being (and not just children, either). That space is the fertile ground for the beginnings of the practice of tenderness.
When we parent from this place we respond to our children’s needs while having a longer view of our job as parents. This is such a tremendous gift, and I wonder how many parents and carers experience it. Instead I believe, most are familiar with the tension-wire feeling we have at all times or that can be activated at any moment (sitting in a restaurant, we haven’t eaten all day, our two year old begins making happy noises, the table over shoots the very familiar toxic glares, our stomach knots, “not again”, our acute awareness of how unwelcome we are here and in the entire public sphere until our children sit still enough and are quiet enough for everyone else…). Ugh. I’ve been there. It sucks, and as I’ve said before, ultimately it is our children that pay the price as we lash out, restrict them, suppress them, require Obedience and Submission, hit and shout when “no one’s looking”, work ourselves ragged in the culturally-supported ritual of performing Good Parentâ„¢… and so on.
Yet parenting from a place of tenderness and Presence has the ability to lift these experiences, as incredible as this may sound, to transform them. Parenting with tenderness involves a deep-seated sense of unshakable joy; it involves my awareness it is my child I am with and the world around us in its chaos and coarseness and anger and fear, is just another presence in our day, nothing personal, not a boot to crush me (try as it occasionally might), powerful – is it? Time and time again my smile, which begins deep inside me, in my stomach, and emerges from my Being, I smile at the next table and I smile at my child (and I help my child) and I smile at my hunger (which may go unsated, for now) and I smile (with sadness) at how many adults react with such anger and fear to small children – and my calmness has soothed everyone – myself, my child, sometimes even, but not always, the angry customer at the next table. The trick is, you can’t fake it. But when obtained, it’s real.
Parenting from a place of tenderness keeps me strong for the times my children suffer or make mistakes and the times these events surprise or hurt me – or others. It is not “turning off” my instincts or alacrity or my loyalty to the rest of the human race, it is going deeper within myself where I find an indomitable ground, a strong woman, not her first rodeo, a person I like very much indeed as it turns out. Therefore some of the old fretting worries surface like they always have – Why is he/she doing this? Have I failed as a parent (mother)? What’s wrong with him/her/me? - but instead of the anxiety, fear, anger, and confusion I’ve typically experienced in the past I often feel calm, alive, aware – even amused. As author Eckhart Tolle relates after a disturbing event at his then-workplace long ago, “There was a brief shifting from thinking to awareness. I was still in the men’s room, but alone now, looking at my face in the mirror. At that moment of detachment from my mind, I laughed out loud. It may have sounded insane, but it was the laughter of sanity, the laughter of the big-bellied Buddha. ‘Life isn’t as serious as my mind makes it out to be.’ That was what the laughter seemed to be saying…”
Parenting with tenderness means trusting the process of growth; it means giving love and support and assistance instead of withholding it or provisionally doling it out in order to coerce children into “better” behavior, like the Operant Conditioning experiments performed on rats (sadly, many, many adults do this by rote to children). It means folding a crying child into your arms and not believing the thought (formed out of fear and narrowness) that their emotional display is “babyish” (over time, this thought coupled with negative judgment will not come at all… and what a beautiful experience for me to have left it behind!). It means over time seeing your child and their suffering with deep compassion and intelligence and depths and calm, not identifying with the phrases “throwing a fit” or “having a tantrum” (imagine my surprise and delight when this awareness began to evidence itself in my experience with other grownups!), nor identifying with the fear that would have you rush to “fix” their pain. Parenting this way, or beginning to anyway, has resulted in more peace and happiness in my home – and “better behaved” children – than I would have thought possible.
Parenting with tenderness means not looking over our kids’ shoulders for the accolades of others (or the label of Good Parent) as we hustle them to the Accomplishment – reading, writing, riding a bike, ”please and thank yous”, multiplication tables, straight As, Miss Congeniality – but being with them as they set their own goals and helping them in every way we can and watching with amazement what they can do (not watching what we can make them do).
Children have or develop, when nurtured and not exposed repeatedly to the trammels of adult privilege – or exposed as little as possible anyway, innate reserves of intuition, wisdom, compassion, righteous outrage, brilliant humor, fair-mindedness, and a capacity for forgiveness and love that rivals any bodhisattva. Tenderness and responsive, considered stewardship of our children will not only raise wonderfully-adapted and “well-behaved” children (promise!) but will also promote our own healing. Tenderness and nurture assist our children (because much as a doctor does not heal our body, rather our body does the work – children grow themselves) more than any artificially-prescribed “boot camps” parents/adults convince themselves are necessary9. To paraphrase author Naomi Aldort (and I wish I had her exact words here) – adversity is good for children, but not when organized by those whose job is to nurture and protect the child. I have seen this bourne out in our own family life countless times – countless.
Tenderness is meeting a child at their expressed need; tenderness is rejecting our arrogance when we attempt to direct what our children need, or what they need to be rescued from (the oft-maligned “helicopter parenting”), rather developing the extraordinary presence and observation and longer, more spiritually-centered awareness so many children find incredibly nurturing (my own father had this gift, despite much idiosyncratic coarseness). When we are in tune with our children, they will ask us with clarity (or we will be able to see with clarity) when they need our help. To my surprise, it’s been less often than I’d have imagined.
Tenderness is the only thing that has given me a compassionate awareness of my previous mistakes; after all, I could have heard all the well-reasoned and logical arguments in the world for more humane parenting but my mind could have dismissed them (as inconvenient or only for the “privileged few” or as naive or simplistic) – had I not been open and seen the suffering I was inflicting on these beloved children. Tenderness is the part of me that has, over the years, acknowledged the personhood of my child at the soul-level (or whatever you’d call it) – not merely a foil for my own ego and Expert status10. Acknowledging my mistakes – instead of clinging to my dung pile11 - I have gained humility and wisdom (and hope to gain more). Our children will experience our improvements as healing, if they are not too far hardened to us. And on that account, it’s never too late to attempt to restore harmony between us.
And here, I would like to say a few more things about my own family.
The other day I heard my son Nels set up a cry and he came into the living room. His face was flushed and his eyes were full of hurt. His sister had bit him. Their skirmishes are increasingly rare; thus for one to proceed to such a level was surprising. Even as I opened my arms I knew something was wrong for my daughter, for her to hurt him thusly (not that long ago, before my husband and I began a deeper awareness of gentleness, a fight between my children that escalated to this level would be more commonplace and we’d have Laid Down The Law on them, more shame clouding up her own inner sense of justice and betrayal, obfuscating her integrity in a scary and humilating lecture…).
But now, in this moment, my son buries himself in my open arms. His bite is angry-looking indeed. But in less time than it takes to settle on the couch together he has stopped crying. My mind is calm and I am sad for his pain; I empathize without anxiety. Untainted by the fear and anger his sister’s behavior would have triggered in me only a short time ago, I have an awareness I must talk to her and we must try to discover what is wrong (which I later do). I have another moment of clarity: the wrongs the two commit against one another along with any redress will ultimately have to be navigated within their own relationship (in other words, I will not seek to force insincere apologies). My son soon hops down, his body language and spirit calm, fully recovered. He kisses me, his face tear-streaked and warm, he tells me he loves me.
Tenderness is making the time, later, to speak to my daughter Phoenix. She and I are sitting in her closet. She is silent and suffering (sadness, not anger), out of the reach of my loving hands, but she is stoic. I ask her if she wants to know what I think. She tells me Yes. I say, “I think you feel bad about yourself as a person.” “Yes,” she whispers. I say, “Part of this, maybe a lot of this, is my fault. I’m sorry.” After a beat I say, “I’d like to help you feel better about yourself. Would you like my help?” “Yes,” she says, again, and then slides into my arms. We sit for quite some time in calmness and I stroke her hair. I am sorry for my mistakes in the past but I am here with her now instead of there. After a while she makes a joke about her father, cooking dinner in the kitchen, his efforts coupled with much noise and clamor. We laugh.
Tenderness is my son in the car last night. “This is my golden apple. It is precious,” he says, as he smells its fragrance and holds it in his hand for along while. Later, he carefully eats it to the core and set it aside on a napkin so as not to mess the car upholstery. Later still, he tells my husband and I he wants to tell us something something. He says, “I know I always change my mind, and I’m sorry for that. But I regret coming on this car trip. I wish I’d stayed home and played.” (He is six years old.)
Tenderness is my daughter, as I type, from the living room: “Mom, can you please help me?” She asks. I come into the living room. She directs me clearly and with confidence (she is setting up a huge, messy living room fort for herself and two friends). “Thank you,” she tells me when I have finished assisting her, and I return to my writing.
Tenderness is a bit later as the house full of kids gets a bit rowdier. My daughter pops her head through the door and asks, “I’m sorry, are we being too loud for your writing?”
Tenderness is in our mistakes; tenderness is me seeing the children have poured too much milk and the half-full bowl sits on the counter and I am troubled as my mind goes to grim realities of grocery monies and I, exasperated, tell them to please try not to waste food. The kids smile and share the rest of the bowl of milk, drinking it up, standing in the kitchen, laughing. I apologize (which is accepted) and I ruffle their warm sleepy hair and I think how much smarter they are than I.
Tenderness is in our mistakes: tenderness is later at night when my husband, at the end of his ability to cope, very tired, snaps at our son and our son cries; our daughter puts his arms around him immediately and comforts him. A few minutes later my husband puts his arms around our (now calm) son and says he’s sorry.
Tenderness is my son sliding into bed with me this morning. I whisper, “Are you okay?” and he says, “Yes,” his entire Being infused with the knowledge of Self, security, and love provided for him. Tenderness is holding him in my arms while he falls back asleep.
Tenderness is the root – the only solution that will save our children, and will help them save others. It can help save us, too.
You are free to join us.
“You don”‘t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” Martin Luther King
Camila Batmanghelidjh
If you read nothing here or only have time to skim, I ask that you please watch this video.
I used to not get upset by the “bad kids”/”bad parents (mothers)” talk. Because I knew I was a Good Mother™ with Good Kids™ – see, I could “prove” it by their manners and how I could get all stern in stuff, in public, and make them “behave”, and get everyone’s approval, and then I could prove how I wasn’t one of those BAD parents, ew! It worked out really well!
At least… in supporting Oppression in our culture.
And… It actually didn’t work out for me, or my kids, very well at all. More in a minute.
See, one day I saw how harmful the whole business is. And now? I’m just done.
It’s hard to escape deep-seated child-hate, yes even when we are socially steeped in the myriad kinds of suffering that results. I’ve seen child-hate crop up loads (well, more than usual) recently in the articles regarding the recent publicized bullycides1 – probably because, to put it succinctly, bullies still scare the hell out of us.
We cannot continue to tolerate violence, that is clear. And yet our fear and suffering are often hand-in-glove with the very factors that create tragedies like these. When our strategies come directly from responses of fear and anger and deny the humanity of perpetrators and the reality of the forces that shape these tragedies, they are are often ineffective and/or further perpetrate the very things we are afraid of: some of us hide, some of us want to be the ones with the bigger stick to beat the bullies down in the name of justice.
These incidents of bullycide are enraging and upsetting, the culmination of a terrible series of events, adults in power who’ve let children down, children who’ve made mistakes and committed wrongs against one another, oppression and fear, damage, death, destruction. The stories are hard to read2 because we think of our loved ones – or ourselves. They are hard to respond to with good strategies because many of us relate, having been on one side or the other of bullying behaviors (usually both at some point) and we are damaged from these experiences. Many of us have not healed from wounds inflicted during our childhood. We remember with righteous anger or trembling fear these horrible things that happened to us. We want to speak out, to voice our pain. The pain and anger are so loud in our blood we sit down and start typing away. We walk amongst others with our gut in a knot of pain.
As the legal aphorism says, “If you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. If you have the law on your side, argue the law. If you have neither on your side, pound the table.” It is really easy for many to pound the table about bullies, about “assholes” and “psychopaths” (when children are younger you hear them called “Devil’s spawn” and “brats”, my parents used to call me “Little Hitler” when I was two!). It feels (momentarily) Good and Right. Does it help? Hmm… Does it further perpetrate harm? You might not like my answer, which is: Yes.
And the fact so many even well-intentioned adults don’t realize any participation in Dominator culture is exactly what creates and reifies bully culture and oppression is just – for me – devastating.
So I’ve been thinking a lot about these subjects over the past week. How would I write about it? What or who would I address? How could I discuss the poor strategies many grownups persist in (which need to be addressed) without denigrating the feelings of Fear and Anger these grownups have (which are entirely valid)? How could I differentiate the role of good leaders – who employ effective and holistic strategies against the abuse of power – with those who (mostly) “pound the table” – without disrespecting the feelings and experiences of the latter group?
The answer is, of course, to reflect on where this starts for victim and perpetrator: childhood.
So here, reader, is when I begin to talk about childhood. And here, perhaps, is where you may no longer want to read on. Because I’m not going to be writing to those who have not done their homework as to whether the child class is an oppressed group in our country (short answer: they are, and across all races and genders and socioeconomic classes etc).3 To further argue the subject is exhausting to me, personally, just now, and I have been let down by so many activists who do not engage in this work or take it seriously as their own activist subjects, seeking support for their own personal brand of social justice without seeing the limitations therein.
I am going to talk about childhood a bit, and here is another thing I’m not going to discuss: I’m not here to address the feelings and angry accusations of those without children who claim they aren’t “allowed” to weigh in on parenting or child behavior4 or the accusation that all those who parent children reject out of hand the experiences, feelings, and thoughts of those without children. Don’t misunderstand me: these feelings of minimization felt by those without children are important; indeed I have discussed them, though not yet at length, before5. I’ll likely write on the subject again.
The truth is of course it isn’t really a parents vs. nonparent thing anyway. Framing the issue of child oppression this way only obfuscates and ensures the continued oppression of mothers and children. It also means the best efforts and research in anti-oppression work regarding the child class is ignored in favor of shouting matches where everyone feels entitled to weighing in on with their “expertise”. And, sadly, those without children who have deep-seated anger regarding child behaviors have more in common with many parents than they might realize; much like racism and homophobia, none of us have escaped internalized child-as-second-class-citizens worldviews; instead we must work to undo them. Sadly, many if not most parents daily devote their work as the Long Arm of the Law, doing their best to “guide” (meaning coerce, control, beat, etc.) their children according to oppressive strictures.
And with that last I am – finally! – going to tell you who I am writing for, today.
I’m writing to other Good Parents™ who know it isn’t really working.
I’m writing those who already have those squicky feelings about how we frame children and speak about them and treat them. I’m here to speak to those who already know the problems of bully culture do not start in a vaccuum. Those who’ve felt uneasy when they see parents/carers cockily strut their, “I’d never let my kid such-and-such” or “I’m raising my kids right”, etc. stuff – the kinds of statements parents are so culturally-rewarded for saying (and talk is cheap). I’m writing to those who were smart and “strong-willed kids” (hi!), intelligent enough to see the “I’d never let my kid blah-blah-blah” is a road that only leads to two destinations: the person with the stick and the person being hit with the stick (remember, the person doing the hitting always feels righteous in the moment he/she is doing so, for whatever reason including Good Parenting and Concerned Citizen).
I’m speaking to those who’ve either not been damaged so much they cannot disengage from their personal history (for whom I have much empathy; some of my friends who most adhere to authoritarianism in parenting were themselves abused and maltreated horribly – one of these friends gives thanks for the beating and abuse at the hands of her mother – it kept her “safe” from worse things – but admits she is too afraid to have children herself as she knows she would likely be unable to not abuse them; naturally this person also supports corporal punishment of children even as she does not want to be the one who “has to” do it) or who’ve healed enough to be ready to do their part and Help. Sadly, there are too many who are – for lack of a better phrase – wounded. They aren’t yet ready to join to make a better future. I suspect many are scared and angry about the vulnerability of the child class and do not want to take a real hard look at what’s going on.
At root like a cancer our culture perpetrates poisonous worldviews reified generation upon generation. Most grownups believe kids will go astray unless we force values into them, like opening their throats for ill-tasting medicine “for their own good”. I used to believe this myself, even if I would have resisted such a grim characterization. Thus, many parents are afraid to relinquish control. Why wouldn’t we be? We know how severely we will be tasked and blamed (especially mothers6) if our children fail, or hurt other people, or wreck something, or say the wrong thing at the wrong time.
Our strategies may be poor or not good enough but our drives are quite honorable: we don’t want our children to get hurt; we don’t want them to hurt others. We want to be Good Parents™. All most of us know are oppressive edifices that employ Control models. Many of us as children were told “sit down and shut up” – and rarely did anyone defend us or stop the diminishment and/or abuse – so much we grew a thick, leathery skin so we could deny how much it hurt. We merely, now, breathe a sigh of relief to have left it behind us. Now we’re in charge (or we SHOULD be, it’s our place and prerogative).
Never mind that Control doesn’t really “work” – for anyone. Sure, it seems to function well at first (or looks like it). We tell ourselves Control is what keeps our kids from running into the street and being killed by a car (this, along with the “loud children in restaurants”, are the two most oft-employed examples used to justify adult privilege). Make no mistake: we are responsible for our children’s safety, entirely at first, diminishing as they grow and learn to care for themselves. But so many of us go astray; as our children grow we shift our Survival and Safety drives onto our need to control child behavior, as well – an error socially-enforced, and one that doesn’t necessarily evidence itself immediately. Thus we can make our children (most of our children) toe the line and say “Please” and “Thank you”. We lap up the praise we get for “good kids”. When we hear other parents (mothers) dissed – for feeding their children “junk food” or, alternatively, for being “control freaks” about “healthy food”, or for not being involved enough, or being over-involved – whatever the Parental Evils of the day are being lamented – we breathe a huge sigh of relief because it’s the OTHER parent (mom) who sucks, not us. See, we know how to raise our kids in proportion. We make sure our kids have the exact right manners/diet/values/foodstuffs/education etc. They aren’t talking about US. In my case, the razor-thin line to walk in feminine perfectionism was dialed up all the more acutely once I embarked on Motherhood; and I know I’m not the only mother who experienced this.
Still, for a while we try to keep up the effort. We have successes and they dull us to the truths deep within our bodies. We have the “well-behaved” kid. This feels so good! Sure, sometimes we’re uneasy… when someone says something horrible and we recognize ourselves, and some of the unaviodable Truths of parenting, and we feel that little earthquake that informs us how much pressure it really is. So we say something. Usually mildly. Then we hear: “Kelly, I’m not talking about YOU, you have good kids, you’re raising them right.” I’ve heard it so many times. When my kids were younger it felt good. See, I was doing it Right. If the kids slipped up I’d only have to nip in and employ a little control. A little pruning.
And it feels so good until you’re under that lens – until it’s your kid who has the audactity to, you know, be a child, and hit another child, or wander over to another table in a restaurant (if I had a dime for every time I’ve heard the “horrible kids in restaurant” anecdote… I’d be able to buy my own restaurant!), or loudly proclaim a preference in public, or break down crying in public (and we all know how well that socially enforced suppression-of-unwelcome-emotions thing works for grownups!) – and then?
Then. Ouch. You want to know what happens? Let me tell you, you probably won’t like hearing it. Then we are crushed by all the judgments we’ve held against those other parents (mothers) who were Doing It Wrong. Then we’re alone – yet on display as Failure. Then we maintain the thin-lipped smile or brittle “in control” mommy mantra. “I”ll talk to you when you can speak nice.” “You need to quit this fit right now.” “1… 2…. 3…” We call our child a “brat” and shake our head (from our own fear and anger and as a performance for the other adults watching, the other adults putting the pressure on to “control our kids” – or maybe they are primly “not saying anything” but judging, and don’t think we don’t feel it). Then we hold it together and then, safe in the car, or in our home, we scream at our children. We hit. We say horrible, horrible things to them.7
Then, all the cultural pressures are rained down upon: our children. Literally the most vulnerable group in society.
Don’t worry. We don’t scream and hit our kids in public – if we are Nice White Ladies (or whomever) and that’s part of the training that is. Thus all those other people going about their day, they don’t have to see the fallout. You’re welcome; another service of Not Inconveniencing You, brought to you by the Kyriarchy, penalty paid by the little ones.
And the cycle continues.
If you don’t think this happens you’re only kidding yourself. You don’t need to be a parent to start caring about it, either.
Me? I had to stop being a Good Parent™. I was hurting my kids too much – and I was suffering not only from the Perfectionist mantra but by the awful knowledge me, I, was hurting my own children, a stark bottomless awareness that caused me more pain than I could have previously believed possible.
So yeah, I’m no longer a Good Parent. I intervened early enough to begin providing a better future for our family; I’d like to believe I’ve begun undoing damage. My children are now safe (safer). They are happier. I am happier. My husband is happier; our marriage has improved. I am moving through the pain inflicted on me as a child and more amazingly still I am moving through this with my mother (the author of much of my pain as a child). My children have given us another chance; and we’re giving them a better one.
And this? Is why I write.
Many who read my work know we are now life learners – sometimes called autodidactic homeschoolers or radical unschoolers – that we live consensually8, and that we do not “discipline” our kids. And I understand – well, I sure do understand now that I’m some years in! – since this is my field of study and my lifework, that the concepts of consensual living, life learning, radical unschooling, parenting without discipline are terrifying, confusing, and yes, even enraging to many. I get that they scare and upset many people. Those of us who employ it are called “crazy”, “loony”, “abusive”, “neglectful” or “sheltering”, “elitist” or “low-class”, “too intellectual” or “backward”. And you should hear the things they predict for children being raised in homes like these.
Those who say these things do not ask us how it actually works (but I like to believe some of the Good Parents™ reading here just might start to). We do have strategies; we do have a body of evidence. We have advice that does not require all parents follow the exact lifestyle tenets we do; improvements can be made in all circumstances. And we know eventually some people will catch up. Me, I’m waiting for them when they’re curious. I try not to think too much about what their children might be going through – unnecessarily.
When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “˜Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”‘ To this day, especially in times of “disaster,” I remember my mother”‘s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers “” so many caring people in this world.- Fred Rogers
My kids are going to be Helpers. They already are, and they’re pint-sized.
That’s who children really have the potential to be; if we treat them right.
That’s the solution to invest in – for bullying, to stop the wrongs being committed, for compassionate, intelligent, strong, firm, direct intervention, for leaders, for joy.
Trust us. Join us.
I used to be a Good Parent™. But there is hope, even for that.
Next week: Part 2.
Mentioned/Further Reading:
“Dancing between the tables: on the personhood of children” at Raising My Boychick.
“Bullies = bullies, children =/= sociopaths and other simple equations” at mymilkspilt.
Choice quote from the excellent “Children Take Up Space (and Notice When We Don”‘t Notice)”: “Children take up space, and when we don”‘t notice them, they hurt. It isn”‘t just a mother”‘s issue to let you know that. Children notice that we don”‘t do enough to give a damn about them, whether they know about social justice or not (some of them do, mine does). It hurts them. It should hurt more of us to realize this.”
“shorter, cuter, more honest people” – including in comments the typical “terrible children/parents in restaurant” derail, 400 of ‘em – at Feministe.
“I’m a Good Wife” at mymilkspilt
“My Child Takes Up Space” at womanist-musings
Mothers for Women’s Lib; I recommend adding this excellent site to your feed reader as it does not update often.
“Kids: screw ‘em” at Pandagon. Those who think only individual breeders are solely responsible for the holistic well-being of their own children have a lot in common with rigorous pro-lifers.
“How Children Learn Manners” by Naomi Aldort. This article was the first to expose me to unintended but unavoidable fallout of “manners” policing and enforcement when foisted on our children. Shortly after reading and discussing this with my partner, we stopped prompting our children. P.S. while I’d like to keep this article free of the justification of our parenting strategies by the “results” of our children’s behaviors I also know this kind of article challenges many people – who respond by predicting children will grow up total “sociopaths” without such “common sense” socialization. Thus I will point out our children, 6 and 8, evidence consideration, empathy, and social behaviors of saying “please”, “thank you”; they do not curse in public spaces, they make eye contact, shake hands, introduce themselves, and listen to others.
The Natural Child Project – better ideas for parenting
“History is written by the winners” - non-attributed
Growing up in America we are taught to believe in the Rightness and Goodness of the Meritocracy – that people who have good things and a life of comfort earned it all on their own efforts. Please note, people that have things relatively good tend to trumpet this loudest. People who have things harder, well, sometimes they have a different perspective. We the privileged often don’t like to hear that perspective.
I believe one’s gut reaction to the “winners” quote above depends on one’s worldview. Some people might see the quote as purely observational shorthand – that is, recorded historical accounts are told and reified by certain groups while others’ equally valid experiences are suppressed. Some believe the quote to be morally prescriptive in a Darwinian fashion: that is, a “winner” is someone who’s dominated others for their own goals, and – yay, the world is their oyster as it should be (this is sort of the sports analogy interpretation)!
Here’s what I believe: in being a “winner” one is essentially in a position of privilege (no matter how we got there); when I find I am a “winner” I must then look carefully around at how I have prevailed – and who hasn’t, and how to help them if they should want it. It should go without saying to any who read here that I believe it is my responsibility – given I have relative privilege, good fortune, and personal success – to take steps to care for the “losers”, the down-trodden, those who are being marginalized, eclipsed, abused, oppressed. There are many, many paths of responsibility and stewardship; imagination and exposure continue to illuminate more still.
Some measures are small. Today in a Yahoo group I made the tangential request those in the discussion pool refrain from using the words “crazy” or “lame”. Here is my clarification post (after I asked and was granted permission to post links):*
My intention wasn’t to police anyone and obviously I don’t have that power anyway (I’m not a mod). I am active in reading blogs authored by people with disabilities and the topic of abelist conversation comes up quite a bit.
For those who are interested, here are a few readings that convinced me to stop using those terms as pejoratives (“adult” language in the links):
“The Transcontinental Disability Choir: What is Ableist Language and Why Should You Care?” at bitchmagazine
“Guest Post from RMJ: Ableist Word Profile: Crazy” from Feminists With Disabilities/FWD
“Why Not to Use the Word Lame: I Think I”‘m Starting to Get It” at Alas! A Blog
I still accidentally say “lame” and “crazy” myself but am working hard to use other effective and less offensive words. Fortunately the English language has many!
This is also a fun read that comes up usually when someone calls out language as being problematic, and the resultant typical objections that often ensue: http://www.derailingfordummies.com/
The moderator immediately accused me of – guess what? Censorship. Yes – the moderator accused me of this. Very rich indeed.
Now of all the toothless arguments people knee-jerk with when their behavior is identified as being aligned with oppressive tactics, cries of “censorship”, accusations of being “the thought police”, and sneers of “PC” probably bother me the most; like an unholy Trinity of Ass they share the same roots of fear and an immediate assumption of bad faith.
I mean really, Censorship? “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” (Here is some 101: “online interaction and free speech” at finally feminism101). “Thought police” is particularly fartsy-bloated with the same tooting self-important drama-horn as the C-word; as if by maintaining a moderated blog or objecting to a word, phrase, or worldview that is offensive or incorrect or bigoted the blog author/objector is suddenly in the POSITION OF ALLTIME INTERNETTY POWER and now has CONTROL OVER ALL TEH BRAINWAYVES / ORWELLIAN TELESCREENS.
PC? Please. I teenaged through Bill Clinton’s Presidential tenancy and the attendant revival of sensitivity/PC language and I can tell you the backlash started so quickly it almost preceded it (which to me is a barometer that people loooooove their bigotries). There hasn’t been a whiff of PC that hasn’t been, like El Niño (this paragraph is very USian 90s), simultaneously and fervently blamed for Everything Bad including Ruining America and also, Now We Can’t Have Jokes.
Back to the Yahoo group response: at current count there have been five responses to my request – very familiar responses to those versed in corners of the social justice online sphere. On the positive side, the original poster who’d used the term “crazy” apologized for using it and said she understood why the word was problematic (classy! and – more later). The remaining four responses have been skeptical and/or hostile and for their brevity have still nailed a surprising number of the squares in Bingo for Derailing – including “You’re being oversensitive”, “You’re being overly-intellectual”, and “Words have power only if you give them power”/the reclamation argument (the “power” sentence is an actual quote from one of today’s Yahoo messages – this person also said, “words hold no inherant ability to hurt”). If the discussion doesn’t die quickly I predict soon I will get, “you’re nitpicking a minor/trivial issue” / “Don’t you have more important things to think about?” But hey, I hope I’m wrong.
The most commonly iterated response was the token/backup trot-out, or what I sometimes think of as the “black friend” defense meant to entirely shut down conversation: “I have a friend / brother / such-and-such in this marginalized group and they don’t find this offensive” etc etc. So therefore: I will not read the articles or listen openly to your points. Therefore: I will ignore the fact that marginalized groups sometimes internalize oppressive and damaging narratives and strategies (reading the above link re: “reclamation” helps explain the so-called “double-standard” on who is “allowed” to use what language). Therefore: I do not care how many other people/scholars/researchers/writers/bloggers have objections and have worked to elucidate others on why they do – my tokenized example puts me above any reproach. This would be a laughable defense if it wasn’t also a very typical response to anti-oppression work and therefore, a bit sobering if not frustrating.
I have no evidence whatsoever a single soul who responded on Yahoo read my provided links, and that’s a shame. I posted them precisely because they were good, well-written, and better formed than anything I could have done. I’ve been exposed many times to the defense of pejorative use of words associated with marginalized groups: “retard”, “gay” (Wanda Sykes – I love it!), “crazy”, “lame”, “pansy”, “spaz”, “moron”, “pussy”,”woman” (yes! This is often used as an insult!), “faggot”, and “idiot” (um, I really could go on and on); objecting to these words and offering up arguments against their casual use is my prerogative and is not done for fun nor whimsy. I further add nor is it my contention those who use these words are Monsters and I am A Thoroughly Enlightened One (please; I only recently got right re: “crazy”; if you search my near decade-long blog you’re sure to see my ass in many minorly humiliating ways). To those who are uncomfortable with being challenged and/or embarrassed, I feel you. I’d offer this tasty tidbit from the Shapely Prose comment policy:
If someone gets pissy at you for using the word “retarded” for instance, that doesn”‘t mean they think you”‘re an evil person who hates developmentally disabled people OR that they”‘re hysterical, overreacting thought police. It means there are people around here who find that word hurtful, and we”‘re a lot more interested in protecting their feelings than your god-given right not to think of a better word.
Believe me; I’ve made my share of comments and been called out; it stings, I know, and I fully expect it to happen again! Being allowed to say anything I want without being challenged is not an inalienable human right; in the glass-half-full analysis of this I would posit that listening openly and self-educating are some of the more breathtaking and beautiful aspects of human responsibilities if we are in the position to do so.
Speaking up is hard. It often isn’t welcome, as any of my dedicated readers will know by now. This isn’t because the world is full of assholes (or at least I refuse to believe this); it’s because many people don’t like having their worldviews challenged; they often respond with a counter-offense (no matter how respectfully, I’ve discovered, one puts forth an objection).
But there are good reasons and positive results from objecting to a harmful status quo; a few touching anecdotes came my way from a father who tweets me today in recognition of these problematic words. “The one that makes me cringe the most is ‘that’s retarded’ and this was before I had a son with a mental disability.” He continues: “Now that I do have a son with autism I hear the ‘R’word and it sounds like it’s coming out of megaphone.”
Yeah. And thank you for sharing. He sends me the link to his blog where he writes about his son; I put it in my feed reader.
And then there’s this: some people truly can pick themselves up, brush themselves off, and thank you for the assistance. The very first comment in response to the FWD ableist word profile linked above is from Sarah, who simply writes, “I”‘ve been guilty of this. How embarrassing! Thank you so much for posting.”
Now that? That gives me hope.
* Incidentally? I would appreciate it if you do not re-tweet, IM, email, or share this article unless you first read through the four links provided in my cited Yahoo message; I typically do not write using linked articles (hence “quick hit”) and these are good ones.
Mentioned/Further Reading:
Meritocracy at en.wikipedia.org
The quote, “History is written by the winners” discussed at the snopes message board.
“Teaspoons 101: I Am Not the Thought Police” at Shakesville.
“Ableist Word Profile: Why I write about ableist language” A great 101 on a way to think about abelist language and the study therein at FWD.
“Being White” by Louis C.K. (trigger warning: rape metaphor)
“Touching Strangers: Making Friends of ‘Others’” at humaneeducation.org, sponsored and authored by Zoe Weil
“What ‘So Ghetto’ Really Means” by Tami Harris at change.org; those who’ve used “ghetto” against white neighborhoods might want to zap to my comment re: growing up in then-largely-white-but-working-class Hoquiam.
Tangentially and finally, because I had nowhere else to post this – someone in rebuttal to my points in the Yahoo discussion offered up this page: “Your guide to living life in the U.S.”. I kind of don’t have words as this does not seem to be a parody.
Food? Or Poison?
So it’s happened again: yet another lunch guest who tells me she hardly eats any meat or fat, mostly all-vegetables – and a few minutes later is ladling up two plates’-worth of my shepherd’s pie – with its buttery mashed-potato corona of Awesome – and devouring with much gusto. Then she tells me she doesn’t drink alcohol – and ends up asking for one of the gin and tonics my husband is mixing for other guests.
In my peer group at least, food fuckabouts are common enough. Whether men and women self-identify as “dieting” or not, they often are. And many of them do not demonstrate eating competence.
Food and diet are controversial, varied, and hugely complex subjects. So just to be clear from the outset, here is what I am not addressing in this article. I am not going to be talking about individuals and families who do not have access to a variety of food they can afford. I am not going to be talking about concepts appropriate for individuals with severe eating disorders.
I’m weighing in on the behaviors and strategies of people like my friends, family and I: people who have the means and resources to afford a variety of fare and who would not be classified as having an ED.1
Considering “eating competence” is almost as an important aspect of feeding and eating as supply and access it’s interesting few people know the basic tenets of the concept. From an article published at Kansas State University’s Department of Human Nutrition:
People who are competent eaters have positive attitudes about eating. They enjoy food. They are confident that they will have enough food to eat and they trust their bodies”‘ internal regulators to signal when they are hungry and when they are full. Children move toward eating competence as they learn to acknowledge their own internal cues. Development of eating competence ““ or the lack of ““ begins in infancy and continues through life.2
So I’m a pretty good cook; mostly though, a joyful and prolific one. I cook often for my family and for other people when I can.3 The socially-performed rituals of food-as-a-moral-failing-or-virtue are behaviors I’ve observed too often to be considered flukes.
See, many Americans can be really silly about food. Fer realz. Did you know we still have an operational Food Pyramid being purveyed by our government?4. Advocates of the Ethical Food Movement – with whom my family shares some aims and is locally-influential in promoting these goals – often do not address the institutional, cultural, and hugely oppressive stresses on American food habits, instead releasing considerable internet-vitriol slandering individual people and families for their ginormously disgusting Fatty McFatsalot food habits and sloth. (I’m not going to provide any soul-sucking links for this, throw a rock on Google and you’ll hit loads of it.)
That obesity business. Because let’s get real: one of the major factors in these food-games my friends and family play relates to their weight and size. Many Americans absolutely worship the Idol of Weight Loss with a fervor blind to any nuanced discussion of mitigating factors, scientific study, or personal health and happiness. Weight Loss is massive, a constant undercurrent, and an aspiration we’re all supposed to hold (so even if you’re not dieting, you should support dieting), even though countless studies prove diets don’t work and Americans know this anecdotally and empirically. In fact the efficacy of dieting is worse than many people realize: study after study shows around 95% of diet-participants gaining weight back in two years while two-thirds gain even more weight than what was lost.5 The significant health effects of de facto yo-yo dieting are wreaking havoc on American bodies and minds and quality of life (more about this in a minute). But this does not deter Americans from: dieting.
I notice a fair amount of my friends and family will claim their diet-and-exercise regimens and their food restrictions are about “health” – not weight. If you query them further (they might not like this) you often find this is a smokescreen.
Example: a dear friend of mine recently told me she needed to drop forty pounds. I asked Why? and she responded, “To be healthy”. She want on to say, “I want to be able to walk a brisk two mile walk and feel good doing it.” I said, “If you got up tomorrow and tried that walk slowly, then rested the next day then did it again, and so on, within a couple weeks you’d be able to do it and you’d probably feel great. And you probably wouldn’t drop more than a couple pounds, if that.” (This friend is able-bodied and fairly active already). From the look in her eyes I could see I wasn’t “getting” the fantasy-image she had of her new, slimmer, “healthy” self, a whole new Her (the fleshed out version of these visions is further-reaching than just Pounds Lost; it is also sometimes called The Fantasy of Being Thin6). Later, passing through her bathroom I saw the scale on the floor and the careful notes of pounds written on a piece of paper and taped to her mirror.
This woman, and so many people I know, might say the word “health” but does not know her blood pressure nor has had recent bloodwork done or seen a trusted naturopath or physician or embarked on a study of quantifiable health markers (and yes, she could afford to do so if she wished). If her focus was truly on health she’d likely get rid of the scale and follow a proven method of lifestyle and fitness improvement, such as the HAES model developed by Linda Bacon (that’s right, BACON!).7 But of course, that’s not really what she, or lots of other “health”-touters, are really thinking about.
The typical versions of dieting are distressing behaviors because weight loss culture is a real agent of harm, self-loathing, and poor health. As long as people still cling to the ideologies of the Weight Loss Industrial Compex (fistfuls of money are being made hawking this religion) their bodies will suffer as will their quality of life: also and especially their children. Spending time with other people’s kids – especially the girl-children – I observe how many girls, even young ones, talk sneeringly about fatness or express their longing to thin – yes, even girls who already are thin. I’ve heard girls as young as four express these sentiments. I am afraid in many cases their parents/carers aren’t doing all they can to protect these children, probably because they’ve either bought into “thin is in” or they don’t realize how invasive the forces are working against their children’s health.8 Make no mistake, the influence of peers and the media has even well-strategizing parents at a disadvantage.
The cost to our children is being borne out overwhelmingly by our female children, especially girls and young women of color.9 No one, however, is immune. My own daughter asked me the other day if she was “too fat”.10 She’s not only not “too fat”, she’s just not fat at all, and the fact she has been asking and hinting about this lately troubles me. We are a homeschooling family who does not own a television and her father and I are active supporters of FA and healthy eating; we do not impose Draconian food measures. If she’s still getting these “better worry about one’s weight” messages loud and clear I’d like the reader to consider how oppressively ubiquitous they are and how they are likely playing out even more harmfully depending on the race, gender, sexual orientation, degree of disability, institutional status, and socioeconomic class of other children – most categories of which my daughter is an a culturally-privileged place.
It’s a grim picture. Yet we still talk about food incautiously and as if there were these tangible or elusive moral Rights and Wrongs. We still look at fat people (and occasionally thin people) and imagine we know what they eat (and/or how much they exercise and how “good” their exercise regimens might be). Sometimes my friends tell me they’re carrying “an extra X pounds.” I ask them how would they know it was ‘extra’? – literally, where would they go to find out? (The BMI index?11 The tabloids? Equally laughable!) They then, invariably, tell me about a time in their life they were smaller – maybe thirty years and three children ago (personally I came into this world at about eight pounds but I’ve put on a lot since then!).
We still suffer from poor-self-worth and insecurity which, tragically, often contributes to the pro-Diet mantras and myopic concepts of food morality. Unfortunately, this is not a “victimless crime” or even a one-victim crime; our attitudes and lip service in aggregate have very real effects on other people. There’s also just the personal garden-variety misery our worldview effects; therapist, author and lecturer Ellyn Satter writes:
Our dilemma with weight is that at the same time as we are being told by health policy makers – repeatedly and with a great deal of judgment and urgency – that any degree of overweight is medically dangerous, there is no successful method for reducing and maintaining a lowered body weight. In fact, weight loss attempts have a boomerang effect: Most people regain lost weight and many gain to a higher level with each loss-regain cycle. While high body weight is a serious health risk only at the extremes, the far-more-common pattern of weight instability as a result of dieting is associated with negative health outcomes [emphasis mine].
For people who are relatively fat, the weight dilemma is even worse. Although body composition is, for the most part, genetically determined, people of size generally feel guilty about their weight and therefore ashamed of their eating. They have accepted society’s judgment that they overeat and that they are digging their graves with their knives and forks. In reality, most relatively fat people eat no more or no differently from thin people. They just pay the price. People of size at times eat chaotically, but that chaotic eating, rather than being a cause of high body weight, is far more likely to be a consequence of the weight-reduction dieting that they have pursued in the name of becoming thin.12
People make judgments about food and individuals’ “food virtue” that make little to no objective sense. Around these parts I’m known as a good cook and a “healthy” one. Because my family is slim and people know I enjoy cooking and I do cook with a wide variety of ingredients, some organic depending what I can afford, I am told I’m a “healthy” cook. What does that even mean? I’ve had people gush about my refried beans from scratch and tell me They’re Gonna Start Cooking Healthier At Home, and I think to myself, Do they want to know how much butter and salt are in those beans? From what I can tell some want to eat my food, proclaim it as healthy and delicious, perhaps claim they never eat such-and-such (while I’m watching them devour it), and/or tell themselves and the rest of the guests how they’re Losing Weight (or going to start soon). This is all part of that Fantasy I alluded to before. It’s hard to know what to say; often, I don’t say much at all. (Disclosure: by vast overwhelming majority my friends and family who eat restricted diets because of medical issues or spiritual/ethical convictions are the ones I observe eat the way they claim to eat.)
Day after day I see the play-around “rules”, the “bad” food vs. “good” food, the “I can eat this slice of cheesecake because I did thirty minutes on the treadmill”, the endless discussions on size 6 jeans or size 8 jeans (and the hurt silence of the woman in the room who’s a size 20). I’ve seen it so many times, and as a hostess who loves to cook and have friends over it would almost be funny if I didn’t know What Lies Beneath; if I didn’t want better for future babies, boys, girls, men and women. My job as a hostess is to cook exactly the foods my friends tell me they want, put the grated cheese on the side or provide vegetarian alternatives or gluten-free main courses or whatever best serves everyone attendant; to lovingly craft with my own hands exactly what will nourish us all. What they put on their plate and how they frame it is, in the end analysis, under their control. The smiles and compliments, at least, tell me I’m doing something right.13
Here, writing about my observations, I know there are lots of people who simply can’t break the perpetuated mainstream mindsets on food and diet (and occasionally, ZOMG the obese are Ruining America!!11!) and who will want to tell me about all these Great Big Fat Persons14 out there who really, really, REALLY need to lose weight, Kelly, you should see what “these people” eat, blah blah.
But there are those I know who read here – those who are passionate about doing things a better way for themselves and their family, friends and children – who are open to expanding their worldviews and finding better ideas. As a personal aside, my own mother is gradually, ever-so-gradually, breaking a lifetime of training on self-worth-hinging-on-attractiveness, body image, and self-food-policing; she tells me I am her main influence in this regard. This means a lot to me personally.
I’d hope I could positively influence other people, as well – not just cook for them.
Mentioned/Further Reading:
“If only poor people understood nutrition!” by Michelle Allison at The Fat Nutritionist
“Dear Health Care Provider” at RaisingBoychick.com, on partnering with your doctor/PA/naturopath/practitioner, etc. to manage topics of self-care, diet, exercise, and medication.
“But Don’t You Realize Fat is Unhealthy?” at Shapely Prose.
“Let us eat cake” at mymilkspilt: pressures on mothers regarding feeding their children.
“Occupied Bodies: Women of Color Speak out on Self-Image”, a call for submissions from Tasha Fierce at Red Vinyl Shoes.
“Diets Don’t Work, But…” on dieting-but-not-calling-it-that, by Kate Harding
“A Fat Rant” as performed by Joy Nash
“No Weigh! A Declaration of Independence from a Weight-Obsessed World” – a commitment to health from NationalEatingDisorders.org : “I, the undersigned, do hereby declare that from this day forward I will choose to live my life by the following tenets. In so doing, I declare myself free and independent from the pressures and constraints of a weight-obsessed world.” [click] for a pdf download.
