There, I said it. And now I will explain why this is not an opinion, but a motherfucking fact.
Were this a normal election, I literally would not care if a bunch of angry straight white guys in good health decided to write in Donald goddamned Duck as their candidate. But this is not a normal election.
This is an election in which Hillary Clinton not winning means we have guy who flies off on vengeance-driven Twitter crusades at 2am in charge of the nuclear codes.
This is an election in which Hillary Clinton not winning means a guy who is to stand two civil trials for large scale fraud and raping a 13-year-old girl has the power to sign bills.
This is an election in which Hillary Clinton not winning means a guy who has no idea how the government works will hold the nation's highest public office.
This is an election in which Hillary Clinton not winning means a guy who thinks he has the right to sexually assault whomever he wants to just because he's rich will have to meet with other world leaders, many of whom have wives and daughters and quite a few of whom are women.
This is an election in which Hillary Clinton not winning means a guy who wants his political opponents jailed or assassinated has the power to issue executive orders.
This is an election in which Hillary Clinton not winning means a guy who has expressed borderline incestuous interest in his own daughters has the power to pardon convicted rapists.
In other words, were the nation made up of sane, rational people, the very idea of a Trump presidency should scare the holy shit out of everyone enough to make sure he lost by a landslide, simply because we'd become the United States of Fuck This Guy. But of course, if that were the case, Trump would never have gotten the nomination at all.
So here we are.
Unfortunately, while Clinton is still leading, there is a sizeable contingent of people -- many of whom supported Bernie Sanders of all people -- who plan to either throw their votes away entirely on a 3rd party candidate, or not even bother hiding their childish tantrum and vote for the Orange Menace himself. And these people are, by and large, straight white cisgendered men in general good health, voting in a way that screams "I know I'm one of the most privileged demographics in this country and I don't give a shit about anything but my feelings."
Why? Because for them, even a Trump presidency isn't as bad as an establishment candidate since none of the things he wants to do will affect them directly. Thus, the blow to their pride that would be casting a vote for a woman is of far greater concern.
Yes, I'm going there, because the evidence is literally right in front of your faces.
Bernie Sanders has been involved in Congress for even longer than Clinton has. She was elected as a U.S. Senator in 2001; Sanders first got elected as U.S. Representative in 1991. They support many of the same policy positions. They're certainly further on the same page than Jill Stein, Gary Johnson, or Saints preserve us, Trump. And yet, Sanders is the favored anti-establishment "maverick" candidate, while Clinton has been "in politics too long" and therefore "corrupt."
They are virtually the same candidate. But only one of them is female, so obviously that one is no good.
And this is the result of Clinton being the subject of a Republican smear campaign for nearly three decades. Longer than half the electorate has been alive. There is no way in Hell that people haven't internalized that nonsense in some form.
And yes, it's nonsense. Literally every single anti-Hillary argument boils down to "she's unfit to be President because she embodies qualities we still do not find acceptable for women; she does not back down and shut up when a man is talking." Every single "scandal" she's been embroiled in has fallen apart under even minor scrutiny. Every. Single. One. But for insecure privileged white men who felt their balls shrivel up and retreat when she got up on that stage and accepted the nomination, they will cling to any excuse not to vote for her no matter how ridiculous it is. It doesn't matter that her opponent is literally a fascist dictator fanboy. They will, as Varys said of Joffrey Baratheon, "see this country burn if they can be kings of the ashes."
For those of us who are not straight white men in general good health, this election is quite literal life and death. I'm a gay woman with two chronic health conditions. I have friends who are also women, LGBT, disabled, cancer patients, black, Native, and Hispanic. People who would not survive 4 years under Trump, no matter how Congress ends up leaning. I have already voted Hillary Clinton not just because she is the most qualified candidate to ever run for this office, period, but because I will do anything I have to to make sure that the people I care about make it through the next four years alive.
This is not an election to cast a protest vote in. There is too much at stake. This is not about you. This is not about your fucking 'conscience.' Because if your conscience is telling you to vote against someone just because she's a woman, no matter what, then you need to get a new one because yours is fucking broken. This is a fucking emergency.
And I'll tell you what we do in emergencies: we break glass.
Statcounter
Monday, November 7, 2016
Monday, October 3, 2016
Happy Hour With Mussolini: The Rise of Donald Trump Explained
This election cycle is unlike anything we've seen on U.S. soil in living memory. The last time we had such a forward-thinking candidate matched up against the rotting remains of last year's compost stash was when The Party of Lincoln was literal; being anti-slavery was the same level of radical as being feminist, pro-climate science, and anti-crony capitalism is today. And by all accounts, Stephen Douglas was just as batshit looney tunes during the debates as Trump was last week.
It's the kind of once-a-century circus on the Island of Misfit Toys that has people on both sides of the red-blue spectrum asking "where the fuck are we and how did we get here?" To answer that question, we'll have to go across the Atlantic and roughly a century back in time, to where and when conditions were very similar.
In the immortal words of Sophia Petrillo: picture it, Sicily, 1916.
Not Sicily proper, but close enough. The middle of World War I. The Italian Socialist Party had declared itself neutral and opposed Italy's involvement in the war. But a prominent member, writer and professor Benito Mussolini was having none of that. A fan of eugenics, who believed that WWI was a golden opportunity for Italians in Austria-Hungary to prove just how superior they were, Mussolini changed his tune from Marxist Socialism to the kind of scary ideology that would make him besties with Hitler later on; that of nationalistic fervor and the mandate that "superior" peoples dominate the "inferior" ones.
WWI was the European version of Iraq and Afghanistan, only it lasted half as long because in those days, countries still used actual declarations of war rather than merely committing troops to an area indefinitely. But it was just as popular-and-then-unpopular an albatross as Iraqi Freedom later became. And Mussolini saw the same kind of opportunities in WWI that conservatives saw in Iraq; profit, and a chance to bomb the shit out of brown people. And just like Iraq, it eventually proved to be more trouble than it was worth for the Italian Socialists when it started to divert money away from important shit like food and infrastructure.
The Italian Socialist Party eventually gave Mussolini the boot over his pro-war stance, and he responded by forming the Italian Fascist Party, which promoted the need for the "elite" to show the rest of those plebes how to live. And that could only happen if everyone in the country united under the banner of superiority and self-determination, and Seriously, Fuck Those Slavs.
If this sounds frighteningly familiar, that's because it's all happening again. Only replace Italian Fascism with the Tea Party and Mussolini with Donald Trump. It's the same zombie ideology wearing a flimsier, made-in-China hat.
Trump is taking advantage of the same kind of people Mussolini did. Uneducated, low-information country folk who miss the Good Old Days when they were the biggest fish in the pond. And he had a cult of personality much the same way Trump does. He "told it like it was." He peddled the idea that Italians were inherently superior, and if only they could stop their petty squabbling and agree on everything, they could bring their country back to its glory days of law and order. "Make Italy Great Again" indeed. What's more, the Italian Socialist Party that had ousted him saw the whole thing as an overly long joke, until the Blackshirt squads started "restoring order" by getting rid of everyone Mussolini didn't like.
Oh yes, the Blackshirts were very much real. WWI veterans who swore an oath to Mussolini and carried out all the ugly stuff like kidnappings, murder, bombings, and general mayhem in the name of scaring people into line. The fascia in fascism; they bound everything together with the promise of swift and scary judgment against those who didn't conform. Today, we'd recognize them as the "sovereign citizen" movement. The Timothy McVeighs and Cliven Bundys of the U.S..
And the years between WWI and WWII were the crucible in which this explosive mixture of nationalist fervor, childish fear and resentment, and the apathy of the opposition cooked and eventually boiled over.
Like Trump supporters today, Mussolini's followers viewed him as a genius, someone whose success meant he was inherently better than everyone below him. Mussolini himself fanned the flames by attributing his wealth and prosperity not to luck or being born into the upper middle-class and thus having more advantages, but to having inherently better attributes than other men. Much like Trump's "very good brain."
And that's not the only similarity. Both men dodged military service themselves while later advocating for war (Mussolini did eventually serve, but only because it was a condition of his pardon for, ironically, falsifying immigration papers in Geneva). Both men cultivated a propaganda machine that associated their names with prestige and value (despite the fact that nearly everything Trump has ever slapped his name on no longer exists). Both men's visions centered on a glorious empire with themselves at the top (Mussolini wanted to reforge the Roman Empire, while Trump merely wants to dominate the airwaves).
The common thread that really ties the two together, though, is that neither man was/is dangerous by himself; on their own, people like Mussolini and Trump are no more concerning than that hardcore conservative relative of yours who ruins Thanksgiving every year. The danger is in their followers. Nobody would've taken Mussolini or his movement seriously without the March on Rome; had it not been for 30,000 pissed-off Blackshirts and the very real threat of an armed communist revolt, Il Duce would've been remembered more like Leon Czolgosz.
Likewise, what makes the prospect of a Trump presidency legitimately terrifying is not the kind of laws he could enact even with a Republican Congress (because frankly even his own party can't stand him), but the fact that being elected president has the potential to embolden his fiercest supporters to translate their hatred into the kind of violence we haven't seen in nearly a century.
And these modern-day Blackshirts have body armor, semi-automatics, and much larger magazines than their 1920s counterparts.
There's a saying in toxicology that the dose makes the poison, and it's true in politics as well. The support makes the movement. Followers are the difference between your hardcore right-wing relative ruining Christmas dinner, and a neo-fascist right-wing lunatic ruining your country.
Still, a charismatic leader who tells angry people precisely what they want to hear isn't quite enough on its own. As I mentioned before, it's the apathy of the opposition that's the final catalyst. And yes, we have that, too.
Like the Italian Socialists, today's Democratic Socialists are not taking the threat of President Trump seriously enough. He's written off as a joke candidate, much the way Mussolini was. To the point that some who supported Bernie Sanders' run for the nomination have declared their intent to either stay home or vote a protest candidate rather than cast a vote for Clinton.
Edmund Burke told us over two centuries ago why this attitude is dangerous:
It all boils down to this: don't do nothing.
Don't be the apathetic opposition that looks on and lets this happen again because we forgot what happened the last time. Be the generation that remembers. Be the generation that votes, because there is too much at stake here to throw your voice down the gutter or not use it at all.
Be the generation that tells the Angry Fuckhead Movement that this shit will not be tolerated anymore.
Be the the generation that, when the mob and the press and the whole world tell them to move, plants themselves like trees beside the river of truth, and tells the whole world — "No, you move.'
It's the kind of once-a-century circus on the Island of Misfit Toys that has people on both sides of the red-blue spectrum asking "where the fuck are we and how did we get here?" To answer that question, we'll have to go across the Atlantic and roughly a century back in time, to where and when conditions were very similar.
In the immortal words of Sophia Petrillo: picture it, Sicily, 1916.
Not Sicily proper, but close enough. The middle of World War I. The Italian Socialist Party had declared itself neutral and opposed Italy's involvement in the war. But a prominent member, writer and professor Benito Mussolini was having none of that. A fan of eugenics, who believed that WWI was a golden opportunity for Italians in Austria-Hungary to prove just how superior they were, Mussolini changed his tune from Marxist Socialism to the kind of scary ideology that would make him besties with Hitler later on; that of nationalistic fervor and the mandate that "superior" peoples dominate the "inferior" ones.
WWI was the European version of Iraq and Afghanistan, only it lasted half as long because in those days, countries still used actual declarations of war rather than merely committing troops to an area indefinitely. But it was just as popular-and-then-unpopular an albatross as Iraqi Freedom later became. And Mussolini saw the same kind of opportunities in WWI that conservatives saw in Iraq; profit, and a chance to bomb the shit out of brown people. And just like Iraq, it eventually proved to be more trouble than it was worth for the Italian Socialists when it started to divert money away from important shit like food and infrastructure.
The Italian Socialist Party eventually gave Mussolini the boot over his pro-war stance, and he responded by forming the Italian Fascist Party, which promoted the need for the "elite" to show the rest of those plebes how to live. And that could only happen if everyone in the country united under the banner of superiority and self-determination, and Seriously, Fuck Those Slavs.
If this sounds frighteningly familiar, that's because it's all happening again. Only replace Italian Fascism with the Tea Party and Mussolini with Donald Trump. It's the same zombie ideology wearing a flimsier, made-in-China hat.
Trump is taking advantage of the same kind of people Mussolini did. Uneducated, low-information country folk who miss the Good Old Days when they were the biggest fish in the pond. And he had a cult of personality much the same way Trump does. He "told it like it was." He peddled the idea that Italians were inherently superior, and if only they could stop their petty squabbling and agree on everything, they could bring their country back to its glory days of law and order. "Make Italy Great Again" indeed. What's more, the Italian Socialist Party that had ousted him saw the whole thing as an overly long joke, until the Blackshirt squads started "restoring order" by getting rid of everyone Mussolini didn't like.
Oh yes, the Blackshirts were very much real. WWI veterans who swore an oath to Mussolini and carried out all the ugly stuff like kidnappings, murder, bombings, and general mayhem in the name of scaring people into line. The fascia in fascism; they bound everything together with the promise of swift and scary judgment against those who didn't conform. Today, we'd recognize them as the "sovereign citizen" movement. The Timothy McVeighs and Cliven Bundys of the U.S..
And the years between WWI and WWII were the crucible in which this explosive mixture of nationalist fervor, childish fear and resentment, and the apathy of the opposition cooked and eventually boiled over.
Like Trump supporters today, Mussolini's followers viewed him as a genius, someone whose success meant he was inherently better than everyone below him. Mussolini himself fanned the flames by attributing his wealth and prosperity not to luck or being born into the upper middle-class and thus having more advantages, but to having inherently better attributes than other men. Much like Trump's "very good brain."
And that's not the only similarity. Both men dodged military service themselves while later advocating for war (Mussolini did eventually serve, but only because it was a condition of his pardon for, ironically, falsifying immigration papers in Geneva). Both men cultivated a propaganda machine that associated their names with prestige and value (despite the fact that nearly everything Trump has ever slapped his name on no longer exists). Both men's visions centered on a glorious empire with themselves at the top (Mussolini wanted to reforge the Roman Empire, while Trump merely wants to dominate the airwaves).
The common thread that really ties the two together, though, is that neither man was/is dangerous by himself; on their own, people like Mussolini and Trump are no more concerning than that hardcore conservative relative of yours who ruins Thanksgiving every year. The danger is in their followers. Nobody would've taken Mussolini or his movement seriously without the March on Rome; had it not been for 30,000 pissed-off Blackshirts and the very real threat of an armed communist revolt, Il Duce would've been remembered more like Leon Czolgosz.
Likewise, what makes the prospect of a Trump presidency legitimately terrifying is not the kind of laws he could enact even with a Republican Congress (because frankly even his own party can't stand him), but the fact that being elected president has the potential to embolden his fiercest supporters to translate their hatred into the kind of violence we haven't seen in nearly a century.
And these modern-day Blackshirts have body armor, semi-automatics, and much larger magazines than their 1920s counterparts.
There's a saying in toxicology that the dose makes the poison, and it's true in politics as well. The support makes the movement. Followers are the difference between your hardcore right-wing relative ruining Christmas dinner, and a neo-fascist right-wing lunatic ruining your country.
Still, a charismatic leader who tells angry people precisely what they want to hear isn't quite enough on its own. As I mentioned before, it's the apathy of the opposition that's the final catalyst. And yes, we have that, too.
Like the Italian Socialists, today's Democratic Socialists are not taking the threat of President Trump seriously enough. He's written off as a joke candidate, much the way Mussolini was. To the point that some who supported Bernie Sanders' run for the nomination have declared their intent to either stay home or vote a protest candidate rather than cast a vote for Clinton.
Edmund Burke told us over two centuries ago why this attitude is dangerous:
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."The reason I've taken the time and energy to write this is because this exact scenario strikes a very personal chord with me; my grandfather escaped Fascist Italy in the 1930s. He died in 2007, which I'm actually glad for. Because my grandfather loved the United States; he would not have wanted to be alive to witness the rise of the same kind of man he risked death at sea and capture/deportation to get the fuck away from.
It all boils down to this: don't do nothing.
Don't be the apathetic opposition that looks on and lets this happen again because we forgot what happened the last time. Be the generation that remembers. Be the generation that votes, because there is too much at stake here to throw your voice down the gutter or not use it at all.
Be the generation that tells the Angry Fuckhead Movement that this shit will not be tolerated anymore.
Be the the generation that, when the mob and the press and the whole world tell them to move, plants themselves like trees beside the river of truth, and tells the whole world — "No, you move.'
Tuesday, September 13, 2016
Nobody "Put" You In the "Friendzone"
You walked in there all by yourself. And you remain there 100% by your own choice.
No, it's not your fault that the woman (because this seems to be exclusively a straight guy thing) you're interested in rejected you, but that's not what the "friendzone" is. You don't just get there by being rejected. You get there by choosing to stay friends with the woman who rejected your romantic advances, despite not actually wanting a friendship with her at all.
See, the "friendzone" is really just the dysfunction junction between Resentment Road and Dishonesty Boulevard. It's what happens when a guy, for whatever reason, refuses to admit to himself that staying just friends with a woman he wants to be romantically involved with but who has made it clear that's not happening is too much for him to handle emotionally. And so he remains friends with her in order to not seem shallow, but spends the entire friendship bitching and moaning about how difficult and unpleasant it is.
And this goes about as well as anyone sane expects it to. Eventually, the guy does one of two things:
1) he tries, without success, to weasel his way past her boundaries no matter how many times she unequivocally shuts that shit down, until he explodes at her and shows his true colors.
2) he finally wises up and realizes that a friendship isn't enough and quietly severs contact.
And this is all provided he doesn't threaten to kill her (or worse, actually kill her).
What the guy misses from the very beginning, though, is that the only reason any of this happens, the only reason the friendzone even exists for him, is because he chooses to stay friends with someone he does not want to be friends with.
The friendzone is not a prison cell. You are not locked up in there against your will. You have the option to leave at any time; furthermore, you have the option of never entering in the first place.
As a member of the mysterious tribe called "Girl," I'll let you in on a little secret: women don't expect a guy they just rejected to stay friends with them. It's nice if the guy is cool with it, but we really do understand if he's not. So at least to us, it's way the fuck less creepy and douchey to say "look, I gotta be straight with you here, I don't think I can handle staying just friends." Women are frankly more inclined to respect your honesty.
Certainly less creepy and douchey than claiming our friendship still means so much to you while going behind our backs to whine to anyone who will listen how we're such frigid bitches because we won't give a Nice Guy like you even a handjob.
Because since men are supposedly the more logical of the sexes, let's break this down as such: if you don't really want a friendship with this woman and she has made it clear that friendship is the only relation she's willing to have with you, why would you bother staying friends with her at all? Why would you remain friends when you've already admitted it's difficult and painful and unpleasant? Because last I checked, that is everything a friendship is not supposed to be.
As much as I really hate to reduce women to consumable goods, sometimes that's the only way men can understand because that's how they've been trained to think of us: do you hang around outside Home Depot hoping one day they'll start carrying Cristal champagne? Do you stalk the baristas at your local Starbucks to buy winter coats? Do you loiter around your local Apple store looking for outdoor camping equipment?
Of course you don't. Because you know that those stores are not offering the thing you want to buy. And no matter how much you beg and plead and stamp your feet, they never will.
So why would you hang around a woman whose only offering is a relationship you already know you don't want?
You are under no obligation whatsoever to remain friends with a girl when she tells you friendship is all she wants from you. You are free to leave the friendzone whenever you want by simply leaving the friendship.
Nobody is saying that you can't feel hurt or disappointed or even a little angry when rejected by someone you're into. But it's how you react and how you choose to handle it that means the difference between being an actual nice guy, or a creepy, predatory douchelord.
You have a right to those feelings. What you don't have a right to do is lie to a woman's face and then get pissed off at her for believing you. You don't have a right to her being, and you never will.
No, it's not your fault that the woman (because this seems to be exclusively a straight guy thing) you're interested in rejected you, but that's not what the "friendzone" is. You don't just get there by being rejected. You get there by choosing to stay friends with the woman who rejected your romantic advances, despite not actually wanting a friendship with her at all.
See, the "friendzone" is really just the dysfunction junction between Resentment Road and Dishonesty Boulevard. It's what happens when a guy, for whatever reason, refuses to admit to himself that staying just friends with a woman he wants to be romantically involved with but who has made it clear that's not happening is too much for him to handle emotionally. And so he remains friends with her in order to not seem shallow, but spends the entire friendship bitching and moaning about how difficult and unpleasant it is.
And this goes about as well as anyone sane expects it to. Eventually, the guy does one of two things:
1) he tries, without success, to weasel his way past her boundaries no matter how many times she unequivocally shuts that shit down, until he explodes at her and shows his true colors.
2) he finally wises up and realizes that a friendship isn't enough and quietly severs contact.
And this is all provided he doesn't threaten to kill her (or worse, actually kill her).
What the guy misses from the very beginning, though, is that the only reason any of this happens, the only reason the friendzone even exists for him, is because he chooses to stay friends with someone he does not want to be friends with.
The friendzone is not a prison cell. You are not locked up in there against your will. You have the option to leave at any time; furthermore, you have the option of never entering in the first place.
As a member of the mysterious tribe called "Girl," I'll let you in on a little secret: women don't expect a guy they just rejected to stay friends with them. It's nice if the guy is cool with it, but we really do understand if he's not. So at least to us, it's way the fuck less creepy and douchey to say "look, I gotta be straight with you here, I don't think I can handle staying just friends." Women are frankly more inclined to respect your honesty.
Certainly less creepy and douchey than claiming our friendship still means so much to you while going behind our backs to whine to anyone who will listen how we're such frigid bitches because we won't give a Nice Guy like you even a handjob.
Because since men are supposedly the more logical of the sexes, let's break this down as such: if you don't really want a friendship with this woman and she has made it clear that friendship is the only relation she's willing to have with you, why would you bother staying friends with her at all? Why would you remain friends when you've already admitted it's difficult and painful and unpleasant? Because last I checked, that is everything a friendship is not supposed to be.
As much as I really hate to reduce women to consumable goods, sometimes that's the only way men can understand because that's how they've been trained to think of us: do you hang around outside Home Depot hoping one day they'll start carrying Cristal champagne? Do you stalk the baristas at your local Starbucks to buy winter coats? Do you loiter around your local Apple store looking for outdoor camping equipment?
Of course you don't. Because you know that those stores are not offering the thing you want to buy. And no matter how much you beg and plead and stamp your feet, they never will.
So why would you hang around a woman whose only offering is a relationship you already know you don't want?
You are under no obligation whatsoever to remain friends with a girl when she tells you friendship is all she wants from you. You are free to leave the friendzone whenever you want by simply leaving the friendship.
Nobody is saying that you can't feel hurt or disappointed or even a little angry when rejected by someone you're into. But it's how you react and how you choose to handle it that means the difference between being an actual nice guy, or a creepy, predatory douchelord.
You have a right to those feelings. What you don't have a right to do is lie to a woman's face and then get pissed off at her for believing you. You don't have a right to her being, and you never will.
Wednesday, September 7, 2016
An Open Letter to the Hipster Edgelords
Nobody gives a shit about you.
No, really. Nobody cares what obscure piece of media you're currently creaming yourself over. Nobody cares how much you hate social media (but still post on it every day for gods-know-why). Nobody cares that you hate everything popular purely because of its popularity. Nobody cares that you hate most of humanity for literally no reason other than you think it makes you unique and therefore cool (spoiler: it doesn't).
Because see, as geeks we all went through that phase where we were so desperate to prove we were better than other geeks to cover up for our inability to function outside mom's basement that we took every opportunity to wave our geek boners at anything we thought they were long enough to slap. Fortunately, we grew out of that fucked-up mentality by the time society expected us to be functional adults.
But you? Oh no. Growing up into a mature member of society is entirely too mainstream. You're still chasing that banner of Better Than All Those Other Nerds because you're such a worthless, useless sack of piss and vinegar that you have no other purpose in life. And it's your own damned fault.
And no, you don't get to use the myriad of excuses you've racked up over the years, that so many people gave you a fucking pass on because you happen to be straight, male, cisgendered and white.
Don't have a job? Since you seem to love spewing bullshit on the internet 24/7, guess what? You can totally get paid to do that. You don't really need money to start, either. And with modern accessibility features on all operating systems, even a physical disability isn't a barrier. You have a computer, you have internet access, and boom. With a little work and--
Oh yeah. That's your problem. "Effort" is a dirty word in your language. After all, it's easier to bitch and moan all day about how every popular video game, band, movie, and TV show sucks and get into forum and Facebook spats at 2AM than contribute anything meaningful to the media landscape. After all, bitching and moaning gets you the payoff you're after -- the smug assurance that you're Better Than All Those Other Nerds -- and you don't have to do a goddamn thing except piss people off (which is easy, since you're an asshole).
But at the end of the day? Guess what? The blogger who writes about stuff they like, popular or not, gets to take home a paycheck, make friends, and have fun. People give a shit about them.
You? Get to sulk in the lone corner of your mom's basement with your friends, Empty Cheeto Bag and Jizz Shirt, once your Better Than All Those Other Nerds high wears off and you gotta go get into an online dick-waving contest so you can shoot up again.
And still, nobody gives a shit about you. And nobody ever will. Because you don't give anybody a reason to care since you're too busy pissing them off for your own childish amusement.
So if you still want to keep on keeping on on the Road to Nowhere that is being Better Than All Those Other Nerds? Fine.
I think you should just be aware that seriously, no one gives a shit.
No, really. Nobody cares what obscure piece of media you're currently creaming yourself over. Nobody cares how much you hate social media (but still post on it every day for gods-know-why). Nobody cares that you hate everything popular purely because of its popularity. Nobody cares that you hate most of humanity for literally no reason other than you think it makes you unique and therefore cool (spoiler: it doesn't).
Because see, as geeks we all went through that phase where we were so desperate to prove we were better than other geeks to cover up for our inability to function outside mom's basement that we took every opportunity to wave our geek boners at anything we thought they were long enough to slap. Fortunately, we grew out of that fucked-up mentality by the time society expected us to be functional adults.
But you? Oh no. Growing up into a mature member of society is entirely too mainstream. You're still chasing that banner of Better Than All Those Other Nerds because you're such a worthless, useless sack of piss and vinegar that you have no other purpose in life. And it's your own damned fault.
And no, you don't get to use the myriad of excuses you've racked up over the years, that so many people gave you a fucking pass on because you happen to be straight, male, cisgendered and white.
Don't have a job? Since you seem to love spewing bullshit on the internet 24/7, guess what? You can totally get paid to do that. You don't really need money to start, either. And with modern accessibility features on all operating systems, even a physical disability isn't a barrier. You have a computer, you have internet access, and boom. With a little work and--
Oh yeah. That's your problem. "Effort" is a dirty word in your language. After all, it's easier to bitch and moan all day about how every popular video game, band, movie, and TV show sucks and get into forum and Facebook spats at 2AM than contribute anything meaningful to the media landscape. After all, bitching and moaning gets you the payoff you're after -- the smug assurance that you're Better Than All Those Other Nerds -- and you don't have to do a goddamn thing except piss people off (which is easy, since you're an asshole).
But at the end of the day? Guess what? The blogger who writes about stuff they like, popular or not, gets to take home a paycheck, make friends, and have fun. People give a shit about them.
You? Get to sulk in the lone corner of your mom's basement with your friends, Empty Cheeto Bag and Jizz Shirt, once your Better Than All Those Other Nerds high wears off and you gotta go get into an online dick-waving contest so you can shoot up again.
And still, nobody gives a shit about you. And nobody ever will. Because you don't give anybody a reason to care since you're too busy pissing them off for your own childish amusement.
So if you still want to keep on keeping on on the Road to Nowhere that is being Better Than All Those Other Nerds? Fine.
I think you should just be aware that seriously, no one gives a shit.
Monday, June 13, 2016
America, We Need To Talk
In the early morning hours of Sunday, June 12, 2016, a lone gunman opened fire in a gay nightclub and murdered 50 people (so far; of the 53 wounded, 5 are listed in grave condition, so that death toll may climb even higher).
I'm not going to spit facts at you. You can look that shit up on your own. I'm not going to spit arguments about gun control, either, because this problem is so much fucking bigger than that.
I don't even know what I want to spit here, other than nails.
This was an act of terror, but not the kind we've gotten so used to in the last 15 years. This is an act not motivated by retaliation against a political enemy or a monolithic ideology. There is no "cause" here. There is nothing the world could have given Omar Mateen to make him put down that gun.
This is an act motivated by hatred, and hatred alone. Omar Mateen wasn't looking to scare anyone into submission; he was looking to simply kill as many of the people he hated as quickly as possible.
And those people were LGBT youth.
As the right-wing noise machine tried to argue in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church shooting last year, many will again try to argue this was motivated by religion. And they will do some impressive mental gymnastics to support this view. They will all but erase the real reason for Mateen targeting the people he did: they were queer.
Don't let them do it.
Omar Mateen was motivated by the same kind of hatred as Dylan Roof. Hatred against a class of people different than himself, simply for existing.
Pulse is a gay club. A place where LGBT people can gather and meet and be ourselves, without the fear that we face on the street every day. Where gay men can dance with their boyfriends, lesbians with their girlfriends, and bisexual people with whoever their partners happen to be. Where trans folk don't have to worry which bathroom to use. Where PDAs won't result in abuse and threats from onlookers.
It's one of the few places where LGBT people have a sense of safety, because everyone there is like you. Everyone there knows the struggle. Everyone there wants to get away from it for a few hours.
Omar Mateen sought that space out. Invaded it. Violated it. And ultimately defiled it with the blood of over 100 people, dead and wounded.
Straight people, you cannot fathom this. You cannot begin to understand the kind of bone-shattering fear this strikes into the hearts of everyone who is LGBT (or even wondering if they are). Because what this act has done is destroyed the sense of safety that we were just beginning to cultivate.
It's 2016. Marriage equality is the law of the land in all 50 sates. And we are still not safe.
Do you hear me? We are still not safe. Even when we build our own spaces where straight folks don't have to look at us. Even when we "stop shoving it in your faces" we are still not fucking safe.
Picture, if you will, being a child and hearing about 50 children shot to death at a Chuck E. Cheese, and you're starting to approach the kind of fear we're feeling right now. I say "starting to approach" because there isn't a persistent undercurrent in our culture that loathes the shit out children and wants them all piled in a landfill somewhere.
See, Omar Mateen was a lone wolf as far as Daesh is concerned. But in regards to the actual reason he murdered 50 people? He's hardly alone.
We're not safe because even though it's 2016, we still live in a culture marinating in hatred. A culture enabled by people who wish we didn't exist.
If you really want to be an ally? If you really want to help the LGBT community not just in Orlando, but everywhere this kind of massacre could occur?
Start speaking up.
When you see someone use homosexuality as an insult? Tell them that shit isn't acceptable.
When your friend makes shitty jokes at the LGBT community's expense? Tell them that shit isn't acceptable.
When your bigoted relative laments the destruction of the country because of marriage equality? Tell them that shit isn't acceptable.
This goes way beyond gun control. This goes way beyond terrorism. This goes right to the very fucking core of what makes us civilized.
The ability to coexist with other people and not murder the shit out of them.
I'm not going to spit facts at you. You can look that shit up on your own. I'm not going to spit arguments about gun control, either, because this problem is so much fucking bigger than that.
I don't even know what I want to spit here, other than nails.
This was an act of terror, but not the kind we've gotten so used to in the last 15 years. This is an act not motivated by retaliation against a political enemy or a monolithic ideology. There is no "cause" here. There is nothing the world could have given Omar Mateen to make him put down that gun.
This is an act motivated by hatred, and hatred alone. Omar Mateen wasn't looking to scare anyone into submission; he was looking to simply kill as many of the people he hated as quickly as possible.
And those people were LGBT youth.
As the right-wing noise machine tried to argue in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church shooting last year, many will again try to argue this was motivated by religion. And they will do some impressive mental gymnastics to support this view. They will all but erase the real reason for Mateen targeting the people he did: they were queer.
Don't let them do it.
Omar Mateen was motivated by the same kind of hatred as Dylan Roof. Hatred against a class of people different than himself, simply for existing.
Pulse is a gay club. A place where LGBT people can gather and meet and be ourselves, without the fear that we face on the street every day. Where gay men can dance with their boyfriends, lesbians with their girlfriends, and bisexual people with whoever their partners happen to be. Where trans folk don't have to worry which bathroom to use. Where PDAs won't result in abuse and threats from onlookers.
It's one of the few places where LGBT people have a sense of safety, because everyone there is like you. Everyone there knows the struggle. Everyone there wants to get away from it for a few hours.
Omar Mateen sought that space out. Invaded it. Violated it. And ultimately defiled it with the blood of over 100 people, dead and wounded.
Straight people, you cannot fathom this. You cannot begin to understand the kind of bone-shattering fear this strikes into the hearts of everyone who is LGBT (or even wondering if they are). Because what this act has done is destroyed the sense of safety that we were just beginning to cultivate.
It's 2016. Marriage equality is the law of the land in all 50 sates. And we are still not safe.
Do you hear me? We are still not safe. Even when we build our own spaces where straight folks don't have to look at us. Even when we "stop shoving it in your faces" we are still not fucking safe.
Picture, if you will, being a child and hearing about 50 children shot to death at a Chuck E. Cheese, and you're starting to approach the kind of fear we're feeling right now. I say "starting to approach" because there isn't a persistent undercurrent in our culture that loathes the shit out children and wants them all piled in a landfill somewhere.
See, Omar Mateen was a lone wolf as far as Daesh is concerned. But in regards to the actual reason he murdered 50 people? He's hardly alone.
We're not safe because even though it's 2016, we still live in a culture marinating in hatred. A culture enabled by people who wish we didn't exist.
If you really want to be an ally? If you really want to help the LGBT community not just in Orlando, but everywhere this kind of massacre could occur?
Start speaking up.
When you see someone use homosexuality as an insult? Tell them that shit isn't acceptable.
When your friend makes shitty jokes at the LGBT community's expense? Tell them that shit isn't acceptable.
When your bigoted relative laments the destruction of the country because of marriage equality? Tell them that shit isn't acceptable.
This goes way beyond gun control. This goes way beyond terrorism. This goes right to the very fucking core of what makes us civilized.
The ability to coexist with other people and not murder the shit out of them.
Thursday, June 2, 2016
The Pyrite Rule
There's nothing quite like discovering that the "wisdom" that adults imparted to you in childhood is really bullshit packaged in a very pretty box. There's almost a five-stages-of-grief thing to it. At first you're in denial that the box is full of shit. Then you get angry that someone would seriously think handing you a box of shit and calling it "wisdom" was a good idea. Then you bargain with anyone and everyone to take this box of shit from you, you'll do anything in return. And when nobody will relieve you of your box of shit, you get depressed. And then finally, in the acceptance stage, you decide to use the box of shit as fertilizer for newer, more productive ideas.
Of the many, many boxes of shit I received as a kid, the one that was the hardest to accept was the so-called Golden Rule (AKA Matthew 7:12): do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
When you're a kid, this box of shit is like a tray of fresh-baked brownies. Of course it makes sense. Be the example, right? When people see the way you treat them, of course they're going to be more likely to return the favor. But when you get old enough to see this play out in the real world, is when you realize that like a lot of the worst advice from the Bible (not all of it is bad, but like every holy book in existence, there is some absolute horseshit in there that would never fly today), the Golden Rule is exactly the kind of self-indulgent nonsense anyone would tell a foreign population they were trying to convert.
It's particularly insidious because the Golden Rule maintains the veneer of promoting kindness toward others, while in practice it's the most selfish philosophy you could possibly be taught before you're old enough to read Atlas Shrugged.
First and foremost, the Golden Rule is selfish because it promotes the exact opposite of empathy. Treating others the way you want to be treated, in fact, requires you to ignore their feelings and focus on your own, because it's using your preferences as the yardstick.
To see how this plays out in the real world, let's take a look at some types of people we can't stand who follow the Golden Rule to the letter:
Second, the Golden Rule sets the expectation that the primary reason for being good to others is so that they'll be good to you in return. We all have that one friend or relative who will never agree to lend a hand unless you make it clear there's something in it for them. You could be stuck on the roadside with a blown-out tire, and they will only come pick you up if you make it clear they'll get a free tank of gas out of the deal.
These are exactly the kind of assholes the Golden Rule was written for. Rather than "treat people with kindness and respect because it's just the right thing to do", they only offer kindness and respect in the hope they'll get some of it back from you. Like the kid who returns your lost wallet only because he or she hopes you'll give them a few bucks out of it in return for not robbing you blind.
Third, the oft-quoted part of Golden Rule by itself provides no instruction for when its core principle does not apply; what do you do when people don't want to be treated the same way you would like to be? Even in the original context (Matthew 7:9-12), there is no good answer to this:
It still doesn't take into account that...say...your son may be asking for bread, but there's none made yet, so what he really wants is a stone to grind the wheat into flour in order to make some bread. Or rather than eat the fish, he wants to toss it through the window of that asshole up the street whose dog keeps crapping in his yard, in which case the snake is a far superior choice.
In other words, as the gift giver, you're assuming a stone or a snake is a bad gift because you wouldn't want a stone when you asked for bread or a snake when you asked for fish. But that may not be what the person you're giving it to is thinking.
If you really want to be kind and respectful to other people, what you have to do first is put yourself in their shoes. Level with them and find out what they really need, even if they're too ashamed to ask you for it directly. Don't just assume they want and need the same things you do. And for fuck's sake, don't hand out gifts with one hand while expecting a return favor with the other.
Don't treat people the way you want to be treated. Provided it doesn't directly hurt you to do so, treat others the way they want to be treated. Not because you hope someone might do the same for you one day. Not because your deity of choice will reward you in the afterlife. Treat people with the respect, kindness and empathy they want and need because it's the right thing to do.
Rather than the Fool's Golden Rule, I propose a much simpler one:
Do no harm, but take no shit.
Especially boxes of shit disguised as wisdom. They stink up the house.
Of the many, many boxes of shit I received as a kid, the one that was the hardest to accept was the so-called Golden Rule (AKA Matthew 7:12): do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
When you're a kid, this box of shit is like a tray of fresh-baked brownies. Of course it makes sense. Be the example, right? When people see the way you treat them, of course they're going to be more likely to return the favor. But when you get old enough to see this play out in the real world, is when you realize that like a lot of the worst advice from the Bible (not all of it is bad, but like every holy book in existence, there is some absolute horseshit in there that would never fly today), the Golden Rule is exactly the kind of self-indulgent nonsense anyone would tell a foreign population they were trying to convert.
It's particularly insidious because the Golden Rule maintains the veneer of promoting kindness toward others, while in practice it's the most selfish philosophy you could possibly be taught before you're old enough to read Atlas Shrugged.
First and foremost, the Golden Rule is selfish because it promotes the exact opposite of empathy. Treating others the way you want to be treated, in fact, requires you to ignore their feelings and focus on your own, because it's using your preferences as the yardstick.
To see how this plays out in the real world, let's take a look at some types of people we can't stand who follow the Golden Rule to the letter:
- That creepy drunk on the subway platform would love it if random attractive women approached him with compliments and offers of sex, so he's going to do that to every woman he fancies.
- The Jehova's Witness would love it if people came to her door to start random conversations about faith and God, so she's going to do that to every neighbor in her subdivision.
- The nosy lady at the mall would be grateful to receive random parenting advice, so she will offer her opinion to every mother she sees with a kid under five.
- The hard-line conservative uncle nobody invited to the family reunion would love to debate politics and religion with everyone in a five-mile radius, so of course he's going to start arguing with everyone right in the middle of hors d'oeuvres.
Second, the Golden Rule sets the expectation that the primary reason for being good to others is so that they'll be good to you in return. We all have that one friend or relative who will never agree to lend a hand unless you make it clear there's something in it for them. You could be stuck on the roadside with a blown-out tire, and they will only come pick you up if you make it clear they'll get a free tank of gas out of the deal.
These are exactly the kind of assholes the Golden Rule was written for. Rather than "treat people with kindness and respect because it's just the right thing to do", they only offer kindness and respect in the hope they'll get some of it back from you. Like the kid who returns your lost wallet only because he or she hopes you'll give them a few bucks out of it in return for not robbing you blind.
Third, the oft-quoted part of Golden Rule by itself provides no instruction for when its core principle does not apply; what do you do when people don't want to be treated the same way you would like to be? Even in the original context (Matthew 7:9-12), there is no good answer to this:
9“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! 12So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets."The closest it comes is "don't give people rocks when they ask for food." But the reasoning for such is "well come on, a rock is kind of a shitty gift, you know? And if your lowly human self knows how to not give shitty gifts, think how much better at this whole gift-giving business Almighty God is!"
It still doesn't take into account that...say...your son may be asking for bread, but there's none made yet, so what he really wants is a stone to grind the wheat into flour in order to make some bread. Or rather than eat the fish, he wants to toss it through the window of that asshole up the street whose dog keeps crapping in his yard, in which case the snake is a far superior choice.
In other words, as the gift giver, you're assuming a stone or a snake is a bad gift because you wouldn't want a stone when you asked for bread or a snake when you asked for fish. But that may not be what the person you're giving it to is thinking.
If you really want to be kind and respectful to other people, what you have to do first is put yourself in their shoes. Level with them and find out what they really need, even if they're too ashamed to ask you for it directly. Don't just assume they want and need the same things you do. And for fuck's sake, don't hand out gifts with one hand while expecting a return favor with the other.
Don't treat people the way you want to be treated. Provided it doesn't directly hurt you to do so, treat others the way they want to be treated. Not because you hope someone might do the same for you one day. Not because your deity of choice will reward you in the afterlife. Treat people with the respect, kindness and empathy they want and need because it's the right thing to do.
Rather than the Fool's Golden Rule, I propose a much simpler one:
Do no harm, but take no shit.
Especially boxes of shit disguised as wisdom. They stink up the house.
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
6 Signs Of a Toxic Friendship
We've all had That One Friend. Someone we think is the greatest person we know. Until a year or two later when we're suddenly doing everything in our power to get the fuck away from them, but still in some ways we're too afraid to cut them loose. Hell, you may have one of those "friends" right now. Or think you do. But because they've become so good at gaslighting you, you're not really sure anymore. Maybe you're the crazy one.
Well, based on having to kick my fair share of toxic assholes out of my life, I've observed six hallmarks of abusive behavior. Red flags that should immediately set off your internal Bullshit Alarm if people you know exhibit these traits.
Obviously it's not comprehensive. There are, unfortunately, far too many ways to be an asshole. But it's a start:
1. Everything Is a World-Ending Crisis. Everything.
2. Your Feelings Are Never As Important As Theirs (Or Important At All, Really)
When the rest of us are helping a friend through a rough time, or when a friend comes to us with a legit problem, we put the focus on them and their feelings. It's just natural for true friends to be empathetic and help each other out. Not so with the Toxic Asshole, who may or may not pay lipservice to your needs, but in the end will refocus the situation to be all about them.
Because if you have time to think about your own pain, you may discover eventually that they are the source of it.
The Toxic Asshole, when confronted with your need for help, will suddenly have an issue of their own that is far more pressing than yours. An "emergency" that you must help them through. Purely as a diversion from your own needs, wants, and desires, because to them, it's dangerous for you to have anything of your own since it might pull you out of line with their agenda.
As an example of what this phenomenon looks like, I was talking to the most recent Toxic Asshole I had to remove from my life (before I finally got the guts to break away from them) about a depressive fit I was having that made me disappear for a few days. Her response was to tell me how much my absence had affected her, had triggered her depression. With some not-so-subtle hints and threats that Bad Shit Would Happen if I ever did it again.
She was fully aware that I was in a very fragile place mentally, and still proceeded to lay a guilt trip on me about being away for a few days. It's one of the many reasons we're not friends anymore.
Why? Because she could not let me have my own pain. She could not let me have my own problems, my own bad day. Because that meant I was my own person, and not a tool for her amusement.
But when the shoe is on the other foot...
3. It's OK If They Do It (Everyone Else Gets Crucified)
...Well. It's different then.
You remember that kid you used to play with at recess, who would change the rules of the game just so they could do shit you weren't allowed to in order to score more points? Well, the Toxic Asshole is the adult version. And instead of kickball, you're playing Risk: Social Life Edition. But otherwise, it's the same M.O.: they can break the rules, but not you.
In my case, the Toxic Asshole I dealt with was allowed to demand every waking moment of my time to deal with crisis after crisis. But if anybody so much as tried to talk about a problem of their own with her, they were asking far too much. Because she would then fake a panic attack or depressive episode to get out of the conversation.
She was also allowed to make other people's problems all about her, but if anybody else did that, they were manipulative and abusive. She was allowed to make cryptic talk about hurting herself purely to glean sympathy from others, but if other people deigned to talk about their problems just because they had nowhere else to go, they were attention whores. She could create a whole other social media account to bitch about specific people while still pretending to be friends with them, but if anyone talked about her behind her back, they were cowards (and manipulators/abusers). She can make cracks about the weight and sexual orientation of people she doesn't like, and it's not fat-shaming or homophobic purely because she's doing it.
The Toxic Asshole labors under the notion that every terrible thing they do is excusable or justified, but they are the only ones allowed to use such excuses or justifications. The rules they judge everyone else by do not apply to their own actions.
You remember Engywook's description of the Magic Mirror Gate from The Neverending Story? If not, here's a little walk down Wasted Childhood Lane:
But that's not going to last forever, because people are, by and large, not as stupid as the Toxic Asshole imagines. Sooner or later, they're going to wise up and figure out what's going on. And our Asshole is more than prepared for this eventuality because...
4. Everything Is Your Fault
In case you haven't guessed, I'm a pop-culture freak. The more obscure, the more it's up my alley. And the 2008 indie film The Gamers: Dorkness Rising illustrates my next point perfectly. If you've never seen it (and you really should), the gist is that the crew lost the campaign from the first film, and resident douchebag Cass demands a replay because he insists there is no game he can't win. Because one of the band's players is unavailable, they don't have the full quorum needed to restart. Cass recruits his ex-girlfriend Joanna as the final player, with the obvious intent to humiliate her and win the game because he assumes she's going to be a terrible, terrible newbie at it. Unfortunately for him she's a math-and-logic whiz, and being both a girl at a table full of geeks and not a douchebag, his plan backfires when she wins over the entire crew. Cass doesn't take it well (scene starts at 1:27:08 if you want to skip ahead):
Sound like any "friends" you might have?
When people start to get too suspicious of the Toxic Asshole's intentions, this is when they pull out one of their more devious tricks: the scapegoat.
Just like Cass in that meltdown, if you don't comply with the rules and allow them their loopholes, suddenly you are the one who is cheating. You are the one who's making the game not fun. You are the incompetent player. They might've flipped the table and ragequit, but it's all your fault for pissing them off.
Narcissistic projection is one of the more effective tools in the Toxic Asshole's arsenal. The one I dealt with flat-out accused her ex-girlfriend of things she did herself. It's yet another way to preserve their ideal selves and not have to face the music. If people start seeing through the hypocrisy, they just find some other donkey to pin the tail on.
And it works especially well because once a victim is stuck with the blame for everything, it's far easier to get them to accept responsibility for it, whether they're at fault or not. Which will serve to draw them deeper into the web (and consequently, it'll be that much tougher to get out).
5. You Are Responsible For Their Emotions
One thing you will never hear a Toxic Asshole say is "I was/got angry/annoyed/etc." Instead, their refrain will be "she/he pissed me off/annoyed me/etc." Because one of the hallmarks of toxic and abusive behavior is making other people responsible for their moods. It's one of the most insidious things in their playbook, because it accomplishes two goals: 1) absolving the Toxic Asshole of responsibility for themselves, and 2) laying a guilt trip on the particular minion they're trying to keep in line.
We all experience incidents where someone else's behavior is profoundly annoying/enraging/hurtful. But the effect it has on us -- our emotions -- are still ours. People who are not Toxic Assholes realize this on some level, and thus even when we are annoyed/angry/etc., we have ways of coping with it that don't drag other people kicking and screaming into the picture.
The Toxic Asshole refuses to use such coping mechanisms. Everything they do that's been said so far -- the constant emergencies, devaluing others' feelings, moving the goalposts to benefit themselves, and projecting their unacceptable behaviors onto others -- is all leading up to this, to making other people responsible for what they feel.
The particular Toxic Asshole in my life would fake suicide attempts and ideation to get attention, and then blame anyone who ignored her for why she felt awful. It was her way of guilting people into hanging around her, by taking advantage of their empathy and holding the fear of what she would do to herself if they left over their heads. This was especially effective on people like me, who had seriously considered and attempted suicide before. And frankly, those are exactly the kind of people she targets. The vulnerable. Those who have been abused at least once, and are thus prone to re-victimization. Especially those who have been emotionally violated.
Because people who have suffered abuse are pliable in that regard. They can be convinced to hold themselves responsible pretty easily, because someone else has already planted that seed. Someone else has already held them responsible for things they have no control over. Someone else has already used them as a scapegoat. To the rest of the world, that's messed the hell up. To the abused, that's just life.
And to the Toxic Asshole, that makes a mark ripe for the sniping. They're like a broken vase. Even if they've been repaired as much as possible, the cracks are still there. And those cracks are weak points. Hit them just right, and the whole thing will shatter all over again.
With the Toxic Asshole, nearly all of their friends will have this quality. See, while the Toxic Asshole is frighteningly good at what they do, they're also incredibly lazy. It's a rare thing when they choose a mark that has never been subject to the kind of tactics they use (and may therefore be perfectly capable of resisting them and telling the Toxic Asshole to get bent). Because it's way easier to break a vase that's been repaired than to shatter a brand new one.
6. Standing Up For Yourself Is Treason
So what happens when the mark has finally had all they can take, and refuses to play the dutiful boot-licking emotional whipping boy?
Oh, bitch it is on, then.
In the twisted world of narcissistic abusers, standing up to them is their kryptonite. Nothing will make a Toxic Asshole lose their shit quite like being challenged, and coming to the realization that all the gaslighting, manipulation, and guilt-tripping skills they've so carefully honed over the years no longer work.
That for all intents and purposes, they've lost.
At that point, the mask comes off and like the Grand High Witch, they're revealed for the pickled, maggot-ridden sack of putrefication they are.
That's when they'll either start the smear campaign against you by contacting all your friends and loved ones and telling them what a crazy bitch you are, or if they're too cowardly for that (like mine was), they'll go retreating back to their sycophantic fan club for the attention and sympathy fix that you're no longer providing.
And like any addict, they'll immediately start looking for a new source (provided they didn't have one lined up already, and many of them do).
See, your average well-adjusted person does not need constant attention. Your average well-adjusted person understands boundaries, and understands that simply being their friend doesn't entitle them to every spare moment you have. Nor does it make you their personal stress ball that they can squeeze every time they need to let off steam. An average well-adjusted person will see their friends as people rather than as appliances, tools, and characters in a TV show they control.
This is because the average well-adjusted person has confidence in themselves and their ability to be decent human beings, such that they don't have to seek constant reassurance from everyone. They're satisfied with who they are, enough that they don't need to warp reality into their own personal Holodeck.
Toxic Assholes, on the other hand, are thoroughly empty people. They have confidence in spades, but it's confidence in the same way aspartame is sweet.
Having a friendship with a Toxic Asshole is like starring in a movie helmed by the most nightmarish director you've ever had to work with. The script changes without warning, and your role is being constantly rewritten to suit their needs. At first you'll be cast as the loyal sidekick. If you get fed up and walk off the set, you'll get written out as a supervillain, for two reasons:
1) it absolves the Toxic Asshole of all responsibility
2) it makes an example of you to the rest of the film crew, detailing exactly what kind of treatment they can expect if they ever step out of line.
In my case, the Toxic Asshole I was friends with for entirely too long started devaluing and discarding me the minute I began withdrawing from her. I went from being the friend she went running to whenever an "emergency" presented itself to being berated for not being available and then finally talked up as the person who ruined her life. Purely because I was too emotionally exhausted to care and finally started taking my life back.
That's really the greatest tell for whether you have a Toxic Asshole on your hands. What happens when you try to set -- and more importantly, enforce -- healthy boundaries. If someone has an exaggeratedly awful reaction to being told "no?" That's your giant neon sign that they're a Toxic Asshole and you need to get out.
Because what it's taken me so long to realize is that normal people don't fucking do this.
Normal people don't flip their shit when you tell them not to bug you so you can get work done/go grocery shopping/bathe/use the bathroom/etc. Normal people don't flat-out ignore your "no" and keep pestering you even after you've said you'll be unavailable. Normal people don't threaten to hurt and kill themselves when they don't get their way. Normal people don't make you feel guilty, anxious, and worthless for having your own needs.
Standing up to a Toxic Asshole is the scariest goddamn thing you will ever do. Because you've been conditioned to fear losing their friendship and approval. You've been conditioned to value their opinion more than your own. They trained you as such in order to feed their ego.
But as scary as it is, it's also worth it. Because once you realize that their "friendship" is hollow, artificial, one-sided, and absolutely worth losing, the happier you'll be.
Well, based on having to kick my fair share of toxic assholes out of my life, I've observed six hallmarks of abusive behavior. Red flags that should immediately set off your internal Bullshit Alarm if people you know exhibit these traits.
Obviously it's not comprehensive. There are, unfortunately, far too many ways to be an asshole. But it's a start:
1. Everything Is a World-Ending Crisis. Everything.
The thing to understand about Toxic Assholes is they don't see their friends as people. They collect friends the way normal people collect stamps, shot glasses, and Pokémon. Friends are things they brag about having and show off to the neighbors to make themselves seem like far better people than they really are.
Of course, when you treat people like shit, eventually they're going to figure it out and dump your ass. So how do you keep them from wising up? Keep 'em tired. Keep them mentally exhausted by making your life a constant wagon-train of emergencies.
For normal people, there are generally two types of emergency. Either somebody needs immediate medical attention, or somebody is about to lose their home/family/life savings/entire financial future/etc. In other words, the word "emergency" means something, and that something is "I need help NOW or I'm irrevocably boned."
For the Toxic Asshole, "emergency" simply means "you're ignoring me."
Because for the Toxic Asshole, not being the center of your life 24/7/365.25 means that you're the one shot glass/stamp/Pokémon/etc. in their collection that is out of place, and you need corrected. And because "emergency" means something else entirely to the rest of us, they will use that to their advantage in order to guilt you back into line.
When I say "everything is an emergency" to these people, I really do mean everything. Package didn't arrive when the tracker said it would? EMERGENCY. Someone's insulted their favorite TV show/movie/actor/musician? EMERGENCY. Their take-out place got the order wrong? EMERGENCY, DAMMIT!
You get the idea.
And the thing is, they know these aren't actual emergencies. But they will use them as an excuse for "having a panic attack" and needing you to talk them down. And how will you know this? Because if you even suggest the idea of calling a crisis hotline or even using a service like IMAlive or 7 Cups of Tea (both excellent depression and anxiety resources), they will insist they've tried those services and they don't really work and they just really need you to talk to them. Often laced with thinly veiled threats of ending the friendship (or worse) if you don't -- or can't -- comply.
For the rest of us, friendship is about mutual caring, respect, trust, and just generally liking being around other people. For the Toxic Asshole, friendship is purely about ego. They want to be able to brag about having friends without making the effort to be a person worthy of them.
Everything that ever goes wrong is an emergency to them, because it gives them an excuse to demand every spare moment you have, and if you decline to fork it over, you end up looking like the asshole. Either way -- at least in their minds -- they win.
For the Toxic Asshole, "emergency" simply means "you're ignoring me."
Because for the Toxic Asshole, not being the center of your life 24/7/365.25 means that you're the one shot glass/stamp/Pokémon/etc. in their collection that is out of place, and you need corrected. And because "emergency" means something else entirely to the rest of us, they will use that to their advantage in order to guilt you back into line.
When I say "everything is an emergency" to these people, I really do mean everything. Package didn't arrive when the tracker said it would? EMERGENCY. Someone's insulted their favorite TV show/movie/actor/musician? EMERGENCY. Their take-out place got the order wrong? EMERGENCY, DAMMIT!
You get the idea.
And the thing is, they know these aren't actual emergencies. But they will use them as an excuse for "having a panic attack" and needing you to talk them down. And how will you know this? Because if you even suggest the idea of calling a crisis hotline or even using a service like IMAlive or 7 Cups of Tea (both excellent depression and anxiety resources), they will insist they've tried those services and they don't really work and they just really need you to talk to them. Often laced with thinly veiled threats of ending the friendship (or worse) if you don't -- or can't -- comply.
For the rest of us, friendship is about mutual caring, respect, trust, and just generally liking being around other people. For the Toxic Asshole, friendship is purely about ego. They want to be able to brag about having friends without making the effort to be a person worthy of them.
Everything that ever goes wrong is an emergency to them, because it gives them an excuse to demand every spare moment you have, and if you decline to fork it over, you end up looking like the asshole. Either way -- at least in their minds -- they win.
When the rest of us are helping a friend through a rough time, or when a friend comes to us with a legit problem, we put the focus on them and their feelings. It's just natural for true friends to be empathetic and help each other out. Not so with the Toxic Asshole, who may or may not pay lipservice to your needs, but in the end will refocus the situation to be all about them.
Because if you have time to think about your own pain, you may discover eventually that they are the source of it.
The Toxic Asshole, when confronted with your need for help, will suddenly have an issue of their own that is far more pressing than yours. An "emergency" that you must help them through. Purely as a diversion from your own needs, wants, and desires, because to them, it's dangerous for you to have anything of your own since it might pull you out of line with their agenda.
As an example of what this phenomenon looks like, I was talking to the most recent Toxic Asshole I had to remove from my life (before I finally got the guts to break away from them) about a depressive fit I was having that made me disappear for a few days. Her response was to tell me how much my absence had affected her, had triggered her depression. With some not-so-subtle hints and threats that Bad Shit Would Happen if I ever did it again.
She was fully aware that I was in a very fragile place mentally, and still proceeded to lay a guilt trip on me about being away for a few days. It's one of the many reasons we're not friends anymore.
Why? Because she could not let me have my own pain. She could not let me have my own problems, my own bad day. Because that meant I was my own person, and not a tool for her amusement.
But when the shoe is on the other foot...
3. It's OK If They Do It (Everyone Else Gets Crucified)
...Well. It's different then.
You remember that kid you used to play with at recess, who would change the rules of the game just so they could do shit you weren't allowed to in order to score more points? Well, the Toxic Asshole is the adult version. And instead of kickball, you're playing Risk: Social Life Edition. But otherwise, it's the same M.O.: they can break the rules, but not you.
In my case, the Toxic Asshole I dealt with was allowed to demand every waking moment of my time to deal with crisis after crisis. But if anybody so much as tried to talk about a problem of their own with her, they were asking far too much. Because she would then fake a panic attack or depressive episode to get out of the conversation.
She was also allowed to make other people's problems all about her, but if anybody else did that, they were manipulative and abusive. She was allowed to make cryptic talk about hurting herself purely to glean sympathy from others, but if other people deigned to talk about their problems just because they had nowhere else to go, they were attention whores. She could create a whole other social media account to bitch about specific people while still pretending to be friends with them, but if anyone talked about her behind her back, they were cowards (and manipulators/abusers). She can make cracks about the weight and sexual orientation of people she doesn't like, and it's not fat-shaming or homophobic purely because she's doing it.
The Toxic Asshole labors under the notion that every terrible thing they do is excusable or justified, but they are the only ones allowed to use such excuses or justifications. The rules they judge everyone else by do not apply to their own actions.
You remember Engywook's description of the Magic Mirror Gate from The Neverending Story? If not, here's a little walk down Wasted Childhood Lane:
Kind people find that they are cruel. Brave men discover that they are really cowards. Confronted with their true selves, most men run away screaming.The Toxic Asshole refuses to confront their true self, and creating loopholes in the rules just for them and nobody else is but one way of avoiding the Magic Mirror Gate (and thus, the Southern Oracle and the final piece of info they need to complete their quest).
But that's not going to last forever, because people are, by and large, not as stupid as the Toxic Asshole imagines. Sooner or later, they're going to wise up and figure out what's going on. And our Asshole is more than prepared for this eventuality because...
4. Everything Is Your Fault
In case you haven't guessed, I'm a pop-culture freak. The more obscure, the more it's up my alley. And the 2008 indie film The Gamers: Dorkness Rising illustrates my next point perfectly. If you've never seen it (and you really should), the gist is that the crew lost the campaign from the first film, and resident douchebag Cass demands a replay because he insists there is no game he can't win. Because one of the band's players is unavailable, they don't have the full quorum needed to restart. Cass recruits his ex-girlfriend Joanna as the final player, with the obvious intent to humiliate her and win the game because he assumes she's going to be a terrible, terrible newbie at it. Unfortunately for him she's a math-and-logic whiz, and being both a girl at a table full of geeks and not a douchebag, his plan backfires when she wins over the entire crew. Cass doesn't take it well (scene starts at 1:27:08 if you want to skip ahead):
Sound like any "friends" you might have?
When people start to get too suspicious of the Toxic Asshole's intentions, this is when they pull out one of their more devious tricks: the scapegoat.
Just like Cass in that meltdown, if you don't comply with the rules and allow them their loopholes, suddenly you are the one who is cheating. You are the one who's making the game not fun. You are the incompetent player. They might've flipped the table and ragequit, but it's all your fault for pissing them off.
Narcissistic projection is one of the more effective tools in the Toxic Asshole's arsenal. The one I dealt with flat-out accused her ex-girlfriend of things she did herself. It's yet another way to preserve their ideal selves and not have to face the music. If people start seeing through the hypocrisy, they just find some other donkey to pin the tail on.
And it works especially well because once a victim is stuck with the blame for everything, it's far easier to get them to accept responsibility for it, whether they're at fault or not. Which will serve to draw them deeper into the web (and consequently, it'll be that much tougher to get out).
5. You Are Responsible For Their Emotions
One thing you will never hear a Toxic Asshole say is "I was/got angry/annoyed/etc." Instead, their refrain will be "she/he pissed me off/annoyed me/etc." Because one of the hallmarks of toxic and abusive behavior is making other people responsible for their moods. It's one of the most insidious things in their playbook, because it accomplishes two goals: 1) absolving the Toxic Asshole of responsibility for themselves, and 2) laying a guilt trip on the particular minion they're trying to keep in line.
We all experience incidents where someone else's behavior is profoundly annoying/enraging/hurtful. But the effect it has on us -- our emotions -- are still ours. People who are not Toxic Assholes realize this on some level, and thus even when we are annoyed/angry/etc., we have ways of coping with it that don't drag other people kicking and screaming into the picture.
The Toxic Asshole refuses to use such coping mechanisms. Everything they do that's been said so far -- the constant emergencies, devaluing others' feelings, moving the goalposts to benefit themselves, and projecting their unacceptable behaviors onto others -- is all leading up to this, to making other people responsible for what they feel.
The particular Toxic Asshole in my life would fake suicide attempts and ideation to get attention, and then blame anyone who ignored her for why she felt awful. It was her way of guilting people into hanging around her, by taking advantage of their empathy and holding the fear of what she would do to herself if they left over their heads. This was especially effective on people like me, who had seriously considered and attempted suicide before. And frankly, those are exactly the kind of people she targets. The vulnerable. Those who have been abused at least once, and are thus prone to re-victimization. Especially those who have been emotionally violated.
Because people who have suffered abuse are pliable in that regard. They can be convinced to hold themselves responsible pretty easily, because someone else has already planted that seed. Someone else has already held them responsible for things they have no control over. Someone else has already used them as a scapegoat. To the rest of the world, that's messed the hell up. To the abused, that's just life.
And to the Toxic Asshole, that makes a mark ripe for the sniping. They're like a broken vase. Even if they've been repaired as much as possible, the cracks are still there. And those cracks are weak points. Hit them just right, and the whole thing will shatter all over again.
With the Toxic Asshole, nearly all of their friends will have this quality. See, while the Toxic Asshole is frighteningly good at what they do, they're also incredibly lazy. It's a rare thing when they choose a mark that has never been subject to the kind of tactics they use (and may therefore be perfectly capable of resisting them and telling the Toxic Asshole to get bent). Because it's way easier to break a vase that's been repaired than to shatter a brand new one.
6. Standing Up For Yourself Is Treason
So what happens when the mark has finally had all they can take, and refuses to play the dutiful boot-licking emotional whipping boy?
Oh, bitch it is on, then.
In the twisted world of narcissistic abusers, standing up to them is their kryptonite. Nothing will make a Toxic Asshole lose their shit quite like being challenged, and coming to the realization that all the gaslighting, manipulation, and guilt-tripping skills they've so carefully honed over the years no longer work.
That for all intents and purposes, they've lost.
At that point, the mask comes off and like the Grand High Witch, they're revealed for the pickled, maggot-ridden sack of putrefication they are.
That's when they'll either start the smear campaign against you by contacting all your friends and loved ones and telling them what a crazy bitch you are, or if they're too cowardly for that (like mine was), they'll go retreating back to their sycophantic fan club for the attention and sympathy fix that you're no longer providing.
And like any addict, they'll immediately start looking for a new source (provided they didn't have one lined up already, and many of them do).
See, your average well-adjusted person does not need constant attention. Your average well-adjusted person understands boundaries, and understands that simply being their friend doesn't entitle them to every spare moment you have. Nor does it make you their personal stress ball that they can squeeze every time they need to let off steam. An average well-adjusted person will see their friends as people rather than as appliances, tools, and characters in a TV show they control.
This is because the average well-adjusted person has confidence in themselves and their ability to be decent human beings, such that they don't have to seek constant reassurance from everyone. They're satisfied with who they are, enough that they don't need to warp reality into their own personal Holodeck.
Toxic Assholes, on the other hand, are thoroughly empty people. They have confidence in spades, but it's confidence in the same way aspartame is sweet.
Having a friendship with a Toxic Asshole is like starring in a movie helmed by the most nightmarish director you've ever had to work with. The script changes without warning, and your role is being constantly rewritten to suit their needs. At first you'll be cast as the loyal sidekick. If you get fed up and walk off the set, you'll get written out as a supervillain, for two reasons:
1) it absolves the Toxic Asshole of all responsibility
2) it makes an example of you to the rest of the film crew, detailing exactly what kind of treatment they can expect if they ever step out of line.
In my case, the Toxic Asshole I was friends with for entirely too long started devaluing and discarding me the minute I began withdrawing from her. I went from being the friend she went running to whenever an "emergency" presented itself to being berated for not being available and then finally talked up as the person who ruined her life. Purely because I was too emotionally exhausted to care and finally started taking my life back.
That's really the greatest tell for whether you have a Toxic Asshole on your hands. What happens when you try to set -- and more importantly, enforce -- healthy boundaries. If someone has an exaggeratedly awful reaction to being told "no?" That's your giant neon sign that they're a Toxic Asshole and you need to get out.
Because what it's taken me so long to realize is that normal people don't fucking do this.
Normal people don't flip their shit when you tell them not to bug you so you can get work done/go grocery shopping/bathe/use the bathroom/etc. Normal people don't flat-out ignore your "no" and keep pestering you even after you've said you'll be unavailable. Normal people don't threaten to hurt and kill themselves when they don't get their way. Normal people don't make you feel guilty, anxious, and worthless for having your own needs.
Standing up to a Toxic Asshole is the scariest goddamn thing you will ever do. Because you've been conditioned to fear losing their friendship and approval. You've been conditioned to value their opinion more than your own. They trained you as such in order to feed their ego.
But as scary as it is, it's also worth it. Because once you realize that their "friendship" is hollow, artificial, one-sided, and absolutely worth losing, the happier you'll be.
Thursday, October 8, 2015
Mental Health Awareness Week: Depression Is Not Sadness
Depression isn't sadness. Not even deep sadness. In fact, take the deepest sadness and grief and anguish you could possibly imagine, and that would be an improvement.
Why? Because even sadness and grief and anguish mean you still feel something.
Depression is having a steady supply of novocaine pumped into your skull where your brain should be.
Depression is the feeling that your body is a ten-ton weight you're dragging around.
Depression is not having the energy to attempt suicide.
Depression is looking at a plate of your favorite food and picking at it even though you're so hungry your stomach lining is trying to eat itself.
Depression is feeling like everything inside you has already died and you're just passing the time until your body catches on.
Depression is not even caring whether or not you care.
Depression is deliberately injuring yourself because even pain is better than nothing.
Depression is not being able to sleep past 5AM unless you've been awake longer than 20 hours prior.
Depression is not even sleeping so much as being occasionally unconscious.
Depression is whenever people talk about the future, you feel left out because you don't have one.
Depression is Hell.
Why? Because even sadness and grief and anguish mean you still feel something.
Depression is having a steady supply of novocaine pumped into your skull where your brain should be.
Depression is the feeling that your body is a ten-ton weight you're dragging around.
Depression is not having the energy to attempt suicide.
Depression is looking at a plate of your favorite food and picking at it even though you're so hungry your stomach lining is trying to eat itself.
Depression is feeling like everything inside you has already died and you're just passing the time until your body catches on.
Depression is not even caring whether or not you care.
Depression is deliberately injuring yourself because even pain is better than nothing.
Depression is not being able to sleep past 5AM unless you've been awake longer than 20 hours prior.
Depression is not even sleeping so much as being occasionally unconscious.
Depression is whenever people talk about the future, you feel left out because you don't have one.
Depression is Hell.
Friday, August 21, 2015
5 Horrible Things You Learn From Surviving a Suicide Attempt
I was on my way home from work one day and feeling like frozen, thawed, and then partially reheated shit when I walked out in front of a speeding bus.
The driver fortunately had good enough reflexes not to hit my ass, so I’m still alive and unharmed and able to write this article for your entertainment. The way we talk about suicide as a society -- everything from the Saw franchise to the speculation regarding Robin Williams’ death last August -- makes it seem as though killing yourself is like becoming a Jedi. Do, or do not. There is no ‘try.’
That...is really the furthest thing from the truth. There are plenty of tries, with varying degrees of seriousness. And as long as you’re still alive and you still feel like parboiled shit, you’re at risk for trying again and eventually getting it right. Because even though suicide has been around as long as we have as a species, we still have a very poor understanding of what it takes for self-preservation, the strongest force in biology, to fail. Mostly because suicide is one of those things where people who succeed can’t exactly come back and tell us what the fuck happened.
But for people who fail at it? Well, read on.
The reality is that for a lot of people, the decision to kill themselves gets made in the same way college students decide to get a tattoo (including copious amounts of alcohol). The whole “this is fucking permanent” thing doesn’t really register, except in the final moments before the noose tightens/you hit the water/the car crashes/the last pill goes down your throat/the gun goes off.
In my case? I just didn’t give a shit what happened anymore as long as I wasn’t going to be around to deal with it. I hadn’t been planning to walk in front of that bus until I actually did it. My thought process literally went something like this: There’s a bus coming. If I don’t stop walking it’ll kill me. Oh well.
It was only afterward, when everyone in a 10-foot radius was freaking the fuck out because holy shit some girl we ride with every day almost got clipped by a bus, that I realized what had even happened. And I went along with the assumption that I hadn’t been paying attention because it’s easier to admit you’re a fucking idiot than admit to being depressed. But that’s a rant for another day. Point is, I didn’t plan months in advance that I was going to walk in front of a city bus and end it all. I made that decision quite literally on the fifteen-minute bus ride over there. It was a spur-of-the-moment choice when I was at rock bottom, still digging, didn’t think I had anyone around to stop me, and I was past caring.
We never consider that our brother who manages to drag his ass out of bed every day to get to work may be thinking of ending it all because he hates his job but it’s the only place that would hire him, and he’s buried under a mountain of student loan debt that his children will be paying off when he’s 90. We never consider that our sister who is bubbly and funny and sweet and dorky just wants to make the world forget about her because she can’t see that her company is appreciated, and feels as though the world would be a much better place if she was no longer in it.
People with depression learn to be very good at hiding their pain. Often because when we do bring it up, we invite all of the stigma associated with it. We’re lazy. We complain too much. We’re too negative. We need to just get the fuck over it and make ourselves useful. So we learn quickly that it’s easier to put up and shut up.
When the bus missed me, everyone on the street -- people I rode with regularly -- just assumed I hadn’t been paying attention. I got told how lucky I was. How “God gave you another chance today.” I got asked what the hell I was doing. And all the while I wanted to just scream at them “IT WAS DELIBERATE, YOU STUPID FUCKS, STOP RUBBING MY FACE IN IT!”
But I didn’t, because I didn’t want to get hauled off in a squad car down to a psych ward for treatment I can’t afford. And also because telling well-meaning people who are happy you’re not a stain on the pavement to stop being glad you’re alive is kind of a dick move.
But the point is that I didn’t look like the classic preconceived image of a depressed person. I didn’t look or act like someone who was fed up enough with her life to walk in front of a three-ton speeding death bullet on purpose and give absolutely zero fucks. So the thought that “hey, this girl might’ve been trying to get herself killed” never crossed their minds. And there’s no reason it really should, either. Because in the world of people who aren’t depressed, who the fuck even does that? It’s easier and less painful to just assume I’m some dipshit who didn’t see the bus coming. And from my point of view, it was easier and less painful for me not to correct them.
I was mad at myself for not succeeding. And I couldn’t simply do it again right that second because now people were on alert, and I’d have less of a chance than I did before with the element of surprise.
Life is not like the Saw films, where the title character survives a suicidal car wreck to come out with a new outlook on life and a drive to make people mutilate themselves in order to prove how much they don’t want to die. I survived a suicide attempt to turn around and hate myself and life even more than I did before. I felt like a coward, for choosing a passive method and not being brave enough to just do it.
And that’s all part of depression. Of finding every stupid thing you’ve done and/or failed at and believing those deeds to be all you’re capable of. Like the Dementors from the Harry Potter series (which Rowling totally intended as a metaphor for her own battle with the disorder). A depressed person could literally find the cure for AIDS and win a Nobel Prize and they would still feel stupid and worthless and hopeless because of the one time they tried to make an omelette and burned it so badly they had to throw out pan and all.
“But that’s irrational!”, you would say. And you’d be correct. Of course it’s irrational. That’s why it’s a mental illness.
That’s another part of why seeking help for depression is so fucking difficult. I’ve often likened it to that kid who used to poke you in the back of the neck with a pencil in math class. Only now he’s using an icepick. It’s a little inner head-voice that is constantly telling you what a worthless piece of shit you are. And eventually you develop a kind of Stockholm Syndrome towards it by agreeing with it just to shut it up for a while. And every time someone tries to do something to make you feel better, even as small as giving you a compliment, up pops that voice again. Feeding you a line about their true motives, and that they couldn’t possibly legit care about you because who the fuck does that? And once again, you start agreeing to make it shut up. And you begin to resent the very people trying to help you because you think they’re wasting their time on a lost cause like you. You don’t want help. You just want to die.
It’s a little like having an abusive spouse. Only that spouse lives in your head and you have to stand by and defend them because you have nobody else. And again, that’s another function of depression. It isolates you. It makes you feel detached from the world at large, like you don’t belong with other people. And you start to hate anyone who tries to get past the barbed wire, electrified fencing, ten-foot-thick steel walls, gun turrets, and lasers that your abusive head-spouse has set up to keep everyone out so they can have you all to themselves.
Because how dare these people talk bad about your beau. Even when he’s metaphorically (and sometimes literally) beating the shit out of you.
And like the infomercial, the product is a total ripoff and you can’t return it.
Getting help is hard. Because literally everything in you is going to fight against getting better. That abusive head-spouse has been a part of you for so long that you feel like you won’t even know who you are anymore if you get rid of it. But that’s the thing: you really can’t get rid of it, not completely. And any healthcare professional who claims to be able to ‘fix’ your depression needs to be reported to the state board to get their license revoked. No amount of medication or talk therapy is going to rewire your brain chemistry to make you not depressed anymore. The goal of mental healthcare is management, not a cure.
And what you have to learn to do when managing depression is to ignore the voice or make it shut up without capitulating to it. It’s giving the abusive head-spouse his own room with the door walled shut and ignoring his screaming about what a bitch you are for keeping him cooped up like that (alternating with crocodile tears and blatantly false promises to not call you a bitch anymore if you let him out). And sometimes, even with help, that voice is still going to be hard to ignore.
If you want a new lease on life, you have to make a down payment. And by the time you get around to taking out that loan, your credit is shot. So your down payment and fees for the first few months (maybe years) are going to be through the goddamn roof. But unlike that piece of junk on the infomercial, a new life is worth every last red cent. And it does eventually get easier to make the payments each month. Though some months will be more difficult than others. Even with treatment, there will be relapses (which is what happened to me).
The hardest part is filling out that initial application because it means admitting just how shitty you feel. When I first started receiving treatment, my general physician had to wheedle it out of me. All the signs were there; but until I admitted to what was happening and stopped blaming my razor scars on my cat, his hands were tied.
I had to want to get better. I had to say I wasn’t going to take my abusive head-spouse back anymore. I had to make that decision entirely on my own. And it was the single hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life because it meant standing up for myself, against myself.
That’s really what depression is in the end. You are literally battling your own mind. Every day. From the minute you wake up to the minute you go back to sleep. The part of you that wants to live is fighting the part of you that wants to die. Occasionally, that second part gets the upper hand.
Surviving a suicide attempt isn’t the failure it feels like at first. What it really means is that you still have some fight left in you. There is still a part of you that isn’t quite ready to give up yet. A part of you that hasn’t lost all hope. That self-preservation instinct is still there.
That’s the exact opposite of failure; it’s the ultimate triumph of the human spirit.
The driver fortunately had good enough reflexes not to hit my ass, so I’m still alive and unharmed and able to write this article for your entertainment. The way we talk about suicide as a society -- everything from the Saw franchise to the speculation regarding Robin Williams’ death last August -- makes it seem as though killing yourself is like becoming a Jedi. Do, or do not. There is no ‘try.’
That...is really the furthest thing from the truth. There are plenty of tries, with varying degrees of seriousness. And as long as you’re still alive and you still feel like parboiled shit, you’re at risk for trying again and eventually getting it right. Because even though suicide has been around as long as we have as a species, we still have a very poor understanding of what it takes for self-preservation, the strongest force in biology, to fail. Mostly because suicide is one of those things where people who succeed can’t exactly come back and tell us what the fuck happened.
But for people who fail at it? Well, read on.
- Suicide Is Rarely Planned (At Least Not in Great Detail)
The reality is that for a lot of people, the decision to kill themselves gets made in the same way college students decide to get a tattoo (including copious amounts of alcohol). The whole “this is fucking permanent” thing doesn’t really register, except in the final moments before the noose tightens/you hit the water/the car crashes/the last pill goes down your throat/the gun goes off.
In my case? I just didn’t give a shit what happened anymore as long as I wasn’t going to be around to deal with it. I hadn’t been planning to walk in front of that bus until I actually did it. My thought process literally went something like this: There’s a bus coming. If I don’t stop walking it’ll kill me. Oh well.
It was only afterward, when everyone in a 10-foot radius was freaking the fuck out because holy shit some girl we ride with every day almost got clipped by a bus, that I realized what had even happened. And I went along with the assumption that I hadn’t been paying attention because it’s easier to admit you’re a fucking idiot than admit to being depressed. But that’s a rant for another day. Point is, I didn’t plan months in advance that I was going to walk in front of a city bus and end it all. I made that decision quite literally on the fifteen-minute bus ride over there. It was a spur-of-the-moment choice when I was at rock bottom, still digging, didn’t think I had anyone around to stop me, and I was past caring.
- People Will Doubt You’re Suicidal If You Don’t Seem Depressed Enough
We never consider that our brother who manages to drag his ass out of bed every day to get to work may be thinking of ending it all because he hates his job but it’s the only place that would hire him, and he’s buried under a mountain of student loan debt that his children will be paying off when he’s 90. We never consider that our sister who is bubbly and funny and sweet and dorky just wants to make the world forget about her because she can’t see that her company is appreciated, and feels as though the world would be a much better place if she was no longer in it.
People with depression learn to be very good at hiding their pain. Often because when we do bring it up, we invite all of the stigma associated with it. We’re lazy. We complain too much. We’re too negative. We need to just get the fuck over it and make ourselves useful. So we learn quickly that it’s easier to put up and shut up.
When the bus missed me, everyone on the street -- people I rode with regularly -- just assumed I hadn’t been paying attention. I got told how lucky I was. How “God gave you another chance today.” I got asked what the hell I was doing. And all the while I wanted to just scream at them “IT WAS DELIBERATE, YOU STUPID FUCKS, STOP RUBBING MY FACE IN IT!”
But I didn’t, because I didn’t want to get hauled off in a squad car down to a psych ward for treatment I can’t afford. And also because telling well-meaning people who are happy you’re not a stain on the pavement to stop being glad you’re alive is kind of a dick move.
But the point is that I didn’t look like the classic preconceived image of a depressed person. I didn’t look or act like someone who was fed up enough with her life to walk in front of a three-ton speeding death bullet on purpose and give absolutely zero fucks. So the thought that “hey, this girl might’ve been trying to get herself killed” never crossed their minds. And there’s no reason it really should, either. Because in the world of people who aren’t depressed, who the fuck even does that? It’s easier and less painful to just assume I’m some dipshit who didn’t see the bus coming. And from my point of view, it was easier and less painful for me not to correct them.
- You Will Hate Yourself For Failing
I was mad at myself for not succeeding. And I couldn’t simply do it again right that second because now people were on alert, and I’d have less of a chance than I did before with the element of surprise.
Life is not like the Saw films, where the title character survives a suicidal car wreck to come out with a new outlook on life and a drive to make people mutilate themselves in order to prove how much they don’t want to die. I survived a suicide attempt to turn around and hate myself and life even more than I did before. I felt like a coward, for choosing a passive method and not being brave enough to just do it.
And that’s all part of depression. Of finding every stupid thing you’ve done and/or failed at and believing those deeds to be all you’re capable of. Like the Dementors from the Harry Potter series (which Rowling totally intended as a metaphor for her own battle with the disorder). A depressed person could literally find the cure for AIDS and win a Nobel Prize and they would still feel stupid and worthless and hopeless because of the one time they tried to make an omelette and burned it so badly they had to throw out pan and all.
“But that’s irrational!”, you would say. And you’d be correct. Of course it’s irrational. That’s why it’s a mental illness.
- You Will Hate Other People For Wanting to Help You
That’s another part of why seeking help for depression is so fucking difficult. I’ve often likened it to that kid who used to poke you in the back of the neck with a pencil in math class. Only now he’s using an icepick. It’s a little inner head-voice that is constantly telling you what a worthless piece of shit you are. And eventually you develop a kind of Stockholm Syndrome towards it by agreeing with it just to shut it up for a while. And every time someone tries to do something to make you feel better, even as small as giving you a compliment, up pops that voice again. Feeding you a line about their true motives, and that they couldn’t possibly legit care about you because who the fuck does that? And once again, you start agreeing to make it shut up. And you begin to resent the very people trying to help you because you think they’re wasting their time on a lost cause like you. You don’t want help. You just want to die.
It’s a little like having an abusive spouse. Only that spouse lives in your head and you have to stand by and defend them because you have nobody else. And again, that’s another function of depression. It isolates you. It makes you feel detached from the world at large, like you don’t belong with other people. And you start to hate anyone who tries to get past the barbed wire, electrified fencing, ten-foot-thick steel walls, gun turrets, and lasers that your abusive head-spouse has set up to keep everyone out so they can have you all to themselves.
Because how dare these people talk bad about your beau. Even when he’s metaphorically (and sometimes literally) beating the shit out of you.
- Getting Help Is the Hardest Thing You Will Ever Do (But It's Worth It)
And like the infomercial, the product is a total ripoff and you can’t return it.
Getting help is hard. Because literally everything in you is going to fight against getting better. That abusive head-spouse has been a part of you for so long that you feel like you won’t even know who you are anymore if you get rid of it. But that’s the thing: you really can’t get rid of it, not completely. And any healthcare professional who claims to be able to ‘fix’ your depression needs to be reported to the state board to get their license revoked. No amount of medication or talk therapy is going to rewire your brain chemistry to make you not depressed anymore. The goal of mental healthcare is management, not a cure.
And what you have to learn to do when managing depression is to ignore the voice or make it shut up without capitulating to it. It’s giving the abusive head-spouse his own room with the door walled shut and ignoring his screaming about what a bitch you are for keeping him cooped up like that (alternating with crocodile tears and blatantly false promises to not call you a bitch anymore if you let him out). And sometimes, even with help, that voice is still going to be hard to ignore.
If you want a new lease on life, you have to make a down payment. And by the time you get around to taking out that loan, your credit is shot. So your down payment and fees for the first few months (maybe years) are going to be through the goddamn roof. But unlike that piece of junk on the infomercial, a new life is worth every last red cent. And it does eventually get easier to make the payments each month. Though some months will be more difficult than others. Even with treatment, there will be relapses (which is what happened to me).
The hardest part is filling out that initial application because it means admitting just how shitty you feel. When I first started receiving treatment, my general physician had to wheedle it out of me. All the signs were there; but until I admitted to what was happening and stopped blaming my razor scars on my cat, his hands were tied.
I had to want to get better. I had to say I wasn’t going to take my abusive head-spouse back anymore. I had to make that decision entirely on my own. And it was the single hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life because it meant standing up for myself, against myself.
That’s really what depression is in the end. You are literally battling your own mind. Every day. From the minute you wake up to the minute you go back to sleep. The part of you that wants to live is fighting the part of you that wants to die. Occasionally, that second part gets the upper hand.
Surviving a suicide attempt isn’t the failure it feels like at first. What it really means is that you still have some fight left in you. There is still a part of you that isn’t quite ready to give up yet. A part of you that hasn’t lost all hope. That self-preservation instinct is still there.
That’s the exact opposite of failure; it’s the ultimate triumph of the human spirit.
Friday, June 26, 2015
Love Conquers All
It's the law of the land, now: marriage is a right for all, not just a privilege of heterosexual people.
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court made it clear in a 5-4 decision that banning a couple from marrying purely because their genitals match is the absolute bollocks that we've all known it as. As a lesbian, this means a lot. As a kid, I always said that "I don't ever want to get married." What I meant but didn't feel free to say at the time was "I don't ever want to get married to a man." SCOTUS has now ruled that I can marry a woman instead, no matter what state I live in, and every other state in the country must recognize it. That's huge.
Besides the obvious squeeing because equal rights fucking finally, I'd also like to take this time to assuage the right-wing butthurt out there of what marriage equality does and doesn't mean:
1) No, you will not be required to host a same-sex wedding in your church.
I know the very idea may blow your mind to itty bitty pieces, but churches are not a requirement of legal marriage, and there are a fuckton of people who get married every day without ever setting foot in one. Marriage equality is referring specifically to having the law recognize a couple as married. What the decision requires is for every court in every county in every state in the country to issue a marriage license regardless of the couple's sex, and for every other court in every other county in every other state in the country to acknowledge that the couple is married, regardless of the couple's sex.
2) No, you can't marry dogs and children.
In order to legally marry, both parties must be legally elligible to enter a contract. Meaning that both must be of consenting age (minimum varies by state, and requires parental consent/witness if a minor), and must be of sound mind (basically the rules of elligibility for entering a contract, period). Children and dogs fulfill neither of these requirements, ergo nobody can marry them.
3) No, this decision does not legalize incest.
Here's the part where that whole "equal protection" thing comes into play. Incest prohibitions treat everybody equally. If you are prohibited from marrying because of incest, it doesn't matter who you are. What makes it discrimination is when the rule only applies to some people but not to others.
Saying you can't marry your sister is like saying you can't buy a ham sandwich at a kosher deli. Nobody can marry their sister, and nobody can buy a ham sandwich at a kosher deli. If nobody can do it, it's not discrimination, purely because the rule applies to everyone. Ergo, that law isn't going away anytime soon (nevermind that incestuous relationships are inherently non-consensual, so you're not even comparing apples to other fruit, here).
In the case of same-sex marriage, what makes it discrimination is the denial of a marriage license that would otherwise be granted if the exact same couple was heterosexual.
And now for the more fun part. What this ruling does mean is that gay couples now receive the same benefits that straight ones do. Here are just a few of those benefits, and the ramifications of more people having them:
- Next-of-kin rights. Previously, if one half of a gay couple suffered an illness or injury that rendered them comatose, unless they had an advanced directive written out, their partner did not have the right to make a medical decision such as pulling them off a respirator. What this meant is that the family who kicked them out of the house for being gay could now force them to live as a vegetable, even when their partner of 30+ years knows they wouldn't have wanted such a thing. And if the injured/ill half of the couple landed in ICU, the partner of 30+ years wouldn't even be allowed to visit them.
Now that gay couples can marry, you don't have this problem. The person who ideally knows them best -- the person they vowed to spend the rest of their life with -- can step in and make the decision they know is right.
- Immigration. Gay couples wherein one party is a U.S. citizen now have an avenue for gaining permanent resident or citizenship status for the other half, since they can now marry.
- Joint tax filing. Gay couples can now file a joint tax return and enjoy all the tax breaks straight couples get. This means gay couples can improve their financial station by tying the knot, which means economic stimulus since they'll have more money than they did while single.
- Spousal privilege in court. Communication between spouses is inadmissible in criminal and civil court proceedings.
And that's just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
Bottom line is that history got made today, and lots of lives are being made better for it. The tide has turned. It's not going back. You can either swim with it or drown, and frankly we're too busy picking out china patterns to care which one you choose.
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court made it clear in a 5-4 decision that banning a couple from marrying purely because their genitals match is the absolute bollocks that we've all known it as. As a lesbian, this means a lot. As a kid, I always said that "I don't ever want to get married." What I meant but didn't feel free to say at the time was "I don't ever want to get married to a man." SCOTUS has now ruled that I can marry a woman instead, no matter what state I live in, and every other state in the country must recognize it. That's huge.
Besides the obvious squeeing because equal rights fucking finally, I'd also like to take this time to assuage the right-wing butthurt out there of what marriage equality does and doesn't mean:
1) No, you will not be required to host a same-sex wedding in your church.
I know the very idea may blow your mind to itty bitty pieces, but churches are not a requirement of legal marriage, and there are a fuckton of people who get married every day without ever setting foot in one. Marriage equality is referring specifically to having the law recognize a couple as married. What the decision requires is for every court in every county in every state in the country to issue a marriage license regardless of the couple's sex, and for every other court in every other county in every other state in the country to acknowledge that the couple is married, regardless of the couple's sex.
2) No, you can't marry dogs and children.
In order to legally marry, both parties must be legally elligible to enter a contract. Meaning that both must be of consenting age (minimum varies by state, and requires parental consent/witness if a minor), and must be of sound mind (basically the rules of elligibility for entering a contract, period). Children and dogs fulfill neither of these requirements, ergo nobody can marry them.
3) No, this decision does not legalize incest.
Here's the part where that whole "equal protection" thing comes into play. Incest prohibitions treat everybody equally. If you are prohibited from marrying because of incest, it doesn't matter who you are. What makes it discrimination is when the rule only applies to some people but not to others.
Saying you can't marry your sister is like saying you can't buy a ham sandwich at a kosher deli. Nobody can marry their sister, and nobody can buy a ham sandwich at a kosher deli. If nobody can do it, it's not discrimination, purely because the rule applies to everyone. Ergo, that law isn't going away anytime soon (nevermind that incestuous relationships are inherently non-consensual, so you're not even comparing apples to other fruit, here).
In the case of same-sex marriage, what makes it discrimination is the denial of a marriage license that would otherwise be granted if the exact same couple was heterosexual.
And now for the more fun part. What this ruling does mean is that gay couples now receive the same benefits that straight ones do. Here are just a few of those benefits, and the ramifications of more people having them:
- Next-of-kin rights. Previously, if one half of a gay couple suffered an illness or injury that rendered them comatose, unless they had an advanced directive written out, their partner did not have the right to make a medical decision such as pulling them off a respirator. What this meant is that the family who kicked them out of the house for being gay could now force them to live as a vegetable, even when their partner of 30+ years knows they wouldn't have wanted such a thing. And if the injured/ill half of the couple landed in ICU, the partner of 30+ years wouldn't even be allowed to visit them.
Now that gay couples can marry, you don't have this problem. The person who ideally knows them best -- the person they vowed to spend the rest of their life with -- can step in and make the decision they know is right.
- Immigration. Gay couples wherein one party is a U.S. citizen now have an avenue for gaining permanent resident or citizenship status for the other half, since they can now marry.
- Joint tax filing. Gay couples can now file a joint tax return and enjoy all the tax breaks straight couples get. This means gay couples can improve their financial station by tying the knot, which means economic stimulus since they'll have more money than they did while single.
- Spousal privilege in court. Communication between spouses is inadmissible in criminal and civil court proceedings.
And that's just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
Bottom line is that history got made today, and lots of lives are being made better for it. The tide has turned. It's not going back. You can either swim with it or drown, and frankly we're too busy picking out china patterns to care which one you choose.
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