Why is so much “inspirational” material so ableist?

Let me start by saying that I respect people’s need for re-framing techniques and stress management. I really do. Even people who are mentally and physically average through and through who have no notable impairments whatsoever still get into very bad situations and struggle to cope. I don’t begrudge all of them their coping. However, sometimes their very public displays of coping run headfirst into my coping and others’ coping and make it harder. It is at that point that it becomes a problem.

I will share a few prominent strains of ableism I’m observed in inspirational materials.

1) Erasure of the disabled/the possibility that disability exists

One graphic, typical of the genre, reads “if you want to be happy, be.” This may make some kind of sense to someone who is psychologically healthy, but is complete balderdash to someone with a painful and severe mental illness.  The assumption that everyone has an unlimited potential for emotional regulation is really irritating. If this statement makes sense to you, why not just enjoy your mental control and capacity for self regulation? Why broadly share this thing that erases the reality of others who struggle profoundly with emotional regulation?

Another graphic cheerfully pronounces that “you (presumably anyone) are only one workout away from a good mood.” Again, while that may be true for some portion of the population, many are embroiled in a protracted battle for mood stabilization for which there is no “cheat,” while many others are forced to endure excruciating exercises in service of debilitating health conditions. Someone may not see the big deal here, but these microagressions and moments of isolation for one person who has severe depression and another person with a newer prosthetic limb really add up to quite a shit pile of bad feels.

Another common inspirational phrase “pain is just weakness leaving your body” is the kind of thing you would feel very rude saying to someone going through chemotherapy, or with fibromyalgia or rheumatoid arthritis, but people do that exact thing every day by broadly sharing these image macros.

2) Content that really takes an unfortunate, discouraging meaning when it collides with a disabled person

This fitness inspirational graphic loudly pronounces “you earn your body.” While, on its own, it is already pretty rude and has a substantial whiff of fat shaming, it is an enormous, egregious “fuck you” to anyone with a physical disability.

This emotional regulation mantra “positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will” may seem like a gentle reminder, an obvious truism to someone who is mentally healthy. To someone with severe anxiety or depression, it’s like someone is gloating about their superior ability. It’s like they’re sort of rubbing it in that your disability presents obstacles to your functioning.

Another one that takes a very unfortunate meaning for people living with severe anxiety, this graphic reads “A head full of fears has no space for dreams.” This is a pretty harsh message of hopelessness for a fear disordered person, in service of a flowery reminder to the abled to chill out occasionally. Is it really necessary?

3) Brazen exploitation

This graphic shows two pictures of one legged men, possibly the same man. The one on the left is average in build but the one on the right is an advanced body builder. It is meant to resemble a “before and after” fitness comparison and is labeled with the phrase “excuses: let’s hear yours again.” First of all, I’m not convinced these are even the same guy, not because men with one leg can’t go from being average to being body builders, but because it just doesn’t look like the same guy to me. The idea that someone might juxtapose two disabled guys, conflating them as more or less the same because leg, and using them this way is staggeringly gross, but I can’t prove it. Second, and more importantly, I’m not sure why the man in the “after” picture became a body builder, but it is very unlikely that he did it in order to scold people who “make excuses” not to work out. It was clearly something that was very important to him and probably very personal. Repurposing his image and story in this way (and probably without his permission) is extremely exploitative.

This graphic features what looks like probably a stock photo of a guy in a wheelchair superimposed with the quote “The only disability in life is a bad attitude.” This quote is attributed to Scott Hamilton, a guy who is not only not a disabled person, but is an elite olympic athlete, an industry notoriously inaccessible to the physically disabled (yes, I do know there are exceptions). Needless to say, people in wheelchairs aren’t using them for your uplifting moments or daily affirmations. They’re just using them. To live their lives. Don’t exploit that to simulate sentimentality.

4) stigma/aversion

There is an abundance of inspirational material that seems to advise people to shun people with emotional difficulties, for fear of their contagion. Sure, one can argue that these images are speaking about meanies and haters as opposed to disabled people trapped in a depressive funk or an anxiety loop, but that is rarely clear. If that’s the case, why leave the ambiguity?

This graphic reads “you can’t keep a clean reputation hanging out with messy people”

This one reads “the less you respond to negative people, the more peaceful your life will become.”

This one reads “Protect your spirit from contamination. Limit your time with negative people.”

So, enough of this shit, alright? Like if you enjoy it privately and it holds a constrained, non-ableist meaning for you, that’s cool, but if you blast it in a public forum, it’s going to hit some people. Peace.

I don’t feel sorry for cops.

I’m tired of constantly being fed this narrative about how hard it is to be a cop and how me must pity and coddle them while we beg for our lives and our rights and those of our friends.

I’m tired of being told that we must always, always at every turn remember that some of them are good, although the “good” ones are constantly using this statement as a way to shut down and derail criticism of the definitely bad cops.

I’m tired of hearing that they’re all really heroes, and that it is necessary to occasionally spill the blood of black innocents on the altar of that heroism, because they’re so, so desperately afraid that mistakes get made.

Let me start to explain a few reasons why I refuse to play out this melodrama anymore.

Let’s start with that underpaid, overworked, tired and battered shit, shall we?

As it turns out, the junior-most, lowest paid 10% of cops are earning a little more than 33k a year, which is at least 50% more than an E2 (army enlisted officer, second rank), for reference. That’s right! The guy that arrested you at the “fight for 15″ rally is earning, at the absolute lowest, more than 15. And that’s the low end. The middle of the road for police is more like 55k, which is about twice what a newly minted E6 (staff sergeant) makes in the army. Police higher up the chain can earn all the way into six figures.

“But they’re putting their life on the line every day!” you might say

Did you know that store clerks are more than twice as likely to be homicide victims on the job when compared to police? No one seems to think about this when they go into retail, but it’s one of the worst jobs out there for murder risk. The same BLS statistics show that more police die in roadway accidents than are homicide victims. Even with the roadway and homicide deaths combined, more people are dying in the course of retail work. As far as overall death rates, including traffic incidents, loggers and fishers each have more than twice the workplace fatalities that police do.

Everyone please stop. TW: molestation

With the best of intentions, right now everyone is combing through graphic accounts of sexual abuse of a younger sibling of a famous person, posting and reposting and reposting these visceral vignettes in the hopes, I think, of bringing the perpetrator to justice.

If what I think about that is unclear from the tone of that first sentence, I’ll just say, everyone please stop.

This sibling is not a willing participant in this dialogue. This is not her graphic, willing account, that she shared publicly. Everyone loves justice, but, you know, you can’t really have justice that tramples on survivors of sexual abuse. Justice doesn’t work that way. Everyone take a step back and a deep breath.

I will be your willing participant. I will tell you a little bit about what it’s like to be molested by another kid, who was probably herself molested and probably didn’t realize she was molesting me.

It is weird. It feels very bad. I knew in the moment that it was weird and that it felt very bad, but I didn’t know that I had been molested. Not exactly. Not until much later. Today may be the day that this younger sibling of this celebrity has a realization, like I did, that she was molested. And she needs privacy, and she needs space, and she needs time to figure out what she needs. She may not want righteous vengeance on her abuser. I didn’t. To this day I pity the girl who molested me and wonder if she’s okay. Maybe you don’t see how someone could pity someone like that, but it’s my choice how I feel and it’s the sister’s choice how she feels.

The girl who molested me and her cousin (also a girl) who helped, clearly recycled someone else’s grooming techniques. They told me that it was a game, and that my struggle to get free was a part of the game, and that my shock and panic and discomfort was a part of the game. When I reflected back on the experience, it was clear to me that someone else had played the “game” with them. When you’re really young, you’re taught to believe and obey whatever older people say, and I think they believed that it was a game, because an older person or people had instructed them to believe it. A lot of things can become normal when you’re young and in a dysfunctional environment.

I personally would not feel empowered by the entire internet turning a forensic lens on my life. I would not feel empowered by them going for the heads of the girl who molested me and her cousin who helped. I think they are probably as messed up right now as I am, and even if they are not, I don’t want to be consumed as some sort of righteous anger pornography.

So everyone please stop. Only do this kind of thing with affirmative consent.

On Jian and the pervasive cultural vigilance against false allegations

People like to say that rape/abuse allegation ruin lives. They don’t, at least not today. They did ruin SOME lives back in the era where we were looking for an excuse to lynch people, or when police were more comfortable closing a case by fabricating evidence against any old black person, but thankfully our collective humanity has increased in this country just an inch past that. We’re starting to release some of these folks that were falsely imprisoned, but are now exonerated by DNA evidence. We have only had access to this technology for about 20 years, and though it has been instrumental in solving crimes, genetic labs are woefully underfunded. The lack of funding for DNA testing directly reflects the priorities of justice agencies everywhere, who are not interested at all in prosecuting rapes or freeing innocent black men.

I can at least understand why some black people would be haunted by the threat of racist violence, and I wanted to acknowledge that, but in my experience, it is usually white guys who are constantly warning me that I need to be careful about whom I believe, because someone (not the rape survivor, because fuck them) could really get hurt.

Here are a few reasons why I don’t think false rape allegations are this pressing epidemic, rampantly “ruining lives” anymore.

1) Because TRUE rape allegations aren’t ruining lives

Look at Roman Polanski, who was crowned king of the martyrs after he raped a young teen and simply fled the country to avoid his inevitable prosecution, taking an extended vacay to France. Look at Julian Assange. Look at R. Kelly. Look at Woody Allen. Look at Eldridge Cleaver. Look at Ben Roethlisberger. Look at Robert H. Richards IV. Look at Ma’Lik Richmond. Ask any of your survivor friends what happened to their rapists. Almost always, the answer is that nothing happened to them and that they’re fine.

Even when as many as about half of survivors are reporting their rapes to the police, only about 3% of rapists are spending any time at all in jail, including those simply being held until the day of their trial and then being given a no jail or time served sentence. It’s rare to see a divorce ensue, somewhat less so if the abuse is intrafamilial.

2) Because people are not afraid of telling people that they’ve been accused

If the very whisper of rape and abuse were enough to ruin someone forever, why are people so comfortable perpetuating such whispers about themselves? People jump at the opportunity to talk about how they were falsely accused once, or how some friend gave an account of being falsely accused, when the topic of rape is brought up . Maybe that doesn’t seem weird to you, but re-contextualize it just a little. Let’s think about a really damaging rumor.

Let’s imagine that that your boss decides he hates you and tells everyone you stole thousands of dollars from your charity-funded daycare for kids with cancer so you could buy heroin. That’s a damaging accusation! If an employer heard about that, they definitely wouldn’t hire you, even while not having any hard evidence. People would be hesitant to invite you into their homes, because they would be worried that you steal stuff, or that you’ll be in any of the unpleasant stages of heroin use. Your family would be scrutinizing the shit out of your actions, at the very least. That’s why, if you had such a boss make that kind of accusation against you, you probably wouldn’t bring it up in casual conversation. You wouldn’t be like, “hey… since they’re saying Robert Downey Jr. is on drugs, I just want to let you know that you should reserve your judgement, because at this daycare for cancer kids where I used to work…”

Blabbing about it all over town is not the behavior of an innocent person who has been nearly ruined by a conspiracy. An innocent person who has been nearly ruined by a conspiracy will run like hell, look for people who are untouched by it, and pray that they are out of its grips. Which brings me to my third point…

3) “False” allegations are usually not so false.

So if you’ve never had the experience of telling folks about a rape, I’ll tell you how it generally goes. You tell someone, or a few people, and you expect that they will envelop you in protective love so that you can not deal with anything other than putting your life back together. If you elect to tell the cops, you expect that they will lock up the person and you will have a decent shot at getting a night’s sleep.

None of that happens. No one believes you and shit gets really weird, really fast. There are a million questions, and many are intrusive to a degree that make you want to absolutely die. Some people start to avoid you. There are a lot of whispers and hushed conversations. There’s a lot of gaslighting. The police do whatever they can to get rid of you. They don’t want your case and they don’t want your crime stats in their district. So people recant. People say, “You know, this is not helping me, so fuck it. Ignore what I said.” And everyone breathes a huge sigh of relief. But that retraction goes in the books as a false accusation.

Similarly, there are other times when people are just kind of looking for loopholes where some really obviously shitty behavior “doesn’t count” as rape or abuse. They will cling to their loophole in a very self righteous manner, because they were so, so careful, in their mind, to avoid culpability. They’re mad because it didn’t work out that way, even though they think they have “followed the rules”. That is bad enough, but what’s worse is that they’re often factually incorrect in their belief that they didn’t commit the textbook definition of these acts. They have deluded themselves into thinking a man can’t rape someone he’s had consensual sex with before, or that it’s not rape to do that to someone who is in and out of consciousness, or that someone who comes back to your apartment alone with you has given you consent to do whatever by the sheer act of being there under those circumstances, or that sex stops when the man has ejaculated so when the other person says to stop, that means the man just needs to “hurry up” and keep fucking for several non consensual minutes until he is ready to stop and so on.

Which is to say nothing of the people who know what they did and are simply lying. Rapists who admit to being rapists are pretty rare. Like you see them on the dirtbaggiest forums, but other than that, almost no one admits it. Everyone knows a guy who was “falsely accused” and got inundated in sympathy, only to have another abused person appear, and then another, and then another.

So I am not worried about Jian, and not just because he’s guilty. He is guilty, though.

Some thoughts on nail polish roofie detection and rape culture

**TW: discussion of rape 

A few thoughts on the subject of nail polish roofie detection and the subsequent controversy it has inspired:

1) I don’t even wear nail polish, nor does every woman, so this would be useless to some. That said, I see it as a useful tool for some who choose to use it, and kind of a clever one, too. I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing. I have no personal value judgment to assign to a simple tool. That said, there are some problems that we need to talk about. 

2) I’ve heard a lot of “well, it’s about personal responsibility and an extra step to insure one’s personal safety”. If you ask a room full of women the steps they take to avoid rape/assault on a daily basis, you guys would probably be shocked at just how aware we are, and how completely fucked up it is that we have to go out of our way to avoid certain places/things because of that possibility. So spare me the lectures on how our safety is our “personal responsibility”. We know. More than guys EVER will.

3) Where things tend to get squicky and why some women are bugged out by this nail polish thing: when we have tools like the nail polish, or self defense knowledge, or we went out of our way to avoid a weird situation and we still get assaulted, the problem is the victim blaming that starts when it becomes all about “well, you had the nail polish”, or “you must not have hit him hard enough”, or “well you still must have worn something/done something to provoke it”. The issue that people are having with these things is not that they aren’t useful, but that they become another victim blaming cudgel to hold over our heads for those prone to that sort of shit.

4) The problems I am seeing with some things being said (mostly by men) are the assumptions that we should “use these things, because bad people exist and you can’t magically stop people from raping”. That may be true to an extent, but the determinism of that statement is problematic. Yes, we can wear the nail polish, but how about we start asking “why are people bad?” Why do we accept this? The thing is, our attitudes about rape in this country are not just the attitudes of “bad people”. They are a cultural undercurrent that present themselves from people who you probably wouldn’t consider “bad people”.

We have a nation full of young men who don’t actually know what consent is. We have a media full of people who talk about the poor boys who raped a girl and how this changes their lives. We have a judicial system that puts rape victims on trial for their fashion choices and accuses CHILDREN of wearing makeup and “leading boys on” who end up gang raping her. This isn’t a “bad people” problem. This is a cultural problem. We have allowed rape culture to be normalized. We don’t bat an eye when women are demonized for their own assault. That’s fucked up. And it’s actually something we can at least attempt to fix, instead of just shrugging our shoulders and assigning it to bad people.

4a. Again, let me address the “bad people” thing. We do a disservice to everyone if we try to make it a “bad people” versus “good people” thing. Because thinking rape is something perpetuated only by horrible monsters seeking to destroy women for fun is ignoring the fact that sometimes it is as simple as a college kid who’s been drinking who doesn’t understand consent because no one has ever actually taught him what that means. Or sometimes it’s your drinking buddy who’s been going out with this girl for 2 months and one night things just get out of hand because she’s tired and he’s not and he thinks being in a relationship means you’re entitled to sex on demand. MOST RAPES ARE PERPETUATED BY SOMEONE THE WOMAN KNOWS.

There are a lot of fucked up things being taught to men in our society. To ALL men. And to think that there is some dividing line that separates the monsters from the decent people is to ignore the very real fact that you probably know a “good person” who has raped someone and didn’t realize that’s what they were doing, because our culture taught them some really screwed up ideas about women and sex and men’s right to both of them.

tl;dr version: Defensive tools are helpful, but don’t blame women if they don’t work. Work to teach mean what consent means, to respect women and our boundaries, and to stop rape culture.