When I went to college

When I went to college, Carroll invited our parents to come for an orientation. My dad went because this sort of thing falls under his purview of responsibilities. Not a dis on my mom, but not her thing. My dad told me after that they had a rape orientation which was essentially, Catholic school, door open, feet on floor, which much like abstinence only education is fool proof, and they warned our parents that a lot of kids have trouble with the close quarters in the beginning. This was promptly followed by a tour. Now, I too had the rape lecture and found it as useless as my dad, but his response to the dorm living I’ll never forget. He said to the tour guide, my girls (J and myself) share a room not even half this size. It was true. J and I shared a ridiculously and comically small room growing up. It really prepared us for living in a surveillance state because there was no privacy. When I moved to DC I had a closet larger than my childhood bedroom—I measured it, because that is something I’m neurotic enough to do. I didn’t actually have my own room until I moved out of the dorms my senior year and into a brothel (not really, but according to the restrictions in South Euclid, houses with more than 3 unmarried women…).

My parents’ home is one floor located about half way down our street (our current vacant lot count is 18); growing up it was always white, inside, outside, all the walls, white, always white. It didn’t have a basement just a crawl space or much of an attic, which was only accessible through a trap door in the hallway ceiling. A hallway that two people can’t really fit side by side in, which I’ve mentioned before and completely responsible for my sisters and my belief that basketball should be a full contact sport. I’m trying to paint a picture here of simple, and that word is important because of an article I read last week talking about the appropriation of poverty. We were working poor and by no means that bad off. My parents put us through private school so we could go to college, and while I don’t know if it was their intention without Trinity I would never have been able to assimilate into Carroll or the rest of my life and not just because of the Catholic part. Trinity was a college prep school, and with its shortcomings, and there were some, Trinity taught us how to pass with kids who there was never any questions about whether they’d attend college. Trinity gave me the patience women stereotypically have and along with those shortcomings the realizations that there are consequences for everything and the price is pretty steep for people who don't intrinsically belong. 

The article, “The troubling trendiness of poverty appropriation” by July Westhale published on the Establishment, left me with a lot of feelings and thoughts. Westhale and I have very different experiences, and her’s definitely lends itself more to the “simple living” trends, but mine, well mine is the gentrification that displaces and erases poor people, mostly poor people of color from urban neighborhoods. Westhale says, “And it’s not the Tiny House Movement that incites my discontent. From dumpster diving to trailer-themed bars to haute cuisine in the form of poor-household staples, it’s become trendy for those with money to appropriate the poverty lifestyle—and it troubles me for one simple reason. Choice.” Preach. The article is broken out into three major sections: space/things, entitlements, and food.

Women in general are hyper aware of space, please see manspreading for more information. Women are told not to take up space by everything, and poor women should take up even less after all they haven’t earned it. So when people start talking about wanting to living small spaces or take back spaces relegated to the poor what they are saying is I can choose this and those people still don’t deserve space. It has always been this way; the poor living on top of each other in tiny spaces slums, “ghettos”, trailer parks, or even further back the tenements. As for things, when you think back to being a kid, think back to saving for something, remember saving your allowance or birthday money or whatever, and then you buy whatever it is, and it is just stuff, a thing, which can’t make you happy or anything, but it is yours. That is kind of what poverty is like. So everything you have you had to earn. People don’t think about that when they think about the poor. We think people with money earn things, but people who always have access just have things; they don't earn things. Things and space are the right of the those in privilege. 

Westhale also shares an anecdote about hipsters rejecting capitalism through welfare. Once in Portland I became so irate with the idea that people would suggest people who could work, white, educated people who could obtain jobs without the same biases people of color and the poor have to face, who opt out, that I yelled at friends and strangers alike. I was not at my healthiest mental state. I yelled about how block grants get fixed sums of money and when the money is gone most states don’t comp the people it won’t cover. Really, hipsters are taking welfare from poor people; this is the reason to hate hipsters. I still want to hit something. It isn’t just hipsters in Portland who join welfare to opt out of capitalism. A group of people I deeply respect participate in “voluntary poverty,” and as I told them, there is nothing voluntary about poverty. If you can opt in you can opt out again. They don’t use welfare to counter their costs, and they see it as participating with the population they serve. See for real people, poverty is super expensive. It is juggling bills and late fees with what gets paid this month, or opting for a parking ticket instead of paying for parking because you don’t have the cash now, and the ticket won’t be due till after you get paid. Being poor comes with a ton of fees. Opting out of capitalism is like opting out of the patriarchy. It isn’t possible, and if someone does think they are doing it they are blinded by their privilege.

Finally, the food. I love fast food fries. As a kid my dad and I had a rating system. See I’d go with him to get takeout usually on Fridays, and we’d rate fries by whether they required ketchup. Really good fries like Red Barn (Slavic Village, what!) fries required little to no ketchup, but Burger King fries need ketchup, all the ketchup. But poor people food isn’t just fast food, through it is a lot of it, right? You can tell what kind of neighborhood you’re in by the fast food places…Popeye’s, you know where you are compared to a Panera. You don’t even need to think about the actual amenities of these places like the bullet proof glass that separates your server from you in some take out places in the hood or accidentally ordering drugs through a drive thru.  But kidding aside, I can’t eat peanut butter. Westhale talks about rice, but for me it is peanut butter. I don’t know why. I mean we ate it all the time in school. It got to the point where I would only take carrots for lunch because I couldn’t eat the peanut butter. My mom and dad still eat peanut butter sandwiches for lunch every day, every day. My maternal grandma (Nanny, as we called her) couldn’t eat pumpkin. There were times when it was the only thing they had to eat during the Depression so she refused to eat it later in life. And this is the side of things where you consume something so much you can’t anymore, let’s talk about exposure. I never had eggplant, mushrooms, a variety of foods that either my mom didn’t like or didn’t know how to prepare. I remember the first time I ate a kiwi, and the first time I ate a mango. Surprise, poor people don’t have access to a full range of foods or any idea how to prepare some of it. I still have no idea how to prepare eggplant. No clue, and I have the internet. That said mushrooms are gross and always will be. *shudder*

I’m torn on how to end this post because Westhale ends with this quote, “Because, let me tell you, there is nothing simple about being poor.” Truth. Being poor is hard. People have some idea that it is easy or poor people are lazy, but anecdotally, it has been my experience that poor people have hella work histories. They work all the time. Additionally, they have stress and anxiety and are more likely to suffer from depression and usually don't have access to mental health care. To opt into poverty or opt into poverty appropriation is just a slap in the face and reeks of privilege. That might be it, my big peeve about all this: people I know, me, my friends, worked really hard to get out and pass, and because we were lucky and made few mistakes we did or we didn't (and a lot of us didn't) so when these little privileged kids want to play poor for a minute I want to punch them in the face. They don't want to improve things for those in poverty. Instead these people want to mock the poor, and things that have been part of the impoverished lives. 

Aside: My roommate is studying hipsters, and this quote exemplifies everything:

“It’s but one example of an entire hipster moment—can it be called a movement when it’s a subculture rooted not in political consciousness, but in capitalism?—that has brought with it an ethos of poor-culture appropriation and the “re-invention” of things that have largely been tools of survival for the poor, disabled, working class, and/or communities of color for decades.”

That was not a weekend

I can’t even right now, but there was an article at The Guardian over the weekend about how the rich are getting therapy because being so rich is isolating. If only more so, and then we wouldn’t have to deal with them. I get that mental illness can hit anyone (though low-income people, women, and people of color have high rates of diagnoses and that’s largely without access to mental health services), but this is where my background shows. People feel bad because they have too much money? I can’t resist the eye roll. It is a different kind of problem I suppose, and when in the middle of a depressive episode you don’t, or you might, recognize that this isn’t as big of deal as it feels like. I’m more familiar with concrete stressors triggering mental illness: lack of access to meds, financial stress, violence, a debilitating self-loathing. But apparently rich people need to know that people like them with or without money. For the record, I don’t like rich people because of the way the system exploits people, and I don’t believe you can accrue a fortune without the exploitation of others.

I came home last night to my roommate’s texts about our bathroom flooding and the maintenance guy asking her (for the 100^th time) are you sure? Guys might not get what that means. “Are you sure there is a problem?” Subtext, well you present as cis gendered women so you can’t possibly know if something is wrong. *head desk* I wish K had said, well there is water on the floor so yeah pretty sure there is a flood, but if you’d like to come over and explain to me why I shouldn’t be concerned then by all means. So my afternoon to do list includes calling and yelling at this dude about his condescension and ignoring our concerns. With the added bonus of knowing we have to move in May.

I read this article and came home to the flood after listening to a person talk about killing themselves before their partner kills them. Lack of resources when your husband is the breadwinner, isolated from family and friends, and a lack of access to resources. But some people with a lot of money feel lonely. I’ll be exiting stage left and barricading myself in my apartment for the rest of the week, but this is only Monday, and I can’t imagine what the rest of the week is going to look like. 

All my heroes are dead

I’ve never been able to write about depression. It always comes out wrong. A few weeks back, a friend I greatly admire, and I were talking about it. A told me about her first episode and how she felt a second one coming on and pursued action because she could recognize it. She also said it is a privilege to have health care coverage which covers mental illness like depression. She argued anyone with health insurance should seek help, after all why wouldn’t you?

We weren’t happy kids nor were we particularly unhappy kids. I mean we weren’t crying all the time (my sisters and myself) but the sarcasm was strong in these children, and we weren’t mentally ill. We knew what that looked like, and it looked like schizophrenic breaks with reality. Thinking messages are being sent through the refrigerator from aliens or the government, that’s something to see a doctor about. I have happy memories, but all too often it are the sad ones that float up. The sad ones shaped my lived experiences, and maybe that is part of depression, I don’t know. That said, when I was 17, two friends had to drag me out of bed (the first time, and certainly not the last) and to a party I had promised I’d attend. It was of the utmost importance to put on a smile and pretend I didn’t want to die. I wanted to die, and I wasn't being hyperbolic. That reads as trivial. I, like most depressives, have perfected faking it, telling everyone everything is fine all the time regardless of whether or not it is because we don't want to bother anyone.

It was ten years later when I was diagnosed with severe depression, and yes that decision to see a therapist had a lot to do with great health insurance and lefty employee benefits offered by my current job. But as I sat next to A, I told her I never knew you could feel any different because I couldn’t remember ever feeling differently for a substantial period of time. It never occurred to me other people didn’t feel this way; that there are people who haven’t thought about killing themselves or justify living because it would be to too unfair to leave others on the hook for your decisions. There are people who live lives who don’t and never have felt the hopelessness that leaves a feeling of hollow nothingness deep inside you. They have never felt that they were at best a distraction from more important things and at worst the cause of other’s pain.

Part of this of course, is my upbringing. Staring down schizophrenia makes all other mental illness pale in comparison. Add that to our family joke of, “Are you bleeding? No? Walk it off”—we should put that on the crest—mental health is something you deal with, individually. We also know women, low-income persons, LGBTQA, people of color are all more likely to suffer from depression. There are added stressors to just existing as any individual or combination of these identities.

It took six months after I mentioned to B and M that I thought I might need to see a therapist before I went. I resolved to, but then I emailed some people and they affirmed what I believed, everyone feels like this. There is nothing special or wrong here. And by talking about it, thinking about it, wallowing in it, I was somehow breaking an unspoken rule and that was selfish. So I didn’t go, and things got so much worse. I always figured things would be fine if I just kept myself so busy that I didn’t have time to think. Thinking is the problem for me.

Now, I know you’re thinking, “Kari, what does this have to do with that title? Which is the only reason I clicked on this.” I know! It is a great title. I read recently an article demanding we all stop romanticizing death and suicide because the impressionable children, because we should always think of those abstract children and not real suffering ones, but I digress. But also, people who kill themselves have families, and it might be hurtful. The Internet immediately disagreed, claiming no one romanticizes death. But I don’t think that is true. When J and I were young it was the legend of Cobain. As we grew up we discovered we kind of wanted to write, and there are tons of writers who hate themselves. They showed there was something on the other side of this sadness and emptiness or at least something good that might come out of it. Many authors had suicidal tendencies such as Wallace, Woolf, Sexton, Plath, London (there is debate here), and Vonnegut. But more so there is Keats, while not suicidal, died young. All of these people are obscenely talented. Arguably their contributions to literature have changed its course. Specifically, there is a human perspective in these authors’ work and usually a sadness that changes all those who read them. As children, and I do mean children, we would joke that you should be dead by thirty or you were living too long and bound to fail. These writers were my heroes.

I am afraid of not being able to feel the despair, and sometimes that scares me more than not feeling joy. I should probably mention that my depression is more nothing than sadness. I feel nothing at all just watching all the things go by. There is balance for me, somewhere between moderate (my therapist thinks this is my normal) and severe depression where I am my most creative. My work is best, my mind is keenest. I am my most empathetic, human, personable, and vulnerable. At these moments the words I write sound like music in my head—even if in desperate need of revision—but my rogue thoughts about not being good enough are hovering right under the surface which manifests in self-deprecating humor in the text. Somehow it works. It works so well I write a novel in a month or fifteen blog posts in a week for two blogs. This isn’t mania; it is a conscious full court press in anticipation of what is coming. And all too often, immediately after, the bottom falls out. Then I can’t think. I can’t work. But I also can’t turn my mind off.

See I can’t remember not feeling like this so I don’t know what I’d be like without it. Anyone who fears change gets how scary that is. Don’t get me wrong, I’m in treatment—I’m on drugs, do with that what you will. For me the medication I’m on, really just makes it easier to put the depressive thoughts aside and function. But that feeling of a weight on my chest is still there. It physically feels like I can’t take a deep breath because of that pressure.

After my cousin killed himself everyone immediately jumped to the “suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem” or they suggest he didn’t know how much he was loved or that it is trivial to kill one’s self over a girlfriend. People who say these things have no idea what it feels like. For me it is empty, nothing. I feel nothing at all, which is because generally I feel too much so I shut down. I’m overly empathetic to the point where I make myself miserable, well at least according to my therapist. And yes, I know people love me, but sometimes I can’t imagine why. Depression isn’t logical, but damn if you can’t rationalize it. I can be in bed, unable to turn off my thoughts, and know what I am thinking is untrue, but believe it all the same.

Nothing this week

It occurred to me I haven’t blogged in more than a week. Yeah, I have no reasons for this except I didn’t feel like it. I did have a few posts written, but they were all scifi-ish in nature so I’ve been sending them to R in case he wants them for his site. I suppose this is because I’m having some trouble concentrating on anything at the moment. I’ll have my shit together soon. Promise. If nothing else, I’m going to read Capital  this week.

I couldn’t decide between “Dear Mama,” “Life Goes On,” or “Crossroads.” In the end I picked Bone Thugs. Kind of goes with the theme of my Facebook feed this past month.  

Enjoy this:

Violence and Masculinity

Let’s be clear I fear men. I’m not joking or kidding. I grew up a woman in a patriarchal society that has dictated my safety is my responsibility and no one will ever be held accountable for any crimes perpetrated against me. Add in the class elements and how you’re a traitor if you speak up and how the cops aren’t always on our side you get fear as a conditioned response. I have feared my father, my friends, and my boyfriends…not all the time and not all for the same reasons, but it is there. That moment when you know things have taken a turn for the potentially dangerous.

I can’t remember my father ever hitting us; instead it was the threat of “wait till your father gets home” and usually a time out. Then much like my paternal grandmother before her, my mom wouldn’t mentioned it to my dad. My dad told me a story about how he was riding his bike somewhere he was forbidden from doing so and fell. He ended up with gravel embedded in his leg. He got home and my grandma dug them out, and she didn’t tell my grandfather because the punishment would have been severe. My father isn’t my grandfather. I can think of a handful of times I was truly scared of my father. My older sister and I didn’t discuss for three years. And what we did discuss was how we both hid in our rooms when it was happening because we didn’t know what to do. I’m pretty sure every woman in our house was crying that morning. My dad lost his temper and under the stress of the situation I get it…do I ever get it—that desire to shake or hit something when all you can do is watch people destroy themselves. He didn’t hit anyone really, but there was a physical altercation. A while afterwards, I was on a road trip with my parents—mom was asleep—and I noticed my dad counting something on his fingers. I asked him about it, and he said he prays the rosary every day and has since that morning—he scared himself. But that was all that was ever said about it. My dad has stories about his life that would make most people think twice about crossing him. It is kind of assumed that everyone just kind of does what my dad tells them. His temper is one of the ways the other men (and women) in my family measure his dominance.

Abrupt (yet connected subject change): I never break up with men. I did once over the phone, and I employ the fade out, but I don’t do the in person break-up initiated by me. I once stayed in a relationship for an additional three weeks while emotionally shutting down and avoiding him as much as possible. I’ll never forget when he suggested we break up. We were walking to the metro and,

Him: “We should talk.”

Me: “Oh, we’re breaking up?”

Him: “Umm, yeah.”

Me: “Ok.”

Him: “I thought you’d be more upset about this…”

Upset about what? I had ended things weeks ago. It hurt, I cried when I got home, and M and B know my crazy and insecurities. There was cake. After this I was dealing with ALL THE THINGS about the relationship at home. I bumped into a friend and unloaded on her...She said, “With a mouth like your’s at least he didn’t hit you in the face.” Factual. But I thought he might. He was angry all the time, and he associated violence with masculinity. And at some point, my friend—and every other woman in our situations—learned that physical violence from partners might just be part of the draw.  Now, to be clear, my friend and I socialized in different circles, and her partner was abusive and from a lower socioeconomic class. But mine was college educated and grew up wealthy; I suppose it is the class jumping myth, there is a better quality of people up here except not really. This conversation between my friend and me would trigger years of baggage when dating outside my defined socioeconomic class at birth. See when you unpack my friend’s sentiment it was girls like us have x happen to them. But here I was trying so hard to pass and not be like us and ending up in the same situation. So, I don’t break up with men, instead I convince them to break up with me.

You can’t do that with friends. One night after a show, several of us were drinking heavily. One of our guys got us thrown out of the venue and then out of the second bar. I have no idea why, well I think he was ridiculing the bartender. Anyway, another guy we were with who was sober grabbed the first guy, and they proceeded to get into a physical confrontation in the middle of a heavy traffic street in the beginnings of a blizzard. I want to point out neither of these guys subscribed to your conventional definitions of masculinity or well they didn’t feel they needed to conform to them. It took three of us to prevent the fight. Now to round back to class, I’m white. I regularly put my body between men at a homeless drop-in shelter to prevent violence because to assault me would have had greater consequences than to assault each other. I was a volunteer, college educated, white, and a woman. I mention this because fights between my peers are usually less concerned about how gets in the way.

Defining violence as masculine does a disservice to men and all genders. But more so, violence and masculinity police the behavior of everyone in society. Men have to fulfill some definition of masculinity that is always unattainable, while women and gender-non-conforming persons are forced to live with the fear of violence. These threats of violence are always present. There are so many resources on violence perpetrated by men against women. 

Women, Objectification, and Masculinity

Hetero man identified friends this is where you turn back. I’m being upfront this is going to make you uncomfortable (hopefully not angry, but definitely uncomfortable). My awesome, progressive, feminist, hetero, cis, male friends objectify women, like all the time. It is a conditioned response to the patriarchy telling them it is expected and ok. Actually, it is fucking hysterical most of the time. And I’m not saying being sexually attracted to someone is wrong or always objectifying. Additionally, within the context of a relationship power dynamics and sexual interests can encourage objectification within certain contexts.

That said, I have so many stories of guys just being objectifying toward women. So before we get into the examples let’s go over objectification. In the feminist perspective, objectification refers to treating someone (usually a woman) as an object. Martha Nussbaum has identified seven features of objectification and Rae Langton added three more:

1. instrumentality: person is a tool for the objectifier’s purpose
2. denial of autonomy: person is treated as though they lack autonomy and self-determination
3. inertness: person treated as if they lack agency
4. fungibility: person treated as interchangeable with objects
5. violability: person treated as lacking boundary-integrity
6. ownership: person treated as owned by another person
7. denial of subjectivity: person treated as if their experiences and feelings do not need to be taken into account
8. reduction to body: person treated as the sum or parts of their body
9. reduction to appearance: person treated in respect to how they look
10. silencing: person treated as if they have no voice.

Good times right? Obviously, my peers and friends are most likely to be employing 1,7, 8, 9, and 10. Ok, ok I know it sounds bad. But I’m willing to bet most people are guilty of doing this to someone at some point. We're conditioned to be selfish and by extension it is easy to treat others like objects. Now for some examples and why they are particularly troubling.

A while ago, I made an off the cuff remark to several male friends and acquaintances about how I’ve never met any of their female friends who were biologically related to one of the group or in a sexual relationship with one of the group. The response was immediate and negative. One swore up and down it wasn’t true for all of three minutes before they started to concede that yeah, they don’t have very many. Then the buck was passed to my friend. It was his fault because he pursued many of the women in the group’s friend category *side eye/eye roll*. But that isn’t the objectifying behavior, well it maybe I don’t know specifics there. But several of the guys started explaining to me how some of the girls my friend hooked up with went crazy and started fighting with one another, and I don’t really know but some kind of stereotypical female behavior that was irrational and problematic for the group. See, we’re looking at number 7 and maybe 10.  The women in question’s feelings and perspective wasn’t relevant to the group; they might as well not have had any at all. If you’ve ever blown someone’s mind you can immediately tell, which I did when I asked if they were sure the girls were ‘crazy and irrational’ or if it was a perfectly rational and emotional response to the situation my friend put them in. *crickets*

This objectification seems harmless enough, but it is clearly indicative of a way of thinking. The women folk are the problem and their feelings aren’t important. Of course, it has to be taken into that group mentalities and the desire to protect the group from outside threats, which these women may have been perceived to be. Additionally, women seem to be placed in these categories, which will sound familiar: respectable and inconsequential. These categorizations then determine whether or not the woman in question’s feelings and perspective is legitimate. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the story, and why I still find it fascinating is that they were all mortified by my observation and subsequent explanations by each other, which implies they too on some level have an issue with the objectification.

Now for a very different kind of example. In undergrad, I had a peer in several classes who consistently spoke over me and took credit for my ideas in class. This peer was a white dude; I know everyone is shocked. Several times he behaved and implied I should be flattered that he agreed with what I was saying. These were acts of silencing me and taking credit for my ideas. I wanted to use this example because it was about entitlement to my ideas and being heard over me instead of the overt sexualization that objectification usually invokes. Essentially, as a man his ideas were superior and any good ideas from a woman could be co-opted by him. For some reason he was entitled to my ideas. It is by far the most obnoxious thing I’ve ever experienced, particularly when he just spoke right over me. Also, this co-opting of ideas is something being discussed a lot right now by feminists of color on Twitter. 

I juxtapose this experience with a situation where two of my girlfriends and I made a good man friend speak for us. I borderline stalked a university representative for a year. True story. The fours of us were speaking with university representatives about fair trade issues and school licensing. The three white men on representing the university consistently directed questions to my guy friend. He did his best to redirect the question to the appropriate person including C and ME who were the leadership in our school organization. However, it was a cycle, the university reps would rather our guy answer all the questions and as the meeting continued we all were willing to defer to him. After, our guy was pretty angry with all of us for forcing him into that role.

In terms of masculinity, objectification is the right of men in the patriarchy. Women are objects for men, and men are entitled to benefit from all aspects women. This includes our thoughts, actions, and feelings. Being masculine means being able to demonstrate the use of women as objects. I don’t think men always see it that way. They don’t think that they are rendering women as objects and less than them just because they discount our experiences or take credit for our ideas. Some men probably only find rendering women as sexual objects to be objectification, but to me the other forms can be more insidious.This entitlement runs really deep, and I suspect a lot of men don’t even realize that this is going on. Instead, they think if they aren’t openly objectifying women for sexual gratification or objects for their physical use then it is ok. Once we work within the extended framework of objectify then we read infantilization as objectification; rejection of a woman’s ability to self-determine; etc. To expand on this conversation it is frequently happening in respect to ideas and the free exchange of thoughts online. Black Twitter is rightfully outraged that others, including white feminists, are taking their ideas and profiting from them. This is objectification. Dr. Patricia Hill Collins noted this in her talk I saw this spring: intersectionality is profitable now and when something is profitable the white people follow.

Alcohol and Masculinity

I like guys. I always have, can’t really help it. I’m not saying I prefer men to women, except in sexual relationships, just I’m a feminist with a lot of guy friends, less now in adulthood than in my adolescences. But it didn’t start with my peers, my dad and I would watch Star Trek the Next Generation (Sir Patrick Stewart is my captain, I’ll fight anyone who says different) while my mom and sisters watched something else in the other room. Sometimes J and M would watch with us, but I loved it. We’re all our father’s daughters, and we have the best and worst of his traits.

My father is a recovering alcoholic (always the present tense). Alcohol and the Irish have a long love affair. It was exacerbated by classism and racism, but I don’t want to dwell in the historical. Instead, I want to talk about my family histories with alcoholism. Alcoholism for the Irish and working class/poor just go together. No one is surprised everyone is drunk. No one thinks it is a problem. Sometimes when you quit you’re met with a hostility and other times no one says shit. Both of these responses probably stem from feeling acknowledging an alcohol problem hits too close to home.

We romanticized my father in a way we never did with my mom. I love my mom. She is a cool and powerful lady, and everyone in my family has the same dark and sardonic humor so win. Once over dinner, M, mom, and I were discussing the behavior of another family member. Mom didn’t understand why this family member would behave this way, when it was so dangerous and hurtful to watch. M said it was because we glorified alcoholism in our family, particularly our father’s alcoholism. There are epic stories one of him drinking all day while out hunting with my uncles and cousins. He didn’t want to put down his beer, but it was the first thing they saw all day so he shot a chipmunk…he hit it, only a little fur on a log was left because you shouldn’t shoot a small animal with a shotgun; he bruised his shoulder badly but didn’t spill his beer. A lot of the stories are funny, and they are the happier stories he has. He has the bad stories about alcoholism too the ones where my grandparents would drink, yell, and throw things at each other, or hunting for my uncle in the middle of the night when he was too drunk to know where he was, or the schizophrenia that was self-medicated through booze.

All of us girls heard different things in these stories. Sometimes I think I was the only who heard the warnings underneath: the sickness that follows (and not the throwing up but the diabetes and liver disease), the self-medication (how am I going to know if I’m crazy if I’m drunk all the time), and the isolation. But the men in my family define masculinity by alcohol, which is evident by the skepticism my cousins had for my brother-in-law. F doesn’t drink much, doesn’t have a particular interest in cars, and wasn’t particularly mechanically inclined. These and sports are what the men folk do.  My dad had all girls so we can do any combination of these things some better than others. We also all drank, a lot. M gave J and me our first beers at a party when she was in high school, and we were in middle school. We wanted her too, and we didn’t get drunk. We probably didn’t even like it. But we’ve all out drank the guys on occasion.

Bell hooks’ The Will to Change begins by talking about fearing men and the desperate hunger to be loved by men. I don’t fear much or maybe I fear too much so after a while it loses it’s meaning. I’ve been in some pretty terrifying situations and thought, “oh, I thought this would be worse.” Additionally,  I’ve only known my father sober, and there have been times I’ve been afraid of him, but that’s another post. I do worry sometimes because I can only think of one boyfriend that didn’t have an alcohol/substance abuse problem. I’m not innocent here either. I’ve been in relationships where we both know he’s slipping into serious problem territory, and I know I can’t help or maybe I just didn’t want to. There was one relationship in particular that went bad real fast, and I checked out three weeks before we broke up. He needed help, and after one situation I wasn’t the person willing to give it to him. Wow, I was in a relationship with someone I wasn’t willing to help…paging bell hooks’ preface in The Will to Change.

The flip side to my father’s epic stories are the stories that have the questionable endings. The one’s where you’re left asking yourself, and we’re all ok with how this went? We’re all ok with how alcohol determined these ends? We never seem to talk about how alcohol defines masculinity, particularly in working class groups. Everyone has come to accept that we all develop alcohol problems in college, and post college, but then we're expected to just snap out of it because we're adults now. That expectation doesn't carry over to the working class. You're supposed to drink the depressing aspects of your life away, and that is completely acceptable.

I don’t know if I said anything here. But if this sucked let me know because I have three other posts in the works on masculinity and if no one is interested in them I’ll scrap them. Those topics are anger, violence, and women…not necessarily in that order.

The problem or the solution, these are your choices.

First, let me say, I owned my debate last night. I got to call the pro-Obamacare side out over elitism, continued marginalization of the poor, and policy that favors insurance corporations. Ending with questions about what would a better option be? “Public option.” What would you say to someone saying that is socialized medicine? “Socialized medicine, I wish, but I’d say it isn’t because it is all about improving capitalism through competition in the markets.” All this said, I think my peers are on to me…

I was going to write about the exploitation of service members through payday loans, but I bumped that to Monday. I want to instead talk about the people we include in our lives. Can’t choose your family, but you get to pick your friends. I have a handful of really conservative friends, and these relationships are out of loyalty and emotional support. For example, one of my friends is a confidant to me, and I share things with her I’ve only shared with two other people. Because I know I can call her and just cry. If we’re face-to-face, there will be hugs.

I mention all this because I’m writing a novel for NaNoWriMo and while it is fiction a lot of it is rooted in my late adolescences because we write what we know, the conflict is completely derived from the news. All that said, on Facebook this morning, I was reminded that I once took great pride in being “one of the guys.” It is funny, as I write that I know the majority of people who read this blog are men and friends of mine. But you’ll never hear me say that again because I learned a lesson the hard way.

There are two sides to view this: I get along well with men, and I value friendships with men over women. That link I posted talks a little about it.

For me in my youth, I would argue both influenced me because even when I had more female friends, my best friend was always a dude, which isn’t necessarily bad, but he was a douche. Really. I never thought much about his (or the other guys) behavior. If something made me uncomfortable, I looked the other way or worse, I embraced it so I could be the cool girl it didn’t bother. I was young and very stupid; I’m still young and stupid, but worse then. The prioritization of all things deemed masculine includes the priority of relationships with men over those with women.

It is interesting to juxtapose the relationships I had with these guys in my late teens/early twenties verses the relationship I have with men in my mid to late twenties. I think about the rape apology and sexism I let slide because I was above all that because I’m one of the guys, which is better in the social hierarchy. Now, I feel no apprehension in calling out friends who don’t have any women friends that are related or sexually attached to a man in the group. While I respect these men, they don’t validate my existence, and sometimes I worry I’m holding them responsible for my previous relationships with men, but that isn’t the point of this post.

I was sexually assaulted, I’ve written about it before. My “come to Jesus” moment with this whole “one of the guys” thing came in college when my best friend chose to believe a dude he barely knew over me. It was about power, privilege, and a culture that promotes rape and sexism. And of course, the second oldest joke in feminism second to “make me a sandwich,” “bitches always be lyin’.” I know all this now, at the time I just felt alone and very small. It was also an amazing silencing technique, because why tell anyone if my best friend didn’t believe me.  So when I see people (women identified people, queer identified people, and “progressive men”) ignoring sexism because it’s a joke (and we all know feminists can’t take a joke) it promotes this culture. My best friend made comments defending alleged rapists, not because he knew they were innocent or was close to them, but because you can’t rape a sex worker. Needless to say this was one of our last conversations.

Don’t get me wrong, I tried to save that relationship, and actually learned another really great concept about life because it got so much worse before I cut all ties. Eventually, I made a decision that I didn’t want someone like this in my life. And while it is hard, some people we loved aren’t always going to be in our lives. Also, we have to take responsibility for the things we let our friends get away with. I am deeply ashamed of some of the things I did to justify behaviors of people I knew. But as they say, “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”

This means if you know something your friends are doing or promoting is wrong and you do nothing you’re just as guilty of promoting it. Swapping one stereotype for another doesn’t solve the problem that your friends are sexist and possibly misogynists (or racist, classist, homophobic, etc.).

All of these poorly articulated thoughts came to me because of a loved one’s Facebook post, and when she learns her place in the social hierarchy of the group she participates within the patriarchy, I hope she doesn’t learn the way I did.