Destiny Allison's Blog, page 2

New Project: Chapter 25

Twenty Five

 

Milton Friedman, the godfather of neoliberal capitalism and the economist most responsible for a “Shock and Awe” policy that devastated Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s (and is, in part, why Venezuela’s economy is collapsing today) said, “Because profit making is the essence of democracy, any government that pursues anti-market policies is being antidemocratic, no matter how much informed popular support they might enjoy. Therefore it is best to restrict governments to the job of protecting private property and enforcing contracts, and to limit political debate to minor issues.” His theories are why we are in a manufactured culture war and why Supreme Court rulings like Citizens United are possible.

While his declaration may feel perverse, it is rooted in the convictions of our founding fathers, those same fathers who framed our constitution and set up a construct that doomed the vast majority of the American population to a life of struggle, inequality, and discontent.

In spite of lofty ideals espoused by our Declaration of Independence and constitution, the game was rigged before it began. Adam Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations, arguably influenced James Madison, the “Father of the constitution.”

Smith was the first economist to suggest that the wealth of nations is measured not by how much gold and silver a nation possesses, but by its commerce and productivity (known today as Gross Domestic Product, or GDP). Although he favored division of labor and specialization because they increased productivity, he also foresaw the end of democracy “if manufacturing aristocracy should escape its confines.”

Smith’s prediction has come to pass because, as Chomsky says, “what is right for the people of the world will only by the remotest accident conform to the plans of the ‘principal architects’ of policy.” These architects, historical and contemporary, have absolutely zero reason to change policy to benefit anyone other than themselves. They never have, and the way our democracy was envisioned and enacted has ensured a continuation of oppression. The top tier of wealthily people is vested only in accumulating more wealth.

Our equality, as put forth by the constitution, is an illusion designed to keep us from revolt. It gives us a modicum of power (the vote) and the American Dream (the hype) to keep the vast majority of us under control. If, as Chomsky says, government depends on control of opinion, then it is no wonder Donald Trump ascended to the Presidency. With fake news and a multi-million dollar Facebook strategy, complete with dark advertising designed to target individuals based on their personal proclivities, Trump controlled opinion.

Mass media, even “mainstream liberal media” fed into the Trump phenomenon, giving him unlimited headlines and a narrative that underscored a systemic conviction that Hillary Clinton was flawed.

Who isn’t flawed? Certainly Donald Trump is flawed, but as a nation we didn’t care. His flaws were palatable. Hers weren’t. One of Adam Smith’s most popular quotes is, “Virtue is to be more feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.”

As a woman, Clinton was required to be the epitome of female virtue – a moral compass, a pure being. Consequently her qualifications and experience were unimportant. Our collective focus was on her “likeability” and we crucified her because virtue, contrary to common belief, is the exclusive province of men. Cultural standards dictate that likeable women can’t behave like them. Trump understood this and exploited virtue to his benefit.

The root of virtue is strength, masculinity, virility. It is supposed to be a particular moral excellence, but it is also valor, potency, and capacity to act. For women, however, the dictionary says virtue resides in virginity alone. How could we elect a virtuous woman? A woman who has known the thrill or tedium of a lover’s bed cannot be virtuous. A virtuous man, however, earns his masculinity by his capacity to act, by his potency, virility, and valor. The double standard is breathtaking. If a woman is to be a woman, she cannot be virtuous because virtue (beyond virginity) is how we define what it means to be a man.

Men do the dirty work – the backroom deal that’s ethically questionable, the physical violence that’s sometimes necessary, the sacrifice of self and soul for the sake of sustenance and comfort – that a woman, if her virtue is to remain intact, is incapable of doing.

Like neoliberal free market economy, a virtuous woman will redeem a man and cement his masculinity by allowing him to do what he must to achieve a desired outcome. The market will, according to Friedman and Smith, render “immoral” actions virtuous in the long run. The un-virtuous will fail. Those who succeed are rendered virtuous by the outcome they achieve. More is better.

But is it? Smith was right in declaring virtue more dangerous than vice. Precisely because it is not regulated by conscience, virtue is runaway capitalism. It is excess. It is the capacity to act in any way necessary to prove virility and potency as long as the actions occur under the guise of morality.

Morality, however, is fickle – always dependent on current cultural climate. Today’s morals have little in common with those of prior generations with one exception: Wealth and power are achieved by morally deserving men or by loose, immoral women.

The double bind insists that virtuous women are feminine (caring, nurturing, kind, and spiritual) from birth and men must consistently earn their masculinity. This conviction is a trap because no woman is truly “virtuous” and no man can be virtuous enough.

James Madison, warning about apathy toward government, said, “I go on this great republican principle, that the people will have virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom. Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks – no form of government can render us secure.”

Madison, of course, was speaking to moral virtue. He was also speaking to the very qualities that have defined American men for more than two hundred years. He spoke to the rugged individual, the man who was not afraid to challenge England to further his own prospects, the man willing to die for liberty and property, the man who was not a “Macaroni,” but one who pulled himself up by the bootstraps and made something of himself. His call for a new nation challenged the masculinity of the King’s subjects and basically cried, “Man up” to the men who would form that new nation. Like Madison, Trump promised to “man up” and called his constituency to do the same. Using morality common to certain portions of the population, he acknowledged their impotency, stoked their virility, and promised change.

“Man up,” however, is a terrible call to action. It excuses egregious, dangerous behavior, making men less than human and women merely artifact.

If we have been willing to fight for freedom before, are we not willing now? Our past battles were for someone else’s profit. Bloodshed on fields foreign and domestic never benefited the working classes. We rallied to a cry that was never ours. Freedom is easy for the Trumps of the world. It’s not so easy for the rest of us, but we can achieve it if we refuse to comply with their opinion. We control our own stories. We write the narrative. We understand the only thing we control is what we give. What are we giving when we nod our head in agreement with public conviction? What are we giving when we beg for a raise? What are we giving when we drop our prices to compete with a corporate conglomerate that kills small business and takes our money out of state?

Economic independence looks different for everybody. Some can get by with less and be happier for it. Some can open a business. There’s no right way to achieve it, but it’s possible to free ourselves a little at a time from those who would enslave us.

Recently, in response to a conservative boycott of a large department store, liberal friends rallied. Because this corporation stood up for liberal values and refused to conform to gender stereotypes, we’re all supposed to shop there. This is crazy. If we’re going to be free, we have to stop being manipulated by corporate propaganda. The rallying cry should be shop locally. It should demand that local businesses stock products that do not have a negative environmental impact or support slave labor in third world countries. It should be a cry to consume less and pay for quality over quantity.

As a small business owner, it would seem I’m rallying against my own interests, but I’m not. Chomsky says, “The social inequality generated by neoliberal policies undermines any effort to realize the legal equality necessary to make democracy credible.” He also says, “Instead of citizens [neoliberal policy] produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless.”

If we are to be economically independent, we need vibrant communities vested in local business to secure the resiliency of our all our people – not just the most marginalized. The negative effects of income inequality are well documented. So are the benefits of strong communities.

That’s where we have to start. Social media has helped us to create online communities with like-minded people, but it minimizes real, human interaction and isolates us in the process.

Most people are fundamentally good. We have more in common than that which divides us. Politics, as manipulated by those who would have us war against each other, be damned. It’s our neighborhoods and communities that matter.

New Project: Chapter 24

(To read the previous chapter, click here)

Twenty Four

 

In the election’s aftermath, I watched scores of Facebook friends share ways to get involved, make a difference, and organize against the threat Trump presented. I witnessed protests, attended a few rallies, and even held a town hall meeting of my own. The call to action was strong and, for me, violence sang a siren’s song.

I wanted blood, wanted it to rain red, paint our cities the color of life lost and hope quenched, wanted it to wash away our arrogance, smug surety, and fear. As rural America took stock, hoped, and prayed, I drank, ate macaroni and cheese, raged and cried and counseled others to be strong, brave, and more than me.

I said, “We need to be our best selves.”

I said, “We need to focus locally and ensure that our community is resilient in the face of unknown, but certain, change.”

I said, “Would you really not help Mrs. Johnson, though her husband died last year and she recently underwent surgery, because she voted for Donald Trump?”

And I encouraged people to get off their social media and get to work.

And yet, even as I counseled, part of me wanted it all to collapse, wanted the crumbling infrastructure of a nation bloated with its own sense of self topple so that light and air and bright new seedlings might fill gaps in the rubble and we, reborn, might wonder like children at the world we’d wrought.

Then, with the nation collapsed, perhaps we could sing an anthem not of war, racism, or dominance, but of tolerance and economic change.

 

Amazing grace

How sweet the sound

To save a wretch like me…

 

Outcomes are always uncertain. We only control one thing. All the polls and pundits, economists and scientists and generals, presidents and senators, church leaders and community organizers wave their magic microphones and spin a version of a truth that’s supposedly written in stone, but seldom concretely proved.

We’re all just guessing, hoping, and trying desperately to carve some sense of purpose and direction, to rend from chaos a calm order that defies or justifies our inevitable mortality.

Get more. Get heaven. Get money. Get property. Get married. Get peace. Get free. Get respect. Get a drink.

 

I once was lost

But now I’m found

Was blind, but now I see.

 

Trump’s election may just pull the tourniquet off our collective wounds and blood may flow before we’ve cleansed and healed them. But, and I emphasize this, we have more power than we think. All of us. We are humanity. We have more in common than what divides us. We mostly want the same things. If we can look past our culture war and into our hearts, we know we are bigger than our fears. David Hume said, “Force is always on the side of the governed.”

In his book, Profit over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order, Noam Chomsky furthered Hume’s sentiment by saying, “If people would realize that, they would rise up and overthrow the masters.” Hume and Chomsky concluded that government is founded on control of opinion, a principle that “extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular.”

Economic independence is attainable. We can free ourselves from corporate control. Over time, and through political action, we may be able to secure some protection under the law, but that’s a long way off and, again, outside our direct control.

For all intents, the democracy we knew toppled in 2016. Our two party system showed itself to be hollow. America elected its first true Independent President and that man walked all over protocol as he prepared to take office.

However, his ascendancy is not that of Nero. Rome is not yet burning. We are, if we’ll allow ourselves to embrace it, already free. We have exponential amounts of empathy. We can harness these to build a model where equality is more than promise or possibility, but it’s going to take some risk, hard work, and courage.

All over the world, micro economies prove that different models are possible. We are not locked into a neo-liberal nightmare. We can’t be. As Naomi Klein says, “We are in the zero decade.” If we don’t act soon, we won’t be talking about anything beyond basic survival and that, too, may prove tenuous. Climate change is happening. It’s real and it will be catastrophic if we don’t arrest the raping and pillaging of our world.

When I first opened my store, I tried to be the least expensive option on just about everything I carried. I scanned my products on an Amazon app to ensure I remained competitive with the giant and worried constantly that my customers would leave if they discovered better prices elsewhere.

Then, about a year in, I saw a video produced by Eileen Fischer that depicted the travesty of Fast Fashion. Until then, I had never heard the term. I didn’t know that big retailers manufactured clothing designed to only last for a little while. Shoppers could stay in front of fashion trends without doing serious damage to their budget. What most shoppers don’t know, however, is that these clothes are terrible for the world. Fast Fashion is the second leading polluter (behind oil and gas) and is the number one employer of slave labor. Fast Fashion should be a crime.

Horrified, and unwilling to be a part of something so bad, I rethought my business strategy and vowed to shop with ethics and sustainability at the forefront of my buying decisions.

Prices in my store went up. They had to. If I was to sell products made by people receiving a fair wage, working in healthy environments, and making products from sustainable fabrics, I had to pay for it and so did my customers. The average price on merchandise went up fifty percent – from forty dollars to sixty.

I told customers what I was doing and why. Most stayed with me. Some didn’t, but I have to stay true to my moral compass and it’s my job to raise awareness where I can. The choice was worth the risk. I have fewer customers who buy fewer things, but we’re all doing what we can for the planet and the increase in price covered the loss of revenue from additional sales.

I can hear some of you screaming, “Privilege!” You’re right. I have it. I didn’t always. My life, too, has been one of intersections and being white has always helped me to take risks others can’t or won’t. Nevertheless, my privilege was taken, not granted. I made my place in this world and I didn’t do it by focusing on what I got or could get. I focused on what I had to give and how, and to whom, I could give it. That is something we all can do.

Mr. Trump, welcome to my outrage

Yesterday, the Presidential Inauguration committee tried to silence hundreds of thousands of women by blocking their ability to march and assemble at all public parks in Washington, D.C. The move is unprecedented in American history and I wonder if the protesters were people of color or veterans or any other group willing to riot, would they have done the same thing.

Listen up, Predator-elect and misogynist team.

You will not silence me.

You will not take the voice I have finally claimed.

 

You will not find me compliant

Easily manipulated

Or afraid.

 

Do you think, really, that the lack of a permit is enough to quell my rage?

Do you think I fear your rubber bullets, water cannons, or percussion grenades?

Women are not so easy to dissuade.

Perhaps we will march anyway.

 

Can you see the headlines?

The news clips?

The horror of women beaten in the streets?

 

I am not afraid of your violence. I have felt it already and am no stranger to pain.

You will not rape this country.

Not without a fight from millions upon millions of women like me.

 

We will rise. We will dream our dream and make it a reality. You will see us unleashed and feel the full fury of our outrage.

Just wait, Mr. Trump. Just wait.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New Project: Chapter 23

Twenty Three

 

The unthinkable happened. Our country elected hate. Watching the election returns, my body felt as if all the air had left it. Crushed. Broken. Hopeless. The work I’d done, the work of years to undo the ravages of sexual assault, the work of letting go and believing that I could have power, choices, agency disappeared in an electoral count nobody predicted. I thought I could let go. I thought I could matter. I thought the weight I bore, the scars I wore counted for something. I thought, believed, hoped, prayed that I was more than some horrible man’s judgment of me. I was wrong. In a few hours, the 2016 election affirmed every doubt, every wish for a different body, a different mind, a different mode of expression.

There was, honestly, not enough whiskey in the world for the hurt I felt. How many times would I be raped? How many times would men assert their fear and render me powerless against them? How many times would my body be worth more than my heart and mind?  What, now, did being a woman mean?

Broken. Beat down. Used. And also aging. Not a ten or an eight, but a two. Maybe. My worth dictated by a mob angry with an elite. Like I was nothing. Like my mind was nothing. Like my experience and hurt meant nothing. How was this possible? And where to go? What to do? How to fight? How to lead? How to finish this book, this work?

I wanted to curl up under a rock. I didn’t even want Steve to see me. That our country could elect this man meant everything I believed was a farce, a construct of magical thinking. What would I tell my sons? How would I go to work and open my business – a safe haven for women who hurt? What guidance or hope could I possibly offer? What strength was left to give?

The sobs wrecked my body, rendered me even more powerless. I longed for the cold of fury, but it didn’t come. A woman’s place, again, was in the home.

Donald fucking Trump. Really? Oh my fucking god. And everywhere women cringed. Democracy, it seemed, was at an end. The stock markets tumbled. The world revolted. Terrorists grinned. In one evil, dastardly night, the US of A determined my panties were in a twist

And still, despite it all, I maintain (and offer Trump’s election as proof) the only thing we control is what we give.

Writing this I felt so small, but I wrote. There is a flame. That flame is love – love  for the millions of women who feel the weight of what our country did, love for the men who love and respect women, love for the children who learned the bright hope of their future had dimmed.

Steve said, “Like after the second plane hit the World Trade Center, our world just changed and not for the good.”

How does an educated, financially successful white man comfort a wife whose pain he can only imagine? The world, really, did not change for him.

We only control what we give.

Should I have phone banked? Donated more? Should I not have been exhausted by the email pleas and phone calls?

All the polls said Clinton would win. I expected a landslide, would have been fine (mostly) with a win.

Caught in a web.

And yet, re-reading my own words and convinced of their truth, I reassert there is never a moment when we are powerless. A Facebook friend – a white, male, university professor – suggested we rise up. In my bones I know that won’t work. Again, I hear a whisper. Only in quiet revolution will we win.

We must stop seeing ourselves as victims. Trump’s election did not diminish my worth (no matter how much it felt that way at the time). It did not undo my years of work. It triggered a reaction, certainly, and his election brought me to tears, but I still stand strong.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. We will not achieve equality in this country until the oppressed cease to behave as victims of a society that does things to them. Privilege can be taken. We have the power to reclaim our nation. Our resiliency is not dependent on flexibility or adaptability. Instead, it is dependent upon the health of our relationships and our moral code.

As a society, we have been conditioned to fear the “other.” People not like us are a danger, but fear of the other breeds isolation. It severs communications, keeps us in line, and creates the problems it presumes to solve.

Fear taught women to be judgmental and prejudiced against the “other” even as it taught them to be sweet and compassionate to their own kind. Through fear, we learned women have monsters inside. The monsters are terrifying. They loom dark and uncontrollable when we feel thrilled, aroused, deeply sad, terribly angry, ambitious or just desirous of something. Women believe that if their monster gets out, it will consume them.

The monster is power. It can wreak havoc, make mayhem, even murder, but that’s not what it usually does. Instead, that monster fosters and sustains courage. It defends our families, gives us the strength to endure tragedy, and promotes our ambition. In fact, it is the monster that makes us human. What women have been taught to repress is their strength, sexuality, intelligence, agency, and anger. To unleash these, to take off the restraints, is to be fully alive, but many don’t know this. Many keep their monster locked inside.

53% of white women voted for Donald Trump. There has been much speculation as to why. Some say that women’s conditioning led to compassion for a bully. Others say white privilege and racism are to blame. Perhaps both played a factor, but I also think women who voted for Trump did it to protect this country from the monster they couldn’t contain. Hillary Clinton is the monster unleashed and therefore couldn’t be Commander-in-Chief because society dictates that powerful women are evil. If you have doubt, you need only look at history and the thousands of women burned at the stake.

For centuries, women have been taught to suppress their own power in order to stay safe. Compliance and compassion, generosity and temerity, daintiness and desirability were the qualities we had to embrace. We’ve fought this and we’ve won some victories. The very fact that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by well more than a million demonstrates the work that’s been done. However, the election crushed our optimism. Nationwide, women grieved hard. Hollowed out, directionless, and exhausted from too many tears, they formed a steady stream in and out of my store.

“What do we do now?”

“Where do we go from here?”

“How could this have happened?”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think I need to get a gun.”

Like me, they felt hopeless, lost, and broken.

Fear raised its ugly head, licked its slimy lips, and slithered toward us in anticipation.

Then liberals and progressive women shed the fog of complacency and gathered on social media and in the streets.

“No more,” we said. It ends today. Now is not the time for fear. It is the time for rage. Yes, rage. White-hot, laser-like feminine rage. It’s time to unleash our monsters and make concrete, positive change.

If the election of Donald Trump did anything, it woke us up, roused us from the dream of safety, and motivated us to congregate.

The election requires us to move forward with a vision of freedom or abdicate. In moving forward, we must harness the power inside us and use it to combat corporate greed, climate change, and political corruption. Listen to the monster when it speaks. Follow its lead. Reach out and embrace the “other” even if you’re terrified. Talk, listen, and discover common ground. The other’s fear is as real as yours, their future as uncertain.

We all want the same thing: the freedom we were promised to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. As a nation, we must come together in defense of freedom and the tenets it demands: liberty, empathy, and economic independence.

To achieve freedom, we must support the businesses that support our communities, spend like getting is less important than giving, and boycott the corporations that condone rape, misogyny, xenophobia, bigotry, and environmental irresponsibility because their pursuit of profit is more important than humanity and the preservation of the world.

New Project: Chapter 22

Twenty Two

Election Day, 2016. I woke heavy, queasy, afraid. So much was at stake. Would we, as a nation, reward tenacity and experience or hate? I couldn’t fathom the decision we faced or understand how we had sunk so low. Rather than thrill to the possibility of electing our first female president, I tried, without success, to banish dread.

Wall Street held its breath. The world waited and watched, consumed with a drama that could, if things went wrong, have a profound and lasting effect. Everything was a stake – fifty years of civil rights legislation, forward movement to combat climate change, economic security, global stability, even democracy itself was in danger. Would the great American experiment fail? Would fear and anger vanquish its quest? Would, finally, the words “All men are created equal” be laid to a sad and ignoble death? Or would sanity prevail?

I went for a run. I talked with my mom. I paced and cleaned and tried not to look at my phone. I wondered, repeatedly, if I could start drinking yet. At moments like these (and thank God they are few and far between) it is easy to feel hopeless. Powerless. Caught in a web. But we are never powerless. Never. There is always a choice, a way, a path.

I know what it is to feel trapped. I’ve lived it. I can close my eyes and be there again. I have been abused. I have been raped. I have lived poor and lonely and desperate. Once, when it was about as bad as I thought it could get, my mom lashed me with an angry gaze. She stood, stepped close and said, “Destiny, there is no bottom.”

I looked at her perplexed and she repeated her words.

“There is no bottom. You either start climbing or keep falling. You think this is the worst, but it’s not. So you do what you have to do. You dig your fingernails in and scratch your way to the surface. Bleed, cry, rage, but get moving because you’ve got three kids who need you and you can’t quit yet.”

She was right. The only bottom is dead and dead, then, wasn’t an option. It seldom is when I’m honest, but there have been times…

I know you’ve had them.

Still, we’re here. Breathing. Writing and reading. We made it through mostly unscathed, we dug in, climbed out, kept going because there’s always a choice, a way, a path out of the darkness if we’re willing.

Janis Joplin said, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” We experience freedom when we’re cut loose, left to die, floating like balloons unleashed into a wide and empty sky. Grief is freeing. So is joy. They are two sides of the same coin and both require courage and the ability to face and own the fact that we are more than we thought we were. It is from these two sources that we confront our fears, carve a path, or change the world.

On September 17, 2011 a group of people occupied Zuccotti Park in New York City’s financial district. They were there in protest. Three years prior, deregulation of financial institutions had cause the economy to collapse. Millions of Americans suffered catastrophic losses. Rather than help them, the US government decided to rescue the banks which had caused the collapse. Those at the top profited from the bailout and middleclass losses. Three years later, not much had changed. The economy was still stagnant, incomes were flat, and corporate CEOs and Wall Street bankers made millions while a significant portion of the population lost jobs, health insurance, and homes.

The protest, known as Occupy Wall Street, grew into a worldwide movement against greed, corruption, income inequality, and corporate influence on government. Then, without accomplishing much of anything, it dissolved.

Micah White, one of the movement’s co-founders, said, “Occupy was a perfect example of a social movement that should have worked according to the dominant theories of protest and activism; it was a historical event, joined by millions of people across demographics from around the world around a series of demands, there was little violence. And yet, the movement failed.”

White, who now runs a non-profit think tank that studies effective methods of protests and activism, believes the next revolutionary movement will “be a contagious mood that spreads throughout the world and the human community.”

He says, “For me, the main thing we need to see is activists abandoning a materialistic explanation of revolution – the idea that we need to put people in the streets – and starting to think about how to spread that kind of mood and make people see the world in a fundamentally different way. That’s about it. The future of activism is not about pressing our politicians through synchronized public spectacles.”

He’s right. Rioting, marches, and peaceful sit-ins are not making a difference anywhere in the world. The patterns of these kinds of protests, though emotionally compelling, are known and predictable. That makes them ineffective. Opposition knows how to handle them and the public is desensitized because it has seen so many.

We live in a magical time. Never before has the spread of news been so instantaneous. Never before have we been able to create global communities from the comfort of our homes. The indigenous protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline received almost no mainstream media coverage and yet it garnered international attention, raised millions of dollars, and attracted sympathy from agencies including the United Nations and Amnesty International.

And yet, for all the technological advances that have allowed us to communicate across vast distances in real time, we’re paralyzed. Social media lets us witness and post without compelling us to action. We can complain bitterly, join in solidarity with like-minded folks, and stream news that reflects our values. We don’t really have to think anymore. We revel in the meme and sound bite even as they stoke our fears.

Fear loomed large in my heart the day the US election threatened to erode our rights. I worried about armed insurrection and white supremacists at the polls. Would civility descend into chaos? Would violence ensue? I thought about this book and what I’m trying to do. We must challenge the status quo, but protest and riot aren’t the answer. Only a quiet revolution can change the collective mood. As we give to ourselves and those we love, we must also give to our world. We do this first by wriggling out of corporate control.

How do you spend your money? How does your money control you? Are you the type that saves or do you spend because there’s never enough? Does money define you or do you define yourself?

The answers, for most of us, are complicated. We don’t have the luxury of excess. Some live paycheck to paycheck. A $500 emergency is catastrophic for two thirds of the population and most people are one paycheck away from homelessness, though they seldom look that bleak reality in the face.

Our collective lack of economic independence keeps us bound to jobs and lives we hate. We can, however, make change. Understanding how money influences our decisions empowers us to do things differently. Quietly, softly, we can improve the ways we give and receive. In doing so, we step away from corporate control and into lives we create.

New Project: Chapter 21

Twenty One

 

In her book, Gender Trouble, Judith Butler says, “[G]ender is an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through a stylized repetition of acts.” In other words, we perform behaviors, gendered nuances, and physical movements over and over again until they become the basis of our identity. Women are not, by nature, the better caregivers. They merely behave that way. Men are not, by nature, more rational.

We are taught to adopt a series of attitudes and actions that determine our identity as women or men even though these attitudes and actions may have nothing to do with us. Gender identity can be unlearned. Our best, authentic selves are seldom who we were taught to be. Somewhere beyond the stereotypical definition of women and men are humans longing to be whole.

We can be deeply individual and fully free without compromising each other’s right to the same. My love of cheese does not in any way impede your loathing of it. My competence with power tools cannot emasculate a man or render him powerless. Marriage, friendships, and family need not be sick, twisted, or mundane if we are willing to do the work of embracing ourselves, giving to ourselves, and sharing us with those we love.

By taking my liberty, I granted Steve his. I couldn’t have done that had he not developed real empathy for my plight as a woman in this world. Knowing it, understanding my fears and doubts, hearing me in a way no man ever had empowered me to take a stand and finally kill the idea of romance I played like a fairytale in my head. “You belong to me, I belong to you,” is static, dead, and wrong.

Belong is a strange word. I want to belong to this community. She doesn’t belong here. Belong implies that we are either part of something or owned when, based on its etymology, the word simply means: to go along with. It turns out that belonging is a choice one makes. When we choose to go along with something or someone, we create a relationship based on that decision.

“Hey, I like that idea; I’ll go along with that,” never meant that the idea owns you, that you are part of it, or that it may exercise any form of control over you. It simply means that you’re going along — next to, in dialog with, and wholly your own. Likewise, one cannot belong to another person. One may go along with in friendship or love, but one is not a part of the other and one is never owned.

The adaptation of the word as a method of control carries the threat of ostracization and amplifies our fear of being alone. We use it to welcome, manipulate, or shame so there is always someone else to lean on, share with, or blame.

I no longer choose to belong in this way; to Steve or anyone else. Our culture, and its obsession with a twisted sense of belonging, radicalized me without my knowledge so it could use me as a weapon against myself and everyone else. However, belonging to this culture requires my consent and I now refuse to give it.

Like too many, I’ve spent much of my life trying to be someone I’m not so I could belong to a social construct not my own. I am, to paraphrase David Wong, part of a long line of history. I did not make the problems that choke our society, but I am responsible for making things better. Consequently, I must shed my desire to belong, face the fear of being shunned, and embrace the freedom I demand.

To walk along side the man I love is so much richer than owning or being owned by him. To take time for myself is to give us both the opportunity to rejuvenate, re-engage, and stay in love. To let him go, to trust he will return, gives us both the freedom to grow, love, and learn. Sharing experiences we’ve had alone keeps our conversations strong. Sharing an ever deepening frustration with the limitations imposed on all of us by a political and economic system vested only in its own survival, and that of those at the top, motivates us to do more both individually and as a couple.

Shedding gender roles means shedding gender identity. I love being a woman and the many differences between women and men, but I don’t need to sculpt myself into an object or caricature to belong. Can you imagine a world where men cry freely and women lead the charge? Where men kissing men isn’t disgusting and women kissing women isn’t porn? Where men and women share the caring, the bread-winning, and the household chores?

In her book, Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg says that if women are to occupy the “C” Suite, they must act like men. Then, when they get there, they can make changes to corporate culture that will benefit women.

This, to me, is insane. I would rather walk away from the steel towers, corporate suites, and glass ceilings. I would create a new way to be, one where women and men are free to determine their own identities and build personal, communal, and economic relationships that that are rich, diverse, and permissive.

Culture dictates that we fit in, do like those around us, and conform to ideas and beliefs that were formed to control or coerce us into performing work, maintaining the status quo, and questioning our own worth. The tenets of our culture ensure we remain insecure and thus powerless.

In the place of power, we are granted the opportunity for civic debate and the right to vote. These lure us into believing we can make change by electing some new figurehead that will embrace the values we were taught to celebrate. Instead of making change, however, we just get more of the same. Our political system has dissolved into a mockery of itself and Republicans and Democrats are waging a vicious culture war that accomplishes nothing.

It does not fix the economy, end hunger, or ensure that we, as a nation, are safe. Instead, it keeps us divided, defensive, and disengaged. As long as we’re vested in winning, vested in forcing our personal morals on everyone else, we are not clear-headed enough to challenge this new norm.

As citizens, we have an obligation to protect our freedom. We are bound, as sentient beings, to ensure that its three tenets – liberty, empathy, and economic independence – are taught, encouraged, and supported so that we have what we need to thrive, but as long as mega-corporations buy our elections and write our laws, we will be forced to compromise.

Corporations sponsor the culture war, spending countless dollars each year to distract us while they secure astronomical profits at the expense of our welfare, the planet’s welfare, and our children’s welfare.

Capitalism with good stewardship built a magnificent nation. Runaway capitalism will destroy it. It’s up to us to reexamine our convictions about how money is made and spent and how business and government enhance our lives or prove relentless. If we can free ourselves from cultural norms and develop empathy for each other, we are also capable of wresting economic independence from those who’ve made it their mission to take it from us.

Many know this. Most don’t know how. Those that do are often shackled by fear, shame, or both. The truth is all relationships can be moral and profitable. Business is no different. It, too, can be good for our individual hearts and communal soul.

New Project: Chapter 20

(To read the previous chapter, click here)
Twenty

Marriage is a living thing, a river carving a path, an ocean hitting the shore. Every interaction is a collision, every moment a choice. The minutes, hours, days and weeks of breakfasts and dinners, laundry and chores, missed communication and passionate exchange carve a landscape that is testament to misery, complacency, or joy.

It is not a document, ring, or vow. It is a commitment to rend – through fight and conversation, heartache and lust – the best version ourselves, the people we were before the world and its expectations of who we should become destroyed our confidence. To marry is to see someone for who they are and not let them hide behind cultural norms. It is to bleed in the light, to reveal every flaw, to comfort and scold and hold through terrible nights until dawn breaks cold and pink and the coffee steams, warming the mugs. It’s unlearning everything we’ve been taught and throwing the recipe out and knowing the raw ingredients might make a meal, but being unsure where to start. Marriage begins the moment the contract falters, the vow is broken, or the promise is undone. Until then, it’s a mirage, a social expectation that helps us feel we belong.

Feminists have long decried marriage as an institution. They have been blamed for the rise in divorce, chastised for weakening the family unit, and threatened for their unwillingness to embrace something many believe is a principle tenet of our civilization. Until recently, I didn’t share their view. Now, I do – at least in regard to the idea of marriage we’ve been sold.

Early in our relationship, but after I rejected the liberty he offered, Steve and I talked a lot about marriage. Both of us had been deeply scarred by our prior divorces and the events preceding them. We had failed at marriage, missed something crucial, didn’t do it right. We broke our vows to the spouses we thought we’d have for life and understood that somehow marriage as an entity was at least partially at fault, though neither of us knew how.

We discussed the patriarchal roles assigned to men and women, marriage equality for the LGBT community, and staying engaged. We spent long hours trying to envision a different kind of marriage, one that wouldn’t consume us whole. We failed. Our marriage became a thing of its own, a stage upon which we, as players, acted the roles. Steve would provide. I maintained the home.

We both worked to preserve our individual identities, to behave as if the marriage had merely cemented our union, but our scripts were written in stone. I became someone I didn’t know – needy, jealous, controlling. Though a self-described feminist, Steve behaved like an entitled boor.

He called me crazy. I called him oblivious, insensitive, and more. We were both right because we had an idea about marriage that was wrong. Marriage, we discovered, must be about the liberation of souls.

For that to happen, we must feel each other’s pain. Take it in, believe it, hold it as our own. Empathy is the language true love knows. Steve could not just call himself a feminist. He had to become one all the way down in the darkest recesses of himself. He had to recognize his contribution to the toxic, misogynistic stew that is our culture and learn what it felt like to be on the receiving end of sexist jokes. He had to get intimate with assault, objectification, and how women police themselves. He had to start having conversations with other men about it, had to witness with fresh eyes how men perpetrate horror on their wives and girlfriends every day in small, micro-aggressive ways and recognize himself in their actions. He had to feel, like a visceral blow to his body, what I felt when I heard Trump bragging about sexual assault and understand that every nude photo shared between men, every off-color remark, every up and down the body evaluation was a knife in my heart.

To me, his job seemed easy. He only had to learn what it was like to be me. I had to learn to let him go.

Marriage between two people is like freedom. It requires liberty, empathy, and the economic independence of each person. In most instances, Steve possessed all three. He had all the liberty white, male privilege affords. Empathy, once understood, came naturally. Economic independence was his from the start. He was all the things I was not, had all the freedom I could imagine or want. As a woman, I was inherently at risk because he would never need me as I needed him. He was all I had and I peppered him with questions in an attempt to hold on tight.

“Where are you going?”

“Who are you talking to?

“What time will you be back?”

The difference between us is that he already had it all. I could step up to meet him, but he didn’t need to step down. His empathy was a choice. Mine was imperative. Women feel deeply because we lack the luxury of apathy. Our emotions are a means of survival in a patriarchal culture that prefers to use us as objects for its own end. We can’t be apathetic or oblivious because at any moment some man might decide we’re expendable. Used, tossed away, left for a newer model, beaten because he’s had a bad day, raped, murdered for rejecting him, murdered for disobeying, drugged, dragged, kicked, addressed with contempt, condescended to, ignored, disrespected, interrupted, bullied, harassed, ridiculed, checked out, found good enough or wanting, a thing at his beckoning lest we endure yet another attack, women must never let their guard down. We must always know what men are thinking and feeling because our safety depends on it.

As a privileged man, endowed with freedom from birth, Steve couldn’t validate my low self-worth, couldn’t see the damage his coming home late without calling did to my heart or feel what I felt when he called me drunk to tell me he and a buddy were bar-hopping.

My empathy did not extend to his liberty because I had none. Though self-imposed in response to stigma dictated by cultural norms, I felt I couldn’t go bar-hopping with a friend. A chaste dinner, a single glass of wine, and I was done. I had to get home to my man. I couldn’t imagine not calling if I were running late, couldn’t posit the repercussions that would have.

Not only did I not want him to feel what I did, I didn’t believe I had the right to act with impunity or focus solely on myself. That province belonged exclusively to men.

Letting Steve go meant taking responsibility for the liberty freedom demands by experiencing the liberty I denied myself after we became a couple. It meant being strong, healing the wound that I had become, and running fierce and free in the mornings with my dog. Only then, only after I had claimed my place at the men’s table in all the ways I wanted, could I find the empathy that a living marriage demands.

Protests are Great, but They Won’t Stop Hate

I spent the morning in solidarity with One Billion Rising and Love Trumps Hate. The day started cold, uncomfortable, awkward. People brought signs, wore ribbons and pins, and crossed their arms against the chill of November and the coming four years. They sought some kind of connection, peace or a sense of direction, a new way of being in a changed world.

Through all the speeches, impassioned pleas, and heartfelt promises, I felt torn. On one hand, Trump will never be my president. Instead, he is my Predator in Chief. Like it was for so many survivors of sexual violence, his election was a sucker punch, a blow of profound effect. He, and those who elected him, made my agony a joke, reduced me to an object, and denied my humanity and hope.

On the other hand, I want to understand. I want to know the hearts and minds of those who voted for him. I want to build bridges and end the divide. I want fear to stop ruling this country. I want there to be no “other” that rises like a bogeyman and sends us scurrying to our insulated social media bubbles so that we may, for a time, feel safe.

I have no idea how to move forward because I am conflicted at core. Love Trumps hate is at odds with my deep rage and desire for war. This is new. It’s real. It’s not going away.

I love my country and my community, but maybe it’s time for me and all women to finally love ourselves more.  It is my prayer that we rise strong and finally achieve the equality and respect we deserve.

 

 

New Project: Chapter 19

Nineteen

 

Feelings are the stuff of dreams, memories, courage, and compromise. Often, they lead us blind. We are so prepared to trust the emotions our relationships inspire that we create narratives that justify. He’s mean to you because he likes you. He loves me and would never hurt me so it must be my fault. Boys will be boys. Girls are just too emotional to be trusted most of the time.

It takes something shocking to jolt us out of the narrative we create, something powerful to demand critical examination of the relationships we make. That happened to me recently and I ended two friendships inside of a week. I’d known Tom for thirty-two years and John for five. Both defended presidential candidate, Donald Trump, for bragging about sexual assault. Severing the relationships hurt a lot, and yet there was no choice. I simply couldn’t continue friendships with men who share Trump’s thoughts. To them, his words were no big deal, just locker room talk. To me, even “locker room talk” is demeaning and hurtful. Take out the unwanted kissing and groping, the words of sexual assault, and you are left with men who see women as toys with attractive body parts.

Tom and I met in college. He was muscular, proud, and blond. We shared a passion for literature and tree climbing and forged a strong, platonic bond. Early in our friendship he told me I’d be pretty if I lost some weight. I was sixteen, an athlete, and in fairly good shape. Later, as I met boys and played with them, he told me to be careful lest I earn the reputation of slut. Tom was like a brother to me. I winced when he made his comments, but didn’t blow them off because he was doing his job. The recipe dictates that men protect the women they care about.

Over decades, Tom and I talked, encouraged, supported, and fought. One night, shortly after I’d left my first husband, he called me while drunk, asked if the panties I wore were lace, and if I’d ever given him a sexual thought. Though shocked at his lewd behavior, I tittered nervously and let it slide because of the alcohol and, well, boy talk. He called a few days later to apologize and we moved on, the incident a glitch unworthy of the friendship we’d held for so long.

I never thought about any of these instances until Tom defended Donald Trump. The hateful rhetoric of that man’s campaign gave so many people permission to shove aside the proverbial curtain and step out of their caves. In a staggering, shining moment, I realized Tom’s comments over the years were part of a nefarious conviction he shares with much of the world; women are objects so men can be men rather than human. They need us weak so they can be strong,

The fight for equality has raged on this continent since the European invasion bloodied its shores. Freedom from government without representation incited the American Revolution. The fight over slavery separated brothers in the Civil War. Now it seems the fight has taken a broader course. Battle lines are drawn. The nation is in upheaval. There is talk of bloodshed over cultural norms. Women, minorities, and LGBT people are demanding more than has ever been allowed and those who would maintain the status quo are prepping for war.

Hang on to what you know. Don’t rock the boat. Women are women and men are men and that’s the way it’s always been. One female Trump supporter said in defense of his words, “It was a man saying it to another man in a man’s world.” Somehow, to her, that meant his words weren’t wrong. The recipe for toxic love. Coulter’s song. No good way to be a girl. Go along to get along. I cried when I ended my friendship with Tom, though I did it on Facebook and he never saw.

John and I became friends on Twitter. We’re both writers and over the years his critique of my books has been invaluable. We disagreed on many issues, but our dialog had always been respectful. Then Trump came along. John said Trump was no worse than the rappers invited to the White House by President Obama.

I said, “This man’s running for President and bragging about sexual assault. The rappers are writing songs.”

John said, “No. They’re trying to get people to shoot cops and Trump’s words were locker room talk.”

The issues are complex, certainly. One can argue there is no right or wrong, there is only how we feel and what we do in response, but that conviction only works when rooted in the narrative we’ve been taught.

A draft reader of this book read Chapter 14 and sent me a note. Shaken by my words, she recounted a story of her own about a woman who had taken art classes from her a long time ago. The student was sweet, quiet, and dedicated to learning the craft. She came in the afternoons while her children were in school and then suddenly stopped. The teacher called and got no response. Finally, after much persistence, the student explained that her husband, who had forbidden her to leave the house, had found out and it was dangerous for her to continue the lessons. After that conversation, she never heard from the student again.

The teacher told me, “Women’s lives are often much more complicated than what you describe. Often excuses hide secrets, secrets others (women included) don’t want to know. This happened in 1985. Still happening to too many women today: women keeping secrets, hiding their secrets behind ‘excuses’ because they are unable to tell their truths, even to other women.”

When I first read this, I felt terrible. Nodding my head, I silently agreed with the teacher’s words. Safety is paramount for women. The student did what she felt necessary to preserve it for herself and her kids. And then it hit me. This is the narrative we’ve been taught. There were so many possible endings to the teacher’s story, but we both accepted the traditional version, the justification that keeps women powerless: “Don’t do that or you’ll get hurt” is how we’ve been controlled for so long.

Consider an alternate version. We know the student was dedicated enough to her creativity to risk her husband’s wrath. Perhaps that dedication continued at home in spare moments and over time gave her the confidence and courage to leave him. Perhaps she eventually called the cops. Or, had the teacher not accepted the conventional narrative, she could have continued the lessons at the woman’s house, brought her books and materials so she could continue on her own, or called the cops herself  to prevent or report an assault.

Until we saw a video of Trump bragging about sexual assault, millions of women had kept millions of secrets for far too long. Then Trump’s cavalier attitude challenged the conventional narrative. Assault victims realized they are not the ones who should be ashamed. Our country learned that assault is all too common and is perpetrated not just by some monster lurking in the dark, but by classmates, close friends, and those seeking the highest office.

In response to Trump’s attitude, and the way his campaign minimized his words, women began sharing their sexual assault stories. The stories flooded the internet and news media. They became the thing people talked and cried about, the thing over which friendships were forged or destroyed.

Collectively, we hurt. Collectively, we were no longer afraid of slut shaming and blame. By running for President and defending his words as just locker room banter, Trump inadvertently changed our narrative and, for the first time, a “women’s issue” dominated the Presidential debate.

All over the nation, men and women began to talk. Wives confessed to husbands, revealing – in some cases after decades – the truth about the assaults they had experienced. They spoke candidly and men did too. In some instances, relationships imploded. In others, the partners became closer. Men said things like, “I knew it happened to women, I just never imagined it could happen to you.”

In doing so, they came face to face with the insidious nature of rape culture. They realized they had perpetrated the myth that rape and sexual assault only happen to “those” women – the other ones, the ones that brought it on themselves because of what they wore, how they behaved, or the race and class to which they belonged.

Until Trump opened the dialog, too many men believed that only loose women get assaulted. Good girls – girls like their wives, girlfriends, sisters, daughters, and moms – don’t. Now more men finally understand that all women are victims. While not every woman has suffered a violent abuse of her body, she certainly knows unwanted touch, street harassment, and the vicious effects of “locker room” talk.

Virginity, church, and prayer are supposed to protect us, but they don’t because men – even well-meaning men – continue to assault. They talk about us, size us up, rate us like beef in a yard. All the things designed to keep us safe – Federal and state laws, chivalry, even marriage – fail because men don’t stop.

 

 

New Project: Chapter 18

Eighteen

 

Anne Marie Slaughter wrote, “Work and family will be framed as a women’s issue, never as a mainstream issue.” She goes on to say that critical issues about work culture, gender bias, and family policy are defined through the lens of the harried, working mother. She suggests that a better lens would be of the harried caregiver, and best of all would be, “Recognizing the failure of modern American companies to adapt to the realities of modern American life.”

But it is not just companies that have failed to adapt. We have failed to adapt. We continue to act according to a script written generations ago about what love means and how it should be shown. As a result, toxic love is everywhere from intimate, sexual relations to parenting to job performance expectations. Rewriting the narrative takes exceptional courage and a great deal of compassion for ourselves and the people we love. Once the first steps have been taken and someone has been generous enough to say, “Stop, enough!” they have laid the foundation for trust. Until that happens, trust is often confused with loyalty and that creates problems of significant scope.

Companies, kings, and countries demand loyalty and a swearing of oaths. Lovers don’t. This goes against the grain, I know, but swearing fealty is one way we are manipulated to behave according to the norm. Loyalty is demanded, trust is given. Sometimes they go hand in hand, but loyalty without trust is merely obedience and that is a key ingredient in the recipe for toxic love.

Oaths and contracts do not build trust, guarantee a desired outcome or prevent people from being irresponsible, careless, or cruel. They merely ensure the possibility of financial recompense should an agreement dissolve. One can sign a contract with an employer and commit to a particular job, but the contract doesn’t prevent that person from quitting if the boss is a sexist slob. A vow cannot stop the apathy that tears a marriage apart. An oath doesn’t mean a soldier will follow an order when the shit storm is happening and everything’s gone wrong.

When Steve offered me liberty all those years ago, he understood something I had failed to grasp. Safety is something we pursue to evade a frightening reality: Security is an illusion, control a fabrication, and love, like fire, is something we can nourish, appreciate, and never hold. We can stoke it, keep the embers warm, but if we stop paying attention it will go cold.

Steve and I wrote our marriage vows. One of things we promised was to kiss constantly. This seemed simple and natural to us. We’re passionate, deeply in love, and love to touch, but when stress overtook us, Steve didn’t want to kiss as much. Then I accused him of breaking his promise. The broken promise threatened my trust because that’s what a contract does. Our marriage became about the vows, not the daily interaction of people in love.

Because my focus was on the promise, I believed the creep of marriage had worn thin his desire for me, that he was falling out of love, and that I would soon be abandoned. The story I told myself was the story of movies, books, and songs. I was tradable, not enough to keep my man involved. I got so caught up in this narrative, and was so convinced of its truth, that I forgot to ask Steve what he felt.

To credit Brené Brown, the stories we tell ourselves are often wrong. They are the walls we lean on when we feel our world falling apart, but they are seldom what’s going on. Until we dig for truth, empathy is impossible. Without empathy, trust is impossible. In the absence of trust, most contracts dissolve.

He loves me. He’s trying. Maybe you’re the one who’s wrong.

Steve breaks promises. He doesn’t do it on purpose. He just gets distracted, busy, consumed with life. I used to think that meant he didn’t care and that belief ate me alive. Every broken promise was a fist in my heart. Trust was elusive as smoke.

At first, I excused him and took on the traditional role. I picked up his slack at work, around the house, and in our romance, but eventually that made the hurt worse. I came to resent him, came to believe that nothing I did would ever be enough.

Then I fought him. Tears and fury and words I regret. Hours of turmoil, heartache and exhaustion. The slamming of doors, the hurling of want, the knot in my stomach as big as the earth. An onslaught.

We wore each other out, reached across the table and tenuously clasped hands. I crawled into his lap, cried in his arms, apologized, forgave, and moved on until it happened again.

What I failed to see, what almost cost me the love of my life, was how I held him to a false standard and wasn’t honest with myself. I bought the bullshit. I swallowed it whole. I consumed what society fed me without examining it at all.

The promise was supposed to be mine. It was all I had. My whole value was determined by it. Those vows, the vows we wrote together over drinks in a bar, the vows we meant from the bottom of our hearts were my due, my reward for being a woman. When he broke them he shattered the illusion. Cinderella returned in tatters from the ball.

Eventually, sitting by a fire on a late May night, I learned that contract and vows are not marriage. They are entities unto themselves, separate things that often push people apart because they are static and we are not. Love is fluid. Like us, it evolves. It must be tended, and protected from elements until it is raging. Then it must be fed to stay strong. It will flicker and threaten to go out in a storm, but underneath the ashes it is warm.