This piece was so amazing to read because it put words to my own frozen ness, too. I really resonate with what you shared about being trapped within an ideology and I really do feel the shame as an internal control mechanism that I use to silence myself — keep myself “safe” — and so I don’t share anything at all. This really does feel like an attempt at purity, an intervention in being discarded, a desire and an attempt to belong in a place / culture where there actually is no belonging. It’s been especially devastating because I am a writer (or at least used to be) and I used to write about my political frame to process it but I just don’t anymore. I have almost just kind of watched my own ability to articulate my own thoughts get flatter and flatter — and that is how I know that this is Not Freedom at work. I still spend some of my time in lefty spaces and I try to set a tone of imperfection, of “it’s okay to ask questions other people will judge”, and invite in play and dissent, but it is difficult because I feel so outnumbered, even though everyone there hates it, too, even if they don’t know that they do. I am looking forward to reading the readings you linked to, and am exploring Joyful Militancy with a book club now and I like that book a lot, too.
Also resisting the urge to be right is just really good advice for all relationships and for emotional sobriety in general so I just think you’re onto something here.
damn if i read this back when it was published, i could've saved myself 3 months' worth of therapy copays (literally $200)... realizing that my body was in a constant state of turmoil for 5 years because i was acting against my values and instincts was the biggest upheaval/relief of 2020
1) I would LOVE to get an elder queer AIDS survivor's thoughts on "queer enough"
2) Non binary ID freaks me out because the last thing I want to do is out myself to a cop or border guard l m a o (one of the few times when I am grateful to be misgendered as cis)
3) A lovely friend sent me a postcard that had an illustrated quote, something like "you are valid even if you don't do paid work" and my genuine emotional response was aggravation. I don't work due to health stuff and while I appreciate the intention, I was like, dang, send me a postcard with some flowers or a bird or a dolphin maybe?! "You are valid" definitely has the opposite of the intended effect on me! Yes, I am aware that I exist in corporeal form, thank you.
Thoughts about this post:
1) Ohhh man that part where your inquisitive nature turned inwards when it was suppressed: relatable. I couldn't tell you the number of times I asked myself what was wrong with me when what was wrong was the situation/organization/event/culture I was in, and I was having a perfectly reasonable emotional reaction to how I was being treated or what was happening around me. It is TRIPPY though when everyone else is seemingly in alignment/agreement and you're the only one having bad feelings and you end up gaslighting yourself into submission (I am not exaggerating in my use of gaslighting here.)
2) The self-censorship! I haven't been involved in the sj scene since... I want to say 2014 or 2015, and I STILL struggle to air my critiques. Some of it is fear of cancellation or loss of friendships, but it seems to go deeper than that because I think I'm relatively safe from both of those, being a nobody without social media and having parted ways with the more fundamentalist of my friends long ago. My remaining friends are smart and curious and warm, even if they remain invested in identity/intersectional politics in a way that I'm not. Even without an actual threat, I still feel unable to make myself speak out. Part of it is probably that I want to protect the huge health gains I've made and having to revisit/interact with the cult I escaped doesn't seem to do good things to me. But I also think it will take me a very, very long time to deprogram myself to the point where I can speak freely in a public forum without waves of shame and regret crashing over me, nearly regardless of the topic. Because although critiquing sj feels the most dangerous, I also just lost any trust in my own intelligence and judgement generally, and any belief that I have the authority to have an opinion on anything except what I ate for breakfast.
3) An opening: fiction? This is my current exploration. I hypothesize that there is a way to explore all of this without retraumatizing myself, and in such a way that I can take risks I wouldn't subject myself to otherwise. Pretend characters, pretend events, pretend conflicts and chaos. People may hate or love it, but I think I'll be far enough in therapy by the time anyone reads it that I'll be able to identify constructive commentary and divert all rageful vitriol to the spam folder. Ask me in a year or two how it's going!
This piece was so amazing to read because it put words to my own frozen ness, too. I really resonate with what you shared about being trapped within an ideology and I really do feel the shame as an internal control mechanism that I use to silence myself — keep myself “safe” — and so I don’t share anything at all. This really does feel like an attempt at purity, an intervention in being discarded, a desire and an attempt to belong in a place / culture where there actually is no belonging. It’s been especially devastating because I am a writer (or at least used to be) and I used to write about my political frame to process it but I just don’t anymore. I have almost just kind of watched my own ability to articulate my own thoughts get flatter and flatter — and that is how I know that this is Not Freedom at work. I still spend some of my time in lefty spaces and I try to set a tone of imperfection, of “it’s okay to ask questions other people will judge”, and invite in play and dissent, but it is difficult because I feel so outnumbered, even though everyone there hates it, too, even if they don’t know that they do. I am looking forward to reading the readings you linked to, and am exploring Joyful Militancy with a book club now and I like that book a lot, too.
Also resisting the urge to be right is just really good advice for all relationships and for emotional sobriety in general so I just think you’re onto something here.
damn if i read this back when it was published, i could've saved myself 3 months' worth of therapy copays (literally $200)... realizing that my body was in a constant state of turmoil for 5 years because i was acting against my values and instincts was the biggest upheaval/relief of 2020
Nodding vigorously.
Thoughts about the linked article:
1) I would LOVE to get an elder queer AIDS survivor's thoughts on "queer enough"
2) Non binary ID freaks me out because the last thing I want to do is out myself to a cop or border guard l m a o (one of the few times when I am grateful to be misgendered as cis)
3) A lovely friend sent me a postcard that had an illustrated quote, something like "you are valid even if you don't do paid work" and my genuine emotional response was aggravation. I don't work due to health stuff and while I appreciate the intention, I was like, dang, send me a postcard with some flowers or a bird or a dolphin maybe?! "You are valid" definitely has the opposite of the intended effect on me! Yes, I am aware that I exist in corporeal form, thank you.
Thoughts about this post:
1) Ohhh man that part where your inquisitive nature turned inwards when it was suppressed: relatable. I couldn't tell you the number of times I asked myself what was wrong with me when what was wrong was the situation/organization/event/culture I was in, and I was having a perfectly reasonable emotional reaction to how I was being treated or what was happening around me. It is TRIPPY though when everyone else is seemingly in alignment/agreement and you're the only one having bad feelings and you end up gaslighting yourself into submission (I am not exaggerating in my use of gaslighting here.)
2) The self-censorship! I haven't been involved in the sj scene since... I want to say 2014 or 2015, and I STILL struggle to air my critiques. Some of it is fear of cancellation or loss of friendships, but it seems to go deeper than that because I think I'm relatively safe from both of those, being a nobody without social media and having parted ways with the more fundamentalist of my friends long ago. My remaining friends are smart and curious and warm, even if they remain invested in identity/intersectional politics in a way that I'm not. Even without an actual threat, I still feel unable to make myself speak out. Part of it is probably that I want to protect the huge health gains I've made and having to revisit/interact with the cult I escaped doesn't seem to do good things to me. But I also think it will take me a very, very long time to deprogram myself to the point where I can speak freely in a public forum without waves of shame and regret crashing over me, nearly regardless of the topic. Because although critiquing sj feels the most dangerous, I also just lost any trust in my own intelligence and judgement generally, and any belief that I have the authority to have an opinion on anything except what I ate for breakfast.
3) An opening: fiction? This is my current exploration. I hypothesize that there is a way to explore all of this without retraumatizing myself, and in such a way that I can take risks I wouldn't subject myself to otherwise. Pretend characters, pretend events, pretend conflicts and chaos. People may hate or love it, but I think I'll be far enough in therapy by the time anyone reads it that I'll be able to identify constructive commentary and divert all rageful vitriol to the spam folder. Ask me in a year or two how it's going!
<3