Many years ago I discovered that an artist I was newly into, Otep, had created a blog through which she interacted with readers. I was thrilled by this chance to talk directly to a famous artist, of course. Who wouldn’t be? At one point I drew on my reading habit to comment on a political issue she shared, and she thanked me because of how useful she found it.
I was elated to be seen by an artist I admired. Not just seen, but appreciated, too. Can you imagine? This fierce poet warrior who had just released Smash the Control Machine – an album of potent wrath against abusers at levels both personal and national – had regarded me with her sharp mystic’s eye and thanked me for the insight I shared.
Validation is a drug I’ve been addicted to since early childhood. I was bolstered by this, encouraged to continue reading her blog regularly and carefully in order to contribute more thoughtful commentary.
But my next comment, as meticulous as I had been in composing it (I think it took me a couple of hours to write about 150 words), did not deliver me the kind of hit I was seeking. Instead she threw a suckerpunch; a reprimand so severe that I stopped commenting, stopped reading, and even stopped being able to enjoy her music for a while.
From her perspective it was no loss at all – it was a victory akin to Kurt Cobain’s request to newly acquired Nirvana fans in the liner notes of Incesticide: “If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of different color, or women, please do this one favor for us—leave us the fuck alone! Don’t come to our shows and don’t buy our records.”
The finer details of the exchange between me and Otep are recorded in a journal somewhere that I don’t currently have access to, but I’ve retained enough of the experience in my memory to share the important parts.
On a post that had something to do with the rights of LGBTQ+ Americans – a community Otep belongs to and passionately supports – I did that thing that probably all of us have done by now on some social site at some point in time: offer a “counterargument” without realizing how out of line I was, owing to ignorance I’d never questioned.
In my “thoughtful” comment to her post, I had counted pedophiles as part of her community – an association I had uncritically absorbed through the homophobia of my upbringing and maintained through a social network stacked with cis-het white guys from similar backgrounds.
Otep did not question my ignorance. She exposed it to me and her readership like a wrecking ball exposes the insides of a building.
Her response was to use my name – just like she had in the comment she had appreciated earlier – to tell me how soft my brain was and that I had all the depth of a puddle of mite urine.
It’s comedy now for several reasons, but at the time it shook me. My intelligence or lack of it has always been a huge shame trigger, and her use of my real name to directly address her insults pulled that trigger so hard that the effect was drilled into me.
I understand if her response elicited a laugh from anyone at any point. At least half the time it’s true – my understanding of situations can be extremely soft and shallow, much to my embarrassment or in this case, humiliation.
I had wanted to be supportive, but I had unconsciously advocated for the devil, thinking I was offering a valid perspective while on a less conscious level I was asking for clarification and release from my ignorance.
I remember struggling with trying to see why my comment had evoked such an aggressive reaction. It took some time to untangle my misconception of pedophilia (usually a disordered paraphilia) from my misconception of homosexuality. I rooted out my confusion when I realized I had perceived both as equally deviant forms of sexuality (to be crystal clear, I no longer perceive homosexuality as deviant because it isn’t). After that, I didn’t even know where to begin my re-education except to read more from LGBTQ+ writers around the web, remaining open to their unfiltered feelings about their experiences of prejudice.
Though this story brings up a lot of shame, I’m grateful to my younger self for having the wisdom to see through the ego-injury to a clearer view of reality. I could have done like I’ve seen so many others do; experiencing the incident as nothing other than an emotional wound and using that pain as an excuse to turn away from all attempts to understand what had not been understood.
If it weren’t for this incident, my harmful assumption might not have been challenged until much later, like in 2011 when I studied with gay classmates under a transgender professor – the most diverse class setting I’d ever been in, at the very end of my academic career.
Or if not by that point, then maybe around 2016 when the results of the presidential election shocked me into realizing what civil rights activists have known for decades; that justice wasn’t crawling along on its own, that if we don’t proactively fight for it we lose ground, and that it has always carried the risk of costing more than just personal comfort, or even safety.
From those points until recently I’ve had a tendency to share a similar hostility with members of my social environment, stacked as it can still sometimes be with what I came to see as the very embodiment of ignorance: straight white men. I know better now but I used to project my shame and judgment to fight with them aggressively. I can still find encounters with my ideological opponents kind of thrilling, though.
My most rewarding encounter was after developing my own style of rhetoric in which I mostly eschewed ad hominem attacks and learned to snap red herrings away from the dialog to quickly course correct derailments. I demonstrated these skills beautifully in an exhausting Facebook fight about the Ferguson riots.
A straight white male colleague made a post that was his own variation of the predictable, self-righteous conservative talking point on how the rioters were reckless idiots burning down their own town. It was rife with racist and classist undertones. Witnessed by an audience sympathetic to his Libertarian politics and hostile towards me, a social justice warrior, I found myself a few days later in a room full of these same people in real life.
A political conversation had started up, and because I was still exhausted from the online debate and entirely outnumbered again, I mentally checked out. Then an older straight white male – the last person I expected – made a comment that challenged this room’s majority position. Something to the effect of, “Sometimes a riot is the only way to be heard.” He shyly looked in my direction, perhaps waiting for additional input, but I was stunned silent. So was the rest of the room.
I think the key ingredient to this small victory was empathy – having just enough not to insult anyone involved as I asked them to have the same respect for people in a situation they struggled to understand.
That said, I strongly agree with most who feel it’s not their job to educate others – which usually means being unwilling to engage with intransigent bad faith actors. This is good boundary setting. For anyone who can summon the energy to address offensive misunderstandings, I think harshness is forgivable. Carefully engaging in difficult conversations is a demanding task that requires us to pick our battles and methods wisely. We’re human – our choices are often flawed.
I also want to note that the more privilege we have, I feel, the more this duty of engaging with others falls to us. Otep handles her duty in a way she finds both expedient and satisfying, and it has proven an effective method of redirecting offenders to educate themselves, which is ideal.
Anyway, this was a thing that happened, and it turned out for the best, and I learned that Truth doesn’t have to be coated in honey to be received. A wrecking ball can get the job done, but finding a way through without resorting to either extreme delivers the kind of satisfaction one only gets from resolving the paradox of the peaceful warrior.
Though I still enjoy being a rude-ass cunt sometimes.
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