Let’s Talk

I’ve thought a lot about the situation concerning Ashley/Black Veil and the greater issues at hand here over the past few days. I’ve also spoken with a lot of people about things. 

Personally, this situation has turned into something that is causing myself to lose sleep and become very anxious. The likelihood that Ashley actually gets formally reprimanded for his actions is low just based on how cases like this typically go, and it’s quite clear that while people now know the type of person he is and that his career in music is over, those who still support him will continue no matter what. He will more than likely dwindle into irrelevancy and probably end up in jail for drinking and driving eventually. 

I have personally witnessed how this has affected the people involved, some of which are even close friends of mine. I believe that Twitter is great for some things, and catching people’s attention and spreading information is one of those things, but it can also be an incredibly toxic place. As a victim of sexual assault myself I feel for every one of the victims and fighting with people every day on Twitter who are willing to go to disgusting lengths to defend monsters like Ashley is exhausting. In my personal opinion at this point I believe people’s mental health is being harmed by the back and forth (not speaking for everyone, but I have personally seen how this is affecting people’s lives). And I don’t know how much more good can come from more Twitter arguments. 

With my MCAT approaching I need to get myself in the right head space and jumping every time my phone goes off because is it someone attacking me? Is it another victim? Is it someone in pain? That’s not a good head space. I also see the conversation at times going in a direction that I am not comfortable with or that I do not have enough information to put myself in. 

I do not want to out victims or people that do not want to have their story out there. I do not want to hunt down people and make them relive their trauma or pressure them to speak when doing so could cause a significant disruption to their lives. I’m not saying that is what is happening but I just don’t want it to A) come off that way or B) become that. In addition to that, it is very clear from a legal standpoint that Black Veil cannot say what people want them to say without breaking the NDA (at the benefit of Ashley). Ashley has retreated to his subscription only accounts and so that kind of leaves everyone at a stand still. This situation is incredibly complicated and perhaps in time there can be a conversation had but I just don’t think that time is right now. 

Speaking broadly, I will say that I am not for the cancellation of entire groups of people based of the actions of one person. I believe doing so can bring down innocent people or even potentially other victims. Should there be some punishment for succumbing to the bystander effect? I think that is fair, I think you can’t make blanket one size fits all statements but inaction can hurt too. And I think you should try and gather as many facts before deciding on any form of punishment for actions or inaction. Should you give people the chance to own up to their shortcomings and change for the better? I think so. Should inaction receive the same punishment as actions? I don’t think so, I think doing so allows the truly evil to fade into the background and minimizes their actions. 

I want to see significant change in the music industry with not only more protection for fans but for musicians as well. I see young kids, sometimes not even 18 thrown into an industry that has a habit of making monsters and addicts. The amount of leeches that feed and prey on these young musicians and don’t give a second thought to if that harms them is a big issue. Stop normalizing alcoholism and addiction. Stop watching your bandmate drink themself into a blackout every night.  Don’t create situations where a power dynamic allows people to get away with criminal actions. Check your bandmate when they say or do problematic things. I think there’s been a culture of ‘everyone looks after themselves’ but that’s clearly not working. I think if you are a band and you want to continue into the future that attitude has to change. The past can’t be changed, but the future sure as hell can. 

Beyond that, fan safety needs to be a priority. COVID-19 will change concerts and live music. And honestly, good. There should be more sanitation precautions when you have thousands of people packed together. The Route 91 mass shooting changed security at shows, and good, people should be searched for weapons. 

I think there are ideas that could prevent or reduce the situations in which sexual assault happens to fans. I think these should include things like ID scanners operated by individuals not employed by the band. No one under the age of 21 (unless they are direct family, significant other or a member of the band) be allowed on the buses. Venues need to do better ID-ing every single person that enters the venue. Tour managers and tour organizers need to do more to ensure that there are strict rules enforced as far as conduct. There needs to be a zero tolerance policy for giving alcohol/drugs to people underage and sexual misconduct. That will not prevent everything but it will make it safer and hopefully start to change the culture. 

I do not believe that every single musician is a pedophile. I think there is a disturbing number of them and I think there is another group that gets off on the power dynamic of 16-18 year old girls who worship them and that ability to control. I think there are decent people who have failed to speak out and protect their fans due to fear of their job/reputation/etc and this should serve as a notice that that’s got to change. 

This conversation tends to be very female centric but men can also be sexually abused. That’s not okay either. Band members can be sexually harassed and abused as well. It’s not okay to grab at them on stage or yell obscene disgusting things. It’s not okay for your bandmates to pressure you into drugs, sex or drinking. I will also say that physical violence is not okay. Not towards fans and not towards fellow bandmates. There’s a lot of toxicity and it’s all gotta stop. 

I will leave it up to people to make their own choices as to who they want to support or not support, I won’t tell anyone what to think. I will say that I believe it is best for this discussion to change on my blog as far as answering asks assigning blame or innocence to certain people. I stand by my accusation that Ashley Purdy is not only a sexual predator but a predator in general. But going forward I will be very selective in my answering of or posting of this topic. 

I am more than willing to continue the conversation of the issues in the alt-rock scene at large. I would love to hear people’s ideas on what can be done or just your thoughts. But for my own legal protection and sanity I would prefer that it not become specific to certain people/bands. I am open to private discussions about that and you can send in asks for only me to read but know I think this is the best move going forward. Obviously, other topics are all open and you can comment about anything else but it’s just... been a lot these past few days. 

Obviously, if something new comes out or if future incidents occur (not necessarily concerning Black Veil/Ashley but any band/person/etc) there could be more specific discussions but while I might personally believe or think certain things if I don’t have physical evidence that I am free to share (without harming the source) I don’t think it’s fair for me to open up a free for all. 

I hope that is okay with everyone. After my test and things in my life are back to a more ‘normal’ state I have further things I would like to discuss and post in regards to making my blog a more positive environment while of course still having conversations about ‘hot button’ issues, and a place where people can have discussions/comments and still speaking out when shit is fucked up. But perhaps in a way that doesn’t make me appear so hateful, because that is not who I am as a person. 

That all being said, if you are at all struggling because of the discussions being had right now. Please reach out to someone. That could be a therapist, doctor, friend, family member, counselor, etc. If you are dealing with trauma please consider seeking counseling to help you process and deal with what happened. If you feel you have evidence of criminal activity I encourage you to make a police statement or at least document it the best you can. 

I will end with this. I turn 25 this year and the past year of my life I have grown up and matured more so than I have ever before. I have learned a few things that I would like people to at least give thought to...

Please are a contradiction. Every single person has something for which they hypocritical about. Anyone who tells you differently is lying. There is no pure person, there is no one who is free of mistakes there is no one perfectly pure and consistent in ideology. It’s okay to get new information and change your opinion. No one person can change the world and evil will always exist. You will drive yourself crazy trying to eliminate all the bad out there. At the end of the day all you can do is try and help more people than you hurt. 

There are very few black and white things in life and you can’t always classify people as purely good or purely bad. People can change and that can be for better or worse. People have free will but they are also the product of their environments. It is easy to point a finger and say YOU/THIS is responsible and destroying this will right the wrong. It doesn’t. I think cancel culture can do good but it can also be toxic. Not just for the people ‘cancelled’ but also for the people doing the canceling. 

Don’t over analyze any of this or try and read between the lines, just think about it. 

#2- Restless

TW: talks of kinning, kinning bad characters, mentions trauma, talks of shitty people, guilt, abuse victims, trauma survivors, toxic behaviors, abusive behaviors, mentions Hitler, and self hatred. I watched my baby sister draw today, an’ it’s very relaxin’ watchin’ her draw. Picture looks nice too. She was drawin’ an OC a headmate made recently. I think she should post it somewhere, but I don’t want her to post shit unless she herself comes up with the idea to.  I guess the first thing that comes to mind to talk about are fictive an’ kins of the character I’m an introject of. For some fuckin’ reason the kinnies an’ the fictives of this one single character are completely different. I see popular character kinnies act or try to replicate that character in every way possible, even in an alarmin’ amount. But for once the kinnies (most of the ones we’ve came across, however there are people who will be that shitty, as we live with a woman who we kin assigned that character) are actually really nice people. For context, the canonical character is a bad person. Very toxic an’ all that shit. An’ it’s jus’. You’d expect them to be shitty people? But they’re actually really nice. They’re weird, but they’re honestly the people you’d want as an ally in a fight. I find it unsettlin’ in a way, an’ I also feel bad ‘cause these people are bein’ hated on ‘cause of a bad person they kin. I can understand hatin’ the character an’ not trustin’ the kinnie, but I feel bad that genuinely nice people are given crap about kinnin’ someone. Of course, if I met someone who kinned someone like Hitler, I’d not trust ‘em either. So this is jus’ a shit situation. All I gotta say for the kinnies who are genuinely good, I think it’s best to not share that particular character that y’all kin. It closes the door to a hell of a lot of paths in your life. While the kinnies are nice people, we’ve met... 8 introjects of this character, only half are decent people. An’ this is from a few systems we talk to on the regular. These introjects are just. Horrible persecutors. Some even harm people outside of their own system, an’ I can’t even imagine how many other introjects of that character are out there, an’ how many are jus’ as horrible. It’s scary as hell. An’ I’ll admit, I was horrible too, but.. my hand was forced to say the least, an’ I sure as hell would never do the things that I did back then ever again. I’m not who I was anymore. An’ I’m glad for that.  It pains me knowin’ that there’s a shit ton of people with the same face as I, hurtin’ people. I have met victims from these people an’ they project so much trauma on me an’ I hate myself for it, despite me not bein’ the one to hurt them. I still can’t remove the guilt of essentially existin’. My source character may not define me now, but godamn his face is my face. An’ I can never escape the consequences of the people who have been hurt. I don’t blame anyone for hatin’ my source self, bein’ uncomfortable by me, or projectin’ your traumas on me. I guess I jus’ want to repent for the shit that me an’ every introject of my source self has done. Even though I know I can never erase traumatic experiences..  I guess the best thing to do is be a safe person for people to yell at or vent to about what was done to ‘em by someone who shares my face. That way they can be able to get everything they want to say to their particular source mate without the threat of gettin’ hurt.  This shit might not even make sense to anyone but me, but that’s a’ight. I don’t care if it’s incoherent nonsense that no one sees, it only really matters to me.

A (expect a part 5) 4-Part Good Omens Meta Part 4: Crowley’s 5 Harmful Coping Skills + 1 That Heals

So Expect a part 5 maybe tomorrow maybe the next day, and perhaps a part 6. Honestly, the Ineffable Duo has a lot of trauma and abuse issues that deserve more time and energy than my metas, but I hope this helps unpack some??? of their experiences and helps explain their recovery journies. Obligatory apology for somehow turning into a Good Omens blog overnight

So what you missed on these outrageously long metas

Part 1 TLDR:  Crowley’s love for Aziraphale helps heal him from the abuses of Heaven 

Part 2 TLDR:  Aziraphale’s love helps Crowley cope with his trauma and their no-strings-attached relationship enables him to begin healthier healing processes despite the abuses of Heaven and Hell.  

Part 3 TLDR:  Aziraphale’s abuse doesn’t allow him to cope with the fact his bosses and his instincts are telling him to do 2 very different things. He manages to cope but only by using denial and repression...which is hella unhealthy. It is only when he finally puts down his defenses and being honest with himself that he is not in a good place in Heaven, but he is in a good place with Crowley, that he can start working toward recovery.

The Road So Far:

So Where Aziraphale is badly abused and Traumatized by Heaven and the fear of falling,  Crowley lived it, he fell, he lost his sense of self, and he struggles with isolation. In short, it’s much, much worse. While I’ll be arguing his coping mechanisms are not AS toxic as Aziraphale’s (which, let’s be honest that’s a low bar considering how deep in denial Aziraphale is), he still doesn’t cope with his loss in a healthy manner. 

This being said, Crowley IS further along his recovery path than Aziraphale, it is their relationship with the angel that allows him to finally come to terms with his issues and start forming healthy strategies for overcoming, or coping with, his considerable loss.  

CROWLEY (please someone >Aziraphale< give him a hug)

So whereas Aziraphale is drinking some top-shelf quality Repression and Denial, Crowley is not allowed such a luxury. Unlike his angel who will not/ cannot touch his trauma with a 10 and a half meter pole, Crowley is intimately aware that he is fallen, and that that kind of loss (abandonment) does not heal easily.

First, he is shown to believe that he is responsible for all of the bad things that have happened in the world. For example, he takes responsibility for things “humans beat him to”. but we can see (in the book at least) that many of the horrific terrors (like the Spanish Inquisition) caused him so much pain he drank for a week. Also, he frequently says things to the effect of “I am bad” (i.e. I’m not nice), “I am undeserving of love” (i.e. I’m unforgivable), and “no one can be trusted (i.e. the trees have ears). 

Ultimately, this trauma manifests in low self-esteem for the demon, and enforces his reckless, and often destructive, behavior. All of this negative perspective stems from losing supposedly unconditional love, and Hell’s expectations for him as an “evil” demon.  

You can see some of this at work when Aziraphale says “I hope you are forgiven” and Crowley responds “I’m unforgivable”. As noted in Part 2, this interaction demonstrates Crowley’s low approximation of himself. Worse, it also indicates that he has internalized the idea that he, by mere providence of his being a demon, is unworthy of love, forgiveness, and unconditional care. Since Heaven tossed him out, and his genius is unappreciated in Hell, he is isolated from the rest of the divine creatures for his humanity, as he is isolated from humanity by his divinity. He does not see himself as worth forgiveness, attention, or any “positive” emotion. 

Because his self-esteem has been thoroughly broken by God, he fails to properly assign blame. Meaning, when he should be pointing to the key abuser (in this case God) as the reason for his abandonment, he instead blames himself and other demons for falling. 

Let me reiterate again, Crowley is not at fault for being cast out. It was God who, in her abusive “wisdom” chose to cast him out and banish him from his home. In reality, he didn’t “saunter vaguely downwards” or “hung around the wrong crowd” or “simply asked questions”, he was tossed out. Each of his “reasons” for being a demon is not an act of reclaiming his identity. He is not saying “I left because you are an abusive power hungry parent and this needs to stop”. Instead, he’s saying “I’m looking for a reason to justify why I was abandoned”. Each of his responses places the blame on him for his lack of etherial-ness do not directly address the cast-outer as the one at fault.   

Consequently, he constantly has outbursts of anger (see: screaming at plants),  guilt (see: apologizing to Aziraphale for “whatever I said, I didn’t mean it, Look at me I’m apologizing, now get into the car”), and shame (see: his response whenever he talks about falling, because it’s not pride or joy, but fear and sadness producing shame).  He also has a significant about of fear that he won’t be successful, that the earth will end, and that motivates his desires to Run. The. Fuck. Away. 

Although I can not and will not diagnose Crowley with PTSD, according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America Crowley demonstrates many worrisome behaviors that come with untreated or poorly treated trauma, causing negative effects to recovery from abuse.    

By and large, Crowley responds to the trauma of falling not by denying and avoiding, but by internalizing all of the negative stereotypes placed onto him. Where many of the other demons revel in their designation, truly trying to kill and undo humanity, Crowley doesn’t do that.  Instead, he finds other, unhealthy outlets for his trauma. 

This is also followed emphasized by his aggressive behavior and irritability towards practically everyone, sentient or not (his plants count).  Along with his reckless and often self-destructive behavior (like speeding, drinking, yelling, saving Aziraphale, and running away to Alpha Centauri).

Like Speeding:

While Crowley’s Bentley is practically his child, and he does love it, he drives recklessly in it. There is something to be said about the miracles he presumably places around it to avoid disaster, Aziraphale’s correct in pointing out that it is, without a doubt, DANGEROUS behavior. 

We see 3 different instances where Crowley is straight out a reckless driver. First, while delivering the anti-christ he is so consumed with his fear for the end of the world that he almost crashes into oncoming traffic. Second, he HITS Anathema on her bike (which under normal circumstances could have resulted in his, Aziraphale’s or Anathema’s death). Third, he drives THROUGH hellfire, and across the English countryside with a car on fire. Yes, I know that he survives because “damn it he’d started in the Bentley, he’d end in the Bentley”. But, as we see with Hathur, the fire is normally deadly (inconveniently discorporated-ly) even to Demons. His desperation is noted, but also dangerous and reckless. 

Each of these reckless instances is in direct response to traumatic triggers. Namely: the fall, rejection, and death. 

Almost hit by a semi-truck? It is likely that the end of the world, the end of humanity, and the celestial war to follow is reminiscent of the first rebellion. I mean, the first war that would have resulted in Crowley’s fall. Being tasked with delivering the very thing what will make the “end times” realized is a hard reminder of the “beginning times”. 

Actually hitting a girl on a bike? He’s talking to Aziraphale about love and as someone who has been rejected (several times at this point) by the said angel, and we can tell based on the 1970′s rejection, that it’s not a healed wound. His relationship with Aziraphale is one of the healthiest in the whole series, as well as, I wager, the most healing ones. But, it doesn’t work if/when Crowley is afraid of rejection or reminded of the 7(ish) times he’d been rejected previously. 

Your car’s on fire?  What’s the “perfect” response to being stuck on the M25 while something that could “kill” you surrounds all of London? Why not drive right through it? No! We, the audience, can tell that’s a terrible idea, but, because Crowley’s self-preservation skills are 0 and Hathur just threatened to kill him (and alluded to the death of Aziraphale again which, we will be getting to) it’s the only response to the threat he can figure out.  It is only by a miracle (perhaps many) that he doesn’t die in the car fire. 

Like Drinking

Although both Aziraphale and Crowley indulge in drinking, with an assumed frequency, Crowley uses it as a coping mechanism when faced with his traumatic triggers. He drinks because it’s the end of the world and needs to not be rejected by Aziraphale. He drinks because he’s scared about what the end of the world means and having nowhere to go. He drinks because Harthur mentions his fall. He drinks because Aziraphale’s bookshop burned down and likely died. 

Yes, you could say that because he’s demonic, and alcohol doesn’t have the “same” impact on him as it might someone else, he uses it as a crutch to process a lot of his fears and trauma. And, regardless of the effect, getting drunk/drinking heavily is not a healthy coping mechanism. We can see this fantastically displayed when he has hit rock bottom and his only support system (all of 1 angel, Aziraphale) up and dies on him. He has no other place to process his trauma except at the bottom of a whiskey bottle.  This is not healthy and does not allow him to process the grief and retraumatization he’s experiencing with the loss of his best friend. It is only Aziraphale who can pull Crowley out of the stupor he’s in, because Aziraphale is the only reliable thing in Crowley’s life, and even he comes with a few triggers. 

Like Yelling

Although I like to think he doesn’t actually destroy his plants for “disappointing him. We can’t know that. We can only know that, with little prompting, he can and does fly off the handle and yell, scream, and yell abuse at his plants. Now, while it sorta seems like his plants are semi-sentient, in general, this coping mechanism isn’t the worst. However, it too does not get at the root of his problem, being cast out of Eden. He needs to address the elephant in the room which is, that he, in this scenario, is taking his anger out on plants which did nothing wrong JUST LIKE God treated him. It can be therapeutic, to enact and confront the issues he's’ dealing with, but without the confrontation part, reenacting his cast-out moment only serves to reinforce that he, not God, is at fault for his fall. Which is decidedly unhealthy. 

Like Saving his angel

I love in Episode 3 we see just how head over heels in love Crowley is for Aziraphale. However, this often comes at >surprise surprise< great personal pain or danger. He cannot walk on consecrated ground without causing himself a great personal injury. However, he can’t stand the death of Aziraphale more. It is clear that when faced with the loss of his one friend/lover/partner, he would walk 500 miles of consecrated ground, and then walk 500 more just to be the one to see Aziraphale happy at his door. 

Normally, Demons are specifically unable to enter holy sites, or else be burned or otherwise injured. Despite this! He does into the church anyway for no other reason than to save Aziraphale. 

Now, I love this. This moment makes me happy and we get to see Aziraphale also recognize how in love Crowley is with him. BUT doing so is reckless and dangerous, and there was a non-zero chance he may have been harmed in a similar manner to Holy Water.  Continuously placing himself in these kinds of dangerous places (like in the 1970′s) is destructive and could even constitute a form of self-harm. Aziraphale certainly thinks so (at least the dangerous part) when he tries to talk Crowley out of the heist. Azi goes out of his way to ensure Crowley won’t go into a church and harm himself again and knows only giving him Holy water will ensure there won’t be another (maybe) self-harm repeat. 

Like Running Away

Crowley doesn’t avoid things like Aziraphale does. But, he does, as a last-ditch effort, use it as his only tool for coping with the prospective loss of Aziraphale from his life. But like with yelling at his plants, it doesn’t cope with the trauma of loss, or rejection, or death. It only puts off the stress and distracts from the events he needs to focus on. He, at this moment, NEEDS to focus on the end of the world, no matter how painful it is. He needs to focus and get Aziraphale out of the pit of denial and repression. He needs to be on his own side, creating a plan to save humanity. But he wants so badly to run away, and live, happily ever after with Aziraphale. Unfortunately, he can’t without working through some of his underlying issues first.

Plus The Like One Healthy Coping Mechanism

Which brings me to my whole reason for this meta. A brief look at the one healthy coping mechanism he has developed in his life. It is only his relationship with Aziraphale that Crowley can healthily begin his recovery journey.  He works so damn hard for his relationship with Aziraphale, and using it to confront his fears and triggers is a healthy approach to an otherwise traumatic life. 

Aziraphale is his support system. He is the person he relies on the most to be honest, true, loving, and appreciative of humanity. Together, they both work to lift each other up, validate their concerns and worries, and ensure that they can focus and tackle the underlying trauma they otherwise can’t cope with. 

When Cowley does not have a support system (read: Aziraphale) he is unable to channel his trauma into a productive way (see part 2 for more details). Moreover, each of his other coping mechanisms does not deal with his significant trust issues which results from the fall. God certainly doesn’t love him, the angels don’t trust him, and many of the demons think he’s “gone native”. But Aziraphale? Aziraphale trusts and loves him like an equal. He talks to him with more care and reverence than anyone else who has ever existed. Together, the two of them work as equals, trying to make sure the world breaks even.  

Which makes his frequent rejections and repressed feeling for Crowley all the more painful. It’s also not that Aziraphale means to hurt Crowley, but where he is in his recovery journey, he simply doesn’t have enough tools to confront his heavenly abuse. And, to be fair, for the most part, Crowley is understanding and patient. Crowley is more than willing to find the speed he needs to go to make Aziraphale comfortable so they can be on the same page.

Crowley already sees the writing on the wall. He knows that he needs someone to love, and that’s his best friend. He knows that through developing healthy, consistent communication and telling the truth (being vulnerable to that rejection and not isolating himself)  is he able to begin overcoming the memory of his fall. However, they both need to see the that they’re their own side for it to go from “a celestial security blanket” to “a healthy and healing relationship”. To get through their trauma, they need both of them are on board and seeing each other as equals.  And Crowley knows that. 

The shift to 100% “healthy coping system” is most easily seen at the end of the series where, after being tortured (I see you, Gabriel, you abusive asshole). While he knows the hellfire won’t kill him, there’s still a trauma inherent in knowing his <lover> would not have. Moreover, there’s trauma inherent in not getting a trial from the supposed “good guys”. While Crowley takes glee in scaring the angels, it’s not an easy space to be in. However, once both Aziraphale-as-Crowley and Crowley-as-Aziraphale make it back to the park, they are able to cope with their joint traumatic experiences together. No secrets. No lies. No “my side won’t like it”. Just the two of them, working through their issues together.

TLDR: The 5 harmful coping mechanism of Anthony J. Crowley, and the 1 that helps him (so long as they’re both aware they’re in this together).

Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.

Addressing sexism of autistic men

CW: gender-based violence, including murder and rape

I. Introduction

This post has been coming for a long time. And I mean a LONG time. My thoughts on this topic have been evolving constantly. They will probably evolve even after I post this. I am still learning and welcome feedback.

I was prompted to write this post during the pre-coronavirus Before Times, when I saw that the popular Facebook page Humans Of New York had profiled an autistic man who had become a pickup artist. For context, pickup artists are a group of straight men who will cynically do whatever it takes to get them laid, which of course means blatantly ignoring the needs of the women they interact with, and who share strategies with one another. The autistic man in the photo post talked about how before he was a pickup artist he was hopeless with women, and now he was getting girls - getting laid, even. He said he knew it was manipulative, but that it was only fair - after all, it’s not like anyone had ever sympathized with him for his social difficulties. I was curious about what people had to say in the comments section; turns out, I wasn’t satisfied by any of the takes I found.

The takes I didn’t like can be broken down into two categories. Category number one were formulations like “poor him, he just wants to be accepted.” I’m not even a little bit sympathetic to this take and will only be spending a moment on it. Suffice it to say, it’s hard to take these people at their word that they care about the autism struggle when they don’t show up in droves to the banners of the neurodiversity movement with this level of enthusiasm. Rather, we are part of a culture that likes to sympathize with toxic men. If the man wasn’t autistic, they’d find some other excuse, but since he is, in defending him they can also activate the ableist notion that autistic people are incapable of respecting boundaries. I choose the word “incapable” because if your position is that autistic people sometimes don’t know better than to violate a boundary, the logical conclusion is simply that someone should teach them. To sincerely and enthusiastically take up this kind of “poor autistic guy doesn’t know any better” rhetoric, you have to presume complete incompetence of autistic people and that we’ll never learn, so that when a straight autistic man does a violating thing to a woman, they can shrug their shoulders and say, “well, I guess nothing can be done about this.” This attitude is sexism and ableism couched in a delusion of sympathy.

Category number two of takes, I like lots better but still am not quite satisfied with, and can be roughly summarized: “This isn’t caused by autism, it’s caused by being an asshole.” While I agree that being an asshole is the main ingredient in this cocktail, I don’t think the autism should be dismissed as an irrelevant detail. I think there is a sexism problem specific to autistic men that needs to be separately talked about and addressed. I intend to do so in this post, without assigning blame either to the autism or to the women being abused.

I want to note in advance that this post will be cishet-centric, not because I think straight experiences are universal, partly because the behavior of cishet men is what’s at task here, but mostly because I have no idea how these issues affect LGBTQIA communities. If anyone is able and willing offer insight or resources on that topic, I’d love to hear from you.

I. Autistic men

Having experienced it firsthand, I can say for sure that autistic loneliness is a vicious cycle. By loneliness, I mean a lack of any social connection, not just a lack of romantic or sexual partners. Autism makes social interaction more difficult, which makes it harder to find friends, but, crucially, not having friends also makes social interaction more difficult. More people to interact with means more practice with social interaction; it also means more assistance from comparatively clued-in people who care about us. This vicious cycle can also manifest with respect to a subset of people. For example, an autistic child who only socially interacts with adults may have trouble forming connections with peers. For the purpose of this discussion, I want to focus on the problems this presents for autistic boys who want to interact with girls in their age group.

The scarcity of cross-gender social interaction during childhood need not be framed as a uniquely autistic experience. Societal forces sort us by gender from an incredibly early age, so the vast majority of our social connections in childhood are with people of the same gender. Furthermore, especially during and after adolescence, boys and men are discouraged from being emotionally close with one another. Thus, the norms of masculinity isolate us almost totally from peers of all genders. Our social connections with men must be superficial; our social connections with women must be non-platonic. For those of us who crave the emotional intimacy that our same-gender friendships lack, a romantic relationship is the only socially acceptable opportunity to forming a deep, loving bond with someone close to our own age.

Enter autism (again). Dating, when we hit adolescence, is wholly new to us, and we have been given no opportunity to adjust ourselves to its social norms. Autism makes this a particular challenge, as do gender roles in dating. Since men are supposed to initiate and women are supposed to merely give subtle hints (if not be straight-out “hard to get”), straight autistic men face both the pressure of leaping into an arena that intimidates us, and the bewilderment of not knowing whether it’s working. If I had a crush on you in high school, I probably kept it a secret; if you had a crush on me, I probably didn’t notice.

Worth noting here that none of the things I’ve listed are evidence against autistic men’s actual attractiveness or appeal to women. We are facing access barriers that accumulate over the course of our lives until we finally figure out how to start ripping them down, and when we do, we quite often do get to have romantic and sexual relationships. But the prevailing narrative about autism and other disabilities is that they’re unsexy, and a lot of autistic men buy into that. I myself thought I was one of those autistic men who’d never date or have sex until experience taught me otherwise.

Knowing all this, we can see why a lot of autistic men might feel both that they need a relationship to be happy, and that they cannot possibly have one. This makes us prime targets for recruitment, because the sense of personal injury at being deprived of sexual experiences for reasons beyond one’s control is as indispensable an ingredient in the various movements of the “manosphere” as the sexism itself. It’s not that autistic men are any more or any less sexist than regular men, but that the sexists among us already feel exactly the way these communities require them to feel: deeply aggrieved, and deeply desperate. Pickup artistry both validates this sense of personal injury, and sells itself as the solution: a set of simple, logical rules that, when followed, will grant success. But it misses the uncomfortable truth that while everyone deserves to receive love, no particular person is obliged to give it. This is a deeply frustrating contradiction with no easy solution, but the solution certainly is not to cynically manipulate women into doing the thing you want.

III. Allistic women

I never was a pickup artist, but that doesn’t mean I never harbored a grievance against women for my loneliness. After all, I thought, wouldn’t my perpetual singleness end if women were more direct and assertive? As such, I worry that other people who read this may end up pinning the responsibility for autistic loneliness onto individual women too. The previous section hints at why that’s wrong, but I also want to take the time to explain why it’s deeply unfair.

My autism and masculinity were first brought into conjunction (or was it conflict?) in my mind in my freshman year of college. One of my new Facebook friends shared a Tumblr blog called “Straight White Boys Texting” which was a collection of screenshots of unwanted straight white boy texts, running the gamut from simple inability to take a hint to bona fide “what color is your thong” garbage. I felt pretty attacked, partly because I wasn’t yet used to seeing myself as part of a “straight white boys” collective that people didn’t like, and partly because what I saw was a bunch of guys missing social cues and taking things literally, just as a younger me would have done. I felt like I needed to say something - and boy, was that a bad decision. I said something about how the women in the screenshots needed to be more direct, and got instant (and deserved) backlash both for focusing on the least important problem in the interactions and for placing responsibility for a male behavior problem squarely back onto women.

At the time, I didn’t have a coherent framework for understanding sexism. Since then, I’ve learned that giving a direct no can occasionally get women killed, and most often at least gets them yelled at and insulted. Giving a yes also comes with its own risks - the risk of rape, in (unfortunately-not-actually-so-)extreme cases where that inch of “yes” results in guys taking a mile, but also the more pervasive risk of being socially stigmatized as slutty or promiscuous. It’s often the most women can get away with to be subtle (rather than completely silent) about all of their wants and needs, so that a discerning man who actually cares will know what those wants and needs are and respect them.

This puts those of us who have trouble with reading subtle signals in a difficult position if we inadvertently cross a boundary, but that’s not a problem women can reasonably be expected to solve. If a man crosses a woman’s boundaries because he simply doesn’t respect them, he wants to make it look like it’s an accident so that he will be forgiven. “But Aaron,” you might say, “didn’t you just say that the right thing to do in those situations is to teach people the right behavior, not ignore it?” Yes, that’s true. But that assumes the continuation of a conversation that a woman might feel safer just skipping; if a man is making her feel uncomfortable, she’s probably not inclined to continue to converse with him in order to establish whether his intentions were good or bad. When we impose the burden of freeing males from loneliness onto women, we are asking them to continue to interact with frightening men at their own peril.

Ironically enough, some of these frightening men are the autistic pickup artists from part 1. This means that pickup artists, far from “solving” the problems with dating they feel aggrieved by, are actually making it more difficult for everyone except themselves by giving women one more reason to be scared and cynical, and men who slip up one more type of monster to be mistaken for.

IV. Autistic women

At first glance, it seems like there’s a choice to be made here, between supporting autistic men who want to be valued as potential romantic and sexual partners and supporting allistic women who just want to be safe. But what I’m realizing more and more is that when there seems to be a conflict between the needs of two marginalized groups, the right choice is generally to avoid picking a side and instead find ways to support both groups. This works well, not only because both groups get what they want, but because if a side must be chosen, the people at the intersection of the two groups will lose both ways.

Autistic women bear the brunt of every part of this mess, as described in detail by Kassiane Asasumasu on her blog, Radical Neurodivergence Speaking (see  the links later in this paragraph). Because autistic men fear ableism from neurotypical women, we tend to believe that autistic women are the only partners who will accept us for who we are. As a result, autistic women report being swarmed at autism meetup groups by men looking for a girlfriend, and those men who struggle with independent living are more than willing to escape that by leaning on the patriarchal expectation that the woman does all the chores, even when she is an autistic woman who struggles with the exact same tasks. This means autistic women actually interact with sexist autistic men the most, and not only are they subject to the same toxic shit that allistic women have to deal with, but they’re also expected to “understand” these men and thus endlessly tolerate their (supposedly inevitable) shitty behavior.

V. Solutions

Fortunately, the choice between female safety and autistic desirability is not a choice we have to make, but the solutions are not as simple as members of one or the other group simply choosing to behave differently. Rather, they require the collective participation of all kinds of people.

Addressing autistic male sexism necessarily means addressing sexism. It means respecting when women say no, rather than making it an unpleasant experience they might fear to repeat. It means teaching consent in special education classrooms, so that no one can claim in good faith that an autistic boy who crosses a boundary simply doesn’t know better. It means teaching girls, as they grow into women, that they are under no obligation to tolerate sexist behavior out of sympathy for the sexist man.

But addressing sexism also means supporting boys and men as they escape the confines of conventional masculinity. It means enabling and encouraging them to have close friends of all genders. It means reminding them that they don’t need a woman, any more than a woman needs a man.

In addition to addressing sexism, we need to address the ableism that prevents autistic people from accessing not just dating but emotional closeness of all kinds. We need to stimulate autistic people’s peer relationships at all stages of life. We cannot do this if special ed teachers continue to view us as broken allistic people rather than whole autistic people, nor can we do it if they view us as incomplete adults rather than entire children. If an autistic boy is unable to learn about condoms because it offends the sensibilities of the teacher, or if he is unable to learn how to talk like a teenager because his parents would like him to learn to speak like an adult, then that autistic boy is being deprived both of autonomy and of the opportunity to learn.

Furthermore, we need to teach allistic children how to interact with their autistic peers. Autistic people need no additional incentive to learn how to interact with the societal majority who control their access to jobs, housing, healthcare, education, political representation, and much more. Allistic people can, however, choose not to bother learning how to support and include us and face almost no social consequences beyond not getting to see my cool maps. Rather than alleviating this unequal distribution of incentives, adults generally exacerbate it by focusing only on the social development of autistic children with respect to interactions with allistic people, but not on the social development of allistic children towards being able to interact with autistic people. This is because the prevailing view regarding autism is still that our modes of moving through the world are incorrect and defective, whereas allistic modes of social interaction are viewed as normal and valid even when they exclude others.

The problem of autistic male sexism is hairy and complicated, but if we take the above steps, we can solve it without further stigmatizing autism, and without victim-blaming women. We don’t have to leave anyone behind in this conversation. Rather, by fighting both for autism acceptance and consent culture, we can produce a more just world where everyone gets the love and respect that they deserve.

Fiona Faded Away

A visual representation of how reluctant I was to even watch the episode. (gif source: i-usedtobe-normal)

A visual representation of my face as I watched the episode.

It was SO boring.  And emotionless.  Believe me when I tell you that Joe Mazzello posted an 80 second video of himself breaking up with a piece of cardboard and it was more compelling than Fiona’s send off.  Don’t take my word for it-watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cvfyh_hD2F4

The video has everything the show was missing-longing looks, inside jokes, references to things past, REASONS to break up...

The show gave me hardly anything to snark about, but here’s a recap anyway, under the cut.

I don’t know how they managed, but the show has actually gotten worse since I stopped watching after episode 6 (you remember that one?  Cam’s bullshit swan song?).  There is nothing compelling happening, since anything that DOES happen is wiped out in the next scene containing the same characters-or even within the same scene.

I truly was bored to tears, so I ain’t gonna recap much.

I think John Wells is too in love with his idea that actors leaving a show is just a thing that happens and you don’t have to spotlight it and make it a big deal-in real life, people move in and out of other’s lives all the time, right?  But Fiona is supposed to be considered FAMILY even to the viewing audience and how cold and unfeeling to you have to be to put that on par with someone you take classes with or work in an office with for a period of time moving on? 

He said in post-airing interviews that having Fiona saying goodbye to characters would get too repetitive or whatever-but she didn’t really say a proper goodbye to anyone and the episode was bland and felt false.

Frank was more annoying than ever-laid up on the couch and expecting the family to wait on him hand and foot and keep him doped up and on a constant beer drip.  He had some interaction with Franny that I guess we were supposed to find humorous, but the thought of Debbie leaving her toddler napping in a house with only an incapacitated man was actually horrifying.  Even if the kid couldn’t get out of her crib and down the stairs (which she could) it was child endangerment.  What if there had been a fire?  The other “humorous” Shameless thing involving him was his bedpan needed to be emptied and they had the props department whip up something that looked like human shit and Carl dumps it in the downstairs toilet and then washes the bedpan out in the KITCHEN sink wearing the yellow gloves one assumes are there for washing dishes, plus using the kitchen sink sponge.  Another insight as to how the writers, especially Wells, think poor people live.  All the other Gallagher kids but Liam are right there, and not one of them yells at Carl not to use that sink and those supplies.

Frank was the only character whose farewell to Fiona might have been considered to have any emotional punch, but since they weren’t facing each other when they spoke, I thought a lot of it was just meh.  He comes as close as he can to thanking her, but fucks it up by saying she “helped” raise the family.  It was in character for him not to be able to face how much responsibility his shitty parenting forced onto her, and her upset reaction was justified, but it came so late into the episode that I was numb and was like, “Just walk out the door already!”

Lip is dealing with yet another heatless romance.  He and Tami have a fight after she gets some hard to hear medical news.  So, granted she had every right to be upset and overwhelmed, but the actress didn’t pull it off, and going from tears to “let’s fuck in a dirty bathroom” to “forget it” to getting into her car to Lip chasing after said car to Tami letting him in to driving under some LA overpass (I really don’t think they were in Chicago for that part of the scene) to fucking in said tiny car with the camera a dozen feet or so away to getting out of the car to pull up her underwear to him getting out to zip up his pants to fighting about whether she should put the kid up for adoption to saying they don’t love each other to Lip saying but maybe he could grow to love her to her driving off in a huff to leave him to walk back to work-yes, kids, that all happened in ONE scene.  Am I supposed to give a shit about these people?  Am I supposed to buy into each of the half dozen or more emotions they’re trying to cram into that one scene?  There’s no build up, there’s certainly no time to process what’s going on and to decide if I think one or both or neither of them have a point, and there’s no consequences to any of the elements of what we were forced to watch!  Lip gets back to the bike shop, his boss diffidently asks him to do his job, and Tami’s waiting for him, ready to talk to him again and go get something to eat.  By the end of the episode she’s at the Gallaghers with a beer in her pregnant hand, dancing.  WTF?

Lip’s final scene with Fiona-just by seeing her one dinky suitcase being packed he’s all, “You going?  Okay, good.  Let’s throw you a party!”

Debbie and Carl-lumping them together since the show seems determined to.  They have an awful bonding over having their hearts broken by Kelly thing going on-it’s too bad they never established one of them were adopted so they could just have Debbie and Carl hook up romantically, it’s sort of how the show feels they’re pairing them up-ew.  Just because Kelly woke up to Debbie kissing her and freaked out and ran off and had already (I guess?) dumped Carl because he’s too clingy, they decide to destroy her truck.  Carl has some sort of awesome spray paint that doesn’t drip and does a professional-level graffiti job on the side of the truck, Debs punctures all the tires, and I thought they didn’t have time to pour sugar into the gas tank when the car alarm went off, but Kelly mentions it later, so I guess maybe they poured it before they ran.  (And then she had it all fixed the same day so she could drive around again, but sure, it’s Shameless.)  

Carl and Debbie have a scene together that’s pretty much Ian and Lip’s fight from Season 6 about Ian being a janitor (kept waiting for Carl to say the fast food industry is “where I land”) and their acting was...not good.  Both of them just seem to get loud to try to convey any kind of emotion that’s required of them.  They both usually act very sleepy and stoic when not having to act worked up.  Carl insists he’s quitting school.  Kelly comes looking for both of them, and finds Debbie.  (Side note: Kelly, Debbie, and Fiona all wore clothes in this episode that looked painfully tight-does the infamous wardrobe lady Lyn Paolo do one fitting at the start of shooting and by the end of the season, if any of the actors have even gained 4 or 5 pounds it’s tough shit and you get what you get?  For years Cam has been hulking out of his wardrobe, now it’s others too?  Sheesh.  Sorry for the side trip.)  Debbie gives Kelly this horrible toxic speech, blaming Kelly for “making” her and Carl fall in love with her.  Um, excuse you?  It’s her fault you’re obsessed and stalking her?  Anyway, Kelly bitches about what Debbie wrote on her truck, and Debbie says, “That wasn’t me, I can spell” because what it says is Heartbeaker Cunt-Kelly says all moony, “Carl?” and Debbie says Carl’s dropping out of school (she might blame Kelly for that too, but, again, by this point I was so bored I wasn’t paying very close attention).  Kelly jumps in her truck, drives to Carl’s fast food place, zip ties him up, marches him out of the restaurant, yells he’s quitting, and tells him he’s going back to school and that she loves him because he’s so dense.  She also makes a dumb speech about him not going to West Point but he’ll be a better officer than those guys cuz he’s South Side and can reload while he’s rolling under an Impala during a drive by or something.  Um, that might make it better for him as a soldier saving his own ass, but nothing about that says he’s officer material.  But again, I don’t care because it’s another Ian recycled storyline that I never bought into to begin with.  So, in the space of just a couple of scenes, Carl and Debbie have vandalized her property, called her a cunt, yelled at her for being a siren who forced them both to fall in love with her, Carl’s reunited with her, and we’re supposed to buy that they’re wonderfully in love even though Carl is still just a dumb teen.  Even if you’re a Carl fan, there was no time to care about any of the plot points, and by the end of the episode Kelly’s also dancing in the Gallagher living room.  

Debbie and Carl don’t have any kind of goodbye with Fiona-just Lip giving them their assignments of what to get for the send off party.

Liam-Oh god, you poor little kid.  Liam spends the episode trying to point out to people in the family that they don’t care about him, so he doesn’t care about them.  He wants his own room, his own cultural identity...and I guess that’s about it?  But, in having his story mainly be that no one cares and he doesn’t care, fans at home don’t care either.  Fiona didn’t care enough to stick around if he was truly missing.  Not to mention that, as his legal guardian, her leaving the way she is is child abandonment.  Carl too-he’s not 18 yet.

Fiona spends most of the episode walking around in her too tight blazer and pants.  She drops in at The Alibi and Vee talking about Kev being Jesus reminds Fi she has a brother once known as Gay Jesus, so she goes to visit him.  No goodbye to Vee or Kev.  The Fiona/Ian scene is (no surprise here) badly written.  She’s obviously been there before-she doesn’t ask Ian any questions about how he’s being treated or what his life there is like-but hasn’t she been on a bender since she didn’t drop him off in Episode 6?  And if she went to see him after hitting AA and Al Anon, wouldn’t she have told Ian the family news?  Especially about Lip’s girlfriend?  Continuity?  Shameless never bothers with it.  She asks about his hair, he says a guy in the infirmary had lice and it was easier just to buzz it.  She goes on to say, “So you’re STILL working in the infirmary”-so, again, she knows shit about his life on the inside.  He says it beats working in the laundry like Mickey, so, okay, we get a Mickey mention, but it’s pretty fucking neutral.  (Not that I was expecting more.)  But once again, I can’t help but feel it’s a bit of a dig-how does working in the infirmary and being exposed to puke, pink eye, and parasites “beat” working in a place where Mickey goes back to the cell smelling like clean linens every night?  And then fucking Fiona has to go and say, “Mickey washing undies, you gotta send me a picture.”  Bitch, YOU worked in a prison laundry!  You know he’s not handwashing inmates’ delicates!  You forget about those big canvas sacks you had to sling from machine to machine?  It just rubbed me the wrong way, the two of them sitting there acting as if they’re (still) better than him.  Gallaghers looking down on a Milkovich?   I don’t fucking think so!  

Also, it really bothered me that Ian’s “putting his medical training to use”.  I can just see Wells making him a Certified Nursing Assistant or something when he magically gets out of prison next season-like he’d ever get medical field work with his background now of blowing shit up near minors, his prison record, and his army file.  

Anyway, Ian asks if everything’s okay at home and she runs down the list-he blinks at Lip having a girlfriend, but literally doesn’t bat an eye when Fiona says Liam may be missing. Then she tells him she’s thinking it’s time for her to go, and that it’s the first time she’s said it out loud.  He’s immediately on board, giving her the support she failed to give him when he wanted to leave with Mickey.   

Then after the credits, there’s one more truly dumb ass scene of him playing basketball with his fellow inmates (although I did laugh that he did the courtesy of wearing a beanie so as not to spread his head lice, but when he hugged Fiona their heads were snuggled together sans hat) and a plane flies overhead and he looks up at it and smiles.  Why would he assume she was leaving that day-and on a plane?  Fiona specifically states how she’s never been on one before in her final scene.  John Wells trying to make some sort of poignant moment that just looked hokey and fake.  

One last thing about the money Fiona gets-now that it’s not being rolled into another investment, won’t she get smacked with capital gains tax?  I’d love it if they have to have her crawling back to Debbie the following April to tell her she can’t keep all of the $50K she left her.  

Also, Debbie’s face when she sees the check?  To me it looked like she was thinking, “Now it’s MY turn to really fuck up!”  And when she inevitably does, it’ll just be boring too. 

Anyway, I got to thinking later how if Cam hadn’t fucked everything up by coming back to the show, the scene with Fiona would’ve been a good way for him to end his time on Shameless.  We see him looking happy-he’s getting three square meals a day, there are people to make sure he’s taking his meds, he’s probably even getting to talk to a therapist in there-plus he’s getting good loving every night from Mickey.  He’s probably in the best situation of his life-even when he was a kid at home at the beginning of the series he was with Kash in a very unhealthy situation.  He and Mickey don’t have Terry to deal with, he’s on a schedule, things seem good.  AND THEN I GOT PISSED AS HELL THAT THE SHOW HAS REDUCED ME TO THINKING IN TERMS OF CRAPPY SCRAPS LIKE THAT BEING “BEST CASE SCENARIOS”.  THE LAST PLACE A PERSON DEALING WITH MENTAL ILLNESS SHOULD BE IS IN PRISON!  

Ugh, what a shit show.  If Noel’s not coming back, what is the point in trying to continue?  Here’s my pessimistic outlook-Noel won’t be back.  Why should he come back?  The show has gotten progressively worse since S6.  All the pressure would be on him to salvage a show that’s done everything it can to save money on writers and talent.  There’s no indication that anything is going to change-Wells isn’t going to suddenly hire experienced talented writers to try to put this thing back on track.  There’s no incentive to.  Showtime has renewed them (and I get the feeling maybe it’s for the last time and they all already know it-hence Cam coming back so quick-he’s probably been told it’s his last chance to make bank) and even if my theory about it being the last season is wrong, ratings have obviously played no role in renewing the show the past few seasons.  There’s no reason to “improve” the show.  They’ve let is slip further and further into a cesspool in each season since 5.  Would I love to see Noel as Mickey again, swearing and being sweet and the best character in the entire history of TV?  Yes.  Do I think it’s still possible given what a piece of crap this show has become?  Not really :(  

Crossing Over Into the Second Half Century

by Don Hall

Mrs. Mayfield started this.

Way back in 1982, she had our class write down down everything we could remember learning (in a Life Lessons sort of way) in the year that had passed. It was a class assignment and, as a classic overachiever, I took it very seriously. And, like so many of those random exercises teachers tend to give students, this one stuck with me like a stink on a funky shoe that you just can't get rid of.

Since then, every birthday has bore witness to my deep self-reflection of the Big Things I Learned in the Year prior. For years, I wrote this listicle out long hand and I'm pretty sure most of the remnants are locked away in a box somewhere in my mom's basement. Since 2005 or so, I've kept them as blog posts and saved digital documents.

The list generally contains things unique to that specific year peppered with a few lessons I just have to keep learning and re-learning until they gel, I suppose.

Today, I am fifty-one years old. A full six years past my predetermined demise and a year into my fifth decade. I did the math and realized that: In My Twenties: I Was a Teacher In My Thirties: I Was a Theater Producer/Director/Actor In My Forties: I Was a Public Radio/Storytelling Person Not entirely sure what my fifties will end up being but I'm now fully into that decade.  What did I learn in my fifty-first year worth remembering?

Some years are glides through the park; others are Normandy Invasion style melees that only Steven Spielberg could re-create. Year 51 was of the second category. The quick synopsis goes like this:

Protagonist has everything pretty well set up in terms of career and art, the third (and final) marriage is swimming along wonderfully, and for the first half of the year, he is oblivious to any of the machinations being set in place to topple the House of Cards he has erected. Then all hell breaks loose, friends instantly become foes, work becomes a battleground, the internet becomes a bludgeon on his fragile existence and the machine breaks down. And then, as the protagonist has the uncanny ability to be bathed in shit and come out smelling like a newly waxed crotch, things turn out pretty damn good.

THE BEST REACTION IS NO REACTION (OR AT LEAST A NON-EMOTIONAL ONE)

Jumping right into the mid-year bunch of nonsense involving a bit on online bullying, in the aftermath, Scott sent me a story.

A GIFT YOU DON'T ACCEPT

This was a hard lesson to learn. And perhaps I didn't learn it correctly but I've certainly gleaned some sort of information. 

My mistake was not unfriending a toxic, self important asshole without a phone call; my mistake was participating in her online theatrics in the role she decided to give me. She and a man I barely knew went on the full offensive, ginning up dozens of people to comment on a situation they knew next to nothing about and I played along, arguing and spitting along like a rube. I was outraged and felt maligned and pilloried and I fought back. DUMB. All my righteous indignation about being called names by dipshits got me was being fired from a gig I enjoyed and the bitter after-taste of defeat.

With that written (and I spent a lot of time writing so much more about that particular circumstance and the blowout that followed but, ultimately, you either know what went down or don't care and even I'm fucking bored with tales of an internet troll and her sycophants so I kept it for the inevitable book yet to be written) here are the quick hits of learnings derived from that unfortunate slice of time:

THE OPINIONS OF PEOPLE HAVE THE VALUE YOU ASSIGN THEM If you don't value me, my opinion of you or anything else is worthless. Double that for you. Value is given, not demanded and if no one gives your opinion value, it has none. No matter how much you may fret and argue, if you have no worth, your voice has no worth.

Too many opinions came this year from people whom I hold no genuine value. Too many opinions that ultimately don't matter.  Clear out the weeds and focus on the opinions of those who matter.

RED FLAGS EXIST TO WARN YOU, DUMBASS! Heed the warning; blame only yourself for ignoring them.

If you're driving down an icy highway and you see signs that tell you there is danger ahead and, in your hubris, decide to ignore them, own the fact that it's your fault you are stuck in a ditch with an airbag jammed in your face and a broken collar bone jutting out of your neck.

If someone bullies your friend and you think "That person would never do that to me! I'm special!" you are wrong. If someone you work with is duplicitous and conniving to get ahead of someone else on the job and you say to yourself "Not me. He would never even think of stabbing me in the back to feed his ambition!" you are wrong.

BULLIES WIN MORE OFTEN THAN NOT This applies to both tiny bullies and billionaire bullies. And all bullies think their bullying is justified. This doesn't mean one should simply cede the victory to them but understand that, in spite of the underdog/hero narrative that you live within, fairness is never a guarantee.

DON'T EXPECT LOYALTY FROM A COWARD OR A CLIMBER Be loyal. That's the only thing you can control. Expectations of reciprocation will leave you disappointed.  And when you genuinely try to train your replacement, don't be shocked when he undermines you so as to replace you.

IT'S ALL JUST A HOUSE OF CARDS, THIS SECURE EXISTENCE YOU CREATE The security of reputation, of stability, of importance, is nothing more than an illusion, a fairy tale you tell yourself like a daily affirmation. You choose to believe this fiction until the bottom falls out. Then you blame everyone else. Best to not invest in the illusion in the first place. This is not to say one shouldn't build Card Houses but only to understand in their construction, they're impermanent at best.

***

OK. Water under that bridge, as they say. I've set new boundaries, figured out who I can and cannot trust, and have far better things to do that sit in that sallow bowl of sewage a moment longer.

While a lot of the second half of the year got eaten up by that minuscule Trumpian nightmare, there were a lot of other revelations worth spending a few keystrokes on.

THE LONG LASTING MARRIAGE IS ALL ABOUT COMMUNICATION AND KISSING (A LOT) I love my wife.  If you spend more than five minutes with me and we are talking, it's highly likely I will tell you something about how much I love her.  More important that, I tell HER.  Every day.  It's important to tell her how vital she is to my life and to take time to also talk about the hard, complicated stuff.

We celebrate Month-a-versaries on the 12th of every month.  Flowers.  Cards.  Prizes.  And the inevitable sit down question "How's Married Life?"  No holds barred.  It works.

Also - you may be too busy to have tons of sex once you get into the groove of partnership but you always have time to kiss.  A lot.  If you've spent a day and not really, passionately kissed your spouse, you're doing it wrong.  Go kiss him/her/them right now.  I'll wait.

EVERYONE NEEDS SOME TONE POLICING (ESPECIALLY ME) Waking up on November 9, I realized that all of my anger and outrage and the the time I spent howling through the digital noise about injustice and equity and civil rights and capitalism was absolutely pointless and without any external affect. My screaming amounted to nothing but the good feels I received for voicing my strident, self righteous opinion.

Here's the straight deal: nobody really gives a shit how angry you are and the more you yell and ALL CAPS WRITE and bark, the less anyone will listen. You can roll your eyes and stomp your feet and piss and moan, but like climate change and the failure of Neo-Liberal policies, facts is facts. I'm going do my level best to police my own tone. Why? Because I want people to listen to me. If you want people to listen to you, tone it down some. Or be happy shouting into a plastic bag.

INDULGENCE IN EMOTIONAL REACTION AND EGO IS THE DOWNFALL OF EVERYONE The world has plenty of Kirks. We need more Spocks. Somewhere along the line, it became popular to place a lot of importance on our feelings over rational thought. The results of this trend is more and more division in our culture and the election of Donald Trump. Suck it up and be logical.

DON'T LOVE SOMETHING THAT CAN'T LOVE YOU BACK I loved hosting The Moth and representing the organization but they are in New York and a thousand miles away and when push came to shove, I was disposable.  What I am left with is a true love for the craft of storytelling.  And The Moth had become a comfortable rut to slide on through without any challenge to my creativity.  So leaving turned out to be a solid benefit.

I love my job but my workplace has taken a right turn into a Corporatist approach and I realized this year that loving a place and an institution that cannot love you back is a set up for nothing but heartbreak. Show up, work hard, get paid. Expect nothing more than the ducats at the end of the two weeks and you're good. If you find that you are becoming shackled to the idea of being civilized, exit but exit GRANDLY. Otherwise, reframe things in a way that make your cubicle seem less like a self-imposed prison and more like a place to feed the machine without feeding it your soul.

IT IS THE STRENGTH OF CHARACTER RATHER THAN THE IDENTITY THAT MATTERS Your skin color, gender, sexual identification, religion, economic class are all a part of what makes you you. Can't be dismissed lightly.

That said, anyone can be bereft of character and that transcends all the rest of it. Character transcends identity; integrity is more important than ideology.

ATTITUDE IS EVERYTHING. SERIOUSLY.  EVERYTHING. If there has been a Life Skill I have perhaps over-employed this year it is reframing circumstances. Manually shifting my attitude into a less dramatic place. Actively moving the camera to see the humor in some humorless situations. When confronted with enough outrage and an avalanche of feelings of personal injustice and injury, almost physically forcing perspective is absolutely required.

With the properly in-focus angle, I can handle anything. With the corrected attitude toward seeing myself as a joke and thus everyone else kind of funny, things are bearable. Even Trump and his evil henchmen.

TRAVELING WITH THE RIGHT PARTNER IS THE BEST USE OF YOUR TIME The best moments of my 51st year were all on trips with my wife. Trips to my parents' home in KS; trips to her parents' homes in PA. "Team Retreats" to Ann Arbor or Starved Rock. A vacation to New Orleans.

Traveling should be a priority—even if you can't afford to fly to Europe, you can hop in a car and go a few hours out of town and check in to a hotel for the weekend and relax. Being with the right partner makes that simple trip into a holiday. Trips with Dana are the dreams I never thought to dream but can't wait to dream up more.

I AM NOT THE HERO OF MY OWN STORY In what one could arguably call the Age of Narcissism, considering oneself the hero of one's own narrative arc seems pretty normal. As if we are all each in a movie about us and, as the one person watching the whole thing, it makes perfect sense that the hero of each story is viewer.

Except...

No hero of any story sees theirself as the hero. Harry Potter isn't the hero of those books. Rocky isn't the hero of his films. They are the protagonists but if they were to see themselves as the heroes they would suddenly not be.

So, I am the protagonist of my story but not the hero.

That is not to say there are no heroes in my story. In fact, there are a lot of them. My mother, my grandfather, my dad, my sister, my wife. Teachers who stood for something. Mentors who guided me along the path. Doctors. A few of my employers. Some of my friends.

There are plenty of heroes in the Nicholas Nickleby version of my fifty-one years. I'm just not one of them.

AND FINALLY (...whew...) I ended up mid-year writing a manifesto of sorts with some additional detritus. If there is anything that crystallizes the lessons I have absorbed over my past year, this is it:

MANIFESTO

That's it for 51.  It was an often tough year to endure but, at the end of every tough year is the realization that I survived it wiser and with a bit more purpose.  Who can really ask for more than that?