This is Molly. She is an 8-year-old Yorkshire Terrier who is definitely NOT a white nationalist.
AH: Are you a good girl?
M: YES!! I AM THE BEST GIRL ILYSMSMSMSMSM
AH: You are so cute. (to partner) BABE come in here and see how cute she is.
M: Can we walk rn maybe plz?
AH: Molly. MOOOOllllleeeeey. Are you a white nationalist Molly-bear?
M: N. Definitely not a white nationalist. R u gonna walk me?
AH: yes.
When I was an undergraduate I had a social psychology professor ask us a series of questions about “the self.” One of the questions was, “What if a person is on antidepressants? Is he or she the same person?”
The idea that someone is fundamentally changed, or no longer the same intrinsic “self” to which we so often refer when discussing our thoughts on life, love, and the people around us, is only one of a limitless supply of philosophical questions pertaining to psychoactive pharmaceuticals. Others that fall into this category can, and have been, the stuff of science fiction novels and films—and tend to exploit this human fear of being out of control of one’s authenticity. Another, more frustrating, question about the use of psychoactive drugs relates to the user’s laziness, or desire for a “quick fix.”
The New York Times Magazine published an article back in the spring titled “Tell It About Your Mother,” by Casey Schwartz. The piece examines the use of neuroscience and neuropsychology for the study of Freudian psychoanalysis (Schwartz, 2015). In the interest of brevity, I will describe the relationship between Freudian psychoanalysis and neuropsychology as—at odds. In any case, Schwartz’s (2015) article highlights the way in which psychoanalysts are collaborating with social and cognitive psychologists to examine the Freudian idea of transference as it applies to structures in the brain visible through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). She includes in her introduction this excerpt:
“The very project of psychoanalysis – to cure through self-awareness, through an exhaustive exploration of the patient’s unconscious mind – is increasingly at odds with that most people seem to want: to fix their problems as quickly and as painlessly as possible. With millions of Americans now taking pills for depression, expecting to feel better in a manner of weeks, the concept of signing up for a psychological treatment that can stretch on for years no longer seems to make the kind of sense it used to” (Schwartz, 2015, p40).
Within this excerpt, Schwartz manages to make a quite obviously pejorative statement about “pills for depression,” while also implying their fault in the downfall of long-term psychological treatment. As I read on, I found that this deprecatory reference to Americans’ usage of antidepressants had absolutely nothing to do with the content of the rest of the article. Indeed, it is frustrating to read an article that uses such an overworked and stigmatized philosophical question to bring readers in to an article about neuroscience.
It seems that people feel uncomfortable with the idea of antidepressant medication. Some of the discomfort often comes from this notion that swallowing a pill for a disease that makes people sad, is an easy way out; and furthermore that it is an effortless alternative to other treatments. I see the logic in this understanding of antidepressants, and I wish to explain why it is incorrect.
Despite pop-cultural archetypes of the unstable pill-popper, psychoactive pharmaceutical treatment is actually not so easy to attain. Of course one may spout the horrors of the prescription pill market and its accompanying addiction epidemic; and it’s true, class C drugs are easy to get and get high off of. But I am talking about prescribed drug regimens for the treatment of mental disorders like depression. First, one has to acknowledge the fact that that he or she is suffering from a mental disorder. This part of the treatment process may take years and even decades. The stigma surrounding mental illness needs little description—it is massive. An individual may or may not begin some sort of conventional therapy like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and make a decision with his or her clinician to try out a pharmaceutical treatment. The problem with this hypothetical is that the overwhelming majority of those with mental illness simply do not have access to conventional talk therapy. It is rarely covered by insurance, the copays can be astronomical, and therapy sessions take up time. In order to actually go to therapy, a mother may have to find childcare, someone in a rural area may have to drive a long distance, an employed individual may have to rearrange her work schedule. So maybe Schwartz is right here—brief and monthly visits to a psychiatrist are much more feasible modalities of treatment than long-term therapy. Plus as medical doctors, psychiatrists are more than likely to be covered by most insurance companies.
This is not at all to say, however, that medication is a better alternative to other treatment options. What I am saying, though, is that it is a realistic and effective option.
For me, antidepressants were not at all an easy way out. I cowered in fear at the list of doctors’ names and phone numbers I was to call for a psychiatry appointment. Nearly every single call went to voicemail, with the doctor explaining that he or she was no longer taking new patients. As a college student suffering from depression and anxiety, making these phone calls was truly terrifying. It is difficult to describe and even think about the fear I experienced dialing a phone number, both terrified that someone would answer and terrified that no one would. I knew that I could not continue to exist the way I had been, and if there was a medication that could help me, I was ready to try it out.
Now I am in graduate school for public health and social work, and I am very happy. I have friends and I can get out of bed and put on clothes and wash my hair and listen to voicemail and respond to emails and feed myself and make to-do lists and complete those to-do lists and deposit checks and I can see color. Except yesterday I had to leave class to go sob my face off in my car. For no other reason than a sudden wave of existential fear having to do with feeling like a useless waste of space in careless cosmos of emptiness. Sometimes that happens, and it is usually because I have messed up my dosage of citalopram, the SSRI my doctor prescribes me.
I don’t think I have to feel like that, nor do I think it is purposive or character building. Feeling like I take up too much space prevents me from doing the work I am actually capable of doing—which actually does in fact have a purpose. If 60mg of citalopram per day staves off my feelings of self-hated and loneliness, hell yeah I am going to take it. I want to be a social worker, I want to work on mental health care policy, I want to make the world a better place, and I want to want to be alive to do those things.
So what I am saying is that we have to stop acting like taking a pill for depression is the easy way out because it is not. In order to get the medication, individuals have to own up to having a disease that can feel like a character flaw. We have to stop stigmatizing depression, which means we have to stop stigmatizing antidepressants. They are not a crutch, they are not a cure-all, and they are not “happy pills.” But antidepressants are life-saving medical advancements that help a lot of people.
In an age where information, legitimate or not, is spread globally with the touch of a digital button, it is important to acknowledge some fundamental and objective truths. Furthermore, it is thus exceedingly crucial that we establish and then promote these truths to maintain any sort of social structure. One such truth that carries significant weight while also being inconvertibly certain is this: women are not funny.
Firstly, we should examine the female anatomy and physiology as a means to better our foundational understanding of why women are not funny. I spent some time googling what we know about the female anatomy and I found a lot of great information from politicians who have done a lot of work across the country explaining how my lady parts work. Here’s what I learned: we all know that females have an excess of hormones, but not all of us know that uterus hormones complicate an ability to form a sense of humor. It is these uterus hormones that make women so sensitive and volatile. Essentially, the uterus is to blame here. Women’s uteruses have such and influx of hormones that make them utterly insane, and even incapable of understanding humor. Fundamentally, women have a harder time with humor because uterus hormones are so frequently causing irrational outbursts of tears or fits of anger. More so, every month women experience such a saturation of these female uterus hormones that worsens their sense of humor tenfold. I can tell you this from my own personal experience: one time in high school when my body was doing those lady things I mentioned, someone was being really funny by pointing out my lack of friends. Unfortunately I cried when I guess I was supposed to laugh. Luckily he figured I was probably just on the rag, and he was right. He must have understood this about women because he asked me if I was on my period when I started crying. The humor was lost on me, primarily in thanks to my uterus. [To anyone who is unfamiliar with this lady business I mention here, it is essentially what goes on in the female reproductive system when it is not carrying a fetus. Possibly too graphic to discuss here.]
This brings me to my next point—the female cannot tolerate any sort of teasing in jest. Women are far too easily humiliated and take things very personally. I knew a girl who was called “thunder thighs” one day in middle school by some 8th grade boys and all she did for the rest of the day was cry. Because of my womanhood I cannot fully appreciate the humor in this nickname, but I assume it is funny because it is alliterative and creative while also poking fun at the female form. What this girl probably didn’t understand was that the funny 8th grade boys were not actually teasing her, they were merely making fun at the objectivity of her body.
Women cannot handle similar jokes like the aforementioned because they take themselves far too seriously. Like I mentioned earlier, such humor is typically directed not at a female’s personhood, but her mere physicality. It is just her body folks! Women, for some reason, simply are against detaching from the ownership of their bodies. Part of the problem may be due to the fact that politicians and the judicial system are always taking such serious positions on the matter of a woman’s “right to her body,” so it is indeed possible that women don’t even know how to make the switch to understanding objectification humorously. Women are actually very sensitive when it comes to this type of humor. Jokes that capitalize on the flaws of a female body tend to have an adverse effect on women; they tend to get very uncomfortable and offended. For example, if someone jokes about a woman’s breasts being too large or small, instead of laughing she will just get really insecure even though she could easily fix this flaw by breast augmentation or reduction. The same goes for stomachs, thighs, arms, hair, faces, etc. If a woman doesn’t want to be offended by humor, she can just work out more, eat less, buy makeup, get her hair done, and undergo plastic surgery.
Another issue with a woman’s inability to be funny and understand humor is the whole issue of feminism, and because all feminists are women, it is a double whammy. During the climax of the women’s suffrage movement in the early 20th century, women were relentlessly picketing, fighting, and protesting tirelessly for their right to vote. Have you ever seen civil rights activists laughing? Probably not. Feminists cannot understand humor because they are preoccupied with explicit and covert oppression of women. They are so often brooding online about the wage gap that they cannot see the humor in the fact that men make around 30% more money than women. According to funny men I have encountered, women’s oppression is a milking cow for jokes. Though as a feminist I am rendered incapable of understanding humor, I know from spending time with males that these jokes get a lot of laughs. Some of these jokes are sometimes so creatively constructed that they combine oppression with objectification. Such jokes may poke fun at a high-level businesswoman’s means of getting to her position via sexual favors and sandwich making abilities, thereby using multiple facets of humor.
Now that we are on the subject, feminists are obsessed with the objectification of women’s bodies, but can’t seem to understand the humor in it. For example, feminists won’t shut up about rape. Rape, in case you didn’t know, is when another person, typically a male, asserts his power, control, and ownership over another person’s body, typically a female’s. This action, though invariably emotionally and physically scarring to the victim, is often used in comedy material. People will use rape to humorously address video games, sports, schoolwork, and other women. This is when I especially notice my incapacity for humor as I become personally offended in the instance of a rape joke, probably due to my biological hysteria (uterus hormones) and a dash of post-traumatic stress. But I am not alone here—other feminists go up in arms when someone makes a rape joke. Plus, if a woman in the vicinity of this joke is in the middle of “that time of the month,” she will probably be doubly unable to understand the humor here because of her crazy uterus hormones.
Despite the fact that women are not biologically predisposed to not be funny, some women decide to be comedians and comedy writers. Presumably these women are not conventionally pretty enough to be legitimate actresses. Nonetheless, they do their best even though the comedy industry is obviously monopolized by men. Television networks with successful late night shows only hire male comedians as hosts because the likes of Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, David Letterman, Craig Ferguson, and Conan O’Brien would essentially be degraded if a woman were to host a nighttime talk show. Women like Jenny Slate, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Lizz Winstead, Sarah Silverman, Wanda Sykes, Chelsea Peretti, Chelsea Handler, Kristen Wiig, Ellen DeGeneres, Mindy Kaling, Amy Schumer, or Whoopi Goldberg could never be as hilarious or beloved as one Mr. Jay Leno. This is because successful comics that have escaped the margins of the industry and garnered a place in mainstream pop culture will have achieved celebrity due to the fact that their humor focuses on ideas that only men can use as material.
For example: political comic Jon Stewart uses news and politics to make people laugh on his show The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Women are not really supposed to engage in politics because it is a man’s world and they mustn’t adulterate democracy with their hormonal chaos. Though Stewart employs female writers on his show, it is unlikely that they will ever host their own shows like Stephen Colbert or John Oliver, two previous Daily Show writers, because people wouldn’t find a political humor show funny if it were hosted by a woman.
Another famous comedian you may have heard of is Louis C. K. Louis C. K.’s comedy features issues relating to sex, how hard parenting is, aging, and being gross. You see, women really are not funny when they talk about sex because it is not demure or ladylike. Plus, how can women joke about sex when we aren’t even supposed to admit we like it? As far as difficult parenting goes, women have no personal experience to draw from in terms of comedy. They simply cannot relate to it. A woman’s purpose is to bear children and therefore all women are naturally gifted mothers. If a woman is not good at motherhood, it is more concerning than funny and we should inflict all sorts of judgment upon her. If a woman doesn’t want to become a mother she is probably having uterus hormone problems. Also a woman must never share her age, so that topic is off limits. And grossness? That is a huge no-no. Louis C. K. is allowed to talk about the sweaty, smelly mess that is his scrotum and penis all bunched up in his pants, too tight from bloating and weight gain, because it is hilarious. But nobody wants to hear about lady parts. Unless a comedian is describing his sexual encounters with female sex organs and/or giving them funny nicknames. Furthermore, Louis C. K. makes a lot of people laugh by discussing his body fat. He seems to be generally okay with his weight as it is despite the fact that his material on his body is self-deprecating. Women would not be able to employ body humor because nothing is more offensive than when a woman is okay with, or even proud of, her body. It is far more socially acceptable for women to torture themselves in pursuit of thinness, and further, parading around with self-acceptance just makes men uncomfortable.
In case you are a woman reading this and your uterus is releasing those hormones that make you angry or sad or offended, remember this: women aren’t funny because they don’t need to be. Whereas men use humor to attract sexual partners and inflate self esteem, women use their appearance to attract partners and establish self esteem. You needn’t worry about your inherent inability to make people laugh because if you are doing it right, your physical appearance should be a veritable substitute. Think of all of the benefits this fact bestows upon us women! We do not have to engage in any sort of academic inquiry that will enable us to cultivate wit that is both fulfilling and engaging to those around us. We only have to be pretty. It is not important that we are politically savvy and aware of our world while also being able to find humor in democratic dysfunction. We only have to be skinny! Though I do concede, challenging our biological predispositions to certain body shapes and sizes in favor of an idolized figure can be difficult and even life threatening… at least nobody expects us to be funny.
I just wish I could have told Chelsea Peretti she didn’t have to do that Netflix special and explained to Megan Amram that she wasted her time writing that book. I wish I were able to tell both of these women they didn’t need to exhaust their efforts in writing those episodes of Parks & Rec. I feel terribly that Tina Fey and Amy Poehler spent all that time studying improv only to be sucked in to hosting The Golden Globes no less than three years in a row. More so, if Amy hadn’t created her show, she wouldn’t have perpetuated Chelsea and Megan’s delusions of comedic grandeur! We should all stand up and tell Mindy Kaling that she doesn’t need to have her own show anymore, and she didn’t have to degrade her femininity by writing for The Office. Somebody should tell Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph that they are pretty enough to drop this whole writing, acting, talent, and humor thing. But oh god we really fucked up with Betty White. All of these misguided women can just stop now and focus on what really matters! Tight butts and blowjobbing! All women deserve to know the truth: although our fundamental rights and human dignity may be a joke, women are not, and never will be, funny.
I will not make a martyr of my body for what I cannot speak aloud.
I ponder this sentiment as I stand frozen, feeling the enormous weight of recovery, present mostly in my brain and in my belly.
Don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t.
My thoughts are violent. They are angry because they come from a place of fear. I am afraid of my body. The body that takes up space knowing no right or wrong way to do so. It simply exists, without any malevolent volition, to do my bidding. So why does it feel as though I have this adversarial relationship with this body? It is if my body is merely an extension or representation of me, and not something with which my consciousness is one. And still my studies have informed me that this is not the case. Our brains are part of our bodies, in the simplest of terms.
These violent thoughts tell me to rid my body of the nourishment to which I have just provided.
As it were, having an eating disorder has figured my relationship with my body to be rather dynamic. Years of abuse and neglect between the two parts of one whole have frayed the ends of some very important connections. My understanding of somatic sensations is limited, as it became blurred with emotional oppression. In order to combat the horror upon confrontation with the mirror, I aimed to destroy my body.
But don’t we all?
We traverse the holy ground of bookstores and libraries, haunted by ever growing aisles of smiling women on book covers proclaiming their possession of the Holy Grail that is Eternal Skinniness. We cannot leave a grocery store unscathed by the glossy sensationalism of a female public figure’s weight loss or gain. The same screen that brings these words to you may also flash recipes for fulfillment in the form of a sugar, oil, gluten, and diary free muffin we will use to reduce our hunger for self-love. We “eat clean and train mean” to take up the space in our thoughts that seeks profound understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
Our thoughts trick us into believing that the body is the problem. The body that knows no right or wrong, but instead neutrally pursues homeostatic balance, is our terminal enemy. We will finally be happy once we smooth our dimples, firm our arms, and shrink. We are shrinking women, seeking validation as we try to perfect our disappearing act. And we will always fail, because a fundamental requirement for being human is to occupy a body that takes up space.
Taking up space means taking ownership of the body that has been objectified, commoditized, and abused for centuries. It means acceptance that we can do better. It means acknowledging pain and trauma accompanied by emotions that wreak havoc on our complacency. It means feeling unmuted joy without our most loyal companion: guilt.
Our epic journey to defeat the nebulous and existential turmoil of personhood is far more fantastic than our pursuit of the correct body. Our body deserves respect, from others and from ourselves. We have voices much more powerful than a shrinking body. We will not make martyrs of our bodies for what we don’t say aloud, for we will speak, shout, cry, laugh, love, lust, and simply be.
I know where everyone went to brunch last Saturday morning in Los Angeles. I also know where everyone in Los Angeles went to brunch on the weekend of March 22, 2014. Of course claiming my knowledge of everyone’s whereabouts is hyperbolic, but I know where a lot of people who live in Los Angeles went to brunch on any given weekend if you give me a wifi password; and I don’t even have an Instagram profile.
Now before you dismiss this article due to a justifiable premonition, I’m not trying to make a point about social media. I think we have heard enough about our generation and social media, so don’t fret baby boomers and the like—we feel properly patronized, but have resolved to accept our addiction to our phones and won’t deride your iPad enthusiasm in the process.
I’m talking about Los Angeles. Regardless of any stereotypes to which you may subscribe, loyalties you may boast, or disgust you may proudly hold (esp. if you are from New York), LA has a lot of cool shit to do. Just beginning with the restaurants: there are so many really good ones. They aren’t all organic vegan cold-pressed raw alkalized lettuce menageries either. One can easily satisfy his or her craving for animal by-product laden, carbohydrate-based meals in any of LA’s, I dare say, “boroughs.” And before I am burned at the stake for blasphemy to the idealized metropolitan paradigm of the United States (yes I mean New York), how else would you describe the segmentation of Santa Monica, Hollywood (West v. East), Downtown (where?), Culver City, Malibu, Venice, and East LA?
If you have run out of restaurants to visit, congrats on being rich and old, but there are still countless places to play in Los Angeles. One can enjoy concerts at dozens of venues, shop (obviously), visit world famous museums like the Getty and LACMA, appreciate the freaking beach (everyone forgets), and even go bowling at the trendiest alleys.
Importantly, all of these activities and restaurants are aesthetically pleasing so to match the people. I say this very purposefully. Los Angeles has done quite the job of cultivating an economic and social structure footed in impression management. I steer clear of making claims of perfect adherence to any sociological theory, and still Los Angeles does well to perpetuate a dedication to theories of impression management.
While driving back to Marina Del Rey from Malibu, I passed through the side streets of Santa Monica and Venice rather than using a freeway or main drag. I have lived in LA for nearly four years, and I had not seen the majority of the storefronts I passed on my way home. I thought not about the different foods, products, goods, or services I had missed out on by not visiting these places—but about the chrome filtered photos obligatory of any venturing out in Los Angeles. I thought about the types of people who would be at this restaurant and that, and about having the right outfit and making sure my eyebrows were done and if my skin would be clear that day and if my outfit was missing the mark or close enough and if I was dressing for boys or girls or what etc. As it were, I cannot afford to eat at any of these restaurants, but the thoughts went through my head. The point is, Los Angeles and its market aims to create a photographable atmosphere, and we all take part in the dramatization of this atmosphere.
To take a piece from Goffman’s cake, the people of Los Angeles are performers. Not because some people here go to work and get paid to perform, but because they come home from work and do other things. The curiosity of a performer’s authenticity contributes to our own presentation of our authentic self. Branding and marketing firms seem to be more numerous than are trees in this city. Subsequently, this industry has taught us how to cultivate our own “personal brand,” but more importantly has expressed the necessity of such a personal brand.
This brand accompanies us to everything fun there is to do in Los Angeles. And we take photos of it. And we filter these photos, post them, and then look at everybody else’s. We don’t just look at the people in these photos, and this is important to note. We devour the painstakingly executed combination of the location and it’s accoutrements. We interpret the atmosphere of the photo and try to understand the way in which this post is an expression of this person’s personal brand. And we do this hundreds of times each day.
We do the same thing with tweets, making sure that the tweeter has an understanding of the forum. We must confirm that the tweeter is parodying his or her own personal brand because something so en vogue as even the term “personal brand” is a perfect idea upon which to assert one’s sociological awareness as well as self-awareness. So while someone on twitter may not post a scrupulously curated photo of brunch, he or she aims to compose a tongue-in-cheek comment on the millennial sanctification of this activity.
As an unyielding advocate for the accurate understanding of social-psychological phenomena, I make no claims as to the universality of this experience, nor do I assert any social theory. And still, I wonder if you experience something similar?
Why is this about Los Angeles in particular? Because we all know it’s true. I do not deny that this happens everywhere all the time, but Los Angeles lives and breathes on impression management. Its market relies on social media, but more specifically on cultivating concepts we want to impress upon others as part of our authentic self. There is a particular brunch location in Venice that overtly advertises unlimited mimosas as major draw. The other marketing technique, though, is covert. When one goes to this restaurant, he or she gets the privilege of posting a photo in front of the notorious blue and white wall outside that lets everyone know where exactly you went to brunch this Saturday.
We were talking about pizza one evening, my roommates and I. One usually begins his or her relationship with pizza in elementary school I suppose.
“Well at my school you would get three tickets and so you could either get one piece of pizza and one cupcake and one juice. But not fruit juice. There was absolutely no fruit in this juice. It was just sugar water with food coloring in this cheap round plastic bottle that sort of opaque. So anyway— everyone did this thing where they would put the frosting from the cupcake on their pizza.”
“You put frosting on your pizza?!” we laughed.
“Yeah! It was a whole thing! It wasn’t even me just being a fat kid it was like a thing that everyone did. The best was when there were vanilla cupcakes with chocolate frosting. On those days I would get two cupcakes and save one to eat and use the other for the frosting.”
“What did you do with the leftover cake?”
“Probably traded it for a juice.”
“Did you guys have little ceasar’s pizza? Because I think I must have gotten food poisoning from that shit like at least twice. My best friend threw up every Friday because her stomach couldn’t handle it but it was so good.”
“Did you guys eat your crusts?”
“No I was not a crust person.”
“Oh man you were my favorite kind of person but I also hated you and didn’t understand you because I was tortured by all of the crusts that people didn’t eat. I wanted to eat all of abandoned crusts because it was like, free breadsticks ya know?! So I had this whole inner turmoil about wanting to eat everyone’s crusts but also not wanting to hate myself for eating everyone’s crusts.”
“Okay well at my school you got a salad ticket and a pizza ticket and I always traded my salad ticket for a pizza ticket because all of my friends were skinny and I had like seven chins. And then I would also eat their pizzas when they didn’t want them. So I ended up having like four pieces of pizza for lunch. Oh also there was this kid at my school who’s parents ordered him pizza like, every single day so I decided to make him my boyfriend so that I could have his pizza.”
“Genius”
“What?! His parents got him pizza every day? He was like the luckiest kid ever.”
“I know. So I made him my boyfriend. And I got to have pizza all the time. But then everyone told him that I was only his girlfriend for his pizza and he broke up with me.”
The legal definition is non consensual sexual penetration or performance of a sex act of an unwilling individual’s oral, anal, or vaginal cavities, or other body part. That’s what the law says. This is what the courts use when determining whether or not one should be accused of such an action, and consequently, if another warrants the term “victim.” This definition tells us what exactly constitutes the occurrence of a rape, plainly and simply.
The definition clear, concise, and dry—as all good explanations should be.
The other evening I was privy to a rather fascinating conversation between a few men. They were discussing sports—football I believe—and one of the living, breathing, natural resource consuming members of the conversation referred to a win by a certain team as a rape. Upset by his words, I interrupted the conversation and said in the most scholarly manner, “dude, you can’t fucking say that a sports team raped another sports team. That’s not how rape works.” To which he responded,
“But that’s what they did. They raped them.”
I will make sure not to include my bias against this young gentleman by telling you that he smirked condescendingly at me from his proverbial high horse nicknamed WASP. I dare not discredit my information dissemination ethics code by including the minor detail that earlier in the evening he expressed his unbridled opinion that world leaders should exclusively be proud owners of a Y chromosome. I shan’t tell you such things because they do not contain any relevance to the point I am trying to make. See, people make this senseless comparison all the time—of instances of domination to rape.
“That test raped me.”
“I just raped that other player [in this video game].”
“We raped the other school’s team.”
Indeed, these comments are accurate but only in the idea that rape is not about sex but about power and control. Still— it is important to note that losing a football game is nothing like getting raped.
The aforementioned definition illustrates an interaction between two human actors: the unwilling victim and the rapist. It captures a moment in time, that being the execution of volitional power and control over another person. What that definition does not include is the result of the crime, only the action. In a crime of stolen property, the result is lost belongings. In a crime of murder, the result is a loss of life. In a crime of violence, the result is injury. So despite the fact that we have a very clear definition of what rape is, we have such a problem with it. Rape as a general topic has become a subject of controversy, with people taking polarizing sides of an argument that really isn’t even an argument to begin with. But, for clarity’s sake, I can offer some guidance that will hopefully exfoliate this idea that has been buried by layers of misinformation, human statistical interpretation error, and stupidity. This idea of rape. This idea of who/what/when/where/why/how rape. This idea of the extension of the action—of rape.
So maybe it’s the loss of a football game. If that football game is a sense of human dignity and worth. If that football game is a sense of jurisdiction of one’s own body. If that football game is the idea that the body in which one lives is inherently unsafe because others may exercise control over it at will.
What happens is that kissing becomes scary. What used to be the fantasy of a little girl who took up running around her neighborhood so that she could impress her crush during the President’s Physical Fitness Test, leaves a bad taste in her mouth. She knows what happens when the kissing starts, and it has nothing to do with what she wants. So she avoids it completely.
Or maybe she grows quick to take off her pants. And she doesn’t know if it’s because she likes to or not. But sometimes she finds herself floating on the ceiling, watching two people intertwined, one earnestly trying to please despite paralytic ecstacy, the other with eyes closed, lifeless, traveling through space and time to a place of panic, and horror, and numb.
Regardless, her body is not her own. Or least that’s how she feels. It is her dignity’s dowry and must be kept accordingly decent. Still that body is chronically failing her. It is too small or too big. It is overexposed or matronly. She is either lazy and neglectful or vain and narcissistic. It is emotionally volatile or a stone cold bitch.
Or if this body is a man’s, it must not have happened. Because that can’t happen! Or he is gay. Or he is lying. Or he is a pussy. Or he should’ve protected himself, even if he was a kid. Or he is being ridiculous because all men love sex all the time. And he must exert his masculinity ferociously. He might want to cry, but is certainly not allowed to. Because boys don’t cry. He learned that playing football.
Experiences may vary, but trauma is invariably a bio-psycho-social terrorist. Revisiting the event and dissecting what happened, when and why, and who asked for what, is like going over the plays and trying to win a football game that ended three days ago. Except if one team had no offense and no defense and didn’t want to play the game in the first place.
When we use rape to describe losing a video game or failing a test, we are implying that rape is a situation in which someone has the opportunity to not get raped. For a test, there are avenues to take that guarantee a passing grade. Yes it is true that women can wear date-rape-proof nail polish, not walk outside late at night, and be wary of men who buy them drinks. But these are all actions women take to prevent something that someone else decides to do to them. With a test, or a football game, or a video game, one elects to engage in activity, likely recreational and not a largely universal activity, and then works toward a goal using precaution and preparation.
It is unacceptable that a goal can be to not get raped.
I hope that when I leave my house tomorrow a bird doesn’t shit on my head. I can wear a hat or use an umbrella, but birds are going to shit. Are you going to tell me that it is my fault if a bird shits on my head?
All birds have to shit, but no person has to rape. That’s the thing. It is all very simple. If people stop raping, nobody will get raped.
So the argument that women should learn from their mistakes or stop asking for it or stop ‘crying rape’ or do anything else to take responsibility for being violated is a dumb one. Of course every human should do what they can to be safe, but that is a different topic. The way to end rape is if people stop raping.
I made this.
attieharris 