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Worthless Words

I have finally figured out this week why the words “I never meant to hurt you” are so infuriating and frustrating.

(I’m a slow learner!)

“I never meant to hurt you” or its close cousin, “I never meant to cause you pain” are words that center the offender in a hurtful relationship and attempt to erase the experience of the one harmed. They are passive aggressive phrases that pull the energy and truth of anger out from under the hurt person and deflect the conversation.

They are silencing words that demonstrate a disregard for the difference between intent and impact.

“I didn’t know any better at the time”  (What someone knew or didn’t know in the past has no bearing on someone’s current trauma).

“I didn’t mean you to feel this way” (That isn’t a response. The person DOES feel the way they feel. This is an attempt at denial and often a gateway remark to gaslighting efforts).

“I was so young” (Stating the obvious isn’t a response to pain that remains across time and well into adulthood).

“I was just doing what everyone else did”  (An admission of cowardice and moral failure in the past is not sufficient for accountability to someone’s current pain).

“I hurt about this, too” (A manipulative deflection intended to coerce emotional caregiving from a victim).

These are all “I” phrases, did you notice? I. I. What they really mean is: I don’t want to feel guilty. I don’t want to think about shitty acts I committed. I can’t tolerate feeling like less than a good person. I don’t want to be in the same space with someone who has emotions I don’t approve of. I do not want to examine my power to harm. I do not want to be held accountable in relationships. I don’t want to have to accomodate the messy emotions of other human beings because it inconveniences me and interrupts my inner narrative about who I am. 

“I never meant to hurt you” is a shut down.

Here are some other ways we can choose to respond when someone tells us they have been harmed by us. These are responses that create respect in intimate relationships, social relationships and restorative justice work:

This is upsetting. I’m a little shaken but I am willing to hear more. Let’s make time to have a conversation.

I am truly sorry that this hurt is still real for you. I wasn’t aware of that, and caught off guard. Is there something you think I can do that would help?

It’s really hard for me to be the object of your anger but I recognize that I am responsible so please, let’s see if there’s something we can do together to work it out.

These are strong emotions and I have strong emotions about this, too. Could we find a way to work through this together with a counselor or facilitator?  It seems important to do that.

Sometimes there is genuinely no relationship between the aggrieved and the supposed abuser. In that case, it’s fair to say “I hope you get the support you need in dealing with your pain” and to step away from the shooting range.

Some people are perpetually hurt and wounded and need somewhere to project their insecurities. These are people with poor boundaries who want apologies for motives they ascribe to others. There’s mostly nothing that will truly work to repair relationships in these situations, but “I never meant to hurt you” isn’t the proper response, either. It’s still a deflection. A more respectful response is an honest conversation about projections, which are a challenge to all human beings (with the possible exception of the Dalai Llama). If possible, we can love each other enough to work through projections together and recognize our mutual craziness. We are all expert projectors. Let’s go in there together when we can –when we go in as comrades in the human struggle, it can be a truly bonding experience.

“I never meant to hurt you” is not a loving response. Unless those words are followed by, “… but I believe that you ARE hurt, I am sorry about it, I want to know what I can do to support you because you mean a lot to me,” they’re empty and cowardly.

Here’s to the human struggle.

And to all of the Northwestern University alumnae who are grappling together right now with the truth about the rampant sexual misconduct at the theatre department in our era: thank you for your honesty, for your willingness to confront the gross abuses you suffered by guru-like professors who still hold some alumnae in their thrall, and for inviting me into an honest accounting of my own remaining pain about an abusive relationship I was in at the time.

To our healing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A Field Guide To The Online Sea Lion

There is a dynamic that is so prevalent among white men online that I think it might be helpful to post a field guide to the phenomenon.

  1. A woman or a person of color posts a fact or analysis of a situation. She is reporting from her own experience and often from the perspective of professional expertise. If her writing is critical of behavior she has observed in men throughout her lifetime, other men (ususally white) will show up to engage in sea-lioning. This cartoon by David Malki appeared in his comic Wondermark in September of 2014 [click to enlarge]:
    sea lion
  2.  The sea lion will take a solicitious tone that purports to express openness and curiosity, but the content of his inquiry is grounded in the assumption that everyone involved in the conversation must assuage his doubts about the veracity or fairness of the claims before moving on with their day.
  3. The sea lion is extremely concerned with fairness. However, close attention to his remarks reveal that his commitment to fairness is almost exclusively oriented toward protecting the reputation and respect he unconsciously assumes is due other (almost always white) men.*
  4. When called out for his sense of entitlement to the original poster’s time, energy and research efforts, the sea lion will plead innocence and draw other posters (mostly white men — and women with a low threshold for discomfort)  to his defense. The sea lion is an expert at drawing a group’s focus away from his own insulting interrogations and toward the woman or women, queer person, or person of color who is being “unreasonable” or “confrontational” with him, the innocent querent.  In this way, he relies on other participants in the conversation to reinforce white male supremacy.
  5. If the sea lion fails to get the attention and answers that will satisfy his own personal sense of justice, fairness and worldview, he will make a sombre observation about the unraveling of democracy, civility, general decency, and free speech before leaving in a huff of wounded male ego and white fragility. Enablers will run after him to make sure his feelings aren’t hurt as opposed to assuming that he is a grown adult who can take care of himself in the new world order.

Please don’t feed sea lions. They can be found among all social, economic, religious and geographic groups, including Unitarian Universalists and other progressives.

 

 

 

 

  • If the men aren’t white, they’re celebrities in the field of entertainment, political figures that the sea lion personally admires or famous athletes.
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Solidarity With Take The Knee

My late father was a huge football fan. He was also openly racist — something I wish he had lived long enough for me to confront him about, steadily challenge and change in him.

He was not a stupid man or a garden variety asshole, but a stubborn and macho one. His racism was lazy and flimsy enough that I think he could have been converted. But as I said, he loved football and the Take The Knee protest would have gotten his attention, and gotten him to think. Dad was not an unfair man, and as a Jew, he understood historic persecution and irrational hatred. I think it would have jolted him to consider that the guys he loved watching play his favorite game were not just gladiators being paid to entertain him but human beings with justified anger and concern about social injustice suffered by their people. It would have opened conversation with him, I think, in a way that no other Black Lives Matter action has done.

This is how social change movements MUST work: coordinated and engaged across diverse areas and places in a sick society so that they can meet and confront people where they are. How brilliant and brave and effective for Colin Kaepernick to interrupt the mindless entertainment of football with a statement about reality beyond the stadium.

Please engage with the enraged and tell them what this is about. Tell them to stop repeating the stupid mantra “Stick to sports.” Tell them to LEARN. Tell them that the whole point of protest is to make people like them uncomfortable. Tell them that this is not about protesting Trump, and that it began during the Obama Administration. Tell them to read Ta-Nahesi Coates Between the World And Me or Wesley Lowery’s They Can’t Kill Us All, or Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow or to to read Race Matters by Cornel West or Waking Up White by Debby Irving. Tell them to read Peggy McIntosh’s seminal essay, “Unpacking The Privilege Knapsack.”  Tell them to see the documentary “I Am Not Your Negro” and to read James Baldwin. Tell them that black lives are more important than white feelings and to stop centering their own defensiveness in conversations about systemic racism in America.

Tell them that white privilege is separate from economic privilege and to stop insisting that they don’t have privilege because they grew up poor or disadvantaged or Irish or Jewish. Tell them that comparing Irish indentured servitude and prejudice against other groups of immigrants in the U.S. to the unique horror of the African slave trade is a diversion that needs to stop.  Only Native American peoples have an equal status as survivors of white genocide on this soil. Tell them to stop intellectualizing and sparring and opining when there are dead bodies in the streets and packed into our prisons. Keep at it. And while you’re at it, tell them that even my bigot of a father knew that what he and his brothers fought for in World War II and the Korean War was EXACTLY what those who Take The Knee are doing now, and not for a flag and an anthem.