Category: Philosophy

Every once in a while, I try to share news of interest to the trans community with people from outside our community, in the hopes that people will get a better idea about what goes on in our lives.  It’s all part of that teaching effort that we have been told we must do before we can ever hope to be accorded equal rights.

What else is new? department:  

Item:  Transwoman killed in the East Hollywood portion of Los Angeles.  This was actually last summer.  What is really new is that the office of Los Angeles City Council President Eric Garcetti is offering a $50K reward for information as to the whereabouts of Jose Catalan, who has been labeled a “person of interest” in the case.  Catalan may turn out to be a suspect or may be just a witness.  But currently he is a missing parolee and is considered to be armed and dangerous.

Commentators have variously chimed in over the years, and from a variety of different ideological persuasions, regarding the question of whether the Feminist movement has done women and society at large more harm than good.  Recently, the argument has been couched in terms of whether women’s collective happiness has suffered with increased equality, and as a result, whether efforts towards gender parity are to blame.  Some columnists have returned to the same old arguments against women’s rights that have been used for centuries and others have placed the yoke upon basic human selfishness, greed, and societal narcissism.  I myself fall into the latter category.

To begin my remarks, I don’t honestly believe for a second that Feminism has made women more unhappy, or that somehow the old ways were superior, or even that women are innately less able to survive in a draining world of leap-frog and sharp elbows.  The survey data cited which indicates that basic life satisfaction has declined over time must be qualified first.  It must be noted that so must of the conclusions drawn are made as a kind of blanket accusation upon everyone, when they really only apply to a relatively limited slice of the population—professionals, middle class and above, usually white, highly educated, big city residents.  Yet, since regrettably so much dialogue in mainstream woman-centric media is dictated by the privileged, if not in all mainstream media, the accuracy of the results are taken as gospel and never thought to be extended to anyone beyond the immediate audience.  Who knows if this same attitude pertains to working class women, for example.  

If one is seeking blame, of course, it can be safely assigned to consumerism, which states that one is what one buys, or rather what one wishes to buy.  If one is seeking blame, one can place it upon the shoulders of a kind of toxic materialism whereby some arbitrary standard of living is the ultimate goal.  In that vein, I recall the story of a close relative of mine, who was raised in a family where love was purely conditional, and was only granted at all when she jumped one hurdle after another—first rising up the ladder, then making more money, then accumulating another in a series of never ending status symbols.  The expectation turned into a  sibling rivalry between herself and her brother that led to a most unfortunate competition between them, whereby those who wished to have the affections and blessings of Mom and Dad knew that it only arrived in the form of dollar signs, new houses, new cars, and a thousand others ways in which those who have money flaunt it.  Her case may be extreme, but I think even muted forms of this disease are prevalent among many.

In the column I cited above, Madeleine Bunting writes,

The problem, Twenge believes, derives in part from a generation of indulgent parents who have told their children how special they are. An individualistic culture has, in turn, reinforced a preoccupation with the self and its promotion. The narcissist is often rewarded – they tend to be outgoing, good at selling themselves, and very competitive: they are the types who will end up as Sir Alan’s apprentice. But their success is shortlived; the downside is that they have a tendency to risky behaviour, addictive disorders, have difficulties sustaining intimate relationships, and are more prone to aggressive behaviour when rejected.

The narcissism of young women could just be a phase they will grow out of, admits Twenge, but she is concerned that the evidence of narcissism is present throughout highly consumerist, individualistic societies – and women suffer disproportionately from the depression and anxiety linked to it.

In my own life among young professionals I notice similar findings to that of the survey, but not to such an alarming degree.  The disorders of those who live lives of quiet desperation rarely lend themselves to screaming headlines and panicked rhetoric.  Rather, I see a group of overworked, highly driven, heavily motivated, but overburdened toilers desperately seeking to make a name for themselves.  At this stage in their careers, those in their late twenties pushing thirty like me are on the path towards greater visibility, an increase in salary, and the ability to achieve fullest satisfaction based on the fact that so much of their own self-worth is heavily tied up in achievement.  If they don’t already have a Master’s Degree at this point, they are surely already enrolled and taking courses, or are at minimum making plans to be enrolled somewhere very soon.  Self-worth is a positive thing at its face, but I have always felt it needs to come from within, not from the accumulation of merit badges, skill sets, and embossed pieces of paper.        

Yet, as they put in unnecessarily long hours and place their careers first, many end up also denying their basic needs as humans.  To be sure, I am not arguing that women who put their careers first ought to return to the days of subservient housewifery.  I think that as we have had more equality in the workplace, to say nothing of the rest of society as a whole, the results have been overwhelmingly positive for all.  What I am saying, though, is that letting one’s work consume one’s life is an excellent way to reach burn out and to sacrifice one’s health in the process.  A recent article in Politico detailed the sad demise of a Congressional staffer who put in 100 hour workweeks and eventually perished from the stress of her occupation.  For about two days the topic was incorporated into some modest debate, then everyone moved on to something else entirely.

I firmly believe we are meant to be social with each other, we are meant to date and be in close relationships, and we are meant to find a balance between our obligations and our free time.  I myself have engaged in conversation with many people my own age who haven’t just pushed back the date at which they intend to be married, assuming that they even want to be married at all, they’ve also filled their schedules so full that they simply don’t have time to devote to look for a relationship or to socialize with friends.  Delayed gratification is fine, of course, within reason.  If this were some temporary state of being, much like buckling down at college and studying for finals, it could be excused, but far too many people live their lives as though they are preparing to take their final examinations.  I don’t think the Grim Reaper makes one take the Death Preparation Test (DPT) upon condition of being accepted into the world of the deceased.

We are a highly individualistic people, yes, but I have long believed that this degree of individualism works against us time in and time out.  More recently, the reason we can’t seem to agree upon the most basic of reforms is that too many of us are looking out for number one.  Over the course of my life I have personally observed a thousand inspiring speakers, each saying some variation of the same thing, namely that we have got to think more collectively rather than individually if we ever wish to make the next leap forward.  They have some fine old company in this endeavor, beginning arbitrarily with Jesus, and moving as far forward or backwards in time as one wishes.  And yet, the problem persists.

What is the solution?  Well, solutions are easy enough, provided people adopt them.  Learning that we are finite beings with a finite amount of energy is a beginning.  Closely linked with it is the realization that work ought to be provide us a sense of satisfaction of having achieved a job, a paycheck, of course, and a resulting sense of pride in having done a job well rather than a ceaseless Sisyphean struggle.  Acknowledging that it really doesn’t matter how many committees you happen to be a member of is another.  Recognizing that one shouldn’t settle for good enough while also taking into account that learning how to say no is an essential life skill is still another.  After a time, some people really think that they are their resumes or the letters either before or after their name, and you can be sure they’ll want you to know it, too.  But namely, we’ve got to understand that it’s not about us:  it’s not our careers, or our paychecks, or our starter homes, or the Holy Grail of the corner office someday, or any of these superficial concerns.  

For too many of us, for every step up we take, with it comes the compulsion to accumulate accessories.  Our possessions often weigh us down; they do not enrich us.  Rethinking the idea of achievement and success is where we’re really lacking and until we even consider dipping our toe into the way things could be, expect more unhappiness for everyone concerned.  We might not be equal, but we will be equally miserable until we choose to change.

I was asked by someone to recount some of my experiences working as a correctional specialist (aka prison guard) when I was in the US Army (1971-73).  I decided to try to write about that for this evening, although those are not the easiest memories I have to work through, so there will probably be fewer stories than maybe I should have.

I’ve written a little bit about the experience before.  One of the pieces was Ever, which was about prison rape and other mistreatment of our prisoner population.  The other, Bummer of a week, mostly, was written near last Memorial Day.

I’ve also recounted some odds and ends in comments over the years.

I’ve become disgusted the past few days.  Actually it has been coming on for several weeks, but the last couple of days have brought things to a head.

My basic thought?

It is difficult enough to fight the conservatives who wish to deny us equal rights, strip away the few freedoms and liberties which we do have, and even deny us the basic necessities of life, like even the freedom to use a public restroom without having to choose between being arrested or being physically and/or sexually assaulted.

We should not have to battle the slings and arrows hurled at us by those who one would think we should be able to rely on as our friends.

With friends like these, who needs enemies?

It all comes down to a matter of respect.  Who deserves some and who has some to give?

Earlier today, teacherken posted an essay entitled, American, land of opportunity – Not!.  It was mostly about the the limits of upward mobility caused by race and class.  In fact, the paper he cited discussed downward mobility caused by those factors.

Downward mobility is not strange to people in the trans community.  In the news yesterday was this report from the 2010 Creating Change conference, courtesy of Renee Baker for dallasvoice.com.

Numbers.  They were preliminary numbers, but numbers nonetheless.  And I’m a numbers person in the eyes of most part, so I thought I would share and comment on them.

They are not exactly new.  The numbers come from a preliminary report dated in November.  NGLTF released an even rougher sketch of the data earlier in last year.

But the question comes up from time to time.  Do transfolk really need to be covered by an inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act?  

Many bloggers, including me, have expressed frequent consternation at the lack of substantive female voices in the mainstream media.  On that note, there are times when I wonder what both Kathleen Parker and Maureen Dowd are both smoking and inhaling.  Tweedledum and Tweedledee routinely write columns crafted with such a flagrant disregard for coherence or original analysis that I wonder how they even ended up with a job.  Both of these writers are supposed to be the apex of serious journalism and with it the mouthpiece of womanhood and womens’ concerns.  It seems as though both conservative and liberal women are getting the short end of the stick, though I’m hardly surprised at the revelation.  And it isn’t just women who are suffering from such inadequacy.      

Martin Austermuhle, writing today at dcist, points out the sloppy logic of Parker’s latest column in The Washington Post.

Parker asserts that shoveling is something men just need to do, like it’s hard-wired into our genetic code. “What do men want?” she asks. “Shovels. Men want shovels, the bigger the better,” she responds.

“Women can’t be blamed for wanting to be independent and self-sufficient, but smart ones have done so without diminishing the males whose shoulders they might prefer on imperfect days. Add to the cultural shifts our recent economic woes, which have left more men than women without jobs, and men are all the more riveted by opportunities to be useful,” she observes.

According to her profound analysis on the matter, the minute we simple-minded men see a flake of snow, we go running to the nearest shovel. “Man is never happier than when he is called to action, in other words. That is to say, when he is needed,” she posits. Of course, she does add that women will shovel, but she only admits as much to avoid “sexist stereotyping.” Yeah. That’s like prefacing a homophobic joke by saying, “But some of my best friends are gay!”

I frequently use personal examples in my posts and diary entries, but I am always careful to try to use facts and other sources to bolster my claims.  There is great power in the personal, but Parker proves that the personal can be used very wrongly to stand in for objective truth.  Ignoring societal conditioning in favor of innate biological programming is a tactic frequently employed by the Right, particularly as a means of keeping gender distinctions frozen in time.  Even so, there are a few undeniable elements of our behavior that must be chalked up to the undeniable fact that some of us have two X chromosomes and some of us only have one.  Yet, relying too heavily on that fact fails to take into account that we are distinct from other animals in that we have highly advanced brains and reasoning abilities.  Since the beginning of time, humankind has been imposing its own version of reality beyond purely biological imperative and survival instinct.        

The feud between Parker and Dowd is well-documented and I don’t need to add much more to it.  Unsurprisingly, both columnists manage to miss the point altogether when they cobble together a collection of stale arguments and pseudoscience to make their case.  They end up on opposite ends of a great existential divide, managing to be equally wrong in the process.  Contrary to what Dowd says, men are necessary, but it should be added that they are necessary in ways beyond shoveling driveways or providing emergency manual labor.  Contrary to what Parker says, it’s not biologically determined that men are born snow shovelers and ditch diggers.  

Later in the column, Parker at least makes an effort to try to state that she isn’t homophobic or dismissive of the fact that gay men are equally capable of being “masculine”, but the conclusion she draws is bizarre, at best.  If it wasn’t so strangely rendered, I might take more offense to what it implies.

As for Craig, he’s been happy the past 25 years with Jack, who, though he pleads a bad back, cooks a mean stroganoff, from which I have benefited twice since the snows began.

Doubtless, such displays of manliness — which in my view include feeding the hungry — are, like the weather, passing divertissements. And these jottings are but a wee contribution to the annals of gender study. But if one should ever stop pondering the malaise of modern woman long enough to consider what men might want, the answer is obvious to any except, perhaps, the U.S. Congress.

Give a man a job, and he’ll clear a path to your door.  

Her convoluted conclusion seems to be that women have focused too selfishly on their own empowerment that they’ve failed to understand or appreciate the contributions of men.  With it comes an underlying assumption that men feel confused these days because their time-honored roles in society have been somehow denigrated or tarnished since women started demanding equal rights, equal pay, and basic equality.  If only things were this simple.  If only women had anything remotely close to the same degree of parity with men.  If only, for example, there was some set standard of what all men wanted or what all women wanted, for that matter.

One can’t just make a blanket statement based on absolutes.  Men are not some monolithic entity any more than women are.  Surveying the women and men with whom we work, live, and interact will reveal that gender distinctions are not distributed exactly the same for everyone.  In that spirit, it is equally wrong-headed to reduce men to violent brutes or women to flighty fashionistas.  A major problem everyone faces is that we are forced to conform to gender roles that are designed for one-size-fits-all settings when we are all different sizes, shapes, and proportions.  If gender were a set of clothes, we’d be tugging on it constantly, hoping that with enough effort it eventually would cover us properly.  And so long as we impose simplistic identity upon complex humanity, it never will quite work.        

The major problem at play here is that Feminist groups and women’s rights groups tend to often to couch their analysis in overly-academic terms.  I can vouch for this personally.  This means that pop-feminist analysis like Parker and Dowd ends up shaping the perception of most people, as though these sorts of stilted descriptions are some objective picture of the way things really are.  But these two aren’t even the worst offenders.  At least these columnists usually mean well and usually at least aim high.  Meanwhile, aside from “serious” analysis, a perversion of Feminism leads women to believe that there is something empowering in being publicly sexual or in adopting the same pose of their chauvinistic brethren.  Objectification by any other name, this is an attitude reflected ever more frequently in popular culture.  But instead of focusing on whether or not it’s a good thing that now Tween aged girls are dressing provocatively rather than like the children that they are, or whether we’re including people of color into our depictions of feminine identity, or whether transgender citizens are treated with the respect they deserve, instead we get into the eternal back and forth about whether the cause of women’s rights has done more harm than good and whether men are suffering as a result.          

This degree of navel-gazing does no one any good.  Periodically, it might be helpful if we engaged in a respectable dialogue about how far the rights of women have come, where the movement is headed, and what we all might take from it.  However, if this territory is mined constantly without anything especially novel or even interesting to report from it, then we forget that there’s much more to Feminism and gender equality than the tit-for-tat that never ends.  Gender is a construct of the human mind and it is so pervasive that its impact effects us in ways that are both exceptionally glaring and maddeningly minute.  The complexities of civilization and the human mind have given rise to a huge amount of interrelated information to be combed through, but if we fail to survey it in totality, then it does us no good.  The mysteries of men and women will remain so forever.  We might not solve them all, but we’d be a damn sight closer to a greater understanding than we are now, instead of focusing so narrowly on one particularly yawn-inducing issue.

We all grow up with a vision of what is right and just in this world.  Many, if not most, of us grow up with the idea of pursuing “the American Dream”.  For some that has meant the pursuit, as when it was first enunciated in 1931 by James Truslow Adams, of achieving a “better, richer, and happier life”.  In his book, The Epic of America, Adams stated it this way:

that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.  It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it.  It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.

Oddly, in view of today’s circumstances, Mr. Adams was a banker.

I’ve been watching the Prop 8 trial…except not really, since SCOTUS disallowed us folks who couldn’t be in the courtroom to watch what may be the most important court case ever for GLBT people.  So I watched the transcripts instead, as they were posted by the people at the Courage Campaign Institute and FiredogLake.  

One of the assertions made time and again by the defense was that Proposition 8 was not based in animus.

What?  No strong dislike of GLBT people?  No enmity?  Are we seriously expected to believe that there was no hostile attitude?

I’d like to think that one could discount those assertions as being false on there face.  But this was a court of law.  I am no lawyer, but as a writer and a mathematician, I know words and logic.

Having followed the trial closely, I have to ask the following.

When you deliberately choose not to learn about people who you wish to discriminate against, what is that if not animus?

A friend of mine recently visited, and while she was here, she shared an interesting story. For many years, beginning in childhood, she was sure that her chosen career path was that of an engineer. So, of course, when she started undergrad, she majored in engineering, quickly finding that she was the only female currently enrolled in the department. This reality didn’t really surprise her, since she had always felt comfortable in male-dominated spaces and in many ways considered herself one of the boys. Her passions had always been those where female attendance had been sparse, so she’d long ago accepted the reality without complaining, or in honestly feeling as though she had much need or desire to question the status quo as it always had been.

However, with time she recognized that engineering was not for her.  This had nothing to do with gender disparities and everything to do with the fact that she found her course of study ponderous and uninspiring. In the meantime, she had taken a few anthropology courses as electives and had fallen in love with the subject.  After giving the matter much thought, roughly halfway through attaining her degree, she made plans to switch majors.  Even though it delayed her graduation date and required her to take more hours, she was prepared to make a sacrifice. Still, her heart had led her away from what she had assumed would be her life’s passion and as a result she was more than willing to do the extra work necessary to move in a vastly different direction.

The decision didn’t sit well with one of her engineering professors, who was the sole, if not one of a very few female instructors in the field.  My friend was informed that, whether she recognized it or not, the very fact that since she was the only matriculating female enrolled in that course of study, this meant that she was a trail-blazer; if she left, the whole hopes and dreams of those who wished to establish gender equality within the engineering department, to say nothing of the work world, would be utterly dashed.  My friend took quite a bit of liberty with this statement and shortly thereafter left for Anthropology, just as she had originally planned.  In so doing, she didn’t discount what the professor said, but simply stated that she was unwilling to be unhappy in a subject she had come to dislike, especially when she knew inside herself that she might find true success and certainly true contentment elsewhere.

As much as we might like to see complete gender, racial, and sexual orientation parity across the board (and I certainly do, too) I think we have to take into account that our collective dreams sometimes take a secondary role to an individual’s desire to pursue his or her own.  When we hang the entire hopes of a movement upon the shoulders of one person, no matter how strong and broad we think they might be, for any reason at all, this places an inordinate and disproportionate amount of expectation upon a flawed and very human being.  To some extent, every minority in a majority setting lives in a fishbowl and has his or her actions minutely scrutinized.  None of this is especially fair, but when so much of our own identity depends on how we define ourselves as unlike others, rather than focusing on similarities between us and others, then it might be understandable, though not necessarily justified, why we fall prey to this kind of thinking.    

To expound upon that which I am saying, I am not attempting to let anyone off easy.  It is true that for all of the post-racial talk, Barack Obama is the first Black President.  We all knew that going in and we always will.  In the beginning, which seems like a least a decade or so ago, I was willing to concede to him the benefit of the doubt, but now I like so many have become openly critical and impatient with his leadership abilities.  That he continues to poll highly with African-American voters and not necessarily with Caucasian voters is, I think, a very complex dynamic that can’t be reduced to merely a matter of race and racial identity.  Any minority which historically has had its concerns placed at a lower priority to that of the majority is bound to believe that even a candidate with flaws is at least is testament to the fact that a major hurdle has been crossed; that it finally one of its own reached that which is still the most powerful position on the face of the Earth.  I have no doubt that when a female becomes President or an openly gay candidate reaches the highest office in the land, there will be this same unshakable sense of loyalty and devotion among those of a similar persuasion and identity, no matter what the larger political climate either for or against this person may be.      

Still, excusing bad policy decision and being a constant apologist for any elective official at any time, for any reason, is not the best of strategies.  For the most part, aside from a few true believers, we have not fallen prey to this trap in our age.  But what we have done is assumed at times that one African-American lawmaker can wipe away centuries worth of racial strife and tension.  The Obama Effect is, to my reckoning, largely minimal and perhaps more a product of wishful thinking than much in the way of substance.  Likewise, the first female to be referred to as Ms. President will likely encourage the media and others to ponder whether her election portends greater gender equality or perhaps even leads women to embrace occupations or spaces long designated for and peopled by men.  Likewise, the first gay Chief Executive will encourage many to hope that perhaps homophobic attitudes might be finally be waning and will simultaneously foster a thousand human interest stories of LGBT young adults who followed the example of the President and decided to come out and live openly.  

In writing this post, I don’t seek to tongue-lash or to chastise those who rightly strive for a fairer state of affairs.  This is what we are all seeking to one degree or another.  Rather, I think perhaps the problem is when we assume that one single woman, man, or minority with a singular talent can by himself or herself crack the glass ceiling, end a history of racial inequality, or sound an end to homophobia.  Even when this person, whomever it may be, makes makes significant strides, we become disillusioned when he or she she alone can’t quite bust through, failing to recognize that a collective effort is the only means by which any adequate reform movement has ever been accomplished.  I firmly believe that the entire process starts with one woman, one man, and/or one minority, bold enough to step into unfamiliar and sometimes unwelcoming spaces.  Yet, and this cannot be stressed overmuch, without those courageous enough to both correctly emulate their example and in so doing follow their lead, the ultimate objectives espoused will often remain unrealized.  

I recognize that it is easy to become impatient with the slow progress of reform.  But we oughtn’t let our sense of desperation and desire supersede any individual’s freedom of choice.  It is a constant temptation to search for ammunition in every corner to hurl at one’s enemy, but I believe that this impulse must be kept firmly in check.  There may not be any such thing as a fair fight, but alienating allies or potential allies is not the best of strategies.  When the world seems full of roadblocks and detours, we all can lose our heads and let hostility and spite guide us in directions we will probably later regret.  Anger may have a function, but anger rarely stays on course, instead it gives no quarter to anyone for any reason, and thus it has been the undoing of many a worthy endeavor.

Returning to the anecdote upon which I began this post, perhaps soon the disappointed female professor will find another woman in the department upon which to set precedent and and in so doing encourage others to participate and take a seat at the table.  Though my friend might be relatively unusual, she is far from the only woman not intimidated by being outnumbered and not especially uncomfortable in a boy’s club or a man’s world.  And, as I conclude, I have always been able to see far enough into the future to know that lasting gender, racial, and marriage equality is within our grasp, though its progress rarely presses forward at a fast enough clip for our or anyone’s satisfaction.  In the meantime, we continue to fight the good fight and advocate for that which we know we need.  I hope we always do.  

Recently I have been giving much thought to why Progressives and Democrats can’t seem to accomplish more than the bare minimum regarding desperately needed reform measures, even when they have the luxury of substantial majorities in both public favor and legislative representation.  The answer may lie in the prevalence of pointless, unwieldy levels of stratification.  With these comes an isolating sense of separation—individual elements of the base often have a problem pulling together with one voice, and, for that matter, do all who would deign to fit underneath the big tent.  

To many liberals, life must be overly complicated:  specialized committees, committees within committees, identity groups, splinter identity groups from larger ones, rules for the sake of rules, rules set in place when one unforeseen problem creates friction with anyone for whatever reason, exacting policies based on good intentions that soon become headaches for all, and many other examples.  It doesn’t have to be this way.  Overlap is sometimes a good thing.  

As such, the true failing lies in the absolutely ridiculous complexity of how structure ourselves and how we have in many ways forgotten how to communicate with each other.  For too long, information and strategies that could be used for the benefit of all have been isolated within specific single-issue oriented groups, each with its own nomenclature and particular phraseology.  For too long, so-called experts carrying a briefcase, a PowerPoint slide, and a hefty speaking fee have been employed to enlighten other people of an unknown universe, when with major modification, we could easily understand the intersections and common ground which links us together, not the great unknown that keeps us at arm’s length from each other.  

This sort of set up directly reflects the nature of academia, since the merits, weaknesses, and structure of pertinent concepts are hatched there and exhaustively vetted.  Just as I have recently discovered that the health care system available to low-income and disabled residents of Washington, DC, was written to be understood and effectively managed by policy wonks and the highly educated, not the poor and under-educated, so do I realize that so many of our grand goals are thwarted when they are neither designed, nor framed so that all might easily comprehend them.  

To cite a related example, when I am speaking within Feminist circles, I know that there are certain terms, overarching concepts, and abstract notions that one needs a thorough education, keen mind, and a willingness to research on one’s own time to grasp sufficiently.  Much emphasis is given to an everlasting critique of Patriarchy and cultural practices which place women in a subordinate role, and from these comes a thousand deep conversations and leitmotifs.  I can speak this language competently, with much practice, I might add, but I often can’t help but wonder if any of these worthwhile ideas and highly involved strategies ever get out to the working class battered housewife or to the sex worker standing on the corner of a bus terminal, prepared for another night of a dangerous way to make a living.

In my own life, part of the reason I have been able to keep my health from being as debilitating as it could be is that I had access through education and relative affluence to know how and where I could do my own research about the condition.  Now, years later, I can hold my own with any psychiatrist because I know and understand terms like selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor, titration, GABA, dopamine agonist, and efficacy.  However, these terms mean absolutely nothing to the average person, who must trust fully in a psychiatrist who then must translate their needs, their symptoms, and their expectations for treatment into a regimen of medications that is inexact even in the best of circumstances.  

The likely outcome with anyone diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder is a tremendous amount of constant modifications, some slight, some major, and frequently a need to try an altogether new combination of medications, all of this in the hopes that one will stumble across the proper drugs in the proper proportion, eventually.          

We humans are a peculiar breed.  In the animal kingdom, one could argue that the average mammal attends to its own more readily and with less reservations than we do.  Without romanticizing the primitive, it would seem that no other species on Earth usually has such profound reservations about reaching out to assist others.  Though certainly other animals fight within themselves for food, mates, and resources, I often wonder if we are perhaps the most self-absorbed creatures the world has ever known.  

We are given the gift, by God or by whichever belief or unbelief you espouse, to have the gift of a very complex, and very advanced organ at our disposal known as the brain.  Yet, it seems to me sometimes that this supposed great gift can dispense evil and great suffering as easily as it gives rise to good and with it great gain for all.  

As a person of faith, I sometimes wonder if this basic concept is a credible interpretation of the beginning of time as expressed in the Book of Genesis.  So long as man and woman weren’t aware of the greater complexity of all things, they lived nakedly, blissfully in paradise.  But once temptation arrived in serpent form, suddenly they recognized that reality was not nearly so simplistic and easy to swallow.  Christianity and other religions teach that humanity was created in God’s image, and if that is the case, perhaps we are caught in some still unresolved eternal polar tension between our ability to sense and structure things in advanced shades of grey versus our relatively straightforward mammalian biological imperatives and compulsions.  Some have even implied that the human condition is imperfect particularly because we have divine elements seeking to function within imperfect organs, namely our brain.  

While on the subject, I am reminded St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthian church.  It seems that the church had fallen prey to smooth talk, false teachings, and a distortion of the faith itself.  Much of the passage I am about to cite, as you will see, is written quite sarcastically, its target primarily those who deceive others, not those who had been unwittingly deceived.

However, I am afraid that just as the serpent deceived Eve by its tricks, so your minds may somehow be lured away from sincere and pure devotion to the Messiah.  When someone comes to you telling about another Jesus whom we didn’t tell you about, you’re willing to put up with it.  When you receive a spirit that is different from the Spirit you received earlier, you’re also willing to put up with that. When someone tells you good news that is different from the Good News you already accepted, you’re willing to put up with that too.  

I do not think I’m inferior in any way to those “super-apostles.”  Even though I may be untrained as an orator, I am not so in the field of knowledge. We have made this clear to all of you in every possible way.  Was it a sin for me to lower myself in order to elevate you by preaching the gospel of God to you free of charge?  (Italics mine) I took money from other churches as payment for my work, so that I might be your servant [at no cost to you].  And I will keep on doing what I am doing in order to cut the ground from under those who want an opportunity to be considered equal with us in the things they boast about.  You gladly put up with fools since you are so wise!

Even those who do not believe in a higher power or in Christian terminology can understand the general message here.  To get down to the heart of the matter, our own selfish goals, ego, and pride are largely responsible for the complications that separate us from others.  When we throw up barriers for whatever reason, we cause others who might use our knowledge and insight as a helpful resource to stumble or to fail outright. The intent initially may not be to isolate information inside very specific spheres of influence or schools of thought, but very soon this is its inevitable end result.  

If we were speaking of a purely Christian point of view, we would concede that no believer should be discouraged from taking an active role in the faith, nor turned away from membership in the body as a whole based on any perceived deficiency or lacking of any kind.  Sometimes putting walls up is an unconscious decision made out of a desire for protection, sometimes it is a response to feeling unappreciated and discounted by society as a whole, and often it is a reactive measure that replicates itself a thousand times once established.  Like some untreated cancerous cell, walls and barriers become duplicated a thousand times over, leading to factionalism within factionalism, specificity within specificity, and minutia within minutia.  

The Left has adopted this formula time and time again under the pretense of being sensitive and accommodating to every possible group with a semi-unifying basic agenda.  But what this ends up doing is placing the individual concern first, and ignoring the basic humanity that draws us together.  The current generation in power embraced post-modernism with open arms, not recognizing that simply denoting a specific circle of influence means also that one ought to get to take the time to understand its core philosophy as part of the bargain.  

We can advance LGBT rights, for example, but if we don’t really make an attempt to listen, really listen to LGBT citizens and to their reflections and concerns, we are wasting our time.  Recently, a controversy has sprung up within Feminist spaces that criticizes men who make very ill-informed, very glib pronouncements of what the greater movement (and women themselves) needs to do.  These forceful pronouncements are almost always set out in condescending fashion, without, of course, truly understanding where women are coming from and without much specific understanding their particular grievances.  Some have denoted this as “mansplaining”.  

I do know the resolution of this issue ought be a two-way street, since any exchange of information needs both a talker and a hearer.  Though some may disagree with me, I also assert that Feminist circles would be wise to modify, but not water-down, nor soften their message to reach maximum exposure with the world outside of it.  This might be accomplished by consciously seeking to move away from the complications of heady terminology and abstract discussions.  This doesn’t mean voices should be silenced for any reason or that women ought not speak first and speak often in so doing.  Nor does this mean that the dialogue must be dumbed down.  What it does mean, however, is that that communication requires an equal sense of that which must be said and that which must be comprehended.  

I sincerely believe that women’s rights have a relevance and a pertinence which needs to be added to the daily discourse, but I do also know that doing so requires that it keep the extensive cerebration within itself and the cut-and-dry to those outside.  But lest one feel like I am picking on Feminists (which I am honestly not), this goes for every single-issue, shared identity, or niche group with liberal sensibilities.  Just because we seem to enjoy making things complicated for perverse reasons as yet unknown, doesn’t mean that we should.                  

The true failing in all of these cases lies in the absolutely ridiculous complexity of how we structure ourselves.  To reiterate once  more, for too long, information and strategies that could be to the benefit of all has been isolated within specific issue-oriented groups, each with its own nomenclature and particular phraseology.  This directly reflects the nature of academia, since these concepts are hatched there and exhaustively vetted.  In that profession, segregated subject areas and ultra-specific foci are considered necessities within a field of study to encourage subsequent analysis.  However, this particular structure is anathema to greater progress beyond the world of professors, scholars, and students.

I’m going to do something very different today.  I’m going to talk about a matter has been on my heart and on my mind for a good long while.  Now seems like as good a time as any to address it.  To put it bluntly, observing the constant back-biting, smears, below-the-belt attacks, and other supremely childish means of conducting supposedly civil discourse that I find in every avenue I observe has been really getting to me.  This criticism is meant towards both no one in particular and everyone in particular.  While a gaze towards the past will reveal that these sorts of juvenile tactics have been with us since the beginning of time, this doesn’t mean that they are justified or somehow not counter-productive in the end.  We all revel in the thrill of victory, but sometimes our successes prove Pyrrhic and nearly bankrupt us, even though we may be the first to limp across the finish line.

For example, the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, writing of the need for coercion in the cause of justice, warned that: “Moral reason must learn how to make a coercion its ally without running the risk of a Pyrrhic victory in which the ally exploits and negates the triumph.

The above quote has application to many avenues, politics being only one of them.  But I would prefer to broaden the context to as large an audience as possible, singling out no one, but extending the ability for personal reflection to any and all that might be capable of hearing it.  To provide a personal example from my own life, I contribute to Feminist discussions and take an active part in the cerebral discourse raging inside them.  Yet, interestingly enough what all of this soul-searching and cerebrating produces often is not my still-growing understanding of femininity, some supposedly foreign concept based on my being born and socialized as a man, but rather a calling to question my own conception of masculinity and how it relates back to how I perceive the construct within the framework of my whole identity.  

The idea that perhaps the solution to sexism, misogyny, and gender inequality lies within a re-examination of male behavior and restrictive societal definitions of masculinity has been an informal thesis of mine that is beholden to a million related postulates.  Moreover, that the true resolution can be reached by a collective effort between men and women working shoulder to shoulder is my ultimate goal and my fervent prayer.  When men see that which is feminine within them and do not recoil from it and when women see that which is masculine within them and do not feel shame, then I know we will be finally close to true equality.  In the meantime, I have never really had any heart for the fighting and I look forward to the day we lay our burdens down by the riverside.    

The poem which follows below has been on the back burner of my mind for a while.  It speaks to our bloodthirsty impulses and questions whether the expectations of winning we hold are really worthwhile and tenable.  In a darkly humorous manner, the piece reveals what happens when our egos encourage us to rush blindly into one fight after another, recognizing only in hindsight that we are forever damaged and notably impaired by each and every one.  Reconciling our primordial impulses with the wisdom of reason is a major challenge within every person and sometimes, as the poem notes, it is a realization only granted circumspectly.  But when I see so many people who have made it their personal quest to pick rhetorical fights or who seem to think that their occupation or chosen purpose in life gives them a right to act like a Type A bully, then it compels me to speak out and to push back, but notably not with fists raised in opposition.  This includes the thousands of legends in their own mind who possess the cockiness, the arrogance, and the attitude, but have nothing in the way of insight or intellect to back up their lofty claims or poker faces.

“The Winner” by Shel Silverstein

The hulk of a man with a beer in his hand looked like a drunk old fool,

And I knew that if I hit him right, I could knock him off that stool.

But everybody said, “Watch out — that’s Tiger Man McCool.

He’s had a whole lot of fights, and he always come out the winner.

Yeah, he’s a winner.”

But I’d had myself about five too many, and I walked up tall and proud,

I faced his back and I faced the fact that he’d never stooped or bowed.

I said, “Tiger Man, you’re a pussycat,” and a hush fell on the crowd,

I said, “Let’s you and me go outside and see who’s the winner”…

Well, he gripped the bar with one big hairy hand and he braced against the

wall,

He slowly looked up from his beer — my God, that man was tall.

He said, “Boy, I see you’re a scrapper, so just before you fall,

I’m gonna tell you just a little what a means to be a winner.”

He said, “You see these bright white smilin’ teeth, you know they ain’t my own.

Mine rolled away like Chiclets down a street in San Antone.

But I left that person cursin’, nursin’ seven broken bones.

And he only broke three of mine, and that make me a winner.”

He said, “Behind this grin, I got a steel pin that holds my jaw in place.

A trophy of my most successful motorcycle race.

And every mornin’ when I wake and touch this scar across my face,

It reminds me of all I got by bein’ a winner.

Now my broken back was the dyin’ act of handsome Harry Clay

That sticky Cincinnati night I stole his wife away.

But that woman, she gets uglier and meaner every day.

But I got her, boy, and that’s what makes me a winner.

You gotta speak loud when you challenge me, son, ’cause it’s hard for me

to hear

With this twisted neck and these migraine pains and this cauliflower ear.

‘N’ if it weren’t for this glass eye of mine, I’d shed a happy tear

To think of all you’ll get by bein’ a winner.

I got arthritic elbows, boy, I got dislocated knees,

From pickin’ fights with thunderstorms and chargin’ into trees.

And my nose been broke so often I might lose it if I sneeze.

And, son, you say you still wanna be a winner?

My spine is short three vertebrae and my hip is screwed together.

My ankles warn me every time there’ll be a change in weather.

Guess I kicked too many asses, and when the kicks all get together,

They sure can slow you down when you’re a winner.

My knuckles are so swollen I can hardly make a fist.

Who would have thought old Charlie had a blade taped to his wrist?

And my blind eye’s where he cut me, and my good eye’s where he missed.

Yeah, you lose a couple of things when you’re a winner.

My head is just a bunch of clumps and lumps and bumps and scars

From chargin’ broken bottles and buttin’ crowded bars.

And this hernia — well, it only proves a man can’t lift a car.

But you’re expected to do it all when you’re a winner.

Got a steel plate inside my skull, underneath this store-bought hair.

My pelvis is aluminum from takin’ ladies’ dares.

And if you had a magnet, son, you could lift me off my chair.

I’m a man of steel, but I’m rustin’ — what a winner.

I got a perforated ulcer, I got strictures and incisions.

My prostate’s barely holdin’ up from those all-night collisions.

And I’ll have to fight two of you because of my double vision.

You’re lookin’ sick, son — that ain’t right for a winner.

Winnin’ that last stock-car race cost me my favorite toes.

Winnin’ that factory foreman’s job, it browned and broke my nose.

And these hemorrhoids come from winnin’ all them goddamn rodeos.

Sometimes it’s a pain in the butt to be a winner.

In the war, I got the Purple Heart, that’s why my nerves are gone.

And I ruined my liver in drinkin’ contests, which I always won.

And I should be retired now, rockin’ on my lawn,

But you losers keep comin’ on — makin’ me a winner.

When I walk, you can hear my pelvis rattle, creak and crack

From my great Olympic Hump-Off with that nymphomaniac,

After which I spent the next six weeks in traction on my back,

While she walked off smilin’ — leavin’ me the winner.

Now, as I kick in your family jewels, you’ll notice my left leg drags,

And this jacket’s kinda padded up where my right shoulder sags,

And there’s a special part of me I keep in this paper bag,

And I’ll show it to you — if you want to see all of the winner.

So I never play the violin and I seldom dance or ski.

They say there never was a hero brave and strong as me.

But when you’re this year’s hero, son, you’re next year’s used-to-be.

And that’s the facts of life — when you’re a winner.

Now, you remind me a lot of my younger days with your knuckles clenchin’ white.

But, boy, I’m gonna sit right here and sip this beer all night.

And if there’s somethin’ you gotta prove by winnin’ some silly fight,

Well, OK, I quit, I lose, son, you’re the winner.”

So I stumbled from that barroom not so tall and not so proud,

And behind me I could hear the hoots of laughter from the crowd.

But my eyes still see and my nose still works and my teeth are

still in my mouth.

And y’know…I guess that makes me…a winner.

The poet Catherine Davis wrote a well-known work entitled “After A Time”, upon which I have based the title of this post.  “The Winner” reveals to us that taken to excess even our triumphs can prove disastrous if we, for the love of blood, plunder, and material gain institutionalize them rather than use them only when all other avenues of resolution have been exhausted.  It challenges the contemporary notion and conduct of unflinchingly tough machismo as advanced by a million cowboy Westerns and John Wayne potboilers.  Davis’ poem below addresses the matter from the losing end, reducing self-serving spin and rationalization to mere wind while noting, quite beautifully, that while winning is ultimately transitory, so too is losing and with it the motivating power of defeat.  I find it fascinating to observe that both of these poems dovetail neatly and how a uniquely masculine perspective nicely counter-balances a uniquely feminine one.          

After a time, all losses are the same.

One more thing lost is one thing less to lose;

And we go stripped at last the way we came.

Though we shall probe, time and again, our shame,

Who lack the wit to keep or to refuse,

After a time, all losses are the same.

No wit, no luck can beat a losing game;

Good fortune is a reassuring ruse:

And we all go stripped the way we came.

Rage as we will for what we think to claim,

Nothing so much as this bare thought subdues:

After a time, all losses are the same.

The sense of treachery-the want, the blame-

Goes in the end, whether or not we choose,  (Emphasis mine)

And we go stripped at last the way we came.

So we, who would go raging, will go tame

When what we have can no longer use:

After a time, all losses are the same;

And we go stripped at last the way we came.