Five Things Keeping Me Up At Night about the Kavanaugh Kluster

Preamble: I like alliteration enough to force it. 

Also: I began working on this well before the nomination was confirmed. As a result, this piece is belated on the timeline, but still alive in my heart and will be for a long, long, long, long, long time. 

#5   Our coarseness, our disregard for one another’s wellbeing, our ridicule. In short: Our behavior. 

After last Thursday’s 8ish-hour-long hearing, there was no shortage of reaction - media and other. The kinds that keep me up at night: meanspirited, shame-filled, inhumane, hot-headed, tactless, name-calling, judgment-laden, hateful, spew-y. 

I only made it halfway through the SNL re-enactment of Matt-Damon-as-Kavanaugh’s testimony that went viral. The ridicule and mocking of the man made my whole being uneasy; I had to turn it off. I only made it halfway through a YouTube clip of President Trump’s rally when, unlike his previous diplomacy on the subject, he made clear his stance by ridiculing and mocking Ford’s testimony. Again, my body responded, this time with a sweaty chill; I had to turn it off.

Finding amusement in another’s pain (and I feel it necessary to add: even when it is a natural consequence to one's own action)... there is no honor in this.

The theme is clear here: We are mad as snakes and we are letting our mad pass straight to mean - whether it’s delivered by late night humor or cleverly and innocently packaged by way of a snarky GIF or spoken straight from the President’s mouth. 

Let me be clear: This isn't a media problem. This isn't a leadership problem. This isn't a party problem.

This is a society problem. 

I'm calling us ALL out. We are unilaterally ugly, and it is diminishing out humanity.   

I'm not asking us to stop being mad. I'm asking to trade out made and mean with mad and compassionate. It's trickier. It's also better.

#4  Everything’s confusing. The whole shebang is like an onion. So. Many. Layers. = More. Than. One. Thing. In. Play. = No. Magic. Bullet.

It’s political. It’s personal. It's confusing. It’s life. We cannot expect simplicity, so can we quit expecting it? Quit requiring it?  

Kavanaugh's nomination was wrapped in lots of political layers long before anyone knew who Ford was. Yes? 

The fact that there's such heavy overlap between the citizens who did not approve Kavanaugh's nomination before Ford made her accusations and the citizens who have spoken out in belief of Ford's accusations, honing in on the theme of support for survivors of sexual assault, CONFUSES THINGS.

The fact that there's such heavy overlap between the citizens who approved Kavanaugh's nomination before Ford made her accusation and the citizens who have spoken out with suspicion about Ford's accusations, suspicious in fact of claims of sexual assault in general being used unhonorably, CONFUSES THINGS.

Those who thought Kavanaugh was an uncool dude before think him more uncool. Those who thought Kavanaugh was a cool dude before think he's unfairly under siege. 

It is irresponsible to not recognize the political muddiness. 

Ready for a follow-up consequence to this phenomenon? It's very. very. very. dangerous. And it is this assumption: Democrats support survivors of sexual assault; Republicans do not.  

This keeps me up at night. 

#3.5   Speaking of layers, there's another one that I can't shake. It has cropped up a lot, these questions: Are we so harsh a society that we will not grant forgiveness for actions done in the past? When a mistake is made, is ruin the only path? Is there room for redemption?

[This takes us down a totally new path in that it makes an assumption I haven't made up to this point in this post: That there actually was a mistake committed... That in fact Kavanaugh did attempt rape as a teenager.]

Sticking with my "complicated" theme from #4 above, this is a complicated question with a complicated answer, especially related to the Kavanaugh Kluster. And it's no secret, from #5 above, that in fact I do believe our society is harsh and errs on the side of judgment, finger-pointing, and un-compassion.

But that's not the end to my thoughts here. (shocker) 

When our kids screw up, Scott and I use the phrase "How will you make it right?" It's a super boiled-down, adolescent version of Restorative Justice. [They suck at it, by the way, usually digging their heals in their unwillingness to ADMIT THEIR WRONGS. But even if and after they have, they suck at Restorative Justive: "I'll tell my bro his eyes are pretty to make right that I beat him to a pulp."] 

Turns out, society sucks at it, too. We dig our heals in, belligerently refusing to admit wrong. (Correlation between harsh public response in all ways and the refusal to come clean is clear to me). But then, if we do, we mis-assign the consequence with the wrong. As Tarana Burke said when I heard her speak recently (and I'm indirectly quoting): Offenses happen on a spectrum. Consequences need to happen on a spectrum.

If Kavanaugh made a wrong in his past, his self-redemption and public-redemption will come when he faces it. When he makes it right. When he holds himself accountable.

It's a painfully awful process for the doer of the wrong, the one who fell from graces. But we have champions who have gone down this road less travelled before. I see it happen all the time in not-famous people (ask someone in committed recovery). We see it more rarely in famous people, but examples are there there as well.

If the question is: Does a wrong ever get righted? The answer is in the question: Yes, if the person has in fact righted the wrong.

Simple, yet uber complicated. 

#3  #Ibelieveher is not the same as #herstoryisprovenbeyondareasonabledoubt.

I am fully aware that I am skating on thin ice here by stating this (I'm picturing people near and dear to my heart in this moment exhaling out loud, "Oh Tricia." Guess what the other half of my friends are exhaling? They're breathing out an: "Amen.").

All of ya: Read On.

I love #Ibelieveher. As you know by the blog post I wrote previous to this one, "Out From Under a Rock" - since I have no experience with sexual assault - I can only empathize with the necessary-ness of being believed. Being believed in a spirit-of-support sense is what will bring so many darknesses into the light - past ones, present ones, and future ones. #Ibelieveher is powerful. #Ibelieveher is necessary. 

Lest we miscommunicate by stating it, though... let me say this: We do ourselves a huge disservice - on either side of this equation - to confuse the spirit of belief with that of proof. To confuse support with due-process. To confuse lifting someone up - backing someone up - with judicial decisiveness.

Lest I miscommunicate in that last paragraph, allow me also to say that we must be aware that just because there is not enough evidence or enough witnesses or enough corroboration does not mean that it didn't happen. 

This is not new; the court of law does not always teeth out the truth. Period. To pretend this is a new phenomenon is silly. 

It keeps me up at night that we aren't talking about acknowledging this.

#2  The complaints about timing.

They bug me. 

If in fact Kavanaugh attempted rape in high school, why did he not make right that wrong before his career was at its highest stakes? 

Cuz, why would he? 

If in fact Ford was sexually assaulted in high school, why did she not make the accusation before her perpetrator's career was at its highest stakes? 

Cuz, why would she? 

I dug a little on Ford's timeline, and learned - quite happily, actually - that she has made it no secret that her accusation's timing is linked to Kavanaugh's nomination. (Look at "Late August" https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/17/politics/kavanaugh-ford-timeline/index.html). 

I'm not happy about the timing. I hate it. It's another layer to the onion that makes it all even more complicated. But, that doesn't stop me from getting it. 

It keeps me up at night that we aren't getting it.

#1.5 Remarks that "Males in our current climate are in increasingly compromised positions and we are setting precedences that force innocent ones to shake in their boots about future false accusations cropping up from women" are not taken seriously. 

Hello, thin ice. 

I'm back. 

I continue to skate upon you.  

These remarks are felt by many, males and females. I've had elder women who love my husband to pieces, in conversations around these past few weeks, share with me their fear for his future. "All it would take is for one disgruntled woman from his past - in his professional life, in his life working with youth in the church, in his college social life - to get on her high horse and ruin Scott and your lives together." 

Listen to me: We need to listen to people who feel this way. We need to follow the reasoning. We need to get inside that head. 

WE CANNOT DISMISS PEOPLE'S FEAR ABOUT THIS, BECAUSE FEAR IS REAL AND PEOPLE ARE FEELING IT. 

This fear is a result of learning - conscious or subconscious - by what their life stories have taught them. 

Some of it is based in fact: There have been accusations made by women that have wound up false. 

Some of it is based in what I've come to view as fiction: Men aren't behaving as badly as we all think. Women - in lots of cases - are being unfair and oversensitive. (If you read my previous piece, you know that this was my position at one time).

Some of it is based in personal experience with women who flaunt and flirt and invite, then unwittingly (or wittingly) bait men into no-win situations. (I've observed this... confusing mind games in an equal opportunity offender)

Some of it is based in perceived lopsidedness: It just doesn't set right with me, this imbalance: Are we saying women are always right and men are always wrong??

Some of it is based in suspicions about motivation: vindictive, revenge-seekers also come in all different shapes and sizes and genders. 

I'm sure I'm missing lots of reasons for the fear. What it's based upon... 

But again - there is no use belittling or poking holes in or rolling eyes at or ridiculing the fear. There is only use in taking a peak behind it. 

The reasons for it might be good and honest and personal and specific. The reasons for it might be based in falsehoods and misunderstandings. 

Either way, to update/revise what leads to the fear here, some "unlearning" is going to have to take place before "relearning" takes place. 

Here's how my learning has taken new shape (through unlearning and relearning): This is not a take-no-prisoners attack on any one body of humanity. This is an invitation to ask questions about the patriarchal society in which most men and women don't even know we are players. The point is increasing our consciousness about the power this has had over us for centuries and continues to have over us. Women are not exclusively at fault. Men are not exclusively at fault. We all have a responsibility to wake up from our brainwash. The first way to wake up from our brainwash is to expose the yuck that is the product of our brainwash, the havoc caused while zombie walking. Sexual assault is the worse yuck and the yuck gets increasingly less yucky from there. But all levels of the yuck are products of the unconsciousness about our brainwash. 

So, here's my response to the remark, "Males in our current climate are in increasingly compromised positions, and we are setting precedences that force innocent ones to shake in their boots about future false accusations cropping up from women." 

Women who feel this way. Men who feel this way. Any-sexual-oriented-individuals-who-feel-this-way: 

ENGAGE IN THE CONVERSATION. Don't be afraid. Don't hide. Don't play victim. 

LEARN.

(And sometimes this means unlearning first).

#1  We are talking a lot. But mainly with people who agree with us. 

Don't stop doing this. 

Just don't stop there. Please, don't stop there. 

And if you don't trust yourself to talk with people who disagree with you - which is fantastic self awareness - this is just information, just facts you can work with. Knowing you are too emotional to talk with someone with opposite views because you cannot leash your words, body language, anger is nothing more than evidence - evidence to suggest that you've got more prerequisite work to do to get there. 

I was a math teacher and couldn't stand it when students (and parents) would proclaim, "I'm just not good at math." That's resignation. A cop-out. A dismissal of personal responsibility to change one's grade.

It's not ok with me for us to be resigned about staying not-good at discourse...to be ok with an "F" in it. 

Resources and articles abound. Google: "Strategies for talking with those I don't agree with." I took a stab at it in this post: How to be Ugly-Averse, Not Conflict-Averse. Just. Don't. Stop. Trying.

This my friends is something - in a world where it sometimes feels we don't have control over many big things - we DO have control over. And it IS a big thing.* 

*And if that isn't good enough reason then do it for me: help me get more sleep, help me be kept less up at night: get good at civil discourse.  

****************************************************************************

Q: Did I lie about there being 5 Things That Keep Me Up At Night?

A: Yes. There are seven.

Out From Under A Rock

I’ve been living under a rock.

My parents, while exceptionally nurturing in most ways, completely omitted educating their only daughter about body safety. 

The Girl Scouts, as I recall, was the source of a really fun self defense class. 

That pretty much covers what I entered the world as an 18 yr old female adult knowing about protecting my body from harm. 

My inflated sense of safety worked out for me, though. 

And it has served as a shield from the truth as a result.

Facts:

1) In my young adult years, my girlfriends demanded that we intentionally walk home together after being out late. I reluctantly agreed, but thought them dramatic.

2) I foolishly blacked out once at a frat house in college. My punishment: I woke up - stinky and embarrassed but physically untouched - on a bean bag chair and the guys who politely bid me good morning led me to one of their dressers, atop it a tidy pile of my jewelry (which I apparently had belligerently demanded be taken off before I passed out). I thanked them for their inconvenience of having housed me for 6 hours and skipped back to my dorm.

P.S. I shared a Cross Country team with most of the boys belonging to that fraternity and they were honorable dudes, fiercely protective of the girl athletes on the team. I had no idea there would’ve been any other way to black-out-then-pass-out in a college frat house.

3) My first apartment in an urban environment was a 1 BR dwelling in the basement of a tall brick building in Cleveland, Ohio. When my girlfriends came to visit for the first time and immediately saw the bars observable from the outside of the apartment windows at street level, one said, “Sometimes I think that girl trusts God too much.” I ran after dark and often left my car doors unlocked.

4) I left for Africa in my mid 20s with an organization called the Peace Corps and there for the first time noticed men’s eyes on me. Part of our Peace Corps training us American women volunteers how to stay safe. My heightened awareness of physical vulnerability as a woman while in Africa felt foreign. At this point, I still could avoid coming to terms with my naivety of the 25 years of my American experience, since I could frame this new feeling of danger as a product of the country I was in. Thank God the US is so safe, I remember thinking.

5) Back in America, I entered into a profession dominated by women and wondered what all the fuss was about the glass ceiling. My male counterparts got paid exactly what I got paid and minded their manners just fine.

6) When Scott and I began making babies, our first several were boys. I remember friends who'd had baby girls would say, "You guys are lucky. With a boy, you only have to worry about one penis. With girls, we have to worry about a bunch of them." I remember my main reaction was a sympathetic chuckle. But my second reaction at the time was inner: "Why we gotta go and make girls all different from boys? Girls get to decide just the same as boys do about sex. It's sorta sexist to suggest otherwise, don't ya think?" I am both happy and sad about my reaction then: Happy that my experience with my body had been so positive and so sexually safe that I had the luxury of assuming girls always get to choose. I am sad about my reaction then, because it misguidedly and ironically waved an inner flag of feminism absent from knowledge i did not have then: for all women, sexual choice is not guaranteed.

7) When, a year ago, women around our globe began communicating that they, too, had survived either sexual assault or unwanted sexual attention, I was not able to say Me Too. It took multiple conversations with women I love to conclude that my story was completely unique and wildly lucky.

8) Add to all of this an inner understanding from a very young age that my body is fantastic and strong and healthy and lovely and useful and mine - that it is to be used how I want it to be used and to that end my relationship with it has always been equal parts Boss and Friend, empowered and loving, protective and appreciative, in charge and without shame.

Now that you have the facts, you can plainly see how my inflated sense of safety has been reinforced at every juncture of my life. You can also conclude how, as a result, I’ve been shielded from the truth.

Because the facts of my personal story don't add up to the truth.

Here’s the truth:

We live in a culture where my story is more fairy-tale-fantastical than on-the-ground-believable.

This makes me all at once a terrible candidate and an incredible candidate to discuss the detestable things that happen to women every day in this country. Why terrible? It is a position of no authority or first handed ness. Why incredible? Because my chips have never been down, and I’m still mad as hell.

I feel like a child, stomping through life without knowing what I don't know in relationship to conversations about sexism, feminism, women's rights, glass ceilings, sexual misconduct, sexual violence, gender stereotyping, and the like. I liken my blindness and naive downplay of these things to being white and not thinking racism is all that bad. A child-like approach.

But I sure as hell won't let the fact that I've been behaving like a kid stop me from growing up.

A mad adult has more sophisticated, tactical strategies for channeling her anger.

We don't tantrum; we act.