Who They Love

One of the greatest parts of my new life is that I now spend my time with a woman who is so incredibly, amazingly intelligent. The conversations in this house... especially the just-starting-to-wake-up coffee conversations...

Just yum. So much fun. 

 

Today's started out on movies... segued to religion... and then to the Girl Scouts. I really wanted to join the Girl Scouts as a child, but somehow, it never happened. There never seemed to be a group around when I was growing up. I suspect now that this claim was put forth by parents who were worried that actually allowing their incredibly socially inept, outcast of a daughter into a group of young girls would have the effect of destroying whatever tiny shred of self-worth I still had. And they likely weren't wrong. Because during that conversation today, when I expressed my regret, she responded with, “just another way to gather a group of girls together so they can exclude some other girl.”

Patton Oswalt recently became engaged. 

 

That's not a random tangent. It's really not. 

 

You see, Patton lost his wife fairly recently. He hasn't been dating his new fiancee for very long. And the fact that they have announced a very public commitment to each other has a lot of people very fired up. And the vast majority of those condemning their behavior are... 

 

Women. 

 

They are reacting as though he is somehow betraying his wife, hell, basically cheating on her, despite the fact that she's been dead for over a year. They imply that he is a bad father for exposing his child to this sordid behavior. In essence, they're acting as though his new love is “the other woman”... and, as such, by definition amoral, manipulative, surely a gold-digger, definitely a slut. 

 

Because here's the thing: from childhood on, and the Girl Scouts and groups like it are a big part of this, women are taught to police their own. 

 

Here on the hard drive of this machine I'm typing on, there is a folder labeled “Screenies”. My past-time for the last few years has been “debating” on posts concerning reproductive rights, heavily focusing on the topic of abortion in particular. The screenshots in that folder are a collection of some of the worst responses I've been given by abortion opponents. As is common when you dare disagree with certain groups on the internet, they're liberally peppered with rape threats, threats of violence, and dearly-held hopes for my eventual maiming and/or death as a sort of karmic revenge for holding these “unacceptable” views. There's a pretty good cross-section of types represented – men, women, religious adherents, atheists, rich, poor, white and POC. But the largest group, and without any doubt and by far the most vicious, is the women. Their attacks are no-holds-barred in a way the men don't even begin to match. 

 

Because folks, we police our own. Any woman who dares to step outside the bounds of what is considered “acceptable behavior” by the majority of brainwashed, rock-ribbed, ”traditional values” women, risks being shredded by the claws and teeth of her so-called sisters. 

 

In my head, this behavior always reminded me of the “bucket of crabs” trope. It's said that if you put crabs in a bucket, and one of them climbs high enough to possibly escape the plastic prison, its peers will pull it back down to prevent it from doing so. I'm not actually sure I buy that... it seems to me that crabs are probably not capable of such complicated thought processes. I believe it's far more likely they're simply trying to use the jail-breaker as a sort of ladder, and inadvertently foiling their own escape in the process. But, as an analogy, it works nicely. 

 

Especially in this context. 

 

It seems as though any woman who tries to step outside of the box that society has created for us is immediately met by a group of her own peers who are bound and determined to make sure she remains in that box. They will clamp on, scratch and claw, and pull her down until she is safely trapped in the teeming masses of those who share her prison.

I'm not really sure what motivates us to do this to each other. I think it's likely a combination of things. Part of it seems to be simple jealousy... we can't stand to see someone else have something that we can't. Or to see someone risking their “safe” position to reach for something better, when we ourselves can't muster up that kind of courage. 

 

Some seem to be driven by a need to tear down others to make themselves, by extension, rise higher. “You are doing a wrong thing,” they seem to say. “And I am a better, more moral person than you are because I would never do such a thing.” 

 

Some seem to be actually fearful of the consequences of such behavior by others. They are convinced that somehow, if this kind of thing is allowed to continue, perhaps even be accepted, our entire societal structure will collapse, and anarchy will reign supreme and destroy all they've worked for. 

 

And some of them... and I believe this includes the vast majority of my own gallery of haters... are simply what we call “mean girls”. They get joy out of hurting others, love the power rush they feel when they upset someone and cause them pain. 

 

Regardless of what motivates them, however, the basic point is this: we have been taught, hell, trained, from earliest childhood, to treat each other is this way. We're encouraged to call out our friends, our families, even complete strangers, for violating the arbitrary standards of “acceptable female behavior”, to show no mercy as we deride them, shame them into meekly rejoining the fold, never to stray again...

Or exclude them completely, banish them from our society as “bad influences”.

And we need to stop doing this. We need to turn this around. 

 

When it comes down to it, the situation I mentioned above, Patton's engagement, is about nothing more or less than two people's choice to love each other, and make a public announcement and commitment to each other and the love that they share. 

 

And it's not acceptable... it's not fucking fair... to turn around and tell someone that they have to turn their backs on what they feel for someone else... because someone with no skin in the game has decided that they should have the final say in who this person loves. Or when they love. Or how they love. 

 

It applies in the arena of reproductive rights... where we literally tell our sisters that they shouldn't share a physical relationship with the person they love unless they are willing to give up their bodies for most of a year, their health or even their lives, and their futures as a consequence for sharing that aspect of their love for someone else. 

 

It applies in the area of LGBTQ rights, which are solely about who someone chooses to love, and how. 

 

Love... is love. 

 

And if you're not personally involved with any individual in a consenting adult relationship... you should have no right whatsoever to judge their behavior or their choices. 

 

Stop. Just stop. There is no feeling in the world greater than being with the person you love – it makes even seemingly boring pastimes like conversations over morning coffee take on a beautiful light of their own. We should be encouraging it, not twisting it into something to be ashamed of, something we shouldn't be doing. And here's the thing: maybe, just maybe, if you stop piling hate on those who love outside of your boundaries of “acceptable behavior”? 

 

Maybe you might learn how good it feels to simply love the people you share this world with, instead of wasting your time dragging them back into the bucket to die alongside you.