not ready for this sort of thing

[lotesse]

I was Away From The Internet over the weekend, because driving, and I have to say - I know it's bad to feel gleeful about others' breakdowns, but I am feeling really vindicated by fake male feminist Hugo Schwyzer losing it all over Twitter over the weekend. Partially because Hugo's actually perceptive enough to lay out some of the toxic shit that drives manipulative men, but mostly I think because my Ex left me with a lot of anger about faux-feminist men who manipulate women with redemption narratives.

I had a troubling thought a while back, that I've been turning over and over and trying to figure out what to do about. I've always said that the thing that I like best about Luke Skywalker as a character is the way he wins by practicing nonviolence and nonjudgmental love: he won't kill Vader because he loves him, no matter what, and in the face of that childlike unconditional trust Vader can't hold on to hate or bitterness and the dark side of the Force loses its hold on him, allowing him to die as Anakin, the father to a good son. I always sort of thought of it as being like Gandhian satyagraha, truth-force, confronting the enemy with their own violence and cruelty by accepting it without fighting back and giving violence the pretext to continue; it was a way for me to bring Star Wars, which as Joanna Russ points out has some nasty business what with the One Girl in All The World and the Honky Savior stuff and the thing where the end of ANH is modeled after Nazi propaganda, back in to line with my own personal ethics.

But, the thing is, I'm pretty much having to rethink a lot of my ideas about passive resistance, because truth-force didn't save me from my Ex. Like Hugo, he could take talk of truth and make it immaterial to the real power struggle: most of what Hugo wrote was pretty decent pop-feminist stuff, but it was only the vehicle for the very sexist drama of "Hugo and The Women."



I thought, if I endured my Ex's abuse patiently, without judgment, if I could only get him to understand how much he was hurting me, and how wrong he was to do so, if I could only educate him about the sociological and psychological structures that made me a safe and convenient outlet for his misplaced anger - eventually, he would see that he was doing something wrong, and he would change it. I made him masculinity studies reading lists. He wouldn't let himself kill me.

The only time I've acted toward suicide, he was egging me on - playing suicide chicken, daring me to put his pills in my mouth. He did make me spit them out again, but nothing else changed, and sometimes I wonder if I really could have ended up dead trying to prove to myself that he cared about me.

This Hugo thing, though - god, it's shifting all my paradigms. It's like, it's like, like getting the resolution that I know I'll never get from my Ex, that I've given up hoping for, that I won't go looking for because I'm afraid of getting pulled back in. He always had an excuse. I told him when he was being abusive and he always acted horrified but he still always had an excuse. But watching Hugo spill I can see all the parallels. I feel like, for the first time, I actually get it. What was wrong with my Ex. What made him do those things to me. What made my parents reject him as soon as they met him - I never understood it, I could never see what they found so offensive about him, I thought they were being snobs. Well, they can be snobs, really. And they were being weird about me and sex. But now I think they also must have seen his capacity for this sort of thing, the way that he was willing to dodge the truth in order to feel good, no matter what it did to other people. To me.

And, god, what Hugo says about the fantasy of men changing for the better. Oh god I know that fantasy. It's the Luke Skywalker fantasy, but with a whole bunch of sex and gender stuff thrown in for kicks. And then politicized. Did I get fucked over by my kinks? Maybe, but I don't like the way that "codependence" or whatever shares the blame for abuse out. Maybe - definitely - I was primed to take it. But it was still 100% his choice to engage and perpetuate that shit.

But all of a sudden I'm less sure about the representational ethics of the sacrificial lamb. I've always been attracted to lamb characters: Luke, Frodo, Buffy. Will Stanton. I tend to prefer characters driven by loss, sacrifice, and the weight of burdens to characters driven by desire for personal gain; the quest to give up the object has somehow always seemed a better story, to me, that the quest to obtain it. Not always, but often, I choose stories about self-abegnation. I have a big button there, but it's also a political thing, definitely, a naive utopian impulse. I was taught that greed was the worst sin, the root of all suffering; so generosity has to be the greatest virtue, and generosity means being patient and not judging. Which is all well and good, until being patient slides down into passive suicide. Which is, pretty much, what Luke Skywalker commits in the end.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

I too, hung in there with an abusive and manipulative man because on some level I thought I had no choice, I thought I could convince him, I thought that because my father was a mentally ill guy who in the end was GOOD, that my husband who was a mentally ill guy who was BAD, was actually good.

My ex wanted his world view validated above all. Even if it meant being miserable and making everyone around him miserable.

I think that's the key.... what drives these men we want to rescue? Do they want to be happy? Or are they happy to accept the void?

My ex, about five years after he kicked me out (I did not go willingly; I was that sick), went to prison for having consensual sex with his stepdaughter, who was 15 at the time.

God only knows how he rationalized that. Because he was always right. Count on that.

What is it about us that we think it's not worthy to have our own path? Why must we always and only save the man in our life? Why can't we get hooked up with a man who is interested in being a fellow traveler?

For the answers to these and other questions....

In short, I am very grateful you escaped with your life. And I'm grateful I escaped with mine.

[lotesse]

It's the problem of perceiving oneself as protagonist, isn't it? Instead of assuming that you're destined for a sidekick role. And in one way I don't want to denigrate helping work, you know? Because I think it's tremendously noble and worthwhile, and also sidekicks are integral to the hero's heroism in the first place. But it would be really different to feel like I was in the center of my story, in that way that heroes get to be. Certainly the Ex always saw himself as the center of every story going.

I'm SO grateful for your escape. God, his poor stepdaughter. Ugh. The going willingly thing - you know, I'm almost not sure if I did or not. After a point, things get so awfully tangled up.

[lotesse]

also, thanks for sharing this stuff - it helps to know that I'm not the only one, and that people as awesome as you have survived this shit.

[princessofgeeks]

*blushes*

It was nine years of my life. NINE YEARS.

I take comfort in something a meditation teacher told me -- nothing is wasted. ever.

things are definitely better now.

[princessofgeeks]

*nods*

and we see the limits of that unconditional positive regard. because my ex would have ridden that train forever and used it as a way to suborn me.

Sometimes you just have to remove yourself when things get toxic. maybe people can be saved, but not by us.....

glad you are free now.

[staranise]

I don't think people can be saved, frankly. I think toxic people want to be saved. They want to use other people as objects to salve their egos, kind of like wet wipes. Maybe if they can use enough people who are good enough objects, they'll feel okay. If someone else is kind and understanding and loving enough, they'll be able to be a good person.

But the fundamental truth is: no one can ever save them. It is physically, psychologically, socially, morally impossible. Impossible in the way that it is impossible for me to inhabit someone's body and operate their limbs with the power of my mind. We are always only ever alone at the end of things. Other people can love them, support them, make their lives infinitely easier, but the power to actually take responsibility for their actions and well-being is theirs. So getting someone into a position where they're capable of being saved is meaningless if they're not willing to do the work themselves.

[msilverstar]

Relationships can get so toxic, I'm glad you survived your ex but wish it had never happened.

I didn't know much about Hugo Shithead before but now it's obvious that he was a pompous monster. And his actions, lashing out at anyone *daring* to criticize him, should have alerted people about his innate failures.

I don't want to say that only men are have this much jerkitude, but damn, he and your ex make feminism look bad and men shouldn't be allowed to do that.

[staranise]

I feel like part of the issue with generosity here is who we decide receives it. The thing about people like Darth Vader or Hugo Schwyzer is that it's always about them. "Maybe if I put all my energy into saving this person, they'll get better." But... why that person, and not somebody else? Why prioritize trying to rescue this person and not another? Or that other person, and not yourself?

Because the problem with "not judging" is that it isn't possible. You have to limit your scope. Having nonjudgmental patience and support for one guy, like Schwyzer, implicitly means not having it for someone else. If I let someone else beat me up without fighting back, what I have decided is: it is okay for someone to get beat up here. If I'm watching someone lash out and hurt other people, and I coddle and support him, I'm okay with those other people getting hurt.

I'm a helper. It's what I do. And/but/therefore, one of the most important things for me is deciding whom I will support, and at what moral boundaries I will stop supporting them.

[ilthit]

I don't know if I can say anything constructive to this but I think I get what you're saying.

I operate on a lot of different frequencies, but I'm pretty sure I would kill a person to protect myself from that person's aggression if I had to (I really, really would not want to), and I also know I would rather be killed than let someone I care about be killed. To let someone kill me in the hopes that they choose not to is not something that I think I would ever do. I can't take responsibility for someone else's moral choices, but I have to take responsibility for protecting myself.

Frodo was the best chance for Middle-Earth, and he knew he was killing himself, but he had an plan and an actual weapon that could save the people he loved. I can understand dying for the people you love when you know it's their best chance to survive. It would have been a different story if he was killing himself to inspire Sauron to make a better moral choice and not overrun the nations with his army. It would not have worked. That would just have been suicide. Sacrifice for its own sake is just self-harm, or possibly asceticism.

[tripleransom]

I think the catch about reforming someone by trying to show them the error of their ways is that - first they have to be willing to see that there is an error in their ways. From your ex's point of view, he didn't see that he had a problem. You (and probably all women) existed to be manipulated, to cater to his wishes. If that's the natural order of things, no reason to change. Why should he want to change? He got what he wanted right then.

Why should we, as women feel, compelled to settle for relationships with men who manipulate and abuse us? We get the message right from the beginning. From "Oh, that little boy who pulls your pigtails is just showing how much he likes you" to "he's only hitting you because you made him [fill in the blank]," is not a huge step.

The 'patient Griselda' is still held up to women as their highest aspiration, while boys are encouraged do things, to change their world, not to sit and wait passively for things to be done to/for them. It's a cultural message ingrained at the most basic level and very difficult to fight.

I'm glad to hear you're out of that relationship - willingly or no, you're out, you survived. You were one of the lucky ones.

[elspethdixon]

I'm glad the Hugo thing is giving you at least some form of resolution (and also glad that you ultimately got away from the abusive ex).

The fantasy of men changing for the better isn't just a Christian "sinners can be redeemed" thing or a pacifist nonviolence and nonjudgmental love idea - society encourages it heavily. For example, one of my favorite musicals has a perkily sung number called "Marry the man today (and change his ways tomorrow)" urging women to overlook the flaws in men they're dating because they can always make them change after the wedding... which is a fluffy song not meant to be taken seriously in a humorous&fluffy musical that's not meant to be taken seriously, but which still nevertheless encapsulates a cultural meme. (And it's interesting that you mention Luke Skywalker, because Captain Awkward's blog has an entire extended metaphor about abusive boyfriends in one post that uses Luke's relationship with Vader as a textbook example of an abuser and their victim: http://captainawkward.com/2011/01/17/reader-question-4-my-friend-is-dating-someone-terrible-or-secrets-of-the-darth-vader-boyfriend/)

I've had sort of distanced perspective on the whole thing in that I don't read Jezebel or Feministe or the other blogs Schwyzer apparently posted on, so my only previous exposure to him prior to the Twitter-splosion was people on ff_a who were uminpressed by or cynical of his redemption story complaining about him ("He's probably one of those men who just pretend to be feminist in order to get attention from women."), and apparently it turns out that they were entirely correct.

Personally, I'm a little weirded out by his statement that he doesn't know any guys who actually live up to ideals like "men in their 30s and 40s should date women their own age," because come on, I know plenty of married men over the age of 35 who are faithful to their wives, as well as hetero couples who got together in middle age. "All men are like this," is just an excuse used to pretend that men like Schwyzer can't help themselves.