Eliot was right about the cruelty of April. Jill at Feministe has announced she is taking an extended hiatus from blogging, joining Blackamazon and Brownfemipower as prominent voices who have chosen to leave the ’sphere in the aftermath of some immensely painful discussions about race, class, gender, and identity. I’ve been reading Jill since she joined Feministe years ago, and I will miss her prolific and insightful posts. How she blogged so much whilst in law school is beyond me.
I won’t say I haven’t thought about taking a break as well. (I do take short hiatuses of a week or three fairly regularly). Sometimes, I wonder if I’ve run out of things to say, or if, as Jill wondered today, my voice is doing more harm than good. I am confident an extended break will happen someday, but for now, I’m going to keep at it.
One aspect of male privilege, I recognize, is the learned ability to compartmentalize. I’ve railed against various aspects of compartmentalization before, particularly when it becomes a device for avoiding the hard work of reconciling contradictory aspects of one’s life. At the same time, there are some useful aspects to compartmentalization, particularly when it comes to blogging.
From a variety of sources, I get some pretty nasty remarks directed my way. That’s been true since at least early 2005, when my twin appearances on the Glenn Sacks show sent hordes of angry men’s rights activists (MRAs) to this blog. Most of the ugliest comments got deleted from the moderation queue; I learned to be much more rigorous about moderating as a consequence. So many of the comments and e-mails were truly ugly that any pleasure I got at receiving attention was utterly vitiated by the sheer overwhelming nature of all of that vitriol flowing at me.
But when I was a little boy, teased on the playground or beaten up, I learned to do what most boys do, which was to shut part of myself down. I did my best, with limited success, to separate what was done to me or said to me from how I thought of myself. I noticed other boys did this too; most of us became masters at not crying by the time we finished elementary school. All the pain just got locked in a compartment somewhere, safely away from everything else. Or so I thought until I hit high school, discovered alcohol, drugs, and sex and started a flourishing addiction that carried me into my thirties.
In sobriety, I had to learn to live with pain all over again. I’m not saying I had a higher degree of pain than anyone else, mind you. Besides, by the time I was an adult, I was the architect of my own adversity. No one forced me to get three divorces in a dozen years, a record that still beats that of any of my friends. But those divorces took a colossal and devastating emotional toll, a toll I processed through prayer, therapy, and a hell of a lot of running.
So these days, when people send me nasty e-mails or write excoriating comments about my blogposts, I still get angry or sad or frustrated. But most of the time, those arrows (deserved or otherwise) don’t do serious injury. It’s not that I’m so self-absorbed that I don’t care what others think, it’s that even now — maybe, especially now on the high side of forty, four times married, ten years sober, my body riddled with scars — I’m better than ever at placing other people’s anger into one compartment of my identity. I’ve learned to get better at separating thoughtful criticism from reflexive, unthinking wrath. I still have a lot of work to do there, but it gets easier all the time.
I also have many people in my life who don’t read my blog, and if they do, they don’t get wrapped up in the same issues I do. They are a source of comfort when I’ve gotten myself too emotionally involved in the internecine debates that characterize the ’sphere. I’m not saying that those who have chosen to quit the blogosphere lack those resources, mind you; it’s just that for me, at this stage in my life, those resources are a sufficient source of support to keep me going.
In the end, part of being human is hurting other people. I will hurt other people with words and actions. Most of the time, I do it unintentionally. Sometimes, alas, that ugly part of me that wants to retaliate for a perceived slight takes over and I say mean and petty things. I do not like doing this. I work at not doing this. But as long as I am in this body, while Jesus continues to tarry, I’m going to fall short of the truly gracious wholeness I pursue so relentlessly and long for so intensely. I make amends where I can, in words and in actions, in the sure expectation that while improvement is always possible, a certain amount of failure is absolutely inevitable.
I didn’t know that before. At mid-life, I know it now. And maybe it’s one reason why I can keep on blogging.
But damn it all, I miss those who have left us this month.
Hugo, come on. It’s more than a stretch to suggest that learning how to compartmentalize is part of male privilege. I can think of hundreds or thousands of things that are part of male privilege, and that sure ain’t one of ‘em. I can’t think how there are things about being female that block women from learning how to do that (or, in other words, denies them access to that ‘privilege’).
You follow that comment up, more sensibly, with a plausible description of how being strongly punished for not compartmentalizing forms a part of the ‘gender policing‘ facet of socialization for many (or most) males in our society. (Certainly I would pick most of the same words you do, were I to describe my own experience here).
Hmmmm. Perhaps unintentionally, your focus on being able to deal with pain (a topic of definite interest for all of us who struggle with faith and sobriety) makes it seem as if other bloggers who have shut down this month have done so primarily because their feelings have been hurt. And I don’t think that’s the case at all.
Wow.
MRA’s will be celebrating in the streets. Beer and misogyny for everyone.
And to think, all it took was a small herd of WOC and WOC allies to start shutting down Feminist voices.
If I didn’t know better…… No, even MRA’s couldn’t come up with stuff like this.
Get some perspective Hugo. Don’t quit. I enjoy your blog.
Perhaps unintentionally, your focus on being able to deal with pain (a topic of definite interest for all of us who struggle with faith and sobriety) makes it seem as if other bloggers who have shut down this month have done so primarily because their feelings have been hurt. And I don’t think that’s the case at all.
Prefer, that’s definitely unintentional. When I think about the reasons I would want to quit blogging, there are many: that I’m doing more harm than good, that no one cares or is reading, and above all, that I’m getting hurt. Watching other folks leave blogging for myriad reasons leads me to contemplate the reasons why I too would consider bowing out, and of course, my reasons might well be different.
Well, I won’t say that the immense pressure hasn’t made me rethink blogging, but then I remember how that would make a lot of assholes happy, and get back to it. That and looking forward to prepping my blog for the eventual return of Jesse Taylor helps. But I think that subsisting on stubbornness isn’t the worst thing in the world, and wish that people who shut down their blogs would reconsider.
Here’s to subsisting on stubbornness, Amanda, I hear ya!
I’m with you in believing that this project, this work that is blogging, does have an impact, if only a much smaller one than we wish — and often at a much higher cost.