It’s impossible for me to think about my relationship to race and racism without connecting it to my rape by a black man at the age of fifteen. Of course, the fact that it took fifteen years for me to begin to consciously conceptualize my racial identity is itself glaringly indicative of my white privilege. That is not lost on me, and I will return to it later. But since even that awareness came about indirectly as a result of my rape, it’s hard for me not to begin with my rape.
It’s funny—in my training to become a certified rape crisis counselor in the State of California, two “myths” of rape were drilled into us: the first, the myth of stranger rape, and the second, the myth of the rape by the “dark man.” And while intellectually I understand that something like ninety-five percent of rapes are committed by family, friends, or acquaintances and that the major structural problem in rape culture is white male supremacy[1], those myths are, in fact, my reality, and I have struggled—continue to struggle—to come to terms with that. I feel uneasy about a black male stranger on the street or on the bus or at a social gathering and I have to ask myself “is this something real, a trigger, my brain responding to a perceived danger as a result of having learned experientially that something like this once caused me harm? Or is this a figment of my white imagination, is this my brain just responding to a perceived danger as a result of having learned through socially constructed norms that something like this could or even is supposed to cause me harm?”
I imagine that it’s a combination of both, and as a white person who cares very strongly about anti-racist work (and who also strongly believes that as a white woman, I do have a stake in racial justice), I sometimes find myself frozen, unsure where to go and what to do and how to proceed with undoing this massive tangle of myths and truths and lived experience and resistance and social indoctrination. In my early years of reading and learning about anti-racism, shortly after my rape, I erred on the side of risking my own safety. I was ashamed of my feelings of unease, sure that they were proof of my racism, and unwilling to be “that” white woman who runs away from the black man in fear or who clutches her purse tighter. The reason I say “erred” is that twice more in the years since then I have been physically and sexually assaulted by black men, strangers, in situations which felt distinctly “off” to me before the assault happened.[2] (Fluke? Probably, yes. Or at the most, a weird coincidence of complicated circumstances.) Neither of these assaults were as invasive as the first, and neither of them resulted in substantial physical or psychological harm to me, but the fact remains that they were both situations in which I had prioritized the social indoctrination cause over the lived experience cause in trying to understand the source of my unease. I trusted my reason over my gut, at the expense of my personal safety.
And what then? Already I can feel my stomach curdle and my eyes roll in irritation with myself for even attempting to further disentangle this mess. The truth is there are times when I feel unsafe and sometimes they’re white men, sometimes they’re other men of color, but most often they’re black men. That is my reality. It unsettles me, deeply. But I don’t know of any other way of dealing with it other than in these insufficient ways: 1) by listening to my body telling me when it feels unsafe, which is different from trusting my body—I can listen to it and support it and prioritize my safety without believing that it’s telling a truth; 2) by committing to unlearn my racialized feelings of safety vs. harm in whatever ways I can; part of this has also been noticing how often I don’t feel threatened or uneasy, noticing particularly when there are black men I don’t feel uneasy around, and also noticing how often I feel uneasy around men that are not black to try to understand what other signals, other than race, put my body on alert; and 3) by always attempting to prioritize my safety in a way that does not perpetuate cycles of racism, that does not jeopardize the comfort of the man in question as much as is possible, and that is quiet and subtle, so as not to serve to unintentionally alert other white people or emphasize publicly the white fear of men of color. At various times, this has meant getting off a bus early as if it were my stop; getting out my cell phone to call someone, carry on a normal conversation, and move at a normal pace towards a pedestrian-heavy and/or well-lit area; and once even saying gently to a black male stranger who was following me and trying to get me to engage with him (about pornography, no less), “look, I don’t know you, and I can’t tell what your intentions are, so I apologize if this is misdirected and I want you to understand that it’s not about you personally, but I am a woman and as a woman in this society I don’t feel safe with strange men following me, so I’m just telling you now that if you continue to follow me I will call the police.” (It worked; the guy looked like I’d dumped him over the head with a bucket of ice and yelled, “well fuck off then, BITCH!”.) The point is to take care of myself first, always, but to do so not at the expense of perpetuating ugly cycles of racism—including the “dark stranger” rape myth.
The thing is I know that the reason why it’s called a “myth” isn’t because it doesn’t happen, but rather because every instance of it happening supports a mythical cultural norm. It’s a trope that benefits white supremacy and male supremacy by insisting that white women need white men to protect us from “dangerous” men of color (and through this, establishing that women of color are both not worthy of this same protection and perhaps even are to be sexually available for white men’s “perverted” fantasies that are “unfit” for the virginal white woman). And because it’s a trope that benefits white male supremacy, it is the trope that has become most visible and most powerful. I know this. But it was attempting to come to terms with the fact that this myth had been my reality was what prompted me to start trying to understand the myth in the first place, and that was my so-called wake-up call to the nasty dynamics of race in a white-dominated and white supremacist world.
According to my county’s website, the town I grew up in is 93% white. The non-white kids were the odd ones out, but it never occurred to me that they may have experienced their race much differently than I experienced it (theirs, and mine). I certainly didn’t have adults in my life that demonstrated otherwise. So the aftermath of the rape was the first time in my life I’d ever even considered that black people experience the world differently from white people, and it was a huge, huge realization for me. Of course, rape is a weapon of sexism more than anything else, and it does no one any good, least of all me if I’m to come to terms with its affect on me, to see it as just a crime against a white person at the hands of a person of color. But race was there. It was visible. And it threw me head-first into navigating the churning racist waters beneath the surface calm white folks have the privilege of floating peacefully on.
Later: I’m coming back to this a day later, having collapsed at the end of last night after writing this, an emotionally exhausted crying heap. I don’t want to re-write it, but it feels disingenuous to publish this with the emotion so markedly absent. I thought it had little place here, since this is about how the rape woke me up to thinking about racism, and not about the rape’s emotional effects on me. So I’ll say just this: this was hard for me to write.
[1] I imagine there are more rapes perpetrated by white men on women, both white and of color, than by men of color on white women (I looked for statistics, but couldn’t find any), and ninety percent of reported rapes are intraracial, according to a report of the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence from 1969—and these are just reported rapes. One can imagine what the racial demographics might be of unreported rapes, given that ours is a legal system that systematically privileges white people and subjugates people of color (as well as questions like “who is the proper Rape Victim?” with the implicit assumption of most people being “an appropriately feminine upper-class white woman beyond moral reproach (read: chaste)”, etc.).
[2] I have also been assaulted by a white man, someone I knew.
I have tried to write this post so many times, and each time I’ve scrapped it and started over. I can’t seem to find my voice in it. Or maybe, I can’t seem to find its point. Or maybe it’s just not a topic I’m very good at writing about. But whatever it is, it’s frustrating me, because I want to write about other things, but I’m stuck on this. So I’m just going to write as if no one were paying any attention. Inspired by Mary Daly’s death (see what I think is the best handling of that over at Feministe) and all the talk of her transphobia and racism, and in honor of Martin Luther King Day, here are my thoughts on allyship.
I don’t like the concept of “ally” because I think so much of what people think being an ally involves is proving to someone else that you’re a good person, whatever that means. And that is so loaded with self-consciousness, with competition and one-up-man-ship, even vanity. I would much, much rather be met by a humble “um, sorry if this sounds stupid, but can you tell me what queer means? I thought it was a bad word” than by someone, upon hearing I’m queer, going on about how they have gay friends and how much the prop 8 stuff sucks and they really think everyone ought to be able to get married and other such drivel. This happens a lot, and those people are just … trying too hard. It’s like if I started spouting my opinions on affirmative action every time I met a person of color. Awkward, right? And de-humanizing. It reduces whomever the person is to whatever identity you’re trying to prove yourself an ally to.
I’m not just queer, you’re not just Chinese American, she’s not just Jewish, ze’s not just genderqueer. [Fuck spell check for not knowing the word genderqueer.] The let-me-prove-to-you-that-I’m-your-ally shtick is really just a way of allowing yourself to allay your own guilt and prioritize your own need to be recognized as good. It’s not really listening to what the needs, wants, and preferences are of the person at hand.
If you want to really be an ally, then you need to really listen. And beyond listening, you need to really hear. You need to turn off the voices in your head that are responding to every little thing you’re listening to, and just hear it with your soul, without judgment, without defensiveness, without shame or guilt or anger. Yes, you’re opening yourself up to being hurt this way, because it can hurt to have your beliefs and your actions crumbled. It can hurt, too, to hear other people, because oftentimes, people don’t speak as if you’re really hearing them. They speak as if you’re not hearing them. So you might hear anger, and hurt, and resentment, and suspicion. But if you’re really going to be an ally, you need to hear all that, and you need to also remember later to take care of yourself and consider what your needs are, and whether and how other people can be better allies to you. And that might mean asking them to listen and hear you. But you have to be open about this, because anything that isn’t shared candidly is just a brick in the prison of self-defensiveness and isolation that you’re building up around yourself, and once that prison is built it is so, so hard to escape.
But I don’t think “ally” is the appropriate word for this — because this, to me, is what it should mean to be human. Forget about proving anything. Forget about trying to live up to what you think it means to be a perfect ally. Forget about trying so hard not to make mistakes that you cry in frustration and from feeling misunderstood. Just listen, and hear. Then, when you mess up, you’ll know because other people will trust you to hear them when they tell you what your mistake was. And you, in turn, will be able to learn from them. And maybe then you’ll be able to tell them when they mess up, and they’ll listen, and hear you too. And then, maybe, gradually, we’ll all be able to stop greeting each other from behind thick curtains that we suspiciously peek out from behind, and maybe we’ll stop having to yell in order to make sure our voices are heard, and maybe we won’t have to resort to communicating to people different from us with anger, because we’ll trust them to hear us when we feel betrayed. Or maybe we will get angry, but then our anger will be met with support and validation, rather than defensiveness and dismissal.
What do you do if you hear someone and they don’t hear you? My friend Ruhi once asked a mentor, “how many people can you love before you love too much?” and her mentor said, “you can never love too many people, as long as you don’t expect them to love you back.” You have an infinite supply of love, as long as it has no agenda. See, the thing is, if you are listening to someone under the condition that they listen to you too, then you’re not really hearing them. In order to hear, you have to give of yourself. It has to be utterly selfless, in a way, because hearing is not an exchange. It’s a one-way action. If you then don’t feel heard in return, you may certainly lose some respect for the person, and you might decide that in order to take care of yourself you shouldn’t pursue a relationship (of any kind) with the person, but that doesn’t mean the person didn’t deserve to be heard. And maybe, just maybe, you planted a seed in the person’s heart. A hearing seed. (And at the same time, I think hearing can be utterly selfish, because you’re acting out of your full humanity, and allowing it to blossom.)
I am not an ally. I’m not an ally to anyone, and I’m not really an ally to myself. I’m constantly fucking up and getting stuck and doing things that aren’t good for me and living out all my various internalized oppressions. And if I keep fucking up with regards to myself, how on earth can I possibly live up to being an ally to others? I try, dammit, I try. But that’s all I can do, and when I do fuck up, the best thing I can do is say, “I’m sorry. I’ll do better next time.” And then try again, and maybe fuck up again, and say I’m sorry again.
I am not an ally, but I promise from the depths of my being that I will do my best to hear you. And when you hurt me, I will try my hardest to tell you, so that you have the chance to hear me too.
I am not in debt, with the exception of my monthly orthodontic payments (I mean, $3,500 is a lot of money to pay all in one lump). And I am not in danger of being in debt. But, I am very bad at saving.
I just finished poring over the last three months of my bank and credit card statements, trying to figure out what on earth I spend so much money on that I never end up being able to keep my spending within the limits of my income. Somehow I always end up dipping into my savings, rather than adding to them.
The main thing is, I spend WAY too much money on food. Way, way too much. Of all shitty things to spend too much money on, food is probably among the shittiest. Obviously, I need food. But what I don’t need is to spend the majority of my food money on eating out. I’m just really, really bad at planning ahead, and so most work days, I end up buying breakfast (ca. $4) AND lunch (ca. $8). I only eat dinner out about once a week (ca. $15), usually with mi’lady on some sort of date, or with friends who are visiting from out of town, or for some special occasion or other (someone’s birthday, special excursion, etc.), or because I get home from work late, don’t have enough to cook with at home, and order take-out. So if you do the math, that’s about $300 a month on food, and that’s not including my grocery budget. THAT IS WAY TOO MUCH MONEY FOR ONE PERSON FOR FOOD. I could probably cut that by about two-thirds if I really committed to 1) cooking every night, with the exception of dates and special occasions, 2) cooking enough so that I have leftovers to bring for lunch on weekdays, and 3) getting up early enough in the morning to have time to make breakfast!
Really, none of that should be too hard. When I move to the Mission next week, which will be a 20 minute commute to work, door-to-door, rather than the current 55-minute commute, I’ll be much more likely to get up for breakfast. And really, all I need for breakfast is a piece of toast and a fried egg — hardly difficult. The hardest part of it all is that I spend approximately half my time at my girlfriend’s house, and so the cooking and bringing leftovers is a bit trickier (though still entirely doable), and she doesn’t like eating breakfast that early, so the breakfast thing will be a bit harder. But… I think I can do it.
Other ways to cut food expenses:
- buy fresh produce from the farmers’ market, but don’t let my eyes be bigger than my fridge! I want to be able to actually use everything I buy
- avoid buying frozen prepared food as much as possible, because that shit’s expensive — almost as expensive as take-out
- plan menus in advance so that I can be more efficient when shopping and cooking. Cilantro, for example, is sold in HUGE bunches and so in order to get my money’s worth on cilantro, I should really plan dinners that use it all week.
- don’t buy coffee and tea! I get really great quality coffee/tea for FREE at work.
- don’t shop at small corner or convenience stores except in dire emergencies, because everything is way more expensive there. Obvs I support local businesses over places like Safeway, but the corner stores will survive even if I only rely on them for my emergency 2-pack of AA batteries ($4.29!!) or pound of butter ($5.29!!!).
Other notes to self:
- try doing LAUNDRY more regularly, rather than just buying new underwear when you run out
- you really don’t need two new pairs of shoes every month
I’m extremely lucky to have an income in the first place that even grants me the privilege of having horrendous spending practices like those above. Trust me, I know that. And mostly it’s that knowledge that’s motivating me to rein in my spending, because honestly, what if I lost my job (there was a huge round of lay-offs in January, which I survived, but would I survive a second round of cuts? debatable)? What if I got hurt or sick and had to live on disability or unemployment? What if something happened to someone in my family and they needed me to help support them? Yeah, I really need to treat my money like the precious commodity it is, rather than like something to just throw around.
