The Cure For Victimhood

There are, of course, those who do not want us to speak. Why? Because, while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. 

My DVD copy of V For Vendetta froze about halfway through, not so much as a smudge on it. Not currently available on any streaming service, the eloquence of the fictional freedom fighter was out of my reach.

Binoculars

I almost saw it!

Strangely fitting for this Guy Fawkes Day, when even words have fallen under suspicion. Transwomen are women, and women are birthing people. 

Words offer the means to meaning and, for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there?

As ravenous Capital tightens its grip, controlling the narrative becomes more imperative. Censorship methodically blocks off neglected corners of culture, authoritarian crackdowns increasingly enabled by the nasty – but very quiet – contagion of learned helplessness.

Freedom of speech is the bedrock of a free society, but saving it won’t accomplish much if we are unable to speak.

Existential Agency

New research brings new words that may be the right reinforcement for our crumbling collective consciousness. In a recent interview, podcaster Chris Williamson spoke with an expert in the emerging field of existential psychology.

Dr. Clay Routledge’s work, examines how the human need for meaning in life influences and is influenced by different cognitive processes.” He tells Chris how fascinated he is with “existential agency” –  The belief in our own ability to determine our life’s meaning. “You need to feel like you have the ability to take action,” rather than just accepting an externally-imposed purpose.

Sad Seamstress

One of these days, I am so out of here!

“This is very, very early work, but it seems like people who have a strong sense of existential agency are the most motivated, they’re the most driven, they’re the most resilient. They feel like, when life feels meaningless, they can change it.”

But he’s not talking about some bootstrap bullshit wrapped in statistics – “This isn’t to take away from real structural challenges that people face. But if we’re only talking about those things that we think of as outside of people’s control, we’re neglecting the fact that humans have all this cognitive horsepower.”

Chris Williamson latches onto the inspirational implications of this and runs with it: “I think that people intuitively are aware of it. Think about why anyone finds it emotionally fulfilling to see those transformation photos – They’ve done that through their own agency.” 

External Control

The last few years have seen the inspirational narrative of transformation being subsumed more and more by the concept of transition. The story of finding the True Self through long-term medical assistance has been framed as the path to Salvation.

And where once, you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission.

Your True Self isn’t within you, it’s in a surgeon’s office.

Dr. Routledge addresses this more broadly, “Part of the reason I wanted to really start to figure that out is because I feel like we are increasingly living in a society where people are acting like you’re not in control of anything.”

Pouty

You don’t understand – She made me hit her!

“There are privileges and advantages but, regardless of that, there’s something going on within humans that gives us a great deal of cognitive freedom – If we choose to act on it.”

Getting excited, Chris fills in the rest – “The victim mentality outsources existential agency. And if Man can make a Heaven of Hell and Hell of Heaven, then your ability to interpret the world is more than fifty percent of the battle.

“You have people in terrible situations who are able to be relatively fulfilled, and people that seemingly have everything that kill themselves. Your material situation is an influence but it’s not a determinant.”

“It predisposes but it doesn’t predetermine.

“I think framing things that way – ‘Take advantage, take control of the direction your life is going’ – I think that’s a smart area of research.”

Science For Better Living

Dr. Routledge is gracious, bringing the discussion back down to earth. “You summed it up perfectly. Your example’s a dramatic one, but even little things – There’s lots of little things that people do every day.” He uses the example of simply deciding to walk more, or take the stairs instead of the elevator. 

But he also pulls in some heavier stuff: “The victimhood narrative – which you see a lot – is, ‘alcohol abuse isn’t really a choice because it’s a genetic disposition, and it’s a disease.’ But, thanks to our scientific understanding of genetic vulnerabilities, you just armed somebody with information.

“Learning about genetics gives me information about my personality, my vulnerabilities. That doesn’t mean you’re just being pushed around by these external causes, they’re information that can help you make choices to live a better life.” Except that self-reliance is out of fashion. Independent thinkers tend to be subversive, and not very kind!

Gloves Off

I have opinions, and I’m not afraid to use them!

“But my feeling is, that’s a minority position in modern day Western scholarship. The more we learn scientifically about that, the more people intuitively seem to think that you have no control over it. People seem to think, ‘here’s another reason why it’s not your fault.'”

Thing is, if it’s your fault, you might be able to fix it. 

How did this happen? Who’s to blame? Well, certainly there are those who are more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable. But, again, truth be told, if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror.

I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn’t be? War, terror, disease – There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense.

Fear got the best of you.

Fear Of The Unknown

The pioneers on the frontiers of human understanding are just beginning to conceptualize existential agency, and not a moment too soon. As communication has become easier than ever, the deluge of information was infused with contaminants. Bedrock has been eroded and our course has become murky. 

Preserving a popular sense of our ability to write our own stories may be the most effective tool against external control. 

Our authoritarianism is gentler, with no High Chancellor to rally against. But those who would control us for their own ends benefit from every unasked question, every unpondered thought. Controlled speech is controlled speech, whether the mechanism is shame or black bags.

Symbols are given power by people. Alone, a symbol is meaningless, but with enough people…

…We can change the world.

Handing over our agency in exchange for safety never works. Putting everything in the hands of authority just spreads the insecurity of relying on others for meaning. We have all lost something of ourselves to the growing climate of fear on all sides. Many of us have even lost our words.

…For now. Material reality is still out there, and a rose by any other name will still prick you. New terms like existential agency can help us find our way through choppy seas to make our stand on solid ground. 

Witches: The Heroine’s Journey

“Magic is a female fantasy and a male nightmare.”

Witch 1

Did you know witches are human Rorschach tests??

The Witch has endured for millennia as a symbolic challenge to male supremacy. She represents our innate understanding of the power structure we live in, her different forms expressing our shifting feelings about Woman regaining her place on even footing with Man.

Magic was traditionally Woman’s purview – Our friends the Ancient Greeks, founders of Western civilization, worshipped a Goddess of Magic called Hecate. Hecate’s three faces are reminiscent of the traditional phases of a woman’s life – Maiden, Mother and Crone.

Kristen Leo rambles pleasantly for over 15 minutes before making the interesting observation that men and women tend to portray magic differently. She says of magical stories written by women, “magic is a medium through which characters can empower themselves and help others.”

Kristen points out that men’s depictions of magic focus on revenge and curses – “It’s really fascinating how often we see female empowerment, when it’s expressed symbolically through witchcraft, being perceived as a threat by the male psyche.” The evil witches of so many fairy tales show us men’s perception of women’s challenge to their authority. 

Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind

Joseph Campbell famously distilled all of Myth and Legend into one storyline: The Hero’s Journey. In collating so many ancient tales, he managed to leave the female perspective out of his sweeping synopsis of symbolism entirely. 

He did eventually realize he’d forgotten half of humanity, describing Her importance, “If the male is on top, and the female subordinate all the way, you have a totally different system from that when the two are facing each other.” 

He wades into some pretty deep mystical waters, describing how we made sense of ourselves in the early days through symbolism: “Everything in the field of Time is dual – Past and future, dead and alive. They always come in pairs.

“Most of us put our minds on the side of the ‘good’ against what we think of as ‘evil.’ Put your mind in the middle. That’s to say, ‘I know the center, and I know that ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are temporal apparitions.'”

Devil Girl

It’s all relative, darling!

That is to say, on a deep level, we understand that our perception is not reality. But our perception is all we have to go on, so we struggle to express concepts that lay beyond it. Larger patterns and systems are described in broad strokes, the meaning lost as cultural understandings shift.

This is the crack that allowed male supremacy to creep in. Traditional philosophy tainted the ancient symbol of Woman as Lifegiver by declaring all Life sinful. You make life? Who wants that?? If I weren’t alive I’d be with God right now!

Woman’s embodiment of natural forces, her evident closeness to the life-giving Earth, was defanged for the purpose of harnessing and taming it. 

“When A Woman Thinks Alone, She Thinks Evil.”

During the surge of development known as The Enlightenment, the infamous Witch Trials were a violent but symbolic reinforcement of Patriarchy. The power structure resorted to blood sacrifice to reestablish itself amid the chaos.

But that overcorrection was itself an admission of insecurity.

It took them quite a lot of effort to push us down, you see. Brutality is the classic method, but progressive civilization demands increasing decorum. Violent coercion is so barbaric! The assault became psychological – Every idea must be made consumable by Patriarchy or snuffed out.

Wit And Folly uses Star Wars as the standard modern telling of The Hero’s Journey. We’re reminded that Luke’s final act against his enemy is not revenge, but compassion for his dying father. 

Joseph Campbell tries, in his own way, to impart that the two Journeys need each other, because their balance is the resolution of the human story. 

But lately, most prominent women display a single-minded assertiveness traditionally used as shorthand for masculine greatness. We are told this is progress – The Witches are all good now, nothing to see here!

The Hero’s Journey wears a feminine mask, but the destination of the Hero’s Journey is compassion and deference – For Woman, this is a road to nowhere.

Finding Woman’s Road

Building on Campbell’s work, Maureen Murdock gave us The Heroine’s Journey –  “Today’s heroine must utilize the sword of discernment to cut away the ego bonds that hold her to the past, and to find out what services her soul’s purpose.

“She must realize resentment toward the mother, put aside blame and idolization of the father, and find courage to face her own darkness.

“Her shadow is hers to name and embrace”

Witchy Bath

I just gotta be me!

In rejecting the passive role of subordinate, she learns to be assertive. Suppression of the Witch is to deny Woman her own Journey. 

With And Folly also pulls from Navajo legend, where Woman (the Earth) speaks to the Sun, her lover: “Remember – as different as we are, you and I, we are of one spirit.

“As dissimilar as we are, you and I, we are of equal worth. As unlike as you and I are, there must always be solidarity between us. Unlike each other as you and I are, there can be no harmony in the universe as long as there is no harmony between us.

Our society is in a death spiral because, in his lust for power, Man villainized Woman and all she stands for – Even Life itself. 

Dr. Campbell tells the story, “Whenever one moves out of the Transcendent, one comes into a field of opposites.” Woman, giver of Life, brings us into this world of duality, where we experience isolation and suffering.

But Old Joe is optimistic, “I think it’s a really childish attitude to say ‘No’ to life, with all its pain. To say, ‘this is something that should not have been.'” 

Man remains a petulant child so long as he refuses to accept his own suffering. For most of history, he’s been determined to distract himself instead, through conquest or inebriation. Whatever he couldn’t forget, he blamed on Mommy.

Mommy

You’ll always be my little boy…

The Witch Within

I recently asserted that the female mind does, in fact, exist. We tend to be caring, but sad. To me, this looks like the legacy of civilization strapping us to the birthing bed. But life in a female body creates a different perspective that’s sorely missed. Universal rejection of that perspective makes civilization into a death cult.

We need to recognize that Woman is not lesser. Women are not weak, and feminine traits don’t indicate weakness. The Hero’s Journey demonstrates over and over and over that compassion demands strength.

But he will never reach his destination until he accepts that the Heroine waiting there can’t be his subordinate. She is the Witch in all her liberated glory, enduring her own adventure to face him. She is the giver of Life, the inspiration of all his striving. And no amount of sky scrapers or oil rigs will change that.

The Witch is just Woman, the real one outside of Man’s head. If we are brave enough to sharpen our sword of discernment – our critical thinking – we can begin adding the Heroine’s Journey back into the human story. If each of us embarks on her own adventure, we can begin to regain some collective balance.

Summon your inner Witch – The world is counting on it!

Life is Weird, But I’m Not Giving Up!

It’s been a quiet few weeks here at BrazenShe. I have a bunch of stuff in the pipeline, but I have been focusing my free time on a business venture.

Applied Learning

Running BrazenShe is rudimentary and fun. I write whatever I want, whenever I want. It’s great practice at crafting engaging pieces around maybe less-than-engaging issues.

I adore writing in my own voice. It’s just about the most fun a girl could have. I have developed and tweaked my style for almost 30 years. But I don’t exactly fit your boilerplate professional mold.

Img 2849

I’m good at what I’m good at!

This has made it somewhat difficult to translate my ever-increasing experience administrating my little corner of the web and slowly, fitfully building a personal brand that’s functional and true, into paying work.

It’s frustrating to have a valuable skillset and struggle to make it work for you. I was a Content Creator, Cultural Critic and Social Media Manager, working a cash register or a factory line.

Something isn’t right there.

Serendipity

I recently took what little spending money I have and threw it toward some comprehensive internet marketing training. Less than a month into it, my estranged father messaged me asking for contact info for my sister.

As if.

He said a friend of his needed someone to build them a website.

The timing was just too perfect. I had to jump for it in spite of myself and everything that’s happened.

Turned out the friend is actually an age-appropriate lady Old Dad was seriously involved with for several years around the turn of the century. She has since settled into the role of Family Friend. Also, it turns out, she’s actually pretty cool.

I never got to know her back then, I was in high school in a different state. But she’s a RadFem and loved the blog! She specializes in a wonderful method for getting rid of her clients’ debt, which she does at no cost to them.

All I have to do is get the site up and spread it around a little. She’s already been doing it for years and the clientele is essentially assured.

Accidental Christmas Networking

Last night was the Christmas Parade downtown.

Many of you may not be familiar with this concept. You read that right: A Christmas Parade, which is just about everything you might imagine it to be. My kids rode a float with the theme, ‘The Night Before Christmas’ and had pajamas on under their coats.

BrazenShe Antarctic Explorer

Smile through the cold!

I’m kidding, of course – I’m sure the coats came off as soon as they were out of sight. I know the 6th grader was sharing a blanket and getting smooches from a chubby girl with a loud mouth. Hmmmm….

I was networking too, as it turns out.

Really, I just love this old man who owns the house next to the parking lot where they all gather and mill around for two hours in the cold, among the exhaust of idling Diesel engines.

Hiding Beside the Ice Box

On the back deck, the guy who was my son’s Scout Leader his first year was giving out hot chocolate. I wandered inside, probably looking for a bathroom, and ran into Bill in the kitchen.

He recognized me from my job at a local Big Box home services store. He told me about his real estate holdings, and how he hired women to do painting and light carpentry topless.

His sharp eyes glinted as he explained, “Normally, you might wait all day for a delivery. But if the delivery guys heard there’s topless women, they show up at eight a.m.!”

His logic was solid. And he was giving out alcohol, so I was smiling and nodding to avoid going back outside. It’s amusing when someone tries to shock me, new acquaintances usually underestimate me.

Desolation Road

And this house is next to, among other things, a homeless shelter. Right there on Main Street, with the churches, library and shops.

Many of the residents have a high school education, and some don’t even have that. A lot of people around here are addicts (recovering or otherwise) or children of addicts, with few skills.

And the “good” jobs in the area want to pay you $9-$12 an hour to do manual labor for 12 hours a day, seven days a week.

Yes, seven days a week. That’s every day. You’re pretty much guaranteed to burn out, if you don’t just bank all that pay (no time to spend it anyway!) and move the fuck away from here.

BrazenShe Get It Running

Gonna get this running somehow!

So, I can see the appeal, if I’m honest. Earn $25 an hour just for painting walls without a shirt? In context, it looks like a pretty good deal.

But that absurd demonstration of everything wrong with Capitalism was just Bill’s opening feint. Only the deep lines in his face give away his age, he is clever and nimble, as well as plain hilarious.

And, of course, he owns the building. I neglected to ask what the decorators of this nautical kitchen were wearing.

I walked the parade, had an asthma attack, and had to push the stroller (that’s right, I drink and interact with children. I’m an adult, not an asshole. And believe me, you are plenty sober after walking two miles!) over and sit it out on the curb.

Repeat Offender

The next year I left the baby at home. Bill was there in the kitchen with the liquor and we went back and forth over politics and history, sexual norms and possibilities for the future.

It does take more than rum to secure my company for two hours.

And, I admit, I hide from the crowd. The noise and the fumes, the endless shouting. It’s a guaranteed headache for me.

I promised Bill I’d see him again next year. Reveling a little in the feeling of finally having an accidental tradition to look forward to.

At some point this year, I was telling Hubs about it and he said he had met the old guy. That he was awesome

Knitting

It’s easy once you get the hang of it!

and one of the most interesting people he’d ever met.

Natural Fit

This made perfect sense. Bill could be my husband’s eccentric uncle. They are cut from similar cloth. This year his work hours made it possible for him to come meet my parade buddy.

It was so beautiful. I do enjoy having a partner I can present with a social opportunity, and he will capitalize on it.

Scout Leader and fam were there with hot chocolate. There was the business manager tending her little bonfire. In years past I have hidden from the experience. This year it was was a natural flow and I had a great time.

Scout Leader is a Web Manager by day. He told me he needs people to run social media campaigns. I’m supposed to call the office and set up lunch.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Life is Weird

So far, I’ve gotten voicemail three times. But he lives around the corner.

Bill invited us back any evening we want. Jack insisted we need to make it more than an annual tradition.

Meanwhile, I’m patching jeans and selling my possessions for spending money.

Life is weird.