Magentic

During the Kavanaugh hearings, I started wondering where I had gotten the message, as Dr. Blasey Ford did, that I should keep quiet about sexual misconduct, that I should never ruin someone’s life by making a big deal about a sexual assault. I remembered where: it was at the dinner table.

My dad was a white liberal, a card-carrying member of the ACLU, outspoken about racial equity. He enthusiastically supported  my feminist mom’s activism.  A lawyer, Dad usually worked later than 6 o’clock, our dinner time. Usually when Dad had dinner with us, I set the dining room table, priding myself on being able to carry four glasses at once. It was fun when he ate with us: we played “guess where I had lunch” with him, for example, or went around the table telling jokes. Often a dictionary or an atlas ended up on the table with our meatloaf and celery sticks. He was genuinely interested in the thoughts and lives of his two children, making us feel smart and respected. He had very good manners, but he didn’t monitor ours, and in general, he didn’t rigidly state or enforce rules. So he passed down an expectation, not easy to live up to, that the dinner table would be an engaging, fun place to share food and ideas.

But he also passed down other things. One night, Dad had just heard a story that really disturbed him. A man he knew had been falsely accused of sexual misconduct. This man had lost his reputation as a result. The man had also had other things happen to him that made Dad feel very sorry for the man. His judgment about the female who made the accusation was that she had done something very, very wrong, because her mere accusation had ruined a man’s life. (Since my mother was a vocal feminist, it’s likely that she pointed out the rarity of false rape allegations, but I don’t remember that.)

What I heard and internalized is that telling on people who do sexual things to you that you don’t want is bad. It was wrong to accuse someone of sexual misconduct. I’m not sure how old I was at the time of that pronouncement (probably between 11 and 13). Before high school, I experienced at least six incidents of sexual misconduct. I never voluntarily told my parents about any of them (The police came to interview me once after someone else told her parents). Once, when many girls in my 6th grade class were harassed, we wrote a group letter, which the teacher publicly discredited. I usually told no one. I broke the rule once in high school, but only because I was worried about another girl. I told my mother what had happened, and she took me very seriously, talked with me about how to proceed and then talked to the perpetrator’s mother.

I don’t know why my father told that story. In telling it, he put the accused man at the center, leaving the victim’s views and circumstances on the fringes. He equated a ruined life with a lost reputation, not with the end of safety that assault victims have or the LOSS of life that could have resulted if accused man were black. He also readily assumed that the accusation was, in fact, false. Have I mentioned that he was probably the best dad in the world? But he made a mistake as my father and as a community member. At that very time, a sexual predator was in our neighborhood, and Dad’s story, or at least the way I interpreted it, ensured that I knew it was wrong  accuse someone.

If he were alive and of sound mind, I would ask him about this. I believe he would regret it. I’m sharing the impact of my father’s story here in hopes that you will. Please be clear and specific when you talk about sexual assault in any form. Take some time, maybe, to follow up, revisit the topic later, or encourage questions. I formed a code of conduct from his story, but I really believe my father would not have wanted me to live by those words.

Here is a comment from a white female FB friend I met through book publishing:

“My God people, if you sit in a restaurant for 25 minutes and absolutely refuse to order anything you are loitering and they have the right to ask you to leave. Order a fricking cup of coffee or a bottle of water. Otherwise wait for your very tardy friend outside. They were within their rights to ask them to leave. It wasn’t about them being black, it was about store loitering policies [sic]. This stupid race shit has guy [sic] to stop.”

(I responded in an attempt to interrupt her racism that I don’t share here because I don’t want feedback on whether or not I responded correctly.)

I need to acknowledge that I have no expectation that she, a distant FB friend, shares my morals. Therefore, finding out that she was racist did not disturb and surprise me as much as it does when my Unitarian Universalist siblings in spirit reveal theirs in equally oblivious ways. When UUs do so, I am much more agitated. I believe that this is an appropriate response on my part.

I believe it is appropriate when discovering that people you love, admire, support, serve, listen to, feed, clean up after, plan events for, whose kids you’ve taught, whose worships you’ve planned and carried out, say racist things, to speak in a way that reveals the way you really feel, the deep and intense feeling of shock and disappointment you feel. When the SOULS of my white siblings are at stake and the BODIES of my siblings of color are at stake, I will not watch my tone.

I believe speaking in my own voice is a manifestation of being human, being loving, and being true to myself in an integrated and authentic manner. I honor myself when I do so, and I equally honor my UU siblings when I do so. I hold them to the same standards I hold myself. This is adult to adult interaction, one of the most sacred interchanges we have.

And when it comes to white people and racism, those standards have never EVER, in the history of the United States of America, been high enough.

* spoilers*

I watched every minute of Twin Peaks: The Return, but I experienced a few of those moments in what felt like an altered state. Those moment took me into a surreal world, where I lived for moments. The Convenience Store’s flood of woodsmen entered the place in my brain and being where nightmares are made and believed. My disbelief was not suspended, but consumed, negated, by the power and threat of the images and sounds Lynch and Frost showed us. That amorphous badness, the moving, evolving, elusive kind expressed a sense the world I feel I live in right now, one that relentlessly pumps wicked goo into the lives of earthlings.

Only an equally amorphous moment can combat that feeling and experience, and Lynch and Front provided two of them from in the finale. Throughout the season, music offered respite during every episode. At the Bang Bang Bar, people forget their troubles as they drink and sway to songs.Watching, Lynch, I have learned to surrender to not knowing what’s going on. It’s useful for me, since, no matter how many papers and posts I read, I will never know what’s going on.

First, Audrey’s dance expressed freedom, beauty, creativity, hope, and love through her gentle, graceful movements, representing a whole body feeling music and creating movement from it. Audrey herself gained no lasting comfort from it, seeming terrified after a brawl broke the spell and she rejected herself in the bright light and mirror. Yet I was transported by her movement, the music, and Audrey’s temporary release from her grinding, confusing reality.

Second, Diane’s quiet dance of lovemaking with Coop healed her rape and added justice and pleasure into humanity’s power to confront toxic greed and violence. Diane wasn’t Diane, it’s true, but she looked like Diane to us, and she had control and serenity while making love. She was not a victim, but a participant. Their moving together was the point–we aren’t shown climaxes–the human act of physical connection that we can do even after atomic evil has entered our soil.

There is no final healing in the finale, I admit. Even after 25 years, even if Laura had never died, we can’t erase the pain in her life. She found some other pain. Cooper wanted to erase it, believed he could as he walked up to the house thinking he Laura would finally be home, but that’s not how it works. Lynch won’t let it work that way; neither will life, the universe, or everything.

But the finale was enough for me. Those two scenes were truth-telling poems, telling truths just as decisive as the bomb’s evil. Lynch and Front created an altered state for me, one in which I plombed the depths of our world’s putrefaction, but where I could also receive a message of humanity’s tiny, momentous acts of love and art.

In this week’s Us magazine, both Paris Hilton and Teresa Giudice were quoted. Paris, who is at Burning Man this weekend,  said that she had always admired Princess Diana, but she’ll never get to admired as much as Princess Di, because she’ll “always be judged” for her sex tape. Teresa, who served a year in prison for fraud and now raises her four daughters while her husband serves his 4-year term, said that her “middle name is Strong.”

Based on these circumstances and statements, I declare Teresa Giudice, star table-flipper and tantrum-thrower of “Real Housewives of New Jersey,” Ms. Morality. She served her time and she’s working hard. It’s not clear she did a crime-it could be her husband’s shady dealings were concealed from her. She’s not savvy, and she doesn’t have much self-control, but she has lived through the consequences of her actions. Now she thinks about her daughters more than her legacy or how she is viewed. I also award her the Ms. Morality crown because I appreciate that Ms. Giudice never seems to have aspired to be adored in the way that British royalty is adored, though she definitely wanted people to watch her on TV and buy her book.

Paris Hilton loses to Teresa Giudice because the heiress party-goer doesn’t own actions or characteristics that led to a sex tape of her existing and being released. She objects to the tiny consequence of having henceforth to “always be judged” because it reduces  her chances of appearing to be like her idol, Princess Diana. Paris regrets what she thinks is being done to her, not what she may have done. It’s only because some bad person released her sex tape, she thinks, that she has lost the opportunity to be admired as Princess Diana was. Never mind that Hilton doesn’t, for example, walk through mine fields to raise awareness of land mine dangers. It’s that damned sex tape that deprives her of pristine princess status in her opinion.

I used to try like hell to avoid experiencing any kind of negative consequence. I couldn’t even handle not having my homework in time, and I would fib and wheedle to avoid any penalty. I had to go to detention once for being late to French class too many times, and from that I concluded that my French teacher was a bitch, not that I should figure out how to get there on time. I once told my mother I must have dreamed (though I knew I had NOT) that I had asked for and received permission to wear her dark blue cashmere sweater to avoid her annoyance and disapproval when she discovered me in it. I cringe when I think of that (and SOOOO much more BS  I spouted), but I was a TEENAGER then.

Paris Hilton is a grown woman. So is Teresa Giudice. But only the scrappy lady from Jersey acts like one.