I have so many feelings about this that I am still processing, I think because of the very point you're making--there is so much of this toxicity and violence and desperation that we no longer even have time to process one horror before another invades our life. I have been, off and on, debating whether or not to write about a similar (not deadly, but it feels like "yet" is the caveat there) situation I experienced with roommates a few years ago. It is so thorny and so hard and it brings up all that related toxic masculinity and white supremacy that feed off each other and perpetuate these cycles. There are so many days I just want to write anything else. There are so many days I fiercely resent how much time these traumas steal from us, not just in the happening but in the aftermath. I'm constantly putting off writing about them because I don't want to let the things that happened to me become who I am. And yet.
Thank you for writing this. It's necessary and appreciated. Your words are so powerful and carry so much weight. I think they're a beautiful start in doing something about all of this.
Thank you, Anni. You know, all these things I mention in this post—the SCOTUS ruling, the lockdown, the murder—*all happened* in a three day span while I was off grid to the North Fork of the Flathead River, up near Glacier Park. So I leave one world and come back to another. And yet, truly, it has been this world all along. Finally, after my return, a grizzly mama and her three cubs that were roaming around where I just returned from were killed by FWP the other day because they got in trouble due to negligence of motherfuckers who have no business being anywhere near the area. It is almost too hard sometimes, isn't it?
I don't know when and where the good guys win but I cherish the cage rattlers. Bezos doesn't give a fuck if I do or don't order from Amazon. Wall Street is no less evil by my non participation. "We will never binge watch our way to a better society." There may be someone like your neighbor in my class next week. Over the semester he'll read some Chris LaTray and maybe he'll have a second chance. For the daughters and the sons, there's got be a little hope.
This past summer, I took a clerkship with the Division of Children and Family Services here in Arkansas. I supported the attorneys who represented the State in cases where children had been taken from their parent or parents by the State. I had more than one case with a similar fact pattern to this one. I saw a lot of good people doing extremely difficult labor in the closest proximity to human suffering that one could be. I also saw a system starved of resources where they were needed most, and our most vulnerable people suffered because of it.
But you are right. It is all connected. These children are starved just like their parents are starved just like their teachers are starved just like their bodies are starved for food and healthcare and education and safety and resources and futures and humanity.
At least the fuckin' homogenous grass is green, though.
'Mornin', Chris. I get all this, obviously. I do think it's easier to live where Anglos are a minority. I feel protected in a way—"insulated" might be a better word—by the Hispanic/Latino culture that surrounds me here in New Mexico, although God knows there's some ferocious toxic masculinity there as well. At least I see brown faces all the time and there are tons of NDNs.
My own life is such a wreck right now following the death of my wife. With all the emotional, spiritual, personal, domestic, and financial issues to deal with, *in the middle of the unending pandemic* and all, it's more than I have ever faced. And yet, I have another chance. There's nothing physically wrong with me. The rest of my days are there for absolutely anything.
I think the only answer is to live as fiercely and compassionately as we can. No one can fix it for us. I joked the other day on Twitter that "I really hate the end of everything." That's how it feels, though. If we could only let the bad things die and celebrate the rest, you know?
Cosign to all the other readers have said. Toxic (mostly white) masculinity kills us, whether with a bullet, or a slow acid drip. I don't quite despair, but I am so tired of being so angry. I expect that time will kill off the worst of the old white men, like my father, a WW2 veteran who has grown meaner by the year, and at 94 is still not finished being angry and hurting people. Mitch McConnell and Newt and the other old whities in power will also die--but they're burning down the planet on their way out. Just talking about it puts me into a sort of catatonic state. Tonic immobility. It's a survival strategy, and it works--for a while. Can I count on my adult daughters (29-36) to take up the fight while I load guns and bandage wounds?
I know that the abortion case is getting all the headlines right now, but Texas filed a petition to challenge the constitutionality of ICWA. If removing women's choice wasn't enough, they want to go after indigenous communities right to protect their children. This is madness.
This Land, Season 2, covers this ICWA case. The entitlement of white people that threads through the series is disgusting. As a juvenile public defender representing kids and parents in child welfare cases, I am horrified at the idea that ICWA could be ruled unconstitutional.
I have no words except thank you. Thank you for being so brave - to write this, to put yourself out there - observing and saying the hard things. Thank you for calling us all to action.
Also: "What is wrong with white women?" is a question that keeps haunting me and I fear I'll never find an answer. We get some modicum of privilege and it's worth all this suffering? I mean, is that it? It's horrific.
I think about this a lot too, Nia. So far...it seems to me that perhaps yes, it is that. That little island of "it's not SO bad right here" is what we (white women) as a demographic are hanging onto. Maybe it works like this:
We see the daily outplay of toxic patriarchy right here in our faces, and we often hate it (especially when it hurts us directly.) We also see how much worse it is for other people and groups who sustain more explicit damage. Our personal burden seems bad, but what if we had to put up with what "those people" have to put up with? And maybe we see how much worse it is on a societal level too, and how unstoppable it feels.
So a lot of us do the defensive thing we've been taught by that very patriarchy: we fend for ourselves, and ourselves only. We're hurting, and we only know how to tend that personal pain.
That last paragraph kind of encompasses it, doesn't it. We're supposed to fend for ourselves. It's so counter to our culture (I guess?) to understand that the health of our community (nearby and wider) is what really determines our own health, safety, etc., and that of our children. Maybe that's why I like the Rianne Eisler investigation of partnership vs. domination societies. It's a big paradigm thing we're stuck in, but there is another viable paradigm.
This is such a hurdle: remembering, or inventing, that there are other viable paradigms. I always thought imaginative work must be easy, but in fact it requires so many of the things we don't culturally value: connection and the daily work of that, vulnerability, a willingness to fail...
It took a lot of work for me to get past the "lone genius [usually a dude] sitting in a room drinking whiskey turning out fabulous books" mindset of writing. I was definitely brought up with that, and with the idea that everyone should be in service to said lone genius (though in my case it wasn't a dude). When the truth is that writing is the most collaborative work in my life aside from parenting. Most writers seem to be that way, too, at least the ones I know and like, though few seem to talk about it?
Yes, and it's complex, because for me the writing itself requires solitude. Acres of it. Even if I'm not actively writing, I need that background of solitude to hear myself well enough to write later. And also: definitely writing is hugely collaborative. Maybe not constantly so, but those interactive parts are key, and good writing just does not exist without them. Also, like the solitude-background, to write something meaningful outside of my own self, I need to be in a regularly collaborative context. How to live creatively in both of those directions is a constant question.
I have been following with utter consternation the Texas law and SCOTUS response to it. From Europe, let me tell you that we are watching with awe...and a bit of trepidation too. because, unfortunately we have some very backward governments here too - for example in Hungary or Poland. The way SCOTUS is annihilating Roe v Wade is just a warning for us too in Europe that women's rights are still under threat, just as Simone de Beauvoir said ("Never forget that it will only take a religious, economic or political crisis for women's rights to be jeopardized"). And boy was she right about that.
Toxic masculinity, which pervades every bloody corner of society, is killing us. Figuratively and litteraly. We don't have the repeated mass shootings as you do in the US, but we do have so many - too many - women killed by men. We even have a special word for that "féminicide".
On top of that, we have fake news, global distrust of government (in France we witness the terrible consequence of State distrust in Guadeloupe and Martinique, where people refuse to get vaccinated and are now dying by scores because of the virus)... and also in France, we have people threatening doctors who battle fake news about COVID and vaccines... some even talked about getting the guillotine out to chop some heads off... and it was retweeted by bloody Raoult (the guy who said HCQ was the cure, maybe you've heard of him. An absolute shame for us) can you imagine??
It is horrifying and clearly makes me despair of Humans.
Caroline, I'm sorry it's such a nightmare over there too. But it's good to hear from you again anyway. Perhaps one day I will write something comforting you can relate to as well, heh. Please take care of yourself....
I appreciate that even through the anger and sadness and fear, you find space for compassion, for uplifting someone's humanity, or at least their potential. This can be such a dehumanizing place, in so many senses of the term, and I wonder how different things would be if we acknowledged people as complex beings with the capacity to be good, at least somewhere in their timeline. Maybe this is too idealistic, but I'm not sure what the alternative would be, if not what we're living in right now. Anyways, thank you for your words, as always.
It is all horrendous. And I think something that should also be talked about is how it's not just men exerting their power over women, but anyone who is not a cis white man. The abortion bill doesn't just harm cis women, but also trans men and women, and anyone who identifies outside of the binary. When we realize just how many people this can affect, it's hard to not feel hopeless. It's also exhausting to be angry all the time. And to a point, I think that's a big part of why they keep winning. We are exhausted arguing for equality/equity, when it should be so obvious (because it is so obvious that there is disparity in this country).
I know what I am capable of when it comes to my own small/big acts, but I wonder a lot if it will ever be enough. It makes it hard to want to continue I think.
Absolutely, Rebekah. And another question a friend brought up that I didn't, beyond the usual narrative of "why didn't she leave" is the narrative of "why wasn't he already in jail?"
I think our problem is we try too hard to play fair. And they don't give a fuck how they achieve their ends.
Please keep rattling, Chris. You do it well, so well, that perhaps that is what you where put here for, (not that I particularly believe in destiny). I wish I had a more clear idea of what it would look like to actually confront these inequities and solve the issues that are wrecking not just humanity, but our beautiful planet, as well.
Something I consistently say is that the scariest people on earth are white men. No one scares me more. Their greed, their insecurity, their power. It's terrifying. Jeff Bezos is a great example, and he is just one kind of example. I can't stand him. I boycott Amazon, and I'm beyond dismayed by how many people continue to feed his dominance and bank account by relying on the convenience that Amazon offers. A company that pays zero taxes while its heavy trucks clog up and wear down our roadways. The same roadways that us little folk have to pay to upkeep. How are people so blind to this? Convenience. That is actually something else I consistently say: greed and convenience have ruined our society. We are creating a society that demands things now. Well... let me be more clear... we demand material objects now. But do we demand social justice? Equality? Fair wages? Climate protection? Fuck no. White men. Convenience. Greed. What a fucking shit show.
Ugh, my heart. We had a double murder and suicide here a couple months ago. The shooter was someone I had great interactions with, was so kind. Hard to reconcile. I’m sorry for your community and ours as well. Gun access remains the main factor, in my mind. Thanks for writing so compassionately and thoughtfully.
I have so many feelings about this that I am still processing, I think because of the very point you're making--there is so much of this toxicity and violence and desperation that we no longer even have time to process one horror before another invades our life. I have been, off and on, debating whether or not to write about a similar (not deadly, but it feels like "yet" is the caveat there) situation I experienced with roommates a few years ago. It is so thorny and so hard and it brings up all that related toxic masculinity and white supremacy that feed off each other and perpetuate these cycles. There are so many days I just want to write anything else. There are so many days I fiercely resent how much time these traumas steal from us, not just in the happening but in the aftermath. I'm constantly putting off writing about them because I don't want to let the things that happened to me become who I am. And yet.
Thank you for writing this. It's necessary and appreciated. Your words are so powerful and carry so much weight. I think they're a beautiful start in doing something about all of this.
Thank you, Anni. You know, all these things I mention in this post—the SCOTUS ruling, the lockdown, the murder—*all happened* in a three day span while I was off grid to the North Fork of the Flathead River, up near Glacier Park. So I leave one world and come back to another. And yet, truly, it has been this world all along. Finally, after my return, a grizzly mama and her three cubs that were roaming around where I just returned from were killed by FWP the other day because they got in trouble due to negligence of motherfuckers who have no business being anywhere near the area. It is almost too hard sometimes, isn't it?
I don't know when and where the good guys win but I cherish the cage rattlers. Bezos doesn't give a fuck if I do or don't order from Amazon. Wall Street is no less evil by my non participation. "We will never binge watch our way to a better society." There may be someone like your neighbor in my class next week. Over the semester he'll read some Chris LaTray and maybe he'll have a second chance. For the daughters and the sons, there's got be a little hope.
Thank you, Susan. Thank you for continuing to teach.
This past summer, I took a clerkship with the Division of Children and Family Services here in Arkansas. I supported the attorneys who represented the State in cases where children had been taken from their parent or parents by the State. I had more than one case with a similar fact pattern to this one. I saw a lot of good people doing extremely difficult labor in the closest proximity to human suffering that one could be. I also saw a system starved of resources where they were needed most, and our most vulnerable people suffered because of it.
But you are right. It is all connected. These children are starved just like their parents are starved just like their teachers are starved just like their bodies are starved for food and healthcare and education and safety and resources and futures and humanity.
At least the fuckin' homogenous grass is green, though.
'Mornin', Chris. I get all this, obviously. I do think it's easier to live where Anglos are a minority. I feel protected in a way—"insulated" might be a better word—by the Hispanic/Latino culture that surrounds me here in New Mexico, although God knows there's some ferocious toxic masculinity there as well. At least I see brown faces all the time and there are tons of NDNs.
My own life is such a wreck right now following the death of my wife. With all the emotional, spiritual, personal, domestic, and financial issues to deal with, *in the middle of the unending pandemic* and all, it's more than I have ever faced. And yet, I have another chance. There's nothing physically wrong with me. The rest of my days are there for absolutely anything.
I think the only answer is to live as fiercely and compassionately as we can. No one can fix it for us. I joked the other day on Twitter that "I really hate the end of everything." That's how it feels, though. If we could only let the bad things die and celebrate the rest, you know?
I love your only answer, to "live as fiercely and compassionately as we can." I'm going to do my best, brother.
Cosign to all the other readers have said. Toxic (mostly white) masculinity kills us, whether with a bullet, or a slow acid drip. I don't quite despair, but I am so tired of being so angry. I expect that time will kill off the worst of the old white men, like my father, a WW2 veteran who has grown meaner by the year, and at 94 is still not finished being angry and hurting people. Mitch McConnell and Newt and the other old whities in power will also die--but they're burning down the planet on their way out. Just talking about it puts me into a sort of catatonic state. Tonic immobility. It's a survival strategy, and it works--for a while. Can I count on my adult daughters (29-36) to take up the fight while I load guns and bandage wounds?
PS I would love to join you in a writing workshop or retreat some day in Big Sky country. #wishlist
I would love that too.
Hey Chris,
I know that the abortion case is getting all the headlines right now, but Texas filed a petition to challenge the constitutionality of ICWA. If removing women's choice wasn't enough, they want to go after indigenous communities right to protect their children. This is madness.
https://turtletalk.blog/2021/09/03/four-cert-petitions-filed-in-texas-v-haaland-brackeen-icwa-case/
Motherfuckers never stop trying, do they? Jesus.
This Land, Season 2, covers this ICWA case. The entitlement of white people that threads through the series is disgusting. As a juvenile public defender representing kids and parents in child welfare cases, I am horrified at the idea that ICWA could be ruled unconstitutional.
I have no words except thank you. Thank you for being so brave - to write this, to put yourself out there - observing and saying the hard things. Thank you for calling us all to action.
Thank you, Rebecca.
A heart rending column. about a never ending situation that has endured since Cain mythologically killed Abel.
Everything you write here is exactly on point. I have so much more to say that can only be shared in conversation.
Also: "What is wrong with white women?" is a question that keeps haunting me and I fear I'll never find an answer. We get some modicum of privilege and it's worth all this suffering? I mean, is that it? It's horrific.
I think about this a lot too, Nia. So far...it seems to me that perhaps yes, it is that. That little island of "it's not SO bad right here" is what we (white women) as a demographic are hanging onto. Maybe it works like this:
We see the daily outplay of toxic patriarchy right here in our faces, and we often hate it (especially when it hurts us directly.) We also see how much worse it is for other people and groups who sustain more explicit damage. Our personal burden seems bad, but what if we had to put up with what "those people" have to put up with? And maybe we see how much worse it is on a societal level too, and how unstoppable it feels.
So a lot of us do the defensive thing we've been taught by that very patriarchy: we fend for ourselves, and ourselves only. We're hurting, and we only know how to tend that personal pain.
That last paragraph kind of encompasses it, doesn't it. We're supposed to fend for ourselves. It's so counter to our culture (I guess?) to understand that the health of our community (nearby and wider) is what really determines our own health, safety, etc., and that of our children. Maybe that's why I like the Rianne Eisler investigation of partnership vs. domination societies. It's a big paradigm thing we're stuck in, but there is another viable paradigm.
This is such a hurdle: remembering, or inventing, that there are other viable paradigms. I always thought imaginative work must be easy, but in fact it requires so many of the things we don't culturally value: connection and the daily work of that, vulnerability, a willingness to fail...
Oh my goodness there's an essay in there!
It took a lot of work for me to get past the "lone genius [usually a dude] sitting in a room drinking whiskey turning out fabulous books" mindset of writing. I was definitely brought up with that, and with the idea that everyone should be in service to said lone genius (though in my case it wasn't a dude). When the truth is that writing is the most collaborative work in my life aside from parenting. Most writers seem to be that way, too, at least the ones I know and like, though few seem to talk about it?
Yes, and it's complex, because for me the writing itself requires solitude. Acres of it. Even if I'm not actively writing, I need that background of solitude to hear myself well enough to write later. And also: definitely writing is hugely collaborative. Maybe not constantly so, but those interactive parts are key, and good writing just does not exist without them. Also, like the solitude-background, to write something meaningful outside of my own self, I need to be in a regularly collaborative context. How to live creatively in both of those directions is a constant question.
Hello Chris, as usual, spot on - unfortunately.
I have been following with utter consternation the Texas law and SCOTUS response to it. From Europe, let me tell you that we are watching with awe...and a bit of trepidation too. because, unfortunately we have some very backward governments here too - for example in Hungary or Poland. The way SCOTUS is annihilating Roe v Wade is just a warning for us too in Europe that women's rights are still under threat, just as Simone de Beauvoir said ("Never forget that it will only take a religious, economic or political crisis for women's rights to be jeopardized"). And boy was she right about that.
Toxic masculinity, which pervades every bloody corner of society, is killing us. Figuratively and litteraly. We don't have the repeated mass shootings as you do in the US, but we do have so many - too many - women killed by men. We even have a special word for that "féminicide".
On top of that, we have fake news, global distrust of government (in France we witness the terrible consequence of State distrust in Guadeloupe and Martinique, where people refuse to get vaccinated and are now dying by scores because of the virus)... and also in France, we have people threatening doctors who battle fake news about COVID and vaccines... some even talked about getting the guillotine out to chop some heads off... and it was retweeted by bloody Raoult (the guy who said HCQ was the cure, maybe you've heard of him. An absolute shame for us) can you imagine??
It is horrifying and clearly makes me despair of Humans.
Caroline, I'm sorry it's such a nightmare over there too. But it's good to hear from you again anyway. Perhaps one day I will write something comforting you can relate to as well, heh. Please take care of yourself....
I appreciate that even through the anger and sadness and fear, you find space for compassion, for uplifting someone's humanity, or at least their potential. This can be such a dehumanizing place, in so many senses of the term, and I wonder how different things would be if we acknowledged people as complex beings with the capacity to be good, at least somewhere in their timeline. Maybe this is too idealistic, but I'm not sure what the alternative would be, if not what we're living in right now. Anyways, thank you for your words, as always.
Thank you.
It is all horrendous. And I think something that should also be talked about is how it's not just men exerting their power over women, but anyone who is not a cis white man. The abortion bill doesn't just harm cis women, but also trans men and women, and anyone who identifies outside of the binary. When we realize just how many people this can affect, it's hard to not feel hopeless. It's also exhausting to be angry all the time. And to a point, I think that's a big part of why they keep winning. We are exhausted arguing for equality/equity, when it should be so obvious (because it is so obvious that there is disparity in this country).
I know what I am capable of when it comes to my own small/big acts, but I wonder a lot if it will ever be enough. It makes it hard to want to continue I think.
Absolutely, Rebekah. And another question a friend brought up that I didn't, beyond the usual narrative of "why didn't she leave" is the narrative of "why wasn't he already in jail?"
I think our problem is we try too hard to play fair. And they don't give a fuck how they achieve their ends.
Please keep rattling, Chris. You do it well, so well, that perhaps that is what you where put here for, (not that I particularly believe in destiny). I wish I had a more clear idea of what it would look like to actually confront these inequities and solve the issues that are wrecking not just humanity, but our beautiful planet, as well.
I wish my idea was more clear too, because I do love this beautiful planet.
Something I consistently say is that the scariest people on earth are white men. No one scares me more. Their greed, their insecurity, their power. It's terrifying. Jeff Bezos is a great example, and he is just one kind of example. I can't stand him. I boycott Amazon, and I'm beyond dismayed by how many people continue to feed his dominance and bank account by relying on the convenience that Amazon offers. A company that pays zero taxes while its heavy trucks clog up and wear down our roadways. The same roadways that us little folk have to pay to upkeep. How are people so blind to this? Convenience. That is actually something else I consistently say: greed and convenience have ruined our society. We are creating a society that demands things now. Well... let me be more clear... we demand material objects now. But do we demand social justice? Equality? Fair wages? Climate protection? Fuck no. White men. Convenience. Greed. What a fucking shit show.
Excellent writing, my friend.
Convenience is a curse. And I agree with every word you say here, Angie. It is a shit show.
Ugh, my heart. We had a double murder and suicide here a couple months ago. The shooter was someone I had great interactions with, was so kind. Hard to reconcile. I’m sorry for your community and ours as well. Gun access remains the main factor, in my mind. Thanks for writing so compassionately and thoughtfully.
Thank you, April. It is all very hard to reconcile.