Suppose I made a pie.
It's a delicious pie, my favorite kind: frozen chocolate, effectively homemade chocolate ice cream in a crust of crushed graham crackers held together with butter and sugar.
Of course, now I have some choices as to what to do with this pie. I could eat it all myself, or I could eat half and give half away, or I could cut it in thirds and share it among three people... and, of course, the more people who wind up eating some of it, the less there is for each.
Pie is like that. It's limited; the only way to give everyone more is to make another pie. What I've been noticing lately, though, is that while not everything in the world functions the same way pie does, there are people out there who are very invested in treating all things as if they were pie.
Oppression works like pie: if you give it away, you stop having it, and that's scary for some people.
But the thing is, love doesn't. Love works much more like the number pi.
Let's say I decide that the first three digits of pi are mine, and then you come up to me asking for a piece of the number that same size. I've already claimed 3.14, but 159 is available, and now we have 3.14159 and a greater degree of precision. And then someone else comes along and wants a piece of pi. Great, now we have 3.14159258 between us, and our calculations are getting better. That's how love is, that's how justice is: the more of it you are willing to share, the more of it can come back to you.
Showing posts with label The Rubberglue Rule. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Rubberglue Rule. Show all posts
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Saturday, August 25, 2012
A Letter to My Younger Self
I've been doing a lot of reading lately, about people who are different. I've found that there's a lot out there about being on the receiving end of different kinds of prejudice, and I am very grateful for those who do that kind of writing. It has inspired me to answer somehow. Today I reached some important revelations about what I was doing when I was younger and I was so fascinated by the stories of the people who were the targets of such behavior. In response, here I write an open letter to the little girl I was around first or second grade.
To the little girl who wants so badly to be different,
It isn't just your imagination. The prejudice you're sensing is real, and it has real causes in things that are just under the surface of who you are. Your mind really does work differently, and there's a proper name for it. It's called Asperger's Syndrome. In third grade, you will meet a boy who has it and doesn't like you, so you won't have much to do with him, but your class will be taught about what it is in ways that you'll hear but not understand until you look back and remember about him four years later. In fifth grade, there will be a boy who identifies you before anyone else does, and you'll feel a little sorry for him because he claims it as his own identity even though it's obviously a medical diagnosis.
And then, in sixth grade, you'll get the diagnosis for yourself and realize that you know exactly why he did.
You've been bullied all your life, little girl, and it will get better, but it will never go away completely. Your mommy will try to teach you how to deal with it and ignore it, but that isn't what you're looking for. This is:
Your concerns are real. Your worries are real and have good reasons for being there. You aren't just undergoing some twisted rite of passage--you're being attacked because your classmates can tell that you are different and want you to change. And your job, which will be hard but very much worth it, is to hold on to yourself.
You are going to be persecuted, just like you'll find out in fourth grade that Jesus promised--and the other half of that promise will be fulfilled too: the rewards will be great. Hold on to that promise. It'll help you survive a lot of trauma in fourth grade, and seventh grade, and tenth grade, and twelfth grade, and also in the spaces between the hardest fights. Pray, even when it's hard to find the words. Ask for help, but don't believe anyone who tells you that your senses are lying. The funny high-pitched noise that comes out of the TV is real too, and anyone who can't hear it just doesn't have hearing as sensitive as yours. You are different because you can see things, hear things, and do things that other people can't. You are different because you can't help these things.
There are other people out there who are different for other things they can't help, like where their families are from or what they look like or how they understand themselves. You're already fascinated by them--good. You're looking to their histories because you want to identify with them--to see your own life mirrored in what they have to face--and because you want to do something to make up for how other people have treated them. Keep listening to their stories and learning from their struggles, because you can learn a lot from them. You'll learn how to treat them with the respect everyone deserves, and you'll learn how to demand the same from the people who are hurting you when your turn comes to tell your own story. The most important thing you'll learn is that people who are supposed to be big and responsible and powerful can be wrong, and that they need to be challenged when they are.
I know you're looking at these stories because you're so desperate to see some kind of truth that will explain what you're seeing in the world. Keep looking. The truth is in there, even though some of these stories aren't about "your" people. Oppression is a real thing, and because you see it you have the responsibility to fight it. Because you are of a few of those groups, you have a story in there yourself. You don't know what you are yet, but when in due time you will find out what identities are in your blood and heart and mind. Value your own identity, and the ones that you can only watch and fight for. Don't forget that for every one you aren't a part of, you will one day know and love someone who is. Don't forget that, as Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." All kinds of bullying are wrong, and if you can you should stand up to the bullies.
There is no forbidden knowledge. Don't worry about what the teachers say--it's okay to sit down and study everything you want to learn about. Learn about science, and when two books disagree ask questions about why. Immerse yourself in history, and you will have lived over a hundred years' worth of questions and culture and growth by the time you are old enough to look out at the present day. No matter what anyone tells you, this is worth learning about. You have the ability to be more than you are expected to be, and that is how you get there.
People will hate you for who you are. People will threaten and insult you for daring to exist. Worse, people who mean you well will try to make you hide yourself and harm yourself because your safety is uncomfortable to people who will hate you no matter what. If you realize taking that advice is hurting you, draw the line. Your safety is important, and your body belongs to you. By the time you reach seventh grade--as you'll calculate in second grade because of books you're reading and liking, that's the first year of junior high school and the year your body will start changing to look more like an adult--you will need to know that how you look to other people is less important than simply being able to navigate life without being hurt. If performing the woman-act interferes with your ability to do everyday things like going to school, the first priority should be to be able to do your everyday things. Mommy will talk a lot about priorities. You will set your own, and it's okay if they don't always agree with hers. Existing is the first priority.
Don't let anyone tell you that being different is bad, or that you aren't different. You are not capable of everything that everyone else can do, because you are capable of things that other people can't even imagine. You will know what you can and can't do before you are old enough for people to believe you. Keep telling the truth as you understand it, no matter what. They will come around. And--as you will understand instinctively--it will pay off.
When your feelings tell you something that doesn't make sense in the world you're told you live in, stop and think about it. You are living in a world that isn't fully real, that has been made for you to have a childhood in. The books you find will give you doors to other worlds--some are real, some are not, and all are worth exploring. You'll learn a lot of things about people from them. But the world you are living in is missing some important information that will come back to hurt you later in life. There is a part of your heart that the people creating that world want to erase from existence. They want you to follow a straight line through life that won't necessarily work out for you, without ever looking at the fact that you are designed to be able to do something else. They've already taught you to be confused by it, even though you're already seeing it. You can--and you do--fall in love with girls, the same way that you have been told it is only possible for girls to love boys. You already have had one girl you loved that way, and although you will never see her again after the first week of second grade, there will be others. They will make you wonder--she has made you wonder--if you are a boy on the inside, but don't worry: it doesn't matter whom you love; you can be a girl anyway. There will be boys, too, but that side of yourself is already accepted and you will never have any shortage of help in growing that way. Some grown-ups, even Mommy and Daddy, have tried to force you to ignore the other side of yourself. They think it is healthy for you to believe that that kind of love does not even exist, because they have been lied to and told that it is wrong to love another girl that way. It is NOT wrong. It is part of who you have been all your life, and it is not any different from how Mommy and Daddy love each other. As you grow up and the false world slowly falls away, you will see that you are not the only person ever to ask these questions; far from it, there are many. We are a minority, and one that is often fought against, but we exist and always have. We make people uncomfortable, by existing as girls who can and do fall in love with other girls--just like we make people uncomfortable by existing as people with Asperger's who look at the world and see things that most people don't notice instead of things that most people do. It's the same thing, really: seeing things and people differently.
You are different, and you see the world differently. Never be ashamed of that. The greatest commandment in the Bible is to love God, love others, and love yourself; never let anyone take that away from you. Never lose your will to learn, either; you will become a better person if you pay attention to everything. When something doesn't feel right, stop and think about what's going on. Ask questions. If someone tries to shame you and shut you down for asking a question, ask more questions. Learn how to forgive and whom to forgive, and watch people until you understand why they do things. Ask more questions about that. And always tell the truth, even when you're shivering with fear--as I am writing this now. Honesty is worth any cost, any shame, any harm.
As Mommy will tell you many, many times,
Honor. Courage. Commitment.
Our core values, in the Navy. Learn what they really mean, and live them.
With love and great good wishes,
Iuliana Amata
Your future self
To the little girl who wants so badly to be different,
It isn't just your imagination. The prejudice you're sensing is real, and it has real causes in things that are just under the surface of who you are. Your mind really does work differently, and there's a proper name for it. It's called Asperger's Syndrome. In third grade, you will meet a boy who has it and doesn't like you, so you won't have much to do with him, but your class will be taught about what it is in ways that you'll hear but not understand until you look back and remember about him four years later. In fifth grade, there will be a boy who identifies you before anyone else does, and you'll feel a little sorry for him because he claims it as his own identity even though it's obviously a medical diagnosis.
And then, in sixth grade, you'll get the diagnosis for yourself and realize that you know exactly why he did.
You've been bullied all your life, little girl, and it will get better, but it will never go away completely. Your mommy will try to teach you how to deal with it and ignore it, but that isn't what you're looking for. This is:
Your concerns are real. Your worries are real and have good reasons for being there. You aren't just undergoing some twisted rite of passage--you're being attacked because your classmates can tell that you are different and want you to change. And your job, which will be hard but very much worth it, is to hold on to yourself.
You are going to be persecuted, just like you'll find out in fourth grade that Jesus promised--and the other half of that promise will be fulfilled too: the rewards will be great. Hold on to that promise. It'll help you survive a lot of trauma in fourth grade, and seventh grade, and tenth grade, and twelfth grade, and also in the spaces between the hardest fights. Pray, even when it's hard to find the words. Ask for help, but don't believe anyone who tells you that your senses are lying. The funny high-pitched noise that comes out of the TV is real too, and anyone who can't hear it just doesn't have hearing as sensitive as yours. You are different because you can see things, hear things, and do things that other people can't. You are different because you can't help these things.
There are other people out there who are different for other things they can't help, like where their families are from or what they look like or how they understand themselves. You're already fascinated by them--good. You're looking to their histories because you want to identify with them--to see your own life mirrored in what they have to face--and because you want to do something to make up for how other people have treated them. Keep listening to their stories and learning from their struggles, because you can learn a lot from them. You'll learn how to treat them with the respect everyone deserves, and you'll learn how to demand the same from the people who are hurting you when your turn comes to tell your own story. The most important thing you'll learn is that people who are supposed to be big and responsible and powerful can be wrong, and that they need to be challenged when they are.
I know you're looking at these stories because you're so desperate to see some kind of truth that will explain what you're seeing in the world. Keep looking. The truth is in there, even though some of these stories aren't about "your" people. Oppression is a real thing, and because you see it you have the responsibility to fight it. Because you are of a few of those groups, you have a story in there yourself. You don't know what you are yet, but when in due time you will find out what identities are in your blood and heart and mind. Value your own identity, and the ones that you can only watch and fight for. Don't forget that for every one you aren't a part of, you will one day know and love someone who is. Don't forget that, as Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." All kinds of bullying are wrong, and if you can you should stand up to the bullies.
There is no forbidden knowledge. Don't worry about what the teachers say--it's okay to sit down and study everything you want to learn about. Learn about science, and when two books disagree ask questions about why. Immerse yourself in history, and you will have lived over a hundred years' worth of questions and culture and growth by the time you are old enough to look out at the present day. No matter what anyone tells you, this is worth learning about. You have the ability to be more than you are expected to be, and that is how you get there.
People will hate you for who you are. People will threaten and insult you for daring to exist. Worse, people who mean you well will try to make you hide yourself and harm yourself because your safety is uncomfortable to people who will hate you no matter what. If you realize taking that advice is hurting you, draw the line. Your safety is important, and your body belongs to you. By the time you reach seventh grade--as you'll calculate in second grade because of books you're reading and liking, that's the first year of junior high school and the year your body will start changing to look more like an adult--you will need to know that how you look to other people is less important than simply being able to navigate life without being hurt. If performing the woman-act interferes with your ability to do everyday things like going to school, the first priority should be to be able to do your everyday things. Mommy will talk a lot about priorities. You will set your own, and it's okay if they don't always agree with hers. Existing is the first priority.
Don't let anyone tell you that being different is bad, or that you aren't different. You are not capable of everything that everyone else can do, because you are capable of things that other people can't even imagine. You will know what you can and can't do before you are old enough for people to believe you. Keep telling the truth as you understand it, no matter what. They will come around. And--as you will understand instinctively--it will pay off.
When your feelings tell you something that doesn't make sense in the world you're told you live in, stop and think about it. You are living in a world that isn't fully real, that has been made for you to have a childhood in. The books you find will give you doors to other worlds--some are real, some are not, and all are worth exploring. You'll learn a lot of things about people from them. But the world you are living in is missing some important information that will come back to hurt you later in life. There is a part of your heart that the people creating that world want to erase from existence. They want you to follow a straight line through life that won't necessarily work out for you, without ever looking at the fact that you are designed to be able to do something else. They've already taught you to be confused by it, even though you're already seeing it. You can--and you do--fall in love with girls, the same way that you have been told it is only possible for girls to love boys. You already have had one girl you loved that way, and although you will never see her again after the first week of second grade, there will be others. They will make you wonder--she has made you wonder--if you are a boy on the inside, but don't worry: it doesn't matter whom you love; you can be a girl anyway. There will be boys, too, but that side of yourself is already accepted and you will never have any shortage of help in growing that way. Some grown-ups, even Mommy and Daddy, have tried to force you to ignore the other side of yourself. They think it is healthy for you to believe that that kind of love does not even exist, because they have been lied to and told that it is wrong to love another girl that way. It is NOT wrong. It is part of who you have been all your life, and it is not any different from how Mommy and Daddy love each other. As you grow up and the false world slowly falls away, you will see that you are not the only person ever to ask these questions; far from it, there are many. We are a minority, and one that is often fought against, but we exist and always have. We make people uncomfortable, by existing as girls who can and do fall in love with other girls--just like we make people uncomfortable by existing as people with Asperger's who look at the world and see things that most people don't notice instead of things that most people do. It's the same thing, really: seeing things and people differently.
You are different, and you see the world differently. Never be ashamed of that. The greatest commandment in the Bible is to love God, love others, and love yourself; never let anyone take that away from you. Never lose your will to learn, either; you will become a better person if you pay attention to everything. When something doesn't feel right, stop and think about what's going on. Ask questions. If someone tries to shame you and shut you down for asking a question, ask more questions. Learn how to forgive and whom to forgive, and watch people until you understand why they do things. Ask more questions about that. And always tell the truth, even when you're shivering with fear--as I am writing this now. Honesty is worth any cost, any shame, any harm.
As Mommy will tell you many, many times,
Honor. Courage. Commitment.
Our core values, in the Navy. Learn what they really mean, and live them.
With love and great good wishes,
Iuliana Amata
Your future self
Friday, July 20, 2012
Mater Ursa & the Rubberglue Rule of Hate Speech
Some days, I just start reading and discover that there are bad people out there. Or I'm walking around and I hear people throwing around horrible words, the kind that hurt people and make me wish I dared to turn around and yell "EPHESIANS 4:29!!!" even though I know most people don't have that verse committed to memory. (For the record, though the phrasing depends on what translation you use, it says something to the effect of, "Do not let any harmful talk escape your lips, but only that which is useful for building others up." I only know it because I'm fond of the band Building 429, whose name is derived from that verse, but it's right up there alongside John 15:13 on my list of favorite verses.) Or people throw slurs right in my face, some of which have something to do with me but some of which don't have any connection at all.
Being attacked with insults that have no relation to who I am--or which are concerning a trait that this person clearly doesn't know that I have--bothers me, and when I think about it it's almost worse than insults that refer to some characteristic I actually have. It hurts even when it's someone else being attacked that way, which my parents and teachers don't seem to understand, so here I'm putting it into words so I can explain it better the next time I'm asked to try.
It's because it means that they have some prejudice that's so deeply ingrained that it's become a generic insult. "I hate fillintheblanks so much that I will call everyone I want to insult a fillintheblank." It doesn't matter who they're throwing the word at, when it reaches that level, because the person who actually gets hurt will be the one whom that specific slur denotes. One white boy in the middle of the classroom calling another some Asian-specific slur might be funny to both of them, but it's rare that the Vietnamese boy two rows back will be amused. He might laugh along if he's trying to feel included, but often--far too often for that kind of behavior to be even remotely excusable--he'll feel the sting anyway.
And that's what I call the Rubberglue Rule of Hate Speech. The name derives from a little rhyme my mother taught me when I was in second grade, to wit, "I'm rubber, you're glue/It bounces off of me and sticks to you." It was supposed to be a tool to defend myself from the many insults that I was on the receiving end of back then, some of which were very... weird, but now that I'm older, I see that it applies in darker ways to cruel, stereotype-based arguments.
It may bounce off of me, but the person it sticks to is the person that word means. That applies to all stereotypes. That's why I'm offended by calling people of normal intelligence "retarded," because it's implying that being like my friends who are genuinely slow is an insult. People with severe learning disabilities can be the nicest, sweetest, and too often the most terrifyingly abused people you will ever meet. That's why I'm offended by the use of racial slurs--I may be white, but what about the friends I've practically adopted as sisters who are half-Chinese? What about my friends from school and church who are black? What about my first-grade best friend who was Bolivian, or my friends from the two years I spent in a predominantly-Hispanic community in California? That's why I'm offended by the use of "gay" as a catchall term for "bad," because after discovering exactly how many of my friends are gay how could I not be?
Yes, I left my own identity out of that paragraph, because I react much differently to people attacking me. I've grown so used to being attacked, insulted, and hated on that it just makes me freeze up or cry, so I try to leave myself out of it. My friends, on the other hand?
Don't mess with my friends. Especially the younger ones, the ones I get all maternal about. Mama Bear does not take it well.
Oh, and John 15:13? It reads, in the King James version, "Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."
It may bounce off of me, but the person it sticks to is the person that word means. That applies to all stereotypes. That's why I'm offended by calling people of normal intelligence "retarded," because it's implying that being like my friends who are genuinely slow is an insult. People with severe learning disabilities can be the nicest, sweetest, and too often the most terrifyingly abused people you will ever meet. That's why I'm offended by the use of racial slurs--I may be white, but what about the friends I've practically adopted as sisters who are half-Chinese? What about my friends from school and church who are black? What about my first-grade best friend who was Bolivian, or my friends from the two years I spent in a predominantly-Hispanic community in California? That's why I'm offended by the use of "gay" as a catchall term for "bad," because after discovering exactly how many of my friends are gay how could I not be?
Yes, I left my own identity out of that paragraph, because I react much differently to people attacking me. I've grown so used to being attacked, insulted, and hated on that it just makes me freeze up or cry, so I try to leave myself out of it. My friends, on the other hand?
Don't mess with my friends. Especially the younger ones, the ones I get all maternal about. Mama Bear does not take it well.
Oh, and John 15:13? It reads, in the King James version, "Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."
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