I
Most academic blogs appear to be by assistant professors, and many discuss in some detail the abusive behavior of senior faculty. I wish to emphasize that the behavior of many assistant professors is outrageous beyond belief. I made gaffes and I am sure you did, but mine, at least, are nothing like the outright abusive behavior I have observed since.
These assistant professors get away with it, too, by threatening discrimination suits (which scare administrators who are also abusive), and for other reasons including that their protectors elsewhere may sit on editorial boards their department chairs cannot afford to alienate.
II
Many people, including assistant professors, believe people of color and women other than themselves have been put in place for their abuse. It is amazing how audacious they can be in claiming their putative right to abuse. And if you write in to this blog to say it is our own fault for not “whistle blowing,” you merely demonstrate that you do not know that the system is itself complicit with this behavior.
III
Is Louisiana behavior more outrageous than behavior elsewhere? Yes, says a well traveled but local student. This is a result of the traditions of abuse and enmeshment we have here, and of the strict religious upbringings in a provincial context. People grew up in straightjackets, or strung up to the ceiling as at Guantánamo. They are trying to push out any way they can.
I do not know what to say except long live Toussaint L’Ouverture and Sandino. That is to say, it is at societal structures and not at individual psychologies (or “dysfunction”) one must look for the keys to these problems.
IV
I also know that some practical things can be done to protect oneself from emotional abuse generally. In my life it is, of course, a given that emotional and verbal abuse are hazards which must often be tolerated in academia and in one’s family. It is, however, not a evident to me that it has to be tolerated from friends, despite the fact that I was raised to think so.
I am going to write down a few simple rules for recognizing that an interaction is abusive, since I tend not to realize it until I feel so invaded and mistreated that I am ready to defend myself with any weapon available.
1. You may visit a dying aunt out of a sense of obligation or pity, but you should never let anyone get closer to you than you are comfortable with out of those emotions. In particular you should not allow people to behave poorly “because they are having problems” unless you really are all right with it — not because you have been obliged or coerced into it.
2. If you do things in which you have no particular interest because you feel guilty rejecting so many invitations from this person, you are in a position to be abused emotionally by them. Guilt is the key factor here.
3. If you feel drained as opposed to refreshed after seeing someone, it may be that they are verbally or emotionally abusive. Watch their rhetorical strategies closely if you want confirmation.
4. If you feel projected into by this person — and the sensation of this is often a physical one — you may next become a victim of verbal or emotional abuse from them.
5. If you are asked by them to see yourself in a less than positive light … but I do not mean that, I mean something more like, if they appear to want a piece of your identity … or if they repeatedly insist to you that what they say on very simple topics is true of your life despite indisputable evidence to the contrary, then they are probably in the process of placing you in some sort of abject position. My most recent example is someone who does not realize that just because someone speaks Spanish, does not automatically make them interesting to me. She imagines that I am like an isolated middle school teacher with weak Spanish, anxious to try out my faltering phrases on someone. Much of what she does is an effort to place me in such a position, or think of myself in this way — just as my Reeducator did. I have trouble recognizing it. I think it is just that they are misinformed, like many people. I do not realize until later that it is a direct effort at diminishment or at least non recognition.
6. If you have trouble deciding whether to see someone because past experience indicates it could be fun, but it could also be irritating, draining, and exhausting, then they are probably verbally or emotionally abusive.
7. If you have to stay on your guard so that, when they say invasive or violent things about you, other people, or the world, then they are definitely verbally or emotionally abusive.
V
The colleague with whom I had trouble last week, and the neighbor / friend with whom I had trouble this week, both told me I would not have had trouble with them had I been on guard. They disagree with me that I should not hang out with them — they just think it is my job to stay on my guard so they do not hurt me, and to put limits on their behavior when it goes awry.
That is to say that they literally want me to make a deal with the devil. And I have had a major illumination: the constant cant of “draw a better boundary” really is just a technique to make anything that happens your fault and keep you within reach so you can be acted upon. Every time someone tells me to “draw a better boundary” what they really mean is that they do not like the boundary I HAVE set, and they want a greater level of access to me.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
One of the things about feeling someone is projecting some need of their into you is that the situation has more of the physicality of actual boxing than it relates to shadow boxing. Shadow boxing is just metaphorically akin to dealing with your own anxiety. But if someone is projecting something into you, it feels — as you have suggested regarding the physical nature of the sensation — more like a jab. The thing to do then is to keep moving, not to become transfixed. I know this sounds highly figurative, the way I’m saying it, but it was not until I actually started to learn this process of evading a pursuing opponent in the non-metaphorical sense — that is, in the gym — that I really understood the process as it relates to psychology. It’s really similar, because you endure proximity with the psychological opponent, and that alone is likely to get your nerves working and your gut responding to the sheer viscerality of the situation. Yet it is so important to distinguish between the proximity of aggression and a direct hit. I heard one of the main instructors giving advice to somebody he was training to spar today. He said that the important thing, when confronting an agressive opponent, is not to tense the muscles. Even if you are hit in the face, just relax the head, because the hit will do less damage when you are relaxed and you can recover more quickly from it. But the one way to do this, I have found, is to put it into the mind to keep moving, no matter what happens. So long as your opponent is unable to stun you with his or her blows, causing you to be transfixed upon the spot (and thus be a steady target for even more blows), you can probably evade most of the punches. It’s when the mind becomes transfixed or stunned because of the power of the hits, that resistance starts to break down, and you start to loose control of the situation. So when a person says, “you should really get in touch with x person” you can say, “yeah, sure, one of these days,” or “no, not just yet, It’ll have to wait,” in fact anything that doesn’t commit you to a particular chain of behaviour and reaction. That way you keep the other person guessing (boxing is a kind of mind game), and you get to keep and set your own agenda.
Jennifer — that’s very astute. I *really* tend to get transfixed and then of course people tell me it was my “choice” to be transfixed … when it was hardly; this transfixes me even more.
Keep moving in the sense of saying “yeah, sure, one of these days” … I find I only normally do that when I haven’t been projected into, when it’s just a suggestion someone has made, one I disagree with but which wasn’t made coercively or very coercively in the first place. An innocent suggestion. If it comes with that jab-like projection my compulsion is to fight it. I will say, no because this, no because that, etc., with an adrenalin rush as though I were literally firing an automatic weapon to defend my home. It is as though they have me cornered at precisely the place that needs defending and I have to stay and defend the door so that they do not get in.
HOWEVER, if I reimagine the whole thing as a boxing match where it is just a jab, what I say doesn’t matter. I actually think that in order to just dance away, as you suggest and as I know I should — sometimes even do — but to do so systematically I may have to imagine I have an army or something that I can call on the cell phone so THEY can defend the door. That’s baroque, I know, but it may be what works.
******
And you can’t do real intellectual work if you are in an abusive relationship.
1. It was why I could not do honors English in high school … I could do fancy math and foreign languages, because this was more mechanical, but I could not do any thing which required deeper
access to self.
2. It was why I knew I could not live at home and go to college, as my parents wanted — I would not be able to do college level work and live in their house, I would have flunked out / had a nervous breakdown / something.
3. It was why I was not more daring in graduate school. It was why I wrote a mechanical dissertation, not a good one or one I could commit to.
4. It was why I had trouble with that book — Reeducation was happening then.
5. It is why I have had trouble in the past month: abusive ladies who don’t look bad but from whom I’d have liked to keep distance, have been trying to get me into their enmeshed and low social circle.
In general: if you are in an abusive relationship you are impaired generally, living at a minimal level, and so on, and the whole thing is why I have not done more and been freer, because being raised to be abused is also to be raised to be dependent, and so on, and so forth.
On “boundaries” — that WHOLE theory is false, I see it now. Normal people don’t try to suck your blood. People who do try to suck your blood, you have to stay FAR away from. THEY say you can keep them closer, and you SHOULD be able to keep them closer and defend yourself against their constant attempts to suck blood, but they are wrong. They only want to be given the chance to suck blood. It is true that you have to keep them very far away.
Hell, ya. This is an excellent post I’m sure I’ll be refering to in a post one of these days. It can be so tricky to de-tangle from crap that sneaks up on you. I picture it all as in the final scene in the book “The Chrysalids” – the good guys are trap the bad guys by dropping a fine invisible sticky mesh on them so the more they struggle, the more they’re caught. You really have to deek out that mesh!
12. The Flies in the Market-Place
Flee, my friend, into thy solitude! I see thee deafened with the noise of the great men, and stung all over with the stings of the little ones.
Admirably do forest and rock know how to be silent with thee. Resemble again the tree which thou lovest, the broad-branched one- silently and attentively it o’erhangeth the sea.
Where solitude endeth, there beginneth the market-place; and where the market-place beginneth, there beginneth also the noise of the great actors, and the buzzing of the poison-flies.
In the world even the best things are worthless without those who represent them: those representers, the people call great men.
Little, do the people understand what is great—that is to say, the creating agency. But they have a taste for all representers and actors of great things.
Around the devisers of new values revolveth the world:—invisibly it revolveth. But around the actors revolve the people and the glory: such is the course of things.
Spirit, hath the actor, but little conscience of the spirit. He believeth always in that wherewith he maketh believe most strongly—in himself!
Tomorrow he hath a new belief, and the day after, one still newer. Sharp perceptions hath he, like the people, and changeable humours.
To upset—that meaneth with him to prove. To drive mad—that meaneth with him to convince. And blood is counted by him as the best of all arguments.
A truth which only glideth into fine ears, he calleth falsehood and trumpery. Verily, he believeth only in gods that make a great noise in the world!
Full of clattering buffoons is the market-place,—and the people glory in their great men! These are for them the masters of the hour.
But the hour presseth them; so they press thee. And also from thee they want Yea or Nay. Alas! thou wouldst set thy chair betwixt For and Against?
On account of those absolute and impatient ones, be not jealous, thou lover of truth! Never yet did truth cling to the arm of an absolute one.
On account of those abrupt ones, return into thy security: only in the market-place is one assailed by Yea? or Nay?
Slow is the experience of all deep fountains: long have they to wait until they know what hath fallen into their depths.
Away from the market-place and from fame taketh place all that is great: away from the market-Place and from fame have ever dwelt the devisers of new values.
Flee, my friend, into thy solitude: I see thee stung all over by the poisonous flies. Flee thither, where a rough, strong breeze bloweth!
Flee into thy solitude! Thou hast lived too closely to the small and the pitiable. Flee from their invisible vengeance! Towards thee they have nothing but vengeance.
Raise no longer an arm against them! Innumerable are they, and it is not thy lot to be a fly-flap.
Innumerable are the small and pitiable ones; and of many a proud structure, rain-drops and weeds have been the ruin.
Thou art not stone; but already hast thou become hollow by the numerous drops. Thou wilt yet break and burst by the numerous drops.
Exhausted I see thee, by poisonous flies; bleeding I see thee, and torn at a hundred spots; and thy pride will not even upbraid.
Blood they would have from thee in all innocence; blood their bloodless souls crave for—and they sting, therefore, in all innocence.
But thou, profound one, thou sufferest too profoundly even from small wounds; and ere thou hadst recovered, the same poison-worm crawled over thy hand.
Too proud art thou to kill these sweet-tooths. But take care lest it be thy fate to suffer all their poisonous injustice!
They buzz around thee also with their praise: obtrusiveness is their praise. They want to be close to thy skin and thy blood.
They flatter thee, as one flattereth a God or devil; they whimper before thee, as before a God or devil; What doth it come to! Flatterers are they, and whimperers, and nothing more.
Often, also, do they show themselves to thee as amiable ones. But that hath ever been the prudence of the cowardly. Yea! the cowardly are wise!
They think much about thee with their circumscribed souls—thou art always suspected by them! Whatever is much thought about is at last thought suspicious.
They punish thee for all thy virtues. They pardon thee in their inmost hearts only—for thine errors.
Because thou art gentle and of upright character, thou sayest: “Blameless are they for their small existence.” But their circumscribed souls think: “Blamable is all great existence.”
Even when thou art gentle towards them, they still feel themselves despised by thee; and they repay thy beneficence with secret maleficence.
Thy silent pride is always counter to their taste; they rejoice if once thou be humble enough to be frivolous.
What we recognise in a man, we also irritate in him. Therefore be on your guard against the small ones!
In thy presence they feel themselves small, and their baseness gleameth and gloweth against thee in invisible vengeance.
Sawest thou not how often they became dumb when thou approachedst them, and how their energy left them like the smoke of an extinguishing fire?
Yea, my friend, the bad conscience art thou of thy neighbours; for they are unworthy of thee. Therefore they hate thee, and would fain suck thy blood.
Thy neighbours will always be poisonous flies; what is great in thee—that itself must make them more poisonous, and always more fly-like.
Flee, my friend, into thy solitude—and thither, where a rough strong breeze bloweth. It is not thy lot to be a fly-flap.—
Thus spake Zarathustra.
By the way, the main thing that hinders women’s creativity is repression of their aggressive instincts. WE are conditioned not to be aggressive in any way, and effectively what that means is that we can’t say anything that hasn’t already been said before — nothing that will upset the applecart. This could be why, historically, there are so few female geniuses.
The way I found to break out of that conditioning was by employing a technique that we call in sparring, “feinting”. Actually, this was more for my own benefit than to achieve any actual effect, although it does serve to throw the enemy off his game. Feinting sets up a psychological wall of defence for you. The more you use it, the less you will feel that your enemy can read you like a book.
But you must harness the kind of aggressivity that goes beyone mere femininity. The way you would do it in the particular instance you described is to give an indication of having intentions that are the exact opposite of your intentions. As we say in sparring, “get them thinking about defending their head, and then kick them low. Or get them thinking about defending the lower body and then hit them on the face.”
So you could give the enemy the impression that you fully intend to see x about your Spanish, whilst sitting back in your confidence that you never intend to. The audacity of telling a lie can bring a lot of awareness of your own aggressivity into consciousness, which is a good thing, too. Just by being aware of this resource of aggressivity, you will feel less vulnerable to attack.
This is so wise! I have been avoiding many friends for no real reason that I can articulate – until now. One in particular is very damaged, I think – he consistently gets into relationships with women who he considers The One, and then when it falls through, as it inevitably does, they are lying, manipulative bitches. I think I have been so scared of calling him on his shit because then I too would be one of those women to him. What a terrible reason to continue a friendship – out of fear of the alternative…
K – he can think what he will think, but that will not make it true (except in his view, of course, which you do not have to share).
J – yes, I am willing to do these things at work but not when I’m not being paid for it. They say that other relationships take “work” and it is true that they take time and understanding, but if it feels like work I’d rather just be out of it. However — I will consider seriously your comments for general purposes. Sage’s too … I haven’t read _The Chrysalids_ but perhaps should.
Maybe you misunderstood — I wasn’t suggesting you give them time and understanding. I just think it is sometimes refreshing not to wear one’s heart on one’s sleeve.
Yes – I know. It is, but I personally am not there yet (except for work and other circumstances where people are not invasive). I find – and this is just me – that if they are invasive and I do not wear my heart on my sleeve, then I give them further inroads. If I do wear my heart on my sleeve, I end up finding out sooner who they are.
I find – and this is just me – that if they are invasive and I do not wear my heart on my sleeve, then I give them further inroads. If I do wear my heart on my sleeve, I end up finding out sooner who they are.
That’s interesting. My way of doing it is different — because I think in terms of paradigms, and can often detect really quickly what sort of characterological paradigm somebody is presuming me to fit into. I remember when it first clicked for me that people are not intent upon relating to me as a person, but are in fact relating to a paradigm of identity that is really already extremely external to who I am. It suddenly made sense of a lot of things, and when I realised how arbitrary it was (not to mention unfair) I felt suddenly very free to be equally as arbitrary and to treat the whole situation as I would a game of sparring.
PS. As suggested before, I think it is easier for me to see the kinds of paradigms that are applied as cultural straitjackets, because I wasn’t educated in this culture, so my expectations, including those for gender roles, are actually quite different than the paradigms that get applied. The difficulty is that I can never bring it to the other’s party’s attention what I know, and what I feel uncomfortable with, because I am not supposed to be in a position to stand outside of “myself” in this way — ie. to insinuate that I can see the nature of the role and the nature of the social dynamic that it is supposed to produce, but I can’t feel it from the inside, as it doesn’t relate very strongly to my take on the world and my own conditioned experiences. I think that a different person, who had been conditioned to feel a sense of familiarity with these particular gender roles and so on would not be offended as much by being treated in terms of a particular paradigm, but because I can see the strings and all the mechanisms behind the operation that is supposed to create the requisite social dynamic, I find such treatment crude and in poor taste.
Yes – in foreign countries I know I am seen as an “American” and I easily disarm the stereotype because I don’t conform to it, yet I am aware of my role and my country’s, and so on, so I can easily spar on these things and quite quickly get seen for who I am (good or bad, but real).
Here I can be seen as so many things it sort of isn’t worth second guessing: Yankee, Californian of a certain generation, New Orleans person, Mexican, Puerto Rican, mysterious European, Creole, crazy independent woman, etc. I would perhaps do well to remember that the essential things are: *crazy* because intellectual and independent, and also, “single woman in need of social life” because by definition, all single women should be up for anything. If I realized this second thing, I could evade a lot of problems. If I recognized the first, I would be too constrained by trying to evade it or spar with it, so it’s easier to just ignore it — or so I think so far.
On a cultural level of difference, even when somebody is not importing a wholesale paradigm to impose, there is often a subtle tendency towards a misreading of my intentions, that I have to watch out for. For example, if I bring something to someone’s attention because it makes me feel uncomfortable, I’m not affecting a feminine display of passive suffering, I am making an authoritave moral critique. I find that cultural differences get exacerbated with misreadings occur, as for example by an interpretation in terms of the former. Also, if I am teasing someone, I do expect them to take the liberty of teasing me back on the same level, rather than reacting as if I’d lost my mind and deserved severe retribution to boot. Similarly, if I bring new ideas to the table, it isn’t because I have lost my mind, but because I have been capable of thinking them, and bringing them up.
Men, but people in general, do tend to think that if a woman criticizes something it is just that it is not to her taste … not that she has a reasoned objection to it. They do this of course so as not to have to change or rethink anything in a profound way…
They do this of course so as not to have to change or rethink anything in a profound way…
..which is why everything finds its own air-level as their company becomes intolerable.
Actually, I am starting to realize how important rule 1, about pity, really is. Virtually every error I have made at *work,* even, where I am more objective than elsewhere, has had to do with pity for someone, feeling I had to help them out somehow.
AND: another way for me to tell that abuse of some kind is happening is if I suddenly wonder, why I am I not getting paid for this, or think, I should be paid for this. We were raised with the idea that it was our job to take verbal and emotional abuse, and that it would be my *profession* as well, since I was a girl. So I have the idea that it is normal, but also that I should be paid for it, and I end up finding myself really insulted that someone expects to do it to me for free. VERY odd.
thanks for this thread.
downright therapeutic.
Yes– you have been set up for a fall (as was I). Because if it is the feminine role to extend an attitude of pity, then that is where you will find your identity; your self-esteem. So your expectations produce the base of a beautiful symbiotic relationship made in hell.
That is why it is so important for women who are not interested in being masochistic to develop a different character structure. I have suggested that by accessing our innate biological capacity for aggression we can often get in touch with a more healthy and wholesome aspect of ourselves. Why else is female aggression prohibited under patriarchy more than absolutely anything else — it is the gateway to freedom.