I am still on strike, so we can take this hiatus to explain a code word in this site: REEDUCATION. Reeducation began in 1991. It was composed of (1) putatively “feminist” psychotherapy, by a gay male MSW in New Orleans but who was originally from Abbeville, to whom I was referred by someone in Baton Rouge who seemed smart and whom I would have seen had I lived there, and (2) Al-Anon, which I attended because it was quickly revealed to me that my family is alcoholic and that is why there is a certain strange, yet easily recognizable dynamic in it. I had gone to Reeducation because I had always wondered why I was so uncomfortable with this dynamic, and had always been told at home that I should get an interesting, perhaps Jungian type analysis to find out. So it had for some time been on my list of things to do as soon as I could afford them.
The problems with Reeducation included, but were not limited to the fact that this MSW and the people in Al-Anon were so messed up. They were supposed to be more advanced and better informed than I, which I believed for a while because I could not understand the world they lived in, its structures, its values. I really did try to transform myself according to the principles they thought corresponded to health, and it was very destructive. Since then I have been occupied, first, with trying to manage a life which had been quite seriously harmed by these therapeutic principles, and next, with discovering the world view underlying these and separating myself from it.
This entire process has taken me eighteen years and I do not appreciate the efforts of people who have read this weblog almost since its inception and also discussed these things in real life to show me that I should try, once again, to come to Jesus (as it were). If I did not think it presumptuous on my part and possibly hurtful, I would tell certain individuals to get off their high horses and try to face whatever it is they are hiding from. I might perhaps to ask them who they think they are to condescend to me and to the other people to whom I know they also condescend. I would certainly remind them that the Twelve Stones recommend relinquishing power and control over others, and trying a little humility. I would definitely point out that by humility they probably do not really mean shame (which is what many Twelve Stoners appear to believe) but actual integrity and dignity.
I note, however, that to me the basic views of women, of “God,” and of the world this faux “feminist” brew espouses are still poisonous. I was so abused because of not relating to these ideas and not believing them to contain universal truths that I still cannot stand to have them preached at me one more time. I worked with them so hard, and for so long, and felt so guilty about not being able or willing to absorb them or take them on, about not being able to suppress the non patriarchal and non Western aspects of my being, that CONVERSING with them — especially discussing them with people who are hanging onto them for dear life, and whom I therefore do not wish to interrupt or upset — is bad for me, dangerous to me, destructive the way deciding ze can have just one drink is destructive to an addict.
I can EITHER continue to try to be diplomatic with and about those ideas, OR I can have a life. I cannot have both things and I really think the second choice is the better one — especially since I have given almost eighteen years of my life to the first option already. Therefore, Al-Anon and CODA people, New Agers, Christians, Self Helpers, and Magazine Readers, NOTE that THIS BLOG WAS CREATED AND EXISTS TO PROTECT ME FROM YOUR IDEAS. Try to hawk them at me again and I will be a little dismissive. I do not wish to engage further on this matter because it will just be a drain, and I have things to do.
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In one comments thread Jennifer pointed to three main problems with Reeducation: patriarchy in general, its coercion to conform to a state of loss in particular, and ressentiment.
Patriarchy as a system…exerts [a] subtle and coercive effect towards conformity to a state of loss. It is as such an often subtle (at least until challenged — then it shows its teeth) and pervasive form of ressentiment.
It is perpetuated by those who have sacrificed much of their intellectual and emotional integrity to the concept of a giant phallus that has purported mystical protective properties.
Having said before that this blog should come to an end, I sometimes feel it may be doing so. This does not mean I will end it, it only means that the major part of its work, against Reeducation, feels to me more and more to have ended — even though I have announced that before in flashes of inspiration. Yet I need it as a prophylactic, since all it takes is one well placed comment from a Reeducand for me to realize I cannot afford to drop my guard.
*
I kept writing and writing in this blog, much more seriously than I had planned to do, so as to write myself back into being after (a) the disaster of being cast into the nastier side of academic femininity, or patriarchy, post Ph.D., and (b) the disaster of Reeducation.
The conundrum was that both said one could not be what one was, namely an intellectual person with some independence and expertise. One problem with this was that it was, at the same time, required to be such a person. The solution to this problem is comparatively easy, however, if one simply identifies Reeducation and/or patriarchal paradigms as one’s natural opponents.
Additional problems for me, were that (a) academia had become a crime scene one wanted to flee and get over, but was not allowed because at a rational level, or at any level other rational beings would recognize, it was merely a scene of struggle like any other; and simultaneously (b) having entered it in the first place was, according to Reeducation, a crime for which one must atone and which one must extirpate from oneself — so that one could not merely see it as a scene of struggle like any other (and therefore just deal).
Of these two elements, (b) is by far the most problematic and it had to do with Reeducation’s ressentiment and idealization thereof. If you have been following me on Facebook lately, you will have seen that I argued with someone over my putative “snobbishness.” But it appears that I, and several of my friends, and many of those I admire are “aristocrats” in Nietzche’s terms and this has nothing to do with social class or money. I have been told this before but I never took it seriously, considering the idea too overblown. Now I understand it.
And this more or less sums up Reeducation. But we can look at things yet more simply. 1. Reeducation just wanted to keep people from getting homework done. It was a sabotager of school and nothing more. There is little more substance to it than that (although we know, of course, that there is a great deal more context.) 2. It and its people are my enemies. They look like friends but really they only want an audience, company, and blood. The more pleasant and attractive, the more compatible, the better, of course — but any will do. This seems harsh but it seems to me that I cannot afford half measures. Does this mean I cannot be friends with any serious Reeducands? That remains to be seen — I have friends in other religions, but this is possible because we each realize our own religion is not universal.
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This weblog and its commenters have always been of far greater use to me than Reeducation. I am only not writing more in it at present because I am still on strike — and because I have finished unraveling Reeducation.
I am on strike. My check is promised, but if it does not arrive and negotiations deteriorate, I shall do nothing but play classical music.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
To sabotage “school” is a common Christian vice (or, in their terms, “virtue”.) That was one of the features of the abusive workplace I was in. It manufactured one crisis after another, to keep us unable to stop and reflect on what was happening, and how it wasn’t right. My father, too, seemed to be attempting this abusive practice in order to obtain practice dominance over my intellect — in order to make up for his lack of education, which he no doubt feels/felt sorely about, especially given his patriarchal ideology of male superiority and the premium of value that the colonial ideology place on getting educated.
The Christians think the intellect is the work of the devil, because it allows some people to attain superiority over others (even is this superiority is just in their heads and has more to do with incorrect notions that high intellect implies a kind of moral purity, as it does in some systems, maybe Plato’s). Anyway, they try to counteract the intellect because they are afraid of it and of its power — probably because they can’t quite understand it, or the motivations of people who claim to be ‘intellectuals’.
Yes. Had I figured out then that I was in the Christian paradigm … had I realized how broad it is … ! But it’s true, that’s how they are.
And there is the other touchy aspect of getting away from them that does not make it too easy. They appeal to your pride that you should be able to participate with anyone in anything at any time. They say, “you are running away from reality” on a blog like this — putting up barriers.
And you have to concede that, yes you are. But then, their model of a human being is not fit for human consumption. It’s more of a model of a pig who must descend into the mud and slime, to prove its bacon. And it’s a model of a machine, or factory robot, stamping out bottle lids, 24-7.
These are high standards in a sense. But they are also dubious standards as a code of ethics for human life, since they bear no considered relation to any actual human being or what a human being might want from life.
Well, I’d say anyone has the right to run from any portion of reality they wish to, and can run from.
The person in question swears she had the problems Melody Beattie describes, and was much helped by Beattie’s books.
I am nobody to say that isn’t valid for her life if she says it is. But I wish there were some alternative to the 12 Stones model for addicts.
Quick random Googling turned up this article:
http://www.jstor.org/pss/4316045
It’s from 1990, before I started Reeducation, and I wish I’d read it then.
This book, on p. 43, cites the author of that article (Bette Tallen) on the problem of the addiction model generally.
http://books.google.com/books?id=8M5FgV9PG7wC&pg=PA43&lpg=PA43&dq=bette+s.+tallen&source=bl&ots=UvJv465gWE&sig=T-jaAeAYrd7mZpo9d7A-cyUoZdQ&hl=en&ei=ShQrStm2CYXEM_ym_eAJ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4#PPA43,M1
Perhaps the answer then is to dump the model and go for … Paulo Freire?!
And note that I had to write 6+ posts to get that person’s comment out of me.
A key idea from Tallen, although she is not the only one to have had it, is that the addiction model calls oppression “addiction.” So, for instance, it isn’t that many men are abusive, it is that some women are “addicted” to abusive men. Now what does that do: (a) blame the victim and pathologize her, and (b) cover up the fact that that many men are abusive. So whom does that serve? one cannot help asking.
It’s odd and I don’t understand it (the attribution of addiction to women who end up in bad situations). I’ve actually tentatively framed it as having a relationship to the Western addiction to passions rather than reason, that would have everything that has ever happened to you brought down to the level of “personal choice”. I don’t see how that model can correspond to reality in its broad sense, since reality is so much more complicated than being an issue of simple free choice. There are other things going on with it.
But I have skim read the article on the lesbian feminist critique, and the writer points out that families are necessary ‘dysfunctional’ because it is imperative to treat women badly within them, as a simple reproductive resource. This may (or may not) be true, but there is certainly an aspect of condoning abuse in families that is all but universal. One does not express outrage at patriarchal behaviour, and the best I have received from those who have read and claimed to have ‘enjoyed’ my book is a silent nod.
To which I give the Japanese retort (which holds much more meaning than its Western counterpart could ever do): “Yes. I see.”
Paragraph 1 — I also think it replicates the so called addictive paradigm.
According to which: you are mistreated and abused from early on because you see realities *about the family* adults deny and have not yet figured out that you are supposed to deny them, or how. You internalize this mistreatment, think poorly of yourself, have to learn how to deny things and dull pain, and so you abuse alcohol/drugs.
Then the addiction saviors come in and say it will all be fine if you admit the truth about your family, so as to free yourself of it, and live a healthier life. BUT you are required to say it is ALL your family and your reaction to it, you cannot say it has anything to do with the rest of reality.
I have an idea re your book — if they let me teach a Comp Lit class on life writing / memoir / autobiography, it could be one of the texts. This will take a while to set in motion, but I sort of like the idea.
The other thing about this group is … well, actually 2 things.
1. They are complicit with oppression early on. They are into envy, revenge, and all of this and are *desperately* trying to unlearn it. Hence all the preaching, all the suppositions about how jugmental one must surely be, etc. … these are the things they are trying to unlearn.
2. They are not grown up and they are trying to learn to take responsibility for things. It is a big deal for them to admit to any kind of error. That’s why they call pointing out oppression “blaming.”
2 rethought. OR: they used to be able to see oppression and have been taught they will be punished if they do. So they call it seeing it, “blaming.”
I think it is all just standard right wingness, really. They are going from being really hate filled and chaotic to a greater sense of peace.
P.S. A greater sense of peace, but which does not upset the status quo.
Now there ARE people who really do have at least some of these characteristics, the partners of alcoholics and so on.
But that commenter, who knows me but not all that well, is convinced I’ve been in a string of abusive relationships with men … what she doesn’t realize is that the string of abusive relationships is actually a certain “friendship” with women, and that she is looking like one such — although again, I hope it’s not true.
You’re most welcome to use my memoir in that way. I’d like that.
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One of the things that I’ve learned about the people whom I do not trust — those who have taught me not to trust them — is that they do seem unable to discern the difference between “a reason” and “an excuse”. It’s quite possible that they have had intolerant parents who didn’t want to hear a peep out of the child, or something.
However, let it be known that if I give somebody “my reasons” then I am engaging in a relationship of implicit trust with them. I’m not just kicking around doing whatever it is comes to mind — rather, I’m bothering to explain myself, with the expectation that we might come to a mutual understanding.
When my reasons — that is my explanations — are dismissed as so many “excuses”, communication is completely eroded. I am giving a very negative disincentive for even trying to engage in it, anymore. After a while, I start to feel alienated, bewildered, and not a little bit contemptuous of the people who will accept no communication from me.
Perhaps they feel that my mental capacities are too strong and that by merely giving me an ear they are already making themselves too vulnerable to this, my overwhelming power of communication.
Or perhaps it goes deeper than this — that feeling compelled to listen to somebody else’s point of view reminds them all too much of how their parents — one or both — failed to give them much of an ear. It might feel like they’re constantly ‘paying out’ in terms of being the one who listens, whilst getting nothing in return.
You would be surprised how many people think like this, though. It might be the most common character structure — at least among the uneducated (at university level).
ie. it those who have no university education probably feel this way
But also, this common character structure is NOT a Japanese character structure, by any means. So it is by no means universal. I haven’t encountered any sense, at all, that the Japanese consider that one makes “excuses” by communicating oneself. In the light of Western consciousness, that the point of communication is to put oneself in the best light possible, whilst putting the other person in the worst possible light, I guess the Japanese would seem downright naive.
But actually I think they are very interested in the big picture, and more respectful of spontaneity in the other person. They by no means attribute nefarious motives to any form of communication.
Yes – I know the type. I didn’t meet it full on until later in life and I am starting to get the idea that it is indeed a Western thing and that part of my non comprehension is all those Asian and Native American types (Mexicans, but they’re very Native American, a lot of them) that are so much of the Californian culture! I never thought of them as foreign, and CA is a major Western economy and all…but.
The other thing about the addiction/abuse circuit is that to tell someone it isn’t abuse, it’s (their) addiction is of course the STANDARD paradigm of verbal abuse. !
I’ll think about this course.
It would be logically a part of an ego-centred capitalist culture. It seems that there can be capitalist cultures that are not adversorial in a pathological sense, then.
And yes, of course, to blame the victim is an exacerbation of the abuse they have already suffered. To experience that is what caused my physical health breakdown in the first instance.
—
I want to talk about something that I’ve been thinking about that isn’t directly related to the above — but sort of is.
I have a strong instinct for what is healthy, as compared with what isn’t.
It goes against the grain of capitalism in many ways, although not in all ways and not ‘on principle’ as such, since my way of thinking is directed towards health and not towards opposing capitalism just for the hell of it.
But, when I received my scholarship grant, I ended up giving away some of it. The reason for this directly had to do with my sense of my relationship towards my own health. Life is supposed to flow (this feels to me like an African principle) and to bottle it up is also to bottle up the sense of small injuries received in the past. The positive things in life require, rather, to flow through you, to remove this bitterness.
I think that those who develop stinginess cannot really appreciate what they have, because of the past injuries that accumulate in their minds (and bodies) and make them feel inwardly ill, despite their greater accumulation of wealth. They have an overwhelming sense of life’s imperfections, and not matter how much wealth they get it’s not enough. Soon something happens to them that requires extreme forms of intervention (that cost money). The strain of keeping everybody else (and their needs) out, and shelting their little ego has taken its toll.
Yes, that’s all part of the non Western flow, I think, not to be so grabby and resentful. Definitely bad for health, probably carcinogenic.
This I think is where all the fixation on “boundaries” among those self helpers comes from. You know that other people are going to try to get your stuff, so you have to guard it. And you have to try and see how much stuff you can get for free, not bartering, and how much free service you can get, and so on.
But a whole lot of people get a whole lot out of 12 stepping in particular, they say. They say they used to be full of rage, envy, and blame, and were very judgmental. They learned more self respect and more respect for others, they say.
And when you do get some free service or some free item, you tend to gloat as if you’d metaphysically raped the mind of the person who gave it to you, making them think you were something that you were not. You can’t believe that someone would really give you something for free if they had their eyes open and their wits about them, so you think they must have fallen for your supermad skilz, and you look down upon them. In fact, the whole cultural game is not so much to get something for free, but to gloat over what you think it signifies.
If this is how you are, then I’m sure that the only way for you is up. 12 stepping could even help you.
PS a fast food hamburger shop in Oxford has this on its windows:
“You’ll feel like you’ve robbed us!”
Yes. And my idea at this hour is that it all has to do with this heady article, which I am trying to absorb and am about to Facebook.
http://www.truthout.org/060709C
Giroux says, “the public now becomes understandable almost entirely in the realm of a privatized notion of the world.”
Very interesting. I see he concurs with something I had thought to say — that the bubble economy is kind of like the pathological ego state of the individual pro-capitalist ideologues. Both indicate a state of being against a natural flow and order. Both collapse.
Also–it may not be so well known, but I have deduced that there is a pernicious gender-based ideology attached to the pushing of a market-based approach as the social justification of one’s socialisation and culture.
Who is being targeted?
–Those who are classified as “dependent” groupings in terms of the ideological notion that only systems that participate in directly making a buck are self-justified as having a right to exist.
–The “independent” systems, by contrast, are the “male” systems at work in society, such as corporations, small businesses and independent capitalist operators.
Dependent groupings — such as academic institutions (and those who work in them), non-profit organisations, international human rights organisations, and facilities that cater to the common good — had all better watch out. For nobody wants to be classified (obviously pejoratively) as “feminine” — and we already have a long-established patriarchal system in place that prevents those who fall under the judgment of being “feminine”(and thus ‘dependent’) from receiving any ethical support from the larger society.
“In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;
And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;
And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;
And then… they came for me… And by that time there was no one left to speak up.”
Well I really think all the trouble I’ve gotten into is about being female and not realizing one is supposed to hide one’s independence, if one has any.
But yadda yadda, we know, patriarchal, capitalist, and other violence isn’t the problem, addicted women are.
I wish I’d been as clear eyed as Susan Faludi at the time she wrote this:
I think that one inadvertently steps on patriarchy’s toes if one is too honest and direct. I say, “inadvertently” since the point in being honest and direct was never to step on anybody’s toes, nor did one anticipate doing so.
Ultimately though, you have to see patriarchy as a very old sparring partner, whose techniques and tactics one has come to know very well by now.
The main thing about patriarchy is that he likes to use a lot of bluff. Fall for that and he’s got you where he wanted you. Keep your mental processes cool, and you can wrong-foot him every time.
I came across the Faludi book in a library many years ago. I got the gist of it then, which might have been quite cultural. I didn’t experience it as a hard-hitting book, though.
I wonder if things have continued to decline in gender relations since the 80s. My own experiences have been quite severe. That is why I think that the right might be more ideologically organised now than it might have been in the past.
I do think that it uses the technique of picking off various liberal organisations and cultural values by labelling them “feminine” one by one. Nobody wants to be feminine, do they? It’s the same as being on the side of immorality; of having no backbone. So anyone labelled in this way is tainted, and nobody wants to stand by them or their organisation. Hence the ease of facilities by which the “marketing model” is introduced into Universities, which is more dangerous for the Arts than it is for the School of Business. (It might be quite dangerous for some of the sciences, too.)
What is clear to me, though, is that the approach is METAPHYSICALLY (not just ideologically) flawed.
Whereas I didn’t understand it quite before, an old Tatar once informed me that the kind of masculinity that is a product of eschewing “the feminine” is no masculinity at all. Rather, those who do this become empty shells, without inner force.
The practice of martial arts has been responsible for teaching me about this inner reality. Even if one considers martial arts to be primarily a ‘masculine’ activity, it is not the rapid fire of punches or kicks that will enable you to win, but the way you deliver them — which has to do will coolness of mind and timing. The “feminine” considerations and the attribute of being able to read the situation very well, and to become “one” with it, are PRIMARY skills for the performance of martial arts at a more advanced level. So, “bam, bam, bam,” (the purely ‘masculine’ way of relying upon physical force alone), will not cut it as an approach to martial arts in the long term. It will just make you very, very tired.
METAPHYSICALLY flawed, this is a very important point.
It was my sense when I was first introduced to Reeducation (which of course wanted one to get a Western style God). I thought, wait, you don’t have to conceive of the universe in this limited and self punishing way, and I felt sorry for Reeducation because to ME it seemed to lack what, for lack of a better term, I’ll call religion (I refuse to use that New Agey word spirituality).
Part of the way I got hooked in, I think, was the disbelief … people couldn’t REALLY be living this way, could they? So I stuck around and asked some questions … an error.
“I think that one inadvertently steps on patriarchy’s toes if one is too honest and direct. I say, “inadvertently” since the point in being honest and direct was never to step on anybody’s toes, nor did one anticipate doing so.
“Ultimately though, you have to see patriarchy as a very old sparring partner, whose techniques and tactics one has come to know very well by now.
“The main thing about patriarchy is that he likes to use a lot of bluff. Fall for that and he’s got you where he wanted you. Keep your mental processes cool, and you can wrong-foot him every time.”
This of course means one has to know how to recognize it. I am bad at this — I tend to think people are mentally ill or something, wonder if I should call a doctor, etc. … my first reaction is to wrinkle my brow, lean forward with my forehead, and say “Are you feeling all right?” I don’t get it.
Getting worse since the 80s, possibly. They definitely got worse during the 80s.
I ALWAYS think that someone who comes on in a patriarchal fashion is mentally ill. It’s one of the things that has got me into a lot of trouble with the patriarchy (it’s defenders), because its defenders then look at me, and say: “Hold on a second. Aren’t you the one in the relationship that is a female?” and “So obviously he cannot be the one who’s mentally ill — I guess it must be you!”
So you really do have to watch out for that one.
It may help to think of a patriarchal mindset as being a relatively infantile one, still very idealistic, unformed by much reflection about the real world.
That doesn’t stop you from feeling sorry for it — introducing the additional danger of PITY — but it does help to make sense of it in some ways, and when you realise its limitations in these terms, you are less likely to try adult approaches such as speaking to it directly, which is only likely to disturb it more.
True and also funny. When I was younger — i.e. before Reeducation — I knew this and would do it with older men and it worked perfectly.
I didn’t realize clearly enough then that patriarchy could be embodied in *professionals* who claimed feminist methodologies, or, oddly, that it wouldn’t stop being visited upon me (and perhaps even moreso) when I was older (I always thought getting older meant having more authority, but it is not true, and I always thought condescension was because of being young and pretty, but it is only because of being female).
However and of course, you don’t get to grow out of its attacks and it wears many guises.
that is why we need our “masculinity” to do constant battle with it.
YES – and that was precisely what Reeducation got me to relinquish. !!! It was why I was blogging as a man, originally … !!!
I absolutely refuse to be on guard around men. To hell with that.
Yes but being aware of this whole mindset is useful … realizing that it even exists. The main participants in all of this New Agey and codependency stuff seem to be women. I think solidarity and act nice, but that only makes them think oh good, here’s someone we can pull down into the patriarchal muck.