there's our catastrophe

May 17

I can’t personally get into “feminist oversharing” because incitement to discourse.

in all seriousness, when I think about “oversharing” between women I think about being in my early teens and making up appropriate crushes so I would have something to talk about. because otherwise I would be shut out, because we had to trade vulnerabilities, but what actually scared me — the fact that I didn’t understand and couldn’t conclusively label my sexuality — was both too much of a secret to share and paradoxically might not even be understood as me showing vulnerability. and I think about how “appropriate” meant so much more than even just a dude, it meant masculine, it meant not significantly shorter than me, it meant exclusively heterosexual, and actually, it meant white. it was understood that that was the acceptable range of dudes I could have a crush on. and I think about how that shaped my understanding of my sexuality for many years and it took me a long time to realise that I had other options that were better. like, “sharing” does not just uncover what is there, sometimes it constructs things, and sometimes those things are not great.

it wasn’t a “mean girls” situation or anything, girls weren’t out to manipulate or hurt each other, and everyone was dealing with this stuff, a number of us turned out years later to have radically different sexualities than we really talked about then. and there were also a lot of times that I was able to talk through shit that was really helpful to me, that I never would’ve been able to discuss if there was a clear boundary of Appropriateness — I’m so thankful that I grew up in an environment when it wasn’t really necessary to constantly be on my guard about who knew about my mental health issues, for example. but when girls talk about only wanting to hang out with the guys I think this is mostly what they are talking about, freedom from the injunction to overshare, freedom from disclosure.

I also have mixed feelings about venting and confessional writing and it all comes down to the same thing: emotional sharing needs to be understood as not just freedom but sometimes an expectation or demand or constitutive force.

hysteriarama:

TRIGGER WARNING WHATEVER I FEEL GROSS PLZ DON’T TELL MY MOM I’M NOT READY TO HAVE THAT CONVERSATION UGH UGH THIS FEELS LIKE COMING OUT

to contextualize oversharing as a tactic:

- caution, the ways we speak in hushed tones

- being a “shitty person”, carefully measuring our words out to not transgress upon anyone’s hard-won autonomy and safety

- except that that can be silencing, quiet isn’t necessarily safer

- and sometimes we can deal with difficulty, sometimes you just need to say everything that’s bothering you in a space for you won’t be abandoned for it

- not always

- but sometimes

- if we politicize support and care but only in certain contexts then we miss something

- if we support survivors but we don’t support people who just feel bad then we don’t give them space to assert their feeling-bad as something that may be pre-politicized

- for example sometimes it takes us a long time to name rape as rape and violation as violation. the first hint is the feeling bad but when we say the feeling bad we’re being crazy, we’re being hysterical

- in many communities, feeling-bad and oversharing it is only valued and received gently when it’s understood as political

- I’m thinking of all the people I know who would call a rape joke out as fucked but wouldn’t listen to someone vent/participate in a climate of non-venting as normal and healthy and how they are contributing to silence

- because we aren’t finished figuring out how to live together, how to practice intimacy, how to relate, how to resist etc, together

- and feeling awful is relevant

- feeling awful is relevant

- feeling awful is relevant

- I don’t know what it means but it is relevant

How am I to integrate these experiences:

When I was eighteen and had just been assaulted by a friend who I knew and trusted I didn’t call it assault. I was without an adequate language for the mess of grief and betrayal I felt. I did not have the words to call it rape. That came later. At the time I only felt wrecked. (You know this story, why am I telling it to you, you know it)

May 4

about me

I don’t have much that’s actually “about me” in the strictest sense on the “about me” section here. it’s mainly a list of my interests. no a/s/l, no lists of privileges or oppressions. of course, all that tells you is that I obsessively and vainly curate my online presence so as to look, among other things, like the kind of person who doesn’t obsessively and vainly curate her online presence. and that I would secretly quite like universal subject status.

however, it’s also true that I feel like if I mention anything I have to mention everything. I really resent having to justify myself by dredging up my personal experiences. I avoid it when possible; I only talk about them for context, when it’s truly necessary to give what I’m trying to say any meaning. but this is often, because I need context, because I am not, actually, the universal human subject, the legal Reasonable Person, though I would probably be close enough if not for a quirk of fate, as my male-but-otherwise-very-similar-to-me brother likes to remind me when I get on his case for being The Man. like. I do often want to know very badly the position, the context someone is writing from, I understand that others might too, I get that. it’s just.

I don’t feel like I have an identity politic. just a life. I’m pretty much against a politics based around individual identities rather than structures of oppression and material conditions. but at least half the people who say that are loser social theory bros who just wanna live in their head and not deal with other people’s problems. I wish I could do that. I could, I guess. I’m not good. I’m lazy, and I mostly like comfort, and people telling me I’m clever and pretty. so when I am good it’s on purpose, it takes work, it doesn’t flow naturally from who I am, the position I was born into. half the time I just wanna be a literary critic, an analytic philosopher, something like that, and nothing else. on the occasion that I do shoulder any kind of social responsibility I want some credit. I’m not pure. I know that.

I can’t take all this endless reflexivity, this self-scanning. I’m not “confessional”, I swear. I don’t even like memoirs! they’re boring! why can’t I mention my life without it being called an overshare? I don’t get anything out of telling you all the things I tell you, I don’t really want to, I wouldn’t even mention it if you didn’t need the context, but it’s just another chore, it’s not a big deal. It’s narcissistic but it’s situational. I need to get through it before I get to my main point. it’s boring. why is everything seen as so heavy, so intense? it’s not really that heavy, I promise. If it was it would break my back. I’m not brave. I don’t ever say anything on the internet I would be truly embarrassed by if it turned up on the front page of the tabloids. the things you’ll only coax out of me after five years of friendship and half a bottle of vodka are the strangest, stupidest things, but I’m certainly capable of squeamishness and shame. I’m not really so blunt, nor so blasé. I, I, I.

I had to learn a lot about I-first statements when I learnt about active listening and assertive communication. As I recollect, they said it would be clunky at first but after a while it would become second nature. I don’t even believe in a distinction between first and second nature, I’m Butlerian like that. I use I-statements all the time now. They’re really helpful. To me, at least. I find that they defuse conflict before it even begins. I feel that they keep me out of trouble. I’m not sure that’s always a good thing, though, at least when it flows over into all kinds of discourse. I have, as many do, concerns about the way people feel they are owed an in-depth look at others’ lives and traumas before they decide if they’ll give them credence. I also feel like overemphasising identity is individualising and therefore defensive and therefore also a deadening force on some potentially productive and necessary intellectual conflicts.

Well, that’s my opinion, at least, grounded in my own life, my own privileges and oppressions, my experience and identity, unique to me, personal, heavy business, and unchallengeable.

Apr 26

“A great deal of research demonstrates that venting is ineffective at decreasing or eliminating the mood state — in fact, venting is often shown to prolong the negative affect, mood, or emotion, rather than reducing it….To understand why venting is ineffective, it is important to consider some of the details about what venting does. Venting may often fail to reduce anger or other emotions because the components of venting are directly incompatible with other self-regulatory responses. For example, venting involves focusing attention on one’s negative emotions to express them in detail — but research has demonstrated that focusing on one’s negative feelings is ineffective for escaping from the negative mood. In contrast, distracting oneself from the negative thoughts or emotions is an effective way of getting out of a mood, but venting prevents people from distracting themselves.Venting directs attention to precisely the wrong place, namely to one’s distress and to what is causing it. In addition, because venting involves emotional expression, the physical feedback from the facial muscles, posture, and other bodily systems plays a role in prolonging the negative mood…The idea that people need to vent their emotions is deeply ingrained in the public and therapeutic literature. Tavris (1989) suggested that the vast majority of modern Western citizens believe that it is physically and mentally harmful to themselves to refrain from venting their emotions and are unaware of the scientific evidence to the contrary. Thus, people may be venting negative emotions not just because they are not trying hard enough or do not possess sufficient strength to control their emotional expression, but rather because of a mistaken belief that venting is an effective form of emotion regulation.”

Giving in to Feel Good: The Place of Emotion Regulation in the Context of General Self- Control Author(s): Dianne M. Tice and Ellen Bratslavsky Source: Psychological Inquiry, Vol. 11, No. 3 (2000), pp. 149-159

—
the article goes on to quote some studies that basically prove that most of the time when people say they just couldn’t control themselves they actually can, they just choose not to on some level, primarily because they believe it will help them feel better. but it generally doesn’t. sometimes this has minimal consequences — light procrastination, breaking a diet — but sometimes it can lead to fatal violence.

they also note that attempting to repress or deny negative emotions doesn’t work either. the only thing that seems to work is acknowledging you’re feeling shitty and doing your best to just do the things you need to do anyway, because if you try to fix your emotions before fixing your life you’ll fail at both. this is pretty much in line with my experience.

on a personal level — my experience has been that talking about negative emotions (of which I have many!) is unhelpful except when it’s in the context of helping me understand what I’m experiencing. otherwise it’s just an obligation, one I profoundly resent. but there’s this widespread idea that the person needling you to talk about it is actually doing you a favour, that the mere act of discussing your emotions will help you move on. (side note: how’s that for incitement to discourse?)

there’s been a lot of study in the past decade or so on how the “talk about it” model of dealing with trauma or negative emotions is not just of questionable efficacy, but also profoundly Anglocentric — the idea that more openness, more discourse, a laissez-faire economy of knowledge is self-evidently healthy is very grounded in post-Enlightenment Western mentalities.

I’m also curious about how to reconcile all this with the political necessity of testimony, of bringing unspeakable experiences to light so they can be prevented in future. there’s often tension between the needs of individuals who’ve experienced a particular trauma and the needs of others or of the community as a whole. it’s kind of like negotiating content/trigger warnings — how do you balance the need of some to avoid retraumatisation with the need to open up space for others to be heard? or like — what’s best for the community as a whole might be someone speaking up about their experiences — but that act could have devastating personal consequences for them.

at the very least — I think people need to know about all this stuff. in particular, the idea that talking makes it better is so pervasive, so normalised, you’re really shamed and pathologised for not wanting or needing to talk about it. people need to know that catharsis a bit of a furphy — that you might indeed get some kind of personal benefit from discussing your experiences but it’s unlikely to come directly from the experience of telling.

there's our catastrophe

work is its own cure. you have to like it better than being loved. ⚑ ♀

I can’t personally get into “feminist oversharing” because incitement to discourse.

about me

work is its own cure. you have to like it better than being loved.

⚑ ♀