Confession

[Trigger Warning for Survivors of Sexual Assault]

I am twelve or thirteen. There are five of us and one of her. She hasn’t lived in the neighborhood long. The others hold her down, laughing. One pries her legs open. I know what’s happening is wrong, but I don’t say anything. I grope her breast, the first one I have ever touched. I stand up and back away. Thankfully, it’s enough, and we let her up. I never tell anyone.

I am eighteen. I’ve gone out on a couple of dates with a girl whose friend just broke up with me. We’ve made out once or twice. One night in the middle of the night I go over to her house. The door is unlocked, and I sneak into her room. We have sex. After, I ask if we can do it again, and she says no. I leave. It’s not until a few years later I realize I probably raped her. I don’t tell anyone til I’m in my forties.

I am twenty-one. I’m having consensual sex. She freezes up, asks me to stop. I finish. I never tell anyone.

This list of my transgressions is hardly exhaustive. I can only hope it’s the worst I have done. In two of three cases, I’ve never told anyone until now. I didn’t want people to know. More than that, I didn’t want those things to have happened.

But they did happen. I did those things. And if it’s taken this long for me to human up and acknowledge them, well, that’s on me, too.

I could make excuses. I was young, dumb, and full of cum. I didn’t know any better. I came of age in the ’80s, when rape culture was just culture. Men were supposed to want sex, and anything shy of actual or threatened violence was on the table for getting it, be it deception, cajoling, or just getting her drunk enough to let you take her panties off and do what you wanted. I was a product of my environment.

Those excuses are bullshit. Basic human decency isn’t hard to grasp once you admit to yourself that other people are people.

I am sorry for the things I did. I apologize to the people I did them to. But I don’t presume to ask forgiveness. Some stains can’t be washed out. Just like some wounds never heal.

The idea of hitting publish scares the absolute shit out of me. People I don’t know are going to judge me. Worse, people I do know will, too.

But after reading as much of this as I could stomach, my conscience compels me to come clean and own up to the things I have done. Somebody has to go first.

I may not be a good person. But I can at least try and do the right thing. If we, as men, are going to do something about rape culture, we’ve got to look inside as well as out. You can’t fight something you’re not willing to face.

Let’s Call Donald Trump What He Really Is: The Candidate – and Literal Embodiment – of Straight White Male Privilege

trump-smirk — “I have never been wrong about anything.”

You know, for a guy as demonstrably and reliably dishonest as Donald Trump is, he’s been pretty open about what kind of man he is, and what we’ll get if he wins the Presidency.

What kind of man is he? Well, yes, he’s straight (the straightest!), white (okay, he’s actually orange), and male (“There’s no problems. I guarantee it.”). But above all, before anything else, he is privileged.

It’s been said of both George Bushes, ‘He was born on third and thought he hit a triple.’ Trump was born on third and he’s mad because he’s sure he hit a home run. He must have, because everything he does, says, or thinks is awesome, and the only reason he can’t have literally everything he wants whenever he wants it is because the world is conspiring against him. Probably because everything he does, says, or thinks is awesome, and they’re jealous, or fat, or ugly, or sad!

It’s almost hard to fault him for it, because the notion he is entitled to do whatever the fuck he wants, whenever the fuck he wants, to whomever the fuck he wants has been drummed into him his whole life. It’s the air he breathes, the fabric of his space-time continuum, of which he is the absolute center around which all else revolves.

Okay, it’s not that hard to fault him.

But just as it’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it, it’s damn near impossible to get a man to understand something when his privilege depends on his not understanding it. Continue reading “Let’s Call Donald Trump What He Really Is: The Candidate – and Literal Embodiment – of Straight White Male Privilege” →

The Limits of Argument

Man, do I love a good argument. Seriously, ask anyone who’s known me at any point in the last forty years and they’ll tell you. It’s like my brain’s factory wiring was optimized for it. It’s such a rush, when I’ve got a really good one going with a smart, well-informed person whose positions and beliefs are different from my own. It does for my brain what playing soccer does for my body.

I’ve spent decades doing it, in all kinds of situations, with all manner of people. It’s honed my critical faculties and made me question the assumptions at the foundation of my worldview. I’ve learned many valuable lessons as a result.

The most valuable lesson I learned? If you actually want to change or even open someone’s mind, arguing almost never works.

Here’s something that’s happened to me more times than I can count. Maybe it’s happened to you, too. You get into it with somebody. Things get heated. You’re going back and forth, back and forth, and you realize you’re both making the same argument in different words. And if you’re like me, it’s kind of frustrating, because you’re all het up and there’s nothing to argue about anymore.

After the nth time that happened, I started to realize that, at least for me, the contentiousness was the pay-off. The heated back and forth. A chance to let my rage nugget vent a little steam so it doesn’t boil over some inappropriate time. Like when I play soccer.

And I’ve come to think of argument in the same way as soccer. For me, at least, it’s best approached as a sport, a competition I engage in with fellow enthusiasts whom I cultivate online and IRL, who approach it with the same understanding. It won’t surprise you that most of them are lawyers and academics.

But if I want to get through to someone, and actually change the way they see the world (or at least get them to take a look at how I see it), getting all het up and marshalling facts and arguments and statistics and memes isn’t how I go about it anymore.

Nobody, but nobody, likes being told they’re wrong, and they like it even less if you can prove it.

In my experience, if you want to change someone’s mind, the best you can do is plant a seed and hope it takes root. And to do that, you have to find common ground to plant it in. It’s surprisingly easy to do if you start from a position of respect. If you frame what you have to say in such a way that it’s taken for granted that the person or people you’re dealing with have reasons for their views that they find genuinely convincing and good. If you ask them to explain, make the positive case, nine times out of ten you’ll find something in there you can both agree on.

Once you’ve established a rapport by genuinely engaging, and built goodwill by finding some point of agreement, you can show them the way to where you’re at from where you’re both standing. Connect the dots, make the positive case. Let them decide for themselves.

Will it work? Sometimes. And almost never right away. That’s why I use planting a seed as a metaphor. If you want a plant to grow or an idea to take hold, you have to find that common ground, and prepare it. Then you can plant the seed and, if conditions are favorable, the seed will sprout. It will grow roots, and when enough time has passed it will break ground into the light, and grow organically on its own.

Changing people’s minds is a really hard thing to do. But even if you just open them up a little bit more, that’s a good thing. A net gain for the ideas and ideals that you’re passionate about. And in my experience it’s a hell of a lot more effective at spreading them than browbeating people til they submit or defriend you out of exasperation.

Arguing and debating is a really fun sport, with the right people. But when the chips are down and the stakes are real, I think I owe what I believe in its best possible chance of spreading and taking root. Because the more of us there are, the better the chances of making it happen. Which I think will be good for everybody.

Even the people who disagree with me.

Hillary, Bernie, and Me

I was a strong and early supporter of Bernie Sanders, especially the Bernie Sanders of the early campaign: the guy who took the high road, who spoke truth to power, who organized at the grassroots and refused to engage in negative campaigning. The guy who said on her worst day Hillary Clinton would be a better President than any of the Republicans.

But I have a confession to make: I never thought he’d win.

It wasn’t lack of faith in the message or devotion to the agenda he espoused. That faith and devotion is what drove my support. To me Bernie Sanders was only a vehicle for getting the word out and starting to organize. It was clear the man himself was an imperfect vessel (he is, after all, a career politician). It was also based on a cold, hard political calculation. Remember the incident in Seattle about a year ago, when two #blacklivesmatter activists stormed a stage he was set to speak on? The way Bernie and, more importantly, his most ardent supporters handled that told me all I needed to know. However you stand on the incident, nobody gets the Democratic nomination without support from African-Americans. And while Bernie has done a great job of mobilizing younger African-Americans, they were outnumbered by their elders, who were less willing to take a chance.

Still, I advocated, and donated, and when the time came I caucused. All along I tried my best to keep to the high road the Bernie Sanders of the early campaign laid out.

Sadly, my candidate chose not to. Somewhere along the way, some subtle threshold got crossed. It was about Bernie now. Bernie the man, the visionary, the leader of a revolution, though what the revolution meant or would look like was never made clear. He started throwing punches, insisted he was going to win despite the fact that the path to victory only got narrower and less likely with every primary and caucus, even the ones that he won.

Continue reading “Hillary, Bernie, and Me” →

Death and My Birthday, or What I Learned from David Bowie and Brent McDonald

As some of you may know, it was my birthday yesterday. My forty-third, to be exact. So I was already in a contemplative mood, thinking about where I’m at and where I’m going, and whether or not any course corrections are called for.

Death was already on my mind. See, a friend I’d lost touch with was murdered not long before Christmas, and his memorial service was scheduled for yesterday. His partner was someone I was once close with, so of course I had to go. I missed the service (seating was limited, and I didn’t think it appropriate to take up a spot), but I went to the reception after, which was a lovely, well-attended affair. Sad though the reason for it was, it was good to reconnect with my friend, and to see her daughter, who I’d known since she was an infant and who has grown into a quite impressive young lady.

I had dinner after with my girlfriend and father, and swung by a party not held in my honor, and both were quite lovely. Later, on my own, I went round the corner to my favorite watering hole, and sipped on some single malt and did some thinking.

That’s where I was when I heard about David Bowie. Continue reading “Death and My Birthday, or What I Learned from David Bowie and Brent McDonald” →