It's all under control

Beyond the Book: On Victimhood.

The world doesn't like human victims.

Only animals get to be victims. Especially the cute ones. Puppies and kittens get to be victims. When animals are harmed, they don't have to prove that they were perfect victims in order for people to feel sympathy for them. Feeling sympathy for animals is easy, as easy as killing them. In a world where people indiscriminately massacre animals in so many ways, people also - even sometimes the same people - lament the loss of animals in a way that they can't seem to do for people. They need no personal connection with the animal to rage at its mistreatment, to mourn its loss.

It can seem hypocritical on the surface - our ability to feel deep sympathy for the creatures that we alone have done more harm to than any other species. But when you watch people, when you watch the difference in relation to human suffering verses the suffering of animals, it actually makes perfect sense.

It is because we have the power to destroy animals that we are able to care so deeply about harm done to them - harm we do to them. In that care lies our own power, and our own safety. It has been quite a few generations since the average human has had to fear animals. I'm not talking about someone who is afraid of the dog that barks at them in the park, not everyday phobias. I'm talking about the collective idea that we, as a species, have to be on our guard against predation by another species. We have, with the creation of obscene and deadly weapons, become untouchable by the animal kingdom. So much so, that exposing ourselves to the faint echo of that danger has become sport. The hunt that was once a dangerous yet necessary tool of survival has now become an adrenaline rush safe enough to bring kids and a few beers to. We have caged the deadliest of wild predators, and because we have, we can now afford to lament seeing them in cages.

We not only can afford to care for animals now, we benefit from that care. We get to be both the executioners and benevolent saviors - both positions which reinforce our power and safety over that which we once feared. One way or the other, we have control.

But when we turn our violent ways onto other people, sympathy for the victims is often not automatic. When someone is harmed the first thing we want is details. Often before we ask what harm was done, we want to know who was harmed? Are they known to us? Are they one of us? Then we want to know who harmed them. We want to know what the harm was. And then we want to know what the person who was harmed did to deserve it.

No, we don't want to know, we need to know.

Last year I got covid after traveling out of town for a speaking engagement. Again. I was upset and honestly, ashamed for reasons that I couldn't quite put words to. I didn't want to tell people that I was sick, but I knew I had to. I, of course, had to tell anyone I had seen in the days before I knew I was sick. But also, as a public figure who often talks about the importance of covid safety, I felt that I needed to remind people that the virus was still very much active and infecting people. I explained that I wore a mask on my plane and during my event when I wasn't alone at the podium, and yet I still got sick. I warned people to please be careful.

I almost immediately received a DM from somebody asking for more details. They hadn't attended any events I was at and was not at risk from me personally, but they wanted to know how I had messed up. Surely I'd taken the mask off somewhere. I must have done something that I shouldn't have done. They explained that they needed to know because if I had done everything right and had still gotten sick, then that meant that there was nothing they could do to ensure they'd be safe. So could I please, for their peace of mind, tell them how I'd fucked up?

I realized as I read this DM that this is why I had felt ashamed at coming down with covid. Because, I too, didn't want to live in a world where you could do everything right and still get sick. So I must have done something wrong. And so instead of feeling like this was a time where I could ask for community support or even just simply rest and care for myself, I instead felt shame. The shame felt safer than living in a world where sometimes bad things happen and you can't do shit to stop it.

This is not a healthy response, even if it is quite a common one. Not only does it cause us to, say, feel shame at getting sick, it also causes us to see news reports of a Black man getting murdered by police and immediately ask, "What was he doing when he was shot?"

It is how we watch a genocide unfold before our eyes ,and instead of empathizing with human suffering, say, "What did these people do to threaten their killers so?" and “What makes them different from us?” We hope that there will be answers that will make it make sense. That will allow us, in a world where all that a colonial power needs to justify our violent destruction is the slightest inconvenience or the faintest whiff of the promise of profit, to feel that we are safe from the animals that have always been most dangerous to us: ourselves.

When I was a child there were times where my home was very unsafe. In moments of unsafety, where I had no opportunity to leave or fight back, I first chose sleep as my escape. I remember saying, "just close your eyes. This isn't real. Just go away in your head." And I would try to sleep. Still, to this day, when I am in very stressful or triggering situations, my body wants to shut down. I spent years in therapy as an adult to find a way to survive hard times without sleeping through the majority of my days - a survival skill that helped somewhat as a child, but no longer suited when I had children of my own to care for.

But even as a child I knew that sleeping could only accomplish so much. The fear and trauma was still very much present in me. And so I did the one thing that could restore some semblance of safety in my life: I blamed myself. If I could find out how I had somehow made this happen, then I could make sure that it wouldn't happen again.

This self-blame not only made me feel safer, it made others around me feel safer. They weren't suddenly finding themselves complicit in harm that they never intended. They didn't look at me and see their own vulnerability to similar harm. They looked at me and saw what not to do. And if they just didn't do whatever I did to bring harm upon myself, then they would never be the victim.

I've written about how I've found myself in the midst of community conflict recently. This conflict has caused me immense harm. Harm to my work, my ability to provide for my family, and to my mental health. It is a harm that seems wildly disproportionate to the conflict itself. I've struggled to make sense of it, even as my therapist has practically begged me to please stop trying. I've spent weeks going through every single action I've taken or not taken. Every option available to me along the way and what these other paths might have led to. I have clung to every way in which I was not perfect, even as it fills me with shame that says I somehow deserve everything I’m being put through. I hold up each "would have" "could have" "should have" as if that is the key that will unlock the mystery of why this is happening.

I did this when our home was targeted by white supremacists. I did this when my children were battling serious depression. I did this when my house burned down. And it has turned me into a person who can never let go, who can never relax, can never be present in a moment because at any given moment there is something that could harm us and if I don’t react perfectly, it will be my fault. But if I do get it perfect, I and those I love can live forever.

This is not me being selfless. This isn’t even me trying to take responsibility for my actions. This is my deep need to regain a semblance of power. If it is my fault then I can stop it. I can make sure it never happens again. If all I have to be is perfect, then I will do that. And when I fail to do that, maybe at least I'll be able to see the consequences of my imperfection coming.

This is about ego. I'm so powerful that the entire world can turn on my smallest error. I cage the beasts or set them free, according to my whim. I am not vulnerable to the fates or the unpredictable actions of other people -- I'm only vulnerable to my own mistakes.

The truth is unbearable. The truth that I'm a queer, Black, neurodivergent woman in a white supremacist, patriarchal, ableist world. The truth that capitalist and colonial systems can and do crush people like me – and people better than me - every day for no reason other than it suits them. The truth that I'm vulnerable to the environment, to natural disaster, to covid. The truth that I'm vulnerable to people I love and like and admire as well as people I loathe and fear or people I will never know -  and I always will be. I will die one day and everyone I love will too and I don't really get much say as to how that happens. And there is no space anywhere in this world that is safe from these unbearable truths.

My logical brain knows that running from these truths is futile and harmful, but when I'm scared or feeling threatened, my logical brain isn't driving. My logical brain knows that I will survive until I don't. That in all of my survival so far, I've loved and been loved. My logical brain knows that the only thing under my control right now or ever is how much of that love I'm willing to receive, even if it means that I have to open my eyes, have to stop running, have to stop demanding my own perfection and have to just accept the terrifying truth that I'm vulnerable and imperfect and deserve to be loved and mourned and fought for anyway.

We all do.