Facebook Healings

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In a relationship, each partner has to work to understand the language of their partner. Two people can have the same intent, but have different definitions and charges to words and behavior: note our current argument about health care. I think that the majority of each side wants the minimum number of people to die due to poor or absent care. The disagreement about how this can be achieved, how much of our communal resources should be allotted to this, and the role of government in this is being debated fiercely, and not always honestly...and this shows the depth of feeling involved.

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How much more so in the struggles within our daily lives? The classic instance is the man who works day and night to provide security and safety for his family. By his definition, this is love. While the wife wants to HEAR HIM SAY IT. By her definition, anything else is just noise. So two people can actually love each other dearly, but be incapable of making genuine connection. It can be tragic. Emails I've gotten from people on both sides of the UHC debate suggest that the intents are largely the same--but the preferred methodology varies greatly. There are, of course, freeloaders on one side and selfish bastards on the other, and partisans on both who just want to win for the sake of winning. And many in the middle who are afraid of the status quo, or of change. And this is where the lack of effective dialogue is tragic.

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Over the last couple of years, I've noticed that my past is catching up with me. Or I'm passing up with it. I'm encountering friends, lovers, old teachers from my 20's, people with whom I had broken communication or fouled heart-lines. And that stuff is slowly, surely getting disentangled. My very first girlfriend found me on Facebook. And we've been able to talk about those days, and what we both did right and wrong together. Damned if that isn't useful, a glimpse into my process, and a prediction of future issues.

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Have any of you ever had a conversation with an old flame that helped you understand your current relationships?

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So Roman Polanski finally got arrested. I can't wait to hear his lawyers claim that thirty years of exile is as bad as incarceration, and that he should therefore be pardoned. What a crock. Thirty years of champagne, getting laid by women, jetting around to the greatest cities in Europe, making movies, laughing with friends...the inability to come to America simply doesn't strike me as the worst punishment in the world.

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And the former victim pleads for clemancy? Probably because she was an active partner, yeah. But society says she she doesn't have the right to decide that. And her current opinion is irrelevant: he would be incarcerated to protect OTHER children, not her. And not to "teach Polanski a lesson." Nope. Right now he's the very poster child for how to break the law and get away with it, in plain sight. I've met too many girls who had sex inappropriately young, and it seems to me that a disproportionate percentage of them were seriously screwed up emotionally, and had real relationship issues later.

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Some people say, "well, this isn't fair! If she had been a boy, and Polanski had been a famous female director, no one would do anything but give him a Thumbs Up." Well, that's not true, while it is true that FEWER people would complain. And that gets down to a question of whether it is legitimate to consider boys and girls to have different needs for protection. You know my side of this: I find it impossible to believe that females, who must put a gigantic investment of time and energy for every child, would not be wired up to process sexual data differently from males, who, in comparison, invest a fraction. Nature would be indescriminate indeed if males and females reacted to sex the same. I know of no society, anywhere in the world, at any period of time, in which females were expected to be more sexually experienced than males. So, yeah, we tend to grin if a 16 year old boy has sex with the sexy housewife or teacher. And grimace if the 16 year old baby sitter has sex with the hunky husband or swim coach. It isn't "fair", but it isn't unfair, either. Just protecting the species, to me.

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It is tendencies like this that blossom into full-blown social restrictions, reinforced by the power players of both genders. As I've said, men manipulate women with fear, women manipulate men with guilt, and the war goes on. Most men and women love the opposite gender, but there are genuine haters out there, and they queer the deal the same way the serious political partisans do--especially when they lie and hide their venom behind mainstream political rhetoric.

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Racially, it cracks me up when someone talks about racism, and their political opponents will squeal: "Oh! So you're saying America is a racist nation?" And then go off into all the things America has done to heal this divide.

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It is so absurd for people to use this ploy. Worse is: "Oh, so you're saying white people are evil racists?" To me, the person asking this question is in real danger of actually being that thing. Why? Because it doesn't seem to occur to any of them that the problem is in a human tendency. Their natural assumption is that people MUST mean that whites are actually worse. Or, even if someone says that, that that is the issue to be debated: Are blacks or whites more racist? Because that's the way they think: it HAS to be one or the other. Either white people are the best, or the worst. It can't be that human beings are wired up that way, and we have to be conscious to prevent these tendencies from poisoning our lives. Any more that it could be true that men and women are each wired to think that THEIR view of life, relationships, or whatever is the "right" one, and that the other gender is somehow defective. Or that it is natural, and healthy, for countries to consider themselves Great. Those who believe in American Exceptionalism are participating in a great human past-time. As long as they grant that EVERYONE feels this way about their countries, they get the joke, and it's all in good, serious fun. But the minute you think "I feel this way! And if you don't agree you're a fool or a knave"--you are part of the problem, rather than the solution.

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Insofar as racism: I think we are programmed to feel more comfortable with "our own" and the fastest distinction is race or gender. Experience, programming or deep self reflection can change this, but I think it lingers. And those slight tendencies, multiplied across population or power inequities can create horrific effects, especially when good people turn a blind eye to the excesses of their lunatic fringe...which has happened in national, racial, and gender politics to a nauseating degree.

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It can be combatted, but I think the easiest way to combat it is to have friends of the "other" group. Do I have Conservative friends with whom I have polite disagreement? Do I privately think they are crazy for having different opinions?

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Do I have female friends with whom I can discuss relationships and gender issues? Do I privately think they're crazy for having different opinions? How about different thought patterns? Tananarive, for instance, has a trait I've seen far more frequently among women than men: she talks in suspensive sentences, postponing the object for clause after clause, and sometimes sentence after sentence, as if working from the outside in. It drives me crazy, but it used to drive me crazier. Now I just see it as a difference, and accept it. It still irritates me, but I just shake my head and realize that some of my communication styles must be equally bothersome to her.

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Do I have white friends with whom I discuss history, and race relations, and psychological theory regarding blacks and whites in America? You betcha, and it's enriched my life immeasureably. And if I found myself considering some of their attitudes unconsciously racist ("those people in the inner city must love living in squalor." "The crime statistics speak for themselves" That's great, but unless they also take the position that the social structures were damaged by racism, it got REALLY easy to corner them into admitting that they think that innate differences are responsible for these problems. It's actually fun to corner them, and to watch their faces as they realize I understand what they are really saying. And they are so surprised that, deep down, I don't agree. I, of course, am a different breed, and their acceptance of me is proof they aren't racists. Of course. What fun.

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This is a fight we have to continue. Having friends in your circle who differ with you while still holding your respect are critical in keeping yourself from falling into the very oldest Primate trap: we rule, you drool, now stand there while I fling poo from the top of the tree. And pretend I did nothing at all.

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