Protected Classes, Harassment, and Singing to the Choir

An organization with which I am involved (Minnesota Science Fiction Society) is in the throes of developing an anti-harassment policy. This is a good thing, hard work, and well, subject to the usual stress. I wrote this for an email discussion, and decided to drop it here, as well, in case you aren't following that particular discussion. I realize it isn't anything that hasn't been said before.

******

Someone, I don't remember who as I deleted the email, said something about the harassment policy existing for "protected classes." While I realize that almost everybody understand that this is, in fact nonsense, and that there is a very high likelihood that the person who said it isn't interested in why this is not the case, I thought I'd give it a go, anyway. After all, it's 4 a.m., I can't go to bed yet, and what the hell.

The protected class is actually people. All people. People, as it turns out, come with a number of characteristics. There is a long history of making fun of, harassing, or otherwise belittling certain normal human characteristics. The most common are gender, race, ethnicity (those two actually being basically the same thing), religion, and sexual orientation. Trans is somewhat more recent on the list because the whole option of transitioning genders in public where people can see is a relatively (as in, just barely within my lifetime) deal.

I think that one of the reasons people talk about "protected classes" when this comes up is because they misunderstand something. It is a type of reading incomprehension. I believe it was Samuel Delaney who first talked about the "unmarked state". In our culture, unless otherwise identified, people are assumed to be male, white, heterosexual, cis-gendered, and usually protestant. So when a policy prohibits harassment based on gender, race, sexual orientation, etc., I believe that people accidentally misread this as "female, black, gay, trans, and religion-I-don't-practice." Because the other simply, you know, goes without saying. If you say gender, what they hear is "female" and perhaps even more importantly, "not me."

In point of fact, the harassment policy totally also prevents people from harassing people for being white, for being male, for being straight, or for any other basic human characteristic. Properly written, it also leaves a room for addressing harassment that doesn't fall under the laundry list of most likely things. If someone develops a seriously prejudicial attitude towards people whose names are David, if someone habitually says negative things about the sexual proclivities, reliability, desirablity, and general worthiness of someone named David, the policy should allow us to address that. And most policies do.

The reason the laundry list exists is an important one. These are the specific characteristics which have a serious historical context. These are the characteristics that have been very commonly used to denigrate and make miserable other human beings. Also, it is important to note that we, as a culture and a sub-culture, are attempting to address and change a situation which has a great deal of historical inertia. It has often been the case that this kind of behavior was at minimum tolerated, and at maximum encouraged by our culture and community. Policies like these are a tool in attempting to change and correct old wrongs. By specifically citing these particular issues, we are acknowledging that there is a specific problem here, that we know about it, and are trying to fix it. And this is a good thing.

People. They should get to be people without being hassled for being who they are. And that totally includes you, whoever you are. This is not about protected classes. You, too, are a protected class.
_______________________________________________

Crazy relationships (not filtered)

So, I've been thinking about crazy relationships. You know the ones. The ones with large amounts of drama, occasionally physical fights, the ones where the friends all flinch when it comes around again on the guitar? I actually have a fairly high tolerance for crazy in relationships. It seems to me that, unless they break up, they kind of fall into three categories.

The first are the couple (I'm going to assume couples here, for the sake of simplicity) that start out with way more than the required daily dose of psychodrama, and everyone despairs. But over time, they learn to fight better. They get smarter. They learn from their mistakes. As they go along, the blow-ups happen less often, they get less serious, and things just get better. Sometimes they even achieve a level of evenness that belies the rocky beginnings. You know, what we'd really like to happen for all our volatile friends.

The second type stays incredibly volatile. They regularly have melt-downs, both in public and in private. It's sometimes stressful to be around. But the relationship still seems to function. The level of drama is more than most people would be comfortable with, and in some cases it seems to be ritualized or institutionalized. There are levels of enabling and co-dependence that at minimum raise eyebrows from observers. But the relationship itself, while it may not be one you'd want to be in, seems to work. The couple grow and change together. They learn from their mistakes. Sometimes, so they can repeat them letter-perfect. But there seems to be on-going communication. They have significant outside relationships. Their world is bigger, not smaller, as time goes by. It is possible to criticize the partner, or even the relationship dynamic, without having it result in losing them as a friend. (I'm not saying you get listened to. Or that they don't argue. Or even that they don't get angry. Just that this is not a deal-breaker.) In some relationships, there is even occasional, minor violence. I am not arguing that this is a good thing. Not even that this is the best that they can do (although, you know, it might be, people are weird). But I am arguing that this is a relationship which meets the minimum definition of functional. It can even be, in some cases I know of, an incredibly valuable, vital, marvelous relationship. Problematic, especially for outsiders, but it is a net positive in the world. And, it is often easy to look at the relationship, especially right after a particularly bad blow-up, and decide that it's a bad relationship which should end.

The third type is the crazy-never-ends relationship. And for a while, it looks a lot like the second type. But the things that I think distinguish it are not the amount of love, or the amount of commitment, or even the amount of crazy. One of the things that I think is indicative is that the psycho-drama fails to function as a form of communication, or possibly as an outlet for tension. Instead of being able to learn that "this really upsets my partner" the only thing one learns is "this is how I must capitulate in order to get my partner to stop hurting me." Hurt, here, can be verbal, emotional, or physical. I've been involved in relationships where my partner would regularly lose their tempers, and much drama ensued. The thing was, I couldn't predict when that would happen. A good child of an abusive home, I tended to internalize this and assume that I had done something wrong and that it was all my fault. It took many years to learn that in some relationships what is actually going on is that the partner wants not to communicate an issue, but to be appeased. Controlling behavior is a warning sign, but different people want different amounts of autonomy, and I think we should allow for that. But if a couple tends to lose friends, if their social circle tends towards getting smaller over time, if the actions of one or both of them become more and more constrained as time goes on, that is a huge warning sign that this is a "crazy-never-ends" situation. If the relationship cannot withstand the normal wear and tear of being in the public eye, of interacting as individuals and as a couple with a normal social life, there is probably something seriously wrong here. If any hint of criticism is grounds for cutting off contact, there's a problem, here. If everyone is evaluated based on their willingness to support the relationship even when it's being crazy, there's a problem.

Even in incredibly volatile relationships, there should be a positive trend. I'm not saying that people never experience set-backs. But, over time, one should be able to feel that one understands one's partner better than one used to, that one has a better grasp of how interactions will go, one is less suprised by sore spots. That one is being heard, and that one's partner is also learning and accomodating. Blow-ups may still happen, may still happen more frequently than you are comfortable with, and some of them will still be a surprise. Things should not get progressively more random and chaotic. Generally. In my opinion. Etc.

The other thing to note is that it is frequently the case that in the crazy-never-ends relationships, the one thing that continues to show a positive trend over time is the amount of love felt by one or both parties. Love, for some value of the word. The problem, of course, is that the word means so many things that it functionally means nothing, here. Incredibly passionate attachment, call it love, doesn't fix things. And it can make it worse. It can make it so that it is very hard to focus on the day-to-day livability issues. "I love you but can't live with you" is a perfectly reasonable conclusion in many cases. Passion and affection do not necessarily translate into a functional relationship, which has many moving parts and has to interface with the real world and daily life. Love exists in our minds as a Platonic ideal, a high and grand thing. But daily life, as Neil Rest used to tell me, is where we spend most of our time. In my opinion, if you are in a crazy-never-ends relationship, the time to get out is yesterday. Lacking a Delorean, today will do. 'Cause, it's not going to stop.

First Chapter, _The Ocean at the End of the Lane_

(Determinedly avoiding spoiler details, but some emotional spoiler is inherent in this post.)

So, I just read the first chapter of Neil Gaiman's new book. And I...

Ok, I have a pretty high tolerance for tragedy in my fiction. I don't particularly demand happy endings. What I demand is good art. Very sad and or horrible things, when dealt with in terms that I find to be authentic, are fine by me. I cry easily, get involved easily, and am an easy mark. And I don't mind getting my heart wrung. I figure that's in the contract. Life has all sorts of bits, happy and sad bits, easy and uncomfortable bits, joy and sorrow. I want art to encompass that. I have very little patience for being manipulated, however. Which is why I really like Joss Whedon and really dislike Steven Spielberg. In general, I find that Joss earns his emotional responses, and Spielberg cheats.

And my response to the first chapter isn't either or my two usual responses. I don't feel like I've been put through the wringer in a good cause. I don't feel like I've been cynically manipulated. Maybe it's because it's the first fucking chapter. Maybe it's because I trust Neil enough to assume that he didn't just do this to wring sympathy from me to get me to care about his character more.

But, honestly, I spent an hour just wishing I hadn't read the first chapter, and that I could forget about it. It really, really upset me. I have now read the second chapter, and um, I'm not exactly feeling better. But that's mostly because it's been several hours and I've had time to metabolize it. I am certainly going to read the rest of the book. But seriously, that first chapter was way outside my comfort zone.