One thing about backbones. They rarely develop a consciousness that they are a backbone. Take white women, for example. We don’t realize that we’re the backbone of patriarchy! Or that we willingly or unwillingly support the whole structure that oppresses our fellow bones, ligaments and muscles that would be Black people, any people of color, Native Americans … Fellow women of all descriptions. Even the Karens. I know it’s not popular to say that word anymore. All the Karens of the world that were named Karen have either changed their name, or have been vociferous online about how awful it all is.
Well, ladies, welcome to the world. The real one.
And, back to the backbone.
So here I was complaining about my achy back when I came across this little book written by Louise Hayes talking about your body never lies. And I’m like, well that’s interesting. Maybe we do have someone in the equation who hasn’t bought into the lie. That would be my body! So I became a massage therapist and rescued people from religious abuse, sexual trauma, childhood abuse, etc.
I did ascribe to the idea that I should do more therapy on myself as well. So I spent a couple of decades really trying to work through the mass of tangled crap that was my childhood when a really wonderful therapist of mine said, have you ever heard of the Gordian Knot? And telling a sweet lie as usual, I said: “Sure!”
Cuz, who in the world would admit that their college education had some holes in it?
She said, well just do that.
I said just do what?
She said, just slice through it all.
She ignored the fact that my mouth was hanging open. She was nice that way.
So I mentally imagined the big old knot and sliced through it all. It was such a relief! I actually felt 30 pounds lighter! That was an easy workout!
And … I could do that to society!
So here I am with my imagination, sword slashing around, being an activist while in therapy. I’d have to say I was doing more for myself than other activists. I found a lot of mental illness and craziness in the activist world. People thought that activism cures their craziness!
It was decades before I realized that, indeed, the whole world is crazy.
Well, at least that explains all the rabid fundamentalists, nationalists, skinheads, Trumpers … well you get the idea.
(Speaking to a catcall.)
Oh, there’s a Trumper in the audience! So what do you say?
Oh yeah well dear, please first do your homework. Do you know that work the Black people have been telling us to do? Our homework? You could start with Trump. This is a great article: Forbes, October 2008, a magazine that only business people read. Uh oh look at all those cell phones lighting up! Guard? Guard? Take notes please. I want to know which direction the rotten tomatoes are coming from!
Anyway Forbes turns them onto the fact that the man is a giant robber baron of international proportions. He keeps his fortune like most Ponzi schemers do: by offloading his costs onto the next unsuspecting ethical businessman. And in the spirit of traditional journalism, they never quite put it that way. They let you put all the pieces together.
Trump probably has mafia ties. He also appears to have ties with the Russian mafia! Wow. That’s who we want running our country again! The Russians are coming. Aaaaaaah! (She ducks)
Wow, that was reactionary!
What does that mean? The word reactionary? It seems like the AI programs have neglected to really answer that question for us.
So let’s call on an old is cool person called me and find the real definition. That is someone who reacts to information without thinking about it, or examining it or investigating it. They just react emotionally. Often a childhood trigger is involved. In therapy, we call this getting your buttons pushed. And it usually leads to extremely irrational behavior.
If you don’t believe me, here’s an example. Let’s say some pundit says, “that politician is just groping for approval.”
Well, those of us who’ve been through any kind of sexual or violent trauma think of the word, groping and immediately go back to that most terrible moment … or duration of extended agony. So whatever the pundit says next, we are yelling, rah, rah! Yay! That man is so right!.
Note the word man….
That’s why the Right Wing spends so much time looking for the Marsha Blackburns of the world. These women have never experienced reality! And they are rabid.
You know, like, bit by Dracula? Or some other infested animal. Possibly another human.
(Makes direct eye contact with a man in the front row. Back away slowly. Extends her arms as if holding a gun.)
“It’s all right, sir. This will all be over soon. Remain calm.
(Mimes shooting, lifting gun, blows on it, holds out hand as if to shrug.)
Wow! That was so simple. I feel like the hero in To Kill a Mockingbird ….
That book was kind of boring though. There were no car crashes, no violence toward women, and only one shooting! And it was just a dog!
And speaking of gun control, let’s get right into it. So the most dangerous population to hold guns is teens and men in their early 20s. Followed closely by any woman with a small handgun in her purse.
Having lived on the street, I myself have escaped a few awful situations by simply putting my hand in my pocket and pointing my hand in a gun like shape.
Risky, I know. But better than the alternative, which would be to get in the car when commanded to … or submit to a man getting too close to me. Even women with men are questionable. See the above note about women supporting the patriarchy with their backbones.
And on a lighter note in the news today … backbones were discovered to be completely dependent on muscles, ligaments and fascia. Fascia, not fascists! Fascia is that weird stuff that surrounds your muscles and keeps them from being useless. It is also the core of health. The fascia transmits so many nutrients, and things that we need. You could study up if you like or- just take my word for it for now.
So let’s jump down that rabbit hole for a moment. White women, the backbone, are dependent on all the people below them in the stratified social order.
This image isn’t really that far off people. The English, who definitely colonized this country before Americans got here, clung to the theory that the king was the head and the peasants were the feet and all the people in between were the thighs, knees, stomach, etc.
I imagine they gave bakers the role of the stomach!
These ideas followed the Americans — the white ones anyway — into a whole theory of manifest destiny, and a bunch of other stuff that justified a lot of violence.
Somehow we can’t get away from our Puritan ancestors. They haunt us with their images and paradigms. A paradigm is something that you believe to be true, because well you haven’t really examined it. A paradigm can be useful if you’re using it to try to figure something out, but once you take it as truth, you are in trouble.
Take me. I have a paradigm that I share with many people. It’s called “America, the Free.”
I want to believe this, with all my heart and soul, every fiber of my being. It’s one of those irrational depleted passions that were developed while being forced to say the pledge of allegiance. Wonder why the 60s happened? It’s because white people learned the Pledge of Allegiance.
Black activists worked hard for civil rights actively since before the 40s. They weren’t fooled. But we white peons blindly knew nothing about it, willing the inequality away.
We might call it Ignorance is Bliss. No one actually pointed these things out to us. We would’ve had to have gone way out of our way to look because we weren’t even part of the circles that had Black people in them!
Granted, I was just a kid, living out West where the military had plunked us.
I first saw a Black girl because my parents were in the military. Nowhere in my neighborhood, at school or on TV did I ever see a Black person. When I was four, the base had a playground for military kids where my mom dropped us off. Black girls were up on the monkey bars. I stared at them slack jawed and amazed. I had about one million questions, including why they were colored that way! They stared at me, and then spit on me and said, “quit staring!”
My mom was not happy. She yanked me away and scolded me … but she had no further wisdom to offer on this issue. So I buried it. This would’ve been around 1965-ish.
The first video record I ever saw of unjust treatment of a Black person was the Rodney King assassination by police. I was in a turmoil. I didn’t know what white guilt was. But I was pretty angry.
Yet somehow I thought that one example would turn all of America into “the Land of the Free …” see how indoctrination works? Clever paradigm really!
And now, back to my regularly scheduled homework. You don’t have to watch this part. Believe me, it’s drudgery, but someone has to do it.