[storytime] An Abridged List of Lies I Was Taught as a Child

September 2, 2012 Miribeauty, career, childhood, dating, family, feminism, happiness, life, personal, relationships, work66 Comments

Money and success will make you happy.
Being beautiful is an obligation.
Being fat is the worst thing that could happen to you.
College will be a magical la-la land where you will finally be happy.
Men don’t like strong, opinionated women.
Being gay is wrong.
Never ask a guy out.
Never have sex with someone you’re not dating seriously.
Casual sex will make you depressed, and a slut.
Intelligent people are better than nonintelligent people.
Your parents know best.
Family comes before friends.
You should be willing to sacrifice anything for your family.
Fitting in is important.
If you’re upset, you’re probably being too sensitive.
Your friends should come from your cultural/ethnic/religious group.
If a guy likes you, he will let you know. And if he doesn’t, he’s a wimp anyway.
Your career should be as high-powered as possible.
Your husband should make as much or more money than you.
It’s okay to let men do things for you rather than learning how to do them yourself.
Never, ever trust another woman. She will stab you in the back at the first opportunity.
If someone doesn’t like you, you should probably ask yourself what you’re doing wrong.
If your boyfriend is unhappy, you should try to make him happy.
Politics doesn’t matter anyway.
Everyone can tell how many men a woman has slept with just by looking at her.
Your clothing should always “flatter” your figure.
Sex can only be one of two things: Dangerous, or Special and to be saved for The Right Person.
Getting ahead is more important than sticking to your principles.
You can always just choose to be happy.

I learned these things as a child and a teenager. Now I’m an adult and I finally get to reeducate myself. A decolonization of the mind, so to speak.

Most of these lessons have been proven false by experience and common sense.

What lies were you taught as a child?

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[Guest Post] The Evolution of 'El Tigre': A Feminist Discovers the 'Beauty' Aisle at Walgreens

August 31, 2012 Miribeauty, body image, feminism, personal1 Comment

Here’s a guest post from my friend Emily.

I have stretchmarks, acne scars, oddly shaped eyebrows, a decades-long nail biting habit, rough spots on my feet, and hair that is generally nice, but tends to be boring.

So, given that I’m not a girl who spends a quarter of her paycheck on creams, gels, goos, brushes, tweezers, and other body products, I had just lived with my imperfections—accompanied by a self-hatred and guilt worthy of any Jew joke you can make out of it.

So steeped in the hot water of my own shame was I that I didn’t even want to go to the gym for fear of wearing tight clothes (in public!) that showcase my lumps, bumps, and the outline of my underwear. So, the pounds slowly marched further on, till I was 50 pounds overweight, which really shows on a 5’4 frame.

Then I put my big girl panties on and got over it.

I realized that the only way to look the way I wanted to look (so maybe I’m a little vain), feel the way I want to feel, and be as healthy as I want to be was to GO TO THE GYM. I also realized that I had to do it for myself and no one else.

That decided, I bought some gym clothes, signed myself up for a spot in the torture chamber (gym), and hauled my needs-its-own-zipcode ass up on a treadmill. I’m not even halfway to my goal, but I’ve lost more than ten pounds, which is better than nothing.

And I felt SO much better about myself. I can like… run and stuff. If I clench my stomach, I can feel abs. They are hiding, snuggled deep down under the remnants of Papa Johns and chocolate, but they’re there. I know I’ll find them one day.

Then I looked at the rest of the things on my laundry list of self-pity, shame, and loathing and realized I could fix them too. I got what was probably the third manicure of my life (after my bat mitzvah manicure, and one before a family vacation years ago), which helped me stop biting my nails. I’ve gone over a month without biting them, and I have long claws now (so watch yourself).

I actually marched myself to a salon wherein I allowed someone to pour hot wax on my face and slowly rip out my eyebrows, And even though I won’t doing that EVER AGAIN, I now know what eyebrow shape best suits my face and keeps me from looking like an angry troll doll. (And I found some tweezers).

And speaking of trolls: I got a little hair cut, I stopped washing my hair so often, and I bought some leave-in conditioner which has smoothed the frays and brought out a shine I didn’t know was possible without flashbulbs going off.

As for the stretchmarks, I once again donned my big girl panties and waltzed back into the beauty aisle I had spurned and misunderstood before. BioOil is now my personal savior, as it has turned my stretchmarks—formerly livid red lines—into meek little white squiggles that know better than to show up again.

And all of this isn’t to say that I’m some beauty queen who will get a boob job, rhinoplasty, and a pedicure. No. No one will ever touch my feet (it feels weird and I’m very ticklish). My eyebrows will still attempt to belie my Russian ancestry. I still have a few many more hours to clock at the gym.

But I feel a lot better about myself.

I had always shunned the beauty aisle from the get-go because of its ridiculous name. Oh, I can go to the soup aisle and pick up some soup; I can go to the bread aisle and pick up a loaf of wheat; I can go to the beauty aisle and buy beauty? Hell no. But after a little growing up and some experimentation, I realized that it’s not vain, or stupid, or shallow, or anti-feminist to want to look nice or feel good about yourself as long as you’re doing it to make yourself happier. I’m still not an object to be ogled. I’m not doing this to satisfy what my gender studies classes have told me is the “male gaze.”

My bright red nail polish makes me feel more confident and powerful, like I can go sit in a boardroom and tap my claws against the table as I intimidate a bunch of people—or something.

My new nickname for myself: El Tigre.

Emily Davidson is a loudmouth from the State of Tennessee who enjoys talking about politics and correcting other people’s grammar. A Senior majoring in American Studies at Northwestern University, she has many accomplishments that she would love to brag about. She loves reading, books, literature, and belles-lettres as well as science, history, and the color purple. She writes about feminism, religion, and politics.

[Guest Post] Thank You, Todd Akin

August 24, 2012 Miripersonal, rape, sexual assault, todd akinLeave a comment

One of my blog’s readers, who wishes to use the pseudonym Dubs, asked me to publish this guest post. Trigger warning for sexual assault.

I can’t keep quiet any more. Thank you, Todd Akin.

And less sarcastically, for inspiring me to finally write my first public piece, thank you Eve Ensler, quoted from her response to Representative Akin here:

You used the expression “legitimate” rape as if to imply there were such a thing as “illegitimate” rape. Let me try to explain to you what that does to the minds, hearts and souls of the millions of women on this planet who experience rape. It is a form of re-rape. The underlying assumption of your statement is that women and their experiences are not to be trusted. That their understanding of rape must be qualified by some higher, wiser authority. It delegitimizes and undermines and belittles the horror, invasion, desecration they experienced. It makes them feel as alone and powerless as they did at the moment of rape.

I, like many of the women I know (and many of the women YOU know, whether you know it or not), am a survivor of rape. I am a survivor of several rapes. It is not an easy thing to say, to any one at any time, let alone to try and say it to the entirety of your Facebook community, where this post originated. But here’s my story. (For those of you who avoid such things, trigger warning & naughty language ahead.)

I was 25. I was out with a friend. We’ll call her B. She was something of a Bad Idea Bear… the little devil on my shoulder that would convince me to do things that my little angel knew I’d regret in the morning. Clearly, my choices were my own, but she definitely helped me make them.

I was in the midst of a rough divorce, and she was determined to help me regain my self-esteem and confidence with men. We were at a bar, both flirting with the bartender, hereafter known as Dog.

Dog is graciously providing us with deeply discounted drinks, and I’m enjoying the attention. B is cheering me on. Dog’s shift is over, and he convinces a now rather unsober me-and-B duo to join him at this great piano bar. Off we go, staggering away in his car. (Are you keeping count of how many mistakes I’ve made yet, and how this is all terribly my fault, and I brought it all on myself? Exactly… keep counting, there’s more coming…) At the piano bar, I don’t remember much, except that it was such a classy joint, they only served beer and wine, and I don’t drink beer. Dog insisted on choosing a great red wine for me, despite my assertion that red wines give me migraines, but not wanting to be rude, I acquiesced. When the piano bar closed down, Dog convinced B and me to head to his place to keep the party going. I vaguely remember staggering into a cab, and feeling utter shame at what the patrons and the staff must think of me, and I think I caught a look of sympathy from either a doorman or another bartender who caught me once as I tripped.

We get to Dog’s place, and I’m in the head lolling stage of my drunk. B & Dog are still conversing amiably (in retrospect, I believe they were probably both functional alcoholics). At one point, I remember thinking how smooth I was, because I was able to hide the fact that I was vomiting by just swallowing. Anyone else who’s had that thought knows–you actually haven’t been smooth. B helped me to the bathroom to clean me up. (I was still cleaning pink stains out of the stitching on my leather coat weeks later…red wine, remember?).

After that embarrassment cleared, Dog guided us into his bedroom. All 3 of us laying on the bed just drunkenly talking and being… drunk. At some point kissing started, in which B was involved. When Dog started getting more aggressive, she stands up and says “Nope, I don’t want any part of that.” and walks out of the room.

(The bitch fucking left me there–after he had shown that he was sexually aggressive and didn’t give a fuck about consent. She fucking left me alone with him.)

I remember telling him I didn’t mind making out and stuff, but I didn’t want sex. I said no. I was drunk, I wasn’t in complete control of myself. I put myself in really compromising situations with untrustworthy people. I fucking said no. Did I stab him? Did I push him off? Did I scream and yell and cry? Or did I just lay there, and wait for him to be done with me, since clearly he didn’t care about my opinion anyway? Roll over, go to sleep, and do the walk of shame in the morning. One more notch in the slut shame hall of fame.

A few days later, I was talking to B about our random drunken escapades and drunken regrets. I told her “Yeah, so that night with Dog? Not that I’m going to press charges or anything, but it really could be construed as rape. I did tell him I didn’t want to have sex… he just pushed right on anyway.”

Did I mention that B is a rape survivor herself? But hers was “legitimate.” Home invasion, serial rapist. Nationwide coverage. Big trial, conviction, the whole bit.

I stepped in a land mine. “HOW DARE YOU COMPARE WHAT I WENT THROUGH TO A DRUNKEN ONE NIGHT STAND REGRET?!?!” She immediately regaled me with full details of what happened to her. Admittedly, it was horrific. But suddenly, because she had suffered horrendously, I wasn’t allowed bodily autonomy.

It wasn’t until about a year ago that I could admit to myself that I had been raped at all without qualifying it with “could be construed as” (I muttered the magical word NO!, but it was still my fault). I am an imperfect victim, I am quite sure many will say I brought it on myself (when I told my own mother, her response was “Hopefully with time, you can forgive yourself.”). But at the end of the day, whether I put myself in a risky position or not, a man felt entitled to use my body in a way I did not consent to. When I confided in a friend, I was promptly told that my experience of violation was ILLEGITIMATE.

You want to know how to make a person who already feels worthless feel any smaller? Just let her know that the abuse of her person isn’t worth being concerned about.

I’ve talked to my friends a lot lately. You know that statistic about 1 in 4 women have been raped or molested? It’s bullshit. It’s more like 3.5/4. Chances are, your wife, your mother, your sister, your friends, your daughters–at least some of them have been sexually assaulted. They just don’t tell you because it’s shameful. They don’t tell you, because they don’t want you to tell them that it was their fucking fault. They don’t tell you because women aren’t allowed to know what violation of their own bodies feels like. But we know. And if we trust you enough, some day we’ll tell you. And when enough of us speak up about how much we’ve been hurt, hopefully you’ll stop passing laws that hurt us.

Recently laid off from the IT sector after over 10 years, Dubs is a somewhat unwilling though not unhappy stay-at-home mother of two, both boys, both under the age of 4. A self-proclaimed “mommy who says fuck… a lot”, she is a new contributor to the blogosphere and is using the new-found free time that unemployment brings to begin finding her voice and to use it loudly to fight some of the injustice in this world. Once her toddlers require a little less of her brain space, time and energy, Dubs hopes to return to school so she can heal the world one mind at a time as a therapist.

[storytime] These Streets Are Mine: On Street Harassment

August 23, 2012 Mirianger, beauty, personal, privilege, sexual harassment, street harassment6 Comments

I got sexually harassed today.

Actually, it happens all the time. Like, almost every time I venture out on the city streets for longer than ten minutes. It’s kinda like when you have to drive in the city and you can never find a good parking spot, or when you’re stuck behind a group of sluggish tourists on the street.

You know, annoying stuff that happens when you live in the city.

Except this is different. Because this only affects people who are (or appear to be) women, and because this is a conscious, purposeful attempt to make us feel unsafe and violated. It is not a compliment. It is not “boys being boys.” It is harassment.

This time, I’m on a dark El platform at 10 PM. I’d just been out with a friend and had a great time. I’m wearing a nice dress, same one I wore to work, not that it’s any of your business. An old man calls something to me from 10 yards away; I ignore him.

A few minutes later he ambles over, passes in front of me so close as to brush against me, and says, “Mhm.”

He stands on the other side of me until the train comes and gets into the same car as me. He doesn’t get a seat near me because there are too many people, but I see him looking over.

I slowly reach into my bag and pull out my pepper spray, letting it dangle from my fingers. And I look up with a face of stone, and he knows that I know what he did.

I am attractive. You can think I’m vain for saying that, but I don’t really care what you think. It’s hard not to know you’re attractive when you’ve been told from birth. My parents always say, “You’re so beautiful, you can get any guy you want if you just stop being in such a bad mood all the time.” They say, “Make sure you have a guy walk you home.” They say, “Try to find a job where your boss is a man. It’ll be easier that way.”

In the past, when I had friends who didn’t get it, they did it too. They thought I couldn’t possibly have any trouble in my love life. They thought I couldn’t possibly have a problem with the number on the scale.

Beauty carries a lot of privilege in our society–and, really, in any human society, although standards of beauty vary. But, unlike most kinds of societal privilege, this one comes at a cost. I’m not particularly interested in debating who has it worse, but suffice it to say that I would rather not have strange men brushing up against me when I’m trying to take the train home at night.

And no. I will not demand that my male friends take me home; that’s not their job. I will not dress in ugly, baggy clothing. I will not stop leaving my apartment in the evenings. I will not stop taking public transportation. I will not stop walking down these streets, because these streets are mine.

I’m not afraid. Not because I have no reason to be, but because I couldn’t keep living if I were. I can’t keep crossing the street every time I see a man. I can’t keep wincing visibly every time I hear their slurred come-ons. I can’t keep tugging at my clothes in front of the mirror, trying to figure out how to cover up what I never chose to have in the first place.

I’m not afraid. I’m angry.

A while back, the writer Norah Vincent dressed as a man for a year and a half and wrote about her experience. This is what she said about the first time she went out in drag:

I had lived in that neighbourhood for years, walking its streets, where men lurk outside of bodegas, on stoops and in doorways much of the day. As a woman, you couldn’t walk down those streets invisibly. You were an object of desire or at least semiprurient interest to the men who waited there, even if you weren’t pretty. But that night in drag, we walked by those same stoops and doorways and bodegas. We walked by those same groups of men. Only this time they didn’t stare. On the contrary, when they met my eyes they looked away immediately and concertedly, and never looked back. It was astounding, the difference, the respect they showed me by not looking at me, by purposely not staring.

They can choose to look away from women, too. But our society teaches them that women are there for their eyes.

There are things I can do. And I’m not talking about the “don’t go out alone” types of things. I find that anger deters these pathetic men more than anything else. They don’t want a woman who’s going to cause trouble, who’s going to whip around and snarl, hit, tell them to fuck off. They don’t want a woman sitting straight up, glaring, with a can of pepper spray ready in her hand.

Nine of out ten of them will stop at that.

As for the other one, well, I suppose that’s a risk I have to take if I’m going to fight for my right to walk down the fucking street.

Just like any man can do.

For more information: Hollaback and Stop Street Harassment

Depression Personified

August 17, 2012 Miridepression, fiction, personal, writingLeave a comment

This is a work of fiction. Trigger warning for depression and abuse.

And again.

Everything starts to swirl in my mind again, tears pool in my eyes. Everything about me is shit–my writing, my activism, my appearance, my personality. I cry everywhere–in the office, in the bathroom, on the train, in bed.

Just yesterday I had been able to see clearly. Now that haze is back and everything turns to grey because of it.

He has me by the wrist now, his long nails digging into my skin and leaving red half-moons, just like I used to do.

He jerks my hand towards him, makes me caress his face with it. His eyes seem as black as his hair in that moment. They pop against the smooth porcelain of his skin, cold under my unwilling fingers.

His thin lips twist into an ironic smile.

“You thought we were done,” he says in a low, throaty voice.

I don’t deny it.

“You told all your friends how happy you were to be through with me.”

Can’t deny that either.

He grabs me by the shoulders and pulls me in, putting both hands on my face and tilting it towards his. If you ignore my facial expression it would probably look romantic. But don’t be fooled.

When I’m with him I feel as black as his eyes. I see myself reflected in them. Looking into them is like looking into a cave or an abyss–you don’t know where they end.

I could probably wriggle out of his grip if I tried hard enough. He’s not even holding me that tightly. But I can’t find the will, and he knows.

His eyes narrow and I know he’s not done.

“Here’s the thing.”

I let out a sigh and try to look away, but he’s still holding my face in his hands, stronger than I thought.

“I decide when we’re through. Not you. Because I own you.”

I can never quite believe that someone so beautiful could be so cruel.

“I can come back for you whenever I want. I’ve been choosing not to because I thought you needed a little break. So let this be your reminder.”

He runs one hand through my hair, gathering it up into his fist. He tugs on it, not enough to hurt, but enough to keep me still. We stare each other down–him with his calmly brutal black eyes, me with my terrified, wet hazel ones.

Then suddenly he pulls me into an embrace that feels almost real, if not for its coldness. I’m taken aback. It’s one of the only times he’s shown me anything resembling care. Or love.

I keep shivering long after he’s gone, but gradually the fire relights in my heart.

Some people have real problems.

A Reflection on Three Years of Blogging

August 12, 2012 Miriblogging, personal, writing8 Comments

Three years ago today, I inaugurated this blog with its first post. At one point in it, I explained that I’d moved to WordPress.com and started a new blog because of issues with my previous host, and I wrote this:

I thought about buying my own domain and not messing around with that stuff anymore, but then I thought, wait a minute. Nobody actually reads what I write, anyway. Why pay for the privilege of writing it?

Well. Three years later, I have my own domain name. I also have a modest following of both friends and strangers, and the blog now gets hundreds (sometimes thousands) of views a day.

A lot of other things have changed since then, and they’ve all impacted my writing. I started college, developed severe depression, got diagnosed, got treatment, and recovered. I did a political 180 and became a passionate progressive. I dropped journalism as a major, picked up psychology, and chose the field of mental healthcare as a career. I gained weight and cut my hair short. I left a serious relationship.

In general, there is very little in common between the person who wrote that first post and the person who is writing this one today.

I’ve learned a lot from writing this blog. I’ve become a better writer, obviously, but I’ve also learned how to argue better, how to take things with a grain of salt, and how to remove myself from the world when I need to.

I’ve learned that calm and careful writing fares better among the commentariat, but that there is a place for snark and anger. Sometimes I’m fucking angry. Sometimes I have the right to be.

I’ve learned that what they tell you about women who are both seen and heard isn’t true. The adults in my life warned me of all sorts of things–that people would dislike me, that men wouldn’t date me, that employers wouldn’t hire me–if I kept up this blog. I’ve certainly lost friends through my writing–well, I’ve lost “friends”–and it’s certainly made things awkward sometimes. I don’t really care.

But these days, most of my genuine friends are people I met through writing. Some of them knew my writing before they even knew me in person, which is interesting. I get messages all the time from friends and from people I barely know or not at all: “I read what you wrote about depression…can we talk?” “My boss keeps making sexist jokes. Do you have any advice?”

I’ve learned that doing what you love will set you free. In my case, it set me free from unhealthy friendships and relationships, from depression, from a terrible career path, and from the feeling of being powerless and insignificant. Three years ago I had no voice. Today, I do. And I use it meaningfully.

I’ve learned to do things for myself and for my own benefit. Not for friends and family, not for lovers, not for teachers–and not just for my resume, either. I write because it’s a joy. I write now for the same reasons I did when I was a kid–because I love to. (I wrote my first creative thing when I was three years old, and it was a song about cement trucks, which were my favorite vehicles at the time–clearly I never really did the whole girl thing properly.)

I’ve learned that, to put it mildly, haters gonna hate. There have been people who seem to be offended by the mere existence of this blog. There have also been people who find everything I write here to be a personal insult to them, and yet they continue reading it day in and day out. This is something I have yet to understand about people. Why not just leave?

I’ve learned that apathy doesn’t get you anywhere. It’s so fashionable and the pressure to cultivate it (or at least learn to fake it) is so high, but nothing good has ever come to me through not giving a fuck. I care deeply about things, people, ideas. I think that’s my strength as a writer and as a person.

I used to be so quiet. I used to tread so carefully. Not much scares me anymore, and the opinions of others matter little.

Blogging gave me an identity, and the whole process is a joy–from the first spark of an idea to getting to a computer, wringing it all out, checking the facts, linking to the sources, reading everything over, giving it a title, pressing “Publish,” taking a break, doing it all over again.

Hopefully for many more years.

[Guest Post] How I Was Indoctrinated into the Gay Agenda

August 1, 2012 Mirifamily, homophobia, homosexuality, lgbt, personal12 Comments

My friend Seth writes about growing up with four gay uncles and how they’ve shaped his views on gay rights.

I never stood a chance.

I was indoctrinated at an impressionable young age—so young that I can’t even remember what age it was. I have four gay uncles; two related by blood, and two more because I don’t give a shit what the law says, they’re family. Regardless, it was these four who indoctrinated me, using the typical insidious and underhanded homosexual tactic of being kind, funny, upstanding and just all-around decent people. Before I knew it, I had been brainwashed into thinking that these four men were human beings just like any other, and just as deserving of my respect and love as any other member of my family.

One more poor soul lost to the gay agenda.

Of course, I can’t place all the blame on my uncles. Some must go to my father, who always loved them unconditionally, apparently considering the fact that they were his brothers more important than their sexual orientation. Still more must go to my grandparents, who failed to respond to the news that their sons were homosexual by disowning them, instead welcoming their chosen partners into the family with as much warmth and fondness as if they were heterosexual spouses. With such weak moral examples from my elders, how was I supposed to know that the proper response to having gay uncles was to shun them as abominations regardless of whether or not they had ever done anything to offend me personally?

All right. I should probably turn the snark off before it makes your computer explode.

In all seriousness, though, this is not a story of redemption, wherein the protagonist starts out thinking that all homosexuals are icky hedonistic perverts who are out to destroy our families, and then has a transformative personal experience that teaches them that, oh hey, homosexuals are actually living, complex people who are not defined by their sexuality. Those are great stories, and I’m all for them, but I was lucky. I never needed that experience. I had a chance to learn, at a young age, that the people who society considers “different” are actually…not so much. (Spoiler alert: growing up with all these gay men in the family also completely failed to turn me gay.)

Well, hooray for me and all that, but what does that mean for the big picture, the larger debate about gay rights? Not everybody is going to have the experiences I had. It would be nice if they did, but it’s understandable if your close relatives didn’t obligingly orient their sexuality in a manner that allowed you to learn an early lesson in equality. Nonetheless, my story and others like it are still a significant factor in the debate over gay rights.

Because here’s the thing: the people who want to deny homosexuals the right to get married, who want to live in a world where somebody can be fired because their employer doesn’t like their orientation, who want to “pray the gay away,” have made the debate very, very personal. This is against our religion, their arguments go. This is something that our God has told us is wrong. These are our traditional values under attack.

To which I say, if you think it’s personal for you, come spend Thanksgiving with my family sometime.

Anti-gay leaders sometimes seem honestly baffled as to why they’re losing ground in the so-called culture war, especially among the younger generations. Is it because the church’s image isn’t hip and cool enough? Is it all this media garbage, driving the young ones away from the one true faith? Is it because those godless Democrats are in office? Please. It’s a lot simpler than that.

It’s because people like me are becoming more and more common. When somebody talks to me about “the gays” or “homosexuals,” I don’t think about some flamboyant stereotype engaging in round-the-clock orgies. I think about the two uncles who run a car repair shop out in rural Colorado, with a house done up in the finest of 50s retro décor. I think of my cousin and her partner, who run a cafe that serves some of the most amazing pizza I’ve ever tasted. I think of the friend who’s a constant fixture at our college house’s game nights, dances, and movie events. I think of the uncle, not related by blood but my uncle nonetheless, who drove me home in his truck through a blizzard so that I could make it to school the next morning. (Spoiler alert: despite being alone in a truck with a young boy for nearly three hours, he utterly failed to molest me. Shocking, I know.)

These are the people I love and cherish. These are the people whose lives I want to improve. These people are my personal stake in the gay marriage debate. So if you were hoping you could win me over to the side of righteous discrimination, I’m afraid that I have to inform you that you’re too late.

I’ve been indoctrinated.

Seth Wenger is a senior neuroscience major at Earlham College and a practicing Buddhist. He can usually be found on Facebook, snarking about life, current events, and politics.

Because I Am An Atheist

August 1, 2012 Miriatheism, life, personal, religion/atheism, science/skepticism22 Comments

A few months ago, blogger Ian Cromwell wrote a post about how atheism has affected his life and titled it “Because I am an atheist.” In the comments section, others left their own “Because I am an atheist” stories. Then my friend Kate wrote her own version, and now I’ve been inspired to write mine.

I’ve only recently started identifying with atheism. I’ve used the terms “humanistic Jew” and “secular humanist” to describe myself for a while, but it’s really just a matter of semantics. The nutshell version is, I don’t believe in any sort of god. I haven’t for a very, very long time, and the belief left me naturally, as though I’d grown out of it.

Fun happy disclaimer thing: This is a personal post. It’s about what atheism means to me. It is not an attack on your religion. Aside from this disclaimer, I’m not going to insult my readers’ intelligence by sticking in “but of course you don’t have to agree” and “of course you can get a similar experience out of religion too” and “I don’t mean to say that atheism is superior” into every paragraph.

So here we go.

Because I am an atheist, I get to develop my own moral code. Many people get their sense of morality from religion. That’s totally okay. But I relish the opportunity to create my own.

My morality is a sort of combination of utilitarianism and the Golden Rule. When I decide how to act, I weigh the pros and cons. Will this help someone else at very little cost to myself? If so, then I’ll do it. Will it help someone else at a great cost to myself? If so, I might do it if the cause is important enough to me. Is this act self-serving, with a potential for hurting the other person? If so, I probably won’t do it, unless I really, really need to.

That’s not to say that I always act ethically or that I never hurt anyone. At least, though, I get to own my actions whether they’re positive or negative. Regardless of the outcome, nobody made me do it. My holy book didn’t tell me to do it. My pastor/rabbi/what-have-you didn’t tell me to do it. I told myself to do it, and if it turned out badly, I can do better next time.

Because I am an atheist, my major life decisions are my own to make. I don’t have to get married. I don’t have to have children. I don’t have to give a percentage of my money to any particular cause or charity unless I choose to. I don’t have to belong to any particular organization.

Now, I do want to get married and have children, and I do want to donate money to certain causes and belong to certain organizations. But I’m allowed to change my mind. It’s not my “duty” to do any of these things, unless I’ve chosen that duty for myself.

Because I am an atheist, I am only accountable to the people I choose to be accountable to. If I screw up, the only people I need to apologize to are the people I’ve affected. The only people whose forgiveness I need is theirs, and my own. I don’t need to confess to a religious authority figure. I don’t need to pray for forgiveness.

Because I am an atheist, I can seek explanations for things in the physical world. For instance, I don’t have to believe that men are the dominant sex because God made it that way as a punishment for Eve’s sin. I can examine the evidence and form the opinion that it’s because males are naturally stronger than females in most species, and human gender roles developed from there. I can also decide that we don’t need these roles anymore, now that our lives aren’t a constant struggle for survival.

In my own life, I can find explanations that are empowering rather than disempowering. For instance, my depression wasn’t some sort of punishment from God; it was an illness caused by an interaction between my genetics and my environment, and I could overcome it. Although it was my responsibility to overcome it by seeking treatment and changing some things about my life, that doesn’t mean it was my fault that it happened. Just like if you slip and fall, it’s not your fault, but you are responsible for picking yourself back up. Not God.

Because I am an atheist, I can choose my own lifestyle. I can eat what I want. I can make my dietary decisions based on what’s healthy or what tastes good or what restaurant my friends want to go to.

I don’t have to stop doing the thing I love most for one day each week. I never have to disconnect from technology unless I choose to–and sometimes I do.

Decisions about sexuality are mine to make. Without religion, there’s little reason to consider any consensual sex act to be “wrong.” There’s only things I want to do and things I don’t want to do.

Because I am an atheist, I can trust science. Of course, there is still such a thing as faulty science, but the trademark of science is that it keeps trying to challenge and improve itself. So while individual theories might be disproven and individual studies might be poorly designed, I can trust the scientific project itself.

I don’t have to worry that new findings will contradict my beliefs. Of course, that’s exactly what they might do–but then I can just change my beliefs. I don’t have a huge, deeply personal stake in explaining things a certain way. Evolution doesn’t bother me. (In fact, it’s pretty cool.)

Because I am an atheist, I can question things. Since there’s no god to make the world the way it is, there’s no reason it has to be this way. Judaism, which is the faith I was sort of secularly raised in, does emphasize asking questions and learning, and I appreciate that about it as opposed to, say, Catholicism. However, in the end, you do need to believe in God. Full stop. Or else you’re a “humanistic Jew,” like me. You can question and seek “proof” for God’s existence (and many Jewish philosophers have offered up compelling and interesting rationales for this), but at the end of the day, you say your evening prayers and you go to bed knowing that someone’s watching over you.

Nobody’s watching over me. I’m watching over myself. And that’s fine by me.

More Than Just a Body With a Broken Brain: Why I'm Choosing Social Work

July 23, 2012 Miricareer, college, education, graduate school, personal, psychology, social work, therapy, work20 Comments

It would be nice to be called “Doctor.”

It would be nice to be paid a very high salary and have a stable job, and to be able to produce an official piece of paper proving that I am Smart.

It would be nice to be published in prestigious journals, to receive emails from others curious about my work. It would be nice to be quoted in newspapers and magazines as an Expert.

It would be nice to be part of the elite–the less than 1% of Americans who have a doctorate.

It would be nice, but it won’t be me. At least, not for a while.

Until recently, I left unquestioned the notion that I want a PhD in clinical psychology. I just wanted it. Why? Well, it would allow me to be a therapist, which is what I want. I would get paid a lot. It would carry prestige.

But gradually my resolve started to break down and I started to wonder, Why?

I discovered that I disliked research. When I told people this, they were often shocked. But aren’t you curious? Don’t you care why people think and feel the way they do? Don’t you want to understand?

Yes, I am, and I do. I’m deeply curious. That’s why I read voraciously. And I am more than happy to read all the answers to my questions when they’re published rather than to work long days in a basement lab somewhere.

I can do research, I’m sure. But it’s not what I love, and there are others who want this much more.

The turning point came when I attended a panel of graduate students in psychology, along with an admissions person for a doctoral program in clinical psych. They all told us that when we apply for grad school, our entire resume and personal statement should discuss nothing but our research experience. Everything else I’ve done wouldn’t even matter–not the year I spent as an RA, not the three years I’ve spent as a member (and, then, a leader) in a sexual health and assault peer education group, not the summer I volunteered at a camp for at-risk kids in New York, not the initiative I started to implement a peer listening program at Northwestern, not my internship at the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

I shouldn’t even include it, they told me, because it would annoy the admissions people.

The work that I love, the lives that I hope I’ve changed–it would be an annoyance.

At first, I thought it wasn’t a big deal. Who cares what I put on my application as long as I get in?

But then I learned more. I learned that I probably wouldn’t be accepted if I admitted that my goal is to be a therapist, because they want to spend their money on someone who would bring prestige to their institution by publishing research. I realized that I would have nobody to turn to for support–no mentors–because I’d have to hide my dreams from them. I learned that clinical training in clinical psych programs is mostly lacking (ironically), so I wouldn’t be learning the practical skills that I need to help people.

And, most of all, I understood that my time in graduate school would be miserable beyond belief, because I would be living a lie, facing extreme pressure to publish or perish, and wasting at least five or six years of my life. During that time, my life would be completely on hold–I wouldn’t be able to move, work, or start a family, if the opportunity presented itself.

The future that I had once dreamed about turned into a nightmare.

It was then that I finally stopped listening to my professors–who, of course, all have PhDs–and listened instead to the friends and family I have who actually are therapists, or hoping to get there. And increasingly I understood that a masters in social work would be a better option.

MSW programs emphasize learning practical skills, and many of them have you start a clinical internship as soon as you start the program, because the best way to learn is by experience. They understand that people aren’t just isolated brains inside bodies, that circumstances affect individuals and that psychological problems aren’t always caused by faulty brain chemistry. They emphasize understanding societal inequality, working with marginalized groups, and picking up where clinical psychology leaves off.

I’ve been told that I’m “too smart” for a masters in social work, that I will be “offended” when I see how little they pay me. People who say these things must not know me very well. Although I wanted a PhD before, I’ve never really needed my career to make me feel important. I don’t need to be important. I just need to be helpful.

As for “too smart,” that’s ridiculous. The helping professions need more smart people.

The truth is that, in my hour of need, it wasn’t a man with a white lab coat and a doctorate who saved me. It was–as corny as this is going to sound–the social justice movement. That was what finally taught me that my feelings are justified, that my thoughts have merit, that my words matter.

I finally learned to see myself as more than just a body with a broken brain. I’m a whole person enmeshed in particular circumstances, and the interaction between the two has made me who I am now.

I still agree with what I’ve written before. Medication can be useful. Therapy works. Psychiatric labels are important.

But my strengths and goals require a different sort of education than what I could receive in a doctoral program, and they point me to a different sort of career than a PhD would prepare me for.

True, I’ll earn less money. There will be hard times. There will, I’m sure, be bureaucracy, budget cuts, and crappy bosses. There will be days when I don’t love it.

But there will not be days when I’m living a lie. There will not be days when I’m sitting in an expensive lab at a prestigious university, doing work that may be meaningful, that may get published, that may be improved upon, that may someday, maybe, help someone. Maybe.

And I have nothing but respect for people who want to do that. I admire that, and maybe someday I’ll return to school for a PhD. But at this stage in my life, it’s just not for me. After all, I can always get a PhD; what I can’t do is unget one and unwaste all that time.

I don’t expect every single day to be productive, every session to help every client. But I do expect that at the end of my life I will be able to look back and know beyond a doubt that, in my own way, I changed things for the better.

That’s why I’m choosing social work.

P.S. A little disclaimer–I’m not looking for any comments on how I’m wrong about the doctoral route or why I should reconsider my decision. There’s a lot more than went into it than I could even discuss here, and there are enough Older and Wiser People trying to tell me how to live as is. Thanks. 🙂

It Happened Here (Or, How to Hate a City)

July 16, 2012 Mirichicago, depression, personal3 Comments

It’s been three years and nothing’s changed.

I still cry every time I leave home, whether I’ve been there for a weekend or a summer. I’m still the awkward girl with no sense of decorum who cries on the Megabus. I still feel worse and worse as I get closer and closer to my hateful destination. Every lonely Indiana mile hurts as I pass it by.

There’s no redeeming Chicago in my eyes. For the rest of my life, I’ll remember it as the first place where I ever consciously wanted to die. It was the first place I have ever felt truly alone–the first place where I understood, after my luggage has been carried up the stairs and the door has slammed shut, that nobody will come and save me now.

All the negative superlatives of my life so far have happened here. Coldest, loneliest, saddest, angriest. Most betrayed, most apathetic, most afraid.

Some days I feel like hate is the only response I can give to this city. I like to imagine that it will somehow be hurt by the blunt force of my hate, which burns on and on even after my wounds have all healed. But of course, cities don’t ache. People do.

It wasn’t always this way. When I was in high school, before I could imagine any sort of life outside of the Midwest, Chicago shone in my eyes like a lighthouse by the lake. It was an oasis among the decaying farms and factories and cookie-cutter suburbs that I drove through to get here. I dreamed of coming here for good.

Now I remember that and I’m filled with guilt for hating it without even being able to fault it. On one hand, this could all have happened anywhere else. Any city, any college, any lifetime. But it happened here. To me. And “it” includes too many interacting and inseparable events and incidents and feelings to plausibly explain to anybody but myself. But it happened here, to me.

There were the little daily indignities that piled up, and the larger heartbreaks and nasty surprises, too. And there were the “real” traumas, the ones that would make it into the story I would come to tell about my life.

There were times that made me smile, too. There have been moments when I have loved Chicago–for instance, when taking the purple line downtown above ground and watching the entire city skyline unfurl in front of me as the train rounded a corner. But a pretty skyline (and a few good friends, and a few fun trips) will never erase those superlatives.

This city has beat me down, and I’m just now starting to stand up again. I wish that I could keep living here without a heavy heart. But I can’t. So now, full of guilt, a hopeful voice in the back of my head counts down the months until graduation, until I can leave.

When I walk down the streets, I see yellow cabs and delis in my mind instead. I pretend that Evanston is Queens, that Lakeview is Greenwich Village, that Michigan Avenue is really Fifth. They are poor substitutions. But I remember the way the setting sun shines down the numbered avenues and I feel better.

It could’ve happened anywhere else, but it didn’t. It happened here.

Brute Reason

Care and responsibility.

personal