*that* is despair.

exactly the opposite. when i tell myself “shit, i fucked up. but it’s not going to help anybody to sit here and rationalize to myself over everything i did right or wrong, there’s still work to be done and i need to get moving” – that isn’t despair.

despair is: “shit, i fucked up. and nothing i can ever do will make it right, and i can never fix everything, and no matter how much good i do or how heartfelt my good intentions are, i will still fuck up and it will still hurt people in real ways. i can never escape this and it’s just going to make me feel shitty, so why should i keep trying if i’m just goingto fuck up and have people yell at me anyway? what am i supposed to doooo? why can’t people give me a break? forget this, i can never do anything right anyway so why bother.”

THAT is despair.

there is a markable difference between the two reactions.

One aspect is how ‘we’ respond to the fearful behavior of white women. Whether or not ‘we’ should *care* if ‘white women’ feel fearful is not really an open question here. Obviously we care or we wouldn’t be writing about it! Ok, so we care. Now we have a choice. We can care in an angry/exasperated/cynical/beset-upon way. It can piss us off, insult us, especially in light of the bravery of ‘other women’ (i.e. the clinic workers) who refuse to succumb to their fear/guilt/anxiety, even in life-or-death situations. This choice is what I heard in the majority of the thread — and in your hypothetical response, Donna, of “Cry me a river” and “shut up.”

Alternatively, we can simply understand and accept that this is (yet) another ‘white woman’ who is suffering from fear. Then we can choose to respond not with anger, but with compassion.

If this suffering incapacitates her, I’m with you, Sylvia/M — she should seek help that gets to the bottom of her guilt complexes. Does it cost ‘us’ anything to encourage her, with compassion, to seek that help, while taking care to maintain our own boundaries (i.e. not allow ourselves to become her personal brown confessional priest)?

If, though, the suffering doesn’t shut her down totally, but instead she shoves it down or ‘learns from it’ (same thing), then that suppressed negativity will only undermine her work. Work that she could and should be doing lovingly, wholeheartedly, guilt-free, and with the understanding that she is not showing up merely to learn fancier, more distinguished ways of voicing her concern for the plight of women of color (a super-common hidden motive, as you know, that may even be concealed from the person herself, and that ultimately leads to even more suffering and guilt for *her*, in addition to leeching the people around her). So there is already a danger that she’ll ‘bite the bullet’ and radiate a negative mentality.

Why should we invite the negativity by responding negatively ourselves? Why not respond instead with simple compassion? Not coddling; not condemning. Just having compassion and moving on. Why should we raise the overall sum of suffering?

So that brings me to the second aspect I’m seeing, which is this question: putting ourselves in the shoes of the clinic workers, what are legit or delegit responses to making a mistake that cost a woman her life?

A spiritual disclaimer: I’m probably not in the majority in believing that it is possible to live a life free of suffering. That a person can learn from mistakes, even severely consequential ones, without remorse or guilt — and not be a sociopath. That, in fact, the best way to honor the woman killed by her partner — a tragedy that occurred despite the clinic workers’ best intentions and efforts to help her — is to *stop* adding to the total suffering, learn from the error, and gain ever greater compassion from the experience. None of this involves negative emotions like guilt or remorse. And I don’t know for sure that I would be able to do it, if I were in that situation, but I believe wholeheartedly that I need to always strive to respond this way to grave mistakes.

In my experience, Donna — while I respect that your experience may be different — guilt can never motivate us in a *lastingly healthy* way. Even if the guilt is brief and acute, then disappears, like jump-starting a car, it still ingrains a corrosive habit of self-deprecation and keeps us identifying with mistakes. And that’s the thing, Sylvia/M, in my experience (and again, I can only speak from my experience), it is possible to “[hold] oneself accountable” for errors (which brings no negativity, no fear) without *identifying* with the errors (which is how guilt and remorse happen).

As for the flip side of the same coin, “futility” (which is a great word to describe what I meant, thanks Sylvia/M!), it is the harder dimension for me to talk about, but the more important one. The example came to my mind from Aaminah’s comment:

i fuck up all the damn time. ALL THE TIME. but i don’t disengage the issues. i do not have the luxury of walking away from these convos, at least not permanently, because my life, my sisters lives, my loved ones lives, depend on these conversations.

I think that many women of color feel that resistance is futile: we can’t “walk away” from these conversations, this work, these circumstances. And in one sense we are right. The bullshit ain’t goin anywhere. We can’t escape the external factors. But I believe that what we can learn to walk away from, eventually, is our own suffering.

I see anger and agitation and suffering in this thread itself. And while I understand it and oftentimes feel it myself, I don’t believe it is inevitable. Bottom line, I do not want women of color to suffer. Ever. I love us. I want peace for us. And a step toward that peace, as I see it, is letting go of our anger at full-of-excuses white women. So they exist. Okay. So there are a lot of them, all the time. Okay. We don’t have to take their suffering on ourselves. We can maintain our peace and happiness and compassion, even if we are rehashing the same solidarity-101 conversations we’ve had a million times. We can do it smiling and laughing. And we can also celebrate, and take inspiration from, courageous clinic workers.

Does this ring true at all? I certainly don’t claim to be able to free myself from negativity all the time. In fact, it’s because I’ve experienced a shitload of both of them — just like most humans on the planet — that I don’t want myself, or you, or anyone else to suffer from them. Ever.

Phew.

Thank you for your patience. Now that I’ve spilled my heart out in far too many words, here’s Joseph Campbell to say what I said, only beautifully:

Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.

I’m happy to keep conversing, or let it rest. If you want me just to listen, tell me, and I will.

With love and gratitude,

katie

If a person — white woman or no — says to themselves, “Oh man I just made a mistake, but I’d better get over myself and get to work because people are dying, and what do my feelings matter in comparison to that?”, I don’t see responsibility there, I see guilt and panic.

Guilt and panic? I’m not following. I don’t think anyone’s saying to completely discount one’s personal feelings towards a situation and blindly work through your extreme pain. However, the process of holding oneself accountable (not expecting others to do it, processing one’s own emotions privately) in addition to continuing to work towards something better is beyond guilt and panic. It’s learning. It’s gross, it’s painful, and it can be onerous, yes. But the initial discomfort and upset are as natural as the eventual healing and confidence from continuing to do the work.

I will say this now: if a white woman feels incapacitated by what she’s doing with guilt and panic, or any woman, or any person — to the point that person cannot function or cope or heal — please, please get out of it. Stopping the work doesn’t mean you get an excuse not to learn anything or to teach yourself. But very frequently that’s what happens with some of our paler friends.

In this scenario, the guilt came because someone inadvertently caused a woman to die, and that went against the purpose of their work, why they dedicated themselves to that work day to day. So? They learned vigilance, they took from that mistake a very valuable and painful lesson, and I don’t see how you read that they likely did not do a lot of soul seeking. The fact that someone’s still telling this anecdote twentysomething years later makes me think this wasn’t just a tongue biting situation that got obviated into nothingness with dogged nose-to-grindstone work ethic.

And if a person says to themselves, “Well there I go making another mistake, but since I can’t escape my fucked-up circumstances, no matter how much I’d like to, my only option is to bite the bullet and keep going,” I don’t see determination there, I see despair. A feeling of choicelessness.

I guess I’m confused about where you’re reading the futility into this. Not everyone has to do the same type of work. The Work is multifaceted. So where is this lack of escape coming from? The analogies don’t really fit for me.

I think BFP is used to this sort of thing, like any other woman of color. That’s why she doesn’t give a damn what today’s excuses are…scared of fucking up? Cry me a damn river! There is work to be done so shut up with your excuses and lip service and start doing!

Guilt is a useful emotion, if it spurs you to action, which it did with the clinic. You’re a sociopath if you feel no guilt after something you did caused another person harm. Anyway, they changed things so that it wouldn’t happen again and pushed on with the work. When it isn’t useful is when a person freezes which is what this “scared of fucking up” is the excuse for.

I am awed by the capacity of people, including these people at the clinic, to forgive themselves for their mistakes, and to grow from the lessons.

And I think it is ultimately much healthier for all of us to act from a place of love and compassion (for ourselves and others), rather than guilt or fear.

If a person — white woman or no — says to themselves, “Oh man I just made a mistake, but I’d better get over myself and get to work because people are dying, and what do my feelings matter in comparison to that?”, I don’t see responsibility there, I see guilt and panic.

And if a person says to themselves, “Well there I go making another mistake, but since I can’t escape my fucked-up circumstances, no matter how much I’d like to, my only option is to bite the bullet and keep going,” I don’t see determination there, I see despair. A feeling of choicelessness.

And when guilt or despair motivate our actions, no matter how noble the actions might look from the outside, no matter how many hours we log doing the grunt work, if we are suffering internally from guilt and self-loathing then eventually that negativity will undermine our efforts. Not only that, it’ll seep out and infect everyone else around us. And in the long run, that sickens the movement.

That is why I *do* care about white women’s fear of fucking up — and anyone else’s fear of fucking up, including my own. Because the fearful mental state of an individual weakens the movement as a whole.

And in responding to an individual’s fear, I have to be mindful of nurturing my own mental state, too. What good does it do me to respond to someone’s insecurity with a big, “Fuck you, get over yourself”? That only makes my own mind agitated. Especially when that insecure someone is *me*. And when I become agitated, I spread agitation to those around me. Instead, when I see a fearful mind, in myself or someone else, I can choose to respond with compassion and nurturing. “Hey, I’ve been there. Don’t waste time worrying — just act from your heart, knowing that you are loved, no matter what you do. There’s a lesson to be learned here.”

To me, the struggle against oppression is too vast and too urgent to ignore or dismiss the motivations and mental states with which we engage it — each one of us. External work alone will never be enough; we need internal work, too. We need to forgive ourselves *so that* we can keep the clinic open in a healthy way. Otherwise, we’ll poison the atmosphere.

All my love to you, bfp, and everyone on the thread — would love to hear your thoughts but totally understand if everyone else has moved on…I’m the slow kid.

ps: diggin the new interface, especially the “Speak!” button that I am about to click.

Oh my god, yes.

So many thoughts in my head about this, but I can’t quite get them out. I know that fear of being hated, and it eats at me because I *know* (for me, anyway) it’s a hold-over from when I was taught that I deserved hatred and that speaking up at all was speaking out of turn. Getting over that –having people in my life who call me on my shit and trust me to get over it, developing the ability to be in conflict with people while still working with and respecting each other– that has been life changing. For myself and others.

Anyway, yes. Yes to this entire thread.

Yeah I get that too, but you know, I unintentionally snub people all the time because I’m crap at small talk and, well, a whole bunch of basic communication, which people take as a cold shoulder. And at the end of the day, people are going to have a whole bunch of things they’re thinking about. Maybe they snubbed you cause they have toothache, or cause they’re not in a mood where they can string two words together, or whatever. So I obsess over whether I’ve fucked up too, usually assume I have, but at the end of the day, that probably didn’t even occur to them.

I think it’s natural to worry about it somewhat, on the other hand, if there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s the long, long, looong conversations I’ve seen in the feminist movement about “how can we be nice and racially-inclusive”, “how can I, as a white woman, not fuck up”, because it’s phony bullshit at the end of the day, it’s basically apologising for all the times you do fuck up so you can buy the right not to care about it. And when it’s sincere, well – it’s almost worse, because the main problem with the mainstream feminist movement to start with is that a bunch of privileged women think that them feeling ways about stuff is earth-shatteringly important, when in fact, it’s not – and we’re not going to fight disenfranchisement among women starting from that premise, to start with.

It’s about not wanting to take on responsibility as well – which is what you’re getting at, correct? It’s like the core feminist movement is sitting there going “ooh, this ‘responsibility’ thing is so scary, we’re so good for even caring about it”, meanwhile there are women every day taking on this huge life and death responsibility. They probably do a lot more good by failing to help someone than an entire year’s worth of hand-wringing conversations about ‘how can we avoid fucking up’.

And, I don’t think it’s such a simple binary opposition between “oppressors” and “oppressed” and who gets to do what either, at least I didn’t see that in the original post… well, if it’s possible to continue oversimplifying and compare with the situation of feminist men, when I see these guys walking around in Fawcett Society T-shirts (”yes! I’m a man! and a feminist! your mind equals blown!!!”), I want to bang their heads together and shoot them into the sun and generally think feminist men are a bad idea – specially when I encounter the ones that know sooo much better than most women what’s good for us. Then again, some of my strongest influences in terms of feminism have been men, and at the end of the day, I’d rather have Ian MacKaye on my side than Julie Burchill or any number of feminist-identified life and style columnists who think they’ve saved womankind by having a tattoo on their butts. But you don’t see him in a Fawcett Society T-shirt, and even if you did, there’s no way a stupid shirt could undo all the stuff that matters.

It’s the difference between “performing” and “doing”, I guess – those guys with the T-shirts, they’ve had more of an effect through what they are in social terms than anything they’ve done, because they think what they are is mind-blowing enough for all of us little people. Same with the hand-wringing white feminists. To be honest, I’d rather have them think me a racist (it’s happened), and refuse to join in the hand-wringing, because it really feels like they’ve lined up a row of arses to kiss, and I’m fundamentally against that kind of objectification.

Then again, I don’t like having my arse kissed either, and judging by the reaction of some of them when you fail to kiss theirs…