A person I trust and love wrote me a letter about a month ago. I read it, responded (I hope) as graciously as I felt, and haven’t read it since. But it stuck with me, and it’s part of the reason I haven’t been blogging as often.
The way I remember what this friend told me (which may be different from what they wrote), I am very close to getting it but still falling short. The person told me this with so much kindness that I could take it as nothing but valuable constructive-criticism, not only of my way of thinking, but of my way of being.
This particular person had the misfortune to be my first official student, and they worked hard to hear the lessons I offered. Through their diligence, they earned a tremendous amount of respect from me, a respect they continue to reinforce in every interaction we have, lo these many years on.
How could the generously offered constructive-criticism of someone I respect not work its change on me?
The “it” I’m so close to getting has to do with the variety of progressive movements circulating around the lived questions of race, gender, sexuality, and identity, and how they each — individually and intersectionally — relate to power.
The main thrust, as I understand it, is that because of thousands of years of history that have led to a dying earth sick with the diseases of violence, greed, and corruption, an earth where every victim cries out with “Me too!” just to remind others that they matter, it is officially times up on the crime of male domination, with particular penalties to straight white cis males for their historic role in an unfair share of mass murders and genocides.
I am okay with this.
But it leaves me with the question: what should I do?
Maybe the answer, truly, is to do nothing. Anything I might do to advance the cause would, by dint of my doing it, hurt the cause. No one, including this straight white cis man, wants a straight white cis man to increase his power by connecting the identity of straight white cis men to this stage of human progress.
Further, by removing myself from the field, I allow someone who once upon a time is and was marginalized to approach from the shadows and sing out their truth, and in their song, enhance and entrance our species’ understanding of itself.
But the problem is: I just love to write.
Yes, I haven’t blogged much during the past few weeks, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing. I’m working on a couple of pieces that will probably never see the light of day, and maybe…just maybe…that’s a good thing.
I have faith that the pieces I’m writing are good (that is, if you think my blog is any good), but I honestly don’t believe the world has any use for them.
Last week, Sen. Lindsay Graham said calmly, “I know I’m a single white male from South Carolina, and I’m told I should shut up, but I will not shut up, if that’s ok.“
It’s not okay, Sen. Graham. On behalf of white males, please shut up. We had our say, and everyone can feel where that’s got us: a world that is drowning in debt, depression, and easily preventable death. Us white males should not be in charge anymore. So please, shut up.
The best thing to do right now for males in general and straight white cis males in particular is for us to ease the burden. I imagine myself as a nurse in a war, and I shiver at the physicality of it, the blood, sweat, and tears of it. I imagine myself as a homemaker, and I balk at the cost of it. I imagine myself as a servant, and I stubbornly and pridefully cry, not willing or wanting to think of anyone else as master.
But if not on the battlefield, in the home, or in the fields, how else to ease the burden? It must be in a way that stays completely behind the scenes, where my efforts sustain the progress of others rather than advance my own.
My friend suggested opening Fluid Imagination to other writers, to use whatever skill sets I have to establish the website as a viable amplifier of nontraditional voices whose stories, philosophies, and opinions might contribute something of significance to the chorus of today.
The only problem is that turning Fluid Imagination into a viable amplifier would take a lot of work, and to put it mildly, I’m not looking for more work.
(Maybe someday; definitely not now.)
Leaving me with this: a blog that doesn’t get updated as often as a blog ought to be updated because you don’t need to hear what another straight white cis male thinks about Judge Kavanaugh. Or what he thinks about the Patriots. Or Game of Thrones. Or the end of the climate as we’ve almost always known it. There are other, better voices than mine speaking truths about these things with more beauty and power than I know how to identify. You don’t need to waste time or energy wrestling with my pot-infused, white-male confused assertions about the truth of this or that.
Which leaves me with this: a blog that’s not about a lot of things being updated less often than any blog ought to be.
And yet, still I write. Still I write.
And some days, like today, I publish, because I don’t know what else to do.