Part of my household work as a life partner involves attempting to minimize my family's exposure to rape culture. We'd gotten pretty good at this: pre-screening movies & tv, keeping an eye out for trigger warnings and content notices on print and online media, and cultivating feminism in our village.
That all changed the day the phrase "grab them by the pussy" entered our national lexicon.
Adults in my family haven't slept the same since. Whatever shield there was, whatever bubble we'd created is gone. The patriarchal poison in our culture colors our windows, stinks up the air, and covers our newsmedia in a greasy film. There's no prescreening for the national stories of the day; there are no content notices on our representatives' Twitter feeds. How men are allowed - encouraged even - to treat women is clear. More disturbingly, the giant number of Americans who normalize and apologize for this treatment is clear. Now that we know better, we have to do better.
So to my dear friends wishing and begging for politics to be separate from our daily entertainment/communication/information media, I'm sorry to say this is not a luxury we are afforded anymore. In truth, to have ever been able to consider politics an abstraction was a privilege, and for better or worse, this privilege grows more rare by the day. Silence is louder than screams right now.
I'm not saying we should be fundamentalist about our socio-political ideas. Far from it. We have to listen to each other, we have to entertain differing perspectives, we have to compromise. However, we also have to stop pretending we can have peace without justice, and we have to stop harboring violence, abuse, and oppression in our communities in the name of preserving an unjust peace.
I AM saying we must embrace our discomfort with politics in public as part of our collective growth process. The shock of the recent campaign and election has clearly catalyzed an awakening, and in this I find hope. Awakened constituents are loud and active, and this is a really good thing: our representative bodies cannot help but react to clear cultural changes in the populace. We've seen it happen before.
Therefore, I can't find it in my heart to resist President Trump. He's clearly being manipulated, and is also clearly out of touch with both the spirit and the letter of the presidency. The legislative and judicial branches are designed to resist him, and part of that - congress - can be very responsive to cultural change. I think our energy is better spent engaging the institutions designed to check the president, driving change at the local and state level, and playing as little of the president's personality game as possible.
I am resisting against the culture that elevated him. I am resisting against patriarchy, white supremacy, heteronormativity, and the unbridled capitalism that leads us both to value one another in terms of our contributions to the economy, and also to make heroes out of amoral, small-minded, and unfeeling men. I am resisting against a culture of political disinterest, in favor of education, understanding, and empowerment on a personal level.
Part of this we do by discussing, and then voting on and acting on, political content, sure. However, part of this is also making sure we continue to feed and nurture the other parts of our selves. We have to make art. We have to celebrate. We have to laugh. None of this denies how politics is affecting our daily lives, but instead fortifies us, giving us both the strength to fight, and reminders of what we're fighting for. If there's no escaping it (there's not, but I wish there was), we're instead charged with working through our political ugliness together to build a Just Peace.
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