Harmful Communication: The "I Love You" Defense

[Content Note: Abuse; gaslighting.]

"I love you" can be a beautiful and welcome turn of phrase, when it's said to someone who wants to be loved by the person saying it, whether in a romantic or non-romantic context.

It can also be a fraught phrase, especially between two people with different expectations about when and how it should be used—as inside a relationship where one person wants to say and hear it often, and the other person thinks it ought to be held in reserve for special occasions.

It can be a weirdly obligatory phrase, compelling people to reply, "I love you, too," in accordance with embedded expectation, personal or cultural.

One's individual comfort with saying and hearing "I love you" is neither right nor wrong; it's just something that has to be negotiated with other loved and loving people in one's personal sphere.

This post, however, is about a very specific deployment of "I love you," which is always wrong: Saying it in one's own defense.

Example:

Person A: I am upset by X behavior toward me, and here is why, and I would like you to not do that, please.

Person B: But I love you.

That's a very simplistic representation of a type of exchange that will be familiar to many of us. It might go something a little more like:

Person A: I am upset by X behavior toward me, and here is why, and I would like you to not do that, please.

Person B: You are wrong to feel that way. Intent argument. Gaslighting.

Fight fight fight.

Person B: I'm sorry if your feelings were hurt. But you know that I love you.

Person A: BRB going to read the Terrible Bargain again.

Here's the thing: Love is a verb. (So is "care" in the similarly deployed "I care about you.") It's not a fixed state of mind, where as long as someone has decided they love another person, that's all there is to it. Love is an action—or, better, a series of ongoing actions that constitute loving behavior. The act of loving somebody.

When "I love you" is deployed as a defense, an invoked reminder, it functions to communicate the idea "I can't hurt you, because I love you."

In refusing to apologize, and to be accountable, and to listen to someone who is articulating a boundary, and instead "reminding" them that you love them, that you have always loved them and always will, you are effectively, even if unintentionally, communicating these things:

1. That love and harm are mutually exclusive capacities.

2. That love is static, and does not require the active work of negotiating boundaries.

3. That the person is saying they don't feel loved, rather than saying they don't feel respected.

This last one is a biggie. And it's a biggie because, while certainly there are times that a consistent subversion of safety and/or respect can undermine one's belief that someone loves them, mostly people who are willing to take the time to address an issue of safety and/or respect with a loved one is aware that the person loves them. (Otherwise, there's little incentive to invest the time to address it.) So "I love you" thus functions as a red herring, to make the issue about something it patently isn't.

As a result, treating "I love you" as a defense or resolution may also function, inadvertently or maliciously, as a way of implying that the "real" issue is that the person with a rightful complaint is the problem—a broken person who just doesn't have the capacity to accept love.

When the problem is not feeling unloved, but unheard.

The response to "this thing you do makes me feel unsafe or disrespected" is "I hear you, and I will not do that thing that makes you feel unsafe or disrespected anymore." It isn't "I love you." Listening is the required act of love.

"I love you" comes after that love is in evidence, and not before. Or instead.

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OMG LOL

After our We Love Puzzly Type Games thread the other day, Ive gotten so many emails from people who are now completely obsessed with 2048, lol.

Among them was an email from Shaker Mod Hallelujah_Hippo, who sent me the link to DOGE2048. (Please be advised that there are moving and flashing gifs in the game.)

Obviously, that is amazing. And I got to the top-level dog way faster than I got to the 1024, lol. I haven't even reached 2048 yet!

Damn you, 1024! DAMMMMMMMMMMN YOUUUUUUUUUU!

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Quippy

[Content Note: Misogyny.]

As you may have noticed, I have, over many years of being an outspoken feminist, developed a repertoire of snappy responses to tiresome misogynist accusations and rhetoricals.

You're too easily offended. I'm not offended; I'm contemptuous.

You're too angry. I'm not angry; I'm dissatisfied.

You're too sensitive. Or maybe it's just that you're not sensitive enough.

What do you expect? More.

Etc.

Earlier today, I was speaking with a friend about the old "Is there anything you like?" chestnut.

As I bet you won't be surprised to hear, I've been asked that question many times in my life! At the job which was the most horrible job of all the jobs, where I worked for a misogynist, homophobic, racist, transphobic, Christian Supremacist, fat-hating Bush fanatic during the '04 election, he asked me once if I liked anything. To which I replied, "I am inordinately fond of annoying you."

Which has since been deployed many times, always to my profound amusement.

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Got any snappy comebacks to common silencing memes you'd like to share? Have at it in comments!

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Daily Dose of Cute

Zelda loves to sleep in the weirdest positions, and this is certainly one the weirdest (and most adorable):

I can't even begin to understand how that can be comfortable, lol.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.

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The Friday Blogaround

This blogaround brought to you by polka dots.

Recommended Reading:

Stephanie: [Content Note: Anti-choice terrorism; harassment; racism] Why I Am in Solidarity with Mireille Miller-Young

Maya: [CN: Misogyny] Vintage Sexism: 20 Things Men Don't Like about Women in the Office

Jason: [CN: Discussion of racism and anti-affirmative action narratives] Why I Support Affirmative Action: One Asian American Perspective

Steve: [CN: Homophobia] Jason Collins Says NBA Player Taunted Him with Anti-Gay Remark

D.L. [CN: Self-harm; racism; dehumanization; othering; exploitation] Enslaved Human Zoo Captive Ota Benga Ended Life on This Day in 1916

Prison Culture: [CN: Racism; internment] George Fujii and the Travesty of Japanese Internment

Trudy of Gradient Lair also does a round-up weekly, and it is terrific, and you should check it out!

Leave your links and recommendations in comments...

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Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

The theme from 227

This week's TMNS brought to you by lady-centric sitcoms I loved.

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In the News

Here is some stuff in in the news today...

Here is just a typically terrific Politico piece about whether Hillary Clinton delaying her announcement about whether she'll run for president is a good thing because it shortens the primary season thus sparing candidates who will run if she doesn't a lot of the "eating each other alive" quality of extended primaries, or if it's the WORST MOST TERRIBLE AND HORRIBLE MONSTROUS THING EVARRRR because she is a selfish, self-absorbed, narcissistic devil. (I'm paraphrasing.) (Slightly.)

In other Clinton news, Gallup finds that her top "selling point" as a potential candidate is that she'd be the first female president. Which I find really interesting, especially juxtaposed with the finding that now only 1% of respondents say that the country isn't "ready" for a female president.

[Content Note: Sexual harassment] Anita Hill, whose testimony about allegations of sexual harassment against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas were a central part of his confirmation hearings, said yesterday that "as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Vice President Joe Biden did a 'terrible job' overseeing Thomas' confirmation hearings in 1991." Yes, yes he did. And that's a pretty charitable way of putting it, since Biden basically straight-up called Hill a liar.

New legislation introduced by Democratic Representative from New Mexico Michelle Lujan Grisham would "significantly improve the ability of immigrant women and families to access affordable health care." The Health Equity and Access Under the Law (HEAL) for Immigrant Women and Families Act of 2014 would "eliminate discriminatory barriers to coverage, including the current 5-year ban on enrollment after an immigrant has established lawful status...immediately restore full Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) coverage to immigrants who are authorized to live and work in the US and are otherwise eligible for coverage...[and] remove the exclusion of DREAMers who have been granted deferred action through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program from obtaining insurance under the Affordable Care Act."

[CN: Racism] More evidence that suggests public schools are used as a pipeline to prison for many black students in the US: "Data to be released Friday by the Education Department's civil rights arm finds that black children represent about 18 percent of children enrolled in preschool programs in schools, but almost half of the students suspended more than once. ...Advocates have long said that get-tough suspension and arrest policies in schools have contributed to a 'school-to-prison' pipeline that snags minority students, but much of the emphasis has been on middle school and high school policies. This data shows the disparities starting in the youngest of children. ...Overall, the data shows that black students of all ages are suspended and expelled at a rate that's three times higher than that of white children. Even as boys receive more than two-thirds of suspensions, black girls are suspended at higher rates than girls of any other race or most boys."

[CN: Anti-choice harassment] Englewood, New Jersey, has enacted a buffer zone rule to protect clinic patients from harassment. "Anti-choice protesters in Englewood, New Jersey, can no longer come within an eight-foot radius of a health-care facility’s entrance, exit, or driveway." Eight feet is such a small buffer, especially given the aggressive tactics used by anti-choice harassers. But at least it's something.

[CN: Racism; whitewashing] A petition has been launched in opposition to the casting of white actress Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily, a Native American character, in a new film version of Peter Pan. Like, I'm wondering at what point studios will stop supporting whitewashed characters, if not out of basic decency, which apparently eludes them, then out of a self-interested desire to avoid this kind of legitimate and predictable criticism?

Do you want to see the first posters for the upcoming Dumb and Dumber sequel, which is being made 20 years after the first film's release? Well, if you want to, here they are.

Jem and the Holograms is getting its own live-action screen version. And I was pretty excited about that until I read that it's being directed by the guy who directed G.I. Joe, which was SO terrible, AND it's not being set in the '80s. Boo. All I can say is that Aja, Shana, and Carmen had better not be whitewashed!

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He Knows Not What He Did

[Content Note: Homophobia.]

Fred Phelps is dead. 

And I am thinking about his life.  I want to state clearly, right up front, that nothing -- nothing -- could justify or mitigate the hatred he fomented during his lifetime, and I have no urge to do that.  This is merely a story about the unintended consequences of his bigotry.

Fred Phelps radicalized my parents.

I grew up and came out as queer in Kansas.  At present (after a 34 year hiatus) I live in Kansas once again. 

When I first heard of Fred Phelps, I didn’t live in Kansas -- I lived in Portland, Oregon -- a place that I “fled to” in the late 1970’s, seeking a life where I could express my queerness with a higher degree of comfort than I’d found in my native state.

Then, Phelps was just some far-off weirdo -- in the early 90’s, queer friends who lived in and around Topeka would report to me about some creepy old local minister protesting Teh Gay in all its forms.

At the time, I was in a something of a state of political burn-out.  Since 1988, I’d been actively engaged in preventing anti-gay laws proposed by the “Oregon Citizens Alliance” (see also: Scott Lively) from passing in my new home state.

I’ll admit it -- I held Phelps in my mind as “business-as-usual for Kansas” while I focused on battle lines in Oregon -- a state that I thought of as my personal queer haven.

As time went on, though, the far-off, seemingly not-my-problem minister came closer and closer -- showing up in larger and larger news-markets, and finally hitting the big time (coverage on CNN) when he picketed Matthew Shepherd’s funeral.

In the meanwhile, something else was happening.

My parents, who lived less than an hour away from Fred Phelps’ church, had been seeing reports of his bigotry on local news reports for years.

My parents, now in their late 80’s, are both life-long Democrats.  They have been, and remain, quietly committed liberals who chose to make their lives in a state that has become more and more conservative.

My mother and father visited me in Portland in 1981, and I (finally) came out to them.  My mother said: “Well, I’ve begun to think differently about this since I first began to suspect.” (Which is a whole ‘nother story.)  “We love you, and we will always love you.”

In other words, when I first came out to my parents, they were accepting.  Please note:  This was way better than the coming-out experiences of most of my Kansan friends.  I felt relieved and fortunate.

For the next ten years, my parents demonstrated what was, at the time, considered to be pretty stellar Parent-Of-Queer behavior -- they welcomed my partner(s) at family celebrations, they remained involved in my life, and they never attempted to convince me that I should try to be straight.

Of course, we never really talked about any of this -- but for me, that wasn’t anything new.  As the daughter of a Germanic/Swedish Midwestern family, I’d come to accept that we didn’t really talk about anything that might be controversial or uncomfortable.  (Except maybe one-on-one, late at night, after everyone else was in bed, and we’d had a couple of drinks.)

And then there was -- Fred Phelps.

I generally talked to my parents a couple of times a month in the years that I lived in Oregon.  The first time I can remember my parents talking with me over the phone about my experience of being queer in a straight world was after they’d seen a local report on one of Phelps’ protests (in the early 90’s, before the Phelps made national news).

Mom:  “So . . . have you heard of Fred Phelps?”

Me:  “Oh yeah -- oh yeah -- I’ve heard of him.”

Dad:  “Well . . .does that make you . . . feel bad?  It’s just so horrible . . . ”

I went on to explain to my parents that I’d been dealing with people like this my entire life, and that I’d developed a pretty thick skin when it came to people who acted with such overt bigotry.  I told them that I found it far more complicated to deal with people who didn’t actually know that they were bigoted against queers.

“What do you mean?” one of them asked . . .  and so the conversation (finally) began.

Within a year, they had moved from “accepting/tolerant” parents of their lesbian daughter to active advocates for queer rights.

They began by standing up in church when their synod was debating LGBTQI issues. They told everyone that their daughter was gay, and that they hoped that she would always be welcome and included in the church -- at every level.

In 1992, they showed up at the gay bar in Colorado where I was doing a benefit concert to raise money to fight anti-queer laws that were up for election in that state.

When those laws passed, they wrote letters to the legislators, Attorney General, and Governor of Colorado and told them that they would not be spending a single dime in Colorado until the laws were repealed (my parents had vacationed in CO regularly prior to this).

My dad started interrupting conservative friends when they were verbally queer-bashing and saying, “I find that offensive.  Please stop.”  If they gave him any pushback, he’d say “My daughter -- you know her, right?  She’s a lesbian.  When you talk that way, you’re talking about her.  You don’t want to talk about her that way, do you?”

Did they get the words and approaches wrong sometimes?  Sure.  We all do, sometimes.  But -- they were talking about it.

Fred Phelps helped them see the end-game of bigotry, and helped them to understand that it wasn’t enough for them to simply remain silent and hope that somehow, somehow, things would change.

Fred Phelps put them on notice that they had to be part of that change.

I’m not grateful to Phelps for that -- but I am grateful to my parents for this:  When they heard Fred Phelps say that God Hates Fags, they heard that he was saying that God Hates me -- and they knew that was bullshit.  And they called it bullshit, in their own quiet, retired-school-teacher ways.

My parents were born in the late 1920’s -- once, when I was talking to my mom about my experience of being queer in this society, and telling her how important it was to me when they could (and did) speak openly and easily about me being queer, her eyes widened for a moment with realization:  “Oh!  You know -- I always knew people who were like you -- but when I was growing up, if you wanted to help them, the thing you did was not talk about them.  I see how that’s different now.”

Fred Phelps talked about me. 

My parents talked back.

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Welp

[Content Note: Invasion of privacy.]

Meet the drone that can hack your phone:

Hackers have developed a drone that can steal the contents of your smartphone -- from your location data to your Amazon password -- and they've been testing it out in the skies of London. The research will be presented next week at the Black Hat Asia cybersecurity conference in Singapore.

The technology equipped on the drone, known as Snoopy, looks for mobile devices with Wi-Fi settings turned on.

Snoopy takes advantage of a feature built into all smartphones and tablets: When mobile devices try to connect to the Internet, they look for networks they've accessed in the past.

...Users can protect themselves by shutting off Wi-Fi connections and forcing their devices to ask before they join networks.

One of the guys who developed the drone, Sensepost security researcher Glenn Wilkinson, says he's "an ethical hacker. The purpose of this research is to raise awareness of the vulnerabilities of smart devices." Good intentions pave the road blah blah.

While most of the applications of this hack are creepy, it could also be used for law enforcement and public safety. During a riot, a drone could fly overhead and identify looters, for example.

For example.

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Open Thread

Hosted by a snail.

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Question of the Day

Suggested by Shaker masculine_lady: "What apps do you use for productivity/having your shit together?"

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Throwback Thursdays

[Please share your own throwback pix in comments. Just make sure the pix are just of you and/or you have consent to post from other living people in the pic. And please note that they don't have to be pictures from childhood, especially since childhood pix might be difficult for people who come from abusive backgrounds or have transitioned or lots of other reasons. It can be a picture from last week, if that's what works for you. And of course no one should feel obliged to share a picture at all! Only if it's fun!]

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Yeah, And?

[Content Note: War on agency.]

Democratic Congressman from Michigan Gary Peters, who is currently running for a US Senate seat, opposed Michigan's "rape insurance" bill which was passed last December and took effect earlier this month. In a statement last week, Peters said: "As the father of two daughters, I struggle with how to tell them that the state we love and where our family has been for generations is now unfairly discriminating against them and makes health care less affordable."

Cue the hyperbolic anti-choice reaction:

Right to Life of Michigan — the right-wing group that was instrumental in getting the new law approved last winter — has seized on that sentiment. In a new website highlighting Peters' abortion policy positions, the group cites Peters' recent comments to assert that the pro-choice lawmaker "wants to make sure abortion is accessible and cheap for his daughters."

In response, Peters reiterated his support for access to reproductive healthcare and asserted, "To include my teenage daughters in their attack crosses the line."

I like his response because he doesn't actually reject their contention. And nor should he. Because there's nothing wrong with wanting to make sure abortion is accessible and affordable for one's daughters, should they ever need to terminate a pregnancy. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, that's being a pretty good dad.

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Recommended Reading

[Content Note: Fat shaming; medical malfeasance.]

"The Shame of Fat-Shaming" by Sayantani DasGupta. This piece is so terrific; I'm not even going to excerpt it. Just go read the whole thing.

(In which is quoted, by the way, Shaker Mod Hallelujah_Hippo's excellent piece on the WaPo article about the fat-hating doctor.)

My thanks to Professor DasGupta for her wonderful article, and to Professor Daniel Goldberg for the heads-up.

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On Parks and Recreation

[Content Note: Bullying; fat hatred.]

I've gotten a few emails and tweets lately asking why I stopped doing a Parks and Rec open thread every week, so I thought I'd just write a quick post to address those queries.

Parks & Rec is a show I loved (A LOT) for a very long time, even though I always saw that it had problems. I can't think of any shows I really like and watch regularly that don't have some sort of problem, from a social justice perspective, so I'm not really anticipating perfection from any show (although I'm always expecting more). Whether I watch and enjoy something tends to be based on whether the good stuff significantly outweighs the bad (for me).

Each of us draws those lines in different places.

Long-time readers of my Parks and Rec threads know I had problems with the bullying of the Gary Gergich character, and with the fat hatred on Parks and Rec, as the two most ongoing (but not exclusive) issues with the show. Over the past couple of seasons, the fat hatred has gotten worse, and so has the bullying of Gary. It crossed my line.

I can tell you the exact moment it just became too much for me: It was when Gary, who the characters had long been called Jerry, returned to work, only to have them start calling him Larry, despite their all being aware that is not his name. I was just over it.

I do still watch the show, for the most part, but I watch it half-heartedly, and find myself increasingly detached from it. I don't feel inclined to give it space at this blog anymore.

I'm certainly not telling you not to like the show. Like what you like! We all like problematic things. I just wanted to explain why I'm not writing about it anymore. To my regret.

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Quote of the Day

[Content Note: Sexual violence.]

"The system worked. I've always been proud of my Army."—Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair, who struck a plea deal after a captain who served under him in Afghanistan alleged he forced her to perform oral sex and threatened to kill her. Sinclair was sentenced today to pay $24,100 in fines and restitution, but was not sentenced to any jail time nor demoted.

The most serious charges against Sinclair were dropped as part of the deal he made midway through his high-profile court martial, but he still could have faced prison time.

Instead, a military judge gave him a reprimand, ordered him to pay $5,000 a month for four months, plus $4,100 for improper use of his official credit card...

His rank was not reduced, but if it's unclear if he will face a reduced pension when he retires. Sinclair now earns about $12,000 a month.

The system worked, he says. Yeah. It worked for a rapist, not for his victim.

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Daily Dose of Cute

I don't even know, lol.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.

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Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

The theme from Alice

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Today in Great Ideas

[Content Note: Poverty; domestic violence.]

Faith and Freedom Coalition founder Ralph Reed thinks that making divorce more difficult is a better solution to poverty than food stamps:

In an interview with MSNBC's Morning Joe to push his latest book, Reed asserted that the national debt was connected to the decline in the nation's morality.

Host Mika Brzezinski wondered why Reed had compared divorce to drug use, human trafficking and legalized gambling to prove the country was in decline.

"I personally think the no-fault divorce revolution in the 60s and 70s has not been good for society," Reed explained. "Certainly, I recognize that couples are not going to be able to stay together. That's been true throughout society, but do we really want to make it easier for a man to discard the wife of his youth than it is for him to fire his secretary, for him to basically go in and say goodbye when 40 percent of all child support is never paid?"

"And when we know, 40 percent of the women and children that are thus cast aside end up in poverty," he added. "A woman is far more likely to end up in poverty. A man's income goes up. So, a lot of the poverty problem in America is a problem of women and children abandoned by the husbands and fathers."

MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle pointed out that Reed should support more federal programs like food stamps if he was concerned about poor women and children.

Reed, however, argued that making divorce more difficult was a "better solution" than food stamps.

The "no-fault divorce revolution" made it easier for women who were being abused by their husbands to divorce them.

Among the many deplorable conservative fantasies about marriage are:

1. All men are the primary breadwinners in their families.

2. That a man who is forced to stay married will be a good husband and/or father. But a man who refuses to pay child support and/or alimony is just as capable of controlling finances and withholding funds inside a marriage.

3. That a woman and/or children are better off forcibly held together to an abusive husband/father than they are away from him, even if they're impoverished as a result. Which, of course, is not an inevitable result, if only we would robustly fund the social safety net.

4. That children always need a father. This argument often comes up in discussions of households headed by single mothers, multi-generational female relatives, and lesbian parents, in a framework of how children need a strong male role model (which, many conservatives assert, only a father can be). Less discussed is the fact that some fathers are so shitty that their presence does harm to their kids. No, it's really not necessarily better to have a present father who abuses and/or neglects you than it is to have an absent father.

(That's not a comprehensive list of problems with conservative views on marriage and parenting.)

Reed says that the no-fault divorce revolution was a disaster and that "a lot of the poverty problem in America is a problem of women and children abandoned by the husbands and fathers." But the truth is, the no-fault divorce revolution was very important for women, and a lot of the poverty problem in America is a problem of women and children abandoned by their government, at the urging of conservatives like Ralph Reed.

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Fun Fact! The first protest in which I ever participated was protesting Ralph Reed coming to speak at my university campus. We won. Fuck you, Ralph Reed.

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In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today...

[Content Note: Death via state execution] Ray Jasper, whose letter from Texas' death row was published earlier this month, has been executed. Capital punishment just does not feel like justice to me.

[CN: Airline disaster] Australia found two objects on a satellite image that may (or may not) be debris from missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. But reconnaissance aircraft "were unable to verify the discovery...amid visibility limited by cloud and rain before the search ended for the day."

CNN has been obsessively covering the missing flight, and the coverage has included some truly absurd speculation. The latest: Don Lemon asks if it's preposterous to consider Flight 370 was enveloped by a black hole. Seriously. The most trusted name in news, folks.

[CN: Guns; terrorism; Islamophobia] Shots were fired into the Islamic Center of Hattiesburg (Mississippi) Tuesday. Fortunately, there was no one in the building at the time, and the damage was minimal. Police will "will pursue the incident as a malicious mischief case." Um. Well, I certainly hope that will change if the investigation suggests it was something more.

[CN: War on agency] Sahil Kapur has "Everything You Need to Know about the Supreme Court Taking on Birth Control." This is very important: "A defeat for the government would expand the concept of corporate personhood by concluding that a for-profit business can hold religious beliefs that afford it special treatment under the law."

[CN: Misogyny] The ACLU shares the story of Angela Ames, who was forced out of her job after returning to work while still breastfeeding, and asks you to share your story if you've experienced similar workplace discrimination.

[CN: Racism] Further evidence of why there is a racial wealth gap in the US: "Before the recession, black-owned small businesses received 8.2 percent of all loans through the Small Business Administration. That figure is now down to 1.7 percent, according to an analysis by the Wall Street Journal. The total number of loans they are currently getting is similarly low: 2.3 percent of the roughly 54,000 doled out through the agency, down from 11 percent in 2008."

New dinosaur! "The fossilised remains of a bizarre, bird-like dinosaur, nicknamed the 'chicken from hell' by scientists, have been unearthed in the US." LOL.

[Video] Welp, this is one of the most amazing solves on Wheel of Fortune anyone will ever see!

This is, for sure, my favorite headline of the day: "Gwyneth Paltrow is the face of a salmon-placenta skincare line, naturally."

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