The Gift Of Presence & The Perils Of Advice

https://onbeing.org/blog/the-gift-of-presence-the-perils-of-advice/

Just a bit of perspective - but when people are complaining about "technology", particularly mobile phone usage, this is actually what they're asking. They're longing for more present-ness from people. They're asking you to witness them.

So while I am firmly on the side of "technology is good, the internet has saved lives by bringing connection to those who have little or none, and nobody owes you their attention", when a partner or friend spends a lot of their time on their device while physically spending time with me, it can feel hurtful because it feels like they're not really present and not witnessing either me or our rare and limited time together.

Sometimes I wish various partners I've had wouldn't be so prepared with their charging cables and their phones would just die so they have no choice but to be more *here* with me, because phones are so rarely their "in case of emergency" device there days; they're usually their "get instant answers and check in on people who are not present while the present ones wait for attention" devices.

So maybe "completely unplugging" is an unrealistic or selfish request, but if someone you value is complaining about your devices, perhaps putting it down a little more often and just being in the moment with them is an act of kindness, a response to a bid, that you can afford to pay a little more.

Also, stop with the fucking unsolicited advice. Seriously, if you feel this compulsion, there are tons of FB groups with people asking advice and Quora is a place specifically designed for advice giving.

"Advice-giving comes naturally to our species, and is mostly done with good intent. But in my experience, the driver behind a lot of advice has as much to do with self-interest as interest in the other’s needs — and some advice can end up doing more harm than good."

"He talked while I listened and asked a few more questions. When we were done, he told me that some measure of peace had returned. It was a peace that had come from within him, not from anything I’d said. I’d simply helped clear some rubble that blocked his access to his own soul."

"Here’s the deal. The human soul doesn’t want to be advised or fixed or saved. It simply wants to be witnessed — to be seen, heard and companioned exactly as it is. When we make that kind of deep bow to the soul of a suffering person, our respect reinforces the soul’s healing resources, the only resources that can help the sufferer make it through."

"And yet, we have something better: our gift of self in the form of personal presence and attention, the kind that invites the other’s soul to show up. As Mary Oliver has written:

“This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.”"

How Not To Make Your Female Character "Pass" As A Man In Film

Filmmakers: If your female character is trying to "pass" as a man, and especially if she is from a historical era, don't give her the modern Hollywood "no, I totally woke up with perfect lashes and cheekbones" makeup.

1. She wouldn't have worn that makeup anyway, but I've given up on expecting period pieces to faithfully recreate period makeup; and


2. Nobody in their right mind would believe this person with big doe eyes and pouty lips and hair obviously upswept into a cap is a man. Since there are dire consequences for women "passing" as men in previous eras, she especially would not have been wearing feminine makeup. If anything, she *might* have tried to roughen her face to look more masculine with makeup, but likely she wouldn't have had to wear makeup at all.

Women do not need to constantly have "no makeup" makeup on to be in front of the camera. It doesn't really look "natural" anyway, and if a woman tried to get away with it in the real world while pretending to be a man, she'd never succeed.  Actual men can't "pass" as "real men" if they're "too feminine", what makes you think that merely putting a woman in man's clothing but with women's makeup would?

All it does is make your film look completely unrealistic when people have no idea that she's a woman. It makes the other characters look oblivious and unobservant and clueless when nobody recognizes her as a woman while dressed as a man with eyeliner and lipstick on.  Nobody is buying that this short, very slender person (yet suspiciously bulky in certain places) with long hair tucked into a cap and lined & shadowed eyes is male. Women do not need to look "pretty" 100% of the time, even in movies.

Small Boundary Violations Are Only Signals Of Future Bigger Boundary Violations

Here's the thing.  The latest guy I blocked on FB is an ex-bf.  One of the reasons why I dumped his ass is because I suspected him of spying on my internet activities (we were in a poly relationship at the time, so there was no reason to have done so, other than fucking entitlement, which I'll get to in a moment).

He is a rather skilled computer networking type guy.  In fact, I learned a lot of my own networking skills from him.  Sometime after I moved out, my computer crashed.  I was dating another somewhat skilled networking type guy at the time who helped me recover my hard drive data.  During the deep recovery process, we uncovered a keystroke log buried in my hard drive.

This keystroke log did, in fact, show exactly a private IM conversation I had set up with a friend to "test" to see if this guy was spying on me.  We said some things in that conversation, and when my ex let some things slip that he would only have known if he had seen that conversation, I moved out.  And now here was the evidence that I was not paranoid, he did, indeed, spy on me and it wasn't by chance that he happened to say the right things to make me suspect him.

So, years later, he found me on FB.  Contrary to all my advice to other people, I have a habit of keeping toxic people in my life, justifying to myself that I want to "keep tabs" on them.  So, after about 3 years of letting his friend-request sit in my queue, I dubiously accepted it.

Now he fancies himself a "photographer" because he has money for all the latest technology, which makes just about *anyone* look like a competent photographer without doing all the hard work of learning the foundations of art, like composition, photography history, art theory, color theory, light theory, etc. and he's not a total bull-in-the-china-shop with computers.

So he decides to contradict me online about photography and Photoshop, which he himself admits to not being an "expert", even though *I am one*.  Most of y'all ought to be aware of how I respond to mansplaining my job to me.  So I blocked him.  Because fuck him.  I was already on edge with him with the whole violating-my-privacy thing.

He immediately contacted me using another account.  Not with an apology, of course, but to whine about me responding to his last comment and then blocking him so that he couldn't see my response, and he wasn't trying to argue with me anyway, so why I gotta be so rude and block him?!

Here's that entitlement thing.

You see, when people are told in no uncertain terms "I do not want to talk to you anymore" (which is exactly what a block is, and y'all fucking know it), and they keep trying to talk to you anyway, this is entitlement.  They feel that their desire to continue communicating with you is more important, and worth more consideration, than your desire to NOT communicate with them anymore.

It doesn't matter if it's an apology, if it's to continue the argument, to "explain" that they weren't trying to argue, or what, when someone tries to end communication and you try to continue it, you are, in fact, absolutely saying that your desire to continue trumps their desire to end it.

Here's why I get so pissed off at this:  His entitlement to attention at this very minor argument and his entitlement to my privacy are the same thing.

He feels that he has the right to access me even when I have explicitly said he does not.  My express wishes to cut off contact were dismissed.  The very idea that I could have private internet communication without his knowledge was dismissed.  Whatever reasons he had for violating my privacy, he believed those reasons justified violating my privacy.

And this is why I get so pissed off at people for doing seemingly minor infractions.  These infractions do not happen in a vacuum.  These infractions are usually part of a pattern.  Entitlement is a foundational value, and that value will affect all other interactions with people.  Feeling entitled to access someone, *even when they said no* can and will manifest itself in different ways.  Maybe he has some kind of line drawn somewhere in his head where his entitlement justifies his intrusion into [Group A] people or situations but not [Group B] people or situations.

So, like, maybe if a girl he hit on in a bar said she wasn't interested, he would totally respect that rejection.  But other things that other people told him that he couldn't access, he wouldn't respect those rejections.

"Entitlement" doesn't have to mean that everyone who feels "entitled" are all equally capable of exactly all violations.

But it does mean that they are capable of *some* violations.

And, as a former partner, I happen to know for a fact that he is capable of some violations.

Not only did he install a keystroke log on my computer to spy on my internet activity, he also was one of the MANY former partners I've had who did not take "no" for an answer.  

I fully believe that he would never meet a stranger in a bar, ask her for her phone number, and when she said she wasn't interested, he would never, not in a million years, follow her out of the bar and violently rape her in the parking lot.  He would, however, ask a girlfriend for sex, and when she said "not tonight, honey, I have a headache", he would wait until he thought she was asleep and then start touching her in ways she just said she didn't want.

I know he would do that because he did that to me most nights towards the end of our relationship.  We even fought about it a few times, but he still did it, until I banished him from sleeping with me anymore (we had our own bedrooms, he just slept in my bed every night because I slept in my own bed every night).

Then there was the Tupperware Incident.  I had been engaged before, and my ex-future-mother-in-law bought us a set of Tupperware as an "engagement gift" (considering that she hated me, this was kind of a big deal).  I took the Tupperware when my ex-fiance and I broke up (another relationship I had to "escape" from, but that's a tale for another time).

So, here I am, moving all the way across the country, my first *real* time away from home, and I move in with this guy.  And I bring my Tupperware with me.  Then the suspicions start, then the "test", then I move out.  I tried to mostly get my stuff out of the house while he was at work, to avoid a confrontation.  He knew I was moving, but I was hoping to just not be there one day when he came home.

On my very last trip back for the last of my stuff, he came home as I was putting the last load in my car.  It was awkward and tense, mostly because I didn't actually, "officially" break up with him, I just said I was moving out to try living on my own (since I never had, at that point) and to live closer to campus, where I had started going back to school.

As I walked to my car, he asked about the Tupperware.  He accused me of stealing it from *him*, that he had stolen it from his ex-wife when he kicked her out, and he wanted it back.  We argued, and I tried to end the argument (as I often do) by just leaving.

Before I could close my car door, he literally dived, head-first into the driver's seat and across my lap, holding onto the steering wheel, pinning my legs down, and blocking my view, to prevent me from leaving.

So I laid on the horn and screamed "rape!"  It was dirty play, because he wasn't trying to rape me, but he *was* assaulting me.  Startled, he backed out of the car and I peeled out of the parking lot with my door still open.  I used to street race, and I have a manual transmission, so as long as I could physically operate the car, he was not going to win against me in a car.

I also used to do really foolish shit, like drive with two of my friends hanging onto the hood of the car and one guy laying across the roof of the car, really fast around curved roads.  So I am *not* afraid of using my car ... unconventionally.  I also hit one of my closest friends with my car once, in retaliation for an injury he gave me, so I'm also fine with using my car as a weapon (we had an, let's just say "interesting" relationship - my teen years were kinda dramatic).

All I needed was enough room to operate the vehicle, and I would have driven off with him still hanging on through the open door, if I had to, with absolutely no concern about flinging him out of the car by simply taking a fast turn.  Because I used to do shit like that for fun.

Fortunately, for him, he was startled enough by the scream and the horn and he voluntarily backed out of my car.  I never contacted him again. We had run into each other a couple of times after that, and he never once apologized for physically restraining me as I tried to leave, or even acted awkward or concerned about our last encounter.  As far as I can tell, he doesn't think there was anything unusual about how we broke up, which is fucking frightening.

So when someone violates a boundary like "stop talking to me online", I know that this violation is possible because of a sense of entitlement.  And I know that when someone has a sense of entitlement, it is not isolated to one specific action.  It is an underlying belief structure that informs many different actions.

Which ones, I do *not* know for every single person.  But I know that entitlement sends out little tendrils at the base of their behaviour decision tree, and those tendrils flow under and around and through that decision tree, touching various branches here and there.

So while I don't know exactly what else someone with entitlement is willing to violate, I know that they are willing to violate some things.  When a person is blocked on social media, and that person *immediately* tries to contact the other using another account (and I will make a small exception for those whose attempt at contact is a humble, contrite, PROPER apology with no defensiveness and an awareness of wrongdoing and a willingness for accountability, but I have never actually seen this from anyone who was blocked who then attempted to force more contact within a few moments), then I know they are willing to violate boundaries.

I know this person is unsafe, because they have *just* demonstrated a lack of respect for boundaries, a willingness to violate boundaries, a sense of entitlement that their desires trump others' needs, and *I don't know what else this entitlement will affect*.  But I know that it will affect other interactions.

That makes someone a *very* unsafe person indeed.

So, sure, trying to contact someone after they've blocked you might not seem like a rage-worthy offense in the grand scheme of things, not in isolation.  But doing so reveals that they *are* willing to make rage-worthy offenses, because doing so requires them to have an underlying sense of entitlement to access another person against their express wishes, and that value does not exist in isolation.

What If All Teh Menz Could Not Photograph Any Women For A Period Of Time?

I wish that, for 2 years, all young women everywhere would just all simultaneously refuse to pose for men photographers, for 3 reasons:

• All the young girls who like posing would have to sit for women and anyone else who isn't a man, and they could maybe learn what a non-predatory shoot is like (not that women can't be predatory, but for the most part, women photographers aren't the problem, and WAY too many men use photography as their tool for being predatory, a significant subset of them aren't even bothering to be real photographers, they're just setting up "shoots" to creep on young women);


• Women / enby photographers would finally have their work be in demand and their talent accepted;


• All the male photographers would finally have to learn how to shoot anything other than conventionally pretty, young, thin, white girls and women. Those who already do shoot anything other than that won't even be affected by the spontaneous ban. But everyone else will have to learn how to see beauty in subjects other than young, thin, white women, or else have nothing left to photograph.

To address anyone who thinks ""but if I can't look at women photographed by predators all the sexy ladies will be gone!":

1. I said for 2 years, not forever. I think you'll survive. And there is always the bajillions of predatory porn that already exists.


2. Being photographed by women does not mean there will not be any sexualized photography of women. Women photographers are perfectly capable of photographing erotic or sexualized photography of other women. As both a photographer and a model myself (professional for both), I can say this with certainty.
   
   In fact, that was my second point above.


3. This is never going to happen. This is an expressed desire for teaching people a lesson. Don't treat it as a serious suggestion, listen to the moral lesson behind it.


4. I'm not terribly interested in catering to, nor providing space in my comments for, the desires of people who "wouldn't want to live without" the products of abuse and predation and are willing to trade the lives and mental health of vulnerable young women just to avoid the inconvenience of not having a product available to them for a short period of time. So I just don't care if some people have to "live without".

A Test For Couple Privilege In #Polyamory

If you ever want to see just who is willing to put their money where their mouth is in terms of poly "equality" and "our others are just as important to us as we are to each other", ask if they'd be willing to divorce in order to give one of those other partners legal protections, rights, and obligations, and see how quickly people justify that their need for legal protection is necessary for life and more important than anyone else's need.

Usually the conversation goes like this:

Me:   So, you want your metamours to feel "equal", but you won't divorce so they can marry, huh?

Them:   We can draw up legal documents to make them equal if necessary.

Me:  OK, so then why not divorce and let them marry and YOU draw up legal paperwork to make yourself "equal"?

Them:   Because there's this thing I need that I can only get from marriage.

Me:  ...

Me:  So, you're saying that legal contracts can't give you the same things?

Them:  [without noticing the irony] No, I have to stay married to get this thing.

Me:  0.o

Me:  ::blinkblink::

Me:  So, much like why gay people wanted marriage and said that civil unions were not good enough and they were being treated like second class citizens and did not have equal rights, maybe that's partly why people say you have couple privilege and why they don't want to date couples and why they don't feel truly equal?

Them:   No but they are! We totally love our OSOs as much as each other!

This is why it's about power, not emotions or priorities.

#ItIsEqualAsLongAsIAmNotTheOneToSacrifice #ButItIsDifferentWhenIDoIt #ButIHaveTheGreaterNeed #UntilYouDoNot #ButWhatAboutTheChildren #InATrulyFairSystemSometimesYouHaveToBeTheDisadvantagedOne #WeDoEgalitarianPolyAndDoNotBelieveInCouplePrivilege #ExceptOnlyOurKidsGetHisHealthInsurance #WhatWeAlreadyDecidedNoKidsWithAnyoneElseAnyway #ButWeAreTotallyEgalPolyAndOurSecondariesAreEqual #OopsDidISaySecondariesOutLoud?

"Crazy Ex" Behaviour Is Not The Same Thing As "Real Abuser Lying About Abusive Past" Behaviour

Reminder:  Abuse makes people "crazy", so if you date someone who has an abusive ex, and you later discover that the person you're dating is "crazy" themselves, the proper response isn't to then doubt just how "abusive" their exes really were (particularly when *you saw them* be abusive with your own eyes), but to feel saddened that abuse is so ubiquitous, that your partner has been that badly hurt, and that society's first reaction to your partner's behaviour is to dismiss them as being "crazy" rather than condemn the abuse that makes them behave so irrationally.

Not that people never lie about abusive exes - my abusive ex is sticking to his story that it was his *victim* who was the one who abused *him*.  So I don't mean to say you should never question someone's one-sided story after new evidence comes to light.

I'm just saying that most of the time, when we call an ex "crazy", because of the social convention for the use of that word, it's often for behaviour that they picked up as a direct result of someone harming them.  It's either a survival strategy that no longer works when they're not being harmed, or it's contrary to reality because they no longer have a terrific grasp of reality thanks to someone rewriting their reality for them.

The things that we tend to call "crazy" (as in, "my crazy ex") are not usually the same sorts of things that abusers who flip the script and accuse their victims of being "abusive" tend to do.  If you're dating someone that you start to suspect might have lied about their ex being abusive, there's a good chance that what they're doing to make you suspect this is not behaviour that we culturally refer to as "crazy" from "my crazy ex", generally speaking.  They're probably being more gaslighty and / or controlling, than the sorts of things that we tend to label as "crazy".

Abusers who try to convince people that their former victims are the "real" abusers tend to do other things, like the things found on the Wheel of Abuse, such as gaslighting, manipulating, and other controlling behaviour.  Erratic and "emotional" behaviour and being out of touch with reality is actually more likely to be *confirmation* that the abuse was probably real.  Cool controlling or explosive anger controlling and using your fear to direct your own behaviour is more likely to be the signs that their story of past abuse may not be accurate.

If someone you're dating starts acting in a way that might tempt you to call them "crazy" (because of how we generally use that term), which then prompts you to reevaluate their claims of an abusive ex (even though you may have even seen the abusive behaviour first-hand) just because they're acting irrationally and you think this is reason enough to doubt everything they've ever told you including their abusive past even though their irrational behaviour isn't really related to lying about victimization, then they're probably not "crazy", they're still struggling with their abuse.

You don't have to stick around in that relationship if their response to their trauma is too hard for you to deal with.  Just don't call them "crazy" for it.  They're traumatized.  They're not immune from acting out in harmful ways just because they were a victim themselves, but they are traumatized, not "crazy".