Tag: abuse

The Generation That Respected Our Parents

Content warning: reference to child abuse; guns; death

An image of a brick wall, with white text, mostly in a bulleted list, that reads, “I’m part of the generation that: Respected Our Parents Drank From a Garden Hose  Stood for the Flag  Played Outside  Had Toy Guns  Got Spanked  And I SURVIVED SHARE IF YOU DID TOO!” There is also a smiling Minion wearing goggles, from the “Despicable Me” franchise. The credits in the lower right-hand corner say “Minions - for the Old Folks.” Really.
An image of a brick wall, with white text, mostly in a bulleted list, that reads, “I’m part of the generation that:
Respected Our Parents
Drank From a Garden Hose 
Stood for the Flag 
Played Outside 
Had Toy Guns 
Got Spanked 
And I SURVIVED
SHARE IF YOU DID TOO!” There is also a smiling Minion wearing goggles, from the “Despicable Me” franchise. The credits in the lower right-hand corner say “Minions – for the Old Folks.” Really.

As an elder Millennial, I admit that the rhetoric of the whole Millennials (et al.) vs. Boomers (et al.) feud can feel irrelevant and reductive at times.

As much as I love the utility of an all-encompassing catchphrase, and respect parody in the service of iconoclastic comedy, “Okay, Boomer” is sometimes used in ways that force much more complicated issues into the framework of a simple generation gap.

So, I acknowledge that simple inter-generational snark has its limits.

Still, I’m going to paint with broad strokes today, because this macro has handed me an enticingly broad brush.

I’d almost like to believe that this was created by a 30-something with more qualifications and fewer prospects than most financially-secure 65+-year olds ever had to face, but ultimately I think it reads like a genuine artifact by and for “the Old Folks.”

Most of the bulleted items are clearly dog whistles, but I’m really hung up the “garden hose” one.

“Respect for parents” covers all manner of “kids these days” sins: majoring in English, not having kids when it sure seems to be the right time, enforcing healthy boundaries, being gay… the list goes on.

No respect.

In “stood for the flag,” we have a defense of all kinds of thoughtless patriotism, including implicit support for police brutality and the willingness (some might say obligation) to attempt to conceal the hardwood foundations of American racism beneath the questionable beige carpeting of respectability politics.

“Played outside” feels like general pearl-clutching about the Video Games, the Computers, and/or All Those Electronic Devices turning everyone into screen-obsessed couch potatoes (who also know how to set up All Your Electronic Devices).

“Had toy guns” could be an enormous and depressing post of its own, but we’ll just settle here for a general preference to minimize the scope and sociopolitical clout of the NRA.

That spanking bullet is good old Normalization of Child Abuse*.

And then what’s left is… non-traditional drinking apparatus.

Am I missing the dog whistle?

My best guess is that it’s somehow meant to be sissy (read: feminine-adjacent; read: weak; read: inferior) to NOT be willing to drink out of the garden hose, but I also have to admit that still feels like a stretch.

Just, has drinking out of a hose vs. a faucet really ever been a point of contention? It’s so oddly specific.

BOOMER: You look like someone who used a KITCHEN tap your whole life! Go ahead. Drink from this sun-hot rubber hose.

MILLENNIAL: I mean, I CAN, I’m not technically opposed to it, I just don’t see why…

B: DRINK IT!

M: …if I do, will you stop telling me to hit my kids?…

B: *shakes head slowly*

*maintains eye contact*

*proffers hose*

Also, the whole “Share if you survived!” thing feels unnecessarily cruel (but then again, I’m one of those Easily Offended Millennials, so what do I know?).

I think the intended meaning of “I survived” is just an effort to minimize the validity of all of these other debates.

Like, “Geez, no one DIED.”

Except… some people did.

Because of institutionalized racism.

Because of child abuse.

Because of both real and toy guns.

The dead ones just aren’t out there posting Minion memes.

Animated gif of Ted Danson on the show “The Good Place,” holding up a plush Minion doll in amazement

*This is actually old but it is not actually good

It Doesn’t Matter

Trigger Warning: Sexual assault and abuse.

Content Note: Animated gifs.

A light tan, textured background has a stylized line drawing of a couple who appear to be a man and a woman, embracing, with a heart covering their faces. The black serif font says, "It doesn't matter who hurt you, or broke you down. What matters is who made you smile again." The word "smile" is in red. The lower left-hand corner logo says "Heart Centered Rebalancing."
A light tan, textured background has a stylized line drawing of a couple who appear to be a man and a woman, embracing, with a heart covering their faces. The black serif font says, “It doesn’t matter who hurt you, or broke you down. What matters is who made you smile again.” The word “smile” is in red. The lower left-hand corner logo says “Heart Centered Rebalancing.”

NO.

Animated gif of the character Titus from “The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” shaking his head “no” and also shaking his finger “no”

NO.

Animated gif of the character Lana from “Archer” saying “noooooope”

NO.

Animated gif of a white bird vigorously shaking its head from side to side.

NO.

Animated gif of sock puppet aliens from “Sesame Street,” looking at a rotary telephone and saying, “Nope nope nope.”

NO.

You don’t need to invalidate your partner’s (or your own) history of trauma in order for good times to also exist.

Animated gif of a star trailing a glittering rainbow from NBC’s “The More You Know” TV campaign from the ’90s

Three guesses about who wrote this:

  1. A person who once caused another person to break down and just wants them to get over it, already.
  2. A person who wants to be the person who makes someone else smile again, once they just get over that time they were broken, already.
  3. Brett Kavanaugh #topicalhumor2018# #ioriginallywrotethisin2018 #thatfeelslike20yearsago #abortionishealthcare #nomeansno

The categories of “having been hurt” and “being able to smile” are not mutually exclusive.

Why are they being presented as if they are? Let’s explore!

I get the sense that the author was going for a chiasmus-type thing, and failed, but they wanted the basic infrastructure to uphold the illusion of forethought.

I could probably find a more precise rhetorical term for this setup than “failed chiasmus,” and maybe some day I will learn it, and then update this post. Hold your breath for that. #itsbeenthreeyearsandistilldidntdoit

At any rate, let’s see how the basic point holds up without the syntactic support of not-quite-chiasmus.

“The identity of who hurt you and how they did it isn’t important, as long as you don’t forget that there are also people who make you happy!”

“It’s important to remember to smile after you’ve been hurt by abuse, and also that you remember to give humble li’l me sufficient credit for making you do it. Smile, that is!”

“The experiences that shaped you aren’t as important to me as the warm, fuzzy feelings I want you to be having right now!”

“Happy is better than sad!”

We’ll just table cisheteronormativity for now. (Which, I know, is basically all day every day in so many contexts, but this blog post isn’t gonna fix all those. If I find compelling evidence that this image and message were created by queer folx for queer folx, I’ll certainly update some of my commentary.)

I just doubt that the creators of this image were progressive or intentionally transgressive with respect to gender, sexuality, or intimate relationships. I think we’re safe to read this as a stylized rendering of a passionate cis-man-to-cis-lady embrace and also possibly they are getting married.

If this was a photo in this couple’s scrapbook, I would interpret the big ol’ heart sticker covering their faces as an effort to mask obvious tension, rather than as a cheerful decoration.

That dude just gives me bad vibes. I can’t read his body language as unaggressive.

He’s leaning down and leaning in. His hug looks restraining, and she kind of looks like she’s pushing back on his chest.

Just me?

Animated gif from Looney Tunes with the character Pepe le Pew forcefully hugging a black cat who he believes to be a skunk while she is trying very hard to escape his unwanted embrace
Animated gif of a scene from the film “Promising Young Woman” with a male character gently and creepily kissing the nose of the apparently nearly catatonic protagonist
Animated gif from Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” showing the character Gaston leaning aggressively in to plant a non-consensual kiss on Belle after he’s weirdly abruptly proposed to her, and she backs into the door and opens it outward behind her so that he falls outside

On a side note, when I looked for animated gifs à la Pepé le Pew, I was surprised at the frequency of this same posturing: taller man on left, leaning down, arms constraining if not restraining, lady looking up and backing away.

Ew.

Anyway, it turns out that it can matter that you were hurt and that you are ready to smile at the same damn time. The latter doesn’t cancel out the former.

It’s entirely reasonable to be suspicious of people who are aggressively insistent that you have to “get over it, already.”

And it’s entirely reasonable to remember that you can take the credit for learning to smile again all for yourself.