minimizing – Pith Rant

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.”

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:

A person who once caused another person to break down and just wants them to get over it, already.
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.
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.

A bright red umbrella obscures the face of a person wearing dark boots and a gray coat, walking on a snowy beach. The text alternates between red and black. and says, “Pray, when you feel like worrying. Give thanks, when you feel like complaining. Keep going, when you feel like quitting.” The logo at the bottom says, “Power of Positivity.”

I’d argue that there’s a difference between “reframing” and “denial,” and that this macro captures the importance of that distinction.

A reframe for “I’m worried” can be as simple as “I feel worried right now because I don’t have a sense of control over a situation that really matters to me. I know that this feeling will pass and that it will probably happen again.”

Instead of not complaining at all, maybe something like, “I want to examine the source of my irritation when I feel calmer to decide whether it was a defensive response or if it is really important to address.” It can be worthwhile to reframe the urge to complain, but it depends entirely on the situation. Sometimes complaints are necessary for change to happen, and in those cases people who offer gratitude as an alternative to frustration often want stasis, power, or both.

I might counter the suggestion to “keep going” with the words of one Kenny Rogers: “You’ve got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em, know when to walk away.” Persistence without purpose isn’t necessarily laudable. A reframe might just be a pause: “If can make it through the next five minutes, I can check in with myself again.”

The message on the macro could be paraphrased as, “Don’t stress, don’t whine, don’t rest!”

That’s denial.

If you are experiencing a common response to a trying situation, STOP! Do something else instead.

That’s how you do healthy.

Ungood feelings are definitely not appropriate responses to inappropriate circumstances. Your feelings are wrong and they need to be corrected.

If you haven’t learned to eliminate your human stress response by praying, then you’re really just asking for an ulcer.

If you can’t solve a huge systemic problem by practicing individual gratitude, you’re really just an ungrateful leech.

If you haven’t managed to persevere in the face of overwhelming resistance, were you even really trying?

I just don’t know why so many anxious and depressed people miss these obvious solutions to simple problems.

Life is mysterious, I tell ya.

With respect to the image:

I don’t know that “Thank god I remembered to bring my big red umbrella today so I can finish this shitty winter beach walk” should really be the takeaway here, and yet it seems to be supported by the text.

It’s okay to give up on your walk that turned out to be windier than expected.

Tag: minimizing

It Doesn’t Matter

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