Prejudice

I really try not to be prejudice. If I see myself doing it, I focus on it and scrub it away. It started when I was little and saw my father making nasty comments about people who didn’t have the same skin color as us. Basically, I was rebelling against my dad. As I got older, I felt it wasn’t just a rebellion – it was the right thing to do. I still feel like that but it’s grown to include more than just race or nationality. Everyone on this planet is human. We are the human race and to hate or prejudge someone on the color of their hair or skin or eyes is ignorant. To hate a group of people on their religion is ignorant. To hate a group of people because of their culture, or job or ability or sex, or damn it, for flipping anything, is our dark side whispering to us.

When I was growing up the only time I saw black people in the movies, was the Angry Black Man. During these formative years, I was taught to fear the Angry Black Man. The Angry Black Man will hurt me. Kill me. Rape me. Probably in that order. The first time I saw a black man who wasn’t portrayed like that in the movies and television was Bill Cosby in I Spy. Even my father liked Bill Cosby! It wasn’t until I saw Will Smith, who I quite liked, that I realized I’d been brainwashed from all those movies. Mr. Smith didn’t scare me. He looked like a nice person. I had been brainwashed, and it made me angry. I didn’t hate black people, I was afraid of them. And from then on, I did my best to be ‘color blind’. Nowadays, being color blind is bad, or that’s the impression I’ve gotten. Then, being color blind meant I didn’t ‘see’ the color of their skin, I saw the person as just a person. (I actually got good at it. I remember being told: ‘You remember Debbie? The black girl.’ And it took me a while to remember Debbie was black. She was just Debbie.) Today, you should see their color, acknowledge their color, then… what? Ignore it? High five them for being black? They had no more control over them getting born black as I did being born white. If they’re a good person, they’re a good person.

I fully support the BlackLivesMatter movement. Damn, they have every right to be mad, fizzling pissed off. It’s just as dangerous today to be black in America as ever throughout history. The problem is cops are scared. Just like I was. They’re reacting in fear. It’s just got to stop. (I know, easily said, hard to do.)

But I do still have fears. These fears have built up over a lifetime. As such, I do understand where their hate is coming from. My fear hasn’t developed into hate. But my fear has developed into terror.

I grew up in a state of the US with a lot of serial killers. Men, almost always men, who abducted, raped, mutilated and dumped the bodies of women. I grew up in an environment of fear of the stranger. We were given a lot of advice on how to protect ourselves. From not leaving your window open during the night, to letting the guy rape you so he might not kill you. Don’t put your first name in the telephone book, never your address. (Even now I’m gobsmacked at the amount of transparency women give of themselves on social media. Are you fucking nuts? Why don’t you just scream ‘victim here, victim here.’ like Whoopi Goldberg in Jumping Jack Flash?)

Women were – are – targets. Soft targets. Easy to physically subdue, rape, abuse. Except for Polyana Viana who is my hero! All women should be like her. If all women could defend themselves like she did, there would be a lot less abuse.

MeToo. Oh, yes, me too. After the MeToo movement started, I made a list of all the times I’ve been catcalled, wolf whistles, molested, touched, grabbed, assaulted, propositioned, (almost) abducted, … well. I couldn’t remember every single time, as catcalls and wolf whistles were basically a daily occurrence, but the others… there were about 20 things on that list, and for weeks afterward, I remembered more and more. I’m nothing special – average pretty much. And all this stuff that happened to me, to thousands of women, it doesn’t matter if your pretty or not. Rape and molestation have nothing to do with how you look or how you’re dressed. It’s the fear of women and misogyny. It’s control. It’s assault. The weapon isn’t a gun or knife, its a penis and a fist.

So, yes, I do have fear. And a bit of prejudice, because every time I talk to a man, every time I get in a cab, or wait for a bus…if I go out at all, I have to prejudge the men around me as a threat assessment. I use prejudging as a shorthand. Not the color of their skin, not their religion, disability, scares or tattoos. Their strength…their height…their ability and opportunity to restrain me. I try to always be aware of what’s going on around me. I try to wear things that I can move in, no high heels, no tight skirts. Nothing that restrains my hands or legs. My partner goes through life like walls will move out of his way. I explained to him how I always scan my environment and he just doesn’t get it. On the one hand, he doesn’t want me going out at night, because I’m a bitty woman and some man will rape me. But on the other, I don’t need to be aware of what’s going on around me, cause I’m a sainted woman, protected by God.

So this is a prejudice I’ve noticed and I need to work on it. I know there are good men, men who would come to my assistance if I needed it. Not all men are evil, nasty, malicious persons who need to hurt you to make themselves feel better. Like my partner.

Apologies, real and imagined

There’s been a lot of apologies in the news lately. Paraphrasing a few:

“I’m sorry if I offended anyone out there with my comments on skin colors.”

“I’m sorry I upset you with my joke about monkey babies.”

“I didn’t mean to outrage the hysterical womans libbers with my views on sammich making.”

There is making an apology, and then there’s a sneering apology, which means something along the lines of: I stand by what I said, but here is an apology for all the snowflakes out there.

The above (and the real-life comments they represent) weren’t actual apologies. Here’s an example of an apology.

“I’m sorry. What I said and did was wrong.” Taking responsibility for your words and actions. No excuses (I was joking), no deflection (you misunderstood me) and no blaming other people.

In the above examples, the ‘hysterical women’ are in the wrong for taking offense. Those who ‘can’t take a joke’ are in the wrong for ‘misunderstanding’ his humor. His prejudice is just the way it really is, if you don’t speak Political Correct.

When you read or hear someone making an apology, really listen. Are they just saying I’m Sorry, or do they qualify the statement with the REAL people who should apologize?

My partner once said this; (all tears and hand wringing) Forgive me for anything you’ve imagined I’ve done.

It took me a minute to parse that statement. I think it was the first time I actually thought about what he was saying, word for word. It was his use of the word ‘imagined’ that caught my attention.

By saying imagined, he was saying he’d never done anything that needed forgiving for. After all, you don’t need to forgive something that never actually happened. I also noticed there was no ‘please’ said. This wasn’t a petition, a request, for forgiveness. It was a demand: “forgive me”.

I said: No.

He was truly shocked. “But you have to. Family always forgives.” And for him, that is true. His family always forgives him. They forgive him before he does anything, good or bad. He went through hell when he got sick. Every single day, he could have died. They forgave him everything, every breathing moment. He expects that. He doesn’t think about what he does or says, because all his has to do is say ‘forgive me’, and it’s done. He’s washed of all sins.

He has never taken responsibility for his words or deeds. He is never held accountable for his actions.

I said: “Tell me something you’ve said or done that you know is wrong, and I will forgive you.”

It was three years before he figured one out. I forgave him.

Quandry, do I or do I not.

We’ve been having a silent (in more ways than one) battle. He acts, I react and counter. I have taken some small actions by noting things that he does. But this is mainly on the sly, as far as I know, he doesn’t know about all my notes, which are scattered over several social media and other places. I do know at one point he was monitoring my computer with a dongle. He knows I googled abuse.

Now I need to come to two or three decisions. 1) go to the hospital and have an EKG done. I’ve had 3 different medical personnel tell me to go do so. I’ve not. 1.a) Tell him I’m going and tell him the results. or 1.b) don’t tell him I’m going and don’t tell him the results. Or various combinations of those two things. 2) I need to register with the police that I think he’s trying to kill me. But I don’t want them in my house and I don’t want him to know I’ve talked to them. 2.a) call them to the house and let them look him in the eye and say ‘bad boy’, or perhaps they’ll say ‘your partner is having a mental break down, perhaps install her in a psych ward and let them straighten her out.’ 2.c) the police don’t have a sterling reputation in protecting women from abusive partners. I feel like making a report is only going to be of benefit when my murder trial comes up. IF one comes up.

1 Going to the hospital. If I decide not to tell him, I need to come up for a reason for leaving the house. I don’t go out unless I have to. A doctors apt usually. I have in the past gone out for a social event with someone. But its hyper rare. However, I think if I go the route of going to the hospital without telling him, this is the excuse I’ll give. If I go without telling him I’m going, I won’t give him the results, either. But this can cause problems and is probably central for the reason of my conflict.

If I find out there’s something wrong with my heart (I know there is, I just don’t know what), if I tell him what the problem is, it does two things. First, it blocks his defense of ‘I didn’t know she had a weak/bad heart’, which he will absolutely use. Second, he will need to come up with a new strategy of knocking me off. And he will. It might take him a while, but he’ll come up with a new one. And I’ll have to be constantly watching to know what it is. That’s exhausting just thinking about.

This is of course, if it’s a simple thing. Stress. Too much caffeine or smoking. But if it’s something that needs surgery, he’ll have to know. And if he has to know, I can’t lie about the reason I left the house. … but, I can say the person I was seeing insisted on my going. Yeah, that would work. They talked me into going and getting it looked at. What a nice friend 😉

2. Talking to the police isn’t really going to do anything in the short term. Perhaps if I register every time he sneaks up trying to scare my heart into stopping. But my gut says reporting things will only be of benefit after I’m dead and he’s on trial. Oh god, I want there to be a trial. But if I do talk to them, do I go to the station, find a foot copper wandering down the street or more likely, ask to see one when I go to the hospital?

3. Not mentioned in the first list. Talking to someone other than my two daughters. I could ask the GP for a referral to a psych. This could be of benefit to my mental health but on the other hand, if it goes to trial, it could be used against me. “She’s crazy”. I have some virtual friends in the online game I play. (yes, I have no real life friends. Or family in this country.) There are a couple that might actually believe me. We hear about women getting murdered by the partners all the time but we don’t know these women. And how many people say stuff like: I had no idea there was a problem there. Or She told me but I thought she was just getting paranoid. I’ve mentioned things to other ‘friends’ online who literally told me I was just crazy. So super hesitant to go that route again. If I do and they instinctively tell me I’m nuts… I don’t know if I could handle that.