Intentions aren't everything.

There's an article on essence.com, which I read via Feministe, concerning the reporter Mac McClelland's use of a story of another woman's traumatic rape in a personal essay she wrote about how her job affects her sex life. Go read the Essence article, and the comments too, where McClelland, Mother Jones (who McClelland works for), and the rape victim's lawyer respond.

I'm sure McClelland had good intentions - both in bringing the story of the situation in Haiti to people's attention in her Mother Jones reporting and in addressing the complex affects of violence on sexuality in her personal essay (which I won't link to here but it's easy to find...as a warning, though, I personally found it very difficult to read and upsetting). But her focus on her intentions and her own trauma seem to have blinded her to the rape victim's feelings and wishes, which is not OK.

I was reminded of a situation a few years ago, when Eve Ensler's V-day organization had a huge event in New Orleans. My playback troupe was performing at this event and leading story circles, which is a process in which people share stories from their lives (it is something we often use in conjunction with our Playback work, since Playback is a theatrical representation of personal stories). We were working in a beautiful red tent designed by an artist from New York, which created a nice sense of intimacy and was a women-only space...however, it proved to be too small to hold the many women who wanted to participate in our workshops.

Anyway, I found myself in the unfortunate position of bouncer for much of the event, which really sucked because I hated turning away women who wanted to participate. And sometimes people got really confrontational with me, which I felt was unfair because I had no real power to change the situation or go build a bigger tent or anything like that.

Many of the stories that the women were sharing had to do with sexual assault and violence, and we did our best to keep the space safe for these women. Part of the story circle process is an agreement not to share stories you hear in the circle with the outside world.

Well, at one point a woman with a video camera showed up, and informed me that she was going to film one of our workshops. At that time, the leader of our Playback group was not present and I had not been informed that this was going to happen. I told her this, and she assured me that it was fine, because Eve Ensler had asked her to document everything going on at the V-day event. I told her I still was not comfortable with her taping the story circle workshop due to the need for privacy and a safe environment. She kept repeating, "but it's for Eve!" and telling me what a swell person Eve Ensler is (which I'm sure she is, but that wasn't the point). I eventually got so frustrated and angry because I felt I was being patronized and dismissed that I started to cry. Gah! I hate that I cry when I'm angry. Especially because her reaction was to become even more patronizing and to hug me, repeatedly, against my will.

Eventually, thankfully, the leader of our group returned and spoke with this woman, and they decided to have one story circle comprised of people who had given prior consent to being filmed, with the understanding that no one else was to be filmed.

The McClelland mess reminded me of that experience because I think both are examples of what can happen when two very important issues - the need to share with the world at large the horrible violence that too many women endure and the need to protect those women and honor their feelings and their ownership of their experiences - clash. My opinion is that we need to be vigilant to protect the individual women's needs first, or we risk victimizing them all over again.

Memories and truth

NPR has an interesting piece about the memoirs written by Augusten Burroughs, his brother, and his mother. I loved Burroughs' Running With Scissors and Dry, and although I found A Wolf at the Table somewhat harder to read (because it lacked much of the dark humor of his other memoirs), it was certainly well written.

The NPR piece raises the issue of truth in memory - the emotional truth is what tends to stick with us, though the factual details can get fuzzy. I thought of my 30th birthday party, where my Playback theater group performed, and I sat in the audience as party guests told stories about me and Playback turned them into theater. Many of those stories bore little resemblance to the events I remembered. For example, one friend told a story about a day when I was called him on the phone, stressed and upset. He implied that my emotional state was due to the difficulties I'd encountered directing a play, coupled with the chronic unreliability of my then-boyfriend. Now, those things were present, but the friend omitted that he himself had just sent me an angry text message, and my memory of that day is that I was upset that he (my friend) was angry with me. I don't know if he forgot that part, but if I were to tell the story of that day, that text message and my reaction to it would be what it was about. Now I suspect, in retrospect, that my friend was never really that angry at me to begin with (I probably over-reacted due to my already stressed out state), and that's why that piece of the story was irrelevant to him. But it's interesting how different that experience was for the two of us.

I can only imagine the differences that could occur over years and years of memories, in the case of Augusten Burroughs and his family. His brother's account sounds especially interesting, and I plan to read it.

30 today!

I haven't been very posty lately...I've had a lot on my mind, not all of which I can share right now. But! Today is my 30th birthday. I have to do one massage, but other than that I have the rest of the day free. I'll probably spend it reading and relaxing, for the most part.

I took the GRE last week, and was happy with my scores. I surpassed my goals for both verbal and math! Granted, the math goal was not particularly lofty, but as someone who, until recently, could no longer do long division, I think I did pretty well! And now I have a more expansive vocabulary due to my verbal preparation.

On Sunday, I had a tea party with friends and family, and NOLA Playback performed. I think this was the first time I've ever watched our group do a show...I'm usually on stage! The show was all about me, so I loved it ;) We're hoping to perform at more birthday parties in the future. As one of my friends pointed out, it's nice to share stories about someone while they're still alive, rather than waiting for the funeral!

My mom's delicious vegan apple butter cake was a big hit as well.

Personal experience, playback, and talking to men about feminism

I read this post on Feministe called Unreality and the Politics of Experience (go read it!) and it was interesting timing, considering some other things that have been bouncing around in my head for the past couple of days.

In the post, Chally talks about having her personal experiences questioned, and how she thinks this practice helps to reinforce oppression. And I agree. In the comment section, a disagreement began over whether Chally is advocating for validation, and against "rational thought."

What's interesting to me is that the "rational thought/debate" model is the type of discussion that is more closely associated with males, and the "emotional support" model is the type of discussion that is more closely associated with females. Is this a coincidence? Nope, it's patriarchy.

The best explanation of the concept of patriarchy that I've ever encountered (and I forget where, so I can't give anyone credit for this) is "that which is associated with maleness is valued over that which is associated with femaleness." Note that it's not necessarily saying "men are valued over women," it's more complicated than that.

Recently I was trying to explain to a man who is very dear to me how I personally feel about feminism. I ended up getting emotional about it because it's an emotionally loaded topic for me, and because our discussion was frustrating for me because I felt that his focus on bringing up his points of disagreement with feminism was causing him to not really listen to me. He seemed genuinely surprised that I was upset, because he thought we were having "an intellectual discussion." And we were, but for me, it was also a discussion about my personal experiences, and talking about my personal experiences can make me emotional.

Many men I've encountered are far more comfortable with conversation that could be described as "intellectual," "rational," or a "debate." My dad is a prime example of this. He loves to argue about anything and everything. If you agree with him, he'll change to the opposite view, to try to steer the conversation back to debate. But my dad, and many other men, are far less comfortable talking about anything involving feelings. Whether this has something to do with biology, or is purely based on cultural messages about what it means to be a man, it definitely seems to be a strong pattern.

My issue (and this is where patriarchy comes in) is that emotionless, intellectual debate is often presented as the correct way to talk about issues, and personal experience and emotions are portrayed as inferior and less important. And from this comes the tendency to argue with someone's interpretation of something that happened to them.

I'm not saying we should never question someone's interpretation of their personal experience. But I think that questioning should only happen after listening and trying to understand where that person is coming from.

Most of us are taught how to debate more than we're taught to relate. I'm not sure about you, but my high school didn't have an Empathy Team. I think if there were such a thing as an Empathy Team, though, it would look a lot like a Playback Theater troupe.

In Playback Theater, we "play back" stories and experiences offered by audience members. When you're a player, you stand silently on the stage (in "neutral" position...always a challenge for me) and listen while the audience member (called "the teller") tells their story. You have to pay attention, or you'll be screwed when you try to play it back. You also can't talk at this point, so you can't argue with them. I admit, I have stood there listening to black tellers talking about an experience with racism, and felt an impulse to say something along the lines of "maybe your boss didn't mean it that way...I'm sure she wasn't trying to be racist...are you sure that's what she said?" That impulse came from a place of being uncomfortable with what I was hearing and wishing it could somehow be explained away. But, because of the nature of the form, I was not able to voice any of this (thank God), and instead I just had to listen. And then I had to validate the teller's experience by playing back their story. And you know what? I've learned a hell of a lot through this process.

I believe that learning to listen and empathize is just as important as learning to debate and justify one's position. It frustrates me that the latter is often thought of as more valuable. Trying to change that is one of the reasons I am a feminist. It's also one of the reasons I am an artist.

An actor tries to write

When I started working on my novel, I noticed that writing dialogue came naturally to me. Since the only writing I'd done for years was for theater, this made sense. But I soon noticed, flipping through my first draft, that the manuscript was mostly dialogue. It didn't look like a novel. It looked like...a script. Oops.

My sister said, "you're expecting the set people and the costume people and the lighting people to take care of everything else. But there are no set people and costume people and lighting people."

So I worked on adding description to break up the dialogue. Anyone who's ever taken an acting class is familiar with the concept of motivation. You read the lines, and figure out what the character wants from the person they're speaking to.

My novel is told in the first person, so I ended up with several variations of "I wanted him to..."

Not good. I needed action. This is where my theater background actually started to help me instead of hindering. I acted it out.

I would mentally put myself in the situation, say the lines of lovely dialogue I'd already written, and observe myself. Sometimes literally, in front of a mirror. But more often, I just noted what my physical impulses were, then wrote them down. I should note that it was at this point that I gave up on the idea of writing in coffee shops.

My training in Playback theater was especially helpful for this process. Playback is improv, but not the comedic type. We listen to stories and experiences offered by audience members, then we act them out on the spot. I've found that Playback helps me get into the heads of others by connecting to universal emotions instead of focusing on differences. I often have to play someone who is not my age, gender, race, etc. It's the kind of role I would never be cast in for traditional theater, but it happens all the time in Playback.

One time, I remember I was acting out a scene and I actually made myself physically ill. I got so upset that I felt nauseous. I had to stop and remind myself that not only was it "just a story," it was a story I freakin' made up!

What can I say? Actors are intense.