“Yeah, that guy is the ED,” Ming said. “The executive director.”
“Oh,” I said. “I thought you meant the erectile dysfunction.”
We laughed. Yes, powerful people who perform class in yuck ways, believe in business models, and think they deserve more money than other people destroy my erections, personally.
I used to have to pass a billboard, somewhere else I lived a long time ago, that was for a scammy-sounding men’s health clinic. The billboard had a picture of a banana and used ED to signify erectile dysfunction.
“Or Emily Dickinson,” I said, speaking of dicks. When I did my undergrad work, a dear teacher was an Emily Dickinson scholar. We definitely used ED to refer to that reclusive brilliant New England poet.
“Or eating disorder,” I said. All my friends with eating disorders would abbreviate it with ED. Yes, they would talk about ED treatment centers, behaviors, and impulses.
EDS
Also there’s EDS which is a disability that I probably have. We know already I’m hypermobile, but I might have Elhers-Danlos Syndrome also. The tests are in the works.
Hypermobility and EDS have a lot of overlap with autism. I’m sorry I’ve endured a lifetime of physical pain that’s been mostly ignored. If anything, medical persons chalked it up to my fatness, so I was to blame.
racism
Education can also be Ed, like higher ed. I knew a racist high school teacher named Ed. He was tall and white, with a loud voice he used to shut people down. You know that’s pretty common. But in mainstream culture we’re not supposed to object to the white guy with the big voice shutting people down. That’s just life. But his height made me think of him as Higher Ed.
I was upset about Ed’s racism after he said something offensive that scads of people overheard, since he has that booming voice. So I complained to my community member who held the power, where Ming and I lived before. Rather than taking me seriously and doing something about it, she said I needed to speak up in the moment, not after the fact. She also mentioned that Ed was married to someone Asian, so Ed couldn’t be racist, having mixed children.
I was aghast at how rudimentary her understanding of racism was. As if being married to a person of color means someone’s not racist, when my dad who was white, was married to my mom who was Mexican, and my dad was the most racist person I’ve ever been close to. He loved my mom as far as he was capable of love. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t racist against Black people, Asian people, or even Mexican people who were browner than my mom, and less assimilated than my mom.
In fact, the way my mom served my dad and accepted his abuse for decades was an enactment of racism. He thought he was better than her based on his gender and whiteness.
Not all marriages are happy, even long ones. There can be happy parts mixed in with long-term violence.
power
Like always, I backed off. I knew I was right, but anti-racism was never my community member’s values, and her values were what mattered in that community. I accepted that she had more power, then further withdrew.
My community member didn’t treat me as a brilliant, perceptive person who might know a thing beyond what she knew. She never saw me as someone who could be trusted to see important aspects of reality. She centered her own life and perceptions and carried on. Her own self and missions were central.
She saw other people as presenting her with a series of fires to put out. My speaking up was not a gift of truth–my speaking up was a problem, and shutting me down was the solution.
She treated me like that for years until we left. I’m still hurting at how undervalued I was. I am capable of amazing things. But that community member acknowledging my strengths and welcoming my gifts would have required pulling me into the decision making. Acknowledging me as an equal, or at least as having worth, would have meant sharing power with me. My silence was important to the smooth functioning of what she had created.
standards
Now I have standards. I will never again be close to people who treat me like that. My community member had surrounded herself with damaged men who kept their heads down. I was the only woman who lived in community with her for years.
The gender thing was weird. I asked her if she would ever like to talk about it, and she said no. The gender imbalance was not a problem to solve. That was how she liked it.
I’m still angry because the Higher Ed situation is just one example of how I was treated as lesser than, for years. Any objections I made to what happened in our community, she treated as irrelevant, and if I pressed it, she acted like I was betraying her, as in, “How dare you accuse me of this, after all I’ve done for you.”
She needed me to keep her on a pedestal, but her repeated disrespect was cruel. I’m so glad I’m free.
ed
Executive directors might come and go, but the harm of being treated as lesser than by people who have more power is forever. Being shut down and having our opinions treated as unimportant in community is violent. A little bit might be inevitable. But over and over again for years, having my needs and opinions downplayed and discarded was bad for me, until I couldn’t do it anymore. I deserve better–we all do.
Other people can be difficult! Of course we know that. Ming is a chill, go with the flow sort of person socially. He’s a yay sayer who wants to help. I have big feelings and would get upset when I was disregarded. Ming would downplay the issue to keep the peace.
But that’s not peace–it’s just withdrawal and silence, and silence is for the benefit of the person with more power. I need to live in communities with shared power, because even a dictator who seems benevolent is only going to stay benevolent as long as you’re doing and saying what they like.
I don’t exist to stroke anyone’s ego. No, I exist to tell the truth, and being treated like my truth is quirky, cute, overly sensitive, off-base, or cruel betrayal is bullshit. I’m not going to live like that anymore.
community
Community is how I need to live, but it’s hard to find a happy one. Problems with power, communication, and differences of values are everywhere.
People don’t know themselves, or use words to hide who they really are. “I don’t care what you think or what you need,” is something my former community member never would have said. She never would conceive of herself that way–of course she’s a good person. She would diplomatically listen to me, get upset about thirty seconds in, and dismiss what I noticed or needed.
If I didn’t let it go immediately, she would call me disrespectful for bringing it up, and wrong about the way the world works. Always she was the authority, and I was ever the newcomer, until Ming and I left.
Community is my life. I’m glad I’ve found some examples of how I want to do it, and how I can’t do it.
