#ADDRESSINGchallenge

Everyone is impacted by power, privilege, and oppression to some degree. I believe that awareness of your areas of privilege helps you to realize ways in which you benefit from your various privileges as well as how you might help those who need a boost. In school, we had to complete the ADDRESSING Framework for ourselves. It's a helpful tool. I challenge you to complete it and share it to start a dialogue. At the bottom, feel free to add other ways in which you believe that your life is easier or harder when compared with those around you.  #ADDRESSINGchallenge

Age: I'm 31. I am privileged in that I am old enough to drink, vote, drive, and many other things. Though I lack the freedoms afforded to the youths due to the responsibilities of my age.
Development: (privilege) my intellectual and developmental are in line with my chronological age.
Disability: (privilege) I am able-bodied and in good health. I am able to enter buildings and use every day tools without requiring intervention. (Disadvantage) I am short and often need a stool or a helping hand. I also require prescriptive lenses and struggle with accurate depth perception. I take anti-depressants to combat anxiety.
Religion: (disadvantage) I am agnostic/atheist. I don't believe in a higher power or an after life. This is off-putting to many who would assume that I am a sinner or bad because of that.
Ethnicity: (privilege) I'm white. I had never been denied anything that I wanted because of my race. (Disadvantage) I have felt guilty or that people assumed the worst of me because of my appearance.
Socioeconomic status: (privilege) I'm middle class. I make a good wage and can always afford my bills plus the occasional splurge. I have almost no debt. (Disadvantage) I often worry about savings, and feel I need to save for the things I want.
Sexual orientation: (privileged) I a straight. I am attracted to the opposite gender, and have never worried that who I am attracted to will change how people see me or treat me.
Indigenous heritage: (disadvantage) I don't really know my heritage or the history of my family. I assume, because of my appearance and names that I am of European descent.
National Origin: (privilege) I live and am a legal citizen of the country in which I was born. I am afforded access to all the rights that go along with citizenship in the country I live.
Gender: I am a cisgender female. (Privilege) if you look at me my gender and pronouns are readily apparent. I do not get mistaken for a person of my gender. I am (relatively) comfortable in my body. I feel that it reflects who I believe myself to be. (Disadvantage) I have been denied access to things I want because I am a girl. I have had people call me hurtful names, cut me off, or treat me unfairly because I am a girl. I feel unsafe walking alone at night because of fear of attackers simply because of my appearance.
*I might add to this framework:
Political leanings: I am a democrat living in a liberal area of the country. I do not feel that my political leanings will be judged or disregarded. Though, I do have very closed loved ones who I interact with regularly who have starkly different political beliefs than I do.  I have to work hard to check my values and beliefs and balance them with my love for those peoples along with my honesty to myself.

ETA: I also carry privilege in that I feel safe enough to post something of this nature without overwhelming fear of backlash or detrimental judgement.

Two Out of Three

I have never been raped.

I am fortunate. I have been supported by friends and family who allowed me to feel strong and taught me to stand up for myself.  My loved ones have always contributed to my feeling of security and importance in this world.  I am privileged.

I have never been raped.  And still I have been made to feel small, weak, and undervalued.

As a middle schooler, I was followed home by a boy who was bigger and stronger than me. I told him to stop.  The next day, he left before me and jumped out of some bushes a block away from my house.  He wanted to scare me for a joke.  I laughed because I was scared and I didn't know what to do. 

I have never been raped.

As an adolescent, my male friends referred to my stylish braids as "handle bars."  Again, I laughed.  I felt uncomfortable.

Those same friends of mine once worked together to attempt to unbuckle my overalls because they learned doing so would cause them to fall down exposing me in my underwear.  When I protested, the 2 of them pushed me forcefully into the nearby boys bathroom.  I was backed into a stall, and yelled furiously as they laughed and unbuckled my straps.  They then ran away, leaving me alone, in the boys bathroom, in my underwear.  I did not laugh.  I was astonished.

I have never been raped.

In college, I once had to forcefully shove my elbow into the padded belly of a man dressed as a tomato who felt that the dance floor of a Halloween party was an appropriate time to slither his hand up my shirt and cup my boob.  I did not know him.  I could not see his face, but I stomped his foot, elbowed his gut and shouted "FUCK YOU TOMATO!" I laugh about this now.

I have never been raped.

In my 20s, when I went out dancing with my friends, we regularly discussed how we would skillfully dance one another away from the unwanted advances of men who felt our enjoyment of music was an appropriate time to touch, fondle or kiss us. I remember spinning a friend away from a man who randomly stuck his tongue down her ear.  With my back to him, on a crowded dance floor before we could get away, he grabbed my breast.

I have never been raped.

However, I once purchased a couch from a man who copied my phone number off the sales record.  He began texting me.  At first I responded, thinking of the possibilities.  The messages quickly became uncomfortable, and I stopped responding.  He showed up at my apartment a few days later. I hid from him in the elevator. 

I have never been raped.

However I have been hit on by men who had wrong numbers and knew nothing about me other than that I sounded female. I once answered the phone at a clinic for survivors of domestic violence and encountered a man seeking treatment for batterers. After I directed him to the appropriate agency, he asked for my number. 

I have never been raped, but I have clutched my keys in my hand while trying to find my car in a dark parking lot.  I have held my phone tightly in my pocket while riding public transit alone in the dark.  I have asked to be escorted to my car in the secure parking garage of my luxury apartments. 

I have never been raped.  Though some of what I have experienced constitutes sexual assault, I have never been attacked or beaten, and my experiences do not count in the eyes of statistics. Many of my experiences were brief, and easily escaped. Those that weren't, were reported and promptly dealt with before they could escalate.  I have been protected, defended, and able to keep my self "safe."

I am one of the lucky ones, and these are facts from my life.

I have never been raped. At least not yet.

What Lies Beneath

"First thing is first," the over-eager young woman said to me. "I want to learn how to control my anger."

After listening to her explain how she no longer wanted to have explosions and get into fights with her loved ones, I indicated that I knew exactly how to help, but that the answer would likely confuse her. She assured me she was up for whatever I had to say.

"Well," I began. "You're not actually angry when you have an outburst."

Silence filled the room. "What do you mean?" She asked.

I followed with my patented schpeil about how anger is a secondary emotion. I explained that anger sits on the surface, and carries with it a variety of externalizations that are easy to act upon. We discussed how angry people often act without thinking, because anger doesn't require thought. She stayed with me, but insisted that her experiences were solely anger.  So, I did what any self-respecting adult does when kids decide they don't know what they're talking about. I bet her a candy bar that I was right.

"Tell me about the last time you got really angry," I invited.

She provided a detailed account of an argument that occurred the night before when her brother had teased her for being forgetful and disorganized.

"Do you like being forgetful?" I asked

"Not really."

"What about being disorganized, is that something you're proud of?"

"I don't mind really," she insisted.

"Does it seem like it gets in your way though?"

"What do you mean?"

"Do your organizational skills make you successful, or unsuccessful?" I asked. I suggested she consider her follow through on homework, her grades, how often she gets in trouble at home, and what for. 

"It makes me unsuccessful, I guess."

"Do you like to be reminded of that?"

She shook her head.

"Hmm, so there's some shame there huh?"

"Yeah!" She responded passionately.

"And what happens when you feel ashamed?"

"It makes me mad," she said.

"Bingo."

I didn't make her buy me a candy bar. Instead, we talked about what would have happened if she had chosen to tell her brother about her hurt feelings rather than explode on him. How that might have impacted her reaction, and if he would have received the information in a way that felt emotionally safe for her. Then, we went on to another example of a time she felt angry, and another. Slowly, we pulled out that her anger outbursts really stemmed from feeling incapable, unsupported, and unheard.

In later meetings, she and I worked to define a wide range of emotions so that she could enhance her understanding of how discomfort and pain can vary more widely than black and white; angry or not. Then, I told her about times I felt angry, and had her guess what feeling I was hiding from her. She made a lot of progress.

Did she stop feeling anger all together? Of course not.

Anger, as I have told her repeatedly, is a normal human emotion. We all feel it, and that's okay. The problem is that we often forget to listen to anger. It makes us communicate in ways that we can't hear ourselves, and others don't want to listen to us. This causes more problems than it resolves. Before we know it, we are angry because we are angry, and the original pain is so deeply buried under a colossal pile of anger that we feel suffocated. The trick to resolving that is to reframe our understanding of anger. We need to learn that anger is a cue to listen harder, to ourselves, and to those around us.

Unsolvable

Image found here

Originally, I had planned to publish a very different post today. In the face of recent violent acts in my community and elsewhere in the nation, I have felt a large pull to join the political debate of issues. However, I have kept my distance. This has been partly out of respect for the grief and sorrow many are feeling during such an awful time. I have wanted to be one of the few who actually allows space for feelings and emotional reactions.

That sounds really noble doesn't it?

Well, my motives have not been entirely selfless.  If I'm totally honest, my abstention from the political discussion has had a lot to do with my own confusion.  Like many, I believe something needs to be done, but, also like many, I have no idea what. The issues being raised are overwhelmingly complicated. These are heavy topics accompanied by a variety of passionate opinions. Understandably, the strong emotional attachments bring about loud and overly simplified statements, from both sides, about how things should be.

Each day I read a mixture of clearly supported and valid arguments from every perspective. Additionally, I am bombarded with rants and raves from people who haven't really thought it all the way through or given themselves enough emotional distance to sort facts from beliefs. Evocative information, plaintive pleas, and ignorant platitudes have been swirling both inside and outside my head at an increasing rate for a week now. Frankly, I have been too confused to make sense of it all.

So, I haven't gotten involved. I have avoided entrance into the political debate out of respect for those who are hurting and out of uncertainty about my own beliefs. However, today something changed.

I found myself sitting at my internship, a counseling office for survivors of violence, combing a research database for articles about handguns and the glorification of violence in the media. I pursued the articles for information relevant to my work, when suddenly I became overwhelmed once more. Recognizing my own need to separate and decompress, I took my lunch break. Slowly munching on a pathetic microwavable meal and browsing social media sites, I came across yet another article about weaponry, violence in the media, and mental health. The article, detailing a mass shooting victim's resistance to gun control regulations, offered some relevant perspective, but once again left me with the same reaction. Confusion.

I took another bite of an overly chewy pot-sticker, sighed to myself, and thought "it's just not that simple."

And that's how I found my political stance in this heated debate. It's just not that simple. I wish it were.

I know that right now things seem truly awful. In fact, these are tragic times, but I'm not convinced that this is unique to our generation. Furthermore, I'm not convinced that one almighty resolution will eradicate this plague of inter-person violence that has afflicted us since the beginning of time.

As a people, we have been fascinated by violence from the get go. Media has always reflected that. Our earliest tales are dark and gruesome portrayals of violent behavior. Weapons today are more intense then ever before, but grotesque person on person crime and mass murders predate long-range weaponry by far.

I'm not saying that we should ignore the issue. Clearly something needs to be done, but I'm not sure hyper-focusing on one or two political hat hooks is really going to change human nature. At least not over night. 

My Controversial Musings

Found here

I think sometimes when people say that they are all about diversity they mean to say that they are all about minorities and oppressed populations. If that's true, that's great! Those groups absolutely need someone to stand up for them. They need people to be their champion, and to make sure that they are equally included in this world dominated by the privileged masses.

But, let's be real. If that's what you're doing, you are not actually promoting inclusion. The diversity movement, at least as I understand it, is about incorporating everybody. After all, the word literally means variety. So, regardless of your reason, if you shut out a person from any one particular group you are decreasing the variety and therefore the diversification of your own movement. When you favor one group over another, even if it's the disadvantaged, you are merely replicating the same discrimination you seek to eradicate.

For the record, I am aware this is a controversial view. I'm also aware that this might sound like I'm advocating to extend the privilege of the groups with social power (and therefore my own). This is not my intent. I am merely noticing a discrepancy between the ideology of many (not all) proponents of diversity groups, and the actual intent. Maybe I'm too literal, but I believe that a truly diverse group of people would be all inclusive.

Describing My Outlook

Location: Yoga Studio
Mood: Contemplative

I'm learning new things about myself each and every day. Lately I've been learning that I love when something has a simplistic beauty about it.

In my Yin class tonight, the instructor recited poetry while we meditated. I never thought I would be much for this. In fact, I mentally resisted it for a while. A lot of it seemed too... (what's the word?) ...carefree for me. However, at one point she was reciting a poem, and I was internally mocking the experience. I know, I shouldn't be that way, because it is profoundly supportive for some. It just tends not to be for myself. Anyway, she's reciting this poem, and for some reason one of the stanzas pulled me out of my mental block and spun me on my axis. The stanza was:

"Union can't be forced,

won't be one by fighting."

I believe the original intent, was for us to think of this in terms of our body struggling with the pose. However, It rang true for me, and as I thought about it the stanza resounded. It is deeply simple, yet truthfully beautiful. Also, it's interpretation extends to a wide variety of circumstances. For me it, gave words to my previously indescribable outlook on a number of situations in my life. In some, the interpretation is surprisingly literal, and in others it continues to be accurate in a metaphorical sense.

I was unaware of it, but this is how I wish everyone felt. I'm not about persuading people to want what they don't, or converting them to believe what they can't. I think disagreements are a necessary part of life, but fighting back never fully solves an issue. It will cause a rift in relationships that, while it may heal, will always leave a scar.

I wish people in my world, and the world beyond it could learn to coexist with their difference. I'm not expecting people to embrace each other for being dissimilar, but acceptance would be ideal. Currently I'm attempting to learn that what's important to me may not be important to others, and vice versa, and accept it. There is so much in this world that we don't know. It's easy to get wrapped up in ourselves and forget that.

Living for Hope

Image found here

Location: Home
Mood: hopeful
 
I experienced something truly great last night.

In my lifetime, Americans have seen a lot of things happen. Some of them horrible, and some of them good. But last night was the first truly awesome thing that I have ever taken part in.

I am, of course, talking about the election of Illinois Senator Barack Obama to the highest office in the land.

There was no doubt in my mind that he would win the popular vote. However, having witnessed the 2000 elections, I’d be lying if I didn’t mention that I was nervous for the potential of dangling chads, Governor relatives, and conspiracy at the polls.

In the beginning, with only two states, McCain was ahead, and I was nervous. Then Obama seized a lead, and I began to feel the excitement. Shortly after that, McCain picked up a few more states, and the nervousness snuck-up on me again.

Then, around 8pm (Pacific Time) ABC news announced the closing of the western pools, and the Nomination of Barack Obama. Part of me didn’t entirely believe it.  And then John McCain appeared on my screen. He delivered one of the greatest speeches. No doubt, it was one of the greatest speeches that I have ever heard, probably second only to Obama’s acceptance speech later that evening. As he ventured onto the stage, and began to speak I was enveloped by the enormity of his words. My father wisely pointed out “if his entire election had been anything like this speech he might not have lost so hugely.”

For the past week, I have actually been temping with Multnomah County Elections, and I was scheduled to go in to count ballots at 10pm. I was delaying my departure because I did not want to miss Obama’s acceptance speech. There was something in the air, and I just knew that it was going to be great.

Of course, the news cut to Obama walking on stage at the exact moment that I was putting my coat on. I quickly ran outside and tuned my radio to NPR, a station that I normally try to avoid (Talk Radio makes me car sick). As I drove into Portland, I was completely moved by the words of President Elect Obama. On a few occasions I welled up just at the significance of his words and his election.

When the speech ended, I continued to listen to NPR. This is entirely out of character for me (as I mentioned, NPR makes me car sick). I think that this was mostly because I just did not want the moment to end. Over the chatter of the news, I heard a bang and looked up to see fireworks light up the Portland Sky.

Suddenly, I realized that there was some honking and yelling. I quickly turned off my radio and learned that all the commotion was a celebration on the streets of Southwest Portland. Cars were honking their horns and people were cheering and hugging on the streets. At this moment, it really sunk in for me. I was living through one of the greatest moments in American history. I was experiencing something that people all over the nation were experiencing. The entire country was elated at the selection of the first African American president.
I reached the elections facility, and parked my car. As I walked the block and a half to the building, I passed people cheering and singing. I stood across the street from the building, and watched as people knocked on the windows giving thumbs up to the the staff inside. I crossed the street, as cars were honking and celebration filled the air. After I began to work, a band set up in the middle of Morrison blvd (the street Multnomah County Elections is located on) and began to play. It was as if all Portlanders lost their calendars and thought it was New Years Eve.

It was truly bizarre to be a part of the election at such an historic moment in time. It was especially bizarre spending the entire night/morning counting ballots when the country had clearly already come to a decision.
In any event, I have never been more proud of my fellow man. When I arrived home, at 9am, I fell fast asleep. My mind was at ease. Sure, I am anxious and hopeful, but after a night like last night I am confident that the American people have made the first step in a good direction. I am so filled with pride, and excited for what is to come.

Way to Go America, and congratulations President Barack Obama!