The Broken Manhood Spectacle

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In recent years, I’ve watched three women I know endure long, bitterly contested divorce battles. In all three cases, the court battle has turned heavily on their efforts to regain their own birth names, so they need not be legally known by their abusers’ surnames. Names have power, and when abuse survivors are still required to sign their abusers’ names on legal documents, it has the ability to double down on scars that haven’t healed.

That was my thought when I wrote the image at right. For those unfamiliar with Whisper, it’s a smartphone-only social media app where people post 200-character thoughts without bylines, sort of like anonymous Twitter with better graphics. It’s fun sometimes to post random thoughts and get general feedback from strangers. This particular idea, more a random musing than a thought-out manifesto, sat unread for days. Then, over the weekend, it blew up in my face.

Click the link if you want particulars, which I don’t recommend. The idea got over 600 clicks on the heart logo, indicating over 600 people like this idea. But it also got nearly 250 text responses, skewing heavily negative. And by “negative,” I don’t mean people saying that’s a bad idea. Many responses are hostile and vulgar. Many impugn my sexuality. Several include threats against me, and against women who don’t adopt their husbands’ surnames.

This battery of emotionally charged, bizarrely personal responses possibly bespeaks an important cultural issue. These responses variously indicate I’m gay, I’m weak, that I’m an embarrassment. But I can’t help noticing two recurrent threads in these responses: accusations that I’m a porn addict, and that I’m sexually impotent. Both imply I’m incapable, psychologically or physically, of having normal heterosexual sex. These respondents, presumably mostly male, feel the need to impugn my sexuality and my manhood.

I’ve experienced this before. When I positively reviewed a book questioning why women are systemically marginalized in churches, I received responses indicating I was homosexual, that my receding hairline proves my moral degradation, and that I’m so weak and enfeebled that I can only convince women to have sex with me by pretending to be nice. Overthinking the responses arrives at multiple contradictions, not least that gay men aren’t interested in sex with multiple women.

But in both cases, we have men who’ve never met me, mostly men who don’t post their real names, projecting fears of diminished manhood onto me for isolated opinions. They don’t know my context, like the three women I’ve watched struggle to reclaim their identities from their abusers. They simply assume, because I don’t desire to dominate and sublimate women, that my manhood is somehow diminished. The consistency of their imputations is bizarre, and noteworthy.

These men lash out at another man who doesn’t share their dominance-based model of manhood. They implicitly see masculinity as something not innate, but achieved, presumably through shows of strength. They dominate women, and when the opportunity avails itself, they dominate other men. If they cannot dominate others face-to-face, they dominate electronically. But their behavior demonstrates that dominance beats all. You aren’t a man, their words declare, until you crush somebody else beneath your boot.

One other common trait bears comment. Though the app conceals the users’ names (unless users voluntarily offer their names), other details are visible, like gender, location, and broad age range. These hostile comments overwhelmingly come from men between ages 18 and 25, the ages when men are most likely to seek partners and marriage. I cannot say how these men treat the women in their lives. But their response to a male stranger is telling.

There are legitimate arguments against my position. Several young women, responding to my statement, expressed a desire to take their husbands’ names to shake off abusive fathers. That’s a good reason. A woman may want to adopt somebody else’s name. If and when I get married (a prospect seeming increasingly unlikely at my age), my wife and I will discuss, and make a decision then. My thoughts now aren’t binding for the rest of time.

But these responses, disproportionately, don’t involve appeals to contingency. They’re largely free of nuance. They bespeak a model of manhood that doesn’t brook women having separate identities, or men having dissenting ideas. I spoke for myself, not all men everywhere, but these men choose to threaten, insult, and belittle me. Be honest, you only attack somebody when you believe they’re dangerous. These men see independent-minded women, and men who support them, as threats to manhood.

We Need To Talk About Clara

The Twelfth Doctor (Peter Capaldi) and Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman)

Steven Moffat’s run on Doctor Who has been controversial, to say the least. He started well, and had ambitions to recreate the kind of year-spanning story arcs untried since Graham Williams helmed the show in the late 1970s. But his love of long, rambling plotlines, his tendency to push stories lacking narrative tension into production, and is love of exaggerated, rococo scene design, have alienated many fans. And don’t get some started discussing Amy Pond.

For me, however, the culmination of my frustration came when Moffat concluded Clara Oswald’s two-story arc in 2015. Not counting her one-off appearance in as a slightly different character in 2012, Clara debuted at the beginning of 2013, and left at the end of 2015. During that time, we had the first cringe-inducing moment in the episode “The Name of the Doctor,” when she said frankly, “I was born to save the Doctor.”

Two years later, in “Face the Raven,” we had the surprising sight of Clara dying to save the Doctor. Other than mayfly companions like Astrid Peth, we hadn’t seen one of the Doctor’s credited companions die on-screen since Adric in 1982, thirty-three years earlier. Longtime fans weren’t prepared to have the Doctor’s friend die violently, even in a self-sacrificing way, and were surprised when, two episodes later, even the Doctor’s work-around couldn’t save her.

So Moffat literally put a woman onscreen who was born to save the Doctor, and who died to save the Doctor. Maybe Moffat thought it was time for someone else to save the Doctor, who has saved so many others; most of the Doctor’s regenerations have been self-abnegating acts of heroism, including the Fifth, Ninth, and Tenth Doctors, who all specifically died protecting their companions’ lives. Maybe Moffat decided somebody else ought to bring salvation to this unusually messianic character.

Or maybe it was just sloppy.

Early depictions emphasized the romantic tension between Clara and the Doctor. In “Hide,” the psychic Emma Grayling specifically warns Clara not to fall in love with the Doctor, claiming there’s coldness at his heart. (This theme runs throughout the Eleventh Doctor’s run, that he’s secretly plagued with rage stemming from unchecked guilt.) The warning doesn’t take, however. By “The Time of the Doctor,” Matt Smith’s regeneration episode, Clara accidentally lets slip that she follows the Doctor because “I fancy him.”

The Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) and Clara Oswald (then billed as Jenna-Louise Coleman)

Even if it’s true, that’s a weak, weak reason. Rose Tyler, the Doctor’s first companion following the show’s resurrection in 2005, also professed her love and attraction for the Doctor, sure. But in “The Parting of Ways,” the Ninth Doctor’s regeneration episode, she says she sticks with him because “He showed me a better way.” Rose’s attraction to him wasn’t only personal; the Doctor also taught her to be a better human being.

Clara shows some inclinations to self-improvement through her run. After the Doctor’s regeneration frustrates her romantic aspirations, she channels those feelings onto Danny Pink, and by learning to love and trust another human, she turns his struggles with wartime PTSD into actions that save humanity. She even learns to stand up to the Doctor, as seen in “Dark Water.” But romantic love remains her chief motivator throughout.

One never gets the feeling, watching Clara, that she’s exceeded the circumstances of her origin. She constantly exists to prod the Doctor, to keep him on the straight path and keep him moving forward when he’d rather descend into self-pity. She literally does so in “The Snowmen,” when it’s revealed he’s been wallowing since losing Amy Pond. Clara literally chases the Doctor onto his cloud, into his TARDIS, and encourages him to act.

Again, in “The Bells of St. John,” the first time Clara appears as Clara, her phone call rousts the Doctor from stewing in a medieval monastary. Lacking either the Fourth Doctor’s restlessness or the Tenth Doctor’s wrath, the Eleventh Doctor would rather sit around, taking up space, than do anything, unless Clara motivates him. No wonder, in “Flatline,” Clara undertakes the active role usually performed by the Doctor. Without her, he’s become moribund and immobile.

So when it transpires that she was born to save the Doctor, and dies to save the Doctor, I’m forced to wonder: why do we waste time with the Doctor? Despite his knowledge, age, and technical prowess, he’s become a passive passenger in his own series. Clara is doing things. Clara motivates the show; the Doctor is Clara’s companion now. Then Moffat kills her. And now, I have trouble watching my one-time favorite show.

The Conservative Feminist, and Other Chimeras

Melissa Ohden, You Carried Me: a Daughter's Memoir

Young Melissa Ohden always knew she was adopted. But at age 14, she learned the truth: in 1977, before the battle lines hardened, she survived a botched saline-infusion abortion. The revelation cast a formerly bubbly youth into a spiral of grief from which she recovered only after long struggles and deep prayer. As she faced adulthood, education, marriage, and motherhood, her defining question became: How do I use this knowledge?

Ohden, now a full-time speaker for groups like Feminists For Life and the Susan B. Anthony List, regards herself a progressive on women's issues. She doesn't clarify why abortion access, which mainstream progressives consider core to feminism, is the opposite of what her peers claim. Which explains why I'm of two minds about this book. She hits the required inspirational high points, but makes little attempt to communicate across the aisle.

Half memoir, half manifesto, this book guides readers through her discovery of herself, and her decision to go public with her message. She never sought celebrity, but her combination of tragic background, personal eloquence, and drive, make her an ideal spokesperson for her brand of mixed feminism. It's hard for readers not to feel strongly for Ohden and her struggles, even if, like me, we disagree with her legislative agenda.

Ohden's  story really begins to move around page 70, when nearly a decade of labor bears fruit, and she receives her unexpurgated birth records.  Before this, her story involves lots of throat-clearing about her loving childhood, pain of discovering her history, and difficult reconciliation of the two. All this feels interesting, but doesn't get treated in much detail. Basically her entire life before 2007 feels like something she includes because she thinks she must.

Two examples should suffice. First, after learning about her birth, she descends into self-abuse, including anorexia, underage drinking, and casual sex. This gets resolved in a chapter, giving her the Born-Again narrative Christian readers expect, then patly forgetting it. Later, in college, she writes, "I learned quickly that my story was one that could not be heard, and therefore must not be told." But she never says what that means; she assumes her audience understands.

Melissa Ohden

I suspect Ohden doesn't really want to tell either of those stories, but realizes conservative Christian readers expect them. She doesn't invest the energy or detail she commences after page 70. That's when she begins the two-track narrative of how she meets the birth family she never knew, and how she became an in-demand speaker. Here, her story fills out with details, dialog, and scenes to move a heart of stone.

She also shares the stories of people she meets along the way. Fellow abortion survivors; mothers (and fathers) who lived to regret their abortions; pro-life leaders who have gambled their lives fighting what they consider moral violence. Just anecdotes, sure, but anecdotes that touch the heart of today's continuing culture wars. And her birth family. Sudden death prevents her meeting her father, but when Ohden meets her mother... wow.

Let me emphasize: I disagree with Ohden's issues position. Experience tells me that a leading cause for abortion is poverty, or other circumstances that make women feel they have no future; banning abortion only further circumscribes their options. Though I dislike the idea of abortion as birth control, I doubt how many women would consent to such an invasive, difficult procedure if they believed they had another choice.

As a contribution to the other side, Ohden's argument is a one-plank platform. She briefly acknowledges her beliefs about women's rights and the need for progressive reform, but doesn't give any details. Like her organizations, Ohden nods toward diverse issues, but spends her actual time rehearsing standard conservative Christian talking points. How can we reverse abortion trends without first giving women something to live for?

Nevertheless, Ohden presents an emotionally complex autobiography of the pro-life position. Readers who already agree with her platform will find plenty to cheer, and maybe provide some tools when discussing this issue in the future. As a memoir, it requires pushing through the obligatory Fundamentalist building blocks, but once Ohden starts telling her own story, it becomes worth reading.

Just realize, readers who don't already hold pro-life opinions probably won't change their minds during this book. I finished reading more aware of the other side's beliefs, more conscious of where we actually disagree, less like to believe caricatures of the pro-life position. I think we can argue better now. But deep down, I haven't changed my mind.

Make America Sad Again

1001 Movies To Watch Before Your Netflix Subscription Dies, Part 15
Kelly Makin (director), Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy

Deep within a mysterious Canadian laboratory, a research team makes a discovery: a permanent chemical cure to depression. Nobody ever need feel needlessly sad again. But the corporation holding the purse strings has no patience for due diligence or boring old science: they rush Gleemonex onto the market without proper testing. It becomes a hit, and happiness becomes epidemic. Until the side effects hit.

Like Monty Python, whose television series they shamelessly copied, the Kids in the Hall sought to transform sketch comedy gold into big-screen revenues. Their single resulting effort received lukewarm reviews, lacked studio support, and lost money. It’s exceedingly difficult to find currently. Yet it remains possibly the most accurate mass-media insight into how affective mental illness works, and why making your pain vanish might be worse than the alternative.

Dr. Chris Cooper (Kevin McDonald) and his researchers have toiled ceaselessly, pursuing the goal of curing depression. They’ve become hunched, gnome-like, in their isolation, unable to have authentic experiences. Basically they’ve become depressed. But when their drug proves effective at eliminating human sadness, Cooper gets swept into rock-star-like celebrity, the adulation of millions. Happiness becomes a commodity ordinary citizens purchase over the counter.

On one level, this film uses fast-paced slapstick to tell a funny story. The Monty Python comparison isn’t gratuitous; executive producer Lorne Michaels used old Flying Circus footage to pitch Kids in the Hall to CBC, as well as selling Saturday Night Live to NBC. This movie’s episodic story structure, arcing toward ultimate disappointment, partly mirrors The Holy Grail. KitH’s humor tends gloomier, but audiences will find comforting overlaps between the styles.

But this movie also has serious themes. It unpacks the nature of depression, the fact that people mired in bleak sadness will try anything to escape their condition. This proves a complicated, nuanced issue immune to simple exposition. Patients consuming Gleemonex in this movie often don’t want happiness; they want to leave themselves behind and become someone else. These patents aren’t necessarily depressed, not clinically, they just aren’t happy.

Historically, the British Utilitarian philosophers, led by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, insisted all human effort sought to bring happiness. Nietzsche mocked this idea, noting people often perform actions that make themselves unhappy, and said people actually assert power. This movie splits the difference, insisting that people actually want the pain to go away. If that means power over themselves and others, well, that’s happiness.

Until it isn’t.

Spoiler alert: Gleemonex proves to have disastrous side effects. Patients supposedly made happy risk falling into coma-like trances in which they do nothing. Literally nothing, not even feed themselves. Gleemonex cures depression by unlocking patents’ happiest memories, but some become trapped in those memories, an all-encompassing cycle where they lack either past or future. Happy people become mindless, losing the ability to move forward, literally or figuratively.

The comedy in this story comes from people failing to comprehend one another. Mrs. Hurdicure, the chief test subject, doesn’t understand her family, who don’t even pretend to understand her. She clings onto moments of meaning, the ability to be together even for a few seconds, regardless of the long-term consequences. She wants to exist, and existence means doing something meaningful. She’s simply not doing anything meaningful in the present.

We see glimpses of other people’s struggles. An aging housewife, bloated from futility, gets trapped in a mental discotheque, repeating one moment where she felt connected with human beings. Wally (Scott Thompson), a frustrated suburban husband who embraces his homosexuality under Gleemonex’s influence, keeps repeating moments when he didn’t feel forced to conceal himself. But he’s neither present nor whole; he keeps retreating into these moments.

This story doesn’t necessarily discount the whole experience of depression. Dr. Cooper notes late that he invented his drug “for people too depressed to get off the floor.” Dr. Stephen Ilardi, at the University of Kansas, notes this is the only group that clinically benefits from taking antidepressants. The problem arises when ordinary people abuse the drug to escape ordinary disappointment. Without dissatisfaction and occasional sadness, this movie insists, we aren’t really human.

With its deep meaning layered beneath frenetic dorm-room comedy, this movie rewards multiple levels of watching. Unfortunately, it’s very hard to find. Unlike KitH’s original TV show, which has always been widely available on VHS and DVD, this movie never found its audience, and has gone out of print. If you find a copy somewhere, grab it. Intelligent, informed viewers will find reward unpacking this movie’s complicated comedy.

The Rise of Name-Calling Nation

Wow, way to raise the discourse!

I’m getting heartily sick of the word “fascist.” Political pundits on both sides of the aisle love throwing that word around with reckless abandon, often in disregard of the facts. Certain incoming American presidential administrations who shall remain nameless have, indeed, demonstrated structural characteristics reminiscent of classic Italian Fascism. Yet the casual attitude people use with the term reflects not political enlightenment, but fear of marked difference.

2017 is shaping up to be the Year of Nasty Name-Calling. Shouters from the Left have made “fascist” their rallying cry, while from the Right, “snowflake” and “cuck” have become ubiquitous and annoying. Both sides have managed to cheapen their debating stock by hollering the same repeated buzzwords until they’ve lost all meaning. This doesn’t merely undermine the principles of political discourse; it weakens our ability to communicate using language.

It’s tempting to attribute all manner of causes for this rising disparity. The increased importance of partisan news sources like Fox News and MSNBC means many Americans need only receive information they know they’ll already agree with. The “other side” gets heard only in contexts where their loss is foreordained. And social media provides a ready-made platform for clickbait, including the “fake news” we’ve heard ballyhooed so much recently.

Diplomats: This is bad.
Experts: This is bad.
Trump voters: You're snowflakes.
China: No, this is bad. pic.twitter.com/HAdGWqytcU

— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) December 12, 2016

But considered coldly, that doesn’t make sense. While improving Internet technology and the proliferation of deep-numbers basic cable channels have created new crevices for partisan bomb-throwers to fester in, print has always given voice to one-sided pseudo-journalism in titles like The Nation and The American Spectator. And supermarket tabloids have appealed to Americans’ hindbrain fears and knee-jerk judgmentalism for generations already. Shitty news, sadly, isn’t new.

Likewise, we could attribute Donald Trump’s frequently ugly language for the normalization of name-calling. His rallies stopped short of dropping N-bombs, but he did call Mexicans “rapists,” urge the exclusion of religious groups from receiving American visas, and encourage followers to pummel protesters. But that feels hollow, given historically ugly political language. Having such posturing from the presidential rostrum may be new, but sidemen have always talked that way.

Indeed, since I began following politics around 1988, there has always been ugliness. Ads produced by future Fox News head Roger Ailes, including the notorious Willie Horton spot, and the image of Governor Mike Dukakis wearing a tank commander helmet that looked like Mickey Mouse ears, propelled George HW Bush to President without addressing issues. Let’s skip Walter Mondale, who lost in 1984 despite accurately predicting Reagan’s impending tax increases.

So ugly political language isn’t new, isn’t technology-driven, and probably has no single source. However, it’s distinctly powerful: Hillary Clinton, who had majority favorable poll ratings when she announced for President, found herself fourteen points underwater by election day. Maybe that’s because facts got slung her way during the campaign, but probably not. She had actual policies that polled well, which Trump lacked, but her opponents had "Trump That Bitch" t-shirts.

Meanwhile, the insults actually slung become meaningless. “Snowflake” originally meant “special little snowflake,” a reference to the idea that individuals’ feelings are sacrosanct from insult and disparagement. It goes back to Mister Rogers-era pedagogy telling children “everyone is special, in their own way.” Kids don’t buy that buncombe: I remember thinking, if everybody is special, nobody is special. But this philosophy survives as insults flung at anyone my age and younger.

The image many pundits partly blame for
killing Michael Dukakis' presidential hopes

Look at the tweet above, using the term “snowflake.” One asshole says “calm down, snowflakes,” to policy experts who observe that poked bears bite back. This isn’t about protecting anybody’s precious feelings, it’s about not provoking a confrontation with a nuclear-armed opponent with a nationalist government. The insult has come unmoored from its origins, simply because the insulter hopes to provoke high feelings. And language progressively becomes meaningless.

Losing our linguistic anchors isn’t some academic exercise. If, through the coming administration, insults and name-calling become standard rhetoric, the effect will be cumulative. Ordinary citizens already don’t talk politics across the aisles (any mention of Hillary Clinton at my workplace results in a shouted tirade from my boss about Whitewater and the Rose Law Firm). Legislators don’t live in Washington full-time or meet for drinks after work anymore.

Political rhetoric got this ugly once before. When that classic name-caller Andrew Jackson got elected president, his all-or-nothing discourse drove his opponents to form the Whig party, establishing America’s two-party electoral system. And ugly language in Congress led to Congressman Preston Brooks beating Senator Charles Sumner on the Capitol rostrum with a cane. Not long after, the Civil War began. Let’s agree to prevent that happening again.