7:53am August 2, 2015

Fluttershy’s dark side.

I talked in my post about animals, about the thing people do where they form an imaginary relationship with someone (often an animal, sometimes a human too) and then see themselves as “loving” and being “good with animals” and stuff, even if what they’re doing to the people in question is utterly horrifying.

I was incredibly pleasantly surprised to see this tackled on an episode of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. If you haven’t seen the show, Fluttershy is a pony who is generally depicted as sweet, timid, demure, and loving, and “good with animals”, and she has all sorts of animal friends and pets living in and around her house. Normally, on the show, her relationship with animals is depicted as 100% wonderful and loving and caring and perfect. So I was shocked, bowled over, and pleasantly surprised when one episode showed that the way she thinks about animals can actually have a dark side that is wholly unpleasant for the animals in question.

Mind you, I don’t actually dislike her character, and I actually mostly like her relationship with animals. Because most of the time she doesn’t cross the lines she crosses in that one episode. But when she does cross those lines, it doesn’t shy away from how awful it is for the animals. Which is amazing for a children’s show, especially one where her relationship with animals is normally idealized to the point it’s almost like Snow White singing with the birds and shit.

Unfortunately, the video itself has been taken off YouTube. However, I found a transcript I made of it years ago, so I’m going to post that. It includes descriptions of her actions, not just her words:

FIRST SCENE
Fluttershy singing:
At the gala
In the garden
I am going to see them all
All the creatures
I’ll befriend them at the gala
All the birdies
And the critters
They will love me big and small
We’ll become good friends forever
Right here at the gala
Everyone singing:
Your dreams will come true
Right here at the gala
SECOND SCENE:
Fluttershy:
Oh my, a meadowlark!
[Someone else whistles a few notes]
[Fluttershy gasps]
Fluttershy: I think she’s calling to me, it’s exactly what I wished for!
[Fluttershy sings the same notes]
[Someone else whistles the same notes]
[Fluttershy whistles the same tune a little lower in pitch]
[Someone else whistles the original notes]
Fluttershy: My little meadowlark is right around this bend!
[Around the corner is a brown pony with a tall hat]
[Brown pony whistles the same notes]
Fluttershy: Was that you?
Brown pony: Yep! I love whistling while I work.
[Brown pony whistles the same notes]
Fluttershy (sounding upset): Oh. Yes. Well, excuse me…
Fluttershy: Oh! I see a [toco!?] toucan, and a spider monkey. And oh! Is that a wallawoo?
[The animals rush away in an instant]
Fluttershy: Oh Fluttershy, you’re such a loudmouth.
THIRD SCENE:
Fluttershy has set up a drop trap with a carrot as bait.
Fluttershy: I just have to be more bold like Twilight says.
[Fluttershy backs away from the trap, pulling the very long rope with her towards the exit to the garden.]
Fluttershy (to animals, in an odd voice): I’m so sorry to have scared you, my friends. You can all come out!
[Fluttershy quickly ducks behind a bush with the rope still in her teeth]
[Some sounds are heard, and Fluttershy pulls the rope]
Fluttershy: Gotcha!
Fluttershy: It’s okay, I promise not to hurt you, I just want to be your —
[The brown horse from before is munching on the carrot]
Fluttershy: …friend?!
Brown horse: Mmm. Sounds good to me!
FOURTH SCENE:
[This whole scene is set to music someone else is singing, similar to the hokey pokey.]
LYRICS: You stomp your whole self in
You stomp your whole self out
You stomp your whole self in
And you stomp yourself about
[This whole time, Fluttershy is throwing herself at various animals, who run away before she can touch them and can be seen hiding in trees and bushes.]
LYRICS: You do the pony pokey and you give a little shout
Fluttershy: COME OUT!!!!
LYRICS: That’s what I’m talking about
Fluttershy: I’ll catch you yet my pretties. Oh yes. As soon as one of you little birds, or monkeys, or bears touches this net, you’ll be mine! MINE!!! [Evil, shrieking laughter.]
Fluttershy: What??
[Fluttershy trips her own trap, which pulls her up into a net. A rabbit comes up to investigate.]
FIFTH SCENE:
[This is inside some sort of huge room at the gala.]
Twilight: Well… it can’t get any worse.
[The entire building starts rumbling and shaking. People look really confused.]
[The doors burst open and a huge bunch of animals from the garden come rushing in, terrified and trying to get away from Fluttershy]
[Fluttershy appears in the doorway after all the animals have come in. She looks worn out and angry.]
Fluttershy (words increasing in volume and anger): You’re… going to LOVE ME!!!!!!!!!
[The various animals run away.]

Just… wow. (Lots and lots more discussion behind cut, some of it redundant from my last post on this subject, some of it new.)

I never, ever expected that, even though I like MLP:FIM more than I like most kids’ shows of the same general type. I really hope that it especially teaches that lesson to kids who might have modeled their own actions after an overly-idealized version of Fluttershy being “good with animals”. I hope, I can at least hope that it has taught someone, somewhere, self-awareness about doing this kind of thing. Because it’s an incredibly shitty thing to do to anyone, whether that person is an animal or not.

And everyone I have ever met who has literally told me “I have a way with animals,” “I have a special gift with cats,” or “I am a [insert animal name] whisperer,” has actually been exactly like Fluttershy in this video. Or worse. Sometimes much, much worse. And also the same when people say they have a “special way with disabled people”, or some subcategory of disabled people, such as autistic people. Doubly so if they say they happen to always have a “special way with” people who can’t talk back in any standard way.

Often the exact same people will do this both with animals and with disabled people, especially disabled people with severe communication impairments who can’t contradict the person in a way that anyone will listen to. It makes me want to throw up, especially when a disabled person who can’t speak makes it clear they want nothing to do with this person, in every way possible, and the person not only violates their space over and over again, but if they fight back, giggles and calls them “naughty” and then continues pushing back against them. It’s horrifying. Especially because I’ve been on the receiving end of this before and it completely sucks in ways you can’t imagine till you’ve been there. It’s worse than any form of overt abuse I’ve ever endured, at least for me it is.

And anyway… there was this one person I met who was worse this way than the average person. And she actually had to have an animal taken away from her for the animal’s own safety. She had kept him in a tiny cage in a darkened closet 24/7 (to keep him away from her cat), and believed that this was a viable long-term way for him to live, and that he didn’t mind because she had a way with animals and he loved her so much. He was actually terrified of her.

Once he was taken away from her, he had to be rehabilitated before he could be given a new home. He had to relearn to trust any humans because of the degree of abuse and neglect she’d put him through. He started out hiding in a corner of his cage shaking every time a human was even in the room with him. He had to be gradually taught that even most clueless humans were more trustworthy than this human he’d first had the misfortune to be “rescued” by. She would try to visit him and forcibly pet him and the new human had to keep her from doing this. Even after he got used to other humans, he still hid every time he saw her coming, tried to bite her if she managed to catch him and touch him, and did everything possible to communicate his displeasure, all of which she ignored because she didn’t want to see it.

He eventually got given a home where he would never have to see her again, and she was not told where this home was. She was furious, probably – actually undoubtedly, given that I know her personality really well, she probably did everything possible to figure out where this animal had been taken. But I also know the person who found him a home knew better than to tell her where that new home was. Last I heard, he was healthy and happy and had recovered from the trauma of being kept in a closet by this woman who thought herself so good with animals that anything she did to them would be forgiven (and didn’t even need to be forgiven, because she had practically a telepathic connection with them, don’t you know, so she could do no wrong?).

This is the same woman who, when I told her that she should not touch Fey on her back right leg, proceeded to grab Fey by the back right leg and squeeze. Fey got an uncomfortable look on her face but kept her cool. (This woman would have fully deserved it if Fey bit her face off, but despite Fey’s reputation as grumpy she actually tries to give people a chance before she resorts to violence. Unless she’s in so much pain that she just lashes out the moment she’s touched, which happens sometimes. That leg has nerve damage and her pain levels fluctuate, so the amount of touch she can tolerate fluctuates too.)

The woman then proceeded to talk my ear off about how this proved she had a special way with animals, especially cats. I said, “No you really don’t.” And she said “But Fey let me touch her leg, and she doesn’t let anyone touch her leg.” I said “I never said she doesn’t let anyone touch her leg. I said that she doesn’t like it when people touch her leg, because it hurts her. It doesn’t mean she never lets you, it just means you shouldn’t do it, especially when you don’t know her well enough to gauge her pain levels.”

Nonplussed does not even begin to describe the response this woman had to my words. Actually it does begin to describe it. It exactly begins to describe it. Nonplussed is where it starts, but it doesn’t end with nonplussed. It ends with some exponentially worse version of nonplussed that English doesn’t have words for. A version of nonplussed that is as intense as nonplussed can possibly get, combined with hurt, offended, and weirdly avoidant of reality.

The weirdly avoidant of reality part is key to understanding how this entire thing works. The person usually cannot stand to see their relationship with the category of beings in question (animal, cats, autistic people, or even just one specific person of any species or type that they happen to do this with… from now on I’ll use animals as the generic example but feel free to imagine me as meaning any person or group of people of any species that you’ve seen this happen with) as anything other than perfect. So they will use their minds to tell themselves stories about the world. Which is something we all do, almost all of the time, but we don’t all do it to the same degree or in the same ways as each other.

And in this particular case, they will tell themselves stories that bend away from their awareness, every aspect of reality that would otherwise tell them that their relationship with animals is less than perfect. This can range from outright denial (”that hampster didn’t bite me!”) to twisting the meaning of the signals the animal is sending out (”that hampster bit me because he was playing!” “oooh you cute little NAUGHTY thing!” “heee hee heeeeee she’s being so CUTE when she hisses at me like that!” “awww you’re so SILLY”) to pretending the signals don’t exist at all.

It also frequently involves vilifying anyone who tells them “Hey, that animal doesn’t like that.” Well, anything from discounting to vilifying, but it’s shocking how fast it can turn into vilifying even if the person tries to be hesitant and polite about pointing these things out to them.

Discounting generally looks like “That person just doesn’t understand animals the way I do. I am telepathic with animals, I understand everything they think and feel. They clearly are not good with animals and are misreading how much the animal likes me. Maybe they’re even jealous of my abilities with animals! That’s it, they probably wish they were like me, and since they aren’t, they’re trying to tell me I’m doing something wrong when I’m not.”

And yes, some of the people I’ve talked to actually believe they are literally telepathic with animals, that’s why I used the word. I don’t actually discount everything that gets called telepathy, including with animals, although I have different explanations for it than the average new age type does. But what these people are calling telepathy? Hell yeah I discount it, because it’s so clear with everything they do that the animals are not thrilled with them and quite often can see right through them.

Also, as someone who’s (while unable to communicate in any way that could contradict them) had people claim to have a telepathic way of communicating with me, and then communicating ‘on my behalf’ in ways that were supremely fucked up, I can say it’s an incredible violation to be on the wrong end of a fake claim of telepathy. I also find it interesting that people are far more likely to believe fake claims of telepathy, than they are likely to believe it when people actually read my mind and translate it for me. And by read my mind I don’t necessarily mean by any supernatural means, I just mean being able to tell what I’m thinking and then translating it for the benefit of me and the other person in the conversation, because I’m not able to communicate those things at that moment. People love the things said by people who claim to be able to do that but I haven’t given my consent for them to say or do the things they say or do on my behalf. They hate the things said by people who can actually tell what I’m thinking and translate it. Invariably they choose the fake one as the more “real” of the two.

And that’s because the fake form of mind-reading, the fake form of having a “way with” animals, is an immensely comforting form of fakeness. It’s a story that has a built-in happy ending. When you can really tell what someone is thinking, who can’t communicate it in words, and you really translate it for them in an unambiguous way, chances are at some point you’re going to step on the toes of someone who’s been running roughshod over the person’s rights for a really long time. And when you do that, there is no comforting illusion, but a very uncomfortable removal of comforting illusions. And that’s why people almost always prefer the fake version of mind-reading to the real thing. (Again, when I say mind-reading, I don’t mean it in a supernatural way. I just mean the ability to tell what someone else is thinking at a particular point in time. Most people can do it at least sometimes for at least some kinds of people, it’s kind of the whole basis for communication in general.)

Comforting illusions are how you can chase a bunch of terrified animals into a room, scream “LOVE ME!!!!!!!!!!” in an utterly horrifying voice, and think you’re doing them a favor and that they really do love you deep down and are not running from you in terror. (Why am I reminded of Galadriel in movie-LoTR when she says “ALL SHALL LOVE ME AND DESPAIR!” in that weird “evil and powerful” voice?)

Comforting illusions, and the power to pull them off. And given that humans have immense power over most other animals we interact directly with on a regular basis, it’s not hard to maintain comforting illusions about them and our relationships with them.

Even people who don’t particularly think they have a way with animals can fall prey to these illusions.

I can’t count the number of cats I’ve seen who do not like being picked up, but have become resigned to it. The difference between these cats, and cats who genuinely love being randomly picked up (and such cats exist, certainly), is night and day. The cats I’m talking about here… they will often go limp, or their eyes will glaze over for the duration of the interaction, or both.

The woman who claimed to be “good with” Fey because she touched her on the leg and didn’t instantly get bitten, and who abused/neglected that other animal until he had to be taken away from her and emotionally rehabilitated before he could even handle humans again, had a cat. That poor cat. This woman would randomly grab the cat and blow raspberries into the cat’s belly. I don’t know any cat ever who likes having raspberries blown into their belly. But the cat’s eyes would glaze over, she’d go limp, she’d look utterly despondent, and she’d just wait until the entire ordeal was over.

That’s… somewhat of an extreme example of something a cat really would never like. Because there’s just not any way a cat would like that particular action. OTOH there are cats who either actively like being picked up, or don’t mind it. The problem is that most people can’t tell the difference between a cat who likes being picked up, a cat who doesn’t mind being picked up, a cat who likes being picked up some of the time and not others, and a cat who doesn’t like being picked up. That goes double if a cat has learned that there is no escaping being picked up. At that point, if the cat doesn’t like being picked up, the cat simply endures until it’s over, and it’s painful to watch. Sometimes the cat will squirm a little, but the human will usually just go “aww you silly” and hold on tighter, and the cat learns that squirming will do no good, and eventually stops trying altogether.

Fey is good at knowing when fighting back is futile. This means that, for instance, I can usually give her a bath without getting mauled. Because I can usually make it clear to her that this horribly distasteful thing will be over faster if she just lets me do it than if she fights it. She’s often the same way with vet visits. But this means that anyone who interacts with her in any sort of power relationship has a duty to be incredibly careful not to use her understanding of when it’s time to give up, for self-serving reasons. Like… when she used to sometimes come home after having jumped in a dumpster, she had to get a bath, and I would use whatever power I had to make sure we got through the bath with the minimum of fighting. And that’s… not pleasant, and it is a use of power on my part, but it’s not the same as if I used that same knowledge to pick her up whenever I wanted to and carry her around and teach her not to communicate any displeasure when I did this.

In fact, when she first came to me, she was so afraid of human hands that she’d run and hide if she saw you move your hand. I don’t know what exactly happened to her in her first six months (and her previous humans refused to fill out the questionnaire the ASPCA gave them other than to say she slept “wherever she wants” and that they gave her up “because they changed jobs”… the questionnaire had zillions of questions about her personality and habits and history, and those are the only two they answered), but some of it clearly wasn’t good.

So I went out of my way to teach her that she had a right to control when and where and how people touched her, and to respond negatively if she didn’t like how they touched her. And the more she learned that she could give you a warning look, or swat you, and have it be respected as communication, the less terrified of people she got, and the more she interacted in a way that was pleasant for everyone involved. But it was an uphill battle to keep people from randomly grabbing her off the floor, cootchie-cooing in her face, and saying “She likes it, or she would be fighting me right now!” as she went utterly stiff and wide-eyed with terror. Like… she would be freezing in terror, not resignation, but terror, and they would be missing this because their ego said they were good with cats.

I soon learned that the same caregivers (these were mostly my caregivers who did things like this) who were the worst about “I’m good with cats” were the same ones who were pretty awful about “I’m good with [autistic/disabled/DD/whatever] people” too. Sometimes I’d want to jump right under the bed with Fey when the worst ones came in the door. (Occasionally I actually did. It didn’t help. They thought it was cute, invariably.)

I also remember a really interesting ongoing experience with a caregiver. Who was someone who really tried hard to look at her power relationships, even if she didn’t always manage. The sort of person who actually read Dave Hingsburger’s stuff and took it to heart, rather than just paying lip service to how amazing he is.

When she first came, she would grab Fey around the belly, and when Fey sunk all of her teeth and claws into her, she’d giggle and talk about how cute it was that Fey was so “playful”, and then do things that antagonized Fey in order to “play with” her further. She routinely told me I was completely wrong about Fey and that I just didn’t understand Fey as well as she did, or that I was “projecting my own fears” onto Fey that weren’t real, or something along those lines.

(Mind you, there’s also a huge difference between a playful cat and an angry cat, but a lot of people never learn it. And by never learn it, I don’t mean that they don’t learn the subtle variations that can be hard for even people who know cats well to figure out. I mean the things that can be told easily by the presence or absence of certain vocalizations and ear positions. I have heard – and occasionally seen – horror stories about people who antagonized their cats in the name of playing with them, and the cats would be terrified by the toy and/or people in question, and growl and hiss and spit and stick their ears back while attacking, and the people would think this meant the cat was “enjoying playing” and do MORE of whatever made them do that, until they had undermined their entire relationship with the cat and didn’t even know it.)

Anyway, gradually over time she started realizing I was right about Fey being angry, and she started treating Fey better, and Fey got to really enjoy her and prefer her to other people even.

And over that same period of time she started admitting to me that, whether a person was human or not, if that person could not talk, she didn’t totally see that person as a full person. And I know people who have been shocked when I say she said this. And by shocked, I mean they think she’s a worse person than most people because she admitted openly to feeling this way. But it was actually that she was a better person than most people that she was able to see she felt this way at all. Most people – even many people with severe communication impairments who really ought to know better, but clearly don’t, from the things they do and say about other people with severe communication impairments – have this bias. I’d even say possibly all people have it to some extent or another, some stronger than others. It’s harder to see someone as a full person when they’re not responding in ways that you see as communication.

So I don’t think she thought this way any worse than most people do. In fact, many of the people who criticized her the loudest for saying it up front, were people who were much worse that way than she ever was. She just had the courage to face herself and see it. Not everyone has that courage. I know that I don’t always have the courage to face myself about way more minor shit that I’ve done wrong. That’s why I’m always seriously impressed by people who’ve done things beyond the normal level of awful, who can face themselves with courage anyway.

Like Dave Hingsburger, an author who is now disabled himself, worked in the disability field for decades before becoming disabled, and used to write behavior programs that involved torturing people with skin shock so severe it burned their flesh. He still remembers the smell. And writes about it. And does not shy away from the fact that there is and never can be any defense for what he’s done. And uses everything he’s ever done wrong, to try to teach other people how not to do those things wrong.

I know people who refuse to have anything to do with him because he isn’t perfect when it comes to disability (or just isn’t perfect in general, I don’t know why so many people seem to expect a better than average level of perfection from him but I see it all the time and it weirds me out, it’s like they think because he’s gotten some things so right then he has to be held to a higher standard than the rest of humanity), or because of things he did in the past. But I would far rather interact with him than with most of those people who treat him that way. And I’d far rather interact with my former caregiver who was willing to admit to her own struggles with bias as they were still happening (which takes a level of vulnerability that’s seriously non-trivial and that can’t be even expected of most people to the degree that she did it anyway) than I would with people who pretend they’ve never had such a bias in their lives.

Anyway, I’ve gotten a little bit off of my main topic, but I’m going to send this as-is. I’m still exceedingly impressed that some writer in MLP:FIM managed to give Fluttershy’s “way with animals” an incredibly realistic and powerful dark side. Because nobody ever seems to see the dark side of characters like that, or character traits like that, even though they’re very much present. And dark!Fluttershy is absolutely necessary to show from time to time to show she’s actually a flawed character. And I really do hope that like… the sort of kid who would have really identified with her almost-entirely-positive-with-regards-to-animals portrayal up to that point, may have gotten their own animal-related egos shaken up a bit by the gala episode. I can hope. I can really hope it made some people think.

Because to me… there’s still little more horrifying than being on the receiving end of… that. That whole thing, all of it, as a package.