12:50pm September 15, 2014

“If somebody is investing time, resources, and energy into convincing you of your own worthlessness, that same somebody has revealed to you that they have a lot to lose if you don’t believe them. They’re protecting their own loss of power. Which means they perceive you as somebody who can take that power away. If somebody is putting in the work to knock you down, it’s because they’ve got something to fear about you if you’re standing up.”

—

Harriet J., “On Interpersonal Badness (You Are Worthless, Let’s Be Friends)” (x)

Reblogging this just to say… the bits about “they’re protecting their own loss of power” and “they’ve got something to fear about you if you’re standing up” really resonate with me.

And to go off on a bit of my own tangent with it.

I remember some years ago when I was involved in certain feminist communities both online and off but especially online. People had this very weird idea about power and what it was, where they saw only the social dynamics that people abuse. I remember one person even had a tattoo that read “Where love is, there power is not. Where power is, there love is not.”

And that always struck me as weird and wrong but I could never place my finger on why. If “power structures” are things like racist imperialism and patriarchy, then of course “power” is bad.

Except that… leaving out the part of power that has to do with you “standing up,” with the fact that finding your own voice and your own strength gives cruel or manipulative people “something to fear” is… leaving yourself defenseless.

If you believe power is just this creepy byproduct of social dynamics, you get as far as wanting people (patriarchy, white supremacy, etc.) off your back. You get as far as “That boot on my neck? I need it to not be there.”

But you never quite account for what it means to be standing.

And honestly, as I go through life and watch people, over and over, use noble-sounding ideologies with truly admirable goals in cruel and twisted ways…

…I become more and more convinced that most ideologies don’t want you to learn what it means to stand.

Want you to believe there’s always something more in the way of your standing. Always some step you have to do first, some shackle you have to break, and who knows? This time you might make it from your back to your knees.

But standing?

That’s always in the far-distant future.

They want “power” to be untouchable and inherently corrupting because if it isn’t, you might step out of line.

And individuals who step out of line are the most dangerous things to any ideology, however virtuous its original aim.

(via fierceawakening)

Wow what a great quote, and great commentary too. I really needed to hear it just now, as well, with that bully I just encountered who basically mocked me for being highly sensing, mocked me for trying to warn other highly sensing people so they wouldn’t get hurt in the ways I’ve seen other people get hurt. What does that tell me about what that bully wants?

They don’t want me standing up and taking my own power as a sensing person, as someone in whom sensing is my dominant way of perceiving the world, as someone who gets a lot of beauty and meaning and value out of that, including being able to perceive certain danger signals before other people do, and being able to warn people of certain dangers. They don’t want me to be okay with who I am, as I am. They don’t want me to stand up and say “This is who I am and there is nothing wrong with it” or “There is nothing inferior about the way my brain works, just because it doesn’t work like yours.”

They’d rather shame me into silence by telling me I just want to be special.

As far as specialness goes, I think everyone is special and I think nobody is special. Everyone is special because each person has a unique place in the universe just for them, right where they fit, right where their niche is, right where they can do the most good at any given point in time, and I think it’s part of our life’s work to find that place in the world and occupy it to the best of our possible abilities. And nobody is special because nobody is totally unique, nobody is someone who stands above the others and is better than them. Two different uses of the word special, obviously. When words have more than one meaning, it can be a confusing conversation.

And I know, for a fact, that part of my place in the world involves sensing, because as everything in my life was falling apart, as I lost everything else, I never lost sensing. It was the one thing in my brain that I could always count on. Even when I was delirious, and my mind felt shattered to pieces in the most painful possible way, I still had sensing. Distorted sensing, but sensing. Which is more than I can say for the amount of rational thought I had at the time. Sensing is my fall-back position, it’s my strength, it’s a big part of who I am. That doesn’t make me special. Everyone has some mode of thinking that is easier for them than other modes of thinking. Mine happens to be an unusual one, but it still doesn’t make me special. There are lots of other autistic people and cognitively disabled people who rely on sensing as much or more than I do. There are autistic people who raise it to a high art form.

But anyway, these things are part of me, and clearly there are bullies who don’t want me standing up and taking my own power, the power that’s actually due to me as any human being is due a certain amount of power, and saying “This is me and there is nothing wrong with that.” And all of this is exactly what I needed to hear. Not just because the bullying I just encountered, but because of stuff I’ve seen going down in the echo chambers lately.

Notes: