There's a Place for the "F*ck You" Voice Inside Our Heads
Let's please stop indulging the bullies.
Last week, all of my activist sensibilities were challenged, and I’ve spent this week wrapping my head around how to move forward gracefully. After noodling on it ad nauseam and spending more mental energy on it than I can care to admit (spoiler: this is exactly what I need to not do in the future), I think I have finally found my breakthrough answer. I need to reconnect with the “f*ck you” inside my head. Not the internally focused f-you; rather, the one that I get to say to people in my head after it is clear they are only interested in being combative or difficult.
Though I’d never be intentionally disrespectful to someone, last week it occurred to me that I sometimes over-correct and instead become a doormat.
By reconnecting with my inner f-you, I am giving myself permission to not hold space for jerks.
And that means both space in the moment (I’m allowed to leave the room, even if it’s virtually), and (this is key) space after the fact (I don’t need to waste mental energy replaying it over and over … that’s me giving away way too much of my power).
Last week, I was a panelist on a Clubhouse talk—and I quickly learned that Clubhouse runs the risk of emboldening disrespectful people who are used to hiding behind making nasty comments under social media images. But now, they get to act out in audio form, hidden by some degree of anonymity and not necessarily realizing that the person they are speaking to (… at) is a real human being. Though Clubhouse certainly provides a lot of opportunities for bringing people together, like everything else on the internet, it comes with a dark side.
I have a lot of practice not reading comments, and when I accidentally see them anyway, I have fine-tuned the art of (usually) not letting them get to me. But I don’t have much experience with this kind of medium. So I wasn’t really prepared for how easy it would be for someone to be, shall we say, undignified. We were operating from two different sets of rules: I was a polite panelist who has given at least hundreds of talks about veganism and activism around the globe. But the mean people were operating as internet trolls, or at the very least, bored people who had nothing better to do with their lunch hour than be combative.
Their vitriol had to do with me advocating veganism. Actually, my watered-down messaging for this more mainstream crowd was that, given the catastrophic connections between animal agriculture and climate change, my hope is that we can each embrace more of a plant-based diet in ways that make sense for us.
As vegans, many of us are trained to become excellent communicators (notably, many of us are not).
I have spent decades—first as an AIDS-awareness activist and then as an animal activist—trying to master the art of difficult conversations (even my Bat Mitzvah speech back in 1992 was about Ryan White and the AIDS crisis). I know that the issues I have devoted my life to fighting for bring up a lot of defenses in people, and I understand why. I do my best to bring my ethic of compassion and empathy to anyone I’m with, not judging them if they have concerns or reservations—but rather, doing my best to advocate for animals from a place of inclusivity and gentleness. I know we are each on different paths, at different times, with different sets of circumstances.
But when combativeness takes over someone’s messaging, I need to remember that there is a point in which I am allowed to check out. Though I would never join them in their aggression (that’s just not my style), I can certainly say “f*ck you” more often inside my head (only), recognize that I have a valuable voice, remember that I don’t always have to use it (!), and not provide the other person the space they are so desperately trying to take up with their shenanigans.
More and more, I’m realizing that I have bent over backward time and time again—perhaps throughout my entire life—to ensure that the other person feels acknowledged and validated (even, perhaps especially, when I haven’t felt that way). Being accommodating can be a tremendous skill to bring to activism, and I’m grateful to have it. It has allowed me opportunities to discuss tough subjects such as LGBTQ rights, antiracism, and animal advocacy with humility and, I hope, unpretentiousness. I have held (and will continue to hold) space for learning, growing, and deepening my own social justice work, internally and externally.
But I have also self-abandoned, given too much power to haters, shrunk and self-doubted when louder-people-than-me entered the room, and—perhaps most upsettingly—lost a lot of precious time thinking about the encounter after it was over.
If you had any idea how many conversations I’ve had in my head, you would wonder how it is I have been able to accomplish anything.
My experience last week threw me. Perhaps because it was occurring at the same time as other activist disappointments: a long-time vegan I know became an ex-vegan; a vegan project I’ve been involved with felt, to me, to be misguided and was watering down the animal message in a way that saddened me; I was given news that the net-zero home my family and I were considering moving to was no longer an option, proving to me that it is nearly impossible to truly live my environmental values as radically consistently as I want to (which also means others won’t be able to, specifically regarding net-zero living, anyway); and, on a selfish level, I allowed myself to be pulled into so many damn meetings that were entire wastes of time (which goes against everything I’m learning about time-management).
Though I am looking at these words and chuckling to myself because it’s very clear to me that I want to be the empress and it’s frustrating that I’m not (everyone would be mandated to have extremely time-efficient meetings if I ran the world), I am also recognizing that last week was indicative of a tough activist week, and that’s okay.
We wouldn’t be activists if it were easy.
And though I could certainly go on a rant right now about the importance of self-care (and yes, it’s important, blah blah blah), what I’m mostly recognizing right now is that I don’t say “f*ck you” nearly enough (again, using my inside-voice).
Perhaps not surprisingly, what made this really gel for me is that I confided the full story about what happened to a friend of mine who happens to be in the public eye, and has been since they were quite young. They learned the really hard way that you absolutely cannot please everyone—especially when you stand for something—and they have mastered the art of muting the assholes. It is a firm boundary they now have with themselves.
I am deeply inspired by that, and so my current life lesson—whether it is through Clubhouse panels or IRL discussions—is to protect myself (and my voice, and the mental energy I give people after the encounter) as I would protect a friend. If a friend were being bullied, I would tell them to remove themselves from that situation, focus instead on their safe spaces, and stop allowing the haters to ruin their day.
As the brilliant Tabitha Brown says, “Have a good day. But if you can’t, don’t you dare go messin’ up nobody' else’s.”
Sometimes, when we are spiraling, we have to train our brains to stop. We have to intentionally intervene. And I have experience with this. I spent years and years intervening with negative self-talk, and as a result, managed to turn around my bad body image completely. It didn’t happen overnight, but after many years of disordered eating and a shitty relationship with my beautiful body, I took down those demons.
And believe me: If that is possible, then it is definitely possible to intervene with our thoughts—even when we are spiraling because we were on the other side of someone else trying their best to ruin our day. Letting them succeed at that is the opposite of social justice, and the opposite of self-care or self-esteem.
Everyone is a teacher. Some of those teachers are fuckwads, but they are nonetheless fuckwad-teachers. So even though last week sucked—and I am still, quite honestly, sitting in a bunch of disappointment—I am now genuinely grateful I had that experience. It jostled me out of something that needed jostling out of. It allowed me to come to this conclusion and share it with you: sometimes, it’s okay to say “f*ck you” to someone who is being a jerk, using only the voice in our head, and then move on.
There are other things that need, and deserve, our attention instead.
xo,
jazz
A Random Thing I’d Like to Share
At the encouragement of my best friend Erica, I am taking part in this Radical Compassion Challenge, which sounds a little more woo than it is (though I suppose it has some woo). It’s totally free and each day it includes a meditation and a talk all around compassion (for ourselves, for each other, and for the world). Though I’m admittedly a little behind (thankfully, even though the program indicates specific dates, you can self-direct your experience if you need to divert from the prescribed calendar), so far my biggest takeaway has been that mindfulness is a practice, not a destination.
Okay, that sounded really woo, so let me break it down further: One of the things I struggle with is pausing when things get heated. Either I want to immediately jump in and fix it (paging Alanon!), get an immediate response from someone, or indulge my knee-jerk anger by not thinking through a response before I hit “send.” The type of mindfulness that the organizer of this challenge, Tara Brach (a psychologist and author I follow—who, btw, happens to be vegan), teaches resonates with me. That’s because it seems to be based on an understanding that if we practice pausing in our day-to-day lives (and not just in heightened moments), we can be better at pausing when those assholes try to ruin our day.
Okay, she doesn’t quite say it like that, but you get the point. I find so much inspiration in this, even though taking part in these daily challenges is for sure outside of my comfort zone.
And, I guess, I’ll raise a glass to that: Here’s to being outside of our comfort zones!