The First Part: Surveillance & Audiences

I was thinking of going offline to get away from the distraction and the all-pervasive surveillance but then I got worried I would miss my f̶r̶i̶e̶n̶d̶s̶  audience.  I mean, sure, I want to be spectacular — look at me! look at me! — but I want to be spectacular on my own terms.  I want to show you myself so that you respond by loving me, not so that unseen but always present – and we know they are always present, they are in the very coding of these pages – audience members will manipulate me or punish me or find ways to take my money.  But if I can’t have the audience I desire, I suppose I’d rather be exploited than ignored.  And I guess I’d rather have someone peeping in my windows at night than have nobody ever think of me at all.  I’ll turn on all the lights and leave the curtains open when I’m changing if that’s what it takes.

~

Once upon a time, two people “made love on the living room floor/ with the noise in the background of a televised war” but smart bombs have given way to smart phones and instead of television we have Skype or snapchat or tinder or grindr and if we can’t warm ourselves with someone else’s body, we can make love to ourselves with their image.  I’m not alone if I’m watching someone else.

Of course, we’re still bombing the life out of all kinds of other people, but it’s old news by now.  Perpetual war is kind of taken for granted.  War and loneliness are pretty much all there is anymore.  It’s so perfectly normal to be so utterly isolated.

Isn’t social media a wonderful panacea to living a life where we spend the vast majority of our time working bullshit jobs and surrounded by people we hardly know or care about?  Fuck, I’m too tired and busy and stressed and broke to ever be able to set aside time to spend with love ones… but 65 people wished me a happy birthday on Facebook! And the ads have been getting ever better at showing me things I want to buy with the money for which I have traded my life, so that’s nice.

~

I remember talking to some sex workers who started when they were very young (14 is the average age of entry into sex work in Canada).  When they first started and people told them they were being exploited (if they had anybody in their lives to say that kind of thing to them) they would laugh and point to their new fur coat or new jewelry or point out they were already making more money in a few months than most people make in five years… but two years or ten years or twenty-six years (40 is the average age of death for a sex worker in Canada) down the road, they often looked back and thought, yeah, I really was being exploited.  But, by then… well… a lot had happened by then.

Seems to me that Social Media has a similar relationship with us.  We’re so enamoured with the things it gives us, it makes it easy to forget that we’re getting fucked.

But our pages are eternal – there’s no slide from high track to low track, from private jets and Fortune 500 CEOs to five dollar blowjobs behind the Carnegie Centre, from living it up to dying – so maybe we’ll never have to know.

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We didn’t think they’d rise
And even if they did, we figured they’d understand
That we only voted strategically
—–Our hearts were elsewhere
———-I’d have voted Green if it wasn’t such a waste
—–But anyone but Harper sounded too good to pass up.
———-How can we be to blame
—————When we voted him out?
We didn’t think they’d rise
And even if they did, we figured they’d understand
After all, we drove a Prius
—–And bought organic, local-grown
———-Fruits and vegetables
—–And our hundred dollar sweaters
———-Were purchased through a fair trade arrangement
—————Between the store at the mall and a village in Thailand
We didn’t think they’d rise
And even if they did, we figured they’d understand
That although our tax dollars purchased bombs
—–We rather wished they’d didn’t
———-Plus there’s a peace sign on the bumper of our Prius
—–And although we funded the murder of entire villages in the Middle East
———-We sponsor a child in Mexico
—————Her picture is on the fridge next to the ice dispenser
We didn’t think they’d rise
And even if they did, we figured they’d understand
That although we’re middleclass settlers
—–We visited Occupy encampments
———-And dropped off socks at the shelter at Christmas
—–And we applauded idle no more
———-Even though we have no Indigneous friends
—————They just didn’t seem to be around
We didn’t think they’d rise
And even if they did, we figured they’d be merciful
Even though we were not
—–Because we wanted something different
———-And used gender neutral language
—–Because that wasn’t really us
———-We didn’t pull the triggers
—————Or fly the planes or give the orders
We didn’t think they’d rise
And even if they did, we figured they’d be merciful
Because surely there cannot be others as cruel as us
—–With no regard for the lives of children
———-Or the bodies of women and men
—–It’s not our fault they were downwind
———-Of Tar Sands or Chemical Valley
—————Or Free Trade agreements and Private Property
We didn’t think they’d rise
And even if they did, we figured they’d be merciful
Because our kids at least are innocent
—–Although theirs were too before we killed them
———-Or maimed them or took them away
—–But that’s not the point
———-We didn’t think they’d rise
—————We hardly thought of them at all

[What follows is the transcript of the material I tried to present at a conference called Streetlevel.  It’s a conference for people working in social services that are rooted in the Christian faith.  As you will see in what follows, I see this as an highly problematical endeavour.  However, given the audience and given my own background in textual criticism, especially in relation to the New Testament, I found it useful to use language, stories, and characters familiar to the audience in order to try and make some of my points.]
“How can I be healthy, when I’m already dead?”  Confronting the dominance of the medical model within social services, with an oppression-informed analysis
Opening
I will begin by recognizing that I am speaking while occupying land that Creator has gifted to the keeping of the Anishinaabe and shared with the Haudenosaunee and Lenape.  I lift my hands to these caretakers of the land and thank them for allowing people like me to live, work, play, and settle in their territories beside the Askunessippi and all across Turtle Island.  As a Settler, I benefit from the ongoing project of Settler colonialism as it plays out in the occupied territories named “Canada” on the maps we learned in school (maps that no longer show European colonies like Rhodesia, the Belgian Congo or Spanish Guinea, but which continue to show Canada).  In these territories, more than six hundred Indigenous nations have been the target of genocidal practices and policies from before independence up until the present day.  In all of this, the government of Canada, the Christian churches, the charities, and all the settlers and citizens of the nation, have been implicated.  Indeed, it is necessary to acknowledge from the beginning that as a white male settler of Christian European descent, I am a beneficiary of the genocidal process of colonization that has secured for me legal rights, access to wealth and education, and political and social status.  So, it is with a sense of my own liability and responsibility that I express my thanksgiving and lift my hands to the caretakers of the land I occupy. Chi-miigwetch.
In light of this history of genocide, so tightly woven together with the history of Christianity, it is often difficult to think or speak of God, and just as difficult to think about prayer.  However, I want to open with a prayer I learned from an elder in Vancouver’s downtown eastside.  After sharing some of his story of surviving in a Christian-run residential school, a student in a class I was helping to lead asked this elder what he now thought of God.  The student was doing what I have seen lots of Christians do – she was struggling to really hear this story of abuse, to see how it was intimately linked to Christianity, and to then respond in a manner that genuinely sought to enter into communion with the man sharing.  It seemed as though she was more upset by the idea that a person may have drifted away from the Christian God because of this experience (because she was convinced that Jesus Christ was not represented but misrepresented in residential schools and that the people who did such horrible things were not really Christians, even though they called themselves Christians). She was wanted to highlight the importance of maintaining a sense of one’s relationship with the Christian God.  She was, in other words, trying to be both sensitive and missional (these two characteristics will come up a lot in what follows).  In response to this line of questioning, the elder was very gracious.  He did not say too much but he did say that there was a prayer that he learned from one of his elders.  This was a prayer he could still pray.  It is one I can still pray, too, and I will pray it now:
Creator, may this day be good.
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This is the part about things
Looking back on myself now, I am amazed at the ease with which I spoke of some things. To speak of any thing at all (as if things are things-that-are) is increasingly an absurdity. But all this absurdity is pragmatic. Names are lies and violence and beyond any imaginable bounds of belief or justification, but we name everything (every thing, too, is a name – even if names are also not things-that-are) and so we are able to continue to maximize our efficiency in waking and sleeping and working and paying off credit card bills and taxes and fines and drug dealers (pharmacists?) and everyone else who takes the money for which we are trading our lives. Language may be ideology and fiction, but it works. And I may also be ideology and fiction but I work, too – pretty much everything is structured to ensure that I do. And if I don’t, don’t worry, there are employment resource centres and shelters and social workers to punish me (support me?) for as long as I’m unemployed and to try their damnedest to get me back to living in order to work for money as soon as possible.
Ten years from now, if this fiction that I lie about and name “my life” or “myself” is still being written (as if it is being written, as if it’s a text, as if there’s an author, as if it is, as if I am an I-that-am), I imagine I’ll look back at all of this and be amazed at the ease with which I spoke of it.
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I.
We were holding hands when we walked over the ridge of the dune and saw them. There were three of them. Bigger than newborns but still young enough to be with their mom (at first I wondered if they had been orphaned but a minute later I saw her – she was standing back amongst the trees and scrub and she had seen us long before we spotted her). There was nobody else on the beach and they were playing and jumping on each other. They were dashing towards the water and bouncing back, then dashing, then bouncing, then dashing, then bouncing – as though they had never seen water like this before and it thrilled them and filled them with wonder and joy and the kind of fear that is fun to feel – the kind that is exciting to face into, not the kind that seems bigger than we are.
We held hands and we watched. What did we witness? Three children playing and rejoicing in the world into which they had been thrown. My children were much the same when they went to the beach. Only these children were a little older and they were playing and rejoicing in their own bodies and the strength that was growing within them. And they were all playing together – playing with each other just as much as they were playing with the water and the sand.
Eventually they caught our scent and they turned and bounded over the sand to join their mother, white tails high in the air, wagging back and forth like flags. They made it look effortless.
I wanted to kiss you at that moment.
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I continue to think a lot about Haiti these days. In many ways, I think it is a microcosm of the best and worst of the world that came to be with the rise of capitalism. The history of oppression, of profits over people, of rapacious violence brought to bear upon human beings seeking little more than freedom and their own bit of land to cultivate, is absolutely appalling. The history of resistance to that oppression, the refusal to give in to Death — despite the extent and severity of the violence — the constant uprisings of Life, Life that will not be killed, Life that will not remain dead, is astounding.
Every now and then I try to talk about this with some of my sensitive bourgeois white friends, many of whom are Christians (as is Aristide, as were the French slave traders). I say things like, “The only successful slave revolt in history!” and “I wonder how all of this might provide insight into our own context!” What is the universal response I receive from these kind-hearted people? “Yeah, but what happened? Once they got free, didn’t the leaders just turn on their own people? Didn’t they just end up replicating similar power imbalances – isn’t there now a small percentage of elite, wealthy Haitians oppressing a large number of poor Haitians?  It didn’t really work, did it?”
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[What follows is a very personal and painful reflection about my own experience of being sexually assaulted.  Graphic details are included.  For a number of reasons, explored below, this was extremely difficult to write and to share.  If you know me, I expect it will also be extremely difficult to read.  You don’t have to read it.  If you do read it, please don’t feel obligated to comment on it — although you are also welcome to comment.  Please know that I’m okay (for the most part).  I’m a survivor.  Mostly, I have decided to go public with this for two reasons: (1) personally, I don’t like feeling afraid and I think secrecy facilitates fear and other misplaced feelings like shame, so, for me, this is a part of confronting my own fears; and (2) mainly, I hope that sharing the following will also help others who have experienced sexual violence and who don’t know how to feel or think about it and who have remained silent.  I hope that the following will be helpful to these people.  Perhaps it will help folks to negotiate their own confusion or their own sense of isolation.  Because of this, I hope that you will consider sharing or linking to this on your own social media as I think the more people this can reach, the more potential there is for it to help in the ways I hope it to help.]
This is the first part
It is difficult to know how or where to begin this reflection.  I have tried to write it several times already and ended up deleting each previous attempt at some point in the process.  I have taken breaks of days and months and years in between efforts. I did once manage to write a fair bit about all of this in another piece but I don’t feel that I can stand to go and read or rearrange what I wrote there.
They say that survivors sometimes tell and retell their stories as a part of the process of working through everything that happened… a part of “making peace with” or “moving on” or “healing” or “accepting” or whatever other terms people use so easily in order to speak about the unspeakable.
~
Sometimes I am triggered by events that go on around me or things I see or hear as life goes on – although I am never noticeably triggered, at least I don’t think I am, and I am far less frequently triggered than a good many other survivors I have known – and so to try (again) to sit and dwell in the memory of what was and what still is, to try (again) to put it into words, to try (again) to conceptualize it (to literally transform a trauma into a concept) is very difficult.  I tried recently, after I wrote my last post about representations of female sexual desire, because I realized I was walking around for days in a triggered state of increased anxiety while I was writing what I wrote. I got about four pages into my own personal reflection and then I stopped and deleted it and sat on my bed in the dark trying to suppress the feeling of nausea that was rising in my stomach and throat and the feelings of anxiety and panic that were building up in my chest and head.
~
Thinking about where to begin now, I almost wrote that this is a reflection about something that happened to me.  But I feel like that makes me too passive.  I was involved in what happened.  Things were done to me, but things were also done with me.
Is it still rape, if I let myself be raped?
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Once, while dining with the Pharisees and Tax-Collectors, one of the elders seated at the right hand of the host began to question Jesus about the sayings attributed to him.

“Teacher,” the elder said, “you have told us to love our neighbours and you told us who our neighbours are.  I have heard that you have also told us to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us.  But you have not been so clear as to who our enemies are.  Tell me, teacher, who is my enemy, so that I may love him?  Who is the one who persecutes me so that I may pray for him?”

In response to this question, Jesus told the following story:

“Once there was a man whose wife had died and who had been left alone to raise a single daughter.  In order to raise her up and protect her and educate her and put money aside for her dowry, this man worked very long hours doing backbreaking work for a thankless taskmaster.  Yet he always greeted his master respectfully, he smiled and nodded and laughed at his master’s jokes.  He rose when his master rose and only sat when invited to do so.  He never complained when he was beaten.  He didn’t interrupt and he always thanked his master for his pay and for the opportunity to work for him.  Sometimes, when the master patted his shoulder or shook his hand after a job well done, he expressed a particularly great delight.  But the work was hard and he was often weary when he got home.  If his daughter did not have dinner prepared, he would be short-tempered with her.  If his work clothes were not properly washed and laid out in their place early the next morning, he would yell at her.  Sometimes, if he were particularly sore or tired or had been beaten by his master, he would hit his daughter.  This went on for some time until the man became injured at work.  He was unable to fulfill his normal duties and hoped that his years of service would incline the master to give him a different role.  Sadly, this was not the case and the master threw him out.  Unable to find other work, he was reduced to begging.  The little money he was able to raise begging in the streets with his daughter – who now joined him there – was not enough for them to survive and so, weeping a great many tears, he did what many others did before and with and after him.  He sold his daughter into slavery and that was the last he saw of his only child.”

There was silence around the table when Jesus finished his story and so he asked a question:

“Tell me, who is the enemy of this man?”

Without hesitation, the elder who had initiated the conversation responded, “Surely the taskmaster is the enemy!  Surely he is the one the man is called to love!”

“Oh, you blind and foolish fellow,” Jesus responded, “no wonder you are seated where you are at this table!  The taskmaster is not the enemy of this man – for he always greeted him as a friend and he always was respectful in his presence and he always showed delight in his company.  No, the man treated the taskmaster as his friend and so he was, regardless of how the taskmaster treated him.  The true enemy – the one the man treated like his enemy – was his daughter.  She was the one he was short with and yelled at and beat and ultimately sold into slavery, regardless of his feelings for her.  Those whom you harm are the enemies you are called to love in deed and in action for love is a doing far more than a feeling.  However, the taskmaster was the one who persecuted the man.  I do not say that it is necessary to love such a person – has he not already been treated as a friend, even by those whom he abuses? – but it may be worthwhile to pray for him.  Perhaps my Father in heaven will hear your prayers and make him into a good master instead of a cruel one or, if that proves to be too difficult, perhaps my Father in heaven will hear your prayers and strike him dead.

Your enemy is not the one who harms you, but the one you harm.  And so I say this: do no harm.  As for the one who persecutes you, leave that one in the hands of God.  Rome crushes you – whom you treat as a friend – and you crush the people – whom you treat as enemies although they are flesh of your flesh and blood of your blood.  You cannot stop Rome but one day Rome will be stopped.  Whether or not you are also stopped at that point will depend on whether or not you have ceased to do violence to those who are less than you.  If you do not learn to actively love your enemies, when judgment falls on Rome, those whom you have treated as enemies may decide to accept that designation and rise up against you.  They will be singing songs of freedom as they beat plowshares into swords and they will cut you down like the harvest and not one of you will be saved.”

When Jesus finished speaking, several of those gathered at the meal decided it was time to get serious about their plot to kill him.