#127: Wants vs Needs; Boundaries and Abuse

 CW: This post contains discussions of abuse and mental illness.

Lately I’ve been pondering abuse and boundaries, and how to identify less obvious forms of abusive behavior, and how to explain them without using generalities that gloss over far too much.  It's not the most cheerful topic, I know, but the reality is that humans are SHOCKINGLY bad at understanding our own emotional states, let alone the emotional states of others. And for all that we make fun of the ostrich, we have a talent for ignoring what's right in front of us, and we don't even have to stick our heads in the sand in order to do it.

I guess the reason I’m so obsessed with this is because I have children.  Not only do my kids constantly have me rethinking my concepts of boundaries, they also give me a profound urgency to do the best job I can in explaining certain things.  I want them to have guidelines for life.  I want them to know how to judge the behaviors of others, as well as their own behaviors.  I want them to be prepared to evaluate how they're treated, so that they can make good choices. Not the choices I would make--they're not me and they have a right to evaluate their own tolerance for things. But so that they have the skills to make their OWN choices, with an understanding of what they're deciding.

I’m currently in the process of establishing boundaries with my daughter, and it’s been hard for me.  I mean, it's a good example for her, and it's likely to lead to a better relationship between us over time, but good GRIEF is it awful.

I believe, she has the right to make certain choices for herself, as an autonomous individual.  But we’re warring over how late she stays up at night.  Does she, as an autonomous individual, have the right to stay up late if, when she stays up late, she invariably has a hard time dealing with her responsibilities the next day?  What if, when she stays up late, she makes a lot of noise and it wakes me up, and then I’m not getting enough sleep?  

I'm not saying it's like this.  But I'm not saying it's NOT like this.

Yes, yes, I know, you probably have the same gut reaction to those that I do, but the point is, why?  Why are we so certain that’s the right answer?  It cannot just be “because I’m the parent and I say so.”  That has never been a valid reason for anything, since Eve ate the apple.  If I cannot understand why I think my choices as a parent are valid, then maybe I need to make different choices. So it's important to me that I understand her boundaries, and my boundaries, and where those boundaries come from.

I think, when we’re talking about boundaries, it’s important to distinguish between the concept of wants and needs.  Stick with me for a minute, because I’m going to back out of the realm of parenting and use a very simple example to start.

Let’s say there is a single bite of chocolate left in the house.  I want it, and you want it.  Who gets the chocolate?  

Some people will inevitably go the math route, and say “split the bite” and I agree, sharing things equally is always a great choice when no one really has a better claim, but for the purposes of this thought exercise, this chocolate is magical and has the ineffable property of being a single unit that cannot be split.  So, again, who gets the chocolate?

In some houses, there are established rules about such things.  In fact, I’d go so far as to say there are established rules in most homes, even if they’re unspoken. Sometimes those rules are egalitarian.  “The first person who asked if there was chocolate gets the last bite.”  Sometimes they’re not.  “Mommy gets first dibs on the chocolate, no matter what.”  And those rules are a good starting place (or, at least, a recognized starting place), as long as everyone knows what they are.

But let’s say we have an egalitarian chocolate tradition in our home. And our hypothetical chocolate is sitting here in front of us, and I have had a truly terrible day, and your day has been no big deal.  Even if you are the first person to reach for the chocolate, should you still eat it?  Or should you offer it to me?  Because the chocolate is just a want, but the act of you being kind and giving towards me may actually be a need in that moment.

Or, instead, what if my day was fairly typical, but you had something big to celebrate?  Should I possibly offer you the chocolate as a way of acknowledging your big moment?  Because while the chocolate itself is, again, just a want, getting recognition from someone can be a need.

Here’s another one.  Let’s say we’ve got pizza coming in 45 minutes, and there’s this one bite of chocolate in the house.  What if I ate breakfast and lunch like normal, but you’ve had a crazy day and didn’t get to eat at all?  You’re not going to starve, but still, maybe letting you get something in your stomach is a need in that moment, and you’ve moved past the “just a want” threshold.

Needs and wants have a tricky, difficult to pinpoint barrier between them.  Like looking at a color spectrum and pinpointing when “reddish-purple” becomes “purplish-red”.  That’s because we’re not simple systems that only have one metric that we’re judging at any given time.  We have a whole host of wants and needs that intersect, and it can be very difficult to dive down into them and figure out if what we’re demanding in that moment is more of a want or a need.

For instance, the reason my daughter wants to stay up late is that currently she’s depressed, and we’re in quarantine, and late at night is when she can spend uninterrupted time with her friends online.  For me, that is a compelling argument that her late night time is wandering into need territory.  She needs it for her mental health. I need sleep for my physical health, and I need her to be able to handle her responsibilities for my mental health.  We're in territory where both of us need something, and that makes it harder to find a resolution.

My daughter and I will, hopefully, come to some sort of agreement about how to balance each of our needs, but whether we do or not, this is a very good example of why it’s not always easy to draw boundaries with those you love.  Love is a difficult thing to define, but I think part of it must be weighing other people’s needs alongside your own, when you make life decisions.  If you love someone, you might set your boundaries in a slightly different place, out of deference to their needs.  You might even, if it’s not too critical a boundary, set them in a different place out of deference to your loved ones wants.

I do not believe that’s wrong.  I believe it’s how people create bonds.  By adjusting their boundaries so that they can fit neatly together, because they believe the other person is worth it.

But sometimes people abuse the system of give and take.  And if we're not paying close attention to how all the wants and needs are being balanced, we can get suckered into just accepting that bullshit.

*****

In media, abuse almost always takes a form that’s easy to recognize.  The person who beats their partner, or their child.  The drunk who screams verbal abuse when they’re off the wagon.  These are forms of abuse most of us recognize, because we’ve seen them modeled for us.

In life, abuse can take so many other forms, and a lot of the time those forms are harder to recognize, because they aren’t actions that are intolerable if someone only does them once.  Unlike beating someone because they burn dinner, these actions are more understandable.  After all, no one is a perfect human.  We will all, at some point or another, hurt someone we love.  And if we understand that, it makes it harder to draw the defining line of “is this a mistake?  Or is this a pattern?”

In the longest romantic relationship of my life, my partner consistently valued their wants above my needs.  It’s fairly human to value one’s own needs above another’s (although possibly not the best foundation for a relationship, if you can’t weigh both partner’s needs).  It’s also fairly human to weigh your own wants over another’s (although, when you can only see the chocolate, and not the kindness someone else might need by you offering it, that can, again, make for a difficult basis for a relationship.)  But to value your own wants over the needs of the people you share your life with, is--in my opinion--abuse. Particularly when you berate or bully them when they fail to meet your wants, even as you ignore their needs. Or when you punish them for trying to discuss, let alone prioritize, their own needs, if it conflicts with something you want.

The funny thing is, I really didn’t see it until I was trying to extricate myself from the relationship.

Part of that is because abuse generally isn’t intentional.  Most abusers are caught in their own damaged psyche.  They don’t wake up and think to themselves “today I’m going to manipulate my partner into ignoring her own needs because that’s how I get my chuckles”.  They’ve got something inside them that has made them think that what they’re doing is okay.  Maybe they had a bad role model growing up.  Maybe they have a personality disorder that makes it hard for them to see what they’re doing.  It doesn’t matter.  The point is, most abusers don’t know they’re abusers.  

When you tell them what they’re doing is hurting you, they’ll say they’re sorry.  They’ll tell you they can’t help it, it’s just how their brain works.  They might agree to change their behavior.  They might swear to do better.

I want to take a moment and admit, some of them do actually do better.  Some of them start paying attention to their choices, or seek professional help and guidance, and they really do change their ways.  People are not always trapped in a cycle of bad behavior.  Every single one of us has hurt someone we loved.  Every single one of us--barring an imminent death--will do it again.  If someone works to improve and change and be a better and more loving person then I am not one to hold it against them.  A person who engages in abusive behaviors, but works to stop when they have those behaviors identified for them, isn’t any worse than the next human.  We all have places we fail.

Unfortunately, there are many, many abusers who do not seek professional help or guidance.  They do not put effort into changing.  They do not start paying attention to their choices.  They apologize for the specific instance you called them out on--or don't. Sometimes they explain why you pushed them into it and that if you don't want them to behave that way then you need to never do something like that again--and then they carry on in their patterns.

Those people are toxic.  And, whether they mean to or not, they will hurt you if you let them.

Sadly, if you have let one of these people into your life, they will probably hurt you even if you try to stop them. 

My daughter, when I tell her she cannot stay up any later because she’s woken me up three times and I need sleep so I can work, will scream at me that I’m mean and horrible and awful.  My daughter is also ten years old, and hasn’t quite grasped that people should be allowed to set boundaries that affect her in order to protect their own needs.

I understand that my daughter behaves this way because she’s a child, and is still learning.

Unfortunately, my ex also behaves this way.  Boundaries that I set, to protect my own needs, are ignored, and if I insist on them then my ex responds by hurting me.  Or, if I am protected from being hurt, by threatening me.  At this point, I have a fear response to setting boundaries, because I expect retaliation.

It’s honestly incredibly messed up.

*****

There are three theories you can find on the internet relating to mental health and cutlery.  Spoon theory, the lesser known fork theory, and the almost never mentioned knife theory.  Spoon theory is a model where spoons are used as currency for the things we manage each day, and it’s established that people with illnesses or chronic problems have a lower daily supply of spoons than your average healthy person.  The phrase “out of spoons” has generally come to mean “I don’t have the emotional energy for that.”  

Fork theory is a model where having a fork stuck in you is a burden you bear.  There are different sized forks, but each of us has a fork limit, and “too many forks” means that you cannot handle a single other thing, no matter how minor, going wrong.

Knife theory is just like fork theory, but knives are things that do damage and hurt when you take them out.  So, extricating yourself from an abusive relationship is a major knife you’re pulling out.  It’s got to come out, but it’s not going to be a painless process.

***********

Often times, when abuse is portrayed in media, there is a particular scenario that gets modeled.  We all know abuse is generally hidden to those outside the relationship, unless it’s so bad it can’t be kept a secret.  But most abuse--physical, emotional, mental, whatever--tends to be something that is private.  Even when aspects of it happen in public, the public doesn’t know that they’re looking at a pattern of behavior that amounts to abuse.  Representations of abuse generally get that right, but what they fail to get right is the way abuse presents in daily life.

I should pause here and explain that I am not a doctor or a researcher.  I am a person who has experienced abuse, but, in addition to that, when I was a child my family ran shelters for abused women.  What I am talking about I understand on a visceral level, due to my own personal experience and what I observed throughout my childhood.  However, your mileage may vary.  I am not trying to speak for everyone--I am trying to speak for the people who make up at least some percentage of the adult population, who aren’t being accurately shown.

At any rate, when I see abuse in media I often see it presented as a kind of persistent, malignant fear on the part of the abused.  I do not want to say that no one experiences it that way.  But having it only portrayed that way leads to misunderstanding, on a number of levels.  First of all, those who are experiencing abuse, but don’t live in terror, can have a hard time recognizing what’s happening to them, because they think the constant terror is a vital component.  It can also make it harder for people outside the relationship to see concerning signs.  But it also builds up a whole culture of expectation, guilt, and blame around the abuse victim, and that culture is harmful.

Most abuse victims, at least those I have known, do not live in fear all the time.  There is a trigger surrounding their abuse--generally a very specific trigger--and most abuse victims are completely able to identify that trigger subconsciously, even if they can’t pinpoint it consciously.  It might be that your partner becomes violent when drunk.  It might be that they become mean if they ever experience embarrassment.  It might be that they get vicious when they feel out of control.  It could be anything, but the point is, it is not generally something that is persistent.  It’s a specific trigger, and people who are abused have a very simple coping mechanism;

They avoid the trigger.

Again, I’m not claiming this is a conscious thing.  Humanity as a whole does this all the time.  Do you have a friend with a phobia?  You probably avoid that subject in their presence.  Not because you are abused, but because you’re trying to avoid causing them pain.  It’s natural to avoid triggers that bring negative responses, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing, unless the trigger itself is something you either can’t avoid, or something you have to have in order to lead a healthy life.  

Most abuse victims will actively avoid the trigger.  If their spouse goes out drinking, they’ll go visit their mother for the night.  They won’t tease their partner, if their partner’s trigger is embarrassment.  If their partner hates feeling out of control, they simply let them make all the decisions.  

The problem with this, of course, is two fold.  The first is that stuffing yourself into a box in order to avoid triggering abuse from someone else is super bad for you.  But the second is that you and your partner aren’t the only two people in the world.  Sometimes their trigger will get hit by someone else.  And when that happens, you can end up suffering the consequences.

But in the day to day life of an abuse victim, they often aren’t scared.  They aren’t worried.  They engage with their partner the same way anyone else would, both good and bad.  They’ll snap at them over a pet peeve, or cuddle together to enjoy a favorite TV show, or reminisce over a really great party they went to, or roll their eyes when they think their partner is being ridiculous.  That aura of persistent fear isn’t there, because they know that the trigger isn’t there.  

And when you’re not afraid, you’re just with the person you love.  Which is how we come to the subtle cultural guilt and blame that surrounds victimhood.

People always ask “why do they stay?”  And often someone who has never been abused says something back, trying to convince someone else who has never been abused, and they discuss it until they eventually fall back on “They’re afraid to leave.”

And that’s definitely true sometimes.  In the worst cases, people are afraid to leave.

But lots of times, they just stay out of love.  They love their abuser.  They want to make their abuser happy.  They take part of the blame for exposing their abuser to whatever the trigger was, and they accept that whatever happened to them as a result is at least partially their fault.  

It is far harder to leave someone you love, than to figure out a way to escape someone you fear.  

But we don’t talk about that, because we have this idea of abuse in our heads.  “How could you stay?” is hard to answer, but “How could you love someone who does this to you?” is even harder.  If the victim doesn’t realize it’s abuse, then their confusion about it can be even worse.  If the victim does realize it’s abuse... well.  Then the guilt creeps in.  How can we be so stupid, so foolish, so idiotic as to love our abuser? You argue with yourself.  It can’t really be abuse, because if it is then we love an abuser.  And that can’t be right.  We’re not an idiot.  We’re not self-loathing.  So maybe it’s not abuse, and maybe we’re the problem?

Yes, that must be it.  We’re doing something wrong.  We’ll just have to try harder to be a better partner, because we love this person, and we wouldn’t love an abuser, so that makes us the issue.

It is exhausting trying to justify abuse from someone you love.

And folks, it’s not like one person is all sweetness and light and the other is the one with the darkness in them.  We’re human.  We all have darkness in us.  Like I said, when the trigger isn’t present, abuse victims act like normal people.  Which means they have bad days, and days that they aren’t kind, and days that they don’t do the right thing.  

After my son was born I had a prolonged bout of Postpartum Depression.  Every hurt that I had ever suppressed or tried to accept from my partner became a trigger point for me.  I would flip shit at anything that reminded me of their abuse.  For nine months, which was how long that awful chemical maelstrom lasted, I turned right around and abused them.  And I want to be clear about something, I am not excusing that because of PPD, or because it was a reaction to rage I had built up over their behavior.  All abusers have a reason.  All abusers have something that makes them think what they’re doing is okay.

Reasons don’t make it right.

I crawled out of that hole after nine months and I don’t ever want to be that person again.  But if you’ve been that person, and have worked to heal, and do better, it makes it so much easier to stay with the person you love, and hope that they will also reform.  You know it’s possible.  You know you’re not a blameless soul.  Or maybe you, personally, were never an abuser, but you still know there are times you’re mean, or petty.  We all are.  So you forgive and you move on because you love your partner and you want to be with the person you love.

And after all, most days aren’t like that.

“He only hits me when he’s drunk” is the physical version.  “He’s only mean when I tell him no” is the emotional one.

And it seems easy enough to stop safeguarding what you need, when it lets you be with someone you love.

*****

Refusing to accept any more abuse is a knife.  You hurt yourself dreadfully, in order to start the healing.  It does damage to you, in ways that sometimes feel worse than just tolerating the abuse.  People stay because if you leave the knife in, it only hurts when you bump it.  But pulling it out is agony.

I don’t find it surprising that a tipping point for many people is their children.  We are willing to tolerate abuse for ourselves much more than for our children.  And when we know they will look to us as an example, it becomes harder to justify avoiding the pain of pulling out the knife.  Maybe we don’t care enough about ourselves to make the most healthy choices, but we care enough about our children to model what we hope they’ll do.  So we pull ourselves up by our kid’s bootstraps, and do the right thing, in the hopes that they’ll be better, stronger, braver, wiser humans than we are.

I want my children to become adults who set boundaries that protect their own needs, but also respect other peoples’ need-based boundaries.  I want them to know the difference between needs and wants, and to be able to weigh those things appropriately, with love and consideration.  And that’s not something you can teach by word.  You have to teach it by deed.

So I’ve been pulling out this damn knife, and, in order to distract me from the pain, I’ve been thinking about wants and needs, and boundaries and abuse.  Thanks for letting me share it with you.

NB: I wrote this in January of 2021, but was unable to share it at the time.  It is with great happiness that I announce that, while I'm still healing, the knife feels like it's finally out.  And my daughter and I did, in fact, manage to work out our respective needs.  I'm pretty proud of both of us.

#126: The Myth of the Meritocracy

In the fall of 2019 I re-entered the work force after being out of that world for 12 years.  My skill set was that I was competent, intelligent, and able to buckle down and get things done.  Other skills included changing diapers, feeding a family, shepherding special needs children through the school system, and writing stories.  In other words, nothing that would land me a job.

Two years later (it's still 2021, right?  Time has lost all meaning but I'm pretty sure it's still 2021) I'm working as a producer at a game studio.  It kind of blows my mind.  

Now, I am not one of those people who cannot see their own worth.  I am aware that I am competent, and I am aware that I am intelligent.  Those things both played into finding my place in a career driven world.  But the truth is, beyond either of those traits, the reason I have my current position is because I am lucky as hell.

I had a friend who worked for a software company that needed a temporary fill in.

I took that job, which they offered me mostly on his recommendation, and did well enough with it that one of my coworkers recommended me for my current position.

And here I am.  That's really all there was to it.

Yes, my abilities at my old position came into play, but they were arguably far less critical than the fact that I was in the right place at the right time.  And I'm profoundly aware of that.

There's this myth of meritocracy that, even as our economy faces downturns and shakeups, we persist in clinging to.  The idea that if you're skilled you can support yourself, and if you can't support yourself, it's probably because you aren't skilled enough or willing to work hard enough.  That myth spills over into all sorts of systemic oppression--of race, of gender, of class--and helps support the existing power structures.

Look, if you're successful, I'm not saying you didn't earn that.  I'm not saying you didn't work hard for it.  I'm not saying you don't deserve it.  I'm just saying that there are other people who have your exact same qualities, who just happen to not be as lucky as you.  Be grateful for your luck, and do your best not to uphold the idea that, if someone doesn't have what you have, that it's because they failed somehow.

Maybe they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

#125: Extremely Adult Content

Gather round, friends and neighbors, and let me tell you a story.  It's the kind of story that is all too common place, but it's mine, and I think it's important to share such things.

It starts with a man, let's call him John Smith, who reached out to me regarding my neck and shoulder pain.  Now, I am not an idiot, nor am I blind to the ways of the world.  John Smith was clearly trying to hit on me, but honestly I was here for it.  A man offers to help out with my chronic muscle pain?  He's a keeper.  He was nice, and clearly flirtatious, but was offering me something I needed and he wasn't attaching sexual strings to it.  

But then he took it upon himself to tell me how I should masturbate, and when I didn't respond, a while later he followed it up with "did you work that little pussy out"?

Let me be clear about something.  I know some of this is going to be unpleasant to read, but I feel like euphemisms blunt reality, and I am so fucking tired of the reality where this happens, I'm not willing to blunt it.  

I lost my temper, and sent him a scathing reply about men who cannot understand the difference between consenting to talk about a massage and consenting to being instructed on how to masturbate.  I am aware that women who set boundaries with men, especially women who set boundaries using an angry tone can generally not expect a good response.  Still, I was not prepared for the message I got back.

John Smith informed me that I was old, and had a mom bod.  That he hadn't wanted to sleep with me, anyway, he was only taking pity on me.  That I was likely 80 years old and repressed.  That I was probably a nun, I was so prudish.  

Oh look, another man who doesn't like people having boundaries and loses his temper over being told that he's overstepped.  How shocking.  I think I'll have a heart attack and die from not surprise.

Honestly, I thought that would be it, but John Smith wasn't done.  

No, he had one more offer for me: 

To hate fuck the rage out of me.  He'd use me like a rag doll, and that would cure my anger, presumably leaving me pliant and grateful for the manly duty he had performed.  

I don't think John Smith realized he was implying his penis is a sedative, but, you know, of all the things he didn't realize this is likely the least offensive.

Now, you might think this is the end of my tale, and I will now rage about men, their lack of boundaries, their aggression when told 'no', etc, but you are wrong.  There's one more piece, and truly, this final piece is why I am writing about this today.

A week and a half went by, and John Smith reached out to me again.  He wanted to let me know that he'd just been really horny that night, and that's why he'd had such poor boundaries, and he was sorry, and he was just trying to test the waters.  

And frankly, y'all, this apology has upset me so much that I either have to write it all down, or I am going to grind my teeth to nubbins.

***********************

"But, Jessica," I can hear you say, confused and curious, "why did the apology upset you so much?"

Well, frendo, I will tell you.  It's because of what he didn't apologize for.

See, overstepping boundaries is a human condition.  We are super bad at it.  Those of us that practice and try really hard will hopefully not overstep egregiously, and also hopefully infrequently, but we will still overstep!  Those of us who don't practice will probably be walking around asking other individuals if they've worked their little pussy out, and while that's certainly a pretty big leap past the boundary line, it is still a fault of the same kind.  It is a truly gauche mistake, but it can reasonably be called a mistake, depending on how you follow up.

And here we come to why this apology pisses me off: he apologized for pushing boundaries, but he didn't apologize for how he spoke to me when I called him on it.  

Rude, abusive, misogynist, and borderline threatening, and none of it warranted an apology.  He was sorry he'd overstepped his boundaries, he was just horny, and... I guess everything else was fine.  His horniness made him overstep, my refusal made him angry, and once he was angry then everything else he said to me was fair game.  

image from goodwp.com

When men are angry, they get to attack our boundaries.

They get to call us names.

They get to shame our sexuality.

They get to degrade us.

They get to offer to hate fuck us into compliance.

And, in the end, even if they realize their behavior was wrong, what they apologize for is the original lack of understanding of our boundaries, not what they did once they were angry.  Because the anger of men is a universal excuse.  

But guess what?  

IT'S NOT, ACTUALLY.

***********************

This post doesn't have a denouement.  There is no final resolution on this, because there will always be another John Smith.  He's a symptom, not the disease.

I'm sharing because there are people who still don't realize how pervasive this sort of thing is.  Who want to make excuses or justifications.  Who will comment "well, to be fair, his feelings were probably hurt--"

No.  Fair means fair to all parties.  It is not fair to me to have to accept and dismiss his attacks simply because he never learned to think before he lashed out.  It is not fair to the next person he will attack who tells him no.  

Instead of a conclusion, I'll give you a call to action instead.  Start holding yourself accountable for the things you say when angry.  If you've got that down, start holding others accountable, as well.  Not just for the things they say to you, but the things they say to others.  Stop excusing people because they were angry.  In particular, stop excusing men.  

Your feelings are always okay.  Your actions, based on those feelings, may not be.  Learn to tell the fucking difference.

#124: Much Ado About Justice

 Much Ado About Justice

**warning: here be spoilers**

The Play

Much Ado About Nothing is my favorite Shakespearean play.  In that, I am not alone.  The play itself is an amazing comedic romp with a blatantly dark heart and a brilliant streak of feminism.  A friend of mine who I shall refer to hereafter as “The Professor” (as she does, indeed, teach college courses in theater) has managed to deepen my appreciation of the play, even though I’ve loved it since I was a teen.  Mentioning Much Ado in her presence unlocks lecture mode, and she will happily spend a great deal of time explaining how revolutionary this piece is, in that the core of the central love story involves a man being willing to overthrow the central order of his life out of respect for a woman’s judgement.  

Now, I have my issues with the show, as do many other people.  The character of Dogberry is (in my experience) generally incredibly tedious, and the highest compliment I can give any of the comedic actors that have tackled that role is that they made it tolerable.  More significantly, for my fiery feminist heart, I truly loathe the plot arc of Hero.  A demure, blushing maiden who wants only to be given to some important, handsome man; who is ruined by slander; who’s word counts for nothing in her own defense; and who, in the end, forgives the rat bastard who almost got her killed.  Even thinking about it makes me clench my jaw.

For all that it is Hero’s piteous scenario which gives us the chance to experience the extraordinarily powerful tale of Beatrice and Benedict, it still leaves me with a foul taste in my mouth.  I have always seen Hero’s tale as a bitter pill in an otherwise delightful piece.

Now, with that background in mind…

The Professor told me that I should watch the 2019 Shakespeare in the Park production of Much Ado About Nothing.  She hadn’t finished it yet, but she’d seen about half and was positive it was worth watching.  Not to mention, it’s currently streaming for free on PBS.  So last night The Professor and I, along with our friend The Preacher, had a remote watch party of the production.

There are some things you should know about this production.

The first is that it is set in the spring of 2020.  Now, in 2019 they didn’t know we would be facing a rampant plague, but they were aware of a number of the other things that were staging to be part of this cultural moment.  That’s critical.

The second is that this is an all black production.  That is also critical.  

The show opens at the estate of Señor Leonato, a well to do gentleman, and father to Hero.  The young male characters of the play (the Prince, his brother The Bad Guy, Benedict, and Claudio) are “away at war.”  That is the scene in which we find ourselves.  Many varying productions have chosen to incorporate music into the show, and this one does as well.  Instead of a lilting lute, however, this production begins with the character of Beatrice emerging onto her balcony, singing an a cappella version of Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On.  The other major female characters (Hero, Margaret, and Ursula) join in, and merge America the Beautiful into the vocals.  It’s beautiful, and well done, and entertaining.  But, to be honest… I wasn’t sure where it was going.  

That’s also important folks.  I didn’t get where it was going.  We’ll circle back around to this later.

The women finish singing, the actual canonical dialogue begins, and right on cue the messenger comes to let them know that the men are returning home from war.  There’s an exchange in this opening scene that I’ve always disliked:

How many gentlemen have you lost in this action?

But few of any sort, and none of name.

Now… this production?  They edited a bit.

How many have you lost in this action?

But few of any sort.

That’s it.  THAT.  IS.  IT.  And that’s when I first picked up my phone to text The Professor and The Preacher (because I certainly wasn’t going to talk over the dialogue—not then, at any rate).  But I was too excited to sit on it.  Because the original dialogue?  Well… It’s SUPER CLASSIST!  And very Ayn Rand-ey.  Only the gentlemen matter, and the most important thing is that they haven’t lost anyone “of name.”  It’s very dismissive of the actual, real live men who died in the fight.  But this!  This was so much better!  I was so excited!

The men arrive from war.  They are marching, carrying protest signs.  “Hate is Not a Family Value.”  “Now, More Than Ever, We Must Love.”  “Restore Democracy Now.”  “I Am a Person.”

I admit, gentle friends, I still didn’t get where they were going with it.  I thought it was a clever way to represent war in modern times.  And here’s another important thing that we’ll circle back to later on:  I was so entrenched in my super feminist view of Much Ado, it was almost impossible for me to entertain the possibility of what they were setting up with this opening.

Now, the show was great.  They had a Dogberry that I actually enjoyed.  I mean, within my expectations of Dogberry.  Beatrice and Benedict were by turns amusing and then very serious, in all the right moments.  The choices made by Kenny Leon (the director) and Margaret Odette (the actress ) finally made me actually respect Hero somewhat.  I have always loathed that character, and, at last, here was a production where I could maybe consider even liking her a bit.  Honestly, it was so good, and so well done, and so engaging that, y’all, I straight up forgot the beginning.  It had happened, it was an interesting modern take on opening this show, and it hadn’t grabbed me any more than that.

And then we got to the end.

The wedding party is dancing!  Everything has ended well!  Love has triumphed over slander, and we just know they’re all going to live happily ever after.  It is a raucous, uproarious celebration.

And then the music fades, and police sirens begin in the background.  The Prince calls out:

Formation!

FORMATION!

Hero and Beatrice, fear on their faces, kiss their loves goodbye and the soldiers take up their signs again, holding them high as they march off the stage to go confront the sirens.  I caught my breath, watching the “I Am a Person” sign waving across the stage.

The household of Señor Leonato watch the soldiers go, and they begin to sing.

Lift every voice and sing

Til earth and heaven ring

Ring with the harmonies of li—

And Beatrice’s ringing voice cuts across them all.

FATHER, FATHER

We don’t need to escalate

War is not the answer

Only love can conquer hate

But we’ve got to find a way to bring some loving

Some loving

Here to today.

Oh… What’s going on?

And then, friends, I cried.

The Direction

Y’all, it took me until the final moments of the show, but I finally got it.  If you haven’t yet, let me break it down for you real quick:

The central plot of the show is the story of Hero.  Beatrice and Benedict’s love (which is what the show is mostly about) blooms in that framework, but it’s not the main series of events.  The main series of events are as follows.

A member of an oppressed class (a woman) is going about her business, doing everything she should in life, perfectly within the bounds society has set for her.

A member of the privileged class (a man) makes a false accusation against her, based on very flimsy evidence.

Because of this accusation, she is cast aside.  She is ruined.  She is threatened with death.  Simply because someone in power made a mistake, and assumed they were right, and did not choose to give any credence to the protestations of the oppressed individual that they were, in fact, innocent.

Now… does this sound at all familiar to anyone, in the context of current cultural events?

Kenny Leon took two very brief moments, at the beginning and the end of the play, and that, in conjunction with his use of an all black cast, made me see this play (which I have watched in multiple productions, and multiple times in each production) in a whole new light.

The plot of this story is about oppression.  It is about the damage that can be done when those in power do not even stop to question their rightness.  And it is, to a certain extent, about the fact that only those in power who do not blindly follow their fellows are truly worthy of love.

There are only two men in the play who do not turn against Hero.  One is the priest, a character Shakespeare routinely uses as a voice of benevolent compassion in all his shows.  The other is Benedict—the only male character in the show I have not screamed at, at one time or another.  In fact, it is, in part, the actions of Benedict that keep Hero’s own father from killing her, on the word of a powerful man alone.  

When the sobbing girl has been led from the stage, and Beatrice and Benedict are finally alone together, finally declaring their love, finally becoming united, Beatrice asks her newly declared love to do something for her.  She asks him to avenge her cousin, and kill the man who wronged her.  A man who just happens to be Benedict’s closest companion.

The Professor will tell you that this scene is why this show is so revolutionary, and I do not disagree with her.  Benedict is a member of the nobility.  His entire life is about serving the Prince.  His entire history has been one of privilege.  Not only that, he has been to war with these men.  His own life is inextricably linked with theirs and asking him to kill his friend is not only asking him to wound his own heart but also to cast himself forever from the grace of the Prince, on whom his fortunes depend.

And yet, when he understands how serious Beatrice is, he goes to challenge Claudio.  Not just because he loves her, but because he respects her.  He sees her as an equal.  And when she says that Claudio has wronged her cousin, he believes her.  

Imagine that.  

Y’all, when you strip out the scenes of comedic gold and the improbability of the foibles, Much Ado About Nothing is actually a very great ado about a very critical societal issue that plagues us to this day, and that we are seeing on what feels like an almost weekly basis on the news.  

George Floyd

Breonna Taylor

Atatiana Jefferson

Stephon Clark

Philando Castille

Tamir Rice

Jacob Blake

I can’t even list them all.  I don’t even know them all.  But when the show ended with a raucous party of black people, broken up by police sirens, so that the soldiers had to rush out with their protest signs again, you can bet your ass that the names I did know all came rushing into my mind.  And I finally saw where Kenny Leon had been going with it, from the beginning.

The parallel was there, for anyone to see it.

So, here’s a thought provoking question.  

Why didn’t I see it?

The Reality

Friends, I believe in intersectional justice.  We are not pursuing equality if we only want equality for our group.  That’s not equality.  That’s just joining the high rollers club.

The truth is, though, that comprehensive “woke-ness” is not a thing.  We all have blind spots.  Ironically, sometimes it is our very desire for justice in one regard that can lead us to the most glaring omissions.  I have always been so focused on Much Ado as a feminist piece, I simply failed to ever consider that my favorite Shakespearean play could be applied in a much broader context.  I could never, in a million years, even if I became an accomplished and well-regarded director, have come up with the idea to do what Kenny Leon did.  I had a blind spot there.

I am grateful to this production for removing this blind spot.  

I am not so arrogant to assume that I do not have many others.

There’s a lot of talk in the arts communities about representation.  A lot of people pushing for broader representation.  A lot of people pushing back.  A lot of half measures, where there is only token representation, or systematically under-represented groups are allowed on stage or screen, but only to perform scripts written by white people, in scenes staged by white directors.

This production, in addition to being a brilliant stand alone piece, and in addition to being a new insight into a show I truly thought I knew well, is also an excellent example of why we need the kind of radical representation in the arts that minority communities have been too long denied.  

Humanity learns through the stories we tell.  Even the most factual account holds some thread of narrative, and we absorb those stories, and we learn from them.  And while I had some vague idea of this before, Kenny Leon’s production of Much Ado About Nothing gave me the concrete words to say this:

A group in power can never tell the stories of those that they oppress and overlook.

We need representation because we need to hear those stories.  We need people of color, and women, and LGBT folks, and people from the disabled community, and poor people—we need them telling their own stories.  They are the only ones who can.

I could not have directed this version of Much Ado.  I am white.  I could not tell this story.  Not because I was unwilling, or because I am a bad person.  Because, despite my desire to be inclusive, I could not see that story.  It was too obscured by my own.

But Leon could tell the story.  And I could learn from it.  And that is a blessing. 

And it is a blessing that I, for one, think we need more of.