Many years ago, I saw an interview with a Black American man. I am thinking this was likely on the TV show 60 Minutes and he was being profiled because of his work teaching ballet to poor inner city kids, I think in Chicago.
In the interview, he said that he went to Africa at some point in his youth to try to make a difference there and then, at some point, he decided to come home to the US and try to make a difference here. He said something like "There were plenty of problems at home. I didn't need to go elsewhere to find social problems to solve."
He was a Black man trying to help Black people. The status of Blacks in the US is plenty sucktastic. He didn't need to go to Africa to find Black people in need of help.
I thought of that one day after waking up from a nightmare during my divorce while very ill and under a lot of stress generally. I had friends in Pakistan and was having completely unrealistic escapist fantasies of moving to Pakistan and "improving the status of women" there.
I had a nightmare about doing so and this leading to violence being directed against me by the very women I was trying to help. I awoke in shock at the idea that trying to be helpful would make people so very angry at me.
At the time, I interpreted the nightmare as a vision of the future if I pursued that path. Whether it was or was not genuinely a vision of the future, it was a clear message that making a difference in the realm of human rights was not ever going to be easy.
It helped me get a clue and stop having these ridiculous escapist fantasies.
Me being an "educated Westerner" did not mean that there were easily solved problems of the low hanging fruit variety in some other country. It did not mean I could just waltz in and handily fix everything with no real effort.
That's not real. It doesn't work that way. People who think it does have a long track record of doing a lot of harm.
I was an American woman wanting to improve the status of women. The American track record on women's rights is plenty sucktastic. I didn't need to go to some poorer country with less educated people to find women in need of help.
For a lot of years now, I have been tangling with someone from a country with a better track record than the US for women's rights. It has been both a personal growth experience and also infuriating much of the time.
I don't think this person understands how hard it can be to be a woman in the US. I can well imagine that if this drama had been going down in meat space rather than online, it could have turned violent. I've certainly wanted to slap the man at times.
But I adamantly did not want him to "rescue" me. I wanted to learn to do certain things myself.
Probably a lot of people have no idea he and I have any kind of relationship at all because his role in my life has been metaphorically much like the role I played for my oldest child when he was two and he wanted to climb the ladder to the slide all by himself: This man has served for a long time as a human safety cage for me while not touching me.
But I knew he was there. While I never actually trusted that he would catch me if I fell -- in fact, I very much felt he failed in that regard and I was quite angry about that fact for a lot of years -- the shape of this man defined boundaries that were useful in guiding me along my path.
The person I became was my choice. I chose to do the work. He didn't force me down some particular path. He didn't make any decisions for me.
He's not perfect and I certainly at times had to tell him to get the hell out of my way and stay the hell out of my way and "not touch me."
He respected those requests. And I think it was probably as much a growth experience for him as for me.
In the interview, he said that he went to Africa at some point in his youth to try to make a difference there and then, at some point, he decided to come home to the US and try to make a difference here. He said something like "There were plenty of problems at home. I didn't need to go elsewhere to find social problems to solve."
He was a Black man trying to help Black people. The status of Blacks in the US is plenty sucktastic. He didn't need to go to Africa to find Black people in need of help.
I thought of that one day after waking up from a nightmare during my divorce while very ill and under a lot of stress generally. I had friends in Pakistan and was having completely unrealistic escapist fantasies of moving to Pakistan and "improving the status of women" there.
I had a nightmare about doing so and this leading to violence being directed against me by the very women I was trying to help. I awoke in shock at the idea that trying to be helpful would make people so very angry at me.
At the time, I interpreted the nightmare as a vision of the future if I pursued that path. Whether it was or was not genuinely a vision of the future, it was a clear message that making a difference in the realm of human rights was not ever going to be easy.
It helped me get a clue and stop having these ridiculous escapist fantasies.
Me being an "educated Westerner" did not mean that there were easily solved problems of the low hanging fruit variety in some other country. It did not mean I could just waltz in and handily fix everything with no real effort.
That's not real. It doesn't work that way. People who think it does have a long track record of doing a lot of harm.
I was an American woman wanting to improve the status of women. The American track record on women's rights is plenty sucktastic. I didn't need to go to some poorer country with less educated people to find women in need of help.
For a lot of years now, I have been tangling with someone from a country with a better track record than the US for women's rights. It has been both a personal growth experience and also infuriating much of the time.
I don't think this person understands how hard it can be to be a woman in the US. I can well imagine that if this drama had been going down in meat space rather than online, it could have turned violent. I've certainly wanted to slap the man at times.
But I adamantly did not want him to "rescue" me. I wanted to learn to do certain things myself.
Probably a lot of people have no idea he and I have any kind of relationship at all because his role in my life has been metaphorically much like the role I played for my oldest child when he was two and he wanted to climb the ladder to the slide all by himself: This man has served for a long time as a human safety cage for me while not touching me.
But I knew he was there. While I never actually trusted that he would catch me if I fell -- in fact, I very much felt he failed in that regard and I was quite angry about that fact for a lot of years -- the shape of this man defined boundaries that were useful in guiding me along my path.
The person I became was my choice. I chose to do the work. He didn't force me down some particular path. He didn't make any decisions for me.
He's not perfect and I certainly at times had to tell him to get the hell out of my way and stay the hell out of my way and "not touch me."
He respected those requests. And I think it was probably as much a growth experience for him as for me.