Champagne Candy: radicallyhottoff: so i was going to write a bit about that “violent...
so i was going to write a bit about that “violent sex” essay and it being found out now that the survivor discussed in the article had asked mcclelland to stop using her name/story in her writing.
but it’s been a really long day—just now finishing up. so instead I’ll…
you know, there are some things i have been wanting to say about that article as well.
but before i do, i should probably explain some things to folks about myself like:
—i was a journalist and human rights worker in conflict zones inc. the west bank and e. congo
—i have ptsd from that work
when i read that piece, it reminded me so much of how those of who have done that kind of work, that journalist in the midst of it all, it reminded me of how we talk about the work, the place, the people. esp how we talk about it once we have been traumatized and are working through the process of who are we now.
one of the things that seems to be common in war zone worker ptsd is that we become incredibly self centered. we draw lines between ourselves and everyone else as a way to psychologically protect the wounds from getting hurt again. we tell ourselves that our survival is paramount and whatever increases our chances for survival while still allowing us to do our job, is what we have a right to do.
im not saying this is ethical. i am saying this is what happens.
as a staff member for a human rts ngo, i advocated for pulling members who were traumatized out of the zone, and into some r n r and therapy, or whatever they thought they needed at the moment.
what it sounds like to me is that she hit secondary trauma and started tweeting. i almost know what she was thinking. because when that wave of 2ndary trauma hits, i so want to reach for my notepad and start taking notes. it is a way of disassociating from what is going on.
she had no right to do this. she had no right to tell a story that she didnt have permission to tell.
and her descriptions of haiti, the details that she includes, are give a stereotypical, racist, colonialist view of haiti.
and i have a lot of sympathy for why she wrote about haiti that way. because when i was in the congo, listening to rape survivors and their stories, it took a huge amount of effort to consciously NOT tell the story that way. to not tell the story of — these are the images that haunted and will haunt me forever, the violence, the fear, the chaos — without framing the story, the place, the women and men more accurately.
and some of the memorable nights of my life, are a few of us, survivors from working in war zones, sitting around swapping stories. telling the stories raw, from that place of self centered trauma. yeah its kind of like group therapy—with beer.
and if you read the tone of the piece, that is what it sounds like. like she is sitting around after a couple of drinks with a few war survivors and we are swapping stories. and we know we wont tell them to anyone else. and we know that if i say, fuck, after listening to a room full of rape survivors all day, i nearly spat at every congolese man i passed that night. you will know that congo is so so so much more than that. you will know that it is also beautiful, and green, and there was no single story about men or women. you will know this, because you’ve been there too. or you’ve been someplace enough like that. you will know it is complicated and amazing and very very human and tender.
but the problem is that mcclelland wrote those tweets and that story and then published it in a magazine. for public consumption. for people who dont know. and may never know. and she has shown the worst, but didnt bother in this piece to show the best, or the balance, or the humanity of any haitian.
and she violated another woman, another survivor, made her into an object rather than the subject of her own story. on more than one occasion. and put her in danger, all so a writer could exorcise her demons. or disassociate from them.
i dont think she is ‘healed’ from her ptsd. i think she is functional. yes. but if i were on staff, i would have told her to step out of the field until she can tell the difference between her story and k’s story.
listen, i have stories. we all do. stories that have changed my life. that i will never tell you.
stories that are not mine to tell.
Yes. and although Detroit is not the Congo or Haiti—this is what I feel like with Detroit. The first time I was in the 48217 area—which is the industrial corridor and has so much pollution and heavy industry and there are entire families where every person either has cancer or asthma—a group I organize with does tours out there and works in “processing” into the tour because it’s SO….traumatizing…and they help you to work through the devastation, so that you can see the organizing folks in the area are doing. the first time i was in the 48217 area was very near the time that Jess died (who died of breast cancer), and I was SO angry. I don’t have PTSD-but the grief mixing in with reality that people outside of detroit keep saying “let it die” in willful ignorance of the reality that it is *humans* that are dying and that heavy industry will never die, it will just pick up and leave to some place else where more families will die…hearing “just let it die” on the right day is like being slapped in the face. and I’ve written these whole long angry tirades just *reaming* assholes. NO MOTHER FUCKER, YOU DIE. and then I delete them and I can feel my tongue swallowing up my throat.
not only are the stories of 48217 not mine to tell—but me slashing and burning any motha fucka who says shit about detroit *justifies* people’s belief that it should die. we’re all a bunch of angry gangstas out burning down houses for the fuck of it, right?
i dont think she is ‘healed’ from her ptsd. i think she is functional. yes. but if i were on staff, i would have told her to step out of the field until she can tell the difference between her story and k’s story.
I have no idea if she is healed or whatever. but I do know that bolded part—yes. and it’s why i haven’t written all that much since Jess died. especially since I quit wheat and there has just been this rage, this HUGE rage…i don’t know what I’m angry at. I don’t know if I can tell the difference between mourning jess and being SO fucking angry at the injustice in Detroit (or Jose Guerena being murdered in his own home, or another Planned Parenthood being shut down, or the latest tumblr blow out or or or…)…
and it makes me wonder about her editors and about the relationship she has with them and if they understood enough about trauma to be making the calls that they did and it makes me wonder about the individualism (and the whiteness and class level and gender etc) where “bringing a subject out into the open” which is what that essay was supposed to have done (re: women reporters and PTSD) is so focused on a single person (i.e therapy) rather than collective discussions where multiple reporters speak out and why if this is such a huge problem was one voice and one answer prioritized rather than collective responses and….I read this tweet: ( ”In which post-traumatic stress disorder ruins my life, and my sex life, and I get punched in the face. su.pr/5EeWN0.”)
and just sighed. like a deep historical never ending sigh. was all this about promotion? what kind of tweet is that, except a shock jock sort of tweet? a woman’s story was *used*, her safety put in danger….and none of this was for collective change—but for …..promotion? playing on the crassest part of readers who want to peek in at women having sex and getting punched in the face? and mcclelland was paid for it and the woman whose story she *used* was in hiding?
uneeeeeeending sigh.
i dont know about mcclelland’s intentions. but i do know that that tweet, thats the way we talk. thats what keeps hitting me about this whole situation, is that to me it all reads like—this is how we talk amongst each other…but even looking at pics of her—yeah she has that look. that - im a bad ass - what you going to do about it. i know that look.
well, i know it has taken me a while to be able to figure out how to say things that are shocking, and sound shocking, and yet not to be trying to be shocking. you know? okay like, i have this convo often, the one where i am asked why did i come to egypt. and i have to stop and think — do i tell them the israeli prison story? which version do i tell? or do i just skip it all and say, ‘we had friends in cairo.’
when i first got to cairo i would just tell the israeli prison story. and i soon learned that that sounds like attention-seeking and makes folks uncomfortable.
but, we get to this point, where srsly, a good amount of my life sounds shocking and its exhausting to skip around all the parts, so why not just say, the israelis put me, my kid, and my partner in jail for three days, and then we came to cairo. cause sooner or later i am going to slip up and prove that im fucked up and have thrown myself in front of live fire or whatever and i might as well get it over with, and most ppl who have done the same kind of work, and hit ptsd, have the same kind of communication skills.
and honestly this is part of the reason that i just cant deal with the states. if i hear some ignorant us american start talking about how dangerous egypt is because of the revolution, or how sad it is that those people cant govern themselves, or whatever, i will feel violent.
and there is this other thought where after being traumatized from war zones you start to think, well i deserve some recognition, some credit for what ive been through. and at the same time, we are supposed to be strong, and endurable (is that a word?), and to well, handle it — like a soldier. the problem is that she doesnt see the story as k’s story. she sees it as her story. HER STORY. that she earned in compensation for her trauma.
and in journalism, she is kind of right. not ethically, but i mean, in the article she changed the name to sybille, and didnt give too many details, so, its okay right? in her mind she didnt violate k’s letter, because she masked k. and kept the story.
and i kind of understand where champagnecandy is coming from, because this shit is done all the time. this is why i dont bother reading stuff the usa anymore, except for a few exceptions. the only difference about this piece is that it was about violent sex. but the descriptions of third world conflict zones. the telling someones story, just hiding exact details like name, place, time, etc (and that is what you do if you dont have permission to tell the story. no, i dont agree with it. but that is protocal.) the self centeredness. all of it.
ugh…i KNOW her. not her personally, but enough of hers.
and you know—the biggest thing for me is the money. god knows we’ve ALL told the story of somebody else—that’s what feminist story telling *is*, i think. mentioning somebody you knew, how it affected you, drawing big conclusions. understanding mothers, figuring out daughters…sitting judgement on fathers—i’ve done it all and half the writers I follow do that type of writing and I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t really even think that the distinction of her being a journalist makes much of a difference. she was writing an *essay* not a journalistic piece. And the first thing you learn in literature classes is exactly how unreliable “I” is in story telling.
so…i could deal with it until (as the women reporters in Haiti urged) the story was put in context. I was reading her story as a person who largely writes creative non-fiction (that was what I got my MFA in) and who does often act like a leach, hearing stories from others and integrating those stories into my life. there’s that old joke, right? about how poets will go to a party and write a poem about the pretty cups and a story writer will go to the same party and suddenly everybody is a character in her latest novel? And if just look at the tumblr fuck yeah asian history, the entire avatar series is drawing on history—and aang was modeled after the son of the martial arts expert for the show. so…i was not/am not shocked by mcclelland using the survivor’s story in her own story in the sense of “journalist standards.”
it was that tweet that did it for me—all set within the context of “branding”—and that’s when The Old Familiar that had been hitting other people hit me. Was that what this was? promotion? “name branding”? and is the next thing up going to be how criticism of this essay is hurting her effort to make a living, while the woman of color she wrote about is in hiding? so while we *hear* talk about “opening spaces” and “challenging expectations” and “women’s health” and “we should all care about this”— is this really about worker security?
I don’t know. I am probably reading too much of my own past on to this…and I’m not invested in her as a writer or as a person—so to me, trying to sort all through it has more of a grisly quality—like, I”m going to confirm that you are everything I hate about white women. and I don’t want to do that. because like you said, we don’t know her intentions, and as we’ve seen repeatedly in the past, friends can’t vouch for friends very well. and is knowing her intentions really all that useful any way?
cuz I guess when you pull back and survey the whole thing—its not anybody’s intentions that matter or is the question, at least not for me—but whether collective change can come from the way we have chosen to tell stories (i.e. through a corporate model)—and if it can, what type of change are we looking for and are there more accountable ways to tell stories—and in telling those stories in more accountable ways, can the change they create be more sustainable—and can they be accountable to the story teller’s ability to survive (both mentally, economically, physically, etc—which are all the reasons why storytellers tell stories)…
Reblogging because this whole conversation is really important and also to remind myself to come back to this topic when I have time and a computer because it’s making me think about how I talk about the work I’ve done with kids and the things i’ve seen in public schools…
(Source: iinventedeverything, via iinventedeverything)
