My "fuck you" to ignorance

A month or so ago, I was invited to write for a site that I won't name. It was a group blog with a decent readership, authored by a diverse group of people. The owner approached me because he thought they could use the voice of a "young, urban female" and he liked what he read here.

I was extremely flattered, as no one ever asks me to write anywhere. More than that, I was intimidated. The posts that I read there were well-written and intelligent, if somewhat bordering on intellectual to the point of being dry. It was a far cry from the occasional storytelling and whatever else it is that I do here, but I was excited about the challenge and signed on for their standard requirement: 3 posts a month about anything I wanted.

I wrote a few posts but never linked to any of them because I didn't care that much about them, and I ended up mostly skipping or skimming the posts from the other authors (that whole "dry intellectual" thing is really not what I like to read in my free time). A few titles caught my eye, though, so occasionally I read some things.

And frankly, I was disgusted.

I found myself reading a post talking about how Equal Pay Day is "hooey." I read a post about how feminism is a bunch of bullshit because men have been the oppressed gender all along. I read a rant about "lefties" and their tyranny in forcing Brendan Eich out of the top spot at Mozilla because of his past donation to Prop 8. And that wasn't even all of them.

I read these posts and fumed. I wrote, and never published, angry retorts. I decided I didn't want to get involved in a comment war that would surely end in nothing but frustration. Where does one even begin in trying to reason with someone who doesn't believe the data saying women are paid less than men?

The more I read, the more I hated myself for being a part of that site, and the less I ever wanted to link to any of my posts and drive traffic there. I knew that this site encompassed a diverse range of perspectives but, perhaps naively, it had never crossed my mind that among the diversity would also be bigotry. Living in a city as wonderfully liberal as New York, you never really encounter those people. You know, the ones who don't believe in things like, oh I don't know, fucking equality.

I sent the site owner the following email:

While I never thought I would last forever on the site, I certainly thought I would make it longer than this. But alas, here I am, tendering my resignation as an author on ----. In my short time there I've seen a few too many ignorant, hateful posts that stem from people leaning so far to the right that they're actually just leaning backwards. I've never been one to mind those of different political leanings when it comes to, say, fiscal conservatism or the debate over universal healthcare, but I can't get down with anyone who legitimately does not believe in a) all humans being treated as equals, and b) that there is so much work to be done towards said equality. While I realize that others' opinions don't reflect on me, I have no desire to share the same virtual space as them. And so I thank you so much for this opportunity, as you have been nothing but gracious to me, but I cannot continue with this. I apologize for all the effort you went through to get me on board, and I do hope you find a new "young urban female" voice soon. Perhaps one that is a little braver than I and wants to tackle the challenge of converting the ignorant over simply choosing to surround herself with people who believe in equality, open-mindedness and tolerance - and only those people.

Arielle

Our exchange went on from there, and included the owner linking me to a photo of the offending author's son and his African American prom date, which he had posted as a comment elsewhere on the site. The intent was to make me see that this person is not, in fact, a bigot. I told the owner that I was glad that at least this man had evolved enough to accept racial minorities as equals. And after a few more back and forths, we had said our goodbyes.

At first I thought maybe I should have stayed on as an author, using my "young, urban female"ness - 3 qualities which seemed to be underrepresented on the site - to make some impassioned arguments in favor of some of those values that we "lefties" hold so dear. But I didn't join the site to go to war. I didn't want to read posts by "colleagues" and feel outrage. Writing is a hobby for me; something I do for fun. And so I said my non-literal "fuck you" to ignorance and left. It may have been the quietest possible "fuck you" I could have mustered in that situation, but I was making my point.

If having tolerant, accepting, loving friends and family is a bubble I'm sheltering myself with, I will happily stay cocooned in here most of the time. I like to believe that in the moments when I do choose to fight the good fight, it has been, and will be, in ways more powerful and effective than a petty comment war could have ever been.

Yes or No?

I recently saw several people post a link to this article from O magazine, called 20 Questions Every Woman Should Ask Herself. It sounded like exactly the kind of article that I would start reading and get bored of halfway through, because as someone who used to blog for a life coaching site, and who is friendly with other people who used to blog for that same life coaching site, and who has also seen a few more people become life coaches, and let me see how many more times I can say life coach in this sentence life coach life coach life coach, I feel like I've hit my saturation point for woman-oriented life advice.

Plus, as much as I think Oprah is a total badass, I'm not sure she can really give me advice. Oprah is a self-made billionaire. Until she can tell me how to find a job so I can stop waking up in cold sweats worrying about the impending end date of my current job (June 30th) and my looming descent into ANOTHER round of unemployment, I'm not interested.

But anyway, I clicked on the article and, as predicted, lost interest halfway through. But not before I arrived at question #8, which was: "Do I know how to say no?" This, of course, arrived after question #7: "Do I say yes enough?"

The yes/no continuum seems to be polarizing in the realm of women's life advice. The two sides look like this:

SAY YES TO LITERALLY EVERYTHING
Open your heart to new experiences! Don't be afraid! When an opportunity comes along, say yes! Discover your gorgeous truth through the power of "yes"! If you feel like saying no to something, say yes anyway! It will change you as a woman FOREVER!

SAY NO TO EVERYTHING, BE A HERMIT, HERMITS ARE COOL
Do you not want to do something? Say no! Do you want to maybe do something but you also maybe want to sit on your ass eating Ben & Jerry's and Netflixing the shit out of House of Cards? Say no! Don't let anyone force you out of those pajama pants, girlfriend!

I would like to meet a woman who isn't tired of reading stuff about saying yes or saying no. Whatever happened to maybe, the ugly stepsister of yes and no? Let's all be non-committal! I'm kidding. Don't be non-committal. That sucks.

For what it's worth, which may be nothing, I'm always on the side of saying yes. I love pajama pants not just as much as the next girl but even more so. But I also love actually living life. You know what's not living life? Netflix. Look, I'm not saying you should partake in every single activity that comes your way. I have a friend who constantly invites me to super trendy clubs, and while I love killing my feet in uncomfortable heels and paying $16 for drinks and being so close to other people that there isn't any room to dance WAIT HAHA I HATE THOSE THINGS. So I don't go. (I went once. It was okay, but I'm all set now for at least a year).

But if someone asks you to do something that legitimately could be fun, and you're all, "Weeeeeell I have laundry to do" or "Weeeeell Game of Thrones is on" or "Weeeeeell I have to wake up in 16 hours," then, amigo, you should just fucking go. I recently texted a friend to see if he wanted to join me for a last minute free concert of a band I knew he liked. He hemmed and hawed and said no. And then changed his mind at the actual last second. The concert was great, and as we walked towards the subway, he said, "I'm really glad I ended up coming to the show. I was really tired but I knew that I never regret saying yes to stuff like this."

Supremely long digression aside, in this Oprah article, the "yes" question had some BS verbiage that I didn't read. But the text after "Do I know how to say no?" had only the following quote from Martha Beck:

"Here is the crux of the matter, the distilled essence, the only thing you need to remember: When considering whether to say yes or no, you must choose the response that feels like freedom. Period."

If ever there was such a succinctly beautiful statement in all of life coaching literature, I've never heard it.

Choose the response that feels like freedom.

Amazing.

What women talk about when they don't talk about men

When I think of something that I might potentially want to blog about, I write it down in the notes section of my phone. Often Sometimes I come up with these ideas when I'm drunk, so many of them never get used because while I do believe "in vino veritas," I also believe, "in vino, what the fuck was I thinking that idea is dumb." (My Latin is limited, I apologize).

One of the blog ideas in my phone says, "Are we only going to talk about dating for the rest of our lives?", which I think was written down after a boozy brunch many many months ago and which sort of accurately reflects the sense of mimosa-fueled despair that I was feeling at the time. Not despair about actually dating, but despair about the fact that sometimes it seems like no one talks about anything else. And I'm not sure I can go on like this.

Don't get me wrong - I love complaining about the lack of nice, normal men in New York. I could be a regular contributor to any site dedicated to creepy OK Cupid messages, and I spent all of 3 days on Tinder before I decided that I'm not cut out for the type of flirty repartee that it requires in order to be successful. In fact, here's a sample convo I had from those 3 days:

Tinder guy: What's your bra size?
Arielle: What's YOUR bra size?

See? I just can't indulge these people. But I digress.

Brunch is the perfect time to talk about dating - the weekends are when all the dating-y stuff goes down, and Sunday afternoon with your besties is a perfect time to dissect all that. The problem for me is that it's all the same. And it's been all the same ever since we were 22 and had just moved to the city. I love my friends and want to know what's going on in their lives, and of course I want to be able to talk to my girlzz about what's going on in my life, but how many times can we hear the same, "met a guy at a bar, we exchanged numbers, I never heard from him again," story before we feel like we're in some kind of Clockwork Orange-esque torture chamber?

So I kind of just have to wonder - is this all there is for us? For the rest of our lives? Or the rest of our single lives?

I'm not even unhappy being single. In fact, I think us single folk are doing a service to society. If not for single people in New York, what would happen to all the TV sitcoms? And rom-coms? And chick lit? And other 'coms' or rhyme-y things that always seem to focus around dating in New York?

So I'm happy to be doing my civic duty, navigating the city's choppy romantic waters, fighting the good fight so people can have their unrealistic movies about relationships that never seem to reflect anything real but that we consistently expect that real life will turn out that way anyway. I do this for YOU, America! And I do it proudly, except I guess I'm getting a little tired of all the repetitive discourse around it. The guys who didn't call, or the "should I wait at least 24 hours before responding to this text?" and that kind of nonsense.

I still want to hear the stories, of course. The good ones. Like the time you went to a show and a hot guy started talking to you and you were all, "What? Hot guys never talk to me, what is this and who are you, guy with the sexy blue eyes?" and you talked for like 15 minutes and then the hot guy dropped a casual, "I'm a student at NYU..." and you realized that this person was literally about 10 years younger than you.

If stuff like that happens to you, I want to hear about it. That actually happened a week ago to someone I know. Her name may or may not be similar to that of a fictional mermaid and she may or may not be the owner of this blog but NO MORE REVEALING DETAILS.

So what's the solution here? I guess I don't really have one because as long as women are single and as long as the men in New York are creeps and/or jerks, we're going to need to vent about it. But maybe instead of harping on things, let's think of some potential alternative conversation topics. For when the going gets really rough. Here's a starting list.

- Ironic hipster glasses - redundant, or an oxymoron?
- Puppies - if you had one, what would you name it? (Dr. Theodore Waffles). Sub-question: if you already have a puppy, can I come play with it?
- Benedict Cumberbatch - why do people think he's hot? He looks like an alien.
- The Winter Olympics - aren't we glad they're over? (Yes)
- The world - there's important stuff going on! Let's discuss in between complaining that our mimosas have too much OJ.
- Colors - what the fuck is chartreuse?
- Books - are you reading a good one? Recommend it to me so I can add it on Goodreads!

Etcetera.