Bitch I Might Be

(I'm holding your hand while i say this)

You might be right.

You might have opinions that you feel have veered off into unacceptable territory. You might have come to feminism with a "fuck all men, we should start treating them like shit, see how they like it" mentality. You might have come to anti-christian nationalism with a "christianity is so patriarchal and imperialistic, anyone who practices it hates me and i hate them" mentality. You might have come to environmentalism with a "there are too many people on this planet, we need a new plague" mentality.

You might have noticed your opinions slipping further and further into radicalization but you might also feel like you started on that path from a genuinely good place and you've had only the best of intentions.

But (and this is the part you need to internalize), it is not too late to course correct.

Whenever I worry that my desire to make a better world has led me to accept opinions, beliefs, rhetoric etc. that I don't actually agree with, I take a step back and ask myself three questions:

First, am I assuming that other people are not people in the exact same way that I'm a person?

The root of all evil is the incredibly tempting tendency to treat other people like they're not exactly as much of a person as you are. So take a beat and ask yourself if you're treating them like they are.

(This can go in both directions by the way! Treating someone like they're less than a person is obviously harmful and dehumanizing but treating them like they're more than a person can lead to objectification, tokenization, and more. Not good stuff.)

Second, am I thinking from a place of love or hate?

The saying "you have to love the oppressed more than you hate the oppressor" will untangle you from so many impossible ethical dilemmas, I promise you.

And third, am I putting my anger somewhere useful?

This is actually a two part question because the first step is asking yourself, "Am I directing my anger towards the person or institution I am actually mad at?" If the answer is no, then you are effectively yelling at a Walmart employee about how evil the Walmart corporation is and expecting them to be able to do something about that.

Then you move onto the actual question, "Am I putting my anger somewhere useful?" If the extent of your civic engagement is getting into fights on social media, I can assure you the answer is no.

So for example...

Let's say you are a girl in your early-mid 20s. You learned about feminism from your friends and maybe a teacher or professor or two and you've accepted the fact that patriarchy is real and harmful to women but you find yourself repeatedly thinking "Ugh, I wish all men could just fuck off and die. I should be able to treat them exactly as terribly as women have been treated since the beginning of time."

This is an understandable thought. I see how you got there. Misogyny is incredibly exhausting to deal with, many men have done exactly zero work to become less misogynistic, and living your life with the crushing weight of "a significant portion of the world's population do not think of me as a full and autonomous person" is very very difficult.

So what do we do about it? What is our response.

Here is where we pause and ask the questions.

First, am I assuming that other people are not people in the exact same way that I am a person?

Am I treating "men" like a monolith in the same way that misogynists treat "women" like a monolith? Yes? Okay then what's the reality? (Hint: it is always more complex than you first think).

For me, the reality is that "men" includes my best friend from college who loves me and the world so much he's spent 12 years learning about feminism and gender theory just so he could be a better person, a better friend. It includes Brennan Lee Mulligan (and Lou Wilson and Zac Oyama and more) who prove to me that it is possible to be a public figure without promoting toxic masculinity. It includes my favorite professor who still checks in on me and my career, even years after I stopped being his student. It includes trans men I want to celebrate and love, both for their trans-ness and their maleness. It includes so many men whom I love and who love me. Which brings us to....

Second, am I thinking from a place of love or hate?

When I have the knee-jerk thought "I wish all men would just fuck off and die" what am I actually saying? I'm saying I wish the world were safer and kinder and better for women. I'm saying I want women to live the lives they want to live, regardless of whatever a hateful man might think about it. I'm saying I want a higher quality of life for women.

And so....

Third, am I putting my anger somewhere useful?

Do I actually think all men should die? Do I think men should be violently eradicated from the planet?

No, that's ridiculous and not useful at all and certainly not coming from a place of love.

So instead I'll ask myself "How can I make my anger work for me?"

Well, what do women need to have a higher quality of life? They need to be paid a fair wage, they need access to high-quality health care, they need subsidized childcare and birth control and abortions and education. So those are the things I will fight for. Those are the things I will talk about.

Simple question, right?

Except… he suddenly got defensive. His tone changed. I could feel tension building, and I had no idea why. So I took a breath and asked, “Wait, what did you hear me say?”

He paused, thought about it, and said, “I thought you meant ‘Why aren’t you doing anything?’ Like you were mad I was being lazy.”

But that wasn’t what I meant at all. I’d genuinely just been curious.

And that moment reminded me how easily things can go sideways when we assume intent. Our brains, especially when we’ve had messy pasts, trauma, or relationship anxiety, tend to fill in the blanks with the worst possible meaning.

But that one question, “What did you hear me say?”, turned what could’ve been an argument into understanding.

It gave both of us a chance to clarify before our brains made up a story that wasn’t true. I was able to explain, and he was able to listen. Understanding what I meant changed his tension entirely.

Sometimes the fight isn’t about what was said. It’s about what was heard.

But we look back everyday- rechecking emails, making sure a friend is still behind you, checking to see if you remebered to pick up your keys. It's second nature, a habit of care.

And I don't mean it's not like the Evangelical church, I mean he's not interested in convincing anyone to be a believer or a church goer. When the woman at the construction company starts talking to him about her mother, he doesn't tell her that God is there for her. He tells her that he's there's for. She already knows she can go to church, maybe she is even a Christian and feels like she has her God's love. But Jud knows that what she needs is another human being, because she's talking to him.

And that's such a better way to welcome people to your church than telling them to go. He's letting her know that there's fulfillment and safety and love there beyond just the religious side, because he's there.

It started as a comedic bit that quickly crashed into a serious tone. An extreme high followed by extreme low right really making you feel the weight.

But I also had been bracing for the moment of "God is here for you" preaching. Something that would have drawn me into a defensive mood.

“Hey man, your main character isn’t sympathetic enough, could you fix that?”

they first find him in the jungle, where an armadillo has no business being

they find the entrance to the city, while being followed by him

he is present when the volcano starts to erupt (previous concept art also showed him in the background actually stopping the eruption)

miguel and tulio sucked ass at the ball game, so they used Bibo as a ball. He ricocheted himself all over the place and defied physics to get into the hoop every time