Maybe the internet is not your personal therapist?

Problem Chylde:

Is it natural to fear an idea that to make feminism more inclusive, we need to think of all the entities involved as living beings? Logically, instinctively, the answer would be no. But in practice, the answer sounds like a belabored, protracted “Weelllll…”

Okay, first things first: That post? That is a read-the-whole-thing post. And there is other stuff in it I would like to talk about, especially the last line, but right now I have absolutely got to get some things off my chest about that “Weelllll…”

I have got that response by the truckload–and I can’t talk about what happens during or after it, because even if I removed the names and the details, even if I stripped everything down to the barest outline of what occurred, those incidents would still be recognizable to the parties involved, and those parties would then be hurt, and (this is important) their hurt would not be unjustified.

Think about it: You have a conversation with somebody in a relatively private medium and then maybe a day, a week, a month later, you see them posting their rendition of it on their blog. You’re hurt, right? You go, “Wait, wait! If you had this problem with what I said, why didn’t you bring it up to me then? Why did you have to address it in such a shitty, sneaky way?”

And it wasn’t until I read that excerpt up there that I understood: It’s because that “weelllll…” pours over me like heavy syrup. It slows my wit and my reflexes. I don’t bring it up “then” because I can’t even formulate my thoughts right “then.”

That one fuckin’ syllable, said just the right way like that, manages to hit me with so much at once. Mind you, most of this may not even be intended–I am not making any claims regarding what is meant by the speaker using that “Weelllll…” I am describing the effect it has on me. I may hear, feel, sense, or read in any or all of the following:

• (From the slowness of it): “I am being considerate, thoughtful, and deliberate. You, I fear, are being hasty, reckless, and reactionary.”
• (From the dubiousness of it): “I do not actually think you are right, but I am too tactful to say so directly. Let this word serve as a pause while I work out just the way to say this without hurting your oversensitive, irrational feelings.”
• (From the very act of starting the sentence this way): “I have many innovative thoughts and ideas to share with you that you don’t have, thanks to your ignorance, for which I will now make allowances. Here–let me gently bring you up to speed.”

I’m sure there are more I’m just not recalling right now. I’m too keyed up right now by the realization that this is a thing. Now I should have damn well known it was a thing, obviously, because I have a good deal of privilege, and yet I’m hearing it often enough to wince at it; how often, then, must people with fewer privileges be hearing it? I ought to have known–that much is on me and I feel deservedly stupid about it–but DAMN.

Here, though, is the so-rich-I-could-choke-on-it part:

Nothing that follows that “weelllll” is ever, EVER something I haven’t encountered before. Shit, it’s almost never anything that couldn’t sit comfortably on an oppression bingo card square. It is never a carefully constructed illuminating thought, it is never an original idea, and it is never, ever the unique and special product of a unique and special mind. And, for maximum irritation factor, I know this as I’m hearing it.

The problem is, at the time, I’m trapped in the sticky, oozy, gluey, coagulating MESS of that one. Little. Word. And I can’t react quickly enough to go, “No, now, come on, please, let’s cut the shit. Here is the flaw in what you have just said.” And I can’t hash it out here, either, because that would be mean and would hurt feelings, and I already feel up to my ears in agita as it is.

So all I am going to say is please, before anyone busts that one out at me again: Sit yourself down and ask yourself honestly if any conversation with any man on the planet has ever left you feeling anything but enraged, tongue-tied, and frustrated once he’s started saying, “Weelllll…” I will allow you one exception, on the grounds that there’s almost always an exception, but that’s it. One. You get one. But that word, that pause, I’m convinced, is actually your brain’s way of telling you to slow down and reevaluate.