Theater: Jobsite’s Alice production…why I love social media, despite everything
Apologies, I have to get caught up on these!
Ray and I went to the Jobsite theater group’s production of Alice and it was excellent. Music, lyrics, and book by the troop themselves.
The theater is tiny! There was a stage with wings, and it was also tiny, mostly occupied by a three-piece band: synths, drums, acoustic guitar and similar. I took photos before the show.–The synth guy had a breath-driven, hand-held keyboard to replicate an accordion; it was enchanting.
Before they started, they warned us that there were no breaks and to keep OUT of the aisles, as the performers would be racing through every possible space, carrying things that you didn’t want to get slapped with. And this was true.
But the opening of the show was magical, starting in a capella sopranos and darkness., then spotlights on a pair of acrobats on hoops.
Then Alice entered, a Muppet-style puppet held by a woman dressed in black, singing, through the aisle. It was haunting.
The rest of the production flew by. As we were nearing the end (I know the plot of the Alice books, you see, no matter how much they get scrambled) I went “no! not yet! it’s only been five minutes!” but of course by then they had sung a dozen songs, switched twice as many costumes, chased three different sizes of puppets around stage, put on feats of acrobatics with those freaking hoops (often within mere inches of someone’s face), and had us all in stitches.
My only wish was that they’d been able to get the rights to sing the version of Beautiful Soup from the 1999 Hallmark Alice production; Gene Wilder sings it, and it be a thing of glory. But really I have no complaints.
Ray started picking it apart, which is Ray for “here’s a bunch of stuff that’s going to show up in my art over the next six months.” But I didn’t have anything else. Just: I wish the actors had come out to shake hands afterwards. I would have liked to thank them directly. But that would have been just for me, really; I’m sure they were exhausted.
–There was a little girl dressed as Alice sitting in front of me, in the front row, related to the man sitting beside me, who teased her throughout the wait for the show. When we came in (it was general seating and we snagged two open seats in the second row), I told him to beat the shit out of anyone who tried to take my stuff when I went to the bathroom. He just laughed and said he would; he had that kind of face. Ray said he kept tapping the girl on the shoulder and then trying to blame it on *her* whenever the girl looked back–but the girl wasn’t fooled. Anyhow, he fell asleep during the show and started snoring softly during the Walrus and the Carpenter song. I don’t know whether the little girl heard giggling or him snoring, but eventually she turned around and slapped his knee to wake him up. It was perfect.
…
Completely different subject here: o woe, thou art social media.
A friend posted about how he’s getting scammed all the time on social media and he has to be wary of accepting friend requests because he didn’t know who to trust.
A *male* friend, presumably cis.
I laughed hard when I read his post, going, “Who’s gonna tell him?” I decided to tell him, because thinking about the situation made me realize something I’m grateful for.
When I was younger, I got hit on a lot. Catcalled and leered at everywhere I went, harassed and worse on public transportation, groped at school, work, church, etc. This doesn’t count other types of direct sexism. JUST being touched or sexualized verbally against my will was a near-daily occurrence. Usually this was men, BUT NOT ALWAYS.
This ran from about age 12 to age 45 or so. It slowed down for a while, but when I moved to Florida it started right back up again. As I get more confident in person, it has subsided from people outright hitting on me (although it still happens) to getting the much-nicer Southern nod of boob approval, like, “Damn, you brought some light to this day.” That’s fine. Maybe other people can’t pick up on the difference (or are reacting from a place of trauma), but I grok it.
Everyone who comes into my life gets screened as a scammer, harasser, potential rapist or murderer, or worse: as a controller, someone who wants to drain the fucking joy out of my life.
Constant threat. And the possibility for any person in my life–again, usually male but not always–to flip from friend to foe in an instant was high. At least once every couple of months, I would get hit on, harassed, or worse from someone I knew personally and considered more or less “safe.”
I had at least one stalker per year–and let me stress this, both male and female. (I might not have had one this year?!? HOLY SHIT.)
Tits + lack of self-confidence = danger.
So the privilege of going, “I have to screen my friends on Facebook” cracks me up. No offense taken! But it gave me a belly laugh.
But that’s not why I’m writing this. I’d just like to take a moment to appreciate social media for a few things.
One.
The assholes in my life used my lack of self-confidence to cut me off from other people in real life and tell me it made me “safe.” By the time I left my ex I was terrified to be in Target by myself, because I wasn’t “safe” without him.
Social media is harder for assholes to control. I think that’s why you see them act up harder and more often online. An asshole in control is a confident asshole; an asshole feeling threatened with lack of control shows their ass in a way that can be documented for future reference. They can delete the comment thread, but is it gone? Is it *really*?
Two.
The ex, in particular, focused his efforts on driving me away from male friends. I was really only allowed to talk to, or about, male friends that were HIS friends, and then only inasmuch as was necessary to make him look good during social gatherings. I never interacted with them on social media or otherwise. Anybody I got even remotely close to, on my own, got me harassed at home, often indirectly. I wouldn’t know *what* I’d done to piss him off (or even if it was about me), but I knew that he was lashing out about something so I’d shut down everything but taking care of his moods. It was only later that I started putting together what must have triggered him. In retrospect there were obvious patterns. Plus there was the direct harassment. It was ugly.
Three.
And this is the part that made me want to write this.
In person, my male and male-raised friends tend not to say or do the things that they would need to, to become a friend. (The term “friend” is a loose one and I don’t like it, but it’ll do for now.) Most women do these things without thinking, for anyone, for enemies, for strangers. There’s a connection between women that makes life more bearable wherever you go. I have never been anywhere in my life where a network of women has not offered to make me feel welcome, whether I was in a state to take advantage of it or not. I myself would rather die than let my worst enemy leave a public bathroom with her skirt hiked up in her underwear.
Most men don’t do these things, and they don’t accept having these things done for them or to them. I learned a couple of years ago the extent of bullying that men go through to silence and socialize them. It sounds miserable, being forced to trade interconnection for power. But of course being forced to trade power for interconnection is miserable, too.
Women make cookies just to give them to other people, whether they plan to eat them or not. They carry purses with little things in case someone needs them. Safety pins, wet wipes, tampons. They look each other in the eye first. They see the effort put into a new hairdo and compliment it for no reason they’ll ever see a reward for. They stay late to clean up after the party. They forgive a text not responded to. They write Christmas cards. They hug. They smile like it’s a public service, even when they know it’s gonna get them harassed by some asshole. They step out of the way. They play with fussy babies in grocery store lines, to give the mommas breathing space. They watch for lettuce between your teeth. They put their arms around you when you’re taking photos. They hold your hand when you’re talking about tough shit. They give you tissues when you cry. They are, in general, kind.–There are other issues. But that’s a conversation for a different day.
They are also used to getting attacked if they try doing *any* of those things for, or to, anyone remotely male. Men get triggered by softness; it means getting hurt. And getting hurt means getting *more* hurt. And, because they often have no clue how not to suck someone dry when they do get help, they’ll get pushed away when their needs become too much, to disruptive for the friendship.
Vulnerability becomes a vicious cycle of hurt.
So women tend not to adopt men into their networks of intimate friends, and they tend not to reach out to men in general.
Not *all* men are rapists, but *all* men will lash out at and/or drain you for being nice to them.
They can’t help it. They don’t even know they’re doing it, even as they complain that nobody treats them kindly. They don’t have a clue.
I’m working on talking Ray through it; she has a male friend who’s been feeling down lately and I’m bugging her to ask him to hang out. “He might not ask you. You might have to make him feel welcome. Get a gaming thing set up. Send me an email with a headset you can tolerate and I’ll buy it. He can come over to our house. He is welcome here. You can game here.”
“Okay okay!!!”
“Did you ask him yet?”
“I’m ASKING him how his DAY went first, sheeeesh.”
She just assumes that he’ll vent to her if he needs to vent BUT HE WON’T. Most of her male friends, growing up, were assholes. They took advantage of her. She has no idea what to do around this guy sometimes. I feel half-blind. I don’t know either, but I have more experience being clueless.
It used to be that men were not kind to me in person. They were abusive, or they talked over me, or they leaned on me hard enough to tip me over without returning the favor, or they were silent. Often they cycled between all of the above. I assumed genuine gestures of friendship were casual–just being polite, because who would want to be my friend? really?–or testing the waters to see how easily I could be manipulated, because 99% of the time, that’s what they were. For the most part, the men who might have been my friends were silent.
Online, men have voices that they can use with me, rather than against me, or that get silenced by the assholes among them. They don’t have to flatten themselves as much. They’re more interesting. They have doubts. They can take risks with accepting kindness. They can act like friends, here one day and gone the next, then back again as circumstances allow, without worrying that I’ll hate them for not waiting on me hand and foot. (Or they’ll worry and be shocked that I’m fine, but at least they won’t be like, “I will never speak to her again; it has been too long.”)
They can accept the kinds of things from me that women do, because there are spaces where I can do those things where the assholes around them (of every gender) won’t call them weak and police their behavior. They can ask for things; they can take no for an answer; they can apologize; they can tell me “I told you so” later and not be fucking douchebags about it, leaving me laughing at their silly teasing. They can make suggestions for cool stuff without being fucking gatekeepers about it and having to one-up me on how much better they are than me. It’s awesome when guys can get out of their own ways.
I don’t know what men’s networks are like. I’ve only ever touched on the outside edges of them (although I’m always mad when I’m not in the middle of geek-men networks, just utterly steamed about it). I don’t think they’re as resilient; I hear a lot about and from men not having friends as they get older.
Look: I’ll take the scammers and the assholes on social media. I’ll take them over the way things used to be *every day.* I’ll take finding out uncomfortable truths about the people around me. I’ll take the petty bullshit, being controlled by algorithms, the uncomfortable feeling of being exposed in ways that I don’t even known I’m being exposed. The dangers. The fucking stalkers, now with so many more tools than they used to have.
Without social media, I don’t know that I would ever have had the tools I needed to get out of the various types of bullshit I was surrounded with. I would not have been able to rebuild my life in a way that breaks generational patterns and biases. (Books help, but only if you have access to books that break those patterns and biases, and a lot of the books I’ve read would never have been available at the local libraries or bookstores I grew up with.)
I would not know the people I know.
I’m already always on high alert. Social media is no big change there. I never grew up feeling like my thoughts or opinions were acceptable. Finding out that other people believe differently than I do–ugly things–was no real shocker. Getting stalked online sucks but it’s not that much different than being stalked in person. Being brainwashed by algorithms isn’t much more subtle than the abuse I caught from the assholes around me, in constantly conflicting layers.
So social media is bad, you say?
Social media has always been, to me, a way to access good things. I already had all the downsides of social media in my real life; I didn’t have the upsides, mostly–particularly after I got together with the ex.
Yeah. Scammers. In your DMS. Got it 😛
…
Ray’s outfit to Jobsite’s Alice production. Sassy!
Midjourney LOVES making porcelain dolls, apparently. Trying to get Black porcelain dolls wasn’t easy, though. I particularly like this one.