Sunday, June 25, 2006
Discoveries
Two discoveries today:
1. My mother is an alcoholic.
This is one of those discoveries that I already knew. It's more that I discovered how to name it today. Same sort of thing with the abuse history. One day I just continued to think about it, and a little bolt of lightning hit me, and made me say "oh! That's what this is!" My mother is what some people call a functional alcoholic. She drinks on her own time - she doesn't get drunk at work or do anything like that, but will get drunk as soon as she gets home. When I visited her in Cleveland in 2001 for Christmas, she invited a co-worker/friend over one night. We all got to talking and in the meantime my mother passed out on the floor.
It affects her cognitive abilities. She is paranoid about me, and I suspect also about the other people in her life. She doesn't listen to logic, because I don't think she understands it as fully as she would were she lucid and sober.
I think I have had something to do with this. I used to fix drinks for her when we were all living together. They were strong. Obviously I am not able to do that for her anymore, since I am not in her vicinity, but I think that by neglecting to name the problem, I am helping to facilitate it. I think I should tell her that I think she has a drinking problem. Suggestions on this?
2. Men need exclusive activities or spaces so they can practice being men for the world. I was at the gym today, and there were no women in the weight room, so the room took on that all-male energy. I noticed one fellow practicing dancing in a mirror. It's an activity that I associate with aloneness, and then I realised that the man (admittedly, a young man) considered himself to be the equivalent of alone: the purpose of the room (a sports activity), and the makeup of the population (exclusively male) made him feel safe enough to check himself in the mirror to see how he was doing at activities that would attract women in other contexts. This is why "others" are not welcome in these sorts of contexts - because they alter the safety of the space for activities (like dancing in front of a mirror) that men don't generally want to admit that they do. If the people for whom you are practicing are present at the practice, the practice is no longer that. It is now a performance. Men practice for performances with the "other," and they're conditioned to think of women, gays, and academics as "other." Men of different colours or creeds from the subject are less problematic in this case, since the population of the neighbourhood includes a great range of different cultures and backgrounds. But you can see how Boys' Clubs and secret societies would enact racist, sexist and heterosexist exclusionary rules - it provides an insight into who the members of those clubs feel their performances are directed toward.
1. My mother is an alcoholic.
This is one of those discoveries that I already knew. It's more that I discovered how to name it today. Same sort of thing with the abuse history. One day I just continued to think about it, and a little bolt of lightning hit me, and made me say "oh! That's what this is!" My mother is what some people call a functional alcoholic. She drinks on her own time - she doesn't get drunk at work or do anything like that, but will get drunk as soon as she gets home. When I visited her in Cleveland in 2001 for Christmas, she invited a co-worker/friend over one night. We all got to talking and in the meantime my mother passed out on the floor.
It affects her cognitive abilities. She is paranoid about me, and I suspect also about the other people in her life. She doesn't listen to logic, because I don't think she understands it as fully as she would were she lucid and sober.
I think I have had something to do with this. I used to fix drinks for her when we were all living together. They were strong. Obviously I am not able to do that for her anymore, since I am not in her vicinity, but I think that by neglecting to name the problem, I am helping to facilitate it. I think I should tell her that I think she has a drinking problem. Suggestions on this?
2. Men need exclusive activities or spaces so they can practice being men for the world. I was at the gym today, and there were no women in the weight room, so the room took on that all-male energy. I noticed one fellow practicing dancing in a mirror. It's an activity that I associate with aloneness, and then I realised that the man (admittedly, a young man) considered himself to be the equivalent of alone: the purpose of the room (a sports activity), and the makeup of the population (exclusively male) made him feel safe enough to check himself in the mirror to see how he was doing at activities that would attract women in other contexts. This is why "others" are not welcome in these sorts of contexts - because they alter the safety of the space for activities (like dancing in front of a mirror) that men don't generally want to admit that they do. If the people for whom you are practicing are present at the practice, the practice is no longer that. It is now a performance. Men practice for performances with the "other," and they're conditioned to think of women, gays, and academics as "other." Men of different colours or creeds from the subject are less problematic in this case, since the population of the neighbourhood includes a great range of different cultures and backgrounds. But you can see how Boys' Clubs and secret societies would enact racist, sexist and heterosexist exclusionary rules - it provides an insight into who the members of those clubs feel their performances are directed toward.
// posted by MSR @ 2:46 PM 
