#my therapist said there was a common thread of loneliness in my life :(

[ahotknife]

i will never stop being 6 years old and lonely. i will never stop being 11 years old and lonely. i will never stop being 19 years old and lonely. i will never stop

[rosieengel]

the beauty and the terror

I’ve been contemplating starting a blog for a long time now, but felt paralyzed with terror because I couldn’t find a great opening post topic. This week, the topic found me. I’ve had the draft saved with my finger hovering over the “post now” button for a few days. So, here it goes. 

My first post is about my most recent brush with beauty and terror, best encapsulated, I think, in the mystical words of the poet Ranier Maria Rilke: 

Let everything happen to you Beauty and terror Just keep going No feeling is final

In one of my favorite books of all time, Awareness, Anthony de Mello ponders and unpacks those non-final, fleeting moments in life - he points to the fact that our cells live and die so often that we have to wonder, who am “I” after all? Was I the same person I was in the past? No. Not physically, at least, but isn’t our “consciousness” also comprised of a neural network made up of cells? So we are also not our feelings or our emotions. As a matter of fact, we have to liberate ourselves from our experiences altogether if we are to be fully present in the here and now, or we become hijacked by the filters that create our reality. This becomes even more interesting when we consider how many of our memories may be false or fabricated. How much of my past did I dream? How much did I experience in consciousness? “Don’t carry over experiences from the past... don’t carry over good experiences from the past either. Learn what it means to experience something fully, then drop it and move on to the next moment, uninfluenced by the previous one.... You’d know what eternal life is, because eternal life is now, in the timeless now.” In this book, de Mello suggests, no demands, that the reader, “Wake up”.  Wake up to how we filter reality. Wake up to our excuses. Wake up and be aware. 

I’ve always taken this book very seriously, but it became more important to me when I experienced my first pregnancy loss. The week before Christmas 2017, we experienced major emotional and physical whiplash; we were excited about the possibilities of the new life I was growing. We had told our family and friends, and like a lot of mothers-to-be, I was already dreaming about all of the amazing and absolutely terrifying ways our lives would change. I had spent my 20s and most of my 30s focused on my teaching and playing career, my health, and music. It was time to take care of someone else and I was looking forward to a new chapter (that I thought about my life then in terms of chapters is preposterous and that is worth another blog post). But the Universal Creator had different plans for us, as He typically does. At 12 weeks into my pregnancy and three days before Christmas, I had a miscarriage on the other side of the country and felt a tremendous sense of loss and confusion. In the ER, I could only hold tightly to E’s hand and eeck out, “Our little kumquat...” I was really shocked. I felt as if no one understood - I was grateful for the kindness of everyone around me, but at the same time, I felt as if they were too afraid to give me any comfort or love. Now I know that that is no one else’s responsibility but my own. 

Much to my surprise (and other women who have lost babies or children probably grok this), many ordinary and mundane things in life became very difficult. Particularly because it was Christmas. I found I couldn’t really think about the future at all. Holiday traditions and cheer seemed trite and fabricated. I fought back breakdowns whenever I was around children of any age. Drops would well up in my eyes whenever anyone started talking about their dreams of getting pregnant or starting families. I sat amidst the glee and celebration screaming inside, “HEY!!! CAN’T YOU SEE THAT I’M STILL HERE AND DONT YOU KNOW WHAT IM FEELING!?!??!?!” I would go to the bathroom bleeding, cramping, and sad as I waited for the miscarriage to finish playing out to its gruesome end. I was ashamed to burden others with my uncomfortable tears. I will never forget how I reached into the toilet to touch, pick up, and say goodbye to what I believe was the last of the tissue that remained.

In the days afterward, I came across what would become a well-loved piece by Brian Andreas:

This is how I came to see that first baby - as an angel who was with me so briefly, but made such a terrific impact on my life. An angel, who most certainly prodded me to “wake up” in a de Mello sense. Immediately upon my return home, I said my goodbye to her and started healing (and it’s still happening). I felt an enormous calling to help and to heal others too; in the process of healing with Craniosacral Therapy (CST), I decided to study it myself and enrolled in massage therapy school.  CST helped me to fully experience that pain and grief, down to the mitochondria of my cells, through my fascia, through my very center.  When my inner spirit sensed the healing presence of Erin, my therapist, emotions bubbled up through my solar plexus, through my left hip, my ribs, my sternum. They still do, even today. As an additional part of my healing, I dragged myself to talk therapy for a whole year. My counselor recommended EMDR, using vibration and aural cues because I’m a musician. Through this therapy I finally fully experienced some trauma that I had hidden, buried in my tissues. I came to realize and acknowledge that I had not held proper space for myself and my loss. I had been remiss in thinking that life should go according to my plans, that the world owes me certain things, that I have even a tiny bit of control over my path. The worst is that I held so much shame for all of the things I thought I had failed at in my life. I couldn’t live my pop rocks life because I was looking externally for validation that I was worthy in this world - I was looking everywhere but inside my own spirit. I believe this is what also attracted me to academia, a field where accolades, accomplishments, and the correct lines on your vitae become a measure of your life’s work. That was a tough pill to swallow, but I’ve come to terms with that realization. I’m still healing today in other ways and I probably always will be.

This week, I was gifted a second angel. Even though she is gone now, I will always think of her as Eliza Jane. We conceived her without really intending to around New Years in New Orleans. I love walking down Magazine Street toward the Quarter. When we would walk by the hotel, I would admire its historic, embossed vertical sign. I offhandedly told E that I would love to name a hypothetical daughter Eliza Jane. Two weeks later, I would learn that she was already there.

Early miscarriage is very common. Statistically speaking, 1 in 4 confirmed pregnancies end (that they know of). So - why don’t we talk about it? Why do I feel embarrassed and ashamed that I am part of this statistic? The answer explains why this post stayed in draft form for so long. 

I drove myself to the ER this week, in pain and bleeding. My midwife suggested that I go if I was concerned and if I wanted a quick answer. The answer was not good, but.... I knew the answer already.  I had felt the absence in my body, the little tug at my heart when her life left me. I won’t say that it was easier this time, but I knew what to expect. I knew what the pain would feel like; I would not be taken off-guard by the waves of grief and sadness, the emptiness, and in some ways, the feelings of loneliness and alienation. I was able to hold space for myself this time, to sit in silence, to be in my own home, my own bathroom. I didn’t have to speak to anyone. E was with me and we were together. These two losses have brought us closer together. As I laid in the ultrasound room, unable to see the images that the silent technician kept from my view, I renewed the gratitude in my heart that the Universe brought E and me together.  It may sound like a sappy cliche, but this is the only way I can put my love for him into words right now: the threads of grief in our souls are so "bare” when they are left alone, but when weaved together, make us inseparable and stronger than ever before.

When I got home from the hospital, I planted myself in bed to mentally prepare for the night ahead. Our scrappy, stray cat, Tikky, crawled into bed with me. She rarely does that. As I writhed in bed and moaned in pain, she planted herself next to me. Sprawled out against my belly, she stayed. Although I thrashed about, she remained, wide awake and concerned. Even in that moment, I was so present and grateful for her healing energy. She reminded me that the sick and pained don’t have to crawl into the corner, to lick their wounds alone. The strongest survive with the help and love of others. She sent me light in her own way, without saying anything at all. This is one of the many things I have learned from cats.

I’m sharing this story with the hope that it reaches others who have been through a similar experience. To you - you are not alone. Would this be different if I had a stillborn or if I lost an infant? No. Not according to my belief system. After the worst was over, I woke up before dawn to hear a robin trilling outside my window. In my world, nothing is a coincidence.

If you have not had this experience, open your eyes to those around you who are suffering in silence. Wake up. Just as someone communicates joy and celebration with new life and new possibilities, there is also someone who is crying and mourning the loss of a life. There are also those who did not want to create life and decide to end it (or they don’t). This isn’t just confined to miscarriage - there are people struggling around you. You must assume they are doing their best and it is not their responsibility to make you feel happy with your life.  If you find yourself riled up or offended because of someone else’s struggle, or what you feel to be their failures or incompetencies, just ask yourself - am I taking this personally? I ask myself that question often - that is part of the process of waking up. It’s the process of leading a more compassionate life. Death surrounds us and it is part of a cycle that is repeating. There’s something comforting to me about the cycles of life. My cycle, that of the earth and moon, and the seasons.  Your cells die, they shed, they turn over. It does not happen to us, it is us.

Of course, we should be happy. We should experience bliss and joy and scream it from the mountaintops, all others be damned! But can’t we also show our heartbreak, sadness, grief, and despair? Instead of turning and running from the pain, what if we leaned into the uncomfortable and said something. ANYTHING. Say you’re sorry. Ask if they are okay. Say that you don’t know what to say, but you are here to talk. Be there in silence. Be a shoulder or a hug. Hold space for them in your heart. Reach out. That’s something. Let yourself see the terror and the beauty, because if you don’t, your life will consist only of coincidences and you may miss the angels who are helping you along the way to wake up so that you do not miss your life.

Tikky didn’t leave me to lick my wounds alone. She nestled in and hunkered down right next to the pain. She leaned into it and sat there patiently through my tears and gibberish. Just as I am here to do for you, my friend.

[juistheseminarian]

Eccentric, part 1: (gasp) a child!

You can tell I take myself seriously as a writer since I was originally planning on making this a stand-up-sounding twitter thread, doing my usual best turning the topic into a trendy depression meme while telling anyone who’d listen that I’ve decided to write “real articles” since I “can’t find a job in my field” (I’ve totally looked). So this is me taking a step. I get the tingling feeling it might sound exactly as it would have anyway, except this time i’m gonna have to pry readers from one platform they spend their time on to another that’s about real reading, and somehow this distance is a real marathon to close. I know because I don’t read, and i do run. I expect little and I hope for even less. 

Writing “for real”, as opposed to waxing my usual poetics, has been a terror of mine, along with praying mantises, stick insects and john mulaney’s wife, in a good way. It’s been my plan A as well as my every other plan for as long as I can remember, which is an excellent reason to stay away from it since nothing else could possibly keep it from failing. It’s almost like I didn’t believe in hard work, which is ironic for a person who spent hours a day playing over two-measures loops of music so I’d learn guitar solos for a man. Where’s the reward here? Non-gendered consideration? Give me a break. 

I’ve been told in school that a writer’s first work is oftentimes autobiographical, in reaction to which I thought it would be a funny idea to even try to write about anything else (who could possibly?). That was before I tried viewing it through the lens of standpoint theory and claiming the relevance of my situated point of view as if we needed another white girl to cry about the upper middle class experience. Now don’t get your hopes up, I’m still gonna do it, but I’ll do my best to keep some perspective. There are more important pieces to be written and more important voices to be heard and I’ll never replace them or try to; what I want to do is use the language I’ve had the privilege to develop, and acknowledge my main skill as an opportunity to challenge what needs to be challenged at my own scale. 

Now that I’ve proceeded to justify myself because clearly you had asked, and have realized I’m going to have to find another way to introduce myself than to offer my guests a cup of insecuritea (get it?), let’s move on - I’ve been meaning to talk about, well, me, you got me there - no but really, about my journey trying to put words on my mental health. Tl;dr: I haven’t yet. I’m starting to think the final boss of this game is financial independence so I’ll probably shelf it and go back to super hexagon for a decade or two. What could go wrong. 

It all started when i was still going to school in rollerskates and wearing orange tights to show how I had just discovered the sex pistols - in fact, it started long before, as the nice ladies at daycare told my parents that maybe I was a little more than just shy. The year after that, I was pulled out of school for being unable to stay in class during storytime: I had taken to crying uncontrollably and panicking into a near catatonic state at the thought of the old crone in charge reading fairy tales. I got sick in the morning. I was taken home and it fortunately coincided with my family moving to another village, where I started class the next year and appeared normal, if a little keen on the self-pity. My teacher suspected I was bored, but shit happens, and it didn’t show. I didn’t show.

I never showed. Later on I tried to show and disappear all at once, which was, you’ll see, a little suboptimal, but you do what you can, right. I went from year to year in constant fear and numbness, threats surrounding me in the classrooms, hallways, home, people. I felt injustice and it made me puke, and all that mattered was not being seen, not being seen for this reason at least. To everyone’s surprise, including mine, I had numerous friends, which made the loneliness thing all the more age-typical. Girl-typical. Good grades for a good girl, we never hear her. Now she’s too confident, we hear too much of her. Oh I too was bad at maths! You’re good at languages, where did you learn this? Why do you know that? Why do you talk like this? Look at her, she was ready to cry! We got you! 

Most of what I remember from school is the shame and inadequateness of feeling. I had a few questions: why was I obsessed with sex, how would boys like me, why did it feel better talking to adults even though I was ashamed to do so. At home, I was shamed for masturbating and at school I was just ashamed without anyone needing to make me that way. I don’t know where the trauma was, so don’t ask, okay? I know it’s gotta be in there but how can I tell what’s real and what’s a memory this abusive therapist planted for the sake of being right? 

My body felt like a traitor, always horny and always heavy and always numb. The swimming pool was a nightmare. My femininity was nowhere to be found. The delicate, cheerful way the others sang and hopped around made me grow old, I found myself revoltingly fat, I found my hair too short, and why didn’t I know how to dance? Why were people telling me I was so honest when all I did was be ashamed? Something wasn’t working out for me, and I was crying often. As soon as I pictured myself skipping and singing i couldn’t hold back my tears. I invoked this image of me as what I figured would be a normal little girl, and I felt a thousand years old, an antediluvian tree, its movements blocked and its curves absent. 

The body did things and I hid them. Through puberty i felt like an impure, sexless organism, like secondary sex characteristics implanted on a shape, a bunch of pubes on a round mistake. I didn’t know what makeup was for and my friend group had common enemies: lingerie, sluts, girly girls, because they could not be smart, they wore thongs and smoked and thereby lost the war of clever versus hot. Somewhere along the line we admitted to masturbating and that was the breakthrough, that’s that on that, and one day a girl choked another during recess. Around this time fat became an issue and everyone knew before I did, because it was normal and I overplayed normal. The limits were, and are, invisible to me.

The old school ended without a diagnosis, and I feared for my life since some older kids made a hobby out of telling us we were gonna get beat up as soon as we’d have set foot in the new school. I was scared, normal scared at first, and I shared the scared, which was something I thought I could get used to (unfortunately I did, and then it went away). I moved on and at first it all seemed to have worked out, I had kept some old friends around and even made new ones, I had a boyfriend for one month and we held hands before I told him I was a vampire (I had read a book by Anne Rice) and he no longer wanted to speak to me. I didn’t particularly mind. I found another (I didn’t want him and we tried to fit him inside me; it didn’t even feel like it would ever be a physiological possibility, he was a gentle friend, I was not receptive). I found another (it worked out and we dated for five years. I did manage to fit him inside me, and to this day i’m not certain I should have). Fat had become an issue. 

For the first year it didn’t show - well, not alarmingly so. I studied how to girl and promptly found out that caring about the body seemed an effective shortcut, and I did, very much. I was nerves and erogenous shame, a piglet in human cast, and anything that touched me sent thunderbolts of frustration through my entire bedroom; anyone that talked to me was taking me by surprise and met with confused torrents of whatever had to come out that day. At this point we called the food thing “being careful”: you didn’t want to gain weight so you were “being careful”, salad instead of a main course, no ice cream, careful. Look in the mirror, have you been careful enough? I have a very clear image of walking in on my mother weighing herself and telling me “you see, the biggest worry for moms is to have a flat tummy”. She denied it ever happened. Truth is, the last time she said it was three days ago. 

Then came the warnings and I had already learned to take them as compliments. Everytime someone told me I was eating too little, I was gaining points. I was about to graduate. I was about to evolve like a training pokémon; warnings were congratulations and fear was validating me as a fragile young girl, finally, finally, no longer a slug. You could say it was progressive, and throughout the whole thing I was taken care of, yet I slipped through everyone’s fingers because I had lost twelve kilos and weighed a remaining 36 (that’s 79 pounds). 

My grandmother was afraid of my hands and my body was drying out, dehydrating, too weak to menstruate or feel. During this time I have never fainted, but have pretended to numerous times. I still wasn’t the center of the world, so I considered it a failure. My mother’s friends said I needed to gain weight for men to love me, my mother said I needed to eat or people would keep staring, and everytime I bought diet coke my boyfriend gave me the look you give to a relapsing junkie, because it was the case. All other possibilities had been eliminated, by me. 

The abusive therapist was there all along, but then she was okay still. I saw her all the time, did all sorts of talking and then I saw a doctor and she measured my heart and threatened me with a hospital stay so I cleaned up my act. I was admitted once, in a special unit for teenagers, and it was a nightmare. The others were real and a girl lived there long term because her mother threw chairs in her face (she was the first one to come and introduce herself to me, smiling, complimenting my clothes, kind). One had lost her father and one didn’t like spinach. Before I could spend the night I had caved in and my parents collected me, and I collected the phone they thought was the problem. ED treatments: isolation won’t do shit, trust us. We get better because everyone else is less cruel than you were, and don’t say that’s the point. You lasted one hour before telling me my skirt was too short. 

At one point I told the abusive therapist I was going to get better, and I did. It had lasted about a year and the doctor said it hadn’t been real anorexia or I would have had it worse, and I thought, the nerve on this person that jumped on the occasion to invalidate me as soon as I ate one bite. Don’t you dare take the words from my experience, don’t be ridiculous, I’ve already claimed the words - I do realize how lucky I was, others died, I didn’t, but I was very ill indeed, your ego be damned. I was very ill, I was offered fashion advice and condescension and suggestions that I should stop or men wouldn’t look at me, and I was not medicated and I had my asshole pumped full of water because it had dried shut. My heart sounded like a ruffled biscuit wrapper and my first year of high school was a made-up arrangement for me to not completely float away: I would come to some classes for the sole purpose of keeping myself afloat and would repeat the year no matter what. I think this kept me alive. 

My first days of high school i was a mummy. I had taken to rubbing the skin off of my arms with a pumice stone until they oozed with pus and burned constantly, I wore bandages from my wrists to under my t-shirt sleeves, I don’t know how my legs supported me, I don’t know how anyone did. I had picked a special high school where half my classes would be in english but I’d know nobody: I lasted two days and was transferred to my local school, and there I appeared sporadically in french class, bonding with the delightful old man who gave it and thought my writing was “images”. He said I should do contests but maybe I wouldn’t win because “the best ones often don’t”.

I repeated the class and fell in love with the next french teacher, a gentle woman who taught us about the middle ages. She was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen, mysterious, a woman but not just a mother, she didn’t know what to do with my writing and I’m ever so sorry she had to fence off the embarrassment and try to be a good role model. Lucky for me, she really wasn’t. 

Ultimately I got better. But I gotta say: my style during this era was off the charts. I looked amazing, I copied Amanda Palmer and my boyfriend and the mad hatter and David Bowie, I once went to high school with a suit and converse because of David Tennant, and I cut my own hair with kitchen scissors. My then-boyfriend painted my t-shirts with foetuses and whatever else we found extremely shocking. We said we’d lose our virginity to raw power by Iggy Pop (did we?) and his mother said she was afraid I would mentally screw her stable, balanced son whose anger issues had him slap me a bunch of times - I would have slapped me too, I said then, and almost stand by it. Years later he phoned me saying he was in therapy and he was sorry and it wasn’t my only fault; I don’t think i hold grudges and I’m glad others don’t either. My mother, however, does. Beyond unrealistic. Must be exhausting. 

If I had to describe what anorexia felt like, i’d say it felt like depression but floating, like compulsive obsessing over fashion because I felt I was allowed to now that I was thin; like the most hopeless cul-de-sac with no way out except the one you came from, a well full of serpents like you’re Ragnar Lothbrok and the british are laughing at you from the surface. You float yet sink and you have to claw your way up but your nails are like chalk, you know, from the not eating bit. The anxiety makes every day feel like a year of waiting in terror, and you don’t know why it came and you don’t know why it ends, and sometimes it doesn’t. 

...

I’ll have to return to the abusive therapist topic, which is why this is part one of a series on my experience of mental health issues. This isn’t meant as a self indulgent victimization (although it is self indulgent, I mean what the hell, i’m not catholic) though I don’t think it requires further justification, either. I don’t know what will come out of this once I said everything I had to say on the matter, but for now i’m angry about things, and I feel we need to do better. 

I was in the best possible conditions and my treatment still sucked, and I still spent the last fifteen years of my life in pain because health professionals can’t have an empirical, science-based approach for shit. I’m not exaggerating when I say I was a ping pong ball in a match doctors played with their dicks. Gender informed how easily my anorexia was diagnosed whereas countless young men still suffer in silence; it also informed how patronizing people would sound and how “efforts” were suggested as medication for my disorders. How pleasing men was supposed to be reason enough for me to eat my own illness. How my ‘’giftedness’’ was not investigated and neither was my ADHD because female-coded symptoms are overlooked. I’m pissed off, I’m qualified to be, and you’ll hear more of me. 

-Ju 

[lindyhunt]

Are Sex Robots Really the Answer to the Incel Problem?

The ranks here at FASHION are not filled with men. Shocking, right? But there are one or two (there are actually, literally, two). Naturally, when a question about male/female dynamics arises it’s only fair that one of them stand in for the members of his gender and provide some insight. Our last topic of conversation was why men tend to get defensive when the #MeToo filter is applied to certain news stories, and today we’re wading into the concept of ‘the redistribution of sex’ as a response to the incel movement. Two of our staffers—from the men’s corner, Greg Hudson, and from the women’s, Pahull Bains—talk it out.

Pahull Bains: Last week, the New York Times published a whopper of an op-ed by a man named Ross Douthat in which he put forth his thoughts on how the “redistribution of sex,” much like an equitable distribution of property or money, could be the key to a future without angry, violent behaviour from men who identify as incels: “involuntary celibates” aka men who find it difficult or impossible to find sexual partners. (The op-ed is in response to the recent killing spree in Toronto at the hands of self-declared incel Alek Minassian, which left ten people dead.)

Aside from the fact that to posit this sort of argument requires one to consider women’s bodies a commodity, much like land or money, and erases entirely their agency in the ‘transaction’ of sex, there’s also the tiny matter of equating incels—men with a demonstrably violent and misogynistic worldview—as a subjugated group worthy of a paradigm shift undertaken on their behalf. To help his argument, Douthat quoted Robin Hanson, an economist who, in his estimation, is a “brilliant weirdo:” “One might plausibly argue that those with much less access to sex suffer to a similar degree as those with low income, and might similarly hope to gain from organizing around this identity, to lobby for redistribution along this axis and to at least implicitly threaten violence if their demands are not met.” Douthat goes on to suggest that a combination of sex workers, virtual-reality porn and sex robots might be the answer to “address the unhappiness of incels, be they angry and dangerous or simply depressed and despairing.”

These arguments fail to consider several points. 1) Women are as likely as men to suffer from a lack of sex, yet we don’t see women shooting up frat houses or “threatening violence” as a result of it. 2) Since men are the prime “sufferers” here, a ‘right to sex’ largely translates to a ‘right to women.’ 3) If we are to go by the Reddit and 4Chan message boards where incels gather to vent and commiserate, it’s not just a ‘right to women,’ but a ‘right to attractive women.’ So mere access to sex—or in the case of sex robots, access to acquiescent partners—isn’t the solution. Incels demand that the women they fantasize about—the ‘hot, beautiful blonde girls’ that Elliot Rodger, patron saint of incels, purported to hate in the manifesto he left behind after his 2014 massacre—be truly interested in them. It is the absence of unattainable, beautiful women in their lives that they deplore, not necessarily absence of the sexual act itself. So how could something like sex robots possibly appease that burning, and likely insatiable, desire? Tell me Greg. How???

Greg Hudson: It’s like you’ve been reading my Internet history or something.

While the devil likely doesn’t need an advocate (especially now that Ty Cobb is available–HEY-O political humour!), I want to push back on a few of the things you said. Not because I believe that we should live in a world where the sexual needs of misogynistic men are at all a priority, but because I think this is at least an attempt to find some kind of solution to what is obviously a giant problem. It’s easy to feel nihilistic about this, just as it is when discussing terrorism based on other ideologies. You even alluded to that yourself when you call their problem an “insatiable desire.” There’s no hope!

But the problem is, when there aren’t many solutions offered, the few that are can seem smarter than they actually are. Because, while I admit that parts of his thinking is intriguing, it seems he maybe should have spoken to like one woman before publishing this, if only to flesh out the details of what he’s proposing.

Let’s put aside talk of incels for a moment, so that this Redistribution of Sex Idea isn’t a kind of ransom/response to incel terrorism.

You mention that there are women who suffer because they maybe don’t get the sex they wish they could have, but they don’t go out and kill anyone. That seems true! But of all the incels out there, only two have made the news for causing mass violence. Most just feel bitter and mean and make nasty comments on the internet. It’s similar to the argument silly gun fans make about gun control: that the mass shootings skew the picture. The reality is most gun deaths are suicides. (How that really works as an argument against gun control is kind of tortured). Most incels are just sad.

But what if sex was a right for both genders? What if Ross Douthat had included women in his piece? As he mentions in the piece, we often look to programs that help connect disabled people up with sex workers as progressive and important. The differently abled deserve physical affection, too! What if sex was just one aspect of holistic healthcare? Like mental healthcare, sex would be available if you want it (and maybe qualify), but not essential. Does that change the argument at all? Because you’re right, a Right to Women is gross. But, I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to distill this argument down to that.

We’ll get back to why this probably wouldn’t help incels.

PB: But incels are not disabled people! (Unless you construe a lack of game as a disability, in which case, I think we’re done here.) And I don’t think we can reasonably conclude that most incels are “just sad.” Yes, only two might have committed mass violence thus far, but they are cited as heroes on these message boards and their acts are glorified. So although we could agree that the majority of the men who identify as incels don’t go out and commit murder, it’s indisputable that they harbour virulent views about women. Even the most cursory glance at some of the misogynistic message boards of the ‘manosphere’ is enough to see that. I mean, a word I saw coming up over and over was ‘femoid,’ which, it turns out, is a combination of female and humanoid, implying that women are subhuman. Another common thread was the opinion that the only thing women are good for is sex.) So I don’t think these men need to commit an act of mass terrorism to be deemed dangerous or potentially violent.

Now, getting to the women. Again, not being charming or beautiful or confident enough to attract men (or women!) does not a disability make. So if we were to talk about sex as a right, regardless of whether or not you’re disabled, we’d have to first address the question: what makes something an inalienable right in the first place? And what makes sex fall into that category?

GH: Ugh. I don’t like that I’m within walking distance of defending incels. Like if incels were a highway McDonalds, and defending them was buying a Big Mac, then I’d be seeing the golden arches looming. And Big Macs always make me super sick.

Assuming sexism leads to violence isn’t really fair. All men who are violent towards women are sexist, but not all sexists are violent. In fact, I think it’s more likely–and we should just state that both of us are making assumptions that may or may not prove to be true according to the data we don’t have–that most incels don’t have the confidence, means, or strength to incite much violence. They see themselves as Good Guys. Until they don’t.

You have a very strange way of defining a right. I can’t think of any inalienable rights that are so defined. Is healthcare a right? I think most Canadians would agree that it is. What about a childhood free of fear, hunger, abuse? What about an adulthood like that? Probably. I mean, it’s a hard right to enforce, but I think we’d all prefer a society that ensures the safety and at least minimal care of its people.

There is a significant push to have employment, or a living wage, be considered a right, even though it would be just as easy to say, “why is laziness a disability?” I don’t know if I agree, but one could make the argument that sex–physical touch, affection, intimacy–affects one’s quality of life in pretty serious ways. And just as there are many reasons a person can’t work, or find a job–some visible, others not so much– there are many reasons why men and women might have trouble finding sex. But if there are people who deeply miss human intimacy, and there is an industry set up to meet those people’s needs–and if that happened to prevent some men’s loneliness from curdling into misogyny, wouldn’t that be kind of cool?

But, to your point: it’s not orgasms that incels want. It’s not dates, either. Not really. I’m sure you’ve had the experience of meeting someone truly eccentric and then meeting their partner and thinking, yup, there’s someone for everybody.

The incels don’t just want sex, they want validation and companionship and love. They want to believe they are okay, and the only evidence they’ll accept is a woman who aligns with society’s definition of beauty, wanting to be with them. That they only see these women as prizes or means to their own gratification is what turns them into monsters. Would having a regular appointment with a sex worker help them see women differently? Part of me thinks it wouldn’t, since they’d always know they were paying for sex (even though in my pretend reality, this sex therapy is subsidized by the government), which would insult their fragile sensibilities and prove that women are objects that can be bought. But, then again, a therapist is a friend you pay for and that doesn’t stop them from helping people.

I think what I didn’t like about the responses to Ross Douthat’s column was that so many of them lacked imagination. They presumed a world where the sex robots and sex workers were essentially enslaved, against their will. It’s as though we all assumed that this redistribution of sex was going to be done with all the grace and nuance of a dictatorship, rewarding only men at the expense of women. That’s partly a result of how it was written–and what it was written in response to. But if we forget that a conservative columnist wrote it, would the principle of accessible sex be dangerous?

But, seeing as how we don’t live in Greg’s Socialist Sexual Utopia, in real life incels, violent or not, don’t just want sex. They want to punish.

What’s the answer then?

PB: Quick note: I don’t believe that sexism leads to violence, nor do I think I implied that. There is a wiiide, Grand Canyon-scale expanse between sexism and violent misogyny, and I think it’s safe to say that incels fall pretty firmly in the latter camp. (Last year, the 40,000-member ‘Incel’ group on Reddit was shut down by the site following policy changes that prohibited content that “encourages, glorifies, incites or calls for violence.”)

Now, back to the sex-as-a-right thing. While I do agree that sex affects the quality of a person’s life, treating sex as a right turns our world into a minefield. What, then, would prevent husbands from arguing that marital rape isn’t rape, it’s a response to their wives denying them their basic right to sex? As Amia Srinivasan noted in her recent London Review of Books essay: “On the now defunct Reddit group, a post titled ‘It should be legal for incels to rape women’ explained that ‘No starving man should have to go to prison for stealing food, and no sexually starved man should have to go to prison for raping a woman.’” So if we did live in a world where sex was considered a universal human right, we’d have lots more ideologies like that floating around, and what’s worse—legally sound ideologies. That seems more dystopian than utopian from where I’m standing.

You ask: ‘would the principle of accessible sex be dangerous?’ No, of course not. But there’s a huge difference between access to sex, and a right to sex. Accessible sex is already a reality. (Let’s face it: the fact that prostitution is illegal isn’t really slowing anyone down.) What we both agree on, I think, is that access to sex isn’t actually going to solve the incel problem because it’s far more deep-rooted than that.

Going back to Douthat’s op-ed, what bothers me the most is that, like with most problems that involve male violence against women, the burden to fix it or to find a solution instantly falls on the women’s shoulders. It’s always ‘how do women adjust or reevaluate what they’re wearing or how much they’re drinking or whom they trust,’ instead of ‘how do men adjust or recalibrate their mindset or outlook or behaviour toward women.’ This is another manifestation of that. Rather than looking at the incel movement as a potentially violent and sadistic ideology, and trying to figure out how to address it, the solution goes immediately to how women (or robots!) can appease and satisfy it. Rather than the policing or probing of this dangerous mentality, women must find a way to live safely around the contours of it.

GH: Nuts. Man, I forget that the world is the worst. Here I am imagining this world where sad, angry, lonely people can talk to a mental health professional and get a prescription for like a date night with a sex professional, who will help them feel less alone. And once people feel less alone, all misogyny, racism, homophobia, and whatever else ails the deplorable set, will melt away and we’ll all bake birthday cakes full of rainbows and speak only in clapping emojis.

And while I don’t really see how sex as a right will lead to marital rape–just because something is a right doesn’t mean violently stealing it is justified, especially since there is already a recourse for spouses who are unhappy with their sex life. It’s called divorce.

But I realize that that is all a little idealistic. In a way, I’m doing the same thing that I said annoyed me about other people’s response to Douthat’s column: I’m judging it based on what I’m wishing it said, and not what it really encouraged.

Thus, to answer your very first question: sex robots can’t fix this. I don’t know how the incel ideology can be fixed. But, I’ll do whatever you think I should!

PB: I think the first step is accepting that incels are not “sad, angry, lonely people,” who might be easily cured with drugs or weekly sex (android or otherwise). As Harper’s Bazaar’s political editor at large noted in her recent piece: “Their existence is not about being lonely. It is about blaming women for their loneliness.” The sooner we all see the deeply violent, unstable and misogynistic ideology driving the incel movement, the better off we’ll be.

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Todd Essig , CONTRIBUTOR My beat is mental health, mental wealth and making the most of living Text-only therapy is just another brick in the digital wall we are building between each other Talkspace, recent recipient of $9.5 million in investment capital, is a startup with a dream, a big dream. They want to be a disruptive technology platform for transforming psychotherapy practice into, as their tag line states, “therapy for how we live today.” Their aim is nothing less than making therapy accessible to everyone, especially the millions worldwide with an untreated mental illness. No more obstacles like inconvenience or cost, or even the stigma of seeking help. Frictionless therapy everywhere for anyone whenever and wherever it is wanted. Their attractive, well-designed web-site proudly welcomes people “to the wonderful world of therapy, re-invented.” With their trademarked offering, “Unlimited Messaging Therapy,” people can access “affordable, confidential and anonymous therapy at the touch of a button.” For only $25 a week this is a very inviting offer, especially because your “professional licensed therapist is waiting to chat with you right now, and help you make a real difference in your life.” If this seems too good to be true, as we will see, it probably is. Significant clinical risks are inevitably present, as they are in any treatment model. We need to know what the risks are of “Unlimited Messaging Therapy,” as well as any other text-only clinical service delivery system. Only by understanding both promise and risk, gain and loss, can we ascertain whether some of the disruptive potential of tele(mental)health can be fulfilled by a text-only approach. I've consulted with experts, and drawn on my own clinical experience, to identify four significant clinical risks inherent in the Talkspace model that are not being properly managed nor discussed in the service's current incarnation. (And, as we’ll see in a related post about the Talkspace Terms of Use, the company is very careful to avoid being accountable for clinical risk.) The four hidden risks of the Unlimited Messaging Therapy model include: 1. delaying effective treatment, 2. making things worse not better, 3. minimal protections for crises and emergencies, 4. strengthening the stigma against seeking psychotherapeutic help. Delaying Effective Treatment If you had strep throat would you delay taking antibiotics to gargle with apple cider vinegar because the cider vinegar council said it was re-inventing treatment for infectious disease and had a more convenient and less expensive treatment? If not, or if you would try both, then you already get how delaying an effective treatment can be harmful. I reached out to Talkspace to find out the research backing up their claims of effectiveness. It sent me 11 references. While all the references dealt in some way with online therapy, none of them looked at the Talkspace model of therapy via unlimited text messages for everyone. Its spokesperson alluded to an independent outcome study in progress but would not share any specific information despite my explicit requests. I look forward to reading it eventually. But at present, while it claims anecdotal evidence of satisfied customers, there is no peer-reviewed research looking specifically at the treatment model Talkspace uses. So, that leaves consumers a choice: something that works versus something that might or might not. Is it a good idea to reach for a convenient screen to access the untested rather than reach out to a person for treatment known to be effective? Why not just give the screen-easy a try? Well, because delaying effective treatment to give texting-alone a try can itself be a serious problem. Delay can both prolong suffering and allow a destructive process to continue and even accelerate. Consider, as an example, text-message based treatment for someone with an eating disorder (not to be confused either with the very useful and very common texting that goes on between therapists and patients with eating disorders or texting as a bridge to treatment). I reached out to Dr. Judith Brisman, founding director of the Eating Disorder Resource Center and author of the classic Surviving an Eating Disorder: Strategies for Family and Friends about text-only treatment and eating disorders. She was clear and direct about how such an approach can delay someone seeking effective treatment. She said in email: “Anorexics die. Often direct and immediate weight stabilization is needed. Texting can delay that and result in dire consequences." That's clear. Eating disorders are serious business. Texting-alone as therapy can delay effective treatment. But there is nothing obvious on the Talkspace site, at least not that I have found, saying that text-only treatment may not be appropriate for people with eating disorders, that texting can be a useful bridge to in-person treatment, but is not enough on its own. I had Dr. Brisman review exchanges on the Talkspace “Eating Disorder - Help and Support” public therapy forum. She found the comments by Talkspace therapists to be “terribly irresponsible,” in part because they may lead many to delay getting effective in-person treatment. One recent thread included a therapist responding to a woman who described a history of being hospitalized for anorexia at 18 who was experiencing a relapse. All of the therapist’s responses asked about the stressors in this person’s life that might have led to the potentially dangerous relapse. It was a gentle and kind inquiry. But, as Brisman said, “a general questioning of stressors will do NOTHING to intervene with ED (eating disorder) behaviors.” When asked about what her response might have been Brisman responded: I would have said that eating disorders are really serious issues and that she is going to need a lot of support to move forward. I'd encourage her to get to an MD who specializes in eating disorders to make sure her body is healthy. But she should also speak to someone in person who could help her through, step-by-step, what she needs to do to fight the urges to restrict, binge or fall into moments of really bad body image. I might even write how the part of her that wants to get well is there, but there will also be a silent, yet still powerful part of her that will be afraid to let go of all the familiar eating disorder behaviors In other words, insofar as this woman was texting on Talkspace about stressors rather than seeking, or being encouraged to seek, immediate in-person attention to properly intervene in the relapse, effective treatment was being delayed and harm risked. By trying to be an approach suitable for everyone regardless of the problems they present, Talkspace puts some users at risk. Unfortunately, however much some people find Unlimited Messaging Therapy to be of valuable help, some experts are clear it puts others at risk by delaying access to appropriate care. Making things worse Text-only treatment also risks causing direct harm, both generally and specifically. MIT Professor Sherry Turkle described in Alone Together how we are expecting more from technology and less from each other. In the soon to be published Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age she takes her research further. There she shows how relying too heavily on the connections screens provide undermines our capacities for empathy and intimacy. We no longer see each other as worth the effort in-person conversation requires. So, why not grab an always on always on us screen rather than dealing with the messy, fleshy complexity of actual conversation? At dinner, work and play, with family, friends, colleagues and loved ones we sacrifice the benefits of conversation for easy pixels of connection. Text-only therapy is just another brick in the digital wall we are building between each other. It is a practice that risks increasing alienation and loneliness, risks decreasing the ability to tolerate, let alone celebrate, solitude and self-reflection, as well as each other. You can see this downside in “ghosting,” millennials ending romantic relationships not by having a difficult break-up conversation but by simply no longer responding to texts and on social media. Millennials feeling limited, lost and confused, or perhaps under-gratified by the frenetic pace of busy lives, might better be encouraged to put down their screens and talk to someone, anyone and not just a therapist, rather than looking to a screen for therapy. In this way of thinking, text-only therapy is problem, not treatment. Now, let’s turn to the possibility of specific clinical harm from text-only treatments, what is known as an iatrogenic effect. As an example let’s take those with a history of trauma, which is a frequent presenting problem in a therapy practice. Standard treatment (the kind Talkspace wants to “re-invent”) involves talking through the trauma with an understanding, supportive and trusted therapist who makes sure levels of arousal and anxiety stay manageable. A skilled therapist creates a trusting relationship in which they serve as a soothing presence, including suggesting specific techniques and actions to help manage the inevitable pain and discomfort that accompanies talking about trauma. A specific version is exposure therapy, the treatment of choice especially for veterans with PTSD. It works by asking the veteran to re-imagine the specific details of the traumatic event guided by a therapist who also monitors levels of arousal and anxiety, suggesting techniques—like breathing—to help the patient get through the rocky parts. The idea is to sever connections between the traumatic memory and the pathological fear response. The presence of the therapist is crucial, in part to minimize the iatrogenic risk of re-traumatization. You do not want to make the patient worse off from the treatment because asking someone to re-live trauma via imagination can recreate the arousal and fear of the original trauma. Here’s a short video further explaining how painful trauma treatment can be: In contrast, the Talkspace web-site includes a blog post titled “How to Help Veterans Deal with PTSD & Live Better.” They apparently do not believe in the value of another person being present. It encourages veterans suffering from PTSD to avoid the “inherent social stigma associated with asking for mental help in the military” by, instead, using Talkspace’s text-only therapy. After all, this blog continues “most people utilizing online therapy start to feel a difference in just six months.” I find this shockingly irresponsible. However much public embarrassment (the “inherent social stigma”) is an obstacle to seeking help, the likelihood of re-traumatization of a veteran sitting alone re-living traumatic events in imagination is too high to be worth the risk. Other forms of trauma are also frequently encountered by therapists, including histories of sexual abuse and betrayal. Similar problems with text-only treatment abound. I had an email exchange with Dr. Richard Gartner, a psychologist and psychoanalyst and pioneer in treating men with histories of sexual abuse. He has written two ground-breaking books on the subject: Beyond Betrayal: Taking Charge of Your Life After Boyhood Sexual Abuse and Betrayed as Boys: Psychodynamic Treatment of Sexually Abused Men. He told me that “victims of childhood sexual trauma typically wait years before talking about what happened to them. They may be secretive, ashamed, guilty, depressed, or suicidal. When they finally disclose their trauma they may be in a very vulnerable and insecure state. It is recklessly dangerous for a clinician to believe that a text message is an appropriate way to respond to such a person's first disclosure of sexual trauma.” The center of the problem he identifies is that there is just not enough feedback in either direction for trauma treatment when the rich complexity of human communication gets shrunk to fit the extraordinarily narrow pipeline of information flowing between people texting. Gartner told me “trauma survivors are desperately in need of a listener who communicates emotional acceptance and concern. This is often communicated through voice inflection and body language. Texting cripples this process of growing trust between patient and therapist.” In contrast, Nicole Amesbury, LMHC, one of Talkspace’s therapists apparently thinks less contact is a good idea, that presence gets in the way of healing. While talking about rape trauma she was quoted as saying, “By being able to come online, in your own home in a comfortable space is helpful. If I were to ask them a question, they can take as long as they need to respond to me – it’s easier to work through trauma that way.” (Amesbury is apparently referencing the well known online disinhibition effect.) But what happens when someone lulled by the comforts of home and time discloses information they would otherwise keep private until they felt themselves in the presence of a sufficiently soothing and trusted other person? According to Gartner, “this person may feel overwhelmed by the level of disclosure and exposure. The disclosure may be experienced as further shaming. None of this may be apparent to the person being texted such volatile information.” In other words, a text-only therapist may not even know when they are doing harm. They will only know should the harm get intentionally expressed in words typed on a device. Whether looking at a therapist communicating trust and comfort or a patient communicating levels of distress, text-only therapists and traumatized patients are just not in close enough contact with each other to prevent (iatrogenic) harm. After all, we’re still just people. And sometimes, as was documented by Gillian Isaacs Russell in Screen Relations and by Susan Pinker in The Village Effect, the actual physical presence of other people is much more than merely an inconvenient option as Talkspace suggests. It can be an indispensable part of healing. It is not a stretch to say that given the current state of knowledge, encouraging people with a history of trauma to seek care through text-only treatment borders on the cruel. And again, this is not to be confused with text as part of a treatment or texting as an initial step towards engaging in treatment. Minimal protections for crises and emergencies Every skilled therapist keeps an eye on the suicide gauge. Even when the needle never moves from zero the gauge is never disconnected. The tragic alchemy that turns suffering into suicidal thoughts and feelings and then some suicidal thoughts and feelings into suicidal behavior is too poorly understood to ever be ignored. As Dr. Shane G. Owens, a psychologist who is Board Certified in Cognitive-Behavioral Psychology and Chair, NYS Psychological Association (NYSPA) Suicide Prevention Task Force, told me in email, “Any therapy—no matter how it is delivered—must include suicide risk assessment and management.” Talkspace does include a footer on it’s pages “If you are in a life threatening situation, do NOT use this site. Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, a free, 24-hour hotline, at 1.800.273.8255. Your call will be routed to the crisis center near you. If your issue is an emergency, call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.” I informed Dr. Owens about the crisis management footer. I also let him know that the Talkspace Terms of Use states “The site is not intended for diagnosis”. I wanted to learn whether this was adequate protection from the perspective of suicide prevention, whether this new text-only re-invented therapy was safe enough for the public. In response he commented that “a service that states in its disclaimer that it is not for diagnosis and that anyone in life-threatening crisis should go elsewhere disqualifies itself as a therapy provider.” The Talkspace option of remaining anonymous presents an additional danger zone beyond minimally acceptable standards. If a Talkspace customer chooses to remain anonymous, and the anonymity is not illusory so that there is presumably no available contact information nor emergency contact information, what happens if a credible suicidal threat is made? Or, perhaps even scarier, a specific homicidal threat is made with method, opportunity, and motive. Or, for those states with child abuse reporting laws, what happens if an anonymous customer reports credible evidence of ongoing child abuse and does so without sufficient identifying information. When you look closer, anonymous treatment is another word for both not accountable and unprotectable. I for one certainly hope that this is not therapy for how we live today. I should note that I clearly communicated to Talkspace the nature of all my concerns and that I would be writing a piece that was critical of its approach. In a long email to Michael Kuznetsov who heads the marketing team at Talkspace and Chi Zhao who manages its press relationships I specifically told them I would be writing about how, to quote from that email, the “Unlimited Messaging Therapy model is dangerously inattentive to potential crises, e.g., self-destuctive (sic) behaviors, changes in mood not yet being verbalized, etc. The little warning footer about suicide does not really absolve Talkspace of responsibility should such a tragedy strike.” I specifically requested comments. In response I got a sharply worded email from Oren Frank, Talkspace CEO and co-founder, that stated “the company has decided that it will not contribute to your article.” I would have liked to get their comments. If their re-invented therapy is one that relies on disclaimers in the absence of ongoing accountable risk assessment then they are putting people at unacceptable risk. Strengthening Stigma Roni Frank, Talkspace co-founder and Head of Clinical Services has been quoted saying: “Talkspace’s new modality eliminates the powerful stigma that is still associated with therapy.” I must disagree. Their marketing and their practice reinforces that stigma. What they are doing is trading on the stigma against seeking help, not combating it. Their message is that seeing a therapist brings shame and embarrassment so don’t see a therapist in person, text instead. As an illustrative analogy consider what Hannah Seligson writing in the NY Times calls “age shame” among women. A powerful stigma against women aging can be found in entertainment, fashion and business. Many under-report their age in response. In contrast, Suzanne Braun Levine, 74, the first editor of Ms. Magazine was quoted saying “Whenever I am with groups of women, I always try to make a point of urging them to be courageous about their age." Similarly, encouraging people to have the courage to seek help, to take steps to improve their well-being and increase happiness, is a way to undermine the stigma against seeking therapeutic help. What Talkspace is doing is like selling documents allowing women to pretend to be younger than they are. By marketing a “new modality” that lets people pretend there is no stigma they strengthen that stigma, creating higher obstacles to overcome for those considering seeking therapeutic care. But analogies only go so far. So, I spoke with an expert about stigma. Dr. Leonard Davidman is current President of NYSPA, long-time NYSPA "Media Watchdog," and former volunteer for StigmaBusters. He was emphatic that “it reinforces stigma.” Their entire marketing program is based on “reinforcing the stigma of psychotherapy” and “trying to make face-to-face practice unacceptable.” His conclusion was that "Talkspace leaders should be ashamed of themselves for marketing their service as a means to avoid stigma as a selling point, especially because their message so powerfully reinforces that stigma. They can market their service in so many other ways." —— Finally, I should note that the email I received from Talkspace CEO Oren Frank telling me they would not be commenting also contained an implied threat. He said in that email, one cc-ed to an attorney, “Understand, if you will suggest that this Company has or will harm a client physically or mentally, that we increase Stigma, or any other claim without any scintilla of corroborating evidence we will take every necessary step to protect the integrity of our company and our vision.” A mere tiny trace of corroboration (i.e., a scintilla) is a pretty low bar. I think it has been passed with ample room to spare. But I was actually hoping in the short space of this blog post to provide enough corroboration for more. However much some, even many, might feel text-only treatment is a valuable experience, I hope you will also see four sources of potential harm in its text-only model that puts the vulnerable at risk: delaying effective treatment, making things worse not better, minimal protections in crises and emergencies, and strengthening stigma. (See related post: Talkspace Argues With Talkspace: Conflicting Messages And Clinical Risk)