In Which I Make You Work for Me

I’m still thinking about King Kong.

I read this article by Ta-Nehisi Coates, in which he talks about a “heritage of rape.”

The this article by Charles Pierce about how a lot of white people think they now face the same kinds of discrimination, at the same levels, that minorities used to face.

Then this blog post by Bethany Liston meditating on how it’s fucked up for women to act like, when men do stuff around the house, they’re “helping” the women out, as if housework is women’s work and men doing it is a special treat for women.

I’m starting to believe that the truth at the core of the funhouse mirror of America is that we believe that anyone who can dominate another deserves the labor (all sorts of labor) of the dominated person. Of course, it’s hard work to dominate someone. You have to keep it up all the time.

Unless you can get the dominated person to believe that their proper, natural role is to be dominated. This is what America wants from racism, classism, and sexism–for the dominated to understand that what’s happening to them is natural. That’s the work those -isms are supposed to be doing.

And it works. Women internalize the idea that it’s their job to keep their house clean. Black people internalize the idea that violence is some problem their community intrinsically has. And so on. Sometimes you don’t even notice the ways you’ve internalized this bullshit, mistake the funhouse mirror for truth.

I don’t want to sound like I’m downplaying the terribleness of racism, sexism, and classism. I just want to be clear that they are more funhouse mirrors. In our case, a great tragedy for us as a country is that they’re the funhouse mirrors that sit closest to the truth, that obscure the truth most thoroughly, so they are reflected in the most surfaces, spread the farthest in ugly, damaging ways.

But the truth at the core is the seducing power of theft–I can take what I want.

And there are very few people immune from the charm of the idea of being a thief.

What can you take from another person without them stopping you? How ostentatiously can you display what you’ve stolen from them and still have the support of your peers? How can you keep what you’ve stolen in the face of a crowd of angry victims? Are you powerful enough to pass down the fruits of your stolen labor? Can you teach your children to steal? Can you convince them that their theft is natural?

There is no other real question in America other than “Can I take what I want from you? Am I powerful enough to keep it without getting in trouble?”

Every sick fuck thing we do to each other culturally has this question at its heart. Every sick fuck thing we do to each other is that so many of us perceive answering no to either of these questions as being some kind of insult we can’t live with.