Oops, I Accidentally Got a Crush on an MRA, Part Three

Yesterday would have been my first day back at the bookstore. Cute Pansexual Assistant Manager was transferring, so it seemed doable a couple of weeks ago. When the time came, though, it seemed too sad. I knew it would take a lot more transformation for me to feel safe there, and it felt like that would take more work than my 10$ an hour covered. I’ve been wanting to commit to my own business anyway, so I took the leap and declared myself bossless. I’m nervous about the change and still heartachey about what happened, but I’m proud that I put myself first.

Things finally broke down between me and CPAM while the Store Manager was off for a week. We were setting up the textbook department for fall rush, so there was lots of good getting-in-a-flow-and-moving-heavy-books-around—my favorite part of the job.

But on the Friday of that week, something curdled in CPAM. He was in a text message argument with his sister-in-law. (she and his brother had just moved back in with his parents, where he lived as well) He was sniping about her to another employee in the back room and when I walked back there to get more books, he looked at me with such deep contempt, like how dare I walk in there, as if I were the hated sister-in-law herself.

I kept doing my job and chitchatting cheerfully with him—I have that abused-kid bad habit of trying to nice somebody out of being a jerk, as if I can avoid being hurt by being well-behaved enough. It bugged me, though, when he talked about her “bitching,” when he said he was going to “put that bitch in her place.” I had been volleying back his low-key prejudices for weeks, but this outright misogyny was still shocking. I didn’t say anything about it, though, because I was sick of having to say something so many times.

But then he turned on me. Although I had been working with a textbook company on and off for fifteen years, he decided to explain how alphabetizing works. Then he explained it again and again.

“I know how to alphabet,” I joked to try to get him off my case, but I succeeded only in giving him a chance to correct my grammar. Just want to mention at this moment that I have a Master’s Degree in Education.

            I said calmly that I wanted to be treated like an adult, but he kept doubling down on the condescension. I needed to learn how to take constructive criticism, he said, because after all, he was my superior. Which technically he was, but nobody had ever put it quite that way to me before. In all my years of low-level and often-temporary positions, no one had ever talked down to me that way.

As I tried to stand up for myself, he poured on the gaslighting: He said I needed to “compose myself.” He said I wasn’t hearing what I thought I was hearing. I left early, feeling livid and shaken. I wrote to the Store Manager about what happened, and he wrote back right away saying that he would take care of it.

Next Time: He didn’t.

Oops, I Accidentally Got a Crush on a Men’s Rights Activist, Part Two

This story is sad, but it’s hopeful too. I like the way that I was able to love this person, this man so disjointedly separate from me, so deeply. It gives me faith in my heart, even if my taste in humans is once again not the best.

Conversation came back again to the “morbidly obese” who were, Cute Pansexual Assistant Manager kept saying, a problem. “For them,” (us, I meant) “MAYBE, but it’s not fair when society tells people what our bodies should look like. It makes me want to punch society in the face.”

WHY was I IN a conversation about his, about ANY of this, at work? With the Assistant Manager and the Store Manager? The Store Manager cosigned my feminism out of empathy for his teen daughter, which was comforting, but it hurt to have to defend my body weight in the middle of my stupid day job.

Even when I told Cute Pansexual Assistant Manager directly that he was hurting my feelings, he maintained that it was “just a difference of opinion.” He had thoughts on the matter if I was interested. NO, REALLY, SUPERVISOR AT WORK, tell me more about how the size of my ass is burdening you.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about a comp class I was in fifteen years ago at Syracuse. The professor had ostensibly chosen food politics as the semester’s theme, but in retrospect I can see she was doing body terrorism before I knew there was such a term. As we watched Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me show shot after shot of headless, poorly dressed fat people, revealing the filmmaker’s contempt for both the fat and the poor, I sat in my slightly two small classroom desk feeling scrutinized. The fat at my middle felt naked, my boobs too big. I felt exposed in a way that reminded me of my long-ago rape.

In 2018, I would have been OUTRAGED, would have called every campus official, but instead I wrote about objectification in my class papers, got an A and moved on. Now, whenever I see Morgan Spurlock’s book, or any other piece of body-shaming trash, in the Little Free Libraries around town, I put them in the recycling where they belong.

Anyway, back to the bookstore, fat-shaming comments weren’t the only ones to come out of CPAM’s mouth—he seemed determined to dismiss any existence of sexism or racism ANYWHERE. “It’s 2018,” he said, “It sucks for everyone.” He brushed off feminism as man-hating, ignored my complaints about his frequent casual racism, and seemed personally injured by any kind of justice talk. I was only DOING any justice talk because his gentle but constant stream of prejudice kept nagging my conscience to say something.

 “Stop trying to school me,” he eventually said, the third time I tried to calmly explain that fat people aren’t less-than, that we haven’t necessarily “let ourselves go,” that we haven’t somehow placed a burden on him or on other straight-sized people just by existing.

I can see how the “schooling” was annoying to him and how it DEFINTELY wasn’t my job. I gave him way too much leeway because I needed a friend, because I wanted a new bookstore home. I should have reported him to the Store Manager, but he had a ways to go, too—I’d had to also gently call HIM out when he referred to an old Cosby joke that was only sort of about rape. (At least SM was receptive to pushback and didn’t make me explain myself, but the reference hadn’t exactly inclined me toward trust. )

Partly, I was doing a bad white person thing: I didn’t want to give up comfort to do what was right. I wanted a break from being like this. I wanted to be a part of things without being an SJW for like FIVE SECONDS but I think what I’m learning is that those days are behind me. Good.

I’m not sure why I tried so hard to belong there, when there’s so much belonging available all around me—there’s marches, there’s canvassing, there’s yoga and massage and occasionally stopping into (super liberal Unitarian) church. There are my feminist-bookstore-owning neighbors who still have their Hillary sign (from primaries!) up. I have a home in the world no matter what. I’m not sure how or why that bookstore got so important to me.

Because of that needless struggle to belong, or because of my poor handling of it, (and, to a greater degree, because America puts children in cages now) the first half of this summer was about battling depression, about really struggling for hope. I want sometimes to go back to my life before activism, before Nazis came back to the streets, before Heather Heyer got murdered, but this is where we are now, and there’s no way out but through.

At the bookstore, that would mean a few more snits and a lot more HR.

Next Time: Does he know what he’s saying?

Oops, I Accidentally Got a Crush on a Men’s Rights Activist, Part One

I remember when this blog used to be mostly cuteness and sexy adventures. I hope it’ll be those things again someday, but it’s 2018. Dietland is a show, I write to congress so much it’s starting to feel like a diary, and I have new stupid story about clashing with an ignorant white dude about once a week. So here we are.

About two months ago, I started working at a nearby university bookstore in the mornings. I mostly loved it—my commute was only three songs long (meaning, for several belty weeks in a row, the first three songs of George Michael’s Faith…) and the work was emotionally neutral. Best of all, hooray, the assistant manager was a cutie-pie pansexual guy with a great talent for iterating entire (original, not remake) Will & Grace episodes and an ability to endlessly process the new season of Kimmy Schmidt with me.

Unfortunately, the whole staff seemed to have a gentle South Park vibe, a we-pick-on-everybody kind of casual prejudice, but I was new and I thought I could change the culture with friendship, kindness, patience and love. Did I mention the three-song commute?! I had Faith indeed and I thought I could avoid blowing up about prejudice just this once, that the culture of the place would change if I just patiently explained what was wrong, little by little. It was a self-serving mistake, and it bit me in the ass. At this point, spoiler alert, I’ve realized I can call HR just as often as I call congress, though I don’t think they’ve invented any cute Resistbot-style apps for it.

So I bonded with Cute Pan Assistant Manager and indulged my sincere love of stacking textbooks—there really isn’t a better workout in the world. Despite the giggly blush of new friendship and reminding myself this could never be like the Mister Makeout Music situation, there were hints that our pop culture bond didn’t transcend CPAM’s general lack of awareness. A few days into the new position and already DEEPLY in friend-crush territory, I was sad to overhear him chitchatting with other members of the team about “the obesity problem”

I haven’t weighed myself in a while, but last time I checked, I was hovering around 300 pounds. At 5’10,” that places me squarely in the “extremely obese” category on most charts, and that’s what it says on my medical records, but this has never rung true to me. I’m healthy, active, and the problems that arise from being fat come more from the outside than from the inside.

I’ve spent a good chunk of this year looking at #fatshion for ideas about how to femme it up, listening to the She’s All Fat podcast, (https://shesallfatpod.com/) answering all of the questions in The Body Is Not an Apology (https://thebodyisnotanapology.com/) and reading/watching/obsessing about Dietland. (https://www.amc.com/shows/dietland/full-episodes/season-01/episode-01/episodes-1-2)  I’ve gotten in the habit of Instagramming myself in cute outfits and tagging @whatfatgirlsactuallywear. So I have no patience for the way that talking about the “obesity epidemic” lends a sheen of science to prejudice and serves to legitimize diet culture, that creepy little cousin of rape culture. I’ve had quite enough of any and all efforts to make women smaller, literally and figuratively.

I was little-kid hurt that my seeming new friend would other me that way, especially at work, so I gently pulled him aside about it. “I just want to be treated like an equal,” I said, and though he denied having said anything, it felt like he heard me. I ended the conversation with “It’s not you, it’s the patriarchy,” and we happily went back to debating whether or not Erasure is a good band. (OBVIOUSLY THEY ARE)

We were happy and giggly together. Though it seems really weird now, it felt like we were a ridiculous new kind of soul mates. He was a close talker and sometimes a chat really felt like a cuddle. At least I know I still turn into a complete fool-o-rama when someone is cute, it gives me hope for better days.

I taught him what the word “unicorn” means in poly slang, and he kept me up to date on all of the cutie-pies breezing in and out of his life. Work days felt charged with compersion for his exploits and it reconnected me with a need for warmth I hadn’t felt in a while. It felt sweet and dangerous and I don’t know why this always happens to me at work—there’s really no excuse.

It SOMEHOW came out (because he brought it up) that we were both switches and I happily acknowledged inwardly that I would know exactly how to order him around in a non-coworker version of the world.

Next Time: Micro(and MACRO)aggressions are not cute.