Dr. Eye Candy Speaks About “Justice Warriors”
A primer on how to lose a really, really good catch
Andy Eye Candy (he would be so very embarrassed if he saw me writing this right now) is my chiropractor. At least, that is, until I move to Eugene.
Andy took over a practice from a very talented woman who had moved overseas.
Here’s what to love about Andy: he is over six feet, exceedingly well built, smart, funny, emancipated, gracious, kind, gentle, very good with his hands, handsome as fuck. And solid in all the ways I wish all my exes were, but weren’t. I think he’s right around 32.
You can see why I am going to miss having him crack my back. Andy is one of the examples of Good News About Men, including White Men. I love that he is intellectually curious, is aware more than most of what he doesn’t know, and is incredibly humble. Man. That’s a package.
We were, as we always do, discussing my articles. I told him about some recent exchanges with no less than four ( update: now six) in a row: White, Young, usually Blonde women who had decided they were going to lecture, moralize, punish, and educate this not particularly bright author about body image, life, and travel. Oh, and racism. Especially about that.
About which I know nothing, natch.
Well, kindly, I live what I write about. Not read about it on social media.
After the fourth one in less than three days I was just gobsmacked. There had to be something going on. So, given that Andy is single, and he is in the market, and he’s moved in a lot of Boulder-Denver single circles, I asked his opinion. After all, this is his age group. Denver has more than most: the average age is 34.
Andy nodded. I could see his eyes crinkle as he grinned. Lord, he’s going to age well.
Sigh. DAMN it.
“I have a few- just a few- among the people I’ve met since moving here from Michigan,” he said. “They say they’re up for polite discourse, but the second you say anything that doesn’t agree with what they believe, well….”
He trailed off. Shook his head.
“I can’t even go there. They’re media puppets.”
I’d never heard the term. He nailed it however. The way he explained it, and this tracks with what I’m seeing, is that they are so addicted to social media, and so manipulated, that the only way they can deal is to set themselves up as Justice Warriors ( a term one woman used on her Medium profile). As Andy said, a role nobody asked them to take on, which makes them impossible to talk with or be around. Their extreme, desperate need to be relevant makes them a lot more than just annoying.
“They impede progress because they don’t see what they’re doing. Or, that whatever the unhappiness that is driving the behavior has nothing to do with anything outside themselves.” That’s what the good doctor thinks.
I tend to agree, if my observations and experiences are any teachers. I also completely understand it, which helps, but it’s hard to be gracious when people are trying to peel your skin off in public and online.
Andy is one hell of a catch. He’s a competitive athlete, endurance runner, and in every way that I’ve gotten to known him, the personification of Dr. Dreamy. The real thing.
And right now he’s having a very hard time finding someone to date. This is part of the reason why. In fact, it’s a big one.
The self-appointed PC-on-steroids Morals Police manufactured outrage has begun to turn up more and more on social media. Including Medium. I’ve also seen White women hurl racist epithets at our Black sisters on Linked In for not knowing what they were talking about. They were, in fact, talking about their own experiences of being Black.
Andy, and his friends, find that kind of outrage pretty off-putting. He’s educated, he has opinions, he’s extremely open-minded. Did I also say he was handsome AF? Oh. Yeah. But he won’t tolerate intolerance disguised as Justice Warrior behavior. He was very familiar with the term. It’s a major turnoff for him.
Frankly, Andy is running full tilt in the other direction, along with other Great Catches in his age range. Nobody wants to make love to a Shrike ([The Shrike] is portrayed as composed of razorwire, thorns, blades, and cutting edges, having fingers like scalpels and long, curved toe blades; Hyperion, Dan Simmons)
My Black sisters write with real authority about how they do not need White Saviors. This is nothing new. It’s four centuries old. We need to link arms if we’re going to move forward.
This Atlantic article is eight years old, but speaks eloquently to one piece of the issue:
From the article:
That is what made me compare American sentimentality to a “wounded hippo.” His good heart does not always allow him to think constellationally.
I love the word constellationally. Religious righteousness and fervor all-too-often inform this savior complex , which is underscored by a fundamental belief in superiority. Which is of course driven first by our need to save ourselves (from ourselves as it were).
That’s what got us here in the first place.
Lot more to that. While this piece specifically speaks to Africa, where I have spent considerable time, the problem of White Saviorship is also seen where the BLM movement has taken off. White chicks, too many of whom were long the protectors of White Supremacy and the rules of the patriarchy (called Gatekeepers by writers like Rosennab and many others) have leapt uninvited into the role of Protection of Black Folks. Who aren’t asking for White Saviors, thank you very much. Again we need to stand side-by-side, not divided.
Allies wanted, not saviors. Allyship can be exceedingly difficult and painful work, especially if you and I have been in a racial coma.
But that’s not all. They have also leapt into the role of Protector of a whole slew of folks. Most of whom, best I can tell, also didn’t post a job description requiring Caped Crusader. My impression, based on what I’ve read in articles by those who are dancing with their demons, is that they are doing just fine. Not fun, but this is their shit. Most know that. Their truths are what make their writing so damned good.
The brave folks who openly discuss their sexual assaults or racial problems or body dsymorphia on line are largely well aware that this is their Work. If someone takes it over, that robs them of the Work that only they can do. But Justice Warriors can’t see that, largely because they aren’t doing a particularly good job of dancing with their own demons. This is Psych 101.
In lieu of a real job, they create one. Especially one with the promise of a hero button, even when there was no job posting. Moral outrage is hardly limited to this group, to be fair, but most don’t take such effort to attack the writers on Medium that I’ve heard from. I guess that’s what surprised me.
What troubles both Doc Andy and me is that, as people with genuine interest in, and in my case, some real experience with some of these issues, sometimes such people can be an impediment. The need to be important supersedes anything else. Especially thoughtful discourse. It isn’t that they don’t have a legitimate take. It’s that it comes across as the only take, and any attempt to engage with an alternative viewpoint, as Andy described, leads to a pretty angry response.
I saw precisely that same thing happen on Medium with the #MeToo issue, when very good older White men were reaching out to begin a discussion. They were doing the level best they could, with the language they had at the time, and were being not only rejected but blocked. This is not how we earn allies.
Andy described strident self-righteousness rising like lava when they hear any hint of anything they don’t like. That’s a brilliant neon sign not only about their insecurity but also how much hurt they can, and do, cause to the cause. Whichever cause they have hijacked.
Andy, I think more than most, understands that this is an outlet for an internal source of pain. He just doesn’t want to be around it.
The other day this article came out on Medium:
Put succinctly, people who are stupid but don’t know they are stupid. Kindly, that’s a rough translation. Lot of that going around, and I have done my fair share and then some.
Look, most of the time (well sort of) I’m pretty aware of how stupid I am, or how uninformed. That has a lovely side effect of emptying the cup that is full of my self-importance. It allows knowledge to seep in. Usually. I still do stupid shit, but then, if I didn’t I wouldn’t have anything funny to write about. But that’s because I don’t take myself very seriously.
Some many years ago I hired a woman for a customer service job at a corporation where I was the Training Manager. She was very smart, had a great track record. However, I had no idea what she carried. She got a reputation (this was her nickname, which I am reporting, and apologize for here) as the “Diversity N*zi.” Look, this was back in the early 90s. She had come from a company with an excellent diversity track record. Our company was just beginning that arc and wasn’t quite ready for her. She appointed herself Savior of our Evil Culture. She would march into the CEOs office uninvited to complain that our sales manager had said “damn” in the classroom. She was so righteous she couldn’t read signals, body language.
She was so sensitive she was brutally insensitive.
I was counseled that if she didn’t cease and desist, she would be dumped. She was the Morals Police personified. Interestingly, she got pregnant out of wedlock, decided I didn’t know shit about diversity and complained to the CEO one too many times. She got canned. She was my first experience with this phenomenon. It was painful for everyone. Especially for me because I really liked and respected her, except for that brutal insensitivity. She hurt people.
Self-righteousness is a serious blindness. Having data, without a clue of what the data might mean or how to use it, can make certain folks dangerous. They think they are wise when they are witless.
This goes to Andy-Candy’s point (honestly he will NEVER forgive me if he sees this article), the late, great Toni Morrison has this to say about wisdom:
We move from data to information to knowledge to wisdom. And separating one from the other… knowing the limitations and the danger of exercising one without the others, while respecting each category of intelligence, is generally what serious education is about.
Media puppets, as Andy called these so-called Justice Warriors, hear data on social media. Being young, it is extremely easy to assume that hearing a thing means you understand it. That you have context. This is what understanding something constellationally, as above, means in practice.
Armed with data but sans understanding, context, subtleties, history or anything else, folks can become out-of-control bowling balls without the slightest idea how much damage they’re doing in the process- to movements, to individuals, to the cause.
As my Black friends might say (and I agree), you don’t know shit. Not until you have lived it. But you can’t begin to learn shit until you know you don’t know shit. Honey, I know I don’t know shit. By definition that makes me teachable.
Truly educated people know they don’t know shit.
I have read plenty of articles by my fellow Medium writers and have had plenty of conversations with folks about the plethora of material on Medium which is nothing more than someone else’s hard-won wisdom regurgitated and hijacked. Social media and the Internet have made this kind of thing so very easy. While that’s disappointing, it’s inevitable.
However.
If you’re foolish, and you don’t know you’re foolish, you take on people who DO know you’re foolish. This is how we make fools of ourselves.
I’ve done it myself. I have the scars. Which is part of what has taught me to be slightly more circumspect about putting my foolishness out for the world to see. And to constantly seek out people who know a lot more than I do, rather than lecture them about what fools they are.
Dr. Eye Candy is one hell of a nice guy. However, not only does he not suffer fools, he is not in the market to be called stupid by some mildly attractive White chick with a stupendous chip on her shoulder. He’s too smart for that.
Which is why he’s still single.
Sigh. I can think of some very smart, very talented young women on Medium whose work I respect, link to and amplify that I would have loved to connect Andy with. Most of ’em are paired off. Good reason for that. They own their shit. Makes them a lot of fun to be around, to read, and to learn from.
These are writers whose POV interests, informs, engages and regularly delights me. You know who you are. Your courage effing rocks. You are also those same writers who will gently get in my shit via a PM if I head over a cliff. YOU, I attend.
Good men don’t want women who are at war with themselves and take it out on everyone else. Good women don’t either: as friends, partners, or co-workers.
Andy Eye Candy would love company, but he’s not interested in being made to bleed by women who take out their internal battles on others.
So he stays single.
A final note to my fellow Medium writers and Dear Reader:
I have worked with, mentored, developed women my entire career. I have repeatedly been a featured speaker at some very, very big women’s international conferences. Working with women has been a life’s work for me. Issues of body image, racism, sexual assault are those which touch me most deeply. I get it. But being on the warpath and hurting others to make a point doesn’t move us forward. It makes enemies at a time when none of us can afford that. If we have moral outrage, it strikes me that the most important question is to first ask what’s going on inside us that we feel so much rage. How much of that is misplaced, and is indicative of our own pain? How much of that moral outrage is our need to make others bleed for the pain we feel? Because that doesn’t heal the pain. It spreads it and amplifies it. While I can make light of this here, this is a much larger question about how we’re showing up. I don’t question that the pain is real. I DO question how we choose to deal with it. Attacking authors about word choices or shaming them publicly because you don’t agree is not a sign of healthy discourse. It’s a sign of pain- pain those writers didn’t put there. I would invite you to, rather than attack the author, first hold up a mirror. That’s where your answers are. The bravest writers on Medium do that every day,about their bodies, their pain around racism and relationships. They inspire. And it would be fair to say that they get a lot of loving support. That’s earned, and it isn’t earned with public eviscerations.
Oh. And just saying, Andy exists, he is real, just as described. They are out there.
