{"id":3810,"date":"2010-12-27T09:11:44","date_gmt":"2010-12-27T14:11:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.starshipnivan.com\/blog\/?p=3810"},"modified":"2019-12-15T20:09:36","modified_gmt":"2019-12-16T01:09:36","slug":"never-complain-never-explain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/?p=3810","title":{"rendered":"Never Complain, Never Explain"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m the wall with the womanly swagger.<\/em> \u2013 Judy Grahn, She Who<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

During Thanksgiving dinner at a dear friend’s house, another guest airily stated that climate change is a myth.\u00a0 An environmental scientist and once a department chair in a well-known university, he now writes regularly for such venues as The Wall Street Journal<\/em> using arguments along the lines of \u201cThere was radical climate change on earth way before humans came along.\u201d\u00a0 And like many self-satisfied self-promoters, he\u2019s set on Transmit Only.<\/p>\n

I was spoiling to kick him in a tender spot of his anatomy and it was obvious the other guests shared my wish.\u00a0 But then the visit would have revolved around him.\u00a0 So I looked straight at him and said, \u201cIf you really believe this, go discuss it with the people of Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Maldives, who are watching their land go under water as we speak.\u201d\u00a0 We all essentially ignored him for the rest of the visit. We had a terrific time.<\/p>\n

I thought of this incident during the Stone Telling 2<\/em> roundtable<\/a>.\u00a0 Among other questions, Julia Rios<\/a>, the discussion moderator, asked me, \u201cIn your own life you’ve chosen to engage in battles, and to speak out against things you perceive as unjust. How do you reconcile those choices with the costs attached to them, and is there ever a time when you choose not to engage?\u201d<\/p>\n

After I had answered Julia’s question, it lingered in my thoughts.\u00a0 I often say (only half in jest) that humanity consists of several subspecies which happen to be interfertile.\u00a0 We’re far more hardwired culturally than we’d like to think.\u00a0 Progressive notions notwithstanding, facts almost never change the minds of adult humans unless something happens to affect them concretely in their health, status or wallet.\u00a0 Battles against injustice, vested interests, willful ignorance, complacency, cruelty never end.\u00a0 Before this relentless flood, people like me are Dutch boys with fingers in the dam.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Halfway through my fifth decade, I still haven’t learned to leave well enough alone.\u00a0 By deed and by word, I\u2019m still fighting on many fronts.\u00a0 I\u2019ll go to my grave angry, though the waters of Lethe will close over my small efforts as if I\u2019d never been.\u00a0 Yet after a lifetime of battles, I don’t have even a partial answer about how to engage effectively —\u00a0especially since anger is still a heavily punished transgression for women.<\/p>\n

Naturally, intelligent fighters adjust their strategy and tactics to fit circumstances.\u00a0 Sometimes you have to be Odysseus, sometimes Alexander.\u00a0 But I think there are two powerful weapons tikkun paladins need to use more often.\u00a0 One is laughter.\u00a0 Another is celebration.\u00a0 The two share a crucial attribute: they\u2019re not defensive; they assume legitimacy.<\/p>\n

Accusing someone of humorlessness is a standard bludgeon used by knuckle-draggers of all persuasions.\u00a0 “Can’t you take a joke?” is the constant taunt to outsiders grudgingly allowed into previously exclusionary clubs.\u00a0 In all fairness, much humor relies on Us-versus-Them distinctions.\u00a0 What’s amazing, though, is how fast bullies crawl off (bawling \u201cYou\u2019re mean to me!\u201d) when you turn humor against them.\u00a0 There’s a reason why satirists and cartoonists are among the first to be arrested in dictatorships.\u00a0 Of course, this tactic can get you badly hurt or killed.\u00a0 Men in particular grow furious when women laugh at them.<\/p>\n

I once was at another party where the guests were finance professionals.\u00a0 The host held forth about the deep wisdom of polygamy: it’s nature\u2019s way, our ape cousins have harems (obviously he knew zilch about either bonobos or chimpanzees) and as a dominant male himself, etc.\u00a0 The other women guests were fuming, but too polite to contradict him.\u00a0 Finally, I smiled at him sweetly and said, “I agree with you.”\u00a0 Into the dead silence that ensued, I dropped, “Personally, I could handle at least three husbands.”\u00a0 The women burst out laughing.\u00a0 Several of the men spent the rest of the evening huddled in the kitchen, muttering darkly into their drinks.<\/p>\n

The other way to short circuit reactionaries is to celebrate.\u00a0 When some dim bulb bleats \u201cDiversity brings down quality,\u201d my reflex reaction is to verbally rip them to shreds<\/a>.\u00a0 However, a far more satisfying response is to issue invitations to a feast<\/a> and call the endless rosters of Others who excel in a specific domain or task.\u00a0 Women don\u2019t write space operas?\u00a0 Andre Norton, Ursula Le Guin, Alice Sheldon (aka James Tiptree Jr.), Joanna Russ, Joan Vinge, C. J. Cherryh, C. S. Friedman, Joan Slonczewski, Octavia Butler, Melissa Scott, Laura Mixon, Sydney van Scyoc, Kristin Landon, Elizabeth Bear, Gwyneth Jones, Liz Williams\u2026 without pausing to think and listing just those whose works I\u2019ve read.<\/p>\n

Celebration serves a dual purpose.\u00a0 Not only does it lift the morale of those who stand arrayed against oblivious idiocy; it also prevents (ab)use of the \u201ctone\u201d argument.\u00a0 Celebration recognizes past achievements and encourages forging ahead, rather than stooping to pick up every piece of broken furniture flung in our path.\u00a0 Let god-wannabes stew in their own toxic wastes.\u00a0 We have worlds to build and sustain.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the small personal roster of worlds I\u2019m part of and want to celebrate as loudly as possible: my modest contribution to alternative splicing regulation and dementia research; Crossed Genres<\/a>, Science in My Fiction<\/a>, Stone Telling<\/a><\/em>; my slowly<\/a> emerging<\/a> fictional universe, and the artists who depicted it so beautifully: Heather D. Oliver<\/a>, Kathryn Bragg-Stella<\/a>; and this site<\/a>, now starting its fourth year, whose blog portion consistently hovers at high positions in Technorati rankings.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWell we made a promise we swore we’d always remember,
\nNo retreat, baby, no surrender.
\nLike soldiers in the winter’s night with a vow to defend,
\nNo retreat, baby, no surrender.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Bruce Springsteen, No Surrender<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Images: 1st, Pict warrior Guinevere (Keira Knightley) in Antoine Fuqua’s King Arthur<\/em>; 2nd, and\u00e1rtissa (resistance fighter) in WWII Greece (national historical archives); 3rd, Hald\u00edr of L\u00f3rien (Craig Parker) in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m the wall with the womanly swagger. \u2013 Judy Grahn, She Who During Thanksgiving dinner at a dear friend’s house, another guest airily stated that climate change is a myth.\u00a0 An environmental scientist and once a department chair in a well-known university, he now writes regularly for such venues as The Wall Street Journal using […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,6,12,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-biology-and-culture","category-history","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3810\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}