Some Cliche or Other

What Girls are Made Of

Do not let him tell you that your mouth is made for kissing.
 Your mouth is made for the articulate frenzy of revolution, for the
 crisp shape of kindness, for lurching picket lines and your
 solitary war cry in a law school classroom. It is made
 for the brutal pucker of dreaming. Do not let him
 cradle your jaw in his audacious hands and
 tell you that your mouth is anything
 less than the soft and violent
 devastation of water, stirring.
 The next sentence you begin with “I” -
 don’t you dare let it end in “love you.”

(Source: sincerelyjoanna, via cannibalistic-vegan-cabal)

schraubd:

blindjewwanderinginthedesert:

(Image Description: black text on a white background: “Sometimes, you just can’t tell anybody how you really feel — not because you don’t know why — not because you don’t know your purpose — not because you don’t trust them — but because you can’t find the right words to make them understand.”)

dharmasimulation:

“Sometimes, you just can’t tell anybody how you really feel — not because you don’t know why — not because you don’t know your purpose — not because you don’t trust them — but because you can’t find the right words to make them understand.”

Personally, I have this experience often which is why it is so wonderful to have real life friends to parse these things out with. 

This statement reminded me of something I wrote several years ago while guesting at Alas, a Blog. The post was entitled “Taking a Theory” (after the old expression “It takes a theory to beat a theory”), and it was about the need to create a broad theoretical account of what anti-Semitism means:

Resistance to oppression doesn’t go away without a theory, but it does become in many ways incoherent — the survivors know they’re being wronged, but the grammar of the system is so foreign that even their own protests seem nonsensical. Without a theory to explain them, most claims of anti-Semitism won’t make sense. They will strike us as emotional, paranoid, in bad-faith, panicky, groundless, isolated, and/or unwarranted. And many times, the speakers themselves won’t be able to clarify, because they’re are as confused (and consequently, insecure) as anybody else. They can’t explain, in exquisite detail, every syllogism and connection latent in their argument. They are just exhibiting the same reflex every other human has: if you prick a Jew, we will bleed. And very likely, we will cry out.

I understand, then, that a lot of time non-Jews have trouble understanding what Jews are talking about when they say something is anti-Semitic (particularly, it seems, when that something is a given criticism of Israel). I don’t ask that you “get it” right away, particularly when our own language is so inchoate. In many ways, I don’t think we “get it” ourselves. A lot of the time I feel confused and disoriented, and frustrated as well — I can’t expect more out of others than I can give of myself. But I do think it is fair to ask that you assume ourgood faith. When Jews say something is anti-Semitic, we’re saying something important. It is not a frivolous charge, even when it might ultimately be wrong. It is not something we do for fun. It is not something we do for leverage. It is not card-playing. It means something.

Richard Bernstein defines the goal of critical theory as an effort to “encounter…what is radically ‘other’ and alien. To do this requires imagination and hermeneutical sensitivity in order to understand the ‘other’ in its strongest possible light.” When J Street or the AJC or, yes, even AIPAC says that they feel some argument, institution, or person is anti-Semitic, what is the strongest possible light we can give to that statement? When many Jews say that they believe the existence of Israel is critical to their safety and well-being as human beings, and that they view the politics of certain members of the progressive pantheon as fundamentally threatening their lives, what is the strongest possible light we can use to evaluate the claim? The strongest, not the weakest — not the one that assumes even our expressions of fear or grief are closet political power-plays, not the one that assumes that the beginning and the end of Jewish political practice is as a brigade in the Western White Christian reactionary army.

It takes a theory to beat a theory. We can only create a theory if our friends are there to support us when we speak. Support is not a synonym for “agree”. Support is a synonym for assuming our words matter us, that what we are trying to say is important and represents a real experience, even if it hasn’t all come together yet. Support means not assuming you know it all from the beginning; being willing to hear an alternate tale and open to adjusting your own assumptions accordingly. Support means that when you disagree, when something sounds a false note, you see it as an opportunity to build something up, not tear something down.

Yes to all of this. It also applies to feminist theory and misogyny beautifully. The bit about Israel can also apply to female-only safe spaces.