Cross THIS Line, I DARE you!
Cross-posted at The Midnight Hour
Boundaries. Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about boundaries. You know, those things that get bent or broken when you want to please other people. Those lines in the social sand that sociopaths, salesmen, panhandlers, and toxic Southern belles know all about transgressing. Every person has boundaries, and part of playing nice in public is abiding by those unspoken accords so you don’t make other people, you know, uncomfortable.
Creative people, and especially writers, have a hard time enforcing their boundaries. With the submissions process all about rejection and begging (or at least, that’s what it feels like) your boundaries are already weak. You want my story, but only if I make these revisions? Sure! Anything else I can do for you, anything at all, so you will buy my story?
Not to make us out to be whores, but it’s a difficult balancing act–staying true to your principles and self-respect vs. the very real need to be flexible and reasonable in order to get your stuff sold or agented. For female writers, the act is even more difficult, since we’re taught almost from the very first breath to be nice, to smooth things over, to make everyone happy.
Yeah. That’s how a lot of predators prey on women, by using that need to make nice. Case in point? A while ago, early in the morning, a salesman knocked at my door. It was early, so I answered in my robe–hey, I was waiting for a manuscript to come back for copyedits, so I thought it might be UPS or something.*
This guy not only tried to pressure me into buying his “encyclopedias for homeschooling,” but when I said I wasn’t interested and tried to close the door, he actually surged forward, putting his foot in the door and trying to press in past me.
The only thing that saved me was thinking I’ve got kids sleeping in here, dammit! I didn’t back down, just shoved harder against the door and felt the Mama Bear in me rouse from her deep slumber, snarling. I managed to shove him out and close the door, adrenaline-trembling so hard I had trouble with the lock. I felt tremendously guilty at not being polite, a feeling I haven’t had since my last barfight. (Don’t ask.**) No matter how many self-defense classes I take or how often I’m put in the situation of acting in order to protect someone–and there’s another rub, that I’ll go to the “self-assertive bitch” place to protect someone else but rarely to protect myself–the social pressure to be nice, be polite, and back down is still overwhelming.
This is a clear boundary issue. I have every right to deny a salesman entrance to my house. And yet I felt guilty for being “rude.” God alone knows what might have happened if I hadn’t been protecting my children.
That’s a very clear-cut case of boundary violation and response. One place where it isn’t quite so clear is here on the World Wide Web.
We’ve had some discussions about freedom of speech lately. Yes, there is absolute freedom of speech on the Web, married to and made possible by anonymity. You can say whatever you want. Consequently, a lot of trolls take advantage of that, and I see many authors desperately trying to make nice on their weblogs and journals, almost never banning trolls or flamers.
Why? After all, these are our webpages. Most of the time the author is paying for the bandwidth, which means he or she has a perfect right to say, “This kind of discourse is not acceptable here, and I won’t have it.” Even if you’re using a free service, like Blogger or Livejournal, it’s still your sandbox. You can decide what gets said and what doesn’t. Guests and visitors are just that: guests and visitors. They do not have a right to invade your space and, socially speaking, poop on the floor.
Now, if you are a petty dictator on your site or your blog, you can expect traffic to decline rapidly. But that’s different from enforcing your boundaries and telling a troll to go away. Getting rid of trash that will poison the waters of discourse at your site is different than being a troll yourself. Again, there’s a line to be walked here, but it’s not a fine one.
When I was in massage school, we had classes on boundaries. Since we were, after all, touching people while they were naked and vulnerable. “Anger,” one of my instructors said, “is one of the signs of boundary violation.” I think it’s more accurate to say that the heart-pounding, slippery-palm feeling of a boundary being trespassed is chemically and physiologically mistaken for anger,since we don’t talk a lot about boundaries in our culture. It’s a taboo subject, partly because of the need for social lubricant to reduce friction and riots, and partly because the existing gender inequality does not permit much discussion of one of its prime mechanisms. Part of my training as a licensed massage therapist was brainstorming appropriate responses to boundary violation, acting them out, and differentiating between rage and the feeling of angry violation at an unauthorized crossing of my borders, physical or otherwise.
I wish every woman in our society could have that training. It has been tremendously useful in publishing. Even just being able to put into words the discomfort I’m feeling when someone has trespassed my borders has been invaluable. Of course, there are the few people who make their living or get their jollies off such trespasses, and they think I’m a bitch.
That’s a small price to pay for my safety and psychic integrity. And I can handle being called a bitch by a troll. I can even wear the word as a badge of pride.
So, my fellow writers, male and female both, I would like to offer you this gift today. Think about your boundaries, and recognize that they are there for good reason. Politeness is there for a good reason too. A moderate use of both is necessary to get along in the world, by balancing your needs with other people’s. But it does not mean you have to roll over and let a troll poop in your Internet sandbox. It is far easier to bar them access than it is to clean their droppings off a shag rug, electronic or otherwise.
* Notice how I almost unconsciously have to explain why I didn’t “ask for it.” Sound familiar, anyone? But that’s an issue for a different blog post.
** Hey, I had a misspent youth. Didn’t everyone?
Related posts:
