“Get Over It”: Bootstrapping and How Privileged Folks Can Add Ableism to Any Oppression

You’ve likely heard the phrase “pick yourself up by your bootstraps” at some point over the years. It’s a common colloquialism used to describe finding your way out of a difficult situation by sheer force of will. Unfortunately, what some mean as an inspirational term to describe one’s ability to self-motivate, others use as a weapon to tear down those who don’t display such abilities.

In social justice circles, this has morphed into a verb as the act of “bootstrapping.” It’s common in disability discussion, as many able-bodied people think everyone should be able to bootstrap their way out of anything. Exhausted from the unending muscle pain of an invisible illness? Bootstraps! Just start walking 10 miles to work every day, uphill both ways, and you’ll learn that your pain is all in your head. Unable to conquer depression without medication? Bootstraps! Toss your pills down the sink and just learn to smile at butterflies and fluffy puppies, and all will be right in the world. Terrified to enter certain social situations because of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? Bootstraps! Run out your front door and hug some strangers, and you’ll see how you were scared over nothing.

Often, the bootstrapper will offer an “inspirational” story of how they suffered from a similar problem, and bootstrapped their way out of it. They overcame depression by watching Will Ferrel movies, why are you so unwilling to laugh? They once had a broken ankle and still didn’t use the electronic wheelchairs at Wal-Mart, why are you enabling your own laziness? They lost weight by just switching to diet soda, why do you insist on staying fat? It’s not actually done from a place of good will, but rather from one that is trying to induce guilt. If they were legitimately trying to help, they’d be forced to acknowledge that not everyone has the same abilities to overcome the cards they’re dealt. There is nothing wrong with being unable to bootstrap your way over every obstacle you face, and you are no less of a person for needing help.

Bootstrapping ignores the realities of living with physical and mental illnesses. It demeans the experiences of those people suffering them, and paints them as too lazy or self-indulgent to do what is necessary to reach normalcy. It’s another way for the social majority to tell those suffering that they are lesser, another way for them to marginalize them and deride the suffering they face.

Maybe you’re lucky enough that you don’t suffer such illnesses or disabilities, and you fear you may never experience the glory of bootstrapping. Well, worry not! For the social majority has discovered a way to inject bootstrapping into their everyday acts of oppression.

I personally encountered a lovely act of bootstrapping on this very blog a couple of days ago, as I was told that while “[b]eing a rape victim is troubling,” I need to just “get over it.” Well, isn’t that lovely. Time for me to bootstrap my way out of victimhood!

First, such a mindset ignores the reality that social oppression can result in physical and mental consequences that make such bootstrapping arguments flat-out ableist. Based on my own experiences with rape, sexual assault, and gendered violence at large, I had an 89.4% chance of suffering a mental disorder. Excuse me for allowing my PTSD to get in the way of your ableism, dear mansplainers. And what about the women who are infected with incurable STDs by their rapists? Who are left pregnant by their rapists? Who are physically mutilated by their rapists? There are a slew of potential physical side effects to gendered violence that bootstrappers would have us all ignore, as well. They’d rather paint us as bitter old crones, clinging to our victimizations as an excuse to be offended

Second, telling us to bootstrap our way out of being angry over the injustices we face is just another way of dismissing our concerns. It tells us that our plight can’t really be serious, because we could just bootstrap our way out if we tried hard enough. It paints minorities as the bad guys, clinging to our anger as justification to hate on privileged people.

Third, even if we were capable of bootstrapping our way out of our upset, it would be counter-productive to the cause of equality. If every minority simply turned the other cheek when they were wronged, how would justice ever be dealt? If we just bootstrapped our way toward ignorant, half-assed happiness at the expense of reality, how would our experiences be acknowledged, those slights be challenged to not repeat themselves? Minorities have every right to be angry; we are oppressed, and oppression is damn angering.

Last, it is not your place to tell anyone how “troubling” their problems are; only they know the complete realities of their lives. You cannot know how severe their pain is, how deep-rooted their problems are, how much strength it takes to accomplish anything in their lives. You cannot compare your situation to theirs, and tell them, “I overcame your exact problem, so you can, too.” No one lives a life identical to another person, and it is a privileged assumption to think otherwise.

Perhaps the social majority could try picking themselves up by their bootstraps, dragging themselves out of the muck of their own self-righteousness, and learning a little compassion. That is something that can be done by sheer force of will, yet so few are willing to do it.

Google is Your Friend: Why Minorities Don’t Want to Educate You on Your Privilege

There’s a reason that the top two entries on Derailing for Dummies are about “educating” privileged people: Because those people think their privilege should also extend to our time, effort, and patience as we hold their hand through the basics of social justice. They believe they are entitled to that from minorities, and why? Why, when we are already oppressed by them on a daily basis, are we also burdened with the job of explaining our oppression to them?

Let me directly address the education-demanding privileged folks for a moment, and outline just a few of the reasons why a minority might not want to be your personal tutor in the subject of marginalization:

1. It is another way for you to shirk responsibility. By placing the onus on us, you take upon yourself the ability to say that it’s our fault that you’re a bigot, because we won’t help you change. It shows a complete lack of responsibility for your actions, and is disrespectful and further marginalizing. If you want to prove that you don’t see us as lesser than you, prove this by donating your own time to educating yourself, instead of demanding that we sacrifice our time for you. By demanding that we succumb to your whims, rather than taking responsibility for googling simple phrases like “what is white privilege?” you’re telling us that your time, your effort, is more valuable than ours.

2. You are not the first bigot we’ve encountered. It takes only minutes for an individual to search information for themselves; it would take us a lifetime if we had to constantly provide that information to every oppressor we encounter. By being yet another of a long line of privileged people demanding our efforts, you’re reinforcing the social structure that tells us that our time, our lives should be spent solving the problems of privileged people. We’re already told that constantly; it’s part of what keeps us oppressed.

3. When we do make the effort to educate, our attempts are usually disregarded. There are few things more frustrating than encountering someone who says they “only want to learn,” and they want your help, and then having them spit in the face of all the legitimate information you convey. Most of us have tried to be educators in the past, and that is exactly why we don’t want to do it anymore. We’ve personally encountered how largely fruitless those efforts are. If you, as a privileged person, don’t think the subject is worth enough of your effort to wander over to a search engine and educate yourself, 99.99% of the time, you’re not going to think any of our arguments are worth your effort to legitimately contemplate. Those who demand to be educated are those who are most averse to actually opening their minds, and we’ve learned this through harsh trial-and-error. Those who demand that others must change their minds for them are those who are least willing to have their minds changed at all.

4. Educating you on the ways you oppress us can be harmful and triggering to us. To use a personal example, I am tired of males thinking they can tell me rape isn’t a feminist issue, then demanding that I educate them on how it is, lest I concede my defeat. I can blog about my experiences, and it is done during those times when I can distance myself from the reality of them. But sometimes that cognitive dissonance is not possible, and when I’m rape triggered, the last thing I want to do is explain to a self-righteous man how damaging the realities of rape and rape culture are to women. We, the oppressed people, are victims, and victims don’t owe you an explanation of their victimization. It’s disrespectful to demand that someone dredge through all of their personal experiences just because you are too lazy to hit up a search engine.

Is Google that complicated? Fine, here, I’ll help. You’re welcome.

The primary criticism of this mindset is that it makes social justice inaccessible to laypeople. It’s what makes feminists into feminazis, makes all activists look angry and unreasonable. Well, guess what? We are angry, and we have every right to be. And “anger is often the first step toward action,” so I won’t apologize for it. If you understood the prejudice and hatred that really exists towards minorities in this world, you’d be angry, too. Or at least I dearly hope so, because otherwise, you are truly a lost cause.

The Man-Hating Feminazi: Maintaining Focus while Fighting Ignorant Stereotypes

“Feminazi.” I’ll admit it, I’ve used that word. It was a word I used to separate myself (a “reasonable equalist”) from those crazy, extremist feminists who just took the idea too far. Those women didn’t just want equality, they wanted dominance, they wanted power at the expense of men, they wanted to tear apart the foundations of our very society with their hatred.

Or, you know, those women were just better-educated in the realities of society than I was. They weren’t so busy proving they could be One of the Boys® that they ignored their own oppression by that very boys’ club. They were smart enough to recognize prejudice when they saw it, and brave enough to call out inequality.

At least we can all take solace in the fact that our detractors don’t understand plurals and the grammatically correct usage of apostrophes.

It can be really painful to recognize that you are contributing to your own oppression. Internalized misogyny is a rampant problem in modern society, particularly among those women who embrace misogynistic standards while crowing to the imaginary goddess of Girl Power. It’s a lot easier to take false pride, to brag about your equality and fortune, than it is to step back and acknowledge that you and your rights are torn down on a daily basis. Some people seem to believe that marginalized people are exaggerating their oppression, that we all just enjoy having something to complain about, something to blame our problems on. But that’s a naive assumption, particularly in the face of someone like me, someone who spent so many years blindly pretending that their oppression wasn’t real, because it’s easier than facing the reality of it.

The sad fact is, this is still a battle I have to regularly fight, though in a form slightly evolved from that I struggled with as a younger woman. I’m no longer concerned with placating men, or with assuring everyone that I’m a “balanced” woman who maintains feminine standards while pursuing equality. But I still fall into traps, I’m still victimized by misogynistic mind games that trick me into abandoning my philosophy in the name of “proving myself.”

I try to integrate my activism into not only my daily life, but my personal philosophy. Equality is not just an academic curiosity for me, it’s a real-world pursuit that I actively engage on a daily basis. This means it exists beside and integrated with my other real-world philosophies, including things like my religion, environmentalism, attached parenting, and honest interpersonal relations. This integration has largely allowed me to examine all those philosophies that are important to me through a more critical, fair, and objective lens, and work to pursue all of my life goals with the frankest approach possible. But it also creates problems as opponents use those other philosophies against me, as an attack against my feminism.

This is most successfully done through a spiritual approach. I’ve recognized in myself such a strong desire to defend my personal faith and spiritual philosophy that it often obscures my attempts at female equality. The best example of this is when an anti-feminist accuses me of being a “man-hater.”

The man-hating stereotype is perhaps the most common falsehood thrown against all feminists. This is not to say there aren’t women who stand firm under the feminist flag while also declaring a hatred for males; I’m not naive, but I also don’t feel the need to justify such women’s behavior or beliefs. Truthfully, while it goes strongly against my own philosophy to maintain such a hatred, I do not condemn those women. It’s immensely difficult to acknowledge your constant oppression and not become bitter and angry toward your oppressors, and I refuse to judge a marginalized person for doing so. But the man-hating stereotype is largely false within the feminist community, and certainly with me in particular.

And this is where my philosophy opens me up to misogynistic attack. You see, I’d have to call hatred my greatest spiritual foe. I have never found a use for it on a personal level, and have instead found it to be detrimental to my attempts at happiness. Whenever I’ve indulged in hate, it’s done nothing but swallow my life and make me entirely miserable. Moving away from hate, learning to forgive and/or empathize with those who would inspire hatred, is one of my spiritual tenets. And this makes being accused of hating when I don’t one of the deepest insults I can have hurled against me.

This works in the favor of anti-feminists by throwing me off-track when engaging in debates on equality. Call all feminists man-haters and I’ll become so busy justifying my personal philosophy and defending the virtue of non-hateful feminists that I’ll get distracted from the true debate. The fact is, it doesn’t matter whether or not feminists hate men; even if all of us were the violent, hateful harpies that anti-feminists make us out to be, we still wouldn’t have the power to use that hate to oppress men, so its real-world consequences are nil when compared to the subtle and blatant misogyny espoused and perpetuated by men. Essentially, feminist man-hate is an entirely moot point, yet it is the cornerstone of anti-feminism.

There is a delicate line that must be walked by feminists like myself. I don’t hate men, and I don’t want to personally harm those males that I love, but I must acknowledge that for the feminist movement to be successful, we need to stop catering to male allies. We need to acknowledge that men are not the ones that matter in this, and our energy should not be divided between the sexes. Why? Because of the same answer to common anti-feminist questions like, “Why do you make rape and spousal abuse feminist issues when men get raped and abused, too?” Because men are in power. Men are not the majority of those victimized. Men dominate politics, economics, social doctrine. Men are granted an unfair advantage over women, and until that advantage is stripped, until men and women have equal access to power, and equal ability to exercise control over themselves as individuals and over society at large, focusing on men does nothing but prolong inequality.

Picture two children, each with a bowl of jellybeans. Jimmy has 10, and Sally has 4. If you want to allow them an equal number, choose the scenario that is the most efficient, logical course of action:
A) Taking 3 jellybeans from Jimmy and giving them to Sally, so they each have 7.
B) Giving Sally 6 jellybeans, so they each have 10.
C) Giving Jimmy 1 jellybean for every 2 given to Sally, until they each have 16.

Option “C” takes far more jellybeans than both of the proceeding options, and takes longer to enact. And both “B” and “C,” while eventually reaching equality, rely on the assumption that there are extra jellybeans at your disposal. What if there are no extras, and you’re forced to only work with the original 14? “A” is the only possible answer. Yet anyone who’s ever raised, worked with, or spent time around children knows Jimmy will cry a stream of crocodile tears over his lost jellybeans; Sally, fairness, and sharing be damned.

Now picture those jellybeans as representations of social, economic, and political power. Should we add extra seats to Congress, and insist that only women be allowed to run for them? Should we add even more additional seats and demand that women be elected to two-thirds of them? Or do we create a society where women are equally voted into those seats that already exist? Where female candidates are allowed the same encouragement in academic pursuits, the same opportunities for political success, the same popular criticisms as their male counterparts? The answer seems obvious, yet when feminists pursue that obvious solution, we’re derided as selfish man-haters, out to strip men of their rights while promoting ourselves to the top of the social hierarchy. Are we forced to take power away from men in order to have some granted to women? Sometimes, yes. But that still does not create the grand imbalance that anti-feminists claim to suffer from, because we are still struggling against such massive inequality that the crumbs we manage to nibble are nothing compared to the cookies devoured by the men in power.

Feminism is not about hate, but feminists shouldn’t have to keep saying that. We shouldn’t be forced to spend so much time assuring everyone that we’re good, honest, equality-driven people that we have less time to devote to actually achieving that equality. Men at large need to start understanding the simple truth of the privilege they’re given when they are handed that heavy bowl of jellybeans. And if male allies want to be appreciated in feminist circles, they need to stop making such a big deal about how wonderful they are for handing over their candy. The goal is not a world where women are granted male charity, it’s a world where the treats aren’t divided unevenly in the first place. And until that world is a reality, you’ll have to excuse me for not gushing over the miraculous generosity of males who go so far as to consider the radical notion that I am their peer.