Y’all, your esteemed author is turning 40mumble on Thursday, and to celebrate I went out and I bought myself two packs of big ol’ cotton high waisted, full coverage leg practical grannie panties. You know why?
Cause ain’t nobody got time for butthurt in their 40s, that’s why.
Now, you might ask yourself, “Self, doesn’t Aunt Hippie know butthurt is just a metaphor for a wounded ego coupled with a stubborn determination to make sure everyone knows about it at every possible turn, and not the actual literal discomfort that comes from shoving a strip of scratchy, ruffled elastic between your cheeks like a piece of rectal floss?”
Well, Aunt Hippie is here to assure you that she is most definitely aware of the difference between metaphor and not. So then you might want to ask yourself, “Self, if she knows all this, is she talkin’ bout literal grannie panties or is that a metaphor too, for the need for all of us to put on our big girl britches and get out there doin’ the boring, adulty parts of activistin’ with a minimum of butthurt and nobody to pat you on the head and give you a cookie for savin’ the world? And is she couchin’ all of this in clothing metaphors on account of everybody seems to think that’s the most important thing to talk about when women are doin’ politics and using that imagery to both highlight that hypocrisy and also point out at the same time that it’s mostly women who bear the burden of said boring adulty parts, without the luxury of wallowing in eternal butthurt?” at which point Aunt Hippie is gonna look at you, smile, and say “Now you’re cookin’ with gas” and invite you in for a drink. A good, stiff drink.
Listen up, y’all. Aunt Hippie has been activistin’ for over half her life, albeit with an enhanced sense of urgency these days, and she has picked up a trick or three along the way. It may surprise you to learn that there’s a bit more to it than writin’ clever signs to carry along with your snarky t-shirts (not that Aunt Hippie ever disapproves of snark in service of an opinion, mind, particularly if it’s clever) or chipping in a couple of lattes a month to Planned Parenthood (and not the metaphorical exchange of value kind, either, do y’all understand what kind of hours nurses have to keep?) or emailin’ your congresscritter on the regular so their fresh-faced young ancap interns risk a serious case of gamer’s thumb deletin’ your missives and have to file for worker’s compensation in a remarkably myopic perspective of who does and doesn’t get “handouts” from the gubmint.
[Yeah, Paul Ryan, I’m lookin’ at you, and when they invent a Retroaction Ray I’m gonna zap your ass out of those teenaged benefits and see how hard you gotta work to become a destroyer of worlds.]
At some point, people come to the realization that in order to really make it count, you gotta work with other people who feel the same as you. Maybe not exactly the same, and by maybe Aunt Hippie means “definitely,” because even if you cloned your entire mind somehow, and you asked that new consciousness how it felt about civil disobedience or restorative justice or gun control or voter suppression or just which dumpster fire y’all should start pissin’ at first, y’all would have a disagreement on some point or another within an hour, maybe two tops.
Now imagine how much more fun that is when everyone you’re workin’ with is a fully fledged separate consciousness from your own, who has their own life and experiences to reckon with, and isn’t 100% delighted with your layin’ out a 23 step plan to overthrow capitalism, reverse global warming, arm the vegans, and restore karmic balance to the globe when the agenda for the afternoon is goin’ door to door to register voters.
At some point, if you are properly garbed with your Big Girl Panties, you will realize that the questions you need to ask before any event are pretty simple:
1. Do I agree with the ultimate goal of this action?
2. Do I believe that it’ll be effective, even if only incrementally?
If the answer to #2 is no, and y’all just feel like blowin’ off steam and yellin’ in a crowd for an afternoon, that’s fine too- provided your presence doesn’t take away from other folks accomplishin’ something they believe in.
If the answer to both of these is no, and you’re goin’ anyway with the intention of makin’ the entire discussion about how all these folks who put in hours of time herdin’ cats and puttin’ all this shit together shoulda done it your way, when you just turned up this afternoon with the intention of live tweetin’ your outrage and clever signage, kindly take this roll of duct tape and wrap it around your face until that level of dipshit is wholly contained.
If you survive two or three rallies at that step without gettin’ duct taped too many times, it’s time to move on to the big fish. Aunt Hippie’s PTA operated on the principle of “open thy mouth and it shall become thy problem,” and activistin’ isn’t too far off that mark. Hitch those panties up, kids, cause now it’s time to tackle Actual Organizing.
Gettin’ involved in an established group requires nothin’ more than sustained enthusiasm and commitment, skills that one ought to have at least gotten a handle on by the time you’re tossed into the cruel realities of adulthood. What Aunt Hippie is gettin’ at is that the bar for bein’ involved is pretty gotdanged low, and involves the ability to drag your shamblin’ corpse off the couch at the appointed time and take direction while performing menial tasks, much like an entry level job. The level of glory involved is similar, and again, y’all will be expected to make it for some extended period of time with a minimum of reward, pleading, cajoling, or needin’ to be duct taped into silence.
Once you’ve successfully accomplished this, you can look to turn in some of your newly minted cred for Unpaid Responsibility. It’s time to ask yourself the Double Jeopardy question:
3. Do I have useful, concrete skills that I could put to use in service of doin’ this shit up right? Am I willing to learn them?
Examples of skills that might be handy include fundraisin’ (in the event that your Soros check is late, of course), showin’ up, schedulin’ volunteers (who may or may not show up), securin’ permits, showin’ up, donating technical or moderation expertise along with your entire lifetime supply of tact to discussion boards and the hellscape that is social media opinion-holdin’, collectin’ dues and tracking finances, showin’ up, keepin’ meetings on track, generatin’ publicity, showin’ the hell up, and soothing eternal butthurt like some kind of human witch hazel pad.
“But wait, Aunt Hippie,” you say with despair, “that sounds like an actual job.” Well slap my ass and call me Sally, I had no idea that all these skills that people get paid for on the regular by widget manufacturers, accountancy firms, and High Holy Bidness weren’t somehow magically different when applied in service of political opinions!
Here’s the horrible secret laid bare- the hard work of activistin’ and makin’ all those events and rallies and food drives happen looks just exactly like the most boring middle management job you could ever envision. Your coworkers might be a little bit cooler, and if you’re real lucky you can do a lot of it without wearin’ pants, but it ain’t sittin’ in a Parisian inn, drinkin’ wine and wavin’ flags with a stirring score backing you up, not by a stretch.
By and large, the people with a lot of skill in the three Ss (Show up, shut up and step up) are non-men, on account of we’ve already had a lifetime of bein’ taught to set our egos aside in service of keepin’ shit running. This goes triple for soothin’ all that butthurt, and if you’re not sure why go take a break and read just about anything written about conflict, society and women to know why we’re the ones holdin’ the bag in the name of harmonious group dynamics all the time.
Newly engaged activists are clueful in inverse proportion to their enthusiasm most of the time — your esteemed author’s 20 year old self included — and you will be Wrong about stuff. Once you get that under control enough that you’re not peelin’ duct tape off yourself every meeting, you’ll be besieged by the next wave, who will be loudly Wrong at you, and you will be expected to wrangle them into some semblance of useful with loving kindness. Eventually, you’ll be at it long enough that they will regard you as The Man, because clearly their enthusiasm will turn the tides when your 20 years of actual work has barely made a dent, on account of how wrong you are doin’ it all and the obvious lack of a stirring score to prove your righteousness.
This is not to say that your methods can’t be improved upon, or that new tricks aren’t in order — hell, most of what Aunt Hippie donates her pants-free time and data management skillz to is voter outreach and mobilization, and it is an actual, literal arms race of technology and marketing aimed at shoving precise segments of the population in one direction or another, provided nobody’s gone and closed all the polling stations in their neighborhood or kicked them all off the voter rolls or passed thinly veiled “Voter ID” Jim Crow laws in their state, or maybe even just straight up lied and pretended to be recruiting illegal votes on behalf of their opponent via the same method of outreach so your signal is drowned in noise.
But when y’all ignore the boring parts — remember that unpaid, unglamorous middle management job that all those non-men are quietly carryin’ out behind the scenes — and tell folks that enthusiasm and all that yellin’ are the same as actual, concrete experience in doin’ useful stuff, and that anybody who hangs around long enough to learn to do that stuff is a dinosaur who obviously doesn’t know dick or else you wouldn’t have to be out here yellin’ still, you’re upholding a whole mess of patriarchal bullshit that don’t need to be carried forward.
