Farewell, douchebag

I spent two of the most unpleasant years of my childhood attending an all-boys' prep school in Severna Park Maryland. As a short, chubby, nearsighted lad, I quickly learned a whole lexicon of insults. It was the end of the 1960s, so a lot of sexist, homophobic stuff was just normal. Cocksucker?    Fag? Homo? Pussy?Hell yeah. Douchebag? Absolutely.

When you know better, you do better. Cocksucker fell by the wayside when I reflected upon the fact that I had friends who were. There is nothing inherently wrong or contemptible in consensual participation in oral pleasures. Interestingly, I can still say "fuck you," and a host of other fuck-related profanities. It's such a satisfying word to say, in all of its combinations. It's also an act of pleasure, and sometimes of love. But when something's fucked, nothing sums it up more succinctly. When someone needs to fuck off, they need to fuck off.

Douchebag had been hanging in there. I was so young when it was first leveled at me that the first meaning I assigned to the word was "contemptible loser idiot." I'm not sure when I actually learned about the device and its uses. I was pretty slow in that regard. It has so many connotations of douchebagitude that it almost has its own existence independent of the device that gave it its name.  In fact, as far back as the 1970s, when I became a visitor to vulvas and vaginas, and conversed with women about their intimate lives, I was hearing that the douche was unnecessary, and becoming obsolete. I have no standing in that court, so I take my opinions from those who know. I champion whatever cause requires my alliance. But the apparent end of the douche era did not diminish the popularity and pervasiveness of the insulting potential of the bag.

Some technical purists would say that the bag doesn't really do anything, and the nozzle is the real dirty business. And that starts to penetrate the controversy in which I inadvertently found myself today.

I like to post photo comments. When commenting on the antics of a male engaged in acts of dicklitude, I use this picture of a stinkhorn mushroom a lot.

But it was getting a little old, so I rustled up another picture that could apply perhaps to a slightly wider range of offense, and give a little change-up from the fungal dick-pic.

It never failed to get a laugh...until today. A woman whose views I respect stated that the term equates her intimate anatomy with a dirty place that renders the tools of its maintenance -- whether still in common use or not -- symbolic of filth and degradation.

Well shit. If you want to get technical about it, it's absolutely true. A douchebag is no more contemptible in and of itself than a cocksucker. The contemptibility of a cocksucker would come not in the act itself but in the motives for the act. So then you need to append a bunch of supporting scenario to the insult that robs it of all of its immediate whip-crack power as a combat word. And there's no such thing as contemptible douching. I mean I suppose you could -- again -- construct a scenario in which the application of a douche could be degrading, but there you are, digging around for cumbersome qualifiers again.

Sack of shit is still usable. Schmuck is a degrading reference to the penis, but so far no one has been able to refute the fact that a lot of stupidity does seem to emanate from the masculine. So, dick, dork, wang, they're still in play. Or you could be a men's rights dickhead and hold out for the right to insult vaginas. But let's face it: men have gotten away with generations of insulting vaginas as part of a generalized contempt for women. Godammit, we know better, and now we have to do better.

Farewell, sweet douchebag. Unless we can all decide on a treaty that permits insulting use of those syllables unmoored from their vaginal derivations, we must bid farewell to a fine old war horse in the cavalry of harsh words. I shall do my best now to remember and amend my ways. I don't want to be a dou-- fuck! Shithead. I don't want to be a shithead.

A hard and necessary realization

I was almost 30 before I realized that I was not inherently good.

Feeling good about yourself is a privilege, not a right. It is a privilege we are all born with, but it can be squandered before you even realize you've lost it. Doting parents mean well, but they give you the benefit of the doubt. Through that loving loophole you can slip forward, onward, downward, on a path of self indulgence, because you are basically good.

You don't make a person good by telling them that they are good. You do it by making sure they know all the ways in which they can be bad.

I had the goal of being good. I just had to learn how to identify it. It seems obvious in hindsight. Later generations love to condemn earlier generations on the basis of later knowledge and customs. Later forms of myself rip the earlier forms of myself to shreds even though the damage is done. My few good memories are islands in a sea of contemptibility. And rightly so.

I've met a few genuinely good people. They make me wonder if there really are chosen people for whom a heaven is prepared. I am not one of them. I am lustful, impatient, harsh. In eternity, all nows are equal. What I was in the beginning, I am now, and ever shall be.

This lesson is abundantly clear in the treatment of public figures who end up judged solely on their transgressions. Most sins are unpardonable. You would do well to identify them early and avoid them completely.

This will cut down on how often you get laid.

Sexual relations get complicated in a hurry. I once had a relationship with a woman who for reasons of her own liked it rough. She did not always like it rough, which was good, because I was not able to be rough. So she would get bored with me and go to the guy who would knock her around, and then come back to me to recuperate. Eventually, he made her an offer she liked, and she relinquished me to go with him full time. I have no idea how their relationship actually worked. I only know how she looked and what she told me when she arrived at my apartment one night, moving gingerly from the pain.

"Careful," she said. "He slammed me in the abdomen with a rifle butt." Then she smiled slyly. "Of course I was trying to shoot him with it at the time."

I've always been attracted to interesting women.

I was raised to develop a thick hide. Keep the pain on the inside, preferably far enough that you don't even feel it yourself. Show no weakness. Show no fear. My two years in an all-male prep school were a crash course in how to deal with constant bullying in an ocean of testosterone. Hazing and harassment were staples in male culture, and male culture dominated the adult world. 

My father's military academy stories often dealt with hazing by the dominant upper classes. The pecking order continued after graduation. The Coast Guard remained all male until near the end of his career.

Given the option to avoid it, I did. But I had absorbed the methodology even as I thought I was rejecting it. I had developed armored skin and iron heels. I could walk all over someone without noticing it, no problem.

Not being very perceptive, I fell into the trap of stereotyping. All of a given group were the same, or similar enough that I could treat them with a simple and uniform set of responses. This is common. Keep it simple.

You can keep it simple, if your default is polite deference. If your default is to look for your own advantage, you will constantly cross lines that you should have respected.

Good = Polite Deference.

Bad = Look for your own advantage.

It really is that simple. You can, with polite deference, look for mutual advantage. Then you need to look at the wider effects to see if this spreads disadvantage to third parties and beyond. But one on one, be respectful. This does not mean subservient.

I learned all this the hard way, earning my place in hell. I share it with you now in hopes of saving others. The worst of my sins are moderate -- as much as I would like to call them minor -- but, combined with the minor ones, are numerous enough to make any glance backward a painful and necessary reminder that a work in progress is never finished. Just because you are hopelessly condemned by your past misdeeds is no excuse to quit trying to be better.

Authority

My employer had one of his periodic foaming shit fits yesterday. These typically consist of a disproportionate rage response to a triggering event. Underlying stressors have accumulated until he blows a gasket, usually bellowing impotently about his authority.

When you have to yell about your authority you have none. I can't remember the last time I yelled. Even when I was running the retail concession at Jackson Ski Touring in the early years of the century and had an employee who could be a real punk asshole when he felt like it, I did not yell. I did my best to understand the man's limitations and work with them, to maximize his strengths. It would do no one any good to get in endless pissing contests with him. We developed a functional symbiosis. Eventually, he moved on. I got a new colleague.

I don't have subordinates. I have colleagues. And I AM no one's subordinate. This does not guarantee that my employer does not think of me as a subordinate. He does have power, for all his lack of authority. He can order me to do things, leaving me to decide whether to follow the order, ignore the order or quit. He can fire me. But he cannot command my respect. No one can. Nor can I command anyone to respect me.

Life gets a ton easier when you just do your thing and don't worry about whether anyone bows down before you.

My employer's problem is that his kids never rebelled. He's got these great authoritarian rants saved up that he never got to spew at them. Since a certain kind of employer considers his employees to be so junior that they are actually juvenile, the incoherent bellowing about attitude and respect transfers neatly.

My bluntness is an expression of efficiency. To me, the shortest distance between a stupid idea and the trash heap is a straight flight launched with a sharp kick. I get away with this often enough to lull me into believing that my employers actually understand how my mind works. Then a blowup happens and I have to remember to let them do what they want. I will simply wade through it, climb over it or walk around it, and hope it goes away. If it doesn't, it becomes the new normal.

If I thought all their ideas were stupid you could accuse me of being an arrogant punk. However, I understand how they fit into their particular community. I oppose only the ideas that will do them -- and us -- a harm they have not considered. Ultimately, they have the power to institute the harm. After whatever token critique I attempt to offer, my next responsibility as an employee is to do the foolish thing they command, or at least stand back so it can play out in all its collapsing glory. If all goes well, it will cause no outright harm, only inconvenience. At worst it brings the whole place down. Then something new can arise.