One of the drawbacks to our “always on” culture is this expectation that if we see something, we have to respond to it. “Sea lions” take advantage of this knee jerk reaction we have to engage with people who ask us questions on the internet. They can get you to waste hours going around in circles “explaining” things to them that can be easily googled. If you aren’t careful you could find yourself spending all day “explaining” why women should have the right to vote and why slavery is bad and why police shouldn’t shoot unarmed people in the street and yes, the Holocaust really happened my grandfather helped haul the bodies out of the camps.
The fact that we feel we have to reassert reasonable moral positions and actual facts which should be common knowledge over and over is depressing in and of itself. But when you feel the urge to do so I want you to remember this quote from Toni Morrison:
“The function, the very serious function of racism, is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language, so you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly, so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Someone says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”
In case it’s not obvious, this quote can easily apply to any other type of “ism” out there. No one wants you to do your work. Doing your work can change the status quo. And that’s why they work so hard to keep you from doing it.
Certainly one in a position of privilege does have a moral imperative to state, “This atrocity is wrong.” But when you buckle down to engage the haters on any issue, consider what your end goal is in having that conversation, and consider what other valuable work you could be doing with that time. I can pretty much guarantee you that, say, writing The Geek Feminist Revolution and getting it into people’s hands was worth about a billion times more than spending that time arguing with dudes on the internet who were just there to distract me. They aren’t here to change minds. They are here to keep us from doing the work that changes the world.
We all have a finite amount of time on this earth. Those of us with chronic illness or who have had near-death experiences appreciate that more than others. I feel that it’s my moral imperative to remind you that you could get hit by a bus tomorrow. And if you did, would you regret how you’d spend the hour, the day, the week, the month, the year before?
My goal is to live the sort of life where I won’t feel I’ve wasted my time if I die tomorrow. It has kept me on target through a lot of bullshit. The truth is that all this shit is made up, and because it’s made up, it can be remade. But only if we focus our efforts on creating the work that moves the conversation forward, instead of letting ourselves get caught up in the distraction.
