Lauren Boebert

Curiosity Saved the Cat, or How I Stopped Fighting and Started Asking Questions

~ Randy Blazak ~ 7 Comments

May 21, 2023

I spent most of my life in a narcissistic head cloud. I put it off to being a Pisces, but the fact of the matter is that I was habitually more interested in myself than other people. After all, both Mr. Rogers and my mother had told me, “You are special.” When my first wife was on her way out the door, I remember her saying, “You suck all the air out of a room, Randy.” I thought that was meant as a compliment. I would think that. Turns out Mr. Rogers (and Mom) were wrong. I wasn’t special. I was an asshole.

This “COVID-era” life change I’ve been going through has forced me to stop. Stop my awesome rocket ride through “Randyland.” I’d had plenty of clues along the way. As an ethnographer, my job was to skillfully interview subjects without them knowing it. I’d come out of the field after months of hanging out with white supremacists realizing I was missing data because I’d spent more time talking than listening. I realized my biggest grammar mistake was forgetting to end queries with question marks. One student’s review of a sociology class at Portland State was one sentence long: “Nobody loves Randy Blazak more than Randy Blazak.”

This lack of curiosity became an issue between Andi and I. She didn’t need another story. She need someone who was interested in her thoughts and observations. Someone who talked with her not at her. I needed to figure this curiosity thing out.

Even though it might be too late for Andi, I finally cracked this curious nut. I’ve mentioned in this blog how lucky I’ve been to find a somatic therapist who could help be corral my unwieldy lizard brain and help find methods to get my parasympathetic nervous system to help my behavior be in line with my “I’m a feminist!” values. She recently suggested a book by Buddhist Oren Jay Sofer called Say What You Mean: A Mindful Approach to Nonviolent Communication and it’s been a game changer. I’ve really relied a lot on mindfulness practices to get away from to my bad habits. Ruth King’s Mindful of Race and her emphasis on “Impact not intent” has been vital in deflating some of my patterns of harm. These books are sacred.

I’m currently working on a federally-funded project to interrupt violent extremism so I figured out I could read Sofer’s book for work. Turns it’s more about people like me than the Proud Boys. (Does that sound narcissistic?) While I was focused on the eminent fist fight between Marjorie Taylor Greene and Joe Biden, the conflict here was less domestic terrorism and more just domestic. Our interpersonal conflicts certainly can escalate into some ugly areas, of which, violence is only one stupid scenario, but fighting over someone not doing the kid’s laundry is enough.

The book follows three main strategies to get us out of the combative way we communicate; 1) Being present in the moment, 2) Bringing in curiosity and care, and 3) Focusing on what matters. Sounds simple but there’s a lot of detail in the process. The bottom line is we are really good at reacting and getting pulled into a fight to prove the validity of our position. But more often than not, that just ends in a pointless stalemate. My Facebook page is an endless battle between my blue state Portland friends and my red state Georgia homies and the line of scrimmage hasn’t moved an inch.

A key part of the middle of Say What You Mean is developing empathetic listening skills by practicing curiosity. Let’s be honest – for most of us – when other people are speaking, we’re just listening for a gap to say whatever we were going to say anyway. That’s what we’re listening for, not what that person is saying, but for a chance to hear our own voice. That’s why modern speech is full of  linguistic space holders, like “like,” “um,” “you know,” “well,” “literally,” and my least favorite word on Earth, “actually.” All those linguistic cock blockers serve to keep the stream of sound coming out of our gobs and preventing anyone else from actually getting a word in edgewise. Literally.

I started trying empathetic listening out on my students. I broke my diversity class up into random pairs and gave them five minutes. Student A had to ask Student B, “What’s the most challenging thing about being your primary identity?” (For example, their race or their gender identity.) Then Student A had to SHUT UP AND JUST LISTEN FOR FOUR MINUTES. On the fourth minute Student A was to say, “It sounds like the hardest thing is…. Did I get that right?” At the end of the five minutes they’d switch roles and Student B would ask same question. Afterwards, the students reflected how validating it felt to be actually listened to and how they created a new bond with someone who seemed, at first, very different from them.

Was there something to his power of asking questions? I was soon to put it to the test myself.

My last blog post was about transphobia and the hellnado that was unleashed by Kid Rock going Columbine on a case of Bud Light. Being the king mixer that I am I posted it on the Boycott Bud Light Facebook page. Very quickly I got a DM from some dude named Jamie that read, “Fuck trannies faggit You look like a fucking freak from Portland.” I went into my standard battle mode, trying to convince Jamie that he was in the closet. And the fight was on. Then I stopped and thought, WWOJSD? What would Oren Jay Sofer do?

So I switched gears and started asking Jamie questions. Were transgender people an actual problem in his life? (No.) Did he know any transgender people? (No.) What did he think WAS the biggest problem in America? He went off on a vector about the war on drugs and pharmaceutical companies and I said, “Hey, man, I agree 100%!” All of a sudden we were on the same page and talking about a bunch of stuff we agreed on. Jamie texted, “Sorry for calling you names, that’s pretty immature of me. I shouldn’t be like that. You take care. I’ll be more open minded.” Wow. It was all I could do to not ask Jamie if we could be Facebook friends and maybe go grab a Bud Light. Just being curious changed everything. I talked to him like human being and not a sparing partner and we both benefited from it.

So if this approach worked with transphobe like Jamie could it work with my estranged wife? I started trying the technique out with Andi. “How did that make you feel?” “Can you tell me more about that?” “It sounds like that was really hard. Am I hearing you correctly?” And it wasn’t an act. The more I asked the more I wanted to know. She asked me to stick around so we could continue the conversation. I didn’t tell a single anecdote. Each one of her sentences left me wanting more and we talked for hours.

Curiosity won’t solve all our problems. I still have a lot of work to do to de-program my asshole tendencies. But it’s a start. And what if there’s something bigger at stake here. What if Congressman Jamie Raskin got curious about Lauren Boebert? What if Antifa Annie asked Proud Boy Billy about his childhood? Or what if Road Rage Rob asked Road Rage Roy, “Do you need a hug?” So whether it’s political incivility or fractured marriages there is great value in the advice of Vanilla Ice; stop, collaborate and listen. Let’s get curious. Stop talking and start asking questions. People just want to be heard. And then they’ll listen.

Seriously, What’s Wrong with Men? Lighting Fires in Post-Roe America

~ Randy Blazak ~ 3 Comments

May 12, 2022

In the 1990s, I assigned a book entitled Men Are Not Cost Effective to my criminology students. June Stephen’s 1991 book makes the case that men commit the overwhelming majority of crimes and each of those crimes carries a financial burden represented in the costs of policing, courts, incarceration, parole, probation, rehabilitation, and crime prevention programs. Since half of the tax bill for funding all this falls on women who are not committing these crimes, Stephenson argues men should pay a “man tax” to pay for their bad behavior.

How little things have changed in 30 years. From shootings on New York subway trains to the genocidal violence being levied by Russians against the people of Ukraine, men’s bad behavior seems completely unrestrained and even facilitated by some women. After I returned from Ukraine, a story broke about a Russian soldier whose wife gave him permission to rape Ukrainian women. This was reported before and after numerous stories of Russian soldiers raping the victims of their invasion. What is wrong with men?

It should be of no surprise to anyone that Donald Trump’s Supreme Court is doing exactly what he said it would in snuffing out women’s bodily autonomy by reversing Roe v. Wade. In Trump’s misogynistic world, women’s and girl’s bodies belong to men. Their “pussies” are there to be grabbed by MAGA men and raped by Russian soldiers. Their duty is to look good to male eyes and not challenge male authority. And they will be rewarded for maintaining that status quo whether it’s the small college scholarships from Trump’s uber-creepy Miss Teen USA contest, or being handed “careers” while towing the big lies of the Trump administration (I’m looking at you, Kayleigh McEnany). When women play their “be a good girl” role, the rewards follow. Women and girls are to be looked at, not to offer opinions about their ownership of their bodies. A similar case was made a hundred years ago against “giving” women the right to vote. Why did they need to vote when they had husbands to do that for them? Seriously, what’s wrong with men?

The traditional way of defending the radical idea that female human beings are human beings ain’t working. The ballot box has failed us. Post-reproductive women in the Senate,  like Alaska’s Lisa Murkowksi (64) and Maine’s Susan Collins (69) just voted against codifying women’s reproductive rights into federal laws. And batshit crazy Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert are chomping at the bit to force American women and teenage rape victims to give birth. They are only one or two degrees away from the Russian wives encouraging their husbands to rape Ukrainian women. So if putting our faith in Election Day and singing, “We shall overcome, someday” is playing out as moving us backwards in women’s rights, what’s the better strategy?

The murder of George Floyd in 2020 woke up a lot of white people. Folks of all races took to the streets. Shit got fucked up. There were fires this time. And even though 93 percent of Black Lives Matter protests were completely peaceful, the riots captured the news cycle. We now know that President Trump wanted federal troops to shoot BLM protestors in front of the White House. But like how the riots following the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. pushed Congress to pass the Fair Housing Act, the turmoil of 2020 worked. Research shows that cities that had BLM protests saw a reduction in police killings. There were countless policy reforms and, while some were merely cosmetic, they reflected the shift in America’s opinions on institutional racism in the justice process. Deep conversations about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) became normalized in private and the public sectors. (I can’t count how many workshops on implicit bias I conducted after the tear gas cleared.)

There are a lot more women and girls in America than black people. The summer of 2022 could make the summer of 2020 look like the summer of 1020. (I’m assuming the summer of 1020 was pretty chill, but Wikipedia just told be that Italy was on fire.) The patriarchal line is that women are more relational and less action oriented than men, but those people weren’t here in Portland to see women (and many teenage girls) on the front lines. The Wall of Moms, anarchists, high schoolers, and the founders of Black Lives Matters; everywhere in 2020 women were up in The Man’s face demanding change.

According to every Republican running for governor in Oregon, “violent protestors” were burning down cities in 2020. I live in Portland and was at the protests numerous nights. There were a couple of brief bonfires set in the middle of the street and a handful of trashcans set on fire. Portland was not “burned to the ground” or even burned. But those images sure got a lot attention because the fire next time was potentially real. In 2022, there may be a value in a few well placed dumpster fires, particularly from Alabama to Texas (what we can call the Gilead Belt), but there’s a larger question that needs to be addressed first, what’s wrong with men?

What is it in men’s psyche that keeps them thinking the oppression of others is in their long term interest? Whether it’s old white men, like Mitch McConnell and his boss Vladimir Putin, or younger sex-traffickers like Matt Gaetz, or just the average Joe Blow on the street, it seems like men as a whole are hell bent on doing jack shit to end their oppression of women and girls. From unequal pay to sexual assault to endless public commentary on Hilary Duff’s (airbrushed) body after birthing three kids (gasp!), patriarchy remains firmly in place, and no amount of elderly white ladies in Congress, or their younger white counterparts who are backed by the fanatics of MAGA (Make America Guys Again), will change that.

We need spies inside the halls of patriarchy to find answers. In 1963, feminist writer Gloria Steinem went undercover as a “bunny” at the Playboy Club in New York City. Her exposé, “A Bunny’s Tale,” revealed how adult women were treated and harassed in Hefner’s clubs that were the symbol of modern masculinity 60 years ago. Maybe a new generation of women can attach themselves to the arms of the captains of industry, hang out at gun shows, or get jobs at whatever strip club Samual Alito sneaks into, and find out why these men are so fragile. Why does the oppression of women, immigrants, the poor, and minorities make them feel powerful? Why does using young men to be rapist soldiers in their wars of choice make them feel like their penises still work?

Speaking of penises, we might get a little help from Freud here. Psychoanalytic feminists look to Freud’s idea that early childhood experiences subconsciously shape our adult personality. Judith Butler, author of Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990), argues that children are all initially intimately connected to their mothers as the primary sources of sustenance and nurturing. But then boy children are pulled away from their mothers and expected to attach to their fathers. This separation anxiety becomes a psychosis in which the mother is framed as the source of rejection and that anger is levied at all women. In addition, since the separation was not boys’ choice, the desire to control others choice becomes a subconscious mandate.

It’s not a stretch to guess that Trump has serious issues with regard to his Scottish mother, Mary Anne, as Putin likely does with his factory worker mom, Maria. On the other side, Joe Biden seems to have a long and loving relationship with his mother until her death in 2010 at 92. Is understanding why so many men are invested in patriarchal control (and why others seem less so) as simple as understanding the separation anxieties they feel toward their mothers? It would explain why the so many men take a dim view of therapy. If therapy can repair early childhood trauma, what’s left for the misogynist? Being a god is much more affirming than just being a human being.

Pyscho-babble aside, the old strategy of politely asking men not to oppress women and girls in every single aspect of society and phase of life, from the devaluing of female babies to the invisibility of older women, is not working. Until we can fix men’s fragile minds, there might have to be some shit that gets set on fire. It’s worked in the past.