On tenderness v. emotional intelligence
Feb. 21st, 2019 10:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
breathedoutLately I've been mulling over the subcultural trend, which I see a lot in my Insta/[former]Tumblr circles, of assertively valorizing softness, tenderness, and emotionality. I'm thinking, to take just one example, of the spate of marquees, plaques, cross-stitch samplers, etc. sporting the Jenny Holzer quote, "It is in your self-interest to find a way to be very tender," which despite dating from the late 70s (the Truisms pieces went up between 1977 and 1979), seems suddenly to resonate very strongly with many folks in this particular moment, 40 years later.
It... doesn't resonate with me. In fact I find it somewhat off-putting. And that's interesting to me: it makes me think the folks for whom it does resonate—a group which includes many dear friends of whom I have the highest opinion—must be reading these words, and this trend, differently than I am. It also makes me wonder if there are particular references or theoretical works which I am missing, and which might help me better relate to the place this is coming from.
There are certain things about it I understand. I get that it's a reaction against the every-man-against-the-world ethos of mainstream capitalism (gender markers chosen advisedly), which rewards and therefore begets brutality. I get that remaining emotionally present and vulnerable in a brutal world can be an act of radical courage. I get that reclaiming the kind of emotional intelligence ignored and denigrated by our society is likewise both personally and politically necessary, and making decisions from a place of empathy and compassion, though difficult, can be transformative. I get that genuine human connection is vital to physical and mental health, and we can't build that kind of connection if we've protectively closed ourselves off from other people.
But there's a big difference between "emotional intelligence" or "genuine human connection," on the one hand, and "softness" or "tenderness" on the other. Anyone who has ever hung out with, e.g., a hospice nurse, or a longtime builder of grassroots coalitions, can tell you that true emotional intelligence—being open yet taking responsibility for your own feelings and owning your own reactions; managing long-term proximity to mortality or trauma in a way that makes some space for one's own mental and physical health—often looks nothing like softness or tenderness. Sometimes it does! But a lot of the time in my experience it can look more like gallows humor, and/or an affect that can be tightly-controlled in high-intensity situations, and/or just a straight-up toughness born of experience, where the toughness is what enables the connection—and the work—to continue.
That's where the disconnect happens for me. When I look at that Holzer phrase, "It is in your self-interest...," I can't help thinking: Is it, though? Is it really? I'm reminded of a song that played a lot on the radio in the 90s, which Google tells me is by the artist Jewel. "Please be careful with me," she sings. "I'm sensitive, and I'd like to stay that way." Every time it would play, I would grit my teeth. Even then, long before Robin DiAngelo's brilliant coinage of the term white fragility for a specific iteration of this phenomenon, I'd met a goodly number of people who both advertised their sensitivity in this way, and also used it as a "get out of jail free" card to avoid dealing honestly with criticism or improving their own behavior. The white lady who redirects attention away from a discussion of systemic racism by bursting into tears and then expecting her teammates of color to comfort her. The "sensitive guy" who feels attacked when a female coworker brings up his tendency to monopolize meetings, because what are you saying? That he's sexist? How could you? Even, on a less institutional and more interpersonal level, the friend who borrows money from you and then, whenever you try to bring up a repayment of the loan, starts melting down about their relationship drama and fear that they'll die alone. (Not to mention the regular online shitstorms in which people competitively perform emotionality in order to one-up each other on some kind of trauma scale, but I'm trying to keep this based largely in meatspace life.)
I don't think any of these diversionary behaviors are necessarily even made in bad faith, though sometimes they are. Discussions of systemic racism ARE really upsetting! It CAN really hurt to be told your behaviors are oppressive! Sometimes being reminded of a debt CAN be the straw that breaks down one's equanimity! The world is a scary and overwhelming place, and obviously we all sometimes react to that in ill-considered ways. But as a pattern, as a way of being in the world, I think we can agree this is not ideal. I certainly don't believe most folks on the current softness-and-tenderness train are advocating this kind of behavior. Nonetheless, that's sometimes how it reads to me.
I expect basic respect in how other people treat me, but I don't want to be the kind of person of whom my friends, coworkers and loved ones have to "be careful" in order to preserve some kind of fragile gentleness in my character. I want my relationships to be mutually caretaking, and part of that is that I want to be sturdy enough to take on board a piece of critique, evaluate its merits, and potentially work on changing my behavior in response to it. To do that requires an openness to criticism, yes, and imaginative empathy in relating to where the other person is coming from; but it also requires a lot of toughness of character in taking responsibility for my own reactions and emotions, both in terms of managing my interactions with other people, and managing my own inner life. Compassion yes; empathy yes; but I question whether "tenderness"—with its connotations of bruisedness, of pain, and also of extreme subjective closeness—is a quality that will really help me in this goal.
Anyway! I'm sure others have written about why this particular strand of thought is meaningful for them, and if you have any reading recs that you think would shed light on some of the things that puzzle me above, I'd welcome them.
Possibly it's just a difference in temperament? I'm by nature kind of a cerebral, sarcastic misanthrope—a passionate misanthrope and I hope a caring and responsible one, but a misanthrope nonetheless—and hence the experience of having a particular brand of soft sincerity shopped to me feels forced and unnatural.
It... doesn't resonate with me. In fact I find it somewhat off-putting. And that's interesting to me: it makes me think the folks for whom it does resonate—a group which includes many dear friends of whom I have the highest opinion—must be reading these words, and this trend, differently than I am. It also makes me wonder if there are particular references or theoretical works which I am missing, and which might help me better relate to the place this is coming from.
There are certain things about it I understand. I get that it's a reaction against the every-man-against-the-world ethos of mainstream capitalism (gender markers chosen advisedly), which rewards and therefore begets brutality. I get that remaining emotionally present and vulnerable in a brutal world can be an act of radical courage. I get that reclaiming the kind of emotional intelligence ignored and denigrated by our society is likewise both personally and politically necessary, and making decisions from a place of empathy and compassion, though difficult, can be transformative. I get that genuine human connection is vital to physical and mental health, and we can't build that kind of connection if we've protectively closed ourselves off from other people.
But there's a big difference between "emotional intelligence" or "genuine human connection," on the one hand, and "softness" or "tenderness" on the other. Anyone who has ever hung out with, e.g., a hospice nurse, or a longtime builder of grassroots coalitions, can tell you that true emotional intelligence—being open yet taking responsibility for your own feelings and owning your own reactions; managing long-term proximity to mortality or trauma in a way that makes some space for one's own mental and physical health—often looks nothing like softness or tenderness. Sometimes it does! But a lot of the time in my experience it can look more like gallows humor, and/or an affect that can be tightly-controlled in high-intensity situations, and/or just a straight-up toughness born of experience, where the toughness is what enables the connection—and the work—to continue.
That's where the disconnect happens for me. When I look at that Holzer phrase, "It is in your self-interest...," I can't help thinking: Is it, though? Is it really? I'm reminded of a song that played a lot on the radio in the 90s, which Google tells me is by the artist Jewel. "Please be careful with me," she sings. "I'm sensitive, and I'd like to stay that way." Every time it would play, I would grit my teeth. Even then, long before Robin DiAngelo's brilliant coinage of the term white fragility for a specific iteration of this phenomenon, I'd met a goodly number of people who both advertised their sensitivity in this way, and also used it as a "get out of jail free" card to avoid dealing honestly with criticism or improving their own behavior. The white lady who redirects attention away from a discussion of systemic racism by bursting into tears and then expecting her teammates of color to comfort her. The "sensitive guy" who feels attacked when a female coworker brings up his tendency to monopolize meetings, because what are you saying? That he's sexist? How could you? Even, on a less institutional and more interpersonal level, the friend who borrows money from you and then, whenever you try to bring up a repayment of the loan, starts melting down about their relationship drama and fear that they'll die alone. (Not to mention the regular online shitstorms in which people competitively perform emotionality in order to one-up each other on some kind of trauma scale, but I'm trying to keep this based largely in meatspace life.)
I don't think any of these diversionary behaviors are necessarily even made in bad faith, though sometimes they are. Discussions of systemic racism ARE really upsetting! It CAN really hurt to be told your behaviors are oppressive! Sometimes being reminded of a debt CAN be the straw that breaks down one's equanimity! The world is a scary and overwhelming place, and obviously we all sometimes react to that in ill-considered ways. But as a pattern, as a way of being in the world, I think we can agree this is not ideal. I certainly don't believe most folks on the current softness-and-tenderness train are advocating this kind of behavior. Nonetheless, that's sometimes how it reads to me.
I expect basic respect in how other people treat me, but I don't want to be the kind of person of whom my friends, coworkers and loved ones have to "be careful" in order to preserve some kind of fragile gentleness in my character. I want my relationships to be mutually caretaking, and part of that is that I want to be sturdy enough to take on board a piece of critique, evaluate its merits, and potentially work on changing my behavior in response to it. To do that requires an openness to criticism, yes, and imaginative empathy in relating to where the other person is coming from; but it also requires a lot of toughness of character in taking responsibility for my own reactions and emotions, both in terms of managing my interactions with other people, and managing my own inner life. Compassion yes; empathy yes; but I question whether "tenderness"—with its connotations of bruisedness, of pain, and also of extreme subjective closeness—is a quality that will really help me in this goal.
Anyway! I'm sure others have written about why this particular strand of thought is meaningful for them, and if you have any reading recs that you think would shed light on some of the things that puzzle me above, I'd welcome them.
Possibly it's just a difference in temperament? I'm by nature kind of a cerebral, sarcastic misanthrope—a passionate misanthrope and I hope a caring and responsible one, but a misanthrope nonetheless—and hence the experience of having a particular brand of soft sincerity shopped to me feels forced and unnatural.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-21 08:22 pm (UTC)However, I do not have a problem with the whole radical hope, radical kindness is our best defense against nihilism and apathy type posts. I see radical empathy or hope as coming from strength, not "softness" or "tenderness." It's fucking hard to be kind in a world that says that kindness is weakness. I don't think that being kind is the same as being tender or soft, though.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-21 09:01 pm (UTC)Ugggh yes
no subject
Date: 2019-02-21 09:14 pm (UTC)I very much appreciate your second paragraph, because I agree, and I think it's interesting that these two strands of discourse seem to have become conflated, particularly when they seem to me to be at times mutually exclusive.
Does "soft" just equal "capable of being kind and empathetic?" It doesn't seem like it's used that way to me. Also, perhaps empathy =/= understanding, always. I am very much in the "x can explain but can rarely excuse behavior" camp.
(no subject)
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Date: 2019-02-22 07:22 pm (UTC)I guess I'm also pretty comfortable with nihilism? To me that just means we are responsible for creating our own meaning in the world rather than having it supplied to us, which IMO begets less apathy, not more. I don't really believe the world or humanity can be fixed, but that doesn't mean it can't be improved, and it doesn't mean there's not value in the attempt.
I didn't even really connect the tenderness trend with the smoll gay bean nonsense, mostly because I see the former but not the latter from many people with whom I otherwise connect & see eye to eye. But yeah, that's unconscionable; gross gross gross.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-26 02:44 am (UTC)That's not even going into how "trans men are so soft" is basically setting them as aside as Men-Lite, and wow, how transphobic is THAT!
Radical empathy is completely different, to me - that's the toughness of someone who has been through some shit or at least can imagine deeply what's that like, and resolves to help others through it. It's far more likely to be seen in a battle-scarred survivor than a sheltered, native person who's never gotten dirty.
(no subject)
From:emotional abuse cw, suicidal thoughts cw
Date: 2019-02-21 08:29 pm (UTC)I mean—I come at it from the place of having been told, repeatedly that my lack of softness/my gallows humor/my preference for basic respect over performatively connective emoting from friends and romantic partners makes me a robot. I don't... one hundred percent disagree with this?? Like, I'm aware that to an extent, this is/can be distorted messaging that I've internalized in ways that maybe aren't healthy, but I'm also pretty sure that, objectively, there's frequently a level of emotional current that goes over my head. So it's like, a premise that I have a hard time engaging with, because it's not just one thing or the other. It's partially a distortion, and partially true—and the ways in which it's true are not really ways I find value in objecting to?
e.g.: I don't feel like apologizing for having hurt an ex's feelings when he threatened to kill himself when I dumped him, and I laughed. Like... is that an appropriate response, on my part? No, I mean, probably not, but it also meant that his attempt to coerce/abuse me into staying with him failed pretty spectacularly, soooooo... down with that!! Like, if the softness we're valorizing is: be sympathetic to this douchebag's Mental Bad Shit that makes him try to coerce me into staying with him, fuck that. If it's the softness of being able to intuitively understand that, probably, that threat came from him desperately needing a mental health intervention—which, it did—and being able to empathize with that even while maintaining my own boundaries... I mean, okay, fine, but I'm not even a little bit sure that counts as "softness." It doesn't feel soft, to me, and it also doesn't feel primarily emotive—it feels analytical, to be able to weigh my instinctive emotional reaction ("uh fuck you dude") against this other human's emotional reality ("MY LIFE IS NOT WORTH LIVING WITHOUT YOOOU because my life feels not worth living most of the time"), and to respond—how, even? I mean. Laughter, probably top of the "don't" list, but there was legitimately no response from me that wasn't going to be super painful for him, and that was kind of not my problem...? After we broke up I, in my typical blunt way, told him he probably would feel better if he got therapy; instead, he started up a relationship with a friend of mine and emotionally abused her instead. *throws up hands*
But this is why I have a hard time evaluating the robot assertion. Like... I don't actually... feel... bad... about not making this dude's shit my problem. I'm sorry he was having that problem! I would love to intuitively know how to respond to him in a way that could be helpful to him, but I didn't then, I don't now, OH WELL. I feel worse about him moving on to a friend—but honestly, her inability to set boundaries was also not my problem. She knew exactly what he'd done with me, so. Not my circus, not my monkeys. If that makes me a robot, I mean.... okay? I'd rather that than let some twerp with a sad he doesn't know how to manage dictate my life. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
[there's no way I can post this with a different icon, is there?]
Re: emotional abuse cw, suicidal thoughts cw
Date: 2019-02-22 07:38 pm (UTC)You're not a robot for laughing at that asshole. He deserved it and his shit was NOT your problem. I suppose a textbook "emotionally intelligent" response might be, like, "I hear that you're hurting, but using threats of suicide as a tactic to persuade a partner to stay is a textbook abusive tactic and is hardline unacceptable. Here is the number of the National Suicide Prevention Hotline. They are trained to help; I'm not." -- but that said, (a) I think it's the rare person who could actually pull that out of their hat as their first response to a suicide threat, and (b) absolutely nothing about it is "soft," either.
Anyway I TOTALLY agree that being able to weigh my instinctive emotional reaction against my perception of the other person's lived reality, and balance that against the respect (or lack thereof) for all parties' boundaries, feels like a HUGELY analytical effort: not primarily emotive and definitely not gentle or tender. And frankly, if what we're arguing about is whether you should feel bad after the fact... what possible use does that have in your life?? Why should we be looking to increase our feelings of retroactive guilt and shame?? Fuck that noise.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-21 09:10 pm (UTC)Anyway, this linked with me not on that level but rather because it reminded me of a series of iterative fights my partner and I kept having about our responses to (especially) #MeToo news, which would bring up the general subjects of consequences/retribution/accountability, empathy for perpetrators, ideal legal systems, and privilege. These fights would become very fraught, and we just kept having them. Basically, I was reading my partner's responses as being "soft" or "tender" and I absolutely hated it. I saw it as victim-blaming, not-all-men-ing, unconstructive, downright dangerous apologia that I genuinely could not believe was coming from my partner. On the other hand, my partner thought I was being a heartless bitch hypocritically glorying in the thought of legal and physical violence.
All this to say that we finally managed to explain ourselves to each other, and what I realized about them was that they were coming at it in a very Buddhist sort of way: bad behavior is coming from pain, which one can acknowledge without condoning and without falling into bad discursive traps. Meantime, I managed to explain that I don't really feel the need to go looking for that kind of empathy because I have principles. And regardless of whether or not I gave a fuck about the circumstances that brought a particular person to a particular disgusting action (99% of the time, I super don't), those principles would guide my behavior.
And it's that which really gets me about the soft/tender thing. I value the ability to analytically decide what behavior and discourse is constructive and helpful to oppressed peoples far, far more than I value an inherent quality of "softness." I don't advocate for hunting down perpetrators of sexual harassment with cheese graters not because I care about them, but because I care about things like solid democracy, equal protection before the law, low levels of violence in society generally, and the primacy of unbiased courts. These things don't exist in the U.S., and so it's doubly important to consider those principles with care, knowledge, and self-perception. Carefully considered principles are always more valuable than inherent qualities. And it takes a whole lot more than being "tender" to construct, exercise, and adapt those principles in the face of complex and often horrifying reality.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-21 10:49 pm (UTC)THEY SURE DIDN'T
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2019-02-22 07:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-21 09:14 pm (UTC)I think, for me, it looks like part of the trend in fandom and feminist spaces (or spaces where fandom intersects with feminism) to explicitly valorize traditionally feminine characteristics. And like, I do get the need for that. I understand the undercurrent of misogyny of always saying "it's okay for women to be like men" but never saying "it's also okay for women to be like women", or rather, "it's okay for anyone to embrace traditionally feminine characteristics, because there's nothing inherently bad about femininity.". There are circumstances where I can get behind that.
But I do think it sometimes gets pushed so far that for a woman to do things that are traditionally coded as masculine is seen as a betrayal, or an act of self-loathing. Like, "your sarcasm, toughness, and emotional remove are signs that you only value masculinity. If you truly loved women, you would be soft and sweet all the time."
Which... Blech.
But I'm probably just projecting 9/10ths of that haha. Because I've been told all my life that I can't comment on womanhood because I'm not a "normal" woman.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-22 07:49 pm (UTC)But I definitely, viscerally share your aversion to the messaging around traditionally masculine-coded traits being seen as not truly woman-loving. (Which I don't think you're projecting, fwiw.)
(no subject)
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Date: 2019-02-21 10:23 pm (UTC)Sweet Satan, THIS is what's wrong with the internet.
(My actual relationship to the topic at hand is one giant shitshow of a clusterfuck, basically, and I am in no good place to start excavating it, but since I had the opportunity to approach this one as an issue of sheer reading comprehension --)
no subject
Date: 2019-02-21 10:52 pm (UTC)But maybe I'm just weird
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Date: 2019-02-21 10:24 pm (UTC)(Nnnnot to mention the gender essentialism of it - a lot of it feels like 'these traits are womanly by definition and people can only be good if they have them and make an effort to be womanly' which is profoundly gross.)
no subject
Date: 2019-02-22 03:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2019-02-21 10:26 pm (UTC)Hm: but kindness and tenderness aren’t really the same... a huge amount of this for me is tied to teaching, and how much I prioritize an emotionally affirmative pedagogical environment. I know folks in my program who really disagree with my approach, and think it’s better to keep things “professional” and focused exclusively on intellectual rigor, but I just....... I know that a student who is missing deadlines it not doing it because they are dumb, they are doing it because they are struggling. I make it very clear that I can’t solve, and don’t really want to hear about, whatever they’re struggling with, but I also want to provide a feeling of.... being seen, for them? That’s the maximum of what I can do for ALL of them (too many to do more!) but I do make a lot of pedagogical choices around the letting down of tough fronts, the destigmatization of errors and difficulty, the acceptance of vulnerability when learning, etc. Which feels “”radical”” to me because I was explicitly instructed in my pedagogy class not to open student meetings by asking the students how they are.
Like I said, this may only be tenderness-adjacent, but it comes strongly to mind in this context.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-22 03:42 am (UTC)And the second is related -- I think this value of "tenderness" in and of itself maybe just makes more sense within the context of schooling and higher ed? My sense on tumblr has always been that those smol gay bean posts mostly get reblogged by undergrads/pretty young people. And that makes sense for me in a couple ways -- one, obviously, resisting the things about having to transition to an adult identity that feel overwhelming, but two, tenderness is an extremely appealing alternative to perfectionism. There's nothing particularly soft or tender about perfectionism, aka the reigning mode of academia. So, even though I think the critiques here make a lot of sense, I also get why that kind of language is so appealing to people -- and even why it's so appealing to internet denizens who may not practice a lot of gentleness or tenderness, because sometimes you want what you don't have.
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Date: 2019-02-21 11:37 pm (UTC)Which is not to say there's no practical dimension here. I've skipped by other people's pain a lot in my life, and it seems important to me to learn how not to do that. For me a subjective experience of tenderness is part of what gets me there. If my goal is to act with integrity, tenderness--or vulnerability, maybe--is a kind of sensitivity-to-the-truth that makes integrity possible.
Still, there's a level at which this is a conversation about what kind of subjective experience of humanity you want to have. There's a part of a poem by Rita Dove that I think about a lot--it's about Beethoven after he has gone deaf:
Call me rough, ill-tempered, slovenly--I tell you,
every tenderness I have ever known
has been nothing
but thwarted violence, an ache
so permanent and deep, the lightest touch
awakens it. . . . It is impossible
to care enough.
Which is at once despairing on the subject of interpersonal tenderness (especially that "has been nothing" standing stark on its own line) and irretrievably dwelling in subjective vulnerability. "It is impossible to care enough" is a line that rings in my head a lot, for a lot of different reasons. Possibly Beethoven would be happier or calmer getting a little more distance from his emotions (for the most part, here, he's furious about losing his hearing) but there's a core truthfulness in them that he finds creatively vital.
This is, of course, highly Romantic, which pretty automatically means it's not for everyone, and that sense of having all your feelers out is not one I can easily dwell in full time. But the fact that I find it difficult is part of why I like the truism in the first place: it is in my self interest to figure it out.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-22 09:44 pm (UTC)I think I get what you're saying about tenderness/vulnerability acting as a sort of truth-compass toward integrity, but for me the demands of personal tenderness more often get in the way of acting with integrity, particularly in a political context but also, sometimes, in a personal one. The path of least resistance for me vis-a-vis my emotions has always been to become paralyzed by them, even if a failure to act is irresponsible or even immoral: just don't read the news; don't go to that meeting; don't go see that friend in the hospital; it's too much, too scary, too painful. Deliberately cultivating or dwelling in that pain seems counterproductive; but I can see how to someone whose relationship to personal tenderness is more activating and less paralytic, it wouldn't seem that way.
For me, getting to the point where I can channel my emotions appropriately and constructively has involved contextualizing them analytically: how did we arrive at the darkness of this historical moment? What is the history of resistance and what are some practical tools that people before me have used successfully? What are concrete things that I can do in my personal relationships to support the mental and emotional growth of the people I love? It's involved a lot of training in acknowledging the emotion and letting it go, or just sitting in the moment and not trying to change it one way or the other. And frankly it's also involved a practice of sometimes saying to myself "I feel X but that doesn't matter right now; who cares; do the thing anyway." I feel like I've gotten to a point where I can (often, not always) overcome the paralysis of personal tenderness in order to act, but I still don't find it beneficial, and deliberately increasing my experience of it still strikes me as a really wild idea.
(As you can imagine, the semester I spent with Wordsworth et al was an extended exercise in eye-rolling and book-throwing; the emphasis on "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings," whether "recollected in tranquility" or not, always rubbed me the wrong way because I felt that they were deliberately training themselves to have emotions so powerful, and/or bulwarks so low, that they could maximize the spontaneous overflows which they prized as the germs of art... and then portraying this hyped-up emotionality as more virtuous and naturalistic than Georgian (pseudo)rationality, which it most certainly wasn't!)
no subject
Date: 2019-02-22 01:38 am (UTC)I’ve seen those too, and looking across the Atlantic I’ve tended to place a simple interpretation on them: ‘jfc fellow Americans, if only for the sake of our self-esteem we need not to be like the dickwads running this place’. I’ve taken that as being the core impulse, and it’s seemed a basically sound one.
So it feels to me closer to the (to me positive and empowering) idea of radical hope than to the smol soft gay infantilizing stuff. But then ‘tender’ and ‘sensitive’ are such nuanced words, with ‘I felt tender towards her’ and ‘My feelings are tender’, having such different implications, and ‘She is so sensitive’ being in isolation completely opaque as to whether it means ‘She’s thoughtful and responsive’ or ‘She’s touchy’ that I think any use of either word without full explanatory context is going to trigger the reader’s favoured interpretation of the word.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-22 09:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-22 04:09 am (UTC)We have not touched the stars,
nor are we forgiven, which brings us back
to the hero’s shoulders and the gentleness that comes,
not from the absence of violence, but despite
the abundance of it.
For me, that Holzer quote rang in my brain when I was working at a women's shelter, physically tired, in pain, overworked, vicariously traumatized, and utterly fed up. It came to me in times like: My shift is over, I'm on my way to the door, and a resident stops me to ask for something. And that's when I slap tenderness over me, like padding on a piece of iron, so that I turn around at a reasonable rate, my facial expression isn't too sharp, my voice is soft, as I take her back to the office and tell her my coworkers, the new shift, can help her out. That way I don't regret my actions later.
For me, tenderness is one key on a grand piano is emotions. I need to have access to it, to perform things I want to achieve. I keep it so I don't turn entirely sharp and shrewd.
So for me, there's emotional intelligence, like being able to screen a call and see if the person calling is in a dangerously abusive situation, or writing up documentation that I know will persuade other workers to treat a client in a way that will benefit her; and then sometimes there's tenderness, the pure display of emotion that is not genuinely felt, but what is what the situation merits. Because I've seen burned-out nurses and social workers and home care aids who can't find a way to be tender, and I dread ever being like them, and unable to get out of it.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-22 10:11 pm (UTC)I also work in a job that can be high on challenging interpersonal interactions in which I am required to be measured and empathetic to (e.g.) multiple sides of a thorny dispute, and I relate to your description of "slapping tenderness over you" so that you can act appropriately. I do a similar thing, but I mentally refer to it as "practiced patience," which is more useful for me because it doesn't require me to feel any certain way about the behavior I'm manifesting. It's just a sort of gentle squashing-down of the impatience or defensiveness or other barbed feelings I may be having in the moment, and a layering-on of a kind of behavioral mantle which enables me (hopefully!) to act with patience and empathy even when I'm not feeling those things. The difference may be largely semantic, tenderness vs. practiced patience. I think I bridle at "tenderness" because it seems to require a specific subjective, interior experience from me, in a place where I feel I only owe an objective, exterior behavior—especially if, as you say, the required emotion wouldn't be genuinely felt in the moment, anyway.
(no subject)
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Date: 2019-02-22 04:09 am (UTC)There's also a distinct performative edge to the concept of radical vulnerability, especially when people ask marginalised people to commit to it, which just skeeves me the right off, because often it asks those most disturbed by their circumstances to do the most amount of emotional regulation >_>) it's a contradictory idea that, to use your example, a black person should stay open to the feelings of others over their oppression, b/c how will they then receive the support they need.
In the end there really isn't anything "vulnerability" doesn't do that hopefulness, compassion and mutuality don't cover.
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Date: 2019-02-22 10:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2019-02-22 06:16 pm (UTC)I mean. the title of my main blog over on tumblr - a blog I'm dedicated to keeping as soft and tender as possible, is literally 'tenderly'. I didn't, like, change it to make my point skjhfs lmao. it's fair to say that I relate strongly to the idea of being soft, of being tender, and I very much took Holzer at face value with this quote, because the first time I read it I went 'yes. yes it is, and you know what? I'm going to do this thing now, which is in my self-interest to do' I felt seen. it felt so wonderful to see someone acknowledge that being soft and tender is important, is a worthwhile goal to pursue, because everyone around me was so against that sort of thing.
I strive constantly for tenderness, and it's a private goal. I still value respect - I'm not sure why I ever wouldn't - but tenderness is my thing. it's having a nice blog because having a nice blog makes me happy. it's doing things that make me feel good and not worrying about what others think of me even though I worry constantly what other people think of me - it's the vulnerability that comes with wanting things and being afraid and wanting things anyway. it's watching shows in which people die and blacklisting the spoilers so the deaths really hit - and that's a lot for me, because for about 4 years in the middle I aggressively refused to get attached to any character who died. tenderness is keeping myself open to feeling things as much as I can and still be safe. I can't articulate everything it means to me, all the ways in which being constantly kind and soft and tender has made me more myself, because even that's a stage of vulnerability I'm not at yet.
I guess the flip side of having spent years trying unsuccessfully to be colder than I am is that I still have this weird craving to be that person. the one who no longer cares about the people who hurt me. the kind of person who can watch game of thrones and not feel like dying every time there's a lot of blood. I admire people who aren't tender or soft and don't want to be. I just think it's very brave and sexy of them to be like that, but I can't do it and I want to and gahh
gahhh
But yeah. poke me if you want to hear more about this, I'm going to stop........talking.....now.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-22 11:34 pm (UTC)Thanks for sharing some of what a return to tenderness has meant for you. It sounds like a real feeling of homecoming, which I can understand the power of even though my personal bent doesn't naturally tend toward softness & tenderness. (Which is not to say that those qualities are totally absent from my life, but they're not things I strive to center.) I'm glad you're finding your way back to a selfhood that feels more genuine; that's a big deal.
I think it's interesting, based on the comments on this post overall, that no matter how our characters most naturally manifest—whether tender or sharp-edged, earnest or sarcastic, nurturing or solitary—we seem all to have absorbed messaging that to be that way is wrong or defective, when really none of us are. It's just different ways of being.
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2019-02-22 09:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-23 12:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-24 01:02 am (UTC)I’m just going to leave this link here (goes to a post on my tumblr)
Edit: gah, html fail, and I’m on mobile, so the fix isn’t working. link text: virtual-particle.tumblr.com/post/182994569167
no subject
Date: 2019-02-26 04:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-27 09:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-28 12:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-01 11:46 pm (UTC)I tend to think of tenderness and softness filtered through the lens of hurt/comfort (particularly in fandom contexts, where tropes are never far from my mind). My liking for it is situationally dependent. As manifestation of love and caring? That gets me hard - I grew up in a household where soft and tender expressions of love were pretty much completely absent, largely for cultural reasons, and you dealt with hurt by keeping it to yourself, repressing it, and turning it inwards. And I still do it out of long habit. So experiencing comforting tenderness IRL or vicariously in fiction is like dripping drops of water onto something shriveled up inside me.
I’d speculate that’s where a lot of the “smol gay pastel beans” is coming from - people who have experienced a lot of hurt due to XYZ marginalization and so really crave the comfort half of the h/c equation, whether it’s for themselves or their favorite characters. Of course, people being people, and subcultures being subcultures, everything under the sun gets Flanderized into insufferability. But that’s not a problem inherent to softness and tenderness.
So maybe we should be talking about all these nouns and adjectives as verbs instead? Tender actions rather than tenderness? Tools to be applied according to the situation, rather than a state of being?
no subject
Date: 2019-03-01 11:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2019-03-04 02:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-05 12:53 am (UTC)