Life lessons from doge

Today I took my dog to the vet to be spayed, and learned a valuable life lesson about the Internet.

Most important things first: Kaori is home and running around as if absolutely nothing happened, so that's cool. She's a little mini tank, NOTHING bothers her, she's like the honey badger. 

Yeah OK we get it, I hear you saying, you think your dog is so great. Well, I'll have you know, my dog is not just great, she's the greatest. She is objectively the best dog in the world. Sorry not sorry, joking not joking. The vet thinks so too. I love my vet because he loves my dog. Mostly because she stoically ignores all injections and similar indignities rather than trying to murder him, but also because she's a seriously beautiful dog. He was telling me, when I picked her up this afternoon, that "all" (direct quote), I repeat, all the people who came in to fetch their pets from the recovery area were staring at her. Because she's the best dog in the world. All right, I'll stop bragging and get to the point. They were looking at her and saying "That's a beautiful dog... what is it?"

That's also what the vet said when he first met her. And both the vet's receptionists. And the people in the waiting room. And I'm really used to it, because wherever I go with her we get the same reaction: that's a beautiful dog. What is it? And because my dog is the best dog in the world I never get tired of saying, she's a Shiba Inu. S.H.I.B.A. New word. I.N.U. It's a Japanese breed. Inu means dog. You can just call it a shiba. No, she doesn't mind the heat at all, she has a long nose. Yes, her fur is really soft. No, it wouldn't be a good idea to shave her. I LIKE people asking the same questions and making the same comments because hey, I've got an unusual dog, I chose to get an unusual dog, I love my dog, and I enjoy talking to people about her. 

I'm really used to people asking me what she is - there have been maybe two people ever who have seen her and said "is that a Shiba Inu"? - but it was only today that it actually struck me: No one knows what she is. Not one of these people in the vet's office, at the farmer's market, in the physical world I inhabit, has come up to me and "Doge! Shibe! Shiba Inu Puppy Cam! That Jezebel article saying no one should get a Shiba ever!"

Real life is not the Internet. 

Wow  

                                such profound

     so revelation

I am being a hundred per cent serious here. What I mean is not that the human interaction that occurs on the Internet is not real - it is absolutely real. And I don't mean that my online friends aren't my real friends, they are. What I mean is that I have had it brought home to me, profoundly and through the medium of Doge, that the generalised other that I have been living with lately and which has caused me a great deal of pain, is simply not representative of the people I interact with every day (online or in the physical world). And that has made me breathe one great big sigh of relief.

The Generalised Other (also known as Everybody) is a concept that I came across reading Martha Beck. There's a decently comprehensive article on the idea here. The short version is: My - and your - idea of what "everybody" thinks (and especially what they think of us) is an artificial construct that each of us forms from the stated opinions of only a very few actual people or groups - maybe about 5 or 6. My Everybody, for the last while, has been "everybody on the Internet", which means a composite of the most vocal denizens of the corners of the Internet that I choose to frequent, and this Everybody is seriously pissed off at me. 

She doesn't like me because I'm privileged (even though she falls into exactly the same group that I do). She's an extremely accomplished scientist who thinks I'm an idiot and a bad feminist for not going into an STEM field, a loser for being an artist, and a terrible oppressor for using the word "idiot". She thinks I'm rather stupid to believe in God, though she doesn't really berate me for it too often. She does berate me for having bought a dog from a breeder, because good people only have rescue dogs. She also side-eyes me for having a Japanese breed - she thinks that might just constitute cultural appropriation although she has conceded it's a borderline case. She thinks pretty much everything else in my life constitutes cultural appropriation. She lives in America. She really, really does not like me. She thinks my very existence is illegitimate and that the world would be a lot better off if I were to simply disappear. She thinks I should probably become a vegan. She says that my friends and co-workers are figments of my imagination, I am making them up, or perhaps I have intimidated them into pretending to think I am an acceptable human being. She looks exactly like me. She sadly wonders why I do not ask every new acquaintance their preferred pronouns before entering into a conversation. She thinks that maybe it is because I just don't care. 

I care, I care so much, and that's why she lives in my head, telling me that I'm a bad, bad person. Not all the time, but some of the time, my Generalised Internet Other makes my life a misery. I know very well that her opinions are not held by the majority of actual human beings. I know that I have invented her out of a combination of what I'm afraid people are thinking of me, not what they actually think of me. 

I also know that there are real people out there who do actually subscribe to those opinions. My boss, for instance, definitely thinks I should be a vegan. My sister thinks people shouldn't keep any exotic pets, like fish, and I do. But they don't yell at me, or "call me out" or think I'm an all-round rotten human being. They're just people. We have differences of opinion, and that's OK. 

What I learned today from my dog's hysterectomy is this: No one in the vet's office knows what Doge is. My co-workers do not know that I should not be wearing the geometric pattern on my T-shirt. The people I meet at an art opening do not know that I should be asking them their preferred pronouns. My husband does not know that we should never sleep together when one of us has been drinking alcohol, even though we are married - and I'm never going to tell him, either. And if they don't know these things, they are not judging me according to them. Real life is not the Internet. 

When I walk down the road with Kaori people say 

"That's such a beautiful dog, what is it?"

They don't say 

"Doge! Shiba Inu Puppy-Cam!"

They don't say

"I read a Jezebel article saying that no one should get a Shiba"

They don't say 

"You are bad for buying and not adopting"

They don't say

"You are culturally appropriating from Japan, you are a racist"

They don't say

"I don't like you and you are a bad person"

They don't say 

"Be grateful for the callout"

I have a Shiba Inu. She's the best dog in the world. I bought her from a breeder because I wanted a Shiba Inu and not any other dog. She's a Japanese breed of dog and I named her "Kaori" which means "perfume" or "smell" in Japanese. That's funny because she looks like a fox and foxes are smelly, but I chose the name mostly because it sounds nice. I don't speak Japanese. I am not Japanese, but I have a purebred Shiba Inu named Kaori, and she is the best dog in the world, and I am not ashamed. 

Seriously.

Pictures of perfection

"...as you know," said Jane Austen, "make me sick and wicked", and I suspect that Holly Hilgenberg would agree with her. I've been thinking an awful lot lately about the recent article she wrote for Bitch magazine, entitled "Better homes and bloggers" (As well, of course, as all the comments). And a lot of those thoughts have been, I have to admit, kinda bitchy.

Disclaimer: Not everything I say here refers to Holly's article. This is a response to many, many articles and discussions of the same kind, many of which were much less balanced than hers. This one just happened to be around when I finally snapped.*

The thing is, I have a bit of a problem with criticism. And while Hilgenberg's article is directed at "lifestyle blogs", not "art blogs with occasional road signs and plants that look like illegal drugs", my problem with criticism is more all-encompassing than that.  What I mean is that I don't dislike only criticism directed at me, but any criticism. I get all antsy and defensive, like Leave Britney Alone Guy, of people I don't know, of people I don't even like.

OK, let me qualify that. Please, go ahead and criticise governments, court decisions, laws, politicians. Oh, right, politicians. They illustrate my point beautifully. Here it is: Criticise Julius Malema for his blatant opportunism and lack of any principles or sense of loyalty. For crying out loud stop going on about that woodwork thing. All that proves is that he's no Jesus, and we already knew that.  And criticise Sarah Palin for being so bloody Republican, but please leave her dress sense, family and face alone. See what I mean?** That's it, it's personal criticism that I hate. And talking about Sarah Palin's face, why is it always women we attack more often, and more personally? And by we, I mean other women. Liberal women. (Wasn't liberalism once meant to involve tolerance?) Feminist women.

That's the basic point of Hilgenberg's article: that women who write sweet, whimsical lifestyle blogs are anti-feminist. Why? Because they portray "pictures of perfection" - an old-timey, rustic type of "perfection" - that other women compare themselves to and, inevitably, come up short. Her argument, or the parts of it I took in through my defensiveness-glasses, boils down to two main points:
- Bloggers present idealised and edited versions of their lives. This makes other women feel bad about themselves.
- These bloggers are too rich, white, straight and middle-class, and they spend too much time doing crafty things at home and too little making money in offices. This promotes patriarchy as well as racism, sexism, homophobia and... classism, I suppose?

I'll come back to the first point later, but the second point is the one that bugs me, because while I agree with it on a societal level (it would be wonderful to see more blogs from people from disadvantaged backgrounds, and blogs that showcase a variety of lifestyles), it becomes problematic on an individual level. What is Jo, or Elsie or Abbey or Anja, to do about it? I once saw an astonishingly honest reply by a black (female) writer to a white (female) writer who had asked her what she, personally, could do about the fact that her voice (white, female) was overrepresented. Stop writing, said the black writer, and instead work to support writers of colour. Harsh, hurtful, honest as hell, it was her opinion and she had the courage to state it.

However, hardly any of the writers of this sort of article would be able to say the same thing, because it would make them massively hypocritical, since mostly (in line with the whole overrepresentation thing they're critiquing) they themselves are as white (straight, cis, etc) as the women they're criticising. Pointing fingers at other white (etc) women is their way of atoning for their own whiteness (etc); allowing their own voices to be valid while calling for other white (etc) voices to be silenced.

Because that's really what you're doing, when you say to anyone, however privileged and sugary, "There are too many of you, there should be fewer of you": You should either change, shut up or go away. Some things we can change - I'll get back to the charge of apparent perfection. But some we can't: I could sit in the sun every day and I wouldn't become any less white - I'd just die of skin cancer. (OK, this is where the criticism really hits home.) And that's where my mind goes when someone says there are too many of me: They want me to die. Silly, of course. Overdramatic, of course.

No one really wants me to go away, or even keep quiet for ever; they just want me to go around all day meditating on my sins privileges. But would the world really be made that much better if Jane Aldridge and Ree Drummond swapped their "lifestyle" blogging for feminist critiques of everything? Surely it's better for people to write about what they know, what they like, what they do best? Surely if someone is as incredibly privileged (and I mean that strictly descriptively, not perjoratively) as these women, it's good for them to turn that into a bit of entertainment, a bit of pleasure, for others? I'll be honest: I really enjoy reading these blogs. And I think there are other people who do too. I like looking at pretty pictures, and I don't think there can ever be too many "Instagram shots of early-morning trips to the flower market".

Ah, I think I see it! The weird subconscious reason why this particular article bothers me. It's the "Instagram", the "quirky", the "authentic", the "sewing machine tattoos" and most of all the article's illustration - she's invoking the bogey of the hipster! In almost exactly the same way as white women criticise white women for being white women, hipsters criticise hipsters for being hipsters. And the word gets ever closer to being meaningless. (I'll save that rant for another time!)

All right. Let's get back to the original point: the "pictures of perfection". Now, I don't personally have any problem with people who want to showcase only the pretty parts of their lives. I don't feel inferior when I read those blogs, and I don't resent their good fortune - mine is good enough, and we all know that no one can be untouched by tragedy; some people just choose not to blog about it. In fact it's comforting to me, when stuff isn't all that great, to retreat into the candy-floss world of bloggers who don't write about the bad things. But it seems that some people don't feel that way. They want "real", they want vicarious tragedy, they want angst. Do they really want all that with their daily dose of whimsical outfit posts? Oh well. It's easy for me: there's no way I'm going to post about my own personal issues because I'm not the only person in my life, because the innocent need to be protected. But maybe I'll have a rant now and again. Just to keep it real.

* Snooping around doing "research" for this post, I found Holly's own blogs. She has lots of serious stuff, but also clothes. And her writing is really good. And the subheader of one of her blogs is:
" independent. vintage. resale. thrifted. fashion writing ". One of us! One of us! "Hipsters", I mean. And whimsical she-bloggers.

** The exception is Hitler. You're allowed to do anything to Hitler's face and I won't bat an eyelid.