On Protest

In the middle Clinton years, I started to go out with a young man I'll call Todd. He unfortunately showed himself within a couple of months to be a self-centered boor. It seemed my romantic relationships happened with about the frequency of world wars, and I had hoped to get a bit of mileage out of this one. I hadn't wanted to see Todd's lack of respect at first, convincing myself that being stood up without notice or apology was acceptable, and that I didn't mind never being asked a personal question by a date who only wanted to talk about himself.

Of course I should have ended it. But he beat me to that punch one evening on the telephone, in a five-minute hit-run maneuver. I have not heard from him since, though in a men-seeking-women personals ad I came across after our breakup, unbelievably, he had described himself as a "very decent guy."

The relationship with Todd and the breakup had been unsatisfying, even humiliating. But, beyond that, the Todd interlude was to feel "incomplete," was to disturb me profoundly for months, for no reason I could identify. I stewed for a long time, doing nothing but writing letters I did not send and talking to girlfriends.

It dawned on me one day that my route to closure on the Todd chapter was not to be found in therapy or in the annals of self-help: I became convinced that gender politics determined my experiences with this man. I needed to wage protest.

Unlike the chronicles of many a romantic disappointment, you'd instantly guess the respective genders in the narrative of Todd and me. Todd's behavior towards me well fit the "patriarchal" model of social relations described by feminists, and poignantly acknowledged in the every-day dating-world archetype of the "doggy" man. Todd's was the gender that had traditionally held power, that wanted to retain power over women in a post-feminist era, and did this by refusing equal partnership to women in intimate relationships.

On a plain postcard, I wrote the following message to Todd:

Hey, 'very decent guy,' don't just fuck 'em and run.

I decided to mail this one, signed.

As I did so, I noted dryly that the self-help books largely fell silent where my situation was concerned, since I was not "trying to change Todd" for personal reasons. Todd and I were not on sociable terms. This was about principle.

The postcard was only a start. On its heels--don't know how I hit on the number, or on the timing--I was to write Todd forty-six more postcards, spaced over sixty days. They bore slogans like, "Show women good faith," and, "Treat women like human beings, or switch to inflatable dolls," along with quite whimsical and elaborate ballpoint cartoons.

I would not necessarily recommend anyone doing what I did. I am not sure I would do anything like it again. Confronted with a gap between how others are acting, and how one feels they should act, I believe there is often much to accomplish "working on oneself," before setting out to change others. Yet, as one individual protesting the actions of another, I believed I was waging a worthwhile personal campaign for social justice. I believe that still.

From observing a variety of activist movements, including famous ones, I've discerned several characteristics of effective protest. By "protest," broadly, I mean social dissent that opposes "the privilege of a few," or of a seeming privileged class or entity, in favor of democratic ideals of respect, human rights, and self-determination for the many. Traits of effective protest have had to do with its origins, with the stirrings in the consciences of protesters, and with the effects achieved in the world. My quirky missives to Todd, while I can't know what ultimate consequences they had--repercussions that may still be rippling outwards all these years later--had the characteristics I have noted in common with the best dissents.

I will start with a brief history.

Noteworthy social reforms instigated from the grassroots have included the abolition of slavery in America and the spread of women's suffrage in developed nations, among other examples. I reckon the American civil rights movement in the 1960s as the starting-gun of principled modern activism in the West, however, for its codification of "nonviolence." The civil-rights era reformers were the clearest yet in articulating an ethic of universal civility. To put it another way, the civil rights reformers recognized that you could despise social conditions, while not despising their perpetrators: You could hate actions without hating people. I will say more about this later.

For now, I'll say that by the 1980s, "liberal activism" was cliche, even pitiful. The era saw a sharp rise in religion and politics that touted "a return to traditional values" as the solution to social problems like poverty and violence. The era also fostered a culture of therapy and self-help, which redirected popular focus from social inequities, to personal improvement. Hence, the brilliant Saturday Night Live parody featuring the advice of a self-help maven to the persecuted Kurds. Hence, my own wry nod to self-help books as I kicked off the "Todd campaign," and the general cultural silence that surrounded my initiative.

A cause's immediacy and seeming inevitability to those promoting it, are ingredients of great social protest. I believe the tradition of "liberal protest" became as marginalized as it did in the 1980s, because the centrality of immediacy and inevitability as motivating factors was lost. Somehow, the "liberal" causes floated in the post-Reagan era were those of white middle-class do-gooders.

Often, by contrast, those who become renowned activists in great social movements have seen themselves as persons of conscience, thrust into activism by circumstance. Martin Luther summed up the inevitability of one kind of protest in his immortal 1521 statement before the Diet of Worms, "Here I stand; I can do no other."

Aside from being "trendy," a principled cause needs to matter in a down-and-dirty way to activists, as the dismantling of segregation in the Deep South mattered to blacks, and as the fair treatment of women in intimate relationships mattered to me. When I think of social protest informed by immediacy and inevitability, if humbler in scale than Martin Luther's, I think of my feminist postcard campaign and of the Ford van I once spotted in the parking lot. The vehicle had been decorated from stem to stern in fluorescent paint, as for a wedding, except that the marks detailed repairs and their dates: "8/19/94: Replaced shocks and struts." "10/11/94: New head gasket." "1/4/95: New master cylinder." Across the nose of the van was written: "FORD: Fix Or Repair Daily."

The Ford owner probably did not think of himself as an "activist," yet the spillover of his personal indignation into protest was altogether valid politically. His sentiment about his lemon, as mine about Todd's behavior, issued from a larger cultural notion of "fair play"; in his case, this was the idea that auto manufacturers should not get away with fraud, that consumers should get what they pay for. The Ford driver and I shared a sense of entitlement embedded in the still-larger "liberal" paradigm of the protection of individual rights as a moral absolute.

The next hallmark of effective protest is one I'll call "ingenious disruption," which results from a kind of focused dissent that jeopardizes a particular social injustice at its linchpin.

"Ingenious disruption" is the end achieved in the best-conceived of labor campaigns, where vulnerable persons aren't hurt, but the employer is sufficiently inconvenienced, the employer's profitability is sufficiently compromised, that management finally needs to back down and re-evaluate the demands of labor. "Ingenious disruption" has been achieved in many a "sit-in" over the years. It was achieved particularly at civil-rights era demonstrations, which obstructed day-to-day public discrimination, or "business as usual." "Ingenious disruption" was handsomely dealt by the disaffected Ford driver who decorated his vehicle with descriptions of repairs. Since Ford, as any other corporation, spends lots of money on its public image, this man was making a shrewd statement.

Speaking of "ingenious disruption," I believed, ten years ago as now, men who behave selfishly towards women, "who act like dogs," do it with self-assurance, because it their behavior is too seldom challenged.

Todd had every reason to assume he was going to be left to go about his business, hanging up after our final conversation, as you'd expect to fling something in the trash and walk away. Traditional gender role expectations entirely supported his belief, he barely thought about how he'd acted.

This one occasion, however, I did not back down from making an issue of a deeply unfair situation. Though I'm sure Todd cast my missives into the garbage the moment he spotted them, he unavoidably glimpsed words: "disrespect," "unfair," "insulting." Maybe there was flak from roommates, or from the mail carrier. As the postcards kept arriving in the mail, Todd was caused to worry, to slow down. It's telling that he made no move to stop me. While circulating handy explanations of the "crazy ex," I believe he privately started to question himself and to doubt his own motives. He was not so hardened he could make an issue of my behavior, while continuing to stonewall about his own. The seeds of change, then, were sown; "ingenious disruption" was achieved.

The last characteristic of effective protest, humor, is in many ways the most surprising. I wonder if stereotypes of "strident" and "dour" ideologues are not a commentary on protest gone awry and rendered ineffective. Humor can be impersonal, sprung from exasperation, as it was in the Ford driver's demonstration. Hilarity can also stem directly from the protesters' ethic of "nonviolence," appearing as a paradoxical lightness in the most earnest of dissents. I wasn't present when Martin Luther fixed the statements to the cathedral door; I would not question the seriousness of the gesture, but I doubt it was solemn. The sticking of daisies into gun barrels, likewise, was the expression of something basic to great dissent. Hilarity comes of hating-actions-without-hating-people: We are right. We are laughing about it, booming laughter at the creation of a just cosmos. We invite you to laugh. I have no first-hand knowledge of civil protest in grave or life-threatening situations, though I imagine a certain ebullience can prevail there, too.

My postcard with the slogan "Treat women like human beings, or switch to inflatable dolls," actually depicted a shriveled inflatable doll sex-toy, with an air nozzle like a tire's. Another postcard featured an intricate cartoon, consisting of several frames, of Todd and his mother. They were discussing my use of quotes in the postcards. The sequence of frames ends with a balloon out of her mouth saying, "Tch, no girl who compares herself to Thomas Jefferson is right in the head."

Todd could have found the courage at any time to tell me personally to cease all contact. It would have worked, since I was not out to cause pain. I wanted only to be heard.

I hope his inaction was sign my postcards inspired self-questioning, even if he didn't let on. Regardless, he had the concepts and the language to cast me to onlookers as a "stalker," my postcards as weapons to intimidate, himself as a victim. That's too bad. I wish Todd had dared look closely enough at my actions to understand, for my expressions of fury, that he had nothing to fear.

It was all there for his notice, every quality of great protest. All were my recognition of humanity in common with him.