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Feed the Monster (continued)

AJ, my non-binary progeny, has had what you might call “difficulties” coming to terms with being a boy trapped in a girl’s body and has written about that on this blog. (“Toy Retreat,” October 8, 2021; “Dinner With Mom and Dad,” December 20, 2021; “Clothes Make the Man-Child,” January 14, 2022; and “Non-Binary Tennis,” August 31, 2022.) Today AJ continues to guest blog about perhaps the most difficult part of that journey–his struggle with body image, food, and the lapse in mental and physical health that made it clear that some critical life decisions were necessary. Here is the second part of AJ’s essay: 

I’m on a mission to lose the pounds that have produced this highly unwelcome feminine body. Excessive Exercising on an Elliptical (E had become the letter of the month…so Sesame Street), but I was making sure that my daily intake of calories was far less than the ones used to exercise. The Evil Elliptical had a calorie counter that I kept at a constant display. (Watts, who cares? Distance…mildly interesting. Nah, calories expended was where it was at). I wasn’t trying to get fit; I was only trying to shed flab. Another fun obsession was that I would check the calorie labels on foods, do some math (then redo it correctly), and ensure that I didn’t eat more than I would expend in a day.

Unsurprisingly, I became obsessed with calculating calories. I was a label looker and Googler of all foods and their nutrition vs. calorie payout. I collected nutrition label information like baseball stats. I watched predominantly all food shows, which was easy thanks to the Food Network, Travel Channel, and Cooking Channel. Food blogs were also a key escape and a form of foodie voyeurism…come on now, they call it food porn for a reason! And I was a dirty dirty viewer and drooler. I could literally be watching Hungry Girl, Lisa Lillien, while being on my iPad looking at local restaurant dishes on Yelp or looking at one of the many junk food, or cooking, or rating and tasting food blogs on my iPad. Food porn for the win.

Back to reality, I had a small stock of food left in my cabinets, but I managed to finish that off quickly, so I could start with a clean slate. My fridge became pretty much barren except for milk, condiments, and carrots—bonus: it was nice and tidy and just the way I liked it.

At the beginning of this “diet” I still had my wits about me, and I was intent on taking control. I also sought serious punishment: Punishment for my past bad eating behavior; punishment for spending too much money; punishment for being in a woman’s body; punishment for my mind telling me I should be a man. I sought that serious punishment by walking hours a day and ellipticalling (sure, that’s a verb now) away as many calories as I could. Working out had the double bonus of being robotic and zombie-like while also being painful…everything I could want.

I was feeling in control-ish, so I ventured back to the grocery store to buy some non-coffee related items. I went with the directive in mind to buy the “healthiest”—and cheapest—food I could find. “Healthy” meant low-cost, low-calorie, non-processed, non-fat, low-sodium, ready-to-eat foods. What does that equal? Canned vegetables. I had an affinity for cans because of their handy, portion-controlled rations and tidy uniform containers. Admittedly, they were a splurge. Canned foods were more costly than a giant sack of dry rice and beans, but they were so user-friendly and stacked so neatly (labels facing out…labels always facing out; OCD; OCD; OCD!). Frozen veggies were probably cheaper, but they were not portion controlled, and required preparation. Yes, dear reader, defrosting is preparation. No, I wouldn’t heat them on the stove or even microwave them. Yes, I’d merely set them in the fridge the night before like thawing meat, or leave them out on my counter all day so they would defrost to room temp. No, I didn’t want them hot; I actually like room temperature foods. Canned food fit the bill in all categories.

Eating at work was an issue. I figured I couldn’t just eat stuff out of a can for lunch without looking like a super weirdo sociopath. I did have some caloric leeway for lunch because it was the middle of the day, so I’d have plenty of opportunity to burn those calories away after work. I had to eat (dang it) and I was getting progressively hungrier watching coworkers go out and buy yummy food and then smelling it all around me. At first I let my wallet dictate my path and sought out the cheapest food that I could buy for the week—like 5-pound bags of tomatoes that I could store in the fridge at work and eat with mustard throughout the week. I don’t know why I thought that looked “normal.”  Somehow eating fresh produce was less embarrassing than eating canned stuff. Apples continued to be consumed for snacks. When tomatoes were unattainable, I pre-cooked kabocha squashes or sweet potatoes (both of which I could buy in bulk) and portioned those out for the week.

My plan was working! Those excess pounds started to melt away. My clothing fit differently, and I felt in control of my body and my life…slightly.

I liked the direction I was going, so I upped the ante and worked out every free moment I could. I wanted to look like Brad Pitt in Fight Club, I just didn’t know how to accomplish that in a healthy way, so I went with my own version. I was aware that a woman my size and age required a basic 1,600 calorie diet to maintain organ operation and all those basic life activities like working, typing, talking, walking, and going to the bathroom. 1,600 seemed like a pretty high number to me so I took my intake down to 1,400 and then 1,200. These numbers still seemed high to me, so I took it down to 1,000. On my 1,000 calories-per-day diet, I spent at least 500 calories walking, another 300 ellipticalling, God knows how many doing pushups.

I never didn’t eat for a day. I knew fasting was a “bad” thing and would eventually kill my metabolism, and I didn’t want to be “unhealthy.” I never considered that I was moving myself into the realm of anorexia because I was always eating something, and anorexics didn’t eat anything, right?

I soon came to the realization that the only path to truly not eating was to not buy food with the intent to not eat it (triple negative word score!). Deeper down the rabbit hole I went. Pretty soon 1,000 calories a day sounded like a lot. I mean, 1,000, that’s a big number! I was still functioning, wasn’t I? So obviously I could function on fewer calories. My figure was responding nicely. I was getting my androgynous body back, but I still had my infernal breasts and tummy pouch. Needed to cut more calories.

By now my caloric intake had decreased to maybe 800 calories at best and I was in the beginning stages of starvation mode. My body began to fight back; I was really hungry! There’s a cure for that. It’s called binge eating. I started binging on “healthy” things like jars of tomato sauce or 32 oz. tubs of Greek yogurt—non-fat, of course. Anytime I got food near me, I would snarf it down like a desperate dog or a top of the line Dyson vacuum cleaner. I tried to play coy, but I was just plain friggin’ hungry. I once demolished a block of uncooked tofu standing in the kitchen, pouring soy sauce over it so that I could pretend it was sushi. Clearly, I was turning to the dark side. Only it wasn’t yet clear to me.

(Continued October 14)

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Feed the Monster

As you may know from his guest blogs, AJ has had what you might call “difficulties” coming to terms with being a boy trapped in a girl’s body. (“Toy Retreat,” October 8, 2021; “Dinner with Mom and Dad,” December 20, 2021; “Clothes Make the Man-Child,” January 14, 2022; and “Non-Binary Tennis,” August 31, 2022.) The following five guest blogs recount perhaps the most difficult part of that journey–his struggle with body image, food, and the lapse in mental and physical health that made it clear that some critical life decisions were necessary. Here is AJ: 

My eating disorders began as a child. I was always an emotional eater and lived out my hedonism via Hostess and Hershey’s and all that good stuff. I’d always eat as many cookies as the parents would allow and drank orange juice (aka, “healthy soda”) by the gallons as well as soda soda whenever I could get my grubby paws on it. Food was one of the places I could get a hit of tasty dopamine and lose myself at the same time. It was sublime to come home after school with a big bag from the bodega of a mix of sweet and savories. Junk food was a friend. I guess I had a killer metabolism at the time and was also, ahem obliged, to play tennis all the time so my activity battled all those snackies. Another metabolism booster was that I picked up the lovely habit of smoking cigarettes somewhere along the way as a teen. Ahhh, another oral fixation to take me away and out of myself. Sorry, I’m not advocating smoking but oh man, it was disgustingly amazing.

But then, as much of the population, I was dropped off at college…and LEFT! Among the very first things that first-year students are required to figure out—besides where the bathrooms are—is how they are going to handle their new independence when it comes to eating and drinking behaviors. I am now a strong advocate for requiring all entering students to take Nutrition and Eating for Oneself 101. (Oh, and also, Financial Literacy 101 in which one would learn all about money management.) It’s so easy and tempting to lose control with Frito-Lay and Froot Loops around. Realization that one no longer has to eat what they don’t want to eat is revolutionary, and potentially belt-loosening or gut-busting. Moreover, vending machines and 7-Elevens present new collegians with cornucopias of “food” laden with fat, salt, and sugar and processed beyond recognition. Also, beers can be chugged ad nauseum (literally).

I, however, being a nervous wreck, ended up taking the opposite route. I still had the palate of a little kid and wanted hamburgers with fries and broccoli all the time (at least the broccoli was healthy). Sauces that weren’t fire engine red like ketchup or Prego were to be feared. I wasn’t eager to experiment with food when it was presented. Alternate versions, unfamiliar offerings, or unidentifiable foods weren’t appetizing. At this New England school, for example, there was a lot of mystery fish. I had eaten fish sticks and canned tuna fish in my previous life but that was it (not even the Fillet-O-Fish sandwich at McDonalds…not that that doesn’t count as mystery fish). Here, on the other hand, was a fish called “scrod.” Surely that was a joke. What kind of stupid fish, or stupid anything, is named “scrod”? In any event, I was overwhelmed trying to remember how to get to class and where to go to the bathroom at any given moment. So, naturally enough, I stopped eating regularly-scheduled meals.

I wasn’t playing tennis multiple times a week; I wasn’t walking around Brooklyn; I wasn’t doing anything to keep my muscles intact, so they atrophied. It was a slow process that I didn’t even notice because I didn’t know atrophy was a thing! I always had a pretty static body comp so why would it ever change? I also didn’t like to think or look at my body because as a transgender person, I HATED my body and never wanted to think or deal with it. So, I just went on smoking and drinking Coke, which, along with ramen noodles and potato chips, had become my main source of nutrition (I use the term loosely). You’d think I would have learned that basic nutrition needed attention…eventually I did when I got so unhealthy I literally got sick. Yup, I got mononucleosis and not the fun kissing kind; just the lacking nutrition kind, sigh.

Years pass.

I have graduated. I’m technically an adult. I’m working. I’m living alone, but I am trying hard to become a social being…you know, going out with friends and exploring life a bit. But my relationship with food continued to be a ticking time bomb. Restaurant food always meant larger portions, alcohol, and fried things. And at home, well, I never ate an organized plate of food, only a mishmash of whatever I had around, standing up in the kitchen, arms flailing toward a cabinet or the fridge door and back again grabbing for more and only stopping when I was beyond full and tired of eating. I might go to the trouble to cook chicken or tilapia (surprisingly healthy lean proteins)—while intermittently grazing on other items—pour ketchup on the protein, eat it and then do the process all over again because I wanted more, more, more even though I didn’t even think, know, or care if I was hungry.  Veggies were scarce and fruit was nonexistent. As they tend to do, all those calories added up, especially since everything seemed to end up doused in ketchup.

Not surprisingly, due to my Henry VIII-ian ways in food consumption, I easily packed on an additional 20 pounds. This was not good. Looking at the reflection of myself in my now too-tight clothes was not a pretty sight. And I say “pretty” because the snugness of the clothes made me more identifiable as a woman with curves and soft spots. My one body blessing had been that I didn’t have a womanly woman figure; I was not curvaceous nor endowed with a big chest. My hips weren’t noticeable, and my waist was relatively straight up and down like a guy’s. But with this added weight my womanly figure started to make herself known. Let’s face it: I was a plump, chonky female…my inner-dude was weeping. I had always liked being lean and looking as physically male as possible, but all of a sudden, I was looking doughy, soft, and…feminine.

When finally even a doctor said that my cholesterol was high and that I was not all that fit, it seemed time to stop wallowing in misery, candy, and ketchup and to take control of myself. The second ginormous shock came on the day I went down into plank position to do a pushup. I went down but couldn’t come back up no matter how I struggled. I had never not been able to do a pushup, and being able to do them always signaled self-sufficiency and masculinity to me. Men were expected to be able to do pushups, even if women were not. That I had grown too heavy and/or had become too weak to accomplish a single pushup was a blow to my masculine ego. To find that I couldn’t lift my weight off the floor made me feel like a floppy, flabby seal.

This new feminine look was simply not me. I needed my boyish figure back!

In Sesame Street-ese, my letter for the year became E. E as in “Eating” and E as in “Exercising.” In my mind now Eating was to be forever deemed E as in “Evil.” And Exercising became E as in “Extreme.” All effort went into exercise in order to mold, erase, and punish my body. Given my personality, it wasn’t hard for me to overdo it. I stopped going out with friends, and instead came home every evening after work to exercise. Not being able to do that single pushup had been emotionally distressing. But now I had a physical challenge and a goal to reach. I felt purposeful and less lost. It took quite a while for me to again be able to do a full plank pushup, but the build-up process was wonderfully satisfying. I incrementally increased the goal: do 5; now do 10; ok, do 15; 20; now do 2 sets of 20.

As exercising ramped up, eating had to be curtailed. I didn’t want to feed the hedonist anymore. She had been eating too much dough and spending too much of it, too. I wanted to put a stop to my self-indulgent eating and spending habits. Such hedonistic behavior needed to be punished. Nothing good had come of it. Pretty soon my obsession with [not] eating and [not] spending money joined my obsession with working out. So I started punishing myself on an extreme dieting and budgeting bender while working out incessantly. I was putting my life in order. Yeah, right.

Continued October 12)

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The Lost Trip

An autumn trip to upstate New York has much to offer. The drive north through the central part of the state goes through lovely country of welcoming rises affording broad vistas. The farms look prosperous with well-painted red barns offset by what are now the tawniness of fallow fields satisfyingly spent from the summer’s efforts. The fields are now highlighted with the yellows of goldenrod. You pass Indian lands with casinos and cheap smokes to find forests with tall pines spreading their green. But, of course, you want to see the maples and elms, the ashes and horse chestnuts. The colors become more vibrant the further north you go.

As you approach Canada, the late afternoon is not cold but crisp, and a deep breath opens the nasal passages to new smells. It all calls out for hot, spiced apple cider, and that can be found in abundance. Upstate New Yorkers have been known as apple knockers. Perhaps that was meant to be derogatory, but it should convey that upstate New York is a wonderful place for apples of dozens of varieties. No one should spend an autumn without the exhilaration of crunching into a crisp apple. And, of course, although it may be good all year round, an apple crisp for dinner’s desert with local ice cream (for there are many dairy farms in upstate New York) is almost required during the fall. And, for breakfast, go for warm apple pie with a wedge of sharp cheddar. Maybe not every day of your life, but at least once each year in upstate New York.

And then there is the town that is the destination. It has an uncrowded wonderful museum showing how photography transformed the world and its art. Another museum allows for thoughts about how play and amusements have changed as toys have evolved. You learn more about some nineteenth century Americans who lived in the town and made this a better America, and you wonder if there is still time for you to leave more of a legacy.

You stay at a historic inn and meet interesting people who are as eager as you are to see the fall colors. You eat breakfasts of innovative dishes there but eat dinner in the former railroad station that now houses an award-winning barbecue restaurant.

These were just some of things I planned to write about after our planned trip upstate this week. But instead, I got Covid—feeling better, thank you for asking, but still some lingering effects—and we did not make the journey.

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He Is a Tool

Driving back from a funeral, the spouse spotted a flatbed moving a forklift-type device bearing the logo “mytoolsrental.com.” She said that sounded like a gay prostitute. She, of course, was not thinking of a conventional definition of “tool” but its slang as synonym for the male sexual organ. Her comment made me think about the many terms for “penis” but also how often that slang has been turned into a derogation. He is a “tool” or a “dick.” Some such terms seem to have lost their origins as a genital description and live on only as deprecatory or belittling terms—think “dork” or maybe even “prick.”

I can’t document this, but men most likely originated the slang words for penis, as they probably also did for the many terms for the female genitalia. However, men of a certain sort were also the ones who expanded sexual slang into words of derogation. I wondered why the testosterone-fueled who might brag about their sexual prowess and organs would turn terms for their proudly possessed penis into something that was meant to be an insulting description.

The spouse responded that not all penis equivalents are used to demean and cited “willy,” which always seems slightly humorous. I then thought of the neutral-sounding “Johnson,” and cock sometimes seems to be a praiseworthy term. And surely there must be others that aren’t derogatory. (Surely you, too, have such meaningful conversations with your partner.)

At first I thought, a comparable female term to the male ones is “cunt.” She has a cunt, or she is a cunt. But “cunt” is always harsher than the male terms. “He is a dick” is not a compliment, but it is only slightly risqué in my polite circles where “She is a cunt” is strictly off limits. “He is a prick” refers to behavior. “She is a cunt” might be triggered by behavior, but it is not simply describing conduct. It is misogynistic. “You’re a cunt” seems to be saying “You are only a cunt. You are only a woman and women are only cunts.” It tries to reduce a woman from a person to her sexual organ, and that organ, that woman, is only for fucking.  

There are, of course, perhaps as many terms for female genitalia as for male ones, but perhaps the only other one that has become a derogation is “pussy.” While the derogatory “cunt” is just used for women, the “pussy” is invariably used to describe a man meaning he has some stereotypical female characteristics, such as lacking daring. If a male term is applied to a woman—she is a “dick” or “prick”—it does not so much imply some stereotypical male characteristic as it unsexes the woman and means she has the nongendered characteristics of a jerk.

And I can’t help but feel that men have transformed the slang terms for their sexual organ into derogations out of a certain insecurity, knowing that somehow a penis, perhaps especially an erect one, is always somehow ridiculous and vulnerable. (“Boner,” I almost forgot “boner.” It, of course, is an erection, but it is also a blunder, a giant mistake. Perhaps the second comes from the first. I have been told that young males sometimes have gotten a boner at an inopportune time—during a school assembly, a glimpse of a friend’s mother’s breast, etc. In other words, the boner was a boner. On the other hand, a bone-headed person makes boners. I think I need a linquist.)

I would like to draw some deep meaning from these ramblings, but I don’t have one.

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Snippets

The baseball game was on a streaming service. When I muted the sound to read, closed captioning came on. I assume that the captions were not entirely accurate, or the commentary was unusual. One time when I looked up from my book, I found out that the Yankees were playing the “Baltimore Oreos” and another time a player struck out with a “swing animist.

The main point to watching the Yankees right now is Aaron Judge. Each time he comes to bat, I wonder what his birth mother is thinking.

I don’t know the couple, but from public presentations they look happy. There are pictures of them looking tenderly and smiling at each other and laughing together. No one seems to doubt their marital devotion, and perhaps more wives could learn from this marriage. Wives should never, ever, ever burden their husbands with the stuff that is truly important to them. Keep it to yourself and don’t share. And husbands—and I suspect this will be easier for many of us—should never, ever pry into what our wives consider important. Apparently, this has worked for Ginni and Clarence Thomas.

Whenever there is an evacuation order because of a predicted natural disaster, some people don’t leave. Who are they? Are they just a random collection of the affected people? Or do they tend to share certain demographic characteristics? If so, what are they? And is more effort and money spent helping these people on average after the event compared to those who evacuated? Do we ever try to collect that difference from them?

Hurricane Ian should produce self-reflection, but I doubt Ron DeSantis does much of that. He has been quite strong in stating that the current federal administration from the President on down comprise incompetent socialists. Even so, the man came hat in hand–close to groveling–asking for federal assistance for Florida. He was met with words of graciousness: This is America, and this is what Americans do: help each other. Did DeSantis blush? I didn’t see it, did you? He should have. A decade ago when new to Congress he voted against aid to victims of Hurricane Sandy. He had “principled reasons,” which few ever thought were sincere. It was a political stunt to appeal to supporters who were happy to stick it to the liberal Northeast. Those “principled reasons” are not mentioned by DeSantis now as he begs for federal aid. The virtue of DeSantis is flexible, as flexible as . . . . What simile do you have? I’ll try one. His virtue is as flexible as that of Brett Favre’s.

Brett Favre might have been the poster child for the Mississippi scandal, but clearly there is corruption there that goes beyond one ex-football player. Case in point is the shocking water problem in Jackson, which gets reported as a problem separate from the use of welfare money for volleyball courts. But they are both examples of the same broken system that is Mississippi. There are reasons why it is so poor. I have a car old enough to have an outmoded sound system with a CD player. My collection of discs has been sitting untouched on shelves for years, and I thought I would listen to them again while driving. I grabbed four or five, and by happenstance found myself listening to Nina Simone singing her famous song from years ago, Mississippi goddam. I recommend it.

I was told this was a state motto of Alabama: Thank God for Mississippi.

Brett Favre has said that he thought that he had suffered three concussions in his pro football career, which ended in 2010. He counted three because he had been knocked unconscious three times. (Gosh. How many times have you been rendered unconscious by your work?) Since then, he has learned more about concussions, and has realized that every time he saw stars or heard ringing in his ears, he probably had a concussion. By those standards, he had “thousands” of concussions. He has talked, quite touchingly, about not remembering part of the childhood of his oldest daughter and that he does not remember at all her playing soccer. (Hence his eagerness to build a volleyball court in her honor?) Perhaps these are extenuating circumstances for Favre (well, no, they’re not), but I doubt that Ron DeSantis has similar extenuating circumstances for his flexible virtues. Instead, he is like a pocket left after floodwaters recede, scum.

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Snippets

It was an incongruous sight: A Bentley convertible in a Walmart parking lot.

I was used to the ratings warnings on streaming shows but was surprised when I saw for the first time in addition to the usual Language, Violence, Sexual Situations, and Nudity, the inclusion of Smoking. I am wondering if someday the caution notice will also include Fast Food.

I was telling my friend about the live music I had heard at a jazz venue and said that one of the good things about the room is that people came to hear the performers and were respectfully quiet during the performance. He told me that had not been the case for him a while back when he went to a famous cabaret to hear Jack Jones. And I said to him, “Jack Jones! You are old.” However, I understood his reference. The next time we lunch, I expect him to tell me about Jerry Vale, but I won’t believe him if he tells me about seeing Russ Columbo.

“I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman and that’s how God created it.” Many conservatives against same sex marriages have been saying something similar to that pronouncement, but they leave out any Bible references that condemn divorce. We do know that the chief pretender to conservatism has been divorced more than once and is an adulterer. How many other conservatives have been divorced? How many of these religious conservatives would overturn our divorce laws?

There are many times that I want to say to someone, “I bow to your superior sciolism.” But what’s the point?

I have been “authoritatively” told by several friends that those who run our weekly farmers market can’t be Amish because they come in the produce-carrying truck driven by a non-Amish person. Perhaps, these “knowledgeable” people continue, they are Mennonites but definitely not Amish because Amish can’t ride in a motor vehicle. I told my Amish friend Amos who helps run the market about these conversations. For one of the few times since I have met him, he was speechless with open-mouthed bewilderment. I said, “I don’t know much about you guys, but many know even less.” He nodded

I asked when he rode in the truck whether he listened to the radio. Amos said that they were not supposed to, but then he paused, smiled, and said, “We leave it up to the driver.” I asked if he plugged his ears if the radio played, and Annie, his sister, laughed.

Annie is getting married in a month. I found out that my local drug store did not have many appropriate cards for an Amish bride.

A cultural anthropologist told me that at a funeral in some countries the mourners want to know what the deceased had done; in others, how they did it. In America, they want to know how much money was left to the heirs.

I have been worrying recently that if I go to hell, I will have to hear eternally a high school marching band playing a Captain and Tennille song, or even worse, Kars for Kids.

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Culture Wars

The scope and intensity of our present culture wars may seem unprecedented, but there have also been discussions of how today’s turbulences compare with those of 1968. I understand the urge to do that, but the earlier time is often brought up in a nonsensical, competitive way—was 1968 worse than today? I, too, have indulged in such discussions, but what is the point of old folks telling younger ones that it was worse or better a half century ago? The words of Alexander Pope should come to mind: “Some old men by continually praising the time of their youth would almost persuade us that there were no fools in those days; but unluckily they are left themselves for examples.”

On the other hand, we should examine the past to learn from it. The adage that unless we learn from history, we are condemned to repeat it is, of course, false. History is not a cycle or circle. It is a continuum. Today was not created this morning; the world did not begin with the sunrise.  The seeds of the present were planted in the past, and an understanding of history helps us understand today. Certainly, many of the present battle zones are just further representations of themes of our history.

One fierce area of contention today is over sexuality. The battle may seem narrow concentrating on the transgender and same sex relationships, but U.S. history is replete with attempts to control sexuality. We have had laws that made fornication, adultery, and sodomy criminal. We have had laws restricting birth control. We have had dress codes, which, of course, were also aimed at restricting sexuality. We have had battles over sex education. And, I am sure, that you can think of other examples that were aimed at sexual impulses and identities. It may be the land of the free, but it has also been the land where some have always wanted to impose their sexual views on others.

Issues about race today may seem to center on the often-undefined Critical Race Theory, but one needs only a little familiarity with our national background to know that issues of race were with us when the country was founded and have been a central focus throughout our history. Pick any historical era, and you will find that concern about race was a driver of what was happening. The Civil War was about race, but only because of what happened before. The Civil Rights Era was about race, but only because of what happened before. The effort to stem Critical Race Theory is about race, but only because of what happened before.

Race has also been a component of immigration battles throughout our history. Our first naturalization law, — in effect for over a century — allowed only whites to be naturalized. This led to tortured Supreme Court decisions as to whether a Syrian or a Sikh was white. Our laws at one time banned Chinese workers from the country (and states forbade Asians from owning property.) Our restrictive immigration laws of the 1920s came in response to waves of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe and others from Southern Europe because these people were not seen as really white (leading to the oft-repeated, only half-joking question, Are Italians white?)

The concern over immigrants, however, is also part of another theme of our history, an American concern and fear about the foreign “other.” From the country’s inception, there were strong anti-Irish sentiments that intensified after England’s heartless responses to the potato famine brought waves of Irish immigrants. As Catholics, they could not be American, or so thought many, under the theory that they owed allegiance to a foreign potentate, the Pope.

After the Civil War, the fear of the foreign other shifted. With accelerating industrialization came increased labor strife. Instead of examining the complaints about corporate or monopolistic practices, the owners and government officials dismissed labor leaders as foreign-born or under the sway of the foreign, un-American ideology of anarchism. The country saw something similar as it countered opposition to World War I. Fear of “foreign” ideologies intensified after World War II. Reformers of all sorts were labeled as communists or socialists. These were “foreign” ideas, after all, and those advocating for changes they thought could produce a better society must be under the influence of Russia and, later, China. Adopting a more current term, these reformers needed to be “cancelled.” 

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union came the realization that there was no meaningful foreign-inspired radical movement in the country. For the first time in well over a century we did not have a foreign “other” to fuel cries for patriotic Americanism. But then 9/11 came to ramp it up again, this time focusing on Moslems. The current immigration fears of Mexican rapists, immigrant welfare recipients, and Venezuelan communists have their historical roots in a long, unsavory American history.

We have more positive themes in our history and society, but sex, race, and the foreign “other” have been dominant ones that continue in all sorts of ways. Conservatives still respond to proposals for government actions with the cry of socialism because socialism, somehow, always smacks of the foreign. That, of course, is not new. Medicare and polio vaccinations were called socialism. The environmentalist Rachel Carson was said to be inspired by the communists. Martin Luther King was following Russian orders. And now Critical Race Theory is dismissed as stemming from Marxism, even though I am quite sure that Karl, Engels, Lenin, and even Trotsky never considered CRT. Instead of debating the merits of its message, we seek to undermine it by implying that it is foreign-inspired. While these forces within of our history persist, a theme of our early history seems to have been lost. Our founding era was a product of the Enlightenment. This period was not characterized by a rigid philosophical notion or ideology. Instead, it was a way of thinking that encouraged an examination of the world with skepticism but with confidence in reason, study, and observation. Such contemplation and study was to lead to a better understanding of history, nature, and society with the core belief that things could be improved. This should be the primary goal of education, but such Enlightenment thinking seems to have abandoned us.

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Simple Solutions to a Complex Crime Problem (concluded)

Studies of the widespread use of stop and frisk in New York conclude that it did little or nothing to decrease crime. Other studies, however, have shown that the practice increased distrust of the police. That is not surprising. In 1968, the Supreme Court held in Terry v. Ohio that a stop and frisk did not violate the Constitution, but the police could only stop someone if they had reasonable suspicion to believe that the person had committed or was about to commit a crime. Almost 700,000 times in one year police in effect maintained that they had such reasonable suspicion to stop someone. It is true that some were charged with an offense as a result of the encounters, but 87% of the time no charges were lodged, and the offenses that were charged were almost always for something minor, usually for possession of a small amount of drugs, most often marijuana. Almost no one was convicted for a violent offense or even a property crime because of widespread stop and frisk. And, of course, the notion that police had a reasonable suspicion that all the people stopped had committed a crime or were about to strains credulity, to put it politely. You can’t have reasonable suspicion that someone has a spliff in the pocket merely by seeing them on the street. As a result of widespread stop and frisk, many concluded that the police were widespread liars.

Even if a person is validly stopped, the Supreme Court standards say that the police may frisk—pat down the outer clothing—only if the officer reasonably believes that the stopped person has a weapon. In my experience in defending such cases, the cop would usually say that he saw a bulge in the clothing that he believed could be a gun. If during that frisk the officer feels something like a weapon, he may then search—reach inside the clothing—for the object. Remember again that only one in a thousand times did the police find a weapon. How often, then, did an officer truly reasonably believe there was a gun? And in all the cases, the person stopped felt violated. Is anyone surprised that widespread stop and frisk produced distrust of the police?

Those who were stopped learned to distrust the police. And who were they? Out of proportion they were young, nonwhite males. Even controlling for estimates for “crime participation” by race, Blacks and Latinos were stopped more than other groups. In one year, the number of stops of 14- to 24-year-old Black men exceeded New York City’s population of young Black men. A wide swath of New Yorkers could not peacefully walk down the street without a fear that they would be physically accosted by men with badges and guns. It is not too harsh to say that New York had a modern version of an antebellum slave patrol.

And yet even though most studies of the stop-and-frisk policies of fifteen years conclude that the practice was ineffective, and even though the practice produced distrust of the police, some want it reinstituted because they fear crime has increased. They want this even though murders and shootings, already low by historical standards, have decreased recently in New York. (Or as I like to put it, murders, which increased during Trump’s presidency, have begun to decline.) As is often the case, fear triumphs over rationality.

The Supreme Court has introduced a new twist for those who want to reinstitute the discredited stop-and-frisk practices. When the policy was widespread, few people in New York could legitimately carry a concealed gun in public, because New York State had strict gun control laws. However, the Supreme Court ruled this year that those laws violated the Second Amendment. New Yorkers, so saith the Supreme Court, have a constitutional right to be armed on Broadway now, and the seizure of those few guns that police found in stop and frisks of the past cannot be so readily seized today.

New Yorkers have always had legitimate concerns about crime. But whatever that concern is or should be, simplistic solutions to crime are almost never the answer.

Posted on by rjonakait

Simple Solutions to a Complex Crime Problem (continued)

Although my New York friends who have recently brought up the topic of increased city crime do not say they, family, or friends have been recent victims of crime, I have had one tell me that he has seen brazen shoplifting in a local CVS and that police, even when in the store, have done nothing about it. Others of us have been affected by such behavior whether we have witnessed it or not because more and more goods, at least at drug stores, have been put under lock and key making shopping for some everyday items more inconvenient. Although there has always been shoplifting, we now apparently have widespread organized shoplifting, or as it is called in some circles, “organized retail theft.” In the past an individual may have boosted Crest, a Kit Kat bar, or a six pack. They may have lifted the occasional watch for later pawning. But now teams are stealing in bulk to sell in bulk, often on websites, and this, not surprisingly, has caused concern in the retail sector. The manager of an affected store hit by organized shoplifting in downtown Brooklyn said in a news story that he thought that the cause for this crime wave was New York’s recently reformed bail law, which, according to him, had allowed the release of many repeat offenders.

The manager’s statement illustrates our desire for simple answers to increased crime. However, it is perhaps impossible to explain with certitude why criminal rates fluctuate. Organized shoplifting is not just a New York City problem. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently said, “Organized retail theft rates have spiked significantly in the past year, affecting communities across the nation.” The Buy Safe America Coalition says organized retail crime has hit hardest in places other than New York, listing Pennsylvania, Washington, California, Hawaii, Tennessee, Delaware, Maine, Florida, Missouri, and Kansas. The cause of the shoplifting in these states is unlikely to be New York’s reformed bail laws. The widespread practice indicates that New York’s problem is part of a larger problem that stems from causes other than a change in New York legislation.

When my friend first told me about the drugstore shoplifting and the police inaction, he ascribed the cause to the defund-the-police movement. But that rallying cry got little traction in New York City and seems to have had no effect on the police budget. Even so, the organized shoplifting has continued. My friend no longer blamed that shoplifting on the defund movement. A simple supposed cause of increased crime seldom stands up to scrutiny.

Statistics, however, show that overall crime rates have increased in New York. Several friends have maintained that New York City’s abandonment of the stop- and-frisk policies is the reason. The goal of stop and frisk was to question people on the streets who were suspected of crimes and then confiscate the illegal guns they were carrying. This seemed logical. Fewer weapons on the street would lead inevitably to fewer violent crimes. If you sent those violent criminals to jail, then there would be fewer criminals on the street and therefore fewer crimes. Simple cause and effect, right?

Although the use of the police tactic had been increasing before, under Mayor Michael Bloomberg stop and frisk soared at the beginning of this century, and crime, including violent crime, declined. Working just like it was supposed to, right? Many people thought so then, and many continue to think so. However, the widespread use of stop and frisk ended with the Bloomberg mayoralty. The stops plummeted from almost 700,000 a year to fewer than 12,000 a few years later. And the crime rate? It continued to decline. Six years after the end of widespread stop and frisk, the murder rate in New York City was the lowest it had been in seventy years. So crime fell when stops increased and crime fell when stops decreased. That “obvious” cause and effect between widespread stop and frisk and lower crime rates turned out not to be so obvious.

Criminologists have conducted more sophisticated studies and analyses of stop and frisk instead of just looking at these gross numbers. Most found no effect on reduced crime rates, while a few studies found a modest crime reduction–modest to the tune of a fraction of a percent. These results are not particularly surprising in light of the fact that the stops did not remove many guns from the streets, the stated rationale for stop and frisk. A gun was found in about one in a thousand encounters. Five times as many illegal weapons were found through traditional policing, which declined when police were focusing on stop and frisk.

Mayor Bloomberg reported that the absence of recovered guns showed the policy worked. Because of stop and frisk, he said, New York criminals learned not to carry guns on the street. So, let’s see: If a lot of weapons had been seized, it would show that the police practice worked. If only a few weapons were seized, it showed that the police practice worked. Hmmmm.

(concluded September 26)

Posted on by rjonakait

Simple Solutions to a Complex Crime Problem

My dinner companion asked me how I felt about crime in New York City, a topic that comes up more often these days not only among New Yorkers but also from others when they learn I live in Brooklyn. The question usually implies that New York crime is rampant, and the city is dangerously unsafe.

I want to reply, “Of course, crime is prevalent in New York; we have all these people working in the financial industries.” But, of course, that’s not the kind of crime they are talking about. They are speaking of the kinds of crimes that are committed on the streets that aren’t Wall Street.

When a non-New Yorker makes comments about the city’s crime, I assume I am talking with a person who watches a lot of Fox News, but I know that that is not true for my crime-commenting NYC friends, who certainly are not conservative. I ask my fellow residents whether they or family members or even acquaintances have been recent crime victims, and uniformly the answer has been no. I remember a time some years ago when that same question would have produced recitals of victimhood.

Even though untouched personally by crime, many of my friends know people or are among those people who won’t ride the subways because of perceived rampant crime. And this highlights some of the special relationship between crime and New Yorkers. I have friends who choose other means of transportation over the subway, but I also know people who will not enter the trains under any circumstances. Period. It’s true: if you ride the subways enough, you will see untoward things. True now. True always. Have the bad incidents increased dramatically? I don’t know but not in my personal experience. A friend who recently gave up the subways did it at a time that transit officials maintained that crime had not increased on the trains. But it was also at a time when local news outlets increasingly reported subway crimes. It certainly seemed that danger had increased on the trains, whether it had or not. Think, though. If you are or have been a commuter or an otherwise regular user of a car, how often during the last several months, did the news media report about a serious accident on your network of roads? How often did you witness or were told about a dangerous incident—a car suddenly cutting in front of another one to make an exit or weaving about or tailgating or driving too fast? My guess is that scary road incidents in Atlanta and Dallas and many other places far exceed the dangerous incidents on the New York subway. Someone can check this out for me, but I believe that more people are killed and hurt in car accidents in this country than they are in crimes. Few people, however, decide not to drive because of highway violence even though they are much more likely to die or be injured that way than a New Yorker is by a subway or street crime. I am not immune to these patterns. Like most of us, I am not good at assessing risk. Even though I intellectually know that if I die or am hurt violently, it is more likely to be on my drive to Pennsylvania than on the subway, the report of a subway crime makes me feel more vulnerable and concerned for my safety than seeing the remains of a car crash on Route 280.   

There is, of course, crime in New York City that causes concerns and perhaps it has increased recently, but statistics show that the New York crime rate is lower than in other major cities and much lower than it was a generation ago. However New Yorkers, regular Americans, and news media don’t talk about other cities as much as they do about New York. A lot of weird and bad things can, and perhaps generally do, happen each week in New York, but I wonder if we collected all the similar news from places with a comparable population, whether we would find nearly as many weird and frightening things. For example, if each week you heard all that kind of news from all parts of Wisconsin, would you feel that Wisconsin is a dangerous place to live? The local paper from my birthplace reported that there was a shooting this last week in Sheboygan, which contains a tiny fraction of the state’s population. How many similar violent episodes were there in the entire state, and how would that compare to New York? I saw a report recently that there had been two mass shootings this year in New York City (population 8.4 million). Bad, yes. However, Wisconsin (population 5.9 million) had six; Colorado (6.0 million) had five; and Louisiana (4.6 million) had nine. But because one of the mass shootings in New York occurred on a subway in Brooklyn, it got national coverage. Most mass shootings don’t even make more than the local news these days.

Even with these statistics, we don’t tend to ask whether Wisconsin is dangerous and crime ridden. We might ask that about specific places in the state, but the state covers too much territory to think about it in those terms. The Janesville resident is unlikely to be concerned about a shooting in Wausau or Rhinelander. It may be surprising to you that the homicide rate in Florida is higher than it is in New York. But Florida encompasses many more square miles than New York City, and so you are only concerned about the small area of the state in which you live or where you visit. Similarly, a robbery or even a killing in the East Tremont section of the Bronx does not affect me. I don’t believe I have ever been there, and I can’t see how the event can make my life more dangerous. However, it will make it into the New York crime statistics, and when I see that crime is increasing in the city, it can make me feel more apprehensive even when few, if any, of the crimes truly affect me.

(continued September 23)