Fear

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  were transforming it into a torture chamber. Soon they noticed former Red Rebels limping about on campus, afraid to talk to anyone. Then it was Jianhua’s turn to be taken into the room. He was blindfolded and tied to a chair in a most uncomfortable position. They wanted him to sign a withdrawal statement, and as he hesitated to do so, they began to beat him with a chair leg. Jianhua screamed, “You can’t do this to me. We’re classmates. We’re all class brothers. . . .” Little Bawang would have none of this. Jianhua had to confess his crimes, the part he had played in the various battles in town, and name names of other Red Rebels hiding somewhere on campus. The blows on his legs became more intense, and then they began to hit him over the head. Still blindfolded, he feared for his life and in a panic suddenly spilled the name of a fellow Red Rebel, Dusu. Finally they carried Jianhua, unable to walk, out of the room. He quickly felt intense regret that he had named Dusu. What a coward he had been. He tried to warn Dusu, but it was too late. The torturing of other Red Rebels continued in the room next door, including his brother Weihua, beaten to a bloody pulp. Mengzhe had his head shaved, and when they saw him next, his face was covered in the most hideous bruises. One day Jianhua was told his old friend and comrade Zongwei had been captured, and when Jianhua went to see him he was unconscious, his bare legs full of large punctures, blood oozing everywhere. They had flailed him with steel hooks for refusing to admit his crimes. How could the rather harmless Zongwei inspire such savagery? Jianhua ran to get the doctor, but when they returned it was too late: Zongwei died in his friend’s arms. The dead body was quickly carted away, and a cover story was created for how he had died. Jianhua was ordered to remain silent. A female teacher who refused to affirm in an affidavit the official East-Is-Red Corps version of his death was beaten and gang-raped by Little Bawang and his followers. In the months to come, Fangpu extended his powers everywhere, as he essentially ran the school and classes resumed. Battlefield News was the only newspaper allowed. The school itself had been renamed East-Is-Red Middle School. With the Corps’s power secure, the torture chamber was dismantled. Classes largely consisted of reciting quotes from Mao. Every morning they assembled before a giant poster of Chairman Mao and, brandishing their little red books, chanted to his long life. The East-Is-Red members began a scrupulous rewriting of the past. They held an exhibition to celebrate their victories, full of doctored photographs and fake news reports, all to bolster their side of events. An enormous statue of Chairman Mao, five times larger than life, was now installed at the school gate, towering over

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  321Lecture 32—Liberation Theologies in Latin America LATIN AMERICA AND THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT õ Protestant conservatives agreed with the future pope there. They saw liberation theology as dangerous too, for many of the same reasons. Moreover, many Latin American evangelicals had strong links to the American Christian right. Another way of putting it might be: The American Christian right liked to meddle in Latin American affairs almost as much as the U.S. government did. õ American televangelists and radio ministries have had a huge impact in Latin America. For example, Pat Robertson used his TV channel to promote the Contras, the CIA-backed force fighting the communist Sandinistas, who took power in Nicaragua in 1979. õ Latin American Protestants didn’t just fall into line behind American busybodies. And the more Latin American evangelicals learned about their North American colleagues, the more many of them realized that there were real theological differences between them. õ They generally shared a traditional view of gender roles and a commitment to anti-communism. But like many Christians in the developing world, more progressive Latin American evangelicals did not share the attitude of many Northern evangelicals that a commitment to social justice, to reforming the structural sin in society and calling on the government to help do so, makes one uncommitted to preaching the gospel. õ At an international conference of evangelicals in 1974 at Lausanne, Switzerland, evangelical leaders René Padilla (from Ecuador) and Samuel Escobar (from Peru) insisted that the conference’s official statement had to stress the church’s social responsibility. õ The prominent Argentinian evangelist Luis Palau, for his part, criticized Lausanne for being too cooperative with liberals. He preached that real social change can only come with winning more hearts for Christ, not through large-scale social reform. 322 The History of Christianity II SUGGESTED READING Gonzalez and Gonzales, Christianity in Latin America. Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation. Stoll, Is Latin America Turning Protestant? QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER ä Why were Protestant immigrants both a boon and a threat to the Catholic regimes of Latin America? ä How did Protestant and Catholic missionaries and priests respond to the challenges of evangelization among rural communities and the poor? ä Why did conservative evangelicals in the United States spend so much time and money meddling in Latin American affairs? 323 LECTURE 33 PROPHETIC RELIGION IN MODERN AFRICA T he Nigerian minister Daniel Olukoya is the head of a religious empire called Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries, which has its headquarters outside of the enormous city of Lagos. This ministry has other branches all over Nigeria and in the United States, Europe, and other African countries. Olukoya preaches a particularly potent version of the prosperity gospel. This is a form of Christianity that emphasizes an idea that appears throughout the Bible—the notion that God rewards true believers with worldly blessings and punishes those who don’t keep the faith.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  As a former trading colony, South Africa has always had a large expatriate community. People find their way here. Tons of Germans. Lots of Dutch. Hillbrow at the time was the Greenwich Village of South Africa. It was a thriving scene, cosmopolitan and liberal. There were galleries and underground theaters where artists and performers dared to speak up and criticize the government in front of integrated crowds. There were restaurants and nightclubs, a lot of them foreign-owned, that served a mixed clientele, black people who hated the status quo and white people who simply thought it ridiculous. These people would have secret get-togethers, too, usually in someone’s flat or in empty basements that had been converted into clubs. Integration by its nature was a political act, but the get-togethers themselves weren’t political at all. People would meet up and hang out, have parties. My mom threw herself into that scene. She was always out at some club, some party, dancing, meeting people. She was a regular at the Hillbrow Tower, one of the tallest buildings in Africa at that time. It had a nightclub with a rotating dance floor on the top floor. It was an exhilarating time but still dangerous. Sometimes the restaurants and clubs would get shut down, sometimes not. Sometimes the performers and patrons would get arrested, sometimes not. It was a roll of the dice. My mother never knew whom to trust, who might turn her in to the police. Neighbors would report on one another. The girlfriends of the white men in my mom’s block of flats had every reason to report a black woman—a prostitute, no doubt—living among them. And you must remember that black people worked for the government as well. As far as her white neighbors knew, my mom could have been a spy posing as a prostitute posing as a maid, sent into Hillbrow to inform on whites who were breaking the law. That’s how a police state works—everyone thinks everyone else is the police. Living alone in the city, not being trusted and not being able to trust, my mother started spending more and more time in the company of someone with whom she felt safe: the tall Swiss man down the corridor in 206. He was forty-six. She was twenty-four. He was quiet and reserved; she was wild and free. She would stop by his flat to chat; they’d go to underground get-togethers, go dancing at the nightclub with the rotating dance floor. Something clicked. I know that there was a genuine bond and a love between my parents. I saw it. But how romantic their relationship was, to what extent they were just friends, I can’t say. These are things a child doesn’t ask. All I do know is that one day she made her proposal. “I want to have a kid,” she told him. “I don’t want kids,” he said. “I didn’t ask you to have a kid.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  That’s when I made a mistake. I moved further back into the station, away from them. In doing so, I moved further from the exit or any possibility of help. Some mistakes in life are not punishable, others teach you a lesson you never forget. When I heard their footsteps growing closer, I knew better than to hide behind the pillar. It’s far worse to be caught cowering, I reached inside the bag and pulled out a small handful of elderberties. Their tart taste heightened my senses. They stained my hands with the color of battles won and lost. I set the rest of the berries down on the platform, wishing Ruth could have known I had found her elderberties in the winter in this paved city. I wanted more time with Ruth. I wished I had thanked her for breathing a little life back into me. I positioned my house keys between my fingers so that my fist bristled with coppery spikes. I was trapped between the end of the station and the three faces getting closer. They are the hunters; I am the prey. For just a moment, before it began, I cursed Ruth for making me hope again. Then I let go of everything except the moment confronting me. The leader of the pack emerged. He reached for my face. “What have we here?” he asked, almost gently. I blocked his hand with my own. He smiled. Now it had begun. My spiked fist was out of their sight. I didn’t reveal my readiness. His buddies leered and sneered. But his smile was harder to stand up to. It reminded me of a cop’s smirk, meant to force me to admit powerlessness. “What the fuck are your” he asked quietly. “T cart tell what you are. Maybe we should just find out, huh, guys?” His taunts and threats rolled off me, not because I was impervious to them, but because I was filled to overflowing. I tried not to listen. It didn’t matter what he said. It didn’t matter what I answered. All that was important was the action, the positioning of their bodies and mine, the juxtaposition of matter and space, open throats and unguarded kneecaps. At the instant the action exploded I would have a moment to strike, to change the relationship of forces. When one of their punches connected with my body, when 282 = Leslie Feinberg blood filled my eyes, when I could no longer catch a breath—I would be theirs. I braced myself against the leftover grit of elderberries between my teeth. Any moment it would erupt. Any moment.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  generally categorize them as negative and narrow or positive and expansive. Those with a negative attitude tend to operate from a basic position of fear toward life. They unconsciously want to limit what they see and experience to give them more control. Those with a positive attitude have a much less fearful approach. They are open to new experiences, ideas, and emotions. If the attitude is like our lens on the world, the negative attitude narrows the aperture of this lens, and the positive variety expands it as far as possible. We might move between these two poles, but generally we tend to see the world with a more closed or open lens. Your task as a student of human nature is twofold: First, you must become aware of your own attitude and how it slants your perceptions. It is hard to observe this in your day-to-day life because it is so close to you, but there are ways to catch glimpses of it in action. You can see it in how you judge people once they are out of your presence. Are you quick to focus on their negative qualities and bad opinions, or are you more generous and forgiving when it comes to their flaws? You will see definite signs of your attitude in how you face adversity or resistance. Are you quick to forget or gloss over any mistakes on your part? Do you instinctively blame others for any bad things that happen to you? Do you dread any kind of change? Do you tend to keep to routines and to avoid anything unexpected or unusual? Do you get your back up when someone challenges your ideas and assumptions? You will also catch signs of it in how people respond to you, particularly in a nonverbal way. Do you catch them being nervous or defensive in your presence? Do you tend to attract people who play the mother or father role in your life? Once you have a good feel for the makeup of your own attitude, its negative or positive bent, you have much greater power to alter it, to move it more in the positive direction. Second, you must not only be aware of the role of your attitude but also believe in its supreme power to alter your circumstances. You are not a pawn in a game controlled by others; you are an active player who can move the pieces at will and even rewrite the rules. View your health as largely dependent on your attitude. Feeling excited and open to adventure, you can tap into energy reserves you did not know that you had. The mind and the body are one, and your thoughts affect your physical responses. People can recover much more quickly from illness through sheer desire and willpower. You are not born with fixed intelligence and inherent limits. See your brain as a miraculous organ designed for continual learning and

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  improvement, well into old age. The rich neural connections in your brain, your creative powers, are something you develop to the degree that you open yourself up to new experiences and ideas. View problems and failures as means to learn and toughen yourself up. You can get through anything with persistence. View the way people treat you as largely flowing from your own attitude, something you can control. Do not be afraid to exaggerate the role of willpower. It is an exaggeration with a purpose. It leads to a positive self-fulfilling dynamic, and that is all you care about. See this shaping of your attitude as your most important creation in life, and never leave it to chance. The Constricted (Negative) Attitude Life is inherently chaotic and unpredictable. The human animal, however, does not react well to uncertainty. People who feel particularly weak and vulnerable tend to adopt an attitude toward life that narrows what they experience so that they can reduce the possibility of unexpected events. This negative, narrowing attitude often has its origins in early childhood. Some children have little comfort or support in facing a frightening world. They develop various psychological strategies to constrict what they have to see and experience. They build up elaborate defenses to keep out other viewpoints. They become increasingly self-absorbed. In most situations they come to expect bad things to happen, and their goals in life revolve around anticipating and neutralizing bad experiences to better control them. As they get older, this attitude becomes more entrenched and narrower, making any kind of psychological growth nearly impossible. These attitudes have a self-sabotaging dynamic. Such people make others feel the same negative emotion that dominates their attitude, which helps confirm them in their beliefs about people. They do not see the role that their own actions play, how they often are the instigators of the negative response. They only see people persecuting them, or bad luck overwhelming them. By pushing people away, they make it doubly hard to have any success in life, and in their isolation their attitude gets worse. They are caught in a vicious cycle. The following are the five most common forms of the constricted attitude. Negative emotions have a binding power—a person who is angry is more prone to also feel suspicion, deep insecurities, resentment, et cetera. And so we often find combinations of these various negative attitudes, each one feeding and accentuating the other. Your goal is to recognize the various signs of such attitudes that exist in you in latent and weakened forms, and to root them out; to see how they operate in a stronger version in other people, better understanding their perspective on life; and to learn how to handle people with such attitudes. The Hostile Attitude. Some children exhibit a hostile attitude at a very early age. They interpret weaning and the natural separation from parents as hostile actions. Other children must deal with a

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  “You’ve made up your mind, haven’t you?” she asked. I knew her tone was colder than she meant it to sound. I nodded. “Yeah, I sorted through hundreds of options.” I hadn’t meant to sound so satcastic. “God, Theresa, I’m so scared. I don’t want to die and I don’t know how to live. I’m really afraid.” Theresa pulled me close. She squeezed me so tight I could hardly breathe. “I’d do anything to be Stone Butch Blues 163 strong enough to protect you,” she said. “I’d do anything if I could only keep you safe with me.” She put her fingers on my lips to silence me. “Maybe I do understand what you're saying. I just don’t want to admit that I think you’re right.” I was relieved. I tried to hug her, but her body was limp. I pulled back to examine her face. She wasn't done talking yet. “I’m scated, too,” she continued. “If ?’m not with a butch everyone just assumes I’m straight. It’s like ’'m passing too, against my will. ’m sick of the world thinking I’m straight. I’ve worked hard to be discriminated against as a lesbian.” We both smiled. “You’ve made your decision,” she said, “I know you have. Pm not really surprised. ’'ve been so damned afraid for you.” The tears began to flow down her face. I tried to wipe them, but she pushed my hands back and held them tightly in her own. “But I can’t do it, Jess. I can’t go out with you in the world and pretend that you’re a man. I can’t pass as a straight woman and be happy. I can’t live as the scared couple in apartment 3G who can’t trust people enough to have friends. I can’t live like a fugitive with you. I wouldn’t be able to survive it, Jess. Please try to understand, sweetheart.” I pulled away from her. “What are you saying?” She just shook her head. I stood up slowly. “What are 164 = Leslie Feinberg you saying? You won't stay with me? Why? That’s how much you love me?” Theresa stood up and moved toward me. “Please, honey. I can’t. I just can’t stay with you if you do this.” Rage boiled in my throat. “If you loved me... ” Theresa’s face was cold and angry. “Don’t you ever say that to me again.” My eyes filled with angry tears. “Well, it’s true, isn’t it?” All the steam leaked out of me when Theresa started to cry. She buried her face in my neck. “It doesn’t mean I don’t love you. I love you so much I don’t know what to do. I just can’t go with you. Pm trying to understand you. Can’t you try to understand me?” I shook my head. “How come nobody ever gives me any choices in life? I can’t go on living this way, but you won’t go through the only door that’s open for me. Thanks a lot.”

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  to take on a project of even the smallest scale, taking it all the way to completion and embracing the prospect of failure. If you fail, you will have already cushioned the blow because you anticipated it, and inevitably it will not hurt as much as you had imagined. Your self- esteem will rise because you finally tried something and finished it. Once you diminish this fear, progress will be easy. You will want to try again. And if you succeed, all the better. Either way, you win. When you find others with this attitude, be very wary of forming partnerships with them. They are masters at slipping away at the wrong moment, at getting you to do all of the hard work and take the blame if it fails. At all costs avoid the temptation to help or rescue them from their negativity. They are too good at the avoidance game. The Depressive Attitude. As children, these types did not feel loved or respected by their parents. For helpless children, it is too much to imagine that their parents could be wrong or flawed in their parenting. Even if unloved, they still are dependent on them. And so their defense is to often internalize the negative judgment and imagine that they are indeed unworthy of being loved, that there is something actually wrong with them. In this way they can maintain the illusion that their parents are strong and competent. All of this occurs quite unconsciously, but the feeling of being worthless will haunt such people their entire lives. Deep down they will feel ashamed of who they are and not really know why they feel this way. As adults they will anticipate abandonment, loss, and sadness in their experiences and see signs of potentially depressing things in the world around them. They are secretly drawn to what is gloomy in the world, to the seamy side of life. If they can manufacture some of the depression they feel in this way, it at least is under their control. They are consoled by the thought that the world is a dreary place. A strategy they will employ throughout their lives is to temporarily withdraw from life and from people. This will feed their depression and also make it something they can manage to some extent, as opposed to traumatic experiences imposed upon them. An excellent example of this type was the talented German composer and conductor Hans von Bülow (1830–1894). In 1855 von Bülow met and fell in love with Cosima Liszt (1837–1930), the charismatic daughter of the composer Franz Liszt. Cosima was drawn to von Bülow’s air of sadness. He lived with his domineering and hostile mother, and Cosima had great sympathy for him. She wanted to rescue von Bülow and transform him into a great composer. They were soon married. As time went on, Cosima could see that he felt quite inferior in relation to her intelligence and strong

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  several ways instead of just one. It could become more sensitive to the environment and learn. It stood a better chance of survival because its options were widened. This sensation of fear would last only a few seconds or even less, for speed was of the essence. For social animals, these arousals and feelings took on a deeper and more important role: they became a critical form of communication. Vicious sounds or hair standing on end could display anger, warding off an enemy or signaling a danger; certain postures or smells revealed sexual desire and readiness; postures and gestures signaled the desire to play; certain calls from the young revealed deep anxiety and the need for the mother to return. With primates, this became ever more elaborate and complex. It has been shown that chimpanzees can feel envy and the desire for vengeance, among other emotions. This evolution took place over the course of hundreds of millions of years. Much more recently, cognitive powers developed in animals and humans, culminating in the invention of language and abstract thinking. As many neuroscientists have affirmed, this evolution has led to the higher mammalian brain being composed of three parts. The oldest is the reptilian part of the brain, which controls all automatic responses that regulate the body. This is the instinctive part. Above that is the old mammalian or limbic brain, governing feeling and emotion. And on top of that has evolved the neocortex, the part that controls cognition and, for humans, language. Emotions originate as physical arousal designed to capture our attention and cause us to take notice of something around us. They begin as chemical reactions and sensations that we must then translate into words to try to understand. But because they are processed in a different part of the brain from language and thinking, this translation is often slippery and inaccurate. For instance, we feel anger at person X, whereas in fact the true source of this may be envy; below the level of conscious awareness we feel inferior in relation to X and want something he or she has. But envy is not a feeling that we are ever comfortable with, and so often we translate it as something more palatable—anger, dislike, resentment. Or let us say one day we are feeling a mood of frustration and impatience; person Y crosses our path at the wrong moment and we lash out, unaware that this anger is prompted by a different mood and out of proportion to Y’s actions. Or let us say that we are truly angry at person Z. But the anger is sitting inside of us, caused by someone in our past who hurt us deeply, perhaps a parent. We direct the anger at Z because they remind us of this other person. In other words, we do not have conscious access to the origins of our emotions and the moods they generate. Once we feel them, all

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  “You want more truth, Ruth? There’s a place somewhere inside of me where I’ve never been touched before. I’m afraid you'll touch me there. And I’m afraid you won't. My femme lovers knew me well, but they never crossed those boundaries inside of me. They tried to coax me across the borders into their arms, but they never came after me. You’re right there with me. There’s no place for me to hide. It scares me.” Ruth smiled sadly. “Isn’t it funny? That’s exactly why I would like to make love with you.” We lay quietly. I kissed her hair. “Oh, Ruth, I haven’t had to navigate sex in a long time, with anyone. I don’t even know who I am as a lover anymore. But ’m scared you'll leave me now. Can’t we figure it out as we go along? Please stay in my life. I need you so much.” Ruth got up on one elbow and kissed my lips. “T need you, too.” I held one of her hands, marveling at how small mine looked in hers. She dropped her eyes while I kissed each one of her knuckles. “T’ve been thinking a lot about my life since my jaw got broken,” I told her. “I once read about warriors who resolve before they go into battle that 999 “Today is a good day to die. Stone Butch Blues 295 Ruth smiled. “It’s a brave thought, but I don’t want to die.” I nodded. “At first I thought it meant resigning myself to death. But now I think it means facing my own life at the moment I’m facing my enemy. Maybe that’s the key to fighting fearlessly, to surviving. I’ve left a lot of things unfinished in my life. It makes me more afraid to die. It holds me back in a fight.” Ruth frowned. “Like what?” “T always wanted to leave something important behind. Remember the history book you gave me for Christmas?” Ruth nodded. “Pve been going to the library, looking up our history. There’s a ton of it in anthropology books, a ton of it, Ruth. We haven’t always been hated. Why didn’t we grow up knowing that?” Ruth propped herself up on her elbow and watched my face as I spoke. “It’s changed the way I think. I grew up believing the way things are now is the way they’ve always been, so why even bother trying to change the world? But just finding out that it was ever different, even if it was long ago, made me feel things could change again. Whether or not I live to see it. “At work, when everyone else is at lunch, Pve been typesetting all the history I’ve found, trying to 296 = Leslie Feinberg

• From Best Erotic Romance

  My bottom quivered in the aftermath of the unexpected smack. I supposed that was a no. He bobbed down under the bed again, looking for more devilish implements. “It’s an unorthodox treatment,” he said, coming back up. “I’m writing up my findings for the medical journals. It’s proving very effective, but it can be a little difficult to administer if the patients are too mobile. So...” He applied a leather cuff to my left wrist, chaining me to the outer post of the headboard. “...I think restraints are in order...but it’s nothing to worry about....” He repeated the process with my right wrist. “It’s all perfectly safe. Trust me. I’m a doctor. Now, get up on your knees and spread them.” Promptly I obeyed, slipping about on the wet rubber sheet until I was positioned for optimum obscene display. “If you make a sound,” he cautioned, “the treatment will be ineffective and I will have to use something stronger on that sore bottom of yours. So complete silence for this, understand?” I nodded, full of joyful dread. “It’s called orgasm therapy,” he told me. A smooth bulb-shaped presence made itself felt at my cunt. “Come-vales-cence.” “Oh, that’s terrible,” I groaned, and then I squeaked as the bulbous head of the vibrator was shoved unceremoniously forward, breaking through yielding flesh and lodging inside. “I said silence! That’s five strokes of the strap for you, later.” I held my breath and concentrated on the easy passage of the silicone intruder up to its full length, where it rested for a while before beginning to buzz gently. Matthew’s fingers, now sheathed in surgical gloves, manipulated my clitoris, bringing it to its swollen point of no return, making me gasp silently and strain against my bonds. His exact and precise knowledge of my most intimate places frightened me sometimes. It was as if he had a book stored in his head called How to Touch Loveday, every word of which he had memorized. Heat rushed to the spot, and the slow vibrations inside me brought me to a first rapid climax. Mixed with the intensity was an edge of panic as I wondered if orgasmic silence was possible. Why hadn’t he gagged me? It would make things so much easier. Oh. That was why. I bit my lip, pulled at my bonds, let the tremors build up and radiate through me, concentrating on feeling myself at the center of them rather than expressing them in my habitual broken yowls. “You’re coming, aren’t you? That’s good. Very good. Let it out. That’s right. But we haven’t finished yet.”

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  of the cops knelt down beside her. He never took his eyes off me as he reached forward and took one of her hormone-swollen breasts in his hand. “Honk, honk,” he laughed as he squeezed it. I stopped dead in my tracks, chilled and filled with hatred. I couldn’t think of a way to intervene except to stand there and witness. The cop standing nearest me walked over. He brought his face up close to mine. “What’s your fucking problem?” he asked me. He’d eaten garlic recently. I didn’t move or speak. He jabbed me in the rib with the end of his nightstick. “How’d you like me to run you in?” he asked. The thought of getting busted alone in New York City terrified me. “Answer me, huh? Yes or no?” I paused. He grabbed his nightstick with both hands and held it horizontally across my chest. “Yes or no, asshole?” I exhaled. “No.” “You mean Ng, sir,’ he taunted me. I pressed my lips together. He stared into my eyes. “Get the fuck out of here,” he ordered. I ran down 46" Street until I couldn’t hear their laughter any more. My breath came in short gasps. An icy wind blew off the river. A young child was standing near the driver’s side of a car, talking to the man behind the steering wheel. If she hadn’t been wearing high heels, she wouldn’t 252 = Leslie Feinberg have been tall enough to meet the driver’s eyes. She wore a thin, short jacket and seamed stockings. She must have been freezing. I saw her walk around to the passenger side of the car and get in. I couldn’t run or walk any further. I leaned my forehead against the cold brick face of a building. The physical pain began in my chest and worked its way up to my throat. I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound would come. The next morning I was waiting in front of the 42°¢ Street temporary labor office when it opened. A man in a plaid sports coat read over my application. “What kind of discharge?” he asked me. “Huh?” “The service. What kind of discharge you got?” I shrugged. I hadn’t filled out that section of the application. “I wasn’t in the service.” He leaned back in his chair. “Why not?” I leaned forward. “Mister, you got a job for me ot note” He slammed his pen down. “You got a drivet’s license?” I shook my head. “Get one,” he said. “No,” I told him. “I don’t want to drive in this city. Too crazy.” He wrote something down on a piece of paper. “Know how to drive a forklift?” I nodded. “Sewing machine factory,” he said. “Skid work.” He was a man of few words. “What's it pay?” He smiled. “$80 a week. We take $40 out this week and next.” I leaned forward in anger. “What for?” “For finding you the job. You want it or not?”

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  were not afraid to ask for more or assert our will. We were remarkably resilient and fearless in so many ways. Timidity is a quality we generally acquire. It is a function of our mounting fears as we get older and a loss of confidence in our powers to get what we want. We become overly concerned with how people perceive us and worry what they will think if we stand up for ourselves. We internalize their doubts. We become afraid of any kind of conflict or confrontation, which will churn up emotions and lead to consequences we cannot predict or control. We develop the habit of backing down. We don’t say what we feel even when it would be appropriate, and we fail to set boundaries to people’s harmful behavior. We find it hard to ask for a raise or a promotion or the respect due to us. Losing our bold spirit, a positive form of aggression, is losing a deep part of our self, and it is inevitably painful. You must try to recover the fearlessness you once possessed, through incremental steps. The key is to first convince yourself that you deserve good and better things in life. Once you feel that, you can start by training yourself to speak up or even talk back to people in everyday situations, if they are proving to be insensitive. You are learning to defend yourself. You might call people on their passive- aggressive behavior, or not be so timid in expressing an opinion that they may not share or in telling them what you really think of their bad ideas. You will often come to realize that you have less to fear in doing this than you had imagined. You might even gain some respect. You try this out in small ways every day. Once you lose your fear in these less dramatic encounters, you can start to ramp it up. You can make greater demands on people that they treat you well, or honor the quality work that you do. You do this without a complaining or defensive tone. You make it clear to bullies that you are not as meek as you seem, or as easily manipulated as others. You can be as relentless as they are in defending your interests. In negotiations, you can train yourself not to settle for less but to make bolder demands and see how far you can push the other side. You can apply this growing boldness to your work. You will not be so afraid to create something that is unique, or to face criticism and failure. You will take reasonable risks and test yourself out. All of this must be built up slowly, like a muscle that has atrophied, so that you don’t risk a large-scale battle or aggressive reaction before you have toughened yourself up. But once you develop this muscle, you will gain the confidence that you can meet any adversity in life with a fearless attitude.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  infallible. If he happened to mispronounce a word in a speech, every subsequent speaker from then on would have to pronounce it that way. “If I’d said it right,” confessed one of his top lieutenants, “Stalin would have felt I was correcting him.” And that could prove suicidal. As it seemed certain that Hitler was preparing to invade the Soviet Union, Stalin began to oversee every detail of the war effort. He continually berated his lieutenants for slackening their efforts: “I am the only one dealing with all these problems. . . . I am out there by myself ,” he once complained. Soon many of his generals felt like they were in a double bind: if they spoke their mind he could be terribly insulted, but if they deferred to his opinion he would fly into a rage. “What’s the point of talking to you?” he once shouted to a group of generals. “Whatever I say, you reply, ‘Yes Comrade Stalin; of course, Comrade Stalin . . . wise decision, Comrade Stalin.’” In his fury at feeling alone in the war effort, he fired his most competent and experienced generals. He now oversaw every detail of the war effort, down to the size and shape of bayonets. It soon became a matter of life or death for his lieutenants to accurately read his moods and whims. It was critical to never make him anxious, which made him dangerously unpredictable. You had to look him in the eye so that it did not seem like you were hiding something, but if you looked for too long, he became nervous and self-conscious, a very risky blend. You were supposed to take notes when he talked but not write down everything, or you would seem suspicious. Some who were blunt with him did well, while others ended up in prison. Perhaps the answer was to know when to mix in a touch of bluntness but to largely defer. Figuring him out became an arcane science that they would discuss with one another. The worst fate of all was to be invited to dinner and a late-night movie at his house. It was impossible to refuse such an invitation, and they became more and more frequent after the war. Outwardly it was just like before—a warm, intimate fraternity of revolutionaries. But inwardly it was sheer terror. Here, during all-night drinking bouts (his own drinks were heavily diluted), he would keep a watchful eye on all of his top lieutenants. He forced them to drink more and more so they would lose their self-control. He secretly delighted in their struggles to not say or do anything that would incriminate them. The worst was toward the end of the evening, when he would pull out the gramophone, play some music, and order the men to dance. He would make Nikita Khrushchev, the future premier, do the gopak , a highly strenuous dance that included much squatting and kicking. It

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  But I didn’t comprehend any of that at the time. I was a boy with a boy’s understanding of things. I distinctly remember the last time we argued about it, too. It was sometime after the bicycle, or when she was moving into her shack in the backyard. I was going off, begging her for the thousandth time. “Why? Why don’t you just leave?” She shook her head. “Oh, baby. No, no, no. I can’t leave.” “Why not?” “Because if I leave he’ll kill us.” She wasn’t being dramatic. She didn’t raise her voice. She said it totally calm and matter-of-fact, and I never asked her that question again. — Eventually she did leave. What prompted her to leave, what the final breaking point was, I have no idea. I was gone. I was off becoming a comedian, touring the country, playing shows in England, hosting radio shows, hosting television shows. I’d moved in with my cousin Mlungisi and made my own life separate from hers. I couldn’t invest myself anymore, because it would have broken me into too many pieces. But one day she bought another house in Highlands North, met someone new, and moved on with her life. Andrew and Isaac still saw their dad, who, by that point, was just existing in the world, still going through the same cycle of drinking and fighting, still living in a house paid for by his ex-wife. Years passed. Life carried on. Then one morning I was in bed around ten a.m. and my phone rang. It was on a Sunday. I know it was on a Sunday because everyone else in the family had gone to church and I, quite happily, had not. The days of endlessly schlepping back and forth to church were no longer my problem, and I was lazily sleeping in. The irony of my life is that whenever church is involved is when shit goes wrong, like getting kidnapped by violent minibus drivers. I’d always teased my mom about that, too. “This church thing of yours, all this Jesus, what good has come of it?” I looked over at my phone. It was flashing my mom’s number, but when I answered, it was Andrew on the other end. He sounded perfectly calm. “Hey, Trevor, it’s Andrew.” “Hey.” “How are you?” “Good. What’s up?” “Are you busy?” “I’m sort of sleeping. Why?” “Mom’s been shot.” Okay, so there were two strange things about the call. First, why would he ask me if I was busy? Let’s start there. When your mom’s been shot, the first line out of your mouth should be “Mom’s been shot.” Not “How are you?” Not “Are you busy?” That confused me. The second weird thing was when he said, “Mom’s been shot,” I didn’t ask, “Who shot her?”

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  Theresa squeezed my arm. “That’s one of your strengths. The way you soothe people when they’re mad at each other. Sticking together is really important sometimes. But not always.” I sat up. “What do you mean?” Theresa sat up next to me. “Sometimes you have to take sides.” I reached for my cigarettes and lit one. Theresa took it from my hand. I lit another for myself. “Sides on what?” I asked her. Theresa ran her fingers through my hair. “Where you stand on the war, for one thing. If you come out against the war, you'll have to take on some of the old butches. And I think that’s going to be very hard for you.” I sighed. “Of course Pm against the war. Who’s for war?” Theresa sighed. “Some of the butches are for the war, honey. And are you sure you're really against all wars? Are there any wars you feel different about?” I did a double take. “Like what?” Theresa took a long drag on her cigarette. “Ed feels like she’s in a war here at home. You haven’t seen the news yet. Cities are burning. There’s troops in the streets.” I shrugged. “That’s different.” Theresa nodded. “Yeah, it is. You have to figure out where you stand.” I exhaled smoke and watched the wind lift it up and away. Theresa watched my face with obvious concern. “T’m just saying be careful, honey. Think first before you talk to Ed or anybody else about what happened last night.” I listened to the seagulls’ caws. Theresa tugged on my arm, demanding my response. “T’m listening. I’m glad you didn’t let me call Ed all half-cocked. Everything’s changing so fast. Sometimes I understand what’s going on and then I lose the thread again. I'll think about it. I just don’t know what to think.” Theresa kissed my lips. ““That’s a great answer. You'll figure it out. You always try to do what’s right.” I dropped my eyes. Theresa lifted my chin with her hand. She asked me with her eyes what I was feeling. “T’m just scared,” I told her. “All this stuff hasn’t really hit me until now. But all of a sudden I’m realizing how much you’ve been changing, and it scares me to death. I’m afraid you’re changing and ’m 9 not Stone Butch Blues 137 Theresa pulled me down on top of her. I glanced around to see if anyone was around. We were alone. “Jess,” Theresa whispered, “don’t be afraid to let me change. We’re all changing. Who knows? You could end up changing so much you'd leave me behind.” I laughed at her words. “Never,” I promised. “That'll never happen.” Before I could turn the apartment door key in our lock Theresa opened it. “How did it go?” she asked me.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  to us. We must explore the limits of our willpower and how far it can take us. The Ultimate Freedom As a child, Anton Chekhov (1860–1904)—the future celebrated writer—faced each morning with a feeling of dread: would he be beaten that day by his father or somehow spared? Without warning, and sometimes without any apparent cause, his father, Pavel Yegorovich, would strike him hard several times with a cane or a whip or the back of his hand. What made it doubly confusing was that his father did not beat him out of any apparent malice or anger. He told Anton he was doing it out of love. It was God’s will that children be beaten, to instill humility. That was how he had been raised, and look at what a fine man he had turned into. At the end of the beating, young Anton had to kiss his father’s hand and ask to be forgiven. At least he was not alone in this ordeal—his four brothers and one sister all received the same treatment. The beating was not the only thing he came to dread. In the afternoon he would hear his father’s approaching footsteps outside their ramshackle wooden house, and he would tremble with fear. More often than not he was coming to the house at that hour to ask the child Anton to replace him in the grocery shop that he owned, in the backwater town of Taganrog, Russia, where the family lived. For most of the year, the shop was unbearably cold. While minding the counter, Anton would try to do his homework, but his fingers would quickly become numb and the ink in the pot for his pen would freeze up. In that mess of a store, which smelled of rancid meat, he would have to listen to the dirty jokes of the Ukrainian peasants who worked there, and witness the lewd behavior of the assortment of town drunks who wandered in for their shots of vodka. In the midst of all this, he had to make sure that every kopeck was accounted for, or he would get an added thrashing from his father. He would often be left there for hours while his father was getting drunk somewhere else. His mother would try to intervene. She was a gentle soul who was no match for her husband. The boy was too young to work, she would say. He needed time for his studies. Sitting in the freezing shop was ruining his health. The father would thunder back that Anton was lazy by nature, and only through hard work could he become a respectable citizen. There was no respite from the father’s presence. On Sunday, the one day the shop was closed, he would wake the children up at four or five in the morning to rehearse their singing for the church choir, of which he was the director. Once home from the service, they would

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  intimidate or wear people down. They depend on our docility as much as on their own aggression. The sophisticated aggressors that you encounter do not have to be as spectacularly successful as a Rockefeller. They can be your boss, a rival, or even a scheming colleague on the way up. You can recognize them by one simple sign: they get to where they’re going primarily through their aggressive energy, not through their particular talents. They value amassing power more than the quality of their work. They do whatever is necessary to secure their position and crush any kind of competition or challenge. They do not like to share power. In dealing with this type, you will tend to become angry or fearful, enlarging their presence and playing into their hands. You obsess over their evil character and fail to pay close attention to what they are actually up to. What you often end up surrendering to is the appearance or illusion of strength that they project, their aggressive reputation. The way to handle them is to lower the emotional temperature. Start by looking at the individual, not the myth or legend. Understand their primary motivation—to gain control over the environment and the people around them. As with Rockefeller, this need for control covers up vast layers of anxieties and insecurities. You must see the frightened child within, terrified by anything unpredictable. In this way you can cut them down to size, diminishing their ability to intimidate you. They want to control your thoughts and reactions. Deny them this power by focusing on their actions and your strategies, not your feelings. Analyze and anticipate their real goals. They want to instill in you the idea that you have no options, that surrender is inevitable and the best way out. But you always have options. Even if they are your boss and you must surrender in the present, you can maintain your inner independence and plot for the day in which they make a mistake and are weakened, using your knowledge of their vulnerable points to help take them down. See through their narrative and their shrewd attempts at distraction. They will often present themselves as holier-than-thou or as the victim of other people’s malice. The louder they proclaim their convictions, the more certain you can be they’re hiding something. Be aware that they can sometimes seem charming and charismatic. Do not be mesmerized by such appearances. Look at their patterns of behavior. If they have taken from people in the past, they will continue to do so in the present. Never bring on such types as partners, no matter how friendly and charming they might seem. They like to piggyback on your hard work, then wrest control. Your realistic appraisal of their actual strength and their aggressive intentions is your best defense. When it comes to taking action against aggressors, you must be as sophisticated and crafty as they are. Do not try to fight with them

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  conveniently cause us to have to leave the scene. It could be love— desperately searching to re-create a close parental or sibling relationship in the present, triggered by someone who vaguely reminds us of the lost paradise. It could be extreme mistrust, originating from an authority figure in early childhood who disappointed or betrayed us, generally the father. This often triggers a sudden rebellious attitude. The great danger here is that in misreading the present and reacting to something in the past, we create conflict, disappointments, and mistrust that only strengthen the wound. In some ways, we are programmed to repeat the early experience in the present. Our only defense is awareness as it is happening. We can recognize a trigger point by the experience of emotions that are unusually primal, more uncontrollable than normal. They trigger tears, deep depression, or excessive hope. People under the spell of these emotions will often have a very different tone of voice and body language, as if they were physically reliving a moment from early life. In the midst of such an attack, we must struggle to detach ourselves and contemplate the possible source—the wound in early childhood—and the patterns it has locked us into. This deep understanding of ourselves and our vulnerabilities is a key step toward becoming rational. Sudden Gains or Losses Sudden success or winnings can be very dangerous. Neurologically, chemicals are released in the brain that give a powerful jolt of arousal and energy, leading to the desire to repeat this experience. It can be the start of any kind of addiction and manic behavior. Also, when gains come quickly we tend to lose sight of the basic wisdom that true success, to really last, must come through hard work. We do not take into account the role that luck plays in such sudden gains. We try again and again to recapture that high from winning so much money or attention. We acquire feelings of grandiosity. We become especially resistant to anyone who tries to warn us—they don’t understand, we tell ourselves. Because this cannot be sustained, we experience an inevitable fall, which is all the more painful, leading to the depression part of the cycle. Although gamblers are the most prone to this, it equally applies to businesspeople during bubbles and to people who gain sudden attention from the public. Unexpected losses or a string of losses equally create irrational reactions. We imagine we are cursed with bad luck and that this will go on indefinitely. We become fearful and hesitant, which will often lead to more mistakes or failures. In sports, this can induce what is known as choking, as previous losses and misses weigh on the mind and tighten it up. The solution here is simple: whenever you experience unusual gains or losses, that is precisely the time to step back and counterbalance them with some necessary pessimism or optimism.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  Let us look more deeply into these fears. The fear of entering immobility: We avoid experiencing the sensations of immobility because of how powerful they are and how helpless and vulnerable they make us feel. Some of these even mimic the death state. When you consider how the thought of something as routine as being compelled to sit rigidly still in the dentist’s chair can cause you to wince, you begin to understand the challenge of voluntarily entering immobility mode. You may anticipate the pain of being trapped with no way to escape. For anxious or traumatized individuals, having to lie immobile during an MRI or CT scan can be downright terrifying. For children, these procedures may be vastly more difficult. Sitting quietly at one’s desk, unable to move for hours at a stretch, is a challenge for any youngster. For an anxious or “sensitive” child, it can be unbearable, perhaps even contributing to attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. This may be especially true for children who have had to undergo immobilizing procedures, such as when casts or metal braces are required for orthopedic correction of hips, legs, ankles or feet during the developmental stage when a child would normally be learning how to walk, run and explore the world. Even adults who meditate often struggle with sitting still. Those few fortunate ones who can crawl into a warm bed, lie absolutely still, and drift quickly off into a restorative sleep are bestowed a most precious blessing. However, for many (perhaps even a majority), bedtime is often fraught with anxiety. It can become a nightmare in itself. In frustration, you may try to lie still while “counting sheep.” Mind spinning, you are unable to let go and surrender into Morpheus’s waiting arms. And then when some people awaken during (or shortly after) REM sleep, their bodies are still literally paralyzed by the neurological mechanisms designed to inhibit running or fighting (or even actively moving) in a dream for self-protection and prevention against hurting someone else. Waking up from this normal “sleep paralysis” can be terrifying, particularly when people experience themselves detaching from their bodies, a frequent component of immobility. For others, the sleep-induced REM paralysis is a curious, enjoyable, even “mystical,” out-of-body experience. For those who perceive this detaching from their bodies as terrifying, panic reactions are typical. In traumatized people, fear-potentiated immobility is their wrenching companion, day and night. Although avoidance of immobility is understandable, it has a price. Whatever experiences you turn away from, your brain-body registers as dangerous; or colloquially, “that which we resist persists.” Thus, the time-honored expression, “time heals all wounds,” simply does not apply to trauma.