The Woebegone Tale of the Shitbubbler and Amy’s Brain

One Labor Day weekend lo these many years ago, when she was younger and callower, Amy’s Brain went to a festival of new-age wackiness. She wasn’t quite sure what she was doing there and so tended to wander, bewildered and aimless, around the grounds. One afternoon she found herself at the lakeside, where, for lack of anything more pressing to do, she sat down away from the other people and looked out over the water to have a good think.

Before she’d had time to formulate any conclusions about her situation, down the path to the lakeside came running a diminutive pale naked red-haired person. Pulling up short at the edge of the lake, this person began scooping up handfuls of the gravelly beach and rubbing them onto her skin. Amy’s Brain could not be certain, but it did seem to her that the small rocks and watery dirt of the lakeside were not really the proper materials for an exfoliating mudpack. This didn’t daunt the naked woman, though, and after a few minutes of energetic scrubbing, her torso and extremities unevenly blotched with wet dirt and a few tenacious pebbles, she ran shrieking into the lake.

That was Amy’s Brain’s first encounter with she who would become Shitbubbler.¹ It would be a couple of years until their next meeting, when Amy’s Brain decided to join a women’s group. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t a very smart decision, since the group billed itself as a place for women to “claim our strength without losing our femininity.” Or some such vagueness. And as is well-established on this blog, Amy’s Brain is at best deeply ambivalent about her “femininity” or loss thereof.

But she was lonely and isolated and so she joined this group despite the bellyful of doubt which arose when she recognized the gravel-smearing redhead in attendance. The group decided to close itself after a few meetings, with about eight members. Everyone agreed to prioritize attending group meetings, which Amy’s still callow Brain interpreted as A Rule. At first, as always, everyone was enthusiastic and upbeat, and so the group was fun and interesting and attending the meetings was no problem. After a while, though, it became apparent that the group lacked purpose, and the Shitbubbler, in particular though not exclusively, began to exhibit spotty attendance and to provide weak-sounding excuses. This might not have been so bad in itself (although Amy’s Brain still thought Breaking The Rules a wrong and inconsiderate thing to do) except that when Shitbubbler did attend, she disagreed with any and all decisions taken by the group when she was absent, and, worse, monopolized the group time with her victimy drama du jour. For several months the group founder tried to institute a group-goal-seeking process, but due to the continuing absences and impromptu group therapy sessions focusing on Shitbubbler and her problems, this exercise in “Why Are We Here?” was continually postponed.

One evening, when the group time was once again being used up by Shitbubbler’s whining objections to a prior group decision, made in her absence and inconveniencing her personally, Amy’s Brain, well, she lost her shit. She was so fed up with the dynamic that she can’t quite remember what exactly she said, but she knows it wasn’t nice. Being still callow, she didn’t have very many conflict/anger/emotion management skills, and so whatever she said certainly wasn’t framed in “I” statements, and it probably didn’t focus on behaviors over personalities. The group of nice white ladies was duly shocked at this “unprovoked” personal attack. And, as is wont to happen, Amy’s Brain’s lost shit hit the fan and flew directly back at her.

The emails and phone calls were thick and furious in the two weeks between meetings, and Amy’s Brain had some time to contemplate her shit and realized that, well, some of it stank. She reluctantly agreed when it was pointed out by group members, including Shitbubbler, that she ought to have asked Shitbubbler if she were willing to hear some feedback. That she could have framed her objections as being about herself and her reactions, rather than as something intrinsic to Shitbubbler. (There were also some wackier suggestions and some personal slurs which Amy’s Brain wisely chose to ignore.) Someone outside the group pointed out that she, Amy’s Brain, could have missed a meeting or two, if the dynamic were so frustrating and the group so unuseful to her. This, I tell you, was shocking to Amy’s Brain, because at that time she did not Break Rules. And she marveled that the option of skipping one of the (tedious, pointless, frustrating) group sessions had never occurred to her. Who knew that one’s Brain might not conceive of all possibilities!

Amy’s Brain pondered these and other thoughts, and returned to the next group meeting with a letter that she read aloud.² She sure wishes that she had a copy of that letter now! But it seems she apologized for the way she expressed her objections and for not first ascertaining that the group wished to hear them–though she let the objections themselves stand. She agreed that it was not particularly productive to allow hostile emotions to overcome her, and explained that she had decided to leave the group but that she wished all the members well, individually and collectively, and hoped that they could be successful in creating the group they wanted.

The nice white ladies of the group, with the exception of Shitbubbler, accepted her apology, and invited her to continue with the group. However, for once Amy’s Brain listened to her gut, which was telling her that she wasn’t going to get off that easy. And lo, it was true, for she later learned that Shitbubbler monopolized group meetings for the next six months with her complaints that “safe space” had been violated, that a healing ritual needed to take place, and most importantly that Amy’s Brain needed to be held accountable for what she had done. The group was unable to move beyond this incident, and so it crumbled.

A year or two later, Amy’s Brain was leaving the natural foods store with her beloved. She was happy, as she most often was in the presence of her love, and when they passed a short woman with frizzy red hair coming in as they were going out, Amy’s Brain didn’t think twice about flashing her a beatific grin. It was only as they continued across the parking lot that a sinking feeling in her gut made her think, “Was that….?” Almost simultaneously she heard her name being shouted from the doorway. She turned, and ah yes, it was Shitbubbler, who called out across the parking lot, “Thank you for being my teacher.” Amy’s Brain nodded, smiled, and waved, and Shitbubbler went inside the store.

Amy’s Brain looked at her beloved, and her beloved looked at her, and her beloved said, “You feel like a bird just crapped on you, don’t you?” And the collision of world views was relieved by laughing together at the ridiculousness of the whole situation.

What Did Amy’s Brain Learn From the Shitbubbler Incident?

1. Don’t speak up. No one wants to hear what you have to say. This lesson actually was learned at her mama’s knee and the Shitbubbler Incident only served to reinforce it.
2. White middle class women (and those who have assimilated to white middle class culture) deal with unsanctioned behavior among ourselves through silence. If someone’s behavior is out of line, it must not be mentioned, only ignored, avoided, accommodated, or somehow walled off to minimize its impact. It must never, never, ever be confronted directly. Indirect confrontation may be okay, but it must take the form of personal sharing–”Well, once something sort of similar happened to me, and this is what I did about it.” These indirect confrontations must be so mild and weakly phrased that the person the story is intended to influence will not realize it is directed at her.
3. The only exception to Rule #2 is that if you break Rule #2, you will be punished. Severely. You will be the wrong and the bad one. Even if everyone in the room agrees that the other person’s behavior is problematic, they will not back you up. You will become the focus of criticism and censure, while all love and sympathy will accrue to your “victim” and her hurt feelings — no matter how much of a pain in the ass everyone secretly thinks she is.
4. The people who want you to be “held accountable” for hurting their feelings are never satisfied. This kind of “accountability”³ is all about dominance. By continuously castigating you, focusing on what you did (and hence what a terrible person you are), and completely refusing to examine their role in the situation, they are trying, consciously or not, to gain dominance within the group — and they will never drop it. They will scheme and manipulate and make any accusation they can conjure up to convince everyone else of how mean and scary you are — not to mention dragging in any and every hurtful thing they can think of just to cause you pain. If need be, they will destroy the group rather than give up their righteousness. Leave now.
5. Group problems are individualized. The Shitbubbler Incident was framed at best as a conflict between Shitbubbler and Amy’s Brain; at worst, it was entirely Amy’s Brain’s fault, for as we learned there can be no excuse for breaking Rule #2. By individualizing conflict thusly, the other members become safely innocent bystanders, rather than participants in condoning and perpetuating whatever unproductive dynamic is going on. Shitbubbler and Amy’s Brain were expected to work out their “personality conflict” on their own without disrupting the group, the crucible within which that blowout came to the boiling point in the first place. No group, no conflict; therefore, this denial of group responsibility for conflicts within it is false and dysfunctional — and, within a context of liberal individualism, nearly unassailable.

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¹ Yeah, it’s a really mean nickname. The story of its origin is even meaner, yet hilarious. For better or worse, I can’t take credit for it.
² When Amy’s Brain experiences strong emotions she sometimes does not trust herself to speak extemporaneously and calmly about loaded subjects.
³ As opposed to responsibility which I discussed in this post, which is about following through on one’s own commitments to other people.

Filed under: conflict, fluff and musings, personal is political by Amy's Brain Today