Torrey Orton
Feb. 25, 2013
Anger into energy…
A major change of direction is
often upon us before we know it’s happened. We find ourselves facing into the
wind instead of back to it…So it seems to be with me and the HoGPIs at the
Fertility Control Centre (FCC). I adopted a treat-them-as-they-treat-patients
attitude 8 months ago. I explicitly disregarded them and did not speak to those
I had spoken to before, restricting my speech only to moments of their ‘bad
behaviour’ – their daily-repeated breaching of the Melbourne City Council
public harassment regulations. That’s the amount of time they gave to each
passing patient.
When I wrote of my anger struggles 8
months ago (http://diarybyamadman.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/learning-to-act-right-26-my-rage-and.html
I was at the start of my attempt
to influence HoGPIs with disregard. They, the errant HoGPIs, carried on as
before, harassing with indifference and impunity. My anger continued, somewhat reduced by
attending to not being angry – the CBT solution. This internal strategy worked
a few hours of each week’s time on the line at the FCC, only to be overwhelmed
by the more outrageous examples of harassment. These moments still spark a
perilously vertical rise in my pulse and pressure at the sight of an already
crying woman and her bewildered male companion being set upon by the harpies of
heaven.
Two of my FCC Friends – Marty and
Charles – took a more assertive approach to the HoGPIs over this period,
stepping up more pre-emptively to their actual harassing. Need for an intervention
was relatively predictable because the most persistent harassers were 4-6 women,
usually present on any given morning in ones and twos. Patients arrive in
discrete pairs with lots of time between one and another. I could not do this
so pre-emptively as they. Proximity to the offenses pushed me outside my
self-control range in a flash.
Anger in retreat
My anger started to recede three
months ago when I heard the outcome of the HoGPIs efforts to have a security
guard charged with assaulting one of their number. They were unsuccessful. My
anger receded further over the intervening months since as I formulated an
approach to data gathering which offers a prospect of shutting the HoGPIs down
to some extent and a way to be (more) effective protecting patients.
In some trial rounds of data
gathering with voice-over video (where I comment on what a HoGPI is doing, her
name, the time of day and date) of specific HoGPI transgressions has produced two
results: an immediate HoGPI shame reflex and withdrawal from the behaviour, and
a secondary threat of possible legal action. There was only one patient query
about the videoing, which was easily answered.
Engage or disengage?
But it is not so simple: engage or
disengage. Feelings come in different intensities. My anger varies with
circumstances, which I still do not understand well or engage effectively. For
example, one of the interesting things about
the HoGPIs is their aversion to personal accountability for their public
actions at the FCC. Aversion appears in self-veiling in different ways. The
religious wear trench coats; the laity are trenchantly nameless. Neither
provide their names easily, or ever so far. Two examples here - http://diarybyamadman.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/learning-to-act-right-32-unveilings.html
They do not provide their
associations – professional, social, familial, avocational – easily, or at all,
if asked. And, yet, they see themselves fit to attack others (under the veil of
“helping” or “counselling”) about one of the most individual challenges in
life…the continuation of it...or not. Their aversion is intrinsic to their single-issue
strategy. Anything more personal is always a threat to the consistency and firmness
of a single objective – removing abortion rights period. I’m reliably told by some
among them that keeping it pure is part of the playbook for many HoGPIs.
Seeking their names, affiliations
and vocations is not easy. They are hiding and my approach is a threat and
their hiding is a threat to me and patients.
Upshot: an angry request from me. Effect: even more likely withholding
by them. And so on. Personalising our relationship is one pathway, maybe, to
breaking through the single issue veil. It’s hard to see 3D persons as iconic
figures of evil. The generic example of this is the incapacity of those close
to serious misbehaviour to actually see it or predict it – the family which
stays together, blames together. Anger’s
not a helpful starting point. On the other hand, it provides energy for action
in pursuit of what I see as patient justice. A difficult mix to get right.
The sinner-prospect identity, TBC
There is another dynamic at play in
the FCC front yard. It goes something like this, I think: HoGPIs see patients
through the anti-abortion lens only, so every patient who appears is identified
as a prospective sinner to be saved. Their identity for the HoGPIs is
sinner-prospect TBC (to be confirmed, by their response to the HoGPI offer of
counselling or help). No other aspect of the individual is relevant. Keeping
irrelevant the factors which could personalise the patients out of the
sinner-prospect identity is central to sustaining the HoGPIs own identity as
perfectly justified in any efforts the make – that is, harassments in
particular. HoGPIs perform this fantasy maintenance trick by only presenting to
the patients what they perceive – the sinner-prospect – with no question about
the actual circumstances which bring patients to the FCC. Patients feel this
perspective.
It also helps sustain the idea that patients
cannot be any more distressed than their identity as potential sinners already
makes them. Normal psychology of stress doesn’t even get into view. Maybe when
I get a better grip on my stressors, I’ll get better at increasing the HoGPIs’.
Tracking my actions and their effects on me and HoGPIs will come next.
Stay tuned.
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