10 Things I Realized While Watching "Nanette"

The most important thing to say about Hannah Gadsby's stand-up Netflix special, "Nanette," is: Go watch it.  Maybe you'll love it, maybe you won't.  You may not agree with all of it, but you will chuckle, and your eyes might even get a touch watery.  The morning after I watched it, I made a list of reactions/realizations.

1. I self-deprecate all the time to make myself more accessible in exactly the ways Gadsby talks about.  And I relate to writers and comedians who do the same thing. I think I saw self-deprecation as our collective way to make ourselves more accessible and palatable to a world in which we are marginalized.  It is a strategy for being heard.  But we don't have to do it.
2. You don’t have to be at the top of a genre to reinvent it. Nor do you have to be at the bottom.  You can do it at any point on the ladder.
3. Being a lesbian and being a gender nonconforming woman both matter, together and separately.  We are subtly encouraged, in a thousand ways, and even in the most "accepting" places, to think that sexual orientation "matters" but gender presentation is not a big deal because it is "just about looks." That is incorrect.  It matters.  It shapes our interactions, our sense of self, how people relate to us, everything.  It matters.  
4. I have been discriminated against and I hate it and I own my stories.  I will tell them.
5. I was raised as if I were straight.  Most of us were, even if our parents loved us more than anything in the world (as mine did, and still do).  Being raised straight can't not affect us and the way we see ourselves in the world.
6. It is hard to let people evolve and change in the stories we tell.  It is easier to stay insular and angry.  One of the places I choked up in Gadsby's special was where she talks about her recent conversations with her mom.  I can relate to that, and to the temptation to hold onto old hurts that seem so immediate it's easy to mistake them for the truth of the present.  But to evolve, we have to let others evolve, too--in the stories we tell about them, and in our own hearts, too.
7. Conflict is okay.  Especially at a political moment when we feel like all we can do is shield ourselves from going completely batshit, we must not be conflict averse. It becomes more important than ever that we reach out, that we try to make connections with those we fear hate us, and with those that, deep down, maybe we hate too. 
8. We are allowed to be angry at people without “giving them power over us.” Anger is allowed to come in flavors and waves. We can reinvent our anger. Anger is a kind of tension, and we are allowed to release it any way we want.  We can take it back, let it rise up again, channel it to make us productive, or use it to make us sad.  We are not obligated to "let go."  Letting go is one way of diffusing tension.  It is not the only way.
9. I can still be surprised and inspired by art. I am almost 40 and lately have been thinking that maybe I am just not moved by things the way I used to be.  In my 20s, the combination of an oldies song and a crush on someone could move me to tears. Not anymore. I even started to wonder if I had lost the capacity to feel deeply.  But I have not.  The threshold might be a little higher, but that is not a bad thing
10. Most importantly, stories hold our cure.  We must tell them.

Like many people, I cried a little when I watched "Nanette."  Not because I have experienced the things Gadsby has experienced--I haven't.  And not because I felt sorry for her--I didn't.  No, I cried because I recognized the important power of Gadsby's story, and because it made me realize the important power of my own.  I cried because of all the times I've used myself as a punchline to make myself more accessible to people.  I cried because I realized I chose my occupation partly because I thought it was one of the few places someone like me would not have to worry about poor treatment.  I cried because this turns out not to be true.  I cried because of the ways I have failed to listen to other people's stories.  I cried because of the ways I have failed to tell my own.

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