Brighid the collaborator: Truth, justice and the going rate for lost eyeballs

Kick ’em when they’re up
Kick ’em when they’re down
Kick ’em when they’re stiff
Kick ’em all around – Don Henley, “Dirty Laundry”

My piece on cancel culture was well-read as far as blogs go, which is always a bit nerve-wracking.

When I write controversial things – not uncommon for me, since I am authenticity-oriented rather than attachment-oriented – the responses and the silences fascinate me. I rather suspect that some folks may have bobbed their heads in agreement but were too afraid to say so or even press “like” because of the possibility of shunning, shaming and related social pressures. Getting kicked out of community hurts.

And if you are among the silent cohort, no worries: I’m an old hand at taking a hit for truth-telling purposes, and not only as the town weirdo; I was a working journalist for nearly 15 years. I’ve talked with folks from all walks of life, I’ve seen some shit, and I’ve talked to people who have seen worse shit than I ever will.

You can yank the possibility of human social relationship, threaten to beat me up or sue me (yes, I’ve faced some threats during my newspaper days), and I will still shout truth from the rooftops – even if it costs me absolutely everything. I make a god of truth, I wrote in a poem. Once I’m on a tear, there is absolutely nothing you can do to force me to fall in line. You’re welcome to test this statement.

And that makes me a dangerous person to people with ranks and armies.

My astrology-believing friends would probably say that it’s because I am a Taurus, and people born in my stretch of flowered springtime are ungodly stubborn. I prefer to think of it instead as being principled: I won’t go along to get along if the journey is taking us off a cliff’s edge or onto a battlefield. I am a moralistic, values-fueled prig. My values are generosity, love, truth and compassion, and I am absolutely obnoxious about them. I own it all, dawg.

The reactions that edged into doubt or hostility present a different sort of fascination.

Some people seem irked that I didn’t name names of the cancelees, and my refusal to spill the tea makes it difficult to decide whether I belong on the enemies list. I left the tea safely in the cup because I want readers to engage with the ideas I am discussing, which is difficult to do once you have decided that I am unredeemable human garbage.

Here’s the thing: The fact that you are in some corner of your heart assembling an enemies list means that I belong on it. I’ll make it easy for you.

I am talking about exactly the case that you think I’m talking about, and the other one, and the one before that. I am talking about exactly the case that you have in your mind right now, which I have never even heard of before … because I am talking about all of these cases, every single one, now and forever.

I am talking about all those times when you accepted rumor or innuendo as truth, when you said “perception is everything,” when you decried the call for evidence and legal process. I am talking about those times when you equated the lack of immediate, proofless, unilateral belief in another human being to a moral crime, when you confused justice with vengeance, and when you called people “apologists” for the crime of asking questions.

I am exactly the rabble-rousing monster you think I am – the toothy love-monster that lives under your bed and howls, “What is the world we are creating, people? Will you just stop and think for a goddamn minute?”

Photo by Kaique Rocha on Pexels.com

Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth

Add this to the cancellation list: I was accused of being a rape apologist during the crest of #MeToo. I will say that I am deeply disappointed that a movement initially meant to highlight the risks of sexual violence for girls in marginalized communities was repurposed as a way to settle scores, particularly among middle- to upper-class white women.

Sexism and sexual violence are real for all too many people, of course. But my issue is with the command to “believe women” – with the understanding that the lack of automatic belief equates to a moral crime. Asking for evidence and adhering to the legal process was – and is still, in some quarters – viewed as revictimizing people.

We should always listen to people, but we owe no one – absolutely no one – automatic belief. While it’s uncommon, some people really do lie about being victims of crime – and, since women are people, that includes some women. 

At the time, I tried to explain this by using a common aphorism in journalism: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” Chances are that your mother does indeed love you, but you need to check verbal statements against the physical evidence.

If your mother says she loves you, and then leaves you – a minor child – at home alone to starve for 10 days while she goes on a Caribbean vacation, does she really love you? If she says she loves you, and then beats you within an inch of your life, or lets a boyfriend abuse you, or spends her days drunk or stoned while you scramble for survival, does she really love you?

In short, words are one way of showing love, but alone, they aren’t enough—especially if the evidence points in the opposite direction.

The call to unilaterally believe victims led to situations such as the McMartin preschool trial, part of the hysteria of the ‘80s and ‘90s that we know as the Satanic Panic. 

I read about Satanic Panic cases in the newspaper when I was a kid; I read the newspaper when I got home from school every day, which was the sole reason my parents kept the subscription. Even as a kid, I just didn’t get it: All these claims of Satanic child sacrifice rings were horror-movie bullshit. How could adults believe things that were obviously made up – and send people to prison over them?

Around the same time – in middle school – I participated in community theater. My big role: One of the writhing witch-finding girls of Salem in The Crucible. Both reading the newspaper and re-enacting the Salem Witch Trials via Arthur Miller gave me a certain sensitivity to accusation without evidence, which has stayed with me during the course of my life.

There’s a classic ethical conundrum: Do you send 10 people to prison if one may be innocent? Or do you let them go – keeping the innocent out of jail, but also the guilty? What if you substitute imprisonment with execution? There is, after all, a reason that the Innocence Project exists. 

Many people would choose to punish the innocent along with the guilty “and let God sort ‘em out,” as the saying goes. Initially, this may seem to create a safer world – one in which more criminals are off the streets – but it also fosters a system of fear and accusation. My choice – to let them go, even if the guilty go unpunished – may create a more dangerous world in some senses, but also one with more freedom: If you’re fingered by a bunch of hallucinating Salem kids, you can feel confident that this will be sorted out before the authorities fire up Old Sparky.

In a culture built on a warrior chassis, justice is synonymous with punishment and the elimination of enemies. If we take Internet commenters at their word (always a pugilistic bunch), the ideal mechanism of justice consists of inflicting the same harm on the perpetrator – perhaps amped up to drive the point home.

The phrase “an eye for an eye” comes from the Code of Hammurabi, a Babylonian law text from around 1750 BCE. It’s not a peaceful document: Slaves get their ears cut off, people die and a lot of folks face fines, depending on the offense.

“An eye for an eye” is a bit of a misnomer because the social class of the parties involved determines punishment. “Eye for an eye” is for social equals. If the perpetrator is a rich man and the victim is poor, then it’s “a fine for an eye.” If the perpetrator is poor and the victim rich, then it’s “death for an eye.” Sadly, unequal justice has apparently been baked into legal systems for more than 3,750 years.

But what is the purpose of justice? Its root is the Latin ius, a legal right. Justice ensures us that our legal rights are honored – but the nature of those legal rights comes from social custom; law derives from the Proto-Indo-European *legh, that which is laid down or established. And that’s where we get knee-deep in shit: The law at various points of time considered certain human beings property rather than people, for example.  

Brighid Breathach, Brighid of the Judgments, may have a different view of justice. Let’s go pay the Peace Bride a visit.

Lux in Tenebris by Evelyn De Morgan (1855–1919)

The Peace Bride and cancel culture

But first, a reflection. One reaction to my post intrigued me in particular: the suggestion that I am damaging my “wyrd” if I am expressing any support for the person they think I’m supporting. In other words: If I stand with the nithing, then I am cursed by the Gods.

I’ve always found it a little too convenient to claim that the Gods hate a particular person or group of people, or anyone associated with this group. For one, the Gods are free agents and perfectly capable of communicating their perspectives. I should know: We chat often, as part of my spiritual practice. If I fuck up, we have a discussion.

For two…. I actually am following the path of the Peace Bride, as I understand it.

As I sifted through my thoughts during my run this morning, I realized something: Warrior culture would have canceled Brighid. They would have considered her contemptible, an apologist … a nithing.

Brighid is the peace-weaver, wed to Bres – the king of the Fomhoire, with whom the Tuatha Dé were at war. In fact, the Fomhoire held the Tuatha Dé in bondage during the first half of the story. Brighid was literally the enemy’s wife – and bore him Ruadhán, who fought for the Fomhoire during Cath Maighe Tuireadh.

Ruadhán died while attempting to kill his uncle, the smith-god and weapons-maker of the Tuatha Dé. And what did Brighid do? Did she denounce her son for the crime of turning against her own people?

She collapsed over her son’s body. Thosaigh sí ag caoineadh. She invented the wild funeral wail known as keening – uttering the first lament in the world. She mourned. She loved her son, her traitor-to-the-Tuatha-Dé son.

In the eyes of the warrior, Brighid is a collaborator—a disgusting apologist for the oppression of her own people. When the other Gods swore their talents on behalf of the Fomhoire’s defeat, her voice was absent. She took up no sword and made no promise to kill or conquer.  

Brighid has many titles: Brighid of Poetry, Brighid of the Judgments, Brighid of Hospitality. She is also Brig Ambue: Literally, Brighid of the Cowless, a title that essentially means “Brighid of the Outcasts.”

She comforts and heals the afflicted and the hurt – but she also sits at the side of the nithing in compassion and witness. She purifies the criminal and weaves them back into the peace of our shared being. 

In the love-eyes of Brighid, that is justice: the healing of harm and the reweaving into communitas. She leaves no one behind – no, not the Fomhoire, not even that person: No what-ifs.

That doesn’t mean that the victim is somehow tasked with making a perpetrator whole; the victim’s primary duty is to work toward their own healing. However, it does mean that the larger group of humans that we call “community” must confront the uncomfortable dyad of accountability and forgiveness; either, in its extreme, is corrosive, and justice depends on evidence and circumstance and a whole lot of other pesky stuff. Otherwise, the fabric of society frays, its fringes soaked with blood and despair.

It’s difficult, morally complex work – a lot harder than building gallows or organizing a holmgang. It’s also very much in line with the spiritual concept of universal reconciliation, in which there is no hell except the one we choose to make.

Classical writers tell this story of the Druids: They could stop two warring armies by walking on the battlefield between them. And Brighid says to me: The hand that holds the bell branch cannot hold the sword.

The Peace Bride is an uncomfortable companion, especially when she wears her tattered mantle as Brig Ambue. The war-gods say that she’s contemptible, a collaborator, a weakling who refuses to take sides. She’s used to being canceled by the warrior set and says, “Fear not.”

And I don’t – because I’m in good company.