"FAWNING"

Probably I’m one of the few people who welcomed the idea that we should all stand six feet apart.  I am not a sardine (esp not a dead one) and do not like being crammed up against others, which seems to be a feature of cities: elevators, buses, and workplaces.

Mammals have built into their physiologies a certain psychological distance which doesn’t appear except in behavior.  If you go towards some person or some animal and the creature backs up, you’re getting into their circle, that unseen perimeter.  It’s not predictable except by experience.  That’s what taught it to them and why they expect to be protective against you.  People who work with people who have been in prison know that the perimeter can be big.  Creep up on a former felon and you are taking a major risk, because to them your approach is also a major risk.  Six feet might be too close for them.

People who work with very small children know that they often haven’t developed a sense of how close to get and some will come to actually lean on a teacher.  Others will stand back, beyond reach even if invited.  My kittens like to sleep in a pile, because of warmth, sure; but also because it is safe to sleep with each other.  They knew it before birth.

People who are prone to approach unknown animals or people may get hurt by trying to hug a buffalo or pet a street dog.  When I was in elementary school, I did not know to keep my distance from an animal that didn’t want to be approached.  When dogs barked at me on the way to school, I didn’t know I was being warned.  I had full sentimental confidence that my good intentions were perceptible and that if I persisted, I could calm them down.  People came out of the dog’s house and yelled at me,  “Stop pestering my dog, little girl!”  Later the tables were turned and it was me who had a personal distance that was sometimes in trouble because people came too close.

Partly this was because of a public role, like being liberal clergy.  The role itself said to some that I was safe, and therefore no perimeter was too close.  Particularly women, usually older, would feel free to adjust my collar or pick lint off my bosom.  Men would want to shake hands, but then not release my hand.  They all seemed to feel that they were nonthreatening and I would not attack them for coming too close.  It was a sentimental interpretation of the role.

They didn’t know how often I had to suppress the fight or flight in me.  They were using “fawning” as a way to keep me acting safely towards them or risk criticism from society. Even without the role, simply being female, certain men in Valier will pound me on the shoulder.  A nurse from Cut Bank once reached down my neck and adjusted my bra straps.  On the job she was accustomed to physical contact with her role entitling her. 

The more fierce traditions, based on rational theology that let them be aloof, never had this problem.  Think Ingmar Bergman ministers. The premise today is that “fawning” on teachers, doctors, lawyers, and priests will control them for the sake of safety.  One should be wary.  Women make children of us all when they ignore a respectful distance.  Men express ownership and dominance when they "fawn" on women.  Trump teaches us that his familiar fondness is just the flip side of attack.

We have learned about the four “F’s” that are alliterating ways we protect against danger.  They have evolved as creatures have.  Even reptiles will FLEE or FIGHT.  There is a previous reaction which is older.  It is to FAINT.  To play possum.  To go dormant, as though dead.  It’s not a learned reaction but deeper, in the unconscious.  Though it can be conscious, few people identify or recognize the fourth mammal strategy:  FAWNING.  Flattery.  

All these responses can be brought up to consciousness with a little support and reflection.  Pete Walker is a specialist psychologist who considers the four F’s.  He suggests that those who depend on fawning, which is close to the way some clergy operate, are like the children described in Alice Miller’s “The Drama of the Gifted Child,” kids smart enough to be parent pleasers and achievers.  Since congregations are socio-economic and the groups tended to be highly educated, prosperous, and focused on being exceptional, both clergy (usually when they were women) and parishioners like this were common in the UU congregations.  It’s a denomination that believes in meritocracy, esp among women who have been patronized contemptuously by men.

I vividly remember a big tech-specialist man who had disagreed with my sermon and who at coffee hour afterwards came to bawl me out so closely in my face that he covered it with spit.  I was grateful to be wearing glasses.  It was hostile intimacy.  I must have terrified him.   I can’t remember the subject but usually in his case it was about clergy having no authority.  

I don’t know why he came to services.  I also suspect his father beat both him and his mother.  If I had done so much as put my hand on his chest and pushed him back, I would have been interpreted as attacking.  That I tolerated him was my form of fawning, when he should have been knocked flat.  The others present seemed on the verge of flight.  No one intervened.

The symbolism of the body, as acquired through experience and expressed by behavior, is not always easy to recognize from the inside, let alone identify in some other “mammal.”  But it needn’t interfere with intimacy.  One of my most intimate and rewarding conversations (lasting a decade) was only email print and image.  Walker suggests that not feeling “seen” is a characteristic of “fawners.”  But I felt seen without ever being seen because the words were close to my experience.  I hope that as well I was seeing the Other.

On the other hand, the rhetoric of many progressives, esp. when they speak of love and inclusion, violate my perimeter.  I was still a Presbyterian when the "passing of the peace" began to include hand-holding and even hugging.  People who push this think they are “feeling” but they are preventing me from “feeling” because what I feel is danger, attempts to own and control.  Is that in me or in them?  Both.  We are an owning and controlling culture, which is why I need distance and solitude to think about other issues as well.

This pandemic introduces a whole new dimension.