Onamaimię (She Has a Name): Combating Sexist Hate Speech in Poland

Kasia Górnicka, Joy Liu, Mariia Veselovska

2016 Ideas Incubator Fellows

Growing up, I was called a variety of names. Some of them likened me to animals or objects, some of them were just descriptors that I never thought to challenge. I began to listen and absorb these descriptions. I began to accept them as true.

My experience is not unique. Girls are commonly and casually called derogatory terms. The problem is often exacerbated when these terms are not regarded as sexist hate speech because they do not appear obviously offensive. We selected four of those Polish terms to craft and build a social campaign against sexist hate speech called Onamaimię (She Has a Name).

Although there isn’t much official research on the subject, many Polish women told our team they were called derogatory terms growing up and felt strongly about the sexist nature of these terms. Often, they were unclear about what qualifies as hate speech and unsure how to react. We centered our campaign on a few seemingly innocuous words that represent the beginning of sexist hate speech. We chose the Polish words świnia, pasztet, laska, and foczka. These words roughly translate to pig, pate, seal, and cane. All terms directly objectify girls by comparing them to an animal or inanimate object. 

Like most sexist hate speech we experienced, part of what hurt the most was being unexpectedly confronted with terms like świnia, pasztet, laska, and foczka. We wanted to re-create this sensation in some way to see what other people’s reactions would be. By choosing the coffee cup,  a place where a person’s name is often written, we wanted to make the connection that seeing the terms świnia, pasztet, laska, and foczka on a coffee cup is essentially replacing a woman’s name and reducing her personhood. We named the campaign Onamaimię (She Has a Name) to convey this message.

In collaboration with Polish artist Aga Strzeżek, the campaign made illustrations of the four words in a simple, black and white style as a visual representation of the comparisons that are made when women are called świnia, pasztet, laska, and foczka. The visuals form the core of the campaign and are on stickers available at local Warsaw cafes and restaurants on coffee and other beverage cups. The stickers link to the Facebook fan page, which has more images, text, and animations diving further into the four terms. We hope to provide more information and engage people consistently through the page.

We implemented the core components of our campaign, but certain parts took longer than anticipated. In this case, some of the difficulties included logistical difficulties and time constraints. In order to adjust, we made a number of modifications. We were originally focused on designing and distributing coffee cup sleeves, but the ordering process and time necessary seemed to be an issue. At the suggestion of one of our café partners, we decided to use stickers, which could be placed on the cup and include cold beverages as well.

Through the course of developing, implementing, and reflecting on the campaign, we learned that it’s important to think about how to reach an audience that may not already share your beliefs. For us, the offline component was especially important for this. We found generous partners who were supportive of our campaign, and we found women who immediately nodded their head in understanding when we described why these words bothered us. It is in this spirit of listening, acknowledging, and understanding past and current hurts that we created this campaign. 

We do this in the hope that one day, people will no longer use świnia, pasztet, laska, or foczka to describe girls so the generation after us can see themselves and be seen as who they are—a whole human being.

Kasia Górnicka

Joy Liu

Mariia Veselovska

  

Feeding the Internet  

Tadeusz Michrowski, 2016 Ideas Incubator Fellow, Poland

Alex Granato, 2016 Ideas Incubator Fellow, USA

Aleksander Bucholski, 2016 Ideas Incubator Fellow, Poland

There is a fanpage on Facebook that has twelve thousands followers, each of its posts is getting over five hundred fans. People share its content and talk about it. This page is making a real difference in Polish internet. It’s not our page. It’s ‘Stories from Tinder’ page and it gathers the stupidestdescriptions of people who at some point of their existencelooked in the mirror and decided that sharing with strangers information about how they like anal sex would be a game changer in their romantic life. We madea page about feeding the most vulnerable. We have 76 likes. That puts things in a proper perspective.

*** Before I had a group and a cause, I had to ask myself few questions. ‘Whom I want to help’, was one of them. Somehow it felt like asking something else: ‘Whom I don’t want to help’. And why. I may be afraid to stand up for some causes, I may be unsure to fight for others, I may just not understand something enough, to advocate for it. I may this or that but in the end, how much I don’t like to constantly question myself*, I have to do something and, hopefully, believe I’m right. My team was lucky. Alex, Aleks** and Tadeusz (who is me) were designated to work with underprivileged groups. That is probably one of the broadest of all terms used by HIA. The choice we made was an easy one: working with Food Banks for the benefit of hungry people. Nobody will hate us for focusing on little, cute girls;shiny smiles coming from most obscure part of the city may create only positive emotions. “Cuteness factor”,as said by one of the HIA speakers. But it doesn’t mean it was a walk in the park. “We need no food” said people from our cooperating organization. “Those children are not starving. We need money to pay our staff.” We started having some ideas about the issues. Then we realized we have no idea about them at all and – finally – confronted the simple fact: what people need is important but what is more important is what we can give them. So, we decided on a matter, on a message, on a target-group and we had a good idea. Lovely Alex&Alekspart of the team came up with it. I’ll limit my role to givingyou an opportunity to see how hard it was to make it “sexy”. The internet loves short messages. It loves images, gif’s and – above all – it loves videos. As for the content, anybody who has ever seen any of HBO-produced series knows what “sells” stuff to people. Sex and violence. Recently: also dragons. It’s hard to compete with that. Unless... you use porn. Food porn in this particular situation. We decided to take the social media fashion of posting photos of food and show people how ironic word “sharing” is in this particular situation. We went to our local cooperating organization and convinced few parents to let us take photos of kids trying to eat actual photos of internet food. And now? We are establishing cooperation with Polish network of Food Banks and we target top online grocery stores. 

Imagine. You go to your favorite online grocery shop, you buy your little octopuses and caviar, and Italian wine*** and whatever else will make a cool Facebook post after youput it through a thousand iPhone camera filters and, while you are close to check out, you notice OUR OPTION. A cool, simple yet elegant way of buying an extra basket of food for little, sweet, hungry kids. And the best is that this option allows you to post marvelous pictures of food that would be actually made out of ingredients in the basket.
You can share food with real people, while sharing food-photos with friends. Can you feel the hipster-ish, moral high ground up there? By the way: as I’m finishing writing this paragraph, we are having around 150 likes. We are on you, ‘Stories from Tinder’!

 The real work is probably finished, yet at the same time the real work is yet to come. We will have to make sure that all the people in suits and ties and ironed shirts will meet at some point in one room and it’s our responsibility that before they leave, their hearts will be sold on our idea. It will take a lot of phones and e-mails. Maybe even ironing our own shirts. We will try to make sure that negotiations between Food Banks and shops will not flush our idea. We will look for food bloggers and journalists for publicity. I hope we will. What is finished is the work with ones it is all about. Social workers, kids. Guys, who are not waiting for somebody to save them. They are totally self-reliant, intelligent and witty, they are not miserable but could use some help. It was probably the best part of work.

Whoever says that volunteering is about giving has no idea what he is talking about. You soon realize you get from the people you are’ helping’ way more than you could ever give them. And they probably think it’s them who are on the better part of a deal. Here comes the magic. Both sides are sharing things that has no particular value to them, like time, and both get something priceless in the exchange. Inspiration, simple wisdom, emotions they could never got in their own environment. It can change the way you see the world.

I wonder about things. When we’ve left Aim High Association for the last time, Aleks said he will miss the kids, we were working with. I won’t. The very second I passed heavy metal doors, I knew we were as much guests in their lives as they were in ours. The thing I wonder about is “humanity” in HIA’s name. It is probably more effective not to get attached. But it seems more human to do so.

Alex Granato
Aleksander Bucholski
Tadeusz Michrowski

 *The only reason I don’t suspect myself of being schizophrenic is the fact I can’t tickle myself.
**Such a delight to have two teammates with similar name. Whenever you ask one a question, you get response from two sources.
***By now you know who our target is.

Girls like Girls. Boys like Boys. People Like People.

So What?

Adam Pakulski, 2016 Ideas Incubator Fellow, Poland

Marek Beresiński, 2016 Ideas Incubator Fellow, Poland

Carlos Flores, 2016 Ideas Incubator Fellow, USA

Over two-thirds (exactly 68 percent) of Poles rejected the idea of allowing same-sex couples to
publicly express their relationship - according to an opinion poll conducted by the Centre for Public Opinion Research (abbreviated CBOS in Polish) in 2013. In Poland, the Sexual and Gender Diversity Community (hereinafter referred to as the LGBTIQ+ Community) continues to face widespread discrimination. A large sector of Poland’s population continues to hold intolerant views of same-sex relationships. Although the LGBTIQ+ Community has held an annual equality parade in Warsaw since 2001 to manifest their desire for more inclusive public policies, negative public opinion has not been significantly reduced. On the contrary, many public officials have inhibited the LGBTIQ+ Community from exercising its right to organize. Fortunately, the European Court of Human Rights ruled—in the 2007 case known as Bączkowski vs. Poland—that Polish officials could not ban LGBTIQ+ pride parades because such actions infringed on the freedom of assembly under Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Despite these modest legal advancements, hate speech and prejudices from large sectors of the Polish
society remain major problems facing the LGBTIQ+ Community. According to researchers Anna Stefaniak and Michał Bilewicz, a large proportion of Polish society considers that offending homosexuals and other gender minorities is socially acceptable.
Before developing our own campaign, our team researched existing campaigns addressing LGBTIQ+ issues. First, we looked at international campaigns such as the Human Rights Campaign, the It Gets Better Project, the All Out Campaign, and the Rainbow Campaign. Although these international projects were more developed, it was important for our team to look at the different campaign strategies utilized in their own activism.

Next, our team looked at local campaigns and projects. The presentation given by the Campaign Against Homophobia (KPH)—a local LGBTIQ+ civil society organization—on Monday, June 6, 2016 to the Humanity in Action Fellows was very helpful in doing that. During the presentation, several campaign ideas were highlighted and served as inspiration for our own campaign designs. Our team also identified local bloggers that we listed as possible allies for our own campaign.    
After considering Poland’s particular shortcomings and various existing campaigns, we decided to launch our own social campaign—coined So What? Our team visualized a Polish society in which same-sex relationships were not ostracized. We also imagined a society in which all relationships—including same-sex relationships—would be treated as normal human interactions that would not require unnecessary attention. In essence, we crafted our vision to be a society in which all relationships are treated with equal respect and dignity.  

In order to make small but important steps towards our long-term ideal vision, we developed a clear mission for the So What? Campaign. The campaign was geared at promoting the idea that all relationships are normal, meaning that none of them require any special attention since they are mainly private interactions; they simply need to be tolerated in public spaces.
We decided that our target audiences should include youth and other users of social media in Poland, which does encompass heterosexual individuals. Since our long-term vision requires a massive change of attitudes within the entire Polish population—most of which consists of heterosexual individuals—we decided to have this broader target group. We also considered the platform that we would use (Social Media) and our time frame (one week).

The main platform for the So What? Campaign is the official Facebook page (see link: https://www.facebook.com/sowhat.campaign/). The page, which is in both English and Polish, provides the following detailed description of our social campaign: “Same-sex relationships should not get more attention than heterosexual ones because they are equal. Simple! In public spaces, same-sex couples should not receive unnecessary attention like surprised glances or snarky remarks. When people with prejudices try to have you mock same-sex couples in public, you should just tell them one short phrase—“so what”—to imply that they are like other couples.” The page also features the following short description: “If you agree with us, then join us to show that you ‘don’t care’ too.”
Graphics were very important for our online campaign. Our logo is the principal image for our campaign. The design is reminiscent of the green logo used for Whatsapp, a very popular social media network. This small allusion, coupled with the simple—but attractive—question (so what?), makes the logo very powerful and marketable for our target groups.

Other graphics, such as photographs taken during our campaign, always feature our logo to attribute the work to the So What? Campaign. Since the campaign’s main platform is Facebook, images have been indispensable for promoting the mission and vision previously described. Other forms of graphics, such as images promoting like-minded campaigns/events, were also featured on the Facebook page but with full acknowledgments to their respective creators and/or designers.    
After taking the photographs, our team was able to interview the members of KaDO, a very popular Polish LGBTIQ+-related blog. The KaDo team has an extensive network of followers, including over three thousands Facebook followers. Thus, this interview was an important way of promoting our campaign and forming alliances with like-minded groups.
Finally, we concluded the day by speaking to several representatives from the civil society organizations participating in the diversity event. We were able to distribute some of our stickers and take photographs of several members that agreed to support the campaign by wearing the sticker.

 Main Idea

The main question of our campaign "So what?" is a manifesto in support of homosexuals who want to freely express emotions and feelings with their partners in public places. Most of the social actions aim to break the passive attitude of people in relation to specific situations and trigger some form of re-actions and thinking. Our campaign against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity encourages passivity. "Passiveness" in this context takes on a new meaning and is an expression of acceptance and respect.

We believe that world where lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people can live openly without discrimination and enjoy equal rights and the freedom of expression is possible.

NoUnsexyQuestions - Cutting The Cake Is Not As Easy As It Sounds

Levke Burfeid, 2016 Ideas Incubator Fellow, Germany

Michalina Ferencz, 2016 Ideas Incubator Fellow, Poland

Andy Post, 2016 Ideas Incubator Fellow, USA

Designing the Campaign: 

We were lucky to be assigned to our first choice topic wise: women! Well, that is easy, we thought. Something about women rights, a topic some of us had already been engaged in for some time. In a sense it was true - we had immediately many ideas. Since we were not advocating for any distanced group, we didn't had to figure out what "this group" actually wants. We were advocating for ourselves and we were able to quickly name many important topics. Sexual violence, victim blaming, slut shaming, high discrepancies between rape statistics, double standards for men and women, abortion laws, new masculinity studies, etc. But as quickly as the ideas came we realized how broad our topics of interests still were. As Tara Dickman, Ideas Incubator trainer on community organizing, termed it: we wanted the whole cake.
To specify our interests we needed to narrow down our target group. Whom do we actually want to reach? It was very important for us not to limit our audience to women. Although they form the majority of victims of sexual violence we agreed that men need to be included in the conversation. Finally, we decided on our campaign: #NoUnsexyQuestions. Speak out against Sexual Violence and Communicate for Care. By sharing videos of positive experiences of learning and communicating about sex we sought to encourage peer-to-peer sexual education.

Implementation: 
This was our first time implementing a social media campaign--lessons came quickly. One of the first challenges was finding ways to simply convey our message without becoming too verbose. As we learned from Marek Dorobisz, a creative director and expert in media campaigning, we have about seven seconds to a) pique our audience’s interest and b) encourage them to act. In many instances we wanted to write detailed paragraphs about our campaign, its intentions, and the nuances of issues of sexual violence in Poland. However, we learned catering to a fleeting audience requires short, catchy taglines. We quickly realized one of the limitations of a social media campaign is the depth to which we could inform our audience.
Another challenge included translation from English to Polish. In many cases, the vocabulary used to describe sexual safety and sexual violence in English do not have graceful translations. For example, “rape survivor” is a common phrase in English that reframes the negative connotations of “rape victim.” In Polish, the equivalent phrase is uncommon if used at all. Perhaps a goal for the future would be to introduce a vocabulary to discuss rape culture and sexual assault in Polish.

Reflections: 
After implementing our campaign we realized that Facebook is a place of high competition. Though we’d heard about it before, we didn't expect to struggle with the amount of Likes we were supposed to reach. Part of the problem is definitely our general inactivity on Social Media. As a social activist who wants to work on an online platform, it is helpful to already have an audience of friends. This may give us a better chance to compete against cute kitten pages.
However, we did get a lot of positive feedback. Some people felt even personally touched and asked and commented about our campaign. Engagement ranged from Moms to classmates from primary school to ex-boyfriends. In the end, we found confidence in our campaign as the quality of the feedback was more important than the number of views and Likes.

DOM PL - POLAND UNITES, NOT DIVIDES US

Paulina Banasik, 2016 Ideas Incubator Fellow, Poland

Angie Liao, 2016 Ideas Incubator Fellow, USA

Mikołaj Solik, 2016 Ideas Incubator Fellow, Poland

Although  the  rate of immigration  in Poland  is one of the lowest in EU (foreigners represent about 0,5% of Poland’s inhabitants), immigration is a very hot topic in  the Polish media and political discourse. Unfortunately there is not enough substantive debate in the mainstream media and immigrants and refugees are used very often as a tool for awaking fears of Poles. Our American-Polish team has been working for 10 days on Dom PL, a social campaign addressing challenges facing immigrants and refugees in the Polish context.

Our team decided to tackle this issue problem through a campaign proposing a positive approach to the presence of foreigners in Poland. Instead of focusing on underlying the presence of the hate speech, discrimination and various obstacles that immigrants in Poland face on an everyday basis, we wanted to emphasize the common ground held by all who live in Poland, regardless of their origins.
As such, we asked each participant of our campaign a simple question: What do you love about Poland? Honest responses of Poles and foreigners show that people tend to focus too much on differences between people instead of looking for similarities that can be the first step to an intercultural dialogue. By sharing such positive representations and the human face of “the Others”, we hope to fight against the negative or doubtful public opinion on refugees and migrants and the perception of those who were not born in Poland as eternal outsiders.

Over the course of the campaign we all became graphic designers, film-makers, photographers, and detectives looking for the people who would like to join our campaign. Our number one enemy was time - we would have loved to have had more time and to engage more people with the project. With more time we may also have been able to establish ourselves more officially in order to gain the trust of a broader range of participants. We faced a fair amount of rejection, especially when soliciting people on the streets, and sometimes a bit of suspicion, though no experience was ever unpleasant. Nonetheless, thanks to our engagement, we were lucky enough to taste some traditional coffee from Eritrea, meet the founder of the Polish branch of Amnesty International, ride the vintage tram full of refugees through Warsaw and experience many other heartwarming moments.

With every next meeting with our amazing participants, we became more addicted to our idea! It was a great pleasure to see smiles on their faces and to hear their opinions about the project. Although it is a small social campaign thanks to them we got to know that we are doing something really  important.
And in spite of the tiredness (and occasional discouragement)
it was really a great time, nurturing our minds with even more ideas!

Meeting with the Other

 Paulina Banasik, 2016 Ideas Incubator Fellow, Poland




 











“These other worlds, these other cultures, are mirrors in which we can see ourselves, thanks to which we understand ourselves better – for we cannot define our own identity until having confronted that of others, as comparison.” Ryszard Kapuściński

Intercultural contact is as old as the history of humanity. Each society has always had its own “Others” or “Strangers”. They can be present in day-to-day life: for example, in the form of newcomers from distant lands, people from nearby villages characterized by other traditions, sometimes neighbors with distinct religious beliefs and practices. The particular feature that connects all these kind of people is cultural baggage that they carry on, different than our own. It has been constructed piece by piece during the socialization process and is still under construction. Diverse baggage causes a natural tendency to see the world through ethnocentric glasses, categorizing the world in the terms of that what is our/well known and that what is their/unknown. “Unknown” is often equated to threatening life order to which we are used. Such cultural filters, despite the fact that they help us find ourselves in ongoing reality and create identity attachments, unfortunately very often are a source of negative attitude and discriminations towards certain groups which can be very easily observed nowadays in Poland.

There are two main tendencies that shape the globalized world. On one hand,  thanks to new technology, for the first time such grand scale distances between countries and people are shortened. This situation facilitates mixing of the cultural codes and growth of openness. On the other hand, the opposite process can be also noticed, characterized by closed attitudes towards other cultures, fear and walls building (either mental and physical ones). Permanent coexistence of these two tendencies create tensions and new challenges.

The case of Poland in this discourse is especially interesting. After Second World War diverse Polish society disappeared. The communist period limited minimum migration flows, strengthening  in this way the homogenous trait of citizens in Poland. After 1989 when the communist dictatorship collapsed, the borders were reopened and the situation started to change slowly. Although the immigration rates are still low and Poland is definitely an “emigrant country,” every year Poland becomes more and more popular as a destination for immigrants that are looking for a temporary or permanent home.  The crucial issue is if Polish society,  institutions, and administration are ready for the challenges it brings.

It is a particularly important question in the context of the refugee crisis and  Polish attitudes towards it. Unfortunately, very often politicians use it to manipulate and frighten people (nothing unites more than a common enemy) instead of to analyze the situation and work on the best solution that will allow Poland to avoid the mistakes committed by other countries in the context of cultural integration. So far Poland does not have any effective integration program for refugees or immigrants. After obtaining the protection status, refugees are engaged in a one-year Individual Integration Program, the main role of which is to provide small financial help. Even though social workers are supposed to help refugees integrate with the Polish society, there is no clear plan how to do it. A huge problem is also the housing – Polish government does not provide to refugees a place to live, which generates further obstacles.

The growth of discrimination incidents, hate speech, strengthening of  radical right-wing organizations, and actual government’s tacit acceptance of such developments about what we were discussing during the sessions, unfortunately do not bode well. The surge of hate crimes motivated often by national or racial differences is also very alarming and needs the immediate reaction of Polish authorities that is still imperceptible. Hopefully it will change and people will understand that the most important thing in the situation of meeting with the “Other” is to recognize in this person a partner for a mutual dialogue and negotiations of cultural identities and belongings. It is worth to mention the work of growing nongovernmental Polish sector that tries to fill up all these gaps in the system and start intercultural dialogue between the people instead of spreading fears and incomprehension.

Yes, Please, Thank You: The Value of Words in Social Activism

Alex Granato, 2016 Ideas Incubator Fellow, USA

I am standing in a children’s playroom...tiny chairs, hand-painted posters, a cabinet packed with board games in softened, well-worn boxes.  I look around and in my head I count the words I know how to say in Polish: thank you, excuse me, yes, no, please, one, two.  I list them over and over again, forgetting pronunciation and practicing until they sound right again. They feel so meager, these scraps of language. I wonder how they could ever be enough to bridge the gap between my foreign, 22-year-old self, and the kids I am about to meet- the ones who consider this classroom a kingdom of their own making, who participate in this program (aptly called “Aim High”) after school every week, learning from each other and finding inspiration in all sorts of special projects.  The leaders here glow when speaking about them, showing off the latest bits of artwork and pointing to the equipment where the kids have been practicing circus routines (acrobatics and unicycles, to my amazement).  But they remind me, as well, that this organization was meant to serve a particularly underserved community.

“The kids probably will not know much English,” I am told at least twice.  Some come from difficult circumstances, some from homes with violence, others with parents working so many hours they barely have time to spare at the end of the day.  I am warned that some of them might be closed off to me entirely, and that their trust is hard-won.  I stare at a homemade poster that keeps track of birthdays in neat marker script. I count my Polish phrases one more time. Yes, please, thank you. One, two.

In the years that I have been surrounded by activists, I have developed a near-religious appreciation for the power of language.  I have learned to read the nuance in every phrase, how to dig through ordinary sequences of words for traces of micro-aggressions, how to dissect connotations and denotations and note their relationship to the ever-elusive concept of inclusivity.  I have spent this month here with HIA considering the power of hate speech, historically and contemporarily.  And at the same time, this past week, I watched as the heartbreaking words of a rape victim, shared in the now-infamous “Stanford letter,” started a national conversation about the need to challenge political and cultural systems of my country.  In short, I believe in words.  I believe in their power to bring beautiful change. I believe in their power to bring incredible harm.

So today, standing in the Aim High playroom, I cannot help but feel at a loss. Today, I am without the double-edged sword I’ve spent a lifetime learning to wield.  Thank you, please, one, two.  This is all I have to offer now.         

But then the door opens. The door opens and three girls tumble in and I realize that childlike laughter is a sound that is neither English nor Polish. It needs no translation. The squeals, the rushing, the hugs and petted hair are all so familiar to me. I breathe out a little. I smile, remembering that this, too, is universal. 

They are curious, bright-eyed. They find a map and I show them home. We trail our fingers across a printed blue sea and we count together, in a Polish/English blend, the number of hours it took my plane to bring me here to them.  I hold my hands to my heart. I laugh. I speak with sounds…gasps and excited squeals and a tone of voice that says, “be careful.” I find a board game from my own childhood on the shelves. I learn the word for “cookie.”  I get a makeover with juggling scarves. I play Twister in a pair of borrowed jeans.  I am hugged, in earnest, and I learn that in Polish, the word for “hello” also means “goodbye.” 

And when I leave I feel lighter, walking in the sun with the other fellows, turning over in my mind a phrase I heard once but cannot recall where…childhood is universal. That it certainly is.

And of course, I still worship at the altar of language. I still believe in words to comfort, protect, empower, and heal. I still believe activists should exercise deliberateness and the sometimes exhaustive patience that thoughtful speech and writing require.  This is how we reshape attitudes. This is how we make lasting change.  But every now and then I believe we would also do well to remind ourselves that connection does not rely solely on language.  Comfort does not rely solely on language. Celebration, commiseration, even change.  For all the time that we spend pulling at the meaning of the smallest phrases, we should sometimes wipe ourselves clean. We should go where no one will understand us. We should appreciate with overflowing gratitude the other ways that two people can try to bridge a gap.  We should strip ourselves down to yes, please, thank you.  We might be amazed at the results.