I am not the goddamn pope
I'm too much of an atheist to provide you with a good definition of indulgences. What I know came up during history classes: at some point during its history, the Catholic Church started charging people for forgiveness in the eyes of God, made manifest via a piece of paper called an indulgence. Supposedly this pissed off a guy so much we ended up with protestantism. Go ask a historian and/or a theologist for details.
A few months back, I started joking that I should start selling indulgences. Because some folks clearly expect me to provide some.
First: some mythbusting
There are people who seem to think I'm one of the most hardcore hardliners on covid precautions in France.
This is inaccurate. I am not, as far as I know, immune defficient or otherwise especially "at risk". I just have existing bodily fuckery - histamine intolerance, suspicions of mild EDS, hints of some flavor of dysautonomia - paired with a strong dislike for preventable disease and avoidable extra disability. Mostly, I have better-than-average awareness of how utterly fucked I am if I get bad long covid. I've needed help before. I know there is little to none available. I have a lot to lose, and so I do not gamble.
Nonetheless. Compared to some, I can afford to "take risks". I do my grocery shopping myself (masked). I take public transit (masked). I attend a few events and meetings in person (masked). I travel occasionally (masked). I go to the odd movie (masked) or concert (masked). I don't necessarily run trusted friends through a PlusLife test before unmasking together. In most situations, I am wearing a reused FFP2 rather than my P3 elastomeric. I use nose spray more often nowadays, but don't bother with mouthwash. I wear glasses to begin with so never looked into safety goggles. I get boosted every six months because it is easy and free where I live.
This is a lot more than many people do. I'm aware of that. My precautions are primarily defined by consistent masking and missing out on a lot of opportunities for socializing or new adventures (which is awful but belongs in another essay). It is nowhere near as much as people who could drop dead from a single infection need to do.
Which is to say: I am not a saint, but I nonetheless get perceived as one of sorts. This means people sometimes make really weird assumptions and behave in truly bizarre ways around me.
Covid confessional
Shame is fairly well-documented as a bad tool by harm reduction initiatives of all sorts. Experts from the HIV sphere in particular will repeat at length that shaming people is not a good way to achieve a change in behavior. With illness and transmittable disease especially, you want people to tell you things. You want them to say they've been exposed, you want them to seek support. They won't do that if they're ashamed. You want open conversations about risk-taking and prevention. That requires being shameless.
I think applying this logic straightforwardly to an airborne pandemic breaks down, though - not just because consent cannot operate in the same way, but also because that rhetoric easily muddles shame and guilt despite them being subtly different. There is, in fact, such a thing as fucking up, and guilt is a reasonable response to fucking up.
It is very clear at this point that my mere (masked) presence makes people feel guilty. That guilt gets worse if I bring up the topic of covid precautions. It spirals if I dare to vent about what this whole thing is doing to me, to my place in "the community", to what activities I can even consider engaging in, to my hopes and dreams for a better world. The folks who feel guilt know, very clearly, that they are doing something Wrong. And in order to prevent that guilt from turning into shame, they deploy a few different strategies.
The main one has been to paint me as an unfunny bastard who enjoys lecturing people and feeling smarter than them. Because if I am indeed an unfunny bastard who enjoys feeling superior, then I am not worth listening to, I am not making good points and I am just an annoyance who everyone is too polite to kick out of the room. This is classic tone policing and not the strategy I'll be discussing here.
Another coping mechanism - the one I'm interested in this time - is to apologize to me. Not via actual apologies, hell no, but via pathetic explanations of why they just have to take risks, you see. This especially happens one-on-one and nine times out of ten it's about "mental health". I should probably workshop a good From Soft NPC Ominous Laugh(TM) so those people get a visceral unhinged earful of exactly how well my mental health is doing these days.
Get me off that pedestal I have a bad case of fear of heights
Look. I'm not doing great, in case it wasn't obvious from the absolute state of these blog posts. I'm not doing badly, either, but the amount of trauma and rage and frustration and sadness and betrayal I carry is inhumane. I am only doing "okay" because of a couple things.
One: I got extraordinarily lucky while job hunting and scored myself a full remote gig somehow tailor-made for my weird-ass profile, on projects I love, with wonderful coworkers who adore me, and decent pay by gamedev standards. Having money helps a lot, who'd have thunk, and as a workaholic who's always having to keep myself in check I do derive a lot of pleasure and meaning from my job.
Two: my baseline for the amount of socializing I do need is low. I cope with isolation a lot better than many people do, though being cut off from so many chunks of my communities still hurts like hell. I basically always had a class going for a new craft, before. I miss that dearly. I keep wishing I could actually be a part of some groups, with covid YOLO as the only rift between us - but what a deep rift it is.
Three: organizing is the antidote to despair. I do the work, if generally with gritted teeth, and I know things are improving. I am able to do that work because I have money and a mostly-functional body and mind, do note. Be it handing masks off to people, connecting other activists to resources, or apparently nailing relatable feelings in digital ink, it all staves off the solitude somewhat.
Meaning: I get that some folks are struggling but they need to go elsewhere. They need to find their own couple things that make them hold on and do better. Their guilt is not my fucking problem. I am not the pope. I do not provide indulgences.
Forgive me Father for I have decided to make my poor choices your responsibility
So. If those apologetics are not apologies, what do they end up sounding like, beyond requests for forgiveness I am unwilling and unable to provide? They turn into tone policing. It's not the most obvious "you should be nicer" kind, mind you - the manipulation happening here is different and sneakier.
By making their guilt mine to solve, those people tell me - hopefully without meaning to - that I should act sorry for them. They feel so bad, you see. They really want to be more careful but they simply cannot, it is just impossible. And that means that since I'm standing right there as a living example that it is, in fact, very much not impossible, I need to somehow be made different and exceptional. I need to be put on a pedestal or maybe in an alcove, lecture incarnate to the poor sinners on this Earth.
After all, the whole point of saints is that you're unlikely to ever reach their level, wretch that you are. Guilt gets displaced, from actions you could take to your very nature being lesser. A saint turns the other cheek, takes arrow after arrow, bears it all with a smile. Sure they might hand out the occasional sermon, but really they are exceptional and aspirational. Put the poor fucker on a cross and remember you will never be as pure as he was.
There is no reason to feel true guilt then, no reason to let that guilt turn into shame - do the ritual prayers, get a piece of paper from the annointed authority, and you can carry on with nothing weighing on you.
No. Fuck you. That's abdicating responsibility and I'm fairly sure that's not even how the whole religion thing works. I'm not that special. You're stronger than you think. You can avoid the guilt AND make the world a better place. Even good ol' Jesus was an activist before all else and wanted you to do the darn work.
You know how people sometimes go "I could never do it, I'd rather die" at a disabled or chronically ill person explaining the sheer amount of logistics they do daily? The same bad logic is at work here. When the day comes - and it will come, because you will get old some day, hopefully - you will, in fact, find that you too can do it. Because most of us are too bloody stubborn to let ourselves die that easily, even when society disagrees.
We're done with the blasphemy now I think
Mind you, I'm not a monster. I understand that things are complex. I can in fact adjust my mode of discourse to the audience. If unmasking for an event so you can briefly pretend the world isn't broken is the difference between attempting suicide and not, by all means, unmask for an event. I'll be patient, understanding of access conflicts, prompt to stress how much misinfo has made this all very complicated, blame institutions over individuals. I call this pedagogy mode.
The trap with pedagogy mode is that it will never be good enough. As described, my mere presence, the mere topic will create guilt. As such, to many, what I call patient and undertstanding looks like being the aforementioned unfunny bastard. I could tie myself in knots attempting to be nice enough, pleasant enough: I would never win anyway and so I've decided not to play that particular game. I'll be, ironically enough, my full unmasked self and you will deal.
Online, on my own platforms, I will generally be less keen to compromise. I do, in fact, need at times to be harsh, angry, unpolished. Do not think for a second that I forget who is the true culprit - the State, public health, capitalism, political parties. I just believe I am also allowed to be very tired of how it all becomes an excuse to dodge individual accountability. We're in year six. It's been so long.
Friends get a mix of both modes. I will offer support and understanding of risk assesments that differ from my own. I will also open up, hope to be offered support and understanding in kind. Occasionally this results in the exact style of tone policing described above. We typically work it out. Sometimes we don't.
You, too, can identify as a problem
Once more: I am not special. If I was able to learn, find resources and do better, so can anyone. Along with others, I work hard at making it easier to do better - but people have to want it. Systems are not abstract gods that exist in the void and control us: they are made of inviduals. Every person can become a grain of sand in the gears. From each according to their means and all that.
If there is anything saintly about me, it's that I am still able to switch between those modes - pedagogy, RAGE - and not get stuck in ever-seething anger. Ableism is load-bearing, from the eliminationist eugenics of the far-right to the workfare eugenics of the far-left, and confronting it means getting betrayed again and again by people you thought were on your side. The patience required to keep going is kind of a lot.
Nonetheless. I still, deep down, believe that everyone can learn and do better. That's why I'm still trying.
Practical Postscript
I'm not asking everyone to become a pillar of organizing and I certainly do not care for self-flagellation. I am asking for the following, in this order:
One: Go get a covid booster if you can. It's free in France, or ten euros if you have no coverage, it'll protect you and lower transmission somewhat. There's basically no reason not to. Get a flu shot while you're at it, if it's the season and you're able. (I am aware that access varies greatly)
Two: Start masking again, beginning with healthcare - waiting rooms, hospitals, doctors' offices, pharmacies - and public transit, plus shopping notably at grocery stores. Those are the places that people cannot avoid even when they're at very high risk from disease. Use the best mask you have access to - FFP2 is better than well-fitted cloth is better than surgical is better than "no mask".
Three: Learn to isolate when sick. Nobody wants your germs. Stay home if you can, isolate inside your home if you can, mask if you can't isolate. Ventilate. Filter the air. Don't treat it as "haha I'm just under the weather". You'll notice this comes after the previous point, because asymptomatic transmission is a thing too and securing critical spaces for everyone is a must.
Four: Start masking again every time you're indoors. Stores, movies and concerts and parties, meetings, work if you can afford to. Stop being afraid of being the weirdo especially if you're white, doubly so if you're not visibly queer. Stand out so it becomes easier for others to stay safe. Eat and drink outdoors whenever you can. Otherwise, put your mask back on between drinks and between dishes. Use your fucking brain, "sometimes" is better than "never" even if it's not "always".
In parallel, if you organize events - meetings, parties, classes - you need to take responsibility for your actions. Acknowledge that the world has changed: ask people to stay home if they're sick, to mask before, after, on the way and during the event, provide masks if you can. When you create a space, you owe it to the folks who show up to keep them as safe as possible. Model good behavior.
As it turns out, doing even one thing on this list will do wonders to alleviate the guilt and prevent it from turning to shame. That's because a great way to stop feeling guilty is, in fact, to stop fucking up.
For further reading, see Anna Holmes' "To My Unmasked Friend in the Fifth Year of COVID". The breakdown of fucking up as still containing some degree of personal choice even in the face of institutional failure was a major inspiration for this piece.