Fight, Flight and Freeze

We all know that there are three responses to a perceived threat: fight, flight and freeze. 

Two of the three, are widely studied and legitimised - flight and fight. The last of these - freeze - is subjected to intense scrutiny. Many cannot understand what would compel you to freeze and allow your attacker another opportunity to attack when you are confronted with a threat. To be honest, I don't either.

This is why we struggle to empathise with the proverbial deer caught in headlights and often use that anecdote as a soft insult to those who freeze in the face of danger. And yet, there is a reason why deers freeze; a lesson for us to all learn. Deers freeze in headlights because they cannot see at all. Its' eyes are not calibrated to take in the sheer brilliance of a car's lights. As a result, deers need to freeze in order to assess the threat before them. We do this too. How do you react when lights are turned on, abruptly, in a dark room? We freeze while our eyes adjust, blinking rapidly to aid in this process. 

Knowing why deers freeze in headlights completely changes the way in which we consider them; at least the way I consider them. They freeze, not because they are inherently weak, dumb and docile. They freeze because they are in new terrain and they need to adjust in order to respond. 

This is the part about freezing that we often ignore; that many people - myself included - freeze so that I can adjust to the flood of information before me. This freezing often takes the form of checking out and letting the information pass through the highway of my mind like busy cars; each with a place to go and a function to fulfil. I bring this up because of what's going on in the USA. Last weekend, whilst recording my podcast, I had initially intended to unpack the Dobbs' ruling and its' impact on Africa. But as I sat to record, I couldn't bring myself to speak on the issue; I froze. Part of this may have been informed by laziness; I did not want to engage with a topic that would activate a 20 min rant that I had neither the time nor the psyche to edit down to 5 minutes. Or it may have been informed by practical considerations. Discussing reproductive rights on a podcast episode about human-ape hybridization would have been a bit of a tangent. But, mostly, it was a combination of fear and fatigue. 

First, fear that I would alienate my small listener base. Second, I experienced two types of fatigue: the first is the kind of tiredness you get when you are constantly questioned about your political views because of your vocalness and your willingness to engage. Immediately after the Dobbs hearing, I got into a number of discussions with people across the political spectrum about why I disagreed with the court and why I, as an African, cared. The second time of fatigue was a sign of moral exhaustion; I have become aware of all the obligations required of me to live an ethical life and I decided to tap out. Many of us experienced moral exhaustion for the first time during COVID; for many of us, our actions had real, and deadly, consequences on our loved ones and strangers. And the high cost of our actions, made us think critically about every little action we did and did not take. Applied to my thinking on reproductive rights, I tapped out of thinking about my friends and family trapped in states threatening to curtail their rights to reproductive healthcare. I got tired of thinking of the knock-on effects the Dobbs' ruling would have on USAID funding priorities (i.e. the global gag rule) and, therefore, all reproductive health outcomes in the Global South. I checked out of considering the implications of this ruling on other civil rights - like access to contraceptives, marriage equality, segregation, and voting. But above all, I just wanted a break from the anxiety I felt whenever I thought about the current state of affairs in the US; because American domestic policy impacts American foreign policy which, in turn, impacts MY country's domestic policy. 

I recognise as I did on my podcast, that my ability to check out (in essence to freeze) is a by-product of my privilege. Right now, I can afford to ensure access to my own reproductive rights. And I am not American, so I have time before the consequences of their far-right, fascist Supreme Court reach me. But this privilege is not etched in stone; it is a by-product of my economic standing which is, in and of itself, not guaranteed (put simply, I do not have enough wealth that it is self-perpetuating or that I am culturally rich). So eventually, I will need to fight; if for no other reason than to ensure my own survival (insert liberal hypocrisy). Except, I don't know how to fight for those without at home and elsewhere. So perhaps my reluctance to speak on the issue on my podcast was informed by helplessness; I don't know how to help and talk is cheap (as the Democrats have proved). 

All this is to say, I froze. I wish I had frozen like a deer in headlights, assessing the situation, adjusting and then reacting. But now, I froze; content to let the car hit me because I see no other way out. I froze because I was scared of doing what has to be done; of turning this issue into a mission and fighting for it till the last man. I wish I could lie and hide; saying that I froze in order to assess the next steps. But I don't know what those steps are.

Do you?

Post Writing Reflection: Reading this through, I get the overwhelming sense of privileged exhaustion easily dismissed by the fact that I am motivated by my own comfort. Everything I have done in my life is done with the outcome of securing this comfort. I could counter by saying that as leftists swimming in capitalistic waters, what other option do I have? The entire system has manipulated my actions in order to make every single action I take exploitative and, at best, morally neutral. And that, as a result, my only obligation is to minimise the moral and economic harm of my actions (i.e. minimise the exploitation and maximise equity and equality). However, this feels like a cop-out because I often criticise those with privilege for failing to use that privilege to help others. 

Social media activism won't cut it anymore. 

We need concrete action to secure the rights that people desperately want to take away, and hiding from this responsibility is nothing short of cowardly. I, as a woman of privilege, do not have the right to be tired when the fight has just begun for me. I can be overwhelmed and scared, but these should not preclude further action on my part. I cannot use them as an excuse to focus on other parts of my life, parts dedicated to my own comfort. But that still leaves one question unanswered, the answer to which will provide me with clarity; what are my next steps?

Am I freezing to re-evaluate my position? Or am I freezing because I'm scared?