Minding Your Own Business, For the Revolution
Personally, when I get sick enough to cancel plans, I usually say something vague, like “I’m not feeling well” or “I’m a little under the weather”—I try to avoid giving any details. But elite athletes are not so lucky. The degree of knowledge that fans, and even non-fans, have about the health and well-being of these competitors would be creepy if it weren’t so common: This guy has a hyperextended knee; so-and-so has a partial—NOT FULL—tear of her ACL; someone else’s bone bruise is healing slower than expected. Etc. We just know these things without trying.
So when Simone Biles withdrew from the team competition on Tuesday, people naturally felt entitled to some kind of explanation. But it’s really none of our business, and we ought to remember that.
It turned out that Biles withdrew from that event, and then later from her individual event, for mental health reasons, which unleashed a storm of predictable takes. People like Dave Portnoy and Charlie Kirk attacked her, calling it selfish or weak and citing it as an example of American decline. In a very stupid tweet, Matt Walsh compared her unfavorably to Michael Jordan—who pretty famously took two years off during his prime because of the mental strain of his father’s murder.
The source of these attacks is depressing, if unsurprising. The modern conservative movement is based on little more than a reactionary longing for a mythical past and a contempt for cultural “others.” It is particularly vicious towards people who are young, Black, and female—and Biles is all three. It almost doesn’t matter what Biles did, because a political movement so devoted to demanding the suffering of people like Biles would find a way to delegitimize her amazing career in any case.
On the other hand, there were people throughout the media who took the opportunity to valorize Biles’ decision, commending her for taking care of herself. Many connected it to Naomi Osaka’s May withdrawal from the French Open last month, citing both as examples of Black women standing up to the sports establishment. This impulse is more sympathetic than the conservative one, but it ultimately falls into the same trap. The people elevating Biles as a symbol of “self-care” or mental health are also projecting a set of expectations onto her. This doesn’t seem fair to her, and still ends up evaluating her choice based on where it falls in the culture war.
For example, a number of people like this rushed to call Biles’ decision “brave.” It certainly takes bravery to talk publicly about your mental health struggles, but it’s also now fashionable to commend people for that type of bravery. More to the point, it is not a lack of bravery that keeps most people from addressing mental health issues—it’s a lack of real access to solutions. Many people cannot afford to take time off work to address mental health struggles. Some cannot afford therapy, or simply find it impossible to find one who will see them. And, of course, the medical professions have structural reasons for neglecting people based on race, gender, or class.
It is one of liberalism’s great failures that it considers people in such exceptional circumstances that these structural barriers do not apply (or, in the case of Biles and Osaka, are at least offset by their talent and athletic accomplishments) “brave”—that it turns social phenomena into matters of individual character. The result is that liberals go all in on the culture war, where they can identify heroes like Biles and Osaka, and neglect material solutions. Politics becomes all about performative support or condemnation of certain stars, with no actual collective action or policy goals.
All of this leads me back to my initial thought—we probably ought to mind our own business about stuff like this. If someone needs time off to address their health, either mental or physical, they ought to be granted that without having to explain themselves. Endless discourse about whether that choice is brave or powerful or inspiring or whatever, however well-intentioned, is potentially alienating because you shouldn’t have to be any of those things to take care of yourself. Self-care can be radical… but it doesn’t have to be. Sometimes, respecting the autonomy of the people means letting them do what they want, regardless of whether you approve. In other words, it can be an act of solidarity to mind your own fucking business.