Why We Need to Embrace Every Part of Our Gorgeous “Selves”
Your body is full of assholes. And I’m not talking about your anal sphincter.
This is not metaphorical. We’re going to talk about your glorious immune system and how we want our ‘selves’ to be assholes.
At this exact moment, an astonishing number of cells are wandering around your body checking identification, interrogating strangers, eating corpses, setting traps, calling for backup, marking suspicious characters for destruction, and occasionally blowing themselves up for the greater good.
They are not nice.
Thank Jesus, the Buddha, all that is Holy.
Because nice is not the objective.
Discernment is.
Your immune system has one impossible job: Protect what is you from what is not you without destroying you in the process.
And evolution has been working on that problem for hundreds of millions of years. It has not solved it perfectly. Not even close. Sometimes your immune system attacks pollen. Sometimes it attacks your thyroid. Sometimes it ignores cancer. Sometimes it responds to a minor insult like somebody launched a nuclear weapon into Cleveland.
But most of the time?
It performs one of the most spectacular balancing acts in biology so quietly that you don’t even know it’s happening.
And I think there’s something here we’re supposed to notice.
We prioritize peace, and rightly so. We want to be forgiving people. We show kindness without even thinking about it, as we should. We prioritize empathy and community and, please, don’t hear me say that this is by any means the wrong idea.
All useful.
All beautiful.
And potentially catastrophic without the equally sacred ability to look at something and say:
No.
So I’d like to introduce you to some assholes.
They’ve been keeping you alive your entire life.
Meet Mack.
Nobody calls Mack because things are going well. If Mack walks into the room, somebody already fucked up. Badly.
He doesn’t run. Running is for rookies.
Mack has worked this neighborhood since before you were born. He’s watched bacteria invade, viruses hijack innocent civilians, cancer try to open a franchise, and neutrophils turn perfectly good tissue into the aftermath of a Michael Bay movie.
He walks in carrying coffee that’s been cold since the Clinton administration.
Looks around. Long sigh. No one answers.
Because most of them are dead.
The bacteria? Dead. Half the neutrophils? Also dead. Three innocent bystanders? Yeah. Sorry about that.
Mack doesn’t complain. He gets to work. One corpse. Chomp. Another corpse. Chomp.
Dead bacteria. Dead cells. Broken proteins. Shattered debris. Gone.
His actual name is macrophage. Literally: big eater. But Mack isn’t merely the janitor. He’s also collecting evidence. Every suspicious bastard he eats gets d i s m a n t l e d. Pieces of the intruder can be displayed on his surface, essentially announcing: Found the asshole.
Now other parts of the immune system know what they’re looking for. Without cells doing this work, everyone else is swinging fists in the dark.
But Mack has another lesson for us. He’s not a saint. Leave him activated too long and Mack becomes part of the problem.
- He keeps releasing inflammatory signals.
- Keeps recruiting reinforcements.
- Keeps rebuilding after the emergency should have ended.
A response designed to save tissue can begin damaging it. Because biology doesn’t divide the world neatly into good cells and bad cells.
It asks a much more interesting question: What is my job Today, regardless of morality?
Meet Nute.
Nute is twenty-two.
He’s on his fourth energy drink.
He has exactly three emotions:
- GO.
- FASTER.
- I REGRET NOTHING.
His actual name is neutrophil. And Nute doesn’t investigate. He doesn’t interview witnesses. He doesn’t preserve evidence. Someone says, “I think there might be bacteria,” and suddenly he’s sprinting through your bloodstream like the opening scene of an action movie.
No backup.
No plan.
No fear.
No fucking brakes.
He doesn’t care whether there are ten bacteria or ten million. He throws himself into the fight like his life depends on it. Which is funny because Nute’s life is already spectacularly short.
He was built to burn.
He arrives throwing antimicrobial chemicals, digestive enzymes, and reactive oxygen species at anything unfortunate enough to be standing nearby.
And if that isn’t enough?
Nute can sometimes rip apart his own cellular contents and cast a sticky web of DNA and antimicrobial proteins across the battlefield. Scientists call these neutrophil extracellular traps. NETs. Imagine dying and using your own skeleton to trip the bad guys. That’s Nute.
Absolute psychopath.
And sometimes Nute saves your life.
Sometimes he also destroys half the neighborhood doing it.
Which is why, eventually, Mack arrives. Looks around. Starts eating bodies.
“Fucking Nute.”
But here’s the important part:
Nute is not defective because he’s aggressive. Aggression is the feature. There are emergencies in which your survival depends on having something inside you that does not want to discuss the matter further.
The problem is not that Nute exists. The problem would be letting Nute run everything.
Meet Denny.
Denny doesn’t kill monsters.
He finds them.
His actual name is dendritic cell, and while everyone else is exploding things, Denny is quietly gathering information.
- Pieces of bacteria.
- Viruses.
- Fungi.
- Suspicious proteins.
Evidence.
Then he leaves the crime scene and heads for a lymph node. Headquarters.
Imagine the adaptive immune system sitting around waiting for assignments.
Door opens.
Denny walks in.
Drops a manila folder on the table.
Slides a photograph across.
Here’s his face.
Now the immune system can stop fighting something and start fighting this particular thing.
There is an enormous difference.
Denny is discernment before action.
And every healthy asshole needs a Denny.
Because if you are going to unleash Nute, for the love of God, first make sure somebody actually checked what the threat was.
Meet Hank.
Hank is a helper T cell.
He doesn’t carry a gun. He carries a radio. Once Denny brings the evidence, Hank starts coordinating the response.
- Virus? One battle plan.
- Extracellular bacteria? Another.
- Parasite? Different army.
- Different signals. Different response.
Hank’s power isn’t aggression.
It’s proportion.
And if he gets it wrong, things get weird quickly.
Mistake pollen for an invading army and suddenly Molly—whom you’ll meet in a minute—has permission to empty the armory. Congratulations. You sneezed yourself into another dimension.
Mistake your own tissue for the enemy? Now we have a much more serious problem. Because an immune response can be powerful, coordinated, sincere— and completely wrong.
Your immune system does not become correct simply because it feels strongly.
Neither do you.
Meet Nikki.
Nikki doesn’t chase anyone.
She checks IDs.
Nearly every nucleated cell in your body displays molecular identification through MHC Class I. Think employee badge.
Healthy cells continuously display tiny samples of what’s happening inside them.
Still me.
Still me.
Still me.
Then Nikki—a cytotoxic T cell—finds one displaying something that should not be there.
A viral peptide. Something wrong.
She stops. Checks.
Confirms.
And then she kills the cell.
Not because she’s angry. Not because the cell is evil. Because leaving one infected cell alive may allow thousands more infections tomorrow.
She uses perforin and granzymes to trigger apoptosis—a controlled cellular self-destruction.
No neighborhood explosion. No theatrical bloodbath. One compromised cell quietly dismantled.
Ten minutes later Mack arrives. One neatly packaged corpse. No innocent casualties.
“Clean work.”
Nikki is my favorite kind of bad ass.
Precise.
She doesn’t carry anger. Anger makes mistakes. She doesn’t carry guilt. Guilt hesitates. She carries responsibility. Her job isn’t to hate the target. Her job is to protect the organism.
Meet Benny.
While everyone else is fighting, Benny is in a workshop.
His real name is B cell. And Benny builds answers.
Antibodies. Ridiculously specific little molecular answers.
He starts with something that sort of fits the enemy. Then, with help from other immune cells, his descendants deliberately mutate the genes that build that antibody. Most versions are worse. Those cells lose. A few fit better. Those survive. Mutate again.
Test again.
Closer.
Closer.
Click.
It’s Darwinian evolution compressed into days.
And once Benny has something good? The battlefield changes.
Yesterday the bacterium was hard to recognize. Today it’s covered in molecular Post-it notes screaming:
THIS ONE.
Now Mack knows what to eat. Other immune mechanisms know what to attack. And when the infection finally ends, Benny’s lineage can leave behind memory cells.
A blueprint.
Because your body doesn’t believe wisdom should have to learn the same lesson from scratch every time.
Neither should you.
Meet Molly.
Molly is a mast cell.
And Molly is the panic button.
She lives near the places where the outside world meets you:
- Skin.
- Lungs.
- Gut.
- Nose.
She has good reason to be suspicious. Her body is packed with granules containing things like histamine and other inflammatory mediators. When a legitimate threat appears, Molly can be magnificent. Mast cells participate in defense against certain parasites and can even help protect against some venoms.
She can mobilize a response incredibly fast.
Unfortunately, sometimes it’s pollen.
Smoke detector beeps once. Molly pulls the fire alarm. Sprinklers. Fire department. News helicopters. Three neighboring buildings evacuated. Turns out someone burned toast.
This is allergy.
And sometimes Molly’s response becomes systemic and life-threatening.
Anaphylaxis.
The system designed to protect the organism can endanger the organism because it has responded too strongly to the wrong thing.
This matters.
Because Molly isn’t malicious. She’s protective. She’s simply protective without sufficient discrimination.
And protection without discrimination can become pathology.
Then There’s The Mark.
The complement system isn’t one cell. It’s an ancient cascade of proteins circulating quietly in your blood.
Once activated, one activates another.
Which activates another.
Which activates another.
A biochemical avalanche.
One of its most important products is C3b. C3b coats a target. Marks it. Suddenly Mack looks up. Nute grins. Everybody knows where to go. The mark isn’t the punishment. It’s the verdict.
Other complement proteins can eventually assemble into the membrane attack complex—a molecular pore punched directly through susceptible microbial membranes.
Ions and water follow the plain old laws of physics. The target loses its ability to maintain itself together.
Done. Complement doesn’t hate. It doesn’t forgive. It doesn’t need closure. It follows chemistry.
Which brings us to the part I can’t stop thinking about.
Your Body Does Not Believe Everything Deserves Access to You
Your immune system is obsessed with boundaries. Not necessarily impermeable walls. But Boundaries.
There is a difference.
A wall says nothing gets through.
A living boundary says:
You may enter.
You may not.
You’re food.
You’re oxygen.
You’re useful bacteria.
You’re one of us.
You’re dangerous.
You’re damaged.
You’re infected.
You’re welcome.
You’re leaving.
Life depends on permeability. You cannot survive completely closed. But you also cannot survive completely open.
And somewhere in our endless conversations about healing, compassion, forgiveness, vulnerability, empathy, and understanding, I think we occasionally forget that.
We start treating exclusion as a moral failure.
We think the evolved person should be able to remain soft in every circumstance.
Maybe she should understand why he did it. Maybe he should give the job another six months. Maybe she should call the friend again. Maybe he’s being judgmental. Maybe she needs to examine her expectations.
Maybe she should forgive.
Maybe he should regulate.
Maybe she should make absolutely certain that no one could possibly mistake her boundary for cruelty.
Meanwhile your immune system is standing there like:
Ma’am. This molecule doesn’t have an ID.
Sometimes You Need to Be an Asshole
There are moments in a human life when being an asshole is not a character defect. It is an immune response.
Quit the bullshit job.
Stop calling the friend who never calls you back.
Leave the party.
Hang up the phone.
Say no without attaching a dissertation proving that your no is reasonable.
Stop giving unrestricted access to people who repeatedly injure you simply because you understand why they became people who repeatedly injure you.
Understanding is information. It is not an admission ticket to your life. We don’t have time for bullshit molecules who didn’t bring their fucking IDs.
This is not cruelty. Cruelty enjoys suffering.
This is something far less dramatic and infinitely more useful: discrimination.
Self from non-self.
Welcome from unwelcome.
Mine from not mine.
Yes from no.
Your immune system does this every second of your life without convening a committee to determine whether the bacterium might feel rejected.
And thank God.
Because a boundary incapable of excluding anything isn’t a boundary. It’s an opening.
Here is where every “embrace your inner bitch” philosophy eventually makes me nervous. Because sometimes your inner bitch is wrong. Sometimes she’s Molly screaming about pollen. Sometimes she’s Nute throwing bleach at the furniture. Sometimes Mack is still rebuilding a battlefield after everyone else went home. Sometimes Hank has misidentified the enemy entirely.
Your protective systems can save you. They can also destroy you. Ask anyone with an autoimmune disease.
The lesson of the immune system isn’t: Attack anything that makes you uncomfortable.
It is almost the opposite. Build a system sophisticated enough to tell the difference. You do not want Nute running your marriage. You don’t want Molly interpreting text messages. You don’t want Nikki executing everybody who disappoints you. And you absolutely do not want Mack maintaining an inflammatory response to something that stopped happening five years ago.
The goal isn’t to become an asshole.
The goal is to have access to one.
To know there is something inside you capable of saying absolutely fucking not when absolutely fucking not is the appropriate response.
And then capable of standing down when the threat has passed.
That second part is harder than it sounds.
Maybe that is what discernment actually is.
Not becoming harder. Not becoming colder. Not learning to attack first.
Learning the difference.
What is yours to welcome and what is yours to refuse.
What deserves your tenderness and what requires your teeth.
When to send in Nute.
When to let Nikki handle it cleanly.
When Molly is protecting you—and when Molly is just screaming about pollen.
It can recognize.
It can discriminate.
It can attack.
It can remember.
It can tolerate.
And, when the danger has passed, it can stand down.
Maybe wholeness works the same way.
Maybe we aren’t supposed to become endlessly soft, endlessly forgiving, endlessly anything.
Maybe we’re supposed to have access to every gorgeous part of ourselves—
and develop the discernment to know who gets the keys.
Amy Dinaburg
Philosopher, ER RN (Retired)
Resource Notes
General Immunology / Innate and Adaptive Immunity
Janeway CA Jr, Travers P, Walport M, Shlomchik MJ. Immunobiology: The Immune System in Health and Disease. 5th ed. New York: Garland Science; 2001.
Used throughout for the fundamental organization of innate and adaptive immunity, antigen recognition and presentation, macrophage and neutrophil function, dendritic cells, T and B lymphocytes, immunological memory, and complement.
NCBI Bookshelf — Immunobiology
Macrophages, Neutrophils, Inflammation, and Complement
Alberts B, Johnson A, Lewis J, et al. Molecular Biology of the Cell. 4th ed. New York: Garland Science; 2002. “Innate Immunity.”
Covers phagocytosis, macrophage and neutrophil function, inflammatory signaling, complement activation, C3, and the classical, lectin, and alternative complement pathways.
NCBI Bookshelf — Innate Immunity
Dendritic Cells / Antigen Presentation
Janeway et al., Immunobiology. Dendritic cells are specialized antigen-presenting cells that acquire antigen in peripheral tissues and migrate to lymphoid tissue, where they are particularly important for initiating adaptive T-cell responses—the considerably less cinematic biology underneath Denny and his manila folder.
NCBI Bookshelf — Principles of Innate and Adaptive Immunity
Cytotoxic T Cells, MHC Class I, Perforin, Granzymes, and Apoptosis
Janeway et al., “T Cell-Mediated Cytotoxicity.” Cytotoxic CD8 T cells recognize foreign peptides presented by MHC class I molecules and can kill target cells through highly localized release of perforin and granzymes, inducing apoptosis while limiting damage to neighboring cells.
NCBI Bookshelf — T Cell-Mediated Cytotoxicity
B Cells, Somatic Hypermutation, Affinity Maturation, and Immune Memory
Janeway et al., Immunobiology, Chapters 9–10. Activated B-cell lineages can enter germinal centers, undergo somatic hypermutation, and be selected for improved antigen binding. Adaptive immune responses can also leave behind long-lived antigen-specific memory cells.
In other words: mutate, test, select, repeat. Click.
NCBI Bookshelf — Chapter 9 Summary
NCBI Bookshelf — Immunological Memory
Mast Cells, Allergy, Anaphylaxis, Parasites, and Venom
Pflipsen MC, Vega Colon KM. “Anaphylaxis.” StatPearls. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing.
Reviews the pathophysiology and clinical manifestations of anaphylaxis, including mast-cell and basophil activation and the inflammatory mediators responsible for its systemic effects—the less whimsical biology underneath Molly losing her shit over pollen.
Mukai K, Tsai M, Starkl P, Marichal T, Galli SJ. “IgE and mast cells in host defense against parasites and venoms.” Seminars in Immunopathology. 2016;38(5):581–603. doi:10.1007/s00281-016-0565-1.
Reviews evidence that mast cells and IgE can contribute to host defense against certain parasites and can enhance resistance to the toxicity of certain animal and arthropod venoms, while emphasizing that the same protective machinery can also produce allergy and life-threatening anaphylaxis.
PubMed — IgE and Mast Cells in Host Defense Against Parasites and Venoms
Author’s Note
The immune-cell characters in this essay are anthropomorphized for storytelling purposes. Mack, Nute, Denny, Hank, Nikki, Benny, Molly, and the Mark are not intended as comprehensive descriptions of their respective immune functions. Immunology is substantially messier, more interconnected, and more interesting than any character sketch can capture.
The biology is real. The personalities are my fault.
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