Blog

Disclaimer O’Clock

Annalee3 Comments


" Marta rails at Miami Circle " by Stephen Harlan , CC-BY" Marta rails at Miami Circle " by Stephen Harlan , CC-BY

“Marta rails at Miami Circle“ by Stephen Harlan, CC-BY

I started a new job recently. I’m working with great people on really exciting stuff.

So this is as good a time as any to establish some disclaimers regarding my personal writings and social media accounts.

I think it’s perfectly reasonable for employers to hold employees accountable for bad behavior they engage in on their own time. If I’m publicly engaging in behavior that might give the appearance of impropriety, or give coworkers a reasonable impression that I’ll discriminate against them, it is right and proper for my employer to have a problem with that. Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences.

But there’s a particular brand of troll that works to silence women by trying to get us fired for having opinions on the internet. I’ve seen it happen to friends of mine and to women I barely know at all, and it can get really ugly.

So just to be clear:

When I write or post things online, I am speaking as a private citizen, and all views I express are my own. I’m not acting as an employee or speaking for my employer. My employer does not have editorial control over my blog, my social media accounts, or anything else I write online (except for some of my code, which gets published on my github account).

If I write something for my employer, it will be clearly marked as such. Code-wise, that means it’ll appear in a repository my employer owns, or else a fork of a repository they own. My job doesn’t involve writing things for public consumption other than code at the moment, but if it ever does, that content will appear on my employer’s site, or a social media account they own, or will otherwise be prominently and clearly marked as having been written in my capacity as an employee.

I will never, under any circumstances, be using this blog or my private social media accounts to host content I wrote for work.

I take responsibility for the way that I comport myself, both on the job and off. So if you have complaints about me that are my employer’s business, I’m not going to tell you what to do with those. But if you’re just some sexist troll who’s annoyed by how I’m responding (or not) to your harassment, you should be aware that I’m a federal employee, and that my employer is therefore constitutionally barred from retaliating against me for any statements that I make that are not pursuant to my official duties.

Since I never, ever post anything pursuant to my official duties on this blog or my private social media accounts, you’re pretty much out of luck on that front. Maybe you should instead spend that time examining why you’re so invested in getting women to shut up.

How To Ask Me About My Cover

Annalee10 Comments


Yes, that's Tux in the background. Good catch, you.Yes, that's Tux in the background. Good catch, you.
Yes, that’s Tux in the background. Good catch, you.

I wear religious dress. (Quakers call this “plain dress”). Sometimes, people ask me about my clothes or my religion. Most folks are very polite and respectful, and I’m usually happy to answer.

But I’ve also had to put up with a lot of bad behavior. Even innocent curiosity can cause a few moments of stress while I figure out if the person asking is genuinely curious, or if they’re just trying to engage me in conversation so they can be a jerk.

I want to talk a little bit about how to approach these questions respectfully. I’m not the Voice Of All People In Religious Dress, but I’ve user-tested this conversation enough times to have run into many of the common user experience bugs. So if you’re curious about someone’s religious dress and you want to ask about it without making the person uncomfortable, here are some ways to avoid the common pitfalls.

0. Be Mindful of Power Differentials.

Questions about religion have the potential to be fraught and uncomfortable. If I’m not at liberty to refuse to answer you, or may feel that I’m not at liberty to refuse, you should think long and very hard about where the burden of your curiosity should lie. Teachers, bosses, and law enforcement officers should be especially careful here. If you’re in a position of power and not absolutely sure of your rapport with the person you’re asking, it’s best to just not ask.

1. Choose your moment.

Asking people about religion can be personal, but before we even get to that, it’s still striking up a conversation with someone, and all the normal rules apply. Take a second to consider whether I look like I’m interested in a conversation with you. Am I rushing to get somewhere? Am I using body language or other clear signals (book, earbuds) that say ‘leave me alone?’ Am I already in the middle of another conversation?

When I’m at restaurants with other plain-dressed Quakers, people routinely come up to our table and interrupt us mid-sentence to ask why we’re dressed the way we are. Follow-up questions about what Quakerism is and what we believe are common. Sometimes I just want to have a nice meal with my friends and family without having to table for Quakerism to complete strangers.

2. Ask if you can ask.

If I seem receptive to conversing with you (or better yet, if we’re already conversing, or have done so in the past), ask me if I want to talk about my religion. It helps to phrase it in a way that makes your intentions clear. People sometimes bring this up because they want to start an argument. I appreciate it when people open with something like “I’m curious about your head-covering, but I don’t want to be disrespectful. Is it okay for me to ask about it?”

When you’ve asked, respect my answer. If I’m not up for it at the present moment but I’m okay talking to you about it later or in a different context, I’ll tell you so. Also, I may be up for a quick question, but not a lengthy theological discussion–when I tell you I’m done, I’m done.

3. Don’t argue with me.

I’m not going to try to convert you or tell you how to dress, and I expect the same courtesy. Curiosity is normal, but telling me I’m wrong to dress the way I do is incredibly presumptuous. I’m also not interested in debating my beliefs or politics with strangers in this context.

4. Be careful with assumptions.

The assumptions I get about my clothes range from the benign (mistaking me for an actor in costume) to the tiresome (launching into a tirade about my assumed politics without stopping to say hello first).

I don’t tend to care when someone asks me what play I’m dressed for, but they usually look super embarrassed when I tell them it’s not a costume, and then I have to assure them that they didn’t offend me, and it’s all quite awkward. You also shouldn’t open with “are you [name of religion]?” It’s easy to guess wrong, and keep in mind what I said about making your intentions clear–I’m unlikely to answer that question unless I know why you’re asking.

If you make assumptions about my politics and try to start arguments based on those assumptions, I might troll you. I’m not sorry. You know what they say about assumptions.

I’m not trying to scare people off asking. I’m quite a geek about religion, and we all know that geeks like opportunities to geek out. Just, you know. Treat me like a person, not a walking Google search, and we’ll get along fine.

Clanging Cymbals

Annalee1 Comment

The Supreme Court has issued a ruling striking down Massachusetts’s thirty-five-foot ‘buffer zone’ around reproductive health clinics. The ban was put in place to protect patients from people who harass and assault clinic patients.
Many people have already pointed out that the Supreme Court itself enjoys a one-hundred-foot buffer zone. But I’m not here to talk about that, or the myriad other legal precedents for reasonable limitations on uses of public property.

I want to talk about clinic attackers, for a minute. Most of them claim that their actions–which include grabbing, spitting on, throwing things at, threatening, non-consensually photographing, libeling, slandering, vandalizing the property of, and otherwise committing crimes against clinic patients and staff–are rooted in Christian faith.

Y’all know how I feel about people who try to use Christianity to justify bad behavior.

We’re going to go ahead and side-step the question of whether there’s any biblical basis for opposition to abortion. If people have a sincerely-held religious belief that abortion is against God’s will, then trying to explain their religion to them is not going to do you or them any good. I can respect that some people believe that abortion is murder, even if I don’t agree.

But if you are shaming, abusing, and assaulting vulnerable people in Christ’s name, you are doing Christianity wrong. If you are going out ‘in Christ’s name’ to spread hatred, you are doing Christianity wrong.

I refer you to 1 Corinthians 13:1-7:

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but I have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but I have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body to be abused so that I can boast, but I have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious, boastful, arrogant, or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

If you go to a clinic that’s under attack, you’re going to see a whole lot of boasting, arrogance, and rudeness. You’re going to see people insisting on their own way. A lot of irritability and resentment. You’re going to see clinic attackers rejoicing in wrongdoing.

What you’re not going to see from clinic attackers?

Love.

You’re not going to see them recognizing the inherent worth and dignity of all of all people, including clinic patients. You’re not going to see them meeting clinic patients with the radical love that Paul calls all Christians to in scripture.

The sincerity of their beliefs is not the problem. The problem is that–no matter how sincerely they believe–if they have not love, they are nothing but clanging cymbals.

The pain and suffering their violence inflicts serves only themselves, and not God.

1 Corinthians 13:13:

Abide these three together: Faith, Hope, and Love. But the greatest of these is Love.

My prayers today are with clinic staffers, who bear all things, hope all things, endure all things, and risk their very lives to ensure that their patients have access to medical care.

‘Not All White People’ and Derailing Conversations

Annalee

This is an entry from the department of Things That Activists of Color Have Already Explained More Than A Million Times. But I just saw someone shove their foot into the shoe again yesterday, so I guess I can’t hurt anything by trying to explain it too.

It’s practically a Law Of The Internet that when a Person of Color says something about racism, at least one white person will barge into the conversation to assure everyone that ‘not all white people are like that.’ Bonus points if they go on to explain that making negative generalizations about white people is ‘racist’ (spoiler: it’s not).

That’s a tiresome way to behave, and you shouldn’t do it. If the shoe doesn’t fit, don’t wear it.

If what someone is saying about white folks and racism doesn’t apply to you, then it isn’t about you, and there’s no reason to make it about you. If you’re feeling a driving need to make it about you anyway, ask yourself where that’s coming from. If what they’re saying really doesn’t apply to you, then why are you feeling defensive about it?

Maybe you think you’re just standing up against prejudice and generalizations, because you learned during Black History Month back in school that it’s wrong to judge people by their skin color. But the thing is, racism isn’t a two-way street.

As white people, we have the enormous privilege of not having the actions of other white people held against us in any meaningful way. For example, when a white guy attacks a federal building (or a post office, or a school, or a women’s clinic, or a museum, or a theater, or another federal building, or another school), people don’t start treating all white guys like terrorists.

And while there are stereotypes about white people–some of them even negative!–they don’t impact our everyday lives the way stereotypes about people of color impact theirs’. We don’t get paid less or denied jobs over them. We don’t get stopped and frisked over them. Trigger-happy racists don’t gun us down over them.

generalizations about white people hurt feelings. generalizations about POC end our lives. there’s the difference.

— Franchesca Ramsey (@chescaleigh) July 21, 2013

So when you equate generalizations about white people to generalizations about people of color, you’re not just asserting your privilege to shape the discourse around racism; you’re also demonstrating a staggering lack of empathy. You’re acting as if your implicitly limited understanding of racism is more accurate and ‘true’ than the lived experiences of people who actually face racism every day.

We accept that young children will be self-focused, and will sometimes fail to take other people’s perspectives into account. But interrupting other people’s conversations to insist that they praise you for mastering basic concepts stopped being charming shortly after you learned to tie your own shoes. If you’re still doing it when you’re supposed to be old enough to use a computer without supervision, you are embarrassing yourself.

So please. Do not insist that your effort to treat other people with dignity and respect–which really is the bare minimum of what’s expected from decent human beings–is so remarkable that you need to interrupt other people’s conversations to demand praise.

Everyone already knows that ‘not all white people are like that.’ But if you’re barging into conversations to make them about you, chances are pretty good that you’re exactly like that.

If people don’t react to that with cookies and praise, it’s not because you’re white. It’s because you’re being clueless and rude.

Get Your Fake Conscience Objections Off My Lawn

Annalee101 Comments

NOTE: If you see the full text of this post on any site but this one, it has been reprinted without my permission.


Conscientious Objectors using hand tools to create a fire line.Conscientious Objectors using hand tools to create a fire line.

Conscientious Objectors using hand tools to create a fire line.

The Green Family, owners of the Hobby Lobby chain of craft stores, has asked the US Supreme Court to grant them ‘conscience protection,’ exempting them from their obligations under the Affordable Care Act. They claim that their religious convictions don’t allow them to cover employees’ birth control.

As it happens, I know a little something about conscience protection. I’m a Quaker–one of the groups for whom the first conscience protection laws were created.

Back in 2011, I wrote:

As a Quaker, I believe in Conscience Protection. I believe people should have the right to refuse work that violates their principles. If a draft were called tomorrow, I would wholeheartedly support people’s right not to serve.

But if someone serving in the military came to me and said they wanted me to defend their right to refuse military service, but that they also wanted to keep their job and be paid as if they were actually serving in combat, I would laugh in their face.

A pharmacist demanding the right to keep their job even if they refuse to dispense legal medication is like a Marine demanding to keep their job even if they refuse to follow lawful orders. That’s not “conscience protection,” that’s a handout to someone who wants to be paid not to work.

I feel the same way about Hobby Lobby’s Affordable Care Act stunt.

I will refrain from asking where Hobby Lobby gets the nerve to claim ‘conscience’ when their shelves are full of products from countries with appalling labor laws. I won’t even ask which version of the bible they’re reading where Matthew 25.36 reads “I was sick and you sued not to cover my medical care.”

Instead, I want to know exactly where they’re getting the idea that conscience protections are a consequence-free exemption from legal obligations.

During World War II, men who refused conscription for reasons of conscience didn’t get to go back to their normal lives. They were conscripted instead for difficult, dangerous jobs. They served as forest fire fighters (including smoke jumpers), psych ward orderlies, and subjects in medical testing.

That program formed the basis of the Alternative Service Program used during the Korean and Vietnam wars. If a draft were called tomorrow, the Alternative Service Program would start right back up again.

And Alternative Service applies to work that people are required to actually carry out themselves, not to things they’re only required to pay for.

Every year, I pay taxes to the United States government. I tell myself that I’m paying for roads and schools; food for hungry families and head start programs.

I am, of course. But I’m also paying for Guantanamo Bay.

I’m paying for two wars, and for racist immigration laws.

I’m paying for drone strikes, including those that kill and maim children.

I’m paying for federal executions, and for lawyers to argue that the government is not obligated to provide comprehensive medical care to Chelsea Manning.

I’m paying for the prison industrial complex.

All of those things violate my religious beliefs.

And if I refused to pay my taxes because of that? I would go to jail.

There are Quakers whose consciences really won’t permit them to pay federal taxes. Many of them manage that by making sure they don’t make enough money to incur tax liability. They live on far less than they could earn if they were willing to pay taxes, but they’re willing to make that sacrifice, because their conscience demands it.

Now along comes Hobby Lobby, demanding a consequence-free exemption to paying for birth control on the grounds that it violates their conscience.

Back in 2011, I wrote:

If your conscience prohibits you from dispensing legal medication, then your conscience prevents you from being a pharmacist. Full stop.

If your conscience prohibits you from performing abortions, then your conscience forbids you from taking a position where abortions are part of the job. Full stop.

I know firsthand that it can be hard to pass up opportunities that violate your conscience. But that is the price you pay for conscientious objection.

If you’re not willing to pay that price, you’re not a Conscientious Objector. Full stop.

If the Green family’s conscience really forbids them from meeting their legal obligations under the Affordable Care Act, then they have the option to arrange their lives so as not to incur those obligations. They can choose not to run a two billion dollar corporation.

But if they’re not willing to make those sacrifices–if their ‘conscience’ only compels them so far as they can follow it for free–then they are not conscientious objectors.

And they and their fake conscience objection can get the hell off my lawn.

NOTE: If you see the full text of this post on any site but this one, it has been reprinted without my permission.

Going Plain

Annalee3 Comments


" Quaker Meetinghouse in Coanwood " by John Wigham , CC-BY" Quaker Meetinghouse in Coanwood " by John Wigham , CC-BY

“Quaker Meetinghouse in Coanwood” by John Wigham, CC-BY

On and off through my adult life, I’ve been carrying what Quakers call a ‘leading’ –a spiritual calling–to take up Quaker Plain Dress. In college, I did an independent study on Plain Dress that involved taking it up for a while, and I came this close to committing to it as a lifestyle. Plain Dress was very grounding, for me. I don’t want to get too theological about it at the moment, but suffice it to say that it helped remind me of the person that I wanted to be. In a bunch of little ways, it made it easier for me to live my Quaker values.

I laid the leading aside at the time because plain dress is a big commitment when you’re trying to break into the workforce, especially in a tough economy. But I always told myself I’d revisit the leading if my circumstances changed. Over the years since, the leading has revisited me quite a lot. My bookmarked plain dress resources made their way into my browser history every few weeks.

My professional circumstances have indeed changed, and pretty significantly. I’m now in a profession where employee dress codes are practically unheard-of. But even if I was still working in a formal office environment, I’ve come to a place where I think I’d try to make it work anyway. Among Friends, a leading isn’t a thing you necessarily want to do; it’s a thing God is telling you to do. I’ve been answering that call with “okay, but later.” And while I wasn’t looking, I arrived at later. It’s time.

I’ve started putting together a ‘look board’ to work off of as I construct my plain wardrobe. Since I’m making my own clothes, I have a lot of leeway in coming up with a style that works for me. What I’ve settled on is a fusion of traditional plain styles and what Quaker Jane calls “modern plain.” I’m trying for a look that is identifiably plain, but still modern enough that it’s not going to cause problems for me as a woman in the Tech industry.

So I’m off to go buy some fabric. I’m pretty excited.

Kid Flash The Super Creep: The Problem With ‘Funny Harassment’

Annalee6 Comments

Content Warning: this post discusses sexual harassment, stalking, and sexual assault.

Kid Flash

I’ve recently been introduced to Young Justice, a superhero cartoon featuring beloved sidekicks of the Justice League. It started in 2010 and wrapped up earlier this year. I’m a big fan of superhero cartoons, having grown up on the DC Animated Universe. So Young Justice is right up my alley.

But if Kid Flash doesn’t have a drastic character adjustment pretty soon, I’m giving up on the show.

Kid Flash, AKA Wally West, is one of the founding members of the Justice League’s covert junior team. As soon as he meets teammate Miss Martian, he starts hitting on her. She brushes him off.

And so begins a campaign of sexual harassment that, seven episodes in, shows no sign of ending soon. It’s annoying enough to watch as a viewer, because harassment isn’t funny, but what it says about this world and the morals of these alleged ‘heroes’ is pretty gross.

Aside from Robin making fun of Kid Flash with no apparent concern for Miss Martian’s personhood, no one has called him out. Neither Robin nor team leader Aqualad has pulled him aside and said “Bro. She’s not interested. Quit being a creep.” The adult members of the Justice League don’t seem concerned, either–though given how the adult Flash behaves, it’d not hard to work out where young Wally picked up his views on women.

So Miss Martian has to put up with not just killer robots and evil monsters, but also with an incessant campaign of sexual harassment. On top of that, she has to rely on a team that clearly doesn’t have her back. They’d rather laugh about Kid Flash’s behavior than tell him to knock it off.

As far as the show is concerned, this situation is funny. We’re meant to laugh at Wally and his pathetic antics, rather than empathize with how awkward and uncomfortable his harassment makes things for Miss Martian.

If it were just this one obnoxious character on one show, it’d be an ignorant joke in terrible taste. But Kid Flash is part of a larger pattern[1] of pop culture heroes portraying sexual harassment as funny or endearing.

Miss MartianThis stuff matters–not just because it’s an annoying trope that alienates harassment and assault survivors, but because it leads to real people getting harassed and assaulted in the real world. It perpetuates the idea that harassment is normal courting behavior, and that “no” actually means “keep asking me until I change my fickle girly mind and fall madly in love with you.” Some folks who’ve been raised on a steady diet of this trope have it so bad that they take anger and contempt as signs that their victim secretly likes them back.

A guy who assaulted me went on to subject me to this kind of ‘funny’ harassment. He was a friend of my brother’s and a member of a social club I was very heavily involved in, so I had no good way to avoid him.

Among other obnoxious behavior, he was constantly calling me ‘babe.’ Every single time he did it, I told him to knock it off. I tried patiently explaining that I found it demeaning. I tried yelling. I tried getting up and leaving the room. I tried flipping him off and calling him sexist.

He kept right on doing it.

One day he told me he did it because the main character in his favorite book did it.

I bet the romantic interest in that book told the main character to quit calling her ‘babe,’ too. I’ll bet she was a Strong Female Character who Didn’t Put Up With Nonsense.And I’ll bet by the end of the book, his campaign of harassment had changed her fickle, girly mind and she’d fallen madly in love with him, thus completing his hero narrative of the good guy getting the girl.

The guy who assaulted me? His campaign of harassment didn’t end that way.

It ended with him assaulting me a second time.

Since I grew up watching cartoons, I’m used to superheroes telling me about seat-belts, recycling, stranger danger, staying away from guns, and not trying superheroics at home. Would it have killed Young Justice to have a member of the Justice League take young Wally aside and tell him that heroes treat women with respect?

Or, better yet, they could have just not included ‘funny harassment’ at all, because harassment isn’t funny, and Miss Martian is supposed to be there to fight bad guys, not to teach socially-awkward boy geniuses like Wally how to behave around women.

[1] TV Tropes has several pages full of examples, including:

  1. [CW: Harassment, stalking] “The Dogged Nice Guy”
  2. [CW: Harassment, stalking, misogyny]: “Defrosting the Ice Queen”
  3. [CW: harassment, stalking]: “Belligerent Sexual Tension”
  4. [CW: Stalking]: “Stalking is love”

The Comforting Tale of the Crazed Gunman

Annalee


A rifle barrel. Remixed from " Shoot for Hope 2 " by Renee Viehmann , CC-BY .A rifle barrel. Remixed from " Shoot for Hope 2 " by Renee Viehmann , CC-BY .

A rifle barrel. Remixed from “Shoot for Hope 2” by Renee Viehmann, CC-BY.

In the wake of the tragedy in Connecticut, the narrative of the mentally ill gunman has reared its ugly head again. It’s a comforting story–one that says that people capable of mass killings are rare, and so far outside of society that they’re not really even human. It provides a neat, easy explanation of how someone could do something so terrible.

The truth is a lot more complicated than that. One out of every four Americans has some form of mental illness. The overwhelming majority of them never kill anyone, and many mass shooters have no medical history of mental health problems.

The kind of homicidal (and suicidal) impulses on display in mass shootings are a pretty obvious sign of some form of mental illness. But if someone shows no sign of having these impulses until the day they commit a mass murder, then it’s very unlikely that improving access to mental health care would do them much good.

When a mass shooting happens, derailing the conversation to talk about mental health actually just re-enforces misconceptions about mental illness, increasing the very stigma that makes it difficult for people who need mental health services to get care in the first place.

Mass shootings are irrational, so it’s easy to blame them on insanity. But we’re not going to protect ourselves or our children  by stigmatizing mental illness. We need to find the stomach for some hard conversations–not just about guns, but about how we construct masculinity, how we connect power and aggression, and the pressures we place one people who are already hurting. It’s easy to point at a mass shooter and say “they did that because they were broken.” If we’re serious about preventing these tragedies, we need to start asking ourselves what broke them.

Awesome Thing On The Internet: A Game of Rats and Dragon

Annalee


Tobias Buckell's Mitigated FuturesTobias Buckell's Mitigated Futures

Tobias Buckell’s Mitigated Futures

Lightspeed has a new Tobias Buckell short story up: A Game of Rats and Dragon, from Buckell’s upcoming Mitigated Futures collection.

He’s exploring a couple of ideas that really interest me: first, the idea of digital companions as equivalents to stuffed animals or pets–things to which we can have a deep emotional connection even when we know they’re not real.

The video game Dreamfall (which, sadly, was awful, in spite of being a sequel to The Longest Journey; one of my favorite games of all time) comes at this trope more directly, with actual stuffed animals that are given to children with some basic learning apps (speak and spell type stuff) and ‘grow’ with their owners to become personal data assistants. Even though they’re just computers stuffed inside plush toys, it’s easy to see how their owners anthropomorphize them and grow attached to them as if they’re actual creatures. After all, they talk. They walk. They play, sing, dance, teach, listen. Even without most of those traits, most people would still read humanity into them–just ask anyone who’s ever cussed out Siri.

The other thing Buckell’s getting into here is Live Action Role Play. My own experience with LARPs (yeah, I used to dress up and hit people with padded sticks. Judge me all you want; it was fun) has taught me that the more realistic the world–in terms of costume, props, setting, other players– the easier it is to get into the game and actually play a character without feeling silly. Buckell’s taking that one step further to posit that if augmented reality technology were good enough, LARPing would become a really popular pastime.

On top of that, he’s also telling an entertaining story. I heartily recommend giving it a read.

‘My Quakerism’ Responses, Take II

Annalee1 Comment


" Out of Order " By Melanie M ,  CC-BY ." Out of Order " By Melanie M ,  CC-BY .

“Out of Order” By Melanie M, CC-BY.

My Quakerism Will Be Feminist and Anti-Racist or It Will Be Bullshit got shared around on Facebook again after I wrote what I thought was the wrap-up. It’s now sitting at more than 700 unique views, which is, um. A lot more traffic than my blog posts usually get.

The overwhelming majority of the second round of comments got approved. I really appreciate the support, folks. It means a lot.

The comments that got moderated mostly fit into one of these two categories:

1. The commenter wanted to debate the existence of ‘reverse racism.’

Those were not approved because, per the comment policy on the original post, I didn’t want the conversation derailed.

Having to stop and explain basic concepts (like the definition of racism) to every new person who walks in the door is a huge obstacle to those trying to discuss racism beyond the 101 ‘this is a real thing in the real world’ level. If you can see this post, then you have the technology to educate yourself about these issues, using either the links in the original post or your favorite search engine. If you need a basic introduction to racism, I strongly suggest you seek one out.

Why am I spending an entire paragraph telling you to google it instead of just explaining why reverse racism doesn’t exist? Quite simply, because the expectation that I will answer the question is born of white privilege.

As white people, we live in a world that privileges our opinions about race and racism, while downplaying as ‘biased’ and ‘anecdotal’ the lived experiences of those who experience racism firsthand. If someone shows up at our Quaker Meetings and says ‘you guys are racist’ and we don’t want to hear that, all we have to do is ignore them. They can’t do anything to change us or our communities without our participation, so if we don’t want to leave our comfort zone and listen to them, we don’t have to.

People of color do not have the privilege to walk away. Racism affects them every day, in ways both great and small. It’s not something they can ignore when it’s inconvenient or stressful (which it is for them more often, and to a greater degree, than it ever is for us).

When you have the privilege to walk away from a conversation and the other party doesn’t, you control that conversation. You get to decide whether the other person is ‘too emotional,’ or whether or not you like their ‘tone.’ You even get to set the standard of evidence you’ll accept before acknowledging the facts they live with every day of their life.

One of the ways that privilege manifests itself is white people entering conversations about racism and taking it as a matter of course that we can change the subject. If we still need the basics explained to us, we ask, fully expecting that everyone else will stop the conversation they’re trying to have and educate us. If we decide we want to ‘play devil’s advocate,’ we can just start doing it, without even considering whether or not the other party wants to be our partner in an academic debate about the truth of their lived experience. If something that comes up in the conversation upsets us, we can refuse to discuss the matter further until the other party apologizes–which often leads to the absurd circumstance of white folks demanding people of color apologize for saying that racism exists, and that white people perpetuate it. If our conditions are not met, we can just walk away, insisting that the other party is being ‘reverse-racist’ for not considering our feelings.

If you actually care about racism–if you want to be an ally to people of color, and create spaces that are welcoming to them–then step one is not exercising your privilege to walk away. If someone’s calling you out, listen. Think about what they’re saying. Participate in the conversation on their terms. If that takes you out of your comfort zone, then step on out, and accept that discomfort as the gift that it is. Always assume that what someone is telling you about their lived experience is their truth. If listening to that truth makes you realize your actions haven’t matched your intentions, acknowledge it. Apologize. Do better. Do it enough, and your comfort zone will grow. Take another step.

If you listen and you still can’t reconcile their truth with your own, keep listening. Remember that you–and everyone else–has been conditioned to privilege your experience of a situation over the experiences of people of color. Resist the urge to do that. Assume that you’re missing something before you assume that the other person’s truth is invalid.

Early Quakers didn’t speak of the inner light as a warm, fluffy ball of love. They saw it as a hard light–one that shines on us and illuminates our flaws so that we can see and work on them. They acknowledged that spiritual nakedness as a gift from God–and it is. It’s the unwavering belief that every one of us is capable of doing better. Embrace that. Listen. Educate yourself. Don’t hide your light under a bushel on the assumption that you can’t.

Everything I just said also applies to men and sexism (and straight folks and heterosexism, able-bodied folks and ablism, cis folks and cissexism, etc). Which brings us, in a round-about way, to the second category of comment that didn’t get approved:

2. The commenter suggested that I’d be much happier if I’d just [forgive everyone/stop letting assholes rent space in my brain].

The idea that people can’t make us feel inferior without our consent is meant to be empowering, I know. What it actually does is place the responsibility for both hurt and healing squarely–and exclusively–on the injured party’s shoulders.

Recent anti-bullying campaigns have finally started wising people up to the idea that ‘just ignore them and they’ll go away’ is not a winning strategy. It is, as I explained in point 1, a strategy that only works for those with social power, not those who are hurting for lack of it.

Forgiveness is part of the healing process. It’s pretty hard to heal when the wound is constantly being re-opened. My community is hurting me, and I’m not a failure for asking them to stop.

If I sound angry, it’s because I am. But I’m not speaking up because I’m angry. I’ve been angry–and silent–for years. I’m speaking up because my silence on these issues does not serve God. I’m speaking up now because I’ve finally found enough grace and trust to believe that doing so will make a difference. I’m no longer willing to pay my faith community the insult of assuming that I have to rise above our failings because we can’t face them.

F(f)riends should be honest with each other.

I honestly believe that Friends can do better.