Queries on Implicit Bias

I helped design some reflexive activities for early childhood educators working with implicit bias, including these queries, which were meant to be used after watching a presentation by Dr. Walter Gilliam, embedded below. 

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1. What are your immediate reactions to the stories of implicit bias in the video?

2. What feelings and thoughts do you experience when you open up to the idea that you have implicit biases?

We Are Not the Fragile Ones

I delivered this talk on January 21, 2018, as part of a series of reflections on the public discourse and high profile cases involving sexual harassment and violence. 

CW: sexual harassment and violence, including rape, child abuse, LGBTQIA+ antagonism; oppression and violence related to disability, race, and class 

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Despite the fact that I spend much of my time laughing, playing ridiculously silly games, singing my way through house work, and generally talking in funny voices, I am usually invited to talk about really serious topics. This morning is no exception, since I will be reflecting on the #MeToo movement, patriarchy, toxic masculinity, and my experience as a bi- or pansexual, demisexual, genderqueer person. I personally feel ambivalent about the opportunity: I’m grateful for the invitation and for the chance to speak about crucial issues; I’m also exhausted by the necessity of repeating how gender and sexuality have been weaponized against vulnerable people, including how speaking up too often makes folks targets of more coercion and violence. So here is my current best attempt to put it into words, a lot of words, that will include discussion of sexual harassment and violence, including rape, child abuse, and gender and sexuality antagonisms. I’ll also talk about the intersection of this kind of violence with disability, race, and class. 

Meditation, From Attention to Socio-Affective and Cognitive Competencies

When it comes to meditation, a common emphasis in the mindfulness movement is on the cultivation of attention and concentration. These practices are often transformative in themselves and have been correlated with changes in the brain, especially in the cortex, which regulates executive functioning. This is certainly helpful, bearing benefits to both my well being in general and to my work in conflict transformation and community activism. 

However, for those of us who are struggling with developing compassion or handling overwhelming emotions, it's important to note that these practices are not aimed at and do not produce increased skills in socio- affective and cognitive competencies. To build those skills, we need to widen our nets, considering reflective practices that we might not as readily associate with meditation. 

Reclaiming Self and Community Care

I was invited to give a presentation on December 11 on the topic of "Reclaiming Self and Community Care: Principles & Practices for Social Change in the Direction of Social Justice." Below are the starting points and principles that I used to introduce and frame some example reflective practices. 

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Starting Points: 

1. In a healthy, functioning society, self and community care is integrated into everyday habits, relationships, organizations, and culture. Special actions would not be required except in cases of crisis, trauma, disaster, etc.

Equality: From Principle to Reality

Below is the text of a talk I delivered December 3, 2017, lightly edited. 

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For many of us, and perhaps for more and more of us, we live with a familiarity with despair. It's a kind of desperation that silently grows as the injustice around us is heaped like so much kindling, waiting for the spark. We feel it when we hear the news, and we feel it in the experiences of our own lives, when we walk out the door into an unsafe world. It is overwhelming, and has been for a very long time. 

The history of the West, with its complex mix of incredible and awful, is not one thing, despite how our civic myths like to shoehorn every story into a narrative of progress. In reality, this history is also the history of white supremacy, imperialism, and patriarchy. And we are still bearing bad fruit, as recent headlines reveal, through stories of the violent and misogynistic actions of sexual predators (SOURCE), or the late night passage of tax legislation that benefits corporations and the wealthiest 1%.(SOURCE) And, with regard to the latter, we are yet to see what further impact the final form of the tax bill will have on the most vulnerable,(SOURCE) especially since cutting vital social programs is a favorite past time of those in power. Meanwhile, approximately 1,100 people have been killed so far by police in the USA in 2017.(SOURCE) And, according to the FBI, hate crimes continue to be on the rise, with over 6,000 reported cases in the latest numbers from 2016. Of those cases, 58% were motivated by “race, ethnicity, or ancestry”; 21% were based on religion, and 18% were based on sexual orientation.(SOURCE)

We could fill the rest of the day with a litany of these tragedies and injustices, with more than enough sorrow that all of us would feel that creeping desperation, born of grief and rage. But none of this is a surprise; neither is it surprising to say that we humans continue to experience a lot of polarization, growing farther apart. We have a long history to demonstrate how efficient we are in producing new circumstances that fuel those divisions. What we have proven to be less efficient at doing is bringing us together. That’s also not surprising, as it is much easier and faster to destroy than it is to create, to bring death than to nourish life. And yet we have to find ways to keep walking out the door. We have to find ways to live in this very world, while injustice persists, and the water is always at or near boiling. And we have to find ways to do so without either giving up or giving in to the way things are. 

TDOR 2017 Reflection

I was a speaker at our local LGBTQIA+ community center's vigil for Transgender Day of Remembrance this year. Below are some of the reflections I shared as an introduction and welcome. 

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I’ve been out in an affirming way as a genderqueer person since 2007. And I love it, I love myself, and I love this beautiful community of trans and gender-nonconforming folks. I love how being genderqueer has shaped how I experience and understand the world, and the way it helps me connect and care for people. It is a wonderful gift, and I am grateful every day for it. 

But there is also this grief that goes with it, a persistent awareness of the suffering that makes it necessary to have a Transgender Day of Remembrance every year. Those of us who are here already know it; we know it painfully well. This is the day when we put into words and actions the silent grief that follows us every day. We name the names of those who have been murdered because someone hated them for simply being themselves. Each year, the list takes us around the world. This year, two of those names are of people who lived and died here in Missouri, Kiwi Herring and Ally Steinfeld. 

Our grief is also for those in our family whose names are not on the list. Too many of us suffer from suicide, domestic violence, violence not considered hate crimes, and deaths that also come out of the suffering of being hated and rejected by the world: drug overdoses, dangerous decisions of desperation, and the intersections of oppression with race, gender, and class. We would be remiss if we did not acknowledge that trans women of color are especially at risk in a world overflowing with patriarchal, racist, classist violence. There are too many of their names on this list, and we have failed them the most. We must ask, what beautiful and powerful actions can be born of our grief and our rage? 

A Fragile Whole: One Year Later

I offered this reflection year ago, November 13, 2016, in response to the election results. It replaced a presentation I was asked to make on simplicity and ecological justice. Some of the information reflects circumstances of that particular week, such as cabinet candidates, but the points still feel relevant to me. I've only lightly edited it here for brevity and clarity.

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This was meant to be a presentation on simplicity, on contentment and joy in the face of a consumer society fueled by injustice and greed and sustained by a culture that values permanent dissatisfaction over gratitude and care. It was meant to grieve how this precious earth, this fragile whole made up of human and natural communities, has been looted and crushed, poisoned and neglected. It was meant to celebrate the ways, little and large, in which we could bring about healing our own fragmented lives and communities. And it was meant to celebrate how the earth itself, this beautiful and terrible hum of living and dying, is worth celebrating and grieving and loving and exploring and protecting. I was going to talk about gardening with my grandparents and parents, and hiking with Holly. There was even a sentimental childhood memory about buying seed potatoes and onion sets with my father.

I really hoped I did not have a compelling reason to put that presentation aside last Tuesday.

Although I was not expecting a Trump victory, I was also not surprised. I have spent a good deal of my life around people that helped carry him to success. Although we can’t generalize to individuals, we can notice the trends. Despite the rhetoric around economic issues, Trump’s victory was not a blow against neoliberalism, evidenced by his willingness to cut taxes, deregulate industry, and bust unions. Instead, Trump’s vision appealed to those who have felt the symptoms and impacts of neoliberalism, such as job loss, and did not like it. Trump offered a message built around the assurance that the spoils of neoliberalism would include the middle class, mainly white folk who have felt their privilege threatened both by an uncertain economic future but also by movements for equality and justice among traditionally marginalized people who are growing in number, visibility, and power. The economic world we have inherited and sustained has always required the suffering and oppression of marginalized people, especially black and brown people and women, as well as the pillaging and destruction of the earth. So even if it carried mainly sentimental, a-historical meanings to most followers, the slogan “Make America Great Again” was a startling reminder of just who has born the cost of that so-called greatness, and who will likely bear it again. If you don’t recognize this as white supremacy at work, then we need to have a conversation.