Tag: antioppression

My Fear of Excommunication

I value what I have learned from the world of anti-oppression. It has shaped my development into adulthood. It has made me a better person. It has taught me ways to stand in solidarity with people I care about. These are important parts of who I am and how I move through the world.

And yet, I fear it. Not the work of dismantling oppressive structures. Not the theory, as crunchy and dense as it may be. Not even the often painful self-reflection on my privilege and participation in these systems. I fear the zealotry of the adherents of the Church Of Anti-Oppression.

This is not a fear anyone who has ever taken an Anti-O 101 workshop. This is a fear of those who approach the work of dismantling oppressive structures with fundamentalism.

I am terrified that I will say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing, organize an event in the wrong way. I am terrified to make a single mistake because I fear I will be excommunicated. My anti-oppression licence will be revoked, I will loose all credibility, my reputation will be destroyed, and I will be run out of town.

There is a level of irrationality in this thinking, but I do not know to what degree. What I do know is that I let it shape my actions to my detriment. I want to express myself though writing, but it feels safer to say nothing than to use the wrong language. I want to build community by organizing events, but it feels safer to do nothing than to hold a less than perfectly accessible and inclusive event. This fear of the church of anti-oppression stops me from actually doing the work of anti-oppression.

This is not an attempt to avoid responsibility. Call me out, call me in, hold me accountable. I want that. This is an attempt to challenge a fear that I know I share with many of my peers, and to challenge the fundamentalist discourse that this fear is rooted in. Social change is not a neat and tidy process. Social change is messy and complicated and must be grounded in empathy. We are imperfect creatures but that doesn’t mean we can’t strive to improve together.

You Can’t Say That

Over the holidays, my extended family all got together and something interesting happened. One of my cousins said “that’s so lame” and my dad called her on it.

“Andrew says you can’t say that anymore,” he said.

She asked why not and I explained how just like “that’s so gay” it paints a group of people negatively by using them as a shorthand for something that’s undesirable. We then talked about what sort of things she could say to express what she wanted to, without it being at the expense of a group of people. The conversation moved on.

However, I kept thinking about it, playing it over and over again in my head. The whole experience just didn’t sit right with me. I felt like I should’ve been pleased: oppressive language had been used, someone (other than me) called it out, we had a discussion about it, and I think my cousin got it. That’s what’s supposed to happen, right?

“Andrew says you can’t say that anymore.”

I was stuck on this phrase. Was there a list of what was permissible to be said? Why did I seem to be the arbiter of it? Was this just excessive political correctness, something that only activists were concerned about? Most importantly, was it how I wanted her to remember the experience?

“I shouldn’t say this because Andrew says we’re not allowed to.”

That’s not what I want her to think. I don’t want her to think that some words are inherently forbidden, nor do I want her to base her language use on the apparent moral high ground I have from being one of those social justice types.

It’s also not what I want to think. I want to understand the power and meaning of words, and make conscious informed decisions about how to use them. Instead of not saying something because we’re “not supposed to say it,” I choose not to say “that’s so lame,” “that’s so gay,” or other oppressive words and phrases because I don’t want to cause hurt in someone else, nor perpetuate negative beliefs about certain groups of people.

At the same time, I will continue say words like queer and faggot, which are most certainly on the Official List Of Words Not To Say due to their histories of use as oppressive slurs. I will continue to say them because they are powerful words that I can use to describe myself. Powerful because of their oppressive history. “Yes,” I am saying, “that which was seen as negative in me is something I am proud of.” This is a complex situation because while making those outside my group uncomfortable is arguably part of the intention, potentially making those within my group uncomfortable is a less desired side effect.

When I first started to explore my queer identity and the complexities of the word, I though that older gay and lesbian folks just had to get with the times and get over whatever they didn’t like about it. Then, an older gay man told me a story of how when he was brutally assaulted simply for being gay, “queer” was the word being shouted at him. Perhaps that isn’t something that one could just “get over.” This drastically changed how I engaged with language. While I didn’t stop reclaiming these words for myself, I did make a shift in how that looked around my gay elders in recognition of histories with these words that I do not share.

In a situation where words are forbidden, critical thought and individual agency are lost to political correctness and powerful words are unable to be reclaimed by groups. I strive to educate myself on the meanings and histories of powerful words so I can make conscious choices about what impact my use of language will hopefully have. When similar situations arise in the future, my focus will be on exposing oppressive meaning and histories of words and concluding not with a prescription of prohibition but instead with an invitation to join me in consciously engaging with language.