Anger and Justice
Podcast: Download (Duration: 14:08 — 12.9MB)
Subscribe: More
The only word repeated more than once in our seven UU principles is the word “justice.” We are called to justice. But what does that call look like? What does it feel like? What does it demand of us? I was born female. The gender assigned to me at birth by the doctors’ observation of my physical body has largely conformed to my experience of myself: I also self-identify as female. By these measures, I have what is known as “cis-privilege.” The prefix “cis” comes from the Latin cis, meaning “on the same side of.” It is the antonym of the prefix “trans,” which means “on the other side of.” I have cis-privilege because this body/gender identity means I have experienced the world in a way that is normative: those of us who have comfortably inhabited the gender identities of our body and birth have dominance. Culture is built on our assumptions and our experience.
People who have a trans* experience of the world—those who have to teach, tell, re-form or create alternate pathways in order to find a more whole “fit” for their gender identity—have a very different experience. What I wanted to begin with was a story about a particular experience I had as a woman. But I can’t begin the story there, because it is never that simple. So let me identify where I begin this story: as a white-passing, cis, currently able-bodied woman of middling economic privilege, high education and class privilege. Although I am bisexual, in this story and in my marriage, I also have hetero-normative or straight privilege. Those are just the basics. But hold onto them. Whatever you may be thinking right now, those pieces are not superfluous.
When I was in seminary, I first began listening to my love, the feminist folk/rock singer Ani diFranco. I was also dating a man who ran the board on privilege; he had and still has them all, although he might argue a little about his place within economic privilege. I was singing along to a song where Ani describes a host of sexually abusive things that had happened to her from the time she was a child, just because she had a female body. Not one abusive thing—many. And as she sang, all these experiences from my own life clicked into place. I had never really put them together. To survive them, I had always kept them in disparate little pockets, a one-off here, a “just that guy” there…. I was crying.
Later, when my partner came over, he didn’t understand why I was upset, and when I tried to explain that I was suddenly experiencing the pain of a lifetime of gender and sexual-based oppression, with all good intentions he began to try to explain my experiences away. The song that reframed my experience ends tellingly. Ani sings:
girl, next time he wants to know
what your problem isnext time he wants to know where
the anger comes fromjust tell him this time the
problem’s histell him the anger just comes…
That night, my sorrow and pain crystallized sharply. I was furious. My partner did not, could not, understand my experience. It was nothing like his own. His privilege had insulated him from it. And instead of listening and trying to understand, he decided to try to tell me that I didn’t understand my own experience, was making too much of it, and of course, that he himself was not abusive, so I should change my feelings—or at least not splash them on him. He didn’t mean to be hurtful.
He wanted to help. But he made it all so much worse, because his inability to see me and believe me only exacerbated it all a hundredfold.
We have all been on both sides of oppression, but all oppressions are not equal. Let me make this exceedingly clear. Some oppressions or moments of oppression are more dangerous—as Matthew Shepard’s death shows, or as anyone living where ethnic “cleansing” is taking place might attest. Some oppressions are more endemic and pervasive, as trans* people or pretty much any person of color can illustrate all too well with examples from their lives. But we all have been on both sides of an oppressive moment. Maybe when we were children, and adults held all the power and our choices did not matter. Maybe when we were the only liberal in the Wyoming room.
But here’s the point: when someone is sharing that their experience of the world is dramatically different because they do not experience a privilege I experience, it’s my job to listen, to hear, and most of all, to not try to explain their experience away, to not deny it because it makes me uncomfortable or because I feel personally implicated in the group or groups that hold oppressive power.
Let’s look directly at rage. In the article that originally inspired me to tackle this difficult subject directly, GenX UU Tim deChristopher stated flat out that it was the Boomers’ failures that have made the climate situation not just a concern but a crisis that will deform lives—ours and many generations to come. And he said he was angry about it. I imagine this feels personal to many of you. And then he said the thing that needed to be said: being able to express rage is an essential part of the work to change and heal.
As a Southern woman and a UU brought up under the tutelage of my elders, I had been enculturated differently. Nice white educated people know that being angry just doesn’t help. We need to be nice and kind and considerate and work with hope and love toward all people. If we have feelings of anger, we need to deal with those privately and always remember to be nice to everyone. I didn’t think that explicitly—it was just my basic assumption about how the world worked, and when someone went off-script on that, I thought they were “doing it wrong.”
Nowadays, I spend at least part of every single day in communities that are highly and intentionally diverse. I spend some portion of every day listening to and talking with people who are diverse across the spectrum of possibilities: people of different racial, ethnic, sexual, and gender identities; people from different countries, different backgrounds, people who are differently abled; people with mental and physical illnesses; people from different generations and economic backgrounds, people who are and are not parents, women who have had abortions, are sex workers, have different religious beliefs and backgrounds.
Here are things I know we have in common: we all identify as feminists, and we all have access to computers and converse in English. Having said that, even our identities as “feminist” are frequently very different from one another. This community is built on and is sustained by a key principle: intersectionality. We understand that we all have privilege in some areas and experience oppression in others, and it’s essential for us to be responsible for ourselves in community spaces.
This is my core spiritual work now. It’s really, really difficult, but it’s also exciting and transforming. I see and experience the world so differently now. When I first was exposed to intersectionality, I know there was a sense of “holy cats.” It just looked like a minefield—a million different ways to be a “bad person.” Sure, maybe I was checking my racial privilege pretty well, but crud—I was making hetero-normative assumptions right and left. Or maybe I had done some good work understanding and appreciating my cis privilege, but then I carelessly referred to some public personality as “crazy.”
But here’s what I’ve learned: doing anti-oppression work is not about being “good” or “bad.” And it’s not constricting, or at least not for long. It’s liberating. I’m always learning; I am always making mistakes, and this work is not about me. It’s about being part of a world where really hearing and listening to different voices creates something that simply isn’t possible any other way. It is a bright road I am walking toward justice.
But what about anger? This is perhaps the first and most important thing I learned when working in intersectional space: oppression makes people angry—which is a healthy, reasonable response to oppression. And it is not the job of someone experiencing oppression to moderate for the comfort of those either being oppressive or benefiting from oppression. In discussions and debates on the internet, discomfort with anger and the attempts of others to control the expression of outrage is called “tone policing.”
Tone policing is frankly a central feature of white, middle-and-upper class, educated, and more frequently, liberal interactions. It deeply assumes that when working together, everyone should make nice and be comfortable. By which we mean, people who don’t conform to the dominant cultural norms need to change or get lost.
Dominant cultural norms mean be white, be straight, be cis, speak in the language of middle and upper class white English speaking people, be able bodied, and do not expect accommodations for any illness you may have, mental or otherwise. Also, we often basically expect you to have some disposable income. Or, you know, income. And housing. Those are the assumptions that are in place, especially when we do not discuss them.
So back to tone policing, which takes place when we tell someone that they need to express themselves more nicely. That they will get farther with us and everyone else if they are polite. That they should not express their anger because we are—I am—not the direct cause of that anger. (As an aside, as soon as I do that, even if I wasn’t a direct cause of the anger or oppression before, I just became an oppressive source in that moment.)
Here’s what I have learned in intersectional space: that I am responsible for myself—for my own choices, words, actions and experiences. When I make a mistake, it’s my job to take responsibility for it and make appropriate changes. Making mistakes does not make me a bad person. It makes me a learning person. If someone lets me know that I am making racist, classist, sexist, genderist, ableist assumptions, my job is to listen and learn, not to get defensive and explain myself and declare that what I’m saying is really OK because I have good intentions. Most of all, my job, when others are sharing their experiences of the world, is to listen and try to understand. It’s definitely not my job to tell them that their experience didn’t happen or they probably misunderstood.
When we recognize privilege, people of good will often begin an important kind of work: the work of being an ally. When we have privilege, that means that we are heard, seen, and have power in some situation. The first and most important work of being an ally is to listen and understand, and then see how we can leverage our own power so it is shared with those who are marginalized.
Anti-oppression work is not about me or you and how good we are. It is about understanding the reality of oppression and trying our best to understand what people who are oppressed need so that they themselves can have power and influence over their own experience.
Be bold in doing justice. Know that anger is a part of the work. Remember your privilege. Remember that being a good ally means it’s not about you. And thank you—for everything you do, every time you try, and for bringing your experience to the table of humanity.
In addition to her role as a high-level agitator in Wyoming, Audette loves being a mother to her daughters Ember (known for her work as a staff leader at SUUSI) and Ani (known for her excellent 3rd grade reading and math skills) -- both proud cradle UUs. Audette also enjoys the adventure of being married to her husband Rob, who shares her joy in philosophy, gaming, movies, and most things geeky. On her days off, Audette can be found working on her urban fantasy novel.
- Anger and Justice - May 1, 2016
