2018 was undoubtedly the year of wellness. With #fitspo trending on social media at every turn, Generation Z supposedly drinking less than any age group before them, and trending health fads showing no sign of abating, it’s clear that society’s obsession with how we eat, exercise, and care for our bodies is going nowhere. But although Instagram would have us believing that we’re all ditching vodka sodas and a kebab for kale smoothies, the statistics tell a very different story.

A recent UK study suggests that alcohol related deaths among women are at their highest rate since records began, while an estimated 300,000 deaths in the U.S. per year are currently obesity related. Growing swatches of fitness enthusiasts may be hashtagging their morning yoga session and staking out their nearest #foodporn vegan joint, but it is clear that for all the talk of wellness, we are in a health epidemic that shows little sign of slowing.

For many this paradox may be puzzling. As our society continues to prioritize health and self-care, why are so many falling behind? Exercise and eating well is increasingly accessible, with videos and advice from experienced personal trainers and nutritionists only ever a click away—we no longer need to stake out a small fortune for the service. But although wellness may be trending it remains deeply exclusive, its Lululemon clad roots embedded in the class structures that still dominate modern society.

It is clear that for all the talk of wellness, we are in a health epidemic that shows little sign of slowing.
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An expensive gym membership and a fridge stuffed with hummus may seem second nature for some, but millions of others have grown-up leading a very different lifestyle. For entire communities, gym class may have been more likely to have been the dreaded repetitiveness of weekly laps of the playing field instead of a range of activities with proper coaching and inter-school competition. School lunches may well have been beige in color, and a celebratory meal out was more likely burgers and fries at a local diner than a posh nosh with plenty of protein and greenery arranged elaborately on a child size plate.

As much as we may cringe and delight in equal measure at Overheard in Whole Foods you can bet your bottom dollar that little Tarquin, asking his mom for fettuccine rather than farfalle for his lunch, will grow up knowing his avocado from his artichokes. Our attitudes towards wellness are ingrained in us from a young age and these deeply entrenched outlooks are not easily overturned.

Privilege defines how we approach our health well into adulthood. Although the archetype of the yummy mummy squeezing in a pilates class before picking the kids up from school may be a faintly uncomfortable gender stereotype for some, for others it speaks an untenable truth of inequality. Those who can afford childcare or to give up their jobs to care for their children are more likely to have the time and money to exercise, to prepare nutritious meals, and to educate themselves on health. With unaffordable childcare options comes vast disparities between the haves and have-nots that disproportionately affects women.

The parent working fifty hours a week just to cover nursery costs may have to prioritize their child’s health at the expense of their own. Mothers unable to afford childcare altogether who are forced to give up work may have to prioritize putting food on the table full stop, without having the luxury of ensuring that this covers their kids’ five a day.   

Beyond parenthood, the seeming ignorance of the wellness set can also be infuriating. Influencers sunnily declaring that their home workouts are something “anyone can fit into their day!” are preaching to an extremely privileged subgroup. The fact is that multitudes of women don’t have the time, space, or social environment to roll out a yoga mat in their living room and cram in some burpees.

Likewise, bloggers who blithely assert that anyone can give up gluten ignore that to do so requires access to a half decent selection of gluten-free products at their local store, the time and energy to research alternatives, and the cash to cater for this dietary preference (not to mention no other dietary restrictions that might make going gluten-free even more difficult).

Embracing a plant-based lifestyle in a nutritious manner requires a level of food education that not everyone has been fortunate enough to have, and enough food security for your primary concern to not be that your family is getting enough calories to live, period. Giving up drinking requires being part of a social circle that fits with a booze-free lifestyle. Practicing yoga safely requires a membership fee that not everyone can afford, and is often an environment that alienates anyone who isn’t white and already skinny. “Wellness” is for people who are already doing well.

Statistically the links between social class and health are undeniable and terrifying. Residents of affluent counties in the U.S. can expect to live up to twenty years longer than their poorer counterparts, with variables such as quality of healthcare, smoking, drinking, and physical inactivity cited as major contributory factors to soaring mortality. Fitness bloggers declaring that shaping up and switching their nutrition plan changed their life are perpetuating a message that fundamentally fails to correlate with reality.

It suggests that something as simple as what we put into our bodies defines our quality of life. It fails to account for the numerous other factors—social and economic—that are far more significant determinants of how well we live and which ultimately defines the food and exercise we are able to afford to enjoy.  The conversation around wellness seems to too often sidestep the things that actually make us well—affordable healthcare, access to nutritious food, and available sexual health care amongst many others.

Wellness is for people who are already doing well.
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Suggesting that the wellness culture is the new normal lifestyle places onus on the underprivileged to eat and exercise better. In reality this is far from feasible, a seismic gulf in opportunities, education, and healthcare options holding back thousands of people from emulating a lifestyle we are urged to aspire towards. Can we really preach self-care when, as a society, we are failing to care for the thousands left behind by a flawed and deeply exclusive system?

As the gap between rich and poor becomes ever deeper our conversations around the wellness culture need to be reframed to understand it as a privilege. Instead of declaring that young people are giving up alcohol, signing up to gyms, and embracing clean eating we need to be honest about the specific subset that this lifestyle caters for, and look to who is getting left behind.

It should never be the oppressed who must manage the pain of an oppressor realizing his wrongfulness.

flickr/Gigi Ibrahim

T he well-known South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was created to help form a unified society out of the ashes of racist division. Moving from a society carved out by legalized bigotry called apartheid to one made whole by equality was a mammoth task no one could achieve perfectly. Despite the violence done to people of color, particularly black Africans, the TRC called for “a need for understanding but not for vengeance, a need for reparation but not for retaliation.”

To obtain closure, victims and victims’ families could confront the agents of violence who had acted out of political motivations (from both the apartheid and anti-apartheid sides). The TRC aimed to provide amnesty for such people, if they gave satisfactory testimony: There was a fear that people would never find out the fate of loved ones or the identity of transgressors if amnesty was not offered. Instead of answers, there would be only silence. Amnesty would allow truth to blossom, and, as many know, silence is not conducive to stability, because when things are unsaid it also means they’re not resolved.

Whether the TRC was a success is its own discussion. But for all its faults, it recognized that it should never be the oppressed who are forced to manage the pain of an oppressor realizing his wrongfulness. It wasn’t the victims attempting to convey to their oppressors why they had done wrong. The wrongdoers themselves — out of fear, shame, desperation, or whatever — were the ones coming forward, carrying a knowledge of wrongfulness to the altar of amnesty for all to see. However bloody that altar became, we did not expect the victims to maintain it.

The wrongdoers themselves were the ones coming forward, carrying a knowledge of wrongfulness to the altar of amnesty for all to see.

This lesson doesn’t appear universal.

A few months back, in the United States, Frederick Sorrell was “charged with … intimidation after following a black Muslim couple in his car while hurling threats through the window.” He did this for twenty blocks, yelling racist threats and making violent gestures.

He pleaded guilty, and after being sentenced, Sorrell wept, claiming “I guess my ignorance and my stupidity is why I opened my mouth, and I shouldn’t have and I claim full responsibility.”

If he had stopped there, that would be dodgy enough: He doesn’t actually acknowledge he did anything wrong, only that he “shouldn’t have” acted the way he did. Does that mean he shouldn’t have acted then and there? Or that he should’ve waited for a better time when he would not have been caught? He claims responsibility for his actions but doesn’t tie his actions to being wrong. (In case you’re wondering, that’s how you make a proper apology.)

But he continued, saying “I would love to sit down and have an open conversation with [the couple he targeted] and have an open mind and apologize.” If Sorrell had his way, his victims would give up time, to sit with him and have an “open conversation.” They would gain nothing, while he would get a free education and good PR. They would sit in a room with a man who conveyed pure hatred and violence toward them, all for the gamble that their aggressor might emerge a better person.

Too often, people from various spectrums of privilege who might say or do something offensive to a marginalized group put out a call to be “educated.” Men who do or say something sexist call for women to “educate” them; white folk want to hear from black people why they can’t say the N-word; and so on. Like Sorrell, people like this are asking those already targeted by the status quo to do the emotional labor to educate them.

Consider men and our alleged ignorance about feminist issues. As Lindy West noted in her New York Times column, a lot of men claimed ignorance when confronted with various issues raised by #MeToo, such as affirmative consent and gendered socialization. But, especially in the digital information age, this can longer be an excuse. “The reason [nuanced conversations about consent and gendered socialization] feel foreign to so many men is that so many men never felt like they needed to listen,” she wrote. “Rape is a women’s issue, right? Men don’t major in women’s studies.”

They would sit in a room with a man who conveyed pure hatred and violence toward them, all for the gamble that their aggressor might emerge a better person.

These discussions didn’t emerge when women finally had Twitter accounts. Feminists do and have written on these various subjects for decades, so they’ve already carefully researched and argued the very points men continue to feign ignorance about. If you can work out how to operate a computer, you can find books and blogs and articles written by feminists on feminist topics you are ignorant about. Books exists, podcasts exists, blogs exist. You can even give money to such wonderful publications that aim to educate on feminists matters.

This applies to issues of race, disability, and so forth. Ignorance is only seriously condemnable if you do nothing to alleviate it once it’s pointed out. And it’s easy and lazy to respond by wanting those who’ve called you out on your ignorance to solve it for you.

The flipside of laziness is the condescending insult of assuming this education is what you are owed. Consider Sorrell again: How entitled must you be to think that the people who you targeted with horrific, racist bile should then sit down with a cup of tea and become benevolent educators? That they should be the ones to forgive what you haven’t apologized for? While ignorance might explain part of racism, it doesn’t explain aggression, targeting, and threats. Sorrell didn’t unintentionally make a rude remark in a public space this couple overheard: He followed them for a mile for the grave crime of walking in public while Muslim.

There Is No Middle Ground Between Racism And Justice

It is not the job of the oppressed to sit with those who think that, to one degree or another, they are less than people. It’s a nice, cozy ideal to expect the oppressors to be “better,” to go “high,” when everything is dragging you low. This is why it’s doubly insulting when alleged allies call on oppressed groups to not be “too hasty” or “dismissive,” to have a “dialogue” — as if we’re disagreeing about the best Marvel movie, not our personhood. If you think there’s “both sides,” rather than recognizing one side is bigoted and the other a target of bigotry, I’m not sure you’re the ally you think you are. If you want a calm response to bigotry, and you are not part of that targeted group, feel free to enter the fray. Indeed, as men, it is on us to call out other men’s sexism; it is our job as straight people to call out homophobia; it is our job as cis people to call out transphobia.

But we ought not to entertain these opinions as mere political views arising out of ignorance: They harm. To paraphrase Dr. King, sometimes the biggest obstacles are not the screaming bigots but the moderates who, even if they’re not the ones planting the seeds of hate, are flattening the soil with their shovels of civility.

The oppressed are not lost for words: books, articles, speeches all exist and those with bigoted views are welcome to them and, better, moderates are welcome to direct their bigoted friends to these words. We’ve spoken them already. We’ve in fact already done the work. It’s time to stop expecting oppressed groups to, with some preternatural calmness and civility, simply smile and calmly discuss a bigot’s bigotry, to their face, until it unravels and he reaches Enlightenment.

It’s not our job to yank them out the dark well they wallow in. They put themselves there and many ladders have already been stitched together. It’s their job to grab a rung and pull themselves out.

Looking For A Comments Section? We Don’t Have One.

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Unsplash/ Win Pauwels

“give your daughters difficult names.
give your daughters names that command the full use of tongue.
my name makes you want to tell me the truth.
my name doesn’t allow me to trust anyone that cannot pronounce it right.”
― Warsan Shire

This week, we learned the world is a lot more like an episode of ‘Black Mirror’ than an episode of ‘Black Mirror’ could be. As we come to terms with the deep technological betrayal of privacy and trust, and have long discussions over whether to delete our Facebook accounts, consider that in so many parts of the world, using Facebook is not a luxury, it’s a lifeline. It’s a necessary connection to information, to jobs, to access.

Hitting “deactivate account” is a privilege we get to have: We don’t even have to bother engaging in the fight for privacy. Will you fight anyway, or will you walk away?

Speaking of Facebook, when I posted about a challenge far too many people of color face — that of carrying the undue burden of correcting people about the proper pronunciation of our names—a white person insisted my views were incorrect. “For the record, white people deal with it too when they have names like Dominique,” she argued on my timeline.

Sometimes, the conversation is not about you. You can, for example, be a man who hears a woman saying “me too,” without quickly crying out “not all men!” You could hear a woman say “me too,” without saying it back. You can even listen to another person’s oppression, without jumping in to tell your own stories of oppression.

Sometimes, we don’t want to hear “me too.” Sometimes, “I’m sorry you’re going through that,” is fine. And sometimes, words will never be enough.

With love + solidarity,
Ruchika Tulshyan
Founding Editor

Can It Be Healing For A Sexual Assault Survivor To Communicate With A Harasser?

By Andrea Hannah

The #MeToo movement has illuminated what it takes to truly heal: connection, sisterhood, and the willingness to look at pain head-on.

I know that I alone can’t heal the kind of soul-sucking void Greg has written about, and I reject the individual responsibility of even trying. But because of the courage of so many survivors bringing their pain to light,

I’m strong enough to have these conversations with him. I’m willing enough to witness his own acceptance of his void, and I’m attempting to answer the call of my own questions:

What can I do about this to change the course of the future?

How can I be brave enough to speak up, especially when I fear for the safety of other women?

How can I make sure my daughter and others never have to scream #MeToo?

The Legislation That Would Harm Sex Workers — In The Name Of Their Own Protection
By Alex MK

Whether they utilize Facebook groups, other online forums, or even text group chats, sex workers’ ability to communicate with one another and screen potential clients is one of the only security mechanisms available to them .

It’s one that will be further compromised, with assuredly fatal consequences, if the supposed anti-trafficking bill, FOSTA, passes the Senate this week.

FOSTA will make our lives exponentially more dangerous under the pretense of protecting us.

When You’re Autistic, Abuse Is Considered Love

By Aaron Kappel

We need to be able to speak for ourselves, but instead, #ActuallyAutistic voices are too often shunned and silenced, while the voices of allistic (non-autistic) parents raising autistic children are lifted up and praised.

A common retort to the autistic adults who condemn this genre of writing and alleged advocacy is that our viewpoint is inconsequential because we aren’t autistic enough.

Our needs don’t compare to the mountain of needs their children require because we are able to raise our voices and organize, and by doing so, we are making things harder for autistic people — like their children — who require more care.

Treat yourself to an ESTABLISHMENT membership!

Tips On Filling Out Your March Madness Bracket For Whose Time Is Up Next

By Kristin Nalivaika

Filling out brackets can be daunting. Especially when, in industries varying from entertainment to journalism to government, so many people brought their A game to disgusting, inappropriate behavior in 2017!

Some of these individuals have experienced the spotlight of accusation in prior seasons, but the lack of results have kept on disappointing us year after year. Other entrants are fresh faces appearing in the tournament for the first time.

There are a million different combinations for the 68 individuals in the bracket who have not yet suffered appropriate consequences for their despicable actions. If you want any chance of winning your office pool, here are some tips on picking the Final Four creeps.

By Anis Gisele

(CW: mention of death; eating disorders; misogynist, racist, anti-queer, and anti-trans violence)

I learned to be a girlfriend through ’90s American rom-coms.

90% of the time, I learned, I had to be laughing or cutely disagreeing with my white leading man.

At some point, I had to pose a challenge to him, more along the lines of, “Pick me, love me, let me make you happy” and less along the lines of, “Please realize that patriarchy is hurting us and work with me to dismantle it.”

My partner learned to be a boyfriend by dating girls who could play these American characters better than I could.

I’m not straight nor white. My most honest gender is non-binary. I grew up in what we call a developing nation. I spent a decade of my life starving myself and imagining myself dead.

I’m also straight-passing, cis-privileged, and light-skinned. In many ways, my partner and I proceeded with our relationship as if I were a straight, white, “all-American” gal.

In many ways, my partner and I proceeded with our relationship as if I were a straight, white, 'all-American' gal.
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His family and friends know I’m important to him. They cook me vegan food, lend me winter coats, and call me “vibrant” and “pretty.” I tell myself to be grateful — and I am.

But once, his friend’s wife, a white woman, told me, “People get so offended since the Civil Rights Movement.” Once, over the course of a game night, his friend called me a bitch and a slut, and then asked if my partner and I have anal sex. And once, his friends were cackling over an iPhone screen, and when the phone reached me, all I saw was the Tinder photo of a genderqueer person.

In all these situations, instead of making a decision I could respect, I chose to be, first and foremost, a girlfriend — a quiet, indistinct, likable girlfriend.

I said nothing because an evening with friends had to go smoothly. I stopped asserting my needs as a queer person, a person of color, a person of the female experience, a survivor of trauma.

The more time I spent with my partner’s community, the more agitated I became. I would sob afterwards in his car, in his room, drilled down to my core by a feeling I couldn’t define.

That feeling was invisibility. That feeling was namelessness.

To my partner’s face, I called the feeling discomfort. The overwhelming expectation was that I would hold in my discomfort, he would hold my hand, and I would get a kiss and a thank you at the end of the night for convincing everyone that I’d had fun. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Neither my partner nor I questioned this cycle.

That feeling was invisibility. That feeling was namelessness.
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Here is context you might need: In the last three decades, not one man has stayed faithful to my mother. Like me, she lives her life as an insecure woman of color. I have learned from her and the men who hurt her that I can’t ask too much of my partners.

I asked my partner once if he has ever been afraid that I’ll leave him in the same way I am always afraid he will leave me. He said no.

He’s a privileged, white man, and he’s been loved well throughout his life. He knows he “deserves” me, and he knows I’ll stay.

If you’re a person with power and self-certainty, it’s important that you notice when your partner withdraws, when they’re pretending they have no feelings or needs because they may be de-emphasizing their needs in order to create more room for yours.

Your partner shouldn’t have to disrupt racism and sexism alone, even if you don’t think you’re perpetuating either.

Society perpetuates them, and unless you listen to and back up your partner, your partner will be put through pain that will ultimately consume your relationship.

If you’re unsure about how to initiate a conversation, here are some potential starting places.

1. ‘Sometimes I Make It Hard for You to Show Up Fully — How Are You Doing?’

I’ve made the joke that my partner wasn’t ready for an advanced-level girlfriend like me.

Because it’s not enough that he asks me what I’m feeling. That’s beginner-level shit.

I need him to acknowledge that sometimes, he has shown impatience when my traumas have shown up as feelings that weren’t poignant, contained, or novel.

I need him to acknowledge that sometimes, he has shown impatience when my traumas have shown up as feelings that weren’t poignant, contained, or novel.
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I need him to acknowledge that it’s hard for me — a person who was repeatedly told by my family that I was ugly and crazy — to be transparent with a man whose emotional distance seems to confirm that I am.

Once he started to recognize this and hold it to light in our conversations, we started becoming honest with each other.

2. ‘My Circle Is Predominantly White — How Would You Feel If I Talked to Them About Respecting You as a Person of Color?’

Had he asked me if he could do this three years ago, I might have said no.

I thought: No, your family will think I’m high-maintenance. Your friends will think I’m shit. They’ll all think that I think they’re racist.

If he offered this now, I would say yes.

Had he oriented his family and friends on Allyship 101 three years ago, I wouldn’t have felt compelled to smile as white people told me that I speak “perfect English” or that I come from “hard-working people.”

And there was a double standard: My partner used to prep me.

He used to tell me repeatedly, “It matters to me that you’re there. It matters to me that we share community. Could you try harder to connect with [insert friend or family members’ names here]?”

There was a double standard: My partner used to prep me before I met his family and friends.
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And so I would go, say please and thank you, help with the dishes, and keep white people feeling comfortable about their race, upbringing, and power.

He could’ve prepped his friends.

He could’ve said:

“Hey, I get that we’re straight, cisgender, white men, and this often means we’re encouraged to take up all the air in the room. But maybe you should ask my girlfriend questions about her life and really affirm what she says, so she doesn’t feel the need to censor herself to avoid a situation where you belittle her.”

3. ‘My Circle Is Predominantly Straight — How Would You Feel If I Talked to Them About Respecting Your Queerness?’

Once again, three years ago, I might have said, “I’m nervous enough. Don’t you dare fucking out me.”

As it turns out, he has a hometown contingent of friends who are devoutly Christian. I don’t talk to them about gayness. In fact, sometimes, I’ll pause in the middle of stories to stop myself from saying the words queer, butch, femme, dyke.

What Happens When We Try To Map Our Privilege?

At dinner or after dinner, I have been afraid of what his people would say or not say to my face if I outed myself.

I wish my partner had had the conversation with his community and known ahead of time if they believe queerness or gender-smashing sends you to hell.

I wish he had known ahead of time if his parents would use someone’s pronoun — not just he and she, but also they, ze, or no pronoun at all — and if they would honor someone’s preference without ever implying it was too difficult or unnecessary.

I wish my partner had had the conversation with his community and known ahead of time if they believe queerness or gender-smashing sends you to hell.
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I wish he had known if his people could listen to me talk about kink, polyamory, sex work, and other realities of my community, without making faces about it afterwards, in private, or to each other.

We didn’t know. So I hid myself.

4. ‘If My Community Fucks Up, How Would You Like Me to Hold Them Accountable?’

Accountability is a non-negotiable.

But depending on the situation, I may want to speak for myself, or I may want you to speak up in the moment, or I may want you to address the fuck-up at another time — that is, when the bride and groom have left the venue.

My partner looks like a young Matthew Fox. He looks so sharp in his leather oxfords and crisp button-downs.

When I’m vastly outnumbered by straight people, white people, or people who know each other, I want my partner to leverage his privilege on my behalf.
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He’s the kind of white man who people view as respectable. If he tells people they fucked up, he’s likely to be believed. If people need to be held accountable, he has their attention and all the credibility.

When I’m vastly outnumbered by straight people, white people, or people who know each other, I want my partner to leverage his privilege on my behalf.

But when I can do so safely, I want to speak for myself.

Otherwise, we risk setting him up as my default savior, and every situation gets “resolved” because people decide to give him respect.

5. ‘What Triggers You? What Keeps You Grounded?’

I come from parents who passed on their traumas, including the not-so-pleasant gift of post-traumatic stress.

I know my mind is brilliant. I also know it’s quick to be triggered.

In the face of mainstream expectations (she needs to visit, she needs to chill, she needs to smile), I’m at a disadvantage.

In the face of mainstream expectations (she needs to visit, she needs to chill, she needs to smile), I’m at a disadvantage.
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I put in twice the effort to seem half as sane as my partner and twice the effort to stay present when I am listened to half as much.

When my partner takes me into his “territories,” it’s often for days at a time, and my emotional resources are wrung out by the first night.

He does his best to provide me care — I see this and I’m grateful. But I question anyone’s urge to pin a medal of honor on him for doing this.

He isn’t rescuing me. We both put in work.

I repress parts of myself to show up at his people’s celebrations (see above). I do this because it means so much to him that I’m there. But my anxiety and depression deepen as a result.

He does his best to provide me care — I see this and I’m grateful. But I question anyone’s urge to pin a medal of honor on him for doing this.
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It’s only fair that he pays attention to this happening and offers me support.

6. ‘Capitalism Is Less Kind to You — How Can I Support Your Sense of Security?’

Up until this past fall, my lack of money made me anxious.

My partner was making eight times as much as me, while my friends were crowdfunding for their healthcare, and my siblings were being evicted from their childhood home.

If my partner and I had been honest with each other then, I would have told him that I found it really triggering to spend time with his people who purchase brand new cars, eastside condos, and three-day passes to live music festivals.

I was at a point in my finances where a pound of grapes was a splurge.

Before our trips to his hometown, I wish I’d asked for a conversation about what was expected of me financially.

Two Christmases ago, I made these sweet little cards for each member of his family. I drew detailed cartoons on the covers and wrote long notes inside.

When I showed them to my partner, I expected praise and kisses. He said, “Could you get my family something else, too? Like a board game?”

It wasn’t really a conversation. It was an expectation.

His family was putting me up for a week, so I owed them a more expensive gift. I was too embarrassed to say that I wasn’t working enough at the time to feel good about spending forty dollars on a board game.

So I spent the money.

If there’s a real privilege differential between you and your partner, there’s probably a real difference in your readiness to state your needs. My partner is comfortable stating his.

I’m learning to be comfortable stating mine.

Don’t expect to get an honest or agreeable answer to every question you ask. Understand that asking “Could you get my family something else? Can you pay for gas this time?” may become a deeper conversation.

If there’s a real privilege differential between you and your partner, there’s probably a real difference in your readiness to state your needs.
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Frame every question like you have time to have a longer conversation, like you’re willing to hear more than agreement.

My partner has learned to tell when I’m triggered.

Sometimes, he’ll tease me gently by saying “Your eyes just glazed over.” When I’m further gone, he’ll say, my hand in his, “We’re on the same team.” Even if he can’t quite reach me, I hear him.

Here is who we are as a team: He tells his friends that I’ll be joining the trip, but spending most of it alone to write. He credits me proudly and consistently for all my emotional labor.

He advocates for me, at my request, and doesn’t expect to be deified for this. He doesn’t speak for me when I haven’t asked him to, and he asks interrogators to give me space.

Women who look like me are the punchline, the option, the inconvenience.
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My partner is on my side. Which I don’t say as a cop-out, as a way to slap a shiny bow on our very real challenges. I say this because he gets it: This world isn’t set up for me.

Men who look like him are decision makers. They are storytellers and historians with the most amplified voices. Women who look like me are the punchline, the option, the inconvenience.

We are a team. This means we actively resist the ways this world wants to prioritize him and render me small.

This story originally appeared on Everyday Feminism. Republished here with permission.

A handy list of things that you’re going to need to catch up on. Buck up, because it won’t be easy.

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Are you still reeling in shock at the presidential election results? Are you pulling at your hair wondering, “How did this country get so racist??” Are you posting statuses about how it is now time to come together to fight racism in the face of current political threats? Have you found yourself saying, “Well, at least this administration is waking people up.”

Hi! I see you there! Welcome to the anti-racism movement. I know you were kind of hoping to sneak in the back of class in the middle of this semester and then raise your hand in a few days to offer up expert opinion like you’ve always been here — but you’ve been spotted, and I have some homework for you, because you’ve missed A LOT and we don’t have the time to go over it all together. I’m glad you are here (I mean, I’d really rather you arrived sooner and I’m a little/lot resentful at how often we have to stop this class to cover all the material for people who are just now realizing that this is a class they should be taking, but better late than never I guess) and I know that once you catch up, you can contribute a lot to the work being done here.

If you are just now feeling the urgency of the need to fight systemic racism, chances are, you are white. I know, I know — I’m starting off with blanket assumptions about you and that doesn’t feel good; you literally don’t have to tell me about it, I’m quite familiar! But seriously, you are probably white or white passing (yes, I’m aware that Ben Carson and Lil Wayne exist and some people of color are capable of holding on to baffling amounts of denial, but I do not have whatever power it would take to break through that level of delusion so let’s just stick with new white folk). I’ve written down this handy list of things that you’ve missed so far that you’re going to need to catch up on, on your own time. This knowledge and preparation will not only make your fight against racism more effective, it will allow us to continue our progress as you catch up.

If you are just now feeling the urgency of the need to fight systemic racism, chances are, you are white.

This work is the worst.

Woah, I know — I’m starting off in the most negative way possible but look, I need you to know what you are signing up for. Fighting racism is one of the most difficult things you will ever do. I mean, reading this essay might be a little uncomfortable, but it is NOTHING compared to the conversations you are going to have to have, the privilege you are going to have to sacrifice, and the brutality and pain you are going to have to be able to look in the eye every day. Not only will this work get harder and harder the further you dive in, you will also get what at times seems like a very small return on your efforts.

If you want a fucked-up silver lining, you can always remember that people of color (POC) are also doing this work, never have the option of taking a break, and also have to live through the actual racism being fought in the process. So, buck up and get ready.

Your welcome parade. You missed it.

It was a beauty too — floats and streamers and everybody was clapping and cheering. But then it ended and we swept up all the confetti and everyone had to get back to work. Sorry.

Every idea you have for how we can better fight racism has already been discussed.

I know you might be saying “but how can you know that Ijeoma, you don’t know me?” I know. Trust me. I know. You are a 10-year-old explaining to a theoretical physicist how time travel might work. The theoretical physicist has already heard your theory and many others. She probably had some of those same theories when she was 10. And while your interest in time travel and your imagination and intelligence might well lead you to eventually help invent time travel, it will only do so after it has been paired with a lot of the education and experience that the physicist that you are trying to explain time travel to already has. But you are not actually 10, so your ideas are not cute. Keep them in your hat for now while you learn the basics.

Your journey to understanding that racism is a real problem and you have been contributing to it has already been covered.

Please don’t raise your hand to tell us all the tale of how you came to see that you are part of an oppressive system. We were there. When you didn’t know, when your obliviousness was contributing to our oppression, we were there being oppressed. When you were ignoring our cries for help, we saw you look away. As you stumbled along the path of recognition, we were the people you took down with you in each fall. We would rather not go over that all again.

But all is not lost, and your story does have real value — to people who are not in this room, who are afraid of acknowledging the part they play in a White Supremacist society. You can show fellow white people that they can survive the self-reflection necessary to fight racism. Please, share your story with them, it can do real good.

White People: I Want You To Understand Yourselves Better

Your ramp-up period. You missed it.

When POC were very, very small, we got a few years of comfort and protection from some of the realities of a White Supremacist society. When we were safe at home with our parents, the effects of systemic racism were muted somewhat, although never entirely. Then when we were 4 or 5 and went to preschool we discovered we were four times more likely to be suspended from preschool, and by the time we went to kindergarten another kid called us a “nigger” or another racial slur, and from then on we’ve been neck-deep in that shit.

So, if you weren’t there, you missed it. Nobody is going to hold your hand through this. If you fuck up, you will be called out. If you slow us down, you may be left on the side of the road. If we are angry at white people, we will say we are angry at white people, and nobody is going to add “not all white people” for your benefit. You will find a way to keep going — we have.

Nobody is going to hold your hand through this. If you fuck up, you will be called out.

Free, individualized education is not a thing we do anymore.

I know you would prefer a nice, safe sit-down with someone who would patiently walk you through all of this, but we have millions of people we need to get right and an entire system of White Supremacy to fight. We do not have the time or energy. Also — that “free labor from POC” thing is kind of how we got into this mess. The questions you are asking have already been answered by POC — some of whom have already been compensated for their time and effort. Google is your friend. If we have to live it, the least you can do is Google it.

We care about multiple things here — at the same time.

Yes, we are aware of how dangerous this administration is. No, we do not have “better” battles to be picking right now. We are doing multiple things at once, because we cannot be sure if it is the cops that will kill us, or the racist jokes at work fostering an environment where we are seen as unreliable and dispensable that will leave us unable to feed our families. But we know that it all can kill us in body and spirit, one way or another, so we will drag people for cultural appropriation and demand that schools provide a more diverse education to our children, while also raising alarm about the Muslim ban, ICE raids, and police brutality.

You could maybe help pick up some of the slack instead of trying to refocus our efforts in a way that makes sense to someone who doesn’t actually have to live with the consequences of what you think we should just “let go.”

Your privilege is the biggest risk to this movement.

That’s right: the biggest risk. The compromises you are willing to make with our lives, the offenses you are willing to brush off, the everyday actions you refuse to investigate, the comfort you take for granted — they all help legitimize and strengthen White Supremacy. Even worse, when you bring that into our movement and refuse to investigate and challenge it, you slow down our fight against White Supremacy and turn many of our efforts against us. When POC say, “check your privilege,” they aren’t saying it for fun — they are saying it because when you bring unexamined privilege into anti-racist spaces, you are bringing in a cancer.

Your privilege is the biggest benefit you can bring to the movement.

No, I’m not just talking nonsense now. Racial privilege is like a gun that will auto-focus on POC until you learn to aim it. When utilized properly, it can do real damage to the White Supremacist system — and it’s a weapon that POC do not have. You have access to people and places we don’t. Your actions against racism carry less risk.

You can ask your office why there are no managers of color and while you might get a dirty look and a little resentment, you probably won’t get fired. You can be the “real Americans” that politicians court. You can talk to fellow white people about why the water in Flint and Standing Rock matters, without being dismissed as someone obsessed with playing “the race card.” You can ask cops why they stopped that black man without getting shot. You can ask a school principal why they only teach black history one month a year and why they pretty much never teach the history of any other minority group in the U.S. You can explain to your white friends and neighbors why their focus on “black on black crime” is inherently racist. You can share articles and books written by people of color with your friends who normally only accept education from people who look like them. You can help ensure that the comfortable all-white enclaves that white people can retreat to when they need a break from “identity politics” are not so comfortable. You can actually persuade, guilt, and annoy your friends into caring about what happens to us. You can make a measurable impact in the fight against racism if you are willing to take on the uncomfortable truths of your privilege.

Thank God For Identity Politics

You will get better at this, but at first you will fuck up a lot, and you will always fuck up a little.

You are a human being and human beings are inherently flawed. You are also a human being who has lived with an entire life of unexamined privilege and racist social programming. You are going to fuck up hardcore. You are here because you are a decent human, and because you are a decent human you are going to feel pretty shitty when you fuck up. You will probably be called out, you may even be dismissed by some folk, and that may make you feel angry and defensive along with feeling shitty. You will need to get used to the pang of guilt from realizing you have fucked up and it has hurt people. Because it will hit you again and again.

It is okay to feel guilty about things that you are guilty of. It will not kill you, but hiding from that guilt and responsibility can kill others. So feel the guilt, realize you are still alive and intact, figure out how to do better, try to make amends if possible, and move forward. You are not alone. We are all fucking this up in various ways, every single one of us. Right now, there are whole big problematic chapters in our movement. We are all trying to do the work and wrestle with the ways in which we are causing more harm than good. But we have no choice but to keep working, even when it sucks.

You are here because you are a decent human, and because you are a decent human you are going to feel pretty shitty when you fuck up.

I’m glad you are here. I’m angry you are so late — have I mentioned that? I’m very, very angry you are so late because so many of us have been lost fighting without you. And you are going to just have to live with that anger for a while because you deserve it. But I am also glad you are here. I am glad you are seeing more clearly now and have decided that you no longer want to be a part of the problem. Eventually, I may get over my anger and I may even trust you, but until then I’m still going to need you to do the work to help dismantle the system that you have benefited from and have helped maintain for so long.

Because I do need your help, and I do know that you can help in ways that I cannot. Your reward may not be the warm welcome and heartfelt thanks that you might have been hoping for, but a more just and equal world will have to suffice.

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]]> https://theestablishment.co/easily-triggered-privileged-people-have-turned-society-into-their-own-giant-safe-space-b7110b2d9e79/ Tue, 31 Jan 2017 02:31:31 +0000 https://theestablishment.co/?p=2313 Read more]]> Our culture is set up to protect the powerful from anything they can’t handle.

“Are you triggered?” white men sneer from every corner of Facebook, when confronted with political outrage or even mild disagreement. “Do you need to go to your safe space?” Rhetoric about “trigger warnings,” alerts to traumatized people that a book or film or article might exacerbate PTSD, has been twisted into a snide way of mocking people, a coded insult meant to imply someone is spoiled or coddled. Celebrities of all levels have commented: Neil Gaiman named a short story collection Trigger Warning as self-congratulation for its disturbing contents. Joe Rogan’s new Netflix comedy special is named Triggered, and Rogan said in an interview with Maxim that talking about triggers was the “anthem of the oversensitive crowd.” In the intro to her new book Buffered, YouTube personality Hannah Hart makes a specific point of saying there will be no trigger warnings because “life does not provide trigger warnings.” Even the University of Chicago has weighed in, making a point of telling incoming freshmen it didn’t support trigger warnings in classes — preferring, I suppose, to have students ambushed by trauma.

Before the sneering, dismissive backlash, a trigger warning was intended to inform people that a conversation, book, movie, or other experience could make them recall or relive a previous traumatic incident. Often it specifically warns of references to sexual assault, abuse, violent language, racial violence, or violent action — content that can throw people into post-traumatic flashbacks if they encounter it unprepared. Trigger warnings can benefit those who have experienced personal trauma, as well as anyone who suffers from the daily violence of being a marginalized person; for example, rape culture permeates our society as a whole, and the constant bombardment has an emotional effect, whether or not one has experienced direct sexual harassment or assault. A “safe space” is a space as free as possible from these vectors of trauma. Both are tactics to ease the load on people living in a society that constantly shoves them aside and injures them.

But in recent years, trigger warnings and safe spaces have become a shorthand for unnecessarily sparing the delicate feelings of someone too weak to face pain. Real life, detractors say, doesn’t tell you when you’re about to be challenged or hurt, so why should I?

It sounds tough. It sounds pragmatic. It’s completely wrong. In fact, real life offers plenty of trigger warnings and safe spaces — for the people in power.

Real life offers plenty of trigger warnings and safe spaces — for the people in power.
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The truth of the matter is that privileged people have all of society as a safe space; our culture and even our laws are formed around their comfort. The most unequal laws of history have existed to protect the safe space of those in power — a space safe from abortions, from queer marriages, from black people and women voting, from anything that challenges their supremacy. Many of the people catered to by the entire setup of society are the same ones who would claim that life never gave them a “safe space.”

Of course the privileged don’t understand the need for such a space. Safe spaces exist to give marginalized people a quiet moment of respite from a society that has done everything in its power to disenfranchise and disempower us. Those who have power, money, and influence have never experienced such a thing. The world has been made safe for them from the beginning.

There are multiple examples throughout history of laws and restrictions intended to avoid triggers and make all of society a safe space for the privileged. In early Hollywood, the Hays Code limited what could and could not be shown on film. Many of the things outlawed were ideas that disturbed the people in power: positive representation of queer people, successful interracial relationships, and authentic portrayals of racism were all practically non-existent under the Code. Though touted as protection for all, the Hays Code was really about protecting a rigid, white heterosexual masculinity.

What Our Culture Gets Wrong About Trigger Warnings
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For years, the Comics Code did the same for the comic book industry, limiting the portrayal of sexuality, drug use, and sexual liberation. And who could forget the brouhaha in the late ’80s when white parents (led by Tipper Gore) were up in arms that their children were listening to naughty rap lyrics? They pushed for parental advisory stickers to protect the youth from “dangerous” content. The campaign was roundly mocked, but it was implemented nationwide. Parental advisory stickers are still warning people of potential offense today. So is the MPAA movie rating system, which privileges old ideals. The documentary This Film is Not Yet Rated shows the ways in which heterosexuality is elevated over other sexual expression when assigning ratings, and sex routinely garners a more restricted rating than violence.

What made parental advisories and MPAA ratings more serious than the current request for trigger warnings? These things were meant to protect privileged people and their children.

As a result of rules intended to protect the privileged from ideas they found distasteful, creators who wanted to present nuanced portrayals of marginalized people were blocked and stymied, so most appearances of marginalized characters were caricatures. These stereotypes protected viewers from having to consider the complex humanity of groups outside themselves, which allowed the audience to feel safe and reinforced in their beliefs. Many tropes — including the buffoonish black person, the desexualized Asian man, the oversexualized young woman of color, the strident bitchy single woman, the campy gay man, and the doomed lesbian — stem from this protective oversimplification. The stereotypes function to reassure the privileged that they are inherently superior and have no need to respect characters who don’t look or act or believe like them.

The appearance of three-dimensional, non-stereotyped LGBT characters or characters of color in media threatens the safe space that society, codes, and laws have defended for years. Privileged people resist these incursions of nuance because they feel like their safe space is being “invaded.” The safe space, in this case, is the entire culture.

Real trigger warnings and safe spaces aren’t intended to allow people to skip traumatizing material entirely. Some of us simply need time to emotionally prepare before discussing or viewing triggering subject matter, or prefer to postpone it for a time when we’re not facing other emotional challenges. Trigger warnings can be the difference between knowing you’re going to see a slasher film, and going into the theater thinking Halloween is just a feel-good movie about a pagan holiday. But suppose someone did want to evade all discussion or representation of something they find traumatizing — why is that suddenly a problem? People have used status, laws, money, and tradition to shield themselves and those they care for since time immemorial. Considering that those in power have continually manipulated things in their favor from womb to tomb, it is the highest hypocrisy to decry someone making a conscious decision to shield themselves from trauma.

The problem the privileged have with ideas of trigger warnings and safe spaces is the same they have with most pushes for inclusivity and education: being asked to consider someone else’s feelings, particularly someone society teaches is below them and barely deserving of their attention. What they see as an imposition is actually an attempt to correct an imbalance that has been in their favor for too long.

If you are going to call for the end of trigger warnings and safe spaces, be ready to throw away all the little ways the world coddles and protects you from reality.
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If you are going to call for the end of trigger warnings and safe spaces, then you have to call for an end to all of them, including the ones society bends over backwards to provide you. Be ready to throw away all the little ways the world coddles and protects you from reality. But of course, the people mocking the ideas of safe spaces and trigger warnings are the first to demand calm tones or immediately shut down dissent when they are called out or attacked for their lack of compassion.

In the end, the reasoning is always the same: We do not want you to have anything that we do — not the power, nor the safety, nor the peace.

“I want to make sure we have good light for the plants,” I tell my boyfriend of nearly four years. “So there should be big windows.”

I make a mental note of the granite bar in the open kitchen, the dishwasher, the circular basin bathroom sink, the rooftop deck with the living wall, and the shiny people at the juice bar — the juice bar — in the lobby.

I’m looking for my first real (read: not sharing with roommates) apartment, and when I’m not careful, I forget who I am and where I come from. This is dangerous. Without remembering, I’m just another career-oriented White girl who wants a gym in her building. And I hate that girl.

When we see the bedroom — which is technically a home office in New York City, per its lack of windows — we wonder how the darkness will affect our sleep cycles. But in the back of my mind I’m reminded of my teenage bedroom in the port of Newark, New Jersey, where one night my best friend and I tried to hair-spray the cockroaches away, only to make matters worse.

I slept in the center of my room on a mattress on the floor, as did my younger brother. I would sleep with the window open in the summer, while friends slept in cool, three-story homes on the better side of town. Our dinner was funded by food stamps; we washed the plates immediately lest the roaches come. The memories are of my little brother’s bedroom.

This room was the saddest of all. It didn’t have a window, and it was always dark, always filled with the sound of him playing by himself, a static television. I think now of the little pale boy, alone after school, sitting on his broken bed on the floor. How he didn’t know of the lack. How my mother took the living room couch as her bedroom. And the television with the aluminum foil.

Without remembering, I’m just another career-oriented White girl who wants a gym in her building. And I hate that girl.
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But we did have long white curtains, and if I closed my eyes just slightly, they seemed beautiful. Like the balcony apartments on Riverside Drive where writers in movies always lived.

When I finally signed our lease, I felt guilty. Guilt that I left behind those days of poverty and had all that I do now: my own sauna, the cobblestone square and its French wine bars outside, the option to have things I want. Mostly, I was mourning the loss of the 14-year-old girl who never wanted anything but to write and to be happy. Who wanted her mother to have another work shirt, a dinner that didn’t come from the bodega. That 14-year-old shaped me. But here I have the 30-year-old with the fancy job and the gone-into-debt credentials. I can never let her shape me.

When I told my partner this, he said, “That’s fucked. You worked yourself to death for this this. You work more than anyone I know. You put yourself through six years of university. You sacrificed everything, and we’re still paying more than we probably should be. We’re pushing our limits.”

What we’re paying is three-and-a-half times the amount that my mother — after she got custody of us again — paid to live in a small house in the rural hills that had enough bedrooms for everyone. Put that into perspective.

It takes a certain level of privilege to even get to a place where I can pay my rent as a writer and editor. As I look out at the financial district from the seventh floor, I take measurements for the window seat and think about how my partner could be right.

I went into extreme debt, worked countless jobs and had no parental help, no safety net — nothing but my own resiliency. All I wanted was stability, and so my work-hard strategy has been advantageous.

Those In Poverty: You Aren’t Responsible For Making Your Family Comfortable
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Weirdly, all of this makes me less inclined to invite my mother over to my new fancy apartment, as if now I’ve changed, am entitled to these luxuries, as if I’ve forgotten about being chased by the pretty girls after school because I wore brandless sneakers. I don’t want my mother to think I’m other now. I have not forgotten where I’m from, I tell her, but good god, I don’t want to wax all Jenny from the Block here.

My mother wants me to have everything and has never, ever implied anything else besides sheer exultation. But her just-don’t-be-like-me only makes me feel guiltier. I think of her in her tiny New Jersey apartment. I think of how hard she works for less-than-enough.

My path from rags to more-than-enough has been strange, punctuated by privileged variables.

When I was 16, we ended up in foster care. My mother couldn’t afford to care for us because of an addiction to hard drugs and bad men, and so we were sent away. First we lived with family, then we lived with people we didn’t know; my brother and I were separated.

This is, ironically, how life got better.

My boyfriend at the time didn’t want me lost in the system, and so his family, a couple of New York City artists, rifled generously through their rolodex. They knew of an older couple in New Jersey who owned their own esteemed theater company. They’d taken in foster kids before, and so I moved in with them one sunny day. I still remember the fancy rotary phone in my new bedroom sitting painting-like on the white oak desk at the window.

The couple were quirky, intellectual, fiscally Republican, and they lived in an affluent town, Westfield, where the high school was jokingly referred to as Westfield University.

There, I could take an English class about existential literature, so I was 17 reading Camus. I would think about how I am an agent of personal responsibility. And then I’d walk back to my upper-middle-class foster parents’ house. A big blue house. Furniture no one sat on. Constant vocal technique practice. (Think Running With Scissors, Broadway-style.)

And me, the dirty foster kid, putting on my airs, staying tucked away.

Actually, I blossomed. Their rigid expectations meant I would go to class, and I would pass the class. They got me a job at the local newspaper. They taught me about cuisine and art. They decorated with Degas. And so, I had my experience with privilege, and because of that (and my own desire to not recreate my mother’s life), I got into college and later, into graduate school.

If I didn’t have all of that, I wonder if I would have had what I have now. I might have failed all of my classes in a depressive anger, suffering from separation anxiety and PTSD. Even though my dream was to write and edit, I would likely be the person wishing fucking hard for it, not the person negotiating for more money because I can.

But in this disparate new life, I feel my past-self is more real. Going from foster care to a luxury high rise is not lost on me. I can’t enjoy the steam room without thinking too hard, because normalizing privilege is dangerous to community and to the nation. Maybe I’m a poor girl at heart? Maybe the answer is to take what I have and share it with others, helping other women empower themselves to do better, be better, and take care of themselves.

And whether or not I want to admit it, my body is part of the privileged class, even if my heart isn’t. It’s tough to swallow, tough to convey, and I’m always checking myself and remembering myself.