A better world requires our responsiblity.
Part one one of some musings I have on responsibility
One of the hardest things for us to do as humans is to take responsibility for when we cause harm. It is inevitable that we will cause harm, and just facing that reality can be difficult. It is simply not possible to move through life and not cause harm to others.
We will cause harm: in small ways that we want to minimize and say “oh that’s not that big a deal, I bet that person didn’t even notice” like when we’re late for a meeting with a colleague or for drinks with a friend; in medium ways that we want to avoid a “difficult conversation” about like when we say something out of urgency, anger, fear to our partners or friends and need to own the impact; in large ways that leave us questioning ourselves, layering on top of the harm to others harm to ourselves by judging our actions, telling ourselves it proves that we aren’t a good person / good enough / worthy / loveable like when we misgender someone, say or do a racist / mysoginist / homophobic / islamaphobic / ableist / ageist / xenophobic thing, cross a friend’s boundaries somehow, or engage in some really large and stupid lie; and some of us even do it in jumbo ways like when we are physical, emotional, or spiritual abusers, manipulators, rapists, murderers, the like.
The first part in any conversation about responsibility, in my opinion, is about the fact that we cause harm, it’s inevitable, and we are each equally capable, sometimes in the same day or hour, of causing egregious harm and engaging in truly loving relationships. When we can look at and face that reality, I think it opens up a spaciousness within us that allows us to move just a wee bit more easily into taking responsibility for the harm we’ve caused.
This topic - responsibility - is something I’m rather consumed by: it’s at the heart of every single coaching engagement I have with teams and individuals; my own growth into taking responsibility for when I cause harm, for my own development, and for the habits I’ve developed out of trauma has changed my life and my experience of being alive; I find the bigger cultural conversations we keep getting stuck in as Americans (and elsewhere, too) a study in responsibility (or the lack thereof); and I think our activism could be stronger, more powerful, and more world changing if we were able to practice responsibility within movement spaces and outside of them.
In today’s edition, I’ll focus mostly on responsibility in the context of building a better world; in the next part, I’ll focus on just why it’s so damn hard to say “I’m sorry” (and mean it), and focus more on how we can practice doing it.
There is a quote by the activist Grace Lee Boggs on responsibility that I use with every team I work with who’s stuck in conflict, with myself when I find myself drawing lines between myself and “those people over there doing a thing I don’t like”, and with individuals who are avoiding their own liberation and power by avoiding responsibility:
“You cannot change any society unless you take responsibility for it, unless you see yourself as belonging to it and responsible for changing it.”
Every single time I read this quote it kicks my ass. It reminds me to get in action and do something. It reminds me that engaging in “othering” doesn’t get me anywhere but feeling righteous and that righteousness very rarely changes the world (some current or past actual otherings I’ve had in my head: “there those liberals go again doing something that will have no impact, is out of touch with reality, and exists to make themselves feel better”, or “those racist white people annoy me, I’m so much better / smarter / nicer than them and I simply ‘cannot’ with them”, or “good lord could straight people be more dull”, or “wow, I didn’t think Lindsay Graham / Ron DeSantis / Donald Trump / Tom Cotton / Josh Hawley / Marsha Blackburn could be more hurtful, but damn, here we go”). The quote also reminds me to open to love and to see myself in those that I would otherwise be too eager to make into an enemy that I, naturally, simply could never be.
Except: I have been the annoying liberal posting the hashtags, the simplified mottos, engaging in the binary thinking about good and bad; I have done, said, and advanced racist, and all the hateful otherings we do, including participaing myself in misogynistic and homophobic, things or agendas; I haven’t been straight ever, even if I’ve passed as such, but I have certainly been dull and missed how to see people in their full beauty and complexity; and for fucks sake, the first president I ever voted for was George W. Bush. I’m not sure what it looks like to actually make up for that one. So it behooves me to look inside and see how yes, I too am responsible for the society in which we live and the results it is producing.
I also love this quote because it has me return to my responsibility and invites me to stop externalizing responsibility onto others for the current state of things, and when I put it in the context of Grace Lee Boggs’s (and her husband, Jimmy’s) lifelong activism, it reminds me that the way to change the world is by building power together, through organizing with others, and being “radically hospitable” to everyone who could join (there is a whole OTHER post - and likely many other newsletters that could focus on how much better the right is at being radically hospitable, and therefore successful, in organizing folks to their agenda and how….truly terrible the left is at even trying it). It reminds me that I need to do something, but that individualism is not the way.
To take these lessons and apply them to a current situation happening now: what the media would like us to believe is a “renewed attack” on LGBTQ rights (I’ve seen a version of this headline/story at least three times since waking up today, including in the widely read NYT The Morning Newsletter). I state it that way because it would be fucking banner news to me and every queer person I know that we haven’t been under attack forever, using the same tactics that are being deployed today (“mental illness”, “grooming and pedophilia”, “destruction of family values”, etc.) just because some in our community prioritized and fought for gay marriage as the “most important” right and straight people have accepted those in our community who now engage in behavior that’s more comfortable to them, namely getting married and having babies. But ask them (and even too many inside our own queer community) to accept Black transwomen sex workers, or to accept non-binary people, or trans kids, or queer people whose very affect in life is queer as fuck and not “respectable”, and well, you don’t even get tolerance unless it’s part of entertaining bachelorette parties at drag shows.
It’s easy - and in my opinion, far too simplistic - to look at the coordinated attacks on LGBTQ, emphasis on T, and conclude that it’s one evil political party doing this work. Here’s some questions I have for myself (and for you, if you’d like to apply them to you) in a framework of responsibility:
How am I deepening my own understanding of the movement for queer liberation and understanding today’s attacks in the context of a centuries-long-playbook? How am I inviting others to do the same and to reject that this is a new line of attack? As a step here, I highly recommend the podcast Making Gay History. It’s not perfect - it focuses too heavily on American and white organizing efforts throughout the years - but it is an effective survey of the themes of what has been used against queer people throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, what queer people have done in response, and the limitations of our efforts.
How am I directly supporting the efforts of those who are doing work that is not my calling, but is vital for the health and wellbeing of my community? Again, if you’re in need of recommendations, I personally give / have given to these folks, but also could not more firmly believe in directly giving money to people, not organizations: Black & Pink, Sexy Sex Ed, The Haven, OUTMemphis, to name a few. I would personally not give to organizations that have name recognition, clout, resources, etc. - in part because I think some of them have lost their way and in part because the groups that are doing the most direct work to change the immediate material conditions of queer people are not groups like HRC.
How can I own up to the ways in which I’ve contributed to the current reality without that reflection leading me down a path of being stuck in self-blame, guilt, or a narcissistic exaggeration of my impact? For example, it’s important for me to own up to the fact that I have played a role in the current tactic of corporate activism: I have previously been moved to action in boycotting corporations who do things I don’t agree with and have urged others to do the same. I have previously celebrated when companies support issues I care about. I have come to now believe this is a way that I externalized responsibility (it’s easier to say Chick-fil-a is the cause of anti-gay sentiment in America because then I simply get to not eat there and think I’m doing the most good, while I also never during those same years actually examined what it would look like to organize teachers in Memphis, for example, to fight the law that previously made it legal to fire teachers who were out). That’s an important reflection for my learning, my action, and my future engagement on all social issues, but it doesn’t need to turn into that I was somehow single handedly responsible for the TN law that made it legal to fire out teachers for so many years.
How am I growing my capacity to have empathy with those who are taking action that I don’t agree with (an example: why are we asking Disney, historical bastion of racism and homophobia, not to mention a whole ass corporation, to save us)? How am I cultivating within me a true, and not forced, appreciation for the varied efforts it will likely take to fight for a better world, that likely includes those actions I might not agree with as well as those that I would advocate for? Some examples of what I might advocate for: I can judge Florida all day long, but am I willing to move there and organize? Am I willing to be the teacher who is fired intentionally to start the lawsuit that challenges this law? Am I willing to dedicate my life and risk my livelihood to fight this bill and others like it?
Since I’m not at all willing to move to Florida or go back into the classroom and since we’ve collectively dropped the ball on building an organizing infrastructure that is effective at challenging these efforts at least in the short term, how can I begin to imagine - and link with others who are doing the same - the emergency supports that are necessary for, in particular, this entire generation of queer and trans youth? If the supports exist, what do they need and how can I be part of lending a hand? If the supports don’t exist, how can I be courageous enough to start them? Some examples here might include things like connecting directly with queer youth as a mentor, but it probably also looks like spending the hours to get trained and volunteering to work on suicide and counseling hotlines or in queer youth houseless shelters; helping to crowdsource funds for families (especially low-income or BIPOC families) to move out of hostile states who otherwise couldn’t afford to do that; organizing or joining efforts to get clothing, food, and other needs of queer houseless shelters met; starting or being part of starting adult houseless shelters that focus on queer people and ensuring that, in particular, trans people can be housed in shelters that align to their gender? I could keep going. My point is that people are going to be impacted and devastatingly so; there is unfortunately never a lack of people who need material support and I can do more than I am to lend a hand in these important needs.
How can I organize with others for the long-term need of building a better world, a world that actually doesn’t cause all this unnecessary, spiteful, hurtful and human engineered surplus suffering? For me personally, this takes me away from electoral politics (I have personally come to view that entire effort / scheme as not at all about changing worlds, but upholding the current status quo by consuming the resources - our time, energy, hope, money - in having us believe that electing “changemakers” will change the world, but I understand this is niche view) and more into putting everything I can into the quality, depth, and breadth of the relationships I have with others. For me, this means focusing my professional work on supporting others in building relationships - with their word, with their priorities, with their colleagues, with everyone around them - that are joyful, rich, full of responsibility, and that change their life and helping individuals and teams experience healing and restoration when long standing conflict and judgment are present. It also means being deeply committed to that practice for myself. And it means making meaningful changes to my life so that I can do the work that these types of relationships and long-term organizing take - changes like making a lot less money & taking a lot less work on than I theoretically could because that brings me into absence, urgency, busyness, striving, competing, individual obsessive behavior and away from presence, connectedness, slow moving and thinking, creating, and showing up for others; changes like reaching out and being awkward in the name of building adult relationships and getting that wrong and then trying again; changes like prioritizing my wellbeing with how I sleep, eat, exercise, grow food, meditate, etc. These might not seem like revolutionary tactics and I imagine there are many who would say they aren’t. But I disagree. There’s a quote that I’m forgetting in its entirety and who to credit for it (help me in the comments please if you know it!) but I’ll paraphrase its meaning here: We can create a better world; that starts with living our version of that world right now. We don’t have to wait for policies, elected officials, corporations, etc. to make the changes necessary for that better world (again, I think this means we will always be waiting and in the meantime, abdicating our responsibility and our power and freedom); we don’t have to wait. We can act our way into freedom, and it takes courage, it takes commitment, it takes sacrifice, it takes change. But we can, in fact, take responsibility for doing it.