Thread by @PennyRed

Spent today reading ‘Hood Feminism’ by @Karnythia - excellent, and required reading for all white people in the feminist movement. Found myself called out in the last chapter. Which I appreciated, though it was painful to read, as it made the hit home.
It got me thinking >

Over the years, I’ve watched so many white, cis and/or otherwise privileged progressives behave like wankers when they’re called out. I’ve seen people use the fact of angry criticism to play the victim and double down on their own wankery. It’s boring, predictable, and so toxic.

I include myself in that- I haven’t always done well when called out, although better than some, mainly because I have a reputation for well-reasoned apologies (‘performative apology’ is actually what MK calls me out for in her book).
I am, in fact, pretty good at saying sorry. >

And I credit that on some otherwise unedifying things in my past that mean that for as long as I can remember, when someone starts yelling at me my first reaction is to assume I’m in the wrong and apologise- sometimes before I even know why.
This is, of course, a trauma response.

It’s not always a healthy pattern, and in intimate relationships I’ve had to learn to stand up for myself more.
However.
When you are engaging politically as a white/cis/able-bodied person, that same pattern can actually be pretty useful.

When you are, to pick an example tooooootally at random, a white feminist author being called out by a BIPOC feminist (or two or several), ‘assume you are in the wrong, apologise, work out what has happened and try not to do that again’ is actually a GOOD instinct.

When it comes to politics and social justice, when you’re trying to do better as a person with privilege, it’s so important to be aware of how your own trauma, shame and baggage can get in the way of the work.

That’s especially true for white women and NB people, because when we retreat into our own pain and panic, we’re playing, often unintentionally, into cultural tropes about the fragility of white women that can cast the person calling us out as dangerous.

Nobody likes to be shouted at. I, personally, hate being shouted at. But today, there are whole movements of notionally well-meaning progressives who have gone off the deep end and become the very thing they profess to hate because they could not handle being called out online.

For me, personally, I know that the moments in my life when I have been cowardly and made choices I’m ashamed of have almost all been because I was scared that someone would shout at me, because part of me is still that frightened kid who wants the shouting to stop. >

But I’m not that child anymore. And the strategies that so many of us learned to protect ourselves and survive as children are the very things that make us cowardly and calcified as adults.

I honestly think that a lot of people who are scared of being called out could stand to have a talk with themselves (or with a friendly neighborhood therapist) about why their threat-modelling is broken.

I got better at being an ally (or, as @Karnythia would put it, started making the transition from ally to accomplice) once I learned to tolerate discomfort and stay in the room with other people’s anger, even if that anger felt unfair.

If a person of color calls out my racism, if a trans person calls me out for cissexism, all that happens is that I get uncomfortable and embarrassed. I’m not actually in danger. I am safe.
Part of the reason I am safe, of course, is that I am white and have cis privilege.

Trans people still have so much more to fear from cis anger. Black people have a great deal to fear from white rage. When a white person lashes out in racist self-defence, they have the entire machinery of white supremacy backing them up.

I’m still learning how to quell my own panic and umbrage. When I first read @Karnythia calling me out in her book, I was anxious and disgruntled. That’s ok. I don’t need to be gruntled all the time.

Over years of being called out, sometimes quite harshly, over years of being publicly excoriated for stupid fuckups, my mental health did suffer- partly because it brought up old traumas that had nothing to do with what I was being called out for.
But honestly? It was worth it.

Because I am less racist now. Less cissexist, less heterosexist, less of a wanker all around. I would like to think that that it would have happened anyway, even if I hadn’t been so scared of getting yelled at that I had to do better, faster.
But I can’t know that for sure.

I see this pattern everywhere. I see it repeating when I watch the men in my life struggle to come to terms with their own sexism and internalised misogyny. I see how they fail to see the pain of others through the haze of their own existential panic.

Coming to terms with your own complicity can be really painful.
But it’s a whole lot better than continuing to be complicit with systems of racism, sexism, ableism and homophobia that actually literally kill people every day.
We‘ve GOT to get better at coping with discomfort.

Link to the book is here: amazon.com/Hood-Feminism-…