On Belonging
Acceptance and tolerance are subjects that have been raised this week.
It’s astonishing how time and time again we repeat history, and normalise hatred by clinging to the false premise that hate is debatable, that we can defeat it in the marketplace of ideas, that people who are deeply invested in the sky being red will of course come around to the fact that it is blue by logic instead of depriving hate of a soapbox:
It’s baffling that we still refuse to acknowledge the difference between free speech and hate speech, that we still can’t fathom that one of these comes with the kind of power differential and organised, deliberate normalisation of atrocities that once led us to say “never again”.
It’s appalling that instead of a lack of acceptance and tolerance of hateful ideas and the active dissemination of them, the lack of tolerance and acceptance is in relation to other human beings trying to live their lives.
I’m a cis woman. I believe that anyone who identifies as a woman is a woman, and that trans rights are human rights, end of discussion.
Without wishing to speak over anyone from the trans community in a moment that should centre and support them, I wanted to express as part of this newsletter a few thoughts about belonging.
I have experienced the perception that the entirety of who I am has to be accepted or tolerated. This is an implied gateway that doesn’t often exist for straight, cis people, and that straight, cis people often assert implicitly or overtly that they need to make.
I have the privilege of being pākehā and straight-passing. A vulnerable comment is that in all honesty I rarely feel like I truly belong because of the regular reinforcement that I don’t, and the implication that there’s something about me that requires an effort to accept.
There’s rarely a wall that isn’t ready to go back up, because acceptance of my sexuality is often at the whim of those who have the privilege of never experiencing that othering themselves. Acceptance and tolerance are tenuous offerings, and to belong means that space must first be created for our full, authentic selves - without acceptance being a constant navigation of decisions made by some one else.
Transphobia is on the rise worldwide and is documented as having roots in modern white supremacy, but it is by no means exclusive to today.
The trans community were also targeted in Nazi Germany - it’s not a coincidence that Nazis are showing up at drag events and are clearly aligned with anti-trans protests.
For expert, and excellent, commentary this is a recommended read from Byron C Clark.
I’ve said this before, but I firmly believe that if we want to know how we would have reacted to increasing far-right toxicity in say, 1920 - it’s what we’re doing now. It’s how we are reacting now. It is our actions, now.
Being anti-fascist requires being anti-racist. It requires being anti-misogyny, anti-transphobia.
Far-right influence is growing. It is well-funded and dangerous and we should be concerned.
“… the relevant historical lesson is that the threat to democracy doesn’t come from the proportion of the people these groups can claim to represent. It’s about the size of the damage they are willing to do.”
- Van Badham
We should be thinking about allyship.
We should be thinking about what it means, to really stand by the values that you say you have.
About what it means, when we silently watch history repeat. About the voices we preference, tolerate, accept, normalise in order to do so - and the ones we ensure by our words, our actions, and our love, belong.
“There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain.”
- James Baldwin