iNTERSEX AND QUARANTiNE

October 15, 2020 by Shelby Sorrel in Other

Written By: Alicia Roth Weigel

Hello and I hope this blog post finds you and yours healthy in these trying times.

Who else is ready to not have to start emails that way anymore? Let’s be real, this quarantine sucks. And what sucks even more is it seems like if society collectively had a bit more empathy—to understand how, even if we’re okay and not experiencing health inequity and will ultimately be fine, our actions (or inaction: let’s all vote, y’all) still affect one another—we’d be out of our cages a whole lot sooner.

As an intersex person, it’s not the first time I’ve felt like this. If you’re not sure what that word means, I don’t blame you as we exist largely hidden from society and often even from our own friends and family. According to Planned Parenthood, intersex is “a general term for a variety of conditions where a person is born with reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t fit typical definitions of “female” or “male,” comprising an estimated 1.7 percent of the population.” According to me, we’re born with traits that mean our bodies are in between what most consider to be a binary, literally “inter-” “-sex”.

There’s a lot you can read to familiarize yourself with what probably seems like a foreign concept, but I’m more interested in focusing on some phenomena you likely will understand. We’re all trying to stay positive on the rollercoaster that is this global pandemic, but I’ve realized a few of the more frustrating aspects of quarantine are familiar feelings intersex folks experience day in and day out.

The first, and often most frustrating, of which is feeling trapped in a space that is supposed to be our home. Maybe some of us have felt on the verge of murdering that person we love the most because we’re not used to spending every. single. waking. hour. of the day with them. I know I sometimes want to throw my adorable little puppy out the window (not actually) when she refuses to stay quiet as I take an important call in my one-bedroom, which before the pandemic seemed big enough for the two of us.

Beyond these “quarantine feels”, for many intersex people, feelings of resentment are usually directed at our parents or doctors—who’ve often made life-altering decisions to pump us with hormones or rearrange and remove our body parts without our consent. This atrocity is referred to as “intersex genital mutilation”, and often assigns a gender to a young child regardless of how they identify, involving irreversible surgeries that necessitate that they transition later in life. Many trans folks understand not feeling at home in the body they were born with; imagine that same feeling in a body that was created by doctors, and altered based on your parents’ wishes and not your own?

The second, is loneliness. Wikipedia describes it as “an unpleasant emotional response to perceived isolation”. Growing up intersex, you’re usually labeled with some medicalized term (I got “Complete Androgyn Insensitivity”) rather than being told you’re part of a global population of roughly 150 million individuals like you, and you’re told that sharing your intersex status with others will lead to being ostracized.

That means that as we experience marginalization—whether it be unconsented surgeries on our bodies, or the daily microaggressions of having to fill out forms or choose bathrooms that don’t include us; we go through it alone. This is a bit different than the experience of, for example, BIPOC folks, who often form part of a community of shared identity; and as many of us intersex folks “pass” as cisgender, we don’t always wear our target of persecution visibly—which can be a saving grace, but also means it’s even harder for us to find one another.

Per Wikipedia, “loneliness is also described as social pain—a psychological mechanism which motivates individuals to seek social connections,” which is why we seek to be accepted into the broader LGBTQIA+ community. While there are many unique aspects to being intersex, there is so much we share… We all have experienced shame and stigma. We’ve all faced uncertainty as to the best way to care for our health and wellbeing due to the lack of adequate medical care and resources. We’ve all faced questions as to who we are, in a society that often tries to legislate our rights, and sometimes our whole beings, out of existence.

But it’s often a struggle to get our fellow members of the alphabet soup to even include our letter in the acronym, let alone include us in their advocacy in a more meaningful way. We’re often told to wait our turn, though intersex advocates have been yelling for decades—or labeled “problematic” for our tactics of trying to be visible, even just within the queer community, despite the fact that our trans-cestors literally threw (very warranted) bricks.

When we are included, it’s usually in a way that contributes to the tokenization of our community. You know, those token acts to get recognition that don’t actually make us feel better or solve the problem—kinda like your friends who post “wear a mask” on their feed, but then you see them inside at bars every night in their story?

The intersex community is usually only recognized once a year, on October 26th or “Intersex Awareness Day.” I sit here writing this on Indigenous People’s Day and I’ve seen so many posts about erasure of identities, and reducing a community to a 24-hour period each year, and a lot of the feelings are relatable. Just like re-posting one Native person’s thoughts to a platform that disappears in 24 hours isn’t enough, neither is reading one intersex person’s blog post. There are so many of us that you can follow, all year long, to learn more about the struggles we face… And not just white, cis-passing intersex folks like me—black, trans femmes like @queen_johnny_; latinx, non-binary queens like @rivergallo; and downright legends like @pidgeon.

I hope this pandemic has been an eye-opening experience for folks, as it has for me. I hope it’s been a needed reminder of how interconnected all of our struggles are, and how we can each do better by one another in ways that are pretty low-bar, all things considered (washing your hands really isn’t that hard…) And I hope that perhaps reading this might be the same—that y’all won’t close out of this blog this then wipe your hands clean [pun intended] of the fight for the intersex community, but rather commit to educating yourself more fully on threats to fellow members of your global community’s health and wellbeing, and adjusting your own actions accordingly. We all deserve the same rights and autonomy over our bodies and decisions, and yet some of us are still struggling to access some of those most concepts.

So the next time you hear about immigrants being force-sterilized in camps at our border and post about abolishing ice, maybe throw in some acknowledgement that intersex kids are force-sterilized across our country everyday in our neighborhood hospitals. Or the next time you fight for trans kids to access gender confirmation surgeries, take a second to remind folks that intersex folks have similar procedures forced upon us without our consent. And please: vote, and wear a mask while you do it. The sooner we all realize our simple actions can make momentous change, the faster we’ll all be free—from oppression, and from our own damn couches.

Alicia Roth Weigel
@xoxy_alicia
www.xoxyalicia.com

No Reservations: A 30-Year-Old’s Reflection on Depression

July 28, 2020 by Shelby Sorrel in Other

Content Warning: Suicide and Depression
By: Bridger Sperry

Oh God. Where do I start with discussing something that will be forever ongoing? What a hopeless feeling for me personally that this thing will never be finished until I am in the ground.

A confession: I don’t like advice books or generally motivational shit because A) I’m not a baby boomer trying to get coached through a midlife crisis by a younger generation who sees the world through a different lens and B) am not a Gen Xer wanting to get rich off of telling others to believe in themselves again, and again, and again. Yet, here I am trying to scribble down something that I would hope is at most, helpful, and at least, entertaining to read.

I was never particularly good at anything that set me above my peers. So, in most of my organized activities growing up my parents enthusiastically encouraged me with a rainstorm of “way to help the team!” type compliments and reassurances. Let this read be my “way to help the team” in discovering how to talk again with no reservations about depression.

June 8th, 2018 is the day my hero died. Heroes always die in battle. Fighting for freedom, or love, or for a belief. All storybook heroes regard their subject matter greater than losing the most precious possession we collectively have as humanity: life.

No, not my hero. He strung himself up and let his body weight suffocate his life. Suicide.

Anthony Bourdain. It feels foreign to claim him as my hero. I know he’s other people’s hero. I know I’m not the only one who has felt the weight of his suicide. I’m sure others feel more weight than myself. The fact is that our hero committed suicide, and that really, really, sucks.

I’m positive that most who knew, loved, and respected Bourdain came to know him the same way I did. His show No Reservations aired on the Travel Channel. I was initially watching because every summer they’d air a “rollercoaster week” (big coaster guy over here). Eventually, No Reservations started airing more than anything with rollercoasters (ugh), but I started tuning in. After a few shows I saw this guy diving into cultures and asking uncomfortable questions and writing facts of how things were in a given culture. His opinions and feelings were never swept under the proverbial rug that society constructed for how a “man” is supposed to confront emotion. God — it was raw in some cases and depressing in areas, and those were the episodes I craved.

Speaking candidly, it never took me much to spot a stranger with depression. The more difficult confrontation is the spotting of depression in yourself. Much like the AA’s first step, admitting you have ______. I was drawn to Bourdain because I saw him wear his depression on camera. “No Reservations” didn’t mean “can’t find any place to stay”. It was an invitation into a space of real talk, real emotions, real feelings.

Having no reservations helped me reclaim my life.

On a night in 2014 I invited my friend over to do what we both loved. This episode, Tony was in Montana, a state that to me still has a sliver of frontier left in it. But, that sliver is full of intentionality and perspective. Perspective to see that there is something bigger than yourself out there in the world, and intentionality where the collective community shares the same feeling but no words are ever spoken, it’s just understood.

That feeling hit me in a way that I couldn’t shake. Cold numbness ran through the central nervous system. A belief came into my mind telling me I had never experienced relationship where someone just understood me. How could they? My parents had unknowingly raised me to believe that I was always imperfect. Turns out those “talks” about where I fell as an eight year old on the body mass index held (and continue to hold) my mind hostage. Too afraid to share. Too broken to have anyone just understand me. I looked over to my friend as the words fell out of my mouth.

“I don’t want to be alive anymore.”

That was my first night of no reservations with my depression.

My story of depression has taken me to the place of suicidal ideation, a term I learned about in therapy. Suicidal ideation, in my experience, has ranged from looking at everyday items such as plastic grocery bags, belts, and bridges as ways I could kill myself, to the scarier place of imagining that gathering of family or friends, without me, would go on just fine. What would it matter if I wasn’t at that gathering, or any gathering from there on out? The devil of imagining situations in a depressive state is that the mind can make your imagination into a damn convincing reality. I wish I could be with Bourdain’s thoughts in his final hours. I wish I could have had the perspective and intentionality to be with him and be “just understood” together.

No reservations for me looked like coming to my parents and telling them I was having suicidal thoughts. It looked like seeking out therapy and being prescribed anti-depressants (I’m still on them now). Admittedly, the hardest part of depression to confront, though, is exposing the desire to suppress depression in social and friend groups. I was too scared to lose my life, so I told every one of my friends in hopes they’d be able to help save it if I was too compromised.

The unfortunate reality is people who are not depressed have no way of knowing or intervening on behalf of a friend, child, parent, or hero, until it’s too late. Part of me harping on this idea of having no reservations with depression is that it’s a two way street. We must ask one another how you are doing, and go one layer deeper than, “I’m fine”.

I mentioned in the first paragraph that depression would follow me to my grave. Depressing, eh?

I didn’t put myself in my grave when I was diagnosed with depression. I slide between different ranges of depression depending on the day - emotions, feelings, actions (some would call it “life”), and maybe that’s the point of this writing. With having no reservations regarding depression, the hope is to reclaim a bit of the reality of life along the journey.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255

Bridger Sperry
@bridgersperry
bridgersperry@gmail.com

Finding the Language for Mental Health Advocacy Through My Own Recovery

June 26, 2020 by Shelby Sorrel in Other

Hi! I’m Sam Slupski. When this post was written, it was Mental Health Awareness Month. When you’re reading this, it’ll be weeks after May has ended, but the topic is just as necessary. I am a writer, poet, and performance artist who explores how a body survives trauma and I aim to illuminate stories about mental health and recovery, but my work lately has been specifically centered around mental health advocacy. As the world has shifted, it’s become essential that we incorporate new ideas so we can begin to dismantle the oppressive systems that we participate in. The lane I feel most comfortable shining a light on is mental health. My advocacy is aimed towards creating an inclusive and equitable world that is safe and accessible for everyone. This is essentially a call for an interrogation of how we stigmatize mental health and how mental health intersects with white supremacy. It just starts with a conversation, a little bit of education, and someone to empower you to walk through that door. I hope you see this as an opening and that you continue to walk through.

I often wonder how young people are when they form their first memory. As time goes on, I’m sure that answer changes, but for me, my first memory comes from when I was 4-years old. I was riding in a car with my grandmother, grandfather, mother, and father on our way to Osawatmaie, Kansas – effectively the middle of nowhere. We were taking my dad to the Kansas state mental hospital.

When this is your first memory, conversations about mental health become ingrained in you, almost as if it’s a part of your DNA. My father is schizophrenic and my life has been greatly informed by the way my entire family has navigated his illness.

My whole life, I have watched my family be terrified of my father because of his schizophrenia. We were ostracized away from our bloodline because of his illness. As I got older, I was diagnosed with bipolar, and then re-diagnosed with PTSD and a panic disorder, and I felt that same ostracization from my extended family. We were always the “odd ones out.”

I was admitted into a psychiatric inpatient unit for the first time when I was 10-years old because I had tried to kill myself. I went to inpatient treatment every summer for self-harm related incidences for 6 years in a row. My first therapy appointment was when I was 11. My first psychiatrist was incredibly dismissive and was one of the most traumatic people I encountered in my adolescence.

It wasn’t until I was 21 that I found a therapist that finally helped me find a path to recovery from self-harm, toxic relationship patterns, and helped me learn the vocabulary and tools to re-parent myself. Now, here I am today: 26 – in many healthy relationships, living a life I feel proud of, and self-harm free for almost 2 years.

While this is an extremely condensed and limited snapshot into my whole story, I tell you a little bit about it because I think it’s important that you know that from a deep, physiological level, mental illness has always been a part of my life and I have felt the detrimental effects of when people ignore it and stigmatize it. It’s important for me to share a bit about my story so that you see that there is an actual human life attached to advocacy.

It’s also important to talk about how my life has been informed by how my father was viewed because when I was going through treatment, I saw how people treated me. It wasn’t just my terrible psychiatrist, it was school nurses who dismissed my panic attacks, people who made fun of my self-harm scars, strangers on the internet who told me to go kill myself, and told me that medication was for the weak-minded.

The more people told me that my experience was invalid, the more I believed it myself. I internalized this stigmatization because it confirmed my insecurities. And that's what any kind of stigmatization, discrimination, or invalidation becomes: our insecurities; the things we are ashamed of; the things we hate most about ourselves.

Talking about mental health has become something immensely important to me because I believe it is part of my life’s purpose to make sure that the internalized hatred we have for our illnesses stops and I believe this starts with destigmatizing and normalizing the conversations around mental health.

Another reality of my advocacy is that I didn't just wake up knowing all of the things I know now and I am still learning new things every day. I was lucky enough to find myself in a community with incredible writers and thinkers who talked about mental health in a way that I had never heard before. I found myself in the spoken word poetry community where I also learned more about the way that racism, and specifically anti-blackness, are rampant in America. I learned about homophobia, transphobia, fatphobia, xenophobia, ableism, and how these, and so much more, are things that compound mental health issues.

I learned that poverty, unaffordable housing, food deserts, homelessness, debt, low-income, unaffordable healthcare, internalized oppression, and discrimination exacerbate mental health issues. I feel an immense responsibility to mention these things because to dismiss these topics is not mental health advocacy – it’s white supremacy.

But as I said, I did not wake up knowing these things. There was a time where I did not have the language for all of this. My advocacy looks like using the language I do have to educate or shine a light on things. It also looks like surrounding myself with people, accounts, books, and podcasts to continue the education to not only learn the language for it, but to do the work in my actual life – not just on the internet.

But because this is on the internet and you, dear reader, are likely reading this on a screen – I want to give a small list of lessons I’ve learned that I believe are good entry points into how we can begin to destigmatize mental health issues.

I also want to empower you to speak up for people who may not be in a place to speak up for themselves. The reason I am able to do what I can today is because I had people to encourage me, educate me, and empower me. It feels necessary that I do the same.

My caveat is, of course, that I am not a professional. I do not have a license to treat mental health issues. I am not a counselor, therapist, or coach. I am simply just a human with a mental illness sharing what I have learned as I navigate my own recovery. These are lessons that I take with me daily, that I incorporate into my life and conversations with those I love because I know unlearning harmful mental health language is difficult. If I would have had this language – if I would have had partners, friends, therapists, and family members earlier on who taught me these things, it would have made such a difference in my recovery.

The hardest thing about my father is that there is a certain kind of powerlessness in mental illness. He didn’t ask to have schizophrenia – in fact, he got beaten in an alley after work one day that triggered his first episode, and yet people treated him like it was his fault. People have treated me as if my trauma, anxiety, and depression are my fault. Mental illness is never anyone’s fault. Yes, we do have a certain responsibility to unlearn harmful behaviors, but I also know my father, and so many others, do not have these tools to do so.

But I do.

I hope you can carry these into your relationships and conversations around mental health:

Describing something as “bipolar,” “OCD,” or “psycho” is unacceptable. These are not words we should use to describe a thing or a person. There are so many other adjectives to use. Do not use these.
You do not have to buy anything to practice self-care. Capitalism makes us believe that we need to, but we don’t. We CAN buy things, but we don’t HAVE to.
In our conversations and advocacy about creating equitable, inclusive & accessible resources for mental health treatment, that also looks like having conversations about addiction recovery/treatment and eating disorder recovery/treatment.
Posting mental health advice on Instagram is not a replacement for therapy and treatment services. They are good jumping-off points, but are not a stand-in for sustainable care.
Taking medication is a valid way to treat mental illness. Pill stigma is still a very big problem and there is no universal treatment option for people with mental illness.
Again– poverty, unaffordable housing, food deserts, homelessness, debt, low-income, unaffordable healthcare, internalized oppression, racism & discrimination are all things that impact and exacerbate mental health.
Telling someone to “breathe” or “just relax” can be very dismissive during times of crisis or distress. Try asking, instead, how that person would like to be supported at that moment.
Boundaries are uncomfortable to set, but necessary to be in healthy relationships.
Your mental illness is not your identity. You are a complex human being. You have a mental illness, you are not your mental illness.
The trauma your family experienced does not excuse the harm they inflict onto you.
Mental health awareness cannot be limited to one month. It requires ongoing advocacy.

If you are interested in continuing your education about mental health and advocacy, I have included a small list of resources that have helped me gain a lot of the language I know now. I am always learning so know that this is not an exhaustive list, but it is my hope that it can be a jumping-off point for those interested in learning more.

First, I believe that the best education we can receive regarding these topics comes from seeing a therapist ourselves. Open Path Psychotherapy Collective is an affordable counseling resource that matches you with a therapist in your area. They offer online therapy and do so at a lower cost. You have to pay an upfront fee of $59 to help keep their non-profit going, but after that fee you can find sessions for as low as $30. As someone who has paid upward of $150 a session, this is a very good and necessary service.

IDHA’s online course on Trauma, Growth, & Resilience: This self-paced online course that provides a diverse overview of trauma alongside actual practices that survivors have found helpful in their own healing processes. The class also serves as an exploration into current research as it pertains to rates of adversity and trauma in people diagnosed with mental illnesses (especially those considered “serious mental illnesses”) and substance-use; findings within the neurological and psychological research on the cognitive and neurocognitive effects of trauma; and concrete guidance around how mental health professionals can practice better trauma-informed care. I love IDHA and the classes they offer, and highly recommend following then for more mental health education.

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk: One of my favorite books about how our bodies carry trauma and how it reshapes our physiologies. 10/10 a must-read, in my opinion.

Rachel Cargle’s “How to Be an Ally,” Social Syllabus Resource: A much-needed conversation starter for anyone who may not have an understanding of how white-feminism is deeply dangerous. This document has links to other resources about the racist roots of our Founding Fathers, whitewashing history, definitions of white feminism, and resources about systemic racism. I believe this resource is really important because we have to talk about racism when we talk about mental health and I think this is a good jumping-off point for anyone who may not understand why these things intersect.

Anne Carly’s Instagram: One of my favorite profiles to follow that talks about having inner-child wounds.

Again, this is just a small list and don’t want to overwhelm you to the point where you don’t know where to start. I think these are wonderful places that will hopefully empower you to take steps for yourself and the people in your life who undoubtedly struggle to navigate the world with a mental illness.

Sending you love and light,

Sam Slupski
@samfromkc / atx_interfaces
www.samanthaslupskipoetry.com

Magnitude of the Mountain

June 23, 2020 by Shelby Sorrel in Other

I didn’t always know, at least not in the way that people usually speak about it. It started small, by despising my name. I don’t remember a time that I liked it — I could recognize that it was a pretty name, and it suited everyone I met who shared that name. But it didn’t suit me, although I bet if you looked at me with my long hair, dresses, and long eyelashes that you wouldn’t understand why I was never a Nina.

But it started small, and it crept up on me. People always ask what signs there were when I was young, and I never know how to answer that question. Did I play with the boys? Yes. Did I do ballet? Yes. Did I join the all-boys sports team? Yes. Did I play with Barbies? Yes. Did I want to learn woodworking instead of homemaking? Yes. Did I enjoy learning to knit? Yes. The problem with these questions begins with the assumption that these likes/dislikes have anything to do with gender. Do girls enjoy playing ‘boy’ sports? Of course they do. Are there boys who like ballet? Without a doubt. So when I’m asked for the signs, I don’t know what else to do but shrug.

For the longest time I thought that I was adopted, because I felt ‘other’ and understood that to mean that I didn’t fit in with my family. (As a kid you tend to believe that your family is a reflection of the world, but it would take many years to understand that it was society as a whole that I didn’t feel I fit into.) Spoiler alert, I’m not adopted. I emailed the hospital where I was born to double-check in case everyone had been lying to me my whole life. (In case you’re wondering, yes, I’m a Virgo.) At first they couldn’t find my records, giving me a renewed sense of ‘AH-HAH!‘, but then they came back with the boring truth. So the answer to why I felt so ‘other’ didn’t lie in my birth story.

When I started exploring my sexuality at the age of 17, I finally found some of my ‘otherness’. “Ah, so this is why I’ve been feeling like a stranger all my life”, I thought. And for nearly 10 years I held onto this answer and didn’t think much of it again, that is, until I started abusing alcohol. At first it started because I was mourning the death of the most consistent father-figure I had in my life — my grandfather. I drank what I smelled so often on his damp breath: brandy and Coke. It made me feel close to him. Over time I found other drinks, and eventually I was drinking myself blind drunk every night off of gin & tonics, passing out nightly on the couch. I didn’t understand at the time that I’m a highly sensitive person, prone to feeling all the feelings. And feelings didn’t feel safe, so when I drank it was a way for me to process some feelings without actually having to be present for them. A fantastic loophole, I thought.

At some point during one of my binges I started to write down my drunken thoughts as journal entries on scrap pieces of paper. And I remember distinctly reading one of these brain-dumps the next morning — I was struggling to understand what I was feeling during intimate moments with my then wife. At the time I didn’t have the language around gender that I do now, so the thoughts basically went something like this: “Sex is feeling really weird lately. Actually, it’s never felt really good. I hate when I’m touched there. I don’t have the right body parts. Do other people imagine they’re someone else during sex? I’m not a MAN, so I can’t be transgender. But I’m also not a woman. So what the hell am I??”

Then I promptly shelved those thoughts and didn’t revisit them for another 5-6 years.

Much has changed since those thoughts first emerged in my mid-twenties, and these days I comfortably exist as someone who identifies as non-binary (I finally found the word!) transmasculine, meaning that I really don’t identify as any gender, but if I have to put a label on it, I walk through the world as a guy. A trans guy. And the idea of a ‘non-binary trans guy’ makes many people really uncomfortable because how can you be a guy with no gender?

I was about two months into hormone replacement therapy (HRT) when I had my first real moment of doubt since beginning my medical transition. I watched a video of a prominent (and controversial) transsexual in which he asserted that true transsexuals — those who choose to medically transition to the ‘opposite sex’ — don’t call themselves transgender, and that the transgender identity was for others, meaning people who weren’t truly born in the ‘wrong body’. People who were essentially faking it. I can now speak endlessly about how problematic his ideas are, but at the time all I felt was ’other’... again. As someone who didn’t have the experience of being born ‘in the wrong body’, who experienced a comfortable childhood, who generally felt okay, and who didn’t assert at the age of 4 that he was a boy, I once again felt like I just didn’t belong, even in my own community.

I wasn’t trans enough.

I wish I could say that this was an isolated feeling, that as the months went by I consistently stayed confident in my identity and my decision to begin HRT, but that would be a lie. I’m just not built that way. I remember a conversation with my mom shortly after I started HRT, where she asked me for the millionth time, “Are you sure?”, and for the millionth-and-one time I said, “Yes”, and lied to her.

I imagine that if you’re someone who exists within the binary, for whom the world is frequently black or white, deciding to transition might be an easy one. But I have questioned this every step of the way. And frankly, people just don’t like that uncertainty, especially around a decision like this. For most, the idea of ‘switching genders’ is an extreme, radical act. And while it isn’t a decision without risks, whether social or medical, it never felt radical. My fears were never about my own reaction to HRT — it was always about how others would react. And then one day (after a bunch of therapy) I realized that I didn’t care.

When I was six years old, growing up in South Africa, there was a day when I realized that something wasn’t quite right. I was riding in the car with my family and they were speaking about the mountain range in the distance. I always thought it was a beautiful blob of grey and blue, but suddenly I understood that they could see lines and cracks and magnitude in the mountain that I had never seen. And when I got glasses, I could suddenly appreciate it for how impressive it really was. Transitioning for me was never about being in the wrong body. It was always about appreciating what I already had while knowing that an adjustment like HRT would open me up to experience something even more profound. And that’s perfectly valid, too.

Noah Hendricks
@mxnoahjay
www.queerified.com

Why the Black Lives Matter Movement Needs Your Service

June 15, 2020 by Shelby Sorrel in Other

Hi friends, I’m Briona Jenkins. When Shelby asked me if I would be interested in writing for her blog, I was unsure what I should write about. Having been an activist, for most of my life, there were so many things I wanted to discuss. As of late, my work has been solely focused on the Black Lives Matter Movement, getting justice for those who have been murdered by the police and racists, and speaking on behalf of the LGBTQIA+ community, especially the trans people of color who are murdered at alarming rates. After bouncing some ideas around, I decided to write a letter to the folks out there aiming to be better allies, specifically White and Non-Black People of Color (POC) supporting the Black Lives Matter Movement.

Graphic created by Rey Joaquin

Dear allies,

Whether you have been on your allyship journey for years or you are just starting out, welcome. First things first, I want to hit you with a hard truth. The Black Lives Matter Movement isn’t about you. Now, please, do not run around, do not get angry, but instead sit with any discomfort or feeling that you need to defend yourself. We have been conditioned to not talk about race, religion, and politics, therefore touching on these topics puts us into fight or flight mode. I am asking that you just sit and remember, change happens in the uncomfortable places.

As you begin your journey into allyship, I want to remind you that Black people know how to organize and we should be the ones leading the charge around the Black Lives Matter Movement. Black people have experienced well meaning White people rushing in and trying to teach us how to protest, march, etc. but we just need you to show up and support us.

Over the last few weeks I have had a number of friends and followers reaching out to me saying things from, “I want to learn more, what are some resources that you can recommend,” to “I am so sad. I get it now. I am so sorry this is what you have to deal with.” While your intentions may be in the right place this is VERY damaging. You are asking Black people to make space for your feelings when we do not even have the capacity to deal with our own. Instead, we need you to take your tears, anger, sorrow, annoyance, etc. and use your privilege and access for good. Show up and shield us from police violence and the agitators who are coming in to undermine the work we are trying to do.

Things I would like Non-Black allies to stop doing:

Centering yourself - If you mess up, move on. Black people do not want to hear how hard it is for you to get it right or to be an ally. We do not want to hear how sad you are or how shocked you are. You have had the privilege of waking up to this whereas we have been dealing with this for centuries. Your feelings are valid but you do not get to unpack them with us.
Letting the news criminalize murdered Black people - whenever a Black person is murdered by the police, we quickly see how vilified the victim is. This can range from “He left a job too quickly,” or “How were they behaving” to “Well she shouldn’t have been wearing/carrying that.” STOP VICTIM BLAMING MURDERED PEOPLE.
Asking Black people to send you resources or make space for your emotions - If you can Google and find the nearest coffee shop, you can search “how to not be racist” or “how to be a good ally” -- or you can read the hundreds of thousands of books that have been written.
Ignoring (micro) aggressions and racist comments - When you are at work or at a bar and see White people treating Black people terribly, step in. An example: “You are so articulate.” or “You are so pretty for a Black girl.” Note: I do not like the term “micro” in front of aggressions. For me, the term “micro” diminishes the impact that the actions have on Black people. An aggression is an aggression no matter what size it is.
Telling Black people that you are shocked, disgusted, or that you have been an ally for x amount of years, etc. ⁣⁣- This is centering your experience and is honestly a slap in the face. I have had friends say this to me and I am shocked to learn that our friendship over the last x numbers of years clearly meant nothing to you if you only value the lives of Black people you know.
Negating the experiences of Black people - I once found an article outlining how Black people are fired due to the way we style and wear our hair. I reposted the article and a White person commented, “I have never seen this happen, how do you know it’s true?” There are so many examples of how Black hair is often seen as unprofessional, or a distraction, and has led to Black people being fired from their jobs because of it. Google “Black people fired from their jobs due to hair.”
Performative allyship - If you haven’t made a statement on BLM or the recent events going on just know that no response IS a response and your loved ones and followers are watching you. For those of you who have made a statement, please make sure you are posting because you support Black Lives Matter and are doing the work to dismantle systematic racism and helping to make sure that Black Lives are saved not just so you can get the social / clout credit.
Saying Black Lives Matter, but not having any Black people in your friend groups - I am NOT saying to tokenize Black people or go and check off a box about having a Black friend, but if you do not have a Black person that comes to mind when you think of Black Lives Matter, I would encourage you to think about why that is. Diversify your friend group.
Telling people how to protest - I have been seeing a lot of comments about the “looters” and “they should protest more peacefully,” and this is not okay. For generations Black people have protested, boycotted, marched, done sit-ins, took a knee and no matter how “peaceful” we were, we were constantly met with how we should properly do something and this generation is sick of it. In the words of John F. Kennedy, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
Stating that you are against looting but supportive of protests - I have seen a lot of comments about looting. The narrative that protestors are causing destruction is such a closed-minded and privileged way of looking at this. Let’s not forget that states have been closed down, in response to COVID-19, and while some of us received $1,200 checks, large companies received astronomical amounts of money. Those who are looting are getting things like diapers, food, and necessities they need in order to survive. Folks have been out of work and while $1,200 may seem like a lot that could mean some people are choosing between paying their rent or feeding their families.
Showing up ONLY when it’s convenient - Attending protests is not enough. Showing up means you must educate yourself; listen to podcasts, read books, attend seminars, etc. Talk to your people. If you have family members, friends, coworkers, etc. who make racist comments or perpetuate the false narratives around stereotypes, call them out. You can’t let that stuff slide.

⁣Things I would like Non-Black allies to start doing:

Sit with your White privilege - Reflect on all the times you have benefited from being white. This can range from people not crossing the street when you are walking on the same side as them to you being able to find your shade of nude in everything you need.
Look at your life - If you have been able to borrow looks, phrases, etc from the Black community and no one ever stereotyped you because of it, that is privilege. Here are a few examples:
- White folks who have had dreadlocks or braids and no one said your hair was dirty, unprofessional, or not classy.
- White folks who have been on public assistance and no one ever calls them a welfare queen or lazy.
- White folks who have features deemed as Black features (big lips, big butts, etc) and being praised for it but Black folks being stereotyped or sexualized for them.
If you use phrases such as “Yas”, “Shade”, “The Tea” - these all originated in Black Queer, Trans, and Ballroom scenes. Know this, and give credit where it’s due.
Research how our language deems “black” as bad - Some examples:
- Angel’s Food Cake Vs. Devil’s Food Cake, black balled, black listed, black mailed, the dark arts, etc.
- Philly Mag has a whole article on how to spot a racist word.
- You can also read Understanding Social Problems by Linda A. Mooney, Ph.D./David Knox, Ph.D./Caroline Schacht, M.A. for a deeper dive.
Go to protests and marches - Physically put your bodies in the way of Black people who may be targeted by the police at these events. Let Black people organize and lead and you show up and support. This does not mean you should center yourself at protests.
Have conversations with the people in your life - Cancel culture has run rampant and we have been conditioned to stop talking to or ex-communicate from the people who do not believe the same things that we do. This is not helpful. I cannot get to your people the way you can. Show up. Stay put (as long as you are safe) and have these conversations. It is not your job to fully convince them, but to listen and be listened to.
Do the work to educate yourself - Use Google. Use Instagram. Watch a movie. Use anything but asking Black people to do the emotional labor for you unless you are talking to a Black person whose job is to talk about this or who has already created the resource. Every streaming service has a “Black Lives Matter” catalogue right now.
Donate to organizations that help with racial equity, in particular, black organizations - I suggest the NAACP, Black Lives Matter, The Loveland Foundation, Black Trans Conference, and the ACLU. You can also Google “Black led organizations near me.”
Pay Black people - Artists, photographers, designers, presenters, hosts, etc. Black people are constantly underpaid or expected to do / give things away for free.
Share resources and credit the people who created them - Self explanatory, White people have been taking credit for things created by Black people for centuries. The most recent example I can think of is when dancer Jalaiah Harmon created a dance that went viral on TikTok and was done by countless people — White social media influencers got paid while never crediting Jalaiah.
Vote - Research who your local and state officials in positions of power. If they are not aligned with your wants for your community, vote them out.
Talk about injustices all the time not just when one of us is killed - This is a movement, not a moment.
Research the school to prison pipeline, the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, the effects COVID is having on the Black community, the History of Black Wall Street, etc. ⁣⁣- Look into how Black people have been oppressed for the last 450 years. I love this short YouTube.
Listen to me - You can find my conversations on Black Lives Matter, race, and much more here.

As you continue to learn and have these conversations, remember that it’s not something you are going to complete overnight. This is a movement and I do not want activists and allies to get burned out within the first mile of this marathon. Continue to educate yourself, talk to your circles, donate to Black led organizations, individuals, and causes you support, and create real change in the world. You are not going to be perfect, so remember to have grace for yourself and others, and center the voices of the Black people you are trying to support. I hope that you will find this resource useful and that it will cause you to do some thinking of how you can be a better ally to all marginalized communities.

Briona Jenkins
@brionajenkins
brionajenkins.com