Alisha and I are heading to a conference this weekend to talk about our work on Invisibility Blues (and maybe a little something else). It’s exciting. It’s fun. It’s great that people see the value in the work that we are doing and think that we can help them in their own social change movements.
As I made some last minute checks of the conference’s program and the time of our presentation I noticed a strange little icon over the photo next to my presentation. All kinds of thoughts ran through my head until I clicked around and found a legend for what one would normally recognize as a traffic sign of sorts. It was a trigger warning sign. And the only thing that I could think was wow, I’m a trigger! Ok, so that’s not really what it was, but it kind of felt that way.
So, the trigger isn’t me (or Alisha), but our work, our passion, our day to day existence. This realization has caused me to rethink what it is exact what I want to talk about this weekend. What do you talk about when you know that everything you have to say requires a trigger warning. Starting with the post that called out a history of racism (and the racist and sexist comments that it provoked), to the video that followed (and the racist and sexist comments that it provoked), to the Kickstarter and the videos attached to it (and the racist and sexist comments that they….you get the point, right?).
Do I tell them about how you prepare for a barrage of hatred and threats? Tell them how to create insanely difficult passwords, how to check for where your personal information appears online, how to lock down (and out) your social media accounts, how to anonymize your children online so that only friends and family far away may be able to see them online, and how to prepare your parents and loved ones for the fact that they might be targeted when folks can’t ruffle you? And most of all how do I tell them how to deal with the fact that you keep telling yourself that you are just being overly cautious for the sake of your children, especially when you have this quietly persistent voice constantly asking you “But what if it’s not overly cautious at all?”
Do I tell these folks, who think that we have something valuable to add to the conversation, about the value of of making crude jokes at your own expense as your work through piles of vitriol? Or how you get a good laugh out of quick witted snippets about what didn’t happen this time? Maybe we get really honest and talk about the way your stomach churns when you get a comment or email notification on a day when you’ve released anything about race, gender, or general misogyny into the world. Or tell them how I feel like Ron Weasley opening a howler from his mama after really fucking up every time I click through to see what it is?
Do I tell them how to deal with the moments when your change agent work crosses paths with your pay the bills work and someone at work looks at you and lets you know that they are bound by law to record or report threats made against you? Do I tell them how to make it seem less important than it is to comfort them while keeping close records of your own?
Or most importantly do I tell them how all of that is bullshit? How the fact that we take all of these protective measures is really based on the fact that we see the hatred that goes unchecked and we want to make sure that our babies are safe in bed and that we don’t have to deal with possibilities of blowbacks? Or maybe, just maybe, I tell them how to pick that secret point? That point that you know that you will know when you have had enough. When it has gone to far. When you know that it is time to pass the torch (the one that simultaneously illuminates and burns) to someone else. And all of these things that I have spent a lot of time considering over the last couple of weeks and tonight it all kind of came to a head with a simple icon placed on my picture.
Welcome to that “Oh Shit!” moment. The moment when you recognize that the trigger warning on your face is there rightfully so. That moment when you recognize that you, by virtue of who you are and what you do, really are the thing that can trigger. My life as an agent of change and the realization that I have gone beyond doing change work to a place where the work of change is who and what I am and that that thing has the very real potential to trigger.
But this weekend as I take my place to talk about my work and my cause I recognize that I am in good company. Good company with the friends and allies of NYMG and Invisibility Blues and with my fellow iconed comrades who will share the stage this weekend to take about their work.
