Hello dear ones,
It has been a hot minute since my last newsletter, but I’m glad to be back to share these words with you. Special shoutout to my bestie Natalie for the words “beyond the pendulum.”
A few reminders and an announcement before we dive in:
I’ve launched a colouring sticker collab with Disobedient Goods and Apparel called “you’re healing!” BECAUSE YOU ARE!
We chose 5 of my memes and created a pack of 10 for $12. You can also get them in singles by following this link!
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Thank you, as always, for being a part of the CARESCAPES universe! It’s such a deep honour to have you here with me!
Trauma doesn’t care about nuance. Trauma operates in extremes, binaries, black and white. I’ve found myself endlessly fascinated by the ways in which, in our healing, we can swing from one end of the pendulum to another. We go from having no boundaries to rigid boundaries. We go from excusing any and all harmful behaviour, because we desperately want to stay in connection to disposing of those who make the slightest infraction.
I see this pendulum swing happen in social justice communities all the time. Recently, I found myself staring at two sides of the pendulum that is the cancel-culture debate. On one side, we have those who believe that cancellations are a necessary response to harm and a form of accountability. On the other are those who want to cancel cancel-culture because of the ways in which cancellations have been weaponized, cause further harm and trauma, and are fracturing the left.
I want to exist somewhere in between, somewhere beyond the pendulum. I believe that call outs and cancellations are a last resort when the person who has caused harm cannot or will not be accountable. And I’ve watched (and experienced) as all of the steps between harm occurring and call to cancel are skipped — because those steps require relationality, dialogue, time, energy, and hard work. They require a regulated nervous system.
I agree that many people are weaponizing cancellations, using words like “transformative justice” and “accountability” as smokescreens for punishment. To be clear, accountability is not the same thing as punishment. The trauma of living in a world of punitive accountability has led us to conflate the two, causing us to run away from accountability for fear of punishment. Here’s how I understand the differences:
Punishment is a tool of the prison industrial complex and systems of oppression, and leads to more trauma. Accountability is a tool of transformative justice, which seeks to disrupt power-over relationships and systems, leading to power-with relationships and healing.
Punishment is a sentence handed out by a judge (the person who’s been harmed) and jury (their peers), with no discussion, no consideration of impact. Accountability is a process that involves dialogue and collaboration between community members. It takes time and does not happen at the speed of urgency.
Punishment uses consequences that threaten our safety, belonging, and self-worth, cutting us off from community, resources, and our human dignity. Accountability uses consequences that affirm our inherent need for safety, belonging, and self-worth, and refuses disposability until it is absolutely necessary.
Punishment relies on shame, on painting humans as bad with one broad stroke: calling someone an abuser, a narcissist, an evil fucker. Accountability relies on compassion, sees us in the fullness of our humanity, and asks us to recognize that we're all capable of causing harm, and we're all capable of transformation.
Our trauma can lead us to seek out punishment when what we truly value is accountability. And it makes so much sense that we’d want to see those who’ve harmed us punished. It’s what we’ve been taught to desire thanks to the prison-industrial complex and evangelical religion. If we believe in social justice, then it follows that we believe in prison abolition (because prisons are a tool of racial capitalism set up as an extension of slavery) and believers in transformative, restorative, and loving justice. It is our task, then, to unlearn punitive accountability so that we can move towards a more just and caring world.
How do we do this? One step is resisting the swing of the pendulum. Can we see how we’re on one side of a binary? Can we get curious about what the space in between might look like? I get why people say again and again that you don’t have to forgive your abuser or have compassion for them — as these acts have often led to staying in abusive dynamics. And yet the idea that we reduce one another to our harms doesn’t feel like the solution either. It’s for this reason that I’ve never used the language of “abuser” to describe those who abused me. Identity-first language can be liberating (in the case of saying (“I’m disabled” rather than “I’m a person with a disability”) and it can cause harm.
I want us to get curious. I want us to be able to acknowledge that there are often two or more competing stories at play in a single situation. I want us to resist the lure of black and white thinking because it feels neat and easy. I want us to look at each other with compassion, with an acknowledgment of our humanness. I want us to step into the space in between and move beyond the pendulum.
Here are some things on the internet that brought me joy this week (with thanks to adrienne maree brown for curating these):
This montage of Cillian Murphy looking very unimpressed, with the caption “my constant mood.” Felt very deeply seen by this.
I know I’ve recommended this resource before, but I’m gonna do it again. If you haven’t checked out Kai Cheng Thom’s SO YOU’RE READY TO CHOOSE LOVE – Free Conflict Resolution Workbook, 10/10 recommend doing so.
From Kai Cheng’s website: “This free digital (and printable) conflict resolution workbook is intended as a gift and humble offering to anyone looking for trauma-informed, anti-oppressive conflict resolution resources. While SO YOU’RE READY TO CHOOSE LOVE is self-published in the tradition of queer zines and open source knowledge sharing, it is in many ways a practical companion to my more anecdotal/theoretical essay collection, I HOPE WE CHOOSE LOVE, which is distributed for purchase through the wonderful Arsenal Pulp Press.”
As we are now in the winter months in the northern hemisphere, and it’s -30C/-22F where I reside, I’m thinking about those who’re houseless and in need of warm goods to help them get through. This week, can you look up local orgs in your area that are in need of funds and/or winter clothing donations? I’ll be donating 10% of proceeds from the “you’re healing!” sticker pack to Hares Outreach in Edmonton.