by Tiffany | Nov 19, 2018 | Calls for Participants, Gender, Health, Identity, Writing
Image description: a wooden heart among greenery. Text reads, “celebrating international men’s day”
International Men’s Day is celebrated every year on November 19. That’s today! (In my part of the world, at least. Belated greetings to my colleagues across the international date line!)
Image description: Twitter user @Erinkyan “happy international mens day, especially to trans men, disabled men, men of colour, queer men, mentally ill men, feminine men, elderly men, poor men, male survivors, and other vulnerable men. and a big fuck you to MRAs that further isolate and harm men in the name of misogyny.”
This post a celebration of this day, and also the official launch of a new project! Keep reading to find information about the new project at the end of this post.
There are so many ways that men are harmed and vulnerable under patriarchy. Because it’s not just patriarchy. It’s also ableism. Transantagonism. Racism and white supremacy. Colonialism. Ageism. Heterosexism. Patriarchy is a critical hub in this web of oppressions and privileges, but it is not the only hub, and it is not the only intersection that we need to address.
Men are differentially vulnerable.
They become more vulnerable the more they deviate from the ideal of white, straight, cisgender, able-bodied, English-speaking, educated, middle-and-upper class, young, fit, neurotypical manhood.
Men are vulnerable in different ways.
Black men and boys face police violence at disproportionately high rates in both the United States and in Canada. Indigenous men and boys also face disproportionately high rates of police violence and incarceration. (This post at The Conversation examines Canada’s shameful treatment of Indigenous folks within the ‘justice’ system.)
Men are more likely to die of suicide (as this British Columbia Medical Journal discusses), and men who are victims of domestic violence (regardless of the gender of their abuser) are less likely to find support either socially or structurally (as this article by the BBC discusses).
Men who are victims of sexual assault, either as youths or as adults, also face a lack of social and structural support. Although there have been important shifts in this cultural landscape, particularly by men responding to #MeToo (Terry Crews most publicly), there is still a significant cultural pressure to maintain an idea of masculinity as impervious to harm (as this Atlantic article discusses). This pressure comes both from proponents of patriarchal masculinity who are invested in maintaining these rigid gender systems, and from some advocates who are invested in the idea of men-as-perpetrators. Acknowledging the vulnerability of men is destabilizing to patriarchy, but it is also destabilizing to some of the gendered ways of understanding violence that have helped women and feminists frame the issue of violence against women. As this article by the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism notes, “The domestic violence movement historically framed its work on a gender binary of men as potential perpetrators and women as potential victims.” (link is to a PDF)
This article by Scientific American also talks about violence by women, and makes the important point that, “To thoroughly dismantle sexual victimization, we must grapple with its many complexities, which requires attention to all victims and perpetrators, regardless of their sex. This inclusive framing need not and should not come at the expense of gender-sensitive approaches, which take into account the ways in which gender norms influence women and men in different or disproportionate ways.”
And it is important to also recognize that there are men who have been both victims of violence and have also used violence against others. These men are often unable to access any supports that recognize and respond to both sides of their story, since many services for survivors of sexual or domestic violence do not work with people who have used violence against others, and services for men who have used violence against others often do not include support for survivors.
Toxic masculinity invites men into violence and dominance, which means that men are often cut off from emotional supports and connections, and it also means that people around men are vulnerable to violence and dominance. Not all men accept this invitation into a specific kind of masculinity, but all men receive the invitation – patriarchy is the air we breathe.
And, just like it is men, women, and people of all genders who are harmed by these norms of masculinity, it is also true that men, women, and people of all genders uphold and support these norms of masculinity.
As Vivek Shraya writes in her fantastic book, I’m Afraid of Men:
“And so, I’m also afraid of women. I’m afraid of women who’ve either emboldened or defended the men who have harmed me, or have watched in silence. I’m afraid of women who adopt masculine traits and then feel compelled to dominate or silence me at dinner parties. I’m afraid of women who see me as a predator and whose comfort I consequently put before my own by using male locker rooms. I’m afraid of women who have internalized their experiences of misogyny so deeply that they make me their punching bag. I’m afraid of the women who, like men, reject my pronouns and refuse to see my femininity, or who comment on or criticize my appearance, down to my chipped nail polish, to reiterate that I am not one of them. I’m afraid of women who, when I share my experiences of being trans, try to console me by announcing “welcome to being a woman,” refusing to recognize the ways in which our experiences fundamentally differ. But I’m especially afraid of women because my history has taught me that I can’t fully rely upon other women for sisterhood, or allyship, or protection from men.”
That’s important to note, too. (Vivek’s book also speaks about the problem with the idea of the “good man,” and makes a strong argument for not using the term “toxic masculinity.” You can read more about that in this article by Vice. I highly recommend reading her book.)
But this is International Men’s Day, so let’s turn the focus back to men. And to a definition of men that is much more broad and expansive than the thin description of dominant masculinity, with its demands of ability and class and race and the tight confines of The Man Box (this page offers an overview of “The Man Box” study in Australia, which looked at men’s views and experiences of masculinity, and also includes a link to the full report).
There is no single truth about masculinity. (I am thankful for narrative therapy and its focus on multistoried lives and experiences. And I am thankful for Chimamanda Adichie and this TEDtalk about the dangers of a single story!)
Gendered assumptions about emotions mean that men, regardless of any other intersection of identity, are often not supported in their emotional lives. This leaves men at risk in their own lives, and less equipped to support their community members.
These issues are complex, and talking about them requires care and a willingness to invite complexity to the table.
If I’m honest, I found this post challenging to write.
This is partly because I am not a man. I have never experienced being read as a man in this patriarchal world. When I try to empathize with the experiences of men, I do so from my position as a non-binary individual who was assigned female at birth, as someone who is read as a “woman” by anyone who doesn’t know me.
But there are men in my life who have helped me begin to understand the complexities of being a man under patriarchy.
I am thankful for these men, who advocate for men’s issues and also support social justice. They challenge toxic masculinity (by which I mean, the gendered assumptions that invite men into performances of gender that are hostile to other genders, that coerce men into rejecting anything deemed “feminine”, that limit the range of emotions and emotional responses available to men, that locate successful masculinity in a specific performance of heterosexuality, ability, and capitalist productivity), and they look at this issue with nuance – toxic masculinity harms men, and it also harms everyone else.
So, how do men unlearn these hostile lessons of patriarchy? How do they learn other ways of being men?
I’m in the early stages of a collaborative project exploring how men have discovered feminism and learned about social justice. My goal is to speak with a wide range of men about their experiences, and create a collective document and resource that other men can learn from. If you would like to be part of this project, get in touch!
Image description: two books stacked with purple flowers on top. Text reads: “Men! Let’s talk about how you learned about feminism and social justice. A collective documentation project. Contact sostarselfcare@gmail.com”
If you appreciate this work, you can support me on Patreon!
by Tiffany | Nov 10, 2018 | Narrative therapy practices, Writing
Image description: An addressed envelope to Dr. Ford, c/o Palo Alto University.
The following is the collective letter to Dr. Ford, the result of October’s Witness and Respond event in Calgary, Alberta, and the contributions of people elsewhere. It has been mailed to Dr. Ford, who is, as of yesterday, still receiving threats. We hope that she will also continue receiving support.
Dear Dr. Ford,
This letter is the collective work of a group of people who met in Calgary, Alberta, Canada in October to watch your testimony and talk about what it meant to us and made possible in our lives. It also includes the contributions of people in Calgary and in Adelaide, Australia who watched your testimony on their own and sent in their thoughts. This letter represents the responses of almost a dozen people, each of whom was moved by your actions.
We want to express our appreciation for your actions. We were inspired to do this by Anita Hill’s sharing that receiving support was helpful to her following her own experience, and also by the work of narrative therapists at the Dulwich Centre using letter-writing as a way of showing support.
As we watched your testimony, we were curious about what it was that allowed you to take these actions; to say the name of your assaulter after so many years, to write the letter to your representative, to meet with political aides, to describe the assault again and again despite the fact that it was so difficult for you, to come forward publicly with your story, and to stand in front of a Senate committee and, as you said it, “relive this trauma in front of the world.”
We saw each of these actions as a choice that you made, and we wondered, how did you make those choices? What values were you holding onto? Who supported you in these actions?
We heard you say that “sexual assault victims should be able to decide when and where their private details are shared”, and that it was important to you to describe the assault in your own words. It was clear to us watching that you have held this value close, and that despite the intrusion of reporters into your life, forcing you to tell the story in ways you may not have chosen otherwise, you kept this value centered in your opening statements. For those of us watching who have felt pressured into disclosure or ashamed of our stories, your strong assertion of our right to tell our story in our own time, in our own way, in our own words, was powerful.
Witnessing you tell your story allowed one person in our group to identify an incident from her own high school years and enabled her to speak about this incident with people in her life.
Another person said, “The courage to speak up is significant to me, when so many people don’t. When I myself have not. At the time it was a fear of the mocking, and the being pulled apart and condemned. I did not have the strength to endure that process at the time on top of what I experienced. Now I would maybe feel differently. Maybe because I am stronger now and maybe because of these stories. Dr Ford’s testimony in shaking voice made me want to cry with pride that she did speak up.”
Your shaky voice was something that many of us noted. Some of us also speak with a shaky voice, and have felt worried that we will be dismissed because of it. Hearing you speak in a voice that shakes like our own was a moment of validation that some of us had never experienced before. We saw that it is possible to speak in a shaking voice and still speak with confidence and calmness. Some of us also recognized within ourselves that hearing your shaking voice did not make us doubt you or dismiss you. We had feared that if we spoke in a shaky voice, nobody would hear us or believe us. But you did, and we did hear you, and we do believe you. Rather than seeing weakness, we saw the strength it took for you to speak. We feel closer to our own shaky-voice strength, having witnessed yours.
We also saw you adding to the community knowledge of what trauma is, and how it can operate in the brain. Your references to norepinephrine, to the hypocampus and amygdala, and to other scientific knowledge was validating for some of us. We wondered if this indicated a way that you were “re-valuing” yourself, and claiming space for science as a celebration. One of us wanted you to know that she, too, is a scientist and that seeing you use “science as a safe place” was validating for her.
We also saw that you spoke even though you didn’t know what the outcome of your speaking would be, and this is important. One of us said, “Just because you’re good, doesn’t mean you’ll be rewarded. But she did whatever she could to stop [the confirmation] from happening.” This makes it possible for us to also take action even when we may not see the outcome that we want.
We also heard you say, “It is not my responsibility to determine whether Mr. Kavanaugh deserves to sit on the Supreme Court. It is my responsibility to tell the truth.” In this, we saw you valuing integrity over outcome, and as we each move into what promises to be a difficult time for marginalized communities in the United States, in Canada, in Australia, and elsewhere, we are better able to hold onto our own integrity even when it seems that we might not get the result we are looking for.
We saw you acknowledge your fear without expressing any shame for it. Throughout the testimony, we saw you declining to engage with any invitations to shame. So many of us have felt afraid to share our own stories, and have felt ashamed of that fear. Your actions make it possible for us to shift our relationship to fear, and to see it as something that we do not need to be ashamed of. It is okay for us to be afraid, just like it is okay for you to be afraid. You described your fear so clearly, and also described the very real outcomes of your actions – even worse than you had feared! In your testimony, some of us felt for the first time that fear does not have to be accompanied by shame.
We also saw that your actions are part of a collective, and you are part of a community of women speaking up. Anita Hill also spoke despite not knowing the outcome of her speaking, and although it took many years, her actions are part of the legacy of speaking that you are now part of, and that we are invited to join. Tarana Burke founded the Me Too movement a decade ago, and we see her as another part of this long legacy of speaking the truth even without knowing the outcome. This helps us locate ourselves within a collective, and as part of a long history of resisting injustice. Your actions have helped us find each other, to find the history of this resistance, and have helped us open up conversations that otherwise might not have occurred.
We are actively searching for each other now, looking for other people who want to take similar actions, who want to speak out. As one person put it, we hope that “speaking the truth will be contagious over time.”
Dr. Ford, we watched your testimony together after your assaulter had been confirmed to the Supreme Court, and so we knew what the outcome of your actions would be.
Rather than diminishing the impact of your work, this allowed us to see that what you have made possible through your actions extends far beyond one unsuitable man’s appointment to a position of power. You have mapped out actions that will allow more of us to speak, and to keep acting in alignment with integrity despite the actions of people in power.
With warmth, respect, and appreciation,
Tiffany and many others
(Although there were many names signed to the physical letter, I didn’t want to expose anyone online, even by first name.)
by Tiffany | Nov 9, 2018 | Intersectionality, Narrative therapy practices, Possibilities Calgary, Writing
Image description: An ornate pink, blue, and white background. Text reads – Solidarity : a Possibilities Calgary event in solidarity with the trans community : Nov 20, 2018 | Loft 112 | Writing a collective letter in support of the trans community on Trans Day of Remembrance
November’s Possibilities event falls on Nov. 20, Trans Day of Remembrance. (The official Transgender Day of Remembrance event happens in Calgary on November 18 at 1:30 pm at CommunityWise.)
Possibilities, although we are a group for and by the non-monosexual communities (bisexual, pansexual, asexual, and otherwise non-monosexual), has always been trans-inclusive, and many of our founding members are trans. This year, we will host a conversation with the goal of writing a collective letter of support from our community to the transgender community.
This is particularly important this year because transgender rights are under increased threat, very actively in the United States and looming on the horizon if conservatives gain power in Alberta and in Canada. This is a hard time to be a trans person looking to the future, and the goal of this event is to document our collective support for our trans community members and for trans folks beyond our bi+ community.
This event is open to transgender and cisgender members – we will be expressing our support both for and as transgender folks, and support from many parts of the community is important.
This collective letter will be part of the ongoing Letters of Support for the Trans Community project.
Notes about Possibilities:
There is a small fee associated with renting the space, and you can support the event by either donating at the event or becoming a Patreon supporter.
We have a focus on self-care and self-storying for the bi+ community (bisexual, pansexual, asexual, two spirit, with an intentional focus on trans inclusion), and a new framework for sustainability (you can now support this work by backing the Patreon).
There is no cost to attend.
This is an intentionally queer, feminist, anti-oppressive space. The discussion will be open, as they always were, to all genders and orientations, as well as all abilities, educational levels, classes, body types, ethnicities – basically, if you’re a person, you’re welcome!
These discussions take place on Treaty 7 land, and the traditional territories of the Blackfoot, Siksika, Piikuni, Kainai, Tsuutina, and Stoney Nakoda First Nations, including Chiniki, Bearspaw, and Wesley First Nation. This land is also home to Métis Nation of Alberta, Region 3.
It is important to note that Possibilities Calgary is a community discussion group and not a dating group.
by Tiffany | Oct 20, 2018 | preview/review
Reasons to join my Patreon: when I get super busy and forget to make the review/preview posts public until 2/3 of the way through the month, you’ll have already read it, so it won’t matter! And you’ll get access to the behind-the-scenes review/preview content that gets edited out of the public posts.
Alright! This post is way late, but better late than never! Want the recap on September, and what I thought October would look like? Here it is! (October has turned out quite a bit busier than this anticipated, but that’s a story for a different post.)
21 days ago, when this was first written, it was October 1.
On September 30, the Tender Year ended. This is a huge thing – the Tender Year has been a full year-long project, and I feel… I feel a lot of things at this ending! But I also feel like this project ended at a moment when I am mid-marathon, and so it has just dropped out of my life but I don’t have time to pause and honour that. I can’t take a couple days to process, sit with what I’ve learned and how this project has changed me. So, my goal is that I will take this time… eventually. I’m not sure when.
But that’s forward to the preview, so let’s start with the review.
September.
Sage
Early in September, I spent a whole day with Michelle Robinson and her family. I didn’t write a post about this, but this was an incredible experience. I had reached out to Michelle because I have been exploring my own spiritual practices, and had a question:
If it is true that my spirituality is connected to being present in the physical world, connected to nature in some way (which I have learned that it is),
And it is true that I am a settler on this land that I am connected to,
And it is true that plants are part of my spirituality,
And it is true that some plants are part of Indigenous spirituality, which I have no right to,
And bringing in non-indigenous plant species is tied to colonialism and could be further violence against the land,
Then how do I practice my spirituality respectfully – honouring the plants that are here on this land where I am a settler, without appropriating in ways that perpetuate ongoing colonial violence.
This is an ongoing process of exploration, and I am thankful to Michelle for her part in helping me figure this out. You can read more about this in the Patreon post, but it doesn’t feel right to share it more publicly at this time.
Narrative therapy
I also spent a lot of time working on my practice innovation project for the Masters program. I hadn’t narrowed down my focus between “using narrative practices to navigate ‘too much of a good thing’ experiences” and “using narrative practices with polyamorous communities” even last month, but in September I realized that I really did have to make a decision so that I could start writing the final paper.
I picked polyamory, for a few reasons:
First, I’ll continue the other project regardless, just a bit slower. So it didn’t feel like a very high-stakes decision, since I know that I will end up doing both.
Second, I am helping coordinate the Horizons: Conference on Polyamory and Non-monogamies in November, so it made sense to get two uses out of one project – the oral presentation that I’ll give in Adelaide at the end of this month, I will also give (though slightly expanded) in Calgary in November.
And third, I am really keen to expand the pool of resources for therapists working with the polyamorous community, because right now it is deeply lacking and this has real and tangible impacts on polyamorous folks who are looking for support.
So, to this end, I conducted both interviews and narrative therapy sessions on the topic of polyamory. I wish that I’d had more narrative therapy sessions, but that’s just not how it worked out. I really do need to figure out my marketing – I posted the call for participants once, and then never re-shared it. *facepalm*
I did 38 hours of narrative therapy this month, which is still shy of my goal, but getting there.
For those of you who are curious or interested, I do still have some of the “37 for $37” narrative sessions available (this was a promotion I ran for my birthday – charging $37 for a session in honour of my 37th birthday).
(Mid-October update: I did not write my paper on polyamory at all. I wrote it on using narrative practices to respond to the current political situation, and that is also what I’ll be presenting on at the teaching block.)
Events and Groups
September was full of events.
I planned to run the Resilience self-care salon with my sister on Sept 9, though nobody showed up, so we just chatted. I’m really looking forward to collaborations with Domini, so keep an eye for those coming in the future.
I ran the Possibilities discussion event, with the topic of “how we got through,” on Sept 18 and it was phenomenal. I am still working on pulling the resource based on our discussion together (and am leaning to a simple blog post rather than a full PDF, just because these projects accumulate faster than I can finish them!). I really loved this conversation, and some parts of it have stuck with me all month. You can read one of my reflections on this conversation in this long Facebook post. (I feel like I should be pulling more of those posts into blog posts, but I haven’t figured out a flow for that yet.)
I also ran the Bi+ Visibility Event on September 23, and it was amazing. We had a panel discussion that I was really proud of, lots of people attended and seemed to have a great time, the informational postcards turned out great, and the poetry event was small but lovely. I would like to write up a blog post about this, but haven’t had time because…
I woke up September 24, looked at the news, and realized that the following week was going to be horrific. So I threw together an impromptu self-care support group for anyone who wanted to join (we ended up with 10 participants). All week, from the 24th to the 30th, I sent out two emails each day checking in. We also had two online group chats, and one in-person tea-and-pastries chat yesterday morning. This was a really successful experience, in my opinion (and based on the feedback I’ve gotten), and at the conversation yesterday we talked about how to extend this work into the coming year, since with all of the elections coming up, it is likely to be stressful AF. I have ideas about how to do that, and I’ll write about those when we talk about October. I am also considering taking the emails and turning them into a little downloadable PDF that could be used as a “do-it-yourself” one-week self-care support. (Mid-October update: this group is what developed into the project I wrote my paper on, which Patreon supporters have access to!)
The last event of the month was the coffee chat for the Very Professional: Marginalized Professionals group. This happened on Sept 29, and I’m planning on these to be monthly. There is also a secret Facebook group (to maintain people’s privacy), so if you’d like to be added to that, let me know! I am still working out the logistics of how this group will run, but the original idea was that it would be a subscription-based support group for professionals (meaning people in “professional” careers, where the heavy expectations of gendered/abled/educated/classed/raced professionalism come into play).
Writing
I wrote one paper for the Masters program (which hasn’t been graded yet), and most definitely did not keep up with my other writing goals. At all.
So!
Onward to October!
I did honour the ending of the Tender Year in one small way – I started a new planner today.
(A planner, open to this week, with a task-pad on it.)
Here’s what’s coming up:
October 5, 8 am: The Art of Narrative Practice essay is due. This is meant to describe, using one exemplary practice story, how I am adapting narrative practice to my specific context. I have gone through at least a dozen different outlines of this, and have no idea how to do this effectively or well. This is worth a significant percentage of my grade, and I am a ball of anxiety. One of my classmates participated in the one-week self-care group and suggested that I should write the essay on that, but since I have to demonstrate how my narrative work shifted a community member’s experience of their problem, or resulted in their feeling more connected to a preferred story of themselves or their lives or their agency within their lives, and I didn’t really do “how is this group impacting you” interviews, I don’t know how to do this. So, I don’t think I will. But it was a big confidence boost to see that a colleague sees me using narrative in innovative and effective ways!
October 8, 8 am: The draft of my Narrative Practice and Research Synthesis paper is due. This is the draft version of my final paper, and although it will not be graded, it is a big deal. And I am definitely not ready. At all. *gulp*
October 14, 1:30-3:30: I’ll be hosting the No spoons left, only knives: Honouring our anger narrative workshop. This is in response to what has been happening in the news in the last couple weeks.
October 15: Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day. I will be resharing the collective document that I generated last year. You can find it here – it is a queer and trans-inclusive resource, and this is still a significant gap in the available resources for families and individuals who have experienced this kind of loss. If you do have a chance to read over it and you would either like to share your story, or make suggestions for content that should be included, let me know. I have set aside 5 hours on the 12th to work on this document.
October 16, 6:30-8:30: I’ll be hosting the Possibilities October discussion, and I have not set a topic yet. Ideas? Things you’d really like to discuss or see a resource (eventually) created about? Let me know. I’m setting up the event tomorrow.
October 17, 9 pm: Get on a plane and fly to Australia. (!!!!!!!)
Sometime during the week of October 29-November 2: 30 minute oral presentation on my practice innovation project
October 29: Submit research poster on the topic of my practice innovation project
October 31: Dinner with the team heading up with trans and queer youth clinic at the family therapy clinic in Adelaide, because Rosie and I have been staying in touch about their work getting this up and running, and the Dulwich Centre has authorized Rosie to hire me as a peer consultant for her work. (I have started to do some of this – there are now two therapists who consult me on topics related to transgender, queer, or polyamorous folks. That’s kind of exciting, hey?!)
So, between now and VERY SOON, I have to get a lot of writing done, come up with both my oral presentation and my poster, host a couple events, and keep up with my narrative therapy sessions (and hopefully book more of those!)
I am also working on another event, which I’d like to run before I leave.
When everything was happening with the Kavanaugh hearings, I wrote to David Denborough and Cheryl White at the Dulwich and said:
I wondered if you have any thoughts about how to pull together some kind of narrative response or project re: what’s happening with yesterday’s hearing and today’s news that Kavanaugh will most likely be confirmed.
I wondered, particularly, if there were any narrative projects or responses to what happened with Anita Hill and how that impacted people? Or other narrative responses to situations where a great injustice has been carried out in very public ways like this. The George Zimmerman trial, similar. It feels like this happens pretty often.
I don’t really know what to look up, in terms of how to find maps, or ideas for projects, or what to do. And I know lots of people are responding – the responses are both crushing and heartening – but I also see that a lot of folks are talking about feeling helpless, unable to act, disconnected from a sense of agency. There is so much hurt this week. (I mean, always. But this week has been particularly hard, as we see the rape apologists just crawling out of the woodwork.)
We are all bystanders, but we are watching something that symbolizes and crystalizes lived experiences. I don’t know how to support myself or my communities in response to this. Particularly after the news of Jeff Flake’s decision to support the nomination this morning. Calling our politicians hasn’t done anything, it seems. I don’t want to individualize responses into simple “self-care” but also… I don’t know what else to do.
And it’s just, my communities are experiencing such intense retraumatizing this week. Yesterday and today especially. And I think, there must be something? I know there are ways to respond. I just don’t know what they are or how to do them. I wondered if you might have an idea, or even just some papers I could read to start thinking about what I could do.
I put together a little “emergency survival” group on Monday and we’ve been doing daily check-ins, but I feel like I want to do something more? I don’t know. I want to do something with my hands other than hold all this grief and fear.
Anyway.
You both have a wealth of knowledge when it comes to putting together responses to crisis and tragedy and so I thought I’d ask about whether you have ideas, or if you know other folks who are working on this that I could support or contribute to their work, or anything like that.
Thank you. Even if there’s nothing, I really appreciate that narrative therapy has given me new ways to think through problems. Your work makes such a difference.
Warmly,
Tiffany
David wrote back and had some really great suggestions for a letter writing event, and some other potential directions for using narrative practice to respond.
I love these suggestions, so I will be putting together an event for folks to collectively view both Dr. Ford’s testimony and also the video of Ana Maria Archila and Maria Gallagher confronting Flake in the elevator, and then facilitate a narrative conversation about this and generate letters that can be shared with Dr. Ford and Ana Maria Archila and Maria Gallagher, and also perhaps posted as open letters available to other survivors.
I am still working on the details of this, but I feel strongly that I want to pull this together and that it’s important. And then, going forward, I want to figure out how to create some kind of narrative project that does the work David outlines, of challenging, and making visible, and making visible the resistances to, and that can “problematize dominant gendered discourses of ‘pliability, friendliness, flirtatiousness, sexual availability, forgiveness’.” But that will wait until after I get back from Adelaide.
(Mid-October update: I did run this event, it was fantastic, and I will be writing it up for the next preview/review post!)
So, phew!
A big month past, and a big month ahead.
I do want to say, there are some new Patreon supporters this month and that means so much to me!!!
Thank you.
by Tiffany | Oct 15, 2018 | Downloadable resources, Writing
On Friday, I hosted the Witness, Respond, and Continue to Resist event. At this event, we watched Dr. Ford’s opening statements, as well as an interview with Ana Maria Archila and Tarana Burke, and the video of Ana Maria Archila and Maria Gallagher confronting Jeff Flake. We had dinner together, and talked about what watching these powerful statements meant for us, and is making possible in our lives.
I will be turning the notes from that event into collective letters that we will send to Dr. Ford, Ms. Archila, and Ms. Gallagher, and that will also be shared publicly. I will also be writing up a reflection on the event and sharing it here.
If you would like to contribute to this project, or if you are interested in how to write acknowledging witness letters to other people, you can download the handout here. Although the handout was created for this event, the information about how to be an “acknowledging witness” (meaning, someone who sees and validates both the hardship and the response to hardship in someone’s story, and who goes beyond simple praise and appreciation), can be used in other situations as well.
If you would like your responses included in the collective letter, please get them to me as soon as possible, ideally by Friday, October 19.
If you would like to send your own letter, I have included addresses in the handout.
