Divisions

Social media—and Facebook especially—has made all the facets of life painful and obvious. My feed has a range of voices: from openly racist relatives to those who’ve changed their avatars to show their support for #BlackLivesMatter, from those who still insist on gender binaries to those who’ve felt in their own bodies how untrue that polarity is.

I’ve kept the peace by making myself absent.

Partially this was because some people are A-OK inflicting violence on others, usually those who have already experienced too much violence in their bodies. Partially this was because I am a little too conflict-avoidant, and I’ve had the had the privilege to indulge myself. I didn’t want to dive into those pools of sharks (with fricking laser beams!). And I didn’t think I was up to the challenge of what? Protecting? Mediating? Just being in those spaces?

But that needs to end.

As a cishet white male, theoretically my voice isn’t exactly missing from important discussions, but maybe my voice will reach someone no one else has gotten through to. Or better yet, maybe I can amplify someone else’s voice.

So what are the parts of me that I’ve been keeping apart? Like the people populating my timeline, they run the gamut: computer programming, medieval literature, genre literature, poetry, spirituality, science, digital humanities, environmental justice, feminism, ethical adoption. I could go on. It’s all there.

This is partially growing out of an article by Parker Palmer, “Divided No More: A Movement Approach to Educational Reform”. He talks about the power of movements to “rewrite the logic of organizations.” The first step in this process is that “Isolated individuals decide to stop leading ‘divided lives.’”

This starts from a deeply personal decision to bring your inner and outer worlds into better alignment, and to so reduce your inner tension and conflict. But as more and more people begin to make this shift and as they begin to connect with each other, a movement is grows. And this can create structural, organizational, and cultural changes.

Palmer points out that a vital part of this process is going public.

Part of this is also the conviction that one prism to look at social justice work through is the prism of creating wholeness and health, particularly in oppressed individuals and communities. But that health has to come at all levels. Sick individuals or unhealthy communities cannot create a whole society. And likewise, an unsafe community or an unjust society will infect the individuals it holds. This is to be a step toward wholeness and, hopefully, health.

So.

I’m tired of the divisions. I’m tired of the walls. I’m getting rid of them. And I’m talking about it.

Except I’m not getting rid of the walls entirely. Rightly used, boundaries are healthy and health-maintaining. I’m not moving this discussion onto Facebook. It’s all happening here, where I have control. I may move the discussion into other places later, but I’m starting here.

Tonight of all nights, as I suffer. As I watch the women in my life suffer. As I watch the people of color in my life suffer. As I watch my LGBTQ friends suffer and my Muslim friends suffer and my immigrant friends suffer. As I watch so many afraid. I have to make to a stand. I have to say who I support and who I fight with.

Fight on.