From Sabotage to Support by Joy L. Wiggins

Author:Joy L. Wiggins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Published: 2019-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

Joy

As a white woman, I realize I can never completely undo my socialization and biases. I can become more aware of them and work to interrogate them every time they come up. I can also invoke curiosity when my biases come up and examine their origins — for instance, asking myself why I am resisting listening to someone or taking their direction. Is there some kind of preconceived notion or history of discrimination that I have taken on in my thinking? We are not immune even in adulthood. Because I have been doing antiracist work for over twenty years, I am able to adjust my actions a little bit faster. I may read all the books and watch all the movies and documentaries on racism, but society’s fog is thick, and it takes vigilant effort to ensure I continue to see through the fog and eviscerate it as much as I can. I believe it’s very important to be honest about that because that’s where the work lies on undoing bias.

I have had plenty of experience interrupting my biases toward my own identity. As a cisgender woman but also as a closeted queer person, there were many times that my conditioning around lesbians in particular were that they were really masculine and wanted to be men. It was hard for me to imagine how I could be gay or bisexual if I identified with stereotypical feminine ways. The male/female binary was strong in me. I grew up thinking that if you were attracted to women you were a lesbian and if you were attracted to men you were “straight.” That was it, black and white. My mind was totally blown when I attended a workshop on the “gender galaxy” in which we explored a whole array of non-binary identities that don’t even fit on a spectrum. When I was a budding queer in the early 1990s in the panhandle of Texas, there wasn’t a lot of talk about what it meant to be attracted to both genders. So I remained silent and confused. I always knew I was different in this way and the conditioning I experienced growing up in a conservative Christian family that didn’t recognize the LGBTQI+ identities; dismissing it as “unnatural” further silenced me. However, now in my forties, I find that I am more brave than I have ever been. There’s something liberating about getting older and taking the risk of being your true self. Continuing to educate ourselves on the variety of different identities and their subsequent oppressions is imperative when working toward equity. We have to realize that we will never “arrive” at a bias-free state or be persuaded into thinking that we can’t possibly insult another person again. We will never truly recognize all the biases we hold, but the important point is that we are continually seeking out the experiences and voices of others to build that empathy and to be a better advocate.

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