confident

Hello, reader.  Are you confident?  I am becoming more so, as I’m less afraid of people and love myself more as a grown-ass adult.  But I feel annoyed that I need to be confident in order to be taken seriously, especially in community.

Being confident feels almost violent to me, especially when it’s loud; it feels authoritarian.  Confidence is a weird use of power that I don’t always appreciate.  It’s associated with louder voice, upright posture, being taller–at least standing taller.  It’s associated with masculine traits, health, money, and being abled.

You know, some people physically can’t stand up straight.  Deep voices are overrated.  I want to listen to women, children, and disabled people.  Those are the voices I want to amplify.  The needs of people who have less power are the needs that I feel most responsible to.

Cis men shouldn’t hold as much power as they do.  Not to say they should never make decisions for a group.  Just that the playing field is not level, and I’ll do what I can to listen to fat, poor, queer, trans, elderly, brown, Black, and sick people every day.

Abled cis men are listened to a lot already.  In some ways, they’ve built the world, or at least the systems.  Women, enbies, and transmen are often the builders of families and other community work that’s unpaid, underrated, and sometimes made invisible.

unconditional worth

My needs and ideas matter– being confident has nothing to do with how much I should be listened to.  Whether I squeak out my truth like a mouse, or speak my truth proudly with a sense of stable self-worth, the performance is just a performance.

Acting like I have deep worth doesn’t give me deep worth–my worth is unconditional.  If people need to see me perform worth in order to believe it, sounds like their problem.  All people have worth.  My tone of voice, posture, and the way I dress have nothing to do with whether you should listen to me.

A stable sense of self-worth is a luxury.  White people from money who were not very abused might grow up believing they deserve things.  People from less privileged backgrounds might have different beliefs and an uphill climb to think their needs matter at all.

questions for discussion

How much power do you have?

How are you using it?

Do you think your ideas are better and more important than other people’s ideas?

On a scale of one to ten, how open are you to the ideas of people who are unlike you?

How open are you to the ideas of people who are similar to you?

Do you believe you’re being fair, in group decision making?

How could you be more fair?

Are your needs met in community?  In public places?  At work and school?

Do others even understand your needs?

Which needs are neglected or ignored?

How would your life be different if more of your needs were met?

What do you do on a day-to-day basis to build a more just world?

memes

I made some memes about heartache in community.   Confidence is related to class; seeming rich can contribute to power.  That’s what this meme is about.

On a background of sky with cirrus clouds, the meme says, “I don’t come from money but read fancy books as a child and learned how to codeswitch.”

This next one is about being in meetings with a white man who would stay mostly quiet until he really wanted something, then would turn nasty.

On the same background of sky with cirrus clouds, the meme says, “the bulldog intensity you hold onto your beliefs with excludes others’ experience violently.”

Most people believe they’re fair and a good listener.  Like asking a drunk person how drunk they are, self-reporting can be questionable!

thank you

Thank you for listening to me about this topic which I ponder all day.  I remember when Ming and I were homeless, it could be scary when we stayed at a vacation rental.  We weren’t exactly on vacation.

Would our hosts treat us differently if they noticed we were on a long, strange trip?  Yes, that did happen.  It hurt at libraries, trying to figure out norms.  I needed somewhere to cry, pray, daydream.  Is it ok to cry at the library?  When you don’t have a place to call home, there’s a lot to do in public.

more questions for discussion

Who are your disabled heroes?

What Black writers do you like best?

How many of your friends are fat?

What are your favorite ways to support trans people?

How do you listen to children?