Identity 101: Part 2 -Identity: Known, Unknown, Spoken, Silent
An IG Live Series around Identity and Meaning
How do I define what my identity is? How do I know if I have ‘privilege’? What does it mean to be seen?
Linet & Brenda broadcast a series of laid back conversations where they explored the waters of identity, privilege, and anti-oppression work. These open discussions led audiences through an exploration of themselves, their relationships, and how they move through the world, culminating in a call to engage in anti-oppression through acknowledging the challenges, realities, and hope of our place in the world.
Free to the public, this series of open conversations on Instagram offered a prism of thought, feeling, and learning to lead audiences through an exploration of themselves.
Click this link for ID101 Part 1 video and transcript. Check out ID101 Part 3 video here.
Brenda, she/her(s), is a full-time Anti-Oppression Consultant & Facilitator. Born in Mexico City, but partially raised in India, traveled the world, middle school in South Carolina, high school in Wales, and college in Massachusetts, Brenda identifies as a queer transnational woman of color. After Hampshire College, Brenda experienced diverse roles in advocacy as a youth program coordinator at a refugee resettlement organization, later as a bilingual counselor for survivors and victims of intimate partner violence, and finally as peer recovery coach. Brenda built In.Visible Paradigms to support white allies in their connection to the work, community, and movement of anti-oppression. Her goal is to go beyond the basics and facilitate transformative spaces for white allies to move forward in the journey of turning silence into language and action (Audre Lorde). Brenda is also involved with the Anti-Racism Collaborative and the Equity Consultants of Colorado.
Linet (she/her) is the Co-Executive Director of the Unconscious Bias Project (UBP). Linet was born in Bogotá, Colombia and grew up in Nigeria, France, Venezuela, and completed her education in the US. She is a PhD scientist turned diversity, equity and inclusion professional. Throughout life, she witnessed and experienced the harm caused by toxic workplaces, discrimination, and bullying. This fueled her passion to grow more inclusive and equitable spaces including co-founding the Texas A&M University Language Learning Institute, co-developing the first annual diversity workshop for UC San Francisco’s graduate division, and advocating for childcare grants for graduate student parents. Her passion became her career when she co-founded UBP, where she now works with her co-ED, volunteers, advisors, and community members to bring creative, accessible, and evidence-based programs to reduce bias and unconscious bias to workplaces and classrooms centering empowerment and sustainable action.
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Brenda: What does it mean to be seen, and how can we use the values and principles of anti-oppression to be true to ourselves? Welcome to our second ID Live series with Dr. Linet from Unconscious Bias Project, and myself Brenda Rae Moreno, founder of Invisible Paradigms. We're going to be exploring these two questions today and recap a little bit of what took place last week. We talked about identity 101 specifically around identity and privilege. Dr. Linet guided us through a really great activity of, “what are the points of yourself that you don't often think about?” And that was a continuous thread in our conversation. It brought us through difficult conversations that we've had with, our family members, with our community.
[00:00:17] And today we're going to be exploring a little bit more about “how do we be true to ourselves? What does true identity mean for us? What parts of ourselves are unseen? Unwitnessed, silenced, maybe?” And I love this question about “how can we use the values and principles of anti-oppression to get us into our whole selves and our true selves?”
[00:00:25] So as we wait for Dr. Linet to join I want you to take a moment to breathe in, and stretch too. Do what you need to do… there we go.
[00:00:34] Linet: How are you? I'm sorry I interrupted your breathing moment..
[00:00:36] Brenda: Oh, it was an invitation for anyone to just join me in that we can definitely do a little bit of a bigger one. How are you?
[00:00:38] Linet: Good. I'll be honest, a little frazzled. It was one of those pandemic Fridays with back-to-back meetings type of thing. But it was, it was good. I had a really nice chance to connect with so many people. So I always appreciate that.
[00:00:44] Brenda: Do you need to do anything to be present, or do you want to release anything?
[00:00:46] Linet: Yes. I was hoping to do that one minute of breathing and connection to our bodies before we got into this work.
[00:00:50] Okay, awesome. So for those of you joining me now, joining us now, hi, I'm Linet. I know Brenda introduced me briefly; I'm the co-executive director of the Unconscious Bias Project. My pronouns are she/her, And I want us to just take a minute to settle into our bodies. Just sort of breathe, and connect with where we are, who we are, and our connection to the ground and our environment.
[00:01:00] If mindfulness, if meditation is not your thing, take this moment to look away from the screen. All right. so if you want to close your eyes, close your eyes. If you want to just engage in a soft focus, a few feet in front of you, wherever you are, take a few deep breaths… fully letting out that exhale… another couple of deep breaths… and then the next few breaths sort of resettled back into your body: this amazing you, that is, and exists, and breathes. Feel your connection to the seat, if you're sitting; to your feet and the ground, if you have your feet on the ground; take a second to check in with your body.
[00:01:22] If you have any tension, see if you can direct breath into that space, and then know that we're coming into this space together, a lot of empathy for ourselves. Search for that inner stage within you, the empathy for yourself as we dig into some of these topics together. In your next few breaths, come back to the space that we have in this room, having coffee together or tea with Brenda and Linet as they get into this conversation.
[00:01:36] You know, I do want to remind y'all we might get uncomfortable. So do get resources, grab your water. If you need to step away, step away. You can come back. We'll have all of these sessions recorded. You can always come back to them at your own pace. And get excited, because we're going to get into things a little deeper, and I'm really excited to do that with all of you, and with Brenda, and I think it'll be really fun. We have some exercises and stories, but as mentioned earlier, before we get started, I did want to acknowledge that I am currently in Las Cruces, New Mexico, which is unceded land of currently-living Piro, Monso, and Tiwa united three-tribe nation. And I wanted to start with that before we get into our work, because I think it's important, as we talked about last time, how identity is also something relational.
[00:01:57] And so for that, that's something that I'm working on. I'm exploring my relationship to indigenous people of this land, and their experiences, and their current lived experiences and past experiences. So with that piece, I wanted to recap what we talked about last time. I'm just looking at my notes off-screen, but I just want to recap how we identified identity.
[00:02:05] I mentioned relationship. So it can be sometimes how you express yourself with relation to other people, maybe you're working with, or you live with, or you interact with in public. And we're going to get a little more into that today. it can be an identity that you've come upon because either, maybe you came to it or you consciously made the decision to identify with that.
[00:02:15] And there are other also identities that are, in some ways, imposed - by our current culture, our current environment. Identity has many, many different flavors and shapes and forms, and we all have different feelings around our identity and different aspects of our identity. So I'm excited to get into that work with us today.
[00:02:23] Brenda: Yes. Thank you, Linet. Take a sip of water and sit down, settle in. I think it's important to make this connection for people; the connection of mindfulness, meditation, and breathwork as a part of anti-oppression. And I think this is an opportunity to reflect on why we started at the beginning and why we've ended with it in our ID Lives so far. For me breathwork, which means attunement to self, body, sou - literal breath is a practice of disrupting some of the tendencies and quick-paced energy that our body - even in virtual spaces - our body takes on. And I was one of the people in the past that didn't pay much attention to my body in the day to day, and it took this tool and I can only in retrospect now see the lack of attunement to myself, with myself, through breathwork, that I needed to do.
[00:02:48] And so that's a reason why you might see some of that in workshops or in IG Live by certain people. And it's an active skill that we can all take a part of. And we all should be taking a breath every once in a while. It is a magical moment that takes place to just realign, and I notice it in my body - yawning is a way that my body just releases some of the energy that gets built up.
[00:02:59] So I wanted to frame that. And then the second reflection right now is this piece around unceded stolen land, in which we all are a part. And this is another powerful thread to bring into the space. You can find which territory you are a part of. So I live in Massachusetts. I live and work actively on the stolen lands of the Massachusetts and Wampanoag tribes.
[00:03:08] And I found that through going to www native-land.ca, I believe. It's one step in your allyship, but not even allyship; in the existence of this history of this country, to just acknowledge this thing that we don't see; or that is silenced intentionally. And one way to intentionally disrupt the silence is to acknowledge the land which we are all a part of, which is native indigenous land with a multitude of communities and histories. So thank you for that. Where should we begin? What feels good?
[00:03:23] Linet: I know we - so full transparency for folks joining us, it's like - we have lots of plans. I'm definitely a planner and had this vision for today. And I think Brenda and I had a lot of excitement and energy around what we were hoping to discuss.
[00:03:30] And the best is to really let things take us. And I'm noticing my cat has decided to start playing with the toys, so will have that in the background - of playfulness, which I appreciate in this moment. I really wanted to get into - actually, I recently joined a cohort that's exploring how to fully listen to yourself and to others, and it's a skill that you and I practice a lot being facilitators, listening to other folks, listening to our communities, doing our best to be in tune with ourselves. And one of the things that we discussed was being seen, being in the process of listening to somebody, seeing them as they are without judgments, without ideas about who they are, where they come from, just like accepting the full reality that somebody is giving to you and just fully accepting it - not filtering, not questioning, not trying to match it up with the last article that you read, or a post that somebody made, or maybe a rumor you've heard about this person, but just taking that in. And so I thought that that would be a really good place to start is, “what does it mean to be seen?” What do people mean when they talk about, “Oh, I feel seen.” I think that that's a really juicy place to start.
[00:04:04] Brenda: I agree. I love the word. What do you mean? - the phrase, the question, what it means to be seen? What does it mean to be silenced in being in the construct and ideologies that are so pervasive in this country, which is white supremacy culture, and understanding what it means to be seen as a moment of resistance and self and witnessing yourself in that transformation and slowly recovering other parts of yourself? So I agree. I think that feels like a really great place to start. And you and I occupy, I think, shared identities, in terms of our professional capacity. So I'm sure there's much more criss-crossing over of identities that we have personally. But this part about - this is an opportunity for also us as humans, as Brenda and Linet, to share some of our personal experiences of how we are seen and unseen in our work, how parts of us come to life. We're also negotiated to be marginalized in other contexts, family and friends. And so in those spaces, when I work home, family, friends, IG Lives, how would you describe yourself in these different places? Are they cohesive? Are there different parts of you that show up? And if so, which places and what?
[00:04:37] Linet: Yeah, I think that's, that's a really good question. I love that you picked up on the sort of, “what parts of myself do I bring forward in these different spaces? How cohesive is it?” And I have to say before I really aligned myself with my values and in my beliefs and what my like truths, if you will - before I did that in this work that I'm doing now with the Unconscious Bias Project, I was an academic in science. I'm still a scientist. Once a scientist, never stopped being a scientist. but being a scientist in the academic world in - so I was doing my PhD in molecular biology and biochemistry. There was a lot of myself that I didn't bring to the plate. So folks joining us now can see, I am super white-passing.
[00:05:00] There is no… you barely, if any, if there's any remaining, still detected accents, unless folks start reading me for a while, then it's takes a little while for people to start asking me where I'm “really from,” unless I mentioned something. And in this space I actively suppressed my own creativity and my own curiosity, because I was often confronted with questioning about my experience, questioning about my knowledge, questioning about really enough different parts of myself or what - if I would express like, “yeah, I'm from Colombia. I speak Spanish and you know, that's part of my background” and folks would start saying “oh, Shakira” and, “oh, do you like spicy food? Do you have burritos?” Like - I'm not here to talk about this part of myself, I'm here to talk about the science. Or even if it's a gentle curiosity, it does make you feel othered, right? No one's asking a white cis male in the U.S., “where are they from?” right? Nobody's questioning when they say, “oh, I'm from Boston.”
[00:05:28] They're not like, “But no, really? Where are you really from? Are you like a hundred percent?” I really literally got asked this question by a neighbor. “Are you a hundred percent Colombian?” What does that even mean? What does that even mean? Right? So I definitely have selected, decided what I bring to work in that context and my current work. I think I don't express a lot of my personal identity, because as a facilitator, I'm helping. I bring some parts of my identity in as examples, or to illustrate an experience that might help others, but I'm really there to listen to where people are at and to try to help them see a reality outside of what they've already experienced without immediately engaging in fear or concern that they're going to mess up.
[00:05:47] So it's more about: I bring forth like my empathetic side, the side of me that is a mom, somebody that has traveled internationally, somebody whose very close both family and friends, with people in all spectrums of the queer identity and people with disabilities and to try to bring those parts of myself and openness into my work.
[00:06:00] At home, I think I definitely let my guard down a lot. I can just sort of be a little more, and it can be challenging to bring the concepts that we bring forward in our work, of acceptance, openness, inclusion when I have family or friends that express something that people call microaggressions, but it's still a form of violence, right?
[00:06:10] Like maybe like a bad joke, or they make an assumption about somebody, or they speak in a mock accent for a different group. And that can be challenging to decide - am I getting engaged right now with this work that I've done? Or could it be taken as, “oh, here comes Linet again with, ‘that's not an okay joke to say,’ she's no fun.” That's not engaging in dialogue. So there's definitely choices there. And I think in public, in general, if a stranger (pre-COVID days), a stranger came up to me at a bar, at a cafe, and is like, “hey, how's it going?” I would be super hesitant to connect with them because of my identities, because I am a woman, because I am, you might not know, but I am shorter than the average American women; you know, I'm a mom. So I might be thinking about, “are they trying to talk to my kid that's playing in the playground?” So I'm actually very protective about my identity. However, there are some public spaces that are more receptive to being a person of color - white-passing person of color - somebody with an international experience, where it does feel more comfortable to show up as myself.
[00:06:44] So I say, I would think that now in my work, home, and with friends, because I've been more in alignment with my values, I am able to express myself much more than I used to in my past work. And I think my family are also willing to engage a little more in discussions. My immediate family - let's not get started about my - a little more. And you know, my partner has had enough experience with me talking about these things. Now that they're more open, “Okay, let's get challenged a little.” Or “did I mess up in this space?” Or “how do I repair things like that?” That feels a lot more in alignment, but it is absolutely true that not my whole self comes to the plate every time. That is not true.
[00:07:04] Brenda: I think the question that we posed - so just to recap for folks, I asked Linet, “what parts of you, in the spaces that you’re part of, show up more than others? The parts of yourself, are they cohesive, if not, which ones don't get to be seen, and for what reasons?” And I think that I really resonate with a lot of what you said, and I heard negotiation as a theme, like negotiating safety for self, for others.
[00:07:15] I resonate with parts of energy. Do I have capacity right now to be going through my life story? And I also hear within those negotiations, kind of analyzing, identifying the context, that relationshipin a situation, and you hit the nail on the head at the beginning with, “a white man does not have to go through those negotiations,” or - there's not a question, “are you really from Boston, but are you really, really from Boston?” No one, I would kind of be thrilled if I ever witnessed that conversation, because what I would see is someone who's getting flustered and being confronted with you know, someone else.
[00:07:33] So in this hypothetical situation, if this were to happen, the white cis man going through the questioning and excavation itself that I've gone through, I would see probably someone getting really flustered or someone getting really aggravated. There is a huge privilege in never having to question and negotiate which parts of you are going to show up with certain identities that we hold. And I'm sure white, cis men, white folks may still have to do a little bit of negotiation because we're human and we're complex that dynamic.
[00:07:46] So you mentioned personal things, identities aren't constructed by necessarily wnite supremacy. We all into a little bit of that negotiation - the type of jokes that we make, the type of voice that we use, the type of situation and personal experience that we're going through. We might choose to show, to disclose that because we feel more supported in certain situations than others, but it's still so different than someone who experiences marginalization, to continuously put out energy to justify an existence, or continuously put out energy to protect parts of who we are. And to really say, I don't want to choose that conversation today for myself. And I'll just pick up on some of the things that were shit that you mentioned that I really want to elaborate on.
[00:08:05] I have also been in those conversations when someone asks you, “wait from?” And I'm born from Mexico, grew up in India, lived in the US now for 11 years, have dual citizenship. And sometimes I play around with someone's assumptions. So I could say I'm Mexican. Some people can notice my accent similar to maybe what you were saying, but sometimes I say, “no, I'm from America,” or “I grew up in South Carolina,” or I really challenge people because when they ask you where you're from, or “where did you grow up?” Even though it's gentle curiosity, I feel through my experiences - my experiences have taught me that some of this question has a shared root of, “I don't understand who you are and why you look like this. Can you please explain?” And so there're strategies that I developed for my own humor, protection, as a strategy to challenge people's perceptions about who they think I am. Oftentimes it is difficult for me to share who I am, and my stories of where I've grown up, and how I identify with people that are friends of friends or one-offs.
[00:08:34] So I think that comes from me like politeness, like we're close enough that we have a mutual relationship, but we're not close enough - like if you and I were to bump into the grocery store, I would still not tell you this story, but because there's that relationship piece, it makes the conversation - for myself - very different.
[00:08:41] So these strategies about what we choose to disclose, or share, what gets protected and just intentionally not disclosed, I think is also really important for folks to understand. And for me, the undercurrent and sort of what I'm sharing and what I'm hearing, Linet, is energy - it takes energy to protect or disclose and have other people witness it when it relates to an unbalanced power dynamic or someone wanting to excavate that information.
[00:08:54] Other times energy has felt really beautiful, where I feel like I'm being witnessed, or parts of me are being held in a supportive, loving way. And in those cases, I think there's that sixth element, in terms of like trust and safety that we have as humans that you can just kind of feel. I at least feel it in my body when I know someone is exuding that, or I'm picking up on that - that I can - I do feel safe here, and I do want this part of me to be touched or to be supported.
[00:09:09] Linet: Yeah. You know, I see Alexis nodding vigorously, saying yes. There is a point that I didn't touch on, and you started to, and I thought was really interesting is the things that we can't control. I can't control much of what I look like. I intentionally put on makeup and try to look less tired.
[00:09:19] Yes. I am a mom. you know, I have like the timbre of my voice, you're talking about voice, right? Some of those things are things that can't be changed. If somebody needs a cane to get around, they can't change that. If somebody is a trans man, they have to put a lot of energy into their voice so they can leave that sort of preparation work for the new person they're meeting to see them as male. Right? These are places where I hold privilege. And things that I can't control. I can't control what my body shape is. I can't control what my facial features look like. but all of these - there are some things that we're able to adjust.
[00:09:37] There's some things that we're able to say in a conversation. And like you're saying, there's not always space. It may not always be the right space. It might not always be the right moment to invest that energy, to tell a critical part of yourself that makes you you. And one thing that I noticed as we were preparing for this work is, we prepared bios for this work, which - I don't know where, how many places that got to - but we prepared our bios for this work that we're doing together. And I learned parts about you and your identity that we hadn't talked about. That was interesting to me. And as a business people, as business women who are trying to sustain ourselves in this work, there is a piece - it's escaping me a little bit how to phrase it - but there is a bit about telling our personal stories, or personal journeys, and aligning that with the brand or the story of our organizations, of our mission, that becomes a critical - and it's going to sound capitalist - cause it is a selling point for people to trust us, for people to say “oh, I can talk with this person.”
[00:10:06] Brenda: Bios are such an interesting landscape. Oh my goodness. I've gotten to the point with invisible paradigms and clients and people who join our anti-oppression cohorts - it's like that barrier, and that branding and starting to blur it, starting to lessen - because I think in my strategy now, I was like, “I will attract the people to this community, we will attract the people to this community.” If I'm being more honest, those are the people that I want to engage with. But I've also been in a place of like - a bio for a certain event where you have two sentences, you have to compromise a little bit of how much you're going to be choosing for other people to read.
[00:10:25]Bbut yeah, it was a tricky little landscape to navigate, especially in the work that you're doing, as we're saying, and storytelling and connecting to people.
[00:10:29] Linet: You know, your piece about bios, or like two-sentence bios, it makes me remember our co-founder, Dr. Cat Adams. She's now a Ph.D. too. Cat was talking about how triggering and re-traumatizing applications can be. So when you're asked, oh, we have the scholarship for people with less socioeconomic means, for BIPOC folk, for indigenous folk, for queer folk - and then you're asked to talk about your life and you know, that if you hide painful aspects of your life, it is less likely that they're going to put you at the top of the list.
[00:10:45] And so, for folks that aren't used to doing that, or haven't developed the tools, and the emotional safety and barriers to not relive trauma - it's really intense and, we ask them that, and we're not asking that of the white man who has the means to pay for college, or we're not asking that of the able-bodied person that wants to join a workshop.
[00:10:59] It's an interesting problem of people wanting to help. I think you see this a lot. We see this a lot in our work, people wanting to help, but in doing so, asking somebody to bring out a layer of themselves layer it is up for exploration or will cause them tears and consternation and will take them days to write about themselves?
[00:11:13] Brenda: there's so much in what you're saying. And I love the path of - we started the conversation with our personal choices, navigation, exerting energy, while we don't have it, to disclose, show, or protect parts of who we are. Then we started talking about bios, which catapulted us into a conversation around job descriptions, applications, retraumatizing, some of those parts of ourselves. While the institution wants to have really good intentions or that scholarship or that program that you're intending The application process I think is a really important place, and the reason why I'm so activated is because I have been a part of some applications. I know that the institution and program want to capture information that would be useful, but it's not mutual information. If it has to do with information about how this country views certain identities, how the current conversations about DEI and tokenization, I sometimes go into those applications protecting my identity, and preferring not checking the box, [refer not to say so. I don't know what the end game is, and it feels alarming in my body to share my life story, if there isn't kind of protection measures or communication about those pieces. And I know now there's a huge number of workplace application processes that really trigger people.
[00:11:49] And even though you have a really great mission statement, a vision statement, yet picture - you have ongoing training and you're asking diverse candidates to join your organizational culture. Your application can be a place where barriers like - you're signaling and sending red flags to the applicants who may not - for me, I've been in that boat where I was really excited about an organization, and then the application process is X and I back up, I don't apply because, it doesn't feel safe for me. I don't know if that organization is going to hold parts of who I am. I think about work. Sure, it does work, but you and I both thought the personal is connected to every part of our life and vice versa.
[00:12:07] So if I'm having a bad day at work or my coworkers say something really insensitive that affects me and who I am, that's damaging. And I think one of the places that that can be a premonition for people is the application process.
[00:12:16] Linet: yeah, we uncovered so much more than I thought we would.
[00:12:20] Brenda: I also want to maybe take a step into parts of our - at least this is an option, that you and I can go through, and I want to check in with you as well. Like what feels good for you to talk about. I’m interested in talking about the opportunities that our identities hold or the opportunities that we have within ourselves to explore parts of us that we haven't engaged with personally, or that we are in the midst of.
[00:12:32] So there's that thread that I would be interested in stepping into, but what do you think, what feeling, what's coming up for you?
[00:12:35] Linet: I'm feeling that I've seen some new - so many presences - in the group, and I wanted to open it up for questions. You asked a really good question when we were prepping, “I wonder what are the parts of identity people are exploring?”
[00:12:44] And we talked a little bit about it in our first slides. You said that you were actively exploring your identity. And it made me think about: identity is so fluid, right? It sounds like - we're talking about application, sounds like a category, like a box you check, right? This is who I am, and I will forever be this, and you'll see it on my chest, and it'll be this forever, but it's not right.
[00:12:55] I think one of the things that I learned in my opportunities, you're talking about opportunities, opportunities to learn - I grew up in a very heteronormative culture, and doing it, through no fault really of my family. And even as I traveled to different countries, it was still very heteronormative and more specifically, very homophobic, especially to gay men.
[00:13:05] And it wasn't until, I think I was in my teenage or getting close to adult life, that I started understanding more about my queer counterparts and the difficulty that they have. (My computer just turned off, like, don't turn off. I need to use it) But the difficulties they have in being recognized for who they are, this idea of - well, you're just choosing to be man, or you're just choosing to be non-binary, or you're choosing to be a lesbian, have you not tried?
[00:13:21] Have you not, right? That questioning of identity that can fit for them, it's - for lots of folks - it's something really, you know… it's asking you, well, have you tried? I don't know. Have you tried breathing lately? It's like, what is something that is just - arbitrarily?
[00:13:28] Oh yes - I picked to be lesbian. I picked to be gay. This is a total choice because I really want to be outcast by my group. This isn't - it's not something like that. And I have understood that exploring gender, and exploring sexual identity, all of that can be very fluid.
[00:13:36] And one of the opportunities for me is to use my privilege - for some identities, and - I can explore a little more for me personally, my own relationship with sexual preference and my own relationship to how I decided: yes, I am woman, and how I decided to portray that, and the opportunity that I have in advocating for people, really listening to our trans brothers and sisters and our non-binary folk, that if they tell you they are non-binary, if they tell you they're asexual, if they tell you, then just believe it and move on.
[00:13:52] Brenda: And what is the effect when we doubt them, or doubt young children about realizing who they are. And I think we - so you and I can talk, have this very good conversation as adults, but there's messages that you and I have. And you started to name them, that we've ingested and believe to be true because of how we grew up.
[00:14:02] And the detriment that some of these - the toxicity and internalization of them when the community - bad theology, or centered around heterosexism or heteronormative, and anti-gay, anti-lesbian, anti-trans sentiments. It's a consequence of centering heteronormativity.
[00:14:13] We're centering - the way that United States works is, if we're centering whiteness, gender identities, we are always at the consequence of being the antithesis of that. So queer folks, gender-fluid folks, identities that don't fit the norm, (that's my dog) BIPOC communities. And I think we learned to believe them, some of them, to be true when we're young and the internalization of those messages is really toxic.
[00:14:24] It actually affects mental health. We have data and information that if trans youth aren't given affirmation or being supported by the people around them, because of who they are, it affects their lives, of people and young trans kids. So I wanted to bring that in because we were having this conversation.
[00:14:32] But when you are exploring yourself now as an adult, or wherever you are in life, these opportunities to break cycles, as you're learning who you are, to be your true self, you're breaking cycles and what you learn to be - quote, unquote - “true” by society. And sometimes that's parents. And sometimes that is friendship, friends.
[00:14:41] Linet: Yeah. I 100% see, - and I just made the connection. I mean, it's - of course. But I just made the connection of: when we say a little kid who has a penis and is thought of as a boy says, “I want to grow up to have a baby. I want to be pregnant.” Right? “I want to be, I want to be a mom.” And then somebody comes and tells them, “no, honey, you're a boy.”
[00:14:52] You're going to be like - that's exactly how we start to even as a child. And it's funny. Cause it's funny, it really intense. I think about it as a parent, right? There is a time in a child's development where they explore the truth or, or maybe lies, maybe imagination.
[00:15:01] And they're like, “yeah, I brushed my teeth,” but they didn't brush their teeth or you know, “I didn't eat all the cookies - the monster did” or you know, something like that. And you're in a situation of: do I believe them, do I not believe them? I know I'm straying far, but I'm coming back - we ask, we have to believe kids, because this process of believing somebody, where they want to explore where they want to be, where they are in the moment, is just as critical for a child exploring their gender identity or a teenager exploring their sexual preference as it is when we believe somebody that has been harmed.
[00:15:17] So if a survivor of assault comes to you and says, I was assaulted, It's not, “are you sure? Were you drunk?” Right. The same as we want to believe our black brothers and sisters that say “I was discriminated against, I was persecuted. This cop pulled me over you,” believe.
[00:15:26] Social media is everywhere. Everybody has a phone. So there's lots of recordings. So people are forced to believe, but it's - we need to believe that harm. And , for a gentler example, I had a very toxic boss during - I had two very toxic bosses - in academia, and in trying to advocate for myself and finding mentors and people that would mentor me instead.
[00:15:37] So trying to change who my boss was. I did talk to somebody who I thought, you know, she is a woman, I think of color, white-passing, like myself, and had been in academia for a long time. And I came to her with “this is the awful thing that I'm experiencing. My boss is questioning my intelligence. They're like yelling at me and it's like really difficult to do this work plus other details.” And her response was, “what did you try? Did you try really talking to him in a way that made sense of - where are you focusing, on science? or what are you talking about?” And it was just -
[00:15:52] Brenda: My eyes just rolled so far back.
[00:15:55] Linet: - it's that we need to believe, and that's part of being seen. It's part of holding space. You know, if we want to see the real change in the world, if we want to engage in that anti-oppression, if we want to really go into the opportunity to change either the way we behave, others behave, how our systems operate… we need to take that, just get rid of that judge, and just believe.
[00:16:10] Yes, I dropped a lot.
[00:16:10] Brenda: No, I just wanted to give that a little space to breathe. You outlined, you talked about some really important things. You mentioned anti-oppression, and why we're talking about identity matters so much to this work, and movement, and community event. Oftentimes I've written the sentence, and like personal experiences, but because you're this - it's obvious that's worth connecting to this larger point of your personal experience about how you live, navigate, negotiate the world are valid to your strategies around surviving, finding ways to thrive, by having justice, resistance, restoration are also parts of that. How each of us describe personal experiences and you - the reason why I'm mentioning this is because it strongly has to do with anti-oppression.
[00:16:33] We talk directly to white supremacy, culture, ideologies, and norms. And in this conversation, we are especially around silence. And not believing other people, especially marginal. I spoke to people affected by an unbalanced power dynamic. This is gaslighting. So this is one way that we can bring in,
[00:16:42] even though it feels like a small, “oh no, that's not true.” Or a small denial or micro denial. It's actually toxic, violent silencing that is similar, if not very much like, gaslighting that exists in our behaviors, and each other. And even with ourselves, there's been moments where I'm like, no, that's not true.
[00:16:53] Like there's moments that because we live in the white supremacy culture, I like self-doubt who I am, or I tell a different story just to feel better. Parts of my identity. And I think those are very detrimental and harmful in this moment. I want to tell, I'm like, some of the questions that started this point of conversation, and that was (I'm sorry, there's a lot of motorcycles. You don't hear them? No, I'm not really hearing them now.) - but this piece of what lessons or norms about who you are, how you be yourself, what lessons that you ingest when you were younger and how are you now, and adults forever point in your life, even young adults watching this, like, how are you now getting to know your truth?
[00:17:15] And noticing that those are moments of disrupting oppression, and disrupting cycles of harms that are taking place. And I think within this, I wanted to ask like what does a yes feel like when we're in the exploration of self and being witnessed by other meaning being supported, celebrated, right?
[00:17:23] What does that feel like in your body?
[00:17:25] So for me it feels like goosebumps, and like this thrilling and pleasurable act of like: that's a reality, I can do that. You know, my body just said that to me just now. What about you, Linet?
[00:17:34] Linet: It's interesting. I'm on this… I talked about the listening journey. I'm also on this journey of doing this program to get more in touch with my inner Sage. And in this work, the path that the specific facilitator, the specific program works is to connect to yourself as who you were at age five or younger, before you started having a strong critic voice, before you started holding yourself to impossible standards, or before other people held yourself to other standards, before there was that criticism or the, “ah, I look fat, I did this, I did that. I'm not X enough.” Those are my critic voices, by the way, I'm just going to put it out there. And so the exercise is to imagine yourself and remember yourself as you were as a child. I have a picture of myself that we used for the exercise. And so remember all those aspects of yourself, and those are your wisdoms, that's your Sage, because you are already like a whole incredible human beautiful being before you got to all this baggage of society and adulthood and the systems that we're in.
[00:18:06] and before we became aware of all these parts and interacted with them, and part of the exercise is to then embody, bring that tiny, wonderful human back into yourself and feel what that feels like. And that's what a yes feels like to me when I am, when I can be my full self, it's something comes off of my chest.
[00:18:15] It's like, I can breathe a little better. I can feel joy in the silly, I can engage in the unknown, in the mistakes. It's so freeing. It's so energizing. It's calming. you know, I'm definitely very heavy into this work of reconnecting to myself and seeing myself you know, let alone how that will look for anybody else, but I can work on that.
[00:18:27] And and yes, that's what that feels like to me. Is breathing a little better. Yeah. And what I wonder, oh, go ahead.
[00:18:30] Brenda: No, I love the, I wonder if we could repost pictures of.. I have one. Yeah.
[00:18:35] Linet: Well, I'm curious of the folks that are coming on or listening, in tuning in or folks that are watching this recording afterwards: what does it feel like to get a yes to yourself, either to your full self, or to a part of you that doesn't really come out very often. And just to show why I'm talking about where I'm talking about… I think we were in Cali, at that time it was super hot. My mom always likes to say that my skin was so sensitive that I had to take baths three times a day, cause I would just get so hot and get heat rash everywhere. But yeah, this is me.
[00:18:53] This is my Sage. And what I am learning to say yes to is my silliness and my creativity, like perceptiveness and empathy and love. I was a very loving child. And I think saying yes to ourselves, saying yes to each other, can really reconnect us to what makes us us. There's only one us. I mean, even if you believe in reincarnation, there is only one of you in this timeline, in this space, in this now, right?
[00:19:06] Brenda: For folks sharing,for folks that are listening in tag invisible paradigms. UBP_stem, and share “what does a yes feel like?” It could be a picture of something, be song, but we'd love to know, hear a little bit more about that experience, and that - it is almost time. So yeah, there is one of us.
[00:19:19] That's my mom, by the way. Ah, that's lovely.
[00:19:21] So I would love to close our space today. Do you want to share anything else before we go into a closing?
[00:19:26] Linet: I wanted to bring back a point that you said earlier, which is that… resourcing, I think you said rest and resourcing, rest and restoration, something like that, is an important part of this whole journey.
[00:19:31] It's an important part of all of these pieces. It is an important part, actually, of anti-oppression and anti-colonialism and anti- white supremacy. It is a radical act to rest and to restore. So I encourage everybody that's listening to us, or watching us, again, to really rest and resource. There's only one you.
[00:19:42] Brenda: Thank you, Linet. So if you are seated, wherever you are, in listening to us, take a moment to get on the ground, rest against a wall.
[00:19:47] We're going to take a deep breath in and exhale,
[00:19:51] bringing awareness to parts of your body that are being supported from where you are sitting or laying.
[00:19:55] Giving thanks to that structure for holding you, in all parts of you, both seen unseen are yet to be discovered,
[00:20:01] bringing awareness to your chest. You can do this back, placing one hand over your heart
[00:20:05] and sending love. Breath more.
[00:20:08] Each breath
[00:20:11] taking this time to bring awareness to the conversation. We've had emotions that were brought up, the memories being replayed
[00:20:15] and the truth that there is only one of you.
[00:20:17] Thank you. Thank yourself. All of yourselves.
[00:20:21] When you're ready, come back to center. We're going to take one breath in, breathing in parts of you, memories of you, realities, exhale it's release thing. Hopefully are we on booked?
[00:20:29] Linet: That was beautiful. Thank you. I want to do that every morning. Just breathe in the real parts of myself and breathe that out, the parts that you don't really need.
[00:20:34] Brenda: Yeah. I'm starting to release, to process. Thank you all so much for today. Join us next Friday and private message us with any reflections that you have. We look forward to connecting with you all soon.
[00:20:40] Linet: Thanks Brenda, thank you so much. And uh, remember folks, check Brenda at invisibles paradigms or at UBP_stem for ways in which we can support these conversations and other outreach campaigns. So, thanks again. Thanks everybody for tuning in.
[00:20:47] Brenda: Thank you. Bye, everyone. See, you soon.