Dear E,
Your recent reflection on how you navigated standing in solidarity with trans people when in conversation with someone who held trans-exclusionary beliefs was so nuanced and beautiful, and encapsulated the tension that a lot of people on the Holding Space series speak to when working out what their role is in supporting others with change and transformation.
You spoke about how in the face of conflict you might have previously erred on the side of neutrality - perhaps a result of some of the habitual fawning that many of us do in place of a ‘fight or flight’ response. This time however you felt it was important that you lean into the conversation with this person with authenticity - and that meant standing by your own beliefs, and standing up for people who weren’t there to stand up for themselves. You also said that you had more points you wanted to make to this person, but that you kept it relatively light initially, in the hope that it would open them up to connecting with you and perhaps having more conversations that might lead to change.
Obviously the dynamic in this case was the two of you showing up as mutual participants, rather than one person acting as a facilitator, but the question of authenticity versus neutrality is one that shows up perhaps even more acutely when there is a power dynamic at play.
In contrast to how you have previously erred on the side of neutrality, I have historically tended to err on the side of combative. When I was running a lot of Equity and Inclusion workshops my co-facilitator would often refer to me as ‘the viper’ because I would jump on and shut down any bigoted speech. The problem with this was three-fold: it didn’t empower others within the group to find their authentic voice in response, it shamed the person that had spoken into silence (only for those views to potentially bubble up in other ways), and it made me feel more and more limited, constrained and exhausted as I realised just how much harm shows up in all sorts of spaces and conversations. If I couldn’t hold myself through the vast and complicated nuances of our human existence and relationships, how was I going to enable anyone else to go deeper, to find that connection and understanding, and to change how they show up in the world?
When I first noticed this tension I stopped doing Equity and Inclusion work for a while and looked inward at myself as a facilitator. How could I live and exhibit my values while also being more neutral when I hold space? How do I ensure there is accountability for harm without taking on all the responsibility for addressing it? How do I notice the velocity at which my body lurches, and attune to what feels like the most authentic and connecting response I can have… sometimes because of that embodied experience and sometimes in spite of that embodied experience?
One answer to this for me has been to actively embody liberation as part of how the whole space is designed, not just in the moments where harm has to be confronted. Historically I was showing up as a facilitator within organisational cultures where the rules were defined and inequity was woven into the DNA of how people interacted with each other. This meant that I was always going to find myself calling things out in a potentially confrontational way because we hadn’t redefined the rules together. Even many activist spaces I’m part of stick to professionalised cultures and tools that were created by capitalism and white supremacy, and therefore the culture contains echoes of fascism that our bodies notice even if everyone on the surface knows logically we want something different. So in order to change how people show up in a space, I needed to give people an entirely new experience. In the latest Holding Space cohort we did a deep listening exercise exploring what is hard and what is easy about this work, and one of the participants talked about the joy they get from getting to curate these small spaces where you can completely reimagine what’s possible together and the power of that. Holding space is a gift we give to people - and that gift should be expansive and open up possibilities, rather than one that encloses, shut downs and shut outs.
What that looks like in practice really depends on what you are trying to achieve. In my upcoming queer care collective, where the intention is to generate an ongoing sustainable flow of mutual aid within the local community, the process to decide what that looks like involves embodying the exact thing we are trying to create. In a practical sense this means making conscious and explicit choices about who will be present in that space and what value they can contribute; it means giving space and support for people to express their boundaries and needs up front before we start trying to ‘do stuff’ together; it means making a commitment to slow down in order to truly experience intimacy and connection together before jumping into problem solving. Through the design of the process itself I am giving people an invitation to show up differently, and centering agency and collectivism within that so that as the conversations unfold those are the norms we are aligning to naturally rather than trying to impose or project those values onto one another verbally.
What this looked like in your exchange with the person you spoke to about trans rights is you rewriting the story together. First, you leant into a conversation when she expected you to lean out. Second, you held firm with your boundaries and in return she questioned her own intentions. Finally, you are authentically seeking connection from a deep-seated desire to open up possibilities and expand both of your experiences rather than trying to make anyone feel small.
All that said, even in writing this there is a tiny person inside me that still feels the desire to punish, and I wonder if that person was present for you at all too? Even though I was just a listener to your story and was not present in the space at all, my body still responded from a place where there is so much harm that I and others have experienced at the hands of ignorance or outright transmisogyny, that I can’t help but feel I’d want to lash out at this person you chose to connect with. But while that might satisfy me and my community briefly, it does nothing to change the culture - in fact it entrenches the values that our oppressive society was built upon.
Which is why the second thing I wanted to speak to is how we hold space in a way that holds people to account, and holds ourselves as facilitators to account. No matter how well designed I think the Queer Care collective process will be, no matter how much we think we have redefined the rules or are embodying something different, it is likely some or all of us will continue to revert to known patterns of behaviour because forces of oppression are the water we swim in. Which is why methods like the ‘Oops/ ouch’ protocol, which is a simple technique for people to easily call out moments of harm and make it possible for the group to make conscious choices in response, are important. These can become habitual practices that move us out of reactivity and into a deeper engagement with the dynamics that are at play.
And when it comes to holding myself to account as a facilitator - particularly over the question of when do I pay attention to my intuition and when do I go against it - becoming intimately familiar with my fight/flight/freeze/fawn responses and having ways of checking in with my body to get to the root of any dysregulation is so important to be able to move through conflict and harm in a way that is both embodied and thoughtful, emotional and rational. And it also requires me to have a reflective practice with people who understand what long-term sustainable change looks like. Which is why I decided to write this letter, to unpack some of the feelings and reactions I’ve had in the past as someone holding space for difficult conversations. Ultimately I think I believe that sometimes our desire to speak up and confront harm is legitimate, and if anything we need more facilitators that feel confident in how they can do this. Sometimes speaking our truths is the only way to disrupt other unhealthy power dynamics that might be present within our spaces. But we should also be creating spaces where we are already embodying what we believe in, where participants have the power to hold each other to account rather than the facilitator, and where we are paying close attention to when we respond from a place that mimics the punitive and oppressive society we have been conditioned under.
It’s hard work to do all those things - while also maintaining sight of why we do any of this at all. But it sounds like you balanced all these things beautifully in the conversation you had, and I’m glad that I get to be in this work with people like yourself.