Lets Replace Cancel Culture with Accountability

[Music]

[Applause]

i want to invite everyone

to take a deep breath with me

i’m going to ask us to do that one more

time take a deep breath in

and when you exhale i want you to close

your eyes

and i want you to think back to a time

when you up

maybe you said something problematic

maybe you told an inappropriate joke

said something insensitive parroted a

stereotype and someone let you know

maybe they told you publicly maybe they

told you privately

either way i want you to think about

what

happened in your body did your throat

tighten up

did you feel beads of sweat start to

form on your brow

did you get tense did you freeze did you

want to run and hide

how did you react when you got called

out

or maybe called in i want to share my

name

is sonya renee taylor you can open your

eyes now folks

my name is sonja renee taylor and i am

the founder and radical executive

officer of the body is not an apology

make your own company and you can make

your own name we are a digital media and

education company

exploring the intersections of body

identity and social justice

basically for most of my waking hours i

spend my days

trying to convince you that you are

inherently worthy divine

and enough exactly as you are in the

bodies that you have today

i call this inherent sense of enoughness

radical self-love i’m not saying

anything particularly new

uh this lovely lady has said stuff

similar

uh these guys said this too

but unlike these folks i am absolutely

not

altruistic at all i actually think

altruism

is i

do this because i am 100 convinced

that your sense of a lack of enoughness

is totally messing up my life and i’d

like you to stop it

don’t worry my sense of not enoughness

has also wreaked its fair share of havoc

in the world all of the things that we

allow

and accept and promote and

ignore when we don’t feel like we are

enough

uphold the systems of injustice and

oppression that we see in the world

and the world that we want to build

a world that is just inequitable and

kind

a world of love and abundance and joy

and connection that works for everybody

and everybody is a world that we have to

first build

inside of us and so i do this work of

radical self-love

in hopes that i might teach us how to do

that

how to love ourselves radically so that

we can stop harming each other

with our stories of not enoughness this

work that i do is about

personal transformation and how personal

transformation fuels social

transformation and in order to do this

work i have to investigate

what are the things that are in between

us and radical self-love

some of them are things we know already

fear

shame disconnection

but unfortunately those are also the

tools we are most often taught to use in

our society

when we harm each other when we

do things that hurt each other’s

feelings we’re often taught to use those

tools

we’re often taught to call each other

out

about two years ago i got called out

pretty good

i was uh on facebook fishing for

compliments it’s a thing i do sometimes

i had been living in aotearoa really

briefly and i was feeling really lonely

and so

i got on facebook and i asked my

community to share

with me experiences of how they’ve been

impacted

by me and i got about 40 or 50 comments

they were beautiful loving comments

and buried in the middle of those

comments was one comment from a

gentleman who said

sonja when you violated me

it made me have to rethink everything i

thought i knew about gender

and sexual orientation

i read that comment and my heart

fell to the floor immediately sweat

started forming on my brow my throat

tightened up

my heartbeat was racing really fast i

felt nauseous like i was gonna puke then

immediately after that a sense of horror

came over

me oh my god someone has

said i violated them on facebook

immediately after that came

defensiveness how dare this person

accuse me of violating someone i’ve

never violated anyone in my entire life

who is this guy and then after that

another immediate sense of horror

what if what if i did violate him

what if i’ve harmed someone and i don’t

know

i harmed them luckily for me i’ve been

working with radical self-love for a

little bit so i have a few tools

i took a deep breath much like the one i

asked you all to take when i first came

out here

and then i knew that i needed to call

some friends some people that i loved

and respected

and asked for their opinions and luckily

i have smart friends so they gave me

smart advice

and i reached out to this gentleman and

i said first and foremost

i am so incredibly sorry for harming you

and if you’re open to it i would love to

have a conversation about what i did

so that i can be accountable and make

amends if that’s possible

but i also 100 understand if you’re not

interested in that

but please just know i’m deeply sorry

for the harm i cost you luckily this guy

was willing to have a conversation with

me

and thank goodness my violation was not

nearly as egregious as i thought it was

um and we were able to talk through what

had happened but

ultimately it’s not even about what

happened it was about

how my body responded it was about my

response

to what happened and so i want to talk a

little bit about the brain

science of getting called out

um this is your amygdala or what i like

to call your

i up brain

the amygdala is the part of the brain

that controls emotion

and when a word or body language or

special facial expression or

tone feels threatening our amygdala

sends a message to the rest of our body

saying oh no we’re in danger

and our body signals our fight flight or

freeze

response this heightened state often

causes us

to be cognitive cognitively impaired

oftentimes it stumbles our communication

there’s a loss of words i don’t know

about you but if you’ve ever been

in like a really heated argument and you

know the exact thing you want to say to

the person and then you start to flub it

up

and you’re like no that’s your

heightened amygdala

it also impairs our social

functioning and so we are far more

likely to see war

even where there is no war present

we feel like we’re in danger and with

that feeling often comes a sense of

defensiveness

of wanting to argue our point to a fine

chiseled tip

or maybe we storm out of the

conversation or maybe we unfriend the

person who caused us the bad feelings

you know or maybe we freeze we do

nothing

at all oftentimes people say that this

state

makes it really counterproductive to

getting someone to understand

how they have harmed and these people

are usually proponents of

calling in and calling in is when we let

someone know that they’ve harmed us

but gently nicely

the point is to invite someone into a

conversation about how they caused harm

and then help them figure out ways to

cause less harm in the future

not long ago i got called in

i was on instagram i’m on facebook and

instagram a lot

and i would casually mention how when i

was back in the united states

the at the airport i was targeted for

intense screening by the transportation

security administration

and i mentioned how i felt like they

were treating me as if i was planning a

jihad

i made this comment very flippantly and

then i went on about my evening

a few hours later a muslim woman

messaged me

and she said sonya i’m a follower of

your work and i really appreciate what

you do

but i want you to know that the way that

you use that term was very hurtful to me

in my religion jihad simply means an

intense

struggle but the word has been twisted

to mean violence and is often used

to create islamophobia in my community

and with the people that i love

she was so generous and so kind in the

way that she shared that with me

and what was my body’s response

my throat tightened i felt sweat form on

my brow i immediately wanted to tell her

she obviously misunderstood what i meant

because i wasn’t even saying it that way

i had all the same responses inside that

i had when i got called out

on that public facebook thread

but luckily i’ve been working with

radical self-love so i knew

to take a deep breath and take another

deep breath

and then i wrote her back and i thanked

her for being so generous and sharing

that with me

and i told her that i apologized for

causing her harm by using that word in

that way

and that i promised that i would change

the way that i used that language in the

future

and then i got off and i went back onto

my stories and i told all the other

people that followed me

how i had made that mistake and how i

plan to move forward

she called me in and she was incredibly

generous to do it

i have also called people in i once used

the strategy to address

a woman in my community who had

posted a pretty racially charged review

of an event in our community i offered a

lot of labor when i wrote her

and i really tried to help her

understand the offense that she had

caused

ultimately i really think that that

choice to walk

with her was transformative for her and

for my community

but it didn’t happen without taking a

tremendous toll on me

i started having panic attacks during

the weeks that that was happening

i couldn’t sleep i was fatigued my

throat was tight

my mouth was dry the beads of sweat were

forming all the time

i was exhausted with people accusing me

of reverse racism for having

told this woman how her words had harmed

me

the same amygdala response that i was

having when i got called out

was the same one i was having when i got

called in

and it was the same one that i was

having when i called someone else in

why because our threat response

is trained to be activated when we

perceive a threat

and as a woman of color as a person who

lives at the intersection

of multiple marginalized identities

challenging oppression

is an inherently threatening activity

people are often fired they’re evicted

they’re abused

far too often they’re even killed for

challenging oppression

and it really doesn’t matter how

peacefully we say it

so there are lots of folks who suggest

that the trend of public naming

and shaming folks uh is harmful and

counterproductive

to social justice movements that it

would be much better if we called people

in

it would allow them to synthesize the

information and hopefully

change their behaviors it would be

better for social change

and for the most part i agree with these

folks

i mostly agree with these folks

i think that in this digital age when

we’re often rewarded for typing the

pithiest wittiest sharpest digital

sword directed at someone it can be

pretty ugly

and often to the detriment of our

humanity but

i think that those folks are missing an

important part of the conversation

that i want to talk about with us

firstly

not every communication is designed for

the betterment of humankind

if you are stepping on my foot with your

stilettos or your combat boots

and i yell at you hey get off my foot

i’m probably not trying to stop you from

stepping on feet worldwide

i just need you to get off my damn tub

calling someone out is often about

allowing

oneself to express what is very rightful

and righteous anger

at being repeatedly harmed in a world

where we are taught violent and horrible

messages about race

and class and gender and age and size

and ability and sexual orientation

it is likely that all of us have said

something offensive

in these categories and harmed someone

and as people who have to live daily

with the identities that are most

impacted by these harmful messages

it is likely that we have had hundreds

of people

step on our proverbial toes and secondly

i just want to remind us that calling in

puts an

undue burden on the person who is harmed

now not only do i have to nurse my

broken toe

i have to teach you how never to break

anyone else’s toe again

and make sure you don’t feel guilt or

shame for having stepped on feet

me and my toe have no damn time for that

[Music]

and this is why i am proposing a new way

that we might be able to address harm

when it happens yes there will be times

when it is appropriate

to call someone out harvey weinstein

needed

to be called out there will be times

when calling in is the best strategy

as an able-bodied person i should

absolutely

call in other able-bodied people when i

see them operating

from ways that are ableist but i don’t

think we have to be bound

to the binary in this particular

situation

i think there are other options we could

do and i

propose that we should all spend a

little bit more time

calling on now we know now that our

amygdala is likely to be activated

whether we’re called in or called out

why because your amygdala is your

business

we are responsible for the responses and

perceptions that we have

and whether the other person has the

best or worst intentions

is likely to matter little if we don’t

have

any practice in slowing our threat

response

taking a deep breath and responding

based on

all of the information that we have

present after all

having your amygdala activated isn’t all

that bad

if you can have a productive exchange in

this time

it actually builds brain resilience

which is the seat of

innovation and good ideas when we

call on each other we return the

responsibility

of rectifying harm back to its rightful

owners

i don’t have to publicly berate you nor

do i have to nuzzle you to my bosom and

carry you gently to enlightenment

i can share with you how you harmed me

and what you did

and entrust you with the work needed to

repair that harm

and hopefully to do a bit less harm in

the future

i can call on you to learn better and do

better

we live in an age where literally most

of us have the entirety

of human knowledge tucked into our back

pockets at any given moment there is no

intersection of

identity or experience in the world that

someone has not written a book about

blogged about podcasted or youtubed

the information is out there we can

learn

what we did and why it might have caused

some offense

we have the ability to figure it out

when we’re called

on we’re being trusted that we desire to

be

in right relationship with other human

beings on the planet

when we can name that we have been

harmed

and we can be accountable to the harm

that we cause

and we can do that by choice not by

force

or by hand holding but simply by

desiring

to be better human beings to other human

beings

we can call on each other and so i’m

calling on each of us

to step into the possibility of doing a

bit more calling

on in our lives thanks