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