#there is no irrefutable answer
So it’s relatively easy to say #metoo, blm, that you believe survivors, that you stand against police brutality and white supremacy. I’m glad that people get to that point, and understand the importance of those ideas, but affirming them isn’t the hard part.
The hard part is when actual situations come up. Someone you call a friend is accused of sexual assault, a person of color receives a harsher sentence than they would have if they were white. Another person dies in another shooting; It’s now your child or parent or sibling who needs to make a decision about whether or not to have an abortion; someone you admire is in a vicious and complex legal battle with their ex-spouse.
Life is complicated and people aren’t only good or only bad, and sometimes equity means something to you that feels like inconvenience. Just because you don’t like someone who has reported sexual assault doesn’t mean they weren’t sexually assaulted. Just because you’ve never personally done anything that you yourself consider “racist” doesn’t mean you haven’t unconsciously contributed to white supremacy.
This is it y’all, these are the tests. These are the moments where you can prove that you’re actually hearing yourself when you say #metoo and Black Lives Matter. These situations where there are multiple points of view, multiple actors with a spectrum of feelings and interests in a situation, where it’s impossible to know the truth for sure, where there is no evidence that can give you peace of mind to confirm the victory/innocence of someone you like, or the person you WANT to believe.
Just be trauma-informed. Remember that bad things can happen to anyone, but also that there are systems of power and privilege in place that should always be the POUND of salt you consider before you decide to hate someone because you want them to be lying, or you want to keep hating them. It’s okay to see more than one perspective, and it’s okay to refrain from inserting yourself and your opinion into a situation about which you know no more than any other uninvolved person, especially if you find you’re having a hard time holding to these principles.
Just think for a second, about privilege and how it shapes everything around us, and bear that in mind rather than jumping into the cycle of hatred and refusing to listen in which we find ourselves as a society time and again.
