signal boost: Gwen Benaway's Deep Dive into Interpersonal/Community Repair

[jesse_the_k]

GwenBenaway is a trans girl, Annishinabe/Mètis writer, and poet who just won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Holy Wild

Her essay on calling in, calling out, finding justice and repairing the ways we hurt each other is very thought provoking. It includes graphic details of child abuse, child-welfare-agencies and transmisia, which is why I’ve quoted so much here

Repair

I wonder if the ways that we weaponize social justice language against each other is related to the experiences of profound powerlessness that we’ve had to endure. Many of us have never been able to heal from the deprivations of our childhoods. Being able to rationalize why someone is bad and deserves to be punished is a way to reclaim power in a world that actively disempowers us. I’m not suggesting, as some alt-right folks have done, that the work of naming or critiquing systems of oppression is wrong nor am I suggesting that we need to be more civil. I believe strongly in resistance to state violence and oppression as a necessary condition of our survival.

[… snip …]

I am interested in expanding our collective emotional awareness about how our traumas, ongoing and past, inform the ways that we engage in the work of advocacy and justice. What does it mean to acknowledge that many of us never had safe spaces to learn how to process complex emotions or manage intense conflict without relying on our fight or flight responses? How can we love ourselves and others while still holding everyone accountable to the values of liberation? I don’t have perfect answers to these questions, but I still want to ask them.

​ [… snip …]

Unlike punishment, repair is uncertain. It relies on asking questions and listening to the answers. It asks us to hold competing claims to harm equally, using our empathy and intelligence to look for a shared understanding. There are no rigid criteria for rightness, no algebra of oppression to add up, and no easy formula for deciding what should happen. Repair relies on the social space of our relationships to each other rather than an institution or a jury of onlookers. It is outside of the nation state and can’t be reduced into a simple list of instructions.

Repair says that we don’t have to be perfect to deserve love. We can make mistakes with each other. We can take risks.

While a knife can save your life, repair can make that life worth living.

​ [… snip …]

What would it mean if we said “I’m sorry” more to each other? If we were braver to face injustice, not just the injustice that we experience but the injustice that we do to others? If we made space for everyone to be held in their precarity: victims, perpetuators, and bystanders?