As Kundan Chhabra shares, there are seven forms of labor, and all need to be acknowledged so we can better understand how much work we are doing and asking of others, especially queer and trans Black and Indigenous women and femmes. These are:
emotional
intellectual
mental
spiritual
environmental
relational
mitochondrial21
For example, asking Black women+ to educate you on anti-oppression is asking for emotional, intellectual, spiritual, mental, and relational labor (and sometimes all seven forms). Labor is labor, and asking others to work for free, without some form of energy exchange, perpetuates white supremacy, the systemic oppression of Black women+, and our ability to thrive financially and otherwise. The status quo expectation is that it is my duty to share my labor at zero cost, and because of internalized oppression, many Black women+ buy into this bullshit too. I am routinely asked by white folx to work for free, including by multimillion-dollar corporations. But Black women+ also frequently expect me to provide unremunerated time, energy, and labor. When we are conditioned to undervalue ourselves and give away our gifts for free, we expect the same in return. Well, I’m not here for it. I do not engage in the exploitation of time, energy, or labor (emotional or otherwise) of Black folx, especially Black women or femmes. An energy exchange does not require capital. In a feminine economy we can equitably exchange more and in more ways. Valuing myself is a counter-capitalist, pro-Black act of resistance.
A recent report found the global unpaid labor provided by women equated to $10.9 trillion in 2019, exceeding the combined revenue of the fifty largest companies on the Fortune Global 500 list.22 American women spend an average of 4 hours per day on unpaid labor like caring for children or the elderly, while American men spend only 2.5 hours daily.23 In order to achieve equity for all, we need to reenvision work and success from the inside out.
The feminine economy suggests focusing on integrity, honesty, care, generosity, collaboration, sustainability, mindfulness, and abundance. This should also include and prioritize equity (i.e., anti-oppression).24 Operating from the divine feminine, rather than the toxic masculinity required to uphold white supremacy, would mean prioritizing people over profits, honoring our interconnectedness with nature as well as one another, and fostering communal over individual welfare. We would work less and recognize and remunerate the unpaid labor of all women and femmes. Working less means consuming less and caring for the planet more. It also means we are more equipped to withstand economic crises and global pandemics. All of this would create a more connected, leisurely, and equitable workforce and world for everyone, especially queer and trans Black women and femmes who bear the bulk of the burden of additional and unpaid labor. Change is needed, and it is needed now. Queer and trans Black and Indigenous women and femmes are owed our pay. Pay us money, pay us respect. Pay us, period!
Spiritual Soulcare Offering/Call to Action
Waking Up the Workplace
Review the below checklist of suggested ways for you to actively create more inclusive spaces and opportunities for queer and trans Black and Indigenous women and femmes at work. As always, most of these suggestions can also be applied to folx of other or additional marginalized identities as well. If you do not have queer or trans Black and Indigenous women or femmes in your workplace, question why that is and use the below as offerings for improving your workplace. When you’re done, write out a personal action plan for incorporating at least two to three applicable suggestions for you to commit to at work, ideally in the next ninety days (and if you have sufficient power or privilege in your workplace, share and implement recommendations with your colleagues and managers). Many thanks to McKensie Mack and Raquel Willis for sharing and/or inspiring some of these offerings:25
Help ensure all queer and trans Black and Indigenous women+ are adequately remunerated for our time and energy/emotional labor expended at work, whether work-related or not. Whether it’s a podcast interview, workshop, article, or piece of art. At a minimum, offer an honorarium. Remuneration need not be fiscal, but it must be aligned and sufficiently supportive for the people in question. “Exposure” doesn’t count.
Apportion a percentage of all profits to queer and trans Black and Indigenous folx as an ongoing rule (without using it as a marketing ploy).
If your businesses is based on practices or wisdom from a BI&PoC community/culture (like yoga), apportion a large percentage of all profits to that community (again, without using it as a marketing ploy).
Hire and recommend us, especially for leadership and managerial positions (ensure you have at least two trans or queer Black or Indigenous folx in your executive).
Team up with reputable organizations to support workplace training for us within your business or company.
Research businesses owned and operated by us and request your workplace support them as much as possible (hire Black- or Indigenous-owned suppliers, affiliates, designers, caterers, tech support, engineers, etc.).
Learn how to properly pronounce everyone’s names and learn their pronouns (and always share your own). Check in to confirm you have them correct.
Eliminate the use of Black American music in the workplace if the workplace, and everyone in it, is not actively and regularly countering anti-Blackness. In any event, do not permit the use of songs containing the N-word.
Ensure your workplace and work platforms are accessible for all abilities.
Take time to get to know us as people and don’t confuse us with one another.
If we accuse you of being discriminatory at work, listen. Express gratitude for our bravery in telling you and take time to process what was shared. Then apologize and put together an action plan to rectify the harm you’ve caused and prevent harm moving forward. Do not ask for additional unpaid labor from us to assist you.
Check if we are tasked with the majority of “office housework” and take necessary action to reassign those tasks wherever possible.
Hold accountable any colleague, manager, etc. who openly or covertly oppresses anyone for any reason.
Demand a clear and inclusive anti-discrimination and anti-harassment work policy with tangible and actionable steps and full accountability if/when oppression arises.
Act in allyship with us both inside and outside of work.
Acknowledge and value our work, giving credit whenever it’s due.
Implement gender-neutral bathrooms.
Provide generous health insurance for all staff and contractors, specifically ensuring trans Black and Indigenous folx have access to the health care they need.
Demand an action plan for hiring, retaining, and promoting us, including an action plan for getting the workplace and everyone in it to partake in intersectional anti-oppression training led by a queer or trans Black or Indigenous racial justice educator.
NOW, WRITE DOWN TWO TO THREE ADDITIONAL ACTIONS YOU WILL TAKE TO CREATE MORE INCLUSIVITY FOR QUEER AND TRANS BLACK AND INDIGENOUS WOMEN+ (AND/OR OTHER OPPRESSED IDENTITIES) SPECIFIC TO YOU AND/OR YOUR WORKPLACE (REMOTE AND/OR IRL):
TO MY QUEER AND TRANS BLACK AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLES AND OTHERWISE OPPRESSED FOLX, BELOW ARE SOME TOOLS TO CONSIDER HOW TO MOVE FORWARD IF, BUT MORE LIKE WHEN, YOU ENCOUNTER EMOTIONAL OR OTHER VIOLENCE AT WORK:
Identify if there is someone you trust to act in allyship with you regarding this issue and, if so, discuss it with them.
To the extent possible, prioritize your comfort (and not the oppressor’s comfort) regarding how and when to address the issue. Proceed however is going to feel best and right for you (with the understanding that you may not be able to, given that we rely on work to pay our bills).
If it feels sufficiently safe (and/or you’re done giving fucks), make a clear request. For example: This is what happened, this is why it is not okay, and this is what I require from you/management in order to fix it.
Shower yourself in compassion no matter what. Whether you sp
eak up is mostly about what power and privilege you possess (or do not) and whether you work in a sufficiently safe environment (which most oppressed folx don’t!). You deserve to feel safe and valued in all spaces, work included.
Lean into your community for support. If you are currently without Earthly community, lean into energetic community (like communing with your ancestors, guides, or Spirit).
EIGHTEEN
Becoming Unfuckwithable
Sometimes people try to destroy you precisely because they recognize your power—not because they don’t see it, but because they see it and they don’t want it to exist.
—BELL HOOKS, REEL TO REAL: RACE, CLASS AND SEX AT THE MOVIES
As a Black woman, prioritizing my joy and well-being in a world made by and for whiteness is a deeply political and revolutionary act. Honoring my anger, connecting with Spirit, and practicing culturally informed spiritual offerings have helped me affirm my power and speak truth to the atrocities of this world to help change them. Becoming unfuckwithable* means showing yourself compassion, while refusing to take shit from people resigned to the status quo. It is neither your job nor your business to change others. But it is your and our collective responsibility to call others in. To provide them with the invitation to change, grow, and evolve as you do the inner work to change, grow, and evolve yourself. And it is absolutely on us to set firm boundaries for what we will and will not accept (and therefore whom) in the quest for racial justice. We can have compassion for who and where people are and still call them in to do and be better. In fact, holding people accountable to do the work required to overcome oppression and call themselves in to their highest self is the purest form of compassion.
We are all needed in this fight to dismantle white supremacy. You are needed. Becoming unfuckwithable by leaning into your power, expressing your loving anger, and spending your privilege is how we can help extinguish the hot global mess we currently live in.
GIVING UP WHITE COMFORT
After all the years of racialized harm, of feeling ostracized, internalizing my own oppression, and believing I was problematic rather than the white supremacist systems around me (and those upholding them), I finally had space and capacity to address the harms head-on after the death of my mom. I stopped prioritizing white comfort and instead centered myself and Black and Indigenous women+. The audacity! Folx did not like it. It was and continues to be an incredibly painful and liberating process of releasing the people, places, and things that do not serve my highest good or prioritize the comfort, truth, and experiences of Black and Indigenous women+. Fighting to dismantle white supremacy can be a lonely path, but it is my deepest belief that we are all being beckoned to use our personal privileges and to claim our power to dismantle all systems of oppression, everywhere, forever. And that takes courage. And strength. And resillience. It requires an air of unfuckwithableness. This doesn’t mean you don’t care or won’t feel. On the contrary, your unfuckwithableness is sourced from a deep and omnipotent care, particularly for the most marginalized. It is born from feeling deeply, and that is why you are so committed to doing what needs to be done to help heal the collective.
Becoming unfuckwithable compels us to address all the ways we get stuck (remember those?). The need to be good and right, centering the white gaze, people pleasing, refusing to face our shadow, etc. Below I set out the key elements to your becoming unfuckwithable so you can best champion racial justice both in your personal life and out in the world.
#1—Practice Wise Compassion & Discernment
The first element to becoming unfuckwithable is wise compassion. Both for ourselves as well as others, ideally at the same time. Wise compassion allows us to explore, identify, and hold space for our needs while also honoring the needs of others. Your needs for justice, acceptance, peace, love, and liberation deserve to be honored, and they will absolutely come up against other people’s needs. Recognizing and asking for what we need is some of the hardest shit we can ever do! I struggle with this in a big way, but I have come to learn how declaring my needs is a compassionate act that honors my highest self, tends to my wounded inner child, and allows those in my life to fully show up, which is a gift to us all. The more I claim my needs, the more I allow others to claim theirs, and the more I am capable of meeting both. Including my need to forgive myself for the harms I have caused and those I permitted to be caused against me.
Wise compassion necessitates discernment, which is less of a mental practice and more of a remembering and reacquainting with our deepest source of knowledge: our intuition. Your truth/intuition/gut feeling, and a critical analysis of any biases or traumas that may be present within it, can create the foundations for discerning how and when is best to act in a manner that shows compassion for you as well as others, particularly the oppressed. Practicing wise compassion and discernment in the name of racial justice is also a practice of disconnecting from collective fear and releasing the need to people please. Others will be disappointed, if not downright outraged, by what it is you need and your choice to affirm what you believe in, and you will compassionately discern if, how, and when to continue engaging with such folx moving forward. Which brings us to the next element of becoming unfuckwithable—boundaries!
#2—Set Boundaries & Embrace Loving Anger
Setting clear boundaries for both yourself as well as others is a nonnegotiable when it comes to embracing unfuckwithableness and affirming your acts of allyship in the name of racial justice. The deeper I dove into my own racial justice journey the more I found had to change. I was evolving on every level, and the people, places, and things surrounding me needed to evolve as well or they would continue causing myself and others harm. And that was no longer acceptable. When I began setting my boundaries, I was scared shitless. My entire life had been about prioritizing the needs of others before my own and doing my best to find acceptance despite my differences. As family therapist Silvy Khoucasian says, “Not having boundaries is a way of enabling people to do us harm because we are afraid of conflict or disconnection.”1 When I began embracing my loving anger, voicing my truth, and allowing others to meet me, or not, it didn’t go so hot. White people abandoned me for declaring my needs and refusing to tolerate oppressive behaviors. When I told my father that I needed him to speak to me with kindness and acknowledge his role as my parent in order for our relationship to continue, he called me a “fucking bully” (ironic, really, given my ask).
These responses were partly a result of having gone so long without having set any boundaries for the people in my life, and also in part because of the people I allowed in my life as a result of having not set them. Those who get the most upset by your boundaries are usually the ones who most benefited from you not having any. The responses from my friends and family were also because, after a lifetime of not speaking my truth, finally doing so was very charged. I am the first to admit I have communicated violently, and I’ve done my best to rectify harms caused and do better moving forward. A big piece of this is claiming my needs, expressing my loving anger, and setting boundaries early on and without apology. This way I am less in my own feelings when I do so, and it allows me to move from a place of more compassion for myself and others, as well as my needs (whether someone can meet them or not).
Real talk: setting boundaries means some folx will no longer wanna fuck with you. Maybe a lot of folx. We live in a culture that perpetuates conflict avoidance, fitting in over belonging, and inauthenticity. But you will like yourself more, and the connections and acts of allyship you will be able to undertake will be deeper and more meaningful. Setting boundaries for yourself means you can be with the truth that you aren’t too much. That you are worthy of your needs. That there are many who won’t be able to meet them and that changes nothing about who you are, so you feel empowered to get clear with folx however and whenever necessary. If people in your life are causing harm and refuse to stop, it is on you to take action. Especially when we hold power and privilege to do so. How other
s respond is more about their commitment to oppressive systems than it is about you. As entrepreneur and editor Doreen Caven says, “Prepare to be called a bully for interrupting societally approved behavior that is oppressive to others”2 (sometimes by your own dad). Still, we can compassionately release people, things, and situations in a proactive, authentic way communicated nonviolently, rather than a reactive (often charged and potentially violent) one. Setting boundaries does not require making anyone bad or wrong, yourself included. There is a difference between reacting and moving away. Practice saying no. Without apology, without justification. Say no to oppressive others in order to say yes to you.
Boundaries allow us to stop carrying burdens for or trying to fix others. I haven’t spoken to my father in six years, and though I wish we could have a loving relationship, I am affirmed in knowing I was clear in sharing my needs and refusing to be abused any longer. Same goes for the violent and anti-Black folx I once called friends. Sometimes moving forward with racial justice is impossible because we are trying to bring along those who cannot be part of the journey. Boundaries protect us, they help educate and call in others, and they help us to create more relationships and opportunities that serve our deepest needs, including those aligned with racial justice.
#3—Accountable Action
Becoming unfuckwithable also requires accountable action. Meaning we take action to hold others accountable and, perhaps more important, to ensure we hold ourselves accountable as well. Acting in allyship and committing to ending oppression mean we must act, and taking action means we will at some point or another fuck it up. Owning our mistakes, knowing it doesn’t make us wrong or bad, is key. We have no right to call others into this work or demand their accountability if we are not doing the same ourselves. That would be an act of oppression, and we ain’t here for it!
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