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The fifteenth and final challenge for this year asks us to create our own challenge. The additional text is a bit tongue-in-cheek to start before settling into describing what's desired.
So I guess I land in a space where the challenges I might give sound trite and cliché. Perhaps because they are small, seemingly doable, possibly even easy, and yet we don't do them as consistently as we might want to, or as we might want others to. (So maybe they are more of a challenge than they could be.)
Make art from your own experiences. Include people whose experiences are different in your art and portrayals. Do the research on different experiences from people whose experience it is. If you can't find it, or they refuse you, find something else. Try to consume a lot more art from people who are creating their own experiences than from people who aren't. Recommend the good stuff for everyone to enjoy. (If you can't find enough good stuff, examine in yourself why you think that. Then expand your horizons or change your assumptions.) Leave good comments for the creator, if you can.
When you mess up, own up to it, apologize for it, and repair the damage, if you can. (For all those things, remember ring theory, and that if you've messed up, you're not the center of the rings.) Talk frankly with your own circles when someone in those circles messes up. Figure out what you can learn from their mistakes, and change accordingly.
Believe marginalized people. Even when their experience is different than yours. Especially when their experience is different than yours. Understand that marginalization on one axis doesn't mean marginalization on all axes, and that the intersection of where someone is with regard to their marginalizations and privileges is almost certainly unique to them. Recognize the interactions between those axes means all sorts of things, where someone can be right for their experience and wrong for everyone else's in the same sentence.
Call people by the names, pronouns, and forms of address that they have chosen for themselves. If your systems cannot accommodate these things, demand and/or make better systems that can, because identity is one of the fundamental things that humans need.
Take care of yourself as well as others. The terrible truth is that no single person can be everything to everyone, can fight perfectly on all fronts, and have endless energy to keep that combat going perpetually. Make decisions based on your ability, your affinity, and your desires. Maybe the way you make the world a better place is not through carrying signs and speaking loudly, but through sharing your resources, providing rest and support, persistently pestering the people who supposedly represent you to do a far better job of it, and/or creating art that helps people understand and be seen. (Or maybe you carry signs and punch fascists. That's also cool.)
These are the small things that are huge, the things that are simple and complicated, that can be adopted immediately and that will take a lifetime of work to achieve. These are presented in the form of the lies we tell children so they look achievable, so we can be prepared for the bigger lies, the ones we must believe as noble truths.
If you must blink, do it now.
In the 1970s, educator Arleen Lorrance wrote, "Be the change you want to see happen." Which is all well and good, but personally I think one ought to get one's friends to be the change you want to see happen.( Everything I needed to know about Snowflake I learned on the playground… )
[Challenge Text]
This can be big or small; strictly fannish or extending across all aspects of life; a challenge you saw someone else do, or that used to run and you miss, or something you have thought up just now, or something you yourself are already doing. Earnest, silly, fun, all three! Send us off into the rest of the year by challenging us all to give it a go.
So I guess I land in a space where the challenges I might give sound trite and cliché. Perhaps because they are small, seemingly doable, possibly even easy, and yet we don't do them as consistently as we might want to, or as we might want others to. (So maybe they are more of a challenge than they could be.)
Make art from your own experiences. Include people whose experiences are different in your art and portrayals. Do the research on different experiences from people whose experience it is. If you can't find it, or they refuse you, find something else. Try to consume a lot more art from people who are creating their own experiences than from people who aren't. Recommend the good stuff for everyone to enjoy. (If you can't find enough good stuff, examine in yourself why you think that. Then expand your horizons or change your assumptions.) Leave good comments for the creator, if you can.
When you mess up, own up to it, apologize for it, and repair the damage, if you can. (For all those things, remember ring theory, and that if you've messed up, you're not the center of the rings.) Talk frankly with your own circles when someone in those circles messes up. Figure out what you can learn from their mistakes, and change accordingly.
Believe marginalized people. Even when their experience is different than yours. Especially when their experience is different than yours. Understand that marginalization on one axis doesn't mean marginalization on all axes, and that the intersection of where someone is with regard to their marginalizations and privileges is almost certainly unique to them. Recognize the interactions between those axes means all sorts of things, where someone can be right for their experience and wrong for everyone else's in the same sentence.
Call people by the names, pronouns, and forms of address that they have chosen for themselves. If your systems cannot accommodate these things, demand and/or make better systems that can, because identity is one of the fundamental things that humans need.
Take care of yourself as well as others. The terrible truth is that no single person can be everything to everyone, can fight perfectly on all fronts, and have endless energy to keep that combat going perpetually. Make decisions based on your ability, your affinity, and your desires. Maybe the way you make the world a better place is not through carrying signs and speaking loudly, but through sharing your resources, providing rest and support, persistently pestering the people who supposedly represent you to do a far better job of it, and/or creating art that helps people understand and be seen. (Or maybe you carry signs and punch fascists. That's also cool.)
These are the small things that are huge, the things that are simple and complicated, that can be adopted immediately and that will take a lifetime of work to achieve. These are presented in the form of the lies we tell children so they look achievable, so we can be prepared for the bigger lies, the ones we must believe as noble truths.
If you must blink, do it now.
