Letting Marginalized Groups Speak for Themselves

I have a lot of privilege. I recognize this about myself.

I am white - very white, actually, with blonde hair and blue eyes. In high school, other people sometimes described me as Aryan. (I assumed they meant to imply that if I had lived in Nazi Germany, I would have so perfectly fit the description Hitler wanted for his new master race that not only would I have been spared, but possibly celebrated and married off to some prominent Nazi official in need of a respectable looking wife or something. The way they said it made it seem like a compliment, but it was a very strange compliment, and made me a little uncomfortable.) My point is - I could never pass for anything but white. I am so white that even among white people my whiteness is "fascinating" (or possibly intimidating). I have no way to fathom what it actually feels like to be a person of color in this country, because so much of my life experience has been that of white privilege. I can try to empathize, but there is no way I will actually ever understand.

I am female. And while this means I lack male privilege, I do still have cisgender privilege. My body and gender identity match. I also conform to many female appearance stereotypes - my hair is long, my fingernails are long and sometimes painted, and I often wear dresses and skirts, earrings and necklaces. I've never been misgendered. I can't truly understand how it would feel to have a disconnect between who I wanted to be and who I looked like on the outside.

I am straight. I am married to a white man. I never had to come out to my family or friends, or felt ostracized from my religion because of my sexual preferences, or had a stranger make incorrect assumptions about my sexual orientation, or felt that my relationship with my husband was somehow unacceptable or morally wrong. I'll never really know what it's like to be gay, bi/pansexual, or asexual.

I was raised Christian in a Christian-majority nation. My religion's holidays matched the school calendar. I was exposed to the traditions and cultural practices that remain entrenched in American society - and it was never required of me to learn any others. Though I chose to step away from Christian beliefs as I grew up, I still have that outward Christian privilege to fall back on if I chose to - unless I specifically admit that I don't believe in God and would rather identify as atheist, no one would know or assume that about me. I don't really know what it's like to belong to a different religion, a religion without privilege (though I've seen some glimpses, working as a graphic designer at a large Reform Jewish synagogue).

I grew up in a middle class family. I have never known real poverty. Even when my dad was unemployed for 15 months during the recession, I never really wanted for material things. Throughout my life, educational resources were readily available to me if I wanted them. I went to a local state school, was lucky enough to get scholarships and have a lot of my expenses paid for by family members and my (very) part-time jobs, and graduated with virtually no student loans. I'm 28 years old and my husband and I became homeowners five years ago. I don't know what it's like to lack class privilege. Even when it felt like maybe I didn't have it growing up, I really did. I've always had it, and still do.

I'm also healthy (relatively so). I look healthy from the outside. I have poor eyesight, so I wear corrective glasses - but there is no real stigma attached to wearing glasses, so that's irrelevant. And no one could guess any other chronic ailments I might have - unless I told them - because they are not noticeable, nor significant enough to impact my day to day life. I do a lot of preventive behaviors to keep the threat of LADA at bay (latent autoimmune diabetes in adults), because my glucose is slightly elevated. But it's never really been bad enough to be even officially labeled "diabetes," let alone impact my life much. And any mental health/emotional issues I'm working through also don't outwardly influence my daily functionality. I have ability privilege, and have no idea what it's really like to be discriminated against based on my ability (or appearance of my ability).

My point is that I'm not exactly an ideal candidate to talk about a lot of these issues - race, gender, sexuality, religion, class and ability - which I just spent several months addressing with colored pencil drawings and blog posts. I want to use my privilege to draw attention to these topics that warrant discussion, if I can. But I also want to be careful not to speak for these oppressed groups. I don't want my voice to drown out theirs, and I don't want to presume to know their experiences or what the best steps would be to help them moving forward.

This is perhaps the most difficult thing privileged people like myself face in trying to help the unprivileged. We want to help - but often don't quite know how to help. We spend so much time patting ourselves on the back for taking on liberal causes or doing good in the world that we neglect to recognize that we've painted ourselves as "savior" figures. Marginalized groups don't need us to "save" them - they just need us to shut up and listen. It shouldn't be up to us to give them more rights; it is instead our job to support them and help draw attention to their cause from the sidelines while they take the rights they deserve. We are meant to be allies, not leaders.

Marginalized means they have been relegated to the margins. It's our turn to stand in the margins instead, and allow oppressed groups an opportunity to assert their own voice.

I feel a bit like a fraud when I start talking about politics or social issues too much. I'm not an expert. I barely even follow details of what is going on in the world. (To be honest, there's just been too much bad news lately that it's been overwhelming. And I'm lucky enough that I have the privilege to tune all that shit out when it overwhelms me. But that is another discussion for another time.)

It is precisely this reason that my message in this "Stronger Together" series is so vague. My drawings celebrate the differences found in humanity and show a symbolic floral arrangement in which all flowers (all people) have equal weight in filling out a bouquet - regardless of race, gender, sexuality, religion, social class, or ability. It is a hopeful idea that could have just as easily been drawn a hundred years ago or a hundred years in the future as drawn today. It doesn't reference specific topical events, and it doesn't try to speak for marginalized groups. It just showcases a utopia in which all people have their own equal voices with which to speak.

It tells people where I stand - on the side of tolerance and love and acceptance, on the side of allies, on the side of hope for a better tomorrow - without presuming that I have any real answers, without taking a clear leadership role, and without even referencing many specifics. Maybe this isn't enough; maybe as an ally I could have done more. But this is where I'm at in my journey right now. I am erring on the side of Not Doing Enough out of concern for overstepping. This is the extent that I feel capable of.

I do feel more qualified to talk about gender and religion, because these are areas that I feel I have more personal experience in. I don't have male privilege and never have, and I gave up Christianity to label myself an Atheist (an Atheist who married into a Jewish family, an Atheist who works at a Reform Jewish synagogue), so I don't have as much religious privilege anymore either. I can more comfortably talk about these issues and state where the problems lie - because I've witnessed them myself and because I am one of the marginalized who deserve to have their voices heard.

But even here, I often want to step aside to let those with intersectional oppression speak. I can only speak to my experience as a white, cisgendered, straight woman; women who are black or gay or transgendered (or all of the above) face much greater oppression than anything I've lived through.

All humans suffer sometimes. But not all suffering is created equally.

I hope that my "Stronger Together" drawings are adequate at straddling that line - the line between speaking up but not shouting over those less privileged than me; the line between wanting to do something, or say something, but not knowing exactly what to do or say. I hope that their vagueness allow more people to find resonance in them. Often, the more we get into specifics, the more we start to disagree. I am hoping that despite where we are on the political spectrum, or what life experiences we've had, or what privilege we've been granted or oppression we've endured, we can all agree in this very basic premise:

Humans - ALL humans - deserve respect, love, acceptance, acknowledgement, tolerance, and to have their voices heard.

Especially those who have traditionally been denied such things, who have a lack that needs to be filled.