shira hassan
29 06 2008NL: Do you believe that locating struggles in the body is an effective way of uniting people into a larger movement?
SH: Yes. Unfortunately, what I most often witness is people’s trauma around their bodies getting in the way of uniting. As queers, as fat people, as people with disabilities, as people of color, we have often located so much of our pain in our bodies. We internalize so much anger, we get sick from it and throw up walls and make divisions. I get inspired when I see the connections made on an individual level. But on a larger scale I don’t really see it happening yet.I think there are two main obstacles: 1) Most of us spend a lot of time outside of our bodies. I’m not sure how many people are willing to get into their bodies in the way it would require in order for this kind of movement to build. Phat Camp was an amazing place to witness people going through this. They come in with their brains in a tizzy, wondering “What is empowerment? What is self-acceptance?” and then they realize we don’t want their brains to do the work—we want to go to a deeper place. A place where all of our bodies are unified in the struggle to be whole and real.
2) People who don’t have to think about their power usually don’t. Sometimes I wonder if we can really build anything effectively without figuring out how to cross over and get people to examine their privilege. There is so much mythology about health and wellness, that it’s hard for me to picture having a deep moment with someone who more than anything believes I just need to lose weight. Even if we agree that the prison system needs to end and Bush is a motherfucker.
I see the goal of all work like this to be community building, healing, and revolution. In that order.
LF: Part of what I appreciate so much about this roundtable is being able to listen to and learn from activists who have taken this approach. Some people like to argue for unity on the basis that we all have the same experience—for me that just plants landmines that are going to blow up later. In my activism and my travels, I’ve been able to work with so many different types of people, which teaches me to appreciate our differences and recognize the burdens that people are forced to carry. This helps me learn about what it is to be a human being and break out of the isolation that’s been imposed on me as a transperson. GF: I taught a group of young girls of color last weekend, ages 9 to 12. They’re African-American and Latina. At least one of them had starved herself from the age of nine. We talked about how they wanted to create new magazines and images of beauty. I asked them how this conversation related to self-defense and violence-prevention. One girl said, “You have to know your life is worth something before you can fight to save it.” Others talked about their belief that one can’t work for justice in any community without starting from a place of self-love, or at least working toward that.
Shira talked about the challenge of people being wounded and in pain. Open acknowledgment of those wounds and the survivorship skills associated with them can help individuals to heal, and can be something that brings communities and movements together. We have to be aware, though, of the danger of only identifying through our pain—it can easily be diverted into an investment in a hierarchy of oppression.
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