Noticing...
A guide to divesting from oppressive systems
I click on an article that opens with a line about a television producer who creates the kind of men that women love. In my head, without thinking about it, I change the language. I modify it for clarity: Straight women. Bisexual and straight women. Women who are attracted to men.
I add what was assumed by the writer of the article, and all the straight people who read it. I add this because, as a queer gender-non-conforming woman, I can’t help but notice how a majority of things I read about what women like and how women behave and what women believe and what matters to women, don’t apply to me. Because of my queerness being “other” to the status quo, my brain automatically inserts qualifications that are usually assumed: Cis women. Straight women. Femme women. Women who want children.
Language matters to me.
Language both constructs and upholds the things we believe about different human embodiments. I want to be aware of what is assumed within a single word. I want to name the categories that go unnamed, like white and straight and cis and abled and allo1.
I set the intention to notice because that is part of the work of dismantling oppressive systems.
When I was eighteen someone pointed out to me that saying, “There is only one race, the human race”2, skips over the work we have to do to actually address racism. Racism may be a construct, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Racism is a construct with teeth. If someone doesn’t notice racism, it’s not because it isn’t there, but because that person has been brought up to bare its fangs rather than receive its bite.
When I was twenty-six the charity I was working at hired a (straight white cis) man, a recent college graduate with no professional experience, at a starting salary 5k more than I was making. I had eight years experience in the field, a perfect employment record, and I had tripled the fundraising income of the charity in my first year of employment. The CEO denied me a raise because I was ‘unskilled’. I continue to wonder if unskilled was code for queer, a woman, gender non-conforming, not a college graduate, or any combination of the above.
By the time I turned thirty, I would always notice that when a brown person commits a violent act they are called a terrorist but when a white man commits a mass shooting (which overwhelming white men are responsible for) he is called a ‘lone-wolf’ with ‘mental illness’ who was ‘just having a bad day.’
I notice because I’ve been asked to.
I did not always have the skill of noticing racism that I have for noticing homophobia and heteronormativity.
I didn’t encounter the term ‘racism’ until I was twelve and I didn’t understand the word until my mum explained it to me. I’m aware that most Black kids in the US (and probably also Canada) get what is called ‘the talk’ by the time they are five.3 This is their parents’ attempt to protect and prepare them for the systemic racism that will impact their lives every single day, a system that could result in their death simply for being Black in public.
This is white supremacy at work. If whiteness is the default then it isn’t a racialised category. If you don’t think of yourself as a racialised group, why would you notice racism?
It is in the service of white supremacy for white people to not notice the passes we get, the ways in which we are allowed to fuck up and fail without it being attributed to everyone of our race. We do not risk violent retribution for our mistakes and missteps or when we violate social contracts. Whiteness is to be given the benefit of the doubt and that is power when the alternative can be incarceration or death.
I want us to be free of oppression and we don’t get there with platitudes about a single, unified human race. It’s not enough to simply treat everyone equally when everyone is not equal under the oppressive systems that currently influence every single aspect of society.
I notice because noticing shows me the different ways bias functions and is reinforced.
The biases that feed white supremacy, heteropatriarchy4 and ableism, are the self-same biases that give a pass to anyone who is white, straight, cis, and abled. These biases run deep and they are constantly in need of being noticed in order to counteract them.
Bias is not inherently negative; bias can be neutral, negative and positive. Gaydar is a positive bias that serves me in finding my queer kin. Threat model biases for white cis men are a helpful because they protect me from harm.5
There is no equivalency to a bias that teaches me to be wary of white men and a bias that teaches me to be wary of Black men. I am a greater threat to a Black man than he can ever be to me because society favours my whiteness and womanhood, whether I personally identify as a woman or not.
We live in a culture in which white womanhood is regularly weaponized against Black men.6 We also live in a culture where a white cis man can be credibly accused of sexual assault and be elected to President, incite a white supremacist coup, and face barely any consequences.7
I notice because white supremacy is constantly asserting itself and therefore must be constantly challenged.
Where I definitely notice the barriers I face as a queer person, I have to be deliberate when noticing the lack of barriers I face because of whiteness.
Going through the immigration process in the UK took a month less than the estimate I was given, almost certainly because I’m white and English is my first (and only) language. Renting and buying a house doesn’t come with extra charges or hoops to jump through. I can look to live in any neighbourhood I want and not be discouraged from living there by a racist community or homeowner’s association policy and those who enforce them. No one questions whether I should be in any particular public space. Driving or walking around in an unfamiliar neighbourhood is a non-event for me. I have never been harassed by the cops and store security stopped trailing me once I was no longer a teenager.
Most of these things I would never have thought about if I hadn’t learned to notice thanks to multiple resources. I listen to and believe my Black, brown, and Asian friends when they tell stories of white people harassing them simply for being in public. I read books about the systemic ways racism functions and make a point of noticing how easily I can navigate those systems because they were built to let me in and keep BIPoC folks out. I consume media of all kinds with protagonists who do not look like me and start to understand the subtle, constant assertion of white supremacy in the casual use of language.
I notice because false equivalencies prevent us from changing the culture.
It is a lot of work to notice when the system is one that benefits us. Because it’s so hard to notice the barriers I don’t face as a white person, it feels good when I do. I get excited when I notice the noticing. I share it with others because it challenges the power of white supremacy to name it when we see it, especially when we are white.
I notice too, when someone questions what I’ve noticed and pushes back, it’s almost always because I’ve named both whiteness and patriarchy. I have been cautioned to not ‘swing too hard the other way’ for pointing out when a white cis man gets a pass for behaviour no person of colour or trans person or cis woman would get. I’ve been berated and told I’m showing some kind of bigotry to white cis men.
I used to think this was a legitimate criticism, but I don’t anymore.
The bias that makes me wary of white cis men does not result in oppression of white cis men. It doesn’t even result in white cis men facing consequences for the ways they uphold and benefit from white supremacy and patriarchy.
What I used to think of as legitimate criticisms are subtle ways of someone reinforcing the status quo. Noticing the social power given to whiteness, maleness, and cisgenderness is not the same as stereotyping an oppressed group. Claiming it is the same ignores the social power white, cisgender, and abled people have.
White cis men are part of my vision of liberation, obviously. My vision of liberation includes everyone. The reality of our world is that worrying about a bias toward white cis men takes away from the actual work of collective liberation. Putting my energy into clearing the way for the liberation of disabled, Indigenous, Black and trans folks is the best path for me to take as someone who genuinely wants us to all be free.
I notice because I trust I can be better
I have spent years moving away from the duality of whether I am a good person or a bad person. I work instead on seeing myself as someone committed to my goodness who is also always capable of being better. Our goodness is found in our willingness to question the beliefs we have been given and our ability to change our mind.
None of my anti-racist practice of noticing is about guilt or shame. I accept that I have internalized messages about white supremacy and I also accept that I am capable of uprooting those messages. I notice whiteness and how it shows up because it is the only way to stop being complicit in white supremacy.
It bears repeating:
It is in the service of white supremacy for white people to not notice the passes we get, the ways in which we are allowed to fuck up and fail, without it being attributed to everyone of our race.
It is in the service of oppressive systems to claim it is bigoted or hateful to point out how someone benefits unfairly because of their race, gender, sexuality and ability.
It is in service of oppressive systems to not notice the ways we defend them.
As a white person I need to disavow white supremacy just as I want cishet folks to disavow heteropatriarchy.
Until we reach a tipping point of white people noticing the ticket whiteness gives us, and its cost, white supremacy will continue unscathed. Until we reach that tipping point, I will make sure I am mindful of whiteness and all the ways it shows up.
Immense gratitude to S.Rae Peoples of Red Lotus Consulting and Editor and fellow writer Lauren L. for being beta readers on these piece while it was in revision.
Allosexual (noun): a person who experiences some form of sexual attraction to other people of any gender…as opposed to asexual, a person who does not experience sexual attraction to anyone or who only experiences sexual attraction very rarely in specific circumstances.
See also: “We all bleed red” and “All lives matter!”
I don’t know the stats for Asian kids or Indigenous kids or Latinx kids, but I think it’s safe to assume most non-white kids know what racism is well before the age of twelve.
When I use the term “heteropatriarchy” I am using it inclusively of allo, cis, and hetero normativity. Basically is this the belief and assumption that everyone is or should be straight, cis gender, allosexual (as opposed to asexual), and that cis men in particular are superior and in charge according to a “natural” hierarchy rather than a constructed one. It is also the belief that queerness is somehow inherently more sexual than straightness, and that gender is binaried and based solely on genitalia. For a clear, concise resource explaining these falsely labelled “natural” hierarchies, I recommend watching Renegade Cut’s mini-video essay series on the subject, in particular the patriarchy and heteronormativity videos.
Just three references of so many: 1. Kaplin, Aline. Connecting the Dots on White Male Violence. The Next Phase Blog. August 9, 2019. https://aknextphase.com/white-male-violence/ ; 2. Statisa. Mass Shootings in the U.S. by Race. January 22, 2023. https://www.statista.com/statistics/476456/mass-shootings-in-the-us-by-shooter-s-race/ ; 3. Canadian Women’s Foundation. The Facts About Gender-Based Violence. June 1, 2022. https://canadianwomen.org/the-facts/gender-based-violence/
Carolyn Bryant’s false accusation that Emmet Till, a Black child, had sexually harassed her, led to his murder—for which no one was never charged, including Bryant after she admitted she had lied. Amy Cooper called the cops on a Black man after he asked her to leash her dog in a park with clear signs stating it was not an off-leash area. She broke the social contract and threatened a Black man for pointing it out. White women have harassed Black folks for having a BBQ, walking in a parking garage, or hanging a Tigger flag. Routinely calling the police on Black folks and crying when confronted for their racism, this kind of weaponized female whiteness has been nicknamed “Karen” behavior, and spawned compilations of video footage of it happening again and again and again.
$1.6 million is apparently the “Maximum fine” for tax fraud. Seems like a bargain!