Hurt & Humble Pie | T. Taitt

Last night I accidentally misgendered the cherished partner of a lovely acquaintance of mine. When I was asked "Have I introduced you to my partner before?", I answered "Yes, a few times actually! I met her at - "

In a split second, the very instant that the word fell out of my mouth and I couldn't dial it back, I immediately turned to the person in question and tried to self-correct with "Sorry, I mean, I met YOU at..."

It was too late. The "her" hung in the air and I couldn't retract it. As we were headed into a theatre at the time, it was inopportune to try to address it then. I wrote to my acquaintance once back at home, however, apologizing profusely and asking that the apology please be relayed to her partner with my utmost contrition.

I learned that I had caused hurt, sadness, and disappointment. I said that I felt horrible.  I emphasized that I felt like complete crap. I was reminded that it wasn't about how I felt.

She was right. It wasn't. I won't invalidate my sincere remorse; I do believe that both intention and impact matter, and that scalding someone unintentionally and scalding by design deserve to be responded to differently.  But good intentions do not undo the hurt.  If both of our feelings were in triage, the ones to treat first were his -- he whose identity I had erased in a nanosecond -- the amount of time it takes to say "her". There was zero malice in my heart. It was very nice to see him again. But in a momentary mind blip, my brain reverted to a simpler setting and I casually negated him.  I do not take it lightly.  On my end it was an innocent misstep; on his it was one more person making difficult his fight for visible space and recognition in the world.

Knowing that breaks my heart. I try hard to see others through empathetic eyes and to let compassion lead me. I was rocked at the thought that I had caused injury, and also at the thought that someone might think me ignorant for having a lapse that resulted in the slighting - however unintended - of another person.  It is one thing to have someone think less of you because of an intentional act on your part; it is quite another to have it happen because of a rare misstep.

I have been thinking about it for over 24 hours.  I would never say that I'm glad it happened, because I'm not. It was pretty crappy to be the source of pain. I do believe however that when the unfortunate happens, we can wallow in how awful it was, or we can try to salvage something amidst its irreversibility by learning something from it. 

I learned last night that maybe I'm a bit too confident in what I think I've got down.

We all know that there are many different kinds of oppression.  "Knowing about" all of them does not mean that you are going to internalize all of them equally, neither does experiencing one or even two of them.  I care for transgender people because they are fellow human beings, but my deep empathy comes largely from the fact that I have known racism. I know what it is to be hated, to be ignored, to be treated as a second-class citizen, to be discriminated against, to be moved to the margins.

But for all of racism's unique barbs, I have never - EVER - had someone get my Black identity wrong.

Having devoted much of the last decade infusing social justice into my life and art, I realize how easy it can become to unwittingly start believing that there are certain things that you "just wouldn't do" at this point in your life.  There are apologies that can begin to seem like the kind you'll probably no longer have to make. I mean, not only have I had anti-oppression training -- I've LED it.  I LEAD it.  I'm committed to it, I believe in it, and I'm good at it.  I'm someone who colleagues/friends/acquaintances ask for input when it comes to addressing matters of oppression. How could I have let this happen?

Beating myself up is empty and useless.  There is arrogance in expecting oneself to be perfect, and once again, continuing to do that makes it more about my self-flaggellation than his experience of my errant word.  Does writing this whole thing also turn the attention too much towards myself?  I don't know.  I cannot second guess everything I do to try to get closer to the person I want to be.  I can only be honest and fumble along.

Helping to create a world in which we recognize the equality and dignity of all people is part of why I wake up in the morning.  That sounds painfully corny, but it's true.  Ignorance is something I try to combat everyday.  Transgender isn't exactly a novel concept to me; I've taught kids about gender and pronouns, I've sat in awe at the bravery of transpeople, I deeply appreciate the stark reality of cisgender and heterosexual privilege. I've prided myself not on knowing it all, but on endeavouring to know a lot.

None of that prevented "her" from slipping off my tongue in a moment.

Yes, sometimes your brain and mouth just have a mechanical unalignment. No one is immune to that. That may have been what happened to me last night, but I will not avoid a deliberate look in the mirror by reflexively deciding that there is no other possibility. Instead I am looking for the sticky stuff that gets trapped in corners.  Sometimes there still exist deeply buried go-tos -- defaults which you do not realize continue to gasp for air long after you believed them soundly smothered. Those willfully dying but not yet dead embers of yester-thought do not extinguish the fact that you are a good, kind, person and an anti-oppressive force for change. They do not make you a imposter activist. They just mean to have to work harder to not slip into fleeting nanoseconds of unconsciousness.

The passion I carry for social justice has led several of my acquaintances to playfully and respectfully referred to me as "woke". I prefer "awake". The past tense "woke" intrinsicly implies something that has happenED, rather than that something is happenING. "Awake" is present - it is now.  It is not a level of awareness that has been achieved, but a constant state of seeking and inquiring and listening and processing and sometimes apologizing. Because I'm human and I screw up.  We all do.  I am entitled to make mistakes.  And those I hurt through my mistakes are entitled to the most loving and sincere amends I can make, and the promise to try with my whole heart not to make the same ones again.

I have never been much of a braggart, and am often too self-effacing or self-deprecating for my own best interest. But I still became a humbler person last night.  I hadn't realized that perhaps I needed to be.

I aim to do better tomorrow.

Namaste,

TT