244 - Avoiding Emotional Burnout with Queersplaining

Full transcript available

It’s the journey, not the facts

Out of a desire to see more stories about LGBTQ people that she related to and that had queer people as the intended audience, Callie Wright started to dig deeper into the things that queer and trans people experience in everyday lives. For her podcast, Queersplaining, she gives trans and queer people a platform to tell and share their stories as a way to further humanize themselves and relate to other people. She noticed that people connected much more strongly over stories about her life as opposed to lists of facts about being trans, and wanted to uplift other LGBTQ people in similar ways.

In order to get folks to care, you have to make it make sense to them. I can spend hours and hours explaining to someone what it’s like to be trans, but if that’s not their experience, there’s a level at which they’re not going to understand it.

Callie Wright

Sharing personal stories lets people find bits of themselves in the narrative, which triggers empathy and understanding. Focusing on how the information is delivered is much more rewarding and relatable than dry statistics, and tying those experiences in with someone else’s, even if they’re not trans or queer, goes a long way to help them understand the things LGBTQ people experience.

Listen to the full episode for some of Callie’s anecdotes and discussion about how to be understanding of others who may not understand or respect LGBTQ identities while still making sure you’re taking care of your own health.

Transcript

This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.

Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we're joined by Callie Wright from Queersplaining to talk about, how to stay emotionally healthy while trying to educate others about our identities, and also about being understanding when they just don't get it. Callie Wright is an activist, speaker, and host of the Queersplaining podcast, formerly known as the Gaytheist Manifesto, where she shares intimate portraits of LGBT queer lives and the issues that shaped them. Callie came out as a transgender woman in the summer of 2013 and has been creating her podcast since 2015. Is that correct, 2015?

Callie: That is correct. Yes, well.

Jase: Callie, thank you so much for being here.

Callie: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Dedeker: The two of you met in person at PatreCon, is that right? That was the origin of this acquaintanceship?

Callie: How awesome. Yes.

Jase: Almost a year ago last November. We had met online because through Patreon, we had both been doing the same promotion boot camp thing.

Dedeker: Right.

Callie: Yes, when I did the beta for the special offers.

Dedeker: That was about a year ago, wasn’t it?

Callie: Yes. That was the October, like September, October promotion thing that was occurring.

Jase: Yes.

Dedeker: Very cool.

Jase: We had given away free copies of pins and books and things like that. It's funny actually, the thing that started it was just we had a post, a place where we could all post our images we were using and what our promotions were and things like that, and I just saw the name 'Gaytheist Manifesto' at the time, I was like, "I fucking love that name. That is great. I need to go check that out." I listened to some of it. I was like, “Wow, this is really great. That's so cool.” At PatreCon, we ended up talking a little bit. Here we are almost a year later. I'm sorry-

Emily: A year later, that’s amazing.

Jase: -that it took us this long to do this.

Callie: Full circle.

Dedeker: The thing I want to comment on is you win the lottery twice. First of all, you pick Gaytheist Manifesto as the name of your podcast, this great name. Then you change it-

Callie: I don’t know if that's winning the lottery.

Dedeker: I think it's winning the lottery because then you change it to Queersplaining, I'm like, how do you have both two amazing names for your podcast? Let's talk about Queersplaining specifically and what the show is all about.

Callie: When it was Gaytheist Manifesto, I started very much as, I want to be the atheist LGBT person, like in the atheist movement. I noticed that I was having conversations that specifically pertained to religion less and less, and I was really just more focused on the queer and trans experience, and social justice more and generally. It was like, the name doesn't necessarily fit the content so much. For almost a year, I was thinking, "Man, I really need to change the name of the show because it doesn't really fit anymore." Part of the reason it took me so long, was because I couldn't come up with a name that was as cool as the Gaytheist Manifesto for so long.

Jase: It is a really good name.

Callie: No, and I can't take full credit for it. The word 'Gaytheist' actually comes from a Facebook group that I was in, and I helped mod. The folks that ran that group didn't come up with it either. I forget where they said they had learned it from because I went to the mods and I was like, “Look, I want to use this for my podcast. Is that cool?" Forever I turned over in my head at a bunch of different podcasters that I really respect. I would go, “I want to rebrand this,” and they're like, “You got to find something that's as cool as Gaytheist Manifesto."

Emily: Just as good.

Callie: Yes. Literally brainstorming, writing stuff down, running stuff by everyone, hemming and hawing, so much emotional effort expended on this. The name 'Queersplaining' literally just popped into my head one night when I was driving home from work.

Dedeker: And you're like, "That’s it."

Callie: That's exactly it and I was like, "That's totally it." I ran it by all of my friends that I trust, and they're like, “Oh, yes, that's it,” and I'm like, “Cool. I've got it.” At the end of last year, I took a break for two weeks and then kind of did a relaunch. It was a relaunch in the sense that it was a new name, but I had changed the format long before that to be more like storytelling focused, as opposed it just being a straight two-way or three-way interview show.

The reason-- I haven't even really talked about what the show is. I noticed that most mainstream narratives about queer and trans people, I don't always necessarily see myself in them. Sometimes it's because the queer and trans experience is not monolithic, right? Sometimes I could tell it was because the person doing the reporting was not super educated on queer and trans stuff.

The story was about a queer or trans person, but it was not being told by that person. It was being told by someone who didn't necessarily have the cultural competence to understand the story they were telling. Even more so, I could tell that queer and trans folks weren't the intended audience for that story. It was a lot of very surface-level 101 very binary trans experiences and that kind of thing. It's not that that stuff isn't important, like, I don't think that stuff should not exist, but that seemed like that's all there was.

I thought I'm kind of already doing something different than that and digging a little deeper into the things that queer and trans folks wrestle with in our lives. Basically, what it comes down to is, a lot of the stories that I heard sounded like I was being led on a guided tour through a zoo. "And to your left, the non-binary people and to the right, your pansexuals," that kind of thing.

Dedeker: I want to go to that zoo. I'm sorry. Just hold the presses.

Emily: Oh my gosh

Dedeker: I don’t like people to be in cages or anything like that, but the imagery is fantastical.

Callie: I would volunteer to be in the trans exhibit as long as there were good snacks and we had movies to watch and stuff, I'd totally be into that.

Emily: I do really like how your show is this sort of like narrative experience, but it is kind of storytelling and it feels very well-produced. It's different from our show that does go on this banter kind of style between the three of us, but yours is this really beautifully well-written and well-vocalized. You almost are a voice actor in essence, with all of these beautiful sounds, music, and stuff behind you. It's just quite lovely. It's a really lovely experience to have as you're listening.

Callie: Thank you.

Emily: Of course, yes. It feels like a very This American Life to me, which is a huge compliment because I love This American Life so much.

Callie: Yes. I do too. That's very deliberate because my show used to be very much just like I'm interviewing a person or a couple of people and we're just talking about a thing. I still listen to podcasts like that. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. That just stopped being what I was interested in doing.

I wanted to do something that was a little bit more deliberately planned, thought out, written out and scripted somewhat. It's a lot more creatively fulfilling. It's a hell of a lot more work.

Dedeker: I can imagine.

Callie: I can put upwards of 20 or 30 hours worth of work into a 15-minute story. At the end of it, it's the same when I used to write music, and I would spend an entire day and a half writing and recording a song. I would just sit in my car and hit play. I would just listen to music. I'm like, “Oh my God. I made this.”

Dedeker: How cool.

Callie: Yes, it’s amazing.

Dedeker: Do you sing as well?

Callie: No, I don't sing. I play guitar.

Dedeker: Cool. That’s awesome.

Callie: I used to scream into a mic occasionally as a backup vocalist in the metal bands that I played in.

Emily: Along those lines, you do this show that gives a platform and a voice to trans and queer people rather than doing a specifically educational in a certain way kind of show. That's a really interesting and unique kind of perspective to have, as opposed to just, "We're going to sit down and talk about X today." Along those lines, what has the response to that been for you?

Callie: What I noticed, the reason why I did that is because if I would do a talk where I would get up in front of people and I would recite facts and bullet points, "Here's a fact about trans people. Here's a fact about queer people," that kind of stuff, people appreciate that and that's valuable, but when I really would get like, "Oh my God, this is amazing. This really meant so much to me. I really got so much out of it," was when I told stories about my life or stories about the lives of other people. For me, it's education through the medium of storytelling.

The idea is, I can tell you that 20% of trans people have felt discriminated against in seeking medical care. Anyone with an ounce of compassion will think, "Oh gosh, yes, that's horrible. I don't like that. That shouldn't be a thing." If I spend 10 minutes telling you a story about my friend who thought she might be having a heart attack, went to the emergency room and was turned away as a drug seeker because her appearance didn't match her ID, they decided that she was a fraudulent drug seeker, so she was turned-- I can tell you all of that and that makes you feel something.

Dedeker: Absolutely.

Jase: Yes.

Callie: It's not sneaky because I'm deliberately saying, "This is why I'm doing this." I've just found that in order to get folks to care, you have to make it make sense to them. In a lot of ways, I can spend hours and hours explaining to someone what it's like to be trans but if that's not their experience, there's a level at which they're not going to understand it. If I can relate things from my life experience that people can find pieces of themselves in, that can trigger a little bit of that empathy, sympathy or compassion. Whereas me just saying, "I'm trans because I feel like my gender identity doesn't match the sex I was assigned at birth," lots of people check out after five words of that.

The other side of it too is that very deliberately, in the stories that I tell, queer and trans folks are my primary intended audience. It's not like cishet folks aren't welcome to listen. I love all of those folks, but part of the problem that I'm trying to solve is, I hear from a lot of trans people who feel like, "I love podcasts. I hear so many cool podcasts about so many cool things, but I never hear a story about people like me that I actually hear myself in." That's the reason why I do stories, too. Especially, I've been making a deliberate effort lately to tell stories about people who are trying to do something positive for our community.

The last episode I did was about a friend of mine who is doing photos of black trans folks in everyday life because the only popular narrative about black trans people is how terrible it is. That's super valid. That is correct that it's a bad situation, but that's not the entirety of the story. I had a friend who just saw a problem and decided that was a problem that she wanted to solve. I could say that, or I could just follow her for a day while she's doing her thing and put a microphone in her face. They follow her as she's doing the thing. To me, at least me personally, I connect a lot more with content like that than I do someone just saying the facts, the talking points and the bulletins. It's not that those things aren't important, it's just that's the content that I get something out of, so that's the content that I like to create if that makes sense.

Emily: Absolutely. It's lovely.

Jase: In addition to the current form where you'll have a guest on, or maybe a few guests, and you're telling a story, a narrative about those people and with those people, in addition to that, you still do presentations, work as an educator and an activist. On your show in the past, that was a little more conversation interview-based, also did discussion with that. First of all, do you still do any of that? I remember you, on more recent episodes, talking about experiences in the past where you've engaged with people who traditionally someone would go, "Whoa. As a trans person, I would never want to go talk to that person because they're so against what I am and who I am." But you were able to engage and actually had some, I would say, surprisingly positive results from that.

Callie: Yes.

Jase: Can you just give us a one run down of what were some of those experiences? Are you still doing any of that kind of stuff? I know that's hard to do.

Callie: Yes. Actually, one of the more foundational transformative experiences I had, for some reason I'm remembering very clearly that it was episode 14 of the Gaytheist Manifesto, a long time ago.

Dedeker: That's amazing because we cannot pull that stuff out of the air.

Emily: Oh my God. No way.

Callie: That's probably the only one, aside from maybe one or two others that I can remember because this was such a transformative thing for me. In atheist circles, there are lots of people who will just find random atheists to add. Sometimes it's because people feel very lonely. They don't have community where they are, so they just want other people who think and see the world like them, which is totally valid. Then there are some people that we call atheist friend collectors, who do that because they feel like it gives them a platform to just talk.

I didn't know which one of these things this person was when he added me on Facebook. We had a couple of atheist community mutuals. Scrolled his facebook wall a little bit, seemed decent enough, "Sure, let's add him." Then, not even like a day or two later, I saw a post from him that, in so many words, was like, "Transgender people make me really uncomfortable." I was like, "That's gross. I don't like that." I had five paragraphs written out to comment about that. I stopped and I just erased all of that. I just said, "Why?" His response was, "I used to be a pretty terrible person and maybe that's just the side of that that I haven't unpacked yet."

Emily: Fascinating.

Callie: I was like, "Okay."

Emily: "That is not what I expected."

Callie: No, not at all. I've been doing this for a long time and I do have to say that folks like this are rare. I sent him a Facebook message. I wanted to talk with the guy. I was like, "I actually do a podcast about this kind of thing." Then I realized I didn't have a trans 101 episode to send to him, to explain the basics. Then I thought, "Oh my God. How cool would it be if my trans 101 episode was having this guy on my show to ask him my questions?" Because he seemed like he was at least trying to engage in good faith. Maybe it turns into a disaster and it doesn't become an episode of the show, but it has the potential of being cool. We did it. Called him up on Skype and we talked for, God, I think it was like two and a half hours.

Dedeker: Oh my goodness.

Callie: We had a great conversation. It was really nice. I still will talk to him every once in a while to this day.

Dedeker: So cool.

Callie: Yes. We were just really honest and vulnerable with each other about our experiences. Basically, he related an experience of being black in New York on the subway and people looking at him like he's constantly about to steal something. I was like, "Yes. Racism and transphobia are definitely not the same thing, but in terms of people looking at you and making judgments about who you are and treating you differently because you're different, we have somewhat of that in common." It was just like a 180-degree shift in the way that he viewed things. It was great. I got a friend out of the deal. I got feedback on that episode for a very, very long time afterward.

Dedeker: I can imagine.

Callie: It was great. I will be honest and say, at the beginning, I was a lot more bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and optimistic than I am now.

Jase: I can relate to that, yes.

Dedeker: Podcasting will do that to you.

Callie: Absolutely. It's a grind. Even now, if I get the sense that someone is asking questions and engaging in good faith, I'll usually at least attempt a conversation. It took me a while to realize I'm actually arguing my humanity with this person, and that doesn't feel good. It's valuable work. I would never tell any individual person that they're obligated to do it, but I do think it is important for those of us who have the capacity and capability to do that.

On my show specifically, I don't usually engage in those kinds of conversations because I'm just not super interested in making 101 level. There's lots of great content out there that does that. I would rather just promote that content than create that for my show. I hate saying, "I'm beyond that," because that's not what I mean. For me, it's just about what's the content that I want to create, what's interesting to me and what's interesting to the folks who listen to the show. 101 level stuff is just not it. When it comes to going to conventions and doing talks and that kind of thing, absolutely. I'm actually I'm going to be doing a talk in November where they've literally asked me to write a trans 101 and do a Q&A, which I'm totally cool with.

Dedeker: You weren't like, "I'm beyond that. How dare you? Have you not listened to my show? Do you know who I am?"

Callie: I didn't put this on the show because of lots of reasons. I went into a panel discussion in a really rural area. Somebody was trying to start an LGBT advocacy organization and there weren't any trans folks that this person knew in their community. They reached out to me to say like, "Hey, can you come be a part of this discussion panel?" It was super challenging. I'm a gender deconstructionist and I am dealing with people who are like, "But you were born with a penis."

Again, this person, I could tell that the way that she was asking questions, she was incredulous about all of this because it was very new to her and very difficult to understand. She was interested in learning and understanding. She had a very basic level of, "This is a person communicating something to me about their life experience, and I don't understand it. It doesn't make sense to me. In some ways, I might even be hostile to it. But this is an actual, whole human being in front of me and I want to try to understand their experience."

You mentioned earlier, assuming good intentions, I tried to do that. It's not easy. For me, honestly, it's just about-- If I walk into something knowing I'm going to have a conversation like that, I always have a plan for afterward if I'm in a bad mental state because that has certainly happened before.

Emily: Yes, self-soothing and self-care.

Callie: Absolutely. Sometimes it's just like watching silly stuff on Netflix and eating ice cream. It doesn't necessarily have to be a very elaborate-- I'm not someone who's had a PTSD episode trigger. It's certainly not on that level for me. It is very difficult and exhausting. When it really comes down to it, I am arguing my humanity to those folks. It sucks that that's where we are, but unfortunately, that is where we are.

Emily: I was near PTSD. Sorry, no. What is it? TSA. That's the one, sorry. My bad.

Callie: TSA episode.

Dedeker: Sometimes they're the same thing.

Callie: Oh, the TSA episode.

Emily: Exactly, your TSA episode which was fabulous.

Callie: Thank you.

Emily: I remember you saying, you went and got your McFlurry afterward to help feel better-

Callie: And got misgendered by the cashier. It was like, "I got treated crap by the TSA and I'm feeling real bad about it and feeling all kinds of gender dysphoria." Then the cashier is like, "Here's your McFlurry, sir."

Emily: I know, and you're like, "God, damn it."

Callie: "Going to crawl to a hole and die now. It's fine. See you later. It's been great."

Emily: We touched on this before, but are there also any examples of needing or feeling as though you're obligated or just people asking you by narrative being an educator in the community about issues that trans and queer folk have to deal with on a daily basis? Are there examples of how that shows up in your daily life, even with friends and family as well? Because obviously you do it on you're bigger scale in your podcast and your YouTube channel and then you do it at these different panels. Then even with friends and family, are there still times where you need to explain yourself or where you just even need to feel you need to educate and help out in that way?

Callie: Definitely at first. It's petered out over the last probably year to two years or so. I think just because for most of the people in my life, it is the normal state of being now, and all of the- maybe not all, but most of the questions have been worked through. For me, a lot of what it's shifted to is like, I'm kind of in a position of being an ally for other trans folks. When someone's like, "I don't get what it means to be non-binary," I'm like, "I'm not non-binary, so I don't really get it either." I have lots of non-binary friends who have been very patient with me and explained these things to me. So I can, hopefully, be an educator on their behalf.

That feels different for me because that's not me necessarily advocating for my own experience. It's me being an advocate for other folks, I think there's a lot of ways in which it's a little bit easier to advocate for other people than it is for yourself. When people treat you like crap- well, I shouldn't say you, I should say me and I know this is a common experience. When people treat me like crap, I'm always just like, I probably did something to deserve- maybe I could have been nicer when I was talking to this person. You're giving that infinite benefit of the doubt but when my friends are involved, and people are being mean to her, I'm just ready to show up.

It stopped, actually, mostly after I had my bottom surgery about two years ago. That was the big-- Most of the questions of identity and unpacking gender politics and all that stuff was pretty much out of the way. Then it just became all those really-- I put myself out there as there are lots of people who are very uncomfortable talking about it. I am not one of them. If you really, really want me to compare and contrast peeing before and afterward, I'm up for that. Just understand that if you ask that question, you will get the answer and you want to be sure that you want the answer to that question.

Emily: It's your own fault for asking. Be prepared.

Callie: I think there's there's something-- I joke about being a narcissist. There's something inherent in my personality that just makes it easier for me than it is for a lot of people to have those conversations. I enjoy talking about those things. I think it's because I don't have trauma in my past related to being queer, being trans. I have a lot of baggage, lots of issues that I've had to work through and all of that stuff, but never any actual trauma or tragedy based on those things. It's a little bit easier for me to step forward and talk about those experiences than it might be for other folks. I'm a little more predisposed to those conversations than maybe the average person is. Also, that's something that's a privilege that I have and being comfortable in that space.

Dedeker: I know for myself, ever since we started doing the show, it seems to go back and forth for me between- there are definitely times where I feel I have the privilege of having the energy and the comfort in having these conversations with people and being able to feel all these questions. That's great. I can step up so that other people don't have to necessarily, and answer these questions and do the press release and all those things. Then other times where I feel more like, "Oh my God, I'm so exhausted by educating that I just don't want to have this conversation in my personal life."

I'm sure that you've experienced a lot of that and I wanted to know what's been effective for you that helps you maintain your emotional health when you are feeling exhausted by educating all the time both in this very public sphere and in the more private sphere as well.

Callie: I keep a WINS file in my Google Drive that only I see. No one else will ever see it because a lot of times it's stuff that people have shared with me in confidence that are stories that people tell me but are not mine to tell other people. When there's been an episode of the show, or something I did or something I said, that someone took the time to reach out to me to tell me that it was meaningful to them or help them in some way, usually, I'll like take a screenshot of it or do a copy-paste or something like that.

It's a lot easier when you feel like you're being successful at that. That labor, at least for me, it becomes easier when I feel like it's accomplishing something. My feelings of exhaustion usually revolve around, "My God, these problems are so big. There's no way I'm actually making a difference. This maybe matters on a small, tiny scale, but I'm not making a dent in the universe, it doesn't matter. What am I doing?" When I'm feeling like that, that's when I go back to that and I look, and I'm like, "No, I have someone who took time out of their day to send me a message. This is not just some random person blowing smoke up my ass to be polite. This person went out of their way to send me an email, to send me a Facebook message, to approach me at a convention and share this deeply personal thing with me about how something I did or said affected them."

In a lot of ways, that's a privilege too, right? When we're talking about trying to be effective and trying to stay healthy because of the medium that I use that more immediate feedback is available to me in a way that it might not be to other people who have a conversation to plant a seed that might make a major difference for somebody five years down the road. But you never know that that happens. Because of the medium that I engage in, that feedback is a little bit more immediately available to me. That's super helpful.

Jase: Definitely. You touched on this earlier, but in saying that no one is obligated to educate other people about whatever it is, about their identity, and yet, we often feel like we have to anyway, it's always that balance between either I take the time to try to educate this person, which may or may not be received well, and may or may not have a larger or smaller impact on my own energy level and emotional well being and stuff like that. On the other hand, if I don't, then I have to keep putting up with them having that misunderstanding maybe if this is someone who's going to keep coming up in my life like a co-worker or a relative or something, or maybe feeling guilt that I'm letting my community down by not being the one to educate this person. That's such a hard thing to figure out.

How do you justify that for yourself? I'm curious, not only for yourself but if you found things in talking with other people, that has helped that. Because I think this applies whether someone is trans or queer or you're non-monogamous or a relationship anarchist or anything that's not the normal thing that everyone understands, or at least everyone thinks they understand, there's this to some degree or another. What are some factors to think about in that equation and maybe some ways that people find that helps?

Callie: What has helped for me and what I've heard helps other people sometimes is, there's some foundational shifts in thinking that I had to make in order to navigate that dynamic in a healthy way. I think most people will agree that your well-being and your emotional health should be somewhere on your own priority list. Very few people would disagree with that statement, I think. Where we would tend to maybe find disagreement is when I say like, "Maybe you should be in the top five. Maybe if you have kids, your kids are number one or your spouse or your partner is number one," or something along those lines.

When you think about things more in terms of that, and you can say like, "If I am finding this person who's being really, really gross about trans stuff, I can engage maybe hopefully be effective, maybe change this person's mind, maybe plant a seed, what will it cost me to do that? Can I do this and leave the conversation maybe feeling a little bit annoyed, go out and play with my puppy and it's all good? Am I in a headspace where this is like really going to be a damaging thing to me?" If I make a calculation that engaging in this is going to be a seriously damaging thing for me, I will disengage. That's because I am comfortable prioritizing my health and safety. That's not to say it's never a difficult decision because the line between, "Can I be effective and can I not be effective," that's not always clear.

I think it's usually pretty easy to tell when someone's engaging in good faith or not, when they're asking questions and actually being receptive to the answers, as opposed to when they're asking 'got you' questions and that kind of thing. Foundationally, whenever someone asked that question, I always have to say, "Well, I really think that you should internalize and accept the idea that your well-being is important in this conversation as well." As a person who is trans and also doing trans-activism, my well-being is trans-activism, the well-being of other trans people is trans-activism. If this is only going to cause me pain and not accomplish it, then it's almost like a math problem for me. That's not a super difficult decision, as long as it's clear to me whether this person is engaging in good faith and I can be effective or not.

I will often err on the side of preserving my own health doing that because anyone who engages in this kind of thing regularly probably has a very long list of conversations they've had in their lives. There's been a whole lot of fights that you've decided to sit in. If you want to sit this one out, cool, because at the end of the day, when we're talking about what's effective, the foundational thing is, "I feel like I need to do this because I need to change hearts and minds." You can't if you're exhausted, if you're emotionally depleted, if you're depressed, if you're in a bad emotional state, you are not going to be effective anyways. Putting yourself in a position where you're going to end up in that state is- like you're not doing anyone any good in that position. If I have to trade a teensy little bit of guilt, for staying in a good place mentally, that's a trade that I'm willing to make personally.

Emily: That's really good advice.

Dedeker: Yes, seriously.

Jase: That's sort of mental formula, that mathematical formula you're running through also reminds me of the story you told earlier where that guy had written that trans people made them uncomfortable and you had originally written your five-paragraph response to it, and then instead just said, "Why?" There's the, "Do I engage at all?" Then there's also the-

Emily: How do I engage?

Callie: "Do I actually engage? Or do I just rant back? Or do I kind of go back-" and that's the hard thing to not do, I think.

Emily: One type of rant really isn't like trying to come to a meeting of the minds. It's simply just talking at another person and potentially having them talk back at you and nothing really happens there.

Jase: Telling each other why you're wrong.

Emily: Exactly. But you did engage. You actually asked a question, which is so powerful. Probably even like trolls on Facebook, I wonder how often they even get asked questions, maybe, but that's-

Jase: Maybe that's not the best use of your question asking but-

Emily: Well, no. Sure. This ended up being a different story whereas it could have been just a person saying something that was going to be rude and awful, but instead it ended up being this really amazing thing. How lovely.

Callie: Where things get complicated too is that I think in my mind, activism has two basic purposes. The first being to change hearts and minds and win people to the cause or whatever. The other thing, the other purpose it can serve is to simply protect people from harm in the moment. When people talk about the rant-y, yell-y Facebook stuff, I am not a person who actually dismisses the value of that out of hand because it can signal to me who is willing to go to bat to protect me. If somebody is being super terrible to me in the comment section, throw in anti-queer slurs and anti-trans slurs at me. If a person is responding to that by being very polite, "Gosh, that's not nice. Can we have a conversation about that?" I'm like, "Where are your priorities? Who are you trying to protect?" You're making a deliberate decision about who you're prioritizing in this conversation.

I don't dismiss the rant- I probably would have at that point, that's another shift in thinking that I've made and you're deliberately undertaking the question of, "What's my purpose in engaging? If I decide to engage, what is my purpose here? Is my purpose to draw a circle around my friends and my people and make sure that I'm trying to protect them?" That often involves pushing other people out of that circle, and that's a valid thing to do. Sometimes it does involve asking a question like, "Well, why do you think that? What have you been through in life that's made you feel that way?" I think both sides of that equation can be valuable. It's just kind of figuring, using a precision strike and figuring out what's the most effective thing to use in which situation.

Dedeker: That's blowing my mind a little bit. When I think back to the times when I felt inspired to speak up on something, that often for me, it just comes from this reactionary, angry kind of place. It's true, it often falls into those different categories, sometimes it is the, "I want to stand up for someone that I care about who's getting attacked or getting bullied," or sometimes it is the, "I'm really passionate about this issue and I really want to change this person's mind." Or sometimes it is like, "I'm just freaking angry and just need someone to talk at and I don't care how it lands." But I'm not always aware of where it's coming from. It seems like just that little step of having the mindfulness of figuring out what's my purpose and responding to this can so change your approach to it but I think that sometimes we're used to just letting whatever reaction emotions come up, take the wheel essentially. I think you make the point that doesn't mean that those feelings are invalid or not useful, but sometimes it's like finding what mild degree does it need to be angled at, essentially. It's the way that I think about it.

Callie: Absolutely, yes. Thinking deeply about what your purpose is in a situation is super transformative or at least it is for me. It can be for anybody who tries to create a community of any kind. There's an organization recently who I will not name that had a big shift in thinking about- they didn't want to censor people. They stopped policing use of racial slurs and gendered slurs and anti-queer slurs and stuff like that. They're like, "We're not okay with transphobia, but the words, we're not going to police," which there's a whole slate of things to unpack there, but the idea being in a space where people are very openly using anti-trans slurs, that's never a space I'm going to feel comfortable in.

By making that decision, you may say you're not okay with transphobia, but a whole lot of trans people are not comfortable in your space anymore. You've made a decision that maybe isn't the one that you intended to make or not the one that you realized to make, but you have actually picked aside. Again, figuring out your purpose and thinking through the logical consequences of the action and listening to people whose experiences you might not understand, all of those things are super important to factor in.

Dedeker: I want to start talking about having these strategies for yourself for self-care and figuring out where you stand in a situation, but I also want to bring in this idea of it not being in a vacuum and not being something that we do totally alone about reaching out to support networks. We're a huge fan on this show of The Short Instructional Manifesto For Relationship Anarchy, there's a line in the manifesto that talks about how heterosexism is just so prevalent and rampant. Specifically, the manifesto says, "Work with people that you love to find escapes and tricks to counter the worst of the problematic norms. Find positive counterspells and don't let fear drive your relationships."

I want to talk more about not only what one can do as an individual to help maintain emotional well-being in these instances, but how can you really call on the resources of a community or the people that you love to enrol them in that same purpose?

Callie: Gosh. I think this is another situation where the first step for me was a shift in the foundation of my thinking. I had a day job along with the podcast for a long time. That consumed most of my life and I didn't have a whole lot of time except for here and there, for not even self-care, just self and having a life of my own. One of the commitments that I made to myself at the beginning of last year was that I was going to make more time to do that. There are a lot of really nuts-and-bolts kinds of things that I do. Like I Google calendar everything and I Google calendar time for myself and that time is sacred. I Google calendar time for my wife and I, and that's sacred. I don't adhere to it perfectly because that's impossible given the nature of the life that I lead, but it's 80-85% effective, I think.

For me, a big part of that is, like I want to be that for other people. I want to be that person that people can reach out to and thinking of myself as a member of a community. I play roller derby and I have a whole community of people that are involved in that. I have my podcasting community, I have my wife, I have my close circle of friends and because I am an active part of that community and I make contributions to those folks as well, it's not as tough for me to ask for help from those folks when I need it. It's a "From each according to their abilities to each according to their needs" kind of thing. Is that Mark's? I don't know. I'm sorry. I'm not a philosophy nerd.

I try to give what I can and that makes it a little bit easier for me to make the ask for help when I need it. When it comes to engaging in community, I have folks who have a history of being there for me. My friend who's been my best friend since I was 14 has been with me through everything. Cultivating maybe is a weird word, but the idea is like any community that I exist in, I tried to be a valuable part of that community, so it's a little bit easier for me to call on that community when I need that kind of help. It's not transactional, I give only so I can get, but I give because I think when a person who's a part of a community gives what they are capable of giving, everyone is better for it. I hope the folks who are part of the communities that I'm in have the same thoughts and philosophies and again, like prioritizing my own health. I'm a lot more comfortable making the ask but I also don't feel entitled to it. Like if somebody says, "I can't do that right now," Cool. No worries.

Jase: You mentioned earlier in this and actually when we were emailing before this, you also mentioned this about working with your friends to come up- I can't remember if this was more by yourself or with your friends but coming up with a system for maintaining your emotional health. Earlier you mentioned if you know you're going into a situation, you make a plan, can you give some examples of that, what you're talking about?

Callie: Yes. It's an order of operations I go through. When I'm doing something and I'm wondering what's going on. The first question I ask myself is the problem that I am trying to solve, the reason that I am engaging in this activity, does that need still exist, does that reason still exist? For example, a big struggle of mine, I've almost quit podcasting several times because of how many shitty people that I've run into, people who have betrayed my trust, people who have treated me badly, people who have treated people I care about badly, all of that kind of stuff. Then I'm like, "Okay, but why did I start doing this?" I started doing this because there was a need that I identified that I thought maybe I could have some contribution in solving. Does that need still exist? Yes, sure it does.

Okay. Let's move on to step two. Step two is, is the way that I'm engaging with meeting these needs still having any effectiveness? That goes back to, it's a little bit easier for me to answer this question because the way that I engage makes that feedback more readily available to me than it might be to other people. This works for me, it may not work for everyone. If the answer is yes, then I move on to step three and step three is, can I continue doing this and stay healthy? If the answer to all three of those questions is yes, then I just keep moving.

If the answer to any of those questions is no, then that's not necessarily like, "Well, time to pack up and leave," but it's time to reevaluate where I'm at. In any like activist-y type activity, when I'm trying to figure out if it makes sense for me to keep engaging, that's the process that I go through. Because for me, it's like, I didn't start doing what I do for any of these shitty people, so why would I stop doing what I do for any of these shitty people, right?

Dedeker: Interesting.

Callie: When it comes to the work that I do, that's the process that I go through. In my personal life, it's a little bit more squishy than that because it's dependent on the situation. I have my wife and she's great and I deliberately try to make time to spend with her as she does with me. We have things that we do together, like when we snuggle on the couch, watching movies with our puppy all the time. We like having dinner together and we have an implicit agreement that we try to keep our phones put away and try to minimize distractions, but there's no hard and fast rules about that too. For me, it's a lot about communication.

If she's playing a video game that she really wants to play, but I'm not super interested in watching her play that video game, I'll just sit and play on my phone while I'm snuggling with her so we're doing separate things, but together. That came from just a very honest and vulnerable assessment of what our needs were, whereas she would be sitting in her computer room playing her video games and I would be sitting in my office watching Netflix. We're both complaining about how neither of us spends enough time together. We don't actually have to be doing the same thing just because we're in the same room as one another. A lot of things I feel that just comes back to our communication.

Emily: Absolutely.

Callie: That was a whole lot.

Emily: No, I love that. Thank you for all that. That's amazing. We’re coming up on the end of the episode. Callie, where can people find more of you and your work?

Callie: It's- queersplaining.com is the website. The podcast is available, anywhere you find podcasts. I'm Callie Wright on Facebook, @Calliegetsit on Twitter and Instagram, so all of those places I am available.

Jase: Great. I have a request for the end of this episode.

Callie: Absolutely.

Jase: Every time that I listen to Queersplaining, the way that you close every show makes me cry, literally every single time because it's so beautiful. I was wondering if you might be able to give us that closing message here, but for this episode and for this show too. I think the message of it is something that really speaks to me about why we do this show too. I just really love it. Would you be able to give us your ending coffee?

Callie: Absolutely. Before we go, we want you to know that if you're lost, you're hurting, you’re scared, if you feel no one cares and no one understands, you need to know there's a community out here that loves you, cares for you, knows that you're capable of amazing things and that you are worthy of love. If you're struggling, please don't be afraid to reach out. Until next time, friends, my name is Callie Wright and these are all these fine folks. This has been Multiamory.

Emily: Damn it, I cried.

Dedeker: Yes, jeez. When we close the show, we just stop like, "Hey, don't weaponize this shit, be nice. You can break up with that person, break up with that asshole."

Callie: I do that too. The episode that I'm doing this week is an advice episode and I'm giving a lot of that, like, "Stand up for yourself, set boundaries. There's consequences."