The Question: I am disabled and I am working with a coalition of people who consistently fuck up when it comes to access. Every time I talk to them about it, they either start rambling about accessibility or nod a lot. But nothing ever changes. I am very tired. What do I do? -Disturbed, Done
D2!!! That sucks. That sucks so much.
I’m sorry that that’s happening to you, and I’m sorry what you’re doing — advocating for yourself and others while engaging with an issue that you care about — isn’t being held with the care it deserves by others.
There was a period of time when every time I tried to do a 1:1, or fix someone else’s Twitter account someone would ask me about my genitals.
I transitioned after 2013, the year I think of as “ The Year Laverne Cox Made Being Trans More Okay With Everyone’s Mom, “ and trans woman after trans woman on national TV made it very clear:
Even if you knew nothing else about trans people, you should avoid asking that question as an opener.
So: this question had never happened to me before.
I had seen it happen to a lot of my friends, primarily trans women, but it had never actually happened to me.
But I swear to God, for like six months, every time I called a new organizer, tried to transfer a GoDaddy domain, sent an email — someone would ask me about my genitals.
There’s an implicit narrative here I want to address, because it obscures what is so frustrating in the type of situation you’re describing, D2.
Even though I was working with a lot of people who had NEVER heard the word transgender before we met, none of them were the ones asking me about my genitals. It was all people who had some kind of institutional power.
Anyway, after a while, I stopped being even incredulous about it.
I was more tired than anything else, like… “OK. That’s fine. Don’t ask people about their genitals. Can you send me the password now?”
It sounds like that might be kind of where you’re at, D2.
You’re really tired.
Here’s the thing:
When you’re the only Type Of Marginalized Identity in a space, it can feel like you have a sign on your back that says “please! Say Weird Things to me!”
You might even be dealing with some imposter syndrome or like… weird sort of proxy guilt around being in the space at all: “I’m not even that POC/trans/disabled/whatever… I shouldn’t even be claiming this.”
It sucks, and I want to affirm that before I bring in TV for the advice.
Because your question wasn’t about whether or not you should feel tired.
Your question was about what should you do — because you’re tired.
And the fact that you’re really freaking tired… well, I just wanted to give some space for that. It deserves it.
So here’s what TV says:
Ziwe Fumudoh is a popular Instagram live host.
She uses the smiling facade of a talk show host to eviscerate celebrities for their oblivious casual racism.
Notable guests deeply embarrass themselves on her show, and it is an absolute blast to watch.
Her guests are big deals — actors, ceebrities, politicians, and she asks them well researched questions.
Questions like “are you attracted to Black people? Why or why not?” or “Do you pay your black staff less? Then why don’t you have more of them on the show?”
During the presidential debates last year she tweeted at Joe Biden and Donald Trump, inviting them to be on her Instagram live show, saying they would be “Iconic” guests.
When Ziwe says the word iconic, you know that she means “revealing.”
-
The Stepford Smiler TV Trope is about people who are not OK pretending to be OK. This is one of the biggest trope pages, with hundreds of examples from TV, movies, even fanfiction.
Here’s the definition: “The Stepford Smiler is obsessed with projecting an image of wholesome happiness in order to be accepted by her peers.”
TV Tropes, for all of its virtues, is not a particularly nuanced Wikipedia page.
There is no suggestion that this false image of wholesome happiness might be in any way mandatory, a material requirement, an advantage.
There is no discussion of how tired anyone listed on the page might be.
And so far, there are no inversions of the Stepford Smiler trope listed, no non-villainous examples.
But irl, there’s Ziwe.
In an interview with Vulture last year, Ziwe said she turned to the talk show host format after spending years as a performance artist.
Her sets used to be what she called musical “tirades.”
She would demand the audience witness her pain, playing songs about police brutality and her rage as a black woman over and over on loop onstage, calling out non-Black people who left the show early or laughed nervously.
“I enjoyed making people feel uncomfortable, but ultimately it didn’t feel that productive.” She said.
I’ll bet.
It sounds like that would make you tired. Really tired.
In contrast, any uncomfortability guests feel on Ziwe’s talk show is their own problem.
Ziwe does nothing but smile.
She has no reason to make them feel uncomfortable, because that would make them less likely to disclose.
She simply asks her guest questions, and smiles.
-
Most of the examples of the Stepford Smiler, as you might imagine, are very angry inside — even if they’re hiding their anger from themselves.
But some in this trope category, the ones with an agenda, are well aware they’re angry.
They know what they know how they feel,
But instead of being outwardly angry, they smile.
They intentionally choose to beam.
Not out of fear, but as a way to let others reveal themselves.
When they smile, they don’t have to do anything else.
They don’t have to tire themselves out.
The people around them do the rest.
-
The best person I have ever seen on Ziwe’s show answers her questions with nothing to prove. He’s a black man, but she’s had plenty of black men on her show who project as much discomfort, evasion, as the white celebrities on the show.
“What would you do” she asks him, “if a black woman stabbed you in the middle of an alley?”
He looks thoughtful for a second and then he says “I guess I bleed out. If I got stabbed, if she needed to stab me, that’s on me.”
Even though the words sound sort of falsely appeasing, the way he says them sounds very real.
He’s sheepish.
He kind of shrugs.
It is very charming.
So charming that for a second Ziwe drops her smile and cracks up, smiling for real.
It’s nice, especially if you’ve seen her do interview after interview where her questions and silence lead people to ramble, stammer, be uncomfortable with themselves.
It’s nice to get to see her get a chance to to connect.
This is to say: I think sometimes, people tell you to smile in order to make your rage, your pain, palatable to others (Jessica Jones reference here).
You’re supposed to smile in order to “get through to them or to help them have basic decency.
I don’t agree with that, mostly because… well, you’re pretty tired already, aren’t you D2?
Why add another exhausting type of performance?
But sometimes, when you’ve put in all of the energy you can, when you’re feeling really tired, when you’ve done your performance art set over and over but people still don’t get it, it’s worth trying something else.
Not for them.
Not even for the visceral joy of someone else’s discomfort.
Instead, it’s for you.
It’s a way to take a break and assess.
Is this worth it?
I ultimately quit the job where I kept getting a variation on that question, even though it took me a lot longer than it should’ve.
Ziwe, because of the format of her talk show, doesn’t have to bother with the people who can’t connect — she literally can’t, because they’re too lost in their word salad discomfort to even try.
So — see if you really can connect with this group, if they are fully able to meet you — without exhausting yourself, trying to force it.
Try smiling.
Let the others do the rest.
Originally published at https://notesonfeednet.substack.com.
