In this longer essay (5,000 words), I reflect on how we hold space for difference and the way this impacts on whether and how certain conversations happen. These issues are at the heart of aware, anti-oppressive practice, and highlight the problem with neutralility in creating non-heirarchical spaces.

How structural violence works

I’ll use a real-life example, in which I’m the person at fault. An incident many years ago, in which I used the term “lily white” in a work meeting to mean “good”. One of my global majority colleagues challenged my use of the term, and her tone of voice was understandably sharper than my ill-considered but easy language had been. I could see my white colleagues looking uncomfortable with her challenge.

It’s easy for white people to miss the fact that I had been violent. As a white person, I had leaned on a vast and monstrous cultural narrative that equates whiteness with goodness, a narrative that, as a white person, I benefit from. I had not yet felt the need to connect to the extent of this injustice enough to feel the wrongness of my phrasing – it tripped off my tongue too easily.

I say this is violence, because this pervasive narrative does untold harm to the bodies it labels as less good. It helps us turn away easily, for example, when our police kill or brutalise young Black men like Chris Kaba. In that moment, I was actively participating in a pervasive web of harm, and it’s important not to minimise that by claiming my part in this violence was small by comparison – small, overlooked abuses in spaces that should be safe can sometimes hit the hardest, because those spaces should offer respite and social support in an unsupportive world.

The harm inherent in the idea that whiteness equates to goodness is huge. Even my obliviousness was violence – it allowed me to be complicit in this harm and enabled it to continue. My choice not to raise my awareness enough to stop harming people is a way of perpetuating this structural violence. Structural as in the specific way we built this world, not just residing within individuals and not just the inherent tendencies to be biased against the “other” but the actual, living structures that are designed unequally, in this case giving white people in this world unearned benefits over the global majority.

I didn’t personally invent using “lily white” to mean “good” in other words, I plucked it out of the language I’d been raised with – the structure was already there.

Redirecting our empathy

In the example I gave above I apologised, acknowledging I should have noticed the language and I needed to reflect more. I managed that by bracketing my shame response and recognising that my uncomfortable feelings around being challenged were mine to deal with – a signal to go do some self-work.

Challenging me was labour my colleague should not have needed to do, though. The tension I created in my colleague and the room was somewhat diffused by my response, and that was also my work to do. It doesn’t compensate her reasonable anger that she faced this incident in her workplace or her fear of challenging me in this setting and what that might mean for her. Challenging white people on racism, no matter how well done, tends to go badly. Had I reacted badly, she would most likely have been blamed for my reaction. Speaking up might well have changed her relationship with some white colleagues because of their own shame and fragility.

If I or my colleagues had expected kindness or respect from her in that moment, that would be another act of violence, a deliberate turning away from her pain, and from the scale of racial injustice in our UK culture. Deny, minimise, blame Is the process by which abuse is perpetuated. Nobody owes us respect, kindness or compassion while we are being violent to them.

As therapists, we need to think very carefully about how we hold space for these conversations. When we talk about being kind and respectful, without mentioning structural violence and oppression, we can inadvertently weigh in on the side of structural oppression by our neutrality. Violence becomes acceptable if said nicely enough, because the inherent violence often goes unseen. Meanwhile, we take away the marginalised person’s right to respond with proportionate anger to that violence by expecting they will be easy-mannered even as they are being abused.

The worst extreme of this is the dangerous but growing belief that fascism is getting worse because its opponents are not sufficiently kind and tolerant towards people expressing somewhat fascist views. Karl Popper cautioned against this misapprehension in The Paradox of Tolerance, and Martin Luther King did so in his  letter from a Birmingham Jail. It is unsurprising, perhaps, that when fascism is terrifying, the easier target – antifa, the left, BLM, trans rights activists, young people or Greta Thunberg become the scapegoats for people’s growing fear. But this is a dangerous road to go down.

A relational perspective on oppression dynamics

I have not seen anyone talk about what happens relationally when we deceive ourselves this way. It enables us to offer empathy more to people with power and less to people without it. In doing so, we are unlikely to make our own position precarious within the social group. If we side with the marginalised voices, we might marginalise ourselves.

This is why empathy is granted more easily to those enacting structural violence. We might focus empathy on the shame response of the person being challenged, which is their responsibility to work through. We might judge the challenger to be “shaming” the person, making them responsible for the aggressor’s emotions. We might claim that the person being violent is “doing their best” whilst simultaneously believing the person challenging could do better and is “not helping their cause”.

We might use the victim’s subject knowledge, their deeper understanding of the issues involved, to paint them as having a kind of knowledge privilege their abuser does not. In this way ignorance itself becomes a form of power to wield as a type of victimhood, an “I don’t know any better” that can be maintained to continue power-over.

In conversations around injustice what is often missed is the need to work to empathise with the hurt, anger, fury, or pain of the person experiencing the violence, and to look carefully at our reasons for struggling to do so. Many thinkers on this topic, including the wonderful Resmaa Menakem recognise that the oppressor group are dissociating from the trauma they themselves are causing to marginalised folks.

The colleague mentioned above challenged me skilfully. My impulse was still to deflect the challenge by centring how I felt – my sense of self as good and kind suddenly disrupted by the knowledge I’d done harm. It’s too easy to invite other’s empathy towards ourselves as the oppressors in these incidences and isolate the person who needs the care, the one who was harmed. If I had played the victim and got upset, it would have been very easy for me to attract empathy to myself that was entirely due to my colleague.

Much as I’m individually to blame for my own words, and the lack of work that had enabled those words to come out of my mouth unnoticed, I believe if the workplace had been set up differently, it would have made this conversation easier to have. Much of this work is collective, it is about the cultures we create and what we hold well within the spaces we’re collectively responsible for.

How do we make space for the hard conversations to happen?

As a trans, multiply disabled person, violence of some form is an almost daily experience. Often, the desire of the majority to keep things “kind and respectful” makes the ability to have boundaries around being safe, unharmed and free from abuse almost impossible. It is hard even to name systemic violence when it shows up, let alone do anything about it.

It’s hard for many of us to feel that anyone is willing to bear witness to the scale of harm that is happening to us, in either community. Even our therapists, tutors, supervisors, or the people trying to hold space for these kinds of conversations are sometimes failing us. As marginalised people we experience daily injury and also the pain of knowing how many members of our communities are losing their lives to this violence, but this goes vastly underacknowledged.

As oppressed people, we don’t always know how we’re going to react when someone throws a small but injurious piece of an enormous and traumatising structure at us. Lack of awareness can make it worse as they pass us something highly toxic as if it’s nothing at all. Especially if our communities have been trying to alert people to the harm in every way possible. They call these small-seeming things microaggressions, and there’s a lot of data out there on what they look like and just how much they harm, which is why I’m using the word violence advisedly. Trans and disabled people are dying from this violence, and we’re not alone.

The sheer scale of deaths of trans people and disabled people as a result of structural violence is breathtaking, but what is even more astonishing is the lack of concern and engagement from the majority group, something that I have to admit reflects my own past (I hope) lack of engagement regarding the emergency of structural violence towards those targeted by racism.

In an unjust world, this violence and its impact will be downplayed and the victim’s attempts to say no to the violence labelled as aggressive, unjust acts. (There’s a great video essay from PhilosophyTube on this subject here).

The silent dignity that is demanded of us while we endure this injury and trauma is an unreasonable expectation. Our “not making a fuss” ensures people never need to reckon with the enormity of the problem, while any fuss made is automatically discredited as an overreaction, or makes you a “killjoy”. It is a lose/lose, because the rules were designed to make it a lose/lose. If I speak out, I am the aggressive trans person, the belligerent disability activist, the angry feminist. But if I remain silent, I become “one of the good ones”, setting a better example than the majority of my group. I might even benefit from aligning myself against others in my group, or at least tone-policing them.

I trust a space is ready for hard conversations that centre the people being most harmed in the world as it is when I hear certain things named. When words like racism, sexism, classism, ableism, transphobia, homophobia, fatphobia etc. are named explicitly in the setting up of spaces, I know people have thought about the violences that are most present in our current culture.

“Woke” is a good word

There’s an avoidance and fragility around allowing ourselves to connect to the trauma of someone being oppressed. So many spaces are covertly designed to exclude and harm certain people, often simply by virtue of failing to do work on making those spaces less harmful and enabling marginalised voices to speak up safely. We can accurately predict the characteristics of the dominant voices in many spaces will align more with white, cishet, able, man, middle class, etc, but we can be more reticent in naming the structural violence that creates these circumstances – that marginalises other voices.

The word “woke” is such a wonderful term from the Black community for us to think about this: It is about having the emotional robustness to fully and thoroughly connect to other people’s pain and the real-world causes of it without fragility and avoidance. To be woke means to wake up to reality and stop deadening ourselves to the enormity of injustice. It is relational work, connection work, but it might not be all nice and fluffy, it will probably hurt and be a struggle and involve pain and anger and grief.

How will I know a collective, group or initiative has done some work around this? I’m looking out for  conversations that mention things like anti-oppressive practice; challenging structural violence; centring marginalised voices on the topics that concern them; being mindful of existing structures of power and how to work against them; being aware of which voices are leading, which are talking most, who is not being heard; recognising the marginalising power within existing narratives and social structures.

Anything that tells me that people are at a point where they can acknowledge these unequal structures exist and will take a conscious effort to dismantle.

If all I hear when a group contracts to work together is neutral talk of kindness and respect for everyone, without acknowledging any of these inequalities, I will feel naturally anxious about what will happen when someone behaves politely but violently and a marginalised person responds with congruent anger. If these explicit conversations don’t happen at inception, later challenges can be that much harder to manage. Marginalised folk may disengage, not trusting the space to hold them, or feel angry that zero effort has been made to level the playing field. We need a robust scaffold to really get a grip on the dynamics of injustice, and “be kind and respectful” or variations of this just don’t cut it.

It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, with the space inadvertently set up to ensure that marginalised voices will sound dissonant to the desired good vibes, and that will only serve to problematise the marginalised people as unhelpful, disruptive, and not sufficiently reasonable. The “voices of reason” may end up being the ones closer to the identities of white, cishet, able, middle class men (etc).

At its worst, any talk of being allowed to have boundaries around not experiencing structural violence becomes “divisive” or “negative”. People are allowed to hurt you as long as they can say they’re “trying their best”. We might be told to “save the fight for the enemy” or expected to believe “we are on the same side”. My enemy is structural violence and the silencing of my ability to say “no” to it – fascism is just a concentrated version of this. if you’re not stepping up next to me with support when I speak up, then you are not on my side. If I’m not doing likewise for other groups, then fascism is alive in me.

Reverse the polarity

Okay, that’s every sci-fi show’s magic answer but maybe it’s a term we can harness. When conflict arises around injustice, empathy and connection are vital, relationship is what matters, but we need to attend to which direction our empathy naturally flows in and send it the opposite way – not exclusively, because everyone deserves empathic connection and holding, but channelling it consciously towards the groups and individuals who traditionally find empathy being withheld or restricted.

Maybe their anger is proportionate and reasonable and I’m unaware of the full context. Maybe they understand their experience better than me and I should listen harder. Maybe my instinct to reject this challenge is useful information about me and the psychological work I’m avoiding. Given how scary speaking up on injustice is and how likely it is to get undermined, they are probably doing their absolute best to challenge skilfully here – if I perceive them negatively, does that say something about my bias?

As bystanders we can do the work of supporting the aggressor to overcome their fragility and discomfort to listen, and supporting the harmed person to be heard and offered empathy.

How a space is set up is vital to holding these conversations well. Understanding of and naming of the actual structures of inequality that exist in the world will help us avoid carefully holding kind, respectful space for oppressive behaviours to flourish unchecked.

Those of us with structural power (which is all of us, one way or another) can easily ignore the harmful narratives we draw on inadvertently. We mould spaces that cause marginalised voices to be seen as disruptive or problematic. It’s easy to be lured by the idea that marginalised folk are the ones that need to learn to be nicer, kinder, more respectful. Structural inequality is designed to put the expectation of labour onto the marginalised person. We have work to do to notice the ways in which our spaces have been structured to make it difficult to speak up. But if the tough conversations don’t happen, nothing is going to change.

From a disability access point of view, people inside the building can be lovely as they like, but if I can’t get into the building safely, that doesn’t help me. If those people are making decisions that affect me and I can’t participate, that’s structural violence.

No more neutral niceness

I realise as I write this, that it comes down to taking sides when we need to. It has been said by Elie Wiesel, Desmond Tutu and Paulo Freire that if we are neutral in response to oppression, we are helping the oppressor. Both in the therapy room and out of it, I commit to staying on the side of people being allowed to free themselves from harm, being allowed to have boundaries that keep them safe. I commit to learning about and acknowledging the reality of, and violence of, certain oppressive structures. I am inevitably imperfect at this.

This does not mean I believe there are good people and bad people – there’s a little bit of fascism in all of us, as I demonstrated in my example above. But I can wholeheartedly oppose the harmful structures, by being clear, for instance that Black lives matter and that I unequivocally support BLM and understand the violence in saying “All Lives Matter” in this specific context. Likewise, I hold that stating clearly trans women are women, disabled people are valuable whether or not they are deemed useful, the current UK policy on refuge and asylum is an atrocity, uterus owners have the right to access safe legal abortion and so on are necessary boundaries to prevent harm, not subjects that should be up for debate in an ethically held, anti-oppressive space.

Holding an impartial space for those topics to be politely debated is inherently violent, because it renders harm an acceptable option if talked about in nice enough tones. If we don’t oppose violence, we inevitably support it.

The next question is often – well, how will people learn without engaging in debate? The answer is, they will learn if they want to learn, and debate is never a means to learning – debate is a social dominance ritual that helps people sense which opinions are going to be socially useful to express in any given space. Oppressive views deemed acceptable will quickly dominate the landscape, bullying out the marginalised people in question, as well as anyone who backs them up. Boundaries swiftly and firmly set to stop these harmful behaviours are remarkably effective – if you set up an intentionally anti-oppressive culture where you firmly tell people no, we’re not going to do and say harmful things and here’s some resources on why, the culture shifts fast and brings nearly everyone along with it.

And it turns out being on the side of the safety of oppressed people explicitly makes nearly everyone feel safer – we all have vulnerable parts that need looking after. Telling someone no to being abusive doesn’t harm them, it says “we’re holding this space so you too won’t be abused”. This kind of tough care is for everyone’s benefit.

Such spaces, let’s be clear, will hold Donald Trump to account for his racism and sexism, but will not attack him for his looks or his penis size, or post images of him kissing Putin or wearing make up, as if those are things to be seen as bad or degrading. They will look after the vulnerable parts even of one of the world’s most notable fascists.

Those of us who’ve moderated online forums and held training spaces with anti-oppressive values know many ways to set clear boundaries while looking after people who accidentally transgress those boundaries. It’s maddening then to find ourselves in spaces where speaking up for a vulnerable part is risky, and space is carefully held for oppressive behaviours to be enabled and spread, if they are done subtly and “nicely”.

Scapegoating brings no advantage here

If the space is well held, there is no social advantage to scapegoating minorities, but if scapegoating minorities is framed as an acceptable activity that moderation is neutral towards, it will inevitably happen and become an activity that starts to dictate the dynamics of the group. As we get more skilled at anti-oppressive facilitation, it gets easier and easier to kindly and firmly say no to oppressive discourse and direct the person engaging in it towards further learning. As I get more skilful in anti-oppressive counselling, I find that not being on the side of my clients’ oppressive behaviours conversely helps me be on the side of my clients’ vulnerable parts, and enables relational depth, but it takes a lot of skill and learning to get there, and I am still adjusting my practice and learning about this.

As a marginalised person, I know social change will happen when people show up visibly and vocally alongside me in my struggles, taking my side when I am being oppressed and telling me no when I am acting oppressively. Vulnerable and marginalised people need to be allowed to express congruent feelings about the threats to our lives – without judgement, without conditions, with full empathy. When our understandable fear and rage are fully met by enough folks with the courage to connect to how bad things have got here in the UK and elsewhere, it will no longer be possible for us to be made scapegoats, and painted as a threat whenever we even mildly defend our boundaries or try and assert our right to participation, life and safety.

It is really that simple. As long as any community or professional space weds itself to neutral niceness and shuns the entirely just rage of communities facing ethnic cleansing, eugenics, and cultural genocide in our own country, this implacable horror will be allowed to continue, and “nice” bystanders will wring their hands and have abstract and neutral discussions about everyone needing to be kinder and more compassionate, while we die unacknowledged.