Productive Criticism fun fun fun

I’m an activist. If you don’t know that by now, either I’m not using my rhetorical powers adequately, or I’m doing it so well that you’ve been learning without realizing what’s happening. Regardless, the work I do as an activist takes many forms. Here on Patreon, I do my antistigma work by writing about my experience as a sex worker in a way that makes accessible concepts that are often sensationalized, with the goal of humanizing an experience many people consider to be fringe, but that is in reality, not as fringe as we might think. On my Instagram, I convey this message in bite-sized entries that talk more broadly about the topics I explore in a personal manner here. With my organization, we do community building and policy work. We facilitate the structures needed to unite strippers as a coalition of workers with common needs and struggles for a safe and equitable workplace. I’ve been involved with various activism for years, starting with racial justice groups because, while I am a queer feminist, I am Black first. I am a Black stripper. I am Black and trans. I am Black and deal with the issues of presenting as femme. I say this as an establishing point for the argument I’m about to make, because I have a vested interest in what’s going on from the variety of intersections I occupy.

We need to have productive criticism within the community.

That may not sound controversial, but it is. Within the activist community, we have experienced a period of almost nonstop tumult. I am not sure when exactly it began, but I know that it has come to a head during our pandemic, for obvious reasons. Tensions are heightened; we are experiencing unimaginable loss in a way that we cannot even fully comprehend due to our social isolation; we are unable to have in-person meetings to re-establish that we are all human; and underlying issues that have long been able to remain beneath the surface with all of our former distractions, are rising to the surface and revealing themselves to be the festering wounds they have always been. People are rightly angry, especially Black activists. We have been ignored, sidelined from central discussions, considered to be secondary in many fights, and sequestered to “race issues” rather than brought into mass movements in a way that isn’t pandering. In my own community, to my knowledge (and I could be entirely wrong), the issue of widespread discrimination only became a visible issue with the work of Cat Hollis. Prior, it was an issue tacked onto other issues. At the Lusty Lady, they didn’t walk out because of years of scheduling discrimination against Black dancers. The strippers walked out because customers were recording them without their consent and the club was doing nothing. Strippers United (formerly known as Soldiers of Pole) didn’t come into existence to fight racial equality specifically, it was founded as a labor movement working toward unionization. SWOP wasn’t founded to primarily protect Black or Indigenous sex workers, it was founded for the broader issue of decriminalization of sex work. The Red Umbrella Project was also not founded with the basis of focusing on BIPOC, it was created to fight stigma and police brutality against sex workers. While this is all understandable to some degree, and we all benefit from the goals of all of these organizations, the lack of primacy around BIPOC issues has been a major misstep across the board. If we are truly advocating for a “bottom-up” strategy, beginning with trans BIPOC should be the baseline for all organizations. Yet, it has not been the primary focus. Even the Haymarket Pole effort could be bettered with greater emphasis toward trans BIPOC. We all have our blindspots, or issues that we worry might move the narrative in a way that furthers us from our end goal, and criticisms to this end are not only warranted, but should be invited. However, I want to talk about unproductive criticism.

Anger is vital fuel to any activist movement. If we weren’t all full of angry tears, I don’t know how we would dedicate so many unpaid hours to our work. Some organizations are lucky to get funding, but most of us donate our time, because we believe wholeheartedly in what we are advocating for. We work for the future we wish to see. We bring our passion, the pain of marginalization, and a vigorous will to fight until the end, even as we cope with the personal traumas of our own lives. I understand that heated arguments arise because we are a passionate group of people, however lately I have noticed a lot of what I would call unproductive criticisms. I define “unproductive criticism” as criticism rooted in guilt or shame, without a reparative justice-based lifeline extended to offenders. These criticisms are not necessarily invalid entirely, they often bring up important points where a harm was done whether intentional or not. The problem arises when the purpose of the criticism is not to correct the offense, but instead to egg on community exclusion of the perpetrator. I will not call this “cancel culture,” because I believe the idea of “cancelling” a person no longer has any substantial meaning. But I will examine some of the concepts perhaps misbranded as “cancelling”. As a person on the internet, I know that we come for people. When you fuck up; when you harm minority groups; when you say or do something that punches down rather than up; you face repercussions. I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with having a system of accountability. But the internet magnifies this to the nth degree, because it is deeply impersonal when it comes to doling out criticisms or outright hate. The blind rage of the internet can be torrential. I’ve experienced this personally, when I went viral for celebrity criticisms. It is not easy to take, but it was relatively impersonal, and in a way fair game. Those people were strangers. We had no stake in each other’s lives other than a passing moment of spreading hate. Hate happens, and while it can have debilitating consequences for people with mental health issues, the fruit fly memory the internet has means hate will pass in a week or two. What I worry about primarily is social exclusion and how unproductive criticisms which lead to social exclusions often hurt activist groups the most.

Social exclusion arises when you are considered to be too toxic (too harmful) to remain a participant in your community, and people demand you leave digitally and otherwise. I do think that some people definitely need to be banned from spaces. In a world where there are certain issues our justice system is completely unequipped to handle, and honestly which has no business handling, having a means of community accountability is crucial. However, I believe we are too quick to socially exclude people, particularly activists. The bar for morality right now is incredibly high as far as how you are expected to act and speak to be a proper activist. There is hardly any space to make mistakes without people considering your words or actions to be intentionally malicious. I think everybody with any degree of visibility has a bit of worry that something we said once upon a time, back when we didn’t know as much, might resurface. I also worry that I sometimes have very out-of-pocket thoughts. I am bigoted because I exist in a bigoted society. It’s not like we suddenly emerge squeaky clean, spotless activists when we embark on an important community mission. I am so flawed. And I am painfully aware of my blindspots, and the ways my words can trigger some people. This is not a plea for absolution, I’m just saying that I ain’t shit and don’t expect me to be anything more than shit, lol. But in earnestness, I am a work in progress and I am shitty. But I am trying, and doing my best to grow. I think most of the time, people would like to grow and do better. And I do not think that we are at a moment where we can afford to exclude people from our movements, especially when they are willing to learn. I realize that I live in an itty bitty para-social reality filled with leftist strippers who all agree that we need to fight for our rights. We are a super minority among minorities. Most strippers I worked with gave little to no thought about their working conditions or what they deserved. They did not band together to create strip shows as a way to support the community and avoid working in a club and exposing themselves and the people around them to covid. This is not to fault anybody, it’s just the reality. Most strippers do not care about what we do, and are not willing to invest their labor in these movements. It is hard enough to get strippers to call themselves “sex workers” due to the levels of whorephobia we perpetuate within our community, let alone convince them to show up for weekly meetings where we brainstorm ways to fight the establishment. We have a long and difficult uphill battle to fight, and we need all the help we can get. Additionally, I do not think that missteps equate to an unfixable character flaw. If a person is out there, organizing dancers to any degree, I do not believe they are the real enemy. We have plenty of real enemies: the concentrated ownership of clubs in the hands of a few predatory men; management that refuses to hire black or fat dancers and who have normalized wage theft; police doing nothing to examine our sexual assault cases; legislators unwilling to listen when we speak up about how the policies they are writing about us do more harm than good; and so many other people. We have actual villains to fight, and yet too often we are fighting each other, expending effort, dragging each other’s names through the dirt. And for what? What is the purpose of this brand of accountability? Because in my opinion, we lose more ground dividing our already miniscule community.

I am not by any means advocating for an end to criticism. I want to know when I am doing harm. I want to do better whenever I can. I am not blameless. Again, I sit upon a throne of shit. What I am advocating for is purposeful criticism and a harder look at when it’s appropriate to enforce social exclusion. How does this exclusion benefit the overall community effort? Are we at a point where we can afford regular purging?

I say this as a Black person who has had plenty of beefs with White-run organizations. I joined Strippers United after I came for Antonia. She had posted a Raising Hell poster that did not feature a single Black dancer. I asked how she could promote a pole dancing event and not feature Black dancers centrally? I was angry that the organization that focused on strippers’ rights issues, looked so White, when pole dancing came from BIPOC. When the strip club culture that we knew and loved was so heavily informed by Black dancing styles, music, and pop culture. I came in hot, but I genuinely wanted to know why. My criticism led to a tea date with Antonia where we talked about these issues, and where Antonia asked me to join the organization, because she was a problematic White woman and needed help. We came from a point of friction, and I brought in my anger, but I didn’t take it as a sign that the organization was trash and needed to be taken down. I listened and she listened, and here I am, years later and running it. Yes, the organization is not perfect. We have major holes in the way we are operating and our priorities, but the net good is much greater than our flaws.

This issue is not isolated to stripper organizations. I hear about this with other Black activist groups, whether they be focused on tech policy or other structural issues. It’s especially bad within various feminist causes, because as I alluded to above, people identify as BIPOC first, and femmes second. Even with LGBT issues, many people are Black first, and trans second. As organizations accept that we must address our intersectional needs within our organizations as equally as important as our goals for future growth, there will inevitably be friction between what we aspire to be and where we are. Most organizations do not begin with a binding constitution that enforces anti-hegemonic power structures to avoid friction between marginalized people and those with greater power. Organizations come together as loose affiliations of people who show up. It’s whoever comes out for meetings, even though they are inconvenient; require endless labor; and there is no guarantee that what you’re fighting for will ever come to be. It is not for everybody. When you begin something, you take whomever you can get. Strippers United began with Antonia and two or three other strippers. There were many meetings that consisted of only Antonia and a room full of volunteer lawyers and law students, just waiting for strippers to join the cause. When an activist group is small or doesn’t have a lot of visibility, it’s much less likely to face criticism. When you have a bigger voice, you are held to a higher standard of accountability. Which makes sense. The stakes are high, and when your voice carries, you better be saying the right things. I do not contest that accountability and criticism are integral to growth. They undoubtedly are. However at this moment, we aren’t incorporating much creativity when it comes to imagining reparative justice. Why are social exclusion and deplatforming the primary mechanisms we turn to when we want to correct missteps? Are we throwing out the baby with the bathwater?

I think that right now, we are all in a highly volatile moment dealing with grief and isolation. We have lost so much, and we are tackling so much without needed reprieves. We do not get to celebrate our successes. We must continue on, and pat ourselves on the back when we can, alone in our homes. There is a lot to be absolutely infuriated about, and whether or not we direct that rage toward its sources, it inevitably bubbles up. We can only sustain civility in uncivil times for so long. My reaction when I get called out, which is an exhaustingly regular occurrence, is to want to double down. My body is like, “I will fight any and everyone,” which is the best way to further wear a body out. It’s not easy to take feedback from hate mail, but it’s important for me in these moments to consider what reaction is the most productive. I aspire to be better than the person that I am right now, and regardless of tone, these messages are pushing me to be better. At least, the ones where the feedback sheds light on my shortcomings. The ones that are pure bile aren’t giving me much to work with, and maybe in a way it gives me less to do when I’m not given a directive. We all need criticism, as painful as it may be to truly look at oneself and see the unsightly bits. If I had to bottle a takeaway for this meandering essay, it would be to consider the ideal functionality of a criticism. Is the point to inform, or is it to shame and guilt? And if the goal is guilt and shame, to what end? What is the ideal outcome? When considering enforced social isolation, perhaps do a benefit/cost analysis of what expulsion might mean. Finally, if a damage has been done, is there any reparative work one could demand instead of social isolation? I’m a fan of demanding money, labor, or visibility. Maybe you don’t want to have any proximity or contact with an offender, and that’s completely fair. Contact is often emotional labor. I just think that there are creative solutions to the problem of how we punish people, and what we are doing up until this point has under utilized the potential that these moments create.

Feel free to disagree with me, I know I am often wrong, and too forgiving. It’s the peacemaker in me. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.