{"id":283,"date":"2017-12-12T12:43:15","date_gmt":"2017-12-12T02:43:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/intertwine.org.au\/?p=283"},"modified":"2026-09-05T16:56:01","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T06:56:01","slug":"everything-is-connected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/intertwine.org.au\/w\/2017\/12\/12\/everything-is-connected\/","title":{"rendered":"Everything is connected"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Adapted from a speech to the Everything is Connected conference in Canberra, 27 October 2017<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

As always, I want to start by acknowledging the traditional owners of this land \u2014 the Ngunnawal people of the land where I originally gave this speech and the Wurundjeri clan of the land where I\u2019m typing now. I want to acknowledge their elders, past present and emerging and acknowledge that their clans maintain connection to country and that sovereignty was never ceded.<\/span><\/p>\n

I also want to acknowledge the privileges that I enjoy as a descendent of refugees who settled on this stolen land and I and all of us who are not indigenous benefit from continuing settler-colonialism.<\/span><\/p>\n

I originally gave this speech at a <\/span>Green Institute<\/span><\/a> conference in Canberra, in Old Parliament House. The panel concerned Systemic Approaches to Racism and Prejudice. I spoke after the inspiring Lidia Thorpe, then candidate for and now MP for Northcote; the always passionate Tim Lo Surdo of <\/span>Democracy in Colour<\/span><\/a>; and the eloquent <\/span>Rachael Jacobs<\/span><\/a>, educator and dancer.<\/span><\/p>\n

The privilege of passing<\/span><\/h1>\n

I\u2019ve got passing privilege. <\/span><\/p>\n

The aspects of our privilege or marginalisation are axes. Some of those axes are more oppressed in our societies than others. Some are more visible. Being a person of colour is one of the aspects that is constantly visible, it\u2019s on you at all times. The intersections of those privileges and oppressions are part of what make up our complex and interacting identities. The intersection is not a doubling; it\u2019s a layering, and the impacts of that layering are \u00a0exponential.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m standing here as a person who is white-passing, straight-passing, cis-passing, neurotypical-passing. You can\u2019t tell, looking at me, that I identify as pansexual and gender-fluid. You can\u2019t tell, looking at me, that I\u2019m Jewish \u2014 well, some of you can, the Jews can. You can\u2019t tell looking at me that I\u2019ve got ADHD and you can\u2019t tell that I\u2019m autistic. You can\u2019t tell, looking at me, any of that.<\/span><\/p>\n

A while back I found a wheel of privileges on the Internet, adapted from <\/span>Kathryn Pauly Morgan<\/span><\/a>\u2019s 1996 book <\/span>Describing the Emperor's New Clothes: Three Myths of. Educational (In-)Equity<\/span><\/i> but it didn\u2019t quite cover everything I felt it needed to cover. So, I crowd-sourced improvements and we came up with the following wheel of privileges and oppressions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Above the big horizontal line here are your privileges. Below that are your oppressions.<\/span><\/p>\n

[Note: the wheel has now become intertwine's Power Poster<\/a> \u2014 and no longer has privileges above the line but rather towards the centre, closer to power]<\/span><\/p>\n

Some of you are going to say, well, I grew up poor. Yes, working class is definitely one of those things on the oppression side of it. Again, consider the layering. When we talk about white straight men \u2014 those are all on the privileged side of the line. But a white straight man who\u2019s disabled and working-class still deals with a society that wasn\u2019t built precisely for him. That doesn\u2019t erase his privilege however. The layers of that is what\u2019s important here.<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a risk of falling into oppression olympics, people trying to claim that they are more oppressed, perhaps because they don\u2019t really experience oppression and so they don\u2019t understand. The practical advice is check your privilege. Look at that list and seriously think, am I more oppressed than someone who\u2019s having their \u201ccolour scratched off\u201d by their friends, as Rachael Jacobs described. And I think the answer is pretty obvious when you ask it like that. On that list, parent and childlessness are on an axis but I think when you think about it and check your privilege, it\u2019s pretty clear that while it\u2019s hard being infertile and wandering around and looking at people with kids, people don\u2019t walk up to you in the supermarket and harass you for being childless. People don\u2019t walk up to you at a train station and punch you for being childless (as happened to Tim Lo Surdo effectively for existing while Asian). \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When our selves intersect<\/span><\/h1>\n

Intersectional is not my word. I\u2019m an inheritor of a word created by <\/span>Kimberl\u00e9 Crenshaw<\/span><\/a>, who is an African-American woman and academic. One of the things that she explores is the ways that race, class and gender intersect, that these layers of sexism and racism are inherently connected in the life experience of women of colour. The oppression that we then experience is structural. <\/span><\/p>\n

There is often a resistance to raising other layers \u2014 in fact, on the panel at the Everything is Connected conference, Rachael Jacobs noted the frustration that occurs when women of colour are talking about their experience \u201cand then the Queers get up and they say, \u2018hey, us too!\u2019 and then the disabled people get up and they say, \u2018hey, us too!\u2019\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

I hear that frustration, but also, if you\u2019re black <\/span>and<\/span><\/i> queer <\/span>and<\/span><\/i> disabled, we have to acknowledge that the layers get in there. <\/span><\/p>\n

Women of colour experience both racism and sexism. Of 25,000 abusive tweets <\/span>tracked by the New Statesman in an experiment in the UK<\/span><\/a>, more than half of them \u2014 think about that, 12,500 tweets \u2014 were directed at Diane Abbott, the black, female MP. This is not just a little doubling; this is an exponential experience. <\/span><\/p>\n

Abuse directed at indigenous women is likely to be <\/span>racist and sexualised<\/span><\/a>. Queer refugees are at <\/span>greater risk on Manus and Nauru<\/span><\/a> where homosexuality was illegal until only last year. There was an email that went out only this week from All Out, where a woman who is a lesbian refugee from Tunisia says that her translator was homophobic and was mistranslating her to the intake workers and that <\/span>therefore her application for refugee status in Germany was denied<\/span><\/a>. This is not a simple doubling. This is an exponential layering.<\/span><\/p>\n

When <\/span>compared with non-indigenous people<\/span><\/a>, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people had significantly higher crude rates of physical disability in Australia, almost 15% compared to 11%. Psycho-social disability: 6.6% compared to 3.8%. Intellectual disability: 5.9% compared to 2.5%. And higher rates of head injury, stroke and acquired brain injury: double that of non-indigenous people in this country. Again, the emotional impact of racism, sexism and ableism is exponential.<\/span><\/p>\n

The personal is the political<\/span><\/h1>\n

My Judaism very much informs my ethics. One of the quotes we often get from Hillel is \u201cIf not me, who? If not now, when?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

My personal experience of the rise of the right at this time is that everything is connected. As a queer person married to a queer man, the recent Australian marriage equality debate still affected us. As a queer person, as an ally and as a Green, every day, I was wearing my Yes badge, sticking my stickers on the bus stop. One sticker I stuck on the bus stop in my right-wing voting area was scrawled on with a swastika because the intersections and interconnections between queer oppression and racial purity continue to be relevant. The effect is to police my comfort as a Jew within my own neighbourhood. My daughter drew some beautiful things in rainbow chalk in the common space in front of our apartments saying Vote Yes for Marriage Equality and someone in our little block of eight complained to the body corporate. <\/span><\/p>\n

The attacks against those of us who pass aren\u2019t negligible. We are being policed at all times. The attacks rise with international events. We\u2019ve achieved our marvellous borderless world but it\u2019s not working in <\/span>our<\/span><\/i> favour.<\/span><\/p>\n

Per capita <\/span>attacks against Jews continue to occur significantly more frequently<\/span><\/a> than attacks against Muslims and that is true in Australia as well. The evidence produced in police reports on hate crimes and studies by anti-hate organisations show that in North America, Europe and Australia, the most frequent targets of abuse and violence on account of religious affiliation continue to be Jews. That\u2019s from Julie Nathan.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the year to September 2016, there was a 10% increase in anti-Semitic violence in Australia. And surprise \u2014 almost all of the assailants were male. Everything is connected.<\/span><\/p>\n

We know that men who commit domestic violence are more likely to commit public violence. Everything is connected. <\/span><\/p>\n

We therefore also know that those people are more likely to commit racist violence. We can\u2019t stand by. <\/span><\/p>\n

Up to the task<\/span><\/h1>\n

Another Jewish phrase that informs my work is that it\u2019s not your job to complete the task, but neither are you free to desist from it. This quote from Rabbi Tarfon says to me that my privileges that allow me to pass in this world give me a responsibility to stand up at conferences like the Everything is Connected conference and say these kinds of things to mostly privileged audiences. <\/span><\/p>\n

I think that what happens occasionally when we say to that white straight able-bodied man \u201cyou\u2019ve got privilege\u201d, he thinks that we are saying, \u201cyou need to feel guilty about who you are\u201d and then we have a terrible conversation. That\u2019s not what check your privilege means. We\u2019re not aiming for anyone to feel guilty and I don\u2019t think anyone wants men to feel guilty, I don\u2019t think anyone wants white people to feel guilty. I don\u2019t think anyone wants able-bodied people to feel guilty. We\u2019re not asking cisgendered people to feel guilty. That\u2019s not what it\u2019s about. <\/span><\/p>\n

If all you are going to do in response to us saying, \u201cwe are in pain, the system is structurally broken\u201d is feel guilty on an individual level then we\u2019ve achieved nothing. What we need to do is counterbalance. <\/span><\/p>\n

Have you seen that amazing cartoon that shows the difference between equality and justice? And equality is giving everyone a single box and the tall person still just as tall as they were and the next person up gets a little bit of help because they can now see over the fence but the short person still only has a single box and they still can\u2019t see over the fence. That\u2019s not justice. Justice is giving the short person two boxes, the middle person a box and the tall person no boxes \u2014 or pulling down the fence. Then they can all see!<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

We'll just ignore that every version of this I've seen, the characters all look stereotypically male...<\/span><\/p>\n

So the challenge is this: <\/span><\/p>\n