Last Thursday was one of those days.
The water in my building was scheduled to be turned off from 9 am to 5 pm. Routine maintenance, they say. I can’t help but wonder why they do this about once a month. And always on a day when I’ve planned to do laundry.
Miraculously, I managed to wake up and get up before 9 am and had a chance to fill some pitchers with water and fill the sink so that I could do the mountain of dishes waiting for me.
And then I spent the rest of the day on the couch. Tuned into, but not watching, mindless tv. Laptop on lap, being anything but productive. Surveying the mess in my apartment, but doing nothing about it.
I had only one thing planned for Thursday. And I was nervous.
A few weeks back a friend of mine from Parents Without Partners sent an e-mail onto me about a facilitator’s training program taking place in Toronto and was accepting applications.
Applications, not registrations. Because the program is this:
The [Organization Name which has the terms 'counselling referral' and 'education centre' and serves women] is once again offering the Facilitator Training Program for women in our community who are, or would like to be, facilitating groups. This free course offers group facilitation skills through an
anti-oppressive, anti-racist, feminist model.
I had my interview with the program coordinators on Thursday afternoon.
A week later, I still feel empowered by the questions they asked. I can’t remember the last time I didn’t have to consciously censor myself.
Is that weird? I suppose so. But when was the last time you were in an interview and they asked you to self-identify and you could, knowing that it would not be held against you.
I identify as a single parent, fighting to maintain a strong co-parenting relationship in the best interest of our daughter.
I identify as a psychiatric consumer/survivor who is trying to navigate the mental health system and allow myself to not fight to be a functioning depressive, because it means I don’t get the help I need.
I compared navigating the mental health system to being in a library filled with a million books. None of the books have titles. Some can only be reached with a ladder and there isn’t one. Not all the books are written in English. And, deep down, I know that the answer I seek and the help that I need…is in one of those books.
I was asked about being a feminist. About my definition. About my experience.
I was convinced, truly and thoroughly, that I was carrying a boy. So when I gave birth to this girl (a girl?), I wasn’t happy or excited. My first thought? That it sucks being a girl. That I’d brought into this world a little person who had the odds stacked against her. Who would have to deal with menses and breasts (I used to cry as a teenager when bra shopping.) and inequality. I was afraid I wouldn’t know what to do with a girl. I don’t usually wear makeup and I get a pedicure once every 5 years and I can’t remember the last time I wore a skirt and, damn, she’s going to want ponytails and I never learned how to french braid.
But we are here, 4 years later, making our way. I fight to not impress upon any assumptions of gender. Or sexual identity. And I think we’re doing okay. Her dad does not feel the same way about those things, but – at least, at the very least – she sees him do the cooking and the cleaning and the laundry and knows that men are just as capable. As capable as I am with a drill, basic toilet repair and not being scammed by mechanics.
I was asked about how I felt about learning within an anti-oppression framework. And I asked them to define it. Because I wanted to know why racism didn’t fall into their definition. Why it was a separate bullet point.
I’m beginning to see why racism falls outside of other anti-oppression terms. Because race? Race is so very visual. For the most part, sexual identity and orientation and gender identity and age and class and religion aren’t visually obvious. But race is. So very much.
They asked if I had ever been discriminated against.
I consider myself lucky that I’ve not had to deal with injustice related to societal inequality. I so often get asked “and what did you take in school? and where did you go?” and I stammer out some nonsense about being a cooking school drop-out and self-educated and how I’ll get around to some formal post-secondary education one of these days. And at times I feel ridiculously stupid for not having done those four years of schooling that would mean a diploma to hang.
And I do feel like my identity as a single mother brings to mind – for some people – uneducated, poverty stricken, parenting without a co-parent, a mother due to circumstances instead of by choice. Which is – mostly, kind of – untrue.
I would look forward to sitting amongst peers and being able to learn from them how they deal with oppression as it relates to their lives. I understand so very little. I’m not a racial minority (although Toronto has over 50% of its population born in other countries, which makes me a minority, in that I’m Canadian for a couple of generations back). I am able. I’ve not dealt with ageism or sizeism. I’ve never been on the receiving end of a racial slur or an insult to my sexual orientation.
And it came to a question about privilege. And I was asked to identify in what ways I am privleged.
I was born into a family that was fiscally stable and responsible. Two parents. The same physical home and address for 18 yrs.
I’m privleged to speak English as a first language. In the same way, I’m privledged to be literate.
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I got the word today. I’ve been accepted into the program. I start in early February and will be attending 2 nights a week in February and March. Before I sent my application, I proposed a schedule change for The Mook to The Former Mister so that I could not have to try to negotiate afterwards when he would have the advantage of me being desperate to have a schedule that would accommodate something I really, really want to do.
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Oddly enough, I’d been thinking about privledge for a few weeks now, since I started to get to know WordSmith. And I wonder if I don’t reject those things that I associate with privledge because I need to be the one doing the rejecting instead of being alienated because of my lack of privledge.
For example: I don’t golf. I think it’s a stupid pointless expensive sport. It’s unfair to fence off green space and only allow those people with money to access it. And the water it takes to keep those courses pretty and green? What a waste of precious resources, just so the elite can chase little white balls around.
In the same way, I don’t ski. Or snowboard.
If I were in the position to have grown up with access and the inclination to golf and ski and snowboard, would I? Would I enjoy it? Would I embrace it because it is what I know? Or would I reject it for what I feel it stands for.
