Support for the Greater Than Code podcast comes from O'Reilly Fluent and Velocity conferences, happening in San Jose, CA, June 11-14. Don’t miss your chance to get double the exposure to practical knowledge, expert speakers, and networking opportunities that can immediately boost your own skill set, and elevate team performance. Save on your pass using code GTC20. Learn more at http://oreil.ly/2o07Ufw . CORALINE: Do either of you blog or write? ASTRID: I do. CORALINE: And do you blog? SAM: I used to blog, but I guess stopped when Obama got elected, just about. And since then, I’ve been on Twitter and that’s where my energy goes. CORALINE: Yeah. ASTRID: Do you blog [inaudible], Coraline? CORALINE: Infrequently. But I am writing every week, my book. ASTRID: What do you write about? CORALINE: The book is called ‘A Compassionate Coder’. ASTRID: Oh yeah, that’s right. You’ve talked about that. CORALINE: Yeah, it’s about practicing empathy in software development. ASTRID: How do you research that? CORALINE: I just had to do a very difficult chapter about things that make you think that you’re practicing empathy when you’re really not. ASTRID: Such as what? CORALINE: In group and out group empathy. We talk about the situation where someone who is abusive, we try to empathize with them and end up forgiving them for their abuses. Which again, is not empathy. SAM: Yeah, those people also are often really skilled… CORALINE: Manipulators. SAM: At manipulating people, yeah. CORALINE: Yeah. And also, we talk about whether empathy is a zero-sum game and tie in with spoon theory and like, is everyone deserving of empathy and is empathy an emotional drain? So, it’s really difficult to write, because I believe in empathy so strongly. And I believe it makes us better people to practice it. So, to think about the ways in which it could go wrong was really, really difficult. ASTRID: That’s tough. I don’t know if I could write that. CORALINE: It was definitely our toughest chapter so far. But kind of what we went into it was this might be the most important chapter we write. And no one else can do this. ASTRID: So lately, one of the things that I have been thinking about which comes up every now and then is how much responsibilities I feel to explain things that occur, or maybe even things that have made me feel certain ways. You know, versus not being pigeon-held into a position where that’s what I’m known for. CORALINE: Yeah. ASTRID: Which is something I don’t know what the right mix of that is. Because one of the things I don’t want to do is become a person who only talks about race and gender, only because that’s what people ask me about because they think I know something that they don’t know. And then it also kind of makes me angry, not so much that people ask, but I always wonder, “Why aren’t you asking people who are saying or doing something that you think is sexist or racist?” as opposed to asking me? Like, I don’t know. You assume it’s a one-sided story. It’s not. If they are perpetrating some behavior, there’s something going on with them, too. But it feels like nobody’s asking. How do you navigate that? Because I hear what you’re saying about, somebody has to be the person who explains. But then, how do you not make it hurt you in the process? CORALINE: One of the things that Naomi, my co-author, brought up in the definition of empathy is that probably the most important aspect is emotional regulation. And the example she gave is of a child. Let’s say if a child is five and learns that humpback whales are an endangered species. And that becomes the center of that child’s experience of justice in the world. So, the child is like, “People are killing humpback whales and they’re almost extinct.” And it becomes this overwhelming thing that their entire lives become centered on this injustice that they see in the world. And that is emotionally draining and not sustainable. So, we have to be able to filter. We have to be able to regulate our emotions and cut off that empathetic response for our own wellbeing at times. And that regulation is very tricky and requires a certain amount of discipline and requires a certain amount of introspection that does not come easily. But with everything that is happening in our world and all of the bad things that happen to us every day, that emotional regulation is really necessary. And we see this when people that we love and respect take breaks from social media. Twitter’s an amazing tool and I’ve made a lot of friends through Twitter and made a lot of connections and it’s definitely changed my life in a very positive way. But Twitter is also very emotionally draining because we’re constantly deluged with information about terrible things that are happening in the world to people that we care about or people that we empathize with. And it is overwhelming and it’s impossible to regulate. So, we have tools like muting. But sometimes, you just have to take a break from it, because you just cannot process that much bad news. ASTRID: Yeah. I’ve been taking a lot of breaks from it because I just don’t, I can’t do it anymore. It’s not so much that I feel overwhelmed sometimes. It’s just I can’t. I want to build something happy and good. And I can’t do that if I’m constantly seeing things that are horrible. It’s too much. It makes me want to do something, but then I also feel very incapable of really doing what I want to do. I don’t want to just react to everything bad. CORALINE: Yeah. I think it’s important to have an area of focus. That’s what keeps me from feeling overwhelmed by injustice. It’s like, figure out where my strengths are. Figure out the universe of things that I care about and see where they overlap. To some degree, it’s a matter of staying in your lane, right? Like, I care a lot about racial justice, but I don’t have those conversations with people of color because I just amplify the conversations that they’re having or I try to amplify the conversations they’re having. And I don’t lean on them to teach me something. And I don’t inject myself into those conversations. Not because I don’t feel strongly about it but because that’s not an area where I can add value, except for talking with other white people about issues of racial justice. ASTRID: But see, you know, that in particular I have strong feelings about not necessarily what you’re saying, Coraline. But I have strong feelings about making conversations like that be so narrowly focused that only certain persons are allowed to participate. I don’t think that that’s helpful. Which I think some of that, that comes from another place, at least from my experience of how some people feel like if you don’t experience pain in the way that I am forced to experience pain, then I don’t want to hear what you have to say. But I also feel like this is not just happening in a small corner. This is happening to everybody in some form or fashion. Not everyone experiences the same pain. But it doesn’t mean that we shouldn't be talking to each other. Because I’ve just, I’ve also run into the people who are like, so much of an activist that you can never – it’s never enough. Like you’re never enough for them. And it’s just too much. And I just, I don’t agree with some of the ways that – because I feel like it’s another way of marginalizing people without even always seeing that’s what you’re doing. CORALINE: That’s an excellent point. And I really think it’s contextual. I struggle with this a lot. I follow a woman on Twitter named SoniaGupta. She’s actually going to be writing the introduction for our book, which I’m super excited about. And a lot of the things that she talks about in terms of being a woman of color, I experience as a transgender woman even though I’m white. But I’m always afraid to say that, because I don’t want to center myself and my experiences in the things that she’s talking about. But I see a sort of resonance there. And I think there’s some nuance that I can bring to a conversation. But I guess, to your point, I have to distinguish between when it’s time to have a conversation and when I’m simply reacting to something that someone has said and trying to initiate a conversation. And that’s a tricky line. ASTRID: It is a tricky line. And I think in that context, it’s really not for you to try to navigate how. It should be somebody who is inviting you to that conversation. It shouldn’t just be, “We have to go have a meeting and determine if you’re allowed to talk.” I don’t think that that’s very helpful. And I know that’s kind of popular. But I don’t like that. CORALINE: Yeah. I think that’s really interesting. I like that. Inviting broader participation in one of these topics. And to your point, people do specialize in their activism. ASTRID: Yes. Yes. I think diversity and inclusion goes both ways. I think sometimes people forget that just because you may not have privilege in one situation doesn’t mean you don’t have any privilege at all. And there are other situations where you have the privilege and you have to open your mouth and say, “This is not just about us. We should be listening to other people.” And I think some people don’t want to give that up. It’s almost like they would rather, like if I’m not going to be who I think I should be in all situations, then I have this one platform. I don’t want anybody to get on my platform that I don’t think should be here – and don’t recognize that that’s also discrimination. And it’s kind of hard to point it out because then people start going crazy. But I don’t agree that you should do that. Because if you want other people to listen to you and hear your words, then you have to be willing to give somebody else a chance to talk to you. CORALINE: I really like that a lot, Astrid. How do we make people do that? ASTRID: How do we make that happen? CORALINE: Yeah, how do we make that happen? ASTRID: I think that part of it is we have to stop fetishizing oppression and pain, which is that’s a thin line, too. It’s a thin line between getting a chance to describe what you feel versus it becoming almost like a pornography of whose experiences are worse. Because I feel like that happens. And I think if it stops being like a race to the bottom of who gets treated the worst, then you get an opportunity to be more inclusive. Because everything is not the same. But that doesn’t mean there’s not equality in discrimination. You know what I mean? CORALINE: That’s the promise of intersectional thinking, isn’t it? ASTRID: Yeah. And it’s challenging, because like you said Coraline, it’s contextual. It’s, like in one situation you may be the person who needs to have someone else give you the opportunity to be included. And another situation, you could not be effective either way. And another situation, you might be the person who can include someone else. And all those things could actually happen inside of one instance. And I think that that’s why it’s hard to navigate. But I think it helps when you start to realize it’s not – like when you were talking about empathy could be a zero-sum game, I think that inclusion and discrimination is not zero-sum either. There may be rooms I walk into where people discriminate against me. But there may be other rooms that I walk into where I actually am the one with the power. And I don’t think that we talk about that. I feel like it’s partly because there is this need to try to get stories told that never get to be told. But then there’s also I think sometimes, it gets taken to an extreme where it becomes like, “Oh, you must be experiencing this because this is what everybody who looks or sounds like you or have some sort of experience like you, this is what they say they experience all the time.” But everybody doesn’t have those same experiences all the time. And more often, there’s usually more layers to what would make a person feel like they’re being oppressed or not. CORALINE: That’s a form of stereotype threat, isn’t it? ASTRID: Yes, very much so. I get really passionate about it because it’s like, I guess because I see it happening. And I don’t appreciate that. I feel like there’s a time and a place to call people out for, you’re taking over the conversation that’s not for you. I feel like that does happen. But I also think, you can’t pretend – and I see this happen with trans women a lot. Anytime they say something, then they get marginalized. How could you assume that you have any moral stance on whether or not you can determine if somebody else’s pain is enough? That I don’t agree with. I think you can say our story may not be the same, which is fine. Or you could say, what I’m talking about is not exactly what you’re saying. That’s fine. But I don’t think you can dismiss someone. And I see people get dismissed. And this happens in different contexts. But it happens a lot. And I think it happens the worst among people who already have some sort of, I guess identity that would associate them with a group that’s being marginalized or underrepresented. So, it’s easier for them to dismiss, because no one’s going to challenge them. CORALINE: I see a lot of that when it comes to transgender women participating in discussions of misogyny. I think there’s a reaction that some cisgender women have of like, “See? We told you so. You’re just experiencing what we’ve experienced our entire lives.” And that detracts from the conversation and is very other-ing. Because yes, for a large portion of my life I did not experience misogyny in the same way that a cisgender woman would have experienced misogyny. But as a trans person, I experience misogyny and I suffer under the effects of patriarchy. And the way that that affected me just changed when I transitioned. But I was always subject to those forces. I just experienced them in a different context. ASTRID: Yeah. SAM: Doesn’t that also erase specific forms of trans misogyny as well? CORALINE: Absolutely. I had a discussion on Twitter a couple of years ago about whether having a word like trans misogyny is useful or not. ASTRID: I see what you mean, because it’s almost like, “Why does it have to be different?” CORALINE: Yeah. It’s the same system of oppression. It’s experienced in different ways. But misogyny is experienced in different ways by white women and black women, for example. ASTRID: Yeah. CORALINE: And we do have that misogynoir term which again, I wonder, is this fracturing a larger problem in a way that is not necessarily helpful? But I don’t know. I don’t have a strong opinion about it. But I do wonder about it. wonder if we’re splintering into smaller and smaller groups and intersectionality is not the glue that it’s supposed to be to bind us all together, how can we fight back? How can we fight back if we’re so divided? ASTRID: I agree. My mind says, whenever you have to be split into all these different pieces, it’s because you’re defining it the wrong way. But that’s a big change, to try to get people to start to see concepts like gender in a whole new way. But I also have that same wonder. Because I talk with my husband sometimes and I’ll tell him, because one of the things that I’ve experienced is that I never felt any type of sexism until I got married. And I think that part of the reason is because when you’re a young woman, what you’re constantly being told is you can do anything. You have to just work hard and it’ll happen for you. And then when I got married, I started to notice that people kind of were like counting down my time until I was going to become a stay-at-home mom. Even though I’d never communicated that that was my plan. But they’re like, “Oh, how long are you going to work?” As though getting married means I’m no longer planning to work. SAM: As though that’s an option in this economy. ASTRID: Yeah. It’s just these assumptions that are made that are based on these ideas that what women really want is to be able to stay home and raise their kids. And I know there are some women who do want that, which I don’t think that that’s a bad choice for them. But I didn’t like the idea that it was being thrust on my, even though I hadn’t said that. So then, it was like, “Well, when are you going to have kids?” and “When is that going to occur?” And I would tell my mom and other people that I think it’s so strange. Like you can’t talk about your menstrual cycle without people freaking out, but you’ll talk to me about when I’m going to have children as though it’s not the same stuff. But it’s okay to talk about that. You know, some women struggle to have kids. And people don’t even think about that before they ask those types of questions. They have no idea what kind of experiences could be attached to whether or not they have a child. But it started to make me aware of the ways that I’m looked at because I’m female. But then I talk with my husband and I also have these questions of, “Well, how is he looked at because he’s male?” Because we don’t talk about that, either. And for him, it’s more like, okay so when he got married the expectation is his job is to be the provider, regardless of what I do. So, everybody always wants to know, what does he do and how much money does he make? And they’re going to judge him by that. And there’s not a rule book for how to necessarily handle those things very well, either. And I also sometimes wonder, and I feel like the things that we see, especially – we talk a lot about how women get marginalized because they’re women. There’s also the opposite end of that, that we don’t talk about. And I feel like you can’t fix one without at least understanding what’s going on, on the other side. Because there’s a lot of stuff I think that happens with men that just don’t have an outlet. Because there’s also some of the other things, like you’re not supposed to talk about how you feel. You’re not supposed to explain your emotions to people. You’re supposed to have a stiff upper lip and do what is needed from you, regardless of how much that might take from you. Especially because you might have a wife and kids. And I feel like they’re both unhealthy. Because then, what happens if we have a child and he’s the one who wants to stay home? The social stigma associated with that is going to be really high, too. So, it seems like there’s not a lot of wellness anywhere. And that’s kind of why I don’t like this oppression olympics type of thing. But I also don’t want to diminish the fact that there are people who never get to talk, so we should let them have their say. I don’t know. It’s hard to navigate. But I get this feeling that a lot of people are living with a lot of pain. And so, when you try to say, “Well, mine is more than yours,” there’s always going to be pushback. Because I think there’s a lot of pain out there that we don’t even talk about, that’s not even part of the conversation. CORALINE: I think the language that we use, Astrid, is super important. Because in the examples that you gave, they’re all symptoms of one thing and that is the strength of patriarchal thinking in our society. And that does hurt everyone. And men should be talking about those things and how it affects them and working to make changes there. But the people who call themselves men’s rights activists are not addressing the patriarchy at all. I don’t think there is an organized movement among men to address the effects of the patriarchy on men and women or even men or children or anything else. It feels like it’s left to the women to do all of the work of pointing out the problems and trying to find solutions to their problems. But we can’t do that without male allies. Because they’re benefiting from the system. They’re propping up the system. They’re perpetuating the system. All of us are, really, to some degree. But it’s men who have to dismantle the patriarchy. SAM: Yeah. You know, there’s a particular trap in there for men. I’m thinking about it right now the same way as I think about my depression in that my depression tells me that I can’t change things. And my depression takes away the energy that I might have to change things. And the particular trap of patriarchy as it applies to men is that if you can't talk about your feelings and you can’t actually care about things that aren’t sports, that it is unmanly to address the patriarchy. I mean, it’s not a trap you can’t get out of. But it’s something that keeps you from seeing the system at all. ASTRID: Yeah. Yeah, because the whole first thing you need to get out of a prison is to know that you’re actually in one. SAM: Yeah. ASTRID: Yeah. The men’s rights activists, my thing with them is: okay, what do you want? Because it feels like they’re kind of just wanting to eject what they feel and put it on other people. SAM: I want everything to be about me. ASTRID: Yeah. But I’m just like, okay if – some of the stuff that they have brought up, in certain contexts, I understand what they’re saying. But then they don’t finish. Then it’s just like, yeah so we should get rid of all of women’s rights. I’m like, no. That’s not an answer. If you want something to change, it would be better if you would say, these things shouldn’t be happening. We should fight for change. But that’s not what they’re saying. They tend to just say, that’s why feminism sucks. Which isn’t really helpful. But there is stuff I agree – like the family court stuff. I think that’s a good point that they’re making. I don’t know why it’s always assumed that the mother is always the best option. And some of the kids are not benefitting from being with a mother who’s not very good for them, especially if there’s a father who’s trying to, who wants to raise them. But they have to fight to do that. I think that that’s crazy. I think they have a point there. But they’re not doing anything about it. That’s the part I – I agree with what you’re saying, Coraline. They’re the ones who actually could change it. CORALINE: Yeah. SAM: Yeah. But I feel like for some of those guys, a lot of that comes from a place of, “I’m complaining because bitches want my money.” [Laughter] ASTRID: Yes. SAM: And not because it’s what’s good for them or their children or anything. ASTRID: Yeah. I agree with you, Sam. CORALINE: To be clear, I do want their money. But… [Laughter] CORALINE: I want to be compensated for my emotional labor. And I don’t feel bad about accepting compensation for that. ASTRID: Yeah, but I agree. I don’t know. People don’t like to talk about that stuff. And I feel like it’s really dangerous though that the men don’t talk about it at all. And not even just the whole system. I think it’s dangerous to them on an individual level. If you don’t have any outlet, how are you to be okay? CORALINE: You’re not okay. You’re trained, at least in my experience of trying to live male for so many years, I was keenly aware of what emotions I was allowed to express presenting male versus the range of expression that women are allowed to express living as women. And I was terrified that people would figure out like, “Oh my god. They’re not behaving according to gender standards. Maybe something’s going on with them.” I was so afraid of being discovered and having this deep, dark secret revealed that I was maybe more keenly aware of those rules around emotions. So, I made a conscious effort to only ever express fear and anger. Because anything else was off limits. ASTRID: Wow. SAM: Yeah. CORALINE: Yeah. Anything else was off limits. And I think that explains a lot of the behavior that we see among men and their tendency to violence and things like mass shootings or domestic violence or police violence. It’s like men aren’t given any other outlet. And all of this energy gets channeled into fear, which makes them elect people like Trump; and anger, which makes them lash out at others. ASTRID: That is extremely scary. SAM: I feel like there’s a technical point about domestic violence that it’s more about power and control than those other forms of expression. CORALINE: That’s fair, yeah. ASTRID: But that right there is terrifying, that you only get fear and anger. That’s not a life. SAM: Yeah, no. I mean, I got a lot less of that than most men. But yeah, I still feel it. Exactly that that’s right. ASTRID: This is something that I’ve had to work on with my own husband, because when we got married that was like the only thing he would describe to me. And I would be like, “I just want to know what you think about something,” and it would take hours of conversation for him to tell me something else. And it took a really, really long time for him to start just telling me. I don’t even know if he described fear. It was mostly just anger. Because I think he was afraid to show me fear. And so, it took a very long time for him to express things like disappointment or sadness, especially when it’s prolonged. Or things that maybe from a long time ago still really color his views of himself or his views of the world that come from that child version of you that got hurt. That took forever. And I was very demanding of it because I didn’t understand how we were supposed to – like how am I supposed to know anything and really be able to be your partner if you have this big wall? And he did tell me, because he grew up with a dad who was very traditional in the sense of, “I’m a provider and that’s my job but I don’t know how to express emotion with you.” And it took [inaudible]. SAM: We’re not taught those words. ASTRID: That’s tragic. Because that’s like, what life is. SAM: Yeah. ASTRID: I just feel like that’s not acceptable. How are you supposed to do anything and be able to really feel? Because if you shut off emotions, you can’t really feel the good ones. SAM: Yeah. CORALINE: For me, it was very difficult once I gave myself permission to experience emotions. I had a lot of trouble regulating them, because I thought of it kind of mechanically. Like there’s my mind. And my mind is connected to my brain. And my brain gets sensory data from my body. And then I’m applying rational thought on top of sensory data to make sense of the world around me. And suddenly, I had another set of inputs. I had emotional reactions to things that I no longer was willing to ignore. And I didn’t know how to balance the signals to the point where I could have a reaction that I was to some degree in control of or responsible for or didn’t feel bad about. A reaction that wasn’t completely overwhelming. A reaction that wasn’t something that made me freeze because of the intensity of the emotional reaction that I was having to some incident. Regulating that still is a big challenge for me. If I get upset about something or if something bad happens to me, these feelings are overwhelming because I have no experience with regulation. It’s something I’m having to learn on the fly. SAM: DBT might help a little bit with that, by the way. CORALINE: Yeah. ASTRID: What is DBT? SAM: Dialectic behavior therapy. ASTRID: What is that? Dialectic like talking? SAM: Yeah. I’m sure there’s a technical definition. I’ve been going through a group thing where we’re going through a couple of different modules of this DBT package. And some of it is not particularly useful to me. But the core skills are about mindfulness. And the one that we’re about to start is about distress tolerance. It’s interesting in that it gives you a set of rational tools that you can use to evaluate and interact with your emotions. And it focuses on specific skills that you can practice to help balance your emotions. The dialectic is about the tension between your emotional mind and your rational mind. And they talk about wise mind which is this place where you can be in both at the same time. CORALINE: That reminds me of something that my friend Oren Shaw said to me when I was going through some difficulty. She said that her therapist used the metaphor of a train. So, you’re at a train station. And your emotions are trains. So, a train pulls into the station. You can observe the fact that the train is now there. She can observe the fact that sadness has come or despair has come or happiness has come. And then you make a choice. If you’re going to go onto that train and travel with it or not. And even if you make the choice to travel with that train for a while, you always have the option of stepping back off. SAM: Yeah, there’s a couple of variations on that metaphor like ships going down the river, cars on the freeway. CORALINE: Yeah. SAM: It’s all things that are going past you. CORALINE: And one of the difficult things for me was figuring out the difference between recognizing and validating an emotion that I was experiencing and not allowing that emotion to control me or to force me to react in a certain way. Like, the first part of that was learning that yes, emotions are valid, and having to sit with that. And then the harder part was like, “Okay, I have this emotion. Now what?” ASTRID: So, what’s interesting about that Coraline, is some of that is something that I had to learn growing up. Because I grew up in an affluent white suburb and my parents were concerned that I couldn’t be a super emotional child because of the projections that people will assume I’m like what I am because I’m a black child. So, I had to learn just because I’m sad, I can’t really feel completely sad in a way that I show. Because that for other people, they look at me in a totally different way. And that can put my life in danger. That’s what my parents were worried about. So, they would teach us how to process how we feel. And they were like, “You know, when you’re home, you can have a moment.” But you only can have a moment because you can’t just go on. But you definitely can’t do that when you’re out in public. Because it’s just, it’s not good for you. So I feel like, I think some of what you’re talking about of this, how you’ve learned how to deal or not deal with emotions, is applied in so many ways. Because some of what you were saying also reminded me of people that I have met that come from really tough neighborhoods or backgrounds, they don’t know how to process other things. It’s just, they’re so used to having to be on guard that if someone’s really nice to them, they will lash out. Because they don’t understand why they’re doing it. They feel like it must be some sort of manipulation. They don’t want to feel like they’re losing their edge. It’s very scary to them to not have to defend themselves all the time. And it manifests in a kind of similar way of just wanting to cut everything off because they can’t process it. It’s like going through a trauma. SAM: Yeah. What you were saying about your parents sort of training you really made me notice again how much that emotional stuffing is very much a part of whiteness, too. ASTRID: I learned that Sam, growing up. So, what I learned that was different is that in the world, I had to have certain behavior but at home I was allowed to be more free. But for my friends who were white, they were not. That was shocking to me. Because I knew that they liked to come over to my house, but I didn’t realize always why until I would go to their house. And it was as though they were constantly being judged. Like they were constantly being evaluated. And especially I think because a lot of them were coming from families where they had these expectations for what they were going to be and do in their life. And it was like the most nerve-wracking, stressful thing. And I don’t know how – that feels like an oppression of its own, because it’s like they couldn’t just be themselves. It was not okay. It was just not okay. And I did not come from that. It was more like, certain things were separated. Like, your achievement is important, but that’s not who you are. It’s your achievement. So, when you’re with your family, you better be in this room laughing and talking and joking with everybody because you’re no different than them. It doesn’t matter what you have. And it was almost like the opposite when I would go to their house. SAM: Yeah. It goes to puritanism and then Victorianism. ASTRID: Gosh, that Victorianism, man. SAM: Yeah. ASTRID: It’s still doing a number on the world. But see, that’s why I kind of feel like, back to what we started out talking about with the different people who feel like their pain is more. You don’t know everybody’s pain. They can have all these markers that make it seem like they’re privileged but they may not be. Not in the way you think, anyway. Or not everywhere. CORALINE: I almost think that discussion of privilege at the individual level is less fruitful than discussion of privilege at a higher level, because it can be invisible, like you’re saying. And it can be bad to make assumptions. And I certainly make assumptions. I talk about cisgender heterosexual white men all the time. Chads. [Laughter] SAM: Freaking chad. CORALINE: Cisgender heterosexual anglo dude is what chad stands for. So, it is easy to make those generalizations. But the generalizations are helpful in terms of talking about structural systems of oppression and structural patterns, yeah, with privilege. But it is important that we don’t translate that down to the individual level and say, “Sam, you’re a cisgender heterosexual able-bodied white male. Therefore, I’m going to assume all these things about you.” ASTRID: Aw, yeah. SAM: Right. And then it becomes very easy for me to get out of that by saying, “But I grew up poor, so I don’t have privilege.” CORALINE: Yeah. ASTRID: Yeah, I agree. I think it’s more like, there’s this institution of social hierarchies that play on everybody. And everybody’s involved at some level. No one gets out scot-free. CORALINE: But we still have to talk about the system. And it’s the system that we want to dismantle. We want to change the people in our lives to make them better and make them healthier and make them happier and more fulfilled. And that’s on us to do that in our spheres. But the larger problem we’re trying to address is structural. And I think it’s important to remember that. ASTRID: It is. I feel like in America, we talk so much about race that we forget about class. And we act like that’s not a system that people are being affected by. SAM: We can’t talk about class. It doesn’t exist in America, right? CORALINE: A lot of conservatives use class as an excuse to not talk about race, though. SAM: It’s a dog whistle. CORALINE: It’s complicated. It’s complicated. ASTRID: It is complicated. CORALINE: And there is classism and there is racism and they do intersect. ASTRID: Yes. I think what’s hard in America is that we use race as a proxy for class. And then that didn’t stick completely. So then, we still talk about race, which still has its own things. But class, we never discuss at all. SAM: Unless we’re using it as a proxy for race. ASTRID: Yes, yes. Well, then we’re not really talking about class. We’re just putting the word in there. SAM: Right. ASTRID: But we don’t really talk about class. One of the things that I noticed, and I don’t know how many people actually talk about it – although there was that book that came out recently – is that there’s so much description of poor, black and brown people that I think it’s to the disadvantage of poor, white people. I think a lot of poor, white people don’t realize that they’re the poor people, too. Because it’s like they are fed information as though they’re not. And then race is used as a means of saying, “Well, they’re the reasons why you don’t have what you should have. So, go be mad at them.” SAM: That is literally part of the construction of whiteness. CORALINE: What do you mean, Sam? ASTRID: I figured that out on my own, Sam. CORALINE: Can you expound on that? ASTRID: What do you mean? SAM: So, whiteness was constructed because, well, because of a lot of reasons. But part of how it worked was that it is designed to divide and separate people. So that poor, white people won’t have solidarity with poor people of color because they will say, “Well, I may be dirt poor. But by god, at least I’m white.” ASTRID: Yeah, and that’s to their disadvantage. SAM: Yeah, and you can see over time how the definition of whiteness has changed, right? Because Chinese people used to be part of whiteness until they weren’t. It took a while for Irish people to become part of whiteness. ASTRID: And Italians. SAM: Same, yeah. CORALINE: Greeks. SAM: And it basically was this sort of strategic way of separating people so that the folks in power stay in power, essentially. ASTRID: Yeah. SAM: So going back to class for a second, though. My partner was describing a training that she went to one time where they handed out sheets of paper that contained different sets of skills that you might have depending on what class you’re in. And I would love to see the whole list, but the ones that I remember are you know how to apply for food stamps versus you know how to work with a caterer to organize a party. ASTRID: That’s interesting. SAM: Yeah. Different skills that are taught to people in different classes. And how people once they’re – they can function very well inside those contexts, but that’s part of the awkwardness of going across classes, is that you get into these contexts where you don’t know the rules. ASTRID: Yeah. SAM: Sorry, anyway. ASTRID: No, that’s interesting. I do feel like class is this really complex thing that we never discuss that is actually probably more important than a lot of the things we do, as far as its effect on people. Because there are so many proxies for class. CORALINE: I think it’s interesting what you’re getting at there, Sam, or what I heard you getting at. And I think it relates back to the rest of our discussion. You’re not aware of those things until you change class. I wasn’t aware of a lot of things until I changed the gender I was presenting as. And going back to what you said near the beginning, Astrid, I mentioned staying in my lane. And you talked about the danger of staying in your lane. Maybe by shifting contexts, by not staying in our lanes, that’s when we’re gaining real insight. SAM: When we have the opportunity to. ASTRID: I think a lot of what I learn when I’m in an environment that I’m not familiar with is how much they are very much like me, but they don’t know it, or they think they’re not. SAM: In order to be able to learn anything from that, you have to be willing to tolerate that cognitive dissonance. Like the example that you gave, Astrid, of somebody who grows up in a tough neighborhood and doesn’t know how to respond when somebody performs kindness. You have to be willing to be vulnerable to be willing to admit that you might be wrong. So many people just can’t do that. They don't know how to do that. ASTRID: Yeah. Something about what you were saying, Sam, is making me think of people who I know who would say that they are middle class. But they would know how to apply for food stamps. But they also will drive a nice car and buy certain types of things so it makes them feel like, “I’m not poor.” SAM: Yeah, it’s interesting to see the effects of our industrial and post-industrial economy on the markers of poverty. ASTRID: Yeah. SAM: Because we have certain kinds of physical wealth, but we’re still food insecure. Economically insecure. CORALINE: Yeah. Medically insecure. SAM: Oh god, yes. ASTRID: That’s, I would say, the majority of everybody. CORALINE: Yeah. So Astrid, what I’m taking away from this is when I talk about the impact of oppression on me and people like me, I’m going to try to keep the door open for people who don’t share my exact set of characteristics or my experiences but who feel solidarity or sympathy or they see a reflection of that in their own lives. I’m going to try and make room for broader conversations, so I can come at it from the perspective of a transgender woman but not limit the conversation just to other transgender women. ASTRID: Yeah. CORALINE: I don’t know how I’m going to do that. But I’m going to make a conscious effort. ASTRID: I know, right? It’s so hard. SAM: How does this affect you? ASTRID: It’s so hard, but I feel like, I think it’s what happens when we watch movies. Which sounds like it’s superficial. But I can watch a movie and the characters that I identify with are not always people, I feel like most of the time they are not people who have anything to do with what I would call my experience anyway. But there’s something about whatever their arc is that I can relate to. And I think we understand that when we watch movies or television shows. But then it’s like we forget it in the real world. And it’s like we just tell ourselves, “Well, that’s a movie.” So, they just wrote that and that’s why it’s that way. But in the real world it’s not like that. But I think more often than not, it is like that. One of the things I was talking about with somebody recently is you never who’s watching you. And how what you’re saying and doing affects them. And I think that we talk a lot about allies. And I know people are really struggling with how to be a good ally. But I think sometimes it’s just listening. And not even because your intention is to be an ally. It’s just listening because they are human and they have their own story and maybe what they’re saying, it’s not like yours. But if they say it’s relatable to them, then let them relate. CORALINE: Yeah. ASTRID: It is hard to do, though. Especially when you’re in pain. I think that’s the problem, is that when you’re in pain, you’re trying to get through your pain. And you don’t necessarily want to try to be this open vessel for others. Because you’re just dealing with your own pain. But I think the problem is that I think the majority of us are dealing with pain most of the time. So then, if you never can make the door crack open, you’ll never get those opportunities to really grow, I think. It’s just really hard to do it. CORALINE: We have to create safety around us, right? Like the person you were talking about who couldn’t process someone being nice to them. It’s because they weren’t in a place of safety. And for your husband, it took him a long time to realize that being with you, that was a place of safety where it was okay for him to peer around the wall and open up and share. So, maybe what we should really be working toward is creating a sense of safety with the people in our lives and letting them know: it’s okay to feel pain and it’s okay to express your pain, and I’m not going to be comparing it to my own pain. I’m going to hear you. I’m going to listen. I’m going to sit with you. ASTRID: Yeah, I think that’s great, Coraline. Maybe that’s what we should be doing in general, is just trying to make safety be a priority. SAM: Yeah. I’ve been with my partner for 18 years. And I’m only just starting to get to that place. Just in the last week or two, I’ve been able to tell her things that I haven’t told her for the whole 18 years that we’ve been together. CORALINE: Yeah. ASTRID: Does it feel good or does it feel scary? SAM: Yes. ASTRID: Yes to both? SAM: Yeah. Mostly it feels good, I think because I had a wakeup call that made it so that I couldn't ignore how bad my depression and isolation had become. So, that’s what I’m struggling with right now. But yeah, what you said about making a place of safety really resonates with me. CORALINE: Maybe we shouldn’t focus so much on staying in our lane and telling other people to stay in their lanes. But we should [develop] things for people to move freely and get us all to our destinations. ASTRID: I do like talking about it in terms safety. Because that feels like the thing that’s missing the most. People are afraid of everything all the time now. Not even just now, but it just feels like it’s even more prevalent. SAM: Even that coded phrasing of economic insecurity right, that was used around the Trump election. Even directly on its face, that boils down to safety. ASTRID: When you were talking, Sam, about how it’s taken you a really long time, you also made me think of just in your own family, a lot of the people who you grow up with who are related to you are not people that always give you that room to be a whole person. CORALINE: Definitely not. SAM: No. ASTRID: And it feels like if I can’t get it here, then how am I supposed to get this anywhere? SAM: And it must not exist. CORALINE: Yeah. ASTRID: Yes. Yes. SAM: [Inaudible] possible, yeah. ASTRID: And you can’t really control who you’re related to. But it does feel like maybe if there was a little bit more emphasis on making a place be a safe space, it would be more possible for people to have those skills. It wouldn’t have to be this esoteric thing that you’re trying to figure out what to do. I know that this is not exactly the same thing, but in anthropology we talk about this in terms of how human groups evolve. Because when you’re a smaller group, and I don’t remember all the technical terms correctly, but when you’re a smaller group, I think it’s a band. It’s like 150 people, ish. You’re related to all those people in some way, usually. And so, the concept of who your family is and who’s supposed to be responsible for you is shared. Because even though you may not technically be part of the same immediate families, you’re somewhat close relation and everybody looks out for each other. But when those groups start to get bigger, then it’s easier to separate. And that changes – oh yeah, I’ve heard of that before. Dunbar’s number. But this is more like, when they talk about it in anthropology, they don’t really talk about that number. They talk about kinship and social structure. There’s the nomadic bands which are smaller. And then there’s the ones that are stationary and they’re a little bit bigger. But then once you get past families, that’s when you start getting into serious hierarchy where there’s usually people who are rulers and people who are slaves. And then there’s all these different structures in between. And they say that that happens because your ability to recognize someone as you goes away when there’s more people. So, this is like over 500 or 1,000, something like that. Then you don’t think of everybody as related to you. And so then, you don’t care for them in the same way as when they’re smaller. And even now, if you go to smaller islands, a lot of times the people who are indigenous to that island is how they treat – the kids can run around because everybody watches the children. It’s not, “I watch my kids.” But then as you get into these bigger groups, that goes away. And it creates all this insecurity because the conflict is we didn’t evolve to be alone like this. Because we’ve been like this hunter-gatherer nomadic thing for something like 60,000 years. And it’s only been in the last few thousand years that we’ve gotten bigger than that. And so, we don’t have the skills to function fully without that kind of support group, which we used to just have. We were just born into it. That’s just what you had your whole life. And now, you have to go make it. And that’s much tougher, because you have to find the connection between you and another person and build the trust. Whereas before, it was just implied, because that’s what you had to do to survive. So, you didn’t have to hatch those skills. CORALINE: That is a very reliable skill in our connected world that we live in today. And we do see people with their chosen families, with their new tribes that they have created out of nothing banding together to provide a sense of emotional safety for each other. I have my private Slack community that I’ve curated over a period of many, many years. And I know that’s a place where I can talk about absolutely anything and I won’t get judged for it. I’ll be supported and nothing’s going to leak out. But it takes a lot of work to create a space like that. I can’t imagine trying to find a space like that. But maybe that’s something we should be focusing on, is how to create spaces where we do have that safety. ASTRID: Yeah. I think we should be. CORALINE: I think there are a lot of women in tech spaces with varying degrees of toxicity. We have to see past the surface characteristics that we share. Like, I always laugh when people talk about the trans community because there is no trans community. It’s a bunch of people trying to figure things out and making temporary alliances when they get pissed off about something. [Laughter] CORALINE: But yeah. I think we tend to form communities around surface-level things. Like, “Oh, women in tech. That’s obviously a group. So, everyone who’s a woman in tech obviously shares the same frustrations and fears and doubts and aspirations.” So, we’ll just make a blob and assume that everyone who comes into this blob feels the same way and needs the same things, when that’s so untrue. I think those tribes that we form can’t be based around, “Oh, we have this shared characteristic. That means we belong together.” Because that doesn’t work. ASTRID: Yeah, especially because it’s coming from the outside world. The outside world is saying this characteristic is for some reason a problem. And then now, all the people who share are trying to support each other. Which can be okay, but that doesn’t make you all the same. Or even have the same needs. I agree. It has to be more authentic than that. It has to be what will feel real to you. CORALINE: Yeah. It has to go deeper. SAM: I hear this tension between that number of 150 or so, or what was it, 500 or 1,000 where people – you can no longer approach people as people. You have to perform abstraction, classify people. There’s this tension between our need to conserve our limited cognitive resources and the need to approach everybody as their own unique person, which takes a lot of effort. I don’t know how to address that tension. I’m just [noting it]. ASTRID: It’s contextual though, Sam. So it’s like, if you go to a foreign country and everybody speaks another language and then you hear somebody speaking English, you feel like, “Oh. This is a person like me.” Now, they could be Australian. But they’re speaking English. So, you could talk to them. But it doesn’t mean that in your regular life, if you saw that person, you’d be like, “You’re part of my tribe.” You wouldn’t necessarily feel like that. SAM: Right, yeah. ASTRID: And I think that’s also sometimes why the signaling gets mixed up with what you were saying Coraline, where when you’re in a sea full of men and there’s just you and there’s one other woman then you’re like, “Hey, chick. You’re part of my crew.” But in your regular life, that’s not what it looks like. So, would you still feel that connection to that person? That’s the hard part. CORALINE: Yeah. ASTRID: I feel like my reflection would be we should grow safe spaces instead of just conglomerates of minority spaces. CORALINE: Yeah. SAM: Yeah, it comes down to safety for me, too. Coraline, you were talking about trying to figure out how to make space for other people with different perspectives. And that’s just again to me, it feels like, how do you make it safe for other people to participate in the same conversation? And then I’ve already talked about how important safety was to me, personally. That’s a thing I’m working on right now. ASTRID: I feel like part of what makes things safe is being seen, being heard, and knowing that it matters. So, maybe if we just start with trying to do that for others, that would be a good beginning. CORALINE: Yeah, that opens a door, right? ASTRID: Yeah. Not just that you get to say your piece and then leave, but that it actually matters that you say it to somebody else. CORALINE: Yeah. So, this has been an interesting conversation between people who do feel safe with one another. And we’ve shared quite a bit that’s very personal. And I want to hear more. I want to continue this conversation. I want to get more insights. I want to hear about the things that you’re going through in your life and I want to let you know that I’m listening to you. And I want you to join us. So, go to Patreon.com/GreaterThanCode, pledge at any level, join our Slack community, and let’s continue the conversation. Thanks.