Reflection as We Transition

As we near the end of summer, debate camp, and other activities, the high school debate season opener--- whether that be Grapevine, Niles, Greenhill, or Washburn Rural---- is only two months away.

As a collective, we were able to help host the gender seminar at the Michigan Debate camp for both the Classic and 7-week camps. We also held a meeting outside of this time: people shared things they'd experienced at camp/things they'd noticed and also discussed ways to address issues that had come up. Close to 50 people showed up, which we were pleasantly surprised by. It's easy for only women and gender minorities to have these discussions, but the fact that there were so many people who didn't fit into this category means that people do care about making the community better.

It was interesting to hear peoples' responses, although some of the participation within the big group seemed to contradict things that we had heard in smaller groups/one-on-one settings. Most people at the large meeting said, "dynamics are primarily good" and "people are being inclusive," which was great to hear. However, outside of this meeting we heard things along the lines of "I feel like certain people in my lab don't include me in conversations," or "I feel like I don't get the same level of respect that other people do." This made a lot of us on the board question why there was such a mismatch in what we were hearing. We can't know for sure, but we have a pretty good guess. Fear. People are afraid of expressing how they really feel in front of a big group. Perhaps they are worried that their feelings will be invalidated or that people will become defensive/feel like they are being blamed. We can't live under the guise of being a "perfect inclusive community," when that isn't the scenario. We SHOULD be honest about how we feel because otherwise there won't be change, and people will continue to feel hurt. Of course we can't resolve every problem, but we can at least try to make an active effort to make things better. Even if people don't have the intention of excluding others, being aware that there are people feeling that way or disrespected should prompt us to think about how we act. Do we try to open a closed-conversation up to others? Do we give others the chance to make their voice heard?

Reflecting and having conversations are important, but what do we do beyond that? How can we implement, what some call, "concrete solutions." It's hard to pinpoint one action that would fix all negative feelings, but something that we can all do is have more empathy. Even though it sounds insignificant, there's power in putting ourselves in the shoes of others to try to understand them. Putting away our own needs for a second and taking the hard step of trying to feel what they may be feeling. If we understood each other more, we'd be able to recognize when our actions were negative or may be interpreted negatively. Aside from empathy, changing our body language so we engage more people it a conversation/make it more welcoming is important. Even reaching out to new people and hearing their opinions breeds more inclusion. The most simple solution is listening more and talking less. We'll get a lot out of just trying to listen to what others are saying as opposed to just forwarding our own points.

After all, people just want to get a word out in a conversation and be heard.

With Love,

The Women and Gender Minorities Board <3