Performative Solidarity
10 July 2020
The past few weeks have seen many reaching breaking point with systems that enable and foster abusive behaviours. On my Twitter feed this blew up firstly in resistance to systemic racial abuse, and secondly, in calling out misogyny and sexual violence in Irish comedy. The latter and the intersections between the two quickly spread across all spheres, and given my interests in arts and culture and former life as a film academic, it settled firmly in people who've been abused while employed at arts organisations (including one close to me), and people in film scholarship.
As a survivor of abuse in romantic relationships and in workplace settings, the stories of others hit hard. It is not every day that I can read or listen to detailed accounts, and I often don't want to because it feels like an invasion of privacy that victims must speak out so candidly because those in a position to help them ignored and negated their experiences. I also prefer not to blindly believe because I've encountered so many compulsive liars in my time who seem to get a kick out of building themselves a victim narrative that never looks beyond their own ego. Conversely, and I don't understand how or why beyond knowing that I have an overly (to my detriment) empathetic personality, there are certain accusations I accept with little evidence beyond testimony because of the negative feelings I get from the accused separate from any incident that is made public. There is no response here that is fully right or wrong and I have no solutions to squaring those circles.
Something emerging in these swells of resistance is public performances of solidarity with accusers. What stung for me personally was seeing this from people who were in positions to help me when I was experiencing workplace harassment in my old life. One of these I called out publicly on Twitter. Another I have let be for now, perhaps because I already know that others know that person for who they really are. What hurts the most is that this is a woman who knew I was being bullied by women. I was alone and tired and confused. I had just moved city for the fifth time in five years. The one friend I had near me was facing her own battles in a toxic workplace - also a university - and we supported each other as much as we were able.
The former colleague I was upset at, who I recently saw expressing sadness at someone's harrowing experience and hope that the story would help other women experiencing abuse in academia, was never obliged to help me. It's just that she talks a big game very visibly on social media, but when presented with an opportunity to enact solidarity, in my experience, at least, she did the opposite. In fact, the last time I encountered her I saw myself cease to exist in her glazing-over eyes.
She was established at a university I had just joined. When things weren't feeling right halfway through my first semester, I texted her asking if I could quickly have a chat or a coffee. Things were going on and I wanted to see if they were normal. Was I just tired? Was I feeling displaced? Could it be that my line manager was right and I really was mentally ill? I had experienced intense loneliness the year before in my fixed-term post at Lancaster, but I was happy in my work and was highly productive and got on well with all my colleagues. This was different. I was pulling hours like I'd never pulled before but seemingly getting nowhere. I wasn't happy with work arrangements or the ways certain colleagues talked to me or that they changed things without consulting me or undermined my work so that production students were disruptive, if they bothered at all, in theory classes with me. I pushed back at schemes I thought were harmful to the students' well-being and was met with 'this is university policy'. I wanted to check that. I wanted to see if other departments operated like that. I just wanted to ask if this was normal and was it me being odd or difficult like they said - a term I now know is code for 'not easy to take advantage of'? The response was, 'I'm too busy' from someone who seems now to have the time to read involved Twitter threads and long-read accounts of abuse in academic circles.
Of course, I accepted that she was busy. I knew this person was ambitious and had many pots on the boil and, although we'd known each other for years, we were more friendly acquaintances than friends. And sure hadn't she reached out to help me before? As someone a few years ahead of me, she offered to read a draft of my first ever peer-reviewed article. Okay, sure, the changes she suggested ended up being trashed by the reviewers and getting it to scratch in their eyes was a deeply painful experience that I never had again, but she took that time and meant well. And didn't she invite me to loads of stuff she organised? And, sure, it wasn't her fault that at one of these I got put down and silenced for arguing with a senior male Irish academic who hadn't lived on the island in 30 years that abortion rights were adversely and directly affected by the Northern Ireland conflict and its legacy because there was always something more pressing than half the population's bodily autonomy to deal with. And didn't she seem genuinely disappointed to never once be able to attend likewise events that I organised, like my book launch, but isn't it nice that she can do that for her wee favourites who are less outspoken and embarrassing than thon wee prod from east Belfast? And isn't it inconvenient when some of them want to explore their place in the 'Irish Question' instead of burning tyres and flying flegs singing 'The Sash' in the name of Rule Britannia and the Queen?
I recognise it isn't fair of me to draw sectarian lines here. I have no evidence except a suspicion from years of exclusion that this may be why I never really fit into broader contemporary Irish studies circles. They like me to be a number in their amount of page likes and followers, but not speak at their events even though I wrote a fucking book and loads of articles - all really good ones - on contemporary culture in Northern Ireland that, by the way, formed the basis of the major AHRC-funded Screening Violence project now underway at Newcastle University that I became too ill to carry on with, and guess who replaced me - the gobshite who put me down at yer one's event several years before.
Sour grapes, I know. Is it any wonder I now find solace in studying artworks and exhibitions in which things are never what they seem on the surface? And this one certainly isn't what she performs publicly. Not only does she publicly (and not privately) perform solidarity with junior academics who have been abused by senior academics, I once met an ex of hers who had been a Master's student dazzled by the powerful persona she exuded as a postdoctoral fellow. All I will say is that as a survivor myself, I can well see the signs of damage in others, and I saw them in him.
We must be discerning about who we trust, and I say that fully accepting that many out there will not believe a word of what I claim here, and that is fine because I cannot prove it. I just had to say something because I cannot hold these harmful experiences in my body any longer.
Slip me a fiver at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/peablair.
The past few weeks have seen many reaching breaking point with systems that enable and foster abusive behaviours. On my Twitter feed this blew up firstly in resistance to systemic racial abuse, and secondly, in calling out misogyny and sexual violence in Irish comedy. The latter and the intersections between the two quickly spread across all spheres, and given my interests in arts and culture and former life as a film academic, it settled firmly in people who've been abused while employed at arts organisations (including one close to me), and people in film scholarship.
As a survivor of abuse in romantic relationships and in workplace settings, the stories of others hit hard. It is not every day that I can read or listen to detailed accounts, and I often don't want to because it feels like an invasion of privacy that victims must speak out so candidly because those in a position to help them ignored and negated their experiences. I also prefer not to blindly believe because I've encountered so many compulsive liars in my time who seem to get a kick out of building themselves a victim narrative that never looks beyond their own ego. Conversely, and I don't understand how or why beyond knowing that I have an overly (to my detriment) empathetic personality, there are certain accusations I accept with little evidence beyond testimony because of the negative feelings I get from the accused separate from any incident that is made public. There is no response here that is fully right or wrong and I have no solutions to squaring those circles.
Something emerging in these swells of resistance is public performances of solidarity with accusers. What stung for me personally was seeing this from people who were in positions to help me when I was experiencing workplace harassment in my old life. One of these I called out publicly on Twitter. Another I have let be for now, perhaps because I already know that others know that person for who they really are. What hurts the most is that this is a woman who knew I was being bullied by women. I was alone and tired and confused. I had just moved city for the fifth time in five years. The one friend I had near me was facing her own battles in a toxic workplace - also a university - and we supported each other as much as we were able.
The former colleague I was upset at, who I recently saw expressing sadness at someone's harrowing experience and hope that the story would help other women experiencing abuse in academia, was never obliged to help me. It's just that she talks a big game very visibly on social media, but when presented with an opportunity to enact solidarity, in my experience, at least, she did the opposite. In fact, the last time I encountered her I saw myself cease to exist in her glazing-over eyes.
She was established at a university I had just joined. When things weren't feeling right halfway through my first semester, I texted her asking if I could quickly have a chat or a coffee. Things were going on and I wanted to see if they were normal. Was I just tired? Was I feeling displaced? Could it be that my line manager was right and I really was mentally ill? I had experienced intense loneliness the year before in my fixed-term post at Lancaster, but I was happy in my work and was highly productive and got on well with all my colleagues. This was different. I was pulling hours like I'd never pulled before but seemingly getting nowhere. I wasn't happy with work arrangements or the ways certain colleagues talked to me or that they changed things without consulting me or undermined my work so that production students were disruptive, if they bothered at all, in theory classes with me. I pushed back at schemes I thought were harmful to the students' well-being and was met with 'this is university policy'. I wanted to check that. I wanted to see if other departments operated like that. I just wanted to ask if this was normal and was it me being odd or difficult like they said - a term I now know is code for 'not easy to take advantage of'? The response was, 'I'm too busy' from someone who seems now to have the time to read involved Twitter threads and long-read accounts of abuse in academic circles.
Of course, I accepted that she was busy. I knew this person was ambitious and had many pots on the boil and, although we'd known each other for years, we were more friendly acquaintances than friends. And sure hadn't she reached out to help me before? As someone a few years ahead of me, she offered to read a draft of my first ever peer-reviewed article. Okay, sure, the changes she suggested ended up being trashed by the reviewers and getting it to scratch in their eyes was a deeply painful experience that I never had again, but she took that time and meant well. And didn't she invite me to loads of stuff she organised? And, sure, it wasn't her fault that at one of these I got put down and silenced for arguing with a senior male Irish academic who hadn't lived on the island in 30 years that abortion rights were adversely and directly affected by the Northern Ireland conflict and its legacy because there was always something more pressing than half the population's bodily autonomy to deal with. And didn't she seem genuinely disappointed to never once be able to attend likewise events that I organised, like my book launch, but isn't it nice that she can do that for her wee favourites who are less outspoken and embarrassing than thon wee prod from east Belfast? And isn't it inconvenient when some of them want to explore their place in the 'Irish Question' instead of burning tyres and flying flegs singing 'The Sash' in the name of Rule Britannia and the Queen?
I recognise it isn't fair of me to draw sectarian lines here. I have no evidence except a suspicion from years of exclusion that this may be why I never really fit into broader contemporary Irish studies circles. They like me to be a number in their amount of page likes and followers, but not speak at their events even though I wrote a fucking book and loads of articles - all really good ones - on contemporary culture in Northern Ireland that, by the way, formed the basis of the major AHRC-funded Screening Violence project now underway at Newcastle University that I became too ill to carry on with, and guess who replaced me - the gobshite who put me down at yer one's event several years before.
Sour grapes, I know. Is it any wonder I now find solace in studying artworks and exhibitions in which things are never what they seem on the surface? And this one certainly isn't what she performs publicly. Not only does she publicly (and not privately) perform solidarity with junior academics who have been abused by senior academics, I once met an ex of hers who had been a Master's student dazzled by the powerful persona she exuded as a postdoctoral fellow. All I will say is that as a survivor myself, I can well see the signs of damage in others, and I saw them in him.
We must be discerning about who we trust, and I say that fully accepting that many out there will not believe a word of what I claim here, and that is fine because I cannot prove it. I just had to say something because I cannot hold these harmful experiences in my body any longer.
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| The coast at Stonehaven, and healing with dear friends, taken in 2017. |
Slip me a fiver at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/peablair.
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