My letter of resignation to social justice

Dear social justice,

This is my letter of resignation. I untether from your oppressive logics and here’s why.

I am handing in my resignation because I can no longer avoid the responsibility I have to myself and to the world. The world is calling more of me and it requires that I let go of you and the comfort and security you have afforded me. It requires that I evolve out of much of what I’ve come to know and love. It requires that I live my truth and in the process, likely lose the comfort and security of my in-group comrades (and gain a world of possibility). The world requires more of me than the groupthink zero-sum prison that we have built for ourselves, that I have built for myself. The worst kind of prison. I rebuke the notion that as a human who happens to be a black woman, that I ‘have to’ serve the world tirelessly or dutifully vote for a particular political party. That’s sexist, bro. That’s racist, remember. Put. down. the. textbook.

So often we participate in the very oppression, supremacy, and dehumanisation we say we’re here to dismantle. We undermine the movement when we do not allow ourselves and each other to move. I hear we wanted freedom but instead chose constraint. Constrained by rules that make small our humanity and dictate our ability to think critically, carefully, and independently. I say we, and really all I have is me, I cannot speak on behalf of others. Like, I literally can’t. And, I cannot be silent any longer.  Every silent lie, every dumbing down, every squashing of difference is complicity in what I oppose. I no longer participate within your confines. Social justice praxis demands my goodness. Well I’m not good. In fact, I refuse to be good. The unintended consequence of performing, upholding, reifying, deifying, and obsessing over goodness is… “be good or the gulag”. The coercion is real. The punishment is real. The consequences are real.

The problem is not that I’m bad, and neither are you, you’re just not what I want any longer. The truth is that I’m both good and bad, I’m both slave and coloniser, I am both birth and murder. I am both adoption and abortion. I am both compassion and retribution. I am both heaven and hell. It’s all in me and I’m capable of all of it, including being a fucking selfish asshole with unreasonable wants and inconvenient truths. I am multitudes. I am contradictions. I am tensions. I will not go on just agreeing to agree anymore as it’s killing off the best of me and the worst of me and I want the all of me. I no longer submit to my self-imposed walls. It’s not your fault, and you’re not to blame. I built my own trauma-bound walls and took meticulous notes. I continue to be responsible.

I see that I am freedom. I am grace. I am God’s image. I human and I am fallible. And because of and despite my mistakes, I get to think for myself, and I get to feel my feels. I am my own authority, I am my own certainty. I am responsible for my difference in the world because my difference is what will make the difference. I untether. I accept that I am a fractal of the world and the world is a macrocosm of me - with all its violence and exploitation and division. I make peace. Because these wars could do with some peace. ‘When I’m at war with myself, I will always lose’ is what a dream once told me. I am pressing the eject button on the eternal guilt, shame, and rage that social justice binaries condemn me to. My time on this this earth, my breath, my life force is not worth the cost. I’ve realised the subscription fee is spiritually high and I’m tired of your conscription. So I’m clicking ‘unsubscribe’. I seek a different justice. I’m here to shape change, not manufacture or commodify it, not reduce or abuse it. And I still might do all those things, time and again. Ok. Now what? Then what? Then what? I trust. And I respond.

I am born to be all that I am, including my most terrible errors in judgement, my most awful failures in experiment. And yet, love liberates. And so I love me. I liberate me. Me first. This is my role as the artist making the revolution irresistible… by no longer resisting. I accept. I surrender. I create. I remember. I flow. I get free. There will be cost and consequence and I choose what I want to be responsible for. The relationships I decide to be responsible for. Freedom is choosing what I’m responsible for, it is not having no responsibility at all. I am responsible for my difference. I am responsible for how I think, feel, and act. I untether. And I have no idea who or what I’ll find without you, my dear social justice mob. But it will look very different and I’m choosing different. Different justice. I may find myself alone, but then again, I always was. The veneer of solidarity that was actually conditionality is no longer enough.

And so, I untether. I venture into the uncertainty of life without you as my anchor of certainty. Thank you for all you have given me, you were an indispensable step in my self-concept and growth. You’ve given me so so much. You’ve given the world so so much. I wouldn’t be me without you and I couldn’t have imagined freedom without you. I’ll grieve you like an old friend who I no longer want to be friends with anymore. You’ve given me a lens through which to see the world and this won’t be the last time that I look. I balance - this does not need to be a pendulum swing of extremes. You will still be a lens but you’re no longer my only lens. I am the holder, I am the see-er. I decide. And a lens reveals as much as it obscures as someone said. I’m choosing to look beyond, and get curious about what will I find there. What will I find there? Maybe the whole of me, a more competent me, and maybe even our collective liberation along the way.

No longer yours and yet eternally gratefully,

V.

P.s. Am I getting kicked out of the movement for my dissent? I hope not. I’m still committed to justice even though I increasingly have little idea what it actually is anymore. Can we agree to disagree and still move together? Can we agree to disagree and still move side by side?  Can we find points of alignment and points of departure and still dance together at the end of the night? I remain here, committed to my liberation, and inviting you to commit to yours.

Let me know x