The "Liberal Limit" and How to Fight It
Well well well, look who it is. It’s me, your somewhat embarrassed host, Alan Henry. And this is Productivity, Without Privilege, a newsletter about living, working, and thriving as a marginalized person (or not, so to speak) in the workplace…and a heaping dash of whatever else I feel like talking about, I suppose.
Apologies for this newsletter coming in later than usual: the beginning of the year is always a bit of a bear, and I took a few days off there at the end of January for my mental health. You should do the same! Make sure to use your vacation days: and if your company is the type that does “unlimited vacation,” whatever that means, take advantage of it, yeah?
Now then, let’s get started. I should ask you again, as always, to pick up a copy of my book, Seen, Heard, and Paid: The New Work Rules for the Marginalized, if you haven’t already, but if you haven’t, I’ll remind you that I’m giving away ten (10) copies of it to those of you subscribed right here! Just fill out this Google form and you’re entered! I’ll draw the winners at the end of February.
This week, I want to talk about three things, and you already know what they are if you’ve read the subject line: The problem of “The Liberal Limit.” So let’s get started.
First of all, I want to talk about J.K. Rowling and the controversy around Hogwarts Legacy, a game inspired by her IP, and of course, her rampant transphobia. The “controversy” for what it is, is indicative of something that Laurie Penny described back in 2015 in The New Statesman as “the liberal limit,” or that place where privileged, nominally progressive, and right-minded people stop caring or start pushing back against social justice because it makes them feel personally uncomfortable, forces them to rethink their own deeply held prejudices or beliefs or causes them even the slightest discomfort.
The “liberal limit” shows its face when you ask people to put their fandom aside and support their LGBTQ—especially their transgender—friends and colleagues in the face of transphobia not just by J.K. Rowling, but also on the part of major media outlets. Some of you may not be in video game spheres (and honestly, sometimes I wish I weren’t either) but I’ve been watching fans of the game, even if they dislike Rowling herself, DARVO the hell out of all of this to paint themselves as victims because people are challenging them as to why they’re unable to put their money where their values are.
That, for example, is the liberal limit, where their personal discomfort is more important than the lives or rights of a marginalized group. This is the same argument against people protesting in ways that inconvenience others, like “I’m all for Black Lives Matter but do you have to block traffic?” for example.
Other times, it’s less about the inconvenience and more about worry that a specific injustice will be ignored or treated as unimportant if another injustice is brought into the picture. Now we’ve talked about intersectionality in the past, but when people don’t understand the fact that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” they begin to paint even social justice movements as “us” versus “them.” They fear that if a conversation turns to race or white supremacy, somehow class injustice will be ignored. They fear that by advocating for the rights of transgender people, women’s rights will be ignored (which is, obviously and demonstrably untrue considering the history of activism—while the same can't be said of the inverse—and currently the hot topic of conversation among aggrieved white British women for some reason.)
So what does this have to do with you, and what can you do about it, you ask?
Well for one, it’s a reminder to observe your own limit and to sit with your discomfort and address it personally rather than taking up arms against another marginalized group.
It’s also a reminder to pay attention to your surroundings in the spaces you inhabit and understand that even when you’re not being marginalized, if you observe another group or person being marginalized in your space, it’s likely just a matter of time before that comes for you. Even if it never does, you should do what you can to address it, because it's the right thing to do.
If there’s anything I can tell you, it’s to never consider the rights of others as some kind of “burden” to yourself, and instead realize that the load gets lighter the more people carry the collective weight. So by you reaching out to the person who’s being marginalized in your workplace, or in your community, or in your professional space, you’re only doing a good thing. I’m not asking you to stand up in a meeting and defend someone who’s been silenced if you don’t have the psychological safety to do so. Still, I am asking you to be the person who offers to get coffee with the only woman on an all-male team who seems to be stuck doing the office housework. I am asking you to, just as a wild example, ask your openly trans colleague to review a game with close cultural and financial ties to a celebrity transphobe. Elevate marginalized voices when you can, especially when it's difficult to do. Empower the marginalized when you can. Share your opportunities and the stage when you get them.
One thing I told myself is that as soon as I got promoted to a position where I could steer the editorial vision of any organization I worked at, I would do my utmost to champion new voices, voices with unique stories to tell, and lived experiences unlike what that publication routinely featured. And I know I’m doing a little back-patting here, but I feel like I’ve done that at every publication I’ve had the privilege of leading or working on, my current one included.
I encourage you to do the same. It accomplishes multiple goals at once: it helps people traditionally underserved and systemically marginalized, it proves you’re capable of finding new and unique stories previously untold, and it hands the microphone to people with amazing stories to tell. Give it a try, you’ll only find success.
[ Worth Reading ]
Black Employees Face Backlash From White Managers When They Self-Promote At Work, by Monica Torres: This is a point that I made in Seen, Heard, and Paid, but I’m always interested in more objective data to support this fact, even if it doesn’t lead to direct change in working environments. But this is the double-edged sword that people of any marginalized identity have to face (especially Black workers,) where we’re told we should speak up more and be assertive, because being a “worker bee” leads to getting walked on (which blames the employee for their own marginalization,) but standing up for yourself and advocating for yourself results in being suppressed by your privileged managers. I’ve seen both sides of this personally: Being told to speak up by one manager only to subsequently be smacked down by another manager, at the same organization. The piece offers some suggestions for Black employees (e.g., finding mentors, community, and support,) but as it also says, this isn’t on marginalized people to fix.
The New York Times Is Repeating One of Its Most Notorious Mistakes, by Jack Mirkinson: I generally don’t like to speak broadly about The Times, or any of my past employers directly, because I truly do want this industry to survive, succeed, and thrive. But what’s happening at NYT with regard to its coverage of trans issues and trans people is unconscionable, and it’s difficult for me to watch it happen knowing there are trans and non-binary colleagues there who are probably afraid for their jobs if they stand up for themselves. It’s the worst kind of marginalization; where you’re being suppressed in multiple ways simply for existing, not even for the work that you do. Even worse, NYT’s inability to hold itself accountable or even engage with external criticism in good faith is a huge problem. One that very well may cost real lives, the way it did in the 1980s.
News On Twitch: Is the Livestreaming Platform A Viable Future Home for Journalism? by Juwan Holmes: I was interviewed for this piece a while ago, and I’m glad it’s live. Part of this is a great rundown of the potential for Twitch as a platform for journalists to reach new audiences that aren’t engaged with them at the moment (more on that in my next newsletter! Look at me, planning.) I’ve found Twitch as a remarkably interesting and fun place to meet people who are genuinely interested in informal conversations with people who know what they’re talking about, as long as those conversations are collegial. That alone makes it a great place to find people who might be interested in the topics you cover, if you’re willing to get over yourself enough to approach them as equals, which explains why some outlets are interested in it and others aren’t.
[ See You, Space Cowboy ]
The past few months have been pretty heavy, honestly. The news has been cataclysmic depending on where in the world you live, and between slow global crises like climate change, immediate ones like earthquakes and floods, and human-manufactured ones like racism, homophobia, and transphobia eating away at the social contract and eroding the institutions designed to serve us, I think we could use a little break, don’t you?
So this time I’m recommending a book by a good friend of mine, Annalee Newitz, called The Terraformers, an optimistic love letter to the future in the form of a beautiful, brilliantly written science fiction novel. I’ve only read a little bit so far, but I truly can’t wait to dive so deeply into it that I forget the world for a while. Newitz is an incredible writer (and an incredible friend) and they have a way of building worlds that’s both hopeful and engaging as well as thought provoking and contemplative.
So pick it up today, and once you’ve read it, read their back catalog as well, including The Future of Another Timeline, which is a little too close to our current reality for my taste.
Oh, and speaking of books, if you didn’t see above, I’m still giving away 10 copies of my book to folks who may not have it or aren’t able to buy it! Just fill out the form here with one of your goals for this year, and I’ll do the drawing next month, since I’ve been gone so long. I’ll see you back here in two.