- Status: mobile
- dominant posture, assert knowledge
- passive posture, verbal messages of agreement, support
- Status play: When did it start/ stop?
- Rank: system of valuing ppl based on certain social membership
- Rank Machine: sort ppl into Agents (over-valued) & Targets (under-valued) automatically, unconsciously
- ADRESSING (developed by Pamela Hayes) to remember them: Age, Disability, Religious Culture, Ethnicity, Sexual Orientation, Social Class, Indigenous Background, National Origin and Gender
- As absurd the rank system is (because ppl are mixed), it makes a difference in the access, opportunities and comforts of our lives.
- Power: connection to that which is greater than ourselves, to the numinous/ ancestors & descendents / nature & whole of creation
SKILL SETS FOR TARGETS
- Survival skills:
- Approximate Agency: to move, think & talk like a person who has Agent membership
- Fit stereotype that Agent group has of our Target group
- Confusion skills: arise when we notice how exhausting it is to use Survival skills
- I'm confused/ That doesn't seem fair, but there must be a good explanation
- Empowerment
- We must have access to Empowered Target-only space. Talk about our common daily experience, the historical roots of the problem, the social conditions that uphold the status quo
- Strategy: notice we can't sustain the energetic demand of taking oppression head-on
- when to work with other Targets, when to make demands of social institutions, when to confront individual Agents, when not to act
- We no longer get attached to Target membership, we welcome Agent allies
- Re-Centering
- Ready access to our true power
- Collaborate w Targets and with ally Agents to challenge system of oppression in the most effective, humanizing and streamlined ways
SKILL SETS FOR AGENTS
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- Indifference:
- Not notice the existence of Targets & their life conditions, and the Rank system
- I don't know any ... people
- Distancing: Distance the awareness of our own unearned advantage, rather than those who've been labeled Other
- Distancing Out: Hold our arms in front of us "I don't have anything against ..., I just don't want to live next door to them."
- Distancing Down: They're sick, they are dirty/ should be in jail. OR wanting to help/ heal the Target away from Targetship and towards sth resembling Agency
- Distancing Up: pseudo-valuing way, "special, spiritual, exotic, heroic". Appropriate art/music or cultural style
- Inclusion: See similarities
- We're all children of God, fundamentally, we're human and we all suffer
- Still expect everyone to align with Agent standards & supremacy. Resist the perspective that oppression is a supremacy problem, rather one of prejudice/ discrimination
- We're happy to welcome Targets, but unconsciously expect them to conform to our expectations, make us comfortable, avoid issues that we don't want to talk about, be grateful to be included
- Awareness: Takes a strong relationship with a Target member
- “I can’t believe I never saw this before.” “Everything I say is oppressive, because I’m the oppressor.” “I should have done...”
- Learned ignorance: I don't know what that's like. Would you tell me more? Stay w the discomfort
- Allyship: notice the shift from dreading experiences of Awareness to welcoming. A growing sense of being comfortable only when being uncomfortable.
- Fully aware of Rank system & or privilege, acknowledge we can never fully understand Target's experience
@I cannot be a woman, because being a sexual woman is not safe. I also cannot be a child, because a child should have no qualms/ no knowledge about sexuality.
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