Nobody Panic - How to Practise Allyship

Episode Date: July 14, 2020

Stevie and Tessa have been doing a lot of reading about how to be better allies, and discuss what this means for the benefit of anyone with privilege who might be feeling confused and lost. While many of you may be further along the path, this covers the very basics that they both found really helpful in the early stages of “unlearning” and practising allyship towards any marginalised community. Recorded by Ben Williams and edited by Naomi Parnell for Plosive Productions.Photos by Marco Vittur, jingle by David Dobson.Follow Nobody Panic on Twitter @NobodyPanicPodSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/nobodypanic. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, I'm Carriad. I'm Sarah. And we are the Weirdo's Book Club podcast. We are doing a very special live show as part of the London Podcast Festival. The date is Thursday, 11th of September. The time is 7pm and our special guest is the brilliant Alan Davies. Tickets from kingsplace.com. Single ladies, it's coming to London.

True on Saturday, the 13th of September. At the London Podcast Festival. The rumours are true, Saturday the 13th of September. At King's Place. Oh, that sounds like a date to me, Harriet. And welcome to Nobody Panic with me, Stevie. And me, Tessa. This is a good episode, I think, because there's been a lot going on recently.

And also by recently, I mean hundreds of years. But at the same time, a lot of people are kind of having their eyes open to things that lots of other people are going, why are your eyes opening now? Better late than never, guys. The title is how to practice allyship. And initially we thought about calling it, or we were discussing it being called how to be a better ally, and then how to practice being an ally and then the more we learn

and we're going to get into it. But I think the title needs to be how to practice allyship because you realise it's not something you can just say, oh, I've done it, tick, yep, I'm an ally. You've got to... It's a lifelong work. Yes, and it's for anyone who's feeling a bit

lost or confused or overwhelmed by things, wanting to help, not knowing what to do, and also crucially being scared to do anything in case you get it wrong. We're trying to talk to all different kinds of allyship, So that's white people supporting black people, men supporting women, cis people supporting the trans community, physically able, supporting disabled. Maybe you find yourself in one marginalised group for one thing, but in another way, you're in the privileged camp. So hopefully this speaks to everyone, and we're sorry if we get anything wrong.

Neither of us are experts here. What we've done is we've just done lots of reading, and so we just wanted to impart the small steps that we've learnt, and we're trying to go on ourselves so that you don't feel, because it was very important to do something, but also it's very important not to just like expect those marginalised communities to do it all themselves. So we all have to, and I'm speaking of myself as somebody who is a white, privileged woman.

Yeah, I think it's something, this, I think this podcast is probably born of the collective noise of this noise. Ah! Yes. Which is everyone being like, oh God, this is awful. I want to help. I don't know what to do. is this wrong?

Am I saying the right thing? And then we're so terrified about getting it wrong that we felt like the worst thing we could do would be for everyone to be so afraid of doing anything that they did nothing. And if you're listening being like, actually, I don't think there's a time that I'm in any of the marginalised group, look, great.

You just really need to practice the thing, are like? I really, and I mean this really sincerely, like I feel genuinely for the, maybe the straight white male community. Oh, come on, let's hear it. No, I mean, like, if you have never been in the marginalised group, I really think that it is really hard to have the empathy to understand what it's like. Yes, I agree.

I've had lots of, like, conversations with male friends and my boyfriend being like, he's absolutely lovely and what wants to learn everything and asks me questions so that he can understand, because my sort of thing is obviously I'm a woman, so I experience sexism and he doesn't. And it's been very interesting talking to him and seeing, like, how, you know, you have to do quite a lot of work to put yourself in the shoes and to really understand something that you have never experienced in your entire life. So we have to also be aware, I think this really unhealthy trend of like, you know, hashtag men are trash. Hashtag right men are all automatically

pieces of shit. You're like, well, no, can we not? Because some of them are really, really trying. And also, I think on a base level, it doesn't help anybody to throw stones at anybody. We need to start seeing that we're all in it together, otherwise nothing will ever change. Like when Phil Wang came on and we talked about toxic masculinity and he very, very intelligently said, you know, well, nothing has ever changed unless the oppressors and the oppressed are able to come to some sort of agreement. It can't just be one versus the other because that's never, ever going to do anything. Let's get in. My adult thing is, I've finally been to home base. Oh my God, you made it? I made it. It poured with rain. I made it and I got in just. I got in

just before it shut as well. But I kept running around the one-way system and they couldn't get me. I love how the fourth time you went. I know. Three times of not being able to go. The fourth thing I went, you still left it so late that it was nearly shot.

Absolutely baffling behavior. But a sander, so I'm finally ready to sand my scaffolding plants that I got out of a skip. Do stay tuned because I imagine this will be my adult thing for some time. My adult thing is, as a non-dairy eating vegetarian, I only eat maybe one egg that's come out of a chicken I've looked into its eyes and seen its beak smile And it's like, this is for you

This is for you and I'm happy I struggle to get enough protein I was like, it's almost like you're not allowed to say that If you're vegan, if I was like, actually get too much protein if anything So I bought some protein powder I did a lot of research, I asked a lot of people It's called Third Wave And it's not too expensive

Although it is expensive But then the amount you get out of it It's actually not And I've been making chocolate banana It's like chocolate protein powder banana, chopped frozen banana, so it's like, oh, like a milkshake, milk, obviously, because I'll throw up, and peanut butter. It is absolutely delicious, and it means I can have a chocolate milkshake every day.

I'd feel okay. Wow. They're delicious, and for the first time, I'm not joking, I feel like not ill, not, like, tired and ill all the time. Yeah, I think I just haven't been eating any protein and then been like, why? Oh, well. and my like nails are better as well I look at my nails I've never had nails like that

so yes I feel very grown up what dream yeah let's uh yes let's dive right in let's start with a definition this is from PiaNet NBC and this is when you realize that you can't just say I'm an ally even though you think like

but I am I think it's a good cause and I support you can't I just say I'm an ally turns out no so this is official definition of allyship from PNET NBC it is an active consistent and challenging and challenging practice of unlearning and re-evaluating, in which a person of privilege seems to work in solidarity with a marginalised group.

Allyship is not an identity. It is a lifelong process of building relationships based on trust, consistency and accountability. Allyship is not self-defined. Our work and our efforts must be recognised by the people we seek to ally ourselves with. Oh, let's break that down. One of the main things that I feel about this stuff is sometimes the language can feel overwhelming. And you can be like, what I have to be a... It sounds like I have to be a doctor.

That's what it sounds like. Exactly. But when you break it down. Because that's the thing, it does, sometimes with this sort of stuff, the language becomes so academic that you're like, oh,

and that's where you're like, oh no, am I got it wrong? But really it's just saying, you know, you can't, someone else has to give this to you, you can't do it yourself.

Yeah, so an active, consistent and challenging practice of unlearning and re-evaluating. So unlearning is basically, so I'll give an example of it. So there was a video going around from Jane Elliott, who is an American

diversity education, which she sort of specialises in this unlearning thing, which sounds like a ridiculous word, but it's the best word for it. So the video that I saw that she did was her explaining how the map of the world that we've all grown up with looking at is completely not to scale, that the southern hemisphere and essentially the countries that people often deem in massive quotation, which third world countries have been made much smaller. and the, like, Europe and Russia and Northern America

have been made much bigger and more prominent. And that is just one way. And you might be thinking, so, how do you think that subtly and subconsciously changes how you view the rest of the world? And that's just one example of how we have learnt something and we need to unlearn it. Just like there's a very, there's another,

it's not really unlearning, but it's actually just plain learning. the idea that I realised that all the way through school, I've never once been told about the British Empire. And it's so bizarre that we were not taught that, but we were taught so much about World War II. Like, I know every aspect of that, pretty much every single problem in the entire world currently stems

from British people going out and just fucking shit up. So you completely can see how important it is to unlearn and to try and look at the things that you're missing out that you didn't get taught at school. And there's loads of resources that you can just go... Instagram's full of it. Like, you can go forth

and, like, find this stuff yourself. The map thing is so fascinating because we've centred ourselves completely in the middle. We've made our country way bigger than it is. And we've, like, we've compressed everything for size. And it's not to do with, like, oh, we had to fit it on the A3 sheet of paper.

Like, that's an active choice that was made. And so a big part of allyship and why it's, like, so hard. And why you can't just say, yeah, yeah, I am one, is that it's like, Do you want to come down the rabbit hole? And you're like, yeah, how bad can it be?

Quite bad. You think you've got a pretty good handle on the world. And you're like, yeah, I'm pretty educated. I'm pretty curious about the world. And then you're like, oh, God. Like, this is rotten to the core. And, you know, it's so, so deep. So allyship is not an identity.

I think we've, you know, you can't just announce that you are one. And that it's a lifelong process of building relationships based on trust, consistency and accountability, which is about basically it's showing up and then continuing to show up. So it's about, you know, saying like, I am here and I am staying here. I'm not just here while it's like trendy and I am going to continue to be part of this and to be accountable to something. It's not self-defined.

Again, we're going to know to set ourselves. Our work and our efforts must be recognized by the people we seek to ally ourselves with. And yeah, so ultimately like that if you're looking to be told, you are an ally, you need to be told it, you know, the amount of work you would have to do to be actively told that by the group, I think is an enormous, it's almost so much work that it's not, it's almost like, don't even have that in your mind that that's going to be your final reward because that will be so much. I think about, I think about Richard Herring a lot on International Women's Day, the comedian, who spends the whole day, but very famously

men love to say, when's international men's day? And it is on the 19th of November. And this comedian Richard Herring spends the whole day, replying to every man who says that on Twitter, telling them that's 19th of November, and then donating a portion to the women's refuge trust. And I think which is like work, time, effort, money, you know, all of the things. And then I feel like, even at the end, women are like, fine. Like, no one's going to give you it. We're like, we still don't say like, oh, well, no one ever says like, oh, well, damn you. Like, you know, we just are like good enough.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, there's no, there is. no sort of like there is no prize there is no there is no reward like no one no how much you do like there is not going to you know like jana elliott who talked about dedicated her entire life to this thing and then maybe maybe she gets to be called yeah like you do not this there's this there's this i saw this like very brief kind of exchange on twitter because the um i think the full acronym now is lg b tqia the a has been added to i mean like i think it's asexual please do let me know if that's wrong but from what i seem to

gather that was what it was And some people genuinely believing it meant ally. And that's the absolute dictionary definition of what you should not be trying to do. You are not inserting yourself into this at all. Like, you do not go around me like, well, as an ally. Like, well, actually, I see myself as an ally. If those sentences come out of your mouth, you need to stop and you need to stop thinking like that. And I know I felt like that as well.

And I felt like really like, but I thought I was an ally. You just like forget that kind of as a vibe. It's just not really the concept. it's the only people who can call you an ally are the people yeah who you're working for so it's not you're not waiting for them to kind of knight you as an ally that's not what this is for what i found really difficult is social media from my perspective anyway it takes even the most positive elements and it makes them narcissistic because you are automatically by default plugged into a system which rewards likes and things like that so there's a balance that you have to constantly be like, oh, have I tipped over into it's about me now? Or am I making sure that I'm doing this for the right reason. I'm doing this to spread the, spread information. If I may quote American rapper Lil Wayne.

It's about doing things not for the, not for the likes, just doing these quietly. He says, as we all know, real G's move in silence like lasagna. Because the G is silent in Lazzania. me. Stevie has dropped horizontally off the screen as in like the true guys doing the good stuff, they move in silence like lasagna. Like, just do it quietly.

Like, get, you don't, if you can do something, and obviously it's like, it's hard to, you know, people want to say, oh, excuse me, I did this good thing today, but the more that you can do it silently and without needing praise or reward or... Literally trying to improve the human race. That is literally why you're doing it. So, if that

is not enough, then have a little thing. the polar opposite of the doing it for likes is the doing it out of fear that and maybe this is more for like maybe you're part of a company or you're part of a brand or something that has put and lots of people are coming out with statements about solidarity and all of this sort of thing that's coming from a place of fear and again if those things are just like we're in support we stand in solidarity that is absolutely meaningless unless it says like and we have taken these steps and we are donating here and we are making sureing our workplaces has you know, access for everybody and we make sure that these things, you know, it's that thing of like, if it didn't cost you anything, it's not enough. If it didn't, if it didn't cost you time or effort or money or resources, then it's just nothing. Then it is literally, or even just, like, if you did something out of fear, like if you did like post a black square and then you're like, oh, everyone's being mean about the black squares. You have to then, like, the bare minimum,

I think that is, is, is, that you should do is like, think about, okay, well, then why, like, why did I post that? Why am I afraid? Why was I frightened? Why did I not, for example, feel like confident enough to say something in my own words? It's so much better to take something. I read this somewhere. I can't remember who said it. Like it was so much better to take something and then turn it into your own words and then share it. Even that is better because it requires you to engage with what you think about it rather than just being like, and retweet and repost because that's easy. Always be thinking like if you have Because I've started following people like Rachel Cargall on Instagram like a few years ago.

She's very, very like white feminism, it fucking sucks. And you are like white women, you are also the problem. And she's very, very direct. And I found it really like if it felt like I was being attacked. And I spoke to Gina about it. My sister Gina is an activist. And she's like a, she really is practicing allyship in, in a really good way. And she, because obviously I wasn't like, you're an idiot.

I was just like, why do I feel so bad? I feel so bad about it. And Gina was like, this is the state, this is stage one. Like, I went through it a few months ago. First, you kind of get upset about it. And you're like, but I'm not racist. And you're like, no, you are. Every white person who's benefiting from the system is racist.

Like, we really are. The whole system is racist. Therefore, we are benefiting from it. Therefore, we are racist. So we have to, we have to, we have to, the moment that you accept that, it's quite freeing. So you're like, yeah, okay. Now I'm like, cool. okay, I want to learn more. I want to like try more and try harder. And I feel that I'm glad that I

had that about being upset by it. I'm glad I was because I think that a lot of people don't go through, don't push through that because it just feels horrible and you just feel it's not nice to be told that you are privileged. People like, look how men react when you like say like, ah, well, you're privileged. You wouldn't understand. It doesn't, doesn't go down well often. They get very, very defensive, especially on Twitter. So you can see it happening. And like you said, you're always going to be in the marginalised and you're always going to be in the privilege as well for certain things. I completely agree.

I think going on that like the black squares thing. And I'm sure lots of people saw this happening, that people were posting a black square and then posting hashtag Black Lives Matter. And I actually think it was an amazing learning opportunity in like real time because people were doing this because they were like, okay, this is what everyone's doing. Here I am. I'm getting involved.

Then very quickly the word got out that was like, if you use this hashtag Black Lives Matter, what you're doing is literally blacking out any access to like resources or or things, people who are using that hashtag to learn or to give information or help or whatever. So please could you swap that and use blackout Tuesday? And then obviously your initial feeling if you had done it wrong, wrong in inverted commerce, would be like, oh my God, oh my God, this is the worst thing. But if, of course there are going to be mistakes, everyone's going to fuck up.

But if you can then make that a learning opportunity and be like, oh, okay, understood, I got it wrong, thank you. I changed my behavior. I understand now and we get a chance to begin again more intelligently like people have learnt something and as long as everybody keeps moving forward and it's like okay amazing we learnt from that experience

now we're better you know we get to get up and be better tomorrow the only way that experience can be bad is if everyone's like ah I'm never doing that ever again I fucked it it was too you know however you react and however you reacted it's you need to just keep moving forward rather than stick it.

Like, it helps nobody. I remember someone saying, and I can't remember who it was. It was a black woman saying, like, we are too exhausted drowning. And we are too exhausted anyway without drowning in white tears as well. And that's the thing.

Like, just if you, whatever you do and however you react, don't dwell on it. You just have to move forward. And if you are doing the work outside, that's good. That's good. Not everybody is able to post a very eloquent tweet

or to, you know, want to use social media at all or in that way. But if you do have the platform and you are able to, then it's the best way to disseminate the information, I suppose. Yeah, exactly. And the stage one can often be, is really, really tough to be like, oh my God, I thought I was a good, I thought I was a good person. Turns out I'm completely part of this problem. If you're feeling like that because you've just learned about something

and you want to help another group, put yourself back in the mindset of, you, how you feel when you're in your, your marginalized group, imagine if somebody in the privileged team in whatever that set looks like for you, if they suddenly found out about something bad that had been happening to your group and then they burst into tears and we're like, this is so horrible. And you were like, uh-huh, that's not, that's not helpful. And so you've just always got to think like, yeah, okay, my feelings are not as important as the marginalized community's lives. And those feelings aren't unique if that helps you to feel less alone that like everybody

feels that fear, that shame, that like panic, that not knowing what to do, wanting to get it right. Like everyone's feeling that. You just have to work, work through those feelings and be like, okay, what's a positive action I can take as a result? Yeah. And also I found something helpful. Someone said there was like a BuzzFeed privilege test, which I found quite interesting. It was like 100 questions or whatever in it. It really tells you what percent privilege you have. That's not scientific, but I've definitely fallen into the trap of being, so I was like, well, I'm a working class person, I, you know, have had to, I've had no cause of contacts in any of the industries that I've wanted to go in. I've worked from the ground up, but then, when you break

it down, it's helpful to go through your stages and really, really think about it properly. So, okay, I was the only person from a state school in my college. There were no black people. So therefore, that will have helped me get into that university. okay, it took me a long time to get a job and I've really struggled to get into both of the industries that I work in. However, I have a white-sounding name so I automatically was more likely to get a job interview. And sometimes people thought you were a man.

And the moment they found out I was a woman, the guy said, oh, the next piece I got was, for Halloween, when all your gal pals come over to get ready, can we come and photograph you for our slumber party section? Not joking. So it's helpful to if you, because I think sometimes it's one of the things is like, I'm actually not that privilege actually, actually. You will be surprised how privileged you actually are because we all have it.

The word privilege, I think, has really thrown everybody for a loop because we think it to mean like luxury. Whereas nobody is saying that somebody who is in the privilege versus the marginalised group, nobody is saying that anybody in the privileged group has had a fantastic life. People have been through terrible things. people have had awful setbacks. But when we're discussing the specifics of this marginalised versus privilege, we're saying that the privilege group have not had to suffer the direct things that the people in this marginalised groups.

There are real setbacks. There are real, like, factual setbacks for people of colour that white people just do not experience. It's like that map. Like, we didn't write the map. We had absolutely no idea. We didn't know it was in the middle. But obviously, seeing a map where your country is in the middle of it every single day of your life

is obviously a privilege that leads you to believe totally subconsciously in a deep, deep bias, that you are therefore literally the centre of the world. You know, we have to sort of get to the end. I want to leave people with some sort of positive, like, positive, actionable things that they can do. If you're currently going through the unlearning stage, which is, again, going to be for the rest of your life, but if you're in the, like, deep shame well, whatever group you happen to be in, these are some sort of, like, things to climb onto to get out of there. and so obviously the first one is teaching yourself to educate yourself like you imagine i think

think with all of these things that you go to a party and uh you arrive if you've ever hosted a party and then somebody shows up and it's like what can i do and you're like it's not a it's not a helpful you're like ah and you just gesture at the room being like i mean everything it's but if someone shows up and then they say like can i do this could i put out the watsits you're like thank you very helpful or best of all silent like a lasagna someone who just the good friends who just show up and I just put out the stuff so like don't ask your friends your colleagues your your loosely distant acquaintances who are in whatever group don't say like oh please can you help me can you educate me can tell me about this is it okay to do

this no not like go and you know teach yourself educate yourself read the books watch documentaries learn about the map also same with could I just say like if you on instagram and stuff like that like I think there was a tendency to people to just like list like I've found these educators really helpful and then those educators would have an influx of people from privileged communities just in the comments being like, but why am a racist though? Or like, but what about trans women? It's like, oh my God. So it's also very helpful to find these like educators yourself. So go and find them. Don't wait for someone just to give you a list, follow all of them and be like, I'm done. Because that also is a helpful process to see the sort of people that you connect with and follow people that challenge you and make you feel uncomfortable. But do not. if you are in the privileged community or the privileged side of that, do not comment and ask them questions because they will be providing resources for you to just, you are there to listen. They are not Google. You can go and Google these things. Like you don't have, you can read books.

You don't actually have to. It's very easy to just be like, oh yeah, but go on, tell me. And that's, that's actually annoying across the board. I think that's like a goodness life thing. Stop, just stop asking people things that you can Google. But I could see, I could see a great example and people were very, very well good at explaining to them why that was, it's not your space. Like, this is not your space. You have the rest of the Instagram. You just, this is for us now. You're here to watch and listen.

And I think also just diversifying your Instagram feed in general, doesn't have to be activists. Just follow people who don't look like you, who don't have the same experience as you. You'll just start to kind of subconsciously almost like osmote some of that, what they're saying and some of their kind of culture and whatever it is. because obviously we're talking about a wide variety, so it's hard to find the actual nouns. But, you know, anybody who's different to you will help you in a way just as much as following an activist who is giving you lots of resources. And again, like, you know, to use that thing of empathy,

like I'm sure when sort of the Me Too movement kicked off, I'm sure a lot of women had their extremely well-meaning male friends say, like, have you ever, have you got a Me Too ever been a victim of sexual assault? To which you're like... Just a blinking. Like, just being like, firstly, every woman you know has. And also, I don't want to just, you know, and it's so well-meaning and it's come from a good place, but it's not, you know. And so that is, when you, again, so well-meaning, so good, want to ask your, your black friends or your gay friends or whoever and be like, have you ever experienced a terrible homophobia?

You're like, yes, and now I have to dredge it up and talk about it to you. And so, like, don't, don't use them as, so that educating thing, like, consider that to be, you have to be your own teacher. And you're like, well, it sounds like hard work. Yes, it's going to be a long, old process. And also, it might be helpful if when things are coming up for you, like, weird feelings or in this unlearning process or any sort of biases you had, all in those things. So, like, keep a very secret journal in which you write those things down. Like, they're in there. There, you might, well, you're like, this is a thing I think that I know isn't right, but, like, I'm feeling it.

Like, document the process and, like, get those feelings out and get them written down. And along the way, you'll be able to look back and be like, oh, oh, shit. like only a week ago I like I thought I wrote that in the journal bloody hell let's burn it but like just like just admit that like those thoughts are there like you know when you accept that you're like it's when you're like oh yeah I probably am absolutely I've grown up in a racist culture I'm absolutely racist you're like okay now I can do the work to rather me like no I'm not no I'm not no no no you don't have to be on the defence of all the time and then in showing your support to people both with your monies like donate places if you can support businesses that aren't the same as you

if you can. And then the big one is about calling it out when you, when you see people, you know, going through something. I saw this tweet that was like, if we really, when you sent me that text that said that was really fucked up,

that was very nice. But what would have been great is if you just called it out at the time in front of everyone. It's so, it's hard. Is that, that's the thing to do? It's so hard. Like,

we talked about a while back on the podcast about the, that's not cool guy, who would be at a party and, something happens and like someone just goes and it's like an off-color joke and someone goes like that's not cool and then and everyone just knows it's not cool and no one thinks that that's not cool guy or i'm saying guy i mean anyone yeah i think he wasn't a man but he can be anyone you can be your own that not that's not cool guy if you if you i reckon it will take three that's not cool to make you become a that's not cool person the first two will definitely be this is not cool

That's not a cool and it'll sound like you've got an accent That's what will happen You'll be crimson But then you'll be practiced at it And you'll be like I'm ready I'm saying it everywhere So just get those first couple of

That's Not Cools out the way And then you'll be ready to We've said this before In his episode But like this is like Base level So anyone listening They're like

Good Lord You say how to practice Alliancehip is just saying That's not cool It's a party We are starting from the ground We're on stage one here And it's

It's so difficult to call something out. I find it difficult to call out sexism, and I, I'm a woman, and that's a sexist joke. So it's very, very hard sometimes. Also, very British to be like, I don't want to cause a fuss, even though that person's been absolutely foul. Like, you have to, you have to practice it. Yeah, it's unhelpful to preach to the converted in that. You have to see it. And as well, like, when you see racist comments and racist abuse, it's so easy to go,

that's not really, that's not really, I wouldn't help there. you absolutely can, you would always help. There are things that you can do just being there, just saying like, you're okay, that's, that was not okay. Or being like, hey, like, leave her alone or being like, mate, that's not cool. Like, different, uh, intonation, same words. Different town. Powerful on a silent tube when no one ever speaks.

We've all been there. We have to take the initiative to go and just stand there. Be there. Stand up. And so, yeah, call it out individually. Call it out in your, because we can't say what your individual. workplace or family relationship or friends alike so you have to be like okay in my workplace what can I do better to make this place more diverse more inclusive more helpful who am I seeing that's you know

that's being having a tough time who who's the marginalized group here how can we what can I what can I change because it can feel like but this is all so big I can't do anything yes you absolutely can on like an individual also one thing is that there are so many on Instagram and on Twitter on social media so many like helpful little analogies that you can use for so many different things for say conversations with family conversations with friends so for example the consent conversations if you haven't seen that there's an analogy with having a cup of tea so if you google like consent having a cup of tea i use that a lot with male friends or people who ask odd questions and i'm like are serious rather than being like shut the fuck up i'll be like oh have you heard that so there are lots

of little like illustrations and things that you can use so maybe like bank some of those so so that when you are home for Christmas with your bigoted uncle, don't just let him go away with it this time, but don't shout at him because that isn't going to do anything, but maybe have some of these little things stored that are very simple that could help people see things in like a different way. Nobody changed their opinion because they were shouted at. Just consider your personal war effort in the resistance

having these very calm, quiet conversations with people. While understanding that people will, people may be defensive, like marginalised groups will be defensive and they may be what you perceive to be aggressive though, that is hundreds of years of persecution. That feeling of you being like, why is everyone being horrible to me? That's your problem to work on.

Not anyone else's. Your feelings are not more important than other people's lives. Very much so. Look, who knows if it's helpful or not? I hope it was helpful. Maybe we'll have to come back with like round two when we level up and learn some more

but like I hope it at least gives everybody a bit more of like some breath to be like okay I think I can do this. Yeah and a lot of you will be further along thinking good bloody hell like come on. Where have you been? Fair enough. Absolutely. Call us out. We're ready for it. So if you, if we've got it wrong or if there is something that we can learn or, you know,

we need to be called out for something like we're ready, you know. And do tweet us at Nobody Panic Pod if you want to whatever go at us. or also if you have any, it'd be good if you have any good, you know, like we're saying about the kind of tea, the cup of tea consent thing, we will share them because I think it's just good to circulate that sort of stuff. And also if you have any ideas for future podcasts, we have got a couple that have been suggestions that are going to come up soon,

which is fun. We do listen and we do take note yet if we don't reply. Nobody panic podcast at gmail.com, and I'm at Stevie M. The S is a five, the number five. The podcast handle is Nobody PanicPon. Pod at Twitter.com. And my handle is at Tesicose. It's Nobody Panic Pod, by the way.

Yeah, I mean, have a good week, guys. And stay safe and stay educated. And practice. Aalyship. Bye-bye. Bye.