#85 - Building Safe Spaces for Humans

Last week we heard from Kassidi Jones and one of the topics we discussed was Antiracism in Animal Welfare. This week we dive further into Building Safe Spaces for Humans and the implementation with the animals in your life.

In this implementation episode, Emily and I talk about:

• How humans are animals too
• Safety vs. comfort
• Implicit biases are a thing

You can find the full episode show notes here.

It's here! The Pet Harmony Relaxation Protocol Course for Professionals gives you the skills to help pets self-regulate emotions without constant cues, avoid escalation by moving away from stress, cope with fears like thunderstorms and separation anxiety. Ready to teach relaxation as a skill? Sign up for our Relaxation Protocol Course for Professionals and empower pets to manage stress. 

Transcript

[00:00:00] Emily: And all of those points culminate in one really big point, which is: practice listening with curiosity and embrace dialectics. Dialectics are when we can hold two or more truths that are seemingly in opposition with each other, and we can hold space for them all to exist at the same time, and dive deeper and realize that they aren't actually in opposition at all. You can be privileged in some ways and also marginalized in others. You can be privileged and still experience struggles. You can be marginalized and still have a lot to learn about your own identity.

[00:00:38] Allie: Welcome to Enrichment for the Real World, the podcast devoted to improving the quality of life of pets and their people through enrichment. We are your hosts, Allie Bender...

[00:00:56] Emily: ...and I'm Emily Strong...

[00:00:57] Allie: ...and we are here to challenge and expand your view of what enrichment is, what enrichment can be, and what enrichment can do for you and the animals in your lives. Let's get started.

Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Enrichment for the Real World, and I want to thank you for rating, reviewing, and subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts.

Last week, we heard from Kassidi Jones, and one of the topics we discussed was anti-racism in animal welfare. This week, we're going to dive further into building safe spaces for humans, and talk about implementation with, well, usually I say the animals, but I guess with the humans in your life, in this case.

In this implementation episode, Emily and I will talk about: 

·         how humans are animals, too, 

·         safety versus comfort, 

·         and how implicit biases are a thing.

We talk about safe spaces all the time in pretty much like every episode that we talk about rest and relaxation. And while a lot of what we talk about regarding safe spaces with our non-human pets is relevant for humans, there are a whole lot more layers when it comes to humans.

[00:02:03] Emily: Absolutely. And I think one of the things that is so funny about those of us who work with animals is that when we are bought into the concept of enrichment and meeting needs and creating safe space for our learners, that can feel like a no-brainer, like just a really easy concept to grasp. And yet.

It can be harder to apply that concept to humans because we think about humans as having different needs than non-humans. And there's an element of truth to that, but humans are animals too. We all have the same kind of like animal needs on some level. We're not that much different than our non-human companions.

But one of the ways that we are very different from non-humans, as far as we can tell, is that we have a really complex sense of self and we have layers of identity, and that is really important to us. Because it's not just how we see ourselves, it's how we move through the world, it's who we are in community with, it is the access to privileges that we may or may not have.

So identity plays a huge role in social structure and social interactions and our physical, emotional, behavioral, mental health. It's, it's so important and it's so deeply ingrained in who we are. And I don't think that that's true for non-humans. So I think it's a big deal. And that is one of the issues that we see in our profession is that we have this history of being a very white, and especially affluent white, community of people who care for and work for animals, as we discussed with Kassidi last week.

 So if we want to create safe spaces for humans, that means creating a safe space for all humans, not just the ones who are affluent and white. We're going to start this conversation talking about our intersections of our identities to be transparent, to be vulnerable, and also to be clear about where we're coming from in terms of this conversation in particular.

So I'll start with me. I'm biracial. My mom is Tejano, of Mexican descent. We found out through DNA testing that we have ties to every state in the eastern half of Mexico and none in the western half of Mexico. So I don't know what that's about. But that is definitely an aspect of my identity, being biracial.

I also have a neurotype that is described as ADHD and Autism, or Auti-HD and, while I embrace the particulars of my neurotype, I do have a hard time calling myself and people like me neurodivergent and using the term neurotypical, because I just don't find it particularly true to life, that things are that binary. I kind of feel like we're all on a multi-dimensional spectrum of, of neurotypes.

So I prefer to call people like me who are currently labeled as Auti-HD neurospicy, and people who are currently labeled as neurotypical, I prefer to call them neuroherbal. Because we've all got flavor, we're just different kinds of flavors. That's definitely one aspect of my identity that certainly impacts my perception of the world and how I move through it and the way I think about things and the way I do things and the way I move and how my body processes chemicals, all the things. It's, it's deeply impactful to my life.

I'm also queer on multiple levels. My sexual orientation is demisexual panromantic.

And I am also female non-binary, which means I am cis-woman because I was assigned a female at birth. And I do identify as being female, but I don't really fit into the gender stereotypes of what it is to be female. So: female non-binary, my pronouns are she/they. 

And also I learned when I was getting some genetic medical testing, I found out recently that I'm intersex. Because I am actually chromosomally male, even though I'm physically female. And that explains a lot about the fact that I've been hormonally non-binary and I've had to deal with multiple health issues as a result of that. So I'm also intersex as well. 

And then I also am chronically ill. I have multiple illnesses, like I said, some of that is related to being intersex. Some of it is totally unrelated. I have a couple of like weird genetic quirks that have caused a few different issues.

So I also live with a body that has some very real constraints and it does impact my ability to move through the world and the activities that I can participate in and what I do and do not have access to. 

So those are my intersections. Allie, take it away. What about you, my friend?

[00:06:58] Allie: My list is far shorter than your list. I am that stereotypical white affluent woman who is in the pet industry, and um, so really my only intersection is chronic illness. I have dealt with depression and anxiety for a very large portion of my life and also have a physical chronic illness as well.

Being somebody who was not in a particularly marginalized group in this country - yes, women in general are technically in a marginalized group, and I have experienced sexism, and that is a part of how I was shaped and who I ended up being and all of that sort of stuff - It's very different to be a white woman in the U.S. than it is to be in a different marginalized group in the U.S. 

When I started developing my chronic illness symptoms. And so it's definitely been a journey of understanding what I thought prejudice and marginalization was and what I experience now and being able to empathize with the marginalization that other groups of people experience that I will never be able to experience. And so it's been a journey.

[00:08:17] Emily: Yes, it is always a journey. It's a lifelong journey, right, for everybody. And we'll talk more about that later. But one of the things that Allie and I had discussed before we started recording this episode was that, because I have more intersections, I'll be taking the lion's share of this discussion and Allie will be contributing where she feels like it's within her realm to talk about it, or where she feels like she has something to contribute. 

So it's going to be me talking a whole lot today, but I think it's really important to point out that Allie has done a beautiful job of seeing all of her privilege and acknowledging it. And instead of feeling defensive about it, I have just seen her, over the past decade that I've known her, really lean into what it means to be privileged and how she can use her privilege to help and advocate for people who are less privileged than her.

So she's definitely a part of this conversation and she's a really good model for what it can look like to be a person of enormous privilege and really engage in a way that's a good faith, good ally way to engage in this conversation. Definitely wouldn't want to have this conversation without you, my friend.

So before we start this discussion, we want to acknowledge that it will probably bring up some uncomfortable feelings for people. And that's okay. It's okay for you to feel uncomfortable. One thing that we see a lot in our community, the animal welfare community, struggle with is differentiating between safety and comfort.

While you might feel uncomfortable with this conversation, it's important to remember that you are safe in hearing this, and being uncomfortable does not mean that you are unsafe. And I think that's something that can really help a lot of people, because we have received feedback multiple times from multiple people that conversations that were happening in our communities made them feel uncomfortable, and they interpreted that as feeling unsafe.

And because that happened to us multiple times, we realized um, “Oh, this is something that is not well known in our community. And so it's something that we need to bring up because we want people to succeed in these conversations.” It's an important point to bring up that you can be very safe in a conversation and also be not at all comfortable. And that's okay. Sometimes growth is a little bit uncomfortable. They're called growing pains for a reason. 

So let's start by talking about mindset. When we're talking about creating a safe space for humans to learn from us, to adopt animals from us, to seek behavioral health from us, to seek medical help from us - in whatever way that we are serving our community and serving animal welfare - if we want people to be safe, if we want to create a safe space for multiple people, that starts with our mindset, because our mindset influences every single thing that we do.

It influences how we show up. And there are multiple facets to the mindset conversation, so we're just going to go through them systematically.

First of all, as Allie and I demonstrate, and Allie so beautifully demonstrates, you can be privileged, you can have enormous privilege, and you can also still experience suffering and struggles.

The path for Allie and I to get to where we are has been entirely filled with blood, sweat, and copious tears. It has not been an easy journey to get to where we are and there has been lots of suffering and struggles. And still, it would not have been possible for us to get here, even with all the blood, sweat, and tears that we poured into it, if we didn't also have privilege.

There are people who have put in just as much effort as we have and have not gotten to where we are because they don't enjoy the same privileges that we do. When we talk about privilege, we are not trivializing or denying anybody's hard work, effort, or suffering that they've experienced in their life. Privilege is really about this– your starting point and what resources you have access to. It's not a comment on how hard you work or how many struggles you've experienced in your life. 

The second aspect of mindset is that you can be privileged in some ways and marginalized in others. So even though Allie has enormous privilege, she also struggles with mental and physical chronic illness

Even though I have enormous privilege, I also struggle with mental and physical chronic illness. And even though I'm biracial, I experience enormous white privilege because most people perceive me as white. And I have not really been on the receiving end of very much racism.

Like, “What are you? You're kind of ethnic-y something.” Which to me, I don't feel like those questions are particularly traumatizing. They're just kind of like, “Well, bless your heart. You're trying.” Right? I think the worst thing that has happened to me personally is that people got offended when they found out that I was biracial and they called me a “Stealth Mexican.”

And while that was upsetting, I can in no way compare my experience to people who are BIPOC and present as BIPOC and get treated as BIPOC by the rest of the world. So I can be biracial and also enjoy white privilege. 

Likewise, I can be multiple layers of queer and still enjoy straight privilege because my longest term relationship is with a straight white cis-man. And we, out in public, we just look like a normal hetero couple. So I can simultaneously be marginalized in that I am queer and enjoy straight privilege in that, since Chuck and I have been in our relationship together, I have not received any cruelty as a result of my queer identity. 

Next, we can be marginalized and still have a lot to learn about our own identity issues. So, being marginalized doesn't mean that it's impossible for us to unintentionally uphold systems of oppression or unintentionally practice bigotry. You can be a part of an identity group and you can also still have more to learn about equity. And I think I really had to learn this lesson over and over and over again in my life because I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian community where I had a lot of internalized racism, and a lot of internalized sexism, and a lot of internalized homophobia, a lot of internalized ish.

And I became an adult and I went out into the world, and I had all the good intentions and love in my heart. And I realized that I also was carrying a lot of really harmful beliefs about my own identities. And it has taken a lifetime to unlearn those things. So it's not like you're just born knowing all of these complex social issues and how best to navigate them.

Even if you are marginalized, you can still learn a lot about your own identity issues. When I say that you can spend the rest of your life learning this stuff, I really do mean it because literally last week I had another lesson to learn.

So, our dear friend Gabrielle Johnson, who is a behavior consultant that we collaborate with and love dearly, their primary focus in our field, in addition to being an incredible behavior consultant, is working for disability justice. We were talking about some harm that had happened, and I mentioned a diagnosis of one of the people who had caused harm, and their response to that was, “Actually, focusing on their diagnosis as an explanation for their behavior is not really helpful for many reasons.”

I'm not going to speak on Gabrielle's behalf. We're going to have them on the program at some point so they can speak far more eloquently on it than I can. But the thing that they said that really hit home for me was, “It's more productive to diagnose the harm instead of the person.” And that just resonated with me and it made so much sense.

And I was like, “I love that so much! Thank you so much for teaching me that,” because I felt like I was leveling up in my understanding of one of my own intersections. So that was a really helpful reframing. And that was literally last week that we had that conversation. 

So it is a lifelong learning journey, even if you are marginalized. And that kind of really naturally segues into the next point about mindset, which is that it's really important for us to prioritize impact over intent. 

So in that example that I was just talking about with Gabrielle, my intent in talking about the person's diagnosis was not to shame them or stigmatize mental illness. For me, it was a way to think of it– instead of making a moral judgment on that person, reminding myself that there was an illness that was influencing their behavior. And that is a good intention, and yet it still, on the spectrum of harm, is more harmful than diagnosing the harm rather than the person. So it's an approximation. It's certainly less harmful than just making a moral judgment about a person, and it's still more harmful than focusing on diagnosing the harm instead of the person. 

So that's one example. Another example that also recently happened - and I'm just outing myself all over the place here, but that's, I think, the point of this episode - is we had our dear friend Kalyn on the podcast. Their episode is episode 60, if you would like to listen to it. They have some extraordinary knowledge and skill, a lot to share with our community. But when I met Kalyn a decade ago - I've known Kalyn as long as I've known Allie; we all met in the same place - Kalyn's pronouns were she/her, and I knew Kalyn as she/her for many, many years. 

And when Kalyn shared their pronouns with me that were now they/them, I immediately accepted that and adapted to it and had– There was no issue for me. It wasn't even a second thought. Like, “Yes, I get it. It can take years to figure out your own identity and learn what descriptions best align with your lived experience. I totally get it. I'm on board with your pronoun change.” However, I have memory issues and I'm typically very good at not misgendering people I know, but if I'm speaking about somebody in the past tense, my brain sometimes reverts to their past pronouns.

And that is exactly what happened in Jordan's episode, which is episode 68. I was talking about Kalyn and I accidentally referred to them as she/her in that episode, and I didn't even catch my own error because I was referring to past tense, and so my brain went into past tense. But the harm happened, whether or not I intended to cause that harm. 

And so when very recently I realized that I had made that error, I immediately went to Kalyn and I was like, “I'm so sorry. I misgendered you. I will put a correction in the podcast in a future episode. I want to make it right because I didn't mean to cause that harm.” 

So here's why we say we prioritize impact over intent. The intent matters, in as much as when I said that to Kalyn they were like, “Thank you for telling me about this. It helps a lot knowing that it wasn't your intention to misgender me,” but it doesn't change the fact that I did misgender them and I did cause harm by misgendering them. Yes, intent matters in terms of how difficult it may be for somebody to be on the receiving end of that harm, but we still prioritize the impact over what we meant to say.

And this is really important because if somebody comes to you in a vulnerable way and shares with you a way in which you are causing harm to their identity or their community, and your reaction is defensive and like, “I didn't mean to, that's not where my head was, I don't have a racist bone in my body,” or whatever, people say to defend themselves, then you're ignoring the impact of the harm you caused, and you're prioritizing your own intentions over what actually occurred, the harm that actually occurred.

So we're going to listen to the impact that we have had, and we're going to let our intentions take a backseat to the outcomes of our actions.

Which brings me to the next one, which is: even when we are marginalized in some ways, that does not give us the right to assume or speak on behalf of people who are marginalized in ways in which we are privileged. So, as Allie was talking about earlier, even though she experiences chronic illness, both mental and physical, that doesn't mean that she knows what it's like to be BIPOC.

Just because Allie and I experienced chronic illnesses, both of our illnesses are invisible illnesses, so we don't know what it's like to have a visible illness and receive ostracization or undue attention or all of the ways that society is inequitable to people who have visible illnesses.

We can't speak on behalf of somebody else who is marginalized in a way that we are privileged because we don't know what it's like. The reason I bring that up is because we often see this when we're talking about harm that occurred, and people are asking to address the harm, and we're saying, “Well, that wasn't my intention. I'm marginalized in this other way,” is often a part of that conversation as well. So we can acknowledge that we are marginalized in some ways without justifying our marginalization as a way to speak over other people who are marginalized in different ways. 

And all of those points culminate in one really big point, which is: practice listening with curiosity and embrace dialectics. Dialectics are when we can hold two or more truths that are seemingly in opposition with each other, and we can hold space for them all to exist at the same time, and dive deeper and realize that they aren't actually in opposition at all. You can be privileged in some ways and also marginalized in others. You can be privileged and still experience struggles. You can be marginalized and still have a lot to learn about your own identity. These are good examples of dialectics. 

And if we can practice listening to other people and really hearing to understand their point of view, their perspective, their lived experiences, the ways in which they're harmed that we may not even realize are a problem or an issue because we don't experience that kind of harm, then we can embrace these dialectics so that they can bring these things to our attention. And that doesn't make us a bad person, or it doesn't mean we've never struggled, or it doesn't mean that we don't also experience marginalization in other ways.

That is how we cultivate a mindset that cultivates a safe space for others. When we can shift from being closed off and defensive to being open and willing to listen, that is the first step to creating a safe space.

Allie, do you have anything to add or any perspectives to share?

[00:24:13] Allie: No. I thank you for, again, taking over the lion's share of discussion Emily because, yeah, I do not want to be just another cishet white woman who's talking over people who have more experience. One of the things that I just want to drive home, you said it, and I just need to drive it home for the people who experience similar levels of privilege in this world as I do, is that just because you experience privilege doesn't make you a bad person.

It doesn't mean that it's bad that you experience those things, and that means being vulnerable when people do point out your privileges and do point out ways in which you experience the world differently. And I want to also mention that we talked a lot about privileges in things that we don't necessarily get to choose: the way that we look, or the way that our bodies be bodying, or something like that.

But one of the things that I've had to really understand when it comes to my privilege is how my parents raised me. And so I see this in a, in a lot of different ways. But I see this very strongly between me and my partner, and I also see this when I am mentoring our folks in PetPro.

And so, one of the ways in which I am privileged that we didn't talk about up to this point is that I am not a first generation business owner. I am a third generation business owner. And so it has been a really big journey for me to understand all of the privilege that I experience when it comes to running our business and things that I have a hundred percent taken for granted with that, where I watched both of my parents, both of my parents were entrepreneurs.

And so I watched both of them with a business. I watched what it was like to have a flexible schedule. I never really saw what it was like to have a nine to five growing up. I watched what it was like to hustle and trial and put in the work and do all of those things. And that was my norm. Now with my partner, he's a massage therapist and for a hot second he tried to have his own business.

And I learned by watching him, “Ooh, I have a lot of privilege in how I was raised and what that means for me as a business owner,” because he was not raised that way. He was raised with very heteronormative parents. His dad had a nine to five. His mom was a, stay at home mom and he was raised to be a nine to fiver, and I very much was not–to the point where, after starting my business, I was griping to my dad about how I didn't want to start a business, et cetera, et cetera.

And he was like, “You never had another choice. Like you were always going to start your own business.” And it's pretty much because that's what I was raised to do. And so, in mentoring other people, I've had to really take a look at all of these things that I take for granted because I learned it at Day One.

It's such a young age that I thought it was innate and didn't realize that it was a learned skill because I had just learned it a very long time ago. And I had to figure out how to teach other people that did not have that same privilege as I do. 

So when we're talking about privileges, I also want to mention that in the way that you were raised. It's nature and nurture. And one of the kind of aha moments for me was actually something that you said to me, Emily, years ago that I can't even recall what exactly it was. But I remember you said it to me, and I was like, “Oh, okay I need to take a seat for a second.” 

And the other was I was listening to a podcast. Emily knows that half of my stories start that way. This was on the Professional Troublemaker podcast by Lovia Jai Yee Jones, and she uh, was interviewing a Black woman who was talking about the privilege that she had growing up with parents similar to mine who were really into education and independence and troubleshooting and free thinking.

And it was so fascinating to me to hear this person who is marginalized in ways that I will never be able to fully understand and hearing her talk about a lot of the same privileges that I have as well. And so that was really eye opening for me to hear her talking about that and, and I wish I could remember her name. I'm going to have to look it up and ask Ellen to put it in the show notes if I can find it again. But it really helped solidify that there are a whole lot of ways that I am privileged, and I'm still learning about a lot of those ways in which I'm privileged.

[00:28:59] Emily: I also remember that conversation with you, and I don't remember what exactly it was, but it was, it was about how you think about money. And how you budget and you had made some comment about like, “Well, it's just this.” And I was like, “No, it's not just that because you learned that from your parents and not everybody did.”

And you just blew my mind with what you just said as an off the cuff comment, because it never occurred to me to think of my money that way. And so it was something, I can't remember exactly what you were talking about. But it was definitely like, “No, that's because you were raised by business owners, because I have never heard of thinking about money in that way. And it's brilliant. And I'm stealing that from you. And also it's not common knowledge.” 

But you know what? I have parent privilege in other ways. I grew up with a dad who really, really cares a lot about debating and about writing, and he instilled debating and writing skills in us from a very young age. And I have a mom whose degree was in special education. And so she gave me a love of learning and education from a very young age that most people don't experience. My privileges came from my parents raising me with a love of learning, a love of language, a love of debate and writing that– I mean, my dad used to sit me down at a table and be like, “Okay, today you're going to write a story about a brick and the story has to be at least two pages, but I want you to come up with a story about a brick.”

And I would have to think of like, what would I have to write about a brick? Like, what is there to say about a brick? And then I'd have to come up with a story that was actually interesting. He would give me writing exercises like that all the time when I was a kid. And I didn't know that that wasn't normal, because that's just my childhood, right? 

And another way that I enjoy privilege is that I had access to shelter work and veterinary work from a very young age. I happen to live in the same city as some leaders in their fields, and so I got to learn from them. And those are privileges as well. 

So I love that you brought that up, Allie, because yes, the more I learn about how we show up for each other in this world, the more I'm aware of all the different privileges that are not about nature so much as they are about nurture. And so I think that's a really important component to think about as well. 

So now that we all kind of have reflected on our mindset, the next thing to think about when we're creating a safe space for humans is being aware of implicit biases.

And these are biases that we're generally not aware of. That's why we have to develop an awareness of them. The whole thing about them being implicit is that they are implicit. And so we're not really thinking about them. They just exist in our heads. So one of the things that we can do is examine the ways in which we are unintentionally exclusive towards certain identities.

And I'm just going to say: this is an ongoing, iterative process because we are still working on it in Pet Harmony. So one thing that we have on our to-do list to learn - and we're going to get mentorship to, to learn how to improve this - is how to make us a safer space for people to apply to work for us.

Because while we have done a pretty good job of cultivating a safe space in terms of PETPro bringing in a diversity of people, and we have done a pretty good job of bringing in a diverse set of clients, we have continued to only receive consultant applications from white women.

So we have other people on our team who aren't white women, but in terms of every time we go out and we're like, “Hey, we need a consultant,” we get white women. And so that tells us that there's something about how we are marketing ourselves, there's something about where we're choosing to market ourselves, that is unintentionally exclusive, because the only people who are showing up are white women If we want to be a safe space for people to come work, we would see that in the people who are applying to work for us. 

So when I say it's an ongoing iterative process, we don't have it all figured out yet, either. We've still got more work to do as well. And I don't know what the answer is. If I knew, I wouldn't have to hire somebody to help us.

But there is something about how we are operating and showing up in the world that we definitely have to improve on. We do things without knowing that we do them that sends a signal out into the world saying that we are open or not open to certain communities. And those are implicit biases.

And sometimes we can't figure that out on our own. Sometimes we need an outside perspective, somebody who has knowledge and skill and experience in that area to show us the pieces that we're missing and the things that we can change. And part of being able to change that is opening ourselves up to feedback.

I lately have just been raving everywhere I can rave about the book Trauma Stewardship. My therapist recommended Trauma Stewardship to me, and that book has been an extraordinary tool for helping me, but something in that book that really jumped out at me– I mean, many things jumped out at me, but one of them was that the author was um, encouraging people to ask their loved ones, “Tell me about my anger. What does it look like? What does it feel like? When does it show up?” Because if you really want to change and grow, you need to learn how your behavior shows up to other people in your life. 

And also I could use that question to have people tell me about my bias. What does it look like? What does it feel like to you? So if you want to be really brave and vulnerable, you can ask that question and really be open to the answers, because you're going to get a better and clearer idea of what your implicit biases are if you ask the people in your community who have a different worldview and lived experience than you do to tell you about your biases. Because a lot of times you can't see them. 

And I am fortunate– another way that I'm privileged is that I have a very diverse group of friends and we do feel safe enough to call each other out when we say things. And I've been called out many times when I've said something and they're like, “Hey Emily, that ain't it.”

And I'm like, “Oh, alright! Okay. Thanks for pointing that out. I will change my behavior now.” 

So that's really the next step after we get our, our mindset into the right place. The next step is identifying our implicit biases, either by hiring somebody or just asking our community to tell me about my bias. What does that look like? 

But once we have identified the places in which we can change, then we have the power to change, which is really important if we're wanting to create a safe space for humans in our community.

All right. So the third step for building a safe space for humans, I'm basically just going to recap Kassidi's advice to me in last week's episode, because I am not an expert in this part and Kassidi does this for a living. And so, her advice was extraordinary. I'm just basically going to recap it for y'all.

But one of the things that she said to me that I was like, “Oh man, that's so helpful. And I'm going to do that for reals,” is go to people in your community directly and let them know that you've got their back. And ask them if there's a way that you can support them. I hadn't thought to do that before because I was afraid of overly highlighting their marginalization and being like, “So I see that you're marginalized. Can we talk about it?” 

If you are a marginalized person in a broader community and you're kind of a wallflower because you definitely feel like you're outnumbered, it can be extraordinarily impactful for people in the community, especially the leaders of the community, to reach out to you and say, “I got your back. How can I support you?” 

Another thing that Kassidi said that I found was really impactful was, speak out when injustice or systems of oppression are supported within your group. I had always felt a little bit unsure about this because in our community, there is like a teacher-student power dynamic that– I feel really hesitant to interject a correction in front of a whole group because that might feel more devastating than if I was a peer.

Allie and Ellen and I have talked a lot about, like, how do we handle a situation where somebody in the group is unintentionally upholding a system of oppression or using othering terms? And the first iteration of how we chose to handle that was by creating a code of conduct that everybody in our community has to sign, being very clear about what the ground rules and expectations are in terms of how we treat each other and how we show up in our communities.

And that's certainly a good first step, but then the question becomes, what do you do if somebody mentioned something in passing? And that recently happened in our community, like the day after I recorded the interview with Kassidi. And I was like, “Oh! I can say it! I can say it in a way that's still supportive and not hostile or confrontational or insulting the person who made the error.”

But I can say, “Hey, we're not gonna think about people in that way. And we're not going to talk about people in that way, because that is a product or an outcome of a system of oppression. But the part of what you said that is helpful and useful and good is this other thing. So let's focus on that aspect of the conversation and discard the part that's harmful to other populations of people who don't enjoy the privileges that we enjoy.” So that I felt was really helpful. And again, it's given me a tool for how I can better show up in my communities.

The third piece of advice that she gave was, make space for and give a platform to marginalized people in your community. So if there is someone who can do what you do, and you've been asked to do a thing, and you know somebody who's marginalized and isn't given those opportunities because of their marginalization, you can step aside and say, “You know what, this other person is an expert in their field and they can actually do a really good job with this opportunity. I'm going to give this opportunity to them instead.” 

But if you enjoy a privilege and you know somebody who doesn't, you can share your privilege with them. That's the take-home lesson: give from your overflow and let other people in your community who aren't given the same opportunities you are share some of your opportunities.

Another piece of advice that she gave, which I thought was so important - simple yet profound - is take responsibility for your own education. Don't expect other people to do that for you. That doesn't mean that you have to be your own teacher. We can't really be our own teacher for things that we have no experience with or knowledge of.

But what that does mean is, be proactive in learning about things. If you encounter a term that you're not familiar with, Google it. If there's something that doesn't make sense to you or seems to fly in the face of everything you thought you knew, Google it. Google it, read books, um, definitely seek out the resources that we've provided in our show notes that Kassidi has provided on her website.

If you take ownership of your learning journey and you take responsibility for learning more about these complex topics that are not innate knowledge, that we're not born with, then when you do reach out and ask somebody in your circle, in your community, for help, they're going to be more likely and more willing to help you because you're demonstrating a growth mindset and an openness to learning.

And finally, avoid tokenism.

If your community is predominantly affluent white women, and you would like to start building safe spaces for other communities, other identity groups in your community, the way to do that is not to pick a poster child from some type of marginalization or some other community and be like, ‘See, we include everybody! We've got one Black person here, or we've got one neurodivergent person here, or this is our disabled member.” 

It doesn't feel good for people to be used as a token because it's placing all of the focus on one aspect of their identity when in fact, we are all complex people with complex layers of identity and complex skills and knowledge and passions and desires and interests. And when we are distilled down to one facet of our identity, it is dehumanizing, not to mention demoralizing.

If you start off, you might only have one person of one identity type, but instead of pushing them in front of a camera and making them your poster child, if you just include them in your group and welcome them and give them access to the same privileges that everybody else has and get to know them for all of their complexities as a person and make them feel safe and welcome, then other people will be drawn to your community as well. And you don't have to show off the one person in your community who is different from you in order to attract other people who are also different.

You can build a diverse community by being the safe space, not by showing off the one person who looks different from you.

So to recap, it starts with mindset. Practice listening to people with curiosity and a true desire to understand their point of view and their lived experiences and the ways that they've experienced harm that you may not have even been aware of. And then examine your implicit biases. And ask for help in examining your implicit biases so that you can identify what it is you need to change about your behavior or your community to make it a more open, safe space for a diversity of people. The action items that Kassidi recommended included: go to people in the community directly and let them know you've got their back and ask them how you can support them, speak out when injustice or systems of oppression are supported within your group, make space for and give a platform to marginalized people in your community, and avoid tokenism.

That's a really good place to start and it's a whole lot of work. And like I said, we're not done with that work, either. It's a lifelong, iterative process. But the more, as a profession, as a field, we can practice these skills, the more accessible our field will be to a wider diversity of people, and the safer people will feel to come into our community and participate in it and be active contributors to animal welfare.

[00:44:16] Allie: Thanks, Emily, for taking the lion's share of today's episode. Next week will be a Q&A episode about indoor enrichment activities ideas. 

Thank you for listening. You can find us at petharmonytraining.com and @petharmonytraining on Facebook and Instagram, and also @petharmonypro on Instagram for those of you who are behavioral professionals. As always, links to everything we discussed in this episode are in the show notes and a reminder to please rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. A special thank you to Ellen Yoakum for editing this episode. Our intro music is from Penguin Music on Pixabay.

Thank you for listening and happy training.