Getting comfortable with discomfort
New Zealanders are terrible at non-violent confrontation. It makes us uncomfortable in our bones.
This is probably due to hangover Victorian colonial ideas about manners and the difference between New Zealand social norms compared with places like Italy, where norms allow for louder, more robust confrontation (especially when family or community members are doing things that don’t align with social cohesion).
Globally and locally, we are all seeing increasingly extreme online and offline behaviour. And in New Zealand, we’re clearly struggling with how best to confront this in real-time as we encounter it.
An example is the recent quiz night in Kaimai, where a quiz team dressed in full Ku Klux Klan regalia, complete with a petrol can as a prop.
“…nobody approached anyone with concerns at the time or throughout the night. Had they had, we would have acted," the [quiz organiser] representative told the Herald.
As someone who professionally often has to confront harmful ideas and the groups that spread them, I wanted to share some ways we can do better as individuals speaking up in uncomfortable situations.
Out of sheer practice, and notwithstanding times when I could have been braver, here are some strategies I find useful in confronting conversations:
Stop measuring the success of an encounter by how the person or group you’re challenging responds to your confrontation. We do this chronically, and it's debilitating. Success cannot be 'they agreed with me, there was no counter confrontation, and we left happy'. That's unrealistic, and whether we realise it or not, hoping for that outcome undermines the lone value of speaking up.
Success is not that they don't talk back, not that they leave and not that everyone behind you agrees with you. Instead, start deciding that success is confronting someone non-violently in real-time, as they're doing something unacceptable, and that you articulate loudly how this makes you feel.
If you have the chance, take a second before you stand up to mentally acknowledge that you might get shouted down or you might be the only person in the room who says anything.
Get comfortable with that being the reality, and that you’re okay with it and you’re standing up anyway.
Because these scenarios often unfold in real-time, you can often take a few seconds to clarify what you most want to say. Pick one or two sentences, and - this bit is key - decide whether you will leave or sit back down afterwards.Then, stand up and do it. That's it.
And when you then psych yourself out about whether you should have done that (because of course you will) and whether it was a success or not, circle back to what you already decided:
Success was saying your piece, nothing else. Ground yourself in that, and anything else - like people joining you - is a bonus.
Let's get a bit more comfortable being uncomfortable. It's important.
I lean on a couple of key phases, which helps with your #3. “Don’t use ‘gay’ to mean something derogatory” is a go-to. I’ve also learnt “That sounds like soemthing a racist would say” works better than “you’re racist!!” as an opener.
Still makes my palms clammy and face red every time though!