Not a safe person…

I don’t consider myself an influencer – not even close! I haven’t seen/heard/read/witnessed the real privileged nonsense going on in the fiber arts community. And I’m sure that’s more of a fluke than any reflection of intention on my part. I keep my social media (especially my personal Instagram) a place where I can seek inspiration, see cute animals, etc. and I know I’m privileged to want that place for myself and, mostly, be able to ensure that.

I want that right for everyone.

I don’t want to join the ranks of white women insisting “I’m not a racist! Or a bigot! I just want to knit!” My sincere hope is that people who know me for any length of time know I’m not racist or bigoted already. If you don’t, please PM me and let me know you didn’t know these things about me – I will do my own work on being a better ally!

What I do want to make very clear is this: I am not a safe person for everyone.

I’ll wait.

Again: I am not a safe person for everyone.

I mean that. I’m not a safe person for everyone and I don’t aspire to be. There are some people who I do not want to feel safe around me.

Blogger Dalaina May said it far more eloquently, so I will paraphrase her here: “As a leader, safety is a priority for me. I want my team, my family, my employees, and my community to feel safe with me. I believe that safety primarily means space for differences, for emotion, for healthy conflict, and for being truly seen and accepted. What safety cannot mean is space for cruelty, dismissiveness, demanded conformity, and counterfeit community insisting that everything is fine when it is not fine…. None of us can be safe for everything. We have to choose what we will be safe for and what we will be unsafe for.”

I want to make it clear, I am not safe for you if you embrace, espouse, or excuse bigotry, ignorance, racism, misogyny, homophobia, classism, or religious-based phobia or marginalization of other human beings because you don’t agree with their beliefs. If your words – or more importantly, your actions – identify you as being one of those things, I’m probably not a safe person for you to be around. In fact, you should expect to be contradicted, called out or removed from my presence (internet or IRL).

If you are down to be inclusive, to continue to learn and try to be a better human being, come sit by me, I think we’ll get along fine.

Also, a HUGE thank you to those who are doing emotional work and signal boosting those who are doing emotional work. Without you all, I may not have seen the true state of things in our community – and not realized that we need to listen more than we speak.