Bonus: Should You Cancel Your Family?: An Interview with Brit Barron, author of Do You Still Talk to Grandma? When the Problematic People in Our Lives Are the Ones We Love
What You’ll Learn From This Episode:
- Why binary thinking is an obstacle to transformation and wholeness.
- The difference between accountability and annihilation in holding others responsible for their actions.
- How self-righteousness can be a trigger for self-reflection and empathy.
- The importance of acknowledging our own growth journey and extending grace to others.
- Why shaming others is ineffective in creating authentic change.
Have you ever felt pressured to cut someone out of your life because of their problematic views or actions? In today’s polarized culture, it’s easy to fall into black-and-white thinking and believe that we must completely reject anyone who doesn’t align with our beliefs. But what happens when the problematic person is someone we love, like a family member or close friend?
In this bonus episode, I sit down with author and speaker Brit Barron to explore the complexities of navigating relationships with problematic loved ones. Brit’s new book Do You Still Talk to Grandma? When the Problematic People in Our Lives Are the Ones We Love challenges the notion that we must cancel or annihilate those who hold different views from us.
Throughout our conversation, Brit offers insights on moving beyond binary thinking, practicing empathy and humility, and finding a middle ground between accountability and punishment. She invites us to consider the human behind the beliefs and to approach difficult relationships with nuance and compassion. If you’ve ever struggled to reconcile your love for someone with their problematic behavior, this episode will provide a much-needed perspective shift.
Featured on the Show:
- Come join us in The Society!
- Brit Barron: Website | Instagram
- Do You Still Talk to Grandma? When the Problematic People in Our Lives Are the Ones We Love by Brit Barron
- 219: No Gods No Gurus – The Model Is Just a Thought
Podcast Transcript:
Welcome to UnF*ck Your Brain. I’m your host, Kara Loewentheil, Master Certified Coach and Founder of the School of New Feminist Thought. I’m here to help you turn down your anxiety, turn up your confidence and create a life on your own terms, one that you’re truly excited to live. Let’s go.
Hello, my friends, I am, as always, excited for my guests, but today’s guest, I just saw her book come across my Instagram and I was like, “Oh my God, we have to talk, you, me, we need to do this. My people need to hear this.” So, today’s conversation I think it’s going to be an antidote to a lot of what we see online. And a lot of the unmanaged mind action is what I would call it, the polarization of, I have a thought, all my thoughts are true. Anybody who doesn’t agree with my thoughts is a moron and a terrible person. And I therefore should punish them, cut them out, never speak to them again.
So, I’m so excited to introduce Brit Barron. I’m going to have her tell a little bit about yourself, but I just have to tell you the title of her book, which came out this week. So, you can get the book now, and obviously you should all order it, we’re going to talk a lot about it, but it is such a brilliant title, Do you Still Talk to Grandma When the Problematic People in our Lives are the Ones we Love, which I just love for even suggesting that you’re allowed to love a problematic person in your life. Which I feel like a lot of people online don’t think you are. So, will you tell us a little bit about who you are and how you kind of came to write this book?
Brit: Yeah. Thanks for having me. I’m super excited to be here and have this conversation. I’m Brit Barron. I’m an author, speaker. I spent a lot of my career in the DEI space actually. So, I’ve had lots of conversations about liberation, justice. And found myself a few years ago, wondering, where is the room for nuance in all of this? It seems like something that needs to happen and shift. And so, the journey of my own life, the journey of my work, sort of led me to dive deep into some questions, to look at what’s potentially on the other side of cancel culture.
And this work in particular, exactly what you described is the problem that I found myself seeing. And the title of the book actually came from being at a dinner with friends. And one of our friends was saying who their grandma voted for. And sort of after a loud gasp people were like, “Do you still talk to her?” And she was my nana, she was like, “Yeah, I do.” And I was like, “Oh, we’re canceling grandma’s now.” I think we could have a more involved, nuanced conversation here. And so just dive fully into this work and into this conversation for the past few years and I’m super excited to be having conversations like this.
Kara: Yeah, I see so much, let me back up. But one of the things I find fascinating is, I see on my end, I’m more often working on people’s judgment of themselves. And there’s such a correlation between how judgmental we are of ourselves and how judgmental we are of other people. And you talk in the book about binary thinking, which is something that I’m often coaching on in the context of the way people think about themselves, very black and white, I’m good or I’m bad, I’m perfect or I’m awful. I deserve everything or I deserve nothing. The world is amazing or the world is terrible.
So, I’d love to hear your take on kind of binary thinking and how it comes up in your work.
Brit: Yeah, I think it’s one of the biggest obstacles we have into sort of moving forward towards some more transformation, wholeness, liberation. So binary thinking, it’s in all of our storytelling. It’s in the way we understand the world. From children we’re taught in movies and books, there’s a good person, there’s a bad person. It’s usually guys, men, there’s a good guy, a bad guy thing.
Kara: The women are in the kitchen, they don’t need to have [crosstalk].
Brit: Yeah, they don’t even have, yeah, are they good or bad? I didn’t get enough information to decide, yeah, exactly.
Kara: [Crosstalk] unless they’re the evil witch. Sometimes we need to be the evil witch or the damsel in distress. Those are the two.
Brit: Yes, that’s true. They could be bad or pretty irrelevant.
Kara: They can be bad and powerful or good and helpless, those are your two.
Brit: Exactly. Which I mean, to be fair, also plays a role into sort of how we understand ourselves is all the stories that we consume. And so, we have this idea that people can be either all good or all bad. And so, I think by way of fundamentalism, I think that works a lot towards believing that we can do everything right and be somehow on the right side of the line and the right side of everything and the right side of whatever religious or faith tradition we have.
I think we see that on the other side as well, on the progressive side, I can have all the ideology. I can post all the right things. I can have all the right views on politics. I can have all the right things. And I just live my entire life in the right box. And that is what keeps us from examining a lot of things, because we’re like, “No, the right people that I’ve aligned myself with believe this.” And so, if we believe that we can be fully in the right, then that means someone could be fully on the wrong side. So, if we can be wholly good, then someone can be wholly fully bad.
And so now we have this way of thought and so when we have someone who we love or not, a celebrity, an aunt, a partner, say something like, “Well, I don’t understand this issue,” or, “I kind of think x.” It’s well, now you’re bad. Now you’ve just crossed the line and you’re on the bad side. And so, making room for gray area is going to really allow that. And I think, to your point, we can’t give what we don’t have. And so, if we’re not allowing ourselves to understand those things about ourself, we’ll never be able to understand about another person.
So, if I walk around all day and I’m like, “Good thing I have everything right and I’ve always been right and I was actually born knowing everything I know today.” Then it’s going to be tough to sort of engage with other people’s growth journey.
Kara: I mean, it’s so interesting because I think most, at least most people I work with because I always have to account for the fact that possibly just the people who come to coaching have a specific kind of brain. I don’t know what gen pop is doing, but I feel like a lot of the people who come to coaching, at least, they actually are walking around constantly thinking, oh, God, what if I’m wrong? And that makes them double down on sort of very black and white thinking. It’s sort of, I’m afraid that I’m not good and that I am bad. And so, I need someone outside of me to tell me what.
And this seems to be, this is what everybody on Instagram is posting or this is what the person I follow who I think is perfect and unassailable said and so that’s what I need to be saying. And I don’t know what your experience was, but one of the things I have always found baffling about specifically the echo chamber of the internet and progressive politics, is that if you’ve ever actually worked in a political or non-profit organization of any kind. I was on the Board of the National Women’s Health Center for eight years.
Do you know how many meetings I’ve sat in about Women’s Health policy and activism? And nobody agrees with anybody. I was a reproductive rights attorney and every staff meeting, nobody agrees with anybody. My organization doesn’t agree. The CRR doesn’t agree with what the ACLU is doing. And then the people inside in the international department don’t agree what the national department is doing. There’s no actual orthodoxy about what is the correct opinion in the real activist world, often.
And so, I’m just curious if you think there’s a gap between, do you see this everywhere? Do you feel that there’s a gap between how people are operating in the real world and how they’re operating online?
Brit: I think there was much larger of a gap and the gap is actually shrinking and that’s what’s scary.
Kara: Yeah, it’s moving outward.
Brit: Exactly. In your work, I know you understand that so much of what we do centers around the narratives that we consume and the stories we’ve been told. And so, we have lived, we’re coming up on 20 years in this sort of thing with the internet that has created this idea that someone said something I don’t like. I click a button, they’re actually gone forever. And so, I think we have modeled some of that and so you can create an algorithm pretty seamlessly of exclusively people who agree with you, believe in what you believe in and just sort of reinforce your ideas.
And while I would hope that that’s a big gap between that and what exists in our real life, that’s the gap that I think is shrinking in a frightening way. And I mean, to your point, I think one thing we love specifically in America, I think we love external authorities. So, I grew up super religious and growing up super religious you have a pastor and they sort of get to tell you what to do. And you’re like, “This is kind of nice, I just sit in the seat.” They’re like, here’s how to be a good person.
Kara: I’m a passenger princess in my own life.
Brit: Literally. And what a little delightful existence. And then all my friends have sort of since, deconstructed our faith and left those things. But it’s funny how I’m like, “Wait, how is Brené Brown just not your new pastor?” And that’s not shade to her and the work she does. But it’s just our attachment to wanting to find one singular voice that we could wrap around and say, “Every single thing that comes out of this person’s mouth, I don’t have to now do the critical thinking. I just go with her or them or him.”
Kara: That’s so interesting because I’ve never thought about this, this way. I mean, I’ve talked about, I have a podcast episode called, No Gods, No Gurus. And I have talked before about how it doesn’t matter how often you say, “I don’t want to be your guru. I don’t know what you should do. I am a very flawed person.” There’s still people, this desire to believe, you have it all together, your life is different and your brain is perfectly managed. But I never really thought about the way you’re talking about relaxing this in some ways of not having to think for yourself.
I often am teaching and coaching about the idea that your brain just is lazy, not in a moral way, but just in doesn’t want to use up energy way. Your brain is always looking for shortcuts. So, I wonder if that’s part of it is that there’s just this desire to be like, “Well, if I can’t think through this complex policy issue myself, I’d rather just, what did this person say? Great, I’m just going to go with that instead.” Maybe there’s actually a biological impulse towards just shortcutting it.
Brit: I mean it is a lot easier. I think you look at certain people who have found themselves in whatever group and this thing is happening in the world. No stress. Let me just wait for a statement to come out from my perceived leader, whoever that is. And now you’re exactly right, you don’t have to wrestle with, this is actually pretty complicated. You’re just like, “Oh, here’s the tweet.”
Kara: Yeah. And I think to go to something you talk about the book that I’d love to have you tell us more about, what people are worried about is just now how do I not get canceled? I have felt this pressure myself. I have felt there are areas where what I want is to offer a nuanced take and I can’t do that because the current phrenetic fad is going in one direction, kind of. And if you try to say anything that isn’t just that complete orthodoxy, you’re going to hear about it, it’s going to be a problem.
So, I’m curious what you think. In your book you say, “The game has become don’t get canceled, not be a good person and it shows.” So, can you unpack that a little bit for us and tell us what you see?
Brit: Yeah. Well, I think something I thought very early on in working on this book, especially working in the DEI space in 2020 and 2021. I started to get the sense that more people were afraid of being perceived as racist than they were of the fact that they might actually be racist. And so, it felt alarming because I was like, “Oh my gosh. No, we should be worried about those things, not how we are portraying whether or not we believe those things.” And so, I think on one end, I can see why that is a fear, because the social landscape that we’ve created does have very real consequences.
So, I think for people who have gotten canceled or do get canceled, I mean their lives are impacted economically, relationally, socially and all these things that we fear as humans. We want to belong. We want to succeed. We want to do these things. That’s a valid fear because cancellation does come with these costs and these consequences. But I still stand by, I think, more people are afraid of being perceived as being wrong or being racist or homophobic or transphobic, or all of these things, than they are of figuring out whether or not they actually are those things, which I think is the good work.
And something I say a lot in the DEI space is I’m like, “You could either want to be a part of this work or you can want to be right, you can’t do both.” To be in the work of liberation and freedom and transformation is to make mistakes, is to step on something and be like,” I didn’t know that was sharp.” To sort of going back and have these sorts of moments. Without that, we’re not doing anything. We’re not going anywhere.
And I think the ultimate fear is we’re creating all of these justice circles and practices and we’re leaving anyone behind who steps out of this boundary that we’ve created. And we’re going to get there, we’re going to be by ourselves. And what kind of liberation exists for only one person? Not any that I want to be a part of.
Kara: Right. I just saw this meme, this is making me think about. I don’t think I have the text right but it’s like I’m just a girl standing in front of a boy asking him to treat the women in his real life the way he talks about his feminist theories. But it’s sort of like posturing and how are you actually acting. And I think that because it’s just become this, I was teaching this one day workshop yesterday. And I ended up talking about something that every time I say, it seems to blow people’s minds, which I don’t think it’s actually, it’s only mind blowing because of our current culture.
It’s not actually that genius, but that which isn’t my position at least. That privilege is a political analysis, not a moral calculator. I think, part of what’s happened is that this awareness that is positive that we are creating about intersectional oppressive structures is just being in the American way, being made individualistic. And just about, how do I calculate how bad of a person I am based on whatever privileges I have? Which is such a distraction from collective liberation work and who cares?
This doesn’t tell us anything about who you are as a person, but because everybody is operating in, as you say this, I just don’t want to get judged. I don’t want to do it wrong. I don’t want to be the bad one. I don’t want to get canceled. We end up just we’re in survival brain, and then we’re just hustling for safety. And that’s not a place from which you do any real reflective work.
Brit: No. And to what, and then I know that one of our deepest needs as humans is belonging. And I think we have found, whether perceived or real, a sense of belonging with our group on the internet, whatever group it is. And I talk about this in the book, but in 2020 I had a friend and she’s white and she shared this little thing on Instagram. And it was 10 steps to non-optical allyship. And that’s just so funny because I’ve never heard her say anything like that.
Kara: The irony of your optical allyship.
Brit: So, I texted her and I was like, “I would love to hear more because I didn’t know you were even interested in this.” And she said I mean, to be fair, she realized, she was like, “Well, I haven’t read it yet but everyone is sharing that right now and so I need to share it.” And I’m like, “Yeah, totally.” And I think what was so funny and naive on my part is, starting this book in 2021, I was like, “This is such a good conversation right now but it’s not going to come out till 2024.”
Kara: We’ll be so over that by then, [crosstalk] problem.
Brit: Yeah, the conversation would have changed. And I can think of three or four huge social political issues that have come up since then. It’s so much group think of, this really complex thing. Well, everyone’s sharing this one tweet about it, I guess.
Kara: That’s it. That’s the sum of human knowledge and insight on this topic, and it is this one thing.
Brit: I did feminism.
Kara: Check, done for today. Yeah, it’s so wild especially I feel if you have studied any social movement, there’s always tensions within a movement, for instance, between institutional people and radicals on the outside. And there’s always a disagreement about whether to be accommodationist or whether to be revolutionaries and incremental. Every single human movement has had so many people with so many different ideas. But there is something about that echo chamber you’re describing.
So, I’d love to talk about the word ‘accountability’, because I feel there’s a couple of weird things I think that happen when you start trying to talk about ‘cancel culture’, which some people don’t even think exists. And I’m not particularly attached to that term. I just want to talk about this dynamic of flattening and simplifying really complex human issues in a way that alienates us from each other, whatever we call it.
And so, I feel one of the straw man arguments you hear is, cancel culture doesn’t really exist. Look at these wealthy, powerful men who were canceled and nothing happened to them, which I feel is a salience bias, because nothing happens to wealthy, powerful men whenever they do anything wrong. But then there are lots of people who are not that famous and wealthy, who do get canceled and have poor outcomes. It’s just like saying, “Criminal law is not a problem because white, wealthy men don’t go to jail.”
Well, yeah, but what about everybody else who does go to jail? So, you’re only looking at the people who were big enough to escape it and then saying the phenomenon doesn’t exist. But obviously, there’s also elements of that process or culture, whatever it is that grew out of a real gap of people not having to be accountable to anyone, of people causing harm, all of that. So, whispering networks exist for a reason, and public accountability might exist for reasons.
So, I’d love to hear kind of your take on, you talk about accountability versus annihilation. And how do we have some kind of culture where you obviously can surface wrongs and people can have to respond to that if they’ve done them without the bananas of now. Which isn’t even that effective, I don’t think necessarily because powerful people don’t get, nothing does happen to them.
Brit: Yeah. And I don’t know if it’s as effective. It seems to be wanting to serve a purpose more for us than for them is what I perceive. I think we’ve got, I always say, cancel culture gives us an opportunity to export our own emotional labor onto a stranger and I think we do that very well. But this part of the book was actually one where I started to, in writing it, confuse myself a couple times.
Kara: That’s how you know you’re writing something good. You’re like, “There’s too many perspectives on this. I don’t even know what I think anymore.”
Brit: Yeah, because I love that there are real life consequences for being racist. I love the people that were finding the insurrectionists on the right wing dating app and turning them in. Absolutely, yes, I think accountability is important and is necessary for us to learn how to make mistakes well, we’re going to have to be accountable.
Annihilation, I think, is when we take that accountability and we turn it into something that just becomes frenzied in a way that I think is unhealthy, both to the person and to ourselves. And so other language that’s helpful that I found along the way, writing too is, what’s the difference between consequences and punishment?
Kara: I think parents have got to think about that.
Brit: All the parents, exactly. I’m like, “Please teach us.” Because every action has consequences of just something. So, I could go and cheat on my partner right now. And that action is going to have a consequence because we made this existing agreement and those are things inside. And so, we have these social agreements and we have those consequences.
So, when I talk about consequences versus punishments, if you’re my child, and we go to Target and you lose your mind and you feel like an absolutely just monster meltdown and so when we get home. And I could say, “Hey, listen, we had to leave Target and we didn’t get a toy and that’s the consequences for having a meltdown.” Or a punishment would look like, well tomorrow when you go to school, I’m going to go into your class and I’m going to throw an absolute meltdown in the middle of your class.
Kara: You have such a creative parenting punishment. I’ve never heard that.
Brit: Yeah. I’m like, “You embarrassed me, so I’m going to embarrass you.” That’s a punishment. And so, I think as we think about these things, I’m not advocating that everyone just gets to do whatever they want freely. We need consequences and we need accountability but who decides how and when, how we lash out, I think has gotten out of hand. And the way we hand out accountability currently on the internet, it’s as if it is coming from people who have themselves never actually made a mistake, which is wild.
Kara: Yeah, that’s interesting because it feels like, I’m trying to think of a hypothetical example, I don’t know. You work for, whatever you’ve done wrong. It seems a natural consequence to be like, “If people find out about it and then perhaps they don’t want to, you’ve been racist or sexist in the delivery of your services, people find out about it, they don’t want to employ you.” That’s a very natural consequence.
And then the stuff that often feels that sort of mob mentality is, now everybody call every landlord in that area and tell them that they shouldn’t rent to this person. And if you contact their grandma and ask if she’s going to disown them and that thing. The other thing I think that comes up from the accountability is, it reminds me of people misunderstanding boundaries in the personal space and the emotional space. Because ultimately what do we mean by accountability? You can’t make someone emotionally take accountability for something. You can’t force them to think or feel something.
So, you can show up and express your opinion and you can have your boundary of, I’m not going to follow you and support you and buy your album or watch your Instagram post, whatever. That’s all what you can control. But the part where we start getting into this, what feels like this downward spiral of demanding that people prove that they feel a certain way in response. That happens in intimate relationships, too.
And it is also a downward spiral that never feels satisfying. Where you want someone to act in a way that makes you feel that they feel that they’re sorry and you’re trying to control their emotional state in a way that is not possible.
Brit: Yeah. And that’s the thing. So, I do believe about boundaries. Boundaries is something that you make and you’ve set. And when someone says, “They crossed my boundary.” I’m like, “That’s hard to do because you are the keeper and holder and enforcer of your boundaries.”
Kara: It’s, what are you going to do for yourself? It’s not controlling them.
Brit: Exactly. And how we set expectations for that. So, I mean with people online, it’s easy. Again, just like, “Not today, I’ll delete the app and the monster’s gone.” But we have these real people in our lives where you’re like, “Okay, it’s not realistic to assume that in the 19 days since I saw her, my Aunt Sue has changed any of her political beliefs.” So, instead of going in and saying, “Oh, now I’m armed with all the right things, I’m going to hold her accountable.” I’m like, “I think you’re actually just going to really make yourself upset thinking of that conversation.”
And so how do we understand how to set appropriate boundaries and expectations? And we have these social accountabilities and consequences, but you’re exactly right. Do you know how many apology video reactions I’ve watched, where they’re like, “Did you see their eyes? That’s how I know it wasn’t real.” And so, at that point, it doesn’t matter what someone says. And so, I think taking that experience online and taking it into our real life, how do we understand these things?
And I think one big missing element is, in the book I call it progressive amnesia. And I’m like, “So many of us conveniently upon jumping into a mob and piling it on to someone, we just so conveniently forget a time before now.” I’m like, “You know before 2020, when you didn’t know that racism existed in America, you probably said some of these same things.”
Kara: It’s just like your religion where the new Jews at least always say that the new converts are always the most religious. Those of us who have been doing this for 5,000 years are mostly like, “You can’t keep up with all those rules. It’s not realistic.” So, the people who convert are full of fresh enthusiasm for all the rules and enforcing them.
Brit: Yeah. And I think we see that in progressive liberal, whatever you want to call it and the folks who just got here. But I’m like, “Do you know how many things I said from 2003 to yesterday that I’m like, whoops?”
Kara: That’s what’s so fascinating, yeah, it’s amnesia about the past. I think the thing that I always find baffling is the idea, and it’s not just in this area, it’s in all of human history. How can you look at history and all the shit that we’ve been wrong about and be like, “But right now we are definitely cracked about everything. All of it’s true. We have it exactly figured out. We are the pinnacle of human civilization and we have this all exactly correct.”
This is interesting because I’m putting my finger on what bothers me about this phenomenon because this also bothers me personally, which is not surprising, is a lack of perspective and humility sort of. It’s the, yes, I am the winged avenger of justice, and I am sure that my beliefs, which I potentially just learned from Instagram 20 minutes ago, are absolutely correct and I’m here to inflict them on you.
And it’s the same, I think especially progressives and leftists, which I consider I am one, see for instance, conservatives or far right people as being very totalitarian in their thinking and very absolutist and very kind of blindly loyal. But then we have no ability to see that we can have the same traits, a human brain is a human brain. And I think that’s the part that makes me personally slightly crazy about it.
Brit: I mean self-righteousness I think should be our biggest trigger towards some self-reflection.
Kara: That’s so good. Yeah. It’s like a drug. If it feels too good, whatever you’re doing social justice wise, if it feels good, that’s probably wrong. It should actually feel probably confusing and a list of tasks.
Brit: If you feel like I finally figured it out, I finally figured out everything and this is the way and any other way is wrong. That is the perfect moment to take a step back and sort of reevaluate. If you look at your entire family and they’re a bunch of idiots, dumb dumbs, can’t even do anything. I am the one to come and deliver them from their whatever, good moment. Good time to take a step back. It’s a lack of humility, but it’s also such a huge lack of empathy.
So, like I said, I grew up super religious and I have a friend who, her sister-in-law is still super religious and wrote a very Christian book on dating. This isn’t the title, but it’s something like, She Waits so He Can Choose.
Kara: She is blessed by the choice of his penis.
Brit: It is 100%. That’s not the title, but I’m sure that is the title. I’m going to write it after this. And my friend’s so mad about it. And as we were talking about it and finally she got to the point where she’s like, “I just hate it so much because I hate that version of myself, that I believe that.” And I’m like, Oh, period.” And that’s not saying that this book is right and this is the right way to believe and that she’s not drowning in patriarchal oppression. But having empathy for that version of yourself is the only thing that’s going to allow you to have empathy for that version of someone else.
And I think engaging in that empathy is actually what’s going to help you create a justice centered way forward that can include that person because that person too is oppressed under these same systems. And so, if you’re embarrassed by when you were, you’re not going to ever be able to bring actual liberation.
Kara: Yeah, there’s something very, from my perspective as a religious outsider being Jewish, there’s something very Christian about the fixation on your emotional and mental state over the actual actions that are happening. And there’s this conflation of them where rather than be concerned with, well, what are the actions a person may be taking that are creating inequitable or racist or sexist or whatever outcomes that we need to deal with? We’re fixated on their heart. Are they truly sorry? And what is it they think and feel?
And can we make sure that they are going to now think and feel the correct things? So, we’re taking this thing we can’t control at all and becoming completely fixated on that because it is about demonstrating virtue and purity and being sort of morally correct rather than focusing on what are the tangible problems that are being caused? How can we address those? Maybe this person is part of the solution.
I mean, I think people especially who come to me for coaching, when they come in through this feminist coaching lens are often a little dismayed to discover that if you want to have more empathy for yourself and be less judgmental of yourself, you are going to necessarily end up having a little bit more empathy for other people, even the ones you don’t agree with. That doesn’t mean that you’re like, “Yes, it’s great, it’s fine. We’re not going to intervene politically or logistically in what you’re doing if you’re doing something wrong.”
But these things just go so closely together. You can’t develop empathy and compassion for yourself and not also have it for other humans, just for their human experience of being a human.
Brit: Yeah, and the other way is true too. You’ll never be able to have it for other people if you can’t have it for yourself. And I think there’s a fear that empathy equates to acceptance.
Kara: Yeah, it’s condoning, if I admit that this is a human being then I am condoning everything they’ve ever said or done. But there’s something in between these two things.
Brit: There’s so much in between, but we feel that way, if I still maintain a friendship with this person who thinks X or said Y or whatever. And if I know her whole trajectory of life and I have all this nuance and I can hold these different things she’s been through, yeah, then I’m just saying it’s okay.
Kara: Right. Which is as we know, all of our great spiritual teachers have taught, there’s good and bad and you should hate the bad in everyone. And the lessons of all those teachers are the same, which is love and compassion even when someone seems to have done something wrong. But this goes full circle to what we started out with, which is a nice way to bring it together, I think, which is, I think the reason we do this is it’s so hard for us to grapple with the truth about humans, which is that one human can be both loving and a monster at the same time.
I mean, I just think about because I grew up Jewish, learning about the holocaust a lot. I always think about this thing that my mother would say when somebody was talking about how somebody who had done something terrible was like, “But such a nice guy,” or whatever. And she would always say, “Yeah, and I’m sure that Goebbels loved his grandchildren.” And we can see this with other people through history who have done atrocious things.
It’s the Hannah Arendt banality of evil, we don’t want to really contemplate the true thing about human nature, which is that a person can be wonderful and loving to some people and heinous and cruel to other people and that humans can have both those things. And I think that is really destabilizing to us.
Brit: It is and I think that’s what messes up a lot of our equilibrium when we want things to be completely right. And on less extreme, but still wildly hurtful, a lot of us have again, even in the title of the book, we have grandparents who we would be like, “Oh my gosh, she picked me up from school today, made me spaghetti, slipped me cookies when my parents weren’t looking, was a shoulder to cry on.” And then you come out and she’s like, “No, going to hell.” And you’re like, “Okay, so is she nice or is she homophobic? Is this person sweet or are they racist?”
Kara: Right. And the or is the problem.
Brit: Exactly. And I think in 2024, and coming up to the selection. I think every single person I know in my life has at least one relationship where they are desperately asking, “Can I disagree on this thing and still be in a relationship with this person?” And I feel if we start to answer that question with yes and, we’re going to be in a much better spot moving forward.
Kara: Yeah, that’s so true. And the irony of all of it is that you are your least persuasive when you are your most judgmental. So, the whole idea that this, it’s such a bizarre thing this to people who would absolutely say about child rearing, “Well, shame doesn’t help people change their behavior. You have to understand where your kid is coming from.” Be like, “I know what will make my Aunt Millie change her opinion. It’s shaming her at the dinner table. Or I know what will make my college roommate change her opinion, is shaming her on Instagram.”
If it’s true for a child, it’s true for an adult that shame does not make people change their behavior in any authentic way. So obviously, everybody listening to this needs to read your book because I can guarantee that we all do this within our families, with our partners. Can’t tell you how many people I’ve coached about their parents, without any political part at all. Just can your parents both have been generous and self-absorbed? Yes, they can have been both.
So, I think everybody needs to read this book, whether or not you are having a lot of social justice conversations or maybe your family’s all on the same page politically. But all of this relates so much to any relationship you have. So, tell us where people can find the book and where they can find you.
Brit: Yes, you can find the book, it’s out this week, everywhere books are sold. You can get it digitally, audible, hardcover. And you can find me on Instagram @britbarron one T and two R’s, or online at britbarron.com.
Kara: Alright, everybody buy the book this week. First week sales are very important. If you’re listening to this week of October 1st, you all know, you just went through this with me, not a drill. You’ve got to go buy the book the week it comes out. And if you really can’t afford to buy the book then go request it at your library the week that it comes out. Thanks for coming on.
Brit: Yeah, thanks for having me.
If you’re loving what you’re learning on the podcast, you have got to come check out the feminist Self Help society. It’s our newly revamped community and classroom where you get individual help to better apply these concepts to your life, along with a library of next level below your mind, coaching tools and concepts that I just can’t fit in a podcast. Listen, it’s also where you can hang out, get coached and nerd out about all things thought, work and feminist mindset with other podcast listeners just like you and me. It’s my favorite place on Earth, and it will change your life. I guarantee it. Come join us at www.unfuckyourbrain.com/society. I can’t wait to see you there.
If you’re loving what you’re learning on the podcast, you have got to come check out the Feminist Self Help Society. It’s our newly revamped community and classroom where you get individual help to better apply these concepts to your life, along with a library of next level blow your mind, coaching tools and concepts that I just can’t fit in a podcast episode. It’s also where you can hang out, get coached, and nerd out about all things thought work and feminist mindset with other podcast listeners just like you and me. It’s my favorite place on Earth and it will change your life, I guarantee it. Come join us at www.unfuckyourbrain.com/society. I can’t wait to see you there.
Hello, my friends, I am, as always, excited for my guests, but today’s guest, I just saw her book come across my Instagram and I was like, “Oh my God, we have to talk, you, me, we need to do this. My people need to hear this.” So, today’s conversation I think it’s going to be an antidote to a lot of what we see online. And a lot of the unmanaged mind action is what I would call it, the polarization of, I have a thought, all my thoughts are true. Anybody who doesn’t agree with my thoughts is a moron and a terrible person. And I therefore should punish them, cut them out, never speak to them again.
So, I’m so excited to introduce Brit Barron. I’m going to have her tell a little bit about yourself, but I just have to tell you the title of her book, which came out this week. So, you can get the book now, and obviously you should all order it, we’re going to talk a lot about it, but it is such a brilliant title, Do you Still Talk to Grandma When the Problematic People in our Lives are the Ones we Love, which I just love for even suggesting that you’re allowed to love a problematic person in your life. Which I feel like a lot of people online don’t think you are. So, will you tell us a little bit about who you are and how you kind of came to write this book?
Brit: Yeah. Thanks for having me. I’m super excited to be here and have this conversation. I’m Brit Barron. I’m an author, speaker. I spent a lot of my career in the DEI space actually. So, I’ve had lots of conversations about liberation, justice. And found myself a few years ago, wondering, where is the room for nuance in all of this? It seems like something that needs to happen and shift. And so, the journey of my own life, the journey of my work, sort of led me to dive deep into some questions, to look at what’s potentially on the other side of cancel culture.
And this work in particular, exactly what you described is the problem that I found myself seeing. And the title of the book actually came from being at a dinner with friends. And one of our friends was saying who their grandma voted for. And sort of after a loud gasp people were like, “Do you still talk to her?” And she was my nana, she was like, “Yeah, I do.” And I was like, “Oh, we’re canceling grandma’s now.” I think we could have a more involved, nuanced conversation here. And so just dive fully into this work and into this conversation for the past few years and I’m super excited to be having conversations like this.
Kara: Yeah, I see so much, let me back up. But one of the things I find fascinating is, I see on my end, I’m more often working on people’s judgment of themselves. And there’s such a correlation between how judgmental we are of ourselves and how judgmental we are of other people. And you talk in the book about binary thinking, which is something that I’m often coaching on in the context of the way people think about themselves, very black and white, I’m good or I’m bad, I’m perfect or I’m awful. I deserve everything or I deserve nothing. The world is amazing or the world is terrible.
So, I’d love to hear your take on kind of binary thinking and how it comes up in your work.
Brit: Yeah, I think it’s one of the biggest obstacles we have into sort of moving forward towards some more transformation, wholeness, liberation. So binary thinking, it’s in all of our storytelling. It’s in the way we understand the world. From children we’re taught in movies and books, there’s a good person, there’s a bad person. It’s usually guys, men, there’s a good guy, a bad guy thing.
Kara: The women are in the kitchen, they don’t need to have [crosstalk].
Brit: Yeah, they don’t even have, yeah, are they good or bad? I didn’t get enough information to decide, yeah, exactly.
Kara: [Crosstalk] unless they’re the evil witch. Sometimes we need to be the evil witch or the damsel in distress. Those are the two.
Brit: Yes, that’s true. They could be bad or pretty irrelevant.
Kara: They can be bad and powerful or good and helpless, those are your two.
Brit: Exactly. Which I mean, to be fair, also plays a role into sort of how we understand ourselves is all the stories that we consume. And so, we have this idea that people can be either all good or all bad. And so, I think by way of fundamentalism, I think that works a lot towards believing that we can do everything right and be somehow on the right side of the line and the right side of everything and the right side of whatever religious or faith tradition we have.
I think we see that on the other side as well, on the progressive side, I can have all the ideology. I can post all the right things. I can have all the right views on politics. I can have all the right things. And I just live my entire life in the right box. And that is what keeps us from examining a lot of things, because we’re like, “No, the right people that I’ve aligned myself with believe this.” And so, if we believe that we can be fully in the right, then that means someone could be fully on the wrong side. So, if we can be wholly good, then someone can be wholly fully bad.
And so now we have this way of thought and so when we have someone who we love or not, a celebrity, an aunt, a partner, say something like, “Well, I don’t understand this issue,” or, “I kind of think x.” It’s well, now you’re bad. Now you’ve just crossed the line and you’re on the bad side. And so, making room for gray area is going to really allow that. And I think, to your point, we can’t give what we don’t have. And so, if we’re not allowing ourselves to understand those things about ourself, we’ll never be able to understand about another person.
So, if I walk around all day and I’m like, “Good thing I have everything right and I’ve always been right and I was actually born knowing everything I know today.” Then it’s going to be tough to sort of engage with other people’s growth journey.
Kara: I mean, it’s so interesting because I think most, at least most people I work with because I always have to account for the fact that possibly just the people who come to coaching have a specific kind of brain. I don’t know what gen pop is doing, but I feel like a lot of the people who come to coaching, at least, they actually are walking around constantly thinking, oh, God, what if I’m wrong? And that makes them double down on sort of very black and white thinking. It’s sort of, I’m afraid that I’m not good and that I am bad. And so, I need someone outside of me to tell me what.
And this seems to be, this is what everybody on Instagram is posting or this is what the person I follow who I think is perfect and unassailable said and so that’s what I need to be saying. And I don’t know what your experience was, but one of the things I have always found baffling about specifically the echo chamber of the internet and progressive politics, is that if you’ve ever actually worked in a political or non-profit organization of any kind. I was on the Board of the National Women’s Health Center for eight years.
Do you know how many meetings I’ve sat in about Women’s Health policy and activism? And nobody agrees with anybody. I was a reproductive rights attorney and every staff meeting, nobody agrees with anybody. My organization doesn’t agree. The CRR doesn’t agree with what the ACLU is doing. And then the people inside in the international department don’t agree what the national department is doing. There’s no actual orthodoxy about what is the correct opinion in the real activist world, often.
And so, I’m just curious if you think there’s a gap between, do you see this everywhere? Do you feel that there’s a gap between how people are operating in the real world and how they’re operating online?
Brit: I think there was much larger of a gap and the gap is actually shrinking and that’s what’s scary.
Kara: Yeah, it’s moving outward.
Brit: Exactly. In your work, I know you understand that so much of what we do centers around the narratives that we consume and the stories we’ve been told. And so, we have lived, we’re coming up on 20 years in this sort of thing with the internet that has created this idea that someone said something I don’t like. I click a button, they’re actually gone forever. And so, I think we have modeled some of that and so you can create an algorithm pretty seamlessly of exclusively people who agree with you, believe in what you believe in and just sort of reinforce your ideas.
And while I would hope that that’s a big gap between that and what exists in our real life, that’s the gap that I think is shrinking in a frightening way. And I mean, to your point, I think one thing we love specifically in America, I think we love external authorities. So, I grew up super religious and growing up super religious you have a pastor and they sort of get to tell you what to do. And you’re like, “This is kind of nice, I just sit in the seat.” They’re like, here’s how to be a good person.
Kara: I’m a passenger princess in my own life.
Brit: Literally. And what a little delightful existence. And then all my friends have sort of since, deconstructed our faith and left those things. But it’s funny how I’m like, “Wait, how is Brené Brown just not your new pastor?” And that’s not shade to her and the work she does. But it’s just our attachment to wanting to find one singular voice that we could wrap around and say, “Every single thing that comes out of this person’s mouth, I don’t have to now do the critical thinking. I just go with her or them or him.”
Kara: That’s so interesting because I’ve never thought about this, this way. I mean, I’ve talked about, I have a podcast episode called, No Gods, No Gurus. And I have talked before about how it doesn’t matter how often you say, “I don’t want to be your guru. I don’t know what you should do. I am a very flawed person.” There’s still people, this desire to believe, you have it all together, your life is different and your brain is perfectly managed. But I never really thought about the way you’re talking about relaxing this in some ways of not having to think for yourself.
I often am teaching and coaching about the idea that your brain just is lazy, not in a moral way, but just in doesn’t want to use up energy way. Your brain is always looking for shortcuts. So, I wonder if that’s part of it is that there’s just this desire to be like, “Well, if I can’t think through this complex policy issue myself, I’d rather just, what did this person say? Great, I’m just going to go with that instead.” Maybe there’s actually a biological impulse towards just shortcutting it.
Brit: I mean it is a lot easier. I think you look at certain people who have found themselves in whatever group and this thing is happening in the world. No stress. Let me just wait for a statement to come out from my perceived leader, whoever that is. And now you’re exactly right, you don’t have to wrestle with, this is actually pretty complicated. You’re just like, “Oh, here’s the tweet.”
Kara: Yeah. And I think to go to something you talk about the book that I’d love to have you tell us more about, what people are worried about is just now how do I not get canceled? I have felt this pressure myself. I have felt there are areas where what I want is to offer a nuanced take and I can’t do that because the current phrenetic fad is going in one direction, kind of. And if you try to say anything that isn’t just that complete orthodoxy, you’re going to hear about it, it’s going to be a problem.
So, I’m curious what you think. In your book you say, “The game has become don’t get canceled, not be a good person and it shows.” So, can you unpack that a little bit for us and tell us what you see?
Brit: Yeah. Well, I think something I thought very early on in working on this book, especially working in the DEI space in 2020 and 2021. I started to get the sense that more people were afraid of being perceived as racist than they were of the fact that they might actually be racist. And so, it felt alarming because I was like, “Oh my gosh. No, we should be worried about those things, not how we are portraying whether or not we believe those things.” And so, I think on one end, I can see why that is a fear, because the social landscape that we’ve created does have very real consequences.
So, I think for people who have gotten canceled or do get canceled, I mean their lives are impacted economically, relationally, socially and all these things that we fear as humans. We want to belong. We want to succeed. We want to do these things. That’s a valid fear because cancellation does come with these costs and these consequences. But I still stand by, I think, more people are afraid of being perceived as being wrong or being racist or homophobic or transphobic, or all of these things, than they are of figuring out whether or not they actually are those things, which I think is the good work.
And something I say a lot in the DEI space is I’m like, “You could either want to be a part of this work or you can want to be right, you can’t do both.” To be in the work of liberation and freedom and transformation is to make mistakes, is to step on something and be like,” I didn’t know that was sharp.” To sort of going back and have these sorts of moments. Without that, we’re not doing anything. We’re not going anywhere.
And I think the ultimate fear is we’re creating all of these justice circles and practices and we’re leaving anyone behind who steps out of this boundary that we’ve created. And we’re going to get there, we’re going to be by ourselves. And what kind of liberation exists for only one person? Not any that I want to be a part of.
Kara: Right. I just saw this meme, this is making me think about. I don’t think I have the text right but it’s like I’m just a girl standing in front of a boy asking him to treat the women in his real life the way he talks about his feminist theories. But it’s sort of like posturing and how are you actually acting. And I think that because it’s just become this, I was teaching this one day workshop yesterday. And I ended up talking about something that every time I say, it seems to blow people’s minds, which I don’t think it’s actually, it’s only mind blowing because of our current culture.
It’s not actually that genius, but that which isn’t my position at least. That privilege is a political analysis, not a moral calculator. I think, part of what’s happened is that this awareness that is positive that we are creating about intersectional oppressive structures is just being in the American way, being made individualistic. And just about, how do I calculate how bad of a person I am based on whatever privileges I have? Which is such a distraction from collective liberation work and who cares?
This doesn’t tell us anything about who you are as a person, but because everybody is operating in, as you say this, I just don’t want to get judged. I don’t want to do it wrong. I don’t want to be the bad one. I don’t want to get canceled. We end up just we’re in survival brain, and then we’re just hustling for safety. And that’s not a place from which you do any real reflective work.
Brit: No. And to what, and then I know that one of our deepest needs as humans is belonging. And I think we have found, whether perceived or real, a sense of belonging with our group on the internet, whatever group it is. And I talk about this in the book, but in 2020 I had a friend and she’s white and she shared this little thing on Instagram. And it was 10 steps to non-optical allyship. And that’s just so funny because I’ve never heard her say anything like that.
Kara: The irony of your optical allyship.
Brit: So, I texted her and I was like, “I would love to hear more because I didn’t know you were even interested in this.” And she said I mean, to be fair, she realized, she was like, “Well, I haven’t read it yet but everyone is sharing that right now and so I need to share it.” And I’m like, “Yeah, totally.” And I think what was so funny and naive on my part is, starting this book in 2021, I was like, “This is such a good conversation right now but it’s not going to come out till 2024.”
Kara: We’ll be so over that by then, [crosstalk] problem.
Brit: Yeah, the conversation would have changed. And I can think of three or four huge social political issues that have come up since then. It’s so much group think of, this really complex thing. Well, everyone’s sharing this one tweet about it, I guess.
Kara: That’s it. That’s the sum of human knowledge and insight on this topic, and it is this one thing.
Brit: I did feminism.
Kara: Check, done for today. Yeah, it’s so wild especially I feel if you have studied any social movement, there’s always tensions within a movement, for instance, between institutional people and radicals on the outside. And there’s always a disagreement about whether to be accommodationist or whether to be revolutionaries and incremental. Every single human movement has had so many people with so many different ideas. But there is something about that echo chamber you’re describing.
So, I’d love to talk about the word ‘accountability’, because I feel there’s a couple of weird things I think that happen when you start trying to talk about ‘cancel culture’, which some people don’t even think exists. And I’m not particularly attached to that term. I just want to talk about this dynamic of flattening and simplifying really complex human issues in a way that alienates us from each other, whatever we call it.
And so, I feel one of the straw man arguments you hear is, cancel culture doesn’t really exist. Look at these wealthy, powerful men who were canceled and nothing happened to them, which I feel is a salience bias, because nothing happens to wealthy, powerful men whenever they do anything wrong. But then there are lots of people who are not that famous and wealthy, who do get canceled and have poor outcomes. It’s just like saying, “Criminal law is not a problem because white, wealthy men don’t go to jail.”
Well, yeah, but what about everybody else who does go to jail? So, you’re only looking at the people who were big enough to escape it and then saying the phenomenon doesn’t exist. But obviously, there’s also elements of that process or culture, whatever it is that grew out of a real gap of people not having to be accountable to anyone, of people causing harm, all of that. So, whispering networks exist for a reason, and public accountability might exist for reasons.
So, I’d love to hear kind of your take on, you talk about accountability versus annihilation. And how do we have some kind of culture where you obviously can surface wrongs and people can have to respond to that if they’ve done them without the bananas of now. Which isn’t even that effective, I don’t think necessarily because powerful people don’t get, nothing does happen to them.
Brit: Yeah. And I don’t know if it’s as effective. It seems to be wanting to serve a purpose more for us than for them is what I perceive. I think we’ve got, I always say, cancel culture gives us an opportunity to export our own emotional labor onto a stranger and I think we do that very well. But this part of the book was actually one where I started to, in writing it, confuse myself a couple times.
Kara: That’s how you know you’re writing something good. You’re like, “There’s too many perspectives on this. I don’t even know what I think anymore.”
Brit: Yeah, because I love that there are real life consequences for being racist. I love the people that were finding the insurrectionists on the right wing dating app and turning them in. Absolutely, yes, I think accountability is important and is necessary for us to learn how to make mistakes well, we’re going to have to be accountable.
Annihilation, I think, is when we take that accountability and we turn it into something that just becomes frenzied in a way that I think is unhealthy, both to the person and to ourselves. And so other language that’s helpful that I found along the way, writing too is, what’s the difference between consequences and punishment?
Kara: I think parents have got to think about that.
Brit: All the parents, exactly. I’m like, “Please teach us.” Because every action has consequences of just something. So, I could go and cheat on my partner right now. And that action is going to have a consequence because we made this existing agreement and those are things inside. And so, we have these social agreements and we have those consequences.
So, when I talk about consequences versus punishments, if you’re my child, and we go to Target and you lose your mind and you feel like an absolutely just monster meltdown and so when we get home. And I could say, “Hey, listen, we had to leave Target and we didn’t get a toy and that’s the consequences for having a meltdown.” Or a punishment would look like, well tomorrow when you go to school, I’m going to go into your class and I’m going to throw an absolute meltdown in the middle of your class.
Kara: You have such a creative parenting punishment. I’ve never heard that.
Brit: Yeah. I’m like, “You embarrassed me, so I’m going to embarrass you.” That’s a punishment. And so, I think as we think about these things, I’m not advocating that everyone just gets to do whatever they want freely. We need consequences and we need accountability but who decides how and when, how we lash out, I think has gotten out of hand. And the way we hand out accountability currently on the internet, it’s as if it is coming from people who have themselves never actually made a mistake, which is wild.
Kara: Yeah, that’s interesting because it feels like, I’m trying to think of a hypothetical example, I don’t know. You work for, whatever you’ve done wrong. It seems a natural consequence to be like, “If people find out about it and then perhaps they don’t want to, you’ve been racist or sexist in the delivery of your services, people find out about it, they don’t want to employ you.” That’s a very natural consequence.
And then the stuff that often feels that sort of mob mentality is, now everybody call every landlord in that area and tell them that they shouldn’t rent to this person. And if you contact their grandma and ask if she’s going to disown them and that thing. The other thing I think that comes up from the accountability is, it reminds me of people misunderstanding boundaries in the personal space and the emotional space. Because ultimately what do we mean by accountability? You can’t make someone emotionally take accountability for something. You can’t force them to think or feel something.
So, you can show up and express your opinion and you can have your boundary of, I’m not going to follow you and support you and buy your album or watch your Instagram post, whatever. That’s all what you can control. But the part where we start getting into this, what feels like this downward spiral of demanding that people prove that they feel a certain way in response. That happens in intimate relationships, too.
And it is also a downward spiral that never feels satisfying. Where you want someone to act in a way that makes you feel that they feel that they’re sorry and you’re trying to control their emotional state in a way that is not possible.
Brit: Yeah. And that’s the thing. So, I do believe about boundaries. Boundaries is something that you make and you’ve set. And when someone says, “They crossed my boundary.” I’m like, “That’s hard to do because you are the keeper and holder and enforcer of your boundaries.”
Kara: It’s, what are you going to do for yourself? It’s not controlling them.
Brit: Exactly. And how we set expectations for that. So, I mean with people online, it’s easy. Again, just like, “Not today, I’ll delete the app and the monster’s gone.” But we have these real people in our lives where you’re like, “Okay, it’s not realistic to assume that in the 19 days since I saw her, my Aunt Sue has changed any of her political beliefs.” So, instead of going in and saying, “Oh, now I’m armed with all the right things, I’m going to hold her accountable.” I’m like, “I think you’re actually just going to really make yourself upset thinking of that conversation.”
And so how do we understand how to set appropriate boundaries and expectations? And we have these social accountabilities and consequences, but you’re exactly right. Do you know how many apology video reactions I’ve watched, where they’re like, “Did you see their eyes? That’s how I know it wasn’t real.” And so, at that point, it doesn’t matter what someone says. And so, I think taking that experience online and taking it into our real life, how do we understand these things?
And I think one big missing element is, in the book I call it progressive amnesia. And I’m like, “So many of us conveniently upon jumping into a mob and piling it on to someone, we just so conveniently forget a time before now.” I’m like, “You know before 2020, when you didn’t know that racism existed in America, you probably said some of these same things.”
Kara: It’s just like your religion where the new Jews at least always say that the new converts are always the most religious. Those of us who have been doing this for 5,000 years are mostly like, “You can’t keep up with all those rules. It’s not realistic.” So, the people who convert are full of fresh enthusiasm for all the rules and enforcing them.
Brit: Yeah. And I think we see that in progressive liberal, whatever you want to call it and the folks who just got here. But I’m like, “Do you know how many things I said from 2003 to yesterday that I’m like, whoops?”
Kara: That’s what’s so fascinating, yeah, it’s amnesia about the past. I think the thing that I always find baffling is the idea, and it’s not just in this area, it’s in all of human history. How can you look at history and all the shit that we’ve been wrong about and be like, “But right now we are definitely cracked about everything. All of it’s true. We have it exactly figured out. We are the pinnacle of human civilization and we have this all exactly correct.”
This is interesting because I’m putting my finger on what bothers me about this phenomenon because this also bothers me personally, which is not surprising, is a lack of perspective and humility sort of. It’s the, yes, I am the winged avenger of justice, and I am sure that my beliefs, which I potentially just learned from Instagram 20 minutes ago, are absolutely correct and I’m here to inflict them on you.
And it’s the same, I think especially progressives and leftists, which I consider I am one, see for instance, conservatives or far right people as being very totalitarian in their thinking and very absolutist and very kind of blindly loyal. But then we have no ability to see that we can have the same traits, a human brain is a human brain. And I think that’s the part that makes me personally slightly crazy about it.
Brit: I mean self-righteousness I think should be our biggest trigger towards some self-reflection.
Kara: That’s so good. Yeah. It’s like a drug. If it feels too good, whatever you’re doing social justice wise, if it feels good, that’s probably wrong. It should actually feel probably confusing and a list of tasks.
Brit: If you feel like I finally figured it out, I finally figured out everything and this is the way and any other way is wrong. That is the perfect moment to take a step back and sort of reevaluate. If you look at your entire family and they’re a bunch of idiots, dumb dumbs, can’t even do anything. I am the one to come and deliver them from their whatever, good moment. Good time to take a step back. It’s a lack of humility, but it’s also such a huge lack of empathy.
So, like I said, I grew up super religious and I have a friend who, her sister-in-law is still super religious and wrote a very Christian book on dating. This isn’t the title, but it’s something like, She Waits so He Can Choose.
Kara: She is blessed by the choice of his penis.
Brit: It is 100%. That’s not the title, but I’m sure that is the title. I’m going to write it after this. And my friend’s so mad about it. And as we were talking about it and finally she got to the point where she’s like, “I just hate it so much because I hate that version of myself, that I believe that.” And I’m like, Oh, period.” And that’s not saying that this book is right and this is the right way to believe and that she’s not drowning in patriarchal oppression. But having empathy for that version of yourself is the only thing that’s going to allow you to have empathy for that version of someone else.
And I think engaging in that empathy is actually what’s going to help you create a justice centered way forward that can include that person because that person too is oppressed under these same systems. And so, if you’re embarrassed by when you were, you’re not going to ever be able to bring actual liberation.
Kara: Yeah, there’s something very, from my perspective as a religious outsider being Jewish, there’s something very Christian about the fixation on your emotional and mental state over the actual actions that are happening. And there’s this conflation of them where rather than be concerned with, well, what are the actions a person may be taking that are creating inequitable or racist or sexist or whatever outcomes that we need to deal with? We’re fixated on their heart. Are they truly sorry? And what is it they think and feel?
And can we make sure that they are going to now think and feel the correct things? So, we’re taking this thing we can’t control at all and becoming completely fixated on that because it is about demonstrating virtue and purity and being sort of morally correct rather than focusing on what are the tangible problems that are being caused? How can we address those? Maybe this person is part of the solution.
I mean, I think people especially who come to me for coaching, when they come in through this feminist coaching lens are often a little dismayed to discover that if you want to have more empathy for yourself and be less judgmental of yourself, you are going to necessarily end up having a little bit more empathy for other people, even the ones you don’t agree with. That doesn’t mean that you’re like, “Yes, it’s great, it’s fine. We’re not going to intervene politically or logistically in what you’re doing if you’re doing something wrong.”
But these things just go so closely together. You can’t develop empathy and compassion for yourself and not also have it for other humans, just for their human experience of being a human.
Brit: Yeah, and the other way is true too. You’ll never be able to have it for other people if you can’t have it for yourself. And I think there’s a fear that empathy equates to acceptance.
Kara: Yeah, it’s condoning, if I admit that this is a human being then I am condoning everything they’ve ever said or done. But there’s something in between these two things.
Brit: There’s so much in between, but we feel that way, if I still maintain a friendship with this person who thinks X or said Y or whatever. And if I know her whole trajectory of life and I have all this nuance and I can hold these different things she’s been through, yeah, then I’m just saying it’s okay.
Kara: Right. Which is as we know, all of our great spiritual teachers have taught, there’s good and bad and you should hate the bad in everyone. And the lessons of all those teachers are the same, which is love and compassion even when someone seems to have done something wrong. But this goes full circle to what we started out with, which is a nice way to bring it together, I think, which is, I think the reason we do this is it’s so hard for us to grapple with the truth about humans, which is that one human can be both loving and a monster at the same time.
I mean, I just think about because I grew up Jewish, learning about the holocaust a lot. I always think about this thing that my mother would say when somebody was talking about how somebody who had done something terrible was like, “But such a nice guy,” or whatever. And she would always say, “Yeah, and I’m sure that Goebbels loved his grandchildren.” And we can see this with other people through history who have done atrocious things.
It’s the Hannah Arendt banality of evil, we don’t want to really contemplate the true thing about human nature, which is that a person can be wonderful and loving to some people and heinous and cruel to other people and that humans can have both those things. And I think that is really destabilizing to us.
Brit: It is and I think that’s what messes up a lot of our equilibrium when we want things to be completely right. And on less extreme, but still wildly hurtful, a lot of us have again, even in the title of the book, we have grandparents who we would be like, “Oh my gosh, she picked me up from school today, made me spaghetti, slipped me cookies when my parents weren’t looking, was a shoulder to cry on.” And then you come out and she’s like, “No, going to hell.” And you’re like, “Okay, so is she nice or is she homophobic? Is this person sweet or are they racist?”
Kara: Right. And the or is the problem.
Brit: Exactly. And I think in 2024, and coming up to the selection. I think every single person I know in my life has at least one relationship where they are desperately asking, “Can I disagree on this thing and still be in a relationship with this person?” And I feel if we start to answer that question with yes and, we’re going to be in a much better spot moving forward.
Kara: Yeah, that’s so true. And the irony of all of it is that you are your least persuasive when you are your most judgmental. So, the whole idea that this, it’s such a bizarre thing this to people who would absolutely say about child rearing, “Well, shame doesn’t help people change their behavior. You have to understand where your kid is coming from.” Be like, “I know what will make my Aunt Millie change her opinion. It’s shaming her at the dinner table. Or I know what will make my college roommate change her opinion, is shaming her on Instagram.”
If it’s true for a child, it’s true for an adult that shame does not make people change their behavior in any authentic way. So obviously, everybody listening to this needs to read your book because I can guarantee that we all do this within our families, with our partners. Can’t tell you how many people I’ve coached about their parents, without any political part at all. Just can your parents both have been generous and self-absorbed? Yes, they can have been both.
So, I think everybody needs to read this book, whether or not you are having a lot of social justice conversations or maybe your family’s all on the same page politically. But all of this relates so much to any relationship you have. So, tell us where people can find the book and where they can find you.
Brit: Yes, you can find the book, it’s out this week, everywhere books are sold. You can get it digitally, audible, hardcover. And you can find me on Instagram @britbarron one T and two R’s, or online at britbarron.com.
Kara: Alright, everybody buy the book this week. First week sales are very important. If you’re listening to this week of October 1st, you all know, you just went through this with me, not a drill. You’ve got to go buy the book the week it comes out. And if you really can’t afford to buy the book then go request it at your library the week that it comes out. Thanks for coming on.
Brit: Yeah, thanks for having me.
If you’re loving what you’re learning on the podcast, you have got to come check out the feminist Self Help society. It’s our newly revamped community and classroom where you get individual help to better apply these concepts to your life, along with a library of next level below your mind, coaching tools and concepts that I just can’t fit in a podcast. Listen, it’s also where you can hang out, get coached and nerd out about all things thought, work and feminist mindset with other podcast listeners just like you and me. It’s my favorite place on Earth, and it will change your life. I guarantee it. Come join us at www.unfuckyourbrain.com/society. I can’t wait to see you there.
If you’re loving what you’re learning on the podcast, you have got to come check out the Feminist Self Help Society. It’s our newly revamped community and classroom where you get individual help to better apply these concepts to your life, along with a library of next level blow your mind, coaching tools and concepts that I just can’t fit in a podcast episode. It’s also where you can hang out, get coached, and nerd out about all things thought work and feminist mindset with other podcast listeners just like you and me. It’s my favorite place on Earth and it will change your life, I guarantee it. Come join us at www.unfuckyourbrain.com/society. I can’t wait to see you there.
