How to connect by not doubling down!
“I love all the divine feminine energy here. It’s so important. They are trying to tear us apart, but we won’t be divided,” she leans in, her wispy voice, disrupting the conversation I had been having with my best friend, Theo Mae.
We are sitting on the lawn at The Chicks concert.
In the background, Cherry Bomb by the Runaways blares, projected onto multiple 25-foot screens.
We were enjoying our snacks, waiting for the band to take the stage, when this white waify purple-haired woman sat down on the grass between us.
At first, she was on her phone, invading our personal space, but she seemed harmless.
But then she started talking, all goddess this, womyn that, feminine feminine feminine.
Eye-gazing.
Lavender hair tossing.
Trying.
To.
CONNECT.
Theo Mae and I rolled our eyes at each other and shook our damn heads.
Both non-binary, we are no strangers to hearing how incredible our “feminine energy” is.
Let me be clear.
I love women.
I am down with how people want to describe their experiences.
Usually, I pick my battles about gender.
I often ignore comments like these.
After all, I will never see the person again.
But this lady wouldn’t drop it.
Amping up, she went on and on about the glorious feminine moon, the goddess energy of the crowd, the field of the feminine emanating from us all.
Finally, I had had enough.
I turned toward her and said, “I’m not trying to bust your groove, but you are talking to two non-binary, trans people. The language about the “divine feminine” you are using doesn’t work for me. It is alienating and off-putting. You are gonna need to stop with that if you want to hang out with us.”
Clear. Kind. Boundary.
In my head, I’m putting my money on her doubling down. It seems, for a brief moment, that she will stop.
I’m still bracing for it.
“Oh yes! I honor you so much!” she replies, chatting about the music for a minute.
Great, but my guard is up.
“But really, fighting the patriarchy takes ALL of us.”
Uh-oh.
And then.
“Okay, but you don’t understand. Your feminine energy is so beautiful! You are so powerful!”
And there it is, folks. The ole double-down.
Here’s what the Google has to say: “The phrase “double down” means to put forth the additional effort or risk in a situation or argument, even if you know the outcome will be a mistake or will be negative.”
At this point, Theo Mae sees my disgust. They lean in, bless them, and bravely give purple hair Gender 101.
For five minutes of their precious life on Earth time, it’s all smash the gender binary, celebrate the glittering gender multiverse, and try to help this woman learn.
I admire Theo Mae’s fortitude.
Their educational interlude gives me time to think about what I want from this situation.
I want it to stop.
I want to have a good night.
I want to be kind.
Until.
This bitch puts her hand on my arm! “I just want you to know I honor everything about you, your….”
I knock her hand off my arm.
“Don’t touch me,” I growl.
I mean.
When was the last time someone tried to manage me physically?
Now I’m mad.
Is she tripping? She might be.
I still have care for this human, misguided as she is.
I say, “Look, I know you want to connect, but I’m here for the concert, not to educate you. I asked you to stop, and you didn’t. We are done here.”
She tells me that because she honors me, she is going to leave.
“If you really honor me, here’s what you can do. After the concert, go home and get on Google. Research gender identity. Research non-binary. That’s how you can honor me,” is how I reply.
This is reasonable, considering all the shitty and mean things I could have said.
Here’s her parting shot: “I’m sorry for all the people who hurt you and made you the way you are.”
She runs, I mean RUNS, off, forgetting her wallet in the process.
I look at it lying there, unwilling to do anything with it.
But Theo Mae is nicer than me and sprints after her to return it.
They return, laughing, “ Now she’s gonna think trans people are so evil.”
And she likely will.
Bullshit like this happens all the time to my black friends, transfeminine peeps, fat folks, disabled friends, and all the other folks existing at the edges of what is considered ‘normal.’
But something about this episode made me question the doubling down thing.
Like, why double down?
Why did she believe her intention to be understood was much more important than the impact I expressed to her?
More important than the boundary I set?
This is a meme, right? The doubling down?
What did that lady think was gonna happen if she kept insisting on my feminine energy after I set a boundary, saying how she honored me without listening to me and kept nonconsensually touching me? (She did it again!)
Does anyone ever soften because you’ve convinced them you are right?
or…
Have you ever been convinced by someone’s intentions that the impact you feel doesn’t matter?
I think about embodied strategies a lot.
Strategies are attempts to meet needs.
You can ask, “What is this strategy trying to take care of?” especially when it seems nonsensical.
Doubling down is a strategy; my best guess is that it is trying to take care of belonging.
That lady wanted to belong with Theo and me, and for that to happen, she felt we had to understand her perspective.
It makes sense to me.
However, how she went about belonging didn’t work for us, and ultimately for her.
If she were my client, I would suggest implementing a new narrative and strategy for belonging.
Stop and listen when someone gives you feedback that something in your behavior isn’t working.
Every week in my dance community, we read our community agreements. Here are the relevant bits:
“If you receive feedback from another dancer that they were uncomfortable with something, here’s what to do:
Stop.
Listen.
Reflect back to them what you’ve heard.
Ask questions to make sure you understand the impact they are sharing with you.
If you get stuck, seek a supporter.
If someone offers you feedback, they give you the gift of believing in your capacity to learn. Take the opportunity.”
Seriously.
It doesn’t seem that difficult to me.
Sure, it’s hard to hear you unwittingly impacted someone, but it was an accident, right?
So why not just listen, and say something like, “Oh so sorry! I hear that language doesn’t work for you, so I’ll stop.”
That would have been the coolest thing, and then she could have hung out with us all night.
What is the necessary work that gets us all to the place of being able to hear the impact we inadvertently caused without taking it as a personal affront we must defend against?
If I hurt you, I want to know about it, so I can make it right.
That starts with listening and making sure I understand the impact.
Hurt happens in all relationships.
Repair from harm deepens all relationships.
Being the angry trans person isn’t my jam.
It’s no fun.
I often have so much spaciousness for people’s learning.
Case in point: Three weeks ago, I came out as NB to my 75-year-old silversmithing teacher.
It was the first time she met someone NB or encountered the concept.
I explained it to her, then she got excited and hugged me, saying, “Happy Binary! Happy Binary! I love you!”
I knew exactly what she meant.
Now we are having conversations, and I’ve given her permission to ask all her questions.
This feels good to me.
I love this work.
She is so excited to learn and to understand and confront the limits to her understanding.
When she makes a mistake, she readily admits it, “Oh shoot, I messed up your pronoun again!” and we move on.
It’s just not a big deal.
Last thought on this: I wanna double down sometimes too.
Being misunderstood sucks.
The thing is, I didn’t misunderstand the purple lady.
I didn’t think she had bad intentions.
Her intentions of connection were clear.
What else was clear is the learning she still has to do around gender, boundaries, and listening.
As do I, as do you.
Doubling down feels like “But…!” in my body.
“But you don’t get what I’m saying!”
“But I didn’t mean it like that!”
“But if you really got it, you wouldn’t feel like that.”
I think the corrective here is to consider that the impact someone is sharing is the impact they experience.
You don’t know what that feels like to be them.
I am practicing listening to the impact I catalyze in others without defensiveness or trying to convince them of my rightness or good intentions.
I’d be delighted if you’d join me in this practice.
Down with the double down, up with Connection!
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