Transcript

Identity politics can make a difference | Scout Barbour-Evans | TEDxDunedin

tena koutou katoa call Taranaki t+ Inoue Katie no ho okay with and Nene arrow tomorrow okay Tahoe kakapo nugget and manga quarter wide over to our Kunichika new new lower corner cheaper Oh naughty we kata-kata Mucha Walker call kaha new new teeth I gotta call Scott barbarians are who tonight koto Tendo koto gender Coto Kaltura my name is Scott I was born in a wee town called Stratford up in Taranaki where all the streets are named after bits of Shakespeare I come from Natick a nooner kid to wait or an airway on the east coast of New Zealand's North Island and today I'm going to tell you all how my life got flipped turned upside down and totally politicized and March 2010 I opened the door of my maths classroom and I stepped inside it was a lunchtime it was a beautiful sunny day and my friends and I sat around a table and listened in on a meeting I was a student at Otago girls high school yeah we all still thought I was a girl back then and that day I joined my high school's amnesty international group it was my first ever extra curricula that wasn't the choir and I throw myself straight into helping to organize and learning the ropes every year in schools across New Zealand Amnesty International groups work towards one common goal freedom challenge week and 2010 we were protesting for the release of a group of youth activists in Myanmar who had been imprisoned our group somehow got permission from our really conservative school principal it's been the whole day dressed in black and we got to school early and we stood facing the school gates and I remember standing near the music department dressed totally in blacks totally still in silently and I think I had masking tape across my mouth and we stood there until the bell rang and then in our form classes we did the spiel on where we were participating that day and then we repeated that feeling every single class we had that day and did a speech in there simply to since that day in 2010 I can count over 70 individual demonstrations that I have participated in they've all had that general human rights direction to them I went from Amnesty International to the marriage equality movement in Australia that's still going today to protesting against reclaim Australia a neo-nazi group - coming home and protesting for better dunedin hospital food and for access to mental health care and for the Dunedin hospital to be rebuilt - protesting the TPPA because only five of the 29 chapters were actually about trade and that's not much of a trade deal more of a trade off - working behind the scenes in advocacy and lobbying and volunteering and pastoral care and the social services sector and working with former refugees and I'm even training to work as a volunteer and the emergency response sector - and I don't think I've ever really sat down since that day in March 2010 and had a break and I wouldn't have it any other way throwing my entire life into looking after other people was the easiest decision I've ever made and most of what I do is because I've had all of these really horrible experiences and I refuse to allow the health sector the social sector the justice sector the government for anyone else's lives at risk like they did mine I want to use my really horrible experiences and to make them into something good for other people because I can handle those feelings and other people's emotions even when there are so so many of them when not many other people can I definitely recognized that as a gift that I've been given somewhere in the trajectory of my life and I'm really proud of myself for recognizing that I have these tools and I can make a difference even as a terrified 22 year old disabled marginalized martyr mentally ill transgender takata per week when you're a divergent person who survived rape and abuse and somehow suicide attempts to past my skin colour I am NOT privileged and circumstance or wealth or health and in a lot of sectors I have very little credibility due to these identities that I cannot actually shed ever but I'm fighting for that credibility every single day last year 2016 I ran for Dunedin Marion Council I had a $85 campaign budget and most of it went on $15 Facebook ads the odds were stacked against me and I was running against some long-established community leaders some who had had over 20 years my whole lifetime to build their networks and backgrounds I came 180 votes away from election to City Council and somehow I was hundreds of votes closer to election than some of these incredibly well-established community leaders I was 14 places an entire city council ahead of the only other person my age who had run whose politics for polar opposite to mainly to learn his privileges I did this at the same time as I graduated from a certificate and human services specializing in mental health and addiction support from right here at Otago politic with a merit endorsement [Applause] 21 was an amazing year for me and I don't think I'm ever going to forget it at the same time 21 it was pretty tough and really rather isolating I left here's another relationship that had turned toxic I finally formally lost my eating disorder diagnosis only to regain it I had to learn how to handle the media with no training and other than my best friends driving me to candidate forums I had no one else in my campaign team Facebook groups like Dunedin news and the Otago Daily Times comment section and even the blog whale oil became breeding grounds for hateful comments that were directed at me and I have a bloody thick skin but some of her really started to sting what got increasingly difficult and actually ironic for me homes but the accusations of identity politics are termed no one on the Left could or would explain for me and the very centrist or right-wing community leaders who would try to claim that my politics are entirely self-serving and that I was in it to make my own life better no one else's after dedicating my life to making other people's lives ok working myself to the bone despite mess of fatigue and several months of compassion burn out - it's a slap in the face to be told that somehow you were capitalizing out of serving everybody else and yeah I capitalized off my own identities to push my politics but that was never and has never been about me I still don't really have an understanding of what identity politics is supposed to be and I'm not convinced that anyone else does either if you talk to someone on the left wing as political expression that comes purely from your experiences with a marginalized identity and it's bad because some women aren't feminist some gay people are racist essentially being up a diverse identity does not guarantee that you can deal with the big issues and - left-wing folk against identity politics the big issue is classism and that isn't wrong look at Caitlyn Jenner or Paula Bennett but that doesn't mean we should be dismissing identity politics 100% as bad it's still got its place and to the right-wing identity politics is apparently bad - its PC gone mad as the Millennial generations mimimi obsession selfies a bad or something something to the right wing identity politics as seen as selfish which is bizarre because the right wing stands for a very individualist sort of a political agenda that privileges the upper classes and takes away the safeguards for marginalized identities it's almost like we're damned if we do damned if we don't but I think there's a solution our Westminster system of government comes from the days where white people were seen as genetically and intellectually superior to all people of color and men were the only people allowed to own property or vote it comes from the time of spinsters who were seen as queer because what woman in her right mind wouldn't want to marry a man and have children and more children and more and devote her entire life to her husband until she dies in childbirth it's outdated and our social approaches to government are - we still have a predominantly male predominantly parky high government we still have people and cabinet who represent issues they have never been affected by in their lives and while that happens kids with autism are struggling to access education people with mental illnesses are totally unheard unless neurotypical people speak on our behalf migrants who work harder every single day than citizens do just to keep afloat and keep their communities going are facing racist policy after racist policy perhaps somehow there's an opportunity to change the situation in a democratic society it is imperative that we have a diverse representation and a political sphere just an offhand example but 15.2% of New Zealand's population are Maori yet we are significantly underrepresented and local body government you can't represent issues if you've never been affected by them in your life I want ministers for health and mental health who have first-hand experience of the systems that they want to manage I want a Minister for disability who actually has a disability imagine their help just a few years ago the Australian Government had Tony Abbott as the for woman watch does Tony know about being a woman do you know why I became interested in politics I realized how much of a difference I can make every single day I still get thanked by strangers on the street for work that I do I still have the philosophy in my life that to survive and for others to survive I need to use these really horrible experiences and turn them into something good and I cannot do that without using my own identities in my politics my queerness my poverty my transness my euro divergency my disabilities my youth made me to illness my modernist I cannot change any of these things about me I cannot erase the experiences of marginalization that I have gathered and make it ease in so as a child when these identities of mine get inconvenient I cannot just take them off like a can of Jersey on a hot day I am stuck wearing that Jersey of mine every single day no matter how hot it gets and the Jersey gives me perspectives that those of you wearing t-shirts just don't get consider Metiria Turei who I am privileged enough to have sitting in the audience here with me today as a young Maori woman a single mother on the domestic purposes benefit working tirelessly to feed her baby daughter and get her law degree Metiria had it pretty tough she had family support but it doesn't stretch as far as it needed to so Metiria tries not to tell work and income that she had flatmates because if she did she would lose the financial ability to feed her child and ten years later she became a member of parliament a member of parliament who until this year no one knew had committed benefit fraud New Zealanders were divided by the revelation there was fury that she had committed benefit fraud and there was the avalanche of people who understood and you what it was like to be on a benefit in New Zealand and understood that materia didn't just break the law for shits and giggles she broke an unjust law because if she didn't she wouldn't be able to feed her child she was recently forced by the media to resign from her position as co-leader of the Green Party because 25 years ago she fed her child when materia and I have spoken about identity politics she as I responded to the idea of her being bad with derision materias experiences have been shaped by both identity and class and much like myself she has brought her experiences into her politics to great success Metiria made her public statement about what she did to keep her daughter alive because of the same conviction that compelled me to become a publicly know and mentally ill and transgender person statistically those of marginalized identities are significantly more likely to live in poverty the youth 12 report a report on which wellbeing of transgender youth in New Zealand used the 2006 New Zealand deprivation measure to identify that forty 2.8 percent of transgender youth live in high deprivation so that's forty 2.8 percent of transgender youth and New Zealand living in poverty that is an absolutely alarming statistic I am a transgender young person and I live in poverty - I know and understands the complications that come with being a trans person and poverty with high medical needs and the reduced ability to get a paying job and even if my class miraculously changes and they become financially stable I will never be able to erase the experiences of marginalization that I through now I am a walking intersection of marginalized identities living in the poverty class to boot statistics show that my poverty and my transness and my identities are intrinsically interlinked I will proudly and fiercely stand in this world with my identities on my Jersey sleeve and I cannot drop them at whim I want to leave this world better than when I arrived here and the best way that I know how to do that is to use my experiences to make things better to make a difference as local Dunedin heroes sexxxy always say don't forget your roots thank you [Applause] you