Episode 07: Your Racist Uncle, Your Apathetic Aunt, and Your Misogynist Cousin: How To

It's almost Thanksgiving here in these United States. Emily and Amelia discuss their strategies for dealing with people you disagree with during the holidays. In the words of Luke Skywalker, "This is not going to go the way you think."

LINK:

How to Talk to Your Family About Racism on Thanksgiving By Rachel Elizabeth Cargle

TRANSCRIPT:

Found a typo in the transcript? Let us know here.

Episode 7: Your Racist Uncle, Your Apathetic Aunt, and Your Misogynist Cousin: How To

Emily Nagoski: [00:00:00] Hey everybody, it's Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski, and this is the Feminist Survival Project 2020. This episode is going to be posted on the Monday of the week of Thanksgiving here in the United States. 

And we have already had lots of requests for how to talk to people you disagree with, and by people you disagree with we mean: Family members, romantic partners, friends, unignorable strangers... 

And so, so we're going to talk about that, but it's not going to be, like, the usual conversation about how to talk to your racist or otherwise awful relatives because this is not a podcast about how to end racism or homophobia or transphobia or xenophobia or capitalism, or even misogyny, even though it's a feminist podcast. This is about you surviving while you work to be a part of the solution. 

Amelia Nagoski: [00:00:58] We assume that you're already motivated on some level to create positive change. And we assume that you're a human being with limited time and energy whose relationships with the people you choose to eat with on a holiday matter enough that you don't want to write those people off.

Emily Nagoski: [00:01:15] So. The first thing we want to recognize is that you can mostly let go of the idea that anything you say or do on Thanksgiving will change anyone's mind about anything. 

Amelia Nagoski: [00:01:30] That's not going to happen. 

Emily Nagoski: [00:01:31] Is there anything anyone could say, Amelia, that would change your mind about climate change?

Amelia Nagoski: [00:01:35] Nope.

Emily Nagoski: [00:01:36] Or election financing?

Amelia Nagoski: [00:01:38] Nope.

Emily Nagoski: [00:01:39] Nothing anyone says to me will make me change my mind about abortion. I think it should be available readily on demand. I think we should tax the shit out of guns and use whatever money that is to fund abortion for undocumented immigrants and refugees. And yet nothing anyone could say would change my mind about that.

Amelia Nagoski: [00:01:54] Nope. 

Emily Nagoski: [00:01:55] So, remember that if nothing anyone could say could change your mind, that's a valuable piece of self-awareness to bring into your holiday plan because that's probably also true that nothing you say or do is going to change any of your terrible relatives' minds about anything. 

Amelia Nagoski: [00:02:14] Unfortunately.

Emily Nagoski: [00:02:15] The second thing we want to say: You have limited energy, so it matters what you spend it on. And this is where I'm going to tell an anecdote. Uh, back in 2013 there was this kerfuffle about whether or not we should be telling college women not to drink, to prevent sexual assault. The arguments went either, "Yes, we should because getting women drunk is a primary tactic of sexual predators, and if women didn't drink, then they wouldn't be victimized." or, "No, we shouldn't because women's drinking isn't what causes sexual assault. It's predators predating. That's the cause of sexual assault and telling women not to drink is making the victim responsible for their own assault."

So, at the time, I was the person on my campus responsible for creating the sexual violence prevention programming. And my answer to this question of whether or not we should tell college women not to drink to prevent sexual assault was, "I don't care. I don't care whether we *should* tell women not to drink. I don't care whether it's right or wrong. What I care about is whether an intervention is likely to be effective at preventing violence."

That's all. Anything less would be a waste of my office's resources and my personal time. Anything less would be professionally negligent. It would be an insult to the students whose wellbeing I served.

Anything less as far as my conscience was concerned, would be allowing sexual violence to happen. I'm a real person really doing this work, and if telling women not to drink worked to prevent violence, I would do it. I would do it every day at the top of my lungs. It does not. 

The research is real clear about this and always has been. So it's never what I did. So, that's an allegory because there's this whole narrative that you should confront your terrible relatives. It is the "right" thing to do, that you should use your privilege, whatever privilege you have, to advocate for people who lack that privilege. And maybe you should.

We don't know. 

Amelia Nagoski: [00:04:15] Yeah. Maybe. To be totally frank, we don't care. We don't care whether you should or not. That's beside the point. And anyway, in these situations, there is no single right thing to do. There's just a mass of compromises to pick from.

The only question we want you to consider is not, "What should I do?" but, "What's an effective use of my energy?"

Am I participating in creating the change I want to see or am I just shouting at the top of my lungs and not doing anything, but making myself feel righteous and exhausted and depressed without accomplishing the change? I want.

Emily Nagoski: [00:04:48] So, for example, Rachel Cargle, this fabulous educator and activist wrote a piece for Harper's Bazaar recently with this catalog of helpful scripts.

What to say when your racist family member starts talking about Colin Kaepernick or suddenly about "all lives matter." And if you're interested in confronting your racist relatives, but you don't know how to articulate anti-racist ideas, these scripts are going to be really helpful for you. 

We will put a link to it in the show notes.

Your racist relative says "X," and so you say "Y". 

Amelia Nagoski: [00:05:18] Well, let's think through the whole story, past your anti-racist, anti-homophobic, anti-xenophobic or anti-fascist answer. Suppose your intellectually lazy aunt says something about Mexican immigrants and you counter with a clear statement about immigration in America. Then what?

Does she respond with, You know, I never thought about it that way. Thanks for the insight, hon." Does she engage with you in an honest and open-hearted conversation about living with difference? Or does she mock you and your snowflake sensitivity? Or say that if you could find a boyfriend, maybe you wouldn't spend so much time arguing with your elders. Or sarcastically ask if you want another slice of pie.

Or does your mother intervene and say, "Now dear, don't start a fight." 

Emily Nagoski: [00:06:02] Because obviously you're the one who's starting a fight. Not the aunt who use the pejorative racist epithet. Welcome to Human Giver Syndrome, maybe the biggest barrier to dealing with loved ones you disagree with. We have a whole episode about Human Giver Syndrome.

It's episode three feel free to give that a listen, but the ultra short version is: Human Giver Syndrome is the shared belief that women have a moral obligation-

Oh, Thunder's being very needy because you have a cheese plate. So you could take your cheese and, uh, give Thunder the plate on the bed so that she will stay up there with her, with the, with the cheesy plate...

Oh, Thunder's happy. [dog collar jingles] 

Oh boy. There we go. I hope people can hear her licking in the background because that is the sound of joy.

-We have a whole episode about this. It's episode three. Feel free to give that a listen, but the ultra short version is: Human Giver Syndrome is this cultural belief that women have a moral obligation to be pretty, happy, calm, generous, and attentive to the needs of others.

Your role as a human giver is to be patient and understanding and attentive and agreeable. It is not to have an opinion of your own. Just by expressing an opinion, nevermind contradicting someone else's, just having the opinion and daring to use other people's time and attention to express it. Just by doing that, you're already violating your role as a giver and therefore culturally deserve to be punished.

So, people around you may try to punish you with an ad hominem attack telling you you are fat or ugly or a bitch or otherwise unlovable, and all the ways that you violate your obligation to be a giver. They will probably try to gaslight you, be condescending, express contempt for you, and try to humiliate you because, by your mere expression of a contradictory opinion, you have tried to humiliate them, is what they will feel. And so, they are required morally to react with humiliation in turn. 

So expect it Plan for it. Know that there is no response you can give to that kind of counter attack that will have any positive impact on them or you. They have already shut down effective communication. That is why our strategies for talking to family members about political issues are not about how to teach your racist family members not to be racist, or your homophobic family members not to be homophobic, or your fiscally conservative Republicans to pull their heads out of their asses, your Libertarian relatives, how capitalism works.

Libertarianism is not how capitalism works. Okay. I'm like blowing out the microphone a lot, so I'm gonna- see this is why you don't do it. 

So, we have these three strategies. Amelia,want to tell the nice people about our three strategies?

Amelia Nagoski: [00:08:59] Yup. Number one: How to decide whether to engage or not.

Two: How to engage, if you decide to, in a way that's least likely to escalate into something that makes you want to get drunk when you get home, if not sooner, and might even result in positive change of some kind.

And number three: How to shut it down if it gets ugly.

Emily Nagoski: [00:09:19] And we're going to work with this real life example. There was this one time Amelia was hanging out socially with some people, which was her first mistake, and, uh, the conversation generally was about- 

Amelia Nagoski: [00:09:31] It was for work. I had to.

Emily Nagoski: [00:09:32] -Gay rights. And a person whose opinion she had no information about, but she was a person, it was, it was a person she was in the room with, quietly said the thing that people say, "It's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve."

And we should say at this point that Emilia is the idealist between us. I am entirely, almost exclusively interested in what will work. I'm trained in public health. I am extremely pragmatic. We make a podcast because that seems to be the most effective way to communicate this information.

I'm not interested in an ideal way. I just want something that's going to help. 

Amelia Nagoski: [00:10:09] You're, you're okay with making a dent in a problem and I want to blow shit up.

Emily Nagoski: [00:10:13] Yeah. Whereas, I know people live there and don't deserve to have to clean up our rubble, in my opinion.

Amelia Nagoski: [00:10:19] I think their lives are already at risk, so yeah, exactly, it's our responsibility to blow that shit up so the shit doesn't kill them. 

Emily Nagoski: [00:10:27] Exactly.

Amelia Nagoski: [00:10:27] So, we have different opinions about how important it is and how practical it is to engage.

Emily Nagoski: [00:10:33] Which gives us a good framework for being able to talk about this. So we have a couple of principles for deciding whether or not to engage, especially two really key ideas about when not to engage. And the first one is if people are using binaries. Are they forcing you into an either or scenario? If you feel like they're using these binaries as a way to control and manipulate you, if they're using a binary as a weapon, they're forcing people into a scenario instead of talking about whatever the topic is in terms of spectrums and change and fluidity.

If the language people are using is about spectrums and change and fluidity and possibility, then it might be a time to engage. 

If they're talking in terms of rigid binaries, right or wrong, in group or enemy, you hereby have permission, officially, not to engage if you don't want to. It's unlikely to result in anything positive and it could even backfire and reinforce the other person's bullshit ideas.

There's research on this thing called the backfire effect, where the harder you fight to defend a position, the more you reinforce the person who disagrees with you's existing opinion.

Amelia Nagoski: [00:11:46] Yeah. 

And the second thing to consider is if people are arguing about complex topics about which they are not content experts.

When you discuss science, lots of people put on their bone-picking hats and start finding things to disagree with. In the connection chapter of Burnout, we call this "separate knowing" where you extract an idea from its context and analyze it that way, as opposed to "connected knowing" where you explore an idea within the framework of the context where it originated.

If people are being curious and exploring ideas with a connected knowing, they're acknowledging that they're not experts. That might be a time to engage. But rational arguments of science are supposed to be precise, intricate, and often terribly, terribly specialized. If you are not a content expert, do not try to be one.

And if the other person isn't one, don't try to argue about facts with them. 

Emily Nagoski: [00:12:43] Don't bring facts to what is ultimately a feelings fight.

So, to conclude with this portion, you are allowed not to confront people or argue about the things you disagree about all the time. Yes, it is a privilege not to, but if you have the privilege, why not use it to protect your boundaries, your sanity, your energy?

Pointing out that it's a privilege is not an argument about why you should not do something. It's just recognizing that not everyone has that choice. But if you do have the choice, you're the one who gets to decide when and how you use your energy. Yes, we are definitely talking about white people with relatives who say shit like, "I am not a racist, but those people are lazy." We're also talking about people of all races with relatives who say, "I don't hate homosexuals, I just hate what they do." People with relatives who say, "God makes people male or female and they should stay that way." Or, "I won't use they as a singular pronoun because it's not grammatical." And people who say a woman's worth - I literally had this conversation with someone - "A woman's worth comes from the number of children she had." Oh, "Pay inequality is because women choose lower-paying jobs or they choose to work part time because they want to do that work. They want to stay home with their children. It's a choice they're making."

Amelia Nagoski: [00:14:08] I want to point out one other thing about when you choose to engage or not to engage, and that is about positive reappraisal. Positive reappraisal is the strategy for dealing with when you succeed or fail at a goal. And if you fail, but, like, you've worked really hard and you're trying, positive reappraisal is when you decide that the effort you're putting in is worth it.

So for me, in this context, what that means is: When I get home tonight, if I keep my mouth shut, am I going to have to decide that it was worth it? Is that true? Am I going to decide, "I kept my mouth shut. I let them say their piece and I kept it a happy family day and nobody had a big fight. Nobody threw anything. Is that worth it?"

For me, it's never worth it. For me, I choose in that moment to create discomfort. I choose confrontation and a lot of people, when they're in the midst of computation, they're very uncomfortable. They feel bad. It hurts them and the people around them, and if they went home later that night, they would say, "Oh my God, that was not worth it. I just feel terrible about what happened."

Emily Nagoski: [00:15:14] That's what I do. Yeah. I always feel terrible when I get home after that.

Amelia Nagoski: [00:15:18] I would get home and if I kept my mouth shut, I would feel terrible. 

Emily Nagoski: [00:15:21] People vary.

Amelia Nagoski: [00:15:22] People vary. You got to choose which one is true for you. 

Emily Nagoski: [00:15:26] So, if you choose to engage, let's talk about a way to do it in a way that's least likely, again, to escalate into something where you want to get drunk when you get home, which is what would happen to me under most circumstances.

Okay, look, if you're going to have this conversation, first, remember, know ahead of time that you need to know what your goal is and your goal should not be changing the other person's mind.

You're not going to convince them. What do you hope to achieve by investing this effort? You're not going to change their mind, so do you want it to be that when you get home, you look back on it and think, like, "I made the right decision with that. I'm glad that I did that."

Amelia Nagoski: [00:16:00] I made a racist, uncomfortable! Go me!

I punched a Nazi! I win!

Emily Nagoski: [00:16:06] Also, know ahead of time that in order to have a conversation that might result in someone changing their mind, you are probably going to be doing some emotional labor. 

Amelia Nagoski: [00:16:16] Can I say why I do it? Because there's somebody in that room, there's some kid who's gay or trans, and what they saw was me telling that person to go fuck themselves. What they saw was me on their side. "Oh my God, somebody in my family's on my side," And even if they're too young to know,  like, that's what they needed to see, they will learn that not everyone agrees with Aunt Petunia about trans people. There are also people who are willing to stand and fight with them.

Okay. Anyway, sorry. That's my goal when I decide to engage, which is about 80% of the time.

Emily Nagoski: [00:16:49] Yeah. And it's mostly that I engage in a different way. I engage in, I do, I do these, these emotional labor things. I do the work. That means I'll be regulating my own emotional expression to create a context where the other person doesn't feel too uncomfortable.

Amelia Nagoski: [00:17:04] Like so, so like transphobic Aunt Petunia you're worried about not making transphobic Aunt Petunia cry. 

Emily Nagoski: [00:17:11] I don't want to escalate the situation emotionally, not just not because I don't want to make her uncomfortable per se, but because if she's uncomfortable, she's likely to lash back at me and to say something humiliating or hijack the whole conversation and turn it into, you're laughing at this like-

Amelia Nagoski: [00:17:28] I'm ready for that! Bring it, Aunt Petunia. Fuck you. Bring it.

Emily Nagoski: [00:17:36] And this emotional labor is exactly what Human Giver Syndrome says it is my job to do. And it is not my job. And it's not your job. It's just if you want to have these kinds of conversations instead of just having a fight, you use the skills. So we're just going to talk really quickly about three. And Amelia's like, "I'm not going to do any of this."

Amelia Nagoski: [00:17:56] Nope. I just want the fight. The fight is fine with me. 

Emily Nagoski: [00:17:58] "If my stepdaughter's boyfriend comes in and starts saying the things that a Republican says, we're just going to talk about it."

Amelia Nagoski: [00:18:04] Yeah, no, I've literally warned my stepkids. Like, if any of you bring home a person who's going to say these things, you need to know.

You need to, like, warn them not to say it, because you know I'm not going to keep my mouth shut. They know. They a hundred percent know.

Emily Nagoski: [00:18:16] Skill one: Facts do not change people's minds. If you choose direct confrontation and contradiction, you're setting yourself up for a fact fight. 

Are you an expert in the content area you're talking about?

If you are, go for it. There are some things where I feel so confident in my knowledge that I will just go to the facts, like sex education, like what are the consequences of it? But if you're not, it's just going to be you and another imperfectly informed person arguing about facts of which neither of you is master.

And I guess people think that's a reasonable way to spend a holiday. But in my opinion, if you are not an expert in the area, just skip the facts. Confrontation, contradiction. You go instead for the feelings.

Skill number two is about a great way to go for the feelings. And that is when you say "X," I feel "Y".

This is a baseline Therapy 101 strategy for separating what the person is saying from the impact they are having. We know that a person's intention is not an excuse for doing hurtful things, but it is useful to help them see that the thing they're saying is having an impact that is different from their intention and sort of, like, helping them to understand that, look, you're having this impact that I know you would never want to have.

When you say this, it makes me think of my trans friend who is spending the holidays with other trans friends because none of them are allowed to go home to their families anymore. And I've heard them talk about how sad they feel about that exclusion. So when you say that, it makes me feel...

And I know, Aunt Petunia, that you would never want anyone to feel isolated and like they're not even allowed to go home anymore.

So, separating the impact from the intention by talking about what it feels like for you when the person says the thing. 

Amelia Nagoski: [00:20:18] I want to say for the record, we don't have an Aunt Petunia, so- 

Emily Nagoski: [00:20:21] This is a fictional person. And actually, our aunts are great. Yeah, liberal, open-minded, surprisingly, and even the religious ones- 

Amelia Nagoski: [00:20:30] And genuinely open to conversations that are about things that they haven't, like, thought about too much, but kind of took for granted because of the prevailing- so, so, just we're yeah.

Emily Nagoski: [00:20:40] I was delighted-

Amelia Nagoski: [00:20:41] I don't want any of our relatives to be like, What? Me?  I haven't yelled at you then, no. It's not you. 

Emily Nagoski: [00:20:48] I was having a conversation with Aunt Sally about depression. And about my use of dopamine agonists instead of serotonin reuptake inhibitors. And what I told her was that dopamine was my neurotransmitter of choice, if you know what that means? And she went, "Yeah, I know what that means."

That was like, all right. Yeah. Okay.

Skill number three, this is my favorite one.

Okay. The most important thing that I, this is Emily, have learned in a lifetime of having strong opinions and expressing them forcefully, is that if I disagree with something, it is always the case that there is something I don't know. I am missing some piece of information. If I find myself asking the question, "How could they possibly believe this stupid bullshit?"

That's not a rhetorical question. How could it be that they believe this stupid bullshit? And the way you find out how they could believe the stupid bullshit is to slow the conversation way down. You say something like, "Um, hang on one second. I'm just not sure I'm understanding, Aunt Petunia. What I hear you saying is 'blah.' Is that right?"

Search for the missing piece. Figure it out. What is the belief they're assuming you share or don't even know they hold that allows them to think about the world the way that they do? 

There's a list of rules formulated by Anatol Rapoport, who is, I think the founder of game theory, but I'm not sure, but he's best known for originating the famous tit for tat strategy of game theory. In his book, Intuition Pumps, Daniel Dennett, the philosopher, summarizes it with these four rules.

One: attempt to re-express the other person's position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that they say, "Thanks. I wish I'd thought of putting it that way."

 Number two: List any points of agreement, especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement. So not, "We agree that the sky is blue" but, "We agree that humans have bodies and their social role matters."

Three: Mention anything you have learned from the person.

And four: Then, and only then can you say even one word of rebuttal or criticism.

Not only will these four steps- Restate the person's position better than they said it. Point out where you agree. Mention something you learned and then offer any kind of critique.

Not only does this give you an opportunity to understand how anyone could believe this stupid bullshit, it can also provide an opportunity for this person to show everyone at the table just how stupid that bullshit is. It might even be an opportunity for them to gain insight through this Socratic questioning process into how bullshit their stupid thing is.

To sum up. This is still Emily, because this is mostly my way of doing things. If you decide to engage, do not bring facts to a feelings fight 

Amelia Nagoski: [00:23:57] Unless you just want to fight. 

If you want to fight, like go ahead and fight, that's fine. 

Emily Nagoski: [00:24:00] Some people are comfortable with it. 

Amelia Nagoski: [00:24:02] Be ready to deal with the emotional ramifications.

Emily Nagoski: [00:24:04] Tell stories in the framework of when you say "X," I feel "Y". And be a spy. Genuinely try to understand what's going on with this person so that you can understand precisely why and how they believe this bullshit. That way you carry something away from the conversation, which is insider knowledge on how such a crazy idea could actually hold any power with anyone.

Amelia Nagoski: [00:24:29] And then there's shutting it down. We've got two approaches. 

First, you can do it remorselessly. Do not engage, confront.

For example, "From the words you're saying and the heartlessness which with you're saying it, you're showing me that you're too uninformed to have an opinion worth expressing and too intellectually rigid to be worth teaching. Not to mention, too vicious to be worth the time of a loving God whom you claim to worship. Fortunately, most people disagree with you and the mere passage of time is all it will take to make you and your ignorant, cruel opinions to be obsolete. That's why I'm just not going to waste my time engaging in a conversation about anything that actually matters to me or the world. Would you like some potatoes?" 

Emily Nagoski: [00:25:13] And when they respond with anything other than an answer about potatoes, you can, you can keep going with a, "Here's all the reasons why I'm not going to argue with you" or just say, "Would you like the potatoes? Aunt Mary would you like the potatoes? Mom, would you like the potatoes? Dad?" and then turn your attention irrevocably away from them.

You have shut them down. The hard part now is not getting hooked back in. You built a wall. The reason you said this was to end your participation. 

Amelia Nagoski: [00:25:42] The other person may, and almost certainly will, go on expressing their ignorant, cruel opinions to other people who may bother to humor them, but you will not engage. Feel free to go to a different room.

Emily Nagoski: [00:25:55] Because the vulnerable person in the room who you wanted to make sure heard you say that, heard you say that, and now you get to protect your boundaries. 

Amelia Nagoski: [00:26:03] If the person pursues you, follows you, tries to continue the conversation-

Emily Nagoski: [00:26:06] Because they might-

Amelia Nagoski: [00:26:07] Repeat your no calmly, yet firmly. It feels so good .If you get to a third no without them listening to, you say that, "This is the third time I have told you no, I will not talk about it. I'm not going to talk about it clearly. You need to talk about it and I recommend you talk to someone, anyone, who is willing to engage with you. I am not. I'm not going to do this. If you talk to me about it again-"

What's a consequence that matters to that person? I'm leaving or I'm just going to go to my room? Or like, we're just going to talk about potatoes and that's it. 

Emily Nagoski: [00:26:37] Or I'm going to insist that you leave, if it's your house. 

Amelia Nagoski: [00:26:40] Ooh, if it's your house.

Emily Nagoski: [00:26:41] Or if you're, it's in the house of someone whom you can be like, "Look, in order for people not to feel attacked and unsafe, what I need is for you to get this person and their oppressive opinion out of the house."

Does this sound extreme? Does it sound like we're joking? I mean, it is a little bit-

Amelia Nagoski: [00:26:58] No. No, it's fucking not.

Emily Nagoski: [00:27:01] These are real things that happen in your head, right? When the asshole relatives say their stupid asshole things. We're just thinking through what actually could happen in real life if you went ahead and said the thing in your head that happens when they say the stupid bullshit things.

Amelia Nagoski: [00:27:16] Yeah.

Emily Nagoski: [00:27:17] You're allowed to protect your boundaries, your sanity, your energy. You are allowed to do that, no matter what Human Giver Syndrome has to say about it. You do not have to smile and go, "Hmm." And then just change the opinion.

Amelia Nagoski: [00:27:29] And then deal with the rage that has accrued in your brain and is now burning a hole through your amygdala. 

Emily Nagoski: [00:27:35] And so you scream at your partner in the car on the ride home the whole time. I don't say that from any kind of personal experience. [laughter]

Strategy two, if you decide not to engage: Remember, you're not engaging if they are using binaries as weapons. You are not engaging if they're trying to argue about facts over which neither of you is master. Our second strategy- 

Amelia Nagoski: [00:27:56] You're also not engaging if you decide that when you go home later tonight, you're going to feel like it wasn't worth it. 

Emily Nagoski: [00:28:02] Yeah. Which is me a lot of the time. I go home and beat the shit out of myself if I couldn't perfectly argue and persuade the person. So I, my way of not engaging is the second strategy, which is to melt like a toddler who doesn't want to be picked up.

You just slide right out of it. You just wiggle, worm your way...eeeeuuuhhhh...

"I'm not interested in talking about it. You know, we're not going to change each other's minds, so let's enjoy the day." 

Amelia Nagoski: [00:28:30] Agree to disagree. Oh God, I hate that so much. 

Emily Nagoski: [00:28:33] Especially if you've got a relative who knows that you disagree about this, knows that it pushes your buttons when they talk about it, and so they talk about it to push your buttons.

The best way to deal with a person like this is to slither away. 

You be like a palm tree that bends in the wind. You do the whatever the martial arts thing is where you use the other person's energy against them-

Amelia Nagoski: [00:29:00] -Aikido.

There was the president of one of my community choirs that I conducted who I spoke to rather frankly about my doctoral program. And she taught me an expression that still lives in my head to this day: "Think what ever you want. Smile and nod, smile and nod and think whatever you want."

That never ever worked for me, but it's an idea that I aspire to. But if I think whatever, like I just feel terrible about having- I've done it. I feel like it's the wrong choice for me.

I always hate the fact that I did that, but it is a skill that served her and many, many people. Smile and nod and think whatever you want. 

Emily Nagoski: [00:29:37] I think the difference is in our difference in relationship with rage. When I get home, I know that I can hold onto my rage for right now and then go home and do the things I need to do to purge it.

Amelia Nagoski: [00:29:49] Yeah. Whereas, like, I only discovered that I even had rage like eight years ago, so-

Emily Nagoski: [00:29:55] When you feel it, you have to let it go NOW.

Amelia Nagoski: [00:29:57] I don't have any storage capacity- 

Emily Nagoski: [00:30:00] Because when it's happening in the moment, that's when you have the capacity to let it go. Whereas, if you hold onto it, it's just gonna, like, lodge itself somewhere in your body and probably put you in the hospital again.  I'm sorry to laugh.

Amelia Nagoski: [00:30:13] No, but like legit. Like, if I, if the rage happens, like I need to deal with it. Right. It's like buying milk and other has to go in the fridge or we have to drink it right away and I don't have a rage fridge. I have nowhere to preserve it. No, I had a rage fridge and it got so full that it overgrew with, like, mold and mildew and fucking got me in a hospital and, like, the rage fridge is closed now. I got rid of that motherfucker.

Emily Nagoski: [00:30:34] And the only one you could replace it with was a little dorm room fridge.

Amelia Nagoski: [00:30:37] Yeah. I have, like, exactly. I have a little mini fridge where I keep, like, a six pack of rage and that's all I have room for. And the rest of it I deal with as soon as I buy it, which is as soon as an interaction happens that, like, sparks that reaction.

Emily Nagoski: [00:30:50] So the surprise twist insight at the end of our conversation about how to deal with your racist uncle, your apathetic aunt or your misogynist cousin, is it's going to depend on how big and effective your rage fridge is.

Can you hold on to it? Can you smile? And also it depends on the vulnerability of the people in the room. If you stand up for the vulnerable people, is there going to be somebody in that room who sees you doing that and their life is made better because you did it? Like, it's not just for you that you're choosing to do this or not.

Amelia Nagoski: [00:31:23] It's almost never for you. 

Emily Nagoski: [00:31:24] It's for the people around you who get to see it.

Amelia Nagoski: [00:31:27] That's way more common for me as a, you know, a middle class white lady. 

Emily Nagoski: [00:31:30] Yeah. We're walking around with buttloads of privilege at this point. Yeah. And, and when we go to a holiday event of any kind, we have almost nothing to lose.

Amelia Nagoski: [00:31:41] Yeah. 

Emily Nagoski: [00:31:44] Cause we're happy to write people off. 

Amelia Nagoski: [00:31:46] Perfectly happy. Yeah.

Sorry. If you're a Trump supporter, you're just, I just don't give a shit.

Emily Nagoski: [00:31:52] I just do not, no. 

Amelia Nagoski: [00:31:53] Just fuck you.

Emily Nagoski: [00:31:56] I hope some of this was helpful. We talked about some key things that will help you decide whether or not to engage. Some strategies for how to engage.

Amelia Nagoski: [00:32:05] If you choose to.

Emily Nagoski: [00:32:05] And two strategies for shutting it down. One, the direct attack approach and one, the wiggle away like a squirmy toddler. Yeah. Smile and nod and think anything you want, smile and nod. Think whatever you want.

And that is our take on how to survive Thanksgiving with relatives who make you bananas.

And that's our episode of the Feminist Survival Project 2020. We hope you survive your holiday if you celebrate. Dare, we even hope that you experience love and joy in your connection with your family of choice and not just bare minimum survival by managing your family of origin?

Amelia Nagoski: [00:32:41] And that would be so great. I hope that's true.

Emily Nagoski: [00:32:42] We wish that for you. 

So that's it. If any of this was written, it was written by us, Emily and Amelia Nagoski. If was produced, It was produced by my marital euphemism. And the music is by Amelia. 

Amelia Nagoski: [00:32:54] Feel free to follow along on Twitter or Instagram @fsp2020 and email us at feministsurvivalproject2020@gmail.com 

let us know- What are your plans for Thanksgiving?

Emily Nagoski: [00:33:05] Are you going to confront your people? 

Amelia Nagoski: [00:33:06] Are there traditions that you enjoy upholding? Traditions you're interested in blowing the shit out of?

Emily Nagoski: [00:33:13] How big is your rage fridge? 

And how much are you holdin' in there? When was the last time you cleaned it out? 

Amelia Nagoski: [00:33:21] Thanks for listening.