Developing the Language of a Movement
Without inviting the word police
Before we begin a movement, we will start by discussing some of the language historically used in direct actions. This isn't meant to police language or dictate how you speak with each other, but to share common terms to better coordinate and work together.
Non-Violent Direct Action (NVDA) is the process of undertaking a collective action to change the circumstances without handing our power to a middle person. It is a tactic to apply our power without the use of physical violence. NVDA can be acts of omission or acts of commission.
An act of omission might include refusing to perform an act that is usually performed, expected to perform, or required by law or regulation to perform.
An act of commission includes performing an act that is not usually performed, not expected to perform, or are forbidden to perform.
Nonviolence is a choice. The choices include to do no harm or the least amount of harm or to be passive and to do nothing. Sometimes the choice to engage nonviolently is set out as a passive activity. Sometimes it becomes the result of the activities of others.
Strategy has three parts and it comes after you define your goals.
Identity your groups power.
Find specific ways to concentrate that power.
Develop ways for your group to use your concentrated power to achieve your goals.
Tactics are the actual things that your group is going to carry out to attempt to achieve your goals. This is the direct engagement to put pressure on the target.
Civil Disobedience is the intentional breaking of a law, usually because the law itself is considered unjust. This could include the tactics similar to what was seen by the group ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power). In 1988, ACT UP had one of its most successful demonstrations when it actually shut down the FDA for the day through direct action.
Civil Resistance operates through applying pressure to a target or multiple targets. This can be in coordinated ways. This can include peaceful demonstrations, vigils, petitions, strikes, sit-ins, slow downs, letter writing campaigns.
Duty of Care. We have obligations to each other and anyone with whom you are working. These obligations require that we limit, to the best of our ability, risks of threats to personal safety or criminal or civil penalties. There may be times when the action is directly planned as that of civil disobedience. We can still work to ensure that we limit threats to personal safety. This should include considering the general public.
Many pediatric gender centers are located within large pediatric hospital centers. For example we have a duty of care to ensure that the entrance to the emergency room is never blocked or even impeded by an action.
Informed Consent. It may be a bit of a surprise to see the concept of informed consent here, we are so used to considering how poorly it is occurring in pediatric gender medicine. Informed consent in NVDA means that all participants are provided the information in a comprehensive manner with as much notice as possible to be able to voluntarily provide agreement to participate. This is an ongoing process as situations rapidly change.
For example, while in Chicago at the American Academy of Pediatrics headquarters we were unexpectedly met with a demand that we could remain if we removed our shirts that contained messaging. We had not been able to discuss this in advance, yet because we had a working relationship with the police we were able to ask for a moment to discuss as a group. This led to some impactful choices for some participants, moments that we did not plan for but later came to feel were powerful. Including Aaron Kimberly’s decision to show top surgery scars to the police and property managers.
This gender dysphoria started when my kid was in fifth grade, 2 years ago. She did come home from school after her teacher gave the kids a pronoun lecture. I don’t believe there were any transgender children in the class. But you can bet on the fact that there were some parents who were giving their children a lot of language and concepts at home. Thus, the community was primed for it.
Me, I raised my daughter as a nonconformist. She is very close with her older brother. And prior to the pronoun talk (and the trans YouTubers) she was starting to figure her place in the pecking order of her class. We are gender nonconforming, but in hindsight, I now know that we really need to teach our values at home. We need to use language skillfully.
I am an early childhood teacher. I am a trained Montessori teacher. I studied critical theory, literature, and the Russian language (for 8 years). I had to catch up because my reading of critical theory in 1995 ended with feminist theory. In 2023, I was updating my knowledge with the theory of gender performativity—a theory. (Let’s pause for a chuckle.)
My kid left Montessori charter school after 5th. Sixth grade last year, despite my attempts to head off the issues, I watched the things happen that I was predicting. My daughter gravitated to the lgbtq group, spoke about girls with boy names and pronouns (this really
I was on a London train in 1995 when a somewhat inebriated Brit in a business suit with a newspaper in his hand, rolled the paper up and threw it to the floor yelling “England will regret its colonialism!” Wonder where he is today!