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Responding to Call-Outs with Wisdom and Grace
It’s what you do after a screw-up that defines who you really are.
A few weeks ago, I got drinks with a friend and fellow teacher — let’s call her Amanda. Amanda’s a total spitfire, full of passion and possessed with a strong sense of right and wrong. Amanda is constantly self-educating about systemic problems, and forever improving her social justice vocabulary.
Amanda cares about a variety of issues, from ableism to fatphobia to transphobia, and works hard to teach other people about each of them, too. She is also a human being, which means that despite all her best efforts, she is destined to screw up some of the time.
We were halfway into our first round of drinks when Amanda said she had something to tell me.
“I was giving a lecture on gender differences in Autism,” she said to me, fiddling with a drink stirrer. “And I was trying to talk about how the research says men and women sometimes experience Autism differently… but I wanted to make sure I was inclusive of transgender people.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, taking a long sip of my cider.
“But I said it all wrong.” Amanda sighed and her eyes got a bit red. “I said people who are socialized female are more likely to hide their Autism than people who…
