It's time to get personal, dirty, and downright nasty.
I’m (mostly) doing the Access conference this year1. And its been a largely bittersweet experience for me. This is likely the very last public, professional thing I ever do in this field. And it is kind of painful to sit there and listen to things that I genuinely care about and am passionate about and know that… This isn’t my life anymore (inasmuch as it was ever going to be my life).
On this blog, I’ve talked a lot about systemic/institutional oppression. It’s how I prefer to examine the world and the ways that it is fucked up. Because, at the end of the day, I still wholeheartedly believe that people are basically good. And that should we change the systems and institutions we currently exist in, it will give people the opportunity to not only be good, but be great. After everything that has happened and with all that I know about the world, I still believe this. It’s pretty much the last tiny bit of hope and optimism I can muster these days.
But after talking with some people yesterday at Access… I realize that by focusing so muc on the macro, few people seem to understand what this means for me, personally, on the micro level. I didn’t start talking social justice (or whatever) because I find it intellectually stimulating, but because I want my actual life to be better. Now. Not just in some distant future. There is a general sense of urgency in my writing precisely because all of this deeply impacts my life.
Just one example: this Access, I’m making it very clear to everyone that I’m underemployed and poor. Because while most of the people attending the conference all have full time jobs, I wonder who else is here that doesn’t. Or has external circumstances that mean even with a full time job their financial situation is as precarious (or more) than mine. I recently took a really hard look at my spending and budget. About three years ago, there was an eight month period where both my partner and I were working full time. We saved some money. Three years later that money is all but gone. Where did it go? A slow bleed over time because I’ve been supporting the both of us on my part time wages. And… after really calculating everything, after all the bills, there is about $137.00 left. That’s it. Thats all we have for food, toilet paper, shampoo, soap, etc. So… Our savings have gone down to cover that. The savings also got eaten up by the professional development stuff I’ve been doing. Conferences, mostly. Another chunk to get my autism diagnosis. Another chunk for legal fees. And here we are. After three years of living beyond our means, trying to figure out how we are going to eat on $137/month.
All of this because I’ve been unable to get a full time position. Sure, sure, because I’m not able to move wherever, my options have been limited. And, no, it isn’t even the lawsuit. Before the lawsuit, I was still not getting jobs. Barely getting any interviews (remember: one a year in the three years I’ve been looking). While, yes, I got depressed and I have applied for a position in almost a year now (basically since the case really broke into the mainstream).
But I honestly want to talk about job searching and me in this field before the case. Because the case only put the last nail in the coffin for my (currently zombified) career. The last. Not the first. Not all the ones leading up to the last. Just the last.
Look. I’m far from the only person who has been rendered unemployable, so can we not pretend like this is something new in the field? And… my situation is significantly different than the Loon’s.
So. Let’s have a really brutally honest talk about why, pre-case, I was only getting one interview a year.
Before anyone goes “well, maybe nine should’ve done x, y, z”, allow me to quote Captain Jean-Luc Picard:
“Sometimes, you can make no mistakes, do everything right, and still lose.” (source)
All the things people said you should do? I did. This isn’t even a debate. By the time I finished library school, I had a full year’s worth of experience working full time in libraries via UBC’s coop program. My focus was on a growing and fairly vibrant sub-field: library tech. I was bright and shiny and very enthusiastic and capable.
No. This isn’t about me, or at least not about anything I did. It is about me. Me as a person. Who I am and how other people perceive me. This is about how librarianship, as a whole, completely and utterly failed me. How my chances of success before the case were slim and went to none after it.
Let’s dig deep with some examples. Or rather, I guess I should talk about me a little. Because while speaking with some people yesterday, it is pretty clear that a lot of people…. enjoy talking about social issues in a macro way but won’t actually apply them to individuals.
Not white (because I’m Asian)
Not abled (mentally ill and autistic)
Not cis (because I’m trans)
Also not a man (so no glass escalator for me)
Not heterosexual (because I’m gay)
Not middle-class or higher (I’m poor, grew up poor, and have always been poor)
These are the most relevant. Cumulatively? All of this is why my chances of success in this field were vanishingly small. A lot of people of colour know that we have to work, minimally, twice as hard as white people to even get close to being as successful. This isn’t a debate. But when I talk to individuals and despite people generally knowing the demographics of the field and a general sense that our society is unequal in really important ways, few people seem willing to stand in front of me and actually acknowledge the above.
The problem? Not formally acknowledging the above doesn’t mean the biases and oppression and discrimination don’t impact my life. What it does do, is completely invalidate my experiences and my struggles. Talking to white librarians who go “well… idk, maybe you could still get a job” and I just can’t.
“wah, I’m a marginalized person who can’t pull themselves up by their bootstraps… feel sorry for me, wah”
So, let’s fucking talk about the elephant. My chances of success in librarianship were slim from the very moment I decided to become a librarian because the field is sexist, racist, ableist, classist, cissexist, and heterosexist. This is why, pre-case, I was getting very few interviews and definitely not getting any jobs.
As far as I can tell: I did everything right as was humanly possible for me. Obviously it wasn’t good enough. That laundry list of my marginalizations all play into each other. The compound and multiply.
So when we see an article about how “Poor kids who do everything right don’t do better than rich kids who do everything wrong”. This is about me.
When we talk about how librarianship is unbearably white, this is about me too.
When we talk about the library tech pipeline problems, this is also about me. A lot of libtech jobs want a unicorn and demonstrate zero desire to grow talent from within the community. I’m fucking disabled. I cannot be a unicorn. I can barely (and not really at all) function like a ~normal~ person, much less anything beyond.
When we talk about fit and the lack of diversity this is me. Because I am glaringly and conspicuously Other and I don’t fit in anywhere.
When we talk about how race and class are intimately connected and how this impacts the field and informs hiring and entrenches homogeneity, we are (can you guess?) talk about me.
These things feed into each other because the ways to compensate for one area, basically bumps into another for me.
The pipeline problem? I have real and insurmountable limitations for how I learn. Sure, I have the luxury of loads of ‘free’ time because I’m employed part time. In the past three years, I had enough time to learn how to code. In multiple languages. Except that I cannot self-study in any meaningful manner. I’ve been steadily building my tech skils in the ways that I am capable. But I can’t do, what I cannot do.
I can’t do anything to be more white. I mean. I’m already privileged (relative to other people of colour) because I’m light skinned. Only in very specific circumstances has my light skin allowed me to ‘pass’ as white. I can’t do it consistently or predictably (if I desired to and, tbh? I shouldn’t have to).
When I asked about interviewing and getting accommodations, everyone basically said “don’t ask unless you really must” but… While my autism diagnosis is recent, autism isn’t something that magically appears on that day. I can do some social shit, but there is a lot I don’t understand and miss out on.
In a field where I saw that women are expect to wear hose if we wear a skirt to an interview… I will never ever be able to access the cisnormative concept of the respectable woman. It has been such a great experience transitioning in this context because, for the most part, people have been great and respectful. More so than many other trans people I know experienced. No one gives me unsolicited tips for how to appear more feminine or to pass as cis. But I’m very obviously trans and we have a Canadian Senator right now who thinks I should be allowed to fucking pee in public washrooms.
I also know that I can’t… really disguise my lower class roots and my ongoing poverty. You get how expensive clothes are, right? And that I switched gender presentations while job hunting? And that I wear pretty much the same thing all the time because I can’t afford to actually get the wardrobe I’d like? That I know that I look cheap and only meet the minimal requirements for 'looking professional’ when I go to interviews? People notice these class markers.
And breaking the rules? My existence breaks the rules. And then I started blogging. And speaking out about these things and doing so in the way that I do. I made myself open and vulnerable in a field that does the most to ensure that people like me never, ever go into it and, should we be foolish enough to try, that we leave ASAP.
Then I broke A Rule of them all…
Look, the Loon can say this about her own situation:
Moreover, Rules infractions are rarely forgiven and never forgotten, in the Loon’s experience. Instead, in addition to their cumulative use as workplace weapons, they are taken as permanent, incontrovertible evidence that the Rules-breaker is neither to be trusted nor heeded, nor permitted to take part in external-facing situations.
Does anyone really think that what Lisa and I did was a minor infraction of The Rules? Does anyone actually think that a field petty enough to force out a talented and experienced librarian like the Loon, will ever actually forgive us? Will let us move and actually be able to stay in the field?
And so we see that the man behind the curtain is a mirror
So. Yes. I’ve spoken a lot about libraries and institutional oppression. But the personal is political. This is my fucking life we are talking about. That I was talking about. I need the sorts of changes I’ve been talking about for a few years because I don’t even know how I’m going to live whenever my current job goes away. I mentioned to a few people yesterday, that I think my best shot is going on disability and living a half life for the rest of my life.
Sure. I’ve failed. And at least one part of my failure was wholly and totally me. I did it. I’m responsible for it.
But the field failed me long before that happened. And the field will continue to fail people like me unless it starts making the massive, immediate changes I’ve been advocating for since I started blogging. And every day that these things don’t happen? Is a day that everyone involved is complicit in some way. Including me, btw, so long as I still have this job I am a part of it and responsible for the state of the field. But… I have nothing left to offer. I’ve spent the past year entirely focused on not dying as my singular goal. There is nothing left.
Missing a day because labour day means that I have to work one of the Access days if I want to eat and pay rent this month. And, well, as much as I love the libtech crowd, I’m not giving up food or my home for you. ↩
