EP. 98 — Ashlee Marie Preston

Jameela: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to I Weigh with Jameela Jamil, a safe place for learning. I hope you’re well. I feel like shit. I because I went out last night, I didn’t drink. I got home at like 11:00 or earlier, even because I had the munchies, and so I was out at this show. The show was amazing. I was watching Beth Stelling, who’s been on this podcast before and do stand up with music from Monica Martin who’s I think the best singer in the world now. Go and find her on streaming apps. Whatever you say about music streaming services, anyway, kind of halfway through the night just realized that I was going to need lots of carbs really soon. So I ordered on like Uber Eats, like a spaghetti bolognaise and a pizza, and just had it delivered to my house for exactly 15 minutes after when the show would end. So I would have time to get home and it would all still be hot. This is how I this how I party. It’s a bit pathetic. Anyway, I still feel like shit, even though I got home early and had my spaghetti bolognese and my pizza and went to bed at a civilized time. No alcohol. Not to say I didn’t have anything else. And my god, I think it’s just because I can’t cope with being outside anymore because I’ve been on like shows this whole pandemic, which are very lucky for obviously, I’ve been so afraid of making anyone sick because I work with like 200 people at a time. I didn’t go out when the lockdown measures were lifted, and so this is still like, I don’t know the third time I’ve gone out to a thing in the last two years and the sensory overload. I don’t know if you’re feeling this, but so many sound, so many people music playing shoulder to shoulder with strangers, just strangers. That’s a lot to deal with. Queuing up at the bar kind of just. It feels as though I’m working on muscle memory, but my brain has no idea what the fuck is happening. I feel like I’ve never been out before. I feel like a complete extraterrestrial. And it’s very intense. So that’s how I’m feeling. And if you’re wondering the spaghetti bolognese and the pizza were exactly what the doctor ordered. And I had a great fucking night and best selling was absolutely incredible, as was in Natasha Lagerro. And if you are someone who is struggling with starting to go out again, I highly recommend going to comedy shows because I feel like there’s low pressure. You don’t have to bring the they’re bringing the chat, and then afterwards you can just discuss whether or not they were good with whoever you’re with. And it’s like just like a nice dark room and everyone’s relatively quiet and you get to just head laughter. Hopefully, if it’s a good show and that’s a really nice comforting sound. So anyone like me who struggles with, I don’t know, social anxiety. And if you really are like me you’re quite socially inept, then then that I would highly recommend as a lovely night out. I just feel emotionally wrecked, which is very dramatic of me because nothing happened. I just I am now officially acclimatized only to lockdown, and I don’t know if I’m ever going to be the same again. Anyway, moving on to today’s guest, this is an unbelievable episode. And it’s fucking intense, because it’s a story, a life story, unlike anything I’ve ever heard by the strongest woman, maybe ever. And it is so full of heart and passion and inspiration. She’s almost too inspiring to be inspired by because you think, Well, I could. I could never. I could never be like you because you’re a superhuman. But I’m really excited to introduce you to her and her work if you aren’t already following her. I talk about her a lot on my Instagram, so maybe you’ve seen her there or many of the other places she has because she’s hugely successful and an important voice in our generation, and we discuss a lot. I would like to offer a trigger warning right now because there is a lot of mentions of, you know, trauma that includes sexual assault, sexual abuse and an even kind of being institutionalized that can sometimes trigger people. And so I just want to I just want to flag that there are difficult things discussed in this episode, although done in a very like, outrageously candid and kind of calm way. I’m talking about Ashlee Marie Preston, an incredible trans activist, a writer, public speaker. I mean, now moving on to being a creator and just the advocate to end all advocates, I learned so much from her. I look up to her so much and and her shapeshifting ability to kind of move with the times and roll with the punches is something that we just need more of now in this world. This is who we need to learn from people like Ashlee, who are not perfect but who are constantly working on themselves and working with others for actual, tangible change. She’s not interested in in throwing people away. She’s not interested in and being punitive. She used to be a she talks about that, but she’s not anymore. She’s moving towards the goal of like, OK, everything’s fucked. Now, what? What do we actually tangibly do about it? She’s a real organizer, and we talk about learning how to accept yourself and not pursuing martyrdom when it comes to activism. We talk about her whole life journey and talking about mental health and and she describes being neurodivergent as being neuro festive, which is one of my favorite things I’ve ever heard. And I think it’s something I’m now going to use and we talk about, as I said, her work being rooted in repair. She’s super, super cool, and she’s so strong, strong in a way that a human being should never have to be, and you’re going to fall madly in love with her, just like I have over these past few years. It is an honor and a privilege to have her come onto this podcast and and blow my fucking mind with her life. So please tell me what you think about this episode, and please follow her and please amplify her work because she doesn’t just keep her work solely towards her own cause, which is a hugely important cause, that as the rights of specifically black trans people, black trans women around the world, but she extends it to so many different groups. She’s so fucking cool. I wish I was more like her. I’m going to try and do that this year. Maybe that can be my resolution, but just tell me what you think and just sit back and prepare to be completely blown away by Ashlee Marie Preston. Ashlee Marie Preston, I am so honored and excited to have you here. Welcome to I Weigh. How are you? [00:07:20][440.0]

Ashlee Marie: [00:07:20] I’m doing great. Thank you. I am well this morning, actually just I’m grateful. [00:07:26][5.4]

Jameela: [00:07:27] I’m so happy to hear that I’m so I’d like. I feel as though because we are for anyone who doesn’t follow us both together online or see us interact like we are offline friends. And we’ve known each other for a few years and I have watched you. We’ve watched each other go through a lot and and in the past year, I feel as though I have witnessed you on a kind of determined journey to more peace and more happiness and more rest. And I have to say, for anyone who can’t see Ashlee now, you are fucking glowing. It is showing through your pores like there is a radiance coming from you that is unlike anything I’ve seen on you before, and so I can feel that things are good. I’m not saying you don’t still have bad days, but I just want to say how much I admire watching your progress and your journey. [00:08:19][52.7]

Ashlee Marie: [00:08:20] Thank you so much. That glow is intentional because to your very point, some days I just don’t feel that I have it in me to do the bare minimum. I become spiritually overwhelmed and exhausted quite often. And so sometimes those little bitty details like taking time to, you know, a lather to like, luxuriate in skin care products or to light incense or candles or just things that make me feel a little bit extra special. It has the power to pull me out of that slump that I sometimes find myself in doing the work that we do. [00:09:04][43.3]

Jameela: [00:09:05] Totally. And I think it kind of lends itself to have a bigger point, which is that, you know, you are a diehard full time activist and in your life you have had to put your body and your mind on the line in order to try to help countless other people around the world and not just people who are black trans women. But you know, your advocacy extends to everyone who’s marginalized just as obviously more of a focus on that one area. And so I think there’s been this huge misunderstanding in activism where you just have to keep going until you drop dead. And it’s only noble to never stop, to never take a break, to never like re generate. You are just supposed to never take a moment off. And I understand that thinking because oppression never takes a day off. So how can we? But if we don’t, as I think you started to find out, then we slowly but surely have very little left to give. And also like that isn’t that’s not what you’re fighting for. You’re not fighting just a fight, right? You’re fighting to show that that there’s also like part of your fight is to be able to just have a fucking regular life that being a black trans woman doesn’t mean that you then should have to fight for your right to dignity every single day. You are supposed to also just enjoy the mundane and enjoy the little life luxuries. [00:10:28][82.6]

Ashlee Marie: [00:10:29] Yeah, I was literally yesterday years old when I unsubscribed from martyrdom as a framework for liberation and started really being intentional about asking myself, like, when you think about what oppression is meant to do? Like the actual objective? It’s meant to shatter you from the inside out, it impedes your capacity to dream, to imagine, to aspire, to access hope. And if you can’t do any of those things, then you simply cease to exist. And so it’s in that understanding that I’ve started tapping into joy as an act of resistance to do everything, basically coming for everything they said we couldn’t have. And being unapologetic about reaching for that and trying to help others who are also constantly fighting for dignity, safety and access to understand that liberation isn’t a far off destination, but it’s in each and every moment that we take back from these systems, entities and institutions that seek to thwart our ability to thrive and thriving is where I’m at today. It’s where I want to be, and I’m learning that it’s not a linear path. There are moments when it’s linear. There are moments when I take two steps backward, there are moments when I step to the side. There are moments when I close my eyes and open them, and I don’t even know how I got to the place that I’m at. But I think that there is a peace in acceptance and just accepting where I’m at and loving myself in any space that I’m in at any given time. [00:12:11][101.8]

Jameela: [00:12:12] I think that’s lovely, and I think it’s very inspiring and very, very important and and those activists that I know who have taken these steps and and you know, who’ve processed the words of like sometimes joy or self-care can be in and of itself the act of resistance. I’ve seen their work improve and their work reach further because they aren’t constantly exhausted. And I think it’s great that you talk about this so much on social media because it’s a really important thing to to measure. I like I like what you said about martyrdom so much. Can you tell my audience in case they’re not familiar with your work yet when you first got into activism, social justice? [00:12:54][41.4]

Ashlee Marie: [00:12:54] It’s so funny. I have such an interesting, complex relationship to social advocacy because I don’t know that I intentionally engaged activism as much as it was, I was trying to survive. I came from Kentucky at the age of 19 years old to California. I was so excited about starting a new life and just really exploring what the future had for me, and I transitioned because I didn’t have language to describe trans identity. And when I got here, I found my community. Unfortunately, my community wasn’t always visible in these conventional spaces, such as an employer, a job. And when I transitioned on the job, I started facing discrimination and then I ended up getting fired because it was a lot easier to get rid of me than to address the transphobic culture in the workplace. And at that time, you know, equal opportunity employer. They didn’t really have to explain why they were firing me, but it was very obvious. And so that quickly led to me not being able to pay my rent. I was on the streets and because at that time it wasn’t as open as it is now, me being in trans meant I couldn’t get into a women’s shelter because of my assigned sex at birth, and I was so desperate that I was willing to go to a men’s shelter. But looking like this, you know, even without [00:14:32][97.2]

Jameela: [00:14:32] Wouldn’t have been safe. [00:14:32][0.0]

Ashlee Marie: [00:14:33] Yeah, they wouldn’t accept me either. And there was like once or twice that I was allowed to go in, but I was sexually assaulted both times. And so the thing is, in that moment, I was on the streets. I engaged in survival sex work to be able to feed, clothe, house myself. And then I ended up on drugs as a social lubricant to help me navigate all of the heart shattering things that I had to do in the name of survival. So quickly, survival became my number one priority. And so when you’re thinking about where I am today and the message that I’m spreading to the people who also live similar experiences, it’s hard to understand how to thrive and how to actually think about what that framework looks like, when survival is all you’ve known. So it was a weird thing when I started going on social media and just talking about my experiences. I’ve always used social media as a digital diary of sorts to kind of like, you know, just kind of like place all of my thoughts and emotions and things that I’m going through in the past. It’s actually not been so healthy. But in the present, I’ve been able to use my experiences as a light at the end of the tunnel for those who are still navigating the shadows of their reality. And for many of us, our reality isn’t one that gives us this the dignity, safety and care that we deserve. And so that’s pretty much it. My activism began with me just talking about my life experiences on social media in a very unapologetic way because I kind of felt like some of the public figures that were claiming to speak to the issues that we were going through. I feel that it was a bit watered down and it was a bit, you know, buttoned up and it was still rooted in respectability politics that don’t respect most of us. You know, it doesn’t respect women, it doesn’t respect POC. It doesn’t respect LGBTQIA+ folks like I just want it to be free of respectability politics. And so that was how my journey in activism started. It was the first time that somebody had actually cared about my voice and I didn’t feel invisible. And I felt like I had community because the experiences that I spoke to, there were so many people who also had them. And for a long time, I thought that I was the only one who could possibly know the pain and the suffering that I had to encounter. [00:17:19][165.4]

Jameela: [00:17:22] Fuck me, what an answer. OK, so many things to unpack there. First of all, I’m so sorry that our society and this country failed you so many times and so explicitly over your identity and its massive prejudices. And I just have to take a moment to say what a fucking remarkable woman you are. [00:17:48][25.4]

Ashlee Marie: [00:17:48] Thank you. [00:17:48][0.3]

Jameela: [00:17:49] For overcoming all of those things, like one of which would have broken many people and to have withstood all of that. I mean, you haven’t even gone into the full extent of like what your life was like as a homeless person or as a sex worker and the amount abuse of abuse and like life endangering situations you were in there. You’re just incredible. And so to take any of that and then kind of recycle it and turn it into trying to a) kind of bring a positive, I guess, out of all of that darkness, but also to try and stop the next generation from facing a similar darkness is just unbelievably moving. And, you know, anyway. [00:18:28][39.5]

Ashlee Marie: [00:18:29] Thank you. Well, it became abundantly clear that it was my purpose because I didn’t die and so many people. [00:18:35][5.8]

Jameela: [00:18:36] That’s a way of putting it yeah. [00:18:37][1.0]

Ashlee Marie: [00:18:37] So many people did. And so I just think of something like, I’m a spiritual person, not necessarily religious, but I remember being in church growing up and my pastor said something that stuck with me to this day. And he said the wonderful thing about hitting rock bottom is that the only direction you have to go is up. And so I had already experienced every, every terrible, violent, scary thing that can happen so much so that one day I woke up and realized that every single thing that I was afraid of had already come to pass and I survived. When the dust settled, I was still there. And so that indomitability gave me enough courage and strain to not only go for everything that I could possibly imagine or want for myself, but to give other people permission to do the same. And I think that that’s, for me, I wasn’t it was a time where I didn’t have anyone who looked like me or who had my experience to look to in media, so we didn’t have all of these beautiful, brilliant, amazing black trans women that we have now and that Laverne’s and Janet’s an Angelicas and Indias and MJs, MJ’s amazing, like, we didn’t have all of these people, and so I had to pretty much be the change are be the example that I wanted that I wish I had. I had to go back and kind of be that person for myself. It was almost like building the rocket while I was flying. If that makes sense, [00:20:20][102.5]

Jameela: [00:20:20] it does make sense. Yeah. And so being that this is a mental health podcast, what has that journey with mental health been like? I mean, coming through addiction and I mean, I don’t know if you would describe it as addiction, but going through drugs and sex work and the trauma of what happened during that work and everything, I mean, just even the fact that you had to leave your hometown and leave because you didn’t feel like you had a support network anyway, you didn’t really feel like you had anything to lose. And then you come to a new city so young and then face all of that kind of hardship. What has what the fuck is your mental health been like? [00:21:00][39.5]

Ashlee Marie: [00:21:00] Oh my God. So mental health was actually where this all began. I was running from being everything that I. So I went to my first mental institution facility the day after my 12th birthday, and I didn’t know where I was going. My mother told me that like we were just going to go talk to some folks. We were just talking at that point. [00:21:31][30.2]

Jameela: [00:21:33] What was going on in your life at that time? [00:21:34][1.0]

Ashlee Marie: [00:21:34] I didn’t have language to describe trans identity. I didn’t know who to talk to about the fact that there were adults who were molesting me. I didn’t know how to talk about did the fact that some days things just felt really dark for me, and it didn’t necessarily so later they had diagnosed me bipolar, schizo effective. And then then there came a point where they were just diagnosing me with everything and using me as a guinea pig and pumping me with all of these like medications. And so I would need three medications to offset the side effects of the one medication. And then it was in those institutions that I probably experience most of the abuse, violence and [00:22:23][48.9]

Jameela: [00:22:25] from other kids, from workers, [00:22:26][1.0]

Ashlee Marie: [00:22:27] from workers, from workers. I remember specifically, it’s so interesting right now, and even I know that this is something that Paris Hilton is actually talking about and going to Washington, D.C. over about the abuse that takes place in mental institutions. Because who when you go to tell people? You’re discredited and your claims are delegitimize and invalidated because of your mental state. And so anything that I said about the fact that that staff member from third shift was coming into my room at night, anything that I said about the fact that a staff member slammed my head into a wall hours before I was to be discharged because he didn’t like me for being who I was a feminine at that time and and it bothered him and I knew that man didn’t like me. And one day he just decided now is the best time and just like, literally threw me up against a wall and like and called this like, they had these transponders and they would press the button and it would like alert the operator across the hospital. So all of these, like big, burly people, would rush down from different floors to where you are to restrain you and hold your feet and like, hold your hands and hold your head down to the ground. They would often like, you know, not to trigger anyone, but like, pull your pants down, forcibly inject you in the buttock with like this medication that like makes you like, you know, like incapacitated, you know, just so much violence happens in those places. And so I almost wonder if my exposure to sexual assault and childhood sexual abuse and institutional violence actually prepared me for the streets so that when I got there, it was kind of like, the only difference is this time I’m not locked behind the door. And this time, you know, there’s no one forcing me to take medication unless I was date raped which that’s happened before or there is no one to. It was pretty much most of my life since I can remember. I’ve just always. Had to, I guess, navigate violence in many different forms, and so disassociation was my best friend, so I would read a lot of books. I would, you know, escape through fantasy before I even knew what a drug was or had the courage to take a street drug. [00:24:56][149.6]

Jameela: [00:24:57] Can I ask what kind of books? [00:24:58][0.9]

Ashlee Marie: [00:24:59] Oh, yeah. So I actually so at that time I used to love Goosebumps like R.L. Stine. And then also, I was really interesting. I would try to teach myself different languages because I was always interested about different people. So I was teaching myself Spanish. At one point, I tried to learn Japanese and like, different like and I’m like, literally at this time, I’m like 10 and 11. This is before the hospital. This is like during the the sexual abuse and the physical abuse that was happening. But I would just, you know, I’m also like, I call it, I’m I refer to myself as neuro festive. So I know that neurodivergent is that. But I take pride in ownership and my quirkiness and my weirdness and my, you know, [00:25:45][46.7]

Jameela: [00:25:47] I love the term neuro festive. [00:25:49][1.9]

Ashlee Marie: [00:25:49] Yeah, that literally. I created that to remind myself that I’m not a mistake and I’m not broken and there is nothing wrong with me, and I’m constantly having to fight these archaic notions of what it means to be sane and what it means to have your stuff together and what it means to all of these like rules and these ideas that aren’t even real and they are subjective in there. And so as someone who has ADHD, as someone who is, you know, diagnosed bipolar schizo effective and I have all of these different things, it’s such an alphabet soup of fuckery that eventually I was just like, Girl, no matter what they tell you you are, you’re still a bad ass. [00:26:27][38.4]

Jameela: [00:26:30] 100 percent. And and also, by the way, I say this with zero attachment of stigma to those diagnoses. But was that the actual diagnosis in the end or is or was your trauma because sometimes both can be true at the same time? [00:26:44][14.7]

Ashlee Marie: [00:26:45] Yes. [00:26:45][0.0]

Jameela: [00:26:45] Or if a child isn’t taken seriously about what’s happening at home or if it’s being denied by the adults around them, then their symptoms can be a result of trauma that gets missed. I just know that happened to me. So was just wondering. [00:26:56][10.7]

Ashlee Marie: [00:26:57] Yes. I think sometimes it’s an and and it’s a yes and. It’s kind of one of those things where there are moments where I, especially with the mania, when I get manic, I know like I the ups and lows, like the highs and lows, like, there’s times when I feel like I’m on top of the world like I. I always call that the my like Kanye-esque mode where like, I’m just kind of like, I’m like, I’m like, I’m King Kong. I can. And then like, there’s moments when I’m just like, Really, I can’t even get out of bed. Even to get to the shower is like trying to get to like across the world like it. Just it’s so I’ve learned to identify when I’m in those modes and not judge them just to give myself permission to be exactly where I am at. And so to be honest, I. There are moments and there are days when I’m like, Are you this? Like even like, in my recovery like, Are you an addict? Because like, meth was a big part of my, you know, survival toolkit, and I do believe I’m an addict. You know, next month, I’ll have 10 years clean and sober on March the 11th. [00:28:15][77.6]

Jameela: [00:28:17] Congratulations. [00:28:17][0.0]

Ashlee Marie: [00:28:17] Thank you. But to your point, there was a huge distrust for, you know, these institutions because. Most of the trauma that I can remember came from those institutions that were supposed to help me. And there were several instances in my childhood in which the caretakers and the people who were supposed to be the adults in the scenario let me down and fail me. And so I to this day have had a hard time. I just started getting back into therapy because I, you know, baby step was like one of those things where it’s like, I don’t know that I want medication personally because I like being present and aware, and I know that medication does different things for different people. And so we all have to do what’s best for us. There has been moments where maybe every other year bi yearly, I will sometimes have to go on something because I it’s it becomes too insurmountable and it impedes my ability to do what I need to do to survive, to show up, to make meetings to, you know, show up to bookings, to, you know, do all of the things that I feel really lucky and grateful to be able to do. But when I am experiencing those mental lows? It doesn’t matter what I love, like, [00:29:50][93.4]

Jameela: [00:29:52] I love I love medication. I’m very, very, very pro med’s and obviously like, it’s about finding the right one and the right balance and how much to take in the right psychiatrist to diagnose you, [00:30:02][10.4]

Ashlee Marie: [00:30:04] Someone who’s listening to you. someone who’s truly listening to you. And I have gone into offices to speak to someone about like mental health challenges. And the last time I went, it was a place on the west side specifically. And the woman, she just stares at me and I can tell that she’s just like I can see her wheels turning in her head. I’m pretty sure she’s never met a trans woman. I’m pretty sure that she’s used to dealing with maybe, you know, maybe specifically white people. So I don’t even know that she because this area of this place is like, really, you know, it’s kind of bougie. And so I. So she asked me, she says after listening to me talk about, you know, the emotions and the things that I’ve been going through and feeling and what brought me to her, she goes, So did you cut it off? [00:30:51][47.6]

Jameela: [00:30:53] What? [00:30:53][0.0]

Ashlee Marie: [00:30:54] She asked me that. And so here I am, a professional, this woman has a masters. This probably a couple, this woman who you know, we’re told that, you know, these people like they’re trained, they know how they’re trauma informed. They know how to. The first thing you have to ask a black trans woman after and by this point, mind you, she knew who I was. So you know that I’m in, and I think it’s important to say this because I think sometimes we’re under the notion that or belief that like if you’re someone whatever that means, who [00:31:36][41.7]

Jameela: [00:31:37] you mean personally as and I don’t know, like a public figure. Someone of note or whatever. [00:31:42][5.4]

Ashlee Marie: [00:31:42] Yes, exactly. Like someone. [00:31:44][1.4]

Jameela: [00:31:44] So it’s grotesque to say, I get it. I get it. [00:31:46][1.8]

Ashlee Marie: [00:31:47] No I’m like, [00:31:47][0.0]

Jameela: [00:31:48] Your platform shes’ aware of your platform so therefore she’s aware of, like, who you are, you’re plight. [00:31:52][3.5]

Ashlee Marie: [00:31:52] Yeah. And yet even I’m going through this. So what more for the person who doesn’t have that kind of who doesn’t know that there is support elsewhere, who doesn’t have other opportunities to, you know, to seek help or who doesn’t? They’re not is they don’t feel as supported or they don’t have as many resources right to be able to access the help that they need and deserve. And so that traumatized me so bad that that was the last time that I went. That was in 2019. It was right before the pandemic. So you can only imagine what was happening to me like when the pandemic actually happened and when it started, it was like, Oh my gosh, but I did however start talking to this therapist that that’s a trans masculine person. And so there was a lot more trust there because I didn’t have to waste so many hours of my therapy time trying to educate you on, you know, my gender identity and trying to prevent you from conflating the trauma are experiences that I had with my gender, as if me being trans, somehow justifies it. Even though like that, it’s almost like a very distant cousin of like, what were you wearing? Where were you like? You know, like where? [00:33:21][89.1]

Jameela: [00:33:22] Yeah, you’ve spoken about this before. You’ve spoken about this before about how it’s so heartbreaking and infuriating, how your identity and being a black trans woman infuses so unnecessarily like it, like kind of crowbars its way into so many different narratives. There was one time where and you can stop me if you would like me to not be explicit about what happened. But there was an incident where you were ambushed physically by three men while you were working as a sex worker and you were attacked and robbed. And you had the thought. I don’t know if it was straight afterwards, but afterwards I read about what you said about that and the fact that had you been murdered that night, what would the write up actually have been? Would it have just focused rather on then on the the evil behind those who kill and why they kill and a system that has left any of you in that position. But specifically, you it would have focused on the fact that not only, of course, you were a sex worker, but it would have focused on the fact that you are a black trans woman that you’d ever taken drugs, like all these different things would have colored the way that you would have been written about would have would have massively impacted, probably negatively the amount of sympathy you would have received and how you would have been described and how the whole thing would have been positioned as there was horrible violence going on. Instead, it was the blame and the onus is somehow on you and your quote-unquote choices. [00:34:46][84.5]

Ashlee Marie: [00:34:47] Absolutely. Because there still this like moral high ground that people love to stand and look down on us from. And the belief is that if you weren’t doing what you were doing and if you weren’t where you were and if you weren’t. And the funny thing is, before that became our reality. I would have said the same thing. What people don’t understand is that I was, you know, I was a DARE kid and I was in the church. [00:35:19][32.0]

Jameela: [00:35:20] What does a DARE kid mean? [00:35:20][0.0]

Ashlee Marie: [00:35:23] dare I dare the dare drug program that I’m trying to think of the the [00:35:28][5.7]

Jameela: [00:35:29] I mean they’re recently all over the papers at the moment for having condemned Euphoria, which I don’t think would make any child want to. They said that it glamorizes, I think, something like that. And it’s like, no shows ever made anyone less want to take drugs. [00:35:42][13.6]

Ashlee Marie: [00:35:43] DARE used to be a big deal, like there was like a whole like program graduation party, like it was lit like when I was like in Kentucky, like, you know, back in the days. And so I just had. These ideas about sex workers and even to this day and constantly, I’m constantly having to search for these, for these blind spots in my politic and in my belief system that a lot of times is still rooted in respectability politics, you know? So for me, sex work was not liberating and empowering. It was survival and it was a source of trauma. But my experiences shouldn’t necessarily be weaponised to deny someone else of that kind of agency. A bodily agency or the choices that they make, you know, consensually and for themselves and like that kind of thing, right? And so but I think it’s important to name that. I think the heart is a separate trauma that we hardly ever talk about when we go through those experiences is that there was a lot of bias and like, you know, ideas about sex workers and people who use drugs. And so the fact that I fell into that added an entirely different level, an entire layer of shame. [00:37:04][80.8]

Jameela: [00:37:05] And also the way that black trans women, black people, generally black women and trans people are portrayed, as always, as like living this like edgy, shadowy life, as if that was their choice as if no one just wants to fucking work in a shop and go to the movies. And it would, you know, I mean, like, [00:37:20][15.3]

Ashlee Marie: [00:37:22] Yeah well there’s a hypersexualization of our [00:37:23][0.1]

Jameela: [00:37:23] Hypersexualization like a violence that’s imposed on both identities, nevermind if they’re combined. [00:37:28][4.6]

Ashlee Marie: [00:37:30] Yeah. So that’s what it was for me. It was kind of so I was this person who I thought I know. I thought I knew what life I deserved and you know where I wanted to be, and I knew the kind of people who didn’t deserve that. And so when the people who I thought didn’t deserve that because of these choices that I assume they made were the first people to show up for me when I were at my lowest, it was other sex workers when I got robbed and stabbed up, who got me help, who got me a hotel room. They got me a phone when my phone was stolen, they made sure sex workers literally nursed me back to health because I was too afraid to go to the police department and file a police report because they would say, What were you doing? Or they would just shoo you out of there and get out. And so the thing is, what I’ve learned, ironically, is that every, every judgment that I thought, every judgment that I had or that kind of afforded me this false sense of supremacy, which I’m sure will cover it at a moment. But like, you know, because we talked about white supremacy because it’s the most like branded form of supremacy that many of us are familiar with. But supremacy exists. It doesn’t exist on the single axis. And so like, lateral oppression is real. So just because I’m a black trans woman or because I’m black or because I’m a woman doesn’t mean I can’t contribute to the marginalization or the harm that another community experiences. And so. I throughout my life, I think that that’s also you asked the question earlier, what led to the activism I wanted. I felt I had a social responsibility to go back for the people that society had forgotten about because every single thing that I’m celebrated for today, the honesty, the authenticity, the strain, the resilience, the forward thinking, the, you know, all of these amazing accolades I receive. There’s another Ashlee Marie Preston out there right now who’s hanging on by a thread, who’s just they’re just waiting for someone to see them. They’re simply waiting for somebody to see their capacity to, to see their humanity, to see. [00:39:53][143.1]

Jameela: [00:39:54] Potential and. [00:39:54][0.2]

Ashlee Marie: [00:39:54] Yes, and we pass them every single day. We look the other way or we laugh at them or we like we as a society like we see because we’ve made up stories in our minds about who they are and what their journey and experience has been, so that it helps us absolve ourselves of the shame and guilt that we kind of should feel about why we haven’t appealed to that person’s humanity and why we haven’t opened up our eyes to see not that necessarily that we’re responsible for it, but how we can subconsciously be be contributing to a society that further erases who they are and essentially, you know, destroys their lives and. It’s a conversation that’s hard to have, because I think that we think in binary thought around good guy, bad guy, villain, hero, those kind of things. And so I think that part of my journey, not just as an activist, but as a healer, and a light worker and someone who is really I’m a lot of my work now is rooted in repair. I am always thinking about like, how do we all access those different parts of ourselves that have the capacity to be be the pro, the protagonists or the antagonists and we all have that within us. [00:41:23][88.3]

Jameela: [00:41:31] You’ve gone through your own like, I don’t really want to I just. Neither of us can be bothered to get back into any of your old personal controversies, but any time you do anything that is progressive or you’re kind of like old but unacceptable, but completely accounted for now and apologized for tweets will resurface from like probably the darkest years of your entire life where you are not being cared for. You are not okay in any capacity whatsoever and you’re being and you’ve since apologized for those statements that didn’t come from a real place. And yet they continue to be weaponized against you. Your older self from 10 years ago keeps being resurfaced to bring you down. And so you now having gone through being a person who you no longer necessarily identify with, of course, a part of that person, all the beautiful and the ugly parts of that person will always be with you in an amazing way, but you no longer stand by those opinions or those thoughts or those jokes, right? [00:42:31][59.7]

Ashlee Marie: [00:42:31] Mm-Hmm. [00:42:31][0.0]

Jameela: [00:42:32] And so you have personally seen in your own growth how much a person can change and how much a person can take all of that sadness and and all of that pain and turn it into something that is just so exquisitely like beautiful and restorative, not just for you, but for other people. So I I imagine that a lot of your compassion comes from the fact that you yourself were once problematic and you yourself was once as lost in the fucking system as humanly possible and you have fucking gouged your way back. I mean, even in the years I’ve known you just like, well, four years, maybe five years like, I have watched you like, climb so much and grow so much and and and just continue to to just update constantly. It’s inspiring to other people that you don’t shy away from your old shit. And it’s also like it’s something that we need more of now. We need more of hope that people can change rather than just disposing of people upon learning something that you don’t like about them. [00:43:36][64.0]

Ashlee Marie: [00:43:37] Yes, I. Well, the reason why I don’t shy away from my past mistakes is because we can’t heal what we don’t reveal. That has always been my personal motto that I live by understanding that it’s. It’s it’s one of those things that I’m just always like searching again, always interrogating those thoughts and beliefs. And but I think what made those tweets and everything about it so wild is that I actually didn’t even remember that time because it was a time. And this isn’t to say this to excuse it or to give permission or any of that. It was a time where I was literally homeless on drugs. All of these different things. And so I was using social media as like a digital diary because I just felt invisible. So no one sees me. No one hears me. So the thoughts that most people would have to themselves. I completely bypassed the thought development phase and just went right to. And so two things. [00:44:47][69.9]

Jameela: [00:44:47] So can I ask a question like you might not agree with this, but like I also sometimes wonder just from the way that I see some people talk to me online or my friends. And I remember when I used to be like, horrible online, like 10 years ago as well myself, which I’m always very candid about. Is there also like a part of you that at that time, I mean, truly like could could not have been in a worse position? I can’t imagine many people in a worse position than you were back then. Is there a part of you that just kind of wants to shit on someone else because you feel like the world is taking such a big shit on you? Do you know what I mean? I mean,. [00:45:19][31.3]

Ashlee Marie: [00:45:19] It was a no, no, no, not at all. [00:45:20][1.3]

Jameela: [00:45:20] I’m talking about the human condition of just like, I need to feel better than someone else or I need to point the finger at someone else. Is any of that like from a purely psychological point of view? [00:45:30][9.2]

Ashlee Marie: [00:45:31] I actually talked about it in the in the statement that I put out to acknowledge it. I actually talked about the fact that in that at that time, there was such a great cultural inferiority that I felt because at that time I was the only like black, you know, trans person in my spaces. And so I was around. I was experiencing anti-Blackness on a daily basis, even with the people who were my friends like these are my friends. They would slip up and say something that was like clearly like literally using like the N-word with the er at the end. But then just being like, Oh no, no, no, no, like, not like that. Like, I meant it like, and it’s just like you. And so but what it is, this is what I know about that time and what I realize. Most of my life I wanted to be white so bad. So, so bad because there’s all of this social and societal messaging growing up that taught me that if your skin looks like that, then you don’t go through as many of. [00:46:45][74.1]

Jameela: [00:46:45] You’ll be ok. [00:46:45][0.1]

Ashlee Marie: [00:46:45] Yeah, you’ll be OK. [00:46:46][1.2]

Jameela: [00:46:47] And if you’re not OK, someone will help you. [00:46:48][1.8]

Ashlee Marie: [00:46:49] Exactly. And so what I realized was that internalized anti-Blackness. I didn’t need to be necessarily heavily impacted by it, extrinsically when I also shared some of the same beliefs and views and thoughts about myself. You know, when it came to, you know, transphobia and queer phobia, of course, like I was in the church, I am from Kentucky. I call it Six Flags over Mitch McConnell. I’m literally from the place where a lot of which many of us know a lot of those like thoughts and beliefs. And I remember there was a time when I didn’t understand abortion because I was like my mother had me at 16 years old. And selfishly, I was like, Well, if she would have, I wouldn’t be here. And then also, like I was around this, like heavily like, you know, like misogynistic, patriarchal society. So everything that I’m a sponge, we’re sponges. So you can only absorb that. You know, you can only absorb from the soil. [00:47:49][59.9]

Jameela: [00:47:50] What you’re surrounded by yeah. [00:47:50][0.4]

Ashlee Marie: [00:47:50] That you’re rooted in that, you’re planted in. And so I was planted in this corrosive toxic soil. And so quite naturally, I’m going to have all of that. But what changed for me and I think that this is where my work is today and it leads back into what I’m doing now when those tweets dropped, because at first I thought it was a game. I thought that they were because at the time I was a national surrogate for Elizabeth Warren. So even the way in which they were brought up, it was it was bad faith like it was brought up to like get to her to do all of these different things. And so I thought that they had copied and pasted something together and created it until [00:48:28][37.7]

Jameela: [00:48:29] they were fake tweets. [00:48:29][0.6]

Ashlee Marie: [00:48:29] Yes. Until there was a hashtag that I used to use back in the day when Twitter first started. We had like these little clubs, and I recognize it triggered something off in my brain, and I immediately called my mother and I was just bawling, and I was just because it was that part of again, trauma. When you repress everything that happened to you, or you suppress it, you. You, I just didn’t remember, because I did everything in me to push down what it felt like. [00:49:01][31.4]

Jameela: [00:49:02] It’s fucking wild, isn’t it, when you see it, like I remember looking at some of my most like literally mentally ill tweets and they were just vile. and I look back and I’m like, Who? Who did? Who did that? Who wrote that like, I can’t. I know it was me, but I can’t fucking, I can’t believe. [00:49:23][20.8]

Ashlee Marie: [00:49:24] So then then I asked myself the question. How did I get here, because what would I say to the person, not what would I say? What have I said to people? Who’s something surfaces and I’m the first one there on Twitter. The first one there on Facebook, I will tag them, you know, because I got to say in Tag Me, so I know it’s real, so I’m a tag you show you what you’ve done wrong. Tell you about yourself and perform all of this righteousness, you know, which is another story about, like the work. Like, it’s important that we start thinking about, you know? I think what’s changed in my activism, so much so that even other activists like I always respect someone else’s contributions. But we don’t even see eye to eye on all of things anymore, because today I feel like my advocacy is rooted in repair rather than righteousness. [00:50:21][56.3]

Jameela: [00:50:22] So are you saying, are you saying just then that you used to be more intense in calling someone out or just generally a part of your work now? Have you have you changed the way? Have you changed your approach now? And is that what’s kind of maybe creating like a slight rift between you and other activists? Cause I see that for myself, like my choosing to be like depending on whether or not someone has done irrevocable harm, there are some people who just will not get my grace ever. But for some people, I’m like, No, wait, let’s just wait. Let’s not throw them away. Let’s see if we could actually make it make an ally out of this person. [00:50:56][34.6]

Ashlee Marie: [00:50:57] I think it’s changed because again. Being framed through the lens of repair before I didn’t have solutions, I didn’t have ideas, I just knew when a thing was wrong. And to be honest, what I realized is at a certain point I was acting out my trauma and calling it activism. And so the thing is and then what happens is that when you conflate, you know, the work with your own personal healing. It’s hard to give someone space to grow and evolve when you’ve been conditioned through a culture of punishment, revenge and shame. That’s kind of it’s very carceral. And so a lot of us including like a dear friend of mine, Patrisse Cullors, like, we’re always talking about abolition, right? Like what does it mean to emancipate ourselves from a culture and a society that that mimics carceral systems that you know, shames people, abuses them? You know that our motives are centered on revenge. And I can say in all honesty, that a lot of my earlier a lot of my not all of it, you know, because there were some folks clearly that I have called out that we see today they’re still doing the same thing. But like, I think what it was for me, what I realized was that even I realized that I had to step aside and make space for my own personal healing because the reason why I was never satisfied with the attempts that people had taken to make things right was because I had mistaken that action of calling out to be the salt that was going to heal me. And so when you’re mistaking. That’s part of the healing process is to reclaim your voice and to be able to speak out and to be heard, that most certainly is. But that’s not the complete process for healing. [00:53:09][131.6]

Jameela: [00:53:10] It’s also not the whole of activism. That’s a big mistake that we’re making now. You know, I talked about this a little bit with Megan Jayne Crabbe recently on the podcast, but but some people think that’s doing the work. And then when that individual is destroyed, then the work has been done. But the system that creates that individual still reigns supreme. And so the work is is unfortunately, and we don’t have to necessarily do the labor ourselves as individuals, but creating at least a path for rehabilitation for those who have been misguided or misinformed or who have behaved badly for whatever reason. And like I said, non irrevocably. [00:53:46][35.9]

Ashlee Marie: [00:53:48] Yes. Restorative justice and transformative justice are the terms that we’re working through with that. So restorative justice is the relationship between the person who committed the harm and the actual victim and the person that they harmed or the survivor and transformative justice uses an instance of harm between an individual between individuals to shine the light on a larger, systemic issue. And so what I realized some time ago was that we are giving institutions more compassion than we are individuals. [00:54:24][35.8]

Jameela: [00:54:26] They just leave them alone. Sometimes we don’t even give them compassion. We don’t even remember that they are responsible. They go completely untouched we look at them as a big skyscraper and it’s like, Oh, there’s no way in like we don’t know who to point at. So let’s take this one singular individual and then just drag them across the coal. And like I said, you can call out the individual, but then that has to immediately lead to the multi God knows a billion dollar system. [00:54:50][24.0]

Ashlee Marie: [00:54:51] And accountability. I think it’s important to name that accountability is hard for everyone. It’s hard for the person being held accountable. It’s also difficult for the people that are driving the accountability who are truly doing the work because accountability requires strategic approach, guidance and direction. So it’s not just about, you know, centering your feelings about a thing as much as it is thinking about the outcome. So I have more recently sat across from, you know, a couple of people who have been in the media scandalize like, you know, a country singer who used to like all of these different things. And I’ve had to sit across from that person knowing that you said this thing and you meant it with your whole chest and also understanding that you are just as much a part of this system and this society. That’s that like I think, I think this will clear my thought on that. So there was a moment when I this was in 2019, I had just done a bunch of shadow work. Going into 2020. I had interrogated a lot of my intentions behind why I was doing the work that I was doing. Like, Are you doing this work because your heart’s in it, because you’re committed to the healing and transformation of your respective community and each community that your identity overlaps with? Are you doing it because it’s acknowledgment and because there’s clout and because, you know, like you can just say whatever or do whatever, or there were just so many questions that I had for myself. And so once I established and understood that in some areas, I am doing this because I care and because it is about the healing that it is. But then there were some areas where my intentions were blurred because I was being distracted by all of these different things, you know, [00:56:49][117.8]

Jameela: [00:56:50] and it’s hard for ego not to like, but especially when you have a public platform, you have so many opinions coming out. and like you’re only fucking human. [00:56:58][7.9]

Ashlee Marie: [00:56:58] Well, I asked myself the question, Do you want to be right or do you want to be impactful? And some people are like, yeah, but you can be, you know, if you’re right, you can do both. And the truth is that if your focus is if you had to prioritize one, only one lens to see it through. If you’re truly impactful, they’re going to know you are right. And to be honest, being right shouldn’t even be the objective or the outcome. It’s about actually creating a transformative experience. And so impact is much more important than people needing to know that Ashlee Marie Preston said this, and she believes that. And then she told him and she let them have it. And you know, this [00:57:47][48.6]

Jameela: [00:57:48] There’s another layer to this as well, which is that you also when you have the bigger picture, when you are thinking about the eventual like, final impact and outcome, you have to also make some decisions that other people don’t understand at the time. You have to either withhold or you have to continue to associate with someone who maybe you don’t agree with all of their policies or continue to follow someone who you don’t agree with all of their policies but you know that in some areas you are a realist and you understand that this like Jesus, like morally perfect figure isn’t going to come along. And as you continue to climb for your community to get this law changed or get this health care afforded or get this ban like stopped, you are going to have to swallow certain amounts of shit that people will understand later. So that takes a kind of like self-determination of knowing that you know what they’ll figure out. They’ll understand my long game, [00:58:44][56.5]

Ashlee Marie: [00:58:45] Yes. You have to be okay. [00:58:46][0.9]

Jameela: [00:58:47] Do we make it as hard as fuck impossible for someone to enact their long game? So it’s like, why are you following this person? Why you? Why have you not disowned this person? Your silence is deafening and I get it. I get it. But also like when you have a like experience, well-decorated community leader like someone like yourself, or Patrice or like all these different people often who get so fucking judged. You don’t have any kind of faith that maybe there’s a fucking plan? You think they’re fucking stupid? [00:59:16][28.8]

Ashlee Marie: [00:59:17] It’s strategic. It’s how it’s how these systems work. [00:59:21][3.7]

Jameela: [00:59:21] It’s picking your battles. [00:59:22][1.0]

Ashlee Marie: [00:59:23] Yeah, it’s meant to also. I think that it’s important to understand I like what you said essentially like about leadership is that leadership. Part of that is having to learn to trust yourself and have and you have to be willing to allow people to think all the wrong things about you and to be honest, dare I even say that’s how you separate the real from, you know, the folks who are being performative because if your work stops when people give you pushback. You know, if they can bring up tweets from 2009 and shut you up every time you step up to the plate to do something transformative, I stepped up, you know, do the presidential election her tweets? OK. Move on. Years later, the whole Netflix thing and you know, the transphobic content, and they rehashed it again. So my work still continues because my leadership isn’t informed by popularity politics. It’s not informed, even Dr. King. People love to like, you know, talk about him now. [01:00:28][65.2]

Jameela: [01:00:29] Deify him now. [01:00:29][0.0]

Ashlee Marie: [01:00:29] Yes. But the reality is he his approval rate was like twenty three percent at the time of his assassination. We don’t talk about these kind of things and yet streets and schools and everything’s named after him. And so what I truly understood was that I’m so committed to this work that I’m willing to allow people to think wrong things about me knowing that the endgame the long game is going to yield the fruits of everything that we’ve been fighting for. And so what I have also realized in that is also understanding that leadership isn’t about modeling perfection. It’s about modeling practice. And it is about modeling process. And so when I saw myself from 2009 2010 and didn’t recognize it, then it set me on a path and a journey to figure out what happened? Was I just abducted and sucked up into some kind of like, you know, like woke alien colony or something or what happened because in order to be woke, you first must concede that once upon a time, you were asleep. So what happened? And it was in going back and thinking about the fact that, oh, you met so many different people and your bubble began to dissolve. And in fact, the very people that I had harmed with those tweets were the people that saved my life. It’s so interesting, these were the people that showed up for me before I even knew that I was worthy of support, that I was worthy of love, that I was worthy of security. It was all of the literally every single group that I had thought that that white supremacy had conditioned in me to kind of think like, you know, like, yeah, it’s OK to make jokes about Asian people. It’s OK to say this about like Mexicans or these people. It’s OK to because like. I think that there is a denial as a collective that we were mostly on the same page until all of a sudden two thousand and twelve or so all of a sudden there was like an explosion and now we were all woke and conscious. And then there was this denial of what that path and what that journey looked like. I’m not afraid of that journey. I’m open about that journey. And I love that now basically, the things that I thought made me worthless or, you know, the things that I held so much shame behind now that I wear them as symbols of strength and beauty, because that’s where the healing is messy. It is so messy. But the thing is, we need to get to a place where we have more public figures whose work isn’t informed by their ability to like, capitalize or their ability to, you know, be popular, are their ability and more about saying the thing that needs to be said because it’s the thing that’s going to place us on the other side of, you know, the injustices that we are constantly are up against and fighting. And so I never said that my leadership was perfect, but my process is what I want people to focus on, not the fact that I’ve never done a thing. Not the fact that you or anybody else. It’s about figuring out how we can forge a path forward. What does that passport look like? And so I think that right now, at a time where everybody every other week there is like a new person of the week who everybody is like, Oh, they did this or they said this or [01:04:03][213.9]

Jameela: [01:04:04] What’s the date now [01:04:04][0.4]

Ashlee Marie: [01:04:05] the hour, literally. [01:04:06][1.2]

Jameela: [01:04:07] I just refreshed the like hashtag on Twitter. You know, it’s just like shows what’s trending, and it’s just like, it’s a fucking bloodbath. But it’s OK. So to get back to what we were saying, like, you move in strategy and you also move in a kind of restored version of grace. Right? And so the reason I’m saying this is that another thing you’ve spoken out about beautifully recently and it was, you know, I talked a lot about it on my Instagram. Like how important it was, what you said. You talked about the fact that people are in your DMs and in your comments when another community leader organizer has made a mistake or some old shit that’s surfaced or I don’t know, they’ve been maybe maligned by right wing supremacists and and some gnarled, twisted smear campaign has come out about them. They they’re mad at you for being silent on it. They they kind of come to you to go after that person publicly as if it’s a fucking cockfight, which is insane. As if you don’t have better things to do as if you don’t have more important things to do as if, if you know that person, the chances are you’re going to be discussing this with them personally, privately, at least at first. And you talked about the harm in that and also generally the harm. This is what I want to talk to you about now is the harm in the way that we treat activists and community leaders who do make mistakes or who do have things spread about them. [01:05:31][84.1]

Ashlee Marie: [01:05:32] Yeah. One of the things is, first and foremost, some of that and I’ve had to check people on the fact that it’s rooted and it’s subconscious, like anti-Blackness. Black women are not terror attack dogs. Like, the thing is that we’re constantly treated as attack dogs to be able to go out and do the dirty work or the, you know, the grunt work for our, you know, that other people aren’t willing to do. And because you’ve already saw me as someone who you know doesn’t care, you don’t care if my life goes down in flames. You don’t care about the backlash that I get from speaking against the Dave Chappelle or speaking against whomever like. It’s almost like we’re just called on to be attack dogs, and that’s pretty much it. And so like, I’m constantly asking people, especially if they are non-black non-poc, non, you know, if they’re a man, you know, you go tell him that you go have the conversation. But I think the other piece there is in that my work is successful when I master the balance of holding people accountable and holding them at the same time. So I’m not just driving accountability to again perform, you know, punishment porn on people’s pages and just, you know, drag people for the sake of dragging them. [01:06:56][84.1]

Jameela: [01:06:56] For the engagement. These are turning activism into fucking entertainment. This isn’t Fight Club. [01:07:02][5.3]

Ashlee Marie: [01:07:02] Yeah, it’s like Hunger Games, but like, yeah, exactly that. And so what it is is that there are when it comes to leadership, there is sometimes there’s trust, you know, like if there’s something that you know, I said or did, I’m sure you would feel comfortable enough to call or text me to be like, Hey, you know, so you said this thing because there’s an established relationship there. And so I think that I and other activist organizations [01:07:32][30.5]

Jameela: [01:07:33] I’d truly boil myself and oil before speaking about something you did publicly before I spoke to you privately. [01:07:40][6.9]

Ashlee Marie: [01:07:41] That’s what I’m saying. And so for the [01:07:43][2.8]

Jameela: [01:07:44] And we see people who do it in our fields, we see people go public before they go private in spite of long term relationships. And it’s grotesque. And that shit always comes back around. [01:07:54][9.9]

Ashlee Marie: [01:07:54] Yeah, yeah, it does. [01:07:55][1.1]

Jameela: [01:07:56] Bad faith. Sorry you were saying. [01:07:58][1.7]

Ashlee Marie: [01:07:59] And so basically for me, what it is is that I kind of if you if I had if there’s a public figure and an activist and organizer who hasn’t made a misstep, I have questions. You know what I mean? Because there’s a whole [01:08:13][14.1]

Jameela: [01:08:14] They have a good publicist or lawyer. [01:08:14][0.1]

Ashlee Marie: [01:08:15] Yeah, because the thing is, we talk so much about how white supremacy has affected us, but never how it has infected us. And so the things that like seep through in the behaviors and the practices and the things, and again, it takes people that you trust and people that you are in community and collaboration and solidarity with to be able to again hold you accountable and hold you at the same time. And so there was an instance where there was a person who people had questions about their identity and they were like, Well, you’re not technically like a real this. And so this person was like literally pregnant third trimester, all these different things. And they’re like and the person made a public statement. That’s the other piece and was like, This is not as it seems there has been some bad faith, you know, twisting of the narrative and things like that. And I also see the truth and potential harm in this aspect of it. And I want to be able to make it right. I need to learn. I need to take a step back and actually like, understand what I’ve done because if I don’t understand what I’ve done and I’m just saying, I’m sorry, what’s to stop me from doing it again? And the biggest missed opportunity is once I understand what I’ve done, it’s now my responsibility not just to learn, but to also help educate and create awareness and competency around these things. And so the only way to effectively do that is to step back. But when you step back to your point, because everything’s happening in real time and so fast people, we want answers now. Speak now, show up now, do this now, perform do whatever. And so what it is for me is that I personally am. We all work differently. I respect the approach that different people have for different reasons, but I know that my work is rooted in this idea that cross-cultural solidarity is the only thing that will yield dignity, safety and access for all of us. So it’s literally being able to even if someone accidentally offended me or said something about the trans community or I have went to these individuals and not to social media and been like, Well, let’s talk about that. Like, let’s talk about the thought process behind that, even approaching it without making assumptions. Because where we fall short, so much is when somebody gets it wrong, we already come with kind of this narrative of why they did it. You did it because of this. You did it to do that, you did it. But actually asking someone giving them. [01:11:06][171.4]

Jameela: [01:11:07] Agency? [01:11:07][0.0]

Ashlee Marie: [01:11:08] Yes, and allowing them to do the work, to ask the question, to find the answer. Because nine times out of 10, again, I couldn’t tell you why I tweeted what I tweeted years ago. But I can tell you after taking a step back and looking at the social conditioning, looking at the internalized things that I had going on what it made me feel and what I what my intentions were. [01:11:32][24.2]

Jameela: [01:11:32] What your conclusion is now, you know, you’re changing it now. Can I add a point to that as well, which is why I think now people sometimes think I’ve stepped back because I’m less public and when I, you know, have to get a point across or when I’m angry about something. I’d say like 80 or more percent of the people who actually are in long term advocacy or activism or social justice work. Arrived at the point where they decided to live their life in this fucking chaotic way because it is chaos, this work because they are traumatized or they were traumatized in some way. And you know, as [indiscernible] says, activism should be trauma informed, but never trauma led. A lot of these people are traumatized. And so to expect moral perfection and being perfectly sound of mind all the time of someone who is traumatized or who has experienced trauma is simply unrealistic. It’s idealistic to expect that persons come out through all of that shit with no damage and pain and ignorance, right? And so I think the more I have learned and the more I’ve come to understand myself. And then also the fact that I’m very lucky and that my platform is now big enough that I have the power to reach out to individuals privately and they’ll actually listen to me and actually respond to me means that I approach a lot of these people privately. So when you see me or Ashlee not coming out with a fucking pitchfork the way you want us to, the way you demand of us in our fucking DMs, sometimes we’re having that conversation with that person and we’re just not going to share everything about that because we’re trying to figure out what’s actually going on, what’s media spin, what social media spin. And if if it’s all completely a genuine clusterfuck that has occurred from that person, then how do we be a part of the change in the how do we utilize that person’s change to help others? [01:13:27][114.9]

Ashlee Marie: [01:13:28] Definitely. It’s always repair righteousness. Do I want to be right? Do I want to be impactful? And more importantly, we have to remember that shame is not an effective tool of transformation. It does not. It just it. Just like that is my personal belief. I just do not believe that even when you’re trying to drive accountability for, you know, to our corporations and institutions, even I’m even learning you got to hit them in their pocketbook, you got to hit them in their wallet where it hurts, like trying to appeal to a moral sense of like, that’s not always an option. And even when it is an option, I think that I can think of times where, again, shame would have informed a lot of those tweets. That I can think I can honestly [01:14:16][48.4]

Jameela: [01:14:17] We just perpetuate the same harm this is why you draw the parallel with [indiscernible] system [01:14:20][2.7]

Ashlee Marie: [01:14:21] think shame on shame on shame. It’s a cycle. Harm, a lot of the harm that people create. I dare I say it is triggered by feelings of shame and inadequacy and insecurity. And it’s not that we should be like, Oh, you know, poor these people because I’m not saying that at all. But I’m saying for those who are actually task and again, the people who are doing the grit of this work, who are truly invested and committed to transforming hearts and minds and helping people evolve, you have to be able to step into this work and set your personal like emotions or thought. But to be able to actually be strategic and intentional about how you move that dialog. And so if I come in shouting someone down, there’s even been times when I’ve done that, and to be honest, it just helps justify the ignorance that they already have. But they use that to be like, Oh, see, this is why you know this this this. [01:15:22][61.5]

Jameela: [01:15:23] So so then what would you, you know, as we kind of start to draw this to a close what would you prefer to see in the way that people behave online? [01:15:34][10.9]

Ashlee Marie: [01:15:35] Um, what I’m realizing [01:15:36][1.3]

Jameela: [01:15:38] When someone fucks up, especially a community leader, like what would you rather would you rather they just mind their own fucking business for a minute and just like trust the established community leaders to take that action? I definitely think demanding someone go after someone else with a pitchfork, especially as that person is marginalized, is absolutely unacceptable. But are there any other things you think is, is it that you want us to have more faith, more hope and and actually look at activism as a tool of change? Therefore, we have to believe in change. [01:16:05][26.9]

Ashlee Marie: [01:16:06] I think definitely revisiting what the outcome is that that we hope to see. And so for me, it’s sometimes taking it back to the old school, taking it analog because if we’re being real, we are. We’ve seen the emergence of a hate economy that literally monetizes and capitalizes on chaos and contention. And so social media, these companies benefit from these like of from the mob mentality, from dragging people, from trolling for there is actual profit margin in that they’re it drives up the valuation of the company. And so I don’t know that I would necessarily give more instruction to people on social media as much as I would say we get to practice repair in our everyday lives with the people that we come into contact with. Whether that’s your Uncle Ted, who still thinks it’s OK to say certain things at the holiday dinner table or it’s, you know, a best friend or someone you’re dating or a partner or your boss, are you? I think. [01:17:16][70.3]

Jameela: [01:17:17] Or yourself. [01:17:17][0.0]

Ashlee Marie: [01:17:17] Yes. Yes. I just think it’s important to just again think about what you can do to shift the social ecology on a personal level. I think it’s not just enough to call people out and identify the harm, but it’s important to identify the solution. And more importantly, start building or paving a path toward healing. And I think that that’s my goal is how can we heal collectively? [01:17:42][24.2]

Jameela: [01:17:50] God, I love you. I love you so much. I’m so happy that you’re still here, still fighting, still playing the long game. Ashlee, thank you for coming on today and just not only dropping like 9000 sound bites, but mostly inspiring us with your, with your story, with your perseverance and with your wisdom and grace. I appreciate you so much and is is truly like a it’s a it’s a joy just to watch you fly. I am getting English and shy now because I’m having to convey emotion. So, Ashlee, before you go, will you kindly just tell me, what do you weigh? [01:18:30][39.9]

Ashlee Marie: [01:18:32] I weigh my relationships. I weigh my connection to compassion and I weigh joy and hope for the future. [01:18:42][10.3]

Jameela: [01:18:44] I love that, and I adore you. And please come back again soon. [01:18:47][3.5]

Ashlee Marie: [01:18:48] Thank you. [01:18:48][0.3]

Jameela: [01:18:49] Lots of love. Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode. I Weigh with Jameela Jamil is produced and researched by myself, Jameela Jamil, Erin Finnigan and Kimmie Gregory. It is edited by Andrew Carson, and the beautiful music you’re hearing now is made by my boyfriend, James Blake. If you haven’t already, please rate review and subscribe to the show. It’s a great way to show your support. We also have a bonus series exclusively on Stitcher Premium called Asked Jameela Anything. Check it out. You can get a free month to Stitcher Premium by going Stitcher.com/premium forward and using the promo code, I Weigh. Lastly, over at I Weigh, we would love to hear from you and share what you weigh at the end of this podcast. You can leave us a voicemail at 1-818-660-5543 or email us what you weigh at Iweighpodcast@gmail.com. And now we would love to pass the mic to one of our fabulous listeners. Someone wrote in saying, I weigh the precious, vulnerable, tender, fleeting moments that comprise my life, my relationships. I weigh the significance of being a sober person in the world. I weigh the desire to make contributions to my community and the world at large by each therapeutic interaction I have with another being. [01:18:49][0.0]

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