“We’re not Perfect”
In the book White Feminism, author Koa Beck discusses the line she hears again and again: “We’re not perfect”[1]. “…they say, ‘We’re not perfect,’ which effectively reduces the purview of what I asked about in the first place.”
This use is an example of the phrase “we’re not perfect” acting as a thought-terminating cliché. I explained what a thought-terminating cliché is back at the kickoff of the Unfree MAL. Here, it’s being used to stop discussion about problems, either in society at large or a particular group, and avoid taking accountability for mistakes. Essentially, “we acknowledge we aren’t perfect and therefore you cannot berate us.”
In my introduction, I mentioned that I’m not perfect and promised to follow up on the phrase later. As activists, we need to acknowledge that we aren’t perfect. We are going to make mistakes. No one person can know everything about everything, and ignorance is going to lead us to say things that are wrong. Likely, each and every one of us is going to unintentionally hurt somebody who is fighting alongside us. The inability to be perfect, though, shouldn’t prevent us to strive for constant improvement. We need to keep our ears open, to listen to those around us, to continually look for things we can do to make ourselves and the world around us better.
Looking more broadly, Beck also writes, “’Perfect’ casts protections for disability, for wage protection, for pregnancy complications as distantly utopian…it switches around a question about critical need to an assertion of luxury” [1]. An effective way to counter this sort of thinking comes from the book Let’s Move the Needle by Shannon Downey who says as activists we need to work on “…accepting that systemic change will continue to be the work of generations after you. You are moving the needle as much as you can in your lifetime and leaving things better for the next generation…Hold the vision. Release the expectation that you will see it” [2]. Some changes, necessary changes, won’t happen within our lifetimes. Or they will happen in our lifetimes, but can’t happen in a single step. That shouldn’t lead us to sit back, resting on the laurels of whatever progress we’ve made thus far. Instead, we should look around and ask how we can move the needle towards those changes.
Listen to others when they point out a problem, then work together to find steps towards a solution. Take with you the knowledge and perspective you’ve gained about the problem you didn’t realize existed and share it with others. Together, taking one step at a time, we can slowly move towards perfect.