A few years ago, I — or, more accurately, the writers’ conference I co-founded, BinderCon — got publicly called out for our attendance policy, which required that everyone on the premises be 18+ while offering $250 childcare stipends to parents in need of assistance.

Basically, there was a cohort of people who believed that children, and especially infants, should be allowed to attend the conference, and felt that our refusal to allow that meant we were anti-mom.

I felt then, as I feel now, that this is a complicated issue that doesn’t easily break down between those who have kids and those who don’t — I heard from just as many moms who were adamant that the policy should remain intact as I did from childfree people who wanted it changed.

There were also other issues brought up about accessibility and liability and the reality’s of a small, feminist conference’s budget.

This thread is not about re-litigating the policy. This is just context for a larger point I want to make.

When you, or a project that you have created or worked incredibly hard on, gets called out for being flawed, it really fucking sucks. It especially sucks when the call outs say you‘re not committed to your principles or, even worse, you’re the enemy of a cause you care about.

It sucks to be told you don’t care about, or even hate (!!!), moms when supporting moms is something you care deeply about. It sucks to be painted as being on the side of massive corporations that don’t offer parental leave, or that actively discriminate against pregnant people.

It sucks! There’s no way around that.

But what I realized at the time, and what I hold with me today, is that most of these fights are not about individuals so much as they are about larger systems of oppression.

This was not about BinderCon the evil conference. This was about a society that does not prioritize the needs of parents and leaves them utterly unsupported as they do crucial and critical work.

BinderCon, and its policies, were just caught up in that larger mess.

I think if you are called out for participating in or upholding an oppressive system, it is important to stop thinking about whether or not you are a good person or a bad person, about whether you tried to fix things or actively worked to make things worse.

It’s not really about you.

I think it is good to ask yourself, “Does an oppressive system exist?” And if the answer is yes, than the anger you are at the receiving end of is probably justified. And then ask yourself, “How can I work harder at dismantling that system?”

Granted, if we lived in a society where parents were supported and childcare was widely accessible and free, we probably still would have had some debate about this policy, because the question of whether children and infants belong in adult spaces is a complex and personal one.

But I think it would have been a discussion that was a lot less heated, and a lot less emotionally charged, because the stakes would not have been about the worth of parents within the community.

And so for me, the question that emerged from that experience was: how can I help build a society that values and supports parents? Not just in my individual projects (though there too, of course), but systemically?

Obviously, I’m not going to fix that problem all by myself, and no one expects me to! But it’s a helpful frame to keep in mind, and to remember that, as long as we live in a society that does not value and support parents, I may continue to get caught up in this rightful rage.

And the main thing I can do is validate that rage, acknowledge the shiftiness and cruelty of the oppressive system that harms us, and continue to commit to working for that to change.