Author Archives: Tamaki

The word rice 米 is made up of the word eighty-eight 八十八. Each grain represents eighty-eight sets of hands that worked hard to nourish you. People talk about how Asians don’t speak “I love you,” but we say it plenty if people stop gatekeeping how it should be said.

I believe pronouns to be a fact, not a preference, When I am introducing myself, I say “My pronouns are they/them/theirs.” But I don’t ask people to tell me. Because for many of us, pronouns are a choice between outing and lying. If there is any reason I need to use a pronoun, such asContinue reading “Why I don’t ask for pronouns”

My answer to this is “Don’t.” There is no point in conversation, business, or services where you need to know people’s gender. If it is a gender-based service, just list eligibilities and ask them if they fit them. If wrapped holiday gifts are gendered, first of all consider stopping this practice. In any case, reallyContinue reading ““How do I ask people their gender?””

You can easily witness how much insight and knowledge BIPOC have, but you have to first let it happen. There is this thing that’s hard for many people of the dominant race: sideline themselves and just witness. To demonstrate what they’re missing by this, sometimes I specifically set up a situation where white people can’tContinue reading “So how much do BIPOC know?”

What we typically call “trauma reaction” is fundamentally a one-time, life-saving reaction that repeats into other contexts that do not require it. It is often categorized as “fight, flight, freeze, submit,” but we don’t walk enough about how each reaction may be chosen. It could be a contextually-restricted choice – e.g. a person may haveContinue reading “Trauma expresses through our weakness – and strengths”

This is a phrase that’s most often misinterpreted to a harmful degree. It is in fact so misunderstood that people around them don’t catch it. I’ve been wondering about a way to explain this, and I think these photos bridges it. [photo credit https://twitter.com/audrawilliams/status/1500669564711014401?s=21%5D Many real life examples are not quite this obvious. But theyContinue reading ““Meet them where they’re at””

In this society, the “norm” is a very powerful bias. It creates fear of not being it, fear of being it, and whom people instinctually protect as one of their own. Sometimes you feel more alert in some crowd than others? Or more exhausted? That’s often because we are implicitly gauging safety based on whatContinue reading “Set your own “norm””

There is an alarming trend of using “systemic lens” to lift individual accountability. This is not only performative but is in fact complicit to the systemic issue. First, anyone who worked on systemic changes know that they happen as an accumulation of individual acts. We have to create anecdotes, then enough anecdotes to create aContinue reading “Thought on “systemic” vs “individual” harm”

We really need to pull back and consider what training is. A lot of the times we are drawn to the trainer and their thoughts. But then what is a training, and what is a glorified meet and greet? You have this experience too. Much too often, people come out of training and talk soContinue reading “Training vs. Glorified Meet-and-Greet”