Brooke Boney: ‘We must funnel our disgust into something productive’

There are certain ways of thinking and speaking that are very Gen Z. I don’t know the appropriate context in which to use the word “slay” but I try, for my nieces and for the cooler, younger women in my cohort. I tend not to engage in hyperbole, but I know it is a very Gen Z thing to do. Sure, I say “I hate this” and “I love that” or I say something is “the best” or “the worst”, but only in the specific context of American politics and the situation we find ourselves in now.

We can’t just share things on social media and think our job is done. Credit: ISTOCK

I’ve lost count of the number of times in the past five years someone has used the word “unprecedented”, or something similar, only for it to be soon usurped by the Next Unprecedented Thing. Like many of us, I still find it hard to decipher what is actually terrible, and what is merely uncomfortable.

Curious to check what the political discourse was like around the time of my birth, in Reagan-era 1987, I looked through old copies of Esquire magazine. To my surprise, and maybe relief, I saw
that people then were worried about many of the same things we are now – abortion, employment quotas, the death penalty and the president’s influence over the judicial system.

And what about the position of women – how has that changed?

I know that by the time I was born, it was no longer legal in Australia to beat your wife. And because of further progress in gender equality, I know that it’s easier for me now than at any other time in history to, for instance, move to the other side of the world to study, or buy a house, or do nearly anything I feel like doing.

I know for certain these are things my mother or grandmother wouldn’t have been able to do. Or, at
least, they would have faced far greater resistance and more hurdles than I have. So, in that sense at least, things are better, and they have been getting better for women for a long time. What I fear now, though – among many other things – is that all that work was for nought.

It’s like using all of your breath to fill a balloon only for it to slip from your grasp, the air escaping with a comical sound.

BROOKE BONEY

How is that possible after all of those uncomfortable conversations? After all those meetings? After all those shared experiences? How have we ended up here? Was it all for nothing?

I feel the same about the way things have moved backwards on black issues, too. Under US President Donald Trump, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in the US have been scrapped. It’s like using all of your breath to fill a balloon only for it to slip from your grasp, the air escaping with a comical sound, and the rubbery blob laying flaccid on the ground. Only this time you’re too out-of-breath to fill it up again.

Some things change and some things stay the same. This is a tale as old as time. What has to remain the same is our will to keep pushing forward. It doesn’t serve us to feel sorry for ourselves or dwell in misery because we see horror unfolding before us.

I’m not trying to minimise the experiences or emotions we’re having right now – they’re very real and very dangerous. In Australia, women are being killed by people they love at an alarming and increasing rate, which is something we should all be ashamed of.

It’s dangerous for us to say that things are worse now than they were because it diminishes the efforts of those who came before us. We must funnel our disgust and dismay into something productive, not for ourselves, but for the Gen Zers who engage in hyperbole and for those who say “slay”.

We can’t just share things on social media and think our job is done. It’s lazy and means that instead of actually getting involved in the work of changing things, we feel as though we’ve contributed simply by telling everyone how we feel. We can trick ourselves into feeling good, but all we’ve really done is let everyone know we’ve got unproblematic values.

It’s not for me to tell people where they should be expending their energy, or how they should be feeling, but what I will say with certainty is that my life is better than that of the women who came before me. That’s because they didn’t stop, and I’ll use my last breath to make sure I do the same for those who come after me.

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