A Complaint Collector

Taking No is Not a Lonely Utterance on tour

I began collecting complaints before I became a complaint collector.

On November 3rd 2013, I walked into a meeting with students who had made a collective complaint about sexual harassment.

I walked into that meeting. And when I walked out of it, I had a different path in front of me.

The one that led me here.

To doing this work.

In that meeting the students, some of whom are now academics, others are working in different sectors, spoke about what happened that had led them to complain and what happened when they did. They have since shared their story of complaint, how and why they made it together. Leila Whitley, Tiffany Page, Alice Corble, Chryssa Sdrolia and Heidi Hasbrouck (and others who remain anonymous) explain, “There is no one story of how our collective came together.” They came together because of what they faced, working as they did in a department where “sexualized abuses happened in the open,” where they were “grabbed at and touched,” or watched others “be grabbed at and touched.” They came together to try and stop what was happening from happening. “We did not want future cohorts of students to be confronted with what happened to us,” they said. “We knew this couldn’t continue to be the way things were.” I learn so much from this description: how it can take a complaint to stop the reproduction of an inheritance. And so, when a complaint is stopped, so much else does not.

In that initial meeting, I heard that there had been earlier inquiries into sexual harassment in the department. After the meeting, I heard of even earlier ones.

I have since found out how common this is: when you complain you learn of earlier complaints, other complaints.

It is like discovering a secret room full of untold stories.

You come to know how much you had not known. To see what you did not see. And to see yourself not seeing it.

I could not stomach what I learnt.

I left not just my post but my profession. And when I left, I made it a task, perhaps even a lifelong commitment, to become a complaint collector.

A collector “is a person who accumulates special objects, like stamps or coins. If you're crazy about unicorns, you may also be a collector of unicorn figurines, stickers, and paintings…If you can think of an interesting object, it's probably got collectors!”

Complaints are interesting objects but they are not always distinct. Their lives are hard to separate from the lives of those who make them. Although, once made, formally at least, complaints can and do have their own lives, mostly as messy as ours.

I call that messy intersection, a complaint biography, which is the title of the preface of the new book.

To collect as to gather, so many different threads, pulled together.

Some people complain so they can have an object.

What makes it hard to be oneself can then have a life outside oneself. You can point to the complaint – that file, those documents - and say, “there it is.” And you can show even if just to yourself that you did complain, that you had a go. You have a record of what happened. You made that record. So the complaint is not just in your head or your body but in the world.

But even if you send your complaint out, get it out, it can end up buried.

Filing cabinets: where complaints go to die.

The point of receiving complaints is to participate in the task of unburying them.

It is important that we, the complaint collectors, do not rebury them.

It is important that we, the complaint collectors, do not become filing cabinets.

We have too many of them already.

We have different tactics for unburying complaints.

I am telling that story too, of how people get their complaints not just out of themselves but out of institutions.

I might have left academia but in getting complaints out (including stories of how they get out), I still channelled them into familiar forms.

Books. Papers. Posts. Lectures.

Although complaints helped to loosen these forms with their leaky lives.

I spoke of complaint. And again. And again.

In my earliest lectures, I wove the stories I collected on complaint with research on “the uses of use.”

And in my most recent lectures, I wove some of those same stories with research into common sense.

That’s another biography, how the complaints I collected became companions of thought.

But the point is: these are other people’s stories.

I am the caretaker of their complaints.

I mentioned in an earlier post, how one of my participants, Viola, thanked me for taking care of her complaint.

Complaints have taken care of me, too; a complaint collector. In part, because of how they led me to you.

Every time I have shared complaints in lectures, I ended up receiving more of them sometimes in questions asked by audience members, sometimes in comments made in receptions, or in apologetic emails sent after events.

“Is it ok to tell you this?”

So many letters prefaced with that question.

It is ok to tell me this.

I did not even have to tell any stories of complaint to be told more stories.

One time, I was dropping off our dogs to our sitter, Sally. I was on route to give some lectures in the US. Sally asked me what I was lecturing on. I told her: complaint. She then shared with me what happened when she made a complaint about bullying at her former workplace. She said, “They locked the door, and I knew I was in trouble.” I did not tell her my lecture was entitled, “Closing the Door.” Sally kept her hands on her face when she shared what happened, showing as well as telling me how hot and bothered it still made her feel to talk about it, even though it had happened a long time ago. Whenever I’ve talked about complaints, difficult experiences like this have been shared with me, brought into the conversation and also my consciousness.

Sharing this new book on the “art and activism of complaining,” is about creating spaces so we can bring our complaints into the room.

Or at least some of them.

So we can bring them into our conversations and consciousness.

So we can become a chorus of complaints.

Please know, I know this will not be easy. It can be hard and painful and difficult to share what is hard and painful and difficult.

For me, too. I feel vulnerable, sometimes scared, as well as grateful and glad.

In the book, I shared more about how I felt behind the scene of my resignation, as it were; how much I lost, my own grief, that grievance. I speak more openly of losing confidence.

Of losing my voice.

And of finding it again in the companionship of your complaints.

The gift of them.

A collection of complaints, a complaint collective.

Complaint collectives teach us something about collectives as well as complaints (we need many to make them). These are not warm and fuzzy spaces.

What brings us to build these relationships makes it hard to build them.

Because we are easily shattered amidst so much shattering.

And in this time of extreme and escalating violence, we need each other all the more, just as we need each NO; fragile, precious.

To hold onto them is to hold on to each other.

We create spaces to give each other somewhere to go.

I begin the tour with some small events in London mentioned in my earlier post Get NO Out! The first on launch day, September 18th, at Roundtable Bookshop will be more of a party and the second, on the following day, at the Feminist Library, will be more of a discussion. I will be joined in that discussion by some former members of my complaint collective, Tiffany Page, Leila Whitey and Heidi Hasbrouck, how special it will be to speak together in person for the first time in ages; and virtually by Akanksha Mehta whose work (with Ethiraj Gabriel Dattatreyan) on how management can use formal complaints to “cultivate participation while dampening collective rage” has been such an inspiration. Later this month, I have events at Foyles (September 22, London), Queer Emporium (September 23, Cardiff), Small City Books (September 24, Bristol) and Heffers (September 30, Cambridge). For each of these events, I will be in conversation with women of colour scholars, Heidi Mirza, Durre Shahwar, Noreen Masud and Mónica G Moreno Figueroa.

I will then follow these conversations with two small book tours, the first in Ireland and Scotland; the second in Midlands/North of England. I am working closely with Carol Ballantine and Nita Mishra to launch the book at Gutter Bookshop (with support from DSA Ireland) on October 6th. The following day I will participate in a panel, “Complaining for Good – Activism, Feminism and how to Affect Change,” at Abbey Theatre, as part of Dublin Theatre Festival, launching No alongside WTF HAPPENED: #WakingTheFeminists and the Movement that Changed Irish Theatre.

No is Not a Lonely Utterance and WTF Happened: companion texts!

I will then go to Scotland working with Lighthouse Bookshop in Edinburgh and Glasgow Women’s Library who both hosted events to launch The Feminist Killjoy Handbook. It’s a killjoy joy to return to both! On October 8th, I will be in conversation with Professor of Youth Literature and Culture, Melanie Ramdarshan Bold in Edinburgh, and on the next day, in Glasgow, I will lead a discussion focusing on the creativity of complaints.

In fact, I intend to pull creativity out as a common thread throughout the tour even though it is probably not the first word that comes to mind when you think of complaining.

And no, it was not a word used much by participants in my research, either.

On October 20th, I am delighted to be returning to Five Leaves in Nottingham. The following day, I am collaborating for the first time with Juno Books for an event at The Victoria, Sheffield where I will be in conversation with feminist historian Erin Maglaque. I will be returning to Whitworth Gallery in Manchester on October 22nd where I will in conversation with queer scholar of colour Senthorun (Sen) Raj.

It always so freeing to share our queer work in queer spaces. It helps us to breathe a little easier.

There might be some more events: I hope to visit Common Press in London on November 6th and I will be at Broadway Books in London on December 4th. There might be others, depending on my capacity and your interest. If you would like to get in touch about any of the above, I kept my old project email, complaintstudy@gmail.com.

And if you want to share your complaints

those committed to complaining for a more just world

please do

I will remain

your feminist ear,

xx