No is Not a Lonely Utterance

I have been immersed in writing No is Not a Lonely Utterance and have just now sent a revised version back to my editor at Penguin. There will be more edits to come. The book began its life with another title: A Complainer’s Handbook: A Guide to Building Less Hostile Institutions. My editor suggested we find a title that was less prosaic and more poetic. Whilst we were chatting, I said in passing, “no is not a lonely utterance.” I was talking about how when we say no we are often picking up from others and how that no can be picked up by others. My editor picked up that sentence, and suggested it could be the title.

I was at first a little resistant. I was invested in the idea of the handbook; that hand, that handle. I wasn’t sure about the double negative (no is not) nor having the focus be on no.

We would be right to ask: no to what? No can be a simple utterance, an answer to a question, yes or no. But saying no within an institution, or to one, is no simple matter. When we say no to institutions and the conduct they enable, often in contradiction with their own policies, and are called killjoys or complainers, that no is dismissed as deriving from ill intent. We learn on the job how hard it is to say no or how hard it is made to say it. We learn from what comes back at us when we say it.

What comes back at us is not always a strong reaction. When I used to give talks on racism, I would hear a “but” typically turned into a question, “but what can white people do?” Another question was, “but what about resistance?’” That latter question was repeated enough times for me to wonder whether the desire for resistance was itself a resistance to hearing about racism. People want to pass over a no quickly. We have to work to stop no being passed over. Or to stop it from being stuck by the system.

No can be a small word with a lot of work to do. Or we have a lot of work to do to keep it going. So in the end, I said yes to no. And, as I have been rewriting the book with no in mind, I have found the new title to be rather freeing. It has allowed me to focus more on the feeling of the work or in it. It should not be surprising that more of a focus on no became more of a focus on feeling.

Complaints can make you feel smaller, alone, apart. Complaints procedures are designed to make you feel that way. You might be told not to talk to anyone else about what is going on. You might not even know what is going on. You might imagine that to complain would be to be left rather discouraged. That might be true for some people, but it is not true for many others, including me. I left fighting. I am left fighting.

Doing the research didn’t leave me feeling discouraged either. I was left inspired by how hard people are willing to fight, whether for their own jobs or for other people’s.

In No Is Not a Lonely Utterance, I share stories of complaint that I collected for my research alongside others that are already in the public domain. Take, for example, Ellen Pao’s Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change. Pao describes how she lost her lawsuit against her employer, venture capitalist firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) for sex discrimination. But rather than written as a story of institutional defeat, Reset tells a story of political victory. When she took her employer to court, Pao became what I call a feminist ear, “In the wake of my lawsuit people have told me they felt comfortable telling stories they hadn’t shared before – so much so that I’ve become a kind of confessor for people who have faced workplace injustice.” The book itself draws “back the curtain on this private, insular world” and shows “people what was really going on.”

There can be nothing more politicising than the truth when so many people are invested in keeping it hidden.

Many people keep complaining not despite the consequences but because of them.

We need to keep up the fight. And that means refusing the rewards that come with silence and compliance. We need that no.

And by “need that no,” I also mean we need to stand up to the bullies and the harassers wherever we are, whenever we can. We need to stand up to the oligarchs and the patriarchs, the racists and the transphobes; recognising that power veiled by the language of “protection” is still power.

We need to refuse to use words like “woke” or “cancel” that suit those with power because of how they pathologize those who challenge it. And yes, I have spoken to many people whose complaints about bullying and harassment were framed as “cancelling.” We need to refuse to use some words and refuse not to use others. We will use the word genocide for what Israel has been and is doing in Gaza and to Palestinians, even though we are told that makes us extremists. We will use the words transphobia and racism to describe how some people are made to appear as dangerous (as not belonging in this nation or this institution or this room), even when we are told that, by doing so, we are censoring others, trying to stop them from expressing their “beliefs.”

There are many instructions we must refuse, if we are to build alternatives.

I have been thinking of that no, how we need to say it more, or need more to say it.

As I have been preparing the manuscript, I have been back in touch with those who shared testimonies with me. To be back in touch is not just something I had to do, like compliance with an ethics procedure. We have been in and out of touch all through the journey. Each time I quote from participants, sharing their words, I hear their voices.

I carry their complaints with me; I am never not touched by the words and the wisdoms shared with me.

In No is not a Lonely Utterance, unlike my academic monograph, Complaint! I am using pseudonyms for participants to give the text a more personal and relatable feel.

When I was back in touch with one participant Viola, she thanked me for taking care of her complaint.

I have been wondering with her words : what does it means to take care of complaints?

To take care of complaints might mean recognising the work in them.

To take care of complaints might mean showing what they can do: even complaints that did not get through, go somewhere.

To take care of complaints might mean recognising they have not gone because of what goes on.

To take care of complaints might mean keeping them alive, bringing them out, saying what they are about, so they can do something.

We become caretakers of complaints.

But perhaps also: complaints become our caretakers.

We can be looked after by other people’s complaints.

I know I have been.

Viola told me that her colleagues did not speak of her complaint when she was making it, possibly out of politeness. She said, “I just faded out.” And when she later left her post and her profession, Viola used the word faded again, “I just faded away.”

I felt it too; leaving my post and profession as fading away. This might surprise you since I shared my resignation in public (albeit on my blog rather than on mainstream platforms). But there was something in that word faded that spoke to me: if my resignation was public, so much of the work of complaint was not.

There was so much I could not say. Could not share. I watched myself disappear from so many places that had once mattered to me. I needed to let that happen. But it affected my confidence.

I think that is why becoming a feminist ear, listening to other people’s complaints, meant so much to me. It gave me my voice back. I found the confidence and strength to share more of my own story in company with others.

No is not a lonely utterance. I smile with affection as I write this. All those complaints, louder together.