Where's your Oxygen Mask?

The failures of the "put your mask on first" approach

Hello my beloved readers! There’s now just over 9,000 of you here, which is quite difficult to fathom, honestly. Thank you for being here!

I just finished the final leg of travel from a much needed vacation with my wife and family to celebrate her graduation from medical school, and I am coming back in refreshed with some thoughts on rest I’m excited to share.

The Austrian countryside from my plane window!!

Any time you get on a plane, you're reminded to "put your oxygen mask on first before helping others". Very quickly, this phrase was picked up by self-care aficionados eager to learn to set boundaries and prioritize their own wellbeing.

Theoretically, it's a lovely idea. I used to say it plenty—but I never felt it applied to me. I liked helping others, and didn't mind making sacrifices to do so. I had no desire to leave Missouri, I continued to testify at a hateful state capitol, and I spent a lot of free time giving support to parents of trans kids. Naturally, I was dancing very close to the burnout line.

If you're reading this, there's a good chance you are also the kind of person to proudly tell another person "you need to prioritize self care! Put your oxygen mask on first!" and then largely avoid this guidance for yourself.

There's been a bit of an artificial and moral binary created here: either you are someone who does put on your mask first and are therefore being selfish and not helping other people, or you throw the mask away entirely and help others until you run completely out of oxygen.

Imagine with me for a moment that you're sitting on a plane. The oxygen masks drop down, and yours is tangled. The straps are messed up, the air isn't flowing, and you're starting to panic. Sitting next to you is 23 time olympic gold-medalist swimmer Michael Phelps.

That man is semi-aquatic, and if I had to venture a guess, I'd bet he could hold his breath for 3-5 minutes quite comfortably. He can help you with your mask with no negative effects. He can help your whole row, pose for a picture or two, and then he'll probably need put his mask on.

Rather than make self care and boundaries a question of "to help or not to help", I focus on the question of "where can I hold my breath?"

Privilege = Lung Capacity

I spent the past five years living and working as a trans and queer rights advocate in Missouri, which means I spent the past five years being asked near-daily "why don't you just move?"

Part of it was because I didn't want to move. I love my friends and my community, and my wife was in school and wouldn't be able to leave with me. But I also loved my work in advocacy, and I had been untouched, and in many ways un-targeted, by the bills that were being proposed and passed.

Our worst bills that had been passed up until a few weeks ago focused on trans young people, incarcerated people, trans athletes, and people on state health insurance. I was none of those things. I had easy access to drive to Illinois for medical care if I couldn't get it in Missouri, and I'm relatively well-resourced. I'm also white and very masculine presenting, so the capitol is much safer for me than for many other trans people.

In short: I could hold my breath. I could keep fighting while other people had run out of oxygen. My supportive family, my white skin, my masculinity, and my financial security all expanded my lung capacity and I could stay and fight without hurting myself.

In other spaces, there's no air left in the room for me. Some conversations are much safer for cisgender allies to have than they are for trans folks across the board. Some states are not places I feel comfortable traveling right now. Some bills were on my radar that, if passed, would be cause for quick relocation.

I also want to note that your lung capacity can change over time, and isn’t based exclusively on static traits like privilege. The word we might use here is resilience—our ability to withstand uncomfortable or challenging stimuli without significant, sustained damage to our mental or physical wellbeing.

For me, setting up my social media boundaries, learning how to heal some of the things I was grappling with, and building really nourishing relationships all contributed significantly to my lung capacity. Some days, I have a lot of sh*t going on, and I know my capacity will be low. That’s okay too.

What does the mask do?

I've gotten really into this whole oxygen mask metaphor, but I want to clarify that this can represent a lot of choices, both permanent and temporary.

For some people, it represents moving out of a hostile political environment. For others, it's taking a weekend off. Maybe it means saying “no” to a new commitment when you are already working enough. Sometimes it just means taking a break to be silly.

I know this is, like, 5% relevant to this article. But it’s so funny I had to find a way to include it

I use both permanent and temporary oxygen masks. There were moments my wife and I sat down to discuss what Missouri (or American) policies we would use to tell us where to draw the line and find somewhere else to live. There were also moments where I decided not to go to certain bill hearings to avoid burnout or confrontations that I didn't have the energy for.

What oxygen masks are available to you? How often do you discuss or think about the conditions for their use?

Where are your boundaries?

As you're reflecting on how to implement this approach in your own life, I encourage you to reflect on the spaces where you live, work, and fight for change. Where are you safe to breathe easily? Where can you hold your breath that others cannot? Are there spaces that you have a very limited supply of oxygen in? Where does not feel safe for you? How does your body tell you that you are running out of air?

There's no right answer here. Everyone gets to set their own risk-tolerance. Our ability/disability status, financial status, job security, community connectedness, and more are all major factors in how much we can or can't tolerate. Where you set your boundaries is not a moral judgment, especially if it is done with intention and thoughtfulness rather than an across-the-board policy of "I don't help others".

Wherever you are, whatever your breathing conditions, I hope you take some time to decide when your mask goes on.

I believe that we will see a better world in our lifetimes. Setting up intentional boundaries for your self care and safety while balancing showing up for each other and using our privileges as a shield are critical ingredients to making sure as many of us as possible get to see the world we're building.

That’s all for now!

With tremendous love as always,

Ben