In roller derby, we undergo a process of self-definition that is profound and beautiful. We often start with a name and a number, both of which we choose for ourselves. The process of choosing these identifiers is significant — we take time and effort to decide who we want to be as we embark on our derby journey. We chart our course by first choosing our identity, and as we move forward, both our name and number become the foundation of the self we build.
While the name selection process may have obvious empowering value, it might be easy to overlook the relevance of our number. According to the rules of gameplay, we need not even have a name to play roller derby, only a number. When officials address us, it is by number. At our moments of pure competition, of victory and defeat, when we show the results of our hard work and practice, we are a number. Number is, for many, as much as part of their derby identity as name.
During the Men’s Roller Derby World Cup Championship game, four people used the number 23 in a way that demonstrated how little they cared about, or cared to think about, the pain of survivors of sexual assault, harassment, and other forms of sexual abuse in our derby community and the world. Our effort to #reclaim23 was intended to communicate that this number — a number that by our estimation belongs to roughly 800 members of our derby community — could not be used in this way. We would refuse to allow the privilege and willful ignorance of a few to alter the identity of many others. This was originally intended to be one step of a multifaceted plan that would strive to move the dialogue forward about how to address sexual abuse and make our whole community safer. None of our plans involved profiting off this initiative, but rather we would use the skater images collected in a blog post explaining why the greater topic was important to our company, our own traumas, and to the future of our derby community.
In pursuing the #reclaim23 prong of our plan, we made a crucial error: we stopped listening. When a thread emerged regarding the racial context of associating sexual harassment exclusively with one specific skater’s number, we failed to see the validity and importance of the concerns being raised and removed the posts or users from the thread. While we did this in an attempt to keep comments on topic and positive, as is typically our policy for moderating social media posts, we recognize that it instead shut down an important discussion that we should have engaged in. Moreover, the opinions expressed were not incompatible with our big picture goals, and we did not pause to acknowledge that. In doing this, we alienated people, behaved defensively, and lost the trust of members of the derby community. For our actions, their significance, our ignorance, and the pain we’ve caused, we apologize. We understand that an apology is not enough and that there is no way to undo our actions, but we are committed to doing better moving forward. We’ll start by listening. We missed out on participating in an important discussion here because we were hasty in our decision to treat this conversation like any of our other social media platform discussions when, clearly, this discussion was different and should’ve been treated as such.
Our company was formed on the basis of supporting the empowering space created by the roller derby community by providing uniforms and other resources that help our customers feel powerful and confident while playing this sport we love. Our actions were not true to this, and thus we are reevaluating the language we used, as well as our social media policies. Additionally, we have transitioned our previous social media coordinator out and now have our Department of Customer Happiness overseeing our social media posts and responses.
We are considering new ways to create space for discussion and add value because we don’t believe participation in important discussions is optional for a business that purports to serve the derby community. We realize we missed the mark this time, and we vow that in the future, we’ll continue to try, we’ll do so with open ears, and we’ll try to avoid making mistakes like this again while owning it when we do. As we move forward, we will listen to the voices in our derby community, most especially when we participate in the dialogue surrounding our greater culture and identity. Inclusion is what makes derby beautiful, and we vow to remember that in how we approach our people in a social space.
