Telling our racism and sexism stories safely is a global security problem: a conversation between complainers

ABSTRACT In this imagined conversation with an indie music singer-song writer and artist, Lee Lang, I creatively explore what it means to understand racism and sexism as global security problems. Reframing academic conversations about security and politics in everyday contexts and language, the conversation shares the lived experiences of two Korean women as we make our respective ways in our chosen professions from different locations. Making decisions and telling stories safely emerge as major security and political problems we share, and intimately understand. By making this deeply human and personal scale intervention, I critically reposition academia’s relationship to solving important ‘strange questions’ of our times, and invite people to stop hiding behind institutions to perpetuate hierarchy and discriminatory and exploitative practices.