Mentorship Matters
Mentorship should be a community resource.
Instead, we're offered something co-opted and cheapened by our capitalist landscape.
What is mentorship and why does it matter?
Mentorship is fundamentally a relationship of trust—that someone else has experience, insights, or answers to the questions you want to ask for your own life, and that through a relationship, you can apply these lessons to the benefit of your individual growth or community impact. Mentorship is a container in which someone offers wisdom, advice, or experience to others. Historically this relationship crosses an age or experience gap, sometimes in the context of apprenticeships or other professionalized training settings, but more generally is a relationship that facilitates sharing insights and knowledge that come from experience or expertise—which can and does also happen in the context of peers.
For me as an anarchist, and in particular as a relationship anarchist, mentorship is critically important in deconstructing the hierarchies of relationship that a society of domination and capitalist control have forced us to adhere to. White, Western society emphasizes relational dynamics like the nuclear family, and as part of that, prioritizes romantic relationships over friendships. Our entire civilization is built around this at the core, from our understanding of childcare and work demands, to the housing market emphasizing single-family homes with 2 parents and a few children.
Without multi-generational relationships and deep friendships, we are left to invest in our (presumably singular) romantic relationship and immediate family, and then to find our other primary socialization in the workplace, where most relationships are necessarily hierarchical--we have managers and we have direct reports, and we may work on or collaborate across teams, but are always in implicit competition with ourselves and others in a job market where no one's future is certain.
In this environment, our peer relationships have been intentionally eroded and erased. Our opportunities for seeking and receiving guidance, nonjudgmental support, or advice have been drastically diminished and undervalued. Our skills in offering these types of support and relationships have also atrophied. This in turn has buoyed the development of professionalized mental health services and therapy as spaces that have a clinical obligation to help, but are not embedded in our day-to-day lives in ways that give them (obvious) control over our futures if we express dissatisfaction, critique, or discontent.
Licensed mental health practitioners, however, are beholden to state guidelines that actively prevent them from having deep, authentic relational connections to us, or experiential knowledge of us in our communities. This both limits the types of insight that clinicians have, and also limits the trajectory of our relationships with our therapists, preventing them from taking on a truly "mentoring" role. The supposition is that their insight comes from a place of remove, or "neutrality," and the focus of therapeutic intervention is on excavating personal dynamics and patterns that manifest in maladaptation; it is explicitly not on, and not allowed to be on, offering advice, particularly not from a place of personal experience or expertise.
This erosion of our peer relationships and informal opportunities to mentor outside of the strictures of hierarchy has left many of us feeling isolated, lacking guidance, and unsure of how to proceed effectively in our lives. In our current historical moment, politicized mentorship, and political peer mentorship, is more needed than ever.
My personal experience with mentorship
When I was moving through academia, I had a multitude of different mentors. Some were better fits than others, some were for more acute situations than others, some didn't even know they were mentoring me while others were very much aware of their role and institutional responsibility. I chose my PhD program in part on the basis of the excellent mentoring fit I experienced with my first advisor--we didn't study similar regions of the world, or have similar approaches methodologically, but we were very much aligned in mindset. I didn't know it at the time, but without the crucial insights and guidance she provided proactively in my first year, I probably would've floundered. She challenged me intellectually (and personally) in ways that were attuned to my needs but unflinching.
This meant that I was absolutely devastated when she announced she was leaving for another university. It was only at that moment that I realized how much I had mentally and emotionally invested in the relationship, and all of the other roles and responsibilities I had projected onto her that were reflecting the lack of true mentorship I'd experienced in so many other relationships in my life.
Thankfully there were other faculty and grad students who helped me pick up the pieces after her departure, and I was very lucky to have truly excellent intellectual and scholarly mentorship from the advisors who came after her to shepherd me all the way through the completion of my dissertation. Even so, when I began to contend with the prospect of leaving academia (despite having a coveted tenure-track job at an R1 institution), she was the person I wanted to call. I wanted tough love mentorship that was going to hold up a mirror and show me who I was and what I wanted and needed—not just give platitudes or tell me the "right" thing to do on paper. And even when she got it "wrong," or told me things about myself that I knew weren't quite true, hearing them asserted definitively in sentences that ended in periods instead of question-marks gave me the certitude I needed to push back, or to articulate to myself what I wanted or needed instead.
This is only one example of the multitude of mentor relationships I've had in my life, but I don't think I really understood what mentorship meant, or should feel like, until having that experience. And everything else has paled in comparison.
Professional “networking” and workplace supervision aren’t the mentorship you deserve — they are the shadow of true mentorship that the hierarchical institutions we have cannot fully offer.
The mentorship we deserve
That kind of self-assured mentorship is rare. We're all figuring ourselves out in every moment of the day, and (probably) it is all our first time being alive. So we'll feel unsure sometimes. So we'll make mistakes sometimes. But being the kind of person who is solid enough in themselves that they are able to reflect back the light and shadow of others, without absorbing or distorting it--that's what mentorship is and can do. And it's that solidity that can help others articulate and live into their wholeness instead of shrinking, morphing, or oozing into shapes that we think others will find more palatable.
It's not that that type of mentor or style of mentorship is wholly incompatible with our capitalist system. Rather, it's been coopted and repackaged to sell to us, rather than helping us build connections with each other and find the mentors and mentorship that suit our individual needs and community goals. Every instagram carousel with bold quotes and pithy platitudes is trying to sell you exactly this same sense of guidance, but in a cheapened way: no account with 100k followers is going to build an individual connection with you, really see you, and offer up that reflection without expectation of exchange. Those quotes and "insights" are designed to appeal to a mass audience and themselves shape-shift into what the most people probably, somewhat, sometimes need to hear. They are not in conversation with anyone's whole self, including the person who posted them.
On the other hand, the types of "mentoring" in which we do get to develop through relationship to each other are themselves captured in corporate or institutionalized frameworks. We "connect" on LinkedIn in order to shore up our recommendations and visibility for jobs. We get coffee with our manager to talk about our progress and maybe try to relate as people, but in the back of our minds we know that they also have the capacity to promote or demote us, fire us, put us on a PiP—and ultimately that they cannot via institutional incentive alone be invested in our growth and development as people.
We might also try to mentor those coming up in our industry or field, offer them advice or guidance, but know full-well that our interactions are going to be mediated by our institutional context, and that helping someone find out how to best use their gifts and effectuate their values is not the same as writing a performance review. We might be seeking genuine relationship with other people, and solidarity in our life paths, but end up with "networking" that's just a veneer of authenticity without its actual content.
My philosophy of political peer mentorship and political coaching
This is exactly the gap that my political peer mentorship and political coaching offerings are seeking to fill. They aren't a substitute for radically transforming our relationships and our society writ large, but they are attempting to provide a bridge to the types of relating that will themselves be radically transformative.
From my perspective, the goal of peer mentorship is to deconstruct the hierarchy that our common experiences of mentorship suffer from. As such, I don't hold any institutional power over the people I work with in these containers because our relationship is contracted around the need for politicized guidance, not the prescription of an institution or a workplace.*
Instead, I offer intellectual and emotional partnership as someone who has spent over a decade thinking, researching, teaching, and organizing deeply around political and politicized issues. I don't believe that the structures of academia are for everyone (they certainly aren't designed for everyone, and inflict their own harms while reinscribing problematic power dynamics), and academic institutions limit who has access to the scholarship, analysis, and mentorship of people who spend significant time and energy developing specialties and expertise, gathering information and data, and interacting with a variety of narratives and worldviews. One of my goals in political peer mentorship is to offer that experience to others, both directly as an embodied resource, and indirectly through guidance in finding organizations, writing, and relationships that can build others' experience and capacity.
But more than a mental backlog of academic information, historical context, or jargon, what I can offer is experience having been a mentor to those who wish to think and act deeply about political issues, and to those who practice building strength and resilience in their physical movement. As a former professor, contrary to what many believe (or what institutions might prefer), my job was not to "profess" Truths™ or rattle off facts for others to memorize and get As. Rather, my role was to lead with questions and encourage curiosity and inquiry.
As someone specializing in political methodology, the common misconception was that my expertise would be to help people get the "right" answer or solve the math problem that would reveal some political truth. In reality, though, my goal and expertise was in deep listening to the types of puzzles and problems that my students or colleagues wanted to solve, and then finding appropriate tools, methods, and preexisting literature to guide research and action.
Leading with questions, and helping to guide action through inquiry, is what I think distinguishes good mentorship from what passes for mentorship in run-of-the-mill capitalist society, but more than that, I believe that helping people to find the questions they want to answer, and guidance to help them answer those questions for themselves, is a deeply political task, and one that helps people to attune to their goals, align with their values, and grow into their best selves. These are the outcomes that mentorship should emphasize as a community resource, rather than a tool of capitalist production.
Why you might still pay for mentorship
Even if the goal is to offer mentorship to each other in ways that defies our current capitalist system, you might still want or need to pay for mentorship. Why? First and foremost, all of us need to pay money for housing, food, and basic needs—myself included. It's not ideal, but is the reality we inhabit right now. Offering the emotional and intellectual space of mentorship requires time and dedication. Ideally mentorship is offered as a relationship of reciprocity, where advice, guidance, and spaciousness are not offered as an act of charity but rather in the knowledge that the relationship can meet some needs of the mentor as well. In a differently structured society, we might have other options for creating that reciprocal relationship, but paying for mentors to hold time and space is one way to allow everyone in the relationship to have their needs met.
Second, paying for mentorship can reflect the investment that you as a mentee are making. In a world of many competing priorities, we often are tending to the most urgent fires rather than the tasks, relationships, and commitments that would truly align with our values or allow us to build different ways of living. Making a financial commitment is one tool for conceptualizing our mentorship needs as ones that are worthy of our time and attention, and acknowledging that this is an investment in our future behaviors, practices, and relationships.
Third, and related, paying for mentorship can offer you some peace of mind that the space being held is dedicated to you and your needs, and that the person offering that space is not doing so at the expense of their own capacity. It can connect you to someone who you may not know well enough to have trust, but can provide a basis for developing that trust. Your financial investment signals your seriousness of commitment, helps to ensure that your mentor has basic needs of survival met, and creates a foundation for a relationship where community and trust do not already exist.
Beginning a mentorship relationship with pre-established boundaries mediated by a financial component does not necessary impede that relationship from growing into other areas of reciprocity, or from deepening beyond that transactional element; rather, the financial commitment can establish a basis of connection and sets expectations for people who are not already in community with each other.
political peer mentorship
Relational accountability and guidance that rejects hierarchy and helps you embody your politics to reshape yourself and your community
Seeking out political mentorship and political coaching
Feelings of isolation, uncertainty about your direction, or just being "stuck" can be indications that mentorship is needed. For many, these senses arise even with access to resources in the workplace, at home, or among friends and family, in part because we have been conditioned to expect only perfunctory guidance or mentorship that is so mediated by hierarchy and professionalism that all of its political power and human content has run out.
If you know that you're needing guidance, specifically around how to operate in the current political climate, or how to approach your work, life, and relationships through a political lens, engaging in a mentoring relationship that centers your questions and supports your inquiry is key. Whether you need a single session with someone holding space for acute issues, or you need more long-term engagement to start to shift your embodied political practice, embarking on a journey of political peer mentorship can itself be a critical step in transforming what you expect of your relationships and what you have to offer your community.
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* In some instances, I do offer facilitation, mediation, and political mentorship or political coaching that is within an institutional structure and where I do wield some amount of institutional power. While that disrupts some of the goals of deconstructing hierarchy that my peer mentorship work broadly seeks to do, it is nevertheless true that as a person without, eg, a managerial position over an employee, or a state-sponsored license as a therapist, I cannot exert significant institutional force. These kinds of power asymmetries, however, are exactly the type of content that truly politicized relational work can contend with and leave open to discussion during sessions, rather than taking them as a given.
