#mia mingus

[abyssal-debonair]

"We will not trade disabled deaths for abled life. We will not allow disabled people to be disposable or the necessary collateral damage for the status quo. We will not look away from the mass illness and death that surrounds us or from a state machine that is more committed to churning out profit and privileged comfort with eugenic abandonment. "We know the state has failed us. We are currently witnessing the pandemic state-sanctioned violence of murder, eugenics, abuse and bone-chilling neglect in the face of mass suffering, illness and death. We are the richest nation in the world and we continue to choose greed and comfort over people and life. The state is driving the knife of suffering deeper into the gut of those already collapsed on the ground. The cruelty is sweeping and unapologetic."

This was published in January 2022, but Mia Mingus's words still ring true over a year and a half later now that people are pretending COVID is no longer a threat. Especially

"We know we need systemic change so that our peoples can literally survive this pandemic, but we also know that the kind of changes we need are most likely not coming. It is in the interest of those in power to keep people uncared for, sick and dependent on dwindling crumbs. This is one reason why ableism and poverty are so effective and why they are often inseparable. There are many things we cannot control or change right now, even as we desperately wish we could. As we fight for systemic changes, we can also try to change what is happening inside of our communities. We can learn from our mistakes and try to, at the very least, not make things worse than they already are."

[titsoutfornature]

Not getting vaccinated is not “my body, my choice,” it is more like drunk driving or exposing someone to secondhand smoke.

Abled entitlement ensures your risk assessment will always be, “if I get sick, I will be able to recover OK. My family will be OK. My children will be OK.” Never, “Will they be OK? Will their children be OK? Will their family be OK? Will everyone they might also interact with be OK?” Never, “Could this harm their neighborhood? Their state? Their country? Their continent?” Shielded by your abled privileged bravado of “it won’t happen to me.” Never, “Who might I be exposing? I might be OK, but someone else may not.”

[sirghostheart]

Ableism must be included in our analysis of oppression and in our conversations about violence, responses to violence and ending violence.  Ableism cuts across all of our movements because ableism dictates how bodies should function against a mythical norm—an able-bodied standard of white supremacy, heterosexism, sexism, economic exploitation, moral/religious beliefs, age and ability.  Ableism set the stage for queer and trans people to be institutionalized as mentally disabled; for communities of color to be understood as less capable, smart and intelligent, therefore “naturally” fit for slave labor; for women’s bodies to be used to produce children, when, where and how men needed them; for people with disabilities to be seen as “disposable” in a capitalist and exploitative culture because we are not seen as “productive;” for immigrants to be thought of as a “disease” that we must “cure” because it is “weakening” our country; for violence, cycles of poverty, lack of resources and war to be used as systematic tools to construct disability in communities and entire countries.

[death-headed]

"We need to move away from “holding people accountable” and instead work to support people to proactively take accountability for themselves. It is not another person’s job to hold you accountable—that is your job. People can support you to be accountable, but no one but you can do the hard work of taking accountability for yourself."

"Accountability is generative, not punitive. If you want punishment, you should be upfront and transparent about that. Do not ask for accountability, when what you really want is punishment or revenge. Just as it takes work to be accountable, it also takes work to receive someone’s accountability."

[the80hbee]

that last reblog I just made is formatted a little oddly and you can’t see what I added at all unless you expand it, so here’s this:

I strongly, strongly recommend everyone take the time to work their way through this article from mia mingus on accountability and giving apologies (https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2019/12/18/how-to-give-a-good-apology-part-1-the-four-parts-of-accountability/), as well as the other amazing content in her blog, leaving evidence.

this used to be two articles, hence the “part 1″ in the url, but it looks like mia has appended the part 2 to part 1 and it’s one piece now.

the article covers:

1. what accountability is, dividing it up into 4 parts: self-reflection, apologizing, repair, and behavior change.

    1.a. some key points I personally found helpful/interesting were around how mia describes accountability “generative, not punitive” and the importance of accountability as a practice you proactively do: instead of “holding people accountable,” she says “support people to proactively take accountability for themselves”.

2. what makes up a good apology -- mia divides it into 5 parts: use the actual words “I’m sorry,” name the hurt/harm, name the impact, take responsibility by naming your actions, and commit to not doing the hurt/harm again.

    2.a. with that overview, it can look a little unclear what the difference is with those 3 middle steps (hurt/harm, impact, your actions).

       2.a.i naming the hurt/harm is specifically, directly stating what was harmful in you did, showing you understand what happened (“... was racist...”, “I made an assumption...”, “I gossiped about you...”).

       2.a.ii naming the impact: the apology is about your impact on the other person/people, not your intent (which is important, but brings the focus to you and may even elicit reassurances from who you’re apologizing to); mia puts practicing empathy and compassion here (“I would be very hurt and angry too”, “I can see why you wouldn’t trust me again”).

       2.a.iii responsibility via naming your actions: specifically naming what you did (your actions), taking responsibility, showing true remorse and vulnerability for impact, not intent. (“I would be very hurt and angry too. I promised you I would be there and then I didn’t show up and I didn’t call”, “I made a mistake,” “it was my fault,” “I did/I do/I didn’t/I don’t___”).

3. how to apologize, more broadly: in a timely fashion, genuinely, with your full attention, sacredly, proactively, to build a culture of accountability, releasing control and letting go of outcome, and with lots of practice.

[the-sound-of-her-wings]

"We all run from the ugly. And the farther we run from it, the more we stigmatize it and the more power we give beauty. Our communities are obsessed with being beautiful and gorgeous and hot. What would it mean if we were ugly? What would it mean if we didn’t run from our own ugliness or each other’s? How do we take the sting out of “ugly?” What would it mean to acknowledge our ugliness for all it has given us, how it has shaped our brilliance and taught us about how we never want to make anyone else feel? What would it take for us to be able to risk being ugly, in whatever that means for us. What would happen if we stopped apologizing for our ugly, stopped being ashamed of it? What if we let go of being beautiful, stopped chasing “pretty,” stopped sucking in and shrinking and spending enormous amounts of money and time on things that don’t make us magnificent?

Where is the Ugly in you? What is it trying to teach you?"

- Mia Mingus, "Moving Toward the Ugly: A Politic Beyond Desirability" as quoted in Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness by Da'Shaun L. Harrison

[verolynne]

It is lovely to be here with you all. Thank you to the symposium organizers who have asked me to be here and for your hard work putting this gathering on. And thank you to ALL the folks who have made it possible for us to be here, including the people who built this building and who clean it and care for it everyday; including the people who are being violently exploited in this country and around the globe for their resources and labor so that we can exist in this air conditioned hotel with access to clean water and food, able to sit in relative safety from military attacks or the police barging in. And including and honoring native and first nations communities upon whose land we are currently on and whose colonization and genocide have also allowed us to be here.

[thedogofchristmaspast]

oughrrrr SO excited for the roger route.........gnawing at my enclosure

a personal prediction i have is that roger and peter's late former manager was not only connected with the mafia but Was the mafia boss and was mingus's dad...i don't know if anyone else has already said this but i am Putting it out there. in case it happens.

[dotsunflowers]

[Image ID: Two screenshots of text. The first reads, “We must leave evidence. Evidence that we were here, that we existed, that we survived and loved and ached. Evidence of the wholeness we never felt and the immense sense of fullness we gave to each other. Evidence of who we were, who we thought we were, who we never should have been. Evidence for each other that there are other ways to live—past survival; past isolation.”

The text in the second image reads, “ ‘I exist.] In thousands of agonies — I exist. I’m tormented on the rack — but I exist! Though I sit alone in a pillar — I exist! I see the sun, and if I don’t see the sun, I know it’s there. And there’s a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there.” /end ID.]

Leaving Evidence, Mia Mingus via wordpress /  Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.

[deer-in-headlights-stare]

i read this essay several weeks ago for a class but this part of it specifically has stuck in my brain ever since. by obsessing on beauty we ostracise uglyness not just physically but groups n persons we deem ugly!! by focusing so hard on your own beauty you become tunnel-visioned towards others who dont fit the model of beauty youve made to fit yourself in! do you get it!!

[trans-axolotl]

this is a shortened works cited from my thesis, pulling out the sources about American intersex history and activism from the past 30 years. i have pdfs for most of the sources there, if there's something that isn't linked send me a message and i can try to find it!

just thought i'd try to put a lot of intersex history sources in one place.

Works Cited: 

Amato, Viola. “The Intersex Movement of the 1990s: Speaking Out Against Medical and Narrative Violence.” In Intersex Narratives: Shifts in the Representation of Intersex Lives in North American Literature and Popular Culture, 55–102. Transcript Verlag, 2016. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1xxrsz.6.

Bauer, Markus, Daniela Truffer and Daniela Crocetti. “Intersex Human Rights.” The International Journal of Human Rights. 24, no.6. (2020):724-749.https://doi.org/10.1080/13642987.2019.1671354 

Brown, Lydia X.Z., Erickson, Loree, da Silva Gorman, Rachel, Lewis, Talila A., McLeod, Lateef, and Mingus, Mia.  “Radical Disability Politics.” In Routledge Handbook of Radical Politics, edited by A.J. Withers and Liat Ben-Moshe, 178-193. Routledge, 2019. 

Cameron, David. “Hermaphrodites With Attitude.” Newsletter. 1994. https://isna.org/library/hwa/ 

Carpenter, Morgan. “Fixing bodies and shaping narratives: Epistemic injustice and the responses of medicine and bioethics to intersex human rights demands.” Clinical Ethics. 2024;19, no. 1. (2024) :3-17. doi:10.1177/14777509231180412

Chase, Cheryl. “Hermaphrodites with Attitude: Mapping the Emergence of Intersex Political Activism.” Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. 4, no.2, (1998): 189-211. 

---, Hermaphrodites Speak! 1997; Rohnert Park: Intersex Society of North America. Video tape. 

Cohen, Julie, dir. Every Body. 2023; United States: Focus Features, DVD.

Denny, Dallas.  "Chrysalis Quarterly, Vol. 2 No. 5 (Fall, 1997 / Winter, 1998)."  Periodical.  1998.  Digital Transgender Archive,  https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/files/7s75dc39s  (accessed April 08, 2024).

Davis, Georgiann. “Introduction: Normalizing Intersex: The Transformative Power of Stories.”  in Voices: Personal Stories from the Pages of Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics: Normalizing Intersex, edited by James DuBois and Ana Iltis. 1-4. John Hopkins University Press, 2016. 

Dreger, Alice. “Rejecting the Tranquilizing Drug of Gradualism in Intersex Care.” Alice Dreger (blog). November 2015. Accessed April 9, 2024. https://alicedreger.com/dsd_human_rights/ 

Dreger, Alice and April Herndon. “Progress and Politics in the Intersex Rights Movement: Feminist Theory in Action.” Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. 15, no. 2. (2009): 199-224.

Fausto-Sterling, Ane. Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality. New York: Basic Books. 2000. 

“A Framework for Intersex Justice.” Intersex Justice Project. 2021. Accessed April 8, 2024. https://www.intersexjusticeproject.org/intersex-justice-framework.html 

"FTM Newsletter #37."  Periodical.  1997.  Digital Transgender Archive,  https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/files/kd17cs89j  (accessed April 08, 2024).

Hegarty, Peter, Marta Prandelli, Trove Lundberg, Lih-Mei Liao, Sarah Creighton, and Katrina Roen.”Drawing the Line Between Essential and Nonessential Interventions on Intersex Characteristics With European Health Care Professionals.” Review of General Psychology. 25, no 1. (2020): 101-114. 

Hermaphrodites With Attitude.  "Hey AAP! Get Your Scalpels Off Our Bodies! Flyer."  Ephemera.  1990.  Digital Transgender Archive,  https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/files/qj72p712h  (accessed April 08, 2024). 

“Hermaphrodites With Attitude,” Intersex Society of North America. 2006. Accessed April 8, 2024. https://isna.org/library/hwa/ 

“How To: Organize an #EndIntersexSurgery Protest in your hometown--a toolkit created by Intersex Justice Project (IJP.” Intersex Justice Project. 2019. Accessed April 8, 2024. https://webarchive.loc.gov/all/20191111232744/https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EgYy2jfSO04HF_FGv-8RXYEgWW422L-RB7oxMOaIiBc/edit 

Hughes, Ieuan, Christopher Houk, Syed Faisal Ahmed, Peter Lee, and LWPES1/ESPE2 Consensus Group. “Consensus Statement on Management of intersex disorders.” Disease in Childhood. 91, no.7. (2006): 554-563. doi: 10.1136/adc.2006.098319

“I Want to Be Like Nature Made Me: Medically Unnecessary Surgeries on Intersex Children in the US.” Human Rights Watch. InterACT. July 2017, accessed April 8, 2024. https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/lgbtintersex0717_web_0.pdf 

“InterACT Statement on Intersex Terminology.” InterACT: Advocates for Intersex Youth. 2015. Accessed April 8, 2024. https://interactadvocates.org/interact-statement-on-intersex-terminology/#:~:text=interACT's%20use%20of%20terminology%20and,of%20the%20term%20%E2%80%9Cintersex%E2%80%9D. 

Lindhal, Hans. “Is PCOS an Intersex Condition? Here’s 5 Reasons Why Some Say Yes.” HansLindhal.Com (Blog). February 2023, Accessed April 7, 2024. https://hanslindahl.com/blog/is-pcos-an-intersex-condition 

---., “9 Young People on How They Found Out They Are Intersex.” Teen Vogue. October 2019. Accessed April 10, 2024. https://www.teenvogue.com/gallery/young-people-on-how-they-found-out-they-are-intersex 

“M.C v. Aaronson.” Southern Poverty Law Center. 2017. Accessed April 8, 2024. https://www.splcenter.org/seeking-justice/case-docket/mc-v-aaronson

Merrick, Ten. “From ‘Intersex’ to ‘DSD’: A Case of Epistemic Injustice.” Synthese 196, no. 11 (2019): 4429–47. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45220035.

Orr, Celeste. Cripping Intersex. University of British Columbia Press, 2022. 

Pagonis, Pidgeon. “#EndIntersexSurgery Protest At Lurie Children’s Hospital Recap + 5 Ways To Get Involved.” Intersex Justice Project. 2018. Accessed April 8, 2024. https://www.intersexjusticeproject.org/blog/endintersexsurgery-protest-at-lurie-childrens-hospital-recap 

Pagonis, Pidgeon and Sean Saifa Wall. “Open Letter to AIS-DSD Support Group.” EndIntersexSurgery. Intersex Justice Project. February 2018. Accessed April 8, 2024.  http://www.endintersexsurgery.org/ 

Redick, Alison. “What Happened at Hopkins: The Creation of the Intersex Management Protocols.  Cardozo Journal of  Law & Gender. 12 (2005): 289-296 

Reid, Graeme, and Minky Worden. “Caster Semenya Won Her Case, But Not the Right to Compete.” Human Rights Watch. July 2023. Accessed April 10, 2024. https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/07/18/caster-semenya-won-her-case-not-right-compete  

Reis, Elizabeth. Bodies in Doubt: An American History of Intersex. John Hopkins Press, 2021.

---, “Did Bioethics Matter? A HIstory of Autonomy, Consent, and Intersex Genital Surgery. Medical Law review. 27, no.4, (2019):658-674. https://doi.org/10.1093/medlaw/fwz007 

Rios-Espinosa, Carlos, Koomah, Syrus Marcus Ware, and Sean Saifa Wall. “Liberating All Bodies: Disability Justice & Intersex Justice In Conversation.” Webinar at the Crip Camp Impact Team and Human Rights Watch Film Festival, United States, October 2020.  

Rubin, David, Michelle Wolff and Amanda Lock Swarr. “Creating Intersex Justice: Interview with Sean Saifa Wall and Pidgeon Pagonis of the Intersex Justice Project.”  Transgender Studies Quarterly. 9, no. 2. (2022): 187-195. https://doi.org/10.1215/23289252-9612823 

Sharman, Zena. “Intersex Justice and the Care We Deserve: ‘I Want People to Feel at Home in Their Bodies Again.’” Ms. Magazine. 2022. Accessed April 8, 2024. https://msmagazine.com/2022/02/03/intersex-justice-the-care-we-dream-of-queer-trans-healthcare/  

Sharpe, Sam. “No one-size-fits all: Myths and Misconceptions about PCOS.” InterACT: Advocates for Intersex Youth. Advocates for Informed Choice. October 2022. Accessed on April 7, 2024. https://interactadvocates.org/no-one-size-fits-all-myths-and-misconceptions-about-pcos/ 

Spurgas, Alyson. “(Un)Queering Identity: The Biosocial Production of Intersex/DSD.” in Critical Intersex edited by Morgan Holmes. 97-122. Ashgate Publishing, 2009. 

Tamar-Matis, Anne. “ Advocates for Informed Choice, Newsletter Fall 2007.” Newsletter. 2007. AIC Legal .https://aiclegal.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/fall-07-newsletter-final.pdf

---. “Advocates for Informed Choice: Newsletter Spring 2008.” Newsletter. 2008. AIC Legal.https://aiclegal.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/spring-08-final.pdf

---. “Advocates for Informed Choice: Newsletter Summer 2009.” Newsletter. 2009. AIC Legal.https://aiclegal.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/aic-2009-summer-newsletter-pdf.pdf

---. “Advocates for Informed Choice: Spring 2010 Newsletter.” Newsletter. 2010. AIC Legal.https://us1.campaign-archive.com/?u=f8291560ebb2dafc25097480f&id=5803ec8c71

---., “June 2011: Promoting the Civil Rights of Children Born With Variations of Sex Anatomy.” Newsletter. 2011. AIC Legal. https://us1.campaign-archive.com/?u=f8291560ebb2dafc25097480f&id=cec68ddac 

---.. “June 2012: Promoting the Civil Rights of Children Born With Variations of Sex Anatomy.” Newsletter. 2012. AIC Legal. https://us1.campaign-archive.com/?u=f8291560ebb2dafc25097480f&id=b4d4dd90cf

---. “ 2012 Annual Report.” Newsletter. 2012. Advocates for Informed Choice. https://interactadvocates.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/AIC-2012-Annual-Report.pdf 

---. “2013 Annual Report. “ Newsletter. 2012. Advocates for Informed Choice. https://interactadvocates.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/2013-annual-report-FIN1.pdf  

“US: Anti-Trans Bills Also Harm Intersex Children.” Human Rights Watch. October 22. Accessed April 10, 2024. https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/10/26/us-anti-trans-bills-also-harm-intersex-children 

Vecchietti, Valentino. “A Journey to the Intersex-Inclusive Pride Flag.” Global Inclusive Pride Flag. Intersex Equality Rights. 2021. Accessed April 7, 2024. https://www.globalinclusiveprideflag.com/ 

Wilchins, Riki Anne.  "In Your Face No. 5 (Spring 1998)."  Newsletter.  1998.  Digital Transgender Archive,  https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/files/vq27zn45k  (accessed April 08, 2024).

Withers, AJ. Disability Politics and Theory. Fernwood Publishing, 2012. 

Woo, Elaine. “David Reimer, 38; After Botched Surgery, He was Raised as a Girl in Gender Experiment.: Los Angeles Times. May 2004. Accessed April 8, 2024. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-may-13-me-reimer13-story.html 

[liminalweirdo]

'Brilliant at survival' — Long Covid afflicts trans and bi patients at highest rates.

Less than 2% of U.S. adults are trans or nonbinary, yet nearly 24% of all transgender adults report that they have experienced Long Covid. Bisexual adults report Long Covid cases at the same percentage rate (24%). That makes trans adults and bisexual adults, along with disabled adults, the demographic groups that are experiencing Long Covid in the highest percentages in the country.

So what can we do to help our trans community?

Resources:

• ‘Brilliant at survival’ — Long Covid afflicts trans and bi patients at highest rates | ClearHealthCosts.com

• Long COVID is More Common in Bisexual & Trans People. The Reasons Why Are Complicated | Miles Griffis for them.com

• Biological Sex Differences: Key to Understanding Long COVID? | Medscape

• Long COVID more common in people with HIV | aidsmap

• COVID-19 Is Still a Major Health Concern. Why Are Some HIV Organizations Acting Like It Isn’t? | Emmett Patterson, TheBody.com

• HIV may increase the risk of Long Covid. Why aren’t major advocacy groups addressing it? | Miles Griffis for The Sick Times

• As Queer Spaces Return to “Normal,” Disabled LGBTQ+ People Are Being Left Behind | Miles Griffis for them.com

• Still On the Margins: Long COVID Patients of Color | Angela Meriquez Vázquez, MSW for Disability Visibility Project

• Keep Masks In Healthcare – Toolkit | COVID Advocacy Initiative & COVID Safe Campus

DATA SOURCES + RESOURCES FROM THE WEBINAR

Slides from JD Davids’ presentation

Data source from JD’s presentation: Household Pulse Survey. This doc has a link to the data sources and tips on how to view/sort it.

Webinar resource list

You Are Not Entitled To Our Deaths – COVID, Abled Supremacy & Interdependence | Mia Mingus

Art is at the Heart of Disability Justice – Interview with Abdul-Aliy Muhammad and Pato Hebert

Pod mapping info & examples from creator Mia Mingus’ SOIL Transformative Justice Project

Pod mapping resource focused on disability & autism from Autism Society of Minnesota

[bfpnola]

i was collecting some transformative justice resources for one of our volunteers in our discord server so i figured i'd share some here too:

for more, check out the #clarification-center channel of our server! every day, links to novels, videos, articles, and more are dropped. and this is also the same channel folks asks their questions! even if it seems silly or you feel behind in your activist journey, we trust that every question comes from an authentic place of curiosity!

-- reaux (she/they)

[lyle-and-erik-menendez]

We really need to stop putting people on pedestals. It is harmful and dehumanizes all involved. Putting someone on a pedestal is not caring for them. It is not love. You can love, admire, adore, learn from, or follow the leadership of someone without putting them on a pedestal. Putting people on pedestals is part of the binary of how we categorize people into “good” and “bad”. They are two sides of the same coin and they contribute to our collective inability to understand, identify and respond to harm. We demonize people or we put them on pedestals. As we work to be free of a culture of punishment/revenge, we also have to confront the other side. We have to acknowledge celebrity culture and how it stretches well beyond formal celebrities and into our movements, organizations, groups, relationships -- just as punishment does. A punitive culture teaches us we have to be “good” or “bad”. It erases away our humanity: our human complexities and contradictions; our human capacity for growth, change and transformation, our human capacity for both harm and love.

Mia Mingus

[dailyanarchistposts]

Friendship and freedom have sharp edges

If one would have a friend, then must one also be willing to wage war for him: and in order to wage war, one must be capable of being an enemy.

—Friedrich Nietzsche[89]

Working on relationships also means the capacity to dissolve and sever them, and to block those which are harmful. Affinity and bridging require selective openness, with firm boundaries. In this sense, cultivating joyful militancy not only requires cultivating “good” relationships, but also severing those that are unhealthy and damaging. Coulthard drove this point home when we talked with him:

Part of the effect that you see in joyful militancy is an attentiveness to cultivating healthy relationships. And I think that that’s great; there is a productive line of flight … but sometimes—and this is kind of what I’ve been thinking a lot about since writing about reconciliation and resentment—is that the whole idea of a “good relationship”—a positive one instead of a negative one—is almost entirely co-opted by relationship-destroying structures that entrench violence, dispossession, disappearance, all these things, where we’re always compelled to be productive. It’s a compulsion that’s insisted on and that is done asymmetrically across certain bodies. So it’s a demand that’s placed on us as Indigenous peoples, even in terms of having a conversation. It can even be about tone: your tone is negative … Some relationships are just bullshit and we shouldn’t be in them. We should actually draw lines in the sand more willingly, in order to avoid the kind of status quo outcome that’s caused by the compulsion to always be in a positive relationship to others. Others might suck. We shouldn’t be relating to them; we should be fighting them; we should be seeking to destroy them in some circumstances. Because their whole identity, their whole form of life is predicated on our negation. So that’s why, in Canada, Canadians can’t cease to exist in the sense that they understand themselves, because it’s predicated on a genocidal relationship. And there can be no mutual recognition, there can be no mutual respect, because the relationship itself negates that possibility. And that’s a pretty somber situation. It’s not a joyful acknowledgement.[90]

Relational freedom necessarily includes undoing destructive relationships, dissolving or attacking depleting or harmful forces. Freedom is the capacity to make friends and enemies, to be open and to have firm boundaries. Joyful, deeply transformative relationships are only possible through vulnerability and trust, but they also entail the risk of being deeply hurt. In this context, Mia Mingus speaks to the importance of a kind of love that is assertive and accountable:

What I’m talking about is reinventing how we love each other and knowing that solidarity is love, collaboration is love. And really, isn’t that what queerness is about: loving? I am talking about growing and cultivating a deep love that starts with those closest to us and letting it permeate out. Starting with our own communities. Building strong foundations of love. And I just want to be clear, I am not talking about love that isn’t accountable. I am not talking about staying in harmful and dangerous or abusive relationships. The kind of love I want us to grow is accountable and assertive. Really, I am talking about collective love, where we look out for each other.[91]

For this kind of collective love to exist, sometimes it is necessary to sever relationships. Sometimes friendship and close bonds are a messy mix of closeness, struggle, and distance. In this sense, Empire destroys our capacity to identify enemies, too: morality, policing, law, and prisons are all designed to monopolize the power to decide whose actions are right and wrong, and how they should be dealt with.

For the same reason, if reduced to an imperative to always have “good relationships” with everyone and everything, joyful militancy and friendship become simplistic, reactionary, and colonial in their erasure of power relations and systemic violence. This is the hegemonic morality of Empire—the notion that Indigenous people have to “get over” the past—and it plays itself out not only in state-based efforts at “reconciliation,” but also among everyday relationships between settlers and Indigenous people that reinscribe settler entitlement. Leanne Simpson spoke to this forcefully when we asked her to share her perspective on the potential of friendship between settlers and Indigenous people:

Nick and carla: One of the themes that emerged in a lot of our interviews is the importance of trust and friendship for creating and sustaining joyful militancy and transformative movement infused with love. Under conditions of settler colonialism, trust and friendship between settlers and Indigenous people seems especially difficult, because settlers and our governments have violated this trust over and over, and broken trust is the status quo. What makes trust and friendship possible? Do you see it as an important part of decolonization? Leanne Simpson: My honest answer is no, I don’t. Friendship has been and is used by so-called white “allies” in pretty horrible ways—everything from “my friend is native and therefore …” to using friendship as a mechanism to protect against white guilt, to using friendship to appropriate. Friendship for me is a crazy-intimate, personal decision and it isn’t helpful for me to feel pressure to trust or be friends with people I don’t trust and don’t want to be friends with. The white allyship takes up a lot of space and it’s a lot of work for Indigenous peoples. White people love being friends with Indigenous peoples. For me, there is huge gap in our life experiences, often our interests and our politics. That doesn’t mean we can’t find useful and strategic ways of working together but don’t make me go to potlucks or backyard BBQs and make the assumption that my personal life is part of the movement. My personal life is not for the taking. I also see that I have a responsibility to build trust and friendships within the Indigenous community. That is important work because the forces to divide us and make us hate each other are enormous. This does indeed make our movements strong because it’s community building.”[92]

For us, this gets at the danger of setting up friendship or affinity as an ideal, norm, or expectation, especially across the colonial divide and other hierarchical divisions created by Empire. While Simpson speaks to the importance of building trust and friendship among Indigenous people, she is clear that settlers (particularly white settlers seeking to be allies) often end up perpetuating extractive, entitled tendencies. For settlers, getting out of the way might be more important than seeking connection.

Just as intimacy and closeness can be enabling, they can also be sources of coercion, manipulation, and exploitation. To insist on, seek out, or use friendship—and to pathologize its refusal—tends to reinforce these divisions and hierarchies, rather than unravel them. It regenerates the worst of Empire, where oppressed people are expected to stay in oppressive relationships, and their refusal is dismissed as “counterproductive.”

Similar patterns arise to pathologize women and genderqueer folks who refuse to “get over” heteropatriarchy, Black folks and people of color who refuse to “get over” racism, and everyone else who has experienced the liberal trope of “let’s all get along.” Entitlement to others’ time, energy, and love can be an unconscious strategy that reproduces domination through intimacy. Love and friendship can be contorted to erase power and exploitation, enforcing obedience to oppressive norms of politeness or devotion.

Joyful militancy is not a way of dividing the world into “positive” and “negative” ways of being, or asking that we all get along and be happy together. Freedom always needs to retain the potential of refusal, negation, and resistance. To turn friendship into a solution or a goal is to erase the form of freedom we are getting at, which is the freedom to work at relationships—to participate more actively in the shaping of our worlds.