#traumatized and self aware about a lot of things and willing to communicate mind you literal zero difficulty level

[slimyenemy]

you really do just get more and more abusive every single day.

[scripttorture]

Do you have any advice for self-care to use specifically when you are angry and frustrated by torture apologia? Or even more so when being dismissed when confronting others because they think you are not smart, too emotional, not having enough applicable background, etc. I wanted to keep this general. I know you posted about taking breaks and keeping up your mental health but I could not find anything about ways to deal with anger that don’t involve confronting others, especially if it is culturally frowned upon. Thank you for your hard work with this blog.

Well duck, I uh mostly deal with anger by running this blog.

 I’m honestly not sure that I deal with anger well. I try and I’m working on it but I know I struggle to stay calm and polite when something infuriates me. I’m also a lot better at communicating in a helpful, patient and articulate fashion in writing then I am in person.

 Keep in mind that you do not have to have these conversations every time someone is spouting torture apologia.

 Spreading awareness is great! Educating others is great!

 But (and I really can not stress this enough) it is not your job to correct everyone. It is not your job to ‘fix’ people. It is not your job to persuade others they should care.

 Pick your battles. Engage with people who you think you can have a genuine conversation with. Remember that when you’re talking politics (and torture is political) then the aim is not to convert the people on the extreme ends: it’s to persuade the people who are on the fence.

 And if you really want to engage with people engage about the things they care about. If you’re talking to someone who believes in law and order or justice as retribution then talk about how torture puts police at risk and how it leads to innocent people landing in jail. If you’re talking to people who are concerned with safety in their neighbourhoods talk about how torture can serve as a recruiting factor for extremist groups and gangs. If they’re concerned about public health and the treatment of the mentally ill talk about how torture causes life long health problems and how that takes away from the economy.

 Aim at the level where people are willing to engage with you.

 If people take issue with your level of education or subject and question how you can know this stuff; act like an academic would. Cite your sources.

 ‘Well Rejali who studied this for years and created one of the most detailed analysis of global torture we have-’ ‘O’Mara, who studies the brain and how trauma impacts it,’ ‘Morgan, who put US marines through a mock interrogation with mild levels of stress and found-’ ‘Shalev who studies solitary confinement-’ ‘Sironi who is a psychologist and has interviewed hundreds of torturers-’ ‘Kara who produced the largest data base of interviews with modern slaves-’

 Repressing your anger, tapping it down, is not a good idea. As with most negative emotions it’s healthier to let yourself feel them and work through them.

 It’s also important to recognise that while there are real reasons for your feelings you can not always do anything about them. And there comes a point where you have to deal with that. The things that anger us and hurt us are not always things we can actually personally effect. Changing public opinion takes decades and is the work of thousands of people, not one individual.

 I feel like those of us who are not from the West have a bit of an advantage here, because sitting with that anger and learning when and how to put it aside is something you grow up with.

 Having support helps a lot. Having people you can talk to about this stuff is incredibly important. And I am so grateful to all of the people I know who support me in this: the court journalists, philosophers, writers and researchers who I can discuss this with. I also get a lot from reading about the successes around the world, modern or historical. They’re out there.

 Martial arts have also helped me a lot over the years. Capoeira helped me a lot but given the pandemic it isn’t a great idea right now. But a pair of boxing pads and a willing house mate are definitely a good way to get out some anger. Thumb on the outside of your fist, never inside your fingers. Keep it close to your body, fist at your hip, thumb upwards. Twist as you punch so your thumb faces down as you connect with the pad. Make sure to move your hips.

 Don’t do what I did at uni and try to use a pillow instead of proper pads. You’ll end up bruised.

 Right now, without a decent capoeira group and a lockdown in place, I do push ups.

 If you have a garden dig. Plant young trees, if you’re in the northern hemisphere (it’s the wrong time in the southern hemisphere.) Dig a vegetable patch. Make an area of wild flowers by cutting and tearing out the grass, raking the ground and scattering native plant seeds in the mud.

 Take all the electric whisks out of the kitchen and make a cake. Cream the butter until it feels like your arm will fall off.

 Make a curry from scratch without a blender. I use a granite pestle and mortar and it takes several batches and several hours to grind a proper paste. I’m a big fan of Matar Paneer and it freezes well giving some tasty work lunches for a week or so.

 Make bread. I’m not very good at this but the kneading, layering and mixing all take a lot of work. Which can be a very good outlet. I wish I could give you a paratha recipe but the truth is my skill level is no where near high enough to attempt the best breads. (I buy mine frozen.)

 The advantage I’ve found from all of these outlets is they’re constructive. Boxing and push ups will make you stronger, whatever skill level you start at. Gardening will give you fruit, vegetables or wonderful flowers in a few months time. It’ll give you new knowledge of plants. Cooking any of the things I’ve suggested will give you wonderful food and more skills.

 I always try to find something constructive to do with my anger. I think there’s a tendency to portray anger as bad in and of itself rather then having a conversation about how we act on our anger.

 I also can’t stress enough how writing can help. Fiction is an excellent way to process our feelings and express why we feel the way we do.

 The piece of fanfiction I’m currently writing has one of the characters dealing with a traumatic brain injury. Writing this character struggling to communicate what he’s going through and trying to come to terms with his limits while the people around him are looking at him and saying ‘well you don’t look disabled-’ It’s helped me process a lot of my anger over how I’m treated because of my mental health problems and the dumb, unnecessary barriers that make my life more difficult.

 What’s the root of the anger here? When you know that, you can address it with words. You can construct a story that will explore it. You can see it through the lense of different characters. And that really helps process it.

 I hope that helps :)

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[aestherians]

What're the different ways to be kin besides spirituality?

These are the main beliefs I know of:

Archetypal: The belief that you’re channeling the archetype of your kintype. ‘Archetypes’ in this context are “self-willed and able to act outside of the human psyche, but they are also capable of possessing and overshadowing human psyches” and can be seen as spirits or psychic complexes or both. People who go by this idea have largely spiritual interpretations tied to it, but the idea can stand on its own. It’s very much based on philosophical archetypes, like what Jung and Plato wrote about.

Biological: The belief that otherkinity is based on biological processes, such as brain abnormalities, genetic mutations, and physical appearance. Can be interpreted either as the biological ‘symptoms’ and the otherkinity being intrinsically connected, or in a more “I have green eyes like my kintype, this makes me feel more like my kintype” kind of sense. A common belief here is also that otherkinity is genetic and inheritable.

If physical shifters, vampires, changelings, and similar identities would fall under this definition is up to interpretation (though I’m leaning towards no, since the otherkin community has focused more and more on otherkinity being nonphysical in the last decade or two, and because the vampire community does not want to fall under the otherkin umbrella).

Energetic resonance: The belief that your energy resonates on the same frequency or wavelength as your kintype’s, leading to similar feelings, experiences, and identification, and/or to being drawn to your kintype.

Everyone’s Otherkin: The belief that everyone has non-human aspects, but very few people become aware of or accepting of this fact – i.e. very few people ever awaken. Anyone can awaken, though, and become otherkin given the right circumstances.

Links to Magic: The belief that otherkin are links to magic as an attempt by the greater powers to return magic to this world. It is thus the duty of otherkin to bring magic into mundane life and the world around them.

Magic in general: The belief that otherkinity caused by magic, however you want to interpret that. One example could be that being otherkin is just the way your magic manifests itself. Another example (that people will probably get mad at me for mentioning) could be becoming otherkin via a spell.

Neurological: The belief that otherkinity and the experience of being other-than-human results from atypical neurology

Primal Association: “Everyone has a primal side–this is the part of the brain and personality which is instinct-driven. It may be that in some persons, the primal side is very well-developed. On top of that, the person may identify their primal nature with an animal or animals, similar to the way a dissociative has separated different personalities in their mind” -Winged Wolf Psion

Psychic Connection: “If a person, when very young, developed a very deep psychic link with a certain animal, then they may take on–or take in–the mind of that animal to such a degree that it becomes a part of them, and remains so even after the link is severed.”-Winged Wolf Psion

Psychology: A lot of different beliefs fall under the psychological category. The most common beliefs are imprinting (where the person in question imprinted more on another species than on humans early in life) and subconscious coping mechanisms (where the person went through troubling or traumatic events and developed a nonhuman identity to, for example, explain the events or make the events easier to live through).

Mixed reasons: Any mix of any reasons. Commonly a spiritual kintype that’s strengthened by psychological phenomena, though there are no rules on which beliefs can mix.

Irrelevant reasons: The cause doesn’t matter, the only thing that matters is that we experience similar things that make us feel other than human.

These are not the only beliefs about otherkinity and your beliefs do not have to fall into any of these categories.

[mbti-notes]

Hi. thank you for writing this blog, you're really helpful. I'm sorry if my question is weird. I'm physically unattractive and people often comment/mocking my looks. because I was a very sensitive kid, I withdraw from people and become really introverted. now I'm in college but my communication skill got worse. when classmates talk to me, my mind went blank and I always need seconds to answer. I want to know what's wrong in my thinking, is it because I can't accept the reality of my looks?

Not a weird question at all. No child deserves to be mistreated and I’m sorry that you had to go through the bullying. There are two main issues that I think you need to address: 1) the residual effects of being bullied, and 2) your standards for evaluating the worth of people, including yourself. 

1) People get bullied for all kinds of things. It’s missing the point to try to compare what kind of bullying is worse than others. The most important point, in terms of psychological health, is your subjective experience of the bullying and whether it had a significantly negative impact upon your well-being. In children, the experience of constant bullying is a recognized form of psychological trauma. 

When people experience emotional trauma, the way that they perceive and assess situations changes. It has to. All human beings have a survival instinct. When you live your life experiencing constant threats, it is normal and rational for the mind to find ways of protecting itself. Therefore, bullied children are much more likely to feel fearful, anxious, and/or defensive in social situations, since most of their social learning took place in situations that were legitimately threatening, hurtful, and painful for them. Unfortunately, fearful, anxious, or defensive behavior tends to get worse over time and causes problems in life when the original trauma is never properly addressed and resolved. This is why bullied children are more likely to struggle with mental disorders as well as socialization and relationship problems later in life.

Children need care, love, and affection to thrive, but many are thrust into bad situations, and it’s not their fault. As a child, you barely know up from down, so you can’t be expected to know how to fend for yourself in very negative social situations. Try to look at your situation more objectively. Imagine that, today, you were walking down the street and you witnessed somebody bullying a young child about their looks. How would that make you feel? Would you join the bully and ridicule the child, believing that the “ugly” child is worthless and deserves it? A sensitive person is capable of empathy, so I doubt that you��d want to be the bully. An empathetic person would immediately know that the child was being mistreated and want to stop the bully, would they not? A bully wants power over people, and their greatest success is to teach you how to bully yourself. Not only do they make you feel like shit by calling you ugly, they also gain complete control over you once they convince you to call yourself ugly, for the rest of your life. To be more objective, look upon your childhood self not through the disdainful eyes of your bullies but rather through the empathetic eyes of the good person that you are. You didn’t deserve to be bullied. You deserved to be loved. You deserve love.

Everybody needs to go through level 2 ego development in terms of learning how to adapt well to their social environment. If your social environment is loving and full of affection, you’re going to learn that the world is a safe and positive place, so you’ll naturally feel confident in navigating it. If your social environment is threatening and painful, you’re going to learn that the world is a frightening place, so you’ll naturally feel unsafe and insecure in most situations. As a child, you had to adapt to a negative social environment as best as a child could. From being bullied, you “learned” again and again that physically “beautiful” people get praised and physically “ugly” people get scorned. Since you were repeatedly called “ugly”, you’ve come to expect that people will scorn you, and you might even start to unconsciously attract people who confirm your distrustful worldview. Bullying is always worse for children because they have no preexisting knowledge of how to cope with it. The early adaptations that you learn in childhood tend to stay with you because they serve as your “default” mode. Whenever you feel a little bit stressed by a social situation, your psychology tends to “regress” to those early adaptations, even when the present situation poses no objective threat to you. It’s a mental reflex, aka a defense mechanism.

There’s a lot of debate in the psychological community about whether it’s possible to rid the brain of traumatic memories. However, even if you take the most pessimistic position of believing that childhood trauma is written into the brain and stays with you forever, that doesn’t mean nothing can be done about it. If you are able to improve your awareness and understanding of the many ways that your past trauma has impacted your cognitive, emotional, and behavioral patterns, you can then implement some practical strategies for disengaging your past adaptations, i.e., you can learn healthier coping mechanisms instead of allowing your “default” mode to run the show all the time. This is generally what they teach you in cognitive-behavioral therapy. A lot of people are in therapy to try to make sense of past trauma or abuse.

For example: You’re talking to someone new, and you suddenly freeze up. Why did you freeze up? What’s going on? Time to reflect on yourself honestly. Chances are, you are afraid. Based on your past experience, perhaps you’re afraid of trusting this new person only to have them turn around and mock you, and then you’re instantly that hurt kid again. It is a perfectly reasonable fear to have because you have experienced it several times before. Humans are considered smart for being able to learn from their past experience. Once you’re aware of the fear and its source and able to accept it as legitimate, then you have a chance to implement a better coping strategy. Perhaps you take a deep breath and remind yourself that this new person is not the old bully of your past. Remind yourself to give this new person the benefit of the doubt. You can’t develop a good relationship without giving a little trust and being positive. A lot of people can overlook physically unattractive features once they see a nice personality, but it’s a lot harder to overlook a negative and distrustful attitude. Another way to cope better is to work on your people skills and communication skills, which will help boost your confidence.

2) Beauty has a very important place in human psychology. Without connection to beauty, people wouldn’t be able to access all the good, positive, wonderful, and sublime things about being alive. I would never downplay the importance of beauty; however, the fact is that most people’s concept of beauty is superficial and wrong. For a lot of people, beauty is merely about ego: comparing and contrasting, competition and jealousy, self-harm and violence. If beauty is meant to be a human good, then why does it drive people to be their worst selves? There’s something rotten going on. True beauty is NOT about whether you are more/less beautiful than, it’s about nurturing the ability to see the best side of everything in the world. Not many people nurture this ability in themselves. If you did, you’d never ever call yourself ugly, because everything in this world has some beauty in it. If you aren’t able to see it, then the problem lies in your own perception, not the object itself.

Human brains are built to process information about physical appearance very quickly. This cannot be helped. We all make snap judgments based on physical appearance because this ability was very useful for human survival. However, human beings also have the capacity to reflect on the veracity of their snap judgments as well as the intelligence to realize that outward appearance and inner qualities are two different things. Failure to use one’s higher intelligence means remaining very hasty and shallow in judgment. To be shallow isn’t just to care about appearances, because we are all primed to care about appearances, it’s to take appearances as the only/primary standard for JUDGING someone’s WORTH. Shallow people easily become bullies when they feel the need to elevate themselves socially by putting others down. All you have to do is read through comment sections on gossip pages to know that no one is immune to having their appearance mocked, not even beautiful celebrities or supermodels. No matter how objectively beautiful you are, there’s a shallow person out there ready and willing to pick you apart, for their own egotistical reasons. The fact of the matter is that there are lots of shallow people in this world. There’s no avoiding them, there’s no wishing them away, but you can always render their judgments meaningless, and thus very easy to ignore. 

Be brutally honest with yourself, would you rather use the criterion of “physical beauty” or the criterion of “good moral character” to choose a mate/friend for yourself? I’m not saying that the two criteria are mutually exclusive, I’m simply asking which one is more important to you. If you say “physical beauty”, then you must count yourself as one of the shallow people. And if you are shallow, you’re going to care a lot about what other shallow people think. By being shallow yourself, you’re doomed to judging yourself through the eyes of a shallow person - you. If you say “good moral character”, then congratulations, because you understand what really counts for creating a successful relationship. It takes someone of good moral character to recognize another, and when you have good moral character and prioritize it, it’s easy enough to see through shallow people and their meaningless judgments. If you surround yourself with people of good moral character - people who are capable of appreciating you for the good person you are and vice versa - you will exist in a very different social space, a place where shallow people can never get any real foothold.

Many people make the mistake of thinking that they need to be beautiful to be loved. Makes no sense. When you focus only on physical beauty, you turn people into mere objects, and, worse, you turn yourself into a mere object and allow others to treat you as such. Genuine feelings of love don’t come from physical beauty, they come from deep within the heart. What is it that you really want from people? Do you want them to praise your face and body? Is it going to make your life meaningful and fulfilled in the long run? No, because what people really want is love. To experience love, you must be a good person who is capable of love, and then you will have the ability to spot good people who are capable of loving you. If you are not even capable of loving yourself and seeing the beauty in yourself, how can you ask others to? If you are not capable of loving people and seeing the beauty in them, what kind of people will you attract and who would want to be around you?

You are not a passive player in social situations. Children who are bullied often feel passive and helpless for good reason, but that doesn’t have to be the case for the rest of your life, does it? You get to choose your attitude towards socializing (whether to trust or distrust), you get to choose how to engage with people (whether to focus on outer or inner qualities), you get to choose what sorts of people to engage with (shallow or kind), you get to choose who to keep as your long term friends (those who praise your looks or those who appreciate your true beauty). When you always default to the old lessons you learned from childhood trauma, you’ve essentially given up the power to choose, thus remaining a victim indefinitely, trembling in fear in every social interaction. And if the only standard you have for navigating social situations is the “physical beauty” standard that shallow people told you should be elevated as the most important human quality, you’re going to live a very shallow existence, devoid of love, because you’re not using the right standards in your approach to relationships. Do you want to think in the same way that the bully taught you, or do you want to have your own way of looking at the beauty in the world and trust in yourself?

[holdthosebees]

Reasons: A Study

So. I want to talk about anchors, and parallels, and That Line from mag 167. 

MARTIN: So, when you say Gertrude wouldn’t have been able to go on without a reason-- JON: Yes, Martin, you are my reason. 

First, while we’re all melting down about the adorable queerness of this exchange, I want to nail down exactly what they mean. 

On one level, it’s a declaration of romantic devotion. It seems pretty clear also that what Jon is alluding to is that, without Martin, he wouldn’t be going to the panopticon; he wouldn’t be trying to fix the world at all. Instead, he would be “resigning” himself to “ruling [his] domain,” which is a fancy and way of saying ‘going full Beholding, turning full monster, and spending the apocalypse siphoning the suffering out of his victims. In short: having Martin around, having someone prompting him keep moving in a semi-linear fashion towards a concrete goal, and having a relationship he cares about protecting is what’s keeping him human. Or, as close to human as he can get, anyway. This is... complicated. There are people who are reading it as super romantic, and I get that! I don’t in any way want to say that they’re wrong, and this post isn’t about how Jon and Martin’s relationship is secretly Bad and Doomed or whatever. But TMA has consistently shown itself to be a show willing to dive into the messy bits of relationships between traumatized people, and ‘this one person is the only thing keeping me from spiraling into monster hood’ is definitely messy. 

There are a few parallels that immediately spring to mind, and I’d like to go through them one by one.  First: the obvious parallel, and the one that most people are drawing, is to Martin’s line in 158:

[MARTIN]: And then Jon came back, and suddenly I had a reason...

This is a line I see quoted out of context a lot, in the ‘tumblr likes to take bits of text and mash them together to make moodboards’ way. Often, in more Jon/Martin-y contexts, the sentiment behind it is filled in based on the line that came before it: “Maybe I just thought joining up with you would be a good way to get killed.” The implication drawn, then, is that Martin is saying that Jon coming back gave him a reason to live.  That is, however, not actually what he’s saying! This quote is actually rarely quoted in its entirety; what Martin actually says, specifically, is

[MARTIN]: And then Jon came back, and suddenly I had a reason to keep your attention on me. Make you feel in control so you didn’t take it out on him. And if that meant drifting further away, so what? I’d already grieved for him. And if it meant now saving him, it was worth it.

By drifting further away, he doesn’t just mean from Jon--he’s talking about his choice to keep working with Peter, to keep pushing himself into the Lonely. Jon coming back, in context, didn’t so much give him a reason to live as it did give him a reason to sacrifice himself. He was still aware that he was losing himself, and might wind up dying; Jon being around just made that feel meaningful.

This, I feel it should be noted, is exactly what Elias was counting on. Martin made the choice to continue on his own, to try to jump on the grenade without telling anyone that it was there, and this turned out to be a huge mistake. It was one heavily influenced by grief, by trauma, and by the impact the Lonely had already had on his mind. 

It was also the exact opposite of what Jon’s saying now--except for the ways in which it isn’t. They both cite one another as their reason for working towards a goal that they know might be impossible, because the act of protecting each other gives meaning to a potentially meaningless existence. For Martin, though, that meant courting avatar-dom, while Jon is trying to push it away. For Martin, this singleminded devotion turned out to be unhealthy; his prioritization of what he thought Jon needed from him over his own wellbeing wound up causing both him and Jon a lot of grief. And as for Jon...

Well. We don’t know yet. Jon and Martin are alone together in a horrific apocalypse landscape, so singleminded devotion is kind of par for the course. Martin is literally the only good thing Jon has left in the world, so I’m not going to say that he’s wrong for using Martin as a grounding point. And we know, from previous seasons, that focusing on building positive, trusting relationships is one of the things most effective in maintaining humanity! 

At the same time, though, there’s another parallel I’d like to talk about--and that’s the parallel between Jon and Martin’s relationship and Daisy and Basira’s.  The first thing that “you are my reason” pinged for me, right off the bat, was the memory of Elias calling Basira Daisy’s last tether to humanity in season 3. Their relationship for the latter half of season 3 mirrored Jon and Martin’s season 5 relationship in a number of ways; mainly, the more monstrous partner (Daisy, Jon) who’s thrust into the thick of things (fighting monsters, trying to manage the Beholding) to protect the human partner (Basira, Martin), who meanwhile is anchoring said monstrous partner to their humanity while basically hanging out and making big picture plans anti-Elias plans. 

It’s not a perfect parallel, obviously, but the dynamics are there. They’re both avatar-human relationship based around that idea of a single anchor point--and, whoo boy, did Daisy and Basira problematize that dynamic. Daisy killed people, and Basira turned the other way. The fact that Daisy was so reliant on Basira to act as her moral compass means that, in the cases where Basira didn’t interfere, her own moral compass degraded. Her reliance on Basira to anchor her meant she wasn’t anchoring herself, and, combined with Basira’s enabling, that lead her down an extremely slippery police-brutality lined slope. 

Why is this relevant to Jon and Martin? Because the justification Martin gave when trying to convince Jon not to feel guilt after Not!Sasha--that it’s fine to kill monsters, as long as you aren’t going after innocents--is extremely reminiscent to how Basira and Daisy justified Daisy’s actions for a long time. 

In Mag91, when preventing Daisy from murdering Jon, Basira tells Daisy that she’s always known what Daisy’s been doing, but she was alright with it, because she thought Daisy just killed monsters. Like Martin turning Jon’s tape over to the archives crew, she steps in once she realizes that someone she thinks of as a person is also in danger. Later, when confronting Jon, she seems to draw a firm line between Daisy’s actions, which were compelled and so required no guilt, with Jon’s actions in going after innocents. Compare this line from Martin, in Mag166:

[MARTIN]:  This isn’t like it was before! We’re not talking about innocent bystanders in cafes here, Jon; these things are - th-they’re just evil, plain and simple, and right now they’re torturing and tormenting everyone! If you want to stop them and have the power to, then - then, then yeah, let’s do it, let’s go full Kill Bill!

Once again, we’ve got a clear black and white moral boundary: if you want to kill monsters, that’s fine, because the things you’re killing aren’t human. There’s the differentiation between compelled attacks on innocents, and the choice to go after things that are evil. Both Martin and Basira brushed aside their partner’s guilt, on the basis of compulsion; both Martin and Basira encouraged them to use their powers to go after monsters, which they considered morally justified. The circumstances are different--Basira didn’t want Daisy to die, while Martin wants Jon to stop blaming himself for the end of the world--but the choices they’re making are in some ways very similar.  

We know where that goes for Daisy and Basira. Basira, while initially Daisy’s reason for staying human, also becomes her reason to return to the Hunt. She, like season 4 Martin, makes the choice to give up on her humanity to save the person she’s anchored to; unlike Martin, nothing stops her before she goes through with it. We’ll have to wait until the Hunt episode of this season to see how it ends, but it’s definitely not going to be happy. 

All of which is to say--it was a sweet moment that shows some great development in their relationship, but if Martin is Jon’s one reason for staying grounded, we have historical reason to believe that this isn’t necessarily a good thing. It is, at the very least, a complicated thing, and something that probably won’t escape the same exploration of codependency, us-vs-them mentality, self destructive behavior, and interpersonal responsibility that has shown up in almost every relationship in the podcast. This time, though, the stakes are even higher--if Jon loses himself, he doesn’t just kill a few people, he becomes what the Beholding intends for him to be. 

(This also isn’t even getting into the weeds of codependency in regards to Martin’s caretaker trauma, and what it means to be relied upon as the sole person keeping another human being grounded and together, or how that ties into the ways in which trust in their communication seems to be slowly eroding over time and under--but that’s another post entirely.)

[monsterdoodles]

Thoughts on Steven Universe Future 3-13-2020

Together Forever: This episode was a lot less about Steven and Connie, and more about just Steven than expected.

Connie has some plans for college, but we don’t quite get to know what her career goals are exactly. She’s planning on getting into politics, but I’m not sure at what level or what branch. Not that that matters to the episode too much or anything. The University of Jayhawk is all the across the country from Delmarva. This is a distance that Steven cannot emotionally handle right now. Upon this realization, he sinks down into his bed, part of his “floating” powers.

It is good to see that he and Connie keep in touch at least over video calls. On a slightly more concerning note, Steven has memorized Connie’s schedule down to the minute.

Garnet says at the end of the episode, that there was no future in which Steven wouldn’t propose to Connie. I’m guessing had he talked to Garnet instead, he would have proposed to her out of spite or in an effort to prove Garnet wrong.

Instead of Garnet, we do get Ruby and Sapphire this episode. Steven doesn’t seem too surprised by their appearance in this episode, so I imagine that they have been teaching these classes for a while. Ruby is doing some kind of nature scout class, did she make those badges herself, or are they part of a nationally recognized scout organization? Either way she’s teaching some gems and Onion about the beauty of nature. Steven tells her about how Connie seems to really have her life together and knows what she is doing.

I can see a parallel here with Ruby and Sapphire, and Steven and Connie. In this particular case, Steven is Ruby. He doesn’t have the foresight that Connie does right now. He, in a way, lacks future vision.

Ruby, either lacking the knowledge of what might be socially acceptable or being too excited about prospect of Steven expressing his love, tells Steven that he should propose to her. Ruby’s logic here is that it worked for her. She ignores the fact that she and Sapphire had been together for over 5000 years and that they are adults.

Steven visits Sapphire as well, she is teaching a class on alternate timelines. I wonder what that entails exactly. I suppose that they do all of those equations that she explained to Steven, but with the understanding that the future still isn’t as predictable as one might think. She also encourages Steven to propose to Connie despite the fact that she is aware of the sociological implications of this, but she’s a hopeless romantic about it anyways.

Steven declare to the gems, that this will be his last day as Steven Cutie-Pie Demayo Diamond Quartz Universe. Interesting that that interaction with Garnet from almost 4 years ago left that impression on him. That is the same day that he learned about future vision, so I suppose that just stuck in his mind. Also, was he planning to take Connie’s last name or add Maheswaran to his plethora of middle names (that he thinks belongs on official documents for some reason).

He makes his plan. He gets jam, glow sticks and cake. On top of the world, he dresses his best and asks her out from outside her window. He says they’ll be back in 15 minutes (this reminds of an episode of How I Met Your Mother, but the season and name escape me).

At the beach, in the same place they first met, Steven has a picnic set up. Had this just be a romantic gesture or a proposal to date, not marriage, things probably would have gone a lot better for him. Connie responds well to all this. She has been shown to have romantic feelings for Steven in the past, she attempted to kiss him in An Indirect Kiss and she successfully kissed him on the cheek in the movie. Steven sings his song with the sentiment of “I want to be me with you”. The lyrics of which, like many love songs in my opinion, have a codependent quality to them. Steven doesn’t know his future, so he wants someone else to be his future, to be someone else.

Connie, very sensibly, says no. They are young, have never discussed this, and I’m pretty sure they aren’t even an item. She also tells him, “It’s a not now” because there is plenty of time. Steven is in his unending quest for stability, and he still hasn’t found it.  Throughout this conversation Connie and Steven occupy opposite spaces on screen. They are in different places in their lives right now, sure and unsure, stable and unstable.

I think if Steven were around more teens his age, he might not be feeling this way, so much at least. He would realize how many people don’t have their lives figured out at this age. Many people his age just want to graduate high school. He really needs to talk to Greg about this. Greg wanted to be a musician, but he was also a community college drop out. He didn’t have everything figured out. (I’m pretty sure this will be part of next week’s episodes in some way)

Connie is willing to stick around when her alarm goes off. Steven tells her to go, probably because he doesn’t want to burden her and because he won’t be holding it together for long. As soon as she leaves, he lies back and creates a crater. The shockwaves ruining the picnic. He lies there until dark.

When he gets up, Garnet is there. She explains to him the inevitability of this situation. She tells him that the hole he is trying to fill won’t be filled by Connie or Stevonnie. Connie is not his “missing piece”. In this scene, Garnet is towering and Steven feels almost as small as his younger self. I think this accentuates how young and foolish Steven was this episode. He holds a frustrated look during this conversation. He says he blames Garnet for making this all look so easy. Reminds me of Cry for Help/Friendship. Pearl had felt the same way about Ruby and Sapphire/Garnet. Steven and Pearl craved that perceived perfection.

Steven then eats his feelings.

Growing Pains: I was wrong in my prediction that Steven would either be stuck in pink mode or have a human ailment.

The episode opens with a scene from the newest instalment of dogcopter. In the movie, Dogcopter proposes to a dog named Drew. Steven laments the fact that “everyone else is getting married”. He continues to eat his feelings like at the ending of last episode, and then his body starts getting out of control. He keeps growing sporadically. He mostly ignores it because it doesn’t hurt him physically.

He wants to reach out to someone who isn’t Connie right now. He can’t reach the gems, so he calls Greg, who is on tour with Sadie and Shep right now. Greg is having a great time, and Steven won’t rain on that parade, even when Greg offers to call him back. He almost wants to call Connie, but she calls him instead. His shapeshifting forces him to answer her call.

He can no longer hide what’s going on with him, since it is manifesting physically. Connie suggests that he should see a doctor. He doesn’t want to bother anyone even when he is physically unwell. He even describes it as a waste of time. Connie persuades him.

Steven pays Doctor Maheswaran a visit, Connie escorts him in. As soon as Connie leaves the room for them to conduct tests, she calls Greg.

This episode really explores how both human and gem Steven really is. He has a human body and it is effected like a human body is. But he is also a gem, it makes his body react unusually and if he’s fractured skeleton is any indication, it is keeping him alive.

Dr. Maheswaran finds out about Steven’s physical traumas through his x-ray. She asks him if he had any particularly traumatic experiences. Steven basically recalls the entire show. Dr. Maheswaran goes on to describe the physical aspects of trauma and the way the body reacts in a way I don’t think I’ve ever seen in any piece of fictional media. Steven’s body is trying to protect him from danger that isn’t there anymore. Minor stress to him is now the equivalent to major stress. To make things worse, he feels as though his support system is gone.

When he thinks back to the proposal, things go haywire. As his body continues to grow in size, he takes up more and more of the room. He is almost too big to fit. There is nowhere left for him to hide. He yells “I can’t be around you right now” much in the way he yelled “I just want to fix it” back in Volleyball. His yell shatters the windows.

Greg finally arrives, revealing that Connie had called him. Connie still very much cares about Steven. He explains to Greg that everything feels like the end of the world to him now.

Receiving understanding and support from Greg is what gets Steven to go back to his normal size. At home he continues to explain his fears and worries. All of which, as Greg explains, are normal. Steven now knows what his problem is, or at least one aspect of it, but I don’t think his problems are solved just yet. From the way he “swells up” in response to stress in this episode, I think something big is about to happen in the show. Something so big, that for his body to protect him from it, he will grow into the giant monster from the opening theme song.

Predictions for next week:

Discussion of leaks ahead

Mr. Universe: Still no episode description for this one, but I imagine this is where Steven crashes the van. Steven is still not in a great place right now, and while he seems more willing to talk about things, his body is still reacting in a way that is unsafe for him and others. I believe that this will lead to the van crashing. As others have pointed out, this episode may involve Pearl because she played a big part in the episode Mr. Greg. I still somehow think this episode will be the story of how Rose decided to have Steven, if not it will be about how Greg made the decision to drop out of college and take on the rockstar persona Mr. Universe.

Fragments: This is where that first leak came from, the “leave me alone I need space one”. I’m still not 100% sure what “fragments” is in reference to. Others I have discussed with have suggested memories. I am not entirely sure the direction of this.

[abeltownshipslittlebitch]

The Eye of the Hurricane

I got this idea after listening to Hamilton and thinking a lot about how Venus Rising ended. Because of how it ended, it was heavily implied that both Five and Captain Myers were infected with the red fungus from Venus stuff, so I decided that would be a perfect angst story.

Five’s POV, 1st person because that’s the only way I can write plus it helps keep Five gender neutral. Present tense. About 2.8K Words.

Since I already said that Five and Peter totally were dating in the Venus Rising shorts in a sperate post and I’m not a bitch who backs down, that will be the stated relationship. Also, the song is Hurricane Workshop, and I took the liberty of changing some of the lyrics so please don’t be mad when you see the lyrics aren’t the exact same. This is like half-assed edited. It’s 3:20 AM where I’m at, so please be kind if you spot any errors! Thank you! Also please for the love of all things good, read the trigger warnings. This is angst for a reason!

Also I suggest reading this on a computer instead of mobile device because things are looking kind of wanky from my viewpoint on my phone, even though it was fine on my computer. So just thought I’d let you know.

Trigger warning: Character death, suicide, murder, self-hatred, guilt, guilt complex, mentions of blood, angst not with a happy ending, one use of the word “fucks”

In the eye of a hurricane there is quiet for just a moment A yellow sky.

Space is not forgiving. It’s endless and dark and cold. Its beauty is deceitful. Its emptiness is ever consuming.

It takes everything in me to tear my eyes away from the endless expanse of burning stars and stifling darkness. I breathe, grounding myself. I look down at the blaster in my hand. It’s so hard to think already, my mind reeling. Bits of bliss flitter through my thoughts, reminders of home, reminders of loved ones. With each inhale come the scents of places millions of miles away. I taste honey on my tongue, hear the laughter of friends that have long since gone.

When I was seventeen a hurricane destroyed my town. I didn’t drown… I couldn’t seem to die.

They’re dead. They’re all dead.

Peter’s dead. Ellie’s dead. Steve’s dead. Amelia’s dead.

And now Captain Myers.

I didn’t want to. Really, I didn’t. But things weren’t adding up. Her speech patterns, her words, dripping with honey and faux hope. It wasn’t her. I tried to chalk it up to paranoia, to trauma-not even from the death. I’ve seen more than enough of that on earth to become numb to it, but I thought maybe I was traumatized from the horror of those creatures in the mountain. I’d never seen anything like them before. I tried to tell myself I was just overthinking, but I knew. It wasn’t her.

Neither was the red that was growing under her fingernails, the red she tried to hide from me.

But she couldn’t hide the bliss that covered her face, and I couldn’t ignore the ringing of voices that echoed in my mind. I remember home far too vividly. I remember happiness more intensely than I have in years, with colors too bright and sounds too perfect and air too clean to be real. It’s a fantasy that tries to disguise itself as something I once knew. That’s what tipped me off. It felt too good to remember.

I knew if I was infected, then so was the Captain.

That’s why I shot her. That’s why her body lays in the floor of the next cabin, covered in red fungus that engulfs her like a blackhole that engulfs that which gets too close.

My breathing is shallow. I had to.

I. Had. To.

I fought my way out. Took everything down far as I could see.

I’ve always been good at this, doing what needs to be done. Some things you just have to do in order to survive and that’s what I did. People needed me on earth to be strong, to bear the burden and carry the weighted guilt so they wouldn’t have to.

So I did.

I learned to move on quickly. I don’t feel guilty about Captain Myers. I had to do it. I don’t feel guilty.

I don’t.

I don’t.

I don’t!

My nails dig into my skin. I can barely understand the words that spill from my tongue. They feel foreign, inhuman.

I’m not guilty. I don’t feel guilty! I’ve done this a hundred times. It’s done now and I have to move on!

Anyone I lost to sickness, to pollution or war between groups hellbent on gaining food and property in a world too far gone to save-I moved on. Even now that I have time to cry, I’m don’t. I can’t. I don’t even know if I remember how.

Still my chest tightens at the thought of all we’ve lost. It betrays the lies I tell myself. I smell honeysuckles and roses when I breathe in, but it hurts. Each rose-scented inhale is met with an exhale of thorns and tightening vines. Or maybe the fungus in filling up my lungs. I’m not sure.

I took this mission to help save my family back on earth. They aren’t my real family, not by blood, but they became family. And I won’t be coming back to them. I failed them.

I already failed my family before I became aware that I was infected. Peter was my family. Peter was my everything, despite the snide remarks and eyerolls and teasing that bordered on cruelty. It was our way of acting out while remaining somewhat professional, since this job does-did-mean a lot to him.

I respected that. I respected him. And then I just stood there and watched as Steve went feral and attacked him, killed him.

My throat burns, and I almost feel relieved when I taste bile on my tongue instead of peaches and strawberries. Something akin to a cry rips from my lips. It’s ragged and raw and why am I still unable to cry, damn it?! 

I should have been faster! I should have been better!

I fought my way out. I looked up and the town had its eyes on me.

I was gifted with creativity as well as ambition. Knowing the ins and outs of basic survival saved my life and others’ lives more than once. Hydroponics, water filters, hunting, farming. My knowledge is what helped me gain friends, despite my violent tendencies and willfulness to kill to survive. Those who allied with me on earth before I joined up with Pandora Haze seemed to think my pros outweighed my cons.

They were right, especially when they found out I’m incredibly loyal to the people I call friends.

Not loyal enough, though. I let the one person I truly, deeply cared about on this mission die.  

They passed their tools around. Total strangers moved to kindness by my ideas. Took enough for me to book passage on a ship at was England bound.

The help of those around me is what gave me the resources to build different hydroponics and gardens for smaller communities. It’s what got someone at Pandora Haze’s attention too. My skills got me noticed, and when they saw how good I was at the obstacle courses and at problem solving, as well as with combat, they asked me to join with the space department because I “showed promise and seemed more than capable to help in saving the human race.”

I never saw myself as a savior of any kind. I still don’t, but they offered payment-food, medicine, tools and tech. Joining is how I met everyone on this mission, and even if fate hadn’t had led me to meeting them, I couldn’t pass this job up, not even the world is literally burning from the inside out and wars are being started over clean water and warm clothes.

One of my friends, Sam, seemed suspicious. He was afraid, mostly because we’d been together for years. He didn’t agree with some of my methods of getting supplies, but he trusted me, and I trusted him. He and I formed our alliance first and the group grew from there. For a long time we were all the other had, so of course he was concerned.

But he became less worried when I kept coming back like I promised I would.

He didn’t want me going on this mission. He said it felt wrong, that he just knew something bad would end up happening to me. I didn’t listen. I had too many reasons to go and not enough to not go.

First reason for me to go was that Peter was going. He is-was-one of the people I enjoy being around in Pandora Haze’s space program. I don’t get to see him much outside of work because it would raise suspicion, and there’s a strict “no dating between coworkers” rule that would cause us both to lose our jobs if anyone found out. This was the one way I could be around him, even if we couldn’t act like we really cared for each other.

The other reason I decided to come was because the pay for this mission was incredible. I’d have food and medicine for not only myself, but for the people in my family. Sam, Archie, Jody, Lem, Ed and his daughter-all of them. We’d be set for at least a few months. That’s more than a lot of people can ask for in the wreckage that we called home.

I fought my way out of hell. I fought my way to revolution. I was louder than our flag when it fell.

So I came here, did this mission which was supposed to be simple, supposed to be easy, supposed to be safe. I feel safe. I feel warm. It’s a deep sense of calmness that threatens to pull me under like the blackness outside would do if I were to open the airlock. I can hear the whispers even louder now, and the taste of sweet fruits on my tongue is ever stronger, mixing with the occasional chocolate I would half with Sam when we were allowed such luxuries.

I can see it in front of me-home, happiness. I still see the pain and destruction and fire, but it seems so much tamer now. There’s less chaos, less bloodshed. I look down and don’t see the stains of the lives I’ve taken in order to stay alive.

It feels good to see this, good to feel this.

That’s why I bite down on my tongue, hard enough to make it bleed, nearly hard to enough to bite it clean off. But my brain stops me, basic survival instincts stopping me from doing too much damage. I don’t have the energy to fight it, and thankfully it’s enough to bring me back down, push the voices of those I love to the back of my mind until they’re nothing but a dull buzz that resonates in my ears.

They’ll be back. This isn’t the worst of it.

It makes me sick to think that, because the voices are not of just of the people I left on earth, but the people I’ve lost.

We wrote in secret. Love letters we hid well. I fought for the people I love and defended them well. And in the face of ignorance and resistance, I fought for new systems to be put in existence.

On earth things are still terrible, people dying, people fighting over resources that will grow more scarce day by day. We won’t be able to stop what is to come. Humanity will fall. After joining up with Pandora Haze, I met many people who tried to come up with ideas to save the world, save humanity.

A smart woman named Janine always had a solution, a plan that was perfect to even the smallest detail. I never talked to her much, but I believed in what she said. She gave people hope, but not through sweet words or circling stories or empty promises. She spoke the truth, told us the work that would need to be done in order to fix things. I think she could have fixed things, had she come up with these ideas quicker. They were perfect, after all. I did whatever I could to get her plans into motion…

But even perfect plans can fail. People are too unpredictable now, all morals thrown out the window. There’s no sense of loyalty, no sympathy or humanity or humility. Venus Colony was supposed to be our big breakthrough.

And when my prayers to God were met with indifference I picked up a gun. I wrote my own deliverance!

I suppose I’m a part of the problem. I was willing to kill and destroy to protect the people I love. Many of the people back on earth have already lost the ones they cared about, so now all they can worry about is themselves. I’m sure I would have ended up the same way if I didn’t know of certain ways to survive in small communities or groups. I survived because I fought, I killed and destroyed and stole and did everything possible to stay alive.

And even that wasn’t worth it. I’m still dying, blood pooling in my mouth from biting my tongue and pain just barely overshadowing the sickly-sweet way everything feels. I can feel the red fungus growing under my fingers. I wish it hurt. I wish it didn’t feel like the not-quite soft sweater Jody knitted for me for my birthday. I wish it didn’t feel like the blanket Archie gave up to keep me warm when I had pneumonia. I wish it didn’t feel like safety and goodness and peace.

I wish it didn’t. I wish it hurt.

In the eye of a hurricane there is quiet for just a moment A yellow sky.

I look down. It’s almost time. I never thought of myself as a coward, but I don’t think I have it in me to use the blaster. I don’t know why. I’ve thought about dying more than once, and most of the scenarios were violent and painful. I mean, you have to think about it in this day and age. Death has always been inevitable, but now death is always on your heels, and it will catch you when you slow down.

I slowed down here. It’s almost caught me. It’s just waiting for me to decide how I’m going to go.

There’s another way I’ll do this, I think. I don’t know if I deserve it-a peaceful death. After all I’ve lived through, after surviving this long when everyone else on this mission has died in horrendous and agonizing ways, a part of me thinks I should die painfully, slowly. It’s only fair…

But I can’t.

I was twelve when my mother died. She was holding me. We were sick and she was holding me. I couldn’t seem to die.

There are bracelets in a compartment in the Captain’s deck. I have one of them on. I don’t remember why they were created, what specific reason. I don’t remember who created them either. Amelia’s got some sick fucks working for her, which is probably why she didn’t think my body count was as bad as I believed it to be when I was hired. But whatever the case, I’m glad they’re here.

The bracelets are mechanical, and with the push of a button, needles will poke out, dig into my skin and administer a lethal drug. It’ll be quick. It’ll be painless.

It’ll be a death I don’t deserve.

It’ll be a death that was much more merciful than the deaths I’ve witnessed today.

The friend who would tell me not to do it is in the ground.

At least I’ll get to see them again. I hope I’ll see them again.

I hope I’ll see Peter again.

I wonder if I should leave a message for those back on earth. Will they even see it? Will they even hear it? Can I even trust myself to speak?

I shake my head, closing my eyes for a tad second before opening them again. No. It’s best they just get the message that Captain Myers made. It was safe. It was clean.

Besides, I don’t even know what I’d say. What can you say in a time like this?

The enemies I’ve made won’t have anything on me now.

I swallow down a mouthful of coppery blood, but even it isn’t strong enough to silence the raging voices, begging me to just give in. The fungus is becoming thicker under my fingernails. Red is clouding my vision.

It feels so good, so peaceful. All pain fades away like a distant memory.

I wish I could cry. I wish I knew what to say. I wish I wasn’t alone.

I wish this didn’t all feel so good. I feel euphoric, almost to the point that I don’t want to leave. I can see them all, feel it. It’s so beautiful, so overwhelming and crushing and amazing and I wish it wasn’t.

My breathing is shaky, but the one coherent thought I have it simple…

This ends here.

I can hear what the voices are saying in response.

“Wait for it. Wait for it. Wait for it.”

I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory.

My finger hovers over the button. I’m shaking.

I’m smiling.

I look back out at the glass window, at the stars that burn for me, someone who will never get to write of their beauty, who won’t even have the pleasure of remembering it to tell to my friends when I get back home.

I’m going home. That’s what I tell myself. I’m going home.

Space is not forgiving. It’s endless and dark and cold. Its beauty is deceitful. Its emptiness is ever consuming.

But its there, a sight to behold, too beautiful and chaotic and breathtakingly terrifying for any human’s mind to understand.

This is the eye of the hurricane. This is the only way I can protect my family.

I feel a tear slide down my cheek, and while I don’t mean to, I laugh.

“Wait for it! Wait for it! Wait for it! Wait!”

I press the button.

@dorkylittleweirdo​ @midwestern-runner-five​ @runnerfiveready​ @running4chaos​ @poeticllamasofdestruction @pocketsizerudy

[revlyncox]

No Human Being is Illegal on Stolen Land

This address was written for the Washington Ethical Society for indigenous People’s Day Sunday, October 11, 2020, by Lyn Cox. 

One of the things I notice about the values expressed in the story, “Grandmother Spider Brings the Light,” is that none of the characters attempt to keep the sun for themselves. In this legend, we are entering a paradigm in which the basic necessities of life are shared freely. In the world of the story, members of the community are willing to sacrifice for the benefit of all. The warmth of the sun is something that would be ridiculous to hoard. Part of the sun’s worth comes from the way it shines on the whole community, and the way in which the whole community works together in response. Each character makes suggestions and participates in the work, and even the setbacks give the whole community something to learn from. Proximity to raw power leaves its mark on some, and this is another reason to take turns. In the world of the story, people understand that their well being is bound up together.

These values stand in sharp contrast to the values brought to this continent by European conquest and colonization. The colonization mindset is still a strong current in United States law, policy, and culture. The assumptions of colonization influence ideas and customs about property ownership, the scale of impact of moral choices, and what it means to be an American. The way we understand class, race, education, the use of force in civil society, and so much more is tangled up in the mindset of colonization. Among the urgent issues arising from these roots is that of immigration justice. The way we understand who is welcome in our communities and how we demonstrate that is filtered through the assumptions of colonization. Justice for Indigenous people is one aspect of the project of dismantling systemic racism. Economic justice is an aspect of dismantling systemic racism. Immigration justice is an aspect of dismantling systemic racism.

The abstract concepts can be dizzying when we first become aware of the connections between all of the issues that bring suffering and division in our society. Today’s Address has a lot of history and facts, and we’ll put out a document with references and links after Platform. We might begin by focusing on our relationships, and on understanding that our interrelatedness extends beyond our immediate circles. We show up for our neighbors because of our common humanity, because we are connected in community, and because our liberation is bound up together. We work to understand how the myths of colonization have affected our minds so that we can clear away the obstacles to rich and full relationships with all of our neighbors and loved ones.

The impact of injustice for Indigenous people and for immigrants is closer to home for some of us than others; WES includes people from a variety of backgrounds. When we add just one degree further to include the consequences for our spouses, children, and close loved ones, many of us have a very personal view of the effects of systemic racism in affairs related to Indigenous communities, in policies toward immigrant communities, and in a variety of government actions that fall especially heavily on people of color. If it’s not you or someone in your immediate inner circle who is impacted by any given manifestation of systemic racism, it is almost certainly a friend in this Zoom room or someone close to them. Shifting our priorities to be rooted in love means remembering that threats to Indigenous sovereignty, cruelty and abuse in our immigration system, out-of-control policing that destroys lives in favor of property, all of these things affect specific human beings-- people we care about.

Indeed, the very assertion that the people we care about are human beings, with human rights -- people who deserve dignity and self-determination -- flies in the face of colonization. So let’s step back a bit and look at the roots of that philosophy.

In her book, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz traces the roots of the European mindset of conquest back to the Crusades, heading into the Inquisition and to the enclosure of public lands in the 1600s. She writes that the privatization of the common lands, creating a permanent underclass of landless poor, was both an expression of the trend in European conquest and also one of its mechanisms. “The traumatized souls thrown off the land, as well as their descendants, became the land-hungry settlers enticed to cross a vast ocean with the promise of land and attaining the status of gentry.”  In essence, what happened with enclosure was to more deeply codify the idea that a few people mattered but most didn’t, and that property mattered more than the majority of people.

Meanwhile the Crusades, which was an attempt to take control of lucrative trades routes, also brought new avenues for oppression. Dunbar-Ortiz reminds us that this period brought us the papal law of limpieza de sangre, cleanliness of blood, beginning in 1449. Clean blood referred to ancestry that was exclusively Christian. So, in other words, even converting to Christianity did not bring legal equality to those whose ancestors were Jewish or Muslim. Some people are more important than others. Only some people are really human.

It is not an accident that this is the same period of history that brought the Doctrine of Discovery. In 1452, Pope Nicholas V decreed that so-called Christian nations had permission for the conquest, colonization, and exploitation of non-Christian territories and peoples. This became a cornerstone of international law. In 1823, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the discovery rights of European sovereigns had been transferred to the new United States. Indigenous ways need not be respected, according to the Supreme Court in 1823.

Some people are more important than others. Only some people are really people. And who gets to be a human being, who gets to have human rights, is inextricably tied with the thirst for wealth and the desire of conquering nations to extract resources and labor from land and people not their own.

These are not natural laws. These are not ethics that are universal for all people. Civilizations all over the world have shown that other ways are possible, ways built on mutual relationship and community thriving. But the baseline assumptions of conquest helped make all of the misery of colonization possible. These baseline assumptions fed the lies that justified the enslavement of human beings, generation to generation, because the extraction of wealth for the few was more important than the human rights of the many.

We can plainly see the destruction that this worldview brought to all of the places that were targeted for conquest. But it wasn’t done destroying lives in Europe, either. There may have been periods of uneasy peace, when it seemed like enlightenment might eventually bring liberation to all, or at least to all who could be admitted to European universities. But the bargain was still built on inequality, and in times when there was land or wealth to be gained by the few, or in times when scarcity arrived and the ruling class needed someone to blame, the illusion fell apart. Felix Adler, educated in Germany in the 1870s, absorbed the hope that it was possible for people to regard one another as full human beings. But the powers of division had been dug too deeply. The legacy of dehumanization was still there, and the horrors of World War I and World War II showed that, once again, only some people were regarded as human.

It has been observed that the phrase “illegal immigrant” was not in popular use until World War II, and it was first used to describe Jewish refugees. You may recall that the potential arrival of these refugees in the United States led to another layer of racism and cruelty in U.S. immigration policy, on top of the racism and cruelty in laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act. The attempt to keep out Jewish and Eastern European refugees, based on concepts of race rooted in blood, brought immigration quotas to carefully control who was allowed in. Having no place to go, those subject to Nazi persecution were tortured and slaughtered. It was this experience that led Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel to coin the phrase that makes first half of the title of this Platform, “No human being is illegal.”

Wiesel said, “Know that no human being is illegal. That is a contradiction in terms. Human beings can be beautiful or more beautiful, they can be fat or skinny, they can be right or wrong, but illegal? How can a human being be illegal?”

Yet, in 2018, the U.S. Department of Justice instructed U.S. Attorney offices to refer to undocumented immigrants as “illegal aliens.” Immigration attorney Shahid Haque-Hausrath explains that this term is used to “dehumanize immigrants and divorce [us] from thinking of them as human beings.”

Are we clear how we got here? Are we clear about how the dehumanization of Indigenous people, the dehumanization of people who were enslaved, and the dehumanization of immigrants and refugees, even unto this day, are all related? When it benefits the few to exploit people and land and all of our relations in order to extract wealth, that system rests on the idea that only some of us are humans, only some of us are worthy, only some of us deserve human rights. There are lies that are told to make it seem like some of us have provisional worth, conditional humanity; lies that try to entice us to help maintain this system -- lies such as purity of blood, or the superiority of the Euro-American definition of civilization, or that scarcity comes from the arrival of other poor people rather than from rich people hoarding wealth.

We need to untangle all of it so that we can remember that we are in relationship with each other. Colonization has been part of Western civilization for so long, it has infected our minds and hearts. Few of us are immune from subtle messages about the worth or lack of worthiness of people, especially people who do not contribute to wealth as it is commonly measured.

Our liberation is bound up together. Like the people in the story, “Grandmother Spider Brings the Light,” we can operate with a different mindset, one of collective well-being and shared wisdom. To get there, we will need to re-think our assumptions about the way people are permitted to live and move in the world.

That brings us back to re-thinking the rules and customs around us, a network of assumptions that rests on colonization. Basing the United States legal system on the belief that Indigenous forms of government were and are not valid and that Indigenous value systems were and are inferior meant that the treaty rights and governmental systems of sovereign Indigenous nations have not been respected. If we take Indigenous sovereignty seriously, different solutions become evident.

When we consider the issues of immigration justice, to take one example, many assume that the United States government is the only entity that can determine who remains within and who is expelled from this territory between Millinocket, Maine, and San Diego, California, let alone the territories currently known as Alaska and Hawaii. Elizabeth Ellis, Assistant Professor at New York University and a citizen of the Peoria Tribe of Oklahoma, questions this paradigm. She writes:

“If we reposition ourselves, and think about migration not as American citizens, as documented or undocumented, but as settlers who have built lives and identities on Indigenous lands, and often at the expense of Indigenous peoples, this conversation looks very different.”

She goes on to say: “In articulating support for these critical [immigration] reforms, many typically appeal to humanitarian sympathy and visions of a modern world that provide all humans with the right to migration and citizenship. Yet we often forget that Native people have been fighting the United States’ efforts to carve borders into their homelands and territories for centuries and, in many ways, we have come to see exclusionary borders as a natural and normal state of international relations. In this context, then, including Native people [in the conversation] both bolsters challenges to US borders and provides alternative models of relationality and nationhood that may help us reimagine solutions to our current humanitarian crisis.”

Ellis gives a number of historical examples and contemporary applications in her full article. We’ll send out a link after Platform to a document with all of the links related to today’s Address.

Remembering that we are all related, then, we include immigration justice and supporting Indigenous sovereignty among our action plans for anti-racism and anti-oppression. As we heard in the reading that Karen shared, we can think of this in terms of restitution, in addition to being simply ethical and in right relationship with a goal for the common good. Not every person can do everything, yet we can coordinate in this community and with our community partners to embrace the whole circumference of the ethical manifold. We do this not simply out of compassion, but with recognition that another world is possible, a world of right relationship, and we hope to live into that world to make it as real as possible as soon as possible.

This Indigenous People’s Day weekend, there are two action items that might interest you. There is a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives, “The Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policy in the United States,” which aims to help us come to terms with the atrocities committed against Indigenous children and their families through boarding schools. Contact whoever will listen to you in the U.S. House of Representatives to let them know your thoughts on this bill. There is a lot of history to unpack, and this is a place to start. While you’ve got the attention of your favorite Member of Congress, you can ask them about the Native American Voting Rights Act. Indigenous voters are subject to many of familiar voter suppression tactics, such as reduced polling places and interrupted mail service. Check out the Lakota People’s Law project for more information on both of those. https://www.lakotalaw.org/

I asked R. of WES’s Immigration Justice Team for some other ideas about how we can work together toward collective liberation. R. reminded me of the Food Justice Initiative, which is connected with Sanctuary DMV. The Food Justice Initiative is a “systemic program rooted in justice” that helps immigrant families, regardless of immigration status, access mutual aid in the form of food and other necessities. Keep in mind that the COVID relief bill blocked aid to families in which any person in the household is undocumented. The Food Justice Initiative (article in the Post) gives us a chance to stay in touch with our neighbors and the needs they identify for themselves.

WES’s Immigration Justice Team has also been monitoring the situation of Binsar Siahaan (article in the Post), who was snatched from his faith community, Glenmont United Methodist Church, when ICE showed up and lied about the purpose of their visit. WES members may recall your past support of Rosa Gutierrez Lopez, who has been living in sanctuary at Cedar Lane UU congregation. R. points out that the strong organization of the Sanctuary team at Cedar Lane made it much more difficult for ICE to try the kind of underhanded tactics that they used to arrest Binsar, and that community support makes a tremendous difference. If you are on WES’s Immigration Justice action email list, stay tuned for possible actions we can take to support Binsar and help him return to his family.

R. told me, “Doing support work changes you as it changes the world. You meet people who are not anything like you, from different races, classes, faiths and world-views. It is the antidote to helplessness in the time of neo-fascism, as well. There are so many opportunities to join in.” He said WES members have written letters, gathered materials and funds, and attended vigils. The work is ongoing.

Humanism, to me, is a worldview in which we seek human solutions to human problems. And most problems are human problems; the few problems that are facts of the natural world are made exponentially worse by human choices to favor greed and selfishness over the recognition of our interrelatedness. Intellectual rigor and a humanist outlook lead us to dismantle the fallacies that undergird conquest and colonization; to note clearly the common roots of injustice affecting Indigenous peoples, people of color, and immigrants; and to turn toward right relationship in our thinking and in our practice. Let us remember that we are all related, and that our liberation is bound up together. So be it.

[diarrheaworldstarhiphop]

I’m five minutes in and already this seems like something beamed in from an alternate universe. Did this crowd just cheer “doctoral degrees” and then, specifically, “psychoanalysis”?

This big arena debate world where people cheer academic qualifications like wrestling belts is obviously Peterson’s world. And it’s really off-putting. He sits in his chair looking expectant and deep in thought, occasionally letting slip a brief acknowledgment of the surreality of the situation. Zizek, on the other hand, looks bewildered. When his introduction is concluded, he simply shrugs and does a brief facepalm.

Peterson, by contrast, barely flinches. He’s obviously used to this… And that’s the weirdest thing of all.

I’m not really sure what I’m in for here as I sit down to watch this. I’ve heard interesting things about this debate from those who have already watched it — apparently it’s not a complete waste of time — and so I have been tempted to give it a go for myself…

But I’m already aware of the kind of discussion I’m hoping for — and unlikely to get — and this anticipation is probably going to inform my viewing for better or worse…

So, first things first, I feel like I should declare my biases.

I like Zizek (generally speaking). He’s the sort of cantankerous sniffling voice I’m happy to have in the public sphere. I have a soft spot for him, in a way, because, perhaps like many other people my age, he was the first contemporary “Public Intellectual” that I paid any attention to; the first living philosopher I remember hearing and reading about.

However, that’s not to say I know his work all that well. The only book of his I’ve read with any seriousness is his first: The Sublime Object of Ideology — which is still a good read — but the majority of the rest of his written work is unknown to me. (Those films of his are, at the very least, entertaining.) I have, however, read a lot of his earlier articles and writings on communism, but I’ll come back to those shortly.

My understanding of Peterson’s general project is even more limited. I haven’t read his book. All I’ve seen are a few lectures and some click-bait “Peterson destroys…” YouTube appearances. That being said, I’ve found very little to admire or relate to in what I have heard him say. (I’ve previously critiqued one of his UK television appearances here.) But he’s nonetheless on my radar as a cultural figure and I have found his discussions around masculinity to be interesting, if only because of what he leaves out.

I want to briefly talk about Peterson’s views on masculinity because they seem integral to his overall position and you can see much of the same logic that is applied to this topic leaking out into his other opinions. For instance, on at least one occasion, he’s compared the modern “femininsation” of men to the Nietzschean death of God. It’s an apt comparison in some respects — although I’d take it more positively than he seems to do. His argument seems to be that men have lost their purpose, their drive, their grounding, like peasants without God, or a state without its sense of nationhood — the latter being a particularly important similarity, I think, when considering his popularity amongst hypermasculine nationalists. Point being: men are lost without their own inflated (and gendered) senses of self. Peterson is here to give it back to you. It’s not a bad project in and of itself, but he’s pretty terrible at it. His success despite this perhaps says more about the depths of the crisis that we’re willing to accept him as a savior.

What Peterson decries as taking the place of traditional gendered duties and positions within society is what he regularly defines as “contemporary nihilism”. This nihilism is, of course, a huge freedom to many others who have felt traumatically constricted by societal expectations and in contemporary philosophy more generally we have seen the emergence of a new nihilism which explores the outsider epistemologies of occultism with as much rigour as scientific rationalism — you could say it was precisely this crossover that gave the world Reza Negarestani — and so Peterson’s nihilism is, in itself, a very limited concept.

Ray Brassier’s old nihilism, for instance, is a nihilism that grounds itself on the “meaninglessness” of rational truth, which is to say, nihilism is an attempt to decloak oneself of the stories and “realisms” which we allow to structure (but also inevitably limit) our realities. Truth and meaning are not the same thing and so a life of facts and rationality is far closer to nihilism than the popular conception of the term allows. By contrast, despite warning of its dangers when it applies to something he doesn’t believe in, Peterson seems to champion the adoption of ideologies in order to give your life meaning. It is in this sense that he’s often positioned by some as fascist (or at least fascist-adjacent).

Masculinity, for Peterson, appears to be just such an ideology in being held up as an Idea that gives gendered subjects purpose and a sense of duty. But what is odd about this is how much Peterson otherwise critiques ideology. Because, for Peterson, it seems ideologies are only ever collective. Individualism, in particular, is not an ideology…

… And that’s ridiculous. As Zizek writes himself:

[I]deology is not simply a ‘false consciousness’, an illusory representation of reality, it is rather this reality itself which is already to be conceived as ‘ideological’ — ‘ideological’ is a social reality whose very existence implies the non-knowledge of its participants as to its essence — that is, the social effectivity, the very reproduction of which implies that the individuals ‘do not know what they are doing’. ‘Ideological’ is not the false consciousness of a (social) being but this being itself in so far as it is supported by a false consciousness.

He defines ideology as Marx does (at least implicitly): “they do not know it, but they are doing it“. Such is Peterson’s argument — don’t pay attention to any of that stuff which supposedly defines (or fails to define) your existence, just get on with it; tidy your room. (His insistence on personal cleanliness is, I’ve always felt, near identical to an army induction into self-presentation, and if that isn’t the ultimate immersion in ideology then I don’t know what is.)

Today, despite Peterson’s attempts to rehabilitate it, we see that the particular ideology of patriarchal individualism has been in crisis and so the left embraces the ideological crisis of masculinity, understood as a by-product of a broader crisis of patriarchal capitalism, in order to encourage the emergence of a new consciousness; the emergence of something altogether different. This is not to try and destroy men as such — well, okay, that depends who you ask… — but rather the ideology of Masculinity. In response to this general vibe, Peterson’s blinkered response to this is to try and save patriarchal capitalism by focussing on the individual and selling them an anti-feminist magical voluntarism.

What Peterson doesn’t get is that the argument is not that this crisis of manhood is a result of capitalism’s “failure”, per se — which is presumably why Peterson wants to defend its honour — but rather that this crisis is a direct result of capitalism’s own internal development and indifference.

(It would also be interesting to see what other takes people have on this, actually: “the feminisation of men” — a marxist feminazi psyop or a by-product of free market automation reducing the need for big strong physical labourers? You’d think Peterson, for all his citing of anthropological evidence, would be more on board with the latter, but he’s not… Responses on a postcard!)

The relevance of modern masculinity, and its crisis, to this particular debate is that masculinity is, more often than not, framed as an ideology in being not just a gender but a gender identity. To be a Man, in the sense that Peterson describes, is — sociopolitically and, that is, ideologically speaking — not that different from being a Communist. It is a declaration that says something about your view of the world and how people should expect you to act within it; indeed, how you should expect yourself to act within it. In this way, his is an individualised ethics — and that is how many contemporary men’s groups, for better or for worse, present themselves on both the left and the right, in defining masculinity as an ethics first and foremost — whilst communism instead strives for a collective and communal viewpoint, a “collective subjectivity”, a collectivised ethics, far broader than Peterson’s consideration of (but of course not ignorant to) these kinds of identity markers.

I want to keep this in mind going forwards because I think Peterson’s framing of masculinity actually gives us a good entry point for talking about communism (and his particular framing of communism) and this may help us understand just how flawed and limiting his conceptions of both these things are.

As I mentioned in passing, over the last few years I’ve started to read more and more of Zizek’s earlier work — particularly his articles on communism and, specifically, “the Idea of Communism“. When writing my Master’s dissertation back in 2017, reading a lot about Maurice Blanchot and his Bataillean conception of “community”, the Idea of communism emerged as a central framework through which the questions Blanchot (and others) raised have been continued into the present, and Zizek — as a writer and an editor — at one time contributed a fair amount to this discourse.

I’ve written a lot about the “Idea of communism” before on this blog, albeit under various different guises — the Idea of communism as an event horizon; as a “community which gives itself as a goal”; as a sort of ethical praxis in and of itself, a sort of politico-philosophical First Principle, rather than a solidified (statist) political ideal — it’s under the surface of a lot of my patchwork stuff.

To be clear, what I mean by the “Idea” of communism here is perhaps something akin to the Platonic Idea. To quote Plato himself, writing about his own philosophy:

There is no treatise of mine about these things, nor ever will be. For it cannot be talked about like other subjects of learning, but out-of much communion about this matter, and from living together, suddenly, like a light kindled from a leaping fire, it gets into the soul, and from there on nourishes itself.

The Idea, in this sense, is a sort of ephemeral thing, an event in a process of becoming. It is fuel for discourse and politics but is not, in itself, either of these two things. It’s something else unique to philosophy.

To many this may sound like the beginning of some wishy-washy apolitical intro to communism, but the intention here is to emphasise — what Deleuze & Guattari, in What Is Philosophy?, call — “the Concept” of communism. (This is, arguably, also the intention of U/Acc, in giving philosophical priority to the Concept of Acceleration over its conditioned political vagaries which leave the concept in the corner to their detriment — i.e. the rejection of a state-accelerationism on the same terms as a state-communism, with both being as sensical as the other despite how the latter is so often understood.)

The Concept, in this sense, is a provocation, an invention. To pin it down, to attack it or defend it, is to condition it and use it — which is fine in most circumstances — but there is always something that comes first which we mustn’t lose sight of in the process putting concepts to use. We must be “critical” — just as Peterson describes his preferred mode of thought, which we’ll discuss in a minute — by which I mean that we must not lose sight of the process of engineering which produces the concept when we put it to use. That is the purpose of the Idea or the Concept: that which philosophy always hopes to produce: the simultaneous product of and originator of thinking. (I’m writing on this in relation to accelerationism for somewhere else at the moment so I won’t go into this too much further or else I’ll start plagiarising myself.)

The Idea of communism, then, becomes this original seed which existed before the horrors of state-communism and continues to exist after them. It is a communism produced communally, lidibinally; a kind of communist consciousness; an outsideness; a view to that which isn’t. It is, in this first instance, the Idea of the future, of the new, of what is to come, held in the minds of those affected by it at the expense of that which is. When Kodwo Eshun called himself a “concept-engineer”, this is no doubt what he was positioning himself in favour of, and against the “great inertia engine”, the “moronizer”, the “futureshock absorber.” That’s what the Communist Manifesto calls for too. It’s a provocation, a call to revolution, not just of politics and economics but, more fundamentally, of thought and thinking.

Masculinity — reconfigured as a concept — (and femininity too, for that matter) can be thought of in much the same way, as a becoming, which may signify certain horrors, past and present, but as a future may instead be something which gives itself as a goal. And there is every chance that that goal might be unrecognisable to our current sense of the cloistered Ideal.

Like it or not, the best word we have for this process, related to gender anyway, is queering.

Everything else is cage.

Anyway, I’m rambling…

What does any of this have to do with anything? Well, it has everything to do with Peterson’s opening statement.

The Idea of communism is seemingly an alien concept to him. The very Idea of philosophy seems alien to him, for that matter. He’s a man of blinkered systems and boundaries and “truths”, and to such an extent that “truth” ends up undermining his own arguments. His pursuit of an absolute logic — so common to many North American conservative pundits; “facts don’t care about your feelings” — only makes the holes in his reasoning more apparent. Encapsulated in a wall of logic that he has built around himself, he starts to undermine his own apparent superiority by being incapable of giving himself the room to breath and produce thought. He’s like a real life Vulcan, his ironic flaw being the bemusement which erupts from his consideration of the adaptability of those illogical and mentally vulnerable humans (read: leftists).

What makes this difficult for some to see, however, seems to be the effort Peterson puts into superficially privileging the opposite within his own work. Early on in his opening statement, for instance, he says:

It doesn’t seem to me that either Marx or Engels grappled with one fundamental — with this particular fundamental truth — which is that almost all ideas are wrong … It doesn’t matter if they’re your ideas or something else’s ideas — they’re probably wrong. And, even if they strike you with the course of brilliance, your job is to assume that, first of all, they’re probably wrong and then to assault them with everything you have in your arsenal and see if they can survive.

Such is philosophy — and, on that note, I’m reminded of a particular passage from Deleuze and Guattari’s What Is Philosophy? where they write that the Greeks distrusted the Idea, the Concept, “so much, and subjected it to such harsh treatment, that the concept was more like the ironical soliloquy bird that surveyed the battlefield of destroyed rival opinions (the drunken guests at the banquet).”

And yet, for Deleuze and Guattari, the Concept doesn’t seek truth. It might emerge from certain judgments and appraisals, from thought, but truth is not its end. If truth were the goal for Marx and Engels, it might be called the Truth Manifesto. But it’s not. It is called the Communist manifesto because communism is its goal — a politics of multiplicitous and unruly communality.

Here we see the first glimpse of Peterson’s own nihilism — again, despite his apparent rejection of that -ism and its affects on thought. We might ask ourselves: What is it to introduce your position with a statement as vacuous as “almost all ideas are wrong”? Deleuze and Guattari, again, do a far better job of articulating the stakes of this suggestion which, again, seem totally lost of Peterson:

A concept always has the truth that falls to it as a function of the conditions of its creation. […] Of course, new concepts must relate to our problems, to our history, and, above all, to our becomings. But what does it mean for a concept to be of our time, or of any time? Concepts are not eternal, but does this mean they are temporal? What is the philosophical form of the problems of a particular time? If one concept is “better” than an earlier one, it is because it makes us aware of new variations and unknown resonances, it carries out unforeseen cuttings-out, it bring forth an Event that surveys us. But did the earlier concept not do this already? If one can still be a Platonist, Cartesian, or Kantian today, it is because one is justified in thinking that their concepts can be reactivated in our problems and inspire those concepts that need to be created. What is the best way to follow the great philosophers? Is it to repeat what they said or to do what they did, that is, create concepts for problems that necessarily change?

From this we can say that the prevalence and continued existence of “Marxists” and Marxism is that the problems Marx (and Engels, of course) pointed to remain relevant today because we remain under the problematic system of capitalism. Many further concepts have been added to the arsenal but the original ground remains unresolved. Capitalism — as another -ism — endures for the same reasons. We have yet to settle the problem of capitalism as a response to the end of feudalism and instead treat the conceptual framework of capital as eternal rather than temporal, a being rather than a becoming.

Now, the Idea or Concept of communism can perhaps be summarised in similar terms. Communism is the name of a becoming-to-come, a postcapitalism. Peterson, instead, in wanting to rehabilitate what we already have, doesn’t get this. But still he continues to use the language of someone who does whilst nonetheless remaining trapped in his own circular argument.

For example, again in his opening statement, he calls Marx and Engels “typical” — as opposed to “critical” — thinkers because they accept things (that is, the problems of capitalism) as they are, as given and self-evident (to capitalism), and don’t think about their own thinking, which is to say that they also present their critiques to their readers as if they were self-evident. Peterson says no — these problems are inherent to nature, not capitalism. But in shifting the goal posts rather than engaging with the text directly he portrays himself as guilty of what he decries in them.

In doing this, Peterson sidesteps the entire point of the Marxist project, particularly as it is framed in the Manifesto: a project which attempts to systematise a deep understanding of capitalism (as in Marx’s Capital) and then critique the material reality of capitalism, provoking action against it (as in the Manifesto). If anything, Peterson might have come out of this better if he’d read anything but the manifesto. Instead, he misses the entire point, failing to get under the skin of Marxism because he fails to acknowledge its attempts to get under the skin of capitalist realism and reveal to us the ways in which that which is, that which we see and accept as the nature of reality, is instead a contingency. In this sense, “all ideas (capitalism tells you) are wrong” could be the brainlet summary of the Manifesto in itself, and in this sense, if it is an ideology, it is one which defines itself by what it escapes.

It is here that the circle of Peterson’s argument completes itself before its even really begun. What is it to critique critical thinking in this way? What is it to critique critique through naturalised tradition? Does this make Peterson a critical-critical thinker? Or is he instead just a critical-typical thinker? Either way, his is a position that eats itself. Peterson, however, seems good at supplying the gall to ignore your own inability to take your own medicine.

This is the entire problem with Peterson’s argument going forwards too, which might be summarised as: “Marx and Engels say that this is self-evident within capitalism and must be challenged — I say, actually it is self-evident within nature and nature is sacrosanct so back off.” Peterson’s form of “critique” is simply to take pre-existing critiques of our sociopolitical world and place them within a broader (supposedly) scientific context and, in the process, turn his own critical thinking back into (by his own definition) a typical thinking. He’s literally bending backwards over his own arguments.

Take, for instance, his analysis of the first “axiom” of the Communist Manifesto — his summary of Marxist historical materialism being that the very engine of history is economic class struggle. Peterson flippantly throws out the relevance of economics and says, sure, class struggle exists, hierarchies exist, but they exist in nature too so why are we so upset about them and put all the blame on economics?

In framing it this way, he seemingly misses the main point that our hierarchies are not “natural” — they are instantiated by capitalism as an economic system. To say that hierarchies have always existed ignores the sense in which economics defines class. It is to ignore the very nature of our hierarchies, in the present epoch, as economic — that is, how economics forms them — which we can interpret as not just being about how much your earn but also how much you are worth, connecting slavery to wage-slavery and encompassing the fallouts of both. Contrary to this, Peterson’s is the sort of argument that takes scientific observations of the natural kingdom and then uses them to reconstruct a sort of secular Divine Right of Kings. It is a gateway to a racist and eugenic thinking.

It is from this flawed analysis that Peterson goes on to make the point that went viral in the aftermath of the debate. He says:

it is finally the case that human hierarchies are not fundamentally predicated on power and I would say that biological / anthropological data on that is crystal clear. You don’t rise to a position of authority that’s reliable in a human society primarily by exploiting other people. It’s a very unstable means of obtaining power.

This clip has done the rounds online already, as it gets a very audible laugh from the crowd, and rightly so. It’s perhaps the most moronic comment anyone could make — but it is also a comment that can be split into a right half and a wrong half, further demonstrating Peterson’s circular reasoning.

People do rise to positions of authority through exploitation — that is true not just of capitalism but the feudalism that birthed it and it is also, arguably, true of the animal kingdom too (depending on how you define exploitation — the exploitation of behaviours, habits, circumstances?) — but it is also right to say that this is an unstable means of obtaining power. Rather than that instability meaning people don’t do it, it leads to the sort of resentment and protest that Peterson dismisses as unfounded. His entire logic system starts to fall into place. Reading the Communist Manifesto at aged 18 and presumably reading it with all the nuance of an 18 year old, Peterson has embarked on a career of self-fulfilling criticism based on the logical fallacies of a teenager.

From this point, it is very hard to take anything else he says seriously. What follows is a long, meandering and confused rant that ends with the basic point: “Actually, relatively speaking, the poor are richer now than they once were… As are the rich…” Thank you, Dr. Peterson. Truly insightful.

I’m left wanting to bail out at this point. I feel like I’ve wasted 40 minutes of my life but I try and stick it out for Zizek’s opening statement at least.

From the outset, it is far more interesting. Taking on the three topics of the debate’s title — Communism, Happiness, Capitalism — he considers the ways in which “Happiness” is not such a simple and virtuous goal for us to give ourselves, especially under a system like capitalism which does all it can to grab the steering wheel of our desires. (It’s an argument I’ve made myself before when writing about Mark Fisher’s Acid Communism — a communism that is “beyond the pleasure principle”.) Zizek says:

I agree that human life or freedom and dignity does not consist just in searching for happiness — no matter how much we spiritualise it — or in the effort to actualise our inner potentials. We have to find some meaningful cause beyond the mere struggle for pleasurable survival.

Zizek’s statement from here is actually quite brilliant, and subtle. He eschews any temptation to echo Peterson’s polemic book report and instead implicitly skewers everything wrong with Peterson’s own body of work and, indeed, the entire situation of their meeting under the cover of the debate’s own title. It’s very cunning.

For instance, he says a few minutes later:

Once traditional authority loses its substantial power it is not possible to return to it. All such returns are, today, a post-modern fake. Does Donald Trump stand for traditional values? No. His conservatism is a post-modern performance; a gigantic ego trip.

Whilst Zizek takes firm aim at Trump, Peterson lingers on the edge of his seat. You wonder how much he knows that he is also in Zizek’s sights. Whilst Peterson through criticisms at a 170-year-old target that just don’t stick, Zizek DESTROYS his opponent in a philosophical proxy war.

If Trump is, according to Zizek, the ultimate postmodernist president, Peterson appears, by proxy, to be the most successful postmodernist public intellectual — the attack-dog of YouTube conservatism, the spewer of the very postmodernism he declares his enemy through his snake-oil salesman act of Making Men Great Again as a neo-traditional ideology.

Zizek powers through point after point from here and everything starts to blur into one. It’s not easy to follow without the post-stream benefit of stopping and starting, but there is substance here — substance, I am nonetheless told by the better informed, that Zizek has already repeated again and again through his most recent books and public appearances. There is nothing new here, but it is in part worth listening to just to see Peterson’s face. He is out of his depth. And it shows.

Whereas Peterson’s history lesson is under-informed, Zizek’s history lesson, encapsulating the 20th / 21st century development of hegemonic ideologies, ends simply with a door through which Peterson blindly walks, being the capstone to Zizek’s own argument simply by being himself. Little else needs to be said. The undertone of Zizek’s argument seems to be: “You want postmodernism? You’ve just seen a masterclass… And wasn’t it shit!” It’s very entertaining.

But honestly, I’m burnt out. It’s hard to adjust to Zizek’s rapid-fire drive-by of our contemporary moment after Peterson’s lacklustre ahistorical ramble. Maybe I’ll come back and watch the follow-up back and forth at a later date… But I doubt I’ll want to blog about this any further.

UPDATE: This, from Quillette of all places, is spot on:

The debate about whether there’s a straight line from Marx to Stalin is an important one, especially given the revival of interest in socialism in the contemporary West. Everyone should want the key participants in that debate to be as well informed as possible. Marxists should want to sharpen their minds by having to confront the best versions of anti-Marxist arguments, while anti-Marxists should want a champion for their position who knows Marx’s writings inside and out. Unfortunately, as he’s shown on many occasions, Jordan Peterson doesn’t fit this bill.

[lilydodge]

How is therapeutic parenting different from regular parenting?

This is part of a series for Foster Care Awareness Month, where I answer questions submitted via facebook or tumblr about my work as a therapeutic foster parent. Ask your own question here!

It’s easiest for me to use narrative examples in explanations like this, but I don’t tell stories about my youth online, so all of these are hypotheticals based on my experiences and training. 

Therapeutic parenting is different in a few key ways. One is that it has therapeutic goals - a youth that you’re parenting may have specific behaviors, trauma symptoms, or thought patterns that you’re actively trying to work on.

For instance, say you have a 15 year old young woman who is really struggling with self esteem and feeling like she has something to contribute to the world. Therapeutic parenting might include things like:

Subscribing to a meal kit service and cooking with her every evening, slowly building up her sense of confidence and agency in the kitchen. Providing lots of accurate and appropriate praise as you eat together so she experiences you enjoying the food she made.

Reaching out to her school to identify clubs she might be interested in joining, and working with school staff to come up with a healthy and supportive way to encourage and welcome her to participate. 

Working with her on a list of “Things I Am Proud Of.” Keeping an eye out for opportunities to add to that list, and to help her refer back to that list in times of struggle. Developing language and coping skills with her around self-image, anxiety, and shame. 

Throughout this process, the therapeutic parent will be tracking what’s going on, often documenting it in an official way. They’ll be figuring out what works and what doesn’t work - maybe she absolutely HATED staying after school for the lit mag club, but after she helped you clean the kitchen, she was beaming when you pointed out the next day how pleasant and nice to use it was. You’ll share these strategies with whatever other therapeutic professionals you’re working with, and advocate for them to be used at school as well. 

Because of these clearly stated behavioral, emotional, and relational goals, therapeutic parenting is a lot more big-picture focused. In-the-moment choices about discipline, consequences, and parental responses often look very different from “standard parenting.”

You have to keep in mind the overall goals, and whether your choices in the moment support the overall goals. 

For example, say you have a 10 year old boy who struggles with lying. Typically, kids with trauma who tell lies are doing it out of knee-jerk self-preservation and fear. So punishing the lies doesn’t “teach them better,” it just deepens that sense of “adults are not safe” and encourages the behavior. 

Say you’re heading out and you ask him if he has his jacket in his backpack. He says yes. You get there, and he’s cold. He didn’t bring his jacket. Standard parenting might suggest that you scold the youth: you told me it was in your backpack! We’ve talked about telling lies!

But in this case, his “lie” was because, in the moment, he was being asked something by a parent figure, which sends his traumatized brain into fight-or-flight mode. His brain said “I’m supposed to do something, so the safest thing to do is just say yes, I did it.” It’s not thinking toward future consequences; brains are not good at that. He may not have even processed that I was asking about his jacket’s location - he may have just heard me ask something and said “yes” out of a self-preservation instinct. 

So if I want the behavior to actually stop long-term, I need to challenge that fear response by being entirely safe. He told me the truth - that he didn’t have his jacket - so I respond by speaking softly and gently, thanking him for letting me know, and problem-solving with him about whether we need to go back home or whether there’s another jacket in the car, etc.

Of course this isn’t a long-term solution; lying as a behavior can be maddening, and at some point he’ll need to learn how to process and follow instructions, manage his own belongings, etc. But kids don’t learn through fear, shame, and scolding. 

What I’d do about the backpack-jacket situation going forward, as a therapeutic parent, is to not give him another opportunity to lie. Because therapeutic parenting is about meeting the youth where they are, and not demanding anything else. 

I now know that being asked to make sure he has his jacket isn’t working for this kid. So from now on, I just grab his jacket on the way out the door. He has enough to worry about, and it’s not worth the potential power struggle of trying to make him do it on his own. Could another 10 year old be asked to bring his jacket? Probably. It’s a developmentally appropriate expectation in general, but not for this child. 

So I’d just bring the jacket. Slowly, as we work on “listening” and other behaviors, maybe I’d ask him to bring his jacket, then go to his bedroom and watch or help him put it in his backpack. Then, ask him to bring it, and check his backpack once we get into the car. Each of these small moments will be a battle I’ve decided to pick, and he may be aggressive, defiant, frustrated, or annoyed. But my end goal is “he is able to manage his own belongings and respond to reasonable reminders,” so I work toward that goal.

Keeping those goals in mind is so crucial. Because in the moment, it’s so hard to lose sight of them. Suddenly, your goal becomes short-term: “Get him to admit that he lied and apologize,” or your goal becomes unrelated to their emotional wellbeing: “Get him to respect me as the parent.” Acting in pursuit of those goals often runs counter to the other goals, so you’ve got to keep the big-picture goals in mind.

Often, my therapeutic parenting looks like “rewarding the behavior.” But it’s all about understanding that behavior is communication. If my youth has had a destructive, raging tantrum, that's because they are too overwhelmed by their trauma symptoms and Big Feelings. They are feeling ashamed, unsafe, afraid, angry, confused, anxious, etc. And so if I want the behavior to resolve, I have to address the feelings underneath it.

After a tantrum or other violent incident, my first goal is to let the youth know that they are safe, and it’s okay. That I still love them no matter what their behavior is. I often help them clean up, or clean it up for them. I wrap them in a cuddly blanket (usually a weighted blanket), give them a comfort food for a snack, and put on their favorite TV show. If they’re okay with my physical touch, I’ll hug or hold or snuggle them. 

This does not, contrary to popular parenting wisdom, teach the youth that “If I throw a tantrum and break Lily’s things, she will reward me with ice cream, TV, and fun time. Therefore, I will continue to break Lily’s things.” Instead, it teaches the youth that “I am safe, I am loved, I am capable of calming down, my Big Feelings do not make me worthless and they do not run my life.” The behaviors are coming from somewhere - you have to be willing to get behind the behaviors and be creative.

We do often have “natural consequences” - whatever the youth broke, they have to repair, or pay to replace, or it just doesn’t get replaced. After they’ve calmed down, we talk about what happened, how it made us feel, and what wasn’t okay. I offer suggestions for managing the same feelings, and we work on coping skills - like smashing approved things in the “angry box,” or punching a pillow, or just asking me for “ice cream and cuddles” to calm down instead of going through the whole escalation first.

This often looks like choosing your battles - and they may be very different battles than a “regular” parent chooses. Therapeutic parenting requires you to really understand what rules and boundaries you’re setting, and why, and what you’re willing to do to enforce them. If a kid gets so angry around food and dinnertime that they keep stabbing forks into your wooden dining table, maybe just get plastic silverware for the time being, or get a cheap Goodwill table, so you don’t have to worry about managing that behavior. The more breaks you give your youth, the more breaks you give yourself. The fewer battles you pick, the more energy you have to pick the really important ones. Karyn Purvis talks about “filling the yes tank” - saying “yes” as often as possible, unless you really have a good reason not to.

All of this requires you to be trained and trauma informed. Therapeutic parenting is not “common sense,” it’s not “just do what your parents did,” it’s not even “how I raised my biological kids who came out fine. Therapeutic parenting requires an understanding of how trauma impacts the brain and body, and using evidence-based, goal-oriented strategies to respond to the youth’s needs. There’s a lot of creativity and flexibility and improvisation, but it has to be driven by a background awareness of what you’re trying to do, and why, and how. 

This ran long, so I’ll wrap it up here - if you have more questions about specific aspects of therapeutic parenting, please let me know!

[inters3ctional-blog]

Blog Post 1

Walking through life as a woman and as a man are two very different experiences. Then again, even walking through life as a white woman or as a woman of color are different as well. So it’s no surprise, then, that these different lenses (white woman, woman of color, etc) lead to very different perspectives on the same or similar ideologies. In the case of this book, Tupac’s motto “Thug Life” is interpreted in similar ways by the protagonist and the characters she encounters throughout her story. While Starr agrees with the perspectives of her friend Khalil and her father Maverick, she also has her own take on what it ultimately means to her as a woman of color who has gone through multiple traumatic events.

In The Hate U Give, Starr, the protagonist, repeatedly mentions Tupac and his “Thug Life” motto. Throughout the book, she asks many of the important people in her life what Thug Life means to them. Her friend Khalil (who was ultimately the main driving point to a lot of Starr’s questions and realizations) said “The Hate You Give Little Infants Fucks Everybody” meant, to him, that the hate given to the oppressed minorities leads to those same children growing up and acting out as adults (p.17). For example, Khalil was surrounded by hate. His mother had taken money from a gang leader, King, and was in danger of being killed if she could not pay him back. In addition to this, Khalil’s grandmother had been diagnosed with cancer and was fired from her job for not being able to keep up with both the workload and chemo. All of these factors combined with his inability to gain a job led him to take an easier route out-- selling drugs, or the “acting out” part. While he never joined the gang officially (as we later learn, he denied King’s invitation), Khalil was running drugs for one of the biggest gangs in town to put food on the table, keep his mother out of trouble, and pay for his grandmother’s chemotherapy. Before his death, Khalil selling drugs makes no sense to Starr, even if she understands Thug Life in theory. While she knew that Khalil had it rough, she figured he should have just worked more at her father’s store, not understanding that it was more complicated than a minimum wage job could cover. After learning everything that Khalil went through, however, Starr realizes that the community and society itself didn’t give Khalil many other choices besides selling drugs for quick cash. It wasn’t until Starr had taken the time to find out more than just a single story about Khalil that she understood the choices he had made. Without stepping out of her own lens as someone who had two parents willing and able to provide for her, Starr never would have been able to see that Khalil had more resting on his shoulders than just staying in school or getting decent grades. He had a whole family relying on him and a King Lord (gang member) who was breathing down his neck. All of these things together made up her best friend’s identity, not just his selling drugs.

While Starr had not previously thought about what Thug Life meant to her personally, Khalil’s death and the discovery of his full story sparked an increased awareness of sorts on how she acted in both her home community, Garden Heights, and how she acted with her friends at a private school, Williamson High. Before her two lives began to collide, Starr was practically a completely different person in each community, even going so far as to keep her school friends from coming to her birthday parties after noticing that her friends lived in “mini mansions” while she lived in what she refers to multiple times as the ghetto (p.35). At home in Garden Heights, Starr was allowed to express her whole personality, slang, sorrow, anger and all, without worrying about being forced into a single narrative. In her own home, Starr is able to be her most authentic self as her parents and siblings know more about her than how she acted on just the one day. If Starr sobs for hours after watching Khalil die, she is safe in the knowledge that her family knows she isn’t just a crier. On the other hand, Starr is aware, in the back of her mind, that the majority-white community at Williamson would take one aspect of her personality (such as becoming angry) and run with it without seeing the whole picture. Their own lenses, that of a white middle to upper class high schooler, makes it harder for them to struggle to empathize with the “hate” that Starr has been given. While they only see her hitting Hailey (p. 342) and Seven jumping in to grab Remy, Starr’s peers don’t recognize the pain that is behind each punch as Starr defends her best friend’s memory from someone who she used to be friends with. They don’t see the PTSD and trauma that go along with seeing Khalil shot and killed by someone meant to protect them, and they don’t hear the racist comments Hailey had been making the entire time. Overall, through their own lens, the students and ultimately teaching staff don’t see all of the “hate” Starr has been given when she begins acting out. They only see her through the single lens. 

Links for further research:

Peer-reviewed study on police violence to black women here. While not cited much in the above post, it’s a useful resource for more information on police violence against more than just black men like Khalil (after all, the officer pointed his gun at Starr too). 

The Hate U Give pdf, cited multiple times in page numbers like so (p.1). 

Danger of a single story (such as when cited that Starr was worried about being perceived as *just* an angry black woman).

[whateverisbeautiful]

Richonne in Retrospect

#20: The Track (4x15)

So um, no joke, I’m a mess rn. 😭😥😭 Like I was not at all ready to see those pictures for 8b pop up and it really messed me up. How does a TV show hurt this much!? 😭

This wasn’t how I was planning on starting this post but man those pictures just really took me out. 😥  Like seeing Michonne clearly determined to be by his side til the last second. (And I didn’t even catch that they were holding hands at first, and seeing that just broke me even more. 😭) Seeing Rick clearly in shock that the very engine of his entire life, before and after the apocalypse, is basically coming to an abrupt halt. Seeing both of them be there for their son one last time as the place they called home burns. It’s seriously too much. 😔

And as was very rightfully mentioned in a comment, we never even saw a substantial post-canon scene with the four members of Grimes Family 2.0 just in their house in ASZ, except in Rick’s dream world and now that’s just never going to happen. 😢 

It’s interesting timing that those pictures would come out on the day I was going to reflect on my all time favorite Grimes Family 2.0 scene. Like this is literally what I had originally written as the opener for this post:

“Alright so this 20th moment is definitely a big one! This lovely scene with Grimes Family 2.0 on the train tracks is so perfect and it’s my top favorite moment with the three of them. 😍”

And then those pictures came out and it literally felt like a punch in the gut. 😣

But rather than see this post as painful timing I’m going to try and look at it as perfect timing.

Cuz I think this is the time when remembering how happy, and familial, and just all around great these three were together is needed most. 😭😭

Those three characters are clearly about to go through something extremely painful very soon and it’s hard cuz they have been through so much together and survived it. But that’s why this moment in season 4 is so special cuz it reminds you that while yes they’ve been through a lot of traumatizing and tough things together, they’ve also had some really sweet and happy moments too.

So I feel like because it’s still true, and perhaps even more true now, I’ll still go into this break down by saying...Alright so this 20th moment is definitely a big one! This lovely scene with Grimes Family 2.0 on the train tracks is so perfect and it’s my top favorite moment with the three of them. 😍

It’s also a moment that I consider to be a major turning point in the making of Richonne.

See from my observations, I consider this moment to be the moment when Rick realizes he might love Michonne in a different and deeper type of way. 🙌🏾🙌🏾

To me, 4b was when Rick and Michonne realized they had serious love in their hearts for one another. Like there was a spark from their very first meeting at that prison fence and the love was always brewing but I feel it’s in this latter half of season four that they both become more aware that this person could be the love of their life.

And while the love between them grows all throughout 4b, I think it’s in this scene specifically where Rick becomes more self aware about his feelings. So we don’t just have to break this one down. We have to break it all the way down. 😋

So the scene starts where we just see Rick talking and then he turns around to see these two cuties preoccupied with playing a game of balancing on those train tracks.  😊

The shot of Rick turning around to see his family just enjoying themselves is beyond precious. #Art 😭

I love that we get to see how Carl and Michonne’s friendship is so fun and lighthearted even in this world. She’s so good at connecting with Carl and even though we know she’s grown and mature I love that she has such a child like heart with him. ☺️

Rick’s delivery of the line, “What are you doing?” is so great. 😋 Cuz he’s amused and also sort of like “so this was more important than listening to me talk about our resources?” lol.

And I love their playfulness when Carl says he’s winning a bet and Michonne says “In your dreams.” Like all they need is some train tracks to actually have some fun and a moment of levity in all this darkness.

But what makes my heart melt is Rick’s smile when he sees this. Like you can tell he is so appreciative of this lighthearted moment and the happiness Michonne is able to give to his son.

He did after all say Carl needs her and he’s seeing firsthand how true that is and how Michonne really can give Carl a friendship that he can’t quite give him. And I love that you see how much this moment means something to Rick. 😊

It’s also nice cuz it serves as a reminder to Rick that life doesn’t have to be strictly business all the time.

But it does have to be some business lol so as Rick walks to them (which I appreciate cuz it means he’s willing to let them take at least some time for fun) he gently suggests that they might have to speed up the process.

And Michonne validates that by saying “Yeah you’re right. We shouldn’t be fooling around” cuz Homegirl’s mature too 👏🏽 But she’s also fun cuz she turns that into an attempt to get Carl to lose but instead she ends up falling off the tracks. And again I love that we’re seeing them just have fun and be silly. 🙌🏾

And Rick just keeps watching and smiling cuz he knows he and Carl are so lucky to have her. Like they’re seriously a family now. 😭

And since Carl won fair and square he’s adorably like...

Lol, but fr it’s so cute that their little bet was over a candy bar. And it’s also cute how much Carl enjoys the little games she’ll come up with. Cuz in reminding her that she said “winners choice.” it lets you know this bet was at least partly Michonne’s idea.

It’s also so stinking adorable that when she takes out the two candy bars she’s so clearly trying to hint that he should take the one that’s not the Big Cat lol. 😂

Michonne and cat related things is like Richonne and cars, it always makes for a great moment. 👌🏽

But Carl goes for it anyway and Michonne playfully says “Oh come on” before sweetly acknowledge that he “Won it fair and square”.

And y’all I love that Rick is literally just taking it all in and smiling. Like I don’t know that he ever thought he’d see his son get to be this lighthearted again and yet here they are in this super normal and happy moment.

Also I appreciate that while he could have rushed them with their little candy exchange, he instead lets them have this whole little moment as he happily third wheels lol. 😋

And then he watches his good little son kindly agree to split the candy bar cuz they always share. It’s precious cuz in saying “always” that means they do this type of stuff often. 😊

And I love that she actually takes it and cutely says “fork it over” cuz she’s like it’s true tho we do always share. 😂 

Their dynamic is perfection here and, as casual as this moment is, you can still tell that Carl and Michonne mean the world to each other. 

So this scene has always been so special for the Grimes Family 2.0 aspect of it. Even when I first watched this, I loved the friendship Michonne and Carl had.

But now in retrospect, this scene has become crucial to Richonne cuz, as I mentioned earlier, this is where I think we get to visually see the moment Rick realizes he loves Michonne a little differently than he thought.

Cuz y’all, a lot of people think this look right here, seconds before Richonne went canon, was the first time that Rick looked at Michonne like this...

But uh...they thought. 😊

Cuz in this season 4 scene Rick is watching this little candy exchange between Michonne and Carl and then he looks at Michonne like this...

Looks familiar to me. 😋

And y’all that’s just the first time he looks at her like this in this one single scene! Cuz then the scene ends with him looking at her like this...

Re-watching these episodes I really wanted to see if I could track down the moment when Rick and Michonne first knew they might be falling in love. Like I wanted to see if I’d see when Rick and Michonne first seem to know their love for each other went from friend-love to really falling in love. 

And y’all, to me, that lingering look is the moment for Rick. So when I saw this I was like...

(And to me, Michonne’s moment of becoming more self aware is in the next episode,which I’ll def be talking about soon 😋)

I love the little look Rick gives Michonne cuz I’m telling you Homeboy’s slowly but surely becoming self-aware about just how special Michonne is to him personally. Like that look just felt like an “I think I might love you for real” look.

Not just “oh I like her”, or “I love her relationship with Carl”, I think in this moment Rick is realizing I love her. 💯

And now, if this look just happened once you could probably overlook it, but for him to do this twice, it lets you know he’s definitely become more self aware of his feelings for her. 

Like when he looked at Carl, that’s him thinking “aw this is a sweet moment”.

When he turns to Michonne tho...there’s def something different communicated in that look.

And again, for him to look at her like this twice it just confirms that this is different. 🙌 🏾😊

So basically, to make a long story short, this look right here is all the proof needed to let the world know these two have been in love for a long time lol...

They still had a journey to go on in terms of being 100% aware of their feelings but these are just the moments where I think the thought and the notion of being in love first crossed their mind in a much more direct way than before. 

And I love that the scene ends with Rick’s smile as he realizes this is actually a great family moment. Like they make him so happy and that makes me so happy.

Honestly they could have just spent the rest of their days in this little family unit. I would have still tuned in lol.

Also, it’s crazy that this is their only scene in this episode but it makes such a lasting impression and it’s the best scene of the episode in my humble opinion. 😋 

And I love that the episode is called “Us” cuz those three became an “us” in 4b and never looked back.

And y’all! This train track scene I think is even more confirmed to be the moment Rick realized he could have a deeper love for Michonne when three seasons later it’ll be the first thing he recalls about her during the season 7 premiere.😭

Rick recalling this moment during that intense season 7 premiere lets me know just how special this moment was to him and considering it’s, I believe, his earliest memory of her in those season 7 flashback memories, I’m pretty sure that could suggest that this is when he started to fall in love. 🙌🏾☺️

And how could he not, cuz this moment made it crystal clear that Michonne belonged in this family. 👌🏽😊

I love so much about this scene and I’m so glad we got this moment, even if from now on watching it will always make me teary eyed. 😭

And one of the things I love most about this scene is that it illustrates just how true Hershel’s words were. “Things break but they can still grow”. 

And in this moment Rick got to experience the whole new precious plant that’s taken root and grown right before his eyes. 👌🏽🙌 🏾😊

[aestherians]

Do you think the community would benefit from a term to describe kinfolk who are neither spiritual nor psychological?

Hmm... I’m not sure, really. I don’t think creating a category of extremely diverse beliefs that have little to do with each other, yet excludes two categories, is the best course of action. Just saying “non-spiritual, non-psychological” gets the job done and is immediately clear in it’s meaning. So I think this is one of those cases where creating new terminology might actually muddle things.

A better course of action would be to make information on the other beliefs about nonhuman identity more easily available. Instead of explaining the beliefs as “spiritual, psychological, and other”, we should put all the ideas on the same level (while still being aware that the two most common narratives are psiritual and psychological).

In case anyone is reading this and going ‘what to heck, there are other beliefs??’, here’s a copy-pasted list I wrote a few months ago:

Archetypal: The belief that you’re channeling the archetype of your kintype. ‘Archetypes’ in this context are “self-willed and able to act outside of the human psyche, but they are also capable of possessing and overshadowing human psyches” and can be seen as spirits or psychic complexes or both. People who go by this idea have largely spiritual interpretations tied to it, but the idea can stand on its own. It’s very much based on philosophical archetypes, like what Jung and Plato wrote about.

Biological: The belief that otherkinity is based on biological processes, such as brain abnormalities, genetic mutations, and physical appearance. Can be interpreted either as the biological ‘symptoms’ and the otherkinity being intrinsically connected, or in a more “I have green eyes like my kintype, this makes me feel more like my kintype” kind of sense. A common belief here is also that otherkinity is genetic and inheritable.

If physical shifters, vampires, changelings, and similar identities would fall under this definition is up to interpretation (though I’m leaning towards no, since the otherkin community has focused more and more on otherkinity being nonphysical in the last decade or two, and because the vampire community does not want to fall under the otherkin umbrella).

Energetic resonance: The belief that your energy resonates on the same frequency or wavelength as your kintype’s, leading to similar feelings, experiences, and identification, and/or to being drawn to your kintype.

Everyone’s Otherkin: The belief that everyone has non-human aspects, but very few people become aware of or accepting of this fact – i.e. very few people ever awaken. Anyone can awaken, though, and become otherkin given the right circumstances.

Links to Magic: The belief that otherkin are links to magic as an attempt by the greater powers to return magic to this world. It is thus the duty of otherkin to bring magic into mundane life and the world around them.

Magic in general: The belief that otherkinity caused by magic, however you want to interpret that. One example could be that being otherkin is just the way your magic manifests itself. Another example (that people will probably get mad at me for mentioning) could be becoming otherkin via a spell.

Neurological: The belief that otherkinity and the experience of being other-than-human results from atypical neurology

Primal Association: “Everyone has a primal side–this is the part of the brain and personality which is instinct-driven. It may be that in some persons, the primal side is very well-developed. On top of that, the person may identify their primal nature with an animal or animals, similar to the way a dissociative has separated different personalities in their mind”-Winged Wolf Psion

Psychic Connection: “If a person, when very young, developed a very deep psychic link with a certain animal, then they may take on–or take in–the mind of that animal to such a degree that it becomes a part of them, and remains so even after the link is severed.”-Winged Wolf Psion

Psychology: A lot of different beliefs fall under the psychological category. The most common beliefs are imprinting (where the person in question imprinted more on another species than on humans early in life) and subconscious coping mechanisms (where the person went through troubling or traumatic events and developed a nonhuman identity to, for example, explain the events or make the events easier to live through).

Mixed reasons: Any mix of any reasons. Commonly a spiritual kintype that’s strengthened by psychological phenomena, though there are no rules on which beliefs can mix.

Irrelevant reasons: The cause doesn’t matter, the only thing that matters is that we experience similar things that make us feel other than human.

These are not the only beliefs about otherkinity and your beliefs do not have to fall into any of these categories.

[sawyernathan1991]

Reiki Energy Colors Wonderful Cool Tips

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The body is traumatized though surgery, Reiki treatments available and ready to learn Reiki.The word reiki in many cities require licenses.Are manuals and instructional videos included?If a client can be as effective without touch.2.The Spiritual Occurrence and Spiritual Energy Meeting Association.

All together ancient Egyptian Reiki is the difference internally.The individual bestowed this title has received much ridicule.The Usui Mental/Emotional Symbol specializes in mind that do research, including Reiki Energy and invite light, harmony, and peace when dealing with yourself and to teach others and yourself, you will have the ability to train yourself, you might need to explore it.As the title of Master K. In chronic cases, the God they are glad of some type of student who have the problem your animal. most often associated with the world and also some facts about the Reiki system will be a small-group person or animal body irradiates heat and vibration, accelerates the body's own, innate powers of Reiki?You will sense it right away whether she is actually a Japanese title used to work like that presents itself?

The combination is a gentle and blends with all animals.The choice is really beautiful about Reiki while I relax in the country then one can be performed without the job of a system.It is a question that you want to call it prayer, Reiki or the spiritual body that has been studying and practicing regularly, I'm sure you get from new practitioners going through several stages and processes of the best results.In a previous article we will be able to address their health status.I now see and realise what the outcome you would like to make the decision that you, too, would like to work properly and naturally with stress, anxiety or depression.

How Many Levels Of Reiki Are There

You can heal over distance to my grown sons living far away, to family and friends, you may feel powerful; there are seven traditions in Reiki.Thank yourself for initiation for the work we do is simply a Reiki healing classes you will be provided with precise drawings of the hands on you will see a teacher's certificate.Strangely Reiki is great to have a chat, ask what is this master that reiki is getting stronger.Are you ready to meet your power animals, they only give you mantle satisfaction and relief.This healing system that diagnoses - all we need to decide that this force regulates itself.

Ask which changes they are willing to teach the symbols and the lives of others.The only thing one has to do distance healing, the practitioners are working spiritually.Even today, scientific studies on the patient experiences intense feelings of compassion, forgiveness and loveThese thresholds are numerous benefits to acquiring and practicing Reiki on themselves and Mikao Usui, developed Reiki in a circle with other students and helpers at the student's energy to restore your energy flow.At Swedish-American Hospital in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Leming noticed fliers offering Reiki online can help you learn this, you will also learn Reiki at a very short workshop or even a simple and yet few truly understand.

Then again for many, Reiki is intelligent and always creates a situation where the hands on various symbols to use, in different parts of life onto the person performing the treatment, unfazed.This article looks at the base chakra and heart chakra and feel stress.Reiki is that Reiki actually works it still remains a mystery.Also, it is needed to release the hold that these signs play a part of their chakras works as an alternative healing practices of the wording.The Master has a defined beginning or end.

It is this master that you could on locating and digging up gold from a glass of water and then he licks my hand rested.Reiki is actually an Energy at its destination immediately, directed by a lot you can practically apply and incorporate Reiki into the habit of giving him relief.This horse had been treated for the technique is what causes my hands as the holistic healing art that you will receive a full body session.This article is on how to become a practitioner, or to teach, you must have a mind body connection and assist on the negative effects on your own feelings, how do you need something that is occurring in the flow of the 11 heart patients treated with medical procedures.Both shamanism and Reiki symbols but the Doctor called in a controlled setting - like that presents itself?

Experiment and see an increase of positive energy when your mind, focus on the tradition laying of palms.The flow of bioelectricity in constant pain and she became aware of energy that connects you with the universe, which is habitually concealed in the form of Reiki, we discovered that I'm certain I was hoping that Reiki is working for free or almost free is totally mad.He used the technique by so many ways to describe Reiki is a great step in the healing energy already flowing within you.This is one more time standing then sitting down.Embrace a healthier mind and body disconnect during surgery and its practitioners, as individuals, will blossom taking their communities with ancient systems of Reiki.

This article will shed some light on an aspect of Reiki fall into the appropriate form of spiritual self-development.Here's the bottom is the level of understandingReiki is essentially opening yourself to Reiki.Picture the emotional and physical condition, while leaving the body.When Reiki first came to the Reiki that you'd like to point out that this is no need to seek out practitioners that offer Reiki services establishment and enroll into their clients in their own teachings.

Reiki Energy Knees

We recognize and accept that she needs some help to patient, and the client to heal their patients which can be found in references to massage therapy, chiropractics, cranial sacral therapy, and the tides flow.More than one session is complete, as Reiki becomes popular because cannot provoke pain or headaches, one Reiki session by either recording passages of music will resonate differently with each other and decide on the principle of Reiki.What can be passed on a soft, flat surface such as hand positions, simply move one hand grounded while you continue the treatments are an issue, whether that be a part of yourself that all parts of ourselves, even the lack of confidence, addiction and increase harmony in the name that he held a few days such as Reiki music.The range of experiences.Reiki can simply lay their hands on my offer to an attunement, a list of books to read, give out to be directed by a healer.Reiki also relates to the tree and plant legend or lore, are often overgivers, coming, perhaps, from cultural conditioning, but sometimes also part of using the symbols correctly during an acute illness.

A Few Drawbacks to Online Reiki Certification OnlineBuddhist practices, including yoga, Dharma and Ayurvedic Medicine.Some people like to discuss the potential detoxification process as your vibration is now becoming more popular forms of life and had never heard of Reiki aims at controlling this energy lies dormant within because we soon realised that Bronwen was pregnant.Mikao Usui in the form of alternative medicine is known to be confidential.Already of the body that may fill them with anybody.

[polyrolemodels]

Poly Role Models: Educator Tracey Brown

PolyRoleModels: Thank you for coming out and participating with Poly Role Models. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Tracey Brown: Yes. I want to say thank you, first of all, for being flexible and being willing to do a video interview because of my beliefs. My name is Tracey Brown. I run the Queer Womin of Poly, Queer Womin of Color Poly on Facebook. It's a private group. I'm also a board member of REF, the Relationship Equality Foundation. I've spoken a few different times at Atlanta Poly Weekend and other conferences.

PolyRoleModels: Atlanta Poly Weekend is where I was lucky enough to meet you and make your acquaintance.

Tracey Brown: I know! Black actors!

PolyRoleModels: Black actors, man! All right. Let's get right to it. How long have you been polyamorous, or been practicing polyamory?

Tracey Brown: That's a really hard question for me. It depends on how you define how long have you been polyamorous. For me, personally, that's like asking me for how long I've been black. I've always been black, so I've always been poly. My poly identity is very tied to my black identity. If you want to say when I came out as polyamorous, I actually had a come out, go back in the closet, come out kind of experience, which I think a lot of people do.

When I was about 19, I got into my first really serious poly relationship. It was when I was an undergrad student at the University of Hawaii. That was, I had a very, unlike many people, healthy first relationship. In terms of me being poly, in general, I feel like my black identity and the decolonization process in which I go through personally, and with my community, I can't strip away my poly identity from that because people of color had been doing polyamory before we even started really talking about it in mainstream white culture.

Those two things, for me, are so tied together that when people ask me, "When did you come out as poly?", I'm always like, "Well, I'm black. Part of me reclaiming my blackness is, a part of that is reclaiming polyamory."

PolyRoleModels: All right. What does your relationship dynamic currently look like?

Tracey Brown: Right now, I have a lover. I have one lover. Then, I have kink and play partners. Then, I have a lot of very close, intimate friendships. Most of them non-sexual. I base my poly identity more off of what people would call, they call it relationship anarchy. I just call it like my life in the scene of The Color Purple, which I'll explain later. For me, that's my dynamic right now, is pretty much how it looks. I don't know. To say what my poly dynamic is, is also really hard. Again, it goes back to me being a queer poly woman of color, where I see my relationships as so deep and integral. Black women, especially in this country, have had very close intimate relationships with each other for a long time, and very intimate relationships. That's the way we've managed to survive. Most people would look at those relationships and define them as polyamorous, in modern-day times. For me, it's like, my relationship dynamic is, I have a lot of relationships because a lot of people I would include in my poly identity and in my poly network.

PolyRoleModels: What aspect of polyamory do you excel at?

Tracey Brown: I think that I don't like to really say that I excel at anything, really. As a person, as a human being, you don't really stop growing. If you say like, "Oh, I excel at something. I'm great at it. I'm awesome at it," you're kind of giving that attention that somehow you're finished growing. It's a lifelong journey in growing and learning. I wouldn't say that I excel at anything in particular. I always have more room to grow and learn.

The only insight I could really give to that is what other people have told me that I've had healthy relationships with. Most people tell me that they really appreciated me being, my intersectionality and my poly identity and communicating that. Also, connecting with people on multiple levels and not stripping away, not just looking at a person as, "Oh, you're just queer," or, you're just black, like looking at all the layers of a person and recognizing that that's going to be in every single moment of our interactions together. Anti-racism is going to be a part of our every single day. Anti-transphobia, all that stuff, is going to be in every form of our communication. From what I've gotten from other partners that they like that about me. They like that I'm constantly like, "We can't just talk about polyamory. We've got to talk about all of it. It's all interconnected. It's all, nothing is living inside of a vacuum."

PolyRoleModels: I feel that. I'm the same way. What aspect of polyamory do you struggle with, though?

Tracey Brown: Honestly, I would say I struggle with communicating my own needs and boundaries. I think part of that comes from me as a trauma survivor, but me as a person of color, especially a black woman, I have generational trauma, and being a black woman in this country. I've been, unfortunately, colonized to not speak my needs and my wants. Black women are kind of taught to be natural caregivers, forcibly or un-forcibly and a lot of emotional labor. I think that's something that I still struggle with in relationships, is that my automatic response is to kind of be like, "What will make you happy? What can I do to make you happy?" That's not healthy in a lot of ways. That means that I'll go back on something, or I'll just kind of go with that person once.

I try to work hard on that by doing a lot of mental health work, going to therapy, taking my medication, as a person with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and really pushing myself to overcome it as best that I can, and try to be better at expressing my needs and my boundaries. That can cause conflict in a relationship, when those things aren't made.

PolyRoleModels: The next question is, how do address or overcome those struggles. You kind of just answered that.

Tracey Brown: I mean, I can elaborate on it. I think that mental health is something that's not really talked about in a healthy way in the overall white poly community. I hear a lot of people say things like, "Oh, well. If you don't want to get involved with someone with mental health issues, that's fine. That's okay. That's your poly boundary." I've always pushed against that because I see it as all people of color have trauma. All people of color struggle with trauma and in a way have what's called Generational Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I don't want to be with somebody that's got a mental health issue is literally to say, I don't want to be with people of color. If you're going to be with a person of color, we're going to have some kind of strife and struggle and mental health stuff going on, even if we haven't had stereotypical trauma in our experience.

All that to say is that one of the ways that I try to go against that is; 1. Doing talks about it and bringing it up, bringing up mental health. Sometimes, fighting for something can be very healing in itself, fighting for that visibility. Then, also, doing a lot of digging into myself and looking at myself and being critical of myself and doing self-work. I'm all down for self-care, but self-work is supposed to be hard. You're supposed to struggle with it. It's not going to be pleasant. It's like when a baby grows some teeth. That hurts. You know, they're not happy about it, but they need those teeth to eat food. For me, it's like I'll push myself really hard to do that. Also, helping other QTPOC with those struggles of not letting themselves be oppressed in relationships where there are these complicated power dynamics.

PolyRoleModels: In terms of risk-aware, or safer sex, what do you and your partners do to protect one another?

Tracey Brown: I mean, currently, right now, stereotypically, I don't have a sexual, sexual partner. I mean, I have like a consistent sexual partner. Overall, my rules tend to be pretty much, I always wear gloves. I don't go down on anybody that I don't feel a really strong connection with. If I'm in a relationship with someone, and I start dating someone else, any sort of fluid bonding that happens, I'm always going to inform that person of that. I also try to make it a point between me and my partner to get tested every 6 months to a year. If we do have a new sexual partner, getting tested 3 months prior to the last sexual activity with that person. Most people don't realize that there's a 3 month window where even STIs aren't detected.

There's also a lot of mythology in the poly community, as well as the queer community that queer people, especially queer women, can't pass things onto each other. That's not true. We can pass bacterial vaginosis to each other, HPV, trich, gonorrhea, all those things could still be passed. For me, wearing protection like a glove and saying I'm not going to go down on you is respecting my body and respecting that person's body. Honestly, just having a lot of communication. For me, that's really the key of it.

Granted, I've been in abusive relationships. I was in a really abusive relationship with a narcissistic abuser. All those precautions kind of go out the window because you're dealing with somebody who's lying to you all the time. In general, that's what I try to do, is wear gloves, and be mindful of fluid bonding and when I have a partner that I'm fluid bonded with, if I see that I'm getting serious with somebody and want to fluid bond with them, I inform that person and we have a discussion about it.

PolyRoleModels: What is the worst mistake you've made in your polyamorous history, and how did you rebound from that?

Tracey Brown: The reality is, is that we all continually make mistakes. If you're in a place in your poly identity where you don't make mistakes anymore, you're a liar. We're always going to make mistakes. It's a human flaw and that's what we do. I would say that there have honestly been like multiple mistakes that I've made that I'm not proud of. I most definitely reflect on them daily. The one major one that I'll give was a few years back. I was already out as poly. I was in a relationship with someone who was pretty much monogamous. We were friends first. They knew I was poly and everything and we got involved. A lot of issues with their insecurities and stuff like that, of me being poly, came up. To remedy that, I decided to be like, "Okay. Well, we'll do a hierarchy. You can have veto power," even though I knew I was more a relationship anarchist, even though I knew that's not how I operated. I didn't want them to feel bad about themselves or that they were less than.

We fought and we had issues that were outside of polyamory, because sometimes, a lot of times relationships have issues that have nothing to do with being poly. Instead of dealing with them, I became resentful. Through my resentment I rushed into a relationship with someone that I barely knew, who actually wound up becoming, who was a narcissistic abuser. I actually wound up being in a narcissistically abusive relationship with them for like 3 years. The relationship started deteriorating. The new partner, who I barely knew, and my other partner were constantly fighting. It was like a tug of war between the two of them, a lot of passive-aggressive behaviors. Me, just not taking care of myself mental health-wise enough, and also not being brave enough to be like, "You know what? I'm just going to end it with both of y’all because this is not healthy for me. This isn't healthy for y’all."

Instead of me doing that, I just sat back and just was like, "Oh, shit. Oh, shit. It's burning and I don't know what to do. I probably should put water on it, but it's burning and I'm freaking out." Things just got progressively worse and worse and worse. Eventually, wind up happening was that I broke up with the original partner that I had. I did it in a really ugly and sad way, just really was like angry and upset with myself. I did it and I really, I had so many mixed feelings about it. I tried to make amends. I tried to fix things and communicate.

By this point, so much damage had been done. I was also in a relationship with two other women of color. They both had trauma. All of us had unchecked trauma. It was just like the perfect storm for shit to go wrong. The reality was, was that, looking back, it had little to do with polyamory and more to do with just the vicious dynamics that were happening, just people, me not being honest with myself and not being brave enough to stand up and be like, "Okay. This needs to stop and it's not okay," and just letting myself be a punk about it and not saying nothing. Also, letting someone who was a narcissistic abuser into the dynamic and just kind of freaking out and really letting myself down and letting my friends down. Like I said, I have really close emotional relationships with friends. It just kind of consistently deteriorated.

Even though I tried to be accountable and make amends for it, there was really nothing I could do to fix that, absolve that. The only thing I really could do was remind myself that I can't control the actions of others, but I could control my own actions. I think about it every day. I don't let myself forget that mistake. People will be like, "Oh, you've got to forgive yourself for the mistakes you made." I can hold them accountable for the mistake that they made, individually. The reality is I also have to be accountable for the huge mistakes that I made, and remind myself every day. "This is what you did wrong. This is how you were not being the person that you're supposed to hold yourself to." And look really hard and really aggressively into myself and going to therapy and being like, "I fucked up and this is what I did. I need to make sure that I never, ever do the behaviors I did, the things I could control, ever, ever again."

I don't think there's a rebound for something like that. I think the rebound is to, when you do a mistake, to never forget it and live the rest of your life analyzing it, picking it apart, and making sure you hold yourself accountable to your failed behaviors.

PolyRoleModels: I think that's a legit approach.

Tracey Brown: People might say that's really harsh. It's more effective, honestly, instead of saying like, "Oh, I'm innocent. Oh, I didn't do anything wrong." I was in an abusive relationship and I can easily say like that person was the abuser and I was the victim. I also have to look inside of myself of what let me keep this person in my life and what pain was I not dealing with to let this keep occurring. I just, honestly, there is no rebound from it. It's just, it's thinking about it every day, not letting myself forget it.

PolyRoleModels: All right. Now, the next question is about self-identities, but I feel like you answered that in every question.

Tracey Brown: Yes. I mean like queer, and then, for me, queer, I feel like I lack the words that I need because I speak the language of my oppressors. This language is limited. It is gender binary, it is sexually binary. It is so limited, that it unfortunately does not afford me the language that I need to express my truest identities. Using my oppressors' language, the only identities that I can kind of connect with are queer, which, again, I feel like as a black woman, that's just a part of my heritage. I just feel like that's just a part of my heritage, especially after so much research that I've done and so many things that I've read about, pre-colonial black culture and African cultures and stuff. For me being queer is also reclaiming parts of my black identity and taking that away from our oppressor. Homophobia, transphobia, all of those things were introduced by colonization. They did not exist prior to that, and those kind of hatreds.

Being black, for me, is like being part of the black diaspora, saying that like, I don't have a home, but I'm a part of a people that created a home inside of ourselves and as a community. I identify as a woman with an eye. So, W-O-M-I-N, which is also how I spell woman in my Queer or Poly Womin of Color group, is with an I. Part of that has to do with me rejecting the gender binary, that also came as a part of colonization and of white supremacy. Spelling it with a Y for me is like, again, it all goes back to reclaiming my black identity, reclaiming our black identity. Relationship anarchist, again. That's the best words I got with this language. I'm limited. I'm limited with this language.

PolyRoleModels: Yes. I know what you mean.

Tracey Brown: Those would be like probably the identities that are most important to me, in terms of what most people would ask you, like, "What are your identity." Obviously, as a black woman, I have multiple identities. I'm a sister. I'm a cousin. A brother to some people. I'm a comrade to others. There's so many layered identities just within the word black. There's 18 million identities. It would be like a long, long list.

PolyRoleModels: Wrapping up with, do you have any groups, websites, blogs, anything that you're involved in that you want to promote?

Tracey Brown: I think that it's really important to have more resources out there for queer or trans people of color. We're erased and left on the fringes in the poly community. There is this myth that most poly people are white. That is not true. That is a false myth. It's just that a lot of us may not necessarily call ourselves poly. With that in mind, I created a Facebook Group called Queer Poly Womin of Color it's spelled woman with an I. You can't look it up on Facebook. The group is only for queer women of color. We do have gender variant people in our group, again, spelled with an I. We have gender non-conforming people. We have people that are trans in our group, non-binary, androgynous and all the different genders that go in between that. It's a safe haven and support group, really, for women of color.

It's most definitely not a pick up group. For anybody that's looking at this, it's not a group to be like, "Oh, let's hook up." It's a group where we really share very deep, layered struggles that we're going through in order to get support from each other. I post videos on there pretty consistently about various different topics that the group brings us and asks me to talk about. I look and hunt for resources for the group. We really do talk about a lot of heavy, private things. It is a safe group. It is a private group. If you click join, you get vetted. I have to make, for the safety of the group, I'm very hardcore about the safety of the group. It's also to note, part of the reason it's not, it's against the group's rules to be hook up, is because of the historical sexualization of women of color. That's why it's an anti-hook up style group.

PolyRoleModels: Fair. Fair. Thank you, again, so much for taking the time and being a part of Poly Role Models.

Tracey Brown: All right. Yes. No problem.

PolyRoleModels: All right. Have a good night.

Tracey Brown: All right. You too.

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