What is a self-rescue kit for when you’re freaking out?
A self-rescue kit is a box or bag where you keep items that can help you when you’re not doing well or just need help shifting your physiological and/or emotional state. This is where science also comes in–applying what we know about how emotions work, what trauma does to the body, and more—to get us out of tight spots.
What the container looks like, what gets kept inside, and what the items help with is entirely customizable and personal. Though this is not my original idea (check out “comfort boxes,” “cozy corners,” “safety boxes,” “grounding boxes,” and so on), this is my take on them and I hope it’s useful to you!
You can share what this kit looks like with other people, but you do not have to. This is for *you*. Top 3 tips to get started?
Put it somewhere that is easily accessible to you: Think of a first aid kit—you don’t want it on an unreachable shelf you forget about! If you deal with ADHD / issue with object permanence, consider using a see-through box/bag clear so you can easily see the insides. Consider labeling it too, especially with a neon color or something that stands out.
2. Start ASAP: don’t wait until you have “everything perfect.” Just grab a box or bag and start putting stuff in it. You can always change it up later.
3. Practice using it outside of emergencies: Sit with your box a few minutes a day for a week or two even when you’re not freaking out so you build the habit and muscle memory of actually using the box. Then, when you’re freaking out, your body is already primed to reach for it versus having to think about it too hard.
The specific items you put inside will vary widely depending on what “brain hacks” you most often need, what you most often struggle with. Do you most often need support calming down? To change your body temperature? To hype yourself up? To stop ruminating? To destress? Think of objects that could help with those and put them in there. Shifting temperature, breath, and focus are 3 big strategies to calm a body in distress. There’s also science around the uses of scent and memory, the importance of nutrients/food (hello protein bars!),
Just no perishables, please, unless you make sure to check it frequently and toss things out so it’s not gross. If there is a perishable item (an ice pack, a banana, etc) that is key to your self-rescue kit, you can instead include a post-it note that says “EAT A BANANA ASAP”, or something like that.
There are two “types” of items that I personally recommend having at least two or three of: sensory aids, and cognitive aids.
Sensory aids are things that are about addressing your body (not your thinking mind) and you experience with your available senses—whatever those are for you. Here are some examples:
Smell: a scented salve you can rub on your temples or wrists, a candle, a favorite cologne/perfume spritzed in the air, an essential oil and cotton balls to put it on, sachet of herbs, coffee beans, Vicks vaporub
Taste: gum, water bottle, mints, lozenges, favored snacks, water-flavoring drops (the idea here is that you’ll have something that is soothing and familiar, or perhaps something where the temperature, texture, and/or flavor can be nicely distracting to experience and try to describe out loud—or if you have issues with skipping meals or blood sugar, perhaps small snacks that offer some good protein and nutrition)
Look: paper-clips you can focus on bending or linking, meaningful photos, a note with names of videos or films you like, coloring books and pencils, bubbles you can blow (super helpful for regulating breathing!), and even shades/eyemasks if what you need to do is REDUCE the things you’re looking at or take a nap!
Hear: a bell, small plastic maracas, a CD / link to a playlist, small sound-machine, beads and shells on a string
(Pssst, this can also be where you keep emergency stashes of your herbs/medicines/tinctures/etc.)
Cognitive aids are things that can help in a “brain reboot” of sorts and address your thinking mind. Things like post-it reminders or mantras, how-to manuals (for panic attacks, rage fits, grounding techniques for when you disassociate, etc), therapy notes, emotion flashcards, your support system’s contact info, a list of crisis hotlines with their numbers, “gratitude lists,” distraction items (sudoku, crossword puzzles, etc), nice poems or passages from books you like, etc.
Remember: I call it a self-rescue kit, but that does not mean you should not need anybody else to support you in rescuing yourself. One item in your kit can be a note that reads in big, glittery letters: “CALL YOUR FRIENDS, YOU GRUMP” and their numbers, or a note from a loved one that reminds you that they are there for you.
What if I made my kit but then I did not use it when I needed it?
That’s okay! This is a new thing you are trying. When the distress has passed, try examining why you didn’t use it. Perhaps the location of the kit made it so that you were physically or mentally blocked from accessing it.
OR perhaps what you put inside is not what you actually want or need when you’re unwell. My friend and assistant, Lui, insists that what can help them feel better is exercise but they never do it, which makes us both think that it is not something that can actually help them in their current life. It is just what they think should help them, or what they’ve been told to do. What actually helps them temporarily calm down or get distracted enough to move is having a smoke outside and laying on the floor making broken-machine sounds. So, y’know, your mileage may vary.
As an example, the list of things that my box contains or has contained:
A fat bird sculpture two of my sweeties sent me when I had COVID. I love fat birds and their existence got me through graduate school so it was both a preexisting symbol of hope and resilience AND it gathered renewed meaning in this care package.
Fidget toys (the rainbow pop toys? Love those!)
A few small samples of fun fragrances (here is Waffles which smells like actual waffles with maple syrup and Salt Air which makes me think of home en Puerto Rico)
Slimes. I love slimes. The end.
A jar of soil from the home where my parents and abuela live.
Minty gum.
A bone found in the woods of The Rêve that I then decorated while crafting with my chosen family. It reads “Planting seeds for a regenerative future” and “love” with stickers and rhinestones and glitter.
Herbal blends from the boricua transfeminist media collective Espicy Nipplez.
A small glass vial of water from an intention-setting ritual I led at the Sex Down South conference in 2021, which includes dissolved paper with messages of love and abundance for our future.
This is not my first kit. Some items have stayed, some have been replaced by others when the older version no longer worked for me. It will probably change in the future, as my needs and tools evolve.
There is no wrong way or right way to make a self-rescue kit for yourself, and there is no limit to how many things you put in there! Whatever and however many things can help you in a time of need is okay. Perhaps you prefer a smaller kit, if many options overwhelm you, for example. Or maybe you prefer a wider variety, if you have changing sensory needs and boundaries.
And if you need inspiration, here’s a poem you can print out / write down and keep inside your own box—
Are you hydrated? When did you last glut your thirst with a handful of spring?
Have you eaten anything besides emails or your fingernails in the last three hours? Have you pulled the protein out of an oak tree or palmed an avocado pit this month? Are your forlorn probiotics
languishing on your butter shelf? Are you dressed? If so, does your skirt strike matches alight as you walk by? Can you melt it a little around your waist and ribcage? Are you resisting
a dream? Wrestling a dreamless night? Let yourself take a bath in your bed clothes for fifteen minutes, no pressure to fall asleep. But make sure to turn off all your beehives first. At least take them out of your bedroom.
Have you uncoiled the ropes of your legs and strung them along the length of the city today? Have you let a lake or a snow bank sketch silent letters on your back? When did you last give away
your unworn clothes, your well-fitting metaphors? Tell a neighbour or a person across the coffee shop counter how well they catch the light.
Have you snugged into a seedpod in the past couple days? Do you need a massage? Complete something
smaller than a lichen: return a library book, or a letter, or a look, or a relationship you regret. Sew a button on that’s come loose. Crack a window. Crack an egg.
Do you feel unattractive? Rub your skin with smooth stones or strong magnets. Wear sunglasses. Take your reflection in on the surface of a puddle.
Give yourself ten minutes. Give yourself ten years. Give yourself an orgasm. Give yourself a change of seasons. Give yourself a new lover. Give yourself a to-do list written with sidewalk chalk and hopscotch across it.
Have you been working really hard shovelling all the sidewalks of your friendships? Remember it takes time to recover from exertion, especially when you are a seedling.
Know that your friends want to send help. They want to send daffodils and their extra hands to braid your hair. They all want to be deciduous trees and long semi-coloned sentences for you. They want to.
Remember: you are a comma, one beloved earring, a house circled on a traveller’s map, sometimes misplaced, but never an imposition.
Everyone feels like a hallway at some point or another. But you are a room that people enter to stay.
You’re cozy in your bed, drifting off to sleep when a voice calls out: “I’m scared! I need you!” You leap out of bed, heart pounding, and rush into the child’s room. He is sitting up in bed, his face stained with tears, cuddling a stuffed walrus. “Sweetie,” you say in the kindest voice you can muster, “it’s time to sleep now. I was asleep. You need to sleep too.” You give him a hug, he lies down and you go back to bed. Fifteen minutes later: “I’m awake! I need you!” Back into the child’s room, less patience now. “Baby it’s time to go to sleep.” “But I NEED you.” “We all need to sleep. Our bodies need sleep. Lie down now and I’ll sing you a song.” You sing a lullaby and tiptoe back to bed. Begin to close your eyes, and the child calls again.
A friend told one of us this story recently. At her wit’s end, she talked to his teacher who said, “he just wants to feel heard.” Instead of reminding kids of the rules, rationalizing, or focusing on soothing, you’ve got to home in on what they feel in the moment. You have to take them very seriously and ensure they believe you. “Use a lot of ‘really’,” the teacher said. “I really, really hear that you are scared.” Or “I can see that you are really, really sad right now.” When children hear this, they know you have connected their meaning to their behavior, they feel heard, and they can let go.
If you’re wondering whether you accidentally clicked on a parenting article, here is the connection you may be waiting for: Our feelings can be just like small children. They have a deep need to be heard, to be held, without judgment or rejection. To be held with compassionate curiosity. How can you be with yourself in a way that says “I am here. This is okay. Whatever comes up right now is okay,” especially if you’ve been taught the opposite?
In this article, we’ll go over what can happen to buried and inconvenient feelings, the science of emotion and survival, and how you can manage and process all these things differently and/or with new awareness.
Feelings Gone Underground or in Disguise
The tricky part here is that kids (and feelings) don’t always make “rational” sense (and sometimes they do, but you don’t have the tools to understand them or are speaking different languages). When you ignore feelings, they don’t go away; they go underground. When they’re buried, they don’t stay buried forever. Once they’ve gone under, they often come back in even more confusing, less recognizable ways.
Feelings don’t always have the language to tell you what is happening or why. They only have the crude tools to make themselves heard. They manifest in adjacent feelings and other behaviors that may be hard to connect to the “originating” event or situation.
Explosiveness and irritability: You’re filled with rage in certain situations – maybe your boss didn’t reply to your email, or your mom cut your toast in half when you wanted to “eat it big.” Maybe you snap at someone when they interrupt you while you’re working at your computer, or respond curtly when they ask how you’re doing. Either way, when explosive anger and irritability are disproportionate to the situation in front of you, it’s a hint the feelings are coming from (or being magnified by) somewhere/something else.
Inertia: Getting out of bed, getting dressed, showering, eating – basic daily tasks become a struggle. A child might refuse to put their shoes on when going to play with a friend who has been mean to them or lie on the floor when they are supposed to go to school but are not feeling confident in a subject. You may find yourself blocked when trying to write something and stare blankly at your notebook for hours, or perhaps keep delaying getting ready for a date until you’ve made yourself so late that you have to cancel instead of show up.
Physical sensations: Headaches. Tiredness. Lots of poops. No poops. Tight chest. Shortness of breath. Twitching eyes. Muscle tension. Any bodily sensation can be an avenue for feelings to express themselves. For example, one of the authors of this article—as a small child, before they could explain feelings of fear and apprehension—experienced them as stomachaches. On a trip to a theme park, they kept asking to go to the bathroom every time they’d get in line for a big intense ride. For them, stomachaches meant “obviously you need to use the bathroom,” so they would go to the bathroom. They’d feel temporarily better (because they were away from the scary ride), but they wouldn’t actually do anything in the bathroom itself, much to their own confusion. Eventually, they and their family figured out their stomach hurt because they were afraid, and what they needed was soothing and reassurance, not a bathroom visit.
Avoidance: You pick up your phone, turn on the TV, go on Facebook, anything to distract yourself or buy yourself time from the thing you’re avoiding. This can also look like not answering emails from a professor who asks about a missed deadline, getting lost in daydreams frequently, leaving a friend’s texts unread, etc. In a child, this can often present like outright ignoring something that’s right in front of them as if it simply didn’t exist.
Difficulty naming: You make plans with a friend, and when they ask you how you are you say “fine,” and then go home frustrated that they didn’t support you. A child calls out again and again in the night, sounding fearful, but when you go to them they say “I can’t find my bear.” Saying the fear or worry out loud feels impossible.
Do any of these situations sound familiar?
Inconvenient Feelings and Directing Them
But I don’t want this feeling, you tell yourself. This is such a bad time. It’s not the right way to feel – I’m not being fair to my partner, my boss, my friend. I’m exaggerating. I shouldn’t care about this. I’m being childish. This is irrational—there’s no need for this. Other oppressive and normalizing forces like to show up here too – often gender. I need to man up and get over it. I’m being needy. Extra. Too much. Hysterical.
You can think of a million reasons why the feeling isn’t welcome, isn’t convenient, does not deserve the space it’s taking up. You push it away, push it down, reject or ignore it. You find ways to quiet it. Janet Bystrom, a therapist in Minneapolis, says we have three choices about what to do with this energy:
Point it at ourselves (fuck me) – substance use, self-harm, dissociation
Point it at others (fuck you) – aggression and physical violence
Point it at the sky (fuck this) – discharge the feeling safely through movement, art, communication
Here, let’s just acknowledge that options in the first two categories might serve us very well, until they don’t. It’s not always safe to feel feelings, or to inhabit our bodies. If we are experiencing ongoing abuse or trauma. If we are experiencing dysphoria (a sense of disconnect and unhappiness, frequently tied to ways that one’s appearance may not line up with one’s internal sense of self). If we are in a medical or family crisis that requires us to remain organized and productive in the face of big emotions.
Even as we move toward making space for and accepting feelings, can we also be compassionate with ourselves about the reasons we’ve delayed feeling them? Can we honor the roles our survival strategies have played in protecting us, thank them for their work, and let them know they can rest for now, or at least for a bit? (And of course, if you are still in a situation where you are surviving with some of the strategies named here, trust your assessment of safety and, if it’s available, seek guidance and support).
But let’s say we’re safe. Let’s say we have most of the support we need and are relatively stable. What do we do with these feelings we’ve been avoiding?
The Science of Survival and Feelings
We carve our own neural pathways with our actions. A famous adage in the field of neuropsychology is “neurons that fire together, wire together.” If we come to a fork in the trail, and one branch is flat, well-tended, and clear of debris, while the other is steep, rocky, and full of thorns, most of us will choose the clear path. It seems to take less effort in the moment (though the effects of that choice may have longterm implications). It’s familiar. We know where it leads.
Striking out through the brambles requires more equipment, more energy, more persistence. But a magical thing happens when we keep choosing the overgrown path. We begin to clear it. We bring our machete. We wear hiking boots. When we come to that fork again, choosing the overgrown path is a little bit easier. Of course, there will be days when we are tired, when we are overwhelmed, when we must choose the familiarity of the clear path. There is no shame in that. But when we choose the overgrown path, we make that path more available.
All this is to say that the new path may not feel comfortable; it may feel dangerous, and even viscerally wrong. When we have been trained to react in certain ways, our bodies may resist changing—and of course they will! They think changing will put us in some mortal danger! And, in fact, if we have a history of using suppression as a strategy to manage tough feelings, starting to open up to feelings overall will likely feel worse at first. (This is a common experience among folks working through emotional changes; stick with it if you can.)
So when have come to a place of realizing we do indeed need to change, we have to get ready to manage that new set of feelings and reactions. This doesn’t mean we have to dismiss our gut reactions, but that we have to dialogue with them in a new and different way. It means we have to take our worries, assumptions, and immediate reactions through a few more filters before we accept or use them.
For example, people who have become hypervigilant due to trauma pay attention to a lot of ambient cues of danger. Sometimes these cues signal realistic and imminent danger, but often they do not. Figuring out which is which can be very tricky when your body’s been trained to see them all as equally dangerous threats – getting on the subway taking on the quality of intense danger, for example. Conversely, some people are “hypovigilant” and rarely notice threats even when the red flags are glaring to those around them. (Read more about the science of this and “the window of tolerance” here from the perspective of a therapist.)
What Can You Do?
There is no magic one-size-fits-all recipe for how to shift your relationship with your feelings and create more space for them, but it’s key to go slow rather than trying to rush it. Self-compassion as you figure out this new path is also essential, because you’re doing something pretty damn hard—figuring out how to change the wiring you’ve been building for years, and even decades. That’s no small feat. Take care of yourself along the way. Turn back if you need to. But keep finding your way. We promise it’s worth it — even if ONLY to minimize the devastating effects chronic stress can have on the body (note: that linked article, while very thorough, conflates sex and gender).
In the next section, we offer a list of ideas for processing and feeling feelings in no particular order. Not all of them will feel right or available to you. Some may feel great in certain situations and terrible in others. If a strategy feels strange or uncomfortable, that is also information to pay attention to.
Practices for Processing and Accepting Feelings
Some Notes on Externalizing:
Externalizing is the process of separating one’s sense of self from the feelings, problems, social forces, and relational patterns that influence it. It is also the belief—and its associated worldview—that people are not their problems. What this looks like in practice can take a lot of different forms. You might do this reflection and separation on your own, with a therapist, or in a group. You might write down the stories in your mind about a situation or problem, and use color-coding or headings to link the stories with their related sources (i.e. “my dad,” “racism,” “transphobia,” “the mean administrator at my school”). You might develop an externalized metaphor or personification for a problem, like “the void”, “the sneaky hate spiral”, “the ferile cat.” Creating this separation between self and problems creates a reflecting space to take a position on the things that are influencing you.
therapist: and what do we say when we feel like this?
me: my depression is likely tied to capitalist alienation which leads to meaninglessness and isolation.
For those of us in highly individualistic environments (like the United States, which has historically been very influenced by concepts of “rugged individualism”), it can be tough not to solely blame ourselves for our issues. Western medicine and mental healthcare also have a long and unpleasant history of conflating people’s identities with their diagnoses. However, it’s critical that we see the full spectrum of influences, because there are many. It is both a disservice to our healing and a factually inaccurate way of assessing problems when we solely locate them in the individual. (This is also why it’s important that therapists discuss systemic oppression and politics rather than presume they should—or even can—be “values neutral.”)
That said, total separation isn’t really possible, and that’s okay; the point is to create a bit of room in our heads so we can see the issues from a different perspective. We can take a position – maybe we like the influence of the thing we’re evaluating and want more of it. Maybe we want less. Maybe we want to feel it, but don’t want to act out toward others in the ways it invites us to.
We come into relationship with the force or the problem, and in so doing, stand with a self that is separate from the problem. Externalizing can be an antidote to shame saying “we are bad” when we have done something bad. (This may be tricky for people whose systems of faith and value say that doing, or even thinking, “bad things” automatically means they are bad and full of sin. For people in that situation, more discernment work and evaluation will likely be important to address those challenges. People in this situation may also wish to externalize the views of their faith community and step into conversation with those views in new ways.)
An important thing to remember here is that externalizing is not a single strategy, it’s a process and a lens. Acknowledging the influence of oppressions, or positioning yourself as separate from your problems is not a thinking experiment to trick yourself into feeling better. Imagine what it might mean to truly believe that people are not their problems. Think of someone you don’t know very well who activates your defenses – what would it mean to your relationship and interactions if you believed that they were also under the influence of problems at times, just the way you are.
Externalizing is also not a get out of jail free card. Separating yourself from your problems or the societal forces that influence you does not exempt you from responsibility for the things you do while under their influence. For example, while it may be true that toxic masculinity lays the groundwork for sexual violence, the violence itself, and its impact on its targets, remains the responsibility of its perpetrator. However, taking a bit of space and a position on the influence of a problem on our actions could change our response to those influences in the future. For more on issues of accountability and larger social forces, you can explore the Transform Harm Resource Hub.
Below is a list of specific strategies you can use to process and manage feelings and how to bring them into your day-to-day.
Give It A Name
A perfect example of externalizing is on the show “Big Mouth”—a sitcom revolving around a group of middle-schoolers experiencing puberty and all its ensuing shenanigans. In this show, puberty is not just a set of seemingly random bodily changes, but instead changes that come as a result of Puberty Monsters & Monstresses influencing their lives. These creatures are ones that the teens can see and directly interact with. (At the same time, since teens can only see their own Puberty Monsters, the viewer is invited to hold the possibility that these monsters are actually just personalized manifestations of puberty that exist in their own heads.)
This makes puberty an inherently relational experience—one that the teens can navigate with someone else even in its most private components. For example, the Puberty Monsters & Monstresses give the teens advice (as well as argue with and sometimes even sabotage them), jumpstart physical reactions, provide a sounding board for their worries, and more.
The teens can also take a position in response to the puberty monster’s suggestions, argue with them, step away from what they are encouraging, or take their advice and jump in. The teens are autonomous objects, rather than subjects under the influence of external forces, who can reclaim their power, autonomy, and choice, from the forces that seek to influence them.
The technique of giving feelings a name (and even an image) can help us approach them creatively and with enough distance that we can deal with them in a different way than usual.
Practice:
What would it look like if you could dialogue with your feelings as if they were an embodied, physical presence sitting in front of you? How would interacting with them feel and be different? What kind of questions would you ask? What kind of things would you say?
Pick a feeling you struggle with and give it a name (e.g. jealousy, grief, pettiness, anger, happiness, etc.). Draw it, imagine it, and/or write a description of what it looks like. Consider how long you have known it, when it flares, what it suggests you do or don’t do, when it yells versus when it is silent, what people it tends to get excited around versus the people that make it go away.
Practice having a conversation with the feeling. (While you are doing this you might notice that other feelings or forces hang out in cahoots with this feeling – for now just name those and set them aside (“oh, hi, internalized racism!”). If this felt useful you can go back and repeat these steps with those too).
Be With The Feeling & Let It Land
In a Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle writes:
[Meg] leaned her head against the beast’s chest and realized that the gray body was covered with the softest, most delicate fur imaginable, and the fur had the same beautiful odor as the air. I hope I don’t smell awful to it, she thought. But then she knew with a deep sense of comfort that even if she did smell awful, the beasts would forgive her.
Can we be with emotions this way? No matter how smelly, how distasteful, how unwelcome, just be with them. If they don’t have words for what they are bringing us, if they have only tension, or big angry energy, or silence, or tears, can we be with them?
For most people, that is actually a huge ask. Many of us are taught to suppress emotions, especially ones culturally labeled as “too big”, “unhealthy,” “negative,” “bad,” or “inappropriate.” But suppressing emotions doesn’t make them go away, and indefinitely punting them off to “deal with later” only leaves them room to grow and fester.
Therapist and mindfulness teacher Tara Brach calls the practice of being with the feelings “the turn of acceptance.” Brach guides her students to put a hand to their hearts in moments when challenging feelings arise, and to practice welcoming them. We might say “It’s okay that you’re here.” But maybe it doesn’t feel okay! We might instead say “I notice you.” You can take it a step further and say “And I am willing to listen to what you’re trying to tell me.” We might just tune into the sensations in the body and be silent. The hand to heart gesture may not work for us – we might rather plant our feet on the ground or connect with our belly, hands, or forehead.
No matter how you do it, experiment and find a way that works for you to simply create a welcoming, accepting, or compassionately curious environment for the feeling to land in so you can see what wisdom it has to share with you. Even the most uncomfortable of emotions usually have good insight for us!
Practice:
Watch or listen to “Here Comes a Thought” from the popular TV show “Steven Universe.” How can you integrate this kind of approach into your daily life? For some people, it means they keep a bookmark to this video on their phone to watch whenever they’re overwhelmed, or quietly sing the song to themselves when they’re spiraling in negative thoughts! For others, it means they do the same visualization as in the show: seeing intrusive thoughts or challenging feelings as butterflies (or the flying creature of their choice) than can then slowly float away once noticed.
Practice acknowledging feelings and explicitly naming them (this is where a Feelings Wheel can come in handy to help you identify which ones are present).
Try emotion mapping, which gives space to notice emotions without tying them to narrative. You just take a blank paper and draw/shade in the space taken up by each emotion that was in your day. You can color code so that each emotion has a color or spectrum. (Some people like to color their own feelings wheel as their map for this).
Separate Sensation from Story
From this place of acceptance, or even just curiosity, we might find it useful to notice sensations in our bodies without immediately attaching meaning to them. A crucial part of managing stress, trauma, strong emotions, etc. is about helping our nervous system recalibrate, and to do so, we need to pay attention to what’s even going on in there in the first place! For example, the amygdala—a small structure in the temporal lobe of the brain—is in charge of a couple of things, including detecting environmental threats and kickstarting our survival protocols (commonly known as the “fight/flight/freeze/fawn” responses). When we pay attention to what our bodies are doing and feeling, we can better figure out how to sit with it and what to do about it, including telling the amygdala to chill out.
So, especially when our mind screams urgently, it can be useful to instead slow down and get curious. Is there tightness in the body? Pain? Fluttering in the belly? Shortness of breath? Try to be with what is in this moment. Might this stance bring you more peace, even just for a few minutes?
Peace is this moment without judgment.
That is all. This moment in the Heart-space
where everything that is is welcome.
Peace is this moment without thinking
that it should be some other way,
that you should feel some other thing,
that your life should unfold according to your plans.
–Dorothy Hunt
At the very least, learning to listen here can help attune you for your next steps!
Practice:
Explicitly connecting mind and body here can be very useful, but it’s hard to do if you don’t have practice (and especially if you frequently are disconnected from your body and have been trained to ignore its sensations). Sometimes this feels more accessible in less charged moments – maybe an interaction with a coworker rather than a lover, or in a moment where you are activated by your own internal monologue rather than an external stressor. Even something as seemingly mundane as someone getting your order wrong in a coffee shop – can these interactions become opportunities to practice working with emotion?
The next time you have a strong emotion, pay attention to what’s going on in your body (e.g. areas of tension and relaxation, heartbeat and pulse, breathing, perspiration, etc.). Do your limbs feel tingly, heavy, twitchy, numb? What’s going on with your stomach? Is there any part of your body that feels an urge to move? What happens if you follow the movement? Is your breathing fast, shallow, slow, deep, measured? Is your jaw clenched and throbbing? Is there a knot in your throat? Does it feel like there are bees in your sternum?
Check or Challenge the Stories
Maybe you are riding in the car with a partner and having a tense moment around navigation. A storyline might start to form in your mind: “they hate how I have no sense of direction. Why can’t I be better at this? They must be so annoyed with me right now.” You might go further down the road, imagining fights you might have, how long this conflict might last. You may get anxious and quiet, or even preemptively defensive and irritable. Things may escalate and end up in an actual fight with your partner, or in a secret internal fight with yourself that your partner is oblivious to!
It’s very possible you were attuning to your partner’s body language and making an educated guess about their judgment of you. However, sometimes these thought spirals are actually forms of twisted thinking that are a bit more removed from a shared experience. It’s possible you assigned value and meaning to their actions that didn’t match their own, and reacted to your own story rather than a shared reality or even their intentions. So how to differentiate?
Rather than immediately blaming yourself or punting off responsibility to your partner, when your mind returns to the past—or begins to spin more stories about what this all means and churn up anger, self-blame or resentment—what would it be like to interrupt those stories, or even let them go? What might it look like to ask for reassurance, or get external help with those interruptions? What other ways can you engage to check in on the story you’ve built? How would your feelings and behaviors change if the story were different? What past experiences are informing your reactions?
Practice:
Read through a list of common cognitive distortions. Which ones do you find yourself doing frequently? Read through a list of antidotes to those distortions. Which might you be able to try out? Try practicing these first in “lower-stakes” situations and going from there. If you like a daily reminder, there are a number of “mood tracker” apps which can help you spot patterns and distortions in your thinking.
Related to this and the previous strategy set, consider what meaning your physical sensations may be trying to communicate (e.g. dehydration, low blood sugar, need for sleep, chemical imbalance of some sort, etc.), and how your emotions may shift if you address your physical body (e.g. decreased irritability, greater focus, heightened ability to manage emotions, etc.). If you want a guided walkthrough of common things to look for and how to address them, http://youfeellikeshit.com/ is an excellent and down-to-earth resource.
Clarify Attachment Wounds
The way we learn how to process our emotions is partly based on what we see others do around us. This is part of why our experiences with early childhood caregivers is so important (and is a cornerstone of “attachment theory”). As kids, we learn the “rules of emotions.” What feelings are acceptable, what feelings are not, what we’re supposed to LOOK like when we’re having a feeling, and so forth.
We also learn how to have (or not have) conflict, how to address (or not) interpersonal issues, and so on. These things continue to evolve as we grow, and it can be very useful to note what “core attachment wounds” and defensive patterns have emerged as a result. When we know those core wounds that sometimes flare up or lead us to react to present-day people as if they were people from our past, we can better address them both individually and collectively.
For example—one of the authors’ therapy clients loves cats. This person lived a complicated childhood, where responses to her needs were unpredictable. As a result, she experiences a lot of insecurity in her closest relationships as an adult. When her attachment wounds are activated by things like a partner not texting back immediately or her detecting a frustrated tone in their conversation, it is very difficult for her to engage. Instead she might back into a corner, make herself small, take space in solitude, pretend she doesn’t have needs or even lash out if confronted about it. It reminds her of how feral cats react.
So, she and her partner have developed a shared language about her “feral cat” showing up. Because her partner knows her “core wounds,” he does not position himself as her adversary, but rather joins with her to move through the past relational patterns that are currently activated. The “feral cat” language locates the problem outside of her, giving herself a bit of distance from shame and judgment about her actions when triggered. At the same time, her partner knows not to take her actions personally in those moments, to give her space, and to approach her cautiously and with a lot of compassion. Together, they figure out how to care for “the feral cat” and help it feel safe again.
When in a conflict with another person, try to join forces to tackle the issue, problem, challenging dynamic rather than each other. Part of doing that is through externalizing and clearly stating how you and your other person are aligning together rather than being adversarial toward each other. Try to name the problem as a specific thing that is external to both of you, or a “part” of you rather than the WHOLE of you (e.g. you and me and My Depression, or you and me joining to address The Anger).
Remind yourself that the person in front of you, when you’re activated, is likely bringing up a memory of people from your past. Try to specifically identify who you’re remembering, and recognize/affirm that the person in front of you is NOT that person. (Basically, help your body stop time-traveling and orient to the present moment.) It can help to focus on what makes the two people different, or in the case that you can’t or you’re in fact remembering a past version of this same person (e.g. a partner who cheated 10 years ago but has been faithful since), think of how *you* have grown since then and how you are a different person with new tools now to deal with the situation.
This series is titled “Electrons, Suitcases, and Mixing Boards: New Tools To Get The Relationships You Want.” It’s co-written by Aida Manduley and Anna Stern. This is part 1 of 4.
The Power of Language
Humans are deeply complex creatures. We don’t generally relish being reduced to less than the sum of our parts. Yet the language we have to describe our relationships is full of assumptions and limitations.
We deserve better.
In definitions and labels, we can find community and solidarity, but we can also find arguments and division. We can access resources and care, but we can also be kept out of spaces we need and denied these things. We can name our pain and find pathways to heal it, but we can also swim in a sea that is simultaneously too vast and too small to accurately describe our feelings.
Wherever we go, individual and systemic assumptions about who and what we are shape us. When, how, and whether we get to state the terms that define us—or have terms imposed on us—continually shapes our experience. The less our identities overlap with society’s assumptions and expectations, the more we probably feel this tension. And we don’t just feel it as individuals —many communities have been stripped of the power to name themselves. Reclaiming this power can be an act of defiance, courage, and survival.
We wrote this series ofarticles in hopes of providing language and frameworks for people to better craft and negotiate their relationships. Our goal isn’t to offer new words for particular relationship structures, but instead help people figure out the CONTENT of their relationships—the pieces that make them up. This may include things like emotional intimacy, physical touch, sharing hobbies, financial entanglement, and more.
The Relationship Suitcase Analogy
Think of it like this: you are going on a trip. There are two suitcases in front of you. One is empty and you’d have to fill it yourself. You’re not necessarily sure you like the shape or size of it, but it might work out for what you need. The other suitcase is full and you don’t know what’s in it, but the person who packed it said it has “everything you’ll need where you’re going.”
What do you do? Pack the empty suitcase, knowing it will take more time but might have more of what you specifically need? Lug the bulky one, appreciating someone else did the work of figuring out what was needed, but knowing you are likely carrying a lot of things you will not use? Or perhaps you decide to ignore those two suitcases entirely—making a list of what you need for the trip first, and then getting something to carry them in, which may end up not being a suitcase at all.
Much has been written about what to call the suitcase you are carrying—commitment, friendship, platonic life partnership, polyamory, marriage, non-monogamy, love, the list goes on. In this article, rather than telling you what to call your “relationship suitcase,” we are going to help you get curious and intentional about what you pack inside it, how much of each item you want, and how to discuss that with the other person(s) involved. When figuring out what each trip (read: each relationship) needs, you may realize you:
need the same suitcase for every trip, packed with the same contents in the same amounts always and forever
want to use the same suitcase with the same contents for every trip, but the amount of each thing you pack will shift (e.g. a big bottle of shampoo for a long trip versus a small bottle of shampoo for a short trip)
like the suitcase you were given but want to pack it differently for each trip
prefer an entirely different suitcase or bag for each trip, or have a few sets of suitcases for different “types” of trips
dislike suitcases and just want to use bags and other carrying devices altogether, and figure things out as you go along
don’t like traveling and just want to find a single place to go to and be done moving
get excited at the idea of traveling a lot, and maybe even taking overlapping or nested trips
aren’t sure what you want right now at all, actually
feel like some other combination or style not mentioned above
Wherever you end up, and however this changes or doesn’t across time, the idea is to have options and the skills to support those options. (Part 3 and 4 of this series go into greater depth about the specific tools we’ve developed for this.)
Why We Need New Tools & Frameworks
I am a queer, polyamorous, nonbinary person.
I am a straight, married, cisgender woman.
We might read these sentences and think we know a lot about these two people. But we actually know very little about how they define themselves and their relationships, or what these words mean to them in their specific contexts. We don’t know how many relationships they’re in or what those relationships bring into their lives. We have a valuable starting point, nothing more… and sometimes that’s enough. But when we are trying to build connections with others and see how we can make those mutually fulfilling, we need to go into more detail.
What do our labels look like in practice? How do our labels translate to lived experiences?
If the label “monogamous” comes with the expectation that a monogamous partner be our sole confidante, lover, financial partner, and best friend, we might turn away from other important relationships. We might even think there’s something wrong with us if we can’t find all those things in one person. If we are new to consensual non-monogamy, we may feel pulled to have sex with more partners and/or date more and more people regardless of our capacity to handle it, believing this will prove our identity is “real” or that we’re “doing it right.” The more our relationships are discussed and defined by systems outside of us, the less we may feel empowered to create relationship models that really work for us.
The “Monogamy Expansion Pack”
On the surface, with more and more coverage of non-monogamy in American media (beyond infidelity and swinging), it may seem that we have expanded our understanding of relationship possibilities and that those understandings have spread to the mainstream. When we look deeper, though, many media portrayals of non-monogamy amount to something more like a “monogamy expansion pack.”
No offense to the actual board game whose photo we used for our sass here.
Polyamory—one flavor of non-monogamy that’s been getting more coverage—in mainstream understanding centers formerly monogamous, typically heterosexual couples. These people have agreed to date outside their monogamous bond—often to “fix a problem” like infidelity or “spice up their marriage.” Reporters look for “polyamorous couples,” with the baked-in assumption of a dyad. When pictured, these folks are generally White, cisgender, able-bodied, and conventionally attractive. Their relationship is defined in hierarchical terms, centering the previously monogamous “primary” partners, and adding “secondary” or possibly “tertiary” partners to the mix.
Sometimes, for a twist, we’ll see the “couple with a unicorn.” This unit is made up of two women and one man, and the framing often drips with messaging about “greedy bisexuals” or “every man’s fantasy come true.” If the media wants to demonize the arrangement or make them seem odd, they may present a less conventionally attractive set of people or include snide comments from reporters and writers. And sometimes, with a nod to the 60’s and mentions of free love, media will bring up rural communes as a bizarre relic from a different time.
Either way, these portrayals are extremely narrow and don’t usually meaningfully diverge from monogamy’s rules and expectations… there are just a few more people involved in fulfilling the same general scripts.
Challenging the Status Quo
Andrea Zanin critiques these portrayals of polyamory as monogamy with a non-monogamous candy coating, dubbing this “polynormativity.” She writes “the most fundamental element of polyamory—that of rejecting the monogamous standard, and radically rethinking how you understand, make meaning of and practice love, sex, relationships, commitment, communication, and so forth—is lost.” Thus, non-monogamy’s revolutionary potential gets watered down. It’s made into something that challenges the status quo enough to be uncomfortable, but not enough to upend the social order or provide meaningful tension.
So with this in mind, how could our relationships and our social worlds shift if we asked more transformational, liberatory questions? If we had tools to answer with enough specificity to reflect the true parameters of our relationships, the values that shape them (and us), and our individual needs far more clearly?
For more on these questions and their value, stay tuned for Part 2 of this series—where we discuss in greater depth the revolutionary potential of new tools and questions to understand our relationships.
Content-warning: discussions of the Holocaust and genocide overall. If you want to skip that, jump to the “So Where Do We Go From Here?” section.
Learning About the Holocaust
I heard about the Holocaust as a child because I was raised under the Jehova’s Witness faith & JWs were persecuted and rounded up too (though in much smaller numbers than Jewish folks and many other groups). I remember being small and wondering if I would ever have to die for my faith. What would I do if this happened again and my family was rounded up? Would I lie and renounce God? Would I hide? How likely was this to happen in modern-day Puerto Rico, anyway? But what if I moved to another country when I grew up? I was taught about the brave Witnesses who refused to stand down, who kept congregating even in concentration camps, who were marked by purple triangles…and it sparked a mix of curiosity and horror.
Then I devoured everything I could find about the Holocaust and who else it affected, namely the millions of Jewish people who were systematically persecuted and killed. I bought books off Scholastic catalogs about it, read encyclopedia entries about it on CD-ROM and various local libraries, browsed the baby Internet, saved poetry from Jewish authors, watched documentaries on the History Channel and anywhere else I could find. Knowing about this felt important, even though I didn’t actually meet someone Jewish until I was 16 or 17. Part of me couldn’t believe such things were possible, and yet…here was plenty of evidence.
For someone who has really powerful defenses and control over their reactions to traumatic material (for better or worse), to this day, whenever I think about the Holocaust, something in my gut twists and turns, something cold and heavy weighs down my insides, constricts my ribcage. I think, in part, it’s because this was the first contact I had with genocide-related material that sunk in, in all its violence. No one was trying to hide it or sanitize it for me, unlike how many conversations about slavery and colonization were treated in places like school as I was growing up.
And this knowing—certainly partly spurred by some morbid childhood curiosity that later transformed into mature empathy, fear, and dedication—in this political climate is part of what reminds me this fight isn’t over, and that we can and MUST resist, and do so collectively. It reminds me of the power of personal narratives, the power of building communities of support, the power of remembrance. We must stay vigilant & unapologetic about fighting back against the systems that seek to eradicate us and those who may not look like us.
Knowing Our HIstory and Its Connections
Yesterday, on Yom HaShoa—the Jewish-specific Holocaust Remembrance Day—I reflected on this state-sanctioned mass murder (both overt and covert—under a guise of progress & purity) and shuddered at how the hate and values that spurred The Holocaust are still here. I thought about the increase in anti-semitic violence in the United States, and how many Americans in the U.S. have incomplete, flawed, and straight-up poor information about the Holocaust. Whether we have a direct connection to Jewishness or not, anti-semitism is an issue that involves us all and requires our attention.
Plus, here’s a gentle reminder that the Holocaust wasn’t JUST fueled by an anti-semitic platform—it was a platform that required homogeneity, that squashed dissent, that classified large groups of people as undesirable and unworthy of life, that stigmatized and created fear and animosity toward people with disabilities, Roma people, resistance activists, queer people, civilians (primarily Soviet, Polish, and Serb), and more. What happened during World War II in Europe was massive, and in many ways was not ideologically unique. The language and practices of ethnic cleansings, the ideals around eugenics, politically-motivated killings…none of that started or ended with the Nazis. And when we don’t see the connections between what happened there and the history of imperialism, colonialism, and other forms of large-scale violence across the globe, we are missing important lessons of how to resist and recognize these issues.
As we learn about the Holocaust, we should learn about and connect this to the broader history of anti-semitism prior to WWII as well as other instances of mass violence, including ethnic cleansings, man-made famines, politically-motivated massacres, and more. If we’ve heard about the Holocaust, we should also map its similarities and patterns to :
the Cambodian genocide at the hands of the Khmer Rouge,
the Bosnian genocide (targeting Bosnian Muslims and Croats) at the hands of Bosnian Serb forces,
the East Timor genocide at the hands of the Indonesian government,
the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Turkish government,
the Rwandan genocide of the Tutsi at the hands of the Hutu majority government,
the Serbian genocide at the hands of the Ustashe regime in Croatia and Axis forces in Yugoslavia,
the Atlantic Slave Trade a.k.a. The African Holocaust at the hands of the Portuguese, the British, the French, the Spanish, and the Dutch,
and more!
We don’t have to be seasoned scholars in every one of these issues to have some baseline knowledge and understanding.
So Where Do We Go From HEre?
On my end, this reflection process made me recommit to doing liberation work, building alliances, listening & including more voices in my projects, remembering my ancestors, & nurturing love for the Jewish folks in my life. Also, I commit to using a lens that names and challenges anti-semitism more explicitly & consistently, as it is not as integrated into my current work as I’d like it to be.
We must learn from history and note patterns. We mustn’t think ourselves “so above it” & distanced that we miss the signs of fascism, of hatred, of censorship, of xenophobia, especially when they’re disguised under language of protection. The way out of this, the way of resistance, is one of collective action and coalitions across identities based on shared principles. There’s a rich history of cross-movement solidarity; we don’t have to reinvent the wheel or do it alone. We are more powerful together. There’s a reason why “divide and conquer” is a strategy of domination.
Art by Karl Orozco.
Our world has also changed in many ways, and we must learn from history while updating our tools and strategies. We can’t be complacent, fine with doing “just enough” to mirror the victories of the past or avoid its horrors.
We must find courage and imagination, craft networks of care and mutual aid, lower dependence on centralized systems of authority that prioritize capitalist ideals over the reduction of human suffering & more equitable distribution of resources. And we must nurture love and joy. Not in a bland “love everyone and ignore your hurts and Just Be Happy” kind of way, but in a fierce radical way, one that involves compassion without requiring forgetting, one that acknowledges the humanity of every person, one that revels in the ways we are resilient and the ways we can be gentle, one that can understand joy is not always accessible for everyone and that feelings present differently for us all.
Rage & fear are short-term fuel. Powerful as hell, deserving of a spot in our toolkit, helpful for survival…but we cannot rely on these alone. We cannot live well forever in rage and fear, displaced and isolated, stress chemicals wreaking havoc in our bodies. Our flesh and our activisms need expansion, need deep breathing room, need guiding beacons to light the path when things feel bleak.
We have to vision the just world we want and sink our teeth into it. We must make space for dreaming, for working toward the ABILITY to imagine a future at all, and have that future be one where we are all safer, held, respected, loved, resourced, in community, witnessed. Our futures don’t even have to be that far away and complicated; we can vision for the next five minutes, five days, five months, five years. Even at our most defeated, our most apathetic, we hold power through our mere existence. As long as we are alive, our bodies hold possibility for transformation and magic. Whatever the scope we embrace, whatever the timeline that makes sense for us, reaffirming our commitments with a goal of shared joy and nourishment can make a huge difference.
What does that future look like for you? How will you bring yourself and your people closer to that vision of justice? How can you live that dream right now? Let me know in the comments below!
I was back in my homeland of Puerto Rico—the first time in two years—for a professional conference when I heard the news about the Orlando shooting.
I sat around a table, ordering pancakes as big as my face, surrounded by fellow members of the Women of Color Sexual Health Network. We ate, talked shop, and decompressed after some difficult events that weekend. There was a TV on next to us—flashing lights and “ORLANDO SHOOTING” in big letters displayed on the bottom of the screen.
It’s too early for this. We’re already so weary.
Not until later did I actually pay attention to the news. I was in work mode, though, and nothing sunk in. Later that night, I hopped a plane back to Boston and came home to an empty bed. I craved human contact, craved my queer partners, craved community as I read the names of the dead late into the night, crying and unable to sleep. I wanted to light candles, whisper Spanish into the sky and honor the dead, but I could only witness the little information available and sob in the dark, thankful I only had a few clients to see the next day.
On Monday, I watched a mother recount the last words she exchanged with her son as they texted during the shooting. On Monday, I watched the last Snapchat videos various victims filmed that night, including one with gunshots in the background. On Monday, I couldn’t feel rage because my nerves were too tangled in sadness and exhaustion. On Monday, I told one of my partners that I was randomly crying throughout the day.
“It’s not random if you’re grieving, boo. They killed your *family*”
Their words settled in my chest. They killed my family.
I’ve never been one to grieve over strangers, but this felt personal. They were fellow queers, fellow people of color, fellow Latinx, fellow people of complicated genders, out to have a good time.
23 out of 49 victims were Puerto Ricans like me.
So I could try to speak of the rage at how many White queers have put themselves at the center of this grief like they were the center of the universe. I could try to speak of the disgust at how many have spun this into Islamophobic propaganda, speak of the frustration at how this has been turned into a detached debate about gun control.
I could try to speak to how I see this as part of a web of violence, threads connecting the ALMOST WEEKLY murders of trans people and especially the violence against trans women and femmes; the slaughter and erasure of Natives; African enslavement; police brutality targeting Black and brown bodies; harsh immigration policies; lynchings and gay-bashings; harmful legislation about where we can go to the bathroom, how we can dress, and how we can reproduce (or not); and the present-day colonization of Puerto Rico.
And I could try to speak about the hope for the future and the ways we are strong and resilient, of how I see love as the long-term fuel we need for our movements.
But all I can speak to right now is holding sorrow in the same hands I try to hold hope, and how sometimes my hands don’t feel big enough.
All I can speak to right now is my fear that one day it will be me and my familia… and realizing that it already is.
All I can speak to right now is how intensely I want to protect my communities and how I want to care for my QT/POC lovers with such ferocity that the world trembles.
All I can speak to right now is the grief at those misgendered after death, those outed to families who would reject them, those whose undocumented status prevents families from reaching their bodies, those who survived and are wracked with guilt…all the ripples of pain spreading throughout Orlando and mi isla and the entire continent.
The atom of the Latinx universe is the family, not the individual, and so the number of broken hearts balloons much larger than the 49 dead and 53 wounded. This is why community matters. This is why we gather together at places and times like these.
So I hold space for all those who grieve in secret, whose workplaces and families and surroundings don’t acknowledge how this has carved open their chest. I hold space for those who are in helping professions trying to keep their ish together in front of clients as their insides splinter. I hold space for you, for me, for us. For those who are confused about their grief, for those who are numb, for those whose rage rises like bile, for those who have lost so much already and feel this as another drop in the bucket that’s already overflowing.
By being queer and trans we have inherited legacies of mourning, loss, and persecution. By being Latinx, we have inherited legacies of discrimination, colonization, and diaspora. And we must remember that we have also been passed down resistance, power, healing, life.
Como dice el refrán: “They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds”
To all those who were taken too soon: descansen en poder, and may you never thirst.
If you didn’t know, today is Trans Day of Visibility, started in 2010 by Rachel Crandall and now spearheaded by Trans Student Educational Resources [ETA: the new stand-alone TDOV website lives here]. Unlike Trans Day of Remembrance, a day of mourning, this is a date for celebration, recognition, and honoring.
The Theme For This Year’s Trans day of Visibility:
We need more than representation, more than just people seeing and recognizing trans faces. Show your support for trans people of all stripes year round. Think of how you can be an advocate for trans rights in the day-to-day, especially in alliance with trans folks experiencing the intersections of White supremacy, misogyny, ableism, classism, and other forms of systematic discrimination. How can you interrupt when people misgender your friends, lovers, colleagues, family-members? How can you educate yourself and others about gender identity and expression? How can you support trans people around you in concrete ways? And though this list is, in many ways, written for a cisgender audience, a bunch of the things here also apply in cross-trans-identity solidarity and celebration. So regardless of your identities, I invite you to keep reading.
Here are Twelve Ways You Can Start To Work on This:
2. Practice using pronouns beyond she/her/hers and he/him/his with this fantastic website. If you’re wondering what you say when you ignore people’s pronouns and don’t respect people’s identities, this comic and this infographic explain it perfectly.
3. Read amazing articles centered on trans experiences and stories, and particularly those written by trans women. I’ve linked to the exceptional work from Autostraddle here.
4. Fight the slew of “bathroom bills” and related legislation (such as “conversion therapy” bills) that seeks to dehumanize, hurt, endanger, and systematically disadvantage trans people. You can find a recent list of them here. If you live in the following states, there are some bills you should be paying attention to: Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, South Carolina, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Tennessee, Washington. [ETA 2019: Here’s a legislative tracker up to 2017, and in-depth information through 2018 here. To track conversion therapy bills and work on this issue, follow the Born Perfect Campaign and the 50 Bills 50 States Campaign.]
8. Share resources about trans and trans-related identities in other languages and from non-Anglo-U.S.-centric perspectives. I compiled a bunch of resources for Spanish-language trans information, for example.
10. Interrupt instances of transphobia, cissexism, and cisnormativity. When people are actively misgendered, when LGBT events don’t actually include trans people, when trans women’s voices are overshadowed (including by trans men), when discussions of police brutality don’t include trans people, when people in positions of power refuse to use someone’s pronouns, when people randomly ask trans folks invasive questions, when trans people are stereotyped in casual conversation, when someone’s trans identity is the butt of a joke, the list goes on. Take action.
12. Move beyond thinking of trans people as all being “people born in the wrong body who just want to be like cisgender men and women.” The trans umbrella is way more varied than that. Learn about nonbinary trans people (including the varied celebrities who have described being nonbinary in some way) as well as those fitting other labels within and adjacent to the more “well-known” understandings of transness, such as genderqueer.
Many people know Jehovah’s Witnesses as “those people who come to your door to talk about the teachings of God and aren’t Mormons.” You may also know Jehovah’s Witnesses as “those people who don’t accept blood transfusions or celebrate holidays, including birthdays.” Growing up, I was part of their world—raised within this minority religion on the predominantly Catholic island of Puerto Rico. From approximately ages 1 to 12, I didn’t really do holidays or birthdays. Reluctantly, I was eventually allowed to attend birthday parties around age 13. So how did my religious upbringing in the JW universe leave me with valuable lessons about celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.’s birth, life, and death? Read on.
Note: This post isn’t meant to holistically explain JW doctrine or take a stance on their overall existence, but use some of the teachings I digested as a vehicle for remembrance of a key historical figure. Though it’s been ages since I left the faith, my family’s still in the JW world.
1. Beware of Birthdays Being Used for Shady Purposes
I remember being told that part of the reason we didn’t celebrate birthdays as JWs is because they had pagan roots, and historical birthday celebrations were tinged with violence and “sexual depravity.” I vividly recall the story of Herodias asking for John the Baptist’s head at the birthday of Herod Antipas, and stories of a baker being hanged at a pharaoh’s birthday. Part of my child’s brain didn’t get why we had to worry about ancient history if birthdays were something different now, but clearly roots were important somehow. To celebrate birthdays was to invite paganism and a history of sin into my life. Fast forward to the present day, and though I disagree with many teachings of the JW faith and their interpretations of the Bible, the importance of history is front and center in my life.
This holiday is a time when people spin his relentless anti-racism work into a palatable mush. It’s easy and convenient to misuse this holiday and spit out words about “turning the other cheek” and “peaceful activism” to condemn activists doing disruptive protests, to explain why people of color (and particularly Black people) have to be eternally accommodating and kind to those that infringe upon our rights.
I’m not here for it.
I am not interested in celebrations, awards, or acknowledgement given as a silencing tactic or as table scraps. I am not interested in holidays meant to make a community feel complacent or satisfied. Don’t give me a sanitized version of Martin Luther King Jr.’s politics. He was a radical and he was considered a dangerous rabble-rouser. Don’t buy the modern-day fairytale that somehow the United States government and its White leaders were welcoming and thankful for his nonviolent approach, especially in contrast to Malcolm X’s.
Don’t forget Martin Luther King Jr.’s comments on White moderates, and how he felt they were one of the biggest threats to Black people in the United States, more so than the extremists and Ku Klux Klanners. Don’t let people flatten his history and use his birthday as a way to squash radical anti-racist work. Don’t let those around you repeat the most general statements about “equal rights” and blatantly ignore past and present calls to specific action.
2. Celebrating Birthdays Can Detract From The Issues And WHO/What Should Truly Be Honored
For Jehovah’s Witnesses, birthdays celebrating individuals detract from the glory that should be going to God, seen as the true and only creator of any life on Earth. Additionally, many JWs stress that focusing on celebrating a person’s birth ignores what they did with their life. The latter is way more important to Jehovah; it has implications for one’s place (or lack thereof) on an earthly paradise post-Armageddon! So what does it mean to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday with a modified version of that in mind? To me, it means we should look at his life’s work, and that shouldn’t divorce said iconic work from the people who propped him up and helped him become the figurehead he is in our modern day.
There are those who knew Martin Luther King Jr. as a human, and have a visceral, personal understanding of his legacy. There should be space to understand Martin Luther King Jr. as a whole person, flaws and all. However, what he is to most of the U.S. is a symbol, and we can’t forget what that symbol stands for. Here, the man turns into shorthand for a larger story and a struggle for justice. The symbol is useful, but we have to be wary of mistaking the signifier for the signified.
So, I don’t generally use the “behind every man there is a great woman” line because it feels really limited and way too heterosexist for my universe, but there is truth in its spirit. Behind our great leaders we have those who support(ed) them in myriad ways (e.g. in the case of MLK Jr., two obvious names are Bayard Rustin and Coretta Scott King). Behind our tireless activists there are the community-members, partners, friends, families, that help feed them, clothe them, tend to their physical and spiritual injuries, love them, laugh with them, cry with them.
None of us are or work alone, even when we feel like a tiny pinprick in the fabric of the universe.
3. We Shouldn’t Wait For Birthdays To Rejoice And Remember
Being part of a minority religion with “weird rules” like no birthdays meant that I had to defend my views pretty often. Though not a religious institution, my K-12 school operated under laicism, or “French secularism,” but still somehow managed to have a catechism class, a place in the yearbook for First Communion pictures, and participation in Christian sports leagues. Birthdays were often celebrated in the classrooms, and by the time I was in 5th or 6th grade, I had vast experience with deflecting criticism and annoying questions. Heck, I had stock answers ready, like “I can receive presents all year round, so I’m not missing out!” or “My family can have other celebrations, and we don’t need to wait for a birthday!”
Though I’m no longer part of the JW faith, those ideas have stuck with me. Anniversaries, birthdays, other holidays can serve as convenient markers of experiences and excuses to party, but it’s silly to relegate all our joy, love, and sharing to those dates. While I can use, say, Valentine’s Day to tell my partners and loved ones how much they mean to me, I don’t wait until that date to do it. Furthermore, in a capitalist society, I should get creative with how I honor the people and values I cherish rather than defaulting to just buying things.
Similarly, we don’t need to wait until Martin Luther King Jr. Day to acknowledge the history of White supremacy in this country. We don’t need to wait until this holiday to acknowledge the great strides being made by the Black Lives Matter movement. We don’t need to buy something to signify our commitment and wear it like an empty promise. We don’t need to wait until Martin Luther King Jr. Day to speak about racism, raising the minimum wage, the importance of climate justice, or any of the other areas of inequality and injustice King talked about.
If this holiday is the only time during the year that we discuss anti-racism and Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy, we’re doing something wrong.
Let’s discuss these issues and individuals year round. Let’s use this annual date to expand our celebration and acknowledgement, to provoke brilliant and multifaceted conversations!
Use of this unchanged image is allowed under a CC License. Click through for the original.
So, Go On, Celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.’s LEgacy For Longer than Just 24 Hours:
Teach the little humans around you about MLK Jr. and the civil rights movement.
Listen to a Spotify playlist merging his famous speeches with music inspired by his work.
Witness the queer activists of color taking disruptive action to protest.
Read about the activists reclaiming this holiday in a way that acknowledges the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life.
Support actions to restore voting rights to all, particularly in light of the impending elections and some of the egregious candidates running for office.
Every other week, I co-lead an all-gender process and support group. Last night, one of our topics of discussion was, of course, David Bowie. Some of the people in the room felt displaced, distraught by his death. In this intergenerational space we held those who grew up knowing David Bowie was a big deal already as well as those who grew up along with David Bowie and saw his career take off. In this space, we shared stories of the personal meanings of his life as well as the confusing feelings left in his wake as some of us discovered information about his abuses and problematic behaviors. Yesterday, all throughout social media, I saw countless stories shared of how David Bowie’s music touched a million queer and trans people of varying races, ages, and countries. I have seen my newsfeed inundated with people’s shock and memories, with the ways in which he inspired them in ways they did not even know until he passed, with the ways he changed music, science fiction, and gender.
And yesterday is also when I found out about the rape allegations against him (that were cleared by a jury, but I also know that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen) and the facts of his statutory rape of a 14/15-year-old. And so my feed has also been ripe with explosive anger as well as nuanced discomfort, frustration, and exhaustion.
David Bowie and J. C. in Labyrinth Stanley Bielecki Movie Collection / Getty Images
So what am I, a gender/queer Latinx, supposed to feel and do about this cultural icon? As someone who has worked for years on preventing and dealing with sexual assault and abuse? As someone who teaches on consent and believes in the incredible power and knowledge of youth as well as the incredible vulnerability of the teen years? As someone who sees White stars get a pass for things that celebrities of color get crucified for? As someone who works with many people feeling intense things about David Bowie’s death? As someone who grew up watching Labyrinth way more than should’ve been allowed but still did not feel the connection to Bowie that so many others do?
And how should others feel? The survivors of sexual abuse and assault hearing the streams of praise for someone accused of rape? The queer and trans kids of yesteryear for whom David Bowie’s music became a lifeline, became a hope when they considered suicide? The people living at that intersection? I don’t ask this because I have the ultimate answers or get off on telling others what to do (I mean, maybe, but that’s another story), but because we need to have the discussion and figure out where we stand and what that means.
Help: Feelings Are Hard and Complicated!
Our reluctance to have an honest and open conversation about the flaws of celebrities we love stems from a simple fact: we see ourselves in them. If your favorite smart, talented, successful celebrity can be classist, sexist or racist then what does that say about you? Well, it says that you can be classist, sexist, racist, homophobic, or transphobic.
But you can and you are at least some of these things sometimes. So am I. Own it. Learn from it. It’s not an attack, it’s the truth. Nobody is a perfect example of civil rights virtue. If you aren’t screwing up, you aren’t trying.
For those who are not mourning David Bowie: We can and must critique deplorable actions regardless of who is committing them. We must also acknowledge space for people’s grief, and respect the very real pain felt by people when in mourning. This does not mean erase people’s problematic, terrifying, horrible, disgusting, whatever actions. It means respect the fact that many people are feeling sadness. Bowie is dead; the people we should hold in kindness are those that feel the loss. It does not mean we have to mourn, erect banners, engage in commentary that doesn’t feel authentic to us. It does not mean we shouldn’t feel our feelings and get enraged at the ways the media perpetuate rape culture and gloss over issues we care about. It does mean we should allow for space to exist where people who are sad and hurt can congregate and feel their feelings. It means we should find those who are in a similar spot as us and vent our rage at this situation and David Bowie’s actions but not at the expense of those who are mourning.
Are we critiquing Bowie or his fans? Are we centering the cultural object or the person? Are we critiquing the abuses he committed or the fact that people can have big, complex feelings about it and are mourning his death? Are we critiquing how certain stars get so much praise upon their death and get their sins wiped away, but certain stars don’t? Are we critiquing how, due to ignorance and White supremacy, many mourn the loss of a White star and ignore the losses of countless people of color at the hands of police brutality? Are we critiquing people’s sadness to get cool points for not feeling anything? Are we assuming people can’t feel multiple things at once?
We must think about our audience and the impact of our words on our communities. We must think about the intersections and how we highlight or erase them. We must ask ourselves why we are raising our voice and in service of what.
For those who are mourning David Bowie: We have a right to time and space to grieve, to heal, to reminisce, to do whatever we have to do to feel whole. And we must not use our grief as a way to silence survivors of sexual abuse, even if we are survivors ourselves. We must remember that we do not have to immediately engage in a discussion of the problematic aspects of David Bowie with strangers (or even friends) if it feels too raw. We eventually must, however, engage with these and incorporate them into our understanding of Bowie because he was an icon but also a person. We should allow space for the pain of those who have experienced abuse and been repeatedly silenced, especially because so many have been abused by people like Bowie, by people in positions like his and with followings like his, and people have looked the other way “because they have done so much good for the community.” It means we should find those who are in a similar spot as us and air out our feelings in ways that feel helpful but not at the expense of acknowledging rape culture and abuse.
Are we conflating our mourning of Bowie the person with Bowie-what-the-icon-and-the-music-meant-to-us (and thus really mourning a piece of ourselves and our world)? Are we mourning in a way that erases all wrongdoing and promotes Bowie as a perfect cyborg of queer and trans visibility? Are we ignoring the impact of race, age, and money in these discussions? Are we mourning in a public forum and keeping eerily silent about the ways in which David Bowie abused his power? Are we mourning for David Bowie and ridiculing or ignoring the mourning for countless lives lost in places like Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq?
We must think about our audience and the impact of our words on our communities. We must think about the intersections and how we highlight or erase them. We must ask ourselves why we are raising our voice and in service of what.
OUR FAV IS PROBLEMATIC (#SorryNotSorry, David Bowie)
We tend to hold the people of whom we are fans to the same moral standards we hold friends, often expecting them to echo our politics or sensibilities in the same way that their art, whatever it may be, speaks to us. By definition, fame requires those on the outside looking in to rely on imagination to prop up celebrity narratives; the public’s glimpses into the lives and personalities of the famous are so mediated that though we think we know, we have no idea. Fame encourages us to fill in the blank spaces around these people with what we want to see, with what reaffirms our pre-existing assumptions. It’s no surprise, then, that when it comes to art we like, and to the artists who make it, we expect to see reflections of ourselves in them, even on the simplest of levels.
Understanding that “our faves are problematic“is not a carte-blanche to excuse people from their wrongdoing because “everyone is problematic” (and trust me, there are a lot of examples/receipts showing that most of the people we like have shoved their foot in their mouth pretty deeply). We still have a matter of degrees and impact. And we must also remember that a mentality of “kill all people who do anything wrong ever” won’t get us anywhere in the long run. We can both remember and forgive as a people. We can hold folks accountable and keep them with us. We can remember, not forgive, and still move forward. We have options.
Most of us know of Bowie as an icon, as a rocker, an artist, an actor, a pioneer—a larger than life concept—rather than Bowie as a living, breathing individual. We have to contend with the fact that the human Bowie (not the persona he crafted or what he meant to us or what his music did for our souls and survival) abused his power and privilege.
It can be difficult and scary and destabilizing to hold the reality of loving someone and/or thinking they’ve done amazing things with the realities of those same people doing horrible things, but that’s how the world is. This is what intersectionality is all about—about understanding the ways our intersecting identities make up our privileges and oppressions, about the complex ways in which our experiences and pieces form our whole.
Just like the queer and trans people who aren’t survivors of sexual abuse/assault should acknowledge the pain coming from survivors, straight and cisgender survivors should acknowledge the pain coming from queer and trans people. And those at the intersections—the queer and trans survivors—who feel confused as hell and torn (or staunchly on one side of the fence!) need our holding too. In discussing David Bowie’s death, we need to eliminate the transphobia, homophobia, and rape culture apologism in many of these conversations. These are all toxic forces that hurt our world.
We should not simply dismiss David Bowie’s artistic legacy and the impact he had on many AND we should not dismiss the allegations of rape and the realities of how he had sex with a 14/15-year old when he was a powerful and revered adult.
We must also listen to the people who interacted with Bowie instead of putting words in their mouth while also recognizing that there are larger forces at play—that just because someone does not feel victimized, it does not mean David Bowie did not take actions that were predatory and could have victimized someone else in the same situation. We can say “it was the 70’s!” and “things were different back then with all the free-flowing drugs!” or whatever to give context, but not to justify abuse and harmful behaviors. Some of us may feel puzzlement, disbelief, discomfort, and a lot of other emotions toward Lori M.’s account of her relationships with David Bowie and Jimmy Page, but we must understand that it is her story and not ours. Just because some of us would have felt or acted differently does not erase her reality and her truth. And we must also pay attention to what this narrative does in the public sphere.
A carceral, punishment-based justice system where we value an eye for an eye will not save us. It may feel good in the moment and scratch that “revenge” itch, but it will not save us. Booting “bad people” off the island will leave us with an empty island. What will save us is compassion, understanding, accountability, transformation, and restoration of justice. This is not easy, but it is what we must do. And it is not SIMPLE, but it is what we must strive for if we truly want to live in a different, better world. It does not mean we ignore bad things or ~*~magically forgive people and hug them even when they threaten our existence~*~ (more on this in a second).
As far as David Bowie and his work, each of us has to figure out how these things connect in our lives. Some people may swear off his music, some will not. Some people may feel revulsion when they seem him in movies they used to love, some may not. We can figure out how we as a society may honor the great work and things he put out in the world while not erasing his wrongdoing. Bowie is neither the first nor the last celebrity we’ll have to think about in these ways. We better start practicing these trains of thought if we weren’t doing so already (and many of us have been thinking about this for a while, especially in POC communities).
It’s easy for me to have compassion for people I like and see eye-to-eye with, for people who haven’t harmed me. Seeing those people as valuable humans who have worth, who deserve kindness and safety and care from the world and from me personally – that’s easy. Extending the same compassion and open-heartedness to everyone – to the people that have hurt me, to the people I disagree with about everything, to the people who would never listen to me or extend any care or empathy or understanding to me, to the people who don’t think I deserve humanity or kindness or safety – that takes a little more doing. Giving that kind of love is hard and painful.
Now, to be realistic about this, having compassion for people that have harmed me or that mean me harm doesn’t mean I need to allow them to be near me. It doesn’t mean I need to put my own safety at risk. And it also doesn’t mean that this compassion can’t genuinely coexist with real and powerful rage. But my hurt and my rage don’t obviate a person’s right to exist, to feel compassion, to be loved.
As for me? I feel as Andy does. I choose to come to this from a perspective of radical love. Not always and not easily, but with intention and complexity and imperfection.
Update: Since this event passed, you can search the archive of the Tweets and conversation here. The chat was on FIRE, and the amount of responses definitely gave us all a finger workout.
Non-monogamy can be a tricky beast, and I want you to tell me what you think about it. Join me at 3 PM EST on Twitter next week when I’ll be guest moderator for #SexTalkTuesday and the topic is (you guessed it): navigating consensual non-monogamy!
NOTE: We are not just talking about polyamory. This is about the broad umbrella of consensual non-monogamy, so if you’re monogamish, have a steady boo but also a cadre of play partners, are curious about having more than one sexy-friend in general, identify as asexual but have multiple romantic sweeties, the list goes on, I WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU.
I believe in the deeply transformative and revolutionary power of both sex and technology, so doing things like this? That mix both to create dialogue and spread knowledge? You can always count me in, and I hope I can count you in too. You can stay for as long or as little of the conversation as you want, and you can check out the archived tweets after the event as well.
Participating: Log onto Twitter at the times indicated above and respond to the questions as I post them live, one by one. Make sure you include “#SexTalkTuesday” on your tweet so it’s part of our discussion! You can follow me at @neuronbomb.
Witnessing: Don’t want to chat? Don’t have a Twitter account and staunchly refuse to make one? You can still follow along by watching the hashtag in real time here.
Sharing: If you want to tell others about it, you can share this post [use the link bit.ly/nonmonofeels] and/or share the following banner on social media:
Questions About Non-Monogamy We’ll Be Discussing:
Q1 What are the biggest misconceptions people have about consensual non-monogamy? Tell us your pet-peeves! #sextalktuesday
Q2 What are some of the best and worst “rules” you’ve heard about when negotiating consensual non-monogamy? #sextalktuesday
Q3 What class and money-related issues come up in non-monogamous arrangements? How do you navigate them? #sextalktuesday
Q4 While non-monogamy can be tough, it can also be amazing. What are some of your happy non-mono stories? Time to brag! #sextalktuesday
Q5 What advice would you give your past self about exploring consensual non-monogamy? What would you tell your future self? #sextalktuesday
Please read the full article before commenting. This post is primarily meant to explore the confused, defensive, and sometimes outright racist/sexist/etc. reactions to a call-to-action around language use in the polyamorous community. The specific linguistic issue is concretely addressed in the final section.
Doesn’t it suck when someone tells you to stop using a word you’ve been using for years because they say it’s oppressive or harmful to their community?
Do you feel personally angry and/or persecuted when a term you use suddenly comes under attack? Do you think “this is political correctness run amok“?
That’s how a bunch of polyamorous folks felt when they were asked to stop using “poly” as an abbreviation. In case you haven’t stumbled upon this (I just heard about it two days ago myself), here’s the scoop—a Polynesian person on Tumblr made the following call to action:
Hey, can any polyamory blogs with a follower count please inform the palagi portion of the community that “poly” is a Polynesian community identifier, and is important to our safe spaces. Using “polyamory” is cool just like using “polygender” and “Polyromantic” and or Polysexual” is cool. But the abbreviation “poly” is already in use.
Then, when people pushed back saying “chill out, lots of words have multiple meanings” or “people have been using poly as an abbreviation for polyamorous for decades already,” they responded with this. [ETA 12/26/18: The original link has been deleted but there are some archived adjacent posts if you search the above quoted text. Long story short, the person was upset, talked about what people should do moving forward, discussed their thoughts around the word’s exclusivity and meaning, and more.]
Now, do I agree 100% with their statements? Nah. And regardless of my post’s title, I don’t actually want to obliterate “poly” from your vocabulary. But before you breathe that big ol’ sigh of relief, keep reading.
Poly: Polynesian, Polyamorous, Polywrath?
People are now discussing this debate on various Facebook groups dedicated to sexuality education and polyamory (one of the biggest has over 18K members), on Reddit (as well as the cesspools of Reddit) and on Tumblr. It’s apparently been brewing for a few months, if not longer, and some people are PISSED. Those under the delusion that polyamorous people are all kinder and more open-minded than the general population clearly hasn’t been in one of these circles and looked at it through a social equity lens. But that’s a post for another day. Back to the anger.
See what I did there? You’re welcome.
Being on the receiving end of “stop using a word” or “you’re being oppressive” isn’t an easy pill to swallow. Whenever I get called out for something—most likely ableism since it’s an axis of oppression I don’t personally experience and am still learning a lot about—there’s often a knee-jerk reaction in there. A “don’t tell me what to do” demon on my shoulder who loves getting self-righteous and hates being wrong, whose first line of defense is “it’s not even that big of a deal.” Heck, I’ve definitely felt it as a sexuality educator when I’ve merely read up on newer sexuality labels and no one is even talking to me. Though most of the time the reaction is “COOL, NEW WORDS,” I’d be lying if I said I never think “this is just going TOO FAR” or “WHY SO MANY LABELS” when hearing some new categories of identity, especially if people are getting defensive about them. That gut reaction is normal…
But then I take a breath and realize I’m being ridiculous even if it’s normal.
I’m not being my best self in those moments, and I need to hold compassion for my own feelings but also push past them if they’re not serving my values of kindness and justice.
Overall, individuals and communities are perpetually trying to find ways to describe themselves and their lives, and that can be really tough especially if the words are related to identities that are devalued and marginalized. While “labels are for soup-cans” and we’re so much more complex than words could ever describe, language is a powerful thing that helps both reflect and create our world. It helps build communities, express our emotions, and even pass down our histories. It helps us name our struggles, craft banners for solidarity, and connect for change. It makes sense people have a lot of feelings about it!
Language is ever-evolving and it’s a beautiful thing when more words can become available, when more ways of understanding our world are accessible. But that doesn’t happen without friction. Sometimes our knee-jerk reactions to new words or identities come from a place of holding onto what we’ve been taught and being uncomfortable with change. Sometimes the new labels contradict, criticize, or make obsolete other labels we’ve been using—or even identifying with—and that can feel like a punch in the gut.
Art by Amanda Watkins, my other boo. Click on the image to check out more of her art!
Often, and as I recognize is the case with me and my pride, immediate rage comes from not wanting to think that we’ve been ignorant and/or messing something up THIS WHOLE TIME. If XYZ person is right that usage of a particular word is oppressive, then what does that say about me, who has been using it for years? Does that mean I’m an oppressive, irredeemable jerk? (The answer is often “no, it just means stop using it” but the visceral reality doesn’t allow us to understand that quickly.) For more on this phenomenon, check out this video by Ian Danskin [one of my partners] and his overall series “Why Are You So Angry?“
Point is we need to evolve with language and work through our gut reactions to change.
Now, that’s not to say we should forget about the roots of certain words or suddenly say that terms like the n-word and the r-word are chill because “we’re past them being a slur” [hint: we’re not, and racism/ableism aren’t over either]. What I mean is that we need to hold space for growth and be willing to move in new directions with our terminology—that regardless of how defensive our initial “Don’t Tell Me What To Do” shoulder-demons might be, we MUST move in a direction of empathy and kindness, particularly to those in marginalized communities with long legacies of experiencing colonialism and other forms of structural oppression.
“But Poly Is a Latin Prefix; You CAn’t Claim It…”
Yes, poly is a prefix for dozens of words and it actually comes from Greek. Even the “poly” in the naming of Polynesia came out of super uninventive naming schemas (Polynesia means “many islands”). So? No one is saying the prefix needs to be eradicated. When talking about polycarbonate lenses, polygraphs, polygons, or polydactyl kittens, they’re not being referred to as “poly[s]” on their own. There’s the qualifier afterwards, but that is not always the case when talking about people. If someone states “I’m poly” you can’t immediately tell if they’re saying they’re Polynesian, polyamorous, polysexual, polyromantic, polygendered, or a host of other identity labels [without further context]. Heck, they could be a FEW of those labels.
So what we’re talking about here is clarity as well as empathy and willingness to listen.
Whether these Tumblr folks represent a few dozen, a few hundred, or a few thousand, the questions remain the same: what are we, non-Polynesian “poly” people and our allies, going to do to provide clarity to our language and stand in solidarity with however many Polynesians want this change? More importantly, what does this situation, and the pushback from members of “the polyamorous community,” tell us about language adoption and resistance to change in our communities?
When people say this is “being politically correct,” they are trying to make basic decency into a politically contested issue and make it sound bad. Some people even think they’re brave if they’re politically incorrect, conflating deep-rooted anti-authoritarian work that seeks to dismantle structural power with, like, flipping the bird to someone on Tumblr talking about racism. Being a jerk and using oppressive terminology isn’t brave. Whining about trigger-warnings and “preferred pronouns” and “social justice warriors ruining fun” isn’t bold or radical. Saying we’re “coddling our new generations” and actually harming survivors of trauma by being more thoughtful is missing the point (and it’s not even medically accurate). Being unwilling to even consider a minor shift in language to give space for another community to flourish is not living in a space of goodwill.
So What Should We Be Doing?
As someone in the sexuality field AND a polyamorous person with a big tech geek streak, I value useful search terms and disambiguation. Heck, as a super Type A person that drools over nice spreadsheets, regardless of other sexual or racial identities, I think it’s crucial that we make the Internet an easier, more organized place to browse. I already avoided using “poly” online in any meaningful capacity because it felt too ambiguous for searches and helpful tagging, and this debate is just another great reason to avoid it: because it’s a term that a racially marginalized community uses to self-identify and build community. If “poly” on its own works for them, more power to ’em. Even in sexuality-specific circles, using “poly” can be possibly misunderstood because there are other labels that start with poly- as well, so again, not the most useful.
Some have suggested “polya” or “polyam” as possible abbreviations that don’t conflict with usage by other groups. Personally, I think “polya” looks ugly as a word and makes me think of Dubya [never a good thing]. I feel “meh” about “polyam” but could see it as a better alternative, I guess. To each their own, and I won’t be adopting either of these abbreviations soon, but what I do advocate for is mindfulness around when and where we use “poly” to mean “polyamorous.” [ETA 11/26/19: I’ve grown fonder of “polyam” and while I still generally just use the full word, it’s the abbreviation I work with these days.]
Here are some questions to ask ourselves:
Is the word being used in a space where the meaning is clear to everyone witnessing the content?
Is using “poly” for “polyamorous” making it harder for another community to disambiguate and find “their own kind”?
What impact does the term’s usage have on search results, tagging systems, and online spaces?
Is the decision to keep using “poly” for “polyamorous” coming from a place of spite and thoughtlessness or from a place of informed compassion?
Personally, I will continue to use “poly” in private situations or verbal conversation where people know what I mean, BUT in tagging things online—a place where categorizing information is important, where people use those systems to search for others like themselves, and so on—I will use polyamory specifically and avoid “poly.” Again, this is work I was already doing, but something that is generally not a huge effort for folks to start doing if they hadn’t been. I encourage this level of specificity in others, for the sake of more than just random Polynesian folks on Tumblr.
But in regards to those “random Polynesian folks” on Tumblr, it doesn’t matter if most of us “don’t think about Polynesian people when we say poly” or that “our Polynesian friends don’t care.” While that may inform how radical our changes are and where we enact change, it shouldn’t mean that we ignore the issue entirely or dig our heels in the dirt because we don’t want to change. To questions of “couldn’t they just as easily pick a new tag/abbreviation?” my answer is just “maybe.” But when it’s a horde of predominantly White, Western polyamorists asking that question and refusing to consider where they may change, that says something.
At the end of the day, these are people asking for us to collaborate in making the Internet and its communities easier and better to navigate for all.
If you live in a place where you are guaranteed free speech, calls for space and respect like this aren’t censorship—they’re calls for consideration. You still have the power and right to make whatever decision feels best for you, but my hope is that you will prioritize the expansion of kindness and reduction of harm in the process.
One of my favorite poly-related words. This image by Robert Ashworth used under Creative Commons license. Click through for original.
Update 09/04/15: Poly as a prefix actually comes from Greek, not Latin as I originally wrote. Made the correction. I always get those mixed up because they’re both present in the full word [polyamory]. Thanks for the person that caught that!
Update 09/05/15: Unsurprisingly, I’ve heard from Polynesian folks on both sides of the issue. Some use “poly” while others don’t. Some think it’s useful while others don’t. Some use the ‘net regularly while others don’t. Interestingly, the “poly-as-Polynesian” definition got added to Urban Dictionary back in ’06. Anyway. I clarified a bit of language in the post, most notably in a sentence that could be interpreted in two ways and most people were reading it differently than I intended it [the one about calling something “‘poly,’ period”].
