plenilunada

From 'We Do This 'til We Free Us'

Protestors wave the outlawed Palestinian flag during a demonstration against the israeli occupation, First Intifada, 1988.

Adjacent to my post yesterday about straightness, there is something I want to say about romance.

A lot of people- at least on this website- at least in my very queer/tistic feed- say that they think romance 'isn't real'. I kind of agree, and kind of don't, and as I've argued in other places, I think this is partially a culturo-linguistic issue.

I saw a video the other day by nikitadumptruck that helped me solidify this position.

In the video, Nikita argues that 'maybe men are to be enjoyed like fruits, and your friends are your real life partners'. Now this attitude, especially now, is largely agreeable; she lists unfavorable statistics that show the ways in which marriage disadvantages women, and talks about how none of the men she has dated showed signs of being responsible life partners, while her female friends have.

As a matriarchal person, I agree with her point...but not her reasoning.

What stood out to me was when she said, of handling the multiple responsibilities of marriage or life partnership: "Now would I want to do that with a man? Or a friend?"

Man. OR. Friend.

Interesting.

Now many of you might say 'well who can be friends with a man?' if you're getting the gist of my preamble, but instead I want to ask:

Why was the female category inherently 'friend'?

Throughout the video she makes the comparison between the aimless romantic male partners she's pursued or enjoyed, and the women friends who have been more present in her life.

What struck me about this was...oh, you're straight?

Which is fine, but it obscures a very important point:

A non-zero amount of the justifying aspects that lead to the categorization of women as reliable friends versus men as failures to 'stand up' comes from the fact that she doesn't date women.

And IMO, this goes along with the fact that men, for the sake of her argument, were only romantic entertainments.

This contributes to why, IMO, so many people struggle with defining romance or participating it-- after deconstruction of the superficial concept that has been lettered around it, there is nothing left, and people focus on friendship instead...

But I would argue that real romantic love is built on that very relationship.

Amorous love-- a better name for 'romantic' love that does not carry the contextual language of being the name of a literary genre about unrealistic, indulgent and dramatic entertainment-- is not a stand alone feeling, which is why people who have tried to define it fail to, and then argue it doesn't exist. It is a possible development of and addition to friendship-love.

This is also why 'romantic' relationships that are founded on whatever tropes, actions, and escalator-events included in 'romantic love' tend to fall apart unless they manage to evolve a strong level of friendship. People in long term happy marriages almost always refer to each other as their 'best friend'.

When my friend initially sent me the video by nikitadumptruck, I told her I got where she was coming from but took issue with the idea that anyone should entertain intimacy with men who aren't their friends. While I always maintain that everyone has a right to do whatever they want, my PERSONAL OPINION is that it's weird to not even see the people you sleep with as friends, or to engage with anyone solely as a sex object or physical entertainment. Everyone can do as they wish, I just don't see the point in that, especially as justification for having men in your life. Especially not when someone maintains that they otherwise don't like men--

In fact let me say this: I think that some women use feminist praxis as an excuse to continue sleeping with the enemy. IF! IF!! your political positioning is that men are useless scum and not worth importance in life...then don't sleep with them. If you can't live without sleeping with them, then admit that you're attracted to them and do the internal work necessary to figure out how to navigate the discrepancy. Dehumanizing a group you still seek emotional and physical satisfaction from is what men do. Doing what men do isn't particularly appealing to me, or progressive. If you think men aren't important to you at all, stand on that. And I refuse argument on this, I don't care. Argue with your mother, your father, a tree on the sidewalk, idgaf.

ANYWAY. I think straight women can see this difference between men (place where there is penis for fun) and women (person who emotionally supports you) because not experiencing women also as women (person who approaches you romantically then flakes or gets weird and breaks up with you). So the binary seems more real in their head. They're also, as I said yesterday, the same group of people that is largely attracted to men in a conflicted conceptual way that is largely just upholding patriarchal norms and centering men rather than engaging with them as people, which leads to the common phenomenon of choosing their husband (man who I spend all time with and make all choices with)over their friends (women who don't matter as much who I will call when I need to and forget to keep up with in general).

What I'm saying is that colonial heteropatriarchy is too many layers deep for any straight woman to make any ONE shift and think she's going anywhere-- the fundamental misunderstandings of your culture are still there.

Politically, do I think it would STILL be good and helpful if more women decided to marry and partner with their friends instead of looking for men to fill that role? Hell yeah! Obviously!

I just think that it's missing a lot of very obvious psychological and philosophical detangling around gender and emotional connection.

In the end, our friends were the only real life partners we ever have.

That's not new, that's not radical, that's what love always was.

"I don't want anything from you that you're not willing to give. I don't want you to fill a role and I don't need you for validation.

I'm here because I like you for who you are, right now, and I enjoy what you bring to my life. I am curious about you every day, and I want to learn to love you as best as I can."

When you meet someone through the context of dating-- especially on an app made for that, you have entered with:

"I am specifically looking for someone to fill a role, and there is a sense of time or pressure motivating this search. I need to see you as a possible end to my search to be happy, and I am auditioning you for the potential I have in my head."

(this obviously doesn't apply to casual relationships which I am not talking about bc I don't care about them at all. If you like them, I'm happy for you but that's not what this is about)

And this is why 'friendships' stick longer than the many 'failed' dates you've had: because love only grows where hearts are honest and open, and people are FAR more honest and open with friends than they are with potential partners!!

It's not that 'romantic love' aka amorous love isn't real or useful for partnership, it's that y'all treat it like something other than friendship, which is categorically the ONLY non-obligatory free-will bond humans form.

Of COURSE it's the only one with real love-- not attachment, not obligation, not blood loyalty-- in it!

There is a continual need for funds to buy food, water, and medicine, but Israel's destruction of infrastructure in Gaza means that jobs are nearly nonexistence.

You can help this family stay alive through genocide by donating via:

GoFundMe

Or via:

venmo (@gothhabiba) paypal (paypal.me/Najia) Cashapp ($NajiaK)

all with note "🍓" or "strawberry"

like that isn't the problem there. these people were already enslaved. everything about how society and the economy and whatever was structured was premised on them not being human. The Problem is for what propose they were being counted as 3/5ths of a person. it was for apportioning representatives and taxes. the south had millions of people enslaved. 3/5ths of those millions were considered for how many representatives the states had in congress. the more slaves, the more political power. and this had repercussions that echo down through to today. and this is reflected today in prison populations being counted for political representation but incarcerated people being disenfranchised. and in gerrymandering and in gutting the voting rights act. in the continued denial of political power to black people.

literally like everything this country does is a badge of slavery. everything is reproducing slavery while trying to forget it.

oh and the other side of the compromises: the taxes. the south could continue to benefit from slavery and accumulated political power as long as it meant the north and the federal govt could accumulate wealth and capital in tandem.

His pregnant wife still has bullets lodged in her body and needs surgeries to have them removed. Please help them if you can.

1. "I treat myself like I would my daughter. I brush her hair, wash her laundry, tuck her in goodnight. Most importantly, I feed her. I do not punish her. I do not berate her, leave tears staining her face. I do not leave her alone. I know she deserves more. I know I deserve more." (i know i deserve more, michelle k)

2. “Don’t forget to love her. The little girl you used to be. Perhaps She lies within you. Untucked. Sleeping peacefully.” (nurture, kiana llanos)

3. "These days I wake up crying

holding myself in my arms

rocking myself like a mother

repeating

it's all right- i'm here." (rocking, nuela archer)

4. "There’s a little girl in my head & she screams 'unloved! unloved! unloved!' every moment of my life (@star-eaters)

And as an aside we have seen how 'straight' straight men are...so I don't even need to go there.

But straightness in women is...weird because it comes along with some very odd behaviors that make no sense and seem to appear in relationship with the degree to which a person participates in a patriarchal colonial culture.

I saw a vid the other day of a woman doing that 'what I wore vs what he wore to the event' vids. This type of video features a woman properly dressed up for a 'going out' event like a party or dinner date, and then shows their partner dressed like an overgrown 11 year old boy about to run around in the neighborhood streets.

Stretched out tee, random sneakers, stupid jorts, maybe a baseball cap. Mentally absent look on his face.

The 'joke' is that the woman looks great and put effort into her appearance and the man didn't....Because 'men' never do?

But here's the thing: I'm bi. The men I'm attracted to have never, EVER fucking done this.

I only date bi ppl, so I only date bi men.

Straight women will share about how their husbands are gross, can't clean, don't know where anything is...

.....AND consistently tolerate this bullshit, childish behavior from their 'life partner'.

They will date men who are boring, uninteresting, borderline mean, and then be 'surprised' when they find out he didn't really like them...but it was kind of obvious and what's more, how did they even like him?

DID they like him? Or is straightness 80% comp het?

Because when you exist within a narrative that mandates genders appear a certain way and behave a certain way despite what thousands of years of human behaviour show, then you're really just accepting the NARRATIVE and not an embodied experience of attraction.

I think about the commonly repeated discrepancy between male and female orgasm-- women orgasm with women, men orgasm with men (not like that matters much, statistically), men orgasm with women, but women hardly orgasm at all in straight relationships....

But I am very curious if that holds true in BISEXUAL relationships because again....I have never ever experienced this personally. Not to say that my exception breaks the rule, but ...I'm not straight. And I think that matters.

I saw a white woman get online as maybe some (dubious) sex educator to talk about the vagina and how most of the nerve endings are in the clitoris and labia (true! great!) and so few are in the vaginal canal (ok..!) that penetration 'barely feels like anything'.

Bitch. Pause.

Because coming back to straightness, that'sn some shit white people literally invented, and now skinny white women get to sit up here on podcasts selling their 'happy O' courses talking about how penetration 'isn't enjoyable'....

I think about the straps and dicks I've ridden, and I'm truly confused.

I also think about the layers of sexual repression that women are forced into, levels that are even more maintained depending on how white and straight you continue to be, and how vaginisimus and orgasmic dulling coincide with said repression.

I think about the long history of Black women singing writing and rapping about sex and how much they enjoy it, and having to fight back at people -- largely white!!! -- who have shamed us for doing just that, now saying penetration isn't enjoyable anyway.

Would we be rapping about it this way if that was true? Would y'all be so mad at Meghan if that was true?

The same women who make excuses for being with men that don't like to talk to them, the same women that have to be coached into expressing their desires in the bedroom, the same women whose lives revolve around shitty men, the same women who just accept that your 'husband' will dress himself like a fucking 8 year old who doesn't wanna leave the house....these are not the women, I don't think, who are in any position to tell me jack fucking shit about sexuality.

Straightness in general, but for the sake of this discussion, in women, seems to heavily be a performance of not only tolerating unattractiveness from men but actively pursuing and celebrating it. The woman who comes online to 'joke' about how her husband packed her dog food for lunch, who shows of how poorly he dresses for an event they are both attending as adults, who ignores her desire for a partner with charm, attentiveness and the ability to self express and gladly parades her lack of acquisition of a partner in lieu of having an oversized, boring, smelly child at her side.

I'm sorry, that's not natural.

I think of the woman who went on a vacation to Italy with her husband and showed how, after day 3, he went from dressing like an 'american man' (again the childish/lazy/everywhere-is-walmart-and-also-a-gym look USAmericans are known for) to an 'italian man' i.e. an adult in a crisp linen button down, well-fitting slacks and leather sandals.

And I think, that's the thing; do your husbands look like lazy shit bc they are men?

Or because they are USAmerican-breed 'straight' men? I.e. unfashionable and ungroomed....and you've been trained to like that?

Because it's not at all universal.