Patchwork Makes Everything Better

If you’re new to actions with an arrest risk and you don’t have experienced protestors with you, there’s stuff you can find online about having a legal team, writing the name of a lawyer on your body, saying NOTHING to the cops except the name of your lawyer, etc. That’s all good advice.

But let me give you a bit of advice that is just as essential as all that:

If one of your comrades gets arrested, and you know they can be held for 6, 9, 12 hours, depending on where you are, you get a group of people together and you wait outside the police station.

You may be tired, you may be stressed, it may be freezing, you may need to take turns, but you take whoever can still physically and mentally bear it and you go to that police station and you wait for your comrade. You can spend the time taking care of each other, drinking hot drinks, doing whatever gets you through, but you wait.

And when your comrade gets out, you make sure they do not walk home alone in the dark thinking about the fucked up experience they just had, you make sure there’s a big fucking crowd of their comrades there to greet them with hugs and hot drinks and a cigarette if they smoke.

And whether the arrested comrade that just got out is happy or sad or pissed off, you take that for what it is and give that space and you support that. And you get them a hot meal and you hang out with them and you offer to let them stay at your place or you stay with them so they don’t have to spend that night alone with their thoughts.

You do this every damn time, regardless of whether you really like that comrade and regardless of how you feel about the thing your comrade got arrested for, regardless of how often they’ve been arrested. Because you never know how shitty their experience is going to be in there this time. 

Most of us know damn well we aren’t the gender we were assigned at birth. Many of us showed signs of this in childhood (though not all). The very idea that people view me as a woman is fucking weird as hell to me. It’s wrong. I know it’s wrong. It completely clashes with my inner sense of my gender.

Stop calling entire groups of people Q-r, we don’t like people assuming we’re comfortable with a slur. Stop putting the Q at the end of LGBT, it’s a useless repetition and we don’t like people assuming we’re comfortable with a slur. Stop saying you’re Q-r because you haven’t found a better label, it’s a slur with a specific meaning and not a good for all identity. Stop calling other people Q-r especially if they said they aren’t comfortable with a slur. Stop normalizing the use of the Q slur in books and internet pages/blogs, we don’t want straight people to assume we’re comfortable with a slur and that it’s okay to describe anyone and use it commonly.

2. Way to completely shit on the decades of work that elders in the community put into reclamation.

3. Queer people have said over and over again that if we are talking about queer people and the queer community, we mean those that actually identify as queer. If you’re not someone who uses queer for themselves, then we aren’t talking about you. Move on and stay in your lane.

Hey y'all. I’m R, I’m a trans gay disabled Jew. I am very sick physically and undergoing tests to figure it out, and I recently went through the worst suicide attempt of my life, so working is not an option currently. I have no money so I’m not eating (or doing much self care in general), and my rent is due in 16 days. This month I was barely not evicted and I don’t want to be evicted this month, either. Please please help if you can, and thank you for reading!!!

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Most medication right now that has a standard ‘men’s dose’ and ‘women’s dose’ makes dangerous assumptions based on weight and would be far more effective if body weight and length were considered.

Today In Solidarity (6/12/18): As we remember the two year anniversary of the Pulse massacre, it is important that we reflect on narrative and who gets to write history. In the weeks following the tragedy, police were lauded as heroes for their response. In reality, they dragged their feet in responding to the shooting, sprayed bullets indiscriminately into the club, and have used the opportunity to muscle their way deeper into queer spaces, potentially threatening the safety of them. Survivors have recently filed a lawsuit around parts of this reality. 

I see women bragging about their bruises inflicted by men and I can’t help but feel there is something malevolent about that when we live in a world overflowing with male violence. It harkens back to the argument about the failings of “choice” feminism.

I see men who, time and again, avoid culpability and consequences for violating consent in kink communities, and I can reach no other conclusion but the pervasiveness of rape culture.

In addition to the disturbing trans fetishization Eve referred to, I see the same applied to various racial and ethnic stereotypes being fetishized. Those in control in so many kink communities are so very white that it’s hard to see these fetishes as anything other than power fantasy.

Genuine good faith. This includes a sincere desire to create space for kink-positivity and to examine where we fuck up as kinky people. It also includes not wanting to do call outs for coolness points. All of this is rare enough as it is.

An understanding of the difference between the kink itself and the culture of the scene where it is currently practiced. For example: A desire to play with power? Not inherently a problem. Power impacts all of our lives and it makes sense to want to unwrap the impact of power on our emotions within an erotic context. Queer leather culture has build great kink cultures that included playing with the conncept of power in ways that subverted oppressive forces in our lives. But the mainstream BDSM scene as it is, shaped by and for white middle class straight men who get off on dominating women? That’s a rape culture filled mess which actively reinforces oppressive forces in our lives. 

An insider-focussed understanding of the kink and the desires it is rooted in. This requires either having experiences with that kink or genuinely listening to those who do. For example: a ‘fetish for fat girls’? That’s some fatphobic horrible shit. The clue is in the fact that the target of the fetish is the same as the person being fetishized. But a fetish for crossdressing? That’s about the person itself and as a result is generally rooted in someone’s own inherent need to express parts of their gender annd sometimes in their shame around that need. It can be expressed in transphobic ways but the desire to wear women’s cothing in an erotic context is not inherently transphobic because it adresses an inward need, not an outside fetishized target.

Generally, the best nuanced works I’ve seen criticizing kink have been from people who simultaneously have that specific kink and are victimized by the problems within that kink. Like trans women who have experienced being turned on by cross dressing before their coming out but were also very uncomfortable about the transphobia in some of the material produced. And people who like to play with power but have experienced the unsafety of the existing BDSM scene.

The cops might still be violent. Fascist counterprotestors might still be violent. Both groups have demonstarted countless times that they are very willing to use violent against non-violent groups.

So a declaration of non-violence really only says ‘if you use violence to defend yourself against these groups, we don’t have your back. We didn’t set up a legal team for you and we won’t try to hide your identity from the cops’.

That’s not safer at all.

The only time when non-violent protests are able to take place without police violence is when the protestors have elite support from politicians and celebrities, such as MeToo protests and anything lovey-dovey about human rights in a different country (that’s not a close ally of the country you’re in). And even then there’s a constant risk of violence if any of the signs are speaking a little too much truth to power.

But you can not have a non-violent anarchist protest, or a non-violent anti-capitalist protest. Just look at what happened to those activist groups at the G20 that specifically declared non-violence. None of them where safe from police violence. All their non-violence meant was that they were defenseless and basically had to take whatever was coming their way. The only groups able to build safe zones without police violence were those that were ready to build barricades and fight back.

At protests where there was a visibly identifyable non-violent block and an identifyable block that rejected more violence, we’ve also seen the cops use close-up violence against the non-violent block (like battons) while not risking a close-up confrontation with the other block and using things like teargas instead, which gave the block that had not declared non-violence more opportunities to respond or get away and regroup. 

When police violence does happen, it’s also pretty common for the non-violent block to go looking for excuses why their ‘non-violence is safe’ strategy failed. They often end up blaiming the block that did not declare non-violence, either claiming that they stood too close to the non-violent block, or that they stood too far away and abandonned the non-violent block, or that they shouldn’t have been there at all. 

Alliances made before the protest based on a diversity of tactics often fall apart when the non-violent block feels the need to explain away the fact that their experience of violence directly contradicted their theory of safety. 

When a post has 73.000 notes it really helps to scroll through the commets for a bit, I’ve already provided sources about 18 times by now.

http://queeranarchism.tumblr.com/post/127930607693/exeunt-pursued-by-a-bear-gatewaycommunism

Good wholesome: including plenty of hopeful, encouraging materials into your blogging, not trying to shock your followers into awareness, having place for lightheartedness and fun, having conversations based on good faith with those who are genuinely interested in what you have to say, practicing transformative justice, cheering each other up just because you can, working from the assumption that over-reactions come from pent-up pain and making room for someone’s pain to be expressed creates space for healing, perceiving anger as parts of your emotional repair system instead of as a ‘toxic’ thing to feel bad about, appreciating small victories, creating space for vulnerability.

And not just in an “I drink too much and have one night stands to forget trauma” kind of way. I do some of those things and I recognize that that is coping mechanism, something I do to survive and I am happy that my survival instincts are all there. I’d probably be dead without those escapes.

But sex, drugs and ‘adult’ topics are also an important part of my self-care when I’m moving from coping into healing and when I’m building long term mental health.

Good sex with other trans people is an act of intimacy and validation, a celebration of our deviant bodies, a reminder that we deserve pleasure and love. Good sex is also a place where I experience the traumas within my body and allow them to heal. Where I recognize similar scars within my partners. Where I experience putting up boundaries and having those boundaries respected.

Good drugs, particularily those that open rather than numb the mind and the senses, provide me with therapeutic experiences, a greater comfort in new experiences and in my own vulnerability, fantastic new perspectives on life and a deeper appreciation for the good things in my life and in myself. The effects of that stay with me long after I am sober.

Growing weed is some of the best self care I ever did. It forces me to spend a few moments interacting with nature every day, caring for something, seeing if it is doing okay or needs some help. And it’s so satisfying to watch something grow and to get excited about enjoying it later. And the sweet smell is a little something I appreciate every day. To anyone who can do so without too much risk, I’d just recommend growing weed as self-care.

And then there’s things like crime! Confirming through physical actions that the systems around us are not all-powerful, that I can disobey and win, it fantastic. And anger! Being able to be with my anger, being able to share it, being able to channel it into actions, is a thing that is lifesaving. All the self-care in the world probably wouldn’t stop be from collapsing if I wasn’t also actively fighting the innjustices around me.