unfound

CAn Open Letter to the University of Regina Press, regarding the kisiskâciwan anthology (Indigenous Voices from where the River Flows Swiftly):

Over the past year, University of Regina Press invited Indigenous authors from the four directions of Saskatchewan to submit their written works for an upcoming anthology. We were excited to be part of the necessary honoring of great Indigenous writing from our respective homelands.

Much of our writing is an expression of our experiences with the ongoing, violent impacts of colonization. We know the intricacies of this violence: racism has deep roots here, entangled with misogyny and patriarchy. As Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people, we are too familiar with the verbal, physical, and psychological abuse that is a key part of colonialism, attempting to make Indigenous women’s experiences invisible, and therefore, disposable. We want to see the end of violence that is freely and inconsequentially directed at our bodies, minds, and well-being.

It was brought to our attention that the kisiskâciwan anthology will include the work of Neal McLeod, who has recently been charged and pled guilty to domestic assault. We cannot consent to publish our work alongside Neal McLeod, whom to the best of our knowledge has not made amends to those that he has harmed.

After discussions with the University of Regina Press, we are disappointed that their decision is to proceed with the anthology in support of Neal’s work, even after we stated we will be removing our collection of voices from the anthology in an act of solidarity with Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit people (MMIWG2S) and survivors of assault. In an era of MMIWG2S, we believe in concrete actions to build a future where gendered colonial violence is over.

We ask the University of Regina Press and the editors of the kisiskâciwan anthology to honor the experiences of Indigenous women and abuse survivors by removing Neal McLeod from this anthology.

We ask the University of Regina Press, along with all other publishing houses, schools and universities, governments, and cultural spaces to recognize the lifesaving necessity of supporting Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Spirit people who name abuse and abusers.

We believe we must question, disrupt and abolish systems of misogyny and patriarchy, in order to be free to direct our energy and work towards a place of thriving for Indigenous women and Two-Spirit folks. Until these places become real and readily accessible, our work will remain with us, and with publishers who understand our worth.

Signed,

Erica Violet Lee Nickita Longman Sylvia McAdam  Lindsay Knight                                         Night Kinistino  Dawn Dumont

In Solidarity, Chelsea Vowel, Ian Campeau, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Alicia Elliott, Zoe Todd, Sheelah McLean, Janice Makokis, Samantha Marie Nock, Katherena Vermette, Emily Riddle, Shannon Houle, Robert Innes, Christi Belcourt, Jesse Wente, Tracey Lindberg, Hayden King, Daniel Heath Justice, Leanne Simpson, Eden Robinson, Tara Williamson, Paul Seesequasis, Tracy Bear, Erin Marie Konsmo, Kayla Ironstar, Angela Semple, Laura Reid Kooji, Jennifer Adese, Eve Tuck, Dallas Hunt, Joshua Whitehead, Ryan McMahon, Sandi Auger, Renae Watchman, David Gaertner, Melanie Lefebvre, Sarah Nickel, Gail MacKay, Lou Cornum,  Thohahente Kim Weaver, Lee Maracle, Thirza Cuthand, Sherri Swidrovich, Tara Borin, Erin Soros, David Parent, Emma Schultz, Darlene Sicotte, Susan Greer, Pauline Wakeham, Kim Wheeler, The Regina Public Interest Research Group (RPIRG), Sarah Cortez, Molly Swain, Cowboy Smith, Rene Ariens, Michelle Lee.

FLIGHTS #1 POETRY, PERFORMANCE & BOOKS [be]FOR[e] INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY TUESDAY 7 MARCH 2017 7-9.30pm, doors & book tables from 6.30pm AIMÉE LÊ ALISON GIBB GHAZAL MOSADEQ MENDOZA MMMMM (LUNA MONTENEGRO & ADRIAN FISHER) SOPHIE MAYER & more t.b.a. THE HORSE HOSPITAL, COLONNADE, BLOOMSBURY, LONDON WC1N 1JD £5 waged, free entry unwaged. All welcome. RSVP via Eventbrite Flights is an occasional event series of poetry and performance, emphasising the work of female-identified poets, performers, and artists. The series programming is guided by the principle of inclusivity. Flights #1 will take place on 7 March 2017 at the Horse Hospital in Bloomsbury, London, on the evening before International Women’s Day.

Featuring:

ALISON GIBB

alisongibb.com

AIMÉE LÊ

SOPHIE MAYER

Sophie Mayer’s most recent poetry books are (O), published by Arc, and kaolin, or How Did a Girl Like You Get to Be a Girl Like You, published by Lark Books, both in 2015. She was the co-editor of the activist poetry projects Catechism: Poems for Pussy Riot; Binders Full of Women; and Glitter is a Gender, and founder of the website I Don’t Call Myself a Poet.

She is also a feminist film activist and critic – author of Political Animals: The New Feminist Cinema (2015), curator with Club des Femmes, and a regular contributor to Sight & Sound, the F-Word and Literal. She has reviewed poetry for Shearsman Magazine and Poetry Review, among others, and was part of the experimental collaborative poetry project A Thing Like You and Me, edited by Sarah Crewe for aglimpseof. Her current project is Disturbing Words, a subscription email newsletter about the language of where we are now.

sophiemayer.net

MENDOZA

MMMMM (LUNA MONTENEGRO & ADRIAN FISHER)

Adrian Fisher and Luna Montenegro are artists and poets based in London. They work collaboratively under the name mmmmm, creating text, performance, film, installation and sound. They are interested in ideas of ritual, presence and the collective and have shown their work in Europe and Latin America. Their practice develops in a variety of contexts including museums, art galleries, site-specific spaces, residencies, poetry forums, magazines, radio, pubs and public spaces. They have been members of the London Biennale, The Writers Forum in the UK and Chile and were two of the founders of the infamous bobs cabaret a weekly all night art warehouse in London. They have made over 10 films together with Gines Olivares under the collective mmmmmfilms. They run a small press ‘One Night Stanza’ and are part of the experimental sound band 'the yet’.

mmmmm.org.uk

GHAZAL MOSADEQ

& more t.b.a.

In canceling Milo’s book contract, Simon & Schuster made a business decision the same way they made a business decision when they decided to publish that man in the first place. When his comments about pedophilia/pederasty came to light, Simon & Schuster realized it would cost them more money to do business with Milo than he could earn for them. They did not finally “do the right thing” and now we know where their threshold, pun intended, lies. They were fine with his racist and xenophobic and sexist ideologies. They were fine with his transphobia, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. They were fine with how he encourages his followers to harass women and people of color and transgender people online. Let me assure you, as someone who endured a bit of that harassment, it is breathtaking in its scope, intensity, and cruelty but hey, we must protect the freedom of speech. Certainly, Simon & Schuster was not alone in what they were willing to tolerate. A great many people were perfectly comfortable with the targets of Milo’s hateful attention until that attention hit too close to home.

Because I’ve been asked, I will not be publishing my book with Simon & Schuster now that they have dropped Milo. After I pulled my book, they changed the release date of Dangerous from March to June 13, the day my next book, Hunger, comes out. I said nothing because I was neither threatened nor concerned but it did reinforce for me that this was not a company I wanted to do business with. My protest stands. Simon & Schuster should have never enabled Milo in the first place. I see what they are willing to tolerate and I stand against all of it. Also, I’ve received far better offers for How to Be Heard from other publishers.

Since you mention it, I think I will start that race war. I could’ve swung either way? But now I’m definitely spending the next 4 years converting your daughters to lesbianism; I’m gonna eat all your guns. Swallow them lock stock and barrel and spit bullet casings onto the dinner table; I’ll give birth to an army of mixed-race babies. With fathers from every continent and genders to outnumber the stars, my legion of hapa babies will be intersectional as fuck and your swastikas will not be enough to save you, because real talk, you didn’t stop the future from coming. You just delayed our coronation. We have the same deviant haircuts we had yesterday; we are still getting gay-married like nobody’s business because it’s still nobody’s business; there’s a Muslim kid in Kansas who has already written the schematic for the robot that will steal your job in manufacturing, and that robot? Will also be gay, so get used to it: we didn’t manifest the mountain by speaking its name, the buildings here are not on your side just because you make them spray-painted accomplices. These walls do not have genders and they all think you suck. Even the earth found common ground with us in the way you bootstrap across us both, oh yeah: there will be signs, and rainbow-colored drum circles, and folks arguing ideology until even I want to punch them but I won’t, because they’re my family, in that blood-of-the-covenant sense. If you’ve never loved someone like that you cannot outwaltz us, we have all the good dancers anyway. I’ll confess I don’t know if I’m alive right now; I haven’t heard my heart beat in days, I keep holding my breath for the moment the plane goes down and I have to save enough oxygen to get my friends through. But I finally found the argument against suicide and it’s us. We’re the effigies that haunt America’s nights harder the longer they spend burning us, we are scaring the shit out of people by spreading, by refusing to die: what are we but a fire? We know everything we do is so the kids after us will be able to follow something towards safety; what can I call us but lighthouse, of course I’m terrified. Of course I’m a shroud. And of course it’s not fair but rest assured, anxious America, you brought your fists to a glitter fight. This is a taco truck rally and all you have is cole slaw. You cannot deport our minds; we won’t hold funerals for our potential. We have always been what makes America great.

This is a statement by the accountability teams that have been working since early December 2015 to address an incident of sexual harm by BYP100 member Malcolm London that occurred three years ago.

We are publicly releasing this statement with the consent of all parties involved. While previous formal and informal updates have been shared with the immediate community impacted by this incident, we have not until now shared information about our process more broadly.

Quite frankly, it is because of the generosity of Kyra that we do so today. We consider this to be a gift to the broader community which is not familiar or accustomed to formal processes of community accountability and transformative justice. We are grateful to Kyra for her courage and willingness to allow this window in the hope that it might serve to inspire more such efforts in your communities when harm is done.

Below is a statement by Kyra about the process so far:

“I’m very surprised and thankful for the way in which BYP100 has responded to this situation. When I initially shared my story, I had no idea what to expect from the organization, Malcolm, or the public. But this process has truly centered my needs as a survivor and has taught me what transformative justice and community accountability truly looks like. I’m looking forward to working with BYP to develop their enthusiastic consent curriculum and to seeing what else I can do for the community as a part of this process. I realize there are far too many stories like mine within social justice organizations and within the black community in general, but I hope that by sharing my experience we can work towards more effective and transformative ways of addressing sexual violence within our spaces.”

Accountability process and procedure

On November 23, BYP100 put out a statement to its membership that addressed an incident brought forth by a woman who had experienced past sexual harm by a leader within the organization, Malcolm London (ML). This statement was written three days after the survivor brought her concerns directly to BYP100 leadership, and agreed to a restorative/transformative justice accountability process. It was shared and vetted by people who are experienced in leading community accountability processes around sexual violence to make sure that the language was appropriate.

Immediately following the statement to membership and to the broader community, BYP100 leadership handed over the primary implementation of an accountability process to experienced transformative/restorative justice (TJ) practitioners who have facilitated accountability processes regarding sexual violence.

The following update includes information about:

1) Formation of the Support Team for the Survivor

2) Formation of the Accountability Team

3) Relationship between the Survivor Support Team and Accountability Team

4) Survivor Team Goals and the Next Steps for the Accountability Process

1. Formation of the Support Team for the Survivor:

Kyra met with members of BYP100 leadership Charlene Carruthers and Rose Afriyie who asked if she would like to engage in a community accountability process. She said yes. BYP100 leadership reached out to an experienced local CA/TJ facilitator, Mariame Kaba, who independently reached out to Kyra. Kyra had heard of Mariame’s work through her networks. After a discussion with Mariame, Kyra decided that she wanted her to lead her process. Mariame suggested that she could select a co-facilitator with whom she would be comfortable to also support the process. Kyra selected Mayadet Cruz. So Mariame and Mayadet are advocates and supporters for the survivor in this process.

a. Both Mariame and Mayadet are trained in restorative justice and have experience in community accountability processes. They are not BYP100 members.

b. The Survivor Support team is the lead committee to determine the implementation and evaluation of the consequences, reparation and transformative justice process. They meet with and talk regularly with Kyra. Another person who is a friend of the survivor is also included in the meetings and in the process.

2. Accountability team formation

a. This team is tasked with working with ML (the person who caused harm) to ensure he will follow through on the accountability process as outlined by the Survivor Support team.

b. Xavier MaatRa is the lead on the Accountability team. BYP member Jasson P is serving as a support person on the team. Xavier is an experienced RJ/TJ practitioner and Jasson is not but he is committed to a process that follows the lead and centers the needs of the Survivor and Survivor support team. Both X and J were selected by the Survivor Support team.

3. Relationship between the Survivor Support team and Accountability team

a. Survivor Support team

i. Focused on the survivor’s needs and desires throughout the TJ process

ii. Support the survivor’s healing process as an individual and within the TJ process

iii. Define the scope and outline steps that the person who caused harm needs to undertake to repair harm and demonstrate accountability.

iv. Initiate, monitor and evaluate accountability according to the survivor’s guidelines.

v. Define scope and to do steps for organizational accountability

b. Accountability Team

i. Commit to a survivor centered process at all times through written and signed agreement by person who caused harm

ii. Work directly with person who caused harm to achieve accountability and transformation as dictated by survivor team.

iii. Implement steps for organizational accountability

iv. Report to survivor team on implementation of steps laid out by the survivor team.

4. Survivor Team Goals and steps for Accountability Team to implement

• Public acknowledgement by Malcolm of the harm caused. (see below)

Statement by ML shared with BYP membership and posted on Facebook (2/7/16)

“When someone says I’ve harmed them, I do not believe I get to tell them how they’ve been harmed. I want to publically apologize to Kyra for the harm I caused her. I am committed to and am engaged in a survivor led transformative justice process. I have done wrong and I am committed to being held accountable for the harm I have done that centers the needs of the person I have done harm to. Through a survivor led transformative justice process, I am committed to being held accountable in a way that reflects the values of the broader movement community I am part of. As a hetero cis man I’ve been taught to dismiss or ignore harm. I do not want to reinforce these traditions. What I want to do is acknowledge the harm done into learning what atonement looks like & how accountability can manifest into a process committed to survivor led restoration.”

• Person who caused harm to undergo a political education process about sexual violence and enthusiastic consent that is tailored and designed for their level of knowledge. (ongoing)

• Confidence building measures that might lead to a meeting between the two parties. (ongoing)

• BYP100 implementing in its orientation and political education/organizing process a curriculum around enthusiastic consent informed by the survivor. The survivor, Kyra, has 5 years of experience in sexual violence prevention education and is working with BYP100 to develop a curriculum for incoming members about enthusiastic consent and the history of sexual violence in the black community. (in process)

• Creation of platforms within the broader movement for conversations about sexual violence in activist/movement spaces and how other organizations might address the issue. [long-term]

We continue to work towards the goals set by Kyra in this process. Every community accountability process is different because every survivor and community has specific needs, interests and goals. Each process is more art than science. We hope that sharing some of our process provides information that can help others who are struggling to address various harms in your communities.

We are left with the question of how parliamentary democracy has brought us a rabidly anti-democratic president, and whether we now have to prepare to be more like a resistance movement than a political party. After all, at one Trump rally in New York tonight, the Trump supporters shamelessly revealed their exuberant hatred: “we hate Muslims, we hate blacks, we want to take our country back.” —   Judith Butler on e-flux 

Let’s face it, first of all, the grossness of it: this is what we’re up against. Out-loud, legitimised fascism.

It’s so easy to feel overwhelmed by this – by the violence that reaches into our bodies, our families, our communities, and our memories. It’s easy and, oh wow, is it justified.

Protest at Standing Rock against the Dakota Access Pipeline

But it’s also easy to get trapped in the narrative that there’s nothing that you – we – can do. It’s not as simple as “Well, if they can throw a rally, so can we.” Trump, like Brexit, appears to enjoy the support of the populist media, of wealthy donors, of mainstream politicians and businesspeople, and of the organs of civil society.

Wait, come back. Keep reading. As Rebecca Solnit writes, “Trump was such a weak candidate it took decades of scheming and an extraordinary international roster of powerful players to lay the groundwork that made his election possible.”

Which brings us back to: be more like a resistance movement than a political party.

Protestors in Portland

Or maybe: we need to be more like a party than a political party.

For nearly a decade now, the police and licensing authorities in London have been cracking down on club nights, often in an implicitly racist manner. But I think dispersing people from clubs, raves, pirate radio stations, protest camps, and squats has another, bigger motive behind it: to stop people – particularly marginalised people, told we are worth less by dominant culture – thinking we can organise.

I look around in my area of work and see an explosion of collaborative grassroots creativity that says otherwise: film clubs, radical film networks, mobile and community cinemas, bringing more diverse films to ever more diverse audiences. At the same time I learn about Sisters Uncut, Black Lives Matter UK, 3 Cosas, Sex Worker Open University, the Dost Centre, Women for Refugee Women, Frack Off, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, Media Diversified… because it’s the same people, the same ideas and strategies, crossing over and cross-pollinating between them.

Sisters Uncut © Claudia Moroni

It’s you. It’s me. It’s us. Look, here we are. We’re doing this, it’s happening. Not always without debates and disagreements – that’s healthy. And rarely with the support – financial or emotional – that is really needed. But to stop the sensation of the world falling to pieces, I keep looking at what is also real: the people who, everyday, are putting it back together.

So here are some prompts and inspirational poster quotes to get you going.

1/ If You Can Throw a Party, You Can Overthrow a Party

I don’t mean this as in: take a note from the Tea Party. Shadowy evangelical billionaires are hardly grassroots.

But I do mean don’t let the parties we have pretend they’ve been around since the dawn of time. Look at Podemos and Syriza: they challenged and changed the political conversation, they developed new ways of building alliances and developing policy. Could it be you that starts the UK equivalent? Why not. If you can throw a party – get people together in a room, get them moving – you can start a party.

Syriza rally, Athens

2/ Movements Move, That’s Why They’re Called Movements

You don’t have to march (on foot and/or on wheels, as needed), but some kind of physical presence can help share ideas and create connections. Being in a place together – and making movements there, whether dance or agit-prop or chanting – generates an energy that in itself is positive.

But this also works another way: movements change. Even if they start as one issue, they might take in more as more people join or the depth of the issue is revealed. Be flexible and open-minded, think about how your burning cause connects to the next person’s. Because if you pull together, the wall will fall faster.

ADAPT protest, Washington DC

3/ Speaking Out is Scary

This is not meant to put you off, but to acknowledge that the public forum is a dangerous place. Gina Miller, who brought a successful legal claim on Article 50, can’t leave her house because of threats.

But she did what she did anyway, most likely knowing – as an immigrant woman of colour – what was coming for her. If 1000, or 10,000, of us had signed up to her action, it would be harder for the faceless trolls to intimidate us.

If two people speak up on a bus or train where someone is being racially abused, it’s harder for the abuser to continue. Or even one person. Anyone can arm themselves with a few skills. It’s so scary, my word, is it ever. But what people like Miller know is that the threat, the fear is going to happen anyway whether you speak out or not. And the more space we make for fascism, the more general that threat will become.

Gina Miller outside court

4/ Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

Boycott. Divestment. Sanctions.

These work, on all levels. And they’re not the easy option. Giving up PayPal is hard, it’s built itself in to how I do my job. There’s lots of lists available online, based on rigorous investigation, that show investors in UKIP, how to #BoycottTrump, and more.

With all the money you’ve saved, spend positive: support grassroots organisations, people in your community making art and change, co-operative and worker-owned businesses, and each other.

Protest in New York © Jewish Voice for Peace/Jake Ratner

5/ Do It Together

What is a party? It’s people. It’s the opposite of demagoguery, of the strong solo protagonist. It doesn’t have to be hundreds of people, especially if you have social anxiety or PTSD, or struggle with crowds for other reasons. And that’s not to discount cats, dogs, hamsters and other welcome presences. They’re just less good at stapling/photocopying/uploading/baking/putting out chairs/planning/outreach/booking coaches than they are at caring and loving.

Because, as everyone who has ever thrown a party knows, there are parts of it that are challenging, nerve-wracking, eye-rolling, and just plain dull. After the fact, what you remember is the good times, the euphoric highs when people connected and the drop was just right. But it’s not about the night, it’s about the before and after. Planning. Guest lists. Moving furniture. Cash and carry. Cleaning up. Stress.

From Leeds for Change

There are equivalents (sometimes literal) of all these in all political, social and cultural organising. And they all go better if you have one, or two, or more pairs of hands (metaphorical or literal; prosthetic or otherwise) added to yours. Turning the pre-party into the party is the secret – finding joy in the process, through togetherness.

And here is me today in the world:

backwards and forwards between yes, you look hot

in that outfit and your children are beautiful, like like like,

like the video of that rat in the lab pressing the red button.

And a tweet about some obscure techno DJ,

And the compulsive need to share the colour of my socks,

and the quiz about what kind of friend I am that spammed

my inbox. Every click another tick of the clock.

I write hearts and kisses and there are photos

of a dinner party, the long lost friend in a onesie,

cats in various comical arrangements,

and mega mega white men with their anger, anger, anger.

And in a generation, when we’re shovelling the firebreaks,

amazed at how the world burned so bright, so fast,

you will have every right to turn and ask me

what I was doing back in the days of denial.

Chaos - Momentarily at Rest

- ’…and if a single image could suffice to capture the geopolitical drama of this moment in the world, this would be it. Never to make light of the medical misfortunes of actual human beings…but here lies Steven Woolfe. Of British, Irish, African-American and Jewish descent and yet, would-be leader of Anti-Immigration party UKIP. Sucker-punched & collapsed upon the floor of the European Union building. The result of shady, internal fracas. Blow delivered courtesy of fellow Brexiteer ‘Hookem’. A single visual metaphor for a tsunami of catastrophe unfolding on the global stage: From the tanking of the British pound, to the pounding of Aleppo to the pummeling of Haiti whilst climate change denial prevails, to the collapse of peace referendum in Colombia, to the unrepentant hurricane of sexual predation etched in every orange vein of one trumped up Republican candidate on the perilous war-path to 'Make America Great Again’.

This lone visual captures chaos, momentarily at rest.’ -

He is an adventurous dreamer

He can sit at his desk

Yet be in peril,

Go to the kitchen for a coffee

And dodge bullets on his way there and back

All just by grazing on his thoughts

He’s been to every country

He’s ever wanted to visit

On Google Earth

He’s walked down Fifth Avenue

Climbed Everest

Kicked sand in the face of a Carioca

On Copacabana beach

Marvelled at the fact

That Jamaica’s ocean and sky

Are really billboard blue

Versed in dog-eared one-liners,

He has won acclaim with other peoples’ words,

His heart beats for someone else’s love

His courage roars in someone else’s battle

His soul yearns for someone else’s heaven

His head bows before someone else’s god

And every now and then

Self-awareness wafts

Through an open window

Jolting him

He entertains his reality for a moment

Before he dodges bullets on his way to

Close the window

Its #WMHDay and #PsychFirstAid is trending. I’ve written various iterations of this blog over the years, all dispatched to the trash bin of embarrassment and shame. I’m changing that habit today, prompted by some fucking excellent points made on Twitter just now by Charlotte Cooper (@thebeefer). I’ve referenced my MH sporadically in the past online, knowing that people invested in these discussions will understand me – even if its in the most cursory way. But mostly, I’ve avoided spelling things out. I’ve been silent on this front for the usual, crippling reasons that most people are: I’m scared of being stigmatized. I’m scared of being misunderstood and judged and pathologized; I’m scared of appearing weak, or self-involved. But mostly, excruciatingly, I’m scared I’ll lose work – that my colleagues and commissioning editors (established and prospective) will quietly dismiss me as unreliable or incapable. I know for a fact that I am not alone in this – that a number of well-respected colleagues in my (predominantly middle/upper class) field struggle with the same issues. As poor, queer, working-class woman with very few safety nets, this knowledge offers me small comfort. When you find yourself standing in the local pharmacy, having to choose between prescriptions because you can’t afford anti-depressants and an inhaler this month, these aren’t just fears – they are necessary, practical and every-day considerations. I’m speaking to these fears now, publicly, because not speaking to them, not living authentically around my MH in the way I do with everything else online – my queerness, my class identity, my feminism – no longer serves me. It also does a disservice to every other oppressed person struggling with MH, because the more open we all are about this stuff – especially those of us who are perceived as high-functioning and/or in positions of relative power – the less stigma there’ll be. (No shade to anyone who has more to risk and chooses to remain closeted, obvs. More power to you.) Also, at this point, anxiety conditions among my peers feel so standard that I’m actually surprised when I meet people who don’t suffer.

I have a lot going for me: I’m cis, white, able-bodied, first language English, reasonably educated, co-habiting with a love who is in full-time work, and, when my survival calls for it, I can pass as middle class. I also have depression, anxiety, trauma and disordered eating – things I’ve struggled with since childhood. These things affect every sphere of my life, every day. They’re a reality I no longer want to hide from my wider circle of friends and colleagues.

The pressure there is on othered, atypical and neurodivergant peeps to find an intrinsic value to our weirdness in order to justify our existence is bullshit. I’m not about to feed that pressure. It does, however, feel brave and honest and crucial to honour the role that being a-typical plays in my politics – namely, a central one. It’s allowed me to develop a deep compassion and empathy over the years, to foster various solidarities where differences might divide, and to understand how my privilege(s) – even against the backdrop of woeful MH care in the UK – serves me when I navigate the NHS. Hugs, encouragement, consistent consideration and managing any personal embarrassment you might have around my MH are all welcome. But if you’d like to support me, and everyone else struggling with poor MH, in a bigger, systematic way – fight capitalism. Fight white, patriarchal rule, which erodes our well-being on a daily basis. As Charlotte says: fight war, shitty policy and inequality – all major causes of mental health crises around the globe. And pressure your governments for well-funded, compassionate, safe and effective emergency mental health care on this #WMHDay. You know shit is dire in the UK when even the police (ACAB) are threatening to sue the gov over this issue.  p.s here’s a photo of my anti-depressants. I keep them in a Polly Pocket compact, on my desk, because a spoonful-of-sugar and all that. I normally hide them when we have friends and family over. Not gonna do that anymore, nope.  

This past Thursday I was blessed to spend a morning with the brilliant young activists at North Carolina’s Youth Organizing Institute Freedom School.   In the wake of horrifying violence by police against unarmed black people broadcasted on video we write about Revolutionary Mothering, the act of keeping each other alive.

We wrote about the ways that young people keep each other alive as peers and engaging in revolutionary mothering acts of sustenance and love for each other on a daily basis.

Some days being able to keep each other alive feels like Science Fiction.

Some of these poems, which we generated through an activity where the participants listened to stories about who they had been and what they had done they had been in the dreams of people who loved them, expressed the urgency of love in philosophical terms.  Some expressed the urgency of love in zombie apocalypse terms and in direct confrontation of the violence of the moment.   Here are some of the poems (curated into we stay/we slay by yours truly).

We Stay

ocean brings us life

power lives in your bones

markings lead us to freedom

Abuela calls on

the daughters of Oshun

to tell us to breath

sometimes you can feel

not through the phone, but inside

your heart, what is real.

time and space will not

make strangers of us again

i won’t give you up

she is your best friend

wanting to be together

never letting go

dreams and ambitions

goals to make it together

be lit forever

soaring through the sky

our happiness blocks all the hate

our love is a bond*

*bond: spiritual link made by love and can’t broken (definition from the poet)

We Slay

The zombies burst in

Samaiyah and Sajdah are

Ready to kick ass!

The purge has started

Jasper and Courtnei run out

2 hours later they have blood on their hands

Mafia lightning

Striking scars against yellow

The cats deadly glare

Lane just hit the gas.

Panicked, frightened, with much stress.

His friend shot his head.

The most beautiful things can

Be the most deadly

The ocean is very beautiful

And soothing but

It killed Nathalia and Joana

We freeze our zombies

You and me are wolves-always

Oh, Rahssan Rahssan

P.S. If you are looking for a place to write through the complexity of staying/slaying in this moment, check out this Thursday’s online workshop Nobody Mean More to Me Than You.

I’m not editing this, so I apologize if it’s long and rambly and messy. It needs to be. I’ve been measured and silent and obedient for so, so, so long, but if I’m going to write about denied humanity it needs to be like this. You need to see unsanitized, reckless honesty just as much as I need to write it. Targets of mob abuse take a risk every time we’re brutally honest in public, so we usually don’t, but I’m too frustrated to give you PR and I’m working against the clock. If I’m gonna get hurt for an update in my court case, it’s about fucking time it happens on my terms instead of his.

I just hung up from what I hope will be my last phone call with the District Attorney assigned to my case, and I choked back tears as she told me that I’d conducted myself with grace through this whole nightmare. I don’t know why I’m crying. I’m writing this and examining it as I go through the fog of someone with PTSD. I don’t know if the tears are out of frustration of having sunk a year and a half into this awful system for seemingly less than nothing, or if it’s out of relief.

My ex, who we’ll call Creep Throat because seeing his name makes a knot of anxiety rise in my throat, will be notified soon that the charges were dropped, but not why. I’m sure he’ll launch another salvo of flat out lies and spun truths to make it seem like the last year and a half was a byproduct of me “asking for it”, that the courts saw through it, while making him seem like a downtrodden hero of free speech. He managed to do that with previous court dates, leaving out things like a judge flat out stating that she believed he had physically assaulted me during the last time we had sex, and that he’d gone through my friends social media feeds of the day afterward to prove that I wasn’t “acting like a victim” by spending time with friends.

So, instead of just watching this happen for the who-knows-how-manyth time, I’m going to talk about it. It’s not really about me as much as it is an attempt to dispel some common bullshit assumptions the average person has about the justice system, and what it means to “press charges”.   

One of the biggest myths that needs to die is that your first response to being abused should be to go to the police and seek justice. Leaving aside the fact that the police flat out murder unarmed citizens for their race all the time, and that sex workers are likely to be incarcerated when reporting crime done to them, and a myriad of other things I can’t get into, I have a certain amount of privilege and a well-documented case. I have one of the most public abuse cases out there, it started a hate movement that’s swept up my industry and hurt dozens of bystanders, and got international media attention. A lot of people don’t think of it in terms of domestic violence, they forget where the flashpoint of GamerGate came from - you might not even know the man responsible’s name. To make matters worse, I was unable to speak up during that time period out of fear of reprisal from the judicial system (more on that later) and watched as he was washed out of history (along with a lot of other people targeted). I was on my own on this front, until the Boston Magazine article was posted by a journalist who had been following everything and speaking with my ex. Shortly after, I got a call from the DA telling me that I shouldn’t have been told to simply go offline, and that she knew we had a very strong case worth prosecuting.

So why am I dissolving it then?   

Ironically, getting a restraining order against Creep Throat was the least effective thing I could do in terms of getting him out of my life for good, and for protecting myself. I’ll discuss the hot mess of problems around that experience at a later time. Without getting into a long, complicated blow by blow, every time something happened or the case was updated, he’d run back to the mob and make promises and jokes and pleas for more money. The mob would respond by going after me, my family, and anyone else they decided was involved. The mythology surrounding me would expand, conspiracy charts would “prove” I am secretly rich and really deserved it all along, and inspire more threats, stalking, and abuse. The cycle repeated itself endlessly. People kept getting hurt for being close to me, for a poorly worded restraining order that did nothing.

This cycle was so vicious that I even vacated the order myself once he appealed, hoping to make it end. I gave him the legal relief that he’d asked for. It might sound weak but I’m not made of stone, I’m a scared person trying to escape her abuser in spite of the fact that he’s created a self-perpetuating faction within my own industry to continue to punish me for walking away. It wasn’t about him fighting a powerful evil woman, or gaining his oh-so-crucial right to sic a mob on me, it’s always been about punishing me. It was about using it as a way to hurt me further, so when I gave him what he ostensibly wanted he actually *showed up to object to my motion to vacate the order and hand him a win*. The court dismissed him, and the order has been dead for months, and yet he’s back on Kotaku In Action chumming the waters about the oral arguments they’re hearing on a nonexistent order next month.

He gets paid, he gets attention (he even brought a date to court once), and the cycle continues. All the while, shit gets worse and worse for me and my family. The simple fact of the matter is the criminal justice system is meant to punish, not protect. I don’t care about seeing him punished - I would rather he get better. And they’ve done nothing to protect me - it’s only made things worse and become another weapon in his arsenal, and the arsenal of the people out there way scarier than him.

This is the last email I sent to my DA.

It was a reddit thread that showed up in my Google Alerts for my name, that I had set up to help grow my indie dev business before all this started like so many people in my industry. The title was “if eron goes to jail, I will hunt zoe quinn down and rape her”. Alerts and direct contact like this, specifically discussing the court case, was only escalating and becoming more common. I’m used to things like this at this point, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t effect me. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t effect anyone close to me who becomes collateral damage in this sick crusade my ex started against me. The continual escalation only ever increases the chances that someone will make good on something like this. Trying to get the law to protect me has only continually put me in harm’s way.

Why, then, would I ever want to sign up for more years of my life spent flying back to Boston, a place where it’s not safe for me to be, to continue another chapter in this nightmare? Why would I want to keep digging at a giant scar?

“Establish legal precedent!” you might think. I did too. Then Elonis v United States offered little hope that a court wouldn’t skirt the issues of how domestic violence manifests online. Then Steph Guthrie and her co-defendant lost their case, the transcripts showing equal parts “she was asking for it” and “how did this get in there i am not good at computers”. Going to court is like rolling the dice, the precedent you established isn’t up to you, and I didn’t want to risk becoming a tool in the next Creep Throat’s arsenal if we lost. I have have worked with enough lawmakers, law enforcement officers, lawyers, and judges at this point through our work with Crash Override to know that education is sorely lagging behind on these issues, not to mention the cultural biases that come with any cases like that.

You probably know that judges and juries can be biased and hold backward views and assumptions, given that you’re a human in 2016 reading this blog and have probably seen at least one news story about a cop getting away with murdering an unarmed black citizen without so much as a trial. You may have seen it in any reporting on how unlikely it is for rape survivors to see justice combined with how backward everyone is about talking about it. This is at least partly because the US has a very specific idea of who is worth protecting, doubly so when the person in question is being victimized while marginalized.

When you seek charges, you’re on trial as much as the other person, if not more. The “asking for it” defense is alive and well even in 2016, and you have to be a “good victim” in order to give your case the best shot it has. “Good victim”, when it comes to women in domestic or gendered violence cases like mine, tends to mean a lot of loaded, even conflicting things. The courts do not favor a lot of women simply for being who they are - women of color, trans women, sex workers, I could go on. Even beyond that, you have to be well behaved and silent about the proceedings, or risk pissing off the judge and giving the defense attorneys ammo to work with. Even my Cracked article was waved around in court by my ex’s lawyers, citing it as “the most disgusting thing that happened during GamerGate” despite my almost one foot stack of threats and photos of me that people had printed out, jizzed on, and sent to my family. The defense, so far, had hung a hat on trying to prove I deserved all of this.  

I have been open about my depression and my history in sex work. I have not gone out of the public eye during all of the abuse, and I don’t regret that. I believe in standing up for sex workers and people living with mental health concerns and anyone else I can, and I don’t know what would have happened if I had kept my mouth shut when I was targeted two years ago. But this comes with a cost - everything I have said and done will be held against me and spun by my abuser. The cost of being who I am in defiance of the abuse was sacrificing being a good victim.

The spin is even more successful in these cases, because of how disconnected judges, lawyers, police, and juries often are from the internet. One told me to simply give up my career and stop going offline if I didn’t like the abuse. He barely bothered to look at my huge stack of evidence before declaring he had no idea what the internet was about and didn’t want to know.

All the while, it’s hard to explain the indignity of having to sit through this and try to be a “good victim”. To sit in the same room as the man who did this to you and so many others and not appear too emotional or shaken, because the last time you said “uh” too much it became “proof” that you were lying instead of reliving trauma on command. To hide your anger and your outrage and your hurt so you don’t look like you’re seeking revenge, but to also not hold back TOO much because then you look robotic and unaffected like you haven’t been in fear of this man or in fear for your life for almost two years. To have to sit silently while everyone messes up basic facts of the case because they can’t tell the difference between usernames. To leave little bloody half moons in the palms of your hands from squeezing your fists tightly to try to look like you aren’t shaking from being in the same room with him.

What good does any of this do for anyone? It’s been almost two years now, and I desperately want to move on with my life. Even if I did win, I doubt locking Creep Throat away would do anything. Even putting aside my huge misgivings with the US prison system, he’s not going to change. The people who support him would see him as a martyr. I’d probably be looking at years of appeals and court dates and apologizing to my family for MRAs screaming at them in the middle of the night.

I’m tired. I have been trying to pick up the pieces of my life for almost two years at this point, and I’ve done a lot of healing, a lot of building what I feel like are more workable pushes to improve the lives of people being abused online, and a lot of self-improvement. I’m getting to a place where I’m kind of ok even while the abuse hasn’t slowed down. But every time I have to touch this festering part of my life, it drains the energy out of me. I have less energy to do casework at Crash, less energy to meet with tech partners to tell them how to do better and the ways they’re fucking up, less energy to make my goofy video games about feelings and farts, less energy for my friends and family and loved ones that have been helplessly watching me torn apart by this man for years.

In my opinion, it’s not time yet. I’m not the right person to win this fight or set this precedent. It’s too early, and I’m a messy complicated artist who has a hard time keeping her mouth shut while she watches other people hurt. I’m not the platonic ideal of a good victim because I’ve had a long past. I don’t even have any faith in the system to not totally fuck it up every step of the way even when it’s working as intended. The simple fact of the matter is that I’m less useful to the world as someone who fought this case, win or lose, than someone who can throw all hope of winning away to be honest with you, to educate you, to try and call for reform so I can set the next girl up for a spike instead of falling on my face. That’s even assuming the process doesn’t kill me - I’m still someone who was already living with depression, that now has complex PTSD on top of it.

I’m scared of posting this, but I’m tired of hiding and keeping my head down and plodding along. I know it’ll kick some shit up, everything does, but I also know he’s going to try to twist this stuff like he always has. I’m tired of letting him control me. I’m tired of being afraid of being honest. I’m tired of watching people hand out “just go to the police they’ll protect you” while I silently scream and bite my tongue, because I know the advice-giver is giving horrible, ignorant advice. It’s so much more complicated than that, and if someone decides to go to the cops about their abuser they should be doing it with a more informed and prepared plan than I ever did. They shouldn’t have to have their lives hijacked for years to find out that that’s what they were even risking in the first place. I wish I had those two years back. The least I can do to make that right is to be honest and open with the world while trying to reduce the cost of maneuvering through these systems. The least I can do is try to succeed at getting my life back where the courts have utterly failed.    

I won’t ever get my life back, but that doesn’t mean I can’t live in the meantime. Hopefully the next girl won’t have years stolen from her in the first place.

Photo essay by Marion A. Osieyo.

In her article on race and space within higher education, Nirmal Puwar wrote, ‘Social spaces are not blank and open for any body to occupy. Over time, through processes of historical sedimentation, certain types of bodies are designated as being the ‘natural’ occupants of specific spaces….Some bodies have the right to belong in certain locations, while others are marked out as trespassers who are in accordance with how both spaces and bodies are imagined, politically, historically and conceptually circumscribed as being ‘out of place’.’

The ongoing Rhodes Must Fall campaign has reignited debate of whether the pursuit of knowledge can exist in spaces constructed to privilege a particular type of history, perspective and knowledge.

In June 2015, I met with four women studying at my alma mater, Oxford University to discuss this issue and how they have learned to take up space. I wanted to show women of colour existing, resisting and defining themselves in physical and sociological spaces which were often inclusive of everything but them.  What came to light were experiences of learning how to redefine identity not as a compass for others but for oneself. These women are taking up spaces in libraries, debating halls, museums, and public streets not as an act of resistance towards others but an act of affirmation of and for themselves.

Anju taking up space at the Taylor Institution Library, Oxford University:

Marie taking up space at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford:

Ella taking up space at the Oxford Union and Wadham College, Oxford University:

Aisha chose not to take up space within the physical spaces of Oxford University. Instead, she chose a place within Oxford where she felt her identity was recognised, valued and celebrated; Cowley.

Kenyan-British artist Marion A. Osieyo photographs women of colour and their daily acts of resistance. She is based in London, UK.

Email: [email protected] | Instagram: @portraitsofwater

Validate the culture you wish to see in the world - this is something I often say to audiences who come to hear me speak.  It’s one thing to criticize the false idols foisted upon us daily by the mainstream media; far more impactful is creating and supporting a vision that reflects oneself and one’s world view. 

I first met Cristy C. Road (interview with her here) a few years ago at L.A. Zine Fest, where I was speaking on a panel. Cristy was in the audience. Afterwards, she introduced herself, expressed interest in my work and handed me a copy of her graphic novel, Spit and Passion. I am a sucker for graphic novels so I gobbled it up that same night, slowing down from time to time to marvel at the way her expressive artwork perfectly complimented the text. By the end of the night I was a Cristy fan.

Time passed before I would see Cristy again. In 2014, we both happened to be in Champaign, Illinois. She was staying with a mutual friend, Mimi Thi Nguyen. We hung out together and before long Cristy was treating us to a living room serenade, playing and singing acoustic versions of her rock songs. That night, over a late night supper Cristy started talking about a tarot deck that she had been working on. She asked me if I would like to pose for her and of course, I said yes! I have to confess that I was a little confused when she asked me to get down on the ground and strike some unfamiliar poses, right there in the restaurant. Her imagination was racing much too quickly for me to catch up to her. A few months ago I saw some of her tarot deck drawings. The illustrations were colorful and vivid. They depicted beautiful, badass women - the type who are not typically portrayed as beautiful: women of different ethnicities, body types and ages. It was a powerful affirmation of a woman’s worth. Then I saw myself. 

Cristy had drawn me, picking up jewels from the ground. It thrilled me to be included. I wanted to buy decks for my daughters and my friends but the deck was not finished. Doing enough drawings to create an entire deck of cards was requiring time and money. Cristy is no slacker. Earlier this year I contacted her with a crazy request. I asked if she could illustrate the cover of my book which was going to the printer in two weeks. To my surprise, she said yes. Within days I had sketches to approve and two weeks later a front and back cover for my book.

Cristy works hard. She is a super talented artist doing important work. I hope you will join me in supporting her Kickstarter campaign.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/croadcore/the-next-world-tarot

Here is the link, and even if you can’t pledge, I would very much appreciate you sharing this post to help bring attention to this campaign.