Author: Dark Daughta

Ethically, emotionally…poly matures…

I wasn’t even thinking about ethics and boundaries in my early and mid twenties when I started wondering about and exploring open relationships, group fucking, having a partner and being up front about desiring other people. I hurt more than a couple of people trying to make space for more love and lust in my life before I even came across the term “poly”. Even then, I would have to say that I had the colossal bad luck of encountering a situation that was a lot more hedonistic, see where the cards fall, “and…her clothes were off and so yes, i stood you up but please be happy for me because her and I had lots of fun”, than I wanted.

Eventually, some where between hurting good people and being hurt unnecessarily by people who made their decisions with their genitals in ways that left me not feeling the compersion, I started to realize that poly needed to involve a whole lot of levels of consciousness beyond whether I was good with a lover having other lovers, more than just being honest about wanting to fuck, more than everybody being able to force a smile and move on.

Gotten a shit load of attitude, whispers, passive aggressive bullshit, exclusion from some of the poly people I’ve encountered in meat space for daring to even attempt to articulate some of this. Been cast as insecure, jealous, disgruntled, insecure, mean, controlling among other things for asking to get more out of poly than a grope, cuddle, fun time and popularity.

sigh…
This piece of writing came to me via facebook this evening and I can’t even describe how excited I was to have been able to read these words. It took a lot of bravery to go up against the shaming and silencing that happens whenever someone expresses ideas and beliefs about poly that go against the dominant grain in poly circles.

I’m happy it has been written. Now, given that it is in the world, it will serve as virus/meme forming and transforming part of the collective consciousness of poly people everywhere whether folks agree with it or not. That’s more than I could have hoped for. Much, much more.

Please forward this widely and freely. Please quote it to any poly people who you witness attempting to silence dissent and other ways of seeing dominant community ways of managing and discussing poly culture and values. Dissent and differences of opinion, sharing of possible approaches to doing poly that don’t always center pleasure and the rights and needs of the individual have been a long time coming.

Ache

i don’t give a fuck about how you fuck: or, your hot ass mess is not my revolution

your poly is only politically relevant to me if…
you center respect and love for women and femmes in how you do relationships.
you understand and care about how your actions in relationships are directly connected to the well being of your communities. (y’all know that this shit breaks up friendships and communities all the time.)
you are aware of and work to resist heterosexist and patriarchal notions of love that are grounded in ideas of capitalist property ownership, misogyny, and racism.

you respect any and all of your partners.

you do not pit your partners, hookups, or love interests against each other by being shady and shitty about communication — especially if you are masculine-identified and your partners, hookups, and love interests are women and femmes. *of course, when this happens, it’s “unintentional,” right? but when misogyny structures how we understand and do relationships in such concrete ways, you need to fucking fight as hard as you can to actually BE intentional. being unintentional in the way of, “oh it just happened,” or, “but i didn’t do anything wrong,” when what is naturalized is being careless about the relationships between women and femmes, then not having intentions or thoughts around all that is a problem.

you understand the importance of (and work to center) the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs and boundaries of yourself and your partners.

you understand how each of your relationships impacts all of the other ones. and you understand that the way you carry yourself in one relationship will show up in your other relationships.

you do not dismiss your partners’ jealousies, insecurities, or negative feelings as just them being “jealous” or “too emotional” or “not really getting it.” you don’t blame or shame people for their emotions.
you accept full accountability for your actions when you are hurtful, unintentional, or careless in your interactions with others.

you do not dismiss others’ concerns about you being possibly disrespectful or misogynistic as them not being radical or sex-positive enough.

you understand that having the space/freedom to love and fuck however you please does NOT mean that you are operating in a vacuum. you understand that everything you do has consequences – and act with care.
you understand that poly is not about having the freedom to do whatever the fuck you want to. you understand that poly is about having the freedom to pursue your needs and desires openly without shame, and to hold yourself to being intentional and responsible. especially because those needs or desires are about OTHER PEOPLE and OTHER PEOPLE’S BODIES.

you get that you are not entitled to the guarantee that everything you do/want will be okay with all your partners or your communities, esp when your actions will impact them and when people are always operating from different contexts, traumas, desires, needs. (aka, you don’t do disrespectful shit and expect your partners or friends not to respond just because you didn’t mean to hurt anybody.)

you understand the importance of informed consent — meaning, if there are things that are going on that might even possibly make someone reconsider cuddling with you, having sex with you, or being intimate with you, then you need to be open about them.

you don’t take consent for granted. ever.

you know how to set, talk about, and respect boundaries.

you don’t use your “poly” status to be emotionally neglectful and/or abusive to your partners.

you don’t treat people like they are expendable, disposable, or otherwise meaningless, even if it’s a quick fuck or a fling.

you communicate openly and honestly without withholding important information, especially when it’s hard.
the desire to love/fuck lots of people at the same time is not something inherently radical or meaningful. people have always wanted to love/fuck multiple people, whether or not that’s been in accountable ways. basically, if people are side-eying you about how you do poly/relationships it’s not always because they’re just colonized sex negative tools of the state or some shit lol.

(and thanks disorientd, seafoamknife, & lowendtheory for talking/thinking through a lot of this with me. all love. ♥)

if what you’re reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again…then link me.

if what you’re reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again…then link me.
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Sounds like a planetary council in formation, to me…

Open Letter About International Organization for a Participatory Society (IOPS)

The following is being sent to many people and institutions. Anyone in IOPS can send it, as well, to media you appreciate, and it is likely to help a lot.

Hello,

We the signers of the open letter from Noam Chomsky, Vandana Shiva, Boaventura de sousa Santos, John Pilger, and 40 other members of the interim decision body of the new International Organization for a Participatory Society, hope that you will republish our letter, and, even more, that you will publish commentary regarding the organization’s purpose, implications, prospects, etc.

Please reply to let us know your personal reaction, and whether you will be recirculating this, or perhaps taking some other related steps.

An Open Message to All Who Seek A New and Better World

We are members of what is called the the Interim Consultative Committee of the International Organization for a Participatory Society – or IOPS for short.
IOPS is actually an interim entity, pending a future founding convention. IOPS was convened just a few months ago and already has over 2,100 members from 85 countries and a ten language site, despite that it is barely known publicly. IOPS is currently building local chapters, which will unite to form national branches that in turn will compose an international organization.

We send this open letter to invite you to please visit the IOPS Site to examine its initial features – including especially and most importantly its <http://www.iopsociety.org/about>Mission and Visionary and Programmatic Commitments.

The IOPS commitments emerged from a long process of discussion and debate. We believe they correspond closely to the most prevalent, advanced, and widely accessible political beliefs on which to build an organization for winning a better world.

We also hope and even believe that if you read and consider the IOPS commitments, you will likely find that they are congenial to your interests and desires and that they provide reason for great hope that IOPS can become a very important organization in the coming years.

If we had to summarize the IOPS commitments, we would note that they emphasize:
that IOPS focuses on cultural, kinship, political, economic, international, and ecological aims without a priori prioritizing any of these over the rest;

    that IOPS advocates and elaborates key aspects of vision for a sustainable and peaceful world without sexism, heterosexism, racism, classism, and authoritarianism and with equity, justice, solidarity, diversity, and, in particular, self-management for all people
    and that IOPS structurally and programmatically emphasizes planting the seeds of the future in the present, winning immediate gains on behalf of suffering constituencies in ways contributing to winning its long term aims as well, developing a caring and nurturing organization and movement, and welcoming and even fostering constructive dissent and diversity within that organization and movement and based on its commitments.
    We think hundreds of thousands of people, in fact, millions of people, will, on reading the commitments, overwhelmingly agree with them. We hope that if you look at the commitments and feel that way, you will join and advocate that others join as well. If you instead have problems with the IOPS commitments, we hope you will make your concerns known so a productive discussion can ensue.

On the other hand, we also understand that agreeing with the IOPS commitments will not alone cause those same hundreds of thousands and even millions of people to join IOPS. There are numerous reasons why a person might support the IOPS commitments and even hope that IOPS grows and becomes strong and effective at the grassroots, in every neighborhood, workplace, and social movement, and yet, at the moment, not join. Our best effort to summarize obstacles people may feel to joining even while they like the IOPS commitments, and to address those obstacles also appears on the IOPS site, in a Why Join IOPS Question and Answer format. Essentially we argue: If not now, when? If not us, who?

Asked to provide a succinct summary paragraph for the IOPS site about his involvement, Noam Chomsky wrote: “Hardly a day goes by when we do not hear appeals – often laments – from people deeply concerned about the travails of human existence and the fate of the world, desperately eager to do something about what they rightly perceive to be intolerable and ominous, feeling helpless because each individual effort, however dedicated, seems to merely chip away at a mountain, placing band-aids on a cancer, never reaching to the sources of needless suffering and the threats of much worse. It’s an understandable reaction that all too often  leads to despair and resignation. We all know the only answer, driven home by experience and history, and by simple reflection on the realities of the world: join together to construct and clarify long-term visions and goals, along with direct engagement and activism shaped by these guidelines and contributing to a deepening of our understanding of what we hope to achieve… IOPS strikes the right chords, and if the opportunities it opens are pursued with sufficient energy and participation, diligence, modesty, and desire, it could carry us a long way towards unifying the many initiatives here and around the world and combining them into a powerful and effective force.”

And as Cynthia Peters wrote: “You hear it all the time. There is always another urgent crisis. They don’t just come in a steady stream, they seem to multiply geometrically. More draconian policies with life-threatening consequences, more corporate control, more prisons, more bombs, more funerals. With so many immediate fires to put out in our day-to-day organizing work, how can we make time to attend to larger issues, such as long-term strategy, vision, and movement building? IOPS creates the space for us to do the essential work of movement building and envisioning and then seeking a better world. Without these elements, we’ll continue to work in isolation. By enlivening and enriching IOPS with your presence, you will both give solidarity to and receive solidarity from so many others — across the world — in the same situation — up to their necks in the daily fight, and at the same time turning their creativity and energy towards revolutionary social change. That is not just good company. It’s the solid beginnings of another world being possible.”

We hope you will join us as we try to make it so.

Signed,

Ezequiel Adamovsky – Argentina
M Adams – U.S.
Michael Albert – U.S.
Jessica Azulay – U.S.
Elaine Bernard – U.S.
Patrick Bond – South Africa
Noam Chomsky – U.S.
Jason Chrysostomou – UK
John Cronan – U.S.
Ben Dangl – U.S.
Denitsa Dimitrova – UK/Bulgaria
Mark Evans – UK
Ann Ferguson – U.S.
Eva Golinger – Venezuela
Andrej Grubacic – Balkans/U.S.
Pervez Hoodbhoy – Pakistan
Antti Jauhiainen – Finland
Ria Julien – U.S./Trinidad
Dimitris Konstanstinou – Greece
Pat Korte – U.S.
Yohan Le Guin – Wales
Mandisi Majavu – South Africa
Yotam Marom – U.S.
David Marty – Spain
Preeti Paul – UK/India
Cynthia Peters – U.S.
John Pilger – UK/Aus
Justin Podur – Canada
Nikos Raptis – Greece
Paulo Rodriguez – Belgium
Charlotte Sáenz – Mexico/U.S.
Anders Sandstrom – Sweden
Boaventura de sousa Santos – Portugal
Lydia Sargent – U.S.
Stephen Shalom – U.S.
Vandana Shiva – India
Chris Spannos – U.S.
Verena Stresing – France/Germany
Elliot Tarver – U.S.
Fernando Ramn Vegas Torrealba – Venezuela
Taylon Tosun – Turkey
Marie Trigona – U.S.
Greg Wilpert – Germany/Venezuela/U.S.
Florian Zollman – Germany

 
 if what you’re reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again…then link me.

if what you’re reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again…then link me.
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Chrishaun "CeCe" McDonald stands trial for defending herself against racist, transphobic, homophic attackers…

A transgender African-American woman is set to go on trial next week on charges of second-degree murder for an altercation after she was reportedly physically attacked and called racist and homophobic slurs outside a Minneapolis bar last year. Chrishaun “CeCe” McDonald received 11 stitches to her cheek, and was reportedly interrogated without counsel and placed in solitary confinement following her arrest. There were reports that the dead victim, Dean Schmitz, had a swastika tattooed on his chest. McDonald’s supporters say the case is symptomatic of the bias against transgender people and African Americans in the criminal justice system. “People were very enraged about what happened to her, and refusal of Hennepin County to recognize her right to self-defense,” says Katie Burgess, executive director of Trans Youth Support Network, who has helped draw attention the case and notes Transgender people of color are twice as likely to experience discrimination as their white peers. We also speak with Raven Cross, one of McDonald’s best friends.

if what you’re reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again…then link me.

if what you’re reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again…then link me.
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How to survive a plague – a documentary about the history of AIDS activism

The 25th anniversary of the formation of ACT UP recently passed and Democracy Now did a piece on this documentary.

This weekend marks the 25th anniversary of ACT UP — the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power — an international direct action advocacy group formed by a coalition of activists outraged over the government’s mismanagement of the AIDS crisis. We speak with ACT UP founding member Peter Staley, one of the longest AIDS survivors in the country; and David France, director of the new documentary “How to Survive a Plague,” which tells a remarkable history of AIDS activism and how it changed the country. “I’m alive because of that activism,” Staley says of the triple drug therapy he was able to take. “This was a major victory this movie tells about getting these therapies. But that was only the beginning of the battle. Now we have these treatments that can keep people alive, and there are still two to three million dying every year. There are more dying now than when we actually got the therapies to save people. So it’s a huge failure of leadership internationally. And it shows a failure of our own healthcare system.”

if what you’re reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again…then link me.

if what you’re reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again…then link me.
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Amerikkkan citizens (and probably also kkkanadian citizens): The Obama administration has copies of most of your emails…

National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney reveals he believes domestic surveillance has become more expansive under President Obama than President George W. Bush. He estimates the NSA has assembled 20 trillion “transactions” — phone calls, emails and other forms of data — from Americans. This likely includes copies of almost

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FBI seizes riseup.net server…

from infoshop.org… Server Seizure, April 2012: April 18th, 2012, Riseup had a server seized by the US Federal Authorities. This is our press release. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE FBI seizes server providing anonymous remailer and many other services from colocation facility. Attack on Anonymous Speech On Wednesday, April 18, at approximately

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