relationships

Relationship Vocabulary List

I made a list of relationship-related vocabulary and definitions. I hope to provide you with terms to help navigate and express your understanding of various aspects of relationships, gender, and sexuality. This kind of vocabulary is essential for fostering inclusive and respectful conversations about these topics.


When you step outside of cishet-amatonormativity, or even just off the relationship escalator, you need more language than is typically used to express the variety of things that could be happening.

Language, as a result, becomes more functional when it is descriptive rather than prescriptive.

When approaching the world through queer theory, identity is about resonance. Instead of having to validate an identity by adhering to the definition of it, it becomes important to recognize that we are all people and that we all exhibit varied behaviors.

There is no need to prove you are straight or gay. And no one really has the ability to deny you your internal reality, regardless of what your external dynamics look like. What you are interested in isn’t always fully encapsulated by who people link you to. And who you want to be, understand yourself to be, and discover yourself to be are living conversations between your internal and external realities.

In a cisheteronormative paradigm, traditionally one AFAB person and one AMAB person pair up (or are paired up) and find themselves traveling up what we, thanks to Amy Gahran, now refer to as the relationship escalator.

There were phases and milestones that they were expected to reach together.

Some of the milestones were considered to be sacred, such as marriage, which besides being an entity-defining contract recognized by the government, was also a sacrament and a rite of passage. Various rules and agreements were made or expected to be made leading up to and after each milestone. Without a relationship escalator and a model for what is healthy and correct, it becomes each individual’s responsibility to learn and decide for themselves what is right for them and their relationship and when. It is important to decide for yourself what things to pursue and what boundaries and agreements need to be made and maintained to be the signposts for healthiness in ourselves, in any given dynamic, and in the community.


Terms Describing Internal Experiences of Others, Dynamic, and Self:


Emotional Attraction: The capacity that evokes the desire to engage in emotionally intimate behaviors such as sharing, confiding, and trusting. To experience life emotionally alongside them.

Emotional Curiosity: the experience of a desire to understand the emotional world of an individual, whether directly or indirectly. (Note: a child who grows up with emotionally available parents typically inherits a healthy relationship with the emotions their parents have, accepting and healthy relationships with. And potentially, a relatively positive experience of their own emotional world and attachments).

Emotional Availability: The capacity of an individual to emotionally connect with another. In a relationship, the ability of two people to share a healthy emotional connection. Informs the emotional and unified qualities of a relationship.

Emotional Unavailability: The patterns of difficulty one experiences getting close to others, practicing emotional vulnerability, committing, and connecting on a deeper, more intimate level. Engenders feelings of emotional distance, disconnection, loneliness/isolation related to the experience of the unavailable party.

Emotional Intelligence(EI): The ability to manage and understand both your own emotions and the emotions of people around you. There are five key elements to EI: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills.

Physical Attraction: the personal experience that evokes the desire to engage sensually with another person. A desire to experience touch, hugs, kisses, cuddling, roughhousing, play-fighting, nibbles, cute aggression, etc. To smell, touch, taste, hear, or see them. It could involve sexual arousal, but it might not at all.

Physical Curiosity: the experience of a desire to understand the physical experience of an individual, whether directly or indirectly. It can include sexual curiosities.

Physical Availability: The capacity of an individual to connect physically with others. This is determined by many factors, such as their interest in touch, their experience of trauma and pleasure (physical or emotional), their energy levels, distance, knowledge and skills (e.g., someone doesn’t know how to hold a baby), social norms, and commitments (both sexual and nonsexual).

Romantic Attraction: an experience that evokes the desire to engage in romantically intimate behaviors such as courtship, emotional bonding, intimate companionship, romantic relationships, and marriage.

Romantic Curiosity: the experience of a desire to understand the romantic capacities, qualities, interests, and history of an individual, whether directly or indirectly.

Romantic Availability: The capacity of an individual to romantically connect with another. The ability of two or more people to share a satisfying romantic connection.

Romantic Unavailability: A pattern of difficulty practicing vulnerability, establishing commitment, and connecting on a deeper, more intimate level in a romantic context. This could also be an inability to do those things or an aversion to them. A person who is polysaturated may be emotionally available as a friend but not as a romantic partner, for example.

Sexual Attraction: the personal experience that evokes the desire to engage in sexually intimate behaviors. A desire to experience others erotically and to pleasure or be pleasured by them in sexually intimate ways. Sexual arousal might increase with the intensity of the attraction.

Sexual Curiosity: the experience of a desire to understand the sexual capacities, interests, and history of an individual, whether directly or indirectly.

Sexual Availability: The capacity of an individual to connect sexually with others. This is determined by many factors, such as their interest in sex or a given individual, their energy levels, and commitments (both sexual and nonsexual). When people are “fuck-zoned,” they are talking about a relationship having its potential for sexual availability as the priority or one of the highest priorities.

Sexual Unavailability: The circumstances that create difficulty or prevent sexuality from being possible, attractive, pleasurable, or healthy in a dynamic. If you have not received consent, or consent has been rescinded, someone should be treated as sexually unavailable unless consent is willingly and enthusiastically offered. Sexual unavailability can be tied to emotions, commitments, beliefs/values/ideology, social consequences, health, or numerous other reasons. When people refer to being friend-zoned, they are talking about the determination of sexual unavailability as the general rule of a given dynamic. For yours and others’ well-being, it is generally safer not to sexually engage with those who are conflicted about their sexual availability.

Sexual Awareness: Personal sexual experience. This includes personal understandings of our own erotic energies. Our sexual self-awareness includes an understanding of our pleasure and preferences, attractions and aversions, and as a result, our boundaries, as well as which agreements we need for healthy experiences. Sexual awareness and emotional intelligence inform our capacity to communicate our sexual awareness to others.

Theory of Love: Referencing any number of theories that help us understand how we engage with love in our relationships. Attachment theory and the Triangular Theory of Love are two such examples. Languages can create cultural experiences of love and intimacy as well, i.e., Greek describes love with multiple words: Storge, Agape, Eros, Pragma, Philia, Ludus, Philautia.

NRE: New Relationship Energy describes the emotional experience of the neurochemical cocktail we associate with feelings of passion and falling in love.

Agape: Greek. Originally, agape referred to familial or spousal affection without a romantic or sexual connotation. Christianity uses it to refer to God’s perfect love. A love that will be given whether or not it is returned. A love that is not egoic in its locus. Buddhism might use this term to describe foundational loving kindness for all beings. If one were to look at all of reality as divine, as pantheistic monism might suggest, then agape would be the love of reality itself (from reality and towards reality), and acting on it would be in turn a meditation on our oneness. This love does not require familiarity.

Eros: Greek. Sexual, erotic, and/or passionate love. In contrast to Agape’s paradoxical selflessness and oneness, eros is primarily egoic in its locus and is focused on attachment to the potential for pleasure and excitement to be found in sexual/romantic/erotic attractions.

Philia: Greek. Brotherly love. The love one might feel for friends and family. The profound sense of goodwill one has towards those they care for. The focus is not the pleasure to be extracted but the goodwill to be shared.

Pragma: Greek. Love with an emphasis on the characteristics of companionship, commitment, and endurance. A love with shared hopes, values, and goals.

Storge: Greek. The love of family. As with parent to child or between siblings. Carries the qualities of caretaking, selflessness, provision, and protection. Sacrifice and acceptance. The love that provides a “safe haven.” Dependent on familiarity.

Ludus: Greek. Playful love. Associated with feelings of levity and excitement. Liable to dissipate in the face of difficulty or complication. Can persist with intentional cultivation by both parties.

Philautia: Greek. Self-love. Greeks deemed this a prerequisite for coherently loving others. The healthy, necessary experience of love of one’s self that makes it possible to give and receive love from other people without self-deception or hypocrisy. [The self-worth, confidence, and self-esteem that are necessary for self-actualization and the cognitive empathy to understand boundaries and agreements as positives. The integrity to facilitate honest interactions with the self so as not to feel entitled to manipulating others with deceptions we ourselves would not appreciate. A sense of one’s purpose, a personal capacity for fulfillment and meaning. Self-compassion. Allows for solitude to be positive and therefore time apart and space to be positive as well. The capacity to cultivate the accountability, safety, resilience, healing, and growth that allow us to contribute positively in community without the need to oppress, abuse, or dominate others to have our needs met. The self-trust that affords the ability to trust others.]


Terms Describing Sexual & Romantic Norms within Social Constructs:


Allonormativity: The presumption of individuals, communities, and the collective that all human beings are sexual.

Amatonormativity: The presumption of individuals, communities, and the collective that all human beings seek romantic connection/partnership.

Heteronormativity: The presumption of individuals, communities, and the collective that everyone is straight, in a straight relationship, or wants to be straight. [The rejection of gay marriage by straight people]

Cishet-amatonormativity: The presumption that cisgendered, heterosexual, amatonormative, allosexuality is the moral, correct, and most desirable way of being. It is effectively a sex and gender umbrella from which the conservative and traditional social scripts are derived. It represses authentic experiences, moralizes sexuality, and oppresses those who deviate from what are projected to be the human biological imperatives of sex and gender. [In queer communities, we can see the effects when relationships among queer people are held to normative standards. Monosexual individuals might experience anxiety, frustration, and invalidation on account of a partner’s capacity to find multiple genders attractive.]

Relationship Escalator: Defined by Amy Gahran as the collection of expected behaviors and choices that must be followed in order for a relationship to be seen as legitimate. [These expectations change and shift as norms do. What is acceptable in one community may be forbidden in another.]


Terms Describing Sexual and Romantic Orientations and Experiences:


Allosexual: desiring to have sex with other people.

Alloromantic: desiring romantic connections with other people.

Asexual: no sexual attraction or sexual desire for other people. They may experience romantic interest and desire. Or sexual desire without attraction or sexual attraction without desire. They may experience other forms of attraction.

Androgyny: the quality or state of being neither specifically feminine nor masculine: the combination of feminine and masculine characteristics: the quality or state of being androgynous.

Bisexual: describes an experience of being sexually attracted to both people of the same gender and people from other genders.

Ceterosexual: describes a person whose gender is nonbinary and who is sexually attracted to nonbinary people. Some ceterosexual people describe themselves as “diamoric.”

Ceteroromantic: also sometimes referred to as skolioromantic, is a romantic orientation where a person is romantically attracted to non-binary genders.

Greysexual: also referred to as “grey-asexual,” this refers to a person who feels sexual attraction very infrequently.

Gray-romantic: individuals who do not often experience romantic attraction.

Heterosexual: Within the concept of the gender binary, experiences attraction to individuals of the opposite sex. This term, originated in the 1800s, as a description of someone who had an obsession with the opposite sex to the degree that it was almost a form of deviance. It was coined by Hungarian Journalist Károly Mária Kertbeny in 1869. People historically were not considered straight or gay; rather, they mostly engaged in acceptable or unacceptable sexual behaviors. Sexologists at the end of the 1800s started using the term. In 1923, it was defined by Merriam-Webster Dictionary as “morbid sexual passion for one of the opposite sex.” By 1934, the definition shifted and encompassed “normal“ non-queer sexuality. The term “heterosexuality” did not become mainstream until the 1960s. The term straight itself seemingly arises out of queer culture, as a reference to “being on the straight and narrow” after ceasing queer behavior.

Homosexual: Experiences attraction to individuals of the same sex. This term originated in the 1800s as a description of someone who had a preference for sexual encounters with individuals of the same sex. It too has a loaded history but is generally avoided now, as it is associated with being “clinical, distancing, and archaic.” It may also not accurately represent the orientation of the individuals described. It may have originated in Germany in 1868 or with Hungarian Journalist Károly Mária Kertbeny in 1869.

Aromantic: no romantic attraction or romantic desire for other people. They may experience sexual interest and desire. Or romantic desires without romantic attraction or romantic attraction without romantic desires. They may experience other forms of attraction.

Cupioromantic: A person who desires a romantic relationship but does not feel romantic attraction.

Cupiosexual: A person who desires a sexual relationship but does not feel sexual attraction.

Demisexual: feeling sexual attraction only after an emotional bond. They may experience romantic interest and desire but lack sexual interest absent bonding.

Demiromantic: feeling romantic attraction only after an emotional bond. They may experience sexual interest and desire but lack romantic interest absent bonding.

Lithrosexual: Experiences sexual attraction but does not desire those feelings to be reciprocated or pursued. May still experience romantic attraction.

Lithromantic: Experiences romantic attraction but does not desire those feelings to be reciprocated or pursued. May still experience sexual attraction.

Pansexual/Omnisexual: sexually attracted to many or all genders. May not experience romantic attraction.

Panromantic: romantically attracted to many or all genders. May not experience sexual attraction.

Questioning: describes a person who is unsure about or exploring their sexuality and/or gender.

Gynosexual/Gynesexual: sexually attracted to femininity. 

Gynoromantic/gyneromantic: romantically attracted to femininity. Some describe themselves as “sapphic.”

Gynephilia: romantic and/or sexual attraction to femininity. Also sometimes used by TERF and TERF-adjacent people to describe being attracted only to people with a vulva.

Androsexual: sexually attracted to masculinity.

Androromantic: romantically attracted to masculinity. Some describe themselves as “achillean.”

Androphilia: romantic and/or sexual attraction to masculinity. 

Monosexual: attracted to one gender. I use this to refer to people who prefer sexually exclusive relationships. In the 19th century, it also referred to someone who masturbates. Coined by Hungarian Journalist Károly Mária Kertbeny

Polyamorous: having or having the capacity for multiple sexual and/or romantic relationships concurrently.

Polyromantic: romantically attracted to many genders, but not necessarily sexually attracted to them.

Polysexual: attracted to many genders. I also use this to refer to people who prefer sexually non-exclusive dynamics.

Relationship Anarchy: An approach to relationships that attempts to dismantle the relationship hierarchy of cishet-amatonormativity. It is aimed at giving individuals the freedom to love who they wish, in ways that suit them. [Can be attractive to individuals who love freedom as well as individuals who resist accountability.]

Hierarchy: a structure, system, or organization in which people or groups are ranked or ordered according to status or authority. [Not inherently problematic, unless we impose hierarchy in oppressive and abusive ways.]

Relationship Hierarchy: an organization of relationships as ranked by their importance, status, or authority within a structure, system, or organization. (ie family ties are more important than friendship) (ie My partner can dictate certain elements of my life) [Not inherently problematic, unless we impose hierarchy in oppressive and abusive ways.]

Non-Hierarchical Relationships: an organization of relationships such that they have no ranking or no fixed rankings. [Frequently this refers to a rejection of social pressures to rank relationships in specific ways. (ie a romantic partner is not more important than a friend) Since humans are naturally biased, “non-hierarchical relationships” have a tendency to expose us to our values and weaknesses. (ie I say that the length of a relationship does not matter, but I’ve noticed NRE causes me to be more spontaneous with the focus of that experience and less responsible about standing commitments)]


Terms that Describe Sex:


Sex: refers to the designations of reproductive counterparts in species that reproduce via meiosis. Sex determines which kind of gametes a creature contributes to reproduction should it be fertile, as well as which changes occur at maturation when a creature reaches sexual maturity. There are many ways to designate sex. In humans, female corresponds to an XX chromosome pairing with males having XY pairings. This is not ubiquitous in nature.

AFAB: assigned female at birth; refers to a person who is biologically female. Describing someone as biologically female is different from describing someone as biologically a woman.

AMAB: assigned male at birth; refers to a person who is biologically male. Describing someone as biologically male is different from describing someone as biologically a man.

SAAB: a designation assigned at birth based on visible genitals; can be male (AMAB), female (AFAB), or intersex. SAAB is preferred over the term “biological sex” when the latter is used harmfully towards transgender people.

Intersex: is a general term used for a variety of situations in which a person is born with reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn't fit the boxes of “female” or “male.” Sometimes doctors do surgeries on intersex babies and children to make their bodies fit binary ideas of “male” or “female.”


Terms that Describe Gender:


Gender: A construct that provides social scripts for interaction with other members of society, typically associated with social and cultural interpretations of the roles of femininity and masculinity as expressed in or imposed on the participants. Gendered roles in society change from culture to culture and vary in their levels of equity and acceptance. While gender can provide a sense of security about who one is, it can also create distress about who one cannot or must not be, as well as create artificial conflicts when hierarchy is imposed or bigotry internalized.

Agender: describes a person who does not identify with any gender.

Bigender: describes a person who identifies as two or more genders.

Cisgender: describes a person whose gender is the same as their SAAB.

Nonbinary: describes a person who identifies with experiences of gender beyond the gender binary.

Gender Binary: The presumption that gender is not a construct but a biological fact, with only two genders which must be determined by sex.

Gender Expression: how other people interpret a person’s gender based on physical appearance, mannerisms, etc..

Gender Identity: how a person interprets their own gender based on their emotions, personal experiences, etc..

Genderfluid: a gender identity that is fluid between/among more than one gender.

Genderqueer: a gender identity that lies outside of male or female, sometimes without more definition.

Transgender: describes a person who identifies with an experience of gender that is different from their SAAB. It is an umbrella term that people may or may not identify with. Nonbinary people, trans men, trans women, two-spirit people, and other experiences may identify as transgender or trans.

Transsexual: describes a person who transitions sexually from their SAAB. Has some loaded and potentially negative connotations dating back to the 1920s when it was associated with mental illness.

Ally: a person who actively works to end intolerance, educate others, and support social equity for a marginalized group.


I hope this list serves you well. I may post another version of this on my site directly. I plan to follow this up with a list of terms related perhaps to polyamory and kink as well as various worksheets to help people navigate their experiences.

We Are Not The Same.

in ,

But we are.

Each of us has similarities and differences to the people we engage with.



Duh.



And we want to have the right kinds of similarities and the right kinds of differences.



Duh again.



But how did you figure out what the *right* similarities and differences were?



I want you to think about what importance you place on your similarities and differences when selecting anyone for anything.



Any relationship you can think of.



If you’re adept at selection, it’s not just about similarities and differences. It’s about the functionality of those similarities and differences.



Each observable thing in the universe has traits. And those traits are somewhat dependent on an observer’s capacity to engage with them or not.



Is this trait positive, neutral, negative? Is it supplementary, complementary? Compatible, incompatible? Collaborative, competitive?



When you think about two people and someone says, “opposites attract” what is actually in opposition? We are not magnets. Is one strategic while the other shoots from the hip? Is one aggressive while the other is passive? Is one honest and the other a liar?



These things aren’t really absolutes. In different contexts and environments, someone’s extreme is some society’s norm. Maybe there’s no word for a thing that you do in your language, and five to describe it in another one. There may be a feeling you have that does not translate.



So let’s give it context:



If someone is talkative, they may do well with someone else who likes to listen. Different.



But they also may get bored if they feel that person seems to have nothing to say, and find themself in search of a repeated meeting of the minds. Same.



Which is better?



If someone is goal oriented, they may need someone around who challenges them and keeps them sharp. Same, competitive. But they may do just as well if not better with someone who is extremely supportive of their goals, but doesn’t directly participate in their projects. Different, supplementary + compatible. Maybe they need an assistant or mentor whose direct engagement adds dynamism to the process that wouldn’t be possible otherwise. Same, complementary + collaborative. Even still they may find that they truly need people who are disinterested in what they do. From this they draw fresh perspectives and get time away from their consuming interests. They have someone who makes them excited to step away and find balance. Different, complementary. The answer to which is better is found in the fulfillment of the engaged individuals and the consequences of the connection.



Sometimes we have negative compatibility. Like people who enable our self-destructive tendencies. If someone has an addictive personality and a drug dealer bestie, there might be consequences. If someone has low emotional intelligence but finds people who compensate for the damage they do with their lack of self awareness, when those people aren’t around to clean up for them, there will probably be consequences. In these ways, people are dissimilar, yet they function in ways that supplement or complement some aspect of the other’s existence. Negative compatibilities are some of the ways we get stuck in phases where we ought to be growing. How we lose our potential for actualization to entitlements. Entitlements breed ingratitude. Anger, resentment, disappointments. When we look back, and we have had time to heal, our gratitude is typically focused on the fact that it’s over, and the fact that we learned our lesson. Well, hopefully.



Sometimes we have negative similarities. We butt heads because we’re both aggressive. We let things fester because we are both passive. Frequently, we’re naturally repelled by these people until we mature. Some of us have to revisit this space when we see our flaws in our children. We don’t have as big of a problem with seeing negative similarities if we make peace with our own flaws. When we take the time to grow, we trust others to grow. If we don’t grow, we might feel punished when we see others succeeding, especially via means we see or have seen ourselves being punished for. We might fear that they’ll have to learn the same lessons we did, or feel vindicated when they do. We might suffer when we see them thriving via means that others have used to wound us, and that we have promised we would never embody. Judging and rejecting a part of ourselves because we project the pain that we suffered onto others that might witness us engaged in these behaviors or thought patterns. Or we shame ourselves for the pain we did and do cause in these ways. And we justify not forgiving them by not forgiving ourselves either. Or with hypocrisy.



On the other hand, when we witness negative differences, the ones that we don’t like, and that don’t help us, I’ve found one of the deepest signs of maturity is a capacity to extend ourselves compassionately for the possibility of another person’s growth. Not because we’re anyone’s savior and we’re attached to the idea of fixing or saving someone. But because within ourselves we have found the freedom to act against our own individual interest because it is possible for fulfillment to come in service of the collective. Sure, there are some of us who feel we genuinely want to be good people and end up hurting ourselves and others in the pursuit of nobility and martyrdom. But truly finding the capacity for care, altruism, and love primarily because you want to take that kind of action is beautiful. And doing it because you want those values to be expressed as its own reward, rather than for a reward, is to reflect the capacity to transcend mere survival. To thrive and to be a thing of awe that defies the expectations of those whose focus is self-centered because that’s the truth of the phase that they are in.



And only through accepting each other as we are and embracing each other’s truth can we embrace our own. It takes trusting your own truth to be able to trust another’s, and to truly be touched by it. And even as stark a contrast as altruistic hope and faithless desolation are, sometimes, those opposites are exactly what the other needs.



From some perspectives, our differences aren’t nearly as numerous as our similarities. And for some, certain differences or similarities are all that matter. But realistically, similarities and differences are so relative that they don’t matter nearly as much as the fulfillment an experience brings. And again, core to that is gratitude.



You must be able to trust your own perceptions, awareness, and intuition to be able to operate in this world confidently. Even if you are wrong. Because you also have to trust and develop your ability to learn and grow in relationship to your mistakes. You must be able to learn that what is a mistake in one context may not be a mistake in another. And what works perfectly in one aspect of life may not have a useful place in another, except perhaps to teach you about the errors of your choice of application.

There's an experience of process and an experience of outcome. What matters is that you can find people to engage with where you have a positive experience of process and a positive experience of outcome. In some cases, regardless of the realities of processes and outcomes.

We are not the same. But we are.

We just have to figure out how and when that matters.



This one I would like to dedicate to Mikey and Nella. Nella because she asks wonderful questions and in doing so, demonstrates a genuine desire to love others in a profound way that gives me hope. Mikey, because in some ways he is competence incarnate, and one of my oldest friends. And if it were not for him, there are certain things I would never bother to express, or really honor the value of.



Like Action Like Thought

in ,

Another blog about trust. Eyy.

Today I want to dedicate my writing to Komal. I love you dearly friend. And when people learn to witness you correctly, we will all be better for it. This is also dedicated to Mikey. For you, there’s a part two.

-

Humans typically have much more in common than not in many ways. In healthy humans we have similar needs for staying alive. We typically have the same circuitry to allow emotional experience. We all must find our way in this world. As far as we know all of us live on the planet or in nearby space stations.





It’s a simple mistake.




We meet someone volunteering at the free farm stand and we assume that because we love giving back to our community, so do they. They must have a similar desire to engage generously with their time. And as we chat we discover that they love the same artists as we do, we start associating them with having a similar emotional or political sensibility. How can you love Serj Tankian and not care about his politics? But as we meet them for lunch one day and see how disgusted they are by the unhoused man on the corner… we notice something feels a little off. We go back to the farmstand and they’re not there. After a few questions we find out their presence had been court mandated. And it was “better than picking up someone else’s trash on the freeway.”





People frequently mistake “like action” with “like thought.”




And I find it feels like it’s not discussed enough, if ever, in the circles I move in. I find for many people, it is preferable to take like actions while never discussing their real opinions and perspectives in their personal and communal relationships. The unspoken rule seems to be “what should be done is what is socially agreed upon and what is suspected not to be agreed upon ought to be consciously or unconsciously avoided.” 





On the other hand it is incredibly common to watch conflict arise when opinions and perspectives are understood to be similar, but different courses of action are found preferable. As if the rejection of one’s actions are tantamount to a rejection of the individual. Of their reason or rightness or righteousness.




Even amongst intellectuals, there is safety in group think.




And what is not openly justified with a rational explanation, but intuition, whether a positive hunch or distrust, can be treated as foolish and chaotic. Even if if the hunch is a prediction based on evidence:




In 1994 Joycelyn Elders, surgeon general, was stripped of her position, disgraced and pilloried about her personal opinions on health and wellness, because she had outspoken, progressive(at the time) beliefs that were too radical. How dare she suggest masturbation was natural and might be a part of sex education, believing that it could lead to less teen pregnancy, economic empowerment for women, and slow the spread of STDs? Americans were not ready for that level of sex positivity. And we still suffer today because of it. As recently as 2020 I have watched a number of a confidant’s friendships end over their caution about the covid vaccine, even though the person in question was neither against vaccines nor ignoring covid regulations. Their faith in their fellow Americans was shaken by the zealous scientism of people hoping that their trust in modern technology would bring them back to a pre-covid world. And when it didn’t, blaming “those people” who “just couldn’t listen to reason” and “do what they were told” was treated as the problem. Acting as if the issue wasn’t much more complex and the reality was that vaccine or not, unless people were of the same mind, and willing to work together, zero covid wasn’t going to happen anyway. But even as partisan rhetoric, and conspiracy abounded in the US, communally the population of New Zealand in 2020 actually managed to be covid free for a time, while Americans were dying in droves and calling the disease a hoax. What happened in New Zealand was a reflection of what humanity is capable of when like action and like thought combine. Unity instead of division.

 

And even then, it’s still more complex.




Sometimes, when someone does what we do, it can be irritating. Especially when we assume that they’re not thinking for themselves or that they're trying to profit from our hard work. Perhaps it comes from hypocrisy or self hatred, which is a topic for another day. But when we assume imitation is because they like, admire, or agree with us, imitation becomes the highest form of flattery.




Imitation is primal. It’s how babies learn. And cooperation is cohesion. To be like, creates kinship. Kinship creates legacy, for better or for worse.




Similarly, when someone doesn’t do what we do… When they refuse our guidance or reject our ways, it can feel like an attack on our reasoning, identity, or even our validity. We can over identify with our actions and thoughts, surely. But we can also become dependent on agreement, requiring acceptance or validation, lest we face distress. But when we are secure in ourselves, the differences can be something to marvel at and in many cases benefit from.




Our relationship to these presumptions is that they shortcut needing to vet every individual directly. But this leads to its own problems. We don't just confuse like action for like thought. We mistake community with agreement.




I said earlier that a seemingly unspoken rule of social harmony is, “What should be done is what is socially agreed upon and what is suspected not to be agreed upon ought to be consciously or unconsciously avoided.”




And I have a theory as to why this happens.




Many of us have an unconscious competence in the space of submission and agreeability. Whether it came from an authoritarian guardian or the institutions to which we are beholden and subject, it can easily be internalized that hiding or ignoring differences potentially benefits the common good. If we don’t need to know each other’s politics to get our shelter built, it doesn’t really make sense to give ourselves reasons to distrust each other or to not cooperate. If we all love the same person, it does not make sense to focus on our differences and ruin the experience of togetherness on their birthday. It’s imprudent to talk about religion and politics not because people don’t want to know what others believe or care about their truths… but because when the conversation begins, questions of one’s identity are involved. The authorities to which they may submit their thinking to are called into question, and it is possible that even a casual interaction will end with an inadvertent, or intentional attack on the identity of a person. Sure people are people, and not their religion or political party(over-identify as they may) but the state of online discourse and news media couldn’t be what they are if it couldn’t FEEL that way. 




If a christian living in Ohio can feel persecuted because christianity is outlawed in foreign countries, an inability to sympathize or empathize can derail an otherwise productive interaction. Sure, a christian may be of a protected class, where you are, from your perspective. But that’s not their perspective, no matter how out of touch it is with your own perception of reality. Beneath their existential dread is the same humanity any person concerned for themselves and people like them is likely to express. Rejecting that they are persecuted because others who they identify with have been persecuted, is your choice. But if you make that the crux of your argument, you’re engaged in whataboutism. Regardless of your feelings about christianity, if you replace that identity in with some other demographic, it becomes pretty clear. People who identify with a demographic can feel that the capacity to deny the reality of their potential persecution somewhere in the world is indicative of a lack of concern with their safety and wellbeing. Replace christians with lgbtq, ukranians, jews, palestinians, uighurs, armenians, trans people.




The lines we draw about who deserves empathy create tribal lines of us and them, which derail our capacity for unity. There is one human race. (Even if there wasn’t, our mistreatment of life reflects poorly on our capacity to wield power, and illuminates our own potential for callous and abusive behavior. It does not reflect the potential or quality of the exploited beings.)  This practice of submitting to our tribes decrease of which people and things are deserving of platforms and aid is an example of the divisive nature of our shortcutting and submissiveness and agreeability. Activists, changemakers, and revolutionaries must answer to higher or deeper authorities than group think.




These positive and negative attributes that we give people based on our understandings of self and our like actions affect us at every level. I’m sure sociology has a sophisticated term for the positive prejudice of assuming likeness.




Beyond Objectification: Exploring the Complexity of Sex and Humanity

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I met a circus performer who wanted to create a piece about what it is to be sexualized and it reminded me of something I wrote a couple years ago. I told myself I would go back to it, and never did. So, firstly I’d like to thank Sydney, because without her, you likely might not be seeing this:

I wanted to write about sexual objectification, but I feel like I can’t really do that without talking about what sex is.


What is sex? 

“Sex is where babies come from.” 

Birds do it, bees do it,

then the bees help the plants do it. 

Sex is the genesis of complex life. It turns a uterus into the portal through which new consciousness arises. It allows two cells, under the correct circumstances and consequence cascade, to become many millions of cells, unified into a series of singular experiences. 

Nurtured appropriately, they become many trillions of cells that will consume other life and generate new experiences that even more life may witness. And these trillions of cells with their specialized roles will form a body - a body working in unison to create an experience so complex that it is likely impossible to fully understand. And that body will reconstitute the matter of this earth into the forms and fuels that will allow an awareness to turn energies and frequencies into pleasure, pain, and concepts of beauty. These forms can turn light to art, chemicals to tastes and smells, and vibrations to heat, sound, and sensation. We may hear music, and maybe we will dance. It will turn our witnessing into fear, anger, and love. We will meet strangers one day, perhaps after thousands of days have passed, and we will decide we don’t want to face the days to come without them. Or perhaps we will be the reason that they do not see another.

Sex drives human existence. We persist because things procreate. Because they have fucked and they will continue to do so. And as time has passed, our awareness around sex has shifted. As our understanding of what it is to be human changes, so too do our attitudes towards sex.

If we believe that a god cares about marriage, we may feel extreme shame and guilt over acting on sexual desires... or even simply having them. Homosexuality occurs in nature but, because of religious law, is punishable by imprisonment or death in some places. Some might have social or political motivations for sexual activity. For one wave of feminism, promiscuity and sex positivity were a symbol of liberation and rebellion. For some, it’s an economic strategy to be selected, whether by one person or by many. Whether an unwed woman from certain societies or eras needs to make a good match or a sex worker needs clients. For some, it’s experienced as essential to bonding. For others, it’s seen as a necessary evil. Still, there are the abstinent and celibate who might find emotional desolation or spiritual connection without sex. There are nuances to the conscious and unconscious understandings of what sex is and can be, for at least as many people as there are to have them.

So where does objectification come in?

One version of objectification invokes how a person really understands anything.

Objectification used to mean concretizing the abstract. Now it also means degrading someone or something’s purpose to its utility. This is problematic in the sense that this word creates loaded language. Humans understand the world through constructs. Constructs are a form of objectification. We simplify things in order to know how to interact with them.

Human constructs are immensely complex as well as complicated. Complex in the sense that there are many interconnected parts. Complicated in the sense that how each part actually relates to the others requires not just information but intuition to grasp. The phenomena in question, the observers of it, their interpretations of it... arguments for or against its very existence and the consequences of interacting with the phenomenon all play a part. How valuable a construct is in helping us understand or engage with the actual reality we are witnessing usually determines its longevity.

(It’s one thing to recognize colors; it’s another to create art that speaks to others’ spirits like it’s your job. It’s one thing to love the art you make, and another entirely to have it critiqued by people whose opinions are respected that happen to hate your guts. It’s one thing to tell someone what a color is scientifically, it’s another to teach a course on how to use it to trick the eye into seeing wondrous things to people who did not think they could be artists.) Hopefully the metaphor is not too extended.

The reason objectification is so fraught and perilous when it comes to social interactions is that we take it for granted. Someone is paid to wait on you at the restaurant. Someone is paid to do your nails at the salon. Their worth is treated as the quality of their service, but we hopefully recognize it’s so much more. Their character, care, integrity, and patience make it so that our experiences can leave us feeling like a business is our friend, or that we are nothing but a paycheck. The objectification goes both ways… and frequently if not always, it’s harmful. No matter what, something is lost.

When we lived in tribes and villages, every human wore multiple hats. We couldn’t see someone as just a shitty plumber or a rude waitress. They hunted with someone we knew. They helped tend the children. They built a barn or made the best elk jerky. The service industry was not an industry. We as communities served each other. And as the spirit of this dies, we wound our humanity.

To objectify a person is to degrade them, from a whole human at best, and from a spiritual being whom the divine witnesses you through at worst. Even if you’re not spiritual, it still sucks.

And if you don’t have to think about it frequently, you might be the one doing it. To engage with others as though the experience doesn’t matter. To treat them as replaceable, usable. To treat them as property. To act as though they are allowed to or deserve to be used, abused, or violated. In the western world, this is most intensely done to women and people of color, and media and socialization can prime children for it to happen before they’re even grown. Objectification happens when you feel like you are excused from respecting their humanity.

When we talk about sexual objectification, we’re talking about engaging in this way to make their existence, identity, and value equal to their capacity to be consumed for sexual gratification.

We’re talking about language: “she’s for the streets” “you can’t turn a hoe into a housewife.”

 We’re talking about culture. Virginity and innocence. Statistics of sex crimes. 

We’re talking about the male gaze and the corresponding female vigilance.

It’s not enough that women are portrayed as consumable; they also have to construct their path through life in relation to how they are perceived sexually. To have a powerful sense of sexuality too early can be dangerous when young women are seen as a status symbol and predatory masculinity is celebrated. To be too attractive in the workplace can hinder your successes, and to be a mother or to have the potential can limit your opportunities.

Sexuality is a dimension of existence. Before in vitro fertilization, each individual only came into existence if sex happened. Sex is potentially beautiful. The desire someone can feel for another person is powerful. It can upend one’s entire existence. The potential for love and attraction to create literal life is magnificent. When the consequences of intimacy with another person are that bits of what make them, them, and you, you, come together to find their own potential for life and love and suffering and joy, that’s its own kind of magic. You do not know what you will get. You do not know what they will do. And until you’ve met the product of that connection, you do not know how profoundly it will affect you, if you let it.

To sexualize someone is to recognize them as a sexual being. To acknowledge sex as one of their attributes or to make them “sexy.” I apparently get sexualized frequently. I don’t always know how or why, but people frequently read my existence as sexual. It might be how I dance or my devotion to my body. It might be the freedom with which I can talk about sex. It might honestly just be my skin color. Even when I was doing youth theater (I was 18+ at the time), directors would talk to me about my sex appeal, and I would not understand what they meant or what they wanted from me on stage. For me, in the earlier parts of my life, overt sexuality was a power women had. Men were just attractive or not based on the murky preferences of the female psyche or how well they fit male power fantasies, which afforded them the confidence to approach and be approached. Black people are objectified constantly, and since rumor has it we have big dicks, it only occurred to me recently that there are a number of people who probably had that specific sexual curiosity about me based on this stereotype alone. I knew from growing up around white men that it wasn’t uncommon or even taboo for them to sexualize black women when women couldn’t hear, or even to casually joke about my body or Asian men and women’s bodies.

As a person who, for a long time, identified as demisexual, I’ve personally had an experience of discovering what it is to sexualize someone only after getting to know them. To see them as beautiful in a variety of ways that simply doesn’t include sexual attractiveness. For the things they’ve chosen. The loves they’ve cultivated. For the passions of their life that have come and gone. For their unique experience of common things. For their uncommon experiences that they don’t realize are unique. For the way that they laugh or dance. For how open their hearts are or how they guard what is vulnerable or what they love. For me to discover them as a sexual being is a celebration of all of that and more. And it is also a celebration of the body they’ve brought all of this to me with. It can genuinely become a holy experience to see someone as sexual. To be invited to intimacy with them. And to offer it back. And how congruent or disjointed that experience of their pleasure can be is also delightful. People who are dominant in one place and not the other. Playful in the bedroom but not in life. Good kissers. Bad kissers. The cautious and the confident. People who have one way of being in the bedroom and people who wear a million faces. And to recognize that the experience they can have with me is only one of the many they could have. That I can’t know the full potential of our own connection. And that I could never truly know them as anyone else, no matter how much I would love to step outside myself and meet them as someone else and explore them in different ways. Sexually or not. I will never be their sister or the mother of their child. I cannot be their grandfather or their childhood friend who has never given up on them. I can only be so many people’s friend in a truly intimate way.

And honestly for me, sexuality is only one dimension of existence. And it’s one I’m perfectly happy never to explore with someone no matter how magnificent they are. Being given sexual access is a thing to honor. Because even if the participants don’t consciously experience it this way, scientists have discovered that when a lover connects with us sexually, it tells us that things are ok. That we are accepted as we are. And if we fail to communicate in so many ways over so many topics, touch can say for us what words cannot.

Of course, that power is misused... but that’s a topic for another day.

For me, finding the nonsexual connection that says, “I unconditionally accept you, as you appear in each moment,” is the most important part of constructing any intimate relationship. It may be because I was celibate for a time and instinctively felt I must find some other way of holding the space and intimacy of sex if I wasn’t going to have romantic love as a part of my life, but still felt a deep desire to connect with others.

We frequently destroy the beauty of sexuality with objectification. In a western world where capital is king and relationships themselves can be reduced to another set of transactions, sexualization is frequently objectification. In a world spun by money, anyone who exists is likely going to be reduced to their monetary worth.

And for a woman, in a world where across the board they earn less for the same work a man does, what are we telling them about their worth?

When the only arenas where women are expected to earn more than men are fashion modeling and sex work, what are we telling women about their worth?

And when the rules of society rob a woman of her value for how sexually promiscuous she is perceived to be, while a man’s promiscuity in similar ways could be socially rewarded, what are we telling our children about equity? About what it means to respect themselves and each other? About who they are allowed to be?

And when we defend the status quo of sexual objectification, what are we telling our daughters and our sons? It’s clearly not that they are perfectly worthy of love the way that they are. And not that they all deserve to be respected equally for how they embody their truths, make their own mistakes, and grow into who it lights up their soul to be.

We are trauma bonded with society if we allow it to erode our sense of self-worth as a function of the system. If we say that it is ok for society to treat any person as an object, we teach ourselves and our children to accept this treatment if those circumstances ever come about in their lives. (This is actually a question of justice, but that’ll be for a different time).

So even with all the social complexity layered into our experiences of sexuality, we are still animals. Conditioned and instinctual.

For animals and plants out in nature, there can be clear seasonal and environmental triggers that dictate when reproduction happens. It’s an automatic process. And to be sexually successful is to be successful. 

That is what success is.

To be healthy enough to do it and to be attractive or seductive enough to mate. To have enough resources for the offspring to mature.

That’s what success is.

For some, it’s so cut and dry, sex is a death sentence. The male antechinus, some octopuses, some spiders, and many praying mantises die shortly after mating. For at least female ferrets, a lack of sex is a death sentence. For male lions, if they cannot find a pride, they live alone or die fighting to get or keep one.

We may think of ourselves as more evolved. We think our behaviors are less “automatic.” But experiencing your own humanity and allowing yourself to be programmed and conditioned not to think, and not to imbue others with the fullness of their humanity at every chance you get is an argument against that. To degrade another human to protect, improve, or maintain your social status is an argument against that idea. To treat other beings as objects, outside of the context of mutually consensual play is an argument against that. I can’t think of another species on this planet that can be developmentally traumatized by seeing its own kind naked or mating because it’s been conditioned to be so unnatural that the most natural things are aberrant. We do not just pay with money, but with time and experiences. With our psyches. We make endless exchanges. We pay not to see trash. We pay to hide death. We’ve made objectification business as usual and intimacy transactional. And we pay the prices for all these purchases with the fullness of our humanity.

And if you are dissatisfied with the experience, what you’re getting probably isn’t worth the cost.

–

If this spoke to you, I’d love for you to leave a comment. If you think this would speak to someone else, share it. If this helps you say something you could not put words to, I am blessed to be of service.

–

And if you are Sydney Billings, thank you for reminding me to take the time to say all of this.

–

I wrote this for every woman I’ve ever known. For my sisters. For every daughter I haven’t had. For every woman whose hands have ever felt forced where love and sex is concerned. That sexism and objectification are the standards that they must accept. I’m sorry for all the men in your life that didn’t have the courage to stand up for you when you needed them. For the ones who simply don’t care. For the ones who believe this is the proper order of the world. The ones that the double standards are dogma for.



I am sorry for every time you have had to fear that what you are won’t matter in the face of your capacity to be objectified. For everyone who has ever been trafficked or abused. For everyone who lost their job or friends or family because of sex positivity or youthful exuberance a man would never be punished for.  I’m sorry that any of you have lived a life where the fullness of what each person is, ends up discarded for what can be used, or what is convenient. I am sorry that I can’t snap my fingers and fix the ills of society. You deserve to be seen not just as whole but divine. And I think the greatest sin I will ever commit is failing to honor that.



How Can I Trust You?

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49 “She is good to people who are good. She is also good to people who aren’t good. This is true goodness. She trusts people who are trustworthy. She trusts people who aren’t trustworthy. This is true trust.”

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

How can I trust you?

Trust is a funny thing.

Trust is inextricably linked to personal truths.

Some of us don’t recognize that truths are personal. Even if we believe we know the "objective" truth with deep conviction, the reality is that this truth is a personal interpretation of a personal perspective on a concept or phenomenon.

And that perspective might change.

If you think you’re a relatively consistent person and that your views on things likely won’t change, consider this:

Have you ever met someone who used to be a devout believer but is now full of doubts? (Gnostic Theist - Pure Agnostic) Or who started as an atheist and then became a devout believer? (Gnostic Atheist - Gnostic Theist)

If we were to ask them at either point why they believe what they believe, they would have a distinctly different answer than they would have at the other point in their journey. You might even be that person if you ever believed in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy.

Somehow, more or different information changed their sense of what may have been an absolute truth and fundamental to their understanding of the structure of reality.

They are arguably the same person, but from moment to moment, their truth shifts.

They may not be tomorrow the person that made you that promise today. And perhaps their vow to harm you will go unfulfilled... Or the promise to help you. And you may or may not carry the effects of this broken promise with you. Whether it gave you grace or grief.

Instead of fooling myself into believing that I am not capable of anything another human is capable of, in terms of actions or belief, I made peace very early in life with the fact that I simply have not encountered the circumstances that would lead to me taking an action or adopting a belief. I discover what would make violence and dishonesty tempting. I make peace with the reality that the kind of patterns I cultivate are responsible for what I do or don’t do. I’m not a murderer or martyr today, but do I know what I would kill or die for?

When I tell myself what my convictions are, do I live into them? Appreciating the chance life has given me to honor the values I claim I wish to uphold. Or do I wither in the face of challenge, much less difficulty or inconvenience?

If I allow myself to perpetually make my choices based on convenience, who will I become when the immoral action is convenient? If I do not practice discipline, where will it come from when I need it?

If I am unwilling to answer these kinds of questions, what am I really telling myself? Is it that I don’t want or cannot handle the responsibility of self-actualization? That I don’t actually want to feel culpable, if I get caught up in the role of the abuser or oppressor? That I don’t want to take responsibility for my agency in avoiding/overcoming/accepting helplessness or victimhood? That I am somehow better than others, when I find myself in the circumstance of being the hero... not because I faced my weaknesses or ignorance, but because I am a noble soul destined for greatness?

If I reflect on who I’ve been, what does it say about who I’m taking responsibility for becoming?

So in light of that:

What does it mean to trust?

Where does my faith come from when I trust? The strength of my convictions? Hope? Fear? Whose integrity galvanizes mine? Corrodes it?

If you “trust” someone, have you considered what you’re actually saying about your relationship to them, your own perspectives, and reality?

  • You might actually be expressing that you believe they are afraid of the consequences of breaking trust with you. (a punitive incentive)

  • You might actually be expressing that you believe they want to honor whatever leads them to build trust with you. (an equanimous/reciprocal experience)

  • You might also be actually expressing that you are fully accepting of whatever actions they take, regardless of if they are going to break trust with you, because you “trust the process.” (transcendent trust in reality itself)

People can flow through these experiences of trust and trustworthiness. Experiencing different versions in different aspects of relationships or even just different circumstances at different times of day. Are we cultivating transcendent trust, or do we stumble into it when high on divinity or drugs? Of course this is general and non-comprehensive, as anything that I write will be.

No model is ever the thing itself.

I started by asking how can I trust you? But I suppose we’ve arrived somewhere else:

How do I trust myself? Is my trust a shackle, a gift, or even divinity honored?

When I am afraid to trust, what am I really afraid of?