learning to stop hurting each other.

a note about Dean Spade's new book + lists, links, recs <3

full moon in leo.

Dear friends, 

I try to send these out on Friday, I’m sorry. Normally if I haven’t finished writing during the week, I’ll take Friday mornings after the gym to write and send it off, but this week P and I spent three hours dealing with car stuff. My poor little car is kind of on her last leg (many things do not work!) and anyway she doesn’t technically pass the e-check, which meant we had to drive all over the city dealing with paperwork so we can keep driving her until we manage to make time to look for a new-used car. At one of our last stops, one of the workers—an older guy probably in his 60s— said, “Such a shame to have to do this stuff on Valentine’s Day, but at least you’re doing it together!” That was sweet. 

Speaking of Valentine’s Day: A lot of people are doing this already, but I am going to add to the chorus of praise for Dean Spade’s new book, Love in a Fucked Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell Together. In a highly accessible, smart, and engaging little read, Dean takes the best of self-help, removes the really shitty aspects of it (the racism, classism, ableism, the neoliberal bootstrapism), and encourages us “to do work simultaneously both inside ourselves and against our oppressors.” Dean addresses so many common patterns and familiar experiences: trying to numb alienation through romantic (or other) highs; putting unfair expectations on an individual partner; letting childhood trauma hijack our nervous systems in romantic, friend, and movement relationships; putting blame on people or groups without asking how we contributed to a particular dynamic; and so on. Dean’s background in prison abolition and transformative justice spaces is evident in how much compassion he brings to his advice—-he refuses to do the neolib self-help thing of blaming individuals, insists on illuminating the context for why people do things that are out of alignment with their values, and also says we have responsibility to reduce the harm we bring to our relationships and communities. A common misunderstanding of abolition & TJ movements is that we’re only about forgiving people for doing bad things, but actually it’s a movement that says we need to learn how to stop hurting each other, and in the meantime set up barriers to protect ourselves from harm without the state. Dean’s book gets into practical tools for learning to stop hurting each other. Essential work!

I also love this book because it has felt like an antidote to the heteronormative discourses about relationships that are really having a moment right now. As a bisexual/queer feminist, I am certainly able to empathize with the angry pain that so many straight women have in response to relationships with cis-het men. I have also had shitty male partners who were shitty in exhausting to borderline abusive ways! I also feel a lot of resistance to the narrative as some kind of complete analysis because it leaves so much out. I am a broken record talking about the wisdom feminists could glean from the history of the sex wars, but the divide then and today is so similar: some feminists want to focus almost exclusively on gender-based difference and harm under heteropatriarchy, some feminists (and queers in particular) simply need to think and organize more around the pleasure that is possible despite the heteropatriarchy. Dean comes from the tradition of the Sex Radical queers who insisted that sex can be a thing (and a lens) that might help us get closer to liberation. Dean’s book includes stories of harm, too, but by not stopping there, the book gets beyond essentialist narratives of relationship challenges and invites everyone to confront how they might be contributing to particular dynamics. (While still acknowledging disproportionate obstacles facing marginalized people, at various intersections). It’s a messier understanding of relationships, but I think it’s a truer one. 

If any of this sounds interesting to you, or if, like me, you feel a bit ~implicated~ in some of the things he’s gently pushing on, please buy (or library reserve) a copy of this book. 

Below: a canonical queer studies text that feels especially prescient in this moment of growing reactionary sentiment, a roundup of some critical responses to Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl performance, an emo reflection on an indie musician’s new album, a worthwhile culture pod, a rec for a great tarot reader, and more. 

I love you! <3 

love & solidarity,

raechel 

Reading + Podcasts.