Economic Aspects of "Love"

[American Dream]

Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James, The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community:

To make love and to refuse night work to make love, is in the interest of the class.

http://swoonrocket.blogspot.com/2011/06 ... press.html

[American Dream]

At the shaky wooden table in the crowded Whole Foods café in a black t-shirt, cap, and messenger bag, Jack De Jesus grins shyly upon the mention of polyamory, then his lips curl into a tight smile, revealing deep dimples in both cheeks.

“Polyamory to me means having intimate relationships with more than one person in a responsible way,” says De Jesus, 36, also known as Kiwi, a popular rapper in the Bay Area.

De Jesus, who has been divorced, realized that marriage reinforced the same social systems he and his ex-wife—both of whom are activists—wanted to dismantle. He says that once you involve the state in your relationship, the legality of love becomes problematic because the state’s definition of marriage is very rigid. He adds that in his own experience, monogamous relationships and the institution of marriage perpetuate patriarchy and ownership.

“I don’t want to own anybody and I don’t want anybody to own me,” De Jesus says. “Non-monogamy has allowed me to look at things in different ways, like communication, boundaries, and sex.”

…When De Jesus hears people talk about polyamory, it is spoken about in a sex-driven manner, but he argues that it is not only about sex; the root of it is love and building with people. De Jesus prefers to use the term “responsible non-monogamy” rather than polyamory.

“I got into it, or was sort of forced into it, when I was dating somebody who was dating somebody,” he laughs. “I had just got out of my marriage so that first poly relationship wasn’t healthy, because it was still very new to me, and I had to deal with jealousy.”

He did not understand it for a long time, so he decided to study it intellectually by reading books like The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities, by Catherine Liszt and Dossie Easton; Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships, by Tristan Taormino; and Redefining Our Relationships: Guidelines For Responsible Open Relationships, by Wendy-O Matik.

“There are a lot of assumptions being made in relationships, and I’ve had to learn to have awkward and uncomfortable conversations that ended up being transformative,” De Jesus says, affirming that polyamory is all about honesty.

…De Jesus has had a very different experience as a straight-identified man of color who practices polyamory, as women and men close to him have reluctantly asked him about what it all means. In the beginning, he was afraid people would label him a player or womanizer.
“My ex-partner makes fun of me all the time,” he laughs. “In different degrees, she’s calling me a ho.”

…Although De Jesus is a straight-identified male, he says that he does not feel the pressure to fit into that man box and admits to sometimes feeling uncomfortable around other men who exhibit Machismo, or hyper-masculinity. He feels that he belongs to multiple communities, but feels most comfortable around the queer community, particularly queer women of color, who are part of spaces he has made a conscious effort to seek out.

As a community organizer and activist, De Jesus sees the concrete connection between polyamory and his political ideals that include anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism. He feels that polyamory is liberating, because it crushes the ideas the West has enforced about ownership and the language we use around marriage and monogamy.

“Monogamy and marriage reinforces capitalism because it is rooted in capitalism,” he asserts. He adds that instead of sharing with others, we become attached and possessive to the things we own. “Being in non-monogamous situations lends itself to sharing things, dismantling the idea of ownership, and allowing people to be more autonomous.”

(via A Love Supreme)

[American Dream]

“It is not possible,” writes Judith Butler “to separate questions of kinship from property relations (and conceiving persons as property) and from the fictions of ‘bloodline,’ as well as the national and racial interests by which these lines are sustained.”

via hystericalblackness

[American Dream]

The “love” Americans profess for “Indians” takes shape around a core American identity that in an unconsciously configured way links with dominance. To borrow from Yi-Fu Tuan’s words, “Affection [what I am calling “love”] is not the opposite of dominance; rather it is dominance’s anodyne - it is dominance with a human face. Dominance may be cruel and exploitative, with no hint of affection in it. What it produces is the victim. On the other hand, dominance may be combined with affection, and what it produces is the pet.”” “Political correctness” thus fosters a sense of self-righteousness for non-Indian “Indian” lovers, since they imagine “their hearts are in the right place” and the dictum to encourage people to speak for themselves …seems satisfied somehow by the perceived transparency of Indian lives and lifeways.

—Kathryn W. Shanley

[American Dream]

I also think about this in terms of capitalism in the sense that capitalism is always pushing us toward perfection, creating ideas of the right way to be a man or a woman or a mother or a date or whatever that people cannot fulfill. The goal is that we’ll constantly strive and buy things to fill this giant gap of insecurity that is created. You can never be too rich or too thin (greed) or rich enough or thin enough (insecurity). Capitalism is fundamentally invested in notions of scarcity, encouraging people to feel that we never have enough so that we will act out of greed and hoarding and focus on accumulation. Indeed, the romance myth is focused on scarcity: There is only one person out there for you!!! You need to find someone to marry before you get too old!!!! The sexual exclusivity rule is focused on scarcity, too: Each person only has a certain amount of attention or attraction or love or interest, and if any of it goes to someone besides their partner their partner must lose out. We don’t generally apply this rule to other relationships—we don’t assume that having two kids means loving the first one less or not at all, or having more than one friend means being a bad or fake or less interested friend to our other friends. We apply this particular understanding of scarcity to romance and love, and most of us internalize that feeling of scarcity pretty deeply.

--Dean Spade | poly essay take 2

[American Dream]

dating while desi

[American Dream]

Yes We KONY? -RAP NEWS 12

[American Dream]

http://wildrosecollective.org/2011/06/2 ... d-the-job/

The Work and the Job



“I don’t think I’m cut out to be an employee.”

It was a bitter joke. My friend had just finished venting about one of her two jobs. She was typing to me just after getting bossed around on the smallest details of her job at a small nonprofit. After that, she had an evening as a temp to look forward to, grading middle-school standardized tests. She had said that working so much was starting to mess with her head. She hadn’t played music in too long. Too much of her life went to satisfying somebody else.

I had to laugh at the idea there was something wrong with her. I typed back, “Yeah, me neither.” I work at a low-level healthcare job. In some ways it’s worse than my friend’s jobs, and in some ways it’s better. She sits at a desk. I scrub disgusting things off the floor. Her jobs require a degree. I dropped out of college. She gets paid more. I haven’t always been paid on time. On the other hand, I get to see positive results of the work I do. The work itself is more rewarding. That counts for a lot more than you might think.

But the work and the job are two different things. The other day I had to stay late after an overnight shift, correcting paperwork. I spent more than two hours signing and dating every little error. Every time I wrote in the wrong pen color. Every time I crossed out a word with an “X” instead of a single horizontal line. I felt like one of those middle school students, jumping through a hoop for a stranger very far away. Then I went home, took a short nap, and went right back to work that afternoon.

You might say that we’re wrong to object to boring or demeaning jobs. That these are just “first world problems.” In a way you’d be right. I have enough food to eat, and a place to live. I’m better off than workers in most of the world. Hell, I’m better off than a lot of people in Iowa City. Why complain about working too much, if we’re lucky to have work at all?

But I think that’s the wrong question to ask. It’s right to be angry about inequalities between workers. While I was dealing with red tape, a lot of people in Iowa were being denied basic rights like bathroom breaks. Still, I don’t think setting larger and smaller injustices against each other is the right way forward. Some better questions to ask are: How did things get this way? And what can we do about it?

Our jobs didn’t end up like this by accident. The more simple and repetitive a grader’s job gets, the more money an “education” company saves on training and wages. Then there’s that much more money left over for the owners. The less nursing education a healthcare job needs, the less the “nonprofit” needs to spend on training and wages. Then they have that much more money to spend on the director’s company car. Children should be taught, and people with medical needs should be taken care of. But those real needs aren’t what make our jobs boring, isolating, or pointless.

Our work is like this because it’s good for business. We didn’t end up with a school system where the students don’t even meet the graders because it was good for them. We didn’t end up with a healthcare system where so much money and time is put into paperwork because it’s good for the people getting care. It just keeps the funding coming. No matter who you work for, or what work you do, it’s going to be set up based on what’s good for business, on what keeps the money flowing around. Not based on what’s good for people.

So I don’t think we should put these different injustices against each other. The boredom that a worker entering data faces and the abuse that a worker processing turkeys faces both come from the same place. We all should face the injustices in our own lives. By learning to fight for ourselves, we’ll be getting ready to fight alongside others.

When we get bossed around, we’re right to be angry. When we’re made to do the same boring task over and over again, we’re right to be unsatisfied. Our lives don’t have to be like this.

Nobody is cut out to be an employee.

[American Dream]

[American Dream]

People without privilege will be doing this work no matter what, because they are working for their lives. We can work with them, and they know that we work with them, or we can leave them to do this work themselves and curse us for our complicity in killing them.

Americans Who Tell the Truth :: Rachel Corrie by Robert Shetterly — YES! Magazine

[American Dream]

I didn’t steal anything.
You have to move forward.
Aboriginals must share responsibility for where they are today.
I was born here.
We all have equal rights.
Look what Aboriginals did with ATSIC. †
Government spends a billion dollars a year on Aboriginals.
Aboriginals don’t work.
We gave you the right to vote.
We must all move forward together.

—Top 10 Settler Excuses for Colonialism at mediaINDIGENA

[American Dream]

A single explanation: a girl must show what she’s got to sell. She’s got to show her goods. She’s got to indicate that, henceforth, the circulation of women abides by the generalized model, and not by restricted exchange … It is vital to hint at undressing at every instant. Whoever covers up what she puts on the market is not a loyal merchant.

—Alain Badiou rationalizes the banning of the hijab in French schools (quoted in this fascinating essay)

[American Dream]

All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all. There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need.
—
Acts 4:32-35

[American Dream]

http://chaka85.wordpress.com/2012/08/14/slogans/

slogans
Posted: August 14, 2012 | Author: chakaZ |



‘Queer struggle is class struggle!’

I like this phrase, because it evokes revolutionary politics.

Politics informed by queers and our struggles

placed outside the system through the system

violence coloring the entire process.

What i fear is it becoming just that

a slogan

reminiscent of days gone by and struggles that rallied

‘black white unite and fight’

with no real understanding of what ‘black’ and ‘white’ means

in terms of class and therefore struggle.

Capital is too complex for shallow understandings of our oppression

and i, for one, am tired of being erased.

[American Dream]