Leonard Cohen, from The Book of Mercy (1984)

[Text ID (added paragraph breaks): "Israel, and you who call yourself Israel, the Church who calls itself Israel, and the revolt that calls itself Israel, and every nation chosen to be a nation—none of these lands are yours, all of you are thieves of holiness, all of you at war with Mercy.

Who will say it? Will America say We have stolen it, or will France step down? Will Russia confess, or will Poland say, We have sinned? All bloated on their scraps of destiny, all swaggering in the immunity of superstition.

Ishmael, who was saved in the wilderness, and given shade in the desert, and a deadly treasure under you: has Mercy made you wise? Will Ishmael declare, We are in debt forever? Therefore the lands belong to none of you, the borders do not hold, the Law will never serve the lawless.

To every people the land is given on condition. Perceived or not, there is a Covenant, beyond the constitution, beyond sovereign guarantee, beyond the nation's sweetest dreams of itself. The Covenant is broken, the condition is dishonored, have you not noticed that the world has been taken away? You have no place, you will wander through yourselves from generation to generation without a thread.

Therefore you rule over chaos, you hoist your flags with no authority, and the heart that is still alive hates you, and the remnant of Mercy is ashamed to look at you.

You decompose behind your flimsy armor, your stench alarms you, your panic strikes at love.

The land is not yours, the land has been taken back, your shrines fall through empty air, your tablets are quickly revised, and you bow down to hell beside your hired torturers, and still you count your battalions and crank out your marching songs.

Your righteous enemy is listening. He hears your anthems full of blood and vanity, and your children singing to themselves. He has overturned the vehicle of nationhood, he has spilled the precious cargo, and every nation he has taken back.

Because you are swollen with your little time. Because you do not wrestle with your angel. Because you dare to live without God. Because your cowardice has led you to believe that the victor does not limp."]

I'm on the bluegrass music part of youtube right now and i stumbled across this comment on a really talented banjo cover

The idea that some serbian dad is in the same part of youtube as I am and his 5 year old son is hearing this fire banjo rendition of Foggy Mountain Breakdown for the first and going absolutely ape shit he likes it so much that he's running and jumping all across and around their house is just sending me. Peace and love on planet earth.

I let him hit because his tusks are proud and strong and adorned with precious metals

Nice whumpy thing: when people are intensely pragmatic about their injuries illnesses.

“Listen, if I pass out…”

“If you let up pressure, I’ll bleed out. So just, don’t move.”

“I know it ill hurt, just do what you need to.”

#these are all so good #i’m always especially appreciative of the # ‘i’m going to scream. this is going to hurt and i won’t be able to help it. keep going anyway’ # but i think my very favorite is ‘you’re going to have to pin me down’ # (also this isn’t quite the same feeling but the polite ‘i’m sorry but i think i’m going to pass out now’ always delights me) (x)

@motleyfam these tags pass peer review

[“What do I mean by “kind” when it comes to gender?

Much of the gendered trauma discussed in this book is rooted in rigid, harsh policing of our bodies, our movements, even our thoughts about gender. To take a kind approach to gender is, then, inherently counter to the gendered violence that continues to be imposed on our bodies in a variety of ways.

Kind does not mean non-confrontational. In fact, sometimes, the kind thing to do is to confront others when they are doing harm to themselves and others. For example, if someone is forcing themselves to fit into a rigid stereotype of masculinity, femininity or androgyny, because they think this is what other people want, then the kind approach would be to highlight this, and to explore why they feel compelled to do so. Is this for safety, which is an absolutely legitimate concern, or is this out of not being aware of any other options? I discuss further how some people might fall into the trap of all/nothing polarized thinking when it comes to gender in the next section. For now, suffice to say that kind does not mean soft, or rolling over in the face of oppression, but rather it means compassionate, vulnerable and open. This is where having done our own work on gender is essential. If we have done that, we can be much more open and vulnerable about how hard it can be to challenge cisheteronormative expectations of gender. If we are at peace with our own gender and feel no need to police our bodies in harsh, colonial and controlling ways, then we do not need to do this with other people either.

Kindness is, of course, just like any of the other approaches described here: only possible when we are not immersed into a trauma response, that is, fight, flight, freeze or fawn (people pleasing for survival). This is the foundation of doing our own work. If we do not, we risk coming from a place of reactivity and survival, which often leads to more trauma and, ultimately, more violence towards ourselves and others. Being kind, in this context, then, means not being reactive but rather noticing where the other person or people are at and being able to meet them there with clarity about ourselves and what we believe in.”]

alex iantaffi, from gender trauma: healing cultural, social, and historical gendered trauma, 2020

[“What I have witnessed again and again is people who are most impacted by this rigid, colonial gender binary being patient—that is slow, kind and vulnerable—when approaching gender. I have also witnessed, far too often, people with considerable privilege when it comes to gender, as well as race, being quick to judge, unwilling to listen and fast to armor and harm.

These are, of course, generalizations and, as always, there are exceptions to this picture. However, when it comes to gender, if you are having a knee-jerk reaction of some kind, what becomes possible if you slow down and—with curiosity—investigate where that reaction is coming from, especially if you have relative privilege in this area?

This can be hard if you feel attacked, of course, but pausing and slowing down can also help us view more clearly whether we are being attacked or feel attacked. For example, I have had conversations with cis white feminists who hold a lot of pain when it comes to gender and who struggle to see their own transmisogyny because their pain is literally obfuscating the reality of their actions and impact. Being able to slow down with them, sometimes, if they are willing to truly listen, can lead to an opening where we can see that our struggles are connected, that there is no hierarchy of oppression, that we do not need to be pitted against one another. If we slow down, it also becomes harder for colonial, conservative forces to manipulate us by stoking the flames of our trauma and blowing smoke around, making us think we are each other’s enemies, until we are so confused that we end up in alliances we never thought possible or desirable. Going slow helps us reflect, notice where we are going and be intentional, which, in turn, makes it more possible to also be consensual, another tenet of trauma-informed practices.”]

alex iantaffi, from gender trauma: healing cultural, social, and historical gendered trauma, 2020

[“A reminder I find helpful is that trauma, especially developmental trauma, often shapes our thinking into this polarity, this all/nothing, pink/blue, man/woman. When I view the rigidity of this binary through this lens, I can also be more compassionate towards myself and others when we get caught in its net.

All/nothing patterns are tough to break out of, after all. We can notice the rigidity of the gender binary in a range of ways: the gendering of chromosomes, body parts, behaviors, mannerisms, clothing, emotions, toys, experiences, and so on. All/nothing thinking patterns are those that view duality as the only option. For example: you are male or female, good or bad, with us or against us. Given that we live in a cloud of historical, intergenerational, cultural and social trauma when it comes to gender, it makes sense that we have internalized much of this thinking.

In fact, even when we get away from binary ideas of gender, we might still engage in all/nothing thinking patterns, if we are not careful. For example, some young people who identify as trans and/or nonbinary have internalized such a deep need to police gender that they might be afraid of being viewed as “trans trenders” (that is people who think they are trans because it’s “trendy”). Within this paradigm, you are trans or not (another all/nothing pattern). There is no exploring, playing or considering; there is simply, you are or you are not. Some trans and cis people alike question the validity of nonbinary genders, and then other trans and/or nonbinary people turn around and talk about “truscum,” that is, those trans people who align with a medicalized and pathologizing model of gender and believe that dysphoria is an essential trait for some people.

All/nothing patterns are insidious and, if we are not careful, we tend to reproduce the same discourses that oppressed us, creating and recreating boundaries around gender identities and experiences to make sure we know who is “in” and who is “out,” who is “with us” and who is “against us.” While these patterns are understandable, when people are hurt, in survival mode and trying to protect themselves, this is not conducive to healing or liberation. As long as there is policing of gender, any gender, there cannot truly be liberation. This is a really tough one for many of us who have been hurt by rigid gender binaries, and who might have come to our identities through hardship, risk and loss. It is so tempting to feel that now that we are “in,” whichever label, identity or experience that “in” might be, we get to police others and make sure that “fakers” and “trenders” are kept out.

We are simply afraid. Afraid that if we let anyone in who is not 100 percent certain, or in agreement with us, or just like us, we might get hurt. We are afraid that whatever we have built will be blown away. It is understandable. It is what everyone is afraid of. Trauma keeps us afraid of one another. Colonial and patriarchal ways of thinking divide us, and seduce us into believing that, if we behave in certain ways, we too could have power over our little domain, whatever that domain might be. However, these are all lies, lies that trauma tells us and that oppression thrives on. These dualities of Men are from Mars and Women from Venus, cis women against trans women, sex workers versus SWERFs (sex worker exclusive radical feminists) are all deeply rooted in historical, cultural and social trauma.

How can we, then, find another way? The idea of another way is key. If polarities are foundational to all/nothing patterns, our way to liberation can only be found in a third road. Building and nurturing flexibility in our individual and collective soma (bodies) is therefore key. Practicing saying and noticing the maybe, the pause between breathing in and breathing out, reflection, curiosity, slow, kind and consensual relationships are key to healing. We cannot heal from gendered trauma when we are still caught in rigid polarities, still invested in finding a perpetrator or savior so that we can stay in a victim place. Or so invested in being the irredeemable perpetrator that there is no hope for us. Once more, it starts with us, our own gender journey and dismantling internalized polarities first.

Once we engage with this work, we can then support those around us—be they clients, students, fellow community members and communities—to challenge those polarities within themselves and one another. This might all seem very idealistic, and it is. I truly believe we cannot move towards healing through violence. If we are to heal from gendered trauma it has to be through relationships: human, messy, complicated, infuriating, joyful, loving relationships. We cannot be in relationship when we are in opposition. We can be in a tug of war, push and pull at one another but, as long as we stay locked into these patterns, we can only view ourselves as victors and losers. In the meantime, the only victors seem to be systems of oppression.”]

alex iantaffi, from gender trauma: healing cultural, social, and historical gendered trauma, 2020

what’s your ‘thing’ as a friend. i don’t mean like ‘oh im the mom friend’ i mean like what’s the Thing where if one of your friends was looking for a specific interaction they’d message you first. personally i can always be relied upon to get hyped about bugs, literature, and cursed internet images.

[“God knew there was going to be a Fall,” Luwis said, explaining his belief that just as the sin of Adam and Eve was predestined, so is it predestined that some parents are infertile because God has a child for them “in another place.” “It’s part of His plan that other families raise other children, because he knew that this world was going to have sin.”

“When we know that suffering is part of a loving God’s plan,” he continued on America World Adoption’s website, “then we can understand that the existence of orphaned children is not an accident or failure of God’s plan.”

Many Christian adoption advocates not only accept this logic but take it to absurdist ends, using it to justify laying claim to children of poorer parents. For instance, one Christian prospective adoptive parent blogged about her plans to adopt a newborn Ethiopian girl she intended to name Bethlehem. As she wrote, it became clear that the child she was talking about as an orphan in need of rescue was as-yet unborn, indicating that she had requested an adoption agency to supply her with a baby as young as humanly possible, not an orphan already out in the world in need of parental care. “Somewhere there is a woman who is pregnant with a girl,” wrote the blogger. “The woman will make a great sacrifice to give her life—either by her own death, or by handing the child who has kicked her womb for months to strangers with a desperate plea for them to care for her.” After that mother gives birth, relinquishes the child, and the child is handed over to her, the blogger, then and only then, the woman wrote, would the future child “be an orphan no more.”

This was a particularly baffling example, but not uncommon logic. Within this framing—the idea that some families’ suffering is part of God’s plan to complete other adoptive families—a child’s first family is too easily pushed aside. “Children don’t grow in cabbage patches, just waiting for us to find and rescue them,” said Karen Dubinsky, author of Babies without Borders. “In order for the ‘rescue’ narrative to work, you really have to erase the families of origin.”]

kathryn joyce, the child catchers: rescue, trafficking, and the new gospel of adoption

oh I’m a constructionist not an essentialist. this is so helpful.

I loved the bit about the queer people who honestly believe that other queer labels can taint/corrupt/weaken their own identities and political power and proactively attack others to prevent this from happening, and how they base that off of decades of gays and lesbians misreading and misapplying lessons from the Black civil rights movement.