Hello Hello! This is our last round of discussion questions.
When do you find yourself treating friendships as less important than romantic relationships? How can you actively work to decenter romance as the primary form of meaningful connection?
When it’s new. Starting a new relationship of any kind can be exciting. Sometimes I forget that my other relationships require the same amount of care. Sometimes I fall into the romantic relationship because I believe it’s easier.
I’m not actively dating. I’m not passively dating. I’m single and okay with that. I’m playing around with relationship anarchy. Relationship anarchy dismantles the hierarchy we have created around relationships. No relationship is held over the other, they are all in equal standing.
What concrete practices could help build true community care that exists outside of state-sanctioned relationship structures?
Communication and empathy. Resources for the community by the community; fulfilling calls for donations. Mutual Aid. Collaborative efforts. Community needs all members to thrive, responsibility can’t be placed one person. Taking accountability. Having conversations with members of your community when harm has been done. Sharing resources. We gotta get out there and talk to people. I gotta get out there and talk to people. I mull over ways that I can best serve my community. Providing sex education and talking about politics is how I feel I can serve my community.
How do you parse the connections between personal relationship patterns and larger systems of oppression? What role do intimate relationships play in either maintaining or dismantling these systems?
We can look up ways we uphold systems of oppression by how we navigate conflict. Do we offer communication? Are we working towards forgiveness? Are we working towards rebuilding the relationship or throwing it away? What is our understanding of community? Are we practicing transformative justice in our relationships? What do our relationships mean to us? I have more question than answers for this one. I think we maintain these systems when we look at our relationships as if they exist outside of these systems. They don’t. We dismantle these systems when we can have open conversations about racism, transphobia, and the harmful effects of capitalism.
Turns out when I sit down and listen to some lo-fi beats or music I can get hella writing done. Who woulda thought?
This is the end of our Nasty Work discussion question saga. If you haven’t, I urge you to look through these posts and answer the questions yourself. I also highly recommend the book. It might be helpful to read the passages that came before the questions.
Nasty Work touches on desirability politics, race and sexuality, gender, relationships, disability, friendship, consent, and much more. As a sex educator, I’m glad to have this in my arsenal.
That’s all folks! If you haven’t take a chance to read through all of the discussion question posts and answer in the comments or make a personal journal entry for yourself. Chile, when I started I had no idea where this would take me. Will l be re-reading? Yes. Will I be combing through my annotations? Yes. This one of them good jawns.
Thank you for reading, thank you for being here with me. I *hope you have a great weekend.💕
*Saw Hope. It was a wild ride. A thriller that has some comical moments. I’m interested in reading more from the director. Keeping my mouth shut because I feel spoilers on the tip of my tongue.
Lingerie Slayer 
Thoughts?