This Is Defiance

For more than two years, people have gathered every week day in the Rotunda of the Wisconsin Capitol at noon to sing. Every day, Monday through Friday, for more than two years, they've been there. Singing. For five weeks, the Capitol Police have been randomly arresting an arbitrary number of participants each day. The justification for these arrests are new administrative rules that require gatherings of more than 20 people in the Capitol building to obtain a permit. These new rules ignore that the Wisconsin State Constitution designates the Capitol as a public building. These new administrative rules upend the basic right to freedom of assembly and freedom of speech.

I went to the Solidarity Sing Along on Monday, August 26, the day that this and this both happened. The Capitol Police reached for new levels of low, and brutality, and they achieved them. Spectacularly. Damon Terrrell is (as I write this, on my lunch break on Wednesday, August 28, with the livestream of today's sing playing in the background) still in the Dane County jail, having neither been charged nor released. The blatant racism on display is breathtaking. The more than 150 arrests in five weeks (and counting) is chilling, and is intended to have a chilling effect on the exercise of speech.

But you know what? It's not working.

The Solidarity Sing Along has swelled in the five weeks since arrests started. What was 25 or 30 people has grown to hundreds.

This is defiance. "Arrest Us And We Multiply," said a homemade t-shirt. The new rules prohibit the holding of signs on sticks or poles or standards; a woman was arrested for carrying a sign in her hand and was told that she, herself, was the standard, and thus in violation of the rules.

Signs declaring "I Am The Standard" have appeared. Signs demanding the release of Damon Terrell. Signs decrying the brutality used against CJ Terrell. Signs demanding Medicaid expansion. On 8/26, signs in support of Planned Parenthood as participants in the Women's Equality Day rally outside the building came in for the sing along. Signs quoting the Wisconsin State Constitution. A homemade t-shirt denouncing ALEC.

This is defiance. We are the standard. Our bodies are the pike on which we will raise our demands, our
bodies are the ground for our voices, and we will raise them up with our fists and we will defy you. You do not govern by fiat, no matter who you are. You do have to listen to us. You will not shut us up with money, you will not shut us up with violence.

We demand the right for everyone to live. We demand the right to petition our government without reprisal. We demand that every person be recognized a person. We demand the right to economic security.

And if you attempt it? We will sing louder. More of us will be the standard. There will be more bodies, there will be more voices. Courage is contagious, and this is as evident in the Solidarity Sing Along as it is in the Fight For 15 strikes, as it is in the Energy Exodus marchers, as it is in fight for reproductive justice, as it is in the antiwar movement in the wake of Chelsea Manning's bravery and incarceration.

This is defiance, and we are the standard.

The Revolution of Nonmonogamy

There's been a lot of talk about nonmonogamy recently, what with Laurie Penny's piece in the Guardian and this somewhat horrifying bit of commodification at Jezebel. As earnest and elegantly stated and nuanced as Penny's piece is, it still presents nonmonogamy in light of the heteronormative standard: "Just another way of organizing life, love, and who does the dishes" which replaces old relationship problems with new ones, of terminology and how to "make sure you're spending enough time with each of your partners."

Penny herself acknowledges that this isn't the point of nonmonogamous relationships: "The truth is that there is no magic set of rules for love, sex and home economics that works for everyone – and that's why it's so important that there are other options out there." Presenting nonmonogamy as just another set of rules to follow is severely limiting in its possibilities. "Polyamorists and monogamists alike," she notes, "fall prey to the delusion that their rules are the only proper way to organize relationships[.]"

The revolutionary nature of nonmonogamy comes not from being a new and exotic, esoteric set of rules to follow (because, let's face it, that's vaguely racist) but in the idea of creating your own rules. Creating your own rules *in concert with other people.* Creating rules that work mutually for both of you, so that everyone gets what they need. It's not about doing "whatever you want" because no one wants to hurt people that they care about. But it's never assuming the emotional state of someone else; it's always letting them tell you whether they're ok or whether they're hurt, and then listening to the answer. It's respecting the answer. It's working towards a better way of doing things if hurt happens. Between the two of you, to the benefit of both of you so that no one gets hurt and no one unintentionally hurts anyone else.

All of this sounds like some pretty standard, run-of-the-mill couples therapy stuff. Because I keep saying "the two of you" as if it is a couple, two people, and that's not nonmonogamy, right? As if relationships between just two people didn't exist in nonmonogamy. But that's not true. I say between the two of you because no matter how many people are in your relationship, or in a relationship with you, you have to think of them as just themselves, each one person, an individual being with thoughts and feelings and features unlike any other that are completely irreplaceable because this person is a person, a whole person, a single person.

(sidebar: You should view everyone this way, not just people you're sleeping with. Being sexually attracted to someone shouldn't be the deciding factory in whether that someone is a complete human being, because everyone is, regardless of whether you want to sleep with them.)
(secondary sidebar: You have to view yourself this way, too. You, also, are a unique and complete human being that deserves a complete life like any other, in ways that make you happy.)

If you start to falter in this unassailable belief that each of your partners is a whole person, a complete person, an individual human being with feelings and thoughts and dreams unlike any other, what happens is that you gradually cease to weigh their own feelings and pains equally with yours and then you end up "doing whatever you want" which (inevitably) causes pain and suffering for someone, usually not yourself the worst. You cease to care about your partner, because they're not a whole person, just a thing you use. And maybe you're sorry about that thing becoming worn because you're using it because it's not a person anymore, it's an it.

The thing about pre-made rules for interacting with people is they create whole systems that revolve around people not being people, not being individual and complete human beings.They replace individuals with characters, with scripts to follow. You're supposed to wait three days before calling. You're not supposed to talk about your dreams. Or your period. Be thin, white, symmetrical, of normal neuro-functionality, secure in your gender and seeking an opposite gender as if gender were binary. Find one mate to raise children with according to those nonexistent gender binaries. Make lots of money.

These are the rules, right? Those are the people that are held up as beacons of success, of stability, of doing-it-right-ness. This is the script. There are so many people that don't even *get to be in the play* because they're not thin or white or symmetrical or neurotypical or cis or hetero or rich. So, like, hey, even if you're thinking about nonmonogamy as a way to be all those things because you think it's possible to play out the script, that's cool. I guess. I'd sort of like to meet you, because it must be nice to never feel as if there are parts of yourself that just don't fit and that's got to be a weird experience because I don't think I know anyone that wouldn't cop to feeling like a square peg in a round hole sometimes no matter how wedged into their round holes they are.

But inevitably, some people don't follow the script. And rules mean that even when the script doesn't work for you, you're supposed to follow it instead of change it. Rules mean that when you're not in the script at all, you're not supposed to trod the stage of life, complete life, fully human life.

How terrible. Terrorizing.

So throw out the rules. Throw out the roles. Work out your own rules. Be nonmonogamous.

And then, when you've tried that for awhile, you can start to blow apart all your relationships. Monogamy and nonmonogamy are for sexual partners, specifically. But what are the other things we're supposed to be doing with sexual partners? Or not doing with them? Raising children, living together, working. Why should those be tied to who you sleep with? Why should you have to live with someone you're fucking? Why should you have to live with someone you're raising kids with? Why should you have to raise kids with the person you're fucking? Why shouldn't you work with a sexual partner? Does the kind of work matter? What about the rules for relationships between work and parenting? 

Pick all of your relationships apart and put them back together in the ways that work best for you. And demand a system that lets everyone do that. Pretty revolutionary, that.

Words Are Harder Than Images

This past weekend, I went to see an artist I admire greatly perform. It was a spur-of-the-moment, oh-shit-this-is-happening-tonight?! sort of decision and I rushed through my evening parental duties and drove across the city and sat in the backroom of a bar and listened.

The music this artist creates, the sound poems or stories or the intricate weaving of noises, are meditative. Someone once told me that it's "not the most accessible" music, and I was very quietly surprised. It's not what you hear on the radio, any radio, no matter how indie, but I find it instantly accessible because of that meditative quality. The sound wraps you up and engages the attention-paying parts of your brain; I sink into it like a sensory deprivation tank, and suddenly images come into the other parts of my brain, unbidden, uncontrollable. I find the music instantly accessible in ways that most of what I hear is not.

What happened when I sat in the back of that bar with 30 or so other people paying rapt attention was this:

I had a conversation in my head with this artist that I admire greatly. And he asked me why I hadn't been writing.

And, in my head, I said to him, "I've been taking a lot of pictures lately, I've been focusing on that, I guess."

And, in my head, he looked at me quizzically, expectantly. "But you're better with words than images," he said to me in my head.

And without thinking about it, in my head, I made this confession to him:

"Words are harder than images. I've been too lazy for words."

So here I am. Pushing past the laziness. Telling stories in words.