This Relationship Isn't Working

THIS RELATIONSHIP ISN'T WORKING:

Deconstructing the Oppressive Foundations of Relationships and Reimagining New Ways of Relationship Building

BY AVIV GOLDMAN

Guide to Using this Zine

Links:

If you are reading this zine digitally, anything that is underlined (like this) will take you to a related link or resource. These links offer more information and resources on certain topics.

Glossary:

There is a glossary located at the end of the zine that provides definitions for certain complex concepts such as carcerality, heteronormativity, and queer kinship. Click on the word "glossary" to find these definitions.

A little bit about me

My name is Aviv Goldman. I am a Master's student in Women's and Gender Studies and this zine is my thesis project!

I decided on a zine because I wanted to create something that was accessible, creative, and engaging.

This project emerged from my desire to build more intentional interpersonal relationships. This project is about the connection between the practices we use to build our relationships and the practices we used to build our world. This project is about transformation. It is about noticing harm on every level. It is about disrupting this harm on every level.

This project asks, what becomes possible when we transform our relationships?

This project is about enacting change. Even though focusing on change within our relationships may feel small on the scale of things, I argue that making changes to our relationships can actually create a deeply far-reaching impact.

If the way we learn to build relationships is influenced by societal systems, than changing the ways we build relationships will inevitably work to change our systems.

Roots

Pt. 1: "Relationships are Hard"

Pt. 2 "The Talk": How Harm within our Relationships is Connected to Systemic Harm

Pt. 3 "Meeting the Normative Family": How the Nuclear Family is Rooted in Normative Logics.

Pt. 4 "Meeting the Normative Relationship": How Normative Logics Show up in our Relationships

Pt. 5 "Breaking up with Normative Relationships": How Folks are Building Nonnormative Relationships

Roots

This project is rooted in:

The idea that our relationships are influenced by societal systems.

The notion that changing our relationships is integral to changing our systems.

Feminist, abolitionist, transformative justice, queer, and disability thought. While this project is situated within the U.S., it also draws from Transnational feminist perspectives to frame the concept of the U.S. nation.

This project aims to demonstrate the necessity of tying together these distinct, yet already interconnected, spaces for theorizing.

Roots: Abolition and TJ

Abolitionist theory:

Grounded in the ideas and actions of Black, Brown, and Indigenous folks.

Calls for the abolition of policing, prisons, and all systems of harm.

Transformative justice theory:

Rooted in the ideas and actions of Black, Brown, and Indigenous folks. Offers alternatives to and responds to the failures of the punitive and carceral criminal justice system.

Asks how we can build community processes that address harm without relying on the harmful practices and logics that the criminal justice system is built upon.

Both abolition and TJ understand carcerality and punishment as beyond policing and prisons. These frameworks see carcerality as something that pervades every aspect of our society.

Roots: Zine Inspiration

Some of the abolitionist and transformative justice thinkers and orgs that inspired this zine include:

Love and Protect

Angela Davis

INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence

Mariame Kaba

Pt. 1: "Relationships are hard"

I want to talk to you about relationships.

Last year I started to think about all the relationships I've had. I realized that a lot of my relationships have been really fucked up! Even if they weren't "bad," my relationships didn't necessarily make me feel good. So I started to reflect. I'd love to explore what I found with you through this zine.

If you're down, feel free to keep reading.

If you're not down, I understand. I'll be here if you ever feel like talking again.

Relationships can be messed up

It is inevitable that people in relationship with each other will make mistakes and hurt each other.

But I think the way we are set up to build relationships within our society makes for some especially shitty relationships.

The more I think about it, the more I think that there has to be another way. There has to be other ways that our relationships can look. This zine is an exploration of our relationships. It is an exploration of why they aren't working. It is an exploration of how they could look different

there has to be another way

You might be asking what's wrong with our relationships...

Here are some things I've heard people around me say about their relationships:

"My partner always wants to know where I am at all times. If I don't tell them where I am or answer their calls they get so mad. I feel bad upsetting them. I'm really not trying to."

"Ever since I got into this relationship, I've lost contact with most of my friends. I don't want to cut contact with them but my partner doesn't like it when I spend too much time with them."

"My partner gets jealous really easily. At first I thought it meant they really loved me but now it just feels like they're trying to control me. "

"I've been seeing this person but we ' re not dating. Because we ' re not dating I feel like I can't talk to them about my boundaries and my comfort levels. I don't want them to think I'm being clingy or making too big of a deal out of something casual."

"There is a lot of abuse that goes on inside my house. We all know not to talk about it. When we go out in public we act like a perfect family that has no problems."

"Everyone is always asking me who I'm dating but no one seems to care as much about who I'm friends with. Even I feel better about myself when I have a romantic partner. Why is it that romantic relationships are viewed as so much more important than platonic relationships?"

"I was always a child who didn't conform to certain gendered expectations. I grew up constantly being punished for being different. I think my parents thought they were protecting me by trying to make me "normal" but all it did was hurt me. "

"As a queer person, no one views my relationship with my partner as real. I feel like the only way my parents will accept it as real is if we do everything straight couples are supposed to do like get married and have kids. Not that I don't want those things but it sucks that it feels like I have to do those things in order for my relationship to be seen as valid."

"I grew up in a household where I got punished if I did something ' wrong. ' I have my own kids now and I've realized that I don't want to punish them like I was punished. I wish we talked more about ways to parent without relying on punitive punishment.

"I had a 5 year friendship end after an intense argument. Now I try to talk things through with my friends before it ends up getting to such an intense point but it feels awkward to talk about my boundaries and say when things upset me. Sometimes it's easier not to say anything but I'm worried my friendships are going to end abruptly again."

All of these quotes are examples of the ways that our relationships with our friends, families, lovers, and relationships that don't fit neatly into those categories, are not working.

They are examples of the ways that the relationships we are building under our current systems often involve a lot of harm.

SOME COMMON THEMES WITHIN THESE QUOTES:

Pressure to value certain relationships or people over others

Pt. 2

"The Talk": How Harm within our Relationships is Connected to Systemic Harm

In order to build different kinds of relationships, we first need to talk about why so many of our relationships end up being abusive or harmful or just plain bad.

In this next section I am going to outline the systems that negatively influence that ways we build relationships and how they work in connection to our relationships.

Why is this relationship not working?

CAN WE ALL AGREE THE WORLD IS F*CKED UP?!

There are so many structures in place working to oppress people and leave a select few with power and control over everyone else.

We see this oppression playing out on a big, systemic scale through things like the mass incarceration of Black and Brown people, the taking away of bodily autonomy from women and people of marginalized genders, and the suppression of queerness, fueled by white supremacy, patriarchy, and heteronormativity (as well as ALL oppressive "isms" including imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, etc).

It

Feminist scholars Sherene Razack and Mary Louise Fellows explain that systems of oppression “sustain one another” and “come into existence in and through one another.”

(Fellows & Razack, 1998)

Razack draws from Patricia Hill Collins's notion that systems of oppression are interlocking

is important to note that all systems are interconnected and work together to maintain oppression!

Patricia Hill Collins

Sherene Razack

Mary Louise Fellows

BUT THESE SYSTEMS OF OPPRESSION DO NOT ONLY AFFECT THINGS ON THE BIG SCALE!

They actually seep into every part of our lives including our relationships!

YOU MIGHT BE ASKING...

HOW DO THESE OPPRESSIVE SYSTEMS SEEP INTO OUR RELATIONSHIPS?

THESE SYSTEMS ARE MAINTAINED BY CERTAIN LOGICS THAT MAKE THEM APPEAR NORMAL AND NATURAL

I will refer to these logics as "normative logics"

For example, the idea that that there are only two genders.

The gender binary makes it seem that anything outside of this binary is unnatural when really gender is a construct made to control people by confining us to certain expectations of who we can and can't be and punishing us when we deviate from these expectations.

But what if I don't fit into either of these categories?

How do I fill out this form...

Normative logics

Notions of how we “ought” to do things

They tell us how we should show up in the world and punish us when we don't show up in the ways we are expected to.

Enforced by the systems on which the US was built and is now maintained by, including white supremacy, heteronormativity, and imperialism.

"The normative is necessarily coercive and nonconsensual the normative only permits you to “be” on its terms, negating your ability to determine your inhabitation of sociality before you even show up precisely because you can only show up if you adhere to its systematicity…making impossible alternative modes of life." (Bey, 2021)

Marquis Bey

Boys don't wear pink! Norms can be really arbitrary if you think about it

Normative logics

In other words...

We do not get to decide how we show up in the world.

Society decides for us. Society makes us conform to certain ways of being.

We often do not notice that we are being forced to conform because these ways of being are so normalized that we cannot imagine other ways of being–nor are we allowed to imagine being any other way. As Bey emphasizes, we can only be seen within the categories society has set for us because that is the only way we are taught to see.

Normative logics

"Whiteness and cis genders, for instance, are normative endeavors not because they are purely descriptive of most people in a given environment but because they determine who and what counts as valid, ideal, normal, and representable; bestow consequences on those who do not live up to, adhere to, or who deviate from their rubrics; and cast as imperfect, unfinished, nonideal, or deserving of fewer life chances those who are not proximal to, or who do not appear through, or who stray from, whiteness and cis genders."

(Bey, 2021)

Normative logics

Remember this quote?

"As a queer person, no one views my relationship with my partner as real. I feel like the only way my parents will accept it as real is if we do everything straight couples are supposed to do like get married and have kids. Not that I don't want those things but it sucks that it feels like I have to do those things in order for my relationship to be seen as valid."

This is an example of how normative logics influence our relationships. The normative logic here is that romantic relationships should only be heterosexual, and they should always lead to marriage and kids. This norm shows up in active oppression against queer folks, but it also shows up in more subtle ways like viewing queer relationships as less valid/valuable/real than straight relationships.

More examples to come!

Here is a an Instagram infographic on the history of the word "normal" from trans/nonbinary activist Alok Menon. This graphic delves deeper into the connection between normative logics and white supremacist and heteronormative ideals:

Normative logics are linked to carcerlity

What is carcerlity?

Carcerality is about control, surveillance, isolation, and punishment.

Carcerality blames harm on individual character and invisibilizes the systems that create the conditions for harm to occur. These systems include white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, cisheteronormativity, ableism, classism, and more.

We see carcerality most clearly in the U.S. jail and prison system where roughly two million people are imprisoned, making up 16% of the world’s incarcerated population despite the U.S. only making up 4% of the world’s population (Vera, 2022).

Carceral logic tells us that people need to be “put away,” locked up, isolated, surveilled, controlled, and punished. Carcerality works by creating a false binary where people can only be either innocent or perpetrators of harm and therefore worthy of dehumanization.

What is carcerlity?

WHAT IS ILLEGAL DOES NOT NECESSARILYCORRELATE TO WHAT IS HARMFUL

Carcerality is about criminalizing certain behaviors and people that are deemed “non normative” in order to police and control people.

Beth E. Richie

"Carcerality actually operates as a set of political commitments that are independent from data about actual occurrences of lawbreaking…crime can be understood as a social artifact that reflects political and social impulses, as much as it is something ‘real.’ …A rigorous examination of what is considered ‘illegal’ reveals patterns that suggest in many ways law and legal policies serve as an instrument of social control of marginalized groups rather than some neutral mechanism for encouraging safety and social order."

(Richie, 2020)

Carcerality is linked to normative logics because the process of deeming something "normal" is an exercise of control.

When we deem certain things normal, we also deem other things abnormal and we set in motion a process of suppressing that which is deemed abnormal.

We establish a hierarchy where what is normal is good and worthy and what is abnormal is bad and unworthy.

As mentioned earlier, carcerality is about criminalizing certain behaviors and people that are deemed “non normative” in order to police and control people.

Carceral logics tell us that it is ok to punish, dissapear, and oppress those that are deemed abnormal or "non normative" because what is abnormal is bad and unworthy.

Just like what's "in" and what's "out" in fashion, the rules for what is considered normal are constantly changing! This is also a method of control and punishment. The rules can easily change to decrease someone's power if they are perceived as a threat to someone else's power.

Looks like high waisted pants are out and low rise pants are in...

This poem shows how easily groups can be situated as non normative, made into the "other," and persecuted. This poem also demonstrates that no one is free under a carceral system.

Normative logics say this person is more normal and better than this other person.

Carceral logics say this "other" person should be punished for not meeting the criteria for what we've decided is normal.

Carceral logics say we need to get rid of everyone that is not normal because what is not normal is bad.

Because not being normal is bad (even though we made up what counts as normal) it is ok and even encouraged to oppress those that are "not normal."

A key component of carcerlity is isolation

Isolating people makes people easier to control... Just look at prisons

Prisons rely on being isolated from the rest of society and isolating people within prisons so that stories of abuse enacted by prisons remain contained, and so that incarcerated folks have little ability to support each other and organize around prison issues.

Of course organizing and activism within prisons definitely exists, but, just like activist work on the outside, there is always the potential of being punished for speaking out.

Incarcerated folks face punishment for anything perceived as disobedience...

such as discussing experiences of prison abuse, challenging prison rules (which are purposefully, constantly changing in an effort to continue punishing incarcerated folks and thus asserting control over incarcerated folks), and many other arbitrary acts of "disobedience."

Isolation, control, and punishment are all part of carceral logic and work to enact and maintain abuse.

Remember these quotes?

"My partner always wants to know where I am at all times. If I don't tell them where I am or answer their calls they get so mad. I feel bad upsetting them. I'm really not trying to."

"Ever since I got into this relationship, I've lost contact with most of my friends. I don't want to cut contact with them but my partner doesn't like it when I spend too much time with them."

These quotes demonstrate how isolation is also a tactic of control used in relationships. Systems rely on and teach us to recreate dynamics of isolation and control within the context of relationships as a way to maintain systemic tactics of control and oppression. We become actors for systems by enforcing abuse and oppression in everyday life. This works to strengthen oppressive systems.

The carceral logic of isolation shows up in obvious ways like putting people in prison and situating prisons in geographically isolated places, but also in less obvious ways like constraining people to nuclear family structures in which the nuclear family is isolated from those beyond the space of the home.

In the next section, we will talk more about the nuclear family and the way that it is built upon normative and carceral logics.

Nuclear family

Community

"Meeting the Nuclear Family":

How the Nuclear Family is Rooted in Normative Logics.

The "typical" nuclear family is comprised of a mother (wife), father (husband), and children. The "typical" nuclear family is also white, middle to upper class, heterosexual, and Christian.

Oppressive roots of the nuclear family

Colonialism

Many indigenous peoples had/have variable and vast kinship structures and elements of what we often consider "queerness," including two-spirit people. Among Indigenous communities, kinships were/are often not separate from the larger community and people were/are not separated into a gender binary. The nuclear family was a colonialist, white supremacist creation introduced to control and oppress indigeneity, and in connection, queerness. The nuclear family is enforced in order to separate "real" Americans from "fake" Americans. One has to adhere to the nuclear family in order to be considered worthy of citizenship and rights, Thus, to be on the outside of the nuclear family is to be oppressed.

White supremacy

The nuclear family is a prime example of a normative relationship structure. Have you ever thought why we automatically think of this kind of structure when we think of families? Have you wondered if there are different ways families could look? Maybe you yourself didn't have a nuclear family. Maybe you were made to feel out of place for not being a part of a nuclear family.

The fact that we automatically think of a nuclear structure when we think of families, and the fact that we are made to feel out of place when our family doesn't look like a typical nuclear family, is intentional.

The nuclear family structure is enforced by the nation and made to be the "norm" because this structure serves a purpose. The nuclear family ensures procreation, which thus ensures the production of citizens, and finally ensures the protection of the nation (Sinha, 2004; Alexander, 2006). Queerness is seen as unpatriotic and backwards, as if stalling the nation’s development and threatening the strength of the nation through a refusal to produce citizens.

SOME NORMATIVE LOGICS ABOUT THE FAMILY INCLUDE:

Families must be comprised of a mother, father, and children. Queer relationships are not seen as valid. Families without children are not seen as valid. Partnerships not bound by marriage are not seen as valid. The nuclear family is the only valid kind of family.

Families must take on a hierarchical structure. Following old patriarchal rules where women and children were viewed as property, the nuclear family structure encourages an uneven power distribution where the husband/father has more power than the wife/mother and control over his wife and children.

Families must instill proper values in their children. If children misbehave or act outside of the norm, they should be punished because they must learn to act properly.

Nuclear families must operate as their own isolated unit. What happens within the confines of the home should stay within the confines of the home.

SOME NORMATIVE LOGICS ABOUT THE FAMILY INCLUDE:

A husband should have control and power over his wife and his children

Queer families are not real families

If women and children have equal or more say, a man is not a "real" man

The only kind of family is a nuclear family (i.e. a husband, a wife, and children)

Chosen families are not real families

A couple is not valid unless they have children Single parents cannot form real families

Having non-biological children and/or parents does not make a real family

Problems that occur within the home are private and must not be shared outside of the home

SOME NORMATIVE LOGICS ABOUT THE FAMILY INCLUDE:

Asking for support from your community means your family is less capable than others

The family is a private unit and sharing about family problems outside the home is shameful

Carceral logics in the nuclear family: Isolation

It is considered taboo to share "family problems" with those outside the family structure. "Problems" are meant to be kept private. This further isolates people experiencing abuse or violation and allows for the continuation of abuse.

People are encouraged not to reach out to their community for support or resources. Because capitalism teaches us the false, individualistic idea that if we work hard enough we will have resources, not having access to resources is blamed on individual inadequacy instead of systemic inequalities.

Isolation works to maintain abuse. When abuse goes unnamed and uninterrupted, it is more likely to be passed on from generation to generation.

It is considered shameful to ask for or share resources with those outside the family structure.

There is power in connection, community, and coalition.

Isolation works to maintain inequality.

Carceral logics in the nuclear family: Isolation/indiviudlaism

These tweets respond to the idea that people should be isolated from one another and argue that instead, we need to caring for one another. @blackleftis

Carceral logics in the nuclear family: Control or possession over others

The nuclear family structure is rooted in a history of women and children being viewed as property and men literally having ownership over them. Even though this not always the case anymore, the nuclear family remains rooted in the idea that men should have control over their wives and children.

These carceral logics of control and ownership show up in our relationships in ways that might not be obvious. For example, we learn that feelings of jealousy mean that someone cares instead of understanding that jealousy is often about isolating and claiming another, and functions as a justification to respond to “disloyalty” with punishment and abuse

In Abolish the Family (2022), Sophie Lewis talks about liberatory and queer modes of care which she names as "antiproperty" modes of care.

"The word “queer” has widely been emptied of its communist meanings, yet…it still carries some abolitionist freight, signifying resistance to capitalism’s reproductive institutions: marriage, private property, patriarchy, the police, school…Queerly, then, the best care-givers already seek to unmake the kind of possessive love Alexandra Kollontai called “property love” in their relations with children, older relatives, and partners." (Lewis, 2022)

Transnational feminist scholars Mrinalina Sinha and M. Jaqui Alexander investigates the structure of the nuclear family, and in particular the white middleclass nuclear family, asserting that the nuclear family is a tool used by the nation-state to maintain itself and label deviant anything that threatens citizens' complacency.

Mrinalina Sinha

M. Jacqui Alexander

Sinha explains that the "ideological work of the family is to make the various forms of hierarchies both within the nation and between nations seem 'natural. '" (Sinha, 2004).

"Because the family is idealized as a domain in which individual members willingly subsume their interests within the supposedly unified interests of the family (as represented by the male head of household), it becomes a signifier of 'hierarchy within unity' for the nation. The myth of the family as a fundamental 'unity,' of course, is sustained in part through a belief in the allegedly natural subordination of women and children to adult men within the family." (Sinha, 2004)

"The nation’s identification with the family to signify the fundamental 'unity' of its own members similarly constructs the hierarchies of gender, class, race, and ethnicity within the national community as natural and thus without a history. " (Sinha, 2004)

In other words...

If hierarchies are seen as normal within the nuclear family, it is easier to understand hierarchies as normal within the context of the nation.

If subordination of people is seen as normal and natural, then people are less likely to identify subordination as wrong and fight against it.

Intimate

This means abuse continues within relationships and within the nation.

violence is a part of larger projects of nation building.

Through the hierarchical structure of the nuclear family, we learn that relationships are about having control and ownership over another.

We learn that feelings of jealousy mean that someone cares instead of understanding that jealousy is often about isolating and claiming another, and functions as a justification to respond to “disloyalty” with punishment and abuse.

These ideas surrounding ownership and punishment are connected to ideologies of carcerality and can be seen reflected in the way the nation-state treats its citizens.

Any refusal to adhere to the “norms” of the nation or in other words, any instance when the nation cannot seem to control you such as rejecting the nuclear family construction is viewed as “disloyalty” and seen as justified in eliciting a carceral response.

Sinha and Alexander draw attention to the ways that abuse, both interpersonal and systemic, is a tool to maintain “normativity.”

Sinha and Alexander explain that “normativity,” specifically heteronormativity, is intertwined with colonial and imperial projects, and is used as a tool of control to delineate “proper” U.S. citizens from “improper” citizens and to punish those deemed improper.

The nuclear family is about:

Upholding heteronormativity through heterosexual relationships and procreation.

Maintaining patriarchy through the notion that men should be the head of the house and should have control over their wife and children.

It is equally about maintaining white supremacy and class supremacy.

Queer and feminist scholar Cathy Cohen explains that being outside of heteronormativity is not solely dependent on sexuality.

"[p]eople outside of heteronormativity are those perceived as threatening systems of white supremacy, male domination, and capitalist advancement.” (Cohen 2005, 455). Heteronormativity works to “designate which individuals are “fit” for full rights and privileges of citizenship,” (Cohen, 2005)

Cathy Cohen

This shows up in institutional discrimination that affords greater legal rights and monetary benefits to those who are married and have children. This discrimination not only affects queer folks but ANYONE outside of the normative nuclear structure.

Cohen gives the example of Black, single mothers being seen as outside of the heteronormative structure. Despite economic inequality being a product of white supremacy and capitalism, folks that utilize welfare are seen as responsible for their economic instability for failing to comply with the nuclear family structure. Additionally, they are seen as undeserving of state support as their “otherness” deems them “unnatural” citizens.

What are the consequences of these normative logics regarding our relationships?

Hierarchical relationships are encouraged where one person has power and control over others

Suppression of queerness is encouraged

Legal, financial, and social suppression of anyone who falls outside of the nuclear family model by barring them from the legal and financial benefits afforded through marriage

What happens in romantic and familial relationships is kept private

Abuse in relationships is not talked about

Isolation from other relationships and communities Abuse is maintained

"But I love my family"

That's great! The goal is not to stop people from loving their families but to disrupt the notion that there is only one respectable way of being; being in a nuclear family.

The nuclear family was purposefully created in order to maintain white supremacy, cisheteropatriarchy, colonialism, capitalism, etc. Thus, even if your family is working to challenge these oppressive systems, the nuclear family remains a tool used by the state to maintain these oppressive systems.

We cannot abolish these systems from inside structures that are rooted in these same oppressive structures we seek to abolish.

IMPORTANT NOTE

Black families and other “nonnormative” families have historically been “queered” and seen as not “real” families, just as Black women have historically been “queered,” distanced from womanhood, and seen as not “real” women. Because of this queering, Black family structures and Black motherhood have also been sites for liberation and resistance to the oppressive structure of the family. These creative family formations can be appreciated while still ultimately working towards the abolition of the family and the oppressive practices that are connected to family structures.

"Romantic and Platonic and Everything in Between":

How Normative Logics Show up in our Interpersonal Relationships

We've talked a lot about normative logics and carceral logics and how these logics influence our relationships in the context of family, but let's actually delve into the ways that these logics show up in our romantic and platonic relationships.

SOME NORMATIVE LOGICS ABOUT OUR RELATIONSHIPS INCLUDE:

Romantic relationships should be between a (cisgender)man and a (cisgender)woman

Queer relationships are wrong and are not valid relationships

People who chose not to marry or people who are not allowed to marry (for example queer folks) do not have valid relationships

Real relationships are about being bound to someone, being owned, or belonging to someone

The only "real" relationships are those that are bound by marriage

Hierarchal structuring

SOME NORMATIVE LOGICS ABOUT OUR RELATIONSHIPS INCLUDE:

Your relationship to your romantic partner should be valued over any other relationships in your life

Your platonic relationships are not as important or valued as your romantic partnerships.

of

relationships

"You're always texting your friends! You don't even care about me. It's either me or your friends. You have to chose!"

It is ok to isolate someone from their friends for being jealous about the amount of time they spend with friends.

One has to chose between relationships because love is a "finite resource " and there is not enough to go around.

WHY VALUING ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS OVER PLATONIC RELATIONSHIPS CAN BE HARMFUL:

Platonic relationships are sometimes not even viewed as relationships!

For example, the question “are you in a relationship?” almost never refers to platonic relationships.

Invalidation of platonic relationships sucks for a lot of reasons but can also be dangerous in situations of domestic violence.

Abusers will often express jealousy over their partner spending too much time with friends.

Heteronormative logics that teach us being a “proper” partner means prioritizing that partnership over anything and anyone else are harmful because they often lead to being isolated from other relationships and connections.

WHY VALUING ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS OVER PLATONIC RELATIONSHIPS CAN BE HARMFUL:

WHY VALUING ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS OVER PLATONIC RELATIONSHIPS CAN BE HARMFUL:

Being isolated from one’s friends can make it easier for an abuser to assert control and enact punishment, and more difficult for a victim/survivor of abuse to reach out for support.

Isolation also ensures that the abuse stays within the confines of the home and makes it challenging to both speak on the abuse and prove that the abuse is happening.

Isolation works to maintain abuse and maintain silence around abuse.

Starvation economy is the notion that "our capacities for love, intimacy, and connection are finite, that there is never enough to go around, and that if you give some to one person, you must be taking some away from another." (Hardy & Easton)

This term was coined by polyamorous theorists Janet W. Hardy and Dossie Easton

The idea that love is a limited resource is connected to the individualistic capitalist notion that the only way to prevent our own resources from running out is by hoarding them. It is easy to structure our relationships hierarchically, valuing some friendships over others, or valuing our romantic relationships over our platonic ones. it is easy to feel possessive over lovers or friends.

BUT

Pt. 5

"Breaking up with Normative Relationships": How Folks are Building Nonnormative Relationships

I don't want to recreate dynamics of harm in my relationships anymore and the I think way to do that is to build relationships that don't engage in normative and carceral logics.

In this section, I will explore examples of people who are already building relationships in nonnormative and liberatory ways.

One way to think about building relationships differently is "queering" relationships.

Because queer people have historically been excluded from traditional relationship structures, queer people had to find ways to build relationships differently. From chosen families, to kinship networks, to mutual aid networks, queer people have been at the forefront of "untraditional" relationship building.

What does queering relationships mean?

Queer scholar Jack Halberstam defines queer as:

“refer[ing] to nonnormative logics and organizations of community, sexual identity, embodiment, and activity in space and time…”

(Halberstam, 2005)

Here queering, or engaging in nonnormative logics, does not only refer to challenging the normative logics of heterosexuality, but also those of white supremacy, capitalism, colonialism, ableism, classism, etc.

So if we go back to all the normative and carceral logics we discussed...

Control

Ownership

Punishment

Hierarchies

Isolation

Surveillance..

Queering relationships, or building relationships differently, means rejecting these normative logics.

Let me give you some examples!

Queer scholar Judith Butler discusses the ways that people are engaging in nonnormative relationship building through what Butler calls “queer kinship networks.”

To Butler, queer kinship is about creating “occasional spaces in which those annihilating norms, those killing ideals of gender and race, are mimed, reworked, resignified.” (Butler, 1990)

Judith Butler

Nonnormative Relationships: Queer Kinship

Because many queer folks build connections over shared experiences of otherness or rejection from dominant heteronormative spaces, and because this experience of rejection often leaves queer folks unsupported, the connections queer people make are often informed by expectations of mutual support in navigating a society made to abject queerness.

Queer kinship building is a response to the exclusion of queer folks from dominant family structures, and through different and creative methods of “family” formation, allows queer folks to occupy the space of “family,” thus subverting the notion that families must take on a heteronormative structure.

In other words, queer kinship building allows for the creation of different kinds of communities and ways of forming and maintaining relationships outside of heteronormative constraints in which queerness is embraced and encouraged as an ongoing practice.

Nonnormative Relationships: Queer Kinship

Not only are people uplifted and celebrated instead of antagonized and rejected for identifying as queer or expressing themselves in queer ways, but they are also uplifted for acting in ways that may run counter to how society instructs us to act.

For example, it is not only about embracing “queer things” like “gender fuck” clothing, but also about practicing the unlearning and challenging of gender binaries.

It is about practicing nonnormativity by building non-nuclear families, forming relationships that do not need to be legally bound by marriage, creating support networks that come from the community instead of oppressive institutions, etc.

Queer kinship networks that operate outside of heteronormativity and rely on models of collective care create greater possibilities for practices of support and accountability, demonstrating that shifting our approaches to relationship building, for example away from heteronormativity, can allow us to move away from and challenge carceral logic.

Nonnormative Relationships: Queer Kinship

Unlike the nuclear family structure that is rooted in individualistic ideology in which the privitization of resources and relationships are encouraged, queer kinship networks are rooted in practices of community building whereby interpersonal relationships and the ability to cultivate caring and intentional interpersonal relationships are seen as connected to the greater community.

Within queer kinship networks that challenge individualistic ideology, if harm happens on the interpersonal level, the community is often part of the process of addressing this harm and ensuring that everyone is being cared for while also being held accountable.

Nonnormative Relationships: Queer Kinship

Queer kinship networks do not see interpersonal conflict as disconnected from the community. If someone within the community is being assaulted by another member, the conflict is not seen as “personal” and relegated to the space of that individual relationship. Instead, the safety and well being of each individual is a community concern. All individuals in the community are accountable to each other and work to make sure that everyone is being cared for and everyone’s boundaries are being respected.

In this way, queer kinship networks challenge the idea that what happens in one relationship is unlreated and unimportant to the well-being of other interpersonal relationships and those who in community with eachother. Furthermore, queer kinship network challenge individualistic ideas that encourage competition over resources by engaging in practices of resource sharing and mutual support.

Butler describes how the building of queer kinship networks is a subversive practice that challenges heteronormative expectations and provides the possibility for more liberated relationships.

However, Butler is sure to emphasize that even within queer kinship networks, there can exist a “reiteration of norms that cannot be called subversive.” (Butler, 1990).

Subverting heteronormativity is not only about expressing gender and sexuality in different and queer ways, but also about questioning all normative ideology, including white supremacy, capitalism, ableism, colonialism, and more.

Challenging normative logics must be an ongoing and intentional practice of questioning how we “ought” to do things and imagining different possibilities.

Queer Kinship & Ballroom

Marlon Bailey, a professor of African Diaspora Studies and Gender Studies, also explores queer kinship through the ballroom scene, specifically the Detroit ballroom scene.

“Ballroom culture is a minoritarian social sphere where performance, queer gender and sexualities, and kinship coalesce to create an alternative world.” (Bailey, 2013)

Bailey outlines how ballroom communities in Detroit utilize queer kinship structures that not only engage in liberatory practices of care but also conduct community organizing efforts.

Queer Kinship & Ballroom

For example, Detroit ballroom communities are organizing around HIV/AIDS in order to access support that is otherwise denied to these queer, Black and Brown community members under the systems of heteronormativity and white supremacy.

Bailey explains that "ballroom is a community of support...performance is the means through which members create a counterdiscourse (through a social epistemology), provide social support (kin labor) for its members, and produce prevention balls in order to reduce Black queer people's vulnerability to HIV/AIDS infection through competitive performance...This community constitutes a site of refuge where its members have the opportunity to be nurtured, to experience pleasure, and to access a better quality of life in the fact of the AIDS epidemic, particularly for those that are located at the very bottom of society."

(Bailey, 2013)

Bailey’s work within ballroom communities demonstrates how queerness can be engaged to build relationships that are not reliant on oppression foundations and practices.

Nonnormative Relationships: Polyamory

Another example of nonnormative relationships comes from Polyamory.

This does not necessarily mean that everyone has to be polyamorous but there a lot we can learn from how polyamorous people and thinkers are rejecting normative logics.

Janet W. Hardy and Dossie Easton, authors of The Ethical Slut: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships and Other Freedoms in Sex and Love, explore possibilities for different and more liberatory ways of building relationships through the lens of polyamory.

Hardy and Easton outline the ways that monogamy is tied to oppressive ideals of ownership and control. Hardy and Easton emphasize that monogamy itself is not bad, but that the pressure to be monogamous and the ideology attached to monogamy is harmful.

Nonnormative Relationships: Polyamory

Nonnormative practices in polyamorous relationships:

Building relationships with intentionality, care for every person, and in ways that do not recreate harm.

Open communication about what our boundaries are, what expectations we have for relationships, and what things feel harmful to us and those we are in relationship with in order to reduce the chances that we engage in these harmful behaviors.

Building relationships without hierarchy so that no one person or relationship is valued over another. This non-hierarchical structuring of relationships challenges oppressive heteronormative ideals that we must have one central relationship where partners exercise ownership over each other and that this relationship must be isolated and disconnected from our other relationships.

Some polyamorous folks chose to live with multiple partners and share resources with each other. This practice of sharing resources challenges oppressive capitalistic notions that resources belong to individuals and that all individuals have equal access to resources if they just work hard enough.

Nonnormative Relationships: Polyamory

Nonnormative Relationships: Polyamory

Here is a an instagram infographic and resource on jealousy from polyamorous thinker @maryjanilane

Nonnormative Relationships: Mutual Aid

Another nonnormative relationship practice that is often a part of queer kinshiip networks is mutual aid. Mutual aid comes from disability justice thinkers and movements.

What is mutual aid?

Mutual aid is about sharing resources with each other such as information, contacts, money, and material goods and sharing the responsibility of caring for one another based on our own capacities and access to resources. Mutual aid can look like buying someone groceries or fundraising money for someone, but it can also look like helping someone do their hair, offering emotional support, or getting a bunch of friends together to help you edit your zine!

My friends practiced mutual aid by using their various skills and degrees, such as graphic design and writing, to help me with my zine.

Leah Lakshmi

Nonnormative Relationships: Mutual Aid

Terms like “mutual aid” and “collective care” have become more popular. With this popularity, these terms have largely been emptied of their full meaning and roots.

It is important to note that these concepts come from “radical disabled women and nonbinary people of color who were and ar[e] part of the disability justice movement.”

,

mixed blood middle aged nonbinary femme disabled and autistic writer and disability and transformative justice cultural and movement worker,” emphasizes that the kind of mutual aid that has been popularized within abled communities often “fucks up.”

Piepzna-Samarasinha explains that “crip care” does not respond to needs with a savior mindset, with short-termed panicked responses, or with big publicized gestures. Instead, “crip care” is “often smallscale, offline, quiet, and invisible (to some).” It is often simple acts of checking in with each other. It is not always picturesque or fun but instead includes “caring for people who will piss you off, irritate and trigger you.” It “means having to figure out what your limits are…what you have the spoons to do, and where you draw the line.”

(PiepznaSamarasinha, 2021)

Piepzna-Samarasinha

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Let's get into what Piepzna-Samarasinha means by "what you have the spoons to do."

This is a reference to spoon theory!

Spoon theory was developed by disabled folks to describe how our capacities for daily tasks and activities change from day-to-day and moment-to-moment. How many spoons one has refers to the amount of “physical or mental energy [they have] available.”

(@actuallyautisticmama, 2022).

It is not only that some folks have more energy than others, but also that certain tasks or activities require more energy from some than others depending on our own abilities/disabilities and marginalizations/privileges.

Nonnormative Relationships: Mutual Aid

For example:

It takes more energy, or more spoons, for someone with depression to brush their teeth than someone without depression, leaving the depressed person with fewer spoons to navigate the rest of the day.

It takes more energy, or spoons, for a Black student to navigate a racist academic institution than a white student because of the privileges white students hold.

Spoon theory is an important aspect of mutual aid as it acknowledges that all of our bodies and capacities are variable, yet we are all equally valuable and deserving of support.

Disability justice and spoon theory encourage practicing forms of support that feel doable for you and are thus easier to sustain.

Though I personally do not identify as disabled, my communities include differently abled folks with different needs and capacities and our practices of mutual aid are heavily influenced by disabled and queer organizers and thinkers. When I need emotional support, I often start by asking my friends if they have the spoons to offer me support that day.

Piepzna-Samarasinha’s comments on mutual aid are important to continually reflect on as mutual aid becomes more mainstream.

Here is a an instagram infographic about spoon theory from @actuallyautisticmama

Spoon theory is a helpful way to think about engaging in practices of support in more intentional ways. Spoon theory is integral to practices of mutual aid.

Important notes on nonnormative relationships

These examples that I offer as potential ways to build relationships differently are not perfect.

Engaging in nonnormative relationship building does not automatically mean that these relationships will be devoid of all oppressive and normative ideologies and practices.

Even within nonnormative relationships, oppressive dynamics can be easily recreated. Within the U.S., we are constantly surrounded by harmful normative ideas that are ingrained in every aspect of our society. Though we may not notice, we are always being pushed to recreate harmful dynamics of oppression and power.

This means that challenging harmful normative logics has to be an ongoing practice of questioning, deconstructing, and pushing back against these logics. We are probably never going to get it perfect and that's ok. What I am offering here is not a utopian destination, but instead, a practice towards liberation.

Important notes on nonnormative relationships

Queer people are not the only people building nonnormative relationships.

While I follow Cathy Cohen's definition of "queer" as referring to anyone located outside of normativity rather than referring to anyone who identifies as queer it is important to note that not everyone resonates with being categorized as queer. Furthermore, the examples I provide within this zine do come from explicitly queer communities and do not capture the plethora of nonnormative relationships that are out there.

Though this zine focuses on explicitly queer examples, there are many different cultures that have built and continue to build relationships that would be perceived as nonnormative within a current U.S. context.

Historically, groups of people who did not conform to normative ideas about how relationships or familial structures should look were criminalized. This criminalization and "othering" of people outside of normative relationship structures continues today. For example, some Indigenous communities and Latine communities have intergenerational households instead of nuclear family structures. Additionally, in some cultures, specifically cultures that are marginalized within the U.S., practices of mutual aid are actually part of the culture.

It is important to point out that the kind of nonnormative relationships I have focused on in this zine are not encompassing of all nonnormative relationships.

There is a lot more to be said about the ways the U.S. and white supremacist ideology have criminalized not only queerness, but also ANYTHING that is not considered normative. In another iteration of this zine, I would want to expand more on examples of nonnormative relationships outside of queer U.S. based examples.

Relationships are the foundation of our lives. We are constantly in relationship with others. We learn about ourselves through others about who we are, who we want to be, what we like, what we dislike, and how we want to love and be loved. We learn about the world through others about how we should act, what rules we need to follow, what is “normal” and what is not, and what happens when you do something abnormal. Relationships make us feel. They can make us feel cared for, supported, or loved.

They can also make us feel neglected, hurt, lonely, or unwanted. Relationships impact us. When we are hurt in relationships, that hurt stays with us. Sometimes we are taught to confuse hurt for love. Sometimes this means that we enact harm and claim that it is out of love. Sometimes the hurt we experience is not recognized as hurt, especially by those that have hurt us. Sometimes this means that we learn never to admit to or take responsibility for causing harm. The ways that other people interact with us and show us care or hurt influences how we interact with others and enact care or hurt. When harm happens and is not addressed or named, or when harm is misnamed as love, the hurt does not simply go away. Instead, harm is recreated. Over and over again.

I do not believe that building better relationships means that hurt won't happen. However, I do believe that the ways we build relationships are influenced by “normative logics” that create more room for harm to happen and more room for this harm to be recreated in other relationships, in our communities, and in our systems. I believe that this harm can be interrupted by naming, questioning, and challenging normative logics.

There are communities that are doing the liberatory work of building relationships in different and more liberatory ways. These folks are turning to their communities to fight systemic and interpersonal harm in ways that do not rely on the oppressive mechanisms provided by the state.

It is possible to build relationships differently. In fact, I argue that changing our relationships will help us to change our world.

Roots: Zine Inspiration

Some of the abolitionist and transformative justice thinkers that inspired this zine include:

Mariame Kaba

Abolition is not simply about destroying, but about “building or creating…a society where it is possible to address harm without relying on structural forms of oppression or the violent systems that increase it."

Kaba is a central figure in the abolitionist movement and has contributed greatly to the depth of literature on abolition.

Kaba’s book We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice (2021) explores an abolitionist framework and situates both past and present events of police violence as a function of systemic racism, and in particular, anti-Black racism.

Angela Davis Roots: Zine Inspiration

“Everyone is familiar with the slogan 'The personal is political' -- not only that what we experience on a personal level has profound political implications, but that our interior lives, our emotional lives are very much informed by ideology. We oftentimes do the work of the state in and through our interior lives. What we often assume belongs most intimately to ourselves and to our emotional life has been produced elsewhere and has been recruited to do the work of racism and repression.”

Davis, co-author of Abolition. Feminism. Now.(2020) and longtime proponent of decarcerality, speaks on the injustice of imprisonment and carceral systems.

Davis draws connections between state violence and interpersonal violence, as well as between local and global expressions of power and oppression.

“You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.”

Roots: Zine Inspiration

Love and Protect

Love and Protect (L&P) is a Chicago-based abolitionist organization that works to support “women and gender non-conforming/non-binary people of color who are criminalized or harmed by state and interpersonal violence”.

Through the framework of power, oppression, and control, L&P outlines how state violence maintains and enacts both systemic and interpersonal abuse. L&P works to demonstrate the ways that being incarcerated is similar to experiencing interpersonal abuse.

Both incarceration and interpersonal abuse are about controlling, isolating, and enacting power over others. Love and Protect demonstrates the ways in which systemic expressions of harm are mirrored in our interpersonal relationships, and thus, disrupting harm on the interpersonal level is also part of disrupting systemic harm.

L&P points the ways that prisons and policing are rooted in anti-blackness, white supremacy, and heteropatriarchy, and sees abolition as the only way forward.

Roots: Zine Inspiration

INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence

INCITE! is a transformative justice “network of radical feminists of color organizing to end state violence and violence in [their] homes and communities.”[1]

INCITE! has produced toolkits such as “Organizing for Community Accountability” which explores what community accountability is and what is needed in order to build structures of community accountability.

Roots: Zine Inspiration

Generation FIVE

Generation FIVE is a transformative justice organization focused on interpersonal violence and its interconnection to state violence.

Generation FIVE has created transformative justice guides such as “Toward Transformative Justice A liberatory approach to child sexual abuse and other forms of intimate and community violence” that outlines the basics of transformative justice and connects interpersonal violence and systemic violence. This guide also demonstrates how abuse behavior and harmful ideologies that encourage abusive behavior are passed on from generation to generation.

Generation FIVE focuses on ways to intervene, to interrupt this intergenerational passage of harm, and transform our relationships and communities

Glossary:

Abolition:

Rooted in the ideas and actions of Black, Brown, and Indigenous folks calls for the abolition of policing, prisons, and all systems of harm, as abolition sees all systems of harm as interconnected. Abolition reminds us that another world is possible and asks us to start imagining what this world could look like.

Transformative Justice:

Rooted in the ideas and actions of Black, Brown, and Indigenous folks, TJ offers alternatives to and responds to the failures of the punitive and carceral criminal justice system. TJ not only focuses on abolishing oppressive systems, but also asks how we can work outside of the criminal justice system to build community processes that address harm without relying on the harmful practices and logics that the criminal justice system is built upon.

Glossary:

Interpersonal relationships:

“a social connection or affiliation between two or more people. Interpersonal relationships can include your partner, loved ones, close friends, acquaintances, co-workers, and many others who make up the social connections in your life.” (Cherry, 2021)

Heteronormativity/Cisheteronormativity:

The assumption that everyone is straight and cisgender, and can and should engage in “proper” gender roles. Being outside of heteronormativity is not solely dependent on sexuality and instead is about being positioned outside of the constructed “norm." Heteronormativity is linked to colonial, imperial, and nation-building projects and is used as a tool of control to delineate “proper” U.S. citizens from “improper” citizens and to punish those deemed improper.

Glossary:

Carcerlity:

Carcerality is connected to processes of imprisonment but it is more broadly about control, surveillance, isolation, and punishment. Carcerality is about criminalizing certain behaviors and people that are deemed “non normative” in order to police and control people. We are taught that carceral practices keep us safe and prevent harm from happening, yet it is carceral practices themselves that cause harm.

Mutual aid:

Mutual aid comes from “radical disabled women and nonbinary people of color who were and ar[e] part of the disability justice movement." (Piepzna-Samarasinha, 2021). Mutual aid is sharing the responsibility of caring for one another based on our own capacities and access to resources. Mutual aid can look like sharing information, contacts, money, and material goods (ex: dropping of groceries, crowdfunding, bringing needed supplies,) but it can also look like engaging in acts of care and support (ex: checking-in with friends, offering rides to appointments, cooking someone dinner).

Glossary:

Queer kinship:

A “resignification of the family” (Butler, 1990) for those who have been excluded or abjected from the heterosexual nuclear family. Queer kinship building allows for the creation of different kinds of communities and ways of forming and maintaining relationships outside of heteronormative constraints in which queerness is embraced and encouraged as an ongoing practice. Queer kinship relies on models of collective care where resources are shared, relationships are viewed as interconnected, and people practice caring for one another.

Transnational Feminisms:

Feminisms that work against Eurocentrism, colonialism, and imperialism. This framework challenges the centering of "the west" and explores feminist issues throughout the globe, recognizing the interconnectedness of all oppressive systems, and yet, emphasizing the importance of contextualizing issues within specific places and times.