Queer Marriage & Why I recommend ‘Pleasure Activism’
While tucked away on a remote beach this week I finally began sitting down with adrienne maree brown’s Pleasure Activism. So far, I know have a deep desire to read all of Octavia Butler’s catalog and a deeper commitment to queer community that isn’t steeped in heteronormativity.
As I re-read Audre Lorde’s essay Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power and made my way into the chapter titled love as political resistance, I could feel the suntanned, t-shirt wearing girl of my youth in my presence. After countless therapy sessions of my beloved Queer therapist inviting me to befriend my younger self, Brown’s words had opened the door.
There were aches and pains at questions around body movement, sound, and the ways we’re taught to love in linear vibrations as opposed to an organic unfolding of love in rigorous practice with all humankind. The aches were my younger self kicking at my shin bones to bring attention to my senses, “this is why you were angry then…this is why you lied…and hid…this is where you knew you weren’t all a girl or a boy…”
Cognitively, I know this to be true. The patriarchy teaches us gender roles before our birth and places us into roles of submission or domination (if we have the white male counterparts to boast). I know that heteronormativity consumes our fibers and sticks to our bone marrow in ways our roots are not truly meant for --- but there’s a difference in cognitively knowing and embodied awareness.
This is why Brown’s book is a vital gift to me in this moment, for the vocation I am in and for my own being.
How much in our queer bodies and being do we forego pleasure? Forego self-preservation for hiding spots? Forego love that is equitable for a love that hurts for the sake of having companion?
How much in our childlike selves did we hide when our parents were suspicious of our “tomboyish behavior,” our desire to befriend all people not just White Supremacy itself, our creative habits that were our outlets and so many more examples one could write in from their child perspective.
Resistance is a grind against the norm. A norm set up by people to cultivate systems that keep in place roles, power, and greed.
And so, when I read, “we need radical honesty – learning to speak from our root systems about how we feel and what we want..” (PS, 61) from Brown’s book I about fell onto the sand from my seated position with a fuck me up adrienne expression. And then scribbled furiously in the margins:
What the heck our MY root systems? (echo some Dr. Chanequa Walker-Barnes “who told you vibes”)
What belongs to me and doesn’t?
How do I continue to untangle the root systems of heteropatriarchy? Or, keep them alive?
Am I really doing that now?
Yes, that last one stung a bit. Am I doing that now?
Here’s the queer tea:
I’m married and have been for a little over a year to the love of my present moment. But here’s what no one prepared my wife and I for:
There are no queer examples of marriage. There are no examples around us right now or a manual of how-to un-fuck the patriarchal set up of marriage – or – the idea of what monogamous love is.
What we do have is an overwhelming mountain of heteronormative/gendered behaviors of control, isolation, and anti-communal love.
When my wife and I got married in December 2019 we set up our wedding ceremony to smash this shit-show I just stated. We had a communal ceremony. We asked for accountability in how we love as a queer community. We had such high hopes of that dynamic and then the pandemic happened.
A world-wide traumatic event shattered resistance for a minute because we felt threatened and needed to build survival.
For queer folks and marginalized communities, I think, we know this reaction well. If I want to live, I must find ways to not die. And since this behavior, at least for me, has been rooted in isolation and hiding of emotions for the sake of survival – well… that’s a recipe for depression and loss.
What has resulted in many households of my friends and our own is an incredible strain on relationship.
….Well, you’re supposed to be my source of love and joy – that’s what marriage is so if we’re stuck together, it will be ok because we have each other….
If we think biblical for a moment, Genesis speaks of kin-ship or community and I’m sure that the heteronormative understanding of marriage or monogamous relationships makes space for that as much as it makes less space for community to flourish.
What if we were as fluid as Adam was?
Adam, the genderless being from the dirt - just let that sit for a moment….
I’m speaking of monogamy because I would identify at this time as a monogamous person. But I would invite a re-discovery and questioning of how we can queer monogamy, queer marriage and queer our world, honestly.
If heteronormativity cultivates behaviors of control, isolation, and anti-communal love, then queer resistance of love can cultivate behaviors of fluidity, spacial awareness, and communal love.
Perhaps, we have to be the examples of queer relationships and marriage. Perhaps, we must start here.
Brown shares that through the radical honesty of speaking from our root systems “our lives begin to align with our longings, and our lives become a building block for authentic community and ultimately a society that is built around true need and real people, not fake news and bullshit norms.” (PA, 61-62)
I placed this chapter down to look up at my wife. What a fucking hard year this has been. We talked about the lack of queer examples in marriage and the paradox that marriage presents from its roots of formation. We knew that when we pursued marriage. And now as the pandemic still looms but hope emerges with vaccines, we’re back at asking how do we queer this marriage, our bodies and beings for the relationship we desire and the community we hope for?
Here’s my scribbled list:
Asking for needs through consent
Seeking out care for our needs before dumping them onto a partner
Love isn’t isolating or foregoing pleasures with other groups, activities – in this relationship love is fluid and love is seeking out pleasure in new and old ways (that is an active commitment, I think, we have to keep committing to).
Always, always prioritizing your care
Investing in friendships that are honest and caring outside of your marriage or relationship (if that means booking the calendar to ensure this happens – book the calendar)
A practice of love for yourself only (daily affirmations, a lotion routine before bed, etc.)
I’m still reading Pleasure Activism. Slowly and intentionally. And, as I continue to ponder queer marriage and pleasure in my life, I am certainly adopting the terminology of practice ground.