CIIS Public Programs Podcast

transcript

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This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by the Public Programs department of California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land. Through our programming, we strive to amplify the voices of those who have historically been under-represented. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms.  
 
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sonya: Hey, adrienne, how’s it going? 

adrienne: Hi sonya. It's so good to see you.  

sonya: It’s so good to see you. I remember meeting you a couple years ago at the Building Accountable Communities with Mariame. But yeah… 

adrienne: I was remembering that too, I was like, oh, yeah, that sweet face again. 

sonya: And yeah, I guess before we get started, you know, I feel like there's something about just kind of acknowledging that we're humans in the world who might have had a busy day. And so just taking a deep breath. These beautiful people are here to just absorb whatever it is that we have to share, what you really have to share, and you know, just wanted to start with asking you to check in and how are you doing today? Anything that you want to say before we get started? 

adrienne: Well, it's been a good day. Earlier today someone was like, “how are you doing?” And I was like, “I feel like I've really harnessed my energy.” You know, some days the day gets going and your energy is sort of moving in many, many directions and it's like trying to get things done all dispersed and today I felt like, ‘oh, here I go I'm baking bread, here I go I'm doing my work, here I go I'm doing… and I just feel very harnessed…’ and I have to admit we're like in my bedtime territory right now so I'm just sort of like I just drank some black tea, threw on a red lip and I'm just like okay you can do this. [Laughs] I'm here. So, I was like let me put on some sparkles and you know do the... I have this like tincture that my friend Dori Midnight made for Pleasure Activism and I was like, ‘oh I always like when I take that right before a Pleasure Activism event, that also really helps.’ So, all those things you know, it’s a new moon window. [sonya: Yeah] Yeah, so I’m feeling alive. How about you, how are you feeling? 

sonya: I’m doing okay, you know I actually got my COVID vaccine shot yesterday… 

adrienne: Oh wow, congratulations! 

sonya: I actually cried when it happened because it was like, ‘oh my god, I've been holding so much stuff in.’ About what's possible or not possible. I think the woman saw me crying. She's like, “can I still give you the shot?” 

adrienne: You’re like, “no I want this. Give it to me.” Aw that’s so beautiful. Congratulations. 

sonya: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. So, let me ask you another question because they're these two amazing books, Pleasure Activism, obviously that we're going to talk a lot about, but you also just wrote this incredible book, We Will Not Cancel Us, which I have a gang of questions about. Yeah.  

adrienne: I’m like can we talk about this like… 

sonya: One thing I’ve learned from you is to like go with the flow of like what’s alive. So, if we start with a few questions about We Will Not Cancel Us and then lead to Pleasure Activism. Does that sound okay?  

adrienne: Yes! I’m fine with it. I actually would like love to hear what you think about it because we’re in this work, you know.  

sonya: Yeah, we’re in this work. Well, I’ll tell you what I think about it. It made me feel a little repaired. It made me feel softer. It was like a really big gift. I feel like I thought it was one of the most bravest things I've read. You know, I know that you wrote Unthinkable Thoughts in July and then you followed up with this book, and I feel like it's this brave love letter to the movement particularly, you know movements for justice to give voice to both a movement that strives to be about liberation and harm and abolition but also suffers from enacting some punitive stuff.  

That gets totally, you know, codified into like cancel culture, and calling out culture, and shaming and so I guess you know, and I think what's amazing is you also talk about just this like this idea that we're replicating the carceral system. The very system that we're trying to abolish as a system that we're replicating with each other and that we should be really choosing life. And so, you know in choosing each other and I was like, ‘ahhhh!’, you know, it just feels so much gratitude for that work. So, I guess for others that are here, like man you wrote this book. Oh man. How do you want to frame it for people? Why did you write it? What do you want to say about it? 

adrienne: Yeah, yeah. Well, first of all, thank you. I mean thanks for reading it. You know, like I really... I really have been in this place where I'm like, ‘please people read this book’ and feel the love. It is a love letter. It felt like writing a love letter. Yeah, and when I first wrote the piece and when it was like… that was also a love letter, but it was like, you know, sometimes love shows up as rage or love shows up is like shouting out, you know, just like ‘ah, come on y'all like come on.’ There's just such a you know... I recognize now looking back that I was like, I was coming back out of a sabbatical and I got hit with just wave after wave of ‘call this person out,’ ‘do this,’ ‘cancel this person.’ Like I'm... and I was just like it made me feel so full of grief, you know, that was just like this is... we are who we have, and we are all fucking up.  

I mean we are, like we are immersed in a system that is training and socializing and shaping us to hurt each other. And so, we're hurting each other. But then here we are saying we believe that we can move beyond this system. And so, I think the framing up of it is like if you're, if you're an abolitionist, if you're saying defund the police, if you're talking about wanting to end the carceral system, if you're talking about wanting to end policing and prisons and if you've ever had a loved one who either caused an egregious harm and you watch them grow and change or cause egregious harm and you saw them not get a chance. Not get a second chance, not get the opportunity to return, whether that was because they went into the carceral system or because you know, they got canceled in their community or dismissed in their commuter or something else.  

It's for all of us to be in this conversation with each other because the anger is righteous, the feelings that as survivors that we have that are like I want this person who has hurt me as far away from me as possible and I don't want them to be able to hurt anyone else, and all of that is legitimate, righteous. Those are the right feelings. It's like that's how it feels, so I'm like so then what do we do? And I think that to me the book is asking that question of like, I don't think that the just rampant cancelation, rampant call out everywhere is the answer. I want us to reserve that technology for the times when it is the only possible option, and then I want us to skill ourselves up in a bunch of other options and you know, we know this right.  

When we first met each other, Beyond Survival was not out as a textbook right? Now it is. Fumbling Towards Repair was not out as a workbook. Now it is. Patrisse Cullors has a book coming out this year, The Abolitionist’s Handbook. Andrea Ritchie is working on a book on abolition and emergent strategy. Mia Mingus has a website full of resources like there's so many options, you know, like it's like little shoots, little green shoots coming out of the earth. Like actually there's abundance under here of resources and skills and stuff.  

The next book I have coming out is a facilitation and mediation book and I'm like mediation is a part of this, community accountability processes is a part of this, turning inward and asking ourselves ‘from where can I generate the compassion to continue being in relationship with people who have caused harm?’ Especially people who have not caused it directly to me. Right so I'm like when someone's caused harm directly to me, I want my boundary. I want to be able to set it. But if they cause it to someone else who’s in the community, am I not responsible for that person, you know, and my mentor I was... I was grateful to have… lucky to have Grace Lee Boggs as one of my mentors and she's been in my mind a lot lately.  

One thing she talked about was like we have to be able to take responsibility for each other and for our communities and I think that's what Mariame Kaba is talking about, you know, when she's saying like we're not going to move from the carceral system to some other system where we outsource accountability and we outsource ending harm. Like whatever this transition looks like it's one where at the end we have more responsibility for holding those who are still socialized to cause harm. We have more responsibility for each other. So, it's all of that in a very tiny book. It's a lot of questions. You know that I'm grateful every time someone's like, “I read it,” like I think especially people who read the original essay because I'm like, “just read the book.” It's like a lot happened in those windows, those months, in that window. 

sonya: Yeah. How was it received by the community would you say? Because it's a pretty big thing to say like, “hey folks, let's get ourselves and be vulnerable.” Look at like, what are the things that we’re doing, right, and what are the things we could probably work on to change? Which they're not always well received. So, I'm really curious about... 

adrienne: Oh, yeah. [Laughs] Yeah. I mean, you know, the overwhelming response was positive initially and then at the second wave came that was like, “you messed up and here's the ways you messed up,” and it took a while for me to be able to hear that. You know, I was really… you know, I felt so passionately like I'm doing this thing that is an act of love. And so, it was really hard for me to hear that I had fumbled in certain places, but because the other feedback was so positive that was like this is happening in our communities, it’s happening in our institutions, it’s happening here, here, here. I felt like there was something worth saving. I was like, can I clear away what isn't right about this and get to the like root system of what is right inside of that and... the feedback to the actual book has been really incredible. Like there's definitely a few people who are still like, “I'm not reading it” or “I'm not engaging with it” or “I’m still not feeling it” and that's fine. Right? [sonya: Totally] Because for me I really want people to just... I'm like have these conversations in your community. Make a choice, right, make choices about how you want to hold this. I felt like we were operating without having had those conversations. Let's get into these distinctions.  

A lot of people have reached out to me who read the original piece and read the book and are like, “good job. Like you did it. You listened. We can use this, like we can go. This gives us a jumping-off point.” So, you know, yeah, it's a slow burn though. I expect it to be like a slow process, right? Because it's one of those things where people you know, there's a lot of people who are like... I don't know... It's kind of like, “I don’t want to be seen with that book yet.” You know. “I gotta see what other people think about it,” and that's okay, too. 

sonya:  Well, here's what I think. Like cutting edge work that's hard to say is actually not going to be received well all the time, right, and it's going to be painful, and you might be lonely as the writer and I think we hold writers to the standard of like you're supposed to know everything even before we've like thought about it all together. So, you wrote a blog piece at a moment in time and then you wrote a book that was filling out all the other ends of this blog piece. So, I found it to be like here's the heart of something that really needed to be said and then here are the things that needed to get filled out.  

And so, in that filling out I think wanting to ask you about two things. One is you make this beautiful distinction between conflict, abuse, and harm which I feel like is really important, you know, it's so at the essence of it not getting collapsed. So, I wonder if you want to say something about that here. 

adrienne: Yeah. I mean, I really want to uplift Maryse Mitchell-Brody and Emmy Cain because... and my sister Autumn Brown because they all sat down with me with critical feedback about the original piece, which was that I was doing that same collapsing. That I was saying like, “yeah, we are collapsing all this stuff into one response,” and they're like, “yeah and you are collapsing all of this into one conversation, and it needs to be pulled apart and it needs to be held distinctly.” And so, you know, then I started looking around for resources. I'm like, ‘well who has pulled it apart?’ Is there some place where it's really clear and I didn't find something that I was like ‘this is clear, I think that people could pick this up and run with it.’  

But I learned. I felt like I was learning, you know, because I'm someone who's like... I've experienced all these things and I still can collapse them. So, one of the big things I wanted to pull apart was power dynamics inside of it, that abuse is when someone is actively doing a power-over move, right? Actively using whatever privileged position, positionality, social location they have to manipulate, to gaslight, to hurt another person, to control another person. And the idea is, how can I keep that person in my control? How could I keep this institute in my control? Because we do have those kind of abuses of power. How can I keep this nation in my control? We've just come out of having four years of an abusive president… and that being able to make the distinction of like when is it abuse and that abuse really can't be mutual. Like it's not like we're just having... we just have a fucked up power dynamic, whatever it’s like someone is actually working the situation and there's some attention to it.  

And then conflict right is where people may be at a power differential. They may be on the same level. They may be multiple folks involved but it’s really like two positions that are being held, sometimes more, that are just not aligned with each other. And what I was seeing happen on the internet a lot was that both those things, like someone being abusive and two people being in conflict or two or more people being in conflict get collapsed into the language of harm.  

And so, harm is much harder to actually parse out like well, what is it, who gets to determine what is harmful? And harm is really about impact. And I remember as a facilitator there's this agreement that I often use which is... it's basically, you know, whenever someone says, “oh you hurt me,” people are like, “I didn't mean to,” right? And so, it's like, “okay. I honor your good intentions, but I have to attend to the impact.” And to me harm is when we're talking about the impact, that it's like I felt harmed, that harm may have happened because you did not operate with principle struggle. You didn't have integrity in the conflict. It may have come from abusive behavior. Right?  

And it's really determined by the person who's experiencing it and what I find right now is we have like this wave where people are calling everything harm and then it becomes very... and I am guilty of this too, but I was really like, ‘yeah harm,’ and I understand it. We look for these shortcuts to be able to talk about impact. So those are some of the things that I kind of was able to pull apart. I also kept going, I was like and there's also misunderstandings. There's holding contradictions, which a ton of movement organizations are operating inside contradictions that they then hold each other accountable to as if they're not the contradictions of the world.  

So, people who are in nonprofits being furious at other people in the same nonprofit for you know colluding with capitalism, but I'm like everyone who's working in the nonprofit industrial complex is colluding with capitalism because they're participating in philanthropy. Now, we need to drag philanthropy or destroy philanthropy, right? There's moves to make there but that contradiction to hold it against each other as if it's an individualization as opposed to understanding it’s an organizational setting.  

You know, those kinds of things I was like, how do we discern, discern, discern here and then be able to really say the call-out, the cancellation is for those people who are engaging in abuse and it's in people who are engaging abuse repeatedly, often. It’s people who are engaging in abuse and we have tried to hold them accountable in methods that would not make it a huge public show, because I think a lot of times then it becomes this public show of having a certain politic instead of actually being able to address this person's journey for change. So yeah, it's all about like developing some common language to have more distinctions to have more discernment around if possible. 

sonya: Yeah, absolutely. Um, you know, there's so much in the work that you're also speaking towards like abolition and talking about abolition, right? And so, there is this piece where we say, we're about something and then we have this contradiction like nonprofits in philanthropy like enacting, re-enacting sort of carceral thinking, othering each other in ways that are just like really unpleasant.  

So, you know just talk to us about abolition. Like I feel like it's just like it's a word that's thrown out, but it's so deep. It's so powerful. It's got such a lineage, and like what is abolition inside and out? What is it? How do we be abolitionists with each other? Which is a question you asked. How do we do that? And not hold the punitive… You know, I think even sometimes the extreme of the call-out, you know that we... you know, it's debatable to me. Like just what like when we're talking about being you know punitive. How do we really... how do we excavate the punitiveness from who we are right? Huh? What is this whole abolition thing? What is all of that?  

adrienne: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know in this journey, I think the first time when I was like, ‘I'm an abolitionist’ is... I was reading about abolition in the period of enslavement active, you know enslavement chattel slavery. And the kind of people who said, “I stand against this entire system. Nobody should ever own another person, and nobody should be able to punish another person.” The ways that these people are punishing and owning their labor and all of those things and if you paid any attention to the prison industrial complex at all, you know that slavery didn't end, it transformed.  

So, we have this new way of doing it where we can own people, put them behind bars, use their labor, and punish them in whatever way we deem correct. And so, to me the work of abolition never ended it. It also transformed. So now we see people who are like I'm arguing against the prison state, I’m arguing against policing. And so, for me, you know, and I think this is... it's been a great tension. Like I've had this tension this conversation with a lot of people that are like, “well, we can't be like the carceral state. We don't have the power that the carceral state holds. We don't have the power that the police hold, you know,” and I'm like, “we don't have that power. We also don't have no power.” Like there's something about the power of having a community and saying there's belonging, and you get to be a part of that belonging and we will hold you through whatever harm you cause. And you know, a huge part of transformative justice, which I think is like the modern flow of abolition, you know, is saying like we want to keep people out of the carceral state, and I think the distinction or maybe the piece that I'm saying is like I also want to keep them out of punishment like I don’t want to cause them additional harm and I believe that when people are causing this kind of harm it's because harm has happened to them.  

There's this beautiful quote Danielle Sered has offered us that's like, “nobody experiences harm the first time when they're enacting it on another person”, that these things get socialized and planted into us. So, for me, abolition is like how do we end the cycle of harm that is running underneath the policing, the prisons, the punishment, the othering, the pushing people out and wanting to say when someone causes harm, “you're no longer a part of us. We will put you elsewhere.” And I also think trying to... it’s like the punitive part to excavate it for me, I've had to really examine how much I enjoy it. Right? And why do I enjoy it? And I enjoy it because it means I'm not like that [laughs] You know, I still belong. I still belong, I haven't done something that bad or if I did, I never got caught or whatever it is, but I'm not bad like those people and I'm like, ‘what is that about?’ Is there something in me this wired to want to destroy? How do I turn and look at the shadow of that? And I'm like, I don't want to say, and it only started during slavery because I'm like all of our peoples going back throughout history, all of our peoples have different places where we have caused each other great harm. And enjoyed punishment and you know, they're gladiators and that we've gotten joy out of watching people, other humans destroyed.  

So, it's a very old tendency. I don't think we'll resolve it overnight or very quickly, but I definitely don't think we're going to get to true abolition if we don't examine it, if we don't turn and face it because I'm like, I don't want us to say, “okay. We got rid of the prison system and now we just rampantly punish each other, you know much more,” and nobody ever gets to relax and into belonging and knowing like on my worst day I still belong to somewhere to some people, you know? 

sonya: Yeah. I mean, I think that's so deep, like not a question that many people have asked is like, why do we... like what... and I think you ask it. Why does it feel like we're committed to punishment and enjoying it? The enjoying it part, like what is that all about? And I just, I'm not sure there's an answer but just really being able to sit with like when it was... because we talk about when it feels bad. Bad that I did this thing, but like when it feels kind of good that I said that thing and I needled you and I... 

adrienne: Yeah, because it also... it creates a different kind of belonging. Like part of what I was seeing was like, oh the price of belonging now is will tear down this person to join the group. Who I don't know, you know, like I'm like, I don't know that person. I don't know the person who's asked me to tear them down. I don't know the scenario that happened like even amongst my friends, you know, and I think who’s very close to you will tell you that, like if they come and say “this asshole did this” or whatever I'll be like, “tell me more, like what happened,” you know, like I want to understand the whole dynamic and I just try to hold some space for you know, I'm like even if they were an asshole in this moment, right, this is still you know, the father of your children or that you know, this is still someone who you at some point cared about or loved and are they a lost cause, you know? And is what we need, a boundary or is it the destruction of that person?  

And I think a lot about that. Octavia Butler is you know, I’m like a scholar of her work and she says, “our fatal human flesh…” she wrote it into a story so, it's not like she walked around saying it. But, “our fatal human flaw is our commitment to the combination of hierarchy and intelligence.” That we use our intelligence always to keep enacting hierarchy, hierarchy, hierarchy. Through war, through punishment, through all these different steps, through supremacies. We're constantly saying, “I am better than,” “no. I am,” “no, I am,” “no I am,” and we're going to hierarchicalize ourselves right off the planet, you know, like we have actually something that we need to attend to which is our relationship with the planet and we're so busy warring with each other, battling each other, tearing each other down, that we’re not attending to the real struggle of our lives, you know, so... 

sonya: Absolutely. Yeah. All right one more question about this and then we'll move to a whole ‘nother subject! 

adrienne: And then we'll go have a great time. [laughing] 

sonya: Yeah, we’ll go and have a great time and just be pleasurable.  

adrienne: I find this pleasurable also. 

sonya: Absolutely me too. 

adrienne: I mean I want to talk about these things, that’s why I wrote that, you know.  

sonya: Yeah, well I mean, absolutely. I’m assuming that like hard conversations… and like I was thinking about labor. I was thinking about the labor you put into this book and the fear that you might’ve had to confront and like people’s feedback. And just like the relationship between labor and joy, you know, like, doing something hard and feeling pleasure. Just sort of… and maybe that’s something you could even speak to as like, what do you feel is a relationship between like hard work and fulfillment and pleasure? 

adrienne: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think there's something, like, Tupac said like, “I don't want it if it's that easy,” you know, like I've always been the kind of... right, you know I'm a Virgo. I'm like, I like to work hard. I like to really dig into something. And in this instance, it was like I have this very strong sense that was like ‘this is worth it. This is worth it.’ Like people that I respect are upset with me and I didn't do this as well as I could have, like I wasn't patient, you know, I was like, I didn't look to see what the right wing was saying about this or where JK Rowling was, or all these things, you know people throwing everything that has to do with cancel culture in my way. And I didn't look at all that.  

But when I look ahead, like if I imagine being a part of an era of intervention, right, where we're like ‘no y'all, you know abolition means we have to go this way.’ Like we're heading this way, but actually we got to pull ourselves over here. We've got to go this way, like, for something much greater than ourselves, if we're going to break with centering whiteness, and centering supremacy, and centering these ways, we have to go this way.  

Then when I think about what movement might feel like that makes me... it makes me very emotional. You know, when I think of how hard it has been to be in movement or I'm like, ‘this is the place I most want to belong is amongst the freedom fighters of our time.’ I want us to belong to each other and to have each other's backs and to speak well of each other when we're not in the room and to just look and be like, ‘wow, look how hard... we're all working so hard, like so far beyond any reasonable capacity. We are just trying to fix the whole world, you know,’ and I want us to fight for each other and when we see each other fall, I want to look and be like, “oh my God, you fell down, like... let me pause and let me help you get up and like let's... like I'm gonna... lean on me. Like let's go,” you know, and we're so far from that right now and that's okay. You know, we've been under attack for so long. I think we're tired and you know, you always take it out on the ones closest to you when you’re that tired.  

But yeah, I feel like what I'm committed to is like I want movement to feel like a joyful place, a joyful place where you enter and there's a lot of hard work, but you're like, ‘I belong. I'm going to work hard, and when I fuck up people are going to tell me, and we are going to work it through, and I know how to set boundaries and other people can give me boundaries. I know how to honor and respect those. And I will recover from my mistakes, you know, yeah for not just myself but like on behalf of my people, my community, my species like I will learn how to be a better human.’ Like I'm like, that's what I want movement to be about, you know, and so I feel like it's not a joy necessarily in the present moment, but you know part of what I'm trying to learn from our Indigenous comrades, it's like we have to be willing to think a lot longer than just our own lives and like I can navigate it if like there's people who are mad at me for the rest of my short life if it means that in three generations or four generations movement feels like a love place, you know. I’m like that'll have been worth it. The joy. I'll be a joyful ancestor. You know, I’ll be okay. 

sonya: Yeah, beautiful. Yeah. I'm going to just share something a little harder, a little more vulnerable for me. Just you know, I mean, I think for spiritual, political reasons, I have still put myself in sort of a place of calling myself a restorative justice person because I think... and it's more an evolved iteration. It's really about uprooting harm, you know from a paradigm that's grounded in not being punitive and in relationship and I know it has flaws, you know, and there's also a tradition in Oakland, and in Chicago, and in New York that is very aligned in racial justice and gender justice.  

And when I hear... and this is a movement thing, right when I hear people in the transformative justice community kind of like down it, I get hairs and my hairs go up. I get angry. I want to be a crab in a barrel, and I’m like “mrr mrr mrr and you do this,” and I hate that part of me. I hate the side of me that gets catty and gets angry because I feel disrespected, right, because I feel like well you don’t see my work so why should I see your work. And I feel like you know, I feel like there's... what your book did for me was feel like it's a part of a way to bridge something right? 

So, when we name like what might be wrong in our own movements, and like how we could just give each other a lot more grace of like hey things are young. We're still trying to figure things out you know? [adrienne: yes (laughing)] And being kind of like radically honest about each other and about not speaking crap, you know when we're out of the room. [adrienne: yes, yes] Like let's have some real talk about that, let's have some real talk about how we unearth and excavate those things so that we can actually be... I want to be... I want to belong. [adrienne: with!] Yes, in the mud, in the mud. [laughing] 

adrienne: Me too! And sonya, like I really love that you said this particular point because I'm so guilty of that of, that restorative thing, you know, because now I'm starting to understand like I'm more of a philosopher like I'm like, but you know just for me, it's just like the idea. I'm like very clearly I can just feel it, ‘punitive is this,’ and ‘restorative is this,’ but then transformative… you know like I get really into it and I was in a conversation with someone last year who was just like a restorative justice activist, and they’re like “don't dismiss what I'm up to” and I was like, “I'm not! Like I'm just saying like that's great but, like…” and she's like, “but yours is better.” And I was like [exaggerated gasps]. Like I was just… I was just you know it was just like one of those beautiful moments where I was like it didn't even… I was like “obviously we all want to be moving towards whatever goes to the root” and she was like, “but we've been doing really good work here for a long time,” and I just... to me it's so important to take those moments and be like that doesn't feel good, can we unpack why it doesn't feel good? Can I get more thorough? Can I get more inclusive? Can I not, you know, be engaging like oh there's something better or what’s this other new thing now it's new and we've created it, it’s better. So, I actually really appreciate that because I'm like that's how we get in being in a conversation… you know being in it together and not just like battling with vocabulary, but really being able to be like, what is the idea that you're moving forward? [sonya: right] Here's the idea. I'm moving forward, like that’s the way it goes. 

sonya: Yes, and how do we really work with what we're about with our hearts and our actions and not get stuck on the words, you know? Yeah. Thank you for listening to that. I really appreciate it. Yeah, so let's move to Pleasure Activism because like someone's going to kill me if we don't talk about this. Everyone’s like “we thought this talk was about Pleasure Activism!” 

adrienne: [overlapping and laughing] they’re like, “um we came here on a Friday night with our drinks in our hands” you know [laughs].  

sonya: Yeah, and our voices to talk about Pleasure Activism, hello. So, here’s my question. Like I wanna start out with just like, I found like… I was just so excited to read this book. It felt so much more than an anthology. It felt like an all boats rise, like a collective lifting up of Black women and their wisdom, and their care, and their pleasure. And not denying the joy of Black women, and so I want… I just want to ask you about why it's so important to position the work in this way, why it's so important to talk about Black woman's joy and pleasure and why that has to be prioritized in this time?  

adrienne: That’s great. Well, you know, my orientation with my whole life is being like, okay, what's the best stuff I ever heard and the best stuff I ever learned and then like, how can I amplify that and keep going with it. Whatever that looks like. So, Octavia Butler is that for me, has been that teacher Mariame Kaba is one of those teachers, you know, I'm just like okay Mariame is right and let's keep going and there's a lot of those teachers but Audre Lorde is a major one.  

And so, when I read The Uses of the Erotic as Power it shook me, it shook me like there's a particular paragraph in there where she talks about once we have experienced that erotic yes it becomes impossible to settle for those states which are not native to us such as self-negation, such as despair. And I spent a lot of my twenties I think when I look back, I was in despair a lot and I didn't know the language for... I couldn't figure it out, but I didn't feel at home in my body and I didn't have a larger analysis around that, I just thought there was something wrong with me and I didn't understand that oppression and trauma displaced us from ourselves and from our inherent right to pleasure and to satisfaction, and when I use pleasure here it really is that contentment, joy, satisfaction, like being able to really feel the good in your life.  

So, Audre opened the door for me you know that was like there's a way that you can reclaim yourself that doesn't require anyone else giving you permission to be or liberating you from anything. It's like you will have to do this but once you do it, you won't be able to you won't go back and I wanted that guarantee. Right? And I want that guarantee for everyone who's ever experienced oppression to understand that when oppression happens, when the trauma of oppression lands on us and in us, it distorts us from our inherent purpose of being a human. Which is, I believe, our purpose is to move towards life. It's we are life moving towards life. We are creating more ways of being alive. We are in these biodiverse systems that want to live and want to you know be dazzlingly different from each other. It's actually a really miraculous thing that is true all through nature. Everything in nature is moving towards more life. And so are we. And but then in that... inside of that distortion we could think, ‘no I want to take my life,’ or ‘no, I want to take someone else's life,’ or ‘I will sacrifice my whole life, or maybe my whole life will just be drudgery. And then I'll retire and have a good year or two on the beach before I die. I’ll live a living death and I will negate all of my desires and all of my longings.’  

Which, having seen enough Black women do that, I'm like we are losing so much brilliance. We are losing so many ideas. We are losing so many… there's so many creations and stories and things we need that are being lost to that impact of long-term trauma and oppression. So now I think it's actually a really important piece of what this era is about. We have secured so much freedom, you know, that was the other thing as I said, I was like, ‘I'm one of the freest black people to ever live, but I can't enjoy it.’ I'm not enjoying it, you know, what we're all... I'm still finding ways to sabotage and bind myself to structures that don't love me and don't care about me.  

So, pleasure activism really is like all the work we do to reclaim our purpose, ourselves from oppression. And then to look at the things that give us pleasure and to make sure that we are not numbing, that we are not deadening our lives, but that we are doing the things that bring us to life, that help us figure out our purpose. That move us towards ourselves and towards right relationship with each other and towards right relationship with the planet.  

It's really... it's incredible. It's incredible what happens in a room that is invited to move together towards life, in a movement that is invited, you know, Black Lives Matter. I think the reason it has been so impactful fundamentally is because life is at the center of it and especially this last year of uprising was like people are dancing in the streets. People are in movement with each other. We are singing the art. You know the movement for Black Lives has become like one of the greatest artists that has ever lived, you know, and it's an exciting thing to be able to feel like look at us reclaiming our aliveness after the oppression of being in this American experiment. 

sonya: Absolutely. Yeah. So beautiful. I'm your words are like cake; you know it’s just so rich. 

adrienne: Here’s cake. Word cake. [laughing] [sonya: Word cake!] That's great. I'm into the word cake.  

sonya: Yeah, lots of frosting. [adrienne laughs] Yeah, there’s something about… the book is very, it's like a very somatic, liberatory read, you know, like reading it feels like a journey of the body. It feels like it's a journey of your body and then like sharing the possibilities for others to have journeys with their own bodies. And I love how you... there's something you wrote about how the love of your body didn't start with diet and exercise, it started with pleasure. It started with pornography, self-pornography, and self-sex, and I'm just wondering if you'd be willing to share a little bit about sort of the body journey for you. 

adrienne: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I like many people I think in my generation, my first relationships with my body were corrective, you know, my first intention, I was like, ‘oh, I must be fixing my body. Like I have this body, and so clearly something is wrong with it. Like it doesn't look like a body that would go on Cosmo. It must be fixed.’ And so, dieting and exercising and constantly trying to fix and change my body happened early. I was told when I was very young, “no one wants to marry a fat girl.” And this was like the first time I gained like 10 pounds, you know, and so it was punitive, you know, it was like I was constantly like something is wrong, it must be corrected, and I must deny myself things that give me pleasure.  

And I went to college, you know, I did the things that seem like pleasure, you know drinking so much, and getting so high, and I discovered numbness which was like next to pleasure and it was like, you know, I’m like, ‘that seems like pleasure.’ But really it started to kick in for me when I got my first vibrator and when I discovered ecstasy. Those were two things where it was like, ‘hold up, hold up, hold up, hold up, hold up.’ Because I had started having orgasms when I was very young, but it was very like you know, like this is a very secretive thing and then I was like wait you can go in a whole store that is just dedicated to that feeling, that was so mind-blowing for me and I'm forever grateful to Babes in Toyland down in the lower east side. [laughing] You know it’s just like I remember the first time walking into that space and walking out with a thing that was mine and it was just about my pleasure and I would go through these days where I was just like I'm just masturbating. Basically, that's my whole purpose today, just have like orgasm after orgasm and probably I was going too far or doing too much but I was just like I felt so alive. I was like, I don't need anything else. I just I'm feeling myself like I could feel you know, the wiring inside my body. I was like this is connected to this is connected to that. Like it just felt like such an internal discovery and then ecstasy was like you know, it really saved my life and I think as with anything I want to always be careful with these things.  

So, I'm like if you have an addictive personality, you have to be careful with everything. I have to be careful with everything, and it was amazing to come across this medicine that... and I was… I started my political kind of like activist career. My first activist job was at the Harm Reduction Coalition, which was such a blessing and probably the reason I'm still alive. Because I was trained like to reduce the harm that comes along with using drugs. Make sure you use them in moderation. If you can't use in moderation, don't use that substance. There's many others like there was so much about it that was like... there's a... I had a little ecstasy testing kit so I can actually test the pills that I received to make sure that they were MDMA and not speed or whatever. All that stuff was like really wonderful to have as a 21, 22 year-old just in New York, right, and I would go, I would get my pills on a you know Friday night or whatever and I would go feel alive and chase that feeling and just be dancing and I felt beautiful. I felt sexual. I would have people who you know walking down the street would never turn their heads and then all the sudden because my aliveness was so irresistible, they were turning, you know, and just being like I want you.  

All of that was so empowering… and you know looking back I'm like there was also depression, right, there was a lot happening, all concurrently. I'm very blessed about the therapy that I started receiving in that time that helped me sort of place it all in context like could have my therapist asked me like, could you, imagine feeling that without the drugs, without the vibrators without any of those things… and then because I had this map in my, I was like I know this is possible in my system. That led me on this journey of celibacy. It led me on a journey of putting all the substances down for some time and I wanted to know if I could, and I could. And that was like maybe one of the most liberating the, you know, the first sabbatical that I took. I really was like you don't need anything else for this. This is just in the body.  

So, now it's like one of my missions in life. You know, I really want everyone to know like, no matter how much harm, how many times you've been hit, how much you've been abused, like no matter what has been taken from you, no matter how much you've been trained to believe that your body can never feel safe, reclamation is possible. Reclamation is possible, and it might not be total, but there is a there is a path. There are many paths back into yourself and I recommend you know, somatic practitioners finding a group of somatic, you know trainers, you know, somatically held support group so that you have people who are just like what does it feel like to return to the body and I think anything is possible, you know as you find your home in your body which is the only you know, this is my anti-capitalist pitch. I'm like, the only thing you ever actually have in this whole life is your body. Everything else, you know, you'll lose it, you’ll give it away you can be taken off but not the body. So yeah, and yeah now I have arthritis so there's also this pain element. It's like, how do I… it's like, oh that still works, even though you know, it's like I am in pain. There's moments when it's less, there's moments when it's more.  But so now, I'm in the next level of learning, how do I find pleasure with chronic pain and you know new levels. 

sonya: New levels. Yeah. I mean there's something I was thinking about that like age, and how things change you know at different ages. 

adrienne: It's not a game. [laughs] It’s not a game. It happens so much faster than you think it’s going to.  

sonya: Ow, not that way. 

adrienne: No, and you know, it starts to get ‘cause I remember when I was young you would just like hurt yourself and then you would recover and now it’s just like sometimes I worry myself, I’ll be like dang, I think that’s a forever one. Now that’s just what's up with my ankle or whatever like stuff will happen. I'm like that, you know, I don’t know if this disc is going to heal or whatever and you know trying to face that and be like, how do I not surrender to hopelessness? How do I let that become a part of my identity now [sonya: exactly] and you know heal what I can heal but be with myself still if something's not going to heal, so. 

sonya: So real. You said something so beautiful about, and you wrote this too about this idea and I think it's really alive, kind of with like survivorship and ending rape culture and this idea that we're not going to end it by squashing our desire. You know, we're not going to end it by not being honest about shame, and desire, and pleasure… and I love this question that you have is you know, just about how we might even imagine desire that is liberated from patriarchy. 

Like, can we even imagine what desires looks like that isn't somehow in patriarchy and I think that also connects to like all the stuff you talked about in terms of queer sex and just all of our internalized homophobia, all of our socialization, all the regressive thinking of you know beliefs and so just wondering if you could talk a little bit about that? Like just yeah, all these decolonizing, unearthing just simple, just little simple questions you know, but they’re so alive, and I feel like they come in these micro moments and I’ll be like ‘oh I’m so liberated and all of a sudden I’m be like man, I’m being such a ugh’. You know, like I’m so, I’m being like ‘there’s that internalized homophobia right there.’ 

adrienne: There it is. And it helps so much to notice it, right? To just be like, ‘oh, I just called you Daddy. How do I feel about that?’ [sonya laughs] Like whatever it is, and it's just like you know, how do I claim what I want to claim? You know, I'm always looking at myself like, how do I not shame myself? How do I claim what I want to claim? How do I bring power into it? Because I can do anything. You know, that's one of things I think that BDSM Community teaches you is you can really do anything you fucking want to, but you have to do it from… you’re powerful.  

You know, it's like I consent to this. This is my choice. This is my agency, but I think that thing I'll say, you know decolonization. I love this term because it's like take back the land, take the land back, and it makes me think of the territory of the body, right? That I'm like the body, my mind, this is what I have and colonization, capitalism, and patriarchy, white supremacy, and ableism have all tried to take me from myself, take my body away from me, make me feel that I don't have agency in it. And so, whenever I have those moments where I’m like, I’m reclaiming myself. I'm taking this part of me back and queer sex is an incredible one. You know, where it's like, oh this sex is not lesser sex. Like it's not like we're doing the best we can without that penis, you know?  

I'm like no, no, no… like if you are wired for queer sex… if you are wired… it depends how, and I do believe in that kind of idea of the wiring right? I think some people are wired more for monogamy and others are wired more for polyamory. I think some are wired for you know, opposite sex-sex, and some are wired for other things. Me, I'm just like I'm wired for pleasure. So, the gender, the genitals, like none of that has never, has ever really quite mattered to me, but that internalized homophobia was still showing up where I was like, but we still have to figure out like where the penis will come from. Like, is this the penis? Or do you have a penis? Or is your penis your mind? And there was just this moment of evolving where I was like… or not. There's no penis here and we're going to still have a fantastic time and I'm going to penetrate you and is going to be with my fingers my finger’s going to be the best thing that ever happened to you or like just really like landing in the confidence of like all these bodies are made to bring pleasure to each other. How do we be with that?  

I think now starting to live outside of the male gaze and outside of the white gaze are two actions that I’m like no matter who you are, for white people, for women, for men, everyone I'm like, how do you unhook yourself from seeing everything through that very limited lens and how do you begin to look at yourself through your own lens, right? So, I started having these moments where I was like, ‘oh am I really looking in the mirror at myself through the lens of a of someone who's not here? Some white man?’ You know, I'm like, ‘oh, you look like a big Black woman.’ I'm like, but what if I look at myself through the eyes of a big Black woman. I'm like you’re fucking gorgeous. Like you look fantastic. You look like home. You look sexy. You look like a statue from the earliest time in history. You look like, right? You start to see yourself through something that predates the categories of whiteness, right. You’re something that predates such a limited concept of gender. Something that is primal, right?  

And I do think there's something in that, which is how do you begin to desire yourself, whatever yourself may be? And that has been such a liberating experience. I was just in conversation with my friend sonya Renee Taylor… we are doing, we're setting off, embarking on this journey called The Radical Permission Institute, and one of the things we talked about in planning it was how for both of us we have these massive awakening erotic experiences of being like, I desire myself. I'm calling out my own name when I cum. Like I want me. I want my pleasure, and I have learned how to see and touch myself, and the kind of touch I like and not just for orgasm, but just for the aliveness to feel my skin, you know to feel myself and my skin… and that there's actually something quite sacred about it. And Alexis Pauline Gumbs is another teacher in this, it’s is like if God is change, you know if we accept what Octavia teaches us, God is this force of change, then each of us is that force of change, each of us is divine, and how do you make love to something divine, right? How do you live a life as someone divine interacting with a bunch of other divine beings? It's a very different way of moving through the world than I'm someone who doesn't even deserve attention. I can't believe you're looking at me. I don't look like a magazine cover. Whatever. I'm like, I don't care about that.  

sonya: Yeah. This is, wasn’t, oh yea go ahead, go ahead. 

adrienne: Well, I just I'm like, I want more people to notice the scripts in their minds, you know that I’m like who, you know Malcolm X, who taught you to hate yourself, right? Like really someone benefits from you hating yourself someone benefits from you thinking there's something to fix. Who is that? And where, how much attention do you want to give them in your life? Right? Because by the time you notice that they're there, for me, it had already been like 20 years that I'd given them, you know rent-free occupation inside of my mind. 

sonya: Yeah. [Laughing gently] 

adrienne: And so, I just like you're moving out and I'm not, it's not fully to the place where they're nowhere in me. You know, they still show up sometimes. Like my partner is designing clothes and I tried on something the other day and it didn't fit and I was like [gasps] and I was like, hold up. Hold up. Hold up. I just need to show her how to make what’s going to fit me.  

sonya: Yeah, right. 

adrienne: That’s different, that's a whole different orientation than I'll never look good in boxer briefs. I’m like, yes, I will. I will.  You know, maybe it’ll just take a few more iterations, you know? 

sonya: The boxer briefs are wrong. 

adrienne: The boxer briefs are wrong. It's not me that’s wrong. No, yeah. [laughs] 

sonya: Yeah, I'm so curious about like this is an… yeah, like I'm curious about like so the piece of discernment, right? Like so there's this place where it's like is this coming from oppression or is this coming from the wired-ness right? So, like if someone sitting there, if I'm sitting here and going like ‘well am I wired for monogamy, or is it that I have scripts in my mind telling me that?’ I’m actually and like, how do you help how would you help people discern? Or when someone says like “I think I'm more asexual or I think I'm, I'm actually more, you know a nun or I think that I'm you know…” like and then feeling bad that you can’t access pleasure, but maybe I'm so oppressed that like I don't know how to access. 

adrienne: Who knows, right?  

sonya: Yeah. 

adrienne: Exactly, who knows. 

sonya: So like, teasing out that that fine line or just like the both and, the two hundred percent reality of maybe some of it is oppression and maybe it’s wiring and not beating ourselves up, not feeling guilty. What do you have to say about all that? 

adrienne: That’s it right there. That’s it right there. It’s like, for me, the first piece is always like some acceptance, right? Just like, you know, I've had friends who are like “I'm trying so hard to be poly and I'm so miserable like I'm trying so hard because I know that's a better way to be a human, but I'm jealous and angry and…” I’m like “then maybe you're not that like it sounds like you've tried, and you know…” my thing is not to say ‘oh monogamy was oppression and now poly is the new oppression and everyone has to be that.’ I'm like, well no, what we just want to say is there's always spectrums. There's always a range because we are biodiverse. Right, like literally biodiverse.  

So, for me the wiring is a real thing. It's like some creatures in nature pair for life and others don't, and humans have the capacity to do multiple options, to… I tend to do sort of several long, you know, like longer things. Now, I have someone where “I'm like dang I really might be with you for like the whole rest of my whole life.” Like, you know, it's kind of amazing. I didn't expect to enjoy that. It's delightful right? So, these you have to be willing to be with yourself through changes too, and I think that's the piece is you won't know if you don't even ask. So, when I talk to people who are like “I'm just monogamous” you know, and I'm like “have you ever even considered anything else?” Are you monogamous because you’re terrified that that's the only way you can keep the attention of the person you're with? And just to start to interrogate those things a little bit to make sure you are that because it brings you joy, not because it assuages some fear. Because what I see so often is people being like I'm monogamous, but they never relax into it. They're constantly looking for trust, you know, like, how can I possibly trust anybody? I'm like, maybe the trust is hard because one or the other of you is actually not wired for this kind of engagement and like what would it look like to trust each other to be different in this?  

There's this beautiful model called relationship anarchy that I love that I point people towards. Nothing is perfect, but it's pretty close and it has this idea of like what if you begin with trust in a relationship? What if you create your own agreements, you know? Maybe you're monogamous 364 days of the year and then one day something else happens and you don't hold it against each other because there's so many beautiful sexy people in the world, you know? Like maybe right maybe you go through phases of different ways of being. Like I find that I'm very poly when I'm single like you know like I love everyone, and I love all my lovers and it’s just like very delightful. But then when I fall head over heels into romantic love, it's like I don't have the time you know it's literally for me becomes a time like I am romantically involved in my work like I am a romantically I'm romantically right? Like, I wake up like [sighs] ‘my book that I'm writing right now is so sexy to me and that's all I want to think about and give my attention to and my partner.’ You know I'm like those that's a full-time life. So other people are different they're like I actually have the energy the attention to do multiple things for life for years. So, to me it most it is like be curious about where the shaping comes from, give yourself permission to try it out, and then give yourself total acceptance to be however you actually are. 

sonya: That's right. 

adrienne: I also love, and one last thing and I know we're almost at the time zone but… 

sonya: No, that’s alright.  

adrienne: Ursula K. Le Guin is like this incredible sci-fi writer and she talks about these things where it’s like, what happens, hers is a thing where you change genders, so you're like generally non-gendered and then around the time of like a period then you come into, you know, going more towards the feminine and more towards the masculine and it's for the sake of what do you call it mating, right, and then you come back out of it into no gender. So, in the course of your lifetime, you could be, you could carry a child as woman, and then the next time be the father of the child, or whatever else… and it's The Left Hand of Darkness is the name of this book. So, I think about that too that I'm like maybe all of the labels could fall away, and you can just be like what am I in relationship to this person?  

sonya: Yeah. 

adrienne: With this person I am monogamous, or more submissive, or dominant, or more feminine, or whatever. And then with this person something else emerges, right? 

sonya: For sure. 

adrienne: And I kind of love the idea of like these… it's like what if all the other stuff fell away and we weren't like, you know, I don't walk into a room like ‘here's my labels’, you know, because I'm like, who knows? In this room you know something new might be possible, so. 

sonya: Absolutely, that makes so much sense. Love the way you talk about it all, thank you so much for all of you. Just I mean, I think some of this is like, you know, I know you're talking about all the things that you absolutely love, but it's also like it's a lot of… it's a lot of you, you know, it's a lot of like beautiful work for instance. So much gratitude for all your sharing and thank you. I was swimming and so many of your words, you know just like I always want to take those phrases and just write them down so. 

adrienne: Oh, we did a good job. We did a good job.  

sonya: We did okay! 

adrienne: We created a nice sacred space.  

sonya: So, just let's just check out like anything you want to say before…I might say some words of transition. 

adrienne: I feel really good. I feel really satisfied. I feel really plant-like, right? Like I feel like your attention felt very, like water and sunlight and good, good, good dirt, you know. So, I feel very like oh, you know like how plants come up and they like turn towards the sun, and now I'm like, okay good. That was the day now, I’m gonna rest, so I think I will sleep well tonight, that feels good. So, thank you very much. Thank you and thank all the people who are present that we can sense but not see, so yeah. Thank you. 

sonya: I know I thank you. I feel I'm yeah… I like the metaphor apparently because you're like super, like sunshine, you know, and it just felt like there was some nurturing happening in many different ways about pleasure, about movement about, you know, just a lot of nurturing a lot of careful, very intimate. I feel close to you, right?  

adrienne: Yeah, me too. We're friends now, okay?! [laughs] All right.  

sonya: Yeah! So, thank you for coming in with intimacy and like trust and having conversations in that way. So maybe like we could take a minute. I'm just going to say some nice closing ritual words. Just want to really thank everybody who's listening, who just sort of showed up and took their Friday nights to just be in this conversation with adrienne and myself and to remember all the amazing ancestors that are at our backs that allow us to be free in this moment that provided for us the weekend -  the labor workers, all the folks that allowed us to have pleasure, and all the folks that we’re fighting for -  all the kids, all the people, all the beings of the Earth that we’re saying for everything. Just to take a breath with each other, to remember to love each, other, to lift each other up and all boats rise, and that we can do this, and we can be in the mud together. Thank you so much, adrienne!  

adrienne: Thank you.  

sonya: Thank you. 

[Theme Music]  

Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, languages, and territories, the website native-land.ca is a helpful resource for you to learn about and acknowledge the Indigenous land where you live. 
 
Podcast production is supervised by Kirstin Van Cleef at CIIS Public Programs. Audio production is supervised by Lyle Barrere at Desired Effect. The CIIS Public Programs team includes Kyle DeMedio, Alex Elliott, Emlyn Guiney, Jason McArthur, and Patty Pforte. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe wherever you find podcasts, visit our website ciis.edu, and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms. 
 
CIIS Public Programs commits to use our in-person and online platforms to uplift the stories and teachings of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color; those in the LGBTQIA+ community; and all those whose lives emerge from the intersections of multiple identities.  
 
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