In this episode of The Parallel Effect Podcast, psychologist, writer and independent scholar, MJ Barker, takes us into a parallel world without heteronormativity: a world grounded in consent and ethical relating, where diverse forms of sexuality, intimacy, relationships and family are understood not as deviations from a norm, but as equally valid expressions of human variation.
Central to MJ’s vision is the concept of “benign variation.” An idea inspired by the work of Gayle Rubin and Audre Lorde, which asks what might happen if we stopped organising human difference through binaries of normal and abnormal, good and bad, acceptable and unacceptable?
In this parallel world, people are encouraged from an early age to discover what makes them feel most alive, and to find the relationships, forms of intimacy, work and ways of living that enable them to flourish.
Rather than being taught to conform to a prescribed model of happiness, they are supported to develop an awareness of themselves, their bodies, their desires and their relationships with others and the wider world.
MJ describes a society in which there is no single blueprint for adulthood, family, partnership or intimacy. Families of choice sit alongside other forms of kinship. Parenting is understood as a collective endeavour. Emotional expression is not constrained by gender. And major transitions including endings, breakups, changes in identity and shifts in how we relate to the world, are marked and supported through rituals of both celebration and grief.
MJ’s parallel world also asks us to rethink the deeper structures through which we understand difference. What if the problem is that we have built societies around the idea that there must always be a hierarchy of ways of being?
For MJ, moving beyond heteronormativity means moving towards a much broader culture of consent, curiosity and embodied awareness. People are taught to recognise when they become dysregulated, to notice when they are overriding their own boundaries or those of others, and to ask for support when they struggle.
Even harm is approached differently. Rather than focusing solely on identifying and punishing an individual, this parallel world asks what happened, who has been harmed, what support is needed, and what the wider system might need to learn or change. Moments of failure and conflict become opportunities to investigate where disconnection and violence are still emerging, rather than reasons to pretend the problem doesn’t exist.
And perhaps most importantly, MJ’s vision isn’t presented as a distant utopia. They suggest that fragments of this world already exist around us: in queer and neurodivergent communities, in alternative approaches to relationships and family, in embodied practices, in spaces of collective care, and wherever people are experimenting with ways of living that allow themselves and others to flourish.
Listen using the audio player below, or find this and future episodes on Apple Podcasts, our preferred platform.
If you prefer to read along, access the full transcript here.
Artist Audax Mrozik Gawler Responds to a World Without Heteronormativity
Audax Mrozik Gawler (Dax) is a multi-genre, symbiopunk artist working across spatial design, participatory live art, text, film, speculative design and performance.
In this short, documentary film, Dax gives form to MJ Barker’s parallel world with KINNECT – an “interspecies communion facilitation technology” that reimagines how young people might discover identity and belonging beyond the boundaries of the human.
Below, Dax expands on the world of KINNECT and the questions that underpin it.
In a world that has evolved beyond binaries, how might we recognise stages of becoming and interdependence between living systems? How might humans make their way into circles of care and community when borders between species have dissolved, and technologies and intuitive evolutions permit intimacy and connection between all living beings?
Rather than aging into a family of only humans, KINNECT comes from a world in which human genetics are altered through the inclusion of non-human genetics, which, when coupled with intuitive and spiritual practice, spawn new states of understanding and mutuality.Here, coming out of childhood is signalled by the choice of a kin-ring, a circle of care and belonging denoted only through mutual recognition, far outside the now-ancient understanding of ‘family’ models once common in anthropocentric cultures.
KINNECT allows children approaching this threshold to attune to different species from their regional ecosystems, to adapt and experiment with communication, co-creation and mutual responsibility. Following the exploration, they will choose one or more species to belong to, permanently adapting their internal systems to entrain with the non-humans with whom they live, dream, and future.
Helping young humans find their nodes of belonging and steward world-making between species, the KINNECT is designed as a non-invasive, iterative DIY transgenetic species-spectrum experience for humans aged 9-14. Created to support the threshold of independence in the individual user, KINNECT will help users identify which non-human communities to engage their curiosity with as a navigational tool, and which community they would like to step into the adult commitment of a kin-ring with.
Demonstrated to accelerate cross-species empathy, attunement, and exchange, KINNECT uses gentle bioelectric integration alongside dream-state entrainment to induce waking hyper-awareness and sensitivity to plant, animal, bird, insect, aquatic, geologic, and insect communities and individuals. By temporarily introducing intuitive, biologic, and sensorial intimacy with a non-human community, KINNECT allows young users to radically extend their sense of selfhood.
Shown to delimit anthropocentric imaginaries, KINNECT can boost familiarity with diverse ‘species’ cultural, emotional, and linguistic frames, and can have a sustained impact on fluency with interspecies dialects, including vegetal, geophonic, and temporal languages.
Widely distributed by the United Planetary Council under the PlanetHome initiative, KINNECT systems are then infused with hyperlocal species in culturally appropriate ways, and species access is prioritised based on each non-human participant’s conservation needs and vulnerability.
Each kit comes with a journal for experiential reporting. Community supervision is recommended for users in the first and second phases of KINNECT integration.
Thanks for travelling with us into MJ Barker’s parallel world without heteronormativity.
If this journey resonated with you, please share with others – we’re new here, and actively trying to build our community.
We’ll be back next week with more adventures into new worlds. Until then, may you notice the richness in variation, and help create conditions in which people can flourish as themselves.