TRANSCRIPT
Daz:
Hello and welcome to a podcast that travels beyond the normative politics & paradigms of this world, to reimagine possibilities for sustainable & inspiring futures. It’s great to have your company, my name’s Daz Chandler and in this episode, we’re going to hear about a world without heteronormativity. It’s a realm where there’s a diversity of sexual desires, practices and relationships, but there – so long as they’re all engaged in consensually and ethically – are all considered equally valid and valuable. So, has this parallel world always been like this? How does a world absent of hierarchies around specific forms of relationships, perceive other differences, like gender? And do all sorts of people feel supported in this world, or have different types of marginalised groups emerged? Many Worlds traveller, MJ Barker joins us with their observations in just a moment.
This is The Parallel Effect.
[The Parallel Effect theme music]
Daz :
MJ, just before we take a deep dive into the world you visited…how it looks and how it functions – would you mind elaborating a little on the concept of “benign variation” and I suppose, how it contrasts with the idea of normativity?
MJ:
Yeah, absolutely. So benign variation’s an idea that I got from an academic and activist I guess, Gayle Rubin. Two papers really inspired me and one of them was this paper, ‘Thinking Sex’ by Gayle Rubin and the other was ‘The Uses of the Erotic’ by Audre Lorde. And I feel like almost those two papers tell us almost everything we need to know about everything, between them. But what Gayle Rubin was saying with benign variation is like: what if we treated sex and sexuality – instead of constantly through this lens of what’s normal and abnormal, and what’s ‘good’ and ‘bad’ – through a lens of benign variation: that there are many sexual desires and ways of expressing them, all of which are valid and valuable, so long as we don’t impose them on others in non-consensual ways, basically. You know, it’s a starting point for everything. It goes way beyond sex, right? But we can start with sexuality, it’s a good place to ask that. And the way it relates to normativity I guess is Gayle Rubin had this idea that there’s this kind of charmed circle, this kind of inner circle of all the kinds of sex and sexuality that are seen as ‘good’ and ‘normal’ and ‘right ethically’, right? And then it’s the outer limits – where most of us sit, I guess – which are all the ones that are seen as somehow abnormal and bad, and the more you are in the outer limits, the more you are policed and punished and told that your way of doing sex and sexuality just isn’t okay. You know it might be criminalised, it might be pathologized, it might be stigmatised, right?
Daz:
We know that many of the worlds that we’ve visited so far on this series have been almost identical in complexion to this one, until something happens that sets it off on a different path or different course… So, in this parallel world, were there any historical or cultural events that inspired this shift away from heteronormativity?
MJ:
Hmmm. Yeah my sense of the world – I just visited...We could call it “MJ Topia” [laughs]. It was just that people got… just got and understood earlier on, that this way of disconnecting people into normal / abnormal, good and bad – all these binaries – was really connected with our individual suffering, and the kind of global suffering. So this sense of like, oh what we’re doing by having these normativities and imposing them is actually deeply related to this kind of treating ourselves and others and the world as if it’s something disconnected that we kind of act upon in violent ways. And so really it was this moment of realising that all our individual suffering was bound up with that, and also the fact that yeah, we’re going to lose this world if we keep acting this way.
Very much the kind of things that people are noticing now. You know, some people have been noticing for a long, long time, but it’s like the world got it sooner. So, I felt like I’m visiting a world where, yeah, maybe people listen to Gayle Rubin and Audre Lorde back in the eighties. Or maybe they were listening to the equivalents who were talking fifty years before that. It was sometime, yeah maybe sometime in the 20th Century that those voices got loud enough that people started to really hear them.
And obviously, people have been saying this kind of thing – in all kinds of contexts – political and spiritual, for a long, long time. But it’s like, that idea that enough voices were saying it at the right time, that people got it and went with it instead of trying to silence it again.
Daz:
So once those voices were heard, I’m curious to know how the world began implementing the benign variation model. And also, how it landed…Was there any significant resistance to it?
MJ:
Yeah, I think a big piece was people realising that their own suffering was implicated in this. So, that’s always been my sense is that, until everyone gets that it’s personal to them too, we struggle. So if we’re arguing, you know, for example, for LGBTQIA plus rights on the basis of it’s hurting us marginalised people, there’s not much sense in kind of, say, heteronormative people that they’re going to benefit from any change. So what the really big difference was is that people realised this same thing – this normativity – is really hurting those who are inside it and those who are outside it. And also those lines are very blurry. And I always think back to the work I did as a sex therapist years ago, where most of the people coming into that clinic were not LGBTQIA plus, they seemed as if they were part of heteronormativity, but they were deeply hurt by it. They were trying to have forms of sex that were deeply unfulfilling. They often felt a huge amount of shame, like something’s wrong with them. We know from research that about 50 odd percent of people say that they’ve got a sexual dysfunction, for example. And most people at some point in their life, are having unfulfilling sex and also often non-consensual sex, which is obviously deeply traumatising. So it was when people got that all of this is part of the same thing –it’s part of having this ideal norm of sex that people are meant to fit into, and that’s actually harming everyone. That’s part of everyone’s suffering. And if we could move to this model of benign variation, that’s going to be better for everyone and also it’s going to be better for the planet. It’s going to be much wider than just our individual suffering.
Daz:
I wanted to ask you a question about our world because over the past decade or so, there’s been quite a lot written about concepts like ‘heteropessimism.’ You know, this idea that people who identify as heterosexual and are in heteronormative couplings, are feeling pessimistic about the very essence of that relationship because of the associated power dynamics, or the prescriptive gender moulds but also how these things might then intersect with other hierarchical systems, like patriarchy and the related issues, like sexism and misogyny…
So now that these types of ideas are gaining some traction here, do you think heteropessimism is pointing to something real about the limits of the heteronormative model we’ve been sold? Like, possibly creating an opening to imagine relationships differently?
MJ:
Right. And I think it’s the heteropessimism idea, or the cool optimism idea, it’s very much this sense that people are offered this ‘happily ever after’ of heteronormativity and capitalism and colonialism, but what they get isn’t actually alleviating their suffering. Often it feels like even greater suffering because they’ve had to do so much disconnection from themselves, from their bodies, from others, to get there. So realising, oh, this, this isn’t actually bringing me any happiness, feels like a really important turning point. And then what word you know, and then having to you’re having to backtrack, having to undo a lot of those foundations that you were told happiness was going to come from.
Daz:
So back to this other realm…Really keen to get you to paint a picture for us about your initial impression of the place. How did you know that you’d travelled somewhere different?
MJ:
I think it was this overwhelming sense that people were encouraged to find a life, and work, and relationships, that would be a good fit for them, where they could flourish. So in all of these ways, you know? Again, we could start with sexuality. They were encouraged to just feel into – as Audre Lorde says –what lights you up, what makes you feel most alive. They were encouraged just tune into that and let that be a kind of guiding force in their life, rather than trying to push themselves into what was seen as the most “normal” or “good.” And the same with relationships. You know, what forms of intimacy worked for them, for the way their body mind works? Rather than, again, trying to go into a certain kind of relationship. And that they were supported by others to do so. That there’s this kind of virtuous circle, I suppose, of like the more they were encouraged to flourish and find what was nourishing for them, the more they wanted that for others as well, because the more others had it, the more others would support them to have it and it kind of [was] a virtuous circle. And also, generally, that people were yeah less-masked. Less trying to pretend to be anything, and more able to be really open and curious about their lives, about others, about the world. In a way, people were childlike, you know, more able to play, more able to be flexible and playful.
Daz:
Hmm..I’m wondering about the challenges of adjustment and….I suppose “deprogramming” for want of a better term…especially when we’re dealing with incredibly rigid ideas and belief systems…
So for people who had been shaped by the earlier dominant culture and its values, was there something in place to support their transition into this…this different way of being in the world, and understanding the world?
MJ:
Yeah, completely. And, you know, one of the huge challenges in this world, of course, was when people started to realise this and get it, of course, so many people had grown up and been programmed effectively in this older system – the system that we still have as the dominant system – so the big question I had for everyone I was meeting was like, well, what did you do? You’ve got the one challenge of bringing new people up in a very different way, but perhaps the even greater challenge of the people who already had the old sort of programming. Basically there was something about trusting…giving people a lot of time and space, you know, maybe a lot of people had to take a good chunk of time out of the kind of lives they had been doing, you know, to find this other way, and to really tune into themselves. And again, trusting that different ways of reconnecting worked for different people. And a lot of people chose nature. You know, for a lot of people it was a retreat, you know and then yeah, being able to be very engaged with nature. For some people it was more like engaging with others, so having very supportive groups around them, or maybe retreating to be part of a community where they were very supported by others to do this, or maybe have things that would look a bit like therapy or mediation. And for some people it was more retreat into self, and reconnecting with bodies in ways of doing physical movements and somatic practices, or reconnecting with parts of themselves that they’d kind of severed off or disconnected from. And in a sense, for everyone it was all of those, but people found different ways in. And we trusted the different ways in for different people: for some people it was reconnecting with the world, some with themselves, and some with others. That was kind of the way into this fuller, fuller reconnection.
I think this is one of the things about that world…you know, it’s this belief that everybody’s got that in them. There’s a kind of natural presence, and natural wisdom, that if we can just create the right set of circumstances, will flow. Yeah, there’s something really valuable and vital in all of this about the trust that you create the right circumstances for people and it will flow and they will start to flow again with with themselves, with others in the world, in a way that isn’t so disconnected and violent.
Daz:
So talking now about the social structures that are found in this world… I imagine a lot of people who are listening might be curious to hear and learn about family dynamics and how they present themselves in a world without heteronormativity. So, are there new forms of kinship? Are there new forms of caregiving arrangements?
MJ:
Yeah, absolutely. So again, it’s this sense that all forms of intimacy and all kind of family and relationship structures are all equally valid and valuable. And again, it’s really about tuning in and people finding the forms that work for them and then finding the kin, you know? So that sort of sense of families of choice. Finding the people who work in similar ways or yeah, ways that are equally nourishing. Again, learning a lot from kind of neuro divergent communities of like, yeah, our body minds work in really different ways and both how do we find folks who maybe work at a similar pace to us, and have similar ways of relating so that, you know, our home space can be one that we feel very settled and we can come out from that and do more good because our kind of nervous systems are settled, because we’re around other people who work in similar ways. And then that sense of how can we relate across difference? Again, that model of benign variation instead of saying, oh, you should work in the same way as me, we can say, Oh, okay, you know, so you’re somebody who needs a lot of stimulation, and I’m somebody who needs really not to be overstimulated, you know, like what might be, again, what might be the kind of the crossover in the Venn diagram? You know, how might we how might we find good ways of relating? And also, how might we recognise, you know, this really isn’t one that’s going to be that fruitful and let it go, you know? And that sort of model, really, of how we relate. And then the big thing I noticed about, I guess, family structures of all kinds, you know, in this would include families of choice and families with parenting involved, is that there was a lot of support around it. The assumption was people need a lot of support to do this kind of relating. Instead of the sense of like it should come naturally to us, and there’s something wrong with you if it doesn’t.
Daz:
Let’s stick with parenting then for a moment…How does… how does appreciating and honouring the notion of benign variation manifest in the way children are raised and educated about relationships and identities?
MJ:
There’s so many things to say…I feel like I’ve got all of them in my head simultaneously. I mean, for a start, there’s definitely a recognition that children need, you know, many different people to sort of help and bring them up, and many different models. You know and again, that sense that if they can see lots of models of different kinds of people, they can see that benign variation, and if they can see all forms of kind of relating, and all forms of work as being equally valued - so there’s definitely that. And also, kind of everyone modelling, doing their inner-work as well. So their parents not pretending to be ‘perfect people’ but being able to model that they need to do this continued work on themselves, I suppose. And I was thinking in terms of gender, there’s a big, big difference in this world. So all children being brought up that all emotional responses are again valid and valuable. So another form of benign variation is that all the things we feel are valid and valuable, and it’s okay to express them. Rather than, you know, this real violence that we have in a gendered way, of only certain feelings are allowed for boys and for girls. Maybe girls aren’t allowed to be angry. Boys aren’t allowed to be scared. You know, and just again, this internal disconnection that happens so very young, if we’re teaching kids that. And then the violence that then people do from that. So there is a real focus in this world of kind of relationship education, by which I mean relationship with yourselves, with others and with the world. And that being seen as people need these teachings, and they need these practices, and they need this support in order to be with themselves, and whatever’s coming up with them, and to recognise all of those emotional states as valuable.
Daz:
And I suppose if you have a society where everyone appreciates that parenting is a huge and collaborative effort, that involves many different models of example, then if something isn’t working and if someone is feeling a sense of shame or, that they’re unfit to do it – for whatever reason – there would be that community in place to intervene and help support the individuals who need it…
MJ:
Right and you’d be encouraged to say something early. So this is maybe where a lot of perpetration hopefully is prevented, because instead of like hiding the parts of ourselves that are vulnerable, and hurt, and shamed and the parts of ourselves that are angry, and maybe want to act out and hurt others, the encouragement is to really get to know those parts and as you say, to be able to express that really soon. You know, I am feeling not okay towards myself. Or I’m feeling, not okay towards others. And there being this huge support there. And those forms of labour being valued as well. You know, I’m guessing in this world, you know, that everybody has a kind of basic income but there’s also this sense that relational labour – whether it’s with others or with yourself – is also valued and is also supported. So, those who can offer care, you know, who are able to help people who are going through those kind of things, are hugely valued in this culture, in this world. And, also doing your own kind of inner-work is also hugely valued. So people who need to go off for a while and do that, they’re given that space – in fact, they’re even rewarded for doing it. And that makes a very different world than the one where we’re supposed to hide, particularly our vulnerability and the places we’ve been harmed, and our sense that we might want to harm others or that we might have cruel thoughts or, you know, want to dominate others in some way.
Daz:
So in this realm that celebrates and honours the idea of benign variation, what replaces the universal, traditional markers of adulthood and other rites of passage that we have here?
MJ:
Yeah, well, I noticed there were a lot of there were a lot of rituals, and a lot of kind of people reaching certain markers. And one thing I noticed was there were as many rituals around grieving as there were around celebrating. So we might have weddings and funerals, you know, but in a way here, all these kind of big moments of something coming together or some opportunities opening up was celebrated, but also the moments of closing down or not being able to do something anymore, or a relationship ending or so on. There were also as many rituals around that, and the recognition that people needed just as much support, for example over a breakup, as getting together with somebody – or losing a type of work that they really valued. And yeah, it was, you know what was meaningful to that person within that community. So any kind of major transition points in kind of what they were doing with their life or in the relationships that were valuable to them and major kind of shifts in the way their body minds worked as well.
Daz:
So looking at the transition that occurs in adolescence…how are young people guided in discovering and expressing their desires in a non-normative context?
MJ:
Yeah, well, again, this is where Audre Lorde really comes in. This sense of like tuning in. And so Audre Lorde’s idea of the erotic is it’s way beyond sex. So instead of this kind of current situation, it’s much more this sense of what makes you feel most alive, what lights you up? And yeah, learning from the ace, asexual and aromantic communities as well. This sense that there might be sexual things – as we would define them – but it’s a lot broader than that. So yeah it really goes with tuning into your creativity, what you just really love doing and this is what’s guiding them in the work and the life that they choose. And the same with intimacy, you know, it’s what kind of connections? And it’s really encouraging people yeah to forge the kind of connections that are most nourishing and help you flourish and to find the kinds of creativity with your body and mind, you know, and with others, and alone, and with the world. And to follow that, and that comes with the sense to encourage others to do the same – we’ll all be in a better place, if everybody’s doing the things that just feel really nourishing for them and helps them flourish.
Daz:
I love this because it brings in all those different layers of affection and intimacy, which are core components – you know such essential components of human connection. It’s such a refreshing contrast to the rigid way we tend to define sexuality here.
MJ:
That’s right and it’s like expanding out, expanding out. So maybe the first thing you question is, you know, oh sex isn’t just penis/vagina intercourse, right? It’s like, oh, there’s kind of all these other things people can do with their bodies with each other but it’s not just connecting people with people with their bodies we can share our fantasies and do other kinds of things, you know. And then it’s like, Oh no, beyond that – it’s like, it could be all these other things as well that aren’t even what we would think of as sexual, you know? And yeah, just that’s my sense with Audre Lorde’s conception of it is just like it gets wider and wider until it includes I think writing a poem, and includes building a bookcase, and just lying in the sunshine and you know being in the sea. And again, it’s the benign variation, isn’t it? Like, here’s all this stuff and it’s all on the same level. We’ve not got this massive peak of like these things being way more valuable and those things. So people can just look at that smorgasbord and be like yeah this is where I’m delighted, and that can change over time – really importantly. That it can be fluid and flow rather than I’ve decided yeah I’m going to do this kind of work, and have these kind of relationships, and do these kind of things, and I’ve got to stick with that forever or I’m doing something wrong.
Daz:
So in this parallel world, we know that consent and ethics are deemed incredibly important. Can you talk us through how this realm defines and enforces these principles?
MJ:
Yeah, my sense was, you know, people are thinking very broadly about how tempting it is, you know, to try and make others, or other beings, you know, or anything into something we want them to be, and try and make ourselves into something we want us to be – or we think other people or the world wants us to be… Like it’s this very broad understanding of, I guess, consent and ethics that, that, is a form of violence. So people are really striving to notice when they’re tempted to do that, because obviously we’re tempted to do that because we kind of really want to get what we want and we don’t want to get what we don’t want. But yeah, instead of like trying to make this person conform to what I want, how can I do my utmost to kind of make them feel as free and safe as possible, and give myself that as well? And then, where are the places that that isn’t possible in me and in the world? Those then being the areas of focus, rather than those being the things we try and get away from and ignore and deny. It’s like, okay, I still can’t quite do that in this area. That’s why I need the support. And the capacity to be open about that. You know, the assumption that everyone will have areas where they still find it difficult to really respect people’s boundaries, or really look after themselves, and that vulnerable thing of being able to say, you know, this one I still struggle with and there being really great avenues for support in those areas.
Daz:
Yeah okay, so it sounds like a far less transactional approach to evaluating consent and instead a far more embodied pathway into that way of thinking, maybe?
MJ:
Right, and those embodied practices, you know, are cornerstone in all kinds of education and in all kinds of upbringings. We’re not just teaching people knowledge and skills, we’re giving at least as much time to teaching embodied practice and emotional kinds of practice, and relational practice. People have to know sort of how to notice when they’ve become dysregulated, I guess – which is when we’re more activated, which is when we’re most likely to override our own consent or someone else’s, how to say at those times, I need to pause - whether that’s for a minute, or a week. And how to come home to themselves in those moments and reconnect with others.
Daz:
So in your parallel world where people are supported to be open about their vulnerabilities, about feeling triggered or dysregulated, what happens when nonconsensual and violent behaviours emerge?
MJ:
Yeah so, that real sense that those are the areas that we still need to address, both individually and relationally and societally. So it’s like that’s where we turn our attention. One thing I really noticed was the sense wasn’t which individual is to blame and how do we get rid of them? It was much more, oh there’s a systemic issue here, that needs addressing. So yeah, we’re going to we’re going to support whoever was harmed – big time – to heal that harm because that’s a form of disconnection and may result in further disconnection if we don’t help that person. But we’re also going to look at the person who behaved non-consensually, we’re going to really support them and then we’re going to look to that wider system they’re in… Is there a systemic issue here that made it difficult for somebody to say that they were thinking about acting in that way? Or, have we unwittingly brought some new norms back in that made it okay to treat someone as less valuable than somebody else? And to give it time and space. You know, I really noticed this lack of urgency - this sense that this is really important and we’re not going to fix it in 5 minutes. We’re going to take our time and really deeply listen to everybody and to what was going on. And almost a kind of exuberance and enthusiasm for those moments: oh this is showing us something really important here, we can go towards it. Instead of, oh this has shown us that everything we’re doing is wrong and we need to fix it immediately and we need to pretend it wasn’t happening.
Daz:
From what you’ve shared so far it kind of sounds like in recognising benign variation, there’s likely to be far fewer communities of people – who feel marginalised. But do people still find themselves being drawn to tribalism? Like are sub-cultures still a thing?
MJ:
As we were saying before, there is a sense of finding your kin: people who maybe work in similar ways, have similar passions, you know, want to collaborate on certain kind of projects or do similar kinds of labour. There are these kinds of ways of coming together, but there’s also that real awareness that we don’t then want that to become an ‘us and them’ like our kind of labour is more valuable than the kind this other group offers or, our ways of presenting ourselves is more valuable, or our kind of creativity is. So there’s just that caution and lots of places to come together across difference as well and to value all those different voices. And then again, this sense of like in the world, where are the spots where the disconnection is still happening or forms of harm are happening? And then, those are the ones we want to really focus on. And first and foremost, we want to listen to those with the lived experience and be informed by them rather than any sense of this sort of coming in and imposing what we think is the way to go here. So, in that way, there’s still something a bit like these movements, you know, because it’s kind of like,here there’s some suffering occurring and a bunch of people saying, Yeah, we are suffering in this way. And then there’s this deep listening to them and a constant question of ‘How could we ease the suffering?’ A constant, open questioning because it’s not assumed there’ll be an easy answer that we can just put in place and fix it. It’s much more like an ongoing question. Where is the suffering still happening? How might we ease it? We tried this. It helped a bit, or it didn’t actually help - we need to try something else. So yeah, in a way, a model where it’s assumed that people will fail as well and that’s not seen as something to punish and everyone has to get everything completely right, it’s much more of an ongoing process of trying things and learning from them.
Daz:
What would you say to someone in our reality who’s perhaps listening to this conversation and maybe struggling right now with reconciling their sense of self with the ideas and models that have been imposed on them here?
MJ:
I mean, I think even just having this conversation, you know, I can feel that sadness welling up inside me. Or maybe people are feeling rage, maybe people are feeling frightened because it shows just how vulnerable we are in our current reality. Maybe people feel shame or regret that they know that in some ways all of us are doing things that are really not towards this kind of vision. So I think there’s something about really allowing those feelings, ideally creating spaces of support and ritual. You know, the only way we can make anything like the world I’m describing, I think, is to feel all those feelings. For myself, doing grief rituals was helpful, maybe finding some of the kinds of things I’ve described that are currently out there and maybe engaging with them. You know, learning embodied practices or doing bits of therapy or finding supportive groups. I mean, for me, even just finding this small group that I’ve got of quite likeminded people and we meet three times a year and we have the occasional Zoom calls and, creating it where we can. If you can create a little micro version of this world where you can put some of this stuff in place, and try it out, and also listening to the people who are living bits of this already, I guess that brings the joy and the optimism: even in this world, people are already doing this and we can really listen to them.
Daz:
That was Many Worlds Traveller, MJ Barker. MJ holds a PhD in psychology and is a writer, creative consultant, speaker, and independent scholar. They are the author of a number of books and graphic guides on sex, gender, and relationships. They also publish zines, comics, and free books on themes such as plurality, trauma, consent, and creativity via their website: rewriting-the-rules.com
The artist, Awdax Morozik Gawler has responded to this parallel world – to check out what they have to say, subscribe to TheParallelEffect dot substack dot com
You’ve been listening to The Parallel Effect podcast, supported by people like you and the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria.
My name’s Daz Chandler – it’s been really great having your company.
Until next time, may you notice the richness in variation, and help create conditions in which people can flourish as themselves.