Daily Dose: 226

Feminism in 3D: Defy, Disobey, Disrupt

Logo: Sheyam Ghieth

“This is a time where everyone needs to bring their best selves.55 We are actively making a case for our species to exist on this beautiful planet. Can we be just? Can we practice freedom together? Can we rediscover right relations with each other, including between humans and the earth? Can we remember what it is to be alive with each other, beyond suffering and survival? I believe yes, against all evidence to the contrary. I believe yes because I have had so many experiences of vulnerability, moments where I saw that we all struggle with belonging, with finding home, with being honest, with adapting, with getting our needs met, with cultivating safety. With being unapologetically ourselves, not in a defensive way, not in a performative way, just … us. My late comrade Charity Hicks called this “getting naked.” She said that when we come into meetings and movement spaces with each other we need to drop the pretense and manipulation and salesperson-ing, and get naked. When she’d say it, some of us would blush and others would say “Ase!” Others still would find a way to escape the space altogether. There are so many reasons why people are scared to get naked. We are told over and over again by capitalism that our true selves are not good enough. We are told that only the wealthy deserve to be well and receive care. That our bodies are not beautiful because we are disabled or fat or not white or not pleasing to a man or… I want to offer that the same practices we use for getting naked in the realm of sex and intimacy—the unveiling of skin—can teach us to bring our unapologetic selves into any space where we need to get naked,” adrienne marie brown, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good