If you reference back deep into this blog some 10+ years ago, you'll see my wrestlings with literal God that upon some hindsight perspective, were also wrestlings with capitalism and the conservative values I was being expected to have but kept falling short in being able to produce for my Christian circle of influence.
Back then, I was 19/20/21 years old and contemplating leaving the Church. My journeys in Worship Leadership school (a made-up degree but one that can, scarily enough, be used) showed me behind-the-scenes into what ministry is actually like. My theology and Bible classes started feeling so very hollow and it was things like "feminist and African American theology" being thrown around like elective/optional pieces of historical literature to pontificate around when considering what we were to believe. It was hypocritical professors that sucked at their jobs, and ones that were good at ministry but felt the loneliness and pressure of big corporate Church to shut up. It was the inherent misogyny I found in my faith and the way it made my trauma responses and mental health worse.
But most importantly, it was the revelation that I was the arbiter of my own truth and an oh so powerful and lovely human being, capable of anything I set my mind to creating in this world. I began to recognize my obstacles as no longer metaphorical entities to shadowbox, or even my own imperfections as a human. I started to see the system for what it is and started realizing that to fight for the world I wanted to be a part of, I had to dig at roots that existed in realities spoken by real humans.
I became very passionate about arts and activism and turned my love for music towards a means for representation as a queer person, a sometimes woman-identifying person, a genderfluid person, a trauma survivor, and many other intersections I exist at, as well as a platform for speaking out about injustices occurring to other marginalized folks. I met some cool people and I can confidently say my sense of the world was deeply formed in all those years.
But then I started going through some real shit (or rather realizing I had been going through it), and the more I dug, the more I realized that surrounding myself with people that claim leftist values does not make me any safer than I was back in my church days.
I had a pastor once I was quite close to. His whole family was strange. As a 15 year-old, I didn't understand what it meant when his brother, the worship pastor, would speak inappropriately about his daughter, or how absurd it was that his father and mother survived a cheating episode and wanted to be held up as a gold standard of relationship, or how uncomfortable it was for my pastor to speak about "women's bodies" as something he appreciated with a value no 15 year-old AFAB person should have been privy to hearing about. His son assaulted someone several years ago and the family apologized to the victim's family as their means of accountability. I had heard rumors about the son practicing beastiality but my pastor's concerns about my then boyfriend's sexuality was more important.
I spent time around kids in my teenage years that verbally claimed women as their wives prior to pursuing them. Some of them became domestic ab*sers, some of them became unsafe partners, some of them were horrible friends, and I'm certain there are things I don't even know about to this day.
On campus, there were reports of assault happening and several people shared their experiences with racism with me. One peer called me out once and we sought resolution together. It was precisely because people felt comfortable holding me accountable and sharing shit with me that I realized we had way bigger fish to fry and multiply. It was way way bigger than my own ignorance.
But aside from the meaningful experiences I had one-on-one, no one said or did anything. Things have come out about personnel years later. They're in a frenzied PR move to play to visual accountability and pull diversity ploys and I can't help but think about these years in my life as not all that different from the leftist circles I've been spending my time in these last few years.
Things have come out about community members in so many of these circles. And each time that has happened, I have been absolutely shocked, so often now that I'm not even shocked anymore. Yet, prior to my lack of shock, it was the reality that there was no religious doctrine to expect would be used as an excuse. There was no apparent culture of protecting these kinds of people. It has been abhorrently offensive to me each and every time, and I hope and pray each time that the people surrounding these type of folks do the right accountability work. We rarely, if ever, do. In fact, I've seen more folks in leftist circles consistently make questionable choices even more than I have in my former church circles. I never could quite put my finger on it but now I've started to investigate my sense of neoliberalism.
I think leftist culture prides itself on a sense of high moral values, so above and beyond, unthinkably incapable of harm. Leftist culture does not practice accountability - it practices posturing. Leftist culture does not invite uncomfortable conversations. It pontificates around the room to the leftist with the highest social clout or loudest voice, considers their wokeness, and builds decisions about future movement around a sense of neoliberal leadership. That is to say, leftist culture enables fascism by playing capitalist leadership games, willing to co-opt the ever living fuck out of the blood, sweat, and tears the rest of us put into our daily fight, all to increase their clout lest they be the next call-out victim. We daily folk are easy targets for neoliberals - we speak incorrectly sometimes, we contain multitudes and embrace our inconsistencies and complexities, we practice accountability as the hard work it actually is and to each other's faces, but we don't hold degrees or doctorates in Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion, Communications, or win the pain Olympics to satisfy the neoliberal gaze in becoming a Savior every time.
I am leaving leftist spaces because it hurts 50,000 times worse to be spoken over about your own goddamn experience because someone has a degree or non-profit position in your neighborhood or a neoliberal value to prove to god knows who, instead of spoken with about your experiences. I do not fuck with energy that makes assumptions or educated guesses without taking the time to know at a human level. I do not fuck with energy that creates unsafe social environments where psychological warfare is instituted for the purposes of direct or indirect silencing, done in the name of any type of justice.
It is accountability practice to seek wisdom together as a collective, to make space for individual expression in relation to one another, to dig at the roots of all of our problems, and to free ourselves together in this fucked up world. I am not interested in false safety that cannot even recognize itself, and I am not interested in fighting for the right to be in power over others.
I've witnessed it before and been victim to it time and time again. Hell, I’ve even espoused that shit myself without even realizing what I was doing because it sounded correct.
In church circles, we (the good ones) at least held an understanding that we are in it together and that all our bullshit can be handled together, too. There's something to be said about the way spiritual communities, when held together in good faith, operate.
I am only interested in real ass motherfuckers trying to build a real ass world. I am still a leftist and you'll still see me around. My values just don't define me anymore, nor does my community. I do.
If we can't see each other through the lens of our shared humanity, I'm not interested, no matter how bad you want me to believe. I'm really good at breaking my faith at this point.
We say real recognize real for a reason. The horizon is ours.
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