Gender Stories

Political healers at the intersection of race and gender - Part 2

May 02, 2018 Alex Iantaffi Season 1 Episode 4
Gender Stories
Political healers at the intersection of race and gender - Part 2
Show Notes Transcript
In this episode, Alex Iantaffi continues the interview with the incomparable Arique Aguilar, lead organizer at TakeAction Minnesota, about what it means to be a political healer, how she came up with this concept and why this work is so relevant at the intersection of race and gender. They had so much fun in this conversation that they talked for longer than one episode so please check out episode 3 for the first part of the conversation, if you haven't already! You can follow Arique on Twitter at @arique777Support the show

Instagram: GenderStories
Hosted by Alex Iantaffi
Music by Maxwell von Raven
Gender Stories logo by Lior Effinger-Weintraub


Lyrics from musical introduction: There’s a whole lot of things I want to tell you about. Adventures dangerous and queer. Some you could guess and some I’ve only hinted at. So please lend me your ear. 

Narrator: Everyone has a relationship with gender. What’s your story? Hello and welcome to Gender Stories with your host, Doctor Alex Iantaffi. 

Alex: Hello and welcome back for another episode of Gender Stories. I am your host Alex Iantaffi and I am so excited about the ongoing conversation that Arique Aguilar and I have been having about what does it mean to be political healers at the intersection of race and gender. If you missed out on episode 3 you might want to go back and listen to the beginning of this conversation, the amazing badass lead organizer for Take Action MInnesota Arique Aguilar about what does it mean to be political healers at the intersection of race and gender. 

So tell me a little bit about how can the work of political healing both keep at the heart that Black women have the skills and experience and expertise to bring the work of political healing into the world and yet the work of political healing is for people of all genders because there is so much work to do. 

Arique: Right! Oh that’s my favorite question. So the theory, the working theory right now, is that women of color have to use these skills that surround emotional labor to survive. And that’s why, like we’re good at it. We should just own that we’re really good at building trust, at building our reputation, at just kind of like this maintenance, this emotional maintenance we’re really good and we don’t often count that as work. The reason I think anyone can be a political healer is because those skills take work and they take practice and they take accountability and they can be learnt right? So I think there is a moment of liberation to kind of break away from these like stoic over productive masculine leadership styles. We need to like cast those away, we need to acknowledge the ritual that we are all practicing of like saying that powerful people are all cis white men right. And we need to start looking at how these rituals, that we as women of color have needed to develop both for our own self-care, the care of our communities to move shit, to like make shit happen. These are all ways in which we can counteract the current culture. This is it’s not just gonna be… we’re not gonna project white masculinity. We’re going to seek like what it means to be a feminine culture right? And what it means to like have women of color’s intuition be viewed as an asset instead of a liability right? That there have been women of color that are ahead of their time, they get a lot of shit because the things they are proposing are a cultural shift right? And so there’s a lot of work still to do, but there’s ways in which white men can find their liberation through this right.  

Like I believe that if, I studied the suburbs in college, the suicide rate of white men that make $250K annually or more is higher than in any other class. That doesn’t sound like alright to me.  

Alex: No. 

Arique: Right like so even when we think things are all right, we’re all actually really impacted. And who is impacted more, what’s the urgency, I think that’s all lines in the sand to move, make some action steps and plans and policies, allocate resources and at the end of the day, that’s the work that needs to be done. LIke that is the emotional work and the skillset requiring for that trust to actually be built in our movement. Because like trust doesn’t just come out of thin air. You don’t just pass a piece of legislation and we all just suddenly trust each other right?  

Like so the healing part of political healers is about acknowledging that and actually bringing that emotional labor both into view, into practice, and into reflecting the kind of world that we want to live. Like I”m very clear that there are white folks doing this like… trying to figure out their path and their role in race and gender equity right. And I know because I lead the Collaborators table that there’s a cost when you mess that up. Like white women, when you fuck it up, whatever “it” is, you get voted off the island right? There’s a consequence when we ask folks to show up vulnerable and authentically, especially folks that don’t do that routinely right. Like I think there’s a lot of immigrant cultures where that’s just kind of how we relate, so I just don’t believe in voting people out of the island if we haven’t actually invested in training them in what it actually means to stay on the island right. So it’s not worked for everyone I definitely don’t… I don’t do all the work at the Collaborators Table right, that’s not the table that takes up a majority of my time, my time goes to the Women of Color Table. But what I want for my Collaborators Table is for people of color to see them and be like, they’re different. This person knows what’s at stake for them. This person is clear about how they’re going to show up and why and that there’s value in that. That’s what actually builds trust.  

So I want to create these spaces where folks can actually practice these skills and also not be taxing for people of color to have to witness. Right so like that’s what, it was so sad, when I first started this group with an intern, she went to her class and they said “What are you trying to do, start the KKK?” Like they made fun of her for it. And she came to me like borderline in tears and I said so last I checked, KKK are all white dudes. There’s like this really thin line of how you experience sexism as a white woman is like you will be both accountable to what your men do and what your women do. Right, like this kind of like dual standard of who you need to clean up after right and who you need to represent and what you need to apologize for, there is just like this laundry list that is different for every POC you meet. So then, what’s the thing that  keeps them rooted while that happens right? What’s the thing that like doesn’t have white women being like “Oh well my life is perfect because all the POC that I know, their lives are really hard.” That’s actually like not someone who is rooted in this work who really knows their space in, and space to take in with this anti-racism and anti-sexism work. 

Alex: Absolutely. 

Arique: That’s someone who can get bought off easily.  

So digging into this work and making sure it’s not emotionally taxing for women of color especially cause they’re the ones who end up being this catalyst if you will. And then the vision will go on, I think it’s a pathway. There is a pathway, just like the pathway that we trained at the women of color intersectional leadership training right, that was just kind of like, there’s a similar one for all of these things.  

The other thing I’ll say about political healers is that people often think that it’s just a women of color thing. And when we look at cultural trauma, when we actually take that word very seriously, then all of a sudden we have to look at the unique reactions to that cultural trauma. Now I'm putting my hand on my chest and my hand is just kind of laying out flat about cultural trauma. So these circles, these spaces that I’m trying to build, they’re about the unique responses to cultural trauma. Women of color navigating life in Minnesota that’s very white is a cultural trauma.  

Alex: Yes. 

Arique: There is a cost to us, we have lost things. I’ve lost jobs over older white women like we just didn’t vibe or whatever. I didn’t kiss their ass enough, whatever it was. But so like what’s the space that I can access on how to navigate and recharge from that cultural trauma right? So as much as there’s like a woman of color table, a white woman’s table, the possibility of a men of color table, and a white men’s table, I think it’s misguided to say that political healers is divided amongst race. Or gender. I think that it depends on your context. Where you at, who you are. There can just as easily be a trans women table, a trans man table, 

Alex: Non-binary folks. 

Arique: Non-binary folks table, there’s just, there’s room here. There’s international adoptees right… There are these systems that have impacted our life trajectory right and we need folks. And that’s what I call a space of validation. Those spaces, they don’t just validate you, they push you. They make you grow. They help you unearth the political healer that is inside you that allows you to authentically connect to each other, that can actually build the trust. This is the soil that we’re trying to make shit grow from right. So then, it’s an error to think that it’s just like race and gender right? It’s actually about like what is the unique reaction to a cultural trauma. Our whole international adoptees adoptions came from a history of white women not wanting to give birth twice. There is literal magazines that are like give birth to one, adopt one, right?  

Alex: And do some good, which is part of the white savior narrative.  

Arique: Yeah! So there’s something that those adoptees have gone through and they need a space right? So those are spaces of validation, they need to be connected to the spaces of negotiation. You need to go out in public. You need to shut down that highway. You need to show up to that city council meeting. You need to like plan that march, do that door knock. These public engagements where you are negotiating what you have learned in your space of validation, that you deserve and are worthy of in your space of validation. Where the error happened and what you want to do about it cannot stay hoarded in your space of validation. It has to come back into the world right. And so like that’s what I think like is so wonderful about political healers it is this call to like... not remain dormant. And that if you will, if you need to that it be intentional. Right like we are weary, we are not doing any of this shit, we are focusing on this shit. Right like make a decision in your collective to practice a ritual that will reignite you and recharge you because you’re worthy of living in this work with joy with all your shit hanging out right? You just… I don’t believe enough people feel that connection. So like political healers I am trying to train people with the emotional skills to create a space that isn’t the same but that challenges people to dig deeper and to politicize that pain. 

Alex: Yeah. And that’s what I love about this work because you know in the last few years there’s been a lot of work coming up around vulnerability, but it’s been very much about private vulnerability right. So the work of Brene Brown, we were talking earlier about how influential it has been for us both and yet you used the beautiful phrase which I think it was “that work is in a contextual void” right which is often that’s what I found too, that when I talked to like trans folks or POC folks about that work around vulnerability, the way that she has put it out to the public which is different than the way she has conversations around when she does events. But the way Brene has chosen to put it in the public is very individualized very much about individual vulnerability for better relationships and intimacy, and this is another level of vulnerability, this is vulnerability on a collective level to change our culture, to heal our culture from all those moments of misogyny and racism and anti-blackness and settler-colonialism. And that’s for me when you add context, then all of a sudden the work becomes so much more powerful and not just a book on a shelf or a TED Talk right? 

Arique: I often think about my mom and her sisters and the ritual of pouring coffee in the kitchen at like 8pm like this is you shouldn’t be drinking it, but we’re gonna do it now. It’s not decaf people alright? [laughs] And I just remember all the times I watched my mom tell my aunt, her sister, what happened that day. And the question that is so prevalent at least in my Puerto Rican family is, “Well did you say that to them?” right, you can get reanimated but “Like yeah, but did you say all that?” And my mom’s answer was always no. Like had I, had she seen an alternative way right, that like you could actually say all that, and that you deserve to say all that because you are right. You’re not making stuff up right. You’re not making something out of nothing. I think we would have carried ourselves differently in this world right. Let’s not pretend that all the rituals we’re practicing in are good. You know it’s not bad, this was therapy for my mom to be able to pretend her sister was that person and just like stay rooted in like “Yeah I’m worth this and they shouldn’t have said that” and that’s funny because they’ll say “You can’t be doing that to me, you did X Y and Z” and like my mom will go into it.But we can never say that we said it in person. And I… so much about like power is being able to stay rooted in your worth. Like as much as that was my mother's political healing I think I should be able to go like verbatim the way she used to pretend in the kitchen? I believe I can pretend in the city council. I can pretend in this event as I’m speaking and that I am negotiating. I am not here to make you do anything but like I am not here, I am definitely not here to just like share that I am weak. Right like that, that is disconnected from the way my collective sees me right and the way that they value me and the way that I have respect for them. It’s disrespectful for me to not know my worth. So that, that’s kind of the whole and sum about it. No policies got changed for my mom. The only time a policy got changed was when my mom dislocated five spinal discs. And she lost her job because they didn’t have paid sick leave. But the changed the policy about how to lift clients right, from their beds. 

Alex: But how much pain did that policy change cost? 

Arique: It cost my mom’s body. And how many more policies are not changing because we’re waiting for a woman of color’s body to break? It’s not ok. But my mom comes from a culture where like that’s the price. and call me a Millennial, call me what you want, but I feel I’m entitled to not pay that price. I get to keep my body. I get to keep my mind, I get to keep my soul and my heart, I get to keep my actions, I get to keep my judgements. Right like I’m not making stuff up. I think like as women of color, I know how ableist this sounds but like I haven’t really figured out another way, but we get made crazy. 

Alex: Yeah. 

Arique: Crazy making is happening where we’re second guessing ourselves and having a space of validation, knowing how to create that space of validation and having that space of validation connected to political action, public action, those two things are something I believe brings power back into our bones if you will. Like I had a space in college that I felt like infantilized me. But I didn’t know any better right? And these were people that cared about me, I cared about them. We were all survivors and we were talking about how to survive on campus when that person still studied there right? It was a great space. I never felt powerful in that space. I’d cry, I’d like be vulnerable, I’d hear cool techniques but I often wonder what would have happened if we actually like decided we were going to head the ending of sexual violence on campus campaign. I think about like what if we had put our heads together for that? How much energy we would have had around that. Like right?  

And I don’t want to put a judgement around that, like healing circles are only good if you do something, that’s not true. I believe healing has its own trajectory. I don’t believe like everyone is ready to be a political healer, I think there is a lot of internal work that needs to get done. But I do think that the moment I finally stepped out in public and the thing I stepped out about in public was actually the driver’s license campaign for undocumented folks. That this was a way for me to no longer be at home scared about whether or not my husband was going to get deported because he was driving to and from work. Instead of being home and petrified, I got a chance to be out in public, connect with people who were going through the same thing, and do something about it. And we lost the campaign but I didn’t lose all those people. Right, what I did lose during that time was my isolation and that was a good thing. So like I just think there’s a level of power that can be very healing for us in the political and public actions that we take and I think we need to claim that with pride. Cause I think too often we think they’re tangents, we think they’re unproductive. This is the work. This is how we move towards our liberation. And we need it, cause otherwise all I’m doing is pretending to be human for a world that I hope will exist for my son’s lifetime. And it’s just like no, I will create that world around me. And we will know how the world exists, and we will negotiate and we will push. And when we can’t push anymore, we will have a group of people to hold us and that’s valuable.  

Alex: And that push is exhausting. This I feel like we’re coming back to that initial point that you were talking about when we started the interview, meeting with all of these women of color who were saying “we’re exhausted” you know and that started all of this. How do you take care of yourself so that you can go out and do this work of political healing and liberation, which you do so well because it takes a lot of work. This is not something you’re magically good at or that you’re stronger than other people… So what does it take for you to be able to show up in the world in the way that you do as a political healer and community organizer? And a mom. And a Black woman in the world. A Black queer woman in the world. 

Arique: Well I’m not Black.  

Alex: Sorry. 

Arique: [laughs] I should start there. I claim Afro-Caribbean to call out the anti-blackness that exists in Puerto Rico. That’s probably a whole other conversation. I am very aware of what my skin color is and what’s allotted to me because of it. I’ve also never been considered a white woman. [both laugh] Like there is nothing about me that screams “She might be a white lady.” [both laugh] Nor would I want it.  

I think the way I take care of myself, it’s been trial and error. Honestly I’ve found it, I was in a training that I did not expect to be so important to me because literally the title was “Calendaring and Reflection”. Right? So I'm just kind of like yeah whatever.  

Alex: That does not sound life changing. 

Arique: Right? Am I’m just like...My supervisor is practicing because she’s going to go to like a national training and lead this training and I’m just like cool, cool, cool, I’ll come. So I’m there and all of a sudden, there’s all these agitations which is like a technique in organizing to push hard truths to get people to see like what they’re worth when it’s done right. Another conversation we can have! But the agitations she provided were like “Don’t you believe that your time is valuable? Like why are you not feeling the worth of your time? And why does your calendar make you work rather than… why don’t you feel in control of your calendar? Is it actually reflecting what you want to build?” You know if I’m creating political healers and I’m like preaching this theory, this practice, this paradigm shift in organizing, then how am I applying it to my own life? One I love what I do. Absolutely love what I do. And when I stop loving it, I’ll move on to the next thing. Because like I deserve… It’s not all great, it’s not all sunshines and rainbows, but when I lose that joy in my work, it’s time to move on. Right, so I’m clear about that.  

The other thing is you know, I’m on this journey to figure out an autoimmune, is it disorder, disease I don’t even know. Whatever it is. Where my body is literally just like shutting down and then suddenly I’m ok. It’s like really bizarre to me. And your story… are you open about it? 

Alex: Oh yeah. I have Fibromyalgia. I’ve had it for 20 years. Talk about something that makes you… crazy making in air quotes again is autoimmune diseases, chronic diseases.  

Arique: Yeah so a lot of your advice on like how you take care of yourself when you’re having a flare has been really helpful for me because otherwise I just feel like lazy really, right? I can put the lazy judgement on myself very quickly. So I am going through this process, so I am asking for accommodations. I can still do this work, I’m not going to practice in ableist techniques of like ignoring my body to jump this hurdle that I already told you I can’t jump. Right like lower the hurdle and I’ll get over it. Like I will do this. Let’s make the hurdle lower and more valuable, let’s pack a punch right?  

So my calendar, I have space for me time and I mean me time, not… like there’s also mommy time, right where I get to be with my son, we’re bonding, but me actual me time like that’s become very critical for me. And I spend that time doing crafts, painting, drinking wine, that can get carried away, like sleeping.  

And what’s been really critical for me these days is knowing when something is done. Like the practice of like “That is done. Send it, be done with it. Move on to the next thing.” Right like my perfectionism can come in about “But is my grammar wrong? Or am I doing this? Or does this make sense?” It’s just like “Let it be and go. Let your day be done.” I think a lot of my first year as an organizer was working all the time. Feeling like I had to answer this text. I had to answer this email. And now it’s like, I can always get better at answering emails according to everyone, but that I can have, I can create structures that like make that something that is easier for me to understand. And that I can request those accommodations right. And that I can let my coworkers into my healing journey of like figuring out what it is I’m doing, because it involves trust with my supervisor, like she has to believe me when I tell her I’m in pain. Not that she’s ever doubted it, but I had to believe myself at some point right. 

Alex: And how hard is that. Talk about cultural trauma and I’m thinking about partially the cultural trauma of gender and misogyny. You know both of us were brought up Assigned Female at Birth and I don't know about you but being brought up in my Italian/Sicilian family was like you work all the time. Everybody’s needs are met before yours. I remember my great-aunt being up at 5AM like cooking for everybody you know making sure everybody gets fed. And it didn’t matter if she was in pain or not and that was kind of the upbringing. So I know for me it’s been like this huge effort to think that I’m worth my time and attention and that my body is worthy of care and that it’s ok to give myself what I need. And so I wonder what that’s like for you too, how much of that is really also about revolutionary political healing to say “I deserve this time.” 

Arique: Right. As you were sharing I thought back to when my mom was going to physical therapy for those five dislocated disks. It’s a miracle that she’s walking, let’s just say that. Cause like that was… and I watched her in that journey. And I watched her go to the doctors and say how much pain she was in and the doctors not believe her. And I watched my mom muttering to herself as she mopped the floors, saying “The pain’s not there. The pain’s not real. It’s not real.” So like, we do come up in a culture where we learn to drown out the voice of our body. And I went to physical therapy and you saw this of me too, I have every thirty minutes, that’s why I have to turn off my cell phone, every thirty minutes my cell phone buzzes. I have an alarm to remind me to stretch. And whether I do it every single time is a whole different thing, but that I was so out of tune of recognizing the position my body was in. Whether I was stressed, tired, all this, I realized that I was holding a stress position and I didn’t know. And I was wondering why my neck was hurting, I was wondering why I was in so much pain right. And so, it’s a simple fix to a really complicated problem but it goes off during meetings and my coworkers will stretch with me right. Like I think this kind of radical healing requires a community that’s willing to participate with you.  

Alex: Yes. We can’t do this alone. 

Arique: No.  

Alex: There’s one of my friends and co-organizer some time ago has a real pet peeve against self-care and she’s like no, we can’t talk about self-care because we can’t do it alone. Right because if I’m the only one who does this thing I’m going to look weird and countercultural but if we do it together, if we nurture an ethics of care. So what strikes me is it sounds like what you’re doing as part of this work is to create an ethics of care and radical, strategic vulnerability and interdependence and there’s so much potential for liberation for all our bodies in there. 

Arique: Yeah. I think it’s easy to judge people as, what’s the word, discardable? That’s not the word. 

Alex: Disposable? 

Arique: Disposable! It’s easy to see them as disposable. And it’s harder to meet them where they’re at. Like it is not an easy task for my supervisor to meet me where I’m at. Cause like, if this is in fact fibromyalgia my memory is shit. Like I can’t remember how these things connected. I can’t remember why I started this in the first place. And it can come across as me being apathetic about my work. So it requires a lot of trust between my coworkers and my supervisor to be able to say like no I’m still here, I’m really trying and I’ll do better right. Because I want to share in the workload. I want to show up for my team. I want to show up for these people who I think the world of and who think the world of me right. And quite honestly I don’t believe organizations can claim to dismantle what thrives in their organization. So if we don’t have this culture I’d be really concerned about our goals of ending gender oppression, structural racism and corporate accountability right? I’d be really concerned! But because we have them, because of a lot of the work I’ve done other women of color leaders who have been there and are still there can point out “hey this doesn’t really go with our values, let’s do this instead” and we would all do it right.  

Alex: And those are those rituals that you were talking about. It sounds like there is a real change on a rituals level of how you relate to each other. 

Arique: That’s right. I actually do, we change who is in charge of our check ins during the meetings, we always have a check in right at the beginning. Everyone loves when I do the check in because I bring out my Tarot deck.  

Alex: Nice! 

Arique: And I lay it all out and I’m like “people, just sense the card and pick the one you sense”. And then I just read out the meanings and I ask them to share what the card means to them. I remember there was a moment where I was like so scared but I was just like, I’m gonna keep quiet. I’m gonna keep quiet. And I did this check in, I pulled out my card and I got an upside-down rooster. And if anyone doesn’t understand an upside-down rooster, it means “You have an announcement that you are holding back.” And I was like, “you know what, I’m just gonna trust this process, that I picked this card out on purpose. I don’t need a check in after this, I don’t need help, I’ve got it.” And then I just sobbed over how I”m scared all the time and I think the worst is gonna happen. And I know that I”m ok, but like x, y, and z. And then I calmed down. But I got to cry in my meeting and my coworkers didn’t think that I was ill-prepared to continue with the meeting. I think a lot of people misconceive as a tangent. They think they have to caretake the person for the rest of the meeting. And it’s just like no, you just have to let that person be where they are and trust that they can move with you. And that if they can’t, they’ll say it.  

Alex: And that’s where we confuse vulnerability with weakness right. That display of emotion is weak, but it’s not. It’s just display of emotion. 

Arique: Think of it as like a release, it’s cathartic even to go back to work after something like that. 

Alex: Because you’re not holding it in your body anymore. Yeah I remember, this was many many years ago, I was working at a European organization but I was still living in the UK and I cried at a meeting. And then I felt so much shame. And then I was talking to an Italian colleague and he’s like “Why are you ashamed? That was totally appropriate. That was a crying moment, that was really upsetting.” And to have that reminder of that’s right, it’s healthy to express emotions and it’s not unprofessional and when we talk about those displays of emotion as “unprofessional” or taking up space or care-taking, that’s all part of this misogynist, white supremacist world view that doesn’t allow us to be ourselves in our wholeness right.  

Arique: And to be trusted in our wholeness right. I think that’s the thing. The worst part is feeling now that I’ve cried I owe everyone because I’ve somehow like made them uncomfortable and I need to make up for it. That’s bullshit. You don’t owe anyone anything and if quite frankly, if you’re in that scenario then run for the hills because that’s abusive.  

Alex: Yeah and if they’re uncomfortable, that’s their discomfort and they can ask for what they need. 

Arique: Or fuck off. 

Alex: Or fuck off. [both laughing] 

And that’s where it goes back to relationship right? I know we’re kind of winding down towards the end but what I love is at the beginning you described those moments of sitting in the coffee shop with other women of color and that was about relationship and how the work of political healers start from relationship. When you’re in relationship you can like talk. Even earlier I was like “Oh I totally used the wrong identity for you” and you were like “No, this is my identity” and I was like “Ok” and we moved on because we’re in relationship right? And so and I think that part of political healing is that people are not in relationship. Here in the US I see all the time people are frozen. And how can you be in relationship if you’re frozen and you can’t like sit across the coffee table and see somebody else’s humanity and hear again and again “I’m exhausted” and think “Ok, so how do we change that?” because it’s not ok that you’re exhausted, that we’re all exhausted.  

Arique: My biggest hurdle I think for myself even, but also in my organizing has been how do I acknowledge that I currently do not have the capacity to invest in you the way you deserve? Because I think that’s where anger and impatience comes out.  I’m all about self-interested urgency. I love that shit. You need something done, it’s gotta get done right now. But there’s something else about being angry, blindly, and impatient with other folks right. “Oh why do you want this from me? I can’t right now.” Like I’ve done that to like my closests. But when I actually started honoring my emotional labor as a skill and actually acknowledging that this is something I can choose to give to someone, this is not something that has to go to everyone no matter what, that’s not true. That’s something of value that people actually want from me right. When I started realizing that, then I could be more delicate to myself and more delicate to everyone around me. Because I wasn’t forcing myself to do something I really couldn’t. And the other side to that is when I do offer up, I am able. I actually can like have the space for you.  

Right there’s… I think one of the most triggering conversations I can ever be a part of is breastfeeding. But to know that about myself, to know that that process was painful for me and that there was something wrong about it. Like so if the person in front of me wants to have a conversation about what they’re going through, that I can actually say “I’m not the best person to talk to right now, cause I’m still not over my shit. And I can share my shit, are we ok with sharing both our shit?” But I think that can be, I think people forget, people always forget that emotional tending should come with consent. It is not something that people should expect from everyone because you never know where someone’s emotional capacity is or isn’t. Right? So there’s a lot of white folks that give up trying to be the good white person or whatever that is because someone yelled at them. A person of color yelled at them when they were trying to ask a question and then they give up. And I was just like “Do you not see the emotional tending that you were requesting? Is that completely blind to you?”  

Alex: And it is. 

Arique: And it is. But the more we actually bring this skill set of emotional labor to light, the more we can actually put words to it outside of like descriptions of personalities, we can really be kinder to ourselves and to each other. So the culture that I have at the job that I work at like my supervisor’s supervisor is a woman of color right. My supervisor’s a woman of color, I’m a woman of color, the whole metro team organizing are women of color. And not because being a woman of color suddenly automatically makes you correct, but that we are all invested in this culture that allows us to be ourselves. And I think that’s possible in every context and that it’s going to look different in every context but that political healing can exist and that everyone can be a political healer if they want to do the work.  

Alex: Yeah. And if they do the work then it’s not always the same people who have to do this work. Right? And then maybe the same people don’t have to be as impacted and exhausted. Right? Cause there’s a lot of work. 

Arique: We have to tend to the soil. What are we pouring into ourselves and what are we actually trying to grow into right? 

Alex: Absolutely. And what kind of collective body we want to be. Wow. This. I’m just so excited. Thank you. I just really want to acknowledge that you gave a huge chunk of your time to do this podcast interview. And to have the conversation before and then to have our conversation, to meander into all of the places we’ve meandered.  

And if you’re interested in Arique’s work and finding out more about it, you can follow Arique on Twitter at @arique777 and there you can also find a link to Arique’s facebook page and find out more about the amazing work she does in the world. And you know, just figure out maybe how this work will relate to you, where you are in your life, and what political healing might look like for you at the intersection of your identities. Whatever your gender, wherever you are on your path, what would it mean for you to be that radically vulnerable and invested in political healing for the liberation of all? 

Anything else we’ve missed Arique, anything else you want to say? 

Arique: I just love you Alex. You started this conversation with like “She’s a friend, a recent friend, but a good one!” You guys don’t even know like we became family so quickly and I just want to honor the fact that like your husband is taking care of my son right now, your daughter also. And so just the level of investment that like you’ve provided me so that I can just sit here and actually talk about my work. I mean, Wilmer would have added humor so it wasn’t because you denied him being here , it’s just like, 

Alex: Next podcast. We’ll have it with Wilmer and Melissa. 

Arique: We should have them talk. Have people try and guess what Wilmer’s saying. [both laughing] But you’re one of the first friends in my life who provided me a space where I finally understood what supporting someone’s motherhood really means, and how like that’s been lost to me for a long time. That I could have people who help me with Wilmer but shit on my motherhood. And I think that like your husband’s amazing. LIke I keep wondering where’s the line where he’s just like… 

Alex: I don’t know. I’ve been wondering that for 18 years. When is the cis white British straight-ish, I mean not that straight anymore because he’s still married to me, dude gonna be like “fuck this shit” but you know, he hasn’t yet. So maybe that for me that’s a piece of healing there.  

Arique: He is! And it means a lot to me. He is just like so… I then, I learn about myself about how big I make these small requests right. And that I can actually make requests. LIke there’s just a level of my own personal and political healing that that’s wrapped up in your family and really woven in your family. And so I’m just really honored that you would think of me for this podcast and like I really wish the best for you. And all the fans! Keep listening in, Alex fucking rocks with his dope ass bitch friends that will just like fucking rock your world.  

Alex: [laughing] Well I don’t think I can think of a better tagline than that, so keep listening to the Gender Stories podcast. Find it on your favorite platform. Rate it, give us reviews, follow me on Twitter or Instagram at @GenderStories, find us on Facebook where we put the transcript for each episode as well.  

And until the next episode, keep rocking your gender whatever it is and keep telling your gender stories and let’s find some political healing in that sharing.  

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