Speaker 1: Greetings and welcome to Woke F with me Danielle Moody.
Speaker 1: This year, I'm striving to bring more wokeness to my
Speaker 1: listeners and myself through the conversations I'm having on woke
Speaker 1: a F daily that includes centering blackness and black liberation
Speaker 1: in all aspects of life on the political spectrum. I
Speaker 1: had the pleasure of speaking with Charles M. Blow, the
Speaker 1: New York Times columnists and author of the new book
Speaker 1: The Devil You Know, a Black Power Manifesto. We talked
Speaker 1: about how the black vote is too often taken for
Speaker 1: granted by the white male political system, and the ways
Speaker 1: in which we can take our power back and make
Speaker 1: our voices heard. Coming up, you'll hear my conversation with
Speaker 1: doctor Jen M. Jackson about the revolutionary and liberatory power
Speaker 1: of black love. As always, if you want to hear
Speaker 1: the full thirty minute interview, head over to my Patreon
Speaker 1: and subscribe for just five dollars a month at patreon
Speaker 1: dot com slash woke AF. I keep replaying January sixth
Speaker 1: in my head and the trauma of that day and
Speaker 1: the fact that I knew you knew we were all
Speaker 1: headed to that place, right. We know that there is
Speaker 1: there is something that I believe that is and this
Speaker 1: is me not putting words in your mouth, there is
Speaker 1: something that I believe that is inherently violent about white people,
Speaker 1: right when faced with their privilege being taken, when faced
Speaker 1: with the idea that they come White conservatives come from
Speaker 1: this place of lack of scarcity, right where they believe
Speaker 1: that anything anyone else achieves, anything anyone else is able
Speaker 1: to attain that they already have, is somehow taking from them.
Speaker 1: And I wonder how you move, like how you're supposed
Speaker 1: to shift a society when you know that there are
Speaker 1: people that believe inherently in your lack of worth as
Speaker 1: a human. I will frame it slightly differently. I don't
Speaker 1: agree with I don't disagree with that, but I was
Speaker 1: saying slightly different than and say that there is something
Speaker 1: inherently violent about white supremacy, that many white people are
Speaker 1: invested in that and they act out that violence. But
Speaker 1: it is the white supremacy itself that is violent. And
Speaker 1: the beauty of this idea, as you know, which what
Speaker 1: kept me up for you know, four or five days
Speaker 1: with very little sleep and very little food in writing
Speaker 1: a book post. I think when I ended. It was
Speaker 1: like twenty five thousand words. Was because it was so
Speaker 1: clear to me that we would no longer need to
Speaker 1: center whiteness in black liberation. And whether or not you
Speaker 1: want to acknowledge that it has been centered or not,
Speaker 1: it has absolutely been centered the entire history of black
Speaker 1: people in this country. It either centers their guilt and
Speaker 1: us trying to get them to feel our pain. Either
Speaker 1: centers their resistance to our progress. It centers their participation
Speaker 1: or their permission. The only reason you don't have reparations
Speaker 1: or police reform is because the white people, primarily white men,
Speaker 1: primarily rich white men in the Senate, don't want you
Speaker 1: to have it right, and that idea of the white
Speaker 1: male patriarchy existing and dominating every part of American power
Speaker 1: structure becomes the problem. They're the majority of the governors.
Speaker 1: They're only for none white governors in America. None of
Speaker 1: those four are black. By the way, almost all of
Speaker 1: the ones who are, the white ones are male. White
Speaker 1: men are the majority of state House representatives in this country.
Speaker 1: About fifty white women are thirty percent and the other
Speaker 1: fifteen percent left over for the rest of us. So
Speaker 1: when we say things like the system responds like this,
Speaker 1: The system is predatory. Stop being euphemistic. The system is
Speaker 1: white men. The system is white people who benefit from
Speaker 1: what those white men are doing. And the only impediment
Speaker 1: to you not being completely free for the system having
Speaker 1: been set up the way it was set up in
Speaker 1: the first place was because white men wanted it to be.
Speaker 1: And what this does. It says there's something that you
Speaker 1: can do. It does not ask their permission, that does
Speaker 1: not need their participation, does not require me to pat
Speaker 1: you on the back for your racial growth. This is
Speaker 1: we can just assume this power, and that to me
Speaker 1: was powerful as a person who grew up in the
Speaker 1: set in nineteen seven, grew up in the seventies black power,
Speaker 1: always hearing revolutionary talk but never quite understand how we're
Speaker 1: supposed to get there. Arm revolution was never gonna work.
Speaker 1: But this is legal, this is constitution, It is revolutionary.
Speaker 1: We can only experience black revolution and liberation by centering blackness,
Speaker 1: not just in our politics, but in every aspect of
Speaker 1: our lives. I was so delighted an honor to be
Speaker 1: joined this week by doctor Jen M. Jackson, teen Vogue
Speaker 1: columnist and author of the upcoming book Black Women taught us.
Speaker 1: Jen talks about the revolutionary power of black love, not
Speaker 1: just in loving ourselves, but knowing and practicing the love
Speaker 1: that we deserve as black people. For Jen, that includes
Speaker 1: ethical nonmonogamy and polyamory. They talk about what those terms
Speaker 1: mean and how freeing ourselves from the patriarchal conceptions of
Speaker 1: love can be truly liberating. There was so much more
Speaker 1: we talked about in our enlightening and engaging conversation, and
Speaker 1: you can hear it all now at patreon dot com
Speaker 1: slash woke af For now, we pick up with doctor
Speaker 1: Jen M. Jackson telling us what exactly ethical nonmonogamy and
Speaker 1: polyamory mean. So monogamy in the way that I've grown
Speaker 1: to learn it and understand it how I was socialized.
Speaker 1: I grew up in the Black Church, grew up very traditional,
Speaker 1: and for me, it was always about a kind of
Speaker 1: heteronormative principle around possession of one another in a kind
Speaker 1: of marriage or some sort of nested environment. So some
Speaker 1: environment where the goal is inevitably an escalator that leads
Speaker 1: you into marriage, that leads you into this lifelong commitment
Speaker 1: where one person becomes your primary source for all manner
Speaker 1: of emotional care, right, so physical love, sex, intercourse, things
Speaker 1: like that. But also you know, folks use their marriages
Speaker 1: for things like therapy, for emotional work in terms of
Speaker 1: trauma healing, things like that. And so I witnessed this
Speaker 1: growing up in monogamous relationships. And while folks do not
Speaker 1: say this as the formal definition of monogamy, I think
Speaker 1: it matters what people do in addition to know what
Speaker 1: they say. For me, polyamory has been really about finding
Speaker 1: ways to love expansively, right, So not just romantically and sexually,
Speaker 1: which is what a lot of folks reduce polyamory too,
Speaker 1: But it's about loving in a way that means that
Speaker 1: love does not have to be closed off, categorized, boxed in.
Speaker 1: This includes platonic relationships, This includes best friends, to includes
Speaker 1: people who we have deep Internet connections with and we
Speaker 1: go on dates and we buy each other gifts and
Speaker 1: we care for one another, but we don't have the
Speaker 1: goals of being married, right, And so being in a
Speaker 1: polyamorous love style allows for folks to see themselves as
Speaker 1: folks who are worthy of love. Right. There's something I
Speaker 1: think that is particularly harmful about being black and queer
Speaker 1: and monogamous in a society that all already tells us
Speaker 1: that black folks are not valuable, worthy or worth loving.
Speaker 1: Being a black queer woman and monogamous is very violent.
Speaker 1: The notion that one person is my one soul, make
Speaker 1: my other half, right, because I knew that someone will
Speaker 1: complete me, and if I don't find them, then what
Speaker 1: am I incomplete? Right? Yea? Even yeah, the theory behind it,
Speaker 1: to me, reproduces so many of our own harms and
Speaker 1: insecurities and so much injustice toward black folk that I
Speaker 1: can't I can't participate in it um in terms of
Speaker 1: ethical nonmonogamy. So this came up a lot because you know, uh,
Speaker 1: Jada and Will and august Alsina had their whole dust
Speaker 1: up last year then a whole right, so a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of monogamous people got hold of it, you know,
Speaker 1: and we're like, oh my gosh, this is what the
Speaker 1: polyamorous people do. You know, they've discovered the word entanglement
Speaker 1: and it was a whole thing, you know. Um, And
Speaker 1: that's what I was actually tweeting about when you saw
Speaker 1: that thread. I was tweeting about the that during all
Speaker 1: of that there were people who I really respect folks
Speaker 1: who are in the disability justice space, Folks who are
Speaker 1: in the social justice space, raised justice space, gender justice space,
Speaker 1: who were saying horrible things polyamorous people, not realizing I'm
Speaker 1: a whole polyamorous person, a very out polyamorous person. I
Speaker 1: have a husband, assist gender queer husband. We have three children.
Speaker 1: We gave birth to those children. I gave birth to
Speaker 1: those children, and he is a sexual. We've been together
Speaker 1: for eighteen years. I also have a boyfriend who was
Speaker 1: sist gender and heterosexual. He lives across the country. And
Speaker 1: I have two girlfriends, the one who lives in the
Speaker 1: DC area and one who lives in New York City.
Speaker 1: I love all of these people very very much, like
Speaker 1: very deeply. These are my twin flames. These are people
Speaker 1: who I don't want to live without. And when I
Speaker 1: was witnessing this happening on Twitter, it was very hurtful
Speaker 1: to me because people were saying things like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: polyamorous peop who are just trying to have a lot
Speaker 1: of sex, or they're very childish, they can't commit, they
Speaker 1: don't want to make that us adults have to meet.
Speaker 1: And I think to myself, that is so interesting, because
Speaker 1: my life I make lots of decisions, and I have
Speaker 1: so many commitments, and I actively engage in these agreements
Speaker 1: every day. And so what I want to break down
Speaker 1: for folks is that this idea that monogamy is the
Speaker 1: place where agreements lie is really just a superficial or
Speaker 1: artificial boundary that people have created to make monogamy seem
Speaker 1: like it's righteous and like it's the only way in actuality.
Speaker 1: Most polyamorous folks understand that agreements that we enter into,
Speaker 1: entanglements that we enter into, are so important that we
Speaker 1: have to actively engage with them and re engage with
Speaker 1: them over and over and over again, whereas monogamy has
Speaker 1: this kind of hidden curriculum you're just supposed to know.
Speaker 1: I remember growing up, you were just supposed to know
Speaker 1: that when a boy hit you and then he liked you,
Speaker 1: or you were supposed to know that if you were
Speaker 1: going out to problem with someone and this person want
Speaker 1: to go to problem with you, then the other person
Speaker 1: you like, you can't like them anymore. Right Like, all
Speaker 1: these rules about how you're supposed to navigate monogamy were
Speaker 1: imparted to you implicitly, but in polyamory, because you are
Speaker 1: navigating these kind of open relationships. The dialogue often is
Speaker 1: also supposed to be very open. So this is where
Speaker 1: we get into ethical and unethical nonmonogamy. So, unfortunately, a
Speaker 1: lot of folks conflate unethical nonmonogamy with polyamory and with
Speaker 1: ethical nonmonogamy. So ethical nonmonogamy is not being monogamous, but
Speaker 1: doing so in a way that is upfront, clear and
Speaker 1: allows for consent for all parties involved. Okay, at one
Speaker 1: point was ethically monogamous. So I did not have additional
Speaker 1: partnerships outside of my marriage, but that I have romantic
Speaker 1: interests people I loved, folks I went our own dates
Speaker 1: with and I spent time with. Absolutely that I care
Speaker 1: for them deeply, That I yes, But was I at
Speaker 1: a place in my life where I could build a
Speaker 1: life with them. I wasn't, So I was ethically nominogamous.
Speaker 1: They also knew my kids, they knew my husband, they
Speaker 1: hung out with my friend groups. Right, Um, So unethical
Speaker 1: monogamy is cheating, right, This is sneaking out behind somebody's back,
Speaker 1: not telling being right and polyamory and ethical nominogamy are
Speaker 1: not the same. As explain explain the difference though between
Speaker 1: ethical nonmonogamy because I think we all at this point
Speaker 1: should understand cheating, right. Everybody has experienced it in one
Speaker 1: way or another, or been cheated on, or you know,
Speaker 1: or or cheated um or witness stead. All of those
Speaker 1: things explain to us the difference between polyamory, where you
Speaker 1: are actively in relationship up with varied people, and ethical nonmonogamy. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: I mean it looks different for different people, right, and
Speaker 1: in my life in the way that I've embodied non monogamy.
Speaker 1: But I always tell folks they ask, how do you love?
Speaker 1: How do you do this? I say, my goal and love,
Speaker 1: just as in everything else, is to do justice to
Speaker 1: others and justice to myself. And so when I am
Speaker 1: in an ethical nonmonogamy situation or engagement, I am very
Speaker 1: clear about what my expectations are, how I will engage,
Speaker 1: and what I have the bandwidth for and what I'm
Speaker 1: available for. Right. Monogamy often teaches us that if we
Speaker 1: come into contact with our soul mate or our other half,
Speaker 1: that we're supposed to just drop everything, move across the country,
Speaker 1: forget our dreams. Right like it's now our whole life
Speaker 1: has to change and fold itself around this new person,
Speaker 1: because that's the only one and you better get it
Speaker 1: or you lose it. Right. So, ethical nonmonogamy releases us
Speaker 1: from some of that right because it says, no, actually,
Speaker 1: you're your twin flame, you are your most complete part,
Speaker 1: You are your whole, and so it puts you in
Speaker 1: a position to have authority over your love life in
Speaker 1: such a way where you can say, I actually am
Speaker 1: not available to do that, but I still want to
Speaker 1: be in your life. So what are the parameters around
Speaker 1: which we can enter one another's lives and still do
Speaker 1: justice to ourselves. You can still be a whole person
Speaker 1: over there, and I can still be a whole person
Speaker 1: over here. Or if we'd like to walk together and
Speaker 1: live together, or we want to have children or start
Speaker 1: a business, or we can do those things, but we
Speaker 1: can be clear about where the justice looks like for
Speaker 1: me and where the justice looks like for you, and
Speaker 1: so for me. That's how ethical nonminogamy works. It's this
Speaker 1: ongoing cyclical process that allows for our relationships to grow
Speaker 1: and adapt because we our whole, right, we are whole people,
Speaker 1: and so what we bring to the relationship is the
Speaker 1: most important part, not the fact that we found this
Speaker 1: person who is now going to save us and heal
Speaker 1: us six things. And that's the that's the logic that
Speaker 1: we have to get away from. And that's also the
Speaker 1: logic that often compels people to cheat, right, because it's
Speaker 1: the same right, ye, Right, It's built of Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: my body is telling me that i want something else here,
Speaker 1: that I'm missing something. But I'm afraid to actually be
Speaker 1: honest with myself and with others about what I'm feeling.
Speaker 1: So it's inherently saying my intuition is it's not something
Speaker 1: I'm going to listen to. I'm not doing justice. Wow.
Speaker 1: So cheating is injustice to others and to ourselves, right um,
Speaker 1: And so ethical non monogamy gets us out of that
Speaker 1: process of injustice. Love should be a process of justice.
Speaker 1: I have often quoted Bob Marley's line from Redemption Song
Speaker 1: and then to pate yourself from mental slavery, None but
Speaker 1: ourselves can free our minds. I leave you with that
Speaker 1: thought today. Once you are equipped with the knowledge and information,
Speaker 1: it is up to you you to free your mind,
Speaker 1: to get woke, and to live in that wokeness. White
Speaker 1: supremist patriarchy is a hell of a drug and it's
Speaker 1: fed to all of us, all of our lives. But
Speaker 1: we know there is a better way of thinking and
Speaker 1: a better way of living. If we come together, we
Speaker 1: can build power and make a better world for everybody.
Speaker 1: So please do share Woke a f with your friends,
Speaker 1: your family, and if you have not already subscribe. It's
Speaker 1: only five dollars a month to get five new one
Speaker 1: hour shows every single week at patreon dot com slash
Speaker 1: woke AF as I say every week. As I say
Speaker 1: every week, and I'll be saying it until we are
Speaker 1: free and mind, body, and spirit. Power to the people
Speaker 1: and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay
Speaker 1: woke as fuck.