Why kinship now?
“If I’m an individual, it’s too much to hold, but I’m not in individual so — “ - Sista Docta Alexis Pauline Gumbs
The day was sunny, warm, & bright. Smiles peppered the faces of the people around me. In front of me was a dairy free cupcake with a candle in it. The day before, I’d turned 30. I was surrounded by people gathered to get to know one another better, each invested in struggling for the nebulous vision of food sovereignty within our communities. I was grateful to be in good company with good food, flattered by the surprise acknowledgment of my birthday. A waterfall of contentment washed over me, a respite from the turmoil that’s gripped my life for much of 2024. The person next to me, an elder in the gathering, sang along in celebration and excitedly wished me a happy birthday as the song faded. Her words cut through the haze of contentment - she used the wrong pronoun for me in her well wishes. I breathed shallowly and turned to her with a smile, “Hey ___ here’s a reminder: My pronouns are he not that other word. I need you to respect that.” Immediately, she apologized and stated her intention was not to offend.
Truth is, I’m not offended by being regarded by pronouns that are not my own. I feel disheartened, misunderstood, and occasionally sad but I take no offense - it’s just not that deep for me. Offense would mean that the person speaking to me has become my enemy for their mistake. I have enough adversaries under U.S. imperialism without making someone invested in food sovereignty my enemy for her discomfort and unfamiliarity with trans people. I see that her heart is open but her perception is narrowed from conditioning to see gender a certain way. So, I sat in front of her and said my piece. I was received with compassion, accountability, and a willingness to change. I was received in gratitude for being bold enough to sit down in front of her and say you made a mistake, that has to change for us to work together. The correction gave us a moment for connection and an opportunity to share love. My love expressed in honest words, hers in receiving the correction with humility. It’s these moments of kinship that fuel my passion for liberation. Grace between me and this elder means that we can come together to tell a story across many decades and timelines - I want that more than I need her to get my pronouns correct every time. Both are possible with time, practice, and patience.
We went on to talk for a while and some time later I asked her what her passion was coming out of college. She shared and then asked me the same question. I shared that I worked for domestic violence service agencies, in sexuality education, with youth, and in reproductive justice movements. When asked if I enjoyed the work I was honest - I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it but that I have an obsession with a set of questions that brought me to the work. The phrasing of these change but they are more or less: How do we have healthy relationships to each other? What does it look like to navigate conflict beyond punishment and disposal? What are the relational infrastructures that allow us to be fortified enough for the liberatory futures we claim to desire? These questions accompany me everywhere I go. We are intimate companions. I firmly believe our capacity for revolution is directly correlated to our capacity to hold tension and navigate conflict. Rather than ‘do I feel safe with you?’ I want to know ‘are we able to navigate our way back to harmony with one another?’
I know very little at this point in my life with as much confidence as I know that we humans are flawed beings. We are mistake ridden imperfections who will hurt each other. Harm cannot be banished from our lives but it can be traversed. Making the journey more navigable and irresistible is one of my life’s callings. I believe we need to make peace with conflict, contradiction, and harm to move beyond the logics of incarceration, policing, and habitual punishment. I cannot protect myself into being free. I cannot disavow the beings around me and expect to know freedom, interconnectedness, and serenity. Forgiveness is an integral part of this but communication & presence must foreground that absolution or the decision to end a relationship. Lately, however, I am cowed by fear when I think of sharing even the slightest hint of conflict or contradiction - the vulnerability and risk tightens my throat, fogs my mind, and my body turns away from this incredible opportunity to practice towards the answers to the questions at the core of my being.
I’m coming to learn (though if I’m honest I do not yet understand) that fear is the first signal my body gives me that I am heading towards growth and shedding shame. Fear is a veil that isolates me from connection, intimacy, and kinship. (Shout out to sobriety and fellowship with sober people for this revelation!)There are limits to this, of course. Some fears are warranted and must be heeded but all fears need to be faced and questioned before they are integrated into my understanding of the world around me.
What do I mean by that? At first, I feared bugs. Then I spent time with bugs and learned their ways. I no longer fear bugs. For many years, I feared heights. Then I explored climbing, hiking, rollercoasters, and jumping from trees. I still feel uneasy in high places but I am no longer afraid, just cautious and aware of my bodily limits. For a long time, I feared men for all the ways I was harmed by men in my life. Then I spoke with them more, listened to my spirit’s calling, studied cycles of violence, built deep intimacies with trans men & masculine people, and learned the difference between masculine and patriarchal. Now, I love my masculinity and rooted in the truth of its presence in my life. I am angry and ready to dismantle a culture that encourages us to dispose of, destroy, and violate some for the illusion of power. I recognize the necessary duality of masculine and feminine and the beauty of expressions beyond this forced polarity. I still have many fears I’ve yet to process and transcend. Some days I’m eager and ready to do so. Others I am too sick with it to see beyond their looming shadows. Through all the peaks and valleys of my fear, I know I am strongest in the battle to face them when they are shared, spoken aloud, reframed, and faced in good company. To simply submit to my fears is to deny the possibility of worlds and understandings beyond the ones I’ve come to know so far. I’m too curious and fervent about our capacity to change to stay beholden to lies and delusions. I also understand that a world is not an individual creation, I need kinship to build new ones.
So what does this word kinship actually mean and what is its place in our lives right now? Kinship is the word I use to defy a confined definition of intimacy and connection. It offers me an expansive understanding of the interconnectedness I long for between me, you, the soil, an earthworm, rainfall, a tree, the familiar stranger at a bus stop, the moon, and so on. Kinship asks each other to consider - what is my connection to the being before me? It disrupts a neat hierarchy of organization around intimacy. Rather than centering what connections are already established, categorized, and defined through indoctrination, kinship invites a curiosity to seek connection in every interaction. Words like family, spouse, friend, coworker, acquaintance are so human and like I said earlier, we humans are a bit foolish. These words put role and thus a set of behaviors & rules over a relation that may or may not reflect the genuine connection between two beings.
We need to heed nonhumans to see beyond the deadly trappings in front of us now. To be clear, I’m not advocating for a removal of these terms - they have their uses but I am saying that these terms should come about from practiced interrelation rather than mandated labeling. We live in a world where family can be a prison defined by endless cycles of abuse that we are obligated to stay in because of our blood ties. Where a boss can steal wages and mistreat workers and there’s no recourse because of the power differentials ascribed to these roles. Kinship gives me more wiggle room to consent to the relations before me and find the words for them in time. Because kinship is a commitment to active, persistent curiosity and practiced attachment. I choose who I have affinity and rapport with under a kinship model - it takes away an ascribed meaning and replaces it with felt sense of connection. That element of sensuality has completely changed how I perceive interconnectedness. I think less on quantity of relations, time spent together, and propriety of the named relationship. Instead, I turn towards my body mind and ask: “How does it feel to be in relation? What is the connection between me and the being(s) before me - how can I be open to arriving at that understanding with them? How do I want to feel in relationship to those around me? What are the boundaries I need to love myself and them at the same time?’ It’s an ongoing negotiation, a mindful approach, an active agreement forged in the communication between us. Kinship is the practice, for me, of knowing *how* I want to be acting when we win and achieve our liberation dreams. It also fortifies my present intimacies and boundaries for the hard work that faces us to get there in the first place.
What does kinship offer you?
P.S. I am inspired to write today because it is the day we first greet Lauren Olamina’s words in Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. If you haven’t yet read it and its sequel, I invite you to dive in. If you have already, I invite you to join me in rereading it. There’s so much to synthesize and understand in this novel, especially as we navigate so much death and destruction at the hands of fascistic regimes and global imperialism. Deep gratitude to ancestor Octavia for gifting us such a rich legacy of literature, sharing her world building imagination, and helping birth a pantheon of Black speculative fiction excellence.