Thus, in 1876, at the IWMA (Federalist) Berne Congress, Malatesta declared that in spite of the devotion and respect that linked his followers to Bakunin, they were not 'Bakuninists', firstly because 'we do not share all the practical and theoretical ideas of Bakunin', and
secondly and above all because 'we follow ideas, not men; because we reject the habit of incarnating a principle in a man, a habit which is worthy of political parties but completely incompatible with the tendencies of modern socialism"
- Aspects of International Socialism, Haupt
How sad is it that I’ll never read them back lmao, it’s all here if I wanted but the search feature on Twitter sucks and it’s super time consuming. Maybe when I’m a bunch older it would be interesting, but I’d def want an external tool thing, the only ones I’m familiar with cost$
It’s not even especially perfectly accurate, but I was exposed to it at the right enough time and I promise you it had an unreasonable influence on my development
I could be her nice chill agoraphobic boyfriend (cute+need). So I think I already had those ideas floating around for a bit, but those specific applications and proposals had me think a lot more about possibilities I’d be comfortable with
Then with further reflection and exploration I found relationship anarchy and found it to be super compelling and less than a year later I’m reading malatesta anthologies - so thanks for coming to my Ted talk on how to radicalize the libs, just do what I did :P
When I went for a walk yesterday I was really struggling but really desiring to think this stuff through, and convos today helped me a bunch so yay, I feel glad (I typed “content” out but didn’t quite fit, ig not fully at peace with things but still pretty good overall
Next thing was sex. She went through a lot of questioning around the end of our relationship around sex, and I’m not sure how much of that might have been to 1) previous negative emotions about sex from early relationship contexts 2) feeling not as close in our relationship
3) maybe somewhere on asexual spectrum. Either way, talking through that and being exposed changed my understanding of relationships in practice, and allowed me to decouple sex from romance. This combined with un-deified “love” leading me to question the solid grounding of
“Romance” (+personal aro questioning [causality undetermined]) laid the groundwork for RA disposition. During breakup, I proposed (knowing full well she wouldn’t accept) that I’d be fine if she dated other people, or had different people to take her on walks for example, and that
Side note: pretty wild how much my anxiety has shifted relatively recently, I wonder how much is due to pandemic vs breakup. Intuition feels like post breakup was super important. Anyway back to it
So that separation of time def created a whole new vibe to the relationship, and I don’t think she really liked it that much. But it exposed me to new ways of having a relationship with someone, even if that ended up being dysfunctional for us 2 specifically.
And something I just thought of that was more the most recent era of like college stuff and end of relationship stuff:
Parties
Sex
Breakup itself and dealbreakers
First thing is like I was never really interested in partying/drinking stuff. I would chill w Meg and her while they drank sometimes, but that was mostly a proximity thing and it was very low key
In college, I was totally uninterested in going to parties and also seeing her friends at all. It was just p overwhelming and unnecessary for me. But it also meant that it created this pretty big divide between us and how our time was spent. I was totally cool with this, and just
Next thing was learning about jealousy. I don’t know what my disposition was like about jealousy prior to Gail, but she had lots of guy friends and I think that was really cool for me (working on heteronormative assumptions) to fix a lot of biases most ppl deal with
I still remember having certain issues with her guy friends but often I think that had to deal with their behavior, which was often coming onto her when she was not interested. There’s always a risk of me understating jealous motivations, but it honestly feels like a lot of it
Was discomfort for her discomfort and not wanting her to have to deal with stuff. Either way I think I quickly got over any jealousy type memes towards men, and subsequently towards relationships in general
There was a case when she went to Europe, but it was similarly a case of a guy coming onto her that she was uncomfy w, and I think I was more frustrated that she wasn’t transparent (but tbf she said she was struggling with making sense of his advances and how to handle and we
1st was my broad use of love. She would tell friends all the time she loved them, including me, and it always felt really nice and warm. Removing that word from a pedastal was super important to me, and continues to be super powerful conception for me to make sense of things
And time for the fault of no one, and it’s nice to have a space that feels like relaxing and safe. Gail was always p sketch on the idea but I always had it in mind when thinking about future cohabitation
Ok so for beds, I think I was exposed to this idea early, maybe middle school or high school, and I just loved it. Just bc you live w a “romantic” “partner” doesn’t mean you have to share a bed/room always, or that not sharing means uoure fighting. Sometimes you just need space
Also the Barbie stuff was important to me too. Idk it’s interesting tho how I feel like that stuff stopped being a focus for a long while, and there was probably a great deal of social correction by parents or others and I just kinda went w it, def was not supported to explore
Oh and just to note none of this is like “see! I was x all along!” More like just thinking about influences and how precious dispositions and experiences impacted present
I’m thinking about things in my life that hinted at normative positions I hold now (relationship anarchy, anarchic in general, queer gender identity, vegan). Some of them have really nothing at all that I can remember (vegan) but others do.
Like I think in 3rd grade I actually played around with gender a lot lol. Had lots of girl friends and had longer hair, liked being misgendered(I specifically remember a time at McDonalds when I was offered a girl toy and later when the principal gendered me wrong on a fieldtrip)