Pride

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Four Vision Quests of Jesus (2015)

  Unlike religious ideologies that have staked out the Book of Revelation for strip-mining apocalyptic fantasies to sell to an anxious but lucrative audience, or contemporary gnostic spiritualities that have mined sources like Black Elk to merchandise “spirit helpers” and “dream catchers,” I want to de-commercialize vision. The middle ground of vision is hard to find between these extremes of doubt and exploitation, but it is there beneath the inflated expectations both extremes have created. It is not better special effects or quicker enlightenment, but the quiet experience of the man or woman who follows the call of vision as a quest. In this sense, vision is not a shout, but a whisper; not an extravaganza of images, but a single picture. When I went out on the rooftop over forty years ago I had a vision. It was not a vision like Black Elk, or Daniel, or John of Patmos, but it was a vision. It did not include a cast of characters numbering in the hundreds, but only a single character. It did not announce a grand design for the rest of my life, but only suggested a word of meaning that I could carry with me. I value this vision and share it because I want to rescue vision for all of us who live in an age that has few heroes and many cheap options for revelation. I believe that many of us have been shy about speaking of our own visions. We know they cannot duplicate the wonders of Black Elk. We also hesitate because vision has been so expropriated by fringe elements of religion we do not want to face ridicule. Therefore, we remain quiet about what we have seen. If I break this silence and speak of one of the visions I have had, do I run a risk? Yes, I am certain I do, especially in a time when spiritual vision is so suspect. But I believe the risk is worth it because, if we do not reclaim the presence of vision in our lives, we abandon the field to those who would occupy it for their own ends. In sharing my vision, I claim it is neither a rarity nor a commodity. In fact, it is a quite common, simple fact of our spiritual lives, an option available to any person who seeks it through his or her own quest. As I said in the last chapter, the quest in Native American theology is not reserved for the specialist. Black Elk was not the only Native person to have a vision. There were thousands, even millions who did. Over the centuries, as the vision quest was practiced in a great many traditional Native communities, generations of Native men and women went out in order to go within: that is, they made an intentional effort to receive a vision from God. We know very few of these visions. Perhaps some were as grand as the one Black Elk experienced.

• From Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  Smitty’s voice had fallen to a whisper, and everyone in the room began to smile. From a distance, reading the newspapers back in New York, I had shared in their pride, the same sort of pride that made me root for any pro football team that fielded a black quarterback. But something was different about what I was now hearing; there was a fervor in Smitty’s voice that seemed to go beyond politics. “Had to be here to understand,” he had said. He’d meant here in Chicago; but he could also have meant here in my shoes, an older black man who still burns from a lifetime of insults, of foiled ambitions, of ambitions abandoned before they’ve been tried. I asked myself if I could truly understand that. I assumed, took for granted, that I could. Seeing me, these men had made the same assumption. Would they feel the same way if they knew more about me? I wondered. I tried to imagine what would happen if Gramps walked into the barbershop at that moment, how the talk would stop, how the spell would be broken; the different assumptions at work. Smitty handed me the mirror to check his handiwork, then pulled off my smock and brushed off the back of my shirt. “Thanks for the history lesson,” I said, standing up. “Hey, that part’s free. Haircut’s ten dollars. What’s your name, anyway?” “Barack.” “Barack, huh. You a Muslim?” “Grandfather was.” He took the money and shook my hand. “Well, Barack, you should come back a little sooner next time. Your hair was looking awful raggedy when you walked in.” Late that afternoon, Marty picked me up in front of my new address and we headed south on the Skyway. After several miles, we took an exit leading into the southeast side, past rows of small houses made of gray clapboard or brick, until we arrived at a massive old factory that stretched out over several blocks. “The old Wisconsin Steel plant.” We sat there in silence, studying the building. It expressed some of the robust, brutal spirit of Chicago’s industrial past, metal beams and concrete rammed together, without much attention to comfort or detail. Only now it was empty and rust-stained, like an abandoned wreck. On the other side of the chain-link fence, a spotted, mangy cat ran through the weeds. “All kinds of people used to work in the plant,” Marty said as he wheeled the car around and started back down the road. “Blacks. Whites. Hispanics. All working the same jobs. All living the same kind of lives. But outside the plant, most of them didn’t want anything to do with each other. And these are the church people I’m talking about. Brothers and sisters in Christ.”

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Mrs Dendy followed his gaze, then gave a tremendous cough. ‘Well, Nancy!’ she said, ‘and look at you! You have become quite the handsome young lady - and right beneath our noses!’And at that, Kitty herself turned to me - and showed me such a look of wonder and confusion that it was as if, just for a second, she had never seen me before; and I do not know whose cheeks at that moment were the pinker - mine, or hers.Then she gave a tight little smile. ‘Very nice,’ she said, and looked away; so that I thought, miserably, that the dress must suit me even less than I had hoped, and readied myself for a wretched party.But the party was not wretched; it was gay and genial and loud, and very crowded. The manager had had to build a platform from the end of the stage to the back of the pit, to carry us all, and he had hired the orchestra to play reels and waltzes, and set tables in the wings bearing pastries and jellies, and barrels of beer and bowls of punch, and row upon row of bottles of wine.We were much complimented, Kitty and I, on our new dresses; and over me, in particular, people smiled and exclaimed - mouthing at me across the noisy hall, ‘How fine you look!’ One woman - the conjuror’s assistant - took my hand and said, ‘My dear, you’re so grown-up tonight, I didn’t recognise you!’: just what Mrs Dendy had said an hour before. Her words impressed me. Kitty and I stood side by side all evening but when, some time after midnight, she moved away to join a group that had gathered about the champagne tables, I hung back, rather pensive. I wasn’t used to thinking of myself as a grown-up woman, but now, clad in that handsome frock of blue and cream, satin and lace, I began at last to feel like one - and to realise, indeed, that I was one: that I was eighteen, and had left my father’s house perhaps for ever, and earned my own living, and paid rent for my own rooms in London. I watched myself as if from a distance - watched as I supped at my wine as if it were ginger beer, and chatted and larked with the stage-hands, who had once so frightened me; watched as I took a cigarette from a fellow from the orchestra, and lit it, and drew upon it with a sigh of satisfaction.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  This political struggle for power between popes and emperors would inform the religiously inspired violence of the Crusading period; both sides were competing for political supremacy in Europe, and that meant gaining the monopoly of violence. In 1074 Gregory’s crusade had no takers; twenty years later, the response from the laity would be very different. [image file=image_rsrcDZA.jpg] On November 27, 1095, Pope Urban II, another Cluniac monk, addressed a Peace Council at Clermont in southern France and summoned the First Crusade, appealing directly to the Franks, the heirs of Charlemagne. We have no contemporary record of this speech and can only infer what Urban might have said from his letters.37 In keeping with the recent reforms, Urban urged the knights of France to stop attacking their fellow Christians and instead fight God’s enemies. Like Gregory VII, Urban urged the Franks to “liberate” their brothers, the Eastern Christians, from “the tyranny and oppression of Muslims.”38 They should then proceed to the Holy Land to liberate Jerusalem. In this way the Peace of God would be enforced in Christendom and God’s war fought in the East. The Crusade, Urban was convinced, would be an act of love in which the Crusaders nobly laid down their lives for their eastern brothers, and in leaving their homes they would secure the same heavenly rewards as monks who abjured the world for the cloister.39 Yet for all this pious talk, the Crusade was also essential to Urban’s political maneuvers to secure the libertas of the Church. The previous year he had ousted Henry IV’s antipope from the Lateran Palace, and at Clermont he excommunicated King Philip I of France for making an adulterous marriage. Now by dispatching a massive military expedition to the East without consulting either monarch, Urban had usurped the royal prerogative of controlling the military defense of Christendom.40

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Leo first took advantage of the distractions of the North African church under the Arian Vandals, and wrote to its bishops in the tone of an acknowledged over-shepherd. Under the stress of the times, and in the absence of a towering, character like Cyprian and Augustine, the Africans submitted to his authority (443). He banished the remnants of the Manichaeans and Pelagians from Italy, and threatened the bishops with his anger, if they should not purge their churches of the heresy. In East Illyrian which was important to Rome as the ecclesiastical outpost toward Constantinople, he succeeded in regaining and establishing the supremacy, which had been acquired by Damasus, but had afterward slipped away. Anastasius of Thessalonica applied to him to be confirmed in his office. Leo granted the prayer in 444, extending the jurisdiction of Anastasius over all the Illyrian bishops, but reserving to them a right of appeal in important cases, which ought to be decided by the pope according to divine revelation. And a case to his purpose soon presented itself, in which Leo brought his vicar to feel that he was called indeed to a participation of his care, but not to a plentitude of power (plenitudo potestatis). In the affairs of the Spanish church also Leo had an opportunity to make his influence felt, when Turibius, bishop of Astorga, besought his intervention against the Priscillianists. He refuted these heretics point by point, and on the basis of his exposition the Spaniards drew up an orthodox regula fidei with eighteen anathemas against the Priscillianist error.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  As to the social position of monasticism in the system of ecclesiastical life: it was at first, in East and West, even so late as the council of Chalcedon, regarded as a lay institution; but the monks were distinguished as religiosi from the seculares, and formed thus a middle grade between the ordinary laity and the clergy. They constituted the spiritual nobility, but not the ruling class; the aristocracy, but not the hierarchy of the church. "A monk," says Jerome, "has not the office of a teacher, but of a penitent, who endures suffering either for himself or for the world." Many monks considered ecclesiastical office incompatible with their effort after perfection. It was a proverb, traced to Pachomius: "A monk should especially shun women and bishops, for neither will let him have peace."301 Ammonius, who accompanied Athanasius to Rome, cut off his own ear, and threatened to cut out his own tongue, when it was proposed to make him a bishop.302 Martin of Tours thought his miraculous power deserted him on his transition from the cloister to the bishopric. Others, on the contrary, were ambitious for the episcopal chair, or were promoted to it against their will, as early as the fourth century. The abbots of monasteries were usually ordained priests, and administered the sacraments among the brethren, but were subject to the bishop of the diocese. Subsequently the cloisters managed, through special papal grants, to make themselves independent of the episcopal jurisdiction. From the tenth century the clerical character was attached to the monks. In a certain sense, they stood, from the beginning, even above the clergy; considered themselves preëminently conversi and religiosi, and their life vita religiosa; looked down with contempt upon the secular clergy; and often encroached on their province in troublesome ways. On the other hand, the cloisters began, as early as the fourth century, to be most fruitful seminaries of clergy, and furnished, especially in the East, by far the greater number of bishops. The sixth novel of Justinian provides that the bishops shall be chosen from the clergy, or from the monastery. In dress, the monks at first adhered to the costume of the country, but chose the simplest and coarsest material. Subsequently, they adopted the tonsure and a distinctive uniform. § 34. Influence and Effect of Monasticism.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  But whilst eliminating the question about the amount of our efforts as one which psychology will never have a practical call to decide, I must say one word about the extraordinarily intimate and important character which the phenomenon of effort assumes in our own eyes as individual men. Of course we measure ourselves by many standards. Our strength and our intelligence, our wealth and even our good luck, are things which warm our heart and make us feel ourselves a match for life. But deeper than all such things, and able to suffice unto itself without them, is the sense of the amount of effort which we can put forth. Those are, after all, but effects, products, and reflections of the outer world within. But the effort seems to belong to an altogether different realm, as if it were the substantive thing which we are, and those were but externals which we carry. If the 'searching of our heart and reins' be the purpose of this human drama, then what is sought seems to be what effort we can make. He who can make none is but a shadow; he who can make much is a hero. The huge world that girdles us about puts all sorts of questions to us, and tests us in all sorts of ways. Some of the tests we meet by actions that are easy, and some of the questions we answer in articulately formulated words. But the deepest question that is ever asked admits of no reply but the dumb turning of the will and tightening of our heartstrings as we say, "Yes, I will even have it so!" When a dreadful object is presented, or when life as a whole turns up its dark abysses to our view, then the worthless ones among us lose their hold on the situation altogether, and either escape from its difficulties by averting their attention, or if they cannot do that, collapse into yielding masses of plaintiveness and fear. The effort required for facing and consenting to such objects is beyond their power to make. But the heroic mind does differently. To it, too, the objects are sinister and dreadful, unwelcome, incompatible with wished-for things. But it can face them if necessary, without for that losing its hold upon the rest of life. The world thus finds in the heroic man its worthy match and mate; and the effort which he is able to put forth to hold himself erect and keep his heart unshaken is the direct measure of his worth and function in the game of human life. He can stand this Universe. He can meet it and keep up his faith in it in presence of those same features which lay his weaker brethren low. He can still find a zest in it, not by 'ostrich-like forgetfulness,' but by pure inward willingness to face the world with those deterrent objects there. And hereby he becomes one of the masters and the lords of life. He must be counted with henceforth; he forms a part of human destiny. Neither in the theoretic nor in the practical sphere do we care for, or go for help to, those who have no head for risks, or sense for living on the perilous edge. Our religious life lies more, our practical life lies less, that it used to, on the perilous edge. But just as our courage is so often a reflex of another's courage, so our faith is apt to be, as Max Müller somewhere says, a faith in some one else's faith. We draw new life from the heroic example. The prophet has drunk more deeply than anyone of the cup of bitterness, but his countenance is so unshaken and he speaks such mighty words of cheer that his will becomes our will, and our life is kindled at his own.

• From The Great Believers (2018)

  She laughed. “I don’t know about fantastic. You should’ve seen me at twenty-five. Hell, you have seen me at twenty-five. Didn’t I look fantastic?” “You did.” “Now you and I have work to do, because I don’t just want you to have the art, I know you need provenance, and my memory is still perfect. I can tell you when and where every one of those pieces was done.” “That would be invaluable.” He could hear Frank and Phoebe yelling at their children in the basement. Debra was angrily washing dishes. Yale told Nora about the Sharps, about their willingness to help. “If we got the ball rolling,” he said, “these works could be hanging in the gallery while you’re still around to see it.” “Well, I like that. I do. What needs to happen?” Heavy footsteps ascended the basement stairs. He told her, quickly, about needing professional shots of the work for authentication, how there were separate experts for each artist. “And eventually they’ll want to see it in person. If you’re willing to put the pieces in our hands,” he said, “then they’d come to us. We’d handle it all.” Frank was in the doorway. Nora said, “That seems smart, doesn’t it?” Yale wished Bill and Roman would come back inside, but then he didn’t want anything to break the spell. The whole room felt like a soufflé that had just risen, like the slightest shake would destroy it. Frank pressed both hands into the doorframe. He said, “You’re giving away millions of dollars.” His voice a cyclone in a bottle. “Your grandkids won’t be able to go to Northwestern if you do this.” Nora said, “Stanley, won’t you come in here?” “I would consider this undue influence,” Frank said. “Is that the legal term, Stanley? Undue influence?” Stanley had entered the room, and he gave Yale a wary look. “This is where you want your own counsel present. Just—so you don’t have to deal with any of this a year from now, two years from now.” Yale checked his watch. Only 4 p.m. Frank said, “Then I want my own counsel present.” “You’re welcome to that,” Yale said. Roman was back, reporting that it had started to snow. Nora said, “You certainly do bring the weather, Mr. Tishman!” Yale squinted at the window. Had this been predicted? They’d had the radio off the whole drive up. It was falling steadily, thickly. A mixed blessing, at best: Frank might not be able to send for his own lawyer from Green Bay, but this would slow the Northwestern counsel down significantly. The Northwestern counsel, whose name, for Pete’s sake, was Herbert Snow. A cosmic joke. “May I use your restroom?” asked Yale, and Roman, who’d already found it, pointed through the dining room. Yale passed the polished table, the curio cabinets, and entered the kitchen—the kind of kitchen every grandmother ought to have. Herbs on the windowsill, shelves of cookbooks.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  Their liturgy takes place in a feudal castle rather than a church or monastery, and their clergy are not abbots or bishops but hermits, many of them former knights. Galahad, not the pope, is Christ’s representative on earth. The knight’s loyalty to his earthly lord is a sacred duty and no other commitment can supersede it: “For the heart of the knight must be so hard and unrelenting to his sovereign’s foe that nothing in the world can soften it. And if he gives way to fear, he is not of the company of knights, a veritable companion, who would sooner meet death in battle than fail to uphold the quarrel of their lord.” 115 Killing the enemies of his king, even if they are Christians, is just as holy as killing the Muslim enemies of Christ. The ecclesiastical establishment found it impossible to control the knights’ dissident Christianity. Aware that they were in an unassailable position, these knights simply refused to comply with the Church’s demands. 116 “Everybody should honor [them],” wrote an early thirteenth-century cleric, “... for they defend Holy Church, and they uphold justice for us against those who would do us harm.... Our chalices would be stolen from before us at the table of God and nothing would ever stop it.... The good would never be able to endure if the wicked did not fear knights.” 117 Why should knights obey the Church? Their victories alone proved that they had a special relationship with the Lord of Hosts. 118 Indeed, one poet argued, the physical effort, skill, tenacity, and courage that warfare required made it “a much nobler work” than any other occupation and put the knight in a superior class of his own. Chivalry, claimed another knight, was “such a difficult, tough and very costly thing to learn that no coward ventures to take it on.” 119 Knights regarded fighting as an ascetic practice that was far more challenging than a monk’s fasts or vigils. A knight knew what real suffering was: every day he took up his cross and followed Jesus onto the battlefield. 120 Henry of Lancaster (1310–61), hero of the first phase of the Hundred Years’ War between England and France, prayed that the wounds, pain, fatigue, and danger of the battlefield would enable him to endure for Christ “such afflictions, labors, pains, as you chose, and not merely to win a prize nor to offset my sins, but purely for love of you, as you Lord have done for love of me.” 121 For Geoffroi de Charny, fighting on the other side, the physical struggle of warfare gave his life meaning. Prowess was the highest human achievement because it required such extreme “pain, travail, fear, and sorrow.” Yet it also brought “great joy.”

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I jumped to my feet, thrust Cyril at her, then hurried to the steps at the side of the platform and ran up them, two at a time. The chairman saw me and half-rose to block my path, but I waved him back and stepped purposefully over to the sweating, sagging Ralph.‘Oh, Nance,’ he said, as close to tears as I had ever seen him. I took his arm and gripped it tight, and held him in his place before the crowd. They had grown momentarily silent - through sheer delight, I think, at seeing me leap, so dramatically, to Ralph’s side. Now I took advantage of their hush to send my voice across their heads in a kind of roar.‘So you don’t care for mathematics?’ I cried, picking up the speech where Ralph had let it falter. ‘Perhaps it’s hard to think in millions; well, then, let us think in thousands. Let us think of three hundred thousand. What do you think I am referring to? The Lord Mayor’s salary?’ There were titters at that: there had been a bit of a scandal, a couple of years before, about the Lord Mayor’s wages. Now I gratefully singled out the titterers and addressed myself to them. ‘No missis,’ I said, ‘I’m not talking of pounds, nor even of shillings. I am talking of persons. I am talking of the amount of men, women, and children who are living in the workhouses of London - of London! the richest city, in the richest country, in the richest empire, in all the world! - at this very moment, as I speak now ...’I went on like this; and the titters grew less. I spoke of all the paupers in the nation; and of all the people who would die in Bethnal Green, that year, in a workhouse bed. ‘Shall it be you that dies in the poorhouse, sir?’ I cried — I found myself adding a few little rhetorical flourishes to the speech, as I went along. ‘Shall it be you, miss? Or your old mother? Or this little boy?’ The little boy began to cry.Then: ‘How old are we likely to be, when we die?’ I asked. I turned to Ralph - he was gazing at me in undisguised wonder - and called, loudly enough for the crowd to hear, ‘What is the average age of death, Mr Banner, amongst the men and women of Bethnal Green?’He stared at me dumbfounded for a second, then, when I pinched the flesh of his arm, sang out: ‘Twenty-nine!’

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  The content I’ve had the honor of creating includes two adult films (Tight Places: A Drop of Color; Hella Brown: Real Sex in the City), countless erotic art pieces, and a book (Never Let the Odds Stop You), as well as being the keeper of the Feelmore trademark, which make the legacy of the erotic much more necessary and sacred. As the content will always live, past my point on earth, I am honored to leave the world a fresh perspective that no one else should own, my body [of work]. amb. Something I love about you that I’ve witnessed as your success has grown is that you really hold the sacred in the center of your life, often thanking God for things that happen, holding Feelmore as a sacred space. Can you speak about the role of the sacred, and of faith, in your pursuit of pleasure? Nenna. Faith is important. I would venture to say that all who are self-employed are tapping into some kind of faith or spiritual practice. When I first moved into Feelmore, I cleaned out the entire place. The previous business had been there more than twenty years. Everyone believes something even if it’s in themselves. I am grateful that I get to talk, within, to something I believe is greater than me. Ego doesn’t serve my business or me … why give it power? I look to give power to that which empowers me at all times. amb. Tell me about a moment of power that has happened in the store (I know I’ve had a few). Nenna. Opening the door is a true moment of power. Tracing my pockets to find the key that holds the door to my life captive. Ever so gently, I place the tip of the key, guided by my index finder, into the hole. Turning the key gently and hearing the sound that it makes when it frees the door lets me know that the idea I had of Feelmore has been proved. Power comes in many forms, but this daily ritual gives me a moment of pleasure. Ownership of the body is something that many are familiar with, but to own one’s own body … be it mind, work, ideas. But truly the body is a power point. Bodyminds ReimaginedA Conversation with Sami Schalk Sami is the author of Bodyminds Reimagined: Disability, Race, and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction.38 She also teaches at the University of Wisconsin, where three floor-to-ceiling bookshelves of Black feminism and science fiction have her back. amb. Tell me how you became who you are, so interested in bodies.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  It gives me permission like nothing else to accept myself in all of my own wildness and growth. Nature puts the struggle in perspective, and I am filled with my own power. Whether I am sitting coochie directly to the earth or am looking at a waterfall pour from its source, abundant, orgasmic, and confident of its origins or am floating in the ocean letting the rage and grief in my ovaries be rocked out of me with each wave. Nature loves on me and helps me realign. Being in my wildness has allowed me to know divine consciousness in a real way. I pray to be like nature, to unfurl without permission or fear. A Prayer for Pussies, by Junauda Petrus Grown women know that feeling. You a little girl under all that skin. All of that life and holding back. All of that gray coochie hair And planted placentas under the tree the kids climb, when hiding from spankings. Under piles of unpaid bills and expired lottery tickets. In your shadow sits that girl within. Wise and wild. Quiet and unforgiving. Indignant and quick. Clitoris driven. An emotional wreck with soulful perfection. Plotting on wildness You start thinking: Remember when I was all one hot heat? One red ferocious flash? One smooth sweet licorice? One free flying unknown? About Prayers for Pussies In 2016, I was commissioned with three other poets to write poetry to be made into sculptured steel lanterns for a downtown Minneapolis public art project. These would be around for thirty-plus years to reflect the moment and place in time. Prince had passed away that year, a bigot and misogynist had been elected as forty-five, and, as writers, we were observers and alchemists to transformation. When I submitted the poem “Prayers for Pussies” to the City of Minneapolis, it was refused due to them feeling the language was inappropriate. The piece had an intention beyond instigation. The practice of prayer is witness and devotion. The term “pussy” for me was no longer just a juicy and provocative euphemism for a vulva or a perceived derogatory term for people who live in the power of femmeness and queerness. It became symbolic of all things that our society has gotten sweetness and limitlessness from and figured out ways to grab and use with no reverence for the sacred. Beyond Trans Desiremicha cárdenas Micha Cardenas is often blowing my mind, taking the stage in bright red lipstick, a gorgeous dress, and stomping boots, talking about art and technology in ways that reshape the future. Author’s note: Transformative justice, as I understand it, is rooted in an understanding that we have all been harmed and all caused harm. It requires a process of rigorous self-examination, honesty, and accountability. To those ends, I offer this reflection on my previous writing about pleasure in activism.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  But I realized that if I wanted to truly be radical in the world, truly see white and skinny as one way people are born as opposed to the physical supreme, which pours over into every other aspect of life, I had to decolonize my desire. I had to learn to desire myself, my body, my skin, my rhythms, my pleasure. I took pictures at first. The pictures weren’t necessarily explicit in the beginning. They were just selfies, before Instagram. I started with my face—how did I look smiling? Happy? Turned on? Shut down? Laughing? I took photos of every part of myself until I felt I knew more about my body, could tolerate myself, even like what I saw. Then it was time for short videos. I would create the videos during moments of self-love, and then use them the next time I felt like touching myself. These videos were not shared, they were not for anyone else’s eyes, opinions, or desires. That was radically important. The energy of them was purely self-adoration. I dated a woman once who told me she had done sexual healing work to get to a place of screaming out her own name when she orgasmed. I let that concept be a guide. How much could I love myself, literally? The results were life-changing. This practice changed the way I dressed, the way I walked, the way I flirted, the way I made love to others, the way I spoke—because I had seen, heard, and felt my power. I mean both my physical, earthly power, and the divine power inside of this body, this light brown, big, queer, glasses-wearing body. It wasn’t ego, it was sitting with what is and finding beauty. And now no one could take that from me, however they might regard my body. I was a pleasure unto myself, I was a guaranteed delight in my own hands and my own eyes. It was, and continues to be, magnificent. 4. Developing erotic awareness. This section could also be called Staying Curious. It can get rote. You learn the way to release whatever is building up in your body, alone or with others, and you return and walk that path over and over, because you know it will satisfy your need. This parallels with other aspects of life—you can learn what works and keep doing it and get by. But bringing curiosity into your sexual relationship with yourself and your lovers is related to the spiritual practice of cultivating a beginner’s mind. As often as possible, I approach the experience of sex as if it is my first time feeling my flesh, feeling myself awaken. In my thirties, this led me to discover a whole new landscape of pleasure in my body and then to be able to clearly let my lover know when it feels good, how it feels good, and what adjustments to make.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  Dallas. There’s never been that eureka moment. I remember back in fifth grade, we were playing volleyball at school, and it was this little charter school, nothing but Indians. And I remember taking a deliberate fall—a very exaggerated fall—because it garnered laughter. And I knew what I was doing. I knew that I was doing it for attention, but also it was a moment that made me feel good because it elicited a response from other folks—like the response that they got out of it. And the thing about organizing is … and I’m careful about who I speak it to or how I say it … is it’s a form of manipulation. You are using information. You’re using tactics to manipulate a situation or a response from people for the benefit of a movement or the benefit of your community or for the benefit of yourself. Comedy is of the same sort. Storytelling is the same process. You’re using the gift of speech or an action of your body to elicit a sort of response and manipulating emotion. You’re tapping into the core source code of who we are as human beings. I think there are so many people that rarely use the transformative power of humor and lightheartedness of stories. But it’s very dicey. It’s very careful, because it could really go into like kitschy, hipster-like new age—like, “let’s just talk about love and peace and the transformative power of crystals and energy,” and all this shit that just turns people off. A good number of people.99 I am confident enough that I know what I’m good at. I know what my strengths are, and I know my weaknesses. My experience of making people laugh and loving that. I like the idea of making people smile. So you have that. Then there’s this other experience of me being a six-foot-two big-ass Indian and going to college at Cal. And being hella aware that I fucking intimidate by just walking into a room. That walking down a street—if there’s women coming down the street on my side, I’m fucking hyper-aware that I’m a big fucking scary person. amb. Because of the socialization that they’re walking with? Dallas. Yeah, and legitimate concern, like, based off real-life experience. So it was just ingrained, you know, growing up in the movement and being around people, being aware of, like, “Oh, shit, I’m gonna cross the street. I’m’a make the conscious decision that I’m gonna remove that and move—step away.”

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  In fact, the Serapaeum was destroyed by imperial soldiers acting on the bishop’s orders, but the monks who turned up afterward carrying relics of John the Baptist and squatted in the ruins became the symbols of this Christian triumph. 84 It was reported that many pagans were so shocked by these events that they converted on the spot. The success of these attacks convinced Theodosius that the best way of achieving ideological consensus in the empire was to ban sacrificial worship and close down all the old shrines and temples. His son and successor, Arcadius (r. 395–408), expressed this policy succinctly: “When [the temples] are overthrown and obliterated, the material foundations for all superstition will have been done away with.” 85 He urged local aristocracies throughout the empire to let their zealots loose on the temples to prove that the pagan gods could not even defend their own homes. As one modern historian notes: “Silencing, burning, and destruction were all forms of theological demonstration; and when the lesson was over, monks and bishops, generals and emperors had driven the enemy from the field.” 86 It was Aurelius Augustine, bishop of Hippo in North Africa, who gave the most authoritative blessing to this Christian state violence. He had found by experience that militancy brought in new converts. 87 Writing twenty-five years after agents of the Western emperor Honorius had torn down the temples and idolatrous shrines of Carthage in 399, he asked: “Who does not see how much the worship of the name of Christ has increased!” 88 When Donatist monks had raged through the African countryside in the 390s, destroying the temples and attacking the estates of the nobility, Augustine had at first forbidden the use of force against them, but he soon noticed that the stern imperial edicts terrified the Donatists and made them return to the Church. It is no coincidence, therefore, that it was Augustine who would develop the “just war” theory, the foundation of all future Christian thinking on the subject. 89 When Jesus told his disciples to turn the other cheek when attacked, Augustine argued, he had not asked them to be passive in the face of wrongdoing. 90 What made violence evil was not the act of killing but the passions of greed, hatred, and ambition that had prompted it. 91 Violence was legitimate, however, if inspired by charity—by a sincere concern for the enemy’s welfare—and should be administered in the same way as a schoolmaster beat his pupils for their own good. 92 But force must always be authorized by the proper authority.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  That led to a selfie in my phone—I felt fly as hell in this selfie, but there was some voice in me saying it was inappropriate, too much, too fat, too Black, too ugly, et cetera. That feeling of listening to that voice was chafing up against those words, “the body is not an apology.” I’m glad that I use my powers for good cuz otherwise I would be an evil cult leader. I posted it and asked people to tag themselves in it with #thebodyisnotanapology. The next morning, twenty people had tagged me. We started the Facebook page. Our digital reach now is about 250,000 a week. It’s a happy accident. I share the story and speak of a transformative portal. I speak radical vulnerability, radical honesty, radical empathy—those three things together created this moment. amb. When did it shift from “I” to “we”? Sonya. I started off saying I wanted to start a movement. I want to sell the world on living in our bodies without apology. It was always “we” in my mind. About seven months after I launched the Facebook page, I was like, I think I need people to help me. I can’t moderate it by myself. So I put out a call for interns. An unapologetic posse coordinator and a social media intern to help with the Facebook page. That continued to grow. People wanted to submit articles on these ideas. I put out a call, and we made a Tumblr, had eight writers there. Someone else wanted to start a support group, we said yes. A team just coalesced around the idea. Then, in 2014, it became clear that it had become a large enough entity that it needed to be formalized. We would get suspended from Facebook on the regs, they would take it down. I also realized I was losing control of the brand—I hate that word, but—people were putting the language on everything. Today we’re a web-based magazine, do workshops, and a community-building platform. How do we learn? This work is interdependent work, learning with our bodies and the bodies of others. amb. What have you learned about your body in that journey? Sonya. I learned the way that I was bartering myself.103 I saw my body as both shame and currency. How can I get what I want from you using this? At the same time, deeply not believing that this was enough. Like, let me sell you something I don’t want. This work has given me the chance to dig into that. “Why do you want to give yourself away, Sonya?” amb. Do you remember when you were taught the body was supposed to be an apology?

• From Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  Onyango was now almost fifty. More and more, he thought of quitting his work for the white man and returning to farm the land. He saw, though, that the land surrounding Kendu was crowded and overgrazed. So his mind went back to Alego, the land that his grandfather had abandoned. One day he came to his wives and told us that we should prepare ourselves to leave for Alego. I was young and adaptable, but the news came as a shock to Helima and Akumu. Both of their families lived in Kendu, and they had become accustomed to living there. Helima especially feared that she would be lonely in this new place, for she was almost as old as Onyango and had no children of her own. So she refused to go. Akumu also refused to go at first, but again her family convinced her that she must follow her husband and care for her children. When we arrived in Alego, most of this land that you now see was bush, and life was hard for all of us. But your grandfather had studied modern farming techniques while in Nairobi and he put his ideas to work. He could make anything grow, and in less than a year he had grown enough crops to sell at market. He smoothed out the earth to make this wide lawn, and cleared the fields where his crops grew high and plentiful. He planted the mango and banana and pawpaw trees that you see today. He even sold most of his cattle because he said that their grazing made the soil poor and caused it to wash away. With this money, he built large huts for Akumu and myself and a hut of his own. He had brought back a crystal set from England that he displayed on a shelf, and on his gramophone he played strange music late into the night. When my first children, Omar and Zeituni, were born, he bought them cribs and gowns and separate mosquito nets, just as he had for Barack and Sarah. In the cooking hut, he built an oven in which he baked bread and cakes like you buy in a store. His neighbors in Alego had never seen such things. At first they were suspicious of him and thought he was foolish—especially when he sold his cattle. But soon they came to respect his generosity, as well as what he taught them about farming and herbal medicines. They even came to appreciate his temper, for they discovered that he could protect them from witchcraft. In those days, shamans were consulted often and were widely feared. It was said that they could give you a love potion for the one you desired and other potions that would cause your enemies to fall dead. But your grandfather, because he had traveled widely and read books, didn’t believe in such things. He thought they were tricksters who stole people’s money.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  Everyone from evangelicals to feminists clutch their pearls about how “it’s so sad to commodify something as intimate and sacred as sexual pleasure!” Never mind that people get paid for intimate labor all the time taking care of children, our emotions, our bodies. People sell their sperm, ovum, and breastmilk, folks. Where’s their rescue squad? Blaming the sex industry for commercializing sex misses the point. The problem isn’t sex work: the problem is that there is no escape for women and femmes from the expectation that we will perform sexual labor for men on demand. The problem is that we have so little control over the ways we are expected to provide sexual pleasure for free. The Pleasures of Getting Paid Is it really so awful to get money for sexual labor? Our legal system has tried to make the sex industry as dangerous as it can be (though still designed to serve cisgender men, naturally). As a result, the sex industry can be really rough for some, yet it still manages to be the best economic option for many. Sex work can offer poor and working-class women and femmes more financial and personal independence, better working conditions, including more control over how they are sexualized, more flexibility, and more pay in a single day than they might earn during a week in other jobs like in the garment trade. This fact about sex work is treated like a side note compared to all the dumb questions about “why’d you get into this?” So let me repeat: sex workers can earn more pay in a single fucking day than in a week in other industries. That matters, and it matters a lot to people who are confined to shitty, low-paid work. Pluma Sumaq writes, “For many women of color in my position, prostitution is not what you do when you hit rock bottom. Prostitution is what you do to stay afloat, to swim rather than sink, to defy rather than disappear. For me, this was ‘financial strategy’ and not ‘easy money.’”49 When poor, working-class, and racialized women and femmes get paid well for sexual labor, it is a victory. We all win: every woman or femme who’s been ordered to smile, to be sexy, to make him feel good, to give him an orgasm—in exchange for what? Being a “good woman”? Being picked by a man? The pleasure of sex work is in the power to take control over our work, our bodies, and what the world tells us we are worth.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  Monique. It’s almost inconceivable that what began as a small, ragtag group of angry activists managed to set the pace for the rest of the world when it comes to working with and loving drug users. We are change-makers and risk-takers and rabble rousers. We are people who’ve made the decision to continue to love those among us that society casts out. And I am proud to be part of this tribe. The people who comprise the harm reduction movement are far from perfect—this may be one of the reasons I love them so much. The harm reduction movement reflects the dogged perseverance, outsider politics, and gnarly attitudes of all the imperfect people who make up this bad-ass community. I can’t believe most of us still like each other after more than thirty years together! This is deeply pleasing to note—that we still love each other. We’ve built a community and figured out how to support each other in times of hardship and pain. This sentiment—that we still love each other—can be seen when we come together after long periods of time apart. And nowhere is that more obvious than the national harm reduction conference. People travel from all over the world every couple of years to build, laugh, cry, and learn together. The high people get at our conference is unmistakable—it’s filled with positive energy, love, and inspiration. It’s truly a magical space that embraces people who use drugs and those of us who love them. We create the space to love ourselves. And if that isn’t pleasure activism, I don’t know what is. 73 amb: Don was my first supervisor in the harm reduction world and an incredible sweet, smart man. With gorgeous hair. See Monique Tula, “Remembering Don McVinney: A Harm Reduction Pioneer,” Harm Reduction Coalition, http://harmreduction.org/blog/remembering-don-mcvinney.74 To keke (or kiki) is to gather together, gossip, and laugh. Gay culture, gay men are often the ones doing the kekeing.Experiments in Cannabis for the Collectiveby Malachi Garza Malachi Garza bounces into a room, so full of boyish energy that you might forget just how experienced he is as a leader and organizer. Then he busts out some incredible strategic vision with a multi-year plan for exectution and your jaw drops. Here, see for yourself. The less one has, the less one has to do to get incarcerated. I have watched this engagement, by specific design, destroy the future for most everyone in its path. Growing up in the 1980s, all I knew of policing was the “war on drugs,” which targeted communities of color and poor people across generations. I could see in my neighborhoods and then in cities, counties, states, regions across the whole country systematic forced economic isolation en masse—an outcome of criminalization that shapes the fabric of our communities and nation.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  He goes for dainty ones; the last one gave him up for the sake of a boxer.’‘Poor Ralph,’ I said. Then: ‘He is remarkably forbearing on the matter of your — leanings. Don’t you think?’She came and sat on the arm of my chair. ‘He’s had a long time to get used to them,’ she said.‘Have you always had them, then?’‘Well, I suppose there was always a girl or two, somewhere about the place. Mother never was able to figure it out. Janet don’t care - she says it leaves more chaps for her. But Frank’-this was the older brother, who came visiting from time to time with his family - ‘Frank never liked to see girls calling for me, in the old days: he slapped me over it once, I’ve never forgotten it. He wouldn’t be at all tickled to see you here, now.’‘We can pretend it’s otherwise, if you like,’ I said. ‘We can bring the truckle-bed back, and pretend -’She leaned away from me as if I had sworn at her. ‘Pretend? Pretend, and in my own house? If Frank doesn’t like my habits, he can stop visiting. Him, and anyone else with a similar idea. Would you have people think we were ashamed?’‘No, no. It was only that Kitty -’‘Oh, Kitty! Kitty! The more you tell me about that woman, the less I care for her. To think she kept you cramped and guilty for so long, when you might have been off, having your bit of fun as a real gay tom ...’‘I wouldn’t have been a tom at all,’ I said, more hurt by her words than I was willing to show, ‘if it hadn’t been for Kitty Butler.’She looked me over: I had my trousers on. ‘Now that,’ she said, ‘I cannot believe. You would have met some woman, sooner or later.’‘When I was married to Freddy, probably, and had a dozen kids. I should certainly never have met you.’‘Well, then I suppose I have something to thank Kitty Butler for.’The name, when spoken aloud like that, still grated on my nerves a little and set them tingling; I think she knew it. But now I said lightly, ‘You do. Be sure you remember it. In fact, I have something that will remind you ...’