CraigJustCraig

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  • Romance, Brought to You by Late-Stage Capitalism: Fromm, Freud, and the Marketplace

    Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving critiques several prevailing—yet deeply flawed—conceptions of love in contemporary Western society, often presenting them in a satirical or critical light by contrasting them with the idea of genuine love.

    He argues that these modern understandings actually represent a “disintegration of love.”

    He writes:

    “No objective observer of our Western life can doubt that love is rare, and that its place is taken by a number of forms of pseudo-love, which are in reality are many forms of the disintegration of love.”

    He says we often treat love like a commodity, focusing only on two things: being loved and being lovable

    This leads men to chase success, power, and wealth, while women cultivate attractiveness. But these are STRATEGIES!!!!!! (I’m going to write about strategies one day)

    Fromm sharply points out how capitalism has influences our character:

    The owner of capital can buy labor and command it.
    The owner of labor must sell it or starve.

    He says this mindset is tied to the idea that finding love is simple—that the hard part is finding the right OBJECT
    He argues our entire culture is built on capitalism, and our idea of love follows it. We emphasize the importance of the OBJECT against the importance of the function. Our culture revolves around mutually favorable exchange.

    Happiness?
    Fromm says it lies in the thrill of looking for the best and buying all that you can afford. In dating, this translates to a neatly packaged “attractive” set of qualities sought after on the personality market. And what makes a person attractive? That depends entirely on the fashion of the time both physically and mentally.

    In the 20s, a drinking, smoking, tough, and sexy woman was attractive.
    Today? The fashion demands domestic coyness.
    At the turn of the 20th century, a man had to be aggressive and ambitious.
    Today? Social and tolerant.

    But either way, the sense of “falling in love” is just people feeling like they’ve found the best object available on the market, given the limitations of their own exchange value.

    We’re out here marketing ourselves. And the OBJECT must be desirable, socially valuable, complete with hidden assets and future potential.

    This was written in 1956. My grandmother was 4. My grandfather was 6. And yet it feels like he could have written this yesterday. We’re still following the same tired pattern of exchange that governs the commodity and labor market—and we’re still calling it love.

    Then Fromm drags another contradiction:
    The idea that love is just a spontaneous feeling or an “irresistible emotion,” especially when it’s mixed with sexual attraction. He says this mindset completely neglects the importance of WILL.

    Love, he insists, is a decision, a judgment, a promise.
    If love were only a feeling, then loving someone forever would be impossible.
    The only forever is an ACT.

    Love is an act of will. A commitment.
    And fundamentally? It does not matter to who.

    Let me bring up another contradiction that caught me:
    Fromm breaks down different kinds of love—Love of God, Mother, Father, Brother, Erotic Love.

    What stopped me in my tracks was his take on Mother Love vs Father Love:

    • Mother Love is unconditional love. Love for the helpless.
    • Father Love is earned. Conditional. Merit-based.

    He even shows this in how religious systems reflect it.
    Matriarchal religion? That’s Mother Love: all-protective, all-enveloping, unconditional. We are all equal before Mother Earth.
    Patriarchal religion? Father Love: making demands, setting rules, establishing laws.

    Then he speaks on Brotherly Love—love among equals. He writes:

    “If I love my brother, I love all my brothers; if I love my child, I love all my children; no, beyond that, I love all children.”

    Each kind of love is different, but by their very nature, they aren’t meant to be limited to one person.

    Erotic love, though? That’s the craving for complete fusion with ONE other person. It’s exclusive—not universal. Why?

    Fromm directly challenges the belief that love is just the byproduct of sexual pleasure. He says just because two people learn to sexually satisfy each other doesn’t mean they love each other. Sexual desire is often mistaken for love. People think they love someone when really, they just want other.

    But fusion isn’t just physical.
    He says love is not the result of good sex—what we’re really seeking is relief from the painful tension and anxiety of separateness.

    Without love, physical union never leads to true connection. It remains orgiastic and transitory, leaving two people “as far apart as they were before.” So we keep chasing the high with a new person. A new stranger. Over and over again. Because closeness, like novelty, fades.

    Yo!!! Like… are you feeling that in your chest too?
    I damn near cried.

    Then Fromm goes in on Freud. Freud claimed:

    “Man, having found that genital love offered him his greatest gratification, made it the central point of his life.”

    That idea was revolutionary in the 1890s—but Fromm calls it conformist. It completely misses the mystical essence of love: the root of intense union with another person—the feeling of fusion, of oneness—the “oceanic feeling.”(im definitely going to write about the oceanic feeling or the sea of orgasmic bliss)

    To Freud, love was irrational. And the thinkers of the time?
    They were busy trying to prove capitalism matched the natural state of man:

    • That we are naturally competitive, insatiable, hostile.
    • That we’re driven by limitless desire for sexual conquest.
    • And that only society prevents us from going full feral. ( and they have the nerve to call anyone savage)

    So love, hate, ambition, jealousy?
    Freud chalked them all up to variations of the sexual instinct.

    Sound familiar?
    I’ve been trying to tell y’all—you only think the way you think because you live here, and some old fuck told you to.
    This brings me back to Yurugu (which I will write about one day).

    Freud didn’t see that the key to understanding life is not the body, or hunger, or sex, or possessions—it’s the totality of human existence. That’s a very Eastern thought, one that echoes in the Tao and ATR.

    Fromm ties this all together and says:

    Our character (in capitalism) is shaped by the need to exchange, to barter, to consume.
    Everything—material and spiritual—becomes an object of exchange.

    We are automatons with personality packages who have forgotten how to love. We seek security in the herd—and in not being different: not in thought, not in feeling, not in action. Everyone tries to remain as same as possible while remaining utterly alone—racked by insecurity, anxiety, and guilt.

    Our palliatives? A strict routine of bureaucratized, mechanical work—where you remain unaware of your desires, unaware of transcendence, unaware of unity. You overcome your unconscious despair with the routine of amusement, passive consumption, and the hollow satisfaction of buying new things—then exchanging them for others. You are sedated, compliant, obedient—and you like it. Hoping for a fair bargain.

    This shows up nowhere more clearly than in marriage—a union structured like a corporate team.

    In the Victorian age and in many other cultures: love was not a spontaneous personal experience that might lead to marriage. Marriage was contracted by convention, and love was expected to follow after the paperwork was signed. This is the background of what we call marriage: a contract to exchange objects.

    The ideal partner is well-functioning employee: independent, cooperative, and tolerant, and yet ambitious, and aggressive. Intimacy is but as a refuge from unbearable loneliness. We enhance “collaboration,” by adjusting our behaviors for mutual satisfaction, pooling common interests, and teaming up against a hostile world.

    But this, Fromm argues, is pseudo-love.

    It’s the disintegration of love. True love, he says, is an art—one that requires discipline, concentration, patience, care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge.

    And it is completely incompatible with the consumerist, market-driven, alienated society we live in.

  • Do Nothing

    Sometimes I think about weird things all the time and prompted by the weirder things still. Recently, I was talking to a friend and I asked them what were they doing, and they replied, “Nothing.” That set me off for some reason. I have friends that seem to always be doing nothing even when they are clearly doing something. Then I started to wonder—why are we so encouraged to do nothing?

    I thought doing nothing is our rest, but rest is our rest. Rest is an action, just like nothing is an action. Then I wondered, who benefits from us doing nothing? Obviously, it’s us—but really? Do we benefit from nothing? No. Well, then I thought no one benefits from nothing. And I thought that again is not true—all the people that would much rather you do nothing would definitely want you doing that than anything that could possibly hinder their objective or agenda.

    This led to a series of thoughts and ideas till I got to: action comes from ideas, and ideas are not always our own. Ideas are not forced onto us. They don’t have to. Persuasion often works through cues we barely register. Things are phrased the way they are phrased because it’s a nudge to point you into a given direction. The more your perspective widens, the more you realize you have no clue what is actually happening around you and how your perception is just a series of filters that shape your possible thoughts and narrow your inside reality.

    Ideas take root in your mind whether you want them to or even notice it. They live inside our minds and wait for you to water the seeds. Our culture is amused by distraction. We talk at each other. We entertain one another, but we can no longer challenge one another. We cannot be allowed nuance in our rigid reality. We no longer talk to each other because we’re all wearing team jerseys. We no longer exchange ideas, we exchange the illusion. We are fed a constant stream of information designed for you to take no action at all. Our stories are stripped of implication, leaving us with inescapable anxiety.

    Our inaction is a tactical decision designed to get you to look no further, think no deeper, and feel no longer. Grow comfortable with nothing. This is the perfection of slavery, because while you give and consume, the very key to your freedom is hidden in plain sight.

    This brings me back to Yurugu again and again—our worldview is shaped by so little, and it feels so natural. We never resist what we never see. So we continue to do nothing at all.

  • Breaking The Loop

    I’ve been building two very different things lately,

    one tech that uses ai to speed people up. learns your patterns, anticipates your needs, and devilers results FAST! building around momentum efficiency and acceleration.

    The other is a book that does the exact opposite. it slows you down. it asks you to pause, breathe, and reflect. its built for stillness, comtemplation and depth.

    They couldnt be more different, but they feed the same idea; breaking the loop.

    Here is the TRAP! our lives are shaped by habits, patterns, algorithms, and expectations. Those dont let us change. Speed without reflection is burning rubber you dont get traction. but Reflection with action means you go nowhere.

    There is a push and pull between the two. The trick is knowing how to make the switch.

  • Accountability is messy.

    Anyone who tells you it’s simple probably hasn’t lived through the complexity of it. The truth is, two people can live through the same exact moment and walk away with two completely different truths. And , both of them are real.

    harm doesn’t care about intent. It doesn’t wait for your perspective to catch up. And the second you start defending instead of listening, you close the door to the one thing that could have saved everyone: curiosity.

    we builds walls where bridges could’ve been.

    That lack of curiosity escalated everything.

    People’s feelings are real.
    Their pain is real.
    Even if it came from a misunderstanding.
    Even if it came from perception.
    Even if it came from something I didn’t know I did.

    When someone says they’re hurt by you, you have three choices:

    1. Get defensive.
    2. Get dismissive.
    3. Get curious.

    There are only a few possibilities when someone says you hurt them:

    • You did, whether you meant to or not.
    • They misunderstood something you said or did.
    • Something got lost in translation, emotionally or otherwise.
    • Someone influenced how they saw you, fairly or not.

    But in all cases, their pain is still real. And you can’t brain your way into a matter of the heart

    I used to think that my intent should carry more weight. That if I meant well, I couldn’t possibly be the villain in someone’s story. But that’s not how harm works. That’s not how people work.

    When someone is in pain, your job is to stop talking and start listening. Because until their pain is acknowledged, they will not — cannot — hear you.

    Impact is the measure. Not intent.

    leading with curiosity,

    don’t define yourself by my worst moment. But do let it teach you .
    hope others can learn from it, too.

    When someone says you’ve caused harm

    Get curious.
    Ask questions.
    Open your heart.
    Because even if you disagree, even if you feel falsely accused, even if you don’t understand — that curiosity might save everything

    We can’t always fix what’s broken. But we can stop breaking more.
    We can show up differently next time.
    And if we’re lucky, we’ll be given a second chance.

    But sometimes, you only get one.

  • We Forgot How to Be Real

    I’m not trying to be mean. I’m not here to hurt anybody’s feelings. But somebody’s gotta say it — a lot of us aren’t real anymore. Not really.

    We’ve become slogans. Talking points. Hashtags. We’ve wrapped ourselves so tightly in the cloth of ideology that we’ve forgotten how to be people. Not activists, not archetypes, not “representations” — people. I’m not talking about politics here, not really. I’m talking about the erosion of soul in favor of a curated identity.

    I meet someone and instead of Bob or Susan, I’m introduced to a checklist. “I’m a queer, trans, Black, anti-capitalist feminist.” Or “I’m a proud white libertarian Christian.” And that’s it. That’s the intro, the middle, and the end. No room for contradiction, for complexity, for curiosity. Just one long sentence with a period stamped on the end like a warning sign: Do Not Question.

    And when you do try to ask something deeper? You get canned answers, like you triggered the wrong part of a flowchart. Not “let me think about that.” Not “I’m not sure.” Just a regurgitated article, a preloaded defense, or worse — silence followed by distance.

    Where did we go?

    Where’s the part of us that used to hunger for connection and not just agreement? When did winning the conversation become more important than being in it?

    We have brought identity politics into everything we do, and while yes, identity matters — we forgot that people are more than their politics. More than their trauma. More than their aesthetics. And when we make identity the only lens, we stop listening. We stop seeing. We stop being curious. It’s like we’re all standing on podiums yelling bullet points at each other instead of sitting down and learning how to live with one another.

    And I get it. The world is terrifying and messy. Simplicity feels safe. Certainty feels like safety. But what we’re calling safety is just a padded cell of groupthink. No questions allowed. No nuance allowed. No discomfort allowed. No realness allowed.

    Some of us are so out of touch with ourselves that we can’t even ask ourselves questions. That’s the saddest part. If you can’t turn inward and say, “Do I still believe this?” or “What am I afraid of?” or even just “What do I need today?” — you’re not free. You’re not awake. You’re following a script and pretending it’s a personality.

    And we’re losing everything because of it.

    We lost love — because love requires vulnerability and contradiction.
    We lost spirituality — because that requires surrender and wonder, not certainty.
    We lost homes — because everything is politicized, even our doorways.
    We lost family — because nuance died, and with it, compassion.
    We lost community — because listening was replaced with sorting: “You’re in. You’re out.”
    We lost self — because if you are only what you believe, what happens when your beliefs shift?

    And we are still losing more.

    We’ve mistaken performance for purpose we see it with faceless accounts online. We’ve mistaken being right for being real. And in doing so, we’ve made ourselves emotionally, socially, spiritually homeless.

    And yes — the media feeds this. The internet thrives on digestible characters and simplified stories. It encourages this flattening. It wants you to say, “I read the first paragraph, I know all I need to know.” It wants you to scroll, not sit. Swipe, not see.

    But we don’t have to keep playing the game.

    You can step back. You can stop reading your identity like a resume. You can stop policing every word for alignment with your brand. You can be messy. You can be wrong. You can be real. You can say, “I don’t know.” You can say, “That hurts.” You can say, “I changed.” You can be more than the talking points.

    Because if we don’t reclaim our humanness, we are going to lose everything that makes life worth living. The joy. The mystery. The awkwardness. The tension. The moments where you look someone in the eyes and realize, Oh. You’re a whole world.

    So this is your invitation — to be a whole world again.

    Not a headline.
    Not a hashtag.
    Not a symbol.

    Just you. Messy, contradictory, curious, breathing you.

    Let’s bring that back. Before it’s too late.

  • Sometimes Leaders Make It Worse

    the ones meant to protect—end up causing even more damage.

    So let’s talk about it.

    Let’s talk about the fact that, in a lot of cases, it’s not random community members who are fumbling the ball—it’s the leaders. And when they fumble, it’s not a dropped ball. It’s people’s lives.

    We’ve all heard it before: “Listen to the victim.”
    Sounds good. Feels right. But what happens when the people we’re supposed to turn to were never trained to hold those stories? What happens when leadership is built on logistics, not care? When someone can throw a good party, but can’t hold space for someone’s pain?

    most leaders didn’t sign up to be therapists, mediators, or emergency responders. They signed up to run events. To teach classes. To build spaces. And over time, the community starts expecting them to do more , make decisions, take sides.

    But many of them aren’t ready. when someone unprepared tries to carry something that heavy, people get crushed underneath.

    Right now, we’ve got “leaders” who don’t listen. Who jump to conclusions before even sitting down with the people involved.

    Who ban folks from learning or growing. Who confuse neutrality with silence, and silence with safety. Who perform justice publicly, not to repair, but to prove something—to their peers, their audiences, or their egos.

    Some of it’s ignorance. Some of it’s pressure. Some of it is absolutely intentional.

    Being an event host doesn’t make you qualified to handle trauma.
    It means you had the time and energy to plan something. That’s it. That’s not a credential. That’s not a qualification.

    But because people don’t know where else to go, they go to the ones with the mic or the clipboard. And when those people aren’t trained or supported, they end up hurting the very people they claim to care about.

    Worse—some leaders are scared.
    Scared of being sued. Scared of losing clout. Scared of losing access to their favorite violators. And so they scramble. They cover their asses. They ignore the problem or slap a band-aid on a bullet wound.

    I’ve seen leaders spread misinformation.
    I’ve seen them silence people.
    I’ve seen them protect abusers, ostracize victims, escalate situations, and weaponize their influence like a damn sword.

    They say they care, but what they really care about is control.

    They call it safety.
    But it’s safety for them, not for the people who are hurting.

    Let’s be real. Not all leaders are built the same.

    Some want the title. Some want the power.
    But some actually want to be of service—and they’ve done the work.

    leaders ask questions. They pause.
    They know that gossip is not truth.
    They understand that harm and healing are complex.
    They’re not scared to admit when they’re wrong.
    They make space—for the victim, for the context, for the process.

    They don’t just punish.
    They repair.
    They educate.
    They act with care, not spectacle.

    They don’t need to blast everything on the internet to prove they’re “doing something.” They do the work in quiet ways, and the community feels the difference. In those spaces, people aren’t walking on eggshells. They’re walking toward something better.

    Not Everyone Is Built like that

    that’s okay. Not everyone should be mediating conflicts.
    This isn’t about forcing people into roles they’re not built for.
    But if you’re not built for it—say that. Be honest.

    Don’t pretend you’ve got it covered while secretly ducking behind a wall of favoritism, silence, or shame.

    Most leaders are volunteers.
    And a lot of y’all are trying your best with no support and no backup. I get that.

    But that means we need to stop pretending that all leaders are qualified.
    We need to stop handing our deepest wounds to people just because they made a event.

    Questions to Sit With

    If you’re in leadership right now, ask yourself:

    • Who do you actually trust to hold your truth?
    • If someone disclosed harm to you tomorrow, would you know what to do?
    • Have you trained for that?
    • Do you have support for that?
    • Are you willing to hold that weight, or are you just hoping it never lands on your lap?

    And for the rest of us:

    • Are we vetting our leaders like we vet our play partners?
    • Are we asking the right questions?
    • Are we just assuming safety, or are we building it?

    This isn’t about blame. This is about maturity. About integrity.
    About knowing when to lead—and when to step aside.

    If this made you uncomfortable, that’s good. Sit with it. That discomfort might be the door to something

    Let’s stop letting fear dictate our leadership.

    Let’s stop mistaking silence for neutrality, and spectacle for justice.

    Let’s stop acting like harm is something we can ignore, manage, or gossip our way around.

    And let’s start asking the harder questions.

  • What Are We Doing Wrong?

    We talk about building community like it’s host the play party, hold a few consent classes, add a Discord server, and boom

    But let’s be honest: most of our “communities” are just clusters of trauma-bonded strangers orbiting ego, secrecy, and unmet needs.

    And we wonder why they keep exploding.

    This isn’t a takedown. Not a defense. Not even a manifesto. This is a reflection. A spiral through the wreckage we keep calling community—and a challenge to ask if we’ve been building it on sand.

    Every time harm happens, we fall into a pattern that feels more like reflex than care. Someone speaks. Someone is named. Screenshots are taken. Events drop names. Reputations scatter like ashes in the wind. All under the banner of safety, but rooted in something else—fear, shame, power, confusion, grief.

    We get what we’re living through now: collapse, betrayal, shame, power struggles masked as consent violations, and intimacy weaponized into control.

    This piece is about what happens when we confuse harm with evil, accountability with exile, and community with containment. And what we might do instead, if we remembered who we are.

    The Cascade of Silence Someone trembles and speaks their truth

    They name their experience. And everything erupts.

    The accused disappears

    People whisper. Screenshots circle like wolves. Social capital bleeds out like a wound. Groups back away. Educators go quiet. And in the empty space where dialogue could live, silence hardens into strategy.

    This is not justice. It’s reaction.

    The pain is real. The fear is real. But how we move through it determines whether we are a village or a battlefield.

    Two People, Two Nervous Systems, One Wound Most harm doesn’t come from monsters. It comes from mismatch—two bodies not attuned, two stories with different beginnings, two people unprepared for the depth they were stepping into.

    Consent wasn’t fully navigated. Boundaries were spoken, but not tended. Silence was misread as agreement. Someone fawned. Someone froze. Someone thought things were okay. But they weren’t.

    No one is lying. No one is a villain. But harm happened.

    We don’t need exile. We need curiosity. We need slowness. We need repair

    Bandwagons Are Not Accountability We say we believe survivors, but often what we believe are posts, not people. Often, the social response isn’t about care—it’s about positioning. About showing we’re “safe.” That we “stand with.”

    But standing with someone doesn’t mean erasing someone else.

    We’ve turned harm into a currency. Trauma into a status symbol. Support into spectacle. We ghost the accused, but call that justice. We erase nuance to feel safe. But safety built on destruction is a shaky house

    When Trauma Echoes and Becomes Contagion One post reopens a dozen old wounds. Not because of what happened—but because of what resonates. Collective pain rushes in. Everyone bleeds at once. And now we’re not holding one story—we’re drowning in many.

    This is called vicarious trauma. And when a community isn’t trained to hold it, it reacts. It expels. It purges. It isolates. Not to heal—but to survive.

    Misaligned People harm others while trying to connect.

    They were scared. They were socially awkward. They didn’t know how to read cues. They thought silence meant consent. They panicked. They froze when confronted. Trauma met trauma and neither had the tools to hold the charge.

    This doesn’t excuse. It explains. And understanding gives us the chance to interrupt the cycle.

    We don’t ask the person harmed to teach. But someone must. Someone must hold up the mirror. Offer tools. Walk the path

    Most survivors don’t want a head on a stick. They want acknowledgment. Transformation. Assurance that the harm won’t happen again. That something shifted. That the pain wasn’t meaningless.

    But when our culture offers only silence or war, survivors lose too.

    What if we gave more options:

    • ~

    The Bias in Our Vision A big, awkward dangerous person. A bubbly soft-spoken unserious person. A dominan aggressive person.

    We don’t just misread—we misjudge. And in trauma-saturated communities, our fear projects shadows onto others.

    Being trauma-informed means knowing when the voice in your head is your past—not the person in front of you.

    A Better Pattern Let’s imagine a new way:

    • ~

    Healing Is a Communal Act This is where it gets spiritual.

    Unresolved wounds don’t vanish when we walk away. They reappear under new names, in new spaces. Every time we “move on,” we take the wound with us.

    And community? It isn’t just “people we hang with.” It’s the supposed to be the net that holds us together when we fall apart.

    Real intimacy cannot exist outside spirituality. It’s not an “I” relationship—it’s a “we” relationship, where the “we” includes ancestors, nature, spirit, and the village.

    We’ve lost the ritual of community. The wisdom of circles. The shrine as conflict resolution. The sacred as container for grief, desire, and misunderstanding.

    Rituals That Can Hold the Ache Imagine a space where:

    • A circle of men sits with a husband in conflict.
    • A women’s circle carries a wife’s grief.
    • The couple steps back. The village steps in.
    • Conflict is held, not hidden.

    We must stop separating the erotic from the sacred. Stop treating intimacy as a private contract and start treating it as a public covenant.

    Every relationship, especially the intimate ones, must be blessed, witnessed, nourished, completed. Even when they end, there must be ritual. There must be release.

    There is power in saying: “This is what’s aching me.” In letting the village hold the ache. In speaking the trouble out loud, until the problem becomes afraid of your voice.

    Community isn’t optional. Intimacy isn’t trivial. Harm isn’t a death sentence. Accountability isn’t exile.

    We must:

    • Call people in, not just call them out.
    • Use ritual, not reaction.
    • Center spirit, not spectacle.
    • Reaffirm that harm is a call to gather, not a reason to scatter.

    Let’s build communities where harm becomes the beginning of healing. Where closure happens through ritual. Where we listen—to each other, to spirit, to the trees. Where we remember: we belong to each other.

    Let’s do it differently. Let’s do it sacredly. Let’s do it together.

  • Consent, Connection, and Community Integrity

    Don’t Play With People You Don’t Know

    Many consent violations happen because people jump into play without knowing each other well enough. When you engage someone whose conflict style, boundary recognition, or emotional regulation is unfamiliar, you increase the chance of miscommunication or harm.

    Play should be rooted in mutual observation, trust, and shared values—not just attraction.

    Before Playing, Take Time To:

    • Watch how they interact in community spaces
    • Ask trusted members if they’ve played with or observed them
    • Share low-stakes environments: classes, socials, rope jams
    • Notice how they respond to feedback, stress, and boundaries
    • Observe their reliability, communication, and accountability
    • Have open conversations about values, experience, and expectations

    No Private Play Until Trust Is Earned

    Private scenes reduce visibility and raise risk. Without witnesses, it’s easier for misunderstandings, escalation, or manipulation to occur.

    Build Enough Trust for Private Play by:

    • Playing publicly with them multiple times
    • Observing their behavior during stress or conflict
    • Discussing past consent experiences and their response to repair
    • Letting your community get to know them

    Don’t Play With Anyone Who Can’t Speak Up

    If someone struggles to say “no,” they’re not ready.

    Readiness Looks Like:

    • Expressing preferences, not just agreeing
    • Asking clarifying questions during negotiation
    • Using stop signals confidently
    • Giving real feedback during aftercare

    Vetting Through Actions:

    • Watch how they handle disappointment
    • Observe how they treat others when no one’s watching
    • Listen to how they talk about exes or past scenes
    • Do their words and actions align?

    Sometimes, the responsible choice is saying: “You’re not ready.”

    Accept That Misunderstandings Happen

    Consent incidents aren’t always malicious. They often stem from misinterpretation or mismatched communication.

    What Helps:

    • Discuss the possibility of misunderstanding upfront
    • Talk through emotional readiness, mental state, and trauma history
    • Clarify both desires and boundaries
    • Build a shared plan for if things go wrong

    Build Around Community, Not Isolation

    You earn trust in public.

    To Build Credibility:

    • Attend events regularly, even when not playing
    • Volunteer or support community spaces
    • Show up consistently and respect boundaries
    • Talk about your learning process and ask questions

    Reputation is built through visibility and integrity, not intensity.

    Own Mistakes When They Happen

    Integrity matters more than perfection.

    Accountability Looks Like:

    • Listening without defensiveness
    • Validating impact even if intent was different
    • Making changes based on feedback
    • Following through on repair commitments

    Prioritize Education and Empowerment

    Avoid communities that only talk safety. Choose those who teach it.

    Healthy Communities Provide:

    • Ongoing education and mentorship
    • Leaders open to feedback
    • Visible inclusion of diverse voices
    • Transparent, nuanced accountability

    Safety doesn’t come from bans. It comes from knowledge, conversation, and culture.

    Stay Visible If You Have a Complex History

    If you’re rebuilding trust, do it in public.

    Reintegration Requires:

    • Visible growth and transparency
    • Playing in accountable spaces
    • Letting time and consistent action rebuild trust

    Some people need therapy, assertiveness training, or emotional healing before play. That’s not shameful—that’s responsible.

    Understand Emotional Bonding in BDSM

    Scenes trigger intense hormonal releases. Emotional highs can be mistaken for romantic or relational connection.

    Be Cautious If You Notice:

    • Emotional dependence on one partner
    • Craving scenes to relive a high
    • Confusing skill with intimacy

    Healthier Practices Include:

    • Grounding before and after scenes
    • Talking about emotions, not just sensations
    • Waiting between scenes to reflect clearly

    Avoid Role Confusion and Identity Entanglement

    Your value isn’t your kink role.

    When self-worth is tied to dominance, submission, or scene popularity, feedback becomes harder to process and accountability harder to hold.

    Separate your identity from your role.

    Beware Narrative Hijacking

    Sometimes, consent conversations are co-opted by bystanders, exes, or community drama.

    Watch For:

    • People pushing action based on hearsay
    • Advocacy that centers them, not the harmed person
    • Escalation after the harmed party has stepped away

    You Can Do Everything Right and Still Cause Harm

    Intent doesn’t erase impact. Procedures don’t guarantee safety.

    Real Consent Includes:

    • Acknowledging harm, even if unintentional
    • Being open to repair and feedback
    • Staying humble, always

    Consent Isn’t Real Without Risk Awareness

    Negotiation is not a shield. It’s a roadmap.

    Build Risk Awareness By:

    • Including a “what if things go wrong?” conversation
    • Discussing emotional support and recovery plans
    • Being honest about your capacity

    Consent is not performance. It’s preparation for when things get messy.

    Rushing is The Biggest Risk

    Most harm happens not from cruelty, but from impatience.

    Patience Looks Like:

    • Choosing not to play immediately
    • Delaying escalation until trust deepens
    • Revisiting negotiations after reflection
    • Respecting a “not yet” or “not today”

    The strongest dynamics and deepest intimacy come from one thing: time.

  • How I Learned to Mitigate the Risk of Consent Incidents (The Hard Way)

    This is my story of how I learned the painful, exhausting, and sometimes devastating lessons around mitigating the risk of being involved in a consent incident. Not from the outside looking in, but from the center of the storm.

    This is for tops, bottoms, switches, educators, and anyone who chooses to step into kink, rope, or any play rooted in trust and vulnerability. You need to know that even when your heart is open, your art is honest, and your purpose is righteous, harm can still happen. And when it does, it hits hard.

    Consent culture is evolving. But too often, I watched people jump into scenes without trust, relying on vibes and shared kinks instead of real connection. I used to be one of them. I thought, “We’re all adults, we can make our own decisions. We’re responsible for ourselves.”

    I ignored the murmurs in the background. I saw how white men treated Black women—cold, clinical, dehumanized. I watched Black men reach for liberation through rope but wrap anything unfamiliar in layers of homophobia or queerphobia. I scrolled through images of kink online and rarely saw anyone who looked like me. So I opened myself up. I made space. I became the safe one, the one people came to when they wanted to feel beauty in rope.

    I didn’t have mentors. I didn’t have a blueprint. But I created something anyway—a community that centered Blackness, queerness, pleasure, and power. I saw how the gatekeepers hoarded knowledge, access, opportunity. I saw how Black folks were made to feel like they were too big, too loud, too broken to belong. And I said, “Fuck that.” I made a space where they could be everything.

    At first, we were unstoppable. Ten of us. Then twenty. Then hundreds. We showed up in numbers, in cloaks and rope, wild with freedom. People called us a cult. We laughed.

    Then the rumors came. Orgies. Drugs. Chaos. We ignored them. We were building something real. But I made a mistake. The first time I was accused of a consent violation, it stunned me. They said I touched them in a way we hadn’t agreed to. But I had witnesses who backed me up. It didn’t matter. I was banned anyway.

    We brushed it off. Moved on. Months later, I got an apology. But it didn’t end there. The harassment continued. No matter what I did or said, they followed me. They talked about me. They poisoned my name. And still, we kept going. We made our own spaces. We wrote our own rules—strict ones, because people were out here doing wild, unsafe, and reckless shit. We were trying to protect everyone, including ourselves.

    But the rumors grew. No one asked us what was true. They just saw the robes, the ritual, the joy we created—and assumed the worst. We opened our doors to the timid, the confused, the baby kinksters who were still learning. We accepted them because we thought that’s what community does. But some of them weren’t ready. And when things went wrong, they didn’t talk to us. They talked about us.

    We started education programs to stop the cycle of ignorance. That pissed people off. We taught anyway. Our classes were full. Our name was loud. And then I made another mistake. No one was hurt, but it didn’t matter. The rumors changed shape. Now, I was a predator. A monster. The kind of person who makes people shiver.

    They came back. The person from years ago. And now others, nameless and faceless, whispered in shadows. I went from being a safe space to the villain.

    I was never asked. Never spoken to. Just banned. Silenced. Exiled from spaces I helped build, spaces that needed our presence to even survive.

    And then the whispers made it into our home. The people I built this with started doubting. Started drifting. The weight of it all crushed us.

    I wish I had known. Not just as an individual, but as a leader. I wish I had understood the risks of open doors and unguarded hearts. I wish I had seen that being righteous doesn’t mean you’re protected. That building something beautiful doesn’t make you immune.

    Now, I know. Consent isn’t just about negotiation—it’s about capacity. It’s about readiness. It’s about knowing that the loudest harm doesn’t always come from predators—it comes from misunderstanding, emotional immaturity, or silence.

    So I offer this story to those who are building, creating, tying, teaching. Vet. Move slow. Ask the hard questions. Know who you’re in scene with, who you’re building with, who you’re trusting. Trust your gut. Listen to the whispers before they become storms.

    And remember, even if you do everything right, harm can still happen. What matters is how you respond.

    Let this be the start of deeper reflection. Stronger boundaries. Clearer communication. And if you’re like me—if you’ve had to learn through fire—let this also be a reminder: you’re not alone. And your story still matters.

    Rope is powerful. So are you. Act accordingly.

  • Judged by Their Shadows…

    You ever notice how folks size you up through a lens that ain’t yours?

    You could be walking clean, kind at your core, trying to show up with grace—and still, someone finds a reason to flinch, pull away, throw shade. It’s wild. You extend a hand and they recoil like you hid a blade in your palm. They’re not seeing you—they’re reacting to a ghost in their own story. Their shadow.

    Even in circles where trust should hold steady, where truth is currency and connection is sacred—someone will still project their wound onto your skin like it’s your fault they’re bleeding.

    But here’s the hard part: it ain’t really about you.

    People carry weight—generational, personal, ancestral. Trauma distorts the eye. Old wounds warp perception. What they reject in you is often what they’ve denied in themselves. Guilt. Shame. Desire. Power. Vulnerability. Most folks hurl blame when they don’t know how to sit with their own shadow. Instead, they wrap it in judgment, throw it at the nearest light.

    You ever been there? Showing up soft, heart-forward, only to get met with suspicion? You give, and they twist it. You care, and they mock it. And somewhere in the quiet after, you start asking yourself—am I the problem?

    Nah. You’re just reflecting something they’re not ready to name.

    Truth is, people criticize most harshly the very things they secretly struggle with. They’ll use shame, ridicule, guilt, and blame like tools to carve the world into a shape that lets them avoid their own mirror. It’s not malice—it’s survival. A desperate attempt to outrun their own demons

    Still hurts though.

    And if you’ve been wounded before—if misjudgment’s an old song—you might brace for the next blow before it even lands. You start hesitating. Silencing your kindness. Dimming your light so they don’t mistake it for a threat.

    But you can’t shrink your spirit to fit inside someone else’s fear.

    Stay rooted. Stay true. Don’t get dragged into their chaos. Let their shadow be theirs. You don’t need to fix their lens—you only need to keep standing in your own light. Even if no one claps. Even if they never see you clearly.

    Because It’s about alignment not applause.

    And one day, you’ll look back and realize: you held steady. You walked through their fog without letting it swallow you. You didn’t twist to fit their projections—you stayed whole.

    That’s real power.