I came up in sexual violence organizing spaces, working with fellow feminist activists in college to advocate for expanded Title IX policy and protections. These are the circles in which I learned how to be an activist. My political lens was built and refined by feminist peers seeking justice for survivors. Campus organizing politics taught me that justice meant punishing rapists.

I learned that we are always supposed to believe survivors, and that very rarely are false reports made. For so long, my feminist lens relied on the idea that victimizers are supposed to pay for the harm they cause, often through expulsion, criminal prosecution, and public shaming/persecution. Organizing against sexual violence is what ultimately led me to other organizing, including racial justice organizing, and racial justice organizing led me to social work school.

I now work as a social worker in a public defender’s office. When I started this job, I naively thought that I would be primarily exposed to wrongful arrests, innocent people, and lots of racism. Those are all, of course, still parts of my day-to-day work. But more pervasively, I have found a large number of sexual violence cases within my caseload.

Most of these cases allege that a man (often a man of color) inappropriately exposed himself, a man participated in a sex act with an underage individual, or a man sexually abused an individual. As a social worker on these clients’ defense teams, my role is to aid in their defense with mitigating factor reports, verbal court advocacy, and sexual behavior program referrals as alternatives to incarceration.

These cases have challenged me in conversations with my friends. They must wonder: “how is it that she used to advocate for survivors and now helps perpetrators?” I often wonder this myself. It can feel like a betrayal of my former self when I think about this kind of defense work. The desire to write this piece stems from this personal defensiveness, perhaps.

Perhaps I want to justify the work that I do. Perhaps I want to justify the humanity of my clients, individuals who are otherwise labeled as faceless, nameless “perpetrators” and “defendants.” Perhaps I want to expand the frame of justice by pushing myself to see beyond punishment as a problem-solver. This piece intends to put feminist anti-violence organizing in context, and to then trouble our impulse toward punitive and carceral solutions to sexual violence.

A Very Brief History of Feminist Anti-Violence Organizing in the U.S.

In many ways, anti-rape organizing took the private sphere and made it public. Thanks to the work of predominantly white and middle class feminist groups, the 1970s were the beginning of a new era in which rape and sexual violence could be more openly discussed as symptoms of patriarchal dominance. Rapists were no longer simply men who prey on women in dark alleys—and the idea that rape could occur in marriages was brought to the fore. Rape crisis centers emerged as sites of feminist praxis, merging ideals of consciousness-raising with concrete interventions for women survivors of violence. While organizing efforts by women of color certainly existed, they have been largely written out of feminist histories of anti-violence work. White women’s grassroots efforts took off and became a constellation of nonprofit and privatized social services, often locally-run in collaboration with law enforcement and mandated reporters in school and hospital systems.

To be clear, women’s organizing has always been hindered by racism within movements. It’s no coincidence that the white majority of battered women’s organizers and anti-rape organizers both felt comfortable relying more heavily on police and law enforcement, despite statistics that police officers’ families are two to four times more likely to experience family violence than the average American family. With this context in mind as well as the persistent criminalization of marginalized survivors, it’s no wonder that women of color were not trusting of police as problem-solvers.

This is why, in 2001, the Critical Resistance-INCITE! Statement on Gender Violence and the Prison-Industrial Complex was so invaluable. It named the power structures that had previously operated with less criticism in responding to sexual violence. Notably, the statement called on activists to:

Oppose legislative change that promotes prison expansion, criminalization of poor communities and communities of color and thus state violence against women of color, even if these changes also incorporate measure to support victims of interpersonal gender violence.

Expansion of the prison industrial complex can be considered part of the unintended consequences of white feminist organizing in the 1970s. It reinforces a limited way of thinking that uplifts carceral punishment as the only valid solution to sexual violence. This kind of thinking was present before the feminist anti-violence movement took off, of course, but it certainly gained steam when white feminists put their faith and trust in the police to handle problems for them (and us).

Re-thinking assumptions about sexual violence now

My current job forces me to think more expansively about culpability and innocence. It is not my job to determine my clients’ guilt. It is my job to help them navigate a system that empowers prosecutors and police but not necessarily victims. It is my job to provide prosecutors and judges with information about clients’ life circumstances in an attempt to keep my clients out of jail and afford them jail alternatives. This job does not require me to make judgments of my clients’ good character. It requires me to believe deeply in the power of alternatives of incarceration, and thus, it has firmly rooted my budding prison abolitionist beliefs.

Especially in a world where District Attorneys do not always treat victims/survivors with the care they deserve, I’m skeptical of the capacity of our current justice system. I don’t trust it to take victim/survivor narratives seriously enough, nor do I trust it to fairly consider defendants as human beings with lives beyond the charges against them. Rarely are survivors given adequate control over their cases or a voice in court. This alone should be symptomatic of the problems inherent in a punitive frame of justice.

In addition to the de-centering of survivors’ needs, however, our current mode of criminal justice intervention relies heavily on carceral punishment as the remedy for sexual violence. This, despite the fact that research has shown higher risks of re-offending in some individuals who are incarcerated for long periods on sex charges. This, despite the evidence suggesting that prisons are sites of intense sexual violence. Are we hell-bent on eye-for-an-eye justice, or are we willing to reconsider our investments in responding to violence with more of it?

Part of what motivates me in my work is the belief that people who are hurt are often the ones who do harm. I am also motivated by the belief that people can grow, change, and continue to develop over time. I also believe that prisons are rarely sites of personal transformation, rehabilitation, or growth. They are traumatic and violent places.

If we’re looking for (violent) retribution in our justice-seeking, then prisons are the way to go. But, as Jackie Wang astutely points out in her fantastic book Carceral Capitalism, prisons are ultimately moneymakers without the resources or motivation to provide any adequate aids for personal transformation or rehabilitation. That is to say: if we send rapists to prison hoping they’ll get raped too, we’re likely going to get what we want. If we send rapists to prison hoping that they’ll learn from their actions and rehabilitate themselves into non-raping individuals, that’s an unlikely outcome. Prisons are not adequate state social service providers, but merely state security providers designed to manage racial groups in the United States. As the welfare state was dismantled, the prison state was fed.

Despite reform rhetoric to the contrary, prisons are not and can never be trauma-informed. No matter how many yoga classes, prison libraries, job programs, or college courses are introduced, prisons will continue to be sites of surveillance, state violence, dehumanization, and harm. This begs the question: if we want to end sexual violence, why are we turning to cops, prosecutors, and prisons?

Alternatives to Carceral Punishment for Sexual Violence

Stepping away from our (sadistic and deeply-ingrained) impulse to lock up perpetrators of sexual violence, what alternatives are there? Restorative and transformative justice have recently emerged as hot-button terms and means of resolving conflict. These conflict-resolution techniques have been used outside of white Western patriarchal communities for generations, of course, but as they enter the mainstream, they deserve more of our attention.

One of the biggest complaints from skeptics is that prison abolitionists lack vision for alternatives to carceral punishment. To those skeptics, I invite you to read all 608 pages of this toolkit from Creative Interventions, an anti-violence organization devoted to cultivating alternatives to police- and state-interventions to violence. INCITE! has created a community accountability database and working document online for sharing strategies and methods. The StoryTelling and Organizing Project documents stories of successful non-violent interventions that have not relied on the state. The Revolution Starts At Home is a beautiful documentation of anti-violence processes that have grown independently from state intervention. Alternative means of seeking support after violence are growing, especially in places like the Anti-Violence Project in New York City.

I would now consider myself an outsider to anti-violence organizing spaces. I am no longer actively involved in advocacy work relating to survivor protections or sexual assault policies on campuses. I have no connections to doing this work like INCITE! or Creative Interventions. I merely appreciate the growing body of alternatives to police and district attorney involvement in our matters. I see them essential to my own ethic of care and justice.

I believe in the power of our own internal resources, as well as the resources of those around us. I believe in seeing so-called perpetrators or rapists as human beings with personal and structural forces informing their harmdoing. I believe in centering the needs and healing of survivors in justice processes. I believe in removing the state from our problem-solving work. Restorative and transformative justice processes are harder than relying on a state-supported justice process. These alternatives ask more of us, and they demand that we unlearn our impulse to lock people in cages. This is not an easy mental or emotional ask, and yet it is necessary if we are ever going to end mass incarceration and abolish the prison industrial complex.

I’m inviting us all to think beyond prisons and police, to begin eliminating carceral feminism from our visions of justice, and to begin dismantling the false divide between “harmed” and “harmdoer” in this work.

This piece was informed by a number of insightful articles responding to #MeToo’s carceral feminist undertones, including:

1. #MeToo must avoid “carceral feminism”
2. Righting carceral feminism’s wrongs in a #MeToo era
3. How can we reconcile prison abolition with #MeToo?
4. Will feminism’s past mistakes haunt #MeToo?
5. How anti-violence activism taught me to become a prison abolitionist

Brianna is a young twentysomething with a passion for social work, social justice, and intersectionality. She is particularly interested in self-care and collective care through witchcraft.

Her work has been published at ThinkProgress, Feministing, Black Girl Dangerous, The Tempest, and The Establishment.

For more, check out her website.

To support her work, buy her a coffee.

Brett Kavanaugh has brought out the worst in us all. For some of us, this hearing has surfaced painful and traumatic memories, and for others, it’s forced us to reckon (or resist reckoning) with our own complicity and harmdoing.

For me, this hearing has helped me to realize some fundamental misunderstandings between me and men like Kavanaugh, men who—for whatever reason—cannot possibly understand themselves as harmdoers, only as victims of “grotesque and coordinated character assassination.” Here are some of those gaps in understanding:

Sexual victimizers do not put their assaults into their calendars.

The mythic “serial rapist” is akin to the Clinton-era “superpredator.” Statistically rare, keen on stranger rape, and probably black (Central Park 5, anyone?). The latest data on men who rape suggests the following: “these men begin early, studies find. They may associate with others who also commit sexual violence. They usually deny that they have raped women even as they admit to nonconsensual sex.” Surrounded by others who normalize their violent behavior by refusing to call it rape, serial victimizers are able to continue causing harm without even having to acknowledge it as such.

In other words: it’s safe to assume that most perpetrators of sexual violence do not believe that they are rapists. They don’t believe that the sexual assaults and rapes they perpetrate are anything but less-than-consensual sex. Most of us don’t document every instance of sexual intercourse in our calendar, and many sexual violence perpetrators lack the insight needed to see that their nonconsensual sexual encounters are actually rape/sexual assault. Assuming he doesn’t document every instance of sexual intercourse in his calendars, Kavanaugh would have had no reason to jot down anything resembling evidence in his calendar on the night Christine Blasey Ford was assaulted. The calendar is not evidence or defense material. It is a distraction.

Sexual victimizers are often distracted by the fact that others are “the real rapists.”

Kavanaugh, in an attempt to dance around blatant attacks on Dr. Blasey Ford’s allegations, stated that he is not questioning that “Dr. Ford may have been sexually assaulted by some person in some place at some time.”

Some might call this deflection or projection.

Misidentification of perpetrators is rare, and even rarer in cases of acquaintance rape, which is what Dr. Blasey Ford and other women allege. Despite the effects of trauma on memory recall, it is not uncommon for trauma survivors to remember vivid yet fragmented details associated with traumatizing moments, especially when triggered.

When we de-center language like “rapists,” it becomes easier to understand how a person is the one committing a rape or sexual assault. A rape or sexual assault should not be used as a singular descriptor for a perpetrator or survivor—that’s reductive. I am pushing us to think about what and who we are referring to when we use the term “rapist,” or even “perpetrator.” This dichotomous view of sexual violence doesn’t leave room to unpack the nuances and gaps in understanding that I’ve tried to outline here, and that many others have also been outlining this week.

Instead of finger-pointing to the “rapists,” how can we begin to understand sexual violence as a failed interaction with a consent paradigm? In what ways have we all perpetrated, stood by without helping, or been complicit in another way? When and how have we failed to challenge the logics of rape culture invisibly operating all around us? What have the consequences of our failures been, and how can we rectify the harms that we’ve caused and contributed to?

This precedent may raise the level of scrutiny for Democratic nominees in the future—and that’s actually a good thing.

Lindsey Graham’s outburst during the hearing caused an uproar among my Democrat friends. It speaks to a concern I’ve heard several people mention.

Some fear that the Kavanaugh hearings set a precedent, that the Republicans will turn increased scrutiny toward liberal and Democratic candidates and nominees. And to that, I say, let the muckraking begin.

Perpetrators of sexual violence vote for Democrats, too. They are campaign organizers, rally leaders, Democratic elected officials, and men of the left. They speak the social justice language in public while privately victimizing others on the left. We have entered into an era of rightfully-increased scrutiny about the decisions and actions of men in power. Rape, harassment, and assault have been trivialized and perpetrated by men who consider themselves “good” and “politically correct.” This includes men who voted for Hillary and Barack. This includes men who donated to Bernie. Political party affiliation is not an indicator of sexual victimizer status. Democratic elected officials and nominees deserve to be vetted carefully as well—the questioning and scrutiny we’re seeing now is needed in order to set an example for future leaders of the left. Men who talk the talk are often the first to gain the trust of radical and leftist organizers from marginalized backgrounds. We trust them, impressed by their seemingly “woke” insights, only to then have the tables turn when we’re non-consensually pressured into going on a date, spending the night, or staying in a conversation that we’d like to end with you.

For too long, patriarchal values have seeped into the minds of people regardless of gender or political affiliation, allowing us to believe in the idea that men are entitled to sex when they want it. This prioritization of male desire and experience is something I’ve observed firsthand, and all of my social circles are pretty far left-leaning.

Standing against sexual violence is not and should not be merely a liberal talking point.

In the past few days, I’ve been surprised to hear tons of liberal white men speaking about the validity of Kavanaugh’s victims and their narratives. It makes me wonder if they would be saying the same thing if Dr. Blasey Ford and others made allegations against a Democratic nominee. It also makes me wonder how (if?) these men would have supported Anita Hill—so many of us failed her. So many of us are unconsciously inclined to support Dr. Blasey Ford because she is a shy, credentialed, respectable white woman. Were we and will we be able to afford the same trust and belief to future survivors who do not share these identities with her?

I’m speaking to a politics of action, not merely talk. This is not about defending Dr. Blasey Ford over lunch in your office kitchen while the hearings play in the background. This is about committing to changing normative cultures in your workplaces, faith communities, living communities, and educational settings.

This requires acknowledgment of the socially-normative harms we’ve caused—the person we pressured into drinking too much, the person who probably didn’t want to kiss us, the person we were complicit in excluding. These harms are all woven into social norms, especially for white American high school and college students, and yet they are still harms. It is time to consider the reparative and restorative justice options that exist for us, 5 to 50 years after we were perpetrators or bystanders. Apologies are a good beginning to those processes.

Believing all women is just the beginning. Next, try acknowledging that good men rape.

Brianna is a young twentysomething with a passion for social work, social justice, and intersectionality. She is particularly interested in self-care and collective care through witchcraft.

Her work has been published at ThinkProgress, Feministing, Black Girl Dangerous, The Tempest, and The Establishment.

For more, check out her website.

To support her work, please visit her Patreon or buy her a coffee.

Sarah Braasch, a philosophy graduate student at Yale, decided that the black student napping in her common room during finals didn’t belong. Braasch, a loud and proud secular humanist, claims that she is interested in “the philosophical foundations of the law” as a means of understanding gender injustice as it appears in the law.

I’m more interested in her thoughts about the increasing segregation and privatization of public spaces.

I went to school with lots of people just like Braasch, (white) people who proclaimed their support of religious freedom as atheists, who advocated for “human rights” while promoting Islamophobic notions of women’s liberation, who claimed that slavery is a topic that’s completely up for debate. While there’s a lot to be said about the wrongness in each of those sentiments, I’m latching on to this particular incident at Yale as an example of white entitlement to public space at the expense of black co-occupants.

Post-segregation, Americans like to lie to ourselves about the way we now embrace notions of inclusivity. Every day on my way to work last year, I walked past a highly-selective and costly preschool that had posted a banner proudly trumpeting “You are welcome here” in numerous languages. Welcome, sure—if you can afford the tuition and pull the right social strings to get your child into a class of 15 toddlers. In college at Harvard, every dorm entrance had a sign that encouraged occupants to ask about those swiping in after them, as a way of ensuring that only those who belonged in the dorms were entering. In my four years on campus, none of the white friends I asked had ever been questioned when following another occupant into a dorm. Nearly all of my friends of color had.

We pretend that our public spaces are open to everyone, that we are being welcoming by wearing our safety pins and smiling at those with darker skin than us. We say these things out of one corner of our mouths while also choosing to report suspicious bags (and people) in our shared public transportation. We simultaneously welcome and exclude those who don’t fit the right social descriptors. There are no longer “Whites only” signs policing our societal bounds, but it’s relatively common knowledge that if you don’t look thin, white, middle-class, straight and cisgender, you’re out.

This is the problem with public spaces (think: common rooms, apartment steps, sidewalks, parks, coffee shops, gyms, stores). They’re purportedly for all of us, but really for only some of us. In these public spaces, those of us with black and brown bodies are constantly reminded that we are being surveilled, not only by police officers and authority figures like store managers, but also by our white co-occupants, who have been taught to report anything “suspicious” (read: non-white) to the authorities they’ve been taught to trust. These are the same authorities that people of color have learned to fear.

Most white Americans are able to move freely through public spaces without being challenged. This free movement contributes to their shared delusion that “all are welcome here.” It also promotes a white entitlement to public space that emboldens policing of it. That ethic of policing directly impacts those at the margins: people of color, queer and trans people, drug users, out-of-home individuals, and those working in informal economies like street performers or sex workers.

I’ll bet that Sarah Braasch is not someone who has ever been asked to leave a college campus, unlike two Indigenous brothers who had saved up all of their money to take the family car on a college tour in Colorado. Public spaces are not actually functioning as such—they’re primarily white shared spaces, as policed by white occupants. When white occupants of a public space choose to call the cops on someone who’s non-disruptively napping, panhandling, busking, having a smoke, or chatting with friends, they make that public space inhospitable for anyone who isn’t them. This is what Braasch did at Yale, an elite campus—like Harvard—surrounded by a community that has consistently existed in the university’s shadow, socially and economically.

Braasch apparently stated, “You’re not supposed to be sleeping here,” before calling the police on her black colleague. It’s unclear about why Braasch felt so strongly about this, but my guess is that it has something to do with the person she’s addressing, not the purpose of the common room.

As a general rule of thumb, it would be great if white people allowed co-occupants of public spaces to do what they’re doing, as long as it’s not disruptive to anyone. As public spaces shrink and become increasingly privatized, the message becomes clearer: it doesn’t matter what you’re doing or whether you’re being disruptive. If you don’t look like you fit in, you will be asked to leave.

Brianna is a young twentysomething with a passion for social work, social justice, and intersectionality. She is particularly interested in self-care and collective care through witchcraft. Her work has been published at Black Girl Dangerous, The Tempest, and The Establishment. For more, check out her website. To support her work, please visit her Patreon or buy her a coffee.

Earlier this year, a tweet took ahold of many of my friends’ timelines. It spoke to the fact that many LGBTQ folks have a period of second adolescence after coming out, especially for those of us who didn’t come out until after our adolescence.

I really agree with the tweet’s author—identity suppression and traumatic closetedness do have developmental effects. This review of lesbian, gay, and bisexual family development from the Association of LGBTQ Psychiatrists supports this theory as well.

The dangerousness of this assertion, though, comes from the fact that this idea can quickly become distorted.

When we look at our queer, trans, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming communities, we often neglect to notice dynamics of abuse playing out within them. LGBTQ¹ folks are not immune from intra-community assault, violence, and abuse. “Mistakes” that are made by adolescents and LGBTQ folks often cause hurt, harm, and rupture within relationships and communities. While these “mistakes” may be more understandable as ways of working through the things that adolescents typically work through, they are still not exempt from accountability.

LGBTQ communities are often centered in accountability practices. These include values of restorative or transformative justice, public and private calling in and calling out practices, and affirmative consent norms. These ways of being are all designed to reduce and effectively address harm when it happens.

I worry that the concept of an LGBTQ second adolescence can be misused to justify immaturity, recklessness, and unjustifiable harm-doing, all while evading the possibility of holding perpetrators of this harm accountable.

On harm in relation to the idea of LGBTQ second adolescence:

1. Harm is inevitable. In any community or group process, it is natural to encounter difference in ways that lead to conflict. Conflict is healthy and often necessary for growth and change. The natural and healthy parts of conflict do not justify unnecessary harm.
2. Re-living parts of development is normal and not limited to LGBTQ folks—though the transition into living openly as our full selves may be fraught with many of the thoughts/behaviors that all adolescents experience.
3. Trauma survivors often re-enact aspects of their own trauma onto others, sometimes inadvertently. However, trauma is never a justification for abusive or violent behavior.
4. Ego fragility is something that we may begin to struggle with in adolescence, but we are also likely to continue struggling with it throughout our lives. The way that we mobilize social justice terms and ideas to support our harmful behavior is often tied up in ego fragility. We need to do a better job of holding each other accountable for our weak/unfair social justice justifications of harm-doing.
5. Part of an adolescent way of being may include narcissism and entitlement. As folks experiencing second adolescences, we must do a better job of being accountable to each other when those moments of narcissism or entitlement hurt our comrades.

To those who use the idea of being in second adolescence as a reason for their unkind, egotistical, and hurtful ways of being, this is a call-in. Let’s talk about how your use of this justification replicates abusive dynamics and gaslighting in our communities. When you fall back on an excuse grounded in a legitimate social justice analysis of identity development, you delegitimize the experiences of people who are struggling to transition into adulthood because of LGBTQ trauma. When you make use of this tweet as a reason to act out your anger or entitlement at your comrades and community members, you gaslight the rest of us into holding your trauma for you.

Hurt people hurt people, but that’s only a lens for better understanding—not an excuse for harm done. Utilizing the idea of second adolescence to justify verbal or emotional abuse tactics that you spring on others may be understandable, but it’s not excusable or defensible.

Let’s begin applying our critical lens and accountability practices to those in our community who call their abuse and hurtfulness “mistakes.” We cannot continue to use and abuse each other under the guise of fostering personal growth. There is room to continue individually growing and integrate trauma into our sense of personal development. There is room to do this while minimizing risks of harm and remaining accountable to each other.

[1] The T in LGBTQ is intended to be inclusive of trans, non-binary, and/or gender-nonconforming identities.

Brianna is a young twentysomething with a passion for social work, social justice, and intersectionality. She is particularly interested in self-care and collective care through witchcraft. Her work has been published at Black Girl Dangerous, The Tempest, and The Establishment. For more, check out her website. To support her work, please visit her Patreon or buy her a coffee.

“Apology is more than an acknowledgment of an offense together with an expression of remorse. It is an ongoing commitment by the offending party to change his or her behavior…it is a method of social healing that has grown in importance as our way of living together on our planet undergoes radical change.”

— Aaron Lazare

My experience with witchiness has given me an understanding of how we use ritual for letting go, for forgiving, for compassion and care. But what about when we need to hold onto things, for accountability’s sake?

Especially as #MeToo has brought forth a number of new apologies, I’ve been thinking about the role of apology in our lives: part confessional, part acknowledgment, part repentance, part regret, part promise to do better… all bestowed on those we’ve hurt in the hopes of receiving forgiveness.

Apology is a social act, something we do in private and in public. I’m left with questions about the relationship between our apologies and our accountability to those we harm. When apologies include cinnamon roll recipes or forget to include the words “apologize” or “sorry,” however, there is a clear problem: we don’t know how to apologize accountably.

What if we made apology into a ritual, just as we have ritualized forgiveness? What if our apologies centered collective healing and justice, instead of centering our guilt and shame? A spell for apology is just as necessary as a spell for forgiveness or letting go.

I have been vocal about my identity and my politics since high school, and as such, I’ve received easily a dozen apology emails or Facebook messages. These apologies often involve a spilling of guilt and anxiety, emotions that I don’t need to be flooding my personal inbox. Phrases like “if I hurt you” or “if that was offensive” populate these messages, casting doubt about whether they are actually about acknowledging harm, or just assuaging anxiety about having done something harmful.

These kinds of apologies—the kind that happen in textual form, the kind that come out of the blue—leave me with a whole laundry load of emotional labor to do. When I don’t know the function of these apology messages and emails, I’m left wondering if a response is necessary. If a response is required, what do I even say? What if I’m not ready to forgive them? What if I sense that the apology is still more about them than about me? A half-baked apology is a heavy load to carry, and yet it seems to be becoming the norm. Harboring long-festering guilt about the way you microaggressed your classmate several years ago? Why not send them a long email about your deep regrets and guilt?

The apology crisis is widespread. People are writing apology how-to’s and pointing out how frequently an apology can turn into a gaslighting opportunity or a chance to offer a competing narrative, turning sympathies away from the harmed and onto the harmdoer. We overapologize, we underapologize, we use our apologies to seek our own comfort or reassurance, we bury the harmed party with remorseful words. Clearly, we have a problem.

Apology can be an opportunity for holding on, for exploring the intricacies and folds of the harm that we’ve caused and the harm that we’ve been subjected to. Apology can be an opportunity to sit in the messes we make, taking in their impact rather than making excuses. Apology can be an invitation—not a demand—for forgiveness. It can begin the processes of healing and restoration, when done right. It can be an opportunity for repair.

With healing sometimes comes pain or discomfort. When we apologize, we are responsible for noticing the feelings that come up for us—what are they telling us? What can we learn from our apologies, and what can they teach us about our relationships to responsibility, culpability, punishment, and forgiveness? The ritualization of apology offers answers as well as new questions.

With that, a ritual for apology:

ACCOUNTABLE APOLOGY

ingredients:

• tarot cards
• candle of your choice

light your candle, observing the flame and its fragility. meditate on the ease with which it can be extinguished—a strong breath, a cover, or a splash of water could put out this heat and light in a heartbeat. hold the tarot deck in your hands, thinking of the one you have harmed. how has the harm you’ve inflicted impacted them? how has it impacted you? how has it impacted your relationship? pull one card for each of these questions. interpret. reflect. put away your cards and blow out your candle, holding in mind the meaning of your three-card pull.

consider the relationship you have to the one you have harmed. what boundaries exist? how do you (or did you) normally communicate? how might you start a conversation that respects boundaries and facilitates your apology? consider how vulnerable you are willing to be. reach out in the way that feels right. try to find a way to look each other in the eye. offer an apology that is specific. offer an apology that takes responsibility and holds yourself accountable. offer an apology that does not put onus on them to emotionally caretake for you. offer an expression of your remorse. offer a specific commitment to doing better. offer a specific commitment to stopping harmful behaviors, making amends, and hearing about the harm you’ve caused. do not expect an immediate expression of forgiveness. consider this the beginning of the healing.

Brianna is a young twentysomething with a passion for social work, social justice, intersectionality, and witchcraft. She’s honing her tarot skills, growing her herbal knowledge, and self-educating about crystals, focusing her craft on the practice of writing as self-healing. She is particularly interested in self-care and collective care through witchcraft. Her work has been published at Black Girl Dangerous, The Tempest, and The Establishment. For more, check out her website. To support her work, please visit her Patreon or buy her a coffee.

Accountable Apology: A Ritual was originally published in WITCHES RISE on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As we round out the year, I’ve come to learn just how many wonderful, feminist, anti-racist and anti-oppressive folks are out there on the internet. It’s been a wild year, so I’m hoping to leave everyone with some resources and role models to guide us into 2018. Support them however you can, whether financially (most of these folks have Patreon, Paypal, or Venmo on their websites, and some are vendors of witchy wares) or through sharing and following their work!

1. Sara Ahmed

The original feminist killjoy, Sara Ahmed is an academic stirring up tons of shit wherever she goes, reminding us that feminism isn’t a brand, but instead, a way of living that resists normativity in sometimes-painful ways. Check out Sara’s blog as a starting point.

2. Amber Phillips and Jazmine Walker

As co-hosts of The Black Joy Mixtape podcast, Amber and Jazmine have given me LIFE time and time again while I struggle through my gym routine. They offer the black feminist takes on pop culture and politics that we are all gonna need going into the next year.

3. Melody Hoffmann and Raechel Jolie

The co-hosts of Feminist Killjoys, PhD, an incredible podcast about witchery and feminist praxis, deserve all the shoutouts. Give them a listen whenever you’re looking for some hope, hot takes, or healing.

4. Cristy C. Road

As the creator of Next World Tarot, Cristy C. Road is showing off some amazing art skills in this gorgeous and moving deck for the revolution. This tarot deck includes a wide variety of bodies and humanities in its imagery, offering up beautiful visions for the world we aspire to.

5. Haylin Belay

Haylin is a witch of color and sex educator based in New York City who happens to be a friend of a friend (though we haven’t actually met!). She was recently invited to do a tarot reading for Another Round cohosts Heben and Tracy, and the reading was MOVING to listen to! Check out her site here!

6. The Firebrand Witch

The Firebrand Witch offers online and in-person services, and their writing on ability and mad identity is really essential! Check them out online here.

7. The Hoodwitch

The Hoodwitch has got what you need, whether its instructive articles, horoscopes, crystal advice, or just some gorgeous aesthetics. Check out the site for all that and more!

8. Big Liz Conjure

An amazing resource for witches, healers, rootworkers, and mystics alike, Big Liz has an amazing background and a really comprehensive store for stocking up on all of your magic needs!

9. Naimonu James

Naimonu James is my go-to astrologer. Their work is intricate and thoughtful, and their readings always leave me feeling supported and sure about where my priorities should lie. Check them out!

10. Chani Nicholas

If you’re an astrological queer who somehow hasn’t been exposed to Chani’s artful horoscopes, get on that! Right now!

11. Cultivate: QTPOC Healing Practice

If you’re Boston-based or Boston-adjacent and QTBIPOC (queer/trans and black/indigenous/person of color)-identified, PLEASE do yourself a favor and check out this practice, run by amazing healers Kamaria and Janhavi. I attended a healing space run by them both, and the energy and metta-meditation from that afternoon carried me through several tough weeks.

12. The Wild Francesca

Did you know that my co-editor Nicole makes amazing altar cloths and block prints?? I am consistently in awe of the images she is able to produce, and having been gifted one of these cloths myself, I can attest to their magic. They are wonderful additions to anyone’s tarot altar. Check out the Etsy page here.

13. Bitchslap

My other co-editor, Gwynne Michele, is an INCREDIBLE writer with some psychic bitchslaps to give. The website and book’s takes on spiritualism and productive discomfort are really worth your time. Check it out here!

14. Rest for Resistance

Following the Facebook page QTPOC Mental Health, Rest for Resistance emerged as a space for healing and resistance. With a focus on mental health and identity intersections, this publication has taught me so much. Read all about it here.

15. Alchemic Magic

Run by my friend Ellie, this candle and bath/body product store is an amazing aromatherapy and Reiki-charged product resource. Ellie is such a talented maker and healer; you definitely need to check out what’s available!

16. Amandla Stenberg

Amandla is QTPOC royalty, y’all. I get so many mystical vibes from them! Their Instagram and public presence offer so much insight for someone so young! Also, this guided meditation they did for Teen Vogue gives me life.

17. Jenna Wortham

Jenna Wortham is my #mixedgirlgoals, honestly. She offers up so much wisdom in her writing, her podcast, and her newsletter. She’s witchy and has an amazing aesthetic that I aspire to every day.

18. adrienne maree brown

Author of Emergent Strategy and amazing movement thinker adrienne maree brown has so much wisdom to offer us as we keep thinking through how to get free in 2018. Start by reading her book and then move on to her website, where futurism and poetry blossom.

19. Che Gossett

A self-described theory queen (lol same), Che is a trans femme academic doing important scholarship in the realms of race, gender, necropolitics, and more. Follow them on Twitter (@queercruising) or at their website for lots of things to think about!

20. Reina Gossett

Che’s sister Reina is also QTPOC royalty in my book. She’s a talented activist and writer, and she is also producing multiple works that honor and highlight the lives of important trans women of color. Most notably, she worked to highlight the life of Marsha P. Johnson in Happy Birthday, Marsha. We are blessed to have her doing this work!

And finally, some tunes:

As I made this list, I realized that there are tons and tons of amazing musical artists doing wonderfully wild, weird, and witchy things. A shoutout to a few here:

• Rihanna
• Lizzo
• Willow Smith
• Noname
• Jay Som
• Moses Sumney
• Rihanna
• Ke$ha
• SZA
• did I mention Rihanna?

With that and the passing of winter solstice last week, I wish you all a happy new year!

Brianna is a young twentysomething with a passion for social work, social justice, intersectionality, and witchcraft. She’s honing her tarot skills, growing her herbal knowledge, and self-educating about crystals, focusing her craft on the practice of writing as self-healing. She is particularly interested in self-care and collective care through witchcraft. Her work has been published at Black Girl Dangerous, The Tempest, and The Establishment. For more, check out her website. To support her work, please visit her Patreon or buy her a coffee.

20 Witches, Wise Folks, and Healers to Support in 2018 was originally published in WITCHES RISE on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I’ve probably read this poem by Angel Nafis seven times this week, especially these lines:

Woo Woo. Jozie got her man’s EKGs tatted
on her ring finger. 3 years since he crossed
and you best believe she correct when she
talk about him in the present-tense. Gerloni
keeps a frothy pot of black eyed peas boiling
on News Years day. Marlee staves off the yeast
with a garlic clove in her puss. You can’t tell us
shit. We always down for the miracle.

My friends and I gathered last week to mull some cider and wine, snack together, and read each other’s tarot. We lit some candles, put on some Solange, and traded tips about the herbs and crystals in our collections.

We know that these cards, candles, herbs, and stones can’t save us alone. That’s why we believe in them.

There is resistance in the powerful reclamation of invalidated practices, diminished rituals, and long-forgotten knowledges. My witch clique—my coven—is the first set of people to know about bad things at work, oncoming illness, and trips to therapy or the doctor’s office. Our group text is a place for trading stories and wisdom, ranting and strategizing.

My extended circle of witches is full of folks who bring all sorts of healing practices into my life. Reiki, tinctures, meta-meditation, teas… you name it, they’ve got it. They’re a sort of extended apothecary, a network bolstered by the presence of iPhones and Facebook.

This past Sunday, I took myself to yoga, then went to a Halloween-themed punk craft fair, where a friend of mine was selling her homemade bath and body goods. She offered to do an energy clearing for me, as she’s level 1 reiki trained. She lit sage ceremoniously, circling me and laying hands ever-so-softly in-between my shoulder blades. Crouching, she let the smoke of the sage waft in the direction of my ankles, tracing an invisible path up my body, anointing the space I occupied. Walking away, I felt cleansed. Later that day, I went to a healing brunch hosted by my neighbor. We sat on cushions and talked about our favorite tinctures, and someone who I had just met shared their meta-meditation practice with everyone. We practiced together, sitting in a circle, silent and still, sending loving-kindness intentions to our many invisible circles.

Earlier this year, my IUD fell out. It was painful, dramatic, and disappointing to experience the loss of something that I had hoped would control some really horrible menstrual symptoms (potentially undiagnosed endometriosis). To my disappointment, my experience returning to the doctor’s office the next day was impersonal and disheartening—I experienced the healthcare providers at my doctor’s office as flippant and wholly unconcerned with my experience. When women and black people’s pain is not taken seriously by doctors, why would I expect any different? I got home from work several days later to discover a package from friends, complete with a new crystal, some stickers, a radical patch, some sage, and a handmade booklet of poems. With help from the gifts sent by friends, I was better able to cope with the stress of managing my reproductive health and feeling ignored by healthcare providers.

This is exactly why I believe in taking healing into our own hands. I am calmed by rituals that ask me to place my intentions toward healing and feeling better. I am inspired by tarot readings that give me a new perspective on the challenges I face. I am uplifted by the scrubs, tinctures, Reiki clearings, and witchy knowledge bestowed upon me by friends. These are the resources I need to recharge and thrive. I rely on the medical hegemony to keep me well, but I am also invested in imagining healing outside of that paradigm.

Health justice/liberation health means providing access to the healing methods and materials of ancestors, those practices which were forgotten after our healers were silenced or written off by mainstream medicine. Through our witchy practices, my friends and I are moving toward liberation, supplementing our own care and wellbeing with the things that feel good and right to us, utilizing our intuitions to build up the resources we need to get well and stay well.

Mainstream medicine in America was founded upon racist ideals that practitioners continue to enact. Additionally, non-male patients are continually disregarded or dismissed by providers. That’s not to mention the incredibly limited and perilous access to affordable healthcare in our country at the moment (yes, Reductress is a parody website. Yes, they speak the truth sometimes). It’s no wonder that witchcraft and alternative modes of caring are on the rise for young people like me.

When the system is built to fail you, it’s perfectly reasonable to look elsewhere for attention and care.

Self-care and community care have become buzzwords in our world, but they don’t need to be. We can recognize the benefit of touch, of quiet attention, of care. These are not new concepts—in fact, they’re ancient. Midwives, pastoral counselors, Reiki practitioners, massage therapists, yoga instructors, herbalists…these and so many other professions are devoted to caring, often with a critical eye toward the masculinist, white-supremacist authoritarian stance of medicine. This is not to say that mainstream medicine does not serve us—it does, as it should. It is to say that mainstream medicine is often complemented with the things we feel we need in our bodies and our hearts.

My squad is woo woo because we care about ourselves in ways that the medical industrial complex cannot. We feel healed after reiki and tarot, we wake up and take our herbal baths, we sip our tea and light our candles. Waiting for and witnessing tiny miracles.

Brianna is a young twentysomething with a passion for social work, social justice, intersectionality, and witchcraft. She’s honing her tarot skills, growing her herbal knowledge, and self-educating about crystals, focusing her craft on the practice of writing as self-healing. She is particularly interested in self-care and collective care through witchcraft. Her work has been published at Black Girl Dangerous, The Tempest, and The Establishment. For more, check out her website. To support her work, please visit her Patreon or buy her a coffee.

Witching Ourselves Well was originally published in WITCHES RISE on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“In case of trouble, arise at dawn and face the east. Take the vial of spirit oil in one hand and the cake (in its box) in the other. Read the Twenty-Third Psalm and let that be your prayer. When you come to the part, ‘Thou anointest my head with oil,’ shake the bottle well and pour three drops on your head and anoint your head. Do this every time you want to conquer and accomplish.”

Zora Neale Hurston writes this, quoting Mother Hyde (a New Orleans spiritualist) on the third page of her deep-dive into American Hoodoo (published in 1931 in the Journal of American Folklore). Included at the end of this article are various recipes provided by conjurers, hoodoo doctors, and spiritualist practitioners. Code-switching between the academic language required by the journal and the conjurer dialect that she’s picked up in her research, Hurston writes about the “Paraphernalia of Conjure” near the end of her article, giving detailed descriptions of what is used (and how) in the work of black magic-making.

Water Notre Dame: Oil of White Rose and water. Sprinkle it about the home to make peace.

Cleo-May, a perfume. To compel men to love you.

French Lilac. Best for vampires.

There are parallels to the witch practices I see today, of course. Plants and herbs with various healing properties. Love tinctures. Anointing oils. Spells and meditations.

What I’m interested in exploring, however, is Hurston’s deft navigation between academia’s authoritative stance and the subjugated knowledges of the hoodoo practitioners she encountered.

What would it mean to conceptualize code-switching as black magic?

In her article, Hurston writes that “All of the hoodoo doctors have non-conjure cases. They prescribe folk medicine, ‘roots’, and are for this reason called ‘two headed doctors’.” (p. 320) What a split. And of course, there’s duality in the connotations of voodoo and hoodoo as well. “Contemporary images of Voodoo characterize it as a ‘black magic,’ a racial and moralistic double entendre frequently employed in scholarship on the subject.” (Middleton 2016: 156).

I wonder if Zora ever felt two-headed.

Possessing two heads. Of two minds. Of two worlds. Eatonville and Manhattan.

What must it have been like to submit this article to the Journal of American Folklore? A student of anthropology at Barnard and then Columbia, one of very few black students at the time, “Hurston calls herself ‘Barnard’s sacred black cow’ and glorifies in how everyone wants to be her friend in New York because of her minority status…The cow’s image invoked is again anthropomorphic, and with it, Hurston affirms her spiritual and political value as an African-American” (Hembrough 2016: 169).

There are parallels to my own experiences of tokenization at a predominantly white institution for graduate and undergraduate education, of course. Everyone wanting to be your friend. Pity. Fear. Overly-friendly essentializing.

There is a feeling of being looked at, but not seen—I wonder if Zora experienced this, writing about black magic practitioners for a predominantly white academic audience.

In her last year at Barnard, Zora wrote “How It Feels to be Colored Me.” She writes:

I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.

In the code-switching, the inner conflict emerges. It is also present in Zora’s writing. She wrestles with respectability, trying to resist tragic Negrohood, but gets entangled in her aspirations that conflict with the constraining whiteness all around her.

The Wikipedia entry for “black magic” describes it as “the use of supernatural powers or magic for evil and selfish purposes.” But is it really selfish or evil to want more for oneself? What’s so selfish about wanting to be seen as a person and not a “sacred cow?” What’s the evil in trying to navigate white supremacist academic institutions as a black woman writer?

Code-switching is black magic in that it is used by folks of color for survival in a sea of white. Up against a white background, we switch up our language and our stance, risking selling out our own communities, all for the sake of being seen. Protection, hexing, curses, and healing. The use of language and action to uplift ourselves. When we speak the language of the oppressor in classrooms and seminars at the university, perhaps we’re beating them at their own game. Perhaps we’re spellcasting, subverting their objectification of us. The code-switching is part of the magic, turning darkness into a safe haven from the overwhelming whiteness of the academy. We heal with each other in the darkness. The darkness is where we grow together. POC spaces on campus are magical — places where wisdom lies away from book-knowledge and linguistic abstraction. POC spaces are where we don’t need to switch up our language to survive and resist.

Black people are magic. We speak multiple languages, never getting tongue-tied in all-white settings. We code-switch to cast our own protection spells. Language-shifting between our own lived experiences and the academic dissection of them. Using our bodies and tongues to bridge the gap. Code-switching requires strategy, wisdom, and access subjugated senses of selfhood. It is done in self-interested ways, because it is a means of self-protection. Code-switching is my black magic, and black magic is our survival.

Thanks for reading WITCHES RISE!

Follow WITCHES RISE here for more.

Brianna Suslovic is a young twentysomething with a passion for social work, social justice, intersectionality, and witchcraft. She’s honing her tarot skills and self-educating about crystals, focusing her craft on the practice of writing as self-healing. She is particularly interested in self-care and collective care through witchcraft. Her work has been published at Black Girl Dangerous, The Tempest, and The Establishment. For more, check out her website at briannasuslovic.com. To support her work, please visit her Patreon or buy her a coffee.

Code-Switching as Black Magic was originally published in WITCHES RISE on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

[Protection Edition] Uplifting Tituba: Protecting Witches of Color Then and Now

Earlier this year, I went to Salem, MA for Halloween. The site of the famous Salem Witch Trials, Salem transforms into a gruesome carnival town for the month of October every year, capitalizing on a haunting theme of racialized and gendered persecution and violence that occurred centuries ago. It’s hard to walk one block in the town without encountering three costume shops, a witch-related museum, and a spooky-themed restaurant or two.

While riding the commuter rail from Boston to Salem, I realized how concerning the story of the Salem Witch Trials actually was. I remembered reading “The Crucible” in high school and learning about Tituba, a character who has since remained the most prominent in my mind. A black (or possibly Arawak) slave woman brought from the West Indies, Tituba is often cited as the source of the witchcraft problems in Salem, having created a “witchcake” in order to learn who had afflicted the daughter of her master. It was later revealed that Tituba was advised to do this by one of the neighbors of her master, Mary Sibley.

Beaten until she confessed to witchcraft, Tituba was willing to affirm any of the leading questions directed at her. As a slave in the colonies, Tituba acted in self-protection. One might call it self-preservation at the hands of a physically-violent and systemically-violent scenario. However, similar to conditions described today, court and prison fees prevented Tituba from walking free after her testimony. Due to a prison cost of seven pounds, Tituba remained imprisoned until she was bought by a new owner for the price of her debt. This is where she disappeared from the record.

Tituba’s story haunted me as I walked through the streets of Salem, thinking about how Black women have long functioned as laborers of love… as midwives and folk healers, we have taken on the labor of caring for ill, elderly, pregnant, and disabled members of our communities, making lives more livable with the aid of herbs, natural remedies, and recipes for wellness. By many standards, black women’s role in ensuring black people’s survival through slavery, reconstruction, segregation, Jim Crow, and the structural racism of modern America is nothing short of magical. We do emotional labor that heals, we find remedies in our kitchen and bathroom cabinets, we make something out of nothing — like magic. This is not new, and yet, this work has been whitewashed.

When I think of my own introduction to witchcraft, I’m reminded of my preteen obsession with the musical Wicked. As a biracial young woman growing up in a predominantly white community, I connected with Elphaba, the future Wicked Witch of the West, as someone whose skin color was incongruent with the skin color of my friends and family. The racial allegories in Wicked did not miss me; and I did some important identity work through my obsession with that musical.

By and large, however, witchcraft as it is presented via the media we consume remains largely white (e.g. the #witch tag on Instagram and basically all witch movies and shows). What’s missing from this portrayal is the representation of real practitioners of Hoodoo and Voodoo, the real herbalists and healers and bodyworkers and community workers of color who engage in the labor of making and keeping others well every day. Instead of appropriating from “authentic” witchcraft practices without an invitation, white witches have a role to play in protecting indigenous, black, and brown forms of witchcraft/hoodoo/voodoo/brujería in the many forms they take.

Seeing the #blackgirlmagic hashtag emerge was one of the happiest online moments I’ve ever had. It was a reminder to myself that witchcraft of color is worthy of protection and practice, of uplifting for communities of color still in need of healing. To me, witchcraft as a practice promises not only survival and healing, but also liberation — from respectability, from internalized oppression, from the apparent necessity of resilience that often blinds us from observing the real necessity for structural change.

Of Tituba, Marilynne K. Roach writes: “her memory can be that of not just a slave but also a survivor, a woman in a dangerous situation with no one to speak for her, a woman who, in her efforts to endure, managed to turn her accusers’ fears back upon themselves.” Perhaps even more than self-protection, though, we can begin to understand modern iterations of intersectional witchcraft as something culturally-informed and liberatory, something going far beyond survival, something worthy of all the protection we can provide, just as Tituba was.

Thanks for reading WITCHES RISE! Please share this article if it’s tickled your inner witch by using the buttons to the left of and below the story.

Follow WITCHES RISE here for more juicy witchery.

Brianna Suslovic is a young twentysomething with a passion for social work, social justice, intersectionality, and witchcraft. She’s honing her tarot skills and self-educating about crystals, focusing her craft on the practice of writing as self-healing. She is particularly interested in self-care and collective care through witchcraft. Her work has been published at Black Girl Dangerous, The Tempest, and The Establishment. For more, check out her website at briannasuslovic.com.

[Protection] #UpliftTituba: Protecting Witches of Color Then and Now was originally published in WITCHES RISE on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As a lower-middle-class kid, I arrived at college without ever having eaten an avocado. I didn’t think it was a big deal at first, but soon I realized that compared to many of my wealthier peers, my palate was severely limited. As a teacher supporting two kids without child support, my mom worked hard to make sure that my brother and I never felt like we were lacking, but that didn’t erase the fact that her income was much smaller than what my foodie classmates’ parents made.

As a lower-middle-class kid, I arrived at college without ever having eaten an avocado.

In a New York Times op-ed published this February, I read about about Caitlin Daniel’s study of Boston parents who were were interviewed about getting their kids to try new foods. I read the op-ed just as I was beginning to examine my dislike of a number of foods that I can’t recall encountering as a child. My girlfriend was frustrated that the relatively obscure fruits and vegetables that were a normal part of her childhood were foods that I either hadn’t tried or didn’t enjoy.

Daniel writes about this phenomenon in her op-ed: “The problem isn’t poor children. According to psychologists, most children treat new foods with trepidation. Often, they accept novel offerings only after eight to fifteen attempts.” Many parents can’t afford to expose their children to an expensive new food until they like it, and so, a child’s dietary constraints are often informed by the family’s budgetary constraints. Articles by magazines like Parenting encourage parents of picky eaters to get fancy with preparation, which also requires extra time and money — two resources in short supply for poorer families. Daniel writes about a working class mother from the Boston area who worries about wasting food by offering it over and over again: “This mother faces an uncomfortable choice: She can experiment and risk an empty cupboard, or she can make her food last by serving what her son likes, even if it’s not the healthiest and even if she feels guilty about it.”

That mother reminded me of my own; I remember refusing to eat salad as a toddler, and I remember her choice to not push the issue with me. It wasn’t until high school, when friends of mine brought salads to the cafeteria, that I taught myself to like it for social reasons. The same goes for avocado. I had never even seen an avocado at my public school or at home, and for good reason: they’re expensive! The budgetary constraints of poor and working-class families like mine create harsh limitations in the grocery store: “The lowest quintile spends more than 60 percent of its budget on the basics — housing, utilities, transportation, and home-cooked food — while the rich spend less than 45 percent,” according to a report by Think Progress.

When food expenses account for a large portion of your budget, wasting food is not an option. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that 19.2 percent of households in the country are“food insecure,” meaning that “at times during the year, these households were uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food to meet the needs of all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources for food.” If parents are uncertain of their ability to obtain any food for their families, how are they supposed to also ensure that their children are trying new foods? Financial insecurity is closely tied to food insecurity, which has disruptive effects on children and their eating habits.

Wasting food is not an option.

In my own lower-middle-class childhood home, it was utterly unreasonable to spend several dollars on a single avocado — something my mother had never tried in her lower-middle-class childhood home, either — just for the sake of exposing me to a new food. Certain foods were simply not a part of our class culture. Just as generational poverty exists, so might generational picky eating. Lisa Miller comments for Newsweek: “modern America is a place of extremes, and what you eat for dinner has become the definitive marker of social status; as the distance between rich and poor continues to grow, the freshest, most nutritious foods have become luxury goods that only some can afford.”

Just as generational poverty exists, so might generational picky eating.

When we think about access to food in America, we often move the conversation toward our country’s obesity epidemic. Yes, it’s true that childhood rates of obesity are on the rise, but so is the cost of groceries. The USDA reported in July that the monthly cost of groceries for a family of 4 (two adults, two children between the ages of 6 and 11) runs at least $639.60, for the thriftiest of families. As LZ Granderson writes for CNN, class politics are at play in every American grocery store: “we are forced to decide between what’s good for our kids and what we can afford to feed them.”

Food reflects traditions of ethnicity and race, but we need to recognize how it reflects class cultures as well. We judge and overanalyze the eating habits of low-income folks, but we seldom discuss the very real constraints on poor families who do not have the means to expose their children to healthier, rarer varieties of produce. In seeking to understand the role of my socioeconomic status in my own upbringing, I didn’t initially turn to my eating habits — and yet, I can see now that my exposure to Pizza Hut before my exposure to quinoa is not happenstance.

Food reflects class cultures as well.

Now, I’m a giant fan of avocados. I’m grateful to my girlfriend for exposing me to new foods. I’m also grateful for her understanding of why I’m hesitant to try some of the foods I haven’t been exposed to in the past. Avocados were a conversation-starter: they brought me closer to my girlfriend by showing us a way to date across class difference.

Originally published at thetempest.co on September 13, 2016.