Welcome to Modern Anarchy, the podcast featuring real conversations with conscious objectors to the status quo. I'm your host, Nicole. On today's episode, performing artists in Dominatrix, joins us for a conversation about a different understanding of community.
Together we talk about the fear of expansive love, being a sacred interrupter, and deconstructing the God complex. Y'all, this is a fun episode to start off 2023 with. Happy New Year to all of the Modern Anarchy family out there. I'm so excited for all the delightful, intriguing, challenging conversations that are planned for this year and this podcast.
I'm so excited to grow with all of you on this journey of figuring out what it means to be a conscious objector to the status quo. Speaking of burning holy Mormon underwear, I'm curious, y'all, say someone was engaging in some kinky play, asking for a friend here, and they happened to masturbate on the Book of Mormon. Would we say that that is unethical? Is that completely sacrilegious to a minority group's practice, or within a kink space?
Is it a prop in your own world, in your own scene that you are creating and being able to play with? I have a feeling that today's guests would say, hell yeah, masturbate on that Book of Mormon and feel all of that empowerment for whatever that prop means to you. But, you know, I'm curious, it's an interesting ethical question here, and I would love to hear y'all's opinion on this. If you want to send me a DM on Instagram and reach out and let me know what you think, I'm curious, you know, asking for a friend who may or may not have done that over the break. So, let me know.
All right, y'all, tune in to today's episode and enjoy. Do you have any questions about recording before we get into it? Anything about me that you might want to know? Yeah, are you teaching? Are you a researcher?
What's your... Yes, so I am one of many hats. I am in a doctoral, yeah, exactly, right?
I'm in a doctoral program for clinical psychology, so I work in a clinical space doing a work right now with ketamine assisted psychotherapy, which is a little bit different than everything, but my... Yeah, I know, right? What? Crazy, very crazy. Yes, very exciting. But my area of focus in terms of my research for my dissertation, right, and my PSID is relationship anarchy. So, like, in that way, I am doing active research in that area of things, yes. And then I do this podcast, and I'm a yoga instructor, right?
So then I wear a couple of different hats, but that's kind of my world. Wow! Yeah! So, no wonder Brian was like, that way, go talk to... What are your pronouns? She, her, and what about you?
I'm a they, them, from my pronouns. Okay, great, great, great. Yes, okay, well then tell me, what do you think it is that, like, the connection was that you're referring to with Brian?
Like, what did Brian see? Yeah, tell me more. Oh, just the radical, the radical nature of your research.
I'm also a radical person, right, living in states that is completely and totally opposed to everything that I am. Where are you at? Utah. Wow. Hi. Are you okay?
I'm actually better than okay because there's nothing more anarchist than just being here and being like, I'm going to stay, I'm going to stay. Mm-hmm. Oh, that pisses you off. Ooh, that makes me so happy. I love it. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Well then tell me, what have you been up to?
Like, yeah, how do you live your life as a radical person? Well, I know. I've been up to for the past since I was born. Yes, sure. I mean, you can take this wherever. This is your space. I am here with you. I, yeah, the day I was born, I swear to God, the God, something, you know, my parents had no idea what to do with me. Utah has had no idea what to do with me.
The church has no idea what to do with me. Nobody knows, not even me sometimes. So then the options are endless. If there's no direction, if there's no map, if there's no curriculum, as it were, to be who you're meant to be, then you just kind of stumble and fall into the things that are meant for you anyway.
And you do, you live your life accordingly. So for me, I just got done hosting Southern Utah Pride Festival. There were protesters, of course, and I have always had a goal to ask a protester where exactly hell is. And I did that. I had a full conversation while one sided conversation.
Sure. But it was exciting. And I realized how funny protesters are in regards to like, you know, homosexuality is a quote threat to national security.
A homo sex is a quote thin. All these things that they say all these posters, the fire, the brimstone, the full military gear suddenly didn't scare me at all. And it was really gratifying to know like, I was on the microphone, I could host this festival alongside a drag queen, alongside queer kids that were, and on the stage, it was radical as fuck.
And I was like, if this is where I'm at in my life. full mustache, speaking to the nature of what the true power in the world is, which is love, then I've done something correct somewhere along the way, even though I've been utterly hated for it most of my life and have still persisted and resisted. Yes, yes, when you're forging a new path and like challenging paradigms, you're gonna get so much pushback. Yes, and I realized this last week, actually, I was sitting with a friend of mine, and he was like, oh baby, that hate is just your confetti, honey. Just tear it up and throw it in the air. Your like, hate is your confetti, baby.
Let them hate, let them shower that, let them do that because you're just gonna dance in it and be like, oh yeah, is it gold today or rainbow? Woo! I love this energy. I love this energy.
I mean, I feel like I always struggle with it, though, right? And then it's like you get into these places too, where like the people who hate you have power. Like that happened to me at one of like my training sites for one of my clinicals, like it was not a safe space for the queer poly person to come into. And like, then that gets really difficult where it's like we're in these systems where like it still is like so much so like controlled by people who have not done the same things or questioned the same things to end up in the same space of like love being the radical amazing thing that it is, right? It's a fear, right? A fear of love, a fear of goodness, a fear of like expansion that keeps everything the way it is, which doesn't make any sense to those of us that have like broke on through to the other side, you know, like there's this thing that has to be confronted and it's internal.
It's the inside. It's like, you know, change yourself, change the world. And for those of us who haven't met ourselves, it's the most terrifying thing ever to be confronted with the truth that we have to meet ourselves in order to be in community, in order to be able to love and discern truly what kind of love we're looking for, but it all starts in the self. I mean, I am resonating deeply.
I'm like, Simmering, I'm like, Yes, it does. Tell me how so. How does it resonate in the self? Oh, so this is why queer people need to be in positions of leadership, because they are often the ones that have had to face the deepest shadows of the psyche with regards to self acceptance in regards to self love, in regards to finding place in regards to understanding where in the world we can actually create home. Because our homes aren't inherently given. Our families aren't inherently given. And we know it's not blood baby.
We know it's something else. And with that expanded awareness and knowledge, we can create the foundations of what community, family, home, and safe space actually are, because we've had to build them from the ground up internally first, and then find the people externally who are vibrating on our same field or in our own on our same level, and create that new world together. And there's been a lot of this conversation, right, like the world that we're looking to build doesn't exist.
And so how do we come together as community to create that? And here's our foundation of that, I feel, because of the way we're raised, because of existing in the shadow of the AIDS pandemic, because of the way that hate has shaped everything we grew up in. And we still come back with love, we still come back with friendship, family, and often have to leave our bloodline to create it. And see, and see family in a way that has never been established before, it's not who birth who has given birth to you, it's who is there for you. And they can be any shape, size, color, ethnicity, race, religion, the world has to begin to rotate around is a different understanding of family and a different understanding of community, which is all of us. We're all interconnected.
One side is doing well, and one side is doing awful, like it is all related. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, because then it comes through all these structures, and it flows through all of us. I mean, we can't heal unless we come together and have that experience of love for all of us, otherwise, there's still pain being spread throughout the system.
So yeah, absolutely. And I mean, that's something that definitely I resonate with that sense of having to rediscover what family is, having to rediscover what love can look like. I mean, I think polyamory, for at least for me, is like a huge piece of that, right? And a, yeah, and a lot of what I study too, sometimes with polyamory in this like space of like queer people looking for a family in a way too, and like finding community through that sort of system because of the unique nature of not having family that is blood related to a degree, right? Like, so we're, it's just a little different of a paradigm of what we're looking for in terms of connection. For sure. Which, you know, like, what that means, what it looks like, and what position you hold in somebody's life, even in a polyamorous container, which I'm in, I am currently dating a husband, ex-mormon, has eight children and a wife still. Yeah. And so how do I fit myself into a family that was raised LDS as someone who looks like an inherent threat?
How do I do that? And it's consistent conversations, consistent reminders of what love can do, right? And knowing for myself that I'm coming not as a threat, but as a sacred interrupter. And that's a term and a position I've given myself. No, I'm not a wife. Can't be a wife. I'm non binary. That doesn't work.
Yeah. No, I'm not a husband. No, I'm not your father. No, I'm not your mother. No, I'm not your stepfather.
No, I'm not your stepmother. This, this word doesn't exist for me. What I am for you as a sacred interrupter, meaning I'm going to interrupt the storyline. I'm going to interrupt your day to day and let you know that there are other options, there are other things, and there are other positions that I inhabit that you have never even fathomed, because that's my job.
Absolutely. Say more about it. How I mean, and I'm with you, I just love to pull out all the details of like, so how are you interrupting? What are you, what are you doing? So, and this has been the position in my life since day one, right?
If I'm thinking about birth and rebirth and what I do here in Utah, it's always interrupting. Right? Doing these shows. I'm a full time performance artist. I'm a dominatrix.
I'm a clown. I'm a drag performer, a burlesque, heavily involved in psychology, but not in a formal training sense, but in the actual application of what particularly religious psychology has done to people and their sexuality, sensuality, and relationships, playing in that world all the time. So as a sacred interrupter, I get hired to break people out of the paradigm.
I get hired to allow them to explore fantasy. And what that is, is actually a stop of the program. We're going to stop. And you're coming into my dungeon, my house, to play in a program of your choosing.
We're interrupting or stopping or pausing just for an hour to play. And once you have that knowledge, you can't unknow something. something new.
I wish I could. And there's this knowledge presented, right, which is why religion is so interesting because you know, you know, and you can't not know until new information is presented and that new knowledge actually informs that old knowledge and suddenly you know something different. And with gender, with sex, with religion, with love, with all of these things, it teaches us that we can know something different. We can know family in a different way. We can know partnership in a different way. We can know love and bonding in a different way.
So when I show up in these spaces and universities in friendships, in partnerships, it's knowing something different and having the ability to have the conversations to create a different understanding of reality. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Absolutely. And if we were to have that conversation now, right, there's people listening to you now on this podcast that will be like, Oh, what is this? What is this paradigm? Yeah. Right. What are these storylines that we've just kind of assumed as our own and marriage is a huge part of that. Right.
Oh, yeah. A different kind of religious institution, even though it's quite, you know, we're familiar with it worldwide. Most of the time it has to do with God and spirituality and connection and something beyond the realm of the earth and beyond the realm of the self. So if we separate religion and marriage, we're separating a lot of things that have been like this since the beginning.
And this also includes like why gay marriage was such an affront to the institution and to God and to what marriage, this way it took so long to get legalized because, I mean, we're talking what, 2015? Yeah. It's really recent. So recent to have gay marriage legalized.
The reason is the foundation of the storyline was based in male and female connection, in breeding, in breeding children. Modern society is now questioning in ways that have never been seen before. I mean, this is where we're at, right?
This is what we're supposed to be doing, actually, questioning all of these institutions that have worked and are now not working. As our awareness is beginning to be expanded in gender, in marriage, in education, in psychology, the expansion is happening. So you can either expand yourself or continue to actually like implode and like become so fearful and almost like a black hole where you're just like cycling in on yourself. You become a black hole that's inescapable and it's yourself that is that black hole.
Not everyone else around you. We're here hanging out in the rainbow wanting to, you know, extradite you from your fear and your loneliness and your solitude. You just have to say yes. Get over the fear of yes is takes a lifetime sometimes or medicine, right?
You know, there are treatments and medicines that we can take and one of those medicines is love, but you can't even see sometimes you can't even see that because you're in your own way. And that's ego, you know, speaking of extraditing things. If you extradite yourself from yourself, suddenly you realize the self is so vast and way less lonely than you could have ever imagined. It's an understanding of self in the universe, in the world, in the United States, in the state of Utah, in this community, in the state of Utah, and it gets like this, but the more you extradite yourself from that, it vibrates almost. And you realize that you're braided into the fabric of society, the universe, the world, way deeper than you could have ever imagined and that you are not just the self. You are all the other selves that you interact with.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, as you're saying that what is coming to mind is a relational cultural theory for psychology, which would say that like maybe there isn't really a self. Maybe the self is the center of like multiple concentric circles, right, on the Venn diagram. And like in the center, yes, there is a self, but really like what it is is all of the relationships are around you. And it also sounds like connecting back to this like community scale connection, not just even the people you interact with on a day to day, but at least for me, what I was hearing through that of is connecting to the humanity of all of us, right? Like the more at least I check in with myself, the more I learn to accept all sides of myself, the more I'm able to look at everyone else and be like, we're all just humans in this, just figuring it out with like going into a blind together, holding hands, you know what I mean?
Like what? And holding hands is a really beautiful image, right? Because holding hands is something we do with family, with love.
You're highly unlikely to hold hands with somebody that you're not intimately familiar with. And it's that interlacing of fingers that is the familiarity of the human. I always talk about closing my eyes and reaching my hand out across space and time. I just close my eyes, you are not separate from me.
Touch is like that. You are not separate from me. And we can't even touch each other anymore. We can't hug.
We can't kiss. It's not something that's commonplace anymore. And even with COVID, right? The distance, the six feet, the pain of that loss of connection, but even deeper than the loss of the connection is the loss of the familiarity, the loss of understanding we are human in this experience together. And it was like the deepest piece of human fear highlighted in that still post pandemic, right? It just is continuing the conversation around what we actually need to be afraid of. Yes, yes, absolutely. Which is turning on one another.
I mean, the systems that have been supporting white cis heterosexual men for centuries, right? I think that's what, you know, yeah, exactly. We're starting to hit to a point where maybe we're so collected now that we actually have power because we have more connection with the internet and other sorts of things to raise voices, to make change against these larger corporations. And as it's starting to change, I think, yeah, we're definitely in a time of expansion as the paradigm that has been working for that group of people is now being challenged for the first time. And on a collective brand scale, right?
And this is why being able to be seen on social media is so important. And like, why all these queer children, right? Like I said, I just got done hosting Southern Utah Pride.
Ten year olds with their flags out in groups, teenagers walking around in buckets, raising money for the foundation. Never. In my youth, I could have never been as a kid.
queer youth walking down the street in a park with one another kissing and loving and being and knowing that there is a spectrum of relating family love I mean it's simultaneously like grief stricken like internally I am grief stricken to know that that was not available to me right I'm so joyous and it's this you know grief is just love with no place to go it's that it's that holding of those two blocks of human emotion or these two giant pillars of that's better word pillars of human emotion that creates the depths the grief and the love and the loudness of history echoed in these children in ourselves in our ancestors and what we have to fight for and strive for it is is not just the present not just the future not just the past but like the bridging of all three of those things mm-hmm mm-hmm which when I think about this world you know of a ten-year-old at a pride parade like I have so much hope for humanity right like if this is where we're at like fuck yes like when these people are presidents like please tell me that the world is gonna be better right like this gives me so much hope yeah and that's the thing I've been battling with too right is hope and faith and these kinds of things often attributed to God as opposed to like hope and faith being attributed to the gods within all of us that have the ability to create our worlds and create our families and literally create life you know so instead of externalizing a sense of power control hope and faith we have to internalize a sense of hope faith and control and all the things that we externalize to a God force we have to internalize as our self force and then create the reality with the knowledge of our own power that's what I constantly deconstruct as well in this valley of Mormons is you're externalizing all all of the things you're externalizing it all into the God complex why don't we just take a moment and pretend you are your own God how about that what would you do that's blasphemy though you're asking people to like yeah as you raise your eyebrows like yes it is baby that's so much that you're asking them to do I mean that's challenging a whole paradigm of thought but they do it and they pay me tell me more what do you do my website is the x-mormon .com visit me yes come submit to me come correct your submission is my command I'm on a flight to Utah let's go but basically what I do is I deconstruct the God complex so say more tell me more in the various containers there are aspects of hypnosis that I will take and put upon my clients and interact with them in a therapeutic hypnotic space so they still have control but they have relinquished their control to the dominatrix and in this sense often they will call me God yes God deck and what I do is I am then in the position of a God and when I'm in a position of a God I then question the nature of what they've always believed and guide them into what is worship and then make them look in the mirror and put that idea of God next God and worship into them what makes it so unbelievable that you yourself aren't your own God because if you can switch out your gods couldn't you just be a God yourself and they just like they're you know they're hypnotized or under or submitting right they're in submission they're in headspace they're in subspace you can call it either way whatever space they're in that's where they're at and their eyes suddenly there's like a lightbulb moment I'm like but you're not doing that right now but you could couldn't you could do that if you wanted because you just did with me and I'm so grateful but also you can never be a goddess like I could be a goddess but you you when you're done here remember what I said and you'll start thinking different parts and you'll call me again so I'm constantly deconstructing the God complex in fact I had a client come in and I was like strip and he had his garments and I was like listen how long have you been out of the church and he's like 10 years I'm like because you're still wearing those garments aren't you those magic underwear nobody's nobody likes them nobody needs them so what you're gonna do is you're going to burn them under the full moon tomorrow night because it was good timing and I was like so take a picture send it to me you're gonna burn them in my name and he's like yes goddess I'm like thank you and you did Wow that's so crazy immediately as all you're saying this I'm like spiritual healing like what also I mean how sad that to leave the church and then to wear the garments for 10 years after you've chosen that those garments are no longer a part of your religious structure but you still feel stuck to wear them yeah exactly that makes me what is going to protect you really believe that and because the psychology is so like it's just so honestly living and growing up in it I know I know how to be constructed I know the things to say I know the power play I know the symbolism I know all of that and so you have to be very careful so I don't normally like just make them he had seen me a few times we had formulated a relationship I am not irresponsible either but what I do understand is the need for freedom and the need for a different paradigm to be implanted which is where in I remind them that submission is all about choice it's all about choice it's all about choice it's all about choice you're choosing to come to me you are choosing to submit to me you're choosing for me to guide you through this thing therefore let me set you free baby because I love a good slave but I also love a good slave who has enough freedom to actually know what he's choosing choosing. Well, right, because the sub holds all the power, right? If the sub says no, then there's no one to sub for the Dom. You know, like there is that power right there.
So like, yes, it's all like in the choosing to submit to that. And I mean, yeah, I remember the garments are supposed to be that, like, if God comes back to like find the people, like you could recognize them because they're wearing the garments, right? I have the Lord or something. I'm trying to remember what, yeah.
I think about it. Every garment you ask is going to have a different answer. The programming is a little, basically, it's supposed to be like protection and modesty and all these things. It's part of your endowments in the temple. It just signifies that you are one of the chosen. But again, that chosen, right, choice, I just constantly am like, you have choice. And I'm here to highlight your choice so that you can make better choices. All about choice. And in our current society, it's all about choosing. Choosing to heal yourself, choosing to take the journey, choosing to find the medicine that works for you, choosing to talk to people who aren't like you, choosing to be in community, choosing to have the hard conversations that you don't want to have in order to create what we do want to have, which I honestly don't believe is power over.
I don't believe that. I think that we play in that power exchange because we're so subconsciously controlled. We're so fearful. We're so this that that it comes into that dominance and submission.
There's this huge upsurge of BDSM education, practitioners, spiritual connection to the BDSM world and like the consciousness that comes along with these practices. The reason that the surge is happening is because we want to be able to break that. We want to be able to have the consciousness required to have the choice to overcome fear.
It's all fear based. And if we can play, play in BDSM, then in our everyday life, the power control domination becomes less scary and we can make different choices and we can understand that it's we are the ones saying yes to something we don't want. And we are also the ones that can say no. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's connecting to that sense of autonomy, right? And especially, I know you said you were raised Mormon. I was raised very Christian evangelical and like at least part of my experience with that was so much of my autonomy going to God, right? Like work through me God here, put it out there and then like through my own experience stating various like cis men when I thought I was heterosexual, like even giving that power there, like telling me, you know, how do I fit for you?
How do I fit for this versus like coming to a space of having like autonomy here to choose how I want to show up in the world? I mean, that's a radical shift in terms of, I mean, and kind of you were hitting on this too of like the God being here, locating that power here rather than out, outsourcing that. Big, the big deal. And when we understand that we are the reason there is harm or the reason there is disparity or the reason there is an imbalance or the reason that there is pain, we can change that. In all the various communities that I'm in, there's seems to be like this gaping hole of the rupture and repair model. There's a rupture that happens. There is pain that is incurred like felt. There is damage being done.
You've done damage. If we're not self aware, I haven't done any of that and I'm not sitting with you to talk about it because I'm guiltless, ego shield. So in these communities, there's like a gaping hole of rupture and repair because we still have not internalized enough our responsibility for each other.
We have internalized enough our responsibility, number one to ourselves, first and foremost, getting right with the self so then we can have the conversations with one another to be responsible for our personal effects on the people around us. And it's this thing, right? The rupture has occurred. We can have bleeding hearts all day long, but it's again, coming to terms with the self, what do I need to do? And then also understanding the place of self in the community. So it's an internal, external balance all the time, all the time, all the time. And that rupture and repair model, that's absent in the majority of society where we see all the ruptures, all the pain, all the things, all the inequity, all of it, but we're unable to repair it because the distance between the rupture and the repair is often centralized in the self.
And we can't get right with ourselves in order to come right to the community, in order to get to the repair model. Yeah. As you're saying that what's coming up for me is these ideas about cancel culture, right? And the idea, yeah, that someone does something bad, they are to be excommunicated, they are to be pushed out, cast away from society when maybe that takes a confronting with, some people call it your shadow sides, the reality of your capacity for the same sorts of things in different circumstances and seeing the humanity in that person and being able to be, yes, they did a bad thing and they still need love and healing and community, right?
Not to be ostracized. And that's the rupture repair, right? That's the path. Getting to the repair part requires community. It requires a holding of the individual, not necessarily like, oh, poor Brasito, poor thing, not like that. Holding the individual accountable first to themselves and then to the community. It's this thing, right? Like, hey, something happened.
How do we get to this piece of it? And there's a lot of other cultures, not light, of course, because light culture is all about that tenants, tenants, tenants, hellfire, excommunication, isolation, but there are other cultures who, instead of ostracizing an individual, bring the individual in deeper than ever before to remind them of the importance of themselves. Like, you know that you, as an individual, you're worse more than this, you're better than this, all of these, whatever terminology you want to use to help the person center themselves in themselves in order to be better in the community.
But there's like this holding that's absent. And again, that comes back to fear. How can we heal a person who has done damage? They have to heal themselves. How do we determine that they're ready to be back in community? They can't get back into community without community.
They can't have practice without the holding. There's this gap. And so for me, what I'm constantly thinking about is, again, queers, the ones who have been there, the ones who have been blamed for the rupture, the ones who have been hurt, the ones who have all of these things placed upon them, right? And maybe we did something wrong. Maybe we didn't, but we still have repairs to do. How can we, as queers, illustrate a repair model for society because we have to because if we don't, we die. The time that's literal, it's not just a figurative death that I'm speaking to, it's a literal death as well. So there's a lot in all of this. Yeah, my thing has been at least, or I guess maybe I should ask you, like, how do we do that work?
What would you recommend? How do we bridge that gap better? I know. I'm like, let me pull out all of your wisdom.
Come, come, come. I've been speaking to it here in the Salt Lake Valley for years. For years, I have been speaking to this idea of responsibility for the self and for one another.
If one of yours is hurting, that does not mean you just run off and pretend like they're not. It is about everybody. And when I say everybody, I mean every B-O-D-Y, B-O-D-Y, not just the ones you think are worthy, not just the ones you recognize, but everybody. So for me, education is the foundation of this. Education. So if someone has an expertise, like in terms of racism, right? If you are a person that, you know, the rupture is, you're a racist.
Okay. Please help me know what I need to do as a white person to educate myself. And if they say that's not my responsibility, that hurts, right? Because it's like, okay, maybe it's not your responsibility to teach me. I will pay you to help me, which I've done personally as a white person to educate myself. I will pay you to help me. I will pay you to list resources. I will pay you to guide me to the person that I need, and then I will pay them for mentorship. We will pay them to discuss because it's emotional labor and we will pay for that. You have to say you're bad, you're racist, and drop it at that and have no follow-through communication.
That's where we drop each other. So whenever I get something that like that, because as a public figure, very loud and proud, very, very here in the Valley, I get a lot of things that get directed towards me, you're this, you're this, you're this, you're this, you're this. And instead of arguing and defending, I ask, okay, what can I do to educate myself?
What can I do to be better? And if they don't come back with any answer, and I ask, and I ask, and I ask, and I ask, and they don't come back with any answer, then at that point, I do my own research in myself. Where in myself could these things be present? And I really check myself. I really check myself.
I do an inventory, and I check myself before I wreck myself. And then I do reading. I do research. I listen. I talk. I find individuals in the communities that I may have affected and ask them, have you seen these tendencies in me?
Are there behaviors that are concerning to you that I need to correct? And if so, do you have resources to help me find these resources? Because money is a resource. Emotional labor is a resource. So that's what I do is I constantly confront the hard piece of the communication. Thank you for making this, thank you for initiating this conversation. I would like to continue this conversation so I can be a better person.
How does that work? Oh, you're going to run away. You're going to block me. You're going to leave. You're going to not continue the conversation.
Obviously not here for the same things I'm here for. But I know the information. I have the knowledge. I have the integrity to research this and get right with myself to be a better human. So thank you. Not the person that's going to do this work with me. I will find the people who.
Yes. And that takes a level of self, a level of ego, whatever we want to call it to not panic the second that someone comes to you with tough feedback. I am like the prime example of tough love. So my name is Madison, but in this valley, I'm often called dad is on because that is on has boundaries. Dad is on have structures and dad is on has tough love and he ain't going to beat you. That is not the kind of daddy I am, but he will let you know. He will let you know the truth of the matter and you're not going to like it and you probably will cry. I make a lot of people cry and I have stopped apologizing.
I'll cry and I'll be like, but am I telling you something that you don't know and they go, no, no, no, it's true. You're right. You're right. And I'm like, yes, if you want a person who's going to come with truth, you want a person that's going to hold you to the highest standards. And that's what I do. I ain't going to lie to you and I ain't going to give false compliments and I'm not here to scratch your back because I've got money. I'm here to help you grow. And I expect that you will do the same for me.
Maybe I want the flashlight on it. Well, right, because that's how you get better, right? That's how you learn to show up better for other people is when you do that self reflection, when you do that research, when you do that to expand. So that way you're not causing further harm on other people through your actions, through your words. So yeah, it takes that moment of tough love and like, I mean, at the core in those moments, you're doing it because you want them to be better, not because you want them to go further back down.
You're telling them that hard truth because you want them to get better. And when I think about this and when I hear our conversations, talking about like learning how to check with ourselves, how to be better, how to have more connection, more community, I think what comes up for me is it's like, damn, this is starting to sound like a very spiritual practice. Like, how can we learn to love everybody? Hard, hard.
Yeah. The loving of everybody really comes back to the practice of self love because if we're thinking about the infinite number of people that influence how we understand the self, you're not a self in isolation. You're not a rock, you're not an island.
You are an amalgamation of experience that is created by connection to other people. Absolutely. Yeah. Why that? You can't erase that. So it's one of those things where it's like, how do we love everybody? It always comes back to loving yourself, but understanding that there are many, many pieces of the self within you.
And some of them are ego driven, some of them are love driven, some of them are money driven, some of them are fear driven. Loving all of those pieces and understanding them on a deep level like you would try to understand a child. And when you understand that, then you can come correct to society, then you can come correct to community, but you first have to come correct to yourself.
Mm hmm. The hardest reality check we as humans have is looking in the mirror and being like, you ain't right. You ain't correct right now. And what do you need to do to be in balance? And what do you need to do to be in balance?
in and of. It's tough work, absolutely. It's tough work to be doing that. In that process of doing that work, we need to be in connection with other people, right? Like there's no point at which we become the island, even in this self-understanding and self-reflection to be like, oh, I must retreat from everyone because I'm so bad that I can't go out in the world.
It's like we also need connection while we do that. So then I think it gets tricky, right? And I guess this comes back to the rupture and repair. In our understanding of community, we can't be in community with just people who are at the same vibration and the same understanding. Like, yes, you do need that as your recharging doc, but also you can't just leave out the people that still have paradigms that are a little bit problematic because otherwise then they don't come with us. So we need to figure some way where we have boundaries with that, but also bring people with us. It's that boundaries, right?
The boundaries taught. And it's like, this is what I am willing to do. This is what I'm not willing to do. I always say, I will come to the table every time. All you got to do is ask, but I will come to the table and I will sit with you and I will tell you what I'm willing to do and I'm not willing to do. But even if I do not agree with you, even if I do not like anything that you are about, even if you have hated me from day one, even all of that, I will come to the table and I will have a conversation.
I will. And that's how we get closer to this future of change, of all this being implemented, is not by working in silos. Yes, that is needed to keep us alive. I don't think we could do it if our whole work was all of that. We need the people that see us, vibrate with us, but yes, there is also this space of bringing those people with us. And I think boundaries have been one of the more interesting pieces of navigating too.
What do boundaries look like in those relationships with people that might be in different paradigms? Yes, that's the thing. Again, coming to the self, knowing what you are willing to do, knowing what you're not willing to do.
Yes, that is yes. It's a self-exploration. I can try to project my boundaries onto everybody else, but that's just not the case. Everyone has different boundaries. Everyone has different levels of interrelating. So, in this, you know, I used to demand, I'm like, you must come to a table.
You must, you must, you must because of community and because of love. And that in and of itself is problematic, right? Because I can't make anybody do anything. They have to be self-aware enough to choose to come to the table.
And all I could do on my end is talk about how important the table is. And when they're ready, the chair will appear. And if they're not, I'm not here to force anyone.
They come to me. And also what a great let go of responsibility. You know, this sense of like, oh, I have to bring everyone along. It's like, no, you can offer the table and they will choose. Right. And that also lets go of the stress of feeling the sense of responsibility, like this like savor of complex of all of us to be like, let me, let me show you the way, you know, but like. And that's a complex too, bringing it back to the religious aspect of this conversation. If you are forcing somebody or demanding somebody to meet you where you're at, you're actually externalizing their choice onto yourself. And you're not demanding that they do the work.
You're demanding that you do the work. And why would you want that? All you can do is just be like, Hey, this is where I'm at. This is what I'm trying to do. This is the table I've created. This is the table. You can show up or not, but like it's still going to be here. Right. The table gets bigger and there's always going to be space for you. This is not like a 12.
There are only 12 allowed. Like this is like the table is as big as you need it to be. And all of a sudden when you decide to show up, there will be a chair and it's like magic, but it will always be there. If you choose to come to that. In some ways I say we are doing what Jesus would have wanted. Like I always come back to them like, fuck, you know, all I do is go around be like, we need to learn how to love each other and bring people closer. And then I'm like, Oh no, this is what Jesus was preaching. My Jesus left his horse and was definitely exactly Bible. I'm reading.
Definitely a queer. No one's listening. Listen, two by two, more like three by four by five.
I won sometimes 10. Oh yeah. Well, the Bible had non monogamous people like that was a common thing. Can we talk about that first? I can't wait. When the fuck did that get left off from like the history lesson? Excuse me. I'm pretty sure there were 10 wives in that situation. Also, some of those wives are probably husbands. Also, do we even care if they were wives or husbands at this point?
Right. I mean, Solomon, right? Like didn't he have like 400 wives and like a blank amount of concubines and he was like God's chosen king. And you're like, some of them definitely had different parts down there.
I mean, I think the whole thing we need to take a big question mark to a lot of the ways it's interpreted. But like, damn, it sounds like you're doing it like, yeah, like very much so healing work in that space with your experience. That's very powerful. It's the medicine, right? But then I'm also gifted such powerful medicine in the trust that my client. bring to me, but also in my relationship right now with this daddy.
Eight kids, Lord. And he tells me, he's like, you are everything. I was terrified of queer, radical, anarchist, punk, like insane, non-binary, like producer loud, like you are everything. Cause he's very timid, right? He's very soft spoken, sweetest angel baby. But, and I like look at him and I'm like, you are an ex Mormon daddy on the bishop brick with a wife and eight kids living in happy valley. Like the pairing does not make sense, but it's one of these like meeting across the bridge that neither one of us expected.
And it's so beautiful and it teaches us more than we could have ever imagined. And his children have met me and are looking at their daddy and they're like, dad, you're queer. We've always, you're a queer, just like, accept it, accept it.
Hell, yeah. I mean, I want to know more about this relationship, right? Like how did like, what, how did this go down? What are the details? I know it's juicy.
I know I'm waiting. Not at a taunt retreat because that's another modality that I work in and study. And then his wife held what's called a temple night. It's basically a play night or a dungeon night, whatever you want to call it. There's terminology for it, but it's basically where we get together, set intentions and play. And it's very sensual or not talkative or not.
It's what we want. And so his wife held the space and there were about 10 people there. And me and him were just like, and we fell into the universe together that night. There was no penetration. There was no talking. It was just an energetic melding of mind and body and spirit. And it was after that moment, it was an undeniable thing of like, we are supposed to figure out something together. This is medicine, this meeting of the minds, bodies, spirits, histories.
So whatever this is, sacred to use a word that has a lot of connotation, but a sacred relationship. And we're exploring it and him and his wife are both completely and entirely unafraid of bringing me in, emphasizing that my presence is necessary and that, you know, their, their children, they let them speak freely, which is amazing. They write to their parents. They speak out loud to the parents. They've told them, like, I'm not sure I want Maddie involved. I'm not sure if I want Maddie at holidays.
I'm not sure. And I like, good, thank you for expressing that. Maddie is absolutely welcome to come to Thanksgiving and Christmas because they are part of the family just because they're not blood, just because they're not married into it doesn't mean that they're not family. So they're actively changing the nature of relationship with family, with their kids. And the wife has multiple partners and speaks to them and the kids have met them as well. So it's this thing where it's like radical as fuck, right?
Where it's like the kids range between seven and 24 years old. And they're like, this is who this is. They are a piece of this and you can be upset. Don't blame you. That's so beautiful. It is. It's unbelievable. I'm like, is this my reality? Yeah. That's amazing.
I love that you find yourself in this place. I mean, yes, yes. I mean, I'd love to talk to them for the podcast. I think it'd be a really interesting. I mean, you get to nominate who and however many you want.
So don't feel like if you have multiple people, I trust your judgment, especially who you are. Like, yes. But I feel like that's always one of the things too, where people are like, oh, my God, how do I tell the children? Like there's this level of like shame and yeah, keeping away from the kids of like, don't tell them about this or that daddy does that.
But then like what it's doing is continuing a narrative of false city. You're telling your kids, oh, like, yeah, mom and dad, you know, in this paradigm grew up and had this great happy marriage, you know, and it was just the two of them. When like in reality, they had other partners and all these other pieces. And like, what are you teaching your kids when you're giving them like a false representation of the real reality of like how they thrive in their marriage? Amen. You're setting them up for the same fucking like complex chaos of figuring out how to do this again.
Like, or it's that secrecy and that shame that kills relationships. And I am a shame anarchist. By the way, I have t-shirts.
I actually am an anarchist. And it's one of those things where it's like shame is the thing that keeps you controlled. Exactly. Exactly.
And so, yeah, I have a lot of faith that if we do this and these are the kids that are being raised, that the world is going to get to a better place. Yes. Oh, yes.
Yes. Definitely nominate them. I think they'd be down. Hell, yeah, that'd be really, really cool. They're an amazing couple.
And every time we express the story or we tell the story of these two or the partners that are involved, everyone that hears the story is like, no, no, there's no way that they can be together, be happy, have this and that. And you can have it all. You can have. I'm like, yeah, we believe in both and actually.
That has been like my biggest thing, too, like leaning into that. Yes, and yes, and you can have it all. Like that is totally a possibility. You're not a scarcity mindset, baby. I know.
I know. I check in with myself about that every single day. My God, I can have everything I want and more, right?
I do spoil myself a lot. Yeah. Yes.
Yes. I want to hold a little bit of space as we come to the end of our time. Do you feel like there is anything that coming in today? You were like, I wanted to talk about this and maybe we didn't hit it through our dialogue. No, I'm really feeling good about what we discussed. We covered a lot. We just we covered religion, God complex, community, relationships, not only to the self, but to others, belonging, love, like foundational, like societal norms that are being shattered, like feels excellent, feels exactly what an anarchy podcast should be about. Absolutely.
Fuck yeah, it does. Honored to speak to you and be on it. And I want to share all over all your things. I'm super grateful to be connected to so many amazing souls that are doing this work radically, specifically in a clinical sense, you know, like, ooh, let's go one day.
Sex work will be a clinical modality of therapy one day. Circuit partners. Yeah. That that. Yes. But also domination. Oh, yes. Absolutely. Yes. Yes. Taking it into the king space. I think that's something that also I would love to talk to someone about this spirituality of BDSM.
Right here. I know. I know. That's why I was like, maybe I should have talked about that as well. That's a whole nother. That's a whole whole nother thing.
I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know. And especially I want to learn the psych of it and talk more about it and create language with all of that. So I think that'd be a very powerful conversation.
An endless conversation. Really? Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Well, then maybe we'll have to have a second round, too. I felt that with a lot of people, too, where I was like, we only just hit the surface. I need like to come back and hit the other areas of people's lives. But yeah, unless you have anything else, I can come to like a closing question. If that feels good. Cool. OK. Well, then the one question that I ask everyone on the podcast is what is one thing that you wish other people knew was more normal? Gender bending, specifically with cis men.
More cis men want to be in women's underwear, not that way, but for themselves and explore their femininity than you would ever, ever, ever think about. Ever. Oh, they are here and they are clear and they're just really in a lot of pain.
That's the shame, right? Coming through really, really deep. I can't tap into that side of myself. I could never do that. I mean, that. Very deep.
Do you have any advice that you would say to those people if you could give a small tidbit like it's gender bending, but like what would you get? You're like, call me. I will help you. I will help you. Womendom.com. Call me. For sure.
I'm on night flirt, too. You want to have like some little BDSM discourse? Hell, yeah, I guess I don't even have to ask where where do you want to plug? What are the channels you want to plug for you? Yep, yep.
Hell, yeah. Well, then I will make sure that your website and everything is in the show notes for the episodes that way. If people are connecting with you and want to chat with you, it's just all there for them.
Instagram, everything is on the website. You just go play in that. Very exciting. Well, it was so fun to chat with you. Thank you for bringing all this energy and like I vibe very much.
So it's what you're trying to do. If you enjoy today's episode, then leave us a five star review wherever you listen to your podcast. And if you're a part of the anarchist community, then follow us on Instagram or nominate a guest for the show by sending in a letter to modernanarchypodcastatgmail.com. Otherwise, I'll see you next week.
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