5 Quotes by Meg-John Barker

The partner/friend binary places coupled, monogamous, romantic, sexual, partnered love right at the pinnacle of human experience. Like the sexual and gender binaries this is quite a new, Western dominant culture thing to do, and certainly not the way that relationships have been done globally, or across time.

Perhaps an overarching binary when it comes to love and relationships is the one which privileges partners over friends. You can see this reflected in phrases like "just friends", "more than friends" and "friendzone", all of which suggest that being friends is inferior to - and less desirable than - being partners with someone.

Knowing who we are, what we want, and being able to express our needs, wants, and desires - so that we can find others to share them - makes us poor targets for capitalism, because we can now access intimacy in many ways, with several beings, and even by ourselves. This type of knowing is rooted in radical self-care, an acceptance of interdependence, and radical self-love.

Indigenous, Black, and Brown bodies are often non-consensually objectified, exoticized, and touched in public, especially, but not only, if presenting as feminine. It's as if bodies that "don't matter" in dominant culture become communal property of those that "do matter".

There are many things to question in this conflation of binaries: good/bad, with normal/abnormal, and natural/unnatural. First off, can we really say that "normal" and "natural" things are somehow morally better than those that are "abnormal" and "unnatural"? It's not normal to be a genius, a musical prodigy, or a great altruist, but we generally don't shun those people! And it's pretty unnatural to use smartphones and to fly around the world, yet people welcome the ability to do those things.