Life Isn't Binary: On Being Both, Beyond, and In-Between QUOTES

1 " Limits on people's capacities to conduct activities that are essential to everyday life are imposed by structural and systemic barriers. These barriers are part of a social system that regards some bodies as "normal" and some as "other", rather than considering a broad range of bodies and possibilities, for example when designing a building or piece of furniture. This relegates people with disabilities to the status of lesser citizens because of their lack of access. Disability is a byproduct of a society which is organized around only certain bodies which are defined as "normal", in laws, education, institutions, and in popular culture. "

― Meg-John Barker , Life Isn't Binary: On Being Both, Beyond, and In-Between

2 " 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. "

― Meg-John Barker , Life Isn't Binary: On Being Both, Beyond, and In-Between

3 " The many delights of solo living are seldom shown in the media, just as the pain, vulnerability, and often conflict of living alongside the same person for years and years are rarely depicted, unless a "break-up" is involved. What is the impact of seeing the repetition, over and over and over again, of the "happily-ever-after" of getting together with a partner as the ending of every story from fairy tale to action movie? How much do we internalize the notion that this is the goal we should be thriving for? "

― Meg-John Barker , Life Isn't Binary: On Being Both, Beyond, and In-Between

4 " 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. "

― Meg-John Barker , Life Isn't Binary: On Being Both, Beyond, and In-Between

5 " 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. "

― Meg-John Barker , Life Isn't Binary: On Being Both, Beyond, and In-Between

6 " 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. "

― Meg-John Barker , Life Isn't Binary: On Being Both, Beyond, and In-Between

7 " 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". "

― Meg-John Barker , Life Isn't Binary: On Being Both, Beyond, and In-Between

8 " For many disabled people, there is also a specific type of intimacy, which Mia Mingus calls access intimacy. Access intimacy is not just for disabled people; it can also be experienced by many other people who might share experiences of marginalization, such as people of color or trans people. Mia describes access intimacy as “that elusive, hard to describe feeling when someone else “gets” your access needs. The kind of eerie comfort that your disabled self feels with someone on a purely access level.”2 Mia goes on to talk about how it can happen with people with whom there are long-lasting relationships and people we’ve just met. Mia describes access intimacy also as the closeness that emerges from “an automatic understanding of access needs out of our shared similar lived experience of the many different ways ableism manifests in our lives. "

― Meg-John Barker , Life Isn't Binary: On Being Both, Beyond, and In-Between

9 " When opinion and facts become equivalent, and when people’s lives become a matter of debate, that’s when we start to get into the lethal waters of fascist rhetoric masquerading as free speech. "

― Meg-John Barker , Life Isn't Binary: On Being Both, Beyond, and In-Between

10 " One of the most insidious things about trauma is that it’s not about the “bad thing(s)” that happened to us but rather how they have impacted us, and how they can become stuck in us, held in our very being, and leading us to ongoing suffering. "

― Meg-John Barker , Life Isn't Binary: On Being Both, Beyond, and In-Between

11 " human experiences are biopsychosocial: a complex interaction between the world around us, our personal experiences of it, and our bodies and brains, with all of those aspects influencing the others. We risk doing further damage to ourselves when we attempt to change our individual experience without recognizing the role of social injustice and/or cultural messages in our suffering. "

― Meg-John Barker , Life Isn't Binary: On Being Both, Beyond, and In-Between

12 " we require “feminist killjoys”, “melancholy migrants”, and “unhappy queers” to speak from “negative emotions” if we are to reach a more equal society where pleasure isn’t always found at the expense of others "

― Meg-John Barker , Life Isn't Binary: On Being Both, Beyond, and In-Between

13 " Along with the destruction of people and nations—and their legacies—another deep wound of settler colonialism and slavery is the us/them binary of humans/nature. This tells us that we don’t belong with other mammals, teaching us that we’re not interdependent with every other species in the global ecosystem, and that the land is something we can own. "

― Meg-John Barker , Life Isn't Binary: On Being Both, Beyond, and In-Between

14 " When we divide the world into us/them though, we do not only start to dehumanize the other, as we can see in every form of slavery and genocide. We begin to also dehumanize ourselves. If we start to think that we can own the land, green bloods and red bloods—that is animals—then we can also own people, if we can categorize them as not fully human in some ways. "

― Meg-John Barker , Life Isn't Binary: On Being Both, Beyond, and In-Between

15 " Ideals of attractiveness also often obscure racism, misogyny, ageism, and ableism. "

― Meg-John Barker , Life Isn't Binary: On Being Both, Beyond, and In-Between

16 " Both anger and loss are things that we might try to avoid as humans and that get a “bad press” in dominant culture. Nevertheless, we might find ourselves in a paradox: while we’re hypervigilant about our fear of conflict, and the accompanying potentiality of anger and loss, we’re not paying as much attention to the suffering that is caused by trying to avoid them. "

― Meg-John Barker , Life Isn't Binary: On Being Both, Beyond, and In-Between

17 " When I gave birth to my child I was a mom. To her, I am still mom because she does not believe this should be a gendered role. I’m her mom and also a trans masculine person. She says my mom and “he” (I use both they and he pronouns) to refer to me in the same sentence, with the ease of someone who has been doing this for the past ten years. "

― Meg-John Barker , Life Isn't Binary: On Being Both, Beyond, and In-Between

18 " If we look at tropes and stereotypes, it becomes clear who is allowed what emotions. There is no stereotype of the “angry white woman” but there is one for both the “angry Black woman” and “the angry trans person” (especially trans women). For some people, such as Black trans women of color, displaying appropriate emotional reactions can be lethal. "

― Meg-John Barker , Life Isn't Binary: On Being Both, Beyond, and In-Between