A post on the Feminism Reddit proclaims: “Sex Work isn’t feminism”. A commenter on that thread said:
\n“The main reason I think prostitution is bad because
\nhuman trafficking/slavery
\nthe great risk it puts women in
\nmost woman who willingly are prostitutes only do it out of desperation/no other way to support themselves (or their children.)” “How do I know prostitution is bad? What woman who has millions (is very wealthy) prostitutes herself?”
\nTaking each issue one by one:
\nI'm reading \"Not Your Rescue Project: Migrant Sex Workers Fighting for Justice\" There are books that I get a hold of that I have to read more than once, and this is one of those books.
\n\n\n \n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\"When most people think about migrant sex workers, they think of them not as humans, but as objects of grave moral concern. Not as powerful and capable community members, but as social problems.\"
\n
You can insert the homeless, sex workers, transgender people, or any other oppressed minority there, and it still works. The people at the center of any of these issues aren't the main focus of the saviors. They are seen as objects to save. The debates rarely include real voices of the people involved.
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLike other working-class people, migrant sex workers suffer poor working conditions under capitalism. When migrant sex workers face exploitation at work, this is labor exploitation.When they face abuse at work, this is labor abuse or violence against workers. When they are forced to sell sex (or to sell sex in ways that they do not want to), this is forced labor. Their problems are worker problems.
\n
The book explains a lot of the history of anti-trafficking laws in the USA, and it's roots in white supremacy:
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChinese migrant women were also some of the first targets of anti-trafficking laws, under which they were subjected to immigration investigations on whether they were being trafficked “for lewd and immoral purposes.” In 1910, the US Congress passed the White Slave Traffic Act to target sex-trafficking rings and to protect white girls from forced prostitution that they were lured into by “foreign immigrant traffickers.”
\n
and
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThey face racist immigration restrictions and hostility from white supremacist countries that view them as permanent outsiders and expect them to be servile and impoverished, performing the backbreaking jobs that white people don’t want, without a right to citizenship, labor protections, or full participation in democratic governance. White supremacy frames migrant sex workers as a social problem and as a dangerous threat to Western values, families, and border security.
\n
and explains how the anti-trafficking industry is a tool of the state to enact violence upon migrant sex workers:
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCriminalization through anti-trafficking policies allows the state to emerge as the great “rescuer,” while leaving migrant sex workers more susceptible to violence and exploitation. Mimicking the “white slave panic” of earlier eras, today’s trafficking discourses are framed in the language of “modern-day slavery.” This white supremacist saviordom is a gross and glaring appropriation of Black liberation struggles to enable the very thing that abolition is opposed to: increased criminalization and violence.
\n
\n\n\n\nThe premise of anti-trafficking laws is that because vulnerable women and girls are “trafficked” against their will, they must be “sent back.” Like the oxymoron of feminist jails, these are supposedly “feminist deportations.” This state violence is gender-based violence. And ironically, this kind of coerced “rescue” seems a lot like actual trafficking. The purpose of anti-trafficking measures, then, is not to support migrant sex workers but to increase policing and to restrict the free movement and labor of migrant women.
\n
That migrant sex workers suffer under capitalism in the same way that all working class people do.
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nUnder conditions of poverty, limited opportunities, and social inequality, workers make choices about their best options. This includes migrant sex workers. Other labor activists do not need to prove that workers are capable of consenting to their labor, even though capitalism forces everyone to work to survive.
\n
\n\n\n\nIt’s not that sex work is necessarily good, it’s that it can often be better than other work. The jobs available to low-income racialized migrants in other sectors are some of the worst jobs in the world. Work in agricultural, manufacturing, construction, warehouse, and domestic labor sectors is notoriously poorly paid, punitive, relentless, exploitative, and dangerous.
\n
\n\n\n\nWhen the alternative is deportation, arrest, and poverty, millions of migrants are coerced into brutally exploitative labor contracts. Migrant worker activists including, Harsha Walia, have described these conditions as modern indentureship, and in some cases, “systemic slavery.” The conditions of these work permits are deceptive, coercive, and unfree.
\n
And discuss what a danger that \"anti-trafficking\" NGOs are to migrant sex workers:
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIn reality, anti-trafficking nonprofits do not combat human trafficking, violence, exploitation, and coercion in the sex industry; they facilitate, enhance, and expand state violence.
\n
\n\n\n\nThey are aligned not with a social justice movement fighting gender-based violence and “modern slavery,” but with right-wing and carceral feminist movements that are opposed to racial, social, and economic justice.
\n
\n\n\n\nThe anti-trafficking industry must be delegitimized, defunded, and abolished. It is designed for social control, and because it is founded on white supremacy, sexism, and state violence, it cannot be reformed.
\n
and how SWERF/TERF feminism is and has always been a right of center operation that has held hands with conservative evangelicals.
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFeminist anti-trafficking organizations work with these extremist anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ groups and with anti-trans feminists. One of the larger feminist, anti-trafficking and anti–sex work organizations in the US is World Without Exploitation (WWE), which leads campaigns against the decriminalization of sex work across the country and works in coalition with far-right Christian organizations, including NCOSE and Exodus Cry (whose founder describes Planned Parenthood as “Planned Assassination”).7 WWE is a US-based project of the Coalition Against the Trafficking of Women, the first anti-trafficking NGO of the modern era, which was shaped and formerly led by Janice Raymond, one of the leading architects of both trans-exclusive feminism and sex work–exclusive feminism.
\n
\n\n\n\nAnti–sex work feminists are not “abolitionists.” They are prohibitionists who advocate for a type of criminalization and law enforcement that they claim is feminist.
\n
\n\n\n\nAnti–sex work feminists do not join migrant sex workers in their campaigns for fair working conditions or safe migration, but instead organize against those campaigns.
\n
They call for more rights for sex workers
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMigrant sex workers must have control over their movement—and that means the power, resources, and information they need to reduce the risks and vulnerability that accompany different stages of migration.
\n
\n\n\n\nNo migrant workers, including sex workers, should be forced into exploitative temporary work visas, nor should they have their mobility tied to any employer.
\n
and call the trafficking non-profit industry for what it is... an arm of the state who perpetuate harm of migrant sex workers, not rescue them.
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIn a time of escalating fascism, this book urges us to refuse right-wing, fear-mongering moral panics. Lam and Gallant drive home that the issue we should be concerned with is not trafficking or victim narratives (what they say function as “a concealed form of state violence”) but, rather, the control of migration, the criminalization of sex work, the exploitation of labor relations within capitalism, and the circuits of empire that manufacture vulnerability.
\n
It was an eye-opening read from people organizing on the ground, helping, collaborating, and listening to migrant sex workers.
\n\n\n\n\n", "date_published": "2024-12-13T04:04:38+01:00", "url": "https://martiabernathey.com/2024/12/13/understanding-migrant-sex.html", "tags": ["Activism","Racism","Transgender","Feminism","Capitalism","LGBTQ","Religion","Books","TERFs","FarRight","BodilyAutonomy","SexWork"] }, { "id": "http://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/2022/12/12/reactionaries-terfs-and.html", "title": "Reactionaries, TERFs, and Bodily Autonomy", "content_html": "\nA couple of things have been stewing in my brain for a while, and I can't stop thinking about them.
\n\n\nFirst off is a term that describes people who don't believe in the right of individuals to make decisions about their own lives and bodies. Radical feminists (TERF or not) don't think that sex workers have that right, in much the same way that US Republican conservatives. Whether drug use, transition care, sex work, assisted suicide or abortion, the resistance to it being allowed in society is that the person doing it cannot or should not consent. They want to impose their values on the lives of people they don't know or care about. Reactionary kind of fits, but not really.
\n\n\nThe other thing is that the resistors of bodily autonomy are rarely honest in their assessments/debates. They will use a rhetorical trick of treating a systemic issue as an individual issue and vice versa. A good example is the issue of mass shootings. The fact that cis white men commit the majority of mass shootings routinely gets treated as a \"lone wolf\" or as a \"mentally ill\" rather than it being a systemic, societally based issue.
\n\n\nOn the other side of this trick, TERFs use individual trans people being awful that have no systemic/institutional/societal base at the root. TERFs will claim that self-identification of gender will cause harm, say this is a \"valid question\", and repeat it ad nauseam. But they never respond when the question is answered and that their \"valid question\" hasn't resulted in the systemic harm they claim in the 18 countries where it's the law (Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Ecuador, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Portugal, Switzerland and Uruguay).
\n\n\nAnd that's just it; the people at the centre of the question never want to answer it. Like Young Earth Creationists, they have a belief that is centred and anything that agrees with it is true; anything that counters it is false. It isn't a debate, as it is a propaganda campaign that tries to get more people to try and command other people's bodily autonomy.
\n\n![](\"https://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/uploads/2024/fd97e875df.jpg\")
\n",
"date_published": "2022-12-12T14:11:46+01:00",
"url": "https://martiabernathey.com/2022/12/12/reactionaries-terfs-and.html",
"tags": ["Transgender","Feminism","MentalHealth","USPolitics","Blogging","TERFs","BodilyAutonomy","SexWork"]
},
{
"id": "http://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/2015/08/21/no-my-bits.html",
"title": "No My Bits Aren't Your Business or Your Trans Advocacy",
"content_html": "![](\"https://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/uploads/2024/2552f99046.jpg\")
\n\nRecently I read the en(Gender) post,\"Guest Author: Zoe Dolan, When Political Correctness Hits Below The Belt.\" Helen Boyd states in an introduction to the piece:
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\"Here’s a controversial piece from Zoe Dolan, lawyer, author, and friend, in a smart piece about why, when it cones to dating – amongst other things – talking about genital surgery is important.\"
\n\n
If this piece was a post strictly concerning intimacy and talking to a potential partner in frank terms about sex with a trans person, then I'd agree it was a \"smart piece.\" Unfortunately it does not stay within the boundaries of negotiating intimate relationships. The post opens up with:
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe conversation goes like this:
\n\n\nHim: Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?
\n\n\nMe: Yes, I have a vagina. Yes, I have a clitoris, and also labia majora and labia minora. Yes, I feel sensation and I can have orgasms — both vaginal and clitoral. And yes, I self-lubricate; but who ever said no to a little coconut oil?
\n\n\nHim: Wow. That’s amazing. Thank you for being so open. I’ve been curious but afraid to ask.
\n\n
First off, what's the context of this hypothetical concersation? Dolan doesn't give lay out a scenario in which the questions are asked. Is this man a potential lover that you're on a date with? Is this question being asked by a co-worker that is \"just curious?\" The context matters.
\n\n\nDolan continues, saying:
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nI’ve written before, and I maintain: my view is that there’s no shame in the human body. We all have one.
\n\n\nNevertheless, a politically correct script of deflection dominates public discourse when it comes to sex change surgery. This condescension shames people into believing that questions arising out of natural curiosity are somehow overly intrusive, and that inquiring about the medical aspects of being transgender is wrong.
\n\n
First of all, there's an assertion underlying here that trans bodies are surgically created bodies. Dolan repeatedly conflates M2F transsexuality and transgenderism. Trans bodies can be surgically created, synthetically created through hormone therapy, or by winning the genetic lottery. Dolan is correct that there should be no shame in talking about the human body, but context matters because respecting a person's body matters. Context matters because a right to personal privacy matters.
\n\n\nRecently I met a fella at a music show that told me that he thought trans women were women and he respected them. He then asked me if I'd had \"the surgery.\" I'd literally known this guy for minutes. He also informed me that I needed to smile more. I'm in a long term monogamous, committed relationship. I'd given him no signs that I was interested in him in any way. In this context, this man was being disrespectful.
\n\n\nI don't and haven't ever publicly stated the state of my genitals, because I don't believe that's something I personally feel the need to share or that should be up for public consumption. If you ask me about the state of my genitals when I've not expressed an interest in you, you've crossed a boundary and are being disrespectful. Some similar violations of privacy and personal boundaries/space without consent are:
\n\n\nDolan states:
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhile the privacy that others may choose deserves respect, there is fallacy in the proposition that everyone should know better than to pursue understanding of a subject to which they have yet to be exposed.
\n\n\nAfter all, I myself had no idea what sex change surgeons were capable of these days until I asked and found out. So how can I hold regular people to a higher standard and expect them to know what I, as a transgender person, once did not?
\n\n\nIndignation exacerbates at least four problems created by muzzling discussion of sex change surgery. First, silencing talk about the procedure undermines its medical necessity for many of us who identify as transsexual. In the United States, we are now required, like anyone else, to carry medical insurance; yet, although more and more insurers are developing policies that cover transgender genital surgery, many have historically excluded coverage for an operation they deemed “cosmetic.” Tell that to a transgender person wincing every time they have to go to the bathroom, weeping at their body in the shower or the mirror or trying to explain their sex to a potential intimate partner.
\n\n
There's no muzzling of discussions of sex change surgeries. If one is interested, they only need a web browser to educate themselves. I hate being so repetitive, but again it's context of the inquiry that is disrespectful. Trans people should not be asked to educate cis-gender (not transgender) people, with their own bodies as the curriculum of that education.
\n\n\nSorry, I'm not your trans101 sex education doll.
\n\n![](\"https://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/uploads/2024/52206d0891.jpg\")
\n",
"date_published": "2015-08-21T11:13:50+01:00",
"url": "https://martiabernathey.com/2015/08/21/no-my-bits.html",
"tags": ["Activism","Transgender","Healthcare","BodilyAutonomy"]
},
{
"id": "http://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/2014/10/22/renee-zellweger-abortion.html",
"title": "Renee Zellweger, Abortion, and Trans Bodies",
"content_html": "Wading through all the comments on Facebook about Renee Zellweger’s “new look” have made me think a lot about a common thread between abortion rights, trans bodies, and body modification through surgery. The common issue is between them all is bodily autonomy, the right to make choices about what happens to you your own body.
\n\"But she looked good/better/different before the surgery!\"\n\nAccording to who? I’m kind of dumbfounded when someone agrees a woman should have the right to choose what do concerning an unplanned pregnancy, but will comment on a person’s choice for elective body modifications. Why is that ok? It seems to me that it’s Feminism 101 to say that women should have the right of bodily autonomy.\n“She looks ok, but I think she was more attractive as a guy!"
I find celebrity culture to be a tad bit creepy. People will comment freely about a woman’s body as if it’s something of theirs to critique? It’s objectification at its highest level. They probably wouldn’t appreciate the same level of critique of their mother, sister, or partner’s bodies, but they seem to feel they have a right to comment on the body of someone they’ve never met and don’t know? How far is this from the religious fundamentalist (or TERF) who will say:
\n\"The writers of Scripture viewed any attempts at overriding one's birth-sex as abhorrent, a sacrilege against the structures of maleness or femaleness created by God, and ultimately a rebellion against the Creator who made our bodies,\"\nThe underlying theme is the same, regardless of who it's coming from. It's an assertion of ownership, outside of one's own body. It's an assertion that bodily autonomy is harmful, and that any change to the \"natural body\" is mutilation:\n
\"Now one of the things I find puzzling about it is that, when I look at the House of Lords debate on this legislation, those I agree with most are the radical right. Particularly the person I find that I agree with most, in here, and I’m not sure he will be pleased to find this, is Norman Tebbitt… Tebbitt also says that the savage mutilation of transgenderism, we would say if it was taking place in other cultures apart from the culture of Britain, was a harmful cultural practice, and how come we’re not recognising that in the British Isles. So he makes all of these arguments from the radical right, which is quite embarrassing to me, but I have to say, so called progressive and left people are not recognising the human rights violations of transgenderism or how crazy the legislation is. – Sheila Jeffreys\nMy belief (regardless of if we're talking about trans people, sex workers, Renee Zellweger, or someone who is pregnant) that it is \"my body, my choice.\" The right to make choices about your body is a basic, fundamental human right.\n
![](\"https://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/uploads/2024/970fa13b23.jpg\")
\n",
"date_published": "2014-10-22T11:49:28+01:00",
"url": "https://martiabernathey.com/2014/10/22/renee-zellweger-abortion.html",
"tags": ["Activism","Transgender","Feminism","SocialMedia","Religion","TERFs","BodilyAutonomy","SexWork"]
},
{
"id": "http://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/2005/04/15/welcome-to-jesusland.html",
"title": "Welcome to Jesusland",
"content_html": "As a child, I used to be afraid that one day soon Armageddon would come and destroy my world. In those days I feared the rapture, yet now I welcome it.
\n\"I'm a radical! I'm a real extremist. I don't want to impeach judges. I want to impale them!\" - Mark Schwartz, Republican Senator Tom Coburn's chief of staff.\n
This extremist tone permeates the Congress and the White House.
\n\"Our next step, whatever it is, must be more than rhetoric.\" - House Majority Leader Tom DeLay\n
Today’s theocratic mindset is exposed bare and naked by reading Virginia Republican and writer, James Atticus Bowden. He writes that:
\n\"Today, America is engaged in another Civil War, a long Culture War, to determine the consensus culture, the world view, and purpose of our Nation. Judeo-Christian or Pagan Human Secularism. The issues; Ten Commandments, public prayer, partial birth abortion, homosexual marriage, euthanasia, etc., are stalking horses for the intolerance of Tolerance and Multi-Culturalism. These Liberal Puritans are culturally cleansing Judeo-Christian America. Their judges are today's tyrants. The Liberal Human Secularist Totalitarians are hand maidens of Islamist Totalitarians seeking to destroy Judeo-Christian America.\"\n\n“The Confederate battle flag is a racist symbol only to racists, demagogues (liberals, thus Democrats), and dummies. To Southerners, Confederate symbols stand for courage, sacrifice, and fidelity.”
\n“Tolerate homosexuals – they’re your kin – but don’t honor them.”
\n“We don’t give a damn what foreigners think of us. And, frankly, my dear, we don’t give a damn what Yankees think of us (and that really bothers them).”
\n“As a man actually named ‘Bubba’ all my life, I’m proud to be disdained by any non-Southerner - and non-conservative, non-family, anti-evangelical Christian - ‘youse guys’.”
\n“Red States will never abandon Israel - it’s an Evangelical Christian thing about loving the Jews. So, fighting the Islamists for centuries appears not to be a problem.” - Virginia Republican and writer James Atticus Bowden
Um…ya. PLEASE hurry Lord. These people really need to go. America needs the rapture….. and I need a new car.
\n![](\"https://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/uploads/2024/e58fdf249c.jpg\")
\n",
"date_published": "2005-04-15T17:19:24+01:00",
"url": "https://martiabernathey.com/2005/04/15/welcome-to-jesusland.html",
"tags": ["Racism","USPolitics","Religion","BodilyAutonomy"]
},
{
"id": "http://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/2005/02/18/the-loss-of.html",
"title": "The Loss of Innocence",
"content_html": "Coming back from Kentucky, Lisa gave me a GLSO Newspaper to read on the way back. Its a queer organization in Kentucky. Anywho, an article in it hit me like a ton of bricks, and I wanted to share it….
\nThe Loss of Innocence\naftermath of the affair\nby Kelly O’ferrell
\n“This is not the face of an ingenue; this is an old soul in a new body- wary, wise to her own long past, on to the wiles of the world, and having miles to go before she sleeps."-Sarah Ban Breathnach
\nI stood one day and listened as a co-worker told me about her new girlfriend. They’ve been friends for three years, were mutually attracted to one another, but never single at the same time. Now, finally, they are both single and have started dating-and everything that comes along with dating!!
\n“I think I’ve finally found the one I’m going to spend the rest of my life with.” she said. Suddenly, I felt my body rip down the middle. “The one forever,” is what I heard her say. Those words were vibrating in the room.
\nI wanted to run from the room. But first, I wanted to grab her and scream “THERE IS NO FOREVER!!” Stop looking forward to forever with this woman. Wake up now before you get hurt.!” She was pouring salt in a wound that had almost healed up. I had almost forgotten that forever isn’t real. About two years ago I heard the words, “I’ve had an affair.” I wasn’t expecting to hear those words - not from her. I had always heard, “You couldn’t sandblast me out of this relationship and I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” I didn’t live my life wondering if, when, who, where.
\nAll my co-worker heard from me was, “That’s really nice.” All she saw was me smiling as she continued telling me about her new love. I had to ask her: “Have you ever been in a relationship where someone had an affair?” I wanted to know to what extent her history has shaped her belief in forever. I just wanted to know that if the answer was yes AND she still believed in forever, then maybe she could tell me how I could believe in forever again too. “No,” she said, “but there was one girlfriend who I still believe had an affair but she denies it to this day.”
\n“Just for today, Kelly” someone `reminded me. “Just for today you can believe her.” She was telling me that I could believe in my new girlfriend. “There was no guarantee of forever in your last relationship even when you believed there was.” Even in my innocence, the truth was there. I asked my friend Betsy, if she believes she’s with Anna “forever”. I know she loves Anna very much. And she knows the truth too. “The possibilities are endless,” she said. “And I know that I want to do whatever I have to do to stay with Anna.” Anna just looked at me, laughed and said, “You’re making my stomach hurt!” I wonder if I will ever feel - what? Like I did before? No, I will not feel like that again. There’s something about ‘going back’ thats unsettling. So I guess I will feel something new. But why does that thought leave me feeling a little sad?
\nI talked to my friend, Jaime, about this concept of going back. “Back to what,” I asked him. “Back to innocence?” No. We couldn’t find the word. “Here’s another word for innocence,” he said, “unconscious. And here’s another one - ingenue. It means a naive girl or young woman.”
\nInteresting. As a child, an ingenue, I was unconscious because of my limited experiences. I thought that my pets would live forever, that my family and friends would always be there. I had no experience of death and in my case, no family members divorcing.
\nAnd then, as I grew older, I began to have experiences - my pets died, my grandparents died. When I was in college, a friend who was 18 years old was killed going home from work when he fell asleep at the wheel. When I was 24, I went through a divorce with a man I didnt really plan on spending my life with. Someone I did plan on spending the rest of my life with left and I didnt see it coming. And then there was the sickening feeling of hearing, “and I’ve had an affair.” I’ve since watched friends and family battle cancer and heart attacks and survive. And, as I continued to grow older, I watched my friends parents die. And as sad and scary as all of that is, it increases my consciousness to be mindful that the people, pets, and things in my life are as temporary as my last breath.
\nNo. Im not interested in going back - back to being unconscious. I know that pain and joy are equal ingredients that have made my life , the paths I have taken, a more conscious, wonderful journey. If the chances of a relationship staying are there too. the possibilities really are endless.
\nJust for today I am dating a woman that I like very much. Just for today, I love my life with my friends and my dog Lucy. I do not know what my life will be like tomorrow. The loss of innocence is a process of growing older, an increase in awareness comes whether I’m ready or not.
\nTwo years ago, I did not know when I woke up that morning, that my life would be so painfully, radically different before I went to sleep that night. I did not know that what happened in that one day - when I was told about what had happened- would change how I felt forever.
\nAh, there it is again - forever. Apparently, sometimes, in my innocence I still believe in forever. But, not this time. No. I will not give her affair that much power. That’s my part - how how I choose to let it shape my future relationships. So, just for today, especially with my girlfriend Holly, I will believe….
\n", "date_published": "2005-02-18T10:35:40+01:00", "url": "https://martiabernathey.com/2005/02/18/the-loss-of.html", "tags": ["LGBTQ","Books","BodilyAutonomy"] }, { "id": "http://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/2004/05/15/loss-of-innocence.html", "title": "Loss of Innocence", "content_html": "The Loss of Innocence\naftermath of the affair\nby Kelly O’ferrell
\n“This is not the face of an ingenue; this is an old soul in a new body- wary, wise to her own long past, on to the wiles of the world, and having miles to go before she sleeps."-Sarah Ban Breathnach
\nI stood one day and listened as a co-worker told me about her new girlfriend. They’ve been friends for three years, were mutually attracted to one another, but never single at the same time. Now, finally, they are both single and have started dating-and everything that comes along with\ndating!!
\n“I think I’ve finally found the one I’m going to spend the rest of my life with.” she said. Suddenly, I felt my body rip down the middle. “The one forever,” is what I heard her say. Those words were vibrating in the room.
\nI wanted to run from the room. But first, I wanted to grab her and scream “THERE IS NO FOREVER!!” Stop looking forward to forever with this woman. Wake up now before you get hurt.!” She was pouring salt in a wound that had almost healed up. I had almost forgotten that forever isnt real. About two years ago I heard the words, “I’ve had an affair.” I wasnt expecting to hear those words - not from her. I had always heard, “You couldnt sandblast me out of this relationship and I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” I didnt live my life wondering if, when, who, where.
\nAll my co-worker heard from me was, “That’s really nice.” All she saw was me smiling as she continued telling me about her new love. I had to ask her: “Have you ever been in a relationship where someone had an affair?” I wanted to know to what extent her history has shaped her belief in forever. I just wanted to know that if the answer was yes AND she still believed in forever, then maybe she could tell me how I could believe in forever again too. “No,” she said, “but there was one girlfriend\nwho I still believe had an affair but she denies it to this day.”
\n“Just for today, Kelly” someone `reminded me. “Just for today you can believe her.” She was telling me that I could believe in my new girlfriend. “There was no guarantee of forever in your last relationship\neven when you believed there was.” Even in my innocence, the truth was there. I asked my friend Betsy, if she believes she’s with Anna “forever”. I know she loves Anna very much. And she knows the truth too. “The possibilities are endless,” she said. “And I know that I want to do whatever I have to do to stay with Anna.” Anna just looked at me, laughed and said, “You’re making my stomach hurt!” I wonder if I will ever feel - what? Like I did before? No, I will not feel like that again. There’s something about ‘going back’ thats unsettling. So I guess I will feel something new. But why does that thought\nleave me feeling a little sad?
\nI talked to my friend, Jaime, about this concept of going back. “Back to what,” I asked him. “Back to innocence?” No. We couldnt find the word. “Here’s another word for innocence,” he said, “unconscious. And here’s another one - ingenue. It means a naive girl or young woman.”
\nInteresting. As a child, an ingenue, I was unconscious because of my limited experiences. I thought that my pets would live forever, that my family and friends would always be there. I had no experience of death and in my case, no family members divorcing.
\nAnd then, as I grew older, I began to have experiences - my pets died, my grandparents died. When I was in college, a friend who was 18 years old was killed going home from work when he fell asleep at the wheel. When I was 24, I went through a divorce with a man I didnt really plan on spending my life with. Someone I did plan on spending the rest of my life with left and I didnt see it coming. And then there was the sickening feeling of hearing, “and I’ve had an affair.” I’ve since watched friends and family battle cancer and heart attacks and survive. And, as I continued to grow older, I watched my friends parents die. And as sad and scary as all of that is, it increases my consciousness to be mindful that the people, pets, and things in my life are as temporary as my last breath.
\nNo. Im not interested in going back - back to being unconscious. I know that pain and joy are equal ingredients that have made my life , the paths I have taken, a more conscious, wonderful journey. If the chances of a relationship staying are there too. the possibilities really are endless.
\nJust for today I am dating a woman that I like very much. Just for today, I love my life with my friends and my dog Lucy. I do not know what my life will be like tomorrow. The loss of innocence is a process of growing older, an increase in awareness comes whether I’m ready or not.
\nTwo years ago, I did not know when I woke up that morning, that my life would be so painfully, radically different before I went to sleep that night. I did not know that what happened in that one day - when I was told about what had happened- would change how I felt forever.
\nAh, there it is again - forever. Apparently, sometimes, in my innocence I still believe in forever. But, not this time. No. I will not give her affair that much power. Thats my part - how how I choose to let it shape my future relationships. So, just for today, especially with my girlfriend Holly, I will believe….
\n", "date_published": "2004-05-15T06:24:39+01:00", "url": "https://martiabernathey.com/2004/05/15/loss-of-innocence.html", "tags": ["Reflection","BodilyAutonomy"] } ] }