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Teq's Personalised Glossary

The following glossary is a meta-communication tool for keeping-track of concepts I take for granted that may need to be re-contextualised when using them with people for the first time.

In my writing, I often highlight words in bold or italics when referring to concepts that are used in context-specific ways and include them here with a short definition.

While the ways I use concepts reflect the shared-vocabularies emerging within my various communities, some terms are personalised identity markers or customised microscripts.

Always partial, this glossary is intended for my personal networks, is far from exhaustive, and is likely to be inadequately maintained.

ymmv: all entries are descriptive - nothing should not be taken as prescriptive terminological definitions or normative accounts of concept use.

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Navigation note: phrases are listed multiple times for each term yet still link-through to the same resource - either existing resources or a seperate page with longer descriptions and subsidiary terms (if any).

A

B

C

"Compersion is our wholehearted participation in the happiness of others. It is the sympathetic joy we feel for somebody else, even when their positive experience does not involve or benefit us directly" Marie Thouin

D

E

F

G

H

  • HALT+ - a description of the practice of explicitly checking whether you hungry, angry, lonely, tired, irritable, excitable, drunk, distracted, etc., prior to having a conversation.
  • Heteronormative - see the dictionary definition and, for additional context, the LGBT Project Wiki on heteronormativity.
    • Housing Collectives: a group of people who collaborate to improve access to housing. Some of these support housing co-operatives as one tactic in this broader goal, for examples see Housing as a Collective Responsibility.
    • Housing Collectives: a group of people who collaborate to improve access to housing. Some of these support housing co-operatives as one tactic in this broader goal.
  • Housing Co-operatives: a legal entity that operates under the cooperative legal framework that usually exists at the regional or national level. This is part of the broader practice of forming cooperatives - i.e., legal structures for cooperation that have generally developed around groups of people who do not have fair access to political and economic power. By joining together as a co-operative, members combined their social, financial and/or political clout to obtain a more socially just outcome against the odds. Co-operatives are governed by Seven International Co-operative Principles which guides their equitable conduct. In Australia, cooperatives are registered by the states and territories under nationally consistent legislation (Co-operative National Law).

I

  • Identity markers
  • INO (invitation, no obligation): a short-hand expression used with a suggested activity that I have no expectations around to emphasise that a person should only say agree if they are enthusiastic about the suggestion. Also see, NNO (notification, no obligation).
  • Intensity - see Bandwidth and Intensity Capacity
  • Intersex - see terminology advice
  • Intimacy - see Forms of Intimacy
  • Intimate relationship - see The Concept of a Relationship.
  • Intellectual connections - see intellectual attractions and intellectual intimacies
  • Intersectionality: is a concept used to articulate and analyse how overlapping identities are uniquely impacted by multiple systems of oppression. This concept is typically attributed to Black Feminist critical race theorist and legal scholar, Kimberlé Crenshaw who used it to describe the ways in which overlapping systems of racial and gender discrimination act to create distinct forms of employment discrimination experienced by Black women (as compared to white women or Black men). The concept of intersectionality has since been adopted by others to describe how systemic discrimination (such as racism, sexism, classism and disablism) work to marginalize folks in ways that will be invisible/hidden if only paying attention to one system at a time. While sometimes mistaken as being about the complexity of identity, the concept of intersectionality was developed as as tool used to illuminate how power operates within and between multiple larger systems of oppression or domination that fuel instances of discrimination. For more, see Kimberlé Crenshaw’s TED talk The Urgency of Intersectionality, 2016, and Keri Gray video on intersectionality in relation to disability, race, gender.
  • For some resources for understanding the value of diverse perspectives and developing inclusive and solidarity practices, see our section on diversity & inclusion
    Also see this short textual overview, and this sjtoolkit.

J

K

  • Kink – as a form of intimacy – kink & communication practices
  • Knives - an extension of the spoon theory, like sporks it is used to indicate that I'm totally out of spoons and am over-drawing on reserve energy. More spikey than sporks, unless in the service of those struggling with unjust systems even more than me.
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L

M

"what people call 'female Autism' is not actually a phenomenon of gender. It’s a phenomenon of erasure. What people usually refer to as female Autism is in actuality something I like to call masked Autism — a manifestation of the disorder that arises from racism, homophobia, transphobia, and classism just as easily as it arises from sexism."

  • Megasexual
  • Metamours - a relationship characterised by each person being in an intimate relationship with the same other person. For example, if Alice and Talia are both in a relationship with Megan, then Alice and Talia might consider themselves metamours. The dynamics of such connections depend on those involved - from being a mediated connection that are gracious (or not), to being intentionally developed relationships that include elements independent of the person each are also involved with.
  • Meta-Communication
  • Mutual support - see Forms of Mutual Support
  • Microscripts

N

  • NNO (notification, no obligation) - a short-hand expression used when sharing a resource as a 'pebble' to emphasise that I've no expectations for a response. Also see, INO (invitation, no obligation).
  • Nesting relationships - a descriptive term for the way that some people structure relationships that include cohabitation intimacies - see more
  • Neuroatypical - An identity marker to communicate ways that my sensory processing, approaches to learning, and other ways of thinking/feeling don't fit into dominant expectations that emerge from assummptions that everyone should fit in with those who have statistially typical ways of being in the world - see more
  • Nothing about us without us: a slogan that emerged within Disability Activism, as explained by Carly Findlay in Centre the voices of people with disability
  • NRE - see 'relationship energy'

O

P

  • Participation: access and interaction are both important conditions for participation, yet participation is structurally different from both of these conditions (Carpentier 2011). Consider any sociotechnical configuration, X (such as a collective, community, organisation, nation, or set of epistemic practices): access, is about being able to achieve presence within X; interaction involves engaging in socio-communicative relationships within X; participation emerges through contributions to the implict and explicit decision-making processes through which X is governed. Depending on the power-dynamics involved, contributions to decision-making can take the form of minimal participation (where power imbalances structure the degree to which participants contribute to decision-making processes, without participation being completely reduced to interaction or access) to * maximal participation* (where contributions to decision-making processes are structured by egalitarian power relationships. Also see participatory governance & associated concepts
  • Pebbles - a term for the random items/info I share in an 'NNO' way to express interest/care to people. Adapted from Lindsey Brainsandspoons' term of 'Penguin Pebbling' for the neurodivergent love language that Ryan Boren describes as "I found this cool rock/button/leaf/etc and thought you would like it"
  • The personal is political
  • Perspective pluralism
  • Physical connections - see Forms of Attraction and Forms of Intimacy
  • Privilege - for an intro see this privilege 101 post by Sian Ferguson (2014). My privileges stem from a range of traits that are 'default' categories of an overrepresented-majority. As I've never needed to clearly identify or defend these traits, I have not identified with them in any meaningful way, however I consider it is important to continually interrogate those default categories and their resulting privileges.
  • Pansexual - used as an identity marker…
  • Panromantic - see pansexual
  • Queerly Platonic Partnerships
  • Polyamory - as a Relationship Philosophy
  • Relationship Philosophies

Q

R

  • Reciprocity - see Forms of Reciprocity
  • Red flags (in a relationship) - behaviours that suggest a need for some clarification and/or caution in a relationship. Contrast with 'green flags'.
  • Relationship Energy - e.g., 'new relationship energy' (NRE) and 'old relationship energy' (ORE) - see J Koyanagi's overview of polyamory terms part 2 - or 'transitional relationship energy' (TRE).
  • Reciprosexaul
  • Relationships - as a concept
  • Relationship Anarchy
  • Relationship Co-designer
  • Relationship Elements
  • Relationship Escalator: 1, 2,3, 4. A term coined by Amy Gahran (2017) for "one of many social scripts—customs for how people are “supposed” to behave, and how we “should” think or feel, in certain contexts, situations or interactions". For example, when most people say “a relationship,” they usually mean something like this:

"The default set of societal expectations for intimate relationships. Partners follow a progressive set of steps, each with visible markers, toward a clear goal. The goal at the top of the Escalator is to achieve a permanently monogamous (sexually and romantically exclusive between two people), cohabitating marriage — legally sanctioned if possible. In many cases, buying a house and having kids is also part of the goal. Partners are expected to remain together at the top of the Escalator until death. The Escalator is the standard by which most people gauge whether a developing intimate relationship is significant, “serious,” good, healthy, committed or worth pursuing or continuing…In other words, the Relationship Escalator is what most people grow up believing (or more accurately, assuming) that intimate relationships “should” look like, how they are “supposed” to work—and indeed, what any emotionally healthy adult “should” want."

S

  • -ships: used to highlight the many different kind of relationships where one-to-one connections can involve mutual interest and contributions to interacting in ongoing ways (with whichever combination of relationship elements). For example: aquaintenceships friendships, intimate-partnerships, platonic queerships, kinky-spaceships, etc.,
  • Sociotechnical: a term that emerged in recognition of the impossibility of disentangling the social from the technical elements of a community. This concept helps to highlight that, regardless of the technical features that support decentralised decision-making practices within a group with distributed leadership, it remains important to cultivate pro-social behaviours that cultivate participation in these technically-mediated governance structures. An example of this is the community-gardening practices that were cultivated within the open-source community contributing to Scuttlebutt projects.
  • Solo - used to describe someone with many interdependent connections yet without being beholden exclusively to any one person (or unit) when they self-identify in that way.
  • Solo-polyamory
  • Spoons - refers to the conceptualistion of limited capacity as a 'handful of spoons' to highlight the need to consciously count energy expended on tasks that many healthy people take for granted (see: Christine Miserandino, 2003. The Spoon Theory). Spoons have since become a short-hand among those with chronic health challenges for explaining their degree of capacity at any given time. For example, I might say, 'I can, but I'm very low in spoons so if it's not urgent I'd prefer to postpone', or 'I've an extra spoon today - which task should I prioritise?'.
  • Solidarity
  • Sporks - an extension of the spoon theory, it is used to indicate that I'm totally out of today's spoons but am willing to over-draw on tomorrow spoons for specific purposes. For those familiar with it, I use it to indicate that I very much want to help-out or participate in a thing but am likely to be less patient / more irritable than usual. Also see knives.
  • Structural Dynamics of a Relationship
  • Support Rings - Comfort-IN & Dump-OUT
  • Symbiote: an organism living in symbiosis. Refers to an organism in a relationship where both are better off for being in partnership and collaboration (from symbioûn “to live together”).
  • Switch: used as an identity marker to describe a tendency to approach consensual power-exchange from more than one perspective (e.g., alternating between perspectives within a given scenario or in different contexts).

T

  • terms of reference
  • toxic monogamy - see, 1
  • trauma - see, 1
  • Theories of change
  • Tolerance paradox - also see entry for, Disagreement - limits of.
  • Transformative justice: a systems approach to identifying root causes of conflict and responding to these as a community - including developing various harm-reduction processes to interpersonal violence within communities at the grassroots level rather than relying on punishment, incarceration, or policing. See Transformative approaches to conflict resolution
  • Triage (discussing an emotionally fraught issue when it arises): a microscript used within some relationships to indicate that I've identified that I'm experiencing a difficult emotion in relation to them and that I want to 'triage' it with them to determine together if it can be resolved in that moment, or whether we should set aside another time to discuss when we both have more capacity for care and curiosity.

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

Also see:

tags: meta-communication personal-examples intentional-relationships resource-sets key-concepts

Date created: 2020
Version: 1.4 (2024)
Created for: Resources for Intentional Relationships Attribution: created by E. T. Smith on unceded lands of the Wurundjeri people.

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E. T. Smith
I am a researcher and resource curator using this space to draft and share early-versions of projects. For context, see: https://hackmd.io/@Teq/Bio
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