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# The Local Gossip; Anna Marissa Magik Tarot and Gossip (Side B)
File: The Local Gossip; Anna Marissa Magik Tarot and Gossip (Side B)
https://keybase.pub/danielsan/the-local-gossip/the-local-gossip-neb4q4hy-anna-marissa-magick-tarot-and-gossip/the-local-gossip-neb4q4hy-anna-marissa-magick-tarot-and-gossip-side-B.mp3
scuttlebutt cypherlink: %607dXSQuOPzm6Ph/alK2/XP96xZ1Ql23CLVtmRSzj+Y=.sha256
Transcribed by: https://typeology.co.uk/
Errors: Please ping dan at dh@blockades.org or @dan_mi_sun on twitter if you come by transcription errors. We’re aiming for eventual consistency.
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Marissa: Cool.
Anna: Hello, hello. We’re entering part B of The Local Gossip. We’ve had a really interesting moment that we did not require but let’s reinact it quickly. What are your feelings post-break?
Marissa: My feelings – sorry my web sight just went off. My feelings are – I’m just thinking right now part of why we had like such a cool moment in the break space, was because was like the pressure of like the drama to you like performing a podcast can put a lot of pressure on like the timbre and like the way we guide a conversation. And so like, being off of it and being able to like, reflect on how the conversation is going like gave us the space to be like; oh like I’m thinking about this, I feel this way. But I think maybe if we just like, ignore the fact that there’s a red dot, like, quote-unquote recording us, then we can just like continue that space. And I wanted to like continue the like what I was saying to you Anna, off of – off air about like, the English language, especially since my research has to do with language a lot of the time. But like yeah you should just like fuck language up, especially the English language like however you want because like, not only is it an imperfect language, it’s one of the most violent languages and like the only reason that we’re all speaking English is because of colonialism right now. Literally all of us have that relationship in our like ancestral ties that have put us here like both physically and like, in terms of like our like education. So if you like make a weird metaphor that like we don’t understand, I’m just gonna be like; that’s beautiful and I’m gonna try and understand it.
Anna: That’s beautiful too. Thank you.
Marissa: You’re welcome. [They laugh]
Anna: We’re here to just talk a little bit, what kind of stuck in my head, since our conversation was talking about like the ownership to technologies in the first place, how bodies play a huge role and we were talking about Marissa’s background of coding but Marissa herself defining not necessarily being comfortable with taking ownership of that thing when having this conversation. So that was like a really interesting point when we talk about - and how that reflects back to what bodies feel comfortable in both the past like spaces that are technically facilitated but also towards the future and like the reiterations of that like going on parallel to like social – like the socials that are corporate but like quite a few of us sort of feel that we can’t be a hundred percent [inaudible 03:04] but what I think Marissa mentioned quite well, that we’re also bored like there is no meaning necessarily to what we think is important and urgent right now.
Marissa: Yeah, like totally. It’s – Yeah I didn’t even think about it till we were like reflecting on the level of accessibility in our conversation thus far in the podcast and you know, Dan being like; oh Marissa here you’re like pretty far ahead from the Luddite-eque questions I was asking in the beginning of my code journey and then I like was like; yeah I’ve coded, I know HDML and CSS and now we’re both like; are you fucking kidding me, you know how to code. And like, it’s totally what you said Anna, like the fact that I didn’t even like feel comfortable like, saying that – like I would never call myself a coder and like part of that is that I think there is something to be said for having revere for people who have put a lot of time and work into like being what to call themselves something. But then at the same time like a lot of me not calling myself someone that – or even referencing myself as someone who can code, comes from like the violence of like male like white-supremicist like male-dominated spaces. And when I say white-supremicist I don’t mean like Nazi spaces, I mean like literally every space that’s infused with that because like the world is infused with that. So like everything has relationship to that. And then yeah like, being bored in this space is like even -
Anna: It’s a desert of ideas actually so there’s no - it’s no real wonder that you’re feeling that way.
Marissa: Yeah! It’s so dumb and also yeah, what we were saying off-air again about like not only in those spaces are we gonna experience violence so we avoid them or like we just steer clear of them, which is avoiding ha ha. Two different ways of saying the same thing. But like when we’re there, like we’re like often just not interested about what people want to say or talk about and they only talk about – Because we’re talking about sex work and how we’re interested about having a conversation about how the internet and like peer-to-peer could relate to sex work and does relate to sex work because everything related to sex work and you were saying Anna, that part of what has steered you away from Scuttlebutt is that there was a conversation that happened about sex work that was like kind of shut down. Can you like talk about it a little bit? I just want to know what happened.
Anna: Er, I was witnessing – I guess the dynamics is [inaudible 06:03] just anyone who represents a kind of muted identity in technological spaces should like pay attention to when these situations happen cause it’s usually descriptive of the gender dynamic. But yeah, so a person who I’ve been following who does many things, among others also sex work, was raising the concern of how [inaudible 06:28] just like feminist [inaudible 06:32] that happens in digital spaces that have been more and more restrained in terms of access to customers and how they keep on keep on kind of earning their living through those vital sources of incomes and I feel like – I mean obviously those aspects are not set in a conversation but the essential question was how can this platform that’s so actively – there’s a really active community or it’s kind of portraying itself as this community that tries to portray themselves as radical, who are shaping that platform that could – is really raw but there’s an ongoing development going on and with the enthusiasm in itself to like promote and make that space safe for sex work and other forms of work that our – that can only exist digitally. And so like while you clearly – you can can clearly see that people are invested in that space and have a lot of, what we’d be able to refer that conversation further – it’s like this kind of like the kind of sub-text between the lines, is that we’re washing our hands out of this. That no one knows necessarily even how to react to that. That might be due to not having experience or relying on being the side of what is usually you would associate with the bar of sex work. But essentially seeing the kind of slow unfolding of like, you could direct us to this person – but no one is like – no one is really taking the ownership and being like; yeah this needs to be done and how that can be done because of the person raising the issue clearly can’t do that or is not in a position to. But that sort of unfolding of the dynamic makes you wonder what you’re even doing there because that is one intersection that many people who share the same values with you -
Marissa: Yeah.
Anna: - end up doing or need to do in the society that we’re in and redistribute it in that.
Marissa: Yeah.
Dan: It makes me really sad to hear that that went down but I can totally – I can totally imagine that it did go down that way. I think like – touching a bit on what I was – I think – I can’t remember – when I was speaking about it during the break but to surmise one of the things that I was trying to say is that I think it’s important to look around. So if somebody arrives into Scuttlebutt at the moment, one of the most common reframes that you’ll here is; hey like there’s a lot of dudes up here and I think that’s fair. Like if you look on the get our code website and if you look at the organisation Faces, you’ll see I think there’s one woman and everyone else is men and I think it’s mostly all white and the fact of the matter is that it’s probably gonna be the same in most open source communities. Why is that? I think unless we’re looking around and asking why are conversations like about how these new tools can be useful for the most marginalised folk but why is it when people arrive, it’s mostly guys? Why are things this way? We’re not gonna be able to be effective and to contribute to [inaudible 10:18] or access for the most marginalised in society who share the most in common with us in terms of actual needs, then we’re fucked basically and it hurts my heart every time I here stories like that because that’s the state of where we’re at and I don’t really see a cohesive kind of narrative or understanding about like what have we inherited that we perpetuate, that means we are at risk of, more often than not, just recreating those fucked up power dynamics because we don’t have an analysis of how things got to be the way they are.
Anna: Aha. There’s something very ironic about witnessing new platforms and this is not specific to Scuttlebutt in any way but new technological spaces come in and people that you clearly see as representing and finding the joy of finding each other online. It’s just like; well that’s just like what local physical space is all about isn’t it? Like how is that a special moment? And then you kind of see – see that happening. Yeah.
Marissa: Yeah. I guess like, one thing the like concerns me in this is like – OK, actually I’m gonna start from this slightly less negative point right, so if I’m giving the Scuttlebutt community the benefit of the doubt, say this sex work conversation unfolded and like people hand-washed over it, in like an ideal – not ideal situation but like – One reason that could have happened is that like nobody felt that they could hold this conversation and carry it because they’ve not come from the position of that person right? So OK, that’s fair to like, you know, be like this isn’t my jurisdiction but that’s also a classic excuse that white people use where it’s like: “Oh I can’t participate in helping dismantle white supremacy, cause like I’m just a white person, I can’t do it.” But – So that’s like mimetic in that way. So then OK how do we work through that to get you in a position where you can help. So what my perspective, in like a very practical, tangible sense, is OK you have this community, you have a lack of people in this area, you have a vulnerable person who has a valid point, that you can’t support, you need to pay people to come into the space who can support like this conversation and like this discussion, who are experts at what they do, that you can consult and like literally put your money where your mouth is to get them in the space if there is – if there is tangible funds for it, because like what’s the point of like having that pool if you’re not gonna like use it to like pay marginalised folks for their labour, which is like what we should be doing anyway to redistribute capital. So like yeah, even if like – that’s kind of almost like a best case scenario – not the action I described but like that people seeing that we’re just kind of like oh I don’t want to like execute this thing that I don’t have expertise on, I don’t want to speak where I can’t, which I get but there has to be some sort of accountability that moves forward past that. You can’t just be like -
Dan: One of the – one of the properties of what broadly I call cyber space but another word is peer-to-peer, is that we’ll be able to track that thread down and we’ll be able to see for ourselves kind of like the context. It’s quite different than say, for example Facebook or Twitter in the sense that it’s - the analogy I use is that it’s more like a lake – like the water goes in, the data goes in and it kind of builds up over time verses something like a stream, like when you think about the infinite scroll on Instagram or Twitter kind of it’s – once something’s gone by it’s actually quite difficult to find it again, like if it was – Do you know what I mean?
Marissa: Yes. [Inaudible 14:25] thing that you saw.
Dan: Yeah, we’ll be able to find it and have a look like for sure, that’s kind of -
Anna: But socially this moment I guess, is like really is so sad to witness because I feel like the internet has had so much meaning to all these people that don’t necessarily think that way. It has been particularly radical for people who oppose these dynamics that we’re seeing here that that is reflective of the local space, like that’s what the internet has been really revolutionising too. But it’s also been a learning space where everyone outside of those experiences can kind of learn from each other without having to necessarily bother the person or like have ideas of intersectional oppression it’s also spread so widely. It’s clearly that the internet has been such a good learning space for those things so there’s really no excuse. Like that information is all out there. Or like I think even Dan mentioned about Twitter being this huge collective study group and it’s exactly so.
Marissa: Yeah.
Anna: And like the future of the internet can be designed by this principle. What have we even learned; that’s the question?
Dan: If I can I’m gonna just share what I like – why I’m still there, with a quick story about the money that has come into the eco system. So – and I’ll do the TLDR version, an initial pot of money was given to the person who started the project who then who then said I’m gonna give this to the community and spoke with – I think it was like maybe four of the most invested in terms of time and other such who were all [?] guys. Then the next pot of money that came in; it was two – two guys who kind of came up with the framing. Then there was this latest round of cash that’s come in. What’s kind of remarkable and it’s kind of - I think touches on what Marissa was speaking about; it’s kind of – it indicates an openness to changing stuff is that the next bunch of money, the person who started the project; he – he took a complete back, he was like; I’m gonna leave space for other people to take this on and kind of decide. And what’s ended up happening is that a person has held a kind of proto-democratic version or a grass-roots kind of thing of going; OK well let’s try running this as a council and let’s get people to suggest themselves and let’s get everyone to kind of make an active vote as to how this money is spent and who gets to make those decisions. And so, to remind you, we’ve gone from in the initial case it was the person who started the project, suggested an approach, suggested it to about four people, they said ‘yes’ and then they distributed the funds in that way. About forty grants or so, in the next case the person who started the project gave it to someone who then decided a process. In his third one, what’s really interesting is that the people who have power the people who have power over deciding where the money goes – there’s two non-binary folk, there’s one person of colour – I should disclose that one of them is me. I think it’s like three or four of the people are queer and I think it’s almost like more or less fifty-fifty in terms of like male presenting body and not. So the fact that within a year you’ve got this transition from like total, total male to what’s actually quite – way more diverse than that, within a year, is one of the reasons why like that – not that that happened but that it can possibly happen. Because there are a lot of spaces where the potential for that – it can’t even fold that way because there’s such entrenched like bigotry or like power dynamics where it’s not just that people are perpetuating white supremacy or sexism or patriarchy but they’re actively doing it and it’s – in that absence of people actively doing it in the zone is why I think there’s like potential – like it’s a potential space where it’s worthwhile – at least that’s why for me personally, why I’ve like put so much of my time there, which I wouldn’t otherwise do if it felt like a total lost cause. Yeah. I hope like that kind of give a bit of a framing – though I can totally see – and I’ve seen other stuff like what Anna’s said, go down, I can also see how it could change.
Marissa: Right. Yeah and I think like it’s important to like recognise – like one thing this like Venus retrograde season has made me – has really made me confront is like finding that like ability in myself to decide whether something is worth it or not like to invest your energy in and being really into that. Like because I was part – recently part of a group that was like an all people of colour group organised like through the university institution business complex, I’m part of, which is a very violent one and where I had problems myself, I wasn’t going to engage with that and it really bit me in the ass in terms of calling out structural oppression within the group and caused a lot of people to like say a bunch of lies and slander me. So that was an example of me like not being able to pass that out. It’s like really nice to hear you reflect on like the potential that space is given and like and like hear that sense of hope. Cause I really like when people have hopeful stories cause like so many of the stories I hear nowadays are like everything’s fucked ooh!
Anna: I think what you were just stating is kind of like we’re at this state of consciousness as well. Cause I feel like the internet has also just taught so much to us, that we’re even in this place having this conversation, because before we just lack a complete like sense of positionality towards to each other and it was like really violent like setting that we’re living in. But that – I’m just trying to like catch my thought, I think it’s really important that we’re having this conversation, when we think ahead and try to also invite our friends to have these conversations and input and get like – kind of as a [inaudible 21:46] and building stuff and start initiating stuff and building their own stuff.
Marissa: Yeah, I agree.
Dan: That was one of the things up in part A, I think Marissa was like we ended up hanging out in the after event – after party meal, whatever you call those things. It’s not my scene. We just were talking loads and I was like it was like it would be really neat to find the pain points of how you and other folks – I don’t actually even know what you do Marissa. I know you do readings. But doing readings and other stuff; like what would it look like to have a – the technology helping you rather than you fighting against it or working with old stuff that doesn’t work or using platforms not in the way they were designed to but finding ways of working around it. Like what would it look like to – Cause that question, for me, of what can be built with you together is – that’s gonna be what surfaces the most. And by ‘you’ I mean the more general kind of like - it might be Marissa, it might be like some radical sex worker friends. That’s where the radical stuff will happen.
Anna: Exactly, yeah.
Marissa: It’s like - Really the discussion needs to start with I think what you’re saying, which is trusting that like the people you’re asking are authorities on what – what they do and how they operate, especially like – because for me, I feel like, having both been involved in like spheres of sex work on the internet – like there are certain cam girls where I’m just like; you’re a fucking genius! It’s like what you do is amazing and like so – First of all I just personally think it is amazing , that’s almost besides the point in terms of like how they’ve manipulated like this really like archaic, difficult to use technology and like income networks in order to like kind of garner this like following and like just like totally queer the internet in terms of like how they’ve made it work for themselves, not dissimilarly from like You Tubers but also You Tube is like a totally different thing because it’s like the You Tube industrial complex. So like if we want to like – like in my non-like – very limited knowledge of peer-to-peer, I’m just like – I don’t think the activist consultation in it should be any different from seeking out people who are existing in the margins and paying them for their time and like asking them for consultations on what they need because people who are experiencing oppression are the experts on what they need and like so often the violence of white supremacy makes us turn to the academy for everything and we’re not gonna find revolution in the academy, we’re gonna find it – we’re gonna find people from the academy a lot of the time because they’re gonna be able to have certain bodies of knowledge but it’s ultimately not gonna come from there and I don’t think like it’s even a very radical thing for me to say that. I think it’s just like we know that.
Anna: Yeah…
Marissa: Um yeah. I think also in terms of like doing like work involving like mysticism and the occult and like the kind of work that I do; I’m definitely working against technology a lot of the time, which I wish I wasn’t, working against like wifi speeds and like video and like it’s really hard to hold space for people the way you need to when you’re doing a reading, which can be really life changing, just in like – just on what’s that video or like Face Time. And also in terms of like – there’s a tool that astrologers like myself use called ephemeris, which is like mathematical documentation of like where the planets are and aren’t and that’s kind of like when you learn to read an ephemeris it’s like a major step in astrology and it’s like that is kind of the analogue – for lack of a better word, technology of like how you figure out your natal chart and your you know – where do the synergy with other people and also like figuring out what’s happening in your life and relationship [inaudible 26:48] And we have a lot of like kind of really great technology nowadays; you can just like enter your birth time into like Cafe Astrology and Astro [inaudible 27:00] and like get that information but all these websites – I know Dan we were actually talking about this a bit when I was with you… like it’s - it can just be like computed on the spot but like – they’re not all like terrible websites of course but they’re all still pretty janky, you can tell the internet’s not with – with what’s being created both visually and in terms of like the articulations and also in terms of the violence of like the pronouns in astrology. Like the amount of time I’ve been doing research about astrology and it’s just all presented in such a binary context and everything is like ‘He’ with a capital H makes me – like if I had a penny for every time like I would be so rich. And I just hate that and I want to see space and material created to support it otherwise.
Anna: That’s a really interesting point that your brining because I think one of the things that I kind of wanted to put as a foundation to is like why is astrology quite a revolutionary space I feel, for like quite a few people. It’s like I feel like in some ways there’s like shortages of like so many theories of like how we position ourselves in the world and I feel like, especially to a lot of folks who like kind of see themselves as like decentered, I think there’s like a very interesting point about like – as like knowledgewise that you’re not focused on your physical body attributes at all to like explain what you’re doing and I think there’s something really radical about it. I don’t know if you want to talk more about that.
Marissa: Yeah I totally agree. I think like people in the West are really – not to say astrology is not Western; there’s different types of astrology and the astrology I predominantly know and perform is Western, which is problematic but also a symptom of my diasporic existence. But also yeah, in Western like healing and like medicine the mind and the body are completely separate just as a baseline. So astrology kind of really great in that it like treats you as you are, which is like in unique reference to all of the planets and – Sorry I’m reading the little chat that we had in the podcast – OK, so yeah, we’re all specifically in reference to the planets and you have to be careful of that because like you know, neo-liberalism loves astrology because the culture of like thinking of yourself as like unique and like you know, super, hyper-individualised – like ‘self-care’ is like really symptomatic of capitalism but like we’re thinking from a point of view of like it being necessary to understand yourself to like contribute to collective healing. It’s like it’s got a hugely different socio-political impact. Yeah so I feel like astrology was one of the – I was a little bit resistant to it when I was younger – never fully like but I was always a bit sceptical of like how prescriptive it can be but now I like really after having like properly researched and learned over the course of some years, like now I realise like it really just comes down to like; you are here on this like rock in the middle of a universe and like it’s a pretty hot rock and it’s getting hotter and like [she and Anna laugh] like because of climate change so – it’s not the only rock in the universe, believe it or not Republicans and like the position of all the planets and like comets and like specks of dust in the whole universe effect you and like whether you chose to acknowledge that or not is on you but it not only effects you physically, it effects you mentally and like to say that the moon doesn’t effect you physically, the moon being like the easiest planet to talk about, is just fucking stupid because to argue that is to argue that there isn’t tides bitch! There is fucking tides! The moon effects you physically; you are made of water, the ocean is made of water, there are fucking tides, the fucking planets effect you, right?
Anna: I feel like this is [inaudible 32:12] so many people’s world view and I’m really loving this moment!
Marissa: Oh yeah, thank you. I’m just kind of like -
Anna: Just focus on this.
Marissa: [Laughs] I feel like I’ve just like entered a rant zone and like everyone just has to deal with it. I’m really sorry everyone. My Aries moon was out here like: “Who’s trying to fight!” But yeah, like just to finally -
Dan: [Inaudible 32:34]
Marissa: What’s that?
Dan: LOL.
Marissa: LOL? Indeed. It’s really like almost like – I feel like liberating – yeah liberating’s definitely the word, to like have a space online and more increasingly in real life, where I feel like I can talk about astrology and like people aren’t going to necissarily think I’m completely crazy.
Anna: That’s such a fascinating coupling between like digital cultures and like what’s happening in meet space.
Marissa: Yeah, exactly like -
Anna: They so influence each other yeah. Talk about it, if there’s something.
Marissa: Yeah I would love to. Like OK here’s a great example recently; so I yeah – like always - like I’ve loved astrology like for as long as I’ve learned about it because I’ve always like loved numerology as well and it’s just been like oh my god I was born Friday the thirteenth; I’m a fucking witch and like I’m also a Pieces so like whether I like it or not I am a witch actually. But yeah so going forward from that I definitely, like growing up in my like teenage years, like trying to do the whole like gendered like girl like heteroness that like I’m not, I would like clunk it because guys hate astrology and then as I entered more radical spaces and like came into my politics and my feminism, I was just like – I always had this like thing in the back of my head where I’m like; oh if men hate this then there must be something that they’re doing right -
Anna: [Inaudible 34:20]
Marissa: - because like -
Anna: I’m so sorry.
Marissa: No it’s true though. Most things that like straight men hate, I’m like something good is going on there, I’m gonna go over there. And so I was like more and more drawn to it and really my crucial moment is like; I think it was like four twenty when I was like eighteen, I was like really high and got my sun sign tattooed on my arm. I was like well I guess this is my life now, I’m like into this properly. I just kept going and going and – Yeah and like with meme culture, integrated with astrology, people have been like oh my god astrology is the best thing and like it’s funny and giving me entertainment and also reading me because people love being fucking read and reading meaning like made fun of. There’s a whole business for that like which white men are at the centre; it’s called being a dom. But anyway, yeah so with astrology popping off more and more and also people feeling like the state of the world is more and more abysmal, people are increasingly looking to alternative modes of like healing and like I would say like pseudo-therapy, not dissimilar from like movements in the sixties, you know. So anyway, that’s happening, it’s giving me more of like a platform to talk about what I’m talking about. The fact that I’m on this podcast right now is indicative of that. I recently went on like FM radio in London for a singer, song writer’s album launch. Her name is Nao and she wrote a whole album about having her Saturn return and she like doesn’t really engage or know that much about astrology but it was something that she had really been exploring a lot to the degree that she wrote a whole album called Saturn. And so I went on to talk about astrology with like a bunch of like people who didn’t think I was crazy, which was really cool. And crazy is like a prerogative, fucked up term anyway, especially in relation to being a fem. But then yeah I was like I found myself having this conversation and Shaka who was like one of the artists who was like on, in the conversation with us is like a heterosis man who like is not engaged in these politics at all but was taking me seriously and it was just kind of like wow, there’s like a huge connection between like the revolution of like astrology on the internet and it relating to physical space and like also the relationship people feel to the occult, which is benefiting me in some ways but also you know, it warps some things but ultimately, when these conversations enter the mainstream they do get skewed but as long as you’re upholding them in your own practise the way that they need to be held, I think that’s all you can do.
Anna: You can also protect them online for sure, like if you facilitate certain kinds of settings for sure.
Marissa: Yeah, yeah for sure. I think yeah, I try to but you know, I’ve been trying to like not be as – hold more space for myself in like my spiritual – I guess I’d call it a spiritual practise of like not always engaging with like the bullshit people say online, just for like mental health reasons.
Anna: Oh yeah.
Marissa: Yeah I do like to facilitate as much as I can. I think – Are we over time?
Anna: Do we still have time? Or I have like twenty minutes.
Marissa: We have twenty minutes. OK, cool.
[Inaudible 38:11]
Marissa: Dan how are you doing? Are you still there?
Dan: Oh is that for me? I’m -
Marissa: I was just wondering if you’re still there.
Dan: I’m having a blast.
Marissa: OK, cool.
Anna: Let’s keep it going.
Marissa: OK.
Anna: I think yeah this brings us to a really interesting point, cause [inaudible 38:27] because kind of taking into account that we have diverse people listening to this podcast later, kind of bridge these different gaps in like knowledges and understandings. It’s like talking about before what can be the radical meaning of astrology to a person but then also talking about how I think the internet has really made that possible. Like I don’t think it’s any surprise that there’s – you were talking about the spread of memes as like this - this really condense form of media, like really accessible to a lot of people. Also talking about the general ideas. Like I feel like so many of us have found our embetterments online because of the reflections and assimilations that we’re having. Like I don’t know how many of us would be queer for example, without the internet. Like -
Marissa: Oh my god, I would still think I’m hetero! [They laugh] I’m so glad! Oh my god! Especially being like – coming from like a culture – like I grew up in a really conservative town my whole life, where I was one of the only people of colour. But like not only that, coming from like a very liberal family considering the fact that like my father is Pakistani and my mother is Mexican but still like one that does not really – that tolerates queerness but does not like except it in all of it’s -
Anna: Yeah.
Marissa: - like betterness than everything else honestly [laughs]. So yeah, the internet has definitely helped me like especially in terms of like how I think about the illusion of gender and like -
Anna: Yeah.
Marissa: - my own racialisation too and also like debunking all like of the like prejudices that I hold. Because I like – Coming – The internet has allowed me to progress so much in terms of working through like colourism and ablism that I’ve like perpetuated without knowing it, especially being a pretty neurotypical person and then also a light-skinned person, not only a light-skinned person but a light-skinned person with like proximities to whiteness in terms of some of my features and also my hair pattern. So yeah like thank you internet but also I wish more people had access to the internet.
Anna: Yeah.
Dan: I agree with so much of what you just said Marissa.
Anna: That’s the momentum of what brought us here as well. We’ve gotten so much out of it and like how do we preserve those qualities? I mean like the internet is not meant to stay the same. Like I also hope not but there are like these really radical pockets that like – for example we have found each other.
Marissa: Yeah.
Anna: And now we’re here having this conversation and want to invite other people to have this conversation, is that universities totally failed us, as we discussed before and that there’s always this like sort of reminder to yourself that the point that we have these discussions is that we set them in action -
Marissa: Yep.
Anna: - and that we can maybe together share our knowledges to come up with some propositions of what would social look like but also – and foregrounding social like when we find spaces that will eventually like serve and centre the various embodiments that we’ve found - that we treasure. Like how do we -
Marissa: Yeah.
Anna: - keep them safe. How do we learn a different way to interact with each other like Marissa was mentioning for like trusting and believing when someone else with a different body of experience says something and there’s not even a question – there’s not even a choice for you to decide I’m not gonna believe this because you have to.
Marissa: Yeah like oh my gosh and that’s a concept that like I feel like whiteist men just can’t understand because they have a lot of the time, this illusion that if everyone’s speaking in a discussion that everyone has to like prove their perspective because like they’ve never had to like prove themselves to anyone, they get to like just exist and like people believe them because that’s how society works.
Anna: And all the knowledge, like all we know is based on – to confirm that existence and that position in the world and I feel like the internet has allowed a partial breaking of that.
Marissa: Yeah.
Anna: And now we’re like having this conversation about astrology and queer people and coloured folks.
Marissa: Yeah.
Anna: Yeah.
Marissa: But like also I would just like to like acknowledge one more time like we are having a conversation right now about peer-to-peer internet technology and astrology like that is like the hottest blend of like 2018 and like the year’s not even over yet. Like this is like – this is literally like the cracks that we need to make in structures of the internet and we need to have conversations like these in tandem because not only does that like acknowledge that; one they need to happen but two that they’re fucking inter-related. This like literally debunks how like the tech-bro sitting in his office being like oh I’m a tech person and I don’t need to engage in like social practise at all, I can just sit here and work on code, is fucking wrong! Like no Chad, you actually need to learn about intersectionality and like your position in the world as whatever person you are because actually what you do like shapes everyone who has access to the internet and beyond’s world than you could ever imagine and yet your just gonna go home and slide into someone’s D Ms and ask them to Netflix and chill and abuse your power as you always do. I guess this imaginary Chad is someone that – I’m not thinking of an ex right now but I’m definitely having a clear vision of like who this Chad is.
Dan: [Inaudible 44:51]
Anna: [Laughs] I’m glad that this person is not with us.
Marissa: Yeah and I hope he’s like listening and getting really angry and confused and then like there’s a bunch of Google searches later after he’s listened to it.
Dan: So -
Anna: I’m glad we organised ourselves differently in like different compositions. I think like one of the things I want to point out that these conversations are so hard to have particularly because society really nudges you to focus on one area. It’s really hard to have these conversations I mean as in space wise, it’s really hard, it requires you to counter that at all possibilities. That there’s -
Marissa: Yeah!
Anna: - Understanding that there’s always more and wanting to learn that.
Marissa: Yeah like part of like how capitalism works is like individualised niche labour and then like everyone’s so engulfed in their own field that no one’s talking with each other to see anything as a bigger picture. Like it’s literally – not to sound like an anarchist bro but it’s like cogs in a wheel and like we’re not really looking at the wheel, we’re just like being our cog selves. That’s literally it. It’s like until we start looking at like intersectionality as like the beautiful - like Kimberle Chrenshaw like gave that word to us - like intersectionality not only in social practise but like in that application that it is available to everything. Like we’re not gonna be willed to like create like the future that we need to hold us in the ways that we do – I think, like not to pat ourselves on the back too much for this conversation and our space happening but I think – I do think this is like really crucial to moving forward.
Anna: It’s a first step.
Marissa: Yeah.
Dan: Can I, as the nearest to a tech-bro that we have here [they laugh], can I don my slightly open-minded Chad hat -
Marissa: Yeah.
Dan: - and repeat back to you some of the – some practical steps that I’ve heard come up to see if I’ve heard correctly?
Marissa: Yeah I’d love that.
Dan: So I’ve already de-Chadded myself by asking that question, although I might have put it on again by noticing that I’ve taken it off. Anyway – that got meta.
Marissa: Woo meta Chad!
Dan: One of the direct things that was invited was to say those more at the margins of society, those most oppressed are the experts in the systems that are oppressing them. They know what they need and so one of the practical steps that opens doors; communities – peer-to-peer communities can do, if they’re serious about accessibility is to pay these folks who share their expertise. That’s like one very practical thing. Did I hear that right?
Marissa: Yep.
Dan: Check. OK. Another is that when – when folks from like – so in the very specific example that Anna gave earlier where someone was saying hey and asking questions very specifically about sex work and that type of thing, that those conversations matter. Like if you’re on the sidelines and you care, one of the side-effects of not contributing is that there are a bunch of other people who are assessing whether or not to invest their energy in these spaces or not and that matters. Like if we do care about… if we do care about these spaces – peer-to-peer spaces making a meaningful difference then we need everyone and everyone is not gonna – no not that we need everyone but that we need the perspectives, experiences, expertise of those who’ve had to bear the brunt of the bullshit of capitalism. So not everyone. I don’t mean like everyone everyone but we need an expertise folded in and the only way we can is if we are evidencing that the spaces that we’re in are at least not actively hostile. Like we’ve got a lot of space to learn, there’s no rule book. One of the things that the internet seems to have blown up is that we’re kind of doing stuff that probably is unexpected like talking about white supremacy, astrology, peer-to-peer there’s literally no rule book for this shit. Talking about intersectionality coding and coding ethics. We’re kind of making this shit up as we go along and so it’s important that we kind of bear that in mind and that you’re not – that when people come in and are putting themselves out there and probably a bit at risk and exposing themselves, that that’s if you a person with relative privilege to that person it’s important how you treat that person, like how you treat that expertise, that vulnerable act, is that another thing?
Marissa: Yeah I think also, to add on to that I think it’s really important that people like – like say to kind of go back to like when like – putting it like hand-washing and like just like putting a conversation to bed because you don’t know enough about it. Like that’s not a good excuse. I think also part of like tackling patriarchal structures and like domination within like – just within discussions, is like being able to like get off your high-horse and say; hey I see that this is a really important conversation happening and I’m not really sure how to interact and how to best support it because of my lack of knowledge, like I’m going to look into this and like if you have the ability you should look into this or if you have relative privilege to the person talking about it, you should not necessarily like ask them for resources unless it’s offered but you should also offer if you have the means like to pay them to give you the resources to help them and also just hold space to listen to what they’re saying and listen to what they’re saying they need in that dynamic because that – It’s not good enough to just be like; I don’t know about this, only one person is talking about it and then just not do anything about it. If that makes sense.
Anna: Yes.
Dan: Totally.
Anna: Total sense.
Marissa: Cool yeah, yeah.
Dan: So if I could reduce them down, is put our money where our mouth is. If -
Marissa: Yes actually.
Dan: Cool.
Anna: So how do you practise that? How do you assimilate that?
Dan: Well…. I mean so – I guess if you’re putting me at like literally how, I’d be interested to like put this conversation in front of folks with their head in the current – the handshake ground – because what interests me about what you’ve suggested Marissa, is it’s a kind of a thing that I’ve seen – it’s like a call to arms by a bunch of folks organising within the Twittersphere of like – what do they call it? I’ve forgotten what the framing but it’s basically how do we ensure more black women, more black folk get into tech and like communities are actually listened to in a meaningful way. So I’m thinking in particular Kim Crayton from Cause A Scene podcast or I know Sonya Gupta does a lot of organising around kind of like calling out white supremacy and white supremacy within liberalism, within the sates and that type of thing and one of the things that they say is that you need to put your money where your mouth is. Like just front and centre pay people who are the experts of this stuff. If you can make your tools be useful, safe, accessible to these folks, everyone’s gonna have a better time for it.
Marissa: Exactly. That’s really what it comes down to but then it’s not – yeah, it can’t stop at the discourse of representation.
Anna: [Inaudible 44:49]
Marissa: Like a lot of things that I think are trying to be queer and decolonial and all these radical things are just saying OK let’s get people in these spaces but like it’s not the people, it’s the spaces that need to change as well.
Anna: Yeah.
Marissa: So it’s like how people are treated within those spaces, like equally important to them getting there. Because it’s not only a matter of like reaching out to people, it’s like asking the question that I think we’ve been asking this whole conversation which is why weren’t you here in the first place?
Dan: True.
Anna: Aha.
Marissa: Yeah. That’s what I think anyway. But I think you did a good job of explaining it back Dan.
Dan: Thank you. I listened. [Anna laughs]
Marissa: Yeah! Listening is good! Hopefully people listen to this. Are there a lot of people who listen to this podcast?
Dan: Er…
Marissa: There’s gonna be if there’s not.
Dan: So there’s like somewhere between five and ten thousand using Skuttlebutt. Some – some number of them will listen to – I think this is like episode seven or eight now and not all of them have been put on the like internet – internet, a lot of them are on that. So I don’t know how wide – The thing I’ve been going for is more kind of – These conversations that we’re having are the reason I wanted to start doing this because I feel like we can go deeper when we’re able to talk with one another. But then there’s also this – I feel like in part we’re able to have this conversation Marissa because we had that experience in that peer-to-peer room, where we kind of bonded through virtue of having an experience where we were talking about problems that existed and we were able to sense each other and because of that we’re now able to – The fact that Anna reached out and was like hey cool, I also know Marissa, it’s like this bond so that we can go a bit deep. And one of my hopes for this format – the local host format – cause I local host some of them but then my hope is that people from within their own subject division, will speak to the people they have bonds with to have more deep and nuanced conversations. And so to answer your question how many people listen; I have no fucking idea! Maybe ten, maybe twenty, maybe more. I’m not sure.
Marissa: Cool. That’s a good answer. Yeah it was – Yeah I was just - just because I like don’t inhabit this space of Skuttlebutt and I was thinking of putting this on the good old regular internet where I hang out.
Dan: You’re welcome to.
Marissa: Cool.
Dan: And like it feels like we’re rapping up. Could I invite both of you if you want to share if you want – if you want people to find you, if not, if you’re hiding from Chad or not wanting to whatever – no worries. But like what are you working on at the moment? What are you exited about? Like Marissa I saw that you had some pretty rad looking tarot design.
Marissa: Yeah I could talk about that.
Dan: And you’re in between cities. I’m not sure what’s going on.
Marissa: Anna; do you wanna go or do you want me to go?
Anna: Sure please start.
Marissa: OK, cool. So yeah you can find me on social media; so on Instagram my handle is Mariimals; which is spelt M-A-R-I-I-M-A-L-S. Some projects I’m working on that I’m excited about; I’m creating a pterodac, which is – which is based off of like some amazing people in my life who I love and respect and like what’s come of that is that it’s going to be like a kind of naturally gender-non-conforming-slash-gender-non-bindary pterodac. It’s going – it’s kind of like a black-white with gold leafing. It’s on my Twitter, there’s some like little promo pictures on my Twitter, which is the same handle; Mariimals and that’s due to come out next fall with a publisher I’m working with. I don’t think I’m allowed to say who the publisher is yet but it’s coming out and if you – Actually no I won’t even like give a hint. And then what else? I’ve been Djing a lot recently. I’m gonna be Djing at an upcoming queer party in London called Pussy Palace in January and then Friday I’m making my DJ performance debut at Fabric in Room 3 in a room that’s like an all woman-identifying line up called She Said So. And what else? What else am I excited about?
Dan: So basically you’ve just been chilling?
Marissa: Yeah, I’ve just – I’ve not been doing a lot you know. [Laughs] Yeah and I’m you know – I’m still working on my masters degree at the moment but like I don’t even want to like think about that because the violence in my institution is like actually a lot of the time unfathomable. But yeah, so finally there, also on Sound Cloud. My DJ name is Manuka Honey and I do a mix series where I invite queer, people of colour artists-slash-DJs to make one hour – however long mixes that I just like post as like – in like a blog format for people to find as a resource.
Anna: Sounds very nice.
Marissa: Thanks.
Anna: Er, what am I up to? I’m currently kind of incubating a lot of stuff that I’m sort of doing called [inaudible 1:00:23] but it has to do I guess also with [inaudible 1:00:26] conversation about setting up spaces in which every direction the internet is going and try to be there to counter those forces that are there to keep it away from you and finding the people to set things up and start getting ideas into circulation. I’m also, like Marissa, kind of tied to institutions. I’m doing a Phd that allows me to make these – have these thought processes and have some sort of material. So the backing to do those things, to exist and have these thoughts but that’s not really where I’m headed. It’s kind of like a said thing and always should be. Yeah.
Marissa: Amazing.
Dan: Thank you, thank you both so much. Should we listen to Diaspoura on the way out again?
Marissa: Yeah. Let’s do it! They’re amazing!
Dan: Thank you both and I hope – I feel like we just got into it. Would you, I’m not gonna put you on the spot, maybe we’ll talk again in this format or some other format again in the future.
Marissa: Yes.
Dan: So going out, this is Diaspoura spelt D-I-A-S-P-O-U-R-A with GTF, featuring Contour.
[Interview ends 1:01:57, music plays.]