Venus Renegade - Part 4: Breakin' up

My deal-breakers in movement relationships

This is the last essay in a series I began during Venus retrograde, reflecting on our activism over the past eight years. You can read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, and Part 3 here.

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It had been my intention to wrap this series as Venus completed its retrograde through Aries and then Pisces, but I got sucked into the vortex of the Texas legislature and writing fell to the bottom of my to-do list. Now that the legislature is adjourned (THANK GODDESS), I’m back to tippy-typing and pontificating.

I actually think it’s fitting to put a bow on this set of essays in these final hours of Venus’s forward transit through Aries — where it has been sitting with some discomfort — before it enters Taurus in the middle of the night tonight, where it will feel delightfully at home.

Perhaps you, like Venus, have been sitting with some discomfort these past couple months? Perhaps you have been longing to feel more at home? (*raises hand*)

As a reminder, Venus is the planetary ruler of love, femmes and queer folks, our values, beauty, pleasure, the senses, art, unions, and relationships.

As I’ve been reflecting on my relationships within activism and movement spaces, I’ve realized there are two things that chafe me most: 1) exchanges that feel transactional, and 2) people who are not confrontable.

Exchanges That Feel Transactional

When I first got involved in organizing, volunteering for political campaigns felt like one of the most clear and impactful ways for me to take action. But over time I began to see how too often our movements — and especially campaigns — replicate some of the worst aspects of capitalism.

In particular, I think about a neighbor whose door I knocked on in the midst of Winter Storm Uri in 2021. After power had been restored to my house but before the roads were thawed and the water was safe to drink again, I walked around the neighborhood checking to see if anyone needed food or water. When elderly Ms. B opened her door and invited me in, I learned that her usual Meals on Wheels delivery hadn’t been able to get to her and she was running out of food that met the requirements of her special diet. She didn’t have internet or a cell phone, and her phone line — her only way of contacting the outside world — was down.

I brought Ms. B healthy snacks and clean water, and she told me old stories about the neighborhood and showed me pictures of what an absolute babe she was in her youth. We developed a sweet affection for one another.

So I felt a deep shame when I remembered that I had actually knocked on Ms. B’s door exactly once before, back in 2018. We were strangers then and I was there to ask for something — her vote for Beto O’Rourke for U.S. Senate. Back then I didn’t take the time to listen to her, to ask about her needs, to learn anything about her at all. I suddenly felt so gross that I’d previously only reached out when I was trying to get something out of her.

This isn’t an indictment of that specific campaign, which in many ways had a lot more humanity than other campaigns I’d volunteered with. It’s more a reflection on how disappointingly transactional campaigns usually are — parachute in, ask for votes, disappear again for two years or four years or maybe forever.

Campaigns, in a capitalist mold, are focused on ROI and hard metrics — how much did we spend and how many votes did it equal? I mean, I get it… you need votes to win so that particular metric is pretty necessary to pay attention to.

But what I hope we realize by now is that the “consumer decision-making process” for voting is so much more complex than it is for buying anything else that gets sold to us by door-to-door salespeople or via boosted posts on Instagram or through spammy texts.

On my last ballot there were 76 separate items for me to vote on. What other single transaction asks me to research and understand the implications of my decision on 76 different, distinct outcomes, each with a complicated history and context and function that most of us were never taught, usually written in language that is (often intentionally) inscrutable to the average person?

We have to stop trying to fit the square peg of civic engagement into the round hole of capitalism.

Even as the left likes to think of itself as more human-centric, campaign culture still has far too much in common with the extractive capitalist practices we like to rail against. How many all-nighters you pull, or how many doctors appointments you cancel, or how many drive-thru Whataburger meals you eat during the course of a campaign should not be badges of honor. (No shade to Whataburger.)

When I’ve sat through trainings on how to run political campaigns, they will often tell you outright that each political campaign is essentially a startup company. I think they mean it like, “It’s exciting and there’s a ton of possibility and you can get promoted quickly!” But I also think my friends who’ve worked campaigns will see similarities between their experiences and the results that pop up when you Google “cons of working for a startup”:

There are even some billionaires who will admit that “capitalism basically is not working for the majority of people,” so why do we keep thinking a capitalist, transactional, extractive approach will work for the majority of voters? Or the majority of campaign workers?

I’ll be honest with you, as someone who recently crowdfunded to help sustain my civic engagement organization, Democrasexy, I took a hard look at myself as I was writing this essay. Wait, am I being transactional with my supporters? I asked myself. I can certainly do a better job of engaging one-on-one with those who contribute, and I plan to tend to my relationships with donors more thoughtfully going forward.

But when I reflected back on the comments that I got from folks during that fundraising campaign, a common sentiment was, “You have given us SO much over the years through education, ballot guides, and just sheer joy and hope — I am excited to be able to give back to you.”

I wasn’t just parachuting in. I’ve been here.

Which brings me back to the point I was trying to make at the beginning in my story about Ms. B…

All organizing is relationship-building.

As organizers, are we building healthy, long-lasting relationships based on mutual understanding and reciprocity? Or are we building toxic, one-sided relationships that evaporate after election day or after the legislative session?

I’m applying for Democrasexy to be part of an incubator program that would help me strengthen and grow my civic engagement work, and one of the questions they asked during the interview process was, “What would it look like for your programs to be successful?” Maybe they were looking for a metric there, but my truest answer is: “To me, a successful program exists outside the pressures of campaign cycles and legislative cycles — it provides a political home for people that feels authentic to them, that allows them to evolve in their understanding, a place where they feel connected to and genuinely supported by others. A successful program is one where those who are involved experience such benefits that others in their circle are naturally drawn to join, too.”

The investment in authentic, lasting relationships is worth it. In life and in politics.

People Who Are Not Confrontable

The other day as I was scrolling on Instagram, I came across this quote and gasped:

In movements, as in life, we will not always agree. We will hurt each other. We will have blind spots. We will make missteps. Confrontation doesn’t need to be hostile — the Latin origin means “with face.” To confront is simply to face something head on.

To be confrontable means to be willing to face whatever it is that’s being brought to you.

When I bring a hurt or a need or a concern or a constructive criticism to someone and their response is to get defensive, dismissive, or to dissolve into tears, it creates a chasm out of what was initially a small rift. For me, closeness is not possible in a relationship unless the other person is willing to work together to mend a rift. A bridge that’s only built halfway isn’t a bridge at all.

I’m sure everyone who’s ever been in relationship with me could tell you about a time when I wasn’t confrontable — we all struggle with it to some degree. But I’ve been working on it.

And! I’ve discovered a secret weapon to becoming more confrontable.

In his book Think Again, Adam Grant devotes a whole chapter to “the joy of being wrong,” which gave language to an experience I have more often the more confrontable I become.

For example, one of the ballot guides I published a couple years ago included my endorsement on a proposed state constitutional amendment. A staffer in the Texas legislature who was a stranger to me at the time DM’d me to say they disagreed with my take and laid out their reasoning to endorse the opposite way.

Could I have become indignant and dismissed that person? Gotten embarrassed, dug my heels in, and defended my position? I probably could have, and maybe a past version of me would have.

But in reality I was GIDDY to be corrected. I had just learned something new! I was smarter than I was just moments before!

I changed my endorsement, re-posted my ballot guide with the edit and an explanation, fielded a couple questions from folks who were unsettled by the fact that I’d changed my mind… but got way MORE comments from folks saying that my willingness to take in new information and adapt my stance made them trust me more.

Which… made me even more giddy! There is the joy of being wrong, and there is also the joy of telling people you were wrong!

Which always reminds me of this short clip from one of my favorite stand-up specials by Eddie Izzard:

To sum up — being confrontable (and accountable!) makes you both safe AND sexy. :)

In a time of purity tests and call-outs and cancel culture, it is genuinely one of my favorite things when someone DMs me to say: “I disagree with this thing you said and with most people I’d just leave it alone, but I feel like you’ll be willing to at least listen to what I have to say about it.”

Knowing that people feel safe to confront me? That’s a soul-level peace far deeper than any surface satisfaction I’ve ever felt over being “right.”

Okay, now that I’ve let you in on my own personal Venus-in-Aries review of movement relationship do’s and don’ts, I gotta just take a second to gossip about the very Venus-in-Aries stuff going down over at the White House as I type this.

So, sweet Venus (planet of relationships) today is spending its final hours in fiery Aries (ruled by Mars, planet of aggression). This is break-up fuel, babes. And it will come as a surprise to exactly zero astrologers that this is the moment when the Elon-Donald bromance is coming to a downright atomic conclusion.

I leave you with these memes as a parting gift.