Note: I started writing this about a month ago and then life happened but fuck it. I think it's worthwhile, so here you go.
Community is the trending topic right now, as far as my admittedly heavily curated feeds go. The ATProto Community. The Dev Community. The Art Community. The Creative Community. The Black Community. The Indigenous Community. The Queer Community. You listen to the back and forth and in your head you begin painting a landscape of endless islands floating along the oceans of social media and real life. Community will save us. And Community is not real. And Community is exclusion. And Community is refuge. And Community is a contract. And Community is a privilege.
Everyone is talking about Community and no one is actually talking about the same kind of Community. And if you ask for clarification, if you're like me, chronically obsessed with nuance: What, are you daft? Community is Community!
And so on.
And so forth.
So hey, come along with me as I try my best to unravel the meaning of Community and how the same word can have such a cutting edge and deliver so much bludgeoning damage, while in the same breath people swear by it as the only proven defense against late-stage capitalism.
Community cannot exist without the Other.
This is where I always start from because I'm a brown queer enby from a country most Americans believe to be either a disaster relief zone or a tourist attraction, sometimes both, but rarely if ever neither. I'm a bastard (like, for realsies, not just personality-wise, though there's a long list of exes that will testify on that too). My flavor of neurospicy is not particularly palatable so I've spent nearly forty years mastering the art of masking like my life depended on it. ('cause it often did.)
What I'm trying to say is, I am deeply, intimately familiar with being The Other that someone else's sense of community is built upon. And every community is built upon an Other. I understand if your reaction to this news is pushback, but that only tells me you've never been that Other. For which I'm genuinely glad for you and the lack of related trauma associated with it, but I would ask you to try your best to understand that's not a universal experience.
A community begins as a classification, just an observation of similarities in a given population. It's when you take those similarities and start building social structures around them, that you both start a community and begin actively othering people outside it. And I want to be clear: the othering is not inherently harmful at this stage. Othering can be and has been deeply traumatic for large swathes of people throughout history. But my argument here is that it is the things you build onto that Othering that actively cause harm, rather than the Othering itself.
This is important to understand and accept, because when minorities (see, traditionally the Other to majorities across our social spaces) start building safe spaces for themselves, they will, in fact, Other the majority. And if you're not willing to acknowledge that Othering as a neutral act, you're going to fall into the mindset that asks "where's the Straight Pride section?" and "when is White History Month?" because you subconsciously read the othering inherent to community building as an aggression. As violence. What this tells me is not that you're inherently a bad, evil person, but rather that all you took from social studies was that "othering is bad" and not "othering is the thing used to excuse (never justify) horrific acts of violence."
Like, I hope it's clear that we have to agree that Othering in itself is not violence, because otherwise we're accepting that community building is inherently violence. And while I understand that some lived experiences point to that conclusion, I don't think it's an actually productive framework. I think we're lesser, as a whole, if we reject community.
It's only the most powerful tool we've invented since we put the sapiens in the homo, you know?
So yeah, Queer inherently others non-queer (which is not the same as straight, stick with me on this, it's important). And Black inherently others non-Black. And Indigenous inherently others non-Indigenous. What you're doing is prioritizing or calling out a specific set in order to turn it into a category. You cherry pick the bits that you consider the most important to define your category, and therefore to exclude everyone who doesn't have them.
Here's the thing, categories and definitions are functional. They're malleable. They change and adapt depending on what you're using them for. And that definition is load bearing, to both the community you're trying to build and the relationship people will establish with that community.
So who decides what definition to use?
Community is a Choice.
Let's get one thing straight: community is a choice, identity is not. You are who you are, regardless of who acknowledges it or not. "Well, I don't believe in (a part of someone else's identity that has no bearing or impact on your life but you've decided to be a dick about because it's the only way you can feel in control of something at this point)."
Yeah, for a long time the Catholic church really didn't believe in heliocentrism either, but that didn't change a goddamn thing in reality.
Identity is who you are. If Identity is othering, it is othering of everyone except you. A venn diagram that contains you, and nothing but you, for better or for worse. You don't choose your identity so much as you live and define it: no one gives you a drop down with options that you choose from. You're born, and oops, every single action since has been an active effort in shaping who you are. Do you have a choice in the actions you take? Absolutely. Do you understand the long term consequences and layered impacts on your identity moving forward from every single choice you've made? Probably not! (Though if you do: Hi, Gautama, I thought you weren't doing this shit anymore.)
Community, however, is a choice. You choose to open up about yourself, to acknowledge that you fit the description of a community. No one can force you to be part of a community you're not willing to belong to. The best example I have for this is the Queer community. Some people find the ambiguity of queerness comforting and reassuring. Some people prioritize that sense of not quite fitting any given label, over breaking down their identity down to micro labels. Neither of those - the ambiguity or the extreme specificity - is inherently wrong or better. They just speak to different needs. So there are people for whom belonging to the Queer community is profoundly important - spoilers, myself among them - and there are people who find the ambiguity actively harmful.
The people who reject the ambiguity are not part of the Queer community: not because they do not fit the definition - a lot of them do! - but because what the Queer community offers is not something they want and it does not help them. And up to that point, that's fine. Where it becomes a problem is when they go a step further from rejecting membership to the Queer community and go on to insist the Queer community shouldn't exist. Because the ambiguity is harmful to them and they perceive the existence of the Queer community as a latent threat to their own preferred community, which focuses on whatever the specific label they fit, they have chosen for themselves.
I'm gonna be honest here, this feels like a dick move. I can sort of understand the thought process behind this kind of thing, but it's ultimately a dick move no matter how you slice it. It's saying "I find no value in this, and therefore no one should." It's doing to others the thing you're explicitly claiming you do not want them to do to you: i.e., be assigned to a community you do not identify as belonging to.
So that's what I mean, when I think of community as a choice. You have to want to show up. You should look at it and go "yes, ME" and be excited and willing to be labeled as part of it. Put it in your bio. Make an ATProto labeler to put it on your account and let everyone know.
This doesn't guarantee that everyone in that community is going to welcome you or think you belong there, but that's a friction to discuss later: the idea that you can claim to belong to a community, but that means nothing if the community itself doesn't claim you back. And what does that even mean, in practice?
Community as a spectrum, rather than an single point.
A couple weeks, I was reading this very interesting thread about Keep Minnesota Housed and the data they collected and the way they organized to make sure needs were met. And I was struck both by the efficiency of the effort - they absolutely prevented a massive eviction bubble and that's nothing to sneeze at - and the simplicity of it. Surely this has to be a Community coming together. Surely this counts as a tangible example of that mythical figure, Community, showing up and keeping the lights on for people. Literally.
And yet I kept going back to the core mission statement. The call to action. And as I read through some other conversations about community and anger that I will respectfully not link here because those are intra-community conversations and it's very much not my place to bring external attention to them... I started to ruminate on this idea of Community as a spectrum, graphed in three axes because I will never not enjoy graphing things.
But which should be the axes? After a detour spending a few days discussing the importance of community spaces for trauma processing while simultaneously acknowledging how active trauma processing is fundamentally incompatible with activism, I landed on the following scales, each serving as a guideline to position where a community sits:
Purpose.
Distance.
Flexibility.
The whole point of this exercise is to be descriptive, not prescriptive. I'm trying to articulate my own understanding of what community means and how to best understand what kind of community I might be dealing with, and what that community might or might not be capable of. The ultimate goal is to build a larger, stronger community to support the pressing issue dearest and nearest to your heart. So bear with me a bit while I unspool this.
A Community's Purpose: Either Comfort or Action, but not both.
Think of this as the underlying reason why the community was built. Oversimplifying - and keenly aware we're oversimplifying for the sake of descriptiveness - let's say all Communities land somewhere in the spectrum between Comfort and Action.
Comfort here being a synonym for validation, for relief, for acknowledging and embracing and not questioning the things that this community represents. Think of support groups for survivors and intra-community spaces for healing in the face of bigotry and oppression. These are communities that exist to maintain and protect a given space, and are very unlikely to move or participate in coalition-building. Not because the people involved are incapable of it, but rather because the whole point is to prioritize the needs of its members and meeting said needs.
The example that best comes to mind is a support group for victims of domestic violence. In theory, it sounds like the perfect community to build coalition with, if you're aiming for law reform and ultimately to get the government to fund programs that support victims. But in practice, it can feel violating for members to be prodded to participate in activities that effectively require them to parade their trauma in the name of a political statement. You'd have much better luck reaching out to a community of advocates against domestic violence, some of which might also be former victims that have in fact reached a stage in their recovery journey where talking about their experiences in the name of improving things for others is actually empowering and healthy.
In Spanish, we say no le pidas peras al olmo, don't ask the elm to give you pears. You can't build coalition with people who are not willing or open to it. And throwing a tantrum because you think they should join you will do you no good.
What you should look for then, are communities that are built around action. Keep Minnesota Housed is a pretty straightforward community built around a three-word slogan that perfectly encapsulates the goal. The people involved are involved because they believe in the goal, are willing to put work towards the goal and think supporting the goal is worthwhile.
A Community's Distance: Personal like family or Impersonal like a union.
I had a fascinating interaction a while ago, with someone whom I would personally consider a professional acquaintance at best but whose reactions and comments were delivered in an uncomfortably personal tone. They implied we were "community", like we're years long colleagues who've got six or seven seasons worth of sitcom hijinks and inside jokes between us. I'll be honest, I felt more like the unpaid extra in the background shot of their very volatile Marvel production, but I digress. My dispassionate refusal to fall in line and accept this characterization of shared community, which then they used to justify demanding labor and specific actions from me, resulted in them announcing they did not wish to interact further, which is perfectly fair, and we both went our separate ways.
I bring this interaction up because community means very different things to people. The same person holds in their heart completely different feelings for each individual community they belong to. And I think this is one of the key sources of friction that has been sparking arguments, disagreements and eventual blocks in my feeds.
To some people, community resembles a family: close, personal and wrought with drama. It is a support structure, a source of strength and a reservoir of resources at their disposal. They want to know every member of their community personally, and threat them all with both the entitlement and fierce loyalty of your average extended family reunion.
To other people, community resembles a union: you chose none of this people, and on a good day, you might want to visit violence (mild inconvenience) upon them at least twice an hour. But if anyone comes for them, you come for them. You don't need to know their life story. You don't particularly care what they do on the weekend. If they're married, widowed, single or complicated. All that matters is that when the call comes, you will close ranks and you can trust them to watch your back while you watch theirs. Anyone who pays their dues and isn't a scab is welcome, and the less they try to get to know you, the better.
In my experience, small, personal communities are much more difficult to coalition with. By definition, coalition-building requires opening up the definition of a given community and a level of compromise to focus on a shared goal. Personal communities often lack the plasticity required for it, and splinter off into smaller groups when challenged to adapt. The counter argument is that when small communities commit, they commit. If being part of the coalition becomes foundational for the community, it will go on to become part of their identity.
Larger, more impersonal communities are more prone to coalition-building: you already know that you don't have to like everyone in order to stick around, that all that matters is that the goal is met. For a union, this can be group negotiation for contracts and benefits, as well as other labor protections. As long as you're getting your dues' worth from your union, you'll put up with anyone, really. That mindset is welcome when you're seeking to form alliances and negotiation. The downside is, of course, more impersonal, more transactional relationships. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, all things considered.
A Community's Flexibility: the devil in the details (of the definition).
At the beginning, we outlined how community is built around specific descriptors and how those descriptors are not set in stone. They will change depending on the needs and struggles of a given community and their long term purpose.
A community centered around supporting survivors of abuse might not be willing to expand its inclusion criteria because their purpose and the work they do requires people to be willing to be vulnerable about their experiences and that might be compromised if they started opening the doors to "others."
There was this fascinating spat on twitter a while back between a self-described ace person going to BDSM kink spaces at the invitation of and with the consent of friends, sharing their experience. And it gained virality because someone took offense to the idea of an "outsider" coming in to "ogle and stare" at people in a vulnerable position. We're not sidestepping the inherent aphobia of this incident - we're acknowledging that the whole think reeks of aphobia and if you don't see it, I need you to sit with it and figure out why your knee jerk response of the idea of an ace person in a kink community is that they're an outsider (spoilers, it's the aphobia, work on it, babe) - but I want to highlight that this is the quintessential definition conflict.
OP clearly and openly identifies as a member of the kink and BDSM communities: they shared their experiences and how they intersect with their identity, but at no point did they use any kind of wording to imply they were outsiders to the community. This aligns with our initial description of community as a choice. But here the conflict is that someone else who belongs to the community refuses to accept them as part of it. This is not an invitation to litigate this particular case, but rather to showcase how personal this gets. Visceral.
And there's a lot to unpack about the trauma of having your community reject you. Black, White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self by Rebecca Walker rewrote a lot of my understanding of race dynamics and the varying layers of community.
All of this to say, the tension comes from conflicts in that foundational definition: "I belong here, you don't" and what motivates people to be so stringent about it. Because the truth is, no single individual can alter the definition of a community. No one person has control of the identity of a community. And that makes it nebulous. It makes it a matter of consensus. Which makes it a scary, dangerous thing, when you push for clarification. When the entire thing is brought to decide. It can be very traumatic. It can be catastrophic. It can also be deeply validating.
How flexible a community is has to do with a lot of factors: its size, its demographics, its purpose. It's worth taking the time to review the history and to make sure that by asking for a coalition you're not accidentally reopening closed litigation about their definition. Because by then you're just hurting people, and wasting everyone's time and effort for nothing worthwhile.
Community as a means and a tool and a "I just want to get shit done."
The eagle-eyed among you might have noticed that a lot of this ramble is spun from the perspective of coalition and collective action. That's because for me, personally, it all boils down to getting shit done.
I want to get shit done. I think a lot of people that are waffling about community building and shared spaces and reclaiming their slice of the internet are also interested in getting shit done. It's kind of a shared interest and every day more pressing, what with the whole of Everything Happening All At Once.
I wrote this to hopefully help me, and maybe you, navigate what a colossal, contradicting, confounding and ultimately inescapable thing, Community is. Particularly when you're out there, with me, actively trying to get shit done.
Because here's the thing: there's a very common grift attached to all of this, and the grift is that people who agree with you are your community and anyone you don't like is an Other (and, ideally, an Oppressor, which means they're fair game to be destroyed because they're inherently evil), and I'm so fucking tired of watching really smart, really skilled people fall for that shit.
Because that shit does not get shit done.
Look, if you want to sit down and bitch and moan perpetually about the state of the world, and build a community around it? Go for it. But don't be surprised when you join that community and realize that nothing ever gets done, because the point is not DOING or MAKING things, but rather sit down and have feelings about the state of the world. Again, it's not that those spaces and communities have no right to exist: they do! They serve an important purpose, which is letting people check in with others and realize "oh, thank god, it's not just me" who thinks the world has gone to hell in a handbasket.
But you need to be able to tell the difference, because the grift is selling you "Solutions™️" when it's actually just reassurances and complaining, with zero actionable steps or anything resembling a path forward.
You have a thing in your heart you want to make happen. So do I. You cannot do it on your own. Neither can I. We need coalitions, which are just communities banded together for a unifying goal, to make anything happen. And those begin with realistic, honest assessment of which communities you belong to, and which of them might be willing to take on the work of forging the road ahead. It sounds scary. It can be! But the thing is, there are more and more people every day, that want to make things better. That want to take a chance and take control of their destiny.
You just have to be brave, and find the pear tree, to give you pears.