top of page

Unlearning Circles

Our next Unlearning Circle:

​

An update from the UWSINKC collective about the August Unlearning Circle.

 

The collective will not be hosting an unlearning circle this August. Instead, we will be meeting as a collective to focus on consolidating our capacities for undoing white supremacy culture, integrating valuable feedback, and discussing our structure. While it's impossible to do this work perfectly, it's important we are aligned with our principles. It is still possible to send us feedback which could include ideas about how our work could look and if you are interested in helping us move this work forward in our communities. We’d love to hear from you. Email us at uwsinkc@uwsinkc.com. Please send any feedback by September 10th. 

 

UWSinKC is one small piece of a larger picture that confronts racism and colonialism in the our communities and refining the question of how we can best support the much-needed culture shift is ongoing work.

Thank you for your interest and participation. We are stronger together.

The UWSINKC Collective 

Past Unlearning Circles:

​

Characteristics of White Supremacy: Right to Comfort

 

Register for our next Unlearning Circle on the white supremacy culture characteristic of Right to Comfort.

 

Together we will deepen our understanding of how white supremacy’s right to comfort disrupts the experience of belonging, safety, and pleasure in kinky spaces. We will brainstorm how we can create healthier and more intimate play. 

​

In our racialized culture (and none of our communities have escaped the contamination of white supremacy), right to comfort is the unspoken, unacknowledged, and often unseen assumption that everything must serve to keep white people comfortable. That if we are uncomfortable, there must be something wrong. That if we are uncomfortable, something needs to be fixed. We all feel the pressure and engage in behaviors to keep those of us who are white comfortable. 

​

Right to comfort shows up in our kink communities when we choose not to embarrass kinksters who have intentionally or unintentionally caused harm. When we demand politeness. In kink communities, Right to Comfort gets wrapped into our cultures of  loyalty. It derails accountability. 

​

We are going to look at and talk about all of that in our next Unlearning Circle. Please join us on zoom July 31st at 8 pm ET, 7 pm CT, 5 pm PT, for our Undoing White Supremacy in Kink Community Unlearning Circle. 

 

Register here to join this exciting conversation!. 

​

Characteristics of White Supremacy: Sense of Urgency

 

Please join us on zoom June 26th at 8 pm ET, 7 pm CT, 5 pm PT, for our Undoing White Supremacy in Kink Community Unlearning Circle. In this unlearning circle we will return to another characteristic of white supremacy culture: Our discussion will focus on how these characteristics, which are used as norms and standards for the way groups think and act, show up in us, our institutions, the systems we develop and our communities. Sense of Urgency. (See resources below for more about these characteristics as defined by Tema Okun and Kenneth Jones.) The website says this about Sense of Urgency: "our cultural habit of applying a sense of urgency to our every-day lives in ways that perpetuate power imbalance while disconnecting us from our need to breathe and pause and reflect." 

 

We hope to see you there!

 

Register here. 

​

Resources

“We are socialized into systems that cause us to conform and believe our worth is connected to how much we can produce. Our constant labor becomes a prison that allows us to be disembodied. We become easy for the systems to manipulate, disconnected from our power as divine beings and hopeless. We forget how to dream. This is how grind culture continues. We internalize the lies and in turn become agents of an unsustainable way of living.”

― Tricia Hersey, Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto

 People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond - Antiracist Principles

https://www.pisab.org/our-principles/

​

​

​

Characteristics of White Supremacy: Individualism

 

Please join us on zoom March 27th at 8 pm ET, 7 pm CT, 5 pm PT, for our Undoing White Supremacy in Kink Community Unlearning Circle. In this unlearning circle we will return to another characteristic of white supremacy culture: Individualism. (See resources below for more about these characteristics as defined by Tema Okun and Kenneth Jones.) The website says this about Individualism. "Our cultural story that we make it on our own, without help, while pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps, is a toxic denial of our essential interdependence and the reality that we are all in this, literally, together." Come discuss how individualism impacts our leather, kink, and BDSM communities and perpetuates racism in our lives.

Hope to see you there!

​

Characteristics of White Supremacy: Perfectionism and Individualism

 

Join us February 27  at 8 pm ET, 7 pm CT, 5 pm PT for UWSINKC’s second Unlearning Circle of 2023 where we will focus on Perfectionism and Individualism as characteristics of White Supremacy Culture.

Both Perfectionism and Individualism act as a barrier to changing the conditions of racism in ourselves, our institutions and our cultures. We will explore why these white supremacy culture characteristics get in the way of building anti-racist practices in our BDSM/Kink/Leather communities. We will also discuss ways that the BDSM/Kink/Leather communities may already have values that undermine these characteristics. What can we embrace as we seek to undo the harmful effects of white supremacy?

 

From Tema Okun’s website, White Supremacy Culture, we find this description:

“While white supremacy culture affects us all, harms us all, and is toxic to us all… Our experience of white supremacy culture and our navigation of white supremacy culture is very different based on who we are and our lived experience, our race, our class, our gender, our sexuality, our religion ... all the ways in which oppressions intersect.

This brew is a cancer, a dis-ease, an addiction, an infliction and it

infects everything with and without our awareness.”

 

In our unlearning circles, we engage in large and small group discussions to address racism at individual, cultural and systemic levels. We will explore ways perfectionism and individualism keep us from fostering connection and justice. We will ask ourselves, What are the cultural practices in the BDSM leather kink communities that uphold white supremacy and what are the tools that we have to interrupt it?

​

We hope to see you there!

UWSinKC invites you to give us feedback about the Unlearning Circles (ULCs) - what you like about our format and ideas you have for ways ULCs could better meet your needs - things you’d like us to try, explore more, and what might be altered.

Please take a few minutes to email UWSinKC@UWSinKC.com with the subject line: feedback ULC.  

​

Resources

People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond - Antiracist Principles

https://www.pisab.org/our-principles/

​

​

Characteristics of White Supremacy: Perfectionism

​

Join us  January 30th at 7 pm CT, 5 pm PT for UWSINKC’s first Unlearning Circle of 2023 where we will focus on Perfectionism as a characteristic of White Supremacy Culture. Perfectionism is a barrier to changing the conditions of racism in ourselves, our institutions and our cultures. We will explore why perfectionism is a quality of white supremacy culture and how it gets in the way of building anti-racist practices in our BDSM/Kink/Leather communities. We will also discuss ways that the BDSM/Kink/Leather communities may already have values that undermine the power of perfectionism. How can we embrace our imperfection as we seek to undo the harmful effects of white supremacy?

​

From Tema Okun’s website, White Supremacy Culture, we find this description:

“While white supremacy culture affects us all, harms us all, and is toxic to us all… Our experience of white supremacy culture and our navigation of white supremacy culture is very different based on who we are and our lived experience, our race, our class, our gender, our sexuality, our religion ... all the ways in which oppressions intersect.

This brew is a cancer, a dis-ease, an addiction, an affliction and it infects everything with and without our awareness.”

​

In our unlearning circles, we engage in large and small group discussions to address racism at individual, cultural and systemic levels. We will discuss antidotes that we can employ to replace perfectionism with other qualities that foster connection and justice. We will ask ourselves, What are the cultural practices in the BDSM leather kink communities that uphold white supremacy and what are the tools that we have to interrupt it?

 

Resources

People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond - Antiracist Principles

https://www.pisab.org/our-principles/

bottom of page