A Weapon of Mass Seduction

Peace Talks episode 9 featuring Tas DeVille

Peace Talks episode 9 features performer and activist Tas DeVille on self-care, activism, and race/religious relations in the last decade.

 

 

It Was Me, Too

In light of the #metoo posts, I've seen a handful of men delve into intense shame and anxiety regarding their actions, many of which they didn't even realize were problematic until recently. To those men, I would like to say this:

I didn't know any better either. I didn't know any better, and so I was complicit.

We were born into a patriarchy. Just as white people have to work actively to unlearn the racism they were born into, both men and women must work actively to deconstruct the patriarchal system we've been conditioned to think is normal.

So here's my acknowledgement of my own participation:

I edited myself down because I was taught that you couldn't handle my full expression. Most of you couldn't, but I wasn't doing you any favors by not inviting you to rise to the challenge.

I made myself into a sex object because I was taught that that was the only way I could be valuable, the only way I could earn your protection.

I laughed at your rape jokes because I thought being complicit in my own oppression would make you like me.

I participated in many, many boys' club atmospheres where I was regarded as a beautiful prop, because it was easier to win playing by the rules than breaking them.

I stopped enforcing my boundaries. I don't remember when, but I'm pretty sure I was very young. At some point, I gave up and resigned myself to "the way things are." As an adult, this meant that I often let you force yourselves on me without my consent, because I was too tired to fight back.

I enabled your abuse of me. I thought if I just kept complying that you would love me and treat me better. I complied to the point of giving you all my money, sex, service, and emotional labor. At times I let you nearly destroy me. I babied you because I didn't believe you could be better, because I had no role models showing me you could.

I allowed you to abuse me to the point where we were both convinced I was mentally ill, because I didn't understand trauma reactions, because I didn't understand that you were abusing me, because I thought that this was just normal and there was something wrong with me for not being able to handle it.

I underestimated you. I thought you were only after one thing, because that's what society taught me about you.

I led with my sexuality, because I believed that was all you wanted from me. I swallowed my thoughts, dumbed myself down, and sometimes even satirized you before your very eyes without your awareness, because I had made myself into a caricature of everything you said you wanted me to be, and you had no idea that I was just playing a role. Sometimes I secretly laughed at you. But I kept doing it anyway.

And in some instances I was so sex-forward with you that I actually ignored your needs for softness and intimacy. I jumped to sex without enough foreplay for both of us, I shied away from cuddling because I had been shamed out of it, I ribbed on you when you did things that went against the toxic masculine code of behavior. I did this because I was taught that wanting a man who was gentle with me was an impossibly risible pipe dream, that I'd be made fun of and rejected for even holding such a hope, that such men only existed in movies and fairytales. I'm sorry. I didn't realize how accustomed I had become to brutality. I didn't know I was allowed to want tenderness. I blocked myself from receiving it from you because it was simply less painful to not get my hopes up. And sometimes I wonder if in doing this I hurt you too, if maybe I forced sex on you that you didn't so much want as feel you were SUPPOSED to want, if maybe I also deprived you of the genuine tenderness you were seeking from me but were too afraid to ask for.

Yes, I'm angry at you, but I also failed you in many ways, just as I failed myself. I let you walk all over me in many ways and I kept complying, complying, complying, because in the patriarchy we were born into, that seemed like the most viable strategy.

I did this because I didn't know any better.

And chances are you didn't know any better either. Because I'm pretty fucking smart, but like anyone entering a new world, I first sought out to adapt to its rules. And it took me three decades before I realized that the system was completely broken.

If you're just learning this now too, please forgive yourself. Guilt has a function, and that function is to help us have self-awareness and to make better choices in the future. Beyond that, it can turn toxic, fester into self-hatred, and end up doing far more harm than it's meant to.

We were all stupid - or at least brainwashed. We grew up with this. It's up to us now to do better, but we MUST forgive ourselves for where we were simply ignorant. In many ways, we did things for which we are responsible but which aren't entirely our fault. We're paying for the sins of our fathers. This isn't about how bad we are as individuals; this is about how bad this world is as a planet and especially how bad this country is as a nation and about how we are all responsible for our part in creating something better.

Yes, I am calling you to look inward - and outward - and do better. This is crucial.

But I am also calling you to forgive yourselves. Please move forward with me. The sooner the better that we heal ourselves and leave this past behind.

Captain's Log, 10.17.17

Please remember in the midst of this turmoil that everything is coming up to be healed. You can't find a cure if you don't understand the sickness.

Sure, I feel triggered, I feel exhausted, I feel resentful, I feel angry, I feel frustrated. But on another level, this past year has been a rapid acceleration toward systemic equality (both gender and racial), the speed of which we haven't seen in a long time. All of a sudden there are consequences surfacing. I'm seeing the tipping point move toward the right side of history, which is why there is also so much backlash.

Something does feel different this time around, like the ice has finally cracked. I can't explain my perception beyond a shift in the energy but it really does feel like the messages coming in are of being through the worst of it and slowly emerging on the other side. That doesn't mean it won't take time and hard work to unpack, deconstruct, and rebuild, but it does mean that we are set on a course moving in the right direction. It feels bad now because it's a detox, and all the pain and harm has to come up to be released. Society is healing from collective trauma, and this part of the healing process sucks - trust me, I know. But there is so much goodness on the other side.

It's possible that this message is for me only and that I'm projecting my experience on the whole of society - that's my mediumship disclaimer right there, that this is far more a perception than a promise. But for what it's worth, it feels right to me. And I know I've been getting messages - both through my own channels and through professionals I've hired - that this is part of my role in the Ascension, to bring in important upgrades to the collective by healing myself and then passing along instructions for others on how to do it. And I've said this before, but, at the risk of centering my own experience, it is really trippy to be healing my personal trauma on the micro while society is healing its collective trauma on the macro. It makes everything feel really vertiginous, a kind of astral space madness, a mirage that perhaps the spells I cast on myself also reverberated throughout the whole of the universe. I know I'm not the only one this is happening for - this is a wave. I'm one of several assigned to this aspect.

The other day I was with a friend when he took a phone call with the confirmation number 4444, and I noted to him the spiritual significance of repeating numbers. Days later, without meaning to look for it I came upon an infographic explaining the meaning behind repeating 4s, and I knew that was the message I (or he) was supposed to receive:

"The actions you take step by step, day by day, are what create change and improvement. This is how manifestation works. Stay diligent, and rest assured that things are developing even if you can't see the visible results yet."

But maybe the message is actually for all of us.

Even if we can't see the visible results yet, things are developing.
The actions we take day by day are what creates change and improvement.
This is how manifestation works.
Stay diligent.
Rest assured.

Take it from one who's been there: this is what healing looks like.

Captain's Log, 10.14.17

What if hyperarousal and desensitization - the two polarities of trauma responses - correlate respectively to being overwhelmed by one's intuitive gifts vs having to awaken one's intuitive gifts?

Similarly, just as hyperarousal can ultimately lead to desensitization because the body can only sustain being hyperaroused for so long until it shuts down and numbs out of necessity, an overpowering of intuitive gifts can lead, it seems, to a shutting down of connection to spirit in that same vein of self-preservation.

Trauma has often been linked to intuition, and now that I'm typing this out, it seems like the comparisons I'm making are literally the same thing and it seems obvious to even state. But I don't think I've seen it broken down exactly this way before and I suspect there's more around it to unpack.

Captain's Log, 10.11.17

There IS a path that is meant for you.

The good news is that it's the one you want most.

The bad news is that you hid it deep deep within you so no one could find it and take it away, and now you've likely forgotten where to look for it.

Captain's Log, 10.10.17

I've been seeing this article, The New Midlife Crisis For Women, circulate in the last few days and I want to share what was my vulnerable and uncanny reaction to it.

The article describes in detail the ways our current society is set up to fail and torment women of the age bracket I'm about to enter into. Between a failing economy and failing relationship culture, both of which are rife with both sexism and ageism, prospects for women facing midlife are nightmarishly bleak. This article depicts an outcome that I've only imagined during the worst of bad hallucinogenic trips, like a Ghost of Christmas Future come to shock me into listening to my heart and being kind to people.

Mostly, I looked at it, shrugged, and thought, "That's not the reality I'm creating."

It was tempting for me to give in to the pull of the weight of the accurate unfairness the author described. Yes, so much is stacked against us. Yes, capitalism is a huge problem. Yes, sexism is a thousand-headed hydra that shows up in every facet of our lives. Yes, I express anger about these things almost every day, I work for us to be heard so things can change.

But... I don't know... I'm certain I'm privileged in many ways, but I read this and thought, "That's not going to be me. I may have a lot of work ahead of me, but my hope is stronger than my fear."

I don't know, you guys - the older I get, the better my life gets. The more shit I hack, the more I understand, the more I wake up, the more I reclaim the power that was my birthright. I was thinking today how convenient it was that in my youth I spent time in youth-valuing circles (eg, NYC nightlife, modeling) and now that I'm getting older - even when I'm happier with my looks than I've ever been (ohmygod I have cheekbones! and how is maintaining my weight more effortless now than it was when I was 21 and walking everywhere in NY? and how is my VOICE better than it was on my last record, which was better than the one before that?) - I've organically ended up in circles where older women are valued more greatly than they are in the median of society (spirituality, sex ed, traditional magick practices). How did I know to seek places I'd find comfort? What inner guidance caused me to shift paradigms in ways that would serve my happiness?

I'm going through a bit of a midlife crisis now, you could say, but it's more of a midlife transformation - it's only a crisis if I fight the change. Life showed up last year with a serious message of "cut the bullshit and get to work," but I don't have much doubt that I'll succeed, even if I'm at times exhausted and even if I can't quite see the end yet. Why? Well, I've gotten this far ok. The worst is over. I turned inward and found X marks the spot, and now I just have to keep digging.

I felt so much fear reading this piece. But the fear was "wow, SHOULD I be afraid?" And the voice in me said, "No, that's not what you're choosing."

I hope that doesn't make me sound like a jackass, sincerely. For what it's worth, I went through enough awfulness in the first half of my life that maybe I just got it all out of the way.

But also for what it's worth, to me, avoiding a fempocalypse like the one described here strikes me as a process of embodiment - of learning to mindfully inhabit your body so that you can achieve the intuitive emotional mastery that will give you the power of discernment, that is, the ability of choose between what feels good and what doesn't feel good. And at the risk of sounding like I only have a hammer so everything looks like a nail, that means that this is about trauma healing. That means that creating your future is about healing your core wound.

For example, consider that perhaps my relationship with my body is better because since moving to LA to resensitize I can now taste what I'm eating, sense when I'm nourished, and feel when my body needs to move. Consider that my voice and my music are better because my hearing is better, because maybe it wasn't actually my hearing that was damaged but my auditory sensitivity, in having dissociated from so much verbal abuse. Consider that I set an intention to heal, and now I... feel better. Which would make sense as a result of healing. Consider that some divine guidance caused me to set out to do all this just before that time that I'm supposed to start panicking.

Are the odds fair? Fuck no. Is society setting us up to succeed? Hahahahaha. Are there myriad inequities in society that intersect in ways that make this process easier for some than for others? Fuck yes there are. I'm not denying any of that.

But I think this isn't a death sentence. I think this is avoidable. I'm navigating it right now and you guys all know I'll share with you how I did it so you can try it my way too if you want. I'm really good at figuring shit out, and I may have a fuckton of it on my plate right now but I don't see any reason I can't do it.