Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
mike: Mya is a vegan straightedge anarcha-feminist residing in Costa Rica, where she works in
wildlife rescue and rehabilitation, environmental conservation, and many projects advocating
for the liberation of all beings. She is also a yoga teacher and the founder of Total Liberation Yoga,
which is a project dedicated to bringing anti-oppression and total liberation work
into yoga, creating safer spaces and accessibility for all people who wish to join the practice.
mike: So Mya, are you ready with your webcam? You can turn it on now. Mya: Working? Hi. Hi everyone.
Does this sound okay? Everything is good, yah yah? Okay, great. Thanks.
Okay. Thank you everyone for being here, this is a really amazing project and thanks to mike for putting this together. This is really important work.
So I want to talk a lot about the interconnection of oppressions as they respond to - as we
investigate radical sobriety, feminism and animal liberation. To start, the further we
investigate oppression the more we can see that every single one of us has been involved
in or affected by oppression at some point in our lives. The fact is that we live in
a culture of oppression and we're indoctrinated into this system of oppression from an early
age, we learn that we should either be propagating oppression, be accepting it or turning a blind
eye. This process of deconstructing and aboliting different forms of oppression is probably
the hardest thing that any of us will undertake, because not only do we have to rise and fight
up against those who push us down, but we have to have accountability for ourselves
as oppressors. For anybody who has faced any severe trauma or severe oppression, it can
be really hard to acknowledge that even though we were victimized we can still be responsible
for the suffering of others. I will talk a little bit about my life in
and the oppressions that I faced and then I'd like to explore some of the ideas that
I have come up with in regards to this. I just want to put a trigger warning out there.
Sadly, this talk definitely explores a lot a lot of violence to women, so if - take care
of yourselves, like the last talk explained if you are really feeling traumatized by that
kind of stuff, you don't want to hear about it, then please take care and maybe sit out
for this. I will make it short and I don't want to hammer
in any kind of trauma, but just to give you an idea of where I'm coming from.
I had a really rough adolescence. I left home when I was about 14 due to family issues and
by the time I was 17, I had been *** by 11 men on six different occasions. I had been
held against my will at a drug house for three months. I had mistreated my body for a place
to stay numerous times, for something to eat, or to protect my friends. I had spent about
two years working as a drug mule flying extreme amount of narcotics around the country for
a pretty dangerous cartel. My work and my lifestyle kept me away from
hard drugs luckily but I drank so much during this process to numb the pain that I did not
have a chance to think of anybody else or think about anything rather than just survival
at that time. This lifestyle, it was hard and it's something
that was really traumatic for me and fortunately something that I've been able to get through.
I look back at it and I see that in some ways I felt really empowered in that lifestyle.
I would try to be as tough as I could and I would pick fights with others because I
was so powerless when violence was inflicted on me. I was just part of this really vicious
circle of systemic oppression where violence becomes the norm and everyone included numbs
themselves to get through. Often people are blamed, oppressors are blamed, for their actions
and, rightly so, they should be held accountable, every single one of us should be held accountable.
But sometimes we have to look a little bit further and we have to look at the systems
of oppression, the systems of abuse, and really have some empathy and understanding for where
others are coming from and how they are reaching the point where they are so disconnected from
contact with others, from compassion, that they take severe actions against other humans
or other animals. From there, once we find that understanding, we can grow a little more
and we find different ways of communicating with each other.
I was fortunate enough to get out before I was an adult and I am really lucky because
a lot of my acquaintances are dead, in jail or stuck in this life that they cannot break
free from. I found over the past 13 years or so I found some really awesome ways to
heal. In that process, I have really been able to learn about the interconnectedness
of oppressions and how everything is connected. I want to pause here and say a little bit
about privilege. I am a survivor, like so many of us are, and I went through absolute
hell and it has not been easy to bounce back. But I did, and I did in large part because
of my privilege. Despite problems with my family, I had a lot of love when I was young.
I'm white, I'm cisgender, so for me to find rehabilitation programs was easy. To get into
school was easy because I did not face racism from the class and the school system. I was
always able to find a job and I was lucky enough that though I was a really heavy drinker,
alcoholism didn't run in my family so I could walk away from this when I needed to. I was
able to find clarity in life, particularly when I started exploring radical sobriety,
I was able to become aware of oppression and take action against it. Being able to look
back in my own trauma and see how similar traumas affect others had been huge and to
be able to use my experiences to find compassion and understanding for others, for where others
are at, has also been paramount. This is not -- let me find my place here.
This is not the case for a lot of survivors. Many survivors are marginalized, and not just
facing the oppression of a patriarchal system but also racism, homophobia, transphobia,
classism, and so many other oppressions that for some of us, especially people like white
settlers, we don't know this oppression. We just know the one kind that we have been facing.
The first step to abolishing oppression is to remember that when we are calling each
other to mobilize, to step up and take action, not everyone is in the same position of privilege
and not everyone has the same vantage point to be able to look past their own struggles
and focus on the plight of others. We see this a lot in the animal rights movement and
veganism, we want so much for people to step up and stop hurting other beings, but we're
not necessarily taking a look at what is happening in those people's lives at that moment in
time. So, as we move through this work, let's to
not assume other people's privilege. Let's try our best to work from a position of compassion
and understanding and just find out where people are at and how they are and how they
are being affected and how we can work together. There is this article I just read and I wasn't
going to talk about this at first because I had not been opened up to this, but it was
shared on the website the other day and it was an article by Lauren Chief Elk about the
myths of shared gender oppression and it totally blew my mind. I have felt this oppression
for so many years and I do my best to not feel like a victim and I try to work through
that and be strong, but having more privilege than others we need to be accountable for
that without perpetuating further models of colonization by trying to help other communities
because we feel empowered to do so. For anyone who has survived trauma and is feeling empowered
to go out and make changes in communities and it is a natural thing, you want to go,
you want to help and talk to people and see what you can do but it is not always our place
to barge into a liberation struggle and start helping out. There are communities around
the world who are already mobilizing, and standing their ground, against oppression.
For me, it's important to know that it has been an important lesson to know that just
because I feel able to stand up for other women and it's not always by my place to speak
on behalf of them because we are not all the same and we have very similar oppressions
and to be an ally to work in solidarity is huge. But you can't determine what people
-- I see a little note here, the article is called the -- I don't have the full title,
but it is by Lauren Chief Elk and it's about the myth of shared gender oppression. It's
posted on the Facebook page for animal -- for the forum. You can look at that or I will
try to find the link -- oh there it is. Awesome. I was really lucky, I got through, I healed,
and I started to open up to how other beings are being treated. I became active in many
different campaigns for animal liberation, for environmental protection, social justice
issues. What I found was that I was still numbing myself. So back to when I was in the
midst of trauma and oppression, I just numbed myself with alcohol because I couldn't deal
with it and I found that once I broke free of all that oppression, I was no longer facing
such extremities anymore that and I was utilizing my experiences to assist others. But I was
just kind of burying myself in whatever I could find. I was pushing myself too hard
and taking on too much and I would deal with it by having a couple of drinks every day
or whatever. I would use alcohol as a release and something to help me cope. Really, I wasn't
coping at all. I ended up having a pretty bad anxiety breakdown. I found myself in an
abusive marriage. I had just replaced one trauma with another and I had not really started
to heal at all. So, about three years ago I started to explore sobriety. I began to
realize that I could be a lot more effective, not only as an activist, but as a community
member if I started to look a little bit deeper and started to really explore how I relate
to the world and how different oppressions are formed, how different oppressions are
out there, and how I also participate in these oppressions.
When we talk about radical sobriety and veganism in a lot of these movements it sometimes this
sounds like we expect others to deal with life, to deal with trauma, by taking on the
actions of others. I don't want this to be the case and I am explaining a lot about my
experiences with it and for me radical sobriety was something that was paramount and it saved
my life. But it is not the option for everybody. It's
not a means to an end, at all. It is the same thing with veganism we are able to eliminate
the suffering of animals the minute we adopt it and with radical sobriety we can take a
stand against corporations and we can start to take a lot more accountability in our communities.
But it's not the only thing. If we're just sober, that's great. But it's not going to
start a revolution. It is a tool that we can utilize and for instance
in a lot of liberation struggles, the Zapatista movement especially, or specifically, sobriety
has been adopted to affect the autonomy of women, to create safer spaces, and eliminate
any thing that could perpetuate the suffering that someone could be in already. The state
has used drugs and alcohol through history to stop the liberation movements, and in fact,
here's a quote from a really awesome being, from this book, which you should read if you're
interested in this kind of stuff - a significant portion of gender violence specifically ***
and relationship violence against women committed by men who are intoxicated. So how many of
us have been present in a radical community or an anarchist community and has seen abusive
or oppressive actions being condoned simply because someone was drunk. It's not okay and
should not be acceptable. We have this right to safer spaces, and in our quest to create
spaces free of all oppression, why not decrease a practice that affects who we are and creates
a lot of violence in itself. This is something that having come from a place of extreme violence
and coming from a place where alcohol was the tool to really bury down everything. The
idea that we could let go of a crutch like that and start to really be accountable for
ourselves is huge because we don't see a lot a lot - sometimes there is not enough accountability
in radical circles. As we move through this work and we try to fight for the rights of
others, if we're speaking up for the animals, if we're standing up for the environment,
and other kinds of social justice issues, but we're not even able, in our own community,
to be accountable, to be caring and be respectful of each other, how are we going to get out
there and be active for these causes that are bigger than anything else? I've been committed
to a lifelong sobriety for about 2 years, and this changed my life so much. I've been
able to reassess what I take on and have developed a great self-care practice and it was beautiful
to hear the last presentation about self-care because it is so true, even if we are not
taking in any kind of intoxicants, as activists we push ourselves way too hard because we
have to and we feel like there are so much injustice in this world and there is.
Each and every one of us comes with such an open heart and wants to make change and that
is beautiful. We have to realize that we cannot save the world by ourselves and it is hard.
It's really hard. To be able to step away from burnout and do a few things that nourish
our body and our minds and our spirit, it's really important. I have been able to find
that and by having the clarity of mind on a daily basis I don't deviate from that too
much. Which is nicer than the days where I would deviate from that. Because, I was involved
in partying the night before, or something, right. I have been able to face my trauma
which is huge. I didn't for so long, and I thought that I did. I talked about it sometimes
and I knew it was there, and I read some books, but I had not really opened up to it because
I had not allowed myself to just feel, like really, really be down. I hadn't allowed things
to pop up. Not only the suffering of myself but, the suffering of others. Now that I am
opening up to a lot more struggles, I'm able to explore different ways to decolonize and
I have more energy to love, to share, to protect and explore who I am, and what affect I have
on the world. Particularly as somebody whose existence alone
causes oppression to others, I live in central america, and this is where I get do a lot
of work with animals, with the environment, with community. But, I and every single other
white settler here needs to be super aware that just our presence is oppressive, it's
not necessarily our fault, but it goes back far into history, however we all have to take
accountability for it and we all have to work on ways to be allies for a community and to
not just barge in and tell people what to do. I find that sobriety has really helped
me be super aware, at any given time I'm doing my best to be aware. I'm not there all of
the way, obviously. So many of us have so much to work on, but it has definitely helped
me a lot. I am really finding that I need to take accountability for my actions now,
whereas before maybe I would have been a bit defensive or argumentative about the fact
that I could be an oppressor because I had been oppressed in the past. But now I am able
to listen, really listen and it's hard and even if it sucks and it's icky, I need to
listen and that is true for all of us. I find that I feel a lot stronger to call other people
out on their own actions and hold other people accountable for the same things.
The more that, as a community, we can start to practice this. There was this great article
[on Black Girl Dangerous] not too long ago about 'calling in', which instead of shaming
people and casting them out of the community, and making it a big deal, it was more of this
heartfelt one on one conversation with people that we work with, as comrades, about their
actions and I found that was so beautiful because having those situations where we can
talk to one another about the things we do is huge and we are all products of very, very
oppressive systems of years and years and generations of systemic oppression that have
come down. Every single one of us has learned that, maybe some of us have grown up in some
pretty radical communities but for the most part, we have all learned these terrible things
that now we are trying to break free from. To have a situation, to have safer spaces
where people are clearheaded and are mindful, are compassionate, are loving, is so important.
There is a lot to learn and I'm just starting, we are all just starting. There is a lot to
let go of. For most of us, it is weird, but I feel that if we're all on this path together,
holding each other up and supporting one another, we can do it.
So yeah, I think that is about all that I have to say.
Costa Rica is a very - a place
that a lot people move to, a lot of ex patriots and foreigners and I find that sometimes there
is a high level of ignorance as far as being part of the community. Language is huge and
you see a lot of people who come here to live and build some crazy house somewhere that
isn't really doing anything for the community and they don't learn the language and don't
attempt to communicate with anybody in the community and I find that is a huge problem
because how do you really know what is going on in the community or what issues the community
faces. I live in a community of about a hundred.
So, people come together when there is a problem in town, when there's a shortage of water,
when anything is going on and there are collectives, and communities and people talk about it.
I find that coming in to such a situation and building up a little castle and putting
your walls up and not learning the language is a problem. Unfortunately, it really perpetuates
the same model of colonization, to come in and try to change a community, try to bring
in a little bit of America into the jungle. Doing a lot of work talking to other foreigners,
other people who have settled here about this, about language, about mindfulness in the community
and respecting people. For instance, there is a squat here. In Costa Rice, the first
50 metres of the beach belongs to the people and then 150 metres after that it is maritime
zone, so you can't build any structures. There is a squat not too far from where I am and
I think about 30 to 50 people live there and there is a huge push by the people who own
property around here, mostly white foreigners, to abolish the squat and they feel like, especially because
in Costa Rica if a squat is broken up then everyone is given land and they have more
and that is good. This is good. A lot of places can learn from a lot from that. However, the
first 50 meters of the beach belongs to people. And these people were here way longer before
anybody decided to come in and buy land and start selling it for hundreds of thousands
of dollars. Advocating against that and using my position as a white settler and my ability
to converse in English with other people who are trying to abolish squats, who are trying
to step in on the community is huge and is something that at least I can do. I cannot
speak on behlaf of the community, but I can on behalf of being a white settler and a bit
more of the integration process, like being anywhere else.
Another question, are there any problems with "manarchists" in Costa Rica and how do you
deal with it if it occurs and any tactics? Yeah, it's everywhere. Especially since I
live in the country. But it's a huge problem with misogyny and manarchism not so much that
I have seen. The anarchist scene here is really amazing and is mostly around San Jose, which
is the capital city, and it is phenomenal. There is huge emphasis on being *** friendly
and being about total liberation, really including all of the liberating struggles in it, so
I find that I have not met any or seen any of oppression within the anarchism here. Most
of the stuff that I see, the misogyny that I see, is in the general community and the
community that I live in specifically there is a lot of abuse towards women, and so women
don't stay. You won't see any 18-20 year old women because they have all gotten out. I
think that dialogue about that is huge and having safer spaces for women to go to, and
again, it is very interesting because if I was in Canada the first thing I would do is
barge into a community and set up shop and make safe space and start talking to people
about violence against women. Here, because it is not my community and I
am a settler and have to be respectful as an ally it is a different process, so I'm
learning a lot about this and finding where I can be of assistance in the community as
opposed to trying to take over a struggle. It is interesting and a lot of work, but something
to work toward for sure. Is there a website or any social media that
we can contact or interact with you? I have a Facebook page for Total Liberation Yoga,
I try to take away a lot of oppression with western yoga. So it is free classes and open
to anyone and fundraisers for animal protection and environmental protection and I am working
on launching a nonprofit here that will deal with, I'm hoping to start a drop-in centre
for street kids and at-risk women, and then hopefully a sanctuary for injured wildlife.
The last question I can see is can you tell us more about your work with yoga and how
that influences your activism. Again, just as sobriety has been amazing for
me, yoga has been phenomenal. I was in six car accidents during my time of craziness,
my crazy adolescence, and I had a lot of physical problems. Not only was I bearing the pain
of emotional past, but also physical as well. Through yoga, I was a dancer growing up, so
physical movement was something I was missing. To start with, yoga brought that back and
allowed me to start to feel things in my body. All of us hold so much emotion in different
places in our body and when you start to move again, things release. It was really hard,
but it was really worth it. I started to get into the physical practice
of yoga, to open up and feel my physical body, and the more that I got into that the more
I started to open up to the emotional side of yoga and the more I started to realize
I did not have to be a tough angry woman all of the time with my walls up so that nobody
could get to me. Yoga has allowed me to open my heart and to soften. In that softening
I found so much more strength to take a stand and speak up for others. I learn every day
and I had an opportunity to be a teacher and work with people who are facing trauma themselves
or to raise awareness of issues, but I'm helping students. I learn from every single person
that I comes into the room and it is always something new.
I recently actually published a blog about a lot more in depth about what I've gone through
and the amount of feedback and stories people shared with me afterward was heartbreaking,
but so beautiful that through something like that people were able to open up and I find
that in yoga it really helps. The more we get away from the Western model of having
to have the fancy studios and the nicest clothes, the more that we get to the practice of yoga,
of community and raising our awareness and opening our hearts and our minds the more
I find we have the ability to heal each other and be there in solidarity for one another
when we need it. That is big. We often need a lot of the conversations to get us through
and we don't often need so many of these clinical "self help programs". We really just need each other and
to have a practice that allows us to heal ourselves and heal our community, so that we are stronger for one another.