A Gut Feeling: Anal Pleasure, Holistic Sexual Health, and Interpretations of AIDS
Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio
Part # 6
“We were talking about the legal threats a ‘poz’ gay man faces as a dissident,” G remembered as son as we connected again.
“Yes.”
“What about them?” she asked.
“Well, as a result of the allopathic hypothesis about AIDS, statutes that regulate the sexual behavior of ‘poz’ persons are now in place in a number of states.”
“I’ve heard. That’s the basis for the Darren Chiacchia case, correct?[1]
“Correct,” I concurred.
“Do you have more details?” G asked.
“Well, suppose you’re ‘poz’ and you start going out with someone who’s not. You tell them. They agree to have unprotected sex with you. Then they change their mind and go to the police to accuse you of attempting murder. They have the right to do so, based on the law.”
“I suppose if you’re ‘poz’ you better use protection or have sex with other ‘poz’ persons,” G offered.
“And most of the time that’s what happens, I hear. It’s called ‘sero sorting’,”[2] I concurred.
“All right.”
“But then now, with Tony Lance, the new theory is that lubes can further dry out your mucous and make your dysbiosis worse.”
“Well, he does advise caution about that. Does not talk about condoms. And he is right I believe, since that’s an interpersonal, case-by-case decision to be made.”
“What do you mean? Can’t you see that he can be accused of promoting reckless behavior for his own benefit?”
“All dissidents are vulnerable to that.”
“But can you see that as a gay man who at least at some point has tested positive, his whole theory can be constructed as a self-serving ploy,” I probed.
“Sure. That’s why I think he is so brave. If his interpretation acquires credibility in sex-positive, liberal, holistic circles, then some fundamentalists will try to discredit it as a seductive ploy. But is that really credible? The article cites some 75 references. It’s sound research. Just thinking about it as mere perversion is perverse.”
“Still, I can’t really see how the transition between interpretations can happen without causing problems,” I commented.
“Of course. Shall we leave that for next phone call?”
A Gut Feeling: Anal Pleasure, Holistic Sexual Health, and Interpretations of AIDS
Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio
Part # 7
“We were talking about the transition between interpretations, correct?” G asked as we connected again.
“We were,” I said. “Have you thought about it?”
“Yes. It’s part of switching to the holistic health paradigm. The allopathic paradigm is based on what’s called patriarchy in feminism. It’s a way to interpret health as war against disease. It translates as ‘barrier’ when it comes to sexual health, as in ‘do as much ‘war’ on my body as I am willing to say yes to, and barriers will protect the ecosystem that’s me.’ The holistic paradigm is based on connectedness. It creates health by respecting life, by treating its ecosystems as part of the feminine divine. It translates as fluidity when it comes to sexual health. Understanding the flow of life and using pleasure to enhance it.”
“But how do you navigate the transition in a way that is safe?” I probed.
“Good question. I guess it depends on where you’re at when you start the journey. Lance talks about proportion. He never says that using a condom in a one-night stand will kill you. In fact, I bet he’d agree that barriers are quite appropriate for those occasions. But when it comes to healing from AIDS, when it comes to finding one’s own balance between pleasure and health, the emphasis really is on proportion. Being conscious, feeling connected to one’s body and its ecosystems, practicing that connection in ways that bring together the erotic and the sacred, that minister pleasure to the body as they generate health. “
“Right, but suppose you’re a gay man who is positive and has AIDS. How do you get from point A to point B without being criminalized or thrown in jail?”
“Good question again my friend. I guess you’d need a lot of good luck and patience. But suppose you focus on getting proportion. Then there is the leaky mucous, remember? The impurities in your blood that get you to test ‘poz’ in the first place. Keep looking at it from a holistic perspective. Suppose you’ve tested positive because you’ve got a mild case of intestinal dysbiosis. You can practice abstinence or protection with moderate amounts of sex until you get better. Then you may test again, and maybe it will be negative. Another option is becoming active in the AIDS dissidence movement, meet others who are healing themselves from intestinal dysbiosis and no longer have AIDS. Lance was one of them.”
“Right, that’s if you’re lucky and very determined. It could also happen that you get profiled as a sex offender, lose your job, lose your home, and end up in jail.”
“I know. And if you’re already, for some reason, subject to being profiled in a negative way, like say as part of a minority that’s considered hyper-sexed, that makes it even worse.”
“Like, for example, if you’re black, or Latino, or bi , or poly, or all of the above?” I asked.
“Exactly! But wait a minute, are you implying that this is Tony Lance’s fault? That the problems you’re describing are a result of his research?”
“No. But the severity of these problems is, I think, what makes all LGBT institutions react so negatively when they hear about AIDS dissidence. They’re afraid.”
“I know. It’s sad.” G reflected, somber.
“Besides, consider this. Experiencing anal pleasure in moderation, practicing holistic sexual health: those are wonderful ideas. But who will truly understand them? The minute some fundamentalist sect hears about them, they’ll be upon us. They’ll will simply turn the whole concept around and claim that science found out that anal sex is bad, that it’s the true cause of AIDS, and will use this to claim that those who have it only deserve what they got.”
“I have no doubts that some people will hear that, unfortunately. Not everybody on Earth can be sex-positive. But consider the situation we have today. Suppose Tony Lance is right. Suppose intestinal dysbiosis is really what causes AIDS, not a virus. Then everyone can heal from it, and continue to practice anal sex proportionally to the time and energy they have for this to happen naturally and in a holistic way.”
“That would be nice,” I offered.
“Right,” G approves. And she continues: “Then people will understand that love is an art that can be practiced in many different ways, that there are many styles of pleasure and it’s good to learn about all of them. People will learn to integrate the arts of loving with the arts of healing themselves. The entire human species will become more holistic, healthier, and happier. Don’t you think that the hope for such a world is worth the effort of facing the hostility of those who are sex-positive in principle, and cannot see the light of this vision yet?”
“Oh well G,” I responded, “you always get so wrapped up in your utopias. You’re incorrigible. I’m not sure all that can happen. But I’ll admit that if Tony Lance is right, if AIDS turns out to be just a bad case of intestinal dysbiosis that can be cured with proper nutrition and respect for one’s rectum, then the world will be much better off than it is today.”
“Oh, great! I’m so glad you can see that,” G exclaimed.
“For one thing,” I continued, “people will stop being afraid of one another. They’ll lose the fear of their own desire for closeness, for intimacy, that now so often turns into repression and hatred. More people will become proactive about being happy and loving and healthy. They will overcome their dependence on products that can mechanically generate those states. This will lower the cost of health care and free us of the twin tyranny of the pharmaceutical industry and medical profession. It will pave the way for affordable and organic universal health care. And it may even afford people more free time and vacation to enjoy amorous company, healthy sex, and conscious loving.”
“So, you see how important what Tony Lance did can be? Doesn’t he deserve a medal?” G asked.
“He does, especially if he is right,” I observed.
“Yes, and it’s easy to find out, and inexpensive. All it takes is really an experiment. Try douching a few rats, giving them wide spectrum antibiotics, having them inhale poppers, and sodomize them daily with plenty of lube and condoms. I bet their gut would cave in quickly enough to diagnose them with intestinal dysbiosis.”
“But G dear,” I said, “it seems really unfair to take it out on rats. Don’t we have enough sickness already?”
“It was really just a suggestion,” G responded. “People tend to trust laboratory experiments. That’s how allopathic science has operated for the past few centuries. Personally, I don’t need this kind of evidence. I find it in those long-time ‘poz’ people who are healthy and have healed themselves.”
“The experiment you were suggesting could be a shortcut, though. It could help redress health policies,” I offer. “For example, those statutes about murder by infection . . . “
“Right. And if you consider the damage that acting on the wrong hypothesis can cause, if you consider all the earthquake devastation that comes from poverty that is often interpreted as AIDS in countries where poor sanitation causes all kinds of intestinal problems, if you consider all the money spent in programs that cannot be effective because they do not bring people what can cure their intestinal dysbiosis, if you consider how this fear of love, fear of expressing the erotic energy of love in natural ways, is transmuting into hatred, war, destruction, and devastation of entire bioregions and their population, if you consider that all the money spent on these futile projects could be used to stop global warming and create the climate stability that can save us all, then, you know, if sacrificing a few rats can to the trick, if it can persuade the powers that be, or at least the honest people in them, that dysbosis is worth considering as a legitimate cause, then so be it, I say.”
“That’s a nice thought. Now, is Tony Lance alone?”
“No. He is part of a team, he presented his work at the first edition of the conference Rethinking AIDS, in Oakland last November.”
“What other scientists were there? Where did they come from?”
“There were vernacular and professional scientists, as well as activists and clinicians, I understand. Many of the professional scientists are based in the US, but they are of foreign origin.”
“Do you think that’s why they don’t get profiled very favorably?”
“That’s part f it, of curse. They can be dismissed as Un-American, in a new form of McCarthyism, as some would say.”
“Perhaps they can afford to be more honest because they are less involved with the pharmaceutical companies. I mean all those marketing efforts to create the need for a drug by persuading average Americans that they suffer from some under-diagnosed ailment.”[1]
“Yes, pharmaceutical companies pay lavish money to professors of medicine ready to act as consultants who promote their drugs and the medical disorders invented to market them.[2] Foreign scientists can do that as well. It’s just that some of them are not game.”
“I get it. Even though, of course, being a foreigner is not a plus in that role since the public tends to trust your vintage American better.”
“You have a point. That’s why, also, people like Duesberg, form Germany, and Bauer, from Austria, have trouble getting heard.”[3]
“But again, when you think of Tony Lance, and other American heroes like him, who self-trained as scientists to save their lives, and are now sharing their knowledge to save others at the risk of losing everything, you see that it’s happening. Dissident science is making inroads. It’s pushing against the paradigm that generates so much paradox that it almost fall of its own weight, like a giant that can no longer walk because it’s too heavy with its own false consciousness.”
“Are there any other countries where holistic interpretations of AIDs are being researched?”
“At the Oakland conference there was a scientist from the University of Florence, Italy, Marco Ruggiero.[4] His team focuses on AIDS and body ecology, including the effects of chemicals.”
“Interesting.”
“Yes, and remember that in these countries where health care is universal, the government has to pay for curing all disease outbreaks, including those caused by pharmaceutical companies eager to sell the wrong meds for the wrong diseases. So that’s an incentive to fund studies that disagree with the main paradigm as well: A way to force integration of allopathic and holistic methods for the common good.”
“Yes. So there is hope.”
“Being the author of a ‘forbidden book’ that has become controversial on account of my intellectual honesty about AIDS, I can tell only one thing for sure: No one on earth (Nobel laureate or vernacular scientist) knows everything that there is to know about AIDS. That’s why it is necessary to open up to all avenues of investigation. The criminalization of knowledge is the crime. Fear the true enemy.”
“Let’s hope fear evaporates then.”
“Let’s,” said G.
“Meanwhile, congrats to Tony Lance and good luck to all of those who are healing themselves from intestinal dysbiosis.”
“Yes, for all those volunteer scientific efforts the world will be absolutely grateful. Knowledge always evolves by disagreement. It’s the same data. But now they make a whole lot of sense. It’s always a matter of interpretation.”
“Science is an art,” I offer as a way to wrap up the conversation.
“Isn’t it? I’ve always claimed we need more people trained in critical theory like myself.”
“Stop bragging about your specialties, G,” I giggle.
[2] Lane, Christopher. Shyness. Yale University Press, 2008. (A study of the invention of recent mental illnesses in the sociability spectrum.)
[3] Peter Duesberg. Inventing the AIDS Virus. New York: Regnery, 2007. (A classic of non-infective AIDS theory.) Henry Bauer. The Origin, Persistence, and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory. New York: McFarland, 2007. (A recapitulation of and reflection about the inconsistencies of mainstream theories.)
[4] First Rethinking AIDS Conference. Oakland, CA: November 2009. Online proceedings. RethinkingAIDS-Program. Prof. Marco Ruggiero, Univ. of Florence: http://www.marcoruggiero.org/
Disclaimer: This Tale does not constitute medical advice in any way. Readers are invited to consult their own healers and health care providers.
We plan to publish a series of dialogs on anal pleasure and holistic sexual health. The idea is that the two go very well together--in moderation. In anticipation, we offer the vernacular science available on the topic. Today's science often serves profit. See expose of corruption in Our Daily Meds. Vernacular science is science by the people and for the people.
The author of the main source is Tony Lance, an American hero who self-trained as a scientist to save his own life and now is sharing his knowledge to save others . . .
As we learn from Reduce the Burden, Tony Lance is a healthy gay man who turned 'poz' 13 years ago. He refused conventional treatment and practices holistic health.
"His experience of the AIDS era has made him feel increasingly lonely and isolated. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, like many gay men, he performed the sad New Year’s Day ritual of crossing out names in his address book of friends who had died of AIDS.
. . . . .
Lance witnessed the shocking transformations his friends went through. 'These were strong, vibrant men turned in a matter of months into ghoulish caricatures of what they used to be,' he recalls. 'Their hair turned grey, their skin turned a purplish color, their gums receded and their teeth fell out; they lost weight; and some couldn’t leave the house because of uncontrollable diarrhea. . . .
The impression convinced Lance that, 'if my time came, if I tested HIV positive, I would not take anti-viral drugs.' . . . .
Later he discovered Peter Duesberg's book (Inventing the AIDS Virus, 1996) in a gay and lesbian book store. He read it in one sitting and became a dissident."
When some of his fellow dissidents died of AIDS, he was crushed. Initially he felt guilty and wrong. Then he began the process of training himself as a scientist and doing research on Intestinal Dysbiosis.
His article explains almost everything we know as AIDS in LGBTQ communities in terms of Intestinal Dysbiosis. It's an admirable piece of genuine science: science by the people and for the people. A must read for any lover of anal pleasure like yours truly.
GRID = Gay Related Intestinal Dysbiosis?
Explaining HIV/AIDS Paradoxes in Terms of Intestinal Dysbiosis
by Tony Lance
tony.lance@gmail.com
One thing that those who reject the HIV/AIDS hypothesis agree on is that HIV is not the cause of AIDS. But when it comes to alternative theories of causation, disagreement abounds. And some of the most vexing questions surround the earliest cases of AIDS, those that were initially dubbed Gay-Related Immune Deficiency (GRID). Why did it originate in some gay communities? Why did this happen in the late 1970s and early 1980s? Why in the particular form of PCP (Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia), candidiasis, KS (Kaposi’s sarcoma)? And why still do gay men so often test “HIV+”? Why do some “HIV+” people thrive without medication while others get ill? Here’s a suggestion that answers all those questions in a coherent way.
Congratulations ! I am delighted to inform you that our Second Team of judges has selected the 2010 Nautilus Silver Award winners, and North Atlantic Books has a winning title.
Your Silver Winner is:
·Gaia and the New Politics of Loveby Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio –
007 Cosmology/New Science
All Silver Winning titles have now moved to the third and final phase of judging where the Gold Winner for each category will be selected. Gold Winners will be announced and posted on our website, www.nautilusbookawards.com, on Wednesday morning, May 26th, and also at the BookExpo America in New York.
All Winners are eligible to receive 12 complimentary custom-designed metallic Silver Winner’s seals.
If you want to receive these seals, please email us the best address to send them to you.
All Silver Winners will be contacted by email in a few days
and offered the opportunity to purchase additional seals.
We have attached a .jpg of the Nautilus Awards Silver Winner’s seal for you to use on your website, for subsequent printings of your book, or for PRand marketing.
2010 Nautilus Book Awards Gold Winners will receive Award Certificates, and these books will be:
Announced and exhibited in our 2010 Nautilus Book Awards Showcase at the publishing industry's premier event, BookExpo America, held this year in the JacobJavitsCenter in New York.
Announced in a Press Release which will be widely distributed at the BEA, and sent directly to our select list of media.
Exhibited for ONE YEAR in a special display on our website, www.nautilusbookawards.com,with a photograph and write-up of the book.
Announced in the June issue of EVOLVE! Magazine and distributed to 45,000 consumers through hundreds of bookstores. This will be a 5- page, full-color article with a photograph of each of the Gold-winning titles.
Silver Winners will be offered the opportunity to exhibit their books at a greatly reduced rate in our booth at the BookExpo America in New York. More information about this will follow.
We will continue to update you on the progress of our judges. If you have any questions or need any more information, please contact me at marilyn@marilynmcguire.com
Please know how much we appreciate your entering the 2010 Nautilus Book Awards.
We agree with Dr. Jean Houston, who says of the Nautilus Winning titles, “These books are creating a curriculum for those folks out there who are longing for a new story.”
At first glance, sex and the environment don’t make obvious bedfellows. How can the answer to our environmental problems – global warming, access to fresh water, ecological sustainability, and the use of fossil fuels – possibly be found between the satin sheets of lovers? According to a growing number of greenies, free love may just save the world. In her newest book, Gaia: The New Politics of Love, author Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio attempts to lay the groundwork for this premise.
It was a pleasure to interview with Sean Hardin, a journalist who runs a podcast called Truther. He was a terrific listener and gave the interviewee, yours truly, all the time necessary to explain the connections between Gaia, the scientific concept of an interrelated planetary ecosystem, and practices of sexual freedom, including polyamory.
The interview was posted on April 9th, 2010, and runs about two hours. It's roughly divided in three sections.
The interview begins with a discussion of the science of Gaia, including its implications for human life, planetary ecology, and world peace. This section continues with a discussion of the new paradigm for knowledge that Gaia science proposes, why this paradigm represents the only possible sustainable future for humanity and why it is still considered dissident.
The subsequent section focuses on the Gaian principle that we humans, like all other parts of the biota, are already always related. A relationships can therefore be considered a simple actualization of the potential implied in a given relatedness. The challenge of creating healthy relationships is that of actualizing this potential with balance and authenticity.
The final section discusses Gaia science in the context of other scientific theories that are still met with disagreement because they oppose common beliefs, including interpretations of AIDS that emphasize the ecosystemic aspects of the disease. The section emphasizes the need to verify the accuracy of a scientific hypothesis before using it as a basis for legislation and regulation of behavior. It concludes with a perspective on social spaces where one can experience practices of love that involve multiple participants in safe, positive, and self-empowering ways.
Whether you agree with yours truly's views or not, don't miss this interview! It opens up vistas for significant interconnections from both scientific and humanistic viewpoints. Hardin does a terrific job of plugging in all the main references, including scientists James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis, humanists like Gore Vidal, Deborah Anapol, and Suzann Robins, organizations like World Polyamory Association and others.
The most curious and brightest of you will want to know more about what Gaia means for polyamory and sexual freedom in general. The book upon which the interview based is Gaia and the New Politics of Love. Rush to get your own copy while it's still on discount!
If interested in the holistic health aspects of Gaia science and theory, you can check a recent edition of The Gary Null Show where yours truly is a guest speaker. The segment starts at the 45th minute.
Last but not least, stay tuned for more information about upcoming events and features. Please post your comments too. It's unmonitored and free! Yours truly is very active and energized by all the new connections her work is generating.
Bi Book Review by Hudi Shorr will appear inBisexuality and Spirituality, a special-topics issues of The Journal of Bisexuality, edited by Loraine Hutchins pre-published with permission
Gaia and The New Politics of Love: Notes for a Poly Planet
Serena Anderlini D’Onofrio,
North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, CA, 2009
Reviewed by Yuhudis (Hudi) Schorr
Our world is in crisis amidst wars.
Military wars are robbing mothers’ of their children, and people of their land. Political wars are pitting the people of our nation against one another, forcing them to take positions that may make the boundaries between those who have and those who cannot afford to have, more clear and defined than ever before.
Religious wars are abundant around the globe, attempting to justify the denial of basic rights of freedom as the word of God. The Earth has been catapulted into a state of chaos; the wars that we are waging upon her have taken their toll. Never before have we witnessed such levels of increased poverty and environmental degradation. In our time, the human species has acquired the capability to destroy both human life and the biosphere that hosts it.
Gaia and the New Politics of Love: Notes for a Poly Planet is a masterpiece by Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio that offers us a chance to transform crises into opportunity. Using science and nature as her backdrop, Anderlini-D’Onofrio constructs a new politics of Gaian symbiosis that affirms love as the force with which we must affect change in our universe, if we, as a species, are to survive our current state of environmental and political chaos.
In three sequential and interconnected parts Anderlini-D’Onofrio outlines a practical strategy to combat the toxic forces we have inflicted upon our planet. Using feminist ecological epistemology she offers an entirely new way of thinking about love, based upon teachings learned from bisexual and polyamorous communities that can offer a fresh perspective with which we can begin to repair the damage done to the biota that currently sustains us. If we are to survive the trauma to the Earth that we have caused, we must rethink our current conceptions of what that Earth is and the forces that we use to negotiate our way through it. We must expand beyond our currently limited definitions of love and family in order to include entire communities and the ecosphere that we inhabit. If we continue on our path of obsessive consumption of resources without regard to the harm we are causing, the biota will transform and survive, while our species will become one of the many extinct species that have at one point inhabited her live body.
Anderlini-D’Onofrio ominously warms us: if we continue to mistake Gaia for an assemblage of useable resources, we will kill ourselves, not her. It is now more than ever that we need her messages of warning, and instructions of repair.
I. Gaia in Feminist Science
Anderlini-D’Onofrio begins by placing her Gaian philosophy within a framework of feminist ecology. Ecofeminism postulates that Gaia, the Earth, has a life of its own. It has a consciousness like an animated, self-regulating organism. In ecofeminism, subject and object are largely the same, and control is replaced by more symbiotic dialogue and collaboration. This feminist epistemology effectively defeats the logic of either/or, and embraces a more inclusive logic of both/and. In this way, feminist ecologies debunk the myth of distinction between that which is “human” and that which is “nature”. A Gaian philosophy implies giving up our sense of entitlement as a species deluded to thinking that the biota is a resource to be exploited by us.
“If we humans can come back to viewing ourselves as a resource among other resources with no special entitlement to occupying the position of subject in opposition to a “natural world” that becomes objectified as existing for the sole purpose of meeting our needs, then we can find again forms of coexistence with each other and the planet that hosts our lives.” (Intro, xxii)
Symbiotic reason indicates that while there are no mere resources, every cell in Gaia’s body can function as a resource for another cell. Symbiosis is the practice of sharing bodies in which both symbionts, the host and the guest, benefit. We only have to look to nature to see examples all around us: the cow who hosts the bacteria in order to make her food, the womb that hosts the fetus to nurture its survival. All parts of the equation are beneficiaries of the give and take relationship, without losing their individual identities in the process. We: humans, animals, minerals, the very Earth herself are all part of the greater whole of Gaia, the process of life. The pain we inflict on nature is in fact pain we experience as a species, the growth we experience as individuals affects the world at large. A symbiotic logic requires us to view this bigger picture, and begins to develop lines of communication between the now disparate pieces that make up Gaia in order to find a more symbiotic harmony amongst them.
Symbiotic reason is more apt than individual reason to understand life as an interrelated web in which each individual is a small node that exists thanks to others’ presence. The author points to the behavior of growth among trees and roots. Our ecosystem contains two kinds of intricate growth processes amongst vegetation. There are the arborescent plants: treelike growths organized as individual trees that sprout from a seed and grow vertically by sinking their roots deeply in the soil, and the rhizomes, such as gingerroots and potatoes which operate as subterranean root networks that grow sideways, store resources within the soil, and intermittently sprout interrelated plants across the terrain where the rhizome is present. A tree species may have strong individuals who grow to be taller and more powerful than any plant sprouting from a rhizome, but the rhizome in itself is more resilient to adversity and ecological changes due to their numerous points of entry. For Anderlini-D’Onofrio, the rhizome can represent the Gaian principle of evolution by symbiogenesis, the symbiotic process by which a species acquires the genes of its symbionts into its own DNA. This process is more horizontal. Anderlini-D’Onofrio argues that all life is symbiotic because biology shows that without exchanges between interrelated beings, there would be no life at all. It is within this reasoning that she has developed her new politics of love.
II. Politics of Love
Anderlini-D’Onofrio’s politics of love is new way of looking at love that draws from ancient teachings of a sacred feminine to postmodern understandings of health. Our current notions of health are monopolized by allopathic discourse that views health as the absence of disease and medicine a war against its attacks. It ignores the fact that perhaps disease is not a foreign attack on the body, rather a part of the body itself, crying out for repair. Holistic discourse on the other hand realizes a symbiotic alignment of an ecosystem’s dynamic parts. Disease is viewed as a message from the body that demands a change in its ecology. Gaian awareness compels us to shift our current paradigms of health from an overwhelming allopathic discourse to more holistic notions of health, all the while invoking symbiotic reasoning to encourage dialogue between the allopathic and holistic health collectives.
The AIDS crisis played a massive role in positioning love on the side of disease. Through criminalizing loving communities, a rhetoric of fear was born, which produced a social energy that linked erotic expression with fear. A new politics of love seeks to reverse this trend by transforming its negative social energy into a positive one that reconnects erotic expression with safety and well-being. Hypothesizing Gaia helps the world shed needless fears from current dogmas of love as a crime or a disease.
In a holistic perspective, players are encouraged to enhance the health practices that strengthen their immunity and hence their health. This follows the Gaian principle that the health of Gaia’s body is proportionate to the health of each of her cells. Conventional allopathic medicine tends to attack the symptoms that express the body’s problem, and may neglect to seriously investigate its causes (63). As Anderlini-D’Onofrio posits: if an individual is a cell in a super organism, his/her disease cannot be a foreign agent, for all agents are part of the larger entity of which that individual is an element. Disease in the elements of a super organism is a force that manifests a crisis in its life. Disease is thus read as a message that can help the living ecosystem deal with the crisis and reconfigure itself (71).
The AIDS epidemic can be read as a crisis within Gaia, and as such, a signal for systemic change. Excessive emphasis on allopathic hypotheses in sexual health has kept the world stuck in a mode of fear. Anderlini-D’Onofrio’s Gaia hypothesis postulates that the planet Earth is a web of interconnected organisms with a life of its own, a postmodern perspective that reverberates with indigenous, ecofeminist, pre-modern, and symbiotic cultural elements (102). In Gaian post modernity, “sex” is an erotic expression, the joy of taking and giving, and the orgiastic revitalizing pleasures of bacteria. It is the art of loving that lives in the wider space of the arts of healing, and as an art, is shy of any normativity (110). Western masculinity emphasizes control over intimacy. It acts like a cultural imperative that dominates modern philosophical discourse reflected in Western modernity’s obsession with the mastery of nature. The idea that humans can master nature is but a myth of modernity. The reality is that humans cannot master nature, and there is no reason why they should (113).
Reconfigured as ecological erotic orientations, the love styles that correspond to former perversions are found to have a positive effect on Gaia’s health for various reasons: They multiply the possibilities of love; they help expand the boundaries of the loving arts; and they contribute to establishing regimes of love that help in the sharing of resources and the creation of sustainable emotional communities (123-4). Love is free, and it can be multiplied at will. Anderlini-D’Onofrio defines it as “a renewable resource that saves one from the trappings of useless consumerism” (125). The healing arts emphasize practices of the body that redeem people from modernity’s secular materialism. They are effective in empowering people and communities to heal themselves by creating a more symbiotic understanding of us as individuals, without losing the connectivity to each other and our Mother Gaia. As Anderlini-D’Onofrio so eloquently writes, “this may not instantly resolve all global problems, but the perspective it puts things in vastly improves the prospects for healthy global ecologies” (127).
III. The Arts of Loving
In this part of her book, Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio articulates why she feels that bisexual and polyamorous communities provide the framework to actualize a Gaian awareness of living. Bi/Poly communities generate areas of stability of erotic awareness and emotional sustainability that free the imagination from needless fears and create the emotional and ecological abundance that Gaia needs (152). Because of their heavy reliance on touch, connectedness, non-violence, and a subtle knowledge and practice of intimacy, the styles of love invented by poly and bi people promote the activation of the hormonal cycle of Oxytocin (137). Oxytocin is the hormone responsible for states of emotional calm and connectedness that often fills the aural and inner spaces of bi and poly societies. Oxytocin becomes a social lubricant within these communities where playfulness is key. It is the gentle playfulness produced by these arts of loving that enable emotional negotiations and agreements that would otherwise be impossible in an environment without it.
The styles of love practiced in bi and poly communities help build the trust necessary to overcome fears and are often intentionally designed to break down people’s defensive identities, body armors and egos, so that all players can enjoy the free circulations of amorous energies. It is this symbiotic reason that transforms scarcity into abundance.
Consumer society can be visualized as an extensive orgy inasmuch as it is organized as a continuum orgiastic display of material temptations that induce desire for things we often don’t need or want (163). Anderlini-D’Onofrio writes that the combined practices of bi and poly love have the power to allow individual players to become part of the “flow of the orgy”, to consciously navigate its flow and become consensually immersed into the movement of the symbiotic energy generated by our aural, astral, and physical bodies at play (163). This results in sustainability, balance, and renewability of resources for all involved, and it maximizes a player’s ability to give and receive love. She writes:
“As players learn to navigate this emotional/erotic space, the dialogue between the emotional and erotic realms enables them to maximize the love energy they can share. This sharing of emotional resources generates symbiotic energy fields between players, and enables the creation of emotional sustainability that result in symbiotic plateaus of enhanced awareness. These plateaus involve crises that manifest at certain points in the network, and whose collective management can productively turn them into opportunities for deeper levels of symbiosis. This growth and change can move the entire network on a higher level of awareness that enables more focused and productive experiments in the management of shared emotional resources and the symbioses therefore. The network thus functions like a sustainable ecosystem for all of these interpersonal energies. It generates the sustainability, balance, and renewability of resources for all involved” (165).
Applied on a global scale, this turns scarcity into abundance, fear into hope, and hatred into love. This transformation happens when we players lose our intense sense of entitlement to the resources that surround us in our ecosphere. The tools of this transformation can be found in the schools of bisexual and polyamorous philosophy where intentional communities are formed by people who consciously choose to live by a shared utopian vision, motivated by Gaian principles. They share an expansive sense of love and sexual expression that involves consensual sharing of emotional and erotic resources and can be learned at their schools (154).
Anderlini-D’Onofrio proposes a journey to these schools to learn the tools of the loving arts, regardless of one’s orientation or identity. These philosophies of both/and/all include and cherish all points in every continuum. They celebrate our diversities and encourage us to recognize each other and harmonize ourselves with Earth’s symbiotic ecosystem. If we can take from them the ability to think of love as an art whose forms of expressions is infinite, then perhaps we can incorporate those healing and loving arts to stave off ecological catastrophes caused by our irresponsible behavior as a species.
Imagine A Better World
We must begin to imagine a world that is better than the current one we inhabit, where wars are beings waged, and fear is abundant. Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio has directed us upon a path that might open our imagination to new and thrilling ideas that, if we allow ourselves to be open enough to consider them, can restore our planet to a place of homeostatic symbiosis; a world where we both give and take from what and whom is around us instead of stripping all of their available resources and leaving desolation in our wake.Gaia and the New Politics of Love offers us a glimpse as to what a world without animosity, soaked in selfish consumption might look like: a place where differences and individuals thrive together while dedicating themselves to the health of Gaia, that which came before us and will sustain herself after we pass.
Perhaps with this new model emphasizing non-violent, loving sustainability we might do our part in ending the wars and restoring Gaia to her harmonic balance, thus ushering in the new era of planetary peace and health, based on mutual respect and love, that our world surely needs today.
