At the invisible intersections that I and others occupy in situations of severe disablement and compounded trafficking influences, there are specific things that almost always happen when someone asks us if we are safe or okay.
One thing is that we realize there is not enough ambient contextual information that is accurate about our experiences for people to realize what it is they're asking.
When someone asks, typically it is because they care about us and they want to know if we are beyond the threshold of safety or okayness.
But almost always, at these intersections… if we are showing up in the kind of conversation where somebody can ask that… we are already massively pretending to a kind of functions stability that is not actually possible or viable at the intersections we're navigating.
Sex trafficking organizations hide survivors in plain sight, on purpose, because it is an excellent way to store a living commodity for convenient access without having to expensively secure that commodity beyond the reach of others who are not being as intensively directly commoditized.
This applies also to other forms of trafficking that are not as focused on sexual commoditization, though of course all forms of trafficking of living beings rely upon entrapment and control of the sexual vitality of those living beings.
Instead of blocking us totally off from the rest of the population, psycho-social engineering has been deployed so that we won't be able to go into normative community spaces (for instance, because of environmental toxins); and so that even if we do, other people will not feel comfortable engaging with us, or will not believe what we say to them.
Just showing up in a normative social conversation, for us, is often a form of lying because we have to practice sending a lot of signals with our body that help others feel easy in our presence so that we can participate socially… and those signals-of-easiness go directly against what's really happening in (or to) our bodies.
But if we were more directly honest and accurate about our experiences in such situations, people would not ever feel easy enough to get to know us; they would feel so stressed by the presence of people experiencing what we're experiencing -- telling the truths we are telling -- that we would never be able to build socially at all.
Primarily, what our bodies need us to be much more honest about is how much direct access trafficking organizations have to individuals -- not only to us, in fact, but to all living beings in the midst of colonial imperialist trafficking structures.
This can really scare people and cause them to flee communications with us if we are not extremely wise about how we proceed.
Regardless of how careful we are, sometimes communications are stopped anyway -- because there is simply not enough support for any of the individuals who are part of that conversation to continue it.
Ubiquitous trafficking influences, for every person in the midst of them, is a very difficult subject to process.
Typically people who ask us a question like "are you safe? Are you okay?"...
...are already under pretty severe and challenging forms of invisible stressors when they ask.
Really, this is often why they care to express it at all; because they know what it's like to be enduring great difficulties, and they know what it's like to need other people.
There is a desire to support one another socially and come to know one another better in order to build strength together.
And yet, one individual who asks has usually not been in a position to do something about it (at least, according to the approaches or resources they already know about) if our honest answer is no, we are not safe or okay.
Intuitive infrastructure has been dedicated to creating options for people to support one another from severe and invisible circumstances -- because the burden on one individual otherwise is so impossible, the conversation must end if we are honest in our answer to that kind of question.
Intuitive infrastructure gives us ways to help one another even when it seems impossible to do.
Because severely disabled trafficking survivors found a way to collaborate and build together, we have made this possible where it was not before.
What are some of the reasons that a conversation ends when someone asks us if we are safe or okay?
1
If we fumble in our honesty or disseminate in an uncomfortable way out of a desire to protect the person who is asking, it can seem to the other person that we
a) don't want a connection with them... or
b) we're not willing to be vulnerable with them... or
c) we don't want to share with them in that way...
…which tends to stop relationship building energy.
2
If we say that we are safe or okay, we are outright lying to them -- or at least heavily misleading them -- and that energy also comes through to the other person unless we lie in an expert way.
Having to try to lie in an expert way to someone you care about and want to know better is a terrible experience to have, if you even have the neurological capacities to lie in an expert way to a person demonstrating true care for you; many of us actually don't have that capacity, because of the brain damage and relational violence that trafficking organizations leverage in order to isolate and control us.
At the same time, we are experiencing radical and violent social isolation that has much bigger impact on our physical functioning than others realize, because of the invisibility and compounded nature of our intersections.
We urgently and crucially need caring people around us, people who want to be in relationship with us, people who want to build with us, because this is usually the only way to repair our severely injured relational neurology from the trafficking violence we've experienced.
We are intimately aware that being in relationship with others is literally what stops more trafficking violence from happening -- if we can find some way to really be in relationship with others after having been cornered into our compounded and largely invisible trafficking intersections.
3
If we try to provide context about how it is we are not safe or okay -- because the person is expressing true caring to us and we want to be connected and fully honest with that person to honor their caring for us -- the actual context they would need to know in order to understand why and how we are not safe or okay is so deep, subtle, and complex, it is overwhelming to the individual.
When someone is able to more or less navigate normative social resourcing, even in the context of their own very serious challenges, they usually don't realize that they're relying on certain patterns of interactions (perpetuated by collective media resourcing all around them) to be more easily recognizable and navigable.
Our populations of invisibly violently affected people have been intentionally, predatorily erased from society through various forms of exclusion from media and communications platforms.
The level of context correction that needs to occur for us to be honest and forthright about what's happening to us, when we are giving an answer like this to someone who cares and wants to know, is such extensive education that it's not reasonable to expect a person to be able to absorb it or understand it in a short conversation; and at the same time, we are being held at intensive, extreme emergency circumstances that continue without easing.
For these reasons, if we are honest even in a basic way with the person, we can end up communicating that intensity to them in a way that overwhelms them, upsets them, or shuts them down.
4
A person who asks that question often really does want a real answer -- and it matters to them to respond in a way that is supportive of the person they are asking.
They are reaching out for a real connection with the person they hope is safe and okay.
And if they receive an answer that the person is not safe and okay, they want to be able to take some useful action to support that person that they are expressing care for.
Intuitive infrastructure has been developed to give us more ways to help one another, but we are also still in a process of learning how to communicate about that infrastructure in a way that people can more easily immediately take action in. Our languaging is still evolving to allow us to connect usefully and effectively with people who care about helping to resolve these situations.
Ironically -- and from the standpoint of trafficking interests, absolutely by design -- our languaging can only evolve and stabilize in the necessary ways through increased consistent caring social contact and relational integrity with others who are not experiencing the violence of our invisible intersections.
Some people are destabilized by our honest answers even when we take the greatest possible care in answering the question.
This may result in the person feeling uncomfortable interacting with us anymore after that.
It may also result in the person feeling the intensity of the experience we're communicating and then experiencing an overwhelming sense that they have to do something in order to discharge the intensity from their bodies -- which has often resulted in people taking action before they understood the context of what's happening to us. This can be especially dangerous, because everyone everywhere has been essentially miseducated and radically misled about what can help us in the situation we have been wedged into by trafficking influences.
Often, the talk of trafficking influences will cause someone to think that they will be in too much danger if they stay in conversation with us at all -- which is usually not actually the case.
Often, those who really care about us when they ask that question end up worrying continuously without knowing how to connect themselves with the educational resources we're offering -- and indeed, often it has been very difficult for us to provide enough support to a person who asks so that they could really come to understand better. Often this is because the person asking has their own levels of severity that also interrupt our ability to connect more consistently so that they can learn the context of our intersections.
And yet, with someone who is experiencing their own invisible severity who asks this question, we are aware that they need to know what we know. And usually we feel that it's crucial to help them understand -- so that they can avoid the worsening and compounding of their own most challenging experiences.
People who ask us this question are usually not aware of how their own circumstances can compound if they do not have the support of an attuned, aware community body.
When we are aware of this, we want to offer every possible support to increase consistency of social contact and relational integrity so that we can all of us help one another better.
5
Because of the challenging nature of all these elements, many people feel forced to the conclusion that we must be lying to manipulate them, or that we are incapable of communicating accurately or honestly, when we tell them the truth about what we're experiencing.
As you can begin to see from how much we already had to sort-of "lie" with our signals-of-ease in order to be in contact with other people… and how much work we have to do to find a way to engage honorably without outright lying or misleading in our answers to others… it is especially, complexly painful and traumatic to still be called a liar or manipulator by many people anyway.
People who communicate with survivors the desire to be supportive to them, learn from their experiences, take seriously what they share, and collaborate for solutions in the ways that are possible help significantly to repair the trauma caused by how we have been positioned in society as people who lie for lack of care for others.
What does Intuitive infrastructure do that helps to solve these challenging problems?
1
By spending time building gentle, supportive, gradual relationships in the spaces we facilitate in the Intuitive network, people can learn about these intersections at a pace that is right for them.
Rather than being intensively confronted, they can interact with us in a way that builds their own strength and relational integrity with people who speak our kinds of languages from our kinds of lived experiences.
This is a very effective and productive kind of learning modality, for which private and public media network resources are required.
(This is why private and public media network resources have previously been entirely prevented for survivors experiencing our intersections, and why we are very mindful about how we build it in order to protect our efforts.)
2
When we prioritize connecting one another with media privilege for private and public communications, including family communications, emergency communications, and professional platform communications, we are using tool sets that establish much expanded social context to assist all in proximity to more easily absorb more about the real situations everyone is navigating.
3
When we practice relational integrity with one another in ways that increase our understanding of one another's languages and make it easier to understand the context of one another's challenges, we all become inherently more aware of and protected from the trafficking influences affecting all of us across the board.
Identifying incremental solutions becomes much easier as we practice together.
4
Ensuring that severely disabled survivors of sex trafficking and related invisible violence are able to make themselves available and accessible to others who want to learn from them makes their lived experiences part of the knowledge and resourcing of the community body.
This radically increases the resilience of that community body, which otherwise is missing significant parts of its strength, wisdom, and vitality.
5
Co-creating and uplifting artful modalities, creative expressions, meaningful dialogue, and vocational vitality where severely affected trafficking survivors are fully included brings a tremendous amount of otherwise erased healing functions and natural pleomorphisms into the community body who is participating.
This is free energy through relational integrity -- without it, communities just don't know why they are experiencing such hardship, confusion, and suffering.
But when these collective tool sets and infrastructures are implemented, strengthened, and celebrated, all processes and resources of the community body benefit profoundly.
Tune in for more: intuitivepublicradio.substack.com
Mack, signing off.
Are you safe? Are you okay?