Author: Vincent Mousseau

  • The Wrong Kind of Grief

    The Wrong Kind of Grief

    Who’s Allowed to Mourn in Public—and Who’s Not

    It was quiet at first. Just a few of us lying on the cold concrete outside of McGill University. Keffiyehs folded. Bodies arranged—not for spectacle, but for mourning.
    The die-in wasn’t meant to go viral. It was meant to say what the system refuses to name:
    Gaza is being erased.
    And health workers know what genocide looks like.

    I remember the weight of my own breath as I lay there.
    Not heavy. Not performative. Just present.

    Someone walked by and snapped a photo without asking. Another didn’t stop at all.
    When we stood up, nothing had changed. Not on the street. Not in the news.
    But something had settled in my chest. Something that hasn’t left.

    Because we weren’t only laying our bodies down for Gaza.
    We were laying down with the knowledge that our grief is never allowed to be grief.

    Not when it’s Black.
    Not when it’s queer.
    Not when it’s tied to Palestine, or trans lives, or state violence.

    That kind of grief doesn’t get candles.
    It gets cops.
    It doesn’t get statements.
    It gets silence.
    And sometimes, if we’re not careful, it gets turned inward—
    Treated like something to suppress. Something to explain away.
    Too emotional. Too disruptive.
    The wrong kind of grief.

    Black Grief as Threat

    Black grief has never been read as grief.
    It’s read as aggression.
    As instability.
    As a problem to manage.

    A vigil for a Black life becomes a police incident.
    A protest gets framed as a riot.
    A mother weeps on camera, and the story pivots to property damage.

    This isn’t new.
    But that doesn’t make it any less violent.

    Even in so-called progressive spaces—health orgs, queer collectives, activist networks—there are unwritten rules:
    Don’t cry too hard.
    Don’t speak too plainly.
    Don’t say something that makes people uncomfortable.

    I’ve been in those rooms.
    Told I was “too emotional” for naming what hurt.
    Asked to “come back when calmer” as if grief needed to be reasonable to be real.

    But Black grief doesn’t belong to institutions.
    It doesn’t need to be tidy.
    It doesn’t need to be polite.
    It shows up where it’s needed:
    In kitchens. In bathrooms. In the street. In the quiet moment after the meeting ends.

    And maybe that’s what makes it dangerous.
    That we still feel.
    That we still care.
    That we refuse to forget.

    Because in a world trying to erase us, grieving is a form of resistance.

    Palestinian Grief and the Politics of Denial

    If Black grief is read as a threat, Palestinian grief is denied altogether.
    Or worse—criminalized.

    In recent months, we’ve watched mourning itself become a battleground.
    Vigils banned.
    Flags confiscated.
    Photos of murdered children labeled “too political.”
    The dead rendered offensive.
    The living forbidden to name them.

    The message is clear:
    You can grieve, but not like that.
    Not too visibly.
    Not too loudly.
    Not in a way that disrupts the narrative.

    The same governments funding the bombs demand silence about the bodies.

    But Palestinian grief refuses to stay quiet.
    It pours into streets, onto murals, through chants.
    It insists on being seen—even when the world tries to look away.

    And that insistence resonates.
    Because for many of us—Black, queer, displaced—it feels familiar.
    We know what it means to mourn in public and be told it’s too much.
    We know what it means to be asked to tone it down, make it palatable, put it away.

    Still, we mourn.
    Together.
    In public.
    Without apology.

    Queer Mourning and Rituals of Refusal

    Queer people have always built our own ways to mourn.
    No one gave us space.
    So we carved it out ourselves.

    In clubs. In alleyways. In bedrooms and chat threads.
    We’ve lit candles in parking lots.
    Laid flowers on steps where no police ever came.
    Held vigils that no news crew covered.
    Carried names no one else bothered to say.

    This is part of our lineage:
    ACT UP die-ins.
    Ashes delivered to government steps.
    Protests that doubled as funerals.
    Grief that refused to be silent.

    That legacy is still with us.
    Every time a trans name is whispered online because no outlet printed it.
    Every time someone cries in a bathroom after reading a headline and someone else holds them.

    Queer mourning doesn’t always look like mourning.
    Sometimes it’s awkward.
    Sometimes it’s loud.
    Sometimes it’s just showing up.

    But it’s always a refusal.
    A refusal to grieve quietly.
    A refusal to perform respectability.
    A refusal to act like this world hasn’t taken too much from us.

    This grief is a kind of care.
    Not the kind taught in workshops.
    The kind that says:
    “I see you. I’ll carry this with you. Even if no one else will.”

    Grief That Doesn’t Fit

    I’ve been in spaces where I knew I wasn’t allowed to grieve.
    Not really.
    I could speak, maybe. But not feel too much.
    Not shake the frame.
    Not say something that might get labeled “too intense.”

    Sometimes, the silencing is subtle.
    Someone avoids eye contact.
    A conversation gets politely redirected.
    A room falls quiet—not in respect, but discomfort.

    I remember being told I was ben énervé for naming the violence of Black bodies on slides, with no disaggregated data, no context, no care.
    Just images.
    Just performance.

    I wasn’t angry.
    I was grieving.
    Grieving the way our lives get reduced to symbols.
    Grieving the absence of real recognition.
    Even that was too much.

    Most of us learn to shrink our grief until it fits.
    Until it sounds strategic.
    Until it’s digestible.

    And when it doesn’t shrink, we’re called unstable.
    Disruptive.
    Unprofessional.

    But grief isn’t supposed to make people comfortable.
    It isn’t a moment.
    It’s a condition.

    It lingers in the breath, in the body, in the way your shoulders won’t release even when the meeting ends.

    Some days, I carry it like fog.
    Some days, like glass.
    Some days, it doesn’t arrive until I’ve taken off the mask and closed the door behind me.

    But I no longer apologize for it.
    Because I’ve learned something simple:
    Grief is proof that something hasn’t been taken from me.
    Not yet.

    Toward Abolitionist Mourning

    We need to stop pretending grief only matters when it’s quiet, clean, or backed by institutions.

    We need to stop asking the systems that harm us to validate the losses they cause.

    Abolitionist mourning doesn’t wait for permission.
    It doesn’t ask for policy.
    It doesn’t make pain legible to power.

    It mourns on its own terms—messy, collective, unsanctioned.
    It stays with what hurts.
    It lets the wound speak.

    We’ve always known how to do this.

    Black and Indigenous people have mourned in ways the state can’t hold.
    Palestinians have carried memory through exile and massacre.
    Trans people create rituals that no church would sanctify.

    We don’t need more professionalization of pain.
    We need more space for its truth.
    More honesty.
    More refusal.

    Because grief is not what breaks us.
    What breaks us is having nowhere to put it.
    And what repairs us—if anything does—
    is knowing we don’t have to carry it alone.

    We’re Still Mourning

    We don’t need the state’s recognition to make our grief real.
    We don’t need institutions to validate what our bodies already know.
    Our mourning isn’t excessive.
    It isn’t disruptive.
    It isn’t unprofessional.

    It’s memory.
    It’s survival.
    It’s care.

    And it’s not going anywhere.

    If the world refuses to hold our grief,
    then we will keep finding other ways to carry it.
    We will light candles where they say we can’t.
    We will chant the names they refuse to speak.
    We will gather in the cracks and hold each other there.

    Our grief isn’t the problem.
    The problem is a world that only makes space for it once we’re gone.

    We’re still here.
    We’re still mourning.
    And we’re not asking for permission.

    Fediverse Reactions
  • What Whiteness Mourns When a Plantation Burns

    What Whiteness Mourns When a Plantation Burns

    When the Nottoway Plantation burned down, it wasn’t just a building that went up in flames—it was a monument to white fantasy. And in the ashes, what surfaced was telling: white grief, not for the enslaved, but for the venue. For the photo ops. For the imagined innocence of a land that was never innocent.

    Comment sections filled quickly. We had our wedding there. Our anniversary photos were so beautiful. I can’t believe this piece of history is gone.

    But which history? And whose grief?

    What I witnessed wasn’t mourning. It was a performance. A familiar one. A white grief that isn’t about loss—it’s about possession.

    The Plantation as Fantasy

    There is nothing neutral about getting married on a plantation. When you choose that backdrop for your love story, you are choosing to centre aesthetics over atrocity. You are choosing nostalgia over memory. You are choosing the soft light of the golden hour over the screams that once filled those fields.

    A plantation wedding doesn’t just ignore history—it repurposes it. It turns a deathscape into décor. And when that fantasy is taken away, even by something as natural as fire, the outrage that follows is not about heritage. It’s about the loss of comfort. The loss of an illusion.

    White Grief and Anti-Black Sociality

    This grief isn’t misplaced. It’s foundational. As an Afropessimist, I understand it as part of a social structure that requires Black death to affirm white life. The plantation is not grieved because of what it represents—it is grieved despite what it represents. Or rather, because its representation has always excluded the dead.

    In this structure, Black suffering is not just ignored—it is rendered background noise. It is the scenery. The atmosphere. The soft echo behind the vows.

    And when the scenery burns, grief floods in—not for the lives lost on that land, but for the loss of a setting in which white fantasies felt uninterrupted.

    What I’ve Learned from Grief

    As a social worker, I spend much of my life witnessing grief. I know its forms—raw, raging, quiet, complex. And I’ve learned to listen not just to what grief says, but to what it silences. To who it centres. To who it allows to be remembered.

    The grief I saw after the Nottoway fire was not about mourning. It was about control. Control over the narrative. Over space. Over who gets to feel what, and when.

    It was, in many ways, a refusal to grieve what should have been mourned centuries ago.

    The Fire Was Not the Tragedy

    The real tragedy is not that Nottoway burned.

    The tragedy is that it stood for so long. That it was never turned into a memorial, a site of mourning, a place to honour the enslaved. That it became a hotel, a wedding venue, a tourist destination. That it welcomed guests in linen suits and lace dresses but never acknowledged the lives it extinguished.

    And the real tragedy is that so many people still believe it’s the fire that ruined it.

    Refusal as Mourning

    I didn’t mourn the plantation. I won’t.

    What I mourn is every Black child buried without a name. Every resistance that went unrecorded. Every descendant asked to forget. Every ghost made to smile for a photo.

    I mourn what whiteness refuses to see. What it refuses to carry. What it refuses to let go.

    But a plantation is not a loss.

    Its burning is a reckoning.

  • Independence Fantasies, Colonial Truths

    Independence Fantasies, Colonial Truths

    Alberta wants to leave. Again. And this time, it’s louder than usual.

    Calls for Western separatism—what some are now trying to brand as a serious referendum campaign—are gaining traction. Politicians are testing the waters. The Premier hasn’t ruled it out. And, predictably, they’re invoking Quebec’s sovereignty movements as a model.

    But let me be clear from the outset: I’m not defending Canada. I’m not clinging to the federation. I don’t believe states are worth saving—not this one, not any of them. I’m not interested in sovereignty narratives that just redraw the same borders with different colours. I’m an abolitionist. And as a Black queer person raised in Quebec, I know firsthand how nation-building is so often just empire with better PR.

    That’s exactly why Alberta’s separatist posturing doesn’t read as radical to me. It reads as settler revanchism—masked in the language of resistance.

    Yes, Quebec’s independence movements have been violent, colonial, anti-Black, and shot through with contradictions. But they emerged from something real: a distinct cultural, linguistic, and historical formation shaped by centuries of attempted assimilation. That doesn’t absolve them. But it contextualizes them.

    Alberta has no such context.

    There’s no endangered language. No collective memory of being colonized by the Canadian state. No suppressed literature or forbidden faith. What there is, is capital. Oil. Guns. White grievance. And an economy built on extraction and entitlement.

    What Alberta wants to separate from isn’t oppression—it’s accountability.

    This isn’t a fight for freedom. It’s a tantrum from a province that’s never been told no. A province that has long enjoyed disproportionate political power, federal subsidies, and a privileged place in the settler imagination. And now, as the climate crisis accelerates and global scrutiny mounts, Alberta doesn’t want to change. It wants to opt out.

    It’s not seeking liberation. It’s demanding exemption.

    And when Alberta reaches for Quebec as its excuse—as its supposed precedent—it exposes something deeper. It shows how shallow this separatism really is. Because for all of Quebec’s failings, there is a cultural infrastructure here: a language, a kinship system, a literature of struggle (even if that struggle has too often excluded Black and Indigenous people). Alberta has none of that. Just the myth of rugged individualism and the fantasy of permanent control.

    This is not decolonization. This is a colony refusing to share.

    Alberta separatism borrows the postures of liberation movements to double down on domination. It mimics the rhetoric of resistance while clinging to the very systems that are killing us. And that’s what makes it so dangerous: it masquerades as anti-state politics while defending everything the state was built to protect—white wealth, settler power, and the right to extract without consequence.

    As someone who has lived through Quebec’s nationalism and survived the Canadian state’s violences, I don’t mistake any of this for freedom. I’ve seen what nationhood does to those of us who don’t fit its image. I’ve watched how state-building chews up the very people it claims to uplift. I’ve learned that not all exits lead somewhere better.

    Abolition isn’t about preserving Canada. But it’s not about celebrating every departure from it, either. Especially not the ones led by those who already have everything and just want more.

    So no—I won’t romanticize Alberta’s separatist dreams. I won’t let them smuggle white supremacy into the conversation under the banner of autonomy. I won’t let them use Quebec as cover while erasing the very people Quebec has tried to silence.

    Alberta isn’t trying to escape oppression. It’s trying to protect it.

    And some of us are done pretending not to notice.

  • After the Election: No Victory, No Salvation, Only the Work Ahead

    After the Election: No Victory, No Salvation, Only the Work Ahead

    Yesterday’s election unfolded the way it always does in a decaying settler state: desperate, fragmented, unmoored from any real possibility of change.
    Mark Carney won a minority government.
    Not because he inspired anyone.
    Not because he offered a vision of something better.
    But because fear of collapse keeps people clinging to the wreckage.
    Carney’s victory is a victory for capital, for managed decline. He will govern not with transformation, but with technocratic violence, offering competence while administering crisis. He represents an empire trying to manage its own decay without ever questioning the structures that brought it to this point.

    The NDP, meanwhile, collapsed into near-irrelevance.
    Not by accident.
    They spent years softening their demands, trimming the edges off movements that once demanded real justice, chasing approval from the very systems that were built to contain and destroy them.
    By the time they realized who they had abandoned, it was too late.
    The base that built the NDP—racialized, working-class, Indigenous, disabled, queer communities—has already moved on.
    Many of us have stopped looking to electoral politics for salvation.
    We learned long ago that there is no ballot box for liberation.

    And then there’s Poilievre.
    His personal defeat is not a victory.
    He lost his seat but grew the Conservative base.
    He played with the fire of white rage, conspiracy, and open fascism, and those flames are not going out.
    They will find new leaders, more dangerous ones.
    The centre did not hold. It barely even tried.
    What we are seeing is not a reversal of right-wing momentum. It is its acceleration, even in the absence of the man who helped bring it to this point.

    Taken together, tonight’s results confirm what many of us already knew.
    Canada, as a project, is dying.
    Not with a rupture that could birth something new, but through a long, grinding erosion that tightens its violence while pretending to offer stability.
    There is no vision here. No future being built.
    Only a managed decline, administered by people too invested in the structures of extraction, policing, and dispossession to imagine anything different.

    For Black, Indigenous, racialized, queer, and trans communities, this election does not change the terrain.
    The state was never our protector.
    It was never ours to reclaim.
    There was never a version of this country where we were meant to survive with dignity.
    That’s not pessimism. It’s clarity.

    The task ahead is the same as it has always been.
    To build outside of the crumbling systems.
    To invest in abolitionist infrastructures: mutual aid, communal care, survival networks that are not dependent on the permission of the state.
    To protect each other when the safety nets fail, because they were never designed to catch us in the first place.
    To refuse despair, not because we are hopeful about the system, but because we are committed to each other beyond it.

    Carney’s victory is hollow.
    Poilievre’s downfall is dangerous in disguise.
    The NDP’s disappearance is a cautionary tale about what happens when you sell your soul for electoral respectability.

    But our survival has never depended on who wins elections.
    It has always depended on how fiercely we remember who we are to each other.
    How fiercely we build in the cracks they cannot seal.
    How boldly we refuse to accept the limits they place on what we can imagine.

    No ballot was going to save us last night.
    No parliament will save us today.
    Our future will not be built in the halls of power.
    It will be built in kitchens, basements, parks, community centres.
    It will be built in memory, in movement, in revolt, in care.

    No victory.
    No salvation.
    Only us.
    Only everything we still have to build, together.

  • When Institutions Demand Our Labour but Not Our Voices

    When Institutions Demand Our Labour but Not Our Voices

    There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from being invited into a space only to realize that your presence was the priority, not your voice. The expectation was that you would show up, fill the quota, sit on the panel, make the institution look good—without challenging its structure, without demanding more than what was already decided.

    I have been in these spaces too many times to count. I have watched institutions that claim to care about Black voices, queer voices, abolitionist voices drain the life out of people who enter them believing, against all odds, that they might be able to create change from within. Universities, funding bodies, social work organizations, community initiatives—they all know how to position themselves as inclusive. They know the language of equity and representation. They know how to craft the right optics. But when we speak, when we name the contradictions, when we refuse to be flattened into their diversity statements, they make it clear: our labour is welcome, but our voices are not.

    It is never just one moment. It is a pattern. A structure. A way that institutions operate to extract what they need from Black thinkers, activists, and community workers while maintaining control over the spaces they claim to open up for us.

    The Many Forms of Institutional Extraction

    In universities, it looks like being invited to speak on “diversity and inclusion” panels, but never being asked to lead research that critiques the institution itself. It looks like racialized scholars being pushed into unpaid emotional labour—mentoring students, chairing equity committees, doing the messy relational work of care—while white colleagues focus on their research without the added burden of proving their value. It looks like funders celebrating Black scholarship in their marketing materials but only financing projects that do not threaten their power.

    In social work and community organizations, it looks like Black and Indigenous practitioners being called on to educate white professionals on anti-racism while working within systems that refuse to meaningfully change. It looks like organizations that parade their commitment to decolonization, trauma-informed care, and community leadership, while maintaining the same hierarchical, settler-colonial structures that prevent Black and Indigenous workers from exercising real decision-making power. They want our knowledge, our cultural competency, our ability to reach the communities they claim to serve. But when we ask for autonomy, self-determination, or actual redistribution of power, they ghost.

    Even in ballroom and grassroots spaces, the pattern repeats itself. I have seen corporations, brands, and even queer organizations tokenize ballroom culture while offering nothing in return. They will sponsor a ball for optics but never fund the survival of the community. They will parade ballroom as a symbol of queer liberation, yet ignore the material conditions of Black queer and trans people beyond the performance. Major brands will put ballroom performers in ad campaigns, yet pay them a fraction of what they give white queer influencers. They will co-opt our language while refusing to invest in the spaces that sustain us. They want the spectacle, not the politics. They want the culture, not the care. They will use the language of “house” and “family,” but their investment stops the moment the cameras turn off.

    The Cost of Being Seen But Not Heard

    The cost of this is not just burnout, alienation, or frustration—though it is all of those things. It is the weight of being asked to perform expertise without being given the tools to enact it. It is being invited into a room only to realize that your presence is symbolic, not transformative. It is the slow realization that these institutions were never designed to hold us fully, only to extract what is useful before discarding the rest.

    This is how institutions make us question our own instincts—by making us believe that if we just advocate harder, just soften our words, just play the game a little longer, we might be able to shift something. But that shift never comes. Instead, we exhaust ourselves in a system that only rewards our presence when it is convenient, and punishes us when it is not.

    For a long time, I thought the answer was to demand more from these institutions—to advocate, to push back, to make them understand that inclusion without power is meaningless. But I have learned that institutions are not built to listen. They are built to extract. They are built to absorb critique without transformation. And so the question is not how we make them see us, but how we decide where to place our energy.

    Choosing Refusal Over Extraction

    Refusal is a skill. It is an act of survival. It is learning to recognize the spaces where our work will be extracted and discarded and choosing, instead, to build elsewhere. It is understanding that we are not bridges to institutional legitimacy—we are architects of something entirely different. It is naming the harm without softening it, without waiting for an invitation to be palatable. It is leaving the table when the meal was never meant to sustain us.

    I no longer waste my time trying to be heard in places that have already decided what they are willing to hear. Institutions will always seek our labour, but we get to decide where we give our energy. Our work belongs to us—not to the systems that refuse to listen.

  • The Weight of Absence: On Boundaries, Accountability, and the Politics of Disappearance

    The Weight of Absence: On Boundaries, Accountability, and the Politics of Disappearance

    There are moments when absence carries more weight than presence. When the space someone leaves behind doesn’t just signal distance, but a rupture. A confirmation of something you hadn’t yet said aloud. Not all harm is loud. Some betrayals unfold in silence. Sometimes, the deepest wounds are not from what was done, but from what was not.

    I have always believed that friendship is a site of responsibility. To love someone is to be present. To recognize that relationships require more than shared joy. They require care, reciprocity, and repair. That belief has sustained me, but I have seen how quickly care turns conditional. How easily people disappear when accountability enters the room. Some people are only available for ease, not for the work that love demands.

    This was not just one moment. It was not just one conversation. It was a pattern, a structure, a political reality that plays out in the intimate corners of our lives. I have seen how non-Black people, particularly those whose identities grant them proximity to whiteness, expect the safety of Black friendship without the responsibility of real care. They want the warmth. The way we hold space effortlessly. The way we know how to make people feel at home. But the moment we ask them to hold something heavy, they vanish.

    I used to think these disappearances were about me. That if I had softened my words, made my pain easier to hold, things would have turned out differently. But I know better now. This is what proximity to whiteness teaches—to evade, to deflect, to disappear rather than engage. It is a refusal to be seen as someone who can harm. A retreat into silence, into absence, into the ease of never having to reckon with what it means to be in real relationship with Black people.

    I named what had hurt me. I set a boundary. I said: this is where I end. Instead of sitting with discomfort, they called me rigid. Unforgiving. I have seen this before, and I refuse to let it shape what I build next. Black people are told we are too accommodating, too forgiving, too available. Yet, the moment we assert our limits, we become too harsh, too difficult, too unwilling to let things go. This contradiction is not accidental. It is structural. It is what happens when you are seen as something to be held for comfort, but never engaged with as an equal.

    And so they disappeared. Not with an apology. Not with an attempt to repair. They vanished in the way that people do when their presence was never meant to be sustained. A blocking, a shutting down, a refusal to sit with what had been broken. A settler-colonial logic of disposability, played out in friendship.

    I have seen it before. I have learned. People who cannot meet me in presence do not deserve my time. Moving forward, I am choosing relationships where care is not an afterthought, where presence is not conditional, and where accountability is not treated as a burden.

    Care without accountability is not care at all. It is convenience. And I refuse to make myself convenient.

  • Joy, Survival, and the Refusal to Be Broken

    Joy, Survival, and the Refusal to Be Broken

    Notes from a Night of Performance and Resistance

    As Saidiya Hartman reminds us, Black life moves through the tension of mourning and survival, a condition intensified for Black queer and trans people whose very existence challenges the terms of the social order. In a world structured by anti-Blackness, where exhaustion is manufactured and joy is framed as indulgence, Black pleasure is a radical act of refusal. It is a practice of world-building amid dispossession.

    This refusal, this reclamation, is what I found myself reflecting on last night at the Wiggle Room in Tiohtià:ke, where I attended a burlesque show wrapped in the language of tarot and transformation. The performances that unfolded were not simply acts of entertainment, but rituals—embodied acts of storytelling that spoke to the precarity and possibility of life under structures that seek to contain us.

    Each performance was shaped by the energy of a different tarot card, an invocation of mysticism woven into movement and presence. The night had been playful, filled with laughter and cheers, until Phoenix Inana took the stage. Unlike the other performances, theirs was not burlesque—it was performance art, and it demanded silence. A rupture in the rhythm of the night.

    Phoenix embodied The Devil, but through deliberate intervention, they transfigured the archetype—not as a warning of corruption, but as an opening toward self-possessed liberation. They wove The Devil into the figure of Lilith—a symbol of defiance, a body ungoverned, a refusal to be subdued. In dominant narratives, The Devil is a sign of excess, indulgence, a descent into desire. But in Phoenix’s hands, The Devil became something else entirely: an opening, a confrontation with the self, a refusal to abide by the moral logics that have long been used to discipline those cast as deviant. Their movement, measured and defiant, enacted what Mackey calls affective choreography—a performance that is not for spectacle but for insurgency, refusing the logics of discipline.

    As Hortense Spillers reminds us, the body under colonial and patriarchal orders is always already marked for discipline. To reclaim the figure of The Devil—through Lilith, through the rejected feminine—is to refuse the very foundations of that discipline. The room held its breath as Phoenix moved—deliberate, magnetic, speaking in a language beyond words. They did not perform for an audience; they conjured something larger, something uncontainable. A reckoning with desire, with shame, with the ways we have been taught to fear our own hunger for pleasure, for freedom, for more. In that moment, The Devil was not a force of corruption but of possibility—the permission to exist outside of the constraints imposed upon us.

    Before the performance began, I noticed a tarot card had been left on my seat—the Eight of Cups. I didn’t think much of it at first, but later that night, after stepping into the cool air outside the venue, I pulled out my phone and looked up its meaning. Departure. Choosing oneself. The aching, necessary act of walking away. The card’s imagery—cups abandoned, a figure moving forward—settled into my chest.

    It was a lesson I have met before. One that keeps finding me. To leave is not to retreat but to carve out the possibility of elsewhere—to refuse the exhaustion of extractive institutions and instead move toward Black queer possibility. In the afterlife of slavery, where Black life is both hyper-visible and disposable, departure is not just a metaphor—it is a method of survival. We leave institutions, relationships, even versions of ourselves, because survival demands movement.

    I carried that message with me as I lingered after the show, laughing, exhaling, held in the kind of embrace that only chosen family provides. The space between us—our breath, our joy, our indulgence in the moment—was a refusal. Not an escape, not a reprieve, but an insurgency. These nights are not outside of struggle; they exist in direct opposition to the anti-Black, capitalist systems that demand our exhaustion, our suffering, our depletion.

    These spaces of performance, of radical belonging, exist within a lineage of Black queer world-making. One of the most enduring examples of this is ballroom—a subcultural movement rooted in the survival of Black and Latinx queer and trans communities. Ballroom was born out of necessity, a direct response to anti-Black and anti-queer exclusion from white-dominated LGBTQ+ spaces in the mid-20th century. It became not just a venue for performance but a site of kinship, a world where categories of gender, beauty, and realness were reimagined on Black and brown terms.

    Ballroom operates as a Black queer counterpublic—an insurgent archive of survival, where kinship is built outside the logics of capitalist extraction, and where the aesthetics of gender, performance, and belonging are constantly being rewritten in real-time. While ballroom remains deeply rooted in Black and Latinx history, it has also grown into a space where others who have known displacement, resistance, and the urgency of chosen family can find belonging. As Godmother Phoenix Inana Sankofa LaBeija, she has taken up the role of mentor and guide, carrying forward the commitment to craft, care, and those who come after. Her position within ballroom is not just a title; it is an obligation—to those who seek space in a world that denies them room to breathe.

    The world grinds us down. It tells us that we must earn rest. It frames joy as frivolous. And yet, we choose otherwise. We gather. We celebrate. We insist upon ourselves.

    To persist is to resist, but to insist on joy is to demand livability—not as a concession, but as an act of abolitionist defiance, a refusal to let extraction be our only inheritance.

    The Eight of Cups is a departure, yes, but it is also a return—to self, to possibility, to the world we are making together. As I walked out of the Wiggle Room, my fingers still tracing the Eight of Cups in my pocket, I felt something shift within me. Sometimes, the universe delivers its messages in grand gestures. And sometimes, they arrive in a performance piece that demands silence. A tarot card left on a seat. A night spent in the presence of those who see you fully.

    And sometimes, those messages are simple but profound:

    Keep going.
    Keep choosing yourself.
    Keep finding joy.

    Because that, too, is resistance. That, too, is survival. And even when the world gives us nothing, we will make ourselves—together.

  • A Gesture of Hate

    A Gesture of Hate

    In the aftermath of Elon Musk’s unmistakable Nazi salutes at Donald Trump’s inauguration on 20 January 2025, much of the media coverage has predictably veered toward obfuscation, excuse-making, and, most disturbingly, a kind of ableist scapegoating. Instead of calling out the gesture for what it is—an unambiguous alignment with fascist symbolism—mainstream narratives have gone to great lengths to soften its implications. Some have even resorted to blaming Musk’s autism or Asperger’s diagnosis, a form of saneism that shifts focus from fascism to neurodivergence. This is a dangerous, disingenuous, and ableist deflection, and as a mental health professional, I’m here to say: stop blaming autism for white supremacy. 

    Saneism in the Defense of Fascism

    Saneism—the systemic discrimination against people deemed “mentally unfit”—has long been a tool of oppression, wielded to delegitimize, discredit, and silence. In this case, it’s being weaponized to absolve Musk of accountability. Media outlets and commentators alike have leaned into the narrative that Musk’s alleged neurodivergence might explain his behavior, as though autism or Asperger’s somehow predisposes someone to fascist gestures. 

    This is not only an absurd and unscientific claim but a profoundly harmful one. It reinforces the stigma that neurodivergent people are socially inept, dangerous, or incapable of understanding the implications of their actions. It erases the agency of neurodivergent people while simultaneously absolving powerful individuals of their complicity in oppressive systems. 

    Let’s be clear: Autism is not a precursor to fascism. Fascism is learned. It is deliberate. It is a choice made by people in positions of power who understand exactly what they are doing. To conflate neurodivergence with hate is to perpetuate ableism on a massive scale, distracting from the real issue: the normalization of fascist ideology in our society. 

    The Media’s Role in Normalizing Hate

    The media’s handling of Musk’s gesture reflects a broader pattern of reluctance to call out fascism for what it is, especially when it comes dressed in wealth, influence, and tech-world allure. Instead of interrogating the deeper implications of Musk’s actions, outlets have chosen to debate his intentions, contextualize the moment as a misunderstanding, or—most egregiously—blame his neurodivergence. 

    This avoidance is more than cowardice; it’s complicity. By deflecting attention from the explicitly fascist nature of the gesture, the media allows it to be rebranded as harmless, ironic, or accidental. This creates fertile ground for fascism to grow, unchecked and unchallenged, under the guise of plausibly deniable “jokes” or misunderstandings. And by dragging autism into the narrative, it compounds the harm, further marginalizing neurodivergent communities in the process. 

    Why This Matters: The Path from Symbols to Systems

    As a mental health professional, I work with clients who are intimately familiar with the toll of ableism, racism, and systemic oppression. Many of them are neurodivergent, many of them are Black, and all of them live under the weight of a society that demands they justify their existence while figures like Musk are given free passes to perpetuate harm. This moment is a microcosm of how hate operates—not in overt, glaring announcements, but in subtle, insidious gestures that the powerful dismiss while marginalized communities suffer the consequences.  

    Symbols matter. They carry weight. When someone as visible as Musk performs a Nazi salute, whether ironically or not, it signals alignment with systems of white supremacy. The fact that this act is being minimized or dismissed outright is not an accident; it is part of the slow normalization of fascism in mainstream culture. And by blaming autism, the media doubles down on the harm, turning attention away from systemic hate and toward an already marginalized group. 

    A Call to Action

    We cannot let this slide. We cannot let Musk or his defenders hide behind ambiguity, ableism, or irony. We must call this out for what it is: a deliberate act of fascist signaling, made more dangerous by the media’s refusal to engage with its implications. 

    If we allow saneism and ableism to dictate this narrative, we betray not only neurodivergent communities but all those targeted by the systems of hate Musk’s gesture reinforces. As someone who works every day to support mental health and challenge oppression, I know how deeply these narratives harm. And I refuse to let them go unchallenged. 

    To the media: Stop blaming autism for fascism. To the public: Hold Musk accountable. To all of us: Resist the normalization of hate, in every form it takes. This is not a misunderstanding. It is a wake-up call. And we cannot afford to hit snooze. 

  • Urgent Call for Dalhousie to Divest from Companies Complicit in Israeli Occupation

    Urgent Call for Dalhousie to Divest from Companies Complicit in Israeli Occupation

    Dear Members of the Dalhousie University Board of Governors,

    As a current doctoral student at Dalhousie University, I feel compelled to speak out on an issue that goes to the very heart of our shared values as an academic institution. The university’s investments in companies complicit in the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine contradict its commitments to equity, justice, and human dignity. This is not just a financial matter—it is a moral crisis. Dalhousie’s continued financial ties to these companies make it complicit in ongoing violence that the United Nations has clearly identified as having genocidal intent.

    The recent report  by UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese provides chilling details about the systematic destruction of Palestinian life in Gaza. The report describes the forced displacement, mass killings, and deliberate targeting of civilians as actions that amount to genocide. This is not a distant issue; it is one that our university directly engages with through its investments in companies that profit from illegal settlements, home demolitions, and militarized violence. These financial choices have real, devastating consequences for millions of Palestinians.

    Dalhousie’s history shows us what happens when institutions prioritize profit over people. The Lord Dalhousie Panel Report laid bare the university’s deep entanglements with anti-Black racism, slavery, and colonial exploitation. While efforts have been made to address that legacy, the university’s investments in companies enabling the destruction of Palestine perpetuate the same systems of violence. These decisions undermine everything Dalhousie claims to stand for.

    As a student at this university, I had felt proud to be part of a community that values equity and reconciliation. But those values must be reflected in our actions, and over the three years I have spent at Dal to date, what I have seen is a lot of lip service to equity and social justice without doing the very difficult work needed to actively undermine the legitimacy of the systems that reinforce oppression. Let me be clear: investing in companies complicit in genocide is antithetical to everything our community profess to believe. We cannot look away while lives are being destroyed, communities erased, and an entire people subjected to state-organized oppression. Neutrality in the face of such violence is complicity.

    My work as a scholar focuses on how systemic violence fractures communities, identities, and lives. I know deeply how interconnected these struggles are. The settler-colonial violence Palestinians and Lebanese populations face today is not unlike the legacies of anti-Blackness and Indigenous dispossession that continue to shape Canada and Nova Scotia. These systems of oppression are linked, and our response to one reflects our commitments to all.

    Dalhousie has an opportunity to lead—not with words, but with action. Divestment is not a radical demand; it is a necessary step toward aligning the university’s financial practices with its values. By divesting, Dalhousie can affirm its commitment to justice and human dignity, standing in solidarity with those resisting systemic violence. This is not just about Palestine—it is about Dalhousie’s role in shaping a more just world.

    I urge you to act now. Divest from all companies complicit in the illegal Israeli occupation. To delay is to allow our resources to continue funding violence and destruction. The choice before you is clear: to perpetuate harm or to stand on the side of justice.

    This is a defining moment for our university. Let Dalhousie be remembered as an institution that chose accountability and courage in the face of genocide. Let it be a leader in the fight for equity, dignity, and human rights.

    In solidarity,

    Vincent Mousseau, MSc RSW
    PhD Student
    Faculty of Health, Dalhousie University