Red Love Monday: Underground Notes

What  Based on the novel by Russian Revolutionary Alexandra Kollontai, Red Love Monday is a rallying point for leftie couples from all over to propagate their love-at-first-sight-moment-at-a-hunger-strike (or wherever political action takes place), while re-affirming their commitment to bring down the Man.

Why  Because activists aren’t all mercenary die-hard ideologues. Most, if not all, are romantic softies with big hearts armed with sexy quirks and quibbles. The world must take note of this.

When  Mondays.  Sometime in morning, Pacific Standard Time.

Who You! The lovely Political Commissars (or if you know of any lovely Political Commissar couples).

How  Contact me through my blog and I’ll supply you with instruction. On the subject header, please write Red Love Monday.

A few more notes....

Red Love Monday is NOT a dating site/subsection of this blog. I see no further reason to elaborate;

I am NOT running a backroom operation or ponzi scheme of any kind;

As previously posted, I will NOT be asking what your favourite dirty martini is, what type of lingerie you wear (or not wear), or your favourite sex position. I am not interested in skanky pictures and lewd comments will not be accepted;

Since Red Love Monday is about leftie couples, both parties must be involved in leftie politics. I also have to feature both parties in the profile. It’s all about dissident couplehood.

Interested? Contact me!

Props to me, thank you Craigslist

A few days ago I posted a call out on Craigslist for political love stories and here's what some guy (or girl, the voice seems genderless) posted in the politics communities section:

re: political love - whatthef**k????
Date: 2009-09-12, 11:14AM

Char, ... you're a comedienne, right? - cuz your blog is the funniest stuff I've read in a long time. HEY LADEEEEE. you're obviously a smart broad but like uh, are you actually expecting to find a good man from all the slobs that make up the so called "activist" community??? I can see why you would think it would be a good idea for any would be suitor to bone-up (no pun intended) with a solid dissertation on the dialectal comparative dichotomy of Sex-Love (the good kind if your a man) and Class-Love (the Kathy Bates kind that's sure to resonate with all the dickless wonders on the political left). YOU GO GIRL!

(this is so far the most interesting comment, but not what I'm looking for. Sooooo, if you know of any activist couples who want their stories told send them my way!)

I want your political love stories

I'm looking to profile activist couples every Monday starting October-ish. If you and your partner are, or if you know of any couples who're smashing imperalism, drop me a line and I'll send the info your way.

This is the working-class version of the "bachelor of the week" or "bachelorette of the week" WITHOUT the skanky pictures and booty-call debauchery. I will NOT be asking if you're a boxer or brief girl or what your favourite sex position is (well, maybe off the record).

Somethin' new!

Welcome to Dating Politics! For those following my other blog, Under Construction (subject to change), don't worry, I'm still posting (although I haven't been lately) stuff on it--I just wanted to give Dating Politics, a look at love, dating and politics its own platform. Aside from regularly posting, I'll be featuring activist couples every week.

More next time!

Conference Etiquette

It’s a known secret among the left that conferences are the mating safaris for activists and social dissidents. Building solidarity is to militants as feathers are to peacocks. But similar world-views and the forte to chant “the people united will never be defeated” in 62 languages doesn’t necessarily produce class love. So if you’re one of the many male activists—from idealistic neophytes to veteran card-carrying comrades-- to have mobilized a dozen or more activist women to march away from your love cause, read carefully the following points—conferences are always in season!

1. Be on time. Unless to you were a) held up at the border/airport by immigration officials; b) boarding the plane this very second because you were on stand-by for a cheaper flight; or c) fulfilling conference-related tasks (shuttling delegates, photocopying, collating info packages, painting banners for the post-conference rally), there’s no excuse for being late. Tardiness reflects your priorities (or lack of), ideological strength (or weakness), respect (or disrespect) for the conference and its organizers, the majority being women. And if that doesn’t help, consider this: we’re serving the people, trying to change the world—and you’re late?


2. Don’t throw your weight around. Be the ultimate featherweight conference champ; don’t campaign your presence like a desperate GOP half-wit (especially if you were late and missed the plenary session). This rule applies to the following:

• Don’t boast how long you’ve been a leftie, how many meetings you’ve chaired, how many times you’ve been arrested, your longest hunger strike, how many whales you’ve saved, how much blood you’ve donated. Your actions are noble, but not original. Whatever you’ve done for humanity, a million other activists did it long before you signed your first petition. Don’t take it personally, it’s part of the left territory;
• Don’t brag about how many or what books you’ve read. This is a dead giveaway that you’ve read very little, or worse, that you’ve not understood anything you’ve read. It also assumes that you’re all theory and no practice, the latter generally more favoured with activist women who are keen on applying sex love methods in the context of class love relations;
• During solidarity night, recite ONE poem, or sing ONE song, or do ONE dance. You’ve blessed the mic; tour-jetted across the marley floor; you’re talented; we get it. Now raise your fist on behalf of international solidarity and immediately exit stage left. Short and tight performances will arouse activist women. It’s about leaving them wanting more.

3. Stay in the kitchen. Wash, rinse, dry and put the plates away. Repeat process after every meal for the entire conference. You see, activist men who volunteer for kitchen duty are consciously liberating themselves from the old-school patriarchal values they’ve inherited. They’re more attractive than the posers who sit around armchair-revolutionizing/intellectualizing everything. This goes for the mactivists fronting the “Men of Quality Respect Women’s Equality” t-shirts who show up late but tear ass to party--leaving the clean-up/set-up/washing up to the fairer sex. The best thing about kitchen duty? You’re with women.

4. Zip your lip. Fidel Castro holds the record for the longest speech running at 7 hours and 10 minutes. Of all his revolutionary accomplishments, don’t emulate this one. As Chairman Mao noted: “Talks, speeches, articles and resolutions should all be concise and to the point…[and] should not go on too long.” So get off your soap-box, wipe the mic of your spit and learn to finesse your opinions. Remember, it’s all about leaving them wanting more.

Sex Love vs. Class Love

Or bourgeois love vs. proletarian love. Or decadent love vs. activist love. Or idealist love vs. materialist love. Any way which way you call it, activists have their own culture, their own language, their own concept of love and how to express it. Here’s a general run-down about the love-ways of activists (class love) in comparison to society’s general attitude towards love (sex love).

Your relationship philosophy is

Sex Love: Metaphysical Hedonism, “Serve me me me me me!”

Class Love: Dialectical Materialism, “Serve the people!”

You met

Sex Love: At a party, in a club, in a bar, online.

Class Love: At a rally, at a conference, in prison, at a picket line.

Your weekends are spent

Sex Love: At a party, in a club, in a bar, at the movies.

Class Love: In meetings, at rallies, at a conference, at a hunger strike.

You resolve arguments by

Sex Love:
Her: Cutting back on shopping, gossiping, and nagging;

Him: Cutting back on sports night with buddies and being more attentive.

(This is after volatile screaming whereby one of you stormed out to “cool off”, got drunk, crawled back home with your tail between your legs and woke up miserable and shit-faced. Your other half smirked I-told-you-so all morning.)

Class Love:
Her: Reaffirming revolutionary proletarian principles and expelling petty bourgeois tendencies;

Him: Reaffirming revolutionary proletarian principles and expelling erroneous patriarchal thinking and sexist tendencies.

(This is after an intensive criticism/self-criticism process where both of you identified the internal and external contradictions of the conflict thus establishing a higher state of unity and a stronger relationship.)

At your wedding, you marched down the aisle to

Sex Love: “Bridal Chorus” by Richard Wagner.

Class Love: “The International” by workers of the world.
(Alright, words by Eugène Pottier and music by Pierre Degeyter-- but the song really does belong to the workers on the principle that workers own nothing and share everything.)

Your wedding vows consisted of

Sex Love: “To love, honour and cherish until death do us part.”

Class Love: “To love and honour you as I love and honour the people, serving them as equal comrades side by side on the long and glorious march to freedom.”


You spent your honeymoon in

Sex Love: Hawaii, Mexico, Jamaica, the South of France, at a party, in a club, in a bar, on the beach.

Class Love: The Middle East, Asia, Africa, at a Human Rights Tribunal, in a refugee camp, at an anti-imperialist gathering, in an international fact-finding mission.

You name your children

Sex Love: Emma/Sophia/Olivia; Aidan/Ethan/Jacob
(Canada’s top baby names for 2007 according to Babycentre.ca)

Class Love: Rosa (as in Luxemburg) / Clara (as in Zetkin) / Gabriela (as in Silang); Karl (as in Marx) / Salvador (as in Allende) / Andres (as in Bonifacio)
(The children upholding mom’s name as their last name, of course.)

For anniversary gifts you give

Sex Love: Silver, paper, China, jewelry

Class Love: Each other, nothing more, nothing less. Or, the latest version (or rare first edition) of the Communist Manifesto, matching political T-shirts, organic hand-woven jewelry, Pablo Neruda’s collection of political poetry.

And finally, He/She is the love of your life because

Sex Love: He/She wants to give you the world.

Class Love: He/She wants to save the world.

Pt. 2

You rallied passionately for her attention, and even employed protracted guerilla war-fare tactics. But in all honesty, you charmed the fist-wielding activist woman simply by knowing that whoever authored What is to be Done? did not write Working class Hero. You succeeded one battle; on to the next one soldier because dating a political Alpha-female requires that extra effort. To maintain your morale through the long march, review the previous tips and study, analyze and practice this latest post:

1. The evening is going well. You’re executing brilliant ripostes to her sharp counterstrokes in the Beauvoir/Sartre style and have reached a mutual understanding of inflating heart rates--so why ruin it by cheaping out on the date? True, the activist woman is financially self-sufficient, but if you did all the methodic wooing, then splitting the bill (she’ll insist on paying her half anyway) or covering the entire tab are your only options. It’s not about a class thing; it’s about doing the classy thing.

2. Do not divulge your fancies of Middle-Class suburban life. This will not impress the activist woman. To her, the patriarchal nuclear family is a crusty Neolithic construct and she will laugh at you. Or vomit. Her reaction will depend entirely on her sense of humour or gag reflex, so shush about the mini-van and soccer tournaments. Please get real about this, not all women are vying to be a desperate housewife.

3. Ditto about the 2.5 kids. “Romantically” imposing on the activist woman the karmic virtues of motherhood is arrogantly presumptuous and embarrassing—for you. Yes, she believes children are the future, we have to teach them well and let them lead the way (insert chorus here), but for the activist woman, motherhood is a choice, not a “natural calling”. The activist woman does not aspire to be someone’s baby mama, does not yield to her biology and to her, Sigmund Freud is the Devil.

4. She’s liberated. Therefore, she does not practice her emancipation by liberalizing her legs like a bad economic foreign policy. She, and she alone has sole jurisdiction over her libido and knows how she wants it, when she wants it. She’s liberated. ‘Nuff said.

5. If, at the end of the night you’re just not that into her, tell her. Rejection can be a monumental ego-pulvarizer, but is not apocalyptical in comparison to the rapid glacial meltdown, African civil unrest or getting your face blown off by your BFF, like what that dick, Vice President Cheney did. She is a woman with perspective, and she will get over you.

As for you, liberate yourself. Be the modern man. Be responsible. Again, it’s all about the “are there any good men left?” thing.

Strategic War Plan

Eyeing that woman left of centre but lack the strategic war-plan to conquer the political love/lust battlefield? Trying to snag a fist-wielding sass is like trying to understand the divisions of the Canadian Senate--frustrating, but not impossible. Below are tips for the guys who can't decipher Lenin from Lennon but who rally passionately for the attention of the class-conscious activist woman:

1. She reads Bakunin and can map the architecture of the Khmer Rouge Party, but an activist woman is not a secret agent for terrorist cells or Rogue States. So no cracks about her so-called Molotov cocktail collection and stop looking for her supposed copy of the Anarchist Cookbook on her bookcase or underneath her bed. She is trying to save the world. Not blow it up.

2. The advantage of dating an activist woman is her total lack of interest in the technological advancement of fibrous hair gum and the latest texture of over-priced skinny jeans (no mall-talk or what you think of her hair!). This is of course, NOT an excuse to reject basic grooming and canning the pit stick. An activist woman frees animals, not date them.

3. Do not throw around political jargon if you are not familiar with the vernacular of the left. Assaulting her (or anyone) with heavy Marxist rhetoric and sermonizing your hate-on for the MAN who steals the fruits of your labour stinks of desperation and will guarantee a spot in her canon of worst dates ever.

4. She is a critical thinker and excels at dissecting societal follies but do not assume she is your willing audience for angry rants and groundless manifestoes (even if you are cozy with the vernacular of the left). She is your equal, not your disciple, so rid yourself of that Che Guevara-complex. Personality disillusionment is disturbing.

5. She may be able to wrangle the megaphone and lead a million-woman march; is quick with the come-backs and can dodge the paddy-wagon, but opening doors and sending flowers are turn-ons no boycott can live up to. Chivalry will make any woman blush, militant or not. It's all about the "are there any good men left?" thing.

*These may not actually work--in fact, you may end up crushed and defeated, but hey, all's (un)fair in love and politics.