How Do I Decolonize Love and Redefine It as a Liberatory Act?
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Dear Liberators,
Valentine’s Day often arrives wrapped in the commodified version of love, packaged neatly with roses, chocolates, and social media posts showcasing grand romantic gestures. But for many of us, especially those navigating healing and liberation, this day can highlight a sense of disconnection—from self, from others, or from the type of love that goes beyond fleeting gestures. Supremacy culture plays a large role in this disconnection. It teaches us that love is transactional, hierarchical, and conditional. Capitalism tells us that love is something to be proven through material offerings. Patriarchy tells us that love means sacrifice—particularly the sacrifice of women, femmes, and marginalized genders.
But love, in its purest form, is not about dominance, ownership, or performance. It is about liberation. Audre Lorde reminded us that love is an act of political resistance. When practiced through a liberatory lens, love nurtures, heals, restores, and reclaims. It disrupts systems of power by valuing mutual care over control, reciprocity over exploitation, and authenticity over conformity.
Decolonizing love requires us to unlearn the stories of love that were handed to us by systems of oppression. It asks us to redefine love as something that isn’t earned but given freely, and to see acts of love as acts of freedom. This week, we’ll reflect on how to decolonize love in its many forms—self-love, romantic love, platonic love, and communal love—and explore how to practice it as a liberatory act.
The Stories Supremacy Culture Tells Us About Love
To begin decolonizing love, we need to name the harmful narratives that have shaped our understanding of it. Supremacy culture, particularly through capitalism and patriarchy, reinforces love as a tool for control, ownership, and exploitation. Here are some common stories we must unlearn:
Patriarchy Says: Love requires self-sacrifice. To be worthy of love, you must give without limits. For women and femmes, this often means overextending ourselves emotionally, physically, and mentally.
Capitalism Says: Love is transactional. The more you give, the more you “deserve” to receive. For men and masculine-presenting individuals, this narrative often dictates that love is tied to their ability to provide. If they are financially struggling or unable to fulfill the role of “provider,” they are deemed unworthy of affection and care.
White Supremacy Says: Some bodies are more deserving of love than others. Eurocentric beauty standards, ableism, and fatphobia dictate who is deemed “lovable.” This exclusion creates internalized beliefs that love is inaccessible for certain groups.
Heteronormativity Says: Love is limited to specific forms—typically monogamous, heterosexual, and nuclear family models. This erasure of queer, polyamorous, and chosen family structures dismisses the diverse ways love can exist.
These narratives work together to disconnect us from love as a practice of liberation. When we decolonize love, we challenge these myths and reclaim its potential to heal and sustain us beyond the boundaries of oppressive systems.