I thought the problem was me. Now I think it was the model. On why so many of us feel like we’re failing at relationships

Thoughts on non-monogamy and how many of us grow up in a model that gives us no real map of how to love.

open.substack.com/pub/vdebarra...

#nonmonogamy #queerlove #polyamory

What the Manosphere Looks Like From the Outside A lesbian outsider’s view of loneliness, hierarchy and the strange emotional economy of the manosphere.

Watching the manosphere as a lesbian feels a bit like observing a culture organised around a currency you stopped using years ago.

#Manosphere #Feminism #Masculinity #LouisTheroux #GenderPolitics

open.substack.com/pub/vdebarra...

The Small Lies We Tell Straight People An essay about edited selves, complicated introductions and the weight of being read by the world.

Read my new substack piece: The Small Lies We Tell Straight People
open.substack.com/pub/vdebarra...

Val (@vdebarra) I’ve been putting a lot of things into my phone lately. Fragments, observations, errands beside moments that feel harder to name. I don’t always know what I’m recording when I write them down only tha...

substack.com/@vdebarra/no...

Val (@vdebarra) This was written in early January, when the year already felt as though it had ended and something else had begun. It came out of time spent in Achill with others, walking, swimming, talking, paying a...

This was written in early January, when the year already felt as though it had ended and something else had begun. It came out of time spent in Achill with others, walking, swimming, talking, paying attention. The piece is about care not as sentiment, but as condition.

substack.com/@vdebarra/no...

The Grave as an Unresolved Narrative Visiting the grave of a woman the world could not hold.

I went to visit Sylvia Plath's grave yesterday in the pouring rain.
open.substack.com/pub/vdebarra...

#sylviaplath #death #lgbt

Excavation How to grow roots over an ocean

open.substack.com/pub/vdebarra...

When the Line Is a Curve Something is ending.

What happens when a stranger’s voice knows your shape better than you do?

open.substack.com/pub/vdebarra...

Queer Pilgrimage Ruins, art, and the architecture of queer survival.

I went to Rome, I had some thoughts.
open.substack.com/pub/vdebarra...

Inventory You don’t light the candle

A poem about withholding softness, even from yourself.

open.substack.com/pub/vdebarra...

We Raised Each Other What queer friendship builds when hierarchy falls away.

We weren’t waiting for romance to make it count, queer friendship was already the centre.

open.substack.com/pub/vdebarra...

Hue Writing from the space between things

I’ve never shared my writing here before.
For years I kept it to myself not because I didn’t have the words, but because I didn’t trust the world with them. This year I decided to change that. vdebarra.substack.com/p/hue?r=1ojmac