I'm in love with a man who is pathologically poly. He has to have new sex partners constantly, and as soon as the NRE wears off, he gets bored with the new puppies & kicks them to the curb. I've come to resent the new playthings deeply and I want to warn them all away. I want to explain to them that I've been there, that I remember falling for this man who makes you his intense focus, for a while, and that's deeply romantic and and addicting. But after the shiny wears off, he'll lose interest in the fluffy new puppy and she'll be the old dog chained in the backyard with the rest of us, watching her master go off and play with the next new puppy. Those of us who have stuck around hate the new ones and barely tolerate each other. But I love this man, so I can't leave.

cunningminx

tacit

All Percentages

able (25%) accepting (0%) adaptable (12%) bold (12%) brave (12%) calm (37%) caring (0%) cheerful (0%) clever (0%) complex (25%) confident (25%) dependable (0%) dignified (0%) energetic (0%) extroverted (0%) friendly (25%) giving (0%) happy (0%) helpful (0%) idealistic (0%) independent (37%) ingenious (0%) intelligent (37%) introverted (12%) kind (0%) knowledgeable (50%) logical (25%) loving (0%) mature (12%) modest (0%) nervous (0%) observant (0%) organised (12%) patient (50%) powerful (12%) proud (12%) quiet (12%) reflective (0%) relaxed (12%) religious (0%) responsive (0%) searching (12%) self-assertive (37%) self-conscious (0%) sensible (12%) sentimental (0%) shy (0%) silly (0%) spontaneous (0%) sympathetic (12%) tense (0%) trustworthy (12%) warm (12%) wise (0%) witty (0%)

• There's the FMF that you'd think would be everyone's dream but was actually very rare as the only grouping in that configuration out of all the trios on the show, and the two girls who used to be rivals but are now whole-heartedly throwing themselves into a partnership with perfect harmony.


• There's the MFM where one guy was afraid the other guy would be "better" than him & the girl wanted to use his jealousy to her "advantage".


• Then there's the MFM where the couple brought in the guy's brother because of his talent and skill, so they thought they would be better as a whole group for the addition (and they were).


• There's the MFM where the first guy brought in the other guy because he knew how much the girl loved the other guy & the first guy enjoyed the "break" and letting the other guy take care of the girl some of the time.


• And finally are the two MFMs where the girls each brought in the new guy so that the first guy could learn something from him and grow and improve themselves through relating to the new guy. Although, ironically, the dance story of both of those MFM trios was of the new guy trying to "steal the girl" and the first guy chasing off the intruder!

Carl Sagan said that we are made of star stuff.  We are the part of the universe capable of understanding itself.  In the movie The Ledge, the atheist protagonist talks with a Christian woman about the nature of the universe.  She wants to believe in a god because she wants to believe in something bigger than herself.

So he lays down next to her on the apartment rooftop and shows her the night sky, and says something to the effect of "you want something bigger than yourself to connect to?  There, the whole universe, how much bigger can you get than that?"

So she says, basically, that it's a pretty concept, but she wants more than just to be connected to a cold and uncaring universe.  She wants to be loved.  Unfortunately, he doesn't have a good answer to that.

I turn back to Carl Sagan, and Neil de Grasse Tyson, and all the other science popularizers out there, and that's comforting to me.  I am made of star stuff.  I am part of the universe and therefore I am connected to the whole of the universe.  I am the part of the universe capable of understanding itself.

But there's one more part to that.

If we humans are the part of the universe capable of understanding itself, we are also the part of the universe capable of loving itself.

If I want to be connected to something larger than myself, what's larger than the universe?  If I want to be loved by something greater than myself, what's greater than the universe?  Except that the universe doesn't love.

But people do.  And people are part of the universe.  We are star stuff.  We are the part of the universe capable of understanding itself.  We are the part of the universe capable of loving itself.  We are the universe, and we love.

There is one thing greater than the will to live, and that's the will to love.  We are star stuff.  I am connected to something greater than myself.  What's greater than the universe?  I am loved by something greater than myself, and that is because I am loved by people, and people are star stuff.

For those who aren't aware, we have a poly social & discussion group here in Orlando for the Central Florida area called orlandopoly, which has a LiveJournal, a Facebook, a Google Plus, Twitter, a Fetlife profile, and a regular old website.

A whole bunch of social events have just been posted in all places, including the Google Calendar, where you can add events to your own calendar if you have one.  Coming up, we have a Beach Boppers swing dance event, an Atlantic Dance Hall event (pop music & nightclub dancing), a discount roller skating night, a Woodshed Invasion for the kinky polys, and a discussion meeting, all coming up in the next week or so.

Check it out if you're in the area!

I just got a call from the District Attorneys office this morning and she told me that the date for sentencing in Moms case is set for sentencing on May 14th 2012 at 1:30 P.M. They had a court date yesterday and the Probation Department gave a recommendation of the shortest sentence possible with all charges running concurrently. Ms. Martinez got 20 people to write in recommending that she get a light sentence since she is such a wonderful person and great Mother.

What Cody Jones the Assistant District Attorney needs from our side is as many letters as possible from people stating that Leticia Daisy Martinez showed total disregard for human life and public safety on May 1st 2011 when she made the conscious decisions to run from the scene of the first accident,who's diriver was injured, drive erratically through traffic, hit and killed Diana Pundsack where she did extensive property damage to a home, ran from that crime, and hit another car before she was finally forced to stop. It is their recommendation that Leticia Daisy Martinez be sentenced to the maximum sentence available in this case. She needs to learn the lesson that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated and will be met with a stiff punishment.
Could you get as many people as you can to write a letter to this effect. The courts do not need to know if they knew my mother or not,. At this point it is all about the numbers. We can't let this woman get away with this. I will try to get as many people as I can on this end too.

The Letter (2copies) should be received ASAP but definately no later that April 30th 2012. The mail address is:

County of Santa Clara
Office of the District Attorney
County Government Center West Wing
70 West Hedding Street
San Jose, CA 95110
ATTN: Cody Jones -ADA
People vs. Leticia Daisy Martinez  110510239

**EDIT**  Apparently I wasn't clear enough so it needs to be repeated.  This post is ONLY about classifications of relationship statuses and does not cover all the variables & details about who gets to go into each category.  These categories are where I START from, not the end-all, be-all of my risk assessment procedures.  I cover those topics elsewhere.**

It has come up recently in conversation several times what the definitions of things like fluid-bonding & HPV boundaries & so forth are. So I decided now was a good time to write it all out.

My approach to poly relationships is that each relationship is its own thing and I do not concern myself with the behaviour of my partners with other people unless that behaviour directly affects me (breaking dates with me to go out with someone else who doesn't like me, for instance). I see no value or benefit to being concerned with which sex acts my partners perform with anyone else on an emotional level, and I do see a lot of harm in doing so. Sex, to me, isn't special just because it's sex. Sex is special if the person I'm having it with is special. So I have no attachment to my partners performing certain things just with me, or avoiding certain acts with other people. Sex with datan0de is no less special because he also has sex with his wife, and it's no more special because he doesn't have sex with, I dunno, the checkout girl. Sex with datan0de is special because anything with datan0de is special, and because datan0de himself is special.

So when I make fluid-bond agreements, or when I use the term "fluid-bond", I am putting more emphasis on the "fluid" part than on the "bond" part. Remember, the only reason for me to be concerned about my partners' behaviour is when it directly affects me. Bringing home an STD directly affects me. So I have different levels of activity between myself & my various partners based on my risk assesment of my physical safety with that partner.

When I say that I have a "fluid-bond" agreement, I do not mean that my partner and I have agreed to only transfer fluids between us. My agreements are based on boundaries, not rules, and that sort of agreement is an imposition on other people's behaviour. My agreements do not tell my partners who they can or can't transfer fluid with. They lay out the circumstances under which *I* feel safe to transfer fluids with them (and vice versa). They are free to make their own decisions on what they do with whom, and I will modify my own behaviour with that partner based on those decisions. I then tend to seek out partners who have similar levels of risk to my own so that I can enjoy relationships with as few restrictions between us as possible without worry or concern (regular testing helps with that too). If they have similar levels of risk as me, then I don't need a rule telling them how to behave. If they have significantly different sexual values than me, then a rule won't stop them when they feel it is important or "right" for them to do it.

Some people put emphasis on the "bond" part, which is some kind of unique connection between them that is symbolized by the transfer of fluids. Some people are incapable of enjoying sexual activity without a deep, emotional connection to their partners, so a fluid-bond might be a statement of the level of emotional committment between the partners.

There are too many variables for me to say automatically that this is a bad thing, but it has been my observation that the people who tend to choose this method are more likely than not to do so for reasons that tacit highlighted in his Whats Wrong With Rules Anyway post. Saying "I am not interested in sex unless I love you, therefore being fluid-bonded says how much I love you" is one thing, but many people do not use terms like "fluid-bond" to describe what they do with each other - they use the terms to describe what they don't do with others.

But I'm explaining what I do with my partners, in terms of how I use relationship categories.

So, what is a fluid-bond, in my relationships then?

Since my reason for being concerned with relationship categories is to explain "how does this directly affect me", and in the area of sex that means STD and sexual safety, I define fluid-bonding exclusively around fluid-transfer activities that can transmit STDs. If it isn't going to transmit STDs to me, then I'm not concerned with categorizing it. Sweat and saliva do not transmit STDs. Certain viruses have been known to be found in the saliva, but those classified as STDs are either not found in the saliva, or not in high enough counts to infect someone under the circumstances of kissing. Those infectious diseases that are transmitted by kissing are either not STDs or are transmitted by contact - cell shedding - or airborne, not fluids.

HSV is transmitted by kissing. But 1) I don't consider something an STD if you can catch it from your grandma and 2) since you can also catch it from sharing drinks and other non-direct-contact ways, and it's also very rare to catch it in such a manner, I consider the attempts to completely avoid HSV to be futile* and a direct downgrade in my quality of life (i.e. the payoff is not worth the sacrifice).

So this means that, to me, a fluid-bond is willing to share any activity that transfers body fluids that can carry STDs. Blood, vaginal fluids, penile/seminal fluids, but not saliva or sweat. If a couple uses condoms and dental dams correctly & without fail every single time, a couple can have penetrative sex (PIV, anal, oral) and not be fluid-bonded. If a couple does not have Penis-In-Vagina sex ever, at all, but does engage in oral sex without barriers, this couple would be fluid-bonded, by my use of the term meaning exchanges body fluids.

Since there are so many ways to catch something that either don't involve fluids, or can be transmitted because of human error even with fluid precautions, I have a tendency to just avoid certain activities unless I'm willing to fluid-bond with that person. I'll kiss, pet, make out with, grind on, etc. with someone without too much concern, but if I'm interested in going down on them, or having intercourse, he's probably someone I am also willing to exchange fluids with. If he's so unsafe that I'm not willing to exchange fluids with him, then I'd just rather avoid those activities completely, than risk either accidental exposure or exposure to something that is contact-borne.

A lot of people are willing to have that intermediary step, where they are interested in penetrative sex of some kind, but prefer to maintain fluid barriers. That's fine. And when my partner is not sterile, I can see the need for that intermediary step in my own relationships too. But as a general guideline, in order for me to take that step closer to exposure, I want to feel confident that the risk of exposure is as minimal as possible, and if it's that minimal, then there isn't any need for the intermediary step without extenuating circumstances (i.e. contraception), for me.

So this brings us to HPV boundaries. HPV and HSV are the easist STDs to catch, and not stopped by avoiding fluid-transfers. If you avoid activities that can transmit either of those, then you will also avoid all the other STDs, and pregnancy, and a few other non-sexual illnesses. Since I've already decided that complete 100% avoidance of HSV is impossible, that leaves HPV as my Gold Standard.

Therefore, HPV boundaries are avoiding any activity that is likely to transmit the HPV virus. This means no direct oral, genital, or manual contact with the partners' genitals. Kissing does not appear to transmit HPV, but oral sex does, even with condom use. General guideline for me is if the clothes below the waist stay on, it's probably safe (allowing for exceptions, but they are exceptions to the "rule").

This allows for a lot of other sexual activities while still maintaining a reasonably safe risk level. If my partner does not have any symptoms of an oral HSV infection (and I'm fairly confident that he knows what they are & is being honest when he says he doesn't have any), then I'm pretty comfortable engaging in activities that include contact above the waist, no-contact sex (phone sex, masturbation-voyeurism, etc.) and/or some BDSM activities. I can have a long-term, emotionally intimate relationship with a partner and maintain HPV boundaries indefinitely if I think there is a good reason to do so. This means that I can actually have a sexual relationship with a partner who has HPV or HSV and not put myself or my other partners in a higher-risk situation.

If I want to explore those activities that are prohibited by my HPV boundaries, then that means that I am confident that these activities will not significantly increase my risk (in much the same way that monogamous people in long-term committed relationships are willing to forgoe condoms and other barriers). And if I deem my partner to be safe enough to not significantly increase my risk, then I'm generally willing to go straight from HPV boundaries to fluid-bonding, with only circumstantial exceptions.

Also generally speaking, one of the main things that makes me feel confident that these activities will not significantly increase my risk is testing. If my partner doesn't have an STD, then he can't give me one. Recent & regular STD tests, combined with an assessment of his behaviour, is a statistically safer way to avoid STDs even than regular condom use with a partner of unknown status. Although there is some trust involved, it is far less trust than any monogamous couple who just takes for granted that their partner is completely sexually fidelitious to them and doesn't have anything from a prior relationship. But if it is reasonable for monogamous people to "trust" their spouses and never get tested, then it shouldn't be any less reasonable for a polyamorous person to trust their partners in a relationship that is transparent, hard to hide secrets (the more people in the group, the harder to keep a secret from all of them), and where all the participants regularly get tested for STDs including prior to becoming partners.

I am far less likely to be "surprised" with an STD in my poly relationships than a monogamous person who has never been tested, whose partner has never been tested, and who does not have the safety net of several pairs of eyes checking in on the relationship participants making it more difficult to "cheat", given that anywhere from 40%-80% (depending on which study & which article you read) of people claim to have cheated on their partners at some point in their lives, that STDs can be asymptomatic and/or can lie dormant for quite some time, and that most people don't bother to get tested for STDs unless they think they already have one or have just been unwillingly exposed to one. While STD tests are not 100% accurate (nothing ever is), they're certainly much more accurate than "well, he would tell me if he had something, right? Since he hasn't, I assume he doesn't."

So, to sum up:

Any of these can be modified based on individual details, such as whether a potential partner has a known infection of some kind, whether a potential partner has simliar risk aversion strategies or not, or other personal preference red flags such as a potential partner's willingness to get tested, his willingness to disclose, his understanding of STDs & sexual safety, his willingness to meet my other partners, his willingness to introduce me to his other partners and/or friends, etc. As with most of life, the actual risk calculation is quite complex and many people don't even realize all the variables that go into their risk calculation.

Lots of people also try to predetermine which activities are OK and which are off-limits, and, IMO, if you think you can just list all the activities in the world & guess your reaction to them, you are seriously underestimating the sheer breadth and depth of human sexuality. Rather, I try to come up with classes of activities, with a clear guideline for how each activity gets into that class. Then I can determine the safety of engaging in any given activity based on its class, even if I had never previously thought of that activity before, even if I can't reasonably confer with my other partners first, even if I am caught off-guard by something spontaneous. What kind of STD can the activity transmit, how does it transmit it, and is our relationship within the class that would potentially expose me to that STD?

*By "futile", I mean that it is close enough to impossible to completely avoid all possible forms of HSV transmission as to round down to "impossible". But I do NOT mean that one shouldn't minimize exposure. Taking precautions like avoiding kissing someone while they have a cold sore, using antivirals for those with active infections, etc. can be reasonable. plenty of people will go their entire lives without ever contracting HSV. But if you think it's actually possible to completely avoid HSV entirely, you're fooling yourself. Minimize the risks, but accept the fact that you will be exposed to it one day. If you're fortunate, you might never actually succumb to it, but plan for it like you do a cold or the flu or a car accident - try to avoid it but don't think there's a 100% way to avoid it, and it's probably not the end of the world if you do get it.

Western (Judeo-Christian) philosophical thought is that "man was not a unitary being, but was divided into two parts, body and soul. The Greek philosophical conception of the relationship between body and soul was quite different than the Judeo-Christian concept which posited a state of war between the body and soul. Within Judeo-Christian thought the purpose of human life was to save the soul, and the body was seen as an impediment to achieving this objective. Consequently, the body must be punished and deprived. ... Aristotle did not view a state of war between the body and soul, but rather envisioned a complimentary relationship in which the state of the soul or mind was dependent on the state of the body. In fact he stated that "the care of the body ought to precede that of the soul." (Politica) Aristotle also appreciated the reciprocal relationship between pleasure and pain, and recognized that a compulsive search for bodily pleasure originates from a state of bodily discomfort and pain."

I've heard from a few people, none of them connected, but all of them in the very recent past, who have noticed some politicking in their social groups. Since this subject has come up coincidentally clustered, I thought the topic should be re-addressed. So I would like to write a letter on behalf of them to anyone with a social group to pay attention to this situation. Many of these people do not feel that they can bring it up because they want to avoid a confrontation or adding more drama, but it is something that hurts people. I will be writing this in first person, as I often do to make it more personal, so that people will hopefully take a look at their own actions to see if they might be guilty, even accidentally, of this or if they might be misperceived as having been in this position.

Dear Friend,

I assume we are still friends, anyway. You still seem to greet me warmly when we meet at social gatherings, and we still seem to have personal exchanges between us with no indication that there is anything amiss. But I've been hearing things lately that kind of upset me. I've been hearing about parties and events happening that I was not invited to.

Now, I don't want to make anyone feel bad or pressured to invite me to things that they don't want me at. But I'm just a little bit confused because you don't seem to not-want me around, at least not to my face. If there is a problem, I hope you would come to me to discuss it so that we can work it out. If it's something that you feel that we cannot overcome, then I hope you will take this opportunity to let me know that there are just some limitations or boundaries to our friendship and that's just how it is. I won't promise that I won't be hurt, but I do promise to accept your answer as an honest expression of your feelings and to try not to make it any more difficult for you to be honest than it already is to tell someone something unpleasant or difficult.

The reason I bring this up is because I noticed something else besides just not being invited to things. I get that I won't be invited to everything that every one of my friends hosts, just like I can't invite all of my friends to my every gatherings. Maybe I'm seeing things that aren't there, but I noticed that this lack of invitations started around the time I broke up with my partner. And I noticed that my former partner is still getting invitations.

I hope that this is just coincidence and that I am being paranoid and silly. I hope that this is an extension of my own insecurities and that you can set me straight. I hope that none of my friends are the types of people who would give up spending time with someone they like just because someone else no longer likes them. I hope that none of my friends would be willing to continue inviting the person who cannot maintain social cohesion while they stop inviting the person who is willing and interested in fostering pleasant, civil, friendly relationships with all involved. If I have done anything to make you think that I might cause any amount of awkwardness or strife at your parties over my former partner, please let me know so that I can correct either your misassumption or my behaviour.

I genuinely wish to remain on friendly terms with everyone involved and I feel hurt when I think that my friends may be willing to strain our relationship without even giving an explanation for it. I also genuinely wish to be disabused of this notion if it is false because I do not like assuming negative intent of my friends.

Thank you for taking the time to hear me out. I hope that we can move forward from here.

In other words, we shouldn't reward bad behaviour and punish good behaviour. If you know of individuals who have recently broken up a romantic relationship, and you were ever on friendly terms with both/all members of the relationship and no one has done anything related to the breakup that is so heinous that you are willing to stop being friends with that person, please consider having a general policy to always invite everyone who ever normally gets invitations and let those in the former-relationship decide whether they can handle being in the same room with their ex or not.

If one of the people in the former relationship is unable to maintain civility at social functions or to remove themselves when they know that they can't, or makes others uncomfortable with their own discomfort about being around their ex, I would like to suggest that, if anyone should stop getting invited to social functions, it be that person, not the other, even if "that person" is the one you are closer friends with. At the very least, that person should be given a talking-to about their party-fouls.

I would also like to suggest that, if this is happening, that we all bring it to the attention of those involved. Much like the Disappearing Act in my earlier breakup post, the passive-aggressive fade-from-friendship act when a friend starts taking sides in a breakup can be just as emotionally hurtful to the friend being left behind. It can also reinforce the behavior of someone who tries to edge out former partners from social circles after a breakup, sometimes unknowingly when they don't realize that they are doing anything wrong, but that those around them are made uncomfortable because the friend in question can't be polite, leaves the room, gives the silent treatment, makes jokes at the other person's expense, or generally creates a tense atmosphere that we can all feel.

I remember once being new to a social group and befriending two people who were in a relationship.  Then the relationship ended, and as my friendship with them was new, I was not privy to the details of their breakup, only that they did break up.  Well, I spent time with one half of the couple one day in a social event.  A few days later, I was at another social event where that half of the couple was not present, but the other half was.  In the course of conversation, something was mentioned that reminded me of something that happened the other day with the first half of the couple.  So I related the story, as it seemed appropriate.  As soon as I said that person's name, the entire room fell silent, everyone started making shifty-eyes at the other half of the former couple, and the tension got so thick that I literally started to feel as though it was more effort to breathe.  There was an awkward pause when I finished, that dragged out until someone came up with something to say that was completely off the topic entirely.  Former relationship partners should NOT make their friends feel this way or put them in this situation, and those who do should not be rewarded by continuing to be invited to events & having the other party not be invited and therefore losing out on valuable social relationships.

Take a look around your social circle. If you notice that people who recently broke up are rarely at the same social functions as each other in spite of having all the same friends, if these are your social functions, you might want to take a closer look at how and why this happens, but if these are other people's social functions, you might want to mention the trend to the hosts who seem to be doing this that it might be causing some hurt feelings, whether accidentally or intentionally. Especially in the poly community, but for any close-knit social community, we really need to learn to be mature about our breakups and set the goal for ourselves to move, to the very, very least, in the direction of polite civility with our exes and not putting our mutual friends in the decidedly uncomfortable position of being in the middle of a tug-o-war.

*Many times, anecdotes of relationships gone wrong can be very valuable for others to hear, especially within the poly community where newbies have no social role models and tend to reinvent the broken wheel every time.  An anecdote can be told to illustrate a point without mentioning the ex by name, without asking people to take sides, and without making the entire community look like nothing good ever happens there or scaring the newbies into thinking that if they make a mistake, they will forever be villified and publicly shunned.  "Bashing", as I use it, means to take private, personal details of the relationship and use them as a weapon to turn your ex into "the bad guy" in the community in a personal vendetta against him because you feel hurt.

There is room for exception here - if you are or know the victim of an assault or know of someone who is deliberately harming his partners (and by "deliberate", I mean, he either knows he's being harmful, or he doesn't realize he is, but has been told he is and dismisses it), I believe it's fair to warn others, such as what is currently happening in the BDSM community.  This is the type of situation that must be tread lightly, as sometimes people are just angry and they rewrite history from "we had a fight" to "he abused me".  There is no blanket rule for this.  Suffice to say that it's a situational circumstance that I am acknowledging exists even while I say, as a general guideline, bashing your exes publicly has social ramifications so it's probably better not to do it.

Y'know what I hate? I hate when people who eat meat products get all grossed out at processed meat products, like it's any worse or more disgusting than the death and slaughter of a living being to make a meal. These are people for whom lamb chops are a nice slab of chops in a white styrafoam container, so they have the luxury of being grossed out by processed chicken meat in chicken nuggets or hot dogs. Most of these people have never been up to their elbows in blood and fur and shit and urine to skin an animal and remove the inedible parts. Most of these people have never looked their dinner in the eye and watched the life drain out of it while it lay on the ground twitching.

Nature is not pretty. It can be, but that's not its default. Death is not pretty. We are part of a system that requires one to die for another to live. Maybe that'll change in the future (and I hope it does), but until that day comes, our nice and juicy steaks do not come to us from a steak-tree, where we pick off the prettiest looking chunks and display them with sauces and creative arrangements. No, those steaks come from the muscle tissue of a living creature, that someone had to kill, dismember, and PROCESS in some way.

Now, we can discuss ethical treatment of food animals, and quality of food products if that's your argument. But that's not the argument I'm ranting against right now. I'm ranting against people who see pictures of food during the processing production and say "Eww! It's all ground up and mixed together! Gross! I'm never eating another [name your processed food here] again!" They are simply grossed out about the idea of bits of food getting mixed together and not looking like the finished product before it's a finished product.

And if that's your beef with processed meat, then you need a remedial course on what chewing and digestion do. I also recommend going to a farm or out in the woods, being responsible for the taking of the life that you are about to consume and seeing its terror as it realizes that it's being hunted, ripping the skin off with your hands and knife, removing the bowels before the animal defecates itself in its death throws, reaching your hands in to remove the still-warm and steaming heart, and pulling the muscle off the bones, all knowing that you will be putting it into your mouth shortly.

And THEN you can tell me that running that meat through a grinder is gross.

I don't think I've publicly declared my resentment about becoming a feminist. I probably always was one in deed, but I rejected the label and the identity, mainly out of a misunderstanding of what the label meant. But not only have I always identified as a guy in my head, I often sided with guys in gender debates too.

All my life, my closest friends were guys (except for 1 year in high school where I had 4 best female friends and 2 best guy friends), so I saw life through their eyes. I saw the shit girls did to them and I filtered & interpreted the world through a male perspective, even while I was getting shit on for being female. I couldn't have a later curfew because it was "unsafe for girls". I couldn't wear pants, couldn't play with tools, couldn't do this, couldn't do that... and yet, in the battle between the sexes, I saw girls as being "crazy", as mistreating men, as guys getting the shaft, so to speak.

I took a lot of pride in the fact that I was a female standing in defense of the unfair treatment of males - I thought (correctly) that having one member of a gender tell others in that gender that they were being unfair was a powerful tool and a powerful statement to make. I still take a lot of pride in the idea that I believe I evaluate situations from a fairness perspective that is irrespective of the genders involved - when a woman is in the wrong, I won't take her side for sisterhood, and when a man is wrong, it's not because he's a man but because he is wrong.

I think I didn't even see a lot of misogyny because I can pass for white, I grew up in a liberal state, I went to an all girls' school that actually did encourage female empowerment and had the best sex ed I've ever heard of outside of a training course for sex ed teachers, was repeatedly told by my parents to put off dating, finish college, and have my own career before even thinking about marriage, and I grew up middle class in suburbia. Really, other than not having a penis or a mansion, I was pretty much in the next most privileged class down in spite of also being a minority in almost every class.

Since getting online, however, my perspective had changed radically. Even with online dating and being a female in a male-dominiated work environment, I felt sexism and misogyny but still refused to call myself a feminist and I refused to give up defending my male friends from "those crazy women".  I would get resentful if someone lumped me in with "those crazy women" and when someone made a derogatory remark about women and then said "no offense" to me, I'd say "none taken - I don't count as a woman and they be crazy yo!" (ok, I didn't say "they be crazy yo" but you get the point).

But then I got dragged into feminism. I got dragged into it kicking and screaming by fucking atheists and skeptics. The one place where I should have felt safe, is where I felt the most under-privileged, the most at risk, the most dehumanized, the most female. I've walked the streets of downtown Atlanta at night, alone, and never felt at risk. I've been cornered by guys, I've been assaulted both sexually and just physically.  And I've taken the public bus through gang territory in California.  At night.  Wearing the wrong colors.  In a skirt.

I rarely felt that I lacked a privileged status, that I was at risk of harm, that I was subhuman, in fact, I rarely even felt female. Until I joined the atheist communites online. Suddenly, I've started paying attention to how I dress to see if it "encourages" unwanted advances (and making sure I'm always armed in case I do get those unwanted advances) and I've stopped correcting people when they guess me to be male online because I feel as though I lose credibility when people know I'm female.

And, thanks to people who were supposed to be rational and logical and reasonable turning out to be some of the biggest assholes I've ever met (and remember, I get into flamewars with creationists and I work with stagehands and roadies), I now see sexism all the fucking time. And I miss living in the world where sexism happened to other people, where I was an equal, and where I had no fear. I know it was an illusion, but I miss that illusion, because my world was a happier, safer place to be. It's where I grew the balls to be an activist in the first place. If I lived in a world where I could have been killed for my opinions, I'm not sure I would have been brave enough to grow into the flame warrior and activist that I am today.

I wasn't an angry atheist before. I know my online presence makes me look like I'm angry all the time, but that's because the internet was a safe place for me to be angry when I couldn't in person, so I get it out here and then I go on with my day and I can confront people without fear of physical retribution (usually). But I wasn't an angry atheist before. And I wasn't a man-hating feminazi. And I'm still not an angry atheist or a man-hating feminazi, but goddamnit if I'm not more angry, more often. I feel like I have to unplug from my source of news and friends to stop being angry. The internet is no longer the safe place where I can go express my anger to get it out and move on. Now it's the source of my anger, and it's making me aware of things I wasn't before. 

And I bitterly resent it.

Unlike when I heard of polyamory, I didn't research it and then embrace it for my own. I found myself siding against people I previously thought of as my allies, my friends, and my compatriots because they became, not just wrong, but blindingly, obtusely, belligerantly wrong. I find myself in a camp not of my choosing because I value fairness and evidence and reason and "my side" turned out to be blithering assholes, so I had to switch sides by default.  It's kind of like voting for Obama for president - sure I like him and all, but I voted for him mainly to keep McCain (and especially Palin) out.  That's not how I like to spend my votes, but I will if that's what it takes to keep me safe.

I wasn't a "feminst" until certain men made me one. And I resent being pushed into this camp. Although I suspect that some people really do look at the options and choose feminism as the best one, I suspect that the vast majority of feminists (of any gender) find themselves in similar positions - becoming a feminist because there are still so many misogynists out there and they can't just sit down, shut up, and take it anymore. I suspect that a large number of feminists, including me, are not born, but made - made by the very people who don't want us to be feminists in the first place.

Congratulations feminist-haters, much like the fundies are scaring away believers in droves because they're so loony, you certain guys are driving away people who really want to be on your side, but can't because you're so fucking awful.

And if anyone feels the need to chime in with how I got it all wrong and I should be back on Team Poor Menz or how feminazis are really the problem & making teh poor menz lives miserable ... you're exactly who I'm talking about so don't fucking try to derail my rant with "oh woe is me, us menz are SO hated!" If you happen to be part of some marginalized group and you want to say "I know how you feel because [my group] goes through similar situations", that's OK. Just don't tell me that I'm overreacting or I shouldn't be complaining because some other group has problems too, or some other group has worse problems. Just. Don't. Fucking. Do. It.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIX1wXVq0tw

http://youtu.be/8n5O9tz30So

I saw this video today posted on Facebook and I really liked it, so I wanted to share it. But I also had something to say about it and my comment ended up being longer and more rambly than a FB comment should be (IMO), so I decided to make my own post about it.

In the video, Alyssa posits that the reason why people shame others for sex is because they're afraid that, if we give those people permission to do those things they like, then those people will try to do those things with us, and if we don't like those things that's a scary thought.

I don't disagree with her. I just think she was ... incomplete.

I think that at least one reason, if not a main reason, why people shame others for sex is less about fear of those others, and more about fear of ourselves.

I think that a lot of people believe that the way to control scary things is by boxing them up and putting them away in the attic, never to see the light of day (I know a lot of rationalists who think this is the way to deal with emotions). I think that a lot of people believe that, by exploring something scary, they may find the scariest thing of all, and that is that there is no end; that once you start down that road, not only can you never go back, but you can't ever stop either; that you necessarily must keep exploring and exploring and exploring until you HAVE TO explore previously-thought hard limits like bestiality and child molestation and rape and murder because, once you throw out the rules preventing you from doing things, what's to stop you from doing anything?

Except that people in general don't typically refrain from doing things because they are told not to. They typically refrain from doing things because they have an internal sense that they shouldn't do them. This is a very complex sense, though, which can be (and is) influenced by the culture around us, and not everyone has the exact same sense of right and wrong. In a lot of ways, we really do need some kind of external set of guidelines telling us how to get along with each other.

But in a lot of ways, that set of guidelines is born out of our collective internal sense in the first place.

Although sex does create and encourage a lot of the same chemical reactions in our brains as drugs do, contrary to pop-psych, sex is not the same as addictive drugs. People can, and do, stop wherever they want to. But the ones who are the most successful at stopping where they choose to stop are the ones who allow themselves to explore and who live by Francis Bacon's statement (whether they know of it or not) that "your true self can be known only by systematic experimentation, and controlled only by being known."

The more we know of ourselves, the better control we have over ourselves, and we can only know ourselves by experimentation and self-exploration. Ironically, those of us who explore the most fearlessly are the ones who tend to exhibit better control, while the ones who are most desperate for control are the ones who lack it because they don't tend to explore themselves.

People who know themselves, and therefore have control of themselves, don't get caught with "luggage boys" after enacting legislation against gay rights. People who know themselves, and therefore have control of themselves, don't get put under arrest for the very law they created against gay sex with strangers in public restrooms. People who know themselves, and therefore have control of themselves, don't tend to get caught using tax dollars to pay for prostitutes out of the same funds that put them in office on an anti-prostitution ticket.  People who know themselves, and therefore have control of themselves, can consciously and deliberately arrange their lives to enjoy those desires they have in a manner that includes "safe, sane, and consensual".

So I think Alyssa here didn't address all, or even the most prominent reasons for shaming others. I think one of those reasons is that people fear themselves. She makes the distinction between shame (something that people to do you by telling you that you're a bad person) and guilt (something that you do to yourself by feeling bad for a harmful act). I think that a lot of people feel the need to shame others because they feel guilty themselves - they feel afraid of the unknown and/or guilty for things they've done or want to do because other people have shamed them.

I think shame is a self-perpetuating cycle. We shame others because we have internalized the shame that other people have made us and others to feel. If we grow up in a society that says gay sex is bad, then we jump on that bandwagon and shame people for gay sex to avoid being shamed, thereby promoting that message to the next person who has to also jump on the bandwagon and shame people for gay sex, because to not do so would be to draw shame upon them.

And I think the reason why a lot of people shame others is because they are afraid of themselves, and of what they do not know about themselves. When someone tells me that they wouldn't explore some avenue of kink because "how would you ever stop?", that frightens me. That tells me that they don't have any internal sense that lets them see the difference between spanking a lover because he likes it and murdering someone. That tells me that they don't have any internal sense to show them the line between enjoying a sensation and self-harm. And since many of these people are the ones most vocal and most adamant about instilling external rules to help us all behave, this frightens me to no end because these people with no control are in charge.

I am not afraid of myself or my desires. I know what I am capable of, I know what I like, and I know how to stop. I am afraid of other people - afraid they will want to do those things to me, and by those things, I mean lock me up and prevent me from being myself because they are afraid of themselves. If anyone should be ashamed, it's them.

But I like the overall message of this video & I think you should watch it.

cross-posted at www.PromiscuityKeepers.com

Someone on Facebook was recently introduced to the term "metamour" and, after hearing the definition of "your partner's other partner", seems to have taken the stance that a metamour relationship is something you have thrust upon you, completely at the whim of the "person in the center". In fact, his exact quotes are:

"Apparently, it's the person at center's choice." and "The situation as I have read it here is a definition of a situation that was not chosen by the person given the title. It defines the sharing that is not sharing which starts as the middle person choosing to be with a and b but not ab."

This reminds me a lot of an argument in high school with very smart teenagers who like to argue philosophy and semantics as if their intelligence gives them insight into the world that the adults who came before them never grasped. Yes, I was one of those teenagers. The argument was on selfishness and whether there was any act anywhere that didn't ultimately boil down to selfishness. The argument goes that even altruism is a selfish act because people who perform acts of altruism do so because they feel good or otherwise get something out of it, ergo there is no such thing as an unselfish act.

Except, as I didn't realize at the time, the definition of selfishness requires that the person being selfish put himself at the top of the priority list even when it harms other people. Altruism, by definition, is not selfish. But, being smart and yet very young and arrogant, we were missing a fundamental part of the definition of the word that rendered all those hours debating this topic completely moot*.

Anyway, that's what this stance reminded me of. If you circled around and squinted your eyes, you could eventually reach the conclusion that you are given the title of "metamour" by the person you are dating whether you wanted it or not, that it's the choice of the "person in center" entirely. And I disagree.  You can continue to insist that the glass is half empty if you wish and it might be technically true if you ignore or are unaware of a particular necessary element, but I prefer to say that it's exactly 50% full of water and 50% full of air and therefore completely full.

I used the analogy that a person is given the title "fiance" when that person accepts a proposal of marriage, so the title comes along with the relationship. Afterwards, I think I have a better analogy. It's more like being given the title of sister-in-law or son-in-law when you get married. Technically, you are given that title whether you want to be someone's son-in-law or not. But there are 2 things that make being a metamour not exclusively the choice of someone other than you.

First is that, by agreeing to get into the relationship in the first place, you are also agreeing to be someone's metamour, or son-in-law. That just goes along with the romantic relationship - they're a package deal. You might not like the other person you are now tied to, but if you didn't want to be their in-law or their metamour, you don't have to be in a relationship with someone that includes that person.

You know that old saying, when you marry someone, you marry their whole family? Well, you do. You get whatever kind of relationship with your spouse's family that your spouse has with them. No, it's not the exact same relationship, but if you marry a mama's boy, you're gonna get the mother along with the son. If you marry someone who never sees her family, then you won't have much of a relationship with them either. Whoever your partner is attached to comes along, in some form or another, when they get involved with you, and your relationship to those other people is, in part, determined by the relationship between them and your partner who brought them along. If he's a hermit, then I guess you're off the hook.

Now some people manage to convince their partners to drop some family member or friend once the romantic relationship "gets serious". We all know the stereotype of a group of guys losing one of their best buddies because he got married and his wife doesn't like their weekly poker nights or football games. But I'd say that is more of an exception than the rule, because even if a lot of people manage to get their spouses to dump one friend or family member, the spouse still comes along with all their other friends, family, and co-workers.

We are a social species, we have attachments and alliances, and when we get involved with someone, we get all those attachments and alliances too, just as they get ours. That's part of the deal, and it's not like it's some big secret. As a matter of fact, "marriage" was initially all ABOUT those connections and alliances and love had nothing to do with it. The whole freaking point was to connect yourself to all these other people. So I don't think you can say that you just get this title assigned to you whether you like it or not. It's part of the deal that you agreed to.

Second, is that a metamour relationship is a relationship. The definition explains how you are connected, but it is a relationship all on its own. Just like being a daughter-in-law isn't only about "sharing" someone in the middle, it also explains what your relationship is to this other person. Also, just like being a daughter-in-law, there is a very wide variety in how that relationship can be expressed. Maybe you have no direct line of communication and you avoid each other, or maybe you're best friends, but the metamour connection is its own relationship.

Or, to put it in the original person's terms, "metamour" describes not only X with A and B but ALSO AB, the exact opposite of his claim that it describes "a and b but not ab".

Now, I'd wager that most of us don't have a sit-down with our fiance's brother to work out the boundaries and relationship details and how we're going to split our fiance/brother's time between us. Mostly, we just kind of meet the brother, see how we get along, and the in-law relationship develops on its own. If our fiance is very close with his brother, then before meeting him, we might have some idea of how our relationship with him ought to go, and we might try to direct the course of the relationship by intentionally trying to become his friend on the grounds that, if he's going to be around a lot, we ought to strike up some kind of alliance rather than be at odds.

And metamours are the same thing, just with more talking and usually more structure. Some of us have an idea in our heads before meeting the metamour of what kind of relationship we want to have with them, and we might try to steer our metamour relationship in that general direction. Some of us just wait until we meet the metamour to decide how we get along and how this will work into our lives. And still some of us have decided ahead of time exactly what kind of metamour relationship we will have and demand that it will work this way or not at all. Anyone who has ever had a pushy mother-in-law try to arrange your marriage for you knows that this is usually a bad idea, fosters resentment, and generally pisses people off. But some metamours try to do it anyway.

So, the point is that there are 2 ways in which the metamour relationship is a choice of all parties involved, and not some title bestowed upon you, whether you are willing to be one or not. As I said in my response to him, that since polyamory requires consent of all involved, that means, by default and definition, that you consent to be someone's metamour, and if you don't, it's cheating.

By agreeing to be in a romantic relationship with someone who has or will have another partner, you are, de facto, agreeing to be someone's metamour, just the way that agreeing to marry someone implies that you are agreeing to be someone's in-law (or, as I said in my original analogy, agreeing to marry someone makes you a fiance whether you want the "title" or not - the title comes along with the relationship). You cannot get just the person without everyone he or she is attached to (or will be attached to, if you are agreeing to open up a preexisting monogamous relationship). That is not polyamory, that is some other form of non-monogamy that doesn't include consent or ethics.

In addition, being someone's metamour, while defined by its connections, is not solely about the path of connections. Like all other genealogical connections, the metamour connection is also a relationship of its own. The reason why its definition is restricted to the connections is because, also like all other genealogical connections, there is no single way to be someone's metamour.  My cousin might be my dad's sister's child, but he's also my cousin - the boy I grew up playing soccer and climbing trees and sneaking through the space between the fence in my back yard and the fence in my neighbor's yard pretending we were hunting for buried treasure.

We cannot define these familial relationships by their content because the only thing they have in common is the connections of relationship that put them there. There is no constant of behaviour or emotional content that applies to all people in any given familial connection, as much as we might like to think there is, or as much as the media would like us to believe there is an ideal (or stereotypical) form of them. The stepmother is not always wicked, the father is not always distant but providing, the big brother is not always a bully, and the metamour is not always a rival.

What is always constant is how a person was given that title in the first place - by the connection (and even then there are multiple paths to any given title). You are someone's metamour because your partner has another partner. But you had to take on that title voluntarily by agreeing to a romantic relationship that includes metamours, and the "title" describes an independent relationship all on its own.

Which should serve to remind everyone that metamours are not something you have to put up with or tolerate, or even something you can dismiss and ignore. You agreed to be a metamour, and you have a relationship with that other person. Polyamory is not something you are forced to do - if you are forced into it, it's not polyamory. This is why people should never be grudgingly dragged into polyamory. Everyone has to agree and accept, because it's no longer about you and your spouse. It's about all these other people and your relationship to them. Your metamours are YOUR metamours. Yes, they are your partner's other partner, but they are also connected to YOU. Polyamory doesn't require that all metamours be BFFs, just like family doesn't require that all daughter-in-laws hate their mother-in-laws or all fathers and sons have male bonding moments over the exposed engine of a car. But it does require that you recognize that your metamour is a person and not some nebulous "other" floating out there on the far side of your "shared" partner, that this person is connected to YOU, and that you agreed to that relationship.

If any of those qualifications don't apply, it's not polyamory, and I'd suggest that it's also not healthy and you probably ought not to be there.

My house is a mess from two trips that I haven't unpacked from (or cleaned up from the original packing frenzy), the cats have fleas, and I have 3 presentations to write in less than 3 months. So naturally I'm blogging.

I was listening to a new poly podcast called Pedestrian Polyamory. I'm not entirely sure what I think of it yet, but I do like the fact that they say right in their opening that they will be talking about polymory - not tantra or paganism or woo bullshit, just polyamory. I've listened to all their episodes so far and I haven't unsubscribed yet, unlike some other poly podcasts, so I guess I don't dislike it!

The latest episode is on breaking up, and one of the hosts, Shira, came up with some breakup categories. I like categories. I like things that organize and categorize and put things in places. So I decided to write up these breakup categories. She listed 3 types, but I'm going to start with 6 and maybe add to it if I think of more. I kept a couple of her titles, but not all of them, and the descriptions are my own. Because I just like how I put things :-)

• Failure To Launch - This is a relationship that never really went anywhere. This is when you had a date or two or three, and the both of you just kind of fizzled out and stopped following through. Maybe there was no chemistry, maybe ya'll got busy doing other things, whatever, it just never really happened.

  IMO, these are the least problematic, but the hosts of the podcast seem to think that this kind of "breakup" (if we can call it that) makes for really awkward social events when you run into them later. Shira recommends having that final confrontation where it is established that this relationship really isn't going anywhere, to avoid the post-fade-party-meetup awkwardness. I've never really found it to be that much of a problem. If we're both fading away, then I don't see much reason to feel awkward about running into each other later, but maybe that's just me. Not that I disagree with the advice to communicate, just saying that I never noticed any particular awkwardness when my Failure To Launches failed to launch. But I could just be that socially oblivious.

• The War - Unfortunately, I have had a few of these. This is, as Shira called it, a knock-down, drag-out battle. This is a fucking mess. This is a giant train-wreck of a scene with tears and shouting, and it might even last for a few days, or weeks. In my experience, this kind of breakup often spills over into the rest of the community.

  One of my War breakups involved literally shouting at each other on the sidewalk, with him calling me a slut and me calling him a fucking asshole and demanding my stuff back. He was also my co-worker. I'm actually pretty good about maintaining a professional relationship with my exes, but he made it impossible. He picked on me and argued and got snotty every time I came around. It got so uncomfortable that other coworkers started complaining and I had to request to be scheduled on days that he was not scheduled. Then there was the infamous Freaks List Incident, where he couldn't figure out how to unsubscribe from the mailing list that our social circle uses to keep in touch about events or write an email filter for it, so he decided to insult everyone in an effort to get himself banned from the list instead.

  This is where the phrase "poly people come with references" comes in. While not a guarantee, we can estimate someone's future breakup behaviour based on their past patterns. If he has a habit of big flaming breakups, if he doesn't stay friends with his exes, if all his exes talk shit about him, take that as a warning sign. As they say, if all your exes are crazy, the thing they have in common is you.

  With this ex, his last relationship was particularly turbulent. But hey, that could have been a fluke, right? Especially since I personally witnessed a lot of their fights and it really did seem like she was the instigator and the drama queen. But that was only a single data point. I should have had more, and then I could have known that he was a fucking lunatic too.

  My other big War breakup wasn't quite so dramatic. But lack of fireworks doesn't mean that it wasn't still a War - after all, the US spent years in a Cold War that was every bit as tense, if not as bloody, as a regular war. We bickered a lot, and our breakup finally came to a head with some rather unpleasant email exchanges. OK, that's bad enough, but it was what happened afterwards that was the real problem.

  After the breakup, even though we were both prominent figures in our local community, he started avoiding me. And I don't mean that he stayed home from a couple of parties. I mean that he attended those parties, said "hello" to everyone, and pointedly ignored me. Seriously. When he got a new girlfriend, he walked up to a group of about 6 or 7 of us standing in a circle, all of whom happened to also be friends of his. He introduced his new girlfriend to everyone in the group, by name, and skipped over me.

  "Hi, I want to introduce my new girlfriend, Rebecca. Rebecca, this is Calvin and Tom and Sarah and Jessica ... and Melanie and Bob." No lie, no exaggeration, no hyperbole, just some name changes. People still talk of that incident, and not because I bring it up.

  At all subsequent parties, he would leave the room if I walked in. I actually went from room to room once, just to see if it was a coincidence, but nope, he did it every single time I went in, even if he was in the middle of conversation with someone. This is also still talked about by people. In fact, a couple of people jokingly now have a pool every time we're at the same party, for how many minutes it'll take him to leave a room after I've entered it.

  There was one time he felt he had to speak to me, and this man whom I had been in love with and spent several years with and intended to spend several more with, addressed me by Ms. My-Last-Name. Now, that's rude enough, but 1) he broke up with me (twice) and 2) I have a particular pet peeve about being addressed by my last name, and he was well aware of it. In fact, not only had he and I talked about it on several occasions, but one time, someone he met online (who did not know that we were dating) actually gave him the URL to my LJ rant about formality and suggested that my then-bf lighten up and stop calling him "mr." if he expected to become friends.

  And the final straw was when I was invited to a combination party (the party was actually 4 different parties that were all happening at the same time/location) by the host of 3 of the 4 parties (I want to say it was 2 different birthday parties, a housewarming party, & something else). Well, the fourth party happened to be my ex's birthday party, so, as the host of that party, he actually emailed me after I had received an invitation and told me I was uninvited and not to come, in spite of there being 3 other parties with different hosts who *did* invite me, along with my current partners and friends.

  Once again, I didn't properly vette my prospective partner. He *claimed* to want to remain friends with his exes, but I hadn't met any of them. I did meet his other girlfriend, so I thought that gave me enough perspective, but it didn't. In fact, the primary motivation for him dumping me is also the primary reason why he ended up breaking up with that other girlfriend too, a few months later. Patterns ... patterns are very important.

  So, this didn't involve any shouting matches on the sidewalk, but this was a particulary nasty, ugly breakup. I am not a fan of the Wars and I look down quite a bit on those who insist on breaking up in this manner. IMO, all of my War breakups were completely unnecessary and left a lot of battle damage on everyone around them as well.

• Resource Famine - This is when there just isn't enough time or attention or something to make the relationship work. Contrary to popular opinion, love does not conquer all and "all we need is love" is a falsehood. Relationships take effort to maintain. The good relationships don't feel like "effort" or "work" because we are receiving such joy and happiness from them. But it takes more than warm fuzzies to maintain a meaningful relationship with another person. What it does take depends on the people involved and the type of relationship. But it's possible to really and truly love another person and not make a good partner for them. If you don't have enough time, enough attention, hell, even enough money or interest in sex, loving the other person is not enough.

  Sometimes lacking the resources can turn into a War, but a Resource Famine breakup is specifically when it does not turn into a War. One person or both just decides that it's not working and the relationship ends. This doesn't mean that everything is all roses and sunshine either - breakups usually suck no matter how painless they are. But painful or not, not all breakups have to end in a knock-down, drag-out Battle To The Death.

• Fade To Black - This was not listed by the Pedestrian Polyamory podcast. This is when two people just drift apart. Don't mistake this for the first category - Failure To Launch. This is when a relationship is actually underway. In fact, this can happen years into a relationship, even to people who have built a life together. Sometimes people just move in different directions, but there isn't any specific Bad Thing or hard times or even any dislike between the people. If the relationship never moves to the living-together stage, it could die out in the same way as the Failure To Launch, with times between phone calls growing longer and longer until eventually one or both of you realizes that you're just not dating anymore.

  I have two different examples of this. The first is my NSSO partner. I met him and his live-in partner when I first moved to Florida, nearly 11 years ago now. When we met online we just clicked. I mean we CLICKED. Things were going great, and when I went home for the holidays, I met him and his partner in person. Things continued to just click. I thought of him as a partner and a major part of my life. But over the years, with my trips home becoming more and more infrequent and our lives going in different directions (I became a poly activist, they withdrew from the poly community, stuff like that) we just sort of faded out. I have very fond memories of them and I would love to reconnect sometime. But neither of us has put forth any effort in the last couple of years and somewhere along the line, I stopped thinking of him as a partner. As far as I can tell, this was a mutual fading, and if a breakup has to happen, this is probably the least painful way to go.

  My other example is my current fuckbuddy. I like casual sex and I like having a regular fuckbuddy. But I also have a low sex drive. So when I have an ongoing romantic relationship that includes sex as well as love and friendship and companionship, I tend to have fewer resources for maintaining casual relationships. There is one guy who I still think of as a "current" partner. He is, in no way, suitable for a romantic relationship. We are just way too different. But I am not suitable for him either. So, just by coincidence, he and I happen to both want exactly the kind of casual sexual relationship that we started out with.

  But I also have 3 romantic partners right now, as well as running the orlandopoly group, which I have increased from just a monthly discussion meeting to a full-blown social club with no fewer than 3 social activities a month in addition to the discussion meeting. Add work on top of that, and my usual mountain of hobbies, and I just don't have the time or interest in a sexual relationship that isn't also providing me with something else. Especially not when my sex drive has plummeted again. When sex is the only purpose in your relationship, and you have no sex drive, that kind of defeats the purpose of the relationship.

  He's the same way - when he gets a "real girlfriend" (he's not poly), he stops calling me. When work for him picks up, he stops calling me. This is what I mean by coincidentally both wanting the same kind of relationship with each other. This doesn't bother me because it's how I think of him, and vice versa. We didn't put each other into a particular role, this is just how things worked out between us.

  So, basically, whenever we are both "between partners", we tend to call up each other. Well, I haven't been "between partners" in quite some time now, so our infrequent trysts have now gone for a few years between hookups. My casual partner and I never have any "breakup talk" - he never calls me up to tell me he has another girlfriend, I don't email him to explain that I won't be seeing him for a while. We just kind of don't call each other. We'll explain when the other one does call and we're not available, but since we don't call each other much to begin with, we don't go out of our way to notify each other.

  Because it doesn't look like I'll be "between boyfriends" anytime soon, this is probably another Fade To Black breakup for me. I don't even know if I can still legitimately call him my fuckbuddy since it's been so long since we hooked up. Really, the only reason I still think of him in that capacity is because I still intend to call him if I ever find myself in the realm of needing a casual fuck and I have no reason to think he wouldn't be amenable to the suggestion if I ever do. So, in my mind, it's not "over", exactly, it's just not "ongoing" either. But if I never see him again, this would be a pretty classic example of Fade To Black.

• Culture Clash - This is where two people just fundamentally want different things out of their relationship. It's not exactly the same as the Resource Famine, because they might be putting as much time, energy, attention, whatever into the relationship as it needs, or as is reasonable. But I would say that the Culture Clash is related. This is your standard mono-poly relationship, where the poly person wants a poly relationship with poly people, and the mono person wants a mono relationship with the poly person and wants him to be mono too, and there is no getting around that - they want different things from their relationship.

  This is also the Conservative Traditionalist marries what turns out to be the Progressive Mate, stereotypically seen when a "family values" man expects his wife to quit her job and become the happy homemaker, and either she isn't happy with that role, or she was happy with it until the kids turned 18 and moved out, and she was left with no life and no identity, so she goes back to school and the husband flips out over her new short haircut, wearing jeans, swearing, and her sexy liberal Philosophy professor or aggressive Women's Studies instructor.

  Again, like the Resource Famine, sometimes it's possible to really and truly love someone and still not make a good partner for them. If two people want different, and incompatible things from their relationship together, love cannot always conquer all and sometimes all we need is more than love. In fact, two people who don't love each other can get along quite amicably for an entire lifetime if their goals for their relationship with each other are similar and their needs are being met. It's maybe not the life that I would choose, but it does serve to illustrate that love is not what makes the world go 'round.

  Also, like the Resource Famine, the Culture Clash can lead to a War breakup, but it can also be a breakup all on its own, with one or both people coming to the realization that they just want different things and choosing to bow out. My ex-fiance and I broke up this way. He wanted a wife and homemaker just like his mother and I wanted someone who wasn't a pathological liar and a coercive rapist. Apparently, these things were incompatible with each other, so I left, and it didn't turn into a War.

• The Disappearing Act - I think I hate this one the most, even more than the War. This is where things appear to be going well and someone just disappears. It doesn't fade or fizzle out, things are actually moving and there's no indication from the magician that the end is nigh.

  I wrote about my last Disappearing Act too. The last words he spoke to me were "I love you and can't wait to see you again". And then, no call, no returned call, no text, no email, nothing. I thought he might have gotten into a car accident, except he kept logging onto his MySpace page (before Facebook).

  I finally drove all the way into Bumfuck Egypt where he lived and camped out in front of house house and waited for him to get home to confront him. It was a fairly civil conversation, where he listed all kinds of excuses why he couldn't call, couldn't borrow someone's phone, and had no interent but could still access MySpace. Then he promised to call me the next day. Of course, it was all bullshit, and he disappeared again. In the age of the internet, it's hard to disappear completely, so I know where he is. But he effectively pulled a Disappearing Act as a breakup technique.

  And it fucking sucks. This is one of the most painful ways to breakup, for me at least. It usually comes as a complete surprise, it gives me no explanation for what went wrong, nothing to fix or correct, and not even any chance to get my own say in. It's a cowardly way to breakup and I hate it and I hate the people who do it. And yes, I'm still angry over this, several years later. I don't give a fuck about the guy anymore, he's clearly an asshole and I'm better off without him. I'm angry at the idea of the Disappearing Act and how it demeans the person you disappear on.

  So there you have it, several different types of breakup, some of them better than others. Some people say there is no good way to breakup with someone, and while it may be true that there is no good way, much like there is no One Right Way to be polyamorous, but here are plenty of wrong, and more wrong than other, ways. The "right" way is a way that treats the other person with dignity and respect and gives them the opportunity to learn what went wrong, so that they can put the episode behind them and move on too. Maybe not all of our exes are as deserving of respect as others, but that is still the method that makes YOU a decent person, and someone worth taking a chance on dating. Remember my advice to become a friendly ex, if you have to breakup, and avoid the War or the Disappearing Act if it's at all within your power to avoid.

  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsLQju2I0dU

tacit

emanix

tacit

tacit

When someone is ranting about a particular topic, such as sexism, racism, bigotry in general, or other emotional hot-button topics, don't respond with sarcasm that could possibly be misconstrued as genuine.

Even worse are those jokes that may not easily be classified as sarcastic. It's supposed to be a joke. But if the person ranting has her ire up, now is not the time to be poking fun at the topic she is particularly emotional about right now.

• when I say "don't compliment me on my appearance, this seriously bugs me", don't follow that up with "hey baby, ur hot!" as a joke. Not only is it not funny, I'm probably going to get more pissed off at that moment than if you said that out of the blue because I just finished saying how much I don't like that. Kind of like when Rebecca Watson had just finished speaking for 8 FUCKING HOURS about how she hates getting hit on at skeptic conventions, only to be asked back to some guy's room for coffee within minutes of her latest tirade and announcement that she was tired and wanted to go to sleep.
  
  Bad fucking timing. Don't do it. Don't defend it, don't excuse it, just don't fucking do it.


• Also, when I rant about how our society views the worth of females almost exclusively on their appearance and/or sexuality after posting a link to a female politician that I support, don't respond with "I like her, plus she's hot!" and expect me to find that funny. It's totally out of place and I'm already hypersensitive because I just finished ranting about that very subject.


• Also, when I respond to a post that is bigoted and uninformed about a type of sexuality (in this case, kink), don't then post a joke saying that HIV is a magic trick that turns fruits into vegetables. IT'S NOT FUCKING FUNNY. It's not funny at any time, but it's especially in poor taste when one is trying to raise awareness about stereotypes and bigotry. Also, being gay doesn't give you a free pass from making fucked-up gay jokes. Just like being female doesn't give you a free pass from being sexist or misogynistic and being black doesn't give you a free pass to be racist. Just sayin'.

Oh, that's nice. That's good, yes, keep doing that. That's great! Almost there ... almost ... what do you mean you're done? Oh, well, that's OK, we can still ... you mean you're just stopping? Right there? But we're so close! If you just ... what do you mean it's all my fault? Yes women should be responsible for their own orgasms, but that doesn't mean you aren't supposed to contribute anything at all! This is supposed to be a shared experience! That doesn't make you a feminist, that makes you a shitty lover.

I don't think I'll continue wasting my time with a guy who may be decent at starting off, but stops short right when it starts to get good - not when there are plenty of other guys out there who can start out good and still follow through to the end, and who don't mask their condescension of women with intellectual snobbery.

No one told me that I needed a pertussis booster as an adult every 10 years. No one told me that pertussis was whooping cough. No one told me that adults could get it at all. And no one told me that this virus that I read about in old Victorian novels was still around.

When I was 19, I caught whooping cough. It's aptly named. It'd a deep, goose-honking cough that comes in fits that lasts for several minutes, at the end of which you are gasping for breath, holding your stomach in pain, and vomiting.

Yes, you read that correctly, and no, I'm not being hyperbolic.

The coughing fits go on for so long, and the coughs come so rapidly, that it's very like an asthma attack where the cougher can't breathe. In fact, that's what kills people, including those 9 or so babies in California last year. They just suffocated to death. It's a horrible, ugly way to die. And I had these coughing fits about 7 or 8 times a day for about 6 months. Because I was a young adult, in the prime of my life, with adequate nutrition and sanitation, I survived. I didn't realize at the time just how fortunate I was.

The body also tries to expel the mucus through other means than coughing. This means that I had to throw up after every coughing fit. So while I was coughing and gasping for breath, I also had to run around whatever building I was in searching for a bathroom or a door that led outside so I could empty the contents of my stomach. I caught whooping cough when I was a tour guide for the Winchester Mystery House. Let me tell you, it was no easy feat to make it outdoors every time I had a coughing fit.

I went for several years after that initial pertussis infection before starting to cough again. But once I did, it was about once every other year for a couple of years, and now it seems to be once every year. Unfortunately, when I go to the clinic to get treated, they treat me as if I have chronic bronchitis. But no one ever does any tests. I may, in fact, have chronic bronchitis. There are a few mentions in the medical literature that pertussis can lead to chronic bronchitis and that smoking & second-hand smoke is the leading cause of chronic bronchitis (and my housemate smokes - she keeps to her room, but the smoke seeps out through the cracks in the door and through the air vents into my room too), but the symptoms for bronchitis don't match what I have. Or, rather, only the symptoms for chronic bronchitis that are ALSO on the symptom list for pertussis match what I have.

This lasts for months. It's supposed to last only for 6 weeks. It never does.

Doctors routinely prescribe antibiotics for any cough that lasts more than two weeks. You'd think this was a good thing. Except that it means that I have to wait a minimum of two weeks, coughing like my body wants to expel my intestines, before I can get treated. And, for pertussis, antibiotics have to be administered early for there to be any effect, so if it IS pertussis again and not bronchitis, the antibiotics do diddly squat. On the other hand, if it's bronchitis, antibiotics don't do shit either because bronchitis is a virus, not a bacteria. Plus, the specific antibiotic treatment for pertussis is not the same antibiotic that they use to treat chronic bronchitis, so they could be treating me for the wrong disease. whether it's an annual re-infection of pertussis or an annual flare-up of chronic bronchitis, it fucking sucks.

Complications from pertussis include:
Pneumonia
Convulsions
Seizure disorder (permanent)
Nose bleeds
Ear infections
Brain damage from lack of oxygen
Bleeding in the brain (cerebral hemorrhage)
Mental retardation
Slowed or stopped breathing (apnea)
Subconjunctival hemorrhages
Rib fractures
Urinary incontinence
Hernias
Post-cough fainting
Vertebral artery dissection
Death

The reason for this post is to notify and remind everyone to get their vaccinations on time. Whooping cough is especially deadly for babies because they have to be old enough before they can get their vaccination, so any adult might be a carrier and could kill some child. Dragon*Con just happens to offer the pertussis vaccine for free. This is actually a pretty expensive vaccine, so I strongly recommend getting vaccinated at D*C if you go. It's actually the TDaP, Tetnus, Diptheria, & Pertussis. Get it! No excuses! The first year they offered the vaccine clinic was so successful that they used up their entire allotment of vaccines and an HIV testing group set up next to the the following year.

And for fuck's sake, start demanding better healthcare! If vaccines had better PR, I might have known I was supposed to get a booster shot. If I didn't make too much money for government medical aid, I might be able to afford something other than the free clinic, which is only open one day a week and I usually have to try for several weeks before I get selected to be seen. If the economy hadn't crashed, I might have made enough money for private health insurance where I could go to a regular doctor whenever I needed to. If our stupid politicians didn't think that anyone who wanted insurance could pay for it (ergo if you don't have insurance, it's because you don't want it) or that poor people didn't deserve free medical care, it wouldn't matter if I was out of work or working a lot or too far back in line at the free clinic - I could get decent medical care and go back to being a productive, tax-paying citizen instead of hacking up my spleen and wondering how many more of these attacks I have left before it kills me.

I've posted about this show before, but I haven't done an official review yet. First of all, it's poly. It's about as poly as you get. Second, it's funny and weird. Third, I liked the first half better than the second half, but I liked it in general. Mostly it was just a couple of episodes in the second half that threw me off.

Family is the brain-child of Terisa Greenan, a polyamorous filmmaker in Seattle, WA. The show follows the lives of Ben, Gemma, and Stuart, a live-in triad (I get the impression that it's sexually a Vee, but they all consider themselves equal family, so that makes them a triad) that is very loosely based on Terisa's own life.

Each episode is roughly 7 to 10 minutes long and posted on YouTube, although there are 2 or 3 "uncensored" episodes that are posted elsewhere that doesn't have YouTube's ridiculous nudity taboo. We start out by just meeting the three main characters and getting a feel for how their family is arranged. My favorite episode is the second one, where the triad goes to a poly meeting. If you've ever been to a poly meeting and have a sense of humor about yourself, this episode will have you laughing out loud at the caricature painting of poly people.

The entire series is available as a DVD, and watching all episodes one after the other is about 3 hours, and worth the watch. The show covers things like adding new partners, getting along with metamours you don't like, meeting the "in-laws", dealing with conservative neighbors, and even dealing with the media.

About halfway through, though, the show takes a turn for the weird. It introduces some pretty bizarre characters and some of the plots have less to do with polyamory and more to do with just having strange people squatting in your garage, with a bit of psychosis-masquerading-as-woo thrown in for flavor. But it doesn't leave polyamory completely, and the series finale brings it back with a very serious issue that our main characters have to face together as a family.

The production quality is pretty good, and although the acting is a little wooden, it's not so terrible that it distracts from my enjoyment of the show in general. Really, the crazy characters starting about 8 or 9 episodes in was more distracting than any less-than-stellar acting.

I definitely recommend watching this show and, like Summer Lovers, no list of poly movies would be complete without it.

Someone recommended this movie to me as a poly movie, and I can see why he did, but I have to disagree. I don't think this was a poly movie. I think this movie had a poly character in it, but the movie was not polyamorous. As far as enjoyment goes, my tastes run towards the banal and crude - I like action flicks and screwball comedies. I've written several times that I just don't get artsy films or foreign films made during the sexual revolution when things were all experimental and everything looked like the writers and directors were permanently on LSD.

So you might like this film if your tastes differ from mine - don't avoid seeing it on the basis of my personal enjoyment if you happen to be into artsy or foreign or '60s movies. And as far as artsy or foreign or '60s movies goes, this wasn't even all that horrible. It didn't have the bizarre music or jump cuts of A Woman Is A Woman. But, probably because of the difference in cultures, I just didn't find this movie very interesting or the characters very compelling. I know, there's irony in that statement after admitting that I like movies like Caddyshack. But it's the truth, I found the movie just kind of blah. However, I can see other people enjoying it. I have lots of friends who like lots of movies that I don't enjoy, and I can see some of them really liking this film.

As for the poly stuff, the plot is about a married man who loves and adores his wife and kids, but who falls in love with another woman. According to my movie guidelines, cheating movies do not get added to the list, but a movie where the cheater genuinely loves both of his partners and there is some outside constriction preventing them from living honestly (such as social taboos) may be exempted and be added to the list.

Francois loves Therese, his wife. He's very happy with his life, content. But then one day he meets Emilie. And he falls immediately in love. This was his first strike against him, for me. I don't much hold with the love-at-first-sight bullshit. I believe people can have instant attractions to each other, and then sometimes, by coincidence, they are attracted to people who happen to also be compatible to them, so the attraction-at-first-sight can blossom into a true love, and it is when that happens that people think they fell in love at first sight. But we don't hear epic tales of attraction-at-first-sight that then turns out poorly. It's a matter of confirmation bias, or the Fake Boob/Toupee fallacy (I can always spot fake boobs/toupees because they look fake, except when they don't and I can't). Love at first sight is real, except when it isn't.

Anyway, so Francois falls in "love" with Emilie and immediately begins an affair with her. As I said, cheating movies don't make the list, but loving both partners might exempt it, so this movie could have been added to the list. The reason why it's not is because of the ending, which changes the whole tone of the movie into "multi-partner relationships are Wrong and Bad", and which I'll go into under the cut.

Although Francois said a lot of very good poly lines, this movie had that elusive and hard-to-quantify tone that implies, to me, that non-monogamy is bad. As I said in the guidelines, it's not whether a movie ends happily or tragically, or whether a multi-adult relationship breaks up or stays together - it's what the movie says about non-monogamy that puts it on the poly-ish movie list or not. And, in spite of the main character clearly being about loving multiple people, this movie said to me that non-monogamy is cruel and wrong and that a happy nuclear family is the goal.

I think one could defend some ambivalence in the message, with Francois being written sympathetically and not as a villain, so I don't actually recommend that ya'll avoid seeing this movie. It may be worth your time. But I think that the way things were wrapped up, ambivalence aside, the message was more pro-nuclear-family than pro-consider-alternatives, so I will not include it on the list, but I will suggest that people might want to see this movie if they're into French cinema or if they want to hear a protagonist defend the idea of loving two women at the same time.

• If the breakup has nothing to do with the polyamory, but has to do with outside influences, such as the country going to war & separating people, or the pressure to conform to social standards is too great (usually due to the era), the movie might go on the list (i.e. Head In The Clouds & Paint Your Wagon).
• If the movie has other valuable elements in it, such as examples of common and important conversations (coming out, discrimination, overcoming jealousy, etc.), or is a true story of an actual poly family, such as a documentary (i.e. Three of Hearts), then even a relationship that ends poorly may be added to the list.
• Movies where characters die are not automatically excluded from the list - it depends on what role that death plays in the story. If the death is just a part of life in the story, and not the sole justification for someone loving more than one (i.e. Carrington), it might go on the list.  But if one character is torn between two others, and the only way the character can justify loving them both is to kill one of them off (i.e. Pearl Harbor), it does NOT go on the list.