I appreciate all the ways that technology has made our lives easier, safer, all-around-better.  But there are some social trends that have resulted from some technologies that I'm really not a fan of.  The cell phone is my main bugaboo.

I've never liked cell phones.  Oh, don't get me wrong, I find them terribly convenient.  Being able to call my boss when I'm stuck in traffic to say I'm running late has been awesome.  Sending a text to find someone at a theme park when we otherwise would have wandered around for hours and *still* may never have found each other - wonderful.  Getting a short message in the middle of the day from my sweetie to say he's thinking of me can often make my day.  I still don't like cell phones.

The problem I have with cell phones is the immediacy of them and what that does to the people around me.  Because everything and everyone is available right now and right here, I find I have a strong dislike of cell phones, primarily because of what they represent.

First is getting people to stay present with me.  Thanks to smartphones, everyone around me is constantly tweeting and facebooking and googling all the time.  It was bad enough when the phone could ring at any time.  Then it got worse when text messages started getting sent all the time and no one could resist checking their text messages and immediately responding.  But now with smartphones, it seems as though I can't have a one-on-one conversation with someone without them being distracted by the internet.  I don't mean the occasional looking up a fact in question during a conversation - I actually kind of like that.  I mean sitting across the table from someone, looking them in the eye, talking to them, and having the conversation interrupted because a text, then a tweet, then a Facebook update, then another tweet, then a slew of texts, then a need to post a picture RIGHT NOW about the food on the table, all happen and the conversation is lost.  Nobody is really present anymore.  I miss that contact.  I miss that kind of contact so much that I find myself becoming very resentful of my partners' phones.  I try to cover it by always carrying a book with me, so that I can at least have something of my own to do when they are no longer being present with me.  But it irritates me all the same.  If I had wanted to read, I would have stayed home and read.  The book is just to keep me from staring off into space when my companion finds something else more interesting than me.

The other thing is the expectation that comes with all this availability.  When I was in high school (the last time average people weren't easily reached, before even pagers became popular), people had to call the house.  If you weren't home, they left a message on your answering machine, and then they waited for you to call them back.  Leaving multiple messages in a short span of time was considered very rude.  Then I convinced my mom to let me have a pager.  I wanted one so my boyfriend could send me numeric messages while I was at school, but I convinced my mom by telling her she could reach *me* when I was out with my friends.  So she would page me in the middle of the night to find out where I was.  And then she would page me again.  And again.  And again.  I had to explain to her that she needed to give me a minimum of 30 minutes to answer a page because I could be on the road.  30 minutes was the average time to get anywhere in my hometown.  If my mom didn't give me time to arrive at my destination, then I would have to pull over and try to find a payphone.  Since she was paging me late at night, that meant being a teenage girl getting out of the car at some gas station in the middle of the night - the exact kind of situation my mother was worried about that finally convinced her that me having a pager was a good idea in the first place.

This is the sort of thing I see now, only it's not restricted to worried calls from my mother.  If I don't answer an email fast enough, if I don't respond to a Facebook post fast enough, if I don't answer a tweet, if I don't respond to a text in an amount of time that the other person thinks is "appropriate", people get really testy about that.  Never mind that I could be hanging from a steel beam holding something very heavy over other people's heads.  Never mind that I could actually be out of the house and my computer is still at home and still logged on.  Never mind that I could be having one of those intimate conversations where I'm trying to give someone my undivided attention.  Never mind that I could be sleeping, or showering, or fucking, or pooping.  I have to respond RIGHT NOW.

I'm waiting for some repairs to happen in my bathroom.  It will take my shower offline for 3 days, so I've requested that the repairman schedule the repairs so that I can make alternative accommodations for this.  Last week, the repairman showed up at my house first thing in the morning.  I was still sleeping, having had a late night and still having company.  So I didn't answer the door (I didn't know it was the repairman at the time).  About an hour later, while I was occupied, there was another knock at the door.  20 minutes after that, I got a phone call that I let go to voicemail from the building manager telling me they wanted to schedule the repairs.  5 minutes after that, my dad texted me, asking if I was OK.  Since it was my dad, I texted back that I was fine, and he said that the landlord had called the emergency number to find out where I was.  Then I got in the shower.  Then there was another knock at the door while I was in the shower (the shower window, by the way, is on the same wall as the door and since the window was open, anyone at my door could tell I was in the shower).  Then my dad texted again that the landlord called back!

A mere 2 hours after the first knock, when I was awake and dressed and ready to deal with business matters, I finally called the landlord and chewed her out for coming by a total of 4 times, calling 3 times, and calling my dad twice, all without previously scheduling the repairs as requested.  This is what I'm talking about.  People expect other people to be available all the time, even without making any arrangements for it.  I have an OKC inbox filled with first-contact emails and a second, follow-up email of guys pissed off or hurt that I haven't responded to them.  No "I'm sure you're probably busy", no "is everything OK?" - it's all "fine, I can take a hint, the least you could do is tell me that you're not interested and not just ignore me!"  Entitlement.

You are not entitled to my response.  You are not entitled to my availability.  Also, there is nothing about me that is passive-aggressive and even a cursory look at my profile would tell those guys that if I wasn't interested, I wouldn't just *ignore* him.  Plus, if I was ignoring him, whining about it isn't likely to end well regardless.

The latest incident was an ex-mistake of mine.  I call him my stalker, and it's a long and convoluted story how a stalker is also an ex.  The "short" story is that we've known each other since we were 12 and he decided the moment I walked in the classroom door that I would be the girl he married.  He spent the next decade putting himself in the friendzone, i.e. a friend with ulterior motives.  He was my friend for the purpose of getting close to me in the hopes that I would one day realize that he was my soulmate.  I didn't know this at the time.  This is the antithesis of being a nice guy, although every single guy who does this calls himself a Nice Guy for doing it.  He tried every juvenile trick in the book to get me to date him.  Eventually, in college, I did date him, and very quickly learned what a bad idea that was.  After we broke up, he put himself back in the friendzone.  I genuinely prefer to be friends, or at least friendly, with my exes if we broke up simply because we were incompatible & not because he did something unforgivable, so I didn't see a problem with him trying to be friends with me ... at the time.  That took me another 6 years to learn.

By that point, I had discovered polyamory and had moved across the country, so my interaction with him was limited to phone calls.  We'd have very pleasant multi-hour-long conversations, until he'd point out how well we were getting along and wasn't that enough proof that we were destined to be together?  We'd have an argument, and I mean an ARGUMENT complete with shouting where he tried to convince me that we were two halves of the same whole, that I was doing this poly thing only because I was still searching for Mr. Right and I should stop searching because he was right there and I would yell back that I was not interested, that I loved my then-boyfriends, that I was not happy being monogamous, and that our dating was a mistake I never wanted to repeat.

This is more backstory than necessary (and yet only a fraction of the story), but the point is that I spent the majority of my life being hounded by this guy to marry him (complete with him sabotaging the condoms in the hopes that I'd get pregnant, as I learned later) and yelling at him that I didn't want to be with him.  I had finally had enough.  In a phone conversation while I was at my then-boyfriend's house (so I have a witness to it), my stalker started in again on being soulmates and I told him that I was never going to have that argument again.  I told him that I was not going to contact him ever again, and he could not contact me unless he could refrain from starting that argument, and if he ever DID bring it up again, I was going to change my number so he couldn't ever call me again.

About 6 years has passed and I have not contacted him.  He has sent me 2 emails and friended me on Facebook (but not actually contacted me there).  The first email was an essay he wrote for his creative writing class where he described our 2-decade relationship from his perspective.  I've written about that before and how shocked I was to learn that someone who had known me for years & claimed to love me could know me so little (he still believed that my poly relationships were casual sex and that I only did poly because I was "promiscuous" and wanted to have lots of sex with lots of guys ... how he could miss my regular months-long spans of no sex drive is beyond me, but I digress).  His second email was to tell me that his brother had been convicted of murdering his own wife & child, and how my stalker felt his life was falling apart.  That's another long story I won't go into here, but let's just say I wasn't the least bit surprised to hear the news.  For both emails, I did not respond, since he explicitly said "you don't have to respond, I just need someone to listen".  He then promptly emailed me back after both to whine about getting "the hint" from my silence.  Both of those I responded in the same way, to remind him of our last conversation and that he said I didn't have to respond.

Yesterday, after I had publicly posted on my timeline that I was unplugging for a while to go be productive, he sent me a message on Facebook.  Naturally, I didn't respond, as I had walked away from my computer.  He sent me 2 more passive-aggressive messages about getting "the hint" from my not responding.  I got the messages this morning and sent him yet another reminder that I wasn't interested in speaking to him, however my "silence" was because I was not at my computer and that I didn't owe him a response according to his time table.  It's a funny little quirk I have, not prioritizing responses to guys who treat me as an object, who put me on a pedestal and ignore my own wishes for my life, and who think that arguing with me about dating is a good strategy for winning me over.

So, I am increasingly disturbed by the sense of entitlement people seem to have over other people's time.  Maybe people always felt that entitled and the cell phones are merely a new tool to facilitate that entitlement, and I shouldn't blame the cell phone or turn it into a symbol of that entitlement.  All I know is that people seem to demand other people's attention, and other people's responses, and any irritation at being so demanded is met with a counter accusation that it's somehow the other person's fault for not being available and the other person is an asshole for having a problem with the demand.  It feels as though nothing can wait for more convenient times, everything has to be done now and if you don't want to do it now or, Zeus forbid, you're busy with something else, well then you're a jerk.  If you don't want to answer your phone because you're at work, or otherwise occupied with someone else, you're a dick.  If you want your partner to actually finish the conversation, or the date, before surfing Facebook, you're selfish.  If you dare to walk away from the computer while it's still logged on to email or social networking sites, you're inconsiderate.  And if you have the nerve to actually tell people that you have other things to do and can't respond right away, then somehow you are the self-centered prick who thinks the world revolves around you.

So if I don't respond to something you've said to me, or emailed me, or posted to me, or texted me, or called me, it's because I'm fucking busy with other things to do.  I'll get to you when I get to you, as I expect you would for me.  If what I'm contacting you about is urgent, I'll make sure you know it's urgent.  Otherwise, if you don't answer me back, I'll assume that sitting with your phone in your hands waiting for my message was not at the top of your priority list and something else was, something like eating, or sleeping, or any of the dozens of people in your life who are closer to you than I am, or work, or pets, or an emergency, or it was a pretty day outside so you just left the damn phone in your pocket for a while, and NOT that you're sending me some coded signal that you don't like me.  Whatever, respond when you have the time and if you feel like it.  You don't owe your time to me, but I'll appreciate whatever time of yours you're willing and able to share with me.

tacit

There is one fly in the ointment: If you introduce someone new into your life, you DO risk disruption.

A lot of otherwise decent people do many very evil things in the name of protecting their existing relationships from disruption. But disruption is a fact of life. You can't introduce someone new into your life without risking disruption, and that's okay.

Almost everything you do in your life risks disruption to your relationships. Taking a new job. Losing a job. (Couples counselors say that financial stress is more likely to ruin a relationship than any other single factor, including cheating.) Deciding to have a baby. Moving to another city. An illness or injury. Problems in the family of origin. A death in the family. New hobbies. Hell, every time you walk outside your door or step into a car, you're risking serious injury or death, and that'll disrupt a relationship real quick!

We don't live in fear of disruption when we're offered a new job or decide to have a child. We accept that these things will change our lives, and move on. Ethical polyamory is the same thing: you accept that changes in your romantic life may affect your relationship, you resolve to act with integrity and honesty to cherish your partners to the best of your ability, you trust that your partners will do the same thing, and you move on.

tacit

• The event had free parking right on site and was only $3 to get in.  By the time I had arrived, they even stopped charging the entrance fee, so win!


• The food was amazing!  At least, the ones I had were amazing.  The prices were "reasonable", and by "reasonable", I mean that they were comparable with any specialty ice cream shop.  So I'm sure you can find cheaper ice cream, even really good cheaper ice cream, at the grocery store.  But if you go to Baskin Robbins, you'll probably pay the exact same price for a cup of ice cream as the Baskin Robbins booth right there at the festival.


• The music was entertaining.  If you're a music snob, or you like only niche or certain sub-culture music, then you probably won't like it.  It was family-friendly, non-offensive, and designed to keep up people's moods.  I like music like that.  I heard Beach Boys, The Electric Slide, and something from some current pop artist, maybe Tao Cruiz.


• I saw an Indian ice cream booth there! I didn't get any, but I was very pleased to see such an exotic booth.  The only flavor I even recognized was mango, and if I had had enough money when I discovered it, I would have tried some.


• They had some activities besides just buying ice cream - mostly kids stuff.  I saw a bounce house, pony rides, a rock climbing wall, and even a teeny-tiny mini golf course.

• They really did not expect the crowds they got and were not prepared.  I arrived a little before 3 PM (open until 7 PM) and booths were already sold out, which is why they stopped charging admission.


• There were no lines drawn or flagged on the grass parking lot, so the lines of parking were crooked and slanted, and they actually ended up with huge amounts of wasted parking space because it wasn't quite enough room to add another lane but definitely too wide for just a normal driveway.


• Lines were long and unwieldy. The layout of the festival did not account for the long lines, so passerby traffic had to cut through the lines, and the lines stretched and curved and leaned into other booths - both next to and across the road.  The booths themselves were not staffed to handle such a customer load, so the lines were also slow-moving.


• As usual for festival grounds, there wasn't a whole lot of shade.  That's less of a problem if you're moving around and can get to the giant "Chill Pill" tent with all the tables, but because of the line problem, we were just standing still in the sun for unreasonably long amounts of time.  I know there's not much they can do about that, since festival grounds, by nature, need to be wide open spaces.  But maybe putting up a whole bunch of tents right over the road, kind of spaced along the road?  Then, as we're walking down the road browsing the booths, we can pass under spots of shade, and people standing in lines that span across the road can maybe be standing under those tents?


• They needed more variety of non-dessert food.  There was 1 burger stand, 1 Italian sausage stand, 1 hot wings stand, and 1 stand with fries that sold out right around the time I got there.  There needed to be some non-dessert options that weren't $6+.  The fries were a good start, but, as I said, they sold out early.  A corn on the cob stand might have been a good option.  A falafel food truck or a burrito truck or hot dogs or something.  Anything that could have served some kind of side dish for approximately the same price range as the ice cream and even a single option that a vegetarian could have would have been nice (although they did have non-dairy & vegan ice cream - naturally it was already sold out by the time I got there).  I know it was an ice cream festival, but people will be more willing to stay longer, and more willing to buy more sweets, if there are actual meal options that are affordable and options to cut the sweet so that we don't go into a sugar coma.


• The drink booth was also not prepared for the size of the crowd.  They needed more coolers, more helpers, and more drink options.  There was Gatorade, water, Pepsi, and Diet Pepsi.  That's it.  Canned tea for those who need something with flavor but not more sweet, and Sprite for the non-caffeine drinkers who might want a soda instead of Gatorade or water would have been really appreciated.


• Everything was standard specialty ice cream shop sized. I'd rather see the festival organized more like Epcot's Food & Wine festival, where everything is more like taste-sized, so that we can go from booth to booth, sampling a wider variety of foods.  $1 shot glasses of ice cream would be way better than $3 cups of ice cream.  Also, it might not sell out as fast.


• All food was purchased with Moo-lah, fake money that you pre-purchased and then exchanged for the food.  I ended up with a Moo-lah dollar that I couldn't spend, because there wasn't anything there for a dollar (well, maybe some of the activities were, I don't know because I didn't even look at the bouncey house or the pony rides or the mini golf course).

Next year, I would recommend, first, arriving early, then only buying your entrance ticket, then walking the entire grounds to decide what you want, and THEN buying your Moo-lah so that you only purchase the fake dollars that you plan to spend.  It didn't occur to me to do that until I was already inside & had purchased my fake money, although I knew they sold the fake money inside.  As I saw "sold out" signs going up all over the place and lines so long and curvy that I couldn't find the ends, I decided to just jump in the first line that had something I wanted, and each line as I came to it, rather than planning out my spending.  I was afraid I would decide on something back in the beginning and it would be sold out before I circled back after looking at everything.

Even better, if you go with someone(s), plan what you want to buy, then split up - one (or more) of you stands in line for food while one runs to a Moo-lah booth to buy fake money.  Then the person with the money can deliver it by the time the person in the food line gets to the front.  If you can go with several, have one money runner and everyone else wait in different food lines to get everyone's food in each booth. Then meet up at the picnic tables.

Although I liked the flavors of ice cream I got, and although there was a nice variety of brands present, I would have liked to have seen A) more exotic flavors and B) a plain vanilla/plain chocolate option.

I know, that sounds like I'm asking a lot.  What I'm suggesting, though, is that this is a festival celebrating ice cream, and all the vendors are local vendors with shops or food trucks here town.  We can go to these shops any time we want to.  So I think it would benefit them to showcase some of their more unusual, exotic, or specialty flavors as a hook to catch the attention of the thousands of attendees who might be considering the competing shop right next door.  But, at the same time, *someone* has to have the old classics for those who attended for exactly that reason.  What I'm saying is that I saw the same handful of flavors over and over again - cotton candy, birthday cake, strawberry, chocolate chip cookie dough, cookies N cream, etc.

Don't get me wrong, there were some unique flavors.  I had an excellent banana pudding frozen custard that I just adored!  And there probably was more variety that I missed because of all the booths that had sold out before I got there.  But I didn't get any fruit-based, non-cream desserts like a strawberry popsicle, and the Shamrock Explosion that I was originally in line for sold out 3 people ahead of me, leaving the entire line with only the banana pudding and the coconut custard options.  I think this was clearly an underestimation problem that is to be expected with a first-year event.  It's very difficult to estimate what will sell and what won't.  It's why I use a third-party one-off printer instead of printing my shirts in bulk and handling the sales myself.  I've seen too many merchants end up with too many left-over t-shirts and other shirts sell out immediately, all because predicting what will sell is hardly an exact science.

So, it was hot, it was crowded, the lines were long, the food sold out early, and there wasn't enough of the food I wanted.  I still want to go back next year.  I think pretty much everything I had a problem with is something to be expected for a first-time event, so I hold out hope that every single one of them will improve next year.  If outdoor festivals aren't your thing, then you'll probably want to skip this unless your love of ice cream is stronger than your dislike of outdoor festivals.  But if you love ice cream, this was a pretty good event.  it was relatively inexpensive and I got exposed to a ton of ice cream brands that I didn't even know were local shops.  It was a nice day out, if too hot while standing in line in the sun without a hat, sunglasses, or sunscreen on and a poor decision to wear full jeans & a t-shirt with sleeves but that was my mistake, and I liked the music.  Really, it's not a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon, and I expect it to be better next year.

But now I need to go eat something with protein & complex starch, to cut all that sugar.  Wish I had some salad-fixings in the house - add a little egg & a roll & it would fix the whole thing!

• Quinn: Acupuncture TOTALLY works! You should try it!


• Devon: Uh, no it doesn't. Here are citations from well-regulated, double-blind, placebo-controlled, large sample population studies from a variety of research facilities that all confirm there is no measurable effect from acupuncture.


• Quinn: Psshhh! My acupuncturist is a guy I've known for 20 years and he's a karate sensei  so I believe him, not your studies. Science gets things wrong all the time, but THIS guy knows karate! I think he knows what he's doing with acupuncture!


• Devon: *blinkblink*

• Paula: As a black trans woman, I've experienced sexism, racism, and homophobia in skeptic communities, so I'm less likely to want to attend skeptic events.


• Paul: That's ridiculous, there's no sexism, racism, or homophobia in skeptic communities! We're a rational group of people, we require evidence to hold beliefs, and there is no evidence supporting the unequal treatment of other genders, other races, or other sexual orientations. Therefore, you couldn't have experienced any of those things because we're just not any of those things.


• Paula: Look, I'm telling you that I've experienced all of those things. Just because you weren't there or you can't see it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It does, and I've felt it, and so have a lot of other people. That's why there are so few women, people of color, and people of alternative sexualities at your little events - we get treated poorly and we'd rather just not go.


• Paul: I don't see you citing any rigorous studies supporting your claim, therefore you're just spouting anecdote, and anecdote does not equal data. You're wrong, it doesn't happen.


• Paula: I think I get to be the authority on my own personal experiences and you can't tell me that I didn't have them.


• Paul: That's the Argument From Authority! Your argument is invalid!

• Jordan: Polyamory is a legitimate relationship style. I love more than one person at a time and polyamory is a valid way to ethically explore those feelings.


• Sam: You don't love more than one person at a time, you only think you do. Real love doesn't let you love more than one person at a time, so if you think you love multiple people, you don't really love any of them. If you did really love any of them, you couldn't have feelings for the others. QED.


• Jordan: You can't tell me what I do and don't feel! I know what I feel, and I feel real, true love for each of my partners!


• Sam: You're just deluding yourself, that's not real love. Dictionary.com says love is exclusive, therefore what you feel isn't real love.


• Jordan: No one gets to overrule what I say about my own feelings. I have feelings that I can feel, I am part of a community you've never even heard of before today, and I have an academic sociology background. I am the final authority on what I feel and anyone who says different is wrong!


• Sam: Aha! That's the Argument From Authority! Your claim is now invalid - polyamory is not real because you can only support it with logical fallacies!

Before you post a link, or worse, a picture with a sob story attached, about evil corporations trying to screw us over, mad scientists trying to poison our food supply, evil strangers trying kill babies or rape women or steal money, hidden needles in food or gas pumps, dead rodents or insects in famous restaurant chains, or strangely generous famous people willing to pay you money for forwarding pictures to all your friends, check it out on Snopes: www.snopes.com

If you don't like Snopes, use www.urbanlegends.com. Both link to the original sources where they get their information so you can verify their conclusions.

If the story does not give VERIFIABLE information - first & last name, city/state/country, date, etc. - then it's probably fake. If the story does give that information, Google it first to make sure those people actually exist and the incident actually happened in the place and on the date the story claims.

More often than not, Michigan University never had a professor named Dr. Miles Pendergrast, so he certainly could not have bioengineered a potent virus that the government bought to implant in our water supply, little Lisa Snodgrass doesn't exist and doesn't have cancer or stayed at the non-existent Our Lady Of Perpetual Fraud hospital, and that scary chemical, dihydrogen monoxide, that kills millions of people every year and is in our FDA-approved food really does exist but it's not what you think it is (hint: dihydrogen monoxide is water).

*The title comes from a TV commercial currently playing on local television stations:

http://youtu.be/X-pHe879l60?t=8s

If you don't want to watch the video, the premise is that a girl makes a wild claim to a guy she knows.  He asked where she heard it, and she says "the internet".  She then says the the line in the title.  He asks where she heard *that* and they both say together "the internet", the guy clearly thinking "I should have known!"  Then an unkempt guy approaches and she says something along the lines of "excuse me, I have to go, my date is here.  I met him on the internet.  He's a French model!"  The unkempt guy glares at the guy and says, in an obviously American accent with no attempt to hide his lack of familiarity with the French language, "Bonjour!" and smiles contemptuously and lecherously at the pretty, dumb, girl he snookered while she looks back at the first guy with a sickeningly trusting & triumphant smile and walks off with the jackass.  The line that I used for the title has recently come, among one of my circles, to be shorthand for the brand of naivete that results in being taken advantage of by unscrupulous hoaxers and simple internet urban legends and is frequently trotted out to reference both this commercial and this phenomenon.

As I mentioned in my last post, I had heard there was a clinic who was offering the HPV test for men, but I was waiting for confirmation and more information before I posted about it.  I had looked up online on my own and only found more insistence that no HPV test existed except for that used in research.  One clinic in California was taking it upon themselves to use that research testing method to conduct their own study, thereby giving men who participated an HPV test.

Well, I found out that the clinic I heard of that may have had an HPV test for men does not, in fact, have an HPV test for men.  They seemed to have deliberately misled interested patients, as one particular patient tried to confirm several times, through several levels, that he was scheduling himself for an HPV test, and at each level was either told yes, or given an ambiguous or non-committal answer until he finally saw the physician personally.  That physician was the only person to say, flat out, that there was no HPV test for men and that their answering service gives out the wrong information all the time.  The person on the phone, the receptionist, the nurse or medical technician who prepped him for the appointment - none of them corrected the patient on the belief that he would be receiving an HPV test that day.

Remember, when you go in to be tested for "everything", you are not tested for everything.

Let me repeat that:  
When you go in to be tested for "everything", you are not tested for everything.

You MUST go in with a specific list of tests that you want to purchase and get confirmation from the physician herself that you will be tested for those things.  And, more than just saying "I want a herpes test", you have to say "I want the HSV PCR test" or whatever you're looking for.  Some STDs have different kinds of tests with different levels of accuracy and expense.  Make sure you know exactly which test you want and ask for it by name.  

And then be prepared to argue with them over the necessity of getting tested.  Many clinics and doctors still take the position that certain STDs like herpes and HPV are so prevalent, that there's no point in worrying whether you have it or not if you're asymptomatic, so you don't need to get tested.  They figure that if you don't have herpes or HPV yet, you will soon, so just don't worry about it until you start showing symptoms and need treatment.  If you're OK with that, then fine, but if you want to have test results in your records to show prospective partners, then insist that doctors provide the services that they offer to the patients willing to pay for those services, and if they won't, go elsewhere.

It is true that many people either have or will have HSV or HPV, and it is also true that, for the vast majority of those people, the virus is little more than an "inconvenience".  It is also true that stress about health and medical procedures can, for some health issues, be worse than the health issue itself.  Many people are worse off for worrying about things than they are for having those things, and for a great deal of things, too-often testing does not significantly increase your odds of survival or better health.  People who go looking for health problems will often find them, even when those problems are mild or things that the body can heal on its own.  Many people put themselves through unnecessary procedures and surgeries to take care of things "just in case" that probably won't hurt them and that are so mild that they'd never know they had if they hadn't gone looking for them.

All of that is irrelevant if you have done your research and you just want to have accurate and update medical records for your prospective partners.  I caution people against using test results as a way to justify and entrench their own sex-negative fears.  Some people hold onto their "clean" records as sort of a talisman to justify rejecting and being hurtful towards prospective partners who might have an STI.  I can't tell you how often I've heard statements like "I'm clean and I want to stay that way".  The fact is you won't.  STIs should be treated as any other equivalent illness.  You will get sick, whether it's the flu, strep throat, the measles, or warts and cold sores.  By all means, take precautions, but be consistent.  If you're afraid of getting a life-threatening illness like HIV, use condoms, get your flu shots and pertussis boosters, wash your hands regularly, don't go to work sick and insist that other sick coworkers go home, and get your physicals and preventative exams done on time.  

Being sick sucks, but STIs are no better or worse than any other comparable illness, so don't use your test results as a weapon against people with STIs, or to look down on people with STIs, or to think you're "safe" from life-changing surprises like illnesses.  Get tested so that your partners can make informed decisions, so that you can see patterns in your own health history, and to help you and your physician decide on appropriate medical  procedure schedules.  If you routinely have abnormal pap smears, for example, then you ought to be getting the HPV test regularly & often, like annually or semi-annually.  If you consistently have normal pap smears, have no history of cancer in your family, and your sexual network is fairly static, then you can probably get checked less often, like every other year.  

But, yes, definitely get tested "regularly" (for whatever definition of "regularly" fits your particular health circumstances) and definitely insist that your physician provide you with the proper services.  Just make sure to use those tests in the same way that you'd use any other health test - to evaluate your personal risk assessment and manage your personal health checkup schedules, not to freak out about being "unclean" or to ward off "dirty" partners.


For a list of the STIs that you can and should be tested for, download the Sexual Health & History Disclosure form, which includes spaces for you to add your latest testing dates & a record of your past and current partners, their testing status, & the transmissive activities you shared with them and can be found here, along with some other convenient charts & graphics http://www.theinnbetween.net/polysex.html

• Everyone grab one and pull!


• I need a male to female turn-around.


• How many slots are empty over there?


• There's room for one more!


• Someone help me tie this up!


• It's too tight!


• Can I use your tool?


• Which tool do you need?


• I'm getting to old to be working on my knees.


• Rub the kinks out of it


• This one's not kinked up yet!


• My boss just fucked me


• Bring it on in! No, wait! Take it out!


• Aw, man, who did THAT?


• Fuck that shit


• Used condoms right here!


• Here comes the head!


• I need skinny shit to shove in here!


• Shove it in the hole!


• Bring it!


• He's in the right pile.


• Gimme the black one


• Gotta twist it in.


• There's a trick to it. Just remember "twist & jiggle"


• I dunno about that, it looks dirty


• No, not that one, it's too small. I need the horse cock.


• Is that box full?


• You just start breaking them and I'll come behind you.


• I'm gonna need gak to fill the hole


• Fine! Make me bend over!


• You sure you can handle all that?


• How many holes you got left?


• Gonna need 3 guys to grab this fuzzy bitch and flip her on her back.


• This floor ain't exactly clean.  It's kinda chunky.


• I get excited when I see the little ones!


• I can handle the little ones all by myself!


• Non-lubricated Trojan condoms are the best. (Yes, it's legitimately used backstage for backstage stuff)


• My side's in, how about yours?


• Need a little more ass on this!


• I'm gonna go help her with her fuzzy.


• I love doing the movers!


• I need more 8-ways.


• I can finish this by myself.


• Get your fuzzy over there in line.


• Make a hole!


• Don't forget the nipples.


• That's a tight pack right there!


• Are you pulling out or staying here?


• Watch your back, I'm coming behind you!


• Up against the wall!


• More subs!


• Can I ride on the back?


• When you come, go through the rear.


• "How'd he get out of that harness so quickly?"  "He just slid out."  "I'm surprised he's not naked already!"


• Now THAT'S well hung!


• Are you sure that's rated for that kind of weight?


• Just put that anywhere


• Goddamn these condoms are tight! Don't we have any bigger ones? They hurt!


• "They're all fresh & tight." "We don't get many fresh, tight ones around here."

Back in 2010, the Pew Forum did a survey about how much Americans know about religion.  In a 32-question phone survey*, they asked people about Christianity & their bible, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Mormonism, atheism/agnosticism, and American legal issues about religion.  They found that atheists/agnostics scored the highest average, even after controlling for education & other demographics like race & sex, and did particularly well on the legal questions, questions about non-Christian religions, and questions about the Bible specifically.  One of the results that I find particularly amusing is that US Southerners scored worse than those from all other geographic regions on the religious knowledge questions, even after controlling for the demographics

The Pew Survey is completed, however you can take a 15-question version of the survey at Pew's website.  Your results do not affect the survey's conclusions and are not counted as data.  But you can see how well you do compared to Americans in general and compared to several different demographics including religious groups.  The 15 questions are taken directly from the 32 questions used in the original survey.  http://features.pewforum.org/quiz/us-religious-knowledge/

You can also take another survey with all 32 questions, just to see how you'd do, but it's hosted by a Christian website and called Are You Smarter Than An Atheist? and provides no way for you to indicate what your religious affiliation is.  Judging purely by the way other Christian groups have doctored online polls before, I suspect that they will take the results of their totally unscientific survey (which has atheists as well as people of other religions answering it) to show that "their" respondents (the presumption being that the respondents are all Christian) are smarter than the national average and/or the atheists who took the Pew survey.  But I took the survey anyway, just to see how I'd do http://m.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/0105/Are-you-smarter-than-an-atheist-A-religious-quiz/

I scored 30 out of 32 on the full survey (the highest average being from atheists at 20.9 correct out of 32) and 15 out of 15 on the smaller Pew survey (better than 99% of all other respondents - no religious affiliations given).  I'm archiving the results behind the cut because I'm rather proud of my knowledge and understanding of religious issues.  Don't click the cut if you want to take the surveys yourself and see what you actually know, because the answers are given.  Also don't bother clicking the cut if you don't want to be inundated with survey data - it's a boring list of numbers and stats that I'm only archiving for my own records and most people are not going to care how well I did compared to other religions on each question.

*Technically, the phone survey was way more than 32 questions, but that's because it included demographic questions (i.e. age, race, religious affiliation, political party, how often they attend church, etc.) and a handful of "control" questions about non-religious stuff like what is the vice president's name and which party holds the House majority and whether lasers work via sound waves and whether antibiotics kill bacteria and what movement is Susan B. Anthony associated with and who wrote Moby Dick.  But there were 32 questions on religious knowledge and the survey's goal was to determine who knew what about religion.

tacit

tacit

tacit

datan0de

"We're less inhibited online because we don't have to see the reaction of the person we're addressing, says Sherry Turkle, psychologist and Massachusetts Institute of Technology ... Because it's harder to see and focus on what we have in common, we tend to dehumanize each other, she says."

Saw on a Facebook picture today:

No matter which [religious] symbol you follow, if you respect mine, I'll respect yours."

I'll try to keep this short, because I addressed this in my last rant on the COEXIST sticker.  These kinds of bumper sticker slogans annoy me.  I get the desire for peace and cooperation that drives the slogan (and agree with it), but there are two things that are very wrong with slogans like these.

1) Some of those symbols represent philosophies/religions/worldviews/mindsets that are inherently exclusive to the other symbols.  If the very foundation of what that symbol represents is "everyone who isn't exactly like me is wrong and should be converted" or "everyone who isn't exactly like me is wrong and should die", there is no coexisting.  Period.  Any belief system that says it has the Truth is mutually exclusive to any other belief system, so therefore the beliefs cannot "coexist", although the people who hold them might.  And so far, every belief that science has been able to investigate has always provided an incorrect answer, again, making science & every supernatural belief system mutually exclusive (there are now some bumper stickers that include science in the collection of symbols).

2) I think it is reasonable to respect everyone's right to believe whatever they believe, but I do not think it is reasonable to respect those beliefs themselves.  Frankly, some of those beliefs are fucking terrifying and do not deserve respect - even the ones that do not demand the immediate assimilation or death of everyone who is different.  And the beliefs that aren't terrifying are just ridiculous.

It is not reasonable to expect me to respect a belief that says I am a filthy whore who deserves to be raped.  Even if the person holding that belief doesn't actually do anything about it just because we've reached some cease fire agreement.  

It is not reasonable to expect me to respect a belief that says I am going to burn for eternity because I didn't buy the totally implausible idea of a supernatural being impregnating a teenager with himself, and then having himself killed in order to take the punishment that was supposed to be mine for something I didn't do.

It is not reasonable to expect me to respect a belief that says water carries the memory of the poison we put into it, but not all the poop that was in it, and uses that memory of poison to cure us of things that cause the same symptoms as the poison.

It is not reasonable to expect me to respect a belief that says aliens are living at the center of our galaxy and trying to communicate with us telepathically, but the spinning of the galaxy is interfering, and they are trying to tell us how to create a Utopian society while other aliens have possessed our bodies and are making us feel "bad" and undermining the center-of-the-galaxy aliens' efforts at world peace.  (I swear I'm not making this up).

It is not reasonable to expect me to respect a belief that says you can take a machine that detects electricity into a house (with electrical wiring) and it will not detect the electrical wiring but it will detect the presence of a ghost, and jumping at house creaks in the middle of the night with the lights off is proof of an afterlife but not done for the purpose of getting ratings.

"Beliefs" are not worthy of respect.  People are.  But individuals can also deserve to have lost respect from others.

I really don't think people understand what the word "respect" means.  Either that, or they just don't understand the variability of "human nature" and refuse to accept that some people are capable of atrocities and are not worthy of respect.

I noticed something interesting about myself today.  Everyone makes snap judgments and assumptions when they first see people.  These are based primarily on stereotypes, either that we pick up from society or that we develop over time with experience.  They are never accurate 100% of the time, but for most people, they seem to serve just well enough to justify holding on to them.  And by "well enough", I mean that most of the time, even our inaccurate assessments don't get us killed, so if it feeds our confirmation bias or affirms the consequent, that seems to be "good enough".  So when I talk about one of my snap judgments, don't think that I'm not aware of the problems with snap judgments.

One of the things I judge people on is their smile in profile pictures.  Profile pictures, especially on dating websites, are usually the pictures we post of ourselves that we think shows us at our best - for whatever definition of "best" is.  Maybe it's when we think we're the most attractive, or maybe we think it illustrates our personality, or maybe it shows us doing something that we are passionate about and we want the viewer to know that we are passionate about it.

So when I see snapshots in a profile picture (in other words, not a professional photography session, but something someone snapped at a party), I have to wonder why they chose that picture.  Is this what they think their "best" looks like?  What does this picture say about them?  There are a lot of things a snapshot picture can say about a person, but right now, I want to focus on the smile.

A person's smile tells me a lot about them.  Again, I recognize that it might not be telling me the truth.  I do not let a 5-second glimpse at a photo dictate how I will think about that person forever and ever and the smile in one, or even a handful of photographs is not the only thing I use to judge people.  But nevertheless, this is what a smile tells me about someone.  

A close-lipped, tight smile, especially one that is turned down at the corners, puckered in at the corners, or has an otherwise "uncomfortable" look to the smile, tends to make me think that he is inhibited, fearful, or has low self-esteem.  A posed picture with a smirk or subdued, quietly dignified kind of smile doesn't do this.  A snapshot where he is aware of the camera, had time to smile, and looks like he "chose" to smile, and consequently chose a smile that says "I'm uncomfortable right now, please hurry up and take the picture" makes me think that he is not very open or secure.  Having a series of pictures where all the smiles are this one only reinforces my presumption.

But a wide, exuberant, showing-teeth smile indicates, to me, a person who is a happy person in general, who was caught in a moment of happiness, and who is not afraid to show us that he is happy.  This is a smile that goes all the way up to the eyes, which are crinkled and squinty.  It tells me that he is more concerned with how he is feeling right now than how he looks, and how he feels is wonderful.  Which makes him look wonderful to me.

An open, exuberant smile shows happiness and confidence to me.  It doesn't mean that he never has self-doubt and never has bad days.  A tight smile indicates a lack of self-confidence, and it's that confidence that is really attractive to me.  I want to fill my monkeysphere with people who embrace life, who are fearless, the Whole-Hearted people that researcher Brene Brown talks about in her TEDTalk about vulnerability.  I don't mind people who are reserved, or quiet, or even shy - social skills and energy requirements are not a part of what I'm talking about right now.  I'm talking about an overarching life philosophy - a worldview that sees the universe as something exciting and wonderful and wishes to experience as much of it as he can.  You can still be introverted or shy or publicly reserved and have this worldview.

My own experience has created a stereotype in my head, which I use to make snap judgments about pictures, that tells me this smile and this worldview are correlated.  The more pictures a person has with either type of smile, the stronger this correlation is.

There are a lot of people out there with advice for how to make your profiles "better", to increase your odds of attracting a partner.  I don't tend to find those very helpful.  Sure, I give netiquette advice too, but my advice is less about how to raise your profile hits and more about how not to be a jackass and insult or piss other people off, and by extension, you will probably find more success if you're not being a jackass online.

But I don't find these "get more hits on your profile" advice columns very helpful because they don't take into account the fact that we all want different things.  Sure, I can start taking pictures of myself in the bathroom mirror or looking up at my cellphone, and I can shorten my profile and not rant about feminism and sexism and polyamory and atheism, and that will probably get me more hits.  But what about the quality of those hits?  I'm not trying to gather emails like I'm collecting stamps, I'm trying to find those specific people who will get along with *me* and to stop wasting my time with all the wrong guys.

The trick is not to just up the numbers - that gets tedious really quickly when it's all the wrong people.  The trick is to attract the *right kind* of person.  Efficiency over quantity.  You don't need a hundred hits to find "The One", especially if all hundred are incompatible.  You just need the right one.  In order to find a partner, you first have to become the kind of person that your Perfect Partner would want.  Then you have to find a way to communicate that you are that person.  And one of the ways we communicate who we are is through the pictures we choose to post of ourselves on our dating profiles.

So, I won't tell you all to go out and change all your profile pictures to better "improve" your online dating success.  If you don't share my values, then you won't want someone like me to be attracted to you.  But *if* you want a partner who appreciates excitement and has enthusiasm for life, one possible way to attract him or her is to show your own enthusiasm in your profile pictures.

I find I have this same presumption for women's pictures, but since I am not interested in dating women, I never really put it together like this.  I knew that I have some friends who I think are beautiful women, but who consistently smile in a close-lipped, tight smile that I think is not as attractive as their candid, exuberant smile.  Their whole faces just light up when they are genuinely happy, and that's far more attractive, IMO, than having the perfect makeup or perfectly sculpted cheekbones or hiding their teeth.  I'm always just a little bit disappointed when I see a beautiful picture of them that has this "I'm not really smiling" smile because of how much more beautiful I think their happy smile makes them.

But today, I got a notice from OKC about some guy who liked my profile.  I get a lot of those, but I haven't actually checked OKC or read my email in about a year or more.  For some reason, today, I decided to see who he was.  I liked what he had to say in his profile, but when I looked at his pictures, I notice that my interest in him dropped (I read the profile before I look at the picture, and sometimes I don't look at the pictures at all).  So I spent some time figuring out why that might be.  It wasn't until his very last picture, when he had that open, exuberant smile, that I figured out why.  In all his other pictures, he just looked uncomfortable, even though he, technically, had a smile.  And I found myself getting turned off by his discomfort.  But his happiness in the last picture rejuvenated my interest.

So, don't go out and change all your profile pictures.  Use the pictures that you think communicate best who you are and show what you want your prospective date to see of you.  Just keep in mind that people who highly value fearlessness, openness, vulnerability, enthusiasm, happiness, and embracing life may be more attracted to people whose pictures convey those same traits.  And one of the ways those traits are conveyed is through an open, genuine, uninhibited, toothy grin.  

I want happy, passionate people who embrace life & aren't afraid to try new things in my monkeysphere and I have begun learning how to relax and be myself in front of a camera so that my pictures reflect that part of my personality too.  I look for people who smile widely in pictures when I'm interested in considering whether or not someone could be a part of my monkeysphere.  

But if your profile picture has duck face, you are automatically disqualified as monkeysphere potential.

Related articles:
http://tacit.livejournal.com/389036.html - Some Thoughts On Courage
http://tacit.livejournal.com/325057.html - Some Thoughts On Choosing Relationships

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry79LzkkDb4

Natalie Reed
@Joreth @RichardDawkins @michaelshermer Why are you sharing Justicar's nasty, petty little video and tagging it "shared by Natalie Reed!"?!

...

Joreth ‏@Joreth
@nataliereed84 I'm not, the automated online make-your-own-newspaper paper.li is. It sees what links ppl posts & aggregates them


Joreth ‏@Joreth
@nataliereed84 Please do some research before you get angry & start falsely accusing ppl of things. I have no idea what you're talking about


Joreth ‏@Joreth
@nataliereed84 I didn't watch the video, I didn't choose that particular link. If you posted it, paper.li picked it up


Joreth ‏@Joreth
@nataliereed84 But I'll be happy to remove you from the list of respected skeptics & scientists who provide news & links to twitter

...

VixenVivienValentine ‏@vae_victae
@nataliereed84 paper.li does automatic aggregation of links. Since you posted that video it attributed that to you. It's not @Joreth fault.


Joreth ‏@Joreth
@vae_victae I did try to tell @nataliereed84 that, but she seems to prefer to jump to conclusions & get angry at supporters. Shame.

...

VixenVivienValentine ‏@vae_victae
@Joreth indeed a shame. While I understand your aggressiveness to her, I feel that maybe if you had responded differently it'd be different

...

Joreth ‏@Joreth
@vae_victae I'm not sure if you read my responses to her, but I was the opposite of aggressive. 

It's hard for me to even see where someone could have interpreted what I said there as "aggressive".  Natalie asked me, angrily, why I was sharing some video and associating her with it.  I told her, immediately and clearly, that I wasn't doing so and I explained about the link aggregate service.  I didn't cuss, call her names, or use emotional language.  I was also limited to 140 characters.

Some of you will remember another post I made a couple of years back about the polyamory.com forums, in which someone made an offensive statement. I and a couple of others pointed out the factual inaccuracy of the statement & the offense in making it, several people responded angrily & emotionally, those on my side again pointed out the inaccuracy (calmly, I thought), and then those on my side were accused of being angry and hurtful, apparently without irony to the original angry and hurtful comments that prompted our responses.  Only after I lost my temper at being insulted, did my posts get deleted, but the original offensive posts never did, nor did the insults that caused me to lose my temper.

Then there are the numerous times when someone just doesn't like me personally, and they will disagree with me no matter what I say, even while I am agreeing with them.  We end up in this "duck season / rabbit season" argument where they say something, I agree, then they argue with me over it.  For instance, someone posted something not too long ago about Unicorn Hunters that was derogatory.  Someone else jumped in with "I see nothing wrong with unicorn hunting, because I do this thing that is totally not unicorn hunting".  So I said something like "it doesn't sound like you are the kind of jerk that the OP is talking about, so don't worry about it".  And they proceeded to defend their right to call themselves Unicorn Hunters and insist that unicorn hunting isn't bad.  I believe my response was something along the lines of "I'm trying to explain to you why you're not an asshole, but if you want to keep insisting you are, I'll stop defending you".

tacit gets this all the time too.  The Polyamorous Misanthrope once made a blog post that was, essentially, the exact same kind of post that tacit makes.  Or maybe it was even a re-post of his, I don't remember.  One of her followers complimented her on the post, and she responded that it was the same thing that tacit always says.  They replied that they can't stand tacit.  She posted on tacit's page that she doesn't understand why people like her but don't like him, because she says the same thing, and in no less of a blunt, holds-no-punches sort of way.  Same message, same delivery, yet people like her and don't like him.  Sometimes there is no helping this.

This, by the way, is primarily the problem happening in our Congress at the moment.  The Republicans in office are doing their damnedest to disagree with Democrats, even when the Democrats agree with them.  They seem to want to disagree on principle, not because they actually disagree.  Consequently, we have one of the most fucked up Congresses ever in our history, with decisions being made to the detriment of our country, deliberately and intentionally, out of spite.

Then there is when I, fairly regularly, post exchanges where I am accused of having some emotional state that I do not currently have, and I have posted several examples of the differences between a calm difference of opinion ("what you said was incorrect, here is the evidence") and an emotional outburst ("you fucking shithead! I hate you!")

And yet, every time I have a difference of opinion to someone, regardless as to how calm I state my position or how much to the facts I try to stick or even, on occasion, when I try to be conciliatory, I am accused of being the one to have some emotional outburst, some angry reaction, some feeling that I am not feeling.  

So I strongly disagree with the whole "Don't Be A Dick" meme, not because I disagree with the underlying premise, but because I think it is subjective and, ultimately, futile.  If people don't like what you have to say, someone will think you're being a dick no matter how you say it, and having this ambiguous, undefined moving goalpost of "dick" that we're all supposed to follow won't change that.  

I can try to hold myself to a certain standard of exchange, but in the end, we all usually feel justified in the position we take (or if we change our minds, then the willingness to change further confirms our own opinion of ourselves as being Good Guys), and besides that, the phrase "Don't Be A Dick" is a message from one person to another, not a personal standard.  It's not like edwardmartiniii's Bue Button project - a reminder to ourselves to hold ourselves to a standard that we, ourselves, set.  Don't Be A Dick an admonition from other people that you are not behaving the way THEY think you ought to behave.

As an aside, even though edwardmartiniii's Blue Button is intended as a personal standard, even that gets used as a weapon with which to bludgeon those with whom people disagree.  In some other disagreement that I had online that I don't even remember the details of, some friend of his told me that I needed a blue button for daring to hold a position that the commenter did not hold - again, people trying to tell others how to behave, and mostly surrounding "tone", not actual behaviour - completely contrary to the spirit of edwardmartiniii's Blue Button, which is about protecting one's community from bullies by making a personal vow to stand up to bullying when one sees it and explicitly not trying to "stop other people from being creepy".  In fact, telling other people that they need to wear a blue button is, again explicitly, against the rules for how this concept is to work.

There is a quote that I can't find, so I can't give you the exact wording or proper attribution.  But it says, essentially, that there is no nice way to tell someone that they wasted their entire lives on a lie.  Which is, essentially, what one is saying when one claims that religion & the god myths are not true.  But it's even less world-shattering than that.  There is no nice way to challenge any belief that a person holds strongly, whether it's something as deep and profound as our purpose in life or as ultimately unimportant as who is the best football team in the NFL (seriously, I watched this argument nearly come to blows last week when a customer at Little Ceasar's asked the cashier who her favorite team was, and he, shall we say, did not agree).  

If the other person has a strong emotional attachment to their position, you can try different tactics to get through to them, but, ultimately, you are telling them that you think they are wrong and they have an attachment to the belief that they are right.  Because some positions are, by their very nature, mutually exclusive - you can't hold one without simultaneously believing the other is false.  If you think the moon is made of green cheese, then, by necessity, you have to think that anyone who thinks it's made of rock is wrong.  Even if you refuse to go so far as to use the words "they are wrong".

And sometimes, with some people and some tactics, it won't be a big deal.  If you think I'm wrong to have been a fan of the 49ers back in my sports days, I won't really care, unless you try to attack me over it.  And then, I'll only care that you're attacking me, not that you like the Steelers (that's still football, right?).

But other times, with other people, and other topics, the tactic won't matter - especially if part of their position is that *you* are A Bad Guy for holding that position in the first place.  Someone, sometime, somewhere, will think you're a Dick, and if we insist on flying the DBAD banner, we will forever be derailing into the Tone Argument, when we should be focusing on the topic under debate.

And I am fucking sick to death of having the motherfucking Tone Argument or having people tell me that I'm feeling things that I'm not feeling, especially when I have gone out of my way not to lose my temper or devolve into yet another flame war.  Your feelings are your own, and just because you have them, it does not mean necessarily that I am the reason you are feeling them.  There is only so far anyone should be expected to go to make *you* feel better about what they're saying.

If you don't like my message, then you don't like my message, but for the love of all that is good in this universe, STOP fucking derailing the argument into whether or not I was properly conciliatory when I said that thing that you didn't like.  Maybe I wasn't being a dick, maybe I wasn't being aggressive or rude or mean or an asshole.  Maybe you just didn't like what I had to say, or maybe you had an emotional reaction to the topic and misunderstood what I was saying, or maybe you don't like me personally and it doesn't matter even when I'm agreeing with you.  And maybe the message is actually something worth being a dick about - maybe the message is something that the messenger ought to be angry about or posting in angry, emotional language.

Just please stop telling people when they should or should not be angry, stop accusing them of being angry (or any other emotion) when they have said that they're not, and stop this bullshit meme about "don't be a dick" - it is a totally subjective standard that cannot possibly be enforced.  Even the honorable Phil Plait & Wil Wheton have gone into "dick" mode when they were sufficiently pushed, and they will defend those times as "but that's different!"  

Yeah, it's different - a different perspective.  When it happened to them, it was either justifiable, or they salvaged their opinions of themselves as Nice Guys by later admitting that they were wrong.  But when it happens to someone else, that someone else is being "a dick".  Just like when you cut someone off in traffic, it's because you're in a hurry, but when that guy does it to you, he's an asshole.  

We are all "dicks" to someone else, and there are times when it doesn't matter how you phrase it, holding the position that you hold makes you the "dick" and there are no collection of pretty words to make the other person see it otherwise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLX5dwy8Leo#t=3m50s

(if it doesn't start playing at 3:50, skip to that point - that's the only part that's relevant)

• An attempted quad instead of unicorn hunters looking for the hot bi babe
• The newbie love interest struggles with deeply indoctrinated beliefs of fidelity & ownership
• Neither the polyamory nor society around them was responsible for ending the relationships
• How non-traditional parental relationships affects children old enough to have internalized society's messages about relationships
• A couple not letting their pre-existing relationship make the other relationships "secondary" and doing what's best for the family instead of "protecting" their couplehood at all costs

• The characters

 
This is exactly what my problem was.  I fell for the Straw Feminist bullshit.  I'm a Latina female who has always been some religious minority (not always the same minority, though).  My life should have been filled with struggle and hardship.  It wasn't.  Now, don't get me wrong, I had bad shit in my life.  But when it came to obvious gender issues, my biggest problem growing up was that my parents once admitted that insisting on a curfew even after age 18 was because I was their daughter, and if they had a son, he would have had different rules.  Although they never did have a son, so that was never tested.  My next biggest problem was that my dad wouldn't let me use his power tools.  So I bought my own and now my set is more awesome than his.

I grew up with fairly conservative parents, but in a liberal bubble.  In spite of being lower-middle class, I still went to one of the best private schools in the state, where they taught us age-appropriate, evidence-based sex ed, self-defense, and to excel in sports, academics, and politics.  I was awarded jobs easily based on my skills and experiences.  I was praised for being smart, even by the boys.  I was encouraged to play sports (just not football or wrestling) and I was told to put marriage and children on hold until I completed college and started a career, and THEN I was expected to keep my career after marriage & kids, the way my mother did.

In my liberal bubble, just as in the Straw Feminist tropes in media that the video talks about, I lived in a world where feminism was no longer needed.  Those brave women and their male allies had done their job.  We had achieved equality and, in some cases, we had gone just a little bit too far and now it was time to back off the throttle a bit and even correct some of the "overcorrections" we had made.

I did not need to identify as a feminist because I was an egalitarian.  I believed in equalty for all based on merit, skill, and interest.  I still do.  So I may have always been a feminist, but it was not one of my identity lables.  I am a lot of things, but not all of those things are important to my identity and my sense of self, so not all of those things make it to my list of identity labels.  I was born in the US, can only barely speak a few words of Spanish, and went to a predominantly white private school.  I tell people that I'm Latina when it is relevant to do so, but I don't identify as a Latina.  It is not part of my identity makeup, it's just a fact about me that happens to be true.  The "feminist" label was like that for me too - even if I hadn't misunderstood what it really meant, in my liberal bubble, the gender war had been won, so it was not important enough to my identity to attach the label "feminist".

But then I joined the skeptics and atheists communities.  And THEY made me a feminist.  Because I saw that we had not won the gender wars.  We were not "equal".  The place where I should have been the most safe, protected by reason and evidence, is the place where I was most threatened.  Oh, we have absolutely made progress!  We have wrested certain rights that have given women unprecedented power in our society.

But we're not done yet.

And this is what brings me to the story with my friend.  He is like me.  He strongly believes in equality for all, and if I present him with any sort of hypothetical situation, even if he thinks that we have currently solved that problem, he firmly, and without prodding, comes down on the side of feminism without knowing it's a feminist principle.  But because of this whole Straw Feminism problem, we had a conversation a while ago that went like this:

I was showing him some of my favorite geeky music videos (Felicia Day anyone?) and he asked "so, since you obviously like all this geeky and gamer shit, maybe I can ask you ... where are all the gamer girls?"  I said "what do you mean?  There are TONS of gamer girls!  Go to any gaming con & there are gamer girls all over the place!"  He said that when he actually plays his online multi-player games, the women are in the minority.  I told him that developer statistics of their user bases actually suggests that it's pretty close to 50/50.  He said he'd never seen that split.

I said "that's because the women are using male gaming names & not using their mics to avoid getting shit on by guys during the game."  He said none of the people he ever gamed with ever gave women a hard time.  So I sent him to Anita Sarkeesian's Wikipedia page, where he learned all about the rape threats & death threats and misogyny in gaming culture.

He had never seen it.  Probably because many of the women on his games were using guy names, so the one or two misogynists who were also on his game couldn't abuse them, and all the guys he chooses to socialize with are similar Good Guys like himself.  So I started telling him stories.  Stories of what women go through online.  Stories of men who Get It who have tried to post their own analogies so that the men who don't Get It could understand.  The schism in the skeptics communities.  I told him how we're finally seeing some response from game developers to begin talks about how to solve the problem instead of a couple of twenty-something male programmers who had a good idea & started their own company from it saying "well, he didn't abuse the TOS when he called you a fucking cunt & threatening to rape your skull is just game trash talk that doesn't mean anything".

When I reminded him that, just because he had never heard of it, that didn't mean it wasn't happening, but whether anybody knows of any given person's previous rape or assult experiences was directly proportional to how close those two people, he knew that.  I mean, I didn't have to explain it to him, he got it.  He totally grasped the fact that he didn't know how many of the women he knew had any sort of sexual assualt in their history.  And yet, because he was largely unaware of how many women he knew had some sort of sexual assault, he was largely unaware of how big the problem is.

So that's what I'm doing now.  This is why I have always posted my Online Skeezballs tag.  This is why I have always gone off on assholes on the internet.  This is why I rant about Couple's Privilege in the poly community.  People do not know.  People don't know how often this shit happens.  People do not know how much this hurts.  People do not know that what they or others are doing HURTS PEOPLE.  Every time I tell one of my whacked-out stories, someone, often a like-minded close friend, says "seriously?  That really happened?" or "do people really do that?"  Yes.  I am far too literal to resort to hyperbole very often, and when I do, it's pretty fucking obvious, like saying "a gazillion".  I also write this shit down right away because I'm terrified of misremembering or forgeting something and I cross-check with others to make sure my memories are as accurate as memories can be.  This shit happens and this shit hurts.  And people don't know.

And the reason they don't know is because we have been told, for generations, that nobody cares.  If we talk about anything from the status quo that bothers us, no one will do anything about it, except maybe try to make it our own fault.  At best, we'll be ignored.  At worst, we'll be attacked even more for speaking out.  Somehow, we'll be made to be the bad guy in all this.  So we just don't talk about it.  The first rule of Rape Culture is that we don't talk about Rape Culture.

When I first brought up the idea of Only Yes Means Yes, the single biggest criticism I got was that women never give a straight answer, so if guys waited around for a clear and unambiguous yes, then they'd never get laid.  Now, let's ignore the glaring fallacies and falsehoods in that statement and just assume, for the moment, that it's literally true - that women do not give straight answers. Women do not say yes, and women do not say no.

Did it ever occur to these guys why women don't give straight answers?  I'll break the Women's Code and explain why, just like I have always done for my guy friends when they get confounded by the mysterious species that is Women.  The reason why those women who don't give straight answers, don't give straight answers is because they are punished when they do.  A woman who says yes is a slut, but a women who says no is raped.

Of course not every single women who says no is raped every single time she says no.  But people do not take rejection gracefully, and it tends to make those of us who are smaller, or who have no fighting skills, or who have been told our entire lives that the responsibility for avoiding rape is our own, it tends to make us a little gun shy about rejecting people.  And if our personality is naturally to be quiet, shy, unassuming, or particularly sensitive to disapproval or hurting someone else's feelings, it's going to make us even more afraid to reject someone.  Most people do not give flat-out nos, not just women.  It is considered rude in our society to do so.  We do the "I'd love to, but..." and give some excuse that says that we are unable to, not that we don't want to.  But when it comes to women rejecting amorous advances, it isn't just the threat of being percieved as "rude".  It's the threat of bodily harm that often makes us afraid to say no.

Before you click on that last link, let me give you a trigger warning.  It's about a woman who had two children with an abusive man.  And when she turned down his marriage proposal, he killed her and both the children.  AFTER she reported him to the police.  AFTER she got a restraining order against him.  He killed her and the children.  For a rejection.

I've posted some of my own scary encounters.  There was the time a drunk guy hit on me and my two friends at a casino lounge and ignored every single rejection we gave him until all three of us pulled out our knives.  Then there was the guy who tried to "help" me put Fix-A-Flat in my car tire & also did not back off until I flashed my switchblade.  There's the uncountable number of dates I've been on, including just "hanging out with friends" where a "no" only got me Octopus Arms.

So when women are told, repeatedly, that our disinterest, our discomfort, even our fear, is irrelevant and unimportant, the only thing we have left to do is leave.  Or hide.

So if you want more women in your community, if you are a straight guy who wants to find a nice girl to date who shares some of your interests like gaming, or atheism, or rock climbing, or whatever, and you're looking around wondering where all the girls are, it is YOUR FAULT you can't find them.  If you are not actively contributing to the hostile environment (and if you're reading my journal, I'm going to assume that you're not, because those guys hate reading the kinds of stuff I write about), then you're probably not helping it either.  

And it's not because you're a bad guy.  It's probably because you didn't know.  Which is not your fault, but any time you have ever told a woman "oh, he's just an asshole, ignore him and he'll go away" or "I worry about you being safe, so here is a list of things that you should do to keep yourself safe" or even just didn't say anything when another guy made a derogatory comment (probably because it was kind of funny or probably because it wasn't funny but it was a joke and therefore not worth getting into a sexism argument over), then you contributed to the problem.  I know, you don't want to hear that you're part of the problem.  I certainly don't like hearing that I was part of the problem, and to this day I try to rationalize why, when *I* did it, I wasn't contributing to the problem ... when *I* did it, I had a Very Good Reason for it, and it didn't count when I did it.  You probably meant well.  Your motivation was probably because you thought you were actually helping and you wanted to help because you care.  I know, I get it.  But that's not actually how to help.

The first step is to call this shit out when you see it or hear it.  Tell guys that the joke wasn't funny, even if it kinda was, or that even though it was funny, it was still wrong.  Tell guys to stop insulting each other by using female or feminine insults (seriously, it shouldn't be an insult to "throw like a girl").  Point out that phrases like "that's so gay" and other gay jokes & insults is actually harmful to both men and women because of how it places feminine attributes as something that is negative and should be avoided.  When a woman complains about something bad that happened to her, don't tell her how to fix it.  Tell her that you're listening.  Tell her that you're here for her.  Ask her what she would like to do about it and if there is something you can do to help.  Offer to be her support if she wants to make any sort of official complaints and share with her resources where she will not be made a victim a second time for daring to complain.

And the second step is to start saying this shit unprompted.  Don't wait for someone to be an asshole in public before confronting him.  Start blogging or making Facebook posts about events you read or people you know.  An excellent tactic is to link to stories and other people's blog posts that are condemning some sexist action or assault, especially if you can get it trending on Tumblr or Reddit.  Don't link to assholes, crazies, and other fuckups - link to the people complaining about them.  That way, Google picks up the complaints and puts them at the top of searches and the assholes trying to defend themselves get buried under the fold or on second & third search pages.  You don't even have to write a blog post or confront one of these jerks yourself, just help make the problem more visible.  If you're at a party where it's socially acceptable to get a little political or talk about serious news items, bring this shit up and make it clear which side you're on.  "Dude, I read this HORRIBLE story the other day!  Can you believe this fucktard did this thing to this woman?!"

This is not about perteckting the wimmenfolk.  This is about showing your support and fighting for what is right.  I dated a 2nd degree blackbelt karate instructor.  If he were to get into an altercation while we were out together, he would have been totally capable of taking care of things himself.  He was bigger than me, stronger than me, and knew how to fight, which I didn't.  But I still would have helped.  I would have called 911 while he was too busy kicking the other guy's ass.  I would have kept the other guy's girlfriend from jumping in.  I would have cleared stuff out of his way if it looked like he might back up and trip.  Whatever, I would have helped, not because he "needed" my help, but because it would have been the right thing to do.  He and I were a team, we were on the same side, and I supported him.

That's what we need from everyone else, and I'm not just looking at the men here.  We really do need the guys to start speaking up, because the people who most need to hear these messages just don't give a shit about the women who are saying it.  If a guy hates women, it doesn't matter how loud us women are, he doesn't care and he won't listen.  That's what makes him a Bad Guy in the first place.

But women, if it is at all safe for you to do so, we also have to speak up.  I know that there are penalties for speaking up, I know that so often no one will do anything about it anyway so why bother?  Think of my friend above.  The Good Guy.  He's on our side, but he, like I, was just unaware.  It is not your fault that anything bad happens to you and you don't speak up.  But it could do some long-term good if you do.  Most women do not want to be "that bitch", they don't want to be the party downer, they don't want others thinking that all they do is complain about politics or feminism - they don't want to be that Straw Feminist.  BELIEVE me, I get it.

But I promise, if we all band together, the more of us who speak up, the easier it will be for us to speak up.  Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow.  But it will get better if we all pitch in to the best of our ability.

• If you want to have some private little club for males only – like keeping women out of your favorite shooter games – you’re not a man, you’re an insecure little boy. A grown-up man has no problem being in the company of women. He knows he’s a man.
• If you freak out when a girl or a woman beats you in a game, you’re not a man, you’re a nine-year-old boy. A man doesn’t need to beat a woman to know he’s a man. A man is strong enough to take defeat in a fair game from anybody and move on.
• If your masculinity depends on some imaginary superiority over women, then you don’t actually have any. Manliness comes from within, and not at the expense of others.
• And if you threaten or abuse women, verbally or physically, you are not a man. You’re a particularly nasty specimen of boy.

• Mockery. In 1993 50 Ku Klux Klansmen marched through Austin, Texas. Five thousand anti-Klan protestors turned up to jeer at them. Best of all, several hundred lined the parade route and mooned the Klan in waves. The media ate it up, and the Klan looked ridiculous. The hurt that they wanted to cause was met not with anger but with derision. The juvenile delinquents are just like the Klan in 1993: anonymous in their high-tech bedsheets, and threatening, but in fact, a minority. Let’s use our superior numbers and metaphorically moon the boys who can’t behave. They’re social inadequates, immature losers. Let’s tell them so, loud and clear, in front of their friends.
• Shut them up. The right to speak in a public forum should be limited to those who don’t abuse it. James Portnow suggested this one in his Extra Credits video on harassment. Anyone who persistently abuses others gets automatically muted to all players. The only players who can hear them are those who choose to unmute them. Or another of James’ suggestions: New users don’t even get the right to talk. They have to earn it, and they keep it only so long as they behave themselves. This means a player can’t just create a new account to start spewing filth again if they’ve been auto-muted. Build these features into your games.
• Take away their means. If you’re the father of a boy who behaves like this online, make it abundantly clear to him that it is unmanly and unacceptable, then deny him the opportunity to do it further. We don’t let nine-year-olds misuse tools to hurt other people. Take away his cell phone, his console and his computer. He can learn to behave like a man, or he can turn in his homework in longhand like a child.
• Anonymity is a privilege, not a right. Anonymity is a double-edged sword. A limited number of people need it in certain circumstances: children, crime victims, whistleblowers, people discussing their medical conditions, political dissidents in repressive regimes. But those people normally don’t misuse their anonymity to abuse others; they’re protecting themselves from abuse. I think the default setting in all online forums that are not intended for people at risk should require real names. After a user has demonstrated that they are a grown-up, then offer them the privilege of using a pseudonym. And take it away forever if they misuse it. I haven’t used a nickname for years except in one place where all the readers know who I am anyway. Has it made me more careful about what I say? You bet. Is that a good thing? Damn right it is.
• Impose punishments that are genuinely painful. This suggestion is extreme, but I feel it’s both viable and effective. To play subscription-based or pay-as-you-go (“free-to-play-but-not-really”) games, most players need to register a credit card with the game’s provider. Include a condition in the terms of service that entitles the provider to levy extra charges for bad behavior. Charge $5 for the first infraction and double it for each subsequent one. This isn’t all that unusual; if you smoke in a non-smoking hotel room, you are typically subject to a whopping extra charge for being a jerk.

• “What’s the big deal? It’s harmless banter. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the game.” To start with, it’s our game, not yours, and we get to decide what’s acceptable behavior. You meet our standards or you get out. Apart from that, nothing that is done with intent to cause hurt is harmless. The online abuse I have seen goes way beyond banter. Threats are not harmless, they are criminal acts.
• “But this is part of gamer culture! It’s always been like this!” No, it is not. I’ve been gaming for over 40 years, and it has not always been like this. Yours is a nasty little subculture that arrived with anonymous online gaming, and we’re going to wipe it out.
• “This is just political correctness.” Invoking “political correctness” is nothing but code for “I wanna be an asshole and get away with it.” I’ll give you a politically-incorrect response, if you like: fuck that. It’s time to man up. You don’t get to be an asshole and get away with it.
• “You’re just being a White Knight and trying to suck up to women.” I don’t need to suck up to women, thanks; unlike you, I don’t have a problem with them, because I’m a grown man.
• “Women are always getting special privileges.” Freedom from bullying is a right, not a privilege, and anyway, that’s bullshit. Males are the dominant sex in almost every single activity on the planet. The only areas that we do not rule are dirty, underpaid jobs like nursing and teaching. Do you want to swap? I didn’t think so.
• “It’s hypocrisy. How come they get women-only clubs and we don’t get men-only clubs?” Because they’re set up for different reasons, that’s why. Male-only spaces are about excluding women from power, and making little boys whose balls evidently haven’t dropped feel special. Female-only spaces are about creating a place where they are safe from vermin.
• “But there’s misandry too!” Oh, and that entitles you to be a running sore on the ass of the game community? Two wrongs don’t make a right.. I’ll worry about misandry when large numbers of male players are being hounded out of games with abuse and threats of violence. If a few women are bigoted against men, you only have to look in the mirror to find out why.
• “Free speech!” The oldest and worst excuse for being a jerk there is. First, you have no right to free speech in privately-owned spaces. Zero. Our house, our rules. Second, with freedom comes the responsibility not to abuse it. People who won’t use their freedoms responsibly get them taken away. And if you don’t clean up your act, that will be you.

I read an interesting article in Psychology Today. I'll be honest, I have dropped PT from my mental list of Websites Of Quality Articles. They are just another online blog site with dozens of bloggers of varying quality and expertise. They are certainly not a peer-reviewed scientific journal, but increasingly they aren't even an interesting source of pop-psychology to provide food for thought - just a source of rage about how some people are able to obtain advanced degrees and be allowed to have a public forum for their views.

But occasionally I run across an article or op-ed that I like. This was one of them. It talks about respect. "Respect" is thrown around a lot in the poly community in a very particular way. I most often see it used as a defense of The Rules* by primary couples wishing to protect their relationship. The reason why The Rules are necessary, they might say, is because they need to ensure that the incoming partner respects their relationship, their primacy. This is, IME, the reason most often given when a couple does not want to admit to being insecure.

No, they might say, the Rules are not because I don't trust my partner! I trust him implicitly! It's other people that I don't trust! We have a rock-solid relationship! We are best friends! I know that he would never do anything to hurt me! So I am not dictating his behaviour, I am laying out the rules for her behaviour! We don't want anyone to come in and not respect our primary relationship and/or not respect me as his primary partner. So we need Rules to make sure she is respectful.

So let's talk about respect.

tacit has said, in many places, but in his most recent post on rules:

Many folks who claim primacy in a primary/secondary relationship often say they need rules because otherwise they don't feel "respected" by secondary partners, yet it's difficult to be respectful when one feels hemmed in, encircled by walls, and knowing that one's relationship is always under review.

"Respect" is a slippery, tricky word. It's kind of like "freedom"--everyone thinks they know what it means, but when the rubber meets the road, few folks actually agree on a definition.

To me, respect has to be mutual. If Alice is demanding respect from Bob's new sweetie Cindy, that can only come if Alice in turn respects the notion that Cindy is a grown adult with her own needs and desires, and she, too, deserves a shot at having a voice in the relationship. Imposing rules by fiat on other people and then demanding respect from those people is all the rage (I hear) among leaders of North Korea, but can feel a bit yucky when we're talking romantic relationships. ...

At worst, it sets up a relationship with a certain amount of tension and conflict baked in. If you see your partner's other partner as a source of stress, if you set up rules to govern that other person's behavior, then already you've started out on a basis of conflict ... there's an irreconcilable difference there. Someone's desire is going to get trumped, and you're playing the "respect" card to try to make sure it's not yours.

So this article had some interesting things to say about respect. And no, it is not a poly article, it's about relationships in general. In fact, it spends about as much time, if not more, talking about respecting one's children as it does respecting one's spouse. As I say so often, this is not a poly issue, this is a people issue. But I want to bring it around to poly specifically, as I see it played out in this Primary vs. Secondary deathmatch battle at Thunderdome, where the primary couple puts themselves in opposition to the incoming secondary partner and justifies the structure under the heading of "respect".

The author, Peter Gray, separates out love from respect. He acknowledges that some people make respect an integral part of their definition of love (like I do), but he sticks to his point that they are independent elements. Although I do not believe one can "love" someone if they do not respect them, I agree that "love" and "respect" are not interchangeable and can be discussed separately. One can have respect without love, for instance, even if one insists that love must include respect. I can have bacon without it being in a bacon-lettuce-tomato sandwich, but I can't have a BLT without bacon, by definition - then it's just an LT sandwich.

Gray says that, if you accept the premise that love can exist without respect and vice versa, then bliss is what happens when you combine the two. But if he had to choose between them, he'd take respect over love.

It is useful, I think, to compare and contrast parent-child relationships with husband-wife relationships. In both of these, respect is absolutely essential for the relationship to work. Love without respect is dangerous; it can crush the other person, sometimes literally. To respect is to understand that the other person is not you, not an extension of you, not a reflection of you, not your toy, not your pet, not your product. In a relationship of respect, your task is to understand the other person as a unique individual and learn how to mesh your needs with his or hers and help that person achieve what he or she wants to achieve. Your task is not to control the other person or try to change him or her in a direction that you desire but he or she does not. I think this applies as much to parent-child relationships as to husband-wife relationships.

If we apply this to the primary/secondary/metamour scenario, it sounds like this: To respect your partner is to understand that the other person is not you, not an extension of you, not a reflection of you, not your toy, not your pet, not your product. To respect your metamour/secondary is to understand that the other person is not a reflection of you, not your toy, not your pet, not your product. In a relationship of respect, your task is to understand that your metamour/secondary is a unique individual and learn how to mesh your needs with his or hers and help your metamour/secondary to acheive what he or she wants to achieve. Your task is not to control your metamour/secondary or try to change him or her in a direction that you desire but he or she does not. In a relationship of respect, your task is to understand that your partner is a unique individual and to help your partner achieve what he or she wants to achieve. Your task is not to control your partner or try to change him or her in a direction that you desire but he or she does not.

This is the antithesis of everything that The Rules stand for in poly relationships. The Rules, as I am referring to them here, are about protecting from change and prohibiting growth of one person in a direction not necessarily desired by another person. The Rules are designed to make partners into an extension of each other and reflection of each other and to make secondaries into toys, pets, or products.

This is the exact opposite of that "respect" that these sorts of couples are demanding. When those couples that I am talking about refer to "respect", they mean it in the way that we all "respect" the law - by that I mean that we all follow a set of rules that someone else imposed on us without our input whether we agree with it or not because there are consequences to breaking the law, and we surriptitiously break the law when we think we can get away with it (seriously, if anyone out there thinks that you never break any law, like speeding or oral sex, either you are lying to yourself or you've never actually read every single law that affects your jurisdiction - some are inherently contradictory and some don't even apply anymore but were never stricken from the books). We are generally taught to obey authority for the good of society. But really, how much of that is "respect" and how much of that is a sense of obligation coupled with a fear of consequences? That may be an acceptable way to run a large society, but that doesn't sound like any way to run a relationship that claims to be "loving".

I don't "respect" authority and law. I recognize that authority & law have power over me and I recognize that a system of law and authority is beneficial for society (the individual points of authority & law are debatable, though). I accept this power structure, mostly, in order to get along with society, basically as a social contract - I don't hurt, maim, kill, or steal from you if you won't do it to me. That's not respect, that's an uneasy truce amongst people who don't know each other and don't have much motivation to care about each other.

But I also follow many laws simply by coincidence because I care and respect my fellow human beings. I don't need a law to tell me not to hurt or kill or steal from other people (as a matter of fact, there was a time when the law against stealing didn't do shit to prevent me from it). What makes me really not hurt or kill or steal from other people is a sense of compassion, a belief that we all deserve to live with dignity, an immense feeling of empathy, a passionate philosophy of personal soverignty ... in short, respect.

As tacit also says, if your partner truly loves and cherishes you, a rule is unneccessary, but if a partner does not truly love and cherish you, a rule won't make him. Just like with our secular laws, if someone really doesn't feel that sense of compassion and empathy towards the one they are hurting, a law doesn't tend to stop them from doing it. Never has a criminal seriously said (Facebook meme pics aside) "Man, I'm totally gonna kill you! What do you mean it's illegal? Oh, well, then, nevermind, sorry, forget I said anything." People who want to kill find ways to do it. Some of them become criminals who ignore the law, some of them become soldiers and cops who have the law behind them, and some of them become legal executioners who are specifically ordered to do it. If a partner wants to do something that will hurt you, he will whether there is a "rule" in place or not. If a partner honestly does not want to hurt you, he will do his best not to whether there is a rule in place or not.

The same goes for metamours. If respect is what you want, passing rules won't make anyone respect the relationship or the primary position. What makes a person respect that is all those other things I talked about above - compassion, empathy, consideration, acceptance, understanding. Those things are not demanded nor legislated. They are earned. And the best way to earn them from other people is to first give them to those other people.

Love is not all you need, nor all your wife or husband needs, and certainly not all your children need. We all need respect, especially from those who are closest and most intimately connected with us.

*The Rules are defined for this post as a set of restrictions or guidelines dictating the behaviour of other people, such as "you will not have intercourse with anyone other than me without a condom" and "no overnight stays".  Reciprocation and agreement to said rules are irrelevant to the definition of "dicating the behaviour of others".

This is contrasted from Boundaries, which are a source of information about one person that another person can use to inform his or her decisions, such as "I do not feel safe having sex with anyone who does not use condoms with all of his partners" so that anyone that "I" am dating can still choose to use condoms or not knowing how his decision will affect "I" and/or his relationship with "I".  

Many people use the word "rule" when they actually mean "boundary" and many people *think* they are talking about boundaries when they are actually imposing rules.

This started as simply posting a link to an article on Facebook and turned into a rant:

What's So Bad About A Boy Who Wants To Wear A Dress?  
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/magazine/whats-so-bad-about-a-boy-who-wants-to-wear-a-dress.html?pagewanted=all

“No, I don’t want to be a girl,” he said, as he checked himself out in his bedroom mirror and posed, Cosmo-style. “I just want to wear girl stuff.”

“Why do you want to be a boy and not a girl?” I asked.

He looked at me as if I were daft. “Because I want to be who I am!”

...

"My son showed me this is part of core identity, not something people just put on or take off. And it’s not their job to make sure we’re all comfortable.”

http://www.savagesfilm.com/

I think this is the first time I've ever seen a movie that was purported to be a poly movie while it was still in theaters. So I figured I'd go ahead and skip out of order and do a review of it while ya'll still have the chance to see it too.

I knew very little about this movie when I went to see it. A friend of mine texted me with "want to go see the movie with triad?" I thought "wait, who do we know who's in a triad? Everyone we know are singles, couples, or extended networks!" So I asked her to explain & she told me that there was a new movie opening up in theaters the following week that featured an MFM triad. So I said "hell yeah I want to see it!" So we made it a group event for our local poly group.

I'm going to answer the three big questions right up front, and then I'll talk a little about the movie itself. First of all, it is poly. Second, I liked it. Third, I liked the polyamory IN it.

Now, I do have a few little quibbles about both the polyamory and the movie itself, but c'mon, I was a pretentious film student in college and I work in the entertainment industry now. I'm always going to quibble about SOMETHING. That doesn't mean that I also don't like the movie.

For those who haven't heard, the website says: Laguna Beach entrepeneurs Ben, a peaceful and charitable marijuana producer, and his closest friend Chon, a former Navy SEAL and ex-mercenary, run a lucrative, homegrown industry - raising some of the best weed ever developed. They also share a one-of-a-kind love with the extraordinary beauty Ophelia. Life is idyllic in their Southern California town ... until the Mexican Baja Cartel decides to move in and demands that the trio partners with them.

When the merciless head of the BC, Elena, and her brutal enforcer, Lado, understimate the unbreakable bond among these three friends, Ben and Chon - with the reluctant, slippery assistance of a dirty DEA agent - wage a seemingly unwinnable war against the cartel. And so begins a series of increasingly vicious ploys and maneuvers in a high stakes, savage battle of wills.

I liken this genre to the modern day western. There are clearly "good guys vs. bad guys", even though the good guys are often doing something bad, and there is violence, and it's "dirty" (like, with people getting blood and dirt all over them), and it often ends up in Mexico, or the US' modern equivilent of "lawless land", somewhere in the Middle East. Think, Three Kings, with jump-zoom camera moves and handheld camera work, and that yellow-orangey filter that makes everything look like it's hot and sweaty. Oh, and graphic violence with guns and blood and death. Yeah, there was that. But, I thought, just enough to make it worthy of the genre but not what I might call gratuitous violence or gore, again, considering the genre.

So, if you like that kind of movie, you'll probably like this one. But the poly stuff ... that's where this could have gotten tricky. Now, we know before even going into the movie that they are in a threesome kind of arrangement, and right up front, the girl tells us in a voice over how she loves them both and they love her and she doesn't care if you think she's a slut because it's a thing between them. Here's one of my quibbles - in the beginning, where she's describing how her relationships with the each of them work, she compares and contrasts them. I actually liked that part because it emphasized that they were not interchangeable, that she loves them for their uniqueness and that her relationships with the two men are different from each other.

But then she has to go and say that the the two men are more than just different, they're basically opposites, so together, they make up the perfect man. I REALLY really hate that line of thinking - that Frankenboyfriend version of polyamory. But whatever, it was a single line and the trio are clearly happy together.

What I particularly liked about the poly aspect of the movie was that the polyamory was never the problem. "Sharing" a girl wasn't a source of contention for them, there was no rivalry, and there was no social pressure either. It was just a relationship, like any other. There were some confused and even digusted reactions from other characters, when it came up, but the polyamory was not the source of conflict or the plot device.

From the trailer, we know that the Cartel uses the girl against the boys. But this isn't any different from any other "nice guy gets in over his head and has his wife or girlfriend used against him by the bad guys" plot. Again, the polyamory itself was not a plot device. The love story was, but it was the love for the girl, not the fact that there were 2 guys, that was used, and that's so standard that it's cliche. In most of these kinds of movies, a badass, or a guy who used to be a badass, or a guy who isn't a badass but becomes one in a montage, has his girl kidnapped or threatened or killed, and he goes and gets all badassey on them, somehow having exactly the right skills at any given moment to triumph, with maybe a backup guy who can run the intelligence or who gets him the guns or something. In this movie, "all the right skills" get to be divided up between the two men, which, in my opinion, is actually more realistic. And, at least, they made the one guy a former Navy SEAL who did 2 tours overseas to justify the crazy violence they get into during the film.

I had a couple of other little quibbles too, but they give away too many spoilers, so if you see the movie and want to talk to me about it, look me up online (or in person if you're local). But this movie definitely deserves to be on a Poly Movie List, and I actually enjoyed watching it. The graphic violence was just right, in my opinion, for the style of movie, the plot didn't have so many twists and turns and holes in it to make me feel like I was being insulted, and the polyamory was done well. I got the feeling that the writer was poly, or knew someone who was poly and grasped the concepts just well enough that it wasn't a slap in the face to the poly community the way 50 Shades Of Grey was to the kink community.

Now, you could argue that this trio was dealing drugs and got into a Mexican shootout, and that only that kind of low-down, dirty scum would get into something as freaky as a threesome. You could argue that, but I think you'd be wrong. I've talked about "tone" before, and I did not get the idea from this movie that the tone was yet another "polyamory is bad, here watch this trainwreck to see why" kind of movie. I did not get the feeling that we were being moralized at by this film or that the polyamory was being used as another example of their deviance. To me, it just seemed like any other relationship, almost incidental. They could have told the exact same story using only a monogamous male-female dyad and it wouldn't have been significantly different. You could say that the trio is what makes this film stand out from all the others in this genre, so maybe they were selling the trio like beer and car commercials use hot chicks to sell beer and cars. But I'm still not sure that's any different from any other romantic hook in an action film.

And I particularly like knowing that a mainstream, regular box-office movie featured a male-female-male trio in a way that made it seem normal, like, just another relationship and not something to make a big fuss over. That's what I want to see more of and that's a sign, to me anyway, that polyamory has a chance of lasting far into the future. It's just not fussed over the way it should be at this point in its history, like other alternative communities. I might like to see a movie that addresses polyamory itself sometime (in a healthy way, for a change), but I'd rather see movies that have polyamory in them just as naturally and casually as they have monogamy in them.

Also, smokin' hot surfer dudes and ex-military men in very little clothing! Almost makes me miss my teen years growing up in California with the abs and the saltwater-and-sun highlights and the tight little swimmers' asses. So I say: go see this movie!

Honey, can we talk? So, we've been talking about this for a while, but I think we're ready. I think we ought to do it. Our relationship has never been stronger, we're both in really good places right now with work and with each other. Life is perfect, so right now is the best time, I think, to bring in someone new to our family.

Let's have a baby.

I think it'll be great! We're totally ready to take this next step in our relationship. But, because our relationship is so perfect, I don't want the kind of baby that will threaten our existing relationship, so let's talk about the rules. We need to have some rules to make sure that nothing between you and I changes when the baby comes along.

First of all, we have to have a girl baby. I don't want to have to compete with a son for being "the guy" around the house, and you're a woman so you'll have lots in common with a girl baby so you'll naturally get along perfectly. You already know how to handle girls because you are one - you have all the same equipment and you understand women, so having a girl baby makes more sense. I'm a guy, so naturally I understand how to handle girls too, but I don't have any experience with dudes, so I'll be a better father to a girl baby.

Second, we have to do exactly the same things with the baby. I don't want our new daughter to end up loving one of us more than the other, so let's agree to never be alone with the baby and to do all the same things with her. If one of us plays soccer with her before the big soccer game, then the other has to play for the same amount of time the next day. If you help her with her math homework for 2 hours, then I get to help her with her math homework for 2 hours.

Now, honey, I know math isn't your favorite thing to do, but she's going to need help with her math homework, and if I'm the only one helping her, then that leaves you out. And I don't want you to feel left out. Besides, then you might do something with her without me and I'll feel left out. No, it's just better if we only do things with her together, that way no one will feel left out. Of course, we'll also only do the things that you and I like to do. Since she'll be our daughter, she'll just want to do all those things anyway - we wouldn't have a daughter that wanted different things, so that'll be that.

Since a trio is inherently more stable than any other configuration, let's agree to just one daughter that we both share equally. There will not be any accidental pregnancies because we've agreed not to have any.  We don't need to discuss what happens if you unintentionally get pregnant because we just agreed that it won't happen.  

I think I ought to have veto power over your pregnancies too. You can have the same, of course. I know men can't get pregnant, but I'm still giving you the veto power, so it's still totally equal. Also veto power after the kid is born - if one of us doesn't like her, out she goes and we try again. I'm willing to give you veto power because I love you that much, and I trust you not to use the veto power except in extreme circumstances, and protecting our relationship is more important than protecting the parental relationship with the new kid - after all, you and I were here first, way before any kid came along.

We'll work out a schedule for the baby - who gets to change her and who gets to feed her and when. We'll stick to that schedule no matter what because the important thing here is that our relationship with each other doesn't change significantly. The baby will have only the extra-curricular activities we tell her to have, and we'll choose them based on what works best for you and me, not her preferences, because I don't want this new baby to upset our lives too much.

After the baby comes, I still expect sex as often with you as we have it now. I want you to be there for me like you always have been, just as I will be there for you. I still want us to have the time and energy to dedicate to each other that we currently do. Just because the baby will be all new and shiny and she'll want lots of our attention in the beginning, we have to take care not to let that new relationship interfere with our existing relationship. So we have to promise, before any baby comes along, that none of that will change when we finally do have a baby. OK? You won't stop having sex with me, we'll still have date nights, and we won't give each other only the boring, day-to-day parts of ourselves. Promise me now that we'll both still keep the magic in our relationship just the way it is now and that we won't let any baby interfere with that.

What we have right now is so wonderful, we should share it with another person. A baby will be so lucky to grow up in our lives! We have good jobs and we take fun vacations and we have great friends and a lot of knowledge to pass on, any baby would be fortunate to have us as parents! She'll go on all the same vacations that we like to go on, she'll eat all the awesome food that we eat, she'll play all the same sports that we like to play, she'll take after me in math but after you in music, and she'll just love our lives as much as we do! And as long as we plan everything out in advance, make all kinds of rules for every contingency, everything should work out totally smoothly. It'll be awesome!