#poly bloggin

[leafatlaw]

Love does win

ough

[epochryphal]

...yeah no squints loudly at “thou shalt not want a Certain Shape Of Relationship, elst thou art setting thineself up for disappointment and bringing harm upon thine interlocutors” or whatever

kernel of truth: being too rigidly attached to the Form you have Pictured can mean a) missing out on great things, many of which are Close but get blocked out by a narrow filter; and/or b) chiseling at people in your life to Fit Better into that Spot in your life and thus harming them

giant log in eye of not addressing Culture Around Relationship Shapes: ...this gets proclaimed louder the more you diverge from The Default Shape. and less about your rigidity in only accepting your Ideal Shape, but instead about wanting/envisioning that at all. it rapidly becomes about “thou shalt not want That Certain Shape”

hey, sometimes “approximately a Hexagon” is a great search term and will match you with a sparse handful of other Hexagonish-seekers. so yes, thinking about and describing shapes can help filter, not rule everyone out. yes, of course you then have to be careful to observe if there is some unanticipated quality of your Hexagon Match (whether shape-related, like roundedness of corners, or not, like eye-searing lime green) that needs considering

telling people to stick to the shapes they find around them is like. for one, so wtf in an era of internet and global travel - you literally don’t have to. and two, hey, what we recognize as a Shape is already shaped (lmao) by what’s gotten Named and Taught and Reproduced as a Shape! so in saying “thou shalt not desire Specific (Unusual) Shapes” you’re blocking that shape from being a Shape.

like god fine if you don’t want to see more than convex/concave polygons then fine, but insisting that’s all the categories anyone should need and that wanting anything more detailed is some setup for disappointment... is bleak and antagonistic, no matter that the extreme end case of “only accepting this exact scribble-thing i drew” is problems

anyway it’s almost like the monogamous romantisexual default needs to be addressed whenever giving advice about how envisioning relationships/structures has to be Tempered by Reality

[madefate-a]

why is this reboot so fucking good ...... why is the new ed out for MY LIFE, PERSONALLY .... 

[mannersminded]

nearly all of my followers are porn bots and i haven’t posted in a Year or something. this is not interesting to you. i don’t want to be performative here but even writing this feels performative? 

none of that matters. my main point, that I want to say “out loud”: i think i have settled on some sort of gender identity, which is nice. like, one full girl + one third of a nb person. with basically whatever pronouns. i like she and they a lot. he is fine too. (this has been weird doing rehearsals for the show I’m in; the director decided to gender swap my character from a cis man to a cis woman before he cast me, so he gets panicky about the pronouns in the script, as does my main acting partner; but every time one of them says “he” or “mister” i can hear my brain going, yes, that is also me, continue, even as they go “NO, sorry, she”)

also: sticking to bisexual when i’m talking about Identities, but i’m just sort of generally queer i think. also, poly is likely. (very likely. high school was a nightmare lol)

i’m just bloggin in the night, it doesn’t matter really; just wanted to put it in words

[an-eel]

two of them

[ofwhichiamtheworst]

Everyone seems to think that their heart is a pie chart, and when they give a little slice to someone they love, that slice becomes unavailable to anyone else, so that everyone in their life has to bicker over the pieces that are remaining. My heart is a bar graph. The amount of love i give to someone does not depend on the amount of love i give to others. 

Nor should it.

[epochryphal]

do you think that part of the reason why kink isn't seen as queer anymore by the new generation is due to a lack of queer elders? that if queer people hadn't been condemned to death in the aids epidemic that we would still have this as a part of queer culture?

oh, very much.  that and the way we’re often quite scattered - it takes actually seeking out queer culture, and there often isn’t an infrastructure in place for finding people to talk to (because institutionally shut out), and there’s so very many books and few guides to being critical about them…

like, prime setup for misinformation to be channeled by the people who never wanted kink associated with queer (cough, radfems and assimilationists, cough).  and ability to point to ~mainstream Examples~ that are alas far more visible and part of this new generation’s memory than any historical context

and there’s the, very tricky piece of.  telling people “listen to your elders” Tends To Go Not Well.  anecdota get dismissed as nonrepresentative, because Paradigms and the evidence of one’s own eyes and ears.  and that’s, really hard to shift?

i think it’s impossible to actually say, because yeah maybe this generation still would’ve adhered to “but look at 50 shades”?  but maybe kinky queer activists would’ve had a louder voice countering that whole media scene, also?

but, yes i do think, a lot of the work of “queer” specifically was horrifically set back by the aids epidemic, and stepping in to wedge that gap wider are your mainstreamers and radfems whooo play on “kink and poly are straight mainstream” to… divorce their attempt to become (not queer but) Gay Mainstream.

[epochryphal]

A: "this thing is so Radical and great! there are no problems here ever. all those other people are Unradical and less great. yay us. boo them." B: "this thing is so Unradical, ugh. it is just chock full of extra problems. all those people are Trying To Look Radical and diluting what it Really means to be Radical. boo them. yay us." ...no? no to both? both no. can we get a C: "this is a thing that can be great! it has some problems, like most things. it can be and has been Radical in these ways, but sometimes it is used Unradically, as anything can be. we should talk about all of that. yay us."

[epochryphal]

@brokeglitz

The root of polyam was actually in response to Polynesian people asking us not to use poly because it was causing problems with Polynesian people trying to connect online. I get not liking the language we have but I do suggest looking for a different alternative ♥

right yeah! like it makes sense why polyam exists? and i do wanna avoid tagging poly relationship stuff as just “poly” for that reason (though, tagging vs “word exists in post” and search results on tumblr are... mysterious)

here i think that “poly” out loud in my local kink & queer scenes it’s understood by context? and mayyybe also doesn’t always connote romance vs multiple play/sex partners? but yeah def on the lookout for other language

@antigirlhood

i've been struggling w/ this? i formally use 'nonmonogamous' and also sort of cheekily 'relationship anarchist'. with ppl familiar with the term i say i'm quoing relationships, with everyone else i tend to explainquip that i am Actively Rejecting The Normative Relationship Paradigms or that i am Sprinkling Postmodernism Where Postmodernism Does Not Belong. but it's all very clunky and i always feel on the defensive.

( in absence of being comfortable with 'datemate/partner' i tend to just scream excitedly a lot. 'this is the LIGHT of my LIFE' or 'this is ONE of my FAVORITE PEOPLE IN THE WHOLE WORLD' instead of a word. 'this is my best friend! but not my only best friend.' )

YEAH yeah that first paragraph is relatable af, i’m trending back towards using relationship anarchy because fuck what relationships Should look like, but i always feel kinda guilty about it cuz for a long while i was invested in Primary/Hierarchical language as more true to how i worked even if not how i wished i worked, and i have the whole 24/7 TPE D/s owner/owned thing which doesn’t uh... feel very anarchy... but also doesn’t, like, preempt or veto or reach into other relationships?

anyway yeah Quoi Things. i feel like i’ve just been going “yeah i’m not romantic sooo” before doing anything with people and that maybe helps? but maybe also has the bluh effect of they interpret that to mean no emotional intimacy etc? mehh

(also it somehow hasn’t stopped cuddling from happening. why. do i have to explicitly say “any cuddling that happens is For You and i Don’t Get Anything Out Of It”)

excited screaming is adorable and excellent. i’m good with “partner” bc like, idk, “sex partner” or “play partner” is like dance partner and doesn’t feel like a promise of continuing to match up, and “life partner” reflects commitmenty, domesticy, financialy stuff that’s true for some cases and i’ve heard it used platonically/queerplatonically/non-romantically. so in my head “partner” means one of those when related to me

i feel like i’ve used “date” to mean On Today’s Date, The Person but i really dislike it as habitual “dating” and datemate same. datefriend maybe more okay because not the “mate” connotation but also aaahhg the boyfriend/girlfriend-so-Romance connotation??

i know one of the people i’ve played with and would love to some more generally refers to people as their lovers? which almost works for me except for again romance often just sneaks in there as an assumption that Irks Me

and just saying “my person/people” also feels so Claimy when about casual play and blarghhh Words

ok lately i’ve been super feeling the aromantic and also really disliking poly*amorous* and polyam for myself

somewhat ambivalent about “poly”? mostly like yeah seems right, but also doooon’t expand it to amory? no with the love-romance-roots

non-monogamous as umbrella/general definitely feels useful, although nonmon gets confused with non-monosexual

eh, words

[epochryphal]

mm. saying “my experience X has been stigmatized” is not shaming other people’s Non-X experience for not being radical

[epochryphal]

Any of these [kink] acts could be used against you in family court.

This was the case until 2010.

The change was the result of a massive effort from the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (NCSF), an advocacy group founded in 1997 “to advance the rights of and advocate for consenting adults in the BDSM-Leather-Fetish, Swing, and Polyamory Communities.”

The effort to de-classify kink as a psychiatric disorder began in 1980s Los Angeles with Bannon and his then-partner, Guy Baldwin, a therapist who worked mostly with the gay and alternative sexualities communities.

“Now we are seeing a sharp drop in people having their children removed from their custody,” Wright explains. Since the change, according to the NCSF, less than 10 percent of people who sought the organization’s help in custody cases have had their children removed, and the number of discrimination cases has dropped from more than 600 in 2002 to 500 in 2010 to around 200 over the last year.  [contrast with 80% custodial loss rate in 1997-2010]

So, you know,

custodial rights

institutionalization as mentally ill

general bias in the legal system as being mentally unfit

are all tangible, direct issues there has been historical activism around, for and by queer kinky polyamorous people -- on, yes, all of those axes.

Plus the 2008 survey revealed 26% respondents were discriminated against and identified it as specifically because they were kinky, in ways like:

harassment

social ostracism

blackmail/forced outing/threats

losing their jobs/contracts/customers

being denied services (including medical services - and having medical services sabotaged, in one specific example)

being denied housing

being arrested

corrective therapy

sexual harassment by supervisors

sexual assault by police

refusal to pursue charges or issue restraining orders

So I mean.  Yeah.  Actual stuff at stake.

[epochryphal]

when polyamory is the solution: open -- the relationship. stop -- having it be closed.

[epochryphal]

sans is dating papyrus. mettaton and pap start dating. sans approaches mtt. he says: y'know, the only reason i'm ok with you dating my brother... ...is because i guess that makes us... ...mettamours

[epochryphal]

having really good conversations about ideal relationship structures and i would love to do poly, it takes so much (sexual) pressure off me, and if a triad or other polyfidelitous sitch worked homg amazeballs definitely tho i am hierarchical, and need a mutual primary commitment (and actual open ethical communication and observation of negotiated boundaries, pls) and kink, and probably someone else who was semi/grey/ace-spectrum (although then the stars might be hard to align? perhaps someone more allo than me but good with that and at using poly. someone good at both initiating and consent) also could this just. like. spontaneously manifest. skip the courting. straight to established relationship. fandom can do it.

[epochryphal]

"polyamorailous" yes i accept "polyamory because avengers" error try again later

[epochryphal]

ok lately i’ve been super feeling the aromantic and also really disliking poly*amorous* and polyam for myself

somewhat ambivalent about “poly”? mostly like yeah seems right, but also doooon’t expand it to amory? no with the love-romance-roots

non-monogamous as umbrella/general definitely feels useful, although nonmon gets confused with non-monosexual

eh, words