Category: Polyamory
Pride and prying
The most transgressive thing I did during the Pride Parade was tell my coworker I’m in a long-distance relationship with a man. The six years and 700 miles kind of long.
It’s not something you’d expect if you just met me now; I get my dyke hair cut by dykes at a dyke salon, I wear collared shirts to the office and, when my cube-neighbor just asked me how I missed seeing Magic Mike in theaters, I laughed and said, “that movie has nothing for me.” And the other day I marched around my city wearing a big button that says, “Vag, it’s what’s for dinner.”
But I ended up in a cab with this coworker later, and the subject of B^2 came up. There’s always a moment when I’m getting to know someone new—a moment that often sneaks up on me and lasts just for a few seconds—when it is either natural to insert my lovely, long-term partner into conversation, or seemingly impossible thereafter. But there are many versions of our story, and not all of them are safe for work, and sometimes I’m maybe oversensitive to that.
In one story, I’m a single queer woman living in a big city. I don’t have much free time, but when I do, I date. A chef from a fancy restaurant, a German political scientist, a middle school teacher, if I’m bragging. I go jogging by the water and sing along to Ani DiFranco songs. And as my homophobic ex-boss used to tell me, sometimes “you dress like a dude.”
In another story there’s B^2, the cis-gendered man I’m madly, deeply in love with, but not quite ready to plan my life around. The love still grows, not every day exactly, but most days. We don’t talk every day, but most days. We are not growing old together, yet, but we most likely will.
Sometimes I get the stories confused. Two weeks ago one of my colleagues asked me who B^2 was. She said I wrote about him on Facebook a lot. We were in her car on our way to a drive-through for lunch.
“He was my college boyfriend….” I began.
“…But now you’re gay,” She interrupted. There was no question in her mind, and that was refreshing, because there are usually so many questions in my mind. So I said yes. Then the hamburgers arrived.
Which of these stories is more appealing? And aren’t they all, in some sense, lies?
Pride is supposed to be about bellowing out your love from the rooftops. And for the first time in my life, I’m not afraid to shout YES, I love vag and the women who have it. But I’m still afraid to say I love men too—that the person who fucked me last night was a man, and the one person I fucked at a post-Pride party was also a man.
Some people say that if you can’t pick a side then you’re a greedy, grabby, dabbling, disease-spreading slut. Those words, together and alone, are what keep me from calling myself bisexual aloud. (That, and because the term is in cahoots with the concept of the gender binary, and fuck. that. shit.)
Coming to terms with this is perhaps going to be a life-long project.
The trouble with so-called marriage equality
Wednesday’s Supreme Court Defense of Marriage Act ruling, which you can read about here, there, and everywhere, is worth celebrating.
For one, it paves the way for federal legal protections to the married, same-sex couples who haven’t been able to do things to create the families they want, like file joint tax-returns, apply for green cards, share a spouse’s health insurance, take family leave for their jobs, and on and on (there’s something like 1,100 federal marriage provisions).
And it contains language that advocates of marriage equality can use to work on the 30-something states where same-sex marriage is still illegal.
And I’m happy. I know how to put on my big-girl panties (or boxer-briefs) and wave the rainbow flag. But I’d still rather see the institution of marriage done away with entirely.
Maybe it’s because I’m polyamorous. Maybe it’s because my parents skipped their wedding, and told me they didn’t care if I did the same. Maybe it’s because B^2’s parents are divorced, and they offer a lesson in how compromising for the sake of your couple can go wrong. Maybe it’s because some days it feels like all my peers are getting married, and they sound like fools. Maybe it’s because I fantasize about one day sharing the custody and parenting duties of a child‚ who is not biologically mine, with multiple partners whom I love deeply.
Maybe it’s because I watched the Wedding Planner too many times when I was a kid and couldn’t understand why Jennifer Lopez and that blond woman couldn’t marry both the dudes, or neither, and all date each other while they figured their shit out.
Maybe it’s because I know that queer and trans people are still getting beaten up, raped, and killed, getting fired from their jobs and losing their children, and marriage doesn’t fucking change that.
And maybe it’s because the decision has overshadowed the troubling Voting Rights Act decision earlier this week.
But marriage gets under my skin. It’s a federally recognized religious institution that privileges views about sex, fidelity, purity, personal finances, and the rights that employers owe their employees and their spouses, that I despise. I mean, I think everyone should have access to healthcare. I think people should be able to form the families and kinship arrangements they want without facing the massive legal hurdles that only the very, very privileged can easily overcome. And not to get all cutesy on you, but why are we so obsessed with putting a ring on it when we can’t even get many Americans the medical attention they need?
A lot of people said they wouldn’t get married until the gays could get married (looking at you, Kristen Bell). It wouldn’t be so different for me to say I won’t get married until polyamorous people can get married—all three, or four, or however many of them, to each other. But I’d rather say that marriage is dead. Death to any and all conflations of politics and faith, historically used to subjugate women and other adulterers, queers, lovers of different races…
It’s a problem that I think Michael Warner put pretty wonderfully in his 1999 book The Trouble with Normal, which argues that the gay marriage movement is driven to some extent by shame.
“Straight culture,” he said, “needs to learn a new standard of dignity, and it won’t do this as long as gay people think that their ‘acceptance’ needs to be won on the terms of straight people’s politics of shame.’”
Yep.
I fell in love with this book when I read it in college, and underlined practically every inch of it. And the only reason I’m not devoting this entire post to a string of Warner quotes is that the book is still on the East Coast, boxed up with the rest of my belongings.
Some polyamorists think the DOMA ruling will lay the foundation for future legal battles over plural marriages. Alan at Polyamory in the News, one of my favorite poly-focused blogs, is among those who believe the issue is “a political non-starter,” too complicated and too unpopular to be possible. Loving More, a polyamory advocacy group with a god-awful website, rightly pointed out in a press release earlier this week that fair housing, job security, and child custody are still more pressing concerns. (Aside: I know like ten poly folks off the top of my head who could build better websites in their sleep … what’s going on here, community?)
At the end of the day, I want to see poly, queer people, and all consenting adults who can call themselves whatever they like, have the legal and social tools to create the families they want, and protect them. Marriage equality is going to help make that happen for some, but it’s still not the answer to our cultural aversion (borne of deeply-rooted fears and shame about bodies and desire, and, sometimes, some very poorly executed evolutionary psychology) to people whose sexual practices and love fall outside the norm.
Whew. Deep breath. Yes I’m still wearing my party panties and my “I heart fisting” button to this weekend’s Pride Parade.
Why this blog?
They say no relationship problem is so vast that it can’t be solved without the healthy application of communication or lube—And the same goes if the relationship is kinky, polyamorous, long-term, long-distance, complicated.
Google-searching for the phrase “communication or lube” yesterday turned up nothing, (which baffles me because I know I didn’t make this up) so I am doing my civic duty and giving you Communication or Lube: the blog. Not sure what will go here just yet, but I think any effort to put thoughts to page is a valiant one. and if you’re still reading, I hope you do too.
Communication or Lube. 