An Epiphany About Unicorn Hunters
I just had a minor epiphany.
I was listening to an interview where the straight white dude in the hetero legal marriage who "opened up" (granted, he had an open relationship, but then they closed up when they got "serious" because that's what you're "supposed to do", figured out that didn't work, and opened up again) decided to lecture the poly community on how we treat unicorn hunters.
As he was talking about how hard it is for the poor newbie unicorn hunters, the thought popped into my head "says the straight het dude who is never the target of these people, telling marginalized people how to react to abuse in their communities!"
After conceding that unicorn hunting is "the wrong way", he started bemoaning how mean it is when we tell them that it's the wrong way, that we need to be nicer to them and hand-hold them gently into learning why what they're doing is wrong, because otherwise these couples are going to leave the community and try to do this all by themselves with no guidance.
So I yelled at my speakers "because it's better to not chase away the toxic abusive unicorn hunters but to instead chase away all the single, bi & pan, female-presenting (or female-assumed) people?!" Because that's totally what happens. There is NO WAY to explain to unicorn hunters "gently" enough that they're doing it wrong, because they don't want to hear that they're doing it wrong, they want validation that they're doing it right and that they're justified in their approach.
I have this problem with religious debates too. There is absolutely no way to tell someone "I think your god doesn't exist" without them taking it personally, no matter how "nicely" you say it. There are no "nice enough" words, because the people who are open to hearing that message are not the problem in the first place.
So any group that tolerates unicorn hunting even a little bit ends up sending all the "hot bi babes" into the Relationship Anarchy groups, even though RA is what polyamory was *always supposed to be* (until the fucking couples with their fucking unicorn hunting found us through Montel Williams and took over - there were always hierarchical couples and unicorn hunters but they were not the majority until we reached mainstream exposure and then hordes of "couples opening up" discovered us en masse).
We get to choose: a community that is tolerant of unicorn hunting with very few hot bi babes and very few advanced, experienced polys (because they all got chased away), or a community of experienced polys and newbies who shut up and listen, all of different configurations and dynamics and orientations who feel safe because of the fostered atmosphere of respect for agency. Because these two groups are not compatible.
It's like those fucking "coexist" stickers - no, we can't fucking "coexist" because one side is toxic and harmful to the other. BY DEFINITION, the two camps are fundamentally incompatible with each other.
I've been trying to figure out why this is so fucking difficult for people to get. Even people who recognize how toxic unicorn hunting is, some of them seem to think that there is room for both sides and get all up on their high horse about how "mean" we are to unicorn hunters and how we should be nicer and softly, gently, quietly lead them into seeing other people as motherfucking human beings, not sex toys.
And it occurred to me that this is basically the same thing as white people telling POC that we need to "understand" the plight of the poor rural white folk who voted for Trump, and men telling women that we need to be less strident when we explain feminism, and gay people to be less in-your-face when we demand equal rights, and atheists need to be less "militant" (funny how most of us are also opposed to violence and the military, but whatevs) when we request space for people of other belief systems.
Because we haven't been absolutely STEEPED in their viewpoint from every angle of society, so being mean to them, obviously we just don't *understand* them!
Here's the epiphany: People who think we need to be nicer to unicorn hunters (completely ignoring the fact that there is a wide spectrum of people and personality types and argument methods that are actually used in unicorn hunting debates) see the *unicorn hunters* as the "persecuted minority" and the queer, uncoupled femmes (and our supporters) as the oppressive dominant majority.
So when someone who has nearly every axis of privilege stacked against them sees for the umpteenth bajillionth time a mostly het, cis, white couple with legal benefits tearing through their community with their homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, and couple privilege, and decides they've had enough and tells that couple "ur duin it rong", that couple feels like the white man being ganged up on and cries "reverse racism!" because someone was mean to him once.
That's why we are talking past each other. No matter how many times we explain it, people who defend the "just be nice to unicorn hunters / hierarchical / abusive / misogynistic / racist / homophobic / transphobic people in our community" position, those are people who see the cis het usually white, COUPLE as the persecuted minority. And there is no "nice enough" way to explain to them that they're not, as long as they think they are.
They're just going to have to go through the trial by fire that all the rest of us did when our own privilege finally came crashing down on our heads and we learned how to see it. Seeing one's privilege for the first time, particularly after believing that one is *not* privileged, is a painful, shocking lesson. It's like having ice water thrown over your head.
Except the water is actually lukewarm, you're just all fired up with your own blustering ego, so it all feels too cold by comparison. It won't start to feel comfortable until you cool from the inside first.
This post was originally posted at https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/402760.html.
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