rationalizing similar tags
I've tagged entries with either or both: relationship anarchy, and relationship anarchism. I've decided that I will use the relationship anarchy tag when talking about my own relationship matrix, and the relationship anarchism tag when talking about my general relationship philosophy. Anarchy being the status topic, anarchism being the advocacy topic.
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Quarantine has destroyed my relationship anarchy and dumped me back into a more structured polyamory status, with implicit hierarchy. A mutually-primary live-in asexual relationship, and a mutually-secondary dating sexual/kink relationship.
I used to have so much more going on, that I could only describe it as relationship anarchy. And I had decided that relationship anarchism was my choice, my goal, my philosophy.
I would only return to the long-abandoned realm of monogamy by default, if my one partner had only one partner, and neither of us had the time or opportunity for other partners, under the circumstances.
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When I spend more time on the polyamory Reddit, I'm struck by how far I've come since my early poly days -- I'm a lot more emotionally secure in myself, a lot better at jugging multiple relationships and allowing my partners to do the same. In my early poly days I invested deeply in hierarchy -- having a primary relationship and setting that relationship apart from secondary relationships -- having symbolic and functional markers delineating roles in these relationships. Or, having a primary triad in which everybody else was secondary to the triad.
Decades later, I think I'm just tired of all the drama that comes from trying to maintain hierarchical poly relationships. I'd rather have relationships with people who are not interested in having me as their primary. Partners who know for damned certain: that I'm going to have sex with other people according to my own desire and my own schedule, that I'm going to have relationships with other people according to my own desire and my own schedule. Partners who encourage this, partners who applaud this! Everybody sees each other when they have time and mutual interest, everybody communicates with each other as they need or desire.
I have this sort of relationship with K, I had & would have this with Ben. And that's what I had with all the other fellas who I saw from time to time.
Instead of having hierarchical relationship rules, I entered into BDSM roles. But BDSM roles are different from relationship rules. BDSM roles are negotiated within a relationship, and my BDSM roles frankly encouraged me to become as horny as possible and to explore this raging horniness with multiple fellas.
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On the polyamory Reddit I recently found myself downvoted because I sympathized with somebody who "cheated" on her husband. He had told her not to have sex with their fuckbuddy after he went to bed, but also told her that their fuckbuddy didn't have to go home. Well, she had sex with their fuckbuddy after he went to bed anyway.
I felt like that was a stupid rule. You all three just had sex together, but now you are sleepy and want to go to bed, but you don't want the two of them to have sex again while you are asleep. Feels like a stupid rule to me. And if you didn't want the two of them to have sex again, why didn't you send the fuckbuddy home and go to sleep with your wife?
I felt like he was setting her up to fail, for no good reason. And who the fuck cares if she has sex one more time with the fuckbuddy after you go to sleep? You've received your satisfaction, you've gone to bed.
I got downvoted because people felt like I was blaming the husband for the wife's cheating on him.
But I didn't view it as cheating! I viewed it as the husband trying to exert control over when his wife could have sex with their fuckbuddy. Why should he have any control over that? He's already consented to her having sex with somebody else -- he watched it happen, took part in it. Now he's forbidding her to do it again. Why does he get control over that?
I think most poly couples would view this as legitimate -- that one partner gets veto power over when the other partner can have sex with somebody else. For example, [We Only Have Sex with Other People Together, not Apart].
I view this as fundamentally illegitimate.
And my view puts me firmly in the relationship anarchism camp, rather than the poly camp. I view each person as the primary decision-maker regarding who they have sex with, and when they have sex. So long as they are having safer sex, which they should be doing anyway -- talking openly with all partners about sexually transmitted diseases, getting tested regularly, sharing test results openly, using birth control and/or condoms and/or Prep/HAART.
The types of rule making and rule breaking that go on in poly relationships drove me nuts when I engaged in them long ago, and would still drive me nuts today, and watching other people go through these gyrations drives me nuts.
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Monogamy derives from a social system in which men owned women as property, a fundamentally sexist system of sexual oppression, as well as labor oppression. Women were not called "slaves", but after marriage that's exactly what they were, that's what the term "wife" meant.
Feminism updated monogamy to create a kind of mutual oppression, in which each person in a monogamous couple owns the sexual apparatus (and labor) of the other. Instead of liberating women, feminism enslaved men -- now both genders are slaves to their spouses. And many women wonder why lots of men are resentful about this!
Some forms of polyamory modify monogamy so that one spouse will sometimes give permission to the other spouse to have sex and/or romantic relationships with other people. But they still fundamentally adhere to the mutual oppression model -- I own your sex parts, I own your heart, and you may only share these things with other people so long as I approve. I can withhold my approval for any reason at any time, and you must put your sex parts and your heart back in my cage on demand.
As you can tell from my choice of words, I view these arrangements as forms of oppression. I view legitimate relationships as mutual agreements to care for each other, perhaps to have consensual sex with each other, but if these agreements feature exclusivity clauses then they are a form of ownership, a form of slavery.
It's one thing if you feel so devoted to one person that you voluntarily devote yourself to that one person. It's another thing if that one person has veto power over whether you may devote yourself to anybody else. One is voluntary, the other is slavery.
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No Gods, No Masters ;-)
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Why do so many people voluntarily place themselves into slavery, via monogamous marriage? Well, because we're raised to think that's normal, and because we've had submission bred into us via generations of slavery and feudalism.
As I've written before, we're all descendants of both rapists and rape victims. It's in our DNA to dominate or submit. Genetically, we are used to allowing others to own our labor and our sexual expression, that's been the norm for so long, people who didn't fit in were destroyed.
To liberate ourselves, we're not only fighting against our spouses, but also our employers, our religions, our governments, our cultures, AND OUR VERY DNA.
It's tough. And I should forgive myself and others for not ever completely liberating ourselves. For the constant struggle. Sometimes it's just too difficult, so you go along, you go with the flow. Establishing independence from your family/spouse is difficult. Organizing your workplace is difficult. Reforming or rejecting a religion is difficult. Replacing capitalism is difficult. And organizing your thoughts against your own DNA ... the politics of the self ... how many people actively organize against their own nature?
Sometimes it is enough just to see it, to see the matrix of control. You certainly cannot act against it if you cannot see it.
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As the Twelve Step programs say, first you have to admit that you aren't in control.
But the "higher power" -- you might label it God or whatever -- the "higher power" is in fact your own ability to change, your own ability to choose another path. Your own consciousness, your own awareness of self, your own life force. In every moment you have a choice of what to do next. You can do something different from what you did before.
-----
Quarantine has destroyed my relationship anarchy and dumped me back into a more structured polyamory status, with implicit hierarchy. A mutually-primary live-in asexual relationship, and a mutually-secondary dating sexual/kink relationship.
I used to have so much more going on, that I could only describe it as relationship anarchy. And I had decided that relationship anarchism was my choice, my goal, my philosophy.
I would only return to the long-abandoned realm of monogamy by default, if my one partner had only one partner, and neither of us had the time or opportunity for other partners, under the circumstances.
-----
When I spend more time on the polyamory Reddit, I'm struck by how far I've come since my early poly days -- I'm a lot more emotionally secure in myself, a lot better at jugging multiple relationships and allowing my partners to do the same. In my early poly days I invested deeply in hierarchy -- having a primary relationship and setting that relationship apart from secondary relationships -- having symbolic and functional markers delineating roles in these relationships. Or, having a primary triad in which everybody else was secondary to the triad.
Decades later, I think I'm just tired of all the drama that comes from trying to maintain hierarchical poly relationships. I'd rather have relationships with people who are not interested in having me as their primary. Partners who know for damned certain: that I'm going to have sex with other people according to my own desire and my own schedule, that I'm going to have relationships with other people according to my own desire and my own schedule. Partners who encourage this, partners who applaud this! Everybody sees each other when they have time and mutual interest, everybody communicates with each other as they need or desire.
I have this sort of relationship with K, I had & would have this with Ben. And that's what I had with all the other fellas who I saw from time to time.
Instead of having hierarchical relationship rules, I entered into BDSM roles. But BDSM roles are different from relationship rules. BDSM roles are negotiated within a relationship, and my BDSM roles frankly encouraged me to become as horny as possible and to explore this raging horniness with multiple fellas.
-----
On the polyamory Reddit I recently found myself downvoted because I sympathized with somebody who "cheated" on her husband. He had told her not to have sex with their fuckbuddy after he went to bed, but also told her that their fuckbuddy didn't have to go home. Well, she had sex with their fuckbuddy after he went to bed anyway.
I felt like that was a stupid rule. You all three just had sex together, but now you are sleepy and want to go to bed, but you don't want the two of them to have sex again while you are asleep. Feels like a stupid rule to me. And if you didn't want the two of them to have sex again, why didn't you send the fuckbuddy home and go to sleep with your wife?
I felt like he was setting her up to fail, for no good reason. And who the fuck cares if she has sex one more time with the fuckbuddy after you go to sleep? You've received your satisfaction, you've gone to bed.
I got downvoted because people felt like I was blaming the husband for the wife's cheating on him.
But I didn't view it as cheating! I viewed it as the husband trying to exert control over when his wife could have sex with their fuckbuddy. Why should he have any control over that? He's already consented to her having sex with somebody else -- he watched it happen, took part in it. Now he's forbidding her to do it again. Why does he get control over that?
I think most poly couples would view this as legitimate -- that one partner gets veto power over when the other partner can have sex with somebody else. For example, [We Only Have Sex with Other People Together, not Apart].
I view this as fundamentally illegitimate.
And my view puts me firmly in the relationship anarchism camp, rather than the poly camp. I view each person as the primary decision-maker regarding who they have sex with, and when they have sex. So long as they are having safer sex, which they should be doing anyway -- talking openly with all partners about sexually transmitted diseases, getting tested regularly, sharing test results openly, using birth control and/or condoms and/or Prep/HAART.
The types of rule making and rule breaking that go on in poly relationships drove me nuts when I engaged in them long ago, and would still drive me nuts today, and watching other people go through these gyrations drives me nuts.
-----
Monogamy derives from a social system in which men owned women as property, a fundamentally sexist system of sexual oppression, as well as labor oppression. Women were not called "slaves", but after marriage that's exactly what they were, that's what the term "wife" meant.
Feminism updated monogamy to create a kind of mutual oppression, in which each person in a monogamous couple owns the sexual apparatus (and labor) of the other. Instead of liberating women, feminism enslaved men -- now both genders are slaves to their spouses. And many women wonder why lots of men are resentful about this!
Some forms of polyamory modify monogamy so that one spouse will sometimes give permission to the other spouse to have sex and/or romantic relationships with other people. But they still fundamentally adhere to the mutual oppression model -- I own your sex parts, I own your heart, and you may only share these things with other people so long as I approve. I can withhold my approval for any reason at any time, and you must put your sex parts and your heart back in my cage on demand.
As you can tell from my choice of words, I view these arrangements as forms of oppression. I view legitimate relationships as mutual agreements to care for each other, perhaps to have consensual sex with each other, but if these agreements feature exclusivity clauses then they are a form of ownership, a form of slavery.
It's one thing if you feel so devoted to one person that you voluntarily devote yourself to that one person. It's another thing if that one person has veto power over whether you may devote yourself to anybody else. One is voluntary, the other is slavery.
-----
No Gods, No Masters ;-)
-----
Why do so many people voluntarily place themselves into slavery, via monogamous marriage? Well, because we're raised to think that's normal, and because we've had submission bred into us via generations of slavery and feudalism.
As I've written before, we're all descendants of both rapists and rape victims. It's in our DNA to dominate or submit. Genetically, we are used to allowing others to own our labor and our sexual expression, that's been the norm for so long, people who didn't fit in were destroyed.
To liberate ourselves, we're not only fighting against our spouses, but also our employers, our religions, our governments, our cultures, AND OUR VERY DNA.
It's tough. And I should forgive myself and others for not ever completely liberating ourselves. For the constant struggle. Sometimes it's just too difficult, so you go along, you go with the flow. Establishing independence from your family/spouse is difficult. Organizing your workplace is difficult. Reforming or rejecting a religion is difficult. Replacing capitalism is difficult. And organizing your thoughts against your own DNA ... the politics of the self ... how many people actively organize against their own nature?
Sometimes it is enough just to see it, to see the matrix of control. You certainly cannot act against it if you cannot see it.
-----
As the Twelve Step programs say, first you have to admit that you aren't in control.
But the "higher power" -- you might label it God or whatever -- the "higher power" is in fact your own ability to change, your own ability to choose another path. Your own consciousness, your own awareness of self, your own life force. In every moment you have a choice of what to do next. You can do something different from what you did before.