Category: Blog

My Boyfriend’s Girlfriend Isn’t Me

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This song is adorable and hilarious! It could be an interesting way to introduce friends and family to the notion of polyamory. I mean, not have this be their ONLY introduction, but an aid. It’s a cute way to show how complex polyamory can be. And speaking of non-monogamy…I obviously can’t speak for the person I’ll be in 20 or 30 years, but…for NOW…I definitely see myself embracing polyamory, or at the very least ethical non-monogamy of some flavor, for the long run. So regardless of what type of relationships I have NOW, be they polyamorous or monogamous, I do believe that I’ll end up as non-monogamous. Sorry, abuela! 🙂

[4/12/18: Edited to expand instances of “poly” to “polyamorous” and “mono” to “monogamous.]

“My Boyfriend’s Girlfriend” by Must Be Tuesday

There’s lots of kinds of people in this world
and I’m, well, I’m not like other girls
How do I explain this properly?
My boyfriend’s girlfriend isn’t me.

Well obviously one of them is…
But there’s another girl of his
And I know her and she knows me
and that would be great if it was just us three.

But she has a guy who’s even more pretty
and a long-distance thing in another city
He and his wife come by when they can
and they have a kid who calls me his aunt.

Just when I thought it was all too crazy
I tried to draw our family tree.
There’s nothing wrong with extra love
But the paper wasn’t big enough.

Chorus: 
Of all the ways I’ve ever dated
it’s never been so complicated
The chain can extend to eternity
’cause my boyfriend’s girlfriend isn’t me.

We spent Christmas eve with my boyfriend’s dad
Christmas day with my folks and the feast they had
New Years, he went to his girlfriend’s city
I mean the one who isn’t me.

She brought him and her other guy
to her company picnic and I won’t lie
I wasn’t used to being alone
so I want someone new of my own.

It isn’t easy to find a fling
‘Cause when you hit on some tasty thing
They say “Aren’t you with that guy?”
You say “Oh he doesn’t mind.

Have you ever seen ‘Big Love’?
Know what I mean, wink, wink, nudge, nudge…”
And they say “Oh, so you’re a Mormon?”
“No! …I’ll explain from the beginning…”

Chorus

When the partners get together,
the primaries and all the others,
we give the newbies a little primer
and we all get out our day timers.

Calendars as far as the eye can see.
“When can I see you?” “When are you free?”
“Who gets me on my birthday?” and then
“Does anyone have an extra pen?”

The kids have the best celebration.
Gifts from three dozen odd relations.
There’s Uncle Jackie’s girlfriend, Mary,
Ed who is her secondary…

Ed’s new boyfriend brought along
his ex, whose fling is going strong
with someone that I used to know
and just became my boyfriend’s beau…

Chorus

A couch where four can snuggle up
Suddenly isn’t big enough
And even so we don’t give up.
There’s no such thing as too much love.

Some good articles

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1. Things your partner wants you to know. [Mono to Poly and Poly to Mono]

2. BDSM Scenarios and sexual exploration ideas. Some of these I heard at the Fetish Flea. 🙂

3. COMMUNICATION. Yep. There’s some good stuff in this article. “Communication works best when it’s an ongoing process. It’s not something you do when things get out of hand; it’s something you do all the time. Don’t wait for small problems to become big problems before you talk about them! Keep checking in with your partner all the time; make it a habit. (…) Even though it can sometimes seem uncomfortable or even frightening to bring up something that bothers you or that is affecting you in your relationship, you need to do it anyway. Anyone can have good communication skills when communication is easy; it’s how you communicate when it’s difficult that counts.”

4. Thriving as a Secondary. It’s interesting to read this now because, being as introspective and analytical as I am, I have already asked myself SO many of these questions, especially the ones that relate to what my own boundaries and wants/needs are. 🙂

5. Total non-sequitur: Transhumanism!

Some Good Questions

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What does it mean to love someone? What does it mean to have a very strong friendship? What is the meaning of compassion, and of respect, and of happiness? What does being confident in myself and confident in others entail? How do I balance everything out and constantly remain mindful of others’ feelings? What is trust and who am I willing to trust and why? What is the extent of what I can feel for one person? For more than one person? What type of relationship do I want to have here, with each individual? What are my needs? Are they being met? What are my fears? What are my notions of what being in love “should be like/is,” and is it possible that I’m subscribing to a single model when there are actually many more out there (that are different, and perhaps even more fulfilling)? Do I yearn for something traditional, and if I do, is it because I honestly want it and believe in it OR because it’s easier to deal with and easier to explain to people like my parents?

Real Women Have _______ [edited]

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Statement by Gabrielle Hennessey via Flickr.

I hate Dove’s “Real Women Have Curves” slogan with a passion. I stuffed my bra in seventh grade because of ideas like that, because of society’s undying belief that Breasts = Woman. A few days ago I walked into a store and a fellow shopper didn’t hesitate to tell her partner that my body was “gross.”

She said this while three or four feet away from me. I assume she wanted me to hear her and feel bad about my alleged eating disorder/unhealthiness/low self esteem, so that I’d go home and cry over some bonbons about my wasted life and listen to Christina Aguilera and discover my inner beauty and suddenly gain thirty pounds so I could be normal like her.

Real women have hearts and blood and bones. They have skin that breaks and nerves that feel the cold. They are made up of carbon and water and constantly renewing cells. They know who they are.

Real women may not have breasts. They may not even have vaginas. They might like girls or boys or a bit of both or neither at all. They may not always consider themselves to be women, or they might have to fight to be called such since no one else believes them.

Find a new slogan, Dove. Thousands of the people you’ve unwittingly condemned as Not Real Women are waiting.

Enjoy your profits.

Oh, labels. What makes a “woman”? What makes someone “[insert group here]”? What makes someone anything? If breasts don’t make a woman, what does? Is it the chromosomes? Is it the genital appearance? Is it the clothes? Is it other people’s perception of them as a member of a certain group? Is it a certain grouping of these aforementioned things? Is it an intangible essence, a “je ne sais quoi” of “woman-ness”? What does that even MEAN? And why is it necessary to make this distinction?

If we reduce these broad categories (e.g. woman, man, Latin@, homosexual, American, etc) to a list of “traits,” no one person will embody all of them. However, devoid of things that describe a label or devoid of things that make UP a definition, categories become meaningless. With no signified, the signifier becomes empty–just surface, with nothing beneath it. We keep using these terms in hopes that they will represent our realities somehow and allow us to communicate with one another, and ourselves.

The problem with all labels is that they ultimately define through exclusion; they purport to build a community based on, yes, shared traits or ideas or WHATEVER, but it always happens at the expense of keeping “something” out. Now, don’t get me wrong; I’m not going to ask for the abolition of all labels and categories because I DO find them useful (although inherently flawed). What I’m going to ask for is the fluidity and openness of thought to think outside those categories and constantly question them. What I’m going to ask for is a critical, analytical approach to definitions and life in general–one that will allow for change, multiplicity, and a degree of uncertainty about it all.

Next time you ask yourself “Oh, is that person [insert label here]?,” ask YOURSELF why you even need to know. Not because you don’t need to know the answer to your original question (maybe you do, maybe you don’t, whatever), but because I feel an integral part of understanding the world is understanding (or at least trying to understand) ourselves. Being introspective and looking at our own minds and our own actions in a way that is honest, questioning, and even slightly playful (because taking things seriously 24/7 only leads to nasties like high blood-pressure and a permanently furrowed brow) can tell us a lot about the world and why we perceive it the way we do. Asking yourself why you need to know if the person sitting next to you on the bus is “a girl or a boy” or “Mexican or Asian” will probably (eventually?) show you some of your own preconceptions, and by becoming self-aware, you can finally begin a process of growth and change. You can’t break the bars of cages you can’t see.

The Importance of BOOBIES!

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In Gayle Salamon’s “Transfeminism and the Future of Gender,” there is a section devoted to the preoccupation with the physical bodies of trans men and how those physical entities signify other processes and concepts that might not immediately be apparent. I was struck by the double standard when it comes to dealing with “women’s” bodies and “trans men’s” bodies in their relationship to their genitals and/or “obviously sexed” body parts, especially when there is a surgical intervention involved. The text presents two main positions, one of which condemns trans men’s surgical transformations and articulates them as a “mutilation,” speaking of the altered chest in terms of “removed breasts” that, in turn, symbolize a “relinquished femininity.” What’s interesting about this position is how it completely opposes the other, where “women” are seen as being defined by—not even created by, but defined by—something beyond their mere body. This idea invokes essentialist notions of being because it supposes that there is some sort of womanly essence that predates the body and is thus neither created nor informed by the physical, making women seem to transcend their physical manifestations and exist more truly and fully on another plane.

In that sense, the very arguments seem hypocritical and completely contradictory, because how can one explain that the breasts on a “woman” are not the ultimate signifiers of her femininity and her belonging to the group of “women” while at the same time, state that for a trans man, the removal of those very breasts means losing the most vital piece of womanhood? Of course, the point of getting surgery for many trans folks IS that very rejection of body parts that do not correspond to their identities, but it is not a removal of just one piece; instead, it is a removal of multiple pieces that make up a whole and create what is seen as a “male” or “female” body. The problem with the arguments presented in the article is that they assign different degrees of importance (or, actually, assign a value or a lack thereof) on the same body parts. They are contradictory and mutually exclusive ideas because there is no continuity to the valorization of the breasts; there is an opposition between the constructivism and the essentialism implicit in those very values. Thus, both points of view cannot be adopted and promoted simultaneously as true by a single individual without running the risk of being heavily criticized and called out on their hypocritical double standards.

—-

The funny thing is, this is the approach I take toward my hair. For me, my hair is certainly not all there is to me and it’s not the most important thing in my life. My hair doesn’t fully define me or constitute me. HOWEVER, I use my hair as a tool to define myself. I color it, cut it, put hats on it, you name it. First and foremost, in the name of personal desire and aesthetic pleasure, but secondly in the name of socially and physically constructing my identity. It simultaneously means a lot and very little. So I guess I just argued against my own actions in the previous essay and established my views about my hair as contradictory and complicated at best, and hypocritical at worst. XD But I think I can redeem myself somehow…even though the valorization of my hair is contextually contingent, it’s not the ULTIMATE marker of identity (unlike in the previous case, where the breasts were taken to be THE marker of feminine identity), so…yep.

[4/12/18: Edited to change instances of “transman” to “trans man” and the like, based on more modern forms of writing about gender.]

Identity Politics and Coalition Formation

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Judith Butler addresses the “need” for “solidarity as a prerequisite for political action” in Gender Trouble. She claims that, without a need for unity, a group would focus more on the actions instead of the articulation of identity, and therefore would be more successful in reaching the major goals at hand. Then she goes on to propose that groups should form coalitions without predefining categories such as “woman” and instead learn to “acknowledge [their] contradictions and take action with those contradictions intact.” However, I think this approach is problematic when it comes to actions that revolve around discrimination based on identity and how systems of oppression have created a need for those actions.

How is one supposed to fight a discriminatory system without establishing the definitions on which the system has been operating? I agree with Butler in saying that, for example, the category of “women” is too broad, vague, and ignorant of intragroup differences, BUT I feel that we need SOME sort of definition of what “woman” is so that we can counteract the oppression that people who have been identified and/or marked as women have experienced. SOME organizational principle must be used, even though it may act as exclusionary sometimes; I don’t believe there is any term or group that does not somehow exclude a part of the community at large. However, we must try to find the least exclusionary terms that still help reach our objectives, whatever those may be, and try to continually broaden our categories to acknowledge different systems simultaneously at work, while still keeping our original purposes in mind.

Knowledge vs. Ignorance : Unhappiness vs. Bliss

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Before analyzing Sollors’ own words, I read the quotation he included by Alexis de Tocqueville—one that seemed to establish a correlation between happiness and a lack of history, heritage, and national character. This reminded me of a text I read last semester, which argued in favor of moving beyond ethnicity and/or race and instead focusing on other concepts that could bring us together as a people. At first, this seemed absurd on a practical level. How could we all abandon the things that shaped us as we grew up? How could we forget the past that brought humanity to where it is today? In addition to absurd, the very idea of moving beyond race or ethnicity seemed somewhat insulting. To move beyond our roots seemed to imply an erasure of that past which, not only molded us, but also established the hierarchies that were currently in place and accounted for most, if not all, the systems of oppression that worked against people characterized as “The Other” by some dominant group. It would effectively erase the history of inequality faced by millions and silently deny and invalidate the feelings left over from their struggles because they would “no longer be an issue.” To begin completely anew while people still had their past in their minds would be impossible. It would be too silencing, too alienating, and too complicated.

Finally, on a very personal level, I just couldn’t imagine the world without ethnicity, race, or such categories for identification and differentiation. It seems too homogeneous, too boring, too…robotic. But what if it WERE somehow possible to achieve a complete and successful erasure of our routines, prejudices, memories, etc.? Would I be willing to give up these “luxuries” in exchange for happiness? After all, isn’t that what most people say they strive to have in their lives, at least to some degree? The situation is somewhat parallel to the picture presented by the saying “ignorance is bliss.” If we were ignorant of our differences, or if they were completely nonexistent to begin with, we would be blissful and happy. However, would this last? Wouldn’t we just find new ways to build coalitions, and in so doing, separate ourselves from others? Imagining that this state of blissful ignorance could be forever maintained, how would society progress? If revolution is a means to achieve progress, if difference and dissent and argumentation are the biggest ways in which we expand our minds and our points of view, how could we keep achieving these things in a society full of happy lemmings? Isn’t a balance required? Is it possible to have a lot of ying and no yang and STILL move forward?

My mind tells me that we need contrasts—that we need the sour to balance the sweet, the sad to balance the happy—but I wonder how much of this way of thinking is informed by the way I’ve been taught to analyze such things in the first place and how I could think about them differently if I had another way to frame them. Regardless of this last train of thought, would we even NEED progress to be happy? How much would progress, scientific discovery, and all these other things matter if we were blissful? Just like a fish living in an aquarium, one that can’t dream of the sea because it doesn’t know it exists, we would be content with our lives because we wouldn’t be dreaming of the possibilities; we wouldn’t know of their existence and thus couldn’t be unhappy about our inability to reach them. I guess what this all boils down to, in simplistic terms, is a choice between happiness and uniqueness…bliss and diversity, and all the things that go along with those two concepts.