"Is not about".

[kiya]

"X is not about Y."

This is one of those interesting phrases, isn't it?

I use and interpret it to mean "Y is not an essential or motivating factor for X [in all cases, though it may be in some specific ones]."

Other people seem to use it to mean "X and Y have nothing to do with each other, you got your chocolate in my peanut butter! Eeew!"

So there's another one of those threads that comes across to me as saying "Polyamory is too about the sex you sexphobic freak."

I would be less testy about this if I were not currently completely sexually defective and with a bit of a complex about that.

Because if it is about the sex, if that's the essential reason that cannot be eliminated, if that's the real meaning, I have no family right now. Because that means that all of my relationships -- the nominally sexual ones don't exist, because there's no fucking, and the romantic relationships that don't have fucking never existed, they were just some delusion that I was stupid enough to believe mattered.

And if I didn't have enough of a guilt complex from the issues that are keeping me from maintaining my sexual relationships and disrupting the rest of my life, I need random third parties slapping each other on the back and congratulating themselves for being so enlightened as to understand that it all depends on sex and those people who claim otherwise are just repressed fools who are trying to set themselves up as superior to swingers or are brainwashed by a repressive mainstream.

So people like me who aren't currently able to process that part on all cylinders -- or indeed any cylinders at all -- hell with them. They can be alone.

Because it's about the sex. So if you don't got the sex, you got nuffin'.

I'd rather the hokey pokey be what it's all about. At least people don't get sanctimonious about the fucking hokey pokey.

And I can see that they probably don't mean "your relationships depend on sex", even though, in my use of language, that is exactly what they are saying, and right now that carries the subtext "and since you're not currently able to handle sex, YOU HAVE DESTROYED THEM ALL". At this point, I don't care, I'm going to bleed all over everything from this awkward, ripped-open wound now and feel misanthropic.


Meltdown aside: I got my middle_egyptian work done, some sewing, saw a movie at arawen and whispercricket's place with teinedreugan and jikharra. Going to go read my dreams book now and try not to break down any more than I am already.

Tomorrow, to the shore to make my offerings, I think, and to get a bottle for lysana. I think this is probably another one of those deep dark things that Olokun has washed up on my shore, it has the same feel as the last one.

Hey queenofhalves -- could we do lunch or dinner sometime or something and talk about the pure arcs of the meanings of people and Feri stuff and and?

Comments

[lysana.livejournal.com]

Another bottle? Your friend already came through, but if you feel compelled to do so, I won't tell you no. I try not to contradict gods when they're not telling someone to do something stupid, like commit murder.

[kiya]

The more the merrier!

I know kaifu sent you one, but I wanna send one too. I've got this bay right here, y'know?

And I decided I'd do it when I went to do my Yemaya and Olokun offerings, and if I detach things after doing that it gets kind of weird on me.

[pinkpolarity.livejournal.com]

*locates wanky thread, reads*

Oh dear. I feel you on this one. I'm getting the same "please apologize for existing" vibe off this that I was getting from my Baptist friend on the crime thing yesterday. It also seems like the OP is trying to counter a blanket concept ("it's not about sex, NO ONE who is poly thinks it's about the sex") with yet another blanket concept ("of COURSE it's about the sex, NO ONE who is poly thinks it's not really about the sex!"). Yet another person to be educated on the fallacy of the excluded middle, yes?

[kiya]

You and your nose for wank. :}

Yeah. Excluded middles. I'm glad I'm not completely irrational 'cause I'm hypersensitive, at least, that I'm reacting to something that someone else can see.

Gods. So tired.

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

I don't know what specific sex-is-intrinsic-to-poly back-patting you're talking about, but I've seen it before and I think it's ugly. It's like insisting that a marriage is only "real" if the people in it are having sex, or a parent-child relationship is only "real" if the child is the guaranteed genetic offspring of the parent.

In other words, it completely ignores that relationships are about, well, relationships between people.

I mean, sex is a nice part of my life, as it happens, but it's not going to destroy me or my relationship to go without. And I'm afraid I haven't evolved beyond the point where I see relationships that fall apart if the sex ends as not particularly strong relationships in the first place. And I also don't see anything remotely sex-negative about that attitude, however unevolved it might be.

[ailbhe]

My marriage is real. We haven't had sex for um. I forget. I was not very bigly pregnant at the time, so that's a longish time ago.

We have love though. I love all sorts of people I don't have sex with.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Meh. I had a meltdown at the last alt.polycon over this exact same topic. A certain person tried telling me that my chosen family weren't really people I had relationships with. Fortunately, everyone else there supported me as I cried for about three hours non-stop.

I have a romantic partner I don't have sex with at all, and another I have sex with extremely rarely. I quite enjoy sex when it works, but at the moment I have Issues of Medical TMI that are stopping me from enjoying it, and I need to pluck up the courage to actually get some more allergy tests done & stuff. It's difficult when it's something embarrassing to talk about, and when my "visible" allergies (like the smoke & dust mite allergies) get brushed off as me being a paranoid hysterical person it hardly encourages me to go and talk about my private bits having allergies, y'know?!

[elynne.livejournal.com]

A certain person tried telling me that my chosen family weren't really people I had relationships with.

*seeeeeethe*

[luellon.livejournal.com]

::hug::

[jenett]

Thank you for the rant.

I was wanting to have the exact same one, pretty much, yesterday when I saw it, and didn't have time or energy to do it. Blerght.

[kiya]

I realised that I was hurt more than I had recognised when I started sobbing and howling in the middle of writing it. :/

I really need to fix me.

[redbird]

Quite. With a side order of "and some people who would be threatened by their partners having a sexual relationship with someone else are also threatened by a romantic friendship, because many of the emotions are the same."

If it helps any, that thread feels rather like seeing one person insist "Dinner isn't about fish" and another shout back "There must always be herring!" when, in my world, fish is a fine thing, but hardly essential to a meal, let alone every meal, nor must it be a particular kind of fish. I, personally, wouldn't want to go fishless forever--but many people do, for reasons of personal preference or health, and they're doing just fine.

[larksdream]

With a side order of "and some people who would be threatened by their partners having a sexual relationship with someone else are also threatened by a romantic friendship, because many of the emotions are the same."

And some people very smugly putting down those people who do feel threatened for those reasons. Everybody always thinks that they're the final word on what emotions are okay to have, don't they?

[redbird]

I think you're mistaking me for someone else: my point is that if the emotions are there, they will affect people--both the one feeling them, zir partner, and other people nearby.

[larksdream]

I was speaking in general, on the topic of the insufferably judgmental.

[redbird]

In that case, agreed. I misread your post and thought you were classing me as one such. Sorry.

[larksdream]

Sorry, I get incoherent and arm-flail-y...

[brooksmoses]

And, more than that, I know someone whose reaction to poly was, in small part and loosely quoting, "It doesn't bother me for my husband to have sex with other people, but it would be really hard for me to deal with him having a romantic relationship with someone else."

[kiya]

One person posted to the comments on that thread something to the effect, "If it isn't about sex, why is there jealousy and envy?"

I have literally never had a jealousy reaction to sex.

For a while I was seethingly jealous of a doctoral thesis, though.

(I commented to that effect.)

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

Why can't people learn the simple trait of commenting on thier experiences and personal definitions as applies to thier relationships, and leave out others. Is it too much to ask that people learn to use language like "My definition of polyamory and relationships *for me* involves sex, and relationship on a partner (primary secondary, etc) that don't involve sex *for me* don't could as poly. YMMV"

It could probably be done with more grace, but still, if someone's self definition is radicaly different than mine, I don't much care. I leave them to it, and file that away. If they surprise me, I don't tell them that thier self definition is unreal, just that it's at odds with the accepted one, so people might have some confusion and misconceptions over it.

If I'd just met you and heard that you self defined as poly, I'd probably expect to hear that you had sex. I might make a mistake along those lines in how I percived you, but I wouldn't declare you non poly if I heard you had no sex. There's no point to that, other than assinine dominance displays.

australian_joe and I have a mild dissagreement over his ire at self defined lesbians who sometimes sleep with men. I don't care. If they want to self define as lesbians, fine with me. He considers it hypocritical because of some element of biphobia. I sorta-agree, but I still don't care to question thier self identity. It's tacky and rude.

[queenofhalves]

absolutely. after today, i am very free until june 10, then not again until after the next feri class. when is a good place and time for you? drop me an e-mail. :>

[elf]

Of course poly is "about the sex." Just like heterosexuality... if you're not currently sleeping with multiple people/someone of the opp sex, you shouldn't be using the label. And being bi is, of course, about Teh Secks: if you're monogamous, you can't really be bi.

(You could try pointing out that we have a word for multi-directional relationships that are about the sex... it's generally called "polyfuckery." Which may, or may not, be the same as "swinging.")

Everybody knows that sex is the only aspect of a multi-directional relationship you actually have to negotiate; time and emotional commitment and shared interests and proximity/living together are irrelevant distractions. Nobody could possibly base a relationship on any of those features. And if they did, it wouldn't be a "relationship" the same way something that's centered on sex is.

And I do so get sanctimonious about the hokey pokey.

Sidenotes: In Feri, everything is "about the sex." But we've got a *broad* definition of "sex." As we, and the entire universe, are manifestations of the StarGoddess at the eternal point of orgasm, all of existance is sex. The proble isn't with people who claim "X is about the sex," but with their idea that some things are not.

Coffee is sex. Gaming is sex. LJ'ing is sex. Writing is sex. Movies are sex.

I gots no problems with "it takes sex to make a relationship;" it's their limited concept on what counts as "sex" that I object to.

[kiya]

And I do so get sanctimonious about the hokey pokey.

And I imagine I would find it highly entertaining if I saw it. ;)

Sidenotes: In Feri, everything is "about the sex."

One of the things that I'm finding fascinating about what I posted in previous entry is that it means that in a fairly literal but very abstracted way, all of my fiction writing is about the sex, in the limited sense.

[larksdream]

Well, if { relationship iff sex }, then there are several people I dated for a whole lot of years who are going to be very surprised that in fact we had no relationship after all.

People ought to get the fuck out of the judgment business when it comes to any relationships except their own.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I'm not poly, but I think I somewhat understand. I've been told that in a "real" marriage the purpose is to conceive and bear children, something that my husband--according to this theory, I guess I should put "husband" in quotes!--and I never intended to do, having planned adoption from the beginning. I've been told that I'm not a "real" parent, because my children are adopted. There are even those who maintain that we are not a "real" family, not the way parents and born-to-them children are.

(The following is opinion, not advice. The "you" is simply to avoid saying "one," which sounds so damn pretentious.) You just have to ignore these people. I've been in this non-real marriage for 25 years and been a non-real parent for 21, and I haven't encountered anyone who holds these ideas (though I hesitate to acknowledge that any thought process is involved) who has ever changed their mind. People who think they know what constitutes other people's relationships have some kind of emotional investment in that belief, and even if their minds can be changed, you may not want to be around for the fallout.

You don't have to listen to them. If they are not part of the relationship, they have no standing to tell you what constitutes the relationship. Sometimes if your evil side gets the beeter of you, you can pat them on the hand and say, "Well, dear, I understand why you need to believe that" before you walk away.

[larksdream]

I've been told that I'm not a "real" parent, because my children are adopted. There are even those who maintain that we are not a "real" family, not the way parents and born-to-them children are.

*boggles*

Are you seriously trying to tell me that some people would point to a man (for instance) whose entire contribution to a child's welfare was eighty-three seconds of thrusting, and say that THAT is a "real" father, while someone else who is there for that child twenty-four hours of every day is NOT?

Excuse me, I think that grinding sound is coming from my teeth...

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

My father would. ("Lesbians have empty lives," he says, because they can't have kids. Yuh.)

[larksdream]

I don't even know where to start. Holy crap.

Uh, I have an empty life too-- no, actually my life is downright EVIL, because I CAN have kids but choose not to. Another good womb going to waste thanks to liberal propaganda.

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear. Aaargh. Are these the same idiots, or a new crop?

What everybody has said in these comments sounds pretty sensible to me... but I know that knowing that might not help much when the guiltmonsters and ouchmonsters are already chewing on one.

Um, that made sense in my head. What the lioness means to say is, "Yeah, I can see how that would be majorly aarghful, and what you say makes good sense to me, and also I think you are right."

*offers to growl menacingly at annoying people*

[kiya]

If by "the same idiots" you mean "polyamory", then yeah, that's where it is. Several of the commenters, including the OP, are folks who I expect to have more fucking sense.

[undauntra.livejournal.com]

Actually, evidence suggests that polyamory is primarily about roleplaying games - from my POV.

[thomasyan.livejournal.com]

Gah! My sympathies for the imprecisions of natural language and the stupidities of people, esp. stupid people.