Category Archives: Non-monogamy

Married…On Facebook?

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Facebook Relationship Statuses

Your numerous Facebook
relationship status options

I’m no statistician, but I would venture a guess that at least half of all relationships (open and non-open), marriages, engagements, and “it’s complicated”s on Facebook are fictional. On Facebook, a site informed by idealized projections and presentations self-mediated through a policy of hyper-openness, relationships and friendships are made instantly public.

I am particularly intrigued and troubled by the relationships of two female-identified friends. I am not alone in knowing two best friends who are “married” or “in an open relationship” on Facebook. Often, seeing two straight women claiming to be engaged to each other frustrates me. What a blatant unawareness of privilege! Why are they turning relationships between two women into a joke? Why do they joke about being married when they couldn’t even get married if they tried? Are they sure the notion of two women being in a romantic relationship is preposterous, so they aren’t even concerned with being misread? When I see those relationship statuses, I often feel silenced, erased, or mocked.

But maybe I judge too quickly. After all, there is something liberating about re-imagining relationships. Maybe marriages or open relationships are labels that fit certain friendships because of the emotional fulfillment that comes with those relationships. Perhaps these women are engaging in play and ambiguity in their relationships, blurring boundaries between friends and more, regardless of sexual or gender identity. Now, when I find myself frustrated, I try to check myself. Who am I to dictate what a relationship is? Maybe these two women feel like they are in an open relationship, where they are emotionally committed and find sexual satisfaction somewhere else. Or maybe they do find it within one another, and still identify as straight. Women in “fake” Facebook relationships, thank you for helping me pause and rethink public relationship presentations, as I push myself to redefine relationships for myself and how I read relationships onto others.

Why I’m Ambivalent About Gay Marriage

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Friday, June 24 was a big day.  Moments after gay marriage
was legalized in my home state, I received texts from queer and straight
friends from all over the country.  My News Feed was dominated
with happiness about the late night legislation.

“Now let’s all just take a cue from New York, shall we?”

“New York: concrete jungle where dreams are made of. I’m proud of you”

“It’s always a beautiful night to be a New Yorker. Tonight is no exception. Proud.”

And while I, like my peers on the internet and congregating at the
Stonewall Inn, was pleased about this civil rights accomplishment, I
was…ambivalent.  Marriage equality is a big step and I am glad it’s
legal in my state. But…

At first, I figured my reaction was a remnant of my teenage
contrarian ways.  But I’m a queer woman who majored in Women’s,
Gender, and Sexuality Studies in college and I knew that there was more.

Did the original crusaders at Stonewall fight for this moment? 
For the moment where same sex couples could enter the same institutions
as straight couples?  I don’t know.

Why I Think Marriage Equality is a Good Thing: Equal rights!  Duh!

Why I Think Marriage Equality Could Be a Dangerous Thing:

Legalized marriage expands who has access to marriage but limits the types of relationships accepted in dominant society.

With LGBT people celebrating at NYC Pride two days after the legislation passed, I wondered: is marriage now even open to everyone?  Where do queer people and queer relationships of all kinds fit?

Will employers known for their incredible domestic partner benefits
(Columbia University, for example, pays college tuition for the children
of employees’ domestic partners at any school), then only make those
available for married couples?

Will marriage continue to be the only way to receive certain financial and health benefits?  

Maybe, since I’m younger, marriage doesn’t have the same resonance
for me.  After all, I’m still on my parents’ health care plan.

But maybe the conversation shouldn’t end on night-of
celebrations.  Maybe we should continue to question what
relationships mean and who is (still) left out by the language and
institution of marriage.  And while some people may seek a
conventional marriage, others may not.

Maybe my feelings will change when I attend a wedding, or if I seek
one myself.  But for now, I’m comfortable with this ambivalence.

dads, lock up your daughters and your dvd collections. bachmann is coming for you.

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michele bachmann wants your porn.  or to be more specific, she
wants to take your porn away from you, all in the name of protecting us
poor, innocent, logic-lackin’ women who can’t figure out sexuality for
ourselves.  we need men to decide how that shit’s gonna go down.

i’ll back up a minute and explain the details of the latest bachmann lunacy.  at the end of last week, conservative iowa group the family leader put forth a 14 bullet point pledge that any republican candidate that wants their support must sign by august 1.

the bulk of the bullet points are along the lines of “i believe gay
people are a threat and ruining society.”  it’s some pretty ugly,
hateful language going on there, but i guess what else would you expect
from that type of organization.

the 9th bullet point of the pledge is written as follows:

pornography  should be banned: vow 9
stipulates that the candidate must “support human protection of women
and the innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy” and protect them from
“seduction into promiscuity and all forms of pornography…and other types
of coercion or stolen innocence.”

i just love it when conservatives use flowery language when talking
about women’s sexuality.  innocent fruit of conjugal
intimacy?  i feel like any woman who finds that phrase appealing is
the same type of woman who fantasizes about doing it in the overly
styled and unimaginative rooms they see in a pottery barn catalog. or in
other words, the type of women who actually like porn for women.

it’s this kind of shit that really makes you wonder exactly how far
conservatives would go with banning and censoring material were they not
restricted by the constitution they claim to love so much.  would
all racy romance novels vanish from bookstores and airports?  would
sexy, high-end fashion shows and advertisements get shut down? 
the problem with censoring “porn” is that because overt and commodified
sexuality has worked its way so far into the mainstream, censoring
becomes a very slippery and steep terrain to navigate.  oh, and
also because censorship is fascism. that’s another big problem with
censoring porn.

i don’t know what some conservatives think happens exactly when us
lady folk watch porn.  if by “seduced into promiscuity and
pornography in all forms,” i don’t know if they’re trying to say that
women who are single are going to try and have a fulfilling sex life by
sleeping with the (potentially numerous) people she thinks are going to
satisfy her needs, and/or maybe throw on a porn and (gasp!) masturbate,
or if what they’re really talking about here is fears of a married,
straight, christian woman getting one glimpse of evan stone in who’s nailin’ paylin?, (a personal favorite of mine) and heading off to san fernando valley
to let loose.   the first scenario sounds like a lot of girls
i know.  the second sounds like a highly preposterous, though very
funny, paranoid conservative fantasy.

preposterous? paranoid? who does that remind me of? oh, yes. michele.  on thursday, bachmann became the first presidential candidate to sign this ridiculous, insulting pledge.  i guess i shouldn’t be surprised whatsoever that she’s pandering to iowa.  after the gacy gaffe, 
she’ll give iowa whatever they want.  oh, except gay
marriage.  i’m pretty sure she’d try to take that away from them
given the rest of the pledge she agreed to.

on a gay marriage and paranoid conservative fantasy note, 
archbishop timothy dolan has now officially stated that since new york
has emerged victorious in a hard-won fight to secure equal rights for
gay people to marry, polygamy is next.   i have written here before about dolan and his bigotry about anything that isn’t totally heteronormative.

it’s funny and not at all surprising that what got dolan all riled up
is the exact same article that made me incredibly happy to read 
two weeks ago in the new york times magazine.  mark oppenheimer’s article, “married, with infidelities,”
is a fantastic, even handed look at how our culture is shifting towards
the acceptance of nonmonogamy in its many forms, and how this will
improve our lives and save marriages and families, rather than destroy
them.  my only complaint about it was that they did not mention
such great resources as opening up and the ethical slut.   it’s a long article, so i won’t get into it in this post, but i encourage everyone to read it when they get a chance.

listen up, michele.  if you’re not giving up your guns, i am not
giving up my porn.  sex not violence. love not hate.  don’t
tread on my fucking porn.

 


 

 

 

 

this week in monogamy: delusions of douthat and lackluster radicals

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this week i kept coming across articles related to both monogamy
and nonmonogamy, and it’s left me feeling even more disappointed than
usual about america’s inablility to let go of, or even thoroughly
examine, existing social attitudes and structures, even when they have
obvious flaws and could stand to be tinkered with.

on monday, ross douthat wrote an op-ed for the new york times entitled, “why monogamy matters.”
in it, he tries to argue that the cdc announcement that teens and
twenty somethings are waiting longer to have sex is good news, because
according to his findings, there is a link “between sexual restraint and
emotional well-being, between monogamy and happiness — and between
promiscuity and depression.”

tracy clark-fiory’s article on salon
did an excellent job breaking down the “correlation does not equal
causation” flaw in douthat’s argument.  she had even interviewed
the sociologists whose study douthat cites earlier this year.  but
what really bothers me is douthat’s super feeble and disgustingly
saccharine attempts to cover up his agenda.

douthat uses the contention that “female emotional well-being seems
to be tightly bound to sexual stability” and “the happiest women were
those with a current sexual partner and only one or two partners in
their lifetime” to defend social conservatives overbearing interest in
american’s sex lives:

when social conservatives talk about restoring the link between
sex, monogamy and marriage, they often have these kinds of realities in
mind. the point isn’t that we should aspire to some arcadia of perfect
chastity. rather, it’s that a high sexual ideal can shape how quickly
and casually people pair off, even when they aren’t living up to its
exacting demands. the ultimate goal is a sexual culture that makes it
easier for young people to achieve romantic happiness — by encouraging
them to wait a little longer, choose more carefully and judge their sex
lives against a strong moral standard.

the more i read this paragraph, the more i want to throw up. 
“high sexual ideal?” fuck that. one can only assume that by “high sexual
ideal” douthat means “heterosexual sex with the intention of marriage
attached.”  in this paragraph, he tries to make it sound like
social conservatives just care so much about all young people,
and all they want is for them to find romantic bliss. i’m sure, ross. i
feel like one of the most pertinent elements missing from this
discussion is that people generally feel happier when they feel that
they are supported, or at the very least not marginalized, in their
personal decisions. how happy are people supposed to feel when they’re
told that when they fuck more than one person, or someone of the same
sex/gender, that they’ve missed the mark?  not only from a society
that constantly spews
heteronormative/homophobic/transphobic/misogynistic images, but from a
government that actively supports making this “high sexual ideal” the
easiest, fastest way to protection and privilege.

douthat then goes on to a) defend abstinence-only education programs
and b) defend social conservatives attack on planned parenthood:

obviously, social conservatives don’t like seeing their tax
dollars flow to an organization that performs roughly 300,000 abortions
every year. but they also see planned parenthood’s larger worldview —
in which teen sexual activity is taken for granted, and the most
important judgment to be made about a sexual encounter is whether it’s
clinically “safe” — as the enemy of the kind of sexual idealism they’re
trying to restore.

with op-eds like these, it’s hard to believe it’s 2011.  i don’t
even know how he managed to type that planned parenthood takes teen (or
any) sexual activity for granted.  i also can’t understand how
having safer sex would be the enemy of sexual idealism.  i mean,
social conservatives just want us to achieve romantic happiness
right?  how is preventing herpes or an unwanted pregnancy going to
get in the way of achieving romantic happiness? too much time spent
together because you’re not at the doctor’s office or working three jobs
so you can pay to go to the doctor’s office because you don’t have
health insurance? i also think it’d be difficult to argue that people
who take the time/money/energy to procure and properly use safer sex
materials and/or contraception don’t care about the happiness and well
being of the people that they’re sleeping with.

i was still thinking about douthat’s op-ed as i stumbled upon the daily beast’s media gallery of open marriages. 
i think that the number of famous people that the daily beast could
find who are openly nonmonogomous in total, let alone that are american
and still alive, is very telling of how uninhabitable our culture is to
nonmonogamy.  there are a number of people on the list whose work i
respect and like (tilda swinton, simone de beauvoir, r. crumb, picasso)
but again none of them live in america.  while i don’t think that
we should be dependent on celebrities leading the charge for acceptance
of relationships that don’t meet douthat’s proposed “high sexual ideal,”
it also worries me that the easiest examples to pull of an open
marriage are charlie sheen and hugh hefner.

 

 

 

I’m only going to break, break, break, break, break, your heart.

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At the end of the year all the popular songs come back for the
countdowns, and Break Your Heart by Taio Cruz was big this year. Hearing
it again on one of the radio countdowns I was reminded of one of the
reasons I like this song, which is the music video.

I’m someone who is waiting for the day when “fuck you for cheating”
songs are replaced by “being in an open relationship is complicated”
songs. I’m of the opinion that most cheating is the result of people who
are not meant to be monogamous trying to fit themselves into that mold
and failing repeatedly.

While this song isn’t really an open relationship song, the video
shows Taio and his date partying on a boat, dancing and making out with
other people and then ultimately going home together. Instead of being
pissed or hurt, they are amused by each other’s antics. It seems clear
that they have an agreement and aren’t trying to change each other.

It shouldn’t be that groundbreaking, but in a culture where people
are generally hostile towards alternative relationships, it does feel
progressive. Feel free to watch the video and have a Monday after New
Year’s afternoon dance party.