Crossing the Shithead Rubicon

I write here not to praise the poly community, but to bury it.

So this mess recently appeared on Reddit's /r/polyamory: Am I delusional to think that anti poly backlash is especially ironic and bigoted?

I grew up in a poly family, and am happily ensconced in a my own poly LTR, stable and happy for years.

I get the normal "oh you must be taking advantage of your poor girlfriends"* thing, but am I wrong to find this especially offensive and ignorant when it comes from a LGBT person? I Mean, Really? It seems like of anyone, I would expect them to understand or at least not be so vocally opposed - but honestly, I get the harshest feedback from these folks...Is it just me?

*(I joined a happy bi fem couple that was looking for a man to play with / be a father, so that couldn't be farther from the truth - if anything, I am the third wheel!)

So it starts out fucked up and quickly devolves, leaving the original post as a high-water mark of poly tolerance an awareness.  And for those who followed the link, yes, the OP really calls himself "I_love_latinas".

One person in the thread is reminded of reading Maus and there being a Holocaust survivor character who was racist.  Someone else suggested that it was a bad idea to compare anything to the Holocaust that was not in fact a genocide.  That person was repeatedly down-voted, because suggesting that polys aren't exactly like the Jews in the Holocaust is as bad as, I don't know, maybe the Holocaust.

The polys then veer off to complain that it's not like Jews and Nazis, but rather like "the black community", and no I'm not making that up, and how they're all hella homophobic, including, I guess, the gay ones.  The polys go on to say that it's even worse when black people are homophobic, as they all are, given that white people have gotten so good at tolerating their blackness.  Hear that, people of color?  You're disappointing white polys.  Get on that.

One guy makes up a conversation he supposedly had wherein he told a gay man that he was thinking of trying out polyamory and the man responded with, I shit you not, this is him quoting the guy, "I don't think I approve of your lifestyle".  Yep, that definitely happened.  That sounds exactly like what a human would say to a person suggesting he might be interested in polyamory.  Wait, no!  It doesn't even sound like something that an alien impersonating a human using only lines of Java code as a guide to human dialog would say.  I mean seriously, who the fuck talks like that?  No one.  Ever.  That's who.

What really gets awful, is that the most fucked up, racist, homophobic posts got up-voted while those very few people dissenting were down-voted dozens of times in single comments.  So the message is loud and clear.  See what happens you social justice types?  If you don't let the polys into the parade, you're probably taking your orders from the homos, the Jews, or teh blacks.  The whole thread rapidly started to feel like it had cribbed the script of an episode of "Fox & Friends", but with 50% more bigotry.

And this is not just an example of Reddit being the gaping asshole of the Internet.  It's the steady state of online poly meeting spaces.  It's a fucking constant.  It's a feature, not a bug, and it's only gotten worse.

Poly is largely white, middle class, and thoroughly clueless about privilege and race.  Want to see how they really feel about the gay community, drop into a poly sphere and bring up marriage equality.  Better yet, do that at in the same post as you suggest that co-opting the language of queerness  while suggesting that a relationship model can't be a sexual identity is maybe not cool.  The indignant sputters will be heard all the way from Minneapolis.  But I was born poly!  It is so a "coming out".  People are killed for being poly all over!

If you really want a fiesta of whining, try suggesting that there's something to the fact that non-monogamy has been super common in the gay community long before poly was a thing, yet the number of gay people identifying as poly is shockingly small.

So many are quick to point out that they can't be homophobic.  After all, the wife is totally bi and hooks up with a bi woman some times.  Also, they know a lesbian who has been to their Saturday munch.  Hell, several of them even have a gay friend or something.  Just kidding.  They don't have friends.  Potential friends tend to scatter when a pack of gamers wearing Three Wolf Moon shirt and kvetching about the gays walks into the room.

No, we're not poly.  The reason we're not now, or ever going to identify as poly comes down to the community and their fucked up baggage.  We date other people, but to call ourselves poly is to stand in solidarity with some really shitty human beings behaving badly.

No, not all poly people are like that, but a quick look at that thread is a clear demonstration that the the bad is a huge majority.  It's also not going to get better any time soon.  Look around and see what serious discussion is going on in the poly community.  Nothing.  Zip.  Nada.  Pepomint used to write some really insightful pieces on it, but now we're just left with people posting about snuggling with their paramours and talking about the great things about poly.  They get mad that the queer community keeps them at arms' length but don't care to understand why beyond throwing out homophobic statements with little prompting.  That is, fundamentally, a function of privilege and a function of poly.

If it gets better, we'll let you know.

It's not getting better.

Want To Avoid A Dead Bedroom? Marry A Slut!

I know the title of this post will be controversial, but I believe this 100%.  I’m not using the term “slut” in a pejorative manner.  I’m a slut.  Slut is a meaningless word.  As some wise person said at some point, “A slut is someone who’s having more sex than you.”  By “slut” I mean, a woman who enjoys sex for the pleasure it provides her.  How that is expressed in her day-to-day life can vary.  When I lived in the Bay Area, I was hooking up on a semi-regular basis.  Not so much here in Germany, and I haven’t figured out if that’s because German men aren't attracted to my  full figure, or if German men are just awful at initiating any sort of sexual-romantic encounter (German women apparently have a lot of frustration around the lack of initiative German men show.  It’s an ongoing joke in German culture.)

But whether I’m hooking up or not, the fact is, I enjoy sex for pleasure’s sake.  I am absolutely capable of having sex with my husband that is deeply emotional, romantic, and expressive, and that’s amazing.  But I also like to get off.  I find other men attractive.  I have a wide array of sex toys that I like to use while watching porn.  And I’m not alone.  Many women of my generation and younger have shrugged off the sexual morals of the previous generation’s religion and culture and just enjoy sex for sex’s sake.

And what I’m saying to straight men is you should marry someone like me.

Well, OK, that sounds really egotistical, I’m not saying you should marry a weirdo ADHDer with a penchant for Bollywood musicals and a fascination with the history of the Holy Roman Empire.  I’m saying that if you want to prevent the dreaded “dead bedroom” a straight guy (or technically, a guy who is romantically-sexually attracted to women) should marry a girl who likes to get off.  A girl who knows her body and how it works,  is comfortable with her fantasies, and as a result maybe she’s had a few partners - or a few dozen - before you.

The common wisdom in the manosphere - that weird segment of the internet where inexperienced nerds collide with bitter misogynists - is that women who have extensive sexual histories, or even just like sex “too much” are to be avoided.  Athol Kay, of Married Man Sex Life, a really popular blog/money making site warns men to marry virgins or near virgins.  Most men who advocate “taking the red pill” - i.e. men who believe that society is “feminized” are aghast at the idea of getting into a relationship with a woman who has had more than a few sexual partners, even if their ideological cousins, the pick-up artists (PUAs) advocate fucking as many women as possible.

This is all just the old boring fundamentalism packaged in a shiny new box, except it often largely lacks even the religious component to argue that female chastity should be a given.  Instead these guys argue that “studies show” that women who actually enjoy sex and seek it out with multiple partners are destined to be unfaithful to you.  Much of this modern belief system is based on laughable assumptions from evolutionary biology, a junk pop-science genre in which sexist dudes project their own cultural norms onto cavemen to prove “things have always been like this.”

Except that history shows “things” have not always been like this.  There are many cultures who went through hundreds if not thousands of years believing that women, on the whole, had greater sexual libido than men.  You just have to read medieval Japanese, Indian, or French literature to see that this was a common cultural belief.  What most of these men take for granted is the idea that women don’t naturally desire sex, and that’s always been true, because of evolutionary biology, cavemen, etc.  But their sexual mores are actually far more modern than they realize, thanks to the Victorian culture which is pretty recent in the scope of human history. (And let it be said that even those prudish Victorians had quite the erotic imagination that included a whole lot of female promiscuity and crazy fetishes,  if you've read the erotica from that time.)

My ultimate point is this: most women do actually desire sex, but quite a few of us are fucked up about it thank to a culture that tells us constantly that being a woman that desires sex is an awful terrible slut.   Luckily, many of us are able to break free from that programming and enjoy sexual lives in which we are self-actualized, erotic human beings who know how to get ourselves off as well as our partners.  And this doesn't mean we’ll be unfaithful. Most women - hell, most PEOPLE - eventually want to find a long-lasting relationship with someone who can provide both emotional intimacy and sexual excitement.  Having a sexual history does indicate someone is incapable or unwilling to practice monogamy, any more than it does for a guy who has a few notches in his bedpost.

Marrying a woman who doesn't show interest in sex,  rarely or never masturbates, doesn't know how to experience sexual pleasure, and who has no interest in sexual adventure - for whatever reason - is going to likely result in a dead bedroom.  No amount of self-help guides or relationship books about being more dominant is going to change the fact that she’s fundamentally uninterested in sex.  She never was, and likely never will be.

Meanwhile, sure, maybe the statistics show that women who have an active sexual past are more likely to cheat.  I think the literature is dubious for a ton of reasons, but even pretending it’s valid, is being cheated on worse than 20 or 40 years with a woman who doesn't enjoy sex?  Well, that’s up for men to decide, I guess.  Lots of relationships find ways to cope with cheating, but the misery of someone stuck in a marriage where their partner refuses all sexual intimacy - that’s a pain that seems more damaging and awful, to me, than working through a break in trust.

As for me, I’m a “slut” in an open marriage, but despite having the freedom to seek out sexual partners outside my marriage, I haven’t in three years and I’m honestly not that interested in doing so.  My husband meets my sexual needs and then some.  I know what gets me off and I tell him.  I know what gets him off and I do it.  I value sexual pleasure and connection as an integral part of my marriage, and if my husband wanted to return to strict monogamy I’d be fine with that, too.  I like having the option to pursue other partners, but I was a slut who wanted monogamy before I was a slut who had an open relationship.  I’m interested in doing what works for us, as a couple, and right now that’s being open, but that’s not a result of my slutty nature.

I just don’t understand people who claim they need a happy and healthy sex life in a marriage, and then marry people who don’t feel the same way.  I think men who want to have a happy sex life need to get over the cultural programming about “sluts” and realize that what they want is a woman who embraces her sexuality fully.