Nina Hartley's Sexwise

Nina Hartley has had an amazing career as a sex educator, author and adult film actor. It's with some interest that I recently spotted an announcement that she is launching a new web venture called Sexwise, which aims foster discussion about "sex, sexuality, and sexual expression." The discussion/education community is Sexwise.me. Additionally, there's a Web talk show component at Sexwise.tv. This is not to be confused with Susie Bright's book, Sexwise, or the BBC's global sex education project, Sexwise.

 

I'm excited to see sex-positive discussion being fostered. The people of United States are so deeply fucked up about sex that good information and discussion are in critically short supply. We're still arguing over whether we should educate teens about sex or have them pray away temptation and raging hormones.

That said, one has to wonder about the subscription nature of this, in addition to the viability of a web show. The latter issue may be due in part to the fact that I just sat through the whole first season of the polyamory web series, "Family" and spent several days trying to get that theme song out of my head. The content level has to be high from the start to get people to sign up and continue to subscribe. Production values of the show will have to be reasonably high as well. The target audience will have to be pretty sex-positive, especially to keep up with it and pay for the privilege. That's a group that she'll have to keep engaged by not talking down to them, while also avoiding spending too much time on the sexual fringes.

I really hope this works out for her and that site gets more people talking frankly about sex. The site goes live tonight at 7pm PDT.

Edit: The Girl would like to note that she had the opportunity to meet Ms. Hartley on multiple occasions while working for a PO Box store in Berkeley in the early 2000s.  Nina was one of her favorite customers, and always had a great dirty joke to share.  

Poly Weekly Podcast: You're Why Mommy and Daddy Yell

The Girl and I have been discussing polyamory and listening to the Polyamory Weekly podcast. We usually listen, but a recent road trip has given us time to catch up on episodes and complain to each other about it. This show has been on for several years and has improved a bit over the years, but it is still able to send us into apoplectic fits.

We've been listening for about 2+ years and have gone through much of the archives.  In that time, we've laughed, groaned, shaken my head, and hit the skip button so often and frantically I've started to wonder if it's all a Skinner box experiment and we're the hungry rodents.

First off, I'm so thankful she's now got co-hosts, especially Pepomint, who has to be the most genuinely clued in to what she claims the podcast is supposed to be about.  I love his insights on relationships and queer issues, even if his most recent appearance drove us to fits on a recent drive up the interstate.

That said, I really don't think the show is particularly pansexual, despite the show's subtitle that it's from a "pansexual, kink-friendly point of view."  The host describes herself as boobie-sexual. Boobie-sexual?  That's not a sexuality, but a fetishization of a body part vis a vis cock-obsessed men.  It strikes me as an queer-appropriative bid to get attention.  We did get exactly one transgendered-themed episode, but that didn't bring much except for the host's clumsy ignorance regarding trans issues while interviewing a trans man.

CunningMinx tells us so often that it's not all about the sex and that it is all about communication.  That wouldn't bother me if it was acknowledged that it is about the sex at times.  Instead she sometimes comes across as even sex-averse.  There was a regrettable group sex episode in which the participants sat around giggling over how very naughty a tame-sounding group sex session at a convention was.  This is the new sex-positive media? There are SAT questions with more sexual content.  Where was the frank discussion about the dynamics and difficulties of group sex?  The host's contributions struck me as a bit sex-phobic and derailing.

On PolyWeekly, we're beaten over the head with the message that it isn't all about the sex. Hell, that's even the show's tagline. Unfortunately, it's really never about the sex. It's about kink, drama, and cuddles, most often. The drama could at least make for interesting listening, but it's usually glossed over with platitudes about how everything can be fixed with communication. The sex-negativity is also on display in the “Happy Poly Moments” segment of the show. These stories feature poly-identified people sharing pasta with a partner and a third and cuddling on the sofa to watch Stargate following a particularly grueling convention in which they went as the a hairy Scotsman, Chun Li, and a sexy Chewbacca. That's it. The moral of the story is that they can all appreciate each other's company in a cutesy, non-threatening, completely neutered way. At least talk about the Wookie sex.

Without sex and sexuality, we're dished up talk about poly in the media and discussion of cons and cuddling.  The discussions of articles about poly fall into two categories: Yay, they get poly, and boo, they don't get poly.  There's rarely serious contextualization or examination.  That part has gotten a bit better, especially with the addition of guests to discuss the articles.

Kink is one area where extra attention is paid, due in no small part to the fact that the host considers herself kinky. The host and cohorts have talked about BDSM and role play a bit, but kink is often brought up in the generic sense of a word that is already too generic. It comes across that kink and poly are inextricably tied together. That all ties back into the one-true-wayism that the Girl referenced earlier. What about the bigger issues of people engaging in poly to explore kinks their primary partner isn't into, or kinks engaged with one partner that trouble another one? Kink covers a lot of ground and that is rarely glimpsed on the show.

As top dog of poly podcasts, it fills an ambassadorial role for people wondering about it and that's where it fails the hardest. It doesn't have to be a 24/7 sales pitch, but it should try to give reasons why one would actually want to be polyamorous. Sure, we're often told that jealousy isn't a problem, but not how it is really overcome (spoiler alert: it's not). It's often presented as a sci-fi convention-haunting kink geek, pansexual domain. This guarantees that it will stay a fringe element.

Finally, we're constantly driven to fits by the fact that non-monogamy, especially, polyamory, can get messy and difficult, but the show often glosses over that. Some relationships won't survive it. Many will come close to collapse. The show approach is that poly problems are all fixable with communication and a disturbingly Randian approach that what you want is alright as long as you want it. New Relationship Energy (NRE) is the hormone-driven state of euphoria felt early in a relationship. That enthusiasm for the new and tendency to ignore the primary relationship is a minefield, but rarely is there a word of caution to the people experiencing it. Instead the put-out partner is told to deal with it and accept that NRE happens, even while acknowledging that the behaviors exhibited are often selfish and cruel.

Given all my issues with the show, one may wonder why I listen.  First, there's not much out there on the topic.  Second, it does entertain me and my partner, if only so we can sit around afterward and discuss.  That makes the train wreck moments that much more enjoyable.  Kind of like watching Mystery Science Theater.  We play PW Bingo, and try to see who can first check off the boxes labeled, "ooh, boobies", "Heinlein", "naked", "it's all about communication", "and that's the great thing about poly", etc.

I also enjoy hearing the other voices of the poly community.  While I don't think much of Ravenheart Oberon Zell, the show playing his lecture was immensely entertaining.  The guests often do a good job of adding to the discourse and I appreciate their opinions, even when I don't always agree with them.

We're Doing It Wrong: How Poly Should Be

So it's only fair that since I praised Pepomint for his post "Respecting Sexual Identity" and his blog, Freaksexual, in general in the inaugural post of Sex and Television that I can take him to task without feeling too guilty.  Fact is, Pepomint is one of the few serious critical thinkers that the Boy and I have seen writing seriously about poly issues and how they intersect with queerness, feminism, and kink.  That's fantastic, but obviously I'm not going to agree with one person about everything, and while driving down the 101 with the Boy last Sunday, caught a discussion between Pepomint, Tacit, and Joreth (I don't know where they get these names either, folks) on "Polyamory Weekly" podcast about the concept of "Primaries" and "Secondaries" in polyamorous relationships.  And I hope the words below are understood as a rant and not as some sort of reflection on my opinion of those who spoke them.  Except maybe Joreth, she did the previous "Poly and Athiesm" episode on the podcast and has a lot to answer for!

Full disclaimer: we don't define ourselves as being polyamorous as an orientation (in fact, I question it as an orientation akin to sexual orientation but that's a subject for another rant) nor do we consider our relationship polyamorous.  This isn't by choice, exactly - in our years reading polyamorous communities extensively on the web, as well as a handful of books, it's become clear that the community consensus of how polyamory is defined excludes us, despite the fact that we're non-monogamous.  I'm okay with this, although I am often frustrated at how narrow-minded polyamorous communities can be regarding other non-monogamous types, whether it's swingers or people in open relationships that don't necessarily focus on multiple "romantic" relationships.  I think there's a lot of sex-negativity tied up in the poly community's response to these alternative relationship styles - oops, getting off track again.  Subject for yet another future post.

But the point is, poly already seems to have a fairly narrow definition.  For those who might be new to the concept, it's basically a relational style in which one is open to having multiple, concurrent romantic relationships.  It is stressed that this does not meant cheating, because it's open and honest, and that it's "not all about the sex," as in, these relationships probably usually involve sex but the primary focus is loving, romantic partnerships.  I think from the outset this is problematic, particularly in the somewhat naive focus on the bizarre medieval concept that is "romantic love" set apart from say, loving friendships.  Basically, if you're in an open relationship, but you have one say, "life partner" (what a terrible term that is!) and several "friends with benefits" that isn't polyamory, because while you may be genuinely emotionally intimate with your fuckbuddies, it's not a romantic relationship.

This is irksome to someone like me, who was told point-blank on a poly forum that fuckbuddies don't count because maintaining a friendship that is also sexual with someone is "easy" while romantic relationships are "hard."  I don't know about you kids, but dealing with everyone's emotions surrounding transitioning a years-long friendship into a sexual relationship while still remaining friends is one of the more challenging things I've done.  Are those challenges different than having two romantic relationships?  Absolutely.  But it's insulting, particularly given the idea that poly is supposed to be this super radical redefinition of the way that people love and experience relationships, to already have such a narrow boundary enforced.  But wait!  It gets even narrower.

In Polyamory Weekly Episode #232, the above-mentioned co-hosts took one of fundamental styles of a poly relationship - the hierarchical "primary/secondary" situation - took it out back, beat it, and totally forgot the safeword.  It wasn't just a critical examination of the concept or the copious issues that accompany it (namely, the fact that secondaries are often treated like shit) which would have been welcome, particularly on a podcast such as PolyWeekly that rarely engages in any serious critique.  It was an intelligent, interesting discussion that also managed to be entirely dismissive and judgmental.  As I shouted to the Boy, "It's like they're finally having the sort of conversation I've been dying to hear on this podcast, and being total dicks about it!"

A quick primer: some poly people have "hierarchies" of relationships in which they engage in a central, committed relationship with one partner, and then have one or more "secondaries" and while it's understood this is also a loving relationship, it will likely not have the same degree of real-world enmeshment as understood vis-a-vis kids, shared financial obligations, and so forth.  Other people people prefer to treat all relationships as different, but equal in importance and priority.

It also is particularly telling in light of my previous post about the "One Penis Policy" in poly relationships and not entirely ironic given the content of Pepomint's "Respecting Identities" post.  What we were told in this episode was that people who engage in heirarchical poly structures are:

• Doing so out of fear
• Inherently devaluing secondaries
• Engaging in a "little monogamy" despite obviously not being monogamous (respecting what identity wha? who?)

When I first started reading about poly, non-hierarchical structures were presented as a way to be poly, along with hierarchical structures.  This has now clearly shifted to the former being accepted as "real poly" by a large segment of the community  and the latter being completely shit upon.   It doesn't matter if everyone within your poly relationships are happy with hierarchical structures or if it works for you: you're doing it wrong.

There's a term in poly for this kind of bullshit: One True Way-ism.  And that's exactly what this is.  As I said before, I'm down with a serious look at the problematic elements and pitfalls of a poly hierarchy.  Hell, I welcome it!  But it's profoundly insulting to tell people who have made commitments or set boundaries with their partners that work for them that they are doing so out of fear and jealousy, and are basically just as bad as those (boo, hiss) monogamists.

I think it's pretty obvious why this one-true-wayism is ridiculous, but let's break it down anyway.  For starters, the discussion on the podcast never mentioned the possibility that rules/boundaries evolve over time.  Most people are introduced to poly when they are already in a romantic, previously monogamous relationship.  Transitioning from monogamy to polyamory is obviously a process.  This was given absolutely no weight by the PolyWeekly crew, who apparently think it's entirely reasonable to expect a couple, married and mono for 16 years, to jump straight into a style of poly that gives no partner veto power over what the other partner is doing with other people, no room or time to become accustomed and comfortable with going from security in knowing you are the primary focus in your spouse's life to  being "equal" in importance and priority to some 10-years-younger hottie your spouse is banging and totally infatuated with.  This is a great way to be burnt by a poly experience, not to develop an open and honest poly relationship.  It is extremely typical for people in non-monogamous relationships have used rules and boundaries to establish a comfort zone that enables them to later leave behind most, and even sometimes all of those rules eventually, because the trust you've established with your partner in that sort of relationship evolution creates a strong foundation.  Shoving people into the deep end of the pool without water wings does the opposite.

And since I mentioned priorities, can we get over the pollyanna-ish refusal to acknowledge that human beings have limited time and resources which necessitates prioritizing events, and horror-of-horrors, even people.  We don't find it problematic if a mother prioritizes the well-being of her children over a bum of a romantic partner, or if a spouse prioritizes the needs of his partner over his crazy, demanding parents.  It is profoundly difficult to keep everyone happy all of the time, and part of life is having to make choices.  I'm not saying it's not possible to have a truly non-hierarchical poly structure in which all participants are equals, but that it's an extremely advanced relationship skill in a model that already requires better-than-average patience, communication, and emotional regulation.  I'd be willing to wager it's far easier to have a non-hierarchical model in which there is not an established, long-term relationship in the background that was previously monogamous. 

I can think of a million tedious examples of a situation in which partners in a non-hierarchical model could have relationship-ending dramas unfold due to issues that can't be solved with the "poly expert's advice for every problem ever": communication.  Sometimes people just have different needs that cannot be reconciled.  In such a case, people are forced to make choices, and those choices are generally based on - you guessed it! - priorities.  As someone who might have read a bit too much self-help in her time, I find the implied notion of the discussion regarding boundaries deeply troubling.  Fact is, we all have fears and insecurities.  Some people are better than others at understanding their own baggage, and thus articulating what it is they need to feel safe.  The basic poly approach to dealing with troublesome emotions, first articulated in tripe such as "The Ethical Slut" and then repeated endlessly ever after, is to figure why you feel shitty, then take a bubble bath and eat some chocolate.  Problem solved!  Oh, and I left out "communicate."  My bad.

In reality, emotionally healthy and in-touch individuals can know why they are triggered by a behavior or situation, understand that it's "irrational" and still decide they'd rather not deal with that emotion if they can help it: by establishing boundaries with their partner that they both agree upon.  Maybe eventually they'll be able to get past whatever thing it is that triggers their fear of abandonment or seething rage or whatever, but maybe not, but at least they're dealing with it grown ups in taking responsibility for their own emotional state by clearly articulating those needs.  If one of those needs is, "In order to feel comfortable sharing a mortgage/children/a life with you, that I will take top priority ultimately in your decision making as it relates to other partners," that does not make a person less poly, or less evolved, or any other high-horse bullshit.  It just means they're communicating honestly which is exactly what I keep being told being poly is all about.

The point of view expressed in the episode certainly seemed to come from a bunch of burned secondaries who had been treated as disposable or unimportant in a situation where their partner had a primary relationship, and that is certainly understandable and deplorable.  But that doesn't negate or remove the clumsy and offensive armchair shrinking, identity policing, and boundary dismissing tactics employed in what was frustratingly, the podcast's best and yet worst episode to date.

Just A Chat Post

 I've started to real blog entries but then got sidetracked talking to the BoyAboutOaktown instead.  So instead of a real post, you just get a tedious chat transcript.  Hopefully we'll get some more real content on here soon.  Enjoy my lack of punctuation and grammar!

me: i was reading these bi blogs linked to a bunch of articles from a few years ago about mcgreevy and such, and women in relationships with bi and/or gay men who are closeted. and these articles, they use bi and gay INTERCHANGABLY. it's not surprising but it's still so bizarre

it's just further proof that people see bi male as just a transitory identity on the way to full on gayness

although it was interesting that two of the blogs these bi men blogs linked to were men who had come out as bi in marrigaes and then ended up coming out as gay. it's so weird that it gets used that way

i think it has a lot to do with how we construct identity in general though.

these men behaved in what we'd term a bisexual manner for 20, 30 years in some cases

i'm not saying they can't adopt a gay identity now, but we conflate identity with orientation

if you have had a successful loving and sexual relationship with a woman for many years your orientation is probably not 100% homosexual as we think of it

 boyaboutoaktown:  True.  I think there's also a lot of pressure societally

 No, but a coming out is a coming out.  Now you're ghey.  Once you've tasted the peen.

 me:  plus there's nothing like a relationship gone sour to make you want to swear off the sex of the person you were with

 boyaboutoaktown:  Yeah, I can see the guys having an affair with some guy who's totally not their wives, and listens to their shit, and they think, "Hey, this is far better than my marriage.  I must be gay"

 me:  if your experience with women for the last 30 years was an experience with one woman that left you feeling trapped and resentful, i could see the appeal of  "YEP GAY NOW"

 boyaboutoaktown:  Wait, gays get lots of head from someone who worships my cock in the two hours each week we're together instead of reminding me about taking the kids to school.

me: plus if these marriages were sexually stiffling and these men are basically having like, a second adolesence sexually by fully embracing the sexuality thy've repressed for 30 years. it's easy to see again why that identity would be adopted. i just don't buy that these men were "secretly gay" all along. some of them maybe, but not all.

 boyaboutoaktown:  Of course I was gay, I was miserable with that woman for the last two decades.

me: i find it interesting that so many of these bi married guys end up in relationships with very sexually conservative women. did you notice that on shybiguys?

it seems to be a recurring theme. the freudian in me wonders if they were subconciously seeking out sexually conservative women to avoid having to confront their own sexual desires

 boyaboutoaktown:  Interesting.  I've never thought about it, but it does dovetail nicely with their own self-loathing. Why not get someone who resents that as much as you claim to.

 me:  yeah, idk, i may be pulling it out of my ass.

i mean there's the small subset of happily married bi men in open relationships with sexually liberal female partners who are usually bi themselves, but on the whole married bi guys seem to be in relationships in which the sex wasn't great to begin with

and quite a few of the closeted ones seem to be prone to cheating on their wives with men and women, too

 boyaboutoaktown:  I think you may be on to something.  Then again, quite a few of them describe relationships in which their partners were much more queer-friendly and then took a decidedly "no-homo" turn after kids et al

 me:  yeah that's true, a lot of women get more conservative re: sex post-marriage and kids

 boyaboutoaktown:  Does it say something that women who are more sexually liberal would go for a man who is so repressed about his identity?

 me:  quite possibly, maybe that they are attracted to an aspect of his queerness yet afraid to fully embrace that. after all what does that say about THEM. in my experience most women partnered with men, regardless of their liberalism or queer friendliness, tend to have a strong distaste for any non-gender-conforming behavior in their male partner, even while being attracted to aspects of it.

if your man has feminine traits, it's like it throws your femininity into question. and then there's the perennial fear of being a beard, which relates to percieved sexual undesirability

 boyaboutoaktown:  Though isn't there something gender-conforming, oddly, in wanting to see your man fuck and dominate another man?

 me:  i think so, a guy who is a top is still maintaining some degree of a masculine gender role

but then again, how many bi men in het relationships are tops? have we ever come across any?

 boyaboutoaktown:  Right.  He's dominating another man in the most extreme way possible

 me:  it seems like the majority of bi men in serious relationships with women are bottoms or maybe vers with a tend towards bottoming.  well we've talked before about how maybe so many 'straight-ish' bi men tend towards submission b/c in their heterosexual lives they are expected to be dominant by default.  men don't get to express submissive desires much because it's seen as feminine

 boyaboutoaktown:  True.  I think that comes up again and again on shy bi guys.

 me:  to the point where maybe some of these straight identified guys engaging in bi sex might really be more straight than bi, but just really submissive, and in our culture women dominanting men isn't taken seriously

because only a man can truly dominate, y'know?

 boyaboutoaktown:  These guys feel freed by the fantasy of being submissive. Hence much of the cock worship.  They want to be taken. Being submissive to a woman is verboten, but being sub to a man, well, you've already crossed the homo line.

 me:  i think it's deeper than that, like, a domme woman is almost a form of drag. it's not taken seriously, it's just a costume, almost a joke.  there isn't a real threat.

 boyaboutoaktown:  I think it is play acting to an extent

 me:  right, whereas when a man in dominant it can be play but there's an undercurrent of reality

 boyaboutoaktown:  But I think it's also about being able to express tenderness and vulnerability in a way that society frowns upon.

Cookware and Ambidexerity

First off, it didn't turn out to be a twink I spent the night with. The twink and self-described former fratboy stood me up. Instead I ended up with a guy, who while sweet and a good lay, spoke exactly like Wallace Shawn. Luckily, he didn't speak during sex. Otherwise, I couldn't have helped myself from blurting, “Anybody want a penis?”

Back to the point, as I assure you I have one. Bisexuality was gaining ground in the 1970s, 80s and 90s as a real identity. Somewhere along the line, people looked at the flawed label and pointed out that it really didn't encompass the spectrum of human desire, as if that failing was unique to the bisexual label. Thus we got self-described pansexuals, ambisexuals, pomosexuals, polysexuals, sapiosexuals, etc. The most often cited reason was that these people could love and date people who were transgendered, intersex, or in some way gender queer.

While I don't want to shit on inclusiveness, I find the reasoning to contain an element of exclusiveness and othering, in addition to a dose of third-gendering. Yes, the prefix bi does mean two. That's a language issue, not an issue residing with the people taking the label. When one says, “I'm pan because I'd sleep with/date/love a transgendered person, one is implying that other, non-pansexual people would never get involved. It's also making transfolk to be some weird other. Many transfolks identify as having a specific gender identity. If you're a person assigned male gender at birth and now live and thrive as a woman, then why should you feel flattered by having someone effectively say, “I could love you, not because I am attracted to women, but because I can see past what other people of your desired gender cannot”?

Finally, there's an element of terribly misplaced elitism in these labels. Lord knows, many bisexuals have been guilty of sitting on the “I see people, not genders” horse. That trope needs to be retired. So do labels such as sapiosexual. So you only screw the thinking? How deep you are. You'd pass on a hot piece of (non-gender specific) ass if the person doesn't share you're nuanced understanding of Heinlein's science fiction? Geek, please. Ambisexual is just as useless. It implies the same duality as bisexual, but also sounds like you can do your one-handed typing with either hand. And pansexual. Whenever I hear it, I think of my unhealthy obsession with Creuset cookware. It's also the most othering of the lot, if only by virtue of being the most popular.

As my old drill instructor used to say, “Suck it up, snowflake!”

And with that, I'm off to go watch a “My Dinner With Andre” and “Princess Bride” double feature.

Who's Down With OPP? Nobody!

This is re-posted and somewhat modified for ease of reading from my old LiveJournal account.

This entry was inspired by a famous domme and columnist, who wrote an article about the "One Penis Policy" wherein a straight man and a bi woman in a polyamorous relationship have an agreement that they can both sleep with women, but not men.  She also solicited opinions on several of LiveJournal's polyamorous communities.  Unsurprisingly, a dude took exception to the negative reaction to those types of relationship configurations, and drama exploded all over various journals, some time ago.

The fact is, yes, there is absolutely an element of good ol' patriarchal sexism in what appears to be, on the surface, a guy getting to have his cake (i.e. sleep with multiple women aside from his partner) and eat it too (not having to deal with feeling threatened because she's sleeping with other men).

The unspoken assumption in the drama is that most poly people consist of straight men and bisexual women.  Those who took exception to the idea of the OPP also had with them the assumption that the man who institutes an OPP policy does so because he sees female same-sex activity as "not real sex."  I'm sympathetic to this assumption because it's a basic cultural assumption as well. And it didn't help that the men arguing in favor of OPP policies as valid expressions of polyamory did so in a sexist, dismissive way.  That said, I saw some sexism on the part of the men arguing against OPP policies, so.  Surprise: lots of men in polyamory are sexist, kind of like men everywhere. 

That said, some of their arguments were fairly valid.  The one guy that got jumped on initially was trying to make the point that an OPP can be a valid "first step" and is OK as a temporary measure but is kind of bullshit as a long-term edict.  Unfortunately, his phrasing revolved around the idea that men inherently feel threatened by penises not their own.  I'd like to think he would have been received more positively if he made the point that many people of various genders are more likely to feel threatened, jealous, and insecure when their partner is sleeping with someone that they themselves are more likely to compare themselves to.  Now because of the fact that we live in an ugly patriarchal culture, there's a ton of other baggage in his comments as well, particularly as it applies to the straight man/bi woman relationships, but! 

But, I'm not a "choice feminist" and I'm generally annoyed by people who want to examine rindividualistic issues while ignoring a larger sexist context.  But!  In this case the "rare individual case that goes against the stereotype" is my life.  Within all this discussion, the idea of a "One Vagina Policy" agreement is ignored (Yay for bisexual male invisibility, eh?),  and then when I keep pressing the issue, I'm told that it's stupid, selfish, and unfair. 

Of course, when you break it down individually, things look a bit different.  We have a OVP (That is, One Vagina Policy) in the sense that the Boy About Town doesn't have my permission to have sex with other women without me.  I do not feel comfortable with that at this point.  Of course, he also hasn't expressed a desire to do so, and it's less a "policy" and more of an agreement.  The thing is, I also don't have explicit permission to have sex with men without the Boy present, barring one exception that has been hashed out and discussed for like, years.  If I want to have sex with another guy, it's on a conditional, must-be-discussed prior basis, and it hasn't come up yet.  Call me crazy, but this all sounds pretty reasonable, but for all intents and purposes we still have an "OVP."  If he wants to have sex with a guy, I just ask he lets me know the address and time he's leaving, and to check in when he's done, so I know where to send the CSI: Simi Valley SWAT team when he inevitably meets his doom at the hands of some serial killer.  But if he were actively wanting to get with a lady? That would require quite a bit more of negotiation and dreary "talking it out" sessions, because I'm a typical fat, insecure American woman.  Sue me.

I'm willing to bet that there are individual arrangements within OPP couples that probably sound a lot more sympathetic once we get beyond the repulsiveness of the concept.  What if the bi woman in an OPP scenario genuinely has no interest in sleeping with other men?  Is it only an OPP if her male partner wouldn't want her to sleep with other guys?  What about couples whose activity is restricted to a poly-fidelitious MFF?  Is that still expressing the dreaded OPP?  What if a bi woman is able to sleep with women, and not men, but her male partner isn't sleeping with women?

The thing is, this works for us, right now, just fine.  Is it irrational? Duh.

I'm not trying to excuse the prevalence of OPPs in polyamorous circles, they do seem disturbingly common and on the surface they seem sexist and unfair and I'm willing to bet that assumption isn't off-base in the vast majority of cases.  I am sure that behind the idea of OPPs for many couples is the idea that same-sex play between women "isn't really sex" and a possessiveness that is based in a male sense of ownership and entitlement.  But there's also garden-variety insecurity and jealousy that can't be divorced from a sexist context that is still valid.  The notion that a couple has to jump fully into an "everything is totally equal" polyamorous relationship seems rather against the basic ideas of communication and boundary setting so touted by polyamorous experts.  I don't think unequal "rules" in relationships are inherently bad if both partners happily agree to them or desire them.

An example: let's say a guy is OK with his wife spending the night at her boyfriend's house, but she feels bad when he's not in bed with her at the end of the day and has asked him not to spend the night with his girlfriend.  Unfair?  I guess, yeah, but sometimes everything being "equal for the sake of equality" isn't what's best for a relationship.  If the guy in the scenario doesn't particularly mind agreeing to his partner's request, then is it a problem?  Obviously it's not a perfect analogy, but the idea that there is, often, in open relationships a constant process of communication and boundary setting - with certain boundaries falling away as the couple becomes more secure, and perhaps other ones being put up after they feel burned by an experience.

I think we can ask a man who is in a relationship to own the sexist assumptions that has lead to him feeling threatened by his female partner having sex with other men.  In an individual psychological sense, it's also fair to ask anyone who wants to be in an open relationship yet feels insecure to learn to deal with and own their insecurities and not project them onto their partner.  But it's a process, particularly if a couple is transitioning from monogamy to non-monogamy.  Acknowledging sexism doesn't mean that the feelings surrounding it are going to magically go away - that's why you work through it. 

None of this should be read to say, "Private sexual choices are sacrosanct because what I do behind closed doors doesn't affect anything else."  That is obviously a painfully stupid way to go about your life.  But I think the psychological aspects involved in a couple's boundary setting are valid and that should be acknowledged as well.

If you're clamoring for the background on the ancient drama that spawned this post, feel free to read this delightful writeup from some random person here, which will lead you to all the good stuff.  It's worth noting that at one point during the fray, people did come out of the woodwork to describe men who voluntarily moved from an OPP to a gender-equal poly relationship.  Mistress Matisse claims this doesn't really happen, because, "It's a rare individual who willingly gives up an arrangement where he gets everything he wants and nothing he doesn't."  While I do agree with her on the scarcisty of guys who aren't assholes, it would be nice to acknowledge that there are men who will deal with "something he doesn't want" to make their partner happy.

Identity: What Is It Good For? Something, Maybe?

I guess it's fitting that I start this blog off with a navel-gazing look at identity - both my own, and the concept.  I'm not trying to write a thesis here (besides, others have done a far better job examining what, exactly, sexual orientation and gender identity entails than I ever could) but rather to provide a general introduction to who we are, why we decided to start this blog, and other useless nonsense.

In my previous life, when I played for the little leagues (i.e. LiveJournal, home primarily to angsty 17 year-olds and bored stay-at-home-moms taking a break from playing WoW) I frequently got into arguments about things that interested and mattered to me, regarding GLTBQ rights, feminism, polyamory, and identity.  The problem was that while doing so I identified myself as being a straight, cisgendered woman in a monogamous relationship with a guy.  What's the problem with that?  In a LiveJournal identity politics debate, plenty, but the main problem for me was that it wasn't entirely true.  But, lacking the vocabulary (or perhaps, the courage) to speak honestly about the very excruciatingly personal issues that lead me to self-identify as the tripple-whammy of straight, cisgendered, and monogamous in the rough-and-tumble world of a semi-notorious LiveJournal D-lister in which statements of sincerity are the fastest way to lose the game, that identity served its function for a time.

Let's break it down, then, with a serious commitment to honesty and pretending that anybody cares about my narcissism.  Straight?  In terms of who I've actually had sex with so far, absolutely.  If we're going to define orientation based on behavior.  Fact is, I used to identify as bisexual (and for a brief moment, pansexual, before I developed a distaste for the term) but gave it up, because I'd never gone past second base with a girl, and felt like I was one of the legion of young women appropriating a queer identity without ever having faced any sort of oppression as a result of my queerness.  I felt like I was claiming a label without having "done the time" as it were.  So despite my confused and complicated sexual yearnings, I made the decision about five years ago or so to just identify myself as straight.  After all, I was in a monogamous, heterosexual relationship that I intended to be in for the rest of my life, so since I didn't see any future opportunities to prove my queerness to myself or anyone else, I decided to take the political high road: I'd identify myself as a breeder, and take one for the team. None of that trendy bisexuality stuff for me, thanks!  I'd have to be satisfied with my attempts to be a queer uber-ally, because if I present as straight and normative, that's what I am, right?

What I didn't realize at the time was that I'd just basically put myself in some sort of weird, mixed-up identity-politics/radical theory closet out of guilt regarding my own privilege.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I suffered for my own mislabeling,far from it.  But I wasn't being entirely honest with others and in the long run, with myself, either.

This would be the point at which it would be appropriate, perhaps, to have my co-author and fiancé weigh in with his own clumsy paragraph about his identity.  Which he would, except he's out having what I can only imagine is incredibly amazing sex with some cute twink while I'm stuck at home with a terrible head cold, getting a nice buzz on from this mimosa.  Hey, vitamin C is very necessary when overcoming illness!  Anyway, I suspect that answers at least a couple basic questions regarding his identity and our current monogamous status.

Anyway, the point of this isn't to be all, "Blah blah I'm confused about what makes me hot despite being 30 and how pathetic is that, but validate me regardess," but just to give a context for how I personally relate to the identity issue, which overall I think is the most misunderstood and radically changing aspect of sexual politics today.

Outside of the magical Internet anti-kriyarchy blogowhatsnot most people automatically identify themselves as straight or heterosexual, when they bother to think of it, and the majority of everyone else identifies as gay, lesbian, or bisexual.  What we fail to realize is that the very notion of an identity based on sexual orientation is entirely a modern one, and how we identify ourselves and others with regards to orientation and gender has been in a constant state of flux ever since.  Pandora's box is wide open, as evidenced by a lot of the lesser-known orientations flying around as well: not just asexual, but say, panromantic asexual.  Sapiosexual. (Look that one up.  Please.) And so forth. 

Fine, so there's a lot of wacky terms to describe something complex like orientational identity, no need to stop the presses, right?  But the thing with identity is that once you start to think about it, you can't have a conversation about sexual politics without dozens of unsaid assumptions about what identity is and what it means coming into play.

In the conversation that lead to the start of this blog, my co-author and I were talking over tasty burgers and beer at Barney's on Piedmont.  He was raging on about the relatively new concept gaining significant pop culture momentum of women having inherently fluid sexual orientation, with the mostly unspoken corollary that men have inherently static sexual orientation, as exemplified in Lisa M. Diamond's "Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women's Desires."  In laymen's terms, women are inherently bisexual, and we shift throughout our lives through periods of being, whereas men are born straight, or gay, with little inbetween, save for those annoying bisexual men who persistently refuse to have their identity invalidated. 

Of course, one can't even start to have a basic conversation about whether or not womens' sexual orientation is fluid and mens' static without engaging with the very concept of what identity is and how it is defined.  Diamond seems to be, despite some claims to the contrary, an essentialist - a loaded term if there ever was one.  Essentalism refers to different things in different contexts, but with regards to sexual orientation, it does refer to the belief in some sort of inborn, inherent preference with regards to sex partners.  This is, essentially the mainstream view: people are "born" gay or straight.  We like to pretend this view is rooted in science, but it's far more political, borne out of anti-gay movements that claimed that gay identity was a chosen behavior, and thus could be stopped, usually through a liberal dash of Jesus and prayer.  The early LGTBQ (back then, just "gay") rights movement was based in a purely reactionary stance: if they say we can choose to be gay, we will say you can't! Sexual orientation is inherent.  We're born this way, so you have to accept us.  The problem is, in the real world, we all have anecdotal and perhaps even personal evidence that sexual identity, if not orientation, can be fluid.  Hence Diamond and her thesis.  Part of the problem, for Diamond, myself, and many people out there, I suspect, is conflating "orientation" with "identity" to begin with.

In his brilliant post "Respecting Sexual Identities" (linked twice now, it's that awesome), Pepomint writes:
"Identity functions as a kind of personal strategy. This is most obvious in the social arena, where a person considers their position and weighs how to describe themselves. Identities tend not to match perfectly, so expressing a sexual identity often is an exercise in compromises. For example, say a man only falls in love with men, but has good sex with women on occasion. Should he identify as gay, bisexual, or queer? If he identifies as queer, will everyone just assume he is gay? If he identifies as gay, will women assume he does not want to have sex with them? If he identifies as bisexual, will everyone assume that he is mostly straight but does men on the side occasionally?"

He goes on to talk about how identity is personal, political, and full of strategery.  So is it really surprising that something this complex could be ever-shifting?  At this point, I see identity politics primarily valuable as an organizational tool, and a way to frame a conversation.  In terms of describing what burns in a person's hearts, or loins for that matter, it tends to be woefully insufficient, regardless of how many new terms we make up.

Between mouthfuls of sweet potato fries and gulps of Sierra Nevada Ale, I suggested that because we have frustratingly common conversations like this on a daily basis that we do what any good egotistic Americans should and commit said thoughts and discussions to the public realm vis-a-vis this much-touted blogosphere.  Plus, I really just wanted to get away from LiveJournal.  So here we are.