Safety is sexy

I was concerned but not entirely surprised to read today's news that "Almost half of under-25s never use a condom with a new partner." As someone born in the 80s and raised in the teen magazine heaven that was the 1990s, I'd like to think I could never be as cavalier with my health or that of my partners as the interviewees in this piece, who simply shrug that using condoms for sex doesn't feel as good as sex without, and who seem to take contracting gonorrhea and chlamydia in their stride. Most worrying of all, one in ten of interviewees say they have never used condoms, and the consensus seems to be that if the female partner is using birth control, there is no need for one.

Now, I appreciate that sexual shaming gets us nowhere, and I do not wish to stigmatise anyone who has an STI. What I want to remark upon is how attitudes have shifted in my lifetime, and how it seems more and more difficult to get people to care about sexual health. It's not just the demonised demographic of feckless youths who don't seem scared by the prospect of catching incurable conditions; the over 50s have been highlighted as another group who think that calls to practise safer sex don't apply to them (so THERE, Dad!). In both cases, this complacency seems to boil down to "As long as no one gets pregnant, we're fine!" which is pretty frightening considering the havoc an undiagnosed STI can wreak on one's reproductive system, and in the case of HIV, your immune system and your whole life.

Thanks largely to the problem pages of Just 17, Sugar and Bliss magazines, I knew as an 11 year-old in the mid-90s all the myths surrounding safer sex, and I also knew exactly how to debunk them. I wouldn't be sexually active myself for nearly another 8 years, but I was armed with the knowledge that you could get pregnant the first time you had sex, even if you did it standing up or in water or if the guy promised to pull out before he came, and there was a lot of emphasis on how if a male partner refused to use protection, you should show him the door. Protecting yourself from pregnancy wasn't enough, the magazines reminded us; you were still at risk from STIs if you failed to use a barrier method, and one of those STIs was HIV, which took over your immune system and ultimately killed you. How is it we've shifted from that wealth of awareness two decades ago, to 21st century young people being either unaware of or unconcerned about these simple facts?

Now, I'm not advocating a return to the terrifying AIDS-awareness tombstone adverts of the 1980s which traumatised a whole generation of kids and also added to the demonising of gay men as the source of what was, horribly, known as the "gay plague" or "gay cancer" for much of the 80s and 90s. For one, the information in those ads is now totally out of date, because HIV-AIDS has gone from being a terminal condition with low life expectancy, to a chronic condition that can be managed so effectively that, with the right meds and all other things being equal, carriers can expect to live to old age and join the rest of us in grey hair, false teeth and a love of playing bridge. Which is brilliant news. But it shouldn't be cause for complacency.

None of us have lived a sexual life without mistakes or regrettable incidents, and I'm certainly not going to claim that I've never taken risks or been careless with protection. However, now I'm now longer a twatty 19 year-old who was long on seeking oblivion and short on self-care, I refuse to play roulette with mine or my partner's health. Being non-monogamous adds to my motivation to be safe ; the incentive to get tested regularly is increased when you know that failure to do so could harm not just you, but your lover(s). Even if you have a devil-may-care approach to your own health, you don't have the right to impose that on your sexual partners; not getting into bed with someone knowing you could possibly pass on STI on them seems like a basic tenet of human decency to me.

I know that situations where both partners are sober, in their right minds and have remembered to bring their own contraception can be rare, especially in those wonderful heady days of your late teens when getting blackout drunk is merely a competitive sport rather than a cause for concern. Perhaps it's time to recommend a buddy system, then: just like you wouldn't let your friend drive drunk, don't let them fuck without precautions. If you see your housemate about to leave the club with some pretty young thing they spotted across the bar, get yourself into the bathroom quick, stick some coins in a slot machine and go slap some condoms into their hand. I actually did this for a friend in my second year of uni. Because I was fairly sober and she was fairly wasted, and while I didn't doubt she was definitely up for sex with the fine specimen of man she'd been snogging on the dancefloor, I figured that friends don't let friends go home without condoms. And as she reported back the next day, much fun was had by all, with no need for a eyes-cast-downwards visit to the GUM clinic afterwards.

That's not to say the GUM clinic is a place of shame--it's just like any other hospital department, and if you don't know where your local one is, consider if that's because you've genuinely never needed it, or because you're too afraid to ask. If the latter, just bite the bullet and go. I've been to mine probably twice a year since I've been out of long term mono relationships (and yes, I also made sure that both partners got tested in said relationships too - I've never understood the logic that says only one-night-stands or casual sex bring risks of STIs; however much you love or trust your partner, there is no harm in gathering some info that reinforces that trust in the form of an all-clear from the clinic) and the only part I hate is the use of needles, which applies pretty much everywhere else in medicine too. But I still put my big girl knickers on, go and get tested, let the nurses laugh at me when I go pale and break into a cold sweat and have to elevate my legs after the blood test, then I receive a nice text message a few weeks later telling me I'm good to go, and everyone's a winner. No judgemental health professionals tutting at you--the staff could not be nicer or more pleasant, and there are no shocked expressions, gasps or lectures when you tell them you have many or concurrent sexual partners. All they want to know is info with which to calculate your risk from STIs, nothing more, nothing less. They also now ask you if you are afraid of anyone you live with, which I think is a fantastic and simple way of detecting concerns over domestic violence.

In a culture where sex itself is still seen as dirty, I think the idea of adding another layer of dirt and shame in the form of STIs is probably what deters teens and young people from confronting the risk head on. It's easy to tell yourself that what you don't know can't hurt you (which must go down as the biggest lie ever told to humanity!) or to set up a false dichotomy in your head whereby you convince yourself you're not one of those people who are most likely to contract an STI. You tell yourself that "well, I'm not a sex worker/gay man/polyamorous person, ergo I'll be fine," disregarding the fact that these groups are actually more attentive to their sexual health and are much more likely to get regularly tested and practise safer sex, partly because of the way they have been demonised by the mainstream media. And also simply because we can do the maths; as a nonmonogamist myself, I know that multiple partners put me at greater risk of contracting STIs, so I mitigate those risks via honest communication with all partners, ground rules and specific discussions about what sex acts are and aren't permissible without barriers, and yes, I'm afraid there's no getting away from it, kids, getting regularly tested, especially when new partners come into the equation.

I'll leave you now with a call to sexual health by the bizarre phenomenon Tim Westwood, which was broadcast on Radio 1's excellent Sunday Surgery when I was a teenager: "WRAP IT UP BEFORE YOU SLAP IT UP!"

To find your local sexual health clinic, you can search by postcode here

Polyamory is NOT the same as Polygamy, and other myths busted

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Polyamory and mental health: how they fit together

**DISCLAIMER: This post is not meant to be a judgement on any particular romantic or sexual lifestyle, monogamous or otherwise. It is merely MY OWN thoughts and MY OWN experiences.**

 

Recently I had the unenviable experience of someone I found attractive telling me they didn't want to take things further with me because I am non-monogamous. It was particularly galling since this person knew from the off that I practice polyamory - one of many reasons I write about it so openly, so that no one's under any illusions - but for whatever reasons decided to lead me somewhat down the garden path before telling me they couldn't be with me. Everyone's entitled to change their mind, but it's still never nice to have the rug pulled out from under you.

 

It's hard in these situations to stick to your guns, especially when you really like someone and you're facing the fact you're no longer going to get what you wanted. It's a jolt, a slap in the face. It's tempting to weaken and say "Oh, fuck it, I'll do it, I'll be monogamous for you," because it seems like too high a price to pay, to lose someone you've just started forming a lovely and exciting connection with, just because you can't play this game that everyone else seems to manage (even though you know that in reality, many, many of the players aren't "managing" the mono game very well at all ). Given the disastrous state of my romantic life in the past month or so, it's tempting to conclude that polyamory is more trouble than it's worth, that it causes more problems than it solves, that I should just go back to the good old mono way of doing things.

 

Then I remember what monogamy is like. And it chills me.

 

I remember boredom. I remember depression. I remember feeling limited. I remember feeling old before my time. I remember feeling resigned.

 

I remember having wandering eyes and feeling tempted to cheat but never doing it. And wondering why, if I was supposed to be so fulfilled by the other person, I wanted to look elsewhere.

 

I remember the thought that this was the last person I might ever have sex with making me feel like doors were slamming everywhere to me.

 

I remember wanting to be seen and found attractive by people who weren't my partner, and wanting the freedom to enjoy that, even if it never led to anything, even if it was just flirtation, even if it was just a feeling; the freedom to feel possibility was always the more important part, and still is, than the freedom to turn that possibility into reality.

 

There are many reasons I might feel this way. Some of them may well be connected to the mental health condition I've been diagnosed with, namely Borderline Personality Disorder. Some characteristics of BPD people that mean we don't do well with monogamy include:

- sudden, intense and inexplicable bursts of emotion

- persistent sense of emptiness and that everything is basically pointless

- wildly altering preferences (including sexual and romantic attraction)

- impulsive behaviour

- a sense that no one cares about us as much as we care about them

 

Put a person like this in a monogamous relationship and the result is (in my experience):

- they get very bored

- they get depressed, often connected to the boredom

- they feel taken for granted

- they want to cheat

- they feel like a monster for all of the above

 

Taken so starkly, I'm sure some of these characteristics make BPD people sound like cold, callous bastards who want the moon on a stick and sulk if they don't get it. The truth is, BPD people are often extremely caring, loving people who are devoted to those around them, and yet live with a persistent sense that no one returns that devotion. We take things very hard. If someone snaps at me, it can ruin my day, and I'll remember that they snapped at me for weeks, months, possibly forever. As well as huge emotional sensitivity, I'm also cursed with perfect recall. I can remember the fights I've had with people even when they were over a decade ago, and can usually date them to the month. BPD people are sometimes described as experiencing 'hotter' emotions than neurotypical people, meaning we get burned more easily, and take longer to heal. That certainly is true.

 

When the most recent person rejected me, I cried solidly for three hours. No exaggeration. I had only known this person a matter of weeks. But I had really liked them, found them really attractive, and found the prospect of taking things further with them extremely exciting. It had made me happy. So when they took it away, I reacted very badly. I had to take four anti-psychotic tablets to calm down. It is a wonder BPD people attempt relationships at all, really, when this is the kind of reaction we know we can expect. And that's just from a very brief connection - the grief over any kind of long term relationship ending is so splintering that it's nearly killed me in the past (when I was mono, I lived with someone for several years).

 

But I do choose to still attempt some kind of romantic life; I just try and do it nowadays within parameters that leave me feeling less like an animal in a cage. I watch people who I believe are clearly not meant to be monogamous trying to shoe-horn themselves into marriage or long term monogamy and I watch them crash and burn. I watch them cheat, fail and then spiral further down a path of self-destruction because they hate themselves for not being able to live up to the monogamous ideal, and they want to make themselves feel even more dirty and useless. I do believe that these people would be better off being honest with everyone and starting to live a life of consensual non-monogamy (with the knowledge of all those involved), but I also recognise that they are so used to practising the art of lying that honesty is a stranger to them. Plus, polyamory probably wouldn't give them the twisted kicks they get out of their self-destructive behaviour.

 

Despite my BPD, I have enough self-esteem to believe that I deserve better than lying and cheating. However, what I don't believe is that "better" automatically equals monogamy, or LTRs, or marriage. When people  are trying to console you about your love life going wrong, they love to say "You're going to make some guy very happy," as if that's my raison d'etre. Guess what? I have no interest in being someone's "other half", their missing puzzle piece. Perhaps I have too much self-esteem, because I frankly question the idea that one other person could even begin to scratch the surface of giving me what I need, let alone fulfil me in every way. When I look at kinky people in full time master/slave relationships, my biggest question isn't about consent or feminism or whether it's degrading or any of that shit, it's how can the slave possibly trust the master to totally take care of them? How can they know that person will always make them feel safe? That leap of faith is one I doubt I could ever make. We trust our friends, but no one ever tests our trust by asking us to commit to one of those friends for the next six decades of our lives. Yet it's assumed that's exactly what we'll do with our romantic relationships. We're not expected to commit to one of anything for the rest of our lives - no single job, no single house, no single friend, no single country, no single child. Yet we're meant to nail our colours to the flag of one other person and make them our one and only. It just doesn't add up in my head.

 

Maybe that's my BPD. Maybe it's just logic. I may never know.

When this most recent person was telling me that they couldn't be with me because they couldn't handle non-monogamy, I thought the way they put it was very telling. They said "I want to know that the person who's with me is mine and mine only." I thought to myself, "Perhaps I have an unusual way of looking at things, but I don't think that any relationship that begins with you trying to possess another person is off to a good start." And I also sort of wanted to say "What makes you think you deserve to have me as yours and yours only?" It strikes me as massively presumptuous to make that kind of statement: love is so easy to say, so hard to demonstrate, and people fail to demonstrate it all the time. To me, devotion has to be earned and reciprocated, not just assumed. But again, this could well be the perfectionist and delusional part of my BPD making me think a) I'm massively fantastic but criminally underappreciated and b) no poor sod could ever come up to the imperceptibly high standard that is required to please me. See how difficult it is to trust yourself when someone can just throw your diagnosis in your face and call you manipulative, abusive and basically an ungrateful git?

Regardless, I don't buy that a relationship is stronger just because it's had rules applied to it about its exclusivity. If anything, I think that can make it easier to fool yourself that you're oh-so-committed, because your relationship is not subject to anything that's going to test that commitment. Whereas if you see, meet, date, fuck and love other people yet still return to someone out of free choice? That, to me, is a much deeper connection than one between two people who are just together and monogamous out of habit. And NO, I'm not saying that everyone or even most people in monogamous relationships are necessarily in that situation. But some are. I've seen them with my own eyes. I've heard their stories. And that's some too many, to my mind.

 

I don't expect the world, or even a fraction of it, to come round to my way of thinking. Polyamory really isn't for everyone. But in this case, I feel that the person in question wrote it off without properly considering what it might mean. I feel they clung to the fears that monogamy encourages us to hold (jealousy, possessiveness) without addressing them, and they assumed that nothing other than a two-person, long-term relationship could ever be considered "something real". I wished I could show them just how much you can adore someone without trying to own them.

I wish Facebook had a "Polyamorous" option

When you're female, people make a lot of assumptions about you. They assume your raison d'etre is a long-term, committed, heterosexual relationship ending in marriage and children. They don't stop to think that you might not want children. Or you might not be heterosexual. Or you might not 'do' relationships. Or that you might not even 'do' monogamy, full stop. However broad-minded we claim to be as a society, little has changed in terms of the belief that what women really want, despite all their cute little protestations that they want to have careers or travel or have sex with lots of different people, is a ring on their finger and a zygote in their womb.

 

Ah well.

 

I'm fortunate enough to move among a cross-section of people more accepting of the fact that we're not all secretly seeking a rom-com ending, but I still wonder how much people truly believe me when I tell them that monogamy bores the bejesus out of me, ditto long-term relationships, and were I not so highly sexed I might be quite content with just a lot of good friendships, but as it is, I like having multiple casual interactions with people I find attractive. I'm not sure people really know how to deal with a woman saying that. I think they make a fair few assumptions right off the bat. Such as:

- You do want a fairy tale ending, but you're just worried that admitting it will make you a bad feminist.
- You do want a fairy tale ending, but since you've been taught that men are sex-mad commitment-phobes, you're just pretending to be a sex-mad commitment-phobe too to set them at ease (oh, and trap them, of course!)
- You've got serious emotional problems which mean you're actually desperate for love but are just slutting around as part of a self-destruct programme.
- You're a big, greedy, predatory whore who's a danger to every one else's husbands/boyfriends/partners.
- You'll break down one day and admit that you do just want a man to look after you and babies to make you complete.
- Some shit about biological clocks.

 

If I had a pound for every time I'd heard phrases along the lines of "Men use love to get sex, and women use sex to get love", or, "Men are just programmed to spread their seed, but women are programmed to want babies and to settle down," or, "Women are the more naturally romantic/monogamous/insert-other -patronising-adjective-here gender", well, I reckon I'd have enough for a package holiday to the Canary Islands, at the very least.

 

So it'd be nice, for the purposes of re-educating a public fed on a diet of TV and movies that dictates however strong and sassy you are, you'll ultimately want to settle down (Yo! Sex and the City, Yo! Girls, Yo! very sadly, The Hunger Games), if there were more discourse on the alternatives that some people seek. It'd also be nice if there was some more discourse on the fact that sometimes men want to settle down, and sometimes it's men who are the more romantic, emotionally attached or naturally monogamous partner in a couple. If it were just women who imposed those things on their partners due to their crazy, female, hormone-driven desires, then why would any male-male couples ever marry or have children? Yet they do. People like to pair up with one special person. People like to nest and introduce little beings into that nest. Why put it all on women, when there's so much evidence to the contrary?

 

I know it's probably a bit much to ask that everyone's special snowflake status is accommodated in the form of a drop-down menu, but I'd really love it if I could put something on my Facebook profile that reflects how I actually operate instead of having to choose between "Single" and "In an Open Relationship". Neither is accurate. At any given time, I'm likely to be having flirtations, interactions and probably some physical fun with one or more people, so I'm not exactly single, but I'm also not "in a relationship" by any stretch of the imagination. "Relationship" signals hearts and flowers, anniversaries, Valentine's celebrations, but also shared homes, holidays, finances, shared lives. I don't do either that red-strewn world of commercial romance, nor the merging of my assets and space with any other human being. I've tried both, and neither ended well, believe me. I don't feel whatever it is that makes people go gooey-eyed over each other, and I've tried to pretend, but that's not honest and it's not fair. I love my friends and family with a ferocious passion and would lie on a railway track for them if needed. I care deeply about people and about issues close to my heart, and will get extremely agitated when either are threatened. I will always cry, without fail, at the bit in Dirty Dancing where Baby says "You let me down too" to her dad. I am not without sentiment. But I am without whatever it is that makes people feel able, or compelled, to share their life romantically with one other person.

 

And it's nice to be able to let people know that, but there's no easy or simple way to do it. You can't put "Polyamorous, no LTRs, casual only, but I'm not an emotional iceberg, and I really do mean this and I'm not just doing it because I'm a damaged nymphomaniac or secretly trying to trick you into marriage and babies" on your Facebook profile. You can, of course, have an adult conversation with people you're interested in and let them know, and I generally really try to do that, but it's not always easy to find a point in your interaction where you can say these things without the other person saying "Hey, hold on, we're only going for a drink, don't get ahead of yourself!" or "Why didn't you tell me sooner?!" And then, of course, there's the whole other side of polyamory--when people assume that because you're sexually open-minded, that you'll be more than happy to have an affair with them just because they're not happy with their monogamous relationship. Um, no. That's not how it works. I don't take this brave step of living outside how society expects me to, just so that you can enjoy the benefits of my courage while taking none of the chances yourself. And since when did polyamorous = entirely devoid of ethics? It's not polyamory without the consent of all parties involved - it's just cheating. Perhaps Facebook needs a "Get permission from your other half, and THEN get back to me" option as well...

 

I jest, of course, insofar as I know it's a more important step that people of non-binary gender orientations can choose options that they're comfortable with when identifying themselves online, than me demanding a bespoke option for my frisky leanings. And, of course, there can be such a thing as too much information: some folks are brave enough to announce that they're kinky (and sometimes their kink orientation too) in their Twitter biography, whereas I just tend to tell the world I'm a writer, feminist and I like roller derby. I figure that if you want to know the good stuff, you'll find me in person; and if we make it to the pub together, I'm sure you'll end up knowing all of it.

 

In praise of realism - stop telling single people "You'll find someone"

A few years ago I remember a friend of mine suggesting that a lot of the platitudes we're fed as kids - "Follow your dreams and you will achieve your goals!" "You can do anything if you set your mind to it!" - are actually 'sweet poison' which set us up for failure and disappointment. This kind of Pollyanna, one-size-fits-all advice fails to account for the lottery of genes and birth which means I'm white and rich in a world where to be a poor person of colour is basically the shittiest hand you can be dealt, yet billions of people have still been given it. It also fails to consider the millions of slings and arrows that injurious fortune may send our way - disease, disability, deaths of loved ones, accidents, redundancies, economic crises, natural disasters. It'd be a whole lot more honest and accurate to say "It's more likely that your time on this planet will be a thankless struggle than a joyous parade of constant fulfilment, but if you're very fortunate it might end up being somewhere in between, so savour the good bits when they occur", but I guess it's seen as overly harsh to say that to children.

 

I got to thinking about this when I saw people posting on a (different) friend's Facebook status where she was bemoaning her long-term single status. While they all (rightly) pointed out that this person is intelligent, funny, great to be with and physically very nice looking, most of them also felt obliged to add the obligatory "You'll find someone, it just hasn't happened yet" or "He's out there - keep looking" statement that apparently certifies the speaker's ability to see into the future and guarantee a soulmate for the singleton in question. I'd wager that nothing winds a single person up more, not least because these statements often seem to come from the patronising viewpoint of an already coupled-up person, who believes that their lifestyle is so desirable that no one could possibly not want it, and that any poor soul lacking a partner just needs a bit of an ego pat in the form of "There's someone out there for everyone." But it winds me up for a different reason - not just because it's glib, or patronising or presumptuous. But because it is the perpetuation of a myth that I believe sets us all up to fail.

 

What if there isn't someone out there for everyone? What then?

Or, what if there are several someones out there for everyone?

What if some people are better suited to multiple short romances, or lots of brief sexual relationships, or prefer overlapping, polyamorous encounters? What if some people are asexual? Aromantic? Or only interested in sex? Or only interested in romance?

Also, what if finding a partner isn't actually a solution to much at all? Because life will still continue to batter you with its frustrations, and the only consolation you'll have is someone to share your misery with, and it's still not much guarantee you won't end up alone, because people cheat, people leave, and unfortunately, in every couple, someone's going to be the one to die first.

 

My, I am being cheery today, aren't I?

 

Amazingly, the point I'm trying to make isn't that life is terrible and we're all doomed to die alone. What I am doing is deliberately focusing on the negative and scary aspects of life that starry-eyed romantics don't want to think about. And I don't blame them for shying away from these truths, because "negative and scary" is putting it mildly. However, when I sit and listen to people's tales of infidelity, dissatisfaction, broken families, failing marriages and romantic/sexual lives generally spinning out of control, all I can think is how some realistic thinking earlier down the line might have saved these folks a lot of bother. If we considered that expecting sexual fidelity for 60+ years to be easy and effortless may be a smidge ambitious, we might stop making monogamy the benchmark for successful relationships. That's not saying that everyone has to go out and become polyamorous, but at the same time, if you never even discuss the possibility that you or your partner may be attracted to others and may one day want to act upon it, then that possibility may well be what undoes you when the time comes. Especially if you make a long-term commitment with someone whose sex drive, preferences or kinks are vastly different from your own. Thinking that marriage or long term commitment is just going to steamroller such differences is about as sensible as assuming my Ford Ka will run like a Porsche if I just rebadge it. Yet that's precisely what a lot of people do seem to assume.

 

And it's by no means their fault - after all, what fairy story starts with 'They had just got married'? We're not given many life lessons about how 'happily ever after' is actually supposed to go. We're told that monogamous marriage should still be the ultimate aim for all of us (gay? No problem there now!), preferably plus some babies, add water and stir and bingo! Total happiness is the result - apparently. Even though this is a model from an era when we lived half as long as we do now and married for economic and social reasons, e.g. to legitimise children and strengthen family ties - reasons which really don't apply any more, we still adhere to it. Why? Because we've been told that 'love' will take the place of all the other reasons to marry, and love will be what carries us through the bad times.

 

Maybe it will. Maybe it won't. Philip Larkin once reflected that he was too "withdrawn, selfish and easily bored to love", and I'd suggest that unfortunately, many of us are in the same boat. Personally, I'm OK with that. I don't see long term monogamous relationships as something that can fulfil me, so I don't get into them. That doesn't mean I don't have partners, but just not of the type that society tells me should be my ultimate goal. I don't look for a potential husband or future father of my children, because I'm not interested in either of those things. I accept that one day I might be old and unpartnered, but I don't see that as the same as being 'old and alone', nor do I see it as a fate worse than death. I strongly believe that it's up to me to make friendship networks and be part of my community to a strong enough degree that someone will still want to come and see me when I'm 85, rather than just assuming that a partner or children, or grandchildren, will be there to keep me company. Also, I'm a logical gal and I've seen the statistics - at the end of the road, it's still more likely to be us women on our own as the guys unfortunately tend to head off this mortal coil earlier. We're probably all going to end up unpartnered at some point, but what I disagree with is viewing this as a terrible position to be in, or as something that renders us incomplete.

 

So don't tell my articulate, whip-smart, beautiful friend that "there's someone out there for everyone". I don't know if there is and I don't care . I'm not going to set her up to be disappointed by spouting these lazy myths. If she wants romance, if she wants sex, if she wants affection, if she wants children, yes, I don't doubt that she can get those things. But love, soulmates? I don't think any of us have the right to say those things are guaranteed or that we will all find them. What we can definitely find is intense love with the family and friends we already have, and keep showing it to them. We can seek new experiences and new connections. But the idea that "he's out there, just keep looking?". To hell with that toxic platitude. I would say to her "You are perfect the way you are. If someone nice comes along and appreciates that, great. If they don't, you've lost nothing - just keep living your life."

 

Because ultimately, that's all any of us can do.

How polyamory got me thinking about female solidarity

Whenever the media is lacking in convenient reasons to take a pop at feminism, you can be sure it will manufacture one sharpish. Whether it's Lily Allen's most recent bit of stirring about how apparently feminism is worthless because it has just descended into one big bitch fight or the gleefully seized-upon controversy over Paris Lees' assertion that she doesn't mind cat-calls, the image of modern (and especially online) feminism seems to be one of a world turned in on itself, where we spend not enough time fighting the real enemies (sexual and physical violence against women, attacks on our reproductive rights, media sexism, economic discrimination and so on) and too much time telling each other we're "doing feminism wrong."

 

Only this morning I saw a comment on an article about Femen, demanding that we stop using the word 'feminists' to describe the problematic Ukrainian group, because they a) have Islamophobic views and b) use their bare breasts to get their point across. Well, shit. Betty Friedan and NOW used to condemn lesbians as "the lavender menace" and exclude them from the women's rights movement, yet interestingly we don't deny these wealthy, middle-class American women the right to call themselves feminists just because they held shitty views in the past. But any attempt at feminism from a former Eastern Bloc country must apparently be slapped down if it's not as media-literate as, or politically aligned with, privileged US and UK feminists. I'm not interested in adding fuel to that fire. You want to call yourself a feminist, you go right ahead - none of us have the monopoly on that phrase. None of us are perfect, or free from prejudice, however much we like to think we're the enlightened ones. For the record, I can't stand Femen's tactics - but I appreciate that they are grown women doing what they think is right. Just as much as I am.

 

This links in to what I was thinking about earlier today, which was how it's difficult to be in any large group of women without the automatic assumption that it will be riddled with in-fighting. This is a view particularly perpetuated by sexists, who like to believe that women are simply too competitive with and disloyal to each other to ever truly unite. They love that old joke "If women ran the world, there would be no wars...just a load of jealous countries not talking to each other." Cos ha ha HAA, women may not be quite so prone to warmongering, murder, mutilation, rape and OK-ing drone attacks, but they're still just so BITCHY there's no chance they could ever actually create a true sisterhood, and that's clearly worse, right?! If Country A thinks that Country B looks better in that dress than she does, well, better man the cruise missiles, cos there's going to be an international catfight (ah yes, "catfight", that lovely term that trivialises and reduces female anger to a humorous and hopefully erotic sideshow for men to enjoy).

 

I spend a lot of time amongst a large number of women (and a slightly smaller, but ever-growing, number of men) in my roller derby team. Unsurprisingly, I do witness disagreements, personality clashes and unpleasantness between women in this community. I see it like you'd see it in any workplace, academic institution, or group of friends. I see it from some women, and not from others. I also see it occur between the men but funnily enough, when men criticise each other behind each other's backs (and hoboy, do they ever), they're never called 'bitchy' for it, nor is this used as the basis to accuse the entire male sex of being incapable of ever showing loyalty to each other.

 

This made me think about how women are both set up to compete with each other, then promptly criticised and demonised for doing so by both feminists and sexists alike. Which in turn led me back (and yes I know I'm hopping across a lot of concepts today, but stick with me, I'm having a lot of thoughts) to my previous post on how polyamory seems to promote a more feminist view of relationships. When you're open to the idea of your lover finding other people (and if you're a largely heterosexual woman like myself, that means other women) attractive, you have to abandon the monogamous line of thinking that attention for other women must indicate a lack thereof for you, or that male approval of other women means the loss of such approval for you. And yes yes obviously in an ideal world no one would be seeking anyone's approval, but let's put that aside for now and acknowledge that in the real world we all do seek validation of our attractiveness, regardless of our gender or sexual orientation. Because it's nice to feel wanted and sexy, and it's especially nice to feel like someone wants to have sex with you, particularly when you would really like to have sex with them.

 

But it's not easy. These things don't come instinctively. For whatever reason, when my lover says "X Girl is hot", I don't immediately feel overwhelmed with happiness that X Girl's beauty is being appreciated by someone, or pleased for my lover that he is able to honestly express his sexuality in front of me. Instead, what I feel is insecure. I assume that a comparison is being made, and I'm coming out of it unfavourably. I feel worried, that my lover is going to find someone else whose physique is preferrable or superior to mine, and not like my body any more, or not like it as much as he did previously. I'm doing all the things that monogamy has taught me - seeing love, sexuality and affection as a zero-sum game, whereby one person's gain must mean another one's loss, demanding a version of my lover that doesn't exist, demanding behaviour that I myself cannot promise in return, and basically viewing the world of love and sex as one of scarcity. But I'm also doing all the things sexism has taught me - viewing another woman as a competitor, rather than a player on the same team, assigning an importance to both hers and my physical appearance that ranks it above everything else about us, and viewing male approval of that appearance as the most important/only opinion that counts. I'm also forgetting that one of the main reasons I'm polyamorous is because I'm a pretty intense appreciator of the opposite sex myself, and I reserve the right to express that without feeling guilty or like a monster for it (as I did for many years in mono relationships).

 

So along with all the learning and growing that polyamory requires you to do in shaking off your monogamous conditioning, I think it also demands some feminist growth. It takes a lot of strength to always show solidarity to other women. Especially when, as I've found on my polyamorous journey, some of them are apt to judge, hate on or spread rumours about you for daring to be a woman who will not settle down with one man. I've had moments when I'm very tempted to wreak the kind of havoc on others' personal lives that they have tried to do to me, and even though I know that walking away from such temptation and being 'the bigger person' is the right thing to do, it still feels bittersweet when it would be so easy to hurt those hypocrites the way they are trying to hurt me. Being ethical does not always feel like its own reward, but I have to believe in the long game, and believe that trying to take down other women simply because they cannot get their heads around the way I live, ain't feminism. Neither is hating on, or being jealous or suspicious of another woman who has done nothing wrong to me except attract the attention/appreciation of my male lover. A sexist society teaches me to see that woman as a competitor, as a superior, up-herself bitch who I need to 'bring down'. Demanding a better society means that I need to drag myself up, and see that woman as just another flawed person trying to get on in this horrendous cultural pressure-cooker. The most feminist thing I can do is be kind towards that woman, and also kind to myself, by remembering that a compliment aimed at someone other than myself is not an insult to me by proxy.

 

Because that's sexism's greatest secret. When we start liking ourselves, and start liking other women, then we really do pose a threat, one so great that all sexists can think to do to mask their fear of female unity is to make jokes about catfights.

Polyamory and Feminism - Curious Bedfellows?

** DISCLAIMER - this is not intended as an endorsement or criticism/condemnation of any particular lifestyle, be it monogamous, polyamorous, celibate or 'other'. It's merely my own thoughts, reflections and experiences **

There have been some notable online articles regarding polyamory recently. This is really good to see, as despite my frantic Googling I was beginning to think there was very little in the way of public discourse on the issue. Joining a couple of Facebook groups has shown me there's plenty of private discussion, which is great, but obviously those already in the community know what the dealio is, whereas the monogamous mainstream hegemony is often unwilling or unable to learn what polyamory really is about.

So it was encouraging to read this article, which not only did a lot of helpful myth-busting about polyamory (hereafter shortened to 'poly') but also looked at it through a feminist lens. I do think that a lot of the toxic myths that we're sold about monogamy have their roots in the control of women. Fairytales about passive princesses waiting for that One Perfect Man to come and rescue them? Conditioning girls to be dependent and base their fulfilment on another person. Films, books and TV programmes that show however strong, sassy and intelligent a woman is, she still just wants A Man and babies? Modern day fairy tales hoping to insidiously set back feminist progress. Try to think of a film which ends with the female protagonist happy and single. I don't know about you, but I'm struggling. Then try to think of one which shows a woman having multiple partners, and living happily ever after. These cultural artefacts are probably out there somewhere, but they're certainly not anywhere in the mainstream.

Yet the mainstream take on sexuality is often dangerous and anti-woman. The monogamous heterosexual relationship model often seems to me to be based on, if not downright lies, then self-deception, deception of others, and the need to control others. Women complain that men don't listen. Men complain that women nag. Women complain that men don't communicate. Men complain that women don't say what they really mean. Poly forces people to stop using these lazy, gender-binary-enforcing excuses and start getting honest. Much like in BDSM, which despite appearing misogynistic to the ill-informed, actually prizes consent and communication far more effectively than the vanilla model of sex, poly acknowledges that you're not going to get anywhere without talking about stuff. And talking really, really honestly. About all the shitty, shameful and selfish urges to which we're all subject, at one time or another.

I've often felt like there was a conspiracy of silence surrounding monogamous relationships, insofar as no one else seemed to be struggling with them the way I did. No one else seemed to be standing up and saying 'if this person is So Right for me, why do I constantly get crushes on other people? Why is it acceptable to feel deep love for my friends of the same sex, but a connection to someone of the opposite gender is immediately viewed with suspicion? Why are the boundaries of what constitutes OK behaviour for a person in relationships so artificial and arbitrary, when you can have incredible intimacy with a person even if you've never even kissed?'. And when I asked people I'd get the standard answer 'Oh, everyone finds they're attracted to people other than their partner, you just have to get past it'. I never found it very helpful. Or particularly honest.

To me, monogamous relationships often seem to pivot on this kind of fear - fear that you might not love or be sufficiently attracted to your partner, fear that their feelings for you might not be strong enough, fear that you might have to take the painful step of leaving them, fear that they might leave you. I definitely suffered from the first and third a fair bit in long-term relationships, and found the worrying and wondering exhausted. When someone said to me 'maybe you are just better off having a number of less serious attachments', it was revelatory. No one had ever suggested that was genuinely acceptable option for a woman. Oh sure, we're shown caricatures of man-eaters in popular culture all the time (Yo, SATC's Samantha!), but they are usually so one-dimensional as to be unbelievable, or enough of a figure of fun that the viewer knows this is not someone to be looked up to or emulated. You're allowed to fuck around when you're young, when you're going through a 'rough patch', when you're 'just looking for comfort' etc etc. You're not allowed to stand up and say 'Yeah, I don't actually want a full-time partner, perhaps ever, but I really like sex'. The last woman I can think of who really talked such talk and walked that walk was Mae West, and perhaps that's why I've always been unconsciously drawn to her, fantastic trailblazer that she was. I don't say it's much easier for men, who are subject to their own pressures, but when it comes to reasons to be poly, the male sex drive is sufficiently stereotyped that people don't question it so much. He's a man, of course he wants lots of sex from lots of different woman. If a woman's poly? Hmmm, she must be doing it 'for love'...yawn...

And it's not necessarily even men who are to blame for such toxic stereotyping. As the article states,"when we see love as scarce, we are taught to see others outside of our relationship as potential competitors. Women, especially, are conditioned by our culture to see other women as their competitors." Oh boy, are we ever. See, thanks to the aggressive myth-pushing of the fairy tales and films and songs and TV programmes mentioned above, women are still operating with that subconscious idea of The Ultimate Goal - that being, getting and keeping A Man. Never mind that no one ever qualifies how this equates a fairytale ending (although the assumption is that what the women get is economic security, which is bizarrely, the same logic that sex workers are judged and condemned by the vanilla mainstream for exercising), A Man and One Man at that, is what women are supposed to want. So, women for whom this isn't of interest have traditionally been treated with suspicion. You only have to read the horrific stories of how lesbians are routinely treated in South Africa and hundreds of other cultures to see how women who don't base their lives around men are viewed as a threat to the social order. Or look at the rampant slut-shaming of any woman in history who has ever dared to suggest she enjoys sex, or can have it without love, or can enjoy it with multiple partners, or is happy to sell it.

 

Recently I've been subject to what I feel is, if not downright slut-shaming, then at least some pretty harsh judgement by other women due to my fairly sexually open persona. What I perceive in those women is projection of their own insecurities, possibly also jealousy that I'm unafraid to admit that I'm attracted to more than one man, and ultimately a need to police other women's behaviour and desires because I represent a threat to this starvation economy, where Men are the ultimate prize, and Other Women are our competitors for that prize. I find it kind of amusing, if I'm honest, but it's also pretty sad. And in that sense, I do see the poly way of life aligning with feminism much more effectively than the dominant models we are sold. If I am open and comfortable with my partner about our attraction to others, I am less likely to be paranoid and suspicious about his interactions with other women, and the same goes for him with regards to my interactions with other men. Whereas if we're in a relationship where we're supposed to pretend that attractions to others don't happen, we're much more likely to become jealous and possessive over each other, and view all members of the same sex as potential enemies. Much as I don't fool myself that poly is the answer to everything, when considering how it offers many more options for a feminist way of exercising sexuality and relationships, I do think it deals with a lot of issues that the vanilla monogamous hegemony is reluctant to address.

Musings on polyamory

** PLEASE NOTE - this is not intended as an endorsement or criticism/condemnation of any particular lifestyle, be it monogamous, polyamorous, celibate or 'other'. It's just me thinking out loud **

I'm currently reading The Ethical Slut, one of the most famous books written on polyamory (open relationships, having multiple partners, whatever you want to call it) and often signposted as the Bible for poly people. So far I'm not overly enamoured with the book, for several reasons. One, it's couched in a lot of self-help language, which I suppose I should have expected seeing as one of its authors is a therapist. But the constant affirmation exercises wear a little thin after the first few, and after 5 or so I felt like bawling 'Look, I'm never going to DO any of these, can you just please tell me the answers to my questions and stop wasting my time with these BS 'self-love' exercises!'. And what are my questions? Well, I suppose they're the same questions that most people considering polyamory ask, and most of them revolve around jealousy. Like:
 

How do you not get jealous? How do you stop your partner getting jealous? Isn't it natural to be jealous? Isn't jealousy a sign you shouldn't be poly? Doesn't the fact most people still want to be monogamous, despite the fact we're so crap at it, imply that human beings do have a need to be #1 to someone?
 

And despite being 54% of the way through the book (so my Kindle informs me), I don't feel like the authors have actually addressed those questions, or at least done so in a way that's helpful to me. There's been a lot of talk on loving yourself (and not like that, fnar), but not much exploration of the questions and fears surrounding polyamory. So far the authors' solutions seem to be:

- Talk to your partner (never bad advice, but do any of us really need to buy a book to know that's what we should do whenever we have relationship issues?)

- Make sure your self-esteem is really strong by doing loads of exercises saying why you're great

- Let go of social expectations around monogamy

 

The latter is a pretty tall order, and one that I'd therefore I'd like to see explained further. Although the aforementioned expectations are so deep rooted and so powerful that it would take volumes of books to unpick them all, I'm irritated that this book isn't dealing with them in any more than a superficial manner. Because that's what I, and I suspect most of us, really want to know. Are my poly tendencies merely evidence that I'm wired differently from the dominant model of sexuality, and my difficulty expressing them evidence of just how aggressively the hegemonic model is reinforced? Or are they evidence that I'm weak, greedy or bad at relationships?
 

Those of us who have a vested interest in coming to terms with our poly tendencies are obviously going to prefer the former explanation, but have we truly considered the possibility of the latter? This is what I'd like to hear more of in a book exploring polyamory - not just the authors glossing over the issues by saying 'Some people disapprove of polyamory, screw them and their repressive beliefs, go for what you want'. And yes, that might be all the encouragement some people need, but as a cautious, analytical person who seeks pleasure but not unquestioning hedonism, it's not enough for me.

 

The consensus I seem to keep reading when I research polyamory is that jealousy is not itself a sign that poly relationships are wrong. Instead, jealousy is a 'symptom, not a cause' - usually originating from lousy self-esteem. While there may be a lot of truth in that, I'm not sure that covers the whole gamut of reasons for feeling jealous. If, as a child, you felt jealous of your sibling because your mum was cuddling him/her and not you, perhaps it was because you secretly feared your mum didn't love you because you were an inadequate person. But perhaps, actually, you just wanted a cuddle then and there because it felt damn nice, and you were annoyed someone else was benefiting from the thing you wanted. We're humans - we're greedy and selfish, and we want the things that we want, NOW. We're happy when we get them, and we're unhappy when we don't. Couldn't the explanation just be that simple?

 

The book mentions the 'starvation economy' that the monogamous hegemony teaches us to believe in, whereby we believe that love given from our partners to another is love lost to us. This keeps us in a state of panic that love is going to 'run out', like a finite resource, when obviously that's nonsense, because most of us have more than one close friend who we love, and most people have more than one child and would (hopefully!) say they love them all equally. And yet, that analogy just doesn't feel like it quite holds for relationships. This may indeed be because of socially reinforced tropes - no one expects a parent to 'run out' of love by the time they have to kid # 4, yet all adults ARE expected to be emotionally, mentally and physically fulfilled by one person, and taught to feel monstrous when we can't manage that. Which seems a little effed up, to say the least. However, I still think it's kind of naïve to believe there isn't at least some kind of starvation economy at work. It's a simple matter of maths to work out that you can't give the same amount of attention, affection (and yes, OK, sex) to 10 lovers as you could to 5. Or to 4 lovers as you can to 2. And yes, I know I'm translating 'love', a supposedly infinite resource, into 'time', an obviously finite one. But I'm a realist, who doesn't believe that intimacy, fun and affection can be maintained invisibly. They require time, energy and organisation - otherwise they die.
 

But sometimes they die anyway, and that's the issue upon which I always hit a bit of a wall. Because one of my reasons for thinking I should be poly - and perhaps this is a bad reason, and evidence that I'm doing it all wrong - is that I have always ended up bored and dissatisfied in monogamous relationships. I've never cheated, but I've certainly felt like it, and felt deeply tempted to do so by my attraction to other people. Proponents of monogamy would tell me that's natural, that I just have to work past those feelings, that it's an inevitable part of being in a couple which you just have to deal with. Proponents of polyamory would say the opposite, that it's evidence of how monogamy limits us and leads us to feel ashamed and a failure just because of our own natural attraction to others. In my case, it's usually been evidence that I should leave that particular person because things aren't working, not that I should stay with them and open our relationship up - so that's not an amazingly helpful answer.

 

Now I'm wondering how one stops that dissatisfying situation recurring. Is the answer just to avoid emotional commitments and stay casual (something that's extremely difficult to do, as the more time you spend with someone the more you will inevitably come to mean to each other, unless you conduct your relationship on an extremely cold basis where you never exchange any personal information or even have a chat over a cup of tea, and I can't be that switched-off/disciplined), or is it to allow whatever feelings to come up, and enjoy them while you can? The fact that I've always ended up disappointed by whoever I've paired up with in relationships implies to me that being poly could just be another way of getting disappointed by more people, more regularly! I know having multiple relationships could be a cushion - one let-down might not hurt so much if you are already successfully engaging with someone else - but ultimately it seems that time and boredom is going to knock down all your spinning plates eventually, it's just a matter of when. And in that light, polyamory just seems like a way of distributing the problems with monogamy across more than one person.

 

That's the paradoxical thing though. We have this need to matter to someone and to care about them, and then when it happens, we get bored with it. And then we look for the next person we want to matter to and care about, to make it feel new. I'm not sure that a model of sexuality that indulges this fickleness of humans is such a great thing. That's not a shout in monogamy's favour, but it's certainly a question about the limitations of polyamory to overcome our essential nature, which I do believe is ultimately selfish.

 

And that's what the book ultimately seems to shy away from - asking the question, why DO we want more than one lover? Why do we think we even deserve this? What makes us think that this is an impulse that should be indulged, rather than questioned? How can we be sure it's not just our short attention spans, insecurity and crapness at being alone that's making us think we need multiple partners? This is not judgment of anyone who is poly, but my own questions that I'm demanding of myself. Because I know that insecurity and crapness at being alone have, in the past, made me stay in monogamous relationships when I should've got out, and I don't want these same flaws to be the things that drive me to polyamory thinking it's a solution.

Post-script - poly feminist blogger Charlie Hale took the time to give their answers to some of the questions raised above, here. Well worth a read.