Outlining The Radical Potential of Polyamory

With the last of my classes finally wrapping up I've been looking forward to blogging with renewed vigor. My problem lately has been less about not having anything to write and more about having too many subjects I want to tackle at once. I've decided it would be best to start really digging into intersectionality and tie together some of the concepts I've started explaining with my blog. After Pagan Spirit Gathering in mid-June I'll almost certainly be on a Pagan writing kick so in the mean time I'm going to tackle a few Polyamory concepts.

I want to begin by taking a look at what I consider to be the potential for Polyamory as a practice and as a movement. I've already explained what Polyamory is but now I want to look more at the possibilities Polyamory represents. Others have put forward some lessons for the building of a polyamorous movement but before we get to that we need to ask ourselves a fundamental question: what is the value of Polyamory?

What My Queerness is Not

Trigger warning: some homophobic language

I'd like to take a moment to clarify, because sometimes there can be confusion.

My queerness is not homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, or just plain sexual. It is not dependent on who I am attracted to, who I am in a relationship with, or who I am married to.

My queerness is not based on genitalia, chromosomes, hormones, gametes, musculature, broad shoulders, long legs, body hair, deep voice, or sex assigned at birth.

My queerness is not my long hair. It is not my black-painted finger nails. It is not my eye shadow, the way I shave, or my desire to have my facial hair permanently removed. It is not dependent on whether I'm wearing a skirt or jeans. It does not come off with my clothes. It does not come off in the shower.

Fighting For Polyamorous Marriage

My favorite podcast, the excellent Polyamory Weekly, just had a show on the subject of polyamorous marriage (so nice, I linked them twice) and whether or not it's something we should be fighting for as a movement. I always enjoy these kinds of discussions and I actually have strong feelings on the subject, so I was planning to just call in when I realized that I have one of those fancy blog things now. Suddenly I'm able to comment on things soapbox style, so I thought I would do that instead.

Most of Cunning Minx's points on this show come from an article by Mistress Matisse (Poly bloggers have the best names) called You May Now Kiss the Bride and the Other Bride and the Other Bride and the Other Groom so I'll be discussing those first.

Your god, Not God

Writing a blueprint for a new coalition is hard. That's all I can say to people that I know are waiting for a particular post to go up. In the mean time I want to tackle something on the religious end of the issues I care about. I've been fairly focused on queer issues for a while and I think it's time to shake that up.

There is a form of oppression in our culture that I think is often only recognized spiritually but which has very tangible effects. Feeling something spiritually is difficult to quantify exactly, especially for people that aren't religious. There also aren't solid terms for different forms of religious oppression the way there are for other kinds of oppressions, so I can't point to a concept that can be more easily recognized by people with more removed relations to faith. For a working term, admittedly one that doesn't quite roll off the tongue, I'll be using "Gnosivism".

This refers to the assumptions that

• Everyone in a society has the same religion, or that everyone is hearing the same thing from the divine, as the mainstream of the dominant religion . 
• The dominant religion of the culture is superior to all other religions
•  And that members of other religions or those lacking religion can be freely mistreated, harmed, oppressed, discriminated against, or litigated against.

MBLGTACC part 3: Identity Caucuses and Allies

Part 1 is here
Part 2 is here

"I hate it when allies talk," is something I was told by a close friend after MBLGTACC was over and we were discussing our experiences in different identity caucuses. For the first time in my life I've been able to understand this sentiment, and it's a heavy one so I'm taking a whole post to break down what it means to me and potentially what it should mean to allies. The first part of this post is largely based around experiences at MBLGTACC, and so it's related primarily to the LGBTQ community, but in relation to the allies themselves it doesn't matter what group they're allies of. This is important content to understand.

MBLGTACC part 2: Polyamory and Politics

 Part 1 is here

A few more days out from MBLGTACC 2013, the Midwest Bisexual, Lesbian, Gay, Transgender, Ally College Conference, I'm ready to took another look at the conference and assess feelings that aren't just longing to return. It wasn't a perfect conference, as much as I loved it, and although it was the most inclusive of Polyamory of any MBLGTACC I've attended that also left more room open for things to go wrong. So with a queer movie night behind me (Watched "Together" and apparently Scandinavian comedies are based around the idea that if as many people as possible are miserable it must be funny for SOMEONE and romances universally mean always going back to the man that hit you) I'm ready to tackle the Polyamory workshops and caucuses, how they worked, how they didn't, and what they could have done. 

I've started adding handy labels to posts to designate the level of understanding you'll need to have of a specific community to jump right into a topic. This way I won't have to be as extensive with providing definitions for terms I've covered before in each new post. If you're coming here for a Socialist perspective for example (which I really am going to get to extensively once the MBLGTACC stuff is properly wrapped up) but aren't really familiar about Queer identity or Polyamory, there are some articles you should check out before others will make sense to you, and vice-versa. So introductory posts that explain issues entirely from scratch get labeled as "Basics" while in-group topics will be labeled with "Intermediate" and theory that is deep in-group will get an "Advanced" tag. If you don't know much about Polyamory feel free to check out my What is it? Polyamory article (now updated to include more readings on the subject) and some of the linked websites before trying to understand this post.

MBLGTACC part 1: Unpacking MBLGTACC

At the moment I am recovering from an incredible weekend at the Midwest Bisexual, Lesbian, Gay, Transgender, Ally, College Conference otherwise known as MBLGTACC. This is one of the largest annual conferences in the country, certainly the largest in the Midwest, that is specifically about queer issues. Over 2000 people of all different identities, some of them far beyond the scope of the included acronym, converge on a college somewhere for a single weekend of discussions, workshops, networking, learning, teaching, and in some cases having conference sex. I hope that explains the delay in posting this. People don't sleep at MBLGTACC so much as they close their eyes briefly between late night events and early morning ones, and I've been thrust straight back into normative society and homework without processing time. Expect several posts in this series but don't expect them all right away.

I want to spend some time unpacking my own experiences at the conference, and the conference in general. As amazing as the conference was for me there is still a barrier of entry that includes monetary requirements, college attendance, and travel. There is a value to sharing some of the insights gained in this setting with people that couldn't access it, and allowing additional processing opportunities for the people in attendance. While I hope that much of my blog will be easily accessible without needing to locate a ton of outside readings, some posts are predominantly aimed at those that have an understanding of a specific community already. While I will try to provide some links for “obscure” terms my expectation is that people already in the LGBTQ community will be the ones most interested in MBLGTACC.

If you're utterly lost this may be a post to explore again after I've had the chance to elaborate on more topics.