klutz.geek.nz

harm-anyone37:

Philosophical InQUEERy: A New Tradition: Build What You Need

scientificinqueery:

philosophicalinqueery:

So…. I love sex. I think it’s amazing. When it’s good, it doesn’t just feel good, it leaves me in a better place then before I had it. It’s interesting and fun and a little silly and intense and is probably one of the major motivators in my life (which I have no problem with). Most of these are one night stands or casual things. I don’t think that there will be a time in my life where I won’t be a sexual person.

Something that I continue to combat that I see ALL the time is the SEX = RELATIONSHIP problem. My parents, some of my less than non-judgemental friends, and pretty much anyone who have an opinion about my sex life (or at times DESIRED sex life QQ) have a LOT of shit to say and suggest and demand of me. Lots of “Aren’t you worried about diseases?” and “Don’t you want a ‘real’ relationship?” and “Aren’t you tired of being so immature?” and more than anything else “Sex isn’t the most important thing!”. 

To be honest, it seems to me that sex is way more important to heterosexual exclusively monogamous partners than it ever is to me. Here’s what I mean, so the same people that are trying to shame me away from my slutty slutty life are the same people who say that they love their partners more than ANYTHING and that sex is not as important as their “love” (ugh, amorphous love, I despise you). But these same people latch onto their partners genitalia in such a way that sex with anyone else would be a GRAND BETRAYAL. Sexually exclusivity is the DEFINING FEATURE of “traditional relationships”. Anything less than sexual exclusivity isn’t seen as a healthy or real relationship. From that perspective, sex is DEEPLY important to those relationships. The conversation itself about sexual needs being met outside the relationship can’t even be opened, even if the pair has stopped having sex entirely.

All while I see myself eventually ending up in a polyamorous relationship, where sex is important, but only as important as we see it. If we wanted, we could continue to be together (say if we really loved living together for example) and stop having sex with each other (because one of us is not interested currently and the other can seek sexual companionship outside the relationship). In the suggested case sex isn’t the MOST important part of the relationship and we find a way to keep the things we do like without forcing either party to do something they don’t want to (sex or to go without sex). 

In this way I could see myself developing a romantic relationship with an Asexual or “Ace”* (BTW, best shorthand name ever). Our relationship could be slightly complicated, with me likely having one or two additional partners (cause I’m a sexual person) but that wouldn’t diminish the value of my relationship with my Ace Partner. My Ace Partner wouldn’t be broken or “frigid” (gross terms) but he (or she, or they, who knows!) would just have different needs like ANY partner. Needs that we would figure out how to meet together.

And this doesn’t even cover the fact that sex can exist outside a relationship and be perfectly healthy. It doesn’t mean I’m afraid of intimacy or closeness. It means people don’t need those things for sex to be enjoyable and healthy. I currently don’t have a partner of any kind and mostly have sex with one nighters, but I have deep relationships with my friends and allies and would reject the idea that these people are LESS important or could be MADE LESS IMPORTANT if I was in a relationship. The concept itself horrifies me. I could not/will not ever REDUCE the importance of important people in my life to “make room” for someone else. It’s cohabitation or nothing for me.

People who enforce traditional relationship styles (and there are LGBT folk who do this) to me are quite uncreative and boring. Exclusive Monogamy is great if it’s something you want, but it isn’t the ONLY kind of structure we could build. They are OUR relationships. We get to design them together, to meet our needs and desires and ideas of what we want out of love, life, and if we desire it, sex. Sex isn’t the thing that makes all relationships similar, it’s that our relationships involve people who we profess to care about. The strength, passion, health, and ethics of our relationships is about those who are in them. We keep them strong, passionate, healthy, and ethical. As those people in the relationship change, so do their relationship and sometimes that means that the relationship has to end, which is totally okay too. Lets not limit ourselves to only one style when we could have ANY kind of relationship we want.

Fuck you. I’ll build a castle with my friends and lovers and chosen family. I don’t need your fucking blueprint. We are creative and strong and will build lives that incorporate each others needs rather than relying on a blueprint I KNOW will be deficient to cover the beauty and complexity of who we are.

*I can’t speak to the experience of what it’s like to be an Ace and I recommend you read something written by one of them because they would know the best way to describe their experience. But only ask questions of the ones who say it’s okay to ask. Don’t go bugging people who don’t feel like educating. If any person feels that I have misrepresented being Asexual in some problematic way, please let me know.

So, I first of all want to say that I absolutely love how he points out the hypocrisy in slut-shaming done by heteronormative society. Heteronormativity gives us these rigid social codes for how we are to sexually and romantically engage with others, and with whom. I don’t think the system makes much sense on its own, but it especially makes no sense when it comes to the shaming of those who do not fit the heteronormative mold.

I think it’s really interesting reading such insight from someone who comes from a very different realm of queerness than me, seeing as I’m definitely completely monogamous and am (technically) somewhere along the ace spectrum myself. I’m not really sure how I feel about sex for myself at this point, or how I’d want it to function in a relationship for me, or what type of sex I’d like to have in a relationship, or when I might develop a sexual attraction toward a person I have strong feelings toward, if ever, and it’s something I contemplate often, but interestingly enough, in the time that I’ve realized my possible asexuality, I’ve become extremely sex-positive. As it should be, though. 

At a queer sex workshop at my college, the presenters explained that pretty much the three tenets of sex are just “safe, sane, consensual”, and as long as those are met, all is fair game, and I totally agree. As there’s consent, protection, and the laws of the universe and all that good stuff, there is no wrong way to have sex! I don’t think monogamous relationships should at all be privileged over polyamorous ones. 

This is a form of queerness that I’ve gotten to understand much better this past year. I’m not proud to admit I came into college with pretty much all the negative misconceptions about polyamory tainting my view of it. But 3 good friends of mine developed a polyamorous romantic relationship amongst each other, and that changed the way I viewed polyamory entirely. I’m so embarrassed that I ever once thought, “polyamorous people are just greedy” the way people say “bisexuals are just greedy”, but I’m on this planet to learn. These are 3 extremely caring, loving individuals with a beautiful support system in their relationship. They have the queerest relationship I have ever seen. There are no norms. No gender roles. Nothing. Just love and exploration of themselves and each other. It’s not something that I personally am inclined to simply because I feel happier focusing on committing myself to one person at a time (though my feelings for almost all close friends are fluid in nature), though I’ve been in a *sort of* mono-poly relationship before (it was like one, but without the consent, so not really, but my point is I was sharing my lover with someone, despite him not knowing I was involved with her, not something I plan on getting myself roped into ever again for many reasons that are not quite pertinent to this post as they have nothing to do with polyamory and everything to do with closets and such).

The one generalization he made about ace people though is that none ever want sex. The quintessential definition of asexual is just that they don’t experience sexual attraction toward individuals, so many (though definitely not all) asexuals can and do enjoy sex, as well. There are many different experiences of asexuality. But yeah, back to the point. I think that openmindedness is awesome. I don’t think it would be necessarily closed minded if he said he thought that he wouldn’t be able to be in a monogamous relationship with an asexual, because compatibility is important, and if sexual compatibility is really important to you, you shouldn’t sacrifice something you need, unless this is a person you really care about, I suppose.

but I have deep relationships with my friends and allies and would reject the idea that these people are LESS important or could be MADE LESS IMPORTANT if I was in a relationship. The concept itself horrifies me. I could not/will not ever REDUCE the importance of important people in my life to “make room” for someone else. It’s cohabitation or nothing for me.

I definitely feel this for myself. Though I’m not poly, my feelings for people are very fluid, and when I love people in my life, I care about them deeply. I don’t think I experience distinctly romantic feelings, actually. It’s more like, platonic, and then something that transcends the platonic. That’s how I’ve described it to people in telling them I have feelings for them in the past. I value friendship and the meaningful connection with these people more than I value a little title like “girlfriend”, “boyfriend”, “partner”, etc. I’m really tired so maybe I’m skipping some thoughts and this doesn’t make sense…

There are TONS of LGBT(but not so Q) folks who enforce a sort of normativity taken from heteronormativity. A term used to describe this is homonormativity. Queerness, in my mind, is the antithesis of that. Queerness is anti-assimilation and non-normative and damn proud, and supports and respects our fellow human beings even if their practices might not be things we have in common, or might not personally be our style. 

My friend Zach sings about the fetishizing of monogamy in this song to talk about the attitudes toward polyamory in our society, including in queer circles. 

But back to philosophicalinqueery’s post.

I love what he says at the end

Fuck you. I’ll build a castle with my friends and lovers and chosen family. I don’t need your fucking blueprint. We are creative and strong and will build lives that incorporate each others needs rather than relying on a blueprint I KNOW will be deficient to cover the beauty and complexity of who we are.

This is what queer means to me.

Absolutely. This, all of this.

(via curseisfoiledagain)