polyamorous queer lost in space

[queerlyplaced]

Abusive Relationship Special Traps for Person-In-Charge Types: Doms and Masters are Big and Bad

Special Trap: Doms and Masters have to be big and bad. They have to save face. They have to manage their reputations. This means that a support group like MAsT, when it comes to the Masters’ Circle, will probably not be as open and as supportive the way that the slaves’ Circle is often supportive. 

Plus, at least in my circle, most of the Masters were men, and even men who are not explicitly M-types do this kind of thing, because masculinity and dominance are so wrapped up in each other in our patriarchal culture. (This is what people mean by “toxic masculinity.”) 

I spent so much time working to establish myself and prove myself in my MAsT chapter there was no room for me to be vulnerable.

What we can do: I’m glad there are feminist men working to dismantle patriarchy and eliminate toxic masculinity. But that is a really long-term project. I don’t think it’s reasonable to wait for that to happen.

Right now, one solution that might work is the buddy system: when that new Dom/Master/Owner/Person-In-Charge actually reaches out to you for mentoring or mutual support, take them up on it. View it as part of your service to the community to figure out ways to engage new M-types in conversations about what is going on for them, and actively build trust so that the relationship gives you something, too. 

If you can’t stand the person, try to think of who they might click with, and introduce them. This prevents abuse by M-types as well: when you can talk about your ethics and values, and agree to hold one another accountable to those ethics and values, it is much easier to step in when someone is treating a submissive partner in unethical, abusive ways.

I found being semi-consistently shamed, blamed, and threatened by someone I loved and trusted to be extremely disorienting. 

It’s tough to figure out if you are a horrible monster like your partner tells you, or if they are twisting reality and hurting you over and over. For years, I believed that I was just a fuck-up at relationships, especially the kind of relationship I was trying to have.

By the time another Person-In-Charge-type reached out to me, I was at the end of my rope, and I had all but forgotten what it was like to build trust with new friends. 

I had years of putting almost all my energy into 1. making things “okay” for my submissive partner, and 2. never, ever, EVER saying anything that could possibly reflect negatively on our relationship (because my partner would get so upset with me).

I was not even sure how to talk about it anymore - what to say, what was okay, or how to figure that out.

Even now, many years after leaving this relationship, I am not sure how to approach the community I called home for over 5 years. 

I spent so much time and energy engaged with the ideas of power exchange and authority transfer relationships, and later, I spent a great deal of time and energy engaged with ideas about personal boundaries and partner abuse. 

Ultimately I want all of this thinking to be of use to my old community, even if I never do attempt to have a relationship like this again.

Special Traps

Your Personality Makes You The Dom

Experience Makes You Better

Reality Is What We Say It Is

You Are 100% Responsible

Happy Sub = Healthy Relationship

[queerlyplaced]

Abusive Relationship Special Traps for Person-In-Charge Types: Happy Sub = Healthy Relationship

Special Trap: “you know your relationship is healthy when your submissive partner is happy.” 

Another not-at-all-special hallmark of abusive partners is that they are generally unhappy, especially with you. 

If your submissive partner is unhappy, it’s easy to believe that you, the big bad Dom/Master/Owner, must be harming this wonderful person who has agreed to be submissive to you! 

After all, your partner is vulnerable! It is your job to treasure them, nourish them, cultivate them, or whatever metaphor you like.

But basically you cannot treat them like shit and make them unhappy or you are just an abusive ass, not an ethical Dom/Master/Owner/Person-In-Charge. 

This is one way that the idea that’s common in BDSM spaces - that the submissive is “really” in charge of the scene - can leak into authority exchange relationships, where the Person Obeying Authority is absolutely NOT supposed to be in charge in any way, really and truly.

What we can do: normalize the fact that these relationships may not work out due to no particular person’s fault. Unhappiness may be due to many reasons, including simple incompatibility. It is not necessarily a sign that someone needs to change.

Are you making your submissive partner consistently unhappy? 

Sure, check your behavior - discuss with your partner what is making your partner unhappy - check in with a friend, mentor, or trusted community for help and advice - do all those things. But do not keep changing your behavior based only and always on your partner’s assertions of unhappiness, because it is important to keep what you want in mind, too. 

Being clear about your desires will naturally translate into boundaries and limits about what you are willing to change. 

It may be that what you want is unreasonable. It may also be that your partner is simply not compatible with you. It is OK to say you are not willing to change something, and explore next steps of what your partner may have to do in order to deal with that, including having your support in ending the relationship. 

(Make sure they have support that is not you, also! Do not isolate your partner!)

Special Traps

Your Personality Makes You The Dom

Experience Makes You Better

Reality Is What We Say It Is

You Are 100% Responsible

Doms and Masters Are Big and Bad

[queerlyplaced]

Abusive Relationship Special Traps for Person-In-Charge Types: 100% responsible

Special Trap: you are 100% responsible for everything, as the Dom/Master/Owner/Person-In-Charge Type. 

This is not special, really - surely many abuse survivors remember this? 

The basic premise of an abuser is: NO MATTER WHAT, IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT. 

But in the BDSM community, and especially the M/s community, when we talk about power exchange relationships, or (my preferred term) authority transfer relationships, we emphasize that the Dom/Master/Owner/Person-In-Charge is taking on responsibility for the submissive partner.

What can we do: one topic I brought up early on in a MAsT meeting, and continued to struggle with throughout my relationship, were the limits of that responsibility. What were the submissive partner’s responsibilities?

Emphasizing that a Dom/Master/Owner (etc) CAN AND SHOULD have limits of what they will tolerate - not in terms of, “if you disobey it’s over,” but realistically, what can you deal with? How much weight can you really pull? A submissive partner should NOT feel like a dead weight you are dragging, pushing, and pulling around. I know that some folks are into active and ongoing force dynamics, but that has to be specifically negotiated.

In a teamwork approach to power exchange/authority transfer relationships, accountability is important for the s-type/Person Obeying Authority. Responsibility does need to be held by both partners, each for that partner’s role in the relationship. If your submissive partner is not eagerly doing your will most of the time, and actively collaborating in the dynamic, it is honestly just time to reevaluate the nature of the relationship.

And we don’t talk about that. We don’t talk about red flags, of how uncooperative is TOO uncooperative . . . it’s assumed that since the s-type says they want to be there, they must be walking their talk as best as they are able. And that just might not be enough.

Just as partner selection and compatibility of desires are vitally important for an s-type/Person Obeying Authority, they are essential for a Person-In-Charge-type attempting to succeed in running a power exchange/authority transfer relationship. 

It is much better to look at the reality of what is going on and determine whether or not the relationship has the elements required for success, instead of viewing yourself as a fraud or a failure for not being able to “make” the relationship work as you wish it could.

Special Traps

Your Personality Makes You The Dom

Experience Makes You Better

Reality Is What We Say It Is

Happy Sub = Healthy Relationship

Doms and Masters Are Big and Bad

[queerlyplaced]

Abusive Relationship Special Traps for Person-In-Charge Types: reality is what we say it is

Special Trap: we are creating our own reality and making our power exchange or authority transfer REAL, because we said so! One of the things I was relieved about when it came to the Master/slave Conference in D.C. was that the folks there actually talked about the ways that material reality impacted their relationship dynamics. Reality works both ways: your dynamic guides choices you make in the real world, and how you structure those choices - and reality can also bite back. For example, the Master who is in danger of becoming homeless but does not want to move into a submissive partner’s home because of the very real power difference this would create, which would directly counter the power difference the couple is working toward. 

Power is complicated. Raven Kaldera, an Owner who is disabled, has talked about how his boy Joshua is also his Personal Care Attendant (PCA) and yet Raven is still the boy’s Owner - he is in no way submissive to Joshua because Joshua is more able-bodied. That is real - and at the same time, so are other factors of material reality that give Raven power. Having been employed as a PCA, I experienced the way my employer had power over me, and yet, because my employer was disabled, my employer was also vulnerable to abusive PCAs.

What we can do: I think the community could use more examination like this of how power differences in the rest of the world impact the dynamics of power exchange/authority transfer relationships. 

I think we could also use more examination of what both interpersonal power and empowerment look like. 

Authority transfer is definitely not real only because you say so. 

Thinking about concrete elements that make the authority transfer real is also important. 

This does involve feelings, which we certainly look at, as far as what makes the s-type feel submissive? What makes the Owner feel authoritative? What makes both people feel empowered within their respective roles in the relationship? How will success of the power exchange/authority transfer be measured, in specific terms, including personal satisfaction?

But it also involves material reality, and it involves looking at the impacts that the relationship and authority exchange are having on both people’s behavior and real world experience outside of the relationship.

Special Traps

Your Personality Makes You The Dom

Experience Makes You Better

You Are 100% Responsible

Happy Sub = Healthy Relationship

Doms and Masters Are Big and Bad

[queerlyplaced]

Abusive Relationship Special Traps for Person-In-Charge Types: “experience”

Special Trap: experience makes you better at power exchange/authority transfer relationships. To some degree, this may be true, but it can be dangerous to believe that, simply because a partner has had more relationships “like this,” that person must know what they are doing.

The “like this” can refer to authority/power exchange, but it can also refer to other types of BDSM relationships, polyamory, swinging, or even same-sex relationships - basically any type of relationship that is not mainstream, where you might easily be convinced that “normal” rules do not apply.

My abusive, would-be-submissive partner made it seem like he could help me be(come) a Dom/Master/Owner/Person-In-Charge due to his experience with past power exchange/authority transfer.

What we can do: you are an expert on your own self. Every other person is also an expert on that person. This is not like a job, where you can have “2-3 years of retail sales experience.” There are transferable relationship skills, sure - but no one gets to decide how things “should" go if it's a "real" relationship of whatever type. What's real is both the people in the relationship, their wants and needs, and both of their feelings.

To put it another way: just because an s-type has been in other power exchange dynamics, they’ve never been in this one, with YOU, so they don’t get to be the arbiter of when the relationship is measuring up in some objective way. Literally ANY healthy relationship - lovers, friends, parents and children, employers and employees, neighbors, doctors and patients, roommates, co-workers - is something that the people having the relationship figure out together. With a power exchange/authority transfer relationship, there are just specific kinds of things that people are figuring out.

Special Traps

Your Personality Makes You The Dom

Reality Is What We Say It Is

You Are 100% Responsible

Happy Sub = Healthy Relationship

Doms and Masters Are Big and Bad

[queerlyplaced]

Abusive Relationship Special Traps for Person-In-Charge types: your personality makes you The Dom

Special Trap: something about your personality is what makes you inherently dominant and therefore suited to be a Dom/Master/Owner/Person In Charge in a power exchange/authority transfer relationship.

I am not sure if this is the right headline for this special trap, but I want to say something about the way, early on in our relationship, I said something to my would-be-submissive partner to the effect of: “I don’t like the way you are talking to me.”

This partner responded with something like: “If you were really dominant, you wouldn’t find anything I said threatening, because I am submissive to you. I have no power over you, so how could my words be threatening?”

This set up a rhetorical tautology (or maybe just circular reasoning?) in which, if I even FELT threatened by my partner, it meant that I was not inherently dominant enough.

In reality, if a partner is being threatening, it makes sense to feel threatened. A sense of safety is necessary for healthy intimate relationships. Also, requesting that a partner change a behavior that you find unpleasant is a healthy relationship behavior. Being considerate of a partner is also a basic healthy relationship behavior. Expecting your partner to want to please you, and to want to figure out how that can happen, is part of what having an authority transfer agreement is about.

Other traps: Experience Makes You Better

Reality Is What We Say It Is

You Are 100% Responsible

Happy Sub = Healthy Relationship

Doms and Masters Are Big and Bad

[queerlyplaced]

Abusive Relationship Special Traps for Person-In-Charge Types: my story

Where I am coming from

Many years ago, I began dating a good friend. We became life partners and embarked on a journey to develop a power exchange/authority transfer relationship. 

The two of us both read a lot of books, and a lot of blogs, and reached out to the BDSM community, both locally and online. 

We found and became very involved with a local MAsT chapter and also with the FetLife group Owners & property. 

I asked an M-type in our MAsT chapter to mentor me. 

I went to workshops (both with my partner and alone). 

We went to the Master/slave conference in D.C. 

I discussed and tried many different things, both independently to cultivate myself as a Dom/Master/Owner/Person In Charge and with my partner, as far as creating the kind of relationship we both said we wanted to have.

I am telling you all of this in order to emphasize that this was not a haphazard, uninformed, unexamined relationship.

But something was going wrong

Unfortunately, things did not go as planned. My partner and I somehow fell into an unhealthy relationship pattern, where my responsibility to take care of my partner’s feelings became the most important thing in our relationship. 

The entire idea of me being the Owner seemed to be more about my partner’s feelings more than about my feelings. It was not about what I actually wanted from the relationship. 

My partner even told me: “You can’t expect me to care about you as a whole separate person, because you are too important to me. I need you to value your role in my life.”

I loved my partner very much and so of course I cared about my partner’s feelings. Much of the time my partner was loving and sweet to me. Yet I often felt like I could not do anything right. I was not good enough at being an Owner; I was always hurting my partner somehow; if only I could figure out how to do things right, then we could get to the parts that were about what I wanted. 

Why did I think this was OK?

My partner had a lot of mental health issues. My partner was often dealing with a lot emotionally. My partner’s life was harder than mine.

For all of these reasons, looking at my feelings or desires was pretty much constantly on the back burner.

I was in a spiral of increasing obligation and guilt, while my partner was in a corresponding spiral of increasing helplessness and emotional instability.

After years of getting into this terrible rut, I began working on setting healthy boundaries, but my partner could not seem to adjust, and kept escalating tactics to keep things as they were: with me being obligated to take care of my partner above all else.

After about 2 years of couple’s therapy, both with licensed mental health clinicians and with a respected M/s community leader, nothing substantial was changing. My partner continued to refuse to change certain behaviors that I found threatening.

Setting boundaries is not magic

My partner, who was supposed to be my submissive property, had ended up self-harming and blaming me for it, regularly threatening to end our relationship/leave/run away (with all our joint money), berating and insulting me, trying to kick me out of our home, telling me not to come home when I was out, and even threatening me physically. By the time I left that relationship I felt like I was losing my mind, quite literally: thanks to various circumstances I won’t get into, I finally noticed some large gaps in my memory from dissociating when my partner threatened me. When I was fully present, I felt nervous being alone with my partner. I felt like I was at the bottom of a very deep hole. I felt trapped. And I decided to leave.

When I told my partner that I was ending our relationship, my greatest fear was that my partner would commit suicide, as this had also been a threat during our relationship, especially toward the end. 

The threat went something like this: “If you don’t change this thing you are doing to hurt me, I will have to leave you, and I would rather die, so I might as well just kill myself.” (My former partner was fine last time I checked, in case you were worried.)

I had failed

One of the biggest sources of shame for me in processing what happened here, and how I ended up staying with a partner who treated me this way for so long, was around how I was supposed to be the Dom/Master/Owner/Person In Charge and so, if my partner hurt me, and was not really submissive, it really was my fault.

I wasn’t like an egalitarian partner. I was supposed to have MORE power than my partner.

How could I possibly have ended up with LESS power?

This series is an attempt to answer two questions:

What kinds of special traps got me into this?

What can the community do to prevent this kind of thing?

I am writing it because I am not the only M-type to ever be in an abusive relationship with a would-be submissive partner, yet this is not something I have ever seen discussed in depth. 

It is important to know that this is possible. It is also important because these are often life partner relationships. There can be divorces, and custody battles, and evidence needed in a court of law that no, being on the “s” side of the slash by mutual agreement does not mean that you are automatically incapable of being abusive toward your partner. 

Submissive partners can be abusive.

I just did not know until it happened to me.

All of the claims in these posts are my own analysis, based on my subjective experience, so a bunch of it might be wrong. But this is the best I have figured out as of now and I want to share.

Special Traps

Your Personality Makes You The Dom

Experience Makes You Better

Reality Is What We Say It Is

You Are 100% Responsible

Happy Sub = Healthy Relationship

Doms and Masters Are Big and Bad

[saoirsesblog]

My first blog post

I’m Saoirse and I’m six years old. This is going to be my blog. My blog is going to be about everything I really want and what I wish and what I might need and what my gender is. 

I don’t know why I lived in the house I was born in. Now I live in a giant apartment.

Don’t trust the politicians. Or the police. That’s it.

This is a picture of me from when I was a baby. 

[queerlyplaced]

Why is Saoirse so cool?!

[queerlyplaced]

Nesting vs solo

Okay, here is why I think nesting with a partner and solo polyamory are incompatible, from my experience and some unscientific surveying of other people. TL;DR version: when you nest with a partner, the default becomes "us" time, vs all of your time being automatically your own, and your needing to make plans in order to have time together.

More on this (it got looooong sorry):

I *would* believe it if people told me they are nesting and do *not* operate this way - I think it could be *possible* - but thinking back on my experience living with a partner, by the time I started dating a second person and went back to school 5 years into our relationship - well, *that* was when I realized that my partner and I had slipped into a shared assumption that all of "my free time" would automatically be spent with my partner, barring other commitments. Granted, my other commitments had basically all fallen away by then. I had no local friends. I had no volunteer gig. My partner even resented it when I worked on some weekend days. All our hobbies were shared hobbies. It was *not* a healthy relationship. But rather than being some anomalous outlier, I think this relationship was, in many ways, just an exaggerated (to an unhealthy degree) version of couplehood.

Even my very autonomous datefriend - I asked how often she plans dates with her primary, and she said mostly they just see each other because they live together. They do go on dates, but it is not the main time they spend together.

I also asked about this in a general polyamory group on facebook - something like, "Is your free time default spent with your partner?" and "When did this start happening in the course of your relationship?"

Most people said this was the case, and it began when they moved in together. So that seems like a pretty clear indicator that, yes, space-sharing encourages this kind of time-sharing. Logistical entanglement can lead to this temporal entanglement. And this kind of temporal entanglement can lead to ENTITLEMENT - because when you do start dating someone else, or get back into your old hobby, or go back to school for a degree, your partner will feel like something is being taken away - that "us" time is being "taken away" from them, when really it was YOUR time all along. I never want to get into that place of confusion again. At that point 5 years into my primary relationship, when I realized that I could not manage my time at all, I proposed to my then-primary that we switch the default to having all my time being MINE, and I would make plans for time with my partner (and time for homework, classes, my new date, etc). He basically just refused to discuss this. It just never went anywhere. Good thing I left or there is no way I would be so close to finishing my degree. And that is why I don't think you can nest and be solo. You'll be fighting gravity the whole way. Maybe it is possible. But damn hard. Not only does it seem like an easy, comfortable default to slip into logistically, but the weight of society and all social norms around couplehood and monogamy are pulling you into that kind of entanglement.

[queerlyplaced]

partner abuse and kyriarchy

I was just procrastinating and someone shared this thing, "Five signs that you're being emotionally abused" -  http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-36257791 and there was a link to the blog of this person who started the #MaybeHeDoesntHitYou hashtag, Zahira Kelly. Annnnd I just feel like usually when people do the whole "here is how society produces abusive relationships" it is JUST about patriarchy, which I have issues with because of my own gender stuff, and also just seems limited. But this is about everything. Link: http://thenewinquiry.com/features/dear-marooned-alien-princess-3/ Quote: "I’ve been trying to learn more about colonialism and capitalism, but how does it tie into my daily life? I know I have been oppressed and abused in my personal life but it still feels abstract to read about larger systems. It seems like our current problems are now and that’s the past. Can you help me understand? Well, to put it simply, micro is macro. That means the little things are small versions of the big things. We could look at interpersonal relations, rape culture, modern wars, colonialism, capitalism, globalization, white imperialism as a continuum rather than separate things. Think loops within loops. Giant abuse cycles with mid-sized and smaller abuse cycles interlocked. You’d say, what does a cycle of domestic violence have to do with rape or the Iraq War or 1492, right? But let’s look at the mechanisms of all these things, how they’re perpetuated, supported, who is most affected, who is assumed to be rightfully aggressive and whose self-defense is vilified. Let’s look at victim blaming and how it keeps pretty much all the “isms” alive (“If only you were X, Y, or Z, I wouldn’t have to hurt you”), and how respectability politics works on the same logic. The need to exert control over other peoples bodies and reactions and disregard for personal boundaries is seen in abuse within interpersonal relationships, in slavery, and in colonialism. The same “Do what I say or be guilted or agressed into it” is seen in rape—which is usually an extension of other forms of abuse from people you know and even love. Rape doesn’t come from a singular, isolated goblin in the dark of the night. The same “I want what I want, and I don’t care how it hurts you” that we see in domestic violence is what we see in how capitalism operates across the world. It’s the same notions of “Everything’s here for the taking, to be exploited by me” we see in sexist men, in their manifest destiny, and all over what we now call the globalized world. The point has been not so much to connect communities (though that has occurred and it’s had its wonderful effects) but to expand the reach of capitalists. Your question is why I hate to see rape culture framed as if it exists in a vacuum, when it is part of the larger culture of abuse and systems of domination. The same way people victim-blame women enduring domestic abuse, they victim-blame people who’ve endured rape and civilians being currently droned and bombed: “If only you left, did what they want, dressed like whatever, made better choices, they wouldn’t have to hurt you, be grateful, blah blah.” The same way black women in prison tend to be there for defending themselves from abusers, people defending themselves from the war machine are labeled dangerous insurgents and enemy combatants. In those cases its implied you should be a good victim and just lay down and take it with a smile, no room to fight for your life. And it happens that the more “isms” you face, the less power you have, the less sympathy or right to self-defend you are allotted, the less accountability you get. By the same token, we can see how abusers, people with more institutional power, are generally more supported than the people they abuse. Power means people are more willing to see your full-on humanity even if you colonized, murdered, and enslaved millions. Abusers are often also lauded as “important to the community” and their “good work” is seldom unmentioned as victims are dragged through the mud, much like marginalized communities are treated on a large scale by their oppressors. This is before taking into account whose labor, blood, sweat, tears, and land all the things we now have are built on. That is to say, these systems and dynamics are damn near inescapable. They’re in your romance flicks where being chased after saying no a million times is glorified (A.K.A. a drawn-out dramatization of rape), they’re in your home when you are guilted into submission and admonished for speaking up, they’re outside when strange men assume they’re entitled to your time and body, they’re in your university when you mainly learn about colonizers and are subjected to classist, racist, gendered, other emotional abuse you can’t speak against lest you threaten someones chance at a tenured position, and they’re online when people try to use and abuse you and your personal space. They are, unfortunately, what we see as normal life."

Thank you Zahira Kelly.

[polyrolemodels]

I’ve been asked to come to a place and say a bunch of things!!!

If you live within traveling distance of New Haven, CT, I’ll be leading a discussion on Racial Diversity in Polyamorous Communities. We’d love to have you out to share your experiences and share in the experiences of others.

Sunday, March 20th @ 11am

[polyrolemodels]

Following the discussion, there will also be a cuddle party! For more information, take a look at the links below!

Event Page: https://www.facebook.com/events/490658797725784/

Online ticket purchase: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/post-intersectionality-and-inclusion-discussion-cuddle-party-tickets-22552190208

[queerlyplaced]

I am so sad to miss this!

[polyrolemodels]

Cautionary Poly: Gemma

It started out as many modern romances do, we met online. The vibe was intense, the conversation stimulating. We made plans to meet a few days later. He wasn’t my type at all, but there was a spark that set my soul on fire. He professed his love, and instead of running, I embraced it, returned it. We had amazing conversations, about life, love, and the world around us. I felt like a teenager, head over heels in love.

One of those conversations was about monogamy. I picked up on some subtle things he said, and flat out asked if he was poly. I wasn’t, and that was a non-negotiable for me. He expressed that he felt poly, but no one had ever allowed him to explore. We talked a lot about it, and I decided I wasn’t completely against it. In theory. Then, opportunity arose for us both . We talked about it, and decided to give it a chance. My situation was not materializing, but his did. He reconnected with a prior interest, and he jumped the gun. He told her we were poly (we weren’t, yet), and she was all about it. He asked for my permission to see her, and going  against my own feelings, I agreed to a conditional exploration. A hall pass, if you will. We’d only been together a few weeks, and I was worried if I said no, he’d either break up with me, or cheat. He ran with it, and I wasn’t destroyed by it.

I met someone a few weeks later and began my own secondary relationship. We’d all agreed to do this, to practice hierarchical polyamory. It was how we thought poly worked. Things were simultaneously amazing and terrible. My primary relationship was quickly becoming the love of my life and my biggest heartbreak. My secondary relationship became an escape from the intensity of my primary. My primary relationship was this intensely intellectual, constantly processing, discussing every single feeling, every possible outcome ever dynamic.It was exhausting. My secondary was all good vibes, amazing sex, easy and comfortable.  

My primary violated my privacy and continued to do so after I repeatedly expressed my distress. He made unilateral decisions for all  of us.He refused to let me meet his secondary. He made me feel small and admonished my need to be special to him. I felt like I had to do poly his way, or the relationship would end. He also managed to make me feel loved enough to want to continue this path with him. I loved him, and I wanted it to work. I caved at every turn, sucked it up, ignored my feelings for the sake of the relationship. I thought eventually  I’d be okay with the constant flux, the ever changing dynamic. I thought my heart would break and at the same time I couldn’t breathe without him.  I started studying poly like it was my job. I thought if I could just figure it out logically, I could feel it and do it emotionally,  but it seemed like the harder I tried to wrap my head around it, the worse it felt for me. I tried so hard to be what he wanted, to convince us both I was onboard. I wasn’t. I continued to ignore all the red flags, the gut feeling that this would break me, break us. My secondary fell in love with me, and disappeared, as that broke the rules. I was devastated, but I kept it to myself, as I’d fallen in love with him as well. Love was acceptable, even desired, but not the IN love part.

Eventually I realized this was never going to work, doing this entire relationship the way he wanted, as his desires changed almost daily. I was intrinsically unhappy, and I was making him miserable with my wild mood swings as I tried to process, to adapt, to be what he wanted me to be. The relationship no longer looked like anything I had signed up for, and I finally had enough. I wrote this long drawn-out tome explaining to him how I loved him but I couldn’t continue feeling the way that I felt, this angsty teen, this insecure, insignificant, unsure  person. I thought I’d moved past those feelings years ago. We talked, we cried, we realized that we made an entire mess of this relationship and there was really no fixing it that would make both of us happy. I wanted monogamy, or so I thought. We spent one final night together, and in the morning I woke before him and left.

I spent a few dark weeks grieving my losses and getting my head back together, but eventually decided to get out there and meet people, and figure out what I wanted. I ran into a married poly couple that I’d met a few weeks prior to the breakup, and struck up a conversation with the husband. We made plans to hang out. I wasn’t sure if it was a date or what it was. I wasn’t sure if I was poly. I wasn’t sure of anything at that point. We ended up hanging out, and we made zero commitments. It was amazing! It was a very necessary connection for me. It helped me heal, grow, and recover. I’ve told him before, and I’ll continue to tell him what an impact he made on me, simply by being himself. I saw how they did poly and it was so radically different than the poly I have been doing with my primary. I wanted that dynamic! It worked and I wanted that. I had this epiphany…I WAS poly! I eventually met one of my current partners through them. I have this amazing network of incredible people I adore.They’re good for my soul. I have now what I wished I’d had with my first partner. Love, respect, autonomy, security. I feel more myself than I ever have in any relationship. I’m more sure of who I am, what I want, and what I have to offer than I ever have been in my entire life. I no longer feel like I have to give up a part of me to be with someone else. I’ve learned to trust my instincts, and not let anyone coerce me into a dynamic that isn’t right for me. I’ll never let another relationship happen to me.

Cautionary Poly: Teachable Moments in Polyamorous Relationships is a special feature of Poly Role Models. The goal of this feature is to highlight the fact that successful polyamory isn’t always free of mistakes…and those mistakes can definitely be gained from. Now accepting submissions. Just send me a message to get the ball rolling.

[queerlyplaced]

This is what power and control look like in a relationship: unilateral decisions, privacy violations, threats to leave, rules about what you are allowed to feel or not feel, doing the relationship the way only one person wants, always changing what is allowed or not allowed, one person trying to be what the other person wants them to be. I am glad that love, respect, autonomy and security are things this person now recognizes and has been able to get from relationships. A relationship between two people always needs to include and honor both people’s feelings.

[queerlyplaced]

if polyamory were normal

“So, wait - you only date one person at a time, on purpose? Okay. But - FOREVER?! On purpose? You both talk about it and agree to that? You both WANT that? Is this - I think I saw this on TV one time. Is this, like, part of a religious sect?” “Rhonda, I just realized - I don’t think I’ve seen your husband out with another woman for, gosh, it must be years now. Is everything ok with him?” “Aren’t you worried you’ll become totally codependent and wrapped up in each other and not be able to put energy into other important relationships in your life, like close friends and family?” “Monogamy, huh? Kinky.” “Want me to set you two up? . . . oh, my bad. I don’t know a lot of monogamous people. How does that work, anyway?” “So you never date anyone else? Ever? Do you at least have sex with other people? . . . wow. I could never do that.”

[hellyeahscarleteen]

We love this series from TODOS In Action! 

[queerlyplaced]

lovvvvve this

[queerlyplaced]

I am old.

I don't really get how to use tumblr but I am trying so hard, y'all.

[kimchicuddles]

I tend to err on the side of bringing everyone.  Sorry, everyone else.

Support Kimchi + get original artwork!https://www.patreon.com/kimchicuddles

Kimchi Cuddles book now available on Amazon! http://amzn.to/1iHlcIQ

[queerlyplaced]

lol nope I invited YOU, friend, not your partner(s)

[chico-moreno-deactivated2022101]

Is Masculinity Always Privileged?: A Transman's Experience with Intimate Partner Violence

by Mauro Sifuentes

I am a queer and trans non-profit professional of color (mixed-race) who works at an organization in the Bay Area of California that focuses on crisis intervention services for domestic violence survivors. My skills are best put to use doing prevention work; I spend a lot of time working with youth in public schools and other settings to have conversations about interpersonal and community violence, and I also do my best to open up space in collaborative agency meetings to discuss the particular issues that queer and trans youth and adults face. All of this work is important to me today because of the ways that domestic/intimate partner violence (IPV) has affected my own life.

Before getting into my own story, I would like to provide a bit of context for queer cultural and political spaces in the Bay Area. Many are putting a lot of effort into rethinking relationships to privilege and accountability, which is quite possibly one of the most difficult tasks a community can take on, especially during an era of ‘post-'racism that also continues to ignore myriad institutionalized -isms that hugely affect people’s lives and their ability to thrive, including but not limited to ableism, immigration issues, transphobia/cissexism, homophobia/heterosexism, among others. A mantra I have seen many queer people take up, especially many masculine-of-center queer people, is that “Masculinity is privileged/femininity is denigrated,” in attempts to address institutionalized sexism.

I think that as a starting point, this can be an important realization for many who have not questioned structures of sexism and binary gender, as well as performances of gender. Being mindful of how our language, bodies, and mannerisms take up space in various settings is crucial in our efforts to support others in using their voices to speak on a variety of issues that have been silenced, both historically and in present organizing efforts. I also believe that drawing binaries like this out of context can also be very dangerous. Many progressive queer people are looking for scripts so that they can be good allies; these scripts often rely on reductive thinking that marginalizes other people still, but this marginalization is now grounded in a sense of political progressiveness and moral righteousness, making it even more difficult for the margins-of-the-margins to voice their experiences and concerns.

To illustrate the problematics of relying too heavily on the trope that “Masculinity is privileged/feminity is denigrated,” in all moments, I want to share my own story in order to continue a conversation that feels as though it is just beginning. Though I understand that trigger warnings can be helpful tools in order to let others know when content might be very difficult, if not harmful, I often experience their insertion as jilting and heavy-handed. I’m a queer, trans person of mixed-race experience who has survived physical, verbal, and emotional violence, not only from intimate partners, but from strangers as well. I don’t want to sanitize my story with too many warnings. It is simple enough to say that the re-telling of these events might be most traumatic for me, and it is my hope that these words might be held carefully in a community invested in thinking about all forms of violence experienced by its members, difficult as that task may be.

I was in a relationship with a queer, self-identified femme woman. During the course of our relationship, there were many warning signs that I chose to ignore or push back against. Verbal mistreatment via name-calling and other insults. My hormonal transition began during this relationship – before I knew it, my body had become a battleground and a perceived betrayal. What I had not realized is that this self-proclaimed feminist partner of mine had chosen to hide from her own intense experiences of sexism by choosing queer partners, seeking solace from interactions with men in pursuit of her belief that sexism ended where her relationships with men did. What we often fail to see is that the internalized sexism we learn, as both women and trans people, comes with us wherever we go and we have the imperative to work through it in ways that don’t perpetuate cycles of violence. As my body began to change as a result of testosterone injections, I became the target of her rage. My body was beginning to scare her, in appearance and strength. As I was gaining confidence, I was able to stand up for myself in arguments in ways I had not before, which was written off as me aspiring to oppressive male privilege, ignoring that my identification with “male” was minimal and fraught. Frustrations mounted and her attacks shifted from verbal to psychological to physical, overlapping and reinforcing one another. Through this all, I refused physical retaliation.

The vulnerabilities I had expressed before I chose to transition and those I experienced early on were used against me in unfathomable ways. I was told that as a genderqueer-presenting person, I was more attractive as a partner, and that she had “the best of both worlds,” but now that I was more male-presenting, she was “doubly screwed” because she 1) could not push back against me like she would a cisgender male partner and 2) she had to take my experiences as a trans person seriously, and she did not want to have to do that. Another variable in this dynamic was race; my former parter was a white, feminist, queer, femme woman. When the physical violence and psychological abuse became too much for me to handle, I sought help from friends we shared as a couple. These friends were also a couple – a couple of color, composed of a queer woman and a mostly-straight man.

I now know that how they responded to my pleas for help are couched in reductive thinking about gender and race. These friends did not believe me, which fed into a pre-existing narrative that male or masculine people cannot be victims/survivors of IPV, a trope that proliferates in the professional literature on and responses to IPV. Additionally, within social categories, white women are often viewed as the least violent, where as men or masculine people of color are readily assumed to be the perpetrators of violence, especially violence against white women. My status as a queer and trans person did not come into the equation. These friends, rather than keeping my confidence, threatened to tell my partner that I was reaching out for help, putting me once again in harm’s way, as I feared retaliation for breaking my own isolation.

It brings me an immense sense of gratitude that I was able to reach out to other people outside of my immediate circle, acquaintances who came to my aid and helped me feel empowered to make the choices that I needed to keep myself safe, physically and psychologically. I also know that because of the particularities of my circumstances, I was very lucky to receive that support. Many male or masculine-presenting queer people and people of color rarely seek out or receive resources and support when experiencing IPV. A dominant narrative that only women and feminine-presenting people can experience this form of violence has seeped into queer and trans spaces as well; most organizations are not trained or set up to respond to these groups of people.

Here I return to my initial statement about refusing the trope of “Masculinity is privileged/Femininity is denigrated” - this understanding of gender dangerously invisibilizes the struggle of many trans masculine people, especially people of color. The ways that trans feminine people experience violence and discrimination can often look very different than the way trans masculine people experience discrimination. I also must admit the messiness of the categories, and that not all people who identify as a trans woman/MTF experience themselves as feminine, just as not an people who identify as a trans man/FTM experience themselves as masculine. Though this topic warrants its own in-depth analysis, I will say here that our cultural fixation on policing the gender of those who are male or are deemed as 'supposed’ to be male (trans women) is so intense and violent, and this fixation also allows for increased political visibility, media attention, and support for academic inquiry. People who are on a trans masculine spectrum are largely missing from the public eye, especially trans masculine people of color. We need to cultivate much richer horizontal alliances across trans communities, where those who do not experience violent targeting speak up on behalf of those who do, just as those who receive more attention can also be sure to bring up the concerns of those community members who are less visible. These alliances must cross both lines of gender, as well as race.

It is also my hope that non-trans queers can support these relationships within trans communities without imposing binaries and hierarchies on our experiences. We all need support in thinking through the complexity of our realities, and telling marginalized communities to be silent simply because they are masculine-presenting is immensely harmful, as well as violently reductive. The ways that I have experienced myself as a masculine trans person is incredibly different from other presentations of masculinity. How I have struggled to be entitled to my gender presentation warrants thoughtful reflection instead of knee-jerk criticism. I acknowledge the ways that I move through the world in certain moments with increased ease, as my own feminist imperative; I also know that I am a short transgender man of color with no interest in engaging in certain politics of masculinity. In many contexts, masculinity is not the only vector of analysis that can account for how I will be privileged or not.

I want to thank people for reading, and to give my apologies for not writing about this topic in a way that is more beautiful or literary. It has taken me three years to find even these meager words and I’ve avoided recounting my experience in a more public forum precisely because of the way words feel inadequate and lifeless when discussing my experiences of violence. Coping looks catatonic in this moment, but is hopefully not entirely in vain. Perhaps avoiding more robust language is a retreat from expectation, a distancing of myself from the need to make an experience presentable or palatable by turning it into something beautiful. I am committed to continuing this conversation as a community member as well as a scholar – currently, I’m pursuing academic research into the ways that transgender people have been represented across time in scientific and social research in order to better understand both the current predicament we often find ourselves in, as well as the ways binary gender often goes unquestioned even through confrontations with people who defy easy categorization.

I bring forward this conversation in hopes that it can continue and to provide a framework for addressing these issues (sexism, racism, alliance, hierarchies, legitimacy, IPV, queerness, etc.) with a little more thoughtfulness and compassion, and to practice a refusal of easy directions and analysis when it comes to building alliances across difference. There are many queer communities of color grappling with these important questions of how to be in relation to one another and support one another, and I can only hope that this adds something useful to those discussions.  

For questions/comments, please email me at [email protected]

[queerlyplaced]

Not totally sure what to say about this but it seems like part of a larger conversation about how someone with an objectively more marginalized identity can still be abusive toward a partner with a more privileged identity. It happened to me too.