PolyRoleModels: Thank you for coming out and participating with Poly Role Models. Would you like to introduce yourself?
Tracey Brown: Yes. I want to say thank you, first of all, for being flexible and being willing to do a video interview because of my beliefs. My name is Tracey Brown. I run the Queer Womin of Poly, Queer Womin of Color Poly on Facebook. It's a private group. I'm also a board member of REF, the Relationship Equality Foundation. I've spoken a few different times at Atlanta Poly Weekend and other conferences.
PolyRoleModels: Atlanta Poly Weekend is where I was lucky enough to meet you and make your acquaintance.
Tracey Brown: I know! Black actors!
PolyRoleModels: Black actors, man! All right. Let's get right to it. How long have you been polyamorous, or been practicing polyamory?
Tracey Brown: That's a really hard question for me. It depends on how you define how long have you been polyamorous. For me, personally, that's like asking me for how long I've been black. I've always been black, so I've always been poly. My poly identity is very tied to my black identity. If you want to say when I came out as polyamorous, I actually had a come out, go back in the closet, come out kind of experience, which I think a lot of people do.
When I was about 19, I got into my first really serious poly relationship. It was when I was an undergrad student at the University of Hawaii. That was, I had a very, unlike many people, healthy first relationship. In terms of me being poly, in general, I feel like my black identity and the decolonization process in which I go through personally, and with my community, I can't strip away my poly identity from that because people of color had been doing polyamory before we even started really talking about it in mainstream white culture.
Those two things, for me, are so tied together that when people ask me, "When did you come out as poly?", I'm always like, "Well, I'm black. Part of me reclaiming my blackness is, a part of that is reclaiming polyamory."
PolyRoleModels: All right. What does your relationship dynamic currently look like?
Tracey Brown: Right now, I have a lover. I have one lover. Then, I have kink and play partners. Then, I have a lot of very close, intimate friendships. Most of them non-sexual. I base my poly identity more off of what people would call, they call it relationship anarchy. I just call it like my life in the scene of The Color Purple, which I'll explain later. For me, that's my dynamic right now, is pretty much how it looks. I don't know. To say what my poly dynamic is, is also really hard. Again, it goes back to me being a queer poly woman of color, where I see my relationships as so deep and integral. Black women, especially in this country, have had very close intimate relationships with each other for a long time, and very intimate relationships. That's the way we've managed to survive. Most people would look at those relationships and define them as polyamorous, in modern-day times. For me, it's like, my relationship dynamic is, I have a lot of relationships because a lot of people I would include in my poly identity and in my poly network.
PolyRoleModels: What aspect of polyamory do you excel at?
Tracey Brown: I think that I don't like to really say that I excel at anything, really. As a person, as a human being, you don't really stop growing. If you say like, "Oh, I excel at something. I'm great at it. I'm awesome at it," you're kind of giving that attention that somehow you're finished growing. It's a lifelong journey in growing and learning. I wouldn't say that I excel at anything in particular. I always have more room to grow and learn.
The only insight I could really give to that is what other people have told me that I've had healthy relationships with. Most people tell me that they really appreciated me being, my intersectionality and my poly identity and communicating that. Also, connecting with people on multiple levels and not stripping away, not just looking at a person as, "Oh, you're just queer," or, you're just black, like looking at all the layers of a person and recognizing that that's going to be in every single moment of our interactions together. Anti-racism is going to be a part of our every single day. Anti-transphobia, all that stuff, is going to be in every form of our communication. From what I've gotten from other partners that they like that about me. They like that I'm constantly like, "We can't just talk about polyamory. We've got to talk about all of it. It's all interconnected. It's all, nothing is living inside of a vacuum."
PolyRoleModels: I feel that. I'm the same way. What aspect of polyamory do you struggle with, though?
Tracey Brown: Honestly, I would say I struggle with communicating my own needs and boundaries. I think part of that comes from me as a trauma survivor, but me as a person of color, especially a black woman, I have generational trauma, and being a black woman in this country. I've been, unfortunately, colonized to not speak my needs and my wants. Black women are kind of taught to be natural caregivers, forcibly or un-forcibly and a lot of emotional labor. I think that's something that I still struggle with in relationships, is that my automatic response is to kind of be like, "What will make you happy? What can I do to make you happy?" That's not healthy in a lot of ways. That means that I'll go back on something, or I'll just kind of go with that person once.
I try to work hard on that by doing a lot of mental health work, going to therapy, taking my medication, as a person with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and really pushing myself to overcome it as best that I can, and try to be better at expressing my needs and my boundaries. That can cause conflict in a relationship, when those things aren't made.
PolyRoleModels: The next question is, how do address or overcome those struggles. You kind of just answered that.
Tracey Brown: I mean, I can elaborate on it. I think that mental health is something that's not really talked about in a healthy way in the overall white poly community. I hear a lot of people say things like, "Oh, well. If you don't want to get involved with someone with mental health issues, that's fine. That's okay. That's your poly boundary." I've always pushed against that because I see it as all people of color have trauma. All people of color struggle with trauma and in a way have what's called Generational Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I don't want to be with somebody that's got a mental health issue is literally to say, I don't want to be with people of color. If you're going to be with a person of color, we're going to have some kind of strife and struggle and mental health stuff going on, even if we haven't had stereotypical trauma in our experience.
All that to say is that one of the ways that I try to go against that is; 1. Doing talks about it and bringing it up, bringing up mental health. Sometimes, fighting for something can be very healing in itself, fighting for that visibility. Then, also, doing a lot of digging into myself and looking at myself and being critical of myself and doing self-work. I'm all down for self-care, but self-work is supposed to be hard. You're supposed to struggle with it. It's not going to be pleasant. It's like when a baby grows some teeth. That hurts. You know, they're not happy about it, but they need those teeth to eat food. For me, it's like I'll push myself really hard to do that. Also, helping other QTPOC with those struggles of not letting themselves be oppressed in relationships where there are these complicated power dynamics.
PolyRoleModels: In terms of risk-aware, or safer sex, what do you and your partners do to protect one another?
Tracey Brown: I mean, currently, right now, stereotypically, I don't have a sexual, sexual partner. I mean, I have like a consistent sexual partner. Overall, my rules tend to be pretty much, I always wear gloves. I don't go down on anybody that I don't feel a really strong connection with. If I'm in a relationship with someone, and I start dating someone else, any sort of fluid bonding that happens, I'm always going to inform that person of that. I also try to make it a point between me and my partner to get tested every 6 months to a year. If we do have a new sexual partner, getting tested 3 months prior to the last sexual activity with that person. Most people don't realize that there's a 3 month window where even STIs aren't detected.
There's also a lot of mythology in the poly community, as well as the queer community that queer people, especially queer women, can't pass things onto each other. That's not true. We can pass bacterial vaginosis to each other, HPV, trich, gonorrhea, all those things could still be passed. For me, wearing protection like a glove and saying I'm not going to go down on you is respecting my body and respecting that person's body. Honestly, just having a lot of communication. For me, that's really the key of it.
Granted, I've been in abusive relationships. I was in a really abusive relationship with a narcissistic abuser. All those precautions kind of go out the window because you're dealing with somebody who's lying to you all the time. In general, that's what I try to do, is wear gloves, and be mindful of fluid bonding and when I have a partner that I'm fluid bonded with, if I see that I'm getting serious with somebody and want to fluid bond with them, I inform that person and we have a discussion about it.
PolyRoleModels: What is the worst mistake you've made in your polyamorous history, and how did you rebound from that?
Tracey Brown: The reality is, is that we all continually make mistakes. If you're in a place in your poly identity where you don't make mistakes anymore, you're a liar. We're always going to make mistakes. It's a human flaw and that's what we do. I would say that there have honestly been like multiple mistakes that I've made that I'm not proud of. I most definitely reflect on them daily. The one major one that I'll give was a few years back. I was already out as poly. I was in a relationship with someone who was pretty much monogamous. We were friends first. They knew I was poly and everything and we got involved. A lot of issues with their insecurities and stuff like that, of me being poly, came up. To remedy that, I decided to be like, "Okay. Well, we'll do a hierarchy. You can have veto power," even though I knew I was more a relationship anarchist, even though I knew that's not how I operated. I didn't want them to feel bad about themselves or that they were less than.
We fought and we had issues that were outside of polyamory, because sometimes, a lot of times relationships have issues that have nothing to do with being poly. Instead of dealing with them, I became resentful. Through my resentment I rushed into a relationship with someone that I barely knew, who actually wound up becoming, who was a narcissistic abuser. I actually wound up being in a narcissistically abusive relationship with them for like 3 years. The relationship started deteriorating. The new partner, who I barely knew, and my other partner were constantly fighting. It was like a tug of war between the two of them, a lot of passive-aggressive behaviors. Me, just not taking care of myself mental health-wise enough, and also not being brave enough to be like, "You know what? I'm just going to end it with both of y’all because this is not healthy for me. This isn't healthy for y’all."
Instead of me doing that, I just sat back and just was like, "Oh, shit. Oh, shit. It's burning and I don't know what to do. I probably should put water on it, but it's burning and I'm freaking out." Things just got progressively worse and worse and worse. Eventually, wind up happening was that I broke up with the original partner that I had. I did it in a really ugly and sad way, just really was like angry and upset with myself. I did it and I really, I had so many mixed feelings about it. I tried to make amends. I tried to fix things and communicate.
By this point, so much damage had been done. I was also in a relationship with two other women of color. They both had trauma. All of us had unchecked trauma. It was just like the perfect storm for shit to go wrong. The reality was, was that, looking back, it had little to do with polyamory and more to do with just the vicious dynamics that were happening, just people, me not being honest with myself and not being brave enough to stand up and be like, "Okay. This needs to stop and it's not okay," and just letting myself be a punk about it and not saying nothing. Also, letting someone who was a narcissistic abuser into the dynamic and just kind of freaking out and really letting myself down and letting my friends down. Like I said, I have really close emotional relationships with friends. It just kind of consistently deteriorated.
Even though I tried to be accountable and make amends for it, there was really nothing I could do to fix that, absolve that. The only thing I really could do was remind myself that I can't control the actions of others, but I could control my own actions. I think about it every day. I don't let myself forget that mistake. People will be like, "Oh, you've got to forgive yourself for the mistakes you made." I can hold them accountable for the mistake that they made, individually. The reality is I also have to be accountable for the huge mistakes that I made, and remind myself every day. "This is what you did wrong. This is how you were not being the person that you're supposed to hold yourself to." And look really hard and really aggressively into myself and going to therapy and being like, "I fucked up and this is what I did. I need to make sure that I never, ever do the behaviors I did, the things I could control, ever, ever again."
I don't think there's a rebound for something like that. I think the rebound is to, when you do a mistake, to never forget it and live the rest of your life analyzing it, picking it apart, and making sure you hold yourself accountable to your failed behaviors.
PolyRoleModels: I think that's a legit approach.
Tracey Brown: People might say that's really harsh. It's more effective, honestly, instead of saying like, "Oh, I'm innocent. Oh, I didn't do anything wrong." I was in an abusive relationship and I can easily say like that person was the abuser and I was the victim. I also have to look inside of myself of what let me keep this person in my life and what pain was I not dealing with to let this keep occurring. I just, honestly, there is no rebound from it. It's just, it's thinking about it every day, not letting myself forget it.
PolyRoleModels: All right. Now, the next question is about self-identities, but I feel like you answered that in every question.
Tracey Brown: Yes. I mean like queer, and then, for me, queer, I feel like I lack the words that I need because I speak the language of my oppressors. This language is limited. It is gender binary, it is sexually binary. It is so limited, that it unfortunately does not afford me the language that I need to express my truest identities. Using my oppressors' language, the only identities that I can kind of connect with are queer, which, again, I feel like as a black woman, that's just a part of my heritage. I just feel like that's just a part of my heritage, especially after so much research that I've done and so many things that I've read about, pre-colonial black culture and African cultures and stuff. For me being queer is also reclaiming parts of my black identity and taking that away from our oppressor. Homophobia, transphobia, all of those things were introduced by colonization. They did not exist prior to that, and those kind of hatreds.
Being black, for me, is like being part of the black diaspora, saying that like, I don't have a home, but I'm a part of a people that created a home inside of ourselves and as a community. I identify as a woman with an eye. So, W-O-M-I-N, which is also how I spell woman in my Queer or Poly Womin of Color group, is with an I. Part of that has to do with me rejecting the gender binary, that also came as a part of colonization and of white supremacy. Spelling it with a Y for me is like, again, it all goes back to reclaiming my black identity, reclaiming our black identity. Relationship anarchist, again. That's the best words I got with this language. I'm limited. I'm limited with this language.
PolyRoleModels: Yes. I know what you mean.
Tracey Brown: Those would be like probably the identities that are most important to me, in terms of what most people would ask you, like, "What are your identity." Obviously, as a black woman, I have multiple identities. I'm a sister. I'm a cousin. A brother to some people. I'm a comrade to others. There's so many layered identities just within the word black. There's 18 million identities. It would be like a long, long list.
PolyRoleModels: Wrapping up with, do you have any groups, websites, blogs, anything that you're involved in that you want to promote?
Tracey Brown: I think that it's really important to have more resources out there for queer or trans people of color. We're erased and left on the fringes in the poly community. There is this myth that most poly people are white. That is not true. That is a false myth. It's just that a lot of us may not necessarily call ourselves poly. With that in mind, I created a Facebook Group called Queer Poly Womin of Color it's spelled woman with an I. You can't look it up on Facebook. The group is only for queer women of color. We do have gender variant people in our group, again, spelled with an I. We have gender non-conforming people. We have people that are trans in our group, non-binary, androgynous and all the different genders that go in between that. It's a safe haven and support group, really, for women of color.
It's most definitely not a pick up group. For anybody that's looking at this, it's not a group to be like, "Oh, let's hook up." It's a group where we really share very deep, layered struggles that we're going through in order to get support from each other. I post videos on there pretty consistently about various different topics that the group brings us and asks me to talk about. I look and hunt for resources for the group. We really do talk about a lot of heavy, private things. It is a safe group. It is a private group. If you click join, you get vetted. I have to make, for the safety of the group, I'm very hardcore about the safety of the group. It's also to note, part of the reason it's not, it's against the group's rules to be hook up, is because of the historical sexualization of women of color. That's why it's an anti-hook up style group.
PolyRoleModels: Fair. Fair. Thank you, again, so much for taking the time and being a part of Poly Role Models.
Tracey Brown: All right. Yes. No problem.
PolyRoleModels: All right. Have a good night.
Tracey Brown: All right. You too.
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And Like even if I’m not personally attracted to them, but I’m talking abt when they admit they’re not feminist. I started asking men (boys) this, and smfh it just completely destroys my perspective of them. It’s sad too cause they usually had some potential, I mean I only talk to people I find interesting in some way. Smh
But ladies, please start asking guys this question more! !!!,
Saves sooOOOOOOOOO much time and energy so u can kick em to the curb quicker!,!,!!,!
