By Maria Padhila
I try really hard to avoid reaching for the ice cream. It ends up making me sick and hormonal, but it’s always in the house, because everyone else can eat it. I’ve reduced the chips, the other trigger food, to an organic quinoa and flax version, but you know, if they’re going to eat ice cream, they might as well have the real thing. And I shouldn’t ever have it at all. But when I’m at home working and I run across something that makes me feel really nervous, it’s like my brain runs through an algorithm — smoke? drink? pill? ice cream? — of alleged stress-reduction substances (that really only serve to make things worse, as you and I know very well).
Most of the time, I hear my brain turning over the cards and smile and tell it to cut that shit out and then I get on with life. But the other day I hit a perfect storm, and was two spoonfuls through the acai sorbet before I realized what I was doing. Here’s what happened:
I was reading through a litany of abuse and nastiness that came after a perfectly nice woman posted a perfectly nice narrative about her ordinary poly family. Then an email came across about a major business development that could affect Isaac’s job. Then a message from a friend who is childless by choice about all the nasty comments on a Time magazine article about people who choose not to have children. Then a post came across Facebook from another poly writer and activist saying she had been quoted and used as a source in a major Washington publication.
Put down the spoon and walk away from the freezer. Let’s unwrap this particular quad of danger:
• Angi Becker Stevens wrote a first-person narrative for Salon that they headlined “My Two Husbands,” in which she talked about the ordinariness of her poly life. She also reported what her guys and her daughter had to say. The comments are reaching 500, and many are horrifying, insulting, threatening, and grotesque, and reveal a shockingly low level of reading comprehension and writing skills.