{"id":53445,"date":"2012-02-18T15:00:12","date_gmt":"2012-02-18T20:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=53445"},"modified":"2012-02-17T12:43:42","modified_gmt":"2012-02-17T17:43:42","slug":"do-you-know-how-revolutionary-you-are","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/polyamory\/do-you-know-how-revolutionary-you-are\/","title":{"rendered":"Do You Know How Revolutionary You Are?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Maria Padhila<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Poly Living 2012 conference was being held at a fairly nondescript chain hotel outside Philadelphia. Mostly, you couldn\u2019t tell the polyamorists from the rest of the hotel guests without looking for the lanyard and the name badge. Occasionally, there was someone with distinctive clothing or hairstyle or jewelry — oh, wait, there was one kilt — but mostly? We looked like the people next door. The people you\u2019d see on a casual day at work, or at the grocery store, or at the caf\u00e9 or the chain restaurant down the street. At the WalMart, even. No one hanging all over each other, no tongue kissing in the elevators. No conspicuous display of lingerie.<\/p>\n

\"Poly
Poly Paradise at Burning Man. Photo by Eric.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And this is what knocks me out every time. Because we\u2019re not all that special. Not all that different. A bunch of Clark Kents, we are. <\/p>\n

Because then, someone would open his or her mouth, and I\u2019d think: Superman. (Or Wonder Woman. Or something in between.)<\/p>\n

As I was reminded in several presentations, the three most important things about polyamory are communication, communication and communication. That\u2019s where the polyamorists start to look different. If you\u2019re deep enough into it that you\u2019re coming to an event like that, you\u2019ve got your masters or maybe your doctorate in communicating. I myself am not there yet; not in public, anyway. I can do it somewhat in writing. But this was amazing to see and hear. People would talk freely about all the things we have always been told not to talk about: sex, love, conflict, the problems with marriage and relationships and coupling, and also, the joys. What they love, who they love, and what they love about who they love.<\/p>\n

How often do you hear people relate stories about how someone has loved them? Or how they love someone? How often do you talk about what you do for others, what you do for yourself, what you\u2019re willing to do for others or yourself, and what you\u2019re not? How often do people articulate what they want in a relationship, beyond the online dating level of ‘I enjoy a sense of humor and good coffee’? <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

And here\u2019s another revolutionary act: None of us looked like models, or people who would be invited to Hefner\u2019s Mansion, or even ‘reality TV’ stars. Yet there was no question, not even a bit of doubt, that everyone there was fully entitled to be a sexual being, a romantic being, a loving being. This, at the same time that the ‘real world’ tells us all that unless you look a certain way, the pleasures of love and sex cannot belong to you. It\u2019s as if such self-effacement, wished on us by the crushing force of every unavoidable form of marketing, had simply never occurred to these people. <\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want to sprain my arm back-patting ‘the poly community’. I\u2019m not even sure if there is such a thing, or if I belong to it, outsider that I often am. But I have to give these people props.<\/p>\n

At the same time that the most dissociative, disconnected conversations were taking place on the public stage, these people were doing the hard work of saying something honest. <\/p>\n

As politicians were trading carefully crafted and well-memorized sound bites, they were struggling for ways to express never-before heard emotional states and stories from a realm no one is coached or trained to speak of. <\/p>\n

As the TV above the bar squawked with male politicians and pundits bickering about how yet again to rule, order, hurt and restrain women\u2019s liberty and their bodies, I heard men speaking thoughtfully and deliberately about how they believed that women were people, were free to do as they pleased, and how they managed their own emotions so that they wouldn\u2019t stand in the way of that freedom. I heard men speaking with love.<\/p>\n

I know polyamorists don\u2019t own the field in communication. I know there are just as many honest conversations going on tonight, as I try to express this, between friends, between monogamous couples, between a person and the page, even. But I need to take a moment to tell you how struck I was over that weekend, listening to men and women alike. They told about the times they\u2019d been heartbroken and disappointed, and they told about their happiest times, and how for many, this was the happiest time, right here, right now. They talked about the efforts to listen and to respect others, even when what they were saying and doing conflicted with what they wanted for themselves. <\/p>\n

Why are they revolutionaries? Why is talk and action like this as strange and uncommon as these people\u2019s sneakers and sweaters were ordinary? Why are you, reading this, considered the odd one because you speak of your heart and spirit? <\/p>\n

Why, when the truth is that you and me, we\u2019re just like everyone else?<\/p>\n

The politicians talk about \u201cthe people,\u201d \u201cthe middle-class,\u201d \u201cordinary people,\u201d and, the worst of all, the \u201creal Americans.\u201d To me, the people at the polyamory convention are real. They\u2019re ordinary. They\u2019re working, they\u2019re voting, they\u2019re taking care of families. We may be the one percent of love, but we\u2019re the 99 percent when it comes to everything else. Who are these politicians talking to, if not to us?<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve been weaving through my own polyamory path, I\u2019ve held onto the thread of a deep truth, something I believe without knowing why: There are no ordinary relationships. The marriage ideal being sold today is being sold for a reason; it hasn\u2019t worked for at least as many as it has worked for, and it hasn\u2019t always been this way. People have found all sorts of designs for living to suit themselves and the ones they love. <\/p>\n

In fact, Loving More, which puts on the Poly Living conference, is doing a survey of attitudes and realities about relationships. It\u2019s fast and confidential. All the information, including who is collecting the data and why, is here<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The strenuous denial of this reality by politicians and marketing leave me feeling as if I\u2019m being gaslighted<\/a> on a grand scale. And I needed the reality of these revolutionaries — much like the people who read this website — to ground me again. <\/p>\n

I\u2019ll write more about people from the conference in coming weeks; I\u2019m waiting for permission for some materials and quotes. Being a polyamorist isn\u2019t a full-time job for anyone (it just feels that way sometimes), so sometimes things take a little longer. <\/p>\n

But I really wanted to get across to you some of the reality I encountered, and how grateful I am to interact with what\u2019s real. And revolutionary. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Maria Padhila The Poly Living 2012 conference was being held at a fairly nondescript chain hotel outside Philadelphia. Mostly, you couldn\u2019t tell the polyamorists from the rest of the hotel guests without looking for the lanyard and the name badge. Occasionally, there was someone with distinctive clothing or hairstyle or jewelry — oh, wait, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7221,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53445"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53445\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}