{"id":53777,"date":"2012-02-25T15:00:56","date_gmt":"2012-02-25T20:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=53777"},"modified":"2012-02-25T13:19:48","modified_gmt":"2012-02-25T18:19:48","slug":"i-cant-believe-it-either","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/polyamory\/i-cant-believe-it-either\/","title":{"rendered":"I Can\u2019t Believe It, Either"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Are you part of the huge crowd who\u2019s been going around saying ‘I can\u2019t believe it\u2019s 2012 and we\u2019re still talking about contraception’? I\u2019m one of them, too. But on further thought, I realize what I can\u2019t believe is that we believe we\u2019re talking about contraception, when what we\u2019re really talking about is control.<\/p>\n

And I don\u2019t mean birth control. I mean woman control. <\/p>\n

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

When a woman has control over whether she gets pregnant or has to worry about getting sick, she gains a lot of freedom. One way to gain this freedom is through abstaining from sex with men. Another is to use birth control and disease control. This means being honest to yourself and to partners that you are having sex for reasons other than reproduction. Those who want to control contraception want to control women\u2019s freedom and everyone\u2019s pleasure.<\/p>\n

What this has to do with polyamory is that this relationship form is impossible to live out without using birth control, which can also in some cases be disease control. What this has to do with it is that this life can\u2019t be lived honestly without being up-front about having sex for pleasure.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s pretty much acknowledged that in polyamory, women have a lot more control over the relationships and the choices than men do. I don\u2019t know if this is right or fair; it\u2019s just how it works out in America, at least. Women, particularly bisexual ones, tend to call the shots. But without access to birth control, there goes that freedom.<\/p>\n

I actually think that people who are poly would find a way to make this work — that the men would open up even more, that there would be more acceptance about people with different diseases, and that people would become less concerned about whose DNA is in whose baby and just raise the kids. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But I\u2019d rather not test my theories. I\u2019d rather have the same or more access to reproductive and disease control.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m afraid; of course I\u2019m afraid. I\u2019m afraid when someone (Rick Santorum) who could be our next president says things like contraception is \u201ca license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.\u201d I\u2019ve read The Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/em>. I know that for many women in the world, what they can\u2019t believe is that I\u2019m allowed to walk into a drugstore and buy a condom, much less that I still have a clitoris. Of course I\u2019m afraid that we\u2019ll end up with a repressive religious rule making the calls on every move a woman might make. I can\u2019t believe that so many don\u2019t realize we\u2019re already there.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m hearing voices I can\u2019t believe, ones that say ‘oh, you\u2019re just mad because you might not be able to do all those sex things you people want to do all the time’.<\/p>\n

Well, yeah. And what would be wrong with that, exactly? I\u2019m actually in polyamory for the love, not so much the sex. I love romance and being really close and sharing deep cosmic feelings and having someone I can whisper jokes to. But even if I were into it only for lots of sex, what the hell is wrong with that?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t believe condoms are disease eradication, by the way. I said disease control. I can\u2019t believe I\u2019m still answering the same questions about diseases and children and it\u2019s been a year. I can\u2019t believe there aren\u2019t longtime poly people who have stopped being poly just so they don\u2019t have to listen to that question anymore. <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how it works. Poly people have boundaries and make rules. One of these is often called \u201cfluid bonding,\u201d meaning there are only certain people with whom you exchange certain bodily fluids. (Some even draw lines about kissing.) My husband and I are fluid-bonded, for instance. Yes, I realize that doesn\u2019t keep you safe from everything (that\u2019s why they call it safer sex, not safe sex). Yes, I do realize there are other ways you can get a disease, but now we\u2019re starting to venture into killer toilet seat territory, and I can\u2019t believe there are still people out there who are still stuck in the urban legend version of public health. <\/p>\n

And if you break the rules? There are consequences. If you sneak around and break them, you\u2019ll lose the relationship. If you break them and tell the truth, there are other consequences. Just recently I heard the story from a woman whose husband was involved with another woman (who seemed like trouble for a lot of reasons — not respectful of the wife or the relationship) with whom he had unprotected sex. The wife almost ended the relationship, but these are people who work on relationships, and they didn\u2019t want to give up. But even given that, the reality of testing meant the husband wasn\u2019t going to have any sex at all of any kind with the wife until the six-months-clean-and-clear mark had passed. She wasn\u2019t playing around — literally or figuratively.<\/p>\n

This is also interesting in that it illustrates the difference between bringing home the reality that life has consequences vs. forcing shame and punishment. Most fairly sane people learn to do this with their kids. Forget your homework folder at school, and you\u2019ll have to stay in at recess the next day and do the homework you missed. That\u2019s a consequence. But you don\u2019t make your child stand on a chair with a sign around her neck that says \u201chomework forgetter\u201d until she\u2019s ready to drop (like something out of Jane Eyre<\/em>, my favorite book since I was a child). That\u2019s shaming (and sadistic).<\/p>\n

Have unprotected sex with someone random? Wait til you test clean before you come near my vagina again. That\u2019s a fair consequence. When a woman decides to get an abortion, she\u2019s facing the consequences of something that\u2019s either happened to her or something she\u2019s done. That\u2019s fair. She\u2019s handling things in the best way for her at that time, according to the laws of the land.<\/p>\n

But last week, Virginia — a state only aping other states, such as Mississippi, known for their intelligent, thoughtful and unbiased legislation — tried to push through a law requiring a woman to get a trans-vaginal ultrasound before having an abortion, so she would be sure to hear the heartbeat, see any movement, etc. So she\u2019ll really know what she\u2019s doing, because of course her pretty little slut brain couldn\u2019t ever comprehend the terrible enormity of what she\u2019s about to do. This is forcing shame and punishment.<\/p>\n

People force shame on their kids when they\u2019re too attached and see them as an extension of themselves — so if the child doesn\u2019t do everything right, he or she ‘needs’ to be shamed and punished. If you know you\u2019re an adult, it\u2019s not that big a deal if something goes wrong. This is not to say you never say no, or never get exasperated. But you\u2019re letting them get the consequences so they can learn from them. You never learn anything from shame, except that the shamer is weak. Using shame is a benefit to the shamer, not to anyone else. Shame is just an attempt to get control. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to go way out on this one: These people don\u2019t care about my immortal soul, or yours. Give me a break. They\u2019ve just got to fuck with someone so they\u2019ll be able to lose themselves for a few hours, or kid themselves into thinking they\u2019ve done something virtuous. And the control-trip is very hot, isn\u2019t it, friends? When you try to outlaw contraception, you\u2019re not doing it because you think it will make me a more moral person and begin to form a society of more liking to Jesus. If you wanted a society in imitation of Christ, you\u2019d imitate him better.<\/p>\n

Honey, you\u2019re just a deeply shamed person who\u2019s looking for someone to push all that bad baggage you\u2019re carrying onto. The worst of it is for me that I don\u2019t dare show any compassion for you, because we\u2019re in a war zone. <\/p>\n

(Go back a few pages in the blog with this link <\/a>to see what the ever-perceptive Fe Bongolan wrote about this issue earlier this week. She pointed out the truly sick responses among some of the law\u2019s supporters who said, basically, ‘well, if you\u2019re pregnant you\u2019ve had a dick in your vagina, so why should it be any big deal if you also put a probe and\/or the Commonwealth\u2019s entire house of delegates up there, too?’ I, too, find this has Inquisitional overtones.) <\/p>\n

The assumption is that a woman would have a medical procedure as casually and thoughtlessly as getting a latte, and that politicians, most without any scientific or medical knowledge and many without much education at all, are just the ones to set her straight.<\/p>\n

Activists helped get it killed by comparing the ultrasound procedure to rape and showing scary photos of the vaginal probe — in short, by showing the legislature the terrible enormity of what it was about to do. <\/p>\n

‘Virginia is for lovers’? Eh, not so much.<\/p>\n

But after looking at all the articles and commentary and video, I can\u2019t believe it was a true victory. I have this strange sense that they killed it for all the wrong reasons — which means we\u2019ll have to look at it again, just morphed into a different form.<\/p>\n

I think the turning point came because media and more kept showing that big dildo-looking thing and people kept using words like \u201cvaginal probe,\u201d \u201ctrans-vaginal,\u201d and \u201cvaginal penetration.\u201d I don\u2019t think backers backed off because they suddenly realized what they were forcing on women, either. I think they let the bill go because they couldn\u2019t stand having that picture and those words flashed around so often. I have an image of Virginia Republican men flinching every time the picture of the ultrasound \u201cwand\u201d came up or the word \u201cvaginal\u201d was spoken: Oh my god stop SAYING that! PLEASE! I\u2019ll do anything! It\u2019s so icky! Just shut up and I promise I\u2019ll withdraw the bill!<\/em><\/p>\n

They don\u2019t want to know the realities of medical procedures or of women\u2019s anatomy. The desire to shame women and to get a Kodak moment with the fetus is no match for having to think about something other than the dick god gave you penetrating a woman\u2019s vagina, not with the lights on. Though actually, in the many, many trans-vaginal sonograms I\u2019ve had (fibroids, tubal pregnancies, adhesions, ovarian cysts and more!), they\u2019ve always lowered the lights discreetly (because it\u2019s hard for them to read the screen otherwise).<\/p>\n

Through some kind of right-wing ninja triple reverse, they have backed off shaming women for having abortions and instead gotten most of us to buy in to being ashamed of having trans-vaginal sonograms. And women went into double-down denial, fiercely protesting as if someone accused them of having that thing put into them for fun. Joan Walsh of Salon, for instance, used the word \u201ccreepy\u201d twice in one article to describe the procedure, not the people trying to require it. It\u2019s like calling an appendix operation \u201ccreepy.\u201d Now waking up in a bathtub full of ice with a scar on your stomach, that\u2019s creepy — and that\u2019s the point. It\u2019s the lack of consent and necessity and the presence of ulterior motives that make it creepy.<\/p>\n

All the same, women were talking as if a medical procedure really only as uncomfortable as a Pap test is something that\u2019s going to ruin you for life. <\/p>\n

The intra-vaginal sonogram is not going to ruin your life. In fact, it has saved mine, twice. What\u2019s going to ruin all our lives is having someone who is not a doctor dictate medical procedures.<\/p>\n

Actually, this is already going on, with the commercial health insurance we have. They\u2019ll decide, for instance, that your depression should be treated with pills rather than therapy, because that\u2019s cheaper for them, even though cognitive behavioral therapy is the only evidence-based treatment that has been shown to work and most pills have been shown to be ineffective. <\/p>\n

Anyway, they said ‘shame’, and we said ‘vaginal’, and they said ‘OK we\u2019ll stop if you stop SAYING that WORD’. But I can\u2019t believe that tactic could work more than once or twice.<\/p>\n

I also can\u2019t believe that all this noise is really about birth control, or woman control, or sex control. When I look at the trans-vaginal ultrasound dildo, I see a flagpole, with a big false flag at the top. What are we missing while they\u2019ve got us distracted by waving that thing around?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Maria Padhila Are you part of the huge crowd who\u2019s been going around saying ‘I can\u2019t believe it\u2019s 2012 and we\u2019re still talking about contraception’? I\u2019m one of them, too. But on further thought, I realize what I can\u2019t believe is that we believe we\u2019re talking about contraception, when what we\u2019re really talking about … 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\/53777"}],"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=53777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53777\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}