{"id":66478,"date":"2013-04-27T15:00:32","date_gmt":"2013-04-27T19:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=66478"},"modified":"2013-04-26T12:45:29","modified_gmt":"2013-04-26T16:45:29","slug":"its-nice-not-to-be-a-special-snowflake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/polyamory\/its-nice-not-to-be-a-special-snowflake\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s Nice Not to Be a Special Snowflake"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

So I\u2019m poking around on the Internets, waiting for the conference call to start, and since it\u2019s a Monday morning I check out the always fine Molly Lambert Mad Men recap on Grantland<\/a>. If you don\u2019t know this U.S. TV show, it\u2019s a drama about the advertising business in the 1960s (and a great look at how it grew into a monster that got us into this mess, if you ask me). <\/p>\n

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

I\u2019m reading about ketchup and Dante\u2019s Inferno<\/em> and that handsome Don Draper, the lead character, who\u2019s always catting around:<\/p>\n

Don thinks sexual liberation means a traditional marriage with extracurriculars behind closed doors, and only for the man. His values may have been somewhat avant-garde (\u2018European\u2019) in the buttoned-up \u201950s and early \u201960s, but they’re totally retro with regard to feminism and free love, doomed to put him entirely out of step with the forthcoming sexual revolution. … Don would hate polyamory because he gets all of his deviant kicks from lying.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ha-ha, yeah, you can say that agai<\/em>n, I\u2019m thinking. He\u2019s been such a jerk this season, with not wanting his wife to work, and not supporting the women at the agency even as little as he did in the past seasons<\/em> —<\/p>\n

Wait.<\/p>\n

Just one minute, there.<\/p>\n

Did you see it, too? OK. And first, let me tell you that Lambert is a sort of mainstream writer. I even looked her up to make completely sure that she hadn\u2019t done a book on poly or something and I\u2019d missed it.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Nope. It was just an offhand reference. An offhand, appropriate reference. An offhand, appropriate, CORRECT reference to polyamory. A reference that GETS IT. But made completely casually. Without lots of explanations and definitions. Made, I could assume, in a manner that assumes the readers get it, too. <\/p>\n

This is what I\u2019ve been looking for. And it happened so fast!<\/p>\n

Granted, Grantland is kind of liberal and progressive and the kind of place that would pride itself on being up on things. But still. <\/p>\n

She got it. Polyamory isn\u2019t about lying. Polyamory is about being honest. People who go around lying to partners are getting \u201cdeviant kicks.\u201d The polyamorists aren\u2019t being called deviant. The character who is lying to everyone is.<\/p>\n

Oh, my. How did this happen?<\/p>\n

An answer was ventured by Alan P, who writes the Poly in the News blog, in his keynote speech at the Atlanta Poly Weekend in March. I read the full transcript here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is worlds away from how the media used to be toward the poly vision, on TV especially. They really didn\u2019t used to have a clue what it was, or how to treat it other than as a joke or something to pretend to be shocked by. They still don\u2019t always think it\u2019s a good idea, but at least they usually get it now. …<\/p>\n

Here is something I saw change in just 2 1\/2 years. You remember the flap a year ago over Newt Gingrich demanding from his wife that they have an open marriage. Unlike previous<\/em> cheating-politician scandals, that event became a vehicle for lots of major media attention to good open and poly relationships, contrasting with how Gingrich did it. There were profiles of people doing multiple relationships well, and articles on how to make them work with honesty and close communication and compassion and respect, in the New York Times<\/em> (twice), the BBC, USA Today<\/em>, many others.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Words I never thought I\u2019d write: Bless your heart, Newt Gingrich. <\/p>\n

Alan goes on to make a far more powerful point about polyamory and opening up sustainable ways of living into the future that\u2019s pretty provocative. Maybe later. Today, I\u2019m just interested in how fast this changed. How quickly people got it. And how many of them got it right.<\/p>\n

It looked fast, but it was the result of a painstaking and painful process of culture change: people who were willing to go out there and be seen and heard, and those same people either making mistakes in getting off-message or being misconstrued or badly edited, and then getting criticized by other polyamorists or queers or fundamentalist Christians and then learning from that and getting back out there again.<\/p>\n

It came from poly people being willing to talk to each other and learn from other groups about how you do this thing of shaping identity and presenting a self that is both real and projects the messages you want it to. The Polyamory Media Association<\/a> will even give free training in dealing with the media and provides contacts who can interview or be spokespeople.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a very tough thing to do, this self-shaping and self-presentation. In my other life, it\u2019s part of what I do, and it\u2019s hard enough when it\u2019s an organization or work-related thing. When it\u2019s your self that\u2019s presented as a media identity, you risk feeling like a cipher, like a Don Draper, unable to see who you are. On the other side, it can be freeing and liberating to be your authentic self, explaining yourself and your life to the public realm.<\/p>\n

Activist Sierra Black describes that creepy feeling in her blog post<\/a> about being on a segment of the US news program, 20\/20, on polyamory:<\/p>\n

So it turns out my mom likes my girlfriend and my kids are fine and the neighbors don’t care what I do as long as I trim my forsythia and shovel the snow. And it’s great to be given a huge media platform to bust some of these harmful myths about polyamory and show off the good thing I have going.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, the media isn’t simply holding up a mirror to the reality of polyamory. They’re shaping the cultural perception of what polyamory is and who does it by carefully choosing the stories they tell.<\/p>\n

In real life\u2026I hate rules and hierarchies. I’m queer as f**k and also a big slut.<\/p>\n

Good luck figuring any of that out from TV. TV makes it look like I have A Husband and A Boyfriend and A Girlfriend (in that order), not a spectrum of relationships with different friends and lovers and partners. There’s no sex in my TV relationships. On TV, I never worry about money. My husband’s Latin American background is erased, as is his complex queer identity.<\/p>\n

So the problem as I see it isn’t that the media is cleverly choosing people who do poly a certain way and depicting their lives. In my case, at least, it’s that the media is cleverly misrepresenting my life to fit a certain model.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While I always have a problem with the characterization of The Media as a monolith — it\u2019s a plural noun for a reason, and there are many, many good journalists out there — I empathize with her frustration in feeling that her life was shaped and manipulated. (Isn\u2019t it amazing how even the \u201cpoor\u201d people on TV have nice houses and clothes? And ethnic identity vanishes, unless it\u2019s part of a stereotypical character.)<\/p>\n

The only responses I could come up with are to be glad if at least it is being manipulated in one or more of the directions you\u2019d like it to be, be glad if none of the messages are negative or evil; keep it together in the face of criticism from your community; and grow your own. Your own compelling video, show, or memoir will show You just the way you want You to be seen. You\u2019ll also learn even more about who You is. This is one of the reasons I support the blogs, shows and other presentations and publications on polyamory. DIY is the way. No one may listen or view, but you\u2019ll have control of the presentation. <\/p>\n

Years ago — in the last century — I was part of a group of witches and pagans that did this kind of work. We visited Congress and we prepared news releases and media fact sheets and we made ourselves available for interviews. By the third annual gathering we held, well, being a witch or pagan just wasn\u2019t that big a deal anymore. Most people got that it was just another spiritual path. There are always little blurps and bubbles of bigotry, largely from the Bible belt bulge area. But most people get it. It\u2019s not really a story anymore.<\/p>\n

There were still those who wanted to put us in big black witch hats every Halloween — and some of us obliged. Because really, why not have some fun with it? Play with the images people foist on you instead of fighting them (and sometimes, in the process, making them stronger). I\u2019m a big believer in this ninja-double-reverse strategy. <\/p>\n

Getting to normal was a little scary. You get laughed at and mistrusted and looked at like a weirdo. You worry about your job, your family. But you keep smiling, you keep your manners and your wits about you, and you stay sane, and someday, the reward is that you\u2019re just not that special anymore. Thank goodness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Maria Padhila So I\u2019m poking around on the Internets, waiting for the conference call to start, and since it\u2019s a Monday morning I check out the always fine Molly Lambert Mad Men recap on Grantland. If you don\u2019t know this U.S. TV show, it\u2019s a drama about the advertising business in the 1960s (and … 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\/66478"}],"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=66478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66478\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}