{"id":69439,"date":"2013-08-17T13:57:52","date_gmt":"2013-08-17T17:57:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=69439"},"modified":"2013-08-24T21:00:52","modified_gmt":"2013-08-25T01:00:52","slug":"too-many-bananas-in-this-bunch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/polyamory\/too-many-bananas-in-this-bunch\/","title":{"rendered":"Too Many Bananas in This Bunch"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

It is the last day of vacation, and we\u2019re down to the last banana. This is a miracle of timing and targeted consumption, because I managed to get way too many bananas, for which Isaac has been teasing me all week. \u201cHeh heh, why don\u2019t you eat another banana? Oh, you already had one banana this morning?\u201d etc., in his best Beavis and Butthead style.<\/p>\n

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

So this is why you\u2019re getting a random bunch of bananas this week.<\/p>\n

First, the Showtime poly show, Married and Dating<\/em>, is back for another season. In the quad, Jen, is always the black sheep, the one who asks questions and pushes the group; I\u2019ve got a soft spot for her — well, she\u2019s dating a mono guy. This synopsis on Gawker<\/a> is remarkable for its combination of empathy and critical eye. Here\u2019s a chunk:<\/p>\n

What “Polyamory” captures so precisely is the joy of talking about sex — the great American pastime of sitting down with friends (or lovers) and unpacking whatever crazy relationship situation you find yourself in at any given moment.<\/p>\n

There’s a particular exhilaration when it comes to polyamory because there’s no normative model, nor could there be. The complex interplay of feelings and comfort levels expands and alters as more people are added to the mix. A new consensus dictates new rules. And even as you determine how everything fits in the first place, you find yourself relating to society hand-in-hand-in-hand — a different way of presenting all together.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This points to why I\u2019m not a fan of the \u201caw, shucks, we\u2019re just as boring as any other relationship\u201d model of sharing stories. I happen to think no one has a boring relationship, even those whose primary relationship is with themselves (i.e., all of us). It\u2019s interesting! Why not talk about it? Beats the hell out of talking about weapons systems. And I\u2019ve got the same reply to those who have the comeback about \u201coh, polyamory, it\u2019s all about the drama.\u201d So almost 50 years of network TV soap operas about straight mono couples (I\u2019m dating that to the debut of Peyton Place<\/em>, 1964), that wasn\u2019t too much drama, oh no. <\/p>\n

We look at other people\u2019s relationships from the outside and point to the elements that bother us, never seeing those in our own. I\u2019m guilty of this, always dragging out the lesbian second-date joke (what does she bring on the second-date? A U-Haul) to snark over friends\u2019 lesbian drama, without for a minute stopping to remember all the straight couples who have declared love-at-first-sight-I-can\u2019t-live-another-day-without-you and changed their lives accordingly, for better or worse (so to speak).<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s the impulse behind the HBO documentary, Americans in Bed<\/em><\/a>. This show also looks at a poly\/mono couple. I am so glad to see this kind of relationship getting some attention and traction. People who have questions about poly always bring this type of relationship up, and it\u2019s pretty common. But many of the official spokespeople don\u2019t like to address it, because the general public can only conceive it as a situation where the mono partner is being walked on and the poly partner is wild and free. Nobody is going to say the combination is easy, but it\u2019s there and it gets negotiated in a lot more diverse ways than the general narratives would admit. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m thinking about one couple I know; she must always explore and can\u2019t be happy with one relationship and is also a fighter in the marketplace, bringing home the soy bacon and then some. He is by no means a wimp — you\u2019d believe me if you saw him — but his calling is to be a father and to take care of the home. To follow that calling takes a lot of bravery and sacrifice. Both are doing what they want and what is good for their children, thanks. But the message from both the mono and the poly community is that \u201cthese things never work.\u201d I\u2019d humbly ask everyone to back off a bit and give people a chance — you may be wonderfully surprised. <\/p>\n

Which brings me to another thing that appears to be driving some people bananas. It\u2019s an essay on Good Men Project<\/a> by blogger Ferret Steinmetz. <\/p>\n

He also writes and presents about poly and kink<\/a>, and has had various accusations of various things leveled at him, but what I\u2019ve always noticed in his writing (in addition to its readability) is his ability to put himself in someone else\u2019s shoes (probably what makes him a prolific fiction writer as well). His essay \u201cDear Daughter, I hope you have awesome sex\u201d went viral recently. <\/p>\n

The gist is that he\u2019s tired of the whole \u201cI\u2019m gonna lock her in a room til she\u2019s 80 and no dirty man will ever touch her\u201d meme. I hate it, too. I don\u2019t hate men. I don\u2019t think teaching offspring that any sector of the human race should be written off (by virtue of a physical characteristic or two or three) benefits them in any way. In fact, friends who were raised as racists have said this is abusive, and I don\u2019t disagree. <\/p>\n

Yeah, OK, you\u2019re making a joke. Except you\u2019re not. You\u2019re denying your daughter agency and independent thought. What\u2019s next, an arranged marriage? <\/p>\n

The comments, of course, are either congratulatory or make the immediate leap — maybe in this case, call it a stumble — into accusing Steinmetz of ignoring his duty to protect his daughter from abuse and disease. I have to wonder why these people assume he has not provided for his daughter\u2019s education about her own body. (The question of why people assume that anyone who has any kind of sex will immediately be diseased forever and pregnant — also probably with welfare-sucking twins — is one I will never solve, alas.) <\/p>\n

There were a couple of comments to the effect that \u201cthe ones who think men are so bad are probably the same ones who have used and treated women badly. They think everyone else is just like them.\u201d Huzzah!<\/p>\n

The column is meaningful to me because I\u2019m taking something of the same approach. Though we\u2019re gradually going into biology and details, my major message to my daughter is \u201cdon\u2019t do anything regarding your body or heart that you do not completely enjoy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because she\u2019s not going to completely enjoy anything if she knows she\u2019s taking a risk with her health or a risk of creating a being. She\u2019s not going to enjoy it if she\u2019s nauseated from drinking (we\u2019ve talked about this a lot, too, and she\u2019s got my genes, and I\u2019m miss half-a-glass-goner). She\u2019s not going to enjoy it if it\u2019s in a furtive location (until she\u2019s older and wants to play around that way with someone she trusts) with a dangerous person. <\/p>\n

But I must now point out the obvious, as Steinmetz did: she\u2019s a human. She\u2019s not my property. Raising a child does not mean that child is your property.<\/p>\n

And about that \u201cnot protecting her from abuse\u201d thing? Wow. You\u2019d think these people had never encountered the fact that rape and abuse are crimes of violence that are the fault of the criminal and have less than nothing to do with whether a person who is a victim of these crimes has sex, enjoys sex, or does not have sex. I\u2019m tearing my hair out here, guys. And my hair costs a lot of money. So get a clue and help me stop.<\/p>\n

Steinmetz himself addresses the question of how his daughters are doing<\/a> in a later post. Because the concern people show for other people\u2019s children on the internets is so touching. Until it comes to putting some of their taxes into child health care or free school meals or food stamps. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Maria Padhila It is the last day of vacation, and we\u2019re down to the last banana. This is a miracle of timing and targeted consumption, because I managed to get way too many bananas, for which Isaac has been teasing me all week. \u201cHeh heh, why don\u2019t you eat another banana? Oh, you already … 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\/69439"}],"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=69439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69439\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}