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Firstly, yay marriage equality! :)
Now, on to getting polyamorous marriages legalized...
Have you thought about the reasons why you feel insulted when someone asks to share sex with you?
I totally get it if one of the reasons is that they are asking in a rude or vulgar way, or if they are obviously making the bad assumption that being bisexual is the same as being a swinger. Or if you are in a social context where anyone making any kind of sexual invitation is inappropriate, like at work or in church. Those are very good reasons to be insulted. Nobody should be subject to that kind of thing in a professional environment, or in a place where it's obvious that they don't consent to be asked.
But, if you are in a social situation where it would be totally okay for a heterosexual man to politely ask a heterosexual woman to be intimate with him, **how is it actually different** for someone to ask a couple the same thing?
Monogamy is just not a safe or reasonable default assumption. It's cool if you are, but it's also cool if other people aren't. And no one automatically knows which you are without asking. If the reason you feel insulted is that you believe that everyone is supposed to be monogamous and that you expect it to be a default assumption about everyone's relationship, that may be worth some rethinking.
Speaking as someone who's been in an open relationship (not that I wound up taking advantage of it, but still)...I disagree. I basically disagree because asking a person in a monogamous relationship to have sex is generally considered rude in our current society, while not asking to have sex with someone is almost never rude.
If you're in a situation where you have two options, one of which is possibly extremely rude and the other of which is almost certainly not, I feel you should pretty generally go with the sure to be non-rude option.
Besides which, asking someone if they're in a monogamous relationship is way less rude than propositioning them...so why not lead with that? The only reason not to do it that way is if you assume they aren't monogamous. Which is a strange assumption in most contexts, and a bit offensive if it's assumed purely based on the couple's sexual orientations.
Now, if you have other legitimate reasons to believe the couple is in a non-monogamous relationship (like being at a swinger's club or something), well, that's another matter entirely, but in most social contexts the assumption should probably be that a couple might easily be either monogamous or might not, and if either's possible, propositioning them without ascertaining which is true is likely rude and should be avoided.
Theoretically, there could easily be a society where propositioning a monogamous couple wasn't considered rude...but that's definitely not the society we're in, and I'm not sure trying to make this society into that one is either appropriate or necessary.
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...Now on to employment discrimination.
And discrimination in banking, housing, education, homeless resources, medical services, etc. It's not over yet, not by a long shot, especially with the recent court and legislative decisions recognizing a businesses' and individuals' paramount right to "avoid violating their deeply held religious beliefs."
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Congrats to anyone here who planned to get married. Today was a good day for all.
Re: SCOTUS recognition of civil rights = civil rights for all
Congratulations on the recognition of rights you had, but were denied.
Blessed be!
I like the way Romaq put it... "the recognition of rights you had, but were denied." It's about time!
While I don't want to interrupt celebration with possible controversy, I really wanted to know what folks on this thread thought about Jennicet Gutiérrez heckling Obama about [LGBT] immigrants in detention centers. Justified? Inappropriate? What do you think? Also, how do you feel about how it was covered in major media and/or activists news sources?
Tanith, I don't mean to be disrespectful, or snarky; I certainly don't think you're doing it wrong, but I'm very curious as to how a marriage between multiple parters would function legally. Same sex marriage never required changing the legal function of marriage, where including multiple partners would. I'm thinking particularly of pre-nuptual agreements and divorce.
I'm not saying multiple partnership shouldn't be accorded legal status, but that I think one of the reasons same-sex marriage gained federal recognition was because it was simply including same sex couples in an existing legal status. Hell, don't ask me, maybe all I'm saying is that getting bigamy decriminalized is the first step.
I'm all for decriminalization of bigamy. The divorce racket needs to be ended.
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Wouldn't prenup agreements be the least complicated part? Contracts between more than two parties have been standard for centuries.
Polygamous marriage could be managed, legally, using the contract law that rules societies and organisations. What happens when three people combine their capital to form a threeway partnership, and years down the line, they decide to dissolve it? Or one of them wants out? Business law has dealt with these issues for years.
I like the way Romaq put it... "the recognition of rights you had, but were denied." It's about time!
While I don't want to interrupt celebration with possible controversy, I really wanted to know what folks on this thread thought about Jennicet Gutiérrez heckling Obama about [LGBT] immigrants in detention centers. Justified? Inappropriate? What do you think? Also, how do you feel about how it was covered in major media and/or activists news sources?
I haven't read the whole story, but how did someone illegally in the country get into the White House to heckle the President in the first place?
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Wouldn't prenup agreements be the least complicated part? Contracts between more than two parties have been standard for centuries.
Polygamous marriage could be managed, legally, using the contract law that rules societies and organisations. What happens when three people combine their capital to form a threeway partnership, and years down the line, they decide to dissolve it? Or one of them wants out? Business law has dealt with these issues for years.
I've never understood what makes it so difficult.
Are fractions other than 1/2 too difficult?
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While I'm not entirely disagreeing with what you're saying - social context is everything - it's just not a matter of "We're in 'MURICA, and everybody in THIS country is monogamous." That's really not going to be everyone's experience.
Well, no, of course it isn't. Hell, it's not even my experience in a lot of ways (a fair number of my friends are poly or in open relationships, actually, now that I consider it I think it's more than half of those in relationships)...but I'm also pretty sure that none of my poly friends get offended when they're not asked for sex or when they're asked whether they're monogamous. So...my suggestions harm nobody and help some people (those who might take the proposition wrong).
More than half of my friends are some flavor of poly, so the social norm in the culture I actually live in and experience day to day is that it is not insulting if someone asks politely if you are open to dating, sex or some form of intimate play. If you don't happen to be of a compatible gender or orientation, or aren't interested, or aren't poly, you say "naah, we're not down for that." No harm done, as long as the person asking was courteous and not creepy and totally respects your right to say no.
I have no issue with this, and that's fine in an existing social circle where the rules are pretty clear, but more generally, and when dealing with those outside that circle, I feel a certain amount of pre-checking the situation is both polite and warranted.
The folks I hang out with understand clearly that it would be no more appropriate to take these social norms out into mundane space than it would be to bring a platter of ham and lobster sandwiches to a bar mitzvah. It's the "when in Rome" thing. You don't proposition people or even ask their preferred gender pronouns and orientation at work or at a social event that is for Aunt Mabel's 70th birthday rather than for queer Pagan poly activists. You don't have to agree with other people's taboos in order to be appropriately respectful of their cultural traditions.
Right. To be honest, that's basically where I was going with this. Generally speaking, when dealing with people you don't already know well, there are certain societal norms that should be respected even if not agreed with.
I already live in a space where it doesn't matter what gender asks to share sex with what number of people of what orientation. That's my actual day to day social and cultural experience. We're all perfectly capable of respecting other people's taboos in places where it's polite to do so, but that doesn't mean their way is objectively right or better. Or that ours is. Ours looks weird to them, and theirs looks weird to us.
I agree entirely. My point was, more or less that asking someone who's in a monogamous relationship to have sex is sometimes rude, asking whether they're in a monogamous relationship is rarely rude, and not asking to have sex is almost never rude. And that erring on the side of politeness is usually a good plan.
And, in the part you quoted, that I'm not sure if we really need a society where monogamous couples getting propositioned out of nowhere isn't rude. I think a society where the question "Are you guys exclusive?" isn't ever rude would be more than sufficient.
What sucks is being dismissed like we don't exist or like we're doing it wrong. It would be nice if the respect went both directions.
Oh, I agree entirely. Like I said, next step in marriage equality: Polygynous Marriages being legalized.
Tanith, I don't mean to be disrespectful, or snarky; I certainly don't think you're doing it wrong, but I'm very curious as to how a marriage between multiple parters would function legally. Same sex marriage never required changing the legal function of marriage, where including multiple partners would. I'm thinking particularly of pre-nuptual agreements and divorce.
I'm not saying multiple partnership shouldn't be accorded legal status, but that I think one of the reasons same-sex marriage gained federal recognition was because it was simply including same sex couples in an existing legal status. Hell, don't ask me, maybe all I'm saying is that getting bigamy decriminalized is the first step.
Multiple marriages don't really require changing much of anything if everyone involved legally counts as married to everyone. The numbers get bigger (you get 1/3 of the stuff when you divorce your two spouses, etc.), but the basic principles can remain almost entirely the same.
If person A can be married to B and C but B is not married to C...that gets more complicated. That doesn't seem particularly legally necessary to me, though.
I haven't read the whole story, but how did someone illegally in the country get into the White House to heckle the President in the first place?
According to this quote in the Washington Post, she says she was invited:
"“I was fortunate to be invited to the White House to listen to President Obama’s speech recognizing the LGBTQ community and the progress being made,” Gutiérrez wrote. “But while he spoke of ‘trans women of color being targeted,’ his administration holds LGBTQ and trans immigrants in detention. I spoke out because our issues and struggles can no longer be ignored.”"
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Wouldn't prenup agreements be the least complicated part? Contracts between more than two parties have been standard for centuries.
Polygamous marriage could be managed, legally, using the contract law that rules societies and organisations. What happens when three people combine their capital to form a threeway partnership, and years down the line, they decide to dissolve it? Or one of them wants out? Business law has dealt with these issues for years.
I've never understood what makes it so difficult.
Are fractions other than 1/2 too difficult?
In short, yes. Are we talking about polyamorous marriage, where each person is married to every other person in the partnership, or polygamy, where one person is married to multiple people who are not married to one another? If it is the former, can an individual divorce one member of the marriage and stay married to another?
If one member dies, do all the remaining members collect the Social Security? Would a surviving spouse accumulate multiple survivor benefits as each individual in the marriage dies?
Does every member of the marriage have parental rights over the children of every other member, in the event of a divorce?
If one member is in a coma, which of their spouses makes medical decisions, in the event they disagree?
Is there a limit to how many spouses a person can sponsor for immigration?
There are answers to all of these questions, of course, but not within the law as it exists today. Someone will actually have to draft all of these matters into law, and yes, that is more complicated than simply erasing gender as a criteria for a marriage license.
That is not to say that it shouldn't be done, only that it won't be easy.
I haven't read the whole story, but how did someone illegally in the country get into the White House to heckle the President in the first place?I like the way Romaq put it... "the recognition of rights you had, but were denied." It's about time!
While I don't want to interrupt celebration with possible controversy, I really wanted to know what folks on this thread thought about Jennicet Gutiérrez heckling Obama about [LGBT] immigrants in detention centers. Justified? Inappropriate? What do you think? Also, how do you feel about how it was covered in major media and/or activists news sources?
They didn't.
Read the story.
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They didn't.
Read the story.
?
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Based on anecdotal evidence from every anti-LGBT rights person I've ever spoken with, the anti-LGBT argument seems to boil down to: "I think gay sex is icky. Here are convenient justifications for why my opinion should be imposed on everyone else."
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What part of what Thomas Jefferson said, do these extremists not understand. This is a paraphrase, but what he said was that the rights of the minority shall not be decided by the direct vote of the majority. It was never a state's rights issue, but an equal rights issue. I am a cisgender, heterosexual male, and I am so glad that SCOTUS ruled the way they did. The dissenters were as bad and as clueless as all the other anti-ssm. Congratulations to everyone on this thread and may this start the end of anti-LGBT discrimination across the country.
Focus on the threats and not the justification.I agree. My example was an oversimplification to illustrate that understanding motive is important in its own right.
I'm not sure it illustrates that, though. It illustrates that people who disagree violently are more of a threat than people who disagree nonviolently, which I don't think anyone will argue against.
But once we've accepted that, as well as the basic fact of disagreement, it doesn't seem to matter whether the disagreement is because God told you to do something, because an Internet troll told you to do something, or because the voices in your head told you the same thing.
The legal justification for "hate crimes" is that, by their nature, "hate crimes" have secondary victims (the other members of the target group), while solitary crimes of passion do not -- hence hate crimes are more harmful to the community and merit greater punishment.
Granting that line of reasoning,.... why are discrimination or threats against LGBT people because God told you so more harmful than doing it for "state's rights"? Or the other way around, for that matter? The threat, the behavior, and the harm are identical.
What part of what Thomas Jefferson said, do these extremists not understand.
The relevance and/or correctness. One of the standard arguments against Jefferson's writings is that they're not legally binding, and reflect only one person's opinion. The phrase "a wall of separation between church and state" is not part of the Constitution, and has no more legal force than "if there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now; it's just a spring clean for the May Queen."
There's a very numerous group of Constitutional scholars -- not just extremists -- that point out that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights provide no positive rights at all; they are simply statements about how the government may not do various things, but they do not say that the government shall do anything. In particular, the Founding Fathers were very suspicious of granting positive rights to anyone or anything.
Furthermore, the Constitution is very explicit (amendment X) that the states have the authority to do anything that is not directly forbidden.
It's interesting, but you shouldn't rely too heavily on their stated reasoning and logic.
A fair point. My only retort: I am fascinated by the way other people think. Their stated reasoning and logic are, for me, something to be analyzed and maybe even understood.I don't expect everyone (or anyone, for that matter) to share my interest. Take it or leave it I suppose.
This. Determining someone's actual motivation is extremely difficult and error-prone, especially when they are lying to themselves as well.
I am tempted to start a parody anti-spaghetti campaign. I think spaghetti is icky, therefore we must move to ban evil pasta from being served to people who are endangering their taste buds if they choose to consume the vile substance. Never mind that they're adults and should be able to make their own choices about what to eat. I know better than them, and I think it's icky, so I'm going to get laws passed to make sure no one else is allowed to enjoy what I don't like. We are only trying to protect them, and it's totally our business to make those decisions for other people.
May His Omnipotent Noodleinous have mercy on your soul.
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Eh, it's entirely about context. I agree with you absolutely that you just don't go unicorn hunting on posted ground. But in a social context where you can be sure that everyone present is aware of the culture, it is no more reasonable to tell poly people not to seek partners there than it is to tell gay people that they can't ask a same sex person for a date. The standard that should be applied is whether any flirting is appropriate in this place at this time, not who is directing it at whom or how many.
Well, sure. It's definitely all about context. I'm pretty exclusively referring to dealing with people who you don't know well and met in a venue where polyamory/open relationships are far from universal.
Different levels of flirting are appropriate at different venues. If it helps, most of the poly folks I know preface their asking by telling about themselves, their relationship status and what they are seeking. If the person they are telling is compatible and interested, they can say so. If they do not express such interest, then it's left as a friendly social introduction.
Which is wonderful, and sounds perfectly polite to me (at least in most cases), as well as serving many of the same functions as my suggestion.
I'm not trying to attack poly people or anything like that, just noting that hitting on a potentially monogamous couple you meet in a bar or club is generally kinda rude in a way that hitting on single people (even ones completely unattracted to you) usually isn't. And thus that a little more care should be taken while doing so.
It's not so much about who is asking how many people of what gender and orientation as how respectfully the invitation is handled. Also how respectfully a "no thanks" or no answer is accepted. There's friendly, sensitive and tactful ways to express an interest in someone, and there's aggressively horrible ways to do it that can leave people feeling threatened, harassed or violated. I think that the orientations and genders of the people involved matter a heck of a lot less than the social context and sensitivity of the invitation.
I agree entirely. The manner in which you proposition someone is very important as well, and I'll note that I never said otherwise.
Telling ANYONE that they shouldn't dare to seek a partner, flirt or try to connect with other people just because they aren't cis/het/mono is a pretty slippery slope. Yes, there's times and places that flirting isn't appropriate, and it's almost always uncool to explicitly proposition someone for sex before you're pretty sure they consent. Unless you are actually in a venue where consent is already given at the door, blatantly walking up and asking for sex in so many words is probably a social error regardless of who is doing it to whom or how many. Explicitness should be titrated to the known level of consent, which is either negotiated in advance with the individual or a function of the venue.
Again, agreed entirely. Perhaps the best way to put what I'm trying to say is that I feel that in most contexts couples that aren't known to be non-monogamous have an inherently slightly lower level of 'assumed consent' in this regard, given the prevalence of monogamy, and that a few extra measures to find out their degree of consent for sure are thus warranted.
I'm certainly not saying that hitting on a couple (or even one member of a couple in front of the other) is never appropriate, I'm saying it generally requires either slightly more knowledge of the couple, or care in the doing, than hitting on a single person.
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Sorry, Ive been out all weekend celebrating my 50th b-day this week.
Just wanted to stop in and say congratulations to everybody here on all of us finally being recognized as real people with rights and all. What a great present for my birthday. :)
Now on to actual legal protection for all of our rights. We're not there yet; but its coming.
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Not to interrupt the current conversation but things have been interesting for me recently.
And I don't feel I'm alone, the struggle for power and control over our environment is at the core of what I see almost everyone doing and it makes sense: We all want to live comfortable, safe lives where we feel empowered and loved and appreciated and not helpless and most of us try to do this by controlling our environment and, as other people are part of our environment, we try to control them.
Usually when I expressed this idea the folks I talked to about it seemed to have a really negative reaction to it, even when I explained I didn't think they were being manipulative or sinister or a bad person or anything, that the desire for control came out of wishing the best for another person even more often than it did malice and it was usually not even something they seemed consciously aware of.
And my situation sucks just as bad, because as much as I want people to like me, respect me, admire me and treat me well(all things I wish I could control) I just suck at it. My whole life I've just sucked at everything, I'm small and weak physically, passive and easily influenced mentally and awkward and clumsy socially. Anytime a social based predator/prey situation has arisen in my life, be it at school, work, or whatever, I am hands down always the prey.
I am always out of place; I am a black person who is mostly white passing and I don't really fit in either racial world. I am a transwoman in a LGBT hostile conservative christian community. I am a book reading, rpg playing, nerd in a group of friends primarily concerned with partying hard.
I don't fit in, I've never fit in, and my life has been an exercise in helplessness, at it's most basic, life is a competition and I am really really not built for competition.
And now I also have an illness that makes it really unlikely that I'll live to middle age which makes me face the fact that not only am I not a special, one in a million person who will accomplish alot, I'm 999,999 in a million and when I die there will be like ten people who will really care and think about me alot when I'm gone. *sigh*
So I was reading and posting in a long internet argument awhile ago and I found myself paying more attention to how people were relating more than the subject at hand and just noting things as they went by, the struggles to convince each other of their arguments, the snark and jokes and mocking, all the fun but pointless good times we have trying to control others and their perceptions of us and it kinda hit me, why not give up? Why not try to care about people for who they are truly, and not try to control or influence them in anyway?
Why not just give up? After all I suck at influencing my environment anyway. What I've always wanted but rarely feel I get is for people to care about me for who I am, not what they want me to be.
Why not give up wanting people to like and accept me and instead focus all that energy on caring about people as they are, not who I want them to be, to just let them have their differing opinions and bad attitudes and just try to love them, even people I don't really know and who think I'm shit.
Why not just let people laugh at me because I'm silly and uneducated and weak in almost every relevant way?
I've realized that the only thing I have ever been really good at is accepting people and being non-judgmental. Even when I teased them there has never been any real meanness there.
And that is what I have realized, if I have any power at all in life it is the power to choose how I treat other people. It is the power to be honest and genuine in all ways even though I know I may be humiliated and mocked for being me, especially when I am with a group of people who I really want to like me.
I think that is my purpose in life, to love people, even strangers, as they are and not try to change them for what I see as their own betterment and to treat them genuinely well even if the hate me and mock me.
Life has been disappointing for me in many ways but while I can't control whether other people care about me I can decide to care about them, as they are, not as I want them to be.
I think I feel truly peaceful for the first time in my life. I control nothing but my own capacity to love others and love them I do because caring is something I naturally do well and it is something I find genuinely worth doing.
Not to interrupt the current conversation but things have been interesting for me recently.
** spoiler omitted **...
Nice statement and nice wording.
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Not to interrupt the current conversation but things have been interesting for me recently.
** spoiler omitted **...
wow.
Yuugasa, something you can also do is focus on taking care and loving yourself rather than spending so much energy on the external world. While you may look at your life and see all these flaws, which in turn encourages you further to look outside, it could greatly benefit you to focus inward, no matter how painful it might be, and find solace in improving and taking care of yourself; as well as finding a way to appreciate the lovely things about you, instead of focusing on all the ways you don't meet your expectations (which you might find out later on, are also the expectations placed upon you by other people, rather than things you truly feel about yourself).
You don't have to care about people who don't care about you. It's okay to keep your feelings to yourself until someone proves themselves worthy of them by treating you with respect and affection. :)
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What Freehold DM said.
And I had been planning to quip about the post I had seen on the Book of Faces giving congratulations while wondering if and when blackness will be legalized. :-/
Which prompted an odd thought in relation to race and orientation, as I had in the past written 'bara' DragonStar adventures as part of an experiment with literary creativity. It was, to say the least, interesting - my writing partner was surprised at how very 'not yaoi' it was, which necessitated explaining the differences between the genres. This was in part where some of the writing fell off, as it were; the desire was apparently for a different set of tropes.
This bugs me as much for the nature of tropes as for the fact that people embrace them so eagerly. I'm sure that many have seen the rants on ethnicity I have put forth, aside from those that have been removed and redacted - I have made clear on numerous occasions that being black is one thing, but the expectations of 'acting black' are usually pretty offending. Yet with my friends, many embrace the camp cliches as appropriate self-identification. And I support them in almost all things, but that one is vexing and baffling to me, as much as people who hear me speak and see me dress and how I carry myself and presume to call it "acting white". It prompts resentment, yet the friends who act camp embrace that as part of their gayness, and it's not my fight, but the point to me is that their sexuality should not be their primary attribute of assessment, on top of the stereotypes.
Their embrace versus my rejection of associated stereotypes gives me frustration.
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Their embrace versus my rejection of associated stereotypes gives me frustration.
At some point, it just becomes second nature to fight. You do it without thinking. Someone acts camp, you just grumble like an old man. Someone broaches the subject, the lecture about the problems of stereotypes comes out of your mouth like you're a college professor.
It's the people who agree with you that give you pause, because (at least in my case) it's something you're not used to.
My current theory is that the more hostile the world is towards a certain trait, the more people with that trait will seek out acceptance and a group to belong to, and therefore the more willing they will be to act in a stereotyped way to gain membership. As we lessen the hostility towards marginalised groups, hopefully people will be less inclined to behave in stereotypical ways.
Though unfortunately, I feel there will always be lonely teenagers who will resort to anything to have a group to belong to.