joreth | Jun. 14th, 2016

Jun. 14th, 2016

I had been posting about the Stanford rape case for a few days, and rather than fill up my blog or Twitter feed (which auto-tweets each of these blog posts as I make them) with all the posts I blew up my Facebook with, I'm going to just put them all in a single post, and I'll even put the meat of them behind a cut for the 2 of you who still read LJ like a social media feed.

( Here goes... )

If you want to do something and you don't live in Santa Clara county to sign the actual recall petition being launched by a Stanford professor this week, fill out this form and mail it in to file a judicial complaint against Aaron Persky for showing bias in according such a light sentence to a fellow Stanford athlete.

http://cjp.ca.gov/res/docs/appendix/complaintform%20fillable.pdf

WHAT TO SAY:
Judge - Aaron Persky
Court - Superior
County - Santa Clara
Name of case & case number - The People of the State of California v. Brock Allen Turner, Case No. B1577162
Action of judge: (feel free to write in your own words, this is just an example) Appearance of bias toward a particular class: Judge Persky sentenced fellow Stanford athlete to an unusually light sentence of just 6 months, in spite of a unanimous jury verdict on three counts of sexual assault. There were two eyewitnesses to the act. Turner being a swimmer has nothing to do with the severity of his crimes and should not have had any influence on Persky's sentence.
Others present: District Attorney Jeff Rosen, Defense Attorney Mike Armstrong, Brock Allen Turner, Jane Doe.

WHERE TO SEND:
Commission on Judicial Performance
455 Golden Gate Avenue, Suite 14400
San Francisco, CA 94102

Very long and rambly post about flawed female reproductive systems and my own personal experiences with my reproductive system with lots of gory details.

Endometriosis is severely understudied. We really don't know that much about an affliction that affects a large percentage of the population, and affects it in a debilitating way. The main reason for this is because it's a woman's issue. I've been told my entire life that my cramps "aren't that bad" and "I have bad cramps too, but I still make it to work every day so you're going to have to learn how to get to school every day" and "does the ibuprofen help? Well, keep taking it then."

Women's pain is not taken seriously, and women of color especially are ignored when it comes to complaints of pain. In fact, women are generally seen as the weaker sex (yes, I'm using both binary and mixing gender and biology because those fallacies are also mixed up in this whole problem) - whiny, unable to handle the sight of blood, unable to bear pain, even though when men are hooked up to machines that simulate labor they can't tolerate it even half as well as women.

Consequently, the only forms of treatment for endo remain copious amounts of painkillers with their own side effects and long-term usage consequences or dangerous invasive surgery that A) most doctors won't even do because baby-making is a priority and women don't know what they want or what's good for them; B) if successful will still likely result in even more long-term consequences, particularly the full hysterectomy which requires the woman to go into early menopause and spend the rest of her life on drugs to treat *that*; and C) isn't all that successful, given the specific details that is endo in the first place.

So, all of that is to prepare the background for some musings I have about my condition - musings which may very well turn out to be incorrect because I am not a medical research professional who specializes in this area but that seem very plausible to me because of the dearth of knowledge that we even have on the subject.

Often, pregnancy can alleviate the symptoms of endo for a few months after childbirth. See, what endo actually does is cause some of the uterine lining to grow outside of the uterus. Most of the time, it means that it grows out past the cervix and into the vaginal canal, but sometimes it also means that random patches of uterine lining are hanging around in various places in the abdomen. So, when it comes times for the monthly cramps, the uterus tries to shed its lining and those contractions used to push the lining out, in essence labor contractions but without the baby, can happen in places where they're not supposed to happen. In addition to other things endo is doing, labor contractions outside of the uterus and lining shedding outside of the uterus can cause pain.

But when someone gets pregnant, sometimes the extra uterine lining that has grown down into the vaginal canal sorta gets sucked back up into the uterus to cushion the fetus. Because there are no periods for 9 months, those specific labor-cramps might not occur when this happens. Then, after childbirth, all the lining is basically used up (I'm summarizing here to make it more understandable in a short-form, obviously my language isn't going to be 100% medically accurate) and sometimes it takes a few months to grow back to pre-pregnancy levels. This means that, if this happens, the endo-caused labor cramps (which are above and beyond "normal" cramps) might not exist for a few months until the uterine lining grows back in those places where it's not supposed to be.

So, for what little we do know about endo, we know that pregnancy can affect the severity of the pain and some of its other symptoms. Unrelated to endo, we also know that many, many, many times a body might reject a fertilized egg for a variety of reasons and miscarry even before the host body is aware that it is pregnant. A rather large number of periods are actually miscarriages that we don't even know about. So now onto my particular case and my musings.

I was pregnant once. It was one of the worst experiences of my life and I hope to never go through it again. I had terrible cramps even without shedding the blood lining. I had the worst "morning sickness" all day long. I became extremely sensitive to smells, which further triggered the vomiting (a permanent side effect, btw - I remain that sensitive to those same smells years later and often have to fight nausea and vomiting when I smell them). And I had my other digestive symptoms common with endo - diarrhea, constipation, severe gas pain, etc. Basically, it was like having my monthly 2-day ordeal at its worst but for every day between the time my period was *supposed* to start and the day I was finally able to terminate the pregnancy.

Then, for the next 3 or 4 months, I had the easiest periods I've ever had. I experienced absolutely none of the digestive symptoms, and my cramps felt more like the early twinges that let me know that I'm about to start a 24-hour cycle of hell. I mean, they hurt, but when your pain scale is parked at 8, pain at 4 feels like a relief. I was downright giddy at how easy my period had gotten! If that's what non-endo people feel during their periods, no wonder they couldn't understand the severity of my situation! No fucking wonder women in commercials could go horseback riding and surfing during their "time of the month"!

Eventually, my cramps went back to normal and life resumed. But then, one month, I had an episode that was so bad, I started to wish for death. And as I had just come out of a suicidal depression, I mean that literally. I was actually hoping that I would just cease so that I wouldn't have to endure the pain anymore. I couldn't even get out of bed long enough to evacuate all the bodily fluids that were causing all the pain in the first place, and I had one bucket next to my bed for the vomit and another for the poop. I stayed in my sweat-soaked bed for 28 hours in a feverish delirium, awaking only long enough to void some cavity and immediately passing out again.

I wrote about that month. A friend even remarked on how hardcore I was to use my own pain like that to further my feminist goals by trying to help normalize the discussion around women's bodily functions and issues. Then I got to thinking. That month, my endo was the worst that it's ever been. It was as if my body had taken my entire few-week pregnancy and condensed into a single day. I did some math. Given the timing, I had a close call that month. It was within the realm of probability to have gotten pregnant given the last time I had unprotected sex with a partner who was still fertile.

So, now I wonder ... can the severity of cramps be related to the frequency of miscarriages or other situations involving failed implantation or fertilization? If so, would it only affect people with endo or could it affect everyone? I mean, non-endo people also have a range of severity for their monthly symptoms too, right?

As I was explaining yesterday, some months I pop a few pills and I'm like "WOOOO!!! Drugs!! I feel fucking great! Let's tear this shit up!" At least, I feel that way for as long as the drugs are in my system. About 5 hours later, if I forget to take my meds because I'm feeling so fantastic, I start curling up into a ball and crying, but as long as I take the meds, I'm floating on air that day. Other months, I pop a handful of pills and the best I can hope for is to be able to stand just upright enough that I can at least get myself from point A to point B without collapsing. The cramps are like a string is pulled taught in my abdomen and the straighter I am, the more tension is on the string and the more the cramps hurt. Some months all I get is just enough tension let out of that string to enable me to not be horizontal, which allows me to be technically functional.

So, since endo is obviously related to my reproductive system and the shedding of my uterine lining, and it can sometimes be temporarily relieved by pregnancy, I have to wonder if its symptoms are also otherwise affected by the variability of the reproductive system. Because the Far Right is hell-bent on reversing Roe v. Wade, some of us are becoming more aware of the complexity of the subject of conception. It's not a binary state - either you are or you are not pregnant / either there is or is not a baby. There are all these other states - an egg can be fertilized but not implanted. An egg can be fertilized and implanted but in the wrong place. The body can spontaneously abort before the host is even aware there is a pregnancy. More and more and more, that I don't feel like researching and listing. Bottom line is that it's not as simple as the anti-abortionists want us to think. It's not "you have sex, and then BOOM, a baby exists".

Throw into the mix alongside the complexity of the human reproduction system a lack of understanding of that system and especially of when that system is not working optimally under its given limitations, and that leads me to wondering how often I may have actually been experiencing a miscarriage? One of the symptoms of endo is the inability or difficulty to carry to term. The reason I am adopted is because my mom couldn't carry to term so she had to adopt in order to become a mother at all (of course, the doctors waited until she had 2 adopted children and at least one hospitalized miscarriage before they'd deign to give her a hysterectomy, knocking her into menopause at age 34 and condemning her to hormonal therapy for the rest of her life).

Since I've always been so careful about timing, I haven't had all that many close calls in my life, and the one time I was confident we were too close really did result in a pregnancy which I terminated, I don't have very many data points about how pregnancy or conception affects my personal association with endo. It makes me wonder, if we could hook up all fertile people with uteruses who have PIV intercourse with fertile people who have penises, if we could somehow monitor the "pregnancy" status of all those people all the time, how often would we see the loss of a fertilized, viable egg? A fertilized but non-viable egg? What would that mean for the fight for abortion rights? And how would that pattern correlate with each person's own patterns in their reproductive cycle?

I have no answers, no directed rant, no challenge, not even any real awareness-raising goal. I'm just pondering my body and wondering what all these things about my body *mean*, and what *that* could mean in the larger cultural context if we had the answers to all my questions.

If an abuser is a dick 24/7 they'll never actually GET ANYONE TO BE IN A RELATIONSHIP WITH THEM in order TO abuse them. Thinking about this logically for .5 seconds would make all the "but he's nice to ME" people realize that OF COURSE HE'S NICE TO *YOU*, HE WAS NICE TO HER TOO BEFORE HE WASN'T

I have this problem with one of my exes. All our old mutual friends are still friends with him because he never did any of his abusive shit *to them*. He never did it where they could see it. His victims were the "real abusers". Not one single person left his friendship over his abuse who wasn't already on the victims' side before the abuse was revealed. Not one. It still throws me for a loop when I see people @reply him on social media or when I run into people I used to care about who are still connected to him (who often say that they miss me when we meet in this manner).

Hell, even *I* tried to defend him at first. It took him turning his tactics on me before I could finally see what his victims were saying was true. He's charming and endearing and so harmless-seeming because he's not attempting to control everyone he meets. Everyone loves him. Except those he has harmed.

I just can't trust people who try to play the "neutral party" with abusers anymore, even though I was one of them and even though I adamantly believe a person who has harmed can still redeem themselves if they show a willingness to be held accountable (and I have put my money where my mouth is and given some people a chance when they showed evidence of accountability).

Consequently I remain apart from my old communities because too many people are willing to throw their hands up, say that they weren't there so they don't know and won't "take sides", and continue to socialize with certain people because Zeus forbid they give up access to parties or events in order to take a stance and not implicitly condone or support abusers' unwillingness to be held accountable for their actions.

I'm not sure that schadenfreude is *quite* the appropriate term to describe what I'm feeling now that I'm watching official Republican Party reps recognize the racism in Trump's campaign. Usually, watching cognitive dissonance and mental gymnastics reveal people's hypocrisy and make people finally recognize how their positions are wrong gives me a gleeful feeling at their discomfort and learning process.

But mixed in with the gleeful "ha! Now let's see you wriggle your way out of this one!" is an overwhelming frustration that this was entirely preventable if they had just listened to us in the first place. If they had just listened to us warn how all the things they were doing would lead to exactly this conclusion - that one of the most vile, hateful, bigoted people in the 21st century could possibly find enough support to get this close to running our entire nation all because other supposedly less bigoted people built the framework for him to stand upon.

Like, you're fucking surprised that encouraging xenophobia and homophobia and sexism might lead to powerful angry white men grasping for more power when they sense the tide turning against them? Like you're fucking surprised that *ignoring* issues of race and gender and orientation for your precious economic issues and ignoring how those other issues tie into the issues of the economy or foreign policy would someday lead exactly to this point?

I'd like to feel some schadenfreude or some petty smugness at watching the official Republican Party scramble to get control of the Trump campaign, but the consequences for having it taken this far and the consequences for their failure to get control back are too high and I can't even indulge in being smug about it.

Well, I suppose it's progress. Phone call with mom tonight included telling her about helping Richard move across the country, so she asked how I felt about him and I got to gush for a bit. Then she actually asked about Ben! To be fair, she did ask me if I was still seeing him, but she didn't automatically assume we weren't now that I'm also seeing Richard, and she even said to say hello to them for her!

I still had to remind her that I'm still dating

tacit, though, which irritates me because I've been with him for nearly 12 years now (which suitably impressed her when I pointed that out - mononormativity means longevity = success). But she hasn't met him yet so it's harder for her to remember. Couple privilege rears its ugly head in the damnedest places sometimes.

Society places a higher priority on relationships that have met the milestone of "meeting the parents", which is why I actually make a point of introducing my partners to my parents as early and as often as I can even though it's not a big deal *to me*. I recognize that "meeting the parents" legitimizes relationships in my parents' eyes and in the eyes of most other people. When attempting to communicate, more ground is gained when I can speak in the other person's language. So I will often do or say things that mean one thing to me but another thing to someone else, because that *meaning* is what I am trying to convey.

In this case, meeting the parents isn't really a big deal to me because they're across the country and I hardly see them. But when I'm trying to explain to them how important someone is to me, I know that "meeting the parents" expresses "this person is really important to me" in their language, so that's why I do it. It's also why I have started to teach myself how to get comfortable with the selfie and with taking silly "couple" photos when I'm with a partner. That's another thing that society uses as a marker for a "legitimate" relationship, and I have chosen to use that marker as another communication tool that my relationships are real and "serious". It's important to me that my partners feel legitimate, important, and validated in their relationship with me, and part of that includes making sure everyone else understands that my partners are legitimate, important, and valid.

It seems to finally be bearing fruit. Mom remembers at least 2 of my partners and acknowledges them both as "serious" partners. She acknowledges the other one as a serious partner but still has to be reminded that he exists because A) she never met him and B) I rarely see him so I don't have a lot of goofy "couple" photos of us on FB.

Only 15 years after I came out as poly, but, as they say, slow and steady wins the race!

So, there's this thing I've seen. Well meaning people talk about and share FB memes about giving our leftover food that restaurants and businesses are going to throw away to the homeless. I want to first qualify my following rant by saying that I absolutely agree that we waste too much food and if something perfectly edible is going to be thrown away, it should instead be given to those who can't afford to purchase it. I work backstage. I watch enormous amounts of food go to waste when the hotels throw away their leftover catering and refuse to allow the stagehands and hotel workers to eat it or take it home to feed our families. So keep that in mind when I go off here for a minute.

There is a reason why we throw perfectly good food away instead of giving it to homeless people. It has been tried before but it turned out to be expensive. Remember, I'm still in favor of it. I do not believe the expense justifies the throw-away policy. But I don't think a lot of people who share these memes or complain in their living rooms with like-minded friends understand the framework involved in making the shift towards sharing food.

Here's why it's expensive. It has to be done safely. See, when a society sees a group of people who "deserve" to be fed table scraps, that society, collectively (at least, our selfish, independent, bootstraps society does) thinks less of that group. When that society thinks less of that group, the society, collectively, is willing to do all kinds of awful things to that group even while it's in the midst of supposedly caring for that group. This means that it becomes practice to give them substandard products. They're *table scraps*. It's the shit that we were going to *throw away*. Yes, lots of it is totally good, good enough to sell but for whatever reason, it just didn't sell. But usually, by the time we are ready to throw it away, it's because it's no *longer* "good enough to sell".

There is a window in which the food is still safe to eat, between those "good enough to sell" and "rotten" states. But in order to make sure the food is safely within that window, we need some kind of quality control system in place. That takes money. It takes money to research, to design, and to implement. Either the restaurants have to bear the brunt of those costs (which they will then pass onto the consumers who have a history of complaining whenever costs rise), or the citizens will have to support it through taxes.

Now, I am not anti-taxes. I believe a healthy civilization requires its citizens to contribute to its well-being, which means that it's our civic duty to pay taxes. But I, along with everyone else I know, think that I already pay more than my "fair share" and I don't agree with all the places my money is going. So, threaten to raise taxes, and the society rejects the proposal. Of course we can re-work out current budget so that other things get less money so that we can pay for public works, that's not the point. The point is that everyone has their own opinions about taxes and there will be an outcry and a process (which costs money) to implement this particular solution.

In order to protect the health, safety, and even dignity of the recipients of this particular form of charity, it will take money and it will take *oversight* to institute it on a wide scale. That's something that a lot of the people who believe in this food-sharing idea disagree with. There needs to be *some kind* of regulatory body that can come up with safety standards in the best interest of the recipients and that has the teeth to do something about it when the businesses fail to maintain those standards. Sure, there are some businesses out there that are run by caring, compassionate individuals who will do the right thing. These are the businesses who are already trying to find solutions to this problem around the legal consequences currently in place. This is that one business who put a refrigerator outside for food that anyone can just come up and take something. This is that one pizza joint that just gives away slices to anyone who can't pay.

But *businesses* are not people. They are run by people, but contrary to our current legal opinion, corporations are not people. Businesses, by their very nature, are sociopathic. Good people often run businesses and compensate for the sociopathic nature of these entities, but that is still their nature, and not all of the are run by people with the same value systems.

When considering policies to help the downtrodden, we have to actually consider what's in the best interest of that specific group. In this case, we have to think about how this particular system of giving away dumpster food can harm them and what we can build into the system to protect them.

Most of the people I know who are in favor of this idea but who haven't really thought out the logistics of how it can be done are also opposed to the FDA because it's a governmental agency. But that agency is responsible for why you can go to the grocery store and reasonably expect to not get sick from the food you buy. It's not perfect, but if you got the emails that I get from their warning systems and if you know people who work behind the scenes like I do, you'd be shocked at how much the FDA actually does successfully to protect people. They're kinda like stagehands - if someone notices you at your job, then you're not doing your job well. Precisely because the FDA is so good at protecting people, we have the luxury of not being aware of how good they are at protecting us.

We can't just "give" food away to homeless people. You, as an individual, who goes to the store, buys something with your own money that was intended to be sold to someone like you (a person who has the money to pay for it) and was filtered through a protection agency like the FDA, YOU can just give food away to homeless people because you, personally, are taking your own privileges and extending them like an umbrella to someone who doesn't have those privileges.

To make this a society-wide policy, though, we have to give the homeless people their own umbrellas of protection. We have to include in the system safety checks and quality control. That's actually more complicated than it sounds because it's not as simple as just a guy standing in front of a dumpster looking and sniffing at food to make sure it's still good. Judging food safety is actually a complex technical process, and besides the mechanics of the job, we also have the psychology of the job to fight against.

As I said above, we, collectively, view the homeless as a certain Other group. I know lots of people who argue about giving food to the homeless or making more shelters, but who refuse to utilize certain government services because they might have to sit shoulder to shoulder with one of those smelly, crazy homeless people in the waiting room. We have to "do something" to make the problem of homelessness go away, but we don't want to actually, y'know, MINGLE with them.

Oh, but wait! I was homeless for a while! Oh, but wait again, I'm somehow "different" from all those homeless people, so it's totes cool to loan *me* money or give *me* a couch to sleep on, but not one of those icky gross people on the street - wouldn't let one of *them* in my house because they might steal something. Wouldn't give one of *them* money because they might just buy booze or drugs with it. Wouldn't want to sit next to one of them in a waiting room because they might smell or talk to us with their crazy talk. No, I was homeless because of circumstances, but *they* are homeless because they're lazy or crazy and don't want to work or help themselves. (this whole paragraph was sarcasm, btw)

Even when we really and truly believe that it's our duty to help those who are less fortunate than we are, we still see those people as Other. Even when we *know* someone in that group as an individual, we tend to see that person as an individual and somehow apart from their group. Do you know how many times I've been told "you're pretty cool, for a chick" or "but you don't *act* like a Mexican" or "but you're so ethical, what do you mean you're an atheist?" or "yeah, but you don't really 'count' as one of those homeless"? Let's just say that if I had a dollar for every time I heard someone say that I was somehow an exception to my demographic, I would no longer be in one of those demographics (low income, in case that was unclear, I would have a lot of money then).

I'm not at all doubting the good intentions of anyone who says that we ought to give all our leftover food to homeless people. I absolutely believe that you believe that your intentions are pure and out of the goodness of your heart because you care about people. But I am not naive to the nature of the human brain's ability to compartmentalize and Other people. We can't just "give food away", we have to ensure that it's safe to give, both physically safe and psychologically safe.

Food stamps, welfare programs, handouts, shelter cafeterias - these are places and programs that instill shame. They inspire humiliation. They lower people's self-worth. They shouldn't, but they do, because we all still think of people who need assistance as "taking handouts" and not being good enough. Look at all the efforts made to restrict food stamps to only certain foods? Look at how appalled everyone got when they thought a poor person might actually get a decent cut of meat with their food stamps? And then look at how many people sneer at poor people for eating junk food, because *we took away their ability to eat healthy food*. Poor people don't "deserve" luxuries. They don't "deserve" steak or organic kale (unless they grow it themselves, of course, which they *ought* to do, y'know, in that plot of land they can't afford to own). They don't "deserve" to drink alcohol or carry their EBT card in a designer purse they found at a thrift store or to drive to that store in their Mercedes Benz that they bought before they lost their jobs and homes and dignity.

When we institute programs that promote feeding poor people table scraps, it has to be done very carefully. It has to be done in a way that doesn't further the resentment that people are somehow "getting away" with something. It has to be done in a way that preserves their dignity and treats them as equal human beings, not the pet dog that we're "spoiling" by giving our leftovers to.

And because we have to fight against those conflicting mindsets - that they are something lower than us that we deign to offer our scraps and think we're doing them a favor vs. that they are cheats and sneaks trying to get the better of us - because we have to fight both those contradictory cultural ideas, we have to be super vigilant that policies like this are done *safely*.

*If* we think that they are dogs that we are magnanimously treating with our table scraps, we will be less inclined to make sure those scraps are set to the same standards as what we would eat ourselves. We feed our pets the gristle that we wouldn't eat. We feed our pets the food that isn't cooked to our satisfaction. We do this because our pets are not human and have different digestive standards, and for our pets, it's a luxury that they get the food that we don't think is good enough for ourselves, because they're not human. But homeless people are human.

*If* we think that they are somehow gaming the system and "getting away" with free stuff that we had to pay for, we will be less inclined to make sure that what they "get away with" is the same quality of product that we pay for. All our really expensive stuff is locked up, but the cheapo products aren't behind glass or tagged with RFID chips. Some stores even have certain products placed in certain areas for the purpose of tempting thieves so that they're less likely to try for the expensive products. It's sort of like an insurance policy, a write-off, the cost of doing business. We'll save the good stuff for our paying customers, but this cheap shit, well, if it makes them sick, that's what they get for trying to get stuff for free. If they want quality, they can pay for it like the rest of us.

Again, I am *in favor* of programs that make more things available to more people. One of the things that I love about my job is being able to eat off the carts in the back hallway, because that's one meal I don't have to pay for so I have a better chance of making rent this month. But eating off the cart in the back hallway means eating food that has been sitting out, unrefrigerated, all day long. We very quickly learn in my business not to eat things with mayo in them (no potato salad and no sandwiches with the condiments already on them!). We watch the food to see if flies have been settling, and how long. These foods are destined for the dumpster *for a reason*.

I am in favor of these food-sharing programs. But I understand the logistics involved. At least, I understand that the logistics are complicated and will take a lot of very smart people to figure out. It will cost money. It needs to be done carefully. It will require oversight and regulation. In order to accomplish this humanitarian goal, we will have to institute several things that many of my caring friends are opposed to - regulation, bureaucracy, oversight, money. That is *why* we aren't already doing these things. We can't have it both ways. We are too populous to behave as though we are still a small tribal society that will look out for its own because our survival depends on looking out for others. There are trade-offs to be had. Personally, I think those trade-offs are worth it, or at least acceptable and doable. But many of the people who have noble goals don't like those trade-offs and that's how we got to where we are today.

https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2016/05/30/1433

With the awareness of abusive patterns growing in the poly community (which is a good thing!), I'm also seeing a fairly common correlated pattern of people discovering a new thing and then labeling everything as that new thing, or thinking the new thing is the solution to everything.

So, for instance, often when polys first discover polyamory, we can become a bit evangelical, running around yelling about how poly can solve every relationship problem. I've been trying to get better about clarifying when I shout that at movie screens that I mean a *society* that embraced poly as one option among many would be a *society* that had fewer instances of certain types of problems, but those two people in particular would not necessarily benefit from poly *right now* as they are in this society because they don't have the skills (or the "nature" or the interest or whatever) to make poly work and, in fact, attempting polyamory from that broken place would only make things worse.

Now that we've done a fairly good job of raising awareness about abuse in poly relationships, I'm seeing a lot of armchair diagnosing of people as "narcissistic personality" or abuse. But, as I've been accused of "abusing" people for things like refusing to accept his control of my body or not tolerating abuse apologetics in certain forums that have been deemed as "safe spaces" for victims, I'm concerned that we, as a community, are throwing around that word too glibly.

And I say that as someone who fully intends to continue to speak out against abuse in poly relationships and to identify certain poly trope behaviours as abusive patterns and to maintain my hard stance against abuse apologetics.

It's a difficult line to walk and I'm not going to pretend to have all the answers. Stray too far down this path and actual victims start to question and doubt themselves. But, as part of one of my activist goals for bettering the poly community's collective skills in breaking up, I think we need to take a more nuanced approach to this problem. In some contexts, I think it's very important to label things as "abuse", but in other contexts, I think maybe it's not so important what we call it, we just need to recognize that it's not for us. Although I'm sure I will continue to argue with people over which side of that issue is the "correct" one for any given individual circumstance.

One of the bad habits from mono culture that we keep dragging into poly culture is the toxic breakup. We are taught to villainize our exes. I believe this is harmful to the community as a whole and to the individuals who go through this process. This makes it easy to switch from "he's a horrible, evil, hell-demon!" to "he's abusive!" when that may or may not necessarily be reality.

So I hope articles like these can help bring the nuance back to the conversation without making abuse victims feel too shameful or self-doubtful about their situations.

I mean, a bad relationship is still a bad relationship and everyone has every right to not be in a relationship that they don't want to be in, no matter what their reasons. Even if it's a good relationship but it's not meeting something in their life that they feel is important.

Relationships should serve the individuals in them. When individuals serve their relationships, that's when coercion happens.

"Our bodies are special so only our (future) husbands should get to see them!"

My body isn't special because no other man has seen it, nor is it tarnished because men have seen it. My body is special because it is part of me and *I* am special. It is the vessel which houses my soul, my essence, me. No man is so powerful that he can remove my specialness just by looking at me.

No matter how many men see or touch my body, it remains special because *I* am special. No matter how many men I share the experience of my body with, every experience with me is special because *I* am special. No one, man especially, is powerful enough to remove my specialness.

Just because I exist, I am special. Just because I *have* existed, I will always *be* special.

It's also why I'm not afraid of polyamory. Nothing my partners do or say or think or feel with other people changes my specialness, and our relationship is special because *we* are special and *we* are in this relationship.

www.morethantwo.com/blog/2016/06/can-polyamorous-hierarchies-ethical-part-2-influence-control

"But in giving Gilles an ultimatum, was [Elena] prepared for the possibility that he might say no—thus leaving her in the position of having to make good on her promise to end her relationship with him? Or was she working from an expectation that he would say yes—thus making the ultimatum dangerous for only Louisa, and not for Elena? What would her response be if Gilles said no? Would she be angry? Consider his choice a betrayal? Use shame and guilt to try to get him to do what she wanted? Or would she accept his decision—and leave the relationship?"

Eve Rickert follows up with part 2 on the question "are hierarchies ethical?" I pulled this quote out because of my own experience with "accidental hierarchy".

I was not always as secure in my relationships as I seem to be now. Hell, I'm *still* not always as secure in my relationships as I seem to be now. But my security has grown over time, as have my skills in handling my insecurities. In the past, I have taken advantage of Couple Privilege (without realizing it) and I have been in sort of de facto hierarchical relationships, even though I have never approved of hierarchy.

One common tactic I have actually participated in was the pre-approval veto - where any new partner must be pre-approved by the existing partner before any moves are made towards a partnership. This is often seen as an exception to the no-veto rule because the new potential partner often isn't even aware that they are being considered as a potential partner at this point - they might not even be interested, or at least they might not have expressed any interest yet. And if the veto is played, they may never know. I could go on a whole blog post about how that isn't really any different or better from a regular veto, but that's not the point of this piece now.

A long time ago, I dated someone who sought to reassure me about a new partner he was interested in. She wasn't poly. She had never heard of it before. She hadn't even had very many romantic partners at all. I was concerned about how "advanced" her relationship skills were and how this would negatively impact my relatively new relationship with our mutual partner. But I was here first. So my partner volunteered that, because he was committed to *polyamory*, not just me, if this new interest of his started making "enough" trouble, he would break up with her and not just for me, but because he also didn't want any mono-poly drama.

So, fast forward something like a year and a half, and I decided we had reached "enough trouble". So I pulled out my defacto veto. I reminded him of his promise and told him to break up with her. This has always bothered me. In hindsight, I see where I went wrong and I am now opposed to even the pre-approval veto. But it bothers me that I could have been opposed to veto and hierarchy for the whole power imbalance thing and I still pulled rank when I had it.

So that's where this quote comes in. Before I called his hand, I thought long and hard about doing so. I thought of every possible outcome to challenging him to break up with her. And I didn't do it until I had decided what the worst possible outcome was and accepted it. I waited until I was fairly certain that he would *not* break up with her, and that my challenge to him would result in our own break up.

When that's exactly what happened, I wasn't angry. I was sad and disappointed, but not angry. I did not feel betrayed. I felt let down because I felt as though he hadn't lived up to his commitments, but that's actually part of a pattern - he had broken several commitments to me over the course of the relationship and those commitments were *to me*, not about her, but that's what led me to the decision to issue the challenge in the first place. So I felt let down, but not betrayed.

However, many years later, I dated someone who believed that I had violated some agreement that I still do not believe I ever made, and he felt *betrayed*. Based on this partner's reaction, my emotions to that earlier partner choosing not to break up with his other partner were nothing like, and not even in the same family as, the emotions that this later ex seemed to feel towards me and my choices of partners.

I did not shame or guilt my then-partner into breaking up with her and staying with me. I accepted his decision immediately, and I left the relationship. We hugged, and got to work on building a new foundation for a friendship. I'm not saying it wasn't painful, and that I didn't have feelings of resentment, but there was no coercion and no entitlement there.

Later, when the shoe appeared to be on the other foot with that other partner, I worried about consistency. When *I* had a partner who took a new partner that I wasn't happy with, I told him about my unhappiness and I broke up with him when he didn't "do what I want". But then when this later partner was unhappy with my new relationship and this time *I* refused to either curtail or end this new relationship in favor of my existing partner's feelings, how was I any different from this later partner?

I *felt*, deep down, that there was a difference. But of course I did. I am the hero of my own story, after all, as is everyone. Of course it's "different when I do it"! But, was it really?

I think it was. As this article explains, it can be really difficult tell from the outside because often the end result is the same. "An outside observer who did not know Elena would in fact not be in a position to say whether her actions were a veto or not. Why? Because the difference comes down to expectation and intent."

This later partner felt *entitled* to have me choose him. He felt *entitled* to make demands on who I chose as another partner and how that new relationship could progress. He attempted to shame me for not allowing him to dictate the constraints of my other relationship, still trying to shame me even after he broke up with me. He felt betrayed. In fact, that's the exact word he used. He felt it was OK to override the agency of his partners, and not just me. Part of the reason why I refused to be flexible with respect to how difficult this situation was on him was because I saw him override other people.

See, I'm one of those annoying people who, when you back me into a corner, I'll just dig in my heels, bare my claws, and fight back out of spite. I'm working on that, but it's something I do. When I see someone having a hard time with something, and I don't see a good faith effort to own their shit and deal with it, I tend to throw people in the deep end.

Which means, in practice, that when I first start dating someone, I'll be extra considerate to make sure that they're comfortable with all the new poly stuff. I am not a beginner relationship. Even other poly people need a little adjusting when they start dating me. But if I start to notice that they are not making an equal effort to move past the discomfort and grow, if they are instead taking advantage of my consideration, I'll stop coddling them all at once, kind of like throwing ice water on someone. It may not be my best self, but I'm at least self-aware about it and I do warn people up front.

I had witnessed him being unreasonable towards his other partners. I saw him attempting to control their bodies. I saw him even trying to control their minds. He was startlingly successful at it. So I got pissed off. Then I started talking to someone new. This was the first time I had added my own new partner since he and I had started dating, and he was *not* prepared.

Incidentally, this is why I do not subscribe anymore to the principle that you should let your newbie partner start dating first. I mean, if it happens that way, then it happens that way. But I do not believe it is actually doing them any favors to "ease them into" polyamory and I no longer believe that all people need is to experience how it's possible to love more than one and they will magically not be afraid when their partner starts loving someone else.

Personal experience and observation of hundreds, if not thousands, of relationships in the poly community over the last two decades that I've been participating in it have taught me that putting off one's own entry into the dating world, or "easing them in" only makes one's partner comfortable in a fiction. They start to get accustomed to life as it is - with you not dating anyone - and then it's a shock to the system when you finally do start dating someone, because it's a *change* that they never really accepted. How often do we see people have no problem at all dating someone who is already partnered, only to freak out when that someone gets an even newer partner? The existing partner was part of the calculation, but a new partner is a *change*. The kindest thing you can do to someone like that is to show them up front what sort of relationship they can expect from you - and that includes how actively you date others.

Anyway, this partner had become accustomed to me not having any other partners for several years, because I made him a priority. But he added several new partners of his own and his time became more scarce. So eventually I had more time and emotional resources to devote to meeting new people as he dealt with the distraction of trying to control too many women at once. With his time being taken up by all the fires he had to put out with his mismanagement of his other relationships, and his attention definitely not on me or us, I felt alone and was open to considering other partners for the first time in several years.

But I wasn't *just* open to considering new partners, I was also pissed off at him for how he was treating his other partners. So I took off the kid gloves and I just did my other relationships however it felt natural between myself and the new partners and I expected the existing partner to just deal without any coddling from me.

Let me be clear and say that I don't believe I was *cruel*. I don't believe I was *anything*. My other relationships were between me and my other partners. They had nothing to do with him. He and the other partners didn't even live in the same city (or state). What I did was refuse to limit or restrain or shape these other relationships according to *his* wishes even a little bit. Not even the pre-approval veto that I previously believed didn't "count" as hierarchy or infringing on agency. But I'm quite sure that he disagrees with me on whether or not I was "cruel".

So when he confronted me about my new relationships, he was *angry*. He was mad that I wouldn't get pre-approval. He was mad that they progressed at a speed he didn't condone. He was especially pissed that I disagreed that we ever made some sort of "agreement" where he *could* have a say in those things. He called me names. He called me unethical - a sure stab right into my very sense of self. He accused me of betraying him. He accused me of being *unsafe* and putting him and all his other partners in danger, even though A) I had done nothing to put them in "danger" and B) I gave him all the information he needed to make his own safety decisions before we were even in the same city together again.

These are things meant to control. These are things meant to disempower. These are things meant to overrule agency. These are the tower - safety, ethics, consideration for existing partners' feelings. But I saw the village behind them - control, entitlement, fear, disempowerment. And these are not the things that I did with my prior partner, even though the outcome looks superficially similar.

PSA: Turn your fucking phones sideways when taking video! There's a reason why, when we moved away from a mostly square screen for moving pictures, we moved towards a landscape orientation (there are several, but this is one of them). For still photos, a portrait orientation (that's the tall, skinny frame shape) works fine with the appropriate composition because it's a static image. But for dynamic images like video, because things move horizontally more often than vertically, you need that extra space on the sides for things to move into.

When you record stuff vertically, there's a lot of moving side to side to get all the action in the frame. It's dizzying and annoying. You end up missing parts of the action because it moves off-camera quicker than you can follow it. You cut off more than you show. Yes, people are vertical and taller than they are wide, but the orientation isn't for the shape of the subject, it's for the MOTION of the subject.

Your videos look like shit. They're shaky and blurry and annoying. Please, take it from a professional camera operator - someone who people pay a lot of money to make pretty moving pictures - turn your phones to the side when you take a video. I guarantee that your videos will automatically look a hundred times better for doing this one thing alone, even if you never learn another thing about framing or composition or any movie tricks at all.

A- always center the impacted
L- listen & learn from those who live in the oppression
L- leverage your privilege
Y- yield the floor

To all the people who are shocked and surprised that a tragedy like last night's shooting could occur "in our city", first I want to say that I recognize that your feelings are real and that you are hurting. But now I want to tell you that your shock and surprise is what we mean by privilege.

People get all bent out of shape whenever the P-word comes up, and they think that we mean you are guilty of some transgression and should feel bad or ashamed of having a few benefits, or that we are ignoring your very real hardships in life. That's not what it means.

Privilege means that you have gone this far in life without ever considering that your life or the lives of your neighbors are in danger because of who they love (or fuck). You have gone this far in your life without feeling that fear of your life or your loved ones just for stepping out the front door or existing in spaces set aside just for you.

I don't know why you're so surprised that this happened in "your city". Your queer friends, family, and neighbors have been telling you that their lives are not safe. It was said about bathrooms but you complained about "bigger problems". It was said about gay marriage but you complained about "religious freedom". It has been said in a myriad of different ways. But your privilege is that you don't have to listen, or that you can forget for a while. Their reality is that they can't afford to forget that there are people in this world who do not believe they have a right to live.

There is nothing wrong with you for being surprised, or feeling pain on behalf of the queer community right now. Just remember this tragedy the next time someone talks about privilege, and remember how you were caught unawares, your little bubble of safety pierced, after others have been shouting from the rooftops that they are not safe.

They cannot afford to ever forget that they are not safe. You can. That is privilege. The goal is to find a way to extend your privileges to those who don't have them. The goal is to make the world safe enough that they, too, can forget for a while that bad things can happen even in their own cities.

I'm getting very tired of having this same conversation:

Them: I'm just so shocked that something like that could happen in MY town! We're so tolerant and accepting here with Disney and all!

Me: Those of us in the community aren't surprised at all. We've been saying that lives are in danger forever but no one is listening to us.

Them: What do you mean?! I've never seen any violence towards gays here!

Me: That's the definition of privilege. Next time someone complains about bathrooms or makes gay jokes, remember this day and that we tried to tell you so. Maybe next time you'll remember and you'll say something for us. Maybe next time you'll believe us.

"Straight folks who have overtaken gay clubs with your bachelorette parties and unicorn-finding expeditions, I hope you are donating money and blood and standing in solidarity today." - Julia Burke

Also, don't tell me how helpful you have been if you're straight. Tell other straight people. I'm not handing out cookies for being the bare minimum of decent human beings.

This is why so many of us were not surprised.

We breed hate, and then don't understand how extremists and killers can walk among us. We create them and give them places to hide.

I am not Orlando.

In Orlando, it was a felony to have gay sex until 1971 and a misdemeanor until 2003. The law, while unenforceable, is still on the books.

In Orlando, it was not legal for gay couples to adopt children until last year.

In Orlando, it is legal to pay someone to kidnap your child and torture them until they stop identifying as LGBT.

In Orlando, the people who have been outed when they were shot in a gay night club can, when they get out of the hospital, be legally fired.

If they get out of the hospital at all, since Orlando affirms doctors' "right" to refuse to treat them at all.

In Orlando, a hate crime against me doesn't count.

I am not Orlando. Orlando was not the target. Orlando was the shooter. Orlando is what 49 people like me could not survive. ‪#‎IamPulse‬ ~ Johann Koehle

No, straight white people, now is not in fact the time to tell me you worry about my/your gay friends' safety. If you haven't been worrying about our safety all along then don't come over here clutching your pearls right now. Some shitnozzle with an assault rifle did not just magically invent homophobic violence last night in Orlando.

If it's just now dawning on you that my life isn't safe because I'm queer? Congratulations, your shock and consternation are part of what straight cis privilege looks like.

I'd like to invite you, while you are thinking about this, to also think about the fact that this violence was not just anti-gay violence. It was racist violence, it was transphobic violence, and it was misogynist violence. No one magically invented those things last night either.

I know it's not comfortable but I'm asking you to just sit with all of this and not turn to me or any other queer person, or any person of color, or any trans person, for comfort or assurance that "we'll take care of ourselves" and "be safe" right now. We've been taking care of ourselves and keeping ourselves as safe as we can for a long long time and that's why we're still here at all.

I'm asking you to think about what YOU will do to help us take care of ourselves and keep us safe. ~ Hanne Blank

Important links I have shared in relation to the Orlando Pulse Shooting: