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I belong to a handful of alternative groups, or groups that are otherwise explicitly for people not in the traditional, heteronormative, married-with-children category. Stuff like a child-free social group and an unmarried and don't want to be married poly group, and I have a profile on a social networking site specifically for meeting people to dance with that leaves dating open as a possibility but the primary purpose is to find dance partners. The point is, I belong to some groups that certain people seem to think exist for the purpose of providing them with a pool of potential mates when that's not actually the group's intention.
If I were a member of Single Women Specifically Looking For Any Man To Fuck Them, I could understand there being some confusion were I to meet a proposition with "how dare you proposition me, I'm just here for friends!" or something. There would be no sense to participating on a site like that if I weren't actually looking for a sexual relationship. This, of course, is different from disliking an individual user while still being available or interested in finding a compatible partner. I'm talking about signing up for a "find me a sexual partner" site but only wanting non-sexual partners or being offended at *any* sexual interest from *any* other user.
Anyway, to get back on track, there are a whole bunch of other types of groups and places that offer non-traditionally-partnered people a place to be their non-traditionally-partnered selves. When you're in your 30s and intentionally child-free, it can be tiresome and frustrating to have all your other friends have children because you can't socialize in the way that being childfree is supposed to let you do. When I'm bored on a Wednesday night, one of the whole reasons that I'm childfree is so that I can spontaneously decide to go out dancing in the middle of the week just because I fucking feel like it. But when all your friends have young children, you can't make spontaneous plans because everyone else has to find a babysitter first, or can't afford one, or can only do the kinds of things that they can take their kids along to.
Not that I don't love my parental friends or support their choices to be parents, and not that I'm saying being parents doesn't come with its own set of problems, even problems that our society doesn't support. I'm just saying that, when society rewards or defends a particular version of a lifestyle, and you choose another one, sometimes you have to go out and deliberately socialize with others of a similar lifestyle just to be able to *get* to engage in your chosen (or innate) lifestyle. It's why we have poly discussion and support groups, it's why we have Drinking Skeptically or Skeptics In The Pub groups, it's why we have Singles Over 50 groups, it's why we have child-free social groups, it's why we have dance cruises, etc.
Ugh, that was long and rambly, let's see if I can get to the point sometime soon.
So, I belong to these groups. But sometimes, there are people who see these groups and they don't think "hey, that's nice - a group of people with a similar lifestyle interest who can socialize together in a manner that celebrates or accommodates their shared lifestyle interest!" Sometimes there are people who see these groups and think "how convenient! They grouped them all together in one place so that I can more easily find someone to fulfill my own desires!" Guys looking to cheat on their wives, for example, often come to poly communities because they see it as a single location of "easy women" or women who won't bitch about them being married or who won't try to take their wives' place the way having a monogamous mistress would. It's about efficiency - more of the same type of women in one place takes less time and effort than trying to identify that same type of woman individually from among the millions of monogamous-minded women they have to sift through just in their regular lives.
In a group that was intended for people who either are not part of a primary and/or spousal-like relationship or for people who do not want to be in that type of relationship, someone made a typical unicorn hunter's personal ad post: "hubby and I are looking for a single lady to come join us!" Now, remember, this is a group specifically for people who are not in spousal-like relationships and/or who do not want to be in one. People who are in that kind of relationship *can* join, if they want to, but the focus of the group is community for non-spousally partnered people.
To me, there are only two possible motivations for a person who is spousally-partnered to join an explicitly non-spousally-partnered group: 1) To better understand/support non-spousally-partnered people, their preferences, concerns, and needs; 2) Because they view it as conveniently rounding up all the single ladies for their perusal (and I say "ladies" because it's distressingly common that they're looking for women and incredibly rare for them to be seeking men in the same manner, even though it does happen).
These are the sorts of people that I get the feeling, when they see a "Singles Social Club" ad, they aren't seeing a social club for people who have different wants, needs, preferences, and pressures than partnered people and are hoping to socialize with others of similar wants, needs, preferences, and pressures. But, rather, they see something like the obnoxious "dating" ads that show up in my sidebars telling me that there are "hundreds of sexy young Russian women who want to marry you RIGHT NOW!" This is a group of people that we've collected FOR YOU!
If any of you have ever seen The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas, this is what I'm imagining right now - an old fashioned brothel in a rambling old Victorian house, with a sitting room just off the foyer decorated in deep red velvet damask wallpaper and dark wood floors and furnishings; a room with orange gas lighting and an upright piano in the corner, and a line of half-naked women that an older, stately woman walks down, leading a portly, red-faced and sweaty gentleman with a string tie, introducing him to each girl and explaining what each girl would happily do for him. Each girl is there for him, and this house, this sitting room, exists so that he can come to a single location and find a selection of girls to choose from, all who are there for the purpose of being chosen by him.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm actually pro-prostitution and I'm a fan of the idea of professional whorehouses where the women are independent contractors and can work in a safe environment where regular testing and safer sex devices are available, where they can conduct their business in a place designed for it, away from their private residences, where they can have a management structure, and where clients can easily locate them and they can easily locate clinets for a mutually beneficial arrangement.
The point I'm trying to make here is that I'm not talking about the Mustang Ranch or some similar establishment. I'm talking about people treating communities as their own personal pool of available and willing partners. When they see "Childfree Social Group", they don't read "community for childfree people", they read "single location of hot women who won't get 'accidentally' knocked up and tie me down there for my convenience". When they see "Submissive Safe Space", they don't read "community for people of a submissive bent to learn, support, and discuss", they read "hot young girls who will obey my every command all gathered together in one place for me to choose from". I can't tell you how often I've seen subbies told that their duty as a sub was to accept orders, and any time they didn't like it (either the order or the person it was coming from), it meant that they must not be "real submissives", because a "real submissive" gets off on being ordered around. If that's your view of submissives, I'm not surprised you would think a submissive meeting is really just a whole room full of people willing to lick your boots.
I think "community" is the key word there. They are not seeing communities. They are seeing the world as existing for them and people only by how they affect themselves. Like, the customers at the retail store where I occasionally pick up a few extra hours. They routinely go through the aisles, picking up items and putting them down in all kinds of crazy places, leaving their trash on the shelves, and generally being incredibly insensitive to the employees who have to pick up after them or the other customers who can't find the items or have to walk through a dirty store.
"But that's what the employees are THERE for! It's their JOB to put stuff away and keep the place clean! If we all kept the store in pristine condition for them, the company wouldn't have any reason to employ them! Really, we're providing job security, if you think about it."
Seriously, I've heard this argument before. I was actually on a date with someone who refused to throw his trash away at movie theaters because he felt that's what the movie theater attendants were there for, and picking up after himself was taking away their purpose for being there. Notice I said "on a date" and not "dated". There was no second date. How a person treats service personnel is a huge litmus test that can be the deciding factor in whether or not I'll consider dating someone.
No, you're not providing job security. My purpose at the store is not to clean up after you. My purpose is to provide information and assistance to the customers, and running around, putting away products and picking up trash actually takes time away from my ability to be available to other customers. I am less effective at my job because I have to include cleaning up after your privileged, entitled ass to my otherwise long list of job duties.
So this was really nothing more than a meandering rant about the self-centered view some people have on the world around them, where everyone and everything exists only in relation to how it affects themselves. It's a much less serious problem than many of the issues I rant about, but is, I believe, symptomatic of those same problems - those of agency and autonomy and empathy and compassion. I walk my grocery store carts to the cart corrals and I throw away my movie trash. Not always, I'm not perfect. But I don't believe the employees exist for my convenience and I know, every time I don't follow through, that I've just made someone else's job harder.
Seeing a community and thinking of it and the people in it only in terms of how they can provide for themselves is a symptom, a clue, I believe, of some underlying assumptions and beliefs about the world and people around them. Seeing a community for single adults and treating it as a barrel at which to shoot conveniently gathered fish gives away a lot of implications for how their unicorn can expect to be treated, should they ever find one.
Sure, a lot of it is naivete. The vast majority of unicorn hunters are couples who are new to polyamory and operating from a place of great fear. It just hasn't occurred to them how their position affects other people. But I was new to polyamory too, and it never once occurred to me that hiring someone for the position of My Next Partner wasn't inherently objectifying and dehumanizing, outside of an explicitly prostitudinous arrangement, wherein I would still have tried to negotiate with said sex worker over what was acceptable to the sex worker and what was out of bounds.
My first time at a strip club, I asked the dancer what was allowed and what wasn't. She wasn't a product I purchased, or even rented - she was a human person with whom I had contracted a set of services, and she had every right in the world to lay out her own terms. My "paying for it" didn't cancel out her humanity. And, of course, all these firsts happened when I was much younger, much less feminist, and much less educated about certain progressive values that I now hold. And I still knew better.
So, in case it hasn't occurred to you yet, the tl;dr version is this: communities and groups of like-minded people are not a convenient location in which we have rounded up a bevy of people for your attention or perusal. Even those groups for which the purpose *is* whatever you're looking for (i.e. a dating site), the group members are not there for you specifically. Do not treat such groups and communities as your personal pool to fish from, stocked with said fish for your pleasure. Being part of a "singles" group, or a submissive group, or a childfree group, or a poly group, or a kink group, or a whatever group, does not mean that the group exists for you to use as a collection site like a temp employment agency. Being part of one of those groups does not mean that the members are there for you. Even being sexually available does not mean that they are sexually available to you.
And for fuck's sake, stop posting personals ads on the internet unless you're specifically signed up for a personals ads service! Just have a fucking conversation with people, and through those conversations, you will eventually find people who are compatible enough with you to consider the sort of relationship you're looking for (or even a whole new kind of relationship you hadn't considered before, but you'd never have known that you'd be open to it if you hadn't just fucking talked to people first).
If I were a member of Single Women Specifically Looking For Any Man To Fuck Them, I could understand there being some confusion were I to meet a proposition with "how dare you proposition me, I'm just here for friends!" or something. There would be no sense to participating on a site like that if I weren't actually looking for a sexual relationship. This, of course, is different from disliking an individual user while still being available or interested in finding a compatible partner. I'm talking about signing up for a "find me a sexual partner" site but only wanting non-sexual partners or being offended at *any* sexual interest from *any* other user.
Anyway, to get back on track, there are a whole bunch of other types of groups and places that offer non-traditionally-partnered people a place to be their non-traditionally-partnered selves. When you're in your 30s and intentionally child-free, it can be tiresome and frustrating to have all your other friends have children because you can't socialize in the way that being childfree is supposed to let you do. When I'm bored on a Wednesday night, one of the whole reasons that I'm childfree is so that I can spontaneously decide to go out dancing in the middle of the week just because I fucking feel like it. But when all your friends have young children, you can't make spontaneous plans because everyone else has to find a babysitter first, or can't afford one, or can only do the kinds of things that they can take their kids along to.
Not that I don't love my parental friends or support their choices to be parents, and not that I'm saying being parents doesn't come with its own set of problems, even problems that our society doesn't support. I'm just saying that, when society rewards or defends a particular version of a lifestyle, and you choose another one, sometimes you have to go out and deliberately socialize with others of a similar lifestyle just to be able to *get* to engage in your chosen (or innate) lifestyle. It's why we have poly discussion and support groups, it's why we have Drinking Skeptically or Skeptics In The Pub groups, it's why we have Singles Over 50 groups, it's why we have child-free social groups, it's why we have dance cruises, etc.
Ugh, that was long and rambly, let's see if I can get to the point sometime soon.
So, I belong to these groups. But sometimes, there are people who see these groups and they don't think "hey, that's nice - a group of people with a similar lifestyle interest who can socialize together in a manner that celebrates or accommodates their shared lifestyle interest!" Sometimes there are people who see these groups and think "how convenient! They grouped them all together in one place so that I can more easily find someone to fulfill my own desires!" Guys looking to cheat on their wives, for example, often come to poly communities because they see it as a single location of "easy women" or women who won't bitch about them being married or who won't try to take their wives' place the way having a monogamous mistress would. It's about efficiency - more of the same type of women in one place takes less time and effort than trying to identify that same type of woman individually from among the millions of monogamous-minded women they have to sift through just in their regular lives.
In a group that was intended for people who either are not part of a primary and/or spousal-like relationship or for people who do not want to be in that type of relationship, someone made a typical unicorn hunter's personal ad post: "hubby and I are looking for a single lady to come join us!" Now, remember, this is a group specifically for people who are not in spousal-like relationships and/or who do not want to be in one. People who are in that kind of relationship *can* join, if they want to, but the focus of the group is community for non-spousally partnered people.
To me, there are only two possible motivations for a person who is spousally-partnered to join an explicitly non-spousally-partnered group: 1) To better understand/support non-spousally-partnered people, their preferences, concerns, and needs; 2) Because they view it as conveniently rounding up all the single ladies for their perusal (and I say "ladies" because it's distressingly common that they're looking for women and incredibly rare for them to be seeking men in the same manner, even though it does happen).
These are the sorts of people that I get the feeling, when they see a "Singles Social Club" ad, they aren't seeing a social club for people who have different wants, needs, preferences, and pressures than partnered people and are hoping to socialize with others of similar wants, needs, preferences, and pressures. But, rather, they see something like the obnoxious "dating" ads that show up in my sidebars telling me that there are "hundreds of sexy young Russian women who want to marry you RIGHT NOW!" This is a group of people that we've collected FOR YOU!
If any of you have ever seen The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas, this is what I'm imagining right now - an old fashioned brothel in a rambling old Victorian house, with a sitting room just off the foyer decorated in deep red velvet damask wallpaper and dark wood floors and furnishings; a room with orange gas lighting and an upright piano in the corner, and a line of half-naked women that an older, stately woman walks down, leading a portly, red-faced and sweaty gentleman with a string tie, introducing him to each girl and explaining what each girl would happily do for him. Each girl is there for him, and this house, this sitting room, exists so that he can come to a single location and find a selection of girls to choose from, all who are there for the purpose of being chosen by him.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm actually pro-prostitution and I'm a fan of the idea of professional whorehouses where the women are independent contractors and can work in a safe environment where regular testing and safer sex devices are available, where they can conduct their business in a place designed for it, away from their private residences, where they can have a management structure, and where clients can easily locate them and they can easily locate clinets for a mutually beneficial arrangement.
The point I'm trying to make here is that I'm not talking about the Mustang Ranch or some similar establishment. I'm talking about people treating communities as their own personal pool of available and willing partners. When they see "Childfree Social Group", they don't read "community for childfree people", they read "single location of hot women who won't get 'accidentally' knocked up and tie me down there for my convenience". When they see "Submissive Safe Space", they don't read "community for people of a submissive bent to learn, support, and discuss", they read "hot young girls who will obey my every command all gathered together in one place for me to choose from". I can't tell you how often I've seen subbies told that their duty as a sub was to accept orders, and any time they didn't like it (either the order or the person it was coming from), it meant that they must not be "real submissives", because a "real submissive" gets off on being ordered around. If that's your view of submissives, I'm not surprised you would think a submissive meeting is really just a whole room full of people willing to lick your boots.
I think "community" is the key word there. They are not seeing communities. They are seeing the world as existing for them and people only by how they affect themselves. Like, the customers at the retail store where I occasionally pick up a few extra hours. They routinely go through the aisles, picking up items and putting them down in all kinds of crazy places, leaving their trash on the shelves, and generally being incredibly insensitive to the employees who have to pick up after them or the other customers who can't find the items or have to walk through a dirty store.
"But that's what the employees are THERE for! It's their JOB to put stuff away and keep the place clean! If we all kept the store in pristine condition for them, the company wouldn't have any reason to employ them! Really, we're providing job security, if you think about it."
Seriously, I've heard this argument before. I was actually on a date with someone who refused to throw his trash away at movie theaters because he felt that's what the movie theater attendants were there for, and picking up after himself was taking away their purpose for being there. Notice I said "on a date" and not "dated". There was no second date. How a person treats service personnel is a huge litmus test that can be the deciding factor in whether or not I'll consider dating someone.
No, you're not providing job security. My purpose at the store is not to clean up after you. My purpose is to provide information and assistance to the customers, and running around, putting away products and picking up trash actually takes time away from my ability to be available to other customers. I am less effective at my job because I have to include cleaning up after your privileged, entitled ass to my otherwise long list of job duties.
So this was really nothing more than a meandering rant about the self-centered view some people have on the world around them, where everyone and everything exists only in relation to how it affects themselves. It's a much less serious problem than many of the issues I rant about, but is, I believe, symptomatic of those same problems - those of agency and autonomy and empathy and compassion. I walk my grocery store carts to the cart corrals and I throw away my movie trash. Not always, I'm not perfect. But I don't believe the employees exist for my convenience and I know, every time I don't follow through, that I've just made someone else's job harder.
Seeing a community and thinking of it and the people in it only in terms of how they can provide for themselves is a symptom, a clue, I believe, of some underlying assumptions and beliefs about the world and people around them. Seeing a community for single adults and treating it as a barrel at which to shoot conveniently gathered fish gives away a lot of implications for how their unicorn can expect to be treated, should they ever find one.
Sure, a lot of it is naivete. The vast majority of unicorn hunters are couples who are new to polyamory and operating from a place of great fear. It just hasn't occurred to them how their position affects other people. But I was new to polyamory too, and it never once occurred to me that hiring someone for the position of My Next Partner wasn't inherently objectifying and dehumanizing, outside of an explicitly prostitudinous arrangement, wherein I would still have tried to negotiate with said sex worker over what was acceptable to the sex worker and what was out of bounds.
My first time at a strip club, I asked the dancer what was allowed and what wasn't. She wasn't a product I purchased, or even rented - she was a human person with whom I had contracted a set of services, and she had every right in the world to lay out her own terms. My "paying for it" didn't cancel out her humanity. And, of course, all these firsts happened when I was much younger, much less feminist, and much less educated about certain progressive values that I now hold. And I still knew better.
So, in case it hasn't occurred to you yet, the tl;dr version is this: communities and groups of like-minded people are not a convenient location in which we have rounded up a bevy of people for your attention or perusal. Even those groups for which the purpose *is* whatever you're looking for (i.e. a dating site), the group members are not there for you specifically. Do not treat such groups and communities as your personal pool to fish from, stocked with said fish for your pleasure. Being part of a "singles" group, or a submissive group, or a childfree group, or a poly group, or a kink group, or a whatever group, does not mean that the group exists for you to use as a collection site like a temp employment agency. Being part of one of those groups does not mean that the members are there for you. Even being sexually available does not mean that they are sexually available to you.
And for fuck's sake, stop posting personals ads on the internet unless you're specifically signed up for a personals ads service! Just have a fucking conversation with people, and through those conversations, you will eventually find people who are compatible enough with you to consider the sort of relationship you're looking for (or even a whole new kind of relationship you hadn't considered before, but you'd never have known that you'd be open to it if you hadn't just fucking talked to people first).
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Date: 7/31/13 01:17 pm (UTC)From:Apparently it still pisses me off.
:)
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Date: 7/31/13 04:22 pm (UTC)From: