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Dan Savage's Campsite Rule Is Bullshit
I am not a fan of Dan Savage. He occasionally says something not terrible, but so do a lot of other people who don't fill the rest of their time with toxic nonsense. Just because a stopped clock is right twice a day, it doesn't mean that you should rely on that clock as your timepiece. A working clock is also right those same 2 times a day, but it's right all the rest of the time too.
This rant is brought to you by Savage's Campsite Rule. This rule states that you should leave your partners "better" than you found them, including no stds, no unwanted pregnancies, and no emotional or sexual baggage because of their experience with you. Aside from that being literally impossible to guarantee, the problem I have with the campsite rule is that it relies on the very person most at risk of being the problem to self-evaluate.
I've been involved in identifying abusive dynamics in my communities in the last several years, and what we've all learned the hard way is that abusers see themselves as victims even while they're actively abusing someone. Asking one of them to take on the responsibility of not leaving their partner worse than they found them is like asking unicorn hunters to take on the responsibility of not harming their unicorns, or the police department to evaluate and take on the responsibility of correcting its own level of racism and corruption. We need objective and independent evaluations, not our subjective opinions of ourselves which are inherently biased to think of ourselves as "Good People".
Abusers blame their victims for their situation. The abuser always come away from abusive relationships thinking that *the abuser* was the "good one" and that the victim is worse off without the abuser in the picture. I'm sure we've all heard "what does she see in that loser? She could have a Nice Guy like me! Women just want guys who are assholes! They don't even have enough sense to notice a good catch like me when I'm right in front of them!"
Abusers think that their victims are not capable of making good choices for themselves and they require corrective action from the abuser. The abuser is the one who knows how the victim should live / date / dress / eat / work / be! The victim is lost without the abuser to tell them the proper way to cook eggs and raise children and dress for work and clean the house and think about themselves! So the abusers say.
So I'm not a fan of telling people to leave their partners "better off" than they found them because abusers - the people most in dire need of these sorts of restrictions - honestly think they *are* doing that. They think that their victims *came* to them with baggage and that the abuser is the only one who can "straighten them out".
In the book Why Does He Do That by Lundy Bancroft, we hear stories from the sessions with abusive men. Without exception, they believe that their partners are the fucked up ones, that their partners need their corrective hand to survive, that their partners will ruin their own lives without their personal guidance, and that they are absolutely justified in whatever tactics they employ to "guide" their victims.
We all like to think of ourselves as the heroes of our own story. In my observation, it's the victims who are most likely to think that they are too "broken" to be a good partner for someone and everyone else doesn't really believe at the beginning of a relationship that they will one day become a bad influence on their partners. Even without being an abuser, most of us genuinely do not believe that we will one day break up and our partners will be a bigger mess because of their experience with us.
I know that I've had partners, in my early poly days, who were absolutely not ready to deal with ethical non-monogamy. And to this day, I still do not believe that I treated them unethically. But their pre-existing issues did not mix well with my more advanced relationship skills or my own flaws and some of them probably have some baggage after dating me. I am not a beginner relationship. If you throw someone into a situation that is too advanced or too complicated for them to handle at that stage, they're likely to come away from that experience with a few issues.
*We* are generally not the right people to evaluate ahead of time what will or will not be "good" for someone after it's over. We're not even very good at evaluating what will be good for ourselves, let alone other people.
So I think that is a terrible metric to use in evaluating ethics in relationships. We have more concrete, objective metrics involving power dynamics and domestic violence red flags. We should not be relying on our own subjective opinion of ourselves when it is ourselves that need evaluation for potential harm. We are too biased for that evaluation.
This rant is brought to you by Savage's Campsite Rule. This rule states that you should leave your partners "better" than you found them, including no stds, no unwanted pregnancies, and no emotional or sexual baggage because of their experience with you. Aside from that being literally impossible to guarantee, the problem I have with the campsite rule is that it relies on the very person most at risk of being the problem to self-evaluate.
I've been involved in identifying abusive dynamics in my communities in the last several years, and what we've all learned the hard way is that abusers see themselves as victims even while they're actively abusing someone. Asking one of them to take on the responsibility of not leaving their partner worse than they found them is like asking unicorn hunters to take on the responsibility of not harming their unicorns, or the police department to evaluate and take on the responsibility of correcting its own level of racism and corruption. We need objective and independent evaluations, not our subjective opinions of ourselves which are inherently biased to think of ourselves as "Good People".
Abusers blame their victims for their situation. The abuser always come away from abusive relationships thinking that *the abuser* was the "good one" and that the victim is worse off without the abuser in the picture. I'm sure we've all heard "what does she see in that loser? She could have a Nice Guy like me! Women just want guys who are assholes! They don't even have enough sense to notice a good catch like me when I'm right in front of them!"
Abusers think that their victims are not capable of making good choices for themselves and they require corrective action from the abuser. The abuser is the one who knows how the victim should live / date / dress / eat / work / be! The victim is lost without the abuser to tell them the proper way to cook eggs and raise children and dress for work and clean the house and think about themselves! So the abusers say.
So I'm not a fan of telling people to leave their partners "better off" than they found them because abusers - the people most in dire need of these sorts of restrictions - honestly think they *are* doing that. They think that their victims *came* to them with baggage and that the abuser is the only one who can "straighten them out".
In the book Why Does He Do That by Lundy Bancroft, we hear stories from the sessions with abusive men. Without exception, they believe that their partners are the fucked up ones, that their partners need their corrective hand to survive, that their partners will ruin their own lives without their personal guidance, and that they are absolutely justified in whatever tactics they employ to "guide" their victims.
We all like to think of ourselves as the heroes of our own story. In my observation, it's the victims who are most likely to think that they are too "broken" to be a good partner for someone and everyone else doesn't really believe at the beginning of a relationship that they will one day become a bad influence on their partners. Even without being an abuser, most of us genuinely do not believe that we will one day break up and our partners will be a bigger mess because of their experience with us.
I know that I've had partners, in my early poly days, who were absolutely not ready to deal with ethical non-monogamy. And to this day, I still do not believe that I treated them unethically. But their pre-existing issues did not mix well with my more advanced relationship skills or my own flaws and some of them probably have some baggage after dating me. I am not a beginner relationship. If you throw someone into a situation that is too advanced or too complicated for them to handle at that stage, they're likely to come away from that experience with a few issues.
*We* are generally not the right people to evaluate ahead of time what will or will not be "good" for someone after it's over. We're not even very good at evaluating what will be good for ourselves, let alone other people.
So I think that is a terrible metric to use in evaluating ethics in relationships. We have more concrete, objective metrics involving power dynamics and domestic violence red flags. We should not be relying on our own subjective opinion of ourselves when it is ourselves that need evaluation for potential harm. We are too biased for that evaluation.