The Journal Of The InnKeeper

Your sporadic reminder that there is no scale of theist --> agnostic --> atheist. Agnosticism is not in between "there is a god" and "there is no god".

Atheism is not a positive assertion that there is no god. It is absent a positive *belief* that there *is* a god.

Atheism is about lacking belief. Agnosticism is about lacking *knowledge*.

Instead of that line, you have a 2x2 box with theism / atheism on one axis and gnosticism / agnosticism on the other. You have 4 categories: gnostic theists, agnostic theists, gnostic atheists, and agnostic atheists.

It's *gnostic atheists* that claim to know that there is no god.

And to muddle things even further, you can have atheists who are gnostic about some deities and agnostic about other deities.

This is a tired, old argument that has been refuted ages ago and it's very irksome to keep having the same arguments repeatedly over many years just because *this guy* hasn't yet had it *with me*. I have no patience on the 100th time and I don't particularly care if it's your first. Like every other ridiculous debate that's been settled but keeps popping up, go look up where it's been debated before instead of reinventing the wheel yet again.

And for the record, I'm a gnostic atheist about most deities. We have tools to provide knowledge about the possible or probable existence of deities provided one first defines the deity in question. And yet I'm still irritated that we have to keep reminding people that atheism is an absence of belief, not a positive assertion of non-existence. That's my gnosticism talking, not my atheism.

In addition to that, the vast majority of even gnostic atheists don't claim 100% certainty. If we're using science, logic, and empiricism to arrive at our claims then we know better to claim 100% certainty. We just also recognise that one only needs be certain *enough* to operate as if it's true.

For 100% certainty, you have to look to the gnostic theists.

"That costs how much?! Please! I can make it myself for cheaper than that!"

Me: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

If, by some miracle, you actually can obtain all the materials for cheaper than the finished product (which, in my experience, only happens when I already have shit lying around the house from previous crafts or when I know someone in a particular industry who has shit lying around from their businesses), this doesn't take into account your time.

As a freelancer, I've had to learn how to view my time as valuable. I charge X amount per hour for certain labor. My time is worth at least that much. So, how many hours am I going to put into this craft? Multiply that times my going rate for work, and that's how much money the craft is "costing" me by not earning that money for that time.

It's easy to rationalize that I wouldn't be working anyway, so I'm just filling my spare time with activities that include crafting. But that's how we end up with the stereotype of the "starving artist" - by not valuing our time commercially, we don't charge enough and/or don't get paid enough for what we do that other people want to have but don't or won't or can't do themselves.

This is how we ended up with "interns" who are legal adults but who can't pay any bills because they got talked into working "for the exposure / experience". This is how we ended up with an entire generation of people not earning enough to feed themselves and another generation thinking that they're so "entitled" and willing to pay them wages that can't they can't feed themselves on.

Also, raw materials are fucking expensive when you have to buy retail or in small quantities for one-off products. Ignoring the more abstract issue of time, materials cost more than you'd think (if you don't already work intimately with those products).

That prom dress costs $200?! Ridiculous! Except that the same material bought at a retail fabric shop for 1 dress costs $300 plus your labor.

I have no problem with anyone wanting to make anything. As a crafter, obviously I make stuff. And, as I mentioned above, because I craft all the time, I probably already have stuff lying around that can be used in my crafts. Kinda like cooking - the first time I had to buy a $15 jar of some spice was a major investment, but if I only use a fraction of a teaspoon per recipe, then the *next time* I make it, it'll be way cheaper. What spice is it? Saffron? that's more expensive per oz. than gold?

But as a *producer* of goods and services, it really rankles me when my work and the work of artists is dismissed on the, usually mistaken, notion that it's "cheaper" to do it oneself. Or on the dismissal of homemade products by people trying to save money as somehow being "less" than store-bought manufactured goods because they don't count the labor involved as part of the financial investment.

There's that one comic out there somewhere that has a guy behind a desk complaining to a graphic artist that he just paid some "outrageous" amount for something that took the artist (or coder, I can't remember) 20 minutes to make. So the artist reminds the boss that he didn't just pay for 20 minutes of work, he also paid for the years of schooling and training that it took to be *able* to do the thing in only 20 minutes. If the boss had invested the tens of thousands of dollars into a similar education, then sure, he could have done the same thing in the same amount of time.

As a poor person, I definitely know how much "cheaper" things can be when comparing up-front costs. I get into that argument all the time from the other side. But then you can't count your *labor* as a dollar value. If you did that, it likely wouldn't be cheaper. And for someone on an income as low or lower than mine, that actual dollar value vs. potential dollar value is significant. I can actually afford some things I do myself because the bank won't come to collect on the 6 hours it took me to do the thing.

But as a content provider trying to make a living off that labor, because the bank won't come to collect on my *hours*, that means that I also don't have any *cash* to give them instead when people snort at how much I charge to perform labor.

Not saying that prices aren't ridiculous sometimes. Capitalism is a fucked up system from top to bottom. Just saying that it's very rarely ever "cheaper to do it myself" when you really add up all the associated costs.

Watch on YouTube

#CraftersKnowItIsNotAboutSavingMoney #AlmostAlwaysCheaperToMassProduceOrAtLeastBuyRawMaterialsInBulkToHandProduceLargeQuantities #BecauseIAmACrafterIKnowBetterEvenThoughIStillSayThisMyselfSometimes #HolyFuckAmISpendingALotOnMaterial! #CouponClippingAndItIsStillExpensive

"So, do you and your partner..."
Um, I'm poly.

"OK, but which one is your main one?"
Um, I'm poly.

"Sure, but who do you love?"
Um, I'm poly.

"Who do you spend the most time with?"
Um, I'm poly.

"What is your favorite book?"
Um, I'm poly.

"What is your favorite movie?"
Um, I'm poly.

"What's your favorite food?"
Um, I'm poly.

"What about just favorite *type* of food?"
Um, I'm poly.

"Surely you have a favorite ..."
Um, I'm poly.

"If your house was burning and you could only save ..."
Um, I'm poly.

"No, but if you could only save your partner..."
Um, I'm poly.

"Listen! Your partner or your cat? Which would..."
My cats. Plural. Remember? I'm poly.

#polyamory #poly #polyamorous #FeelingSnarky #UnlessHeIsPassedOutHeCanSaveHimselfBetterThanMyPetsCanAndICanAtLeastCarryMyPets #AllTheCats #UhIAmPoly

From a comment I made in another thread about the lesson I learned about metamours:

I am generally friends with my metamours and some of them are closer to me than our mutual partner. 2 of my closest friends are metafores (a metamour from before) where that metamour relationship lasted longer and is closer than the mutual partner who brought us together.

All that said, if I have a metamour who is "a drama starter", that is not a problem between her and me, that is a problem between my partner and me because he would think that it's acceptable to be involved with someone like that.

All relationships bring conflict. I have conflicted with every metamour I've ever had at one time or another. Occasionally the personality conflict is big enough that we choose to merely coexist. The rest of the time, the conflict is like any other - we work it out and get through it.

Think of metamour relationships like in-laws. You don't have a choice who your in-laws are - they come with your partner. If your partner keeps a relationship with them, that's because they see value in those relationships even if you don't have the same value system. You can try to befriend them or you can largely ignore them, whatever you think is appropriate for in-law relationships, but they *will* affect your romantic relationship one way or another depending on how close your partner is to them.

And if you have a problem with your in-laws, then you really have a problem with that partner for choosing to remain connected to them. If the problem is not about how they're influencing your relationship but just about personality differences, then you work through it with them directly until you find a balance you can both live with.

Poly people like to think we're inventing the wheel, that no one has ever done anything like what we do before. But most of the skills necessary to navigate poly relationships are available to us through our other relationships and our other practices.

Metamours are basically in-laws. You can't make your partner choose your in-laws based on your preferences without overriding agency and utilizing coercion so you learn to deal or you recognize that the problem is between you and your partner for having incompatible relationship goals.



"Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence." ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

Bank person: There is a minimum balance for this account, but you have 60 days before we start charging a fee for being below the minimum balance.

60 days later, I add enough money to meet the minimum balance. 15 days after that, the bank deducts $10 for not meeting the minimum balance. So I call.

Me: What's up with this fee? I have the minimum balance in there.

Support Guy: It's a monthly fee, so if any point during the month you dip below the minimum balance, you get charged the fee.

Me: OK, but I was told I had 60 days before that fee went into effect.

Support: Well, the fee is for the whole month.

Me: OK, but I was told I had 60 days before that fee would be charged. I opened the account on the 13th, and 60 days later I put in the minimum balance.

Support: ...

Support: ...

Me: I was given 60 days.

Support: ...

Support: As a one time courtesy, we can remove the fee.

This is why poor people stay poor. It costs money to have no money and we have to argue even to follow the rules that *they* set for us. This isn't a "courtesy" to follow your own damn rules. That's the bare minimum. Now, if I had any difficulty with the language, or been less sure of my position, or been properly socialized not to make a fuss, that's $10 that I would have lost for no reason. $10 down the drain. That's 3 or 4 FULL MEALS. That's literally 2 days worth of eating for me.

And that's how poor people are poor - when a "service fee" is literally more money than it costs them to eat for a day, but no one in charge sees any problem with taking that money from them as a penalty for *not having enough money*.

I wrote this post on Facebook 5 years ago. It turned out to be disturbingly prescient for a relationship I started after this post was written and ended more or less for this reason.

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Me: I need this information to assess where I should place my boundaries.

Them: It hurts me that you would even ask me about that!  Don't you trust me to tell you?  Your boundaries make me feel bad.  Don't you care about me to let me in?

Me: Sure, it's cool, I'll just do the emotional labor so that you don't feel bad.

If people wonder why I'm so standoffish and hard to get to know on an interpersonal level, this is why.  It's easier to keep people at a distance than get into fights over who should be shouldering the burden of emotional labor.  If I push, I'm a nag or I'm disrespectful of someone's hurt feelings.  If I don't push, then I don't feel safe so I place my boundaries farther out and then I'm "cold" and "emotionally distant".  Which hurts their feelings.

When I was a portrait photographer in a studio, I used to have lots of clients bringing in their toddlers and babies.  It was my job to make their bratty, cranky, frightened children look like the advertisement photos of baby models who were deliberately selected for having traits conducive to producing flattering portraits (including temperament and parents whose patience was increased by a paycheck).  I would spend more time than I was supposed to, patiently waiting for the parents to get their kids to stop crying and fussing.

Every single session, the parents would exclaim how patient I was!  How did I do it?!  What I couldn't tell them was that I had built a barrier in my head to tune them out.  I just ... spaced.  I did not notice the passage of time and I wasn't really paying them any attention.  I just let my muscle memory control the equipment and make the noises that got kids to look and smile.  It's an old trick I adapted from getting through assaults by bullies as a kid - tune out, mentally leave the body, make the right mouth noises to get the preferred response.

That kind of emotional labor management takes a toll.  I couldn't express any irritation or annoyance at the client and I couldn't leave to let them handle the kid and the photographing on their own.  So I learned to compartmentalize and distance myself while going through the physical motions.

But the price?  I now hate kids.  I used to like them.  I was a babysitter, a math tutor, and a mentor and counselor.  I originally went to college to get a counseling degree so that I could specialize in problem teens from problematic homes.  Now I want nothing at all to do with kids unless it's an environment where I am teaching them something specific and I can give up on them the moment I am no longer feeling heard or helpful.

That's not what made me not want children, btw.  I was already childfree-by-choice at that time.  I just still liked them back then.  Now I can only stand certain specific kids who are very good-natured, interested in my interests, and able to function independently (as in, introverted and not dependent on my attention).

So, yeah, I can do the emotional labor.  But the cost is high.  Doing the labor for too long, to the point where I have to shut myself off from empathy to bear the consequences of doing that labor, results in my emotional distance.  That's what happened with my abusive fiance.  He wanted a caretaker, not an equal partner.  Everything I did to remain an independent person "hurt" him. I bent a little in the beginning, as I believe partners are supposed to do for each other.  But eventually catering to his feelings while putting my own on the back burner took its toll.
 
So I shut down.  In the end, I was able to watch him dispassionately as he lay on the concrete floor of our garage, supposedly knocked unconscious by walking into a low-hanging pipe conveniently in the middle of an argument.  And then calmly walk upstairs without even a glance behind me to see if he was following.  He described my breakup with him as "cold", like a machine.  I had run out labor chips to give, even to feel compassion as I was breaking his heart.

Of course, I didn't recognize his behaviour as "abuse" until years later, or I might have bothered to get angry instead of remaining cold.  Point is, emotional labor isn't free, and if you don't pay for it in cash or a suitably equitable exchange, it will be paid by some other means.  I don't mean we should never do emotional labor for anyone, just that it needs to be compensated for because it will be paid one way or another.

Since this method has served to end several relationships with abusive men where I never felt "abused" because it didn't "stick" (I just thought of them as assholes), I don't feel much incentive to change it, even though it would probably be better to either not take on so much emotional labor in the first place (which is hard not to do because I *want* to do some forms of emotional labor in the beginning as an expression of love back when I'm still expecting a reciprocal exchange) or to leave or change things before I run out of fucks to give.

But I do eventually run out of fucks to give and I do eventually stop taking on too much emotional labor.  And it always seems to surprise people when I do.  Because I was so accommodating before so that I wouldn't push "too hard" or seem "too selfish".  But that always comes with a price.  People are often surprised to learn that.

www.quora.com/How-would-you-react-if-your-husband-requested-a-threesome-with-the-third-partner-being-a-male-for-cis-couples/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. How would you react if your husband requested a threesome with the third partner being a male (for cis couples)?

A. Well, since he knows that’s one of my fetishes and we’ve had quite a few already, it would be more surprising if he *stopped* suggesting MFM threesomes.  For us, it would be the same as any other sexual request or suggestion he would make.  If it were a newer partner, though, I would be surprised and highly enthusiastic. It’s hard to find straight cismen who have gotten over their homophobia enough to have at least the same amount of willingness for an MFM threesome that they seem to expect women to have for FMF threesomes.

But I suspect from your question that you are implying a suggestion of bisexuality, assuming that the husband in question is requesting an MFM threesome so that *he* could have direct sexual contact with the other man.

Since I tend to date straight cismen (much to my own annoyance), I would be absolutely thrilled if any of my cismen partners were to start exploring bisexuality, especially if they were willing to include me in part of the process, since I have the same thing for hot gay man sex that many straight men have for hot lesbian sex.

Unfortunately for me and my fetishes, two people in a threesome or other group sex encounter do not need to have direct sexual contact during the encounter in order to have the encounter at all.  Most of my threesomes tend to involve two people of the same gender teaming up to pleasure (or torture, depending on the kinks involved) the one person of another gender, since I’m straight and my partners tend to be straight.

So having my spouse suggest a threesome with another man, and assuming by the implication of the question that this would include some male bisexuality explorations, I would first ask him what he managed to do in order to unflip that switch in his head that makes him regrettably but undeniably straight, and then I’d start planning with him who and how and when and where.

So far every single match online who was even a slight possibility has failed my second test (the first one being "can you even read?" with my bio having specific terminology).

As a "single" woman, a poly person, and someone who prefers kitchen table poly in particular, I prefer to meet people for the first time in social settings.   I like meeting at parties and public events.  The other person can even bring their friends with them.   I realize this isn't common, but it's what I prefer to do.

This does several things - it keeps me safer from danger because I'm in a familiar setting with other people, it gives us both an "out" if we don't click.   They have people they can talk to, I have people I can talk to, someone in the group is bound to be That Person who can keep even a limping conversation going, one of us can always leave early because we're not really "ditching" someone if they're there anyway for the event itself, if the other person sucks, we can use our friends as a buffer, etc.

And finally, it shows me just how comfortable they are with the idea of polyamory, or even just with someone being sociable and outgoing and having their own friends.  I don't have a lot of free time, so I tend to combine activities so I can see the most amount of people in the shortest amount of time.

I also prefer for my partners to get along with each other, at least socially, if not become friends.  So I want to see how well these prospectives handle meeting my friends.   How well they handle me sharing or splitting my attention.  I am not a beginner relationship.  I throw people in the deep in right away because I don't have time or energy to teach them how to swim.

And I want my friends' opinions on the new guy because I don't trust rose colored glasses.   I don't need my friends' "approval", but I want some independent verification.  Plus, the social event is usually an activity that means a lot to me.   How accommodating is he of the things I'm passionate about?  How interested is he in the things I'm interested in?

I know that not everyone likes large social events, but that's a compatibility issue in its own right with me.   If they really hate social events that much, we're not going to get along long-term.  I also know that it's hard to have a more personal connection in these kinds of settings, but that's not what I'm looking for when I arrange them. I would have had to develop some kind of connection before even inviting them out. Now is the time for me to see if there is any real-life chemistry in a safe, controlled way.

And only then, if I don't instantly hate them on sight (something that happened to me when a guy I met online from out of town planned a week-long trip to meet me, which really sucked for both of us), I'll plan something more personal and intimate to get to know each other better.

And so far every single person (but 1) who has made it past the first test has failed this one.  Every single person I agreed to meet from an online dating app has said they'd meet me at some public event and then failed to show up.

So, guys, when a woman you're interested in says that she is passionate about this thing, and she would like to meet you in this context, don't fuck that up.  She is inviting you into her world in a way that gives her a feeling of control and safety.  When a woman you know invites you to a thing she is really interested in, don't fuck that up.  She is inviting you into her world, to share something with her that sparks joy in her life.

These are Bids For Attention.  When Bids For Attention go unacknowledged, people pull away.   When it happens enough times in proportion to the investment already made into the relationship, this will kill the relationship.

And for something that hasn't started yet, it really only takes once or twice.  So now even guys I was actually interested in meeting are now off the table for me.  They totally lost their chance by refusing (not being "unable", but *refusing*) to meet me under the circumstances I proposed.

Because it's not like I'm a passive communicator or someone who drops hints.  I've said outright that this is how I prefer to meet people and why.   Quickest way to kill any interest I might have in you is for you to ignore my Bids For Attention, to overlook my safety concerns, and to dismiss the things that I'm passionate about.

I originally posted this on Facebook on April 24, 2019. I'm archiving it here so that I can look back over my progress in my dancing skills in the future.

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LONG post about dancing -

I am not a blues dancer. I have never really enjoyed blues, compared to the other dances, because it's very spontaneous and there are very few rules to it. I don't improv well. I like ballroom because there is so much structure.

Even though they are also spontaneous in that, when you get out on the floor, the lead has to come up with the next pattern off the top of his head, and a good lead will match the pattern to the specific part of the music so that a good dance becomes a visual representation of the music itself, where the dancers ARE the music, the patterns are all existing patterns that we learn.

They have a vocabulary of patterns to choose from and I can learn and memorize those patterns so that when they throw one at me spontaneously, I already know what to do. And even if I haven't learned that particular pattern, the structure of the style of dance we're doing gives me guidelines to infer what my lead wants me to do.

Blues isn't like that. Blues just takes everything that the dancer knows from lindy hop, jazz, tap, Argentine tango, Charleston, and whatever else that particular dancer happens to know, and throws it all together with no *real* basic step (there kinda is one, but it's not helpful once you leave the basic and start improvising, whereas with ballroom, as long as you keep your feet moving to the basic, everything else will follow from there) and the follow dancer (me) not only has to interpret what the lead is trying to get them to do, but also has a lot of freedom to make up whatever shit the follow wants to do in the spaces between.

This is not my strong suit.

But then I got introduced to Bachata. Bachata is basically the Latin version of blues dancing. It's all that improv but arranged around an actual basic step, so there is my structure. And I got introduced to it first in a nightclub and then again at social events.

Learning how to do a street dance actually in the "streets", as opposed to taking lessons, is a different thing. It's a more organic feel. That makes it harder, for me, actually. But it's how I've learned almost all of my dancing once I took that first basic "social dance" course in college where the instructor taught a different ballroom dance every week. With that format, I didn't get a very deep introduction to anything, but I learned how to follow and I learned how to apply things I learned from one style to another, and I learned how to connect - how to connect with a partner and how to connect all the different dances together.

So I learned bachata, and in nightclubs, it's a very sensual, flirty dance. As opposed to in the classroom where it's very formal and stiff. And I fell in love with it. Through bachata, I get all the touch that I'm missing in my personal life with no local partners. After I learned how to just let go and lean into the bachata, blues suddenly got easier for me to connect with. It's still my least favorite of the dances, but I realized something last night.

My local FWB is a fantastic lindy hopper. He's also an instructor. We were talking last week about how we both feel stuck in this intermediate level because we both spend all of our time teaching newbies and never getting to dance with people who are better than ourselves, so we don't have much opportunity to advance further.

I want to be a better, more advanced dancer in general, and he wants to become a better teacher of advanced patterns (he is a better lindy hopper than I am, but I am proficient in more than a dozen different dances and he only really knows lindy and ballet, while he can fake it at a small handful of other lindy-adjacent dances).

So we got a little bit excited at the thought that he could practice teaching me more advanced moves which would help him improve his teaching style (since he usually teaches beginners and doesn't really know how to break down the more advanced stuff that he knows how to *do*, just not teach) and I could dance with someone better than me who could take the time to help me actually improve, not just throw something at me on the floor and hope that I grasp the concept in a 3 minute song well "enough".

With my love of bachata and not actually knowing any bachata dancers to dance with regularly (and not having the time to go to bachata clubs regularly), with my recent regular exposure to lindy hoppers who also do blues dancing, with now having made a dance friend who explicitly wants to learn how to teach better, and with starting up a sexual relationship with said dancer so I feel more comfortable being physically affectionate with him in general, I've been seeking him out for blues dances when I would have avoided blues songs in the past.
And although I am still not as improv-y and as fluid as people who connect with blues dancing, I am feeling more ... loose and experimental in my blues dancing.

One of my limitations is that I can do a lot of patterns, but I don't feel comfortable doing "flare". That takes a degree of confidence in one's dance knowledge and skill that I just don't feel. I don't know when is the right time to wrap my hand around my head and shoot it out and pose, for instance, because I don't feel very confident and I don't want people to see me doing something that screams "I know what I am doing!" when I clearly don't.

This has held me back in acting too - I keep not wanting people tho think that I really believe what I'm saying or doing. Like, I want them to know that *I* know that it's all make-believe. Which completely defeats the purpose of acting. So I am not a good actor.

Flare is something I could learn, I just haven't had the time to take any flare lessons and I haven't had any dance partners that were in a teaching sort of role (it's not generally considered appropriate to "teach" people in a social setting, especially if they don't ask for it first). But I did notice last night that I am relying less on maintaining the basic pattern as a "filler" when my partner throws something improv-y at me, and I'm allowing myself to "feel" the music the way that I always did when I danced solo in goth and industrial clubs.

My FWB dance partner says that he wants to learn how to break down the moves he does so he can teach other people, because he doesn't really know how he does them. He just connects to the music and he just *feels* it. That's also how I experience music, and dances like blues and bachata are the sorts of partner dances where you can really bring that connection into the partnership of the dance. You can in literally any style of dance, but the more fluid and improv-y the style is, the more connection you can bring, IMO.

He often dances with his eyes closed, so he can feel the music better. So our interpersonal connection has to be strong since he's not relying on visual cues but all physical touch and "energy" to communicate. And the event that I host is longer than normal events, so by the end of the night everyone is pretty fucking exhausted. I play more slow lindy and blues at the end of the night because it's all we have the energy to do, and everyone seems to appreciate being able to dance while also just kind of leaning on each other.

Wanting to be close to him because of our newish sexual connection, wanting to dance with him because he's just a good dancer, wanting to do the sensual street dances like bachata and blues because I'm a little bit touch-starved, wanting to improve my dancing skill, and being so energized by the music but so tired from the long hours that I really want to keep moving but can't quite keep up the same level of dancing as earlier in the evening, has all led to me doing a lot more blues dancing and seeing improvement.

So I told him last night that he was making me a better blues dancer, even though we haven't even started any explicit teaching sessions yet. Words of Affirmation is one of my Love Languages, and since that's a thing he wants to improve at, that compliment seemed to mean a lot to him.

The reason why I realized that I was becoming a better blues dancer is because of the new guy I met last night. He's one of the best Latin dancers I've ever danced with, and he threw all sorts of patterns at me that I had never even seen before, let alone done. I managed to keep up well enough to impress him, seeing as how I'm not technically a Latin dancer (I know mostly Ballroom Latin, which is kind of a stuffy version of Latin dances).

I threw in a bachata after we salsa'd, because I like bachata better than salsa, and afterwards he said that I should try Dominican Bachata if I like the slow bachata we did. I asked him why, what's the difference, and he said that Dominican Bachata is more ... just more. He couldn't quite explain it in the moment (I was expecting, like, an explanation of the basic pattern being different or something), so he just started doing it solo.

The music was not Latin at all, it was a lindy jump blues song. But he said that Dominican Bachata could be done to anything and somehow managed to make a Latin dance fit jump blues music without losing the Latin flavor but also looking like it went with the song.

So I watched him for a few bars, to see if I could pick up the basic pattern out of his fancy steps. And I couldn't, really, but bachata (the regular one I'm used to) is kind of a marching step and merengue is definitely a marching step, so I figured I could fake it, I screwed up the courage, held out my hand, and yelled "lead me!"

And he did.

I had no fucking clue what I was doing, but I blended lindy moves with merengue patterns and Latin hips while following his lead, and by the end of it, we were alone on the floor and everyone else was applauding.

And I credit my ability to do that to my increasing familiarity with blues dancing, thanks to my new FWB.

There have been a lot of rumblings in my various communities about the lack of accessibility for basically everyone other than straight white educated cismen. One popular option that a lot of people are choosing to take these days (and I wholeheartedly support them) is to look at the speaker lineup, and if they are the only POC or woman or disabled person or whatever on the lineup, then to decline the invitation to speak.

Another option is to do the same thing as a guest. A third / fourth option is to do the same thing *as* straight, white, cismen and to do it publicly as a way to give up your seat for someone who is not (especially if your "seat" is on a panel or podium discussing accessibility issues).

As I said, I support this choice completely. However, the consequence of all POC and women and disabled people et. al. refusing to participate is that these events *remain* white, straight, male, and able-bodied.

So, if we are a member of an underrepresented demographic, and we get invited (or accepted) to speak at an event where the speaker lineup has less diversity than we'd like, and we have the spoons or the matches or the hit points for it, and our lecture topics work this way, I'd like to propose doing more of this in addition to our boycotts.

Give our lectures and workshops and panels in ways that absolutely do not benefit the people who are not us but that do benefit the people we are trying to make these events more accessible for.

This will not be applicable to everyone who speaks. It's most easily demonstrated with something like hearing loss because accommodating people with hearing difficulties tends to be *inconvenient* for people who can hear, whereas many other forms of accommodation benefit everyone or most people even those who do not *need* the accommodation.

One of the things that I do is, in my Simple Steps workshop, where we take dancing exercises and learn how to apply them as actual communication tools, we deliberately arrange this hands-on workshop so that men have to touch other men.  Everyone other than straight cismen is socialized to allow some form of physical contact (often whether it's wanted or not), but straight cismen get to indulge in their homophobia because of the homophobic culture.

So we do not accommodate them.  They are forced out of their comfort zone in our workshop.

Obviously, this has limitations.  People who have mental health issues regarding physical contact will find our workshop difficult for them. We made a choice to focus on this one issue, and the nature of the workshop is to be hands-on and interactive.  But the same goes for the ASL speaker in the original meme here - people who have eyesight problems would have had difficulty in his lecture too.

Another thing that I do is I make many of the events I host to be either child-friendly or low-cost / free (or both) because poverty is one of my pet SJ issues.  I am not a fan of children.  But I make as many of my events child-friendly because I know how expensive child-care is and how difficult it can be to participate in a community when everything costs money and time and there are children at home.  Children running around an event is inconvenient to many adults.  But without childcare options, poor people (and mostly women) are left out. 

I will be considering some of my more popular lectures and workshops to see if I can adapt them to make them less convenient for various target audiences, to illustrate this point.  If there is a way to make your lectures more accommodating to the people you are representing while simultaneously making it less accommodating to the non-representative audience, please consider this act of civil rebellion in lieu of just not participating at all.

If we want separate spaces, that's one thing, but if we're asking for more inclusivity, some of us have to be the ones to barge through the door. Otherwise, the room will remain monochrome because we've all decided that forcing the door open is too much effort.



Event Organizer: We're sorry, there won't be interpreters at the event where you are presenting about Deaf things, sign language, and interpreting.

 

Me: No problem, I'll present in ASL without interpretation. Hearing people will have to get by.

EO: Ummm ...

I presented for 25 minutes, and opened with a couple of slides in written English that explained the situation. Told them to stay, so that they could "learn a lesson they didn't come here for." They all did.

www.quora.com/Is-there-a-difference-between-a-dominant-and-a-true-dominant-in-a-D-s-relationship/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. Is there a difference between a dominant and a true dominant in a D/s relationship?

A. Yes, a "true dominant" is someone who doesn’t have a fucking clue what BDSM is all about and is using the language and the culture of kink to hide behind and excuse just being an asshole.

Everyone else understands that we all have a variety of tendencies and preferences and kinks and interests, and when someone's tendencies lead mostly towards the collection of behaviours and interests that are generally categorized under the heading "dominant", they can take on that identity label if they so choose.

But anyone who tries to gatekeep what a "true dominant" is, or calls themselves that, is anything but.

www.quora.com/What-can-I-do-if-my-wife-teaches-my-daughter-piano-but-I-want-her-to-do-gymnastics/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. What can I do if my wife teaches my daughter piano but I want her to do gymnastics?

A. What does your daughter want?

She’s a human being.  Her desires for her body, time, emotions, etc. are the only ones that matter here.  If you’re funding her activities, you can technically be allowed to place limitations on them based on what you're willing to pay for, but as for encouraging her what TO do (as opposed to what not to do)? That’s all her.

Your interest in your daughter pursuing gymnastics is completely irrelevant.  So is your wife’s interest in teaching her piano.

Find out what YOUR DAUGHTER wants to do and stop treating her like an extension of yourself that you get to force into doing whatever it is you’d rather be doing but, for whatever reason, aren’t doing yourself.

If she wants to learn piano, then that’s what she should learn.  If she wants to do gymnastics, then that’s what she should do.  If she wants to do both, then find a way to allow her to do both If she wants to do neither, then suck it up and treat her like the human person she is, and encourage her in her endeavors like a responsible, loving parent.

She is not your doll, to dress up in the profession and hobby you want her to do.  She is a person.  She gets to make the decisions about how she spends her time and what she puts her body through.

Honestly, these parents who think their children are extensions of themselves instead of human beings in their own right!  This is how you get adult children who stop talking to their parents.

Respect her autonomy.  She’ll be a much more loving daughter if you respect her.

www.quora.com/Have-you-ever-considered-being-dumped-as-a-blessing/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. Have you ever considered being 'dumped' as a blessing?

A. Yes. I was dating a man who was abusing his other partners. I do not feel that he abused me, but only because I, coincidentally, hadn’t done anything that triggered his insecurities that led him to abuse his partners.

Abuse comes from a belief that it is OK to control another person. At the time, how I behaved was exactly what he wanted from me. So he had no need to attempt to exert his control over me because I was already doing what he wanted.

Then he got another girlfriend, and shortly thereafter she started dating someone else. That triggered his insecurities. So he attempted to control her to assuage his insecurities. She resisted that control, so he tried harder to control her, and it spiraled into abuse.

By the time I finally saw what was going on between them, *really* saw what was happening and not just believing what he was telling me about their relationship, I was in a position to be open and available to new relationships myself.

But because I saw how he was treating her, I got angry at him. I decided that I would not coddle him by making any concessions in my new relationship to make him feel better. I was just going to throw him in the deep end by allowing my new relationship to progress however it wanted, with no feedback from him.

He *really* did not like that. He had never before had a partner who didn’t give him a voice in her other relationships. He felt personally betrayed because his vote in my other relationship didn’t count.

Because his relationship with his victim had escalated to a ridiculous level, *all* of his other relationships were suffering. So he was constantly putting out fires - first trying to rein in his victim, and then trying to soothe his other partners (who he had already cowed into submission) who felt neglected by how much time he was spending reining in his victim.

Every relationship in his life was falling apart because of his one partner who kept resisting his control. His other partners had long since given up control to him, and I (until that point) hadn’t needed any controlling.

So his reserves were low. He had no more patience and no more ability to handle a partner who resisted him. And then I came along and did something that freaked him out (I started dating someone new), and not only did I resist his control, but I did so easily and without any conciliatory or apologetic attitude about how my resistance to his control might make him feel.

His victim, who did not realize he was trying to control her and all the drama was because she knew something was wrong but she couldn’t figure out what - she would resist his control but she would feel really badly about it because she couldn’t seem to understand why she kept "hurting" him.

I, however, had no such confusion. When he attempted to insert himself into my other relationship, I said plainly and immediately that he had absolutely no say in the matter of what I did with my body or time or emotions and he certainly did not get a say in what my new partner could do with his own body, time, or emotions.

I stood my ground. This shocked him so much that he dumped me with almost no build-up, surprising everyone around us. To all of us in the network, it seemed that my relationship with him was the only stable one he had. We didn’t have any of the constant drama that came with his victim trying to figure out why the gaslights kept changing levels (that’s a reference to the movie from whence the term "gaslighting" comes), and we didn’t have any of the arguments that he had with his other partners about how they never got to see him anymore because all of his time was taken up trying to manage his victim.

He and I were wickedly compatible in almost every way. We were even more compatible in some ways than he was with his wife of 20 years. So, to everyone in our network, our breakup came out of nowhere. It took one email exchange over this new partner of mine, where he insisted he should have a say in our relationship and I said absolutely not, and then he dumped me.

At the time I was hurt and angry. I had just lost my place to live and had to be "rescued" by a friend offering me a spare room, only to have that "friend" torture my cats while I was away resulting in both of their deaths. That was the 2nd of what turned out to be 7 moves in 2 years. I lost my housing, my cats, my boyfriend, and even my new partner decided to move to another state right when we got started (although we did not break up), and even my local community staged a coup against me when I tried to oust a guy who was beating his wife so I lost my entire social network too.

It was too much for me all at once, and I fell into a suicidal depression. A few months after that breakup, his victim finally escaped and she and I had several opportunities to talk about our experiences with him. I learned about a lot of things that happened in their relationship that I hadn’t known at the time because of the way that he controlled the narrative of their relationship.

So, in hindsight, him dumping me was probably the best thing he could have done. If he hadn’t, I would have stayed with him and continued to try and work with him on getting past his insecurities when he actually had no intention of getting past them because they were too valuable as a tool he could use to control his partners. I would have continued to minimize his abuse of his victim because I couldn’t see her side as clearly while I was romantically linked to him (although I had begun to see more of the truth before we broke up).

I was not ready to leave him, so I would have stayed with an abuser for much longer had he not made the decision for me. And I’m glad now that it didn’t drag on longer. I didn’t get out of there without scars. I’m not sure how bad the damage would be if I had stayed longer. As it is, I’m still not fully recovered. So I can only be grateful that he didn’t string me along any further.

When I look back over my past and think "would I really erase this from my history if I could?", most of the time I don’t think I would. As many people have said in other contexts, the experiences I went through have made me who I am today. Going back in time and preventing myself from having some of those bad experiences means I would not have come out the other side as the person I am now. So a lot of those experiences I would go through anyway.

But not this one. I would erase this entire relationship if I could. I would erase all the good memories along with the bad ones. I would do this for a couple of reasons - 1) I don’t like having all those happy memories tarnished by the after-knowledge that he was ultimately abusive and he fundamentally does not believe his partners can make decisions for themselves; and 2) I do not think that he deserves the memories of our good times or of my intimacy and vulnerability. I would take that away from him if I could.

Since I can’t rewrite history, all I can do is be grateful that he ended our relationship before I would have.

www.quora.com/What-is-the-safest-most-discreet-way-to-find-a-suitable-man-for-my-wife-to-have-sex-with-We-are-new-to-this-type-of-open-relationship/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. What is the safest, most discreet way to find a suitable man for my wife to have sex with? We are new to this type of open relationship.

A. For the love of whatever you find holy, don't "find a suitable man for [your] wife". She is an adult woman. She has her own preferences, desires, opinions, needs, wants, and boundaries. And since it's her body and her experiences that'll be involved here, none of those things have anything at all to do with you.

I know, I know, "but she's my wife! What happens to her affects me!" Sorry, but in this case, it has nothing to do with you. She is the sole arbiter of her. Only she should have any say at all in what she does with her body, mind, emotions, and time. If she loves you, she'll take into consideration how her actions with another affect you, but ultimately, this is something that is happening *to her*. It's something that *she* is experiencing, not you. You are not relevant in this equation.

Therefore, you should not insert yourself into this experience for her - not to "find a suitable man" for her, not to control or dictate the encounter, not for anything. This is all about her, not you. Stay the fuck out of it.

As for "safe" and "discreet", several online dating apps are adequate for people looking for hookups. Your wife (and her alone) can create a profile sharing what she (and only she) is looking for, and she can be a grown up and do her own homework on vetting potential partners.
She chose you, didn't she? Either she is capable of finding her own partners that are good enough for her, or she isn't. If she isn't, that says something about you. If she is, then let her go about her business and trust that she loves you enough to take care of her relationship with you.

Relevant:

• You Can't Be Trusted - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/294586.html


• Before We Open Up, Let's Discuss Some Boundaries - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/359151.html


• It's Not All About You - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/313759.html


• Don't I Get A Say In Their Relationship? - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/311860.html


• But We NEED Rules To Keep People From Lying To Us! - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/310810.html

Related:

• What Kind Of Partner Will You Be When Your Partner Wants To Do Something Scary? - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/371654.html


• How do you bring a healthy third person into an existing marriage? - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/368069.html


• It Is Never OK To Restrict Someone Else Even If They "Agree" To It - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/363349.html


• On Autonomy And Agreements And "Boundaries" In Poly Relationships - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/359626.html


• I Love You, Just Don't Disrupt Anything - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/275094.html

www.theatreartlife.com/technical/performing-arts-overworked-staff

"We need to stop pretending we're okay. We're not. We're tired, and crying in the dimmer room. Let's come out of the shadows into the light and do something about it."

I am pretty sure I know how I will die. It will likely happen one of two ways - I will suffocate to death because of the fucking chronic respiratory problems I developed after getting whooping cough when vaccination rates dropped, or I will be killed in an accident or die from something related to my shitty eating / sleeping / overworking habits on job site.

We have a saying - there are no old stagehands. I mean, of course there are, but so many more of us die early than we should, and most of the time it's preventable. We eat crappy food, we don't sleep enough, we stay awake too long doing dangerous manual labor, we work physically harder than necessary (dude, we have a forklift to unstack those!), we drink too much and do way too many recreational drugs.

One year, I actually stopped keeping track of the number of conversations I got into that started out like "hey, did you hear who died last week?!"

Our employers want to treat us like real employees when it benefits *them*, with dress codes and long lists of behaviour rules, but then turn around and treat us like freelancers in the monopoly days when it doesn't, with "oh, you can just push through one more hour without a break, can't you?" and "the show starts in 2 days so we will stay as long as necessary to get it going rather than schedule an extra couple of days for a reasonable work day length" and "sorry, we don't compensate for the $25 parking fee" and "no you can't wear that piece of clothing for medical reasons because it doesn't match our aesthetic" and and "but we gave you 8 hours between shifts, that should be plenty of rest even though you have to drive 2 hours each way and have things to do when you get home!" and "what do you mean you need a different person for each job position? Can't you do 3 job roles by yourself?"

No, we need a break every 2-2.5 hours, with a meal break on the 4-5 hour mark. We need OT for ever hour worked past 8-10 hours, and we need days that don't go past 10 hours *regularly*. We need enough time between our shifts to GET 8 hours of sleep, which includes our commute time and eating dinner when we get home and doing laundry and showering, not exactly 8 hours from the time you stop paying us to the time you start paying us again.

We need enough guys on site to accomplish the job safely, not as few as is *possible* to set a Guinness record. We need equipment that works. We need heavy equipment to do the heavy labor, like forklifts and scissor lifts, not rickety A-frame ladders and 4 tall dudes just because you think "tall" = "strong enough to lift this case that you used a forklift to stack back in the shop".

WE NEED ACTUAL MEAL BREAKS. 30 minutes is barely sufficient if food is provided and sitting there, hot and ready, the moment we go on break. An hour is the minimum if we have to go off property to find our own food, because it's still a 10 minute walk to the parking lot and another 15 minute or more drive to find food. And no, the solution to a crew who is not doing a satisfactory job is NOT withholding meals, but sending them home. If the crew is truly doing a poor job, you don't get to keep working them 10 hours without food. Fucking send them home and hire another crew.

And the clothing! We're fucking backstage! As long as our clothing is protective and not hindering our abilities, IT DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER WHAT WE LOOK LIKE. I can lift the exact same amount of weight in a polo shirt as I do in a tank top. Except in a tank top, I won't overheat when I lift. I can run my camera to the exact same skill level in a jacket as in a dress shirt. Except I won't be shaking the camera with my shivering if I'm warm enough and I can focus slightly better when I cut the wind from the a/c blowing in my face and drying out my eyes. When we are not in a public-facing customer service position, our attire does not matter past the point of legality or job performance.

If you want to pretend like you're a &"regular corporation" with all the rules and shit, then I want a fucking annual job performance review where someone sits down with me in an adult fucking manner and goes over my accomplishments and my areas for improvement, training opportunities, and a goddamn annual raise every year I work for you. I want anonymous supervisor surveys. I want salary standardization. I want an HR department that holds the company accountable for not treating people well. And I want some structure.

If the company can't provide all that shit, then don't pretend you're like a regular job. We're freelancers, either we get the benefits of freelancing that go along with the shit, or we get the benefits of a regular corporation that goes along with that shit. We should not get the shit of a corporation with the shit of freelance.

So stop treating us like shit.

#backstage #AVTech #AVLife #roadies #stagehand #entertainment #IMayHaveSomeOpinionsAboutThis #SoTired #AndYetStillSoPoor

www.quora.com/What-is-a-common-sign-that-a-marriage-relationship-is-heading-for-a-breakup-which-many-people-often-neglect-or-dont-know/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. What is a common sign that a marriage/relationship is heading for a breakup, which many people often neglect or don't know?

A. Dr. John Gottman and his team of relationship researchers have identified what they call the Four Horsemen of the Relationship Apocalypse. When these 4 traits appear in a romantic relationship, Dr. Gottman can predict the demise of said relationship with a ridiculously high degree of accuracy (most reports are over 90% accuracy). So if your relationship has these 4 things, it's probably doomed.

The Four Horsemen: Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, and Stonewalling - https://www.gottman.com/blog/the-four-horsemen-recognizing-criticism-contempt-defensiveness-and-stonewalling/

2 things that most people don't know is that 1) just having conflict in a relationship or feeling anger is NOT, by itself, a sign that a relationship is heading for a breakup - people have arguments and conflict and feel anger and that's just the nature of interacting with other people in intimate settings, so just having arguments doesn't mean that the relationship is unhealthy or about to end, but that 2) there is a ratio of how *often* or how *much* conflict or unhappiness a relationship can withstand and it's much lower than most people think.

In a relationship, Gottman and other researchers also discovered that there should be a ratio of "negative interactions" to "positive interactions" overall in a relationship that is 1:5. That means that for every bit of ";negative interactions", there should be 5 bits of "positive interactions". Lots of people think that they should stay in relationships until the happiness ratio tips over to where you are unhappy more than half of the time. That's not true.

The Magic Relationship Ratio, According to Science - https://www.gottman.com/blog/the-magic-relationship-ratio-according-science/

So, the predictors of the ending of a romantic relationship are criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. Anger is not among the predictors. If you have these criteria in your relationship more often than 1:5 compared to positive interactions, the relationship is probably on its way out.

 

www.quora.com/Are-you-in-an-open-relationship-If-so-what-is-the-most-challenging-part-for-you/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. Are you in an open relationship? If so, what is the most challenging part for you?

A. Having to constantly answer questions about how “difficult” my relationships are, or people wondering how I deal with jealousy or scheduling … basically dealing with other people thinking that I’m doing anything at all different in my relationships than they’re doing.

I have relationships, just like everyone else. Some of them are effortless, some of them take work, some of them are totally wrong for me, some of them are bliss, pretty much all of them are some combination of the above, just like everyone else.

The only difference is that I have more than one romantic relationship at a time. Everyone has more than one relationship at a time - you all have parents, siblings, friends, coworkers, in-laws, relatives, exes, co-parents, etc. You all have to manage and juggle multiple important people in your lives. Those relationships are all different from each other, even when they have similarities.

We are having all the same relationships and they feel the same way to all of us. I’m just overlapping my romantic ones, that’s all. There’s nothing more or less challenging about my multiple romantic relationships than about any of my other relationships or about other people’s relationships.

www.quora.com/How-do-I-keep-from-falling-in-love-with-my-fwb/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. How do you handle a casual sex relationship without developing feelings?

A. You don't. You can't control your feelings. Your feelings will do what they will. When I have casual sex, it's *because I don't have a strong emotional connection*, not the other way around. I don't get into a sexual relationship and then try to keep my emotions casual. I have a low emotional connection to someone with a high sexual connection, so I structure the relationship to be a casual sex one because *those ARE my feelings for them*.

Some people just seem to be wired to have their emotional connections and their sexual attractions linked in some way - either having sex causes an emotional attachment or they can't have sexual attraction without that emotional connection first (see: demisexual).

I am not one of those people. I can have sex with or without emotional attachment and I can have emotional attachment with or without sex. If I start a relationship under one premise and then discover that my feelings about the relationship fall under another premise, I discuss with my partner what our options are. If they are open to renegotiating the relationship to match, then great!

If not, I decide if it's possible for me to just have my feelings while in a relationship that doesn't match. My feelings are my own. They are not the responsibility of the other person to manage, and I do not have to act upon them. I can have whatever feelings I have, I can feel them, experience them, lean into them, and my behaviour is whatever I believe is most appropriate for the situation.

I have had romantic feelings for a number of people who did not return my feelings, so we maintained a platonic friendship for a long time. I did not pressure them to get into a different sort of relationship with me, I did not remind them of my feelings for them (thereby making them uncomfortable), I did not behave in any way other than platonically, I did not pine away for them, I did not plot or scheme to use our friendship as a vehicle to steer, convince, or "trick" them into another kind of relationship, I just felt what I felt, and I appreciated the friendship for being what it was.

Sometimes I have romantic feelings for a casual sex partner that are not compatible with remaining in a casual sex relationship, for some reason. Wanting something different from them makes what I *do* have with them feel hollow or inappropriate. When that happens, I have to end the casual relationship for my own well-being. I do not stay in a casual relationship hoping that, if I just stick around long enough and am good enough in bed, he'll eventually come around and give me the kind of relationship I'm really hoping for.

You can't control your feelings, you can only control your behaviour. You can't stop yourself from "catching" feelings, if that's just what your feelings want to be. You can reduce exposure to certain activities that might encourage emotional bonding, such as not having any in-depth conversations, not going out in public together in ways that feel like "a date", meeting at neutral locations, not meeting their parents or friends, etc.

But if your feelings are going to develop through sexual activity, there's nothing you can do about that. Have a conversation with them to see if they'd be amenable to a more emotionally intimate relationship with you if that happens.

If they are not, you choose - continue to have a sexual relationship without a reciprocal emotional attachment from them and enjoy it for what it is without pressuring, cajoling, convincing, coercing, or hoping for something "more"; or end the sexual relationship if you are not happy having one with them where they don't reciprocate your emotional attachment.

But the best way to minimize the odds of developing an emotional attachment to a casual sex partner is to not get into casual sex relationships when you have an emotional attachment to them in the first place. Get into casual sex relationships *because the feelings you have for them are casual sex feelings*. Those are legitimate feelings to have for a person.

It's not a "lack" of feelings, it's a particular type of feeling. You may still catch teh feelingz, but, for most of us, if we're capable of having that particular kind of feeling in the first place, we are less likely to be the sorts of people who develop emotional connections just because we're having sex with someone. Our sexual-attachment-without-emotional-connection-feelings are real, valid, legitimate feelings in their own right.

People who tend to develop emotional attachment through sexual relationships tend not to really feel that low-emotional-attachment-high-sexual-connection in the first place, so they are always fighting the development of what's more natural for them to feel. I don't have to fight that because I am already feeling the feelings that are appropriate for the relationship style that I'm in.

So, have the feelings first (or at least, recognize the potential of what your feelings might want to become), and then structure the relationship to accommodate. Have casual sex relationships *because you have casual sex feelings*. Trying to structure the relationship first and then force your feelings to fit the structure is often a recipe for disaster.

www.quora.com/What-is-a-tactful-way-to-respond-to-my-step-mother-in-law-when-she-pesters-my-husband-and-I-about-having-kids-when-we-told-her-we-do-not-want-any-children/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. What is a tactful way to respond to my step mother-in-law when she pesters my husband and I about having kids when we told her we do not want any children?

A. The original question asked for "tactful" responses. Trust me, for me, this IS "tactful".

• "I'm concerned about why you’re asking me this. Are you getting everything you need at home?"


• "I actually like being happy."


• "Sweetie, I couldn't keep my goldfish alive as a kid, what makes you think I should be in charge of a child?"


• "I'd rather spend my money on beer" - you could go with a totally frivolous item meant to show you as totally unsuitable like "beer" or "drugs", or you could go for high-ticket items that show how expensive children are like "a new house" or "a dream vacation"


• "The world is overpopulated already."


• "I just found out I'm infertile, but thanks for bringing up such a painful and private subject."


• "The cat would get jealous."


• "I love my husband as a person, but frankly, I'm not passing on my genes unless they merge with Jason Momoa [insert celebrity hottie here]."


• "I need to be the only one in the house who has temper tantrums and cries for no reason."


• "After the last 'incident', the courts warned me to stay away from children if I value my freedom."


• "I'm an atheist / feminist, I don't birth children, I eat them." (full disclosure - I’m both, this is a joke) (this also works for "pagan")


• "I don't know why women need to have children to be seen as complete human beings." ~ Marissa Tomei


• "Childhood was heartbreaking enough." ~ Chelsea Handler


• "We thought we might try renting one first, to make sure we don't kill it before having our own."

When are you going to have children? -

• "I'll let you know when I change my mind. In the meantime, I'm sure there are more important things in your own life that you could be thinking about."


• "When you learn to mind your own business."


• "Why? Are you finally sick of talking about yours?"


• "What answer could I give you so that you'll stop asking?"


• "I'm sorry, what did you say? Oh, I thought you said something else that's completely none of your business."


• "Only God knows, and He hasn't told me yet."


• "As soon as I figure out how. Got any suggestions?"


• "I already have one - your step-son."


• "Tomorrow."


• "Can I get back to you? How soon do you need to know?"


• "Did you know that 1 in 6 couples, who desperately want to have a child, struggle with infertility? I'm not going to tell you if I'm one of those people, but maybe you'll think about how hurtful your question might be to someone who is."


• "You know, that's a really personal question you shouldn't ask everyone. Some people have a hard time getting pregnant, and questions like that could really make them feel bad about their situation."


• "We're waiting to see how yours turn out before we decide."


• "As soon as their value goes up to an acceptable level on the black market."


• "Oh, soon I hope! I found this great recipe for roasted babies that I've been dying to try out!"


• "I'm waiting to meet Mr. Right." (especially funny since you're talking to your husband's parents)


• "When I can be sure of doing a better job of teaching manners than your parents."

This is the problem I have with the Radical Truthers. Much like NVC, I tend to only see it being used by people who want to be assholes and pass off responsibility for how their behaviour affects other people's feelings.

You can be truthful AND kind.

But if you're going to be truthful without being kind, at least be honest *about that*. I am quite often not kind. But I'm not going to defend myself by blaming the other person's hurt feelings on "but I'm just being honest!" No, I am trying to make people feel consequences for their actions, so I will say things intended to be *felt* because that's my point.

But when it comes to interpersonal relationships - those connections that I value among people I want to keep in my life such as friends, partners, and family, there is no need to "just be honest". I can be both honest and kind.

That doesn't mean that it will never hurt, even if I'm trying to be kind. It means that I am delivering my honesty with compassion and understanding of the impact of my words and I'm not saying "truth" just to say the truth. I'm taking responsibility for the effect I'm having on the people around me.

Honesty is not a virtue. Courage is a virtue. "Just being honest" is not being courageous. Being compassionate, considerate, and thoughtful is being courageous. Take the Path of Greatest Courage and don't hide behind "just being honest". Honesty, by itself, is not enough.

Q.  What's the most romantic first date you've ever had?

A.  That's a tough one, actually, because I don't "date" very much.  I tend to get into relationships with people I meet through my social circle, and it's really difficult to make a distinction between a "date" and friends doing things together.  Even dinner and movies is not reserved only for romantic interludes.  Platonic friends can do those things too.

So I don't have very many first dates.  I meet people through my social circles, we hit it off, and usually we make out and then decide if we want to be "in a relationship" or if it was a one-time thing, or an ongoing casual thing. After we decide to be in a relationship, we might do date-like things, but going on dates with a boyfriend who was a friend that you already know pretty well is very different from a classic "first date".

There is a tendency for guys who do the "ask a near stranger out on a first date" thing to be guys who aren't part of my sex-positive communities, so on the rare event I go on a more classic "first date", those events tend to be rather bland and uninspiring, usually following some kind of trope because they don't know any other way to start a relationship with someone, especially someone they don't know very well.

But a few "first dates" have stuck out in my memory as being noteworthy.  My first night with my most recent ex is one that comes to mind.  But when I think about this question, one of my most memorable "first dates" has to be with my high school sweetheart, because we didn't just have a romantic first date, we also had a good meet-cute.

I got myself invited to a Halloween party at this guy's house who, as I found out later, didn't even want me to be there because some douchebag I met at camp that summer spread some rumors about me.  But my friends were going, so he let them bring me along.  

He was big-time into vampires (still is).  And I mean, not like he read Twilight (that hadn't even come out yet) and thought it sounded pretty cool.  I mean he researched vampire lore from different cultures and throughout history.  As did I, which is how I knew he wasn't full of shit or just one of the many goth wannabees who thought they looked badass with plastic fangs and black eyeliner.  I didn't know this about him yet though.

At this same party, I met another guy who was blind.  He said he liked listening to movies but it was better if someone described the scene for him.  Lost Boys was on the TV, so I described it to him, which was really easy for me to do as it was one of my all-time favorite movies and I also had that whole vampire-lore background thing to fill things in and go off on tangents.  That's about where my soon-to-be high school sweetheart took notice.

Then some things happened for another story.  But eventually, he finally got around to asking me out on a real first date.  He took me to Santa Cruz, after the Boardwalk closed.  Those of you who are not from NorCal in the '80s, or not borderline obsessed with vampire flicks might not know that the Santa Cruz Boardwalk is where Lost Boys was filmed.  I honestly don't remember what we did, if we did anything, earlier in the evening.  It was a quarter century ago, after all.  But I remember this ending.

We wandered around the closed Boardwalk like the dopey '90s teens that we were, finally finding ourselves strolling along a moonlight beach, the sound of waves crashing on the rocks as the soundtrack to our date.  As we turned a corner around some rocky outcrop near the shoreline, with the cold moonlight hard overhead, we came face to face with an entire colony of sea lions hauling-out for the night.  Letting out a roar of warning, the one closest to us, the one we startled, charged.

We took off running across the sand, back up the way we had come.  This was not my first time being chased by a wild animal because I had encroached on its territory, and it would not be my last.  But it was my most fun.  Unwilling to end the evening, we moved from the scene of the teenage undead and the much scarier and meaner wild life, to his karate dojo where, as one of the assistant teachers, he had the keys.  We spent the rest of the evening making out on the mats right there in the middle of the dojo, because my fetish for unusual places was well and firmly established by that point already.

So, I'd have to say one of my all-time favorite meet-cutes was bonding over a passion for Lost Boys and Bram Stoker's Dracula at a Halloween party, and one of, if not the most romantic first date I've ever had was traipsing around the filming location of Lost Boys, getting chased by a territorial sea lion, and making out in a karate dojo on the eve of Christmas Eve.

Now that I think about it, as much as I hate the plot of most rom-coms, if you were to do a cheesy '90s semi-gothy teen version of a rom-com, our story would probably make a good plot for one, complete with "started out disliking each other" followed by miscommunication and ensuing hijinks.  There were even romantic rivals trying to split us up and nearly a "love triangle" plot with "which guy will get the girl?" tension.

Maybe I'll write out the whole story someday.

My challenge to all the men out there: Take this workout course:

Watch on YouTube

I am not affiliated with this course or this company in any way. But as a dancer, I can recognize the value of an exercise routine built around the core strengthening exercise that's being used as the base exercise in this course. Here's the thing - men in general don't do a lot of exercises unless they are motivated to build muscle; men in general do not dance; men in general do not know how to do isolation movements; men in general do not work on their flexibility; men in general do not know how to loosen their hip muscles and end up being very rigid, causing joint pain later in life.

The reason why men in general don't do these things is because they have become associated with women and femininity. I can't tell you how many conversations I've had where men think that they all walk differently than women because of biology. While it's true that there are some "average" differences between the genders such as pelvic size and placement, our walks are largely learned, not inherited.

Here's something that a lot of my partners have been shocked to learn when the subject came up - you know that walk, the one on the runways and the one that women just do that men supposedly find so sexy? That walk was learned. We *learned* how to do it. We practiced it. Which is why some of us women do that walk and others don't - they didn't practice it. That is not a "natural" walk. It's what we learned how to do because it was prioritized. When I was a child, I wanted to be a model, so I spent hours walking up and down the hall practicing this walk.  Men can do that walk too. But, like us, men have to *learn* how to do it.


A friend posted a male belly dancer video to my timeline - that's another thing that "men" seem to think that they just can't do, that it's inherently a female thing, that their bodies are just not meant to do that. And, like the walk, that's bullshit - people who practice it can do it and people who don't practice it can't. Your individual ability to do those movements is a combination of your *individual* biology (not your gender biology) and all the physical choices you have made over your entire life, conscious or otherwise, that led to today. If you did not spend your life practicing isolation movements, you will have difficulty moving like a belly dancer.

But it's never too late to start trying.

Watch on YouTube

Learning this particular motion, learning how to isolate your muscle groups, building core strength, improving your cardio, and improving rhythm are also all incredibly helpful techniques for improving your skill in sex.  Just FYI.  I don't care how good you think you are in bed, you can always get better.  And as a straight woman who has sex with men, let me tell you - your lack of ability to isolate your core muscle groups have been noticed and is holding you back.

So, I challenge every man on my friend's list to take this course.  Not for weight loss, although you will probably experience some of that.  But because you have all been told a pack of lies about who you are as people that has led to a physiology that is less flexible, less strong, with less mobility and poorer health FOR NO FUCKING GOOD REASON.

Dance, core strength, muscle isolation, flexibility, and a robust cardiovascular system are about as masculine as it gets.  They're about strength.  They're about confidence.  They're about control.  They're about power.  And they're attractive to a lot of straight women.  That's everything that you've been told that heteromasculinity is about, and yet y'all avoid doing the very things that would accomplish these goals.

I don't even care if you "don't like dancing" or "have two left feet".  You never have to get good at this, and you don't have to come to love it.  I challenge everyone to complete one month-long challenge using this core exercise as its base.  If you like it, great, stick with it and see what else they have to offer.  If you don't, find another exercise to challenge yourself with at the end of the month.

www.quora.com/What-should-I-do-if-my-best-friend-and-I-like-the-same-guy/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. What would you do when you and your best friend like the same person?

A. The same thing that I do when anyone and I like the same person - find out what the other person wants.  Their input is kinda important here, and really the deciding factor.  If the other person likes us both, then we both date him.  If he only likes one of us, then he dates one of us.  If he isn’t interested in either of us, then neither of us date him.

His consent makes any potential conflict pretty much irrelevant.  It doesn’t matter how much I like someone, they have to want to be with me in order for me to be with them.  If they don’t want to be with me, then no amount of my feelings for them will change that fact (short of overriding their agency).  His relationships with other people are not my business to control or dictate.  He can have relationships with whomever he wants and manage them however he wants.

If what he wants or how he does the things that he does conflicts with my value system, resulting in a loss of respect for him, then I can choose to remove myself from the situation.  If what he wants or how he does the things that he does infringes or imposes (negatively) in any way on the well-being of my body, mind, emotions, finances, or anything else that belongs to me, I can choose to remove myself from the situation.

But him just liking someone else?  Him dating someone else?  Him being romantic or sexual with someone else?  None of that has anything to do with me, so if I and my best friend happen to like the same guy, well, there’s nothing TO be done about that.  I do what I do with the people who consent to doing those things with me, my friends do what they do with the people who consent to doing those things with them.

It’s like asking me “what do you do when you and your friend both like the same restaurant?”  Uh, we both eat there whenever we feel like eating there (sometimes together, most of the time apart) as long as the restaurant is open and catering to our business.  Whether my friend likes that restaurant or not has nothing to do with what I do about liking the restaurant, except if my friend doesn’t like it, I probably won’t invite them to eat there with me.

I actually find that a lot of my friends’ exes or current partners make good dating partners for me too.  Not always, but often.  As I like to say, polyamorous people come with references!  If my friend likes someone, then at the very least, he’s probably a pretty decent human being, and then I get the bonus of having metamours that I already know I like and get along with.

Of course, we don’t always have the same taste in partners.  I’m straight, for instance, and most of my friends are bi or pan.  And just because someone is a decent human being, it doesn’t necessarily translate to romantic or sexual interest.  A lot of my friends’ other partners are great people to be around, but I’m not interested in dating them.  That’s OK too.

The point is, who my friends are interested in is irrelevant to how I handle being interested in someone myself.  The person I’m interested in has the deciding vote in what happens there - without his consent, it’s a non-starter.  With his consent, we can negotiate the kind of relationship we want to have with each other, and whether anyone else is interested in him has fuck-all to do with what he and I negotiate between ourselves.  That’s between them.

I just read a thing that said "abusers are good at making your anger seem worse than their abuse."  And I thought "yes! They do!"

But then I thought a little more about my last abusive ex.  See, he would do this thing, where he would try to control his partners' behaviour, and they would do a thing that resisted that control, and then he would get angry at their resistance and call it "abuse" and accuse them of hurting him, of not caring about how their actions affected him, of destroying the relationship, etc.

If anyone accused him of "overreacting" or of blowing things out of proportion or of doing anything at all that was "too much", he threw it right back at them that they weren't allowing him to have his feelings (because all feelings are "valid", yo).  He was VERY good at making it seem as though his victims were making his anger seem worse than the so-called "abuse" his victims were doing to him when they resisted his control of them.

I still remember the day one of them called me up in tears, hyperventilating, totally freaking out because she may or may not have broken some fucking rule they had, depending on how the rule was interpreted, and she was upset not because of what he might do in retaliation for breaking the rules, but because she thought she was a horrible, thoughtless person for 1) breaking the rule and 2) not knowing if the rule had been broken because she didn't get clarification on this point.

I made a blog post a while back where I used actual quotes from one of our email exchanges post-breakup where I told him that I did not want him to contact me again except to apologize for one very specific act he had done during the breakup, and he responded quite indignantly about how he didn't "consent" to me placing "limitations" on the conditions under which he was allowed to speak to me.

Dude, that's not how this works. That's not how any of this works.

 

So, I realized that it's not so much that abusers do particular things like making your anger seem worse than their abuse.  Because someone skilled in abusive tactics will make it seem like YOU are making THEIR anger seem worse than YOUR "abuse" of them, when in reality, their anger is part of the abuse.

And also, as I've learned, we all have abusive tactics that we have learned just through exposure to it throughout our lives, from our families and our culture.  So when we are mistreated, we ALL reach into our own bags of tricks, and some of the responses we pull out can be pretty shitty too.

So sometimes (in my experience, basically all the time), it can be really difficult to tell who is the abuser and who is the victim, even if you apply the axioms "follow the lines of power and see who has the locus of control" and "the one who is trying to run away is probably not the abuser".  In this same relationship example, we all thought that the victim was the abuser at first because she was the one doing what seemed like controlling things.  You see, he was also deeply fearful of losing the relationship.  Abusers are in real pain and feeling real fear.  What makes them abusers is how they deal with that pain and fear.

So, to prevent her from ever getting up the courage to leave him, he would play on her fear of losing the family group, which would fuck her shit up, thinking that she could lose everything at any given moment, and it would trigger her anxiety about being "left out".  To relieve her feelings of being left out, she would request that no sex happen among anyone unless the door was left open in an implicit invitation for her to join, even if she didn't want to join.

To me, that seemed incredibly controlling.  But he was desperately afraid of losing his relationship with her and he desperately needed to make this a whole group thing with no individuality or independent-ness, so he made it seem like he was "acquiescing" to her demand to control the sex he was allowed to have, even though "everyone subsumes their identity into the group relationship and we are all one Borg, resistance is futile" was exactly what he was going for.

I'll be honest - the reason why I had a hard time believing that she was being abused is because I had a history with her as a metamour through another partner, and she tried to control our relationship then too.  So it seemed totally in character to me that she was being controlling, even though it was contrary to every value she *spoke* for.

But her controlling behaviour was a *reaction* to HIS controlling behaviour, just as it was the last time (she had just gotten out of a relationship with an abusive metamour and used controlling tactics as a survival technique).  Most of us develop toxic coping mechanisms to prolonged exposure to abuse.  He provoked it by preying on her fear of being alone, left out, of losing the family group.  And then, when things escalated to a level where I could more clearly see who was pushing whom, he strung her along by making it seem as though she were the one dismissing his anger to make it seem worse than her "abuse" of him.

So, it's not that abusers do any particular thing or particular tactic.  It's that abusers flip the script.  They take whatever tools you give them, whatever scripts that society gives them, whatever is available, and they flip it to make it seem like their victim is the "bad guy".  Some abusers are sophisticated about it and it can be really hard to tell that this is what they're doing.  Others, like a particular villain in a TV show I'm watching right now, are really fucking obvious about it (#ProTip - if someone says "the whole world is against you / doesn't believe in you / is holding you back, and I'm the only one who accepts you / believes in you / trusts you / encourages you / is not holding you back", then they're being abusive, just FYI).

This is why I am not a fan of Non-Violent Communication.  It's a ridiculously easy tool to convert into an abusive weapon, and we ALL have abusive tendencies - yes, even you, dear reader, you are not above this shit - so I've never seen NVC used in a healthy way.

And I don't need anyone to tell me "but I use it all the time!" 1)  I'm sure there is someone out there somewhere for whom it has never been warped into a tool of abuse - statistics guarantees that this must be true somewhere - and the fact that someone like this exists is not the point; and 2) I just got done pointing out that we all have abusive tendencies, so in this rant, I am dubious of anyone's claim that they have never misused a communication tool because I believe we all have, either knowingly or unknowingly, simply because we are all fucked up and I'm not letting you off the hook for this.

I'm digressing.  The point is not NVC specifically.  The point is that abusers flip the script.  The point is for them to make you question your reality, to question "who is the bad guy here?" and to come up with the wrong answer.  And they will use whatever script they have access to in order to flip it.

So, an abuser may make your anger at them seem worse than their abuse of you.  But they may also make it seem as though YOU are making their anger at you seem worse than your resistance to their control of you.  Sometimes anger is the correct and necessary reaction.  When someone is trying to control you, your anger is appropriate.  Anger is my primary defense mechanism, so let me tell you how hard it is for me to admit this next part...  But sometimes anger is also a weapon, and you are totally correct to resist their anger at you, because their anger *is part of their abuse* and their efforts to make it seem like you're the one minimizing their anger *is part of the abuse*.

And I don't have an answer for you.  I don't have a checklist for you.  I don't have a listicle for how to make it easier to tell which is which.  We can follow the lines of power (if they control your income, if they are your superior or supervisor in business, if they own the place where you live, if they influence who your friends are, etc.) and we can try to tease out who is running away and who is doing the chasing.

But those have limitations.  Many abuse victims do not try to run away for a long time.  Many of them are only *capable* of being abused because they're desperate to hold onto this relationship so they submit to the abuse out of fear.  Or out of grooming - where they get the victim to submit to a small violation, and then the next larger violation is excused because it's so close to the first one the victim let through, and how can you let one go and not the other, you hypocrite?

And many people gain power over a romantic partner in ways that are invisible to outsiders.  How many of you ask your friends the details of their economic situation?  How many of you know who controls the income?  When romantic partners are business partners, can you really tell, from the outside, that a division of labor based on skills doesn't have an element of power built in, such as one person controlling the money?

 How many of you have witnessed those private conversations where one person steered another away from building intimate friendships with people the first person didn't approve of, and they did so subtly, without overt threats?

How many of you can *really* tell the difference, from the outside, between "that person makes me uncomfortable, so if you are friends with them, I will have to not be around them, but it's totally without expectation or obligation and your choice to be friends with them is OK with me" vs. "that person makes me uncomfortable, so if you are friends with them, I will have to not be around them, but it's totally without expectation or obligation and your choice to be friends with them is OK with me, except I know how desperate you are to please me so that even mentioning this will make you choose the option I prefer even though I have said it was OK to choose the other option because we both know it's not really OK to choose the other option"?

In fact, how many of you can really tell the difference between those two things even from the inside, when you're right in the middle of it?  From either side?  The human brain is not logical or rational, it is a justification engine.  We are very good at justifying all kinds of things to ourselves and others.

And abusers are particularly good at this.  Which means that, since our brains are optimized for it, we are all capable of abuse.  Abusers flip the script - whichever script we have, an abuser will turn it around to justify their control of their victim.  And even they might not realize that they're doing this, because of that justification engine thing.

But they will take whatever is handed to them and use it to control.  If that means they use your desire to seem "fair" and "impartial", if that means they use the "all feelings are valid" principle, if that means they ride the coattails of the #MeToo movement, if that means they flip the gender script, if that means they *use* the gender script, if that means they use social justice language like my ex, if that means they use their social capital, if that means they use your good faith - whatever it means for them, that's what they'll do to come out looking like the "good guy", or if they can manage it, like the "victim" themselves.

Abusers flip the script.  Even if they have to use "flipping the script" to flip the script, as long as it makes you question who is the abuser and who is the victim, they're doing it right.