The Journal Of The InnKeeper

Con Hacks: Tips & Tricks For Attending Conventions & Conferences

Thu, 15 Aug 2024 19:55:52 GMT

I have been meaning to write up a semi-permanent article about Con Hacks for so long that I didn't realize that I hadn't actually done it yet. So here's my first draft:

Remember the 1-2-5 rule: Every single day get 1 shower, 2 full and balanced meals, and a minimum of 5 hours of sleep.

Have a con pack that contains the following:
- Phone, charging cable, power block, & battery backup if possible
- ID, room key, & con badge (if not on a lanyard)
- Painkillers, cough drops, & daily meds
- You Met Me cards (business cards with appropriate contact info for the convention)
- Actual pen & paper
- Sewing kit & makeup touchup kit for costplayers & costumers
- Safety pins & superglue
- Snacks & water
- Paper conference program (if available)
- Earbuds
- Earplugs
- Reading glasses (even if not needed - they make great magnifiers)
- Travel size tissues
- Travel size wet wipes
- Travel size hand sanitizer
- Mask
- Non-electric busy-maker like dead-tree book or knitting

Have a spare pair of "comfy shoes" to change into.

Pack or buy con food for the hotel room, some of which is to be eaten in the room and some to pack in above "con pack":
- Mixed nuts
- Peanut butter
- Honey and/or non-refrigerated jam / jelly
- Tortillas (they travel better than bread)
- Bananas
- Canned chicken salad or tuna
- Fruit leather
- Honey sticks
- Cheese in wax (like Babybel)
- Granola and/or protein bars
- Dried seaweed
- 100 calorie or "snack size" bags of chips
- Individual cups of guac and hummus (if there is a fridge or consistent cooler available)
- Individual cups of cereal
- Individual cartons of shelf-stable milk
- Breakfast pastries
- Mini candy ("Halloween-size")
- Bottled water
- Coffee grounds / tea / roasted cacao grounds, scoop, & tea bags or coffee filters
- Drink sweetener

Food assuming some method of heat such as room microwave or travel slow cooker:
- Microwave bags of seasoned rice
- Canned chicken
- Canned soup
- Frozen meals if there is a freezer in the room
- Hard-boiled eggs if there is a fridge in the room or pre-scrambled eggs in a squeeze bottle if bringing an electric burner/hob
- Meal-prepped breakfast burritos if there is time to prepare them before con & a freezer in the room

Kitchen gadgets (pick and choose according to needs, finances, & travel restrictions):
- Electric travel kettle
- HotLogic Mini
- Electric induction burner / "dorm" hob
- Mini CrockPot
- "Dorm" size microwave
- Electric cooler

Travel pillows and blankets, personal pillowcase

Towel

I, personally, find that I only need 2 kitchen gadgets: an electric kettle (mine looks like the white one top-left) -

and the HotLogic Mini -

The HotLogicMini is a soft-sided lunch-box style "slow cooker" that uses a low-temperature hot plate inside an insulated bag to heat food. It is safe to use with most containers (although I would be cautious when heating up restaurant leftovers in styrafoam containers) and even safe enough to touch without burning (but it will be hot so don't grab the plate and hold on). I have accidentally left plastic forks inside when heating, and most of the time they're fine. Occasionally they warp a little but are still usable. It is safe to travel with and can be checked or carry-on. It can be purchased with a standard wall plug or a car plug, so make sure you read the listing carefully when purchasing to get the correct plug.

Anything that has "microwave cooking instructions" can be cooked in the HotLogic, usually right in its own package without any de-packaging faffing about - just stick the whole container right inside! I will put a whole can of soup inside and eat it straight out of the can like "campfire beans". I also put a whole bag of microwave rice and a tin of canned chicken in the HotLogic together, then I drain the chicken and add it directly to the bag of rice for a wide variety of chicken-and-rice meals. Be careful, though, packages, especially metal ones, can be very hot and will need to be opened carefully because of the pressure build-up from heating.

The HotLogic is a slow cooker, so you will need somewhere to plug it in for a couple of hours (1-2 depending on if the food is frozen / raw or room-temp and cooked first). Unless you stay inside one track room all day (as I do when I'm working), this may be best to leave in your hotel room, assuming you're staying on-site.

The good news is, though, that because it's such low-temp cooking, you can leave your food in there heating all day long and it'll be fine. I once started my food heating in the morning but then at lunch time found out that management was feeding us. So I ate the free catering and forgot about my lunch until it was time to go home, leaving it heating for like 8 or 10 hours. I just put it back in the freezer overnight and reheated it the next day and it was fine. So plug in your meal before you go downstairs in the morning and pop back into your room whenever you're hungry later for a hot meal.

I have literally not had to buy my lunch at work since buying one of these more than a decade ago and I have started using it at DragonCon for the last 3 or 4 years and I love it. Many of my coworkers have them or similar items now because they are so convenient. I seriously ought to become a distributor for them or get a commission or something because of how many video techs I have talked into buying one. If I ever thought about it, I would have a box of these and a box of screen pullers to sell at every gig I work.

The electric kettle is very important for anyone who likes hot drinks. Hotel coffee pots are notoriously unsanitary, and if you like anything other than coffee, using water heated by a coffee pot (especially the k-cup type) adds a bitter coffee tinge to whatever your drinking. You can even make coffee using "homemade tea bags" out of coffee filters and steeping your grounds in your hot water like tea bags. The longer you let it steep, the stronger the drink will be. Some kettles have batteries or USB cords or act as thermoses so you can bring your kettle around with you like a large water bottle and drink down on the con floor.

For food, while your specific dietary needs may vary, if you just follow the Food Pyramid you should be able to eat a healthy diet that is suitable for a weekend or a week at con even without access to a full kitchen and from-scratch meal prep. You want a good source of protein every day, complex sugars and carbs, healthy fats, and a source of vitamins and minerals that isn't solely a daily multivitamin. I car-camped for 2 weeks with the above diet and was fine. Oh, and minimize the caffeine use. I know, fandom cons are extended parties and everyone wants to be awake for the whole thing, but seriously, keep the caffeine to the bare minimum, especially later in the day.

Plan for at least one hot meal per day (hot food seems to be important for emotional and mental health, and going without for too many days can negatively impact your mood and immune resistance abilities) and have ready access to a variety of "grazing" food throughout the day, that includes just a bit of "indulgent" food, again for mood and emotional / mental health.

To sum up -

I carry a small, lightweight, easy for me to carry all day, mini-backpack with my daily essentials and a few "just in case" items that I have found to be very helpful at conferences. I make the investment to carry or wear comfortable shoes. I practice good hygiene including bathing, deodorants, good tooth care, and good sleep practices such as plenty of sleep hours and bringing my own pillows / pillow cases and towels. And I get 1 hot meal and around 1200-1800 calories per day and some kind of food that makes me happy with the diet above (I do not need more than 1200 per day).

Drink water, buy a HotLogic if you can afford it, wear good shoes even if it doesn't work for the outfit, shower, brush your teeth, and get sleep.

Also, this video was made 12 years ago so there are a couple of points that are out of date, but it's still pretty applicable:

comments

New TransFlag Phoenix Design Available at www.PolyTees.com

Fri, 14 Jun 2024 19:19:02 GMT

New for Pride month! Our exclusive Trans Flag Phoenix design on dozens of t-shirts and other products!

Visit the revamped & updated Poly Tees to find many of our old favorite t-shirt designs now reinstated and a whole bunch of new slogans recently added.

Plus, only 3 more days left to get 15% off your entire purchase!

Almost all of our designs are customizable too! You can choose from a wide range of products for each design, many products are available in different colors, AND if you go to the product detail page for most of our designs and click on the "edit" or "pencil" icon below the image, you can even change the design color and print type!

Also keep checking back with us because new designs are being added all the time.

Visit www.PolyTees.com for all our new inventory and sales!

I have been working for MONTHS to get this site back up!

Several years ago, my shirt printer decided to get rid of all text-based designs, which were the vast majority of my designs. It was such an overwhelming process to put them all back in that I kept putting it off.

Well, I finally got most of them back up (the ones I could remember, anyway, and the ones that the printer's moderators aren't currently holding "in review") and I added a whole ton more, just in time for Pride month.

If you see a design that you like but it's not on a product you want, or you almost like it but want it tweaked in some way (like my "Independently Owned & Operated Since 1977" shirt and you want your own year), or even if you have a totally new idea for a design, please let me know either through email or comment or PM on any social media you can find me on and I'm happy to make those customizations where I can for no extra charge.

So please visit the shop and like & share the links and pages with others! Income from this store is partly how I am able to survive when my industry dries up for the summer and (how I hope to survive once I finally leave this hellhole of a state and don't have a job waiting for me) and thanks to all my designs getting purged, I haven't had this income in several years now. So your likes, thumbs up, positive reviews, comments, engagement with the page, and shares are SUPER helpful!

comments

Recipes: Orange Dreamsicle Jello Parfait

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 21:44:34 GMT

There is this little Florida roadside diner place that I used to pass every day on my way to work in Orlando, that advertises "grapefruit pie". The picture on the sign had been so washed out by the sun that I really couldn't tell what grapefruit pie was, but I was intrigued. After several years, I finally stopped in to try this pie.

The diner boasts that it won a pie contest several years in a row, and it was so popular that they even offered the recipe for free on their website. Before I knew that, I bought a slice of pie. I was ... disappointed. It really looked like someone really just made jello with fruit bits in a pie crust, and it vaguely tasted like key lime pie. So I went to the website to look at the recipe, and ... yeah, that's basically what it was. In fact, it wasn't even *grapefruit* Jello, it was STRAWBERRY JELLO! With bits of grapefruit in it!

I could totally do better than that!

So I started thinking ... HOW could I do better than that? After thinking about it for a while, I came up with a Jello parfait recipe that I wanted to experiment with - no idea if it would make a good *pie* or not, but it sounded like a good Jello dessert?

I made the first experiment today, and it worked out wonderfully! I have more experimentation to do, though, because this Jello was not terribly firm thanks to the citrus, and it completely liquefied again after sitting out for about an hour. It gelled back up after another night in the fridge, but next time I will try boiling the OJ first, which kills the enzymes that may be responsible for interfering with the gelatin process.

Anyway, it's ridiculously easy to make, so here it is:

Ingredients:

1 package of Orange Jello
1 cup of boiling water
1 cup of orange juice
1 can of mandarin oranges (drained)

1 package of vanilla pudding
1 cup of heavy whipping cream
1 8oz tub of whipped cream

Directions:

Add 1 cup of boiling water to the powdered Jello in a bowl with a roughly 3 cup volume. Stir until thorough dissolved, about 2 minutes.

Add 1 cup of cold orange juice to the Jello.

Add drained mandarin oranges.*

Put Jello in the fridge to solidify for several hours, even overnight.

Pour heavy whipping cream into medium mixing bowl.

On medium speed with a hand mixer or stand mixer with a whisk, beat whipping cream until frothy.

Add dry pudding powder and whisk until well mixed and solid.

Add whipped cream and whisk until thoroughly mixed and store in an air-tight container until ready to serve.

After gelled, spoon Jello into a cup or bowl in a small layer, then spoon whipped topping over the Jello in a layer, alternating Jello and whipped topping until cup or bowl is pleasingly full. Top with a dollop of whipped topping.

*Mandarin oranges will float to the top, leaving the bottom of the Jello fruit-free. For a regular bowl of Jello, this is undesirable, but since the Jello will be spooned or scooped into dishes, this can be compensated for. Make sure to add scoops of Jello without oranges to each layer in addition to the scoops from the top that include oranges, so that the oranges are spread evenly among the layers and among the servings and the un-fruited Jello is similarly spread evenly.

comments

What Can Make Even A #Poly Person Jealous? #polyamory #polyamorous

Thu, 21 Mar 2024 18:33:13 GMT

Q. What can make even a poly person jealous?

A. The same things that make non-poly people jealous. Because, here’s a secret … you ready?

Poly people are people.

That’s right, we’re just regular old human beings like everyone else. We are not emotionless sociopaths, we are not aliens, we are not relationship wizards. We’re just people. We have all the same emotions as you do, and we fuck up our relationships just like you do.

The only real difference is that we have a culture that prioritizes curiosity, authenticity, and autonomy. That doesn’t mean that individual monogamous people don’t prioritize those things and it doesn’t mean that individual poly people are necessarily *good* at those things. It means that we like to *say* that those things are important to us.

So we are pressured, from our culture and from our own internal sense of morality, to respect our partners’ right to make choices about their own bodies and emotions, and we are pressured to constantly inquire within ourselves about what the signal light on our dashboards is trying to tell us, and then to solve the actual problem.

Because that’s what jealousy is - it’s a signal light telling you that something is wrong. That’s all. Sometimes that signal is trying to tell you that you’re in a relationship with someone who is not respecting *your* autonomy, or your boundaries, or whatever. Sometimes that signal light is trying to tell you that you have unresolved issues to deal with that aren’t your partners’ fault.

Some people don’t like signal lights. They’re annoying. So they put a post-it note over their dashboard and try to pretend like the light isn’t on at all. That’s the culture that most people come from, including most poly people. It’s the culture that tells us that if you see a signal light, if you feel jealousy, you need to make the thing that’s lighting up your dashboard go dark - you need to stop the activity that’s making you feel jealous. Doesn’t matter *why* you feel jealous, just stop the feeling whatever the cost. Take out that light.

Poly culture tells us to pop the fucking hood and get your hands dirty trying to figure out why the damn light is on in the first place, and then fix. the. problem.

Unfortunately for us poly people, none of us are born mechanics. We’re all learning this shit as we go too. So our signal lights go on for the same reasons everyone else’s do. We all got the shitty factory programming.

But *some* of us stop the car, get underneath it, and shine flashlights around until we find the problem. Some monogamous people do that too. Because we’re all just people.

comments

Costume & Wardrobe Storage Solutions For Everyone

Mon, 27 Nov 2023 23:57:07 GMT

I keep getting asked about costume storage, and I'm rewriting the same answer over and over again in costume and cosplay groups, so I decided it was past time that I made an actual blog entry about this.

I have a lot of costumes. I mean, I have A LOT of costumes. And a lot of dance clothing. And dress-up clothes. And work clothes. Let's face it ... I just have a lot of clothing in general. When I still lived in an actual dwelling, I had a 2 bedroom apartment so that I could use my entire second bedroom as a walk-in closet. I don't mean that I wanted 2 bedrooms so that I could use both closets, I mean that the whole bedroom was one giant fucking wardrobe.

After moving into an RV, I needed some kind of long-term storage option for all my clothes. After a handful of years and some trial and error, I finally came up with a system that I really like. I'm very excited about my new storage system.

I found that 28 quart "under bed storage" bins have roughly the same volume as cardboard file boxes (also called "letter boxes" and "banker boxes"), which is what I was using to store everything in before (because they were uniform in size and shape and both big enough to be useful but small enough to carry and limit the contents for weight control).

Plus, because they're longer and flatter, I can put clothing in it with fewer folds, leaving them on hangers and in garment bags and just sort of "accordion-folding" them into the plastic bin. And the plastic holds up better than the cardboard. Also, I color-coded the bin lids. My costumes are all in white bins, my regular clothing is in silver lids, and my "not one costume, but a bunch of the same item" stuff like petticoats and corsets are in green bins.

The picture is a little bit outdated - this was taken before I added several more costumes and before I really nailed down the color coding, so it's not very consistent in this picture, but it got more consistent later on.

I have one bin per costume (or one costume per bin) with all of its bits including accessories and shoes (other than those costume elements I reuse in multiple costumes, like my petticoats). Each costume gets a checklist for all the items that belong to the costume, with the line items that are stored in that bin checked off and the "shared" items not checked off so that I know to look for them in another bin.

These checkists are in a plastic sheet protector and I use wipe-off markers to write on the plastic over the paper when I check something off for an event or to make notes, so I can just wipe it all off afterwards and still have a clean checklist.

And THEN, I have every single individual clothing item and element recorded in a free, online database that includes its location.

When I go to a con, I can just pick up the bin for the costume I want to take, check the checklist to see if there are bits located elsewhere, and I take the whole bin. If I am flying instead of driving, I take the garment bag containing the costume out of the bin and pack just the garment bag with the costume.

I made a template version of my database so that anyone else can use it. All you have to do is create a free Airtable profile, then click the link that takes you to my template, and "copy" that database into your own profile. From your profile, you can edit the database however you want.

I highly recommend this method or something similar. For my non-costume clothing that needs to be stored, I put all clothing items of similar type (i.e. "club tops", "work shirts", "suits & slacks", "pants", etc.) into these bins, tight-rolling them the way that flight attendants pack their clothing (tutorials can be found on YouTube for this very efficient and compact folding method). These items are similarly catalogued into my database so I can find them later. It's truly a space-saver that also protects my clothing from pests and the elements. It's also super useful for moving.

If you're looking for a better storage method of clothing and soft-goods, I recommend buying a bunch of under-bed storage bins and if you want to get really organized about it, some sheet protectors for checklists, some chalkboard labels for the outside of the bin, and some different color lids to color code. Then check out my wardrobe database template for boss-level organization.

comments

Country Swing Dancing And The Systemic Obliviousness Of Men - A Compliment Becomes A Metaphor

Tue, 18 Oct 2022 22:38:55 GMT

I was given a compliment that was definitely intended as a compliment and that I'm taking as a compliment and that, even though it includes a comparison, was definitely not intended to insult the person it was comparing, but nevertheless the compliment shouldn't actually need to exist and I'm using as a metaphor for a larger conversation on gender.

I have decided that there is actually a partner dance that I don't like: country swing. There are no patterns for the feet, it's literally a dance all about how fast and how frequently the lead can spin his partner (because gender norms). Now, dance involves the body so a dance style that doesn't focus on memorized step patterns can still be a legitimate dance style. But this is a dance style that is all about sequences of tricks with no concern for steps or musicality and relies on the strength of the lead to make the follow go where she is supposed to go.

And don't get me wrong but the really good country swing dancers do use step patterns and have musicality and the follows do as much work as the leads. But that's not the social dance experience. Usually it's a dude spinning the fuck out of some thin, young woman with no regard to how well it matches the music that's playing or whether she even knows how to do what he's making her do. Brute force will spin her and stop her without dropping her whether she knows what to do or not.

So, there was a guy at the wedding I went to recently who claimed to be able to two-step and swing dance. My sister grabbed him for a two-step and he was all over the place with her - no control, no musicality, just "slow-slow-quick-quick-spin-slow-slow-quick-quick-spin-spin-another spin-slow-slow-quick-quick".

When they sat down, he said that he was really rusty with the two-step and that he was better with swing. I would rather have danced a two-step with him, but since he said he was better at swing, I asked him to swing dance with me. So we got up and did a country swing exactly as described above - spin, spin, spin, who the fuck cares about beats and music?

I was told later that the dance with my sister looked pretty out of control and my mom was worried that he was actually going to hurt my sister, but she was amazed at how well I kept up with him. And I kind of downplayed it because 1) my sister was never as into partner dancing as she was into line dancing; 2) she hasn't danced in a while and I try to keep up with my dancing; and 3) I know exactly what "country swing" is and I know how to handle guys who dance like that.

So I've been feeling a little pleased that I impressed people by dancing with someone who had very little control and making it look like we were less out-of-control than we really were, mainly because *I* kept control of *me*. And it's legitimately not an insult to my sister, because he was the lead, so all problems were his fault. She's not even a poorer dancer than I am, necessarily, he was just that bad of a lead. I am, after all, a better follow than a dancer.

Here's the metaphor part: Too many cishet dudes are allowed to move through life like these country boys move across the dance floor - full tilt, without regard for their surroundings, who is around them, how they impact others on the floor, how out of control they are, dominating their partner, and with no regard to the mood of the music. And I have spent a lifetime developing the coping skills for how to keep my own feet underneath me when one of these guys swoops by and spins me around. And that's a compliment because it is, indeed, a skill that I've worked hard at and I am a good dancer (and "dancer") because of it.

BUT I SHOULD NEVER HAVE NEEDED THAT SKILL IN THE FIRST PLACE.

I should not ever be complimented for how well I can compensate for men's failings and flailings. Because men should not be allowed to stomp all over the floor and through life the way they do. But so many of them do so, that we just gave it its own dance style name and genre and said "yep, that's legit, that's how you do that!"

And we have done the social equivalent of tolerating and accepting men who do that in life.

Country swing is actually a really fun style to both watch and dance, *when done well*. But what *I* (and competition judges) think counts as "done well" and what social dancers think counts as "done well" are two very different things. It is, and should be, a legitimate style. But the way it's executed on a social floor is just fucking dangerous. It may be athletic, but it's not artistic, and it's not considerate. It's performative without being connective.

So don't be one of these country swing dudes. Pay attention to how you move through life, how you impact those around you, the space you take up, whether your partner is (or is able to) contribute equally to your partnership or are you just flinging them around with you, and for fuck's sake at least try to learn something about musicality because musicality is just emotional connection manifest physically. With a little math.

comments

Reminder: Lots Of Polyamorous People Never "Opened Up" A Relationship

Tue, 18 Oct 2022 22:21:49 GMT

Reminder: A very large portion of poly people did not come to polyamory through "opening up a relationship". There are more than one avenue to discovering polyamory. If you never "opened up" a relationship, you are not alone, and not even a tiny minority.

I know it seems like it, because "couples who open up" are the only ones who ever get any air time, but I promise that you are part of a very large segment of the community. I am one of them. I never "opened up" a relationship. I discovered my own internal desire for ethical non-monogamy when I didn't have any romantic or sexual partners at all and every relationship I got into after that point was deliberately non-monogamous from the moment I entered into it. My partner, Franklin, has just never had a monogamous relationship in his life.

There are so many of us that we have a diverse collection of stories of how our relationships look. My non-monogamous history looks very different from Franklin's history, even though neither of us tried to "open up" a previously monogamous relationship. We are not a small segment of the poly community, NYT articles to the contrary.

Also, not all people who discovered polyamory for themselves while not in a couple ultimately become solo poly. Solo poly is not synonymous with "single". Just FYI.

comments

Love And Leashes (a Netflix movie review)

Tue, 16 Aug 2022 16:19:51 GMT

I watched a Korean movie on Netflix called Love & Leashes, about a submissive guy who transfers to another department at work and meets a woman in that department who he wants to be his Master. Although she is ... "intimidating", she has never heard of BDSM before, but she finds the idea intriguing.

Korean culture is very different from USian culture, and how they conduct relationships is different. Going into this movie, I didn't know if what I was watching is actually how BDSM relationships are done in Korea or if it's more "the writers know nothing of this subject but thought it would sell a movie script", because it's definitely not how I would recommend conducting a D/s relationship here. But a USian friend of mine who has been living and teaching in Korea for the last several years chimed in to give some background:

It's based off a webtoon by an anonymous author. And the style in the movie is pretty spot on with Korean bdsm forums and the lingo in Korean is super accurate and could only be known by pretty extensive research or experience.

Even the word for fake Dom -- 변바 is in it. It's super niche bdsm slang. Same with 연디 date d/s.

When it shows twitter handles those are a few letters off from real people I know irl in Korea. The background info is... eerily exact to the real bdsm scene here.

Even not knowing if it was a culture difference or uninformed writing, 20 minutes in and it was already 50 shades more charming than the piece of shit I've been choking down lately.

The characters' motivations are clear and their behaviour is consistent with both their personalities / histories, and also with what is known about BDSM, kink culture, and kink psychology. There's no abuse happening at all - it's being led by the sub with negotiation and boundaries from the dom, there was discussion and concern about unfair power imbalances due to the work connection, and it was established that the "newbie" to BDSM had personality tendencies in this direction already and does not find kink to be disgusting or that it must be the result of some childhood trauma.

In other words, everything that is happening so far makes sense, in context.

It's very rom-comy, not erotica, and I think that helps. Trying to make her dark and foreboding as a dom would, I think, remove a lot of its charm.

It does make me miss having a puppy, though.

Some of my notes while watching it:

OTG they're so awkward! It's very endearing.

OK, her digging her red heel into his fully clothed back is so far way more erotic than every sex scene in 50 Shades combined.

Puppy play, verbal humiliation, pain, service submission, nurturing dom ... someone here has actually at the very least read about D/s and not just attended a public dungeon with play restrictions.

AFTERCARE!!!

[discussing how his last girlfriend dumped him for being into BDSM]

"Do you really enjoy all this pain and suffering?"
"It hurts ... but I still feel so alive, you know?"
"I don't get it"
[crestfallen] "It's understandable."
"I mean, if it makes the person you like feel more alive, why can't you do it for them, you know? It's not like it's anything bad."
[slow hope]

#SoMuchBetterThan50ShadesOfShit

The movie version feels very manga, without being cartoony, if that makes sense.

They are so adorkable

By the end, I felt it had remained charming the whole way through. It was very much a rom-com complete with confusion arising from not communicating and a ridiculous happy ending, but it was so very pro-kink and the leads were sweet and adorkable and endearing.

Note to all writers: this is how you write "quirky" and "relatable" characters, not by making them Hollywood pretty but having everyone else describe them as "plain" while giving them no personality but making them clumsy. Also, don't soften a "hard" edged woman. Not everyone who has a strong personality is using it as a wall to hide behind and keep people from getting too close, and making a woman softer and smaller is not how she finds someone to love her. Plus, it's totally possible to be "strong" and even "hard" without being a bitch.

Also, a submissive man is not "weak". We see the male lead here standing up to his bosses and taking control of situations when necessary but also never stepping over the women around him when he needs to be aggressive. He supports them and uses his privileged position to make them heard, within the cultural context.

Anyone wanting to write about kink in an erotic setting where there is a conflict to overcome needs to address the idea of shame. And unlike the current most popular example, the goal is not to reinforce the shame of the kink tendencies, but to either overcome it or to find a way to deal with social shaming in an appropriate cultural context without internalizing it. This is a good example of one way to address shame well.

comments

Ms. Marvel: A Review (no spoilers)

Tue, 02 Aug 2022 17:09:17 GMT

Finally got around to watching the Ms. Marvel series on Disney+ and I'm SUPER impressed with the cinematography. It's clever and creative and quirky and both subtle and outrageously cartoonish and it's seamless to the live-action happening.

Really, just these opening scenes is ushering in a new era of YA television, honestly. It's told in a similarly serious tone to any adult TV show I would love but it's so fun and colorful and engaging that I think it probably appeals to a much younger audience. I think it's a great way to bridge the generation gap, actually.

The pace of the effects slowed down and got more subtle after the first episode or two, so that we could focus more on the story and not get distracted by the visual onslaught of creativity but the effects remained throughout, maintaining its young style.

And the story was, in Disney fashion, heavily pro-family. Other reviews have covered the cultural accuracy and since it’s not my culture, I’ll just say that I both recognized some cultural aspects from my time on the Bollywood circuit with Indian clientele and also recognized more universal elements of love and family and being a teenager and generation gaps that it seems we all go through in our own ways.

The series is really quite impressive, technically speaking. It is more “comic booky” than some of the other Marvel series, or rather more YA comic booky because there are darker and more subtle and sophisticated ways to still be comic booky (see Netflix Marvel and M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable), which makes sense as it features teenagers but it’s fun even for adults and has plenty for everyone.

I found this show utterly charming the whole way through, and the cinematography especially is impressive. I think this is a good one for GenX and older Millennial geeks to watch with the kids. If you have kids who are old enough to sit through a series with a multi-episode story arc, I recommend giving this one a go with them.

comments

The Vilification Of Gaslighting

Sat, 30 Jul 2022 17:32:28 GMT

Something I want to be careful of is the vilification of gaslighting. And by that, I mean that I want to draw a line between "this behaviour has harmful effects and we need to stop doing it" and "the people who gaslight are evil manipulators deliberately trying to drive you insane".

The reason why I want to draw that line is because characterizing it as the latter makes it too easy for people to distance *ourselves* from acknowledging when we do it. "I am not an evil manipulator, so I can't be gaslighting anyone." Even "evil" abusers see themselves as the victim in their stories.

The reason they abuse is because they have a *belief* that the actions they take are genuinely right, good, acceptable, appropriate, or warranted. Many of them feel that they are a good influence on others or that they are trying to better their victims or doing what they do for their own good. They can't change until they recognize that they are doing something wrong.

So when we use the latter definition, we give them justification room in their minds to excuse their actions. But if we use the former, then we ALL have to take a look at our own behaviour and keep working on bettering ourselves, and we can do that without the cognitive dissonance fighting us and telling us that we are a "good person" so this can't apply to ourselves. This makes it harder for outright abusers to excuse their own actions if the culture around them encourages this kind of reflection and correction of everyone.

Gaslighting is such a normal part of our society that we're mostly all raised with it all around us. That makes it difficult to identify when we do it ourselves.

One of the classic examples I use to illustrate non "abusive", well-intentioned gaslighting is a mother trying to get her child to eat her vegetables, the child says she doesn't like them, and the mother says in exasperation, "yes you do, now just eat them."

We likely have gaslighted people in these kinds of minor situations many times over our lives and never realized it, so never recorded it in our memories. Why should one of these totally normal conversations stick out in our minds, especially years later? It's *the way things are* in so many circumstances.

I can't remember anything specific but I'm sure I've said to people at various times "oh, yes you do!" when they said they didn't like something or didn't want something, and I'm sure I had good intentions when I did it. I'm not "evil", I'm a meat body driven by a belief engine and a product of my environment, which means I'm flawed.

The best I can do now is to be mindful of my language and try not to contradict people when they tell me their inner landscape. If I have reason to doubt them, such as suspecting *them* of trying to manipulate me, maybe I can ask for confirmation or I can point to conflicting *behaviour*, but I will try not to outright tell other people what they are feeling.

In this post, I want to be clear that I'm doing something that I often rant against doing - stretching the definition of a very importantly narrow term. Gaslighting is not simply remembering things differently, or even *just* telling someone with confidence that their memory of a thing is wrong, even if the "thing" in question is part of the other person's inner landscape. The original term "gaslighting" is, in fact, the second definition I used in my opening paragraph.

In the movie Gaslight, which is where the term comes from, a husband is *deliberately* changing the level of the lighting in the house (created by gas lights, not electric lights), and when the wife comments on the change in light, he *deliberately* says there is no change, so that the wife comes to doubt her own senses over time. The husband does all this *deliberately* so that he can have his wife committed to an asylum so he can access her money. This is a 1940s villain caricature, an evil mustachio'd villain who knows he is doing evil and doing it maliciously and selfishly.

The problem is that this is not how real life "villains" operate. And that's the point that I'm making here. It's important to keep a narrow definition of terms like "gaslight" and "abuse" and not round up just anything uncomfortable to these terms. But we have to *also* make sure that we don't keep the definitions so narrow that it only applies to people in black hats cackling in their lairs and stroking their white cats while they plot world domination.

Because that leads to everyday, ordinary people doing horrible things and justifying themselves because they are not evil villains. We have everyday, low-key examples of people trying to convince other people that they are not experiencing the things that they are experiencing. This is not the same thing as correcting people's flawed memories or understanding of factual claims, although that can also be weaponized. I'm talking about "yes, you do like broccoli!" when you do not, in fact, like broccoli.

These small little disregards of our inner landscape *lead* to large disregards of other people's inner landscapes, because it's the same thing but a manner of scope. The mother *believes* that it's in her child's best interest to eat veggies. And she's right, it is in her child's best interest, and the mother is, in fact, in a position of authority and power over the child to do "what's best" for the child. This is the nature of that relationship.

So it's a very small step to go from a parent / child power dynamic who uses an agency-dismissing tool to manipulate and control one's behaviour, to a romantic partnership dynamic who uses an agency-dismissing tool to manipulate and control one's behaviour *for one's own good*. This is a tool we have been given by our society, so it's a tool we may not even notice that we are pulling out and using because our brains are little more than belief justification engines.

And if our society has also encouraged us to see villains as black hatted evil caricatures of people, then our giant justification engines are going to work overtime to make sure that we are not Bad People(TM). And since we are not Bad People(TM), we therefore cannot be doing the things that Bad People(TM) do.

And THAT is the point of this piece. Gaslighting, the action, needs to be understood as a Very Bad Thing, but it needs to be separated from our personal identities as a thing that only Very Bad People do. The action is a tool that we have all been taught how to use. It's normal and reasonable for people immersed in a culture that uses this tool to reach for the tool themselves. It is an *inappropriate* tool, but the people who use it are regular, everyday people who have understandable reasons for reaching for it.

And now that you know it is a common, ubiquitous even, tool in all of our toolboxes, we ought to be on the lookout for when *we* reach for this totally normal, common but unhealthy tool. Gaslighting is not a tool reserved only for the most evil of all evil people. It's a tool that everyone has been exposed to, and taught how to use. All you have to do now is teach yourself how to put that tool down and reach for another one.

comments

Malicious & Benevolent Hierarchy Are Two Sides Of The Same Dehumanizing Coin

Sat, 30 Jul 2022 16:50:07 GMT

"My marriage is permanent! We place the relationship above the people in it! All other relationships are expendable as long as the marriage lasts forever!"

"Wow, that's not cool. Anyone my spouse and I date will automatically become an equal member of our triad! They're not expendable, they're exactly as permanent as the marriage!"

*sigh*

OK, so, I suppose it's a step up that you don't consider other people to be disposable or expendable. Yay? But you're still making the relationship more important than the happiness of the people in the relationship and you're still removing people's agency by deciding ahead of time what each relationship *will* look like, whether the people in those relationship want it that way or not.

I know it's really hard to see, because benevolent sexism is also really hard to see, and these are analogous things, but this is still problematic.

Benevolent sexism is where we switch from thinking that women are money-grubbing sluts who can't do math and shouldn't vote or talk in public and should be stoned to death for showing their ankles to unrelated men, to thinking that women are goddesses and need to be coddled and revered and pampered and who are better at nurturing and domestic tasks than men.

"But wait, isn't it a good thing to treat people well and to compliment their skills?"

Well, yes and no. it's a good thing to treat individual *people* well, but "well" depends on the recipient's definition, not yours. And it's not a "compliment on their skills" to say that "women" as a group are better at things when we all have different levels of ability and interest and especially when those things are things that society doesn't value highly and certainly doesn't pay for the way that we pay for everything else that requires specialized skills.

Malevolent sexism and benevolent sexism are two sides of the same coin - both versions put all women into a box and all women are required to fit into that box whether they actually do or not. And, especially in the case of benevolent sexism, if they don't fit into that box, they are punished for it. So women are still hindered, limited. A gilded cage is still a cage and my wings are still clipped even while sitting on a padded swing.

Plus, studies have shown that benevolent sexism is very strongly correlated to malevolent sexism - meaning that the society that has one also has the other. So just because a single person might think that women are "goddesses", that attitude only exists in a culture where someone else thinks women are "demons". So the benevolent sexist has to contribute to the overall culture of sexism that ultimately harms the women he claims to love (assuming he doesn't directly harm women as well by punishing women for not behaving goddess-like).

This "our third is an equal" attitude is basically the same thing as benevolent sexism. It might *seem* like it's a compliment or benefiting that "third", but it's still putting people into boxes and still expecting them to conform to an externally imposed role. A more ethical way of doing things is to just meet people, see how you click, and then talk to everyone involved to see what each person wants out of each relationship and allow each relationship the freedom to develop however it wants to.

My relationship with Franklin has always wanted to be what I used to call "emotionally primary" (before I dropped all ranking terms entirely, because I learned that even "descriptive primary" still contributes to this whole problem), meaning that our relationship has always pulled us towards stronger emotional connections with each other. But our lives have pulled us physically apart. If we had given up on the relationship just because it didn't meet our preset expectations of what a relationship with strong emotional connections *should* look like, we would have had to break up more than a decade ago.

But then I would have missed out on the last 15 years of a very emotionally nourishing relationship and I would be missing out on the very exciting future that we are trying to plan now.

I wish we would just erase this whole "equal" language from our poly vocabulary because people don't understand how to use it ethically. "Equal" is more often used as a blunt object to bludgeon people into predetermined roles, than out of any sense of equality or egalitarian values.

I am not "equal" to Franklin's other partners and they are not "equal" to me. I am equal to FRANKLIN. He and I have the same amount of power in our relationship to negotiate our own personal boundaries and the direction of our relationship, and *only* he and I have the power to negotiate our own boundaries and the direction of our relationship.

I cannot determine how his relationships go with anyone else, he can't determine how my relationships with others go, and nobody we are dating can determine how mine and his relationship together can go. This is what is meant by "equal".

People who talk about "equal" in this prescripted sort of way, much like people who defend hierarchy, tend to mix up all sorts of elements into the word "equal". The criticisms are almost exclusively about power structures. But these defenders want to throw in strength of emotional connection, time / attention priorities, and financial obligations.

Our relationships with other people are too *different* to be ranked as above, below, or equal to another. Franklin and I both care about our other partners very deeply and we cannot quantify our emotions to say who we care about "most".

So that's the emotions part that most people who talk about "equal" usually get confused about. I think it's foolish, at best, to even bother trying to rank how much you "love" each person, and at worst, it leads to the mindset that allows you to think of people as "disposable" and "expendable" because you don't "love" someone as much as someone else.

Priorities like time and attention are all different because we are all different people. Trying to make everyone "equal" is to dismiss their individuality, which dismisses their very humanity. Even identical twins are still unique individuals. We all want different things, and we all place importance on different things.

And there are *so many* things to account for here! My "quality time" isn't going to be the same as your "quality time" - it depends on our Love Languages, our preferences, our interests, and even our mood at any given moment. Spending time on the couch watching TV together might count as "quality time" most of the time, unless there's some other issue in our relationship that's coloring the experience for us, and then it won't "count".

There are just so many variables and so many unpredictable things to account for, that to even attempt to tally all things up and make them "equal" is an exercise in futility. And, in my observation, usually just tends to make the insecurities about priority worse when you start micromanaging relationships to make them "equal".

Financial obligations are pretty much the same thing - too many variables. People like to winnow it all down to "we have a mortgage and kids", but there are so many different things to consider like income disparity, cultural power differentials between gender and economic class, tax breaks, unpaid emotional labor, other relationship status, other support networks, other dependents ... there's a reason the US tax code is basically inscrutable without a degree in accounting. Finances are complicated.

To start ranking a relationship's importance based on only a few financial criteria is to ignore the impact that all these other criteria have on a relationship. Which is basically how we got to the point of women complaining about emotional labor in the first place.

A relationship between people who share a mortgage shouldn't be automatically more "important" than other sorts of relationships, just make sure that one obligation is cared for, like all the other obligations. That doesn't mean that the relationship overall deserves a higher ranking, or that one who doesn't share a mortgage deserves a lesser ranking. Relationships that don't involve mortgages can be every bit as "serious" and "committed" and "entangled" as those that do.

Just ... stop with the "disposable" shit and stop with the "equal to my other partners" shit. We. Are. Different. Each person is a unique individual, and consequently each *relationship* is a unique entity because the people in them are unique. Even *you* are a different person in the context of one relationship vs. another relationship. Pretty similar, sure, but that relationship influences who you are, which changes who you are.

Which relates back to a recent post I made about how you can't "add a third to our existing relationship" because that relationship no longer exists, having been permanently altered by the change in status. You have created all new relationships, including with your preexisting partner. *Everything* is different now - your relationships and the people in them.

They. Can't. Be. Quantified. Or. Ranked. Without. Dehumanizing. Or. Objectifying. Them.

Which is why even insisting that "our third will be equal in all things" is just the other side of the coin of the "disposable" perspective. It's a prettier side, to be sure. It feels kinder, it feels fluffier, it feels nicer. It even feels more ethical. I remember the first relationship I was in that espoused this canard, and I remember feeling valued at the time. And then I learned the dark side of what this actually means.

Because it comes from the same place - disregarding the uniqueness, the individuality, and the agency of the people in the relationships and valuing the relationship itself over the people in them.

For more discussion on this topic, here is the FB thread that sparked it.

comments

Imaginary Conversations With Fictional TV 2nd Wave Feminists

Sat, 16 Jul 2022 23:21:51 GMT

I watch a lot of '70s and '80s sitcom re-runs with feminist characters. Most of the time, that's why I like them. But that was the era of 2nd Wave feminism, which is notoriously sex-negative. So I occasionally have imaginary conversations with these fictional characters defending sex-positivity. This bit popped into my head today after an episode including a porn actress:

We all agree that we should have the right to say "no" and have that respected. But what good is that "right" to say no if we're not allowed to say "yes"?

That "no" is just as restrictive as anything else the patriarchy imposes on us. That "no" doesn't give us any freedom at all. We are still being judged by patriarchal values of sexual objectification. Required to have sex, required to be chaste - it's two sides of the same coin.

I will say "no" when I mean "no" and "yes" when I want to say "yes". And if I want to say "yes" more often than someone else, or less often than someone else, as a warrior for the right of women to own their own bodies, the right to say "yes" should be just as important as the right to say "no".

To be judged as "lesser" than other women because one says "yes" is to buy right into those same patriarchal values that led us to fight for the right to say "no" in the first place. You are still judging me for my sexuality, you are still defining my own boundaries for my body for me, you are still taking away my freedom, my choices, my agency.

You don't have to say "yes" if you don't want to. But I shouldn't have to say "no" if I don't want to. Consent is meaningless if you can't say "no", but the right to withhold consent is meaningless if you can't say "yes".

"But self-respect, blah blah blah."

I respect myself by listening to what my body wants and honoring it, not by allowing men to place their own narrow filter over me, telling me when I am worthy of respect by them (and myself) and what makes me not worthy of respect.

I respect myself when I have sex because I want to, and I respect myself when I don't have sex when I don't want to. I even respect myself when I trade sex for money, at least as much as I respect myself when I trade literally any other labor or experience for money.

It's not the act of sex in exchange for money that makes it disrespectful, it's the commodifying of labor and service to trade for survival that's disrespectful.

I am worthy of respect from myself and others because I exist, and no other reason is necessary. My self-respect is not subject to the whims of other people's values. That wouldn't be SELF respect, then. Certainly, allowing other people to decide what to do with my body against my own desires and interests would not be respecting myself.

comments

Polyamory & The Prisoner's Dilemma (And Some Gender Role Bullshit In Poly)

Sat, 16 Jul 2022 23:06:38 GMT

www.morethantwo.com/polyprisonersdilemma.html

I wrote a rant a while back about my observation of a gender-based set of tendencies in the poly community. This is basically what I was talking about - People socialized as men have a higher tendency to start out defensively while people socialized as women have a higher tendency to start out cooperatively. But I don't mean that in the emotional sense, because often there is no clear gender line between people who feel *emotionally* cooperative and people who feel *emotionally* defensive.

So, let me expand a bit on what I mean there.

"I tend to see a lot of people in poly relationships who are very uncomfortable with the idea of meeting a lover’s other lovers. This is one of the most common sources of angst I’ve noticed for people who are polyamorous, especially if they’re fairly new to polyamory.

Meeting a lover’s other lover presents a host of opportunity for cooperation or defection. You can reach out to the other person and try to make that person feel welcome; you can be closed up and defensive to that person; you can even be actively hostile to that person. And, of course, your lover’s lover has similar choices."

When it comes to people who think about the idea of metamours, and who feel uncomfortable with the idea of meeting the metamours, I, personally, have not noticed any gender differences. Newbies, generally speaking, feel all kinds of anxiety about meeting metamours - should they or shouldn't they? How should they meet? When? Under what circumstances? Etc.

But when it comes to *actually* meeting, I've observed that, in heteronormative relationships (regardless of the gender or orientation of the participants, these are relationships that fall into heteronormative traits, habits, patterns, can take advantage of hetero privileges, etc.), it usually falls to the women to making it happen. Women are the ones encouraging the men to meet each other, and women are the ones voluntarily reaching out to other women to meet (or ask in the forums how to go about doing so).

Not without trepidation, not without playing dominance games, not without anxiety. But actually *doing* the emotional labor in poly relationships, I see more women doing more of the work.

In my observations, men have a tendency to just wait around until their women partners instigate or organize some kind of event that will bring the men into proximity with each other. Where they might bother to chat, if they happen to be near enough to hear each other, but unless they find some kind of common interest that sparks curiosity and enthusiasm, men have a tendency to just leave it at that and not put forth much effort to go uphill trying to build connection that takes some effort and doesn't happen spontaneously and easily. And if the men are the pivot points, they just sit back and let the women meet or not meet.

But women as the pivots have a tendency, in my observation, to keep talking and prodding their men partners to meet. They're the ones who schedule the dinner date, or host a party, or set up Skype for the men to meet each other. And if the women are the metamours, they are less likely to wait for their pivot man to insist on meeting and they'll send an email to their women metamours, introducing themselves and arranging a coffee date, or whatever.

These observations are not related to how each person *feels* about meeting metamours and not related to the *strategies* each person employs in meeting the metamours. I've seen people of all genders play out dominance games or pull rank or be passive aggressive, and I've seen people of all genders have excellent communication skills and get along well with metamours.

It's the *labor* that's involved that I had noticed often falls along gender lines and that's what I was ranting about in that post. And it has been my observation and experience that, when the women do all this early emotional labor involved in reaching out and establishing contact, then shit gets done because the groundwork has been laid.

Sometimes the "shit" that's getting done is productive. The women build friendships and a level of trust that enables them to weather turbulence in relationships because they built a foundation to have faith that trouble will eventually be worked out. That foundation gives them a sense of resiliency that makes the metamour relationships more likely to be successful and closer-knit.

And sometimes the "shit" that's getting done is not productive, including hierarchical primaries laying foundations for rank-pulling and place-setting and generally undermining the relationship between their partner and metamour. This is when the traps for hierarchy are set for future snapping shut on the poor secondaries and when cuckoos get the eggs in place to push out of the nest.

My point was that "shit gets done" because they start the work early.

But when men, generally speaking, just kind of passively allow their women partners to take the lead, they end up not having these sorts of foundations with their metamours. And then if a conflict ends up happening (which it doesn't always, but if it does), then the men don't have that connection, that trust that they will find a solution together through collaboration. They see themselves as on an island with their woman partner, who sometimes sails over to another island and stuff just kinda happens over there, and then she comes back. They don't see themselves as really *part* of their metamours.

And when men passively allow their women partners to do all the emotional labor in facilitating their own metamour relationships, that adds to the anxiety and stress and *effort* of the women maintaining those metamour relationships. Regardless of whether they all start out cooperating or not, the women metamours in this scenario are doing it all on their own while the men pivots just sit back and let them hash things out. The women carry the burden of maintaining both their romantic relationships and the metamour networks.

I generally have good metamour relationships. Not without their bumps, but pretty healthy and collaborative. But I'm an introvert and managing a lot of emotional relationships is fucking *exhausting*. It would be nice to have a little help facilitating, especially in the beginning when I don't know my metamour very well and we haven't yet found our common paths.

Add to that, the effort I have to put in to maintain *other people's* metamour relationships, because without me poking and prodding, none of my men partners have ever reached out on their own to meet each other.

I take that back - Sterling often reached out without me prodding him. He would often ask me if it was OK to contact one of my other partners and he would reach out to them. But he's the most social extrovert I've ever dated and has none of the social anxiety or concern that people might find his reaching out to be intrusive.

I've dated other extroverts before (and, in fact, I prefer to date extroverts to compensate for my own introversion), but they were either too concerned with pushing themselves on people, they gave up after a lack of reciprocation, or they were simply too passive and content to spend their energy on their own friends and partners.

And I see this *all the time* in other people's relationships too. Once I started seeing the gender split, I couldn't unsee it and it makes me very frustrated at how poor men's communication and collaboration skills are, especially initiating.

But all of that is a side-step to the point of this link. This link is focusing more on the things that people actually *do* to or for their metamours, not the more abstract application of, basically, using the cooperation / defection as a filter through which I see emotional labor.

"In a very literal sense, you make the social environment you live in. People take their cues from you. Even in a world of people who adopt a hostile, defecting strategy, it is possible to do well. On your first move, cooperate. Open yourself. Invite this other person into your life. Only if it is not reciprocated—only then do you become defensive, and stay that way only for as long as the other person is defensive."

"It turns out that even in complex situations, the simplest strategies tend to work the best. In fact, consistently, the programs that were most successful were nice, meaning they never defected before the opponent; retaliating, meaning they would defect if the opponent did, but only to the extent that the opponent did; forgiving, meaning they cooperated and forgave if the opposing program stopped defecting; and non-envious, meaning they did not attempt to score greater gains than the other program."

The bottom line is to start out being nice to someone, start out hopeful and optimistic and see your metamour as an opportunity instead of a threat. If you do that, they are more likely to do it in return. Couples keep asking how to get their potential "thirds" and "secondaries" to "respect" the primary relationship? The only way to do that is to start out by respecting your secondary and their other relationships.

You *have* to give first. But unicorn hunters never want to hear that answer. They *think* that they *are* respecting their secondaries, but the very act of wondering how to *make* someone "respect" a preexisting relationship is an act of disrespecting the other person. You get respect for giving it.

And then, you have to let them fuck up at least once first. That's the Tit For Two Tats strategy that this link mentions at the end. Start out being nice. Then, when they fuck up, assume good intentions and continue being nice. Only after they show a pattern of operating in bad faith do you start reacting defensively, not before.

Intimate relationships are not a medieval war game. If you try to put up battlements first to "protect the primary relationship" from this interloper that you're hoping will "respect" you, you will lose.

War strategies are basically methods for how powerful people fight each other to stalemates - both sides shore up their own walls first and then warily eye each other over the spikes in the walls and promise to cooperate as little as they can possibly get away with before the opposing side decides to retaliate. It's a game of how much can you optimize your own wins before you lose them in a battle when your opponent gets pissed off at your optimization.

Intimate relationships are the opposite. It's a trust fall. You have to open yourself up to vulnerability and you have to be willing to be hurt for the potential greater payoff in the future. Because you WILL be hurt. Your partners and your metamours will fuck up and your tender side will be exposed. That's the nature of the relationship.

But the goal here isn't to optimize our own gains *in spite* of an opposing force. The goal here is to build a cooperative structure where sometimes one side loses a little but sometimes the other side looses a little too and it all balances out in the end where both sides come out further ahead together than they would have alone. This takes them out of opposing sides and puts everyone on the same side.

The goal is to get out of the Prisoner's Dilemma entirely and build up systems where cooperation is always in everyone's best interest, and voluntarily taking turns conceding is in everyone's best interest because it'll payoff in the next round, and everyone is on the same team.

comments

Stop Rounding Everything Up To "Abuse"

Sat, 16 Jul 2022 22:22:54 GMT

Here's something else I'd like to see everyone stop doing - if someone is mean to you on the internet, stop calling that "abuse".

Yes, there are ways to be abusive on the internet. And yes, there are people who do that. But most of the time, it's not *abuse*, which is about *power*. It's someone being a jerk.

I'm a jerk. I'm mean to people. But don't confuse me losing my temper at something really fucking irritating that you did with "abuse".

When we start "rounding up" behaviours as "abuse", we dilute the whole conversation around abuse, particularly domestic abuse, parental abuse, and intimate partner violence, and also bullying. These are very real, very serious issues that we need to keep talking about and keep talking about. Someone yelling at you on the internet? Not abuse. Even if it hurts.

Did they dox you? Did they reveal personal information? Did they violate your consent? Did they use their position of power and authority to silence you? To turn people or entire communities against you? Did they withhold a valuable resource from you?

These are things that can be discussed in a conversation about abuse.

Did they yell at you? Tell you that you were hurting them? Accuse you of hurting others? Tell you to leave them alone? Call you petty names (but not names with the weight of systemic oppression behind them)? Block you from their personal profile? Use swear words where you could read them? Disagree passionately with you?

These things are not abuse. Depending on the context, they could be someone being a jerk (or they could be a legitimately valid reaction to you being a jerk). But these things do not constitute abuse.

Stop throwing that word around like it's going out of style. You are devaluing a very, very important word.

comments

Out Of The Frying Pan Into The Fire - Escaping Abuse & Leaping Into Relationships In Polyamory

Sat, 16 Jul 2022 21:01:58 GMT

OTG don't start a relationship with someone who is in the process of leaving an abusive partner! And for fuck's sake, don't get upset when they act inconsistent or seem to reconcile or "go back" to said abusive partner.  Abuse does all kinds of fucked up shit to a person's head and they really need to find their own identity before beginning a new relationship.

Escaping one abusive partner into the arms of another creates a coercive dynamic because of the fucked up shit going on inside the victim's head, *even if you try very hard not to be coercive*.  The key part here is the loss of identity. Abuse wipes out victims' identities, and without a clear sense of who they are as an individual person, they are unable to create healthy boundaries for themselves in other relationships *which makes those other relationships coercive by nature*.

You cannot force someone out of an abusive relationship before they're ready, and you SHOULD not encourage them to leap straight from the abusive relationship to a new relationship, poly or otherwise.

Be "on call" for them to go pick them or their stuff up at a moment's notice, field or facilitate the finding of a new place to live so that their abuser doesn't find out about it, believe them and give them space, and most importantly, don't take it as a personal rejection or blame them when they inevitably backslide in some way including going back to their abuser.

Abuse does all kinds of fucked up shit to a person's head. If you can't be a proper support system for a victim, which includes not pushing them into leaving before they're ready and not complaining about how hurt you feel or that they "used" you or "played you" or "ditched" you when they end up not leaving or they gradually stop talking to you or they go back to their abuser, then back the fuck out of their lives. Otherwise, you risk making things worse for them.

For a better idea on how to be a "proper support system" for a victim, check out the resources in the back of Why Does He Do That? by Lundy Bancroft which includes books on how to be the loved one of an abuse victim.

This was in response to a "couple" who wanted advice on how to start a relationship with "a third" who was trying to escape an abusive partner. Other people's responses were ... abhorrent. Some of them argued for this couple to "just go get her out of there" and a few suggested that it's not the best idea but you can be careful or otherwise not treat this like an actual life or death situation that it could become.

To that, I must give a reminder: escaping from an abuser is the most dangerous time for a victim. This is the time abusers are most likely to escalate the violence to murder.

This is not only dangerous for her, it's dangerous for everyone around her. She doesn't need to escape into your home, she needs to escape to a place that knows how to keep her safe from an escalating, now pissed off abuser and that fully understands the situation she is in.  Every time you hear about some woman and her kids or her parents or her new boyfriend being murdered by an ex, it's almost always during the time she is trying to escape the ex. Everyone around the victim becomes a target for an enraged abuser.

What do you think an abusive ex, hell bent on power and control and now extra pissed off that his little punching bag is leaving, is going to think of the new boyfriend *and girlfriend* who "stole her away"?  He's going to *blame* the couple and polyamory as being a bad influence on his girlfriend and believe that he needs to teach everyone a lesson and reassert his authority. This is the time when previously emotional-only abusers escalate to physical violence too.

I can't stress enough what a dangerous time this is for her and why the concern needs to be what's in her best interest, not what's in your pants. That's also why you can't force her to leave if she's not ready. Only she understands the extent of the danger she is in, and if her mind has to rationalize why she stays in order to keep herself safe, then that's what she needs to do.

Please, everyone, read Why Does He Do That? by Lundy Bancroft. This is so much more serious than most people who haven't been there really understand.

comments

Your Single Coworkers & Employees Aren't There To Pick Up The Slack For Married People

Sat, 16 Jul 2022 20:25:42 GMT

https://qz.com/991030/your-single-coworkers-and-employees-arent-there-to-pick-up-the-slack-for-married-people/

Not poly but an example of couple privilege, which is so deeply embedded in our culture that we bring these kinds of values with us into poly relationships unless we are consciously fighting against it.

How many unicorn hunters argue that their mythical "third" should be the one to move in with them because they have the family so it would be more of a hardship for them to move? How often do we see excuses for ignoring or dismissing or mistreating secondaries because they're "single" but the couple has a "family" to protect. How often do solo polys bear the brunt of the emotional labor, the financial strain, and various "responsibilities" because the "family" is a priority and needs to remain as such?

#RhetoricalQuestions #CouplePrivilege #IHaveMyOwnResponsibilitiesThatNeedPriorityButNoOneToHelpMeLikeThat

"In fact, single people do more to maintain their relationships with their friends, neighbors, siblings, and parents than married people. They are better at staying in touch with them, and helping and encouraging them. It is different for couples who move in together or get married. They tend to become more insular, even if they don’t have children. When aging parents need help, they get it disproportionately from their grown children who are single."

"Single people are rooted in their communities and towns in significant ways. They participate in public events more often, and take more music and art classes. They volunteer more than married people do for a wide variety of organizations."

"Ideally, only in special circumstances should employees be asked to justify their requests to take time off. Otherwise, in a culture that still celebrates married people and their families... single people may be treated unfairly. For example, employers may be tempted to take more seriously a request to take time off to care for an ailing spouse than an ailing sibling or close friend."

"When single people are caring for their parents and others who need their help, they do so at greater economic risk than married people are. If they put in fewer hours at work, or step away from their jobs, they do not have a spouse to pick up the financial slack—or keep them on their employer-sponsored health insurance. Similarly, when single people get laid off or lose their jobs, they are particularly vulnerable for the same reasons."

"Even more significantly, single people are excluded from more than 1,000 federal laws that benefit and protect only people who are legally married. ... When lifelong single people die, they cannot leave their benefits to anyone else—they go back into the system—and no one else can leave their benefits to a single person either."

"Financial disadvantages in taxation, Social Security, health spending, and housing expenses add up. By one estimate, single women, relative to married women, lose out on somewhere between a half million and a million dollars over the course of their adult lives."

comments

Duck Sex And The Patriarchy

Sat, 16 Jul 2022 19:49:33 GMT

www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/duck-sex-and-the-patriarchy

"Freedom of choice, in other words, matters to animals; even if they lack the capacity to conceptualize it, there is an evolutionary difference between having what they want and not having it. Unfortunately for female ducks, though, evolving complex vaginal structures doesn’t solve the scourge of sexual violence; it exacerbates it. Each advance results in males with longer, spikier penises, and the coevolutionary arms race continues."

"Contemporary anti-feminists often portray men as victims of the coercive social control of women, even as they actively organize to diminish women’s sexual autonomy by impeding their access to health care, contraception, and abortion. But this view is a grotesque distortion. Like convoluted duck vaginas, feminism is about autonomy, not power over men. Although one is genetic and the other is cultural, the asymmetry in ducks between the male push for power and the female push for choice is mirrored in the ideologies of patriarchy and feminism."

" By evolving to regard violent, antisocial maleness as unsexy, females may have instigated the evolution of many elements critical to our biology, including big brains, language, and even our capacity for self-awareness and reflection."

"When sexism becomes unacceptably antisocial and hopelessly unsexy, then patriarchy may finally give up its remaining weapons."

comments

The History of America Is The History Of Tap Dancing

Sat, 16 Jul 2022 05:03:36 GMT

Bringing me back to my high school theatre days, where I learned tap as a drama geek. Tap is intricately linked to the history and evolution of jazz music, which means that it's also intertwined with the history of swing dancing, a current love of mine. All dance is related in a twisty, convoluted, branchy evolutionary web much like actual evolutionary biology (although with multiple root points rather than one-ish), and all dance is related to music.

Because tap and jazz were the very first styles of dance that I learned, this is why I say that being a dancer is to be a musician. We are part of the music, making music, affecting the music. We weave in and out of the music like any other instrument.

And tap dancing is a study in racism and privilege that parallels the same study in jazz music - first the development by discriminated peoples and the blending of cultures, then cultural appropriation, then being discarded when no longer novel or when too "pure" for the white middle and upper classes to connect to.

comments

Misanthropic Humanism Is Now My Worldview Label

Sat, 16 Jul 2022 04:23:37 GMT

Misanthropic humanism (n): When you know ppl suck but still get pissed when they're mistreated, exploited, oppressed, & deceived. #Atheism ~ @TheGodlessMama

"Wishing everyone on the road would die in a fire and also have affordable health care and the right to use any toilet they want." ~ Rachel Primeaux Jordan

Finally found my philosophical worldview label.

comments

Being Seen

Sat, 16 Jul 2022 04:03:45 GMT

When your partner *sees* you...

Franklin: What I love most about my wife Joreth

Joreth takes zero shit from anyone about anything. Try to manipulate, judge, or emotionally blackmail her and she’ll laugh in your face. She never, ever asks questions like "is it weird if I do thus-and-such?" or "will people like me if I do this or that?" What you get with her is her raw, unfiltered self. You never have to wonder where you stand, you never have to search for hidden meanings. She is who she is without fear or shame, and she apologizes to nobody for being who she is.

Runner up: her passion. As far as she's concerned, if you don't love it with every fiber of your being, it's not worth doing.

comments

Asking About My Armband Is A Privilege Display

Sat, 16 Jul 2022 03:49:49 GMT

Every time some man asks why I'm wearing my iPod (or now my phone) on my arm, I cock my head to the side and say in a blatant "this should be obvious, why are you even asking?" tone:

"No pockets," or "pockets are too small."

It's my way of constantly reminding people of casual and everyday sexism.

Women never ask me why I'm wearing it on my arm. They sometimes ask me if it's a health monitor (as do some men), but they always say what a good idea it is if they bother to say anything at all (except my mother, who sometimes wishes I wouldn't wear it when I'm dressed up, which is exactly the time I need it most because - no pockets!)

To be fair, about half of the men also think it's a good idea, but every comment about my armband has to be prefaced with a question about why I'm wearing it in the first place. These men simply can't come up with the answer on their own. Women know why I wear it on my arm. That men don't is a symptom of how habitual it is for men to not consider what it's like to exist as someone other than them.

Who asks me about my armband is literally privilege in action. That's what privilege is like - small, everyday, relatively unimportant stuff that some people never have to think about and others of us have to spend time, energy, or money to compensate for. In order to ask about my armband, specifically why I'm wearing it, one has to be able to look at me, recognize my attire enough to identify the armband, and never have had the necessity to try and find a place to carry one's phone because a convenient phone-carrying place was built in to literally every possible outfit that one has ever purchased (which itself is often purchased without much thought other than price and approximate fit).

Imagine going through life never once needing to consider how you might need to carry the 3 most important things to carry around on a daily basis - keys, wallet, phone. And never realizing that only some people never have that consideration.

It should be obvious why I wear my device on my arm - because I fucking want to and it's more convenient or comfortable or useful than alternatives, otherwise I would wear it somewhere else. This shouldn't ever have to be asked.

comments

Because You Fucking Know Opening Doors Is Not "No Big Deal"

Sat, 16 Jul 2022 03:39:41 GMT

"Geez, what's the big deal? So what if he wants to open your door or pay for dinner? It's such a minor thing to be making a fuss over, just let him do it!"

You're right, this one instance *is* a minor thing. So YOU shouldn't be making it into a big thing if she insists on not doing it. If it's just a "little thing", then don't get all pissy when she doesn't want you to do it for her. It's just a "minor" thing, right? So it shouldn't bother you at all if she doesn't want it.

Oh, right, because it's not a fucking "minor" thing, it's a big fucking deal to both of you. That's why there's an argument in the first place. It's a symptom of much, MUCH bigger things, only we're the only ones willing to admit that these things mean more than they seem on the surface.

You're in denial. If it's not a "big deal", then shut up and let her get her own damn door or pay for her own damn meal. It should be no skin off your nose to let her have her way if she cares more about this "minor thing" than you do. Or can't your fragile ego handle her "minor" difference of opinion?

"Ladies first!"

That's right, taking point is the most dangerous position that requires the keenest senses for detecting threats and protecting everyone behind them. I shall scan the room to determine it's safety and security so that you can feel safe before you enter an unknown area. Thank you for acknowledging that you need a woman to lead and protect you.

#OrMaybeItCanJustBeWhomeverIsMostConvenientToEnterFirstBasedOnDoorMechanics #LetsNotPretendThisIsReallyChivalryBecauseYouClearlyHaveNotThoughtThisOut #ThisIsPureBlindAdherenceToSocialProgrammingOnYourPart

comments

¿Que Es Una Chingona? Some Discovered Identity Terms

Sat, 16 Jul 2022 03:27:28 GMT

Found a couple of new identity words that I like, but I don't think they feel right on me. (All words written in the feminized form because the post is referencing a feminist movement regarding the labels).

I posted back on Cinco de Mayo the differences between certain labels for people of Mexican descent, and how I preferred "chicana" over "Latina", as a reclaimed, formerly derogatory word that emphasizes the dual nature of being of mixed ethnicity and living in the US as well as the association with activism.

A few years ago I learned about "chingona" and "maldita". As far as I can tell, "chingona" derives from the verb "chingar", which is "to fuck" and is considered vulgar - a swear word. But more than just "a fucker", a "chingona" is colloquial for basically "a fucking badass" and is also a derogatory slur that some are attempting to reclaim, particularly the feminine version that I'm referencing in this post.

A "maldita" is a step beyond "fucking badass", somehow. The literal translation is "damned" or "cursed" or "accursed", but the colloquial use as an identity label is like a chingona on steroids? They are kinda like Spanish words for "thug", with similar classist and racist undertones and a similar embracing of the term by some.

These are words that I would have vehemently rejected when I was a teen, back when I also rejected "chicana" because of the class implications of "gangbanger", "thug", "good for nothing", "low class", etc. I wasn't one of *those* Mexican-Americans. I spoke proper English and I had a proper education and I lived in the suburbs and I eschewed gang violence and tattoos (and used words like "eschewed").

I live very far from the gang violence I grew up on the peripheries of back in the '80s today. Now I live in poverty, often in a house that would have fit right in with the ghettos I turned my nose up at. I still eschew gang violence and I still speak with a "blank" American accent (slipping into a Southern drawl every now and then).

But many people have been blurring the lines between "thug" and "activist", and many of them have been reclaiming words that are normally used to condemn and dismiss them. Like "chicana". I feel that my temporal distance from the California gangs of the '80s and my observations of how civil unrest is sometimes deliberately masked by oppressors to resemble general "thuggery" has given me a new perspective and newfound respect for the title "chicana".

With my memories of the gangs and my distance from my Spanish-speaking culture, I don't feel that I can claim "maldita" and "chingona" for myself, nor that I fully understand all the subtle cultural nuances of the terms. But I like that I learned about them and I like that they exist. I think they'll be rolling around in the back of my mind for a while.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170417034346/https://soyxingona.com/about-me/what-is-a-xingona// - "A Xingona is a woman who is on her game. Basically she has skills that no one else has strived for only by first hand experience. Xingonas aren’t brought down by bias, machismo, prides, and over-rated ego. She gets shit done because she can and she will."

https://alvaradofrazier.com/2012/07/14/frida-kahlo-chingona-artist - "The term 'Chingona' is a Spanglish term, slang, for a bad ass, wise woman, powerful, individualist, self-activated, a woman who lives a life for their own approval, self-empowered, a strong woman..."

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-i-define-my-chingona-fire_b_5887de69e4b0a53ed60c6a35 - "Chingona: noun. 1. a Spanish slang term meaning 'bad ass woman'. Although the word 'chingona' is a Spanish term, it is not limited to Latinas. A chingona is any woman who chooses to live life on her own terms. PERIOD. She is the scholar AND the hoe. At the same damn time. OR she is neither. The point is: she gets to choose. And whatever choice she makes, is the right one."

comments

Are Pop Lyrics Getting More Repetitive?

Sat, 16 Jul 2022 00:11:33 GMT

https://pudding.cool/2017/05/song-repetition/index.html

Basically, music has always had a mix of repetitive and non-repetitive music, and the most popular music *of any era* tends towards the more-repetitive end of the spectrum. Which I find annoying, but I do like a *little* repetition in my music because totally free-flowing, non-rhyming music doesn't work for me either.

Basically, people in general like "catchy" music, and that involves some amount of repetition. That's just how it goes.

This debate has always reminded me of the Dragonharpers of Pern book where a girl born to a fishing village has a unique skill for, what comes down to, "pop music". Her fishing family dismisses and actively discourages her talent for music in a classic blue-collar, working class anti-elitism way that many working class people feel about artists in general.

When she finally gets to their version of Juliard (where music and education are one and the same thing and a very elite profession), her catchy little ditties are dismissed as "twaddles", kind of like the vicious rivalry between opera and musical theater or opera and rock music. There is only One True Way to play music!!!

But much to the dismay of both her high-brow professors and her working class family, the bulk of the population loves her music because it's catchy and fun and easy to remember. Since music is used to teach in this society, "easy to remember" is a very important element. It brings their most cherished lessons out of the tightly grasped fists of only the elitist of the elite singers / academics and into the open arms of the general public.

If Mozart were also a history lesson, we would have even more trouble remembering history than we do today with our focus on dates. But if Britney Spears could also sing an accurate song about history and *that* was taught in classes instead, we'd have a lot more well-educated people in our population these days.

Anyway, point is that the reason why music is so "repetitive" has nothing to do with "kids today" and everything to do with how our brains work as humans. In spite of the hipsters out there who adamantly deny that they like repetition or that music keeps getting "watered down", human brains in general like repetition *to some degree*, and always have.

comments

Personality Types & Trauma - How Experiences Interfere With Your Type Expression

Fri, 15 Jul 2022 23:59:25 GMT

Idea: I would love to run a talk on Personality Type systems & Trauma - how experiences interfere with your Type expression & what to do about it.

One of the things that really mess people up when it comes to MBTI and Love Languages and other sorts of "puts people in boxes" systems is that the pop-psych versions are not good at explaining how all of our learned experiences affect our behaviour and our mindsets (which is not the same things as our inherent personality), so by the time we take one of the tests (which are really fucking crappy - all of them, not necessarily the *systems*, but the *tests* or "assessments"), we don't know how to answer them properly to account for all of our learned experiences.

This is even more important when it comes to trauma and serious negative experiences. People going through serious negative experiences like depression or breakups or loss or massive life-changing upheaval often find themselves answering these really shitty test questions in ways that result in different Type codes than they got before the traumatic event or ongoing situation.

These tests, which I can't stress heavily enough are really fucking terrible, don't know how to tell you how to disentangle all of these layers that affect how you answer their questions. So people take this shitty tests and think that their personality type has changed or that they don't speak a particular Love Language when they actually do.

People then take these mixed up results and go about their life operating under false conclusions. Which, in a best case scenario, causes a few bumps in relationships because they say one thing but behave or react another so their partners don't really understand them or have trouble predicting them or their model for the partner in their heads is not very accurate.

But in a worst case scenario, this can lead to some serious long-term psychological difficulties because people are not getting the love or attention or security they need because they're looking and asking for the wrong things. Being denied a sense of security or feeling loved over a long time period can really mess with one's head.

Introversion / extroversion is a good example of this. It's probably the most common one I see, but I have no real data to back me up on how common it really is, compared to other type categories. But basically, if an extrovert has some kind of traumatic event, and their brain tries to compensate by making them "feel" introverted now, they might latch onto the phrase "ambivert" and start behaving or treating what seems to be their "introvert side".

But if this is actually a side effect of trauma and they are really an extrovert, then their *real* extrovert needs aren't being taken care of adequately and they can compound the damage from the trauma by not using the best tools for healing *for them* because they're neglecting their extroversion needs and treating their new "introversion" like it's a real part of them instead of a coping mechanism that should be used more like a tool or an indicator light rather than just accepted as the new "normal".

So I'd like to do at least one talk, maybe a 101 and a 201 talk, on how trauma can affect one's perception of oneself and also one's external behaviour with respect to Type systems, how to recognize when this is the reason for confusing test results, and how to treat one's authentic self while being considerate of the trauma and its consequences on behaviour and internalized feelings.

Maybe some of our Type systems students and experts can collaborate on a project like this?

I originally wrote this post in 2017. I'd still like to do this. My observations over the years since this post seem to continue to support my ideas on the subject.

My hypothesis is that we don't really "change type", we have some kind of trauma that requires a drastic coping mechanism that may or may not appear to be the "opposite" of some innate trait, and then when we think we have "changed type", we start feeding that coping mechanism as though it's a "trait" and not a tool, and neglecting the original innate trait, leading to a spiral of secondary trauma.

The extroversion / introversion example is still the clearest example, but I also see it in love languages. If we "need" a certain thing for our well-being, such as an extrovert needing social interaction, then we experience some kind of trauma that leads to a self-isolation coping strategy, and we then think that we have "changed type" to an introvert (or the non-existent "ambivert") so we start doing introverted "self-care" because we think we're an introvert now, we then neglect the extroversion that is *still there under the coping mechanism*, which ends up harming us because our needs aren't being met. But we don't know why because we're responding according to our new Type! What could be wrong?!

You need to heal the trauma and also still take care of your original self in ways that work with and around the trauma and coping mechanisms. But nobody knows how to do that because, as far as I know, I'm the only one talking about how trauma affects type systems.

comments