Your Sex is Not Radical
August 19, 2015 9:20 PM   Subscribe

Your Sex is Not Radical In queer radical circles and in much of the left, the worlds in which I operate, there’s a widely held idea that one’s political radicalism can be attached to one’s sexual practices. This is why those who practice BDSM and are variously “sex positive” are often equated with left politics. But the sad truth that many of us learn after years in sexual playing fields (literally and figuratively) is that how many people you fuck has nothing to do with the extent to which you fuck up capitalism.
posted by modernnomad (51 comments total) 31 users marked this as a favorite


 
I think we should add to this - your sexuality isn't even especially interesting, and shouldn't have to be, for anyone apart from the people you'll be having sex with. I know I wish I figured this out a lot sooner.
posted by idiopath at 9:41 PM on August 19, 2015 [38 favorites]


Polyamory in the name of freeing the minds of the masses sounds about as effective as putting a 5¢ tax on plastic bags in order to reverse global warming.
posted by belarius at 9:46 PM on August 19, 2015 [4 favorites]


there is definitely a history of bdsm folks appending themselves to queer struggle, presumably under the belief that socially 'inappropriate' sexual expression is equivalent to queer. reinforcing patriarchal norms as sexual fetish is in no way challenging established convention. i'm glad people are catching up -- wrapping up misogyny in a blanket of 'ok but fetishing the exact same things that patriarchy emphasizes is what makes me orgasm' doesn't make it subversive
posted by p3on at 9:51 PM on August 19, 2015 [5 favorites]


Yeah. If you want to have sex in lots of ways with lots of people, cool (as long as you're being honest and kind/only as cruel as desired about it). But don't make it about politics. It's not. The only way to fuck up capitalism on a meaningful, personal level is to exercise radical self-control.
posted by saulgoodman at 9:58 PM on August 19, 2015 [4 favorites]


Yes. Really. Arousal and politics are not linked. You can't force someone to unlink them or to link them. I think most people have a certain range of sexual tastes established before they really understand politics, and most aren't going to evolve from there. I don't blame people for having a politically incorrect taste, but it's not a radical act. It's just who you are.

That doesn't mean you ignore the political implications of your tastes. If you are a man who likes women, take note of how a male dominated culture mistreats them with things like objectification and take extra effort to not be a part of it, but don't feel bad about being who you are. If you are a woman who likes reading fan fiction or manga about gay male relationships, just make sure you listen to gay male voices if they want to explain how that makes them feel. Don't get defensive or aggressive, just listen.

Society and government must stay out of the bedroom, but it's good advice to also not let your bedroom attitudes leak into society if there are any negative emotions or beliefs involved that might carry over outside of the bedroom context. All people are people first, not objects for our gratification.
posted by Drinky Die at 10:00 PM on August 19, 2015 [6 favorites]


> But don't make it about politics. It's not. The only way to fuck up capitalism

It can absolutely be about politics without being about economic politics. Closets are seriously toxic - all kinds of closets. They're terrible, no one should be required to live in one, and making the decision to live out loud can be radical and political. Who/how many/in what ways you fuck and what kind of tax policies you favor may be totally unrelated, but that doesn't make who/how many/in what ways you fuck not political, and fucking up capitalism is not the only way to be political. (And, of course, yes: being some kind of "sex radical" or whatever does not automatically make one some kind of all-purpose political radical, either. People who think that should rethink that.)
posted by rtha at 10:22 PM on August 19, 2015 [37 favorites]


Left's greatest blind spot in social issues, Gay Marriage, which it fervently supports because it believes, in the most wrong-headed fashion, that the very fact of gays marrying each other is somehow disruptive to, well, something: Capitalism, perhaps, The World Order, the Christian Right. Something.

From reading a few of the links on her site, it appears that she wants to view everything through the lens of disrupting capitalism. I'm not sure I've heard anyone suggest that the point of gay marriage is to disrupt capitalism nor the world order. Tweaking the Christian Right might be a little benefit but most gays that I know wouldn't have really cared much about the Christian Right, had they not been actively working to prevent gay rights.

There is a pretty distinct difference between the right wing people that practice kinky and unusual sex and the left wing people that do the same; the right wing (for the most part) wants to keep the shame and stigma attached to it, even if they practice it. It's far more acceptable for a Republican politician to cheat on his wife than to have an open marriage, and when the truth comes out, the upset is not so much what they did as that they got caught..

The right pretty consistently stands against contraception, abortion, and sex education. I don't care if there's a substantial difference between their actions and my actions in the bedroom or not, it's how they affect other people's sex lives that's important.

But she might just describe me as a kinky right wing person because I don't think there's a good and/or feasible to smash capitalism.
posted by Candleman at 10:30 PM on August 19, 2015 [17 favorites]


If having non-normative sex serves as an introduction or demonstration for the fact that human beings can organize and interact meaningfully in ways beyond the forms sanctioned by capitalist patriarchy, that rules.

If it helps build and strengthen bonds between people in ways outside the standard capitalist-patriarchal roles, that also rules.

But if the concept of non-capitalist-patriarchal possibilities stays only with sex and isn't practiced in other areas of one's life, that sucks.

And if the justification for not practicing those things is "I'm doing my part by having kinky sex", then that really sucks.
posted by Jon_Evil at 10:38 PM on August 19, 2015 [11 favorites]


It can absolutely be about politics without being about economic politics. Closets are seriously toxic - all kinds of closets. They're terrible, no one should be required to live in one, and making the decision to live out loud can be radical and political.

Yes, this is a good point. If society wants to make your bedroom political, then it's going to be political. I'm so ridiculously proud of the people who step out of those closets. The bravery is incredible. Not everything radical is economically radical.
posted by Drinky Die at 10:42 PM on August 19, 2015 [10 favorites]


If I have a frustration with the various factions of the left it would be the idea that everything can be linked back to a single cause, a single system that causes as a root all our issues even as members of thousands of diverse groups. Overthrow or reform that system...and somehow everything else falls into place and gets fixed. For now, focus all efforts to fix capitalism and then racial injustice will be fixed. (For one recent debate) It's often not more rigorously thought out than trickle down economics.
posted by Drinky Die at 10:46 PM on August 19, 2015 [8 favorites]


Metafilter: your sexuality isn't even especially interesting.
posted by Segundus at 11:02 PM on August 19, 2015 [7 favorites]




'Sex-positivity' in a world that says that sex is the only use women have is, well, not so much radical as reactionary.
posted by Dysk at 11:31 PM on August 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


Dysk: "'Sex-positivity' in a world that says that sex is the only use women have is, well, not so much radical as reactionary."

It's a world that says sex WITH MEN FOR MEN is the only use women have. Positivity about women having sex by themselves, or with other people who don't identify as male certainly isn't reactionary.
posted by gingerest at 11:50 PM on August 19, 2015 [3 favorites]


Overthrow or reform that system...and somehow everything else falls into place and gets fixed. For now, focus all efforts to fix capitalism and then racial injustice will be fixed.

You never know till you try, though
posted by oliverburkeman at 11:51 PM on August 19, 2015


Yeah, but the issue is it often asks people to stop focusing on trying other stuff.
posted by Drinky Die at 11:53 PM on August 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


It's a world that says sex WITH MEN FOR MEN is the only use women have. Positivity about women having sex by themselves, or with other people who don't identify as male certainly isn't reactionary.

Except that it still effectively attaches a value judgement to women based on their fuckability. Being judged inadequate by other women for having an unacceptable body is not really much more fun than the same from men.
posted by Dysk at 12:04 AM on August 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


i.e. maybe taking the focus off sex rather than merely expanding who it's with and for might be awesome.
posted by Dysk at 12:06 AM on August 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


The revolution will not come on the tidal wave of your next multiple orgasm had with your seven partners on the floor of your communal living space. It will only happen if you have an actual plan for destroying systems of oppression and exploitation.

To enhance his sexual prowess Woody Allen used to think about baseball - "As she dug her nails into my back, I decided to pinch hit for McCovey" - but I guess imagining a Stalinist future would do the trick just as well.
posted by three blind mice at 12:48 AM on August 20, 2015 [3 favorites]


Wow, the sixties sure did mix up leftist politics and hedonism into one confusing mess, didn't they?
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 1:30 AM on August 20, 2015 [12 favorites]


Some of us on the left like capitalism. We just think it should be done in a Sanders vein. Or as its done in Northern Europe.

Maybe we social democrats aren't leftists in good standing, though.
posted by persona au gratin at 1:48 AM on August 20, 2015 [8 favorites]


Fair points above about there being a political dimension to sex. Sex is definitely political, it's just not in itself a deliberate political act with much power to affect the vast majority of political problems. If your political activism begins and ends with your sex life, you're not going to make a serious dent in capitalism. That narrower version of the claim still stands up to the counterpoints above.
posted by saulgoodman at 2:40 AM on August 20, 2015


Where I grew up we were lucky to get football and rugby playing fields, I guess if anyone was going to have literal sexual playing fields it would be Americans.
posted by biffa at 3:16 AM on August 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


> "'Sex-positivity' in a world that says that sex is the only use women have is, well, not so much radical as reactionary."

Because no woman is ever made to feel shame for having sexual desires, much less acting on them?

Call me ... unconvinced of the reactionary nature of sex positivity.
posted by kyrademon at 3:20 AM on August 20, 2015 [8 favorites]


Everything's reactionary and/or empowering, sometimes at the same time.
posted by acb at 3:22 AM on August 20, 2015 [3 favorites]


there is definitely a history of bdsm folks appending themselves to queer struggle, presumably under the belief that socially 'inappropriate' sexual expression is equivalent to queer. reinforcing patriarchal norms as sexual fetish is in no way challenging established convention. i'm glad people are catching up -- wrapping up misogyny in a blanket of 'ok but fetishing the exact same things that patriarchy emphasizes is what makes me orgasm' doesn't make it subversive

Wow, I didn't realize that patriarchy and misogyny were about carefully and explicitly negotiated power exchanges for the benefit of all involved, in which participants can take any role and negotiate on equal terms regardless of their gender expression. Please, tell me more.
posted by IAmUnaware at 3:35 AM on August 20, 2015 [8 favorites]


I guess the author is talking to an audience of GSF4 carriers. Friendship isn't transitive, even amongst sex nerds.
posted by scruss at 3:45 AM on August 20, 2015


I don't disagree with several of the things said in this piece -- you certainly don't have to have any type of sex at all in order to be politically radical, for instance. But the comparison to the Jack Ryan case, in particular, seems like kind of a straw man to me. Consent and sexual power dynamics are, after all, a major strand in modern sexual politics; Jack Ryan, in contrast, pressured a woman to perform sex acts she found distasteful, until she cried, and then apparently complained to her that her tears were unattractive. This is pretty far from sexually progressive. I think (and certainly hope) the people at whom this piece is aimed wouldn't actually defend Ryan's actions as laudably avant-garde just because he was into kink. Instead, I think they'd probably characterize them as gross manipulative shenanigans that go against the ideals they want to promote.
posted by en forme de poire at 3:49 AM on August 20, 2015 [9 favorites]


Metafilter: Everything's reactionary and/or empowering, sometimes at the same time.
posted by huguini at 3:57 AM on August 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


Wow, I didn't realize that patriarchy and misogyny were about carefully and explicitly negotiated power exchanges for the benefit of all involved, in which participants can take any role and negotiate on equal terms regardless of their gender expression. Please, tell me more.
posted by IAmUnaware


Ironyeponysterical?

Sarcasticeponysterical?

Either way or otherwise, I approve.
posted by Drinky Die at 4:15 AM on August 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


It can absolutely be about politics without being about economic politics.

Very much this. I think the author makes some worthwhile points, but the overall piece isn't fully realized, at least to my reading. There are complexities to both the political side and the sexual side that deserve to be considered, but this essay is not where that will happen.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:43 AM on August 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


Someone just found this out? A lot of us hippy girls of the 60s learned this a long long time ago, much to our grief, getting involved with radical left guys. Pigs in their private life, mysogynists and worse, but politically oh so pure.
posted by mermayd at 4:58 AM on August 20, 2015 [8 favorites]


If I have a frustration with the various factions of the left it would be the idea that everything can be linked back to a single cause, a single system that causes as a root all our issues even as members of thousands of diverse groups.

My take on things is that there *is* a root cause, but that it gives rise to other structural injustices that must be addressed in the course of addressing that root cause. I don't think you can dismantle capitalism without also dismantling racism, sexism, heterosexism, transphobia, and so forth.

I don't think we can talk about the history of economic hierarchies that culminate in the capitalist system without talking about the devaluation of "feminine" work, or slavery, or colonialism; I don't think we can do it without talking about the construction of normative sexualities and gender identities. We can't demand intersectionality without also giving intersectionality; and we can't address the Root of All Injustice without also addressing all the other injustices that it gives rise to, that often conceal it, that are ultimately part of it.

On the long view of things, yes, class consciousness and all that; on the view of things that fits my lifespan and my capabilities, there're plenty of other serious problems to address. And hey, if I'm totally wrong that capitalism will be revealed as the Root of All Injustice once we've set to work dismantling all the other candidates too, then we'll *still be dismantling a bunch of unjust structures.*
posted by kewb at 5:06 AM on August 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


Wow, I didn't realize that patriarchy and misogyny were about carefully and explicitly negotiated power exchanges for the benefit of all involved, in which participants can take any role and negotiate on equal terms regardless of their gender expression. Please, tell me more,

I actively practice this stuff, and it is foolish and dangerous to pretend that everyone who is into BDSM actually follows these precepts. There are a fuck of a lot of horrible misogynists in the BDSM community, regardless of what the theory says.
posted by showbiz_liz at 5:36 AM on August 20, 2015 [16 favorites]


This is, unfortunately, true.

I do understand the frustration - BDSM theory attempts to be more conscious and deliberating about those negative social mores that we're doused in. But not everyone in the community gives a fuck about RACK. Not everyone in the community has an interest in BDSM theory or even social theory. So many people do not care to examine the sexism, or racism, that can (and does) influence their kink (see: the common reactions to a publicly-revealed consent violation, esp. if the violator/violated dynamic is cishet male dom/cishet female sub).

There is a very high chance of finding thoughtful, socially-conscious people in kink communities - much more so than if you were out randomly sampling your local population. But every single one of those communities has at least a gaggle of assholes who aren't going to examine their prejudices and politics, honk loudly and often, and will mar every scene they do as a result.
posted by Ashen at 6:00 AM on August 20, 2015 [4 favorites]


Oy, I know the political sub-communities of which the author speaks, though I have phrased similar critiques differently. (Also, I don't know who her blog's audience usually is, but I'd guess it's not as broad as all metafilter. Different audiences allow for or require different writing styles and levels of explanation and clarity.)

If I were to paraphrase or amplify the main points that I agree with, it would go something like:

* Breaking the Right's rules doesn't necessarily make you Left - the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend and all that. Poly relationships are not necessarily or inherently radical in any way (economically or culturally): communities with non-mainstream standard sexual practices can still impose those practices coercively on newcomers to that community or subculture, and that's not radical or leftist. Also, The Ethical Slut does indeed have some issues. It's nice that it has provided an alternative for folks who so desire, but it has a big blind spot around couple privilege, and I would argue that the way it defines love or envisions the goal or potential of romantic and sexual relationships is pretty conventional.

* If I may interject my own analogy: It's better than the alternative when businesses in the US offer good health insurance packages for their employees, but it's fundamentally problematic that health insurance is tied to employment status in the US. We need universal health care instead. Likewise, it's better than the alternative that marriage benefits have been extended to more people in the US, but it's fundamentally problematic that some of those benefits relating to cohabitation are not just tied to household status, regardless of the nature of the relationship between cohabitants; that others of those benefits are not tied to more common law forms of kinship status or that it is so difficult to make legal declarations of chosen kinship status; not to mention immigration rules being all kinds of flawed.

It would be a more convincing polemic if the author had directed the readers to positive visions for alternatives to what she complains of. I haven't poked around into other posts on her blog, but it seems likely that other of her posts would address this, and that this single link is just one part of a whole. Personally, I think that sexual and romantic relations can be conducted in a manner that helps build our new world in the shell of the old. In particular, the political strength of any movement relies on the quality of interpersonal relationships within the movement. A radical reenvisioning of our political and economic relations must be tied to a radical reenvisioning of our interpersonal relations - leftists must act on both the personal and public levels. I'm not sure the author would agree on this point - some folks on the Left, in reaction to the purely individualistic "be the change you wish to see" philosophy that ignores systemic issues, are opposed to any sort of prefigurative politics. I think that ignoring the personal and only focusing on the public is just the sort of reactionary idea that the author complains of, so she may well agree. What I'm arguing for is an intersectional approach though, and I can't tell from just this one short piece if the author is pro-intersectionality, or advocates the supremacy of class struggle.

What that would look like relates a lot to stuff like the recently closed unpaid emotional labor thread, the dating advice for feminist men link, applying principles of affirmative consent (partly developed in kink and poly communities, so there's at least some connection) to the emotional components of an intimate relationship as well as the sexual components, etc. In other words, it would require people to not just follow some rules around relationship structures, but actually think empathetically about the other people they are in relationships with; treating those people with respect and as co-equals - which, in practice, requires ongoing self-reflection and analysis of how structural oppression influences and interacts with our mundane daily lives.
posted by eviemath at 6:06 AM on August 20, 2015 [4 favorites]


SOMEWHAT USEFUL PROTIP: (if you live in SF, NYC, etc.)

If you are approached in public by an attractive, enthusiastic member of the opposite sex, you are likely being evangelized to. Expect either a Book of Mormon, The Watchtower, or an invitation to a BDSM event. Be courteous, be polite, but make no commitments and get out of there.

I agree with Jung's assessment. Most people enthralled by any ideology are in fact, deeply disconnected from their shadow. They are acting unconsciously and calling it fate. YMMV.
posted by mrdaneri at 6:27 AM on August 20, 2015 [3 favorites]


Which is why the whole 'orthodoxically pure' -> 'monster at home' thing happens, too.
posted by mrdaneri at 6:43 AM on August 20, 2015


I have really mixed feelings about both this essay and the points it makes.

First, I am really uneasy with the "Obama is only president because of a Republican sex scandal" paragraph - and I add that I am no fan of President Drone. Obama wasn't elected president because of a Republican sex scandal; he was elected president because he was able to mobilize Black and anti-racist white voters based on what we believed he'd be willing and able to do. I think that paragraph is just....weird. Like, that's a really weird and minimizing way to frame Obama's election, and it worries me because a lot of nominally radical queer stuff is basically anti-Black. You don't have to like elections or Obama (and I don't) to acknowledge what happened.

Second....I don't know. The last big conversation I had with anyone about gay marriage was actually at Pride - and it was a lousy Pride with a disappointing queer and trans march, and I am rooting for Gay Shame next year - and one acquaintance said that while she wasn't thrilled about the marriage piece, she was thinking about how many people she knew in the South (she's from Atlanta) and how many poor people of color (she's a POC herself, so she was speaking from more personal knowledge) would be able to access services and benefits that would otherwise be totally unavailable. She felt conflicted, because while it was not where she was at politically, she knew for a fact that it would improve life for a lot of people.

So I'm torn - on the one hand, yes, intellectually the whole "gays who believe in marriage are suckers*" thing is really appealing to me, both because it is a....tidier, I guess...kind of argument and because I am very very Not a fan of the way that GLBTQ folks seem to have been pulled into the marriage-mortgage-military framework. On the other hand, I live a very bohemian/Class X kind of life surrounded by other bohemian/Class X kind of people, so that's easy for me. And even if I were to make the same amount of money as a non-college-educated working class person in a non-bohemian community, there is a world of difference in terms of the social capital that I have in this area. (They might have more social capital in other situations, but the "I'm going to be all bohemian and marriage is for squares, man" bit - I have lots of social support for that belief and a substantial unmarried social network.)

I don't know a lot of people who think that their sex lives are politically important because they're transgressive.

Actually, I think I disagree with the whole argument, because no one I know thinks their BDSM/poly/queer/etc lifestyle is especially anti-capitalist, even though I run around in circles where lots of people would think that type of thing normally. I think that people of my generation and younger don't think that precisely because the previous "we're so awesome our sex lives are so transgressive" generations normalized that stuff for us. I think that previous folks had to have some energy to get them through all the social and legal pressure, and "we're awesomely transgressive" provided them with that energy and self-belief. So now it's just boringly normal, like tattoos or multiple earrings. I don't even know which of my sorta-close friends are poly/in open relationships unless they actively start dating several people at once and mention it.

I don't feel like this whole kind of argument is exhausted, or even effectively addressed, by fussing about whether BDSM and poly stuff is anti-capitalist or not.

A much less reform versus revolution article that I found quite interesting is this extended piece about The Argonauts at NplusOne.

For the record - I am a plain and weird person who simply doesn't have the opportunity for awesome poly radical sex parties or whatever, so it's not even as though I'm defending my particular "transgressive" lifestyle.

*Have you noticed how the word "lesbian" has disappeared lately? Everyone says "queer" or "gay"; no one says "lesbian" or "dyke". Obviously I don't identify as a woman and even if I were to hark back to my past life I've never been exclusively attracted to women, so it's never made sense as a term for me, but I have noticed that it's disappeared, and I think it's weird that the one woman-specific word is the one getting used less and less in general purpose non-straight venues.
posted by Frowner at 6:51 AM on August 20, 2015 [16 favorites]


I also wonder if "now that we're all focused on gay marriage, other issues that are important to GLBTQI people are losing ground; this is an ideological failing and the result of getting suckered into valuing marriage by an elite of wealthy white gay men" (which seems to be the argument in her piece about the secret history of gay marriage) is really a good frame.

I think that the apparent unity that she points to during the official AIDS crisis (possibly as some previous golden age?) was both the product of the total lack of effective treatment and a bit of a myth. There were plenty of closeted/conservative GLBT people who weren't into even the idea of AIDS activism, much less support for youth; there were Log Cabin Republicans even then, per Doonesbury.

Something that I feel is absent from these two pieces, but possibly not absent from her other work: the various roles played by queer women. I always think about Sarah Schulman's AIDS crisis novels and how she talks about the way that feminist lesbian organizers decided to work on AIDS activism and decided to work with gay men (who had not, historically, been especially friendly to lesbians*). I feel like the "unity" of queer people has very often been built on the work done by feminist lesbians/queer women and on their specific political history. So basically, it was always a "unity" built on some people being more important than others, and it's no surprise that this peels apart the minute it's materially possible.

It's weird - the less I actually identify as a woman and the more I think about transitioning, the more I realize how important and yet marginalized lesbian/queer women have been in GLBTQI history and activism.

*For christ's sake, consider that movie Pride, which we're all supposed to love - and which I sort of do - in which the actual sexism and actual hostility to lesbian organizers gets totally written out of Gays and Lesbians Support The Miners, and in fact the actual lesbians in the movie are mostly shown as feminist harpies whose beliefs get in the way of "real" organizing.
posted by Frowner at 7:14 AM on August 20, 2015 [6 favorites]


My take on things is that there *is* a root cause, but that it gives rise to other structural injustices that must be addressed in the course of addressing that root cause. I don't think you can dismantle capitalism without also dismantling racism, sexism, heterosexism, transphobia, and so forth.


My opinion is that Capitalism (in it's current, savage, form) is the process that gladly wears any boot stomping out someone somewhere and is ok with everything as long as the elites (above every pre-existing -ism or -obia) are wearing the boot. Sexism allows half the population to be employed and paid less than other half for a difference in one chromosome. Racism (and not just white on black) allows to keep a minority in check and use them for even less (or even none, like the modern-slavery PIC). Heterosexism and transphobia are easy ways to gain the confidence and add a new distraction to people that believe the lack of "traditional values" is what's dragging everything down.

Destroying capitalism in its current form won't solve every problem, just like destroying every social problem while keeping it going the same way just means there will be someone else getting the squeeze. And as history tells us, they'll tell us who to hate next very easily. I heard people born in August are assholes, you know. And the later in the month, the worst they are.
posted by lmfsilva at 7:29 AM on August 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


I have really mixed feelings about both this essay and the points it makes.

Agreed here--some portions dealing with gay marriage struck me as odd and a little uncomfortable. For me, what seemed to be the central point--that while sex and sexuality have political dimensions and implications, sex itself is not a political act--was one I could get behind unambiguously, but there's a lot of other stuff in there that might not sit right with me if I unpacked it more.
posted by saulgoodman at 7:43 AM on August 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


I have really mixed feelings about both this essay and the points it makes.

Thirding. For one thing, the whole same-sex marriage thing--well, I mean, I'm in Texas. And I'm broke, and I don't expect to be able to move for financial reasons for several years. DOMA going down meant my spouse could move to be with me instead of being long-distance until I could move. Obergefell directly meant my spouse had access to health care through my university job. I'm actually in a poly triad, and a theoretical legalization of polyamorous relationships would let us all manage to be in the same place for once and let us be less constrained by immigration stuff. I can't quite emphasize how much of a relief that would be, to not worry about how careers are going to shake out because my chosen family doesn't fit into established legal categories.

And I mean, I'm the specialest snowflake, here; shit that would really benefit me is not necessarily stuff that would benefit a whole lot of other people, and I'm pretty conscious of that. It's okay, I'm really privileged as far as that goes and I have actual options for figuring this out, options that people who don't share my class/educational status and ethnicity don't necessarily have. I'm really conscious that, for example, the PhD I'm working on which makes it easy for me to move to many other countries is not a thing that everyone has access to or the ability to pull off.

But I'm a twentysomething and I grew up on the Internet, and with the Internet it's so much easier for people to find chosen family who don't live in the same country as you do. Especially if you're weird enough that the pool of potential partners is a little bit limited. I have to wonder whether situations like mine are only going to get more common over time as more and more people get access to the internet and online social networks get more and more decoupled from actual location. I gotta say, if marriage equality is the thing that lets that happen, I'm all for it--even if my own personal politics would be much, much happier if we adopted a situation more like the one eviemath beautifully sketched out above. Sometimes it's more politically achievable to push for a tweak to an existing system than it is to restructure a legal system from the ground up.

One of the tricky things about sexuality is that while there's stuff that absolutely no one needs to know about besides the people you're sleeping with, sexuality is so tied into how people construct families that saying "you are not special, your sexuality is not interesting, please keep it to yourself" restricts a lot of people with more unusual love lives from talking about their families or their attempts to form those families. And that's a hard burden to carry. I can't tell how many times I've tried to talk to someone about my life and my history in a way that references my sexuality, is relevant to my sexuality, and had someone go "stop talking about that, I don't care about your sexuality" when I actually wanted to talk about my relationship with my parents or where I met my partner or whatever.

Sometimes your sexuality really informs your politics and your activism by coloring your experiences, even if it is not and should not be the whole of those politics. And leaving it out of the conversation can leave out a lot of the background and reasoning that those opinions and politics are founded on.
posted by sciatrix at 8:19 AM on August 20, 2015 [12 favorites]


I like this paragraph from Frowner's link:
“The tired binary that places femininity, reproduction, and normativity on the one side, and queer resistance on the other has lately reached a kind of apotheosis,” Nelson writes, “often posing as a last, desperate stand against homo- and hetero-normativity, both.” She has no patience for this binary, which understands “procreative femininity” as a pollutant both of queerness and of radicalism; she sees the misogyny of this stance. If The Argonauts can be said to have a primary concern, this is it: how to resist a conception of queerness that shoehorns complex lives into a neat dichotomy of normative versus not, and how to resist the unhelpful demonization of motherhood, domesticity, and the other supposedly reactionary forms that love can take.

Sometimes it's more politically achievable to push for a tweak to an existing system than it is to restructure a legal system from the ground up. (sciatrix)

This is part of why I like Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage: Valuing All Families Under the Law. It talks about how to feasibly attain the more fundamental restructuring. (See also, Poikoff's blog.)

I think that often we do in fact have important choices about how we agitate for changes. We can pull get a group of people to petition somone (government, corporations, etc.) to make a change for us, without doing the extra work of community- and movement-building in the context of whatever the immediate issue is. Then we'll get an incremental, minimal change, which will indeed have actual positive effects in actual people's lives, so that's not a bad thing. But often we could also use the immediate issue to build communities and movements, and look for solutions that involve increasing people power and increasing the political power of those communities. On the immediate issue, we'll still only get the incremental, minimal change, which will still have actual positive effects in actual people's lives, so will still be not a bad thing. But it also helps us be more ready to respond to the next urgent issue more quickly and effectively, so that we can start getting something more than an incremental, minimal change. And it's also the necessary groundwork for building real change.
posted by eviemath at 8:49 AM on August 20, 2015 [5 favorites]


So much for all your hibrow Marxist ways...
posted by persona au gratin at 9:04 AM on August 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


she was thinking about how many people she knew in the South (she's from Atlanta) and how many poor people of color (she's a POC herself, so she was speaking from more personal knowledge) would be able to access services and benefits that would otherwise be totally unavailable.

Yeah, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision on marriage equality, I'm feeling increasingly fed up (as a bi woman) with the sense of entitlement a certain segment of the sort of radical queer community (in my own country and elsewhere) seems to feel to commandeer the backbones of the entire queer population as a foundation on which to construct their magnificent new future. So many people so urgently need the practical protections of marriage and most of the time I don't hear that acknowledged, often by people privileged enough to not be affected either way. And to that I say nah, man. I support working towards better systems too but that needs to happen by actually convincing people that that's what we need, not vilifying "rapacious, greedy and entirely selfish gay men and women" for their lack of allegiance to your non-conformist political goals. Nobody owes that to anyone just by virtue of having the sexuality that they do. In a way I agree with the author that your sex is not radical. But I feel like that understanding is wasted on scolding supporters of traditional legal mechanisms like marriage. What it really means is that no political movement, whether it's marriage equality or something more radical, has an automatic right to the support of queer people.

Also, yes, that thing about Obama's election being "largely" due to some Republican sex scandal from 2004 is aggressively wrongheaded. In spite of all that, though, an interesting essay and website.
posted by two or three cars parked under the stars at 9:13 AM on August 20, 2015 [5 favorites]


As an anecdatum, some of the people I know who are unhappy with the recent focus on marriage equality as a primary glbtq issue are in very non-privileged positions where the extension of marriage rights is immaterial because neither they nor any of their partners or friends have any of the benefits that would be extended to their spouses through marriage, like health care or other employment benefits, can't afford to have children and so find those issue less personally immediate, maybe both partners have questionable immigration status, etc.

Some of the folks I know who would be positively affected by marriage equality are also upset at what they perceive as respectability politics and the erasure of queer subcultures that they identify with. While many (most, in my experience) people find the extension of various benefits enabled by marriage equality to be more immediately important and useful, one can be in the situation where marriage would be beneficial, but still find the politics around how it has come about to be more harmful than the benefits accrued.

I think this issue of normativity and anti-normativity is key. Taking on an explicitly anti-normative or anti-establishment identity can be an important survival and coping mechanism for (especially young) people coming from a background or situation where their sexual, gender, racial, class, or other category of identity is actively repressed, suppressed, or denigrated. Being visible and vocal in membership with a subculture or non-normative identity group makes it easier to find people with similar experiences and to find allies. It also helps people withstand the large and small assaults to their identity and personality that an oppressive or uncaring broader culture throws at them, and can make a difference between being a person with more or less average mental health versus developing depression, anxiety, crippling shame, or other health struggles. I think that's a position that those of us with more privilege need to have empathy and sympathy for, and need to listen to compassionately. At the same time, there is the danger of reproducing the negative treatment that we may have received. Reverse racism/sexism/etc. isn't a thing because of structural power differences, but it would be better to build an actually different culture, rather than reproduce the same dynamics but with different players filling the roles.

Of course, people with fewer axes along which they occupy an oppressed position coming into movements and telling people with even less privilege what they should think and do is also a thing that happens all too frequently (manarchists and such). But I think it's important to distinguish between that situation and the situation of less privileged folks within a movement trying to raise concerns that they feel are being ignored by those with relatively more power who they would like to view as allies. My personal experience (acknowledging that personal experience does not make a general trend) has been that the more vocal opponents of, not marriage equality itself, but marriage equality as a central and high-importance political goal have tended to be in positions of less privilege.
posted by eviemath at 11:21 AM on August 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


Article 16.

(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
posted by mrdaneri at 11:31 AM on August 20, 2015


My personal experience (acknowledging that personal experience does not make a general trend) has been that the more vocal opponents of, not marriage equality itself, but marriage equality as a central and high-importance political goal have tended to be in positions of less privilege.

Around here, I feel like it's not quite that. The folks who have been the least interested in marriage equality have been the ones most firmly entrenched in alternative/bohemian/graymarket subcultures, with varying degrees of privilege. Basically, the more likely someone is to have a social network made up of....huh, sort of countercultural people...the more likely they are to be uninterested in marriage equality. So that might be someone from a really broke background who does sex work, but it also might be someone from an incredibly affluent background who is in a PhD program and on their way to comfort and security. One group doesn't anticipate having access to the benefits of marriage; the other doesn't anticipate needing them; and both are (probably temporarily) united in the world of 20ish to fortyish urban bohemia. Both are dependent on social networks that are not structured by marriage (although both groups do tend to rely on extended family networks for assistance - whether logistical or financial).

For me, I feel like I have a lot of respectability politics advantages that allow me to affirm that I'm not into gay marriage - I sound like a college-educated middle class person, I'm white, I know how to negotiate a lot of entry level business/bureaucratic networks. And I'm not from somewhere where marriage is such a strong norm that I wish for it as a way to affirm that I too can participate in society the way everyone else can.

Now that I think about it, I feel like the whole "well only [good/bad/rich/poor/authentic/inauthentic] GLBTQ people want to get married" conversation that I've had about ten gazillion times since 2000 has itself ossified into precisely the same type of boring, nonspecific political signifier as what it purports to discuss - a good old dead horse that everyone can have fun flogging.
posted by Frowner at 11:40 AM on August 20, 2015 [7 favorites]


After Nadezhda Alilluyeva died, Stalin was mostly celibate. So yes.
posted by gertzedek at 2:32 PM on August 20, 2015


great_radio, I think you are misrepresenting Nair's position on marriage. She absolutely does treat gay and straight marriage as morally equivalent. Her main problem with marriage is that it restricts benefits to specific types of family units that are recognized by the state, and so she argues that instead of just extending those rights in a narrow way to LGB people, we should make the benefits marriage provides accessible to everyone regardless of what type of relationship they're in. I have kind of ambivalent feelings about this sort of left-libertarian critique but it is hardly an intrinsically homophobic position.
posted by en forme de poire at 12:42 PM on August 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


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