Post AVreHrrD6yafAkb2Po by kittenlikeasmallcat@social.xenofem.me
(DIR) More posts by kittenlikeasmallcat@social.xenofem.me
(DIR) Post #AVqVOly6JLkOBq4qEC by kittenlikeasmallcat@social.xenofem.me
2023-05-20T12:14:41.786595Z
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I feel like talking about R.A., cos some people have asked me about it in the past few weeks. This is my practice, my political point of view and it aligns with what I demand to see from the world. As it pertains to me, I’ll say I’m not interested in a lot of the kinds of relationships that prevail in the collective consciousness as being of elevated importance. This framework fits me, in my particularities, including my celibacy and relative facets of social isolation. It seems to me that RA should be what you make of it. I’m gleefully discarding any baggage that doesn’t serve me here, and outwardly advocating the premises I’m using to formulate this.My contact with what’s been written on the subject has led me to believe these things. I’m not saying anything new here, not breaking any ground, all of these points are already spoken about more eloquently than I can put them. I’d take in interest in how much further these ideas can be taken, though.If the ideology is what you make of it, as I’m asserting, then it’s when you don’t believe in or act out narratives sold to you about how different kinds of relationships have to work. You intentionally relate to others as agents on a case by case basis. If you didn’t have a say in constructing or at least radically interpreting a narrative, there’s good reason to resist being bound or even guided by it. What Relationship Anarchy wants to be, it’s most important values, include rejecting the assertion that relationships need to escalate over time and not elevating live-in or sexual partners, (or whoever) over others in some hierarchy, by default. It comes without rules that you don’t consent to. The prevailing ideology in monogamous and polyamorous structures aren’t in ready alignment with these principles, so I find reason to object to them.This is a political opinion that I have about the way that people should be working toward relating to each other on a very fundamental level. I’m interested in maximizing concentrated love, solidarity, comradery, friendship and every other relation of equals in a robust, distributed, stable, redundant way, without assumptions. The idea that love or time is a scarce or finite resource is poison. It’s not to make some kind of judgement about a minimum number of people someone should be close to, just that there should be no maximum, and that care shouldn’t be reserved and withheld out of pretense. I’m specifically not saying “everyone should have at least 3 partners!” instead I’m asserting that a partner or companion or soulmate or co-conspirator is whatever someone makes of it, and that relationship shouldn’t need to be hierarchically more important than anyone else for no good reason, and without long-sought continual agreement. I’m demanding Affinity Groups or bust in all areas of life.There’s no lack of objections to non-monogamy. This isn’t about non-monogamy, but is much more importantly a more holistic framework to begin from. It does not need to have anything to do with romance or sex or anything in particular, but some of those objections have to do with romantic jealousy, even among the non-monogamous, as well as jealousy that has nothing to do with romance or anything like that either. There’s nothing wrong with feeling insecure but in my political opinion, the prescribed practice of unified dependence on one (or even two or more!) other person(s), with near to a single point of failure isn’t robust, and the narrative that underpins it is ethically bankrupt nonsense, and it only leads to fragility. The assumption that this is normal or good is something worth examining. It’s repugnant to my values to allow feelings of insecurity that fester into jealousy compel one into coercing someone else into some set of behaviors. Jealousy is a human thing. It’s not necessarily evil. It’s good because It’s an indicator, it means something. To have the pretense that some feeling should necessarily restrict someone else instead of just prompting an ongoing free and open conversation about feelings like that is not acceptable. Values shouldn’t be imposed in this way - there needs to be a discussion and a consensus. It is imperative that jealousy that stems from feelings of entitlement or ownership be thoroughly addressed and deprogrammed. It’s the premise that it’s imperative to know one’s feelings and to communicate them to to others, and set up clear boundaries and expectations. To have jealousy dictate force or otherwise coerce another are not terms which I accept. It’s about asserting defensible freedom, in the egoist sense, where a free association can be severed without harm at any point, which itself depends on a robust and caring network of networks of people.If there weren’t a lot more to say about all this there wouldn’t be volumes of writing already done about it, so I’ll cut off my two cents here.
(DIR) Post #AVrKRpR8y2C3ThsNxw by evdas@503junk.house
2023-05-20T17:43:20Z
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@kittenlikeasmallcat ‘relationship anarchy’, or as i call it for short: ‘anarchy’.
(DIR) Post #AVrKTZgSVWcFCTs8pc by dragora@kolektiva.social
2023-05-20T16:31:08Z
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@kittenlikeasmallcat Do you have any pointers towards texts you particularly like on the subject? I've been practicing polyamory for like five years or so, but I've never done much looking into the theory, and I know at least some texts are problematic at this point (e.g., More Than Two).
(DIR) Post #AVrKTaXdJp9NrOkbiK by evdas@503junk.house
2023-05-20T17:25:33Z
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@dragora @kittenlikeasmallcat “kill the couple in your head” is an imperfect but decent intro zine.https://archive.org/details/kill-the-couple-in-your-head-part-2-immediatism-514
(DIR) Post #AVrRojWxn8qnV4T1wu by kittenlikeasmallcat@social.xenofem.me
2023-05-20T23:09:17.307307Z
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@dragora I’m going to continue looking around for the longer piece that’s influenced me the the most. I can’t seem to find it at the moment; it talked at length about close mutual aid relationships and expectations and temporality and specific needs, but I can’t remember the name of the work. I think it may be The Ethics of… For now, the most I can do is recommend other pieces like “Notes on RAD 2019”, Andie Nordgren’s works, and Infinite Relationships. To be sure, much of what’s out there is garbage, and much is golden and the best way to tell the difference is to consume voraciously and be discerningly open.
(DIR) Post #AVreHrrD6yafAkb2Po by kittenlikeasmallcat@social.xenofem.me
2023-05-21T01:28:26.515485Z
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@dragora @evdas Starting out reading this and I’m already Extremely a fan.Some resonant passages from ‘Kill The Couple in Your Head’: “Faced with the homogenizing force of civilization that flattens us all into its gendered subjects, difference is our strongest weapon. … To reduce all of this difference to the categories of men and women / males and females requires a great violence from the time of our births. … To maintain the great lie, they operate on babies without their consent, mutilating their bodies because their very existence exposes the lie and, so, must be erased.” … “Even if we create new identities of recognition, they are neutralized and converted into new categories of control, incorporating them as new commercial markers. This is why there are now queer and trans police, bosses, and landlords.” … “There have always been those who have rejected this nightmare and refused to live within its boundaries. Active solidarity and relationships of affinity with anti-authoritarian indigenous struggles can teach us ways of understanding ourselves that are not imposed from those in power …”Beginning this with a stinging critique of willful and enforced assimilation is a shrewd and convincing tactic. It sets the stage for what’s to come, and begins the work of picking and smashing the locks by calling all of the locks rat bastards, and calling our fellow travelers and co-conspirators by name. “We’ve been fed the story of Romantic Love from our earliest years with Disney…” … “Polyamory is neoliberal monogamy.” … “We are all managers in the worker co-op of love!”The amount of patience and tolerance I’ve got for this in particular is absolutely fucking zero. I’ve found this tends to alienate me a lot. Which is good. “Neoliberal Monogamy” Gonna stick that one in my back pocket for later. “… As I resist against my recasting from confidante and companion to occasional coffee date, it becomes clear that my feelings about how the Partners are treating one another, the choices they are making within their Couple, are unwelcome. None of my business.” … “If someone I love starts giving her love to someone who is treating her badly, this is absolutely my business, as it is the business of the rest of our friends.” … “Another reactionary position — that of the empowered slut, a self-sufficient unit of one, who engages in dating or cruising, also fails to put into question the organization of dominant society. In the dating paradigm, it is seen as acceptable to only fuck people you don’t truly care about, trust or respect. Distinguishing the underlying impulse is key here — a desire to connect and share intimacy with people outside of your circles to expand and transform your world, or a desire to keep your friends separate from your lovers to be able to skirt responsibility for your actions. The practice of ‘not dating or hooking up within the scene’ can be particularly ugly if it serves to separate the people you fuck from the people whose opinion you care about, preventing them from sharing critiques of your actions. …”I’ve had a plan for a while for a tattoo reading in clear lettering: “YOUR BOYFRIEND IS NOT MY PROBLEM.” This second excerpt here is the deeper meaning of that tattoo. I’ve found myself frustrated with being put in the position of the ‘confidante’, maneuvered to decelerate the progression of an abusive dynamic under the pretense of mediator. An isolated mediator is insufficient here, and can portray the role of a group as only as a shadow. By not being “my problem” that which is symbolized by “your boyfriend,” a problem by its premise becomes the problem of those who will take up the task of solving it, namely the person at whom the slogan is directed and therefore those in the context which creates the person. The confrontation embedded in the slogan is intended to resolve by closing doors to all but a metamorphosis from “is your” to “not my” (my own boundary) and finally into “is our.” One of the most frequently leveled criticisms of RA is that it looks like other forms of non-monogamy, in this case, solo polyamory. The way these ideologies operate come under fire from those who bother to do so for functioning as a detached, isolated harem, a monstrosity and an upending of values and ethics. “The Couple form can occupy and take over any of our relationships, even ones that we see as ‘platonic’ friendships.” … “Instead of a breakup, a ritual: With a beloved friend, light some kind of fire, a candle will do. Together, think of all the elements of your relationship that are formal, hierarchical, bureaucratic. Name out loud to each other the parts of your friendship that don’t serve you: control, jealousy, competition. Write them down and burn them in the fire. Now think of the elements of your love that you want to nourish and grow: wildness, vulnerability, bravery. Visualize them as oxygen that feeds your flame, allowing it to burn brighter. Revisit this ritual however often you need, not only in crisis but as a way of maintaining indomitable intentions.”This is the crux, in my own experience. A relationship is a relationship, categorizing each of them based on what oppressive narratives require is totally avoidable. When the implications of a union are ambiguous, and aren’t actually discussed in the open out of fear all sorts of default absurd behaviors can be relied on to crop up. What I love about what’s being pointed out her explicitly is that sexuality isn’t ultimately, fundamentally different from something else. It’s not special or sacred or even needed on its own merits any more than any other relation can be. The ritual approach to this is brilliant. [In response to an excerpt from Fedirici’s “Why Sexuality is Work”:] “We must destroy this boundary between body and soul, the foundational lie of rationality, to free our sensuality from this order. By rejecting Sex, we can explore what becomes possible when we see our erotic energies as other forms of sensation and communication that we use to share/expand ourselves… [Continues with excerpts from Hocquenghem’s “To Destroy Sexuality” and ends by discussing at profoundly moving length, the implications and resolutions of loneliness and risk.]”There’s a lot in this section that’s worth repeating but I can’t say much about it other than damn. Yeah, all of that ^.
(DIR) Post #AVrhrsGzLJXQkWVyW8 by evdas@503junk.house
2023-05-21T02:03:43Z
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@kittenlikeasmallcat @dragora good selections and commentary. "neoliberal monogamy" i think cuts a little too harsh, but that rhetorically fantastic phrase has definitely been living in my head rent-free for a while now, and i love pulling it out to (playfully) agitate my poly friends, hahamuch of my approach towards fostering more anarchistic relationships has been informed not just through queer understandings of relationships, but also significantly from disability, asexuality, and neurodivergence lens -- fundamentally, i think challenges to social structures of oppression on the interpersonal level will tend to manifest as a sort of relational anarchy. which is usually hard, because the roles we're expected to play in all sorts of relationships are often very strictly defined with a lot of social pressure behind them!
(DIR) Post #AVrhrtEBnCtRi8DFnE by kittenlikeasmallcat@social.xenofem.me
2023-05-21T02:09:05.714016Z
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@evdas @dragora It seems to be a “if the shoe fits, wear it” kind of weapon, and if it doesn’t it’s aimed elsewhere. If some insurrection isn’t fundamentally imbued with multidimensional and intersectional solidarity it’s not as much of a struggle as it is a reification of identity held hostage to fuel that pressure.