A queer review of 'More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory'

I've been actively polyamorous for about five years, before which I was not having relationships for a couple of years, and before that I was having standard monogamous relationships with men and not so standard…interactions (shall we say) with women. I have had unhealthy monogamous relationships. I have had unhealthy polyamorous relationships.

    If I had to say up front why this book is the one I would recommend to people (literally all people, from queer relationship anarchists living in hippy communes in the Arizona desert with seven partners and three date mates to Ian and Sharon from South Ribble who have been monogamously married for seventeen years) it would be- its barefaced honesty.

   I have educated myself on polyamory a lot. I read articles. I read academic papers. I read books, blogs, listen to podcasts, attend events and obviously have my own relationships. I observe the polyamorous relationships around me. I talk about polyamory to my friends. I discuss polyamory with my partners. From the theoretical to the practical. From the amazing to the awkward. I’m part of several large international groups online where people dicuss polyamory. I’m out at work. I’m out to my family. I launch into social interactions like a pro

   ‘One of my partners works there’ I say smiling and nodding at the embarrassed party guest in front of me. Or maybe I say

   ‘Wow, my boyfriend’s girlfriend bought him this exact model’ and act calm and cheerful all the way through the weird questions, giving them my spiel.

   What I need you to understand, my beloved reader, is that I am not a quitter, fair weather lover, cop out, or polyamory sceptic. I have chosen this ‘lifestyle’ (as my grandma calls it) as the best, most loving option for me and all my ‘friends’ (as my co-worker call them). But that doesn’t mean I am always good at it.

   Yeah, I’ve pushed relationships into primary/secondary hierarchies (ew, I know), I’ve been the trusting service secondary, I’ve been the person who allows crappy people to treat me in a crappy way and yeah, I’ve been the crappy person. We all have. That’s the point. Often polyamory resources are written on the premise that we’re all perfect all the time.

   The reason this resource is good because it doesn’t fall into the trap most other polyamory resources do. It doesn’t pretend that polyamory itself is a way escape the shit you have to own to have successful relationships. It doesn’t presume that all of us are ‘naturally’ polyamorous (whatever that means). It doesn’t divide polyamorous people up into ‘poly gods’ and ‘failures’. It doesn’t make it a competition of who can act the least emotionally invested in the most people.

   Here are some of the things it does do

·        Provide you with a toolkit for communication between yourself and partners
·        Provide you with a good moral and ethical framework for your polyamory
·        Address the (incorrect) idea that polyamory is never coercive or manipulative
·        Advise the reader on how to navigate relationships without coercion or manipulation
·        Guide you through all elements of polyamory with care and sense
·        Discourage the harmful and isolating measures we’re taught to put in place to protect our relationships.

   This book is Polyamory 101 and 201 and it's the text book you come back to in your first week in the job, and after a few years, and then again a few years later. This book is a helping hand on those days when you want to run away to Berlin & get a mullet. If you’re polyamorous you need to read this book (despite how long you’ve been polyamorous). If you’re monogamous you need to read this book. You need to read this book if you’re single. You need to read this book if you are mono-poly. You need to read this book if you are struggling. You need to read this book if everything is going perfectly. You need to read this book if you will never have a romantic or sexual relationship EVER.

   One of the mistakes we make in polyamory is thinking ‘Oh, well my relationships are radical and mutually respectful’. The truth of the matter is- we all have shit we need to address. Yes, you too. My advice is- read this book with your partners, discuss each chapter, ask questions, use the questions in the book. You deserve to have the best relationships possible your partners deserve the best relationships possible because as the book says ‘The people in the relationship are more important than the relationship’. 

 You can find out what others think and decide where to buy it here (including audio-book and kindle options).

You can find the website here

Follow the authors here @everickert and here @franklinveaux 

Good luck. x

Why I came out as disabled.

My journey to coming out as disabled started in 2007 when after a long struggle with severe symptoms of tiredness, weight gain, confusion and memory loss; I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism. As many of you will know, tiredness when connected to illness canbea horrifically traumatic experience. It's not like yawning and deciding to sleep, it's like fighting sleep off day after day. It's sleeping for twelve hours, waking up and feeling exhausted again before you've brushed your teeth. Everything is greyer, further away, tiredness is like a blubber that separates you from the fun, from living.

When framed like that, it makes me wonder why anyone would ever put off seeking medical help for a year. But we all do. Why would someone allow themselves to be lost within a condition? Because that's what happened. I lost most of my personality inside those symptoms and the culmination of how I dealt with them, and if I'm perfectly honest, I'm not entirely sure I got all of it back. Who can crack jokes when they can't remember the end of their sentence? Who can smile when every interaction is such an effort that you begin to resent those who speak to you?

It took a lot of thinking to understand why I subjected myself to this, but I reached a conclusion- internalised disablism.

See for the most part of my life I grew up in a house hold with my Mum, who supported both of us. My Mum has worked my entire life and I can't remember her having a day off, for illness,beforeI was sixteen. She couldn't get ill because her being ill meant being short on the rent, me being ill meant a baby sitter's billwecouldn't afford; ill meant failure. Illness was something to be powered through.

This survival technique coupled with disablism ingrained in ourculture (e.g. people with physical disabilities used as the butt of jokes, people who experience mental illness being represented as murderers) lead me to tell myself repeatedly that I couldn't be ill, because that would mean failing my A Levels.

So, the anxiety & depression over the prospect of failure (and the misery caused by the condition) lead me to find other ways to propel myself through my course and my social lifewithout 'failing'. Mainly narcotics & alcohol (and dangerous relationships to acquirethem).I was living with eight other young people in supported accommodation so there was never peace and quiet. I was out the house for twelve hours a day attending a college with the most unsupportive 'support staff' imaginable. I was using drugs to see me through the weekend and still managing to pass my course. And that was going really well until I started having to hide fainting fits, experiencing hallucinations and paranoia and was admitted to hospital with what was a series of 'accidental overdoses'. The culmination of this behaviour was a mental breakdown and I don't think I have the adjectives to describe that experience to you.

The last time I had to go to hospital for symptoms caused by drugs I finally saw myself for what I was; the same old girl but without the light, without anything but bags under my eyes, a hospital gown and nowhere near enough money to get home. I thought to myself 'I could die right now'. And because that scared me, I knew there was a spark of me left: a spark of me worth fighting to keep.

I'm still fighting for that spark today, I suppose. Everyday is a fight: Disablist external and internal voices telling me that being ill is failing vs. the truth.

To explain what that truth is I'll have to talk about another diagnosis. After being diagnosed with hypothyroidism, depression, anxiety, and seeking help for my addiction, I stilldidn't self- defineasdisabled.For me to claim that term, we have to talk about 2013. In my final year of university, I was seeking medical help for posterior uveitis and macular edema. I was losing vision rapidly and for the first time in five years I felt I was losing the battle with internalised disablism. It was then that I realised that one person isn't enough to fight disablism. Not even close. We each have our limits and our abilities and I wrote a statement about mine in relation to our Student union elections. This is probably the first time I recognised my limits as a disabled person.

Disability to me is not a special criterion, a measurement of ability, or a term reserved for those who are ill 'enough'. Because the truth is that there is no illness small enough to ignore and no role so important that health can be side-lined. Disability is the absence of abled privilege. I don't have the privilege of being able to control my body weight as others do, of being able to see properly, of being able to write and speak without mistakes, of being able to effectively usemy working memory, of being able to use substances recreationally,ofnotbeing depressed and anxious. The expectation thata person cando allof these things is socially constructed and maintained, and because of this, disability is a physical and political identity.

In the movement and activism against disablism and able normativity I found that self-care and peer support are essential. NUS Disabled Students Officer, Hannah Paterson, offered me support and understanding following me coming out about my condition, and I think that was the first time in a long time I wasn't scared to be seen as weak, because Hannah and other activists find strength in admittinglimits. What followed helped me to do the same. Other disabled activists rallied round to help with the things my disabilities prevented mefrom doing and I think the power of that network is a huge factor in me being here today, relatively unscathed. I need and deserve a network of people who share my rage, fight and principles of self-care.

Before disability I was just someone who couldn't see the PowerPoint, someone too scared to leave the house sometimes, someone whose life was a process of rebuilding, relapsing and ignoring. Before disability I was acting out of fear of 'failing' socially and academically but I was failing myself. Before disability I was losing myself, I was killing myself.

And now that I have claimed the word disabled with all its power, history and support?

Now I know that strength means asking for help.

Now I'm proud to be disabled.

How to be an ally to working class people

5 Things That Aren't Racism

Ok, let me preface this post by saying that as a mixed race person who is percieved to be wholly white- I experience a lot of white privilege. Racism I've experienced has mainly been verbal abuse and it most certainly hasn't been often. You could say I'm lucky that I don't have to worry about experiencing racism. You could say I'm unlucky because I exist in a society that has racism (and other oppression) at all. Because I experience white privilege I usually keep my mouth shut on what constitutes the oppression of people of colour (PoC) because I'm not experiencing 99% of it.
But this post is to society at large, and it's about what isn't racism, what shouldn't be compared to racism and why and as someone who has experienced racism, I feel entitled to outline these points.

5 Things that aren't racism

1. A white person taking the piss out of Justin Bieber for being American

Whilst you might really like Justin Bieber and want to defend his honour...don't try and change the meaning of the word 'race'. The dictionary definition may be 'classes of people' but you know that 'racism' relates to oppression on the basis of ethnicity. Just like we understand that class usually relates to socio-economic and cultural background. Xenophobia is different to racism. And to be honest xenophobia has a more heartbreaking effect on someone trying to emigrate from another country to ours than it has on Justin Bieber. Some wealthy celebrity goes on living his life, those who experience oppression get their lives shaped for them by racism and xenophobia. Put down the strawman argument and step away from the false premise. (Sidenote- someone actually argued this exact point with me, twice.)

2. When a PoC is mean to you
(Sidenote- I'm paraphrasing from tumblr here)
What racism is-
The continued devestation of counties with bombs and wars, the historic and unrelenting oppression of PoC, the continued under employment, bigotry and disadvantage experienced by PoC.
What white people think racism is-
A black girl in school was mean to me.

3. Homophobia
I've spoken previously about how uncomfortable I am with white LGBT people conflating homophobia with racism. Not because I think one is worse, but because a white LGBT person only experiences one of these things and doesn't have the experience to talk on the other with authority.
The homophobic response to same sex marriage is not the same as segregation.
STAAHP.

4. When Diane Abbott points out facts
(Sidenote- I'm not promoting or condoning Abbott's politics or Labour) So Abbott once tweeted 'White people love playing 'divide and rule' We should not play their game.' The media was alight with people talking about 'reverse racism' and 'racism against white people' and to that I say- LOOOL.

Another time, Abbott stated that the 'British invented racism'. So white people get all upset because Diane Abbott is making generalisations about them as a group. She's making out that someone who has a privileged position due to being white (in a country that had, lets say, a little hand in imperialism and the slave trade, which created white supremacy) still have imperialist values.

Well guess what? She's right. And as a PoC in a country that still has racist values she cannot possibley oppress privileged white people by pointing out facts. If her comments offend you more than this then you're a victim of your own privileged ego.

5. Someone calling all men 'bastards'
Let's compare two situations
Situation a- someone who isn't a man says 'Oh, Jeff really pissed me off today, why are all men such bastards?'
Outcome- Jeff may be upset if he hears, but he maintains his male privilege anyway.

Situation b- a white person uses a racist slur in a room full of white people.
Outcome- the historical oppression, enslavement and marginalisation of PoC began the use of racist words, the continued use of them maintains a system that sees PoC as less than (linguistics, innit). Language stregnthens and maintains value systems and the other white people in the room see that this word is 'acceptable' in this context.
Hey, guess what? A person generalising about men isn't the same as the structural oppression of generations of people, and the maintainance of that through saying words that were tools of that oppression. Your hurt feelings don't license you to compare or conflate someone being mean to the oppression of a group you don't define into. Get over yourself.