A Crusade. But Without the Oppression and Death

I hate when I have something to write and keep starting dead-end drafts. So screw that. I'm on the internet now. I can do a listicle.

Things I like about polyamory:

1. My girlfriends' girlfriends, boyfriends, and significant others.

Sometimes when you're dating someone, they come with a sweetheart as a kind of bonus. If the person you're dating is awesome, odds are that their sweetheart will be at least that awesome if not moreso. And you can get a kind of privileged access to the sweetheart by virtue of dating their girlfriend. I know that everyone you get involved with, whether monogamously or not, might come with friends, family members, children, and pets that get to be part of your life, too, but there's a special kind of intimacy that comes from being lovers with the same person. There's even a jargon-y name for it, metamours. I like being metamours with cool people. I like having someone else who knows exacly what I mean when I say that my girlfriend is amazing in a certain way, or annoying in a certain other way. I have had the experience of sitting next to a metamour, seeing our mutual sweetie across the room, saying, "Isn't she lovely?" and sighing contentedly in shared understanding.
I remember the first time, more than 20 years ago, that I sat down to a meal with a girlfriend, her long-term partner, and her partner's other partner. I was nervous but I liked it. I liked the cross-currents of love and affection. I liked the teasing looks my girlfriend's partner was sending my way, and I liked listening to the mattter-of-fact way the three of them worked out their schedule for the coming week.

I like the feeling of a web of affection and desire. It's that simple.

2. I like my girlfriends, past and present, and my partner, and don't want to be without them.
Love and sexual desire are notoriously bad at following rules or bending themselves to practicality. Interracial couples have always loved one another whether it was legal or not. Princesses love stableboys, and so do princes from time to time.

I have loved many people in my life, some briefly and tragically, some briefly and brilliantly, some--well, one so far--forever. I have broken many rules to have these loves. I broke the rule about not being in same-sex relationships, and I broke the popular 1990s lesbian rule about not loving trans men. Eventually I broke my own rule that I was a lesbian, and settled down with Raider. I have broken many times the rules about age differences in sexual relationships.

And every time, I'm glad I didn't let a rule stop me. "But she's a girl!" would have kept me from my first real love. "She's 25 years older than you!" would have kept me from a relationship I learned a great deal from and remember very fondly. "He's a man" would have kept me from Raider.
I'm a big fan of standards, and maybe I'll talk about what that means another time. But rules? Not so much. A rule is Robert Frost's wall, about which he says:

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down.

Frost says, "I could say elves...but it's not elves exactly." I say it's love, particularly love in the form of sexual desire, that wants the walls down. And I will make the claim that is not been a lack of morality or an unhealthy promiscuity or a recklessness toward my own feelings or my partners' that has led me to squeeze through the narrow gaps in so many walls in search of the light I can see shining through from the other side.

It has been love, which in all its forms is ultimately the same form. And this is one of the ways I have been called to be in service to love in my life.

What I don't like about polyamory:

This is the world's shortest list. There is only one item on it. I don't like having to mold my behavior to standards that make no sense to me. I've never been good at it. I have no notion of "too much information." I am comfortable disclosing almost anything, and comfortable hearing almost anything. I have never been good at being in the closet, and once I came out never spent much time there. As a lesbian in my 20s, I accepted both the restrictions and the freedoms that being out brought with it.
But I can't be fully out right now. I can't talk in specifics. I can tell you I'm poly, but I can't tell you about anyone I might be seeing who isn't Raider, at least not on my blog or on Facebook. And there are good reasons for this. But that doesn't mean I have to like it.

I hate that I know people who've lost friendships because they came out as poly; I lost friendships when I came out a lesbian, and one of the costs of being in the closet is not knowing who would stand by you if they knew. I hate that someone with a vindictive ex could lose child custody over this, or that parents could withdraw from their adult children, or that employment could be jeopardized, or church or Meeting membership, or a community lost. I dislike being discreet, I'm bad at it even when I try, and I fear harming someone else by a failure to be as discreet as I should be.

Still, many times in my life I have been the one to blurt out something "inappropriate," and it has been my experience over and over again that when somebody like me opens her big mouth and says something wildly inappropriate, there is nearly always someone listening who needed to hear it. I've had a woman tell me that a story I read helped her be brave enough to admit to some of her own sexual desires, with great results. I've had many people say "I thought I was the only one." When word got out in the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival worker camp, back in the 90s, that I had a lover who was a trans man, there was controversy--I had one crewmate who couldn't resist bringing me the negative gossip she'd overheard, of which there was apparently plenty. But I was also sought out by multiple women who identified as lesbians but had a partner who wanted to transition; or were beginning a relationship with a trans man; or had had a relationship with a cis-gendered man that they'd felt they had to keep secret for fear of being judged or ostracized in their lesbian community.
They wanted to talk to me because they knew they could tell me about these things. When I tell you how many people I've slept with or how recently I experienced sexual gratification or what I like to do in bed, I'm not just being Su Who Has Never Been Able to Keep Her Mouth Shut. At least, I'm not only being that. I am fighting a crusade against shame.

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