Posts Tagged ‘independent’

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Trust: yes, because it is you

3.29.10 Cesar | 7 Comments »

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Trust is a sensitive matter for relationships, especially when they involve sexual intimacy. The physical and psychological vulnerability that comes with letting someone into your body is much more complicated than letting someone into your home.

In my life this issue is made more complicated by a disjunction between my relationship orientation and my primary partner’s. I am polyamorous and kinky; Hyacinth is monogamous and establishing her sexual limits. In 75 days we will be married. We are still, and probably will always be, negotiating what that means.

After reading “Am I empowered, degraded, or both?” we discussed at dinner that night what consent means. At the base we have the same view: there are actions that we consent to allow, there are people that we consent to trust. To a certain degree we each, and consequently the relationship, are constrained by how deep we consent to trust each other.

Our relationship started 10 years ago, in college. After not seeing each other for six years we reconnected. On our third date Hyacinth confided, “I’m not going to let you get away this time.” I asked her how she feels about monogamy. Hyacinth told me that she couldn’t handle having more than one relationship. This was the first time that I shared my polyamorous orientation.

Now we have two major threads in our relationship: the emotional trust that allows us to have a healthy day-life and the physical trust that allows an adventurous nightlife. Our intimacy is hung on the intersection of these two types of trust, emotional and physical; either can lead to a breakdown in the other. When Hyacinth gives me the benefit of fulfilling her needs (reiteration of my love/dedication) and my own need (being true to my orientations) we both end up winning.

My task in this has been to show my love through the changing perspectives Hyacinth has about the difference between singularity and importance. I spend most of my emotional time with her establishing a context where love and obligation are different things. We work toward my love being timely tenderness and appropriate actions, rather than inactive presence.

Her part is owning her feelings and communicating her needs—giving me solid insight into which action best show my dedication. Hyacinth is often called to have faith in my commitment to her. By presenting her needs in terms of a stable love and hope for the future, she shows that her love is for our path, not our immediate context.

Frequently, our moments of pause come when Hyacinth needs an unexpected emotional recalibration or I introduce something new to our sex life. At these moments our success hinges on what I call “mutual attentiveness,” a state of showing your needs and accepting your partner’s clues. In her moments I gain ground by refocusing myself to opening up the part of my attention that Hyacinth asks for; she supports the process by acknowledging that my intent is loving–even when I say something the doesn’t fit right.

In my moments Hyacinth gains ground by being very responsive–giving me a clear “YES” when she is on board with me, and letting me know when she needs time. With every “yes,” the new experience moves further into territory that she enjoys. I help this process by immediately attending to her needs when things don’t come together well.

Our relationship’s real struggle is balancing discretion and openness in a way that meets Hyacinth’s need to feel both safe and involved. Although moving in together was not a surprise, it happened earlier than expected, and brought that struggle to the forefront. Soon after she moved in we had to discuss scheduling because I was supposed to have a date that week.

Hyacinth in her own words:

Before Cesar and I moved in together, I had been very uncomfortable hearing about the other people he was seeing, even as I accepted that they were a reality of our relationship. In the first days we lived together, I was forced to address that discomfort, as the result of his desire to schedule his date in the way that would be least likely to leave me feeling hurt by it. Despite knowing that this date didn’t threaten my relationship with him in the long-term, it nonetheless left me feeling like I’d been put on the sidelines during what was a very happy, but also very stressful, time when I needed his support.

Ultimately, I participated in my own activity that night, and set out to let my stress about his date fully process. When I came home, he told me that he’d been stood up, and later shared when she chose not to pursue any relationship with him. The latter was a surprising moment for us both. While their date was distressing for me at the time, and made clear that I needed to be more assertive with him about my boundaries, I was still sad to know that he had been dumped. At that moment, the unhappiness about my failure to articulate my own needs, and my hurt feelings over being put on the bench didn’t matter. Even on our hardest days he is my partner and teammate, and when another woman hurt him, it wasn’t any kind of victory for me, because it hurt my team.

As we each enact our love through apt handling of the other’s moments of pause, we deepen the trust that we have and bring to our moments. Over time we have reached the point where our relationship is unique—where trust can be a simple yes, because it is you. We still do, and likely always will, have moments that require explicit boundary talks, but sit-down negotiation is becoming an exception, rather than a rule.

Labels are not always lies

1.21.10 Marilla | No Comments »

500_bodyisgiftToday, I sat in on a two hour long seminar called Women and Leadership. The professor began by asking how many students in the room could call themselves feminists. As I shot my hand up, I noticed that barely half my peers had done the same. They blinked, not seeming to understand the question.

The professor was intrigued. “For those of you who didn’t raise your hand, why didn’t you?” One student answered that the term was antiquated. Another stated that she didn’t want to be accused of being a bra-burner. As more and more reasons piled up, I saw that I was one of the few people in the room who was unafraid of declaring feminism to be a part of my identity.

This isn’t the only time that I’ve been upfront about who I am. I’ve declared other things too: I’m an Asian American. I’m a writer. I’m a food maniac. I’m an obsessive compulsive. My liberal arts education taught me to do otherwise: avoid labels, don’t embrace them. My education tells me that that nothing is definite, everything is malleable. It tells me that being loud and proud is a performance, all show and no sincerity. As intellect becomes more important, conviction and the sense of self becomes less so.

College, I’ve discovered, often involves more talk than action. Brilliant minds sit in a circle and throw ideas at each other, always making sure to follow certain rules. Don’t accuse someone else of being an essentialist. Don’t say anything that doesn’t relate to the texts. And don’t ever, ever get overly personal. Sometimes I hate these rules. I can’t stand the emotional stagnation after I’ve done all that mental work. It’s because of these things that so many people are afraid to step forward and believe in something; they’re thinking and rethinking to the point of paralysis. Some people take an entire lifetime to get comfortable with a term like “feminist”, or refuse to even give it a chance. They don’t know what they’re missing.

As a new blogger for The Line Campaign, I can only hope to use my daily experiences to initiate both emotional and intellectual discussion, about gender, sexuality, the body, and all the gaps in between that complicate our movements through social spaces. My therapist once drew a Venn Diagram, with emotion as one circle and intellect as the other. She pointed at the overlapping space and said, “That’s wisdom.” The first piece of wisdom I’ll share with you is: Labels are not always lies. Don’t run away from conviction, belief, or chances to find yourself. Find your boundaries and stick to them.

Media glutton + Internet geek + Feminist

1.20.10 Carmen | 1 Comment »

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I began my second morning as a Soapbox Soldier with an Americano. I ordered a small, upsized to a medium, and sat down to smell the beans before running to our first meeting at the Feminist Press, up the street from Penn Station at the CUNY Graduate Center.

This was just the beginning of a day focused on media: on getting into it, on challenging it, on consuming it, and on creating it. I was particularly interested in this, as someone who has ventured into the areas of film, graphic design, writing, and promotions in her time as a student and advocate and has thoroughly enjoyed it all.

The organizations hosting us and speaking with us were all what seemed like worlds apart: from the Feminist Press, the oldest feminist publisher in the world (and just a note- yes, book design is still an appreciated art) to the Women’s Media Center, which advocates for more equal gender representation and opportunity in the media, and even Courtney Martin of Feministing, the world of “real-life feminists” seemed to be one full of different creative outlets. This is a good sign for activists, I think- we’re going to stay busy, which means we will stay satisfied. We also get to choose from a variety of activities to express our feminism, be it through blogs or PSAs.

In terms of how these various mediums benefit feminism, well- messages. Gloria Jacobs of the Feminist Press sees it as a vehicle for feminist thought that goes beyond “women’s issues” – it’s about bringing forth the issues relevant to women’s lives, written about by women, or even separate from women but related to other social justice causes. This was echoed by Debbie of BUST Magazine, who met with us and professed deep convictions that presenting typically “frowned upon” things like cooking, knitting, and fashion in BUST was controversial but necessary: she is trying to create a feminist pop culture, not critique an anti-feminist one.

So this leaves me, the media glutton and the internet geek, slouching in trains at the end of the night piecing it all together. “Carmen, how you gonna do it? How can you? What should you do?” For now, I’m taking the young and ambitious route: I’m doing a little bit of it all. I’m going to remain vigilant, remain visible, but make more of an effort now to reach out to media outlets and let them know how I feel about their programming and coverage. I’m going to remain outspoken and nontraditionally active in feminism, but I’m also going to stick to my guns and lobby and rally and yell like all hell. This is what feminism is made of, after all. Love for your own voice and respect for your own self, and knowing that nothing else matters- except maybe figuring out which blog to publish first.

Do women need “rescuing”?

1.12.10 Carmen | 1 Comment »

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To describe the first day of Feminist Winter Term would be too challenging a task for a paragraph, so today I made the executive decision (for your benefit, as well) to simply blog about each day individually.

It began with the classic feminist icebreaker: “when did it click?” There was laughter and there were tears, and one heartbreaking story about someone’s four-year-old niece, who said she wanted to be a president when she grew up…and knew that in order to do so, she needed to grow up to be a boy. We checked out the local area, hit up Babeland and Bluestockings (what kind of feminists would we be in NYC without such things?), and then stopped in for our first meeting.

The Ms. Foundation. Speakers from were also in attendance from the Barnaba Institute as we crowded into a conference room and listened to stories of sex trafficking, girls as young as 9 forced into sex slavery and kidnapped off the streets by pimps who beat them and then convinced them they were meant for each other. The stories were a challenge to listen to, not only because of the wrenching imagery, but also because of my nagging gender studies conscience, which wanted so badly (and then raised my hand) to ask –

Do you think it’s a problem with sex work, or do you think a lot of this is also masculinity and sexuality and how we talk about them? If we gave women agency, and control, wouldn’t these pimps be powerless?

There was hesitation from the presenters and from the audience, although a few receptive voices backed me up. There is more to human trafficking, after all, than the capitalist needs and demands- there are people doing these things. And do women need “rescuing?” Well, I suppose anyone would need such a thing if they were being beaten, killed, and forced into sex slavery. But does it deny sex workers whom opt-in to sex work, and operate either independently or within an “organization,” and reap successful capital, to summarize sex work as inherently dangerous? And why are we worried only about rescuing the victims, and not finding those sniveling, pathetic people committing the real crime- abuse- against them? (As you can see, it was thoughtful to say the least.)

I left early and hopped the C Train with setting up to do.

Shelby Knox. She sat with her usual ease, blending in with us mere mortal feminists before she delivered her story. Some of us confessed to have never seeing The Education of Shelby Knox, but anyone who has ever met Shelby knows that that’s the least of her worries- instead, we tackled intergenerational feminist divides, how to unite our movement, and exactly what we young people, gathered by Soapbox Media, think of being called the “Forth Wave,” a term Shelby likes to use to describe herself.

If the people I’ve met so far, and the cards I’ve handed out, the smiles I’ve received, and the casual discussions about rape culture I’ve had at FWT so far have taught me anything, it’s that a term about what is to come is the best for us: because we’ve got a lot of energy in the works. (Also, cheers to encouraging someone to buy Yes Means Yes! – I remain loyal, ladies.)

My pussy has nothing to do with your masculinity

1.8.10 Melissa | No Comments »

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