Bay Area: Radical Love and Relationship Workshop.
Feb 6th, 2007
Wendy-O Matik
Radical Love and Relationship Workshop
At a time when our nation is determined to keep us on the warpath, what better time to raise our voices against intolerance, hatred, and violence? At a time when our government propels us into a new dark age of fascism, what better time to talk about radical love, or the right to love who we want, how we want, and as many as we want? Loving openly and freely in these times, whether you are straight or queer, is a brave political act. We have been conditioned by outdated social norms that limit our perceptions and shackle us to unhealthy cycles of dissatisfying relationships. Yet we also live in a time when we can choose our gender and redefine our sexual identities. Don't we then have the right to decide what kind of relationship best suits our lifestyle? Declare yourself a revolutionary of the heart. Find out how you can expand your potential to love, transform your lifestyle, and together we can threaten the social forces of patriarchy!
This looked interesting to me. I have actually tried polyamory and sheeeet it is complicated. But I support any attempt at fighting heternormativity as long as it is healthy and constructive. Other stories from the field?
More info on the workshop here.
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I have a polyamorous friend who told me that keeping a flowchart of the different relationships with people is pretty helpful.
Personally, I wouldn't mind giving it a try, except I have a pretty good thing going on right now with someone that I don't want to compromise.
I hope they're not just talking about polyamory -- I think it is radical for women to get what we really want from romantic relationships even if they're as straight and vanilla as they could be.
I like the idea of this workshop -- sounds similar to the SisterSong let's talk about sex conference happening soon!
I'm doing polyamory. Actively. It takes a lot of time and energy.
At one point one of my long-distance sweeties had set up a shared calendar on a friend's server so that we could all keep track. These days we all keep our own calendars and exchange a lot of e-mail.
Okay, this comment is all over the place. If it's not what you were looking for, I apologise.
The thing I've found most radical about polyamory is that if you're serious about it working you acquire habits and tools that can carry over to how you view relationships, even when you're doing monogamy
I do a lot more work defining relationships, even in periods of monogamy (deliberate or otherwise) I'm less inclined to follow a pattern or succumb to social pressures to have a "normal" relationship.
I mean, why does every relationship have to head towards cohabitation and/or marriage and/or a shared mortgage? What's wrong with a long-term, long-distance relationship that works best when the participants spend no more than a week every month together? What's wrong with having an ongoing, recurring fling arrangement with someone you like well enough, and with whom you enjoy getting it on, but with whom you don't want to join your future? What's wrong with acknowledging that your spouse doesn't do everything for you, and that your (non-sexual) girlfriends (or guyfriends) are really important to you, and letting them place demands on you, as you demand things from them that you don't get from your spouse. You learn to negotiate you needs and examine your priorities, as well as those of the people you're close to.
So I have my sweeties, and I also have dear friends who are as important to me as my sweeties, but with whom I've never had a sexual relationship. I will never have a sexual relationship with them, and that's okay with all of us. But if anything happens with them, I'm there, and if that means taking time off work, so be it. But that can be difficult to explain to people, even to those who are familiar with my poly arrangements. It's like they can get that I have more than one sweetie, and they're mostly fine with that, (except for my mother, who thinks that if they really loved me, my sweeties would ask me to choose), but they can't get their heads around the notion that my family-by-choice are that important to me too. But it makes perfect sense to me.
Those are great questions, and many that I often wonder about too, jennie1ofmany. What is the difference between polyamory and dating or being sexual with more than one person in a certain time period? Is the difference love/being in love with more than one person?