border-war-dispatches:

An analysis of border wars around swinger/polyamorous identities

This article is short but insanely interesting. I’ve had one or two reactions to coming out to people where I had to try and talk about how polyamory and swinging were different, and sadly now realise I made some mistakes when describing it.

Also the concept of ‘border wars’ between sexual identities is fascinating. I’ve been trying not to have to categorise people in my head over the last few years, but the urge to assign labels to people is almost overwhelming. I think it’s because it gives you a comfortable place of social assumptions to work from when beginning to relate to people. Trying to talk to someone without knowing, or caring about, or referencing their gender or orientation is scarily difficult for me. I’d like to get to a point where I’m able to relate to anyone perfectly comfortably without needing to define those things, and then adjust when they feel the need or desire to explain. 

But then I don’t want people to have to explain. That seems cruel. It’s been interesting over the last few years, because I’ve been trying not to assume people were straight when I meet them. So when I reference a partner they may or may not have I don’t use gender-specific pronouns. A few people have gotten really uppity that they have to correct me and say they’re straight.

I don’t want people to feel like they have to use labels with me, but I feel like I want to use them with other people out of an obscure sense of politeness because I know labels can make them more comfortable, or at least give them a frame of reference to talk from.  Which might be perpetuating the problem? If there is a problem?

tl;dr - I want to go back to university and do gender and sexuality studies SO BAD.

This is something that I find very tricky as well, though I think I think about it more surrounding gender identities than around the various forms of nonmonogamy—maybe just because I haven’t had any of those kinds of reactions, myself.

On the one hand, I actually really like labels, and want people to feel free to pick as many or as specific a set of them as suits their particular needs. Not only do they give me a frame of reference, but they make it easier to work out where I overlap with someone and where one or the other of us might have questions or want to do some reading. The more sexual minority communities talk and argue and blog and rally, the more labels we discover and create, and I like that proliferation because people tend to feel more steady when they can clearly and succinctly express what they want to tell someone about who they are. Your labels don’t have to say everything—indeed, as individual as identity is, they’re not even capable of that—but they make a great starting point and they help you decide how much you want to say when you describe yourself.

The hardest thing, I think, is explaining less popular labels to people, and that’s where this ‘border war’ of distinction comes about. The language we speak is heavily based on the idea of an ‘other’ and defining things negatively, by what they’re not, rather than by what they are. A woman is not a man. An apartment is not a house. Your girlfriend is not your wife. Immigrants are not ‘real’ citizens. Culturally, we tend to speak that way—you take the base, the assumption, and define everything else by what makes it different from the base. I can explain that I’m a lesbian because I’m attracted to girls, but more often, people phrase it as being not attracted to men, since that’s considered the default. The lack of ‘normal’ characteristics is culturally more important than what characteristics exist in their place.

The thing that makes breaking that habit so hard is that other people listen from the original viewpoint. I can say that I’m a lesbian because I’m attracted to girls, but the confirmation, the feedback, I get from that is “So, you’re not attracted to men?” 

Border wars confuse the heck out of me because I don’t understand why two minority groups would want to pick on each other rather than work together against a hostile majority.  The trans-hate coming from the gay community baffles me.  The anger and misunderstanding between gays and bisexuals seems nonsensical.  And every time I see something about gay people hating on asexuals, a part of me wonders how much of that actually goes on, because I don’t know why anyone being persecuted for sexual identity choices could turn around and pick on another group.

There are few enough poly people that all of us should be presenting a united front.  I’ll put aside my personal feelings about religion to stand with Mormon polygamists (not the child-abusing kind, but families like the one from the NPR show a while back) if they’ll back up my right to love more than one lady at a time.  I’ll fight for swingers’ legal rights if they recognize mine.  It’s the only logical way to proceed.

There’s a part in Stone Butch Blues where the narrator freaks out because a couple of butch friends of hers have become lovers.  She can’t rationalize this deviation from her perception of “normal” lesbianism, just like mainstream America can’t rationalize her deviation from “normal” heterosexuality.  She later comes to the realization that it doesn’t matter whether she’s comfortable with someone’s sexuality - what matters is that they have the right to it, no matter the subtle nuances.  

I’ve always felt that way.  I figure, as long as what you’re doing doesn’t hurt anyone, and as long as it’s between consenting adults, there’s no problem with it.  I might not like it, myself, but that doesn’t give me the right to demean someone for it.  

This mindset doesn’t really extend to myself, though, I don’t think.  I think I cling to labels for security.  I’ve always been extremely self-conscious, so giving myself a label - lesbian, nerd, Whovian - gives me an excuse for being weird or different.  I like to say now that I use the term ‘lesbian’ to describe my sexuality because it’s convenient.  From the outside that’s exactly what I am, and it makes it easier for new people to get to know me.  But the truth is a lot more complex than that, I think, and I’m not sure I’ll ever be satisfied with a single word for it.  Border wars make it more difficult to be in that middle-ground, but at the same time it gives you perspective.  It makes you kind of like Switzerland in whatever debate happens to be going on. 

That’s a really interesting point Wolfie raised about how we culturally define things as differing from a base assumption. I hadn’t thought about it that way. It feels like a pretty huge concept, and a bit hard to hang on to just because if you take it to heart it’s going to make you reexamine the way you talk about almost everything. I look forward to chewing it over. :D

As for what Meg said about border wars between minority groups - I wonder if that’s because when you can identify someone whose orientation is ‘less legitimate’ than yours, it helps to legitimise your own? A way of trying to almost side with the straight ‘majority’ by placing yourself closer to them on a spectrum of legitimacy? Probably not a conscious choice people would be making, certainly, but that’s what it looks like from my sociology-eyes. When a minority group can identify a new minority group that’s coming along to challenge paradigms, and then shift the persecution and extreme judgement onto the new group, it’s almost like the first group can feel like they’re higher up on the hierarchy. More secure in their position in society? It’s like placing every orientation or label or relationship practice on a ladder, and as long as you’re not the one on the bottom at least you can sort of console yourself that you’re not getting stepped on by /everyone/ like the perceived bottom rung is.

But I agree, it’s quite silly. While some members of minority groups might see it that way, and be vehement about drawing their borders and perpetuating their prejudices, the majority still sees everyone deviating from it in any way as a blanket minority. I’d argue that when someone from the majority who hasn’t examined their own privilege thinks about minorities, they think about them mostly in these categories: not-white, not-straight, not-cisgendered. (I’d add not-man here too, because I still think women are perceived, and sometimes perceive themselves, as a minority, but that’s a WHOLE other discussion.)

I’ve sort of been breaking the lesbian label in over the last few months, and it still feels a bit awkward to use it just because it’s so new. Actually the time I reference it the most is with the married gay couple in my DnD group. It’s like an affectionate handshake or pat on the back, almost. One of them will make a joke about my bosoms and I’ll say something like “honey, you do know you’re gay, right?” And it goes the other way as well, where I’ll make a joke and one of them will say something about flannel or KD Lang. It feels like an affirmation in that context. A nod from across the room from someone in the same club, almost. It’s nice.

I guess that’s what labels are best for: for uniting people, making it easier for them to relate and connect. It’s important that having labels and vocabulary increases visibility as well, making it harder for people who don’t want to challenge their assumptions about the world to ignore people who /do/. It’s sad that something that could be so unifying can also end up being so divisive. But I understand why, I think. When it comes to things like gender and sexual orientation, people are generally working from an extremely personal, incredibly potent set of beliefs and assumptions about themselves and the world around them. It’s bound to be awkward and sometimes aggressive when they clash with someone else’s tightly held beliefs.

I just want to add that this border wars thing is why I am irrationally irritated by people who use/argue loudly in favor of the word ‘pansexual’—not because it isn’t a perfectly good word to use, I think it does describe the idea quite accurately, but because it is almost always accompanied by an invalidation of the previously perfectly adequate idea of bisexual. “Pansexual is about being open to any person, bisexual just means you want to have sex with men and women both.” I don’t think anyone let the bisexual community in on this sudden re-definition of what I always understood to mean “open to relationships regardless of the physical sex and/or gender identity of a person.”

You don’t have to put down one pre-existing identity just to stake some territory for your newly-named one. We can, in fact, overlap and share—as we are all bound to do. Let’s all try to remember we’re in this together.