Youth Radio - Topic: polyamory

Profiles In Polyamory [Part II]

noah — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:35:43 -0500

[This week's feature spotlight focuses on LGBT issues.]

Part 2 of 2

Emerging in the most radical wings of the gay rights movement right now is a movement called Beyond Marriage. Originally proposed by Joseph DeFilippis, Executive Director of the New York-based Queers for Economic Justice, the movement urges the LGBT community to think beyond the conventional nuclear family model.

This means allowing state-recognized partnerships not just for gay and poly couples, but also for best friends, siblings in non-conjugal relationships and caregivers as well.

DeFilippis is clear to point out that the Beyond Marriage movement is not about polyamory. "I want to be clear that this is not about pushing for polyamorous relationships per se. This is about separating church and state from the recognition of family and that the state has no business in determining what makes a valid family.”

****
"The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread."
-Mother Teresa

Sarah slurps vegetable soup, her voice nasal and her normal surplus of energy depleted. Today, the doctor told her she has mono.

"I'm jokingly blaming it on this girl I made out with who was an awful kisser, because I think it must have something to do with her. Other than that, I haven't kissed anybody but Caitlin in a long time."

Mono is just the latest drop in Sarah's roller coaster life. The past month alone her laptop was stolen by the drug dealer living downstairs. She made up her mind to move out after both her roommates told her not to call the cops, since one had an arrest warrant out, and the other an ounce of drugs in her room.

Around the same time that Sarah was crashing on her new lovers's couches, Nicolette, her on-again-off-again girlfriend, broke up with her. [We met Nicolette in Part One.]

Sarah moved on from the break-up at record speed, admittedly distracted by the security of being desired by multiple other partners. Plus, she was falling in love.

Sarah still considers herself poly but has been seeing the girl she’s fallen hardest for, Caitlin, almost exclusively. The one exception to her de-facto monogamy was the incident with the bad kisser. She and Nicolette still talk about twice a week and remain friends--more or less.

"I would have sex with Nicolette again, but I don't think she's very supportive of who I am. I think Caitlin really supports my indecisive nature whereas I think that really stresses Nicolette out. That's too bad because that's not something I'm going to give up for somebody."

Sarah is graduating this semester with an MFA in acting, and wants to try her luck getting work in New York City. Still, she realizes she's going to have to get a job on the side for steady cash and health care. Now that her parents are cutting her off and she's sicker than she's been since she can remember, being insured is her greatest stress of all.

For Sarah, it's in situations like these that make being polyamorous a political statement.

"As a queer community I think we have this ability, this opportunity, to pursue something outside of monogamy and try to re-define relationships. I think we've wasted a lot of time focusing on gay marriage so much, where we could have been fighting for universal health care and the issues that would take the importance away from marriage. Because I think we still privilege a couple over a single person a lot." Sarah slurps, her elbow bent awkwardly out to the side like a small child. "If we all had health care, we wouldn't have to get married."

*****

Everyone imagines a different fairytale ending for themselves. The common thread, however, seems to be in the wish to live happily ever after. For some of us, that ever after will mean marriage. For others it will mean an ending free from attachment.

For Nicolette and Sarah, there will be an abundance of obstacles along the way, including each other, on the path to that ending.

LGBT Spotlight Week

Monday- State of the Unions
Tuesday- Profiles in Polyamory [Part I] : a new generation of gay youth emerges, and challenges the notion of "normal".
Wednesday- The High Cost of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell": a harrowing story of abuse in the military.
Thursday- Profiles in Polyamory [Part II]
Monday June 29th- Discharged But Not Discouraged; an Interview with Anthony Woods, Congressional Candidate and Gay Vet

Profiles In Polyamory [Part I]

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:06:16 -0500

[This week's feature spotlight focuses on LGBT issues.]
   A new generation of gay youth is emerging; a generation coming of age not during the Stonewall Riots or Harvey Milk's assassination, but instead in a world where Will and Grace reruns and news of Prop 8's passage air on the same evening. It is a generation filled with contradictions and young people looking for new models of what’s considered normal.
   One such alternative is known as polyamory, and although it is defined in many different ways, it has one basic principle: that you can be in love and in a relationship with more than one person at once. Although poly and gay rights activists will be quick to tell you their causes are separate, their movements are simultaneously interconnected and at odds with one another.
   This is a profile of two young women (whose last names we have omited to leave them some semblance of privacy) who are trying to mitigate those two worlds.
   "Jealousy is all the fun you think they had." -Erica Jong
   "I keep asking myself: was it poly that ruined it? Was it the distance? What was it that ruined this relationship?"
   Nicolette still isn’t sure. She made the decision to break up with Sarah a couple months after they had agreed to become polyamorous in order to maintain their bi-coastal relationship.
   Sarah and Nicolette met in high school before Sarah was even out. An on-again-off again couple of six years, they've been known to switch between declarations of love and hate depending on the week. After an almost two year hiatus, Sarah moved to Portland to be with Nicolette over the summer. Living together for the first time, the intensity of their relationship reached levels they hadn't seen since they were sixteen.
   "That summer we focused on each other in way most new couples would", Nicolette remembers. "Because it had been so long, it felt like Sarah was a whole new person. We were like newlyweds."
   When Sarah had to go back to New York, polyamory seemed like the best way to keep their relationship going, knowing they wouldn't live in the same city again potentially for years. Sarah had been slow to come around to the idea of opening up their relationship, which made it all the more shocking for Nicolette when Sarah was the one who started dating other people first.
   "I think in my mind's ideal imagination, I hadn't visualized that at great length. At first it was great to hear about the new people Sarah was seeing because I got to see her giddy in a way that gets lost in a long term relationship. It was a vicarious thrill. But then you realize there's only so much you can know about this person while living in a different state. You realize it's not something you're ever going to be involved in."
   When Sarah started getting serious with one girl in particular, Nicolette said it was the feeling of being left out that got to her more than anything else.
   "Honestly, I was like you're not gonna have time to talk tonight? Great! Now I have three hours to myself! That to me really was a relief. But then I started thinking ‘Wait, they’re going to have the memory of Coney Island and I’m not?’ And that made me crazy...Soon, I realized I didn't really want to know what was going on between them and was having a lot of trouble talking to Sarah. I realized we were growing apart."
   Shortly thereafter, Nicolette broke up with Sarah. Still, Nicolette believes in polyamory as a lifestyle, a choice she feels has put her at odds with a lot of the lesbian community.
   "A lot of gay men have to fight for their right to be monogamous and likewise a lot of women have to fight for their right to have non-monogamous relationships. By nature of being poly I feel like I'm instantly assumed to be bisexual, just because it’s so un-lesbian."
   Nicolette does in fact sleep with men as well, but she identifies as lesbian, since when she's with men she rarely forms emotional attachments. Maybe because of this sexual fluidity, Nicolette holds the controversial belief that one's sexual lifestyle and orientation is a choice.
   "I might be able to be straight if it was the right person, but in all likelihood I’ll be gay, and part of that is that I like having a non-normative lifestyle. In the same respect, I would like to choose not to be a compulsory monogamist. I think one's love-style is a choice, but I think that choice for many people is made out of fear and jealousy. Poly, if I can live through it (and I may kill myself trying) seems like the best way to have a giving, understanding relationship, not a relationship based on jealousy or possessiveness."
LGBT Spotlight Week Monday- State of the Unions
Tuesday- Profiles in Polyamory [Part I] : a new generation of gay youth emerges, and challenges the notion of "normal".
Wednesday- The High Cost of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell": a harrowing story of abuse in the military.
Thursday- Gay Music Icons and Profiles in Polyamory [Part II]
Friday- An Interview with Anthony Woods, Congressional Candidate and Gay Vet

LGBT Pride Week

noah — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:45:46 -0500

In honor of the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, which are being commemorated this coming Sunday, Youth Radio is featuring a week of original reporting on the LGBT community, gay rights, and other issues of import to queer youth.

The stories range from the political to the very personal.

Monday: State of the Unions- a review of the state of Gay Marriage rights in California and the rest of the United States.

Tuesday: Profiles in Polyamory Part I- a new generation of gay youth emerges, and challeneges the notion of "normal".

Wednesday: Don't Ask Don't Tell- an extremely moving exclusive interview with Joseph Christopher Rocha, a 23 year old gay man who served in the Middle East and left the military because of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. An investigation into his brigade’s leadership was mysteriously dropped after reaching the highest military court.

An excerpt from his interview gives you an idea of the power of his story:

“Having my military leadership have me on my knees simulating oral sex with other men on video tape-- telling me I needed to be more believable, act more queer and make the sounds and gestures more realistic-- I can’t describe what that was like. I went home at the end of 14 to16 hour days and I didn’t know where I was, how it had happened, how I had ended up at that point in my life.”

Thursday: the second part of Profiles in Polyamory.

Monday June 29th: an interview with Anthony Woods the gay, African-American Iraq veteran who is running for Congress.

Bonus from last week: 'The Gays of Our Lives" by Anthony Waters:

In 6th grade, there was only one kid as bad off as I was—my friend Bobby. We were on the playground when he said, “I have something to tell you. Please don’t stop being my friend.” He told me he was gay. Me too, Bobby, me too.