I've spoken about this soooo many times before but once again studies have come out about indigenous precolonial lifeways within the umbrella of polyamory and ppl keep 'discovering' that these relationships were largely built on mutual responsibility and structure and not just 'wow queer sex'
And it makes me think about how we KNOW that colonizers 'studying' precolonial societies looked at people who weren't weighed down by religious shame or wearing 4+ layers of clothing in hot environments and projected their repressed sexuality onto them.
We KNOW that where sexualities existed, these freak ass euros were obsessive about it and hardly had concepts of anything more subtle or nuanced happening outside of it (these are the same people who saw centuries-old food forests as 'untouched land' so like...par for the course)
And knowing that I REALLY think people- especially white LGBTQ fols-- need to step back bc I keep seeing y'all look at cultural relationship patterns beyond and from before your contemporary culture and all you draw from it is an individualistic liberty of identity. And not to shame but that's the big fucking shadow torturing the community IMO. Like others have said, being gay or trans or whatever doesn't actually absolve you of being part of a contemporary colonial culture, that takes actual work to examine and shift from.
I'm tired of how y'all cherry pick that such and such African tribes had Woman Husbands with multiple wives or that such and such Polynesian culture had open relationships and thats fucking ALL YOU FUCKING TAKE. It's really hard not to get mad. Not because 'boo you're wrong' but that ONCE AGAIN Y'ALL SEE WHAT YOU WANT AND NOTHING MORE.
This was also one of my issues when a few years back everyone wanted to rant and rave about how having free sex and/or multiple partners was gonna revolutionize society.
This is very much like when privileged white ppl in the 60s-70s, exhausted by war, were very ready to adopt cheapened eastern philosophies and their conceptualization around 'transformative' love and sex was just like...orgies and irresponsibility.
Anyway point being that in many cases, wherever you find societies that were based on these various forms of plural relationship that also very very much included shared-responsibility/economic connection driven relationships. Someone's 'wife' could very well have been a co-mother or business partner and NOT her lover. Many times.
To go back to what I was talking about before, I'm fucking hitting snooze on the shit y'all think is so revolutionary until it stops being about you and your fucking desires. Personal wants, needs and desires are important to tend to but it's the BARE FUCKING MINIMUM of building a society.
Please understand that just because you KNOW that your current culture is hyperindividualistic and maybe even hypersexualised doesn't mean you actually have worked out the many ways that's affecting your perspective. It's like with decolonial thought-- you don't just get to say "I've decolonized" without doing years of ongoing fucking work.
I've said it before but a lot of the LGBT/Alt sexuality scene is bound by a very limiting perspective where all you can see or conceptualize is an identity that is self-referential. All you can really center is the pendulum swing away from the shitty right wing sex negativity of your forebears. And I get it too bc when you're not allowed to be who you are from young, you end up having to go through that phase when you're older. But this is why we have ppl in their 20s & 30s and beyond who have very little in the way of community mindset and really only see being 'queer' as a space to self validate sexual exploration and 'I get to do what I want!' personal expression.
Again, not bad, but very very elementary and we're at a point in society where we DESPERATELY need people to value community structure over just like...moving through life thinking that being able to fuck whomever is attractive to you is wow so important.
germansingergirl
theartofmadeline
prguitarman
jacobvanloon
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