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genderjumperThis put me on a tear on Bsky today: https://lauriepenny.substack.com/p/straight-men-are-now-banned-from. It's so good!
In 2011, I met up with a former mentor, an older cisgay who told me he didn't think straight people should do nonmonogamy. I was indignant, but the only defenses I could offer were about how *I* was doing it right. I kinda agreed about straight men, I just hadn't fully removed the label from myself.
I've known a lot of people who found nonmonogamy after queerness, but I am a rare harbinger whose queerness emerged through nonmonogamy. I'm not saying I always got it right or I never did toxic things, but I always recoiled from them and endeavored to do better. I refused to not be held to account and some of the straightest partners I had at the time became indignant that it was so important to me, that I stayed friends or partners with flawed individuals instead of throwing them away. That I believed in changing myself rather than blaming others and scorching where they trod.
In my master's thesis on caregivers, I cited J. Jack Halberstam's IN A QUEER TIME AND PLACE and embraced his framing that existing outside of normative, consumer-oriented procreation was just as queer as any intimate relationship. It's one's relationship with power that determines queerness.
Straights who refuse to unpack the power dynamics in their relationships will always falter at polyamory or any other nonmonogamous model. And those who do not refuse seem to, over time, figure out we are not so straight after all.
If you're worried that I'm conflating unalike concepts, I'll just say it for you: this is the vision of queerness that scares right-wingers most. Behind their pearl-clutching over children and triggers of disgust, they don't want a complex, dynamic world because they can't control it.
It's not even about profit: diverse human experiences lead to better products and get closer to perpetual growth than any top-down hierarchy every could. There is data on this.
Hierarchies exist because someone wants to outsource difficult decisions & others are eager to assert preference as truth.
The corporate class want us monogamous & cheating because it fosters loneliness & inarticulate feelings that can be channeled into impulse buying & status protection on a macro scale. Too busy to care.
The queer class just wants to exist and care for each other & figure things out on a micro scale.
Only one of these visions includes room to care about how our actions affect others beyond our bosses' bottom lines. But it will require constant, recurring introspection until the infrastructure of choice (intimacy, purchase, politics, engagement) makes room for anything else.
Thanks Laurie Penny for saying what needed to be said: Relationships are always political, & people who are comfortable with their social power make polyamory worse for the rest of us.
Let's save all our sexual and romantic liberation for those whose practice includes liberating others.
In 2011, I met up with a former mentor, an older cisgay who told me he didn't think straight people should do nonmonogamy. I was indignant, but the only defenses I could offer were about how *I* was doing it right. I kinda agreed about straight men, I just hadn't fully removed the label from myself.
I've known a lot of people who found nonmonogamy after queerness, but I am a rare harbinger whose queerness emerged through nonmonogamy. I'm not saying I always got it right or I never did toxic things, but I always recoiled from them and endeavored to do better. I refused to not be held to account and some of the straightest partners I had at the time became indignant that it was so important to me, that I stayed friends or partners with flawed individuals instead of throwing them away. That I believed in changing myself rather than blaming others and scorching where they trod.
In my master's thesis on caregivers, I cited J. Jack Halberstam's IN A QUEER TIME AND PLACE and embraced his framing that existing outside of normative, consumer-oriented procreation was just as queer as any intimate relationship. It's one's relationship with power that determines queerness.
Straights who refuse to unpack the power dynamics in their relationships will always falter at polyamory or any other nonmonogamous model. And those who do not refuse seem to, over time, figure out we are not so straight after all.
If you're worried that I'm conflating unalike concepts, I'll just say it for you: this is the vision of queerness that scares right-wingers most. Behind their pearl-clutching over children and triggers of disgust, they don't want a complex, dynamic world because they can't control it.
It's not even about profit: diverse human experiences lead to better products and get closer to perpetual growth than any top-down hierarchy every could. There is data on this.
Hierarchies exist because someone wants to outsource difficult decisions & others are eager to assert preference as truth.
The corporate class want us monogamous & cheating because it fosters loneliness & inarticulate feelings that can be channeled into impulse buying & status protection on a macro scale. Too busy to care.
The queer class just wants to exist and care for each other & figure things out on a micro scale.
Only one of these visions includes room to care about how our actions affect others beyond our bosses' bottom lines. But it will require constant, recurring introspection until the infrastructure of choice (intimacy, purchase, politics, engagement) makes room for anything else.
Thanks Laurie Penny for saying what needed to be said: Relationships are always political, & people who are comfortable with their social power make polyamory worse for the rest of us.
Let's save all our sexual and romantic liberation for those whose practice includes liberating others.
Fuck yes
Date: 2026-04-15 08:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-04-15 09:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-04-16 03:34 am (UTC)Which is hugely ironic because I’m only monogamous because Jay is, and obviously (in my mind) you can’t have one monogamous partner. Even if only one of you is seeing someone else, you both have to agree to be in a poly relationship, and not because you’ve been pressured into it by a cishet man’s determination to run a relationship for his sole pleasure because society tells him that’s how they work.
It’s interesting to see you refer back to your masters thesis. because in my unfinished doctorate, I was using queer theory to look at weirdness and “queerness”, and how challenging societal expectations, or having spaces where those normal societal expectations did not apply (girls’ boarding school stories of the 1920s-60s in my case), gave room for queer people to flourish in all sorts of flavours, as it were. (A space which was women-centric and had women in all positions of power and importance, and in which men were only tangentially mentioned as potential marriage candidates, or sometimes teachers of the Arts, was truly unusual in the 1930s, for example, turning expectations on their head.)
It was through looking at queerness as being related to challenging the status quo and being weird and doing things differently, as well as the LGBTQ+ element that I, as a bi person, started describing my sexuality as queer. My gender identity started as genderqueer, and I’d still use that term, though autigender is perhaps closer and I’m leaning towards that these days.
Meta-communication
Date: 2026-04-16 06:22 am (UTC)Thank you for affirming response!
Date: 2026-04-16 06:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-04-16 06:24 am (UTC)Yes to all of this
Date: 2026-04-16 06:30 am (UTC)I suspect I would love reading your doctorate writings!
I know so many "straight" (cis, hetero, and/or monogamous) couples who are queer AF because they exhume power dynamics and apply themselves to growing together and I cherish their presence in the world.
I identify as genderfluid, genderqueer, and neuroqueer, though admittedly "neuroqueer" has a complicated history and I only like it because I find it more lyrical than "autigender".