Our understanding of gender, sexuality, and relationships is always evolving. A friend recently shared a Facebook memory featuring the Attraction Layer Cake (https://cake.avris.it/) and we remarked that it is now dated, but neither of us knew of anything that’s been created since. So I made my own graphic, differentiating between different types of attraction to […]
“It’s Just a Bunch of Hocus Pocus!” Queer Camp and the 25th Anniversary of Hocus Pocus
I had the pleasure of seeing Hocus Pocus on the big screen this year as a part of its 25th anniversary celebration. It continues to hold its place as one of my favorite Halloween films, and also one of my favorite 90s feminist representations of witches, where it joins Practical Magic and Willow from Buffy […]
Trauma and the Erotic
cw: sexual abuse, emotional abuse I have this growing realization of this thing that I have to deal with at some point. It’s something I’ve been putting off dealing with for a long time. But you can’t contain trauma; it seeps through the cracks of any container you try to put it in. The spillover […]
What is Love?
Sometimes I feel like English breaks down for me and people are speaking a foreign language. Had dinner with a friend who is going through a break up. They said, of their now ex-partner, something to the effect of, “I love this person, but I am not in love with them. I mean, I care about them.” […]
Relationship Anarchy Means Not Knowing How Many Partners You Have
In the four months since my most recent break up, I’ve done massive amounts of personal growth. When I first came to poly, it was because I fell in love with a friend who was already in a long-distance polyamorous relationship. I did a lot of work to learn about poly to be with her […]
Conflict Resolution in Poly
Sometimes if a relationship implodes, you finally learn to push past your defense mechanisms in other relationships to stop the pattern in its track. Growing up in an emotionally abusive family, I have always been conflict avoidant. My sister and I would take turns keeping the peace, and my role as peacekeeper followed me into […]
What Does It Mean to be Open?
I’ve been thinking a lot about polyamory lately, and how I fit into it. I’ve been very interested in the idea of queer intimacy since I was introduced to it in graduate school. The idea that there are forms of intimacy which do not make sense to or in a capitalist heteropatriarchy. The ways which […]
What do you need to bloom?
I’ve had a longstanding interest in gender and sexuality, and the proliferation of new terms to describe gender and sexual orientation I think is a wonderful thing. I first heard the term demisexuality a few years ago on-line, as someone who does not feel sexual attraction without the presence of an emotional bond. The definition resonated […]
What Poly Means to Me
The past few weeks have me thinking a lot about what I want out of relationships, and what I want out of polyamory itself. I have considered myself solo poly because I don’t want to be married or have children or a joint bank account. I’ve also had a lot of bad roommate situations over […]
Uterine Update
I feel like I should have been numbering these. I’ve been dealing with some personal stress, so by the time I remembered to make my tea, it was mid-week before I anticipated starting my cycle. I started bleeding four days earlier than anticipated. Either it is due to said stress, or my body is reverting […]