Category: Intersectional Identity

While there are several great resources created about the practice of ethical non-monogamy or polyamory (Polywise, by Jessica Fern & David Coolie, Multiamory, hosted by the quirky trio Emily, Dedecker & Jase) there is no one-size-fits-all guide for enacting this lifestyle. I personally consider polyamory to be an orientation, just like being bisexual, demisexual, gay. Similar to these other orientations, how any givens person’s relationships fall into a structure will be unique and change over the course of their lifespan. Sometimes the structure will highlight these orientation and there are times where it might be an invisible identity purposely or situationally.

Though it is becoming more commonplace, it can be an intimidating journey to take the step to making the choice to be poly. In fact, there is no ONE step to doing so. There’s the decision that it is something you’d like to pursue and there are several choices along the way, perhaps that never really end, about how this particular identity will continuously unfold within your relationships. This can and often includes friendships as well. There’s a great book by Rhaina Cohen called The Other Significant Others, that describes some unique relationship structures that don’t include sex as a component.

Sex is only one aspect of the world of polyamory. It’s also about challenging relationship structures that we are socialized to believe are necessary in order to ‘succeed’. Once you embrace the identity, there are a world of possibilities. Sometimes this is an exciting prospect and at times it can be very intimidating. How do we not only communicate, but identify our wants and needs well enough to be able to articulate what they are to others? How do we remain regulated in emotionally charged situations in order to ask for what we need in order to feel safe?

The reason that several people in the polyamory community say they don’t date ‘newbies’ is that figuring out how to answer some of these questions, let alone having answers, is a tumultuous process. Having each gone through it themselves, they are seasoned and would like a more peaceful and stable poly existence. Understandable! Being a newbie is like going back to teenage-dom in many ways: exciting yet volatile.

Much of what I’m sharing is from a combination of sources: personal experience, resources, and conversations with other folks. As I said at the beginning, there’s no ‘perfect’ poly people to copy. There are tools, communities, and therapists that can help guide us at sticky points in our journey. But ultimately we are curating our own concept of relationships, romance and sex and tailoring them to our self in that particular point in life. It is my desire that we give ourselves as much compassion as possible in this process. Through the highs and lows of finding what is right for you, regardless of who are what might feel influential, you are not alone.

Photo by Eric Prouzet on Unsplash

I wanted to write about this topic because in the past couple of years I realized that chronic illness can be so invisible, that we might not even be aware of our own experience of it. According to a collective of health organizations, at least 1 in 5 people live with chronic illness on a global scale. Feel free to look up the figures for your area, it might surprise you.

There are many specific biases I used to hold about the experience of CI including that it would be somehow obvious to me if someone carried this identity and that folks with CI were fairly rare. It wasn’t until a couple years ago when I was applying for a job that my particular illness was listed on a job application under a list of chronic illnesses. The hope is that by informing HR, one may be able to manage to have some accommodations to continue to do their work when flair ups occur. I did get the job, but it became too complicated to properly submit all the paperwork and I gave up. This experience highlights how the systems and institutions that define them can sometimes heavily influence our own perception of ourselves.

Flair ups! Most CIs have better and worse periods of experiencing their illness from day to day and month to month. There are times when I am able to achieve more and times where I have to force myself to rest and negotiate with the prickly critic inside of me. (Kristen Neff has been an enormous help for this: https://self-compassion.org/self-compassion-practices/) There are also times where I’m better able, and more motivated, to manage my symptoms effectively and times where I cannot find a shred of ambition to engage with my CI.

My particular story about my CI is that is the result of some specific trauma that occurred during my formative years. Identifying this, for me, has been helpful but not led to the resolution of my illness. Whether a complete resolution possible, I am not certain and I live in faith that I am where I am supposed to be. Others may have a completely different story about their own CI; many of us have a story of some kind. It helps us cope, make sense of the world, and can potentially the habit of spiralling about the randomness of it all. It can also fuel it though! What’s your story?

Photo by CDC on Unsplash

Speaking from experience, race can be a challenging and uncomfortable topic for a white person such as myself. It can also be healing, hilarious and in some cases absolutely necessary. So, how do we best go about having these conversation and who do we have them with?

First, I have come to understand that it’s important to center my own identity when having a conversation about race. As I mentioned before, I am a white person. Despite my Portuguese ancestors having olive skin, in the late 1800s they were classified as ‘white’ by the US government. Thus, they were given all the institutional privileges that came with this binary classification, but did not necessarily experience the social privileges that come with appearing white. These came later as my Portuguese ancestors mixed with my British and Irish ones.

For all purposes, I grew up white on colonized land, and was almost completely ignorant of my privilege. I say almost because growing up in the most recently colonized state, there was plenty of fresh (and justified) anger at they ways in which folks not native to the islands were continuing to dominate and extinguish the local culture. I didn’t understand what was occurring at the time, but as an adult I am taking a more active role in my education. Today, Japanese and Portuguese culture are so integral to the islands that it is difficult to separate them.

I thought about race very fearfully for a long time. I remembered the confusing resentment of community members growing up and I wondered when I would be discovered as a…bad person. During my masters program I learned that counseling, just like most of the systems we exist within, is culturally insensitive. Once aware of my own race, I experienced some debilitating guilt for being white. Frozen in fear, I wanted a single answer for how I could continue being, what I had hoped I had been: an ethical citizen of the world.

Sorry to break the bad news (other whities), there is no Answer. Mostly I have had to experience life, put myself in situations where I’m the minority race, talk to others, and be uncomfortable in order to gain a better understanding of first my own race and second a bit of context about how others may or may not experience theirs. More recently, I have entered a legal partnership with a black person. Through the evolution and safety of our relationship, I have had so many interesting, funny, and painful conversations as well as private thoughts about the experience of being in a multi-racial connection.

The world gains a new sheen when we get the opportunity to be close enough to someone else to experience it through their eyes. It can be both beautiful and horrible. The political and the personal are impacted. White family members who are outspoken about American politics, suddenly become more intentional about what they say. Or they just shift their fear onto another minority group.

My desire is to never stop having uncomfortable conversations when they are appropriate, to continue exercising my mind in order to be a mindful citizen of the world, and to do my part in creating an accessible mental health system.

Image provided by Vonecia Carswell through http://www.unsplash.com

For most of my life I have identified as a she, dressed like a she, behaved as I felt a she would for better or for worse. When I entered the world of practicing counseling as volunteer in 2018, a peer of mine identified as non-binary. They were likely not the first person I met that identified as enby, but they were the most vocal. Initially I felt uncomfortable in response to their loud declarations of how their gender worked. As time went on, we became close friends, and I learned a lot about myself and about the concept of gender in the process.

A few years later, on a balmy pandemic afternoon, I borrowed the aforementioned friend’s clippers and shaved my head. It was probably the most gender-challenging change to my appearance I had engaged in at the time. It was also something I had thought about doing for a long time, I had very short hair in the past, but I wasn’t able to find the courage to go through with it. It felt freeing, and since I wasn’t around many people at the time, in particular family, I didn’t have to deal with the challenges and arduous explanations that I might have felt were required of me.

It wasn’t until a few years later and I moved to New York City, that I was ready to begin using the pronouns they/them in addition to she/her. Part of what supported me in this transition was moving into a sex positive household in Brooklyn. In this environment everyone was encouraged to explore and present however they could see fit in the moment. Roommates and guests walked around in complete drag, totally nude or in some of the hottest lingerie I’ve ever seen up close.

We had ongoing events which provided opportunities to present oneself as varying identities. After sampling some lingerie for myself, I realized it wasn’t quite what I was after and I started scouring thrift shops for something more masculine. I found a sport coat and a fedora and wore them to a New Years Eve party. I loved the way the coat felt like it was hugging me and I’ve always been fond of a nice hat and it just felt right to me. I also was one of the warmer partygoers 😛

What I learned from these experiences is that gender is a unique journey for each of us. I’ve caught flack at times for not being entirely enby and I also notice that there are many of us that chose to fall in different places on the spectrum between she and they and he. There are many invisible intersex folks who have grievously not only been labeled as a binary gender, but also physically altered with painful surgeries in order to ‘affirm’ their place in society. I mourn deeply for these folks.

I continue to experiment with my gender. Every date I go on is an opportunity to decide what kind of flirty person I feel like that day. Each trip to the thrift store isn’t bound as much by the binary sections of clothing organization, but what sizes are available that day. It is my desire to never stop exploring because gender is also not just about presentation, but about how I show up as a human being.

All the politeness and the cattiness that I have participated in as someone socialized female has got to end. It was that very politeness that made me uncomfortable when my dear friend advocated for their own identity. At that time, I was afraid of what might happen if I took up that much space.

As I said earlier, each of us has our own unique tale of gender. So what’s yours?