Month: June 2016

Challenging Asexual Definitions of Sexuality

I’m writing this post for my readers who are NOT asexual, demisexual, gray-sexual, aromantic, demiromantic, or gray-romantic. This post is also probably not for anyone who identifies as queer or trans. This is a post for romantic-sexual people who don’t buy into asexual/aromantic identity discourse and who don’t buy into queer theory either. Which is to say, this post is for the vast majority of human beings alive on this earth.

If you’re on the “asexual spectrum” or “aromantic spectrum,” there’s a very good chance that this post will piss you off. I don’t care if it does because I think what I’m about to say needs to be said. And despite the fact that this post is about you, it’s not for you—because I know most of you are not willing to hear or think about what I’m going to say. I’m not here to change you or convince you of anything.

If I’m right, what I’m going to explain in this post is what allo* people have been trying to tell asexuals (and demisexuals and gray-asexuals) for as long as I’ve been active in the online asexual community. It’s the reason that some allo* people are really angry and annoyed and offended by asexual discourse and asexual-spectrum identities, why they don’t respect those identities, and why they don’t see those identities as legitimate. So I don’t expect the following to be news to allo* people who read it, but hopefully, I’ll do a good job of articulating what they’ve been trying to get across all this time.

Questioning the Asexual+Aromantic Community’s Human Sexuality Model

There are two different ways that we can define the word “asexual.” They are as follows:

Asexual – not sexually attracted to anyone
Asexual – not attracted to either sex

The asexual and aromantic communities currently use the first definition, and this is significant because it ultimately leads to the rest of the asexual community’s model of sexuality.

If “asexual” means “not sexually attracted to anyone,” that leaves romantic attraction unaccounted for, and thus, the idea of romantic orientations was born. We have hetero-, homo-, bi-, and aromantic asexuals because we defined “asexual” as “not sexually attracted to anyone” and up to 75% of self-identifying asexuals still feel romantic attraction and desire romantic relationships. Because these romantic asexuals started using romantic identity labels, it logically forced those of us who didn’t want any kind of romantic relationship and did not feel romantic toward others to claim our own additional label: aromantic.

The popular definition of the word “asexual” just so happens to coincide with the model of sexuality currently popular among queer-identified and trans individuals: claiming that the “sexual” in heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual refers to the kind of attraction felt and not to the biological sex one is attracted to. QT people insist that romantic and sexual attraction are based on gender identity alone, that biological sex has nothing to do with a person’s sexual orientation, and linguistically, this replicates the same meaning of the word “asexual” for all the other sexual identity words.

Heterosexual – sexually attracted to the opposite gender
Homosexual – sexually attracted to the same gender
Bisexual – sexually attracted to two genders
Bonus that only exists in this model: pansexual – sexually attracted to all genders

So the asexual community’s definition of “asexual” complements the QT community’s model of sexuality. It is not the original model by which humans understood sexuality. In fact, it’s extremely new. The original model and the one that most of the world still understands their sexuality by, is based on biological sex and not gender identity.

Heterosexual – attracted to the opposite sex
Homosexual – attracted to the same sex
Bisexual – attracted to both sexes

In fact, the words themselves are linguistically constructed according to these definitions. Breaking them down into their component parts and tracing the etymology, this is what you find:

hetero – from Greek heteros meaning the other (of two), another, different; second; other than usual.

homo – from the Greek ‘homos’ meaning ‘same’

sex – 14c., “males or females collectively,” from Latin sexus “a sex, state of being either male or female, gender,” of uncertain origin. Meaning “quality of being male or female” first recorded 1520s. Meaning “genitalia” is attested from 1938.

ual – a variation of the suffix “-al” that means relating to, process of, or an action.

The etymology of the combined parts “sexual” is the same: 1650s, “of or pertaining to the fact of being male or female,” from Late Latin sexualis “relating to sex,” from Latin sexus (see sex (n.)).

The point being that the “sex” in sexual orientation words never referred to “sexual attraction” but to the sex one was attracted to. The attraction being romantic and/or sexual was implicit, which is logical: why would you need a specific term to describe being nonsexually and nonromantically “attracted” to males or females or both? Attraction is generally understood to be romantic and sexual, whereas preferring to be friendly or to socialize with males or females or both is based on factors other than involuntary attraction.

If we use this model of sexuality, it naturally and inevitably follows that “asexual” means “not attracted to either sex.” If “asexual” means “not attracted to either sex,” then the only people who can call themselves “asexual” are people like me, who don’t feel romantic or sexual attraction or desire for partnered romance/sex. Using that definition of “asexual,” the term “aromantic” becomes unnecessary.

No more hetero-, homo-, and bi-romantic asexuals. Likewise, no more aromantic heterosexuals, homosexuals, or bisexuals. All of these folks would become part of a spectrum of heterosexuality, homosexuality, and bisexuality, their different preferences for sex or romance unlabeled. We would understand that there are straight, gay, and bi people who don’t like sex or who don’t like to be romantically coupled, and that would be that. No need to add a new identity label for every single aspect of a person’s sexuality. No giant gap between the romantic “asexual spectrum” people and all the other human beings that feel romantic attraction. No giant gap between the sexual “aromantic spectrum” people and all the other human beings that feel sexual desire.

The split-attraction identity model would collapse. If you feel both romantic and sexual attraction, even if there’s a difference in who you’re romantically attracted to vs. sexually attracted to, you would simply be one of many types of bisexuals. Why? Because if “bisexual” means “attracted to both sexes” and the attraction is generalized, there’s room for all kinds of attraction experiences under that label. The only qualification is that you’re attracted to both males and females. Bisexuality doesn’t require an equal and identical attraction to males and females. Whether you’re attracted to men more than women or women more than men, whether you feel both romantic and sexual toward males and females or romantic to one sex/sexual toward the other, you’re attracted to both sexes, so “bisexual” covers you.

Demi and Gray Are Not Orientations

I’ve already pointed out the reason that demisexuality and gray-sexuality (along with demiromanticism and gray-romanticism) are not sexual orientations: these labels describe HOW people experience sexual or romantic attraction, not WHO they’re attracted to. Demi and gray are modifiers of a person’s sexual or romantic orientation: hetero, homo, or bi. Sexual orientation is about WHO you’re attracted to, not HOW you develop attraction, and because demis and grays do experience sexual and romantic attraction, they are no less straight, gay, or bi than all the other sexual and romantic people who experience attraction more frequently or more easily or who simply don’t call themselves anything other than straight, gay, or bi.

There are people who call themselves asexual, demisexual, or gray-asexual, who are under the false impression that they are different from everyone in the world who doesn’t. The same goes for aromantics, demiromantics, and gray-romantics. In other words, there are people who can and do fit right in with the 99% of human beings who identify only as straight, gay, or bi—not asexual or aromantic or demi or gray—but who believe and present themselves as being fundamentally different from that 99%. This is made possible by the relative meaninglessness of asexual and aromantic identity terms: without specificity, without concrete definitions, these identities can mean anything, so ultimately, they mean nothing. They’re supposed to describe people who are innately different from alloromantics and allosexuals, but instead, they don’t really describe anything other than people who believe that they’re different, even if they’re not.

Demi and gray identities speak to a phenomenon spawned by identity culture: that of micro-labeling yourself to specify every detail of your sexuality. To be fair, demi and gray identities inevitably popped up out of asexual discourse not just because of identity culture but because of the sexual attraction model that the asexual community uses. “Demi” and “gray” can’t exist if “asexual” is defined as “not attracted to either sex.” If we defined “asexual” as “not attracted to either sex,” demis and grays instantly disappear into the straight, gay, and bi groups they already belong to. Demis and grays experience sexual attraction (or romantic attraction, in the case of the “aromantic spectrum”), and if straight, gay, and bi are defined as “attracted to the opposite, same, or both sexes,” without specifying what kind of attraction it is and how it is developed, demis and grays are already covered. Demisexuality and gray-asexuality are not orientations in and of themselves. They’re descriptors of orientations. If we returned to the sexuality model that’s based on general attraction to the sexes, then the fine details of a person’s sexual attraction patterns or romantic attraction patterns would have no bearing on their label.

A straight person who wants to fuck someone she met three hours ago and a straight person who wants to fuck someone only after they’ve dated for a year are both straight. A gay person who feels attracted to three strangers a day, every day, and a gay person who’s only been attracted to a few people in their lifetime are both gay. Somebody who falls in love slowly and somebody who falls in love quickly are both people who fall in love. Somebody who falls in love twice in a lifetime and somebody who falls in love ten times are both people who fall in love.

An Unfair and Inaccurate Portrayal of the 99%

This leads me to a problem that the asexual community, including demisexuals and gray-sexuals, have had for a long time. They believe in a characterization of allo* people—people who aren’t on the “asexual spectrum” or “aromantic spectrum”—that treats 99% of humankind as a homogeneous group with a singular and consistent pattern of sexual desire and behavior, often basing that characterization on the most sexual individuals and on male heterosexuality specifically. The “asexual spectrum” doesn’t acknowledge any differences between male and female sexuality, between heterosexuality and homosexuality, between sexual behavior and experiences in different cultures of the world. The asexual-spectrum assumes that anyone who doesn’t identify as asexual (or demi- or gray-) wants, needs, and enjoys sex on a regular basis, or otherwise that not wanting, needing, or liking sex regularly means that you’re on the “asexual spectrum” and don’t know it.

In other words, they refuse to recognize that allo* people can feel indifferent to sex, can dislike sex, may only be sexually attracted to what few romantic partners they have in life, can prefer masturbation over partnered sex, can have very mixed feelings and experiences with sex, can lose interest in sex with age, can experience “sexual attraction” not as specifically genital in nature but as a combination of feelings that have nothing to do with sex that point to sexual activity as a result, can actually rarely or never feel sexual attraction by merely looking at an attractive stranger, etc.

What I’m trying to say is that asexual discourse strips all of the nuance, the complexity, and the variation out of human sexuality and assumes that there is one concrete, simple, specifically and exclusively genital experience of sexual desire that all allo* human beings experience the same way from the time they start puberty until death or old age. And because they, the self-identified asexuals and demisexuals and gray-asexuals, don’t experience whatever they decided is sexual attraction or don’t experience it the way they assume allosexual people do, they can claim these “asexual spectrum” identities and believe that they’re categorically different from allo* people. That they are not straight, gay, or bi the way allo* people are straight, gay, or bi, even if they have romantic feelings or sexual feelings (in the case of “aromantic spectrum” folks). This, of course, is what leads to all of that “allosexual privilege” bullshit, the idea that asexual-spectrum and aromantic-spectrum people are somehow uniquely oppressed or discriminated against by not just straight people but all allo* people.

Some of this is reinforced by language, by the defining of “asexual” as “not sexually attracted to others” and the re-defining of heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual as “sexually attracted to the opposite, same, or both sexes” (or, in the case of QT discourse subscribers: opposite, same, or two genders). But even if you put the language problem aside, you’ve still got all these baseless assumptions about the majority of the species that supposedly “asexual spectrum” and “aromantic spectrum” people don’t even know about from experience because they don’t feel what allo* people do, in the way that allo* people feel it. And they certainly didn’t consult the allo* population before deciding what allos* feel and thus, how they (the asexual/aromantic spectrum) are different.

So where did the asexual and aromantic spectrums’ definitions of sexual attraction and romantic attraction and their characterization of allo* people come from? What is it based on? Television? Movies? Novels? Observation of the allo* people they know, that wasn’t followed up with in-depth conversation? How can the asexual and aromantic “spectrums” be confident in their ideas of sexual and romantic attraction and how allo* people experience it, if they haven’t done extensive research and interviewing of allo* people? I’ve seen with my own eyes self-identified asexuals, aromantics, demis, and grays dismiss what allo* people have to say about sexual and romantic attraction–mostly when they challenge the identity of an asexual, aromantic, demi, or gray with that information–but we’re supposed to know better than the entire allo* population what they feel and that we’re not feeling it? How?

Conclusion

Personally, I think it makes a whole lot more sense to define “asexual” as “not attracted to either sex” instead of “not sexually attracted to others.” I believe and support all the allo* people in the world who define their own sexual orientation as being attracted—sexually or romantically or both—to people based on biological sex, not gender identity. I think it would be far more efficient and reasonable to see “romantic asexuals” and “aromantic allosexuals” as members of the straight, gay, or bi categories that their romantic or sexual desires put them in, rather than create a chasm between romantics who don’t want sex and romantics who do, or sexual people who don’t want romance vs sexual people who do. I think it’s better to treat heterosexuality, homosexuality, and bisexuality as broad categories that include a wide range of feelings, desires, and behaviors, including a strong aversion to sex or romance.

Do I think there’s any chance in hell of the asexual community or the “asexual spectrum” giving up their discourse and their model of sexuality, of people in that community giving up their identities and adopting an understanding of themselves as straight, gay, or bi people who aren’t sexually inclined? No. I’m pretty sure that ship has sailed, and we’re stuck with what we’ve got. I don’t recommend trying to argue with self-identified asexuals, aromantics, demis, and grays about switching to a different model of sexuality if they aren’t open to considering it. It’s a waste of time.

But I wanted to write this post so that I could tell you, allo* readers (who haven’t bought into the asexual/queer/trans model of sexual identity), that I finally understand what you’ve been trying to tell me all these years. I understand where you’re coming from. I see the holes and the flaws in popular asexual discourse, and I don’t think that the asexual community is right about you. I don’t even think that they’re right about themselves, in many cases. (And I can hear all the “identity-policing” sobs in the distance, but the fact is, if you base your identity on a flawed conceptualization of reality, then your identity will be flawed too. A bullshit framework is not any less false or flawed just because it validates your identity, and despite what identity culture preaches to its congregation, identity is not sacred or beyond criticism.)

I acknowledge that there are billions of ways to be sexual and romantic. I acknowledge that “seeing a person and wanting to have sex with them” is a crappy definition of sexual attraction that doesn’t actually apply to all sexual people. I acknowledge that sexual desire and sexual activity and how one feels about sex varies from person to person, that male sexuality and female sexuality are different, that being straight is not the same as being gay, that the way sex works for women or gay people or POC is not the way it works for men and heterosexuals and white people. I acknowledge that there are a lot of allo* people who don’t really care about sex, who don’t need it, who can live without it peacefully, who are even critical of sex. I acknowledge that there are allo* people who are indifferent about romantic relationships or critical of them, who are happier being single than coupled, who choose to be single, who have never been in love and aren’t interested in it.

Self-identified romantic asexuals and aromantic allosexuals are not categorically different from all the non-asexual, non-aromantic people in the world. Romantic asexuals may be very different from a lot of people who want sex, and aromantic allosexuals may be very different from all the people who can and do fall in love. But they’re also similar and sometimes identical to other romantic and sexual people who—surprise, surprise—don’t like sex or romance or choose not to participate in it or don’t feel that they’re necessary.

I have a theory that a lot of self-identified romantic asexuals and aromantic allosexuals would feel strong resistance to giving up their asexual or aromantic identity because they believe that identifying as simply straight, gay, or bi means they are obligated to have sex or romantic relationships. They think that if they don’t specify their disinterest in sex or romance with a label (or, in the case of demis and grays, their lack of frequent interest in sex or romance with strangers), that they’re telling the world that they ARE interested because interest in sex and romance is supposed to be the default in humans. But you don’t need an extra label to tell people you interact with or date or have sex with, that you aren’t interested in sex or romance. People who don’t feel sexual or romantic toward anyone have always existed, for thousands of years before the labels “asexual” and “aromantic.” There are plenty of people who don’t label themselves asexual or aromantic (or demi or gray) today who are minimally interested or completely uninterested in sex or romance. And that’s the point. The asexual community’s assumptions about what all non-asexual, non-aromantic people want and feel, which they define themselves against, aren’t actually true.

And how fucked up is it that anyone feels like they need a label to justify not wanting sex or romantic relationships, within a certain timeline or with strangers or at all? Why are we playing into compulsory sexuality and compulsory romance, into a culture that coerces everybody into sex and romance and heterosexuality specifically? Why hasn’t the asexual community and the aromantic community decided to fight for all people’s right to reject sex and romantic relationships and to question the authenticity of their own unexamined desire for sex and romance?

Maybe if they weren’t too busy assuming that all allo* people naturally need and love sex and romantic relationships, they would.

Relationship Anarchy is Not About Sex or Polyamory

Some months ago, blogger Rotten Zucchinis published an excellent series of posts about relationship anarchy, and I’ve been meaning to write a response. I was excited to read the whole series because I admire RZ as a writer and thinker and because there’s not enough good content on relationship anarchy.

When I wrote “Relationship Anarchy Basics” three years ago, I did it largely from an aromantic asexual perspective. I spent a lot of words illustrating how and why asexuals and aromantics could use relationship anarchy to experience love, intimacy, and commitment while not having sex or not engaging in romantic relationships. I tried my best to communicate that relationship anarchy could actually be a way that people who aren’t asexual or aromantic could center nonsexual and/or nonromantic relationships in their social life or explore alternative relationships with atypical combinations of sex, celibacy, touch, emotional intensity, commitment, attraction and lack thereof. I wanted to demonstrate that relationship anarchy provides the opportunity to experience more love, affection, companionship, and touch by removing the restrictions that amatonormativity and relationship hierarchy place on them, limiting those things to one (or even multiple) romantic/sexual relationships.

So imagine how hard I rolled my eyes when I discovered that there are straight men out there calling themselves “relationship anarchists” in order to smoothly get away with casual sex. I mean, really? Really? You think fucking somebody you’ve known for less than 24 total hours who you met on a hookup app makes you a “relationship anarchist”? Or that you can make that sexual encounter sound progressive and radical by invoking the “relationship anarchist” label? Please.

I guess nothing about fuckboys or men in general should surprise me, but I honestly never imagined relationship anarchy being used as an excuse or a trendy framing of casual sex when I wrote my original post on the subject. I never imagined that somewhere on this earth, a real live male would look into someone’s eyes and earnestly say that being a relationship anarchist means “having sex with multiple people and not labeling those contacts as [romantic] relationships.” And I don’t mean to have such an inflated sense of my own influence that I take credit for this asshole’s self-identification as a relationship anarchist—he may not have any idea that my blog exists and heard about RA from some other source—but because my post has been shared and linked as many times as it has, I do feel a bit of secondhand embarrassment, reading what is clearly a moment of misappropriating relationship anarchy for the purpose of keeping casual sex casual.

Let me be clear: the problem is not two adults enthusiastically having sex, without any interest in getting to know each other further. The problem is not that men everywhere want to fuck people without commitment, without love, without friendship, without meeting any other expectations or assuming any responsibility. It’s not necessarily bad or wrong to include casual sex as a possibility in relationship anarchy; I think that at least in theory, a person who practices politically grounded RA can have sex outside of romantic relationships that looks and feels and functions differently than most of the casual sex that happens in the world.

The problem here is that people, especially straight men, are creating a false impression of what relationship anarchy is and what it means by misusing the term because they think it sounds cool or “progressive” or whatever. It’s essentially the same problem I see with nonhierarchical polyamorists calling what they do “relationship anarchy” and themselves “relationship anarchists.” Relationship anarchy is not just a shiny, new label that people get to use when they want to sound different or special or better than everyone else. It’s certainly not a label that fuckboys get to use when they want to make themselves sound enlightened for having casual sex or get away with having casual sex that they don’t have to negotiate emotionally with their sexual partners.

If you want to have casual sex, fine. If you don’t want to be romantically involved with anyone, fine. If you’re polyamorous, fine. But the term “relationship anarchy” is not here for you because it’s not just a label. It’s not a fucking identity. It is a set of principles that informs the structure of a person’s relationships and how they experience emotional connection, affection, and commitment with people they care about. Originally, it was the logical result of political anarchists applying their politics to their relationships. (Notice where Andie Nordgren’s RA Manifesto is hosted: theanarchistlibrary.org.) Relationship anarchy doesn’t have to include sex at all, and sometimes it doesn’t. It doesn’t have to include romance at all, and sometimes it doesn’t. What it does have to include, as a practice that is legitimately different from polyamory and other forms of consensual nonmonogamy, is a politics that actively resists relationship hierarchy as a coercive structure reflective of our culture’s value system. That value system includes amatonormativity, compulsory sexuality, heteronormativity, the sexualization and romanticization of touch/affection/emotional connection (for the purpose of reinforcing hetero-patriarchy via homophobia and on the basis of the sexualized inequality between males and females), individualism of the neoliberal sensibility, and above all, capitalism.

My original post on relationship anarchy got pretty popular for some reason, and I haven’t written a whole lot about the subject since that post. Apart from my post calling out polyamorists who erroneously call themselves RAs, I’ve pretty much only alluded to relationship anarchy in passing on this blog. I’m certainly not the only person who has written about it and I’m not an authority on the lifestyle, if anyone can be such a thing. My primary motivation in writing “Relationship Anarchy Basics” was to flesh out, more for myself than anyone reading, what relationship anarchy is in a structural sense, how it differs from polyamory and monogamy, and how it can work for people who don’t do sex or romance. Andie Nordgren’s pamphlet inspired me and got me really thinking about how intentionally single, celibate people could pursue relationships differently than the typical “single without any intimate or committed relationships and a bunch of superficial ‘friendships’” model.

What I haven’t written much about is the ethos of relationship anarchy, the philosophy behind it that must ultimately be at the basis of a person’s daily life if they’re going to attempt RA. I think that Rotten Z did a great job at tackling some of that ethos and the principles that should ideally drive relationship anarchy in their series of posts, and I recommend them to anyone who’s serious about practicing a relationship anarchy that goes deeper than unconscious polyamory.

It does concern me that people out there are doing polyamory or pseudo-“relationship anarchy” without spending any significant time or energy critically thinking about principles, ethics, personal politics, etc. Then again, I can say the same about the conventional monogamists. Most people, whatever their lifestyle, don’t think about their relationships beyond the interpersonal level. They don’t contextualize the sex and romance and friendships they have into the big picture of their national culture and economy, their society’s politics, etc. They don’t even think about their own personal motives and principles, when it comes to their lifestyle choices. They never get past the apolitical, purely individual desire-and-feelings level. They stop at “I want this because it’ll make me happy” and don’t even interrogate why they believe monogamy or polyamory or casual sex or a traditional marriage is the source of happiness and what it means to live your life serving those desires.

I deeply appreciate the information RZ provided on anarchism and relationship anarchy’s natural roots in anarchism. I don’t think you have to be a full-blown political anarchist in order to be a relationship anarchist (I may be wrong), but I do believe it’s worth learning about anarchism and its principles, for the purpose of approaching relationship anarchy with that information in your consciousness. I myself haven’t yet done the extensive reading I want to do on anarchism, but even back when I wrote “Relationship Anarchy Basics,” I had a crude understanding of the politics behind RA, if only because I knew about the political basis of everything that is not RA. Now, I understand even better, despite not being educated on anarchism, because I have a greater grasp on how monogamy (and polyamory) is shaped by the capitalist hetero-patriarchy we all live in. For that matter, I now have a better understanding of how friendship, and friendship in opposition to romance, is shaped by the capitalist hetero-patriarchy.

Real relationship anarchy is political. There’s just no way around it. How could it be otherwise, when it has roots in political anarchism? Relationship anarchy is not about getting your dick wet and looking cool while you do it. It’s not about sounding hipper than all the other polyamorists. You can do polyamory without any political consciousness whatsoever, and you can definitely do monogamy without it. You can be mono or poly in service of the capitalist hetero-patriarchy. Most people are. But you can’t do relationship anarchy without some awareness of the socio-political context you’re operating in and how you’re attempting to go against that grain out of a genuine belief in certain concrete principles. Those concrete principles are nothing so basic and shallow as “freedom” (to fuck) or “honesty.” They’re the kind of political principles that you can base an effective social movement on: a movement that offers an alternative to the capitalist hetero-patriarchy’s commodification of bodies, sex, and love; to the sabotage of female solidarity in friendship and romantic love; to neoliberal capitalism’s goal of the isolated couple and nuclear family; to the homophobia and toxic gender crap that prevents even nonsexual/nonromantic connection and intimacy between members of the same sex.

According to Rotten Z, if we base relationship anarchy on political anarchism’s principles, then relationship anarchy is fundamentally about:

The rejection of all interpersonal coercion, including state intervention
Community
Mutual aid
Commitments made as communication, not as contracts

Looking at that list, it dawned on me that relationship anarchy resonates with me so much because its principles amount to a friendship ethic. The word “friendship” is widely used as a broad, vague, often meaningless term, but to me, friendship as this deep, intimate, important, positive bond between humans is described really well by the above set of principles. Friendship leans away from interpersonal coercion by default and can’t survive under the burden of it for long. Mutual aid and cooperation are in friendship’s very nature; you could even define friendship by those qualities: helping and supporting each other out of desire and not duty. And when friendship is committed, that commitment is done in a spirit of communication, not drawn up as a contract, which what marriage is: a legal contract binding romantic partners.

I love how the blogger queeranarchism defined relationship anarchy:

“Relationship anarchism then, to me, means community. A community of two or of many. A community that rejects the ‘rules’ of relationships, of enforced heterosexuality, enforced monogamy, of partners being entitled to sex, of marriage, of childcare being a two-person job and of the idea that we need a romantic or sexual relationship to be complete. A community that instead chooses care, cooperation, equality, acknowledgement that we are more than our relationship and that we all have different needs. And in that community, we make the rules that suit us, and end them when they no longer suit our community.

By that definition, an anarchist relationship is first and foremost one of cooperation and setting our own rules. By that definition, it is not self-serving but always mutually beneficial.”

I think that’s something I was trying to express in “Relationship Anarchy Basics” but couldn’t quite put my finger on at the time: relationship anarchy is fundamentally about community, as much as monogamous and polyamorous lifestyles are fundamentally about the couple. That doesn’t mean couples can’t exist in relationship anarchy, but it does mean that the focus of a relationship anarchist’s life and emotional energy is not a couple relationship by default, the way it is for monogamists and polyamorists. It also means that two relationship anarchists having a romantic relationship are most likely not doing it the same way most non-anarchist people do couplehood, even if the RA couple is sexually monogamous in the moment. Being a relationship anarchist doesn’t mean you have to fuck more than one person at a time, because relationship anarchy is not about sexual nonmonogamy, even though it is usually inclusive of sexual nonmonogamy. Relationship anarchy is not polyamory sans the obvious hierarchy of romantic partners. It’s about doing relationships with community-centric values, not couple-centric values. Above all, it’s about relating to other human beings without coercive authority in play and without hierarchy in your group of relationships or in any relationship itself.

I fucking cringe when I read about polyamorous people defining “relationship anarchy” using nonhierarchal polyamory’s terms, just as I cringe when I hear stories of men pulling the RA card on their casual sexcapades. Not just because of how unbelievably inaccurate, apolitical, and ignorant it is but because in both cases, “relationship anarchy” is falsely used to describe the kind of romance supremacist, friendship-excluding, sex-centric lifestyles that are diametrically opposed to authentic relationship anarchy.

The capitalist, heteronormative, patriarchal state promotes relationship hierarchies based on romance supremacy and amatonormativity. It endorses treating sex like a product, protects heterosexual men in their consumption of female bodies as sexual objects, promotes the buying and selling of women’s sexualized bodies. The capitalist heteronormative patriarchal state WANTS you to invest all of your free time, energy, resources, and emotion into romantic couplehood, into marriage, into sex. It WANTS you to devalue friendship, to stay isolated from everyone who isn’t your romantic partner, to be a self-interested individual with no ties or commitments to anyone but your spouse. Why? Because friendship could lead to community and community could lead to collective political action, which could turn into revolution. And because friendship and community are almost impossible to commodify and harness for the purpose of feeding into the capitalist economy and creating bigger profits for the wealthy elite. Sex and romance make rich people money all day every day. They sell it to you every waking moment. They can’t use friendship and community to sell you shit. They can’t turn friendship and community into products. If they could, they would’ve spent the last century doing so, instead of teaching the public that friendship is worthless and money is more important than community.

So don’t tell me that you’re entitled to call your polyamory or your casual sex “relationship anarchy,” as you conduct your social life with anti-anarchism principles and the same amatonormativity that all the coupled up monogamists preach and believe in. Don’t tell me you’re a “relationship anarchist” when you don’t give a fuck about friendship or community or political resistance, just sex and romance and your freedom to be nonmonogamous.

Relationship anarchy is not a cover for fuckboys. And it is not nonhierarchical polyamory.

Recommended Reading: Unquiet Pirate’s “Relationship Anarchy is Not Post-Polyamory“