I’m off for the weekend, so here is a brief post some of which I lost yesterday, damn I hate losing posts . . .
  
Story of the noisy straight boy:

Yesterday I was on the dufferin bus reading this zine of poems that regan was on the editorial board for.  This guy next to me first asks me if my name is nancy, I remind him of someone he use to know.  The asks me if I’m reading poems.  He starts reading over my sholder this poem written by this guy about these one night stands he has had.  The guy next to me takes off his glasses and gets a closer look.  I feel like saying “Yes you are reading queer sex poetry!”

18 days full time!!!

so heres the story:

I walk into the marina museum at the ex, walk up the guy with my best 'hire me for security' confident look.  I said hi **** we talked on the phone yesterday, I'm name is Tobie, my brother sean marven gave me your number.  He handed me this form for me to fill out, basically just name, address, number and SIN number.  On the form it said this is an application not a gaurentee of employment.  I handed back the form, he looked it over, asked me how sean was, then told me to sit down to get my photo taken.  We discussed that the name I want to be called is not the same name that a cheque would be writen too.  Then he wrote Tobie on the new hire list and gave me a sheet that gave the training times. 

it is as simple as that . . . 18 days full time doing security at the ex here I come!!!!

Reading the newspaper yesterday I noticed a few stories that sparked my poly sensibilities.  The first story was about this ex cop from etobicoke who has started up a lie detector business for people who think their partners are cheating.  This guy drives around with his van that says "relationships tests, partners cheating, need the truth?" and goes to peoples homes testing to see if their partners are cheating on them.  This seems to show a complete lack of communication and trust within relationships.  With the high numbers of people "failing" this test is again drives the question about the idea of monogamy and does it actually work.  Once these tests have been conducted the house calling polygraph examiner and partners have found that cheating has occured the relationship is then over.  This story reminds me of a tv show that I just say a tid bit of called cheaters.  Basically if you think that your partner has been infadilious you can call the tv program, they will do some private ingestigating and then have a public broadcast of the confrentation of the partners.  There seems little dialogue about the privacy violations of the person caught cheating on tape.  And there is absolutley no dialogue in either the tv program or the newspaper story about the jealousy, control and ownership issues that are prevalant in both of these stories. 

Its seems once caught the methods of how one was caught is not investigated, the ends of distroying relationships outway the means of discovering what your partner is up to.

A few pages later there was a very distrubing article, the article was on polygamy.  Which is different from polyamory, yet the discourse is damaging all the same.  This women was discussing a polygamy collony where many people had been abused.  Teh article went from exposing the abuse to demonising the community, which considering what happen and the ethics within polygamy one can understand.  Yet her plight was not done, she continued to demonise and pathologise any type of relationship outside of monogamy. 

These type of articles create moral scares that contribute to the fear and hatred of polyamory.  It seems that monogamy with adultry and cheating is normalised and ready to be telivised but if the relationships are ethical, communicated in a positive manor and outside the discourse of control and ownership in relationships, then it is something to be feared.

These moral scares are real and manifest themselves with negative stereotypes, social contructions, laws and norms that discriminate against anyone who lives outside of the monogamous matrix.  One could say outside of the heteronormative yet with same sex marriage at the top of the agenda you would have to wonder if the people in same sex relationships are just begging to be part of the heteronormative making it the new norm and partake in the abuse and discrimination of anyone outside of this new norm.

There are some sancuaries for people who do not fit with this matrix, these spaces are much needed since the general population is not at all excepting.  A few weeks ago I dropped by the Ethical Lovers group at the womens centre at UofT.  It was like in one sence coming home, it felt really good to be around a group of like minded people where I don't have to explain my position and defend it from attack like I did much of this year.  Yet I found that I don't need to be there anymore, it was great when I was thinking about coming out as poly and when I had a few poly crisis.  But now as a comfortable poly person I find the discussion health but not where I need to be.  Also I think since I am not in a relationship I don't have any current expereinces to bring to the group, most people in there are in long term poly relationships.

I found out this past weekend that there is this new monday night sauna that happens in my old hood.  This women I know told me its a really positive, queer, poly environment . . .without the capitalist componant of going to a bath house.  This guy opens up his house and they have developed a community of excepting people.  I think I might check it out in a few weeks.   

 

 

pop quiz:

what job requires a university degree, for you to be in good shape, for you to have been involved with camapaigns in your community and will have two people interviewing you? 

a) astranaut
b) social worker
c) posterer

ding ding ding, if you said C you are right!!!  Not only that they will pay you next to nothing, continuously check up on you and expect you to be waiting at their beckan call for the 9 hours they offer you a week! 

Oh the life of the underemployed. 

So far I have managed to score 13 hours a week of teaching swimming, which depending on my persausive skills may go down to 4 hours a week in august.  And 9 hours of postering  . . . which is a bit nuts actually, I was looking at the map that I mark where I have postered and in the three days which I did my 9 hours I covered around 40km of road.  The posters are really getting to me and I feel like adbusting them after I finish putting them up.

The header says "How to beat the weight loss plateau" then it has a pic of a pretty blond with a quote that says "I lost 30lbs in 3 months".  When I see women looking at the poster I want to talk to them and say you don't need to beat the weight loss plateau, there are better ways to be health then to work towards a certian weight goal.  I was thinking how they could reword their poster to make it more positive, something like "have fun, stay healthy and get stronger" or something about doing it for yourself.  But in reality these are all just advertising tricks to have women feel bad about their bodies and pay huge amounts of money to have someone tell them what type of body they should be striving for. 

 

tonight I went to this queer night at this trendy bar with a few mates, we were just chatting but a song we all wanted to dance to came on so we ran up but the music suddenly stoped. Throught the commotion we came to realise that these to girls were fighting and in the process of getting kicked out. Miind you I don't know what generated the fight but I still had this been question why are you doing this to yourselves. I can't help wondering if their butch image and possible identity was part of the reason the arguement escalated to the stage that it did. I wondering why are we fighting ourselves, yet know that anger and passion are not often acted on objectivily.

Yet I still wonder about the butch persona factoring in this equation. Violence is not a gendered trait, there is violence in women only spaces and in lesbian relationships, there is fighting between women and women act violently towards men. And butchness is also not a gendered trait, there is such a fluidity of ways of performing gender. BUT it is all performed, and this is why I wonder if the butch image had a part to with the fight. Those who do identify as butch often have this indentity as a central part of themselves. There is much time and energy dedicated in keeping this image and indentiy. Even in an age of more fluid gender roles and expression in the queer community, those on either end of the continuum tend to have mcuh invested in their role.

In the same why that some men act in ways that are asserting their masculinity many butches do the same. I am just wondering if two women who were fighting tonight were fighting more out of saving face as a butch, playing a role and attempting to use there power to dominate another person.

It is interesting although I am still often attracted to butch women, my tastes are starting to change. I realise that I was attracted to the confidence, the assertiveness and the presence that came with a butch. I had a hard time finding a butch that I had tons in common with or I was attracted to beyond the physical level, adn I wondered if that had to do with the time and energy that was invested into being a butch and possibly not putting the same amount of energy into other aspects of their lives. Especially in Toronto where you can live a ghettoized existance with only things like family christmas to pull you out one can forget there are other things of importance and interesting in this city and world.

I have met more and more women who are strong, confident, assertive who are more femme and I have found them extremely interesting. Not to mention that my friends seem to all but super cute but deffinalty in that strong soft femme kinda way.

This women from this documentary I say at ladyfest was talking about her love of boy-girls, the androgenous girls, the butch etc. She said that ot her this made sense due to her socialisation as a straight women, she was socialised to like boys. And even though she is attracted to women the boy image was something that stuck with her as an object of desire. Just as marike's taste in boys which is only hardcore boys has been influenced from her time spent in the scene since she was twelve, and have only dated boys from the scene. I was socialized to like boys and before coming out dated a certain style of boy, so it is no surprise that the women I have found attractive have a similar style.

Yet my experience with butch women over the past four or five years has not really been that positive and my expereince with soft butches or soft femmes has deffinalty been better. It seems that the girls that make me get that feeling in my stomach and lose my breath are not the same women who get me thinking and keep me smiling when I think of them. So where do I go from here . . . well well well