Polyverse
Served with a liberal dash of feminism, humanism, and a splash of queerness.
(Text content may be NSFW, but there is no nudity, gore or porn).
QI Poly Fact!
Watching QI, just found out that the creator of Wonder Woman was polyamorous. And I looked it up on wikipedia, and apparently Wonder Woman was based on both his wife and his other partner. Not sure if it was a poly V or a triad polyship (I mean, in any case that would be imposing an anachronistic label onto them, since this was back in the early 1900s), but they all lived together, and after he died, his wife and his other partner stayed together.
So that’s really cool. Also really cool is the fact that the show is being really respectful, saying “Oh, isn’t that a lovely story” and treating it as sweet and romantic rather than weird or immoral or greedy.
10 points to QI!
If you’re looking for more on this, ‘Poly in the Media’ has a good write up .
Aiya Van Kooten everyone
When Aiya Van Kooten stood face-to-face with a burglar in her bedroom, her left eye twitched, then she went into “predator mode”.
“I screamed at him… jumped off my chair, leaped over my bed and sprinted after him down the stairs,” she said.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/8626910/Predator-mode-scares-off-burglars
This is the best story of my life
“Although she was the only one home, Van Kooten said she had no regard for her safety - instead, she said she was just overwhelmed with “rage“….. ummmmm Hero!!!
Haha, badass Muslim woman. Love it!!!
This lady is so awesome. She lives with her grandma and was studying and had a towel on her head and no shoes but she chased them out of her garden, kicked one up the arse as he climbed a fence, they dropped a camera and laptop, she flagged down a passing driver to help her continue the pursuit, and it turned out he was ex-military, and they finally caught one of them in a park and pinned him as the police arrived. Now she’s going to visit the burglar in prison for the next few months to help with his rehabilitation.
So in summary:
This lady doesn’t just defend her home and loved ones, she will hunt you down, team up with other skilled individuals, get you put away, and then teach you the consequences of your actions until you’re a valuable member of society once more.
Seriously she’s a frigging superhero.
literal hero
(via felixrocketship)
Why Do Men Keep Putting Me in the Girlfriend-Zone?
You know how it is, right, ladies? You know a guy for a while. You hang out with him. You do fun things with him—play video games, watch movies, go hiking, go to concerts. You invite him to your parties. You listen to his problems. You do all this because you think he wants to be your friend.
But then, then comes the fateful moment where you find out that all this time, he’s only seen you as a potential girlfriend. And then if you turn him down, he may never speak to you again. This has happened to me time after time: I hit it off with a guy, and, for all that I’ve been burned in the past, I start to think that this one might actually care about me as a person. And then he asks me on a date.
I tell him how much I enjoy his company, how much I value his friendship. I tell him that I really want to be his friend and to continue hanging out with him and talking about our favorite books or exploring new restaurants or making fun of avant-garde theatre productions. But he rejects me. He doesn’t answer my calls or e-mails; if we’d been making plans to do something before this fateful incident, these plans mysteriously fail to materialize. (This is why I never did get around to seeing the Hunger Games movie. Not to name any names, but thanks a lot, Tom.) Later, when I run into him at social events, our conversations are awkward and lukewarm. This is because the moment we met, he put me in the girlfriend-zone, and now he can’t see me as friend material.
I must say that I find this really unfair. I mean, I’m a nice girl. I have a lot to offer as a friend, like not being a douchebag and stuff. But males just don’t want to be friends with nice girls like me. They can’t help it, I guess; it’s just how they’re wired, biologically. Evolution conditioned our male hominid ancestors to seek nice girls as mates and form friendship bonds only with the other dudes that they hunted mammoths with. It’s true—I know this because I studied hominids in my fifth-grade science class.
So what’s the answer? Should I take up mammoth-hunting in an attempt to appeal to the friendship centers of men’s primal lizardbrains? Should I keep making guy “friends” and then prevent them from making a move on me by subtly undermining their self-confidence? Should I just give up on those manipulative, game-playing, two-faced bastards once and for all? I don’t know. I mean, I’d really like to have a true friendship with a guy someday, but it’s so hard to trust and respect them when they never say what they mean—and you never know when you might be relegated to the girlfriend-zone.
I really didn’t care about being the first, so long as it inspires someone else to be second
Raha Moharrak, first Saudi woman to scale Mt. Everest
Feminism has fought no wars. It has killed no opponents. It has set up no concentration camps, starved no enemies, practiced no cruelties. Its battles have been for education, for the vote, for better working conditions, for safety in the streets, for child care, for social welfare, for rape crisis centres, women’s refuges, reforms in the law. If someone says, ‘Oh, I’m not a feminist’, I ask, ‘Why? What’s your problem?’
Dale Spender, Man Made Language. (via dumbledoreisabamf)
the feminist movement has supported wars (afghanistan to liberate the poor brown women, anyone?) and the cruel medical use of the bodies of women of color (history of how the pill was developed, anyone?) and the murder of trans women (the transsexual empire, anyone?) among other… failings, shall we say, to put it lightly
feminism as an institution has colluded with white supremacy, with heterosexism and cissexism, with ableist power structures, with imperialism to bring “liberation” to white, western, christian, cishet, abled, thin women at the expense of women who can’t climb that ladder and cling to any part of that power structure as easily as they can
anyone who feels that feminist is a dirty word because ~ew won’t the women just shut up~ is a misogynist, plain and simple. but to pretend that there is no reason to eschew the label of feminist erases the violence done to many women in the name of feminism.
(via withlovethelavendermenace)
i know i should let this go…
but i guess i’m a little cranky today.
“practised no cruelties”
None? The person above me mentions the transsexual empire, which yes was really bad. But worse was her article on why the state shouldn’t support medical transition. It had the direct effect of pulling funding for any trans related health care, including the penal system. Only now are some incarcerated trans women winning the right to have appropriate medical care, as dictated by the us constitution. only now are states finally passing laws that prevent insurance companies from excluding trans related health care from their coverage.
This alone is responsible for the death of thousands of trans women. Women, who without access to social service like the very same rape crises centres, shelters, or any other social welfare type service, have been put into a situation where mos trans women of colour are forced into sex work. Where Black and/or Latina trans women have the highest rates for HIV contraction. Trans feminine people, who without access to health care simply die (far too often from their own hands).
Feminism has literally built itself on the blood and bones of #girlslikeus, of all woc, of disabled women, on sex workers, etc.
My problem is that I want to live and be free and that feminists have been trying their fucking hardest since the beginning to ensure that #girlslikeus are never free.
(via biyuti)
(Source: uowfreeschool, via biyuti)
10 Realistic Rules for Good Non-Monogamous Relationships
10 Realistic Rules for Good Non-Monogamous Relationships by Andrea Zanin
(Please note I said good poly. Anyone can do poly badly, but I don’t advise it.)1. Know yourself.
2. Love yourself.
3. Be happy ALONE.
4. Communicate. Honestly.
5. Know what you want.
6. Go for content, not form.
7. Be nice.
8. Have safer sex.
9. Be strong.
10. Go with the flow.There’s a great essay accompanying these 10 rules that explains each one - click through for the whole thing!
(via brownqueerpolytriad)
137 
73i am so jealous of all the people who are comfortable with who they are physically and mentally
“Jealousy won’t get you anything you lost” -Beth ditto
(via loveisfluid)
i don’t think i’ve ever agreed with anything more than what this man is saying
watch this. seriously
yes yes yes yes yes
this is amazing
this guy is so sick
I needed this right now. Anyone taking finals needs this right now.
This is a lesson that I’m still trying to learn. I’m better than I was in high school, but sometimes I still fall into this trap even when I try not to.
This is glorious spoken word and it’s an incredibly important message.
My professor played this is class the other day. It was very powerful.
ALYSSA. LOOK. THIS IS IT.
this made me have an existential crisis (which happens multiple times in a week anyway but still)
(via macaroni-overlord)
Is 'gap yah' volunteering a bad thing?
Article on the problems of ‘voluntourism’.
“…It’s like we think we are all Clark Kent. At home we slave away and work hard to be useful in our jobs, but then we enter a magical phone booth and - ta-dah - we take off to a far-away country and somehow our Superman suit, or our volunteer T-shirt, gives us all of the power and knowledge we need to save the world.
We’re teaching our next generation of leaders that development work is easy, and that their skills are so valuable to the people abroad that it is worth donating money to send them to help.
And we’re teaching them that, just because they come from the UK or the US, they are in a position of superiority over the people they are going to “serve”.
We must stop volunteering abroad from becoming about us fulfilling our dreams of being heroes. The travellers are not just missing out on learning the lessons that lead to more sustainable changes in themselves and in the world, but they are also often negatively impacting the people they are meant to be “serving”…..”
7 
![rachelfershleiser:
gotagirlcrush:
Got a Girl Crush On: Katelyn Campbell, a West Virginia high school senior who’s standing up to bullying and slut shaming from her principal. When Katelyn spoke out against abstinence-only education at her school, her principal threatened to call the college she’ll be attending to tell them she has “bad character.”
Despite being threatened, Campbell is not backing down. She hopes that filing this injunction [with the ACLU] will protect her freedom of speech to continue advocating for comprehensive sexual health resources for West Virginia’s youth. “West Virginia has the ninth highest pregnancy rate in the U.S.,” Campbell told the Gazette. “I should be able to be informed in my school what birth control is and how I can get it. With the policy at GW, under [principal] George Aulenbacher, information about birth control and sex education has been suppressed. Our nurse wasn’t allowed to talk about where you can get birth control for free in the city of Charleston.”
Read more about Campbell here.
And then that college tweeted about how proud they were to have her! Fuck yeah Katelyn and Wellesley!](http://24.media.tumblr.com/bbdb20f00698349d4cd668c883046c61/tumblr_mlgh463Rm11qzjiplo1_400.jpg)
Got a Girl Crush On: Katelyn Campbell, a West Virginia high school senior who’s standing up to bullying and slut shaming from her principal. When Katelyn spoke out against abstinence-only education at her school, her principal threatened to call the college she’ll be attending to tell them she has “bad character.”
Despite being threatened, Campbell is not backing down. She hopes that filing this injunction [with the ACLU] will protect her freedom of speech to continue advocating for comprehensive sexual health resources for West Virginia’s youth. “West Virginia has the ninth highest pregnancy rate in the U.S.,” Campbell told the Gazette. “I should be able to be informed in my school what birth control is and how I can get it. With the policy at GW, under [principal] George Aulenbacher, information about birth control and sex education has been suppressed. Our nurse wasn’t allowed to talk about where you can get birth control for free in the city of Charleston.”
Read more about Campbell here.
And then that college tweeted about how proud they were to have her! Fuck yeah Katelyn and Wellesley!
(via womenwhokickass)
LINK: “5 Worst Things About Open Relationships”
The 5 Worst Things About Open Relationships
From the Huffington Post:
1. Needing a Teleporter - It’s always somebody’s birthday at the same time as someone else’s violin recital…
2. Spillover- When things are good in my life, they tend to be good all over. And similarly, when they’re bad they are horrid, as the saying goes. Relationship stress tends to ripple out and affect other relationships…
3. Surprise! Big Feelings- Jealousy is the one that gets the most attention, but surprise feelings can take all kinds of shapes: anger, fear, sadness, envy, inadequacy. Being in an open relationship means confronting the limits of your relationships…
4. Scheduling- Ask any poly person what they love least about their lifestyle and you’ll hear a rousing chorus of “scheduling!” Trying to keep the logistics of several people’s social lives straight is a nightmare, even when everyone is happily getting their needs met.
5. Loss- Daring to love means opening yourself up to the possibility of loss. Lives and relationships change, people grow apart or move away or evolve into needing different things…
Bonus Point: Social Stigma - Being poly means being on the fringes of the relationship landscape. Even if you have a job where it’s safe to be out about your personal relationships and friends and family who warmly accept your choices, it’s still hard. Your relationships aren’t reflected in popular culture, social assumptions are all built around monogamy and even in the best-case scenario, where everyone you love fully accepts your choices, you still have to explain yourself and push back against the assumption of monogamy as a default state.
What can we say? Polyamory requires lots of (emotional, psychological, temporal) work! Someone should make a t-shirt: “Not monogamous, just lazy.” (KIDDING!)
