tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187747901239228372024-03-19T02:05:38.651-03:00The Trail We BlazeMy path through the uncharted wilderness of unconventional relationshipsGreyWandershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15374541753948600822noreply@blogger.comBlogger25125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-718774790123922837.post-57606645008206245372015-11-20T22:06:00.000-04:002015-11-20T22:06:43.450-04:00When feeling bad about yourself is goodI have really good self-esteem. Always have. It's a very useful thing that has served to protect me from some of life's most earnest attempts to crush my soul. Yet even with all this self-confidence floating around, I've still had times when I didn't like myself very much. And you know what? <i>I was right.</i>The times when I've felt the worst about myself have been the times I look back on and go "yep, I was not being a very good version of myself right then". My most frequented corners of the internet are saturated with messages of self-love and self-care, but they're all aimed at people who need them. I don't. I think they're actually bad for me.<br />
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When I feel bad about myself, it's usually because I should. It's usually because I'm doing something unhealthy (like not having friends and working in a call center), or I'm so busy and/or stressed that I'm losing track of the things that make me enjoy life and like myself. I feel bad about myself because the person I am right then is not who I want to be. In these cases, the answer is not to coddle myself* or to try and feel better about myself, it's to figure out why I feel bad and deal with the problem.<br />
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On the whole, I believe that such constant exposure to the culture of self-care has actually made me weaker, because on some level, I believe the messages I hear. When the internet says 'it's okay if you can't face all that work now', I believe it and take breaks I don't need and don't get things done.<br />
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The one tumblr affirmation I really take to heart is <a href="http://40.media.tumblr.com/280a321a2a0baadbe8adc428b61f8f20/tumblr_nv1rauD0F81sm41mbo7_1280.jpg">this</a>:<br />
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<img src="http://41.media.tumblr.com/280a321a2a0baadbe8adc428b61f8f20/tumblr_nv1rauD0F81sm41mbo7_500.jpg" height="200" width="142" /><br />
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I like it because rather than seeming assuring and comforting, it seems accusing. That cat doesn't want to soothe me, it's glaring at me with faint disdain. It's saying "What's the matter with you? You can do this. Pull yourself together." And often enough, that's really the message I need.<br />
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(Of course none of this means self-care is bad, unimportant, or people should stop talking about it. It just means I should look at it less.)<br />
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*I do not claim that self-care is inherently coddling. I claim that applying self-care practices when they are not needed or helpful is coddling.GreyWandershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15374541753948600822noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-718774790123922837.post-85498766005590237842015-11-20T13:11:00.001-04:002015-11-20T13:11:15.718-04:00Classification and Romance (again)I'd pretty much given up on romance ever making sense as a concept, but there's been a new round of posts that's got me thinking again. Let me start with computers and work my way back around to romance.<br />
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One cool thing that AIs can do is classify things. You stuff in a bunch of things and go "here, classify these", and the AI groups them together into categories. It won't tell you <i>how</i> it's categorizing them, just make groups. This is useful in a variety of ways, categorization being important to learning about the world and all, and one interesting thing you can do with it is feed in data that humans have already classified and compare our categories to the groups the computer comes up with. For example, one study gave English words to an AI and provided example sentences using those words. The AI came up with groupings that matched our categories of 'noun', 'verb', etc. It would also have been interesting if the AI had come up with a different way of categorizing words. Maybe there's some arching commonality between words like "tree", "vertigo", and "conjugate" that we've never noticed.<br />
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This idea of categorizing without labeling is a useful one, and between my AI class and my ace blog readings, something coalesced. What if instead of examining my data (feelings, desires, etc.) against other peoples' definitions of romance, I just looked at all my data and tried to group it into meaningful categories, not worrying about what to call them?<br />
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When I did that there was a very obvious group of feelings which stood out. If I apply the name 'romance' to that category, it immediately gives me a rich vocabulary for explaining my experiences. I feel romantic love for Hats and Flowers. That awkward period of time with Flowers was awkward because they felt romantically about me, but I hadn't developed romantic feelings for them yet. I've had crushes. This is very useful.<br />
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Or rather, part of it is useful. What's useful about labeling my experiences that way isn't actually the label, it's grouping similar experiences together so I can understand them in the context of one another. The label is only useful if I want to talk about it, but I'm not so sure that 'romance' a good label to use for this category. Romance as a term comes with a lot of assumptions, many of which I don't like. It comes back to the same problem I had before: Are these experiences and feelings close enough to what other people mean by 'romance' that I want to describe them using that word?<br />
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I'm trying not to care. Whether that category is best labeled romantic or platonic or something else entirely, it's useful for me just to have identified its existence explicitly. I'll probably come back to worry away at it later. No matter how much I try to be content in my grey area, I always come back to the question "what <i>is</i> this relationship?" and my analytical brain can't stop trying to classify things.GreyWandershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15374541753948600822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-718774790123922837.post-43983226480369377982015-09-13T18:59:00.001-03:002015-09-13T18:59:52.299-03:00PerspectiveI found the following quote on tumblr:<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #4c4c4c; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;">If you aren’t aro or ace spectrum, your opinions on our terminology and definitions for the relationships we have literally do not matter</span></blockquote>
It annoys me.<br />
<br />
I recently found myself sitting around a whiteboard with two other ace-spectrum folks, trying to map out some stuff, and it was hilarious. It was like we were doing friggin' anthropology.<br />
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On the one hand, I see where they're coming from. If someone's objecting to ace/aro terminology or definitions, it's probably because they're cantankerous and don't like it when people use words they don't understand. On the other hand, we're trying to define stuff by the absence of things we don't experience - things we can't possibly understand fully because we've never encountered them first-hand. So sometimes when allo folks object to our words, maybe it's because we're defining things badly, or making models that don't fit with how other people work. Allos have data, guys. Useful data. I'm not about to tell them all to shut up and sit down just because they're allos. If they start being a jerk about my words, <i>then</i> I'll tell them to shut up, but there's a lot of perspective out there - important, valuable perspective - which we'll miss if we only listen to people who see the world the same way we do.GreyWandershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15374541753948600822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-718774790123922837.post-16986092177301165472015-07-13T16:48:00.001-03:002015-07-13T16:48:23.851-03:00Heavy MenstruationWarning: Discussion of menstruation<br />
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Dear people who menstruate,<br />
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You know how the side of the tampon box has this little chart of absorbencies listed in helpful units like grams and ml, and how it's not helpful or useful in any way because those numbers mean nothing to you? Here's what they should put on there instead:<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #111111;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">Seek medical help before your next scheduled exam if you experience... [v]</span></span><span style="color: #111111; line-height: 22px;">aginal bleeding so heavy it soaks at least one pad or tampon an hour for more than a few hours.</span></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/menorrhagia/basics/symptoms/con-20021959">Mayo Clinic</a></blockquote>
It absolutely boggles my mind that in all the books and talks on menstruation and puberty, this was not mentioned once*. <b>Everyone was so focused on assuring the pre-teens that what they were experiencing was normal, that nobody bothered to tell us what <i>isn't</i> normal.</b> As a result, there are many people struggling with heavy periods that limit their daily lives or cause medical problems, thinking that that's just a normal part of living with a uterus. That's garbage, so here's a list of things that indicate abnormally heavy menstrual flow (menorrhagia), lifted wholsale from the <a href="http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/menorrhagia/basics/symptoms/con-20021959">Mayo Clinic</a>:<br />
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<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Soaking through one or more sanitary pads or tampons every hour for several consecutive hours</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Needing to use double sanitary protection to control your menstrual flow</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Needing to wake up to change sanitary protection during the night</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Bleeding for longer than a week</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Passing blood clots with menstrual flow for more than one day**</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Restricting daily activities due to heavy menstrual flow</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Symptoms of anemia, such as tiredness, fatigue or shortness of breath</span> </li>
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<b style="color: #111111; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px;">When to see a doctor</b><br />
<span style="color: #111111; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px;">Seek medical help before your next scheduled exam if you experience:</span><br />
<ul style="color: #111111; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin: 2px 0px 15px 15px; padding: 0px;">
<li style="margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Vaginal bleeding so heavy it soaks at least one pad or tampon an hour for more than a few hours</span></li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Bleeding between periods or irregular vaginal bleeding</span></li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Any vaginal bleeding after menopause</span> </li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
So that's my little PSA on heavy menstruation. I'll leave you with an <a href="http://www.cemcor.ubc.ca/resources/very-heavy-menstrual-flow">additional resource</a>, and the thought that "heavy menstruation" would make for an interesting band name.<br />
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* Since writing this I have been informed that it was included in at least one of my books, but I guess it didn't make an impact at the time since I hadn't actually started menstruating.<br />
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** <a href="http://www.everydayhealth.com/hs/heavy-menstrual-bleeding/when-is-menstrual-bleeding-too-much/">Everyday Health</a> lists blood clots as a symptom unless they're smaller than the size of a quarter.GreyWandershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15374541753948600822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-718774790123922837.post-72038630379904958492015-07-13T16:38:00.000-03:002015-07-15T08:50:20.648-03:00Pronouns MusingWhen everyone switched their pronouns, I installed a subroutine in my brain* that shouts over everything else to provide the correct pronoun. This installation has been fairly successful. Now whenever I think about Hats or Flowers in a way that suggests a pronoun, the subroutine swoops in and, like a poorly altered memory in Harry Potter, fogs over whatever I might have been about to think and booms out "SHE" or "THEY" over top. It's effective, but it's very much a surface adjustment. It's taking while longer for the change to percolate down through the layers of my brain and become a normally integrated part of it.<br />
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I also have to import the new genders into different locations. I can think about Hats as female most of the time, but if we go somewhere and do something we haven't since she started transitioning, I find my thoughts defaulting back to the old version of her and I have to 'import' the new version to that place/situation.<br />
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Another thing that makes new pronouns hard is when everyone else gets them wrong. I was doing great with Flowers' 'they', but then I went up for a visit and all over the place there were people calling them 'she'. It's so much harder to stick with the correct pronouns when I keep hearing other people using the old ones.<br />
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Hats is now out to everyone, but for a while I was playing the pronoun game, where I tried to never have to use a pronoun to refer to her. It was surprisingly easy once I got going. I always thought it would be terribly difficult to avoid pronouns.<br />
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*I am not a robot, but I frequently find it helpful to describe myself as though I am one. This is one of the great benefits of studying computer science: It gives you a bunch of cool ways of thinking about how you think.GreyWandershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15374541753948600822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-718774790123922837.post-323225984680734932015-07-11T13:16:00.000-03:002015-07-11T13:16:39.870-03:00Gender bias<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I keep catching myself having dumb thoughts like this and then being really surprised and displeased to find that I have in fact not managed to avoid internalizing the sexism/heteronormativity/etc. in the world. I did know that on some level (it's kind of unavoidable), but it's never been so clear to me how deeply embedded my gender thought-biases are. But now I know they're in there, and I can hunt them down and poke them sharply and tell them to shape up.</div>
GreyWandershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15374541753948600822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-718774790123922837.post-91423696501104455422015-05-07T00:14:00.000-03:002015-05-07T00:14:39.453-03:00Spare BoobsWith Hats transitioning, she's got some synthetic boobs. She has <i>four</i> of them. This means that, at any given time, there are at least two spare boobs lying around the house! Think of all the uses....<br />
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(The person depicted is Hats, even though she isn't wearing a hat.)<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu18a-WUbrzBPKFPQssgVWfQI4uyRBbM2GnR7Nw36Lx7M4T8aljX1rSs4E_hyphenhyphenpBq_dOCXeTVTjTH4tzL5_xo4zxlIfjHu7cv5TVNX1upcOjhzUvwz58L7hyTTJ3Lnpwdh6aUWA2otEU3Y/s1600/BookScanCenter_1+(2).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu18a-WUbrzBPKFPQssgVWfQI4uyRBbM2GnR7Nw36Lx7M4T8aljX1rSs4E_hyphenhyphenpBq_dOCXeTVTjTH4tzL5_xo4zxlIfjHu7cv5TVNX1upcOjhzUvwz58L7hyTTJ3Lnpwdh6aUWA2otEU3Y/s1600/BookScanCenter_1+(2).jpg" height="320" width="255" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Spare Boob Use #1: potholder<br />
(Text: "Dang, where's that other potholder?" *rummage rummage*)</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_t7uCPxpdIRGjDI8nddxUDNDWvtDi1w6jR6Gc4_53GgNI3dM_R4n4DypmHVZ44sqOUJ0L01I-_smywTKR_lsEw3QY4zu-gnmoXgimJEkVkrPnjdwrBjuMXk72nx1g6bwqtlAx6Loy8QI/s1600/BookScanCenter_2+(2).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_t7uCPxpdIRGjDI8nddxUDNDWvtDi1w6jR6Gc4_53GgNI3dM_R4n4DypmHVZ44sqOUJ0L01I-_smywTKR_lsEw3QY4zu-gnmoXgimJEkVkrPnjdwrBjuMXk72nx1g6bwqtlAx6Loy8QI/s1600/BookScanCenter_2+(2).jpg" height="320" width="252" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Spare Boob Use #2: ergonomic wrist support<br />
Spare Boob Use #3: eye pillows</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkBisaoRYQrAsPfFqulb5L08jBfYs5mxonMtJZcSfcdC6RnvWvrncIX2M3OoBXyjs_EMU1dqxUZGXneo5HyXQUG0ZhM14p7LsW-yVESutonhFsbyvc853HlOpEtrt4P_4MOMKTl77ne2M/s1600/BookScanCenter_3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkBisaoRYQrAsPfFqulb5L08jBfYs5mxonMtJZcSfcdC6RnvWvrncIX2M3OoBXyjs_EMU1dqxUZGXneo5HyXQUG0ZhM14p7LsW-yVESutonhFsbyvc853HlOpEtrt4P_4MOMKTl77ne2M/s1600/BookScanCenter_3.jpg" height="320" width="249" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Spare Boob Use #4: cup lid (heh, "cup")</td></tr>
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GreyWandershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15374541753948600822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-718774790123922837.post-60883075220380930552015-04-23T16:32:00.002-03:002015-04-23T16:32:32.733-03:00Pro strategyHats is still closeted to her family, and one of her big worries is that they'll somehow find out about her being trans (or at least hear that she's 'going around in drag' [*wince*]) from some source other than her, and that one day she'll just go to visit the grandparents and it'll be "SO, I heard an interesting thing about you", at which point the world would end. She didn't seem to have any game plan for this scenario beyond being absolutely devastated, so I suggested one:<br />
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Print out a big stack of business cards all bearing some short message along the lines of "You weren't supposed to find out like this!" and possibly also "I'm female!" and just carry them around all the time. Then if a relative springs it on her, she can throw the whole lot of them into the air like a smoke bomb and flee before the relatives know what's hit 'em. Hats endorses this plan.</div>
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I have designed the cards. Aren't they lovely?</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyNDOYeOoB9_JUxCRZPLj7bEPFKuVUCdoXUkuo1FoE20a1lsGHqtmQdzDt8m36FO922HgTkNuQW-GGTSCLpV5YChd1BH6c5R-q2pHfExSsDuVGQS62OdO4o8LzTvJlmmF-B7MyFzTVkBU/s1600/business+cards.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyNDOYeOoB9_JUxCRZPLj7bEPFKuVUCdoXUkuo1FoE20a1lsGHqtmQdzDt8m36FO922HgTkNuQW-GGTSCLpV5YChd1BH6c5R-q2pHfExSsDuVGQS62OdO4o8LzTvJlmmF-B7MyFzTVkBU/s1600/business+cards.png" height="152" width="400" /></a></div>
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After I designed the cards, the website proceeded to suggest numerous other items with my "company name" on them. Including this:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPNFhcpE6ltaoLTqQa7hrLixpZvP18rRWoXjJwvkWPfgnYPMyxFjzWIlhYUQe-iHD0RV_rlkjLsB3FZjTtK6BfaOmjS8HXnkg0NaFs0HP2Xm-A1h5HlAV5H6sp6kXNcwt-YtHbO8X79gI/s1600/business+cards+promo.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPNFhcpE6ltaoLTqQa7hrLixpZvP18rRWoXjJwvkWPfgnYPMyxFjzWIlhYUQe-iHD0RV_rlkjLsB3FZjTtK6BfaOmjS8HXnkg0NaFs0HP2Xm-A1h5HlAV5H6sp6kXNcwt-YtHbO8X79gI/s1600/business+cards+promo.png" height="290" width="320" /></a></div>
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Random person: "Excuse me, sir, do you know the way to the beach?"</div>
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Hats: "I do. Can I see your hand?"</div>
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Random: "Sure, why-" KACHUNK</div>
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Surely this is the most gentle, tactful, and subtle way to correct people on your gender.</div>
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GreyWandershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15374541753948600822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-718774790123922837.post-71998950687755940912015-04-23T16:30:00.000-03:002015-04-23T16:30:16.790-03:00BopIt would be cool if lightly headbutting people in the shoulder was a more widely acknowledged form of expressing affection.GreyWandershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15374541753948600822noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-718774790123922837.post-12753413103460179812015-04-11T11:59:00.000-03:002015-04-15T12:35:24.504-03:00Content WarningsA quick word on the usefulness of trigger/content warnings, even for people without triggers.<br />
(CW: mentions of suicide)<br />
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I'm not a big fan of drama as a genre, but I do like to have drama in my stories. What I mean by that is I like the way the extreme nature of the circumstances in stories pushes people into situations I don't experience in my everyday life. It lets me vicariously experience all the heightened emotions they do, and wonder what I would do in that situation. It's catharsis in its old Greek-tragedy meaning.<br />
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It used to be that suicide was one of those dramatic devices that was interesting and entertaining for me. It pushed all the right buttons of letting me slip into a scenario and play with it a little. It was never comfortable, because it always ended up with me thinking about how I would feel if someone I loved killed themselves, but it was stimulating and cathartic, as intended.<br />
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Then Flowers tried to kill themself. To everyone's unending relief they did not succeed, and are doing much better now, but suicide is no longer a topic I can brush by or have fun with. It's way too real. When I see it in play or in a movie, it's no longer idle catharsis or "I wonder how I'd react to that", it's "It could have gone that way. That could have been us." and it's "That could still happen to us one day." Thinking about people you care for killing themselves is never comfortable, but it's a very different kind of uncomfortable when it's an actual founded concern that you worry about. Way too real.<br />
<br />
I definitely wouldn't say I'm triggered by suicide scenes, but it's no longer something I can encounter lightly in my media. It instantly trips the switch from "oh the tragedy, how delicious" to "this isn't fun anymore". I don't go out of my way to avoid it - in fact it can sometimes be useful for me to read about it and think about - but I like to know it's there. I don't like having it sprung on me when I'm trying to enjoy myself. That's why content warnings are useful to me.GreyWandershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15374541753948600822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-718774790123922837.post-34950798361713953262015-04-11T11:55:00.000-03:002015-04-11T11:55:15.787-03:00"Being" vs. "Doing"Lately I've been thinking about <b>the difference between <i>being</i> x, and <i>doing</i> x</b>. Take being gay. The way it's usually modeled now, homosexual is a thing that you are, an inborn quality that cannot be changed. But it wasn't always that way. It used to be modeled as something that you <i>did</i>. Anyone could do a 'homosexual act', but it didn't mean that they <i>were</i> anything.*<br />
<br />
Both of these models have upsides and downsides. One set that I see is when homosexuality is seen as a bad thing. If it's modeled as something people do, then anti-homosexuality says that <b>people shouldn't do the bad thing and people who do it should be punished</b>. If it's modeled as something people are, then anti-homosexuality says that <b>those people are bad people and bad things should happen to them</b>. That may not seem like much of a difference in practice, but I think it's a very fundamental one with subtle effects only some of which I can unpack on my own. This is something I can only see from a distance, so to speak, so I'd be very interested to hear other perspectives.<br />
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Another place where I see both models of being x and of doing x is polyamory. People argue over whether poly is an orientation - something innate that you're born with, or a relationship philosophy,lifestyle etc, and it just strikes me as really silly. To me at least, it's obvious that they're each true for different people. Some people are innately driven to have multiple intimate relationships at once. Flowers is like that. They're very happy with Hats, but they actively want to have additional partners. I'd say they they <i>are</i> poly. Hats and I, on the other hand, just sort of ended up in a relationship set that was poly through happenstance. I'd say we <i>do</i> poly. In the abstract I'd be fine having just one partner, it's just that that's totally not how my life is shaping up right now.<br />
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I find instances of this being x vs. doing x distinction all around gender and sexuality, but the concept is even further generalizable. I do art. I'm not an artist. Artists express themselves through their medium; I just make stuff that looks nice. Sometimes my work is meaningful, but usually not. I still see myself as a crafter, or, better and more generally, a maker than an artist.<br />
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* I'm playing fast and loose with history here. I'm making it sound simple and linear which it wasn't (isn't), but for the sake of my point the loose version will do.GreyWandershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15374541753948600822noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-718774790123922837.post-91619973694093743262015-04-02T09:55:00.000-03:002015-04-02T22:12:44.235-03:00Modeling"All models are wrong, but some are useful."<br />
- <span style="font-family: inherit;">George E. P. Box</span><br />
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I do a lot of modeling of complicated and muddy emotions and stuff, but I think it's very important to remember that what I'm doing is just that - modeling - and that each and every one of my models, while useful, is flawed, misleading, and wrong. I'm building a web of models to help me understand the world, but I must take care to not become too attached to my models and convictions, lest I miss something else just as important and valid. My current ways of thinking must not blind me to new information and new ways of thinking. I must also guard against the idea that my definitions and ways of looking at concepts are the 'right' ones. They work for me, and for many of the people I'm trying to communicate with, but to expect them to definitively describe all human experience would be a pinnacle of hubris.GreyWandershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15374541753948600822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-718774790123922837.post-73885554871577809792015-04-01T00:23:00.000-03:002015-04-01T00:26:34.009-03:00Jealousy is UsefulThe first pass at jealousy goes like this: It's a negative emotion and we shouldn't have it. Jealousy will ruin our relationships, so we should try not to be jealous ever.<br />
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The second pass goes like this: Jealousy is an emotional reaction to something that's going on. Like anger and disappointment, it's an emotional indication that not all is right, and one that's common in relationships of all sorts. If we can figure out the root cause of it, we can address the problem and fix the symptom and all will be well again. We don't have to be afraid of being jealous on occasion as long as we deal with it and don't let it be a caustic thing, or handle it badly if/when it comes up. Denying that we feel jealousy if we do could be very destructive, because it would put off addressing the underlying issue(s).<br />
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This second pass is what I see around polyamory websites, and I find it very valuable. Me being me, I have a third pass, which pulls jealousy apart into two sub-categories.<br />
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One kind of jealousy I see is "That is mine and you can't have it.", or alternately "I don't have that and you do and I wish to take it from you (so I have it and you don't)". It's what could be called <b>possessive jealousy</b>. It's the kid on the playground lusting after the toy his brother is playing with. It's seeing your partner holding hands with someone and being consumed by possessive green envy. It is "this should be mine and only mine."<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Possessive Jealousy</td></tr>
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The second kind is gentler, though not necessarily any less intense. It's "I see that you have this and I want it too". It's the kid on the playground seeing other kids with ice cream and begging his mother to get him some too. It's seeing your partner holding hands with someone and going "wow, can she do that with me sometime?" The key difference is that with this kind of jealousy, you want to have something, but you don't need everyone else to stop having it so you can. I'm going to call this <b>suggestive jealousy</b>.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Suggestive Jealousy</td></tr>
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Both of these responses are natural and useful. Possessive jealousy is good for pointing out problems that need to be addressed. <a href="http://www.morethantwo.com/jealousytheory.html">This site</a> explains that very well, so I'll leave you with that link and move on. What I really want to talk about is suggestive jealousy, and how useful I've been finding it.<br />
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Suggestive jealousy is useful because it shows me what I want. I've had this problem where I want something, but I don't know exactly what it is that I want. Specifically, I want physical intimacy with Hats (and, to a lesser and fluctuating extent, Flowers), but I don't know what specific actions will satisfy that desire and also be comfortable for us and our relationship. This isn't a case of not knowing if it would be okay to do a particular thing, it's a case of having a nebulous craving and not knowing which particular things will fulfill it.<br />
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What does this feel like? Say that you've never heard of cookies, but you want something sweet to eat. Candy? No, you want something baked. Pie? No, that's too mushy. Cake? No, you really want something chewy that you can hold in your hand and take bites out of. Like Candy? No...no, you guess cake is really what you want, even though it's kinda big and messy. So you have a piece of cake and try to convince yourself that that's what you wanted, because its the thing that fits your criteria the best. You couldn't say 'No, I want<i> cookies</i>' because you'd never heard of cookies. But if you <i>saw</i> a cookie, you would immediately realize that that's exactly what you wanted to eat.<br />
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I see three ways to go from this situation. First is the lazy option. You eat the cake and try to convince yourself that you're satisfied, because that's the thing that's closest to what you wanted, right? But as anyone who's ever had a food craving knows, that may work some of the time, but it's not the most satisfying solution.<br />
<br />
Second is the very effort-intensive option. You bust out the apron and bake batch after batch of sugary messes, trying to invent a cookie without knowing what it looks like or how its done. Eventually, if you are persistent, you will emerge triumphant with your new creation, and that will be pretty awesome, but that takes a lot of work and a LOT of failed batches of cookies which you must scrape sheepishly into the compost, or force yourself to eat even though they are really sub-par.<br />
<br />
The third option is a middle ground between laziness and effort. You take tours of bakeries, peering at all the shelves and sniffing the air until one day you spot in the back corner a rack of cookies and go 'AHAH! <i>That's</i> what I want!'. This is what I am trying to do with touch. There are a lot of ways to be physically intimate out there. Just in my everyday life and in my chosen media, I see dozens of examples of affectionate/intimate touch. This is me wandering around the bakery. So how do I pick out the things I like? Suggestive jealousy. It would take an enormous amount of thought-energy and reflective patience to carefully analyze each instance of physical affection to determine whether it's something I want. Fortunately, suggestive jealousy is the feelings equivalent of a big flashing neon sign in a bakery, pointing at a plate of cookies and mouthing 'over here'. It makes me perk up and go 'yes, that!'.<br />
<br />
So when I watch Hats kiss the top of Flowers' head, or see the two of them cuddle in a new configuration, I am jealous, but it's not that I want them to stop doing that, or that seeing those actions makes me feel bad. It makes me feel good, both because they're happy, and because it points out to me something that I want, which I can then articulate, which I can (probably) then get. It's actively useful to me. They're happy, I'm happy, and I don't have to do all the work of figuring out intimacy from scratch. Everybody wins.<br />
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Note: I originally wrote this post when I was living near Hats and Flowers and seeing them very often. I tweaked it a tiny bit for tenses and to use the new names, but nothing more. This active process of figuring out touch is on hold while I'm away at school and out of touch-range, but the suggestive jealousy has turned up in a different light. Now it serves as a good measure of how touch-starved I am. I've found that I miss touch quite a lot when I'm away at school, and how much I miss it varies depending on my stress level, how long it's been since I visited Hats and Flowers or talked to them, the weather, and so on. Watching how jealous I am when other people hug each other is a good way to keep track of it.GreyWandershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15374541753948600822noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-718774790123922837.post-79358498720323059372015-04-01T00:20:00.000-03:002015-04-01T00:43:07.889-03:00Internet hauntsToday I have a brief grumble about polyamorous blogging. When we started discussing having a multi-person partnership, I started poking around some polyamorous corners of the internet, with varying degrees of success. I keep running into one of three problems:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
1. The site is crusty and old and full of broken links (Has nobody talked about polyamory on the internet since 2000?) </blockquote>
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2. The content and/or advertising is highly sex-oriented (Yes, I want to learn about alternative relationship structures. No, I do not want to purchase sex toys.) </blockquote>
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3. The site/people talk almost exclusively about couples 'opening up' their relationship and bringing in someone new (Not at all my situation.)</blockquote>
I've also found the topics of conversation to be more limited than in ace circles. There doesn't seem to be as much interest in deconstructing assumptions, which is my specialty and fascination.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px;">My perception. I'd like to think it's wrong, but...well....</td></tr>
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On the one hand, I'm a bit disappointed by my findings. I strongly suspect that I'm just looking in the wrong places. Anyone have good site recommendations?<br />
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On the other hand, asexual blogs/AVEN are rockin' places to discuss sexuality, relationships, gender, and so on. Flowers has enjoyed the new wealth of vocabulary and concepts they've discovered here. I think the asexual community has a lot to offer (to anyone, not just asexuals) because of how much careful dissection we've done. It's not that often that you find a place to talk about sexuality where critical thinking is the norm.<br />
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GreyWandershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15374541753948600822noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-718774790123922837.post-72366834335393955042015-03-23T12:50:00.001-03:002015-04-28T13:19:30.991-03:00Updates all aroundHello, blog. It's been a year. Much has changed, and much has stayed the same. Let me get you up to speed.<br />
<br />
<u>Genders:</u><br />
Hat Guy? Not a guy! She's moving towards female identity and presentation, and using she/her pronouns. This is exciting and is making her sooo happy and I'm so glad that she's figuring out all this stuff about how to be a self-version that she likes and which feels genuine and good. I'll call her Hats here.<br />
<br />
Flower Lady? Not a lady! At least not all of the time! They've ID'd as genderfluid as long as I've known them, but mostly always presented female. Now they're moving more aggressively toward rad androgyny and using they/them pronouns. Yaaaay, happy self-vesions all around! I'm gonna call them Flowers here.<br />
<br />
Me? Yeah, I'm still a girl.<br />
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<u>Relationships:</u><br />
Flowers and Hats are getting married this July! Hats and I still love each other. Flowers and I are still friendly and figuring out what to be to each other. We still want to live together, although not necessarily under the same roof. We're thinking the optimal setup would be if I had a tiny house (tiny house!) and planted it in their yard.<br />
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There have been some pretty large ups and downs over the course of the last year+ and a lot of side-to-side, which seems to be par for the course (the course here being relationships period). There's also been some additional poly happenings with Hats and Flowers (as in, additional parters/date-friends).<br />
<br />
<u>"Home":</u><br />
My parents moved, so I now have to go visit Hats and Flowers* intentionally rather than seeing them by default whenever I go home. My concept of 'home', always very particular and meaningful, has gotten rather weird. 'Home' is now, in no particular order:<br />
(1) where my parents live<br />
(2) the place where I used to live, which I love<br />
(3) where Hats and Flowers live (conveniently the same as #2)<br />
(4) my dorm room at school.<br />
<br />
<u>School:</u><br />
I'm still in school (or rather, in school again after a break), with one year left until graduation. It's pretty great, although I don't like being away from Hats and Flowers for so long at a stretch. Hats is still in school, or rather, going back to school in the fall after break. Last semester she was absolutely flat out awful busy (the kind of busy where you don't have time to eat or sleep, never mind talk to your fiance who lives with you, never mind email your GreyWanders), which sucked for everyone, so now she's taking a semester of rest. Flowers is also going back to school in the fall, after a few years working.<br />
<u><br /></u>
<u>Now what?</u><br />
I will continue to post things sporadically when the urge strikes. The blog never died, I just didn't have anything relevant I wanted to talk about publicly in the last year. Now I do. I've been lurking around ace blogs the whole time, and while there's been a lot of stuff I don't have much to say about, recently there's been some more of the kind of discussion I go in for, so that's got me perked up. Also, I know ace people! In real life! Talking to them gives me food for though which may end up here as well. It's mostly shorter stuff though. Anecdotes, observations, thoughts, little comics, and so on. Long thought-out posts may still happen from time to time; we'll see! Also, I've been thinking a lot about trans and gender stuffs, so that will make it's presence known.<br />
<br />
*Hats and Flowers sounds like a very cute little shop in an old brick storefront nestled in the historic downtown.GreyWandershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15374541753948600822noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-718774790123922837.post-65538507838774128432014-02-19T17:32:00.001-04:002014-02-19T17:45:05.286-04:00Flower Lady: Origins<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />GreyWandershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15374541753948600822noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-718774790123922837.post-78128816566379270922014-01-30T17:33:00.001-04:002014-04-30T17:19:54.794-03:00Sexuals and Grey-Area relationships<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This is a response to The Thinking Asexual's post <a href="http://thethinkingasexual.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/are-asexuals-capable-of-nonsexualnonromantic-love-unique-to-us/">Are Asexuals Capable of Nonsexual/Nonromantic Love Unique to Us?</a> Like most of The Thinking Asexual's posts, it is well thought out, well argued, and makes some very good points. It is also quite mistaken.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The post starts off like this:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Recently, I started to deeply contemplate an idea that has flit in and out of mind a handful of times, and the idea has evolved into a theory. The theory feels strongly probable to me, but I haven’t yet decided to view it as truth. I feel like my life experience has been building to this theory for a long time, but I haven’t explored it long enough to make it a part of my worldview.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The theory is this: Asexuals, including aromantics, may be capable of feeling a unique kind of nonsexual/nonromantic love that romantic-sexual people cannot feel. </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Later, the theory is stated more strongly:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">"romantic-sexual people can’t feel the feelings necessary for these types of friendships"</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">(Where "these types of friendships" refers to relationships that fall outside 'just friends' or a traditional romantic relationship. Grey-area nonsexual relationships.) </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">This is something I know to be false. I have a few case studies to illustrate my point, but even more than having counter examples, I know deep down that "everyone in X group is incapable of Y feelings" is probably always going to be a false statement. It's too general, too restrictive, and too simple. If there's one thing I've learned about people and identities, it's that they're frigging complicated. Nothing is clear-cut, and even when two variables seem to be linked, it's never a 100% correlation. There are asexuals who feel arousal, who have sex, who masturbate, even ones who seek out sexual experiences for their own pleasure. We know that knowing someone is asexual tells you nothing about how and whom they love and what they do with them. They could experience a whole dictionary of types of attraction to any gender imaginable. They could desire and have relationships that are monogamous or polyamorous, kinky or vanilla, romantic or platonic. We do not assume to know their feelings on any of these things based solely on their asexuality. <b>So why on earth would it be alright to assume knowledge of a sexual's feelings, based solely on their sexuality?</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But I'm not just arguing assumptions here. I have data. Let me restate the original theory here.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">"romantic-sexual people can’t feel the feelings necessary for these types of friendships"</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Yes, they can. Or rather, some can. I have no idea what the majority take on this is, but I have three examples of romantic sexuals who do have these feelings. (It only takes one example to prove this theory false since it's stated as an absolute.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">My first example is <a href="http://theacetheist.wordpress.com/2013/11/11/askbox-answers-marriage-friendship/">on the internet</a>, so you can go have a look. She is a sexual who clearly states a desire for a non-sexual, non-romantic partner whose importance would equal that of her romantic-sexual partner. A really cool thing about this lady is that she had, nurtured, and articulated this desire all on her own. There was nobody going 'Hey, we should be platonic life partners!'. There's no platonic partner at all right now. There's just a heterosexual lady sitting around going 'Man, you know what would be the bee's knees? Having a deep platonic bond on the same level as my hypothetical marriage.' </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">My second example is my own Flower Lady. She's romantic bisexual, and when I asked her to read The Thinking Asexual's article, she had a similar reaction to the one I had. Good thinking, good arguing, but clearly wrong, because she (Flower Lady) has experienced the kind of non-sexual, non-romantic love that the author describes. She wrote up her thoughts on <a href="http://flowerladythinks.blogspot.ca/2014/01/the-terrible-they.html">her own blog</a>, and I find her perspective very useful.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">My last example is Hat Guy, and this one's my favorite because Hat Guy is the last person you would expect to understand this based on his labels. He's white, cisgendered, male, middle class, young, able-bodied, basically all the privileged labels you can think of. He has a somewhat conservative family background, and is happily engaged to a lovely (Flower) Lady, and yet he loves me deeply in a way that is totally non-sexual, and is outside his definition of romantic. Not only does he have and express these feelings, but he developed them and decided what to do with them on his own. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Well, not really on his own. Relationships are kind of a two-way street. What I mean by that is that I did not sit down and say "Hey, we should have a queerplatonic relationship". I sat down and asked "What is this?", and it was Hat Guy who said it was obviously more than 'just friendship' but could/should not be a traditional romantic relationship. It was Hat Guy who thought that as long as we knew what was going on we didn't need to label it. He was the one who first formally stated what we were, and placed it cozily in the grey area as if it was the most obvious and natural thing in the world. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">So there you go. A sexual who not only can feel these emotions, and sustain these relationships, but who deliberately engaged in a very non-normative relationship, despite having no context for it, or having any specialized words to describe it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">At this point I have shown The Thinking Asexual's theory to be false, but I'd like to keep going because there were some good points behind the theory. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Like this one: If sexuals can experience these feelings, why don't they...you know...act like it? Why is it so enormously uncommon for anyone to understand that there are relationships to be had other than garden-variety friendship and romantic-sexual ones? The Thinking Asexual has an answer to this:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I think that when it comes to the sexual population’s disconnect from gray-area nonsexual relationships (romantic friendship, passionate friendship, and primary nonromantic relationships), there are really only two explanations:</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">1.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>They can’t feel the feelings that fuel these kind of relationships.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">2. They can feel the feelings that fuel these kind of relationships, but through their own social conditioning, they come to believe that such relationships do not and cannot exist and have nothing desirable to offer. In the event that they do feel emotions for someone that are naturally of the gray-area nonsexual friendship kind, they mistake those emotions for romantic and sexual and thus pursue a romantic-sexual relationship with someone they actually want to be romantic friends/passionate friends/nonromantic primary partners/super close QP friends with. Or, they don’t act on their feelings at all.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And then, despite feeling these feelings, they act totally confused and weirded out ... when asexuals bring up the subject of romantic friendship ... because they feel the need to uphold their own culture’s [norms] ... despite the fact that their own emotional experiences prove those norms to be bullshit. </span></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Thinking Asexual applied Occam's Razor and theorized that explanation number one is correct, but I think that in reality there's a bit of each going on. It is entirely possible that some (but not all) sexuals are incapable of these kinds of feelings*, but I think that in many (if not most) cases, explanation number two is spot on.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The effects of social norms should not be underestimated. Even I, an asexual-spectrum person living in an environment where the word 'heteronormative' is commonly tossed out over breakfast, took a long time to stop trying to put my relationship with Hat Guy in a neatly labeled cubbyhole and accept the weird grey-area stuff for what it was. Why? Because I didn't know that grey-area relationships were a thing, and for some weird (but very common) reason, that made it hard for me to come to grips with mine. And I had an internet of relationship anarchists at my disposal. In theory, everyone has an internet at their disposal, but information on grey-area relationships isn't easy to find, even if you're looking for it. I poked around the internet for months and months before I ever found mention of queer platonic relationships. When I did, it was through asexuality. If I had not identified with descriptions of asexuality, I probably would never have stuck around this corner of the internet long enough to discover all the nifty relationship deconstruction that goes on here. The fact is, sexuals are much less likely to come across this information than asexual-spectrum folks, and are therefore much less likely to realize that these feelings are a Thing - that they are legitimate and can go places.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Flower Lady theorizes that many a romantic-sexual relationship has ended because one of the parties' feelings, while loving, were not in line with the traditional romantic-sexual relationship model. They didn't feel the feelings society said they should, so they thought the relationship was a bad one and ended it. Society says that you either pair-bond sexually forever, or cease interacting (unless you can pull off 'just friends'). It takes an uncommon bond (or an uncommonly clueless person) to punch through that burden of norm. That, or access to information which will map out a new possible sub-norm.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Another factor here is necessity. As a sexual, you can sort of putter along with the assumptions you got in grade school. As The Thinking Asexual said in <a href="http://thethinkingasexual.wordpress.com/2012/05/06/platonic-life-partnerships-take-courage/">another post</a>, it "takes guts" to engage in a non-normative relationship. It takes change, and in general, people don't change without a good reason. But if you're asexual (and that affects how you would behave sexually within a relationship), you have to look at non-normative options, because the normal ones won't work for you. Most sexuals never have a reason to question their norms.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">So maybe that's why The Thinking Asexual has never met a sexual who has understood their desire for grey-area relationships. Because anyone who has those feelings inside of them has been trained to neglect and mistake them, hasn't had a strong enough reason the challenge their conditioning, and/or hasn't had access to the information and support that would be needed for them to be able to really shake off the norms and embrace a new way of thinking.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And now a word of caution. I cannot blame anyone for wanting to draw conclusions based on their personal experience. That is how we process the world. I do not blame The Thinking Asexual for arriving at the conclusion they did, given the data they had. But to take all the 7 BILLION sexuals our world has, and say that not one of them is capable of feeling deep platonic love... that's a long jump to make. It is also a very harmful one. This attitude of "I know your orientation, therefore I can assume ___ about you" is exactly the kind of thinking that hurts asexuals - and many other minorities - the most. It is no bad thing to theorize, and to try to find patterns in data, but we must all of us tread very carefully here, and avoid hostility and animosity where it does not need to be. The sexual/asexual spectrum is just one variable axis in a nesting thicket of variables, and grouping the world into 'us' and 'them' based on it does nobody any favors.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">One-sentence summary: Sexuals can experience non-sexual, non-romantic love, and assuming things about people based on their sexuality is a bad idea.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">* I also suspect that some (but not all) asexuals are incapable of these feelings.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Note:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
One more thing: <span style="font-family: inherit;">What about those periods of history during which romantic/passionate friendships were the norm? When women wrote gushing letters to one another and slept in the same beds without a whisper of impropriety? To be fair, some of those pairs were probably 'closeted lesbians' (to force the modern terminology), but all of them? I am willing to bet that at least a healthy portion of these relationships were between heterosexual women who honestly and (since their society accepted it then) openly felt and expressed passionate, nonsexual love. </span></div>
GreyWandershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15374541753948600822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-718774790123922837.post-16369040776977095242013-09-24T20:56:00.000-03:002013-09-26T14:05:59.224-03:00Intimacy ScalesI forget how it came up, but somehow Flower Lady noticed that she viewed hand holding as a very intimate, romantic thing, but Hat Guy thought it was just a friendship thing that girls do, and so didn't think it meant that much when she held his hand.<br />
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Realization: Different people can process the same action as more or less intimate than others would process that same action.<br />
<br />
This makes a lot of sense. It explains why some people, like Flower Lady, are very physical and hug acquaintances, while others, like me, need large personal bubbles and take a long time to get huggy with someone. I had a model that explained that before, which went kind of like a slide rule. On the bottom ruler there was a scale of how well you knew a person, and on the top ruler there was a scale of touch, and different people slid their rulers so that the things lined up differently. <br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgffhVCWtRuXwB7NYfAGZjDZTBI4OJR-HFEZhoX5cH3yay4A73hwl7qeRiy92foSmO9JW56TasuEKWvsr1vwKL2mKJYh3hUAhsS6-XB8FLxaxybNRS_Rd_IInhGY0uS7wUy_EdsZK3i70/s1600/slide+rule.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgffhVCWtRuXwB7NYfAGZjDZTBI4OJR-HFEZhoX5cH3yay4A73hwl7qeRiy92foSmO9JW56TasuEKWvsr1vwKL2mKJYh3hUAhsS6-XB8FLxaxybNRS_Rd_IInhGY0uS7wUy_EdsZK3i70/s1600/slide+rule.png" height="111" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I am aware that this is not what a slide rule looks like.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
But that one doesn't work. It doesn't work because it's not just that different peoples' scales line up differently, it's that their scales are actually different. This is one of those things that seems really obvious in retrospect, but surprised us because it had never occurred to us to think about it before. So we set ourselves homework to draw up our own personal scales of intimacy - to rate actions from least to most intimate. The results were...complicated. It turns out that - surprise, surprise - people are really complicated, and the way we think about physical intimacy is all tangled up with other things. I may talk about some of that tangling later, but for now, here are our results stated as simply as possible:<br />
<br />
<b>Hat Guy:</b><br />
Hat Guy organised things in bins of relationship type. He noted that a relationship could be sexual at any point along the spectrum, but that for him it only makes sense to have sexual relationships come further down the line than romantic ones.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggVryLvm84OFFeH6e6ZHGNHrucvZMC526tHmAq0Mwv4J8RdZfnMBIRaojO7rSGDTpCMterLr5hLB-htwAeLrmeqfE5y5rtvglcSghxzVEtogTt7_CZ4o8vgql6n2owgN11rzsPq0r-JSQ/s1600/Homework+(HG).png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggVryLvm84OFFeH6e6ZHGNHrucvZMC526tHmAq0Mwv4J8RdZfnMBIRaojO7rSGDTpCMterLr5hLB-htwAeLrmeqfE5y5rtvglcSghxzVEtogTt7_CZ4o8vgql6n2owgN11rzsPq0r-JSQ/s1600/Homework+(HG).png" height="123" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Click to enlarge</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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</div>
<b>Flower Lady:</b><br />
Flower Lady organised things similarly. Hers was a scale of emotional/physical intimacy, right up until the purple physical attraction (by which she meant sexual attraction) category. That one she said was different, because she experiences sexual attraction and emotionality as different things. Not necessarily unrelated things, but different (so not along the same scale).<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPe5TJDH1fUjopOxI6eTRiUmUywBrswG1ncdPPlEEjU2Sp396x504cDaXfbXw2NU_rfr6GddyVkCkrirTvPDdomak7u5Psc5pOsmRn8RA21akPyX2MSFZNkw1jYHJLHkF57LBNRkquLNE/s1600/Homework+%2528FL%2529.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPe5TJDH1fUjopOxI6eTRiUmUywBrswG1ncdPPlEEjU2Sp396x504cDaXfbXw2NU_rfr6GddyVkCkrirTvPDdomak7u5Psc5pOsmRn8RA21akPyX2MSFZNkw1jYHJLHkF57LBNRkquLNE/s1600/Homework+%2528FL%2529.png" height="123" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Click to enlarge</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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</div>
<b>Me:</b><br />
My graph was actually much more complicated because my emotional intimacy and physical intimacy don't map to each other linearly. For the purposes of this post, I've re-done the linear part of mine using something like the colour scheme that Flower Lady and Hat Guy used.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFDWF7JD1kB9r_RSDc0Jq64loxyZaGg80EzdVwL2be97g721tBmJ2-GEV2j8F-3woamumDHm4fY_a2NMEfJbGrOSGRVeOiQxDp5idbLcu9Twn4Q9Txmtau2WRH9hDAonoh1kDaBSr-pEM/s1600/Homework+(me+simplified).png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFDWF7JD1kB9r_RSDc0Jq64loxyZaGg80EzdVwL2be97g721tBmJ2-GEV2j8F-3woamumDHm4fY_a2NMEfJbGrOSGRVeOiQxDp5idbLcu9Twn4Q9Txmtau2WRH9hDAonoh1kDaBSr-pEM/s1600/Homework+(me+simplified).png" height="141" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Click to enlarge</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Let's tease out some of the differences here. Hat Guy sees making out as a romantic thing, while Flower Lady sees it as a sexual thing. Flower Lady sees resting with physical contact as more intimate than light cuddling, while Hat guy sees it as less. I see holding hands as extremely intimate, while Hat Guy does not.<br />
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There are lots of complexities I'm skating over here. The point is, different people think the same physicals acts convey different levels of intimacy.GreyWandershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15374541753948600822noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-718774790123922837.post-79569292419369882432013-09-21T18:55:00.000-03:002013-09-26T14:32:38.333-03:00Need/WantIn my <a href="http://ttwblaze.blogspot.ca/2013/08/family-part-2-mine.html">original post</a> outlining my intended family structure, I left room for myself to have another serious, probably romantic relationship in addition to the base unit of me, Hat Guy, and Flower Lady. I did that because I felt that having such a relationship could enrich my life, and because I wanted the opportunity to develop bonds with people in whatever ways seem appropriate at the time. In other words, I didn't want to be unnecessarily limited by my existing relationships.<br />
<br />
That's why I left room for another person. I did <i>not</i> do it because I anticipate having needs or wants that could only be fulfilled by having another relationship. Ideally, the base unit (plus the friend/family network) will be able to fulfill all the needs and wants of everyone in the base unit. This is part of being a functioning, stable unit.<br />
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At this point in our conversation, we the unit demonstrated how super useful we are. We went "We're setting the goal of making sure all our needs and wants are addressed somewhere in our relationship structures? Great! Let's map out what each of us needs/wants and where we can get that". And that's what we did.<br />
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Vaguely inspired by Morrissey and Cake's <a href="http://morrisseyandcake.wordpress.com/2013/07/03/physical-boundaries-checklist/">physical boundaries checklist</a>, we made a big huge table of things that people do in relationships, or that at least one of us needs/wants to have happen. We put those down the left column, and across the top we put each of our relationships (Hat Guy and me, Hat Guy and Flower Lady, me and Flower lady, and the group). We also put a column for people outside of the base unit, a column for objections, and a column for whether things are allowed to happen in public.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYa8XMHQHoIEtSCZ-2yZBLki4fNF-KlZQd9huQPAkMs9BrjYWCdFkhZeAK-6AkJ7rsBLSrtTpef3yyZ4enqIlrzcXUC_eG0kE7LJHAcCrdY7P-MeUn2yolsnegNsHweDc1CRPyklV_HUs/s1600/rsz_1untitled.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYa8XMHQHoIEtSCZ-2yZBLki4fNF-KlZQd9huQPAkMs9BrjYWCdFkhZeAK-6AkJ7rsBLSrtTpef3yyZ4enqIlrzcXUC_eG0kE7LJHAcCrdY7P-MeUn2yolsnegNsHweDc1CRPyklV_HUs/s1600/rsz_1untitled.png" height="215" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Click to enlarge</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br />
This was very much a write-in table, not a check-off table. Specific entries were things like "yes", "ask first", "no problems", and "required". The objections category in particular got wordy, because we were using it for all types of objections, such as how I have to be completely out of earshot when sexy times happen, that Flower Lady should not be allowed to go grocery shopping alone lest she bring home the entire store, and that none of us want to spend time around each other's ex's. This table covers a lot of stuff, and what we got out of it was entirely proportional to the effort we put into filling it out. I have a feeling that this is only the first version of this table.<br />
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<b>Why is this useful?</b><br />
In general, because none of us are mind readers. No matter how well we know someone, we can't know what they want and don't want unless they tell us. Yes, there's body language and stuff, but words are really the clearest, most straight-forward way to do it. Unfortunately, telling someone that you want them to change what they're doing is not always easy. For me and my unit, charts make it easier to communicate. Clearly laying everything out in a very utilitarian way opens up lines of communication, which allows us to be frank about what we need/want. This in turn allows us to get what we need/want. Useful.<br />
<br />
In the case of multiple relationships (those could be romantic, family, friend, or something else), there's more than one person available to fulfill your needs/wants. That makes things easier, because you don't have to rely on just one person to do <i>everything</i> for you, but it also makes things more complicated, because you have more options of people to go to, and more people relying on you. It can be tricky finding the right balances. By mapping out what everyone needs, you can start intentionally matching those needs together. <b>The goal is to make sure everyone gets the attentions they desire, and don't feel pressured to give more than they wish to. </b>GreyWandershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15374541753948600822noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-718774790123922837.post-37158513971587313552013-09-18T23:38:00.000-03:002013-09-18T23:38:26.015-03:00Wait a minute, this is stupid.So I was chopping vegetables the other day, and suddenly it struck me: The Kinsey scale is kinda dumb. Why? Because it measures two entirely unrelated variables (attraction to people of your gender and attraction to people of the opposite gender) along the same axis.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4QzHQx8BJg41I0DAPzIfjf6zml3Eefk7UckAqFge9Wi_myMoP1KIShMQSo5QZVdDwX4kxA3o9LyLCUA6xKaJqYECTdu-5ehyphenhyphenDoaI5O7LhAIcqYeHTkn9ZNkb4uKYNZB7WqbINciC-_yk/s1600/Duh1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4QzHQx8BJg41I0DAPzIfjf6zml3Eefk7UckAqFge9Wi_myMoP1KIShMQSo5QZVdDwX4kxA3o9LyLCUA6xKaJqYECTdu-5ehyphenhyphenDoaI5O7LhAIcqYeHTkn9ZNkb4uKYNZB7WqbINciC-_yk/s1600/Duh1.jpg" height="107" width="320" /></a></div>
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That's really dumb! It's like graphing how much people like bananas and melons using the same axis. If you don't see what's wrong with this, imagine that you don't like melons <i>or</i> bananas. Or that you hate melons and like bananas, but don't like bananas as much as everyone else who's all the way over on the not-melon side. There's no way to express those ideas on this scale, because <b>the only way to like melons less is to like bananas more</b>. This is stupid because how much you like bananas is not related to how much you like melons.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsrIVJ7kFNtriLZ42XOzfQS7jvRnWGpb3ZpY_yZfkty5m9Ei1Hl9CCvN2UM3CkTYwSy7I3yTuF8W8P0jnK_BJ5iSmRY2zJORTuHce4KWrUVRLTl6R4NFqciSKeO76KIrfpeL3m-l4Z5Wo/s1600/Duh1.2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsrIVJ7kFNtriLZ42XOzfQS7jvRnWGpb3ZpY_yZfkty5m9Ei1Hl9CCvN2UM3CkTYwSy7I3yTuF8W8P0jnK_BJ5iSmRY2zJORTuHce4KWrUVRLTl6R4NFqciSKeO76KIrfpeL3m-l4Z5Wo/s1600/Duh1.2.jpg" height="125" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dumb</td></tr>
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To bring it back to sexuality, being less attracted to one gender does not mean that you have to be more attracted to the other gender. Those variables are independent. What the heck are they doing on the same axis? Really the graph should look like more like this: </div>
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What a nice-looking graph. ...Except then this happens:</div>
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Dang it, gender binary, things are so much easier to graph if I can just pretend you exist! (But I can't.)GreyWandershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15374541753948600822noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-718774790123922837.post-38843457963070811222013-09-05T23:36:00.000-03:002013-09-13T11:52:25.004-03:00Cheat Sheet #1: Orientation TermsI've been poking around these parts of the internet for years, so I've picked up a lot of jargon (and there is a <i>lot</i> of jargon around here) and forgotten I haven't always known it. This was fine until I started talking to people who <i>haven't</i> been reading about orientation for years. Jargon can be overwhelming at first, especially if you haven't seen enough of it to notice the patterns, so I'm making a series of cheat sheets to help out folks just arriving to the party who need a jump on the vocab.<br />
<br />
The first sheet covers orientation terms. I tried to keep it clean and concise while being reasonably comprehensive. If there are things that I missed, misrepresented, or otherwise could have done better, please let me know in the comments.<br />
<br />
Future sheets will include Gender Terms, and Attraction/Intimacy/Relationship Terms. (That one may end up being more than one sheet.) The most recent versions of all the terminology cheat sheets will be available in the <a href="http://ttwblaze.blogspot.ca/p/glossary.html">glossary</a>. If there are any other areas you'd like to see a cheat sheet for, let me know!<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Click to enlarge, or right click and open in a new tab/window for a zoomable version.</td></tr>
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<br />GreyWandershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15374541753948600822noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-718774790123922837.post-46738766267270519692013-09-02T09:53:00.000-03:002013-09-02T09:54:05.010-03:00Variable Separation (or, Asexuality 102 and Why Sexuals Should Hear it As Well)<div class="MsoNormal">
One of the things I’m most excited to do on this blog is
talk about separating variables. What do I mean by that? Let’s use attraction as an easy (Hah, jokes!) example. I am (somewhere on the) <a href="http://ttwblaze.blogspot.ca/p/glossary.html">asexual</a> (spectrum).
What this means is I do not experience <a href="http://ttwblaze.blogspot.ca/p/glossary.html">primary sexual attraction</a>. I
do, however, experience <a href="http://ttwblaze.blogspot.ca/p/glossary.html">romantic attraction</a>. I've been thinking of sexual and
romantic attraction as separate things for years now, so it seems very natural
to me, but I remember a time when, like mostly everyone in our
society, I assumed that the two could or should only be experienced together.
Figuring out that they were actually separable variables was one of the most
important mental adjustments I've ever made. Right up there with object permanence. It can be very valuable to be able to pull complicated things apart into their component bits.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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I really like metaphors, and in particular food metaphors,
so I will now explain variable separation in terms of coleslaw. Imagine for a
moment that you are an orphan who has grown up on pre-plated food and have only
ever seen cabbage, carrots, and dressing tossed together in the form of coleslaw.
<o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Please sir, I want some more.</td></tr>
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Since you've never seen a cabbage on its own, it would be
perfectly reasonable for you to think that all cabbage is part of coleslaw, or even to not realize that cabbage is a thing – you could just see coleslaw and
not think about the different bits that make it up at all.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNMy6_Teq6FLF-ZOpWd2k5Lh_TtyHf1vJ5B3K2Rl305dzLR6P8qIWG21Aia9z5M2GmtnfmIzbPAnfUCyTOOfGtw2ELYdl_opHukWNCf0mVKhPzBAa7V9mKB9gVu_vaPsppXrHilHLkLJQ/s1600/coleslaw2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNMy6_Teq6FLF-ZOpWd2k5Lh_TtyHf1vJ5B3K2Rl305dzLR6P8qIWG21Aia9z5M2GmtnfmIzbPAnfUCyTOOfGtw2ELYdl_opHukWNCf0mVKhPzBAa7V9mKB9gVu_vaPsppXrHilHLkLJQ/s1600/coleslaw2.jpg" height="320" width="210" /></a></div>
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This is what most people do. They look at things –
attraction, in our example – and either don't see that the things are made up of smaller parts, or assume that, since they've never seen the component parts individually, those parts must always go together. But I can have cabbage without having carrots or dressing, and I can have romantic attraction without having sexual attraction. Getting people to understand this is not always
easy.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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Attraction is the category I have the best model for. Here
is a list of attraction variables which I, and a nontrivial number of other
people, believe to be independent. Make no mistake, they can and often are
closely linked for many or most people, but I don’t believe that they <i>have</i> to
be. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<a href="http://ttwblaze.blogspot.ca/p/glossary.html">Primary Sexual Attraction<o:p></o:p></a></div>
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<a href="http://ttwblaze.blogspot.ca/p/glossary.html">Secondary Sexual Attraction<o:p></o:p></a></div>
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<a href="http://ttwblaze.blogspot.ca/p/glossary.html">Physical Attraction<o:p></o:p></a></div>
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<a href="http://ttwblaze.blogspot.ca/p/glossary.html">Romantic Attraction<o:p></o:p></a></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<a href="http://ttwblaze.blogspot.ca/p/glossary.html">Aesthetic Attraction</a></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<a href="http://ttwblaze.blogspot.ca/p/glossary.html">Emotional Attraction<o:p></o:p></a></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<a href="http://ttwblaze.blogspot.ca/p/glossary.html">Kinky Attraction</a><o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
For a more detailed essay on these types of attraction, I highly recommend <a href="http://intimacycartography.wordpress.com/2011/06/01/towards-a-better-model-of-attraction/">this post</a> over at Intimacy Cartography, a blog I envy for its excellent name.</div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Types of attraction get talked about a lot in the asexual
community because they need to be, but I think that they could have real value
to sexuals as well. My clearest example of people who could benefit from this model is queer folks. Some people
wake up at the age of seven and go “Yep, I’m gay,” and that’s great. It is by far the
most direct path. But many queer people go through a lengthy and painful period
of introspection, often in middle or high school, where they’re trying to
figure out what their orientation is. This can be very confusing. Go to any
teen advice website (or <a href="http://queersecrets.tumblr.com/">Queer Secrets</a>) and you’ll find a slew of anguished questions something
along the lines of “Am I in love with my best friend? The other day she slept over and we had this really sensual massage session and I enjoyed it –
does that mean I’m gay?”, or “I get butterflies in my stomach when I think
about this boy, but I’m not [sexually] attracted to guys! What’s going on?”, and
so on. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
It seems to me it would be a lot easier to figure out your
sexual orientation if you had a model of attraction that didn't mash all the
types together, particularly because sexual orientation is based only on <i>sexual</i> attraction. Separating the
variables would give people the tools to go “ahah, I am romantically, but not
sexually attracted to this guy, but since I only get sexually attracted to
girls I must be straight”. Trying to figure out your sexual orientation with "attraction" being one unified category is like trying to tell someone whether your coleslaw is made with green or purple cabbage if you're an orphan who's never seen cabbage outside of coleslaw. You can probably do it, because it tends to tint the entire dish, but some things may not line up. Like orange carrots. What the heck?<o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Being able to make those distinctions between different flavors of attraction could be enormously
helpful to people of any orientation. Think of the drama that could be avoided
if people had the tools to think “I have a romance-like friendship with my best
guy friend and that’s very important to me, but I don’t want to get physical at
all, even just hugging”, or “I find this person very sexually attractive, but I’m
not romantically attracted to them, so I shouldn't accept their offer of a
romantic relationship structure”, or "I find this person very aesthetically attractive, but I don't want to interact with him". Better yet, imagine that people could <i>communicate</i> their feelings clearly to
others using widely agreed-upon vocabulary. Amazing!</div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
That’s what all this dissection in the asexual community
is all about. That’s why I have an obsession with variable separation. It’s all
so that people can have frameworks to think about themselves in ways that make sense, and vocabulary to talk about it with others. I'm talking about models of attraction here, but variable separation is incredibly useful in almost any category. I'll tackle some others in future posts.</div>
GreyWandershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15374541753948600822noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-718774790123922837.post-50466736205503900982013-08-27T18:47:00.000-03:002013-08-27T18:47:41.872-03:00The Love GardenSince our initial realization that <i>we should totally live together, </i>Hat Guy, Flower Lady, and I have been doing a lot of thinking and talking about how we want this to work. We established early on that the goal here is to have a function family unit.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_wd5-JFqLEWxAQZei9mwE6992sJkG3JK9ccj91ZnWrBly5x8sqOamqVuSS2vXEnw3wWi9ryLEohNTowd7XUkGzAzWsTCF9vswguBTiQ74PXMyiDQ5YajyOe6ZMVjBG4iFD0-_uaV1Pxc/s1600/models1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_wd5-JFqLEWxAQZei9mwE6992sJkG3JK9ccj91ZnWrBly5x8sqOamqVuSS2vXEnw3wWi9ryLEohNTowd7XUkGzAzWsTCF9vswguBTiQ74PXMyiDQ5YajyOe6ZMVjBG4iFD0-_uaV1Pxc/s1600/models1.jpg" /></a></div>
What that means for us is this:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwNSkhz0jEbw5JQ2LRo2SLIsPG5TrWYpEKAriL-ORjBnv30DipCaEinB0GsUQUak1DE_BmePL240xtECvHXNE-B1pjg2sQw1deX5xugn2fDgqrqTP9UBMxuigmMKvxlV7Eoyf4ih7zREY/s1600/models2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwNSkhz0jEbw5JQ2LRo2SLIsPG5TrWYpEKAriL-ORjBnv30DipCaEinB0GsUQUak1DE_BmePL240xtECvHXNE-B1pjg2sQw1deX5xugn2fDgqrqTP9UBMxuigmMKvxlV7Eoyf4ih7zREY/s1600/models2.jpg" height="279" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The green is a stand-in colour, since we're not sure what that relationship will look like.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Within our family unit there are four relationships. There's a relationship between each pair of people, and then one for the whole group. Each of these must be happy, loving, supportive, communicative, and fulfilling for all involved parties. If any one of these relationships is faltering, the whole system is sad.<br />
<br />
Right now, we have something that looks kind of like this:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbzcD-9fyWmDDeyXys8RYwuvLMr306b00hE4gUUIoV9GTZZKxEQPoVc60E29Y8gBjtQhQ1pLZYFh9P7MkX0Ol53iWPtpe5q5-AnxqwzrDo9aQ69Pv_t6YG9r6-vS65_IRFBo1IzKojGTs/s1600/models3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbzcD-9fyWmDDeyXys8RYwuvLMr306b00hE4gUUIoV9GTZZKxEQPoVc60E29Y8gBjtQhQ1pLZYFh9P7MkX0Ol53iWPtpe5q5-AnxqwzrDo9aQ69Pv_t6YG9r6-vS65_IRFBo1IzKojGTs/s1600/models3.jpg" /></a></div>
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Clearly there's some work to do. In particular, Flower Lady and I need to build a more-than-surface relationship together. We all have some ideas about what that relationship should be, but there's also a large element of natural and unpredictable growth which has to happen. My analogy here is a love garden.<br />
<br />
You can make a box for a love garden, and water it (spend time getting to know each other), and weed it (talk a whole bunch to nudge things in useful directions, or at least away from bad directions), but in the end you just have to wait and see what grows in it.<br />
<br />
Relationships can bloom without such attentions - that's what happened with me and Hat Guy. We just had this box of random plants that happened because we knew each other, and one day we turned around and went "Hey, look, flower buds! We should probably water those." What Flower Lady and I are doing is intentionally constructing a box, sitting down with our watering cans and our gardening gloves, and going "Okay, I want a plant with flowers. Go." And hopefully something suitable will appear.<br />
<br />
It's important to note that there aren't any seed stores in this metaphor. We can have great ideas about what we want to be to each other, but in reality a relationship cannot be forced, and just as we can't plant seeds in the garden, we can't make ourselves have feelings. And that's scary, because what if nothing grows? But it's also okay. Because a love garden is a lot more exciting and interesting and, ultimately, fulfilling than a love lego sculpture. That's because a lego sculpture doesn't have room for pleasant surprises, but a garden does.<br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>GreyWandershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15374541753948600822noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-718774790123922837.post-73367877088625561032013-08-05T22:22:00.005-03:002013-08-14T00:37:21.175-03:00Family (Part 2 - Mine)In my last post I talked about fami<span style="font-family: inherit;">ly. In summary, a<span style="line-height: 115%;"> parental family is the family one grows up in. One then goes out into the
world, finds one or more people to love and live with, and makes a
new, chosen family with them. This post will talk about a particular case.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">This is the family I grew up with:</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL1Dy8JGiI-W0lvtgoiqTijGVJODqYaS2nSMLK2WYu7w7UdlOFUH9ejPdpDIUJ0UjX_H1VUvJAj3jd15n-Tu0U6RzxnhNdwj7jQgzZrr9yb8AvSw_fyfdZW2pFYLGQn2Udv0AdThx5ciA/s1600/15.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL1Dy8JGiI-W0lvtgoiqTijGVJODqYaS2nSMLK2WYu7w7UdlOFUH9ejPdpDIUJ0UjX_H1VUvJAj3jd15n-Tu0U6RzxnhNdwj7jQgzZrr9yb8AvSw_fyfdZW2pFYLGQn2Udv0AdThx5ciA/s1600/15.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Parental Family</td></tr>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
I am at an age when I’m mostly still living with them, but
I’m also living away a lot of the time (at school) and have found a person I
love and want to live with.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRIY6GopYr6XOXlj8V1IefpFcR_ZG16ioJdW1soUP_dOGR1dpvwuvjWVzrJ5qSGYOxcQGsYzSparxuVSRHcddvQBWFH-rKuGkrsNpWglB-k3x5RiBAeXpeSHIJRdK85kwOmvFjMz1f9bA/s1600/16.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRIY6GopYr6XOXlj8V1IefpFcR_ZG16ioJdW1soUP_dOGR1dpvwuvjWVzrJ5qSGYOxcQGsYzSparxuVSRHcddvQBWFH-rKuGkrsNpWglB-k3x5RiBAeXpeSHIJRdK85kwOmvFjMz1f9bA/s1600/16.png" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
So... I should live with him. Right?</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1OCLqCAOYklNJB3kG6T5PIZj3GtIaycjtCx4UD1MOqtyrI-l9h9OryiIp3bAOMaBuJ_mM-y9VMifQT0XpGZmUUPEr0oLCxycwZu36-V8RR_-C2FnZx3K3N0FTyS78VwQR92neaZpgXBQ/s1600/17.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1OCLqCAOYklNJB3kG6T5PIZj3GtIaycjtCx4UD1MOqtyrI-l9h9OryiIp3bAOMaBuJ_mM-y9VMifQT0XpGZmUUPEr0oLCxycwZu36-V8RR_-C2FnZx3K3N0FTyS78VwQR92neaZpgXBQ/s1600/17.png" height="145" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Right?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
No. Our relationship is not the hearts and wedding rings
kind of relationship. It’s the playing Scrabble and finding snails on the beach
and curling up with cups of tea in the winter kind of relationship. Most people
don’t have a word for it. Some people would call it ‘queerplatonic’, but we
think that’s a dumb word and besides, why do we need a word anyway?<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbjzVoXGOzlbjtXafivBoEG8soPDbgpcUMhJlohFZECXA1MmkvU69yOF5DGpRYwQur9kDAX-RK3nZsCW2zu-zxI4wxEyLzeT3M5Q4Ii56UJaY9pn4fdHr1Vzec1mUvf7VFWyBwOT91vBQ/s1600/18.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbjzVoXGOzlbjtXafivBoEG8soPDbgpcUMhJlohFZECXA1MmkvU69yOF5DGpRYwQur9kDAX-RK3nZsCW2zu-zxI4wxEyLzeT3M5Q4Ii56UJaY9pn4fdHr1Vzec1mUvf7VFWyBwOT91vBQ/s1600/18.png" height="152" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Our relationship is very important to both of us, but for
hat guy, it is not everything he needs in his personal life. He also needs a
hearts and wedding rings kind of relationship.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGRnj2dJgVpdpOomb-9ExK_fJKgcjQABEiGwjml4Gy8t39R9DqR-nvQswbFZGo3HAgavx_xZFr80kX4jX9Ui1QMvC3APLQLtQKlf0XT3MRrLWOTRVi2nQlZSc774TqpT1MiuZ2ZNddKhQ/s1600/19.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGRnj2dJgVpdpOomb-9ExK_fJKgcjQABEiGwjml4Gy8t39R9DqR-nvQswbFZGo3HAgavx_xZFr80kX4jX9Ui1QMvC3APLQLtQKlf0XT3MRrLWOTRVi2nQlZSc774TqpT1MiuZ2ZNddKhQ/s1600/19.png" height="196" width="400" /></a></div>
Fortunately, he has that!<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1KrjI3Tqact5e-j46-5JZzh5XzWfsQ8GgvjyLlH3ra_DnbuAOP4tyNPzREyywyi-GTUL7FChUv-SS-QlZ5Asjfg2T4PEPcWwXzDGDsCCMaHqNqbNJ5n5TVcmflpH0yCEuKaG1RcTOk9I/s1600/20.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1KrjI3Tqact5e-j46-5JZzh5XzWfsQ8GgvjyLlH3ra_DnbuAOP4tyNPzREyywyi-GTUL7FChUv-SS-QlZ5Asjfg2T4PEPcWwXzDGDsCCMaHqNqbNJ5n5TVcmflpH0yCEuKaG1RcTOk9I/s1600/20.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yaaaaaay!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
So…they’re going to go live together and I will be sad and
lonely?<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL6duxHLkzF7ucVfUKSIp-spfPXR__5cEYmbT0nwN7gVy74II5q4Q8k3SbjQOg5zmMmvDzPdrzSqB9739WyEUCAZpCzj51eJwNufhza6KiCmXuqjUa-lPPNi0_QzZAdhS89KOgUXjJJKY/s1600/21.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL6duxHLkzF7ucVfUKSIp-spfPXR__5cEYmbT0nwN7gVy74II5q4Q8k3SbjQOg5zmMmvDzPdrzSqB9739WyEUCAZpCzj51eJwNufhza6KiCmXuqjUa-lPPNi0_QzZAdhS89KOgUXjJJKY/s1600/21.png" height="181" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sad? :(</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Nope. Because flower lady is AWESOME...<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizZTkeNE_dslxmlauPA2WxSmNTzmEbDwBFFW-aeuQL6rnlZ_0Xk3CrOXBA0QisoB4ERagg6m1UN5ReRaBBQ1IPU88SjWsg6gNeS_8s1ofhQKO-wi2Gp7ch2neYRLYZmE-gXHRqzyspSjI/s1600/22.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizZTkeNE_dslxmlauPA2WxSmNTzmEbDwBFFW-aeuQL6rnlZ_0Xk3CrOXBA0QisoB4ERagg6m1UN5ReRaBBQ1IPU88SjWsg6gNeS_8s1ofhQKO-wi2Gp7ch2neYRLYZmE-gXHRqzyspSjI/s1600/22.png" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
…and not only is totally cool with me being around, but
wants me to live with them.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlWuRm3hkpkp3GfDYIOTjux0-cX4Zj47E_97r4MigLRpSMF8tUlKW04SeOY2kuiNomiDETDqPsD1xiI4z6CY9Jxtpodws6CqJVwvxa23YWU60BPgX8erBav9Vf8ZzGtQ5TZxCrkI69-7w/s1600/23.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlWuRm3hkpkp3GfDYIOTjux0-cX4Zj47E_97r4MigLRpSMF8tUlKW04SeOY2kuiNomiDETDqPsD1xiI4z6CY9Jxtpodws6CqJVwvxa23YWU60BPgX8erBav9Vf8ZzGtQ5TZxCrkI69-7w/s1600/23.png" height="320" width="286" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We are going to be a family. The three of us. They will be a
couple, and hat guy and I will love each other (But in the pink way, not the
red way. It’s a different colour, see?), and flower lady and I will have the
most awesome picnics on the front lawn. We’ll have a big house so that we’ll
all have room to live in, and hat guy and flower lady can have adorable
child(ren) (and I can be the cool aunt), and people whose families aren’t
working out can come stay with us for as long as they want. As life goes on, I
might find a wedding rings kind of relationship with someone, and that would be
pretty cool. There’s plenty of room in the house and the family. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-V2SbOxPs3g7Bkqn3q_2DjOSVNuhm6xbLt62Kcf7uZBifBsOty6-6_QffYmQjEMgYxbw2VlGKDlHPFVOjIRc23tMybQFp8J21Q8Z4sWr-Yvi0cYmJruu5TU9Sxhyphenhyphenz7kLWuBIR5k7I6wk/s1600/24.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-V2SbOxPs3g7Bkqn3q_2DjOSVNuhm6xbLt62Kcf7uZBifBsOty6-6_QffYmQjEMgYxbw2VlGKDlHPFVOjIRc23tMybQFp8J21Q8Z4sWr-Yvi0cYmJruu5TU9Sxhyphenhyphenz7kLWuBIR5k7I6wk/s1600/24.png" height="258" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span>GreyWandershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15374541753948600822noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-718774790123922837.post-31376437529923196872013-08-05T22:10:00.001-03:002013-10-11T18:27:05.301-03:00Family (Part 1 - General Case)<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRZH6HrkXk-QGYpkFBMnrGUrPMwFF6DO2SYnWlX5v2yS0VlffuPJ2W9fCbOYcsJ26mT_47kGdf3HXYvzXZGf21F_WUMdKsmjjjRRRQAAeVM6aJIMzH7Y0AlvvFwAwrnV6H-j97QJpE4Sg/s1600/1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRZH6HrkXk-QGYpkFBMnrGUrPMwFF6DO2SYnWlX5v2yS0VlffuPJ2W9fCbOYcsJ26mT_47kGdf3HXYvzXZGf21F_WUMdKsmjjjRRRQAAeVM6aJIMzH7Y0AlvvFwAwrnV6H-j97QJpE4Sg/s1600/1.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Family</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is a family. The mother is part of the family, the
father is part of the family, and the children are part of the family. (The dog
may be too, depending on who you ask.) All of these people will (hopefully)
always be a part of this family, even though they will probably not always live
together. When the children reach a certain age, they will be expected to go
out into the world, find people they like, and make new families of their own. They’ll still be part of this family, but in
addition they will have families that they chose for themselves. I will call
the original family the ‘parental family’. I will call the children’s new families their ‘chosen
families’. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Society thinks that that a chosen family looks like this:</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2MaIHhs_KzyiEclv0Dp1YqxtA0WJ3SoyDV8FprSak9ZpkWRuPZViNDdlG6y7Soy65KUykzxajcnOdD_ZhySo92qeERrR5_b-2J2P7PFlnwkqGbdxWGmxyQ7OL54T2Mk0feuMm5zca0vs/s1600/2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2MaIHhs_KzyiEclv0Dp1YqxtA0WJ3SoyDV8FprSak9ZpkWRuPZViNDdlG6y7Soy65KUykzxajcnOdD_ZhySo92qeERrR5_b-2J2P7PFlnwkqGbdxWGmxyQ7OL54T2Mk0feuMm5zca0vs/s1600/2.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chosen Family</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you’re hip to the new social reasonableness, you may
think that a chosen family can look like this:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtlxZvoffK418QihHTDC4NVEtQE-VvNKE2Sdw8eyL9W3cOVVA-lMX5k9V19w1BxVwOuEBET0dDQlq61MYTejo9hDT8CtqGHDdMV6ITzOc5r1kSUQgXvncZFIVS-XB7NhsV2OHwLj5aREw/s1600/3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtlxZvoffK418QihHTDC4NVEtQE-VvNKE2Sdw8eyL9W3cOVVA-lMX5k9V19w1BxVwOuEBET0dDQlq61MYTejo9hDT8CtqGHDdMV6ITzOc5r1kSUQgXvncZFIVS-XB7NhsV2OHwLj5aREw/s1600/3.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Two women and their child being a family</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
…or this:<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2MX78Brwj10qFt8_Q13PiqDWPpSQRpmhACy4EMmDqrjgBPVapOC0M9jaVp5JewywbLAdRCj0RfQt-E6v8LN3OYGFMlMGPMQ4dbFNM7tklVUyETEWVsmw0HD2R4jtpnIqC1japWcdBq6A/s1600/4.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2MX78Brwj10qFt8_Q13PiqDWPpSQRpmhACy4EMmDqrjgBPVapOC0M9jaVp5JewywbLAdRCj0RfQt-E6v8LN3OYGFMlMGPMQ4dbFNM7tklVUyETEWVsmw0HD2R4jtpnIqC1japWcdBq6A/s1600/4.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Two men and their child being a family</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
But <i>I</i> think a
whole lot of other things can be families as well. I think that <i>any</i> group of people that joins together with
love for the purpose of taking care of each other on a long-term basis can be a
chosen family.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBC_0mANRO3-mkLJC0MKUtWlJYyCQZkP5PrJajrmLKg7Ynyc_U6ggF2NRVXN0vJy8aqErmw77EDvneHvC2UtEB71Z0IwZGDyqxgfZMFOqtsZ8M8xDIdQTxcfoZzOvgPaxHI0FuZgM-umU/s1600/5.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBC_0mANRO3-mkLJC0MKUtWlJYyCQZkP5PrJajrmLKg7Ynyc_U6ggF2NRVXN0vJy8aqErmw77EDvneHvC2UtEB71Z0IwZGDyqxgfZMFOqtsZ8M8xDIdQTxcfoZzOvgPaxHI0FuZgM-umU/s1600/5.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Family</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXxxPWHgGvHRAHxJqWdpywMtGkIT-3U0O5ANfjNbQUHkRC1vzWZqO4HwFKDrskOK0mWGB_mls7NR0Dge279yhhEE357TUdwLbuHmn9kAvxM22DG0jxruuKBMcEdpzz9oz3igL98CYZiBE/s1600/6.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXxxPWHgGvHRAHxJqWdpywMtGkIT-3U0O5ANfjNbQUHkRC1vzWZqO4HwFKDrskOK0mWGB_mls7NR0Dge279yhhEE357TUdwLbuHmn9kAvxM22DG0jxruuKBMcEdpzz9oz3igL98CYZiBE/s1600/6.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Family</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-NguRbR7DyJ3XIb1TxhmkM2x24_0q8hxpjX-gMJNscXLdirOmh4c6Yq6FGwp9_VPCY17-R1gKz_FALC67hyphenhyphen9YHT6EkPQgHWfLAhllpsJBLiJgd-OHVdfcnBAsrqQ5GbxWa0fd4_b2kFA/s1600/7.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-NguRbR7DyJ3XIb1TxhmkM2x24_0q8hxpjX-gMJNscXLdirOmh4c6Yq6FGwp9_VPCY17-R1gKz_FALC67hyphenhyphen9YHT6EkPQgHWfLAhllpsJBLiJgd-OHVdfcnBAsrqQ5GbxWa0fd4_b2kFA/s1600/7.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Family (with or without child[ren])</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I even think that this is a family, because even though this
person isn’t living with other people, they’ve formed a self-sufficient unit
that they’re happy with, and which is independent of their parental family:<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKOdUphniCFaB1uL2KyHQTbXiVCYJ1HUiv_zBCTm10sFRahGFN1Q_7ravUifNUmoZvIYZLjCu62Wa67aVs2neyffyyYlBkAVSrqjcHOeFEv0nIYClG2rMraAnR3Qj5LL39JCVOKqRSeSM/s1600/8.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKOdUphniCFaB1uL2KyHQTbXiVCYJ1HUiv_zBCTm10sFRahGFN1Q_7ravUifNUmoZvIYZLjCu62Wa67aVs2neyffyyYlBkAVSrqjcHOeFEv0nIYClG2rMraAnR3Qj5LL39JCVOKqRSeSM/s1600/8.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Family</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
These groups are all different, but they all serve a similar
purpose, and they can all be chosen families. Chosen families are like food.
Chinese food is very different from Mexican food, which is very different from
other food, but they all serve the basic function of making you not starve.<br />
<br />
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHUX6HynM5QqK2-0sjd5pXcyMFdFgPNk7N001spLFJ72i4OJgfNKhILibkQilDwUBv-qg_KMqtnUCl9IqKxcxKCpbVKoNNwMsYKqup3cHE1CqiEjFdp5zARmHV-XOjpVUwzM0OErkdAJA/s1600/9.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHUX6HynM5QqK2-0sjd5pXcyMFdFgPNk7N001spLFJ72i4OJgfNKhILibkQilDwUBv-qg_KMqtnUCl9IqKxcxKCpbVKoNNwMsYKqup3cHE1CqiEjFdp5zARmHV-XOjpVUwzM0OErkdAJA/s1600/9.png" height="80" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
Different people like to eat different kinds of foods...<br />
<br />
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6-acPby3Wbm0GmkEn2yXmYUosIxi2ayFrDgCcyNhXH2yHeGZDPxeshRizK8jXj9DXdjfvWWCwsZmC9CWK4lyoRnvTIcFDpcJ7qiJZHcO59gh6n9fF0UKozk_2aGAd3A8jBK_LY3J6xGg/s1600/10.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6-acPby3Wbm0GmkEn2yXmYUosIxi2ayFrDgCcyNhXH2yHeGZDPxeshRizK8jXj9DXdjfvWWCwsZmC9CWK4lyoRnvTIcFDpcJ7qiJZHcO59gh6n9fF0UKozk_2aGAd3A8jBK_LY3J6xGg/s1600/10.png" height="90" width="320" /></a></div>
… and different people like to have different kinds of
families. Some people want kids. Some people want to live with a woman, or with
a man, or with someone who’s kinda in between, or neither, or several of those.
None of these options make the resulting group any more or less of a family,
just like different ingredients don’t make a food item any more or less of a food.<br />
<br />
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<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-uL5UxCve4YvidI3kCMHDURyJ4lnD7bJaQBGv8dg4B8Gn7tDIGXZtV9z4xdP89ZBTO_E_w5TMkn2MN7lSbH7TMVzMD8xAtANO5wt5HYCzsi2GkfOPsRpwYlS4ewOYDqtagru_JX-b7V4/s1600/11.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-uL5UxCve4YvidI3kCMHDURyJ4lnD7bJaQBGv8dg4B8Gn7tDIGXZtV9z4xdP89ZBTO_E_w5TMkn2MN7lSbH7TMVzMD8xAtANO5wt5HYCzsi2GkfOPsRpwYlS4ewOYDqtagru_JX-b7V4/s1600/11.png" /></a></div>
<br />
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But sometimes food goes bad.<o:p></o:p></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKSXodj7mqPAOJ24W-eHt__uLRNSGfPRD7BW-SRv68DdG7YeyuMsIpZs4CojkGaxXBV8WKRx-YAQkuBH9jPOo7PZ1rMu6NF7NGySe0Bv-5ksi_K2xOHNBF7i0JABblnT8tcLRZ36acSqg/s1600/12.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKSXodj7mqPAOJ24W-eHt__uLRNSGfPRD7BW-SRv68DdG7YeyuMsIpZs4CojkGaxXBV8WKRx-YAQkuBH9jPOo7PZ1rMu6NF7NGySe0Bv-5ksi_K2xOHNBF7i0JABblnT8tcLRZ36acSqg/s1600/12.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Eew</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Sometimes this can be fixed...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidD-xDgdg0hhfdmfVEAKGdvOYZ2IPWiPCumvsMTHQFj2ibla5kte028RfLS_seJhpQdJnZpcSVeTTJO1X5UI5wk9cbGRLKbDU7QGiaXUaTq4jZrmlF4iKx_pFCziwKLT5atzJVYyhJwQI/s1600/13.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidD-xDgdg0hhfdmfVEAKGdvOYZ2IPWiPCumvsMTHQFj2ibla5kte028RfLS_seJhpQdJnZpcSVeTTJO1X5UI5wk9cbGRLKbDU7QGiaXUaTq4jZrmlF4iKx_pFCziwKLT5atzJVYyhJwQI/s1600/13.png" height="218" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
…but sometimes it cannot. When that happens, most of us stop
considering the food to be food anymore, and almost all of us think you should
get rid of it. The same is true of families. I’m being careful to say that a
group of people <i>can </i>be a family, but
aren’t automatically so, because not all people can group together well, and
not all groups that start out well continue well. A family is a loving, caring
group, not just a bunch of people under a roof. This is an example of a group
of people which is not a family:<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrDa2Jul0BGj10HwXwcoI8nilreGJ24v-RW4khUkZByH96VCVHmYnUwp7m4pmPvOmp_iuh3TZzpaeweOS4VZLO_3jYdsgUqaMOh1jpU-nuAYHcNyt9Kgki6DSM7kpcmaMYal2CwM2fK7k/s1600/14.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrDa2Jul0BGj10HwXwcoI8nilreGJ24v-RW4khUkZByH96VCVHmYnUwp7m4pmPvOmp_iuh3TZzpaeweOS4VZLO_3jYdsgUqaMOh1jpU-nuAYHcNyt9Kgki6DSM7kpcmaMYal2CwM2fK7k/s1600/14.png" height="259" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Group of people =/= family</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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This is also not a family:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKOdUphniCFaB1uL2KyHQTbXiVCYJ1HUiv_zBCTm10sFRahGFN1Q_7ravUifNUmoZvIYZLjCu62Wa67aVs2neyffyyYlBkAVSrqjcHOeFEv0nIYClG2rMraAnR3Qj5LL39JCVOKqRSeSM/s1600/8.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKOdUphniCFaB1uL2KyHQTbXiVCYJ1HUiv_zBCTm10sFRahGFN1Q_7ravUifNUmoZvIYZLjCu62Wa67aVs2neyffyyYlBkAVSrqjcHOeFEv0nIYClG2rMraAnR3Qj5LL39JCVOKqRSeSM/s1600/8.png" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
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“Wait a minute, that’s the same graphic you said <i>was</i> a family!” Yes. The difference is,
in this picture the person is living alone because they haven’t found somebody
to love and l<span style="font-family: inherit;">ive with yet. They do not want to live alone. This person can’t be
their own family by themself. The other one could.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So. A parental family is the family one grows up
in. One then goes out into the world, finds one or more people they love and
want to live with, and makes a new, chosen family with them. In the <a href="http://ttwblaze.blogspot.ca/2013/08/family-part-2-mine.html">next post</a> I'll tell you about my families.</span></span></div>
GreyWandershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15374541753948600822noreply@blogger.com1