This is me teasing my ridiculous number of friends that fit this description.
I’m going to pretend that the times that I’ve fit this description didn’t happen.
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For as long as I can remember, the Polyamory community has had a strangely sex negative segment that was largely born of the desire to distance themselves as much as possible from the widespread assumptions by people outside of the community that polyamory was all about fucking around indiscriminately. It’s why, despite the huge amount of common ground they share, a lot of the polyamory community holds animosity towards the swinging community…something that largely goes one way since people in the swinging community don’t have any anxiety over being mistaken for polyamorists and being scorned for being all about love. These purists afraid to admit that a lot of loving relationships start from a place of sexual desire were the first to start talking about “true polymory”.
However, as Polyamory has really been taking off in the last ten years or so as far as the attention it’s been getting in the media, the demographics of the polyamory community have undergone a huge shift and consequentially an influx of new ideas. This has largely been a good thing, but one of the less pleasant side effects is that there’s are now a multitude of new ways for people, according to other people, to be “doing polyamory wrong.” Instead of just one group of assholes slut shaming people who are more sexually open than them, we have a whole new group of assholes who are basically commitment shaming people whose style of polyamory involves any elements they don’t like.
I think it’s important to remember that Polyamory as a movement has no deities. There is no one true model everyone is meant to mold themselves and their relationships to. There aren’t even any basic rules. Even the basic definition of polyamory meaning “many loves” is as open to personal interpretation as the independent words “love” and “many”. I mean, isn’t someone with two romantic partners really just practicing duoamory? Two doesn’t seem like “many” to me. That’s exactly how pedantic anyone who starts talking about “true polyamory” seems to me.
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This one is overdue because I’m a dumbass that writes scripts while half asleep then sends them to my artist without proofreading them, then notices errors while getting ready to post the strip.
Valentine’s Day can be a weird holiday when you’re polyamorous. Personally, I don’t celebrate it if I can at all avoid it, but obviously it’s a big deal for a lot of people and it can be a beautiful and fun thing but also a common catalyst for spikes in jealousy, competitiveness, and leveraging of couple’s privilege.
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The anniversary of the first Deviant Life strip coming out was actually yesterday, but because Deviant Life artist D. White and I have those nasty things called day jobs, this had to wait until today.
Working on Deviant Life for the last year has been great fun and I really appreciate all the love and support the strip has gotten.
(Discerning Deviant is supported entirely through reader sponsorship via the Discerning Deviant Patreon and can also be followed on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, or Instagram.)
When I wrote this comic, the intention was for it to be posted right before I hopped a bus south to go to Euphoria, an unofficial regional burn, which was supposed to take place in Georgia this coming weekend (April 26-29). However, shit went wrong, and Euphoria isn’t happening. This is a huge let down for a lot of people, but shit happens when you need a large, secluded location for such events and rural areas tend to be the domain of xenophobes. All we deviants can do sometimes is roll with the punches and keep on searching for places to call home.
On the bright side, not being able to go to Euphoria ended up pushing me towards going to Frolicon next month (May 17-20). I had a pretty great time last year, but because the added effort and expense of attending two events in Georgia while living in New York seemed overwhelming, I chose to only attend Euphoria. Obviously, with no Euphoria to attend, now I can attend Frolicon and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I won’t be teaching any panels this year, so it’s going to be purely a vacation, hopefully with a great deal of debauchery with friends both old and new.
(Discerning Deviant is supported entirely through reader sponsorship via the Discerning Deviant Patreon and can also be followed on Facebook, Tumblr, or Twitter.)
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