My Afternoon with the Washington Area Secular Humanists

On this past Sunday afternoon I had the privilege of presenting a program on polyamory to the Washington Area Secular Humanists.  One of their organizers reached out to me a couple of months ago, said that a fair number of members were interested in hearing more about polyamory, and invited me to speak at an upcoming monthly gathering.  

Though I knew that some attendees probably weren't going to be entirely comfortable with this idea, I felt it important to take advantage of this opportunity to raise awareness of polyamory, especially with a group that rejects the oppressiveness of organized religion and dogma.   Their values make them potential allies. 

About 40 people turned out.   They were polite, respectful, and asked good questions.   My basic poly 101 presentation was enhanced so as to include some detail on the ethics of polyamory. Secular Humanists highly value ethical behavior, so it was important to demonstrate how it is that polyamory is an ethical manner in which to conduct one's intimate relationships. 

The WASH representatives very kindly permitted me to briefly introduce Michael Rios and Sarah Taub of Network for a New Culture and Ricci Levi of The Woodhull Freedom Foundation, very different organizations that nevertheless both welcome and support polyamorous people.   They also announced the event on the Chesapeake Polyamory Network yahoogroup and invited people to attend, which I especially appreciated.  It was nice to see some local poly community members and CPN representatives there, some of whom very kindly volunteered to help me field questions during the break and after the program ended.

Thanks to Don, Shelley, and everyone with WASH for their kindness and support!. 

Woodhull Explains Position on Controversial Abercrombie T-shirts

A few days ago I posted a blog entry about a "buycott" call from the Woodhull Freedom Foundation to buy a certain group of rather silly sex-focused Abercrombie & Fitch t-shirts, or at least let the company know it has the support of the sex-positive community, as a result of conservative/religious extremist attacks on the product. After doing so I received comments both here and on my facebook entry where the blog entry also appeared that expressed strong opinions that the shirts were tacky, sexist, and generally objectionable, this time from within the sex-positive community instead of religious conservatives.

Woodhull has posted an explanation on carnalnation.com, which says in part:

Like our past BuyCott efforts, our A&F BuyCott stirred a lot of emotion. Some of our constituents were quick to write (thank you!) and call to my attention the history of A&F, including successful lawsuits against them pressing charges of racism and sexism. This will remind me to keep a closer eye on A&F and other companies to detect such unacceptable behavior.

At the same time the issue on this occasion wasn’t the t-shirts or the retailer. The issue is that, popular or not, offensive or not, appropriate or not, the t-shirts are about sex and sexuality. Are they tasteless? Probably! Certainly a lot of people including many sexual freedom advocates think so. But does A&F have the right to market them? Woodhull says YES!

And that’s what the alert was about.

The attack on sex that fueled the assault on A&F was not stupid. It came from a well-oiled, well-researched, thoroughly entrenched message machine. It knew where to strike. It knew that there’s not much point in waving the hysteria flag around a shirt with pictures of flowers on it ...

You can read the entire commentary on carnalnation here.

Abercrombie & Fitch Pitches New Silly T-Shirts To America's Youth Angering Religious Right

UPDATE:  After a variety of comments on this post both here and over on my facebook profile where it was cross-posted,  I'm now convinced that this is a far from ideal set of circumstances to choose for a buycott on behalf of sex positivity.  Many thanks to all those who have offered sound and important observations. 

Woodhull's work is generally very good and worth supporting.  On rare occasions we activists can and do miss the mark, usually, or at least in my own case, due to haste to get a story out and move on to other pressing matters.   - Anita

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Thanks to the Woodhull Freedom Foundation for the heads-up on this one.

Join the BuyCott! Call Abercrombie & Fitch at 614-283-6500 (press "0" for a live person) and let them know you support their right to sell and their customers' right to buy their "sex can be fun" tee shirts.

Abercrombie & Fitch  is being attacked by the religious right for selling these three tee shirts as part of its "New College" line of T-shirts.

Abercrombie & Fitch does not merely sell a popular line of clothing - they sell a lifestyle. And because A&F clothing is popular among teens and college kids, the influence of their sex-as-recreation lifestyle is widespread. If you feel like encouraging this lighter side of sex and showing the religious right that this is a free country help the BuyCott--buy one or more of these shirts.

FACTS!

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The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention reports that Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) remain a major public health challenge in the United States. CDC estimates that approximately 19 million new infections occur each year- almost half of them among young people 15 to 24 years of age.

In the past decade more than one billion dollars in federal funding has been doled out for abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. In contrast, there has been no federal funding at all for comprehensive sex education. Thus the raging STDs?

Whether you buy a tee shirt or not drop a note to your local school board, state legislators, and your Congress member and Senators, encourage them to fund comprehensive sex education!

Is an Alliance between Polyamorists and Patriarchal Polygamists Likely?

In the vein of politics making strange bedfellows, forming political alliances for specifically delineated, carefully considered purposes has been historically proven to have its benefits. There certainly exist several fairly strong rational arguments that can be made for teaming up with patriarchal polygamists ("PPs"). Regardless, alliance with PPs would surely provoke an outcry in much of the feminist, egalitarian-minded polyamory community. Huge differences in community values exist that are next to impossible to simply dismiss or ignore.

People are indeed passionate about violation of their community values. Rather than coming from the rational mind, these are very much matters of the heart. So it is that rational strategy and closely-held values come in conflict here.

The problem with an alliance with PPs is that their form of non-monogamy grossly violates what I'll refer to as the spirit of polyamory ("SOP") as highly valued within the poly community itself. Note that there are many people practicing polyamory who are not denizens of the poly community - in some cases because they don't share the social POV that at least in part underpins the SOP.

I know of no organization that is in the process of forming an alliance with PPs. As a practical matter, the poly community supports no organization sufficiently to have influence over what any does. If Woodhull Freedom Foundation or or LovingMore or World Polyamory Association want to ally themselves with PPs, with enough horsepower and sufficient strategy they can certainly do it. No one can stop them (though to be fair, LovingMore probably has the most at stake.)

Whomever contemplates this approach would be well advised to both plan carefully how to explain the political expedience of it to feminist polys who highly value egalitarianism - and there are many, many of those – as well as be prepared to come under considerable criticism as they likely go it alone. Inclusiveness being also a closely held poly community value, that argument may persuade some - it would be interesting to see if it succeeded.

I'm not usually a skeptic, but on this question for purely pragmatic reasons I just don't see polyamory community support for an alliance with PPs happening anytime soon. The squick factor is just too significant. Perhaps an appeal to self-identified polys who live outside the poly community would get more traction.