Shame, Shame, Double Shame:
Now I Know Why They’re Insane
You know when you hear someone say something that’s like “what in the actual fuck did I just hear?” That happened to me recently. I heard something that made my ears poke up like erections in an orgy full of hardcore curiosity. It said: “Polyamory is the new gay. Polyamorists across the world have not yet united in their public declaration of their choice to practice multiple loves, and some poly folks are still in the closet to their friends and family about their sexual lifestyle…”
This blew my mind. In a world where many many people have affairs and cheat and lie and bend the rules of their relationships, a select people who are making a conscious effort to practice open and honest communication about their unique intimacy and erotic desires are being castigated and demonized by people who probably do not even understand the poly life? Say it ain’t so!
Well my poly friends, please take these words deep into your heart forever more: IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT. Not a single moment of negative speech or action should be directed towards you for doing what you love and like and dream. Shame is an externally imposed affliction internalized at a young age for following an impulse we did not know boundaries existed around. An external force or authority then excludes you from their acceptance and respect, and then the emotion cascades into thine soul, trying to tear you away from the apparently taboo source of joy you have just discovered you like having close to you. Shame is a subjective judgement of character where one person feels entitled to express a need to exclude, expose and/or exterminate the actions of another person, and seek adjustment. There is often never a justified reason to create shame towards someone, but the self-righteous high that people get from pretending their behavior, morals, actions or thoughts are superior to another’s is the catalyst for a lifetime of finger-pointing, tsk-tsk-ing, and SMH-ing… mostly unfounded, if I may add.
Shame is no healthy tool to create discipline or to encourage growth. It assumes that the current standard for things is how things should always be, and if anyone or anything reaches outside “the norm”, they should be punished and made to feel horrible for attempting to let their feelings be free and escape the sanctioned sentiments and allowed intimacies. Fuck that shit.
In the immortal words of Humpty Hump: “doowhutchalike”. Do whoever you want, however you want, whenever you want (if they want to do all the same things with you, of course!) and know that you don’t ever need a reason WHY! Feel no shame in your joy!
I don’t think shame is an emotion that exists in Nature. When you see animals fornicating, masturbating, eating, drinking, sleeping, fighting, playing and living, do you ever see animals act against their nature because other animals would “look down upon them”? Rabbits don’t make other rabbits feel embarrassed for fucking like rabbits, and pigs don’t make other pigs feel bad for eating like pigs, ha ha.
So don’t feel any shame for feeling your feelings and desiring your desires. Simply seek the company of those who may cherish the same emotions, and bask in the joy of freedom.
Always in love,
Addi Stewart
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