So, how should we commemorate the day?

[yesthattom]

Wednesday (I'm told) is the 5th anniversary of Bill Clinton saying, "I did not sleep with that woman." I'm not sure how to celebrate.... or mourn.

On one hand, I completely support Bill Clinton. I campaigned for him, twice. While I don't think he was very effective, I support him a hell of a lot more than da other guy. I think what the Republicans did to him was a travesty of justice. On the other hand, he handled it badly. On the other, other hand, he handled it really well if you consider that he did complete all 8 years in office.

I have to imagine that Poly people of the world, if we had been politically organized 5 years ago, could have made this the watershed event that put poly on the map. We could have taken the big leap and "come out of the closet", embraced him, and used it to publicize that poly exists, is normal, and usually doesn't go by the name "poly" but its time people woke up and recognized how unbelievably common it is. We would have made statements to the press like, "My wife and I have a similar situation and we want the Clintons to know that the poly community is ready for them, if they're ready for us."

Obviously, we weren't and neither were they.

So, how should we commemorate the day?

Comments

[lovingboth]

Hmm, but once he's denied it, it becomes very very difficult to say 'I lied'. The time for support would have been the Geraldine Flowers affair...

[cyan-blue.livejournal.com]

It's a wonderful thought.

But I think that if we'd organized and done that, Bill Clinton's reaction would have been something like, "don't associate me with those freaks."

See, people consider cheating to be "normal." They may not disapprove of it, but they understand it.

They don't understand us.

To understand us, they'd have to get past the blockades of sex-negativism, of monosexism. Of thinking that love given to one person subtracts from love given to another. Of equating [denial of happiness] with [morality]. Of equating [relationship] with [ownership].

In one study, Knapp (1975) found that therapists considered people who were involved in secret extramarital affairs to be less pathological than those who communicated honestly with their partners about their participation in other relationships. When I gave my talk on polyamory to my colleagues at a fairly liberal grad psych department in 1999, that was mirrored: they were fearful of the topic, fearful of its sex-positivism, fearful that if polyamory was accepted, they might lose something from their own relationships.

They were finally willing to accept, based on the research, that polyfolks and poly relationships might be as healthy as our monog counterparts, but they were not quite at the point of giving us equal social footing. A very few psychologists these days *are* getting taught about poly in graduate sexuality courses, but many more are not. Hell, one of the most famous living psychologists (Albert Ellis) wrote a whole book about polyamory - in the 1940's - and that particular bit of his writing is just about never mentioned in the numerous counseling theories textbook chapters that laud his work.

Anyway... I think we will find ways to make polyamory known and accepted, but I don't think that a president who is all ready under the gun for one form of immorality will be leaping to embrace what the public considers to be another.

But it's a lovely idea...

Hugs,
Geri

[beowabbit]

Hmmm. Much though I appreciate Clinton's presidency, I'm not interested in claiming his personal life as poly territory. I have no idea what arrangement if any he has with Hillary, although I'm sure she's not naïve and I suspect there's at least tacit consent there. However, Bill Clinton was the President of the United States, arguably the most powerful person in the world, and Monica Lewinsky was a 21-year-old or so intern. That looks to me like an exploitative relationship and an abuse of power. (And yes, it's probably par for the course among people in those sorts of positions of power, but that doesn't mean I want to celebrate or "reclaim" it.)

[kimuchi.livejournal.com]

I remember back when all this was happening I drove a coworker to get his tongue pierced. While were in the car we ended up talking about Clinton, and coworker said "I think he should come out as poly," presumably parroting something he'd read online as this coworker was not prone to independent thought. This statement really irritated me at the time. Clinton was _not_ poly, he was (still is, I assume) a hypocritical monogamist. Simply fucking around is _not_ the same as making the conscious choice to structure your relationships in an open, honest, non-exclusive fashion. Saying "oops, I've been fucking around, honey let's declare our marriage 'poly'" is a pretty damn low thing to spring on someone as well.

I don't think it does anyone looking to further polyamory's reputation any good to claim hypocritical monogamists as your own, either. Ooh, what a good example _they_ set.

All that said, I don't think it's anyone's business who the president is fucking, whether his wife knows/cares, what he himself thinks about it, etc. Plenty of past presidents seem to have gotten laid in office without it becoming a matter of public concern (at least until later), I'd like to see us go back to that. But I don't see how we could accomplish it aside from just keeping Republicans that the self-righteous social conservatives support in office. :P

[jss]

So, how should we commemorate the day?

By sleeping around outside the boundaries of our relationships (whatever they may be) then lying about it to our SO(s), Congress, and the American People, perhaps by placing an ad in the New York Times or Wall Street Journal or even (heaven forfend!) the USA Today.




Maybe not.