fox-falling

[fox-falling]

I have two partners, but don't call me poly

I saw a post asking, “How do I know if I’m poly?” It reminded me of those other questions—“Am I gay?” “Am I non-binary?” For some, polyamory is an orientation. For me? Not quite.

I’ve been happily monogamous. Now, I have two romantic partners and a few play partners I see at parties. A year into this lovely triad, I can still imagine choosing monogamy again someday. Hell, I could even see myself being single. Because relationship style—like gender or sexuality—can be fluid.

In his TED Talk (and excellent book), psychologist Dr. Jorge Ferrer shares his experience moving through both monogamy and polyamory over the course of his life. He says he finds the question “Are you polyamorous or monogamous?” limiting—just another binary, like “gay or straight,” “male or female.”

Instead, he offers a new term: novogamy—a way of approaching relationships that’s flexible, collaborative, and responsive. Not a fixed identity, but a co-created path between you and your partner(s).

My husband and I were monogamous for nearly a decade. Then we opened up—with care, conversation, and plenty of trial and error. My boyfriend stayed because the connection meant something. If he ever wanted monogamy, I’d kick and scream... and then figure out how to meet the change with heart and honesty.

I’ve read The Ethical Slut. Polysecure. But more than books or labels, what matters is this: Sensitivity. Mutual respect. Ongoing dialogue. An open mind. A willingness to evolve.

So no, I don’t call myself polyamorous, nor do I even call myself "novogamous." To me, the way I love and the relationship path I choose are a process, not a fixed identity.

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stop what you're doing right now and look at archaic period terracotta fox scratching its head

ok you can continue

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Fox Falling

[fox-falling]

As a librarian, I support this message.

decentralize and clean up your life!!!

use overdrive, libby, hoopla, cloudlibrary, and kanopy instead of amazon and audible.

use firefox instead of chrome or opera (both are made with chromium, which blocks functionality for ad-blockers. firefox isn't based on chromium).

use mega or proton drive instead of google drive.

get rid of bloatware

use libreoffice instead of microsoft office suite

use vetted sites on r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH for free movies, books, games, etc.

use trakt or letterboxd instead of imdb.

use storygraph instead of goodreads.

use darkpatterns to find mobile game with no ads or microtransactions

use ground news to read unbiased news and find blind spots in news stories.

use mediahuman or cobalt to download music, or support your favorite artists directly through bandcamp

make youtube bearable by using mtube, newpipe, or the unhook extension on chrome, firefox, or microsoft edge

use search for a cause or ecosia to support the environment instead of google

use thriftbooks to buy new or used books (they also have manga, textbooks, home goods, CDs, DVDs, and blurays)

use flashpoint to play archived online flash games

find books, movies, games, etc. on the internet archive! for starters, here's a bunch of David Attenborough documentaries and all of the Animorphs books

burn your music onto cds

use pdf24 (available online or as a desktop app) instead of adobe

use unroll.me to clean your email inboxes

use thunderbird, mailfence, countermail, edison mail, tuta, or proton mail instead of gmail

remove bloatware on windows PC, macOS, and iOS X

remove bloatware on samsung X

use pixelfed instead of instagram or meta

use NCH suite for free software like a file converter, image editor, video editors, pdf editor, etc.

feel free to add more alternatives, resources or advice in the reblogs or replies, and i'll add them to the main post <3

last updated: march 18th 2025

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My grandma’s on and off again boyfriend that she cheated on grandpa with died today.

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On Being Asked to Choose in Polyamory

Someone asked me the classic polyamory question: If you had to choose between your partners, who would it be?

But what they don’t realize is—when you ask me to choose between people I love, you're not asking me to pick one heart over another. You're asking me to choose between two different lives--one where I’m free to love as I do now and one where I’m not.

So no, I don’t ask myself, Who do I love more? or Which partner is better? That is some mono-normative bullshit.

I ask, What life do I want to live? Right now, I want to love the two men in my life with a full heart for as long as they will have me. I want to explore love through a framework outside of the one imposed by our society.

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Work in progress: Ascension. Mixed fabric, beads, wool thread

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I stitched my natal chart! All hand stitched and improvised.

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Woven, 2025, mixed fabric, embroidery, and applique.

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Fox Altar

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"Witness." Mixed fabric, beads, and thread. 2025.

This piece reflects an experience I had, deep in the heart of the Redwood Forest, where I felt witnessed in my full complexity by something ancient and wild.

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Witness: A Contemplation on Gender and Wholeness

My first memory of gender is the sun.

I was four, maybe younger, running wild in my grandma’s backyard with my three cousins--all boys. My grandma had set up a kiddie pool. The boys stripped off their shirts without a thought. I did the same. But before I could make it to the water, my uncle caught me by the arm. “You can’t do that--you’re a girl.”

I didn’t understand. The upper halves of our bodies looked the same. Why did I have to cover mine when they didn’t? 

The irony doesn’t escape me these days: the sun—long a symbol of masculine energy in Greco-Roman myth—was something I wasn’t allowed to fully feel or embody. While the boys danced bare-chested in the warm summer rays, I had to cover myself. This body of mine was already too shameful to expose—not because of what it was, but because of what it would become. 

For the rest of my younger years, I rejected anything remotely “girly.” Pink. Barbie. Baby dolls. Dresses. Brushing my hair. I revolted against my mother when she tried to dress me up as a princess for Halloween. We finally came to a compromise with Princess Leia, who shot blasters, led rebellions, and held her own with scruffy-looking nerf-herders. I wanted to play Pokémon, catch lizards, and fall off my bike doing stunts. I wasn’t a princess to be rescued by some knight in shining armor. I was the knight in shining armor!

Still, I didn’t completely reject all femininity and domesticity.

Mom taught me how to sew and embroider when I was still small—my legs swinging off the edge of a chair as I watched her thread needles, smooth fabric splayed out upon the dining room table. We made shorts and shirts and Halloween costumes--including a ninja costume, then a detective costume--more compromises by my dear mother. Through those experiences, I learned artistic, creative, and useful skills that the boys didn’t, and there was something to that. It was like a secret, a power that we women shared. Still, it was something I felt I had to keep hidden, just like my feminine body.

At family cookouts, the divide was clear. All the men huddled around fire and meat in some weirdly primitive masculine ritual. The women, meanwhile, stayed inside making side dishes, sipping margaritas, and gossipping. I found their talk vapid and boring. So I’d go outside and wedge myself into the men’s conversations, desperate to prove I belonged—rattling off facts about fishing, space movies, whatever they cared about. They tolerated me well enough, especially if I’d fetch beers for them on command. Still, it was quite apparent that I didn’t belong there, but didn’t belong inside either. So I’d go off and play with my dogs until dinner time.

By high school, I’d committed to my role: the “cool girl.” The girl who could hang. I hung out with all the boys, playing video games and talking about heavy metal albums, and soaked in their compliments: “You’re not like the other girls.” Of course I wasn’t--I was better than girls who subscribed to these stupid feminine norms. Being boyish meant having power, having an in, being included by the tougher, cooler, more privileged gender.

In college, things began to shift. Curves arrived without warning, and with them, new types of exclusion. Boys noticed me differently. I wasn’t just the chill girl who could talk about video games or music—I was desirable. Suddenly, I didn’t fit neatly into the “one of the guys” category. Now, they wanted to date me, and I was excluded from “guy talk.” My body made everything complicated.

My curves also brought new types of oppression.

Men started howling and jeering at me on the street. Catcalls, honks, the slow roll of a car as I walked home alone. I began to feel unsafe, even in daylight. I was sexually assaulted for the first time—some man grabbing my ass at a club, then vanishing into the crowd before I could turn around. I had just wanted to be myself and dance. I remembered my uncle’s voice from that day at the pool--“You can’t do that--you’re a girl.” Showing my body--no, just having a woman’s body--wasn’t just inappropriate, it was dangerous. I was learning that my body was a possession, a trophy, a toy. 

Things like that would continue to happen throughout my life. I no longer cry about it. But I’ve never gotten used to it—men choosing how to treat my body regardless of my feelings, male doctors and psychiatrists ignoring my experience about my own body, male colleagues speaking over me in meetings. 

Still, there has been some evolution despite the adversity.

In my late thirties now, I find myself both more at home in my femininity and still bristling against it. I cut off all my hair on a whim a few years ago with the same gusto as Mulan chopping her hair off with a sword. My husband was shocked. I probably should’ve told him beforehand, but sometimes I just get the urge to rebel against men--even the kind ones.

I think of my younger self often—the girl who wasn’t allowed to feel the sun on her bare chest, who hated being a girl because the world seemed to hate girls too. I feel so much tenderness toward her. I want to tell her she was never wrong to want more. That her anger was a kind of wisdom.

At a conference in Oregon not long ago, I attended a lecture on women artists and self-portraiture. Out of the twenty or so people in the room, not a single one was a man. That detail sent off an ancient, burning anger deep inside of me. Why wouldn’t men want to learn how women saw themselves? Why didn’t they care? The lecturer spoke about how, throughout history, women artists painted themselves not for vanity, but to prove their existence. At the end, the lecturer handed out mirrors and asked us to draw ourselves. Despite years as an art hobbyist, I’d never done that before. 

But in that moment, tracing the lines of my own face—my short-cropped hair, my mother’s eyebrows, my father’s chin, the new, soft sag at my cheeks—I felt something deepen. I didn’t just see myself. I witnessed myself as someone free from the gender labels forced upon me throughout my life. I was something else entirely.

The next day, I went to the Redwoods for the first time. I stood alone in the cathedral hush of those towering trees and felt, perhaps for the first time, truly witnessed by a force other than myself—seen by something beautiful and ancient. In that stillness, I sensed a presence, wild and wise, whispering to me: You deserve to be wild, too.

That night, back at my hotel, I stripped off all my clothes. This time, I sketched my entire body—inch for inch—with no attempt to flatter or obscure. Just the truth of it.

That drawing became the foundation for two embroidered pieces I made later: Woven and Witness—expressions of what it felt like to be seen by a Redwood tree.

Embroidery was the only medium that made sense. It was women’s work—an art form dismissed for centuries, one I had once overlooked myself simply because it was associated with the feminine. But cutting and stitching just the way my mother had taught me felt like a return home. Each thread now carried power, defiance--and care.

These days, I do what I love, not to prove my masculinity or femininity. I enjoy a beer and a college football game. I enjoy a margarita and gossip. I paint my nails and make campfires. At cook-outs, I move easily between the men’s and women’s circles. Still, I sometimes find myself blocked—I watch what I wear and worry if I’m presenting myself as “too feminine,” “too boyish,” or “too queer.” I feel flashes of regret, then anger, then rebellion when men describe their preferences for high heels and long hair. I wonder who I am, what I am, and if it matters. I wonder if people take me seriously when they see my feminine face. Perhaps that never ends, not in my lifetime anyway. In an act of quiet rebellion, I’ve hung both pieces of art in a sunlit corner of my condo so that light can spill across my bare chest--for all who enter to see. (Anyone who enters my condo should know me by now.) They remind me that there is something—maybe even someone—that sees me fully in all of my complexity, radiance, and wholeness. They speak of and cultivate a place without shame, judgment, or restriction—a place where my body, born of this earth, made of this universe, loved by ancient trees, is free.

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Honestly anytime I have to do something these days

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Every time someone calls me at work with some minor request...

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As a librarian, I’m offended this never happens to me. ㅠ.ㅠ ㅠ.ㅠ

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I believe I have found my Kdrama spirit character...

“I will not have your kids.”

#itsokaytonotbeokay #kdrama #komunyeong #seoyeji #childfree