#mononormativity

[alpaca-clouds]

Romance in Fantasy Worlds. Or: WHYYY?!

Lazy Worldbuild Rant Number 2: Why the actual fuck do all fantasy worlds and almost all cultures in them copy-paste most attitudes towards sex and romance from the real world?

Don't get me wrong. I kinda know why. Because a) nobody IRL questions it, and b) nobody really wants to question it. So even those few fantasy authors that do realize that the mono- and heteronormative attitude humans these days have towards sex are not "natural" (in as far anything a human does ever can be, obviously), they would rather not challenge it. Besides, most fantasy books tend to be based in this romanticized idea of what the European middle ages looked like - obviously focusing on nobles or at least special people, rather than peasants.

But by all the gods, it irks me so much. Especially as mono- and heteronormativity also always imply some version of patriarchy existing in the world. After all, matriarchal societies tend to not have mononormativity, and are also way less likely to be heteronormative.

As some who have read me talk about this before know: I am irked by the drow worldbuilding in DnD a lot, but the one thing I will give that stuff credit for is, that it realized that in this matriarchal culture mono-hetero-normativity does not make any sense whatsoever and hence did away with it.

But really, though, there would be so many interesting ways to explore romance and sexuality in fantasy books.

Have a culture, in which romance is very strictly seperated from sex. Like, romance only exists for rasing kids, but it is basically assumed that those kids will always result from casual things outside of that bound, and people are superstitious if a heterosexual couple would actually conceive the kids together. It taints the kids, they say!

Have a culture in which romance really does not exist as a concept and everyone just does it with everyone with the kids just growing up in their village, where every adult will care for every child. The concept of "mother" and "father" does not exist. (This was fairly common for early humans, from all we know.)

Have a culture in which men and women live apart, only coming together for sexual encounters once in a full moon. Children will be raised by the women until a certain age, when the boys go live with the men.

Heck, have a culture in which the general belief is, that men and women should not touch one another, outside of specific rituals for conception. Outside of this homoromanticism is normalized, but heteroromanticism is seen as scandalous.

Recently I get fairly annoying especially when it comes to fantasy worlds of sort, that are basically stone age societies, meaning mainly hunter-gatherers. There is little evidence to suggest that hunter-gatherers do the entire "monogamous marriage" thing, outside of maybe a few exceptions. And yet, out of the couple of stone age or quasi stone age settings I know, most of them do monogamy at the very least, if not heteronormativity as well.

I mean, come on now. Read some actual anthropology people.

And that is without going into the fact that once we get to other fantasy species - or even scifi stuff - it is so boring to mainly get species that do two genders all the time.

*sighs* *looks at his Ursula K. LeGuin collection* Oh, Ursula, why were you the one who understood this? And why is everyone else struggling with it so much? Q-Q

[noahizslay]

being aro and polyam is very funny cause you don't understand either romance or monogamy so you're affected by amatonormativity and mononormativity and in short it sucks.

[reconstructwriter]

+💖:D

Ohhh, I had to think about this for a little while but my Biggest and Most unpopular opinion of the series is: I think Lucas was fine giving his space monks a ‘no marriage’ policy.

It’d be different if the Jedi Order prohibited or restricted members from leaving, if there was coercion going on to stay, if they attempted to impose a lack of marriage on ex or non-members, if they tried to control the sexuality of their members or any of the other tactics cults, fascists and our society in general implement.

But that doesn’t happen and as someone who’s aroace I can’t begin to express how nice it is to have a group – heroic at that – who doesn’t put romance on a pedestal or think sex is a biological need/cultural rite of passage. I enjoy the Prequels reversal of the cliché Happily Ever After marriage and Babies Ever by exploring how both these things help make this particular relationship worse in a way that’s both narratively fascinating and chillingly realistic to watch.

The fandom and even Legends (betrayal!) backlash that tries to ‘fix’ the Jedi Order by inserting marriage into it is as painful to me as the heteronormative compulsion to ‘fix’ queer relationships by straightening them out. Sometimes fandom complaints of 'but the Jedi can fuck' or 'but the Jedi should be able to get married' get awfully close to IRL 'but ace people do fuck'.

Being able to wed Padme openly wouldn’t fix many of Anakin’s issues and adds a few new ones in there. Luke’s marriage to Mara does not make his ‘new Jedi Order’ better than the old one. Ki Adi Mundi having multiple wives because his home-planet has so few men has fascinating gender-bender Handmaid’s tale implications – which is of course never explored. Not even a little.

Also if those with internalized mononormativity problems want Jedi to have a cultural ritual to celebrate a bond of love...*flings hands in the direction of the Canon Concordance of Fealty* It’s right THERE!

[love-me-love-my-weirdness]

I was repulsed by the idea of marriage until I realised I wanted to marry a woman.

I felt suffocated by the idea of only having the option of romantic and sexual committed relationships until I learned about qprs.

I felt wrong when I got excited about my partner having a crush or when I thought about being so tightly bound to one person until I found out about polyamory.

I felt empty searching for what made me feel like my agab until I discovered I was agender.

These standards and pressures exist even when we don’t know what they are. Pushing a hetero/allo/monogamous/cis agenda onto kids hurts them even if they aren’t in an actively intolerant area. Ignorance does the most damage. Nobody deserves to feel broken.

[amaliazeichnerin]

If I wrote a fix-it (1) fanfiction for every dramatic, jealousy-ridden story about an unhappy love triangle which isn't working because of mononormativity (2) ... I would need another lifetime, because there would be too many. 🤔

Footnotes: (1) fix-it fanfiction: A fanfiction in which a problem gets addressed and fixed which isn't resolved in the original story.

(2) mononormativity: The belief that the only adequate relationship model is a couple (Two people, nothing else: no open relationship, no polyamory, no relationship anarchy or other alternative forms of relationships). Or as Wikipedia says, "Mononormativity or mono-normativity is the normative assumption that monogamy is healthier or more natural than ethical non-monogamy, as well as the societal enforcement of such an assumption."

[polyamzeal]

do u have any advice on how to deal with and work through internalised monogamy-standards and like related jealousy and selfesteem issues? i also take recs for literature or something if it's too much.

thanks, i appreciate ya <3

I did a small polyam book recommendation list recently.

Unlearning internalized behaviors and beliefs is always hard and never happens overnight. It takes time and even long after you will slip up from time to time. Have patience and be gentle with yourself.

I honestly don't know if it works for everyone so take with a lot of salt. But to me a lot of mono-normativity and jealousy stems from toxic competition. The inverse of this is constructive cooperation. For example if a partner shows an interest in someone else you might feel like that person will 'steal' away your partner but instead try thinking about how that person might be a fun person to work together with to plan a gift for your partner. Or even from a more parallel sense maybe that person would be interested in going with your partner to that event that you really didn't want to go anyways. Look for ways to realize that a potential "enemy" could actually be a helpful ally that you can get along with.

[alpaca-clouds]

Worldbuild Differently: Unthink Patriarchy

This week I want to talk a bit about one thing I see in both fantasy and scifi worldbuilding: Certain things about our world that we live in right now are assumed to be natural, and hence just adapted in the fantasy world. With just one tiny problem: They are not natural, and there were more than enough societies historically that avoided those pitfalls.

You know what i hate in fantasy and science fiction media?

When it is patriarchal, even though it says it isn't. Because the people writing it have not really looked into the many ways that patriarchy has influenced out world.

Let me explain this once again.

Patriarchy per se in not about the subjugation of women, though this is a logical outcome of it. But in general patriarchy is just about one thing: Ownership is a thing, and whatever you own (both in terms of physical stuff, and stuff like power and influence) gets inherited down the patrial line. So from father to son or from father to sons. Women cannot inherit stuff or can only inherit when there is not a male heir to begin with.

But this brings a problem of course: Until fairly recently in human history we did not have DNA tests. As such the only way to make sure that the patrichal line of inheritence could be ensured was to make sure that every woman only ever had sex with one man. Now, a man did not necessarily only have one woman to ensure this, but the other way around it needed to be ensured. So, women and their sexuality needed to be heavily controlled.

And because it turned out that if you allowed men to have multiple women, and women only to ever sleep with one men, it created a situation where some men never got a wife... Well, enforced monogamy was born. And of course also heteronormativity, because sexuality suddenly was always just about procreation.

Why do we know that? Well for once, because logic, but also because we thankfully got to observe other cultures (before we fucking destroyed most of them), in which we did not have patriarchy, and in which hence all those other things were way, way lessened. Close to none heteronormativity, no mononormativity. And yes, also: In societies that are matriarchal, men are not as controlled as women are in patriachal societiies. Which makes sense, of course, because the matriarchal society has inheritance from mother to daughter, and a mother will always know who her daughter is. It does not matter whether the father has only slept with the mother or with ten other women.

And as I said: No, patriarchy is not the natural way of being. The reason why it is more common in human cultures in the real world is again simple from a logical perspective: Men in a matriarchal society are fairly free, and do have some incentive to try and establish a patriarchy. Some do. While women under patriarchy are less free and hence have less abilities to try and establish matriarchy.

However, we also have to see that patriarchy is very much a result of certain real world effects. And a fantasy world with magic and dragons and what not, will not necessarily develop the same kind of stuff.

Hells, even if we had a patriarchal fantasy world... If there was a spell available to quickly check whether a man and a kid were blood-related, that patriachy might not develop the kind of control over women that developed in the real world.

But yeah... I am personally sick of writers (often white cis women), who wanna write a world without patriarchy and then still will write a world with mononormativity and heteronormativity. Two things that are a direct result of the patriarchy.

Also: Folks really should keep in mind, that "but in the real middle ages" and stuff like that are actually not that good of arguments. One, because of the holes we have in the primary materials, and two, because of the fact that if you write high fantasy, you are writing in a world that are explicitly not the real middle ages, but a world with magic, and dragons and what not. Don't assume that everything is gonna be the same. Part of worldbuilding is to actually think about how the culture your world is set in has developed.

And yes, this is something I am often annoyed with. There is some amazing worldbuilding in the works of Tolkien. But fuck Tolkien in this regard: There is absolutely no valid reason within the worldbuilding on why the world is patriarchal in every way. It does not make any sense for some of the cultures we see.

[redheadedfailgirl]

It's wild that some people's response to the simple existence of polyamory is anger. 'if I had a polyamorous relationship I'd kill somebody' is an absurd response to a problem you don't even face. Simply don't have one then. If your partner asks for one? Say no! If someone you meet wants one? Find someone else! It is so easy to find a monogamous relationship in this world, I don't understand how the minority of people who want someone else elicits this response.

[probablynotsamantha]

Dammit heart why are you like this ik she's like the exact damn girl you would've thought up to be as attractive and friend as humanly possible to me but you still don't have to be this whiny about it.

[mutated-green-things]

Listen. Sometimes I must use a Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtle to allegorically write about the intersection between disability and transness okay?

I love when fanfic authors are freakishly unhinged. "Yes, hello, I am here to write a heart wrenching story about relationships and mortality. My medium is Ducktales (2017)"

[crappyravioli]

“Hey so like just checking in, you promise me you’d tell me if i overstepped a boundary or made you uncomfortable yeah?” as to say “i just pulled my heart out of my chest and ate it for you to watch and i feel forever changed by sharing this with you. Did you see it? Could you tell? I feel monstrous, but i know you’re not scared of monsters. Can you love me? Will this change things? Is it going to be okay?”

The answer is yes, of course.

It may not always sit exactly as you expect, nor will it always fall just your way, but it is yes, and it will always be enough <3

[polyamorousmood]

something really cool about polyamory (combined with being demi) that i don't see often get talked about: rejection can be nice, actually.

i asked a crush if they'd wanna go a date and they said they were polysaturated. so i'm giving my heart a chance to feel through its feelings of rejection -- but my brain is actually really excited about this, because now it means i have greater clarity as a friend.

previously i felt hesitant to talk about certain topics (like the specific details of how we each practice poly) because it felt like sneaky info-gathering if i wasn't honest where i was coming from. now that we're on the same page, it feels like i've unlocked a whole new book of conversations.

mononormativity sees rejection as an ending and friendship as a consolation prize, but a more honest friendship is fantastic, actually.

of course the heart deserves its time and grace to process its disappointment, but the disappointment is fleeting and the excitement is enduring. and i think that is very beautiful

Very good point! Personally, I never like rejection, per say. But I find I mind it a lot less because I've gotten in the habit of seeing such discussions as clarifying rather than "win or lose" situations.

It doesn't have to be seen as a failure or a let-down!

[forestdeath1]

People are just too focused on the idea of one great love for the entire life.

My unpopular Marauders opinion is that Remus did love Tonks in a romantic way. It wasn’t a ‘lavender marriage’ or anything like that. He was bisexual and loved her to pieces, and Teddy was the result of that love. I don’t think that takes away from the fact that he loved Sirius too.

[alpaca-clouds]

About Mononormativity, YA, and Shipping

Let me talk about mononormativity again, because it is such a big issue still. Especially given that while in left queer circles people will by now agree that heteronormativity is shitty. Yet, even in those circles we still struggle with mononormativity in more than one way.

Of course there is this one way - the obvious way - that people will talk about polyamorous relationships as less valuable in some way. As if the people in question do not love their partners or as if their love is somehow less because they love more people at once.

But there is also the other way: This idea that a relationship is less valuable or less "good" because it ends. And with that I am not talking about a relationship that ends because it is toxic, but just because people just grew apart. Yet, the idea keeps being kept around that you "failed" at a relationship and at romance, because it ends.

And that outlook is just so god darn toxic. Because it keeps people in relationships that are hurting them.

Yet, it is just so pervasive. You know, if I look at YA literature you often enough have their epilogues where those teenagers as adults then marry their highschool sweetheart. Because this is then made to proof that the relationship is good and perfect.

It is kinda why I also do not like romance books a lot. Because those require a "Happily Ever After" in terms of "the couple is together", as if two people cannot be happy together, even if they realize that at some point they are better as friends.

It also is so common in shipping, that people will just be so obsessive on "they are together forever" (in some cases quite literally, given immortality might be a thing).

And it is just... relax people. Relax about it. Relationships can fail and still be a good experience while they lasted. And teenagers do not need to end up marrying their highschool sweetheart and then have kids together. And no, just because someone has several romantic partners at once does not mean, they love anyone less.

I beg you to overthink this entire stuff. Because it is hurting so many people. And stop judging people for breaking up with someone.

[aro-culture-is]

Partnering Aromantic culture is being frustrated with the way aromanticism is so often conflated with being non-monogamous, when those are actually two separate things. The fact that I want a committed, monogamous sexual relationship doesn't make me any less aro.

our community may share many thoughts about amatonormativity and mononormativity with polyamorous folks, but that does not mean we are a single-circle venn diagram. we're different, and that's okay.

[sapphicscience]

"amatonormativity" "mononormativity" SHUT UP. acknowledge hegemonic heteronormativity or die