First of all I would like to make one thing quite clear. I never explain anything. - M. Poppins

[nullalux]

As promised, a brief analysis and summary of responses to my Ideologies and Affiliations Poll.

Ethnicity: My mother is Filipina and my father, German. I lived in the Philippines before we settled in the US. My journal layout is in Ancient Greek only because I studied Classical Languages in college. According to poll results, both people who have and have not met me mostly thought I was some sort of generic Caucasian, which I find interesting, as I identify very strongly as Asian. Must be the light-colored eyes.

Religion: I identify as a Jewish atheist, meaning I value culturally Jewish rituals but consider myself a secular humanist. Most folks checked either Jewish or Jewish Atheist.

Sexuality: I'm a solid 3 on the Kinsey Scale. Most respondents answered bi, whether they've met me or not.

Dietary choices: I am vegan, both for health and ethical reasons. Those who have not met me primarily thought I was vegetarian or vegan. Those who have met me overwhelmingly chose vegan.

Political affiliation: Moderate. In high school, I was Republican. By college, I'd shifted to Libertarian, but became frustrated by the two-party system and eventually registered as Decline to State. According to the poll, most people considered me politically liberal, with a smattering each for moderate and socialist.

Relationship model: Polyfidelity seems the closest fit, since I've heard 'polyamory' defined as 'multiple relationships without commitments' (which seems problematic at best). Those who have met me all answered with some form of poly, although more favored polyamory. Of those who have not met me, 68% chose polyamory and 23% polyfidelity.

Regarding the amusing Relationship Poll, several respondents seem to have very ambitious projections regarding my stamina in such matters! In truth, I have varying levels of intimacy with some of my lovely cuddlesome friends, but I maintain only a few more serious connections. I also feel compelled to note here that Spencer is my cat, and further, while he is quite a handsome gentleman, we have a strictly platonic relationship.

Comments

[goldenmean.livejournal.com]

My college friend group not only drew the "who's having sex with whom" chart, they recorded it as tuples and ran least path analysis algorithms on it.

That's awesome. I actually found one of those sorts of charts from the late 90s while digging through some old gaming books a couple of months ago. Though it included shorthand of the "Person x <-> The entirety of ren-faire" variety, which doesn't make it incredibly amenable to hard analysis.

Here's the thing I really don't understand: why do you care?

My main gripe really is that it serves to muddy the language. I know what someone means when they refer to an object as being of a certain color (philosophical ramblings on the nature of objective reality aside), but if someone refers to themselves as being polyamorous, it's barely enlightening at all. Polyfuckery/swinging/what have you doesn't necessarily involve love (or to my ears at least even imply it), so it's just a bit of a pet peeve when it's used interchangeably with polyamory, which has love as one of the root words in its construction.