V-Day and Polyamory
Curvaceous Dee


“You’re my one and only.” 
“You fill my heart.” 
“You complete me.” 
Er …. no. I love you, and you’re an awesome partner, but you’re not any of those things to me.
Yep, buying Valentine’s Day cards can be a challenge when you’re polyamorous. I love giving cards for any damned reason ever (and have a stash because I buy great ones when I spot them). But finding the right card for Valentine’s Day is always the hardest.


I am a romantic and a bit of a sook, so I do like to remind my partners on V-Day – as well as any other day it takes my fancy – that I love them. But the standard commercial cards often don’t cut it (which is a shame, because my craftiness does not really extend to making my own). Store-bought cards often fall into the trap that most of media does: they suggest that being in love means you’re only in love with the one person. 
That’s not me, and that’s not a lot of people.


I’ve been polyamorous for about a decade now. The first February in my meteoric rise to ethical slutdom, I gave nearly ten Valentine’s Day cards. I gave them to my lovers, to the people I’d slept with a few times that year (friends, all), to my best friends, to people I hoped to seduce. I spent nearly two months finding the right card for each person – and it was totally worth it! Because each card was different, and none of them said “Be mine” – I didn’t want them to be mine! Or at least, not only mine…
What I wanted my card for each of them to convey for this: I wanted them to know I thought they were hot and sexy and amazing, worthy of love and respect, and that I was thinking of them (both with and without their clothes on). That I considered them not only friends but more than friends.


Love isn’t just about having room in your heart for one person and only one person. It isn’t about emptying your heart when that person leaves and then filling it up again. It’s about growing your heart each time someone comes along who deserves a portion. There’s always enough to share.
And when you’re sharing, why not show everyone you love them? That can be with a hug, with rampant sex, or with a well-chosen card. Me, I think I’ll go with all three!


Occupy Valentine’s Day!
Amie Wee
 

Oh, Valentine’s Day – the most heteronormative time of the year. A day when the world openly celebrates compulsory heterosexuality and commercialised romance. The day when we are reminded to take time to give a shit about the ones we love, by opening our wallets for heart shaped candy and overpriced cards.


Despite what you may have concluded about me after that feisty little intro, I am far from your average Valentine’s Day grinch. Who in their right mind doesn’t like a day when it’s expected that their partner should spoil and have sex with them? I just don’t feel like there’s much room on 14 February for the queer, or god forbid, dun dun dunnnn, the polyamorous. It’s all just so… straight and blatantly marketed and marginalised towards and for the hetero parade.


I’ll admit, I don’t understand why the queers are always overlooked on Valentine’s Day. It’s not as if being gay is a new thing or that we don’t have any money. When I have seen queerness catered to for Valentine’s Day, it’s always in an unrealistic, stereotyped, probably only funny to straight people way. 
Valentine’s Day subliminally teaches us that boys like girls and boys buy flowers for girls they like and that there’s not much room for anyone or anything that deviates from the heteronormative. Heteronormativity is a breeding ground for prejudice and hate. By keeping the queers silent and safely outside the market bracket, it only encourages people to remain ignorant about other sexualities, genders and relationships.


So here’s what I propose. OCCUPY VALENTINE’S DAY. We should unite with a movement created by Samhita Mukhopadhyay (executive editor of feministing.com) and join others to make noise about and change the mainstream culture of romance. It’s about raising awareness of the constraints that society puts on romance and how the messages birthed from the marketing surrounding it perpetuate gross sexuality and gender stereotypes, further marginalising them or even inciting hate out of ignorance. Occupy Valentine’s Day is about spreading love that doesn’t leave anyone out and spreading the shit out of it every single day.
 If you’ve read anything that’s struck a chord in this article, please check out the Occupy Valentine’s Day tumblr (occupyvday.tumblr.com) to get amongst it! Screw heteronormativity! Throw a gay spanner in the hegemonic masculinity works! Buy lube not flowers! Occupy Valentine’s Day!