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Liz Welsh's avatar

I am also trying to become more accepting of corniness, so I relate to a lot of what you wrote. I’ve noticed two taxonomies of corniness: One is about overly simplification and infantilizing the audience. The other happens when someone is earnest - which is honest, which requires bravery! A lot of that latter kind of corniness has been excruciating for me exactly because someone else is telling a truth I’m not yet capable of bearing myself. I aspire to be corny in that way.

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Sarah Weissman's avatar

I SO appreciate this and Lux's post because I'm super earnest and, yes, like puns! I've sort of embraced I won't have the "coolness" but also that lack of coolness is sort of my strength. I think, a lot of what you're talking about, is simply sincerity and specificity which is a solid way to keep earnestness from being the first part of corny. I realize I'm what kids now would call "cringe" but *so* much of "cringe" is being earnest and emotionally expressive, which a lot of people are afraid of.

And generally, Lux, it sort of goes with the whole "not just one way of being" that fits into queerness, I think. I appreciate your self-reflection.

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Liz Welsh's avatar

Yes yes yes about “cringe”!!! I’m a stepparent to teenagers and always take it as a demented complement when they think I’m being “cringe” because to me it means I’m being REAL about emotions or ideas they can’t really handle. Thank you for mentioning it!!

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Sarah Weissman's avatar

In teens I sympathize though I don't have any teens in my life, everything is embarrassing when you're a teen, but when I see it in grown adults...

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Aris Merquoni's avatar

Gosh that book. I also bounced off it somewhat but I do appreciate that a lot of the stories in it felt like they too place in genuinely queer spaces rather than at the assumed-female-bisexuality spaces of a lot of polyamorous meetups I actually went to. (My feelings about books on polyamory are also colored by the fact that for a while everyone in the space was recommending Fr*nkl*n V***x's book, and I was a meta-metamour of said dude and was not impressed by either firsthand experience or thirdhand gossip, so I have a lot of resentment about that left over that has nothing to do with any of your points!)

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Lux Alptraum's avatar

Oof yeah I think I heard some real bad things about him, sigh

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Aris Merquoni's avatar

While obviously I believe the people who have spoken out against him since, at the time my complaints were that he gave off a self-impressed douchebag vibe, and was writing his book on polyamory while I was hearing secondhand complaints via my metamour connection about how bad he was being at polyamory. Now that his coauthor is now one of the loudest voices calling out his behavior, I kind of wish I had been more of an asshole about un-recommending it to people.

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Josh's avatar

I wonder if we'll ever get back to the scrappy activism and optimism of a bi centric magazine like Anything That Moves. I miss that.

And yeah, there's a lot of corniness in some of the early polyamory books. There used to be a convention for the poyamory usenet group alt.polyamory, and the bi group soc.bi .

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Lux Alptraum's avatar

I'm trying to bring it back!

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Josh's avatar

Do you know Charlie Jane Anders?

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Lux Alptraum's avatar

Yup! We worked together at Gawker Media and I hung out with her and Annalee Newitz when I was in SF this past fall!

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