Thread by @JillianWeise

It is incredibly hard for me to reconcile how people who are my abusers? Those same people also taught me a lot. I don't know what to do with that. Or how to reconcile it.

The husband and wife duo at Florida State University taught me poetry in 1999, 2000, 2001.

I applied to teach at FSU twice before I got the job.

The third time I saw the ad? I almost did not apply. Here's what I said to my partner:

Why would I apply for this job? I have already applied for this job twice and I have been turned down. Why would I submit myself to rejection, yet again, by the Department of English at FSU?

#AcademicJobMarket #AcademicTwitter

My partner -- and he is my only partner rn, but I proudly practice #RelationshipAnarchy and #Polyamory and I veer towards #RelationshipCommunism -- said back to me:

It's your dream job. Go ahead and apply. The search committees change. We don't know who's on committee this year.

My partner & I had other convos abt the job before I applied, a third time, for the job I now hold at FSU.

Such as: That Department seems to like married people. They seem to especially like married heterosexual cisgender people. But we are not married. Should we get married?

Reader: We are already engaged. We have been engaged for a very long time--years--and we are purposefully not getting married. And certainly not for a job. In the academy. And not even for health insurance. And mainly bc? Marriage discriminates against disabled ppl. I'm disabled.

But also bc: Marriage discriminates against people who are not married. That discrimination, in the USA, affects Black single mothers the most. When I learned that, I did not want to get married.

I do not want to participate in an institution that discriminates against other people. No thanx.

But this is not an easy choice.

If you're engaged? You're supposed to get married. And if you're married? You have a chance of getting Two-Jobs-For-One-Job-Application. #HigherEd

Yes, this is true, as backwards as it might seem to people in corporate.

If you are married, in Higher Education, there is a chance you will land not just one job, but two jobs, with two salaries.

We don't talk about the TWO SALARIES thing enough in academic circles.

Here's what we talk about: Isn't it great that such-n-such and her/his wife/husband both got jobs! At our workplace! Isn't that so fabulous? They will both be here!

We pat ourselves on the back.

We appreciate our magnanimity.

My god we are just so generous.

To people who are married. But really: To people who are heterosexual. And also: cisgender. And also man and wife. Because let's be honest. We prefer the man to be the person hired.

We will, of course, indulge the spousal hire for the wife. We understand wives. They must come along!

[Tone on above two tweets: Sarcastic. The thinking repped there is sexist. It is as though James Dobson sits on the search committees, saying, "Now let's focus on the family"]

Nuclear family privilege is pervasive in higher education.

If higher education ran commercials during the #SuperBowl those commercials might read:

HIGHER ED. IT'S WHAT'S FOR FAMILIES.

https://twitter.com/Beef/status/1623441550721052672

No offense to farmers and ranchers. I come from farmers and ranchers. If you are going to farm or ranch, my god, you actually need a partner whether queer or straight, cis or trans. And quite frankly? You need a polycule. Tone: Serious.

This seems like a detour, but I'm going to follow it.

You know what polycules are good for? Accountability.

You know why? If someone in your polycule is abusing others, someone else in your polycule is likely to bring it up. And make it everyone's biz.

This has been my experience. And the reason is that we #polyamorous people are already minorities of the relationship style we practice. Most monogamous people don't care we practice polyamory. But some monogamous ppl seem to care quite a lot that we do not practice #monogamy

And when the hegemon [h/t Greek -- hēgemonia -- “dominance over”], so monogamous ppl notice that we polyamorous ppl are minding our biz and enjoying our lives? Oh that seems to really tick off some of the monogamous ppl. Perhaps bc they are themselves monogamous and so

they are beholden to certain rules of the relationship style that they have chosen, and built their entire lives around: monogamy.

Whereas we #polyamorous ppl are not beholden to those rules. We lived, considered, researched, analyzed monogamy and we decided: No. Not for me.

This, on occasion, makes the hegemon very angry. And then those in the hegemon look for reasons to discredit anyone who practices a relationship style that might appear to "infringe" on monogamy. And then you get things like "but polyamory is abusive!" which is why, in polycules

that I've been in -- not all, but most -- we are decent at ACCOUNTABILITY.

What is accountability? "The state of being accountable, liable, or answerable."

In my experience w/ both polyamorous and monogamous people, polyamorous people are more practiced at being accountable.

We practice accountability A LOT. Omg do we ever. We have "check-ins." We have "RADARs" (h/t @multiamory) We have negotiations. We have consents. We know the diff btw "a boundary" and "a rule" and we recognize that monogamy enforces a very central rule: ONLY 1 PERSON AT A TIME

Now I've said all that just so I can say this:

I do not know of a single University, not anywhere in the USA, that has ever hired a group of friends where only one person applied, but that person said, "I would like to bring my three friends. We are in a relationship together."

bc if being hired in higher education means I'm going to need to put up with the 1 guy who threatened me, and also indulge his 1 wife who spies on my socials, and also the 1 guy who kissed me without my consent, and his 1 wife who stood by her man?

I'm going to need my friends.

So consider this my formal request @floridastate and @fsu_englishdept and @FSU_Writers : I'd like us to be the first University that offers a "spousal hire" for a group of four people. You already hired me. Now hire three of my friends. Sincerely, Cy

For anyone late to the thread: Yeah, I said this. And I mean it.

For certain abusers' wives who are gossiping that I'm "going through something": Yes. I am going through your husband's abuse. I am going through your abuse.

I am going through what happens when a survivor tells the truth about that abuse. And when that survivor is disabled.

I am disabled and I am telling the truth.

I bet you wish I were "going thru" something that would send me to a mental hospital. Because calling me "crazy" ?

That's some basic ableism and sexism.

That's Ableism 101 and that's Sexism 101.

Surely, you got a better technique than that? Oh. You don't? You don't have a better technique than that against the truth I'm telling?

I'm not crazy. Your man did what he did. And you watched him do what he did. And you said nothing.

Now this next part is for you, and you only, and it is in disabled love: If you need help? If you need mental healthcare? You text me. I will get you help.

& for the onlookers: Sometimes the people who are saying "Cy is crazy" are actually themselves at risk. So I'm just going to drop some links here, in case anyone needs them. These links are not the police.

thehotline.org

refugehouse.com

thedvcc.org

Also, nobody is alone here. You're not alone.

If you need company, maybe, for something you're going thru? that maybe nobody knows about? here's some company:

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…