Agony Ashley: Polyamory can be difficult

Q  I am a bisexual woman who is currently seeing a woman. I am polyamorous and want to see more people but my girlfriend will not let me. How do I convince her to also be polyamorous?
Shalini, Mumbai

You can’t “convince” anyone to be anything. What you do need to explain to her is that being bisexual, you cannot, fundamentally, be monogamous. At the very least, you have the potential to have two lovers. Then, explain to her what polyamory means and that it is an ethical engagement with more than one person at the same time in an emotional relationship that may or may not be erotic. Buy her a copy of Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy’s The Ethical Slut and discuss it together. Polyamory can be difficult as we are conditioned to be possessive, jealous, pathetic idiots.

Q I am 18 years old and I identify as trans. I do not understand all this news about the Trans Bill. Why is the community opposed to it? Isn’t it supposed to give us rights?
Gender non-binary, Secunderabad

The Trans Bill was originally and mainly for hijras. It has been hijacked by the trans movement, according to me. The government paved the way for it by using the US Wikipedia definition of trans in the NALSA judgement which then came into the Bill from the first Tiruchi Shiva draft. That definition meeting the governmental desire to identify and help hijras means the whole thing is now a mess. It is not going to affect you much either way, so do not worry your non-binary head too much about it. Claiming to be non-binary sounds strenuous enough to me.