307 - Chosen Family
More than blood
The term “chosen family” comes from Kath Weston’s Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship in 1991 as a phrase to describe people who are not related biologically but consider each other family.
“‘Chosen family’ is a term employed within queer and transgender (Q/T) communities to describe family groups constructed by choice rather than by biological or legal (bio-legal) ties. Chosen family implies an alternative formulation that subverts, rejects, or overrides bio-legal classifications assumed to be definitive within an American paradigm of kinship [1]. The provenance of the term “chosen family” in social science discourse derives from anthropologist Kath Weston’s Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship (1991).”
—“We Just Take Care of Each Other”: Navigating ‘Chosen Family’ in the Context of Health, Illness, and the Mutual Provision of Care amongst Queer and Transgender Young Adults
Historical significance
Within the LGBTQ+ community, chosen family is sometimes all someone has. A few instances and historical significance:
During the AIDS crisis, many of those dealing with end-of-life care were supported by friends instead of family of origin, elevating traditional friendship into something more intimate, meaningful, and intense.
Chosen families are born out of necessity; often queer people are rejected or disowned by biological family and have to find meaningful relationships with others.
Chosen family can provide monetary support, caretaking responsibilities, housing, and/or emotional support.
According to the Washington Post in 2016, 40% of homeless youth identify as queer, and for this demographic, family is vital.
One-third of LGBTQ people identify as people of color, and statistically, immigrants and people of color are more likely to live with extended family or family that is not blood related than white people. Additionally, POC members of the LGBTQ community suffer poverty at a disproportionate rate, and living together is a way to reduce rent bills, etc.
Chosen family and prevalent communities
Perhaps one of the most famous examples of chosen family is from ball culture that originated in New York City, where families were referred to as “houses” and often named after popular fashion brands. Each house typically had a “mother” or “father” who functioned as a parent to the “children.” These families were close-knit and exclusive, and it was considered an honor to be asked to join one. Other similar communities that often have chosen families are:
BDSM communities.
Sex-positive communities.
Immigrant communities.
Communities of color.
Poor communities.
Foster children.
Other marginalized communities.
Chosen challenges
Chosen families can face challenges that biological ones do not, particularly because there are very few legal protections in place for those who aren’t tied together by blood or marriage. Los Angeles, New York City, and Chicago have all passed ordinances that allow people to take sick days from work to care for anyone they consider to be family, and Arizona and Rhode Island have passed similar laws. While not the same, laws like this are a start to providing chosen families the legal rights they deserve.
Choosing right
Some things to consider when forming a chosen family:
Take your time. Forming these bonds with people is not going to happen overnight, but likely with people you’ve spent years cultivating relationships with.
Employ similar tactics to chosen family that you would in a romantic relationship. Discuss boundaries, be aware of NRE, and be on the lookout for red flags.
Make sure you cultivate boundaries around how you choose to deal with people’s personal issues and drama so you don’t get sucked into situations you don’t want to be in.
Try not to sacrifice your wants, needs, and feelings for the good of the group. If something is uncomfortable, speak up and don’t let it fester.
It’s okay to end the relationship dynamic if it’s not working for you, just as it’s okay to end a relationship with a blood relative if it is toxic and/or doing more harm than good.
Transcript
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Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we're talking about chosen families. What is the cultural significance of the term chosen family and why is it so important to those who've implemented it in their communities. Today, we're going to celebrate the origins of chosen families, the communities that use the term today, and where we are going as a people in terms of recognizing chosen families in a legal context, and some things to think about when creating either a chosen family or some other intentional relationship community of your own.
Dedeker: Jase, where are we going as a people?
Emily: As a whole people.
Jase: To the moon.
Emily: Apparently, to Mars according to the world's richest person now.
Dedeker: I don't know if the moon or Mars sounds like a great improvement.
Emily: Yes, I don't know.
Jase: They're still humans once we get there, so I'm not sure that that'll change very much.
Dedeker: We don't got to diss on humans necessarily.
Jase: All right, fine.
Emily: Just some humans. I really had a fun time learning about chosen families, the origin, the etymology of it all because it was a term to me that was rather amorphous and now it's got some context behind it, some understanding of where it came from, and now where it's going.
I really appreciate that and just how much the term family and what it means to be a family has really changed over time because I think for so often or for so long, when we thought of family, we thought of a wife and a husband and 2.5 kids and a white picket fence. That was what a family is. Now, I think of the two of you in a lot of ways family. I think of a lot of my friends as family and there is even further that we'll talk about where that goes today in terms of what shows and families really are. Anyway, I had fun this week learning all about this.
Dedeker: I'm curious for the two of you growing up, your concept of family, as far as blood-related family, did you come from families where there was a very strong sense of family loyalty like, "Oh yes, this person is related by blood so we have to do this for family," or didn't give no craps?
Emily: Yes. No, way. I was shocked when I went to college and had a boyfriend who was like, "I would die for every single person in my family. Blood is thicker than water." All of this that was really intensely passionate about family and I was like, "Yes. It's me and my mom. Cool," because I never really knew my father.
That side of my family, I'm not at all a part of in any way, and then my blood family on my mother's side is fairly fractured and we don't see each other that much. I care about the people that are in my family, but it's not like this really intense, strong, we get together and have reunions and all this stuff all the time.
Jase: I have a clarifying question for you about this boyfriend in college. Did he mean family in terms of all his cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and all that sort of thing, not just his immediate mom and dad and brothers and sisters?
Emily: I think immediate family was really who he was talking about that they were the most important people in his life like bar none. I also didn't grow up with a big family. I think that's the difference like Jase, you have brothers and sisters and multiple dads and all of this stuff. It was me and my grandmother and my mom, and then just me and my mom, and that was it. That's the family that I think of.
Dedeker: Jase just has a family of dads.
Emily: Yes, he has all these dads.
Dedeker: A pack of dads.
Jase: I feel like y'all have painted this very inaccurate picture of my dads' and my relationships.
Dedeker: It's not totally inaccurate.
Jase: Oh, gosh.
Dedeker: What about you, Jase?
Jase: It is an interesting question and it's-- oh boy, I guess there's so many levels to it. First of all, I think in my family growing up, we were very loose with who we would use familial terms for. My parents had some family friends when I was a kid who we referred to as mama and papa. It was like mama Dave. I'm sorry, not mama Dave, Papa Dave, and mama Jane or whatever. That was the name that us kids use to refer to them and their kid used to refer to my parents.
Dedeker: You're saying you had even more dads at the past.
Jase: I guess. Oh, yes.
Emily: He's accumulated them over time.
Jase: We had people who are referred to as aunt and uncle and cousin who are not actually blood-related to us at all, but we had been taken under the wing of my grandparents years ago and so remained part of our family. I didn't realize till later, till I was a little older that these people weren't actually blood-related to me or legally related to me in any way, not even just blood, but this bio legal way that the government at least talks about family in our country.
For me, I think it was more of this blurred line of who counted as that and who didn't, rather than this very strong like, "This is my blood relative and therefore they're more important than someone else," I guess.
Dedeker: Interesting.
Emily: How about you, Dedeker?
Dedeker: I come from a family where there's not a lot of sentimentality and not a lot of tradition, at least on my mom's side, which was the side of the family I spent more time growing up, and quick to cut people out of the family also, a long history of that, of like, "You pissed me off or you betrayed me. Okay, you're not family anymore," essentially. I think what that resulted in was a weird sense of hyper loyalty with material goods specifically. It's like material resources like cars or equipment, if you want to get rid of it, you better give it to a family member.
That's a whole thing that I have years of baggage around that I can unpack on a different episode, but at the same time, I don't think that I grew up with a strong sense of family identity. For instance, I'll see people post on social media or on the holidays where they're like, "Oh, it's a Jones family thanksgiving. Wow. We're all here." I'm just like, "That would never happen in my family." They're not as strong. It's that identity, I suppose. I don't know where that leaves me.
Emily: We'll talk a little bit about legality with families a little bit later in the episode, but I realized like I really didn't want to have to live with my father and his family if something happened to my mother. She changed it so that my godparents became my best friend James' parents. Legally I was tied to him and them --
Dedeker: As in you would go to godparents first instead of going to your dad.
Emily: Exactly.
Dedeker: Gotcha.
Emily: That was great for me because I so felt that they were part of my family more than my father's side, which is great. Do that for your kids if-- no, I'm kidding, but maybe. Anyways. All right. Let's get into this. The etymology of the term chosen family comes from this book from 1991 which is Kath Weston, Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship.
We're going to talk about a study a little bit that I found that's this pretty large study that was done last year, I think, and it's from the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health and it's called We Just Take Care of Each Other: Navigating Chosen Family in the Context of Health, Illness, and the Mutual Provision of Care amongst Queer and Transgender Young Adults.
They say in the opening that chosen family is in term employed within queer and transgender communities to describe family groups constructed by choice rather than by biological or legal, bio legal ties. Chosen family implies an alternative formulation that subverts rejects or overrides bio legal classifications assumed to be defined within an American paradigm of kinship. The provenance of the term chosen family and social science discourse derives from anthropologists Kath Weston's Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship.
Dedeker: It sounds like the first time we see that, but the specific term showing
up in print anyway, even though the practice is very, very old.
Emily: Yes, it definitely originated more in the '70s and '80s and it came out of the AIDS movement and a lot of ways because LGBTQ people who had AIDS and were dying and needed care and whose parents, or families of origin had disowned them or were not in their lives anymore, they turned instead to their chosen families, to their friends, to their loved ones that weren't necessarily biologically related to them, and they offered end of life care for these people. That I think is very striking that we had origins coming out of the AIDS movement and the necessity of chosen family from that.
Jase: Yes, and I think that's just a good thing to always remember about any kind of terms for describing humans and the things that we do. Emily and I have been studying music theory together recently, and we were just talking this last week about how it's important to remember that music came first, and then music theory was created as a way to explain why music works the way it does, and that the theory came after the music instead of like people came up with a theory and then started making music with it.
It's the same thing here, same thing with terms like polyamory, that this is something that in some form has been done for potentially thousands of years even though the term only came around about the same time in the early '90s. It's just a good thing to keep in mind that just because the term started in a certain place or time doesn't mean that those people have the monopoly on what it means or how it's done.
Keeping that in mind about terminology, it is still useful though to compare this to other terms for similar concepts. In terms of chosen family, we also have things like a polycule and co-parenting relationships and intentional communities. These things are all similar in a certain way that they're about creating a group relationship between people that's not following necessarily the legally recognized ways that that's done.
It's important to note though that within all of these terms really chosen family included, there is a big range and these all come from different origins in terms of how we talk about them. I think that all of these concepts can learn a lot from each other and be informed by each other, even though they're not necessarily describing the same thing.
If you think about a polycule, for example, for some people that might be this very close-knit group of people who are in relationships or metamours and who maybe live together or are close to each and maybe raise kids together and share finances. It could be super close or it could be more of a looser network of people connected through relationships.
Similarly, intentional communities could be something where it's like this group of people, we are buying this plot of land to live off the grid and all of our finances and all of our resources will all be pulled together. We'll raise our kids as a community, we'll be the primary community and family for each other. An intentional community could also be an apartment building in New York for only vegans. It could be a very loosely, like we all share some philosophical ideal and so that's why we call ourselves an intentional community. It can really, really vary in terms of what these things mean.
Dedeker: Emily touched on the AIDS crisis in the '80s and '90s, and I think that's an interesting example because it does highlight the fact that I think especially in history and within communities chosen families have been born out of just necessity. Again, even to this day, it's still often the case that queer people are rejected or disowned by their biological family members.
Therefore you have no choice, but to find meaningful relationships outside of your family of origin, which is a sad circumstance but sometimes I think can lead to, then you get to choose the people in your life who are going to support you and hold you in a way that maybe your biological family doesn't, as well as doing things like providing monetary support or caretaking responsibilities, providing housing support, emotional support when it's needed.
Jase: Yes, absolutely. That also shows up with queer and transgender youth. According to 2016 Washington Post article, 40% of homeless youth identify as queer, and for that demographic in particular being the intersection of queer and homeless, the chosen family is extremely important because often that's your only resource you really have. Similarly youth in the foster care system that can also apply-
Emily: I was struck by that, how much this term is used in the foster care system as well, which may, again makes a lot of sense if you don't have a strong structure in your home life, and if you're bouncing around multiple foster care systems to really cultivate that chosen family within the people that you meet through that can be vital.
Jase: A third of people in the LGBTQ community identify as people of color. Immigrants and people of color are statistically more likely to live with extended family members or other additional people like chosen family in order to form a household together, much more so than white cisgender heterosexual people.
Emily: That's also just because LGBTQ and people of color, yes POC communities do experience disproportionate rates of poverty, and so one way to combat that poverty is to have many members in a household together, not just have one person in a household or two people in a household, but rather multiple people living together to bring down the cost of living.
A 2016 report published in the journal of Pediatric Clinics of North America cited research that said that they found that 1/3 of gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth experienced parental rejection due to their sexual orientation. A 2013 Pew Research Center survey found that 35% of LGBTQ adults are parents compared with 74% of adults in the general public.
That is less generally, 35% compared with 74% but that also means a lot of times, if you both have the same genitals, it's going to be harder to have a kid, and so sometimes you need to create a chosen family in order to have kids together. Not only surrogates, become a part of chosen family.
Jase: Not only that, but there's a lot more barriers to having kids in terms of being able to adopt or have a surrogate or something that there's a lot of financial and also legal barriers to even allow that. To end out this section, talking about the phenomenon, there was this funny quote from Wikipedia on the definition of how families have changed over time.
This is a quote within a quote from the late German sociologist Ulrich Beck who observed how in contemporary society, "Marriage can be subtracted from sexuality and that in turn from Parenthood, Parenthood can be multiplied by divorce and the whole thing can be divided by living together or apart and raised to a higher power by the possibility of multiple residences and the ever-present potentiality of taking back decisions."
Essentially the takeaway being how, when I think a lot of social programs and laws and people speaking very generally about family, they tend to think of it as being one fairly uniform thing with maybe a few exceptions. When in reality, it is incredibly complicated and most likely is that there's these factors going on and that it doesn't really serve us to ignore it and pretend that those things aren't adding levels of complexity to it.
Dedeker: I feel like Ulrich is throwing some shade at the end here with his talking about the ever-present potentiality of taking back decisions. I'm like, come on, man.
Emily: What, just the fact that people get divorced?
Dedeker: People can change their minds. Yes exactly.
Jase: That's interesting that you read this sort of negative sentiment in that. I didn't necessarily--
Dedeker: Not, until the very end. Not until it certainly became this dig on like, I don't know responsibility or something like that, but maybe I was just expecting that.
Jase: We should write a letter to Ulrich and be like, "Hey--"
Dedeker: "What kind of family do you have, Ulrich?"
Emily: I don't know if this man is still around. No, he's not. The German sociologist so he--
Dedeker: Oh, dang, okay.
Emily: He's no longer with us but , but ultimately, I mean, what he's getting at, and I think what we're getting at here is that, as we said before the definition of family has really changed over time and even if you do have like a cis white two people who have kids together, they could be divorced, they could marry someone else, bring other kids into the situation. Jase, again, you have multiple dads and this is because you have your biological dad, but also your stepdad and then also your step step dad.
Jase: I don't think that's how those terms work.
Emily: I don't know or stepdad once removed. No, I'm kidding.
Dedeker: We've gone through this before. It's like, stepdad 1.0 and stepdad 2.0 and then dad prime.
Jase: Also mom and stepmom. There's several parental figures in this family.
Dedeker: Several, so many parents.
Jase: Yes, absolutely.
Dedeker: You're not getting away with anything.
Emily: No, you're definitely not.
Jase: Boy.
Dedeker: I think we've also touched on this in previous episodes, where we've talked about relationship anarchy just to point out the fact that yes, definition of family has changed over time but we don't want anyone to think that the family started as this nuclear family unit. That's what's changed over time.
Emily: That's a good point.
Dedeker: It's like even getting to nuclear family unit was a big change from where things were historically.
Jase: Yes, absolutely. Also, it was making me think. Dedeker and I just recently watched the Wolf Hall series, which was a BBC series from a few years ago.
Dedeker: All six of you out there who know what we're talking about, God bless you.
Emily: I have no idea what that is.
Jase: The only important thing to know is that it takes place during the Tudor era. What's that? 1500.
Dedeker: 1530s.
Jase: 1530s.
Emily: When Henry VIII was happening?
Dedeker: Yes. Yeah, when he was happening.
Jase: He's happening.
Dedeker: It was the event that was Henry VIII was happening.
Jase: What really struck me in that though, is that there, family amongst the royalty is a big deal of who are you related to, both legally through marriage, and then also biologically, because it has to do with your potential status in life. Then also, even amongst the peoples who are not that, there's still the sense of family was based on your name.
There's a scene where Cromwell the main character, one of his wards, who's boy, who he's taken in and it's training alongside his son and, teaching him and bringing him up asks to take his name, asks to take Cromwell's name and that's a big deal. It's interesting that, again, the ways that name and family and what we think of has evolved over time, even just in our Western society, and that's not even including the way that it's been approached in so many different ways and the rest of the world just really has changed and evolved over time and continues to.
Emily: Absolutely.
Dedeker: Well, this episode brought to you by Wolf Hall PBS masterpiece, go check it out now. Actually, it's not. I wish we could get that sponsorship from a show that debuted three years ago. That'd be great.
Jase: What a weird sponsorship that would be.
Emily: That'd be very cool.
Dedeker: We're going to take a quick break. In the second half of this episode, we're going to talk a little bit more about particularly famous and well-known communities that have grown out of the creation of chosen families, as well as some things to consider if you are also drawn to this concept of chosen family and want that to be a part of your life. First, we'll talk about our sponsors and the best ways that you can support this show so that we can keep making it free for everybody.
Emily: Ball culture, this thing that I knew nothing about before I read up about this, it emerged in Harlem in the 1970s and '80s, as a response to the rejection of queer, trans, POC by heterosexual society, and the rejection of black and Latinx folks by the white queer community. Basically, it's like a voguing Ball culture that developed in New York City. They had the chosen families, but they were also known as these houses.
They were named often after famous fashion brands like there was the house of Saint Laurent, and the house of La Beja and a bunch of stuff like that. It was so cool and really awesome and I want to delve deeper into it. Something that's a distinction here is that they would often have a mother and/or a father, who functioned as the parent of their children like the community children, and those chosen families are especially close-knit and exclusive.
They consider it an honor and a privilege to be asked to be part of the family. Other chosen families are more inclusive and not quite as boujee. This comes from just the chosen family that pride builds. It was an article on this gentleman's website that I found that was talking about this community that came out of the 1970s and '80s.
Dedeker: I'll just come out and say I found out right before recording that neither Jase or Emily has actually watched the documentary Paris Is Burning, which is all about this subject. If you're out there, and you haven't seen Paris Is Burning, definitely go and watch it. It came out in 1990. It's literally about the Ball culture scene. It really breaks down, this particular chosen family and house culture. It was just put into the Library of Congress just in 2016 so quite recently.
I think that it's a really, really wonderful example of both chosen family as a result of necessity and also chosen family like really providing a lot of the stuff that biological family just isn't therefore, and the wider, more mainstream community not even being there for, that it's like when you're a subset of a subset of a marginalized community, and even the larger marginalized communities rejecting you, it creates even more of a need to cling together and creating this chosen family structure.
Also fun fact, much of our slang that we use today often trickles down, or up depending on which direction you want to call it, trickles over from black and Latino, queer trans communities, a lot from the Ball scene as well like throwing shade, or realness, or queen. It's like all of that came directly from those communities as well.
Emily: That's really cool. Did they discuss that in the documentary?
Dedeker: Yes. The documentary is from the '90s and so some of the older slang is present. Definitely, highly recommend. I think it's a really good example of a more famous communities that came out of this chosen family that was created by necessity.
Emily: Essentially, there are these more like boujee voguing communities and then less specific communities that don't like have the names attached to it, but they are still very inclusive, as well so both exist.
Dedeker: That's literally where Madonna's Vogue came from was-
Emily: That makes sense.
Dedeker: -from this and people got pissed off at her for appropriating that a little bit.
Emily: A lot of sense as well.
Dedeker: Anyway, go Madonna. Of course, there's a lot of examples of communities, and especially marginalized communities that have relied on these chosen family structures, including certain BDSM community, sex-positive communities, immigrant communities, of course, communities of color, poor communities. We talked about foster children like so so many places where I'm going to use this term essentially misfits. I think a lot of people take pride in that term but it's like when you're in a culture that wants to label you as some misfit or other than, you have to find ways to rely on this structure and get the support that your mainstream community is not really offering you.
All that said, maybe you're out there, thinking about your own current chosen family, or you're thinking about creating a community of your own, or maybe you're thinking about cohabiting with your polycule or maybe rearing children with partners, or your friends or roommates or stuff like that. We want to talk a little bit about specific challenges that chosen families have faced historically, are currently facing, and just how that has changed over time.
Emily: I want to go back to the study that we referenced at the beginning of the episode. They had an interesting point to talk about, discussing these communities and how they've changed over time and why it's important to recognize that change. Nicolazzo et al which is someone that they referenced in this study, he noted that queer individuals who negotiate kinship networks under varying degrees of adversity often form counter-hegemonic cultures of care.
In these informal networks, care and support flows freely without the regulation of rigid legal, biological or social ties. Such practices are evidenced in many different types of marginalized communities. Therefore, well-chosen family is not an exclusively queer experience. The phenomenon of caregiving outside the bio legal family framework has been shown to run parallel along multiple intersecting lines of social disenfranchisement.
Jase: It's quite a mouthful there.
Emily: It was.
Jase: Absolutely, that this can show up in various places, particularly for groups that are not legally recognized or protected, or connections that are not legally protected or recognized. Some things to be aware of and keep in mind with this either for yourself and also for understanding a little bit more about other people who might be going through this is that like so many other non-traditional groups, chosen families are not recognized from a legal standpoint like biological families or people who are married.
What that means is that these chosen families can have a difficult time with things like gaining access to one another when they're in the hospital, being able to visit each other or make decisions for each other, tax breaks, benefit programs, end of life care, power of attorney. This list goes on and on. We talked about this years and years ago when we did an episode about the future of marriage.
Emily: Yes, and recognizing single people.
Jase: Right, and essentially that there's this thing where
there's literally thousands, I forget the exact number, but thousands of rights that you are given when you get married, and that outside of marriage, it's possible to get, I don't know, maybe a quarter of those or maybe up to a half. There really literally legally is no other way to get the same rights you can get with marriage, which is a pretty screwed up system, but it's something to be aware of in these situations.
Dedeker: Yes. That is slowly, slowly changing. Hopefully, we'll see a more positive change in that direction. In Los Angeles, New York City, and Chicago, which are the three biggest cities in the US. They have all passed laws that will allow people to take sick days in order to care for anyone who they consider family, regardless of whether or not they're actually related. Arizona State and Rhode Island have also passed similar laws, which is a pretty good sign. It's such a very specific sliver of special rights or special privilege to be granted of just being able to caretake, but it's not nothing for sure.
Jase: It's a step in the right direction at least.
Dedeker: It is.
Emily: Dedeker, something I wanted to bring up is the fact that you did your will recently and I am on it and so is Jase. Jase is your power of attorney. That is-- Or wait, executor, power of attorney. Is that the same thing?
Dedeker: It's all the same thing.
Jase: thing. They're not the same thing but I’m both of those things.
Dedeker: They're not the same but related.
Emily: Cool. That in essence is an act of creating this intentional chosen family almost because you're making an intentional effort to put power in our hands rather than in the hands of someone that you're biologically related to.
Dedeker: Yes, I can launch into a whole soapbox. Maybe I'll do a tiny soapbox right now, but I--
Emily: It's the smallest of soaps.
Dedeker: The smallest of soap, just a little hand soap, soapbox. I will say, generally, I find it bullshit to have to need to make any kind of relationship legitimate through the eyes of the state, essentially. I hate that. I really don't like that. I don't think that's the way humans function. However, I will use that as a tool, if it's the best tool that I got for keeping myself protected, keeping my loved ones protected, so on and so forth there. I'm stepping off my tiny little hand soap, soapbox.
Yes, I actually started thinking about this years and years and years ago when I read Barbara Kingsolver's latest novel, which is fiction. Yes, her latest, novel Unsheltered it's amazing. The thing is in that book, she described a scenario where this guy and his partner, they had a kid together. They didn't get married and ended up being really sad. She ended up dying but because they weren't married, all of a sudden he was screwed in this situation where it's like, well, he can't collect on life insurance. He can't take advantage of her benefits package from work.
Now, there's issues even with custody and stuff like that. That it just became this big nightmare. Just because they were, I don't know, just like a lot of modern couples where they're just like, "We don't feel it's important to get married at this point," or "We're not ready to get married," or maybe "We don't even believe in marriage, legally," stuff like that. That was what first got me thinking where I was like, "Oh crap. Unfortunately, there are a lot of these legal consequences because of the way that our culture is structured as far as recognizing these things."
Anyway, fast forward to today. Towards the end of 2020, I did finally decide to sit down and pull together my trust and will. If any of y'all want to reach out to me to ask about that, I'm happy to answer questions because trust me, it's a lot easier than you think that it is. Part of me was also realizing like, "Oh gosh, because I'm not married, that means that if I'm incapacitated, if I'm sick, if I can't make decisions--" I did the math of who would be the person, next of kin, that would make decisions for me in that case.
I was like, "I don't think I want that person making decisions for me, especially regarding my healthcare. My end of life care, my death, what to do with my body, stuff like that." I do invite all of you listening out there to think about that if you're not married, who's your next of kin? Would they, for instance, insist that your body be dressed in the gender you were assigned at birth instead of what your actual gender is? Is that super upsetting to you? Would they bar multiple partners from coming to your funeral?
I know this is all weird stuff to think about, but it really started to get to me. That was part of why I finally sat down and formalized it. That was such an interesting process of like, "I guess these are the people who are my closest little chosen family." It's like Jason, Emily and Alex are the main three. It's expanded beyond that a little bit, but I don't know. It was a really interesting exercise for sure to apply this dry, boring, legal, and financial framework to formalize these chosen family ties. Anyway, please don't murder me because there's not a lot of money coming at you. At least not yet.
Emily: Promise you that.
Jase: At least not yet. You're saying we should wait a little bit longer.
Dedeker: Yes, wait till I really strike it rich. Then maybe you can make some plots against my life or something.
Emily: Jeez, goodness.
Jase: God. Yes, I fairly watching this stuff about the tutors has really influenced your way of thinking.
Dedeker: Yes.
Emily: There are various ways for people to make legal ties, I guess, to other people like creating LLCs. I think about like my mom. When I was born, my mom and dad certainly weren't married. He was married to someone else. She decided though to put his last name as my middle name. I think in her mind that legally tied me to him in name in some way.
I am Emily Sotelo Matlack, which is my mom and my dad's last name. I don't know. There's a lot of ways I think that people have done creative things in order to get themselves more legally tied and bound together, but it is not necessarily a prerequisite for creating a chosen family for sure. It definitely is something to think about if that's something that's important to you.
Jase: Yes. I think that's a good example of something that's not a legal connection but does make things a little bit easier if you're ever trying to convince someone you're related to this person. If you share a last name or if your driver's licenses share an address, it's easier for people to go, "Okay. Yes, sure. I'll trust you that you're connected in the way you say you are." That's not--
Dedeker: It's a bullshit, bureaucratic paper trail. Sorry, I got to put the soapbox aside. Sorry.
Emily: Nice.
Jase: She pulled it back out.
Dedeker: Put it back in the drawer.
Emily: One sec.
Jase: Right. I just want to mention that because it is worth noting that there's some things you can do like with power of attorney and things like that that are actually legally enforceable. Then there's other things that just lubricate your interactions with bureaucracy, like name changes and address changes and things like that.
All right. Another thing to note, just to be aware of here is when we talked about the origins of this, it was around your birth family or your biological family, either disowning you or not wanting to be involved with you or just not being supportive or making decisions that you wouldn't want them to make on your behalf, but that's not to say that that's always how chosen family works.
That there's also the possibility where some people have a good relationship with their family and with their chosen family. There can be an intersection between the biological and non-biological groups of people, or they might have good relations with both, but they're entirely separate from each other. Anyway, there's just a big range there. I guess also just because someone has a chosen family and are even putting legal things in place for them doesn't necessarily mean that they're not also close with their family of origin and vice versa.
Emily: Something to be aware of how prevalent, I think this is across the United States at the very least. I don't live in a different country, but I'm sure that you can find similar statistics there. The US Census Bureau does not collect data on chosen family, but it does indicate that more than 13 million households contain individuals who do not share biological or legal ties. Many of those are potentially chosen families, and 13 million out of 350 million, that doesn't seem like a lot, but I
Jase: 13 million households.
Emily: That's true. That's a really good point.
Jase: That's not that many people, so it's actually, more people than that.
Emily: That's true.
Dedeker: I think that's going to increase though, because what we already know about our generation specifically is we're still the highest prevalence of people who are more than happy in some cases to live with roommates or buy a house with friends or create, again, these non-traditional looking family structures. I think that our generation is going to be much more likely to do that into the future, into retirement, into aging.
Emily: Yes. That 13 million is probably going to increase a lot.
Dedeker: Yes. Another potential challenge to bear in mind is especially in relationship or sex-focused communities or chosen families like BDSM communities, polycule, stuff like that. For some people, the lines can get blurred a little bit between platonic, romantic sexual feelings. I've seen it go down a billion times in extended networks of polycules
that people will have periods of sexual tension or romantic entanglements for a time and then maybe gradually go back into more platonic relationship.
Some people handle that really smoothly and really beautifully. For other people, it can feel more fracturing or more awkward or cause more drama. Of course, there's bound to be confusing feelings or anxiety about change, because of changes in the original dynamic. That's just something to bear in mind.
It feels like there's a little bit of this transitive property around polycules or polyamorous communities where, I don't know if this is necessarily a good or a bad thing, but the sense of like, "Well, I could date this person who's just three degrees separated from me. Maybe I will try dating them and seeing how that feels." I think in certain groups that can end up being a little incestuous and weird, in other groups, it's great. Just something to bear in mind.
Emily: I think when we look at a lot of chosen families, especially in a foster care system or certain dynamics, we're not talking about romantic entanglements, but in others, we're talking about that potential being there. It is something to think about because I think when some people think of family, they're like, "No way, I'm not going to be in a romantic entanglement with them." Then when some people think of family, it's like, "This also includes my polycule and people that I have sex with and people that I care about in that way." I'm starting to think about them.
Dedeker: This is definitely bringing to mind some of the stuff we discussed with Eli Sheff about that multi linking, or many to many, or one to many-- oh no, specifically it was the many to many kind of bonding.
Emily: Which we all were like, "Eh." Clearly, that's a thing to think about, and we know people in our Facebook community who you're involved in more of this grand family and group of people that live together.
Dedeker: It's Grand Budapest Hotel for polyamorous people.
Emily: Yes, exactly, Wes Anderson film, it’s cool.
Dedeker: Oh man. Some other things for y'all to think about as you're moving in the direction of maybe being more intentional in creating chosen family, just take your time.
Emily: number one caveat all the time.
Dedeker: All the time, slow the freak down. I think it's just I see so often that sometimes people have this dream. They really do have this dream of, "We're going to build the commune," or I have a dream of living with both of my partners or something like that. Then when someone comes along very early on, like three months into the relationship, and they're like, "Oh, I'd be down to build the commune," or "I'd be down to like, live in the house with you and your partner."
Then they feel like, "Oh, gosh, I have to strike at the opportunity, this must be the person. We got to move him in as soon as possible." That's not to say that it's 100% going to end in failure, but it's just like it's okay, slow down. Give yourself some time to, first of all, evaluate if this is actually what you want. As you age, and as you go through life, your dreams may change, spoiler alert. What you feel like is your ideal living or ideal family situation may change and it's okay.
I'm a big proponent of, if this is something that's truly supposed to happen, it's like the opportunity will arise again. You don't need to feel this need like, "I need to do this knee jerk reaction right away." It's like, "Take your time, it's great, time is great."
Jase: Along those lines, you can employ similar tactics to these relationships even if they're platonic ones that you would to a romantic partnership and that means things like discussing boundaries using the Triforce of communication. Maybe having check-ins like a radar, and being aware that NRE, new relationship energy applies not just to romantic relationships, it can also apply to like, "Oh, this new person I've really clicked with."
Still, don't let that excitement blind you from things like looking out for red flags. Either red flags about the relationship as a whole, or maybe just a red flag of, "I love this person. They're awesome." But living with them or entangle and finances with them might not be a good decision.
Emily: We should do an NRE episode about friends.
Jase: Friend RE. Also as we'd love to say, don't sign anything, at least in the first year, and don't make big decisions or commitments too early on.
Dedeker: Got to stitch it on a pillow.
Jase: A cross-stitch that says, "Don't sign anything in the first year."
Emily: Take a little pillow.
Dedeker: Of course, with any group of human beings that are interconnected, it can be easy to get sucked up into other people's drama even if you feel like there's three or four degrees of separation. It can even be easier to deal with chosen family members. Again, it's okay to cultivate boundaries about how you choose to deal with people's issues and drama that are a little bit more, shall we say, removed from you. The good news about chosen families is unlike with your biological family, biological families, you're born into an existing dynamic.
It's harder to out of the blue one day to be like, "Hey, actually, let's sit down for a family radar with the whole extended family." I earned some shit out. It's a lot harder to do that, potentially a little bit easier to do that when you have people who are also wanting to intentionally come to the table to work things out.
Emily: For all of you people-pleasers out there and this is definitely may, try not to sacrifice things like your wants and your needs and your feelings for the good of the group. If something is super uncomfortable to you, if you feel like the group dynamic is not working, your placement isn't working, if something feels off, then speak up about it.
Don't let it fester, don't let it become something that you can never deal with, or that you choose to just put down very down, far in the ground, like never talk about again. Or it just it evolves into you freaking out about it, and then leaving the community. Just try to talk about it and try not to let your feelings come at the end of other people's feelings or be the thing that you don't worry about the most.
Jase: Along those lines, I always like to remind people that if the other people that you're in relationship with whatever relationship, if they actually care about you, they will want to know this earlier on rather than have you keep it. You're not doing them any favors or yourself any favors by keeping something like that to yourself. Then on that note, too, if something isn't working, or if it's true that they don't care about those things, it is okay to end that relationship.
In the same way that it's okay to end the relationship with a biological family member if they're being harmful to you. That's not to say it's easy, but that is to say that it is okay and that your decision to do that is perfectly valid. I think because it's so hard, I think that really adds a lot of weight to that. I just want to affirm anyone who's had to make that decision or who's thinking about it, that is okay, and that is for the best that you've made that decision because it is really hard to do.
Dedeker: As Ulrich Beck said, "There's always the ever present potentiality of taking back decisions." As Dedeker Winston says, "That's a good thing."
Jase: A little meta quotes between the two. I like it.
Emily: Take back the decision of like, "You know what, this chosen family isn't working for me anymore. Bye." That's all good. All righty, well, we hope that you learned something today, I know that I certainly did. I'm going to go watch Paris is Burning, I can't wait. We are also going to talk about a couple other films that you can watch with your chosen family about chosen families because there's a lot of good ones out there.
Also a little bit about the impact of COVID on chosen families, because if you don't live with them, then it could have been a lot harder to see them this year. I know that I haven't seen Jase and Dedeker in over a year and that sucks a lot. Here we are but we're going to talk a little bit about that. The call to action question that is going to be on our Instagram story when this show comes out is, what is your definition of chosen family?