OurPath Open Forum
This forum is for discussion of issues related to Mixed Orientation relationships only, that is when one partner is heterosexual (straight) and one is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender or Questioning.
If this does not apply to your topic, please find another forum.
* Opinions posted here, including that of the Administrator, are the poster's own and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of OurPath.
* As a peer-to-peer network, any advice given is that of a peer, based on personal experience, and should not be considered professional in nature.
* Any discussion of LGBT related issues is acceptable provided it remains constructive and respectful of other viewpoints. Hateful, degrading, or prejudiced speech and/or personal attacks will not be tolerated.
NOTE: Due to recurring spam abuse, you must register to post.
- Daryl
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Re: Amazing changes coming to SSN
Hi Lilly, if the Search Engine Optimization is done correctly on the website, OurPath should bubble to the top when searching terms, such as your example. It does take time for the web crawlers to build the index though, so a search today still brings SSN to the list. Searching "Our Path" brings numerous other 'Our Path' terms and sites at the moment. (Searching "ourpath' brought me to ourpath.org #1 and ourpath.net #2 - the .net site is an addiction help site.)
Last edited by Daryl (September 11, 2021 9:16 am)
“The future is unwritten.”
― Joe Strummer
- lily
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Re: Amazing changes coming to SSN
We've just made this site harder to find for a straight spouse and this is because of worrying about being misperceived as anti gay???
It leaves me wondering if we have been rebranded to fit in with a group?
- lily
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Re: Amazing changes coming to SSN
I'm thinking maybe a therapist's group - sort of like a mini version of Dr Phil.
Or like what happens in academic circles, where it's all about getting your paper referenced by other academics.
The banner is more generic looking. And the name OurPath gets a lot bigger type than the line You're partner isn't straight? You're not alone. which then comes across as more like one of the chapter headings rather than the main title.
Last edited by lily (September 11, 2021 3:48 pm)
- Steve
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Re: Amazing changes coming to SSN
Lily... How long has this "you must register to post" been a thing? Is it new?
You have a future. A good one. It begins as a flicker of hope. Nurture it until it becomes a dream and when you are strong enough you will make it a reality. NEVER give up.
- lily
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Re: Amazing changes coming to SSN
Steve, I've edited my post to say what I want more clearly as that stuff about register to post etc is in little type below the banner.
- UserNada
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Re: Amazing changes coming to SSN
Sam (Admin) wrote:
Lily,
As an organization, we have never condoned or permitted homophobia or gay bashing in any of our public or private online venues or affiliated local meetings or gatherings. It is a matter of perception by others who might otherwise fund us or refer those in our situation to us. I don't like that the term has been co-opted by bigots, and still refer to myself as "straight"...No matter what we call ourselves, the need hasn't changed and our mission hasn't changed.
I am here to just not be silent on this topic. Please take my tone as one who has lost a great deal and am sick of being silent while things I value are destroyed.
I am straight. My spouse is not. I am NOT willing to abandon a common and very old term because you think it is now "problematic" because the mob of leftists, whose entire political strategy is based on scaring people into abandoning, destroying, supplicating, and weakening themselves, call it so (or that they might). I do not condone changing language to satisfy mewling adults that are offended by everything (reality in particular). The Board's position, abandoning the word just out of deference to the possibility that some leftist mob might take offense, strikes me as pre-emptive capitulation for the offense of being ourselves. There is no good to be gained from such a weak willed surrender.
Secondly, your characterization of the "straight pride" parade event, which was years ago and had no significant place in history or culture, seems completely baseless. Naturally, the media tore it up and down. It was, effectively, just a Trump parade (a President the media despise) which they say as lacking sufficient reverence because it dared to use a word ("pride") that is now on permanent reserve for non-straight and non-white people. Only they may feel pride. The media, which is almost entirely left wing, declares anything they don't want to exist or wish to diminish "racist", "homophobic", "islamaphobic" or some other accusation - usually with zero factual or reasonable foundation. I am assuming you are referring to the ironically organized "straight pride march" in Boston, which had a homosexual as its Grand Marshal (Milo Yiannopoulos). The entire event was a provocative joke, just to panic leftists into a frenzy over nothing - which it achieved easily. The reaction was anticipated because upsetting leftists is like shooting fish in a barrel. Just say - "men can't have babies" or "straight people can be proud" and BOOM - total outrage mob in the thousands to protest a parade that was literally a demonstration of provocation, organized by a made up group - "Super Happy Fun America". Why that name? So the newspapers would all have to write in their headlines about how Super Happy Fun America was "alt right" - when it only ever did one thing - have a parade that said zero bad things about homosexuals and had a homosexual as its key speaker, with a guy in a dinosaur costume at the front. The whole purpose of the parade was to show how easily upset and unsatisfied the American left is. How they cannot allow anyone else to have anything - even a voice. It effectively turned into a Trump parade at the end of things - that doesn't make it homophobic either, by the way. You may despise Trump and think the parade was in poor taste, or violated your personal reverences to certain socio-political objectives, but that should NOT control what happens in this place - A place for straight spouses. What will you sacrifice next?
You should be willing to grant that this parade was a non-event, just a silly joke meant to mock society's outrage machine. If you can, there is no need to back away from the word straight - unless it is actually the left that you fear, not a genuine association with a non-existent homophobic boogeyman. The people at that rally, I promise you, would never encourage you to allow them to take from us the most relevant word in this site's vocabulary. We are straight. I am not ashamed of it. I am not scared to use the term, and not just because I don't give any significance to that parade several years ago in one city by a couple hundred people (who required an army of police to protect them from physical violence). I don't abandon vocabulary to satisfy the unsatisfiable mob or to just hand our language over to alt-right/left political actors. Is this just a bid for more time until the left comes for the site? Are you hoping they won't find us?
I have lost several organizations to leftist ideologues lately - apolitical clubs and associations have been entirely consumed with leftist causes. I am just giving my two cents that this smells of the same mentality that resulted in those organizations (after a few years of this stuff) "updating" or "expanding" (read, abandoning) their purpose and becoming, therefore, corrupt by definition. I am sure it is too late to change course back to SSN. I just wanted to not be silent on this point, out of fear, as this approach is what made this an issue at all.
Last edited by UserNada (September 11, 2021 11:58 pm)
- lily
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Re: Amazing changes coming to SSN
It's like having the rug pulled out from under your feet. I've just read that press release that is linked on the banner.
Here is the first paragraph.
"When the Straight Spouse Network launched in 1991, their focus was on supporting the straight spouses of people who came out as gay, lesbian, or bi-sexual. With the changing and expanding landscape of Mixed Orientation Relationships that includes Partners of Trans People, and more people remaining in their Mixed Orientation Relationships, they have adopted the new name OurPath to reflect inclusivity."
First sentence, Yes, exactly, that describes my understanding of the focus that was the inception of this forum.
Second sentence - rug puller. okay so in the first place, this forum was started because there wasn't anywhere in the public arena for straight spouses to get together. Were there forums for gay transgender and bisexual people? you bet. I mean this forum was called straight spouse network. Put us together. Let us see the commonalities of our stories, understand our own pain, heal together. Why do you want to change that?
As far as I'm concerned The Whole Point is to support the straight spouse. We have a new young poster. She says she feels like no one understands the pain she feels and right underneath is someone saying well we do. we do understand the pain you feel, and to me that's the basic point.
If you want to run this forum under the banner of an organisation called ourPath I have no problem with that and you can include anything you like but can we please have this forum called the straight spouse support forum or something like that.
The old fashioned term is you can't be all things to all people. But people being people, there's always going to be a need to be flexible. So I have no problem with that, it's a bonus really particularly when you get a poster like Sean or Diff (Hi Diff, I remember you), but I do think you need to fly a standard over the forum - a banner that reflects your central concern.
Is it not possible to have one place where the pain of the straight spouse is recognised? It's not just the pain of deception and betrayal.
It is the worst of it, the vulnerability of the straight in the relationship, it's beyond words. Being able to talk about the feelings you have and be understood and supported. That is what can happen here.
Last edited by lily (September 12, 2021 5:46 pm)
- Steve
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Re: Amazing changes coming to SSN
I remember Diff too 
You have a future. A good one. It begins as a flicker of hope. Nurture it until it becomes a dream and when you are strong enough you will make it a reality. NEVER give up.
- Kel
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Re: Amazing changes coming to SSN
"When the Straight Spouse Network launched in 1991, their focus was on supporting the straight spouses of people who came out as gay, lesbian, or bi-sexual. With the changing and expanding landscape of Mixed Orientation Relationships that includes Partners of Trans People, and more people remaining in their Mixed Orientation Relationships, they have adopted the new name OurPath to reflect inclusivity."
First sentence, Yes, exactly, that describes my understanding of the focus that was the inception of this forum.
Second sentence - rug puller.
Lily - SSN/OurPath has always served partners of trans people. They are absolutely straight partners in our eyes. They were a tiny minority all these years. But the social landscape is changing, and coming out as Trans is more accepted now. So more people are doing it. Leaving more straight partners in their wake.
There is a misunderstanding that partners of trans people can get help through LGBTQ organizations. Only if you consider "help" being told that their trans partner is the same person, and that they should stay with their Trans Partner if they truly loved them. Those places offer no outlet for any emotions beyond happiness and support for the Trans partner. There is no other group like OurPath - where the straight partner is offered a safe place to vent their complex emotions - good and bad. So the first part of the second sentence ("With the changing and expanding landscape of Mixed Orientation Relationships that include Partners of Trans People") is no different than it's ever been. This is who've we've always been. We're just articulating it more clearly now so that Partners of Trans People know they are welcome here among us. The "changing landscape" is that we have more Partners of Trans People coming to us now than ever before. They are Straight Partners. They are welcome here, and OurPath wants them to know it.
SSN has never prescribed what decisions Straight Partners should make in their relationships. We offer support - plain and simple. We do not advocate for straight partners to stay, and we do not advocate for them to leave. We advocate for them to do what's right for them and their families - and in their own timing. The second part of the second sentence ("more people remaining in their Mixed Orientation Relationships") is no different than it's ever been, either. We want to make it very clear that we are not an organization you come to only if you plan to leave your partner. You can come not knowing, deciding to stay (even if just for now), or if you plan on leaving (or have left) the relationship.
OurPath meets Straight Partners where they are today. Many newbies come to us wanting nothing more than to stay and support their LGBT+ partner. Many change their minds later, too. But they need to know that wherever they're at, this is home. This is their safe place, and we will offer them compassion, encouragement and support. This is who've we've always been, and who we will always be.
You are not required to set yourself on fire to keep other people warm.
- •
Thread Starter- Ellexoh_nz
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Re: Amazing changes coming to SSN
........ Personally I feel its time for the Alphabet people to be shaken up a little bit and realize they have to take others into consideration........
When you're drunk on your newly-embraced authentic status I can imagine an LBGTQ person doesn't get high
on consideration for others who aren't from that community, certainly not those they have hurt
Elle
KIA KAHA