So in my phone's contacts app, you can "star" some contacts. As far as I can tell, this has two implications:

  • Starred contacts float to the top of the list.
  • You can configure starred contacts to bypass Do Not Disturb mode.

This is a fairly simple feature, but choosing which contacts to bless with a star has proven difficult for reasons that are wrapped up in a lot of my feelings about relationships.

For context, I'm aromatic and polyamorous, and I like to use the framework of relationship anarchy[1] to navigate the relationships in my life. In short, that means I don't like to prioritize some kinds of relationships over others or categorize them into to buckets, like "partner" as something distinct from (and more important than) "friend". Every relationship in my life is special and unique in its own way, and I could never compare or rank them. It's a rejection of relationship hierarchies, much like social anarchism is a rejection of power hierarchies.

Obviously starring contacts in my phone does not impose a hierarchy on my friends. But it kinda feels that way. There's this unspoken implication that features like this are intended to be used for your family and partners. Even though it's a purely logistical decision, choosing which friends I want to star feels like picking favorites.

I often complain about the ways in which our amatonormative society devalues nonstandard relationship styles though institutions and systems that make assumptions about how you structure your life. But this really isn't one of those cases; my phone is just asking me who I want to be able to reach me when it's on Do Not Disturb, which is a very fair question that shouldn't be causing me so much angst.

  1. For an overview of what relationship anarchy is about, I recommend the essay that introduced the term. ↩