Polyamory
"Political, popular and psychological discourses tend to present monogamous coupledom as the only natural and/or morally correct form of human relating (Barker and Langdridge 2010, 5)."
I. intro
Increasingly, I've noticed polyamory being an assumed identity in lefty spaces. In a room of anarchists, radical queer folks, or name-your-brand-of-other radicals, there seems to be this whisper in the air: "No one is here for the old exclusive dyad, right?"
In this much delayed contribution to Conlan Writes (i.e. Gabe's pseudo-academic, post-collegiate musings), I take a dive into the theory and practice of polyamory—as I've seen it, experienced it, and read about it. Much of the literature on polyamory is in the self-help genre, with books like Ethical Slut and More Than Two holding central, sacred space amongst practitioners. These texts work primarily to advocate for polyamory, as well as function as practical guide books for those interested. Though I have dabbled in and found such resources useful, for this piece I wanted perspectives a little more sociological and critical. For this purpose, the academic journal Sexualities did not disappoint. In 2006, they put out a special issue on polyamory, with articles running the gamut of topics, and in 2010 they published a wonderful review of relevant, diverse research. I also lean on a chapter from a 2015 sociological textbook on sexualities that gives a nice little overview of non-monogamies (including but not limited to polyamory). It is these texts (cited at the bottom) that I use to bolster my own experiences and observations.
I'll come out upfront and say I am quite a believer in the general thrust of polyamory, and that I am actively trying to internalize and practice its theory in my life. I find that its central critiques and proposed alternative ways of relating can be helpful for thinking through not only romantic relationships, but relationships in general. Clear and direct communication, open expression of needs and desires, clear boundary-setting, non-possessiveness, compersion (the ability to experience empathetic joy, rather than insecurity and jealousy, when an intimate has positive experiences with someone else)—these are skills and practices that benefit how we relate to our mothers, our friends, our coworkers, and our neighbors, as much as they do our lovers. For me polyamory has been one of several factors pushing me toward a totalizing personal reconceptualization of what human relationships could/should look like. Indeed, in the past year I have gone from thinking of relationships as largely driven by accident or circumstance, often rooted in obligation, and only occasionally (and seemingly randomly) having deep purpose and value to understanding them as the intentionally-cultivated, fundamental building blocks of revolutionary life. This change within me has been most directly influenced by the philosophical underpinnings of close friends in my life (chief among them, a person named Miliaku), but also owes a great deal of credit to my introduction to concepts such as polyamory.
My fan-boying of polyamory aside, I am nothing if not a curmudgeony, self and social critic, and so I very eagerly include many of the issues I and others take with polyamory throughout the piece. While polyamory may have some neat and innovative ideas about relating, like any ideology it may be—in different moments—misunderstood, abused, and flat out wrong.
II. discovery
I first encountered polyamory in a meaningful sense when I began hanging around Atlanta anarchists my junior year of college. In anarchist spaces, there was an overall sense of promiscuous excitement and sexual possibility in the air. Though not entirely different from the sexually-charged energy found in many a group of young people, this one seemed to be rooted in a shared political vision, giving it a kind of collectively acknowledged legitimacy I had never before experienced.
While the environment of celebrated open sexuality was a lot to take in on its own, nothing could have prepared me for the frequency with which anarchists in commited, romantic partnerships openly engaged in romantic and sexual activity with other people, often in the very same little community. These extra-dyadic encounters ranged from the small, such as some light necking on New Years, to the large, such as having a whole other partner (or even whole other partners). These behaviors, too, seemed to be par for the course, a perhaps messy (as we shall see), but accepted part of community mores.
Before encountering the revelatory sexual and romantic ways of the anarchists, there had been only the faintest blips on my non-monogamy radar. At some point early in college, my best friend checked out a bunch of books on the topic from his school’s library. It was from him I first heard the word “polyamory” uttered, but at the time, I was very skeptical, and largely dismissive of what he shared with me. Having just taken my first women and gender studies class, I was convinced he was reading propaganda aimed at legitimizing womanizing (see section VI below for some more thorough reflections on polyamory and masculinity).
About a year later, a different friend briefly dated someone who was married and lived with their spouse. When I met this person, they told me that they had lovers all across the country, so many that when they traveled, they could always find one to stay with. I remember being uncomfortable, deeply confused, but fascinated. Unfortunately, the relationship broke off fairly quickly, before I could learn too much more.
A few months later, just before I stumbled across the anarchists, I started casually dating someone who had a boyfriend on the opposite coast. When we first started hanging out, she made clear to me that her and her boyfriend’s openness was very much circumstantial, and if they were in the same physical location, she would have much preferred a closed relationship. Nevertheless, I found her ability to navigate her relationship with him and me simultaneously admirable, and felt my interest again piqued.
These few experiences could not have prepared me for encountering an entire community of people practicing non-monogamy. In fact, I could not have even fathomed such a thing existed until it was right in front of me. But as my exposure to groups of people with radical politics outside of anarchism grew (chiefly to people rooted in queer and/or Black liberationist theory), I began to realize that polyamory was perhaps not so rare as I had imagined. In groups of young people thinking about society in seriously critical ways, monogamy has become a common point of contestation.
With the anarchists, I always understood the ubiquity of polyamorous practice as an extension of their broader politics that opposed systems of control and valued individual autonomy. Indeed, I was having to digest their polyamory alongside many other ideologically-informed practices that equally shocked my “progressive” (and sometimes Marxist) sensibilities of the time, like shop-lifting, squatting, vote refusal, and physically fighting cops and Nazis, to name but a few. In non-anarchist radical spaces, polyamory seemed similarly attached to broader political aspirations, just one of many elements of alternative praxis/lifestyle.
Ultimately, the popularity of polyamory in so-called radical spaces today is sufficiently high as to lead my roommate to tell me that she “assumes people are polyamorous until proven otherwise.” While I think she overstates the case, she indicates a real and substantive turn away from monogamy in particular segments of society, a shift that was far beyond the limits of my imagination just a few short years ago.
III. what it is
Though the term "polyamory" wasn't coined until 1990, threads of its theory and practice run back to early American utopians, feminists movements, free-love in of the 1960s and 70s, and the many political challenges queer people have posed to heteronormative relationship over the last 50+ years. I really wanted to find a comprehensive history of polyamory for this piece, but unfortunately had trouble locating anything of the sort. For now, it will have to suffice to say that polyamory as a specific, distinct practice grew out of a conglomeration of sexual liberationist movements, mostly on the American West Coast, began to crystallize in the 1980s, and blossomed in the 1990s and early 2000s (Sheff and Tesene 2010, 226).
Strictly speaking, “polyamory” describes a particular form of consensual non-monogamy (CNM). In contrast to other often discussed forms of CNM such as open relationships—in which casual sex is permitted outside a central, emotionally exclusive couple—and swinging—in which couples meet with other couples to temporarily switch sexual partners— polyamory emphasizes "an honest interest in building intimate long-term relationships (Klesse 2006, 574)" with multiple people simultaneously. In other words, while other forms of CNM continue to treat emotional exclusivity between a central couple as sacrosanct, in polyamory substantial, emotional connection with more than one person is largely the point. It is etymologically clear: poly (multiple/many) amor (loves). In my observation, people often use the word polyamory when they really mean “open relationship.” And others use the moniker when they are really just interested in casual encounters with multiple people (what my roommate endearingly calls “hoing around”). But theoretically speaking, it is important to understand polyamory’s emphasis is on deep relationality and long term commitments.
For many groups and individuals, a critique of monogamy is the starting point for interest in polyamory. Feminists have long critiqued the institution of marriage specifically, and monogamy more generally, as a device of patriarchal control. In it’s most violent form, the heterosexual monogamous couple isolates women from community and friends and relegates them to roles of servitude, all for the structural benefit of men (Willey 2006, 530). From another point of structural analysis, Marxists and other critics of capitalism argue that the contemporary nuclear family, with the monogamous couple at center, developed alongside industrial capitalism as the means to reproduce and control workers (Barker and Langdridge 2010, 9). Each role in the family played to the ends of capital: the husband worked for a capitalist, the wife did the reproductive labor to ensure the husband could return to work the next day (in addition to often working a formal job herself), and the two of them produced future workers in their children. While such structural critiques of gender and class relations pervade the politics of those left of center, they have not necessarily led to action against monogamous coupledom itself, but rather pushed the dyad to become more palatable and inclusive: challenging traditional gendered roles within the couple and expanding its definition to include queer relationship.
Polyamorists take the critique of romantic structures deeper, isolating the ways the valorization of the couple itself puts constraints on our experiences and brings harm to our relationships, even if we are to challenge the patriarchal and capitalist influences within them. From a young age, critics argue, our culture and media spoon-feed us fantasy narratives of idyllic romantic partnership. Film, novels, religious institutions, our families, our instructors, our foundational social and legal codes teach us to seek out one (still generally heterosexual) romantic partner that can meet all of our needs. This individual must be the panacea to our floundering sense of belonging, providing us emotional support, friendship, intellectual stimulation, sexual satisfaction, and security in our social identity. If they do not or cannot fulfill all of these needs—or not in ways that jive with our particular idiosyncrasies— we are out of luck. We must sacrifice ourselves to be with them, or else set off to seek elsewhere, ending the relationship.
Obviously, this is a recipe for toxic experiences. Polyamorists argue that is plainly unreasonable for one person to meet all of our needs or desires, and that this is okay. If we develop a deep relationship with someone, chances are we are compatible with them in a variety of ways, but they needn’t do everything for us. Rejecting the idea of “the one,” and opening ourselves up to the possibility of multiple partners takes significant pressure off both parties to be perfect for one another. Of course individuals should remain accountable to each other, challenge ourselves to grow for the other, and ultimately make compromises— as in any close relationship—but the weight of 100 years of Hollywood romance movies with happy, perfect pairings can be dropped.
Another defining feature of monogamous partnership is its demand for emotional and sexual fidelity. Having desires outside of a partnership is taboo, and pursuing them (read: cheating) tends to be devastating. Thus, the rule of thumb in monogamy is suppression and/or secrecy—two forces that rarely lead to good outcomes. Indeed, a lot of ostensibly monogamous people aren’t technically speaking monogamous. Cheating, what might be called nonconsensual nonmonogomy, is incredibly common. Rife with guilt, shame, and lies, it often leads to extremely painful moments of reckoning, and often the unsavory ending of relationships.
Polyamory sees desires for more than one person as perfectly normal, and obviously quite common. It argues that it makes much more sense to build relationships that can accommodate the honest desires of their members, even if such allowances will be difficult and inevitably bring up insecurity and jealousy. What is said aloud can always be worked through, while opaqueness more often leads to feelings of betrayal.
Polyamorists also critique the way monogamous romantic partnerships demand ultimate prioritization, often above even immediate family members and dearest friends. Developing and maintaining relationships outside of the couple that are of equal or greater depth is often read as a failure to fulfill one’s role as partner. But sinking time and energy almost exclusively into a single relationship is rarely for the best. I see the way so many couples in my parents’ generation become more and more isolated as they age; their more surface-level relationships to co-workers and kid’s friend’s parents fall away, leaving them with only each other. In less dramatic ways, this phenomenon plays out with young people around me, who quickly disappear when they enter a new romantic relationship. The charge, therefore, that monogamy contributes the "devaluation of friendship and communities (Willey 2006, 531)” is not so far fetched. Indeed, as someone who believes deeply in the awesome synergistic power of collectives of people working in communal ways, I find the prioritization of the couple to the diminishment of other relationships downright counter-revolutionary.
Inherent to polyamory is the spreading of oneself out into multiple or many deep relationships. The risks (to self and community) of being isolated with one person are lessened, and the building of networks is actually activley encouraged. Whatsmore, polyamorists describe how engaging with multiple people simultaneously has the ability to enrich all the relationships in which they are involved, emotionally, intellectually, and, yes, even sexually.
Because the above criticized facets of monogamy are so commonplace as to be invisibilized, polyamorists describe our society as one of “compulsory monogamy” or “mononormativity.” Polyamory, in theory, can free us from these fetters.
IV. in practice
I must confess that, on the whole, the anarchists I met did not seem particularly good at polyamory. Just as quickly as I was absorbing their ideas around polyamorous relationships, I was being made aware of messiness and complications that seemed to come with the territory—what they termed "polydrama." Nearly weekly, it seemed, someone was downright distraught at the romantic/sexual activity of one of their partners. Hurt feelings, jealousy, and large elephants squeezed into the corner of small rooms were common fair. And all of this was happening despite having an incredibly unusual, collective (if unspoken) rejection of monogamy. I felt myself intrigued by and attracted to their free-range ways of loving, but also incredibly trepidatious. As I read and learned more about polyamory, I would come to realize that a lot of what I observed amongst the anarchists was simply bad polyamory praxis. Not that anything about polyamory is easy, but many tears can be spared with proper self-education and practice.
general guidelines
There is general consensus with practitioners and observers that doing polyamory well requires a lot of work, effort, and intentionality. If one doesn’t have the time or willingness to dedicate to conversation and inevitable conflict, polyamory is unlikely to bring anything but frustration. Engaging in multiple deep relationships simultaneously is substantial work in and of itself, but it is made all the harder by the fact that polyamory asks us to push against deep cultural conditioning without many alternative examples to look to; it can often feel like we are making it up as we go along.
Communication and honesty are the bedrock of poly philosophy. Successful practitioners communicate with one another to a degree most inexperienced in this realm (myself included) find very uncomfortable at first. Over communication, explicit expression of desires, needs, boundaries, and raising points of conflict early and often allow the complexity of relationship that polyamory introduces to exist without constant messes and hurt feelings.
Similarly, most agree that honesty and transparency are the best policy. Some (few) polyamorists use a "don't ask don't tell" policy for their romantic/sexual activity. But in general, one of the great benefits of polyamory is the ability to talk through a variety of thoughts, questions, concerns, doubts, experiences, and fantasies that are deemed taboo in a monogamous context. Polyamory brings about a greater possibility for a mutually agreed upon openness, for pulling all of the skeletons out of the closet. While it may seem strange at first to, say, seek romantic relationship advice from someone else you are in a romantic relationship with, chances are that that person knows you quite well, and is in a better position to advise than most.
Even with the golden rules of communication and honesty leading the way, polyamorist people struggle big time with feelings of jealousy. Indeed, jealousy seems to be, almost universally, the most difficult piece of monogamous conditioning to overcome. In the polyamorist world there is much writing on how to deal with jealousy, as well as a fair amount of mutual support infrastructure, such as meet up groups and online forums. In general, as Sheff and Tesene write,
polyamory community lore counsels people to be aware that jealousy will probably occur, and rather than making their partners do something to make the jealousy go away, polys often try to ‘work through’ their jealousy, identifying the fear, insecurity, and unmet need at the root of the jealousy and addressing that issue rather than the jealousy itself, which is cast as a reflection of the real issue underneath (2015, 234).
Ultimately, poly people don’t want to be jealous. They are ideologically and intellectually celebratory of both their and their partners’ multiple relationships. Emotions, however, don’t always obediently follow these beliefs, and it often takes work to reach a point of peace. Many in the poly world aspire to work through jealousy to reach its opposite, what they call “compersion.” Compersion describes the experience of genuine, empathetic joy in response to your partner having a positive experience with someone else, similar to the feeling of happiness one might have when a close platonic friend has a good romantic time.
I remember the first time I experienced compersion when the West Coast boyfriend of the-person-I was-casually-dating-before-meeting-the-anarchists (see section II) came to town. She and him spent several days together and had a really good time. When he returned West, she asked me if she could tell me about their time together, or if it would make me feel uncomfortable. I Invited her to share, which she did at length, even including some of the steamy details. I found myself (somewhat unexpectedly) grinning from ear to ear, genuinely pleased by what a jolly time this person I was dating and cared about had with her boyfriend. It was a strange sensation.
To be clear, I have certainly experienced my fair share of jealousy on my still new journey into polyamory, but I remember that feeling very acutely, and seek to cultivate it, as hard as it may be.
structural forms: what does it actually look like?
In practice, polyamory can take many different structural forms (see the cute comic at top of this post). Sheff and Tesene (2015) create a helpful (though perhaps artificially rigid) schemata for differentiating between kinds of polyamory, which I’ll summarize here. First there is hierarchical polyamory, in which two “primary partners'' share a high level of commitment and life entanglement (often cohabitating and sharing finances and other resources). Though this primary partnership may resemble a conventional monogamous dyad in many ways, in hierarchical polyamory one or both of the primary partners have one or more secondary partners. These secondary relationships tend to resemble the boyfriend/girlfriend/boo relationship from the monogamous world—still serious, but somewhat less so.
In contrast, solo polyamory tends to avoid cohabitation and other forms of practical entanglements. This allows individuals more freedom to bounce around, as well as the ability to avoid hierarchy between partners.
Polyfidelity describes a closed relationship with more than two people in it who are all romantically involved with one another, but no one else.
A vee is a relationship in which one person (the “hinge”) is involved with two people (the “points”) who do not have a romantic connection with one another, but generally still share space or cohabitate.
Triads or throuples describe groups of three that are mutually involved (but are not necessarily exclusive, as in polyfidelity). Quads and moresomes describe four person and five+ person mutually-involved romantic relationships respectively.
A few other fun, bonus vocabulary:
Metamour is a judgment neutral term for anyone one shares a partner with.
Polyaffective describes metamours that are not romantically/sexually involved with each other, but nevertheless have a close and intimate relationship (this is often the case with the two points in a vee relationship).
Polycule describes one’s extended polyamorous network—your partners and all of their partners. In some polyamorous communities of older people, a polycule becomes a kind of extended family for individuals, doing things like gathering for celebrations and raising children together.
Clearly there are quite a diversity of ways to practice polyamory (and the above list is by no means exhaustive). In fact, the broad scattering of relationship types that fall under the umbrella of “polyamory” presents a bit of a problem, as people use the same term to mean entirely different things. In their review of polyamory research, Barker and Langdridge argue that conversations on polyamory “need to either reflect the diversity of ways of being polyamorous or make explicit that they are focusing on people in a particular model (2010, 18).”
Most of the polyamory I have personally observed does not map neatly onto Sheff and Tenese’s categorization. I have never (knowingly) met a throuple, quad, moresome, or group practicing polyfidelity, and I have met only one vee. The vast majority of people I personally know using the polyamory moniker could be categorized as practicing a somewhat loose form of solo polyamory. Sheff and Tesene accurately dub such folks, the “youthful ‘free agent’” who “wants to play the field with casual, brief, no-strings-attached connections,” more so than the “‘seasoned solo poly’ who has deeply committed, intimate, lasting relationships with one or more people (2015, 227).” In other words, these people are at least as interested in hoing around with some slightly more intentional ethics as they are in building relationships. I place no negative judgment on hoing around at all (I think it can be quite wonderful), but strictly speaking, this way of moving is not polyamorous; the focus on deep intimacy and long term relationality simply are not there.
After the solos, I know a lot of folks practicing hierarchical polyamory, having one primary partner with other, less substantial romances on the side. But, again to be critical, I’ve noticed that in practice many of these couples tend to look more like an open relationship than practitioners of polyamory, with engagements outside of the primary partnership rarely reaching much depth.
It is these two classes of (somewhat disappointing) practitioners of polyamory that can give one the feeling, expressed by my roommate, that everyone in radical spaces is polyamorous these days. In reality, only a small handful of people I know have multiple, deep partnerships ongoing simultaneously. And even in these cases, at least one of the partners is often long distance, providing obvious alleviation to relationships demands.
I make these critical observations with the important caveat that I am mostly acquainted with young polyamorists, few of whom are (yet) interested in family-building and long-term settling down. Still, it is interesting to note how few people really are doing the thing they say they are doing. Ultimately, I think the lack of “truly” polyamorous examples in my immediate realm of orbit, despite the preponderance of discussion around and identification with it, fortifies my position (elaborated below) that we are finding great utility in polyamory as a relationship framework or guiding philosophy, even if actually realizing its practice is far away.
the heart of the matter (for me)
It was when a friend shared the following experience with me that I finally felt sold on polyamory. They described how they and their partner of many years had recently mutually agreed to transition their relationship from monogamy to polyamory. They told me that several months had passed since the decision was made, but neither they or their partner had engaged in any other romantic or sexual relationships of substance. Despite this lack of material change to their romantic life, this friend described feeling radical, positive shifts between them and their long-term partner. Specifically, they noticed a lessening pressure to single-handedly meet all their partner’s needs, a diminishment of their feelings of insecurity and possessiveness when their partner spent time with other people, and a growing ability to speak openly with their partner about other relationships, crushes, and desires in a way that was celebrated.
It was in hearing this story that I realized that, somewhat counterintuitively, practicing polyamory has the potential to bring relationships closer together, not dilute or diminish them. Two people can be together for years, yet in many ways have their monogamous role-playing put artificial barriers between them, limits on their ability to connect. Even just considering polyamory, much less practicing it, requires a great deal of intentionality and emotional labor; it requires challenging dominant cultural scripts and pre-trodden roles; it requires extensive communication, self reflection, and the surfacing of things that may prefer to lie dormant. The insertion of these efforts into daily relating necessarily deepens relationships. Even if one is in an exclusive, dyadic relationship for their entire lives, or single all of their days, they can move in ways informed by a critique of monogamy and all that that carries. They can strive to communicate clearly; to express needs, desires, boundaries, and emotions; to hold space for conflict early and often; to overcome the silliness of taboo.
And tugging on this thread of how we do romance will (if we let it) begin to unravel a whole, tightly-wound spool of human interaction. As we start to remake our ways of sexual intimacy and romantic relationship at this depth, it will naturally spill over into our friendships, our families, our neighbors, the strangers we meet. In this way, polyamory can be (as it has become for me) a guiding light for revisioning how to relate in general.
IV. issues
The literature (and my brains) are bursting with critiques of and concerns about polyamory. I want to, rapid fire, highlight the juiciest ones in this section.
positionality
On the whole, the poly canon of writing and the most visible contingents of practitioners have historically been dominated by white, highly-educated, middle- and upper-class people. Sheff and Tesene argue this is in large part because these privileged folks “have the resources to buffer themselves from the pernicious impacts of social stigma (2015, 224)” which, of course, non-monogamy brings.
In addition to making polyamory, at least initially, a place of classist and racist exclusion, the wealth and whiteness of many influential writers and practitioners brought with it a predictable load of baggage. For instance, critics have pointed to how polyamorists' writings are rife with orientalist romanticization of non-Western non-monogamies. In my observation, this problematic pattern continues to some degree today, with groups such as indigenous Americans crudely cited as evidence for polyamory’s supposedly natural existence.
Others have pointed to how, again rooted in its privileged positionality, polyamory has often sought supremacy within the “sexually deviant” world. Practitioners have emphasized self-descriptors like “ethical non-monogamy” to distance themselves as much as possible from implicitly morally inferior practices such as swinging, open relationships, and (god forbid) casual sex or any other practices deemed promiscuous. Klesse (2006) argues, and I agree, that when they position themselves on a moral high ground, polyamorists work to "reinforce the marginalization of certain sexual practices and identities (577)."
hedonism over structural critique
Given my initial exposure to polyamory through radical communities, I was surprised to learn that it isn’t always necessarily part of a broader political vision. I was talking to a friend recently who has been around anarchist circles since the early 2000s, and she told me that, in those early days, there was a distinction between “anarchist polyamory” and “nerd polyamory.” While the former practiced polyamory as a part of their politics (in a way consistent with how I have discussed it throughout this piece), the latter viewed polyamory as an end in itself, not attempting to associate the practice with feminist, Marxist, queer, or other liberatory frameworks. This distinction continues to have relevance to this day, as this friend expressed frustration that the only polyamory support groups she could find in Atlanta were of the “nerd” variety.
An apolitical polyamory is obviously antithetical to my thesis in this piece. But honestly, whether or not one has radical politics, polyamory carries a very real risk of becoming focused on personal pleasure seeking (read: hedonism). It takes so much effort to do the work of growing, maintaining, and balancing multiple relationships, that one can easily get lost in the sauce and let their political prerogatives fall by the wayside.
creating new “regimes of normativity”
Another concern, raised by Haritaworn, Lin, and Klesse (2006), is that within radical, polyamorous circles, people are creating “their own regimes of normativity (519).” In other words, these authors worry that the alternative social practice of polyamory is becoming expected and enforced within small subcultures in a similar way that the hegemonic practice of monogamy is expected and enforced in society at large. This phenomenon may help explain why so many people in lefty spaces identify as polyamorous when they do not seem to be that knowledgeable or practiced on the matter: they feel pressure to do so. There is an unspoken ethical mandate within certain spaces to not only reject monogamy theoretically, but to reflect this in self identification.
In a wonderful essay entitled Police at the Borders, Abby Volcano describes how in radical spaces, people will frequently do this exactly: “construct new ‘queer’ normative assumptions to replace our current organized, normative structures (2012, 33).” In so doing, what are meant to be liberating and revolutionary practices and ways of being can easily become new grounds for policing. What Volcano makes clear is that overcoming the form of oppressor society is often as hard as overcoming its content. Polyamory doesn’t do anyone any good if it's forced down their throats.
practical concerns
These last few concerns are, admittedly, taken from the Wikipedia page on polyamory. But I didn’t find them addressed anywhere else, and I think they deserve attention.
- The anonymous Wikipedia authors write, “Heavy public promotion of polyamory can have the unintended effect of attracting people to it for whom it is not well-suited.” In my discussions with others about polyamory, I’ve often heard people say something along the lines of, “I respect other people doing that, but it’s not for me.” I find such statements frustrating because they feel part of the old American liberal/libertarian ethos that gives tolerance to a broad range of activities, so long as they are out of sight and out of mind. What hear people actually saying is, “I don’t respect that, but it’s none of my business, and so long as you’re not trying to cram it down my throat, we’re good.” At the same time, I concede that polyamory should not be for everyone, in particular not for people who are unwilling to put in the work and commitment to make it possible. I don’t know if I agree with the Wikipedia authors’ implication that there are folks inherently “not well-suited” to polyamory, but it is certainly true that many people enter into it pretty recklessly and without the necessary preparation, and this can be a recipe for disaster.
- Wikipedia also calls attention to the way a “reluctant partner may feel coerced into a proposed non-monogamous arrangement due to the implication that if they refuse, the proposer will pursue other partners anyway, will break off the relationship, or that the one refusing will be accused of intolerance.” That is, a polyamorous person may wield an odd kind of power—rooted in their alternative practice—over inexperienced potential partners. I may have, unwittingly, used this power myself last year when I began a relationship with someone who was totally inexperienced with polyamory. In our preliminary conversations, she was not enthusiastic about my nascent polyamorousness, but seemingly open to it. In retrospect, however, I wonder how comfortable she really was, and if perhaps she felt she had to accept this about me to keep me in her life.
- Lastly, a big, simple, but tremendously important concern that received surprisingly scant attention in my non-Wikipedia reading: time management. As a long-time polyamory practitioner told me on a Bumble date, “love may be limitless, but time is not.” And given that spending quality time together is often a primary indicator of love and affection, and further given how busy people are in this late-stage capitalist techno-dystopia, one can see how time management can quickly become a problem for polyamorous people. I have only a small handful of deep relationships in my life (romantic and otherwise), and feel I can hardly give them the attention and energy I want to. With work, time for rest and self reflection, and other miscellaneous obligations, I must make a constant (sometimes sacrificial) effort to give my loves the priority I feel for them in my heart. Adding new people into the mix—anywhere along a platonic-romantic continuum—is no trivial matter, as time and space will have to be carved out for them.
V. a brief tangent on masculinity and polyamory
Elisabeth Sheff (2006) has a fascinating piece in the Sexualities special issue on polyamory focused on masculinity. I actually read it when I was in the midst of experiencing some pretty intense negative feelings in my own polyamorous personal life (jealousy, self-doubt, etc.) which I felt in my bones had something to do with my socialization as a man. I read Sheff’s piece, and that shit called *clap* me *clap* out (in the best way). The whole thing is really worth a read (and if you are a man/masc person thinking about polyamory, I would implore you to read it), but I want to call to the fore a few highlights.
Sheff did ethnographic fieldwork of mostly white and mostly straight and bi polyamorous communities on the West Coast in the late 1990s and early 2000s. She found that polyamory had an overall detoxifying effect on masculinity, moving men away from what famous gender scholar CW Connell dubbed “hegemonic masculinity—” the nasty ways of being which work to “legitimize patriarchal relations, ensure the cultural authority of specific forms of masculinity, and guarantee the subordination of women (623).” She argues that the very nature of polyamorous relationships force men to be more emotionally aware and present. In heterosexual relationships, for instance, it was simply not possible for men to shunt all emotional labor onto their women partners; there was too much going on for one person to manage it all. Similarly, polyamory required men to come to peace with “sharing” women partners with others, effectively challenging the code of total patriarchal control over women and their bodies. Lastly of note, Sheff found that polyamory encouraged close and intimate relationships between (mostly straight) men within polyamorous communities, the likes of which would generally be found suspicious, uncomfortable, and taboo in the homophobia of broader society.
While polyamory helped detoxify masculinity in many ways, Sheff found her subjects simultaneously clung onto and reproduced elements of the hegemonic. Many men cited their desire to have sex with multiple women—particularly in a group sex settings—as a significant motivator for their interest in polyamory. In this way, one might see polyamory as a tool to legitimize, not unlearn, the consumptive and hypersexual way masculinity teaches men to view women. Sheff also found that, while men in her sample were forced to learn to “share” women partners, they continued to express significantly more jealousy than their women counterparts, suggesting the persistence of controlling mentalities. Lastly, men maintained some degree of an intra-male competitive attitude, deriving a sense of self-worth based on how sexually “successful” they were compared to other men in their polyamorous networks.
At the end of the day, Sheff argues that most poly men do resist hegemonic masculinity in some ways, but on the whole, their challenges to traditional masculine ways of being do not go very far. They (we) tend to exhibit what Connell termed “complicit masculinities,” able to reap the benefits of patriarchy at both the micro and macro levels without having to sustain its worst violences ourselves.
I think its important to think about gender roles within polyamorous contexts, and especially the way masculinity shows up. It’s all but too easy to import the plagues of old worlds into the new, and so an effort at not letting us men get away with our men bullshit should be a collective priority of any polyamorous community.
VI. conclusion
Ultimately, what excites me most about polyamory—elucidated by one of Klesse’s (2006) interview subjects—is the promise “that people, who are not sexually close, house-mates, close friends, get the whole thing, all the way up and all the way down (569, emphasis mine).” That is, in trying to build tools for romantically dating multiple people simultaneously, polyamory inadvertently helps us insert intentionality into all our relationships.
At risk of making one of those dumb historical generalizations, I’ll say: not long ago, people had much less agency over who they associated with. Without the internet, dating apps, and the transience encouraged by late-stage capitalism (physical movement for school, work, escape, or the hell of it), the relationships one happened to be born into were far more sacred. Family, neighbors, schoolmates, and coworkers were the limits of who we could know. There was less debate over whether our relationships should be worked through or abandoned, because they were it.
Today we live in a cosmopolitan hodgepodge of human beings connected to each other in seemingly endless ways. While this new reality is truly exciting in contrast to the past I’ve just described, it is also paradoxically isolating. It makes sense to me that new possibilities of relating call for new ways of relating. If we can connect with literally millions of people at will, how will we make relationships that are intentional, that enrich us, that do not reproduce the systems of domination trained into us? How will we build relationships that make us strong and capable of fighting, that can synergistically build upon one another to mount to the revolutionary? Polyamory, for me, has become a guiding light along this path. Through “many loves,” we can learn much.
References
Meg Barker, and Darren Langdridge. "Whatever Happened to Non-monogamies? Critical Reflections on Recent Research and Theory." Sexualities 13, no. 6 (2010): 748-772.
Jin Haritaworn, Chin-ju Lin, and Christian Klesse. "Poly/logue: A Critical Introduction to Polyamory." Sexualities 9, no. 5 (2006): 515-529.
Christian Klesse. "Polyamory and its ‘Others’: Contesting the Terms of Non-monogamy." Sexualities 9, no. 5 (2006): 565-583.
Melita J. Noël. "Progressive Polyamory: Considering Issues of diversity." Sexualities 9, no. 5 (2006): 602-620.
Elisabeth Sheff. "Poly-hegemonic Masculinities." Sexualities 9, no. 5 (2006): 621-642.
Elisabeth Sheff, and Megan M. Tesene. "Consensual non-monogamies in Industrialized Nations." In Handbook of the sociology of Sexualities, pp. 223-241. Springer, Cham, 2015.
Abby Volcano. “Police at the Borders.” In Queering Anarchism: Essays on Gender, Power, and Desire, pp. 33-43. Edited by C. B. Daring, J. Rogue, Deric Shannon, and Abbey Volcano. AK Press, Oakland, 2012.
Angela Willey. "‘Christian Nations’,‘Polygamic Races’ and Women’s Rights: Toward a Genealogy of Non/monogamy and Whiteness." Sexualities 9.5 (2006): 530-546.
