April 16, 2012
I’m Poly ‘Cos I’m Better
This is an addendum to my old article entitled “I’m Better ‘Cos I’m Poly”. I don’t entirely want to retract my previous statements because I do feel that being in an non-mainstream culture still creates defensiveness when trying to explain it to outsiders. But, I would like to announce that I have found the smugness, and forthwith apologise to people who I doubted in the past who had a lot of criticisms of the poly community. I often found myself wondering (as I continued going to poly events and getting involved in the community) why it seemed to be dominated by certain types of people, and while I explored the difficulties of jealousy and the shame around it in our community, I’ve begun to see the smug.
I feel it’s important to address this. Not because I enjoy being a naysayer, but I can see why the community alienates people. The smugness comes in two forms – a lack of acknowledgement of intersectional issues, and unchecked blatant privilege.
I have experienced a lack of acknowledgement of intersectional issues, both online in polyamorous groups and at polyamorous events. I have been repeatedly chastised for bringing gender or sexism into any discussion; and I’ve been accused on more than one occasion of “playing the gender card” when expressing frustration with the constant hetero-normative assumptions about the way people may or may not experience jealousy or possessiveness based on gendered stereotypes. People who say they’re polyamorous and critical of the assumption that we’re biologically suited to monogamy do not seem to bat an eyelash at gender stereotypes, and are more than willing to glue themselves to biological imperatives of the way “males” and “females” behave.
I find myself (and I’m not exaggerating) constantly having to remind fellow poly people that not only do intersex and gender variant people exist, but sometimes even that bisexual individuals exist. And when I bring up how sexism probably impacts the way people interact with others; the way people find partners; how comfortable, for example, those who identify as female may feel in situations where being poly means they are sexually available, I’m told that I’m pissing in everyone’s Cheerios or being too negative.
At one poly event, when a friend of mine brought up the struggles of women & gender variant individuals, and how – as poly activists, we need to mention and address these issues, she was condescended to by a fellow “poly activist” who told her that those people need to fight their own battles while we need to focus on poly struggles and poly issues.
Yet, almost ironically you find individuals within poly who are not queer identified, or who have no little to no personal lived experience of heterosexism or cissexism, who feel as though poly should be included within the LGBTQ (or QUILTBAG) acronym. In all of the arguments where people have volunteered to add a “P” to the alphabet soup, absolutely none of them have been in any way queer. Most of them have been white heterosexual cis men steeped in economic and educational privilege. And when I voice my concerns as a queer person, that adding “P” to an acronym built on backs and blood of beaten, raped, tortured, and slain individuals is insulting when, while polyamory is misunderstood, it has yet to be a death sentence – I’m told by individuals who have no concept of being queer that I’m being divisive and discriminatory. What sort of welcoming do queer people find in a community that tells them to keep their issues to themselves, unless of course heterosexuals want to co-opt their struggle?
This unchecked lack of intersectionality extends to class and race. To put it bluntly, being polyamorous may cause one to endure all manner of ignorant comments and may even threaten the custody or family lives of a few, but practicing polyamory is overwhelmingly a privilege. Loving more than one person is a capability I believe all human beings have. But having the time, energy, and resources for more than one relationship is, without doubt, a privilege. I see a lot of poly people online and offline wax poetic about polyamory being the next stage of human evolution, degrade and devalue monogamous people for their silly triflings; all the while ignoring that a working single mother barely has enough time for herself, let alone dating.
These discussions about how advanced polyamory is and how much better we are at relationships and life come off to me as incredibly ignorant of the realities many face. There’s a difference between being happy in and of ourselves for what we have, and being arrogant and ignorant. I have the economic privilege and free time to date more than one person, but I haven’t always had that. And people who have to spend most of their time working to keep their head economically above the water may have little time for conventions and long discussions about compersion. Love is infinite. Time is not.
I cannot specifically comment on race relations within the UK and, as a white person, my commentary on race relations in general is very limited. I do not pretend to speak for poly people of colour. Instead, I ask why I have seen so few poly people of colour at events or in online communities? I’m hazarding a guess that economic privilege has a play in it in certain instances. But I also feel like the exoticising and simplifying of cultures which have some sort of polyamorous practice also has something to do with it.
There’s a lot of oohing and aahing, and assimilation of the practices of “others”. I think it’s great to try to find examples of poly outside of the West. But there’s a line between appreciation and exoticification. And just as poly practices in the West aren’t as simple as they seem, one should not assume poly practices anywhere else are equally as simple. I’m not one to tell anyone what their spiritual path is, but I urge people to consider, before adopting something from another country or a completely different mind-set, ask yourself what you’re doing and why.
I’ve previously written about jealousy, the ways in which mental illness causes difficulty in my relationships, and how I’ve found very few people within poly circles who are willing to acknowledge jealousy as a constant issue. Discussions that centre around shaming jealousy, or the assumption that security is a realistic goal for all, or that you need it in order to be “good at poly,” create an environment that encourages people with mental illness (and people without) to not only misjudge red flags and pangs they experience as jealousy but also encourage them to ignore those feelings for fear of being the “green eyed monster”. There’s little to no discussion around these assumptions unless it’s pointed out that insecurity could stem from mental illness, and no advice or acknowledgement on how exactly folks with mental illnesses are supposed to navigate poly situations.
My physical disabilities don’t usually interrupt my daily life, but I wonder about individuals whose physical abilities do create obstacles when navigating through a world that rarely accommodates. Is the poly community inclusive of those people, and I mean in more ways than just making our events wheelchair accessible? Do people take for granted the ease at which they can physically visit or see partners, go on dates, do certain activities? Or, when giving advice for how to deal with poly situations, do we take into consideration certain physical and mental disabilities that directly affect communication?
If you’re incapable, for example (and for whatever reason), of certain types of physical intimacy, and you feel insecure next to partners who have that capability, would that impact how you navigate poly situations? How exactly, given the typical advice poly people are given about insecurity, are you supposed to feel “more secure”? Again, I can’t entirely speak on these issues, but I want to ask if we even think about this when we’re talking about polyamory.
Is this lack of intersectional acknowledgement a result of unchecked blatant privilege? I see people who refuse to acknowledge that practicing polyamory is a privilege; who refuse to allow other people to voice their concerns unless they want to co-opt queer identities and struggles to do the hard work for them; I see a community lacking in individuals of colour; and I see individuals who bring up problems being judged and told they’re hurting the cause of poly, being martyrs, or playing whatever “card” they have. Would there be more diversity in our community if this wasn’t the case?
Also, when we co-opt phrases to describe things within our community that are problematic, we further deny our own privilege. I’m speaking specifically here on the use of “couples privilege” to describe a lack of consideration a poly couple may have for a secondary partner. Privilege within a social justice context and within the world is understood as an unearned advantage, often within systems of oppression, which grants power of all types. Using that word within the context of a couple of individuals wherein there is not an unearned privilege but either a lack of consideration or a preference is incredibly off-putting and insulting. Couples existing as couples do not have an unearned privilege akin to whiteness, heterosexuality, and any other social identity or concept with which the application of the term “privilege” is far more appropriate.
I’m open to explanations or interpretations of the concept of couple privilege, but being in a couple is not the same as me being white, especially when I consider practicing polyamory in and of itself to be a privilege. It makes me wonder if using this term to describe this – while it articulates something perfectly valid, isn’t a sign that individuals either don’t understand the concept of privilege within systems of power, or believe it can be applied to any situation wherein one individual has power over others — which is not the case.
So, I have found the smug poly people. But it’s more than smugness. To me, smugness implies at the very least that there is something to be proud of, and you’re going the extra mile beyond being proud to being boastfully arrogant. This isn’t boastful arrogance, this is unchecked ignorance – and that is nothing, as a community, to be proud of. I see this problem in many communities, and I’m hoping that this is something that will change.
I do understand and empathise with defensiveness: It’s just as tiring for me to explain to people that yes, my partner knows I date other people, as it is to explain to people that I didn’t actually get my tattoos because I wanted to be touched without my consent. But like I have the economic privilege, time, and energy to afford to get tattoos, I also have the privilege of time to engage in multiple relationships. I sincerely hope more people acknowledge these issues within poly groups and poly events, and stop forcing out discussions of intersectionality.
26 Responses to I’m Poly ‘Cos I’m Better
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“I cannot specifically comment on race relations within the UK and, as a white person, my commentary on race relations in general is very limited.”
I can answer this for you as a black poly woman: it sucks.
Thank you for such a thoughtful article. Gender varience, disability, queerness, race and faith are all blissfully ignored by an awful lot of poly people. However these same people are the first ones to ask why there isn’t more diversity in poly communities…
Thanks, interesting read (I’m monogamous but try to be a poly ally). By the way the first link is broken.
Thanks for letting me know! Fixed it!
Thanks for saying this. I’ve had the same type of conversations with poly activists in trying to educate them on how their various privileges put them in a position to have the resources to practice polyamory (and to be an activist) in the first place!
Do you have a suggestion of words to refer to “couples privilege” without misusing the word “privilege”?
I’d go either with “couple-centric paradigm” or “dyadic paradigm”
Yeah. How about selfish asshole behaviour?
The problem I see as well with “couples privilege” is that it’s also applied to situations where there’s been a miscommunication in expectations. The couple has not told the third what they expect out of a third or what they want and/or the third has not clarified what they want/expect out of the relationship. Hence the third enters into the relationship with a couple with the expectation that their relationship with one part of the couple should be equal to in life decisions and time management to the couple itself, whereas clearly that’s not something the couple wants. Miscommunication happens and people get hurt there. But that’s not a “privilege” or even necessarily the couple being a jerk — just people not being honest about what they want/expect out of a relationship.
While I do feel that poly people have some right to be proud of campaigning for relationship & sexual ethics, there occasionally doesn’t seem to be a sense of the radical inclusiveness that can be felt with genderqueer and kink issues. I don’t have much experience of groups/events that are specifically or mainly poly, but have found that the people I speak to have often come via the swinging community rather that as from any radical perspective, which may be part of the origin of this difference.
Glad I found you. Your sensitivities are impressive and right on.
I think that you said many excellent things here, but you made one critical error that I wanted to include my own voice in. However, I did so in a response post. Unfortunately, that post is long, as a significant and thoughtful post such as this compels.
I hope you take a look at it, as I gave it significant thought today.
http://polyskeptic.com/2012/04/16/smugness-and-arrogance-in-polyamory/
Shaun
I responded on your blog but I’ll respond here as well.
First and foremost, the title of the article is sarcastic. I DO NOT believe that polyamory makes people better nor that people are better because they are polyamorous.
Polyamory has a tendency to require more time and resources than monogamy does. That is the essential difference between polyamory and monogamy. In the same way that having more than one child requires more time and resources than having one. Adding more individuals which require your attention, devotion, and care requires more from you as an individual. That’s not something you can really logic your way out of.
It does not matter if polyamory could help people who are poor and have no time — so could therapy, so could daycare, so could a lot of things. That doesn’t make therapy and your ability to get it any less of an economic privilege. Likewise, having NOT ONLY the time and resources, but also the emotional abilities and mental stabilities to engage in multiple relationships is a privilege.
Regardless of how authentic you feel your relation to polyamory is, and I’m not doubting that, you have the time, the spoons, and the energies to commit yourself to more than one person. If you seriously think that PRACTICING polyamory is not a privilege, I invite you to try and work a 60 hour work week, take care of a child, deal with constant panic attacks, and then try and schedule dates around that.
I think your willingness to believe you are better than monogamous people and your lack of experience (which I am assuming due to your own admissions of privilege) with dealing with economic hardship are blinding you to the truth.
You can’t really agree with my minor points if you can’t see that practicing polyamory is privileged.
I see where the critcism of shaunphilly is coming from, though. “Privileged” and “privileges” are not the same as “privilege”.
Privilege is a term to describe that a specific set of people has an advantage over all the other groups. For instance, white people have privilege vs. any other ethnicity in the US. For *privilege*, it doesn’t matter that single *privileges* exist – like women not having to serve in the army or having more rights than the biological father on a newborn child.
Privilege describes that if you sum up all those single privileges, there is a heavy tilt towards a certain group. Whites. Men. Christians. Heterosexuals. And of course also Monos, since polys have a lot of disadvantages compared to monos. No ability to gain the benefits of marriage, no clear laws regulating child custody, etc. pp. I think you are well aware of this.
Since Monos have privilege, polys automatically cannot have privilege. Sure, polys can have single *privileges*, and we should watch out for those to prevent smugness. It is correct that bigger unions have advantages just like you point out.
But in our society, we do not have *privilege*. You are misusing the word, Lola.
I compare practicing polyamory to having tattoos. There are lot of disadvantages to being tattooed. People assume a lot of things about you. You can be discriminated against in the job market.
But, generally speaking, you need money to get those tattoos in the first place. And you make the choice to get tattoos. Do I agree with discriminatory practices against people with body modifications? Absolutely not. But non-modified people are not privileged when the process of modifying your body is in and of itself a signal of economic privilege.
People make a choice to live their lives monogamously or not. Does that make discrimination against poly families right? No. But being black is not a choice. Being queer is not a choice. Being trans* is not a choice. And being queer, black, trans*, or anything else does not involve a process that people cannot participate in without certain privileges.
I’m still waiting to hear your plans on scheduling dates around a 60 hour work week, with children, for a single mother who has panic attacks.
Everyone has the ability to love more than one person. And some people may find themselves in love with more than one person without choosing that. BEING polyamorous is nature is not a privilege. PRACTICING polyamory in all the time, energies, and efforts it entails *IS* a privilege because it requires time and resources that many do not have.
(copied from my comment at polyskeptic)
Lola,
When I first read your comment, I honestly wondered how closely you read the post. I still wonder if you ever finished it. I made an attempt to read your post, including the previous one, very closely to try and be as fair as possible to your reasoning. I don’t feel I was given the same consideration.
Not that I’m owed any such consideration, of course. You are welcome to spend as much, or as little, time as you like considering my thoughts.
I already addressed the first paragraph of your response, so I will leave that alone here. But let’s start with the very next paragraph:
I do not, and did not, contend that polyamory was not more work, take more effort, etc. I do not think this is relevant to my point. What I am contending is that this implies that polyamory is a privilege at all.
Before saying more, I want to acknowledge that we seem to be in at least partial agreement, and that I think what is happening here is semantic in nature rather than philosophical. In a comment over at polytical, you wrote:
This was part of my point in my OP above. I think that this distinction is critical towards understanding what I mean when I say that polyamory is not a privilege. It is a point I tried to make in the OP, but it was misunderstood, simply missed, or ignored. I will make the charitable interpretation that it was misunderstood, and try to reiterate briefly.
I believe that polyamory is, for many people, quite natural. I believe that other people need to work towards it, which can be quite difficult for some. At bottom, there are privileged ways to get to polyamory, and for many people to get to it they need to take advantage of privilege, but polyamory is not a privilege per se.
For me, to be polyamorous does not necessitate actually dating anyone at all. It is a disposition towards relationships, not the actual actions in social/economic reality which do require some privileges to do. The part that requires privilege is to do the dating and spending of ample time, which includes having economic and temporal privileges.
So yes, to practice poly is usually a privilege, but I think that the level of privilege required to practice polyamory to any successful degree is much lower than the level of privilege one needs to earn a graduate degree, raise children well, or to land a well-paying job. All you need, to be minimally successful in poly, is the ability to have a fairly healthy relationship with a person, be honest with yourself about what you want/need, and actually be attracted to more people.
If you consider these skills to be privileged, then we are bordering on a use of privilege which makes the term meaningless. The idea is supposed to deal with social power relationships, not differences in attributes between people of differing intelligence, emotional maturity, etc.
Precisely what I was just getting at. I think you are stretching the use of “privilege” by pushing it towards emotional abilities. I am not denying that privilege is a factor in these things, I am saying that having them or not are not, in themselves, indicators of privilege.
You could be privileged and be emotionally wrecked, and not privileged and be emotionally solid. I don’t think that these things themselves are necessarily privileges in themselves.
If we were to grant privilege status to such things, then the plain fact is that all helpful attributes are privileges in some sense, making the term useless. And if it does not make the term useless, it at least makes your point that polyamory is privileged not interesting, because what accomplishment would not, then, be a privilege?
Is that where you want to go? Is your goal to create, or imply, a theory of privilege as the mechanism for accomplishment in society? Well, if so, then all you are saying is that polyamory is an accomplishment. No shit.
I have dealt with this above, in that I never claimed that the practice of polyamory is, in many cases, possible due to having privilege. That is, it is not necessarily due to privilege, but in our current culture it usually is.
1) I don’t think I’m necessarily better than monogamous people. I may be better than many of them, but I don’t think polyamory is the criterion by which we decide the relative quality of a person. I do think that people who are skeptics and try to apply their skepticism fairly, wisely, and consistently are better people than those who don’t. I have also argued that skepticism should lead to polyamory.
2) Did you read the part above where I was nearly homeless, unemployed, and abandoned in a city I barely knew? See, while I was going through my economic hardship, I was not only BEING poly, but ultimately I managed to PRACTICE poly. I had to lean on those who cared for me for a while, but I was able to do it. No, I don’t have kids, work 60 hours a week, etc, but I will reiterate that such a person would find that polyamory could take some stress of that life, if they could manage to find the right people. The essential point is that such a person could still be poly, even if they would have serious problems practicing it much, if at all.
Are you willing to argue that a person under those circumstances would be incapable of recognizing that if and when they had a partner, they could not avoid declaring rules of exclusivity with those partners? Could they allow the people they date, with whatever time they can squeeze romance, sex, etc into, to date other people (since they have so little time to offer)?
Wouldn’t that imply that those non-privileged people can be polyamorous? Or would the fact that they are able to squeeze an hour or two into a week with someone make them privileged?
I can. I did.
Shaun
apparently, formatting didn’t transfer….
“I believe that polyamory is, for many people, quite natural. I believe that other people need to work towards it, which can be quite difficult for some. At bottom, there are privileged ways to get to polyamory, and for many people to get to it they need to take advantage of privilege, but polyamory is not a privilege per se.”
I think what you’re not understanding is the difference between BEING polyamorous and PRACTICING polyamory, which is what I distinguish.
I don’t care about nature/nurture debates and I’m not here to tell anyone what they’re orientated towards. This is not a debate about whether polyamory is an orientation. I don’t doubt for a second that there are folks who believe in the heart and soul that they are orientated toward polyamory.
However, the PRACTICE of it. That is what is privileged. That is what requires time, effort, usually money, usually relationship skills that individuals with privileged backgrounds find easy to pick up and understand.
“So yes, to practice poly is usually a privilege, but I think that the level of privilege required to practice polyamory to any successful degree is much lower than the level of privilege one needs to earn a graduate degree, raise children well, or to land a well-paying job.”
So you DO agree with me. PRACTICING polyamory IS a privilege. But here is where I’m not going to get into the oppression olympics with you. You have your experience of the “ease” of earning a graduate degree, raising children, and landing a job. I am not even going to touch that with a ten foot pole because I can tell you that none of those things listed can be called “easy” tasks for some. And what someone finds more difficult than others has a lot to do with how privilege and power intersects. Someone who has no social anxiety may find multiple relationships easy but who is also dyslexic may find getting a job really tough because they always fill out applications wrong.
The existence of difficulty of other marginalisations does not negate the existence of something as a privilege. Just because I have been through hell as a queer person, as an intersex person, as a poor person — that does not mean whiteness is not a privilege. Nor is any one marginalisation necessarily “harder” than the other.
“If you consider these skills to be privileged, then we are bordering on a use of privilege which makes the term meaningless.”
Seriously? You think that it’s easy to get a job, get a graduate degree, and raise children? Have you ever heard of the wage gap? Being a felon? Jesus Christ.
“Precisely what I was just getting at. I think you are stretching the use of “privilege” by pushing it towards emotional abilities.”
WRONG. The essential part of what makes practising polyamory a privilege is the fact that it takes more time and resources that people do not have due to marginalisations. Now, I could and have made the argument that mental disorders have an incredible impact on what you call “emotional abilities”.
To use myself as an example, I’ve spent the majority of my life being raised by an abusive father and a mother with borderline personality disorder. This, as well as the chemical imbalance of my physical disorders, have created a situation where my “emotional abilities” are not as good as individuals who have not been through what I have. People who have not been through sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, psychological/mental abuse, who have lived with decent role models, who have had their self esteem built and supported by those around them — they have a significant privilege over people who have not had those things growing up or do not have those things now. What I put that under in my article about mental disorders, is under ableism. I do think there are many cases wherein people who experience constant jealousy and anxiety due to mental disorders are shamed and ridiculed within poly circles and discourse because they feel the way they do. They’re seen as “not good enough” to do poly and bad partners. And how apt that you titled these “emotional abilities”.
One can “accomplish” what you call “emotional abilities” if given therapy and time, also two things which economic privilege and educational privilege provide. But it is not clear cut and it is not a guarantee. I’ve paid for a load of therapy which has helped my anxiety, but I do not know if I will ever be “cured”.
“And if it does not make the term useless, it at least makes your point that polyamory is privileged not interesting, because what accomplishment would not, then, be a privilege?”
Most accomplishments are due to a lot of privilege. And the point in pointing it out is to realise it. Because we’re at a point where people act like not having jealousy and not having any problems is part of “being poly”.
“1) I don’t think I’m necessarily better than monogamous people. I may be better than many of them, but I don’t think polyamory is the criterion by which we decide the relative quality of a person. I do think that people who are skeptics and try to apply their skepticism fairly, wisely, and consistently are better people than those who don’t. I have also argued that skepticism should lead to polyamory.”
You said in your article that you ARE better because you’re poly. If you don’t believe you are, don’t say it.
“Did you read the part above where I was nearly homeless, unemployed, and abandoned in a city I barely knew? …. The essential point is that such a person could still be poly, even if they would have serious problems practicing it much, if at all.”
You are not the example by which everyone’s experience can be compared to. Just because YOU could do something, does not mean others can. Just because I manage to get into my undergraduate university despite both of my parents being homeless and us nearly being evicted and surviving on food donations does NOT mean that others could do the exact same thing. Your circumstances are not universally applicable. And honestly, the “If I can do it, so can you,” is an extraordinarily privileged perspective.
“Wouldn’t that imply that those non-privileged people can be polyamorous?”
I never said that “non-privileged people” can’t be polyamorous. I never said that someone who has limited time and resources can’t practice polyamory. What I am saying is that PRACTICING polyamory requires time and resources which many people do not have. Being white is also a privilege. Does that mean that people of colour can NEVER do anything that white privilege allows white people to do? No. You’re misunderstanding what privilege means and what it is.
Overall, you’re not getting what I’m saying, honestly. And it sounds like you’re really not understanding the basic application of what privilege is, especially if you think that because you’ve done something, everyone else should be able to do it to.
Sorry if unsurprised to hear that people are having experiences of prejudice or people in positions of privilege such as myself not getting where less privileged people are coming from.
Sorry if I have done that. If I do so in the future and someone tells me I’m willing to go off and do something to change how I act to be a better ally.
What do you think would be useful next steps to make poly community the way you want it? I think poly as practised here is new enough as an organised (or at least cobbled together) movement to be flexible. If we can negotiate relationships we can at least have a go at communicating and forming good community.
Would get-togethers to talk about the simplest intersections be a good start? (e.g. poly and disability, poly and LGBT, poly and women, poly and age, poly and class…)
Grant
Honestly, I’d like to see more events with the un-conference model. I think that the un-conference model works for people who have the time/energy/lack of social anxiety to throw together workshops – and I say that as a person with social anxiety who has led a workshop at an un-conference. It just makes me wonder what sort of perspectives aren’t being shown because, like we found with the Occupy movement, the lack of an organisational structure just tends to make privileged people volunteer a lot quickly because they’ve always had their perspectives validated by modern culture.
And the people who volunteer, as nice as they may be, to run workshops are not always experts in the fields they discuss. Often what I think ends up happening in those models is a sort of (bit harsh, but lack of a better term) congratulatory poly parroting circle-jerk wherein we’ve all read Opening Up, Ethical Slut, and Franklin Veaux’s polyamory readings and we’re parroting back to each other the same lines, ideas, and thought processes that we’ve picked up from people as if it’s applicable to every situation to every one. And this is, in my own estimation (I could be wrong), why the poly community is full of the same types of individuals. We’re all like “Oh you’re jealous of your other partner? BE MORE SECURE”. How exactly does that advice work to someone who’s, for example, severaly disabled and lives in a society where they’re desexualised, they rely on caregivers (who may not actually PHYSICALLY allow them to be poly), or they have to navigate systems wherein their poly status could possibly prevent them from accessing the disabled communities which have provided them support. And that’s just one example.
Specifically for my own needs, I’d love to see someone who’s actually studied therapy talk about how mental disorders affect jealousy, security, and how you can deal with that within polyamorous relationships. I’d love a workshop/book led/written by autistic people about how to interpret and understand signs from partners – or how to tell partners that you can’t read non-verbal communication and suggestions for what ways they CAN communicate. I’d love to see a workshop/book led/written by abuse survivors on the boundaries between healthy relationships, healthy arguments, healthy affection, etc. But these are issues I deal with so I want to have other people suggest it. I think the un-conference model’s hope is that by being an un-conference these things will get addressed but… they don’t. Because even though I have all of this experience, I’m not an expert. I wouldn’t be able to teach about any of the things I experience.
I’d love to see someone who’s actually studied therapy talk about how mental disorders affect jealousy, security, and how you can deal with that within polyamorous relationships.
I am a therapist and I’d love to talk about that. I’ve seen a lot of examples of how depression, anxiety, attachment issues, compulsive behavior, and other issues affect poly people including the poly-vangelists, the poly-n00bs, and the poly-under-protest people.
My experience is that the “poly is a sexual orientation” frame tends to shut down much in the way of critical conversation because we can’t talk about “are there times when acting on poly preferences are counter-productive to mental health issues of yourself or your partner?” (as an example of one conversation) if the underlying assumption is This Makes You Just Like The Ex-Gays.
Great! Do you think the unconference model is something that would seriously attract professionals? Or is it something that doesn’t attract them? Or neither?
I think that it smacks of privilege for a lot of poly people to begin to compare their poly “orientation” to being queer. Now, if a queer person speaks and makes that comparison, it’s different. But for non-queer people to do that, especially when it comes to comparing how queer people vs. poly people are castigated… words cannot express how thoroughly infuriated that makes me. There are some queer people in the UK where being queer is more socially accepted that feel they get more shit for being poly, and fair dues if they do… but the history of the persecution of queer people is very, very evident. Polyamory is mostly unknown and not persecuted in the same ways as queerness by a long shot.
I personally feel like poly is not my orientation. I chose to do non-monogamy.
“I’d love a workshop/book led/written by autistic people about how to interpret and understand signs from partners – or how to tell partners that you can’t read non-verbal communication and suggestions for what ways they CAN communicate”
Autscape would be more likely to have this. It’s a conference held every summer for people with autism/Asperger’s. In my experience, there will be frustration if one person has trouble with non-verbal communication but if both people are willing to communicate verbally and accept some frustration as normal, communication becomes clearer over time. I found out early on that saying, “I’m tired” would be understood as “I’m tired” and not “Maybe we should go to bed”. “I’m hungry” means “I’m hungry” and not “I want something to eat.” I needed to be more explicit about my needs. But I think this will vary a lot from person to person.
A
Argh. I mean LESS events with the un-conference model, not more.
Thanks for detailed thinking and response.
The only poly unconference things I know of have been the two opencons. Polyday has tended to more structure. I know quite a few people who find themselves anxious in unstructured spaces and I’m not sure whether they would like a more supportive unstructured space or to instead go to more structured things. I know people who do work for access and squashing heirarchy in unstructured spaces and prefer to do that than have particular people in charge.
Am am concerned to also respond to voices saying “be more secure” – where are you hearing those? They don’t sound helpful.
I am a therapist and am in touch with other poly therapists and also service users and I think talking more about poly and therapy in the way you describe sounds like it would be fruitful. Are you interested in putting together a workshop and facilitator wishlist?
Grant
And as with a lot of theories about “abolishing hierarchy” I would argue that destroying a formal hierarchy does not destroy social hierarchies. Not having anyone officially in charge does not mean someone is not unofficially in charge. All abolishing formal hierarchies does is allow those with privilege to dominate the conversation without it being written in stone. It’s been my experience that people who find unconferences without hierarchies also don’t realise the ways in which living under social hierarchies can still dominate the way you behave after formal hierarchies are gone. To put it simply, if I’ve grown up in an environment where I’ve been constantly told to doubt my confidence as an assigned woman, that does not disappear just because there is no formal hierarchy (nor even when I don’t identify as a woman) nor does the reassurance from society of someone who has privilege disappear because they’re not formally in charge. Squashing hierarchy to me just means squashing accountability.
I’ve heard “be more secure”, from people who others laude as experts in polyamory, people who a lot of people listen to. And while what they say is a bit more complex than just “be more secure”, I’ve found it’s applications when it comes to mental health and social justice don’t really match up.
I don’t have enough experience in therapy or understanding of it to really lead a workshop on it, which is why I support the idea of people being in charge and why I don’t think that having a good workshop idea means you should be the one running it. If I ran the workshop, I doubt it would be as successful as someone who actually knows what they’re talking about. It would be great if one of your therapist connections was interested in discussing the intersection between mental health and non-monogamy. That’d be something that would be great to see either at Polyday or at BiCon.
Just wanted to say thank you for the original article and discussion here. I continue to think of it and am talking about it with other poly counsellor types.
I am a monogamous person just dropping by, but I want to say I really appreciated this, particularly this part:
People who say they’re polyamorous and critical of the assumption that we’re biologically suited to monogamy do not seem to bat an eyelash at gender stereotypes, and are more than willing to glue themselves to biological imperatives of the way “males” and “females” behave.
This has always been my major problem with poly “smugness”: the overlap (probably unintentional) with higgamous-hoggamous stereotypes of male and female behaviour. It is a common cultural trope in monogamy-dominated hetero society that all men are not just polygamous but incapable of monogamy; legal codes have historically punished non-marital/non-monogamous sex in women while condoning it in men; religious conservatives frequently blame the wife or girlfriend for being inadequate, or the “other woman” for being a slut, if the man cheats. On the other hand, there was a period during the most recent sexual revolution where “free love” meant straight women in particular were not considered entitled to boundaries in our sexual relationships — either in whom we would partner with, or in how those partners would be allowed to treat us, and if we tried to set boundaries we were “frigid” or “repressed” or “controlling” or otherwise not OK.
So when you say monogamy is privileged in our society, I definitely agree, but there is this cross-current that runs the other way and carries a lot of misogynist flotsam with it, and when non-monogamous people are ignorant of that, or dismiss its significance, they can say things that sound very contemptuous and sexist to me as a monogamously inclined woman.
I know this isn’t what thoughtful poly people do and indeed my perception of poly in practice is that they are all about explicitly negotiating boundaries, that assuming there are no boundaries would be anathema. But I appreciate the acknowledgement that it does sometimes happen.