probably nothing - but the push by some polyamorists for legal recognition for polygamy damages/derails the more legitimate push for marriage equality.
The. WHAT?!?!?!?!?!!!!!! (Emphasis mine).
FUCK YOU. That is all. Throw somebody else under the bus, yeah? I don’t even give a fuck about marriage but that shit is fucked up, yo. Take your prejudice elsewhere before I puke all over it.
it’s kind of frustrating but it’s like having the fat kid on your sports team, its weighing you down but theyre entitled to some sort of recognition. the only reason i dont support it is because im too selfish and want to make sure i can get married first, and also because i dont know how that is viable in relation to taxes, estate sharing, etc.
Wow. No. It’s called “equality” not “selective ‘me first, me first’ equality.”
President Obama just “endorsed” gay marriage. And guess what? I barely give a damn.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s okay. It’s fine. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it. Saying that gay people who want to get married to each other should be able to do so is basically a good position. And considering that North Carolina just banned gay marriage like yesterday, it’s a nice way to combat (or, at least, speak against) laws invented to discriminate against certain groups of people. In his interview with Robin Roberts (the gayest of all morning show personalities—and that’s saying something!), the president said, “I’ve always been adamant that gay and lesbian Americans should be treated fairly,” and “I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.” Yeah, that sounds great.
He also said, “I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together…”
Um. Okay. Hold up.
See, this is where it gets sticky. And not in a sexy queer way.
So, basically, what the President is saying is that same-sex couples who are in relationships that look a certain way (monogamous, for example) should be able to get married and have all the rights of straight couples.
Hmm.
What about those of us, queer and straight, who aren’t into monogamy but are into committed relationships? (And, for the record, you can be poly and be committed to multiple people). We still get the shit end of the stick, right? (No pun intended!) We still don’t get tax breaks, or immigration and residency for our (non-monogamous) partners from other countries, or inheritance automatically in the absence of a will, or joint adoption, or any of the other 1,400 legal rights that are conferred upon married couples in the U.S.. Right?
This is the problem with this whole same-sex marriage thing (okay, there are a lot of problems with it, but this is one). It’s not really about equality. Not for everyone (which is what equality means). It’s just about extending a few more “rights” to a select few people. It’s just a way of saying, “As long as you are otherwise as much like us normal people as you can possibly be, we will overlook the fact that you do icky things in bed and let you have some more rights. You’re welcome.”
It reminds me of white folks, liberal-types, who think they’re not racist because they have black friends, only their black friends have their same level of education, talk just like they do, live in houses and neighborhoods that look just like theirs, and are basically indistinguishable from them except for their skin color, which happens to be browner. They need their colored folks to be just like them, or as near as possible. Otherwise, it’s just awkward.
In fact, this whole marriage thing is a lot like whiteness. Over time, certain groups get to be added to this realm of privilege, so that other groups can always be left out of it. (see: Irish folks, Jewish folks, etc.)
Here’s another problem I have with all this: A few years ago, I was watching Keith Olbermann and he did this whole long, drawn-out, pompous blow-hard piece on why the gays should be able to get married. And his position was, basically, LOVE. Yeah. Love. That same-sex partners who love each other should be able to get married. Because that’s just fair and right. Yeah, he was real proud of himself, like he always is. And I was all, “Fuck you, Keith Olbermann.”
Because guess what? Straight people are not required to love each other to be able to get married. Nobody even asks them—no goddamn government official, anyhow. There is no question on any marriage license form that says, “Do you really love this person you are about to marry?” (Ok, I’ve never actually read a marriage license form, so I don’t know what the questions are. But I’m pretty sure that aint on there. And even if it was, it’s a pretty easy thing to just lie about). I mean, Kim Kardashian and that cro-magnon-looking mofo she was married to for like five seconds certainly did not love each other, certainly were not committed, probably were not monogamous, and still were allowed 1400 more legal rights for the duration of their five-second marriage than I get.
My point is, straight folks are not held to criteria such as love or monogamy or even commitment when being assessed for the right to marry. (And nor should they be.) Which means that all this talk of marriage “equality” is a kind of a joke.
And even more importantly than all of that, is this question: what does same-sex marriage do for homeless queer youth? What does it do for the trans people being murdered in the streets? What does it do for the poor, of which many, many are queer people of color? Who does all this same-sex marriage stuff really benefit?
Until we stop giving value to certain kinds of relationships over others, until we stop projecting our personal values onto the lives of other consenting adults and making laws about it, until we stop being distracted by the crumbs that the few people in power throw at us so that we are too busy fighting over them to see that the actual pie is still forever off-limits to us, we’ll never break down these oppressive systems that let a few people through the door just so they can help hold it closed to the masses of people still being kept on the other side.
*
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Mia McKenzie is a writer and a smart, scrappy Philadelphian with a deep love of vegan pomegranate ice cream and fake fur collars. She is a black feminist and a freaking queer, facts that are often reflected in her writings, which have won her some awards and grants, such as the Astraea Foundation’s Writers Fund Award and the Leeway Foundation’s Transformation Award. She just finished a novel and has a short story forthcoming in The Kenyon Review. She is the creator of Black Girl Dangerous, a revolutionary blog. She is a nerd who will correct your grammar, so watch out for that.
… (a note for newbs) You don’t have to be fucking everyone like rabbits to be poly. Just the negotiation and the recognition that we are capable of loving more than one person in a safe, consensual way makes it poly. We are happy with where we are at, and though I have realized that there are very few people in the world that I want to have sex with, I’m happier that way. I learned the lesson the hard way, but now I think I’m better for it.
Imagine the web of people you have vicariously slept with through your other partners.
Imagine how it keeps extending, becoming more complicated and convoluted.
Imagine the moments when any of these lovers, out of passion, forgot protection.
Imagine the moments when they had their hearts broken by a partner that lied to them, or denied information, about sexual involvement with another person.
Imagine how long it would take for news of an STD somewhere in that web to reach you.
It take 5 minutes to get tested for HIV. 20 minutes to have a broad spectrum STD test. The majority of that time is spent waiting, filling out consent forms, or listening to the basic “we have to tell everyone this” stuff about test results and counseling. You wait 1-2 weeks for your results. You inform your partners. You get treated for anything you have (if anything).
STD testing is important for everyone regardless of race, gender identity, or sexual orientation. All forms of sexual contact can spread STDs. People involved with multiple partners increase their risk due to the development of this web of vicarious lovers. Especially in circumstances of non-penetrative sex contact where people normally don’t even think about protection.
If you don’t want to get testing done at the doctor’s office because you’re afraid of being judged/shamed, results being reported to insurance, or another personal reason, look into community testing resources in your area. Almost all are free, many provide the medications for treatment free or at a discounted cost, and you will not be judged. Almost all community testing resources are 100% confidential, except having to report numbers to Health Departments, and in some circumstance of particular STDs, report to your previous partners that they were exposed to someone with that STD. The reporting to previous partners often involves a phone call requesting they get themselves tested, and no name disclosure.
As a rule of thumb: Get tested prior to engaging in sexual activity with any new partner, and at minimum get tested once a year as part of a yearly health exam. Know what the warning signs of STDs look like. Know what they look like if your partners are affected.
Afraid of needles? The majority of STD tests are 98% accurate when non-needle, blood free, minimally invasive methods are used (urine sample, cervical swab, vaginal swab, cheek swab).
In order to prevent STDs, always use protection. If you think you’re going to be in a circumstance where it would be inconvenient to use protection and you have a vagina or anus that’s going to be used for sex, consider an internal condom (also known as a vaginal or “female” condom). These can be placed in the body cavity and left for up to 6-8 hours prior.
There have been recent reports of STD forms of bacterial necrotizing fasciitis infections in the San Francisco area of the United States, and new reports are popping up all over the country and world in previously unaffected areas.
Show your partners, your partners’ partners, and everyone in your life that you may have sexual contact with that you care about the health of yourself and those around you. Please, take the time to get tested and protect those around us that we love.
One of the easiest ways to show people we love them is to respect our health and their own.
If you need help acquiring information on STD testing, no matter where you are, send us a message. If you have any questions about protecting yourself and your partners, please ask - L works in a health care facility and provides education and counseling on STDs as well as having a history of healthcare training. P has bachelors degree in Public Health and can provide help as well. Sadly, we cannot provide medical advice beyond very basic educational information.
Love Infinite and Best Wishes for the Health of Everyone in Our Community,
Fuck Yeah Polyamory
I don’t need to imagine this. It happened to me. Please, get tested, as often as is sensible.
People pass rules because they feel that those rules are necessary in order to meet their needs. Rules don’t get passed at random; I have yet to meet a person who makes up rules by rolling dice or drawing words out of a hat.
Whenever someone proposes a rule, I make it a habit to ask myself three questions:
1. What is the purpose of this rule? 2. Does the rule serve the purpose it is intended to serve? 3. Is this rule the only way to serve this purpose?
I can’t overstate enough how valuable it is to think about this.
a rant: when monogamous people complain to me about cheating-
you may be offended!
I can’t respect monogamy. I just can’t. The glorification of jealousy, the unrealistic expectations, the weird possessiveness that comes with looming over your partner’s every move and social atmosphere. The awkward guilty angsting I hear when one person is fantasizing about someone outside their relationship. You don’t own someone. You shouldn’t be able to tell them they can’t see other people. Likewise, they shouldn’t hold those expectations to you, because they don’t own you. You are not property. I feel like there is implied and very not implied disrespect and distrust of both partners.
Likewise, I hate getting the diatribe from monogamous people going “Oh, I just don’t know HOW I could cope with all the jealousy of being non monogamous!” I like to compare this to leaving a big plate of food out on your coffee table and acting like you aren’t allowed to move it or put it in the sink or wash it or even touch it as it molds and decays. There’s no inner dialogue, no examination of potentially poisonous emotions, it’s just left there.
or the “I know you’re all poly and stuff, but this is how the rest of us do it” explanation.
And aside from that, the icky idea of marriage. Being bound to people in a legally constraining way. Adultery being illegal.
I feel like it’s a lie we’ve been fed every day, that the pinnacle of life is to get married and maek babby and that’s where it all ends. And it’s oh-so-important for the child you raise to be related to you. Because genetics are apparently everything. Human beings are so fucking selective when it comes to saying what’s natural and what isn’t. It’s just a convenient way to enforce arbitrary social rules of a culture sometimes.
Um. Not all monogamous people are like this. My partner and I just happened to fall into monogamy with each other, when previously, both of us were poly. We’re monogamous by choice, not by social coercion. I do think more people are poly than they know, but I think most of these problems come from the poor education people get around open honest communication, more than anything else.
I was especially surprised that you started your response with such an over-used privilege denying phrase. “But I’m [blank] and I don’t do what you were just complaining about!”
Obviously, there are monogamous people who willingly choose that and still maintain honest and healthy communication. I am even unintentionally monogamous right now, but I also share the sentiments of the OP. I have a really hard time dealing with people fully indoctrinated in the mainstream heterosexual monogamous ideal. Not even all of these people are even straight! Jealousy is definitely glorified in today’s culture. Any TV show or movie with some sort of romantic interest in it and jealousy is a huge factor. People, especially women, who don’t demonstrate overprotective jealousy of their monogamous partner are often portrayed as not caring or as sluts.
It’s not that people just aren’t taught healthy relationship communication skills, it is that they are actively discouraged from doing healthy relationship communicating. Everyone is taught that they are supposed to be out there searching for The One and to treat every person they are dating like that and to be jealous of someone who might be attracted to them looks at them or if they look at someone that might be attractive and, in the cases that apply, that men and women have ways of thinking that are so different that any bridge between them is insurmountable. That’s why men’s and women’s magazines spend so much time trying to explain this mythical “girl” or “guy” code. What does he/she* really mean when he/she does xyz. It’s in every single issue. Meanwhile, the same magazines are telling you to do some bizarre thing that is totally creepy but it will prove that he/she really loves you! TV shows and movies just replicate this behavior.
When I talk about my poly experiences to my mono friends, I am often treated like some bizarre heartless freak meanwhile I don’t understand their reluctance for clear, direct communication with their partner and positive association with jealousy. Then I watch TV or look at the magazine headlines and realize it’s because that is what is expected.
So bravo to you for moving beyond that, but seriously, that is a VERY small minority.
*Using binaristic language to reflect the language of what I’m talking about
Yeah, that was a pretty shitty opening wasn’t it. Sorry for that. I understand what you’re saying. I think I see a lot more hope for moving past this bullshit in a lot of the younger folks that I know. Also I guess I just don’t hang around with enough monog people. Most of my friends are poly or open. Maybe it’s a queer thing, but we used to take the piss out of monog people all the time.
Last week, Ian Mclean launched an exciting new media project called The Free Open Society. In the spirit of Wikipedia, Anonymous, Occupy Wall Street, and many other collective intelligences that have successfully galvanized myriad individual actors, The Free Open Society (FOS) is aiming to, in its own words:
bring together a collective of new media journalists to curate, edit, and disseminate a concentration of news from disparate movements, paradigms, and projects related to social progress towards the Singularity, post-scarcity economy, and transhuman society as well as threats or challenges to that progress.
I’m intrigued because Ian has a keen eye and is now focusing its lens on the often overlooked power of inter-community spaces. In the Preamble to the Free Open Society Manifesto, Ian wrote:
I envision people from the Singularity Movement educating their peers on the Zeitgeist Movement and the Zeitgeist Movement educating their peers on Anonymous and Occupy.
And so on.
This, I think, is the crucible of revolution.
At the level of individuals, many of these communities don’t know about or know little about the others. I’d like to equip the individuals with an education kit to allow people from different countries, different states, cities, ideologies, methodologies, and paradigms to educate one another on the system of activists, hacktivists, researchers, engineers, and artists currently at work trying to make a better tomorrow for everyone.
We need not only local action but global action if we are to achieve the kinds and quantities of change we need. Coordination between local groups, certainly, but also coordination between global groups and local groups. Both top-down and bottom-up approaches as each provides a kind of strength the other lacks.
In this declaration of intent, Ian is highlighting the need for us not to come together as a single community—a structure so many demagogues have abused in the past—but rather for us to come together as a community of communities. In some places, the FOS Manifesto echoes those such as Eric Hughes’s A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto, the Wayseer Manifesto, the Organization for a Free Society’s Manifesto, and more. In others, the FOS Manifesto is very particular about its intent to be a formal, inter-group alliance and to act specifically in support of other groups. In short, in Ian’s words:
Each movement holds a piece of the puzzle, and when every movement is brought together to contribute their piece, we can see the whole for what it is.
Divide and conquer is every oppression’s primary stratagem. Unity with diversity ought therefore be the root principle guiding every social justice movement. […]
You are not stealing from me when you quote, link to, or copy-and-paste my words into your own work, or contributing it to the works of others, such as the Free Open Society project. In fact, please, do so!
As I bet any sexually vocal person will tell you, the Internet has fundamentally transformed our ability to communicate with one another. For example, before the Internet, if you were a gay teenager in bum-fuck nowhere, you were the only gay person in the world. Now, though, after the Internet, if you’re a gay teenager in bum-fuck nowhere, you’re one of millions of gay teenagers communicating online.
This is big. This is not merely the evolution of telecommunication technologies. This is a revolution.
The Internet is such a big deal that it’s actually a revolution of all kinds—media, governance, technology itself. But it’s also a second sexual revolution, and this one—our generation’s sexual revolution—traces its roots through the first. This is where just a bit of history comes in handily.
On May 9th, 1960, the first oral contraceptive was made available to the general public; “the Pill” sparked the sexual revolution of the 1960s and ’70s. Like all revolutions, no one could predict the outcome at the outset. It sparked chaos; the sexual revolution precipitated the “sex wars” in the 1980s.
Also in the 1960s—in 1962 to be exact—Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider, affectionately known as “Lick,” (not kidding) first proposed a global network of computers. The project was initially adopted by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), an R&D branch of the US military.
As the slogan “Make Love, Not War” spread through public consciousness in the “free love” movement of the 60s, the Internet was being recognized as a tool of generic utility and in 1969 was launched as ARPANet. “Make love, not war” is, at least poetically, a physical parallel of Internet technology.
A specification for the ubiquitous File Transfer Protocol (FTP) was published in 1973—the same year as the Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion in America. In 1986, as the sex wars raged, the National Science Foundation funded NSFNet as a cross country 56 Kbps Internet backbone for expressly non-commercial, essentially academic purposes. The protocol for the World Wide Web, called the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP), was developed by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989, and, of course, eventually became the most widely used protocol on the public Internet.
These histories highlight the intersections of and tensions between technology, culture, and policy. Moreover, hegemonic preconceptions are especially insidious when they make their way into technology. The same-sex marriage debate illustrates this when, for instance, clerks in many jurisdictions maintaining matrimony databases try to record a new marriage and the computer systems they use ask them “Which one’s the wife?” This unintentional antipathy to the diversity of human identities and relationships, which is literally encoded into society’s infrastructure, is perhaps the greatest silent threat to our species’ survival.
Schemes for a marriage database completely free of gender and sexuality assumptions do exist. Sam Hughes’s example permits any human to marry any other human any number of times and have any number of partners simultaneously. Now, if you tried to use a schema like his, you’d actually be forced to write tons of application layer logic to enforce the legal restrictions that are placed on marriage today; our technology already offers us capabilities that are beyond our society’s understanding of the social constructs and contracts many people have and are using right now.
The Dalai Lama once said, “Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.” But today, as environmentalist and author Paul Hawken observed, “goods seem to have become more important, and are treated better, than people.” Faced with the existential threat of this mounting tension, our species will be forced to shoulder the challenge that political advisor Jeremy Rifkin imagines we can accomplish: “extend our empathy to the entire human race as an extended family, and to our fellow creatures as part of our evolutionary family, and to the biosphere as our common community,” or perish.
Thus, the urgent question is: how do we do that? As it happens, today’s polyamory movement is uniquely situated at an ideological and technological intersection illuminating a possible answer. Polyamory’s key tenet—that a relationship involving more than two individuals is a good and valuable thing—is so powerful because it is so simple. To understand why, we can look to the Internet.
As I see it, a poly activists’ core goal can be succinctly described as achieving equality in relationship choice. That is, polyamorous people recognize that the structure of a compulsorily monogamous relationship, in which one individual is connected to only one other individual, is limiting. Instead, we argue, many people may find more value by changing the structure such that one individual can be connected to more than one other individual.
This has some remarkable parallels to the way telecommunication technologies (like the Internet) work. In essence, polyamory does for relationships what digital telecommunication technologies have done for ideas. Here’s how veteran web designer John Waters explained it:
In the industrial economy, scarcity established value. Natural resources such as oil, gold, and diamonds were scarce and therefore considered valuable. […] Paul Romer and other theorists introduced the “New Growth Theory”. In this model, the principle of scarcity is turned upside down.
The new theory essentially divides the world into two productive inputs: “things” and “ideas”. Only one person at a time can use things such as a hammer, a telephone, a lawnmower, or a car. On the other hand, ideas can be used by many people simultaneously, i.e., recipes, blueprints, formulas, methodologies, and software. They can be used to rearrange things. They can be copied, shared, and connected, thereby leading to more ideas. “Economic growth,” Romer says, “arises from the discovery of new recipes and the transformation of things from low to high value configurations.”
Such “transformation of things from low to high value configurations” is what the polyamory movement does with regard to relationships. The most obvious limitation with the often-monogamous notion of “true love” is that it creates a scarcity model, and free distribution is anathema to maintaining scarcity. Polyamorous people understand that “free love” is not just a hippie slogan, it is a way to create real-world emotional value.
Meanwhile, those same social networks offer fertile soil where non-mainstream perspectives—and new languages—can take root. As Wired columnist Regina Lynn wrote, “Beyond the obvious benefits of online community, the language’s Internet-speed evolution continues to give polyamory a boost. When poly or poly-curious people stumble across the polyamorous lexicon, the discovery can help validate their worldview.”
The introduction of new language—both terms and techniques for communication itself—is a profound change. In the words of asexuality activist David Jay, “By finding new ways to talk about relationships we can greatly increase our options for forming them.” In addition to the value offered by transforming the topology of relationships, there is value in having a diversity of relationship types; even healthy monogamous people have strong friendship, co-worker, familial, and other kinds of social networks that look similar to polyamorous people’s more intimate networks.
This marriage of polyamorous culture with the Internet thereby accelerates the distribution of the Dalai Lama’s prophylactic prescription for humanity. Or, in other words, the success or failure of that quintessential American Dream, your “pursuit of happiness” is, at least in part, intertwined with others’ similar pursuits. As Harvard professor Nicholas Christakis observed:
“If I were always violent towards you or gave you misinformation, or made you sad, or infected you with deadly germs, you would cut the ties to me, and the network would disintegrate. So the spread of good and valuable things is required to sustain and nourish social networks. Similarly, social networks are required for the spread of good and valuable things, like love and kindness and happiness and altruism and ideas. I think, in fact, that if we realized how valuable social networks are, we’d spend a lot more time nourishing them and sustaining them, because I think social networks are fundamentally related to goodness. And what I think the world needs now is more connections.”
In the latter 20th Century, the American Dream grew up in a house with a white picket fenced porch, had a college education, and got a steady job. But today, the American Dream has increasingly been seen as a platitude veiling corporate greed. Founding director of Xavier University’s Center for the Study of the American Dream, Michael Ford, sums up the situation like this:
[T]o an astonishing degree [Americans] have lost confidence in the institutions traditionally seen as Dream guardians. […] Americans feel they are on their own but they haven’t lost the Dream. They have confidence in themselves, their families and their personal networks.
So perhaps adopting the polyamorous tenet, that goodness is inherent in social connectedness, is therefore not merely a social ideal, but also a blueprint for a 21st Century version of a re-imagined, re-invigorated American Dream.
There is a chemical in a girls’ brain is released only two different times in her life, when she has sex, and when she breast feeds her baby. This chemical emotionally connects her to another person for the rest of her life. Us guys? We only release this chemical when we bond with our children. So if you think sex is a game and go around fucking as many girls as you want, remember that you can mentally mess this girl up for the rest of her life. If you’re still friends afterwards then whatever, but she will always feel some sort of feeling for you, just because of the chemical.
It’s called Oxytocin, it’s actually released when a woman gives birth as well. But this is so true… sex is more than just a game, and this is a clear reason that explains why humans were only created to have sex with just one person. Doing it with multiple people will have a very strong negative effect on your relationship with the person you want to be with for the rest of your life. I wish more kids knew about this… not that this should be your only motive not to have sex before marriage, but it is one of the most important.
Everyone should know this.
read this you fucktards.
Don’t we release some kind of chemical in our bodies when we eat something we like too? That doesn’t mean I’m only going to eat one type of food for the rest of my life…
And its not only released two times. It can be released when you get a swedish massage. That doesn’t mean I’m going to want to stay with the same swedish massager for fucking ever.
This post is stupid.
UHHHHHHHHMMMMMMMMMM no.
Oxytocin is indeed known as the bonding chemical because it is released during sex. However, it’s also released during any kind of intimate physical contact (such as cuddling), and most importantly no significant difference between sexes has been found when it comes to quantity of oxytocin processed. Men absolutely release oxytocin as well during those activities (source). This certainly doesn’t mean that you’re BONDED to the person you experience it with for the rest of your life, although if you spend a lot of time around that person and they’re consistently upping your oxy levels, yeah, you’re going to feel a bit addicted to them because that’s how brain chemicals work. However, this doesn’t mean we were “meant to be” stuck with one person who we become bonded to for the rest of our lives—welcome to 2012.
Let’s just go ahead and say your entire sexist, slut-shaming argument is invalid, shall we?
^^^ THAT. YES.
Lol “humans were created to only have sex with one person” Been there, DONE with that.
![every-inch-but-one:
ryan-on-bass:
every-inch-but-one:
applespider:
a rant: when monogamous people complain to me about cheating-
you may be offended!
I can’t respect monogamy. I just can’t. The glorification of jealousy, the unrealistic expectations, the weird possessiveness that comes with looming over your partner’s every move and social atmosphere. The awkward guilty angsting I hear when one person is fantasizing about someone outside their relationship. You don’t own someone. You shouldn’t be able to tell them they can’t see other people. Likewise, they shouldn’t hold those expectations to you, because they don’t own you. You are not property. I feel like there is implied and very not implied disrespect and distrust of both partners.
Likewise, I hate getting the diatribe from monogamous people going “Oh, I just don’t know HOW I could cope with all the jealousy of being non monogamous!” I like to compare this to leaving a big plate of food out on your coffee table and acting like you aren’t allowed to move it or put it in the sink or wash it or even touch it as it molds and decays. There’s no inner dialogue, no examination of potentially poisonous emotions, it’s just left there.
or the “I know you’re all poly and stuff, but this is how the rest of us do it” explanation.
And aside from that, the icky idea of marriage. Being bound to people in a legally constraining way. Adultery being illegal.
I feel like it’s a lie we’ve been fed every day, that the pinnacle of life is to get married and maek babby and that’s where it all ends. And it’s oh-so-important for the child you raise to be related to you. Because genetics are apparently everything. Human beings are so fucking selective when it comes to saying what’s natural and what isn’t. It’s just a convenient way to enforce arbitrary social rules of a culture sometimes.
Um. Not all monogamous people are like this. My partner and I just happened to fall into monogamy with each other, when previously, both of us were poly. We’re monogamous by choice, not by social coercion. I do think more people are poly than they know, but I think most of these problems come from the poor education people get around open honest communication, more than anything else.
I was especially surprised that you started your response with such an over-used privilege denying phrase. “But I’m [blank] and I don’t do what you were just complaining about!”
Obviously, there are monogamous people who willingly choose that and still maintain honest and healthy communication. I am even unintentionally monogamous right now, but I also share the sentiments of the OP. I have a really hard time dealing with people fully indoctrinated in the mainstream heterosexual monogamous ideal. Not even all of these people are even straight! Jealousy is definitely glorified in today’s culture. Any TV show or movie with some sort of romantic interest in it and jealousy is a huge factor. People, especially women, who don’t demonstrate overprotective jealousy of their monogamous partner are often portrayed as not caring or as sluts.
It’s not that people just aren’t taught healthy relationship communication skills, it is that they are actively discouraged from doing healthy relationship communicating. Everyone is taught that they are supposed to be out there searching for The One and to treat every person they are dating like that and to be jealous of someone who might be attracted to them looks at them or if they look at someone that might be attractive and, in the cases that apply, that men and women have ways of thinking that are so different that any bridge between them is insurmountable. That’s why men’s and women’s magazines spend so much time trying to explain this mythical “girl” or “guy” code. What does he/she* really mean when he/she does xyz. It’s in every single issue. Meanwhile, the same magazines are telling you to do some bizarre thing that is totally creepy but it will prove that he/she really loves you! TV shows and movies just replicate this behavior.
When I talk about my poly experiences to my mono friends, I am often treated like some bizarre heartless freak meanwhile I don’t understand their reluctance for clear, direct communication with their partner and positive association with jealousy. Then I watch TV or look at the magazine headlines and realize it’s because that is what is expected.
So bravo to you for moving beyond that, but seriously, that is a VERY small minority.
*Using binaristic language to reflect the language of what I’m talking about
Yeah, that was a pretty shitty opening wasn’t it. Sorry for that. I understand what you’re saying. I think I see a lot more hope for moving past this bullshit in a lot of the younger folks that I know. Also I guess I just don’t hang around with enough monog people. Most of my friends are poly or open. Maybe it’s a queer thing, but we used to take the piss out of monog people all the time.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lv30tidOhf1qaqkreo1_400.gif)
