Polyamory is NOT the same as Polygamy, and other myths busted

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Ashley Madison, Marriage and Polyamory

After hackers infiltrated the dating site Ashley Madison, aimed specifically at people who want to have an affair, everyone's suddenly got an opinion on marriage, monogamy and the relationship models held up to us as desirable. People have also got a lot of opinions on privacy and morality, and I have to say that I am reluctantly on the side of those who defend the right of consenting adults to do whatever dirt they wish and who feel the hackers could have used their skills and energy much more wisely to expose, say, nefarious government practices, terrorism threats, child abuse or any other activity that's actually illegal. Yes, I hate cheaters. But being weak and human is not a crime. Yes, it's not exactly as simple as saying no one is getting hurt or exploited - the cheated-on partner is clearly going to be hella hurt if and when they find out what their partner has been up to, but it's not for any single person, or indeed group of hackers, to stand as judge, jury and executioner of the 37 million users of the Ashley Madison website.

Privacy issues aside, I do broadly agree with the Guardian article "In the Ashley Madison era, marriage needs a rethink," recently penned by Gaby Hinsliff. Extra-marital affairs are clearly happening on a large scale. More of a nuanced response than simple finger wagging or tutting are clearly needed. One of the reasons I'm suspicious of marriage and long-term monogamy as an institution is that I'm just not convinced it's evolved alongside the world we live in, nor am I sure it was ever designed to bring the mythical happiness that we in the modern world are convinced it must entail. A commenter on Hinsliff's article says that marriage made sense when we lived half as long, had much less technology around to make our lives easier, and needed children for their support and labour. They add "cosmopolitan capitalism is a poisonous environment for marriage." Lefty soapboxes aside, I think they've got a point. As one of Piers Paul Read's characters (incidentally, female) says in his book The Misogynist, the modern marriage has now become "a relationship between two rival bisexuals both working and both cooking and both parenting so that neither needs the other except for some kind of psychological ego boost which is hard to sustain over the years." With the competing demands of work, leisure, self-improvement, extended family and raising children, maintaining an unflagging bond with one other person for 60 years seems like a taller order than ever. People will, of course, point to feminism as the cause of all this, which is a red herring - yes, the character in question does say that marriage is simpler in South America, where men simply expect their wives to "bear their children and run their homes and put up with their intolerable old mothers," but no one in their right minds actually thinks that retrogression to such a world is actually desirable (or even possible). Capitalism has a lot to answer for, as does aspirational culture (which I discuss to some extent in this post, i.e. the insidious messages we're constantly sent that you *need* a bigger house/flasher car/better school for your kids/more exotic holidays/the newest gadget/job promotion, and that to refuse all that and be content to simply get by is nothing short of a crime). I also think there is simply a failure of imagination going on about how to do relationships. People seem to opt for the extremes of either demanding we return to a conservative nuclear family (preferrably where the man is the breadwinner and women have abandoned all those pesky ideas about financial independence or shared parenting), uphold "virtues" such as the willingness to stick with a miserable relationship, or admit that we're all basically amoral scumbugs with restless loins and give up on marriage altogether.

Even Hinsliff's article, which is refreshingly honest in its willingness to ask uncomfortable questions such as "Can you really remain endlessly fascinating to each other and only each other, for up to 70 years?" and "If lifelong fidelity is becoming one of those laws that everyone tacitly accepts gets broken, like cycling on pavements or speeding on motorways, does that mean marriage itself is in need of a reboot?" is still unwilling to offer answers beyond monogamy. She makes a throwaway reference to polyamory in her closing paragraphs, but frames it as the kind of alternative that's *so* alternative that it's still not really an option - "Most committed couples still set out intending to forsake all others and plenty achieve it, which suggests that aiming any lower smacks of an unhappily self-fulfilling prophecy unless you’re both genuine open-marriage enthusiasts." Even though this statement is kind of weak - "Most" isn't quantified, and neither is the "plenty" which constitutes a smaller segment of this "most" - the possibility of open marriage isn't given any airtime or exploration in Hinsliff's article. That seems bizarre in a piece that's trying to honestly deal with the fact that at least 37 million people (and in reality, obviously, many many more undocumented cheaters) are seeking or having affairs outside of their supposedly monogamous relationships. Non-monogamy shouldn't be set up as a panacea to cheating, for reasons I'll shortly outline, but nor should it be dismissed out of hand as "something you presumably don't want to do or hear anything about unless you're like, one of those crazy hippies."

Polyamory demands a reframing of the concept of fidelity, as well as offering new perspectives on sex and relationships that could be viewed as very liberating, but instead is often perceived as threatening and therefore shut down before it's even been explored. Polyamory is a rejection of the notion that love is finite, ring-fenced and only valid/acceptable as long as it's limited to being shared with one person at a time (at least, in a romantic sense - it's fine to have and love more than one friend, child, or family member, but for some reason we draw the line at romantic relationships, and my next sentence alludes to what I think is most of the reason why). It's also a rejection of the notion that your commitment to someone can be measured by your refusal to have genital contact with anyone but them, even people you would quite like to have genital contact with. Because let's face it, that is still the benchmark for fidelity, isn't it - the people on Ashley Madison aren't seeking someone else to watch films with, go on long walks with, shop in B&Q with - they're looking for sex. Sex with someone new and therefore exciting. Sex with someone forbidden, and therefore exciting. Even though there are a million ways you can betray your partner - and the lying that accompanies cheating often begins long before the actual sex, and is often the most hurtful part of the betrayal - we assign sex the status of being the deal-breaker. Polyamory forces us to acknowledge some painful truths - that both we and our partners may be attracted to other people during the course of our relationship, and may act on it - while aiming to remove that which makes infidelity so painful; the lying. So why, in an article where Hinsliff considers various "alternatives" to traditional marriage - "starter marriages", being together but living apart, "safety blanket" marriages or "I want kids but I'm running out of time and I don't want to do it alone" marriages - is polyamory never considered? Most of the options she names sound to me exactly like the kind of relationships people are already practising but just not labelling as she has; the idea of people marrying for security, out of parental urges, fear of being alone or on a hopeful but not entirely convinced gamble that it'll work isn't really anything new. Whereas the idea of consensual nonmonogamy is still pretty radical. Why not at least give it some airtime by considering it, rather than writing it off as a "niche interest"?

As I've found to my disappointment, nonmonogamy can't save everyone, though. There are just some dyed-in-the-wool cheaters out there who want nothing less than the thrill and the dirt of the forbidden, and would probably find themselves unable to proceed honestly even if they were presented with a poly relationship on a plate. As I wrote in a previous post on polyamory, such people "are so used to practising the art of lying that honesty is a stranger to them. Plus, polyamory probably wouldn't give them the twisted kicks they get out of their self-destructive behaviour." The only solution for these people is the therapist's chair, and even then there's only any point in that if they don't just keep lying once they get there. If we learn anything from human history, it's that no relationship structure, however permissive, can save people from themselves. I think some people get married hoping it'll change them, rein them in, make them a better person, and really they're just passing the buck, because you either make those changes yourself, and make yourself that person, or it's not going to happen. A relationship structure doesn't impose itself from the outside and change you. You either commit to it and do it wholeheartedly, or you'll end up simply warping the structure to suit your own ends. Which, if you're highly sexed and thrill-seeking, is likely to end in tears if you don't seek a relationship with someone similar, in a format that allows you to express those parts of yourself without feeling limited. But if you do decide to go poly, you've still got to decide to do it honestly. It involves a level of self-awareness, as well as a level of consideration for others, that not everyone is willing to reach for.

Commenters on Hinsliff's piece label it "grim and sociopathic" for daring to suggest that people want more than the current relationship model offers them. I think it's more accurate to call it realistic and honest. Another, perhaps more prosaic individual suggests "there are three entirely different sorts of relationships: the person you sleep with, the person you live with and the person you want to have your children with. It is unlikely that all three of those people are the same person, which is the core of the problem - when it works, it is clearly brilliant, but it is so fragile that people will often overlook one of the three to try and keep it together." In my limited experience, domesticity can certainly drive a person to want to separate the first party from the second and third parties, perhaps going some way to explaining why I, as a highly sexed individual, have no interest in cohabiting (and have never wanted children anyway). I just think that it's kind of dishonest to claim you're "rethinking marriage" or to act like you're putting forward a radical idea when you're not actually offering anything new, and are still merely advocating for long-term monogamy - just under the guise of different names - but trying to do so in a way that mitigates the horrible fact that millions of people out there want to cheat, have cheated, or are currently cheating on their partner. The sad fact is, nothing can mitigate that. It's depressing, soul-destroying, and enough to make you never want to trust another human being again. But there are more options than just becoming further entrenched in your views that we all just need to pull our bloody socks up and try harder, or that relationships are doomed and we should all just throw caution to the wind and rut openly in the streets. A media fond of polarising everything would do well to remember that alternatives can be, and are being, succesfully practised.

Polyamory and mental health: how they fit together

**DISCLAIMER: This post is not meant to be a judgement on any particular romantic or sexual lifestyle, monogamous or otherwise. It is merely MY OWN thoughts and MY OWN experiences.**

 

Recently I had the unenviable experience of someone I found attractive telling me they didn't want to take things further with me because I am non-monogamous. It was particularly galling since this person knew from the off that I practice polyamory - one of many reasons I write about it so openly, so that no one's under any illusions - but for whatever reasons decided to lead me somewhat down the garden path before telling me they couldn't be with me. Everyone's entitled to change their mind, but it's still never nice to have the rug pulled out from under you.

 

It's hard in these situations to stick to your guns, especially when you really like someone and you're facing the fact you're no longer going to get what you wanted. It's a jolt, a slap in the face. It's tempting to weaken and say "Oh, fuck it, I'll do it, I'll be monogamous for you," because it seems like too high a price to pay, to lose someone you've just started forming a lovely and exciting connection with, just because you can't play this game that everyone else seems to manage (even though you know that in reality, many, many of the players aren't "managing" the mono game very well at all ). Given the disastrous state of my romantic life in the past month or so, it's tempting to conclude that polyamory is more trouble than it's worth, that it causes more problems than it solves, that I should just go back to the good old mono way of doing things.

 

Then I remember what monogamy is like. And it chills me.

 

I remember boredom. I remember depression. I remember feeling limited. I remember feeling old before my time. I remember feeling resigned.

 

I remember having wandering eyes and feeling tempted to cheat but never doing it. And wondering why, if I was supposed to be so fulfilled by the other person, I wanted to look elsewhere.

 

I remember the thought that this was the last person I might ever have sex with making me feel like doors were slamming everywhere to me.

 

I remember wanting to be seen and found attractive by people who weren't my partner, and wanting the freedom to enjoy that, even if it never led to anything, even if it was just flirtation, even if it was just a feeling; the freedom to feel possibility was always the more important part, and still is, than the freedom to turn that possibility into reality.

 

There are many reasons I might feel this way. Some of them may well be connected to the mental health condition I've been diagnosed with, namely Borderline Personality Disorder. Some characteristics of BPD people that mean we don't do well with monogamy include:

- sudden, intense and inexplicable bursts of emotion

- persistent sense of emptiness and that everything is basically pointless

- wildly altering preferences (including sexual and romantic attraction)

- impulsive behaviour

- a sense that no one cares about us as much as we care about them

 

Put a person like this in a monogamous relationship and the result is (in my experience):

- they get very bored

- they get depressed, often connected to the boredom

- they feel taken for granted

- they want to cheat

- they feel like a monster for all of the above

 

Taken so starkly, I'm sure some of these characteristics make BPD people sound like cold, callous bastards who want the moon on a stick and sulk if they don't get it. The truth is, BPD people are often extremely caring, loving people who are devoted to those around them, and yet live with a persistent sense that no one returns that devotion. We take things very hard. If someone snaps at me, it can ruin my day, and I'll remember that they snapped at me for weeks, months, possibly forever. As well as huge emotional sensitivity, I'm also cursed with perfect recall. I can remember the fights I've had with people even when they were over a decade ago, and can usually date them to the month. BPD people are sometimes described as experiencing 'hotter' emotions than neurotypical people, meaning we get burned more easily, and take longer to heal. That certainly is true.

 

When the most recent person rejected me, I cried solidly for three hours. No exaggeration. I had only known this person a matter of weeks. But I had really liked them, found them really attractive, and found the prospect of taking things further with them extremely exciting. It had made me happy. So when they took it away, I reacted very badly. I had to take four anti-psychotic tablets to calm down. It is a wonder BPD people attempt relationships at all, really, when this is the kind of reaction we know we can expect. And that's just from a very brief connection - the grief over any kind of long term relationship ending is so splintering that it's nearly killed me in the past (when I was mono, I lived with someone for several years).

 

But I do choose to still attempt some kind of romantic life; I just try and do it nowadays within parameters that leave me feeling less like an animal in a cage. I watch people who I believe are clearly not meant to be monogamous trying to shoe-horn themselves into marriage or long term monogamy and I watch them crash and burn. I watch them cheat, fail and then spiral further down a path of self-destruction because they hate themselves for not being able to live up to the monogamous ideal, and they want to make themselves feel even more dirty and useless. I do believe that these people would be better off being honest with everyone and starting to live a life of consensual non-monogamy (with the knowledge of all those involved), but I also recognise that they are so used to practising the art of lying that honesty is a stranger to them. Plus, polyamory probably wouldn't give them the twisted kicks they get out of their self-destructive behaviour.

 

Despite my BPD, I have enough self-esteem to believe that I deserve better than lying and cheating. However, what I don't believe is that "better" automatically equals monogamy, or LTRs, or marriage. When people  are trying to console you about your love life going wrong, they love to say "You're going to make some guy very happy," as if that's my raison d'etre. Guess what? I have no interest in being someone's "other half", their missing puzzle piece. Perhaps I have too much self-esteem, because I frankly question the idea that one other person could even begin to scratch the surface of giving me what I need, let alone fulfil me in every way. When I look at kinky people in full time master/slave relationships, my biggest question isn't about consent or feminism or whether it's degrading or any of that shit, it's how can the slave possibly trust the master to totally take care of them? How can they know that person will always make them feel safe? That leap of faith is one I doubt I could ever make. We trust our friends, but no one ever tests our trust by asking us to commit to one of those friends for the next six decades of our lives. Yet it's assumed that's exactly what we'll do with our romantic relationships. We're not expected to commit to one of anything for the rest of our lives - no single job, no single house, no single friend, no single country, no single child. Yet we're meant to nail our colours to the flag of one other person and make them our one and only. It just doesn't add up in my head.

 

Maybe that's my BPD. Maybe it's just logic. I may never know.

When this most recent person was telling me that they couldn't be with me because they couldn't handle non-monogamy, I thought the way they put it was very telling. They said "I want to know that the person who's with me is mine and mine only." I thought to myself, "Perhaps I have an unusual way of looking at things, but I don't think that any relationship that begins with you trying to possess another person is off to a good start." And I also sort of wanted to say "What makes you think you deserve to have me as yours and yours only?" It strikes me as massively presumptuous to make that kind of statement: love is so easy to say, so hard to demonstrate, and people fail to demonstrate it all the time. To me, devotion has to be earned and reciprocated, not just assumed. But again, this could well be the perfectionist and delusional part of my BPD making me think a) I'm massively fantastic but criminally underappreciated and b) no poor sod could ever come up to the imperceptibly high standard that is required to please me. See how difficult it is to trust yourself when someone can just throw your diagnosis in your face and call you manipulative, abusive and basically an ungrateful git?

Regardless, I don't buy that a relationship is stronger just because it's had rules applied to it about its exclusivity. If anything, I think that can make it easier to fool yourself that you're oh-so-committed, because your relationship is not subject to anything that's going to test that commitment. Whereas if you see, meet, date, fuck and love other people yet still return to someone out of free choice? That, to me, is a much deeper connection than one between two people who are just together and monogamous out of habit. And NO, I'm not saying that everyone or even most people in monogamous relationships are necessarily in that situation. But some are. I've seen them with my own eyes. I've heard their stories. And that's some too many, to my mind.

 

I don't expect the world, or even a fraction of it, to come round to my way of thinking. Polyamory really isn't for everyone. But in this case, I feel that the person in question wrote it off without properly considering what it might mean. I feel they clung to the fears that monogamy encourages us to hold (jealousy, possessiveness) without addressing them, and they assumed that nothing other than a two-person, long-term relationship could ever be considered "something real". I wished I could show them just how much you can adore someone without trying to own them.

I wish Facebook had a "Polyamorous" option

When you're female, people make a lot of assumptions about you. They assume your raison d'etre is a long-term, committed, heterosexual relationship ending in marriage and children. They don't stop to think that you might not want children. Or you might not be heterosexual. Or you might not 'do' relationships. Or that you might not even 'do' monogamy, full stop. However broad-minded we claim to be as a society, little has changed in terms of the belief that what women really want, despite all their cute little protestations that they want to have careers or travel or have sex with lots of different people, is a ring on their finger and a zygote in their womb.

 

Ah well.

 

I'm fortunate enough to move among a cross-section of people more accepting of the fact that we're not all secretly seeking a rom-com ending, but I still wonder how much people truly believe me when I tell them that monogamy bores the bejesus out of me, ditto long-term relationships, and were I not so highly sexed I might be quite content with just a lot of good friendships, but as it is, I like having multiple casual interactions with people I find attractive. I'm not sure people really know how to deal with a woman saying that. I think they make a fair few assumptions right off the bat. Such as:

- You do want a fairy tale ending, but you're just worried that admitting it will make you a bad feminist.
- You do want a fairy tale ending, but since you've been taught that men are sex-mad commitment-phobes, you're just pretending to be a sex-mad commitment-phobe too to set them at ease (oh, and trap them, of course!)
- You've got serious emotional problems which mean you're actually desperate for love but are just slutting around as part of a self-destruct programme.
- You're a big, greedy, predatory whore who's a danger to every one else's husbands/boyfriends/partners.
- You'll break down one day and admit that you do just want a man to look after you and babies to make you complete.
- Some shit about biological clocks.

 

If I had a pound for every time I'd heard phrases along the lines of "Men use love to get sex, and women use sex to get love", or, "Men are just programmed to spread their seed, but women are programmed to want babies and to settle down," or, "Women are the more naturally romantic/monogamous/insert-other -patronising-adjective-here gender", well, I reckon I'd have enough for a package holiday to the Canary Islands, at the very least.

 

So it'd be nice, for the purposes of re-educating a public fed on a diet of TV and movies that dictates however strong and sassy you are, you'll ultimately want to settle down (Yo! Sex and the City, Yo! Girls, Yo! very sadly, The Hunger Games), if there were more discourse on the alternatives that some people seek. It'd also be nice if there was some more discourse on the fact that sometimes men want to settle down, and sometimes it's men who are the more romantic, emotionally attached or naturally monogamous partner in a couple. If it were just women who imposed those things on their partners due to their crazy, female, hormone-driven desires, then why would any male-male couples ever marry or have children? Yet they do. People like to pair up with one special person. People like to nest and introduce little beings into that nest. Why put it all on women, when there's so much evidence to the contrary?

 

I know it's probably a bit much to ask that everyone's special snowflake status is accommodated in the form of a drop-down menu, but I'd really love it if I could put something on my Facebook profile that reflects how I actually operate instead of having to choose between "Single" and "In an Open Relationship". Neither is accurate. At any given time, I'm likely to be having flirtations, interactions and probably some physical fun with one or more people, so I'm not exactly single, but I'm also not "in a relationship" by any stretch of the imagination. "Relationship" signals hearts and flowers, anniversaries, Valentine's celebrations, but also shared homes, holidays, finances, shared lives. I don't do either that red-strewn world of commercial romance, nor the merging of my assets and space with any other human being. I've tried both, and neither ended well, believe me. I don't feel whatever it is that makes people go gooey-eyed over each other, and I've tried to pretend, but that's not honest and it's not fair. I love my friends and family with a ferocious passion and would lie on a railway track for them if needed. I care deeply about people and about issues close to my heart, and will get extremely agitated when either are threatened. I will always cry, without fail, at the bit in Dirty Dancing where Baby says "You let me down too" to her dad. I am not without sentiment. But I am without whatever it is that makes people feel able, or compelled, to share their life romantically with one other person.

 

And it's nice to be able to let people know that, but there's no easy or simple way to do it. You can't put "Polyamorous, no LTRs, casual only, but I'm not an emotional iceberg, and I really do mean this and I'm not just doing it because I'm a damaged nymphomaniac or secretly trying to trick you into marriage and babies" on your Facebook profile. You can, of course, have an adult conversation with people you're interested in and let them know, and I generally really try to do that, but it's not always easy to find a point in your interaction where you can say these things without the other person saying "Hey, hold on, we're only going for a drink, don't get ahead of yourself!" or "Why didn't you tell me sooner?!" And then, of course, there's the whole other side of polyamory--when people assume that because you're sexually open-minded, that you'll be more than happy to have an affair with them just because they're not happy with their monogamous relationship. Um, no. That's not how it works. I don't take this brave step of living outside how society expects me to, just so that you can enjoy the benefits of my courage while taking none of the chances yourself. And since when did polyamorous = entirely devoid of ethics? It's not polyamory without the consent of all parties involved - it's just cheating. Perhaps Facebook needs a "Get permission from your other half, and THEN get back to me" option as well...

 

I jest, of course, insofar as I know it's a more important step that people of non-binary gender orientations can choose options that they're comfortable with when identifying themselves online, than me demanding a bespoke option for my frisky leanings. And, of course, there can be such a thing as too much information: some folks are brave enough to announce that they're kinky (and sometimes their kink orientation too) in their Twitter biography, whereas I just tend to tell the world I'm a writer, feminist and I like roller derby. I figure that if you want to know the good stuff, you'll find me in person; and if we make it to the pub together, I'm sure you'll end up knowing all of it.

 

Polyamory and Feminism - Curious Bedfellows?

** DISCLAIMER - this is not intended as an endorsement or criticism/condemnation of any particular lifestyle, be it monogamous, polyamorous, celibate or 'other'. It's merely my own thoughts, reflections and experiences **

There have been some notable online articles regarding polyamory recently. This is really good to see, as despite my frantic Googling I was beginning to think there was very little in the way of public discourse on the issue. Joining a couple of Facebook groups has shown me there's plenty of private discussion, which is great, but obviously those already in the community know what the dealio is, whereas the monogamous mainstream hegemony is often unwilling or unable to learn what polyamory really is about.

So it was encouraging to read this article, which not only did a lot of helpful myth-busting about polyamory (hereafter shortened to 'poly') but also looked at it through a feminist lens. I do think that a lot of the toxic myths that we're sold about monogamy have their roots in the control of women. Fairytales about passive princesses waiting for that One Perfect Man to come and rescue them? Conditioning girls to be dependent and base their fulfilment on another person. Films, books and TV programmes that show however strong, sassy and intelligent a woman is, she still just wants A Man and babies? Modern day fairy tales hoping to insidiously set back feminist progress. Try to think of a film which ends with the female protagonist happy and single. I don't know about you, but I'm struggling. Then try to think of one which shows a woman having multiple partners, and living happily ever after. These cultural artefacts are probably out there somewhere, but they're certainly not anywhere in the mainstream.

Yet the mainstream take on sexuality is often dangerous and anti-woman. The monogamous heterosexual relationship model often seems to me to be based on, if not downright lies, then self-deception, deception of others, and the need to control others. Women complain that men don't listen. Men complain that women nag. Women complain that men don't communicate. Men complain that women don't say what they really mean. Poly forces people to stop using these lazy, gender-binary-enforcing excuses and start getting honest. Much like in BDSM, which despite appearing misogynistic to the ill-informed, actually prizes consent and communication far more effectively than the vanilla model of sex, poly acknowledges that you're not going to get anywhere without talking about stuff. And talking really, really honestly. About all the shitty, shameful and selfish urges to which we're all subject, at one time or another.

I've often felt like there was a conspiracy of silence surrounding monogamous relationships, insofar as no one else seemed to be struggling with them the way I did. No one else seemed to be standing up and saying 'if this person is So Right for me, why do I constantly get crushes on other people? Why is it acceptable to feel deep love for my friends of the same sex, but a connection to someone of the opposite gender is immediately viewed with suspicion? Why are the boundaries of what constitutes OK behaviour for a person in relationships so artificial and arbitrary, when you can have incredible intimacy with a person even if you've never even kissed?'. And when I asked people I'd get the standard answer 'Oh, everyone finds they're attracted to people other than their partner, you just have to get past it'. I never found it very helpful. Or particularly honest.

To me, monogamous relationships often seem to pivot on this kind of fear - fear that you might not love or be sufficiently attracted to your partner, fear that their feelings for you might not be strong enough, fear that you might have to take the painful step of leaving them, fear that they might leave you. I definitely suffered from the first and third a fair bit in long-term relationships, and found the worrying and wondering exhausted. When someone said to me 'maybe you are just better off having a number of less serious attachments', it was revelatory. No one had ever suggested that was genuinely acceptable option for a woman. Oh sure, we're shown caricatures of man-eaters in popular culture all the time (Yo, SATC's Samantha!), but they are usually so one-dimensional as to be unbelievable, or enough of a figure of fun that the viewer knows this is not someone to be looked up to or emulated. You're allowed to fuck around when you're young, when you're going through a 'rough patch', when you're 'just looking for comfort' etc etc. You're not allowed to stand up and say 'Yeah, I don't actually want a full-time partner, perhaps ever, but I really like sex'. The last woman I can think of who really talked such talk and walked that walk was Mae West, and perhaps that's why I've always been unconsciously drawn to her, fantastic trailblazer that she was. I don't say it's much easier for men, who are subject to their own pressures, but when it comes to reasons to be poly, the male sex drive is sufficiently stereotyped that people don't question it so much. He's a man, of course he wants lots of sex from lots of different woman. If a woman's poly? Hmmm, she must be doing it 'for love'...yawn...

And it's not necessarily even men who are to blame for such toxic stereotyping. As the article states,"when we see love as scarce, we are taught to see others outside of our relationship as potential competitors. Women, especially, are conditioned by our culture to see other women as their competitors." Oh boy, are we ever. See, thanks to the aggressive myth-pushing of the fairy tales and films and songs and TV programmes mentioned above, women are still operating with that subconscious idea of The Ultimate Goal - that being, getting and keeping A Man. Never mind that no one ever qualifies how this equates a fairytale ending (although the assumption is that what the women get is economic security, which is bizarrely, the same logic that sex workers are judged and condemned by the vanilla mainstream for exercising), A Man and One Man at that, is what women are supposed to want. So, women for whom this isn't of interest have traditionally been treated with suspicion. You only have to read the horrific stories of how lesbians are routinely treated in South Africa and hundreds of other cultures to see how women who don't base their lives around men are viewed as a threat to the social order. Or look at the rampant slut-shaming of any woman in history who has ever dared to suggest she enjoys sex, or can have it without love, or can enjoy it with multiple partners, or is happy to sell it.

 

Recently I've been subject to what I feel is, if not downright slut-shaming, then at least some pretty harsh judgement by other women due to my fairly sexually open persona. What I perceive in those women is projection of their own insecurities, possibly also jealousy that I'm unafraid to admit that I'm attracted to more than one man, and ultimately a need to police other women's behaviour and desires because I represent a threat to this starvation economy, where Men are the ultimate prize, and Other Women are our competitors for that prize. I find it kind of amusing, if I'm honest, but it's also pretty sad. And in that sense, I do see the poly way of life aligning with feminism much more effectively than the dominant models we are sold. If I am open and comfortable with my partner about our attraction to others, I am less likely to be paranoid and suspicious about his interactions with other women, and the same goes for him with regards to my interactions with other men. Whereas if we're in a relationship where we're supposed to pretend that attractions to others don't happen, we're much more likely to become jealous and possessive over each other, and view all members of the same sex as potential enemies. Much as I don't fool myself that poly is the answer to everything, when considering how it offers many more options for a feminist way of exercising sexuality and relationships, I do think it deals with a lot of issues that the vanilla monogamous hegemony is reluctant to address.