Polyamory

• Polyamory


  Emotionally intimate and sometimes sexual relationships that include more than two people and everyone involved is aware and consents to the relationships
• Polygamy


  Legal marriage between more than two people
• Polygyny


  Marriage between a man and multiple women
• Polyandry


  Marriage between a woman and multiple men
• Contemporary polyamory


  • Relies heavily on digital media to develop a relationship subculture
  • Places a great deal of emphasis on gender egalitarianism
• Relationship subculture


  A set of shared beliefs, practices, and meanings for intimacy and relationships that differ from the dominant or mainstream culture
• Gender egalitarianism in polyamory

  • All genders are able and encouraged to have multiple sexual and emotionally intimate partners
  • Rejects the sexual double standard
• Impact of gender egalitarianism in polyamory

  • Women report stronger sense of sexual agency and autonomy, develop friendships with other women
  • Men question jealousy and possessiveness, let go of controlling partners' sexual lives and being competitive with other men
  • Some men exhibit "alpha male syndrome" and have "one penis policy"
• Compersion


  Feeling happy when a lover or partner is experiencing pleasure and intimacy with another person
• Polyamorists reject the idea that jealousy is always legitimate, inevitable, and avoidable only through practicing monogamy
• Metamour


  A partner's partner
• Role of metamour


  • Opens lines of communication between partners' partners
  • Helps avoid triangulation through the shared partner
• Polynormativity


  Ways of doing polyamory that reproduces social inequality
• Polyqueer relationships


  Relationships that include more than two adults and, in practice, challenge or diminish social hierarchies based on gender and race
• White, middle-class, and highly educated polyamorists have been most of the participants in published research on polyamory and most authors of how-to books
• Polynormative


  Ways of doing polyamory that reproduces social inequality
• Understanding and questioning racism within polyamorous relationships and communities has not been a central focus of research or how-to books
• Polyamorists of color have developed communities and online content specifically for polyamorists of color
• Online content for polyamorists of color

  • Black and Poly Facebook group
  • blackandpoly.org
  • blackandpoly.wordpress.com
  • blackandpolydating.com
• Mononormativity


  The ways in which social life (including our collective beliefs, interactions, relationships, and social institutions) are set up to systematically privilege people who are or appear to be in monogamous, couple relationships and disadvantage those who are not (i.e., are single or polyamorous)
• Assumptions underlying mononormativity


  • Monogamous coupling is a sign of mature adulthood, and an inability or unwillingness to "settle down" into a monogamous couple is a sign of immaturity, selfishness, and/or immorality
  • Long-term monogamous coupling is the key to living "happily ever after"
  • Most people are or aspire to partner with one person (your "one and only true love")
  • Children are better off if there are two and only two parents in the household
• Polyamorists in the United States can and do lose jobs, custody of children, housing, and other material and immaterial resources with no legal recourse due to lack of legal protections for relationship status
• Class and race privilege can buffer certain groups from harsh social sanctions, however people who lack economic resources, are racial, ethnic, or religious minorities, queer, or gender nonconforming are particularly vulnerable to mononormative sanctions
• This could explain why class privileged, white, heterosexual, cisgender polyamorists are overrepresented in research samples
• Marriage


  The most significant institutionalized form of mononormativity, as in the United States a person can only marry one person and is violating the law if they enter a legal marriage with more than one person
• Anti-polygamy laws have been enforced harshly against religious minorities including Muslims and Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints (FLDS)
• The origin of anti-polygamy laws in the United States lies in the US government's effort to expand settler colonialism in the nineteenth century
• Contemporary journalists' portrayals of FLDS polygamy claim the women and children are victimized by the practice of polygamy, ignoring how gender structures power dynamics and the distribution of resources, and gender inequality is an important causal factor for abuse in monogamous and polygamous, heterosexual marriages
• Because of anti-polygamy laws, polygamists in the United States are forced to go underground and isolate their families to avoid prosecution, allowing abusers to abuse and exploit without fear of repercussions
• Mononormative narratives about living a good and moral life have negative effects on people who are in consensually nonmonogamous and polyamorous relationships
• Colonial discourses often claimed that a particular kind of gendered monogamy is more evolved and civilized than polygamy, thereby casting colonized populations that practice polygamy as less evolved and uncivilized
• The idea that monogamy is moral and multi-adult relationships are immoral is an unstated but prevalent theme in historical biographies, social science research on campus hookup cultures, and popular culture including film and television
• Some biographers have jettisoned mononormativity and written positively about their subjects' commitment to consensual nonmonogamy as embedded within and consistent with their broader political activism and commitments
• Research has consistently found that children in polyamorous households fair as well or sometimes better than children in two-parent households
• Mononormativity


  The assumption that monogamous coupling is the normal, natural, and ideal way to structure intimate relationships
• Some biographers wrote positively about their subjects' commitment to consensual nonmonogamy as embedded within and consistent with their broader political activism and commitments
• Alexis De Veaux placed Audre Lorde's commitment to nonmonogamy centrally in her life story as an anti-racist, feminist activist
• Polyqueer kinship


  Networks of belonging that are based on mutual interdependence, care, and responsibility instead of monogamous marriage, genetic ancestry, and biological children
• One of the most pervasive mononormative assumptions is that children are better off in families with two monogamous caretakers or parents
• Elisabeth Sheff's research has consistently found that children in polyamorous households fair as well or sometimes better than children in two-parent households