Is Polyamory Revolutionary?
The revolutionary breeze that ushered in the 60s carried with it a desire for sexual liberation and emancipation from the bourgeois, patriarchal norm. By calling into question the fundamental unit of society, the nuclear family, rebellious youth hoped to shake the foundations of staid consumerism.
The Sexual Freedom League, a student group at the University of California – Berkeley, organized nude parties and orgies. The Weather Underground tried to "smash monogamy" with bisexuality and rotating sexual partners. And in 1971 Andreas Baader, founder of the Red Army Faction, captured the sentiment of his generation, exclaiming: "The anti-imperialist struggle and sexual emancipation go hand-in-hand, fucking and shooting are the same thing!"
Now, four decades later, we can discern the faint stirrings of a return to the project of sexual liberation. This time, however, it is not under the flag of "free love" but of "polyamory" that the struggle will be waged.
Experiments in free love were not always a success and in retrospect some former participants now admit there was another form of coercion at work. Free love ceased being free and revolutionary the moment it became obligatory. In his 1971 dystopian sci-fi novel, The World Inside, Robert Silverberg conveys this point brilliantly.
Writing in the midst of the sexual revolution, Silverberg imagines a world where an exponentially growing human population lives in mile high sky scrapers. With limited space, their society adopts sexual norms that avoid tension: promiscuity is encouraged, and it is considered anti-social to turn down a sexual advance. Every night, men sleep with their neighbors wives and wives freely switch partners as well. The result is a world of greater apparent freedom – drugs are also legal – sustained by a severe form of social control: those who resist the free love culture disappear.
Sexual liberation as imagined in the 60s was heavily biased towards a vision where sexual energy was freely flowing, all partners essentially equal, and sex something that ought to be shared without restriction. Against this borderless, formless vision of sex another perspective is gaining traction: the "polyamorous" position that maintains it is the tight bounding of a group, whether it be three or four or more, that is revolutionary.
Polyamory is an outgrowth of the free love movement but instead of looking to the orgy as the model for rebellion it is the notion of a tribe that excites their imagination. There are many visions of polyamory, but the one that many find intriguing is a world where partners are not exchangeable, relationships are stable and promiscuity is often frowned on. Whether polyamory means two women and a man, two men and a woman or two couples who share the same bed, the nuclear, patriarchal family is no where to be found.
Can capitalism exist without its foundation of heterosexual monogamy? Is polyamory inherently revolutionary? To all these questions we must answer: capitalism is a master of recuperation. What first shakes it, soon motivates it, later strengthens it. We will never know which tactics bring it down until we try.
To rupture the consumer myth will take more than protests in the streets and boycotts of consumer goods. It'll require a fundamental shift in the structure of society, a revocation of our libidinal investment. Whether that'll take the form of polyamory or simply neighbors getting to know each other remains to be seen.
Micah White is a Contributing Editor at Adbusters and an independent activist. He lives in Berkeley and is writing a book about the future of activism. www.micahmwhite.com or micah (at) adbusters.org
160 comments on the article “Is Polyamory Revolutionary?”
Displaying 21 - 30 of 160
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Sekhmei
For the past ten years I have been polyamorous. I wish to be very clear that every partner involved has been committed to the other members of the relationship structure, including the ones they had no sexual relationship with. I have found that, contrary to bringing conflict, polyamory has strengthened relationship bonds. I know this doesn't happen with every polyamorous relationship, any more than monogamy always brings stability, but my personal experiences have been universally positive.
I was rather amused at the concept of “Polyamory Jackie and Friends”, because I, as a child, adopted my mother's Barbie collection, and had instinctively established polyamorous, largely gender-neutral relationships amongst them. To put this in perspective, this began when I was around seven, I am a heterosexual male, and was raised in a Southern Baptist church, with my family being closely tied to the church structure.
As for tradition, I feel it necessary to point out that the Bible depicts many situations wherein God's chosen have polygamous relationships. Many Native American tribes held the tradition that, should your brother die, his widow would come to live with you as your wife, whether or not you had one (or more) already. Monogamy developed for the express purpose of identifying the father of a child. This has lead to patriarchal societies supplanting matriarchal ones, usually coupled with the oppression of women. In nature, species that mate for life (are monogamous) tend to have higher rates of infanticide.
Sekhmei
For the past ten years I have been polyamorous. I wish to be very clear that every partner involved has been committed to the other members of the relationship structure, including the ones they had no sexual relationship with. I have found that, contrary to bringing conflict, polyamory has strengthened relationship bonds. I know this doesn't happen with every polyamorous relationship, any more than monogamy always brings stability, but my personal experiences have been universally positive.
I was rather amused at the concept of “Polyamory Jackie and Friends”, because I, as a child, adopted my mother's Barbie collection, and had instinctively established polyamorous, largely gender-neutral relationships amongst them. To put this in perspective, this began when I was around seven, I am a heterosexual male, and was raised in a Southern Baptist church, with my family being closely tied to the church structure.
As for tradition, I feel it necessary to point out that the Bible depicts many situations wherein God's chosen have polygamous relationships. Many Native American tribes held the tradition that, should your brother die, his widow would come to live with you as your wife, whether or not you had one (or more) already. Monogamy developed for the express purpose of identifying the father of a child. This has lead to patriarchal societies supplanting matriarchal ones, usually coupled with the oppression of women. In nature, species that mate for life (are monogamous) tend to have higher rates of infanticide.
Andrew McNicol
Polyamory can be a very positive lifestyle choice which, when it is a response to socially imposed value systems regarding romantic relationships and/or sexual practices, can indeed be considered revolutionary. But it could also be revolutionary simply because it goes against the normal practices of society.
It is important to be clear about what polyamory is, though. The above article suggests it resembles more of a 'stable relationship group' than it has to. Polyamory may simply reflect an individual's choice to not limit their romantic experiences to one person and their chosen partners may change regularly, and each of these partnerships may be completely different in the way individuals relate to one another. One of the important things polyamory does is lead us to question the traditional notion of a romantic relationship as being between two people. If we have desires for another person, the traditional system would lead us to believe we are having immoral feelings, where polyamorous ideals would help us to understand that such desires are natural and we are free to choose how to deal with them. One great aspect of polyamory is that it teaches consenting adults to be more open about what they want from life, and from those around them.
Even if one chooses not to have multiple, simultaneous romantic/sexual relationships, much can be learned from the concept that it is possible to love more than one person at any one time.
I'm a believer that strongly questioning deeply ingrained aspects of society is likely to lead to more questions about other things we have come to take for granted. Polyamory can be the cause, or result, of such, wider practices of free thinking.
By itself, global adoption of polyamory would probably not bring down capitalism. But I believe open discussion about some of the ideals it is based on, and making it acceptable for the adoption of alternative lifestyle practices by those who are interested, may help us move a step or two in the right direction of constructing a better world.
Andrew McNicol
Polyamory can be a very positive lifestyle choice which, when it is a response to socially imposed value systems regarding romantic relationships and/or sexual practices, can indeed be considered revolutionary. But it could also be revolutionary simply because it goes against the normal practices of society.
It is important to be clear about what polyamory is, though. The above article suggests it resembles more of a 'stable relationship group' than it has to. Polyamory may simply reflect an individual's choice to not limit their romantic experiences to one person and their chosen partners may change regularly, and each of these partnerships may be completely different in the way individuals relate to one another. One of the important things polyamory does is lead us to question the traditional notion of a romantic relationship as being between two people. If we have desires for another person, the traditional system would lead us to believe we are having immoral feelings, where polyamorous ideals would help us to understand that such desires are natural and we are free to choose how to deal with them. One great aspect of polyamory is that it teaches consenting adults to be more open about what they want from life, and from those around them.
Even if one chooses not to have multiple, simultaneous romantic/sexual relationships, much can be learned from the concept that it is possible to love more than one person at any one time.
I'm a believer that strongly questioning deeply ingrained aspects of society is likely to lead to more questions about other things we have come to take for granted. Polyamory can be the cause, or result, of such, wider practices of free thinking.
By itself, global adoption of polyamory would probably not bring down capitalism. But I believe open discussion about some of the ideals it is based on, and making it acceptable for the adoption of alternative lifestyle practices by those who are interested, may help us move a step or two in the right direction of constructing a better world.
Uland
I don't believe that sexual mores are "imposed" in some sort of vacuum; We regard monogamy as a healthy norm, by and large, therefore institutional powers respond to that assumption in kind.
I think it's important to make a distinction between something being "revolutionary" and simply destabilizing. I don't believe that simply because our culture ( along with every culture I can think of) regards monogamy as a healthy norm provides any cause to believe that attacking this norm will in any way be beneficial. If it's simply a matter of reacting against a norm, there are many more to go after as well ( how about the tyranny of toilets! Let's shit in the street!) . The other ones don't indulge our fantasies about getting laid without having to deal with the messiness of other human beings. In this sense, it's hard for me to not see these fantasies as part-in-parcel with the very fuck 'em all forms of consumerism we'd all like to do away with. It's almost literally masturbatory and represents the worst aspects of young "revolutionary" types.
Uland
I don't believe that sexual mores are "imposed" in some sort of vacuum; We regard monogamy as a healthy norm, by and large, therefore institutional powers respond to that assumption in kind.
I think it's important to make a distinction between something being "revolutionary" and simply destabilizing. I don't believe that simply because our culture ( along with every culture I can think of) regards monogamy as a healthy norm provides any cause to believe that attacking this norm will in any way be beneficial. If it's simply a matter of reacting against a norm, there are many more to go after as well ( how about the tyranny of toilets! Let's shit in the street!) . The other ones don't indulge our fantasies about getting laid without having to deal with the messiness of other human beings. In this sense, it's hard for me to not see these fantasies as part-in-parcel with the very fuck 'em all forms of consumerism we'd all like to do away with. It's almost literally masturbatory and represents the worst aspects of young "revolutionary" types.
Adam Kelley
A true revolutionary idea: Love does not only exist to make us happy.
Love is not self-seeking. Love is commitment.
Some of the ideas and foundations behind polyamory sound valuable on the surface, but I think that the one major flaw behind it and many other philosophies of life we find in the West is that they're all founded with the idea of how to make life better for ourselves. It's all about us. It takes the idea of love and turns it into something more akin to a shoe or hat collection; we have a great pair of shoes for most occasions, but it doesn't fulfill all needs, so we get another pair... and another and another.
This is a product of our consumerist culture. We now treat love and our relationships with people as if they were a cell phone contract... We love them and cherish them, until they start losing some of the services or convenient features. Then we're off to find something better. No where does this consumer mindset teach us about committing to things, even when they're not exactly how we want them to be. As soon as someone no longer makes us happy or has anything to offer to us, we have no reason to love them or be with them, spouses, friends, and offspring all included.
The literal ideas behind "free love" and "polyamor" should be taken for exactly as they're written... We should freely give our love and not require a price from others to have it. We should not just love many (poly-) but all (panamor?).
I believe that once we stop viewing and treating our human relationships as just another transaction to build ourselves up, make us feel better and happy, and a way for us to get the most out of life, Capitalism may indeed then topple on its face.
Again: For Capitalism to crumble, start serving others and stop serving yourself.
For more on how consumerism has affected our collective psyche with human relationships, check out The Trouble With Paris, either the 4 video episodes, or the book:
http://www.thetroublewithparis.com.au/
http://www.powells.com/biblio/62-9780849919992-0
Adam Kelley
A true revolutionary idea: Love does not only exist to make us happy.
Love is not self-seeking. Love is commitment.
Some of the ideas and foundations behind polyamory sound valuable on the surface, but I think that the one major flaw behind it and many other philosophies of life we find in the West is that they're all founded with the idea of how to make life better for ourselves. It's all about us. It takes the idea of love and turns it into something more akin to a shoe or hat collection; we have a great pair of shoes for most occasions, but it doesn't fulfill all needs, so we get another pair... and another and another.
This is a product of our consumerist culture. We now treat love and our relationships with people as if they were a cell phone contract... We love them and cherish them, until they start losing some of the services or convenient features. Then we're off to find something better. No where does this consumer mindset teach us about committing to things, even when they're not exactly how we want them to be. As soon as someone no longer makes us happy or has anything to offer to us, we have no reason to love them or be with them, spouses, friends, and offspring all included.
The literal ideas behind "free love" and "polyamor" should be taken for exactly as they're written... We should freely give our love and not require a price from others to have it. We should not just love many (poly-) but all (panamor?).
I believe that once we stop viewing and treating our human relationships as just another transaction to build ourselves up, make us feel better and happy, and a way for us to get the most out of life, Capitalism may indeed then topple on its face.
Again: For Capitalism to crumble, start serving others and stop serving yourself.
For more on how consumerism has affected our collective psyche with human relationships, check out The Trouble With Paris, either the 4 video episodes, or the book:
http://www.thetroublewithparis.com.au/
http://www.powells.com/biblio/62-9780849919992-0
Anonymous
"We should freely give our love and not require a price from others to have it."
How is this not the very basis of polyamory? The idea that you can love someone, and share that love with them without requiring monogamy from them is the definition of selflessness.
Anonymous
"We should freely give our love and not require a price from others to have it."
How is this not the very basis of polyamory? The idea that you can love someone, and share that love with them without requiring monogamy from them is the definition of selflessness.
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