Love's New Frontier

It's so delightful to know that media interest in polyamory has grown to the point that we can pretty much expect to see at least four even-handed articles on the subject in major publications every year, plus dozens more lower profile articles and broadcast media events.

The latest example of this trend appeared in Sunday's Boston Globe Magazine, a thoroughly researched and accurately written article entitled Love's New Frontier complete with video of Alan and Michelle Wexelblat, long-time fixtures in the Boston Poly group and community. I had the pleasure of sitting on a Poly 101 panel at November's Transcending Boundaries conference in Worcester, Massachusetts, with Michelle, a social worker and experienced polywoman who really knows her stuff.

Other members of the Boston poly community, including my good friend Valerie White of the the Sexual Freedom Legal Defense and Education Fund, paint an entirely accurate picture of what it's like to be polyamorous. It was also wonderful to see a quote from Atlanta-based Elizabeth Sheff, one of the leaders of the growing community of researchers who are studying polyamorists and poly families. 

If I have any nits to pick, it's that I could have done without the erroneous speculation of women's studies prof. Valerie Sperling that poly women tend to be more closeted because of fear of being considered slutty, whereas a man wouldn't be judged so harshly and have to fear being socially castigated. That's an old societal double standard, no doubt, but there are way too many out poly women for that to hold much water. I just don't see it happening, and it's highly unlikely that it had anything to do with a shortage of women who were willing to be quoted for the article. I'm surprised it was that difficult, though admittedly it's easier if you aren't confining the search to one particular area.

In reality the most visible leaders of the polyamory movement are women, something about which I am most definitely delighted. In fact, it is generally believed by some male poly activists that they will not be taken seriously and will instead be dismissed as horn dogs using polyamory as a get-out-of-jail free card to cheat on their partners - open and honest relating being still considered cheating by those who see anything other than monogamy as cheating, including open, consensual outside relationships. I've heard this knee-jerk assertion made about poly men many times, largely by people who feel threatened by the concept of polyamory and compelled to try to discredit it.

Also quoted in the article is Boston area clinical psychologist and poly-friendly therapist Randi Kaufman, who clearly knows what she's talking about. I had the pleasure of meeting and chatting with her at Transcending Boundaries as well. I also loved sex therapist Gina Ogden's quote, whom I met when she presented workshops at Building Bridges, the ITCR conference I co-produced that was held in the Boston area in 2005.  What a wonderful abundance of knowledge about and experience with polyamory there is to be had in the Boston area!

Kudos to journalist Sandra A. Miller for casting a broad net and writing an article that is rich in credibility and authenticity.  She even made sure to speak to Ethical Slut co-author Dossie Easton. 

NCSF Rocks

The annual Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco is pretty much the granddaddy of the BDSM Leather Fetish celebrations. The National Coalition for Sexual Freedom just published the following letter from a very satisfied constituent, i.e. Demetri Moshoyannis, the Folsom Street Fair Executive Director. Helping out with incidents like this is what NCSF does best.

I spent a year as a member of the NCSF Board of Directors, and it was my pleasure to get to know and learn a thing or two from Leigha Flemming (Incident Response Coordinator who wears many other hats as well), founder and media maven Susan Wright, past board chair and loyal, long-time ultra-committed supporter Vivienne Kramer. Since that time the Institute for 21st Century Relationships, which I co-founded with my partner, Jim Fleckenstein, became NCSF's foundation, and now Jim and the NCSF folks are working together to make the US and world safer for people who engage in alternative forms of sexual and relationship expression.

So here's Mr. Moshoyannis's letter of thanks for NCSF's work in helping Folsom Street Fair field an onslaught of attacks from religious extremists who tried over and over to shut down the festival.

Kudos to NCSF!

Moshoyannis writes:

For over a year now, Folsom Street Events has been under attack by anti-gay and religious right groups from across the country. The attacks have been relentless. They have threatened our major sponsorships, picketed our events, called upon public officials to denounce us, and rallied their troops against our community. As a small organization with only two staff members, we do not have the capacity to stand up and respond to these continuing assaults.

We contacted the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom to access the Incident response program. Within hours, we spoke with a highly trained and knowledgeable media and PR consultant for support. In addition to her moral support, we received a meticulous training for our Board of Directors and staff, preparing us to better manage these attacks. Also, the program consultant was able to field all media inquiries - and serve as a positive voice for our community - during our events, so that we could focus on our production duties. We can't thank NCSF enough for their good work and for being there when we needed them.

Demetri Moshoyannis
Executive Director
Folsom Street Fair

The Origins of Monogamy and Jealousy

Someone wrote the following to me yesterday.

You obviously have approached this subject with a scholarly bent and seem to know quite a bit. I have thought a lot about it too and I have, from time to time, dabbled in Sociology and Social Psychology. I have a sort of negative, flip-side question for you: what do you think the origins and purposes of monogamy are? For the life of me, I cannot see how monogamy serves any real purpose except to guarantee mates for the less-advantaged males. What do you think?

Well, certainly your observation about monogamy serving to guarantee mates for less-advantaged males is accurate according to Psychology Today.

Most women benefit from polygyny, while most men benefit from monogamy.

When there is resource inequality among men—the case in every human society—most women benefit from polygyny: women can share a wealthy man. Under monogamy, they are stuck with marrying a poorer man.

The only exceptions are extremely desirable women. Under monogamy, they can monopolize the wealthiest men; under polygyny, they must share the men with other, less desirable women. However, the situation is exactly opposite for men. Monogamy guarantees that every man can find a wife. True, less desirable men can marry only less desirable women, but that's much better than not marrying anyone at all.

Men in monogamous societies imagine they would be better off under polygyny. What they don't realize is that, for most men who are not extremely desirable, polygyny means no wife at all, or, if they are lucky, a wife who is much less desirable than one they could get under monogamy.

Once upon a time when there were certainly no DNA tests to confirm paternity, monogamy was intended to guarantee blood lines so that wealth and property was kept in the family. How well that worked in reality is likely another story, but it did give (or was at least was intended to give) men control over who inherited property, since the right of women to own property is a much more recent development.

Monogamy's origins are also firmly rooted in Europe and the Catholic church. The church enforced monogamy as an aspect of virtue according to the gospel of St. Paul and other biblical sources who believed that Eve seduced Adam into sin and so women needed to be dominated and controlled to save them from sin. This also served to help men avoid feelings of jealousy by keeping their women to themselves, and women bought into it as well, perceiving that they preferred to keep their men to themselves, even as they were attracted to other men and tempted to stray - just as, in reality, were their men. The church declared that temptation to stray was a sin, and that monogamy was divinely mandated. Again, this was the church's way of controlling its parishoners and maintaining it's own power and authority.

From an evolutionary biological standpoint, humans are programmed to pair bond for the raising of children, though anthropologists believe we have never done so entirely monogamously. There is a reproductive advantage to spreading one's reproductive resources around to others, generally others perceived to be healthy - which explains why men in particular are so attracted to women younger than they. We women have a finite number of eggs and a finite number of years in which to put them to use - not so for men.

Next we throw into the mix the matter of sexual jealousy. This is not even remotely new in evolutionary terms and is believed to have developed as a further means of keeping parents together for the raising of children, especially in order to see that children are protected and provided for at least until they are out of the cradle. Some anthropologists assert that this explains why biologically limerence, that "in love" rush of emotions, eventually wears off, preparing us to then be attracted to others so as to continue to spread reproductive resources around to other attractive, i.e. reproductively viable, partners.

For more on all this, see the book references on the website for the Institute for 21st Century Relationships, specifically here and here.

I recommend the works of anthropologist Helen Fisher, especially her book "Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray", as well as the book "Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World: Regulating Desire, Reforming Practice" by Wiesner-Hanks.

Sexual jealousy makes monogamy seem like a good idea, yet we are just as biologically programmed to stray outside the pair bond to further guarantee perpetuation of our species. In other words, it is normal to want to keep our partner to ourselves while we decline to remain monogamous ourselves. It seems that human evolution is entirely focused on outcomes and is not concerned with the internal conflict it may create in attaining them.

In my work with polyamorous people on resolving jealousy, I have encountered a few who are honest enough to fully admit that they want to be with others but are not willing to share their partner with others while admitting that it is unfair. A very few bisexual folks with straight partners take this approach as well, pointing out a need for one of each as justification for being with more than one while their straight partner has no such right or imperative. In both cases the motivation is to avoid feelings of jealousy while getting their need for variety met. These folks are definitely in the minority, at least as to their willingness to admit to these rationalizations. The vast majority of non-monogamous people share these feelings but are much more philosophically egalitarian. They choose to deal with concerns about jealousy more directly, by doing internal emotional work, communicating with their partner(s) about their feelings, and in so doing finding ways to minimize or resolve their feelings in a way that is fair to everyone.

Is an Alliance between Polyamorists and Patriarchal Polygamists Likely?

In the vein of politics making strange bedfellows, forming political alliances for specifically delineated, carefully considered purposes has been historically proven to have its benefits. There certainly exist several fairly strong rational arguments that can be made for teaming up with patriarchal polygamists ("PPs"). Regardless, alliance with PPs would surely provoke an outcry in much of the feminist, egalitarian-minded polyamory community. Huge differences in community values exist that are next to impossible to simply dismiss or ignore.

People are indeed passionate about violation of their community values. Rather than coming from the rational mind, these are very much matters of the heart. So it is that rational strategy and closely-held values come in conflict here.

The problem with an alliance with PPs is that their form of non-monogamy grossly violates what I'll refer to as the spirit of polyamory ("SOP") as highly valued within the poly community itself. Note that there are many people practicing polyamory who are not denizens of the poly community - in some cases because they don't share the social POV that at least in part underpins the SOP.

I know of no organization that is in the process of forming an alliance with PPs. As a practical matter, the poly community supports no organization sufficiently to have influence over what any does. If Woodhull Freedom Foundation or or LovingMore or World Polyamory Association want to ally themselves with PPs, with enough horsepower and sufficient strategy they can certainly do it. No one can stop them (though to be fair, LovingMore probably has the most at stake.)

Whomever contemplates this approach would be well advised to both plan carefully how to explain the political expedience of it to feminist polys who highly value egalitarianism - and there are many, many of those – as well as be prepared to come under considerable criticism as they likely go it alone. Inclusiveness being also a closely held poly community value, that argument may persuade some - it would be interesting to see if it succeeded.

I'm not usually a skeptic, but on this question for purely pragmatic reasons I just don't see polyamory community support for an alliance with PPs happening anytime soon. The squick factor is just too significant. Perhaps an appeal to self-identified polys who live outside the poly community would get more traction.