Talk:Polyamory

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Huh?

From the first paragraph "... an umbrella term that encapsulates activities such as swinging and king". King? Is it related royalty or to something I don't understand? MarmotHead (talk) 21:32, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm going to guess that since it's a full rewrite, it's going to have some defcon 5 typos. If I had to guess, they were probably trying to get some kind of mass marriage in there. Ikanreed (talk) 21:37, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

I propose the correct word is "Viking." King Skeleton (talk) 21:41, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm persuaded. MarmotHead (talk) 21:41, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

It was "kink". Sorry folks. --Seth Peck (talk) 20:26, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

One Penis Policy

We seem to be missing a bunch around the "OPP".

Basically, OPP is where there's multiple people, but only one man allowed. Often this is a "corner" with the guy in the middle, i.e., a man with two wives. It can also be a "triangle" with not just a man with two girlfriends, but the girlfriends are also each other's girlfriend. It can also be of the form with a woman in the middle of the corner, where she's partnered with only one man and any number of women. Or really, any possible combination, but the whole "polycule" only has one man. For obvious reasons, the OPP's are not well liked in the rest of the poly world, because, well, it's just a repackaging of the male fantasy, with the implication that the policy is put in place by the man whether or not the others actually desire to have this relationship. CorruptUser 15:37, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Why would they? Whoever wrote this wants to give the fluffy bunny, positive, leftist friendly version of polyamorous relationships where they all work out (and if they don't, well, it wasn't "true" polyamory) since all of the pitfalls of having to deal with multiple people with complex desires and goals aren't explored all that much. The worst part is they don't even have sources such as studies or whatnot to backup some claims or to assuage doubters like me. Instead, it's full of, "Trust me bro" claims with the most egregious being the effect it has on children which it treats as a minor issue even though children are some of the most consequential parts of a relationship and completely change relationship dynamics even in a monogamous relationship due to the care of the child. The gay marriage article is the standard I hold this article (though, even that one could give more sources) to, and in that comparison, it fails big time.-Ryan1257 (talk) 19:10, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Have there actually been any comprehensive studies done on polyamory? Carthage (talk) 19:12, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

I wouldn't know, but I would be flabbergasted if there weren't at least some anthropology studies done on the topic, even if it's mostly the non-progressive friendly version of this phenomenon, polygamy. Point is, the author didn't even try.-Ryan1257 (talk) 19:19, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia lists some, but they suffer from small sample bias and self-reporting. Polyamory is a mostly "hidden community," which negatively impacts research. Also, I'm polyamorous and I've never seen anyone describe any polyamorous relationship not working out as "not polyamorous." Can you give me some examples? Carthage (talk) 19:23, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Admittedly, it could just be arguing semantics on my part. In this article, it says, "Authors and bloggers on the subject will often say that there is no one right way to be polyamorous (or "poly"), but there are several wrong ways (such as being unethical or abusive)", which I feels downplays the negatives such a relationship can bring as just "bad execution". I guess I just get that feeling because the marriage article is not afraid to talk about the pitfalls and abuses that can occur with marriage as well as what comes with these relationships despite supporting its continued existence, so why is this article so afraid to go in-depth with what those "unethical and abusive" polyamorous relationships look like? And I don't want to hear "because we don't want to marginalize them!", I'd rather people be safe and be able to tell what forms abuse can take that's unique to the situation a polyamorous relationship takes place in rather than make activists happy.-Ryan1257 (talk) 19:41, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

That's fair. I found myself in an abusive relationship for two years, and I hid it from the polycule so that I wouldn't alienate my partners from my abuser, also I was afraid of what my abuser would do. Carthage (talk) 19:46, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for understanding, and I'm sorry to hear that. Polyamorous groups, in my opinion, seem to combine aspects of the friend group and intimate relationships which I can see how that brings fulfillment to someone in them. That said, the situation you've just described to me is the nightmare scenario I think of whenever polyamorous relationships devolve into an abusive one. One where the abusive tactics, mind games, codependency, and social isolation that an intimate, monogamous relationship can suffer from get combined with the groupthink, avoidance of being "that" person, and doing everything you can to not disrupt group cohesion that friend relationships can turn abusive from. Arguably, I think it becomes harder to break out of an abusive polyamorous relationship than a monogamous relationship or a friend group since there's a lot more to lose socially the deeper into it you are. And that's not even going into financial, legal, and (in the worst cases) physical issues that the abuse can have on someone. One stalker is a nightmare, a group of them is a horror film. The only other scenario which I could compare this to is an abusive cult. The fact polyamorous relations and cults are often seen together in the public mind, especially with things like leader having sex with and marrying his female followers is no accident.-Ryan1257 (talk) 20:35, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Marriage is a legally binding contract that makes abuse harder to escape than it would be without said contract, hence it being mentioned, and marriage comes to us from a bunch of religious traditions with prescriptive gender roles, which makes it worth mentioning. Polyamory doesn't come with such a legal institution or, for the most part, such an explicitly gender-essentialist heritage. If it did, it probably would be worth mentioning. But it doesn't. It's not a conspiracy. And I don't see how stating "abusive polyamory is a bad execution of polyamory" is anymore fallacious than "abusive monogamous marriage is a bad execution of monogamous marriage" - both seem perfectly fine takes.

Furthermore, the problem of being scared to be "that" person or lose your social support network is not unique to polyamory. In fact that problem is present in many monogamous relationships where partners have come to share friends and extended family to the point that leaving would risk total alienation. Polyamory can suffer from this problem but it can also mitigate it by providing opportunities for people to establish relationships and connections that are outside of that central bubble. For example, my nesting partner has stable romantic and sexual relationships outside of me that also include networks of friends that I don't particularly interact with. This means that if she ever wanted to leave and was worried that things would get messy, she can do so with the knowledge that a significant part of her support network would still be there for her. She may not have the benefit of that were we monogamous.

And your attempt to associate polyamory with violent sex-cults via an appeal to pop-media sets an incredibly bad precedent to say the least. Pop-culture has spent a long time associating gay men with paedophilia and characterising trans-women as perverted sex offenders, so I don't think that is a particularly worthy argument.

Like Carthage I'm happily polyamorous, have been my entire adult life (though some periods have definitely been happier than others!), and I don't know anyone who would claim that abuse doesn't happen in polyamorous settings. Honestly, the idea that people who are pro-polyamory claim that polyamory is a utopia free of abuse strikes me as a fairly obvious strawman. Tikitime2 (talk) 21:46, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

In fairness, Polyamory isn't new, and it's not the default because it's so difficult get to work right. CorruptUser 06:38, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

So in theoretically "monogamous" relationships we can have: abuse, stalking, cheating and - more far more often than anyone would like - actual murder. Governments often provide shelters to protect abused women from their husbands. Marriages often end in separation or divorce.

I don't now if there are any studies which compare monogamy with polygamy in respect of these issues, but I would guess that a polyamorous relationship would need quite a lot of negotiation of boundaries and responsibilities, and I would further imagine that this would reduce the above problems. But all this is speculation from a person who is not involved in that culture.

Nevertheless, I would however be very surprised to learn that polyamorous relationships were objectively worse in respect of most of these issues.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 07:46, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

There is also "de facto" polyamory to consider when it comes to the acceptability family arrangements. "Blended families" have been a thing since even before the invention of divorce and plenty of children are consequently raised in environments where they have more than two care-givers (a dad, a mom, and a step dad for example) and low and behold it doesn't matter so much as whether the kid is being adequately nurtured and having its needs met. Tikitime2 (talk) 19:30, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Divorce was a rarity in the past, at least for the Peasant classes. What did happen a lot was one parent would die young from disease or childbirth, and the other parent would remarry and there'd be a number of step-siblings. Single motherhood was also relatively rare compared to today, but it was actually rather common for marriages to produce a child in the first 7 months. Ironically, one can make a strong argument that The Pill and legal abortions led to more single motherhood, not less. CorruptUser 21:49, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Different human societies have developed quite a few ways of formalizing and unformalizing different relationships. It's easy to imagine that our current system of (often) church-sanctioned pairings is the "standard". But I'm not sure what most of your comments have to do with the subject at hand.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 06:50, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

The point is that "polyamorous house-holds" are far from unique when it comes to child-care arrangements involving more than two people - even in modern liberal society. The relative "harms" that a young person might have experienced growing up in, for example, a blended family will typically come from the conflicts leading up to and during the divorce... not the incidental fact that they ended up with two "dads" and a "mum". There is simply no reason, outside of a conservative fetish for the nuclear family, to speculate that more than one female or one male care-giver will significantly harm the social/emotional well-being of children. Tikitime2 (talk) 15:41, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Rewriting this

Ok, it seems this article needs a SERIOUS overhaul. Some areas to fix...

1) There's very little quality citations. No, some blog doesn't count. 2) It reads like a fluff piece; while we shouldn't denigrate people for having unusual lifestyles, we shouldn't blindly promote them either. 3) None of the drawbacks or issues are given any attention; there's reasons why poly relationships are not the default for humans, at least beyond a tribal level.

Any other things we need to focus on? CorruptUser 06:43, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

There's a reason? Pretty sure that's questionable. As Tikitime says, none of the problems listed with polyamory are unique to polyamory. Also the "tribal level" is a pretty questionable metric too. What type of "tribe" are we talking about? The Arabs have "tribes" but are also a fully fledged civilization. Polyamory can also be advantageous in some respects, if a partner is abused they can leave that partner and still not lose at least some of their social circle. That's not necessarily a guarantee in an abusive monogamous relationship, as Tikitime puts it. Carthage (talk) 06:48, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

I also question the utility of "tribal level" as overgeneralizing and also a colonialist construct. Even socially complex and stratified kingdoms in Africa often get called "tribal" to the point that the word loses all meaning beyond simply "any culture perceived as primitive by outside observers." The Arab "tribes" are more like kinship groupings, and are very different from the hunter-gatherer bands of the Inuit or the kingdoms of the Sahel. Carthage (talk) 06:57, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm with Carthage. It doesn't need an overhaul. It's fine as it is though we could do with some more academic references, Elizabeth Sheriff's work is mentioned just once here but she's done plenty of other studies and surveys of polyamorous life in the west. If I have time when I go on my next editing sprint I'll look at some of her other stuff in. But going point by point.

1. This doesn't necessitate a re-write. The bulk of this article simply outlines what polyamorous people believe and for that, blogposts are reasonable primary sources. That said, for other claims, if people have better sources they can take it upon themselves to add them.
2. Nowhere in this article do we "promote" a polyamorous lifestyle. Though we say things like "feelings like jealousy and envy are not shunned"... where we should say "many polyamourists such as X believe that feelings like jealousy and envy are not to be shunned" as it is misleading to suggest that all poly-people exemplify "best practise".
3. Acceptance of gay people isn't the default around the world today - that is no reason to believe that it is a particularly "problematic lifestyle". Nor is it clear to me, as Carthage indicated, how many of the "problems" polyamorous people supposedly face are actually unique to polyamory. And while there are challenges unique to individuals pursuing polyamory, there are challenges unique to indiviudals pursuing monogamous marriage. People who come to these articles want an over-view of the topic not life-advice on what kind of relationship structure is best for them.

If there are serious moral and social problems stemming from polyamory then they should be examined in this article but looking to create a section on unspecified "issues" seems to be putting the cart before the horse. I also question the balance-fallacy-esque approach that thinks an article on polyamory must necessarily contain criticisms or drawbacks of it as a "life-style" for it to be considered good quality.

Tikitime2 (talk) 16:22, 8 October 2023 (UTC)