A men's mag out of its depth

British GQ


This article fumbles with some misconceptions and mediocre reporting, or maybe bad editing (for instance, group marriages have always been just one kind of poly). At least the writer went to CatalystCon and one of Reid Mihalko's workshops, so she was exposed to good stuff even if it didn't always take.

Share the love: the return of polyamory

By Anka Radakovich

Rex Features

...This non-monogamous lifestyle is being explored by a small but growing number of folk who want to date other people while already in a relationship, without being called a cheating asshole. It differs from swinging, which is sex only with no emotion. Polyamory is about falling in love. With a bunch of people.

Formerly known as "group marriage", polyamory has its roots in the free-love movement of the late Sixties and Seventies in California.... Today the term "group marriage" means that you cannot date outside your matrimonial ensemble. With polyamory, you can date other poly people. The official dating policy of people on Planet Polywood is: "It doesn't matter who you go home with, as long as it's one of us."

...Peppermint is a 38-year-old "poly activist" I meet at Catalystcon, a sexuality conference attended by sex therapists and marriage counsellors, who says he has "been in a primary relationship with a woman for ten years, has had a girlfriend of five years, and occasionally hooks up randomly with other couples at swingers' parties". What a deal this guy has. "Polyamory's most crucial departure from monogamy is the area of sexual fidelity," he says. "Multiple romantic attachments is polyamory's resistance to the cultural rules of sexual fidelity."

Reid Mihalko and Allison Moon teach a class at various sex shops in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York including the Pleasure Chest in Los Angeles where I attend their seminar, "Poly-curious 101, Understanding Non-Monogomy. " But before I leave, I brush up on my poly pick-up lines like: "Do you five come here often?"

...Sci-fi guy hands me a brochure from Live The Dream, a support group for those inspired by the writings on polyamory by Robert Heinlein and Robert Rimmer. "Many of our concepts on multiple committed relationships come from the books Stranger In A Strange Land and The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress," the brochure states....

Read the whole article (online March 12, 2014, and in the March 2014 print issue of British GQ).

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