Polyamory in the News: U.K. lesbians look at poly history and practice

The Most Cake calls itself "the chic-yet-undeniably-geeky lovechild of a new generation of London lesbians having their cake and eating it too." Here it delves into lesbian poly history and practice.

When your girlfriend wants two girlfriends

By Lucy Peters

...That’s the version of romance you hear about in pop music and romantic comedies, literature and magazine problem pages: that if you choose right, you can find one person to offer you companionship and sex, financial stability and children, along with red roses on Valentines’ Day.

This idea has persisted through the rise of feminism, which allowed many women to escape the need for male financial and legal protection, and the gay rights movement, which turned mainstream notions of sex and love upside down.

...But over the last couple of decades, more and more people have been opting for something slightly different…

The word ‘polyamory’ appeared for the first time in 1992, in a Usenet newsgroup post by Jennifer L. Wesp, who was credited when, in 2006, it was added to the Oxford English Dictionary. The definition was based on a 1990 essay by a pagan writer called Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart about her relationships...

Polyamory originated at the same time as queer theory, the strand of academia that brought feminism and gay rights issues together in books like Gender Trouble by Judith Butler. Like queer theory, polyamory had radical notions about how people might arrange their sex lives, and like queer theory, it was spearheaded by women....

Its first and most famous handbook, The Ethical Slut by Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy, was published in the US in 1997, and though (unlike in more recent books and online guides to polyamory) the focus was more on sex than relationships, the book clarified the distinction between polyamory and cheating, was inclusive of some queer identities, and approached topics, like jealousy and scheduling, that are still key discussion points.... Arguably, it rode the wave of gay and feminist political movements, as they worked to change social attitudes to gender and sexuality, but its philosophy might not have influenced so many people if it hadn’t also been published pretty much at the dawn of the digital age.... If I set my filters to find queer, non-monogamous women living in or near London, I end up with a long list: if I went on dates with them all at a rate of one per week, I’d be busy for the next three years.

According to the BBC, polyamory, with its focus on honesty and flexible approach to intimacy, is ‘the next frontier’ of our romantic lives...

...It might not be obvious that this can be a politically radical way to organise relationships. But for queer poly people, there are clear links between seeing your gender and sexuality as political and organising your relationships along polyamorous lines....