Good poly spokesperson salvages a dumb TV news report

WPIX-11 TV (New York)
Daily Mail Online


Open Love NY is one of the largest and, as far as I can tell, best-organized local poly groups anywhere. Its leaders have shown how to make waves in a city of 8 million right since its founding in 2008. Last week OLNY's current president, Gette Levy, represented us well in the midst of an otherwise mediocre TV news report. Thank you.



This aired on New York's WPIX-11 TV on April 2. Here's the text on the segment's page, condensed from what aired:

Polyamorous community discusses balance, relationships in New York City

HELL'S KITCHEN, Manhattan — Open Love NY is one of the largest support groups for the polyamorous community in the country. They meet on a regular basis in Hell’s Kitchen [named when it was a slum; now gentrified. –Ed.].

“Polyamory for me is when you engage in multiple romantic and sexual relationships at the same time,” explained the group’s president Gette Levy.

Levy believes polyamory is part of her identity.

“I felt very awkward through puberty I was attracted to multiple people at the same time, I got a lot of social cues that I should be jealous or that it was wrong for me to like multiple people at the same time I should be searching for that one person and that never happened for me.”

Today, Levy leads Open Love NY discussions on balancing time, family, and multiple partners. Levy opened up to PIX11 about her own love life.

“Me and my girlfriend have been together for 6 years, my boyfriend and I have been together for 3 and in the intermediary I’ve had partners of multiple years.”

The polyamorous community is growing in numbers and in visibility. Earlier this year, online dating site OkCupid added a feature for non-monogamous daters. In March, DIRECT TV launched the first poly-romantic series, You Me Her.

But Dr. Helen Fisher points out, “sharing a spouse or partner is difficult for the human animal, we are not built for it.”

Dr. Fisher is a biological anthropologist, she built a career studying how humans fall in love. Dr. Fisher found there’s another side of polyamory.

“It’s largely jealousy, its largely wanting to know what happened where.”

“And they’ve got rules. And maybe they’ve decided not to ask each other any of the details because that just pulls up more jealousy and more perhaps anger.”

---------------------------

Just this afternoon we saw one outcome of OLNY's years of community organizing. Today's Daily Mail Online features, flatteringly, a woman who turned her life around when she discovered the polyamorous possibility through the New York community.

Not that the Daily Mail is a stellar showcase for anything — it's one of the rags that give the British press its bad name — but still.

Polyamorous woman with a 'history of serial infidelity' whose marriage ended after she cheated on her husband tells how she found happiness with multiple sexual partners

By Miranda Bryant

A relationship coach with a 'history of serial infidelity' and whose marriage ended after less than four years has told how she found happiness through polyamory.

Effy Blue, 35, who lives in New York, was born in Turkey and raised in the UK, said her relationships used to end badly because she would fall in love then cheat on her partner — which contributed to the breakdown of her marriage.

...But after moving to the US, Effy said she started exploring her 'kinky side' and discovered that it was possible to have multiple partners.

Effy, who used to work for a marketing agency, also changed her career to become a relationship coach that specializes in helping couples who are 'either transitioning or curious about ethical non-monogamy'.

She declined to disclose how many partners she currently has but said one is a man who is soon getting married. Through their relationship she said she has also become close friends with his fiancee.

...She said: 'I stumbled into the poly community in New York and met a bunch of people who're in all different types of relationships, happy, satisfied and doing a very good job. I became very close to some of them, some friends, my support family.

She said finding a community of like-minded people helped her to learn about her sexuality....

The whole article (May 11, 2016).

Good job, organizers. "It is not given to us to know the fruits of our efforts"; we have to do them on faith. Keep the faith.

[Permalink]