Polyamory in the News is back. Why we've been away. And lots of new coverage.
Okay, we're back.
Polyamory in the News was on pause for several months for a tragic reason.
Two years ago my wife Abby Hafer, "Sparkle Moose," was diagnosed with
advanced ovarian cancer. We held it at bay for a year and a half, thanks to
Harvard's world-beating Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. But her
cancer was a fast-evolving ecology of mutating cells. As an evolutionary
biologist she knew what that implied. It finally evolved around every
barrier and broke through our defensive lines.
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In her final months, Abby chose home hospice care until nearly the end. The
nurses taught us to do all the things. I camped on the living-room floor
next to her hospital bed for companionship as much as for care. On the night
of July 30th we moved by ambulance to the Care Dimensions hospice house. I
snuggled next to her there and eventually drifted off. Around 4 a.m. a nurse
gently wiggled me awake: "She has passed." She was warm as life under my
arm, but utterly motionless, unresponsive, still. It was as if she had
simply decided it was time to switch off the lights. She was 67. We were
together 29 years.
Abby was extraordinary: a PhD zoologist, professor of human anatomy and
physiology to nursing students, a loud and proud feminist atheist, and an
in-demand comic-educational speaker championing reality, nature, and reason
against religious malarky and disinformation. She wrote two books,
The Not-So-Intelligent Designer: Why evolution explains the human body and intelligent design does
not,
and Darwin's Apostles: The men who fought to have evolution accepted, their times, and how
the battle continues (with David Orenstein). And chapters in Women v. Religion, The Case Against Miracles, Christianity in the Light
of Science,
and the massive Oxford Handbook of Humanism. She was recruited
to be a director of the American Humanist Association;
memorial article
in its magazine. The author classes her with "luminaries like Carl Sagan,
Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett".
Along with me Abby cofounded
The Polyamory Foundation,
which makes grants to projects that advance understanding and recognition of
ethical poly. She immersed herself in nature, adventure, friends, dear
heart-sharers, our beloved Unitarian-Universalist church, sci-fi cons, and
other interests too many to list. Her superpower was putting people together
who ought to know about each other.
The closing line that she chose to be the coda for her life was Louis
Armstrong's song "What a Wonderful World". She was the best thing that ever happened to me.
So that is why I've been out of commission. Now I'm getting my mojo
back.
------------------------------------
● Let's start with this big, upbeat Sunday newspaper feature:
Forget love triangles. Meet the ‘polycule’ with 80 people in it.
The article paints our nearby city of Somerville, Massachusetts, as the
poly-friendly capital of the world. (Seattle, Portland or the Bay Area might
disagree.) The story appeared far away: in the UK's
Sunday Times Magazine (online Sept. 4, print edition Sept. 7), with
this idyllic illustration of a Somerville neighborhood. Open it in a new tab to enlarge for
details.
|
| Janne Iivonen |
.
.Polyamory is on the rise — especially in one US city where romantic partners have organised themselves into ever expanding networks. Yes, it can get complicated.
By Megan AgnewOn a suburban street in Somerville, Massachusetts, there is a white clapboard house with a note next to the doorbell. “If no answer at No 3 please ring No 4,” it reads. “And vice versa.”On the top floor lives Jay, 56. In the bedroom next door is his partner of 12 years, Ash, 44. Next door again is Ash’s husband of 19 years, Chris, also 44. Chris spends a lot of time in the connected apartment downstairs where his “sweetie”, Cal, 36, lives. Ash also has a boyfriend more than 3,000 miles away in California (they date over video calls), as well as a “sweetie” over the state border in Connecticut. Jay has another partner 1,000 miles away in Chicago. And he recently split up with a live-in girlfriend who has moved out. Are you keeping up?...Somerville, a northern suburb of Boston, is the most polyamory-friendly city in America, a haven for people and their girlfriends, boyfriends, spouses, “them-friends”, “hunnies” and “sweeties”. It’s a left-leaning place with “smut slam” dirty poetry readings in church halls and yonic sculptures on front lawns. With the universities of Harvard and MIT down the road, this is where people thrash out the politics of relationships, creating an experimental idyll away from the confines and pitfalls of monogamy.In 2023 it became the first city in America to legally protect people in polyamorous relationships against discrimination. Three years earlier the city had extended the definition of a “domestic partnership” to include relationships involving more than two people. This grants nontraditional families similar rights and privileges as married couples under city law.... It has made Somerville the Las Vegas of polyamory, with poly people from around the country travelling to its city hall to obtain domestic partnership certificates..
.
(You don't have to live in Somerville to get one of those, though its
validity might not be recognized elsewhere.)
.
.I spent a week in Somerville, a tight-knit small world made even smaller by the fact that so many people in “the community” are dating each other, or have done. Meet the polys.--------------------------Jay, an IT consultant and self-confessed computer nerd, grew up in suburban New Jersey and became interested in polyamory at the age of ten after reading Robert A. Heinlein sci-fi books featuring sexually promiscuous open marriages. His first teenage relationship was nonmonogamous. “I was poly before poly was a term,” he says, blue hair tied back, maroon nail varnish on his toes....He moved to Somerville in the mid-1990s to find many people he knew coalescing around Boston’s university hub — either tech nerds he’d met in online chatrooms or those who attended the sci-fi conventions he would frequent. Large numbers of them were interested in polyamory.“We had all independently been working on this thing [polyamory], and we found each other and we had a lot to talk about,” he says. He started attending casual poly meet-ups in people’s homes, applying the same academic rigour to discussions about romance as they did to technology. “How do you handle jealousy? How do you handle getting a new partner when you’ve had one for a while?”--------------------------...Jealousy can be a problem, Ash admits, recalling the arguments when one of Jay’s girlfriends moved in during Covid soon after they first occupied the property: “I was mad as I thought he and I were gonna get a nesting period. And then there was this other person around who was very exciting and sparkly and taking a lot of his time.”Tensions mounted over sleeping arrangements: Jay’s partners had their own bedrooms and he was switching between the two, without a room of his own. “There were points when each of them was, like, ‘Go away, I want to have the bed to myself,’ ” he says. “And points where each of them was, like, ‘I want you and I’m not getting enough cuddle time with you.’ So there were continuous adjustments. We say often in poly that love is infinite but time is not.”Many of the people I speak to share complicated Google calendars with their various partners to co-ordinate schedules.--------------------------...“There’s a popular view that polyamory should only be nonhierarchical, seen as the purest, most progressive and equitable, almost social justice-oriented,” says Jennifer Schneider, a Massachusetts-based relationship therapist.Others find this oddly prescriptive. Kathy Labriola, 70, was at the centre of the gay rights movement at Berkeley in the 1960s and 1970s, and is in two concurrent romantic relationships, each 50 years long. “There is no utopian way or morally or ethically ‘right’ way to be polyamorous,” she says. “It’s strange and ironic to me that some of these folks who are so into this nonhierarchical model are so puritanical and judgmental about it. It makes the individual king.”--------------------------...Willie Burnley Jr, 31, a socialist [city] councillor and polyamorous mayoral candidate for Somerville, rejects any hierarchy in any relationship and describes himself as a “relationship anarchist”. We meet at the Diesel Cafe, a famous meeting point for poly folk in the area.
Burnley was “ardently and passionately monogamous” until 2015, when he had a shattering heartbreak. “I felt so bad that the relationship failed,” he says. “I realised the monogamous view of romance was very self-destructive. I realised my most important relationship is with myself. And frankly I’m a bit indulgent — I don’t like the idea of denying myself something that I want and could potentially have, just because society says no.”Surely there are some hierarchies in his relationships — is he closer to some friends than others? “Oh, certainly,” he replies. “But saying that you’re closer with someone isn’t saying that you will always be closer to someone.” Isn’t this just an exercise in semantics? “No, it’s an exercise in building life in the way that you want to build your life.”We walk out of the café and on to the street. “They’re another person in the community,” he says, waving to someone loading their shopping into the car. Does polyamory get complicated in a small place? “Oh, certainly.”--------------------------...In another suburban home about ten minutes’ walk from the high street is another polycule. Ryan Malone, 39, a biochemist, lives here with his girlfriend, Emily, 31, a veterinary nurse. “Four cats is too many,” says Malone, 39, as their pets go scampering down corridors covered in fake vines, psychedelic art and fairy lights.Emily has a girlfriend, Anna, living nearby, whom she met while Anna was dating Malone, a bouncing labrador of a man with a jaunty quiff and bright blue patchwork denim trousers. Among Malone’s many lovers is a “comet” partner in Toronto — so called because they only see each other about four times a year — another lover, Marissa, and a married woman in Vermont who has children aged 11 and 9. “I’m like an uncle to the kids,” Malone says. “She’s very open about it, they know that their mom’s poly. The oldest son and I read the same books and play chess together.”In an apartment upstairs live Nick and his “nesting partner”, Kit; they’re both 39 and trying for a baby. Kit is an occasional romantic/sexual partner of Malone and also has a number of other lovers....“There are probably over 80 of us in our polycule,” Malone says. One member — “a data nerd at Harvard” — tried to build a 3D map of all their romantic connections but it got so convoluted that it stopped being able to show information meaningfully. “It was just showing how complicated everything was,” Malone adds.How does he manage having so many partners? “I have a comfort with complexity,” he says, grinning widely.--------------------------...Their polycule was “formed after a failed orgy”, Kit says. “A bunch of us rented a cabin, one person didn’t get the memo and invited some co-workers. We had to wait each night until they went to bed before the shenanigans could happen. It was very awkward. But we were, like, OK, we have to be more intentional about this.”...Though their polycule doesn’t have formal membership, people have to be vetted and sometimes interviewed before attending a party or meet-up. “We try to find out if this person has any history of problematic behaviour in terms of consent violations,” says Kit, one of the main organisers. “For example, we found out one person would constantly drag people in to dance [on a dancefloor] and not take no for an answer. And we’re, like, that’s kind of a red flag. It shows that you just don’t really respect someone’s bodily autonomy.”Another person who organises social events in Somerville, who wanted to remain anonymous, tells me it can be a “slow and selective process” to make friends here.“You almost need ten references for whether you’re going to be invited to a group hangout,” they tell me. “There is also this social ostracism, this call-out culture, which I’m not sure is as productive as people often hope it is. Every so often there will be a Facebook post that circulates that’s, like, ‘Just so everyone knows, this person did this thing on this date and I no longer feel safe around them and you shouldn’t either.’ It feels like we’re boycotting people the same way we boycott companies.”--------------------------...“Seeing others has been really inspirational — you can do something weird and out there and have a loving family,” Nick says. In fact the sense of community the polycule provides was one of the reasons he decided to have children in the first place. It takes a village to raise a child, after all. “What stressed me out about monogamous relationships is that you had to be co-parents, lovers, owners of a home, friends all in alignment. And if one stops working, then that’s a problem that could crater the whole relationship. Being able to not need all of those things, all the time, from one person feels very freeing.”--------------------------...[James] has since learnt there are two types of people who enter polyamory: those who feel it has always been innate and generally find it easy, and those who have to unlearn everything they thought they knew and battle through extreme discomfort, after which, he insists, comes a sort of nirvana. James was in the latter group, reading books and listening to podcasts and talking and talking, trying to reason his way through the jealousy and fear.“I felt like I was on fire all the time, in both a good way and a bad way,” he says. “I went through a long process of figuring out why these things were so upsetting and then changing myself so they were not upsetting any more.” ....
.
● That
article must have been successful for
the Times, because three weeks later the paper
followed up with Everyone could learn from polyamory — and I should know (Sept. 27)
.
.By Leon Craig
...After getting burnt by non-monogamy, in the past year I’ve somewhat reluctantly hung up the glittery fairy wings and am now prioritising a more traditional arrangement — or at least the lesbian approximation of that. Still, I miss the ready influx of strangers into my life, with exciting anecdotes and new perspectives — one strong reason for my not being monogamous for so long was that I like meeting new people and feel a strong curiosity about what makes them tick. I’ve built a good number of genuine connections from dates and hook-ups.
Instead of regretting time wasted, I hope that what I’ve learnt practising non-monogamy will stay with me into the future. What has been helpful was being made to look at all the individual components of a relationship, from sexuality to cohabitation to finances, and to assess individually what I wanted those to look like, instead of receiving a set of assumptions and just going with those. ....
.
● More Somerville:
Two weeks after the UK Times ran that story, a more thoroughly reported deep news feature appeared in the magazine of
the student-run Harvard Crimson: Love and the Law: A Look at Polyamorous Camberville (Oct. 18). "Camberville" is localspeak for Cambridge and Somerville;
they're socially similar and share a long border.
I'll get more into this one in my next post, coming up soon, but there's the link
for now.
● A fifth municipality to enact poly rights? West Hollywood Considers Recognizing Polyamorous Relationships in
Domestic Partnership Ordinance (WEHO Times, June 18). It would follow Somerville,
Cambridge, Oakland, and Berkeley.
.
.By Paul MurilloThe West Hollywood [CA] City Council is set to consider updating its domestic partnership ordinance to allow for legal recognition of polyamorous relationships, including throuples and other non-traditional family structures.
...This proposal follows a related initiative by Mayor John Erickson, who earlier this year introduced a measure to amend the city’s nondiscrimination ordinance to prohibit discrimination based on family or relationship structure. That measure was approved in May and is currently under legal review.If adopted, the update to the domestic partnership ordinance would complement the non-discrimination amendment and expand legal protections to residents engaged in diverse relationship structures....The West Hollywood City Attorney’s office will lead the legal review, with assistance from city staff. The proposed directive is expected to have minimal fiscal impact and will not require significant staff time. ...
Update October 30: Action still pending.
● LGBTQ+ partners in polyamorous relationships are slowly winning
legal recognition and rights (LGBTQ Nation, July 2). It's a quick review of the
state of play.
Poly partnerships have always existed. A new generation of activists is fighting to protect them and their families from social [and legal] stigma. ...
● Normalization, continued. And another new book. Natalie
Davis edits the large, curated Polyamory Today section of Medium, with 74 writers. A year ago she wrote there of
her experiences emerging from the closet: Coming Out as Polyamorous Has Not Been What I Expected (Medium, Aug. 29, 2024). Friends, family, and
employer were not only unshocked, they were mostly uninterested. As poly
becomes normalized, we no longer turn heads like we did.
“Hey, Natalie! It’s so good to see you!”My friend smiled brightly and stood up from the table where she had been scanning the menu. We hugged hard. It had been almost a year since our last lunch.... “So, what’s the writing project you’ve been working on?”...I made myself look at my monogamous friend across the table. “I’m polyamorous, and I’ve been writing a book about that part of my life.”
You can preorder.
Her face showed no change in expression. Had she heard me?I continued, “I gave the first 150 pages to my husband to read. I didn’t realize how anxious I was about whether he would be angry or hurt at the public revelations about our life, but he was supportive and had only a few editorial suggestions.” I smiled nervously and added, “What a relief!”...After a delightful two-hour lunch, we embraced warmly and parted ways.... When I got home, I told my metamour, “I came out as poly at lunch today.”“How did that go?”“Anticlimactic,” I said. ... To be honest, I was a little disappointed.”...My meta mused, “You’re finally in a position in your life where it doesn’t matter to your livelihood who knows, because the morals clause at work doesn’t apply, and you now find out it doesn’t matter. It’s kind of ironic.”------------------------...My married cousin, making polite conversation, had said, “I understand you guys moved into a new house.”“Yes, it’s bigger than we need, but we like the location. We have someone living in the second master bedroom.”“Sounds smart,” he said. “If you don’t mind my asking, who lives with you?” ...“My husband’s girlfriend lives with us,” I said.“Oh, I’m sorry,” he responded, frowning slightly in sympathy.“Don’t be. We’re polyamorous, and she’s my metamour.” I smiled. “She’s great.” ...“Okay,” he said. Then, we talked about his house, his kids, and the upcoming presidential election.------------------------...When my husband’s girlfriend came out as poly to her older married brother, after much angst about doing so, he interrupted her when she started to explain that as her metamour, I was her partner’s partner. He rolled his eyes dismissively. “I know the polyamory lingo.”------------------------When my husband told his boss that he was polyamorous and had a girlfriend, his boss joked, “Is she hot?” Not missing a beat, my husband said, “You can judge for yourself. She’s meeting me at the office happy hour tonight. That’s why I am telling you now.” ....
.
That book she was writing is Saying Yes: My Adventures in Polyamory. Its publication date is January 13, but you can preorder now.
● New novel out: Middle Spoon by Alejandro Varela. From the publisher's
description:
The narrator of Middle Spoon appears to be living the dream: He has a doting husband, two precocious children, all the comforts of a quiet bourgeois life—and a sexy younger boyfriend to accompany him to farmers markets and cocktail parties. But when his boyfriend abruptly dumps him, he spirals into heartbreak for the first time and must confront a world still struggling to understand polyamorous relationships. ...
With a big heart and just the right dose of the anxieties that define the modern era, Middle Spoon skewers the unspoken rules we still live by ...offering a surprising perspective on love, loss, and reinvention. ....
.
From a review by Thane Tierney on Book Page:
.
....The narrator ruminates: “Maybe there’s something worthwhile in unorthodox relationships and atypical family structures. Maybe the world should adapt to us and not us to it.” His nearly unshakable faith in the viability of this belief forms the beating heart of this funny, perceptive and ultimately gratifying love story..
.
If you've read the book (I haven't) send me your thoughts
(alan7388@gmail.com) and I may add them here.
● An indie film has been making news: Splitsville: A Comedic Proof of Polyamorous Dysfunctions (High On Films, July 13). This film presents a caustic,
mocking view:
.
.It’s glossy, slightly smug, and packed with styled emotions, echoing the trend of self-consciousness we’ve been cultivating—but Splitsville works, mostly because it doesn’t ask you to believe in the couple, but rather laugh with the confusion. Michael Angelo Covino seems to be working toward a doctorate in infidelity and distraught breakups (within romance, at least), letting friendship run alongside and strain under the weight of love’s detritus. Friendships are messy, unfiltered, and strangely durable. Somehow, friendship survives the wreckage romance leaves behind....What’s most effective here is that the script refuses to deepen its characters too much. ....
.
● Another new indie film: Michael Doshier Talks Throuple and Why Polyamorous
Stories Matter (Instinct, July 13)
.
.Following a successful theatrical run in New York and Los Angeles, Throuple – a raw and refreshingly honest film from writer, star, and queer indie musician Michael Doshier – is now available to stream on major platforms including Dekkoo, Amazon, and iTunes.Loosely inspired by Doshier’s own life, Throuple follows a lonely gay singer-songwriter who finds himself romantically entangled with a married couple while fearing he’s losing his lifelong best friend to her new girlfriend. As he navigates the complexities of desire, jealousy, and shifting relationships, he’s forced to confront what he truly wants from love, and from himself....Rather than reducing polyamory to a gimmick, Throuple explores non-monogamy as a valid and deeply human structure, and since its festival debut, the film has struck a powerful chord – particularly with queer and polyamorous audiences.At its heart, Throuple is about connection, and Instinct recently caught up with Doshier to talk more about the pivotal moment he realized these personal experiences from his life needed to be told on screen. ....
.
● Another upbeat local-focus piece: How a Canberra couple built a community around consensual
non-monogamy (HerCanberra, Oct. 1)
.
.“We can’t remember who brought it up exactly, but we both have always had wonderful communication, and we started having a lot of feelings which – looking back – were compersive feelings,” says Abbey....Abbey realised that she liked the idea of Liam being intimate with other women (and vice versa), and the couple began thinking seriously about the logistics of taking the fantasy into the real world while maintaining their deep, connected bond....Luckily, they were living in New York at the time – where there’s a thriving non-monogamous community – and it was easy to anonymously discover what they really wanted. ... They spent their twenties in New York – coming home only to get married and live in Sydney for six months before jetting off again – surrounding themselves with an open and like-minded community where they were free to explore.But everything changed when they decided to move back to Canberra to raise their young son.From private conversations to public platformArriving back in Canberra at the end of 2019, it was while reconnecting with old friends and chatting about relationships ... that Abbey realised there might be a space for her to share her stories as someone in a consensual non-monogamous relationship.When she decided to tell friends and family about how she and Liam approach their marriage, their response shocked her.“To my surprise, they were really open-minded and curious, and they wanted to know more about it,” says Abbey.“So, I started a little private Instagram page....Writing about her own experiences with Liam and sharing her perspectives on the topic, as more women requested to follow her, Abbey decided to launch The Evolving Love Project – a public Instagram page and Substack where she dives into the dynamics, emotions and everything else involved in open relationships.Touching on topics that range from motherhood to navigating married life beyond the norms of monogamy, Abbey began building a community of those practising or interested in non-monogamous relationships in Canberra and the surrounding region.
Abbey and Liam (Jeremy Wikner photo)
From there, the logical next step was the Evolving Love podcast.“I started hosting women’s circles – conversation evenings about these different concepts. Then we opened it up and started having conversation nights for anyone interested,” Abbey explains.“It’s a beautiful way to meet people interested in the non-monogamous environment, through a purely conversational lens… it has been a wonderful experience. We’ve had many people reach out to us or email me about my writing that we decided to start a podcast.”...“I think without compersion, even from a values perspective, there’s no real point to non-monogamy.”Building community and changing conversationsSupported by friends and family as well as the community they’ve built, Abbey and Liam are proud to have created a safe space for those interested in consensual non-monogamous relationships to explore this nuanced topic....“It doesn’t feel like it’s as taboo as it used to be, but that also might just be me living in a bubble. But it’s all about the importance of sharing stories. Storytelling is so important, and by podcasting and writing, we’re destigmatising it.” ....
.
● Also from Australia: It’s official: Melbourne is in the world’s most polyamory-friendly
country (Beat Magazine,"Melbourne's voice in music, arts &
culture", Oct. 2).
That title is an overclaim. This project surveyed only 17 countries, the sponsor was a London adult-toy company, and the metrics for
assessing a country's poly-friendliness were too broad: "Pornhub category
rankings, average lifetime sexual partners, search interest, divorce rates,
moral sexuality scores."
Nevertheless,
.
.Australians... showed the strongest search rate at 257 searches per 100,000 people for open relationship and polyamory terms..
.
● In The Guardian: ‘It’s risky business emotionally’: the social shift towards open
relationships (Oct. 31)
.
.With a rise in people opting for non-monogamy, experts suggest the idea of the traditional couple is radically changingBy Jessica Murray...Juliet Rosenfeld, a psychoanalyst and author of Affairs: True Stories of Love, Lies, Hope and Despair, said the growth of open relationships was part of a wider societal trend in which “the idea of the couple is shifting radically”.“It’s a challenge for therapists because there is a much wider range of ways to be in a couple now,” she said. “A monogamous lifelong relationship is simply not what a lot of people, in particular women, want.”...People choosing to open up their relationship after one partner has had an affair, or doing it in order to “fix” something, are cause for concern. “It’s bound to be problematic going down that route,” [Katherine] Cavallo [psychotherapist and spokesperson for UK Council for Psychotherapy] said....Katerina Georgiou, a psychotherapist and senior-accredited member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, said there was an important distinction to be made between people who identify as polyamorous, and heteronormative couples choosing to do this. ....
.
● Traditional polygamy survives in various African cultures, with varying legal
status. In African news media I've noticed increasing attention to
modern polyamory vis a vis the old way.
For instance, here's a thoughtful, personal essay in Nigeria's
Vanguard newspaper: Polygamy not new but its meaning no longer same
(Aug. 2). She contrasts traditional, high-functioning tribal polygamy with
its often degraded state today, and she recommends polyamory's values as
an upgrade.
.
.
By Stephanie ShaakaaWhat once stood as a system of communal survival, built on cooperation and collective responsibility, now trembles under the weight of secrecy, betrayal, and broken trust. Our forefathers practised polygamy with a kind of order that baffled logic, multiple wives, one compound, children everywhere, and yet, somehow, harmony found a way. But today, that same institution is cracking at the seams, not because it is outdated, but because its essence has been replaced by ego, deception, and silence....In the 21st century, we see polygamy re-emerging not necessarily through formal polygynous households, but in polyamorous communities, co-parenting cobbles, and digital matchmaking platforms. The heart isn’t limited to binary partnerships, and neither is commitment. While the law clings to monogamy, reality increasingly drifts toward multiplicity.Yet polygamy is not a silver bullet. For many women, it signifies unequal power, emotional overload, and perpetual comparison. Where income disparities exist, polygamy can reinforce patriarchal privileges. Moreover, when children from different mothers share resources, questions of inheritance, guardianship, and social equity become painfully salient.
A cartoon with the story. (Laobis O.)
Now contrast this with modern polyamory where consent, equality, and open communication are central. Some families share parental duties across multiple homes. Some couples have spendthrift days with one spouse, quiet evenings with another. These arrangements speak to a generation seeking relationship fluidity that reflects their broader values.Globally, the legal response varies. While countries like Iran, Ghana, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia allow men multiple wives, many Western nations penalize it even amongst equally consenting adults. The human rights lens complicates this. ...Evolving gender consciousness is challenging the very foundation of polygamy as a male-centered tradition. ....
.
● Similarly, also in West Africa: Polycule: The modern love web you are just hearing about (Guardian Nigeria News, no relation to the UK's Guardian; Oct. 16)
.
.
.
● And
lastly: Buzzfeed, an internet behemoth whose business is
virality, often asks redditors to send in their life experiences: Your
best-ever revenge on a bad boss. The worst horror you've seen working a
fast-food kitchen. The stories are out of control.
Now comes People With Polyamorous Parents Are Sharing What It Was Like Growing
Up, And It's So Fascinating (Buzzfeed, Oct. 4). The 29 (!) accounts in the collection are
almost all positive or at least no-sweat. One example, by reddit/u/rroowwannn:
.
."My parents were poly since well before they got married and I was born. Mostly, it was just boyfriends or girlfriends who would visit. I didn't know anything about sex; they didn't tell me anything inappropriate, although they did make sure that I wouldn't gab about who slept in what bed when I was young. They were dead scared of child services getting involved."One of my mom's boyfriends became a lot more serious, and he moved in when I was about 8 or 9. It was a lot like having an uncle move in. He became part of the family, drove me and my brother to places, and got involved in our interests. I told people he was my uncle. He had another girlfriend aside from my mother, too, openly. He broke up with my mother in a big way (which they kept private from me) and moved out when I was maybe 14 or so. It might have been hard for my mother, but it wasn't traumatic for me. We kept in touch for a few years until he moved farther away for a new job. It wasn't like a divorce experience, more like my uncle moving out.
One of the many happy stock photos Buzzfeed used.
(Oliver Rossi / Getty)
My dad had a serious girlfriend too, but she was also married with a kid my age, so she never moved in with us, but we went and visited as a family a few times a year. She's great friends with my mom to this day. Her kid and I were good friends for a while and drifted apart as we got older, a lot like cousins.".
.
Another:
.
."It's waaaaaaay more boring than most people would think. Most of the time, my mom wouldn't introduce a partner to me unless it was a long-term relationship, so most of the time, I got the single mom experience. I think the most exciting thing was going out for dinner to meet someone new, and occasionally my mom would date someone who had a kid my age.... Really, for the most part, it was so completely average, other than knowing my mom had two girlfriends, and eventually, I also got a stepdad.""The worst part was around 6th-8th grade when kids found out and started bullying me for it, asking all kinds of disgusting sexual questions about my parents (no one wants to think about their parents having sex). Eventually, I learned to just not tell anyone unless we were close and I knew they were cool. I only ever had one person I trusted enough to actually come to a family picnic where my mom's partners would all be there. My mom's partners aren't my parents, but they are part of my life and my family. They're wonderful and supportive, and have helped me through some horrible dark spots in my life. I'm grateful to have such a wonderful, loving family. So yeah, not very exciting, I know. But it's my life!".
.
And as usual, Buzzfeed asks for more:
.
.Did you grow up with polyamorous parents? Or if you're poly yourself, what's it like raising a family? Tell us in the comments. Or, if you prefer to remain anonymous, leave a submission in the form..
.
----------------------------------------------------
BTW, it's very much time to read this
afresh.
For more than three years I've ended these polyamory posts
with Ukraine. At first some of you didn't get the connection. Now
that fascist-adjacent patrimonialists are smashing what we thought were the constitutional
limits of power in America, more of you do.
We're in a world struggle for whether free and open societies,
or brutal illiberal oligarchies, will rule the 21st century.
What's happening in America is only a part. Authoritarian
rulers around the world have been linking up with direct mutual support that is stated out loud.
I've seen too many progressive movements die out, or get wiped
out, because they failed to scan the environment accurately
and understand their position in it strategically. We
polyamorous people are a small, weird minority of social-rule breakers. Our freedom to choose our relationship structures, and to
speak up for ourselves about the truth of ourselves, depends
on a free and pluralistic society that respects
people's freedom and dignity to create their own lives and identities, to access facts, and to speak of what they know.
Innovative people, communities, and societies who create
their own lives, who "choose to live within the truth" per Vaclav Havel, and who insist on the democratic
structures and rights to do so safely, infuriate and
terrify the world's authoritarians.
Authoritarians seek to stamp out other people's freedom to
choose their lives — by intimidation, inflammatory
disinformation and public incitement, stacking courts and
agencies, by legal erasure, by shifting ever more wealth
and power upward, and sometimes, eventually, by artillery
and glide bombs.
For what it's worth, Polyamory in the News received more
pagereads from pre-invasion Ukraine over the years
(56,400) than from any other country in eastern Europe.
For those of us born since World War II, this is the most consequential war of our lifetime. Because we have entered another time when calculating
fascism, at home and abroad, is rising and sees freedom, liberalism, and social tolerance as weak, degenerate, delusional — inviting easy pushovers. As Russia thought it saw
in Ukraine. All sides worldwide are watching what we will
do about it.
Background: "The United States has a much higher stake in Russia's
war on Ukraine than most people think." More: "If we stop supporting Ukraine, then everything gets
worse, all of a sudden, and no one will be talking about
“fatigue” because we will all be talking about
disaster."
The coming times may require hard things of us. We don't get to choose the time and place in
history we find ourselves born into. We do get to choose how we respond to it.
Here's an easy start: Get on the
50501
email list. Join No Kings and your local Indivisible or at least download Indivisible's
guide
for practical good-citizen strategies and tactics. Read
and follow the personal guidelines that have been learned
from history in Timothy Snyder's
On Tyranny.
Stop moping and buck up. Play this, and this, and this, by people heading into a scarier part of the fight
than you or I will face. Another: "My Son, Hold On." Sixteen thousand more of those, sorted just for that one background
song by Shadow Phoenix. (lyrics)
Some people on the Western world's eastern front trying to hold onto an open society. (TW: war is
awful.) Maybe your granddad did this from a trench
facing Hitler's tanks — for you, and us, because a world
fascist movement was successfully defeated that time,
opening the way for the rest of the 20th century.
But the outcome didn't look good for a couple of years
then either. Popular history remembers the 1945 victory
over the Nazis and the joyous homecoming. Less
remembered are the defeats and grim prospects from 1939
through early 1943.
Some Americans have felt called there because they were more able
than most. By comparison, you and I have it easy.
Remember, the Ukrainians say they are doing this for us too.
They are correct. In the global struggle between a brighter future and a fearful
revival of the dark past that's shaping up, the outcome is again uncertain. It
will determine the 21st century and the handling of all its
other problems.
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PS: Ukraine should not be idealized as the paragon of an open democratic society. For
instance, ‘A Big Step Back’: In Ukraine, Concerns Mount Over
Narrowing Press Freedoms. And it has quite the history of being run by corrupt
oligarchs — leading to the Maidan Uprising of 2013, the
Revolution of Dignity in 2014, and Zelensky's overwhelming
election in 2019 as the anti-corruption candidate.
They're working on that. And they're stamping hard on the old culture of everyday, petty
corruption. More on that. More; "Ukraine shows that real development happens when people believe they have an
ownership stake in their own societies."
Wrote US war correspondent George Packer in The Atlantic early in the war,
Here was a country with a tragic history that had at last begun to build, with great effort, a better society. What made Ukraine different from any other country I had ever seen—certainly from my own—was its spirit of constant self-improvement, which included frank self-criticism. For example, there’s no cult of Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine—a number of Ukrainians told me that he had made mistakes, that they’d vote against him after the war was won. Maxim Prykupenko, a hospital director in Lviv, called Ukraine “a free country aspiring to be better all the time.” The Russians, he added, “are destroying a beautiful country for no logical reason to do it. Maybe they are destroying us just because we have a better life.”
They have a word there, with a deep history, for the
horizontal, self-organized, mutual get-it-done that grows from community social trust: hromada. We polyfolks often dream of creating something like
that community spirit in miniature, in our polycules and
networks. Occasionally we succeed.
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Social attitudes in Ukraine are mostly traditional, rooted
in a thousand years of the Orthodox Church. But in the last
generation the ideal of modern European civil society has
become widely treasured. The status of women has fast
advanced throughout society, especially
post-invasion. More than 43,000 women volunteer in the armed forces, not just in support
roles and as drone pilots but as combat officers, artillery gunners, tankers, battlefield medics,
snipers, and infantry. Some LGBT folx in the armed forces display symbols of LGBT pride on their uniforms, with official approval, whereas in Russia it's a crime
for even a civilian to show a rainbow pin or "say gay." A
report on Ukraine's LGBT+ and feminist acceptance revolutions. Another. Another. Another. War changes things.
Polyfolks are like one ten-thousandth of what's at stake globally. Ukraine must have our full support for it to win its
security, freedom, and future. Speak up for it. Like,
right now.
A Russian writer grieves: "My country has fallen out of time."
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Women defenders on our world's eastern front |
Update 2025: Three years later Vidma is still
alive, still at the front, and posting TikToks. Her mortar unit has graduated to heavy artillery. A young girl who looks high-school age showed up
to join them; another vid with her. Their lives, and their promising society, depend on us.
And maybe our own? Says Maine's independent Senator Angus King,
Whenever people write to my office [asking why we are supporting Ukraine,] I answer, 'Google Sudetenland, 1938.' We could have stopped a murderous dictator who was bent on geographic expansion…at a relatively low cost. The result of not doing so was 55 million deaths.
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posted by Alan |
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