Polyamory is all over the news. Two reasons why so much of it is about polyfamilies.

Lots to catch up on. 

Many readers here have noticed a trend: The type of polyamory that most fascinates the media, presumably because it most fascinates the public, is the structurally tightest form: multi-partner polyfamilies. Especially with kids.

I think it's because polyfamilies are two opposite things at once. They are the most radically different form of ENM compared to what people usually think is possible (compared to, say, parallel poly or just an open relationship). And polyfamilies are also the most like the culturally-standard household, just with a twist: three or more adults instead of two.

●  NBC's Today Show, or at least its website, publicized a new word invented by a quad with kids: polyfamory. The group didn't appear on TV, but this article was a hit on Today's website: Mom + dad + mom + dad = One big, happy family. "Meet the parents practicing ‘polyfamory.’ In polyfamory, the possibilities are endless. And poly parents say the challenges are worth it." (Jan. 23).

The piece features two households. The first:

By Danielle Campoamor

As society's idea of what constitutes a family continues to expand, some parents are living in 'polyfamory' households, where multiple partners birth and care for all of their children under one roof.

Alysia Rodgers, 34, says her and her husband, Tyler, were not looking for polyamory — the term for when a person has one or more romantic partners at the same time, with the enthusiastic consent of everyone involved — when they met Sean Hartless, 46, and his wife, Taya.

"We didn't even know what polyamory was, until we started getting feelings for each other," Alysia tells TODAY.com.

Soon, Sean and Taya, 28, were driving nearly two hours to see Alysia and Tyler, 35, in their home in Oregon. Exhausted by the commute and fueled by a desire to see everyone more frequently, the couples moved into a new house together in February, 2020.

And that's how polyamory became polyfamory.

Tyler and Alysia were already parents to two children, now 7 and 8. Tyler says explaining their new living situation to the kids was "really easy."

"Our kids already knew we were dating Sean and Taya," Tyler tells TODAY.com. "We told them: 'You know mom has a boyfriend and dad had a girlfriend and we're going to move in together, and we're all going to be a big family and they're going to help parent you, so we're going to need you to treat them like you treat us — like parents.'"

Since living together under one roof, the family has added two children.

"I birthed one and Taya birthed the other," Alysia says. "We did not regulate the biology" — meaning Alysia, Taya, Tyler and Sean do not know who their 22-month-old's and 15-month-old's biological fathers are.

"We're all equal parents to all of the children and it's not up for debate or discussion," Alysia says. "It's not something that we're trying to hide from the children either. If they want to know where their DNA comes from, we will absolutely go down that path with them. But at this point in their lives, it doesn't matter."

"We wanted to do everything we could to make sure that everybody feels like an equal parent," Taya adds. "At this point, finding out their genetics would change nothing."

A rise in polyamorous relationships

Polyamorous relationships have gained popularity in recent years. One 2021 study of 3,438 single adults in the United States found that one in six respondents "wanted to be polyamorous;" one in nine have been at some point, and one in 15 said they "knew someone who was or is polyamorous."

Still, shows like "Sister Wives" — which depict polygamy, in which one person is married to multiple partners — have caused confusion and even created negative stereotypes about polyamorous families, Sean says.

"'Sister Wives' references always make us laugh, because that's practicing polygamy versus polyamory," he explains. "I think people hear the 'poly' lead in and think that it's the same thing — that's not us. We don't have a hierarchal situation here — we're all trying to be equals and not have the 'patriarch' lead the family."

People magazine soon had their own story about the family: Poly Quad Parents Open Up About Raising Kids, Having Babies Together (Jan. 31).

Business Insider published a piece about them from a different angle: Meet a 4-parent, polyamorous family using 3 incomes and zero daycare costs to beat the US childcare crisis (Feb. 4). The setup "provides the family a unique financial edge: three steady incomes and zero childcare costs."

Then many other media began featuring them.

Back to the Today.com piece: Its second family includes Jennifer Martin, who you may remember for her other media outreach since last summer. She also appeared later as the guest for 90 minutes on the podcast 'Thereafter', "a place where we explore life on the other side of faith change" (Feb. 14). She's an ex-Evangelical who still identifies as Christian.

Jennifer Martin, 34, agrees [about the religious "patriarch" comment by the other family above]. "It's missing autonomy," Jennifer says, who lives Virginia with her husband Daniel, 35, partner Ty Simpson, 32, and their two children.

Jennifer and Daniel both grew up in conservative, evangelical households, where, Jennifer says, "if you fall in love with somebody, you get married." The couple were engaged at 19, married at 20 and had two kids by the time Jennifer was 25.

"I don't even think I ever heard the word 'polyamory,'" Jennifer says. "I didn't know anybody who was non-monogamous. I didn't think that existed."

At 27, after reconsidering what she believed, Jennifer told Daniel she was feeling sexually attracted to and even in love with other people, but was not falling out of love with him, either.

"We took things really slow — we saw a counselor, read books and we went to a polyamory group," she says. "He started dating somebody before I did."

In 2018, Jennifer met Ty. In 2020, he moved in with Jennifer and Daniel and their family grew.

"One of the things that was hard for me in the beginning, was kind of shaking off the mentality that I was taking something away from Daniel and his experiences with the kids," Ty tells TODAY.com. "But it's a community. ... We all have our own roles to play, and at the end of the day, the main goal is to ensure that the kids are being raised to be kind and loving."

Both families say there are both pros and cons to a polyfamory household.

"We have four sets of adult hands to work on things," Tyler says. "It's very rare, I think, for people to have that kind of help."

Alysia, Tyler and Sean all work full time, while Taya is a stay-at-home mom. Sean says knowing the children are always being cared for by at least one parent "is a big sigh of relief" because everyone knows "your kids are for sure taken care of by the right people."

They say their children also learn valuable lessons as a result of their family dynamic — lessons like, "relationships don't have to look a certain way," Sean says, and that however they choose to live is "100% their choice" and that their parents will "love them and support them no matter what," Alysia adds.

Jennifer says she's glad her sons are learning about "autonomy," to question traditional gender roles and how to tap into the power of community.

"We make everything in the house a communal effort," she explains. "They realize that everybody puts their weight in and has a role to play. I hope that that will form a mindset of mutual aid and community when they grow up."

Of course, polyfamory comes with some challenges: scheduling, for one.

"We have to meet weekly and our Google calendars are so chaotic," Daniel tells TODAY.com. "We have to make sure that not only can we coordinate schedules, but that people's needs are met." ...

...Despite the challenges — including moments of jealousy, strangers sexualizing their polyamorous relationships and not being completely accepted by family members — both families say the pros outweigh the cons because their children benefit from having so many trusting, loving adults in their lives.

"At the end of the day, we're just like any other monogamous family — there's just four of us," Tyler says. "Being a parent is so much more than just biology, and that's what we're about."

One of the Polyfamory quad posted on the group's Instagram: "I cannot thank [Today Show author] @daniellecampoamor enough for being an absolute joy to work with. The positivity and education in this article is everything we could’ve asked for."

●  New York Times, Style section: A Handfasting Ceremony For Two … or Three (or More) (Feb. 18 online; Feb. 19 print edition).

"The Celtic ritual has become a popular commitment ceremony for some polyamorous couples" [sic]

By Jenny Block [who presumably didn't write that tagline].

...Handfasting is an ancient practice that “has become more popular across the board,” said Scarlett Mullikin, an officiant based in Kankakee County, Ill., and the founder of Natural Element Ceremonies. And because it involves binding partners’ hands together — symbolizing the binding of two, three, four (or more) lives — it’s “the easiest way to connect multi-partners” or those who are polyamorous, she said.

...The benefits of a committed relationship are the same whether monogamous, polyamorous, legally recognized or not. “There’s a safety and a security to crossing this threshold of marriage,” [Houston counselor Ty David] Lerman said. “Polyam relationships are still just relationships.”

And with a handfasting ceremony, Ms. Mullikin said, partners can “experience the joy and the energy and the bliss that goes into a wedding day.”

●  On TV: CBS Minnesota WCCO-TV broadcast What is polyamory? What does it mean in relationships? (Feb. 8). "There is a broad spectrum of relationship types that address romantic or sexual needs, Dr. Shonda Craft explains." Watch the 5-minute interview. Craft is positive and excellently informative.

● Throuples, ménages and the power of three: Can ‘triad’ relationships really work? (The Independent, UK; Jan. 20). "Throuples, or ‘triad’ relationships, are having a moment."

iStock

“Call us a throuple,” Selena Gomez recently captioned an Instagram photo showing her embracing Brooklyn Beckham and his wife Nicola Peltz. She was apparently joking, but that’s perhaps part of the problem. While various celebrities seem to be vaguely alluding to polyamory lately, everyone’s being decidedly coy about coming right out and talking about it.

...There are countless ways a triad can look. Grace, a 41-year-old civil servant from Bristol, recalls her first throuple experience being a bit of an accident. “We had some really good times and there was genuine desire and intent between both my partners to be together as well as with me, but they were both quite shy with each other and their relationship went slowly,” she explains.

...Many of the hierarchical problems that arise in throuples, though, are down to the way they’re formed: often an established couple who then meet a “third”, with all the problems that arise from that kind of language.

“If two people out of three had a pre-existing relationship that was already well established, those two people have couple’s privilege,” Grace explains, adding that it can impact everything – from “big decisions [that] always prioritise the stability of one of the relationships in the triad, to small things like language that minimises or separates the most recent partner.” Saying to the newest partner “Wanna come with us to the gig Friday night?”, or even “We love you, we’re so happy we met you” reinforces an unequal “us” and “you” dynamic that can lead to pain in the long term. ...

Winter, a 28-year-old from Bristol, says it’s not an uncommon set-up: all her throuple experiences were with herself, the same established partner, and a third. “My aim was always to create distinct and separate relationships between each of us, thinking of it as three pairs rather than one throuple,” she says. ... “I felt the frame-of-mind was important to how things were viewed.”

While it’s great to see more conversations being had around ethical non-monogamy, there’s also a keen awareness among everyone I spoke to that media representation is usually a massive let-down. Anne Hodder-Smith, a sex expert based in the US, says that the well-worn cliché of one man and two women enjoying a string of threesomes is a cis-normative trope that very rarely reflects reality.

...“Stop using the word ‘third’. Nothing says you want to devalue a human being by adding them onto your relationship like that word.”

Winter also recommends taking time and allowing space for it to work. “Go slowly, and make sure everybody has figured each other out and the dynamic has reached stability before really committing to any labels,” she says. “This involves the general relationship advice of strong, open and honest communication from all parties, and turned up to 10. ...”

●  Also in the The Independent, a book author in a same-sex marriage speaks up for poly relationships. Throuples aren’t immoral – and neither is my own ‘scandalous’ marriage (Jan. 26; registration walled)

Why should we think it shocking for someone to love multiple others? We don’t restrict any other relationship to a binary.

"Among polyamorists, erotic pleasure and commitment
are shared rather than narrowed." (iStock)

By Andrew Solomon

...I have spent several years interviewing people in polygamous and polyamorous relationships, and while I started my research feeling suspicious of these arrangements, I ended by thinking they may make perfect sense to the people living them – and that their ideas of affective commitment were ultimately all that mattered.

Why should we think it shocking for someone to love multiple others? We don’t restrict any other relationship to a binary; most people have multiple friends. If some people want to be in multiple sexual relationships, or to make a commitment to one another that is sustaining and defining even in the absence of eros, then why should those arrangements be denied legal status? In fact, there is a social and political interest in sustaining these models, because people who marry one another – in any arrangement – usually take care of one another. This can relieve the state of enormous costs and burdens. ...

...I write as someone whose own marriage would have seemed scandalous when I was growing up, and was illegal until I was in my 40s. ... In his excellent new novel The New Life, the London Review of Books' Tom Crewe describes the struggle that set the stage for my marriage, and I could not read his words without feeling anew how vulnerable we remain to the shifting tides of chauvinism. My finest book has been banned in three American states lest the story of my joyful marriage infect young readers. ...

●  Quebec LGBTQ2S+ minister 'open' to recognizing multi-parent families (Canadian Press, Feb. 3)

Quebec's minister responsible for LGBTQ2S+ issues, Martine Biron, says she's open to developing some form of recognition for families with more than two parents.

...Groups like the Coalition des familles LGBT+ have called upon the Legault government to provide legal recognition for multi-parent families. ...

●  More from Cosmopolitan: 7 Things People *Always* Get Wrong About What It’s Really Like to Be in a Throuple (Jan. 25)

By Abby Moss

My partners and I are at IKEA, in the middle of the kitchen section, arguing about Kilner jars. I’m saying we’ve got enough jars and that everything in our kitchen doesn’t need to be stored in jars anyway. Andrea*, on the other hand, thinks we need jars for everything—rice, pasta, lentils, and so on. Paul* doesn’t care about the jars but is getting hungry and wants to go get meatballs. We’re attracting a few odd glances from the couples passing by. They’re trying to figure out our dynamic. There are three of us, but we’re arguing like a couple. We clearly live together, but we don’t seem like roommates—that’s for sure. ...

●  Conservatives continue to go after the shrinks: American Psychological Association distances itself from panel studying 'marginalized' polyamory community says Fox News, Feb. 16, citing The Christian Post.

The APA "does not have a policy with respect to consensual non-monogamous relationships," a spokesperson said. ...

The APA Division 44 Committee on Consensual Non-Monogamy "focuses on research, practice, and education about consensually non-monogamous relationships," according to its website.

The committee said that it "seeks to address the needs of people who practice consensual non-monogamy, including needs that may arise from the intersection of [consensually non-monogamous relationships] with their other marginalized identities."

The "five primary purposes" of APA 44 include research, psychological practice, education and training, social justice and public awareness.

A Feb. 10 article by Dr. Melissa Martin in The Published Reporter that noted the committee is "circulating a survey and a petition seeking to secure legally protected class status for individuals with multiple sex partners," and the former child therapist also speculated that APA 44 shows the APA "wants bigamy and polygamy to be legalized as group marriage."

APA Public Affairs Director Kim I. Mills pushed back against any claims that the organization supports polyamory, according to The Christian Post.

"APA divisions are quasi-independent organizations that are free to establish committees to represent and promote their specialties within psychology, using the best empirical evidence," Mills told the outlet.

"As such, they do not speak for the American Psychological Association, which does not have a policy with respect to consensual non-monogamous relationships," Mills continued. "The only official APA policies are those that are adopted by the APA Council of Representatives, the APA's governing body of nearly 200 of the nation's leading psychologists, which meets twice a year. ...

●  Easy as one, two, three: Are throuples becoming more mainstream? (Sydney Morning Herald and other Australian papers in its chain, Feb. 3)

Dianne Gain

By Samantha Selinger-Morris

...“Students are much more likely now, than 10 years ago, to say they’re open to polyamory, or that they are in fact polyamorous,” says Dr Samuel Shpall, a senior lecturer at The University of Sydney who teaches The Philosophy Of Sex. ...

QT Hotels and Resorts ... is launching its upcoming ‘You, Plus Two’ Valentine’s Day deal, aimed at celebrating “love that comes in three”. QT’s Australian hotels and resorts will offer free martinis and oysters for bookings of three this February 14. ...

“I find, clinically, often couples come in saying, ‘We want to explore non-monogamy as a way of spicing up our [sex] life’,” says Sydney sex therapist Jacqueline Hellyer.... “It’s often seen as a bit of a quick fix to a bored or jaded relationship.” ...

But her clients often don’t go forward and pursue being part of a throuple, or another consensual non-monogamous arrangement, after she walks them through what they really want from their relationship, and how having multiple partners can play out. ...

Trio in ‘Y tu mamá también’ (Shutterstock)

●  Throuples on film: 9 times movies and TV shows depicted ‘triad’ relationships (UK Independent, Feb. 15). "Sometimes three’s company... sometimes it can be so much more. Louis Chilton picks nine of the best films and TV shows centring on three-person polyamorous relationships."

●  In the Georgia Voice, an LGBTQ semi-monthly: Dating While Queer in The Modern Age: On Ethical Nonmonogamy and Polyamory (Feb. 2)

By Divine Ikpe

...I spoke to two different polyamorous queer people: Opal, who is just starting to consider polyamory as a viable option for herself, and Fay, who is in a long-term polyamorous throuple. ...

●  I tried the hook-up app for Generation Threesome. Here’s what happened next (The UK's Times, Feb. 9, paywalled.) "Wooed by social media, Gen Z is embracing lifestyle choices that were once considered taboo."

●  Have non-monogamy labels on dating apps caused more harm than good? (Mashable, Feb. 14)

Ashley Vargas

In the last months of 2022, the ethically non-monogamous (ENM) community celebrated a huge win. Dating app Hinge launched their 'Relationship Types' feature, allowing their users to mark if they identified as ethically non-monogamous (ENM) or monogamous. Undoubtedly a landmark event, this marked the first mainstream ‘traditional’ dating app to make conscious strides towards inclusivity for the ENM community since OkCupid allowed polyamorous couples to link their profiles in 2016. Speaking to Mashable, a Hinge spokesperson commented: "We believe that everyone looking for love should be able to find it which is why we’re constantly looking at new ways to support daters' needs."

However, the move sparked an increase in anti-ENM discourse on social media and brought up new questions asked about the virtual future and place for ENM people. ...

●  Away from the mainstream apps, a bi guy's take on 9 Polyamorous Dating Apps [that] Will Help You Meet Awesome Partners (Men's Health, Feb. 13, by Zachary Zane). "For poly folks looking for those special someones."

●  Zane also has been given a new column in Cosmopolitan: Mistake #1: Diving Into Polyamory for All the Wrong Reasons (Feb. 8). "Introducing Navigating Non-Monogamy, a new column in which Zachary Zane walks you through all the fumbles he’s made on his polyamory journey so that you, dear reader, don’t have to."

●  Feeld is probably the leading dating app for poly, ENM, kink, and other alternative folx. Document Journal, a classy fashion magazine "of independent thought and culture," runs a photo-heavy feature on the company and its founder: Feeld is the dating app for the next sexual revolution (Feb. 7). "Document catches up with Ana Kirova, the radical platform’s founder, examining the roots, rules, and labels of the modern sexual landscape."

Claire Seka

●  Quite a different take from the student Fordham Observer at Fordham University: We Can All Learn From Polyamory (Feb. 8), by Jessica Wu. "The nine pillars of relationship anarchy provide lessons for people in any type of relationship."

● 'It's a liberation': Belgians increasingly open to polyamorous relationships (The Brussels Times, Feb. 3)

●  Whole Lotta Love: Polyamory Takes Off (in the Pacific Sun of Marin County, California, " the longest running alternative newsweekly on the planet," Feb. 7)

...“I have seen many straight couples open their relationship at the woman’s initiative,” said Diane Gleim, a certified sex therapist (CST) based in Sonoma County. “[The common] assumption is that it’s mostly men who seek polyamory because they want multiple sexual partners. There is research that shows that monogamous, heterosexual women actually desire novel sex and novel sexual partners more than heterosexual, monogamous men.” Several other counselors interviewed agreed.

Even when women are not the instigators, they often become champions of the way of life. ...

UPCOMING POLYCONS.  The annual round of polyamory conventions, retreats, campouts, and other gatherings is opening up again, tentatively, as the pandemic seems to be receding. At least three are set for April and May:

–  Poly Big Fun retreat, April 9–12, in Bastrop State Park near Austin, TX

–  Southwest Love Fest, April 14–16, Tucson, AZ

–  The ever poly-friendly New Culture Spring Camp, May 5–10, Abrams Creek Retreat Center, Mt. Storm, WV.

This summer has a lot of them. See Alan's List of Polyamory Events for all such gatherings on the calendar for the next 12 months. All that I know about, anyway! Tell me about any I'm missing: alan7388 (at) gmail.com .

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Meanwhile...

Why have I been ending posts to this polyamory news site with Ukraine?

Because I've seen many progressive movements die out because they failed to scan the wider world correctly and understand their position in it strategically.

We polyamorous people are a small, weird minority of social-rule breakers. Increasingly powerful people call us a threat to society — because by living successfully outside of their worldview, we expose its incompleteness.

Our freedom to choose our relationship structures, and to speak up for ourselves about the truth of ourselves, is just one way we depend on a free and pluralistic society that respects people's dignity to create their own lives, to access facts, and to speak of what they know.

The Russian family-cartoon series Masyanya
turned dissident. Watch. The cartoonist got out.
Update: a brilliant sequel of turnabout, with a
coda of empathy in wartime. 
 

Such a society is possible only where people have power to govern themselves, combined with legal structures that are at least supposed to guarantee the rights of all.

Innovative people, communities, and societies who create their own lives, and who insist on the democratic structures and legal rights that enable them to do so safely, infuriate and terrify the authoritarians who are growing in power around the world and in our own United States. Now with overlap.

Such rulers and would-be rulers seek to stamp out other people's freedom to choose their lives — by intimidation, repressive laws, inflammatory disinformation and public incitement, abuse of police powers, or eventually, tanks and artillery.

For what it's worth, this site has received more pagereads from Ukraine over the years (56,400) than from any other country in eastern Europe.

For now, you can donate to Ukraine relief through this list of vetted organizations or many others. We're giving to a big one, Razom, and to a little one, Pizza for Ukraine in Kharkiv, a project of an old friend of my wife (story).

But that is only the start. For those of us born since World War II, we are witnessing the most consequential war of our lifetimes. Because we have entered another time when calculating fascism, at home and abroad, is rising and sees freedom and liberalism and social tolerance as weak, degenerate, delusional — inviting easy pushovers. As Russia thought it saw in Ukraine.

The coming times are going to require hard things of us. We don't get to choose the time and place in history we find ourselves born into, but we do get to choose how we respond to it. Buck up and be ready.

Need a little help bucking up? Play this. Another version, on the streets of Kherson the night after its liberation November 11. More? Just some guys in Kharkiv (our Pizza for Ukraine town) helping to hold onto a free and open society, a shrinking thing in the world. The tossed grenade seems to have saved them. Maybe your granddad did this across a trench from Hitler's troops — for you, and us, because a world fascist movement was successfully defeated that time, opening the way for the rest of the 2oth century. Although the outcome didn't look good for a couple of years there.

Remember, these people say they too are doing it for us. They are correct.  The global struggle between a free, open future and a fearful revival of the dark past that's shaping up, including in our own country, is still in its early stages. It's likely to get worse before it gets better. The outcome is again uncertain, and it will determine the 21st century and the handling of all its other problems.

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

PS: Ukraine should not be idealized as the paragon of an open democratic society. For instance, see If Ukraine Wants To Stand for Liberty and Democracy, It Should Rethink Some of Its Wartime Policies. 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. So they're working on that. (More.)

Now, writes US war correspondent George Packer in The Atlantic, 

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. Learn that word. It's getting them through as well as they've been able. We polyfolks often dream of creating something like that community spirit in miniature, in our polycules and networks. Occasionally we succeed.

Social attitudes in Ukraine tend traditional, rooted in a thousand years of the Orthodox Church, but not bitterly so like often in the US; the ideal of modern European civil society is widely treasured, and social progressivism has room to thrive. The status of women is rocketing, especially since the start of the war (pre-war article). A reported 57,000 women volunteer in the armed forces, flooding traditionally male bastions, including as combat officers, platoon leaders, artillery gunners, tankers, and snipers. Some LGBT folx in the armed forces wear symbols of LGBT pride on their uniforms, whereas in Russia it's a prison-worthy crime for even a civilian to show a rainbow pin or "say gay."

And in November, Russia made it a crime not just to speak for LGBT recognition, but to speak for "non-traditional sexual relations." Until recently Russia had an active polyamory education and awareness movement.

Polyfolks are like one ten-thousandth of what's at stake globally. Ukraine must have our continued material support for as long as it takes. Speak up for it, loudly.

"Defenders of Bakhmut," where soldiers at the front line gave Zelensky the signed battle flag he presented to Nancy Pelosi. Art by Natasha Le in Mikolaiv; she reinterprets traditional guardian angels as riot grrls for an upcoming generation.

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

PS: A real-life version of that icon in Bakhmut; the artwork isn't just fantasy.  Vedma ("Witch") commands a mortar platoon there; watch vid from Jan. 3. In February they were rotated out of Bakhmut after many months, and she recorded this (Feb. 21):

🇺🇦Witch tells the story of the Bakhmut Asphalt Plant❤️ pic.twitter.com/UC3y0NsDjQ

— Sofia Ukraini (@SlavaUk30722777) February 22, 2023

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TLC to launch "Seeking Brother Husband" TV series on MFM triads. Lots more polyamory in the news

One of the happier families on the show.  (TLC)

● For better or worse, it's finally happening: ‘Seeking Brother Husband’: TLC’s New Reality Series (TV Insider, Jan. 12).

Six years ago, TLC aired a one-hour pilot for a reality show to be called "Brother Husbands." It followed an MFM polyfamily to parallel the network's successful "Sister Wives." That's their pic below. (See my post at the time.)

The pilot got relatively little notice because TLC chose to air it opposite the Superbowl. Even so, a month later one of the starring husbands told the media "TLC is extremely excited about the show, and they have been busy filming. You will be seeing more of us!"

Didn't happen. Nevertheless, my post about that pilot remains one of the top 1% most-read posts in this site's 17 years, mostly from drop-in Google searches. Television is powerful.

Six years later, now that polyamory is better known and less edgy-seeming, TLC has changed its mind again. The network just announced that a new series called Seeking Brother Husband will premiere in March. It will follow the hopes and travails of three MFM polyfamilies and one MMFM. Expect laughter and tears. And probably cringe.

Judging from the trailer below, the show looks to be a mix of some polyamory done by people who know what they're doing and, well, reality-show drama:

From #SisterWives → to #SeekingBrotherHusband! Your new obsession premieres this March. pic.twitter.com/00sJJNtAcP

— TLC Network (@TLC) January 9, 2023

From People magazine: TLC Explores the 'Double Standard' — and 'Awkward' Reality — of Plural Marriage in 'Seeking Brother Husband' (Jan. 9):

 

Following in the path of Sister Wives, TLC is diving deeper into the reality of plural marriage.

Seeking Brother Husband, an all-new original series that follows four polyandrous couples [sic] as they navigate their relationships, is coming to TLC in March — and the trailer promises a tear-filled, awkward and exciting season that will track the changes each relationship undergoes.

Among the four couples featured, each is at a different stage in their polyandry journey. One woman — who describes [her] polyandry as "the practice of one woman having multiple husbands, but those husbands cannot have any other partners" — has just married her second husband and is navigating the tumultuous transition, both for herself and for both her partners. "To do this lifestyle successfully, you have to be willing to go outside of your own comfort zones," she says.

Another wife whose journey viewers will follow has embarked on the search for a third husband. ...

The new show will also feature a couple who is just beginning to explore polyandry. The wife says that while many people assume that having "multiple male partners" is "just about sex," that's "definitely not" what it's about for her. She also calls out the "double standard" women face when it comes to polyandry, whether it's being labeled a "slut" for having multiple partners or being described as someone who "sleeps around."... The new couple also have their families to answer to. ...

The final couple is already established as a polyandrous relationship, as Kim's first husband tells her second: "You were the first man I let my partner, Kim, be with." But in a confessional interview, he reveals the down side of the arrangement: "I was watching my partner fall for another man, right before my eyes."...

A Distractify article with pix of all the stars: Meet the Cast of TLC's Newest Series, 'Seeking Brother Husband' (Jan. 9).

TLC's own site has nothing yet. Take a deep breath and hope for the best.

●  Elsewhere: WebMD, one of the most widely respected medical info sites, puts up this: Staying Healthy While Staying Open: The Polyamory Dilemma (Jan. 5) 

By Jenna Fletcher

Angie Ebba, 42, of Portland, OR, has two local girlfriends, one long-distance partner, and a platonic life partner. 

Ebba is polyamorous, having multiple intimate romantic relationships at the same time. Her partners know about each other and have consented to the arrangement, she says. 

Polyamory is becoming more common in the United States. In 2021, one in nine Americans said they’d been in polyamorous relationships, and one in six said they wanted to try it, according to a study by researchers at the Kinsey Institute. 

While a high level of transparency is required to make polyamory work, those who practice it don’t always feel comfortable sharing their relationship status with health care professionals. ... 

...Says Ian Kerner, PhD, a psychotherapist and sex therapist in New York City. “As polyamorous systems are still on the outskirts of the mainstream, some doctors may have implicit biases or explicit judgments, especially if they are lacking in experience.”

People who practice polyamory face unique health issues. These include a potentially higher risk of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) from having multiple sexual partners, and anxiety or depression stemming from managing multiple relationships. 

“It is of particular importance in OB/GYN given the risk of STI transmission, and its consequences such as infertility, vaginal discharge, and systemic illness,” says Cheruba Prabakar, MD, the CEO of Lamorinda Gynecology and Surgery in Lafayette, CA. “Disclosing information will allow the provider to think about the patient more holistically.”

Ebba does not tell her doctors about her personal life. She knows other people in these relationships who have felt judged in clinical encounters, and she avoids disclosure unless absolutely necessary. 

“Primarily, I don't let my providers know because I've already in the past faced discrimination and awkwardness for being queer; I don't want that for being poly as well,” she says. “If I can avoid it, I will.”

A study from 2019 of 20 people in consensual non-monogamous relationships – which can include polyamory – found most of them reported challenges in addressing their health care needs related to lack of provider knowledge, not enough preventive screenings, and stigmas that impacted their health and trust in the medical system.

“Polyamorous people often have trouble seeking out health care because they fear being judged by their doctor or other clinicians who don't understand or respect their lifestyle choices,” says Akos Antwi, a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner and co-owner of Revive Therapeutic Services in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. “They may also be reluctant to share information about their relationships with providers who aren't familiar with the complexities of polyamory.” 

Sharon Flicker, PhD, a clinical psychologist and assistant professor of psychology at California State University-Sacramento, says ... health care professionals can seek training to reduce their biases, and to better understand and address the unique needs of people involved in consensually non-monogamous relationships. In addition, offering to answer any questions that a doctor might have after disclosure can open the door to dialogue, according to Prabakar. 

People in polyamorous relationships also can look for affirming language on the websites of health providers, which may mention welcoming patients of all sexual orientations or gender identities. A first appointment can serve as an interview to find out what kind of terms a provider uses when referring to non-monogamy. 

Safely Navigating Sexy Time With Multiple Partners

Prabakar says sexual health and safety is at the forefront for her patients in polyamorous relationships because they are engaging with multiple partners. 

She recommends anyone who has multiple partners use condoms and dental dams for the prevention of STIs, like herpes and gonorrhea, in addition to receiving regular screening tests for the diseases. 

Tikva Wolf, from Asheville, NC, says she’s been in polyamorous relationships for 20 years. She says she has strict boundaries for engaging in new romantic relationships to protect her sexual health: She has sex only with people who know their current STI status, are clear communicators, and use protection. 

“If the conversation feels awkward, or they don't seem to know what they've been tested for, I don't engage in sex with them,” she says. “I don't start romantic partnerships with people unless they're on the same page about relationships, and I don't have casual sex.” 

Wolf says her actions toward transparency mirror the greater community of people who engage in polyamorous relationships.

“Monogamy is the default setting, so there's a tendency to be more transparent about specific preferences upfront in any relationship that doesn't quite fit into that standard box,” she says. 

Some research backs up Wolf’s hypothesis. A 2015 study in The Journal of Sexual Medicine found that polyamorous people reported more lifetime sexual partners than people in monogamous relationships, but were more likely to report using condoms and be tested for STIs. About one-quarter of monogamous partners reported having sex outside of their primary relationship but not informing their primary partner. ... 

Taking Care of Mental Health

Not only does a polyamorous lifestyle require talking about sexual health and romantic boundaries, it demands an openness with feelings as they come up. ...

●  The Economist, based in the UK with a US edition, has a reputation as one of the world's best weekly international news magazines. It's certainly one of the most content-packed. They don't have to tout that they're read by Important People; you're supposed to know that.

It just published this, online and in print: Polyamory is getting slivers of legal recognition in America  (paywalled). Excerpts:

Searching for rights in a monogamous world 

Jan 12th 2023 | Somerville, Massachusetts

It all began with Dungeons & Dragons. In a club for enthusiasts of the fantasy role-play game, Nate met Ashley and Erik, a married couple. Two years of friendship turned to romance and intimacy: first between Ashley and Nate, then him and Erik. They formed a triad. There was frank talk about commitment, finances and parenting—Ashley and Erik have two children, who now call Nate “bonus daddy”. “There’s a lot of love going on,” he says, as the three adults cosy up on their couch.

...In October they held a commitment ceremony resembling a wedding [pictured above], albeit with more vows. (“We tried to keep them short,” says Ashley.) The arrangement has no legal weight.... So they signed a “no-nup”: a contract outlining alimony and child-care responsibilities in the event of a break-up or death among partners who were never legally married. Their lawyer, Diana Adams, notarised it with a “lovely stamp that goes ker-chunk”.

...Triads and quads are what Laura Boyle, a relationship coach, calls “poster-child polyamory”: comprehensible to monogamous people who can grasp the concept of a closed unit living together. In fact networks are often more complicated, represented by V- and N-shaped configurations that don’t imply mutual attraction among several people. Ms Boyle lives separately from her three partners; she co-parents with her ex and his wife. She calls polyamorous people “folks with a scheduling kink” and thinks they are more willing to accept some fluidity in their relationships, for which marriage is a poor framework.

Still, marriage confers tax, health-care and immigration benefits that polyamorous people would like to claim too. States and cities are granting slivers of legal recognition. In September a judge in New York City allowed the third partner of a deceased man to argue that he should inherit their rent-stabilised lease. A dozen states allow triple-parent custody of children.

In 2020 Somerville, outside Boston, became the first city in the country to offer multi-partner domestic partnerships, followed by nearby Arlington and Cambridge. Municipal employers must provide health insurance and other benefits to employees’ partners. Private firms are under no such obligation—that requirement would have to come from the state. ...

Polyamorous people report high levels of discrimination by employers and landlords; courts often treat them unfavourably in custody disputes. Advocates are pushing for ordinances banning discrimination on the basis of relationship status. Stigma indeed means many stay quiet. ...

...Views are changing: in 2020 a fifth of Americans told Gallup that polygamy was morally acceptable, up fourfold since 2006. ... Millennials are most inclined towards non-monogamy: two in five prefer it. ... 

●  Meanwhile, a breakthrough legal precedent has just been set in Colombia: A polyamorous family shakes up Colombia’s laws (El País, Spain's major newspaper, English edition; Jan. 2)

The nation’s highest court ruled in favor of three men who lived together for 10 years and the two who claimed survivor beneficiary rights when one died.

"Víctor Hugo Prada, Alejandro Rodríguez, and Manuel José Bermúdez
are one of the first triejas in Colombia." (Photo: Santiago Mesa)

By Catalina Oquendo 

Manuel Bermúdez is part of a polyamorous family of three men who sleep in a bed so wide it almost doesn’t fit in the bedroom. He has also been involved in a number of firsts for Colombia. He and his partner, Alejandro Rodríguez, became the first legally recognized same-sex marriage in 2000. In 2017, they added a third person to their union. In another first for Colombia, their tripartite matrimony was recently legally recognized by the nation’s highest court in a decision that affirms the pension beneficiary rights of the surviving spouses and revolutionizes the country’s laws.

...The story of this marriage of three begins in 1999 when the word polyamory was not fashionable. ... Manuel met Alejandro one night and they began a casual dating relationship. They soon fell in love, and a year later were married by a notary public in a symbolic wedding that did not confer any legal rights to the spouses. Despite the opposition of the Catholic Church and other notaries, they proclaimed their love in the glare of a harsh media spotlight.

It was a symbolic and political act – a provocation intended to shake up the city [conservative Medellín] and ignite a battle for same-sex marriage that was just getting started in Colombia. Seven years later, when the Supreme Court extended de facto civil union rights to same-sex couples, Manuel and Alejandro married once again. This time, their union was legally recognized and had all the rights of any marriage.

As happens to many couples, one of them met someone else. ... When he told Manuel about it, instead of separating, Alejandro and Manuel added Esnéider to the relationship. “I asked myself, ‘Why shouldn’t my husband have a boyfriend?’ It seems very unreasonable to separate abruptly when it takes so long to win each other over fall in love,” said Manuel. That was a crucial revelation for Manuel, who did not like Esnéider at first. But the two ended up falling deeply in love. “I don’t know how this will turn out,” he said at the time, “but let’s see what life is like for the three of us.”

...They presented themselves as a family of three because that’s what they were. “The three of us do have sex, of course, but this family is based on love.

For 10 years, the trio were in a stable relationship, with all the ups and downs that every family experiences. ... “You have to be smart about polyamory because it’s not about jumping into a relationship. It’s about falling in love with each other. Falling in love with one person – fine. But falling in love with two is complicated, and three is very difficult. Some people who have tried to join the family just haven’t been able to deal with this,”

Eventually, they decided to add another partner. Victor Prada, a theater actor and psychoanalysis student, became “the fourth,” and says, “That’s how they introduced me. The first night I was in bed with three men, I was so emotional that I couldn’t sleep.” After a period of dating the trio, Prada joined the family and began living with them. He says he always dreamed about having a stable family and he found one there. ...

A death in this untraditional family soon shook its foundations. ... A few months after Esnéider died, Manuel and Alejandro applied to receive survivor benefits from Esnéider’s pension. The private pension fund rejected their claim on the grounds that it did not recognize polyamorous unions....

But since their relationship was public, Bermúdez and Rodríguez were able to prove to a judge that they fulfilled the five-year cohabitation requirement. Four years after Esnéider’s death, a local court in Medellín ruled in favor of the two ... and ordered the pension fund to begin disbursing funds to Bermúdez and Rodríguez with retroactive effect. It was a surprising ruling for an often conservative judiciary that said its decision was based on the importance of autonomy. “Several people, regardless of gender, can come together in the spirit of building a family. One person can love two others at the same time, and three can love each other as well,” wrote the magistrates.

...The pension fund filed an appeal, and the case went to Colombia’s Supreme Court. While the wheels of justice slowly turned, Alejandro, Manuel and Victor recorded another first – they became the first trio to become legally married in Colombia. The marriage certificate states, “… the constitution of a tripartite patrimonial regimen,” and used a new legal term – trieja – a “throuple.”

...The Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of the three spouses determined that this polyamorous family should be protected and have their pension rights recognized. Justice Santander Rafael Brito says that the ruling recognizes that people can choose their own family paradigm. ...

In a statement to the Supreme Court’s media relations department, the presiding magistrate in the case said, “The number of permanent partners is irrelevant. In this case there were three, but there can be more, all with the same proportional rights. ... 

The decision could make life easier for spouses in a polyamorous relationship. “This opens up new possibilities in marriages of three people and for polyamory. This magistrate will go down in history as someone who dared introduce a new word in the legal canon,” said Manuel. There is already talk around Medellín of another group of polyamorous people who want to get married. ...

●  A turn-of-the-year Poly 101: My Polyamorous Relationship Lessons [from] 2022, by Stephanie Parry (Good Men Project, Jan. 6; reprinted from Medium). Bits:

Polyamory is not easy.

...Polyamory isn’t easy due to society refusing to accept polyamory as acceptable as monogamy. Living in a polyamorous way is natural and easy for me.... I embraced a polyamorous life back in 2014 and haven’t looked back.

...So as an old year is passing... how did things go? ... What did I learn?...

1. Only date others who are polyamorous.

[By which she means] polyamorous in practice.

2. Set boundaries.

Repeat after me: It is ok to say no! It is imperative to say no. ... It is perfectly acceptable to opt out or avoid any kind of dynamic you are not comfortable with.

3. Find Your People.

...My first introduction to polyamory involved a large group of polyamorous families who exemplified open, honest living and breaking the social norms in a healthy, egalitarian way. What stuck out to me the most was the supportive environment they all created, with various relationship configurations and family systems. I hold out hope for a large polycule someday where we each support every person’s individual growth and evolution.

4. Discretion, Not Secrecy.

It has been a long, hard, painful road for me to learn that discretion and secrecy are not the same thing. ...

5. Relationships Can Be Whatever They Want to Become.

The beauty of polyamorous relationships is that not all relationships need to look or stay a certain way. Relationship transition is an accepted part of polyamory. ... Each relationship can become what it is meant to be. ... I have found freedom in accepting my relationships as they are.

Freepik

●  On the other side of the world, Gaysi Family is a "media platform and safe zone for queer desis. We hold space for queer folx across Southeast Asia to share their stories and experiences, while engaging with others from the community."

They're currently running a series of interviews and stories from queer polys:

Part 1, Geekspeaking Non-Monogamy

Part 2, On Being Polysecure

Part 3, Family Matters

Part 4, Sacred Spaces: Meditations On Non-Monogamy And Religion.

●  An outfit called TheDatingCatalog.com says it compiles "pre-selected dating websites specializing in unique niches." I can't figure out their business model or how it might bias the picks. For what it's worth, their Top 10 Polyamorous Dating Sites and Apps for Poly Folks just appeared as an advertorial on the Washington City Paper site (Jan. 5). Not all of them are exactly polyamorous, but the ten include some I hadn't heard of:  Zever, Adult Friend Finder, Hinge, Swing Lifestyle, Feeld, #Open, OkCupid, 3Fun, Reddit PolyamoryR4R (a spinoff of the 300,000-member reddit/r/polyamory), and Poly Matchmaker. Open the article for the links.

●  How To Manage New Relationship Energy In A Polyamorous Relationship, another Poly 101 item by Lexi Inks (Bustle, Jan. 10). 

●  Sophie Lucido Johnson Writes (And Draws) About Parenting (And Polyamory) Better Than Anyone (InsideHook, Jan. 10). She wrote and illustrated the delightful personal memoir Many Love: A Memoir of Polyamory and Finding Love(s) (2018) and has gone on to be a New Yorker cartoonist and further book author. I reviewed that first book.

●  Dan Savage on Polyamory, Chosen Family and Better Sex. A long New York Times podcast interview with Ezra Klein. "The advice columnist discusses how dating, sex and relationships have changed over the past 30 years — and where they should go next." Transcript. Fascinating and thought-provoking. (Jan. 10)

●  'I was seeing six people': Polyamory, often misunderstood, can also be freeing, in New Zealand's Stuff.com, the country's online site for its major print media (Jan. 8). The article is notable for its inclusion of non-monogamy traditions in the indigenous Maori culture, with interview. The relationship between New Zealand's Anglos and Maoris remains fraught.          

●  Barnes & Noble has created a category list of 56 "Romance – Polyamory" novels. I have no idea of the list's quality. Anyone? 

● And to close, here's one more plucked from the flow of happy-polyfamily tabloid profiles: Adelaide throuple open up about ‘complicated’ bedroom set-up (Jan. 3; in the News.com chain of Murdoch papers). With a well-produced, basic, but surprisingly accurate little Throuples 101 vid.

By Jasmine Kazlauskas

An Australian “throuple” have opened up about how they became a polyamorous household – after one half of a couple fell in love with her best mate.

Adelaide couple Dee, 30, and Dennis, 36, were in a monogamous relationship for seven years, and had two children together, now aged five and two.

While she had not planned it, Dee ended up developing feelings towards her best friend of two years Amy, 31, which complicated things.

After a deep discussion, the couple agreed that Dee could start dating Amy, alongside having a relationship with Dennis.

But after two months, Amy – who has a five-year-old child of her own – and Dennis had began having feelings for each other, due to spending so much time together with Dee.

The three of them then decided in April 2021 that it was time to become a “throuple”, a term used to define a romantic relationship between three people.

The group now live together in one home with their three children, where the three adults share one king-sized bed and parent their kids equally. ...

While Amy and Dennis are new to polyamorous relationships, Dee has previously been in one.

...Amy says all the kids are happy with the set up, and they all treat each other as siblings, while the three of them parent equally.

“Our children are now siblings, and they have adjusted really well to the dynamic,” she said.

...The throuple say that their relationship is very healthy and balanced, and have hit back at the negative misconceptions about polyamory. ... “It’s not just a sex thing,” Amy said ...“One of the biggest misconceptions is that by loving a second person, you love the first person less. This is so untrue.

“It isn’t for everyone, but it makes sense for us. We compliment each other in different ways. There are so many variables to the dynamic when it comes to interests. We all share different things with each other.

“I get to date my two best friends. We are a unit, it is supportive and I love that.

“We also get double the cuddles. Who doesn’t love that?”

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

Meanwhile,

“This struggle will define in what world our children and grandchildren will live, and then their children and grandchildren. It will define whether it will be a democracy for Ukrainians and for Americans.”

—Volodymyr Zelensky to the U.S. Congress

Why have I been ending posts to this polyamory news site with Ukraine?

Because I've seen many progressive movements die out because they failed to scan the wider world correctly and understand their position in it strategically.

We polyamorous people are a small, weird minority of social-rule breakers. Increasingly powerful people call us a threat to society — because by living successfully outside their worldview, we expose its incompleteness.

Our freedom to choose our relationship structures, and to speak up for ourselves about the truth of ourselves, is just one way we depend totally on a free and pluralistic society that respects people's dignity to create their own lives, to access facts, and to speak of what they know.

The Russian family-cartoon series Masyanya
turned dissident. Watch. The cartoonist has fled.
Update: a brilliant sequel of turnabout, with a
coda of empathy in wartime. 
 

Such a society is only possible where people have power to govern themselves, combined with legal structures that are at least supposed to guarantee the rights of all.

Innovative people, communities, and societies who create their own lives, and who insist on the democratic structures and legal rights that enable them to do so safely, infuriate and terrify the authoritarians who are growing in power around the world and in our own United States.

Such rulers and would-be rulers seek to stamp out other people's freedom to choose their lives — by intimidation, repressive laws, inflammatory disinformation and public incitement, abuse of police powers, or eventually, artillery and terror.

For what it's worth, this site has received more pagereads from Ukraine over the years (56,400) than from any other country in eastern Europe.

For now, you can donate to Ukraine relief through this list of vetted organizations or many others. We're giving to a big one, Razom, and to a little one, Pizza for Ukraine in Kharkiv, a project of an old friend of my wife (story).

But that is only the start. For all of us born since World War II, we unexpectedly find ourselves witnessing the most consequential war of our lifetimes. Because we have entered another time when calculating fascism, at home and abroad, is rising and sees freedom and liberalism and social tolerance as weak, degenerate, delusional — inviting easy pushovers. Which Russia thought it saw in Ukraine.

The coming times are going to 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. Buck up and be ready.

Need a little help bucking up? Play this. Another version, on the streets of Kherson the night after its liberation November 11. More? Just some guys in Kharkiv (our Pizza for Ukraine town) helping to hold onto a free and open society, a shrinking thing in the world. The tossed grenade seems to have saved them. Maybe your granddad did this across a trench from Hitler's troops — for you, and for us, because a world fascist movement was successfully defeated that time, opening the way for the rest of the 2oth century. Although the outcome didn't look good for a couple of years there.

Remember, these people say they're doing it for us too. They are correct.  The global struggle between a free, open future and a fearful revival of the dark past that's shaping up, including in our own country, is still in its early stages. It's likely to get worse before it gets better. The outcome is again uncertain, and it will determine the 21st century and the handling of all its other problems.

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

PS: Ukraine should not be idealized as the paragon of an open democratic society. For instance, see If Ukraine Wants To Stand for Liberty and Democracy, It Should Rethink Some of Its Wartime Policies. 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. So they're working on that. (More.)

Now, writes US war correspondent George Packer in The Atlantic (Sept. 7), 

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. Learn that word. It's getting them through as well as they've been able. We polyfolks often dream of creating something like that community spirit in miniature, in our polycules and networks. Occasionally we succeed.

Social attitudes in Ukraine are generally traditional, but not bitterly so like often in the US; the ideal of modern European civil society is widely treasured, and social progressivism has room to thrive. Some 57,000 women volunteer in all roles in the armed forces, flooding traditionally male bastions, including as combat officers, platoon leaders, artillery gunners, tankers, and snipers. LGBT folx in the armed forces openly wear symbols of LGBT pride on their uniforms, whereas in Russia it's a crime for even a civilian to show a rainbow pin or "say gay."

And in November, Russia made it a crime not just to speak for LGBT recognition, but to speak for "non-traditional sexual relations." Until recently Russia had a polyamory education and awareness movement.

Polyfolks are like one ten-thousandth of what's at stake globally. Ukraine must have our material support for as long as it takes. Speak up to demand it.

"Defenders of Bakhmut," where Zelensky met soldiers at the front line who gave him the signed battle flag that he presented to Nancy Pelosi. Art by Natasha Le in Mikolaiv, who reinterprets traditional guardian angels as riot grrls for an upcoming generation.

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

PS: A real-life version of her in Bakhmut; the artwork isn't just fantasy.  (Jan. 3, 2023)

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