Green flags to watch for in poly dating. The great poly/queer overlap. Co-living. And, a total heartwarmer.

Pride Month has just passed. But not pride.

●  In USA Today: Polyamory seems more common among gay people than straight people. What’s going on? (June 20).

Getty

By Charles Trepany

...According to a survey on relationships published online in 2018, 2% of heterosexual participants reported being in open relationships, as opposed to 32% of gay participants, 5% of lesbian participants and 22% of bisexual participants.

...Experts cite a few reasons why LGBTQ+ people might be more drawn to non-monogamy.

[For generations] many gay people likely became accustomed to defining and organizing relationships on their own terms, rather than by societal norms. This led more gay people to challenge monogamy, as well as other standards traditionally associated with long-term relationships.

"There is a stereotype that queer couples are, at very least, open to being open," says Leanne Yau, a polyamory educator who has been non-monogamous for eight years. "I think that, if you are queer, that means that you are already rejecting the societal norm of being heterosexual. And, if that is the case, then people who are queer are much more likely to think about in what other ways they might live their lives that are unconventional, or which might suit them better."

...Philip Lewis, a therapist specializing in gay men's mental health, says stereotypes around the ways gay people date and fall in love do LGBTQ+ people no favors. One stereotype gay men in particular face, he says, is that their sex and romantic lives must involve either promiscuity or non-monogamy.

That isn't the case, Lewis says − but a young gay person who grows up thinking it is may believe those are the only ways to have relationships as a gay person.

"I don't think that just because you're queer, you necessarily need to abandon everything else," Yau says. "Question and explore your identity and your choices and things like that, but the point is having freedom of choice. The point is not to do all the radical things all the time.... What's radical is the choice."

●  Another reason is because many people don't recognize (or admit) their sexual orientation until they're already adults and hitched to the opposite sex. For serious sexual incompatibility in couples, an agreed open relationship is a common work-around.

Or sometimes a work-apart, as Jason Bilbrey describes in the Modern Love column of the New York Times's Style section. I Was Content With Monogamy. I Shouldn’t Have Been (June 21).

The story takes a surprise backflip toward the end. Spoiler: The answer to the subtitle, "Can exploring polyamory both break you and make you?", is yes.

Brian Rea / NYT

...One night, seven years into our marriage, she said, “Do you ever wish we had slept around a bunch in college before getting married?” Corrie was a fiery social worker whose face could never hide what she felt — annoyance, attraction, embarrassment. Behind this question was an expression of excitement.

I stared at her in disbelief. By “college” she meant the Bible college where we met, both of us in student leadership. It was the kind of Christian university that prohibited dancing.

...It was after an episode of “Orange is the New Black,” the Netflix show featuring incarcerated women — many of them lesbians — that Corrie said, “I wish we hadn’t gotten married so young. I don’t regret marrying you, but I regret that I never got the chance to explore first. What if we had that chance now? Both of us.”

It hurt. It was the first time we talked about divorce. Neither of us wanted to end our marriage. But the idea of opening it also felt wrong — or it did to me. ...

...My reintroduction to dating was a disaster. I spent the moments before my first date dry heaving in an alley behind the restaurant. ...

●  BTW, that New York Times tale was served to me with the same ad repeated in all of its ad slots: Cartier, the high-end jeweler, advertising multi-partner wedding rings.

Here it is (45 seconds). It suggests multi-relationships that look more like RA than triads stereotypically do:

 

Times ads are super-expensive. Cartier is super-establishment. Capitalism adapts.

●  My last post led with Peacock's new documentary Queer Planet laying waste to the Catholic legal doctrine of "natural law," originating from Thomas Aquinas. Remember, 13th-century biology is to modern biology as 13th-century astronomy is to modern astronomy.

Now a new meta-analysis widens the picture by 38%.

– From MSN: The animal kingdom is gayer than scientists are saying, survey finds (June 22)

INTO / MSN

By Jude Cramer

From humpback whales to manatees, there’s been no shortage of queer representation in the animal kingdom lately. But according to a new survey, there’s still more queerness to the natural world than meets the eye — because scientists haven’t been accurately reporting their findings.

The study, published in PLOS One, surveyed 65 animal researchers on their experience seeing same-sex behavior among animals in the wild. Those researchers were studying 52 different species across various orders, from primates to rodents to elephants. Of the survey respondents, more than three quarters (76.7%) reported observing same-sex activity in their species, but less than half actually collected that data (48.2%) and even fewer included same-sex behavior in their publications (18.5%). ...

– From Phys.org: Analysis of data suggests homosexual behavior in other animals is far more common than previously thought (June 24)

By Bob Yirka

A team of anthropologists and biologists from Canada, Poland, and the U.S., working with researchers at the American Museum of Natural History, in New York, has found via meta-analysis of data from prior research efforts that homosexual behavior is far more common in other animals than previously thought. 

For many years, the biology community has accepted the notion that homosexuality is less common in animals than in humans, despite a lack of research on the topic. In this new effort, the researchers sought to find out if such assumptions are true.

The work involved study of 65 studies into the behavior of multiple species of animals, mostly mammals, such as elephants, squirrels, monkeys, rats and raccoons.

The researchers found that 76% of the studies mentioned observations of homosexual behavior, though they also noted that only 46% had collected data surrounding such behavior.... They noted that homosexual behavior observed in other species included mounting, intromission and oral contact—and that researchers who identified as LGBTQ+ were no more or less likely to study the topic than other researchers. ...

– The report itself: Same-sex sexual behaviour among mammals is widely observed, yet seldomly reported: Evidence from an online expert survey (June 20). From its abstract:

...Of the unique species identified as engaging in SSSB [same-sex sexual behavior] in the survey, 38.6% (N = 17) have no existing reports of SSSB to the knowledge of the authors. In both the survey questions and freeform responses, most respondents indicated that their lack of data collection or publication on SSSB was because the behaviours were rare, or because it was not a research priority of their lab. ... No respondents reported discomfort or sociopolitical concerns at their university or field site as a reason for why they did not collect data or publish on SSSB. ... These results provide preliminary evidence that SSSB occurs more frequently than what is available in the published record and suggest that this may be due to a publishing bias against anecdotal evidence.

Much more media coverage.

●  In Gay Times, Non-ethical non-monogamy? What cinema can – and can’t – teach us about polyamory (June 18).  "Non-monogamy is notoriously based on open communication and healthy dialogue, but where’s the fun in that?"

All kinds of movie fun could be in that. But the industry mostly can't see past its old standly the love triangle.

 

A movie exception, writes Megan Wallace, is Passages (Ira Sachs, 2003). 

Most of the films which depict forms of non-monogamy circumvent the culture around it (no-one in these films has read Polysecure, that’s for sure) and certainly don’t affirm the idea that non-monogamy can be an identity or orientation in and of itself. 

This is what makes Passages so refreshing. ...Things don’t exactly end well and there is plenty of emotional suffering to go around. However, Passages takes genuine steps forward in depicting the relationship between Agathe and Martin as metamours – the partners of a shared partner. While Tomas flagrantly flouts boundaries and has a passion for withholding key information, Agathe and Martin’s scenes together are filled with transparent conversation and respect. These two might not be romantically involved, but they offer one another far more consideration than the man who supposedly loves them both. 

In this way, Passages breaks new ground by authentically depicting the overlaps and new formations which can spring from polyamory – and it does so with a quiet understanding, rather than the sensationalism which still abounds.... As non-monogamy becomes increasingly visible in popular culture, we can only hope that other filmmakers follow suit.

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

●  You've heard lots about red flags when dating. But what about the opposite?

Here's Green Flags in Polyamory (Medium, June 24, registration walled). "Society doesn’t teach us how to build healthy relationships, so look for people who seek to learn by themselves." It's adapted from the author's Discovering Polyamory website. 

How to tell if someone is ready for polyamory, and has your best interests in mind

Norrabhudit / iStockphoto.com

By Thomas H. Brand

...Green Flag: Learning on their own accord.

[Which means] When someone is actively working on learning how polyamory works and how to be the best polyamorous partner. 

The truth is, it's simply not possible to take the skills we learn for monogamous relationships and transfer them to polyamory. ...

Green Flag: Spending time alone.

... And why is this a Green Flag? Because it shows that they are not using their partners to avoid themselves. Alone time is important for all of us. ...

Green Flag: Doing their best to communicate.

When someone is actively trying to be open and honest in their communication.

The importance of communication is obviously universal across all types of relationships. But I consider it to be a specific Green Flag when it comes to polyamory. ... We can no longer rely on the assumptions that we have all too often fallen back on in monogamous relationships. And this means breaking out of our communication comfort zones.

...The Green Flag is when someone recognises they need to try harder with their communication, strive to be better, and listen when they are told where they can improve. 

Green Flag: Openly listening to criticism.

Someone who doesn't get upset them they are told they can improve, but instead actively takes it onboard.

Green Flag: Knowing and communicating what they want.

Someone who knows what they are looking for in their relationships and isn't afraid or uncomfortable being honest about it. 

One of the things about polyamory that can be hard to grasp is that everything is on the table. ...The only problem is when we're dishonest with what we're looking for. ... 

 

Green Flag: You feel good telling people about them.

Someone you are comfortable talking about without having to hide, or avoid talking about certain parts of their personality or life.

...If you're not prepared to tell people about something, there's always a reason. It could be because [it's] not your business to tell. But if it's because you know it's a Red Flag and you don't want people to point this out to you, that's another matter entirely. ...

●  Monogamy? In this economy?  Actually, housing and childcare costs, plus pervasive loneliness, are prompting more monogamous and single people to explore group living as long-term close friends. The mommune phenomenon, for instance. The search for good chosen family is growing in many spheres, as financial precarity looks to become permanent in American life.

The results can be very happy. Valuable group-living assets to cultivate, and look for in others, include communication skills, honesty, forthrightness, flexibility, high emotional intelligence, readiness to stand up for one's own needs, and a generous heart. Sound familiar?

Time magazine takes note: Meet the Friends Buying Houses Together (June 10).

TIME / Getty Images

By Simmone Shahjune

...Eve Ettinger realized something needed to change. Stuck working remotely in a rented farmhouse in rural Virginia, they felt isolated and yearned for community and support.

...A friend of Ettinger’s had recently divorced and was looking to start over, and the two began to toy with the idea of purchasing a house together. “We wanted to divest from the compulsive heteronormative idea that you make your family and your stability out of romantic relationships,” says Ettinger. “We wanted to make an intentional community living situation where we could be there for each other in a bigger-picture way.”

They purchased a home in northern Virginia in 2021 that they now share with a few friends. The move has allowed Ettinger, a writer who also works at a nonprofit, to build financial stability that had long felt out of reach.  

...Many millennials and members of Gen Z no longer view the traditional markers of stability—marriage, children, and a white picket fence— as an inevitable or even desirable goal. ... Many increasingly believe that the benefits of homeownership—the number one driver of wealth in the United States—should not be limited to those in romantic relationships. That’s why more people are choosing to purchase a home with close friends instead.

...It’s hardly a new concept in the queer community. “It’s something that people have been doing for a long time because they had to,” says AnnieRose Shapiro, a real estate agent in Portland, Oregon. ... Now the practice is catching on with others out of financial necessity. ...

Poly people too have been ahead of this curve.

...Unique challenges come with buying a house with a friend instead of with a spouse. Heath Schechinger saw that for himself when he chose to co-buy a home with friends in Northern California in 2021. “We all had our own reservations about the nuclear family model of moving to the suburbs and feeling isolated and trying to raise a family by ourselves,” says Schechinger, 40, adding that regular rent hikes made them eager to purchase instead. “We all wanted to be able to eventually be a homeowner, so that we had the autonomy of making choices for our own, but living in the Bay Area that just seems so financially out of reach for all of us.” 

But Schechinger and his friends, who used CoBuy to help navigate the home-buying process, quickly learned that the process was not designed for multiple, unrelated buyers.... Many cities in the U.S. prohibit three or more unrelated adults from living together. ...

Andy Sirkin, a lawyer who specializes in real estate co-ownership, says that he encourages co-buyers to draft up an operating agreement that breaks down what the agreement will look like from start to finish—including an exit strategy, property management, and default. 

Sometimes the obstacles remain too great to overcome. Schechinger and his friends recently decided to sell their home, in part because their mortgage agreement prohibited them from transferring the mortgage to a non-family member when someone was hoping to transition out of the arrangement. 

Still, Schechinger is determined to try again. He describes his ideal home: a house with separate wings to allow for privacy, with shared spaces that foster connection. He views it as an antidote to the loneliness epidemic, a world in which friends might share the responsibilities of raising children or household responsibilities. “In the past, there were clear structures where people could rely on each other for support, whether it was caring for aging parents or helping with child rearing, or even finding a partner,” says Schechinger, a psychologist and co-founder of the Modern Family Institute, a research-based organization focused on expanding legal and social definitions of family. ...

He believes living situations that prioritize friendship and community will only continue to grow in popularity—especially as people look to build their own safety net in the absence of larger societal protections. “The social and economic pressures,” he says, “are too high for people to not consider it.”

 

●  I've saved the best for last. This just came in from the Valley Advocate of western Massachusetts, the half-century-old alternative newspaper where I once worked 16-hour days and slept on a couch. Summer of loves: Polyamory in the Valley isn’t what you think (June 27 print issue).

What poly there is, the writer seems surprised to find, is networks of support, community, and loving chosen family. I'm warmed to see that the Pioneer Valley, at least parts of it, continues to foster our early vision.

Partners LC, Ryan and Erin embrace in Northampton’s Look Park.
(Photos by Christopher Evans / Valley Advocate)

By Melissa Karen Sances

“You know what goes on behind closed doors in a polyamorous household?” Fox asks, and I lean in closer. We’re on the phone and he is 800 miles away, so I am leaning toward — nothing. I am on the precipice of something, I know I am, but all I can see is my broken phone screen over a black background, his name, white like sunlight, filtered through the cracks.

“What?” I ask, as the seconds tick by. “What goes on?”

Josie and Tasha Metley at last year’s Hampshire
Pride Fest. Metley, who is married to Josie, also
has a relationship with Jimmy, who
is married to Liv.

“Board games,” the 45-year-old says with a laugh. “Like Dungeons & Dragons. A polycule makes for a readymade D&D group. I’ve never run across the bacchanalias that conservative folks are worried about, because our life revolves around board games and Google Calendar. It’s soccer mom times 50.”

It sounds so … wholesome.

It also sounds familiar. In 15 interviews across 5 polycules, almost everyone will share that, for them, polyamory has very little to do with sex. And, a few days after my call with Fox, when representatives of each polycule gather for a photo shoot and join hands, I will be touched by their gentle circle, and I will see exactly what everyone has described: shared joy in shared love.

Terri and Gus. “It was helpful to have my first poly
relationship with someone who had so much
experience in the community,” he says.
“It was like going to a foreign country
with a native language speaker.”

Let’s be real

But even in our liberal, queer-friendly Pioneer Valley, polyamory isn’t easy. Everyone who shared their story with me acknowledged a level of risk, from being “outed” to their family, workplace or community, to facing social or legal danger. Some chose to use pseudonyms or first names only to protect their privacy. I spoke with people from Springfield, Greenfield, Westfield, Chesterfield, Easthampton and Northampton, ranging in age from 29 to 55. I consulted with a therapist whose clientele is 80% non-monogamous and an expert witness whose own fear of polyamory drove her to research its benefits. Here are their stories. ...

Polyamorous partners Jennifer Rahner, center, and Sean Rahner, right,
with Jennifer’s boyfriend, left.

Read on. It's long and, like life, not always happy. It ends,

I stare at my black iPhone 7 and disconnect the call. When I turn it over and examine the multicolored case, it assures me, somehow, that nothing is black-and-white, that in between lies promise and danger, and that there is something beautiful about a smudged but sturdy rainbow.

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

Meanwhile...

    

Here is why I've been ending posts to this polyamory news site with Ukraine: I've seen too many progressive movements die out, or get wiped out, because they failed to scan the wider world accurately 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.

Such a society is possible only where people have reasonably good 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 direct mutual support, which is increasingly proclaimed out loud.

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, weaponizing police abuse and stacking courts, or eventually, artillery.

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, linking up 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 whole world is watching what we will do about it. Starting with China, with its eyes on Taiwan.

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. 

Need a little help bucking up? Play this. Another version. More? Some people on the eastern front trying to hold onto an open society. (TW: war is awful.) Maybe your own 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 1941 through early 1943.

Remember, these people say they are 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, ‘A Big Step Back’: In Ukraine, Concerns Mount Over Narrowing Press Freedoms (New York Times, June 18, 2024). 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. 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."

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. It's been keeping them going  to the extent 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 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, especially post-invasion. More than 43,000 women volunteer in the armed forces, flooding traditionally male bastions — including 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 prison-worthy 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 material backing for as long as it takes them to win their security, freedom, and future. Continue to speak up for it.

                                     

A Russian writer grieves: "My country has fallen out of time."

Women defenders on the world's eastern front

PPS:  U.S. authori-tarians, such as Sen. Ted Cruz, say that allowing women in front-line roles is a woke plot to weaken America's armed forces. Ukraine puts that shit to bed. Do you have a relative who talks like that? Send them this video link to Vidma, who commands a mortar platoon, recounting the story of one of their battles near Bakhmut.

Update June 17, 2024: Almost two years later Vidma is still alive, still with her mortar unit, and posting TikToks. They are now at the front in, it looks like, the battle to hold Chasiv Yar, an afternoon's hike east of Bakhmut. A young girl who looks high-school age showed up to join them. Another vid. Their lives, and their promising society, depend on us. 

And maybe our own? Says Maine's independent Senator Angus King (Jan. 31, 2024),

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.

[Permalink]

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Queer & poly animals rewrite "natural law." Research on why ENM succeeds. What an AI thinks we look like. Poly & psychedelics, new compersion book, more.

___________________________

First, announcements:

♥  From OPEN: "The Open Workplaces Initiative is a project between OPEN and the Modern Family Institute to foster inclusive workplaces for all family and relationship structures. 

"We're thrilled to announce our new Open Workplaces Office Hours, held weekly on Wednesdays at 4 PM PST / 7 PM EST. ...Connect and collaborate with the OPEN team and other non-monogamous professionals. Join us to discuss workplace advocacy, career-building, and more!

"...Our newly updated V2 Open Workplaces Toolkit is packed with actionable guidance and template policy language.

♥  Also from Open:  "[Less than] FOUR WEEKS until we kick off the global Week of Visibility for Non-monogamy! July 15 - 21.

"We just published the global event directory, with over a dozen in-person and virtual events and more being added every week! It's not too late to organize something for your community, too. Check out the Event Host Guide for helpful guidance, then register your in-person event or virtual event to add it to the directory.

"Here are the awesome events and activities that members of the community have planned so far:

VIRTUAL EVENTS

• Panel: Identity & Inclusion in the Non-monogamy Movement. Tue. July 16: RSVP on Luma or Plura
• Panel: Peek Inside our Polycule. Tue. July 16: RSVP
• Workshop: Is There a Right Way to do Non-monogamy. Wed. July 17: RSVP on Plura
• Workshop: Creating & Evolving Non-monogamous Boundaries. Wed. July 17: RSVP
• Panel: Non-monogamy Myths and Misconceptions. Wed. July 17: Tune in live on IG
• Panel: Are You Out. Thu. July 18: RSVP
• Mass Media and Non-monogamy. Thu. July 18: RSVP
• More events being planned including "Current Research on Consensual Non-monogamy," "The History & Culture of Non-monogamy Panel," and more – stay tuned!

IN-PERSON EVENTS

• Poly Poly Oxen Free! Wed. July 17 at Brooklyn Art Haus in Brooklyn, NY: Get tickets.
• Picnic in the Park! Sat. July 20 at Edgewater Park in Cleveland, OH: RSVP on Plura, Facebook, or Eventbrite.
• Polyamory Picnic Social! Sat. July 20 at Victoria Park in London, England: RSVP.
• Naughty Gym Kayak Trip! Sat. July 20 at North Alabama Canoe & Kayak in Brownsboro, AL: RSVP.
• Sunday Rooftop Brunch! Sun. July 21 at Whiskey Business in Chicago, IL: RSVP on Plura or Facebook.
• More events being planned in Oakland, CA; Pittsburgh, PA; Indianapolis, IN; Martigny, Switzerland; New York, NY – stay tuned!

"Share your story:

"We're inviting you to share a story that highlights your experience with non-monogamy, and a photo of you and your partner(s) and/or family. By doing so, you'll be helping to create more visibility for real-life non-monogamous families, relationships, and individuals.... Or share online with the hashtag #NonMonogamyVisibility,"

♥  As always, you can find the next 12 months of polyamory/ENM conventions, campouts, retreats, and other regional gatherings at Alan's List of Polyamory Events.  Any missing? Let me know! Write to alan7388 AT gmail.com

______________________________

Now, on with Polyamory in the News.

● The Peacock Network is out with a fun 1-hour documentary, Queer Planet. Fun and important. Many hundreds of animal species are well documented to show homosexual and bisexual behavior and pair bonds — and also, sometimes, to form polyamorous family units raising their young. Nature is not just MF couples like you were told as a child.

So much for natural law, that 13-century concept originating from Thomas Aquinas justifying why governments should outlaw "unnatural acts." If it happens in nature it's natural by definition. Oops.

The trailer:

Some flamingo parents form triads and quads
to hatch and raise their chicks.

My wife Sparkle Moose has a zoology PhD. "Let me tell you about nature," she says with a grin. She gives talks.

This matters because at the US Supreme Court, the Federalist Society, and other centers of orthodox Catholic legal thought, there's talk of bringing back natural law (fundamental to Thomism) as a "non-religious" legal foundation for anti-gay and anti-poly laws. That lots of animals have gay sex was, in fact, one of the arguments presented to overturn anti-sodomy laws in the Supreme Court's 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision. But that was then, this is now.

The purpose of invoking natural law will be, as always, to try to hide the howitzers of Catholic doctrine under secular-scientific looking camouflage netting.

As Moose can tell you, 13th-century biology is to modern biology as 13th-century astronomy is to modern astronomy. Earth does move, and bad facts still make bad law.

●  Here's a piece that's had a lot of internet notice: Why Are Non-Monogamous Relationships Thriving? A Psychologist Answers (Forbes, June 8)

"A surge in non-traditional relationships serves as an augury of
their appeal, despite the prevailing stigma. (Getty)"

By Mark Travers

Non-monogamous relationships have been gaining interest and popularity among people looking for love. ...

[But] a 2023 study published in the Journal of Family Theory and Review concluded that individuals in non-monogamous relationships are considered to be more promiscuous, perverted and untrustworthy than people in monogamous relationships. ... However, the glaring question remains—why are non-traditional relationships gaining popularity and flourishing despite unfavorable perceptions?

The following antecedents and consequences of non-monogamy help account for their surge, according to the study.

1. Why Do People Choose Non-Monogamy?

Several factors act as precursors to individuals preferring to stray from conventional relationship structures.

   –  Sexual demographics. People who are white, younger, members of sexual minority groups, non-binary or transgender are more likely to seek out non-monogamous relationships.

   –  Value-based differences. Individuals who perceive an abundance in romantic alternatives and hold liberal political and religious views are more open to breaking traditional relationship norms. ... Individuals high in openness exhibit a greater desire for non-traditional relationships, showcasing a preference for variety, change and new experiences.

   –  Unfulfilled needs also encourage individuals to gain diversity in their romantic lives. A 2020 study published in Current Sexual Health Reports found that 42% of participants believed their non-monogamous relationships provided the benefits of diversified need fulfillment. ...

2. What Do People Get From Non-Monogamy?

Non-monogamous relationships owe their popularity, in part, to the positive relationship and sexual outcomes they yield.

Individuals in non-monogamous relationships experience greater satisfaction and commitment than their monogamous counterparts. Non-traditional relationships result in greater satisfaction—boasting better communication, and more openness and need fulfillment than conventional relationships. A 2015 study published in Sexual and Relationship Therapy found that adults aged 55 and above were happier in non-exclusive, unconventional relationships compared to those in monogamous relationships. Non-monogamous older adults also reported more sexual frequency and better health than their traditional counterparts. ...

As society continues to evolve, it is essential to acknowledge and respect the diversity of relationship styles and the autonomy of individuals to choose the relationship that best suits them. It’s important to prioritize open communication, trust and mutual consent if we attempt to explore alternative ways of forming intimate connections. Engaging in thorough self-reflection and open dialogue can help establish clear boundaries and expectations. Ultimately, the success of non-monogamous relationships hinges on a foundation of honesty and empathy for all parties involved.

Two books

●  Writes longtime CNM researcher Marie Thouin to friends and colleagues,

I'm thrilled to announce the publication of the first-ever comprehensive scholarly book on compersion: What Is Compersion?: Understanding Positive Empathy in Consensually Non-Monogamous Relationships.

This book is the culmination of nearly a decade of research; I consider this book a hybrid between a scholarly text and a practical roadmap on compersion. While the book is heftily referenced, the bulk of the content is based on STORIES from the study participants I interviewed between 2018 and 2023. So, I trust this book will appeal to scholars, therapists/counselors, and non-monogamous folks alike (as long as they’re at least a little bit nerdy).

From the publisher's description:

Each chapter features compelling stories from real CNM people.... Thouin addresses the broader social context, explaining how understanding compersion is a groundbreaking step toward a world that supports relational diversity and freedom. By disrupting the idea that jealousy is the only valid response to intimacy beyond monogamy, the existence and practice of compersion builds the foundation for a completely new paradigm of loving relationships. ... Indispensable for CNM individuals, therapists, counselors, and scholars, this book is also invaluable for anyone curious to learn about positive empathy, intentional relationships, and radical love.

Thouin just did a podcast interview with the Multiamory crew (June 18, Episode 484, 1 hour).

●  And here's a book for therapists being newly republicized. The Many Faces of Polyamory: Longing and Belonging in Concurrent Relationships by Magdalena J. Fosse (2021). With polyamory a hotter topic now, the book's academic publisher (Routledge) is doing a fresh sales campaign. From their press release:

[The Many Faces of Polyamory] continues to inspire clinicians and patients alike... offering fresh perspectives and clinical insights into the longing to belong within concurrent relationships. The exploration of nonmonogamy within therapeutic settings is both complex and vital in a world where traditional relational norms are changing and evolving.

...Dr. Fosse is the current president of the Psychodynamic Couple and Family Institute of New England (PCFINE), and she is devoted to educating clinicians interested in developing skills and competence in couples therapy. 

...In The Many Faces of Polyamory Dr. Fosse offers  insight into understanding the dynamics of love, sex, jealousy, and compersion among those engaged in polyamorous and consensually nonmonogamous relationships. ... providing readers with a nuanced understanding of how to navigate these relationships....

●  And on another therapeutic cutting edge, or perhaps bleeding edge: Psychedelics and polyamory: an open marriage by Jules Evans (Ecstatic Integration, June 2, paywalled.)

We know that psychedelics can shift people’s metaphysical beliefs. What about shifting their attitude to monogamy?

Do psychedelics make people more open to polyamory? That topic is very much not on the research agenda at the moment, in fact it’s barely discussed. MAPS and other campaigners want to avoid all the controversies of the 1960s, and to show that psychedelics save marriages, strengthen the military, boosts the economy, and so on. The overlap between psyc… [paywall]

Much as I'm partial to psychedelics, mixing this mix is a mental-health explosive. Standard procedure in responsible psychedelic guiding and tripsitting, professional or amateur, is the agreement "No sexual contact during the session, except [maybe] between long-established partners."

This is for hard reasons. The 1960s counterculture, for instance, was famously lax about this mix, sometimes leading to emotional wreckage and the formation of abusive cults.

Evans himself writes on his LinkedIn page,

...Based on my informal survey, a far higher percentage of psychonauts are polyamorous or practice consenting non monogamy than the general public. Do psychedelics and psychedelic culture make one more open to non-monogamy? Over 60% of my survey respondents thought so.

But survey respondents and interviewees also told me of multiple experiences of boundary violations and ethical abuses in the world of psychedelic polyamory, including therapists and guides claiming their sexual touch in psychedelic sessions can heal traumatised vulnerable people.

● Canada's CTV News interviews family-law mediator John-Paul Boyd on gaps in Canada's laws that leave multipartner families stranded. Do laws need to change as polyamory increases? (May 3, five minutes). Boyd has been studying this issue for years. You may remember him in the news for, among other things, his 2017 research report for the Vanier Institute of the Family, "Polyamory in Canada: Research on an Emerging Family Structure".

●  Says Vanity Fair, The Summer of the Throuple Is Upon Us (June 21). They mean movies and TV.

Hot girl summer is over. This year, it’s all about the ménage à trois. ... What is most thrilling is that these new throuples are also marked by power dynamics that may be even more subversive than the sight of three people sharing a kiss at the same time. ...

●  A solid Poly 101 in yet another women's fashion mag, Grazia: Here’s What Polyamory Is Like From Women Who’ve Tried It (June 14).

●  And in the makeup-and-shopping mag Allure, What Exactly Is a Polycule Anyway? (June 21). Surprisingly good, considering.

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●  And now, I'm kind of astonished. I've heard lots of people's polyamory songs on YouTube, almost none of them radio quality. So how would an AI songwriting program do, based on prompts by someone who knows the subject?

Better than most! Joreth Innkeeper prompted for a song to be titled "Solo Polyamory" done in "gritty blues rock." She adjusted the lyrics and posted the result on YouTube:

Color me impressed. Joreth has presented at many polycons over the years, and the song does seem to capture her attitude. Any giveaways that an AI did it? Well, the music hardly grows any more elaborate or varied as it goes on. Easy fixes: Tell it to overlay a second, then third and fourth voices verse by verse. Alternate the voice additions female and male. Add a horn section behind the final chorus.

Gee, that was easy to type! Maybe I have a future in music.

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That spookily good result got me wondering. What would an AI think polyfolks look like? Image-generating AI gets its "ideas" from what is online and in archives. So then, would an AI portray an average of how the real world thinks we look?

I went to Canva and asked it to draw "typical polyamorists today." After a few incoherent jumbles it caught on and presented...

EDIT: Google Blogger deleted the image, apparently as "misleading." Because it showed AI-generated people? In a story about AI??

Use this QR code:

...dashing hipsters. Could be worse. It even made the woman look central and powerful. How'd it know to do that?

Never mind the monster-hand hallucination draped over her shoulder. To generate images that are both creative and convincing, a neural net uses the same universal perception algorithm that psychedelics act upon in your brain.^[1] Sometimes it shows.

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^[1] Okay, here we go down this rabbit hole according to me. Skip if not interested.

Neuroscientists, using new technologies, have been finding out fascinating things about how  brains work, and these findings have shaped artificial-intelligence strategies.

Running all the time in your brain are neural feedback loops that compare bottom-up inputs, such as from your senses or subconscious thought fragments, against top-down "priors", assumptions built up from past experience or habits. These feedback loops test an input against priors for its likelihood to be real and, if so, worth noticing. The loops then either extinguish it as being unreal or irrelevant, or approve it and pass it up to the next, more complex level of processing and reality-development. And if it's approved, the process will often adjust some of the priors to let it pass easier in the future. The process repeats at increasing levels of complexity and abstraction, up and up. All this happens very fast far below consciousness.

These neural loops have actually been found to continuously implement the Bayes formula, the famous equation in statistics for calculating a greatest likelihood from multiple pieces of uncertain or partial information. Bayesian processing is apparently built in at a fundamental level. Reportedly, if you put a few of the pyramidal neurons from a brain's cortex next to each other in a dish, they will find each other and start implementing the Bayes equation right there in the dish. It's what they do.

In this way your brain creates, and continually updates, its best-estimate internal model of the world around you. Evolution has powerfully selected for this reality-judging mechanism, since it gives any creature with a brain its best odds to survive and thrive as it moves through the messy outer world.

These countless Bayesian feedback loops self-adjust on the fly to try to keep up with changes and new things around you. (The term is "active inference.") The loops run at all levels from the lowest and simplest, such as flagging lines and edges in a visual field, all the way up to the complex and abstract: "This thing is a dog", "That thing is a house", "Bob's barbecue party has started next door, because voices." The loops have been measured to run very fast, at speeds of some tens of milliseconds per feedback cycle.

Next point: This model-making process creates both your conscious perception (your experience of the world around you) and your interoception (your experience of your body and self).

The reason your brain has to create models, inside your skull, of the world and the self is so the brain can work with them at all. Because the neurons you think and act with are there inside your skull, not outside of your head in the dog or the house or your toe.

Key point: These internal models feel to you like just they are the real world, and like a distinct thing that is a body and a self -- merely as a shortcut to not waste brainpower having to map the model to reality piece by piece consciously in real time.

This algorithm has, at least, become the hot working hypothesis in the consciousness-studies field. And it's why implementing the Bayesian algorithm in a machine can make the machine act spookily as if it "sees" and "understands" like a human. Though often imperfectly, with hallucinations mixed in.

This scenario of multilevel Bayesian neural feedback loops, IME, also explains many psychedelic phenomena. Simply posit that the thing psychedelic drugs do is to re-weight the feedback loops, at all levels -- either by strengthening the force of the bottom-up inputs, or by weakening the top-down priors and filters that control what's allowed up to the next level. Or both.

That does it. It's no coincidence that the classical psychedelics (LSD, psilocybin, etc.) are known to work by altering the input and output rates of those cortical pyramidal neurons.

So your "doors of perception" when tripping are not so much "cleansed," as Aldous Huxley famously put it in 1954, as reset to run freer -- to form looser, more directly bottom-up-driven constructs of reality. At every level. Which may then trigger, like a sudden revelation, the same "feels real" shortcut mechanism.

This includes accepting and amplifying loose inputs from normally unrelated parts of the brain itself, and from random, low-level neural noise. Both of those would normally be extinguished but can spur unexpected novelty and creativity when passed higher up.

I can even observe the "feels real" mechanism suddenly switching on and off when looking at a hallucination: going from "That pile of laundry looks like a weeping face" to "Goddamn, there that entity is, right here in the room with me just a few feet away!" This is the same reality-making process as in gazing at art painted on canvas, or pareidolia in clouds or tree trunks, or looking inwardly at hypnogogic images ("eyelid movies") that turn 3-D, or lucid dreams.

Next step: This same Bayesian model-making algorithm also creates, using your interoceptions, a working model of yourself.

Which also feels real, like a separate conscious being-- not what it is, just an emergent phenomenon of neural activity: a model. Which, again, comes with the useful working shortcut illusion that you're seeing a reality directly.

For me, grasping this scenario has made pretty much everything on psychedelics more understandable, easier to work with, and often even adjustable on the fly. Which I take as a sign that this is indeed what the psychedelic mechanism actually is.

Including that sense of expanded consciousness. By weakening filters, the drug allows you to see things going on at deeper levels in your brain that would normally be suppressed so as not to distract you from the job of operating effectively in the real world.

But knowing this comes at a cost!  Me, Alan, I, am revealed as not the captain of the Ship of Alan as it navigates in the world, but as merely an internal neural model of a self -- which, again as a shortcut, feels like a real, distinct thing. It's as if the Ship of Alan turned transparent and I look down and see the machinery in the engine room that's actually driving it and creating me -- plain, material-world neural machinery that has spun off this subjective experience of an "Alan" as a byproduct, a wraithlike emergent phenomenon. Its evolutionary role is to efficiently pass best-judgment data from the instruments on the ship's empty bridge to the engine room.

This suggests that the experience of consciousness is a useful spinoff, which evolution strongly selected for as soon as it emerged, because it provides motivation -- experiences of horrible pain and ineffable reward, desperate fear and driving hope -- whereas something that is unconscious like a robot doesn't care. And thus won't be motivated to try so desperately hard.

Talk about existential crisis! When people tell you not to take psychedelics frivolously, listen to them.

And yet, what an incredibly rich, complex, meaningful social-reality world we emergent phenomena have created! Our species' strong experience of being a self became the most important thing about us and enables us to dominate the Earth. How amazing is that? Don't forget, emergent phenomena themselves are real things. . . but abstract derivative things, not the first-order entities that our souls feel to us like they are.

Outright illusions are also things. I've concluded that you cannot grasp what psychedelics do without fully grasping the fact that that the external reality, and our experience of external reality, are two utterly different orders of being.

Confusing the two, I've also come to realize, is the cause of so many human misconceptions, delusions, and dead-end false beliefs.

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The weakening of the Bayesian loops' priors and filters about choosing what is worth spending brain power on, relative to the power of upwelling input material, also explains other effects.

One is how psychedelics famously send ordinary, philosophically uninclined people into experiencing revelatory plunges though ultimate philosophical rabbit tunnels -- mystical experiences of insights into matters that might even be ultimate truths of some kind -- which would normally be extinguished as seizing too much brain attention away from effective functioning in the real world. Think of the stereotyped acidhead mumbling and gasping about life, the universe, and everything as he wanders out into traffic. Millions of years of evolution have selected against that kind of thing. 

Therefore, we find ourselves lacking the words or tools for understanding, or working effectively with, deep possible realities beyond the world and body that we simply never evolved to handle. 

(The usual Ukraine stuff will return next post.)

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