Google employees: "Our Executives Engaged in Abuse. Don’t Let Kink and Polyamory Be Their Scapegoats."

Google employees walking off the job on November 1 (Mason Trinca / Getty)

 
On October 25th the New York Times published an investigative report on top executives of Google abusing their power over women employees and the company letting them go quietly on good terms: How Google Protected Andy Rubin, the ‘Father of Android’.

It included these bits:

In 2013, Richard DeVaul, a director at Google X, the company’s research and development arm, interviewed Star Simpson, a hardware engineer. During the job interview, she said he told her that he and his wife were “polyamorous,” a word often used to describe an open marriage.

And,

[Andy] Rubin often berated subordinates as stupid or incompetent, they said. Google did little to curb that behavior. It took action only when security staff found bondage sex videos on Mr. Rubin’s work computer, said three former and current Google executives briefed on the incident.

...Mr. Rubin, 55, who met his wife at Google, also dated other women at the company while married, said four people who worked with him. ... In a civil suit filed this month by Mr. Rubin’s ex-wife, Rie Rubin, she claimed he had multiple “ownership relationships” with other women during their marriage, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to them. The couple were divorced in August.

The suit included a screenshot of an August 2015 email Mr. Rubin sent to one woman. “You will be happy being taken care of,” he wrote. “Being owned is kinda like you are my property, and I can loan you to other people.”

These stories, and others like them at other tech companies, have been reverberating around the tech industry and its critics, including conservative-world. Now some Google employees have published this on Medium:

Our Executives Engaged in Abuse. Don’t Let Kink and Polyamory Be Their Scapegoats.

A New York Times report exacerbated stigma while bringing wrongdoing to light

By Liz Fong-Jones

...On October 25, two New York Times reporters released their yearlong investigation, and the scandal burst into the open. ... A week later, 20,000 employees walked off the job to protest [Google parent] Alphabet’s systematic mishandling of harassment and discrimination. ... We as workers certainly cannot be safe while our leaders engage in, reward, and cover up sexual harassment and abuse.

Although the New York Times article shed light on workplace harassment, the stigmatizing depiction of polyamory and BDSM counterintuitively hurts victims and makes them less likely to speak out. We cannot agree with its characterization of the practice of polyamory and BDSM as inherently abusive or salacious. The executives’ excuses about their participation in polyamory and BDSM are yet another layer of deflection of responsibility. In fact, it is victims who are polyamorous or who practice BDSM who fear being shamed, isolated, and further retaliated against when reporting abuse, should they be outed in the process.

As women and nonbinary people who work at Alphabet (but who do not speak for our employer), and as people who have dealt with sexual harassment and assault, we want to set the record straight: Our existence as sex-positive and polyamorous people is not inherently abusive or scandalous. The abuses reported in the New York Times arose from corporate power dynamics and misogyny, not from polyamory or BDSM.

Ethical practice of polyamory and BDSM does not entail abuse or harassment. To explain this, let’s briefly define polyamory, BDSM, abuse, and harassment....

Consent is key to the practice of both BDSM and polyamory. Given the position of these men, however, meaningful consent was impossible. ... Adding in the dimension of stigma around polyamory and kink exacerbates the power dynamics in play. For one thing, if someone isn’t out as either polyamorous or kinky, threatening to expose them as such is an easy way for abusers to preemptively silence them. Even victims who aren’t polyamorous or kinky may be afraid to expose the abuse for fear of being publicly perceived as such because their abuser has used those words. Because of how polyamory and kink are often portrayed, being known as either can result in anything from social shaming and ostracization to loss of employment and custody of children.

...If people don’t feel safe seeking out support or asking questions about whether behavior they’re experiencing is normal, they will be easy prey for predators. ...

As a culture, we need to separate abuse and harassment from the ethical practice of BDSM and polyamory. As long as journalists and the public continue to conflate such practices with abuse, victims will face far too many barriers when seeking justice. If people don’t feel safe seeking out support or asking questions about whether behavior they’re experiencing is normal, they will be easy prey for predators. Communities dedicated to education about polyamory and BDSM practices exist, but they’re forced to exist in the shadows because of the fear of being outed and losing jobs, children, and more. Let’s work together to destigmatize ethical polyamory and BDSM so that powerful men will think twice before offending and past victims of abuse can seek justice.

Emily R. and an anonymous Googler contributed to this story.

Read their whole, much longer piece (November 29, 2018).

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Abuse in polyamorous relationships: A discernment tool, and a new roundup

At last February's Poly Living convention, you may remember, Franklin Veaux and Eve Rickert spoke and led workshops on abuse in poly relationships — and especially, how poly communities should address it. The subject was hot; the Polyamory Leadership Network had just expelled a popular figure following several complaints of abuse and harassment from his local community.

Hint: If people around you have come to feel that you harass, threaten, or abuse, it's really unwise to apply to the PLN. We urge communities to make space for complainants to be heard safely, to listen to what they say, and to act decisively to ensure safe spaces.

"There was a time, long ago," Franklin said in his keynote at Poly Living, "when I had this naive idea that polyamorous relationships were less likely to be abusive than monogamous relationships. Isolating a person is one of the hallmarks of abuse. So if you’ve got more people in the relationship, it’s harder to isolate someone, right? You have more eyes on a potential problem, right?"

However, said Franklin, he came to realize that because abusers are often influential and charismatic — and because groupthink is such a known bug in human nature — an abuser can sway an entire group against a person he or she is mistreating, belittling, controlling, or gaslighting. (Gaslighting: undermining a person's confidence in their own perceptions and memories.)

Emotional abusers or harassers often turn an accusation of abuse back on the victim and say that they themselves are the victims. Often they believe it! Whole communities sometimes tear apart bitterly over who to believe.

So, how can you and your community discern the truth?

A pattern of accusers is pretty damning; think Bill Cosby. But in a recent PLN discussion, Franklin described a tool for seeing through the awful fogs when matters are not so clear or so physical. I'll call his tool The Arrow of Control. He cites Emma Fett's influential formulation and its key sentence:

“I was victimized by acts of control” is not the same as “I was victimized by the other person’s resistance to my control.”

Franklin writes,

Something I would like to see more of in these conversations is a realization that the axis of control often points in the direction from abuser to victim.

It is incredibly common for abusers to assume the mantle of victim. And in every case I’ve seen, looking at the direction in which power and control flows is an incredible tool for helping to figure out what’s going on.

Who is attempting to assert control over the other person? Not control as in “you will not interact with me in this way” [that's boundary setting, which is about oneself  –Ed.], but control as in “I want to tell you what you may or may not do with your body/ your decisions/ your life.”

Now you too have this tool.

The Arrow of Control points to the truth in messy emotional-abuse disputes more clearly than anything I know.


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Since my last roundup on this subject, much has been published. Here's a selection.

● At September's CatalystCon West, Eve, Cunning Minx, Tamara Pincus and William Winters (grouped at right) ran a panel on how to recognize and respond to emotional abuse in relationships. Here's Minx's Storify of their presentation. Here it is as a slide show. Here's the session's handout.


● Jessica Burde, who is working on her second book The Polyamory Home, is posting a series about the topic on her Polyamory On Purpose website. So far:
    – Abuse in Polyamory
    – What Is Abuse?
    – Is Polyamory Abusive?
    – Types of Abuse
    – Vectors of Control in Abusive Relationships
    – “There’s no right way to do polyamory!” (But, there’re lots of wrong ways)
    – “Abuse, Boundaries, and Incompatibilities in Mono/Poly Relationships

Her Patreon page.


● By Ginny Brown, at Everyday Feminism: Yes, Abuse Can Show Up in Polyamorous Relationships – Here Are 7 Red Flags to Watch Out For (May 29, 2015). Excerpts:

...For many people, their first mentors in polyamory are also their first partners. And while often this works out fine, as more experienced people help their less-experienced partners navigate the difficult waters, the power imbalance creates the potential for control and manipulation.

And we need to be talking about it.

Here are a few toxic dynamics that seem to come up often when poly people share stories of abuse.

1. “You’re Here to Serve Our Relationship”

A lot of people come to polyamory as part of a monogamous couple opening up.... A Secondary’s Bill of Rights is a good read for anybody involved in hierarchical poly relationships.

2. “I’m Watching for Your Mistakes”

...The key dynamic is that, instead of healthily expressing their hurt and frustration [at something], the abusive partner uses every mistake or perceived mistake as an excuse to shame and control their partner.

3. “You Are Responsible for My Emotions”

...A lot of us carry some “poly guilt” — feeling that by being poly, we’re getting away with something.... Poly guilt can make it easy for a partner to pressure, punish, and coerce us into dancing on eggshells around their negative feelings, even if we haven’t actually done anything wrong.

4. “I Don’t Have to Care About Your Emotions”

The flip side of the above point: Because boundaries and taking responsibility for your emotions are so essential for healthy polyamory, some people will use these principles to justify being indifferent or hostile in response to their partner’s feelings....  In healthy polyamorous (or monogamous!) relationships, all parties are given space to have their feelings heard and considered.

5. “My Way Is Best for You”

You might think that poly people, having broken away from mainstream expectations about relationships, would be immune to the belief that there’s only one right way to do relationships. Alas, it’s not the case....

6. “You Can’t Talk to My Other Partners” (Or, “Everything You Say Will Be Shared with My Other Partners”)

...While the shared partner certainly has a stake in how metamours get along, they shouldn’t be controlling the interactions.

7. “Your Other Relationships Are Inferior”

Regardless of how metamours get along, a baseline of respect and understanding toward the other people our partner loves is fundamental to healthy polyamory. Abusive partners, on the other hand, will sometimes work hard to undercut their partner’s other relationships....

Trust Yourself

...It’s okay to trust your instincts and seek help if you’re unhappy – or if you feel unsafe or controlled. Looking at general resources on abuse in relationships can be very helpful.

...No rationale gives someone the right to control your actions, disregard your feelings and needs, or treat you as disposable in a supposedly loving relationship.

Mo Daviau

● By novelist Mo Daviau: The Polypath! Red flags to watch for if you’re dating a polyamorous narcissist. This was published in November 2014. Recently she updated it with the note, "I’m astonished at how popular this essay has gotten. If you’re struggling with recovery from a relationship with someone with NPD [narcissistic personality disorder], please see my list of resources."

In the interest of protecting the guilty, the innocent, and the integrity of the DSM-5, I have coined the word polypath. (Portmanteau: polyamorous sociopath).

Sociopaths, especially of the narcissist variety (the personality-disordered ones, not just the flagrantly self-absorbed) are usually charming and highly sexual, charismatic, attractive, and fun. They are also [literally] incapable of feeling empathy or compassion for another human being. Yet, because they are charmers, they are very talented at pretending they can. And they are also very talented at sniffing out easy targets. Solid, decent people who are talented and smart, and who are also at a point in their lives where they are vulnerable, such as having recently gone through a break-up, divorce, job loss, sexual assault, or other trauma, are easy targets. I was an easy target....

Narcissists are also, generally, non-monogamous.... The narcs who openly identify as polyamorous are able to adopt the earnest vocabulary, ethics, and norms of the community. However, when you hand these tools to a narcissist they quickly become weapons.... In many instances, the rhetoric of polyamory, while positive and respectful... easily shifts blame to the victim, who is often found beating herself up for being insecure, jealous, or for asking for boundaries....

Here's a handy little list of red flags.

Healthy poly folks do not use poly as an excuse to “trade up.” If you find yourself involved with someone who has never successfully managed multiple relationships, or who overlaps relationships and drops the old one when the new bright ‘n shiny comes around, that’s classic narcissist behavior.

Check the intensity of the relationship early on! If you are being courted, charmed, complimented, and told you are so special after only knowing each other for a short time, this is what the experts call “love-bombing.” We all want to feel loved and special, but too much too soon, with a shocking intensity that only grows hotter after you begin having sex, is Phase One of the classic narcissist Idealize-Devalue-Discard relationship cycle....

Any poly person who cannot come up with at least one ex with whom he maintains friendly relations. [And, I'll add, who you can meet. –Ed.]

If he uses the occasion of introducing his two partners to play one against the other [perhaps behind each others' backs].

If you are being accused of hurting his other partner by asking for boundaries, with no visible concern for your feelings: narcissist! Skilled poly folks know how to make sure everyone feels heard....

Be extremely wary of anyone who says that he hates making compromises. Compromises are necessary in any relationship....

Someone who treats polyamory like an affliction that can’t be helped.

...My narcissist accused me of going on dates with other men to “get back at him for being poly.” He even told me I was “using other men as a weapon against him.” What kind of projection horseshit was that?

A note from me: It's easy to throw around clinical diagnoses like "sociopath," but some of the people who do some of the things above have just bought into bad culture.


● On WikiHow is an excellent, compact resource in outline form with categories and bullet points: How to Address Abuse in Polyamory. It's editable; that's how WikiHow works. It includes many useful links. Here are the top-level categories as of November 11, 2015:

...Polyamory can be especially tricky to navigate. So what happens when abuse comes into play?... Below are examples of issues specific to polyamory, and methods for reducing harm or avoiding it altogether.

Steps:

1. Understand the various manifestations of abuse. Become informed about common (and not so common) ways that abuse can manifest in polyamory....

2. Look for warning signs. Be on the lookout for red flags, such as the ones below....

3. Learn as much as you can. Read articles, books, zines, blogs, etc. that speak specifically about abuse in polyamory and open relationships....

4. Find help....

5. Call a hotline if you are in a crisis situation, or even just to talk with someone....

6. Be kind to yourself. Remember these key points....

7. Advocate for abuse survivors. If you feel comfortable, nip dangerous attitudes in the bud....

● From Kai Cheng Thom, a Chinese trans woman writer, poet, and performance artist: 5 Common Ways Our Communities Fail to Address Intimate Partner Violence (September 10).

1. Not Talking About Abuse...
2. Defining Abuse Too Narrowly...
3. Thinking About Abuse as an Individual (Rather Than Collective) Problem...
4. Blaming Everything on a Caricature of ‘Abuser’...
5. Centering the ‘Abuser’ or the ‘Rescuer,’ Rather than the Survivor...

So Let’s Start Talking.... I believe in the courage of our communities to speak.

Her related articles.

● From a black perspective: The Poison Hidden in the Heart of Non-Monogamy (July 28).

...And despite the remarks written in More Than Two about those who’ve been abused, [the experience] in no way diminishes our ability to recognize healthy boundaries. If anything, it makes us all the more sensitive to boundary violations.... Not all survivors of abuse are the same. Those who don’t have healthy boundaries to begin with are more likely to put up with the abuse for a longer period of time, to not recognize certain actions as abusive, and to believe they deserve the abuse. The rest of us develop more awareness of what we can and cannot handle, of who is likely to be an abuser, and are quicker to notice red flags and get the hell out of there. You don’t survive long by putting yourself in danger when you know better.

Additionally, abusers can only take advantage of weaknesses that already exist. But for black women it is not any individual failing that makes us more prone to being the victims of abuse. No, our weakness is tied into our blood, woven there by history itself....

● And at Black Girl Dangerous, 9 Strategies For Non-Oppressive Polyamory by Janani Balasubramanian (October 4, 2013).


● 10 things I wished I'd known about gaslighting, by Emma Fett (July 15, 2015).


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And, here are resources that I listed with my writeup of February's Poly Living conference:

● Franklin's Some Thoughts on Community and Abuse, reflecting his Poly Living talk. (Feb. 11, 2015).

● Here's the article that he references midstream: The Community Response to Abuse, by Emma Fett (Jan. 30, 2015). This continues to get a lot of buzz.

● That post was a followup to Fett's Abuse in Polyamorous Relationships, including Six Poly Traps (Nov. 22, 2014).

● Here are Eve and Franklin's Resources on abuse in polyamorous relationships that grew out of the weekend. See the interesting comment there, by Liz, that women and men may abuse in similar numbers, but that this is not visible because men are more able to inflict obvious injury, and are more ashamed to admit that they are being abused when they are the victims.

● Also helping to prompt this discussion was Cunning Minx's Polyamory Weekly podcast Episode 418, Emotional Abuse in Polyamorous Relationships (Jan. 23, 2015). Minx says it was a difficult episode to create, months in the making. In it Shannon Perez-Darby, Youth Services Program Manager for The Northwest Network of Bisexual, Trans, Lesbian & Gay Survivors of Abuse, shares her advice on how to recognize abuse of all kinds and how to respond when you or someone you love might be surviving emotional abuse.

● There's a hashtag: #AbuseInPoly

● And here's relationship coach Dawn Davidson's collection of links, with commentary: Abuse in (poly) relationships: A link roundup.

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At the Poly Living con: Addressing abuse in the poly community

I'm home from Loving More's Poly Living conference in Philadelphia. Cons often develop an informal theme, not necessarily the one on the cover of the program. At Poly Living this year, the theme that emerged was abuse in poly relationships and how the community should respond.

The theme was set by the brilliant keynote speech and workshop presentations by Franklin Veaux and Eve Rickert, authors of the turning-point poly book More Than Two. They were onstage for a total of 3½ hours during the weekend and, as usual, held their audiences every minute.

"So there was a time, long ago, when I had this naive idea that polyamorous relationships were less likely to be abusive than monogamous relationships," Franklin said in his talk at the opening on Friday night. "Isolating a person is one of the hallmarks of abuse — so I thought, well, if you’ve got more people in a relationship, it’s harder to isolate people, right? You have more eyes on a potential problem, right?"

Against this happy effect, he said he's come to realize, there is a dark countereffect. Because abusers are often influential and charismatic, and because groupthink is one of the commonest bugs of human nature, an abuser can sway an entire group against a person he or she is mistreating, belittling, controlling, or gaslighting. (Gaslighting: Sabotaging a person's confidence in their own perceptions and memories.) This can make abuse in a poly situation much more encompassing and difficult to escape.

That was only part of Franklin's keynote; it was titled "Telling Our Stories, Changing the World." But the theme kept recurring. Since the mid-1990s, he said, "I've watched the poly community grow and change around me into this incredibly strong, vibrant thing it is now." But that strength and confidence ought to give us the courage to tackle dark sides of poly openly. For all our successes, he said, "what we have not done in our community is come to terms with the possibilities of abuse in our community. It is a mistake to think we are any more immune to abusive relationships than other relationship models." In fact, there is no research (yet) on this question at all.

The next morning, Eve and Franklin went into greater depth in their 90-minute workshop "Abuse in Poly Dynamics." It was packed. Here are Eve's 29 powerpoint slides, which are unfortunately brief (and slides 19–21 should be relabeled "Questionable Poly Advice" to match what she said about them). The discussion that followed was also productive, with many in the audience offering insights from personal experience, and psychology professionals in the audience filling in gaps.

Then on Sunday they presented "Putting the Ethics in Ethical Non-Monogamy" (a new updated version), broadening their earlier topics into wider, more general principles for defining and living the good poly life. And life in general. This too was crowded. Closing line: "Now that poly is surfacing in the world and taking off, we are at a point where we have to be clear about our ethics and values as a community, if the community is to survive and thrive."

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

Later they posted,

As part of our presentation on abuse in polyamorous relationships, we talked about ways communities can cultivate values that are resilient [against] beliefs that lead to abuse. One of these is to internalize and promote the Relationship Bill of Rights. We've finally made the Bill of Rights available in full on the More Than Two website: www.morethantwo.com/relationshipbillofrights.html.

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

Of course lots more went on at Poly Living all weekend. Four simultaneous tracks of classes/workshops ran all day, so you had to miss 3/4 of them — from coming out poly, to practicing vulnerability, to transitioning a relationship (when the black-and-white model of traditional breakups doesn't apply), jealousy management, a roundtable on poly activism, gender explorations, applying faith principles to decision-making, poly parenting, "Creating a 'New Culture' Based on Love and Freedom," and more. Total attendance was 209 people.

The evening after the conference, Loving More hosted an informal social gathering for Polyamory Leadership Network members, featuring get-to-know-each-other games. The PLN, by the way, defines poly "leaders" simply as "people who do cool things without waiting for permission." Is that you? You can read more and maybe send in an application.

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

Much of what Franklin and Eve discussed plays off Franklin's article a couple weeks ago on the MoreThanTwo site, Some thoughts on community and abuse. Excerpts (with my highlighting):

I realize [the topic] is a bit of a downer, and it’s not a lot of fun to talk about. Most of the poly community is awesome, and polyamory itself is wonderful and rewarding.

But I believe the community — by which I mean all the folks who are interested in polyamory and who get together to talk about this multiple relationship thing that we do — is at a crossroads. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I am not impressed with the way the organized BDSM community walks the walk when it comes to abuse. It certainly talks the talk about consent, safety, and respect, but in more than sixty years I don’t think it’s managed to turn that talk into a meaningful culture of consent.

...Right now I think the poly community has come to a place where we can either content ourselves with talking about respect and consent the way the BDSM community has, or we can work to make it a cornerstone of the social groups we create. I look at the kink scene and the path it’s taken, and I’m afraid. I don’t want the poly scene to become like that.

...Dealing with people who abuse is hard. It’s hard to stand up and speak out when you see something happening in your community that’s not okay, but that doesn’t involve you directly. It’s hard to get involved. It’s hard to tell someone, “Look, you’re not welcome in this space because you did that thing you did.”

And hard as that is, it’s only the start.

...The thing we don’t like to admit is that people who abuse are not necessarily evil. They’re not necessarily bad people. If you ask someone, “What makes a person abuse?” you will hear a lot of answers like “some people are just monsters.” That black-and-white, Marvel Comics caricature of what “an abuser” looks like helps nobody. Often, people who abuse are friends. Often, people who abuse are themselves hurting. Often, people who abuse genuinely do have good things about them. Often, they’re not committing physical violence, and the abuse is hard to spot.

See, here’s the thing. Abusers often sincerely believe themselves to be victims.

...Every person who commits abuse that I’ve ever met, without exception, is someone who is in a lot of pain. They feel that the abuse they do isn’t abuse — it’s a reasonable and natural response to the pain they’re in.

As people working in domestic violence prevention will tell you, abuse is about power and control. Lots and lots and lots of people, abusers and non-abusers alike, believe that if your partner does or says something and it makes you feel uncomfortable, threatened, jealous, or hurt, it’s okay for you to control them in order to deal with your feelings.

Look around. This idea has a lot of social currency.... The idea that if you feel something bad, it means someone else is doing something wrong and you should be able to make them stop doing it … well, that’s the root of all abuse.

[Not quite all. Franklin pointed out during the weekend that true predators do exist: psychopaths born without a conscience (often estimated at 1% to 4% of the population), who camouflage themselves in the larger mix.]

And people who abuse genuinely feel that if they tell a partner to do something and the partner doesn’t do it, they’re the ones being abused.

There’s an essay that sums this up brilliantly at The Community Response to Abuse:

“I was victimized by acts of control” is not the same as “I was victimized by the other person’s resistance to my control.”

Because a person who abuses is in genuine pain, and genuinely feels victimized, and sincerely cannot distinguish between “victimized by someone else’s control” and “victimized because I can’t control someone else,” it’s really, really hard to show these folks why their actions are wrong.

...In order to crack the problem of abuse, you have to cut all the way down to why we think it’s okay to control other people, and that’s extremely difficult. Look at all the people who agree with this idea! Look at how many social messages say that if someone does something that makes us uncomfortable, the best way to handle it is to control that person! Every social message we’re confronted with reinforces this idea.

So people who abuse aren’t (necessarily) monsters. They’re just like us. They’re hurting. And that presents one hell of a problem — one that we need to be able to talk about, and get a handle on, if we are to make safe spaces for survivors of abuse.

Yes, we need to be willing to step up when we see abuse.... Our first priority needs to be to protect and make safe spaces for survivors, to believe survivors, and to support survivors.

But if that’s all we do, if we think it stops there, we can end up perpetuating the cycle....

That’s not good enough.

Survivors of abuse need support. Abusers also need support. They need a different kind of support, though. They need someone to hold them accountable. They need someone to challenge their feelings of entitlement to control. They need someone to call them on their bullshit. And even if, for whatever reason, we can’t get through to them, we still need to work to change the cultural idea that controlling others because you’re hurting is okay.

...It’s not enough to cast out the person who abuses. That often does need to happen, don’t get me wrong. But that’s the beginning of accountability, not the end.

I’m not sure what the rest of the path to accountability looks like. But I really, really want to learn. And I really hope that other people in the poly community want to learn, too. I’m asking for a lot. I get that. But we need to be able to do this.

The cycle has to stop.

Really, go read the whole article (Feb. 10, 2015). He asks ask for your thoughts and input there.

● Here is the article that he references midstream: The Community Response to Abuse, by Shea Emma Fett (Jan. 30, 2015). This too is well worth your time.

● That post was a followup to Fett's Abuse in Polyamorous Relationships, including six Poly Traps (Nov. 22, 2014).

● Here are Eve's Resources on abuse in polyamorous relationships that grew out of the weekend. See the interesting comment there, by Liz, that women and men may abuse in similar numbers, but that this is not visible because men are more able to inflict obvious injury when aggressors, and are more ashamed to admit they are being abused when victims.

● Also helping to prompt this discussion was Cunning Minx's Polyamory Weekly podcast Episode 418, Emotional Abuse in Polyamorous Relationships (Jan. 23, 2015):

An incredibly difficult topic to deal with; this episode has been months in the making....

Shannon Perez-Darby, Youth Services Program Manager for The Northwest Network of Bisexual, Trans, Lesbian & Gay Survivors of Abuse, shares her advice on how to recognize abuse of all kinds and how to respond when you or someone you love might be surviving emotional abuse.

● There's now a hashtag: #AbuseInPoly

● Added April 2015: Dawn Davidson's connection of links, with commentary: Abuse in (poly) relationships: A link roundup.

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