Thus asked Love Is Infinite today, and I just thought I’d paste my comment here, with some exposition. In general, I’m so pleased to see various different alternative sexuality groups talking more recently about our communities not always being up to scratch, institutional problems, and the benefits of creating things like sex-negative spaces.
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I think that mono-normativity is misogynistic, and I think that non-monogamy has huge potential to be feminist, especially as many people come to poly, and actively choose it (few monogamous people choose monogamy, as it’s a default) because they’re frustrated with the oppressive nature of mono-normativity. (I wrote about my experiences of that here. Edited to add: and this comment is a fabulous summary of a whole lot of stuff I’ve been learning and thinking about and wanting to talk about for ages!)
However, the more time I spend in poly spaces, the more I’m questioning the inherently feminist nature of poly. I think the ways in which many people practice things could be more feminist, given how much many people talk about how great poly is and how awful monogamy is. I’m a beautiful twentysomething woman, and when I’m in poly space, I feel like I’m fair game for any man to come on to, strongly, and a lot. Most poly space is sex-positive space, and what that means in practice is that it’s space in which I’m seen as being constantly sexually available – especially to the many, many forty-something men that hang out in these spaces, some of whom I’ve found to be actively predatory. Especially for young women new to poly, these people (generally experienced, seen as experts and held in high regard) are really quite dangerous.
In the Climate Camp community, poly became quite widespread a few years ago, and the way in which loads of their women were suddenly seen as sexually available was really rubbish for the community: they wrote a zine about it, the pdf to it is at the bottom of this post.
And much of poly literature seems to be written by middle-aged men, many poly events and websites are run by men… at the moment, my being a twentysomething women writing a whole lot of stuff on poly and running poly events feels like a really good balancing factor against that. But I know that, at some point, this whole thing of… collaborating in making loads of young women sexually available to loads of older men, and this often not really being the greatest thing ever, is going to mean I stop doing poly activism. I absolutely love running poly events, but at some point that’ll get too much.
I think the problems here are really similar to those in kink communities: kink has so much potential to solve lots of the problems that mainstream narratives of sexuality bring up. The ways in which kinky folks talk about safety and consent are absolutely brilliant. But, that potential isn’t realised, because there’s so much focus on maintaining that image as feminist and fully consensual that people who mention problems are squashed – and in addition, some genuinely predatory people gravitate to the community because they know it’s a place where they can get away with abusive behaviour and not be challenged on it. So in many ways it ends up being worse than in mainstream communities. Same with poly.
Sadly, I don’t really know what to do about it. I’d like to make things more institutionally feminist, and carrying on doing my noisy thing as a writer and organiser is part of that. But, I don’t know what else could help. And right now, I don’t really feel like I can go to mainstream communities – say, to educate professionals – and be a voice for the poly (and kinky) communities, and say ‘look, this is a thing people do and it’s great and totally feminist’ or ‘this is a thing people do and it’s absolutely fine and not abusive at all ever’ because I don’t believe it.
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And then! Mere minutes later, I read this post on abuse in the BDSM community: “I’m angry because I’ve been abused under the aegis of BDSM; I’m angry because so damn many of my friends have been abused in the scene; and I’m angry because if I used the guy’s name in that story above, I’d be kicked out of the scene.” There’s even a list of practical things we can do to start challenging this norm and making our communities better. This is brilliant.
OpenCon has a policy of ‘this is a place to meet new friends, not to pull’ – the discouragement of pulling coupled with the fact that most accommodation is in shared dorms means that it’s quite a sex-negative space, and there’s been some really enthusiastic feedback on that. So, maybe things will get better such that I don’t end up stopping poly activism because it no longer feels like I’m doing net good. Right now, I’m sad, and dubious, and I don’t feel like I can be an ambassador for poly to mainstream folks. But maybe things will change. Let’s keep talking about it.
Ace article, I’m thinking a lot more about poly recently and loving reading your blog. How do you feel about the difference between queer poly spaces and het poly spaces? I don’t have any direct experience of the poly scene but certainly in the kink scene I feel the whole dynamic is substantially better in queer spaces. I would NEVER ever again go to a standard het or ‘gay friendly’ kink spaces due to the predatory behaviour of the men there and the lack of respect for consent that I have seen. I’m sure there must be better non-queer kink spaces than the ones that I have been to, I’m not saying they are all like that but I have been assaulted in every single non-queer kink space I’ve been in and nobody has batted an eyelid. Someone once hugged me without asking in a queer kink space and someone else called them out on it, it was lovely. For me queer space goes some way to undermine the usual power dynamic. Obviously it has its own problems and busted power dynamics but I feel that even when a space isn’t run that well it still feels like a much safer space. I’m rambling sorry. I wonder if there’s a way to funnel the good things from queer spaces into non-queer spaces in both the kink and poly communities? I apologise if this comes off a bit ‘queers save the day’ I’m refering only to the spaces that people create, not the people in them.
Non-monogamy isn’t feminist. Like BDSM, it’s non-conformist. It’s considered deviant, taboo. The taboo revolves around things of a sexual nature.
Because of this, non-monogamy and BDSM correlate with a certain set of values which includes feminist values.
That’s also why there is a strong male presence…for whatever reason, males appear to score higher on nonconformity on personality tests. And of course there is the whole aspect of male/female differences in sexuality and the social conditioning regarding it.
I suppose you could argue that human societies (and primate species) in which polyamory (as distinct from polygyny) is the norm are a bit more female friendly when compared to polygynous and monogamous societies. That may take a fair bit of research to demonstrate, however.
I agree we should try to be feminist/egalitarian as a community…but we should be doing that in all parts of life, it’s not a BDSM thing or a poly thing.
Anyway, perhaps more related to your post…could you try to explain in what way these men are predatory? How do they enter the community? Why are they so well respected? Experience tells me that leadership roles generally tend to be filled up by dominant men with mild sociopathic tendencies. Is that what’s going on here? And why is it “young women” and “old men”? Where are all the older women? Where are all the younger men? Are they simply being sidelined or ignored as the young women and old men rush into each others arms or something? Or are they simply not available as a demographic? If it’s the second problem, it’s easily remedied.
I think the best course of action is to make sure no one feels pressured into accepting sexual/relationship advances, while simultaneously ensuring that no one feels awkward making sexual/relationship advances. If, at the end of the day, removing all social pressures from the equation, many young women still cluster around a few older, well respected men…well then I guess that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps that’s just human nature…after all, most non-monogamous human societies are polygynous, with husbands tending to be older than wives. As long as it is informed and consensual, who are we to judge? And I say this as a twenty something male who would be rather disappointed if that is, indeed, what human nature tends toward.
This is so good!!! I have written about the feminist potential of polyamory and BDSM in the past but I had only really been exposed to quite a limited group of poly/kinky people at that point and since coming out into the scene things seem much more problematic. Also, as a (almost) lesbian I haven’t seen a lot of the problems that exist in other parts of the scene. We should talk about this when I see you! (Greta) x
“But I know that, at some point, this whole thing of… collaborating in making loads of young women sexually available to loads of older men”
- um, isn’t that a bit victim blaming? I think I can see where you’re coming from, but the logic doesn’t quite hold up. If we go with ‘women shouldn’t be poly because creepy guys will try to chat them up’ then aren’t we then saying ‘mongamous women are safer from creepy guys’? That hardly seems true. I think women with self respect, good communication and an understanding of their own boundaries, who have the ability to be assertive, etc etc, are safer from creepy guys.
But ultimately I think if a man is predatory then the problem is his predatoriness, not the women around him. (Although there are arguments that the people around him _in general_ can be more or less encouraging and discouraging of particular behaviours, but that’s not an argument I’m comfortable going into right now.)
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