As a reborn opinion journal, Newsweek has to keep up with cultural trends. A few weeks ago, it announced to its readers that polyamory, the practice of multiple relationships in which each partner is aware of the other ones, is going, if not mainstream, than at least tributary.
Researchers are just beginning to study the phenomenon, but the few who do estimate that openly polyamorous families in the United States number more than half a million, with thriving contingents in nearly every major city. Over the past year, books like Open, by journalist Jenny Block; Opening Up, by sex columnist Tristan Taormino; and an updated version of The Ethical Slut” — widely considered the modern “poly” Bible — have helped publicize the concept. Today there are poly blogs and podcasts, local get-togethers, and an online polyamory magazine called Loving More with 15,000 regular readers. Celebrities like actress Tilda Swinton and Carla Bruni, the first lady of France, have voiced support for nonmonogamy, while Greenan herself has become somewhat of an unofficial spokesperson, as the creator of a comic Web series about the practice —called “Family” — that’s loosely based on her life. “There have always been some loud-mouthed ironclads talking about the labors of monogamy and multiple-partner relationships,” says Ken Haslam, a retired anesthesiologist who curates a polyamory library at the Indiana University-based Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction. “But finally, with the Internet, the thing has really come about.”
I’ve been waiting for a story like this — an article that bills polyamory as the trend to watch. A couple of years ago, I was hoping to write a polyamory story, researching the movement and interviewing practitioners (I got sidetracked). So, I confess, I was eager to see what Bennett would do with this topic.
While the article is easy to read, there were some big holes — gaps that seem to me to trivialize the issues around polyamory and those who worry about it.
First of all — what’s this about a “coming-out party?” Yes, a few new books on polys have appeared this year. But Alan over at Polyamory in the News has been tracking media coverage, including mucho mainstream media coverage, for at least four years. What may be more novel about this story is that writer Jessicca Bennett was able to find polys in Seattle willing to let her use their real names. In fact, Greenan, the center of the triad, is quite good at promoting herself — and has commercial motives for doing so. It would have been harder to find a less obvious profile choice, but it would have given the story more depth.
My impression, back when I was researching this subject, was that a triad with a filmaker/actress was more the exception than the rule. Instead, polys are schoolteachers, in law enforcement, administrative assistants — many reside in conservative communities. Polys pretty much look like the rest of us (if you are a striking filmaker/actress, I apologize).
In other words, there’s a strong “glamour” component to this story that disrespects the seriousness that polyamorous partners feel that they deserve — and the strong feelings that they can evoke among conservatives. Check out Practical Polyamory, Anita Wagner’s blog (she’s quoted in the article) if you want to see a down-to-earth perspective on polyamory.
While this particular triad is not, polys are also engaged in religious communities. Among them are Unitarian Universalists, pagans and those who represent other faiths. There’s no discussion of the religious connections here.
But does the existence of approximately half a million polyamorous families mean that “traditionalists better get used to it?” That’s at least debatable. It’s also snarky, distracting readers from taking the piece seriously.
Bennett does address a few of the difficult issues in polyamorous relationships: jealousy, parenting, and those who see acceptance of gay marriage as opening the window for polyamory (and who knows what else) to fly in. There is also, as she notes, tension between some polys and proponents of gay marriage, though it’s not clear how many polys want to be married.
Striking in this article is the lack of conservative religious voices that address polyamory from a theological and doctrinal perspective, like that of R. Albert Mohler, Jr., (who did comment, in the Christianpost.com). Although I like Glenn Stanton of Focus on the Family’s quote (he gets your attention) it’s got more of a political feel to it.
Even more disturbing to me, as a writer, is that nowhere in the article are there quotes from more traditional (and I’m not even talking conservative) therapists, some of whom take a rather dim view of polyamory. Why do we only hear from polyamory proponents in the therapeutic arena? A few peeps from anthropologist Helen Fisher (whose name is mispelled near the end of the article) isn’t enough.
The writer doesn’t really explain why polys are convinced that “more love” is possible — or why some religious leaders and secular proponents of monogamous marriage are indeed watching with concern. How about a little gravitas, Newsweek?
I’m still looking for the story that does justice to the many voices contending for dominance in American culture when it comes to relationships and marriage — among which polyamory is one important, but by no means yet a dominant thread.
Love Outside the Box is from Wikimedia Commons
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Comments (16) |
August 16, 2009, at 12:29 pm
The only purpose of this Newsweek story on polyamory — the only reason for almost any Newsweek story these days — was to twit “traditionalists” who don’t read the magazine for one more thing they’d “best get used to.” One wonders why Newsweek continues to publish, since it seems to presuppose a future that is set in stone and immutable by human agency and human choice. Why not just publish one massive tome of prognostications of all those inevitable changes that “traditionalists” had “best get used to” and just be done with it all at once?
August 16, 2009, at 1:00 pm
How far and wide polyamory will spread is unclear and very much an open issue; but that it will simply pass and go away seems highly unlikely. The indications are that it is here to stay, a settled part of social reality, and in that sense “something to get used to”.
August 16, 2009, at 2:40 pm
I’m Catholic, so I consider polyamorous relationships an offense against charity. And I also consider man to be a free creature, a creature who can choose to do good, or, via the abuse of free-will, choose to do evil. I believe that polyamorous relationships, much like other evils in the world, will be around until the Justice of God triumphs on Judgment Day. But becuase I know His Justice will be triumphant in the end, I’m not worried; rather, I hope!
August 16, 2009, at 3:51 pm
The question I would like to see addressed concerns whether this is a new phenomenom or a long standing tradition becoming visible. In Latin countries, it has long been a tradition for wealthy men to have a visible marriage with children and a mistress with children. And how does this differ from serial monogamy? I would like to see some serious coverage of polyamory.
Having been in a polyamorous relationship, I can testify that it is a very pleasant and meaningful way to live.
Why is Pagan not capitalized? You might link to Church of All Worlds for a better presentation.
August 16, 2009, at 4:16 pm
Polyamory has been around the fringes of Unitarian Universalism for about twenty years, hoping for the same level of acceptance that Paganism and BGLT concerns have gotten. That that has not come to pass suggests some stumbling blocks that either did not have analogues for Pagans and BGLTs, or that the latter were able to overcome but polyamorists haven’t.
While I wish this board wouldn’t make a punching bag of Newsweek as a matter of principle — if they start cleaning up their act, will we notice? — I’m pleased with EEE’s even-handing dealing with the issue.
August 16, 2009, at 4:20 pm
Certainly in the whole of human history, there have been several models of marriage.
When talking of multiple spouses, usually it’s polygamy (polyandry is much less common), or concubinage.
The models, however, do not resemble this version of polyamory. The difference here is that it is presented as equality of relationships, i.e., the women can have multiple partners also. It’s starting to look like well-off, comfortable folk wanting a little extra something or other.
I don’t understand exactly what is being asked for here - acceptance? lack of social disapproval? legal recognition?
The introduction of a form of group marriage? But why? There are no longer laws against adultery or fornication, and if three, six or twelve people wish to live and sleep together, there is no social penalty (other than the disapproval of their neighbours).
If you’re going to try to make “I don’t think the way she’s living is a good way” into an offense either civilly or criminally punishable, then you’d better invent telepathy as well, for the better punishment of thought crime.
August 16, 2009, at 4:46 pm
In a rather socially conservative town in Southern Illinois, I had a client abaout 10 years ago who came in with his wife. Problem: One of the women members of a close-knit swapping group (don’t know what else to call it) was being forced by the state to name the father of her child and the client had been ordered to take a paternity test. The client and wife explained that they had had this group for years; when the child had a birthday everybody came - who the biological father was didn’t interest anybody - it was the group’s child.
None of this would have come to light, except that the mother came on financial hard times when the child was 10 and she sought state assistance. The price for assistance was naming the father so the state could get him to take over financial responsibilitiy.
The client was the 4th guy unsuccessfully named - he was also cleared. There were many more to go.
This rather shocked me, but the husband and wife didn’t act like it was peculiar. They were very middle class. It wasn’t particularly a wife-swapping group - it started way before any of them married and many stayed single.
I’m guessing that the inter-net is creating a virtual community of people who know feel free to talk about it.
I know that there is a travelling “free-for-all get-together” that chose a St Louis hotel a few years ago. That’s a huge group that meets around the country - I guess it could qualify for polyamory, too.
August 16, 2009, at 9:23 pm
dalea’s point is a good one. Men with multiple wives or mistresses have been with us throughout recorded history. And polygamy has been associated with religion: Islam and Mormonism in the past as well. So the difference is not a change from strict monogamy but the change in male-female relationships making polyandry more on a par with the older one man, many women model.
August 17, 2009, at 6:42 am
Quite simple - to allow for open, unbiased competition between relationship models, without the state interfering or playing favourites (as it does now, massively). The demand is for the government to get out of the marriage and monogamy promotion business. It comes down to the basic constitutional principle of free exercise and non-establishment of worldviews.
August 17, 2009, at 8:20 am
The historical reason for governments being involved in the marriage business arose when the state began taking responsibility for abandoned children and financially vulnerable spouses. Among other things, that was the basis for the laws against bigamy; spouses were abandoning financial responsibility that would have been imposed by divorce. Most worrisome, Reno was granting divorces without imposing enforceable financial responsibilities, so many states did not recognize Nevada divorces. Only 50 years after the first nearly fool-proof birth control method - The Pill”, people are forgetting that.
The government doesn’t want to be financially responsible for children or abandoned spouses. Thus, it chose and chooses to promote those relationships it deems the most stable financially. Obviously, that rationale is all out the window now with the high divorce and low marriage rates. Government can’t keep up. And some types of governments are no longer even trying to avoid financial responsibility for children and financially vulnerable caretakers.
The underlying reasoning is no longer understood since the pill and most women generally being in the work force after becoming mothers. I think we’re in a period of transition re: government and who knows what will eventually emerge.
August 17, 2009, at 8:45 am
It is one thing for the state to establish and enforce financial and other responsibilities; it is quite another to promote a particular relationship model at the expense of all others.
Convictions about love, intimacy, relationships are as basic for people’s being as their religions. It is understandable for historical reasons why the protections for the first type of worldview are so much lower that the protections for religions; it is not understandable for logical reasons.
There won’t be fairness unless and until the government de-establishes monogamy and reduces its own role that of a competition authority - enforcing ground rules, not siding with any of the pretenders.
August 17, 2009, at 9:24 am
i think polyamory is like barefoot running — every ten years or so, there’s a renaissance of public attention.
not to toot my own horn, but i did write about the religious aspects of polyamory a couple years ago:
http://www.religionwriter.com/faith-life/polyamory/polyamorys-faith-and-family-values/
August 17, 2009, at 1:20 pm
[…] controversial topics of polyamory and Woodstock, we find the Get Religion blog covering both. First E.E. Evans wonders why recent high-profile coverage of polyamorous relationships have left out the r…, specifically the religions that are (generally) more welcoming to polyamorous families. […]
August 17, 2009, at 2:03 pm
The big elephant in the room here is the almost total absence of mention of Mormon Fundamentalists. While the article is apparently trying to push buttons on “traditionalists,” they’re studiously ignoring the even-more-traditionalist Mormon schismatics. (In much the same way that MF groups that don’t practice underage marriage or incest are almost entirely ignored.)
There seems to be an underlying assumption that things undertaken for religious reasons are somehow dirty, while anything you do for sexual reasons must be approved of. It’s kind of a switcheroo from generations past.
August 18, 2009, at 7:14 am
Andrea - Thanks for the link to your blog and your own work on religion and polyamory. I was taken by the notion that Warren Buffett was a polyamorist, but I’m not sure if he qualifies in that apparently his first wife seems to have abandoned the field to the woman who is now his second wife. In other words, the intimate relationship seems to have been with Astrid Menks.
August 24, 2009, at 1:03 pm
I just wanted to say thanks for doing such a well-written and down to earth post on polyamory, and for the links you gave to help readers who don’t know about it educate themselves more. It’s rare and refreshing to see such responsible blogging/journalism on the subject.