By Maria Padhila
I really wish I could travel more and attend more poly events. For instance, I had to miss Vancouver, BC’s PolyCon event, “Claiming Our Right to Love,” and worst of all, I had to miss the workshop: “How NOT to Be a Poly Elite Douchenozzle.”
The workshop was given by Samantha Fraser, mistress of the Not Your Mother’s Playground website and book of the same name, now available on Kindle. She also gave a workshop on double standards, and the keynote talk, “Living Honestly & Creating Change.”
“…Word is that Samantha Fraser brought down the house with her Friday night keynote talk,” reported Alan of Poly in the Media.
I think what makes her so popular might have something to do with honesty, openness and good communication, judging from her writing. I put in for an interview with her; she’s currently on the road, but is down with it in the future.
But the topic of how not to be a poly elite douchnozzle is one whose time has certainly come. This morning, my mailbox was tied and bound with news of a study that people who do BDSM are “mentally healthier” than those who don’t. So get out the spatula if you’re feeling a little neurotic, and whap your way to mental health, right? Actually, BDSM’s customary honesty, openness and good communication — people actually talking about boundaries and what they want — have been tagged as the culprits in this case.
I still remember the collective community cringe when the quad member on Showtime’s poly series declared that poly people are “more evolved.” Get out the spatula for that guy! Whap!
And over the past few months, there was the much-repurposed and reprinted article on “what swinging couples and committed polyamorists can teach monogamists about love.” Spoiler alert: It was something about the importance of honesty, openness and good communication.
Don’t stop there. Lots of virtual ink got spilled on the superiority of gay relationships as well: for instance, in the Atlantic article on what gay couples teach “us” about a good marriage. It seems honesty, openness and good communication are really good for relationships.
The point of all this being that there’s nothing inherently superior about being poly, BDSM or gay. What makes a relationship good are relationship skills and talents.
There’s a lot of heteronormative and cis privilege in all these perspectives, and if you want to quantify evils, these would seem the worst of them (“cis” is short for “cisgender,” used to describe someone whose gender identity matches their anatomical gender at birth).
But there’s also a fair share of elite douchnozzlery within the poly world. These cases of ED may have a psychological cause — a kind of insecurity that leads to a need to shore up our inclinations and our behavior with studies and statistics. There’s another variety where one’s identity isn’t integrated but instead is constantly being self-reinforced as legitimate — the person who can’t stop talking about themselves in terms of their job, their kids, their car or their sexuality.
First, there’s the variety that posits that poly is “more evolved.” I’ve been called out once or twice here for placing poly above mono on occasion, and I appreciate it. Please continue to keep me honest (and open, and communicating).
Then, in a world of workshops and discussions and gatherings, there’s a tendency to do the “my poly is better than your poly” thing. A ‘V’ like I have, where we’re still struggling to make it all work and the guys aren’t in love by a long shot — well, that kind of poly isn’t real, or at least isn’t as good as a group of five. And that group isn’t real poly until they own a house and have some children together. On and on, we have to prove ourselves among ourselves.
It happens in Burning Man world, too — the burnier-than-thou can start to monitor your every trace. Yep, and in the PTA and in the book club. Doctrinaires such as these are actually important and interesting for keeping us all thinking and growing, but damn if they can’t be a drag — and judgement has a way of turning into privilege and exclusion very quickly.
That’s why I’m glad Fraser tackled the subject. As I said, I hope to get more on this and a few other topics when she settles again, but in the meantime, here’s how the phenomenon was talked about by Zoe Duff, a director of PolyCon and the Canadian Polyamory Advocacy Association.
She was quoted in a balanced news article (sprinkled, for no good reason, with photos of the attractive cast of HBO’s Big Love drama) in the conservative National Post (also the site of a fussy, tsk-y commentary on bonobos that was the source of much Internet mockery). Let me here make the judgy statement that this is such a great, inclusive way to talk when you’re approached by the mainstream media.
“In any pond, there’s people who are going to be, ‘I do it better than you,’” said Zoe Duff, a director of CPAA. “Within the poly community, there are people who think that you need to do it this way, and there’s people who think you need to do it another way.”
For example, the term “primary,” for your main relationship(s), is particularly divisive, for the stigma it places on the secondary partner(s).
Ms. Duff said some polyamorists say they could be monogamous if they wished to. Some are casually “monogamish,” a word popularized by the sexual advice columnist Dan Savage. Others see polyamory more as a natural trait, an orientation rather than a lifestyle.
“I personally wouldn’t be happy if I was that way [monogamous], so then it’s a sexual orientation for me. I’m happier when I’m with several people than when I’m just with one person consistently,” Ms. Duff said. “I think it’s part of my personality. I’m a multi-tasker anyways.”
But in addition to this kind of inward-facing critique, the Canada convention had a strong determination to push for more outward-facing goals. Advocates were able to get past the ubiquitous “But don’t you feel jealous?” questions and into some interesting future political questions, such as in this Winnipeg Free Press article.
While Canada’s polyamorists — people with multiple partners outside a religious context — do not face criminalization as do polygamists, it is not enough for them to be considered “just not illegal,” they said on Sunday.
As the Canadian Polyamory Advocacy Association wrapped up its three-day convention, the first of it’s kind to be held in Canada, the association’s director and conference chairwoman Zoe Duff said polyamorists hope to one day gain the same legal recognition as other couples.
“It would be nice … to have households where our spouses are equal under the law, and moving forward in terms of pensions, and inheritances and property division,” she said.
Unlike polygamy, there is no law in Canada that specifically bans polyamory. Polyamorists also distinguish themselves from polygamists, saying that while polygamy consists of men taking multiple wives usually within a religious context, polyamory is consensual, secular and egalitarian.
Canada has been the site of some legal battles centered on religiously motivated polygamy in the past few years. The upshot has been to bring polyamory into the spotlight as well and, essentially, to make it not illegal — it’s pretty complicated, but basically polyamorous relationships are legal as long as there’s no marriage or authority involved. Nice first step. The strategy in getting there relied on teasing out the differences among forms of non-monogamy and this kind of religious polygamy. In other words, it’s based on Our assertion that We’re Not Like Those Guys.
You bet your ass I’m going to differentiate myself from the guy on the desert compound with a stable of teenage brides. I would go so far as to call myself superior — in every way. There are some kinds of setting yourself above and apart that I’ve got no quarrel with at all. It is all pretty damn simple, at that — it can even be summed up in one word, and that word is “consent.”
This hasn’t stopped the comment flood from proposing all sorts of man-marries-goat or woman-marries-Eiffel Tower-and-Parthenon scenarios sure to arise now that the equality floodgates are open. Pretty confused mental picture there. As one commenter put it “{Insert close-minded comment about how this is all the gay peoples’ fault here.}” Yeah, them and their damn honesty, openness and good communication!