Every now and again, polyamory gets run up the flagpole in the national media. It’s just appened again — this time in Newsweek.
I was at a poly conference where a Time writer by the name of John Cloud was there; he interviewed me and he used the occasion to mock polyamorous people as the kind of folk who believe in…astrology. I did not get quoted.
I’m never sure whether to feel vindicated or scooped when one of these magazines tries to take up such a personal issue; undoubtedly they politicize it, and the coverage is never quite personal enough; this leaves lots of room for Book of Blue.
Note the reference to Tristan Taormino, whose anal sex video you read about in this space back in April or so. No…not all polys…well, ok…haha…anyway…
Now the thing is, without compersion, there is no such thing as polyamory. It would just be torture. Compersion (as emerged in a conversation with my buddy Jane) translates loosely to, “Your fun is my fun.”
If we can do this we can live our lives.
Here is a sample of what Newsweek has to say. Next stop: South Park.
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.”
With polyamorists’ higher profile has come some growing pains. The majority of them don’t seem particularly interested in pressing a political agenda; the joke in the community is that the complexities of their relationships leave little time for activism. But they are beginning to show up on the radar screen of the religious right, some of whose leaders have publicly condemned polyamory as one of a host of deviant behaviors sure to become normalized if gay marriage wins federal sanction. “This group is really rising up from the underground, emboldened by the success of the gay-marriage movement,” says Glenn Stanton, the director of family studies for Focus on the Family, an evangelical Christian group. “And while there’s part of me that says, ‘Oh, my goodness, I don’t think I could see them make grounds,’ there’s another part of me that says, ‘Well, just watch them.’ “
Here is the rest of the article.