Critical polyamorist blog
I am a minority within a minority. I am a polyamorist. Polyamory means being romantically involved with more than one person at a time. With the knowledge and consent of all involved. It does not mean just sex with multiple people. For me and many others it involves the heart.
And I am Native American. No really, I am! My great-grandmother was NOT a Cherokee princess. I am descended from at least four different tribal peoples, and I am a citizen of one of those tribes. And unlike some folks who claim a Native American identity based on some distant and sometimes unsubstantiated ancestor, my entire family—at least the biological relatives—are Native American. Of course, polyamory is not a traditional Native American practice. Or at least it’s no more or no less traditional historically than patronizing your local diamond counter, registering for china at Macy’s, and going down to the little white church. I’ll come back to that in a future blog post. The polyamory expert Elisabeth Sheff notes that people of color and working class people “do not appear in large numbers in mainstream poly communities.” Feminist scholar and critic of monogamy Angela Willey explains that while others engage in varied practices of non-monogamy without necessarily calling it “polyamory” there is a "white hegemony in poly literature" that "has tended to presume a universal subject, neutral and therefore implicitly white, middle-class, college educated, able bodied."[1] As a woman of color raised poor or working class in rural America, although I am now a professional, there are challenges in being an explicit and especially rare practitioner of polyamory. Like many other poly people, I have a university degree. Of course! I would NEVER have been exposed to all of you poly folks if I did not. But after living and traveling in many places, I find that I am still a small town girl in ways that surprise me. My extended family is historically not very formally educated but we were nonetheless a book-reading and PBS-watching lot. I was exposed early on to politically oppositional thinking. My family is anti-racist and anti-homophobic. I am the only one who identifies as a feminist, but most of the women in my family act like they are. I have uncles, aunts, and cousins who are definitely country. Some of them hunt, own guns, and drive trucks. All of the recipes they post to Facebook involve something in a box and or a can. They shop at Walmart. None of us are vegetarians or hippies who practice free love in communes. Well, except me a little. The Critical Polyamorist is an experiment to think through in cyberspace, as an unusually situated person, this adventure that I have embarked upon. This isn’t public journaling. I want to begin a conversation with other polyamorists who feel not only socially challenged in the broader monogamist culture but who also feel culturally challenged within our rather homogenous polyamorist communities. (Disclaimer: I live in middle America, not California or New York. Maybe there are more folks of color who are out as poly in those places. But it’s a pretty pale landscape around here.) I am starting this blog in order to reflect and converse about these struggles with others who feel like me. I know you are out there. I am interested in reaching folks who are grateful for the models other polyamorists provide to love plurally and ethically. Their books and blogs keep me committed to this path on those days when I am suddenly weary or sad. When I feel like falling back into monogamy because it seems easier, because the world is made by and for them. I often hear poly people talk about the lack of models in our society for living this kind of life. We are inundated from birth with monogamy, indoctrinated in its norms and values. Few of us are born into poly families. We often come to this path after living as monogamists for substantial portions of our lives. I have only identified as poly for about a year. At this point I am proceeding with more determination and faith than support or understanding. And for a minority of us within an already poly minority, the examples and support we can find in mainstream poly communities fall short in specific ways as we struggle to do polyamory as particular raced and classed subjects. I identify not at all with the kind of New Age-tinged, communal mode of life taken up by the Kerista Commune in San Francisco in the 1970s that is credited with birthing the polyamory term. And I still see too much for my taste of stereotypical “hippie-dippy” culture in this community. But I am inspired by the systematic shift in both practice and thought that polyamory articulates. I like its intellectual substance. I just sometimes get turned off by its particular form of white cultural drag. I want to find a home in this poly world. If I’m going to do that I need to help make it more diverse. My gift to this community is to provide this place of reflection such as would reaffirm my struggle on those days when I doubt I can do this. So what do I mean by “critical polyamory”? This blog brings critical social theory including analyses of U.S. race and culture to analyze poly life and politics from my perspective as a woman of color, as a rural-born and now urban-dwelling Native American professional. I take the label “critical” not to downplay the radical critique of our society’s compulsory monogamy that polyamorists already engage in. We poly people are critical thinkers and actors who think it is possible to ethically love multiple people simultaneously with the consent of all involved. Polyamory is in this sense inherently and deeply critical. But when I take up the label “critical” it is not redundant. It draws on a broader tradition of “critical social theory.” That is an academic term in which analysis and critique of social problems are not just for the good of knowledge, but they are geared toward social change. Indeed, in pushing for greater inclusion in dominant society, have communities of color not always explicitly called out both obvious and not so obvious politics and cultural practices that exclude our experiences and histories? Critical social theory traditionally brings insights from multiple social science and humanities disciplines (anthropology, psychology, history, sociology, literature etc). I will occasionally add insights from the biophysical sciences to inform my analyses of poly life and politics. That divide between society and nature is a false one anyway. The biophysical sciences also matter very much in understanding our world. And increasingly, disciplines are getting smeared across that line between culture and nature. My kid tells me that I have an “evil sense of humor.” This blog will sometimes get evil, and hopefully funny. All names, locations, and other identifying information will be changed or hidden to protect the innocent, and the not so innocent. Stay tuned for my next post, “Poly, Not Pagan, and Proud.” Yours, The Critical Polyamorist [1] Angela Willey, “’Science Says She’s Gotta Have It’: Reading for Racial Resonances in Woman-Centered Poly Literature,” in Understanding Non-Monogamies, eds. Meg Barker and Darren Langdridge (London: Routledge, 2010), 34-45.
17 Comments
10/26/2013 04:23:13 am
Thank you for starting this interesting looking blog. I'd love to engage with you regarding some of your comments since I have been working on an essay about pre-European sexuality in the Americas for some time now. But, I'm hesitant to engage someone I don't know and cannot address. Maybe you can post something about why you feel being anonymous is useful? I mean, of course you don't have to; it's your blog after all. But perhaps we'd learn something from your desire to remain nameless for this blog.
Reply
The Critical Polyamorist
10/26/2013 07:25:51 am
dear david shorter, thanks for your comment. well i don't figure writing anonymously will last too long as i'm not very good at not saying what i think. and everything is related, so these ideas are already cross-fertilizing the other topics on which i write. i think i say in my bio that i already endure harassment occasionally at public lectures i give on unrelated but perhaps equally contentious topics for conservative listeners. this is new intellectual territory for me, and i'm mostly still waiting to see how this all goes. yay on your pre-european sexuality essay. can't wait to read it.
Reply
10/26/2013 06:47:59 am
This is very exciting and delicious! Yes, please diversify poly community and 'enlighten' or endarken as it were, us hippy new agers who have moved on. As a former extremely permisquous woman, and a woman who documented swinger's clubs like Plato's Retreat and others, I've seen various manifestations/brands of poly over the years. Its so time to create a fresh new flavor, and you are just the person to do it. x
Reply
The Critical Polyamorist
10/27/2013 08:10:32 am
Dear Annie Sprinkle, thank you for your comment. I see a lot of debate on the poly label and outright rejection by some folks who undoubtedly could identify as such. it is as you point out a dynamic term and perhaps one i, like others, will not always subscribe to. For now, it is a productive concept and category around which to think through both my practice and the broader politics of non-monogamy. thank you for encouragement and for your groundbreaking commitment to sex positivity! xo back.
Reply
Situationally Poly
10/26/2013 06:55:55 am
You have just opened the door for other PA's to walk through and come out in a public venue for some serious intellectual dialogue...for that I thank you. I, too, am a Native woman who has lived the poly life for a long time and am all too familiar with the tension of feeling as a minority within a minority. I think in many ways polyamory is even less socially acceptable than being queer or even bisexual, which is why we must resort to anonymity. I think it's out there on the fringe of alternative lifestyles every bit as much as being transgendered or even swinging (which I never did).
Reply
The Critical Polyamorist
10/27/2013 08:19:04 am
Dear Situationally Poly, thank you very much for your comment. Another Native (formerly) poly woman makes me smile. And congratulations on your reconnection with your lost love. I can only imagine how powerful that must be. I have read several accounts of folks moving in and out of plural and monogamous relationships. One of the things that appeals to me about poly ethics is that primary lessons in compersion and not jealousy, openness to possibilities, non-ownership, high levels of communication....are lessons monogamous couples and just human beings in all kinds of relationships can benefit from. Whether i keep practicing poly or not, this journey is causing me to grow into a more decent and loving human being. and for that i am grateful for the examples of others who pave the way. as for your questions--yes, i do think someone can be a poly monogamist and a monogamist polyamorist. and i hope not to be blogging anonymously for long. i am mindful of the work that others have done to not be in various kinds of closets, the risks they have taken to live openly lives that others deem deviant and unacceptable. their work and sacrifices are always on my mind.
Reply
Situational Poly
10/31/2013 01:58:40 am
Yes, the biggest lessons in the poly lifestyle for me was learning a different relationship to jealousy. I've always said that to be successful at poly you have to have advanced communication skills. That alone precludes it as a lifestyle choice for most people, I think.
La Maga
10/26/2013 12:04:58 pm
This is fantastic! What a welcome blog! So relieved to read your take on inclusion and exclusion - on class, race and ethnicity - in poly worlds. I am a Latina of working class background that became poly at 19 as the ugly sexism, misogyny and economic exchange I saw in monogamous relationships all over my own community - particularly in marriage after the infamous "Quinceniera" where you are presented to society at age 15 - turned me off cold. I wanted to live beyond these constraints, It was 1981 when I became poly - calling it an open relationship back then - and my family was horrified and extremely negative about it. I, on the other hand, found it tremendously liberating on many levels.
Reply
The Critical Polyamorist
10/27/2013 08:28:08 am
dear La Maga, thank you for your encouragement. And thank you for your example that we can do things differently than we are told. How inspiring that you made that decision so young. I live in a different time and place, and am much older than you were when you first came out as poly. i have no doubt things are MUCH easier for me now. But it is so liberating to not be anguishing over seeing love and connection as finite. To not be operating in what felt like a scarcity paradigm, but to operate now in what feels much more like a paradigm of plenty. Keeping in mind of course limited time and energy but these are less twisting limits. Best of luck as well in monogamy!
Reply
Josie
10/26/2013 01:39:17 pm
Bravo! This is an exciting development. Can't wait to read more.
Reply
The Critical Polyamorist
10/27/2013 08:29:31 am
thank you Josie! I can't wait to find the time to finish the next post.
Reply
Kokinaj
10/27/2013 06:35:21 am
I almost regret finding out about your blog so soon; no juicy backlog of old posts to read through. I may have to promptly "forget" about it and re-discover it six months down the road...
Reply
The Critical Polyamorist
10/27/2013 12:51:17 pm
Dear Kokinaj, your comment brought the biggest smile to my face when i read it upon hitting the most recent runway in my travels. Hopefully there will be a good juicy backlog of posts in six months or so. I already have the next two drafted on topics that involve really difficult politics of race. the research on those topics is proving fascinating and somewhat emotionally challenging for me. but stay tuned. it is gratifying that this topic is resonating for others. it's been a bit of a lonely cultural go of it in my mid-continent city. i have a lot to learn and being in conversation with others farther along on this road than me is critical. Love & peace back to you.
Reply
Leira
10/28/2013 02:42:58 am
Interesting start for sure. I am definitely going to keep reading and share this blog with members of my own poly family. I am curious to see the directions that this takes. I find that being a minority within polyamoury not only extends to the color of ones skin though but also lifestyle choices as well. Not only do I live in a poly household but all of us also are members of the bdsm lifestyle. We have found though that the two do not always connect, although of course there are those that practice both. I am very interested to read further. I am always looking to expand my knowledge on specific topics though this topic definitely interests me far more then a lot of others. Thank you for sharing.
Reply
marcusfractious
7/14/2014 02:52:46 am
For a short while I was with someone who called herself polyamorous but she had a preference for monogamous men. Do you have something to say to her? I feel like she's harvested my soul.
Reply
7/14/2014 10:21:34 am
dear marcusfractious, i don't understand your question. it sounds like a very interesting, and confusing situation you were both in.
Reply
I was doing some research for my story and stumbled upon this blog. I have to say this is food for my soul! I like the spiritual avenues you go down. It's very inspirational :)
Reply
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Photo credit: Short Skirts and Cowgirl Boots by David Hensley
The Critical Polyamorist, AKA Kim TallBear, blogs & tweets about indigenous, racial, and cultural politics related to open non-monogamy. She is a prairie loving, big sky woman. She lives south of the Arctic Circle, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. You can follow her on Twitter @CriticalPoly & @KimTallBear
Archives
August 2021
Categories
All
|