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Polyamory and Its 'Others': Contesting the Terms of Non

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Polyamory and Its 'Others': Contesting the Terms of Non 04 069986 Klesse (to_d) 6/11/06 8:40 am Page 565 Article Abstract Drawing on qualitative in-depth interviews with bisexual-identified practitioners of polyamory in the UK, this article shows that love, intimacy and friendship are salient themes in polyamory discourses. An exploration of the question of how respondents define polyamory with regard to different ‘styles of non-monogamy’ reveals that the boundaries of polyamory are contested within the movement that has formed around this concept. The prevalent definition of polyamory as ‘responsible non-monogamy’ usually goes hand in hand with a rejection of more sex- or pleasure-centred forms of non-monogamy, such as ‘casual sex’, ‘swinging’, or ‘promiscuity’. The author argues that the salience of the relational ideologies of love and intimacy hampers the potential of polyamory to ground a truly pluralistic sexual ethics. Keywords friendship, intimacy, love, polyamory, promiscuity Christian Klesse Manchester Metropolitan University, UK Polyamory and its ‘Others’: Contesting the Terms of Non-Monogamy In the years between 1997 and 2003 I researched gay male and bisexual non-monogamous relationship practices in the UK. One of my major research interests was to explore what discourses on non-monogamy circulate within the debates on sexual politics in the gay male and bisexual movements. I deployed a combination of qualitative methods, inclusive of qualitative interviews, focus groups, documentary research, participant observation, and discourse analysis. I conducted 44 interviews with gay men, bisexual men and women with significant experience in non- monogamous relationship practice.1 About the half of my sample consisted of gay-identified men. The other half identified as bisexual or lived in a bisexual context. I interviewed 10 bisexual-identified men, including two transmen, and one heterosexual-identified man. Ten Sexualities Copyright © 2006 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) Vol 9(5): 565–583 DOI: 10.1177/1363460706069986 http://sex.sagepub.com Downloaded from http://sexualities.sagepub.com at University of Birmingham on October 30, 2008 04 069986 Klesse (to_d) 6/11/06 8:40 am Page 566 Sexualities 9(5) bisexual-identified women and one lesbian-identified woman participated in the study. I further conducted four focus groups with gay and bisexual men. My study shares a problem with other research into sexuality in that the vast majority of participants were white subjects of dominant ethnic- ity with a middle-class background. I interpret this bias as a result of my own privileged social positioning as a white, high-educated, middle-class academic researching in a context marked by deep social divisions (cf. Phoenix, 1994).2 Although the term polyamory has been around for a few decades, it is not yet widely known in the UK and the European continent. Whereas polyamory has provided the reference point for a significant social movement in the USA for some decades (see Rust, 1996; Munson and Stelboum, 1999a; Sheff, 2005), the social networks that have formed around polyamory in the UK are still quite small (see Barker, 2005). However, for a few years, seeds for a movement have originated from within the intersections of a range of subcultures, including the bisexual and BDSM scenes, the Pagan and new age movements, computer enthu- siasts, the Science Fiction Fan scenes, and political or countercultural groups committed to communal living. From within this diverse context, a small group of activists has started to do campaigning work around polyamorous relationship practices. Although polyamory is not essentially linked to any particular sexual identity, a significant part of the UK polyamory scene seems to consist of bisexuals or – as one of my interview partners3 put it – ‘heteroflexibles’. It is not surprising, therefore, that polyamory emerged as one of the most significant discourses on non- monogamy used by bisexual-identified participants in my study.4 In this article I present polyamory as a specific – even if contested – discourse on non-monogamy. In the first part of the article, I carve out some of its dominant elements or themes. I foreground the centrality of love to definitions of polyamory and show that as a discourse it blurs the boundaries between the sexual and non-sexual and partnership and friendship. In the second part, I explore how my interview partners define polyamory with regard to other ‘styles of non-monogamy’. Polyamory is frequently distinguished from casual sex and swinging. I argue that in particular its definition as ‘responsible non-monogamy’ has repercussions for the representation of more sex- or pleasure-centred forms of non-monogamy. In the third part of the article, I argue that a representational politics based upon a distinction between the ‘good polyamorist’ and the ‘bad swinger’ or the ‘promiscuous queer’ hampers the potential of polyamory discourses for grounding a truly pluralistic sexual ethics that may embrace the diversity of non-monogamous sexual and intimate practices. 566 Downloaded from http://sexualities.sagepub.com at University of Birmingham on October 30, 2008 04 069986 Klesse (to_d) 6/11/06 8:40 am Page 567 Klesse Polyamory and its ‘Others’ What’s in a term? The concept polyamory Polyamory it is a contested term. Its concrete meanings have been an issue of ongoing debate. Charles talks about the difficulties within the UK polyamory scene in coming up with a consensus on a definition for the purpose of getting an entry included in the Oxford English Dictionary. Charles: There seems to be a lot of discussion about exactly what it means, because it seems to be a manufactured word. You won’t find it in the diction- ary, but at the moment they’re looking for new words for the Oxford English Dictionary. They’re trying to get polyamory in as one of the new words. They’re having a big problem actually trying to nail down exactly what a defi- nition of it is, because there’s a lot of disagreement about [it] . I suppose it’s good to distinguish it clearly, just in one word. If everyone wants to agree, it would be multiple relationships. It’s good to make polyamory more specific, about more emotional relationships. It’s loving relationships. I suppose it may not have to be physical relationships even. Charles emphasizes the conflicts about the meaning of polyamory. He believes that the definition ‘multiple relationships’ probably is the least controversial. He then goes on to suggest his own interpretation in which he describes polyamorous relationships as emotional, loving and not necessarily sexual relationships. His definition converges with that of his partner Marianne. She explains the etymological roots of the word as follows: Marianne: Polyamory is . well it’s a new word really . It comes from the Greek word ‘poly’ meaning many and then the Latin word, the Latin bit is ‘amory’. I guess they went for the mixture of Greek and Latin, because the all- Greek version would be polyphilia, and philias are usually things like necrophilia and paedophilia, things that are associated by the public with being bad. And of course there was already the word polyandry and polygamy, meaning many husbands or many wives. So I guess that’s how the word came about. But people, who identify as polyamorous believe in the idea of more than one relationship, meaning more than one love relationship. And they don’t even have to be sexual. Love is central to the discourses on polyamory. This is clearly revealed in an analysis of the etymological roots of the term. Marianne’s speculations about the reasons for the combination of Latin and Greek elements are also quite illuminating, because they point to a concern with the creation of a ‘nice’ word that cannot easily be subsumed to a canon of pathologizing sexological terms. The notion of non-sexual partnership endorsed by Charles and Marianne is a specific feature of polyamory discourses. While Charles suggests that this definition is not necessarily shared by all polyamorists, it was a quite common emphasis in my interviewees’ narratives. 567 Downloaded from http://sexualities.sagepub.com at University of Birmingham on October 30, 2008 04 069986 Klesse (to_d) 6/11/06 8:40 am Page 568 Sexualities 9(5) Polyamory – a love song With the Latin part of the word polyamory meaning ‘love’ and the Greek part meaning ‘many’, polyamory literally translates into ‘many loves’ or ‘more than one love’. With slight differences in phrasing, it is possible to find this kind of definition in almost all publications on polyamory (e.g. Lano and Parry, 1995; Anapol, 1997; Anderlini-D’Onofrio, 2004a). As I have already shown, the emphasis of love frequently correlates with a de- emphasis of sexuality. As a discourse endorsing love, polyamory can easily be integrated with other philosophies of love. Thus, it is the significance of love within polyamory that makes it possible for Marianne to reconcile non-monogamy with her Christian beliefs (cf. Goss, 2004). While certainly not all polyamorists are religious, some Christian groups promote this concept, and some authors claim that the term originated in certain spiri- tualist contexts (Anapol, 1997: 5, 127; Anderlini-D’Onofrio, 2004c). Irrespective of belief, some of my interview partners clearly welcome the de-emphasis on sexuality in the definition of polyamory. Andy, who is very confident with his sexuality and who strongly politicizes bisexual identity, explains that he would prefer the term polyamorous over the identity label bisexual, because ‘bisexuality’ puts too strong an emphasis on sexuality. Andy: It’s always got this sexual bit there, hasn’t it? And . my sexuality isn’t always about my sex life. My relationship also, as I said before, can be sexual, but polyamory is more to do with affection. Most polyamorists used the term ‘partner’ to refer to their multiple relationships of varying degrees of intimate closeness or commitment.
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