sex, love, and exclusivity
Common misconception by monogamous people: you’re just trying to get laid…polyamory is all about sex!
Retort by polyamorous people: no it’s not! it’s about lovvvvve
Common misconception by polyamorous people: it’s important to play into respectability politics related to sex in polyamory! see above retort!
Retort by proud sluts/sex-positive folks: nahhhh
…so, like. It has taken me a surprisingly long time, considering I’ve generally been a sex-positive person for while, to get to a place where I am comfortable making so bold a claim, but:
It’s okay to be polyamorous for the sex.
Before you start saying “that’s not polyamory, then! it’s polyfuckery!” or whatever, keep reading.
Yeah, if you’re non-monogamous and your only goal outside of an otherwise conventional relationship is to have casual sex, then you might get some side-eye from the polyamorous community. I’m not going to gatekeep personally, I’m just saying you might face an uphill battle in explaining why you choose the word “polyamory” instead of something like “ethical non-monogamy.”
My point is, though, is that it’s not an either/or. It’s a both/and.
You can be polyamorous in the sense that you are open to multiple loving relationships and be motivated by seeking sex.
Sex can be one of your reasons for being polyamorous. It can even be a primary reason.
We slut-shame ourselves and our community when we try to distance ourselves from that.
Yes, of course, there are polyamorous aces. There are polyamorous demisexual people.
And it’s reasonable to say that polyamory isn’t inherently more sexual than monogamy–that is true. Sex can be a part of it, just like it can be for monogamous people. And the degree to which it is a part of it varies just as widely!
But we’re playing by their rules when we scramble to prove that sex isn’t important. For some of us…even, dare I say, a sizable portion of us…sex is a real reason we want to be polyamorous. More sex, more opportunities for sex, more variety in sex, more novelty in sex. Whatever!
Now, to ask: Why is that concept so threatening to monogamy culture? And why are polyamorous people so obsessed with showing that we care about love, not sex?
I think this might be why: Because monogamy culture has decided sex and love are inextricably bound to each other through exclusivity. And while a major stated goal of monogamous pairings is to create a loving bond, sex is one of the ways couples are expected to express that love. And the way you know it’s real love is that you don’t do sex things with anyone else.
In monogamy, if you have sex with someone else, that’s generally taken to mean that you don’t really love your partner. You probably love this other person instead. But even if your partner rejects that notion and believes that you still love them even though you had sex with someone else, what you’ve done then is shattered the illusion that love and sex are inextricably bound. They’re not. They still love you, they swear. (As they really might. Polyamorous people know this well enough, even if we don’t like seeing it done unethically any more than monogamous people do.)
To bring this back around: when we polyamorous people say “it’s about the love, not the sex,” we’re appealing to monogamy culture’s value placed on love, and love alone, as the goal of relationships. We’ve correctly identified that a lack of sexual exclusivity is one of the clearest markers in monogamy culture that something’s gone wrong in your love relationship, and so we’re wise enough to downplay that element. “We’re just like you! The point of seeing multiple people isn’t the sex!” Except, sometimes it is. And that isn’t incompatible with love, and we know it.
We’re not rejecting sex: What we’re really doing is rejecting your sex+love+exclusivity link. Sex is legitimized in monogamy by calling it an expression of exclusive love. We don’t buy into that.
But it’s easier to say “it’s not all about sex,” to downplay our genuine interest in sex, to try to get monogamous people to believe we share this fundamental value with them, the idea that sex needs to be restricted, minimized, kept under control in order to be valid to want, to pursue.
vaporwave
amandla
stormborns
tangentwithtanner
germansingergirl
