More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory (66 page)

The easiest way to find poly people is to be open about being polyamorous yourself. The more open you are, the easier it gets. When you treat polyamory as something normal and casual, you create a safe place for others to open up to you.

FRANKLIN'S STORY
One day several years ago, I was at a printing company waiting to meet with someone about a print job. It was a Monday afternoon, and the receptionist asked, "Did you do anything interesting this weekend?"

"Yes," I said. "My girlfriend and I went to see
The Happening
on Saturday. After that, her other boyfriend and his other girlfriend and I went out to dinner. We had a great time, but the movie was pretty mediocre. I don't recommend it."

"Oh, you're polyamorous!" she replied. "So am I! Besides my boyfriends, I don't know many other poly people."

Franklin's is just one of many, many similar experiences we have had as openly poly people. When you're new to polyamory, meeting other poly people can feel impossible. Creating a safe place for other people to be open with you requires courage, but often the rewards are more than worth the risk. To find poly-related discussion and support groups, Google, social media sites, Meetup.com and polygroups.com are your friends. Do a search for "polyamory" and the name of the closest city or large town, and see what turns up.

There's a lot of overlap between poly and kink communities. The organized BDSM world is older and more established than the organized poly community, so towns that don't have a poly presence will still often have gatherings of kinky people. Even if you're not that interested in kink, you can sometimes find poly people by attending BDSM munches, which are social events where kinky folks get together in low-pressure public spaces to chat and socialize. You don't need to be kinky to attend a munch. If kink isn't your thing, fear not; once you've connected with a few poly people, you'll find it easier to meet more.

If you can't find a poly community where you are, create one! This can be as simple as starting a meetup on a site like Meetup.com. Decide on a schedule and a venue (lots of poly social meetups happen in restaurants or cafes), and commit to being there every month. You might get only one or two people showing, or even nobody at all the first few times, but that's okay. Perseverance pays off. The women's discussion group that Eve helps organize went more than a year with only two or three people showing up before it took off; today meetings often fill to capacity within a few hours of being announced.

If you'd rather have a focused discussion, with topics and moderation, find online poly communities (social networking sites are valuable for this) and announce your intentions. Set a time and a place, maybe your home if you like (it's quieter and more sociable than a restaurant). Create a website or social media page if you can, and list it on polygroups.com. Again, you may not get many people at first, but these things tend to gather steam over time. If your interests are more in building a social network, host poly movie nights or have poly outings to events such as movies or shows.

POLYAMORY AND LGBTQ COMMUNITIES

The intersection of polyamory with lesbian, gay, bi, trans and queer communities has been complex and sometimes turbulent. Well before the polyamory movement got rolling in the late 1980s and 1990s, many gay and lesbian communities had already established their own cultural norms around non-monogamy. For example,
The Ethical Slut
was written against a backdrop of queer and kinky community, and it only briefly mentioned polyamory in its first edition. A great deal of polyamorous thought was pioneered by queer women such as Janet Hardy, Dossie Easton and Tristan Taormino.

While poly communities and discussion groups tend to be very accepting of LGBTQ people, most people in them tend to come from a cisgender and largely heteronormative background, and these groups can still have subtle problems with homophobia and transphobia. Cis hetero people may not be able to identify with the issues that gay, lesbian and trans people live daily. So it's no surprise that self-identified queer, gay, lesbian and trans people are not always comfortable in poly communities. Bisexual women, on the other hand, make up a large proportion of many poly groups, although bisexual men tend to be rare, absent or invisible. In some areas so many women in poly communities identify as bisexual that many people seem to assume it by default.

Unfortunately, the gay and lesbian communities have not always been accepting of bisexuality. (Franklin's partner Amber used to identify as lesbian and felt that she could not express her attraction to men without being ostracized.) The emergence of the poly community offered a place for bisexual-identified people, and later trans people, to find acceptance among people interested in non-monogamy. This may explain in part why poly groups today often have a relatively high percentage of bisexual and trans members.

Some people who identify as gay, lesbian or queer express concerns that polyamory is politically problematic. The fear is that polyamory harms efforts by gay, lesbian and trans activists to portray gay relationships as non-threatening, or that polyamory may pander to stereotypes that non-straight people, particularly gay men, are sexually promiscuous. Because members of sexual minorities are subject to social censure already, there can be pressure on people in same-sex relationships to be "model citizens" by promoting relationship ideals that are as socially acceptable as possible.

Other complaints leveled at polyamory have included the idea that it spreads STIs; that the gay community needs people willing to model successful, long-term monogamous relationships; that polyamory damages efforts toward legal same-sex marriage; and that in the context of gay and lesbian subcultures, it distracts attention away from the civil rights struggles of gay people. Even activists who support polyamory can express the idea that gays and lesbians should focus their attention on matters of basic civil rights first, rather than spend time and effort promoting acceptance of polyamory.

It doesn't help that media portrayals of polyamory tend to focus on straight cis people. This means that LGBTQ people or groups may view poly as something straight people do, or as something that reinforces conventional gender roles and power inequities.

Some poly lesbians find it especially difficult to come out in their communities, because lesbian couples have fought so hard to gain social recognition that they are wary of anything that seems to risk undermining that recognition. The small size of such communities can make it difficult for some gays and lesbians to have the same freedom of choice and expectations of privacy that cisgender, heterosexual people enjoy. ("Anyone can know except my softball team!" is something we've heard more than once—really!—and on opposite sides of North America.) We've also heard from trans people who have been told that polyamory "de-legitimizes" them by preventing them from finding "true" intimacy. Franklin has heard people say polyamory is something that trans people settle for when they can't find "real" relationships of their own.

Resistance to polyamory and bisexuality is by no means the case everywhere, though at one time it was common. What appears to be the oldest continuously running in-person poly discussion group in the world was founded in 1997 by a lesbian triad who encountered animosity toward polyamory from other gays and lesbians. And what resistance remains is diminishing. Since about 2000 the landscape seems to have changed greatly, with much greater acceptance of polyamory in gay and lesbian communities. In some places it's now accepted very widely, and many pride parades regularly include a poly presence. Discussion groups are cropping up just for LGBTQ polys—you name it, there's probably a Facebook group for it.

The result of all this is that your experience will vary depending on which of the letters you identify with, where you live and the particular communities you have access to. It's a good bet, though, that you will encounter more ignorance than hostility, and you will likely need to spend time educating both the straight/cis poly people you connect with and any LGBTQ communities you're a part of.

THE POLY CLOSET

How and whether to come out, and to whom, is a major topic of conversation throughout the poly world. Many people believe being open isn't an option for them. Deciding whether to be out is something all people in poly relationships eventually need to address. The decision is a personal one. There is no "right" answer. As among gays, everyone has the right to decide for themselves whether and how much to be open about their life.

There are many advantages to being out. You cease to live in fear of exposure. Being out makes finding partners far easier, you can more easily identify your enemies, and your allies can find you.

There absolutely are costs to being out. Polyamory is not a protected status; people can lose their housing or their jobs if they have a hostile landlord or boss. If you are divorced and not on good terms with your ex, custody of your children may be at stake; Franklin has seen at least one person lose custody of her children because of her involvement in polyamory, though she was later able to win custody back. In the U.S. military, Article 134, paragraph 62 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice prohibits adultery if the conduct prejudices "good order and discipline" or is "of a nature to bring discredit upon the Armed Forces." In practice, whether you will be targeted depends on whether someone is out to get you. Prosecutions are quite rare, but in theory servicemen in adulterous relationships may be disciplined, dishonorably discharged and even imprisoned, regardless of whether the arrangement is consensual. While we can't find any examples of military prosecution for polyamory, many servicemen and women cite fear of prosecution as a reason to be closeted.

Even without specific concerns about child custody, housing, employment or military service, many choose to remain closeted because they don't want friends or family to find out. But there are costs to remaining closeted too. And these costs may not be borne equally by all the people involved with the closeted person. Often he or she is already in a socially approved relationship of some sort, such as a marriage. A couple in a recognized relationship gets to claim the benefits of social approval and validation, while many of the drawbacks for their being closeted fall on their other partners, who may chafe under the demand for secrecy.

For example, when a couple is closeted, it's a pretty sure bet that any third or fourth person will have to steer clear of all their social functions, from family holidays to company picnics. If they do come, the relationship will likely be downplayed or not acknowledged at all. In extreme cases, the non-sanctioned partner may even be presented as an employee, such as a nanny or personal assistant.

A closeted person may have no social support network to call on in hard times. Problems in the relationship may thus stay under wraps, festering quietly. It can also be difficult to feel secure in the relationship when your partner is always saying "No, we're just friends," or even "She works for us." This is likely to make the "secret" partner feel like a source of shame, that she's being forced to compromise her integrity, or both.

For that reason, if you're building a relationship with someone who is closeted, especially if she is already in a socially approved relationship, it's important to discuss what that means. What does she gain from being closeted, and at what cost to you? Will it be okay if your relationship is never acknowledged for what it is? What happens if there is an accidental disclosure? Is there a benefit to you of remaining closeted? How important is it to you to be able to talk freely about your relationship? If you are never able to be seen in public with your partner, will that become a hardship on you? Under what conditions, if any, can these restrictions be revisited? Has the cost of coming out been balanced against the cost of remaining in the closet?

THE RISKS OF BEING OUT

When we talk to people who are closeted, the most common concerns we hear about being out are worry over disapproval from close family members or friends, fear of being seen as "weird" or "strange" (or worse, as a victim), fear of being excluded from social or church groups, and fear of the effect their being out will have on children (for example, many poly people say that other parents won't allow their children to play with the children of openly poly people).

All these things can happen. Poly people have been cut off by family members, had their children's friends (or even their children) snatched away, and been told they aren't welcome in church groups because they're poly. Sometimes the reaction is based on an idea that polyamory is inherently immoral—that it's little more than sanctioned cheating. Some people even find poly more objectionable than cheating, which is something that mainstream culture at least understands. Sometimes the reaction is driven by feelings closer to home. We have spoken to many people who, upon coming out to monogamous friends, are told, in essence, "You are a danger to our relationship. I don't want you near my spouse." Eve has lost several close male friends after coming out as poly. As a married woman, she had not been seen as a threat.