I could unroll a LONG list of complaints on Ace DiscourseTM (I HELPED COIN DEMISEXUALITY, THANKS EVER SO) saying that polyamory is anti-demisexuality and All About Sex and how can you be poly without sex, What Makes It Poly Then, but it's 100% of the time a rhetorical question.
One place where I strongly disagree with the_sidecarist is that polyamory or being unable to maintain multiple romantic attractions at once is some kind of "choice"; that anyone can "choose" either poly or monogamy; that it is not hard-wired and encoded how we feel attraction (however we are defining attraction) even at the basic level of "can I feel it con-currently for more than one person or is it exclusively felt for one person alone when I experience it". Obviously, some people cannot/do not feel it ever. Some people feel it often. I feel it very rarely, exclusively limited to a very small subset of types of people and people with whom I have a pre-existing relationship and relationship dynamic.
I have tried to fall in love with someone. I was not successful. I have tried not to love someone. It also was not successful. I don't particularly like terms like metamors or polycules (they don't describe my relationship matrices) but one of my main emotional partners is someone I failed to fall out of love with when he got married; that's fine, we are fine, we are now in a romantic friendship that will stay an extremely intense romantic friendship. It doesn't map well onto pre-existing poly terminology; I love other people a lot, but have a set of core reasons my spouse is my primary partner who gets first priority in decisions and how I spend my time. ALL OTHER PEOPLE ARE NECESSARY IN SOME WAY. MANY ARE NOT ROMANTIC. Some I am attracted to. Some I do not have an attraction-based relationship with but they'd traditionally try and be wedged awkwardly in a "polycule" despite my self-declaration they fit better as family.
There's more I want to unpack, about entitlement, dating, and the idea monosexual people are bitter and resentful about polyamory and probably sticks in the mud who should try it like a kink they don't know if they'll like yet or not, but I think that's my big hang-up with the conceit described there: I think it's hard-wiring, with some social influences, not a kink you can turn on or off. It changes, because sexuality is fluid, but ... this one, totally divorced of shame, seems really hardwired to into people the way gender attraction is hardwired into people with a firmer sense of gender than me. (I mean, I could, at length, describe the pattern of my attractions, there IS a pattern, but not now.)
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2019-02-27 07:59 am (UTC)One place where I strongly disagree with the_sidecarist is that polyamory or being unable to maintain multiple romantic attractions at once is some kind of "choice"; that anyone can "choose" either poly or monogamy; that it is not hard-wired and encoded how we feel attraction (however we are defining attraction) even at the basic level of "can I feel it con-currently for more than one person or is it exclusively felt for one person alone when I experience it". Obviously, some people cannot/do not feel it ever. Some people feel it often. I feel it very rarely, exclusively limited to a very small subset of types of people and people with whom I have a pre-existing relationship and relationship dynamic.
I have tried to fall in love with someone. I was not successful. I have tried not to love someone. It also was not successful. I don't particularly like terms like metamors or polycules (they don't describe my relationship matrices) but one of my main emotional partners is someone I failed to fall out of love with when he got married; that's fine, we are fine, we are now in a romantic friendship that will stay an extremely intense romantic friendship. It doesn't map well onto pre-existing poly terminology; I love other people a lot, but have a set of core reasons my spouse is my primary partner who gets first priority in decisions and how I spend my time. ALL OTHER PEOPLE ARE NECESSARY IN SOME WAY. MANY ARE NOT ROMANTIC. Some I am attracted to. Some I do not have an attraction-based relationship with but they'd traditionally try and be wedged awkwardly in a "polycule" despite my self-declaration they fit better as family.
There's more I want to unpack, about entitlement, dating, and the idea monosexual people are bitter and resentful about polyamory and probably sticks in the mud who should try it like a kink they don't know if they'll like yet or not, but I think that's my big hang-up with the conceit described there: I think it's hard-wiring, with some social influences, not a kink you can turn on or off. It changes, because sexuality is fluid, but ... this one, totally divorced of shame, seems really hardwired to into people the way gender attraction is hardwired into people with a firmer sense of gender than me. (I mean, I could, at length, describe the pattern of my attractions, there IS a pattern, but not now.)