I wrote that post. I just want to clarify that I did not say “all poly men”, but “many poly men”. The difference is important. As someone who has no theoretical issue with poly practiced consensually, I’m not getting it why Amber Dawn and others feel attacked.
Me: “I was harassed by many poly men. ”
Amber: “Stop attacking poly men. Not all poly men.”
I have been harassed by many monogamous men but if I posted on the LW forum saying “I was harassed by many monogamous men” I would expect a lot of pushback from people who—very sensibly—would think I was trying to stigmatize monogamy.
There are places for unendorsed venting. Those places are not the Less Wrong forum.
ETA: I’m guessing from comments of yours I read elsewhere that you didn’t mean to come off as anti-poly as you did to me and Amber, and I’m sorry if my comment came off hostile. I know I’ve definitely written things that came off in ways I didn’t intend. :)
Your expectation of push back is wrong. If you say ” i was harassed by monogamous men”, I’m never going to be like “not all monogamous men are like that”, “oh but it is just a statistic”. I am female, Indian, bisexual. I am a minority on many axes. I don’t defend female abusers, Indian abusers or LGBTQ abusers. I am going to stand with the victim, not with the class of victim/abuser. A wrong is a wrong, plain and simple.
@ozymandias: now that you have clarification, can you help me get action on the pointers and suggestions on my post? My post is here : https://keerthanapg.com/random/ea-women/ All action items are agnostic to poly/mono status of victim/abuser. I didn’t barely post it in EA forum to talk about it and then move on, I want things to change.
I feel attacked because it’s implied that this is relevant to their toxicity, and it’s not. And you’re not getting that you wanted to make the community less toxic for women, but I’m a woman, and poly, and the community will become more toxic for me is polyamory is stigmatized. I’m not interested in defending poly men—though of course it is true that many poly men are perfectly fine—on a more basic level, I’m defending myself.
Your feeling attacked is slightly unwarranted, because everywhere I mention poly men in the article, I say “these poly men”, “many poly men”, I never say “all poly men”. It’s hard for me to write a post anticipating what you could imply from it, right?
In fact poly women have the most incentive to stop bad poly male actors because they’re more dangerous to you than they are to me. I will never enter into a relationship with them because they’re a disjoint dating pool for me, but they’re lurking in your pool, making you unsafe more than me. And not just that they harm one poly woman, each bad poly male actor will harm multiple by definition, so that multiple poly women are traumatized and driven away from EA due to one poly bad male actor.
Do you think the way we should try to stop bad poly male actors is different from the way we should try to stop bad male actors in general? I totally agree that we should try to prevent predators from being able to harm people, generally.
I think if you replaced the word “poly” with the word “American”, you’d see why I took away that implication. Even if you didn’t say “all American men”, I think readers could be forgiven for thinking you had it in for American men, or thought that they were worse than men of other nationalities.
And not just that they harm one poly woman, each bad poly male actor will harm multiple by definition
I think the fact that “poly” means “multiple” and “mono” means “one” are misleading in this case if you think about what these scenarios look like in practice. I don’t see why you’d expect a poly man to cause significantly more harm than a serial monogamist, a single man casually seeing people, or a man who cheats. And incidentally, I know many poly men who just happen to only date one person for long lengths of time and many poly men who are single for long lengths of time.
I also think that poly men are more stigmatised than those other relationship structures—although sometimes less so than cheating depending on your social circles—and that EAs are tired of being dismissed as a “poly cult” (I prefer “free-loving hippie nerds” but sadly we don’t get to choose our insults).
I assume you didn’t have all of this context before, so thought that associating bad behaviour with being poly wouldn’t be a big deal, or perhaps you even saw being poly as a privilege and therefore thought it would be okay to attack it (in the same way people associate bad behaviour with “rich, young, white men” for example). So I hope this context helps. And FWIW, my own experience of being a poly woman has always felt more like an identity than a choice, although the associated stigma means that I have not always acted on it.
I wrote that post. I just want to clarify that I did not say “all poly men”, but “many poly men”. The difference is important. As someone who has no theoretical issue with poly practiced consensually, I’m not getting it why Amber Dawn and others feel attacked.
Me: “I was harassed by many poly men. ”
Amber: “Stop attacking poly men. Not all poly men.”
Read this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NotAllMen
I have been harassed by many monogamous men but if I posted on the LW forum saying “I was harassed by many monogamous men” I would expect a lot of pushback from people who—very sensibly—would think I was trying to stigmatize monogamy.
There are places for unendorsed venting. Those places are not the Less Wrong forum.
ETA: I’m guessing from comments of yours I read elsewhere that you didn’t mean to come off as anti-poly as you did to me and Amber, and I’m sorry if my comment came off hostile. I know I’ve definitely written things that came off in ways I didn’t intend. :)
Your expectation of push back is wrong. If you say ” i was harassed by monogamous men”, I’m never going to be like “not all monogamous men are like that”, “oh but it is just a statistic”. I am female, Indian, bisexual. I am a minority on many axes. I don’t defend female abusers, Indian abusers or LGBTQ abusers. I am going to stand with the victim, not with the class of victim/abuser. A wrong is a wrong, plain and simple.
@ozymandias: now that you have clarification, can you help me get action on the pointers and suggestions on my post? My post is here : https://keerthanapg.com/random/ea-women/ All action items are agnostic to poly/mono status of victim/abuser. I didn’t barely post it in EA forum to talk about it and then move on, I want things to change.
I feel attacked because it’s implied that this is relevant to their toxicity, and it’s not.
And you’re not getting that you wanted to make the community less toxic for women, but I’m a woman, and poly, and the community will become more toxic for me is polyamory is stigmatized. I’m not interested in defending poly men—though of course it is true that many poly men are perfectly fine—on a more basic level, I’m defending myself.
Your feeling attacked is slightly unwarranted, because everywhere I mention poly men in the article, I say “these poly men”, “many poly men”, I never say “all poly men”. It’s hard for me to write a post anticipating what you could imply from it, right?
In fact poly women have the most incentive to stop bad poly male actors because they’re more dangerous to you than they are to me. I will never enter into a relationship with them because they’re a disjoint dating pool for me, but they’re lurking in your pool, making you unsafe more than me. And not just that they harm one poly woman, each bad poly male actor will harm multiple by definition, so that multiple poly women are traumatized and driven away from EA due to one poly bad male actor.
Do you think the way we should try to stop bad poly male actors is different from the way we should try to stop bad male actors in general? I totally agree that we should try to prevent predators from being able to harm people, generally.
I think if you replaced the word “poly” with the word “American”, you’d see why I took away that implication. Even if you didn’t say “all American men”, I think readers could be forgiven for thinking you had it in for American men, or thought that they were worse than men of other nationalities.
I think the fact that “poly” means “multiple” and “mono” means “one” are misleading in this case if you think about what these scenarios look like in practice. I don’t see why you’d expect a poly man to cause significantly more harm than a serial monogamist, a single man casually seeing people, or a man who cheats. And incidentally, I know many poly men who just happen to only date one person for long lengths of time and many poly men who are single for long lengths of time.
I also think that poly men are more stigmatised than those other relationship structures—although sometimes less so than cheating depending on your social circles—and that EAs are tired of being dismissed as a “poly cult” (I prefer “free-loving hippie nerds” but sadly we don’t get to choose our insults).
I assume you didn’t have all of this context before, so thought that associating bad behaviour with being poly wouldn’t be a big deal, or perhaps you even saw being poly as a privilege and therefore thought it would be okay to attack it (in the same way people associate bad behaviour with “rich, young, white men” for example). So I hope this context helps. And FWIW, my own experience of being a poly woman has always felt more like an identity than a choice, although the associated stigma means that I have not always acted on it.