Yes, I think it’s impossible not to have norms about personal relationships (or really, anything socially important). I should perhaps have provided an example of this. Here is one:
If you move to a new place with a lot of EAs, you will likely at some point be asked if you want to live in a large group house with other EAs. These group houses are a norm, and a lot of people live in them. This is not a norm outside of EA (though it is in maybe some other communities), so it’s certainly a positive norm that has been created.
Even if EAs tended to live overwhelmingly in smaller houses, or lived with people who weren’t EAs, then that would just be another norm. So I really don’t think there is a way to escape norms.
This is a fair point. I think there are maybe two different meanings of norms at play that might be useful to disambiguate:
(1) what’s normal in a community, in the sense of ‘what most people do’ (2) what’s expected, approved of, recommended in the community
(1) can bleed into (2), because if you are the odd one out, you might feel like an outsider, even if no-one is actively expressing disapproval of what you’re doing. Vegans in an majority-omnivore space, or omnivores in a majority-vegan space, might feel kind of awkward, even if no-one criticizes or remarks on their dietary choices. Similarly, I’ve heard some people say they felt ambient social pressure to be poly in the Bay Area just because loads of other people were, or because people assumed it of them, etc.
I think what I’m against is not norms existing, but people trying to intervene in the norms ‘top down’, as it were, by talking about what the norms should be. I think the correct way to contribute to community norms is just by “being the change you want to see”. So if any individual EA wants the community norms to be less overlap-y and/or less polyamorous, what they should do is not date multiple people, and not date other EAs. But it’s not legitimate for them to tell other people what to do.
Yes, I think it’s impossible not to have norms about personal relationships (or really, anything socially important). I should perhaps have provided an example of this. Here is one:
If you move to a new place with a lot of EAs, you will likely at some point be asked if you want to live in a large group house with other EAs. These group houses are a norm, and a lot of people live in them. This is not a norm outside of EA (though it is in maybe some other communities), so it’s certainly a positive norm that has been created.
Even if EAs tended to live overwhelmingly in smaller houses, or lived with people who weren’t EAs, then that would just be another norm. So I really don’t think there is a way to escape norms.
This is a fair point. I think there are maybe two different meanings of norms at play that might be useful to disambiguate:
(1) what’s normal in a community, in the sense of ‘what most people do’
(2) what’s expected, approved of, recommended in the community
(1) can bleed into (2), because if you are the odd one out, you might feel like an outsider, even if no-one is actively expressing disapproval of what you’re doing. Vegans in an majority-omnivore space, or omnivores in a majority-vegan space, might feel kind of awkward, even if no-one criticizes or remarks on their dietary choices. Similarly, I’ve heard some people say they felt ambient social pressure to be poly in the Bay Area just because loads of other people were, or because people assumed it of them, etc.
I think what I’m against is not norms existing, but people trying to intervene in the norms ‘top down’, as it were, by talking about what the norms should be. I think the correct way to contribute to community norms is just by “being the change you want to see”. So if any individual EA wants the community norms to be less overlap-y and/or less polyamorous, what they should do is not date multiple people, and not date other EAs. But it’s not legitimate for them to tell other people what to do.