I know outing people who are gay can get them as far as murdered in places where homophobia is most rampant. On the other hand, polyamory seems to be a fairly popular model in the rich Bay Area community, often not kept secretive and without such repercussions. So I’m reserved whether this comparison is fair.
Yes, telling people in the Bay Area that someone is poly seems pretty fine, but e.g. many people are not openly poly towards their family, or have relatives in other states, and having you be easily outed as poly when googling you can have large adverse consequences for their relationships beyond the Bay Area.
To give a concrete example, my (non-EA) ex was from Europe, and she had a relative who both didn’t like that she had two partners, and that I was non-white. My understanding was that the “poly” dimension was seen as substantially worse than the racial dimension. The relative’s attitude didn’t particularly affect our relationship much (we both thought it was kind of funny). But at least in Western countries, I think your bar on outing poly people who don’t want to be outed should be at least as high as your bar for outing interracial couples who don’t want to be outed, given the relative levels of antipathy people in Western countries have between the two.
I know outing people who are gay can get them as far as murdered in places where homophobia is most rampant. On the other hand, polyamory seems to be a fairly popular model in the rich Bay Area community, often not kept secretive and without such repercussions. So I’m reserved whether this comparison is fair.
Yes, telling people in the Bay Area that someone is poly seems pretty fine, but e.g. many people are not openly poly towards their family, or have relatives in other states, and having you be easily outed as poly when googling you can have large adverse consequences for their relationships beyond the Bay Area.
To give a concrete example, my (non-EA) ex was from Europe, and she had a relative who both didn’t like that she had two partners, and that I was non-white. My understanding was that the “poly” dimension was seen as substantially worse than the racial dimension. The relative’s attitude didn’t particularly affect our relationship much (we both thought it was kind of funny). But at least in Western countries, I think your bar on outing poly people who don’t want to be outed should be at least as high as your bar for outing interracial couples who don’t want to be outed, given the relative levels of antipathy people in Western countries have between the two.
(I may want to delete this comment later).