*Caveat before starting here: I really don’t want any poly reading this to see it as a personal attack. Someone who is poly isn’t necessarily doing anything wrong, it might really be better for certain people, but it is very much worth discussing whether the community may actually strongly benefit from a social norm of monogamy. This comment is also more directed towards heterosexual poly relationships, which I think are more likely to pose power differential and sex ratio issues than homosexual ones.
“Historical note: If EA had emerged in the 1970s era of the gay rights movement rather than the 2010s, I can imagine an alternative history in which some EAs were utterly outraged and offended that gay or lesbian EAs had dared to invite them to a gay or lesbian event. The EA community could have leveraged the latent homophobia of the time to portray such an invitation as bizarrely unprofessional, and a big problem that needs addressing. Why are we treating polyamory and kink in 2023 with the same reactive outrage that people would have treated gay/lesbian sexuality fifty years ago?”
To be quite frank, I think that this a wildly offensive appeal to emotion. Sexuality and gender are very, very different things from the mono/poly distinction and views about monogamy and low age gaps in relationships being superior shouldn’t be immediately dismissed as “polyamory stigma.” The risks when a 50 year old poly man with two current relationships asks out a 22 year old woman are higher and the potential benefits less from a utilitarian point of view then when a 22 year old women asks out a 22 year old man. This is because
a. A poly person will likely invite more people on dates then a monogamous one, leading to more opportunities for something bad to happen.
b. There is a higher risk of rejection and offense being taken when there is a large age gap. The process of rejection can be very painful for people on both sides.
c. There is more likely to be a power gap when one party is older.
d. The risk of STD spread is higher within polyamory.
e. There are lots of studies showing highly negative long term impacts from polygamous societies in contrast to monogamous ones. Obviously polyamory and polygamy are not the same thing, but there are certainly similarities.
f. The potential welfare gains for both parties are much higher in the second case as we should expect the happiness gain from going from zero partners to one to be much higher than the gain from going from two to three.
g. Relationships between older men and younger women seem more common then those between younger men and older men. More high age gap relationships therefore mean more lonely young men and older women.
h. Large age gap relationships are more likely to lead to long term widows.
To be clear, the social norms against LGBTQ relationships, marriages and sexual/gender transitions were and are very wrong. But gender and sexuality are not a choice, pursuing monogamous vs polyamorous relationships and the age of the person being dated are very much choices. The utilitarian benefits from allowing same sex marriages etc .seem very high, I really don’t think the same is true of advocating polyamorous or high age gap ones.
*Caveat before starting here: I really don’t want any poly reading this to see it as a personal attack. Someone who is poly isn’t necessarily doing anything wrong, it might really be better for certain people, but it is very much worth discussing whether the community may actually strongly benefit from a social norm of monogamy. This comment is also more directed towards heterosexual poly relationships, which I think are more likely to pose power differential and sex ratio issues than homosexual ones.
“Historical note: If EA had emerged in the 1970s era of the gay rights movement rather than the 2010s, I can imagine an alternative history in which some EAs were utterly outraged and offended that gay or lesbian EAs had dared to invite them to a gay or lesbian event. The EA community could have leveraged the latent homophobia of the time to portray such an invitation as bizarrely unprofessional, and a big problem that needs addressing. Why are we treating polyamory and kink in 2023 with the same reactive outrage that people would have treated gay/lesbian sexuality fifty years ago?”
To be quite frank, I think that this a wildly offensive appeal to emotion. Sexuality and gender are very, very different things from the mono/poly distinction and views about monogamy and low age gaps in relationships being superior shouldn’t be immediately dismissed as “polyamory stigma.” The risks when a 50 year old poly man with two current relationships asks out a 22 year old woman are higher and the potential benefits less from a utilitarian point of view then when a 22 year old women asks out a 22 year old man. This is because
a. A poly person will likely invite more people on dates then a monogamous one, leading to more opportunities for something bad to happen.
b. There is a higher risk of rejection and offense being taken when there is a large age gap. The process of rejection can be very painful for people on both sides.
c. There is more likely to be a power gap when one party is older.
d. The risk of STD spread is higher within polyamory.
e. There are lots of studies showing highly negative long term impacts from polygamous societies in contrast to monogamous ones. Obviously polyamory and polygamy are not the same thing, but there are certainly similarities.
f. The potential welfare gains for both parties are much higher in the second case as we should expect the happiness gain from going from zero partners to one to be much higher than the gain from going from two to three.
g. Relationships between older men and younger women seem more common then those between younger men and older men. More high age gap relationships therefore mean more lonely young men and older women.
h. Large age gap relationships are more likely to lead to long term widows.
To be clear, the social norms against LGBTQ relationships, marriages and sexual/gender transitions were and are very wrong. But gender and sexuality are not a choice, pursuing monogamous vs polyamorous relationships and the age of the person being dated are very much choices. The utilitarian benefits from allowing same sex marriages etc .seem very high, I really don’t think the same is true of advocating polyamorous or high age gap ones.
I am terrified that you were downvoted to obscurity. These posts, the ones that EA hides, are the ones the public needs to see the most.