Polyamory is a feminist issue

This article was originally published in Spanish with EL PAÍS, as “El poliamor es un asunto feminista”

There are a lot of colourful insults for non-monogamous women. I’m sure you can think of a few. I’ve been called most of them. But why do they tend to be names for women, specifically? 

The fact is, we don’t have much use for words to denigrate non-monogamous men. Historically, men have been allowed to marry more than one wife, to take official “mistresses,” or simply cheat with relative impunity. Male non-monogamy has been accepted as a fact of life. Indeed, we have some positive names for men who sleep with lots of women, such as “stud.”

Women, on the other hand, are said to be naturally monogamous. So if a woman has more than one partner, it follows that she is a bad, unnatural, unwomanly woman. Schopenhauer puts it this way: “faithfulness in marriage is with the man artificial, with the woman it is natural, and thus adultery on the part of the woman is much less pardonable than on the part of the man.” How convenient.  

Pontification about what is “natural” when it comes to gender is usually a red flag, or at least a prompt to dig a little deeper. Contemporary philosopher Kate Manne defines misogyny as the enforcement wing of sexism: a system of social mechanisms set up to reward women who conform patriarchal expectations, and punish those who don’t. Monogamy is one of the patriarchy’s core expectations for women. Hence slut-shaming can be understood as an integral part of misogyny in Manne’s sense.

But wait, you might be thinking, surely monogamy is good for women? Isn’t it a step in a feminist direction, to put a stop to male philandering and Old-Testament-style polygamy? Maybe, if those are the only alternatives. But that is a blatantly false dichotomy. How about giving us the freedom to choose for ourselves what kind of relationships we want?

Ethical non-monogamy can practiced in a feminist spirit. So can ethical monogamy. But either relationship style should be consensual and freely chosen. Compulsory monogamy deprives us of the right to choose. Worse still, patriarchal monogamy is historically possessive, obsessive, and potentially deadly, especially for women. Persistent gender biases lead to lenient treatment of men who have murdered “their” women for (real or perceived) infidelity.

In short, if you’re going to police my love life, it only adds insult to injury when you tell me you’re doing it for my own good.

So what makes strangers resort to name-calling when they encounter a polyamorous woman on the internet? From the receiving end, this kind of verbal abuse appears to be fuelled by rage, like many other facets of misogyny. But rage is often a reinterpretation of fear. The fear of losing control over women’s sexuality, and their romantic attention, deeply threatens a fragile sense of male entitlement to those things that has long been fostered by patriarchal narratives. 

My hope is that we might be living through the extinction burst: the death throes of compulsory patriarchal monogamy. This is, in the long run, an optimistic thought, but in my experience of discussing monogamy and gender, both within and beyond academia, I am finding that young people by and large have a much better grasp of the issues than their elders. Children are teaching their parents. My students have outpaced my colleagues. I think that is a very good thing.