Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: choice [ Polyamory ]

[Fred H. Olson (fholson]

Howard A. Landman howard [at] polyamory.org or howardl [at] sitera.com
founder, poly email list, http://www.polyamory.org/~howard/Poly/ 
        resident of River Rock Cohousing for 2 weeks!

is the author of the message below but due to a problem it was posted
by the Fred the list manager:  fholson@cohousing org

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Deb Smyre wrote:
> I view polyamory as simply a lifestyle choice, not a congenital trait
> or an ethnicity, and I don't believe disapproval of a lifestyle choice
> is in the same social category as hating someone for being brown or
> gay.  That is to say, it's not an individual's choice to be brown or
> gay, but it's a choice to be poly.

Since I'm poly, and am in fairly violent disagreement with Deb's view
expressed above, I thought I should try to express why.

I differentiate feelings from actions.  Most people can't, generally,
controls their feelings.  Especially, most people can't control what they
like or find beautiful or find sexually attractive.  And no amount of
arguing will change those either - "De gustibus non disputandum est".

But a human being should be expected to have some control over their
actions.  This is where real choice comes in.

>From the viewpoint of feelings (what Deb calls "being"), neither gays nor
polys typically have much choice about *feeling* gay or poly.  I certainly
had some poly feelings before I was 10 years old, my diary shows strong
evidence of my preferences developing in that direction by age 13 or so, and
by age 15 or 16 I was verbally expressing my polyness to potential
girlfriends (and paying the consequences of doing so).  In short, I've been
very clear on this aspect of myself since I was a child.  Every relationship
I've had has been open to one degree or another.  My wedding ceremony did
not include the words "and forsaking all others".

>From the viewpoint of actions (what Deb calls "doing"), it is clear that
both people with gay feelings and people with poly feelings can, many times,
suppress those feelings and appear to conform to another lifestyle.  I'm not
saying that it's good or healthy or honest or desirable to do so, but it can
be done.  Gays can act straight, polys can act mono.  I've chosen not to do
so because (1) it felt dishonest and hypocritical to me, (2) I didn't think
I'd have much chance of finding appropriate partners if I hid myself under a
basket, and (3) many polys today are afraid - perhaps even more afraid than
gays used to be - and by standing up and "being out", I make things a bit
easier for others.  All three of these reasons appear to apply to gays and
polys equally.

>From both viewpoints, there doesn't seem to be much difference between the
state of being/feeling gay and the state of being/feeling poly, in so far as
the nature vs choice question goes.   I utterly fail to see how this makes
my being poly a "lifestyle choice" and someone else's being gay as inherent
as the color of their skin - especially since I know some gays who didn't
figure out their preference until their 20's, and that there's a continuum
between straight and gay with many, many shades of bi in between.

There is a strong relationship between the 19th century communitarian
movement and various forms of non-monogamy.  A good survey of this can be
found in John H. Noyes' "A History of American Socialisms".  (Noyes was
founder of the Oneida commune, a 200-person group marriage that lasted over
40 years and founded several businesses including the current Oneida
flatware company.  A "socialism" or "communism" in the mid-1800's meant what
we would call a "commune" today; this was before Marx and Engels and their
followers twisted the terms to mean fascistic nation-sized dictatorships.)
I could talk about this at great length, but that really deserves an epistle
of its own.  Suffice it to say that many leaders of that movement believed
that one couldn't have true community as long as the principle of private
property dominated the group, and that monogamous marriage (in which the
wife was considered the private property of the husband) was a key piece of
the edifice that needed dismantling.  There's a deep historical bond between
attempts to find alternatives to monogamy and attempts to find alternatives
to single-family housing.

So it's not unreasonable to expect that cohousing and poly should go
together like waffles and syrup.  Indeed, the first cohousing discussion
group in which I participated was started by a poly family, one of whose
members had previously been a member of the Kerista commune (which invented
the word "polyfidelity").  And presentations about cohousing have been a
semi-regular feature of the annual Loving More conferences.

        Howard A. Landman
        howard [at] polyamory.org or howardl [at] sitera.com
        founder, poly email list
        maintainer, http://www.polyamory.org/~howard/Poly/ website
        resident of River Rock Cohousing for 2 weeks!