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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2180 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 4, 2025

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Apropos of a very small, tangential discussion on the main culture war thread, what are the borders of polyamory?

For me personally, I don’t think of any variation of one man/x number of women as actually being polyamorous in the current year sense. It’s all just gradations between patriarch with +1 wife, or a mistresses situation, or a full on Ottoman seraglio.

I can’t say I base this on much more than vibes, but modern polyamory seems to connote at least one additional male in the mix, and probably something that tends towards more even mixes of men and women.

Just because a particular form of polyamory happens to historically predate the modern polyamory movement, and be less toxic than most other examples of the category, doesn't seem to be a knockdown argument for excluding it from the category.

By analogy: we don't stop counting plumbing as “infrastructure” or “technology” just because the Romans had it, or because it doesn't lend itself easily to infinitely scrolling AI-generated feeds.

It's still irritating and anachronistic. It's like describing Da Vinci as an LGBTQ+ artist.

I think we had this discussion before, when someone disputed Aella's definition of "you're polyamorous if you're fine with your partner having other partners". Which looks like it's turning the definition inside out, but is actually useful for separating the sheep from the goats, that is, the polycules from the harems.

So an arrangement where a single patriarch has multiple wives is not a polycule unless there's an agreement that these wives are free to seek relationships with other men without terminating the current one. Maybe their husband is just such a fine specimen that they have no need for another partner right now (insert the quote about a woman blowing a man in a brothel not necessarily being a prostitute).

I feel like it still counts as modern polyamory if the one-man-harem situation involves the women openly having lesbian relationships with each other and/or additional outside women. And I want to emphasize the "openly" part, the lesbian activities being openly acknowledged rather than something others maybe suspect but turn a blind eye to.

I personally suspect that this is not actually a modern innovation on harems per se, and that the reason we don't have extensive records of it in the ancient world is that it was considered irrelevant trivia, not that it was considered forbidden. Contrary to male homosexual behavior (which is likelier to be an outright aberration that natural selection simply has trouble weeding out, comparable to mental illness), it seems like the most obvious context that female homosexual behavior would evolve for - particularly given that women are much likelier to be bisexual than men.

One Penis Policies are the most common format of polyamory seen in the real world. It might not be the most pure form of poly or the most honored form of poly in theory but it's the most common, so it seems like it would be odd to define it out of the community.

It also seems odd to call such a scenario monogamy, which would be the implication if one defined it out of polyamory.

In my mind polyamory is defined by:

-- Some degree of social and public openness about the nature of one's relationships.

-- Open Acceptance of the arrangement by all partners involved, with at least some degree of lip service to the idea that this is a positive arrangement for all involved.

So cheating isn't polyamory on either count, but a two ladies, and I'm the only man does, polygyny being a subcategory.

This is so fascinating!

I would not call a one penis policy monogamy. But it’s also not polyamory, at least not as I understand the essence of the concept. It’s just regular old polygamy on the euphemism treadmill.

That’s why it’s so interesting that you have reason to believe it’s the most common format. On the rare occasions I run into openly polyamorous relationships, they are almost always one woman/two or more men. It’s hard to phrase the apparent dynamics charitably because they have been pretty clearly moderately attractive woman+beta wallet cuck+jobless alpha chad. If it’s not that kind of relationship, then it’s sloppy low-class, low-status trailer park relationships being dressed up as a “polycule.”

Inasmuch as I think of those latter two types as being something distinct enough from polygamy to have their own technical term, I think one penis policies are just something very old coming out, inevitably, but having to dress itself in modern clothing, as it were, even if the clothes don’t fit well or at all.

It’s just regular old polygamy on the euphemism treadmill.

I guess we're at crossed wires here on the definition of and the distinction between Polygamy and Polyamory. Polygamy refers to having more than one spouse, while Polyamory refers to having more than one lover. Polygamy refers only to situations in which one is, at minimum, establishing a mutual household if not claiming marriage; while Polyamory refers to any kind of relationship structure in which one party approves of the other party having an additional lover. I'm not sure what your working definition is; as far as I can tell (meant without insult) it's something like "Annoying thing that Annoying cucks on the internet won't stop Annoying me about." Which might be a good definition for most of the times you've run into it online!

Where I've run into IRL couples who label themselves Poly, the most common types in order of appearance are:

-- Theoretically "open" relationships with a 1PP where the woman is supposedly Bisexual and free to sleep with other women but never really has the get up and go to find a woman; and the man is free to sleep with other women in the case of a threesome but isn't hot enough to find one easily while his wife is kind of half-assing it; and it never happens and they're always nosing around "poly" and "kink" and "Queer" events trying to find a third. These are the ones everyone else complains about because they're annoying.

-- The above, but the couple is hot and/or rich and the woman is genuinely bisexual, and therefore find thirds regularly, who they include as an auxiliary member in their relationship for a period of time before shuffling them out. In this case, a 1PP is the stable equilibrium, because a hot woman can find other women about as easily as a hot man can find other women.

-- True "Open" relationships in which both partners are free to pursue other lovers as they choose and are doing so. They tend to just be a glide path to breaking up, or very loosely attached to begin with. Tend to break down due to gender imbalances, because a woman of any given quality can find a man much more easily than a man of a similar quality can find a woman.

-- Polyandry in which one woman and multiple male partners play house. Normally a degenerate form of the above, in which the men are theoretically empowered to look elsewhere but don't.

In all cases, the defining aspect of a polyamorous relationship is the acceptance on the part of one's partner that one is allowed to have additional lovers.

True "Open" relationships in which both partners are free to pursue other lovers as they choose and are doing so. They tend to just be a glide path to breaking up, or very loosely attached to begin with. Tend to break down due to gender imbalances, because a woman of any given quality can find a man much more easily than a man of a similar quality can find a woman.

I agree that this is probably just a glide path to breaking up, but I'm not sure if the dynamics are different for men and women. Sure, women might find it easier to find a man willing to sleep with them, but men are usually more motivated and less selective.

Before I respond in any kind of more substantive way, I will throw out there that I don’t think we’re really at crossed wires.

Polygamy is illegal in the United States. My take is that relationships that would be polygamous under a different legal regime just retitle themselves as polyamorous and go without the official legal imprimatur of marriage despite being long-term mutual households, and being essentially patriarchal “one dude, multiple women” setups. That’s what I mean about them being polygamy on the euphemism treadmill. It’s just patriarchal (which is good, IMO!) dynamics accruing to themselves some woke cover. It’s all very fascinating to me, honestly.

To me, harem-type setups have something distinctly different about them, in essence, compared to the types you mention above.

My take is that relationships that would be polygamous under a different legal regime just retitle themselves as polyamorous and go without the official legal imprimatur of marriage despite being long-term mutual households, and being essentially patriarchal “one dude, multiple women” setups.

I suppose that is possible, but I haven't really encountered it. Generally where you have the rich man keeping a harem on hand, they make no bones about not liking each other and being unhappy about the arrangement, even if Mahomet said it was ok, accepting it as their lot only for lack of a better option. Polyamory is defined by the multiple women having positive, if not necessarily Sapphic, feelings for one another.

What polyamory has largely replaced is old fashioned adultery.

...It's still adultery, though, in the completely literal sense of 'having sex with people other than your spouse'. Plenty of historical wives understood that their husbands would have mistresses, too(after all, it beats having a husband who's poor).

I think the good old fashioned affair has gone into decline.

When my dad and I drive down a certain highway about 50 minutes south of me, he always points out a house and says "That's where used to put up his mistress and their secret kids."

You don't see that much these days at the small town Pennsylvania level.

Secrets of that magnitude are somewhat more difficult to keep these days.

More comments

Definitionally, sure, but I think it's connotationally out.

Why not just use the terms that exist, like polyandry or cuckoldry or open marriage?

At least to me, polyamory is defined by treating sex & romance as just another part of a friendship where you can have different degrees and kinds of sexual relationships with many different people, which can also change quite fast. A fixed group of say 4 guys and 5 girls living together, having kids together, etc. would imo be more aptly described as a commune. And, as you say, 1 man/x woman is 99% just a harem in practice.

Ironically, this is also why polyamory is imo by far the worst for a functioning society; It's basically expanding the dating period of many young people's life to the entirety, with all the anxieties, drama and labor it entails. If you have work & kids, you just don't have time for that. Since work is usually necessary for all but the richest, that means you skip the kids. Communes often have similar problems but to a lesser degree, and as long as they're not too large and have clear boundaries to everything else, can be made to work. I don't like the intrinsic inequality stemming from Harems, but from a practical PoV they work just as well as traditional couples since the boundaries and expectations are simple and clear.

Yeah, I had the exact same thought. Nobody thinks of the Saudi prince as 'polyamorous'.

Surely that's more to do with the cultural coercion affecting his “brides”? cf. Elon Musk's quasi-harem, the sheer exploitativeness and power asymmetry seems to disqualify it from really counting as a mutually constructed "romantic" relationship...

I do, he's not monogamous or celibate. But I think the interesting question is, What about serial monogamy?

It occurs to me that the term "serial monogamy" is very directly analogous to "crony capitalism". Or "social justice", for that matter.

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