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Notes -
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.
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).
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