In
the first few pages of Helene Cixous’ ‘Sorties,’ she outlines various pairs of
‘opposites’: “Activity/Passivity,” “Sun/Moon,” “Culture/Nature,” “Day/Night”
(146). She calls these “dual,
hierarchical oppositions,” and notes, “all these pairs of oppositions are couples. Does that mean something?
Is the fact that Logocentrism subjects thought—all concepts, codes and
values—to a binary system, related to ‘the’ couple, man/woman?” (147)
Cixous
goes on to develop a theory of “bisexual” writing, one which attempts to
deconstruct the binary and allow “every subject, who is not shut up inside the
spurious Phallocentric Performing Theater, [to set] up his or her erotic
universe” (148). Although the language
is highly sexual, her theory goes on not to develop a discourse on sexuality
but to explore the world of women’s writing.
But to extend the theory to a more literal ground, I propose that the
lifestyle (or lovestyle) currently gaining more visibility in this country,
known as polyamory, may be a practical working solution to the problem of the
repressive hierarchies that constitute modern society. After all, if the dominant voice of
discourse and the dominant power of Western culture is masculine, then the
dominant lovestyle or family form is certainly the monogamous model. It would seem to be a mystery why this model
has been the norm for so long; its failure rate is astonishing, and where
monogamous relationships do not fail, it may be more often than not because
someone is not being caught ‘cheating.’
But in a society with a patriarchal dominant paradigm, the power
dynamics associated with the relationship between man/woman dictate that this
model be upheld—man must possess woman exclusively, and both her sexual and
emotional fidelity must be ensured by the rhetoric of ‘romance.’ Constant media images repeating the themes
of jealousy, ownership, exclusivity and the unforgivable act of infidelity
reinforce the societal norm of monogamy.
There
are reinforcing media images on the other side of this argument as well: the
idea of being free to love more than one person at a time, let alone form a
family, often conjures up images of harems, or worse in this country,
Mormons. Thoughts of the oppression of
women and of statutory rape inevitably follow, as the only model with which the
mainstream American is familiar is polygamy, literally meaning, marriage to
more than one woman. But polyamory (or
simply ‘poly’), translated as ‘loving many,’ may involve any combination and
any number of people, and any commitment level from intimate friends to live-in
families with children. Its most
serious enemy (besides the dominant paradigm of monogamy) is jealousy, which it
is the aim of any avowed polyamorist to combat. Though maintaining loving (not simply casual-sexual)
relationships with more than one person can be very demanding, there are many
advantages to this type of arrangement, from economic factors to spiritual
fulfillment. But I would argue that not
only is polyamory a revolutionary lifestyle, it can also be a continuous
deconstructive act; by rethinking gender/sexuality, family models, and economic
structures, it can be a practical, lifelong challenge to the repressive
structures (or, as Althusser would have it, ISAs) that make up our society.
Within
the broad-based definition of polyamory, there are many relationship structures
possible. A ‘straight’ couple, for
example, may decide they want an ‘open’ marriage, where each of them is
permitted to pursue relationships outside of the core relationship, known as
the ‘primary.’ This, polyamorists tend
to insist, is different from ‘swinging’ in that swinging couples often do not
wish to pursue anything other than anonymous sexual experiences at private
events—friendships or new emotional commitments are not cultivated. The open marriage, however, is only one of
many possibilities. Another model is
known as the ‘vee’ (referring to the shape of the relationship), wherein one
person (the point of the V) has two relationships, but the two partners do not
have a close relationship with one another.
If the two do share an intimate relationship, the model is referred to
as a ‘triad.’ Four people form a
‘quad,’ and so on. Besides the number
of partners involved, the sexualities of the persons can vary widely as
well. All of the parties may be
heterosexual, or all of them may be women, or men. Some polyamorists are bisexual, and the polyamorous model allows
them to have simultaneous relationships with persons of each gender, if they so
desire (although some bisexuals are quick to point out that many of them are
monogamous, as they have often come under fire from straights and gays alike for
merely being ‘sluts’ who can’t make up their minds).
It seems that this variety alone allows for a deconstruction of the dominant paradigm; rather than being exclusive, sacrificing, and dual, love becomes inclusive, embracing, multiplicitous. If love is permitted to grow exponentially rather than being confined to two people, then the politics of possession and hierarchical power tend to be undermined. A lover, then, is no longer someone that ‘belongs to’ someone else, as the popular songs and movie images would have it. Each person is a whole in and of him or herself, connecting with other whole people in ways that enrich their lives instead of basing their relationships on need. These need-based relationships are rather like Cixous’ description of the “classical” conception of bisexuality, that is, the example of “Hermaphrodite, less bisexual than asexual, not made up of two genders but of two halves. Hence, a fantasy of unity. Two within one, and not even two wholes” (148). Related to Plato’s idea that each person is really half of a person, searching the earth for ‘The One’ who will somehow make him or her complete, it is a myth that fuels both gay and straight monogamous relationships and causes people “to reject excellent partners in their lives because of some deficiency seen when held up to the artificially high standards that a person must meet if you are looking for Mr. or Mrs. Right to fulfill your every desire for the rest of your life” (Hill). Polyamory is more about ‘want-based’ relationships, wherein each person is already a whole, and relationships with others are for the purpose of increasing happiness, not filling a void. When one sees another person not as a possession, but as another whole person, with desires and freedom as valid as one’s own, then patriarchal, proprietary relationship standards begin to break down.
Perhaps all of this sounds
rather idealistic, and some accuse polyamorists of wanting to ‘have their cake
and eat it too.’ And even in
polyamorous relationships, the old hierarchies and power structures can
emerge. In one way of defining poly
relationships, different partners can be referred to in hierarchical ways, such
as ‘primary,’ a “word often used in a
hierarchical multi-person relationship to denote the person with whom one is
most strongly bonded. In some cases
this bond or commitment takes the form of legal marriage” (Mattheson). In these situations, a second relationship
is called a ‘secondary,’ and so on. In
these instances, it would seem as though the participants in such an
arrangement are once again defining roles for themselves to fit into a more
traditional family structure. Imperial
Chinese marriages, with First, Second, Third, and even Fourth Wives come to
mind, with each woman being younger and having less power in the
household. In addition, and as
previously mentioned, the secondary or tertiary partner may not even live in
the same household; one could argue that, like the stereotype of the husband
who will never leave his wife for his mistress, the secondary partner will
always be less important and have less say in the relationship than the
primary. With this type of arrangement,
it would seem that even within a multiplicitous relationship, the participants
manage to position themselves back into binary oppositions.
There are two possible responses to this point. First, as stated in the alt.polyamory FAQ page, “some people also don’t like the terms primaries and secondaries or the concepts behind the terms, preferring to have ‘a circle of equals’” (Mattheson). In this type of arrangement, each person involved attempts to give equal time and affection to each of the people with whom he or she is intimate, and in some cases, more than two people within the arrangement (as in the triad model mentioned above) may be involved with one another, so they may all spend recreational or affectionate time together at once. Second, even within a hierarchical model, polyamory by its very nature allows each person within the arrangement the freedom to love others. In other words, a secondary in one relationship may be a primary to someone else, which, in essence, equalizes power dynamics. But the most important thing to remember is that in polyamorous relationships, the cornerstone is honest communication, and the continuous reevaluation of each partner’s happiness. This is not to say that nobody ever leaves a polyamorous arrangement—if something cannot be worked out, poly relationships end just as monogamous ones do. But the mere fact of finding another loving partner does not have to negate the original loving relationship. When a relationship isn’t controlled either by the fear of one person leaving or by jealousy, Brett Hill of Loving More magazine says,
you can really relax into
the relationship. This is what truly
makes having more than one partner possible. When your partner finds another
lover, the issue for both of you isn’t ‘Is this relationship over?’ But rather
‘How might we incorporate this in our lives and our relationship?’ You can
create any rules or guidelines you need, and there are many to choose from,
including—no new relationships right now.
In other words, the problem of falling into the traditional binaries is combated continually within any (functional) poly relationship by its very nature—the rules and structures must be worked out by all parties involved and reevaluated whenever necessary in order for the relationship to work at all. More important, though, is that poly relationships involve a continuous choice, and not just a blind surrender to the one acceptable relationship-model—i.e., monogamy leading to marriage—available to us.
Naturally,
all of this meets tremendous opposition from people who value more traditional
family models. On the list of
frequently asked questions at the Loving
More website, the questions reflect the fear of considering something
outside the standard: “Isn’t it just promiscuity? . . . . What about
commitment? . . . . What about children? . . . . Isn’t it just for sex nuts? .
. . . What about jealousy?” These are
all valid questions, but they reveal both a sexual repression and the false
construct regarding the meaning of such words as ‘commitment’ and ‘promiscuity’
that keeps marriage and the nuclear family at the forefront of the American
Dream ideal. This is not to say that
all marriages are dysfunctional, or that monogamy can never work, but
statistically, “modern romance is a flop. Fun idea, but look at its disastrous
effects—soaring divorce rates, torn families, ridiculous societal standards of
beauty and strength, and of course—the broken hearts. Our societal notion of
falling in love with your soul mate, staying monogamous forever and growing old
in bliss simply isn’t happening for the vast majority of us” (Hill). I would argue that the problem, the majority
of the time, is not that monogamy does not essentially work, but rather that it
is a model based on repression and veiled by ideology. That is, family as most of us know it is one
of Louis Althusser’s Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA), rather than a choice
about love and family that one makes for oneself.
Althusser
defines “the family ISA” as one of “a certain number of realities which present
themselves to the immediate observer in the form of distinct and specialized
institutions” (50). When people in this
society reach a certain age, they are expected to marry, have children, and
carry on the family line. Many people
do not even question this expectation, although the particular family formation
that is considered acceptable seems fairly arbitrary, and is fairly new (the
two parents plus children model, exclusive of other relatives or friends in the
household or nearby, developed mainly after the urbanization of the Industrial
Revolution). Even the gay community,
especially since the media explosion of the 1990s which saw mainstream
television shows, movies, and music artists embracing and celebrating
queerness, does not escape this societal expectation. As Suzanna Danuta Walters says in a recent Boston Phoenix review of her new book, All the Rage: The Story of Gay Visibility, “Many gays themselves
feed into the sameness of TV, the June-and-June-Cleaver motif. Gays with different family structures, gays
who are changing the way we think about desire and family, are less visible in
the gay community, and in the larger world.
That is disturbing” (qtd. in King 7).
If we take Althusser’s explanation for this phenomenon, then falling
into the dominant family pattern is just another example of subjects who “work
all by themselves,” and, in the case of family structures, behave in ways that
they believe have something to do with love and commitment, but which really
have to do with how they are expected to act.
But
in the notes to his essay, Althusser also points out that “the family obviously
has other ‘functions’ than that of an ISA.
It intervenes in the reproduction of labour power. In different modes of production it is the
unit of production and/or the unit of consumption” (57). This rather cold description of the societal
function of family makes it even clearer that there is a method to the
monogamous model. Particularly in
recent years, as more and more women have joined the workplace, the cost of
living has steadily climbed. Is this
merely a coincidental function of economics?
Or does it have something to do with ensuring that typical, working- and
middle-class two-income households have no more financial freedom than the
(mostly) one-income households that preceded them? This may be perceived as a radical idea, but it does seem that
the nuclear family model is ideal for preserving capitalism. It also plays well into the ‘golden
handcuffs’ phenomenon: the more money one has, the higher one’s standard of
living becomes, and therefore one must continuously work to keep the amount of
money needed to support that standard.
If there are only two adults in any household, living in this society
which feeds us constant images of desire, success, and greed, then they are
almost guaranteed to continue working, spending, consuming—and producing
children who will grow up to begin the cycle once again.
Conversely,
in polyamorous family structures, there are two main elements that allow not
only for the deconstruction of the family ISA, but also for the challenging of
the capitalist mode of production which keeps American subjects working ‘by
themselves.’ One is the number of
adults in the household, which has the potential to ease workloads and money
anxiety for everyone. The other is more
subtle and less provable, but I will posit it nonetheless: that the very
permission and ability to allow intimate love and sexuality to extend beyond
one person decreases the desire and need for excessive consumption of material
objects.
The
first point is fairly straightforward, and vaguely resembles the experiments in
communal living that were popular in this country during the 1960s. Take, for example, a poly household with two
men and two women. To simplify the discussion,
let us just imagine that all of them are in loving and sexual relationships
with one another (making them all bisexual as well), and that they are
polyfidelitous, meaning they have “made a commitment to keep the sexual
activity within the group and not have outside partners” (Mattheson). Let us imagine that both of the women have
children. In a situation like this, it
would be much more possible for each adult member of the household to pursue
careers and interests of his or her choice, rather than to overwork out of
necessity merely to survive. Care and
supervision of the children could be rotated, or it could be mostly relegated
to one adult who has a particular affinity for childcare. All of the partners could work outside the
home, if they wished, making sure their schedules coordinated to accommodate
the children. As there would be only
one house for all of them, the bill payments and other living costs would be
significantly reduced by consolidation.
Any time one of the adults had a financial setback or a health issue,
there would be three others instead of just one (or none) to compensate. Even better, each of these adults might have
a very different background, personality, and interests to contribute not only
to the richness of the lives of the other three, but also to the raising of the
children in the situation.
Raising children in
polyamorous situations, though, probably attracts more criticism to this
lifestyle than any other issue. As Hill
remarks, “The fear is that children will grow up in an environment confused
about who their parents are and seeing their parents having sex with strangers,
and become some kind of warped individual.”
But he argues the valid, though negatively proven, point that “this is
exactly what happens in many ‘families’ of the traditional sort.” There is, however, a more positive side to
this argument:
Children
benefit from seeing loving and responsible relationships as models. It’s important for them to see how people
who care about each other express their affection and deal with problems. Having more adults around is not a problem
unless they are poor models for the children. Whether one or two or more, it is
unhealthy adults who cause problems in children’s lives. (Hill)
There are many other possibilities besides this
particular hypothetical, of course, and potential for many problems to arise
within any one of them. But it seems
that people willing to consciously choose a lifestyle that so challenges the
mainstream would have a higher awareness of the kind of openness and work
necessary to sustain any type of relationship arrangement.
The
other point I proposed, that poly relationships may decrease the need for
material consumption, is half proven by the example above: already, the
polyamorous family has reduced the amount of space they occupy, the amount of
housing expenses (rent/mortgage, utilities, appliances, furniture, etc.) they
pay, and most likely their food costs.
But it is also possible that when a person commits, not to one person,
but to love itself, that the richness he or she finds when allowed to share
emotional/spiritual/sexual intimacy with several different people reduces his
or her need to seek fulfillment in ‘things.’
As Hill puts it, “when you allow for more partners, you are able to
enjoy the qualities of several people that, together, are able to meet a much
greater percentage of your interpersonal needs.” Is not much of American over-consumerism driven by a lack of
depth or satisfaction in human relationships?
Two stereotypes bear this out: the single woman who goes on a shopping
spree when she gets depressed, and the mid-life crisis-stricken man who buys an
overpriced sportscar when he starts to feel old. The phenomenon is evinced in our holiday rituals as well. Rather than spend more time with friends and
family members than we do, we gather together once a year and give each other
gifts, or even send gifts in the mail to show our love—the more expensive the
better. And monogamous relationships
are infected with consumerism as well, from “a diamond is forever” to big,
expensive weddings, to flowers, chocolates and jewelry bought in compensation
for some wrongdoing. And of course,
once two people are settled into a life together, they have to have the TV,
DVD, stereo system, antique furniture, the latest kitchen gadgetry, another car
or two…the list goes on and on. Is it
conceivable that with more of our emotional needs being met as a result of
having the option of more than one love, we wouldn’t buy so much useless
‘stuff’ with which to fill our lives?
Perhaps. Or perhaps, conversely, more partners means
more movie dates, more dinners out, more shows and sporting events. But the crux of the matter is that
polyamorous relationships, by their deliberate questioning of the dominant
culture, by their rejection of the “obviousness,” according to Althusser, of
the ISAs that order our lives, do much in a concrete way to deconstruct what is
meant by relationships and family. And
by consciously challenging these paradigms, poly people not only take the
deconstructive position of the supplement in a practical way, but they also
begin to find new definitions for living and loving in today’s mass-market
culture.
Althusser, Louis. From ‘Ideology and Ideological State
Apparatuses.’ A Critical and
Cultural Theory Reader. Ed. Antony
Easthope and Kate McGowan. Toronto: U.
of Toronto P., 1992.
Cixous, Helene. From “Sorties.” A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader. Ed. Antony Easthope and Kate McGowan. Toronto: U. of Toronto P., 1992.
King, Loren. “You’ve Come a Long Way, Gayby.” The Boston Phoenix. 30 Nov 2001: 7.