What does that even mean?
I was talking very briefly with someone yesterday about polyamory and what it "entails" - as though there's a list of activities that go along with being polyamory - but that's not entirely the discussion. Being that I like to give people someone else's opinion, I handed off these two links:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyamory
2. http://www.xeromag.com/fvpoly.html
Both of them are good - the second is one the better of the two. Because I was a bit bored at work, I decided to read over the Wikipedia article a bit more thoroughly than I had in the past. Here's what I'm gonna gripe about:
Sex is not necessarily a primary focus in polyamorous relationships. Polyamorous relationships commonly consist of groups of more than two people who are living together, and seeking to build a long-term future together, with sex as only one aspect of their relationship.
What the hell does this mean? I've grown to ignore many things, but I am actually working on an edit of that article in regards to this very passage.
First of all, sex shouldn't be the primary focus of any relationship - not encounter, or coupling, or 'hook-up', but relationship - because that's not what it's all about. If you replaced the word 'polyamorous' with 'monogamous' in an article about 'monogamy', people would read that the same way. What the hell?
Secondly, we're not swingers, and people need to be educated about the difference. A lot of swingers are poly at various points in their encounters, but polyamory indicates more pressing attention being paid to developing lasting relationships like one would have with a significant other - which is what a relationship means.
Also, there's this:
Polyamorous relationships, in practice, are highly varied and individualized. Ideally they are built upon values of trust, loyalty, negotiation, and compersion, as well as rejection of jealousy, possessiveness, and restrictive cultural standards.
Shouldn't all relationships be like this . . . ideally? This just seems overtly pretentious and arrogant on the part of the author, as though there's some hidden agenda underlying it so say, "Hey, guess what, there's this thing called polyamory, and I have to write about it, but I think it's a load of shit. Here's my article." Ugh. It just gets my blood boiling.
So that's my rant.
