monogamy

Problems With "Ownership" in Relationships: How the Concept of "Your Boyfriend" Amplifies Not Only Arrogance but Insecurity

Posted by figleaf on Sun, 2011-09-04 17:32

Holly is talking about not just the down and outers emergency room patients who, as she picks beer-bottle glass out of their scalps drunkenly tell her "Gosh, ain't you as sweet thing... do you have a boyfriend?"

I just say "yes." But that's a partial answer, because they asked the wrong question. They asked something like five different kinds of the wrong question.

The full answer is: "Yes, but he doesn't care who I sleep with, but I bloody well care who I sleep with!"

Perhaps I'm reading too much into the drunken advances of the sort of guy who tries to hit on the person who's picking glass out of his wounds, but it unnerves me that my boyfriend's right to my body is counted as more important than my own, even when he's not around. They're trying to establish whether I'm owned, not whether I'm interested.

Source: The Pervocracy

She doesn't say, but I'd like to imagine, that drunken women patients in similar circumstances ask Holly's male colleagues similar questions about whether they have girlfriends. Based on my experiences as a beer-bar bartender that catered to the young, hip, and alive crowd only at night, I'm guessing that too does at least occasionally happen.

Aside: This does not mean "oh well, then if women really do ask men then it's all hunky dory. In particular if you read the comments on Holly's post it's pretty clear that while women sometimes do pull the ownership card, even the drunken well-too-bad-you're-"taken" version, it's rarely done in the context of what amounts to an extension of street harassment.

That said, there really is a sort of general respect for relationship "ownership" that goes beyond respect for particular individuals in those relationships. Since gender is socially constructed I'm perfectly happy to acknowledge that different genders might have different reasons for honoring relationship "ownership." For instance it could be that men want to know because an angry boyfriend might confront him over messing with "his" partner. And it could be that women are just disinclined to mess with another woman's partner for fear that said partner would eventually just mess around with her. And no, seriously, it really could be those things.

I'd just point out that what makes it gendered isn't that men might respond more to one concern than another. What makes it gendered is that outside of gender thinking both concerns -- confrontation with a transgressed partner and the prospect of being run around on in turn -- are exactly equally probable outcomes regardless of the sex of either or both parties. (Because, seriously, relationship ownership transcends sex, orientation, identity, etc.)

Anyway, years and years ago, maybe as far back as the late 1980s, one of the local mainstream newspapers briefly carried a syndicated arts-and-leisure section columnist who focused on intentional single life. At one point he wrote a column about how the implications of saying "my boyfriend" or "my wife," or "my date for the evening," or even "my friend" are problematic in terms of presumption and ownership. He said it would probably be a better idea to just say "this is John, we're married" or "Joan and I went out last night."

I can't remember if the columnist said it outright, but I was really struck by the notion that speaking about your relationships in terms of shared experience rather than possession wasn't just excruciatingly "correct." Instead it also carries the implication that instead of being with you because, well, they're obliged to be because they're "yours," if someone's not a possession they're probably with you because want to be with you.

Call me crazy, here, but this seems like yet another lesson people with experience in polyamory and promiscuity can bring back to the culture of monogamy: in all but the most toxic relationships you're not partners with people because as "your" partner they have to be, any more than (again for the most part) you're partners with someone else not because you're "theirs" but because you actually kind of like, love, have the hots for, are interested in, like being around, and so on.

 


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Longing: Jealousy as a Feeling of Unbearable Lightness

Posted by figleaf on Mon, 2011-07-18 16:06

DVD cover from Criterion Productions. Cached as a bandwidth-conserving courtesy
Unbearable Lightness of Being DVD cover from Criterion Productions.

In comments to my post A Prudish Libertine's Thoughts on Jealousy, which is short enough to restate in its entirety: "One of the things I've learned as a reluctant but sincere monogamist is that a heck of a lot of what we construct as jealousy amounts not to possessiveness but longing," Ms.Inconspicuous said

"Can you elaborate on this please; what you mean by longing?"

I began to reply in comments and realized it was turning into a separate post.

As far back as my first long-term relationship in high school what I usually felt and called jealousy was about wishing for something that wasn't happening, and wasn't going to happen, and maybe even couldn't happen.

When my first girlfriend came back from a college course saying "I met this guy and we had sex so now I have to break up with you" it didn't bother me at all that she'd met someone, or that she'd had sex with them. It was that it meant (to her!) that we couldn't have our relationship too. It wasn't "hey, she's mine, nobody else can have her," it was a feeling of longing for what could no longer be.

Like when a friend I had a crush on hooked up with someone else. It wasn't that I didn't want them in each other's arms, it's that I wanted her in my arms too. It wasn't "hey, she shouldn't want to be with anyone but me." Instead it was a feeling of longing for a sense of closeness *right now,* even if I knew (as we could know such things in those days) that another night she *would* be with me.

And even now, to use an example from Ms. Inconspicuous's blog, even though I'm happily in a relationship when I hear her describe lying in bed with a lover, away from the world, reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being between bouts of sex and melting ice cream I'm filled with an impractical ache to do that with her. It's not that I think "it should have been me instead of him," and *certainly* isn't "it should be her instead of my partner!" Not at all. Instead it's knowing her and liking her even through the little windows of her writing, and longing to have known her better... known her well enough... to have done the same.

Multiply that by dozens of friends and hundreds of writers and thousands of situations and all the vagaries of time and age and distance and preference and it stops being about jealously "coveting my neighbor's wife nor his house nor his cattle" and so on, nor is it about jealous fear or anger that a neighbor might covet (or even have) a relationship with my partner. Instead it's an emptiness of knowing or fearing that what I long for will never be.

I guess in the simplest terms, at least for me, what I feel when I feel jealous isn't "I want that" as it is "that would be so nice." That, for me, is the difference between possessiveness and longing.

Incidentally, and speaking of impossibilities, what inspired my original post was reflecting on the experiences and expressions of first-time crushes, romance, love, and loss chiming softly through the newly-minted class of high-schoolers in my oldest child's circle of friends. I'd not go back, not least because I remember the anguish as well as the exhaltation. And for that matter I couldn't do that because I've already known first-time love, romance, danger, and lust. But I was feeling wistful jealousy for them and on reflection it occurred to me that, well, as I said the first time one heck of a lot of what we construct as jealousy amounts not to possessiveness but longing.

Update: I think poly people have a word, compersion, "a state of empathetic happiness and joy experienced when an individual's current or former romantic partner experiences happiness and joy through an outside source, including, but not limited to, another romantic interest." That's sort of the opposite of what I mean.  Or maybe the opposite of the opposite -- a genuine but wistful or empty happiness for the good fortune of others.  Oh, and for what it's worth, in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera had a great word, litost, for the desire for or action of self-sabotaging revenge that can arise through jealous longing.


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A Prudish Libertine's Thoughts on Jealousy

Posted by figleaf on Sun, 2011-07-17 11:50

One of the things I've learned as a reluctant but sincere monogamist is that a heck of a lot of what we construct as jealousy amounts not to possessiveness but longing.


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Clarisse Thorn on Why Active Monogamy is Also Sex Positive and Thus Needs No Apologies

Posted by figleaf on Thu, 2011-06-09 16:33

Clarisse Thorn, who's written thoughtfully on the appeal of BDSM and polyamory and swinging in the face of their standard objections takes a good long look at the appeal of monogamy in the face of its standard dissents. She concludes

Personally, I always think it’s really key, during any sex-positive critique, to emphasize from the start that whatever you like is cool as long as the actions you take are consensual. I know people who act all apologetic for being monogamous, usually because they’ve been overexposed to “polyvangelists” who argue that non-monogamy is “better” or “more evolved”. This is silly! Liking monogamy doesn’t have to be justified, as long as you don’t turn around and claim that non-monogamy is bad and wrong. And liking monogamy is a perfectly awesome reason for preferring monogamy!

Source: Clarisse Thorn

For probably the same reasons "sex positive" has been wielded by those seeking to lever consent through peer pressure often enough to be spoken of with everything from cynicism to scare quotes. (The same thing happened to the word "liberated" in the 1960s and 70s when it became a euphemism for "you should want to have sex with me the way I want to do it even though either you don't find me attractive or you don't enjoy what I'm proposing."

But as I like to point out from time to time, sincerely, without ironic, and with no tepid "to be sure" boiler plating, to be sex positive is not about agreeing to or endorsing any proposed sexual act or interest. Instead it's to acknowledge that other people might consciously, willingly, and deliberately find sexual gratification by means that don't necessarily do the same for you.

For this reason being sex positive is exactly opposite being automatically open to any activity any partner might propose. The closest it comes is to being willing to recognize or at least to consider what might be appealing about a practice to others even as you decline to participate yourself. (Case in point: does Sen. David Vitter's baby-play fetish appeal to me? No, it doesn't even turn me off! Except perhaps in the most general terms I don't understand the appeal at all. That said, while I'll avalanche his ass in stickleburrs for his aching, supercilious hypocrisy actively condemning others for acts he enjoys (non-monogamy, sex work, and fetishism, all with adults who have affirmatively decided to participate) I recognize that it's something that intensely gratifies him sexually and that it either appeals to his partners as well... or at least doesn't trouble them enough to decline to participate.)

But here's the trick: while sex positivity is often discussed in the context of acknowledgement and toleration for "non-mainstream" activities such as kink, BDSM, polyamory, LGTB orientations, or sex work, it necessarily implies toleration and acceptance of asexuality, disinterest, and even squicks: real sex positive people are as respectful of "no thank you" as they are of "yes please." Even if those who really, truly would never say no themselves.

But it especially implies toleration and acknowledgment of monogamy. Because after all, even in very open societies monogamy (serial or lifelong) is the most frequently chosen relationship option. Yes, of course, there's enormous (sex-negative!) pressure to make and keep monogamy the default or even the only sanctioned form of relationship. But that in no way invalidate the choice of those who are attracted to it at all, at all. Nor does it invalidate the very real benefits Clarisse articulates that make it attractive to those who choose it, even as many others are attracted to the benefits of their own choices.


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"Nature" Vs. Natural Opportunity: Powerful Women As Attracted to Adultery as Powerful Men

Posted by figleaf on Fri, 2011-06-03 16:55

Back in April Echidne said of the incontrovertible biological "fact" that women's interest in men is exclusively related to men's wealth, status, or power

As long as women are, on average, poorer than men we are going to observe more female hypergamy than male hypergamy.

Source: Echidne of the Snakes

That's even empirically true. But guess what else is true? For some mad, zany, bogus Rules of Desire-defying reason, the vast, vast majority of women still want relationships with men.  Why you'd think it might have something to do with... something besides "golddigging."  Maybe it even has something to do with, you know, heterosexual desire.  Just like, you know, heterosexual men!

And guess what?

Crazy I know but there you have it.

But! In the face of that "fact" of female "hypergamy" have you ever wondered women are inclined to behave when they themselves achieve personal wealth, status, and/or power?

Turns out a Dutch sociologist, Joris Lammers of Tilburg University, has spent a lot of time researching the effects of personal power on individuals' morality, legitimacy, hypocrisy, depersonalization. And it turns out he's just applied the question of how personal power affects women's relationships to fidelity and adultery in a survey of business women with 1,500 respondents.

The upshot? I'm not crazy about the source publication (the Daily Mail) but while their prose and photography is heavily larded with lurid stereotypical examples the gist seems consistent with the sort of things Lammers has said in prior articles. (His current paper is not yet available on line.)

[H]igh-earning, successful women are every bit as willing as men to use their power to attract younger lovers for quick flings.

...

However, a new academic study suggests women are inherently no more virtuous than men. It’s just that, in the past, they have lacked the confidence or opportunity to stray.

...

Like men, women are finding that power is a potent aphrodisiac. And just like men, they are giving in to the thrill of illicit lunchtime assignations and the sheer excitement that accompanies their transgression.

Nor do they feel any more guilty or ashamed about it than a man would — if anything, less so.

Source: The Daily Mail

That tends to bear out Echidne's point. Much of what we "know" about women's "nature" comes from history and tradition. And for most of history, and by near-universal tradition, women have had doodly-squat personal power, status, or wealth. And when one is in a dependent situation one makes other trade-offs in exchange. And when it comes to sexual relationships, especially possibly reproductive ones, the tradeoff evidently is less sexual fulfillment and self-expression in favor of maintaining the trust and interest of the person one depends on.

But!

That means many of the qualities tradition and history assigns to women are artifacts of power, status, and wealth imbalances rather "natural" ones. In other words the behavior we're used to is a product of socially-constructed gender not innate biological sex.

And incidentally I'd just add that whereas one might be tempted to say that power, status, or wealth makes women behave "just like men" that that too is gender construction. For that matter it's also class construction. Because to say "women of independent means are as likely as independent men to be unfaithful" isn't to say that if all women of means aren't unfaithful then the assertion falls apart. And that would be because the assertion also means that non-dependent men are no more likely to commit adultery than comparable women. And in fact, over all, men and women are approximately as inclined to fidelity and monogamy as they're inclined towards adultery and polyfidelity.

There are observed differences but the Daily Mail's reporter, Ruth Sunderland (who unlike many of her colleagues, must not have been drunk or horny), interviewed a Financial Times columnist and novelist, Lucy Kellaway and came away with a likely reason that's also far more social than "natural."

‘There is a double standard,’ she says. ‘A man having an affair might be seen as a bit of a lad, whereas a woman like Stella in my book is likely to be seen as pathetic, or a bitch and a slapper.

‘Because there are so few women executives, the ones that do succeed are put on a pedestal — and they have a lot farther to fall. The message of my book is that affairs end badly for everyone.’

And, while the figures demonstrate very clearly that increasing numbers of successful women are being tempted to stray, can women really divorce sex from commitment in the same way as a man?

Well, no, not if you put it that way. But the reason isn't that women are different from men, it's that society judges women differently from men.

That's not the same thing at all, at all: "held to a different, double-standard" simply isn't a heritable biological trait.

Via Emily Tan and Em and Lo.


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Holly Pervocracy: I'm not a serial monogamist! I'm a parallel monogamist!

Posted by figleaf on Thu, 2011-01-20 12:43

The other day Holly, deconstructing relationship clichés with her usual aplomb, said

I'm not a serial monogamist! I'm a parallel monogamist!

Source: The Pervocracy

That's the way to look at relationships even if you're just "sleeping around" and not poly at all. For that matter it's the way to look at non-sexual relationships.

And here's the trick, and why I like Holly so much: we usually don't think of it that way but that's actually is how most people look at non-sexual relationships. Except we don't call that "parallel monogamy," we call it "having friends." So despite the refreshingly radical perspective her proposition isn't radical at all.


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Correlation Not Causation But a Fun Study Anyway: "Women or Wine, Monogamy and Alcohol"

Posted by figleaf on Tue, 2010-12-28 14:52

Via Tyler Cowen here's a great example of correlation not equaling causation in a paper by researchers Mara Squicciarini and Jo Swinnen called "Women or Wine, Monogamy and Alcohol (pdf)" Here's the abstract.

Intriguingly, across the world the main social groups which practice polygyny do not consume alcohol. We investigate whether there is a correlation between alcohol consumption and polygynous/monogamous arrangements, both over time and across cultures. Historically, we find a correlation between the shift from polygyny to monogamy and the growth of alcohol consumption. Cross-culturally we also find that monogamous societies consume more alcohol than polygynous societies in the preindustrial world. We provide a series of possible explanations to explain the positive correlation between monogamy and alcohol consumption over time and across societies.

Source: Amerian Association of Wine Economists Working Paper #75

They're quite clear that the connection really is a correlation, and they do a reasonably good job of explaining how the two trends tended to develop in parallel.

Question: Should polyamorists take note? :-)


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On Bogus Comparisons: Is Monogamy Better Than Polyamory? I Dunno, Are Apples Better Than Oranges?

Posted by figleaf on Sun, 2010-10-10 08:44


Photo by Flickr user davidrlewis. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Coke Talk of Dear Coke Talk lights into a reader who wanted a “devil’s advocate” case that monogamy is superior to polygamy.

[P]olygamy is not the opposite of monogamy. The terms may share a common etymology, but in colloquial use they have fuck-all to do with each other. Monogamy has come to define a broad concept associated with human sexuality. Polygamy has come to define a narrow concept associated with plural marriage in fringe religion.

I think maybe what you’re trying to ask me is to make a case for monogamy over promiscuity. Okay, fine. Does monogamy make you happier than promiscuity? Yes? Then it’s better. For you. I can make a case for minivans and vanilla ice cream too, but who are we fucking kidding? You’re asking for a value judgement where one isn’t necessary.

Monogamy and promiscuity are mutually exclusive lifestyles, but they don’t have to be in opposition unless someone like you insists on calling one better than the other. Quit being so judgmental.

Live how you want to live, already.

Let others do the same.

Read the quote in context here.

I think that’s about right: are apples the opposite of oranges?


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Sounds Too Much Like Monotony: Svlutlana on Monogamy as a Branding Problem

Posted by figleaf on Sun, 2010-08-29 14:05

Also from 2008, Svutlana on rebranding monogamy (emphasis mine.)

But maybe monogamy just have problem with position. Word monogamy sound like same game that couple play over and over and over. Maybe need for change name for something little bit more excite so that more peoples want for do. Maybe rename monogamy fucktomonamy (say fuck-toe-moan-a-me). Fucktomonamy sound fun for do and little bit pervert at same time. And fucktomonamous sound good too! If no want for be fucktomonamous forever, for sure there is something terrible wrong with you.

She said it here.

First you smile a little and then you start thinking “O.M.G. you really would be something wrong if you didn’t want to be fucktomanamous forever!”

(She gets points for some good digs at the utter predictability of evo-psych earlier in her post.)


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Before I forget: Lynn Gazis-Sax on Oxytocin, the Abstinence-Only Movement's Fetish Hormone

Posted by figleaf on Thu, 2010-02-11 06:39

Abstinence-only worshipers have long made a fetish out of what they call the “love hormone” oxytocin. Women and to a much lesser extent men produce it when they have an orgasm. And it really does seem to be present during post-orgasmic cuddling. Wingnuts say this weakens women terribly because, you know, women who have too much sex, especially, with too many partners just completely lose any ability to love anyone ever again. Especially, their subtext goes, the man who, eventually, is supposed to have complete legal custody of her.

Never mind that women’s bodies regularly produce great huge gouts of oxytocin during, oh, say, childbirth or while nursing. Nevermind that really whopping amounts of the artificial version of oxytocin, Pitocin, are routinely given to women to induce labor. And yet despite the oxytocin receptor exhaustion thesis you never hear of women who’ve given birth becoming incapable of loving their husbands, or moms and dads, or subsequent offspring.

Nope, to hear the ‘wingers talk (including Bush Administration family-planning czar and occasional licensed physician Eric Keroack) this evidently happens only when the oxytocin in question involves fiddling with lady parts. To climax. Which, I might add, suggests a touching faith on ‘winger’s parts that most women climax regularly during intercourse.

But I digress…

I really just wanted to mention that back in January Lynn Gazis-Sax of Noli Irritare Leones wrote a really great post about oxytocin that begins

Oxytocin: The Cuddle Hormone?

It’s actually my mother, not me, who is the oxytocin expert, so, Mom, if you happen to read this on Facebook and see that I get anything wrong, feel free to let me know in Facebook comments. But destinyinprogress, at Alexandria, asked me a question about oxytocin in reply to one of my posts, so, here is what I know, and my thoughts about what I’ve read.

My mother did research on oxytoxin, when I was a teenager, and wrote articles with titles like Oxytocin analogs with oxygen-containing side chains in position 3.

From dinner table conversation when I was young, I learned a few basic facts…

She said it here.

Lynn’s got the details. Bottom line: it does seem to facilitate bonding but not as much as abstinence kooks wish, there’s not much evidence of “exhaustion” from it, even though men don’t produce as much as women do it seems to have similar results. And finally, from Lynn’s somewhat more sexually conservative position, the oxytocin dodge is sort of a red herring anyway since even if it were true (and it’s not) there might be better, um, reasons to strive for monogamy and fidelity. And better explanations than “love hormone” exhaustion for why one might not.


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