Examining the relationship anarchy premise...warning long

Many thanks to Alan over at Poly in the News for this link to the Atlanta Poly Conference's Opening Keynote Speech - 'From Triads to Triadic relationships: Polyamory's Superpower is not what you think' 
 
In all honesty, it is a loooong, over complicated mess, the speaker had made the mistake of thinking that he needed to explain all the complex workings of his brain and in truth, it just came off as boring and pretentious.  Not to mention the travesty which was his diversion of the examination on how the same oppressive structures are also present in the BDSM community.  His use of 'evil' probably stirred some hornets nests I can tell you.  Whether he was just trying to be provocative or he has lost sense of reality....it is hard to tell.

However, I felt obligated to read some of it because I have been examining the Relationship Anarchy model in relation to my own life and whether it is a more ethical way to relate to the intimate connections I have and will have in the future.

MayMay's speech relies a great deal on analysing the complex geometry which has become a bit of an in-joke  of the Polyamory world, using the structures in a slightly different way from the norm, the lines which connects partners to one another are entities which exist like roles independent of any 3rd party, in fact, it IS the 3rd party, people can choose to relate to the 3rd party (take up a role) or not, but it is not imposed upon them.   This structure does not presume a relationship between all the dots/ people.

In this way, he eliminates the oppressive imposition of a relationship he does not want to have (Metamour) since this is not a relationship he himself has chosen, it is one which has been imposed on him due to sharing a lover with someone:

This disruption opened the door for Belle and Claire to be coerced into relating to one another “as metamours” by invisible poly-cultural scripts that decreed how metamours should think, feel, and behave towards one another. In other words, expecting “positive” feelings, such as love, between metamours is an artifact of couple privilege.

Whilst I think language does have power and certainly there is a great deal of institutionalising neologism creation in the Polyamory scene, it really could have been said better.  I was more interested in what he had to say about couple privilege and hierarchies as this is my own particular bug bear about the Polyamory scene.

His run down on how the monogamous system oppresses Polyamorists and how Polyamorists with couple privilege replicate this oppression with hierarchal structures was thorough and gave me some pause as an unmarried Poly woman.

This pattern maps perfectly onto the oppressive systemic behavior at the scale of our society at large in relation to the poly community:

1. Obscure the validity and possibility of polyamorous relationship structures by enforcing monogamy.
2. Divide people into groups, such as married and unmarried,
3. Conquer the oppressed (unmarried) group by making marriage a symbol of success and status,
4. Homogenize the dominant group by institutionalizing the structure of marriage into law and other societal standards.

Sadly, this pattern also maps perfectly onto the oppressive systemic behavior at the scale of the poly community in relation to secondaries.

1. Obscure the subtleties of couple privilege,
2. divide people into groups, such as “polyamorous” and “monogamous,” or “primaries” and “secondaries,”
3. conquer the marginalized group by excluding them from decision-making processes,
4. homogenize the dominant group into institutional structures, such as an “inclusive Poly-L Triad.”

Earlier today I saw a Newbie profile on a Poly website, it started:

 This site doesn't allow us to list ourselves as a couple, which is really odd seeing that this is a poly site.

 I was so annoyed when reading that...how dare these people display their couple focused ignorance for us all to see *seeth*....but it seems that it is a very common  or at least it is to MayMay:

The elephant in the room at poly conferences, meetups, and communities is the centering of a couple’s experience. That is absurd! That ought to infuriate us! For fuck’s sake, it’s a “POLY” event!

This vexes me as a person who entered Poly as a singleton, at the same time, we cannot ignore the fact that most polys still come in couples, many (and this is, of course nearly 100% true in the Poly fi community) are legally married, which means their couple privilege is entrenched in law, leaving those of us like Muggins here, marginalised by society and sometimes the Poly community.

I wouldn't suggest trying to read through the whole speech because it really is tripe, but do check out the comments section,  they are pretty good intelligent comments, many of which pointed out to Maymay that his speech was too....complex (they were being kind) but he seems oblivious to all but his own glory so........instead he just gives some bastard response to Dawn Davidson towards the end.

 Bitsy's comment (comment #8) was especially  helpful to me, she writes:

What I like about the idea of making the relationship themselves visible is that it can make obligation visible.

I like that.  As time goes on, I realise that my idea of RA is not  about loose connections and treating everyone the same, it is about appreciating my relationships for what they are and recognising my responsibility to the relationship.  My ideals are fairly grounded in the idea of group/network situation where the relationship is what you have a responsibility to and for the health of that relationship or, as I prefer to call it, family, you will behave in a responsible ethical way, it is not about who you bump privates with.
Commitment/responsibility is to family without the obligation of imposed sexual, romantic or kindred spirit like intimacy with all people in the family. Which is where so many new seekers fall down I think. If myself, or one of my partners meets someone else, what right have I, or they to insist they relate to me as partner/sisterwife/co-husband/best friend/metamour etc?  No, what they need to relate to, with respect and commitment is the relationship/family and find their comfort zone within it.