Disclaimer: All my love to poly comrades, I'm not shitting on your relationship preferences, it's just this tweet is ridiculous.

  • Rev [none/use name]
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    4 years ago

    It is as much a decision as ADHD or childhood trauma are a decision. There is no standard sexuality with the rest being a "degenerate deviation". Some people get super attached to one person and that's just how they are and others never feel the same attachment and get bored quickly or feel suffocated in monogamous relationships with all the duties and limitations they entail both physically but also in terms of expected emotionality. So yeah at the end of the day being mocked or looked at funny is obviously not the same as being a victim of racism or have people deny you the right to life and dignity because of a disability but it also isn't "just a decision" akin to what colour T-shirt to wear today or which movie to watch.

    • RNAi [he/him]
      hexagon
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      4 years ago

      Idk it doesn't seem like a sexuality, but rather a preference in relationship dinamic. Anyways I'm obviously not an expert.

      • jabrd [he/him]
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        4 years ago

        If you want an actual commie take you could read Alexandra Kollontai’s “Make Way for Winged Eros” or listen to the AK47 podcast on her writings. She describes relationship dynamics throughout history as an outcome of material conditions and theorizes that a communist society would produce more open, polyamorous relationships. Iirc she was the only one of Stalin’s central committee that wasn’t either assassinated by Stalin or Stalin himself

        • RNAi [he/him]
          hexagon
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          4 years ago

          With polyamoury and the theory needed to do it right becoming mainstream:

          Will there be a polylib to chapo pipeline?

          Or will all the libs learning power dinamycs become even more horrible in their educated-libness?

          • jabrd [he/him]
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            4 years ago

            The real question is will there be enough sectarian poly infighting that someone gets an ice pick in the back of the head?

              • ChudlyMcChubbyPants [he/him]
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                4 years ago

                That part of the kink community that likes to dress up like Marlon Brando and play biker gang on the second Saturday of each month

        • ChudlyMcChubbyPants [he/him]
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          4 years ago

          I was just about to ask for a material treatment of the monogamy taboo. Based and perfectly timed

        • 4_AOC_DMT [any]
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          4 years ago

          Iirc she was the only one of Stalin’s central committee that wasn’t either assassinated by Stalin or Stalin himself

          huh. polyamory is the nash optimal strategy in among us

          really makes you think

      • Rev [none/use name]
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        4 years ago

        Well I can only speak from experience. It is a preference but it's a preference in the same vein as the physical itching need for some people to climb mountains, or jump from airplanes or a general need for an adrenaline rush while others are naturally phlegmatic and cannot stand loud noises, for example. It does have to do with the chemical balance in your specific body and the wiring of your specific brain. Now this can be fostered or kept in check somehow but the predisposition is real (whether genetic or due to exposure in early childhood is difficult to say). Which is why even if we get rid of the nuclear family as an ideological standard you will still see many, maybe even overwhelmingly most, people practice exclusive monogamy.

    • jack [he/him, comrade/them]
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      4 years ago

      Ok, no one used the phrase "degenerate deviation", so I don't know who you're quoting, or even standard sexuality here. And I'm not at all delegitimizing poly relationships. But comparing it to being a victim of childhood trauma or having a mental disability seems fucking whack to me, quite frankly. It's a decision people make about what type of relationship they're in, and that's fine, but it's not fundamentally different from choosing to be single, monogamous, or any other approach to the rules one establishes for themselves around sex or relationships.

      • Rev [none/use name]
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        4 years ago

        I used the example of childhood trauma and ADHD because while very real and often debilitating those two can be managed/mitigated to an extent with medication, therapy, training and change of environment. Not so for say blindness, which absent of some huge medical breakthrough you cannot just make functionally go away. So yeah a poly person can very well stick themselves into a monogamous relationship and feel sorta kinda content at least some of the time, given enough motivation but the yearning and the feeling of being caged will still be there. So I'm not saying there's some huge oppression of poly people going on here but let's also not just trivialise it as "just a decision".

        • jack [he/him, comrade/them]
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          4 years ago

          But does being poly require medication, therapy, or training?

          Again, none of this is coming from a place of being against poly relationships. My current relationship isn't poly in practice but we've agreed on acceptable conditions for how that would work. They just haven't come up yet.

          • Rev [none/use name]
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            4 years ago

            We seem to be talking past each other. I'm not saying it is **exactly ** the same, but in absence of a better facsimile (maybe you can find a better one?) I compared it to intrinsic characteristics that are not necessarily life threatening or even necessarily noticed by other people. Maybe comparing it to a character trait would be better. Character traits are real, they exist, they are not simple decisions. They are tightly linked to your experience of self. Can you work on altering them? Of course you can. But the manifestations of said character traits are as real and valid and to the person in question as important and necessary as anything else. They are not just a set of clothes you can put on or take off at will. Take a musical prodigy - they feel it in their bones, it is something they must do. Now will they perish if they don't? Of course not, you can stick them into working construction for the rest of their days and they will still be ok, still find some joy in life but that nagging feeling of something missing, of being held back will be there. Same goes for your typical "adrenaline junkie". The predisposition is valid and structurally real, arising from the make-up of the individual brain. It is also not set in stone, just like a person's character can change over time. This is what makes it seem like just a decision even when it goes way deeper than a fleeting preference or a practical arrangement. I hope I've clarified my position now. And again obviously denigrating people for being poly while annoying is nowhere near to slavery, racism, sexism, ostracizing based on clinical disability, etc.

        • kristina [she/her]
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          4 years ago

          wtf. dude. i have childhood trauma. terrible analogy. i see poly shit as just wanting a different flavor of cookie every now and again, i doubt theres a genetic component at all.