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

  • jack [he/him, comrade/them]
    1·
    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]
      12·
      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]
        2·
        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]
          2·
          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]
        2·
        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.