In sum, I have three key problems with polynormativity.
First problem: the polynormative model is kinda sucky. Perhaps it might work well, maayyybe, for some people—I won't go so far as to say it never does. But it comes with a host of problems for everyone involved, most notably for those who are in the least empowered place within the relationship structure, but also in more subtle and insidious ways for those who are in the more privileged place within the structure. Gee, whaddaya know, that's a lot like pretty much every other privilege/oppression system, ever! I'm going to stop short of saying to polynormative folks, "hey, you're doing it wrong," but, well, honestly? Not far off. Maybe closer to "you're missing the point."
Because of this stance I suspect I may get irate or defensive comments here from a lot of polynormative folks who feel just great about their model. To them, I will say the following. If you are a member of a "primary" pair in a polynormative model, and your "secondary" partner(s) can provide just as spirited a defense of your model as you do, or even more so—not a defense of you as individuals, nor of your relationship, but of the polynormative model itself—without leaving anything out or fibbing even a little bit so they don't risk creating conflict or possibly losing you as a partner, then you fall within the minority of polynormative folks for whom the model works really, super well for all concerned. (And I do mean all. If it's only working really great for the primary couple, the model isn't working.) If you're one such bunch, there's no need to get defensive—I'm not really criticizing you anyway. If, however, that's not the case for you, please hold off on your defensiveness and think really seriously about the critiques I'm raising instead.
When I start seeing a plethora of mainstream media testimonials from happy, fulfilled secondary partners about how awesome the primary-secondary model is... when these secondaries start writing the latest hit poly books, giving the advice, having the lead roles in the reality TV shows, and doing all this as secondaries (not as people who happen to be secondary to someone but it's all okay and balanced and fair because they're also primary to someone else)... when they show their faces in photos, use their full and real names in articles, and just generally feel not the least bit weird about their position in these poly structures right alongside the primary partners who are showcased this way... when this is not an occasional exception, but the main kind of representation I see by and of secondary partners... then maybe I will amend my stance here. I'm not holding my breath.
Second problem: The media presents these poly norms as, well, norms. As The Way to Do Poly. At best, there's a brief mention that some people do some other sorts of poly, over there, and we don't really understand them, or maybe those forms are way too complicated for us to summarize in a 1,000-word article. (Triads! Quads! Families! Ws and Xs and Greek alphabets and constellations and ecosystems! It's all so scary. Also, math is hard.)
But most of the time, "other" (ooh, look at that construction!) kinds of poly aren't mentioned at all. There is this one way, and here it is! Isn't it grand? So brave! So unusual! Really quite cutting-edge, don't you think? ... Well, whether intentionally or otherwise, this approach ends up flattening the picture of poly, depicting it in its simplest, most dumbed-down terms. It's no coincidence that this version of poly is the one that most closely resembles the one-man, one-woman, marriage-based, nuclear-family kind of relationship we're all told we're supposed to aspire to. All we've done is relax the rules around sex a bit, and unlike (but not that unlike) swingers' ethics, we're also "allowing" the emotional end of things to actually exist, in the sense that we have relationships and are not "just" schtupping. But not the kind of relationships that actually "threaten" (?!) the "primary" couple. Not with people who, God forbid, make demands on one or both of us, or challenge us, or want to have a say in how things go. Then, well, they get the boot, because primary comes first! We can all agree on that, can't we? Of course. That's the essence of primary relationships. It's pretty clear in the terminology. One person comes first, the others do not. This is why the mainstream can wrap its head around poly at all: because understood this way, it's really not that fundamentally different from monogamy.
Third problem: This whole state of affairs screws over the newbies. Because of this overwhelming slant in media representation, a lot of folks who are new to poly are operating at a great disadvantage.
I'm not really much one to idealize the past, but boy, was it different ten or fifteen years ago. Back in my day (ha!), if you wanted to learn about poly, there was one source: The Ethical Slut by Dossie Easton and Catherine A. Liszt (as Janet Hardy was known at the time). It was all right. Not perfect. Heavily slanted toward sex-party-attending Bay Area granola types, and written at such a basic language level that it wouldn't go over anyone's head, but overall pretty solid, and nicely thought-provoking. Deborah Anapol's Polyamory: The New Love Without Limits was never nearly as popular or sexy, but it did become a quiet classic, and provided another angle. And, well, that was it. Beyond that, there were a few online discussion forums and potentially, if you lived in a big city, real-life local poly groups. This meant that if you wanted to learn about how to "do" polyamory, you pretty much had to make it up by yourself (which can be a good thing, though extra-challenging); talk to people in your local community, which was probably relatively small but also probably pretty warm and supportive; or attend a conference somewhere far away that brought together a bunch of people. And those people might be doing poly in any number of ways, primary-secondary being just one. (Even then, it was a pretty darned common one, so I'm not saying that polynormativity is entirely a new problem—it's just worse now than ever.)
Right now, though, you can google "polyamory" and get a whole lot of nearly-identical polynormative hype articles, and you can meet up with locals who've read the same articles you just did, and you can all get together and do polynormative poly exactly the way the media told you to. And if that's all you ever bother to do then essentially you are selling yourself short. You are trading in the monogamous norm for polynormativity, which relatively speaking isn't all that much of a stretch, and stopping there because you may very well think that's all there is (and you already racked up a whole bunch of cool points anyway). You aren't encouraged to really think about this stuff without any imposed models at all, which means you never get to figure out what actually might work best for you. As such, the most fundamental element of polyamory—that of rejecting the monogamous standard, and radically rethinking how you understand, make meaning of and practice love, sex, relationships, commitment, communication, and so forth—is lost in favour of a cookie-cutter model that's as easy as one, two, three. The deepest and most significant benefit of polyamory has become increasingly obscured by media representation, and as a result, is getting farther and farther out of reach for anyone who's just starting out.
***
I feel the need to reiterate, one last time, that my problem here is with the polynormative model and the mainstream media's insistence on it—not with a specific relationship structure or with any people who happen to practice it. Yes, the polynormative model and the primary-secondary relationship structure do happen to overlap often, but I can't tell by looking at you what process, values or circumstances brought you to your current structure, or why you chose your terminology, so I can't and won't criticize or judge individual people or poly groupings on the sole basis of having a primary-secondary structure. If this post provokes a sense of defensiveness in you, I invite you to sit with that and think about why.
The key distinction here is between philosophy and current situation or practice. This is similar to how sexual orientation and current sexual practice are not one and the same. You can, for instance, be gay and currently celibate; or bisexual, but these days having sex with only women; or fundamentally straight, but involved with someone of the same sex (though I know some folks would debate that last one). When it comes to polyamory, sometimes, regardless of your philosophy, you may end up being in one big significant live-together kind of relationship and have one or more less-serious or less-committed or less-intense relationships as well. It's the polynormative mindset I have a problem with, and its prevalence—not the form a given poly relationship constellation may actually take.
***
If you'd like to expand outside the polynormative model, I have some recommended reading for you. First, read Wendy-O-Matik's Redefining Our Relationships. Then, check out Deborah Anapol's new Polyamory in the 21st Century: Love and Intimacy with Multiple Partners. (I haven't read it in full yet myself, but the excerpts I've seen lead me to believe Dr. Anapol has a lot of really wise shit to say about non-polynormative models, though I don't think she uses that term specifically.) Spend some time reading Franklin Veaux. Read my 10 Rules for Happy Non-Monogamy. If you're doing D/s or M/s relationships, read Raven Kaldera's Power Circuits: Polyamory in a Power Dynamic (full disclosure: I contributed an essay to it). Look for information, ideas, works that challenge you to think hard, build your skills and stretch your heart. It's out there. Your move.
For over a decade, Andrea Zanin has been teaching about queer sexuality, polyamory and BDSM/leather for universities, colleges, sex shops, community groups and conferences in Canada, the States and internationally, and she brings an awareness of privilege and oppression to all her work. Andrea is pursuing a PhD in women's studies at York University with a focus on Canadian leatherdyke history. She writes about alternative sexuality for numerous newspapers and magazines (for instance, she writes a monthly sex column for In Toronto magazine), blogs at SexGeek.WordPress.com, and pens erotic fiction when she can spare the brain juice.
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