CNM – Con­sen­su­al Non Monogamy : a term ris­ing in pop­u­lar­i­ty since the more pop­u­lar ENM (eth­i­cal non-monogamy) is a sub­jec­tive judge­ment and also implies that non-monogamy is “inher­ent­ly” uneth­i­cal, rein­forc­ing the idea that monogamy is the eth­i­cal norm

When I was approached to do a piece about monog­a­mous priv­i­lege, at first I Spock-eye­browed pret­ty hard. I asso­ciate the word priv­i­lege strong­ly with iden­ti­ty mark­ers that peo­ple can’t con­trol and are usu­al­ly born with—things like race, nation­al­i­ty, gen­der, cis­sism, sex­u­al­i­ty. These are the axes around which you find priv­i­lege and mar­gin­al­iza­tion. Right? Monogamy or non-monogamy seemed to me to be treat­ing the word “priv­i­lege” with a cer­tain plas­tic­i­ty that tends to dull the mean­ing of ideas. (I remem­ber hit­ting this con­cept like a brick wall when a friend who expe­ri­enced PTSD trig­gers from read­ing vis­cer­al accounts of child abuse was table-flip­ping­ly furi­ous that the word “trig­ger” had come to be used as syn­ony­mous with “irri­tat­ed” in cer­tain chic cir­cles. “I’m used to insen­si­tive jack holes blow­ing it off,” she said. “But when I’m talk­ing to the peo­ple who actu­al­ly have human empa­thy and care, if it has no mean­ing any­more, then those people—who would oth­er­wise be my allies—don’t under­stand that I’m actu­al­ly hav­ing a pan­ic attack on the oth­er side of the com­put­er screen and not just clutch­ing my pearls or sniff­ing dis­dain­ful­ly.”

Would exam­in­ing the priv­i­lege of monogamy open the door to fur­ther “dilut­ing” of the idea of priv­i­lege? Would non-main­stream hob­bies or fan­doms begin to talk about their “mar­gin­al­iza­tion”? Would every group that feels “us vs. them” begin to dis­cuss the priv­i­lege of their detrac­tors? Oh GOD, would I have to hear even more whin­ing from white Chris­t­ian males about how hard it is to be them. (“You hap­pen to have ‘mar­gin­al­iza­tion priv­i­lege,’ my friend.” WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUUUU–)

But this isn’t a ques­tion of who is scram­bling to have a seat at the “privilege/no priv­i­lege” table, it’s more of under­stand­ing the way the world “defaults” and the assump­tions that we make about what “nor­mal” even means. I was just start­ing to under­stand white and male priv­i­lege when the con­cepts of thin and tall priv­i­lege were intro­duced. It was a lot then, but now I under­stand how they work. They’re not com­pa­ra­ble to white or male priv­i­lege (cer­tain­ly not in a white-suprema­cy world), but they do exist—they are sta­tis­ti­cal­ly demon­stra­ble and fac­tu­al­ly unde­ni­able.

Still, even years lat­er, when the idea of this piece came up, non-monogamy occu­pied a murky quag­mire in my mind. It lived in a world some­where between iden­ti­ty and lifestyle. While many peo­ple who are non-monog­a­mous iden­ti­fy it as an ori­en­ta­tion rather than a pref­er­ence or a choice—often using much of the same lan­guage as queer folks try­ing to pass about forc­ing their lives into unhap­py con­tain­ers and feel­ing alive when they dis­cov­er there could be anoth­er way—it is usu­al­ly seen as a deci­sion. I have lived in a V tri­ad and raised a child with the bio­log­i­cal par­ents. I have lived as a dyad who did a lot of dat­ing. Cur­rent­ly, I live in a non-hier­ar­chi­cal rela­tion­ship and prac­tice solo-polyamory. I have mul­ti­ple long-dis­tance rela­tion­ships. But I don’t usu­al­ly feel oppressed. Isn’t that what priv­i­lege is all about?

Then again, what if it were a choice? What if it were 100% absolute­ly a choice, and not one sin­gle per­son ever had a bio­log­i­cal pre­dis­po­si­tion to non-monogamy (despite all the evi­dence to the con­trary)? What if monogamy were as sim­ple a deci­sion as wear­ing green instead of pur­ple? The idea of priv­i­lege is that the cul­tur­al norms and sys­tem­at­ic insti­tu­tions favor cer­tain groups over oth­ers. If we have a use­ful vocab­u­lary, frame­work, and under­stand­ing of a con­cept, why not use these tools to exam­ine things that are per­haps less deter­mined by the cir­cum­stances of our birth? It might even help to demys­ti­fy the con­cept of priv­i­lege. If the world demon­stra­bly treat­ed peo­ple in green clothes bet­ter, why not exam­ine how life is dif­fer­ent for some­one who sim­ply loves dress­ing in pur­ple? And if we car­ry this anal­o­gy fur­ther, are there not “choic­es” as innocu­ous as cloth­ing (espe­cial­ly women’s cloth­ing) that are influ­enced by social norms or even enforced by legal codes?

Some choic­es we make are not as “choicy” as oth­ers.

As long as (and this is absolute­ly key) poly vs. monogamy isn’t clam­or­ing for a medal in the oppres­sion olympics, and it isn’t try­ing to make sure it has a let­ter in the LGBTQ+ rain­bow, or for FUUUUUUCKS SAKE its mem­bers doing some­thing absolute­ly odi­ous like say­ing “Hey Woman of Col­or, I know I’m a cis het white male, but I’m also a solo poly rela­tion­ship anar­chist, so I real­ly GET oppres­sion,” we should be able to unpack the knap­sack of monog­a­mous privilege—at the very least as a thought exercise—without unspool­ing the very con­cept of priv­i­lege.

But then I thought about it—specifically, I thought about the things I do and have done to pass when I’m out with part­ners past and present and my fam­i­ly, how my ex and I didn’t dis­play affec­tion very often, and I look like a younger broth­er or a friend out with a mar­ried cou­ple. How one of my past part­ners behaved absolute­ly pla­ton­i­cal­ly towards me until we were a few blocks away from her apart­ment. I thought about how we had to come out to our fam­i­lies, how my mom said I would raise schiz­o­phrenic kids, and how there are a few dis­tant rel­a­tives who still think I was just a room­mate. Yep… just a room­mate who moved with that mar­ried cou­ple… twice. I thought about how my boss asked me if “you and your wife bought a house?” when I told them I was mov­ing (my part­ner and her hus­band had bought the house), and how I didn’t cor­rect her.

I thought about how I keep those parts of my life close to the cuff and speak of my rela­tion­ships in half-truths. I nev­er tell strangers the most com­mon details of my life. I have to blog under pseu­do­nyms so that the chil­dren whose lives I’m involved with aren’t out­ed and harassed or treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly by teach­ers. When I am invit­ed to social or busi­ness func­tions, I have to decide which part­ner can’t come because almost all such invi­ta­tions have the option of invit­ing only one oth­er adult as a guest. I am lim­it­ed to one legal mar­riage, no mat­ter how much I love some­one and want them to be a per­ma­nent part of my life. Most peo­ple who are polyamorous still form dyad cou­ples and date out­side these pair bonds because life is just so much eas­i­er that way. These sorts of clos­et­ed behav­iors and lim­i­ta­tions are all too famil­iar to many.

I thought about how non-monog­a­mous folk have to make spe­cial efforts to get togeth­er with like mind­ed groups. How they can’t just assume that a per­son they’re roman­ti­cal­ly attract­ed to will accept their sit­u­a­tion. How polyamorous peo­ple often con­sid­er mov­ing only to cer­tain parts of the coun­try where there are estab­lished CNM com­mu­ni­ties. How find­ing folks who might also be non monog­a­mous is often a dance of cod­ed sig­nals, care­ful sub­ject broach­ing, and spe­cial algo­rithms on dat­ing sites rather than a sim­ple assump­tion that MOST peo­ple make of most peo­ple. You see some­one cute, you’re prob­a­bly not going to assume they’re non-monog­a­mous.

I thought about the way “choice” becomes a par­tic­u­lar­ly insid­i­ous word when it comes to human sex­u­al­i­ty, and how “just choos­ing not to” has been at the cen­ter of oth­er strug­gles about nat­ur­al sex­u­al expression—struggles that are absolute­ly about priv­i­lege and mar­gin­al­iza­tion. How many peo­ple have had their iden­ti­ty mis­cat­e­go­rized as a choice? How many people’s lived expe­ri­ences of feel­ing like hor­ri­ble peo­ple for cheat­ing and feel­ing mis­er­able with­in the con­fines of monogamy do we have to ignore in order to insist that monogamy is a choice any­one can make? How many peo­ple for whom there is a spec­trum of respons­es to monogamy (like me, who can take it or leave it but hap­pens to be poly due to cir­cum­stance) do we have to tok­enize in order to “prove” that it’s a choice (in a chill­ing echo of how bisex­u­als and their entire iden­ti­ties are thrown under the bus to prove that same-sex attrac­tion is a choice any­one could sim­ply… not make). Is this invis­i­bil­i­ty accept­able because of the small­er num­bers of peo­ple who iden­ti­fy as non-monog­a­mous? Is it accept­able because monogamy is a VERY wide­ly accept­ed cul­tur­al norm? Is it accept­able because we per­ceive monogamy as a choice, even if it is a “choice” for some? Is it a choice because we would rather stig­ma­tize ser­i­al cheaters as immoral than con­front the fact that some peo­ple might be wired to live dif­fer­ent lives?

I thought about how every attempt to nor­mal­ize non-monogamy is always pat­terned in sim­i­lar ways to what was done to queer folks a decade ago. Those slick, white­washed out­reach mes­sages that threw most of the com­mu­ni­ty under the bus for a very ster­il­ized (if diplo­mat­ic?) image. Always those deep and abid­ing emo­tions front and cen­ter (as if no one ever fucks because they want to fuck and fuck­ing feels good and is fun). Always a tri­ad. Always white peo­ple. Always a man and two women. Giv­ing non-monogamy the most accept­able face pos­si­ble, as if we are apol­o­giz­ing for every queered (lit­er­al­ly and fig­u­ra­tive­ly) expres­sion of non-monogamy that wouldn’t be as easy for main­stream cul­ture to under­stand. I mean, maybe we don’t want gen­der-blend­ing orgies on our recruit­ment fliers (or maybe atten­dance would be up if we did), but still, it’s always a white­washed tri­ad that occu­pies many men’s fan­tasies.

I thought about how uncom­mon it is to see non-monogamy por­trayed in the main­stream media in a way that isn’t far­ci­cal or skeevy. I thought about how every time some­one non-monog­a­mous breaks up, it is attrib­uted to the FACT of their non-monogamy. (Think about how often monog­a­mous rela­tion­ships break up, but you don’t have some­one say­ing “Yeah, those monog­a­mous rela­tion­ships real­ly nev­er last” every time it happens—even if that is, you know, like, KINDA sta­tis­ti­cal­ly accu­rate.) How keen­ly I am aware of how monogamy affects people’s view of the world, with­out ever being able to expect them to under­stand how non-monogamy affects mine. Peo­ple ignore or dis­miss my life as deviant or pruri­ent, some­times while I’m stand­ing in the room. How I’ve had to lis­ten to peo­ple in my fam­i­ly tell me that I prob­a­bly have a psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­or­der. How friends have cut ties (some­times tem­porar­i­ly, but often for good) when they found out about “that poly thing.” How cou­ples treat me like I’m on the prowl to “con­vert” them… or maybe just one of them like the sex-fiend home wreck­er I am. How my bor­ing, bill-pay­ing, child-car­ing life was viewed as a curios­i­ty or a won­der because it involved three adults. How I am told, often even by peo­ple who are gen­er­al­ly sup­port­ive, that they “just couldn’t do that,” Every. Sin­gle. Time. I bring up poly in their pres­ence (“If it works for you, great, but I just couldn’t do it.”) As if I am some­how going to for­get that they are monog­a­mous if they don’t remind me con­stant­ly. As if remind­ing me con­stant­ly that my life (or, as they remind me so often, not my life but my lifeSTYLE) isn’t a prob­lem doesn’t clear­ly give me the impres­sion that maybe it is. Methinks some monog­a­mous doth affirm too much.

Most of all, I thought about how ter­ri­fied I was for years that for some rea­son, some­how, my fam­i­ly might end up in fam­i­ly court fac­ing down a judge who dis­ap­proves of non-monogamy, and I might have to move out or the cus­to­di­al sit­u­a­tion of the chil­dren would be threat­ened. A monog­a­mous cou­ple might have to wor­ry about los­ing their chil­dren, of course, but they would nev­er have to won­der if it was monogamy that was a fac­tor.

I thought about it, and I’m not ready to die on this hill myself, but maybe monogamy vs. non-monogamy’s place in the priv­i­lege dis­course is an idea whose time has come.