The Week
By Carrie Jenkins
There’s no longer anything unusual about wanting an open relationship. Many who consider themselves progressive about sex, gender, love, and relationships know this. It’s just that almost nobody in an open relationship wants to be open about it. What’s surprising is that so many people feel the need for secrecy.
I’ve been out as polyamorous for years. Because of this, non-monogamous people who aren’t out often feel able to talk to me about their own situations. When I go to conferences, I can’t help noticing all the philosophers who are in closeted non-monogamous relationships. This discrepancy between reality and socially acknowledged reality can be disorienting; the “official” number of non-monogamous people in the room is almost always one (me).
So what’s going on? No doubt there are several factors at work, but I want to talk about one that’s both powerful and insidious: Non-monogamy isn’t considered “romantic.”
Romantic love is widely considered to be the best thing life has to offer: “Failing” at romance is often construed as failing at life. Amatonormativity is a name for the attitude that privileges lives based around a focal monogamous romantic relationship. What gets called “romantic” isn’t just about classification; it’s about marking out those relationships and lives we value most.
This monogamous ideal is supposed to appeal to women especially. According to the stereotypes, single women are desperate to “lock down” a man, while men are desperate to avoid commitment. There’s nothing new here: Monogamy has historically been gendered. Even in situations where marrying more than one woman has been illegal, it has often been normal for men to have mistresses, but different rules have applied to women. This is unsurprising: In a patriarchal society with property inheritance passing along the male line, paternity is key, and enforced female monogamy is an effective way to control it.
Women’s sexuality can also be policed by developing a feminine model that includes a “natural” desire for monogamy, plus social benefits for conforming to that model (and penalties for non-conformity). This model can then be internalized by women as a “romantic” ideal inculcated via fairytales. In a similar vein, rather than allowing only men to have more than one partner, we can instill a subtler cultural belief that men’s infidelity is “natural” and therefore excusable, while women’s infidelity is not.
Our language undermines gender-related optimism about monogamous romantic ideals: there is no word for a male “mistress”; romantic comedies are “chick flicks.” “Romance” novels are marketed to and consumed by women. Brides are “given away” by men to other men. We never hear about “crazy old cat gentlemen.” And how many married men do you know who’ve taken their wife’s surname? These attitudes persist not just in word but in deed: Wives in hetero marriages still do more housework than their husbands, even if they earn more (which they rarely do).
Recent growing acceptance of same-sex love as “romantic” has presented challenges to gendered norms. But this has happened alongside another change: Monogamy has become an even more powerful “romantic” ideal by including same-sex relationships. And its impact is intensely gendered.
Women who enter voluntarily into non-monogamous relationships are a direct challenge to the idea that women are “naturally” monogamous. They are socially penalized to maintain the status quo. A non-monogamous woman will be portrayed as debased and disgusting — a “slut.” When I have discussed my open relationships online, I have been called many other colorful names. …