“There’s a Big Problem With Polyamory That Nobody’s Talking About”

Identities.Mic

by Kaitlyn Mitchell

When it comes to love and sex, “polyamory” is today’s “it” word.

Poly relationships, meaning romantic connections involving more than one person at a time, seem to making more headlines each day. “I have a fiancé, a girlfriend and two boyfriends,” states one recent CNN headline. “Jealous of What? Solving Polyamory’s Jealousy Problem” reads one in Salon. “Should We All Be in ‘Monogamish’ Relationships?” asked Yahoo recently. “Sex and Polyamory in the Hashtag Age” was a Good Morning America segment just this week.

“There’s this huge group of younger people that are involved in these things,” one 20-something told Rolling Stone in its big “Tales From the Millennials’ Sexual Revolution” investigation.

What’s great is the ubiquity of polyamorous relationships in the media and pop culture. But there’s a prevailing problem that cannot be ignored: their whiteness. And that standard of whiteness not only erases the experience of people of color; it reflects the actual exclusion of these people in poly life and communities.

A hot “trend” portrayed as sexy, youthful — and rich and white: Polyamory may be more accepted than ever, but it’s still largely portrayed as an exotic, vaguely kinky alternative to the institution of monogamy. Purposefully or not, when media and pop culture portray polyamory as something practiced mainly by affluent white people, it makes the image of the movement more accessible and acceptable to the mainstream.

Just take Rolling Stone, which made a point of noting of its subjects: “They’re … both young professional types. She wears pretty skirts; he wears jeans and trendy glasses. They have a large, downtown apartment with a sweeping view.” The same archetypes are prominent in pop culture portrayals, like in Showtime’s Polyamory: Married & Dating.

The perception of poly as white extends beyond media and pop culture and into academia, where nearly every study of polyamorous people to-date focuses on white subjects. A 2011 study by professors Elisabeth Sheff and Corie Hammers found that in 36 studies of polyamorists/kinksters that noted participants’ race and class, only an average of 10.8% of respondents were people of color, while 76.8% were of middle-class status or higher and 78% had at least some college education.

But not only is polyamory neither a new development nor a hot “trend,” it’s been on the spectrum of human relationships since the beginning of civilization. Andy Izenson, an associate attorney at a firm specializing in nontraditional families, told Mic, “Living in chosen families, living in collectives, living in multiple-parent parenting situations … calling those things poly is what’s new, not doing those things.” And poly lifestyles have also long included people of color, something the media dialogue seems to be missing.

One explanation is that white researchers may have difficulty convincing people of color that they have good intentions in studying their sexual habits. If so, the sentiment shouldn’t be too surprising given the current state of poly communities.

A white, affluent image that reflects a troubling reality: A 2013 survey of polyamorous people from online groups, mailing lists and forums found that almost 90% of the participants identified as Caucasian. People of color, especially black polyamorists, report feeling “othered” and excluded in poly environments such as meet-ups, with women feeling especially at risk of being objectified and fetishized as an exotic sexual plaything. …