My issue with her piece is that it is based in her intuition and not in facts. She incorrectly assumes that polyamory is just another way for men to have strings free-sex and to use women when it’s actually women who overwhelmingly initiate opening up of relationships and for many, many women it is an incredibly liberating thing. She assumes that she knows what all Pride parades are like, and generally slings around a bunch of unverified “intuition” as if it were fact. Being judged by someone who doesn’t even know what they are talking about and who hasn’t even bothered to verify their assumptions is just a bit too much.

You both seem to have had some experience with guys who want to be a swinger but who pretend they are polyamorous to make it sound more acceptable. Swinging and polyamory aren’t the same things, just as polyamory and polygamy aren’t the same things. Not making those distinctions means she’s really just kind of doing something similar to the swingers posing as polyamorists; giving a better-looking veneer to something they want to do — in their case fuck around, and in her case to rant.

There’s nothing at all wrong with freely chosen monogamy. Polyamory isn’t for everybody, and not all poly people do the work of taking responsibility for themselves but there is a particular ethos to polyamory. Writing about what your friends do and then assuming that it generalizes to the rest of the category is just kind of sloppy from my perspective, particularly when it’s supported with some of the quotes that she used. I understand that the early days of the sexual revolution were often used as a new way to commodify women, who now had no real reason to not “put out.” There’s still a bit of that with swingers, I think, but it’s not polyamory.

Polyamory is about different kinds of intimate relationships and although most of those have a sexual aspect, they don’t necessarily. My other partner lives across the country from us now, so at this point, our relationship is emotional and spiritual.

All of this has at least given me some good story ideas.