Here's the moral and the story from the guy who knows
It's soapbox week, and I have a couple rants in store for y'all. I had planned to start with the funny rant and close with the serious one, but for fear of getting all Journey into Reason on you guys, I'm thinking it would be better the other way around, so here goes.
It has come to my attention that something like 80% of Blogspite readers are or have recently been in an open relationship, so I thought I'd share with you my recent thoughts on why they are mostly pretty terrible.
At this point, since I know somebody is going to ask, I would like to emphasize that none of this has anything to do with me, okay. Sometimes I think about things is all, especially things that are currently devastating the personal lives of 80% of my readers. Not me. End of digression.
So, until recently, I had had some sort of vague intuition that the demand for exclusive relationships was mostly just a form of puritanical oppression. Sure, if two people wanted to get together and practice monogamy (as, for instance, I do), great for them, but since I'm a modern dude who realizes that there's nothing inherently immoral about polyamory, I was uneasy about the idea of denying it to one's partner...isn't that just the result of some kind of perverse jealousy that treats people as property? One should not be subject to such constraints on one's personal and emotional freedom.
But why on Earth would I think that? Have I suddenly forgotten about the whole notion of positive rights? This freedom talk I had been invoking only works in some kind of demented laissez-faire fantasy of libertarian autonomy. If A and B are a couple, then A's "freedom" to hook up with another person is only one side of things; we must also protect B's freedom from relationships where such things take place. The latter strikes me as not only the more basic right, but also the more harmful to violate, as there is much greater potential for emotional fallout in an unwilling poly relationship than an unwilling mono one.
But what if B is totally okay with that? After all, mutual consent is a crucial feature of responsible polyamory, as articulated by its advocates. Supposing one knows what one is doing, I can certainly see how one could legitimately waive one's right to exclusivity. However, this right could still be violated, and catastrophically so, unless the waiver were revokable at any time, and under any circumstances. And this seems like more trouble than it's worth, as the circumstances under which it is likely to be revoked are precisely those that are most liable to give one's partner emotional whiplash when one does so, which A presumably also has a right to be free from. So, on pain of winding up in some serious deontic blind alleys, I conclude that it is generally better that the whole mess just be ruled off-limits entirely.
In conclusion, people suck, yay fascism.
It has come to my attention that something like 80% of Blogspite readers are or have recently been in an open relationship, so I thought I'd share with you my recent thoughts on why they are mostly pretty terrible.
At this point, since I know somebody is going to ask, I would like to emphasize that none of this has anything to do with me, okay. Sometimes I think about things is all, especially things that are currently devastating the personal lives of 80% of my readers. Not me. End of digression.
So, until recently, I had had some sort of vague intuition that the demand for exclusive relationships was mostly just a form of puritanical oppression. Sure, if two people wanted to get together and practice monogamy (as, for instance, I do), great for them, but since I'm a modern dude who realizes that there's nothing inherently immoral about polyamory, I was uneasy about the idea of denying it to one's partner...isn't that just the result of some kind of perverse jealousy that treats people as property? One should not be subject to such constraints on one's personal and emotional freedom.
But why on Earth would I think that? Have I suddenly forgotten about the whole notion of positive rights? This freedom talk I had been invoking only works in some kind of demented laissez-faire fantasy of libertarian autonomy. If A and B are a couple, then A's "freedom" to hook up with another person is only one side of things; we must also protect B's freedom from relationships where such things take place. The latter strikes me as not only the more basic right, but also the more harmful to violate, as there is much greater potential for emotional fallout in an unwilling poly relationship than an unwilling mono one.
But what if B is totally okay with that? After all, mutual consent is a crucial feature of responsible polyamory, as articulated by its advocates. Supposing one knows what one is doing, I can certainly see how one could legitimately waive one's right to exclusivity. However, this right could still be violated, and catastrophically so, unless the waiver were revokable at any time, and under any circumstances. And this seems like more trouble than it's worth, as the circumstances under which it is likely to be revoked are precisely those that are most liable to give one's partner emotional whiplash when one does so, which A presumably also has a right to be free from. So, on pain of winding up in some serious deontic blind alleys, I conclude that it is generally better that the whole mess just be ruled off-limits entirely.
In conclusion, people suck, yay fascism.
posted by Evan at 2:22 AM
6 Comments:
Okay, so, I know this is really a rant and not an argument, etc. So take my taking-you-seriously with a grain of salt. Mmm, salt.
Point of terminology: I don't think you're right to identify "polyamory" with "open relationship" and "non-monogamy" generally.
I think that I should point out that though you're using the trappings of ethical language, what you're doing here is far from anything I would want to call ethics. In my humble, ethical discussion at its best should furnish tools and attack problems in order to improve our lives and our ways of living with each other. Ethics at its worst provides propaganda that attempts to legitimate ideology. The latter form of sophistry is what you seem to be about, here.
First, what is this "positive right" to be protected from open relationships? You certainly haven't provided an argument for it. And one doesn't have to be living in libertarian la-la land to think that different kind of people can enter into different kind of social agreements, relationships, etc. without violating any rights, and without the ability to revoke the agreement at any second (other than in the normal way that people end relationships).
Can you think of any examples of a contract that can be fair only if it is entirely non-binding? Maybe we'd say that someone could only "sell themselves into slavery" if they were free to renege at any time. Hmm, that sounds more like a monogamous relationship than an open one, though.
Second, why think that an open relationship is any more dangerous than a closed relationship? No argument here, either. The feeling of confinement, the lack of trust that provides the need for strict boundaries, the developing resentment towards one's partner might be just as detrimental to the relationship as feelings of jealously and the lack of security that might be caused by an open relationship.
There are a lot of interesting areas of inquiry into this question, and your discussion has really touched on none of them. What is the genealogy of the emotions, intuitions, and moral feelings that cause us to look askance at open and polyamorous relationships? How does that reflect on our beliefs about polyamory? What is the network of social expectations that lead us to expect monogamy? Is that the only effective way of organizing our relationships? Is it the best? I think that these issues are by no means settled, and inquiry into them would be quite interesting, but it isn't helped by closed-minded screeds on one side or the other.
Well, first, you'll be pleased to hear that I have softened my line on certain details after a long and rather enlightening discussion with "Money Changes Everything," who offered some genuinely compelling counterarguments.
Now, on to yours.
You certainly do raise, if unwittingly, a lot of interesting points. I'm slightly surprised that you do not regard my discussion as attacking a problem in order to improve our ways of living with each other. I am also confused about your claim that "ethics at its worst provides propaganda that attempts to legitimate ideology." All ethics can be turned to this end; I should have hoped that you of all people wouldn't regard certain discursive acts as pure and magical insofar as the tools that they provide can only ever make our lives better and can never be co-opted to further one's ideological goals.
In any case, your point about sophistry was well-taken, and this point was further driven home by your demonstration thereof.
Regarding the terminological question, I did not mean to identify these concepts with one another; however, I did take it for granted that the points I made applied to them equally. If, however, you disagree, to the extent that your having distinguished between them in this discussion furnishes a particular tool to attack a practical problem, I hope you can help me identify it.
There is a lot to be said about contracts; my glib answer to your "are there any contracts that must not be binding in order to be fair" question is "yes, all of them." Rather than getting into a full-on deconstruction of the economy of interpersonal emotion, all I'll say for now is that the sui juris standard is inapplicable to one's emotional life--in short, nobody is competent to make binding decisions within this domain (though I realize what a can of worms this opens).
You then call me on my lack of empirical support for the relative dangers an these relationships. I can give you the references if you want them (they abound in the psychological literature), but since introspection and anecdote seem to be the order of the day, I'll match you on those grounds instead. Among the people have I known in mono etc relationships, a fairly small proportion of those that failed did so because one or more of the participants found their arrangement intolerable (even if one generously includes every conceivable case of restlessness, etc, which, I suspect are more likely to be a symptom of problems unrelated to the formal arrangement itself) Whereas nearly all of the poly etc relationships I have known that collapsed did so as a direct result of the immediate consequences of this feature of the relationship
(NB: methodological concerns abound...even so, the general point is clear: I know a ridiculously disproportionate number of people who have been left absolutely devastated by such relationships (as, I would imagine, do you))
One final point on your vivid, if unmotivated, slavery metaphor, which is made explicitly and then seems to be lurking behind some of your later comments regarding confinement, etc. If this is how one views relationships, why is a person with a single master any less of a slave than one with several? These feelings you describe--confinement, jealousy, lack of trust--these should not be automatically seen as a natural consequence of a single-partner relationship. Despite the contrary specious rhetoric of openness and universal love, people in other romantic arrangements are just as susceptible to these hazards, in addition to concocting several more of their own.
I think your final point shows the clear need for distinguishing between the variety of different relationships you might discuss, here. The single-master / multi-master metaphor makes a modicum sense if we contrast monogamy to polyfidelity (or certain strict senses of polyamory), but not if we contrast it to open relationships (or certain other senses of polyamory).
An interesting question that I should have posed in my original response but sort of forgot was: When do social expectations shift from the point of "just dating," which entails no requirements to fidelity or monogamy, to the point where such requirements are expected. When this shift happens without explicit commitment on the issue (which it often seems to), is the lack of clarity at all problematic?
I think that you're mistaken about the general thrust of my response. You seem to think that I present a position on the issue, one in the defense of which I rely on "sophistry," "introspection and anecdote" and "contrary specious rhetoric," that is, I rely on the same tactics that you do. Perhaps I mistake your point, though, and you refer to others. But I mean to take no position on the matter in my comment; indeed, I think it is a difficult and open issue; I explicit question which type of relationships are the best; and I characterize non-monogamy as a potential source of jealousy and insecurity.
My point is only that you provide some of the trappings of argument in order to propagandize your position, while you supply no argument for contentions claims that your position relies on. Briefly, you (continue to) provide nothing that looks to me like evidence or arguments for the following claims that seem crucial to your argument:
1. There is a positive right to be protected from open relationships where your partner is sexually involved with others. (And, by implication, that this right is unqualified.
2. That there is a greater potential for emotional fallout from unwilling poly relationship than an unwilling mono one.
3. That poly relationships are generally more emotionally dangerous than mono ones.
4. That no binding agreements whatsoever can be made that involve one's personal relationships and emotional life generally. (Does this include agreements to fidelity? Can one even make sense of monogamy without binding agreements?)
In addition, I provide a list of questions that is meant not as rhetorical defense of non-monogamy, but as an attempt to problematize the simplistic way in which you treat the issue, to raise what seem to me the actually interesting issues that go beyond the binary categories and simple allegiances implied by your argument. A responsible treatment of the issue would, I think, go beyond the question of "Open Relationship: good or bad?" They leave open the question of whether monogamy is ultimately justifiable or preferable; they merely provoke one to come back to that question with a more sophisticated understanding of the situation.
Man,
okay, I'ma try to be brief for once:
The lack of clarity that results from shifting expectations is not at all problematic (though if it were, it would of course be equally so across all relationships). Developing relationships are rife with uncertainty regarding what sort of behavior is or isn't appropriate or expected; my general rule is that one should make things explicit, or, barring that, err on the side of caution.
As for the questions you ask, I think those are all certainly worth asking, but while genealogical questions might advance our future knowledge and expand one's understanding of (and even participation in) relationships in the long run, the mere existence of these more speculative questions certainly does not preclude our asking the immediately practical one about relationships that are currently underway.
As for the four allegedly undefended claims, here's my response to each:
2 and 3 are easy as pie. Totally empirical. I don't have it with me, but I'll give you an article or two if you remind me.
1, in turn, follows from the conjunction of the concerns outlined in 2 and 3 with certain more basic assumptions I have regarding the consideration one must have for one's partner's/s' emotional well-being. You can debate this point, I guess, but I am pretty firmly committed to the idea that one does have a general unqualified right not to be deliberately hurt by actions that one's partner can refrain from at minimal personal cost (or something along those lines; there are weaker versions of this claim that would do the same job).
4 is hella tricky, but the incredibly pessimistic idea at its core is that yes, all relationships require the imposition of contracts to which, strictly speaking, one cannot ethically hold another person; however, monogamous relationships involve fewer and less demanding ones (for what that's worth). Sucks to be us, I guess
God, I lose at being brief
Oh, and I also wanted to clear up matters regarding your ongoing efforts to ad hominem me into submission by insisting that I am relying on empty rhetoric in the guise of argument to advance my ideological position.
Setting the obvious and manifold ironies aside, I would like to answer this by expanding upon something I mentioned in the original post...as I said, I used to hold the opposite viewpoint, which caused me quite a bit of confusion when I saw secondhand the spectacular inadequacy of my ethical standards in action.
This post, then, is largely a theoretical reconstruction of where I feel these and other relationships went wrong. As such, it is perhaps best received not as an strict formal argument in which one invokes a set of shared premises to convince one's listeners of the conclusion that they logically entail--for indeed, I'm not trying to convince anyone to hop aboard my newfound ideology, rather, I just wanted to share my own personal post-mortem ruminations.
To the man. To the man.
Points well taken. I'd like to see the empirical stuff. I guess I'd also want to insist that we could ask questions that would lead us to try to transform the facts rather than just try to cope with them, but that gets into my funny views about the relation of ethical theory to empirical facts, which aren't at all apropos.
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