Poly Politics: Lessons from Queer Liberation
by Pepper Mint
RD061006
This paper was presented at the Building Bridges IV conference, Oct 16, 2004
Similarities and Differences
The polyamory movement and the various queer movements have much in common but
at the same time there are very clear and significant differences between them. Let’s start
with the differences.
Polyamory does not have the hundred years of medical pathologization that queer
activists have been working against. There were definite pathologies of overabundant
sexuality during the same period (think nymphomania) but they are not well connected to
modern nonmonogamy, nor are they as heavily present in the modern medical
imagination. In contrast, before homosexuality was removed from the diagnostic manual,
there was an unbroken history of the medicalization of homosexuality and other queer
categories, stretching back through the sexual inverts of the 19th century.
Similarly, polyamory does not face the same history of official and legal repression. Due
to ongoing changes in our culture, actually holding down multiple relationships, even in
the same house, is generally legal. (The exception is anti-cohabitation laws and the
occasional “house of ill repute” law, neither of which are enforced.) Poly gatherings are
typically not raided by the police, though again there is an exception in the recent raids of
east coast BDSM parties, which are heavily poly-attended.
Instead, polyamory is building on a relatively recent and rich history of nonmonogamy,
including that found in gay urban enclaves, lesbian-feminist communes, open marriages,
swinging, free love, and wife-swapping.
Polyamory generally does not evoke the same disgust and fear that queer presentation has
had to deal with, though every poly person has personal experience with counterexamples
to this rule. Related to this, and the fact that there is very little poly presentation, poly
people do not face much violence. (There is an argument that jealous violence, which is
rampant in our culture, can be viewed as anti-poly violence, but this is stretching a bit
since there is typically no poly identification involved.)
Most importantly, the current polyamory movement is occurring after much of the work
of the queer movement has been done. Specifically, attitudes towards gay men and
lesbians have greatly improved over the last thirty years, and are still on the upswing.
(Bisexual liberation is much less clear, and transgender liberation is way behind.) As a
result, much of the hard work in sexual minority liberation has been done, though of
course there is still plenty to do. Once the door has been opened for one sexual minority,
it gets much harder to close it against another.
So it seems clear that polyamory is in a much better place that the queer rights movement
was when it was the same size, despite the significant culture-wide prejudice against
nonmonogamy of any form. That said, there are a number of overlaps and
synchronicities between the two movements.
Polyamory and LBG liberation both have at their core simple sexual and romantic
freedoms: the freedom to love and have sex with a member of the same gender, and the
freedom to love and have sex with multiple people. Similarly transgender liberation is
the freedom to present or to be another gender or sex, or in the case of intersexed people,
to be recognized as one’s own sex. The simple freedoms at their core give these
movements power and a certain wide reach.
There is also a large and notable overlap in actual community members. Polyamory is
usually a queer-friendly place, and there is a huge overlap between bisexuality and
polyamory. There also seems to be a large and growing group of poly lesbians or
lesbian-leaning bisexuals.
However, the biggest similarity between the two movements is conceptual, and it arises
because the poly movement is only recently started. Put simply, polyamory has
appropriated ideology and conceptual structure wholesale from the queer movement.
This appropriation is not a problem – if the tools work, they should be used wherever
they can be – but it needs to be recognized. Let’s go through the specifics:
1) Queer identities are heavily essentialized. In other words, queer people usually
consider themselves to be queer since birth, and their particular queer identity is
seen to be ingrained, natural, and unavoidable. Poly people often feel the same
way, though the essentialization is not quite as strong, and there is more dissent
on whether polyamory is natural or ingrained.
2) Both queer and poly people come out. Coming out is seen as an inevitable and
desirable ritual, despite the fact that it often leads to strife within the family or
community, with the queer or poly person in exile. Coming out is an inner truth
which must be expressed, or the carrier of the secret is somehow not whole or
settled. Note that this is a significant departure from the history of
nonmonogamy: coming out was not a big directive in swinging or open
marriages.
3) Polyamory has inherited a real sense of the political from queer liberation. Poly
people usually know that what they are doing is in some way revolutionary, and
they are interested in changing the world, and they do understand that this will
take organization, legal changes, and significant cultural shifts.
Lessons for Poly Activists
Coming Out
These days, coming out seems like a perfectly natural and understandable reaction to
being a member of a sexual minority. People come out as poly, they come out as BDSM,
and so on. In fact, the term has been accepted and highly generalized, so you can now
come out as having liked the New Kids or come out as a porn addict.
However, this was not always the case. The AIDS crisis of the 80’s really spurred the
beginning of the current epidemic of coming out. It became clear that without visibility,
gay men at least were quite literally doomed. The reaction of the queer activists was to
push as hard as they could for visibility. ACT UP created the famous slogan
“SILENCE=DEATH”, which can be read as a directive to come out.
Most of a decade later, when I was doing queer activism in college, coming out was still
the central theme of our activism. Our busiest week was National Coming Out Week.
Our support group was the Coming Out Support Group. Note the hidden implications of
the support group title – the purpose of the group was to help people come out, not
simply to support them the way they were. Moreover, if you had no intention of coming
out, the title makes it clear that it was not really the place for you. We had a strong sense
that there were a lot of queer folks around who were not out, and we did actions on their
behalf, but most of our interactions with them were based around helping them to come
out.
And come out they did. Coming out is often a brutal process, involving the loss of
friends, family, and support structures. At the same time it is personally very rewarding,
enabling someone to stake out a claim for personal truth and live their life the way they
want, in the open.
At the same time, coming out formed the backbone of the queer liberation movement.
When people come out, they force a conversation about queerness on the people they
come out to, encouraging understanding, tolerance, and more coming out. In other
words, people who come out are the foot soldiers of the queer movement, literally
winning the hearts of the people one person and one conversation at a time. There has
been a huge shift in public acceptance of LBG folks at least over the last three decades
(there’s some question about the progress of transgender acceptance in the mainstream),
and I attribute much of this to the fact that most people now know someone who is queer
and out.
By tying an act that was ultimately political to a person’s happiness, queer activists did
something very smart. They ensured that the movement would grow, flourish, and insert
itself in every nook and cranny that held a formerly closeted queer person.
The lesson for poly activists is clear. We need to encourage personal visibility as much
as possible. It should be noted that the poly community is already strongly encouraging
its members to come out, and they do already reap the rewards in terms of internet
support structures. In addition to supporting people in coming out, other visibility
enhancers are paramount, up to and including cheesy slogan t-shirts and wearable
symbols. Also, we should consider other ways in which we can introduce conversion
narratives involving visibility. One such narrative involves the conversion of cheaters to
polyamory – we should be doing whatever we can to name and support this conversion.
Backlash
At some point the radical religious right wing discovered direct-mail fundraising.
Specifically, they discovered that if they sent around mailers warning of the horrible
moral decay undergoing America, people would send money in direct proportion to their
prejudice, bigotry, or state of moral panic. Homosexuality quickly became the favorite
topic of these mailings, though we can imagine that in other times it might have been
flappers or miscegenation.
The direct mailings fueled a general moral panic over the nascent queer rights movement.
Backlash showed up at all levels. There had always been anti-queer harassment and
violence (committed by acquaintances, strangers, and the authorities), but we suspect that
it actually increased during this period. The donated money fueled a raft of new laws,
opposition to discrimination protection, and anti-queer advocacy groups. Churches got
into the act, with pastors decrying corruption from the pulpit.
Even worse, significant work was done at the conceptual and ideological level. Hatred is
always covered by varying and contingent “logical” arguments. Weak points in the
newfound acceptance of queers were prodded and tested. All the old fears and panics
around homosexuality and queers resurfaced, tidied up in nice language and redeployed.
Homosexuals and bisexuals were carriers of disease, gender deviants, broken or infirm,
necrophiliacs, into bestiality, sexually insatiable, and, most importantly, corrupters of
children. This last charge proved spectacularly successful. To this day, queer people can
still expect setbacks as teachers or in parental custody simply due to their queerness. A
fear for children is also one of the main obstacles to same-sex marriage.
In short, the backlash happened at all levels: personal, social, legal, governmental,
media, religious, educational, physical, ideological, and in changes to conceptual
structures. It happened in the classroom and on the Senate floor. It happened on the
street, in the churches, and in the hospitals. There is a good argument that the recent
round of backlash was not actually anything new, but was rather just a lessening of the
past history of oppression, such as the medicalization of homosexuality during the early
part of the century and the police repression of gay and dyke bars during the 60’s.
However, this history does not make this era of backlash any less vicious and inventive,
for all that it may be an improvement.
While polyamory does not have as heavy a history of institutional and moral oppression
for our detractors to draw on, we can expect a similar sort of backlash. Old and
unenforced laws will be polished off and used to block anti-discrimination legislation or
to justify the removal of custody or in extreme circumstances sweeps. Legislators will
think up new and creative ways to make our lives difficult, such as removing welfare or
other benefits. We can expect a continuing stream of negative or questionable media,
punctuated by the occasional panic over STDs and saving the children.
Polyamory is already on the right-wing radar. Stanley Kurtz has written about it in
relation to the same-sex marriage “slippery slope” argument, which gives me the sense
that the right-wing think tanks are testing the waters with this issue. Recently polyamory
and tantra showed up (and were creamed) on Penn & Teller’s show, which is nothing
more than a regular right-wing hit piece dressed up as debunking. Bill O’Reilly has been
asking around for poly people. You get the idea. Whether we become a large concern to
the radical right depends on whether they can raise money by scaring people about us,
and that is not necessarily a sure thing. However, it is inevitable that they will try.
It may be that the anti-poly backlash will not contain as much direct violence as the queer
rights struggle has. Certainly, we do not have a history of such physical repression.
However, it is premature to conclude that we will not face such violence. For example,
channeling the jealous violence in this country into anti-poly violence would not be all
that much of a reach. However, whether we face direct violence or not, we will definitely
face “nice” forms of oppression (such as losing jobs, children, or family), which can be
easily as devastating. The backlash against polyamory may take the form of other family
structure backlashes, such as the backlash against single mothers.
There was a definite bright side to the anti-queer backlash. It politicized queer
communities. There is nothing quite like getting beaten up, being arrested, losing loved
ones, or realizing that you don’t have all those rights you thought you had. When this
happens to people, they become radical activists.
In fact, we can actually trace much of queer political advancement back to attacks from
the religious right. Acceptance of same-sex marriage has been rising steadily in this
country in recent years, partly because the right wing cannot let the issue lie, so we are
constantly discussing it. Anti-discrimination laws came about around the same time that
the right wing was encouraging discrimination. Hate crime laws were written as a
response to violence fueled by hateful direct mailings. The right wing prevented us from
discussing homosexuality in classrooms, so we went out and created gay/straight
alliances, politicizing a wave of young activists in the process.
So, attention from the right wing may in fact push the poly movement forward, albeit in a
very painful way. Currently poly people are not particularly politicized. They generally
hope to be left alone, and believe that they can live their lives the way they want in peace.
They are currently correct in that belief. However, this lull may not last.
Reclaiming Terminology
Reclaiming words has been a staple of the queer movement through all its eras.
Reclaiming is the process of changing a word’s usage from a negative connotation to a
positive connotation without changing the meaning of the word. Members of an identity
movement start using an epithet that was directed at them to describe themselves, first as
a joke and then as a matter of course and then as a rallying cry. We started with the
basics of homosexual, gay, and lesbian. (It may be that a similar process happened as far
back as “sexual invert”, but we would have to do some historical analysis to be sure.)
And then in the last thirty years, we’ve added fag, dyke, queen, and now queer. In the
case of queer, the process was undertaken quite consciously, and the definition of the
word was even altered somewhat.
Queer movements have been very effective at reclaiming, more so than most other
liberation movements of the last half century, though the practice is common in most
movements (think of “nigger”, “cunt”, “girl”, and “witch”). Perhaps this is because queer
identity is formed more around behavior than physicality, so the words gain a greater
importance. In any case, most or all of the queer epithets have had at least an attempt at
reclaiming, with varied levels of success.
Certainly, there is a long ways to go. “Gay” is still commonly an insult in most U.S. high
schools and middle schools, along with the rest of the above words. So the reclaiming
has not penetrated well down into the schools. However, it has made significant strides
in other areas: “dyke” hardly seems like an insult anymore, “gay” and “lesbian” are
neutral descriptors, and “queer” is showing up in reclaimed form in the media.
Polyamory does not have the gaggle of specific insults aimed at it, but we will be subject
to any word denoting promiscuity or infidelity. At some point we will need to
acknowledge this and take these words on in some fashion: “adultery”, “bigamy”,
“cheating”, “tramp”, “slut”, “hedonist”, “whore”, “nympho” and so on. However much
we may think that these words do not apply to us, they will in fact be applied to us, and
really they already are. We will have to develop a relationship (beyond simple denial)
with these words and the concepts behind them if we want polyamory to spread as a
movement. This does not mean that we necessarily have to claim these words as our
own, but we must in some way reposition them.
Note that these mostly break down into two categories, monogamy-based and based
around women’s sexuality. The feminist movement has already been hard at work on the
women-specific insults, but these are still relevant and necessary for reclaiming by
polyamory, because the position of women as major or central actors is part of what
distinguishes polyamory from other nonmonogamous movements (excepting the attempts
on lesbian-feminist communes of course).
So far, with the exception of “polygamy” and The Ethical Slut, there have been no major
reclaiming attempts in polyamory, which is not too surprising given the age of the
movement. Instead we have generally embarked on the unique course of making up new
terminology, sidestepping older and more demonized terminology. This is innovative
and very effective in the short term, but may not be effective over the long haul, because
our words will be demonized in turn. We have already seen the rifts and endless
arguments that have developed around “cheating” and “swinging”, and the confusion
around “open relationships”. All of these are forms of nonmonogamy, and the latter two
even qualify as “open and responsible” in most instances. These do not need to be our
words, but we need to develop a constructive relationship with them.
There is a certain sub-class of negative words that we may not wish to use to describe
ourselves: cheating, bigamy, and adultery are a few examples. However, simply denying
that these words apply to us will not be effective. Currently, the accepted mainstream
usage of these words includes polyamory (along with other forms of nonmonogamy).
The real project here is to redefine the common usage of these terms so that they do not
include polyamory. This is already underway with cheating. If you talk to mainstream
people, they will tell you that cheating is sleeping with someone other than your partner,
girl/boyfriend, or spouse. However, if you ask poly people, they will emphasize lying or
dishonesty.
Assimilationism
Assimilation is, simply stated, the process by which a minority group becomes normative
or mainstreamed. Assimilationism is the stance that this is the primary goal that the
minority group should pursue. When the argument is directed from the minority group to
the mainstream, it can be stated as “we are the same as everyone else, except for one
thing, so you should treat us with the same respect and acceptance as everyone else.” In
the case of queer movements, this one thing has been sexual object choice and/or gender
presentation.
This is in fact a true argument, it speaks well to people’s sense of fairness, and it is very
effective in certain situations (say, when coming out to family) or at certain points in a
movement (say, same-sex marriage). Also, it carries a certain siren song of normality
that is very enticing: at some near point this struggle will be over, and we can stop living
at the fringes and return to the center where we can live our lives in peace whether or not
we are queer. This is a central premise of queer politics, and a noble goal in its own
right. Also, assimilation itself is inevitable as a movement matures and is one marker of
its success.
Unfortunately, the process of mainstreaming requires the approval of the mainstream.
Queer folk have not gotten that approval yet, except for certain segments of the
community in certain capacities. We cannot simply insert ourselves into the mainstream
by pretending that we are already there or by acting mainstream.
While we may only be different from the mainstream in one way or a couple ways, that
difference is easily enough to provoke hatred and repression. We live in a culture that
politicizes its relationships and family structures, and enforces them with a vengeance.
As a result, making an assimilationist argument to the mainstream is generally
ineffective.
Beyond being unconvincing, assimilationism has other basic problems as a political
strategy. First of all, it is has a self-policing effect: in order to be accepted as normal, we
have to act normal. This is divisive, especially because in the queer or poly movement, if
you get rid off all the odd, funky, outrageous, or outlandish people, there just aren’t that
many left. In the queer movement, I’m thinking of flamers, queens, dykes, transfolk, and
gym bunnies, among others. In the poly movement, we have pagans, goths, ravers, new
agers, hippies, tantra aficionados, and folks associated with self-improvement groups
such as HAI. If you discount all these people as being too strange for the movement (or
too strange to represent the movement), you just don’t have that many people left in the
movement. And of course any attempt to separate, divide, or represent along these lines
is divisive, fracturing the movement. The assimilationist vision for a movement is
therefore often simply inaccurate, discounting the very real differences within the
movement and between the movement and the mainstream.
Even worse, the most devoted activists in a sexual minority movement tend to be fringe
in some way. Something about the process of becoming a politicized activist is easier or
faster if you are fringe or if you belong to multiple oppressed groups. Perhaps you get
more pissed off. For example, my little college queer activist group was mostly
composed of dykes, queer women and men of color, flaming queens, and bisexuals.
None of these people had pretensions at being normal or mainstream. Assimilationist
arguments fell flat in this group, and the occasional takeover attempt by assimilationists
was roundly rebuffed, partly because they were never willing to put in the organizing
effort that we were making.
The problems with assimilationism have borne themselves out in queer politics. Before
Stonewall, there were fifty years of assimilationist arguments that accomplished very
little in the way of actual progress. When we made progress, it was via the outrageous
and the demanding revolutionaries among us. Some of the most effective queer
propaganda depicted the fringe – think Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Boys Don’t
Cry. Some of the most effective groups have been fringe or pioneering groups, such as
ACT UP, the Lesbian Avengers, or the Transexual Menace. Even when more
mainstream queer groups made accomplishments, the pressure exerted by fringe groups
helped them appear more reasonable or as the lesser of two evils.
Also, when there have been assimilationist groups or movements within the queer
movement, they have had a difficult time at best. The Log Cabin Republicans are
everyone’s favorite example. While they have been moderately successful at providing
political cover for Republicans who do wish to support the queer movement, they have
not made much of a dent in the party. Also, they seem to always be landing in difficult
positions due to the basic fact that the Republican party is the party of bigots these days.
For example, they were unable to endorse anyone in the presidential race this year,
because Bush’s record on gay rights is so horrific as to be unpalatable even to them, and
their bylaws prevent them from endorsing a democrat.
Similarly, the Human Rights Campaign has had similar problems arising from its
assimilationist stance. The march on DC they attempted to hold a couple years ago met
with significant resistance from groups who did not feel indebted to them or included in
any way. Also, they recently managed to piss off a significant part of the queer
community with anti-nonmonogamy and anti-promiscuity arguments put forth to advance
same-sex marriage, not to mention such gaffes as dis-inviting Margaret Cho from their
DNC convention party. The entire same-sex marriage political movement got off to a
slow start and has frankly been hamstrung due to distrust from large segments of queer
communities, who consider it to be assimilationist and are wary that it may turn on them
in some way.
Assimilationist or mainstream groups within a movement are necessary in some ways –
sometimes to play the good cop, sometimes because they simply could not achieve their
goals without being so. HRC is a good example of the latter, as a national lobbying
organization. However, it needs to be a basic recognition that assimilationist organizing
and ideology typically do not form the hard core of a movement. That core is made up of
grassroots radicals and the groups they form, and the actions they take.
If we want polyamory to be successful as a movement, we need to take this lesson to
heart. We will not be effective by ignoring or hiding the pagans, radicals, sex party
people, BDSM folk, the new agers, or self-help groups. Rather, we need to celebrate
them as some of the more active and already organized parts of the community, and take
their interests to heart as central to polyamory itself. Also, when they are members of
other identity communities, they will be instrumental as bridge activists in building
effective coalitions through which we will really advance our interests.
Furthermore, up to this point, it has been through subcultures and sub-communities that
polyamory has most effectively spread. When we create visibility or coalition around
these connections, we will speed up the rate of both conversion and acceptance, and grow
the movement that much faster. We of course need to make it clear that there is room for
anyone in our movement, including otherwise mainstream folks, but the way we make
that clear is by forming umbrella organizations and conceptualizations. Some of this is
already underway. For example, there was a brief move among my friends to define a
term “poly*”, pronounced “poly star”, which includes any open nonmonogamy, whether
or not it identifies as polyamorous or shares other traits of the community, whatever those
might be.
Direct Action
One thing that I took from my experiences as a queer activist is that someone is always
going to think that you are being too “loud”. Often this sentiment is expressed in other
ways, such as asking the activist to tone down their rhetoric or avoid bringing up subjects
that are politically inconvenient or not perfectly on topic. Usually these requests come
from people who are not doing much activism of their own.
The stark truth of the matter is, direct action works (along with other forms of loud
activism). In fact, the lesson that I learned over and over again as a queer activist is that
people in power will smile and nod endlessly, and never do what you are asking them to
do. The only thing that spurs them into action is loud activism. You will often not get
anywhere by asking. In those situations, you must demand.
If we look at the history of queer activism, the times that are remembered as turning
points are the ones where queers got loud, demanding, and even riotous. The Stonewall
Riots. The riots after the death of Harvey Milk. The early, heavily political Pride
marches. The 1993 March on Washington DC. ACT UP.
At my college, they decided to stop providing anonymous AIDS tests one year,
presumably because it was somehow bureaucratically uncomfortable. We discussed the
matter with the staff of the medical center and numerous deans, and nothing changed.
We proceeded to hold a series of “die-ins” in the main corridor of campus, illustrating the
fact that not having anonymous AIDS tests would lead people to not get tested, aiding the
spread of the disease. Soon after, anonymous testing was reinstated.
That said, direct action and other forms of loud activism do have a time and a place.
They are much more meaningful (and well-attended) when there is a crisis of life or
liberty at hand, such as AIDS. The poly community does not have a spreading epidemic
to take on (we hope). However, we will have crises of our own, some of which are
detailed in the section on backlash above. For example, if the authorities start removing
children en masse from poly households, direct action would be appropriate and frankly
inevitable. We should be prepared to use direct action in these circumstances.
We should make a point of celebrating our loud activists. They are performing a number
of essential tasks. They present demands that we agree with but are not yet ready to
voice. They push the boundaries at the fringe, and in doing so they make the demands of
more mainstream activists seem reasonable. A good movement is well-balanced between
mainstream, “reasonable” activists, and loud activists.
Coalition Politics
Coalition building is central to sexual minority politics. We will probably never be a
majority, and we live in a winner-take-all political system. As a result, if we are to move
beyond nods and smiles to real political change, we must build coalitions. In fact,
building coalitions should be the primary goal of our politics – without coalition, we will
get nowhere.
Unfortunately, coalition-building is not simply a matter of raising up our hands and
saying “hey, help us out over here!” Something about the nature of oppression
encourages it to divide and conquer, and so we typically start from a position that is welldivided,
not just in terms of community but also in terms of ideology, prejudice, and
assumption. People and groups do not join coalitions unless they will get something out
of the arrangement, and often it is difficult to see exactly what that something will be,
from both sides. Also, there is a definite tendency for any movement to end up being
defined by the members who belong to the least number of oppressive categories, for
example feminism which has been largely defined by and for white middle-class women.
Of course, when this happens, the people who are not defining the movement bail out,
and the movement shrinks or disappears.
Queer movements have learned a series of lessons around coalition and tolerance. For
example, the lesbian-feminist communes of the 70’s were strongly self-policing, in order
to ensure that no taint of patriarchy would enter their world. Masculine women, dildos,
and bisexuals were not welcome. Of course the power dynamics of the policing itself
were only imitation of patriarchy needed. To this day, I still read negative accounts of
the lesbian-feminist movement from women and transfolk who were excluded at the
time.
Later, the immediate violence of AIDS brought together queer communities as never
before. Most of the lesbian community chipped in and did a significant amount of the
organizing and aid work, despite holding the (perhaps incorrect) assumption that AIDS
was not a lesbian problem. Inclusiveness became the watchword in the late eighties and
early nineties, with bisexuals and transgendered people explicitly named in the titles and
mission statements of most groups. Of course, this inclusion was often in name only.
Again, the Human Rights Campaign is a good example: bisexuals and transfolk are
nominally included in HRC’s mission statement, but rarely in their actual agenda.
Currently, NGLTF (the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force) is setting the model for
coalition politics at a national level. Recently NGLTF split with HRC over including
transfolk in the national Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and NGLTF has been a
significant force behind some of recent gains by the trans community. In addition,
NGLTF has been seeking to build coalition by taking positions around class, immigrant
rights, and similar issues which are not handled by mainstream groups.
We can take a number of lessons from this history. First, self-policing is divisive,
weakens the movement, and will be remembered bitterly by history. Second, any time
you take a position which is not inclusive, you will weaken your own movement because
people will leave.
However, being inclusive is not just a matter of opening your doors to anyone who may
wish to enter. Rather, being inclusive requires educating yourself about people who
could be your allies, and then building organizations and ideological positions with them
that will advance your joint interests. Inclusion cannot be handled as an afterthought – it
needs to be considered from the beginning, and it takes real time and energy, and a
willingness to step out of your own worldview and away from your usual priorities.
Third, true coalition building will take years. It should not be seen just as a steppingstone
to political gain, but as an end in itself. The process of coalition building is more
important than the end result, because it is in the process that the real gains are made.
The polyamory movement has a number of potential allies that we should be considering
for coalition. In addition to queer groups and subcultures, we need to consider swingers,
cheaters/adulterers, people using open relationship ideology, BDSM communities,
pagans, and people from non-mainstream ethnicities or other cultures who practice their
own forms of nonmonogamy, to name just a few. We need to set ourselves to understand
these communities and people, so that someday we can actually have a discussion about
coalition. Once we have some level of understanding, we need to include these
communities in our organizing and ensure that the mechanisms we create are useful to
them as well as us. This is not some sort of ideological goal, but a practical and
immediate necessity if we are to be a political or social movement to be reckoned with.
Looking Forward by Looking Back
I have presented six lessons from queer movement history here, out of my own
experience. I tried to hit the big ones first, but really I am just scratching the surface
here. I recommend reading up on queer history as essential for any sexual minority
activist.
Also, the queer civil rights movement is just the beginning. Studying other civil rights
movements, such as the racial justice movement of the 50’s and 60’s, or the various
waves of feminism, will always yield insight. Power generally operates in similar ways,
and so the resistance to power tends to follow matching patterns.
Of course, there are large and significant differences between any two liberation
movements, so it is important to identify the similarities before drawing comparisons or
conclusions. Different times and different oppressions will have different strategies and
solutions for resistance.