Jay's home page ·
Sexuality
What I mean by `poly'
I'm not monogamous. There are a lot of words for that, and I don't
much like any of them, for various reasons:
- non-monogamous
defined in terms of monogamy
- polygamous
-gamy implies a connection with formal marriage to me (i.e., more
than one spouse)
- polyfidelitous
implies being faithful (in some way) to more than one person;
i.e., still exclusive, but limited to more than one person.
(Polyfidelity is a subset of polyamory.)
- polyamorous
Around 1994 I wrote `OK, I guess, but it feels new and clumsy
to me' here. However, this term seems to have taken off, and
it doesn't feel clumsy to me any more, so I use it sometimes.
`Poly' has the advantage of being shorter, though.
All of these have implications that are a little too narrow for
me. So I just use `poly' instead, and let it be deliberately ambiguous.
For more information
If your site gets it, you can check out the
alt.polyamory newsgroup, which has a periodic FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions
list) about poly lifestyles.
<poly@lupine.org> is a mailing list about non-monogamous relationships. (It's
the successor to the
triples list.) You can subscribe to it by sending mail saying
subscribe poly
My Full Name to
<listserv@lupine.org>; make sure the address in your
From: header is correct.
Jay's home page ·
Sexuality
Jay Sekora
<js@aq.org>
last modified 1998.10.11