From: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy)
Newsgroups: alt.polyamory
Subject: Re: poly-wired?
Date: 16 Aug 92 19:47:44
Organization: Natural Language Incorporated
	<1992Aug10.211702.22086@latcs1.lat.oz.au>
	<ZEN.92Aug10193530@death.corp.sun.com> <Bt2zCq.GKp@world.std.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu
In-reply-to: webber@world.std.com's message of Sun, 16 Aug 1992 14:38:48 GMT

In article <Bt2zCq.GKp@world.std.com> webber@world.std.com (Robert D Webber) writes:
>In article <ZEN.92Aug10193530@death.corp.sun.com> zen@death.corp.sun.com (d) writes:
>>
>>In article <1992Aug10.211702.22086@latcs1.lat.oz.au> woodhous@latcs2.lat.oz.au (Joe P Woodhouse) writes:
>>> [...] Monogamy is about declaring to
>>> a partner "No matter how much you love me, you are *not allowed* to love
>>> anyone else without getting in heaps of trouble and probably breaking
>>> up with me". Not a very loving thing to say, is it?
>>  To some people it's about the most loving thing you can say to another
>>person.  [And many religions say that anything but monogamy is against
>>their [Gg]od{ess}(s).]
>I guess I'm about to make another one of those nasty value judgements,
>but any religion or moral system that ignores the basic idea that one
>should do unto others as one would have them do unto one isn't, IMHO,
>particularly moral.  In this case, if a system says that freedom for
>me should be important but not freedom for my partner (or happiness
>for me but not happiness for my partner), its practitioners have
>_already_ stuck themselves where the sun don't shine, and may well
>have folded themselves until they were all points into the bargain.

However, this is not at all what the religions are doing.  Most of the
religions I know of put the same restrictions on both partners.  What
religion(s) did you have in mind, here?

>>  I'm pro-poly myself, but I think it's unwise to condemn others when
>>they disagree with your theories of life, loving, freedom, and
>>happiness.  I'd say the same (and do) to those darn mono-types hyping
>>their way of thought.
>I'm glad to read that.  I don't know how you're able to keep up with
>chiding all the novelists, songwriters, screenplay, play, and short
>story authors, politicians, advertising copy writers, the Pope, and
>parents telling their children how the world works.

Ummm...I think you're going a little overboard here.  I, and d, will say
this to monoamorous people that we are having a discussion with, not
everyone in the world.  No more do we say that polyamory is not the only
way to be to every polyamorous person in the world.

I firmly believe that the way to change the world is to express good (my
judgement, obviously) ideas, particularly in response to bad ones.
However, there is only so much time and opportunity, so I work on
changing the people around me, which consists of my friends and the
people on the net.  I seem to have more of an effect that way than
writing off to millions of people who probably won't even read what I
write (of course, I have that problem on the net, too...*grin*...but at
least I only have to write *one* article to reach thousands of people,
one or two of whom might actually be caused to *think* by it...
*SMILE*...it's so great when that happens).

>The monoamorous
>types sure outnumber the polyamorous types on this planet of clowns
>(in wet shoes), so if you're striving for a balanced approach you'd
>be better off focussing your attention on them: not only are there
>more of them, they don't even consider _our_ theories to be viable,

Well, of course, that isn't really true.  I know many monogamous/
monoamorous people who accept "our" theories as viable but do not choose
to live that way.

>while _we_ are willing to live and let live with the monoamorous
>types so long as they don't take our children from our custody,
>damn us into their [Hh]ell(s) (and try to speed us on our way there).

Well, I also know some polyamorous people who are vehemently against
monogamy.  I think polyamory is great, but it doesn't make us any better
or worse than other people...it doesn't make us more tolerant, in
particular.  It's interesting how it seems to happen in oppressed
groups...some people *do* learn tolerance from their oppression, but a
lot of people are simply oppressive right back, justifying themselves by
saying that the other people aren't tolerant of them, so why should they
be tolerant?

Muffy
--

Muffy Barkocy | muffy@mica.berkeley.edu | wi.4636@wizvax.methuen.ma.us
~Little round planet/in a big universe/sometimes it looks blessed/
 sometimes it looks cursed/Depends on what you look at, obviously/
 But even more it depends on the way that you see~ - Bruce Cockburn
Newsgroups: alt.polyamory