Bi Assumptions

I would say that's as good a reason as any to want to explore poly!

I don't know much about kink. I'm fine with whatever consenting adults want to do, but beyond some VERY light BDSM I have no desire to be involved in it. TGIB (partner) has had an online D/s relationship and he and I have talked about trying it, but ultimately decided there wasn't any point for us. Have you noticed a big overlap between the kink community and LGBTQ community in your area? That's one I haven't paid attention to around here.
 
actually, i haven't seen much overlap at all between the kink and LGBTQ community, but there's a sizeable overlap between the kink and poly communities. on the other hand, most of the kinky women i know are pansexual or bisexual, but not part of the LGBTQ community. i think a lot of us are not involved with the LGBTQ community because we have male primaries, so we can essentially pass for straight (even though i'm very involved in LGBTQ rights). also the LGBTQ community is largely distant from anything to do with polyamory, because most are monogamous and trying to distance themselves from the stereotype that queer = slut. therefore i haven't seen much support at all for bi poly people in the LGBTQ community. now the pagan community... i find the pagan community much more supportive of polyamory and bi/pansexuality.
 
Interesting, it's quite different in my city, the queers and the kinksters overlap heavily. Our premiere dungeon was run by a lesbian until just recently and in our local queer women's cabaret group we have many openly bi members and make frequent references in our skits to kink. I think it's because there's a sizeable radical streak in both groups around these parts -- we support each other because we're all ready to fight for more freedom for all of us.

Of course, I'm sure there are more "respectable" queers and more conventional kinksters (as weird as that sounds) here who would never see a need to interact with each other... I just don't know those people. :D
 
My husband is now exploring his kinky side by trying to get involved in a local group or groups, and actually commented on the LACK of overlap. Apparently the people who say they are looking for poly are actually just looking for play partners, not love. So apparently in our area, at least with the groups/individuals Keith has found, not much of a link between those two.
 
I think that most people have the potential to be both poly and bisexual/pansexual.

I think the reason we see overlap between the groups is that members of any group outside the societal norm have been forced to do a lot of thinking and introspection about what is acceptable and what they need to be happy.

Anyone who does that kind of thinking is bound to discover other things about themselves unrelated to the original topic.

That being said, at our local bi group last month, there was a man who completely freaked out at the concept of polyamory. I wasn't there, but his reaction was described as a "trigger" meaning there was something in his personal history that caused him to feel so strongly about the issue.

So my point is, there isn't a 1-to-1 correspondence between bi and poly, and being a member of the one doesn't necessarily make you tolerant of the other.
 
Where I come from, the BDSM scene is very much hetero-oriented and mainstream.

However, I'm queer, my partner is queer and there is a big overlap in the political queer scene with the polyamorist scene.

Someone once told me that there are two kinds of polyamorists - the activists and the nerds. I agreed. :D

But for me, the bottom line in life, love and everything is being an anarchist. This has to do with all my lifestyle choices. Be it queer anarchism (resisting cis-centrism for example), building radical communities or seeing your relationships in a radical way (i.e. D/s or something along those lines).
 
actually, i haven't seen much overlap at all between the kink and LGBTQ community....
Well, not much overlap...more like they have separate kink communities. The gay male leather/bdsm scene is alive and well (though very underground). It's just a very isolated, separate community that doesn't have much overlap with the straight kink community because it's so male-on-male oriented. And not much overlap with the mainstream gay community because, of well, the kink/taboo factor.

also the LGBTQ community is largely distant from anything to do with polyamory, because most are monogamous and trying to distance themselves from the stereotype that queer = slut. therefore i haven't seen much support at all for bi poly people in the LGBTQ community.
Yeah, I've lamented about this in multiple threads and forums. I tried hard to get some type of poly discussion event at our local LGBT center and I just get the run-around. (It's like they're afraid to out-right say No.)
Suffice to say my opinion is that the power-brokers of the LGBT rights movement seem so marriage-oriented these days that anything they see as counter to that, they freak out and try to avoid. The above-mentioned leather community has already been a victim to that stigma as it is...polys now, too.
 
Suffice to say my opinion is that the power-brokers of the LGBT rights movement seem so marriage-oriented these days that anything they see as counter to that, they freak out and try to avoid. The above-mentioned leather community has already been a victim to that stigma as it is...polys now, too.

I agree when it comes to the mainstream LGBT movement.

But the radical queer movement/scene is totally different, also with regard to poly people. At least where I come from. However, it's not easy if you're straight and involved in the queer scene, a lot of prejudice there towards straight people :/
 
ha, being a female, i know nothing about the gay leather scene, but i'm sure it is out there. in fact, i think there are probably sub-scenes which overlap, but it's hard for a newbie to find those. a lot of my friends are pagan, and i am happy with the pagan scene overall, as it's pretty accepting of differences. as a bi/pan woman in a marriage with a bi male, i found i'm not very welcome in the GLBTQ community, although the theater community overlaps a lot and i am welcome there. :)
 
as a bi/pan woman in a marriage with a bi male, i found i'm not very welcome in the GLBTQ community,

Infuriating to say the least. It's like they constantly forget what the "B" stands for. :p Crap like this is why I tend to hang out in poly circles more than gay ones. As someone who's both, I can count on the poly's to embrace my gay side more than I can the gays to embrace my poly side. Sad in a way. :rolleyes:
 
Infuriating to say the least. It's like they constantly forget what the "B" stands for. :p Crap like this is why I tend to hang out in poly circles more than gay ones. As someone who's both, I can count on the poly's to embrace my gay side more than I can the gays to embrace my poly side. Sad in a way. :rolleyes:

You know, in my experience with the LGBT community, being bisexual is almost a sin it seems like. You're either homosexual or hetero, but never, ever bisexual. Everyone I know involved in the community in any real way will say that their sexuality is what it takes to be with the person they are dating, i.e. hetero if dating someone of the opposite gender, homo if same gender. It's like to them bisexual isn't a "real" option, that it's what wishy washy people who haven't figured it out use. I'm sorry, I'm more apt to take someone who says they are bisexual more seriously then someone who keeps flip flopping between homosexual and heterosexual at the drop of their loins.

On that note, I'll also say my observations about the mainstream LGBT community and poly line up with everyone else's, namely poly isn't an option and that it's a fight against the "homosexuals sleep around a lot" stigma. In some ways, that community, in my experience, are more uptight and xenophobic then "the straight world".
 
What I found funny/ sad is that people were much more accepting of me being bi-sexual when we were stationed in Kansas and I was attending school there. I studied Social Work both there and in NY and my experience in NY - in my own classes about diversity and minorities in NY I was told by my fellow students that there was no such thing as being bi - I was just "confused" and would eventually grow out of it. Runic Wolf and I had been married for 7 years, I told them; if I was going to outgrow it, don't you think I would have by now? Grr. So frustrating.

I recently discussed poly with a friend who identifies at queer rather than bi. Although she is attracted to females, she was virgin until she met her recent boyfriend. She and a couple of our mutual bi-sexual female friends were told by their boyfriends that it was okay with them if they wanted to explore their attraction to females. They all decided that even with permission, it was too close to cheating. After explaining that I am poly and have both a girlfriend and a boyfriend; my friend said that she couldn't do that. She couldn't handle the idea of letting her boyfriend date anyone else. He cheated emotionally on his wife before filing for divorce (and we suspect it was more than emotional) and dated at least one person while his divorce was in progress before meeting our friend. So she doesn't feel that she could trust him not to leave her.

This seems to be the theme with my other bi-sexual female friends as well. Their boyfriends are okay with them dating women; don't expect or want to be part of that relationship or even want it to date other people - they only want their girlfriends to not feel like they are suppressing a valid part of themselves; but the women are afraid that if they take the opportunity to explore their attraction to females that they will lose the relationship they already have. It baffles me.
 
This seems to be the theme with my other bi-sexual female friends as well. Their boyfriends are okay with them dating women; don't expect or want to be part of that relationship or even want it to date other people - they only want their girlfriends to not feel like they are suppressing a valid part of themselves; but the women are afraid that if they take the opportunity to explore their attraction to females that they will lose the relationship they already have. It baffles me.

I think this is very common in most relationships where the woman is bi. My girlfriend and her husband started out swinging because of her bisexuality, but she never considered that an actual relationship (beyond friends with benefits or the sexual) was possible until I brought up poly a few months ago in a random discussion. She doesn't know this, but her husband has been telling me since about day 3 of our friendship that he's always wanted her to have an actual girlfriend (and not just a close friend that's a girl) since she never had the experience of dating a woman before she married. Men are apparently way more accepting of non-monogamy (without any deep soul searching) than women are in general.
 
Men are apparently way more accepting of non-monogamy (without any deep soul searching) than women are in general.

Oh, let's be careful here, shall we? Instead of men being way more accepting, how about "People tend to be more accepting of non-monogamy when they aren't threatened by the other partner(s)." km, your statement comes too close to the, "Men just want sex, women want emotion," stereotype for my comfort.

This has kind of come around to my original rant- just because I'm bi doesn't mean I need BOTH a man and a woman to be happy. I'm attracted to both/either but my life isn't magically "complete" because I have one of each. Yes, I'm bi and poly, but those are separate. I could be bi and mono and still be married to the person I am now, or I could be straight and poly and still in the relationship I'm now in. The men who encourage their female partners to explore their bisexuality, would they be as sanguine about their partner having a relationship with another man??

ETA: Way back in the early years I encouraged Monochrome to date other women for basically the same reason as km mentioned: he'd never dated anyone besides me, and I wanted to make sure he wouldn't end up wondering what he missed 20 years down the line. But part of maturing as a person and within our relationship was accepting that he wasn't interested in dating other women. He knows that door is still open if he ever wants to go through it, but I no longer need him to "prove" that he wants to be with me by choosing me only after finding out what(who) else is out there.
 
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This has kind of come around to my original rant- just because I'm bi doesn't mean I need BOTH a man and a woman to be happy. I'm attracted to both/either but my life isn't magically "complete" because I have one of each. Yes, I'm bi and poly, but those are separate. I could be bi and mono and still be married to the person I am now, or I could be straight and poly and still in the relationship I'm now in. The men who encourage their female partners to explore their bisexuality, would they be as sanguine about their partner having a relationship with another man??

I get what you are saying about how being bi doesn't mean that you need BOTH a man and a woman to be happy. For some, I suppose it means exactly that.

Personally, I came out as bi-sexual in 2000. I was extremely grateful to Runic Wolf for accepting this so fully (as I came out around the time we got married) and allowing me to explore my attractions. I didn't have my first fully sexual experience with another woman until 2009 (mostly for lack of courage, not trying).

I started seeing Wendigo in 2009 and we started seeing his wife a few months later. All in all, I'd say I've had a handful of sexual encounters with her since the beginning (scheduling issues suck!). Most of the time I am content with what I get from Runic Wolf and Wendigo (who I see about once a week or every other week), but occasionally, I start going crazy in my head from missing her and wanting her.

I can't speak for my male friends about how they would feel if their girlfriends wanted a boyfriend, because that isn't the situation occurring. Several of their girlfriends have expressed a desire to date women (one was interested in me for a while) and the boyfriends gave the go ahead, were 100% supportive, and yet my female friends were too afraid to take the opportunity. That is what I don't understand, you want it; the girl wants it; your boyfriend is okay with it; but you won't take the chance that dating another woman might somehow cause your monogamous boyfriend to want to date other women too, and if you decide to take the chance, you're (in your head) cheating?
 
I'm sorry if I didn't clarify or say what I meant to say, but I just meant that in my experience, men have been much quicker to accept non-monogamy (in this case polyamory or at least their wives/girlfriends dating others) than the actual women who would be doing the dating. I was in no way implying that men only want sex, just that (once again in my experience) that men are able to accept the idea of multiple relationships with fewer internal conflicts in the beginning than the women I've known. Most men I know don't like the idea of sex without any emotion at all, so I would NEVER knowingly imply that "Men just want sex, women want emotion."
 
in my experience, men have been much quicker to accept non-monogamy (in this case polyamory or at least their wives/girlfriends dating others) than the actual women who would be doing the dating

Ohhhh, ok, I get now. In those specific relationships, the men seem to be more comfortable with non-monogamy than the women. I'd still be curious if they'd be as ok with it if their girlfriends wanted to date other men, but like you said, that's not the situation. I just like digging at people's thought processes. :)
 
I'm sorry if I didn't clarify or say what I meant to say, but I just meant that in my experience, men have been much quicker to accept non-monogamy (in this case polyamory or at least their wives/girlfriends dating others) than the actual women who would be doing the dating. I was in no way implying that men only want sex, just that (once again in my experience) that men are able to accept the idea of multiple relationships with fewer internal conflicts in the beginning than the women I've known.

I'm going to echo TGIG in pondering -- is it that these men are quicker to accept their female partners dating "others" generally, or is it just that they're down with the idea of their wives dating women? It is much easier, for many people, to dredge up fears of being replaced when your partner's new partner is of your gender. So, the average guy might be far less ok with the idea of the woman he's with romantically seeing another man... at least that's what we've often seen here. This could be interpreted as the men being open to their female partners being with other women because they find it sexy -- thus, a sexual motive. But I think it goes beyond that and into issues of being afraid of being replaced by another man, as I mentioned above.

For all the women who are afraid of the men in their lives' seeing other women, I wonder how it would be if the men were interested in other men? I have a feeling that suddenly we'd be seeing a lot more accepting women (though maybe not? not really sure, as this seems to be a less common scenario).

What I'm trying to say is that while I didn't think that you were implying anything about women caring about emotion versus men caring about sex, I DO think it may be unfair to say that these men are more accepting of polyamory than the women in their lives based solely on them being ok with extramarital lesbian affairs when we can't directly compare and see how their wives would respond to the idea of them having extramarital gay affairs, since that doesn't seem to be coming up.
 
For us, while extra marital gay affairs didn't come up, I have to admit that I was pretty harsh on Runic Wolf and one of our gay friends in the early days of our marriage. While it was okay for me to be bi, I didn't extend him the same courtesy. I didn't even realize that Runic Wolf was having bi-curious thoughts or that he actually enjoyed our gay friend hitting on him. I shot down all porn suggestions that involved male on male interaction and not in a nice way either, I'm ashamed to say. Fast forward to now and I have a bi-sexual boyfriend who is definitely interested in Runic Wolf; find it hot when Runic Wolf does express his bi-curious nature, but those times are few and far between. And I have to wonder if I'd been as awesome as he was with me, if he'd be less afraid to go with those feelings.
 
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I agree that it is interesting to think about how the reactions would be if the tables were turned and more men were expressing bisexuality or interest in exploring same-sex relationships. It's been mentioned many times that in the LGBT community, bisexuals tend to be targeted as people who can't make up their mind or are labeled homo or hetero based on their current relationship status - if we as bisexual females are being less than welcoming of the bisexual expressions our male friends or loved ones are making, aren't we just as guilty for smearing the bi name?

As for whether or not the men are only accepting because their wives/girlfriends have only expressed interest in dating women, I couldn't say but I don't think it's fair to say that the sexual motive is what makes them accept it. To me, that is more akin to saying that men are only interested in sex or things that give them sexual gratification. I would hope that any man who is encouraging their SO to date is worried about the happiness of his partner and not what he is going to be able to get out of the deal.
 
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