Back in
post 13 in this thread, I mentioned that I had emailed Franklin, the author of the Poly Map, asking him to take a look at what we've said about his Poly Map here. He has now done so. He has also agreed to let me quote him, so here goes...
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I did--finally!--get a chance to read through the thread you linked to. It's always interesting to see how people respond to the map.
I definitely get the feeling that a lot of folks read it in a prescriptive way--that is, that what it's doing is it's setting out boxes that relationships have to fit into. The bits marked with Xes are actually intended to be examples, not prescriptions; for example, the area that says "I am a prodomme" is one possible way that a person might intersect with commerce, polyamory, and BDSM. (A prodomme is not likely to be polyamorous with her clients, but most of the prodommes I've met personally do self-identify as polyamorous...they're not in relationships with their clients, but they have more than one rlationship outside of work.) It's certainly not intended to say "all prodommes are poly," nor "the only place where BDSM, commerce, and polyamory overlap is with prodommes."
The purpose of the map is descriptive, not prescriptive; its intent is to say "This is some of the ways that different forms of non-monogamy can overlap," not "You have to be one of the things marked on this map if you're not monogamous." It's been my experience, definitely, that folks who object to labels are quite likely to object to any effort to show, even humorously, the way that different labels intersect; a person who tends to view labels prescriptively is quite likely to view overlaps the same way, seems to me.
A lot of folks seem to voice the opinion that the map should have a large circle around the whole thing that says "non-monogamy". Since the domain of the map is non-monogamy, that seemed redundant to me when I made it; it seems a bit like drawing a large circle around the outside of a map of the earth saying "earth."
There definitely are changes that could be made to the map. For example, "Commerce" could be extended across the top to intersect with "religious/social polygamy;" there are some traditions in which women are, for example, sold to their husbands, or expected to provide a dowry to their husbands.
I actually put the "religious/social polygamy" bit separate because I see a pretty significant difference between cultures which allow plural marriage and cultures which don't. Either the law permits such marriages (whether generally or in limited circumstances) or it doesn't; the fact that some people are happy in arranged marriages and some aren't doesn't change that, I think.
And finally, I don't know quite what to say about the fact that there are people who dislike me because other people like me. I just call things like I see 'em; the fact that a lot of folks see 'em the same way and refer to what I've written, and that makes some other folks not like me, strikes me as a bit...um, weird.
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