Here is the guy who made up this term. If anyone wants to wade thru his text and share with the class, please do. Maybe we can all learn together.
Andie Nordgren is a woman who IDs as genderqueer.
Below is an excerpt from Deborah Anapol's book,
Polyamory in the 21st Century: Love and Intimacy with Multiple Partners, published in 2010. Deborah Anapol states:
". . . I contacted Andie Nordgren, a 28-year old artist and software product manager who currently lives in London and is credited with creating and popularizing the concept of relationship anarchy in her native Sweden. Andie agreed that there was little, if any, difference between relationship anarchy and polyamory as I defined it in my book Polyamory: The New Love Without Limits over a decade ago: "I use polyamory to describe the whole range of lovestyles which arise from an understanding that love cannot be forced to flow, or not flow, in any particular direction. Love which is allowed to expand often grows to include a number of people. But to me, polyamory has more to do with an internal attitude of letting love evolve without expectations and demands than it does with the number of partners."
Her complaint about polyamory is that by focusing on the number of partners, it still upholds the idea that "normal" love is only between two people. In other words, even though the word polyamory has been substituted for non-monogamy, she still sees polyamory as a variation on the monogamy/marriage paradigm. Andie, who identifies herself as a gender queer, explains, "You can compare it to the way many queers don't use the term bisexual even if they have relationships to both male- and female-bodied people, as the term itself indicates that there are only two genders and three sexualities (straight, bi, and gay) to choose from. The other aspect that was frustrating to me was that the polyamorous community in Sweden was still upholding a clear difference between relationships and friendships. Even if there was a lot of talk about not falling into the monogamous traps of wishing/demanding that another person be everything for you--and of course, how love was not restricted to one person--there was still a strong distinction made between those you had a relationship with and those who were just friends."
Andie says that in Sweden, the poly movement has been pretty much incorporated into the Gay Pride movement and usually operates the same way. That is, they try to claim that "we're just like you normal people, only with more partners" and try to differentiate poly from the views of it as swinging or cheating. While monogamy is still the norm for Swedes and "mild prejudice" against polyamory still exists, most people consider it not a "super big deal" but rather a personal choice, much like in the more liberal areas of the United States. Andie found that in Sweden, polyamory was strongly linked to the bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, and sadomasochism community as well. Not surprisingly, power games are not a surefire way to warm the heart of an anarchist. For Andie, the polyamory community has "too many outdated values about gender, sexuality, power, and love and is too focused on definitions and rules and making new mental institutions for managing love relationships with several people instead of just one. Since I was interested in escaping the idea that love needed rules and institutions to survive, I never felt much at home," she says.
Andie summarizes her position as follows: "I felt a need to put another piece on the table, so that the scale of possible relationship choices didn't just go between monogamous and polyamorous but had a third, outer point--relationship anarchy. This is how I see the scale these days. Monogamy says love is only for two people; everyone knows the drill. Polyamory says love relationships can be between several people in various configurations, but there is still a difference between those who are 'partners' in various ways and those who are not. Relationship anarchy says that the gray scale between love and friendship is so gray that we cannot draw a line, and thus we shouldn't institutionalize a difference between partners and non-partners."
She realizes that from a monogamous worldview, polyamory looks no different from relationship anarchy, but to a relationship anarchist, the question "how many partners do you have?" makes no sense and is actually offensive. "The term is meant to put a useful label on an attitude that I feel is different from the mainstream polyamory that deals a lot with defining things like primary partners, jealousy and time management, and so on, to deserve its own term," she concludes.
. . . this brand of polyamory is much closer to what I had in mind 25 years ago when I first started writing about non-monogamy, but has since been eclipsed by what radical young people are now calling "mainstream polyamory."
I like how Marcus described this whole thing what...a couple of years ago?
Marcus particpated earlier in this thread. One can click on "Search This Thread" above, then select "Advanced Search" and specify that you want to see Posts by Marcus, and you'll ge them all. Or check out Posts # 15, 16, 62, and 63 to start.