Vocabulary update discussion: "polysexual"

[Magdlyn]

There is always an underdog. Gays have more rights now. They can get married. Gay Pride has gone mainstream.

Now the right wing is attacking transsexual people.

And "queers" (in colleges? on Reddit? Twitter?) seem to think they own the term "polysexual." So the polyamorous community can just suck it.

 

[Tinwen]

I didn't look through podcast stuff, just hit up Google Scholar for a couple of hours.

And our own search function.

I didn't do reddit, either. And I'm not familiar enough with other poly communities to search them all.

I just did 2 hours or so and we both know that's barely scratching the surface, academically.

Thanks for doing that!

I myself didn't read the books regularly recommended here and I don't listen to podcasts either, so I also just don't know if "polysexual" is in use outside of the forum.
If it is, I may try and pick up the wikipedia fight, but I don't want to push a forum neologism that we just convinced ourselves is a thing.

 

[Magdlyn]

I just stumbled across a thread from 2013, called "Polysexual."

https://polyamory.com/threads/new-to-polysexual-relationships.55553/

I just recently opened my heart and my mind to having a monoamorous/polysexual relationship,...

and

Monoamorous/polysexual is "swinging." Essentially you would be a couple who takes on sex partners, but somehow manages to not fall in love...

 

[Evie]

Sounds like the consensus is we'll just keep using it the way we do until the dictionaries catch up.

We certainly do need a term that refers to the desire and/or ability to maintain multiple concurrent sexual relationships with the knowledge and consent of all involved. I personally wouldn't call them loveless, but I'd say they were so far off the relationship escalator that they are generally not ever going to be perceived as a dyad relationship.

 

[IndieSolo]

We certainly do need a term that refers to the desire and/or ability to maintain multiple concurrent sexual relationships with the knowledge and consent of all involved.

Personally, if I had that kind of arrangement, I'd probably call them FWBs. Because I couldn't imagine hooking up regularly with multiple peeps if there wasn't at least some semblance of friendship, or friendly feelings, between us.


.

 

[Evie]

Personally, if I had that kind of arrangement, I'd probably call them FWBs. Because I couldn't imagine hooking up regularly with multiple peeps if there wasn't at least some semblance of friendship, or friendly feelings, between us.


.

Yep, so would/have I. FWBs describes my friends, polysexual describes me.

 

[Tinwen]

Personally, if I had that kind of arrangement, I'd probably call them FWBs. Because I couldn't imagine hooking up regularly with multiple peeps if there wasn't at least some semblance of friendship, or friendly feelings, between us.

True, but that is not a name for your ability to have those multiple fwb relationships

 

[Tinwen]

I did another AI search (sorry, lazy here) and I'm less and less convinced "polysexual" is in use by the wider ENM community outside of this forum, in which case I do lean towards avoiding the term.
I had chatgpt brainstorm another options, and - asside from using romantically/sexually non/exclusive - here's an option that's perhaps not terrible: monoerotic and polyerotic.

The framework we've been using to get a clearer understanding is I believe
monogamous (as an identity) = monoromantic and monosexual (=> monoerotic)
polyamorous (as an identity) = usually polyromantic and polysexual (=> polyerotic)

So another question is what to call the romantic axis to reproduce the full framework, since mono and poly romantic have also been coopted. We could accept it's just monoamorous/polyamorous, but that partially shifts the meaning of "polyamory" itself. AI got creative with mono/polyaffective, unfortunately these are already used as psychiatric terms for mood disorders :/

So then

monogamous (monoamorous and monoerotic)​

polyerotic​

polyamorous​

is as good as we get, unless there's another nice idea

What do you think?

 

[Magdlyn]

Yet no one complains when we use the term monogamous to mean sexually exclusive: committed sexually to one person, even when you're not married. Gamos means marriage in Greek. So monogamous means married to one other person. Yet, when we are dating, if we are seeking a partner with sexual exclusivity in mind, we say we are looking for monogamy. We can be looking for "monogamy" and not actually be looking for a legal spouse.

I once started a vocab thread saying these kinds of people should call themselves mono-amorous, but no one seemed interested in discussing it. (Maybe because queer rights weren't involved, and it just seemed like pedantry [excessive concern with minor details].) Monogamy is not the opposite of polyamory. The opposite of polyamory is mono-amory. The opposite of monogamy is polygamy (married to more than one, which is illegal in most countries, but people who practice it without being legally married to more than one, declare they are in polygamous marriages in the sight of their god, or whatever).

I bring this up, as I did the term "polyam" in my previous post, to highlight my opinion that I'd prefer to share neologisms with other groups, who many define it differently, despite complaints. Words have different meanings all the time. And there are words for this issue: homonym or polyseme.