Honestly, the polyamory community on LJ is one of the most drama-prone, fluffy, useless, narrowminded-dogmatic poly groups I have ever encountered, and I'm not exactly unfamiliar with them. Part of this is common-failure-state-of-LJ, of course, but agh anyway.
My favorite drama involving that was the time someone had a tremendous pissing match with me about whether or not he could call himself poly when he was not only not interested in having multiple relationships but actively antagonistic to the concept, and he had a snit at me. He then showed up on a useful forum, I replied to him, and he made a reply thanking me for my help as opposed to the horrible person on LJ. (At which point I realised who he was.)
I gots no idea what's the most common implementation of polyamorous whateverage, but I'm squicked out by package-dealie too. (A lot of people are. And a lot of other people are confused as to why they can't find someone who will date both of them. Heh.)
That's part of the "lifestyle" thing; my family is a family, not some sort of hobby. There are other bits of it, too. First of all, that the word "lifestyle" when referring to a minority group, especially a minority-sexuality group, is irrevocably associated with the phrase "gay lifestyle", which I have only ever seen attached to homophobic statements. Basically, the term carries connotation of "antagonistic outsider" to me.
Secondly, sheer literal meaning. The word "lifestyle" refers to a manner of living, something externally observable, and generally associated with socioeconomic patterns, spending, and the like. I live with one person (teinedreugan), two cats, various fish, and a snake; we own our own house and a car; he's an engineer on call every third week at this point, I work at home; we're mid-late twenties, our social circle is likewise largely composed of mid-twenties to mid-thirties people in technical employment in the Boston area; most of our disposable income goes on electronics, games, and books. We have DSL but do our long-distance telephony exclusively by cellphone. Betcha you can assemble a pretty good image of "manner of living" from that; while me being stay-at-home makes us fairly atypical in our bracket, it's not an uncommon lifestyle for our age group, economic status, etc., in the Northeast. On the other hand, if I tell you I'm polyamorous, you know nothing about the way I live, so that cannot be lifestyle information.
Another reason some folks are knee-twitchy about it is that "the lifestyle" is swinger jargon, and (getting back to that whole bubble-identification thing) some people are very firm about the whole We Are Not Them bit. I don't have this (largely because I hated the phrasing long before I heard this) (well, and also because I see swinging as 'something I don't do' and only get het up about it when someone tries to tell me that I do), but it's out there.
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Date: 2004-09-23 01:38 am (UTC)My favorite drama involving that was the time someone had a tremendous pissing match with me about whether or not he could call himself poly when he was not only not interested in having multiple relationships but actively antagonistic to the concept, and he had a snit at me. He then showed up on a useful forum, I replied to him, and he made a reply thanking me for my help as opposed to the horrible person on LJ. (At which point I realised who he was.)
I gots no idea what's the most common implementation of polyamorous whateverage, but I'm squicked out by package-dealie too. (A lot of people are. And a lot of other people are confused as to why they can't find someone who will date both of them. Heh.)
That's part of the "lifestyle" thing; my family is a family, not some sort of hobby. There are other bits of it, too. First of all, that the word "lifestyle" when referring to a minority group, especially a minority-sexuality group, is irrevocably associated with the phrase "gay lifestyle", which I have only ever seen attached to homophobic statements. Basically, the term carries connotation of "antagonistic outsider" to me.
Secondly, sheer literal meaning. The word "lifestyle" refers to a manner of living, something externally observable, and generally associated with socioeconomic patterns, spending, and the like. I live with one person (
Another reason some folks are knee-twitchy about it is that "the lifestyle" is swinger jargon, and (getting back to that whole bubble-identification thing) some people are very firm about the whole We Are Not Them bit. I don't have this (largely because I hated the phrasing long before I heard this) (well, and also because I see swinging as 'something I don't do' and only get het up about it when someone tries to tell me that I do), but it's out there.