If asked to define an ideal relationship, most people influenced by Western and European norms would describe monogamy. They would boast of a love that is “loyal,” a devoted union between two people—usually between a man and a woman. Yet, even within the LGBTQ+ community, monogamy is an expectation, and there is a heavy stigma around having a committed relationship with multiple people. Monogamy, in fact, has been so normalized that it is often seen as the only option, and any one who breaks this expectation is labeled as deviant, as inhuman, as criminal. Polyamorous Americans, unprotected under the law, can be fired from their jobs and discriminated against in housing, healthcare, and courts for simply loving too much and too many (McArdle). However, can polyamory potentially foster more loving relationships and a more loving society? And how can examining the origins of monogamy reveal all the ways in which the institution oppresses people of all gender, racial, and sexual orientations? The 2016 novel by Mimi Schippers, Beyond Monogamy: Polyamory and the Future of Polyqueer Sexualities, begins to answer these questions and sets up a theoretical framework for identifying how compulsory monogamy legitimizes the dominance of white heteromasculinity.
Beyond Monogamy challenges the definition of monogamous couples as natural and inevitable, asserting this assumption has been used to maintain the dominance of masculinity and subordination of femininity. In fact, Schippers claims mononormativity to be the central pillar that upholds heteromasculine privilege and contemporary gender relations (Schippers 25). For instance, compulsory monogamy outcasts women who cheat or have relationships with multiple partners because they threaten expectations of feminine loyalty that uphold male possession. The same can be said for race relations, since monogamy was institutionalized alongside the “eugenic constructions of racial superiority” (8). When examining the sociohistorical construction of sexual normalcy, Schippers finds that mononormative rhetoric pathologizes black Americans to be incapable of marital monogamy and therefore inferior. The author cites the hypersexualization of black women and emasculation of black men who accept the “promiscuity” of wives as examples of the racist deployment of monogamy (41). As a consequence, black, feminist, and queer communities have historically adopted monogamy into their definitions of respectability in order to be deemed worthy in a society that already demonizes them to begin with. However, Mimi Schippers’ main argument provides some hope, that polyqueer sexualities offer an opportunity for the deconstruction of gender, racial, sexual, and class hierarchies, allowing for bonding and love across difference. For individual relationships and for the entirety of society, polyamory has the potential to revolutionize how humans relate with one another.
As a Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies and Department Chair of the Sociology Department at Tulane University, Mimi Schippers is an expert on the sociology of polyamory. Embracing sociological and queer theorist perspectives, Schippers focuses the book around how the construction of sexual normalcy is central to social structure and interpersonal relations. While Schippers builds on the work of Adrienne Rich, Michel Foucault, Gayle Rubin, and other feminist writers, she notes how there are few theoretical interrogations of how monogamy in particular is implicated in production of gender, racism and sexual hierarchies. She reorients away from radical feminist theory that positions men as oppressors and towards queer theories of monogamy as central to “regimes of normalcy” (6). Schippers likewise critiques Foucault for the omission of race and emphasizes how white supremacy is central to regimes of sexual normalcy that compel individuals into exclusivity.
Curious of how non-monogamous relations are portrayed in various media representations and take shape in everyday interactions, Mimi Schippers in Beyond Monogamy analyzes popular texts and film along with her own life experiences dealing with polyamorous relationships. Thus, she combines multiple methodologies of auto-ethnography and deconstructionist methods of discursively analyzing fictional representations of polyqueer sexualities. By including explicit descriptions of her own sexual experiences and short fictional vignettes about polyqueer sexual interactions, Schippers helps readers imagine a polyqueer future and collapse the binary between “the profane pornographic and sacred academic” (28). For each narrative discursivly analyzed, she attempts to demonstrate the feminist, anti-racist, queer potential of polysexuality.
In the first chapter, Schippers explores cultural narratives around “love triangles” and how these narratives dictate correct masculine behavior and establish the white monogamous couple as evolutionarily superior. In the classic erotic triangulation between two men and one women, the men are pitted against each other as rivals, fighting each other for the woman. Schippers uses the example of her own erotic triangle with her lover and his best friend to exemplify how having two male partners would conflict with hegemonic masculinity. The hegemonic assumption that men are naturally jealous and predisposed to control women’s sexuality, forces her lovers to have to determine a winner and a loser. This sprouts from the assumption that humans evolved to be monogamous in order to protect genetic investments and ensure offspring survival (54). However, not only are unions between one woman and multiple men found in every part of the world, they can be highly beneficial. Rather than taking ownership of women, many communities are better served by cooperation and resource sharing. For example, in North Alaskan Inuit societies, men who share spouses form strong bonds of friendship and protection that last a lifetime, due the nonexistence of jealousy and male possessiveness (55). Schippers examined this in her own life when her lover Ben and their friend Matthew were able to reconfigure their heteromasculinity and bond with each other through their love and desire for Mimi. They were able to release control over her and her sexuality through embracing the erotic triangulation.
In the second chapter, Mimi Shippers focuses on the novel by E. Lynn Harris, Invisible Life, which through the narrative of a black man on “down low,” critiques compulsory monogamy and imagines a world in which bisexual black men have the freedom to express their sexuality. The “down low” refers to African American men who identity as heterosexual, but secretrly have sex with men as well as women (73). Media representations of men on the DL categorize them as dishonest, unfair to women, and selfish. In Invisible Life, compulsory monogamy forces the protagonist into secrecy, since as a black man in the 1990s he cannot be economically successful, and involved in his community and church while simultaneously exploring his sexuality with women and men. Schippers attributes this to the politics of black respectability, in which black activists and churches embraced the inherent morality of monogamy so that they could earn a place in society and defy racist stereotypes of black promiscuity (77). This suffocating construction of the monogamous “respectable” black man, forces men to hide their love of black women and men and desire to be intimate with both. The values of the gay community likewise constrained the protagonist, as gay men in the 90s adopted “politics of normalcy” emphasizing monogamy to resist negative images of gay men during HIV epidemic (78). Yet, Schippers displays the potential for polyqueer narratives to reconfigure racialized sexualities and challenge the politics of respectability and homonormalcy that uphold compulsory monogamy. Reimagining queer black men—not as confused, promiscuous, or dangerous, but as human desiring intimacy and respect—the analysis proposes a future in which polyamours people of all races, genders, and orientations can lead prosperous lives in society and openly experience fulfilling relationships.
In the final chapter, Schippers deep dives into cultural narratives around erotic threesomes—their inherent mononormativity and heteromasculine assumptions—and how diversified sexual interactions offer an opportunity to work against racial and gender hierachies. Through her own encounters with hetersexual men and popular media representations, Schippers analyzes the common fantasy of sex between one man and two women—aka “every man’s dream.” In this hegemonic threesome, imaginary traditional Western gender structures are upheld as the women are solely objects of desire for the male gaze, not desiring subjects themselves, able to form deep, romantic connections with each other. The man is also able to maintain a sense of status since penile penetration is symbolic of power, while being penetrated is symbolic of passivity (154). Not only does the dominance of this fantasy depend on and perpetuate heterosexual expectations, but monogamous ones as well. Threesomes tend to only be considered acceptable when framed as momentary suspension of normalcy to “spice things up” in an otherwise monogamous partnership. The sexual preference for threesomes or sex among polyamorous triads are highly demonized, as are intimate interactions with two men and one woman—referred to as “devils threesomes.” However, the monograph asserts that threesomes with all men are actually the most common, yet do not dominate discourse because controlling images of what is “sexy” and “normal” embed into individuals’ subconscious (143). Schippers suggests that this erotic habitus, structed by race, class, and gender, can be dissolved through polyamorous touch and pleasure. For instance, if two straight men of differing races are engaged in a threesome with a woman, they are forced to reconfigure the meaning of racialized genders and their own heteromasculine subjectivity. Brought together by her desire for them and their desire for her, the men have the space to explore cross-racial, same-gender intimacy through the pleasure of orgasm.
One shortcoming of this analysis however is that Mimi Schippers never addresses the logistics of how this potential could be realized. What will allow for such a dramatic shift in sexual norms that dominate every part of Western culture? With still unquestionable levels of fear and shame around polyamory in comtemporary life, how can polyamorous lovers be protected and truly accepted? Barely acknowledging the legal repercussions of polyamory in the United States, Schippers neglects to offer a feasible route for starting to reconfigure gender, race, sexual relations through non-monogamy. If Schipper’s theory proves true that polyamory can dismantle white patriarchal supremacy, the real question is: what can dismantle the oppressive system of compulsory monogamy?
Though as a polyamorous and pansexual person myself, I applaud the attempt to prove the enormous potential of plural loving. Providing a framework that embraces the intersectionality of gender, class, and race, the monograph gives an accurate depiction of the sexist and racist origins of monogamy as a route to social control. Any audience member that takes monogamy for granted as common sense would benefit from reading the historical construction of the practice and perhaps reconsider how they truly want to relate to their partners—as possessions or free human beings? Perhaps the revolution to create a non-monogamous society starts with each polyqueer interaction at a time, one reader at a time reconfiguring their hegemonic assumptions until polyamory becomes the new norm.
Works Cited
McArdle, Elaine. “Polyamory and the Law.” Harvard Law Today, 3 Aug. 2021, today.law.harvard.edu/polyamory-and-the-law/.
Schippers, Mimi. Beyond Monogamy: Polyamory and the Future of Polyqueer Sexualities. New York University Press, 2016.
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