Your Partner's Fidelity Is Not My Responsibility

This essay talks about consent and relationship pressure in Pagan communities--particularly at Pagan festivals--and how some folks have unfairly turned this into critiques of polyamorous folks' behavior.

It's not our fault if your partner wants us.

Consent in Pagan communities is a big issue that is talked about a lot but is not getting better fast enough.  I've talked elsewhere in the past about how I have anxiety about the idea of wearing a kilt to a Pagan gathering because there is a big problem with people sexually harassing men in kilts, but I have been seeing a big focus on consent this year.  I, personally, had far fewer consent-related incidents than normal, although my girlfriend reported much of the same, with people touching her in inappropriate ways during a quite touchy-feely main ritual.

I have a lot to say about that so it'll take a while for me to commit it to words, but I want to talk about something that consistently comes up as an aside we talk about consent.  Pagans start talking about consent and sexual harassment and sexual pressure and inevitably somebody will crawl out of the woodwork to say something like...

"And please remember that we're not all polyamorous!"

I see it a lot, as if it is an integral thing to bring up whenever we talk about consent.  But if you're in this category, if you think it's important to bring this into a discussion on consent, I'd like to push back on that with a counterpoint:  Your partner's fidelity is not my responsibility.

Let me explain, because I think there are a couple of issues at play here--two main ones I'll talk about, anyway--that unfairly privilege monogamy in many respects and actually do real harm to polyamorous folks.

You're implying that polyamorous people are more likely to ignore consent and that we deserve violations of consent that are committed against us.

If you're in a situation where somebody is pressuring you to have sex or enter a relationship with them, that's a consent issue regardless of who is doing it or why.  If somebody is trying to get you to have sex with them while using arguments about how all Pagans should be polyamorous and that polyamory is better than monogamy and using some philosophical garbage on you... that's a consent violation that actually has nothing to do with polyamory.  Sexual pressure is rampant throughout society, so there are people like this within polyamory too, and their target being monogamous has nothing to do with whether or not their actions are bad.

In fact, they're probably playing some other game with other polyamorous folks.  My girlfriend and I are polyamorous ourselves and have still had to deal with unwanted sexual advances and other consent violations.  Which brings me to the first really harmful thing:  When you boil down consent violations such as these as an issue of polyamorous folks "forgetting" that not everybody is polyamorous, you do three things:

• You make polyamory into the problem rather than consent violation.
• You imply there is an explicit problem with polyamorous people as polyamorous people violating monogamous people's consent.
• You imply that if the people being targeted were polyamorous, it wouldn't be as bad.

No, this is something that affects all of us, including a lot of polyamorous folks who have had to deal with the same bullshit kilt checks, handsiness, and relationship guilt as everyone else only to have people imply that we should expect it when we advertise that we sleep with multiple people.

I'm Not Responsible For Your Partner's Fidelity

Here's the thing, though.  I know that most of you don't mean it that way.  Most of you are not trying to imply that at all.  But what you are trying to imply is something that is also super insulting to polyamorous people, which is the idea that we are trying to steal your partners and spouses and that we need to respect that monogamous relationships in the Pagan community exist and do our part to preserve them.  How do I know this?  Because when it's accompanied by a story, it always boils down to this:  Somebody hit on my spouse, and it made me uncomfortable.  My spouse cheated on me and somehow it's your fault.

This, my friends, is absolute dogshit that places responsibility for your relationship dynamic on people who have no way of knowing what that dynamic is without trusting the person we are interested in.  Polyamorous folks, Pagan or not, are used to being in an environment where the vast majority of people are either monogamous, trying to be monogamous, or ultimately looking for a monogamous relationship.  The fact that many more Pagans are polyamorous than non-Pagans means we might be more open about it and more empowered to ask others we wouldn't normally ask outside of those communities.  But it's not our responsibility to keep the preservation of your monogamy at the forefront of our minds.  It really isn't.

Monogamy is a contract (formal or informal) between you and your partner.  I didn't agree to it, you did!  And if I make an advance on your partner, and your partner accepts it, they are the one who broke that contract, not me.  Anything outside of that--if I've taken advantage of them in an altered state, if I've pressured them, if I've laid guilt on them, if I've done worse--is a serious consent violation that needs to be addressed, but it has nothing to do with them being monogamous or me "forgetting" that not everybody is polyamorous.  Like I said above, this implies that polyamory is the problem, which it isn't.  You have the right to reject any advance somebody makes, for whatever reason you want, including no reason at all.

I'm not comfortable dating people who are in monogamous relationships, and I have my own list of personal red flags for weeding out people who intend to cheat on their relationships.  It's a can of worms I hope never to open.  But ultimately, it isn't a polyamorous person's responsibility to root that out.  What am I supposed to do, ask your spouse's permission to date you?  Scour the internet for instances where you talked about being monogamous?  There is no way to do any of this without being a creep or violating my own boundaries (asking a partner's permission to date somebody is a huge dealbreaker for me).

So yes, talk about consent violation in Pagan communities.  It's a subject we need to talk about more and we need to actually take it seriously.  But it's not a polyamorous problem, it's a problem deep throughout society, and by bringing polyamory into this argument you are not helping shit.