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I'll try to respond to more of your post later, but this definition is just nonsensical to the point that I can only assume it intentionally throws mud in the water.
Defining an orientation or proclivity based on non-nullifcation of your partner's activity is such an unintuitive and messy way to approach it. If you're not defining polyamory by what you like/do, you're not offering an honest definition. Aella is obfucating and virtue signalling, by trying to frame the core of polyamory about generosity toward others' preferences, not one's own.
Imagine if I said that the cleanest definition of being a fan of action movies is not vetoing your partner/friends from choosing an action movie on movie night. It doesn't matter if they like action movies or not, it doesn't matter if you don't feel like picking action movies when it's your turn to decide, as long as your partner could pick an action movie if they wanted, then to me, that's being a fan of action movies.
Does that defintion make any fucking sense? it's hard to be interested in engagement past such a goofy and self-serving opener.
Right, but it's you assuming that the word refers to an orientation or proclivity.
Aella is using it to refer to a relationship model.
And this is a completely intuitive and straightforward way to describe a relationship model.
I think using it to refer to relationship models makes the most sense. Otherwise someone with expansive desires who has chosen to commit to a monogamous commitment has to say 'I am polyamorous and monogamous', which is awkward and bad.
If they just say 'I am currently monogamous' or 'I am currently in monogamous relationship', that tells people what they want to know.
Ultimately, polyamorous is broadly understood as the opposite of monogamous, and monogamous refers to a relationship model, not an orientation or proclivity.
Not buying it. That's an extremely idiosyncratic and unituitively gerrymandered way to describe it.
Are you suggesting that polyamorous refers to the relationship model and the relationship model alone?
People describe themselves as polyamorous all the time. Proportionally moreso than people explicitly identify themselves as monogamous. So we've got 3 options
#1 upends the idea of "clean" defintions proving my point, #2 makes your objection moot, and #3 is observably false. The central concept of a person looking for a poly relationship, is not general permissiveness that the other person might seek outside relationships. (Yes some people have a cuck fetish, but that's not 1:1 being polyamorous and it's not even what Aella's defintion describes)
You might further object then, that the polyamourous person is seeking a reciprocal relationship of Aella's model defintion. But
4 Aella didn't describe reciprocally in her definition. She used you pronouns, which linguistically imply a personal defintion not a relational definition.
The definition of 'polyamorous' that I find cleanest, for me, is not forbidding your partner from having extra-relationship intimacy. should be:
The definition of 'polyamorous' that I find cleanest, for me, is not forbidding eithe partner or "one or both partners".
Describing it as your partner makes the claim that it's describing a relationship rather than a person suspect.
Regardless, even if Aella just used poor wording, her defintion isn't described reciprocally, so again should we take it as implied or not necessary. If not necessarily reciprocal, then we're back to the issue with #3. The "cleanest" way of defining something doesn't even capture the core part of what many people are looking for in a poly relationship.
5 If it is necesasrily reciprocal, beyond Aella not describing it that way, it's now fails to capture many actual polyamorous configuirations. Is 'mormon style' polygamy now not polyamorous? Or even worse, the girlfriends who have only the one partner are technically polyamorous, but the man with multiple partners technically isn't? This is a very backwards definition.
At the end of the day, wouldn't it be much cleaner, to, instead of hi-jacking polyamorous to mean something ideosyncratic, describe the relationship model with the already existing word, "open relationship"?
No? Because Aella isn't describing an open relationship, she's producing nonsense.
I'm proposing that this would be the most useful way to use the term.
I think this broadly aligns with your point 3, and I'm having trouble parsing your objection to 3. But, yes, I think the point is that someone who describes themselves as poly is looking for a relationship in which both partners do the thing that Aella is quoted as saying is poly, allowing the partner lattitude.
I guess that saying 'I'm poly, I want to be in a poly relationship' sounds weird at first, but 'I'm a miner, I mine things' is not actually confusing. It's pretty standard to overload the same term as both a description of a person and a description of an activity... a surfer surfs, a bowler bowls, etc.
I mean, not in the 2 sentences that OP quoted, no.
Obviously those 2 sentences aren't going to convey her entire nuanced position here.
If you've actually read and listened to everything she's said on this topic, and know that it doesn't jibe with how I'm summarizing it here, then I concede to greater expertise and change my argument from 'I think this is a fair summary of what Aella means, and I think it's a good proposal for how to use the term' to 'This is my proposal for how to use the term.' I'm not actually invested in defending Aella or anything, I'm trying to stake a position about the object-level question.
If like me your only knowledge of Aella's position is reading OP's comment, then I don't think my interpretation is incompatible with what was quoted there, keeping in mind that short qu0tes pulled out of context never give the full picture of someone's argument and there's a lot of lattitude in what the actual position could be, reading backwards form the quote.
Other replies to my comment seem to think that yes, it's not. So it's at least a live question.
For me, I dunno, I don't see why everything has to be this precise?
If a single person says 'I'm poly', and you're thinking about dating them or setting them up with a friend, you can just ask them 'does that mean you want a mutually poly relationship where both partners can have outside partners, or that you're a cuck and only want your partner to have other partners, or that you're selfish and only want yourself to have other partners?'
And then instead of relying on identitarian labels to categorize people into warring factions that admit of no variance or humanity, you can actually, like, have a conversation with a real person and get to know them as an individual, and learn a little more about how these things are nuanced and subtle and complicated on an individual level, instead.
So basically, yeah, I don't think the fact that someone saying 'I'm poly' leaves you with, like, ONE more question you need to ask before 100% nailing down a fully detailed image of the relationship model they want, is a big drawback. I think it's kinda good even.
See here, I think it's important (very useful) to maintain a distinction between 'Exclusive romantic relationship between 2 partners plus guest-stars for sex sometimes' vs 'Open romantic relationship where people have multiple committed romantic partners.
Confusing those two things would be especially dangerous/disruptive.
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I slightly disagree. Opposite of monogamous is non-monogamous as there are more models. There are different types of non-monogamous relationships such as for instance polygamy or polyandry which I viewed differently from polyamory. Also for monogamy you can have various models ranging from lifelong commitment that can even carry beyond death of your spouse to serial monogamy including hookup culture.
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