Everyone keeps sending me this Atlantic article about a new OkCupid feature for nonmonogamous people, so I might as well respond to it.
The new setting, which became available for some beta users in December, allows users who are listed as "seeing someone," "married," or "in an open relationship" on the platform to link their profiles and search for other people to join their relationship.
[...] Though specialized dating sites for polyamorous people exist, this appears to be the first instance of a mainstream online-dating platform allowing two users to search for sexual partners together, as a unit.
[...] "Finding your partner is very important," [OkCupid chief product officer Jimena Almendares] said, "you should have the option to express specifically and exactly who you are and what you need."
Honestly, I know I should be excited about this Great Leap For Polyamory Recognition, but at this point, I'm not. I just can't care. This feature only serves and makes visible one incredibly narrow, very privileged, and often harmful version of polyamory, and it has nothing to do with the polyamory that I or any of my partners practice.
Let's start with the fact that Almendares refers to "your partner" (singular) and that the feature only allows you to link to one partner. When are non-poly people going to understand that polyamory is not about "your partner," "the couple," or "the relationship," but rather about "your partners" and "your relationships" and the people in those relationships? This sort of couple-centric language may seem like an innocent holdover from everyone's monogamous days, but it can have serious implications for how we treat partners who are more short-term, casual, or recent than others.
Sure, some people are totally fine with " joining the relationship." I'm not writing about those people. I'm writing about those of us who dislike being solicited to become some straight couple's fun queer sex toy, and those of us who are not interested in relationships where we are treated as intrinsically lesser because someone else got there first.
None of that means that the new feature is bad or wrong; I'm just explaining why I don't care about it and why I'm annoyed to see it portrayed as a big victory for poly folks on OkCupid.
What really is cool is that OkCupid already lets people list their relationship style preference (I've included mine here as an example) and it lets you link to other users' profiles in the text of your own profile. Many poly people use that to let others know who they're already dating. You can also, of course, use it to mention friends and fuck buddies and whoever else you'd like. It's lovely specifically because it doesn't force you to categorize anyone based on importance. OkCupid also lets you filter by monogamy/nonmonogamy when browsing your matches, which helps people find potential partners who are interested in the same types of relationships they are.
If OkCupid already includes all these options that recognize polyamory, why is this one being touted all over my online feeds as evidence that the dating site is "finally including options for poly couples"? Probably because this particular option caters to such an easily-recognizable version of polyamory, by "allowing two users to search for sexual partners together, as a unit."
Of course, if you ask just about any bisexual woman, poly or not, she'll tell you that there has been absolutely nothing stopping two users from searching for sexual partners together as a unit this whole time. They do it quite often, and trust me, there's never any confusion when I get a message from an account with two headless bodies in the profile pic that says, "My wife and I are looking for a hot young woman to have some fun with..." It is abundantly clear to me from the first message what sort of arrangement this is and how much value as a human being I have to these random strangers.
Certainly not all " unicorn hunters " (as they're called in the poly community) are as objectifying, entitled, and heterosexist as the prototypical example, but in my experience, even the nicest and most consent-oriented ones are operating under a lot of flawed assumptions about queer women and what constitutes an equitable, mutually satisfying relationship. But whatever, this isn't really the article to hash all that out in. I'm just saying that for many of us polyamorous folks, queer women especially, there's no "victory" in any dating site feature that claims to make it even easier for these couples to target us.
Calling unicorn hunting "polyamory" feels to me a bit like calling same-sex marriage "LGBTQ equality," except admittedly without the implications about oppression. Yes, both of these things are components of polyamory and LGBTQ equality, respectively, but both of them are frequently treated by the media (and even by many activists) as if they are the same thing. In the end, I feel similarly about unicorn hunting as I feel about same-sex marriage: do it if it floats your boat, but try not to trip over the rest of us on your way there and definitely don't act like it's all there is to fight for and make visible.
Before the chorus of But At Least They Did Something So Just Be Grateful For That begins, I'll just say this: I'm not sure it's at all a positive thing to continue perpetuating the idea that polyamory is all about couples looking for a hot young woman to "add" to the relationship. (By the way: even in an arrangement like that, the woman is not being "added." She is forming two new relationships, one with each person in the preexisting couple, and each person in the preexisting couple is forming a new relationship with her. This is an important distinction.) I don't celebrate it for the same reason I don't cheer when a TV show adds yet another conventionally attractive white bisexual woman who sleeps with a ton of people and can't commit to a serious relationship: there is absolutely nothing wrong with being that way, but it's a stereotype that causes many people to have a negative impression of bisexual women, so can't we at least portray a greater variety of bisexual women? Can't we acknowledge that it doesn't always look this way?
I would love for more people to know that polyamory can look like this. I would love for more people whose polyamory looks like that to have an easier time using dating websites. One very small and easy thing OkCupid could do (as could Facebook) would be to allow people to list multiple partners rather than just one, especially if the context is open relationships.
Remember: the whole point of polyamory is multiple partners. You may not feel the same way about all of them, you may not see all of them as often, they may not have the same genders, you may not share homes or bank accounts or parenting responsibilities with all of them, and you may even ( though this makes me cringe for my own reasons) have rules about what you can and cannot do with some of them, but they are all your partners. There is no "your partner" and "the relationship" in polyamory unless you are currently only seeing one person. Hopefully the folks over at OkCupid realize this soon.
P.S. Here are some great perspectives on this from Ozy and Neil, because I like their writing and I want to show you that this isn't just me.
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