I think polyamory should be "gatekept" a little
I know the title sounds bad but hear me out...
I've been going to both kink and poly meetups in my local area. I live in the deep south so not a ton of options but options nonetheless.
There are an alarming number of people in these communities that practice things like veto power, unicorn hunting, needing to be dated or played with as a unit, rules on "no sex" or "sex is only allowed if the primary has been given sex prior" and in general just treating people like "thirds" and toys and claiming they are polyamorous instead of ENM or open relationship??
Both online and offline I see this routinely, people using polyamory as the new ENM label and it deeply bothers me as people tell me directly "I don't fuck with polyamory because it's incredibly selfish and you guys don't treat people like people."
I have had at LEAST 6 experiences in person where I tell people I'm polyamorous and they immediately are like "oh, nope not doing that again I'm not here to fuck you and your dude" without giving any time to explain. Or they bail when I say I have a nesting partner. He doesn't even come with me every time!! And when he does we aren't joined at the hip and talk to different people!!
But it seems they strongly assume these things because literally every single other couple there save for 2 out of like.. 11 claim theyre polyamorous and then talk about stories that directly have veto or any of the other ENM practices above. They'll even directly talk about people I've talked with and how they basically scarred them but never say they traumatized them just "yeah they just weren't a match they tried to stop playing with both of us/didn't want to truly be poly and tried to start drama over it" and my blood absolutely boils at how ignorant they are. Some of them have even attempted to hunt me when I first started going but I made it VERY clear very fast that I don't play with couples.
They now complain about not being able to "find a good companion"??? Ugh
I wanted to make this post because I wanted people's opinions on this. There was specifically a munch about discussing polyamorous relationships and I openly said I think couples with strong rules about how people can and can't relate to one another like requiring couple play or having veto or needing "permission" to do things with others are not really polyamorous. I also stated that it feels like arrangements like that are not seeing the other person as a human beings and it's very harmful to them. I said "I genuinely deeply wish everyone in these arrangements would use ENM or open as their label and NOT polyamory. It's incredibly harmful to polyamory as a whole and I have personal experience witnessing that harm. ENM or open is a perfectly good label! And it's accurate."
That did NOT go over well, and it ended with most telling me I "can't gatekeep polyamory" or "be the one who decides what is and isn't polyamory" and "everyone has their own way of practicing it". Yes I understand every person and structure is unique, but I will not budge on my belief that if you don't have basic consent at you AND YOUR PARTNER(S) being able to have autonomous relationships with others, you're absolutely trying to change what polyamory fundamentally is and it is not polyamory. The more we accept these arrangements as polyamory the more we muddy what polyamory actually is and it just becomes the new umbrella label and I really don't want that to happen.
I did have 3 new people reach out after thay discussion munch fully agreeing with everything I said and being in the same position as me, so that was nice to see I'm not alone in this at least. But also sucks they didn't feel safe speaking up.
What do you all think?