joreth | A Clue For The Clueless

Someone who is completely clueless about polyamory decided to call a poly person a predator simply because he (oh no!) approached her on a DATING site. Poor judgement, maybe, a predator? Not by this evidence alone.

Now, I understand that the poly lifestyle is not for everyone. Hell, I try to advise people against it because, frankly, very few people currently have the emotional stability, self-awareness, or self-security to pull it off. Poly people as a group are not automatically "enlightened", have not conquered jealousy, and certainly have not, as a group, managed to eliminate the drama that we polyamorists shake our heads at when we see it in the mono world.

But I draw the line at being called an online predator.

Now, to be completely fair, she didn't call *me* a predator, nor did she say all polyamorists are. But this very misinformed person got an email from someone online who is outwardly polyamorous. Her response was to post about it in her journal with the preface that he was an online predator.

I don't know this guy, but she posted his email, so it's not really a case of he-said/she-said. Perhaps he was misguided in contacting a woman who did not have any pro-poly language in her profile. But from his very brief introduction, I'd hardly call him a "predator".

I wouldn't really care, except that she's lumping his polyamory in with her accusation and *that* I take personal exception to. Anyone else want to send her a little learnin'?

http://www.okcupid.com/profile/Meg_35/journal/2963316652640852446/PIG-EXPOSED!!-

PIG EXPOSED!! | Apr 14

I got this email from what I call an "online preditor" be very careful.. and be suspicious.

My situation is: - and I want you to really do this:

Go to wikipedia and look up the word "Polyamorous". You may think you may know what it means.. but please just look it up.

I am married, with 2 boys. The wife has a boyfriend - a very close friend of mine. They've engaged in .. basically everything a boyfriend/girlfriend can engage in, including feelings, emotions, trust, respect, .. and sex. ;-)
I'm / we're looking for a girlfriend for ME. Something long term. Again, it can go as far as having emotions, feelings (etc) up to and including the L word.

Still interested?

(Can you believe this joker?) his profile name is "Jonmclovin" in North Port, Florida

Comments:

A few thoughts/comments: 1.I went and looked up "polyamorous" as instructed and it was what I thought it meant. lol Maybe it is my extensive use of Latin in music? I don't know. 2.The middle section is a message sent you to correct? At first I didn't read it as such and I thought, "Whoa! Either she doesn't know what the hell she is saying or she needs to brush up on her grammar." 3.You said "yes" right...right?! :-P

Kylan_Blake: 25M | straight | Long Beach, California, United States
Apr 14 - 62% match, 59% friend, 30% enemy

I was so freaked about it I didn't post it very clearly.. I edited it so re read and let me know what you think.

Meg_35: 36F | straight | Fort Myers, Florida, United States
Apr 15 - 50% match, 46% friend, 41% enemy

First of all, this guy was probably not at his smartest when he contacted you, since you so clearly are not romantically compatible with him.

However, I do take personal offense at his being called a "predator" in conjunction with his polyamory.

Polyamory is not for everyone, but that doesn't mean that those who do practice it are predators. You're on a dating site. That means people contact you for potential romantic connections. He should have read your profile more thoroughly before contacting you to see that it would be a waste of his time, but a person using a dating site to ... gasp ... approach people is hardly a predator.

Polyamory, as I said, is not for everyone. But it does require that everyone involved honestly and openly consent to the arrangement. By definition, he cannot be a predator because he cannot take advantage of someone in a situation where the person he's trying to take advantage of has to consent, and so does his wife and her boyfriend and the potential partner's other partners.

While it's certainly not impossible to have slimeballs in the poly community, just as it's possible to have slimeballs in the monogamous community, polyamory makes it very difficult for these kinds of people to find much prey. In a culture that encourages open communication with everyone involved, if you're not ethical in your treatment of your partners, your reputation will soon precede you and you won't find willing partners no matter where you look.

As a polyamorous woman, I would appreciate if you kept your insults to the individual intended, rather than implicate an entire community of people, of whom you apparently have no understanding of, or firsthand knowledge of.

For more information of what polyamory is, a better site than wikipedia is http://www.xeromag.com/fvpoly.html and http://www.theinnbetween.net/poly1.html and http://www.serolynne.com

Joreth: 31F | straight | Orlando, Florida, United States

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I notice that someone replied to your OKC journal entry calling you 'whiny' in a roundabout passive-aggressive sort of way. If he wanted to call you whiny he should just have the courage to come out and say it.

Funny, I noticed that too. But to outwardly complain, I suppose that would have seemed "whiny", hence showing him for a hippocrite?

I also notice that the monogamous woman who initially complained that a guy sent her an email on a dating site was *not* singled out for being "whiny" in her complaint.

Because, all ills that befall polyamorous people are the direct result of being polyamorous, while all character flaws in monogamous people have nothing at all to do with monogamy.

I'm not ready to take offense, personally, but I see where you're coming from. I just chalk it up to fear of the unknown and said as much in my own OKC reply. Cheers on the note - I've sort of taken myself out of the OKC scene for now, preferring to work on myself alone for a time just now, but I found myself interested in commenting none the less. Thanks again for the pointing.

Yeah, I'm actually not all that pissed off at her, but I did take the opportunity to do a little teaching in a more or less public arena and to hopefully create some awareness of stereotyping and generalization in addition to my usual poly lectures.

As my sweetie

zen_shooter and

datan0de once proclaimed in a debate about the merits of arguing on the internet ... the point of debating is not to change the mind of the person with whom you are debating. Usually, both sides are very firmly entrenched in their point of view. The object of an internet debate is to show everyone watching who is on the fence that the other guy is an idiot and they should listen to you instead :-D

I have a few words to say to this guy privately about his approach, but he asked for my help by appealing to my previous pattern of replying to the uneducated, so I threw in my two cents.

I think that the phrase "internet predator" has descended into meaningless. An internet predator is someone you don't like who hits on you (or your teenage daughter) using the internet. Much like a slut is someone who is having more sex than the speaker.

Unfortunately, I think you're right, which is yet another reason I wanted to voice a dissenting opinion. If anyone who hits on me whom I don't like is a "predator", then what's to be afraid of from real "predators"? Like the boy who cried wolf, why should I care if someone yells "predator" anymore?

Since there are still real predators out there, I find this trend disturbing.

Yeah, I would argue that the whole "internet predator" panic entirely exists to distract us from the real sexual predators: who are most likely family members, close acquaintances, and date rapists. You never hear about "date predators" or "family relation predators" or any such - isn't that odd? Almost as if there's a cultural imperative to hide and protect such people.

Self-reply!

Okay, "entirely" was taking it a bit far. The internet predator panic also exists so that the government can pass internet censorship legislation on the pretext of protecting us all from those internet predators, and for similar moral sexual panic reasons.

Ah, yes, let's not forget how important it is for the government to babysit me and limit my freedoms to protect me from the big bad online predators and my delicate sensibilities. I can't possibly self-regulate myself or instill in any child in my care the importance or the difference between destructive sexual behaviour and healthy sexual expression! No, certainly men twice my age with totally different religious and moral values know better than I do about what I should be exposed to and about my ability to protect myself.

It is. Many a therapist has funded his BMW and vacation home on adults who met "date predators" or "family relation predators" in their youth. We as a culture have been hiding them for centuries and the legal changes that gave women and children the right to say no to sexual activity has only made a dent in this phenomenon ... it hasn't abolished it. We are still taught to feel guilty, that somehow we deserved or asked for it.

True, it's much less of a problem than it was in our history. But it's still there.

Statistics show a very significant difference between the number of people who are somehow victims of someone they know versus a stranger (online or not). And yet, parents still freak out over their teenagers having MySpace accounts, but will let them walk around the mall unsupervised, or walk home from the school bus stop, or even be in the same room with "friends" and neighbors without even blinking. And this continues with us as we grow to adults. How many people don't even look twice when a couple says they met at a bar or a mall or in line for a movie, but who automatically view with suspicion any date you introduce as having met from online?

A year or two ago there was that panic about some actual sex offender (and don't get me started on the unfairness of that topic!) up to his old tricks but on Myspace instead of the local school bus stop. And someone posted the total number of registered sex offenders who had MySpace accounts. I forget the numbers, but the ratio of sex offenders to other members of MySpace vs. the ratio of sex offenders in the general population was significantly smaller. I pointed this out in response to someone's fear-induced "petition" to beef up MySpace security and said that, strictly speaking numbers here, your children are safer on MySpace than leaving their own homes.

I'm totally with you here.

I had no idea about the whole MySpace debate. Thanks for illuminating that.

It's funny how people get so torqued up about kids using the net, when in fact these kids are typically doing it from their own homes, often right where you can see them. I guess it illustrates that the thing that most panics parents is kids being exposed to ... ideas? All the "predator" stuff seems to be a stand-in of some sort for this fear.

Proverbial nail-head, meet inki the hammer-wielder. You're hit.

A Clue For The Clueless

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