Polyamory and Abuse with @polypages

Abuse happens in all kinds of relationships, and non-monogamous people are no different. Claire from @polypages and I discuss:

- The Duluth Model of the power and control wheel as applied to abusive polyamorous dynamics

- Whether the book More Than Two by Eve Rickert and Franklin Veaux should still be recommended as a polyamory introductory text

- Why toxic positivity culture is harmful and does a disservice to the polyamorous community

- Why non-monogamous people are more susceptible to abusive dynamics due to the lack of societal support available and toxic behaviours being brushed under the carpet as "jealousy issues to work through"

- How Claire arrived at solo polyamory as the best fit for her life

and much more.

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transcribed by Erica T. Holt

Leanne: Welcome to Happy Polydays, a series of intimate conversations about polyamory, sexuality, identity, and relationships, hosted by me – Leanne Yau of the Poly Philia blog.

Leanne: Hello everyone, and welcome to day 12 of the Happy Polydays series. Today I’m joined by Claire, who runs @polypages, and we’re going to be talking about polyamory and abuse. So, Claire, tell us a bit more about yourself and what you do on your platform.

Claire: Hi. I’m Claire. I started Poly Pages as a podcast a number of years ago. Since then it’s grown into a larger platform. We specifically are at the intersection between the literature in polyamory and the conversations about polyamory. So, our tagline is “reading the texts that have shaped our community and culture.” So, our podcast goes chapter by chapter of The Ethical Slut, the great Bible of nonmonogamy. That’s coming back in 2022. We run events, specifically about critical conversations around polyamory, and we run a book club. So, we have an international book club with a partnership with Thorntree Press, which is a very big publisher of non-monogamous literature in this kind of space. Apart from that, I make a bunch of Tiktoks with me and videos making those conversations bite-size. But, yeah, that’s the platform. We’ve worked here for a while now. So, this is great. I’m excited. Happy Polymas.

Leanne: (laughs) It was great to collaborate with you for Polyamory Day, which was a couple weeks back. And, also, I remember attending the Abuse and Polyamory workshop that you did. I thought that was really incredible work that you guys are doing.

So, today, the first thing I wanted to ask you is your polyamory origin story. How did you come across polyamory? How long have you been practising polyamory? And I understand as well that you’re solo-polyamorous and a relationship anarchist. I want to find out more about your journey to non-monogamy, and then your journey specifically to solo polyamory, and what that process was like. So, what’s your story?

Claire: Shoot. Let’s do it. I love, by the way, that we call this our polyamorous origin story. It makes it sound so much cooler than it is. Right? Like, it’s when I gained my superpowers of compersion. (laughs)

So, I’m actually the same age as the word “polyamory.” That’s a fun fact. I found out yesterday.  Polyamory was coined in 1990, which is the year I was born. And so, the language I didn’t know about until I was sort of in my twenties. I’m now in my thirties. For most of my teenage years, I was just living relationships that felt good to me at the time. But looking back, they were very informed by this way of thinking about love. I had super intimate friendship groups and we were all very much swapping and changing partners a lot. I had multiple crushes at the same time. Like, all the early indicators. Right?

Leanne: Yeah.

Claire: Looking back, it’s like – yeah, that’s because I was polyamorous. But I really found the language for it in my early twenties when my job – I’m a humanitarian aid worker, so I travel a lot - My job made monogamy logistically insane.

Leanne: Impractical.

Claire: You don’t know where I am half the time. You don’t know if I’m okay. I have needs and I’m stressed and I’m in a camp for six weeks. It’s mental. So, I started to introduce that understanding of non-monogamous relationships then. Things like “don’t ask don’t tell.” Things like the hundred-mile rule. All these various options you can have, different types of agreements. And then I was like, “Oh, this is really working for me, actually. I’m probably gonna keep this up.” So I’m definitely from the long-distance to polyamory pipeline.

Leanne: Yeah.

Claire: And then, I’d been having this affinity with solo polyamory for a really long time. You know, it’s been over eight years I’ve been doing this now. In 2019 – I keep saying last year, but it’s not last year.

Leanne: Yeah, I make the same mistake.

Claire: I’m so confused. In the Before Times, I had three serious relationships and nesting partners, and I was happily bouncing between them. And I thought, “Oh, maybe this is when I start nesting.” Uh, no. Covid came and was like, “Yeah you’re single now.”

Leanne: Nope. Oh, god.

[4:56]

Claire: So, I had to deal with three breakups within the space of six months. It was really hard. It reinforced for me that, the person I will always be in a relationship with the most is myself. And that, for me, is what solo polyamory means. And relationship anarchy, I think of it as a separate understanding of what relationships is aside from polyamory. It’s quite compatible with polyamory.

So, for people who don’t know: relationship anarchy is the application of anarchist principles into intimate relationships. It’s kind of taking the “fuck the system” approach and putting it directly in your friendships and your loves and your everything, and being like, “There are no boundaries, we decide what we do.” For me, that’s always been – it rings true, right? Cause, I’m such a radical lefty commie of course. (laughs) Of course, I’m gonna be like, “Yeah, I don’t want people telling me what I can’t and can’t do.” That’s essentially the whole thing. (laughs)

Leanne: Yeah, burn it all down.

Claire: I’ve been using the title relationship anarchist. I ran a bootcamp at Polyamory Day.

Leanne: Yeah.

Claire: I definitely forgot to plug it at the top of this, so thank you. You can still get an access pass for that as well.

Leanne: I know that you’re going to be doing another Polyamory Day in April 2022. Roy did the shouting out when we did our talks, so we’ve got you covered.

Claire: Good, he’s so organized! And we’re looking for speakers as well. So, people who are listening to this or watching this, and they’re in the U.K. or Ireland, and they have a topic that they want to see or they want to present a workshop. We have a place on our website to send us your pitch. I think it needs to be community-driven, right?

Leanne: Of course.

Claire: All my values are really community-driven.

Leanne: So, you’ve said that polyamory has come fairly naturally to you. But I wonder if there were any kind of struggles you had earlier on in your non-monogamous journey? Was there anything that you found particularly challenging? Because I think there’s this misconception that once you apply the theory to practice, everything is going to be fine and dandy. And that’s often not the chase. We’ve all made mistakes.

Claire: That’s never the case. If you speak to any theoretical physicist, they’ll be like, “I don’t know why it isn’t working in reality.” Every time. “We don’t know.”

Everyone makes mistakes. All relationships are messy. What I really struggled with in those early days was I had this idea that I had to be – not “the one,” because I always realized how toxic that was – but, the best. I had to be the main character in someone else’s life.

Leanne: Right.

Claire: Which meant that I was - that caused a plethora of issues. Rejection becomes really hard because you’ll be like, “Wait, that’s not part of my – “

Leanne: Narrative.

Claire: - vision. You can’t reject me.” And also if they find someone else who is really great, I had to constantly be like, “Okay, but how am I better?” A lot of this kind of stuff is going on. Even though I was always very – I mean I’d never say that to somebody else, this was always an internal thing – but I had to definitely work through that. Time and age has that rubbed that off me. Where I was like, “Actually, this whole framework that women see themselves in” – even though I’m doing this in a counter-culture way – “it’s still there and it’s still trying to produce shame and guilt.” Which are not natural. They are produced by our society so that things and people can sell me stuff, and I don’t like being sold to. I definitely struggled with that a lot. And I think people that are socially reared women, they have this mindset more than – we should get @polymananswers to come on and give his take on that because I don’t know if there’s a male equivalent or a non-binary equivalent. But that was definitely my thing to work through.

I think now, in the later stages, it’s keeping my shit private. I don’t know if people know this but, we get so many calls about being on T.V., about being in the news, and all those kinds of things. I think if this had happened even just five years ago, I would have done those things. Now I’m having to be like, “No, Claire, that’s not good for you. Don’t do that.” Because obviously, that is like selling my whole personal and inner life, right?

Leanne: Yeah, I’ve gotten calls -

Claire: I sit with my inner anti-capitalist principles. (laughs)

[9:41]

Leanne: Yeah, I’ve definitely gotten multiple invitations by the media trying to do a profile on my life and my partners and that kind of thing. I’m very fortunate that my – because I’m very open about my life – but my partners are very much not, and it was my partners who actually held my back and went like, “This is not a good idea. You know this right?” They were the ones who were like, “I very much want my privacy, and I don’t want that to be - ” And also, you know, those complications regarding polyamory not necessarily being protected under the law. They didn’t want to risk employment opportunities and that kind of thing. So, it’s just me risking my employment and my future prospects alone. (laughs)

I jest, but I make a point now not to show my partners on my platform because Poly Philia is very much my own thing. And I think the moment I start mixing the personal and the professional, it kind of gets a bit fucky. Because I don’t want my relationship to turn into my business. I don’t want to have to sell my relationship for the views. We kind of saw that with – I don’t know if you were ever following @thetrifectalove triad on Tiktok – they were a triad. They were together for about three years. Towards the end of their relationship, it very much became clear that they were only together for the likes and the comments. They put a polyamorous twist on a lot of the straight monogamous prank videos you see on TikTok. Which was amusing, but it was very much like, “What are you doing? What are you guys doing?”

Claire: That’s the worst part of straight Tok.

Leanne: I know!

Claire: It’s the weird pranks.

Leanne: I know.

Claire: I don’t know if anyone’s told monogamous, heteronormative people, but you are actually supposed to like the person you’re with.

Leanne: (laughs) I would never prank my partner. We hate surprises. It’s the worst. So, I don’t understand it. But what ended up happening was the two women left the guy. So, he lost his wife, his girlfriend, and his business in the same day. And that was devastating to watch. So, I was watching all that falling apart, just thinking, “Oh my god, I don’t want that to happen to me.” You know? So, I’m relatively private on the details of my partners, but I’m open about how I live my life. I think that you take a fairly similar approach, right?

Claire: Yeah, I do. This idea of making the relationship the brand is not new. Maybe this is how we segueway out into our discussion, actually. This has been happening since some of the earliest books about polyamory, blogs about polyamory. Which makes sense, because polyamory is about your intimate, personal relationships. So, how do you have discussions about those without also platforming yourself as a relationship expert? A polyamorous expert?

Leanne: Yeah.

Claire: But that pipeline, when it’s not done critically, I think is going to create a weird parasocial relationship where there is a vested interest in maintaining this relationship and I would do anything to stop it. That can be very attractive for people that are there for – I don’t want to tar everyone with the same brush because this isn’t the case, but – I can understand why that would be a good incentive for someone that was like, “Oh, I really want a niche fame moment.” I can also see how it could be a place that’s ripe for abuse, right? Because if you’re with somebody who’s in this very public image perspective, not only are they gonna want to keep that relationship how it looks for as long as possible, but obviously it’s really hard for you to say, “You’re not practicing what you preach.”

This is one of the very first critiques of Franklin Veaux, actually. “You’re writing all this stuff, but you’re not doing it?” So, there’s gotta be a space there, where people are entitled to their personal lives. So, if you’re making a rhetoric exclusively out of your personal experience – how much do people need to see? And, it’s attention, right? It’s attention.

Leanne: It is definitely attention. Because on the one hand, you want to talk about polyamory and how to practice it correctly, or in the most ethical and considerate way, but then also recognizing that at the end of the day, we are all human beings who are flawed and make mistakes. And sometimes we can’t be our best selves a hundred percent of the time.

I definitely have run into this in my personal life where I’ve had partners who expect much more of my because I have a platform. So, if I’m having a moment, and I’m particularly emotionally distressed one day, or I don’t communicate something correctly, or I miss a cue – which happens often for me, because I’m autistic – then, I get a lot of shit for it. They’re like, “I expected better from you. You’re supposed to be this poly expert.” And I’m like, “Mm, I don’t know if I should be held to this higher standard just because I have a certain number of followers.” At the end of the day, I just make content on the internet.

I think the reason I want to have these vulnerable conversations with people is because I want us to be humanized, because we’re just regular ass polyamorous people. And that’s important to recognize, because I think the more you pedestalize someone, the more dangerous it is for everyone involved. You give the person a complex. You create this weird parasocial dynamic. You put a lot of pressure on the person, and you give them motivation to perform certain things for their followers. It just creates a really fucked dynamic. I think that’s what happened with Franklin Veaux in a way. I think people venerated him, in a sense. So, he took advantage of that until the persona he was putting on completely did not match who he was in his personal life.

[16:10]

Claire: And of course, it would be someone who’s a narcissist. Because that sounds terrible to someone that’s not a narcissist. It sounds great to someone that is. I know that I shouldn’t be so loose with throwing around the term “narcissist” because it’s a genuine personality disorder, but this is kind of textbook. The seeking out of grandeur and the keep-it-at-all-costs mentality.

And that’s fueled by the cultural things that we have. If we’re not able to be messy and wrong, then – not just as individuals – but what does that say about polyamory as a whole? That’s obviously not the case with polyamory. Polyamory is about people and how they relate to each other. And most of the time, we don’t do great because we don’t live inside each other’s heads. But there is this toxic positivity culture -

Leanne: Yes!

Claire: - that’s like, the polyamory needs to look shiny and fun and if it’s hard – just the right amount of hard –  in the way that will align with your spiritual awakening and anti-capitalist agendas, because that makes it liberal and therefore, we think, accessible. And we have this particular sheen on it, which is never going to do justice to all the times people fail and do it wrong and miscommunicate and the million tiny papercuts that happen. I mean, can you imagine if that was the same with monogamy?

Leanne: Yeah, no.

Claire: I mean for one second, can you imagine if it was, “I mean, monogamy’s great. It’s just really hard, but totally worth it.” That would just be so weird.

Leanne: (laughs) I definitely want to talk about the toxic positivity thing more. Because this is something that massively grates on me as well. This whole thing where, “If you’re feeling jealous you just have to read this book and work through it.”

Also, there’s this expectation that once you’ve read the books and read the blogs and listened to the podcasts, you step into actively practicing polyamory and everything must be a hundred percent perfect, and you must be a hundred percent ethical from day 1. I think that’s quite a lot of pressure to put on people. It doesn’t give them room to make mistakes in the same way that monogamous people are allowed to make mistakes all the time, and they don’t get the monogamy label stripped away from them. So then I feel that it’s a disservice to the polyamorous community that we are holding ourselves to a higher standard. Not only because it creates a lot of pressure for those who are holding themselves to this ideal of having to be their best self all of the time, but also for people who are struggling or they’re having a bad time, they feel like the can’t talk about it because then it’s like, “Oh, we can’t talk about that now, because otherwise, the monogamous people are going to think that polyamory is toxic! So, we can’t talk about it!” And you just create this thing where people are gaslighting themselves.

Claire: Or other people are gaslighting them.

Leanne: Exactly.

Claire: Because there isn’t a discussion. I always say when you make a culture where it’s difficult to talk about certain things, you make a culture where abuse becomes invisible. That can happen to anyone and any relationship anywhere in the world. Generally, the not being able to speak about things is part of an enabling culture. All the time.

Leanne: Yeah, for sure.

Claire: I often have a hot take, by the way, which I’ve put on Tiktok so many times and it always gets taken down. Where it’s like, “If you’re cheating on your partner, you could still be polyamorous.” You’re not expected to do polyamory perfectly in order to be polyamorous. It’s like, “Well, if you cheated on your partner that means you cannot be monogamous, it’s impossible.” There’s so many messy things that we are like, “Oh, this just doesn’t happen in our community. Or if it does, then that means you’re not part of the community.”

[20:04]

Leanne: It’s a “one true Scotsman” thing. “It wasn’t applied correctly and therefore it is not that.”

It’s difficult because I think polyamory was born out of the idea that this is the ethical way to do things. So, goodness and ethics is baked into the history of what polyamory is, and now I think we’re distancing ourselves from it more, and just seeing it as a practice that can be done rightly or wrongly. In the same way that monogamy is. I mean, people fail at monogamy all the time. It’s about the double standard, again.

So let’s get into the meat of what we wanted to talk about today, which is polyamory and abuse. I think we’ve already touched on some aspects of it. How toxic positivity culture contributes to abuse being perpetuated, and how Franklin Veaux abused his platform and so many of his partners while being this pedestalized figure in the polyamorous community.

Claire: And still is, by the way.

Leanne: And still is. And still is. You’re completely correct.

Claire: Which I think is the next thing we need to talk about, which is like, we seem to be terrified of calling out people when we know they’re doing shitty stuff.

Leanne: Yeah, yeah. For sure.

Claire: I think that’s part of this as well. If we did that, then we wouldn’t be playing be the unwritten rules that polyamory is not toxic, because we’re pointing out toxic people. That’s kind of the job of the people that live in the house – is to point out the missing stair.

Leanne: Yeah, yeah. For sure.

Claire: That’s where that comes from. So, Poly Pages has always taken a very vocal stance on believing survivors and calling out people. It hasn’t always been popular. (laughs) But I’d rather be unpopular for that than – I mean you’re only unpopular to some people, right?

Leanne: Right, exactly. I think being content creators, you just have to accept that you’re not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. So, you might as well do whatever the fuck you want. (laughs)

Claire: Right. We have this weird thing in this particular subculture, where we don’t want to be accused of gatekeeping. And I think precisely because we’re moving away from this ethical model of, “This is how you should do polyamory,” and moving more into, “This is an identity or a practice, and it can be done many many ways. So, who are you to say what’s right and wrong?” But in that move, we’ve missed a part of this, which is that there has to still be a way by which you say, “Well that’s actually really shitty behaviour, and this person’s doing really shitty behavior regularly. This is abuse. This is an abuser.” We’re all so scared of being called gatekeeping, which we still get called daily, as content creators.

Leanne: Oh, yeah.

Claire: We’re never gonna encapsulate the whole experience because it’s so multi-faceted. We’re terrified of being called “gatekeeping” and so we’re silent. Obviously, if someone came and asked us, “Is Franklin Veaux an abuser?” We’d be like, “Yes.” But we’re not making sure that that is part of an everyday conversation about polyamory in a way that would actually protect people from identifying that as a bad way of doing polyamory, as a way that was very very harmful, and also identifying that person as someone who’s harmful or problematic for the community. He still has a couple thousand followers on Quora. He’s trying to peddle this again.

For Poly Pages it’s always been a bit of a weird stance to be so strong from so young. But also, what would be the point in not having that stance? It would only serve to hide behaviours that are problematic, and also protect individuals who have done harm. So, we’ve always taken a really strong “believe survivors” stance and mainlined it.

[23:55]

Leanne: I think that abuse in polyamory is such an important topic because I think – along with the whole toxic positivity culture thing – people don’t like to talk about the dark side of polyamory. There’s always this idea that it’s so freeing and love is abundant and it’s all sunshine and rainbows, and you know the reality of it is, well, you’re having multiple relationships and that’s hard.

And definitely when – speaking from my own experiences - I was in, I wouldn’t say an abusive relationship, but I was definitely in an unhealthy and toxic polyamorous dynamic a couple of years ago. I remember at the time there were a couple of reasons why I felt that it was more difficult for me to reach out and get support, compared to if I was in a monogamous relationship.

So firstly, there’s the whole toxic positivity thing we already addressed. I felt that I couldn’t smash the veneer that other people had so carefully crafted of what polyamorous relationships looked like. There was also the gaslighting that came with that. I often saw it as an internal issue. Maybe it was my own insecurities. Maybe it was my own trauma. And it was just something that I had to work through, because polyamory is supposed to be difficult, right? In the early stages, you’re gonna struggle a little bit. At no point did I ever think, maybe it was my partner that was the problem, or maybe it’s our relationship that was the problem. It was always, “I have to work through this hard thing” because I’m trying to reach enlightenment or something.

Then there was the additional pressure of the fact that I was living a non-normative life. I felt that I needed to prove a point to people that polyamory did work, that open relationships did work. And so, I didn’t want to tell people about me struggling or being really upset all the time or being really stressed all the time, because then I’d be proving the haters right. I’d be validating their opinions that polyamory was toxic and unhealthy, and that I was just being taken advantage of. Even though that very much was the case for me at the time. And, of course, a lot of people don’t understand what open relationships and polyamory and all that stuff is. So, then it was difficult to reach out and get support for that, because people would be just pointing at polyamory as the issue, rather than the personal relationship dynamic.

So, then there were so many barriers at the time that made it difficult for me to reach out and talk to people. It really wasn’t until I got out of it that I was like, “That was silly. That was so completely stupid.” I should have spoken out about it more, and I should have no doubted myself as much. Because there is a difference between regular insecurities fucking with your jealousy, and then there’s like distress and disregulation that can occur if your needs aren’t being met, or your partner is consistently neglecting you, or doing all kinds of horrible things.

So, I think it’s important to address the dark side of polyamory. I try to bring light to it on my platform. As much as I like making funny memes and stuff, I also want to talk about how certain practices can be very harmful. Things like triangulation in polycules. Things like if you do a “don’t ask, don’t tell” arrangement for the wrong reasons. If you try to appease all your partners at the same time, and in doing so, disappoint everyone at the same time because everyone has conflicting needs. There’s so many dynamics when it comes to any arrangement with multiple people, because everyone has their own perspective. Everyone’s kind of living in their own heads. It’s difficult to get everything out in the open and communicate effectively.

Claire: I think it’s important to draw a distinction between abuse and bad behaviour. We need to stop a snowball effect from these conversations. You might do something that harms somebody. You might do something that’s not agreed on, dishonest. For example, spreading yourself so thin you can’t meet people’s needs. That is harmful, but it is not abuse.

Abuse, for the record, the one I use at least: “a pattern of harmful behaviours with the intent, design, or consequence of making someone unable to leave a relationship.” This is, for me, at the core of what abuse is. And I think there is a great strength in be able to be like, it’s not this one behaviour, and it’s not this one checklist of red flags – even though we do have a check list of red flags on our website. It’s not just this one thing. It’s a pattern of these things that are packaged together.

For a long time, discussions of abuse didn’t include queer people or the idea that a woman could abuse a man. It was so heteronormative. And this is like, I mean, you’ve just said it made it really hard for you to access – I mean I imagine if you were timed up to a service provider and tried to explain that you think you were experiencing partner abuse – because people in an abusive situation can very rarely see clearly the abuse. That’s something that happens after you leave. Chances are, as you said, it’d be like, “Oh, it’s because you’re polyamorous.” Or at best, that’s a symptom of the abuse. At worst, it was a tool of the abuser that you’re with. I mean, to be clear, it can be. But so can monogamy. Monogamy can be used as an abusive tool by an abuser as well.

[29:50]

Leanne: Yeah, for sure. Something that related to that, actually, since you brought it up - I find that in terms of the differences between how monogamy can be used as a tool for abuse and how polyamory can be used as a tool for abuse, I find that in monogamy, it’s often more common for an abuser to use monogamy as a way to control and restrict someone’s behaviour. Like being very possessive over them, controlling their time, etc, etc. Whereas in polyamory, I think that often manifests itself as neglect. Someone enjoying their autonomy and freedom so much that they don’t care about the people around them. And they just do whatever they want because they think they don’t need to take any responsibility. “Your feelings are not my responsibility,” but taken to the extreme.

Claire: Yes, that could definitely be it, but it could also be like, “Well we’re polyamorous, so you have to be polyamorous. Which means I’m expecting you to be accessible to me in these ways at this time. I’m expecting my partner to have access to you in these ways at this time. I’m expecting you to do things that I want. In the same way that monogamy could be used to ask somebody to perform their relationship in a certain way, polyamory can do it as well.

Leanne: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Claire: It could be like, “I’m polyamorous, so I’m gonna do what I want.” It could be used in this way. But it could also be used in a way that’s like, “This is what you signed up for. So, you need to – ”

Leanne: Get with the program.

Claire: Yeah, and I think we see that in unicorn hunting quite a lot. Where it’s like, “This is the goal, so you need to do these things because we need you to perform in this relationship in a certain way.” Which is obviously dehumanizing, but eventually, if done with a package of other harmful behaviours, can make it very hard to leave the relationship.

There are comprehensive models of what that looks like and how those things will come together, but again, they are not poly-informed. And that was the issue that we were running into at the beginning of this year. There were literally no resources on what partner abuse in polyamory would look like. Like, none.

Leanne: So, could you tell me more about how abuse can be perpetuated in specifically polyamorous dynamics in ways that you don’t see crop up in monogamy?

Claire: Yeah, I definitely can, but before I start that, it’s important to say that a lot of the abuse is the same behaviour, just applied in different ways. The issue is that if the service provider or the theory isn’t poly-informed, it becomes invisible. Not because it’s not there, but because it’s not monogamous.

So, for example, gaslighting is one of the tools of psychological abuse, and you can point at gaslighting – and that’s gaslighting - and it doesn’t really matter if seven people are gaslighting one person or one person is gaslighting seven people – you know what it is. But, because there’s no formal adaptation of a model of abuse, the issue is not necessarily that the abuse is happening in specific or different ways in polyamory – although there are some, which I’ll go over in a second – it’s more that the understanding of those abusive relationships are not being captured by the polyamorous experience.

Leanne: Yeah, completely.

Claire: So, for example, the Duluth wheel of power and control is one of the best understandings of how power and control is used to maintain someone being in a relationship, which is abuse. And they have always had this quadrant on this wheel, which is called “male privilege.” Like, just male privilege? And I was like, “Mm, yes, but we need to update this.” My abusive relationship was between two cis women, me and another woman. So obviously these things are still happening, but without the gendered lens, or with a different gendered lens. So, in our adaptation, we included couple’s privilege in that.

Leanne: Okay, yeah, of course.

Claire: So, one that would come up in polyamory would be using couple’s privilege to implement change or introduce partner rules. For example, introducing or changing or implementing a veto rule without the say of the person that’s not in the original couple. This is a really common one I think. So, for example emotional abuse is sometimes thought of – again this whole package of behaviors and emotional abuse – we have things like using a nickname you don’t like in public in private is always thought of as one of these red flag examples. But you can very clearly apply this to a polyamorous lens. Where you’re being compared to your other partners in public or private. This is emotional abuse.

Leanne: Yeah, I think there can be competitiveness that can be exploited between metamours, where you want to be the good partner that doesn’t cause your hinge trouble.

[35:04]

Claire: Right. Another good example of emotional abuse is making someone feel guilty. Constantly making someone feel guilty.  We see this in a lot of the literature about abuse. It’s very very common and very very harmful because it leaves this deep, almost irreparable wound about what is okay for you to do and not do, which takes years and a very long time to recover. If we put a polyamorous lens on this, it’s making them feel guilty about the polyamory, or about the role that they want in the polyamory, whether or not this person is actively doing polyamory. If you are a monogamous provider or if you are providing monogamous centric or mononormative services for abuse, then you’ll say “Well, of course people feel guilty about wanting to have sex with other people. Of course they should.” But that can, again, be used in this way where it’s used as a tool of emotional abuse. It’s part of this big wheel of other spokes.

Threats and coercion is another area of the wheel. So obviously, this is things like intimidating somebody in a relationship, making them do illegal things. All of which can still happen in any type of relationship. But if you apply a polyamorous lens, then you get more specific things. Like, intimidating a metamour to leave a hinge partner.

Leanne: Yeah, or even two people, a couple intimidating a third by going, “You follow our rules or you leave,” and I think that adds almost a peer pressure, a group pressure dynamic to it that makes it even more difficult for someone to say no. 

Claire: Exactly. I’ve actually literally written down “threats to leave or expel a secondary from the home”. So, you’re getting it. These are not separate behaviours that are happening. We’re not capturing the unique ways that they present when there’s more individuals in this.

So, we’ve also got using children – again this is very monoheteronormative. This comes from an understanding of a battered wife in a home, not like - (laughs) But for example, when there is pressure to conform to the polycule’s family planning or birth spacing, that would be an example of the use of children that’s influenced by polyamory. Or demands to disclose your family planning information. No one should be having to tell anyone what their family planning or birth control looks like. That’s not something you’re entitled to because you’re in a polycule or in a polygamous marriage or whatever.

Intimidation is also a very large part of this wheel, which is obviously slightly different from threats and coercion, in that they can include things like smashing and destroying items, glances, gestures, the introduction of the object of violence. Like introducing a gun or knife into the home. In polyamory, we’re looking at specifically targeting items and things that have sentimental value in other relationships. Displaying jealousy and using that to justify intimidation. Or intimidating people that you are not in the relationship with, like your hinge partners or your metamours.

So, that’s just the first five. We’re gonna do the rest of them as well, because we’re here now. So, why not.

Leanne: (laughs) Yeah, why not. I really like reinventing this traditional model, because it is a good model, but it just hasn’t been adapted to polyamorous dynamics. So, do please continue.

Claire: It was only ten years ago that they included gender the opposite way.

Leanne: Oh really? Wow.

Claire: And now, you know, you and I are on Tiktok and it’s like, “I have no gender. Fuck gender binaries. Gender in this economy?” It’s so behind the times that it definitely needs a revision. And again I have to stress that this is not an officiated version of this. This is a project that we’ve done with some stakeholders that were not the Duluth wheel of power and control.

So, economic abuse is another area of abuse. Again these all work together and are kind of ringed by physical or sexual violence, which we won’t go into for various reasons, but the economic abuse was originally was thought of as being “giving a woman an allowance,” “taking away someone’s ability to work”. This was economic abuse in days of old. Now we can think about it as pressuring somebody to buy into a polycule or a commune. Threatening to keep your unicorn or your third off of the household income or address, which thereby economically impacts them. Threatening to out somebody to their landlords or to their place of work, for example.

[40:00]

Leanne: I think in heteronormative dynamics, there isn’t that extra societal - if you’re in a queer dynamic or a polyamorous dynamic, there is the pressure of being outed, and you can weaponize that. Whereas in a straight relationship, that wouldn’t be the case.

Claire: Right. Absolutely. As I said, it was only about ten years ago we began to introduce non-traditional relationships and that was when the idea that outing somebody could be weaponized as abuse really first got brought up. That was twenty years of the gay community being like, “This is a problem,” before they were like, “Okay, we’ll include it.”

So, the last two are isolation and minimizing, denying and blaming. So, isolation was always thought of as being one of the very first steps in abuse, in that you basically make it so this person doesn’t feel like they can talk about the relationship with other people. Maybe physically moving locations so they’re away from family and friends, demanding to see messages, telling them what they can wear, what they can read, etc. All of which can still happen in polyamory. But when we add a polyamorous lens, it’s like controlling what you can say to other partners becomes part of that. It becomes less about the isolation, but more about the feeling of isolation. Less about physically isolating. Using veto power can also be an example of this. If you’re using veto power, you essentially have a say over what the person’s saying and doing with other people and can isolate them very easily. Calling other partners during an argument.

Leanne: Yeah. Or leaving to go on a date with someone else, while you’re fighting. You just go, “Ugh, I can’t deal with you. I’m gonna spend time with whoever.”

Claire: So, we included these – and I think this is one of the most contested areas, actually when we were revising it – because polyamory is by definition less likely to be alone - but the feeling of isolation is really the key. That’s really the thing that you’re cultivating with these actions and behaviours. Because if someone feels alone, they feel dependent on you. And if they are dependent on you, they cannot leave. So, this is the mindset.

And the final one is minimizing, denying, and blaming. We’ve already spoken about gaslighting, but I think there are some really important things that need to be incorporated into this area of the model. Specifically making light of abuse has always been included, but claims of mutual abuse have never been formally included. And it’s very important to note that mutual abuse doesn’t exist. It’s a myth. It’s not real. And it’s a myth that is used by abusers to justify or deflect from what they’re doing.

Leanne: DARVO.

Claire: Exactly, DARVO – deny, attack, reverse victim and offender. And, this we see this so much in polyamory because we are a small community that knows everyone else’s business. So, it becomes really hard to unpick accusations of mutual abuse. Luckily, when we were working with the Network La Red, it was very insightful because they have a screening tool for service providers to precisely unpick this and figure out who the initiant of that is. I think that’s just really really important because we need to be very clear that this myth of mutual abuse is part of the wheel of power and control. It’s part of the way that we think about abuse, not an actual genuine accusation.

So, that’s a little smorgasbord of what we’ve got here. And I think it’s really important to say that obviously, each one of these things is not abuse, but that is why we define abuse as a pattern of behaviours and actions. Because it cannot be this one thing.

Leanne: And in any case, even if someone doesn’t check enough of the tickboxes to qualify as abuse, it’s still toxic behaviour that should be called out. I think a lot of this stuff gets brushed under the carpet for all the reasons that we mentioned already. I think one of the greatest disservices that the polyamorous community has done is seeing jealousy as purely an internal issue. I think that is a problem that I think really harmed the community –

Claire: Literally from the pen. Literally from the pen of Franklin Veaux. That literally was his abuse.

[44:39]

Leanne: Yeah, because it completely ignores that jealousy can be caused by external factors. Actually, now that we’re on the topic -

More Than Two, as a book, was a very formative text for a lot of people. It was definitely a very formative text for me, early on in my polyamory journey. Everyone read The Ethical Slut and More Than Two, those were the two most recommended books, right? And I do think that More Than Two has valuable bits in it at the end of the day. The subtitle to More Than Two, was “a practical guide to polyamory,” and I do think it did serve its purpose for quite a lot of that. I learnt quite a lot of really useful things in that book. But I don’t know if anyone’s actually ever done a critical reading of More Than Two in terms of what it got wrong and what kind of toxic beliefs it perpetuated that still exist in the community today.

One of those things is the framing of jealousy as a purely internal issue. You have to work on yourself and process it and no one can help you. And I think another one is the emotional libertarianism idea. The, “Your feelings are not my responsibility” and that being taken to its extreme. Going like, “I didn’t cause your feelings of jealousy, so therefore it’s not my issue to deal with.” And I was wondering if you had any more thoughts on what More Than Two got wrong, and what people should look out for if they ever should return to that text.

Claire: So, the text itself – the survivors have always been very clear that they believe it does have a lot of value. That it’s still got very important ideas in it. That it’s not just a historical artefact. It’s meant to be pragmatic. I know that the survivors have always requested that if this book is recommended, it is with the addendum of Franklin Veaux’s personal life. Because what is written – and this is one of the very first critiques – there’s a great documentary about Franklin Veaux’s abuse, actually, which is just a dramatized retelling of the hours and hours of interviews done by Louisa Leontiades. If you Google The Polyamorous Parasite, you’ll actually find it. It’s only about an hour long. And, one of the very first critiques that comes out was like, this guy is writing a bunch of stuff, but is he actually doing it? No. So, I think when you read it, you just have to have that lens. That this is being written by somebody who wasn’t practising this. This is kind of like a theory that would have been good to practice.

And it’s also worth noting that a lot of that editing work and a lot of that writing work was done by Eve, the co-author. So, I think it still has an awful lot to give, and maybe we should do a critical reading for season 2 of Poly Pages. That would be fun. I think it just needs to be added with the addendum that this wasn’t practised. And also that his other books – The Gamechanger for example – the survivors have asked us to not read this book. Because it’s his first-person narrative of the relationships and is a tool itself of minimizing, denying, and shifting the blame for his abuse. It’s basically a manifesto of gaslighting.

Leanne: Wow.

Claire: Which is why I would never recommend The Gamechanger or any of Franklin Veaux’s other texts. There are so many people making new content. There’s new ways of delivering knowledge. There’s a lot more podcasts out there. The Multiamory podcast, I think, is the gold standard of how-to. There’s a lot of documentaries that’s been made by our community like Poly Role Models or the Normalizing Non-Monogamy project. There’s so much new stuff out there. And as you say, I don’t think that many people are coming here because of the book they read. I think they’re reading the book because they’re here. It’s this chicken and egg situation, but I’m pretty sure it was the egg. Do you know what I mean? (laughs) People arrived and were like, “Maybe I should read about this.”

So, for me, it’s more important that we’re having these discussions that are informed by our knowledge of what has happened. Especially when we’re talking about abuse, More Than Two is a case study of abuse, The Gamechanger might be, but More Than Two isn’t. And the discussions since we started running knowledge-making content and dissemination about abuse in polyamory, we are seeing a blooming of discussion on this topic. I think what needs to be done is, we need to be linking it back to the theory and the resources about abuse that already exist. As Poly Pages did with this Duluth wheel of power and control, but there are many other connections that need to be made.

[50:00]

Leanne: Absolutely. I think you’re doing really important work in this space, particularly bringing light to Franklin Veaux, but also abuse in polyamory in general. Like, yourself and the people who joined you for the Abuse in Polyamory workshop. So, Eve Rickert, obviously, Polyamorous Black Girl and Sydney Rae Chin. Polyamorous Black Girl is doing an incredible video series right now on TikTok about polyamory.  

Claire: And more importantly has a workshop on abuse in polyamory. I think it’s important to plug that as well. Bless Alicia’s heart. She wrote this whole thing and her laptop got stolen. She had to re-write it from scratch. Can you imagine?

(talking over each other)

Leanne: I would cry. I would cry.

Claire: I would not have done it. I would not have done it. I am telling you right now, I would have been like, “Okay, I’m getting a ghost writer.” I wouldn’t have done it. I couldn’t have put myself through it twice.

Especially as someone who is publicly a survivor, we have this issue with abuse generally, where the burden is on the survivors. The call out is on the survivors. And more often than not, the call out doesn’t work, and they just end up with a huge smear campaign. And it just wrecks people’s lives and it’s really harmful. So, to be going through all of that, and still be making something for the community, I think it’s really important to give extra props to Alicia for that. Because it cannot be personally easy.

I think the only other thing to say is: we have been working to figure out a way to do events – because we run events regularly – we’ve been working out ways to make those safer. And to make sure they actually put into practice the “believe survivors” stance that we have. During Polyamory Day, we had this package of interventions that were specifically to alleviate that burden. Anyone can report anyone. And it might seem like, “Ah, the flood gates are open!” but we thought we should try it to see what would happen if it wasn’t like “you, yourself, have to have been harmed in order to out this person.” What if it was like someone completely outside the situation heard something and then reported it.?What if it’s somebody who saw someone doing harm or heard about someone who saw someone doing harm? Like, to what degree do we allow it? So, we put the marker way back and opened the floodgates to try and see: would this still be actionable? And then we’ll work in from there. That was kind of a behind the scenes thing that was happening at Polyamory Day – it was to see if we can do this. And with the next Polyamory Day, we’re going to write a report on it, including what we’re gonna do differently. We might be introducing vetting, which is something that’s already done in the kink community, but we don’t necessarily do it in polyamory, formally, at any rate. Now, there’s lots of stuff happening. There’s lots of workshops, there’s lots of thought projects, there’s lots of trials being run. But that only happens if we keep the conversation relevant and moving.

Leanne: Absolutely. It’s interesting that you were almost doing a little social experiment through Polyamory Day, which none of us even knew about. Sneaky.

Claire: Ah, thank you. Yes, super sneaky.

Leanne: No, that’s super cool.

Claire: Because the other big polyamory conferences of the U.K., have traditionally been marred with, if not actual abuses within the committee, then people that are very closely associated with them. Again, we don’t want to be called gatekeeping, so we’re not gonna talk about it. And I’m like, “Someone’s gotta say it.”

This is not to actually make someone’s life hell. It’s to improve the community. That’s the goal. It’s not a vindictive thing. You’ve still gotta say it. You’ve still gotta be like, “Well, you’re a known associate of a known predator in our community, so maybe you shouldn’t be running the event.” Or maybe someone else should be involved. Or maybe there should be a set of common practices that we agree is the minimum standard for running events in order to keep them safe.

Leanne: Yeah, and you know like, it’s honestly so bizarre to me finding out that Franklin Veaux, had his fingers were in so many pies, that he reached even polyamorous spaces in the U.K. I was so shocked to find out that there were so many people in the U.K. who were associated with him and aiding him in his current projects. I just didn’t think that his reach and his influence was that far. And it really shocked me.

Claire: I don’t think I found it very shocking, because if you think about a person that would seek out a subculture in order to leverage it for their own abusive reasons – not gonna let that go, like ever. I mean, eventually, I suppose he’ll drop off the face of it. We’ll think that will happen, because I don’t know how you come back from such a huge blow than this, but it was a bit like, “Oh, you’re still here, like a bad fart.” (laughs) Read the room and leave, c’mon.

[55:30]

Leanne: Genuinely, it is honestly a plague on our community that the person who wrote one of the most well-known texts on polyamory – to the point where it was literally shown in You, season three, was like –

(talking over each other)

Claire: Oh my god, You season three was so trash.

Leanne: It was really trash. Well, I mean You is generally - In a way I wonder if that was a clever – I don’t think the showrunners are that clever – but maybe it was saying something that it was using that book in particular since the show is literally about a narcissist psychopath person. But, no, I don’t think they’re that clever that they showed that book, rather than any other one.

Claire: No. I doubt they even contacted the authors or the publisher. I’m pretty sure they just took – this is a book that people - They probably went for The Ethical Slut and then someone was like, “You can’t show slut on T.V.” And they were like, “Oh, sorry, yes.” The multiple murders is fine, but we could’t possibly have the word “slut” on a book or it’d be bad. (laughs) So we’ll go with this other one.

Leanne: Oh my God. You know, you’re so right. I think that is probably what happened now that I think about it. Oh man. Oh my god.

Well, this has been such an informative chat, Claire. You’re bringing light to some issues that are very hard-hitting, but very much needed in the community. So, where can people find you on social media?

Claire: We are everyone @polypages. I’m personally @claireltravers on all media. You can follow Polyamory Day. We have our own Twitter specifically for Polyamory Day. And that’s @polyamoryday.

Leanne: Very easy!

Claire: Our website is www.polypages.org and the Polyamory Day website is www.polyamoryDay.co.uk. I think that’s everywhere. We’re on Tiktok. Poly Pages is on Tiktok. I do sign language on Tiktok as well, in my personal capacity, and Instagram is also one of our platforms. I think that’s all our platforms. We’re not on Facebook.

Leanne: Do you have any events that are coming up that you’d like to plug?

Claire: Yeah, we do. In the New Year, we’re kicking off our events seasons in the New Year with one on long distance amd polyamory. Talking about that pipeline I mentioned about starting from long distance. But also, the other way, how do you transition polyamorous relationship to long-distance? With Evita Sawyers, myself, and one other panelists, that’s not yet confirmed, so I won’t say them.

We also have the Poly Pages book club, which is running starting in January. We are reading Love Isn’t Colorblind, by Kevin A. Patterson. And we have two facilitators for that. We have Evita Sawyers and Krista Varela Posell. That’s going to be great. I’m really excited to read that. We did a lot of stuff we haven’t talk about in this, but we did a lot of stuff around racial and colonial implications in polyamory this year. So, this is a continuation of that discussion. If you’d like to come and get involved, the Poly Pages book club is less than a cup of coffee a week in price or something. So I definitely think it’s an affordable way of engaging with these texts in a supportive reading environment. And you get to meet the authors, which is really cool.

Leanne: Yeah, absolutely.

Well, thank you so much for the work you do, Claire. It was great to speak to you today. Thank you so much.

Claire: Thank you.

Leanne: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Happy Polydays series. If you’d like to support my work, consider becoming a Patreon subscriber at patreon.com/polyphiliablog. You can also follow me at @polyphiliablog on Instagram, Tiktok, Facebook, and Twitter, buy my polyamory merch at polyphiliashop.redbubble.com, or book a peer support session with me on my website polyphilia.blog. Until next time!