Racists that we are, polygamy seems terrible to us. But as polyamorous people, unions of more than two seem great. How do we resolve such a conflict? The Canadian Polyamory Advocacy Association is clear: “We are NICE”, says its website, “negotiated, individualized, consensual, and egalitarian.” We are nice people, we are the cool ones. In a single sentence here they labelled the ones that are “not cool”, the bad ones, are the Others. The polygamists. [...]
“Polygamy” is a Greek word that was used until the second century to refer to serial monogamy. Later it disappears from European languages only to return in 1558 in French, and in 1590 in English. 800 years of Islam in Europe certainly gave enough space for the reappearance of the term, yet even the medieval chronicles of the Iberian Peninsula speak of “multiple marriages” among Muslims and I have not found the term “polygamy” anywhere. [...]
All right. But what these websites forget is the aspect of biopolitics that governs our sexualities and our loves. And so, although polyamorous groups say that “men and women can do it equally”, the reality is that there is a higher criminalization of women’s sexuality and non-binary identities, as well as an exclusion of dissident sexualities that make cisgender men the biggest beneficiaries of this new revolution. We know that biopolitics exists, but it always exists for others. We are so sure of our “post-superiority” that we believe that reading Foucault makes us impervious to Shakira’s influence. Actually, biopolitics is precisely about Shakira, and not Foucault.
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