I was in a late-night email check, not planning to rezz nor to mind any second life business tonight, but one group notice pointed to JIRA asking for enabling multiple partners. Officially recognized polyamory!
Well, polyamory is always a lovely issue. One of those that can keep me out of bed (hmm, that sounds strange now) for a bit more tonight.
For those of you that are not so relationship-experimental and wonder "what's that Greco-Roman word she is talking about now" here's a short bit of Wikipedia:
Polyamory (from Greek πολυ [poly, meaning many or several] and Latin amor [literally “love”]) is the desire, practice, or acceptance of having more than one loving, intimate relationship at a time with the full knowledge and consent of everyone involved.
If anyone is in doubt, it is not the same as swinging, promiscuity, partner swapping or alike. It is having more than two in the loving family. It is open which kind of relationship your significant others will be in.
Well, it had to happen. Polyamory is a widespread practice in meatspace, let alone the grid of our imaginations. It was a question of time when reshaping of the partner feature will come up. For now, partnership is exclusive to one person and it is a short straigh-forward process that costs 10L$. One nice thing was that nobody asks about the gender setup of the new partnership, not even the species of the partners. Unlike meatspace, you can register your marriage even if you are gay dragons. Only thing you cannot is to have more than one partner at a time.
What really bugs me here is that "consent of all participants in a partnership" part of the JIRA. Not that that consent is not necessary. Consent of all the participants is needed, in this as in all the other things we do. For many other, if not all things, that's the only rule that distincts do's from dont's. But do we have to complicate the process and load the databases with all the emails of consents of the all involved? Do we need Lindens to check if we all agree about our relationships? Or we can behave like grown-ups and live in our families in a healthy and responsible way?
Sure, somebody can ask why do we feel the need to inform the Lindens about that significant person(s) at all? Why do we need a special field on a profile page to show who we share poseballs with? And if we feel like screaming somebody's name to the whole world (hey, there is at least a bit of the crazy-in-love screamer in each of us!), why don't we use that big about me field? There is enough space there, for all the partners and all the wows and all the sweet and naughty things we feel saying. Much nicer than simple bearucratic info partner field offers. On the other hand, if you can be officailly monogamus, why not having a possibility to be officially polyamorous?
There's quite a few issues with this. How do you feel about it? Polyamory itself? Polyamory being offical? Bearucracy around it? What partnership means to you?
there is a equity issue, of course. if monogamous people can officially partner then people who have multiple partners should have the same option available to them. pretty simple really.
at the same time, i wonder if this concern is worth bumping up the JIRA list. there are certainly other things i would have LL work on instead, especially since i suspect many polyamorous people would not choose to officially partner anyway.
Honestly, the equity issue Chestnut mentioned is the only reason I can think of to vote yes on this (which I did). Otherwise, you’re right – relationships here are something built on understanding, comittment, and self-sacrifice, and they’re unique to every set of people involved in them. Making it a little check in a box kind of takes away the meaning.
I like your idea of using the “about me” space. Many people also use the picks column. Some of us wear some symbol of our commitment, others have children together, some people you just know by looking that they are a couple. So much variety here, and so many ways to express our love and make our world more beautiful.
Thank you for a great post, and for getting me thinking about a topic that’s been in the back of my mind a lot lately.
Best,
Argent
Gee, does that mean I’ve got to start juggling my lovers on the partner list all the time, to keep the family happy about who’s where on the list,or worse, who’s on or it not ? Eyuk. Argent and Chestnut are right, there are better way to do this…
So… aye in principle to the option, I guess, but nay as to me personally :)
I voted this up originally on the equality issue, but having heard from so many poly friends that it would actually be annoying I’m about to unvote it again. Actually from what I’ve seen among my non-poly friends I think a better JIRA would be “remove ‘partner’ functions to reduce drama”. Drama can be worse than lag, after all! :)
Thak you all for the comments. So far, this sounds as one of the most useless JIRA issues so far. OK, I’ll rephrase…
It is funny to see that we all vote for it because of equality and rarely even think about using it. Not that equality doesn’t mean much. It means a whole lot. But, sometimes, beneath technical questions, there is a harder to solve social issue. It will be interesting to watch how this develops. And for sure, it would be nice to see the reaction of the community on “remove the partnership” proposal.
After reading the comments here, I went back and unvoted. I’d almost rather vote for a “remove all partnerships” JIRA than this one, I think. Either way everyone is equal ;)
Best,
Argent
I think it should only be one, even though I’m poly. Because it’s important to remember who the primary partner is in any such relationship.
Nat.
But that is only one of possible shapes of a relationship. Not all polyamorous relationships have the same pattern.
What if you have more than one primary? To me, everyone is a primary, if anything at all. There should be a poly option. If not, it would be a discouragement of love!
And even if there is somebody that is "more primary" than others….. That’s internal thing.
Love is internal in its nature!