Compulsory Monogamy Research Articles

Social media construction of sexual deviance in Hong Kong: a case study of a Facebook discussion

This study explores how social media constructs sexual deviance and violence against women. Based on vigorous debates on Facebook about the cheating of case two Hong Kong celebrities, we analyzed how cheating and promiscuity are constructed as sexual deviance on social media in Hong Kong through a politics of claims-making. Research has demonstrated how promiscuity and cheating are facilitated through the Internet. It has yet to show how social media sustains compulsory monogamy and constructs promiscuity and cheating as deviance to induce violence against women. Our study contributes to understanding how CM is sustained and how it constructs sexual deviance in scoial media. We discovered that discussing taboo sexual practices through Facebook involves mainly punitive informal social control and only strengthens the stigmatization of them, regulating gender and sexual morality, sustaining compulsory monogamy, and oppressing women and practitioners of marginalized sexual behaviors. We call for updated measures on social media outlets like Facebook to regulate cyber violence and encourage civilized discussions on taboo sexual topics.

IS IT (MICRO)CHEATING? HOW SOCIAL MEDIA CONFOUND ASSUMPTIONS IN ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS

Social media have changed the ways we communicate, meet others, and form intimate relationships. However, technology can also mediate intimate partner surveillance and abuse (Muise, 2009; Tokunaga, 2010). One of the most explicit ways to understand these shifts is through the transgressing of relationship boundaries, defined and enforced by settler-colonial notions of compulsory monogamy (TallBear, 2020). Anxieties around cheating have evolved along with our technologies, as evidenced by ambiguous new terms like “microcheating” and “emotional cheating” (Lusinski, 2018). In this in-progress, mixed-methods study, we examine new definitions of cheating through analyzing discussions about potential transgressions on Reddit. Specifically, we investigate 1) which behaviors cause uncertainty in emerging forms of social media-enabled infidelity and 2) the degree to which relationship discourse online naturalizes the extension of compulsory monogamy into online space. For our pilot analysis, we used computational techniques to elicit common subjects within subreddit posts to then analyze qualitatively. We began with Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), an unsupervised natural language processing tool, to organize Reddit posts and comments by topic (Blei, 2012). Then we qualitatively analyzed Reddit discourse by using critical discourse analysis. Our pilot analysis suggested a belief that proof of (in)fidelity can be found on a partner’s smartphone, such as by reading texts. This orientation toward evidence then justifies surveillance and hacking of a partner’s phone and computer presence, construing the invasion of privacy as the right to truth. This preliminary finding suggests that discourse around transgressive behaviors on social media likely reiterates compulsory monogamy and settler sexuality.

Bounded Nonnormativity of Heterosexuality: Gendered Sex Partying in Hong Kong

Despite queer theory’s intention to critically analyze the institution of heterosexuality, how heterosexual men and women are differently constrained by normativity—or potentially rupture it—is underexplored. Through an ethnography of sex partying, I integrate queer and feminist perspectives to examine how people navigate and cope with institutionalized heterosexuality and compulsory monogamy. This study finds a contradictory relationship between sex partygoers and normativity: They embrace the ideal of straight manhood and womanhood but simultaneously feel constrained by and desire to transgress it. Therefore, the bounded nonnormativity of sex partying, which allows the compartmentalization of normative and nonnormative desires, is instrumental in helping them cope with the contradiction. This paper contributes to gendering transnational queer sociology by highlighting the distinct experiences of men and women in relation to the regime of normalcy in Hong Kong.

Polyamory Is Deviant – But Not for the Reasons You May Think

ABSTRACT This article identifies types of consensual non-monogamies (CNM) and contrasts them with cheating. When people realize that some people negotiate multiple partner relationships and monogamy is not the only option, they have encountered the polyamorous possibility and might have one of three common reactions. These reactions are embedded in a culture shaped by compulsory monogamy, within which CNM does not fit. Under the relational panopticism of compulsory monogamy, conventional society attributes significant stigma to polyamorous relationships. Two of the ostensible reasons for this attribution of deviance include the fact that polyamorous people have sex for pleasure and maintain multiple partners. Because these are common in other relationships as well, these apparent reasons are not the actual reasons for the stigma and deviance. Rather, there are at least three real reasons for this deviance assigned to polyamory, including honesty, women negotiating access to multiple partners, and the challenge it poses to heterosexual nuclear families.

Monogamous Mind, Polyamorous Terror

Monogamy is not a practice, but a system and a way of thinking. The monogamous mind extends from our romantic relationships with our national identities in a historic development linked to capitalism and colonialism. Monogamy is the latest step in the binary sex-gender system and must be observed as a part of it. Following the works of, among others, Michel Foucault, Arthur Evans, and Silvia Federici, as well as Frantz Fanon and Cedric Rodinson in colonialism, we can observe how the implementation of compulsory monogamy took place and where. Also, which are the key points to observe when we analyse forms of non-monogamy in the Occidental context.

“One among many”? Relational panopticism and negotiating non-monogamies

Drawing on qualitative in-depth interviews with people in the USA who have formed consensually non-monogamous relationships, this article introduces the term relational panopticism and uses empirical data to demonstrate the theoretical concept. Three primary themes in the data illustrate the origin, expression, and enforcement of relational panopticism: (1) encounters with institutions; (2) encounters with personal networks; and (3) coping and resistance strategies. Focusing on the daily reproduction of compulsory monogamy and the ways in which people in non-monogamous relationships negotiate and resist that reproduction, this study reveals how marginalized romantic and sexual relationship configurations are received and negotiated in interaction with family, peer groups, and institutions.

Intimacy negotiated: The management of relationships and the construction of personal communities in the lives of bisexual women and men

Bringing into dialogue conceptual literature on bisexuality, intimacy, and personal community, this article illuminates the lived experiences of 80 bisexual women and men in the UK. The data were collected through questionnaire and individual interview. The article discusses two empirical themes, beginning with the participants’ narratives on their engagement with the dominant sexual and gender order – which hegemonizes ‘monosexuality’ and ‘compulsory monogamy’ – in their negotiation of relational intimacy. This is followed by an exploration of the features and functions of their personal communities, especially the significance of friendships. The article argues that, despite the ambivalence and misperception surrounding bisexuality, the participants enacted creative agency in negotiating intimacy and social support in their everyday lives.

Constituting compulsory monogamy: normative femininity at the limits of imagination

Feminists have coined the term ‘compulsory monogamy’ to describe the deeply normalised status of coupling, especially for women. To say that monogamy is compulsory is to call attention to constraints on our ability to imagine alternatives. The visibility of alternative relationship models can challenge monogamy's grip on our imaginations, but it can also reinforce its status. This paper explores how normative femininity functions to code monogamous and non-monogamous possibilities as desirable and undesirable, respectively. While both are possible, monogamy is reinforced as healthy adult sexuality – for women and men – through the policing of femininity. The paper grounds this discussion in a reading of a film – Two Girls and a Guy – in which the possibility of a non-dyadic relationship is on the table and at the same time rendered implausible. The analysis has implications both for further unpacking cultural investments in coupling and for resisting compulsory monogamy.

‘There Aren’t Words for What We Do or How We Feel So We Have To Make Them Up’: Constructing Polyamorous Languages in a Culture of Compulsory Monogamy

Polyamory is an emerging sexual story that troubles mononormativity: the dominant discourse of monogamy which is reproduced and perpetuated in everyday conversation and saturates mainstream media depictions. Through an analysis of online discussions, websites and self-help books, this article explores the ways in which members of polyamorous communities construct their identities through language. We argue that the potentials of polyamory are, to some extent, constrained by the conventional mononormative language of partnerships, infidelities and jealousy. However, alternative languages are emerging which offer new discursive possibilities for the development of polyamorous identities, relationships and emotions.

Bi Books

This article reviews three classics of polyamory, Anapol's Love Without Limits: The Quest for Sustainable Intimate Relationships; Easton and Liszt's The Ethical Slut; and Nearing's Loving More: The Poly-fidelity Primer. The reviewer defines the authors as pioneering poly women who have mapped the territory for authentic alternatives to compulsory monogamy in realistic yet visionary ways.

Monogamy's Law: Compulsory Monogamy and Polyamorous Existence

Marriage and monogamy feature prominently on the public stage, but not all romantic relationships come in pairs. While people across the political spectrum debate the different-sex requirement of civil marriage, this article focuses on another limiting principle of monogamy's core institution: the twoness requirement. In particular, the article elaborates the practice and ethical principles of contemporary relationships of more than two people, called polyamory. Such relationships take many forms and aspire to several identifiable values, including radical honesty, consent, and the privileging of more sexual and loving experiences over other activities and emotions such as jealousy. The article asks why polyamorous relationships face such severe normative censure. After considering various objections, the article concludes that one key component of the censure is, paradoxically, the ability of most people to imagine themselves having sex with someone other than a primary partner - in other words, a paradox of prevalence. Despite the widespread desire for more than one sexual partner, however, and despite relatively widespread nonmonogamy, most people do not engage in polyamorous relationships. But neither do most people affirmatively choose monogamy: Laws and norms exert strong pressure on people to promise monogamy, and most people simply succumb to this pressure. The article argues that although monogamy is a sound choice for many, polyamory is a sound choice for others. Building on this premise, the article considers some ways that information-forcing principles of contract law might be used to help encourage people to make active, reflective choices about monogamy.