Heyyy Girls!
I just came back from a weekend where I attempted to convert absolutely everyone to my anti-monogamous stance and I also tried to smoke less weed so now I am on a fucking roll and I think it’s finally time I attempt to lay out my anti-monogamous stance.
Thanks to my continueous conversations about this with everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, I feel very warmed up and like I have discussed and thought about many aspects of the questions.
Now, I’ve already written the main text in this substack, because at first the text was written for another substack dedicated to: what comes first, the death of monogamy or the death of the “system”. And when I tried to define monogamy and its ideal death, I wrote 4 pages on what I meant by « monogamy » « relationships » « couples » blablablabla…
So I thinks its best if I start with an exposure of everything I’m thinking and then write substacks on continuing subjects.
If I had to summarize in a sentence my argument, it’s that the way we relationship today is a format that is only 200 years old and serves a capitalist and bourgeois utility. Therefore, knowing that, we should emancipate from this alienating and dangerous way of loving.
The only legitimate counter-argument I have found to this argument is that emancipating from monogamy is entirely dependent on your material reality as the State and system only recognizes and financially aids these types of relationships.
However, if you have the financial freedom to question the way you love and fuck, because we are only taught to do it one way, in a framework corrupted by capitalist possession and legal partnerships, then maybe you should.
Monogamy is not only sexual exclusivity
When I talk about monogamy, it has very little to do with sexual exclusivity. Of course I believe people should stop policing their partner’s body as a heritage of patriarchal and religious control over women’s body and a bourgoies « instinct of private property » as Kollontai calls it.
What I call monogamy is the specific construct of proto-mariage relationships in the capitalist West. It’s super important to state and I will repeat it, that the form of romantic/sexual relationship between people has only been around for 200 years in the West, arriving at the same time as capitalism and rural exile.
As Kollontai (her again, her always) explains, « relations between genders are defined by the economic context of the time ». In our time of ultra-capitalism, where the State needs to make sure the worker is working, the system has forced us to a co-dependant relationship style where, married or not, your romantic partner is supposed to be your best friend, your roomate, the only person that has to sexually satisfy you, your main source of socialization, your financial partner, your partner to raise kids, your therapist…
Historically and to simplify it, this capitalist and bourgeois system ensured two things:
That the male worker can work as much as possible since he has his partner to complete all the unpaid domestic labor. This also allows for the creation of kids - our future workers! Its perfect. Basically what am I arguing is that relationships today (married and unmarried) are just utilitarian systems put in place to make sure you are used to your full potential as a worker. :). nice. You’re right, monogamy is SO love.
Under capitalism, the bourgeois ideal becomes the accumulation of capital, accumulation that can only happen if the family unit is undevided, that no kids exist outside of that mariage and that inheritances are easily transferred. Before capitalism in the West, under feodalism for instance, marriages already existed as an economic structure benefitting the participants. However, love and sex existed in other spaces: there was a logical seperation of the two. Once again, the way we decide to build relationships today, where love always means marriage or proto-marriage, is just proof of how strongly we have been progantated to believe that mariage is more than just a utilitarian system.
So once again, having sexual non-exclusivity in your relationship means nothing if you still entertain this form of co-dependant capitalist relationship. I wrote a Substack on this book supposedly about non-monogamy, where for the whole book the author praises non-monogamy but tells us at the end that she actually is in the form of co-dependant relationship but just they can fuck other people. L O L. Bro, you are still in a system where your romantic partner is dangerously at the center of your life, expectations and life projects, a co-dependancy that is toxic, not sustainable and dangerous.
No exceptions. Don’t be a reformist
My other point and I will write another essay to defend it, is that there is no monogamous relationship that is an exception. From the moment you participate in this structure (probably by necessity because once again marriage is financially benefical since its State sponsored) you are guilty of participating in this system.
Once again, I’ll develop this is another essay, but to tease a little, for me, this is the same question as reform vs revolution. Reformists are guilty of sustaining and benefitting from the system - There are no expections: You can have the best intentions at heart, but wanting to change things form the inside is cowardly collaboration. Same for monogamous relationships: you can be the most feminist, well-intended man, participating in this monogamous system makes you a danger to the person you love. That’s why all men are trash, all white people are trash, all bourgeois are and all cops are bastards. Because no matter your personal intentions, you exist in a system bigger than you which makes you an oppressor. Basically what am saying is I don’t care if your monogamous boyfriend reads feminist literature (first of all he should read decolonial anarchist feminist literature if I may), he is actually actively participating in a oppressive structure for you. Thank u boyfriend!
An example of how oppressive monogamy is: the male gaze
I don’t want this essay to be super long, so I won’t get into loads of details on all the ways I have found monogamy to be oppressive. However, through a discussion with my friend Kassandra, I realized the mega strong link between monogamy and our enslavement to the male gaze and this, I want to share.
Monogamy is oppressive because it emprisones you (specifically if you’re a straight women) in the male gaze. Monogamy entails sexual exclusivity: therefore, technically, you are in competition with all other women for your partner’s exclusivity. You have now made a pact where you are supposed to satisfy him in every way, until the end. Well, how can you ever escape your male partner’s gaze when you are put in a constant state of sexual competition with other people for your partner’s sexual exclusivity. Indeed, we’re taught that our partner not fucking someone else is the ultimate form of love.
Anyways. Girls, please. That’s why often girls with boyfriend are factually dimmed out - notably because our girls our catering to a higher power: their boyfriends.
I feel like I will be repeating and building my definition of monogamy is many of my Substacks. I’m sorry if it does feel repetitive. I think my ultimate aim is to find the perfect word to talk about the specific western capitalist monogamous relationships we know, to stop having to describe what I mean everytime.
Obviously, probably the biggest blindspot in my argument is that I only seem to be referencing straight relationships. I’ve never had a monogamous queer relationship, so I don’t have personal insight on what it’s like living in an oppressive gendered structure but without responding to the gender norms. So please feel free to share your thoughts and experiences on this. I do have a feeling tho that this “instinct of private property”, can go beyond straight couples.
I am not talking about non-monogamy, I am talking about monogamy
One last point, is that I’m not offering a specific alternative to all of this. On the contrary, I think people should do what they want. Even being in love with just one person. What I’m arguing is that the way we have relationships today is oppressive and only 200 years old: we therefore should emancipate from it (again to the extent where it’s materially possible, which I’m guessing is the case for almost no one and certainly almost no women).
Obviously, the more I write and read and debate and the more I construct my opinions and thoughts. And a though I had recently, touching on this subject, is that when I talk about all of this to people (even very left wing people btw) they keep talking about my argument on « polyamoury » or « non-monogamy » or « open relationships » or idk wtf else but actually, what I realize I need to stress to people, is that I am not fucking talking about that.
I am talking about MONOGAMY. I am denoucing monogamy, not advocating for another relationship structure without talking about how we have learned to love in such an oppressive and private property way. So when someone who refuses to challenge their decisions and systems tries to change the subject and talk to you about their definition of « polyamoury » and how they find it complicated, bring back the conversation to what is important: MONOGAMY. Emancipate from that in your brain, and then you’re free to love and fuck however.
But so, why try to emancipate from it now if its materially impossible to survive in another structure then monogamy. Indeed, they are financial incentives to get married and sustain that format, the state helps with no alternative form of relationships. Well, I believe we should still try and we should try in the name if the upcoming revolution, because emancipating from capitalist and patriarchal intent at the core of your intimacy is fucking powerful and revolutionary and endangers the capitalist, patriarchal and bourgeois order.
If we love in another ways we can think about the sex we want to have, the communities we want to be a part of, it redefines the questions of parenthood because it is now a choice you make independently of the imagined childish nuclear family, it redefines the central people in your life, it redefines your freedom… bref the power is infinite. Also in a more crude and practical sense, if the worker doesn’t have his wife also producing the domestic labor, then worker dies and no worker means no production means no money for bosses. See: simple :)
I could write about this for hours and hours and hours and I see even more arguments coming up. Next time, I would like to focus even more on how monogamy is oppressive and what freedom emancipating from it can bring.
In the meantime, here are my two fave sources that have inspired me to write about about love under capitalism.
Alexandra Kollontai: she wrote a lot about « free-love » and « comradeship love » as alternatives of community and love to the capitalist and bourgeois structure she denounces. She has a lot of fiction and non-fiction about all of this.
The AK-47 Podcast by Kristen Godhsee: She is a US professor and Kollontai expert and has this insaneeee podcast where she reads and deciphers Kollontai’s texts. It’s the best and makes Kollontai super accessible. Live laugh love Kristen Ghodsee.
I’m out of sources 4 now.
In the meantime, keep up the good fight as Kristen says!
loveeeeeeee