In a default polyamory world with stigma against monogamy, imagine a monogamous person expressing any difficulty. "My partner cheated on me" or "Im into this other person but can't act on it"
The world would use these normal flaws to mock and degrade monog people. 1/
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Very similarly, it's dangerous to express any problems with a lifestyle that the world holds stigma against. In reality, every single lifestyle holds problems; stigma is just the line between which problems get justified and which are interpreted as signs of deep failure. 2/
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I think this is often why persecuted subcultures get extremely sensitive to people pointing out actual flaws - they've learned that people use the flaws as a weapon, and don't trust anyone making a move towards it.
This is unhelpful for everyone, and leads to stuff like -
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Everyone getting really touchy if you try to talk about stuff like race and crime.
The answer to this is to stop using flaws as evidence of failure or an excuse to judge. Your identity and lifestyle are riddled with "flaws" too, you're probably just much more blind to them.
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It's the kind of social hypothesis that generally gets explored in sci-fi novels (surely there are some about it already).
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Aldous Huxley was ahead of his time in wrighting "Brave New World" - tis a shame that people always flock to 1984 instead...
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This is exactly why I’ve started focusing on using terms like “ethical relationship styles” as a broad category rather than “polyamorous” or “nonmonogamy” — Relationships are about agreements, not defaults. I wonder if there’s an corollary to the other issues you’re describing.
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