This three-part Venn diagram titled “The Role of Privilege in Polyamorous Relationship Structures” is part of Franklin Veaux’s incredible sexual informatics visualizations and shows the overlap of “Male Privilege,” “Couple Privilege,” and “Entitlement”:

At the intersection of male privilege and couple privilege is the one-penis policy (“OPP”), which is a manifestation of sexism that results in common relationship rules of the form “My partners can have other women, but not other men.”

At the intersection of couple privilege and entitlement is the polyamory veto, which greatly contributes to systemic oppressions against “secondaries” and is typically retroactively justified by those who have “primary relationships” (and thus couple privilege) with the callous notion that “our relationship always comes first.”

At the intersection of entitlement and male privilege is compulsory polygamy, including secular polygamous practice, and sounds like some shit-face saying things along the lines of, “I get to have a harem, but none of my women can have anyone else.”

At the intersection of all three of male privilege, couple privilege, and entitlement are unicorn hunters, also known as Hot Bi Babe chasers, which sounds like, “We’re looking for an attractive bisexual woman to move in with us and to be with both of us exclusively. She will be lucky to share in all the love we have to offer her!”

What is too often left unsaid is that these are systemic problems within the polyamory community that the community, as a community, is heavily invested in denying (with the notable exception of Franklin’s visualizations, of course). There is also relatively little work within or directed at the polyamory community challenging these tropes in a forceful way. Franklin’s own writings, such as his recent essay Polyamory: Some Thoughts on Rules, lays a great foundation that I’d love to see advocated far more strongly than I’ve seen it been, to date.

I’m currently musing on these and similar topics in preparation for Atlanta Poly Weekend 2012, where I’ll be giving the conference’s opening keynote. I’ve been fortunate enough to be granted that remarkable opportunity, and at a time in my life when I’m struggling to unpack the effect these things have had on my personally important relationships.

Please let me know if you have any experiences to share that relate to these topics, or come across additional material that has informed your thinking on the matter.

For some of my own thought pieces on polyamory, see:

(via Franklin Veaux’s Journal - Polyamory and Privilege)