Yes, Women can be Polyamorous
And what you’re really saying when you claim otherwise
When you are openly and vocally polyamorous online, you will hear a lot of ridiculous myths.
One of these myths is that women can't be polyamorous. That if a woman claims to be polyamorous, they are lying, and the truth is they have simply agreed to it because they're scared of losing their man if they don’t agree to let him have sex with other people or to let him watch her do the same.
When I hear people say these things, I can only feel pity for them. Pity, because to think something like this, you have to be living with such a patriarchal, restrictive, and misogynistic worldview. A worldview where a woman’s decisions are based solely on the happiness of a man.
So, let’s put this myth to bed, shall we? Women can be polyamorous. 100%, enthusiastically, polyamorous.
First, we need to take a look at why people even think women can't be polyamorous to begin with.
When people say that women can’t be polyamorous, what they are often actually saying is women don’t like sex.
The fact is, a lot of people are unable to hear the word “polyamory” without thinking the word “sex”. Of course, sex and polyamory, while often closely linked, are not the same thing. The reason many people make this connection boils down to the fact that as the most obvious thing about ethical non-monogamy is that it allows people to sleep with someone outside of their relationship; surely this has to be the only reason people do it.
So, what has this got to do with women being polyamorous?
Well, when someone says, “Women don’t want polyamory,” what they don’t realise they are actually saying is, “Women don’t like sex”.
Let's talk about why they think that.
Taking Gender Out of Sex
For the interests of this argument, I would like you to say the following two statements out loud:
Men like sex. It’s all they think about and the only reason they would want to spend time with their girlfriend/wife rather than their mates.
Women don’t like sex. Other than to get pregnant, they only put up with sex to keep their man interested because if she doesn’t, he'll cheat on her with someone else.
Now, did you do it? Did you hear how ridiculous you sounded? How out of date and backward? Did you throw up a little in your mouth, just forcing out words? Did you feel like you were the narrator in a 1950s far-right propaganda film?
That’s because these ideas are ridiculous. However, despite how obviously outdated and untrue we know them to be, they are burnt into our society's subconscious, and many people still believe them, in one form or another, even if they don't realise it.
Why do we Think Women Don’t Like Sex?
Well, to be frank, a lot of women don’t enjoy sex. Or, to be more accurate, have never experienced sex that they've enjoyed. Isn't it easier to believe this is simply how the world is, rather than consider the possibility that society is actively preventing you from experiencing a better quality of life?
Ultimately, the idea that women - as a homogenous group - don’t like sex is a self-fulfilling prophecy. We, as a society, don’t think women can enjoy sex, so therefore, we don't bother to create a world where that is the case.
In an article in Psychology Today, Why Women Don’t Enjoy Sex as Much as Men, Professor David Ludden, Ph.D., breaks down some of the reasons people have come to believe that women don’t like sex as much as men. I recommend reading it in full, but in summary:
If women are brought up their entire lives being taught they won’t enjoy sex, they are going to believe it.
For reasons that are too numerous to go into here, women, on the whole, tend to experience worse sex than men.
Despite modern societal attitudes changing, the “Madonna/Whore” binary is still deeply ingrained in our society, meaning that women who do enjoy sex are shamed out of celebrating this fact.
Essentially, women are taught, consciously or unconsciously, that they are never going to enjoy sex as much as men. They then see women who are overtly sexual being shamed as "sluts" or judged for pandering to the male gaze. So they are not going to question if their sex lives could actually be better, and if they do enjoy sex, they are more likely to suppress these feelings for fear of also being judged.
Compare this to how men are raised. Teenage boys are taught that sex is not only pleasurable but a goal in itself. Even if their sex life is any good, the fact that it happened at all is enough. (And because part of toxic masculinity means all men must be great in bed, they are afraid to discuss whether their partner is having a good time because it would be a wound to their ego.)
In a nutshell, women are conditioned to not question mediocre sex, while men are conditioned to refuse to believe sex with them could possibly be mediocre in the first place.
If women can be polyamorous, why can’t I find them?
Okay, so women can be polyamorous, says the straw man I’ve summoned for this paragraph. Why, then, is it impossible to find polyamorous women when I’m looking for dates?
And it’s a fair, if naïve, question. Try being a man on a polyamorous dating app. You sign up, create a profile, and start swiping. Then, after not too long has passed, you finish swiping. Because there are no more polyamorous women available. You've managed to go through every woman on the app who has stated they are polyamorous. If you're not talking to women and educating yourself about the realities of the dating scene, it's easy to assume that this means there are simply far fewer polyamorous women than men.
Well, my first point would be to look at what I wrote above. There probably are fewer women openly looking for open relationships than men. Because women who might want to explore polyamory don't know about it, or feel too ashamed of their sexuality to be willing to explore it, or - and I'm sorry, but this is often the case - they have been scared off by men who think being polyamorous means a woman is a "slut" who will have sex with anyone and everything without caring about being given any form of respect.
The reason a lot of women won’t be open about being polyamorous, at least around men, is that we as a society have made it difficult or unsafe for many of them to do so.
Claiming Women Can’t Be Polyamorous is Diminishing Them
When people say a woman isn’t really happy in an open relationship, they are perpetuating the outdated myth that women don’t enjoy sex and merely endure it for the sake of keeping their man happy. This, in turn, is rooted in patriarchal and sex-negative stereotypes designed, ultimately, to reduce women to objects that exist for the needs and pleasures of men.
This, I hope I don’t have to actually say, is not even vaguely true.
Women enjoy sex - and polyamory - just as much as men or anyone of any gender! This shouldn’t be a controversial statement. But I know more than a few people who, despite considering themselves modern and progressive, still fall into the trap of thinking that someone's assigned gender has a direct impact on the sorts of things that person will or will not like.
I’m not immune. When I posted about this topic on social media, I received the following Reply:
For what it is worth, the "women can enjoy" makes it sound like women are not the initiators of polyamorous relationships or do not come to polyamory independently of male instigation. Which, in my experience is certainly not so.
The language we use when discussing a topic says a lot. Even when trying to make one point, my use of the word “can” could indeed be read as me inferring women to be passive in their decisions to explore polyamory.
Women can be polyamorous. Women are polyamorous. It’s not okay to dismiss any polyamorous woman as someone pandering to a man’s fantasies rather than pursuing their own desires.
Even if a couple are only exploring ethical non-monogamy for the sexual element - and remember, this is not the only reason a couple decide to open their relationship - that doesn’t mean the woman hasn’t actively and enthusiastically been a part of that decision.
The claim that women can’t be polyamorous comes from a lot of places, but at its root, it’s claiming that a woman’s desires are external and that all they care about is pleasing their partner rather than enjoying sex for their own sake. If that's what you think, you need to take a long, hard look at your attitudes about women, gender, and sex in general.
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