Polyamory : "Loving Unlimited"

 
 Unconditional loving, loving "without limits and without restrictions"
 in all areas and in all interactions, is one of the basic aims and
 guiding principles of the Aluna network of communities for the New-
 Partnership Era to come.

 Let's get really clear that  "polyamorous" for us is by no means
 identical with something like `poly-sexual'.  A polyamorous person is
 not necessarily "sexually-involved", particularly in the sense of
 genitally-sexually involved, with more than one other person  - or any
 other person at all.

 Amor comes from the Latin word for love; and poly signifies much or
 many.  Hence polyamory is simply, and emphatically, love extended to
 many.  Polyamory, for us, is parallel to panfidelity : loving extended
 to many in the context of faithfulness to all.

 In the most significant sense, the term polyamory will obtain its
 meaning from our actions rather than any prescribed definitions.  It
 will be the comportment of members of the Aluna family in their personal
 behaviour and intimate relationships th at will make it clear, to every
 perceptive individual at any rate, what polyamory means to us.

 We find it important, indeed very important at this time, to take the
 undue emphasis on "sexuality", usually a genitally-oriented notion of
 sexuality, out of the practice of love and loving. This is particularly
 important for most people whose views, and actions in the "sexual" area,
 have been  so badly skewed, twisted and warped, by the conditioning of
 "normal" society .  We want to integrate natural sexuality  and sexual
 behaviour in a large variety of kind, loving, enjoyable, pleasurable,
 affective actions and interactions among ourselves.  That will become
 recognized and known as polyamory in the Aluna new-partnership
 communities of the coming era.

 Regarding more overt "sexual" behaviour and "sexual intercourse", our
 guideline is simply this :  Don't do it if you don't want to;
 and  Do it if you do want to. Don't push anyone into "sex" who
 doesn't want it; and do support everyone in having whatever "sexual 
 activity" s/he chooses --  as long as there is no compulsion or other
 form of coercion involved.

 It's the second part of those couplets that we now most often find
 underrated, or entirely avoided, because of its positive, action-
 oriented  "pro-sex" emphasis.  The negative, action-inhibiting,
 injunctions: Don't "have sex" if you don't want to ! -- and don't
 let anyone push you into it ! have been battle cries for quite a
 while now by those helping the beleaguered subjects, if not victims, of
 sexually-aggressive humans, ostensibly usually male human beings.  
 And  they've had a lot of success in that regard.  So much so that in our
 experience the balance has become skewed significantly toward a negative
 "anti-sex" direction.

 In practice, we now more often come across people - usually women - who
 can assert their `rights' not to be sexual and who have very effectively
 learned to say "No".  Sadly, we find a lot fewer who have actually
 learned to exercise their `rights' in an ultimately much more satisfying
 positive way, by asserting their power to say, "Yes : I sure do want to
 and I sure will !" -- allowing themselves full-on sexual-genital
 pleasure along with intimacy, enjoying themselves in it -- and being
 able to do so without fear, apprehension or guilt.

 This is particularly important if they want to be intimate with more
 than one sexual partner at a time; and even more so if they are women.
 In all patriarchal cultures the standard rule has been "Life-long sexual
 exclusivity".  That literally means excluding everyone else from one's
 sexual intimacies.  There were only two categories for all "proper and
 decent" people to fit themselves into : the celibates -- eunuchs,
 priests, and all other "unmarried" people who were meant to have no
 sexual relations at all with anyone (and that included themselves); and
 those who were "married" -- who were allowed to have only one partner,
 of the "opposite sex", for life.  The partner in "wedlock" usually also
 had to be of the same race, colour, "class", etc. -- the regulations
 were massive.

 These rules are held to be the "law of God" by all dominant orthodox
 "religions", East and West, and have been rigorously and often violently
 enforced, most especially on women, in all patriarchal cultures around
 the world over the last four to five thousand years.

 A woman who dared to have more than one "lover" has been denounced as a
 "loose woman", a whore, a slut, and a heap of other ugly and degrading
 epithets.  Such women were "excommunicated", socially ostracized, abused
 and terrorized, by most other women as well as the men in their
 communities.  In earlier times they were accused of sorcery, "consorting
 with the devil", drowned in "trials" and burned as witches.  In India,
 widow-burnings continue to this day; in Africa the mutilation and
 removal of young girls' genitalia are specifically directed to prevent
 women's sexual pleasure and submit them to the possession of their
 husbands.  In "modern" countries, women continue to be kept in line by
 powerful means of social disapproval; the majority of "professional
 counsellors", churches, schools, and the media continue to reinforce
 huge negative judgements, and to instill shame, fear and sexual guilt in
 women who seek to love and be as fully sexual as they choose.

 Most people in the "New Age" movement are not much different in this
 either : at best, the issue of human sexuality is just avoided; or else
 we are enjoined to "lift" our sexual energies up to the heart and
 spiritual levels, where we can be "safe" with them in ourselves and with
 other people.  At worst, this is a subtle and insidious way of masking
 the same old negative judgements and another complete betrayal of our
 (God-given) nature -- particularly when it is paraded as a valid form of
 Tantra, "sexual/spiritual mastery" or "higher form of enlightenment".

 This is the sexual legacy of patriarchy and its dominant "religions" old
 and new which are still with us, deeply embedded not only in the
 traditional social fabric of the culture, but also within our own
 psychies and physical bodies -- like a destructive virus at the cellular
 level of our being.  All of them are forms of social control based on
 the fear of loving fully, totally and abundantly.

 Polyamory is both the means and the end for moving beyond this
 destructive legacy and healing ourselves, our societies and our Earth,
 at every level.  Unconditional and unrestricted loving extended to our
 own Self and to all those around us in whatever ways they are prepared
 to receive it, restores our innate (God-given and God-like) natural
 qualities -- in all aspects and dimensions of our presence here on
 Earth.

 And that includes specifically also our "sexual" interactions and
 relationships with one another.  Polyamory means freedom from abuse,
 freedom from oppression, and freedom from violence.  Through it we
 liberate our Self and one another from the oppression of the old
 dominator culture.  And this is especially the case for women and the
 feminine aspects in us all and in the world around us.

 Polyamory also means freedom to enjoy our Self and one another in the
 fullness of our nature.  And especially so for women, and everything
 feminine and female in our world.  And that, we are confident, will
 eventually make all the `negative' injunctions against being fully
 "sexual" quite unnecessary -- and even inappropriate.  (Any more than it
 is appropriate to caution people against being fully "spiritual" with
 one another !!)

 Therefore restoring balance  -- and eventually making the `negative'
 injunction "against being sexual" quite unnecessary in practice -- is
 very important in the Aluna network.  And it's significant in the
 actions and behaviour which we model as "polyamorous" :

 By "loving" in a multitude of different ways; by avoiding the undue
 emphasis on genital "sexuality"; by not getting any more overtly
 "sexual" than we want to with anyone else; -- and by getting as
 physically intimate with one another, enjoying as much genital-oral-
 physical-sensual-lustful "sexuality" as we want to, when we want to,
 with whomever we want to, who also wants to with us !

 That's polyamory as we practice it now, and as we intend to expand it in
 the Aluna community networks of the future.

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(c)1998 PolyPagan