I don’t have much to add to this post-NY-gay-marriage-law-passing post at Shakesville.

Now that my ass (hip, actually) has celebrated marriage equality in New York on the front page of multiple newspapers, I thought it would be a good time to discuss logical next steps in the fight for justice. Here are three:

1. Keep up the fight for marriage equality
[...]
2. Destroy marriage
[...]
3. Give trans* people equal rights already

I will say I went to an OLNY discussion group this week where Barry Smiler spoke on his paper “There’s No Such Thing As Polyamory.” His premise is that “polyamory”—or other versions of what would more generally be called ethical non-monogamy—should be reframed (for communication with potentially sympathetic folks who otherwise don’t get it) as not all about sex or love, but about self-determination with respect to those things. In other words, it’s all about the larger enlightenment project of progressive self-determination.

Putting aside the problem of “the enlightenment project” itself and the “arrow of progress through history” (all baloney), the point here is that the discussion ranged far and wide, and finally someone asked him, “OK, but what’s the point? What are you communicating this for?” He said, “we want to be left alone.” Most people seemed to disagree.

His sentiment is good—there are partnerships of more than two who have their children taken away by the state, or receive discrimination at work, so, surely “being left alone” (by the state and employers) is a decent way to put it.

But some had a larger critique, and mine touches on what eastsidekate said in her Shakesville post about destroying marriage. I’d go a step further, and say we should destroy institutionalized monogamy—or, rather, monogamy as the cultural norm.

Monogamy in the West is and always has been about economics and property. It is only very recently that some (and by no means a majority even in America) have considered it a partnership between equals rather than a situation where the man is the head of the household and owns access to his wife’s sexuality. Fidelity has only ever been completely expected of women. Men operate under theoretical fidelity but actual easily excused infidelity.

The point is that monogamy has always been unequal, and is still enshrined as unequal in mainstream religion and civil (state) society.

Furthermore, monogamy sets a special class of people—conjugal couples—with special privileges in the form of access to special legal rights, special cultural acceptance, etc.

In other words, monogamy is similar to patriarchy in its insidious construction of privilege and hierarchy, and just as in feminism, the goal should not be assimilation into privilege, but the removal of privilege in the service of equality and liberty.

Put another way, the default, normative expectations should be consent-based freedom of association, but monogamy is the norm and not only binds people away from expressing freedom of association with others, it rewards them with special social privileges.

All this is not to say that people shouldn’t practice monogamy. With all the privilege removed, certainly some would still choose at times to enter agreements with others that could be called monogamy: exclusivity in terms of physical intimacy, perhaps in… well, what is monogamy, anyway? Once you get past the sexual access, is it exclusivity in terms of emotions? What about friendships, then? Only certain kinds of emotions? What about brotherly love, then? Only the oxytocin-generated pair-bonding related to sexuality? What might be called romantic love?

Perhaps in future some folks will say to each other, “I like you so much I don’t want to oxytocin-pair-bond with anyone else but you.” But others should be just as free to bond however they want with whomever will consent. Most importantly, none should get special privileges, and even more importantly, the cultural norm should not be an assumption that one’s affection for another should automatically bind the other into an ownership/entitlement arrangement with you. In fact, put that way, it’s actually kind of sick.