Description
Drawing from qualitative interviews with sixteen women, this thesis seeks to obtain insight into the ways that polyamory—the practice of maintaining consensual relationships with multiple partners simultaneously—affects women's lives in a variety of ways. Because existing research on polyamory has predominantly focused on white, middle-aged, and upwardly mobile men and women, this project instead emphasizes the importance of using intersectionality to analyze how race, class, gender, age, and sexual orientation impact the specific experiences of polyamorous women. After providing a detailed history of polyamory and its resultant literature, I also utilize these interviews to explore whether or not polyamory can be conceptualized as a queer practice. The results suggest that both the desirability and accessibility of a polyamorous identity is deeply affected by prescriptive categories of social location. Participants saw polyamory as empowering because it allowed them to maintain sexual autonomy and an identity separate from that of their relationships; for queer participants, it also gave them the ability to satisfy their diverse attractions to other genders and sexes. Despite this, participants rejected the notion of polyamory being queer in and of itself, mainly due to the presence of heterosexual men, though they did see the polyamorous and queer communities as being allied. Collectively, the participants reveal how polyamorous women must navigate complex negotiations of identity as they attempt to assert their romantic and sexual agency within a patriarchal society.
