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Polyamorous Women, Sexual Subjectivity and Power

This article explores polyamorous women’s potential to enlarge the concept of sexual subjectivity through their engagement in nontraditional relationships and their attempts to reject sexual objectification. Polyamorous people openly engage in romantic, sexual, and/or affective relationships with multiple people simultaneously. Polyamory differs from swinging with its emphasis on long-term, emotionally intimate relationships and from adultery with its focus on honesty and (ideally) full disclosure of the network of sexual relationships to all who participate in or are affected by them. Both men and women have access to additional partners in polyamorous relationships, distinguishing them from polygamy. This ethnographic analysis expands sociological understanding of women’s sexuality by investigating this previously unexamined area of sexual subjectivity. Specifically, the author analyzes some of the ways that polyamorous women expand so-called normal social roles, discusses their sexual lives and identities, and explores novel and traditional forms of power polyamorous practice engenders for these women’s relationships.