Monogamy, polyamory and gender prejudice

Hor received many emails on the topic of female polyamory. In essence, men like to think of women as essentially monogamous; if they cheat, it’s because they have a reason, for example they are neglected by their man. But it is a comforting thought. Because, although the dynamics may be different, many women have multiple men, just as many men are truly monogamous.

A reader wrote to me: «After all, what have we always expected from women? Loving kindness, faithfulness, fertility. But a woman is not a living being born with the one and only purpose of procreating and protecting. The woman is something else entirely. And in some ways it is so similar to man that it is scary. Instead, if a man has many women, he is automatically admired, almost forgivenbecause “it is in human nature”».

«If a woman has many men, as in the case of polyamory, she is automatically a no-good who aims only at her own pleasure (as if it were not the same thing for a man), going straight on her own path without paying attention to all those social conventions that have made her the figure that we still expect her to be today. Why? Why did it happen and why does it still happen today? Women are certainly no more inclined towards monogamy than men. I rather believe that he simply had, for centuries, less possibility of “falling into temptation”.

«Many are still deeply linked to the romantic idea of ​​love, fidelity, the nest to build and protect. But they are not pure instincts: they are models that society has sewn on them for so long that they seem natural. And living within this contradiction is not easy.”

«It’s like feeling perpetually balanced between two opposing thoughts: on the one hand “I am like this, this is my nature”, on the other “maybe I’m wrong”. Perhaps true courage, for a woman, is precisely this: stripping off the clothes that others have sewn on her and trying to understand who she really is, beyond what she has been taught to be.”

It couldn’t be said better.