“Polyamory” and the Internet

Last week we learned that polygamy, or plural marriage, exists in many societies around the world. This week we discussed how changes in technology alter the experience and expression of sexuality. Those two themes come together in a recent commentary from Wired, which suggests that polyamorous relationships are on the rise in America, in part due to social networking outlets on the Internet that offer new ways of interacting with similarly minded people. From the Wired piece:

While having multiple committed partners is not a new concept, many polyamorists have told me they felt lost, guilty, alone or freakish until they came across the word polyamory on the internet and for the first time had a context for the way they felt about love.

“You can argue that before the internet, the poly community didn’t exist,” says Franklin Veaux, author of What, Like, Two Girlfriends?, a respected polyamory FAQ. “There’s no question that the rise of the internet and the rise of polyamory coincided, although poly does predate the net by 6,000 years or so.”

Polyamory may not be a new practice, but the concept is probably new to most Americans, and relatively few research papers have been published on the subject. What do you see as the benefits and difficulties of a polyamorous lifestyle? If you could have two partners consent to such an arrangement, would you be interested? What moral or ethical issues does polyamory raise for you?

Not-so-human sexuality

Two recent stories in the news highlight some of the ways in which human morals and human behaviors are used to discuss sex behavior in the animal world.

In the first story, two western lowland gorillas in Congo were filmed having sex in the “missionary” position - that is, face to face. This is a style of sex that has not been reported before in this subspecies of gorilla, much less filmed in the wild.

Leah and George’s encounter made their plight even more poignant for Breuer.

“It leads me to think about how similar gorillas can be to humans, [and yet] we humans are destroying them,” he said.

In the second story, wildlife experts and animal rights activists are clashing over the controversial pregnancy of a juvenile endangered elephant. Wildlife experts are excited over the pregnancy, as it represents the first pregnancy of a captive elephant in Australia; activists argue that the breeding standards for captive elephants have been violated and the zoo has acted irresponsibly in allowing a juvenile to become pregnant.

Allowing such a young elephant to fall pregnant was “the equivalent of allowing your 12-year-old daughter to become pregnant,” said Erica Martin, Asia Pacific Director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).

“It is completely irresponsible,” Martin said in a statement on Thursday. Martin said that under captive breeding plans elephants should be at least 11-years-old before conceiving.

Like Lauren’s earlier post on macaques and “grooming for sex,” these two stories are news, in part, because we attach human meaning to animal behaviors. Certainly, humans are animals themselves, but are we reasonable to ascribe human values to animal behaviors? Does face-to-face sex in the gorilla world suggest greater intimacy between partners, as we suggest about human lovemaking? Does the pregnancy of a juvenile in the animal world mean the same thing that it does in the human world? In what other ways do we ascribe human qualities to animal sexual behaviors, or vice versa?

How Cupid’s Arrow Works

In the wake of Valentine’s Day and our discussions about sexual attraction this week, you might want to take notice of several recent research reports.

On Tuesday, the results of two new studies were announced, just in time for Valentine’s Day. The first, soon to be published in the journal Psychological Science, suggests that attractive people are indeed attracted to other attractive people. Surprise, surprise… From the UPI story:

The study, scheduled to be published in the journal Psychological Science, found people with similar levels of physical attractiveness tend to date each other, with more attractive people being more particular about the physical attractiveness of their potential dates.

In addition, the study found people prefer to date others who are moderately more attractive than they are. The researchers also found that most people agree on what is attractive, characteristics like symmetrical faces.

However, results from a different study, soon to be published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, suggest that when people fall in love, they find other people to be comparably less attractive. From a Reuters story:

Feeling love for your romantic partner appears to make everybody else less attractive, and the emotion appears to work in very specific ways in enabling you to push thoughts of that tempting other out of your mind,” said Gian Gonzaga of eHarmony, whose study is published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.

“It’s almost like love puts blinders on people,” added Martie Haselton, an associate professor of psychology and communication studies at UCLA.

These two announcements follow on the heels of similar recent research on human sexual attraction:

All of this research might lead one to think that we really have no control over who we fall for in matters of love. In my discussion sections, many students felt that physical qualities were far less important than personality characteristics. Do you agree? If so, is personality something that can be evaluated with first impressions? Do you believe in “love at first sight”? What about “first sound” or “first smell”?

Does Flirting “Count” as Cheating?

In lecture on Wednesday, Dr. Gravlee asked a question about sexual fidelity: Are you being unfaithful if you fantasize about someone other than your partner? Your collective reaction to this question was the loudest so far this semester! Well, what about flirting?

CNN.com recently ran a story examining workplace flirtations. The story suggests that flirting on the job can be good for business, but it also describes a new term for people in platonic work “relationships”: work-spouses.

It’s hardly a unique situation. The career information Web site Vault.com reports that in a 2007 office-romance survey of 575 employees, 23 percent said they had a “work husband” or a “work wife.”

As with real spouses, work spouses turn to each other for mental and emotional support, perhaps share inside jokes or even bicker like married couples. But that’s where the line is drawn.

What does flirting accomplish and why do we do it? If you are in a relationship with someone, do you think that flirting with someone else constitutes “cheating”? What if it was your partner who was flirting with someone else? Have you ever had a workplace relationship similar to those described in the story? Would you feel comfortable with your significant other having, or referring to, their own work-spouse?