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Key points
- Nineteenth-century consensual nonmonogamy was shaped by anarchy, feminism, and transcendentalism.
- These philosophies are connected by a common emphasis on consent and acceptance of women as full humans.
- Some nineteenth-century nonmonogamists lived together in experimental utopian communities.
- These communities often fell short of their utopian goals. Even so, they provided novel role models and tried to create equality.
While polyamory is a subcategory of nonmonogamy and the two are not synonymous, they are closely linked enough to share a common history in the United States. Polyamory is a fairly recent addition to a litany of nonmonogamous relationships, some of which have directly influenced the evolution of polyamorous communities. In my dissertation research, I divided consensual non-monogamy and polyamory in the United States into three “waves” occurring in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. This is the first in a series of posts that explain this history and how it has shaped contemporary polyamorous communities. For a longer, more dated, and more heavily cited version of this idea that CNM comes in three waves in the US, please see the longer blog here.
Anarchy, Feminism and Transcendentalism
Several philosophies combined in 19th century United States society to create a unique openness to consensual nonmonogamy — especially for white people living in the North East. In her dissertation, Dr. Loraine Hutchins -- a retired author/activist who co-edited the groundbreaking anthology, Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out and helped put the B in LGBT -- analysed the influence of 19th century sacred sexuality traditions and trends on contemporary conceptions of erotic relationships, practices, and communities. Dr. Hutchins explained the connections between expanding relationship possibilities outside of monogamy and the new understandings of human social interaction that accompanied anarchist, feminist, and transcendentalist thought.
Based on the philosophy of human solidarity and freedom from sovereign or political authority, anarchy is a school of thought, form of social (dis)organization, and social movement. In the 19th century in the US, anarchy spawned workers' movements that fought for fair labor practices and legislation. The anarchist disdain for centralized authority and hierarchy lent itself to suspicion of monogamy, and anarchist leader Emma Goldman famously condemned marriage as separate from love and monogamy as a failure.
Nineteenth-century feminists focused primarily on suffrage and sought legal recognition of women's votes. Some took it further to espouse women's freedom to control their own fertility and have children if and when they chose. Access to birth control changed women's sexuality significantly, because they could have sex without fearing unwanted pregnancy. Using birth control allowed some women to have multiple partners and bear children with none of them, or select when they were ready to get pregnant and who they wanted to impregnate them.
Transcendentalists believed that people have individual relationships with the Divine, and this fostered their view of freedom, liberty, and equality before God. While certainly not the paragons of contemporary feminist thought, 19th-century transcendentalists were quite egalitarian for their day.
Common Threads
Among these three philosophies common themes emerge. Dr. Hutchins emphasized the crucial nature of consent in this and later waves of CNM in the United States: “Rather than looking at multiple spouses, of one sex/gender — the polygamy enacted in sexist exploitative societies — we can instead experience freely-chosen and created relationship forms that arise without nuclear family nor heterosexist dictates. These ways of building bonds are more evolutionary ways of evolving friendship intimacies and attractions that occur as people become close."
Especially important for this post, their common focus on egalitarian social relationships and acceptance of women as full humans created the space for the first wave of CNM in the US. This is important historically, because previous multiple partner relationship formats were almost exclusively polygyny in which one husband could have multiple wives. For women to have access to multiple men was historically and socially unique, and not particularly widespread at that time. In fact, most of what we know about CNM during this era is based on communities that separated themselves from the mainstream society around them.
Communities
Polyamorous identity did not exist during the 19th century, but this initial expression of consensual nonmonogamy had profound influences on later thinking and communities that challenged monogamy. Several groups seeking to build utopian communities practiced various forms of multiple partner relationship styles.
Brook Farm in Massachusetts was a utopian experiment in equality where community members worked together and embraced religious and social diversity. Women’s equality extended from equal pay to full community membership independent of their husbands or male relatives, freeing them from the imperative to belong to one man.
Wealthy Scottish immigrant Frances Wright founded the Nashoba community in the hills of Tennessee. Initially conceived in 1825 as an experiment to educate and free people who were enslaved in the US south, Nashoba became known as an interracial free love commune. Local Christians and slaveholders objected to the lack of segregation and especially inter-racial sexual relationships, and financial pressure eventually closed the community.
John Humphrey Noyes founded the Oneida community in 1848. Noyes established a system that he called complex marriage that married each woman with each man in the compound and stipulated that community members should think of each other as siblings. Noyes intended this rejection of monogamous marriage to offer an alternative to monogamous relations, which he felt destroyed community by encouraging selfishness and exclusivity. Adults also cared for the children of the Oneida community collectively, and the kids lived together in a communal children’s house. Parents were required to treat all children of the community equally and were forbidden from showing special affection to their biological children.
Although they were collectively founded on the utopian ideals of equality and liberty, none of these experimental communities were able to perfectly enact their lofty goals. All too often they recreated aspects of the same racist and sexist hierarchies they had sought to escape, and each eventually collapsed from internal divisions and external financial pressures. Even with their flaws, they nevertheless attempted grand social experiments and offered alternative role models. The second post in this series explains the second wave of CNM in the United States.
References
Sheff, E. (2005). Polyamorous relationships: Exploring community, gender, family and sexuality. Ann Arbor: ProQuest Information and Learning Company.
Hutchins, Loraine. 2001. Erotic Rites: A Cultural Analysis of Contemporary US Sacred Sexuality Traditions and Trends. Unpublished dissertation for the Cultural Studies Department, Union Institute Graduate College.
Muncy, R. 1973. Sex and Marriage in Utopian Communities. Bloominton, IA: Indiana University Press.
Hutchins, L. (2010). Bi any other name: Bisexual people speak out. ReadHowYouWant. com.
