(Un)usual suspects: Relational capacities and subjective transformations in polygynous and polyamorous practices in the Netherlands

Abstract

Choice and autonomy are at the heart of classic feminist debates about structure and agency. This article revisits those debates with two contemporary cases of polygyny and polyamory. While scholars of non-monogamies often portray polyamory as potentially liberating, an alternative to the dominant patriarchal model of dyadic marriage, polygyny is generally considered oppressive to women due to its communal and heteropatriarchal structures. Based on in-depth interviews, this article complicates such binary understandings of progressive/oppressive non-monogamies by bringing them into dialogue with one another. Focusing on two narrated experiences of polyamory and polygyny in the Netherlands, I trace and investigate relational capacities and subjective transformations. This relational approach serves a political feminist project that seeks to safeguard both scepticism towards patriarchal systems and to remain sympathetic to everyday life’s messiness, moving beyond both cultural essentialism and cultural relativism.