what’s your strangest belief that doesn’t intersect (except in the most generous hot take way that anything can) with politics/culture war type stuff?
Polyamory is a middle class word for what the upper and lower classes do as a matter of course.
Hmm, I think I disagree, at least on a terminological level. The broader category of “non-monogamy” – which includes swinging, key parties, side chicks, etc. – more or less fits what you’re describing, but “polyamory” often refers to more stable/consistent arrangements like group houses and closed triads. That does seem like something distinct enough to be worth naming.
I can’t speak for @bambamramfan – and I’m not commenting on the object-level truth of anything here – but I think that this claim should be translated as saying:
The differences that you’re talking about are not just random paths of cultural development, they are precisely the things that make multiple-sex-partner-having viable as a middle-class lifestyle.
The argument goes something like this: Upper-class folks, who build their lives around connections and status and patronage relationships, can be comfortable with tacit arrangements and kept mistresses and the like. Lower-class folks, who often live rougher-edged lives dominated by short-term concerns, are capable of living with “well, something happened and now we have to live with it” as a major social fact. It’s the middle class that demands legibility and systematic definition; it’s the middle class that needs rules, for the sake of being able to show that you followed all the rules; it’s the middle class that needs its arrangements to be seen and accepted.