On November 23rd, 2011, it was ruled by the Canadian Supreme Court that households of polyamorous groupings were exempt from Canada’s overarching legal prohibition against the practice of polygamy. This was one major step forward for the normalization of polyamory, and it is in recognition of this occasion that Polyamory Day is celebrated each year on the date of November 23rd.
Polyamory Day is a day to center and celebrate polyamorous persons and relationships, broadly construed. It is also an opportunity to advance advocacy and education on the topic of non-monogamy, as well as a time to intentionally push back against prevailing social narratives of mononormativity.
Understanding Mononormativity
You might already be familiar with concepts like heternormativity and cisnormativity: the social narratives according to which compulsory heterosexuality and cisgender identification are perpetuated and reinforced. Through these narratives, any way of being other than the heterosexual and cisgender “default” is considered to be in some way deviant, deficient, defective, or delusional. It is through these narratives that the insidious ideologies of homophobia and transphobia find their roots: the more heterosexuality and cisgender identification are reinforced as the center of potential human experience, the more any other sexual or gender identity is pushed to the margins.
Where heteronormativity goes, cisnormativity is typically lurking right near by—the two almost always end up being a package deal. There’s typically more to this standard package of social narratives than this dubious duo, however, as both are often also accompanied by mononormativity: the social narratives according to which monogamous relationships are the only acceptable relationships, and all other ways of structuring our relational lives are—again—in some way deviant, deficient, defective, or delusional.
We can see mononormativity in the stories we tell, the movies we watch, and the clichés we wittingly or unwittingly perpetuate. Directly or indirectly, we are taught from a young age that one of the main goals to be achieved on the way to a happy and successful life is the quest to find “the One,” a single person with whom we will bond as friend, lover, partner—and occasional adversary. We romanticize the notion of the meet-cute (as in nearly any rom-com) and indulge in the delicious drama of reality dating shows, predicated on an unshakeable foundation of unquestionable monogamy. And the more we reinforce this unquestionable monogamy as the center of potential human experience, the more any other way of structuring our relationships is pushed to the margins.
Related to mononormativity, though still subtly distinct, is amatonormativity: the centering of particularly romantic relationships and subsequent devaluation of other kinds of relating. Together, mononormatiity and amatonormativity impose on us a standard according to which we all need to either have or be looking for committed, long-time, monogamous, romantic relationships—or else, well, there’s just something wrong with us.
The harms of mononormativity
Just like all of the other normativities mentioned above, mononormativity erroneously leads to the conflation of a small sliver of potential human experience with the whole range of acceptable human experience. It imposes limits on how we can be, what we can be, and who we can be, on pain of social sanction. Under a mononormative framework, genuinely reflective choice of relationship structure is replaced with coerced conformity to received social narrative and a subsequent homogenization and flattening of experience.
Those who deviate from monogamous practices—whether by practicing polyamory, relationship anarchy, conscious singledom, or any other flavor of non-monogamy—are all-too-often seen by dominant culture as unserious at best and morally impoverished at worst. (We can see remnants of this even among some non-monogamous discourse, such as that which resorts to apologetic qualifications such as “ethical” or “consensual” appended to descriptions of non-monogamy, with no such qualification typically offered or expected within analogous monogamous discourse.) Even those who practice monogamy have their agency compromised as well, as mononormativity negates their choice to do so and replaces it with a framework of expectation.
Perhaps most disturbing, however, is the way in which mononormative narratives tend to frame loving relationships as scarce and, hence, in near-constant need of defense against potential threats from outside of the relationship. Rather than acknowledging love as abundant and—echoing queer Black feminist thinker bell hooks—loving itself as a practice, we are coerced into a mindset through which love is a thing to be sought after, fought over—and kept.
Pushing Back Against Mononormativity
Importantly, the project of individually and collective unlearning mononormativity is not the same as the rejection of monogamy. Just as you can reject heteronormativity while still validating heterosexual identities (and perhaps claiming one yourself!) and cisnormativity while still validating cisgender identities, every single one of us can reject mononormativity while still validating monogamous practices. To simply replace compulsory monogamy with compulsory non-monogamy would be no real progress at all—the goal instead being to cosign compulsory anything to history and replace it instead with robust agency.
So, what do we do? First, notice and name the instances of mononormativity that you see in your day-to-day, in the media you consume, and even in your own (monogamous or non-monogamous) relationship practices, goals, and ideals. Notice your language, your quick judgments and reactions, and the relationships you tend to hold up as exemplars of what happiness or fulfillment can look like. Actively question such thought and talk, not necessarily with the goal of rejecting everything you say and believe, but instead with the aim of critically reflecting on why you say it and why you believe it.
As part of this process, actively seek out the stories and perspectives of polyamorous (and other non-monogamous) persons and groupings, listening with open heart and mind. This will take some effort, as non-monogamy as a whole is vastly underrepresented in the stories passed around through dominant culture. The payoff is worth the effort, however, as a conscious deconstruction of mononormativity serves us all: whether polyamorous, monogamous, or engaged in any other relating practice, we all benefit from replacing the corrosive toxicity of compulsory conformity with the humanizing elevation of genuinely reflective agency.
Written by Ley David Elliette Cray, PhD (she/they), GSRD (Gender, Sexuality, and Relationship Diversity) Content Specialist for the Sexual Health Alliance.
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