Bashing Unicorn Hunters

Clarification in a new thread, as I my unclear words should really have been a new topic rather than a long winded comment that resulted from this thread http://www.polyamory.com/forum/showthread.php?t=46186

Sure, I can focus a little bit more. What I am saying is that this site has a lot of people bashing two of the three people in triads. The two they bash are the "unicorn hunters" , the couple who decide they desire to open up their relationship and specifically look for a female to form a poly triad.

I don't feel it's necessary to restate the potential problems that can arise from a couple looking for a third, any post tagged with unicorn, unicorn hunters, or couples privilege reiterates the possible pitfalls of the triad dynamic. That is good to point out the pitfalls, but the vilifying of a couple and ridiculing any couple desiring an addition to form a triad is the part that baffles me. And it seems to come from a set of very anonymous, extremely passive aggressive group of tech savy people who have a much exaggerated presence online as opposed to the real world as online what looks like four or fourty people can be the work of only one individual. This attitude I am speaking of is one where they attempt to use very logical and sometimes even a scientific strategy to examine poly relationships as if math equations where A + B = C therefore C - B = A and I feel that their attitude is not at all based on facts, but more based upon whatever crazy notion of the month had the most persuasive bloggers and public debators prove their logic. So they end up with logical sounding reasoning that has nothing to do with the actual assertions or points they are trying make. It is a problem that stems from forgetting that all of the subsets they break a relationship down into do not actually exist on their own, they are an aspect of the dynamics of relationships.

It's the villifying of certain sexual dynamics as if anybody who engages in them are bad people or not poly because they engage in casual sex. From my experience, not only do some poly people engage in very casual (and very pleasureable ) sex on occasion, but they would also never consider the relationships "poly" that are described on this site. When your spouse has a completely separate life involved in a relationship that their OSO is completely removed from they wouldn't call it poly. Any Vee styled relationship where the metamours didn't get along or meerly tolerated each other wouldn't be poly either. Nearly everyone goes through a messy transition as they figure out whether or not they can love more than one person freely. And If they can, what sort of a lifestyle will be tolarable or better yet, enjoyable that works for them and those they choose to share their life with.

of course when I say "love freely" I am not talking about familiar love that people have for their kids, parents, siblings and other blood related family. I don't know anybody who is not poly in that sense of being poly, so it really is kind of pointless to draw conclusions or parallels from familiar love and equate those relationships with the love you feel for those you have a sexual relationship with.

And for the record, there are few "styles" or frameworks of relationships (which may or may not include sex) that are wrong when all involved are honest, of legal age, explicitly desire the acts or behavior and give full consent. It's hard for me to not say something when I see others attacking people because the style of relationship does not suit them. Sure there are always aspects that can make any relationship morally and ethically wrong, but attacking unicorn hunters or telling them it's wrong to have a causual threesome before they hear the unicorn's side of the story, they are speaking from an utterly ignorant viewpoint because it is entirely possible that it is the unicorn who is in the wrong (if if fact there is anything wrong about the dynamic.

Doing so is as ignorant as claiming BDSM dynamics as abusive

Doing so is as ignorant as labeling certain strategies as "victim blaming" when they are attempting to educate women so that they are hip to situations that predators and rapists can easily take advantage of

There is nothing logical or "matter of fact" about it

When intentions and desires are fully disclosed yet later on there ends up being a discrepancy, it isn't always the couple who are at fault. There are instances wherein the couple gets burned by the unicorn as it is possible for the Hot bi-babe to be less than forthcoming for selfish reasons. To automatically attack or blame the couple claiming that it's typically they who are guilty and the unicorn innocent, is honestly a very ignorant or inexperienced opinion.

Quite frankly, the unicorn hunter bashing mentality is not one I have seen anywhere offline, and even online I have never encountered it anywhere but Franklin Veaux's empire of linked sites, the only other exception is here. So that is the connection I was making and I know it's not easy to follow my writing. If I seem a little furstrated, it's because I am. I keep thinking that polyamory dot com is too similar to that empire of sites in that there appears to be a large anti-"unicorn hunter" following here which is irritating because from my view, it does not accurately represent real life demographics. Anytime an attitude that isn't present among poly people offline appears to be significant attitude online, I get suspicious of sock puppet accounts as that is typically how an attitude of a few individuals can appear as the general consensus of an overwhelming majority online.

Is not wrong for any style of non-monogamy to not be right for you, but bashing or ridiculing others for having the courage to ask for and persue the life they desire is not only ignorant, but it is disrespectful. There is nothing wrong with genuine concern for peoples emotional well being and reminding others of how easy it is to set right into the pitfalls of non-monogamy. AnabelMore does a great job illustrating how one can reach out and try to be helpful to those looking for advice whereas others take every opportunity to attack any flavor of non-monogamy that doesn't align with their political ideology as if they are scoring points for a red or blue team.

It is very possible that I am flat out wrong, it wouldn't be the first site I got excited to contribute or be a part of, only later to find out I didn't fit the mold and was out of place. That most of my problems stemmed from where I was and the people I attempted to socialize online with, I was out place. It wasn't me or the attitude they adopted as acceptable behavior, we just didn't mix well.

In full disclosure, I should admit that much of my disliking of certain attitudes, for me is personal. I have trouble with the online explosion and new school, young online people who consider themselves veteran polyamorists as I had a bad real life experience with new, younger ideology of what is or is not "poly"

It's all non-monogamy in my point view unless we are talking about specifc details, I feel it is a mistake brand people without knowing their specific details. Once you do know, go ahead and strike when the iron's hot. But you might not want be in the business of branding others anything if you refuse to hold yourself accountable for your actions
 
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As several people asked after your previous post/rant, if you're trying to start a discussion could you summarise your main points please? You seem to have changed topics half a dozen times before the end of the third paragraph.
 
I know I am hard to understand in my writing

I guess the shortest way to say it is, nobody should ever feel ridiculed for their preferred kink, it can cause severe emotional damage and destruction in a person's life when they are self conscious or have otherwise unhealthy views about their sexuality.

In regards to a person's sexuality, the only definitive or always wrong scenarios have to do with children, not getting explicit consent, and abuse of power and position to wrongly get consent, and of course using lies or half truths that prevent those involved from being fully knowledgeable. So unless a person or people are engaging in any of the previously mentioned wrong ways to experience sexuality, you really have to be careful about jumping to conclusions about wrong and right when it comes to the dynamic among people involved in relationships that include sex.

Specifically, bashing people who may or may not be involved in casual, sexual relationships or implying that such relationships are wrong, is a fairly insensitive thing to do without having all the details. It is only wrong if the unicorn does not desire to engage in sex like that. There are responsible ways to engage in even casual sex, so that casually, sex can be experienced in healthy ways, however when only meaningful or otherwise not at all casual sex is desired, then there is nothing that will make casual sex a healthy sexual experience for that person. So knowing what kind of experience a person desires is very important.

When dealing with sexuality, it really is impossible to label behaviors as right and wrong without knowing specific details (desire, knowledge, consent, legal age, etc...) the few exceptions being age and incest. It is my opinion that couples looking to open there relationships to very specific situations are bashed and ridiculed on this site.

Yes, some couples mislead unicorns, but from my experience many unicorns mislead couples, so I would be just as weary to bash a couple as I would a "unicorn" and I wish people would show more respect for other's views on sexuality. I am not stating that anybody is wrong, this is a not a publicly owned site. I am trying to decide if this is a site that I am either in or out or place being here.

I see a huge difference between offering advice with the intent being to be helpful, and on the other hand bashing a person and or ridiculing the style of relationship they are seeking because it is not your cup of tea.

If my frustration in my writing isn't clear, I am frustrated by people who are tech savy, and use there skills to manipulate public perception in regards to general consensus or opinion. Stating your individual opinion about a topic from multiple accounts, so that one person's opinion appears as many, is a manipulation that I feel any and all sites could do without. It tends to put undeserved power and control into the hands of people it should not be in, as all it takes to maintain complacency among a group is to make them believe their opinion is a few compared to the many.
 
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As it was my post you quoted in that thread, I'm guessing you think I'm bashing 'unicorn hunters.'

I was speaking to one specific person regarding that particular person's own words which came darn close to reducing another human being to golf clubs and himself and his wife wanting share the 'experience' of, oh, golf, basket weaving, a threesome. To me that smacks of the third person not being considered as another person at all, but merely a means to the end of having that 'experience.

I do not regard this as bashing unicorn hunters.

If you do, so be it. I make no apologies.

And sorry...but like your post in the other thread, I didn't even try to follow all of this.
 
Ok, from your second (still wandering, but slightly less so than the first) post, you seem to be equating Unicorn Hunting with casual sex and saying that people who don't want to engage in casual sex are the ones who "bash" Unicorn hunters? I'm not sure I follow your chain of logic there.

Also, which forum members do you think are sock puppets?
 
closer

but something more like assuming all unicorn hunters will treat a third person as if they are nothing more than a casual sex partner, or assuming that if they do, that it isn't desired without first asking for clarification is foolish.

There are a lot of dic s running around the internet who spend time being extremely subtle assholes rather than just coming out and speaking their grievance. All it does is breed animosity and creates problems as opposed to solving them.

If something is personal, just come right out and say it, I have personal problems with people who exhibit the behavior and attitude of people like Mr. Veaux, not only due to my personal experience, but because I believe that being subtle in general when there is absolutely no reason to not be direct is nothing but instigating unnecessary drama. It gets especially old when it comes from people who champion being blunt and honest when much of their behavior online is anything but that.

I have absolutely nothing against anyone's views on how to do non-monogamy right or wrong in any flavor. But doing or treating people wrong against their consent or being hyper critical of others then being hypocritical shows either stupidity or lack of integrity or both.

If a dentist royally fucks up and drills down through nerves and into bone, he would lack intelligence and integrity if he refused to accept his responsibility for gross incompetence. Insulting the person in the chair after such an pseudo-amatuer job is unbelievable.

Regardless though, that is just the way some people are, and I can't change that, I can however remove myself from the situation
 
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I really shouldn't have waited so long and used you as an example

although I did quote your comment originally Whathappened, you comment was for the most part benign. There wasn't anything in your comment that would lead a person to think it was anything but honest communication, which is something that people should never apologize for doing.

I should have just left your comment at pointing out that treating a person as a thing, isn't necessarily bad if they desire it. Continuously doing it without regard for whether or not they desire that treatment is wrong.

thank you for commenting, I know it can be frustrating when I am hard to understand, and it does become nearly impossible to follow me when I get pissed off. No worries WhatHappened
 
Thanks for the props on my posting style, Dirtclustit. Some reactions to your post:

I sincerely doubt that there are many, or any, sock puppet posters on this site. All the people that I see who could be considered to be attacking unicorn hunters also post on lots of other types of threads, and have very different styles. Using Occam's razor, it seems more likely to me that these people are, in fact, different people who just share similar ideas.

You seem to have a serious problem with Franklin Veaux. Why, exactly? Is it just because you feel like he's too harsh on unicorn hunters, or are there other things you don't like about him? Personally, I found his writings on jealousy and on forming healthy secondary relationships to be hugely helpful to me in my relationships. I recommend him a lot to new people, and on numerous occasions I've then seen those people say "thank you so much for recommending that link, that helped a lot." Not saying he's a saint, but I am curious why you seem to think he's such a negative force.

I don't think that the anti-unicorn-hunter attitude is specific to Veaux's writings and to polyamory.com. I mean, the phrase itself was designed to poke fun at an unrealistic attitude. The folks in my local offline community are well aware of the unicorn-hunter stereotype and look at it with derision as well. I think it's just that there aren't many other sites like polyamory.com... I actually don't know of any other site devoted just to giving advice and sharing stories about poly relationships... so it comes up more frequently here than anywhere else, and as a result people get more frustrated about it over time. That's my guess, anyway.

I DO think it's a problem to "bash" unicorn hunters. If your aim is to help people form healthy and functional relationships, which I think it ought to be on a website devoted to giving people advice and feedback about their relationships, then anything that makes people feel attacked and driven away is the opposite of helpful. That said, I understand why people come on strong, and convey dismissive, or angry attitudes towards unicorn hunters... after a few years on this site, it's extremely, extremely frustrating to read the 500th unicorn-hunting story playing out in the same damn hurtful ways to those involved. I would encourage people to stay calm, remember that the person you're addressing doesn't have the same perspective you do, and strive to give advice that doesn't come off like an attack, or else disengage and don't post at all if you know you're too upset to post calmly.

Part of the frustration, I think, comes from the fact that, not all that infrequently, people who you could call unicorn hunters come here for advice and then seem to feel attacked even when people DO speak to them calmly and rationally. Or, even if they don't take it personally, they rarely seem to listen and change course. It makes one wonder if there's any point at all, and if it might not be better to just not bother speaking to them, to just let them learn their own lessons the hard way. I've tried to be more careful about how much energy I put into posting advice, to conserve my emotional energy. I'm very thankful for David Noble's long essay about unicorn hunting, as it really says it all, and I can just link people to that rather than lay everything out myself.

I also DO think it's possible for both members of a couple to seek out a third person for casual sex without it being a problematic thing. Hell, despite my efforts to stay civil on the topic, I'm one of the most anti-unicorn-hunting people you will ever meet, and yet my bf and I are discussing seeking out women for threesomes because of a specific kink that we both share. We're aiming to do it in a highly conscious and considerate way, and, while I think we have to be very, very careful to not be assholes and to not accidentally exercise what one might call "couple entitlement" when engaging with new people, I feel confident that we are capable of doing this in a non-gross way. My confidence is bolstered by the fact that we both have engaged in successful poly relationships of various configurations for years.

Hooking up for casual sex is not unicorn hunting. Forming a triad, if one happens to form, is not unicorn hunting. Unicorn hunting is seeking out someone to fill a very specific and unrealistic pre-defined niche, to love and desire you and your partner equally, to fill a role that you've created for them. I don't want to bash the average unicorn hunter -- in general, they're just naive, not at all bad-hearted. But I DO want to bash unicorn hunting as a practice... I want the understanding of why it hurts people, and why it's a bad idea, to become as widespread as possible, so that more people who are new to poly will encounter the information and perhaps go about things in a better way.

Yeesh, that was long. This topic, I have feelings on it.
 
Dirtclustit, you do realize that the term "unicorn hunters" is already a bash? Unicorn hunting is not something to aspire to or be proud of. It isn't applied to every couple that gets involved with a single bi woman, but when it is used, it is a criticism of their approach. So, to say that people bash unicorn hunters is sort of an oxymoron, when unicorn hunting is already a negative term.
 
Dirtclustit, you do realize that the term "unicorn hunters" is already a bash? Unicorn hunting is not something to aspire to or be proud of. It isn't applied to every couple that gets involved with a single bi woman, but when it is used, it is a criticism of their approach. So, to say that people bash unicorn hunters is sort of an oxymoron, when unicorn hunting is already a negative term.



When you think of it that way, unicorn-hunter-bashing is a GOOD thing, because in math, multiplying two negative numbers gives a positive number. So, two "wrongs" make one "right".

Now that that's settled, time to go have breakfast. Who's coming with me? Also, who wants to eat breakfast with me afterward?
 
I want pancakes!

Heck with the pancakes. I want chocolate... The good stuff from Germany not the cheap American crap.

: i probably do have the stuff to make banana and/or chocolate chip pancakes, but i'm afraid all i have are Hershey's.

Well now it's brunch time so how about some V-8 with your vodka instead? We can pretend we ordered room service at a fancy hotel. After that, we can take pictures of each other lighting our farts on fire.

This is what i like to do for fun on lazy sunday mornings.
 
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This is why.....

I don't post that much. This righteous dislike of so called unicorn hunters. I am married and bisexual. I do have this ideal of a long term poly-fi situation. We are not practicing as yet because I am the type of person who needs to research before I can start a new situation. So when I entered the site of polyamory.com I thought I was coming to the best place to learn about how to begin this journey of ours in an honest and ethical way. I don't really post because I ran into the wall on unicorn hunter right off the bat. I want the third person for our relationship and am willing to work or it. But on this site just saying that is what I want and willing to work for it gets me attacked. I know she will be a person in her own right and have no interest in turning her into property. And I can't answer the what would you to questions because my reaction to any given situation would revolve entirely around said situation. I just think there had to be a better way to discuss the pitfalls without accusing people we don't know. :)
 
I don't post that much. This righteous dislike of so called unicorn hunters. I am married and bisexual. I do have this ideal of a long term poly-fi situation. We are not practicing as yet because I am the type of person who needs to research before I can start a new situation. So when I entered the site of polyamory.com I thought I was coming to the best place to learn about how to begin this journey of ours in an honest and ethical way. I don't really post because I ran into the wall on unicorn hunter right off the bat. I want the third person for our relationship and am willing to work or it. But on this site just saying that is what I want and willing to work for it gets me attacked. I know she will be a person in her own right and have no interest in turning her into property. And I can't answer the what would you to questions because my reaction to any given situation would revolve entirely around said situation. I just think there had to be a better way to discuss the pitfalls without accusing people we don't know. :)

Not trying to accuse or bash or attack or even actually change your mind about what you want, per se. But you said you were doing research (right on!), so, in case you haven't read it yet: http://davidlnoble.com/so-somebody-called-you-a-unicorn-hunter/ (helpful both for understanding why people are so accusatory, and for recognizing common pitfalls, just really well written and balanced).
 
MY issue with Unicorn hunters are they are forcing couple privilege upon someone else. Meaning that most of the time the primary union comes first and you play by our rules or else.

The situation seems to come with a mile long list of rules..

You can only date both of us...
You can only see us every 3rd Saturday..
If so and so gets jealous you can be kicked out..
Our life events are more important than yours...
You have to have sex with both of us together...
Husband has to watch....
Your life has to revolve around us...

Blah blah blah.. There is no room for relationships to grow organically at its own pace.
 
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My pet peeve about unicorn hunters is that they have this notion of how it MUST be and then they moan and wail when they caaaaan't fiiiiiind someone waaah!!!!!! This after deciding they "are poly" two months ago and being on OK Cupid for like a week.

There are other things to roll one's eyes about when it comes to this "perfect triad" stuff, but it's the attitude of ENTITLEMENT that makes me vomit in my mouth just a little bit each time.
 
I appreciate the warnings...

As someone in a developing triad, I have poured over the recommended links and posts about unicorn hunters. Of course our situation is different because my gf and I started up as a totally separate relationship in a V formation. Just recently have my husnand gf started having feelings for eachother. But many of the warning signs scared me at first. A couple with little poly experience (we have none) was one red flag I consistently hear. But I'm committed to letting each relationship develop as they will without putting definitions on what they have to look like. (Someone remind me of this if I have a freak out). This means MD and FJ are planning to have solo dates, and eventually solo sex if they want. Which they do. If MD and I don't work out, I don't know how I could handle her and FJ still dating, but I will have to handle that as things come up if ever. Pouring through this forum and reading the advice and links has been crucial to helping me sort through how to handle this stuff.
 
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