It depends a lot on the social circle. Being gay would be a lot easier in my family than being poly. All of my siblings are pro-gay rights. I'm not out as poly, because they've said some anti-poly things and it's not worth it to me to turn family gatherings into excuses for them to criticize my lifestyle. I just don't want to deal with it.
However, that list is really, really missing how many problems gay people face. And areas that are accepting of homosexuality also tend to be more accepting of poly. My family would be annoying, but they wouldn't disown me. That's a pretty big difference. There are far too many people who have been kicked out of their families for being gay. I wouldn't expect that to happen much with poly, since parents are more likely to view it as a phase and immaturity and to assume they will eventually settle with one person, and then later, the person isn't a child any more. And it's easier to be closeted poly as a youth than closeted gay. You can just say you're not ready to pick one person yet, so you're still dating multiple people.
Anyhow, it's complicated. And I usually just figure it sucks that people aren't nice to other people who are doing decent things and not hurting anyone, and it doesn't really matter which group is, on average, hurt most. I'd rather have more rights and acceptance for so many people.
"However, that list is really, really missing how many problems gay people face."
In fairness, it wasn't trying to talk about homophobia and straight priviledge though. It was talking about prejudice against poly people and monogamy privilege.
I think the problem is that describing the problems poly people face in terms of a privilege list about 'relationship orientation' does make it sound like the two are of similar severity, so it really needed more acknowledgement of the difference.
That being said, the author never explicitly claims that poly people have it as bad as gay people (as far as I saw, I may have missed something). I wouldn't want to assume that's the way he feels.
*nods* And I replied in another comment too about it. I do think some of the tone and wording was poorly done. This could have been done better. It likely had good intentions and the execution was a bit lacking. What the actual author thinks is very hard to guess.
However, that list is really, really missing how many problems gay people face. And areas that are accepting of homosexuality also tend to be more accepting of poly. My family would be annoying, but they wouldn't disown me. That's a pretty big difference. There are far too many people who have been kicked out of their families for being gay. I wouldn't expect that to happen much with poly, since parents are more likely to view it as a phase and immaturity and to assume they will eventually settle with one person, and then later, the person isn't a child any more. And it's easier to be closeted poly as a youth than closeted gay. You can just say you're not ready to pick one person yet, so you're still dating multiple people.
Anyhow, it's complicated. And I usually just figure it sucks that people aren't nice to other people who are doing decent things and not hurting anyone, and it doesn't really matter which group is, on average, hurt most. I'd rather have more rights and acceptance for so many people.
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"However, that list is really, really missing how many problems gay people face."
In fairness, it wasn't trying to talk about homophobia and straight priviledge though. It was talking about prejudice against poly people and monogamy privilege.
I think the problem is that describing the problems poly people face in terms of a privilege list about 'relationship orientation' does make it sound like the two are of similar severity, so it really needed more acknowledgement of the difference.
That being said, the author never explicitly claims that poly people have it as bad as gay people (as far as I saw, I may have missed something). I wouldn't want to assume that's the way he feels.
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