Jesus.
I thought I'd discovered all the hornet's nests on Tumblr and learned what it was like to kick them, but I didn't realize that challenging cartoonish depictions of modern monogamy culture around here would prove to be another hornet's nest.
And to be fair, the pushback isn't tons and tons, and it mostly comes from Tumblr accounts I don't know (not within my "Tumblr circle", except postsforposting, who has pushed back with an appreciable amount of insight and nuance unlike the other pushers-back), but honestly, that first reblog I made felt like I was attacking low-hanging fruit, an almost shamefully easy target (thus my lack of length or effort in that reblog). And instead, when I criticize a claim that the usual norm for monogamous people is to forbid their partners from so much as speaking to someone of the opposite sex, I'm seen as the clearly unreasonable one who doesn't see reality!
I think a major underlying factor here -- well, sitting aside from the likely situation of many polyamorous Tumblrites having socially siloed themselves off from monogamous people after some bad experiences with some of them, which may be possible in this day and age despite the continued prevalence of mono culture, and thus gaining a skewed model of reality -- is that people who (in this case rightly) see themselves in the very small beleaguered minority feel they have a license to be as hyperbolic as they like, which people in an "oppressor majority" are not entitled to do. (Only one replier has outright stated this, but I'm sure it's a feeling behind the way other similar-minded folks choose to talk about it: the lack of legal recognition/rights for poly people has been brought up to me over and over.)
I sort of get that -- people in an oppressed minority need to vent sometimes once they find a safe enough space to do so. (Similarly, there should be places where someone can feel safe to make carelessly hyperbolic statements about "cis/straight/white people be like such-and-such".) But establishing a norm of that in a given space comes with some dangers. First of all, there still are plenty of monogamous people here on Tumblr just like almost everywhere else, and proclaiming cartoonish representations of them as abusers is obviously going to alienate them rather than induce them to listen to concerns or grievances of poly people. But on top of that, particularly in a space like Tumblr, there's a high prevalence of mono people having had a lot of exposure to poly culture and quite possibly having had a traumatic experience from it (I'm sorry, I'm not saying that all or most poly culture is unhealthy, but there appears to be a very substantial chance of having an extremely toxic experience within it), and they are going to be particularly harmed by venting about people like themselves generally being cartoonish abusers. And also, we should just aim in general for proclaiming things that reflect the literal truth as much is as reasonably possible, especially when the claims are nasty characterizations of large swaths of people (whether dominant majorities or marginalized minorities), and show some level of deliberation and awareness about allowing limited exceptions to that practice. (Tagging one's venty post with "hyperbole", or even "venting", for instance, can go a long way.)
But I don't know, next time I should probably shut up, not assume that posts of the offending kind are any more than hyperbolic venting or are trying to argue something objectively true (the writer of the OP I initially reblogged even kinda-sorta seemed to clarify that the OP was meant as a sort of satire instead of literal truth), and just leave them alone. Life is hard, everyone deserves a space to vent sometimes.
