Tristan Taormino’s Opening Up: Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships
Saturday, March 31 is the deadline for participation in the Loving More sponsored polyamory and marriage survey, which means there are less than two weeks left to submit you answers. The survey is meant to gauge how polyamorous people feel about marriage.
The survey is fairly brief and all responses will be kept confidential. No individually identifying information will be collected.
The media and academics always want to know how polyamorous people feel about marriage, but no research has been done on the subject. In the interest of learning more, Loving More has sponsored a polyamory and marriage survey, and they are hoping you will participate.
The survey was designed by Curt Bergstrand, Ph.D. (associate professor of sociology at Bellarmine University and co-author of Swinging In America: Sex, Love, and Marriage in the 21st Century) and Jim Fleckenstein (poly activist and researcher, co-founder of the the Chesapeake Polyamory Network). The aim of the research is described as follows:
This survey is the beginning of an ongoing research effort to gain information about the community of individuals who engage in consensual, non-exclusive intimate relationships, or who are philosophically open to doing so, regardless of their current relationship configuration. We undertake this effort in order better to understand this community, its beliefs, practices, and desires, and it's position within the larger mosaic of humanity.
With knowledge comes the ability to better serve this community, to better represent its interests in the public discourse, and to foster understanding, acceptance and non-discrimination in the wider world.
The survey is fairly brief and all responses will be kept confidential. No individually identifying information will be collected.
Jordan R.W. Robinson, a senior film student at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), is hoping to find poly couples to participate in his senior project: a documentary about poly relationships. The call for participants reads:
Are you currently in a relationship with more than one partner? If so I would love for you to be a part of my upcoming student documentary!
. . . The purpose of the film is not to criticize or affirm polyamorous (multiple partner) relationships, but rather explore your everyday lives together and the story of how your relationship came to be. I'm also interested in investigating why poly relationships lack the general stigma that is often seen in heterosexual society.
So, what's in it for you? As a student and especially as a student filmmaker I can not offer to pay participants for their involvement in the documentary (should the film receive some sort of award or grant I would be happy to share though after expenses), but what I can offer is a chance for you to tell your stories and for you to play a part in the validation and acceptance of LGBT lifestyles. Very little exposure of poly relationships have been made to both mainstream academia and society at large so you would be a significant contributor to that being changed.
Robinson is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, so he is looking for poly couples in/around the midwest. He may be able to travel up to 300 miles from his home depending on university grant approval. Robinson hopes to begin filming near the end of October, and wrap up the project by early December in order to submit the film to the Lightworks student film festival at the University of Michigan.
If you are interested in participating in Robinson's documentary, email him at dieselSPE [at] gmail [dot] com to set up an initial iChat or Skype call.
You can read/see more of Robinson at his production blog.
Sadie Smythe (blogger at Sadie's Open Marriage) is writing a book on parenting within non-traditional relationships, and she wants to hear from you!
As a parent living in an Open Marriage, the most-asked question I receive is, "What about your daughter?" So, I have decided to write a book that answers this question and all the others that go along with it. Questions such as "What do you tell her about your relationship?" and "How do you think it will affect her worldview?" and ohsomany more.
. . . So I am looking for others like me (and unlike me,) who have designed their relationship in a way that suits them, but which might be considered to fall outside of that traditional relationship paradigm -- married and living and parenting separately, unmarried and living next door to each other, polyamorous parenting, swinging parents, queer parents, transgendered parents, kinky moms and dads, etc. -- who would be interested in being interviewed and quoted in the book.
Interviews can be either anonymous or credited. Email Smythe at sadiessmythe [at] gmail [dot] com.