Some Words about Bias

Since there’s not much going on in my personal life at the moment, I wanted to talk about something academic: bias. I’m seriously considering applying for a PhD, which would start in 2016. I would like to study about polyamory because not many people in academia are and because I think it’s a phenomenon worth studying. Plus, I love researching love and sex. I found out about one professor who’s done some relevant research and sent him an email. His response seemed a bit odd. He said that research into polyamory is mostly done by people “in the lifestyle” and therefore, their research will not be objective. By this logic, should research about homosexual people be done only by heterosexual people? Should research into minorities not be done by minorities themselves? There is a dangerous history of all of this happening. I shared the professor’s email with my mother, who has a PhD, and she insisted that he was being encouraging and that in academia, you always have to defend your work. Ben asked my mother, does that mean that I (as in, me) would have to defend my own personal life? I would hope not, but you never know.

For those of us who are poly and especially those of us who write about it, we want people to know that it’s going on. My ex, who I was monogamous with for many years, told me that I have become a poly activist; I write this blog, I’ve started writing a book about poly, and I’ve talked at conferences about it. By all measures, I guess I am a poly activist and why shouldn’t I be? I have a vested interest in people knowing about polyamory and understanding it better. Polyamory is one of the driving forces in my life and I want to share that with others. This does not mean that I believe that poly is for everyone. I just read an article last night about an intentional community that embraces polyamory and for the people who moved there, they were encouraged to try it out. Many of those people had previously not been poly and they found it difficult. The author seemed to suggest that if and when people left this community, they would probably go back to being monogamous, if they had previously been monogamous. She argued that their polyamory was situational and they hadn’t really chosen to be poly at all. Polyamory isn’t the best fit for everyone and I’m fully aware of that. Bias does not have to interfere with logic.

I’m still not sure what to make of the professor’s email. My mother had found an article of his arguing that you can’t love more than 1 person at a time. Of course, he was interviewing people in monogamous relationships who had developed feelings for other people and they felt enormous guilt about their feelings. He stated in the article that more research needs to be done into polyamory, especially more definitive work. He could have started that himself… He said that I could myself write a book about it or at least a blog. Perhaps he found my blog, so he knows what my life is like. My impression is that his bias is against polyamory. We all have work to do to see what our bias is and understand how it affects our life.