A community for polyamorous people and those that are curious about it.
Poly Means Polynesian, Not Polyamorous by Lily Stone - Guerrilla Feminism
Poly Means Polynesian, Not Polyamorous by Lily Stone - Guerrilla Feminism
Poly. A word that feels like home. Short-hand for Polynesian, poly has been an cultural identifier for my people - people of the Pacific; a small part of the larger Oceania and Pasifika family that make up Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia.
medium.com
Gonna try and use "polyam" or "non-mono" in future after reading this. Not sure what to do about this username, though...




But that isn't what co-opting, white-washing, or repackaging actually mean. That isn't how those words work. "Poly" is a prefix, and in this case a shortened version of "polyamorous" that developed entirely separately from the word "Polynesian"
Like, I get that it sucks to have a word you use to identify yourself also mean something else, but that literally is not what co-opting means.
Regardless of race and culture issues, I find it very weird that people would assume polyamorous/polyamory is the only word that could be using the abbreviated "poly". If I want to create a hashtag or a group name for poly folks to find each other I'm going to use the whole word because poly is a very common prefix! Google + abbreviations is not usually helpful. I guess people just didn't really think it through or don't think about names in terms of googleability?
Edit: I don't think Polynesian people are more entitled to the word. Something about this article seemed off to me, and when I read the comments some of them summed it up very well. "Poly" is a very old prefix, and it means the same in the word "Polynesia" - many islands, apparently. There are lots of ways to coin a unique term for a group of people, and when that group of people want to be able to find each other and have a shared non-English language that should really not be a problem.
But either way, if both groups of people are using the same shortening and it's causing confusion, if you want to make things searchable both groups have to use unique terms. There is no single-community ownership of a prefix that common.
Yeah the only time I've seen this being a problem is with Tumblr tags, where poly could be polyamorous or polysexual - polysexual people have taken to shortening to ply in order to reduce confusion with polyamorous as both topics are likely to be confused as they both revolve around sexuality and relationships. But yeah the poly prefix is very common so it's bound to happen and I don't think anyone with a "poly"something identity or nationality needs to give their identity up.
The article claims poly "has been co-opted, white-washed, and repackaged to mean “polyamorous”" which makes it seem like polyamory is some immoral white person thing - it's a lot like the Greek Island of Lesbos trying to "take back" the identity Lesbian - that also stunk of homophobia and not wanting to be associated with "those people". And Lesbos kinda has more of a claim there as Lesbian actually is derived from Lesbos and Polyamorous just uses the same prefix.
oh and the people in the comments pointing out that Polynesia is a word coined by Europeans anyway so if Polynesians wanted a non-white washed term they could use their native language are very correct.
You have a point with the native language thing, but there are some points to consider. Fiestly, There are approximately forty Polynesian languages - although there is overlap between them. It's possible that there's one shared term they could all use and would understand without confusion, but we can't assume that.
The other problem I see with that idea ia that Polynesians who have spent all/most of their lives in another country may not have had the chamce to learn their native language(s). Bear in mind that emigrants - especially those with few friends and family in Polynesia itself - are the ones who will be affected most by the "poly-" confusion, since they'll be more likely to feel disconnected from their culture and seek out groups online than those who already live with people they share cultural ties with. So if only people with some understanding of Polynesian languages know the search terms to find those groups, many of those who need them most won't be able to find them.
Is "poly" that common a prefix for identity terms, though? I'd been aware of the confusion between "polyamorous" and "polysexual" for a while, but other than that this was the first time I'd come across any confusion between "poly-" identities (and I've never seen anyone say that this confusion affected them in a significant way beyond "ugh, having to say the whole word to make things clear is a bit tedious"). I know it's a common prefix for words in general, but the context of identity and community is the important one here because it's the only context where other uses of "poly-" could drown out Polynesian communities.
I recently came across a similar discussion on Twitter. I'm of two minds about it... On the one hand, I'm firmly of the belief that words can mean more than one thing and no-one has to be "right" about that. But obviously, it's better not to be a dick to marginalized groups.
Honestly, I just wish there was a better abbreviation if poly is to be disused. Polyamory is sorta long, Twitter-wise, but "polyam" just makes me think "America!", lol.
Apologies for copy-pasting my comment from another comm.
I heard about this a while ago and I'm not going to change my wording. If I say "yeah I have two partners, I'm poly" nobody will assume that I'm polynesian. Context matters. (And being understood matters to me too.)