Ethical non-monogamy, open relationships, polyamory: these terms have been gaining popularity and visibility in recent years. While the number of people who are actively involved in open relationships can be hard to pin down, it’s thought that as many as one in five Americans have been in, or are interested in trying, some form of ethical (or “consensual”) non-monogamy — and those numbers are on the rise.
According to alternative dating app Feeld — which has been called “Tinder for threesomes” — interest in search terms like “ethical non-monogamy” and “polyamory” has spiked significantly among users of all genders. Last year, the app reported a 400 percent increase in searches for those terms among women compared to the previous year, while men were up 500 percent.
Interest in threesomes, specifically, seems to have increased significantly since the pandemic. A 2021 survey conducted by the Kinsey Institute, in partnership with sexual wellness brand Lovehoney, found that almost a quarter of Americans said they were more interested in having a threesome than before the pandemic.
This might seem like the rebirth of the Summer of Love, a kind of second sexual revolution. Unfortunately, however, the desire to explore sexually doesn’t always go hand in hand with a change in outdated values, nor is this newfound sexual freedom always distributed equitably across the gender and sexuality spectrum. Case in point: the one penis policy.
Put simply, this is the very common issue of a male, or penis-owning, partner being very into his female partner sleeping with other women, but very against the idea of her sleeping with other men. And it’s worth pointing out that although this does occur in all kinds of relationship dynamics and across genders, it’s far more prevalent among cis, heterosexual couples. A quick scan of dating apps like Feeld will reveal that there are far more male/female couples looking for another woman to join them than men or thirds of any other gender. Sometimes, this will have been an active, consensually agreed-upon choice. A couple may have discussed their desires and boundaries openly and decided they would both rather invite another woman into their bedroom (or, in the case of polyamory, sometimes into their relationship more broadly). But too often this is not the case, and the ‘one penis policy’ can have misogynistic and even homophobic foundations.
Leanne Yau is the founder of Poly Philia Blog, an educational platform dedicated to teaching people about ethical non-monogamy. She explains how the ‘one penis policy’ can be problematic because of the way it devalues same sex experiences between women. “I think this comes down to heteropatriarchal ideas of sexuality. And the idea that penetrative sex is seen as the be all and end all of what sex is,” Yau tells InsideHook. “And with this comes the idea that lesbian sex, where there’s no penis in vagina, doesn’t count, or isn’t ‘real’ sex.”
Immediately, this begins to tap into homophobic and bi-phobic ideas about relationships between two women being invalid, or “less than” heterosexual relationships, as well as the idea that men are somehow inherently superior to women. A man who doesn’t want his female partner to sleep with other men may feel threatened by those other men, fearing his partner will leave him for one of them. Which begs an important question: why doesn’t he see another woman as a threat?
“There’s a lot of misogyny in the idea of thinking ‘a lesbian can’t do what a man can’ or ‘what women want is dick’. There’s a lot mixed into it. Including a real sense of entitlement that men have towards women’s bodies,” Yau says.
Maybe a guy just isn’t into other guys, so in a threesome dynamic, he just doesn’t want to get hot and heavy with another man. Okay, that’s fine. But open communication is key, and there should be a consideration that your desires and boundaries might not be the same as your partner’s. Stephen Quaderer, creator of Headero, a sexuality and gender-inclusive connection app for people who love oral pleasure, explains that one penis policy attitudes can be a dangerous double standard. “There needs to be a clear distinction between a person who sets boundaries that says, ‘I’m not comfortable with having same-sex sexual interaction myself’ and a person who says, ‘opposite-sex sexual interaction is okay for me, but not for you.’ The former is perfectly okay — different strokes for different folks. But the latter warrants a challenge.”
Even if you’re not into the idea of opening up your relationship, one penis policy attitudes can enter into monogamous relationships, too. It’s common, for example, for a man to feel jealous of a female partner’s former lovers when they are male, but curious and turned on to learn about former female lovers. A female partner’s male friend could be a source of suspicion, but if she’s going on a girl’s night out, there won’t be any concerns.
“Sexual inequity is rife across the relationship spectrum, from concepts like ‘body count’ and ‘slut’ shaming, to gendered relationship roles,” says Quaderer. “Sexual liberation for only one person in a dynamic or relationship is a contradiction in terms. When it comes to ‘one penis policy,’ the concept privileges one member of the dynamic (the person with the penis), and — not coincidentally — does so on the basis of a deeply ingrained societal stigma about women having agency over their sexual selves.”
But shrugging off decades of socially ingrained stigma and unconscious patriarchal attitudes isn’t easy. How can we start to challenge these attitudes and shift our thinking?
Yau argues that, in a way, accepting the one penis policy is selling yourself short as a man. “The idea that your female partner should only be with one person of your same gender suggests that, somehow, you are interchangeable.” It ignores all the wonderful and varied things you likely bring to a relationship besides sex by focusing entirely on one thing: the penis. “The one penis policy objectifies people and makes [them] disposable,” says Yau. “That’s what we need to deconstruct.”
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