You Don't Hate Polyamory, You Hate People Who Write Books

Yesterday I criticized The Atlantic’s recent invective against polyamory (subscriber-only post, sorry). Today I want to zoom away from the specific bad arguments and examine the overall form of the article. The overall form was: “I read a memoir about polyamory, everyone involved seemed awful and unhappy, and now I hate polyamorous people.” This is a common pattern. Sometimes, if someone’s very careful, they read three or four books about polyamory. Everyone in all the books is awful and unhappy. Then they conclude they hate polyamorous people. But this is an unfair generalization. They should hate people who write books. II. Advice is disproportionately written by defective people. Healthy people perform naturally and effortlessly. You walk so gracefully that a million man-hours into bipedal robots fail to match your skill. But if some stroke patient or precocious one-year-old asked your secret, you would just say “I put one foot in front of the other.” If you want good advice about h

Yesterday I criticized The Atlantic’s recent invective against polyamory (subscriber-only post, sorry). Today I want to zoom away from the specific bad arguments and examine the overall form of the article. The overall form was: “I read a memoir about polyamory, everyone involved seemed awful and unhappy, and now I hate polyamorous people.” This is a common pattern. Sometimes, if someone’s very careful, they read three or four books about polyamory. Everyone in all the books is awful and unhappy. Then they conclude they hate polyamorous people. But this is an unfair generalization. They should