Relationship anarchy –

Relationships without rules

“I am an anarchist! Wherefore I will not rule, and also ruled I will not be.”
John Henry Mackay

“When subservience ceases to be, all rulership will cease to exist.”

Max Stirner

Dorothea Ledinek

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 Relationship anarchy
• Anarchism applied to interpersonal relationships

(attention! Different variants of anarchism – focus here: egoistic and individualist

anarchism)

• Grounded in self-ownership or owness

• Puts the uniqueness and individuality of people and their connection to each other at the

center

• Exploring relationships authentically without being limited by pre-existing relationship

categories and norms

• Challenges hierarchies of relationships based on relationship type or other arbitrary social

norms

• Challenges structural coercion in interpersonal relationships

• Notice the focus on the structural. Egoistic anarchism does not a priori exclude personal

coercion that is not based on a norm or concept or structure! 2

 My motivation
• The anarchy part of relationship anarchy is about

to get forgotten. In this presentation, I want to

ground relationship anarchy in anarchy.

• Relationship anarchy is not a liberal concept like

polyamory, but an anarchic one.

• This might sometimes provoke you to react.

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 Dichotomies
• Commonly used, but not helpful:

– Polyamory – Monogamy

– (Ethical) Non-Monogamy – Monogamy

– Open relationships – Closed relationships

• Philosophically grounded:

– Self-ownership – Domination (republican)

– Owness – self-denial (Stirner)

– Negative rights - Positive rights (libertarian)

– Consent-based - Rule based (today)

– Needs and desires – Entitlement (today)

– Anarchist – power structures 4

 Free love movement (1850-1910)
• Anarchist movement in the USA

• Influenced by abolitionism

• Centred on self-ownership of all humans, including women

• Sexual relations between consenting, sexually mature

individuals are only their concern

• No state authority in matters of sexual conduct (inclusive

prostitution and adultery)

• Abolishing marriage as state institution Victoria Woodhull (1838-1927)

Presidentship candidate
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 Free love movement (1850-1910)
• Rape in marriage

• Marriage as slavery and monopoly

• Critique of exclusivity

• Sex education to get to know one‘s will

• (Negative) right to abortion

• (Negative) right to using contraception 6

 Property right
• Love, marriage and relationships are often

associated with property.

• Property right (liberalism)

– State concession

– Defended law by and morality

– a fief that transforms the individual owner into

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 Self-ownership
Self-ownership as a natural right

• John Locke (1632-1704) “Every man has a Property in his

own Person."

• Josiah Warren (1798 – 1874) "sovereignty of the individual“

– Libertarianism (with a few restrictions imposed by democratic

rule)

– Liberalism (with lots of restrictions imposed by democratic rule)

– Libertarian anarchism
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 Max Stirner – The unique and his property
(1844)
• Egoism is not the anti-thesis of altruism, but of moral idealism

from religion to humanism

• Altruism is also self-interested and self-centered

• Spooks, the sacred:

– Concepts or abstractions that control peoples’ selves

– god, satan, state, morals, humanity, liberty, freedom, property

right, human rights, solidarity, society, family, reason, progress….

– „sanctuaries that must not be touched”

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–
 Willing and unwilling egoists
• Only willing egoists
– face the world selfishly and in a shamelessly self-centred manner

– master themselves

– are in possession of their concepts and

– are not possessed by concepts

– rebel against every society, every collectivity, every ideology, every abstraction

– Rebel against various authorities, institutions or even other individuals that

try to impose a higher power

• Unwilling egoists are not conscious of their egoism, ruled by spooks and

live in self-denial. Even their altruism serves self-interest. 10

 The unique
• Stirner tries to avoid dogmatism, by nominalism

• Describes the unique as:

– creator and creation

– always in flux

– always becoming

– creative nothingness

– The transient, mortal creator, that always consumes and utilizes itself

– always inventing itself anew

– subject without presuppositions, without a fixed identity or destiny

– any crystallized, permanent I rejected as a spook

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– The only meanings, aims, purposes are momentarily, transient ones
 Stirner on property
– Used in the broadest sense

– The unique exists only together with his properties.

– All traits, experiences, imaginations, actions, things that make me unique at the

moment.

– Everything I create, devour, and destroy for my sake

– Everything I can grasp due to my momentarily capacity

– “I am owner of what I have in my power.”

– One is not worthy of property that one cannot defend, because one is not capable of

keeping it.

– The beloved is property.

– Property does not lose its uniqueness by being possessed by the owner. It has its own

uniqueness independent of the owner.

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– Only the owner’s might is their own. Not this tree, but their might over it is theirs.
 Owness
• an expression of the unique’s own power and capacity

• is an active seizure or appropriation of thoughts, values and

objects as the ‘property’ of the individual

• part of the very existence, regardless of external constraints

• forms the basis for one’s resistance against constraint and

domination
– Egoistic anarchism

– Individualist anarchism after Stirner

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– Egoistic archism
 Max Stirner – Union of egoists
• A relation between egoists which is continually renewed by all parties through an act

of will

• Everybody participates out of conscious egoism

• “an unceasing act of coming back together” creates the union

• The union facilitates the full participation in one’s own interests by excluding

everything not in one’s own interest.

• The union is not an authority above a person's own will.

• No binding principles, that are assured against attacks

• Union exercises neither moral influence nor legal constraint

• Being aware of one’s and other’s uniqueness no one will try to prove themselves "in
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the right"
 Max Stirner – Union of egoists
• No sacrifice for the union, but utilization of the union.

• when no longer useful: undutiful and unfaithful cancellation

• If one party silently finds themselves to be suffering, but does not

communicate or leave, the union has degenerated.

• Examples of a union
– Children playing together

– Lovers

– Drinking wine together with a friend

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– No favour or sacrifice, but pleasure for everybody involved
 Stirner on utilization
• “For me you are nothing but –my food, even as I too am fed upon and

turned to use by you.

• We have only one relation to each other, that of usableness, of utility,

of use.

• We owe each other nothing, for what I seem to owe you I owe at most

to myself.”

• the unique utilizes and consumes itself too!

•
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 Stirner on Value
• Uniques are irreducibly different

• Uniques do not have any absolute value.

• One can only consider a person deserving of love, respect,

etc. in an absolute sense, if one doesn’t consider them for

themselves, but as a part of the state or society or humanity.

• The only way of recognizing and appreciating the value of

their own being, is being aware of their utilization by oneself.

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 Stirner on rights
• Equality, human rights and human dignity are spooks and sacred.

• exist only, if we assume an external and transcendent third party – like Humanity,

God or the State.

• That external party mediates the relationship between us and forces us to respect

those concepts

• The third party has more power over the relationship than we have over the

relationship.

• We, on the other hand, have no – or very limited power over the third party -

because it is sacred.

• Spooks and ideals always go hand in hand with a hierarchy and/or power

structures.
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 Hierarchies
• Definition of hierarchy that Franklin Veaux uses for polyamarous

relationships: a third party has more power over the relationship than the

people in that relationship.

• Not a hierarchy:
– A difference in capability between egoists

– A differences in intensity between relationships: Giving more energy, priority,

commitment, sex, or other resources to one relationship than another.

• In egoistic unions power structures denying or granting rights do not exist.

• There might be some bigots, but they cannot use a hierarchy to enforce

their bigotry but only their own capability.

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 Interactions without consent
• If an egoist sees no advantage in an interaction, he will resist it with

all his power.

• He regains his right over himself by the act of successful resistance.

• “When subservience ceases to be, all rulership will cease to exist!”

• “Whoever has to count on the lack of will in others in order to exist,

is a shoddy product of these others, as the master is a shoddy

product of the slave.” (Stirner)

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 The beloved as property
• I have no obligation to my eye; if I still tend it with the greatest care, I

do so for my sake.

• Even conscious egoists can sacrifice their life and liberty and property

for others, but only for their own sake.

• Whoever believes that he owes the object of his love something, loves

romantically or religiously.

• This means that he puts a concept of “sacred love” above the

immediate relationship/union with the other.

• Whenever you think that your feelings towards your lover are not
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“good enough”, you are comparing them to an ideal.
 On sexual liberty
Emile Armand, 1919
• Relationships are not more or less legitimate depending on whether they are

practically monogamous or not. Relationship practice is fluid.

• No definiteness: “One puts an end to an amorous experience: without offending,

sweetly; between comrades disposed towards starting again tomorrow, as the case

may be. Amongst us no experience, of any kind, ends definitively.”

• Communicating how one intends to live relationships is important. “A comrade may,

for instance, love a certain person, A, with the intention of prolonging the amorous

experience and of living together, and also love another person, B, with the same

spirit, but without living with them, and also love C and D on a pure whim.” 22
 Jealousy (Mae Bee, 2004)
• Coercive relationships are NOT respectful, for they deny not only desire but

growth. If I am bound by my lover’s jealousy I presuppose them incapable of

dealing with their emotions and too retarded to change.

• If we feel hurt by another, it does not mean we have been wronged.

• We should openly accept feelings of jealousy and fear.

• Nobody, but we ourselves, are responsible for our feelings.

• We should not ask or expect the other to restrict their behavior to solve

those feelings.

• This forces us to be the possessors not of another but of our own emotions.

• We can ask loved ones to love us through the hurt.

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 Manifesto for relationship anarchy (Andie
Nordgren, 2006)
• „Don’t rank and compare people and relationships — cherish the individual and your connection to

them. (…) Each relationship is independent, and a relationship between autonomous individuals.”

• „Explore how you can engage without stepping over boundaries and personal beliefs. Rather than

looking for compromises in every situation, let loved ones choose paths that keep their integrity

intact, without letting this mean a crisis for the relationship. Staying away from entitlement and

demands is the only way to be sure that you are in a relationship that is truly mutual.”

• “Being free to be spontaneous — to express oneself without fear of punishments or a sense of

burdened “shoulds” — is what gives life to relationships based on relationship anarchy. Organize

based on a wish to meet and explore each other — not on duties and demands and

disappointment when they are not met.”

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 Morals and obligations in anarchy
• Morals, contracts, rules and promises create duties, obligations and

debt, a form of bondage or enslavement.

– restrict people’s behaviors in the future.

– Are unnecessary as long as everybody agrees.

• Obligations matter only

– when people live in self-denial and submit to an absolute or ideal

– They are enforced by a higher authority as for example by a state

• Duties, obligations and debt are always fictions with no other basis than

power of the creditor to impose this fiction, when the belief in the
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fiction has worn off.
 Obligations and authenticity
• Fact: people, their desires, their feelings and their behaviours change.

• Obligating oneself to behave in a certain way in the future, will land you in a

conflict between keeping your obligation or being authentic.

• In other words: between being in self-denial or a willful egoist.

• Only willful egoists can be authentic.

• Additionally, the other party is hurt, if you decide to be authentic
– not only because of the conflict in interest, which is unavoidable

– but because their trust is broken, and they might see you as less moral.

• Your mistake: agreeing to an obligation in the first place.

• The other person’s mistake: accepting and relying on an obligation in the first

place. 26
Other disadvantages of obligations
• Create a debate about the obligation instead of the specific

situation.

• Create a debate about your morals and your character instead

of the specific situation.

• Create a moral high ground and entitlement, an absolute that

can be invoked.

• The person who wants to break or renegotiate the obligation

has a disadvantage, if the absoluteness of the obligation is

invoked and believed in. 27

 Relationships without obligations
• Relationships without obligations are anarchic precisely because they are egoistic.

• I relate with my everybody (except my employer and authorities) under the

assumption that nobody owes anyone anything — ever

• I maintain a relationship

– not because I think you are giving me what you owe me

– but rather because I am getting what I want from it.

• When that is no longer the case, I simply withdraw from the relationship,

– not because you failed in your obligation

– but because I have ceased to get what I desire.

• Thus, no contract, no rules, no promise, no duties and no blame are involved.

• no need to remain attached to the fictions of duty, justice, contracts and the
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Commitments as a form of communication
(Rotten Zucchinis)

• Commitments are useful because they:

– make clear where people are at in a given moment of time

– make intentions clear

– put everyone on the “same page”

• Commitments should be both made and kept voluntarily

• People negotiate commitments collaboratively and by

meaningful consensus
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 Commitments
– are living agreements about interactions

– continuously voluntary, intentional and mutual

– a form of communication

– do not restrict people

– do not coerce anyone later on

– allow for opting out

– can be changed as involved people see fit

– are completely compatible with “consent culture”, mutuality and the

union of egoists
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– not arbitrary
 Commitments
• Changing a commitment does not

– wrong someone

– provoke or justify punishment

– constitute betrayal

– but communicates that the terms of interactions and expectations

have changed

• Forgiveness, compassion, love, adoration, time, energy,

emotional work are presents given and not rights or

entitlements, and they can be retracted if need be. 31

Communicating about relationships
Relationship smörgåsbord
 My practique
• There are no duties or obligations in my relationships.

• Nobody I interact with apart from my employer and authorities is bound by

– rules, promises, contracts, shared values, lack of options or ignorance,

– neither am I.

• I meet/date people freely and return if I want to. They do the same.

• I can be sure that they are with me because they want to and I can be sure that I am

with them because I want to.

• Relationships come into being by repeatedly sharing time and energy and go on as

long as time and energy are being shared.

• Relationships are an emerging property.

• No difference between casual and sincere, because I am always authentic in the

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 Values without obligations
• Values are either about who you are, meaning about your integrity

• or a spook, imposed by morality or the state

• „Like so called ‘ethical polyamorous’ folk, I usually adhere to a moral code

of consent, responsibility and honesty. I adhere to all of these things and

it’s not about being ethical. It’s about being me.” (Louisa Leontiades)

• Nobody has a right or is entitled to my values

• I am not bound to these values.

• I define them as I like.

• I have created them as they serve me.

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•
 My subjective values (1)
• Desire: I am not loyal towards anything, from values to relationships,

that do not help me to fulfil my desires.

• Self-determination: both my partners and I determine our own lives. I

am not responsible for my partners, but myself. I can only control

myself, not my partners (without severe manipulation).

• Authenticity: is the degree to which one is true to one's own

personality, spirit, or character, despite external pressures. We can truly

be who we are at the moment in authentic relationships. Ideals and

norms about love, sex and relationships do not determine/posses us.

We are consciously and wilfully egoistic. Only egoists can be authentic.35

 My subjective values (2)
• Honesty: dishonesty runs counter being desired by my partners for who I am. I want to live

in trusting relationships, because I want to control how I spend spend my limited time and

energy.

• Acceptance of reality: we accept incompatibility, conflicts of interest and feelings, as

realities and do not take them personal. I do not need to defend myself, nor attack another

person.

• Fluidity: We can only be egoistically ourselves in the present and therefore we cannot pre-

consent to obligations. We accept that people are fluid and their values, needs, desires and

boundaries are impermanent. We accept that growth and decay are connected.

• Consent and mutuality: stems from self-determination, honesty and desire.

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Boundaries Duties: rules, promises, contracts
• Stem from self-determination and are • Limit or obligate the other person
about who you are – „You are not allowed to have
– „If I have penetrative sex without penetrative sex without condoms
condoms with you, I want to stay with another person. If you do,
informed about your safer sex you have cheated on me.“
practices. You are free to do
whatever you want with other
partners, but I will change my
behaviour according to your safer sex
practices“.

– „I do not have relationships with

people who have rules with their – „You are not allowed to have rules

other partners that have an impact with your other partners that have

on me.“ an impact on me“. 37

 Boundaries and compatibility
• Know your boundaries: know when you will probably respond to another person’s behaviour by

changing your own behaviour

• Articulated boundaries are necessary so that your partners knows when to inform you about

their own behaviour.

• To not inform you about their behaviour is a violation of honesty/consent/mutuality.

• If your boundaries do not fit, you are not compatible.

• Do not compromise on boundaries!

• Do not battle about incompatibility, but adjust the form of your interactions accordingly.

• You can be in love with a person, but totally incompatible regarding certain interactions.

• To acknowledge incompatibility can be painful, but nobody has done anything wrong!

• There is no moral high ground.

• Incompatibility can arise during a relationship as people change.

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 Norms/the sacred/the ideal
• Norms/ideals/the sacred are always enforced via systems of power: from call-out culture to

legislation.

• Systems of power justify their existence by enforcing norms, ideals and the sacred.

• Sexnegativity

- Assumption that sex is inherently bad.

- Society sanctions which sexual practices between which sets of adults are acceptable/wanted.

- Contributes to homophobia, transphobia, ableism, rejection of non-monogamy and laws

restricting sex work.

- Sacred sex.

- Tvåsamhetsnormen/couple privilege

- The presumption that pair-bond relationships involving only two people are inherently more

important, “real” and valid than other types of intimate relationships.

- Ideal romantic relationship, ideal romantic love. 39

 Norms/the sacred/the ideal

Amatonormativity

– A central, exclusive, life-long romantic relationship is the social goal of ones life and

should be preferred over other relationship types (Elisabeth Blake)

– Prioritizes romantic relationships automatically over platonic or sexual relationships

– Prioritizes the romantic partner(s) over oneself (codependency, abuse)

– Friendships are not even seen as relationships.

– Friends are left for romantic partners.

– Intimacy, sex and sensuality are linked with romance.

– Without a central romantic partner people are destined to be lonely or have empty,

unfulfilling lives.

– Ideal of romantic relationships, ideal of romantic love. 40

 „Ethical“ non-monogamy?
Would you kiss B in front of C if C would be upset?!

• “Poly” argument:

– it is reasonable for A to not kiss B in front of C

– A does not want to upset C

– A does not want that B upsets C

• “anarchist” arguments

– Do not inhibit your own desires for the false peace of not upsetting

others!

– B decides if they want to kiss you or not

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 „Ethical“ non-monogamy?
– What if

• C was upset because A and B were both female and C’s masculinity was

threatened by queer sex

• C was upset because A was black and B was white and C’s security as a

white person was upset by mixed race love

• C was upset because A is his daughter and C’s security in his father role is

threatened by the independence of his daughter

– Homophobia, racism and sexism are enforced by a power structure> A and B

should not care about C’s feelings

– Monogamy as a norm is enforced by a power structure-> A and B should not care

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about C’s feelings
Radicalism (Mae Bee, Emotional Mutation)
• to not act on my desire to love who I will when I will, is to be complicit
in a system of coercion, control and obligation

• no, I do not and accept the rules of “your” relationships with another
person

• I very well might “steal” your partner

• the idea partners can be “stolen” is oppressive

• to respect restrictive relationships is to uphold them

• the consequences in terms of drama might keep me from acting on my

desires, not “respect”, “decency” , “morals” , “civility” and “empathy”

• I am not a SAFE PERSON 43

 Respectability politics –
Don‘t scare the normals!
• Campaign for marriage equality only for romantic couples.

• Polygamy shaming when advocating for marriage equality

• The suffragettes distanced themselves from the free love movement, calling Woodhills lewd and indecent

• Trying to legitimize queer relationships via the state institution of marriage, thereby strengthening the

state’s power over relationships.

• Trying to change ideals and norms and thereby creating new power structures, instead of getting rid of all

ideals, norms and thereby power structures.

• Wrong dichotomy between monogamy and non-monogamy instead of anarchic relationships vs

relationships mediated by a power structure.

• Claiming that relationships based on self-ownership are not more „evolved“ than relationships mediated by

an authority.

• Denying that monogamy as a norm is harmful.

• Lots of „poly problems“ stem not from non-monogamy, but from maintaining coercion despite non-
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monogamy.
 Relationship anarchy
– Grounded in self-ownership or owness

– Puts the uniqueness and individuality of people

and their connection to each other at the center

– Challenges hierarchies of relationships based on

relationship type or other arbitrary social norms

– Challenges (structural) coercion in interpersonal

relationships 45
I hope I have been useful to you!

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