When is it Okay to Have a One P*nis Policy?
By listener request, Libby talks about the one p*nis policy and why it's not a great idea (and the one time it's okay.)
CN: language. Libby uses several words for the male genitalia on this episode.
RECOMMENDED READING
For the Love of Men by Liz Plank
The Will to Change by bell hooks
I Don't Wanna Talk About It by Terrence Real
Playing Fair by Pepper Mint
Transcript
If, one of the fears that you have around your partner, having sex with other men is that you're afraid of them having like a bigger Dick and that causing you to have insecure feelings about your own dick. Well, I hate to tell you guys, but women are very capable of acquiring any number of Dick size, shape curvature that can outperform yours in spades. And also like just the agility that...
I wasn't initially going to do an episode on the one penis policy. And my reason for this is I feel like there's been so much already said about the one penis policy that it didn't feel like I had anything to add. And the whole point of my podcast is because I wanna be a voice for things that I don't feel like are being said in other spaces about polyamory. And so I just didn't feel like I had anything to add here, but I had a listener reach out to me and ask me about what I thought about the one penis policy. And so I've been thinking about it for a while. And then I got into a conversation with a client about it. And I realized, I, I do have some things to say about the one penis policy that maybe aren't being said in other places.
And also, I just emphasize the places where I agree with what's being said about the one penis policy in other spaces. And then the other thing that I realized was I do think there's one situation in which the one penis policy is. Okay, and I'm gonna talk about that, but I'm gonna save it till the end of the episode. I just wanna start out by kind of making a general comment about how the one penis policy is talked about in general, out in the poly internet sphere. Let me be upfront. I'm not generally in favor of the one penis policy. I think it's just one way in which people try to control each other as a way of making polyamory. And non-monogamy safer for them when that kind of control is an illusion. And I'm gonna go into that. So I'm not in favor of the one penis policy, but my issue with how it's often talked about in polyamory spheres is from a very like intellectual and also sort of political standpoint of, you know, right versus wrong, you know, supports toxic masculinity and patriarchal ownership, kind of thinking about relationships.
It's also not equitable or fair. And again, I'm gonna tell you exactly why I agree with all that, but I find when you're stuck in, in that, you know, black and white, this is right, this is wrong. Kind of thinking that how you can end up coming across to someone who maybe didn't know that, or hadn't thought about that, or just really wants what they want, whether it feels right or not, is that it comes across as shaming and blaming and finger pointing and finger wagging. And if you've been listening to my show for any length of time, you know, that's not how I approach things. I generally wanna approach things, even things I don't agree with. Even things that I think are really unhelpful with compassion and with honoring where that's coming from, and maybe the underlying need that's trying to get met and then saying, you know what?
I understand that need, I honor that feeling and that strategy, isn't gonna be a good strategy. And that is how I feel about the one penis policy. And so I wanna just, before I talk about why it's a problem, I wanna talk about why you might want a one penis policy and where that might be coming from. But before I do that, let me back up, I need to define the one penis policy for those of you who don't know what the heck I'm talking about. Okay. So one penis policy, very simple heterosexual, cisgender man in a relationship with a heterosexual cisgender woman, and they are in a non-monogamous relationship. And the heterosexual cisgender man, and the heterosexual cisgender woman have an agreement or a rule, or the man has a request of the woman, whatever. However, it shakes out that the man and the woman can both only have sexual relationships with other women unspecified, whether it's cisgender or not cisgender.
Although I suppose if it's a trans woman with a penis then, and it's a one penis policy, then maybe that excludes also transgender women. But I do think that generally the one penis policy is completely trans exclusionary, which is a big problem, one with it. But in any case, you get the idea. The idea is the only penis is the one Het-Cis man in the relationship. And otherwise the only outside partners that this couple can have are women. And again, there's no explanation of, you know, transness in there at all. So that's the, that's what the one penis policy is. Here's the thing. I mean the one penis policy is just a rule. It's a rule like any other rule and it's a control on behavior. And it's a control on what, not, not what you are choosing to do, but what you are asking your partner to do or not do as well.
And general speaking, the rule comes from a request from the heterosexual cisgender man, the heterosexual cisgender man says I would like to be the only penis here in this relationship and the partner agrees to it. And so this is, this is just a form of control at the end of the day. I'm not a big fan of trying to control your partner. I actually think that's a losing strategy, but I want to, before I kind of go into all the reasons why this particular form of control is a problem. I wanna just honor the desire to control your partner and why that might be coming up for you and why it might be coming up. You in this specific way, if you are a heterosexual cisgender man, because we're raised in this very patriarchal, toxic masculine society. And if you're a man that grew up in this society, then you, you have some of those messages in you that say things to you.
Like if you fully satisfy your partner sexually, then she'll never want another man. And if she does want another man, then you're a cock. If she wants another man, then she's just, and, and especially if you're her nested partner who is providing domestic support financial support whatever it may be, familial support, et cetera that she's using you to go have sex with other men that she finds more satisfying. And you know, she's not actually that sexually interested in you. She's just using you for the resources you provide. Although there's some yucky stuff in there too, isn't there about how, if you're a man and you are investing your time, energy, emotions, and resources into a woman, then she owes you sex, right? And that sex is this transaction that happens between you. And if she's not providing you sex and providing sex to someone else, that's why you're getting a, a not good deal, right.
That's why you're being taken advantage of which again, that's kind of beaky, right? The idea that you're entitled to sex from women, if you invest in them in other ways, yikes, there's messages about how men's value come from, how well they, you know, satisfy their woman with their Dick. There's this idea that the only legitimate sex is penis and vagina sex and all other sex is secondary. That orgasms that don't come from penis and vagina sex are more immature orgasms. I, I could go on, but these messages exist. And there's a lot of security that is afforded to men from their position as the most important person in, in a relationship. And that their Dick has a certain amount of like power in that relationship. And, you know, there's also the life giving aspects too, of, you know, when, when there's, you know, penis and vagina sex and there's and, you know, then there's the possibility of a human being created.
And you know, so that's mixed in there too. And there's the whole like fluid bonding thing as well. So all of that's in there and there's this idea of, of what it means to be in that kind of relationship as a man with a woman and what it means for your self-esteem, your feelings of self-worth and your value in the world and in relationship. And I do think that the way, men have been told that their value is created is often through what they do and what they're able to perform and what they're able to provide. And so to imagine that someone else might be providing that to their partner and they haven't figured out yet how to have more intrinsic forms of self esteem and self worth and value the idea of having some, their partner receive some of the things that they uniquely provide for them from someone else might be just absolutely terrifying and like world ending and completely insecure making, if you're trying to be to, to feel safe and secure and okay, and you don't have any alternate ways to get there.
One of the ways that you might try to get there is to try to prevent that from happening to try to prevent anybody who gives your partner, what you give them from being given to them by someone else, but controlling your partner as a way to try to protect you from having to feel uncomfortable. Generally doesn't work because people are people and they're gonna do what they wanna do, and they're gonna feel how they wanna feel, and they're gonna want what they're gonna want and the way that they become safe to you, isn't by you preventing things that you're afraid of happening from happening, but by your partner honoring you, either as they're gonna do the thing that you're afraid of, or by choosing of their own free will to not do the thing that you're afraid of, or they prove that they're not safe by, you know, flagrantly being unkind to you or violating your boundaries are not taking good care of you when they are honoring themselves in a way that makes you uncomfortable.
They show they don't give a crap about your feelings and don't wanna like lovingly hold you during the hard times and move through those things together. So that you're stronger on the other side. Then that's not a relationship that is ultimately gonna be sustainable for you and trying to control it as a way of trying to make it safe is, is actually just gonna be exhausting and frustrating. It's gonna create a lot of resentment and it's not gonna feel very fair, but I wanna honor the fear. Men in this world. So many of them have been told a lot, lot of things about their value and polyamory really just rips away some of those things that they are used to resting their feelings of security and safety on. And so I wanna honor that, and then I'm gonna tell you why you shouldn't do it. Okay. so I'm gonna presume that when I'm speaking to people on this podcast, that, you know, you wanna be a good person, I'm gonna presume that you wanna do the things in the world that are ethical, kind, integrity and,ucaring and respecting of all human beings and their own autonomy and validity and their desires and that nobody is more important than anybody else. Okay.
So if you're grounding yourself in that idea, then I hope you can see that the one penis policy, like first and foremost, just isn't fair because what it's doing is it's saying, well, okay, I'm a heterosexual man, and I'm interested in women and you know, I'm being fair because I'm interested in women. I'm gonna have sex with women. My partner, maybe, maybe she's interested in women. Maybe she's not, I don't know, but like we can both sleep with the same people. We can both sleep with women, right. But that's not fair because let's just say that your heterosexual and your partner is in fact bisexual. And maybe your partner is a bisexual woman who is maybe in fact, 50% equally interested in women as they are in men, but still even then, they're only getting like half of the people that they might be sexually interested in available to them.
Whereas you have a hundred percent of the people that you might be sexually interested in available to you. In addition to that, most bisexual women, aren't actually 50, 50 interested in men and women. Sometimes it's like 70, 30, sometimes it's 80 10 sometimes. And by 80 10, I mean, they're 10% interested in women, 10% interested in lots of different kinds of people. So to presume that it's fair is, is like ridiculous. Additionally, there are lots of women who wanna be polyamorous with their heterosexual partner who are in fact themselves, heterosexual, which means they're not interested in women at all. Like maybe they're interested in women with, for the occasional like exploration. Maybe they're what we would call hetero, whereas they're up for threesome and they're not just gonna like, not touch the other woman in the picture. They might be willing to play, but they're not deeply enriched by a romantic and sexual relationship with another woman.
So in that case for you to say, Hey, I can have sex with women and you can too well, if that's not what she is actually interested in, and that's truly a completely imbalanced and unequal arrangement. So please don't tell yourself the lie that a one penis policy is somehow fair. And here's another way that it's not fair. If one of the reasons why you want the one penis policy is because you are trying to avoid some discomfort around your own masculinity. You are not in any way giving your partner any protection from the discomfort they might feel about you sleeping with another woman. And there is a whole cultural trope of men cheating on women and how that is completely a, a source of great shame and devaluing of the other women that the man is with. And you're, you're asking her to do a lot of work, to confront her own feelings of jealousy and her own feelings of worth and value and security, but you are not willing to do that with the ways in which having another man in her life might challenge you.
That also seems pretty, pretty unfair. Here's another issue I have with the one penis policy around fairness and inequality is that if you really think that a way of protecting yourself from discomfort and security, et cetera, is the, that your partner can only have sex with other women. And you think that's gonna be like super hot or just super unchallenging to you. I think that you might have this idea in your mind that is again planted in there by patriarchy and toxic masculinity, that female to female relationships are inherently less valuable or inherently less real, or that female to female sex where there's no penis involved is somehow like less satisfying or less exciting to women. And that is just patently untrue and unkind. And it's something I would invite you to consider rooting out of your brain that, that somehow female to female relationships are more shallow or again, less sexually satisfying.
The truth is that I have totally seen women have sex with women for the first time and find out what they're missing and never wanna see another Dick as long as they live. Moreover, if one of the fears that you have around your partner having sex with other men is that you're afraid of them having like a bigger Dick and that causing you to have insecure feelings about your own Dick. Well, I hate to tell you guys, but women are very capable of acquiring any number of Dick size, shape curvature that can outperform yours in spades. And also like just the agility that's available when you're using a dildo, when you're using different kinds of apparatus is to insert said dildo. When you have the full compliment of technology at your disposal, where said, dildo might also vibrate and might also have a literal stimulator and a maybe even an anal stimulator, or maybe even, oh my God, like a double penetration dildo. I mean, the possibilities when you let go of your need for a bio dick are, are pretty endless. And honestly that should be way more threatening to your masculinity than another bio dick, honestly. And if what you're feeling is that you'll be safer because your partner won't be as interested in women as they are in you. Well, again, then there's, then there's that unfairness of and attraction and all of that.
And also there's the homophobic aspect of it too, of like it's much more easy to be publicly in a heterosexual relationship than in a homosexual relationship. And so there's, there's just that natural elevation that can come with a heterosexual relationship, but then you're playing into the idea that homosexual relationships are less legitimate, less, real, less desirable, and that's hurtful. And I, I just don't think you want to be that kind of person. Hopefully you don't wanna be that kind of person. Speaking of not wanting to be that kind of person. I did mention the fact that the one penis policy, as it often stands within head heterosexual dynamics is trans exclusionary. Like, you know, there's often not any commentary of what the man's comfort is with a trans woman who has a penis or a trans man who has a vulva or, you know, any, any combination of, so someone who's gender fluid who doesn't identify as a man or a woman and what their body parts are.
And if you haven't been clear about that, or if you again, have this idea that, well, you're not threatened if it's a trans woman with a bio dick there's some stuff to unpack there too within your own non acknowledgement of trans people and their sexuality and how incredibly beautiful and potentially threatening it might be to you. So there's that. And I, and, and again, it's, it's sort of unpacking the idea that gender is not biology and gender is definitely not genitalia. And if you assume that your partner just wouldn't be interested in trans people, well, then you might have some underlying transphobia that you might wanna take a look at. Here's my last problem with the one penis this policy. And this one is really, again, sort of, I don't see this said a lot, but I wanna say it directly to you if you are a man listening to this podcast, which is, as I said before, I think a lot of men in, you know, modern Western culture, but even not Western culture have been fed the idea that their value within a relationship is what they're able to do and how they are able to perform.
And I think a lot of that can show up in specifically being able to perform sexually and specifically being able to provide a hard penis in the bedroom. And I think that overly centers, penis, and vagina sex, which is certainly not the only kind of sex that exists even between heterosexual couples and also, definitely not even for a lot of women, the most satisfying sex available to them, but, but moreover guys, your Dick might not get hard sometimes. Or you might be uninterested in sex at some points in your life, or you might go through a period of depression or anxiety or some other mental illness that impacts your sexual functioning, or you might have a physical injury or a physical illness that impacts your sexual functioning. And if what your belief is, is that your value to your partner and therefore your source of security of being the only access point for penis and vagina sex is you.
And that your erection is the thing that your partner will keep coming back to you for. And that is going to make you feel safe in the relationship. What happens when that functionality at isn't, what you have been expecting it to be and what maybe she's been expecting it to be. I mean, monogamous people run into this same issue where, you know, sexual function changes. And sometimes people are at sea about what to do with that and what their value is to their partner and they don't talk about it and they don't deal with it. And it's heartbreaking. And my belief is that probably your value in the relationship is far, far more than your ability to get a heart on. And that if you're not sure what that is, that rather than trying to avoid figuring it out and being in vulnerability with it, and maybe even growing those parts of yourself, that your partner desperately wants you to grow so that you can really be providing more than just an erection to your relationship.
You'd rather control their access to other erections. You're missing a profound opportunity for an even deeper level of security, intimacy, connection feelings of self-worth within your relationship. And I, I honestly want better things for you than that. Lastly, to kind of go back to this idea of like feeling secure as the only access point for a bio, this is just straight up toxic monogamy thinking, okay, what do I mean by that in, in sort of toxic monogamy culture and not all monogamy is toxic. I wanna be clear, but in toxic monogamy culture, there's this idea that not only are you supposed to be the one source of pleasure and joy for your partner, but that it is your job to make them happy and make them feel joy. And it is your job to make sure that they're always feeling that you are the source of that for them. And you are definitely the source of sexual pleasure and sexual joy for them. You are the conduit through which they get it, your, their pleasure is your responsibility and your pleasure is their responsibility.
And I think that idea is patently harmful, even in monogamous relationships. I think it's essential that our pleasure and our joy is something that we own and that we seek out and that we find in our life throughout all different aspects of our life, not just with our one partner, it's a tremendous amount of pressure to put on yourself. And it's also just not possible. You can't possibly be the one source of pleasure for another person. It's just not possible. Even monogamous P people need other sources of joy, whether it's a hobby or other friends, or just things that give them pleasure, whether it's, you know, playing cards or board games with your friends or going out and dancing, or taking a pottery class or forging for mushrooms or going on long hikes, whatever brings you joy and pleasure in your life belongs to you.
And to feel like you need to try to control access to that pleasure, whatever it might be at best. Like I said, it's controlling at worst. It's abusive to feel like you need to do that. So I really want you to look that in the face, if it, because feeling like you have to control access to someone's pleasure or be the one source of pleasure, that is a really harmful idea. So what do you do instead if you're a man listening to this podcast, what I would encourage you to do is do some real deprogramming of yourself, honestly. And I would start with maybe consuming some literature about toxic masculinity and its impact on men, because I wanna be clear this, this way of thinking hurts you, it keeps you out of wholeness and it keeps you of being grounded in your own humanity and your own self worth as a human being.
And there's so much opportunity for such richness. If you can unpack some of these beliefs within yourself. So I have some good books that might be useful to check out. So the first one is for the love of men by Liz plank, which is a, just an exploration of masculinity and toxic masculinity and some ideas for healthier forms of masculinity. The next book that I wanna recommend is the will to change by bell hooks, similar idea, the ways in which masculinity shows up in our culture, the messages that men get, the ways in which sometimes women are even reinforcing these ideas with men and how hard it is to UN to undo them, but how necessary it is if we're all gonna be free. I also recommend I don't wanna talk about it by Terry Real, where Terry's my teacher and my mentor, and he's spoken on this podcast and probably will again.
And he talks about the, the, that idea of that great divide of, you know, these traits are masculine. These traits are feminine and not giving men access to these feminine quote unquote feminine traits that are devalued. And then, you know, enforcing all of that through shame can really impact men's mental health. And the last book that I recommended, this is a very short read. And I guess if you read no other book, this might be a good one to start with, which is called Playing Fair. And it's by peppermint and it's this one's produced by Thore tree press, and you can get it on Amazon. It's just a book about men and specifically in non-monogamous communities and how to be a heterosexual man in a non-monogamous community in an ethical way. So I really recommend these books as a place to begin to unpack and deprogram. And again, honor the parts of you that are scared and honoring the parts of you that wanna reach for control and reach for things that are going to build trust instead, because I think that is the path that is going to give you the most security and the most joy and the most love altogether.
So now I'll tell you the one time that I think is okay to have a one penis policy. You ready? It's okay to have a one penis policy. If you are a woman and you have decided that you are mostly into women, but one Dick in your life is okay. You just want the one that's enough. You don't really want any other in your life. It's okay to have a one penis policy for yourself. And by the way, men it's the same with you. You can also decide that you're also are mostly into women, but one Dick, one other Dick besides yours would be great. That's when you can have a one penis policy. So if, if that aligns for you, go forth, have a one penis policy for yourself. So to recap Men, I understand you, you, I understand the desire to wanna have a Penis one penis policy. And I am sorry for the ways in which our culture has brought you to this place where this is what you feel like you need to do, or even feel like you're entitled to do. And I want you to see that this way is, is hurtful, unfair, harmful, problematic, but I also want you to really understand that on the other side of confronting some of your fears, that would cause you to want to try to control your partner. On the other side of that is more, love more, authentic relationship, more trust and Such a beautiful world on the other side. And I wanna personally welcome you if you decide to take that route.
