<p>Poly, to live in several loving and intimate relationships at the same time, is one alternative to the mono norm. In Sweden polygamy is illegal yet in recent years poly has slowly started to enter the hetero normative political agenda and raise debate in the media. But what does poly mean, and how do those who identify with this type of relationship describe it in contrast to mono? The theoretical framework is based on a structural viewpoint of the changes in the organisation of the family and the growing de-traditionalism of society. Amongst other I use a Foucauldian perspective to explain the structural shift (yet not replacement) between an Alliance pattern and a Sexuality pattern. Other theories in use are that of the emerging ideal of The Pure Relationship and Queer Tendencies. The essay draws its empirical results from seven e-mail and/or face interviews with individuals who identify with poly. The results show that if poly and mono are both understood as expression of the pure relationship they are potentially not so different. Yet the stigma and the lack of role models show that there is much needed public debate about it to unleash it from old discourses that still seem to uphold the equation that love equals two partners. Drawing attention to queer mechanism and the initiated process of the decentralisation of the heterosexual norm, I speculate that in the future polygamy must not be a foreign concept in Swedish society.</p>

Poly, to live in several loving and intimate relationships at the same time, is one alternative to the mono norm. In Sweden polygamy is illegal yet in recent years poly has slowly started to enter the hetero normative political agenda and raise debate in the media. But what does poly mean, and how do those who identify with this type of relationship describe it in contrast to mono? The theoretical framework is based on a structural viewpoint of the changes in the organisation of the family and the growing de-traditionalism of society. Amongst other I use a Foucauldian perspective to explain the structural shift (yet not replacement) between an Alliance pattern and a Sexuality pattern. Other theories in use are that of the emerging ideal of The Pure Relationship and Queer Tendencies. The essay draws its empirical results from seven e-mail and/or face interviews with individuals who identify with poly. The results show that if poly and mono are both understood as expression of the pure relationship they are potentially not so different. Yet the stigma and the lack of role models show that there is much needed public debate about it to unleash it from old discourses that still seem to uphold the equation that love equals two partners. Drawing attention to queer mechanism and the initiated process of the decentralisation of the heterosexual norm, I speculate that in the future polygamy must not be a foreign concept in Swedish society.

Denna studie utgår från tre fokusgruppsamtal med sammanlagt tio personer som betraktar sig själva som queera. Syftet har varit att analysera positioneringar i relation till diskurser som konstituerar kön, sexualitet och relationer, och hur dessa positioneringar och diskurser konstrueras språkligt. Feminist Post-structuralist Discourse Analysis har använts som teori och metod, kompletterad med en analys utifrån systemisk-funktionell grammatik. Analysen har visat hur deltagarna genomgående konstruerar ett ifrågasättande av normer som organiserar och kategoriserar kön, sexualitet och relationer. Utifrån queer positionering har kön och sexualitet genom agentiva verbprocesser konstruerats som dynamiska och mångfaldiga. Även anti-hierarkiska och feministiska diskurser, tillsammans med en ovilja att definiera sexuell läggning och relationer, genomsyrar samtalen. Vidare har det framgått att queer konstrueras som perspektiv, men även som en praktikgemenskap med gränser för vad och vem som är queer. En analys av diskursers samspel med varandra har synliggjort ämnen som på olika sätt utmanar queers gränser, bland annat könsseparatism, pronomenet hen, pornografi och asexualitet. Analysen har dessutom visat att det queera subjektet rör sig mellan olika positioneringar beroende på kontexten, och att positioneringar kan vara såväl intentionella som påtvingade. Den queera pendlar därmed mellan makt och maktlöshet beroende på relationen till andra individer och diskurser. / This thesis is based on three focus group discussions including a total of ten individuals who consider them selves as being queer. The research aim has been to analyze subject positionings in relation to discourses that constitute gender, sexuality and relationships, and how these positionings and discourses are linguistically produced. Feminist Post-structuralist Discourse Analysis, complemented by a systemic-functional grammar analysis, has been the theoretical and methodological approach. The result has shown how the participants consistently position them selves against norms that organizes and categorizes gender, sexuality and relationships. The participants have from queer positionings as agents in verb processes articulated sexuality and gender as dynamic and multiplex. They have also drawn on anti-hierarchical and feminist discourses, as well as articulated a resistance to define sexual orientation and relationships. Queer has been produced as a perspective, but also as a community of practice with it's own norms for what and who can be considered as queer. An analysis of interaction among discourses has exposed issues that challenge the borders of queer, for example gender separatism, gender neutral pronouns, pornography and asexuality. The analysis has furthermore shown that the queer subject move amongst different positionings depending on the context, and that positionings can be intentional as well as imposed. The queer individual is therefore oscillating between power and powerlessness depending on the relationship to other individuals and discourses.