Polyamory as Liberation: Radical Love for Multiply Marginalized Queer Folx

By Sarah Wolfer, LICSW

Founder of Courageous You

Love isn’t neutral. It’s shaped, constrained, and policed by the culture we live in. For queer people living at the crossroads of multiple marginalizations, such as race, gender, class, disability, and more, polyamory can be far more than “just” a relationship choice. It can be a survival strategy, a way to take back agency, and a daily practice of collective, radical liberation. Seen through an intersectional lens, polyamory is both a lived reality and a political stance. And when we hold it that way, it’s clear why it matters so deeply in the fight for queer justice and collective transformation.

Recent research, especially the 2024 peer-reviewed study by psychologist Dr. Manijeh Badiee and polyamory educator Evita Sawyers, published in “Sexualities”, brings this story to the forefront. Their work, “Black Queer Femme and Non-Binary Individuals’ Polyamory: An Act of Liberation,” centers the voices and strategies of Black queer femme and non-binary communities who use polyamory as cultural reclamation, survival mechanisms, and resistance to structures of domination.

A joyful gathering of Black queer femme and non-binary individuals celebrates polyamory as a form of cultural reclamation and resistance, with vibrant signs proclaiming messages of love, liberation, and defiance against oppressive structures.

The Historical Legacies of Chosen Family and Collective Survival

Long before “polyamory” entered mainstream vocabulary, queer and trans Black, Indigenous, and people of color were building the kinship systems they needed to survive. Ballroom houses, lesbian communes, radical faerie gatherings; these weren’t just social spaces. They were lifelines, born from the reality that when blood family and society shut the door, we built our own homes together.

During the AIDS crisis, chosen family moved beyond emotional care to provide housing, food, medical advocacy, and bedside vigils. As one participant in the Badiee & Sawyers study put it, these were “bonds anchored not only in care but in survival; when society cast us out, we made new definitions of home together.”

This isn’t new. Across many African and Indigenous societies, family once meant extended kin, shared parenting, and bonds that flexed with need. Colonization severed those networks, enforcing the nuclear, monogamous household as a tool of control. As one Black queer activist says, “In loving multiple, we reclaim everything that was denied us; freedom to be multiple, complex, and cared for.”

Intersectionality: A Framework for Polyamorous Liberation

Critical race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw gave us the term “intersectionality” to name what happens when systems of oppression collide and overlap. As she explains, “Intersectionality is a lens through which you can see where power comes and collides, where it interlocks and intersects. It’s not simply that there’s a race problem here, a gender problem here, and a class or LGBTQ problem there. Many times that framework erases what happens to people who are subject to all of these things.”

For people living at these crossroads; queer, trans, disabled, Black, Indigenous, people of color, polyamory is rarely just a lifestyle choice. It’s a political and cultural act, shaped and sharpened by the forces of racism, cissexism, ableism, economic violence, and queer exclusion. It’s a way of loving that insists on survival, agency, and community in the face of systems built to keep us small.

Four Axes of Liberation Through Polyamory

1. Racial and Ethnic Liberation

For Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color, polyamory can be a way to rebuild the support circles white supremacy tried to erase. The Badiee & Sawyers (2024) study notes, “Polyamory affirms both Blackness and queerness in opposition to white supremacist norms, bringing us closer to ancestral ways of belonging.” One study participant puts it plainly: “Polyamory provides a survival guide against ‘metaphorical captivity,’ allowing us to reconstruct family structures that affirm both our Blackness and queerness.”

2. Gender and Sexual Liberation

Traditional relationship scripts cling hard to binary gender roles and compulsory monogamy. Polyamory gives trans, non-binary, and queer people the space to step outside those boxes, rejecting the gendered and heteronormative scaffolding that has long shaped intimacy. Therapist and writer Alyssa Gonzalez explains, “Polyamory empowers femmes, women, and genders outside the binary to demand consent, redefine boundaries, and reject the historical control inherent in romantic exclusivity.” When relationships aren’t locked into one template, gender and sexual expression can expand and flourish.

3. Class and Economic Survival

The monogamous, nuclear family model often isolates people, especially those already marginalized by race, gender, or class, from resources that sustain life. Polyamorous networks can counter that isolation with shared housing, pooled finances, economic mutual aid, and collaborative parenting. A participant in Gay in the CLE (2025) reflects, “Pooling rents, sharing jobs, and parenting together allowed me to survive both poverty and discrimination in the Midwest.” Polyamory advocate Amy Gahran shares, “As young as 12 or 13, I was imagining relationships that worked in very different ways, but that was so hammered into me from everything I saw around me that it didn’t occur to me that any other model was viable.”

4. Disability and Neurodivergence Liberation

Ableist culture insists one person should meet all of another’s needs. Polyamory offers a different truth; a web of care where support can come from many directions, and no one partner is pressured to be “everything.” For disabled and neurodivergent people, this can mean relationships that are more sustainable, attuned, and affirming. As one poly-affirming clinician notes, “Polyamorous practice enables holistic care; no one partner is forced to be ‘everything,’ and diverse needs find affirmation.”

Legal, Policy, and Structural Barriers

Despite polyamory’s liberatory possibilities, U.S. law and public policy still center monogamy and the nuclear family. The message is clear: belong to the sanctioned mold, or be left out. Legal scholar Natasha Aggarwal notes, “People have been fired from work because their boss discovered they were polyamorous… It’s a problem for health insurance, and for living arrangements such as leases and deeds.” Advocate Elliott adds, “It’s easy to see there is a lack of explicit definitions for many queer topics in a legal system embedded with cis- and heteronormative values. An underdiverse language is key to identifying how the law is hostile towards polyamorous and queer families.”

These barriers, including child custody losses, blocked benefits, hostile immigration policies, denied medical decision-making, etc, land hardest on already marginalized polyamorous families. And none of this exists in a vacuum. The same systems that police our relationships are at work in the political attacks on queer and trans people in the U.S., in the genocidal violence in Gaza, and in the global rise of authoritarianism. The struggle for relational freedom is bound up with every fight for justice, survival, and self-determination.

Polyamory’s power is greatly enhanced when embedded within broader, intersectional struggles for justice. Grassroots collectives, advocacy projects, and peer-support initiatives are connecting polyamory with movements for racial justice, disability rights, abolition, and decolonization.

Crenshaw’s wisdom applies here: “If we can’t see a problem, we can’t fix a problem.” Visibility, coalition-building, and mutual aid are more than trends, they are lifelines for marginalized polyamorous people, creating and defending spaces where all can thrive.

What Polyamory as Liberation Means for Therapists

As therapists, social workers, and other care providers, our work isn’t just to affirm the many textures of queer and polyamorous love, it’s to notice how our own practice is shaped by the same systems our clients are resisting. The realities of polyamorous, multiply marginalized clients call us to widen our skill set, rethink the politics of care, and move past frameworks that shrink love to fit a monogamous mold.

Dr. Badiee reminds us, “These are not simply lifestyle choices, but acts of resistance.” Our job is not to pathologize polyamory, but to protect and nourish agency, complexity, and collective healing. Liberation-affirming therapy includes:

• Trauma-Informed Practice: Hold the truth that societal violence, family rejection, and unmet needs often make queer chosen families and polyamorous networks essential for survival and healing.

• Strengths-Based Approaches: Lift up stories of resilience, creativity, and possibility. Support clients in re-authoring their narratives beyond stigma and deficit models.

• Intersectional Analysis: Recognize that love and connection always unfold in the context of power, race, gender, class, and ability. Address the whole person, not just “relationship issues.”

• Advocacy and Resource-Building: Provide tools clients can use to defend their chosen families including legal letters, documentation, group referrals, community networks. Affirm their right to define family on their own terms.

• Reflection and Continued Education: Keep learning. Seek consultation with polyamory-affirming, justice-oriented colleagues. Unlearn the reflex to center monogamy or “traditional” family as the default.

When we do this work with depth and accountability, we stop treating polyamory as an edge case and start honoring it as a legitimate, powerful site of care, resistance, and liberation.

A joyful group of friends gathers in a cozy, plant-filled room adorned with inclusive flags, embodying the spirit of polyamory and queer liberation through creativity and shared connection.

Conclusion: Radical Love is the Task and the Promise

To practice polyamory as a multiply marginalized queer person is to claim a right to creative, abundant, self-determined love. More than relationship structure, this is about world-building: seeking kinship, security, joy, and meaning outside the confines of white supremacy, patriarchy, ableism, capitalism, and other systems of domination.

As Aggarwal so eloquently phrases it: “From my perspective it just means there is more love in the world, that your heart is so big you are capable of loving multiple people in the same capacity at the same time.”

If the future is to be just, whole, and liberatory, it will be built every day through practices of radical, chosen love that rejects scarcity and embraces infinite possibility. The invitation for therapists, advocates, and communities is clear: learn, support, unlearn, and build alongside those already loving and liberating on the margins.

If you’re walking this path and could use an ally, you don’t have to navigate it alone. Whether you’re untangling the weight of systemic harm, seeking tools for thriving in your polyamorous networks, or simply needing a space where all of you is welcome, I’m here. At Courageous You, we hold space for queer, trans, neurodivergent, kinky, and non-monogamous lives with care, curiosity, and a commitment to justice. Reach out to begin the conversation and we can build the support you need for the love and liberation you deserve.