Empire of Normality and the Machinery of Love

Before you even crack the spine of Empire of Normality, know this... to be polyamorous in a world structured by capitalism is an act of defiance. And when that polyamory intersects with neurodivergence, queerness, Blackness, or any identity cast outside the empire’s walls, the love we create becomes not just radical but revolutionary.

In Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism, author Robert Chapman lays out a critique of the systems that define and confine how we are allowed to be. In the Preface and Introduction, Chapman traces how the modern idea of "normal," especially around minds and behavior, was never neutral. It was built, brick by brick, by capitalism. Mental illness, neurodivergence, productivity, and pathology all became tools of control in a society obsessed with order, obedience, and output.

But what does that have to do with polyamory?

Everything.

Of Machines, Minds, and Manufactured Love

In Chapter One: Rise of the Machines, Chapman takes us to the birth of the empire not in palaces, but in factories. Here, bodies were re-shaped for labor. Minds were judged by how well they kept pace. Those who couldn’t conform were left behind, or forced into silence.

But the factory line didn’t stop with work. It extended into the home. Into our psyches. Into the way we measure love.

Capitalism needed a certain kind of relationship: one man, one woman, one marriage, one job. A love that reproduced labor, reinforced property, and kept emotion tidy. The nuclear family was not sacred it was strategic.

Everything outside that model, queerness, polycules, platonic intimacy, communal caregiving, was marked as suspicious. Deviant. Unstable. But what if it was never instability they feared? What if it was our freedom?

Polyamory as Disruption

To love more than one is to refuse scarcity.

To love beyond hierarchy is to reject dominance.

To love without shame is to sabotage the machine.

Polyamory is a disruption of capitalist normality. It decentralizes the idea that love must be earned, hoarded, or confined. And for those of us who are neurodivergent, polyamory can be a natural rhythm honoring the complexity of our emotional landscapes, the way our attention flows and the way our minds crave dept.

Chapman doesn’t name polyamory directly, but he gives us the map. He names the system. He shows how our most intimate spaces have been engineered for obedience. And once you see that, you can’t unsee it.

We Build What They Could Never Imagine

This chapter, this book, this forum is not just about critique. It’s about creation. It’s about laying bricks for a world that doesn't yet exist. A world where neurodivergence is not just accepted, but honored. A world where polyamory isn’t tolerated, but understood as a sacred, liberating way of being.

So let’s sit with the questions:

• Who taught you what love should look like?

• Who benefits when your love stays small, exclusive, or silent?

• And what does it mean to be ungovernable in the ways you love, think, and live?

Let this be our beginning, not just of reading, but of remembering. Of reclaiming.

So as we move deeper into this book, let us ask ourselves:

• Where have I internalized the empire’s story about what kind of love is “valid”?

• How do my neurodivergence and my polyamory dance together or sometimes collide?

• What kinds of love do I withhold from myself in the name of appearing “normal”?

• What becomes possible when I no longer measure love or worth by productivity?

In the coming chapters, Chapman gives us more language, more history, and more fire to dismantle what we thought was just “the way things are.” At Axioms of Love, we see this as an invitation:

To love in ways that are wildly neurodivergent.

To build polycules like constellations, not corporations.

To be ungovernable in our joy.

To abolish the empire. One act of radical love at a time with Love Unbound!

Join the conversation in our Empire of Normality Book Discussion.