Contact Us

Our collective email is polystair – at – gmail – dot – com. Messages received at that address will be shared with all of us. We reserve the right to publish abusive or harassing messages. Please see below for specific contact guidelines.

01

For other survivors

We welcome outreach from other people who have experienced relational harm from Franklin, or current partners considering or in the process of leaving him. You do not need to be willing to tell your story publicly to seek solidarity and support from our group.

We also understand that some people who have been involved with Franklin have experienced harm from other partners of his, including some within our group. One of the benefits to us of this process has been the opportunity to heal relationships damaged by Franklin’s triangulation and lies, and we hope this may be true for you, too. But this is not a requirement: we wish to extend to anyone harmed by Franklin the opportunity to receive support without having to interact with others who harmed them. If you send an email to our joint address asking not to communicate with a particular person or people, we will ensure you have a private channel of communication going forward that includes only people you feel safe with.

Of course, any current or former partner of Franklin who has a pre-existing relationship with any of us is welcome to continue that relationship on its own terms.

02

For researchers and journalists

We will consider, as a group, requests for interviews and additional documentation from researchers, journalists or archivists. When you contact us, please provide your real name, your affiliation, links to your website or relevant clips, the nature of your project and the type of information you are seeking.

Please understand that some of us have been badly burned in the past by unscrupulous people seeking to exploit our stories, and our trust should not be taken for granted. Boundaries we set around any involvement in your project must be respected, and any violation of those boundaries may result in immediate withdrawal and revocation of our consent. We may request a written agreement before participating in your work.

03

For Franklin and his representatives

At this time, none of us desires any form of contact or relationship with Franklin. He has access now to our stories, and we are offering nothing more. Franklin has the information he needs to stop committing harm, and whether he does so is up to him.

There is only one form of communication we are willing to receive: Should Franklin ever decide to be assessed by a program for abusive men, and should his counselor within such a program or assessment decide that some form of communication with his survivors would be beneficial, we are willing to receive communication from the counselor to our group email address. Such a communication must include their credentials, information about the program, and the nature and purpose of the request. We will then decide together whether and how to respond to the request, collectively or individually.

We will not respond to any other communications from Franklin, or anyone representing him.

04

For survivors of other polyamorous missing stairs

We know that many people reading our stories have found the patterns familiar. As we have said elsewhere, Franklin isn’t special in the behaviors he’s exhibited. We have discussed the possibility of using this site to host more stories by people harmed by other prominent polyamorous spokespeople besides Franklin. We are willing to receive communication for the purposes of discussing this.

If you want to publish your stories here, you must be willing to identify yourselves to us privately (though you may use pseudonyms publicly). You must have a minimum of three people willing to come forward about the same person, and all three of these people must be known to each other. Once we are in touch, we will discuss additional stipulations (on both sides) as well as risks and safety.

At this time we are primarily interested in stories about white cisgender men with platforms—not because these are the only people who abuse, but because these are the people most likely to have the social capital that allows them to commit serial abuse without consequences. In addition, as a group of white mostly women who date men, we are wary of taking part in potentially oppressive dynamics against people of color or gender nonconforming people.

Unfortunately, we believe these limitations will not leave us with any shortage of stories to tell.