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The elevation of monogamy and closed relationships as the God-given natural status of a couple is the source of too many problems. Same for not living our own

The elevation of monogamy and closed relationships as the God-given natural status of a couple is the source of too many problems. Same for not living our own sexuality in the open. By acting like this (that is: like you are supposed to) you are constantly prone to blackmail. If you happen to have a wife that is entitled in her social-induced belief that even thinking about other women is good ground for the termination of a marriage, then external forces will have a great power over you. If you live with a person that accepts external affairs, sex with other people and who is ok with your true sexuality (e.g. If you're bisexual or happen to like transgenders) you will always have someone on your side no matter what, and your relationship to that person can't be menaced by any eventual disclosure. Social stigma might still have a leverage on you, but if you're open with your intimate circle of friends and business acquaintances it would be virtually impossible to use a sex-related scandal against you. The Ashley Madison leak is interesting because of this, too. It's a breakthrough because it exposes behaviors that society still considers immoral and punishable. People that left behind this archaic way of thinking and built their life together with someone that shares more open sexual values are totally immune to this scandal. This is certainly something that would have tickled Sir Bertrand Russell's mind.

zamalek 11y ago
> God-given natural status The "God reasoning" isn't the only reasoning. Just like polygamy is a choice, so is monogamy. It's a sexual choice. What is wrong is that people can't be open about that choice. People should be able to be open and honest about being polygamous or monogamous with their partner - yes, that might sometimes result in the relationship ending; but there's a good chance where there is a disagreement it would have ended with heartbreak further down the line anyway. This should occur long before marriage is ever on the table, or even, before a relationship is on the table. In Africa it's important for people to know their AIDS status and be honest about it; I wish we could do the same thing with relationship preferences. There is nothing wrong with wanting to have only one partner, there is also nothing wrong with wanting to have many partners. Both approaches to relationships have their pros and cons. Either way, debate about polygamy vs. monogamy in this case-scenario is completely irrelevant. Someone was hacked, privacy was violated (it doesn't matter what privacy) and that is the end of that. There's no reason to attach another argument to the discussion because the hack was an outright violation in the first place.
- camillomiller 11y ago
  It's not really a choice. It's "the way things are supposed to be". The argument is not unrelated though, because it's relative the nature of our society. And that nature is what makes this hack so juicy to people that would have otherwise have ignored that as they ignored many other data leaks in the past. Freedom of choice is important, but you're not really free to choose polygamy when education and morals are still mostly driven by archaic religious beliefs.
  - zamalek 11y ago
    > It's not really a choice. Just like homosexuality "was not a choice" a mere few years ago: yet people did choose to be open about their homosexuality and did choose to fight for their rights as homosexuals. Look where we are today: the American courts now lawfully recognize that choice in marriage. > archaic religious beliefs So far as advanced societies go, believing in higher power(s) is a choice. It is certainly not archaic to those who choose to do so and in the somewhat broken world today, possibly more relevant to them than ever. I've never understood why those who are discriminated against have discriminated beliefs. It's not right when their force-feed their beliefs down people's throats, but that doesn't make it right to force-feed Atheism/Agnosticism down theirs.
    - camillomiller 11y ago
      > So far as advanced societies go, believing in higher power(s) is a choice. Is it? That must be the reason why all recent U.S. Presidents were all fervent atheists... Is it a choice in a society where swearing on a religious tome is still considered a rational way to induce people to tell the truth in court? I know that's just theater (otherwise perjury would not be a felony). Still, I think it's a telling detail of how far you would go without believing in something in contemporary American society.
      - zamalek 11y ago
        We've gone from a data breach, to swearing on a Bible in courts. It's an interesting discussion but this is not the place to have it.
rayiner 11y ago
You're barking up the wrong tree. I don't think the core demographic of AM is people who are sexually liberated and in consensual open relationships. The site bills itself as an avenue for cheating, and people find that immoral because it implies breach of a relationship expectation/agreement.
enlightenedfool 11y ago
Or maybe simply don't marry? That's anyway the present and future and humanity is in transition. The west drives it and east follows in a few generations. EDIT: When almost 30% of marriages end in divorce and that number growing, it doesn't make sense to have laws around marriages.
- camillomiller 11y ago
  Yes, have a partner, if you want, but don't marry. I agree. In Europe, where I live, is considered normal to legalize a union not as a marriage but as a simple contract between two persons. That's more than enough to take care of the legal stuff that getting married would normally imply (right to visit a sick partner in the hospital, some forms of mutual agreement about the financials of the couple, etc...).
hoopd 11y ago
Your "partner" may have three other sexual partners that you know about but that doesn't prevent them from having a forth that they keep hidden from you because they know you'll flip out. You're not immune to this kind of scandal unless you're in a sexual relationship with somebody and you have no expectation to be made aware of their other sexual activities, in which case you're not in a healthy relationship. I doubt Bertrand Russel would be very fascinated by polyamory - it's just another concept that works great in theory but becomes endlessly complicated in reality.
- camillomiller 11y ago
  Why would you doubt it? "The psychology of adultery has been falsified by conventional morals, which assume, in monogamous countries, that attraction to one person cannot coexist with a serious affection for another. Everybody knows that this is untrue." "There can be no doubt that to close one's mind on marriage against all the approaches of love from elswhere is to diminish receptivity and sympathy and the opportunities of valuable human contact. It is to do violence to something which, from the most idealistic standpoint, is in itself desirable." [...] "but I do not recognize in easy divorce a solution of the trouble of marriage[...] but where there are children the stability of marriage is to my mind a matter of considerable importance. [...] I think that, where a marriage is fruitful and both parties to it are reasonable and decent, the expectation ought to be that it will be lifelong, but not that it will exclude other sex relations. A marriage that begins with passionate love and leads to children who are desired and loved ought to produce to deep a tie between a man and a woman that they will feel something infinetly precious in their companionship, even after sexual passion has decayed, and even if either or both feels sexual passion for someone else. This mellowing of marriage has been prevented by jealousy, but jealousy, though it is an instinctive emotion, is one that can be controlled if it is recognised as bad." Bertrand Russel, Marriage and Morals
  - hoopd 11y ago
    I suppose I gave him too much credit in assuming he would avoid this topic entirely.
carapace 11y ago
You're using "that" when you should use "who": "a wife who", "a person who"
- camillomiller 11y ago
  Thanks for the correction, I'm not a native speaker, and it shows. I'm always looking for constructive criticism to make my written English better.
ElComradio 11y ago
I think you might be confusing cause and effect. Long term serial monogamy is the norm across cultures and religions. It does not mean any other arrangements are objectively "wrong" but this meme of "Everyone would do X if not for cultural oppression!" is wrong. It's the same delusion that goes on with people who claim everyone is bisexual; it's a wish fulfillment fantasy of people who are outside the norm.
- camillomiller 11y ago
  Where did you get that from? I'm not saying that, not at all. Do I think that living and open relationship (not necessary polygamy, because the terms implies numerous relationships each with the same affective and contractual status) is the best way to go? Yes. Does that imply that humanity, freed from the religious oppression, would go for that? Not at all. There might even be some biological bases for monogamy, but we are rational beings. We can work around our instinct. We do that all the time. Some of us can successfully do that for monogamy, too. It would be great if that could be more largely accepted.
  - ElComradio 11y ago
    You seem to be taking contradictory positions, or I'm misunderstanding. You think that open relationships are the best way to go. But then you say that most people wouldn't go for them if religious strictures were lifted. Are you drawing a distinction based on religion specifically versus culture overall? One would presume that worldwide, if there was no "artificial oppression", people would naturally be mostly into open relationships if that's truly the natural state.
nsxwolf 11y ago
The conclusion of your post seems to be that privacy is only necessary or desirable because of our ancient, obsolete religious hangups. This seems to be a common view of the left on HN. The biggest example being the most common defense of privacy I see: "Gays need privacy because many live in countries where they will be killed if found out". So in other words, once the entire world is accepting of gays, there will no longer be a justification for the existence of privacy. This is the wrong way to be looking at this issue. Regardless of what the users of this site did, it does not excuse the behavior of other parties. It doesn't excuse Ashley Madison's failure to protect user data. It doesn't excuse the hackers theft of that data. It doesn't excuse the disclosure of that data by the hackers or people on Twitter. Lamenting people's hangups about infidelity is the wrong response to this situation.
- camillomiller 11y ago
  Nope, maybe my formulation was a bit foggy, but that's not my point. I'm not saying that the old adage that you shouldn't be worried about your privacy being breached if you have done no harm or if you have nothing to hide. Quite the contrary. Mine was a very specific assertion related to the king of leak we're witnessing: what's making this data so relevant and prone to gossip is the way we give for granted the monogamous nature of our relationship and how we deal with a moral set of dogmas that society inculcates on us "because God says so". Who doesn't live by these archaic impositions and accepts more open forms of relationship has a strong advantage because his pursuit of perfectly natural sexual desires doesn't need to be hidden and is not considered (especially by the partner) as an immoral and punishable thing.
PhasmaFelis 11y ago
> The elevation of monogamy and closed relationships as the God-given natural status of a couple is the source of too many problems. Don't pretend that monogamy is purely socially constructed. There is absolutely nothing wrong with consensual open relationships, and we'd all be better off if the taboo against them went away, but there is definitely something wrong with making a promise to someone you love about something that matters to them and then breaking it behind their back.

zamalek 11y ago

> God-given natural status The "God reasoning" isn't the only reasoning. Just like polygamy is a choice, so is monogamy. It's a sexual choice. What is wrong is that people can't be open about that choice. People should be able to be open and honest about being polygamous or monogamous with their partner - yes, that might sometimes result in the relationship ending; but there's a good chance where there is a disagreement it would have ended with heartbreak further down the line anyway. This should occur long before marriage is ever on the table, or even, before a relationship is on the table. In Africa it's important for people to know their AIDS status and be honest about it; I wish we could do the same thing with relationship preferences. There is nothing wrong with wanting to have only one partner, there is also nothing wrong with wanting to have many partners. Both approaches to relationships have their pros and cons. Either way, debate about polygamy vs. monogamy in this case-scenario is completely irrelevant. Someone was hacked, privacy was violated (it doesn't matter what privacy) and that is the end of that. There's no reason to attach another argument to the discussion because the hack was an outright violation in the first place.

camillomiller 11y ago
It's not really a choice. It's "the way things are supposed to be". The argument is not unrelated though, because it's relative the nature of our society. And that nature is what makes this hack so juicy to people that would have otherwise have ignored that as they ignored many other data leaks in the past. Freedom of choice is important, but you're not really free to choose polygamy when education and morals are still mostly driven by archaic religious beliefs.
- zamalek 11y ago
  > It's not really a choice. Just like homosexuality "was not a choice" a mere few years ago: yet people did choose to be open about their homosexuality and did choose to fight for their rights as homosexuals. Look where we are today: the American courts now lawfully recognize that choice in marriage. > archaic religious beliefs So far as advanced societies go, believing in higher power(s) is a choice. It is certainly not archaic to those who choose to do so and in the somewhat broken world today, possibly more relevant to them than ever. I've never understood why those who are discriminated against have discriminated beliefs. It's not right when their force-feed their beliefs down people's throats, but that doesn't make it right to force-feed Atheism/Agnosticism down theirs.
  - camillomiller 11y ago
    > So far as advanced societies go, believing in higher power(s) is a choice. Is it? That must be the reason why all recent U.S. Presidents were all fervent atheists... Is it a choice in a society where swearing on a religious tome is still considered a rational way to induce people to tell the truth in court? I know that's just theater (otherwise perjury would not be a felony). Still, I think it's a telling detail of how far you would go without believing in something in contemporary American society.
    - zamalek 11y ago
      We've gone from a data breach, to swearing on a Bible in courts. It's an interesting discussion but this is not the place to have it.

rayiner 11y ago

You're barking up the wrong tree. I don't think the core demographic of AM is people who are sexually liberated and in consensual open relationships. The site bills itself as an avenue for cheating, and people find that immoral because it implies breach of a relationship expectation/agreement.

enlightenedfool 11y ago

Or maybe simply don't marry? That's anyway the present and future and humanity is in transition. The west drives it and east follows in a few generations. EDIT: When almost 30% of marriages end in divorce and that number growing, it doesn't make sense to have laws around marriages.

camillomiller 11y ago
Yes, have a partner, if you want, but don't marry. I agree. In Europe, where I live, is considered normal to legalize a union not as a marriage but as a simple contract between two persons. That's more than enough to take care of the legal stuff that getting married would normally imply (right to visit a sick partner in the hospital, some forms of mutual agreement about the financials of the couple, etc...).

hoopd 11y ago

Your "partner" may have three other sexual partners that you know about but that doesn't prevent them from having a forth that they keep hidden from you because they know you'll flip out. You're not immune to this kind of scandal unless you're in a sexual relationship with somebody and you have no expectation to be made aware of their other sexual activities, in which case you're not in a healthy relationship. I doubt Bertrand Russel would be very fascinated by polyamory - it's just another concept that works great in theory but becomes endlessly complicated in reality.

camillomiller 11y ago
Why would you doubt it? "The psychology of adultery has been falsified by conventional morals, which assume, in monogamous countries, that attraction to one person cannot coexist with a serious affection for another. Everybody knows that this is untrue." "There can be no doubt that to close one's mind on marriage against all the approaches of love from elswhere is to diminish receptivity and sympathy and the opportunities of valuable human contact. It is to do violence to something which, from the most idealistic standpoint, is in itself desirable." [...] "but I do not recognize in easy divorce a solution of the trouble of marriage[...] but where there are children the stability of marriage is to my mind a matter of considerable importance. [...] I think that, where a marriage is fruitful and both parties to it are reasonable and decent, the expectation ought to be that it will be lifelong, but not that it will exclude other sex relations. A marriage that begins with passionate love and leads to children who are desired and loved ought to produce to deep a tie between a man and a woman that they will feel something infinetly precious in their companionship, even after sexual passion has decayed, and even if either or both feels sexual passion for someone else. This mellowing of marriage has been prevented by jealousy, but jealousy, though it is an instinctive emotion, is one that can be controlled if it is recognised as bad." Bertrand Russel, Marriage and Morals
- hoopd 11y ago
  I suppose I gave him too much credit in assuming he would avoid this topic entirely.

carapace 11y ago

You're using "that" when you should use "who": "a wife who", "a person who"

camillomiller 11y ago
Thanks for the correction, I'm not a native speaker, and it shows. I'm always looking for constructive criticism to make my written English better.

ElComradio 11y ago

I think you might be confusing cause and effect. Long term serial monogamy is the norm across cultures and religions. It does not mean any other arrangements are objectively "wrong" but this meme of "Everyone would do X if not for cultural oppression!" is wrong. It's the same delusion that goes on with people who claim everyone is bisexual; it's a wish fulfillment fantasy of people who are outside the norm.

camillomiller 11y ago
Where did you get that from? I'm not saying that, not at all. Do I think that living and open relationship (not necessary polygamy, because the terms implies numerous relationships each with the same affective and contractual status) is the best way to go? Yes. Does that imply that humanity, freed from the religious oppression, would go for that? Not at all. There might even be some biological bases for monogamy, but we are rational beings. We can work around our instinct. We do that all the time. Some of us can successfully do that for monogamy, too. It would be great if that could be more largely accepted.
- ElComradio 11y ago
  You seem to be taking contradictory positions, or I'm misunderstanding. You think that open relationships are the best way to go. But then you say that most people wouldn't go for them if religious strictures were lifted. Are you drawing a distinction based on religion specifically versus culture overall? One would presume that worldwide, if there was no "artificial oppression", people would naturally be mostly into open relationships if that's truly the natural state.

nsxwolf 11y ago

The conclusion of your post seems to be that privacy is only necessary or desirable because of our ancient, obsolete religious hangups. This seems to be a common view of the left on HN. The biggest example being the most common defense of privacy I see: "Gays need privacy because many live in countries where they will be killed if found out". So in other words, once the entire world is accepting of gays, there will no longer be a justification for the existence of privacy. This is the wrong way to be looking at this issue. Regardless of what the users of this site did, it does not excuse the behavior of other parties. It doesn't excuse Ashley Madison's failure to protect user data. It doesn't excuse the hackers theft of that data. It doesn't excuse the disclosure of that data by the hackers or people on Twitter. Lamenting people's hangups about infidelity is the wrong response to this situation.

camillomiller 11y ago
Nope, maybe my formulation was a bit foggy, but that's not my point. I'm not saying that the old adage that you shouldn't be worried about your privacy being breached if you have done no harm or if you have nothing to hide. Quite the contrary. Mine was a very specific assertion related to the king of leak we're witnessing: what's making this data so relevant and prone to gossip is the way we give for granted the monogamous nature of our relationship and how we deal with a moral set of dogmas that society inculcates on us "because God says so". Who doesn't live by these archaic impositions and accepts more open forms of relationship has a strong advantage because his pursuit of perfectly natural sexual desires doesn't need to be hidden and is not considered (especially by the partner) as an immoral and punishable thing.

PhasmaFelis 11y ago

> The elevation of monogamy and closed relationships as the God-given natural status of a couple is the source of too many problems. Don't pretend that monogamy is purely socially constructed. There is absolutely nothing wrong with consensual open relationships, and we'd all be better off if the taboo against them went away, but there is definitely something wrong with making a promise to someone you love about something that matters to them and then breaking it behind their back.