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The culture of enforced monogamy also involved closeted gay people getting married to people they had no sexual relationship with and hiding their real relation

The culture of enforced monogamy also involved closeted gay people getting married to people they had no sexual relationship with and hiding their real relationships, rampant alcoholism and domestic violence, many depressed and anxious people stuck in relationships they were unhappy in but felt social pressure not to leave, women with out-of-wedlock children and people who (for any number of reasons) never wanted to get married being ostracized by their communities, women systematically excluded from many careers and positions of social/political power, trusted institutions like the Catholic church covering up large-scale sexual abuse of children, etc. etc. Cherrypicking a single summary statistic gives a far too rosy impression of past sexual/family culture. Ultimately if you go back far enough the original purpose of sexual mores related to marriage were primarily about clarifying and maintaining patriarchal land inheritance and designating women and children as chattel of the male head of household.

OtterCoder 9y ago
If I'm cherry-picking, you're strictly appealing to emotion. Are you suggesting that the gay population, which is between 2-6% of Americans, plenty of whom are also monogamous (75% of male homosexuals, by recent estimates), are a major factor in a 10% uptick in infidelity in the general population? Are you possibly suggesting that abuse never gets inflicted on prostitutes, and that reducing them to human chattel, as their bodies are bought and sold, has improved their lot?
- jacobolus 9y ago
  You’re missing my point, which is that there have been radical cultural shifts in the past 50 years which have completely transformed expectations about sex, relationships, family life, careers, etc. The old pattern might have had less infidelity (though I wouldn’t be surprised if available data about past prevalence of infidelity is inaccurate and unreliable), but it also had many other severe social problems, some of which have improved substantially between 1970 and today. A culture (and the laws, mores, economic relationships, etc. which enforce it) isn’t a simple system that you can poke in a particular way and get a clear and simple result out.
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OtterCoder 9y ago

If I'm cherry-picking, you're strictly appealing to emotion. Are you suggesting that the gay population, which is between 2-6% of Americans, plenty of whom are also monogamous (75% of male homosexuals, by recent estimates), are a major factor in a 10% uptick in infidelity in the general population? Are you possibly suggesting that abuse never gets inflicted on prostitutes, and that reducing them to human chattel, as their bodies are bought and sold, has improved their lot?

jacobolus 9y ago
You’re missing my point, which is that there have been radical cultural shifts in the past 50 years which have completely transformed expectations about sex, relationships, family life, careers, etc. The old pattern might have had less infidelity (though I wouldn’t be surprised if available data about past prevalence of infidelity is inaccurate and unreliable), but it also had many other severe social problems, some of which have improved substantially between 1970 and today. A culture (and the laws, mores, economic relationships, etc. which enforce it) isn’t a simple system that you can poke in a particular way and get a clear and simple result out.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]