7 ms·

One problem I have with Polygamy is that I have never seen a 1-woman, multi-husband community. Sure, I've seen a few relationships in which this was the case,

One problem I have with Polygamy is that I have never seen a 1-woman, multi-husband community. Sure, I've seen a few relationships in which this was the case, but when you look at the historic aspects in the US, it seems a very rare thing. That makes me wonder if there is a severe power imbalance in the relationships and what is truly occurring. It's well known that in some modern US polygamy situations, there is a great deal of abuse of power, both in terms of controlling the wives, as well as controlling and abusing the young men who will not be allowed to have a wife. This further increases the societal costs and leads to more abuse of power, which is not what we need. edit: I should add: It's a numbers game. Given that on average, there tends to be just slightly more women born than men, what happens with all the extra unmarried men (or women, though this is rarer)?

adventured 11y ago
That same concern already equally applies to traditional marriage, in which some % are abusive. If you have a problem with polygamy on that basis, then you've got a drastically larger problem with the already existing system of marriage, in which millions of instances of abuse occur annually. The best solution is to bring polygamy out into the open, legalize it fully nationally. The government has no business dictating who can get married, or what the structure of marriage looks like, so long as the people in question are of sound mind and adults. If I want to form a ten person marriage, with five men and five women, whose business is it to control us and stop us? There are only bigoted 'answers' as to why that shouldn't be allowed.
- lisper 11y ago
  Not that I necessarily disagree with legalizing polygamy, but I think there is one non-bigoted answer: logistics. Our financial system in general, and our tax system in particular, has N=1 or N=2 hard-coded into it. There are other practical considerations as well. Suppose, for example, you have an N=5 marriage and three of them want to break away and take the kids. Resolving situations like that would be much more complicated than what we have now, and what we have now is already plenty complicated.
  - norea-armozel 11y ago
    You could recreate marriage as a form of incorporation which wouldn't be a bad idea if you think about the cost of growing old and having children. More adult partners equals more income to ensure the survival of its members and their children. And yes, I read Moon is a Harsh Mistress too many times (I'm a sucker for that novel). :P
    - lisper 11y ago
      Nothing is stopping you from doing that today. In fact, if you're really serious about advancing polygamy, this would be the way to start: show -- don't tell -- us how it would work. Because right now the poster children for polygamy are (AFAICT) all white male religious nut cases who just want to use it as an excuse to keep a harem.
      - norea-armozel 11y ago
        I never said I want to be in a group marriage, so I don't know why you seem to be suggesting that I should "show, don't tell" anything. I just said I could see it working out for some people. The fact that there exists an entire subculture of queer and pansexual individuals who are in such group relationships seems to me the proof in the pudding that it should be ratified as part of our civil law. And not some horny old man looking to recreate a Turkish harem painting. I think it would be wise to consider the possibility that maybe the legal institutions involved in marriage aren't up to scratch in terms of what humans can possibly do in terms of romantic and intimate relationships. It's better, in my opinion, to incorporate a method by which we can address these issues by more effective methods (as in don't ban something just because you don't like it. You ban it because it's destructive to the social order.).
        lisper 11y ago
        That comment wasn't necessarily direct at you specifically, but at anyone who wants to see polygamy legalized. It was just a suggestion.
- sgnelson 11y ago
  As to abuse in a typical 2 person marriage, yes, you're right, but this is also something that I believe society tries to deal with. There are always going to be abusive relationships, regardless of how many people are in them, but I do think that my question (opinion, whatever you want to call it), about how power and relationships change depending on the number of people involved is something to consider. I totally agree with the fact that marriage is none of the government's business. But at the same time, we would probably want to change some tax laws and social benefits if polygamy became legal. (I really couldn't care less if polygamy is legal or not. Yes, if there is a relationship of 5 women and 5 men, then there is no difference than traditional marriage system. But I really do wonder about what happens when you have 1 male with 10 wives, and 9 other young males with zero wives. In the past, this has traditionally lead to some form of revolutions. I haven't seen anyone actually answer this question yet, just people calling me a troll and a bigot.)
  - sridca 11y ago
    > I really do wonder about what happens when you have 1 male with 10 wives, and 9 other young males with zero wives. In the past, this has traditionally lead to some form of revolutions. I haven't seen anyone actually answer this question yet, just people calling me a troll and a bigot. Most societies studied (83.5% of the 853 societies according to George Murdock, for example) preferred polygyny. In other words, what you describe as "1 male with 10 wives" has always been the norm in human history. The real question is - why enforce monogamy, especially as extramarital affairs and unequal couplings continue anyway? Fairness and justice are human inventions; they do not exist in nature.
gaymarriage 11y ago
what a bogus argument. You're saying because 'some modern polygamy situations' are unhealthy, we should hope to keep it illegal? You're going to freak out when you learn about the divorce rate.
- bennettfeely 11y ago
  Polygamy is simply very different than same-sex marriage. It’s associated with patriarchy and sexual abuse, rather than liberation and equality. It flourishes in self-segregated communities, Mormon-fundamentalist and Muslim-immigrant, rather than being widely distributed across society. Its practitioners (so far as we know) are considerably fewer in number than the roughly 3.5 percent of Americans who identify as gay or bisexual. While some polygamists may feel they were “born this way,” their basic sexual orientation is accommodated under existing marriage law even if the breadth of their affections isn’t, which makes them less sympathetic than same-sex couples even if their legal arguments sound similar.
  - jsmthrowaway 11y ago
    Nothing about marriage has anything to do with liberation or equality. That's a modern attitude. Marriage is associated with the treatment of a person as property and arrangements for political and financial reasons, even to this day. And yet here you are, saying one type of marriage is okay and the other kind that you're not particularly close to is associated with Mormons and Muslims and antiprogressivism, while lauding a modern view on one marriage and taking the dated view on another. The reason plurals doesn't flourish, to you, is because the people who practice it don't tell you, lest you tell them what you just told us, and the inevitable "are you Mormon?"
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      Marriage of course depends entirely upon the married, their culture and their interpretation. Especially in America where we have fused 100 cultures and traditions, there's little you can call universal truths about marriage.
jsmthrowaway 11y ago
The only plurals I know are multi-husband communities and everyone involved are happier than clams. Your concern trolling to equate happy relationships with domestic abuse, simply because you don't understand them and think that everyone in a plural relationship is FLDS and lives in Utah, is pretty striking and antiprogressive (which is odd, considering you're attempting the progressive argument against their happiness). And no, what you're saying is not "well known." You are arguing against certain fundamentalist groups, not plurals. They are not equivalent, despite this thread's clear goal to say otherwise.
yourapostasy 11y ago
The term of art for 1-woman, multi-husband arrangements is "polyandry". The Wikipedia entry [1] has a citation to a survey that finds about 50 out of about 1230 known societies in a 1980 ethnographic atlas practicing polyandry, so it is a distinct minority community-scale arrangement. The next public, conventional taboo to broach is group and line marriages. As economic conditions worsen for some nations' middle class in the upcoming decades, line marriage can potentially offer a coping mechanism, trading off resource collectivization and time in exchange for recapturing increased security of various forms. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyandry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyandry
zxcvcxz 11y ago
You've only seen polygamist relationships like that because that's what you've been fed by society to make you believe that it's wrong and can't work.
vectorjohn 11y ago
So basically, "I don't know about it, so it doesn't happen." News flash, 1 woman multi man, and (prepare to have your mind blown), multi women multi man communities can and do exist.

adventured 11y ago

That same concern already equally applies to traditional marriage, in which some % are abusive. If you have a problem with polygamy on that basis, then you've got a drastically larger problem with the already existing system of marriage, in which millions of instances of abuse occur annually. The best solution is to bring polygamy out into the open, legalize it fully nationally. The government has no business dictating who can get married, or what the structure of marriage looks like, so long as the people in question are of sound mind and adults. If I want to form a ten person marriage, with five men and five women, whose business is it to control us and stop us? There are only bigoted 'answers' as to why that shouldn't be allowed.

lisper 11y ago
Not that I necessarily disagree with legalizing polygamy, but I think there is one non-bigoted answer: logistics. Our financial system in general, and our tax system in particular, has N=1 or N=2 hard-coded into it. There are other practical considerations as well. Suppose, for example, you have an N=5 marriage and three of them want to break away and take the kids. Resolving situations like that would be much more complicated than what we have now, and what we have now is already plenty complicated.
- norea-armozel 11y ago
  You could recreate marriage as a form of incorporation which wouldn't be a bad idea if you think about the cost of growing old and having children. More adult partners equals more income to ensure the survival of its members and their children. And yes, I read Moon is a Harsh Mistress too many times (I'm a sucker for that novel). :P
  - lisper 11y ago
    Nothing is stopping you from doing that today. In fact, if you're really serious about advancing polygamy, this would be the way to start: show -- don't tell -- us how it would work. Because right now the poster children for polygamy are (AFAICT) all white male religious nut cases who just want to use it as an excuse to keep a harem.
    - norea-armozel 11y ago
      I never said I want to be in a group marriage, so I don't know why you seem to be suggesting that I should "show, don't tell" anything. I just said I could see it working out for some people. The fact that there exists an entire subculture of queer and pansexual individuals who are in such group relationships seems to me the proof in the pudding that it should be ratified as part of our civil law. And not some horny old man looking to recreate a Turkish harem painting. I think it would be wise to consider the possibility that maybe the legal institutions involved in marriage aren't up to scratch in terms of what humans can possibly do in terms of romantic and intimate relationships. It's better, in my opinion, to incorporate a method by which we can address these issues by more effective methods (as in don't ban something just because you don't like it. You ban it because it's destructive to the social order.).
      - lisper 11y ago
        That comment wasn't necessarily direct at you specifically, but at anyone who wants to see polygamy legalized. It was just a suggestion.
sgnelson 11y ago
As to abuse in a typical 2 person marriage, yes, you're right, but this is also something that I believe society tries to deal with. There are always going to be abusive relationships, regardless of how many people are in them, but I do think that my question (opinion, whatever you want to call it), about how power and relationships change depending on the number of people involved is something to consider. I totally agree with the fact that marriage is none of the government's business. But at the same time, we would probably want to change some tax laws and social benefits if polygamy became legal. (I really couldn't care less if polygamy is legal or not. Yes, if there is a relationship of 5 women and 5 men, then there is no difference than traditional marriage system. But I really do wonder about what happens when you have 1 male with 10 wives, and 9 other young males with zero wives. In the past, this has traditionally lead to some form of revolutions. I haven't seen anyone actually answer this question yet, just people calling me a troll and a bigot.)
- sridca 11y ago
  > I really do wonder about what happens when you have 1 male with 10 wives, and 9 other young males with zero wives. In the past, this has traditionally lead to some form of revolutions. I haven't seen anyone actually answer this question yet, just people calling me a troll and a bigot. Most societies studied (83.5% of the 853 societies according to George Murdock, for example) preferred polygyny. In other words, what you describe as "1 male with 10 wives" has always been the norm in human history. The real question is - why enforce monogamy, especially as extramarital affairs and unequal couplings continue anyway? Fairness and justice are human inventions; they do not exist in nature.

gaymarriage 11y ago

what a bogus argument. You're saying because 'some modern polygamy situations' are unhealthy, we should hope to keep it illegal? You're going to freak out when you learn about the divorce rate.

bennettfeely 11y ago
Polygamy is simply very different than same-sex marriage. It’s associated with patriarchy and sexual abuse, rather than liberation and equality. It flourishes in self-segregated communities, Mormon-fundamentalist and Muslim-immigrant, rather than being widely distributed across society. Its practitioners (so far as we know) are considerably fewer in number than the roughly 3.5 percent of Americans who identify as gay or bisexual. While some polygamists may feel they were “born this way,” their basic sexual orientation is accommodated under existing marriage law even if the breadth of their affections isn’t, which makes them less sympathetic than same-sex couples even if their legal arguments sound similar.
- jsmthrowaway 11y ago
  Nothing about marriage has anything to do with liberation or equality. That's a modern attitude. Marriage is associated with the treatment of a person as property and arrangements for political and financial reasons, even to this day. And yet here you are, saying one type of marriage is okay and the other kind that you're not particularly close to is associated with Mormons and Muslims and antiprogressivism, while lauding a modern view on one marriage and taking the dated view on another. The reason plurals doesn't flourish, to you, is because the people who practice it don't tell you, lest you tell them what you just told us, and the inevitable "are you Mormon?"
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    Marriage of course depends entirely upon the married, their culture and their interpretation. Especially in America where we have fused 100 cultures and traditions, there's little you can call universal truths about marriage.

jsmthrowaway 11y ago

The only plurals I know are multi-husband communities and everyone involved are happier than clams. Your concern trolling to equate happy relationships with domestic abuse, simply because you don't understand them and think that everyone in a plural relationship is FLDS and lives in Utah, is pretty striking and antiprogressive (which is odd, considering you're attempting the progressive argument against their happiness). And no, what you're saying is not "well known." You are arguing against certain fundamentalist groups, not plurals. They are not equivalent, despite this thread's clear goal to say otherwise.

yourapostasy 11y ago

The term of art for 1-woman, multi-husband arrangements is "polyandry". The Wikipedia entry [1] has a citation to a survey that finds about 50 out of about 1230 known societies in a 1980 ethnographic atlas practicing polyandry, so it is a distinct minority community-scale arrangement. The next public, conventional taboo to broach is group and line marriages. As economic conditions worsen for some nations' middle class in the upcoming decades, line marriage can potentially offer a coping mechanism, trading off resource collectivization and time in exchange for recapturing increased security of various forms. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyandry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyandry

zxcvcxz 11y ago

You've only seen polygamist relationships like that because that's what you've been fed by society to make you believe that it's wrong and can't work.

vectorjohn 11y ago

So basically, "I don't know about it, so it doesn't happen." News flash, 1 woman multi man, and (prepare to have your mind blown), multi women multi man communities can and do exist.