Personally, I think the advantage would go to us girls. My reasons for saying so?
Men and women often have different priorities, and if any household decisions came down to a vote, the women would probably more likely vote together- I think if a man had three wives, he would maybe be able to swing a tie. Four or more, he might more succesfully gain a majority vote if he was good at lobbying, but by and large, I think the women would win out.
If the guy was lousy in the sack (or was such a jerk that the ladies didn’t want to be in the same room with him, much less do the horizontal hokey-pokey)… well, if one woman was refusing to have sex with him, it would be easy to dismiss her as being frigid. Four women crossing their legs, and he might be inclined to pick up a copy of the Kama Sutra, or, if it was his outside-the-bedroom behavior that was the problem, change his behavior, endeavor to be more pleasant to be around, and thus increase his chances of getting some nooky.
And, if the guy was physically abusive, one woman he might be able to keep under subjection. Get a little group of them, and they might just team up and pound the living shit out of him.
*If you wish, you may reverse the question and argue whether polyandry would be a better deal for the men or for the woman. I just happen to think that it would be more advantageous to the sex/gender that comprised the majority of adult household members.
um, I just realized that the subject line should read “Would polygyny… be a better deal for the women involved, or for the man?”, polygamy being a word meaning “more than one spouse”.
You must know significantly more amiable and friendly women than I do. The human capacity for backstabbing viciousness is, in my experience, only enhanced by adjective-uniform groups. (And I have very bad experiences with cases where the adjective is ‘female’.) I also find men vs. women dynamics extremely annoying, and more likely to happen in sitcoms than real life.
My experience with multiple-adult families suggests to me that people who’re thinking in terms of how to play to advantage or who gets the best “deal” aren’t going to be terribly successful in them at all. Voting-based systems are, from what I’ve seen, one of the least successful ways of organising such a family, because whoever gets outvoted may eventually feel irrelevant, ignored, and marginalised, especially if it happens often. Excellent source for drama of the relationship-breaking kind.
(It’s worth keeping in mind that egalitarian multiple-adult families that exists are rarely accurately described as ‘polygyny’ or ‘polyandry’, as those tend to presume that only one person is having multiple spouses, and that that person is not bi.)
Clearly for women, in general. Why? Because in such societies, women are a scarce resource, and thus have more bargaining power. While some men would have many women in their lives, other men would be desperate and willing to do anything.
“Who’s doing the dishes tonight? Well, unless you want me to go down the street and join up with Frank, Jenny, and Jill, I guess you are, sucker.”
If this is a “equal society”- then you can’t assume there would only be polygyny when making predictions. If some women took extra husbands, that would lower your damnedable bargaining positions.
I don’t know if it would be “better” for women but it would be the dawn of a new organizational system for them. The same would happen for the multi-husband groups for men. Basically society wide same sex co-ops. I couldn’t say whether this would lead to some kind of polarization or new realization of how men and women work together (or both).
I could handle sharing a wife- I figure less work for me. Oh you’re staying in Joe? Well I think I’ll go for a beer and play some pool then. If this gets off the ground my terms are guaranteed 4 hours of massage a week and will walk dog, another husband must be assigned yard work.
I’m a “free spirit”, I guess, I don’t do any kind of ogamy or ygamy or marriage.
I would never promise to any partner, or combination of partners, that I would never have sex except with her/them.
I think you female people have a lot of freedom as free agents, as long as you can confidently and authoritately say “yes” or “no” as you see fit, for your own reasons, whatever they may be.
May you retain such power, where you have it, and may you seize such power where and when you don’t. I love you empowered so you have my unequivocal support.
I don’t see you attaining or maintaining such power without control over reproductive matters. Y’all better get seriously militant 'cuz the rightwing conservatives are out to strip you of all of that, and it’s not like you’re getting hurt by accident while they aim at something else they care about, it’s YOU they’re after. Self-determined womenfolk. Please rise and do things. I will configure the shape of my own uprisings (such as they amount to anything) to also always reflect these concerns wherever and whenever I can. But seriously, a no-kidding neo-feminist revolution with teeth in it is what’s necessary.
My limited experience as a husband (wife=1), I don’t believe most men would like the arrangement.
Honey-dos seem to be a geometric function. Two women together can think up more chores for a man to do, than the sum of chores they can think up individually.
For a decent guess how the dynamics would be, we would have to know more about this potential society. Such as:
[ul]Will polygyny be the norm or merely a perfectly acceptable oddity. To what extent would polyandry be done/acceptable.[/ul]
[ul]How are new wives chosen?[/ul]
[ul]How vital is the “hub” spouse? Can he/she divorce individual wives without a vote?
Does the whole marriage dissolve when the hub spouse decides to leave? I guess IOW, how would divorce work.[/ul]
As Lilairen alluded, democracy is not the style of government most families attempt. The internal dynamics would probably have a lot of variance with personalities and number of women. I doubt it would be “good for women” because you would probably have dominant women bossing around submissive women- like what happens in most groups.
My father, sweet, loving, wonderful schlub that he is (even if he’s a Republican) has been in an “gamy” marriage for about 10 years now. There’s two women and two men in the household. And no, I don’t know all the details. Don’t wanna. It’s my dad.
But they certainly don’t “vote” in a democratic fashion. Neither do either the men or the women “gang up” on one another to force issues. Rather, they do what any married persons do: they talk, they negotiate, they come to agreements. Once in a while, they whine, they throw temper tantrums and they sulk. No different than any marriage. Except, of course, that there’s more likely to be three reasonable people at any one time to reassure one another that the one melting down is just having “a thing” and will return to sanity soon.
When I was getting into my first open relationship, Dad told me that he considers the optimal number of people in any relationship to be 0.6 (nice answer from a mathematician, innit?). After that, he said, things “get complicated.” I think he’s right. But I also see how much each and every one of them loves the others, and can’t imagine them living apart for simplicity’s sake.
So who would polygamy be the better deal for? Just like monogamy, the better deal is had by responsible, mature human beings who can communicate effectively and love one another. Plumbing is irrelevant.
Interesting, but I can’t see our society moving toward such a husband-sharing society. Finding one person you love enough that living with them doesn’t drive you crazy is hard enough. Finding 4 women and one guy who mesh well together?
Too many problems.
Having 4 wives wont make it less likely that the husband will cheat.
What happens if one woman hates the huband?
What if the husband stops giving any ‘affection’ to one wife, because he isn’t attracted to her anymore
Thanks to the Pill (And I mean THANKS. It should be a national holiday, because more guys are getting more sex than any time in history) and other reliable birth control, women are gaining more sexual freedom. As they do so, they seem to be acting more and more like men in the sex department. It seem to me that we are moving toward more sexually open relationships, and more casual sex. We might get to a point were everyone has as much sex as they want, but live with the one they choose.
Now if my wife, Elisha Cuthbert, Jessica Alba, Aishwarya Rai and Monica Bellucci wanted to share me?
Yah, that’s kind of why I put the polyandry thing at the end of my OP.
I hadn’t really thought about the “same sex co-op” angle, but I suppose that in many cases, this is what a polygamous (whether polygynous or polyandrous) household would come down to, especially when you’ve got 3 or more spouses of the same sex per household.
Really, I have to reiterate that “polygynous” and “polyandrous” aren’t likely to be useful descriptors of households in an egalitarian system – both of those words are presuming that only one person (typically some form of head of household) has multiple spouses. There are families structured with one person having two partners who aren’t involved with each other, but I don’t personally know of any that have more people than a V shape, nor am I comfortable declaring that the person who has multiple partners somehow dominates the system so that only their parts matter.
As words to describe individual people, sure; I mean, I’m polyandrous (depending on definitions somewhat; if you limit it to marital-type relationships I’m polyandrous). My husband and my mate are both polygynous. Their shared partner is also (obviously) polyandrous. The family isn’t describable with either gendered term with any sort of accuracy.
The human capacity for backstabbing viciousness is, in my experience, only enhanced by adjective-uniform groups. (And I have very bad experiences with cases where the adjective is ‘female’.) I also find men vs. women dynamics extremely annoying, and more likely to happen in sitcoms than real life.
