Cite?
One of my best friends is married to a woman who has a girlfriend of her own. They all live together and support each other financially. When one is out of work, the rest help out. They all love each other. No religion is involved in the situation.
No one is being victimized that I am aware of, and everyone seems quite happy with the arrangement. Perhaps an important reason for this was that the wife picked the third member entirely on her own, with no pressure from the husband.
Plus, I’m not sure the who “powerful men hoarding women” would actually happen in a modern, educated society. I mean, what percentage of women are just “trophy wives” in it for the money only? Hard to say, but I bet it’s not really that high. You’d expect those to migrate to the rich and powerful, but hell, they can have 'em. No great loss to rest of us.
Also, it occurs to me, aren’t the arguments against multiple partner marriage inherently sexist? Aren’t we assuming that women won’t be able to make a rational choice on their own here?
Maybe what we’re really opposing in this argument is the idea of forced marriage.
What’s rational for them as an individual isn’t necessarily what’s rational for society. This isn’t a matter of polygamy being bad in itself like, say child molestation or rape; it’s more like overfishing; the problem is what happens if too many people go for it.
Thing is, that’s how things are now; it’s not necessarily how things would be if polygamy became generally acceptable again. And it’s really the present day acceptance of monogamy as the norm that is important, not marriage law; you would get many of those same negative social effects if women just choose to flock to rich/powerful/famous men and don’t bother to marry them. Being something like a rock star groupie or a Playboy Bunny in Hefner’s mansion isn’t considered a high status lifestyle by most, so it’s not really a problem. Making polygamy legal probably wouldn’t have too much effect; it’s the social norms that matter.
On the other hand, there’s the question of what effect modern (relatively) easy divorce and equal rights has on this issue; multiple women marrying a single man doesn’t have quite the same effect of locking them away from the majority of men if they don’t stay there.
The Early Mormon Church in the Amercian West.
Brigham Young had about 55 wives. Joseph Smith a a few less. Heber Kimball had 45. And not only that many of them were ver young (wiki “and found that two of the girls were thirteen years old, 13 girls were fourteen years old, 21 were fifteen years old, and 53 were sixteen years old.” The average for a Church leader seemed to be around 9 wives. This was during a period where in the American West many men had no chance to marry due to the lack of women. It was well known to have caused a shortage of women in the LDS communities.
It’s hard to draw the line. If a girl is brought up in that society , not allowed outside contact , and in brainwashed into beleiving she MUST marry the selected older man, a man who is possibly her uncle and likely twice her age- then is she forced? I say yes, but it’s hard to prove at that point in time.
I’ve certainly noticed that almost all the posters here have assumed polygamy=polygyny and very few have mentioned even the possibility of women having multiple male partners.
Polygamy, whether polygamy or polyandry is probably not going to be popular with that high a proportion of the population. Not only did I just use far to many words beginning with ‘p’ in that sentence, but it probably means that within an educated society with gender equality, I really can’t see why it would wind up with ‘men hoarding all the women’, there may not be exatly the same number of men with multiple female partners as women with mutiple male partners, but it’s unlikely to significantly upset the balance.
How many people want to practice polygamy but are put off by the lack of legal protection? I can’t see it being that big a number.
Interesting that you assume it’s the girl that’s been brainwashed. I’d argue that there is just as much brainwashing that happens to boys as there is to girls.
Especially in those pseudo-Mormon communities, wherein it is clear that boys are expected to be perfection itself or not worthy even of community membership, let alone reproductive access.
The problem here is the perspective that these women are “taken”, as if they were property. You can have plural marriages without “hoarding” people. These are autonomous adults who can do what (and who) they please.
From the perspective of graph theory, I think my issue with this argument is looking at relationships as a star, or a tree, rather than a web. If Sultan Hefner has 50 wives, there is no reason those 50 women can’t also have other men (or women) of their own. Or other husbands and wives for that matter.
So I don’t think the “powerful men hoarding women” argument works if we assume a enlightened society of equals.
My point is that once the culture war is lost nationally, the Mormons WON’T CARE about having a PR nightmare, and they will be free to follow their faith to the extreme.
Can we make such an assumption? Looking back on history, and knowing human nature, I doubt it.
Assume that women can vote? Looking back on history and knowing human nature, I doubt it.
Assume that women can work at the same jobs men can, including combat? Looking back on history, and knowing human nature, I doubt it.
Insert your own analogy that fails to acknowledge the vast gains in power and equality that women have made in the last century in the first world here!
Yes, I know it’s not fully equal yet, but we’re on that trajectory.
That sounds susiciously similar to Obama style “share the wealth” socialism. Accruing (or inheriting wealth) is the clearest indicator of virtue and genetic superiority we have, so we should let the wealthy have more wives. If that generally mean men having multiple wives, well, thats just because men are more virtuous and genetically superior. If some woman can acrrue a lot of wealth, they can have multiple wives too (seeing as how same sex marriage is legal in so many places), just to be fair.
The LDS leadership is [edit: and I predict it always will be] much more interested in good PR than in returning to polygamy. Lots of the faithful speculate about whether polygamy will be reinstated in the Millenium, but that’s all speculation about what may happen some day. I could believe that more splinter sects might be formed that care more about doctrine and scripture than PR. But the Corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a business, and surely they know that endorsing polygamy is bad for business [edit: and this will continue to be the case even if gay marriage and/or polygamy become legal, in my opinion].
Because very few people of either gender appear to actually like that sort of arrangement. It’s historically been practiced in places where it’s economically necessary, but even the people in such marriages typically don’t like them. Polygyny is a natural human social pattern; polyandry isn’t.
Obama isn’t a socialist, nor is he interested in sharing the wealth. He’s basically a Reagan Republican with the wrong skin color. Nor does wealth have much if anything to do with genetic superiority, and women aren’t likely to be interested in multiple wives or husbands.
I doubt that we have enough evidence to determine the truth of that assertion, given that most societies in recorded history have been strongly patriarchal, with men placing a high importance on controlling women’s sexuality.
It’s not clear to me that such a system is innately preferred by human beings, and in fact the dilution of patriarchy in modern egalitarian democracies suggests that at least humans aren’t all that committed to it.
So while polygyny may be a more “natural human social pattern” than polyandry in societies with a strongly patriarchal structure, I’m not convinced that that necessarily applies to all societies.
Several of the posters in this thread have described being in poly relationships with a polyandrous component (and the poly trio that I mentioned being friends with happens to be polyandrous), and they all seem fine with it.
Why would it necessarily be limited to the “one man, many wives” format? If common in a modern, free-world context, there would probably be as many women with multiple men as vice versa, and it would more or less even out in the end. The responses from poly people in this thread reflect this.
The only time I can think of when polygamy might be a good idea is after a war with a very high death rate for servicemen. After World War I and World War II large numbers of women in Europe were not able to find husbands. This was true in the United States after the Civil War. After such a war a temporary system allowing concubinage might be acceptable.
Here’s an interesting/amusing perspective or three (or six) on the issue: