I just heard something on the radio about a woman who was a polygamy advocate. And I wondered. How would legal polygamy benefit the women in those relationships?
Are you by any chance assuming polygamy would work only one direction, where one male gets to marry multiple female people? If so, did she say that was the model she was endorsing?
Also: is it possible she said “polyamory” and the reporter used the word “polygamy”, or that you yourself confused the two words?
They were talking about a polygamist community in somewhere hidden out-of-the-way. I got the impression that it had to do with one of those religious sects that goes for multiple-wives polygamy.
Polly-Gamy?
You want to marry a Parrot?
In the most basic sense, assuming that the woman in question is not coerced into polygamy, she benefits from having her chosen family arrangement not be criminalized. And if she is coerced into polygamy, she’s presumably coerced into this advocacy as well.
This isn’t something that I know much about, so I went googling. I found this article written by a woman, advocating polygamy:
The full article goes into much more detail:
The Canadian government is very much against polygamy.
https://www.bccourts.ca/jdb-txt/SC/11/15/2011BCSC1588.htm
That is a 357 page document. It primarily focused on Mormon fundamentalists (not ordinary Mormons, of course).
They feel their religion demands it? Some women only want part of a husband? I don’t find it compelling, but lots of other people do for their own reasons.
As others have said, there may be sort of a Stockholm-syndrome thing going on, or just the fact that people like to pretend they chose a challenging situation to make themselves feel more in control. But it’s not my job to be judge of marriages; if they aren’t being harmed, live and let live.
Was this polygamy where a man who already had some wives is free to legally marry another wife, but the wives have no legal relationship with each other?
Or was it polygamy where a married couple, or group of married people, can collectively take another person into their marriage, and they all have legal responsibilities to each other?
I’m not going to be able to find a reference, but a couple of decades ago there was an op ed piece by a fundamentalist Mormon women in a polygamous marriage with a man and something like 8 other women. As she described it, it sounded like a commune of women who kept a man around for sexy fun times and baby making.
The women who wrote was a lawyer. About two thirds of the women worked full time, and the others cared for all the children, and took care of most of the other household tasks. They had a schedule that the women negotiated for which household the man had supper at each evening, and which woman’s bed he shared each night.
It’s surely not how everyone would want to live, but she made a decent case that it worked for them.
Polygamy can mean one woman and four husbands or 3 wives and 2 husbands or a thousand people from a cult all married to each other. That’s not how it’s practiced today, but if it were really legal, I don’t see how a woman couldn’t take four husbands or whatever. So, I don’t see how it’s really a woman’s issue or a man’s issue.
I think there are legal issues to think about (letting new people into a marriage or out of a marriage, parental rights and responsibilities, medical decisions), but those could probably be handled by contract law.
OP, I guess I don’t understand your question.
If I wasn’t the jealous type, I could certainly see the appeal in being in a polygamous marriage. Someone to share the chores with would be awesome.
When you think about all the different types of people and personalities out there, it’s not too hard to come up with some scenarios where polygamy could work for women; even when it’s the classic 1 man + 4 wives.
The simplest is a rich man who’s a pain to deal with. Instead of competing or one of them lucking out to get his money (and tolerate his excessive needs), 4 women can share his fortune and take turns pleasing or putting up with him. Remember not all relationships are built on love and ideals; plenty are simple business arrangements.
There are 2 small towns 1 in Utah the other in AZ. Pretty much everyone in those towns are polygamist and nothing happens to them unless they marry a minor.
Income inequality is bad enough. Income inequality driving poorer people not being able to find partners would even be worse.
If an equal number of women as men practiced this, it would even out, be we know that’s not going to happen.
Not to mention that the Incels would have something legitimate to complain about.
I could not and would not be in a polygamous marriage but…
Consenting Adults should be able to make whatever Marriage choices they wish. I do have to wonder about the social and/or Religious pressures come to bear. IOW how much actual consent is involved? Most of these Marriages seem to be one Man and multiple Women. Is this what these Women actually want, to live this kind of life or are they coerced?
That said, live and let live.
Capt
[Moderating]
Not really a factual question. Moving to IMHO.
Polygamy is in the same place today as gay marriage was 20 years ago: “On the way but not yet there.”
There’s technically no reason why one should be legal and the other not. If it is demeaning to women, well, isn’t that their choice? Of course, one can also expect significant social backlash and upheaval as some rich men hog the women and the gender ratio gets more and more like China’s, where there are 30 million more men than women (although that has nothing to do with polygamy). Wouldn’t be surprising if such rich men get targeted for assassinations either.
It does increase your chances of the relationship(s) dissolving. I have seen a few REALLY BAD polygamous breakups (you have no legal right to the child you were the primary parent - but not the biological parent - for. Three people live together and share assets, money is communal - one pushes one out, the other stays - the one who is pushed out is left with no assets - titles, accounts and such tend to go into the name of the dominant partner - often a man. Three people are in a relationship - two of them bring in a forth the third doesn’t like.) But legalizing these relationships would address some of these issues.
I know a number of polyamorous relationships that seem to be just fine. That’s people with multiple romantic/sexual partners, with the knowledge and blessing of the other partners. Some are stable trouples who live in the same household, some are a married couple who both have other partners. Some are more complicated to describe.
Do people sometimes break up? Sure. That happens in monogamous relationships, too. One advantage I’ve seen in polyamorous breakups is that the exes often remain friends.
Legalizing the relationships seems complicated. Employers may not want to add unlimited additional people to their health plan, for instance. (And this is not the forum to whine about health insurance being mostly controlled by employers, but it does and complexity.) How many legal parents should a child have? Maybe the courts should judge that if the relevant parties can’t agree, just as custodial grandparents often get some rights in breakups.
But, “there are complexities to work out” doesn’t mean “we shouldn’t do it”. Legalizing it would provide some protection to the “third” who may have contributed substantially to the household, bonded with the minor children, etc.