I've had people tell me polygamy is coming to the U.S. and sooner or later will be made legal. That's not going to happen. Any man who would want to put up with six wives is nuts.
The only way polygamy would work is to crush women utterly. Few rights, keep them sequestered inside, no employment. No backtalk or a whap across the mouth - and the law would have to support this.
Researcher have found that polygamous marriage in a culture leads to higher levels of crime, violence, poverty, and gender inequality. It's because the intrasexual competition for wives. Monogamy creates far fewer social problems than polygamy.
This is what studies of monogamous and polygamous cultures have found: "Our goal was to understand why monogamous marriage has become standard in most developed nations in recent centuries, when most recorded cultures have practiced polygyny," says UBC Prof. Joseph Henrich, a cultural anthropologist, referring to the form of polygamy that permits multiple wives, which continues to be practiced in some parts of Africa, Asia, the Middle East and North America.
"The emergence of monogamous marriage is also puzzling for some as the very people who most benefit from polygyny -- wealthy, powerful men -- were best positioned to reject it," says Henrich, lead author of the study that was recently published in the journal "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society." "Our findings suggest that that institutionalized monogamous marriage provides greater net benefits for society at large by reducing social problems that are inherent in polygynous societies."
The most comprehensive studies have found significantly higher levels of rape, kidnapping, murder, assault, robbery and fraud in polygynous cultures. These crimes are caused primarily by pools of unmarried men, which result when other men take multiple wives. These studies have also found monogamous marriage also results in significant improvements in child welfare, including lower rates of child neglect, abuse, accidental death, homicide and intra-household conflict.
Then let's factor in some of the more psycho unmarried men are going to murder the men who have all the women. That 20% are going to have to watch their backs all the backs. Hence, the society would probably be totalitarian.
Here's something else to consider: polyandry is one woman with more than one man. That, in many cases, is what we have today. Many women marry the State (one "man") and then marry an actual, corporeal man (and sometimes engage in serial monogamy). This happens when the government favors women over men.
Now just look around and see how that is working out.
We can see the effects of polyandry - deluded single mothers who believe they can make it on their own, their children who turn into "failure to launch" adults, the destruction of marriage, young men without decent jobs, women turning into sluts who blame all their problems on men...do I need to go on? A little bit, I suppose. Men either fight or withdraw.
These results are what happens with the destruction of "patriarchy."
These things are what happens when monogamy goes away: either women crushed by men or men crushed by women. Right now we've got the second, and the problems are easy to see for anyone with one eyeball open.
5 comments:
I lived for a year in Jordan, where polygamy is legal but not particularly common outside of the lower classes and the ultra-religious. In public areas there would often be a section for families, couples, and single women as well as a separate section for any single men. The men's section was invariably rowdy and prone to fights. It really seemed to be a counterproductive way of dividing society. I imagine it would only get worse the more prevalent polygamy became.
I'm not sure who would actually be the driving force behind polygamy.
After all, there is nothing preventing a man of wealth and status from maintaining multiple lovers, and even fathering children by them. There is nothing preventing him from supporting all these women, and the state, in fact, will probably ensure that he does.
So, from a man's perspective, what additional benefit would be gained from actually being permitted to become legally entangled with these women? It seems to me that polygamy exists to REQUIRE the man to commit to the women he bangs and has kids by.
Are women going to agitate for polygamy? Why would they? First, no feminist would want this, because of the obvious patriarchal aspect, and no religious women of any normal Christian denomination would accept polygamy, even if legal.
The sex, children, and resource parts have already been covered by our current cultural behavior, so who, other than some unusual religious groups, would push for this?
Those who believe in such confused concepts as Alpha/Beta think the "Alphas" will get all the women and have harems and the "Betas" will get nothing. Of course, when you try to build a house on sand...you erect an edifice of nonsense. Polygamy has always been enforced by the government. Women don't willingly choose it. Who wants to be wife number 200 for a billionaire? And it has only been popular in non-Western cultures.
Polygamy also tends to show up in very wealth-asymmetric societies, or in war-torn areas where lots of men are dead.
I think the Mormons took it up originally due to male mortality.
A woman MIGHT choose to be wife #50 to a rich man if her only other choices are 1) life with a very poor man, or 2) going it alone in a female-unfriendly culture, like rural china or the middle east.
Yes on the female-unfriendly culture. They'd be house-bound to protect them from predators.
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