Legalizing Polyamory III

[elfs]

Jane Galt has a, as she puts it, A really, really, really long post about gay marriage that does not, in the end, support one side or the other. However, all of the points she raises with respect to the institution of marriage apply not just to gay marriage, but to polyamory as well.

Most poly folks dismiss what is known as the Carson Scenario. The Carson Scenario proposes that, given a choice between marrying a monogamous man at a close socio-economic level, or sharing with other women a man at a signifcantly higher socio-economic level, enough women will choose the latter option such that a significant number of men will be left without the prospect of a marriage partner. Men of marrying age without a partner make up the bulk of our criminals. There are all sorts of just-so explanations from evolutionary psychology, the most common of which is that these men are engaging in crime because they are hoping to either acquire enough resources to attract a mate or, more directly, basically forcing themselves on a woman in the hopes of getting another generation of themselves. The explanation is vaguely compelling, but it's also irrelevant. For whatever reason, that is the population that commits crime, and marriage appears to be the civilizing influences that discourages crime.

As Galt re-iterates successfully, nobody thought that the welfare reform in the 1950s that gave money to unwed mothers would cause a vast expansion of unwed motherhood. But it did. Among blacks, the illegitimacy rate went from less than five percent to 25% in the 1960s and is now at 70% today. Galt points out, "women who wanted to get married essentially found themselves in competition for young men with women who were willing to have sex, and bear children, without forcing the men to take any responsibility. This is a pretty attractive proposition for most young men."

Poly people don't think of themselves, or monogamous people, as the marginal cases. They don't understand that when you legitimize polyamory monogamous society loses the justification for monogamy. Every woman who jumps the monogamy line for better socioeconomic status legitimizes that decision for the next woman who does so. Without the imposed necessity of monogamy, the distribution of women among men will eventually look like the distribution of money among families: a power curve. And there will be a long tail of unmarried men, and all the social disruption that implies. I believe that "legalizing polyamory" is a far greater issue than legalizing gay marriage because gays make up less than five percent of our population and come, more or less, in equal numbers of males and females, and the disruption caused by its recognition will be minimal precisely because individuals do not move easily from straight to gay or vice versa; it does seem to be innate. Polyamory, on the other hand, is something in which anyone can indulge, and seems to tempt so many. I can't help but wonder if twenty years after the legalization of polyamory Jane would be writing, "Men who wanted to get married found themselves in competition for young women with men who were already married but could easily afford to support a polygynous household. A household with those kinds of resources is pretty attractive to many young women."

(At this point, the polyfolk will start to argue that polyandry will be as commonplace an polygyny. I don't believe it. History has not recorded a single society with voluntary polyandry. Polyandrous relationships exist among polyfolk, but polyfolk now are by definition exceptional; as a rule, human beings form polygynous, not polyandrous, societies.)

Like Jane, I don't have a recommendation about legalizing polyamory. If we're going to have state-sanctioning of marriage, I believe that monogamous relationships are important, and if they're honored in the breach at least they are still honored; the next generation gets the message that marriage is important. I don't like the fact that the state sanctions relationships (hence my claim that it's not a recommendation) of any kind, but as long as the state is going to take these involvements, it's my recommendation that we should think seriously about the consequences of any legitimization of polyamory.

Comments

Causal relationships

[mothball-07.livejournal.com]

The assumption that making a change will lead to an effect requires a causal relationship. You have not demonstrated that there is a *causal* relationship in the two examples you show. Even if there is, you would need to show that the causal relationship leads to the implications assumed in this argument.

For example, if there *is* a causal relationship between financial support for unwed mothers, and the increase in unwed maternity (and not a correlation as societal mores shifted *causing* both changes simultaneously), then it still matters *what* the causal relationships is. Are pregnant women choosing not to marry because they are able to be independent? Or are single women less careful about avoiding pregnancy because they know there will be a paycheck in it?

The former suggests women's independence from men is increased, which is contrary to your conclusion. It suggests women are less likely to marry simply for financial provision.

The latter supports your conclusion.

So it *matters* whether there is a causal relationship, and if so, *what* that causal relationship is. Your argument, like so many social arguments, presupposes that there is a direct causal relationship in currently observed events that have a demonstrated statistically relevant *correlation*.

On the topic at hand, I don't think we can rule out polyandry. In a society where women have equal power, I suspect it is equally likely. There is evidence such societies may have existed, but (male) archaologists have been slow to recognize evidence in places such as Cretian ruins. (The Chalice and the Blade has an interesting exploration of this.) So, have there been? We really don't know, because we see the scattered history of our kind through our own tinted glasses. We *can* say it hasn't been evident in any numbers in recent (recorded) history, which I concede to be a large point against it. ;)

More generally, what do I suspect legalizing polyamourous marriage would do? Let's look at the roots of marriage. It was *not* designed to ensnare men. Witness the relative ease of divorce for men, but not women, until fairly recently. Marriage was designed to ensure a (male) heir with known bloodlines. That's it. Most of our sexual views of females have their root in this, and the attempts to keep women in line with it. Clitorectomy is the extreme version, but the illegitimacy of female lust is the more common aspect. Men, in those days, were not expected to be chaste. Only the female, and in fact female friendships were not considered taboo in many otherwise puritanical places, because they did not threaten that one important element, bloodline. Lesbianism was accepted in many places so long as the woman married and fulfilled her obligation. Similarly barrenness was reason for breaking the contract in some places for similar reasons.

Given this history of marriage, it seems suspect that today it represents a benefit to women. To me anything that weakens the monogamous bonds of marriage may actually lead to improved quality of life and equality among women. When women are free to seek the partner(s) they want, they may be *more* free to choose several lower income males and/or females, pooling resources, rather than one "provider." Lesbianism may become more common, as women are free to have both female *and* male partners. In queer history, until quite recently, women often married because they assumed it was the only way to have children, which they wanted. It's literally been less than two decades since the first upstarts handed friends cups on any kind of common basis. Older lesbians were astonished by the ease with which I did this, for example. How many women might choose "both" when not required to choose? And how many men, too? With the power of group-finance, these options might be more palatable to larger numbers.

My argument is no more supported than yours, but equally plausible. Ultimately, I find social engineering generally legitimizes or enforces the status quo for those in power. Right now, powerful wealthy men are almost expected to have mistresses. Legitimizing polyamoury might do less to shift the distribution of vagina, and more to shift the equality of those with vaginas. ;)

[damiana-swan.livejournal.com]

At this point, the polyfolk will start to argue that polyandry will be as commonplace an polygyny. I don't believe it. History has not recorded a single society with voluntary polyandry.

Um, actually ...

Google is a wonderful thing. :-)

While it's true that polygyny has historically been much more common than polyandry, I think our culture is evolving in some important ways that may well end up resulting in polyandry becoming more common than it has been. Eventually.

--It's becoming far less common for women to be thought of as quasi-property, who shouldn't be allowed to own property or work or get an education and thus "need to be taken care of".

--"Feminine" roles for men (caretaking, bisexuality) are gradually becoming more accepted and less stigmatized.

--The appearance of male strength is now less likely to require the domination of females or of other males, and traditional male strength isn't at all required to be a social "winner".

--Inheritance lines are no longer inherently male.

Of course, I should note one caveat: the increasing tendency of the far right to attempt to impose sharia-like laws does have the possibility of counteracting the above trends, which would pretty much eliminate the possibility of polyandry becoming more common in our culture.

[redsash.livejournal.com]

> Inheritance lines are no longer inherently male.

Historically there are plenty of examples of inheritance following the female line. Judaism, for example: you can't be jewish unless your mother's a jew.

I heard on the radio the other day that there were 75,000 divorces in Canada last year. This roughly matches the statistics I can find googling:

Divorce rates: http://www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb/famil02.htm
Marriage rates: http://www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb/famil04.htm

And this page goes into some more detail, including "expert" opinions on the effects of divorce on children: http://www.fotf.ca/familyfacts/issues/divorce/stats.html

This indicates to me that something isn't working with institutionalized marriage as it stands. Perhaps our culture would benefit from some new models? Group marriages have a lot of advantages over pair bonding.

~r

[sierra-nevada.livejournal.com]

China will be interesting to watch because of the combination of their "one child per family" policy, and the cultural predisposition to value males over females - that lead to a lot of abortion of female fetuses, and in turn the prohibition on sexing a fetus (and technology that can do that, such as portable ultrasound units).

The upshot is an imbalance: more males than females. Question: what will all those unmarried males be doing? Invading Taiwan? Going abroad looking for wives?

This policy also means their society's average is climbing rapidly, and that's going to put some other pressures on them.

The Economist has published articles mentioning these problems within the last year.

[sierra-nevada.livejournal.com]

damnit. "China's average age"

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

You're assuming something here. You're assuming that a heck of a lot more women are wired for poly than are practicing it.

I'm not sure that's true.

I know a couple of people who are in that situation.... OTOH, most of the people I know of that are *wired* for poly are also practicing it, state sanction or no.

And, yes, I do believe it is a question of wiring just as I believe gender preference is.... and that there is a wide spectrum of both.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

But there was a strong assumption, in the 1950s, that a lot more women were wired for monogamy and marriage as opposed to promiscuity, and that only the crazy ones would want to try and raise a family without a man around. But welfare created a situation where slightly more women found that proposition attractive, a tipping point that resulted in the situation we have now: 70% illegitimacy rates among blacks, and among whites a 50% failure rate in marriage with serial monogamy being much more commonplace.

[horsetraveller.livejournal.com]

If the illegitimacy rate is 70%, does that mean that 70% of black women who are mothers are unmarried mothers (or were unmarried at the time of delivery)? Does it include women who later were married or common-law with a partner?

It's hard to believe that 70% of all black mothers live in the inner city.

I think the point is the unintended results. Whether or not it's a correlation or a cause, the result is that many more women are having babies without getting married, than were ever imagined in 1950.

When we consider extending spousal benefits from work to more than one spouse, we may be thinking these will be claimed by only a very small minority of the population (ie 5%) but it may be possible that 50 years from now, it might be 50% or more.

It's hard to know what behaviours are "wired" and which are "chosen" when a lot of individual choices are related to social approval or lack of it. In 1940 a woman having a baby alone faced huge amounts of social disapproval; very few women would have chosen that. But many women today choose to have babies without partners (for one reason or another). So it's hard to say if wanting to have a partner and raise his children with him is "hard wired" or not.

When you face a lot of disapproval for having a same sex partner, it is likely that the only people who will choose that option will be people who strongly feel that is the only choice they can consider. If it is socially tolerated (as I would say that single motherhood is, I don't think it's accepted), perhaps more people would choose that option.

How many people would choose polygyny or polyandry or combined groups if such a choice were socially tolerated? We have no way of knowing until we make the social experiment.

What I found interesting about this post is the suggestion that it might have unintended consequences for monogamy. I think the crime hypothesis is a little far-fetched but it is an interesting thought for consideration.

[mholmesiv.livejournal.com]

I suspect you're basing your argument on a fallacy here. Your assumption is that women won't be independent and will require maintenance. That assumption is obviously false, with millions of women in the workforce, and more joining it every day. Families now are a combined economic power, not just a provider/dependent model assumed by your hypothesis.

Group "Marriages" have existed for millenia, some involving sex, some not, essentially they have been a group pooling of resources by like minded people. Think more in terms of "communes" and less in terms of "harems" and I believe you would be closer to how a polyamorous society today would look like. (This is based, of course, on the assumption that women will achieve equality in status and pay, which may or may not happen).

When you take into account that most previous societies were highly gender unequal, then it's not surprising that you'd come to the conclusions you have, but today's society is a completely different beast.

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

I can't speak to polyamory (mostly due to a lack of time) but I can speak to the link between marriage and criminality; and welfare and marriage.

The welfare laws of the 1950s heavily punished marriage. If a woman with children got married, she lost her benefits -- and with them, her independence and autonomy, all to bet on one many who might just take off anyway. Thus, the well-known destruction of the inner-city family. (Consider that the guy who got her pregnant the first time probably isn't going to be economically productive anyway . . .)

In my studies in criminology, we explored the fallacy that only unmarried men committed most of violent crime. What happened in the 1980s as we got good data for domestic violence, is that the violence CONTINUES but is now inflicted on the wife (and sometimes children) thus dropping out of the public criminal records.

Also, there's a strong correlation between men who are not married and criminals simply because no woman in her right mind would marry such a idiot / predator / scumbag. This won't be changed by the presence or absence of polyamory as an option -- the criminals will still be criminals irregardless.

The "unmarried men / violent crime" hypothesis is rooted in the myth that sexual frustration contributes to crime.

What DOES contribute to violent crime is frustrated AMBITIONS -- i.e. the lack of ability to get married being a placeholder for not being able to get a good job, attract a good woman, buy a house, raise children, etc. This ties quite neatly to individual economic power, which is diving nose-first.

By that standard, we're all hosed. But polyamory is if anything a positive adaptation -- and is one of several styles of shared living arrangements, extended families, etc. that people are using to survive when they can't afford the 2.5 kids and picket fence.