Legalizing Polyamory III
Apr. 4th, 2005 10:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsJane 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.
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.
