My position is that polygamy should be tolerated, but not celebrated (or recognized by law). My reasons:
1) It will probably lead to a shortage of women, as some men hog all the women for themselves. Women are more willing to share a man than vice-versa. (Whether this is cultural or biological is irrelevant. Either way you’ll end up with a shortage of women.)
2) Poly marriages are not as stable as two person relationships. The more premises an argument has, the less likely it is to be sound; so too for marriage. Dan Savage says that he’s been to number of “poly weddings”, but has never been to a poly tenth anniversary party.
Women are more willing to share a man than vice-versa.
This may be a dumb question on my part, but is this from personal observation, studies you know of, other?
ie, I know there’re places where one man is allowed to marry multiple women, but not other way around, for example… But do we have reason to think that if suddenly we went “poof, now it’s allowed both ways” in a western society that, until then, was mostly monogamous, it’d default to “few/single men, many women” type marriages?
(Just to clarify, I’m not arguing against you so much as simply wondering/asking. I honestly don’t know the answers here.)
As far as stability, hrm… I would have thought that a strong poly marriage would be more weblike then chainlike, where each additional link strengthens in, but empirical data trumps all. Lack of poly tenth anniversary parties would be a fairly relevant data point.
(Hrm… wait, what’s the prior for tenth anniversary parties in general vs the actual number of poly weddings that happen.)
Oh, sorry if this reply is a bit disorganized. It’s as much me “thinking out loud” as an actual reply.
This may be a dumb question on my part, but is this from personal observation, studies you know of, other?
You know, I just looked it up and the evidence is less clear cut than I thought. In American poly culture, couples who want to date a woman are much more common than couples that want to date a man. Woman who want to date couples are called “unicorns”, while men who want to date a couple don’t have a word. But this kind of evidence cuts both ways; there are lots of couples that want women, but few women are jumping to date a couple.
Also: the existence of the cuckold subculture, where men ask their wives/girlfriends to have sex with other men. There are a few women who want the reverse, but there’s not a subculture for it.
Wikipedia also describes some cultures where polyandry is practiced. It also says that polyandrous animals tend to have the females be larger than males, while polygynous animals tend to have males bigger than females. Since men are bigger than women, this is evidence that humans are polygynous rather than polyandrous.
Hrm… If it really would end up being significantly one sided (regardless of which side it would end up as) then it would likely be bad. But the question is how one sided it would be. (I guess really the best way is to actually go around looking at poly relationships (not the cults, but actual freely formed poly relationships) and see what tends to happen on average.
Hrm… interesting. Reading that, however, doesn’t seem to imply that a small imbalance in the sex ratio necessarily makes anything more than a small difference. Did I miss it, or is there something in the original actual paper that implies small imbalances produce large effects? (My investigation into this topic is practically nonexistent, however.)
(I am curious also about the wording… Sexually active males vs sexually receptive females.)
If you look at the study (warning: PDF) you can get quantified information. Looking at page 5 you can see that a woman in .925 city (like Philadelphia) will get married a year earlier than in a 1.075 city (like Portland). So maybe the effect isn’t that big after all.
Although I would expect the results would be more dramatic if we comparing the operational sex ratios of countries rather than cities. If the sexual market is unfavorable, it’s a lot easier to import a mate from another city than another country.
1) Not sure what you mean by shortage of women. It’s not like we live in a “fair” universe where every male is entitled to a female. A couple of other points: Poly relationships tend to be open. If you have trouble finding a partner, someone’s poly arrangement is not the reason for it.
It’s not like we live in a “fair” universe where every male is entitled to a female.
Isn’t that the point? Indeed because there’s no law of physics preventing more than n men from experiencing long-term involuntary celibacy, since all other things being equal an universe where (n + 1) men out of N experience it is arguably worse than one where n men out of N experience it, then it’s up to us to make the former case less likely (unless the costs outweigh the benefits).
1) If women are generally willing to share men, how does it come about that the women are being “hogged” (which I understand to mean that they are partnered with only one man)?
2) Is #2 a special case of a general belief that family arrangements that are less stable than currently-legally-recognized families ought not be celebrated or recognized by law? Or does it just apply to this case?
My position is that polygamy should be tolerated, but not celebrated (or recognized by law). My reasons:
1) It will probably lead to a shortage of women, as some men hog all the women for themselves. Women are more willing to share a man than vice-versa. (Whether this is cultural or biological is irrelevant. Either way you’ll end up with a shortage of women.)
2) Poly marriages are not as stable as two person relationships. The more premises an argument has, the less likely it is to be sound; so too for marriage. Dan Savage says that he’s been to number of “poly weddings”, but has never been to a poly tenth anniversary party.
Maybe they don’t have to be?
Maybe in the progressively less rigid modern society it is progressively less fit for marriages to stay stable?
This may be a dumb question on my part, but is this from personal observation, studies you know of, other?
ie, I know there’re places where one man is allowed to marry multiple women, but not other way around, for example… But do we have reason to think that if suddenly we went “poof, now it’s allowed both ways” in a western society that, until then, was mostly monogamous, it’d default to “few/single men, many women” type marriages?
(Just to clarify, I’m not arguing against you so much as simply wondering/asking. I honestly don’t know the answers here.)
As far as stability, hrm… I would have thought that a strong poly marriage would be more weblike then chainlike, where each additional link strengthens in, but empirical data trumps all. Lack of poly tenth anniversary parties would be a fairly relevant data point.
(Hrm… wait, what’s the prior for tenth anniversary parties in general vs the actual number of poly weddings that happen.)
Oh, sorry if this reply is a bit disorganized. It’s as much me “thinking out loud” as an actual reply.
You know, I just looked it up and the evidence is less clear cut than I thought. In American poly culture, couples who want to date a woman are much more common than couples that want to date a man. Woman who want to date couples are called “unicorns”, while men who want to date a couple don’t have a word. But this kind of evidence cuts both ways; there are lots of couples that want women, but few women are jumping to date a couple.
Also: the existence of the cuckold subculture, where men ask their wives/girlfriends to have sex with other men. There are a few women who want the reverse, but there’s not a subculture for it.
Wikipedia also describes some cultures where polyandry is practiced. It also says that polyandrous animals tend to have the females be larger than males, while polygynous animals tend to have males bigger than females. Since men are bigger than women, this is evidence that humans are polygynous rather than polyandrous.
Hrm… If it really would end up being significantly one sided (regardless of which side it would end up as) then it would likely be bad. But the question is how one sided it would be. (I guess really the best way is to actually go around looking at poly relationships (not the cults, but actual freely formed poly relationships) and see what tends to happen on average.
Even a small imbalance in the sex ratio can make a big difference.
Hrm… interesting. Reading that, however, doesn’t seem to imply that a small imbalance in the sex ratio necessarily makes anything more than a small difference. Did I miss it, or is there something in the original actual paper that implies small imbalances produce large effects? (My investigation into this topic is practically nonexistent, however.)
(I am curious also about the wording… Sexually active males vs sexually receptive females.)
If you look at the study (warning: PDF) you can get quantified information. Looking at page 5 you can see that a woman in .925 city (like Philadelphia) will get married a year earlier than in a 1.075 city (like Portland). So maybe the effect isn’t that big after all.
Although I would expect the results would be more dramatic if we comparing the operational sex ratios of countries rather than cities. If the sexual market is unfavorable, it’s a lot easier to import a mate from another city than another country.
Hrm… So the question is does data at the scale of countries (or at least larger regions within countries) exist for this?
Anyways, thanks. I may have to update a bit on this matter (conditional on poly actually being likely to cause imbalance.)
polygamy != polyamory.
1) Not sure what you mean by shortage of women. It’s not like we live in a “fair” universe where every male is entitled to a female. A couple of other points: Poly relationships tend to be open. If you have trouble finding a partner, someone’s poly arrangement is not the reason for it.
Isn’t that the point? Indeed because there’s no law of physics preventing more than n men from experiencing long-term involuntary celibacy, since all other things being equal an universe where (n + 1) men out of N experience it is arguably worse than one where n men out of N experience it, then it’s up to us to make the former case less likely (unless the costs outweigh the benefits).
On the society-wide advantages of monogamy over polygamy: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5317066/2012-heinrich-puzzlemarriage.pdf
My background notes on polyamory, if anyone cares: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5317066/2012-gwern-polyamory.txt
Two questions.
1) If women are generally willing to share men, how does it come about that the women are being “hogged” (which I understand to mean that they are partnered with only one man)?
2) Is #2 a special case of a general belief that family arrangements that are less stable than currently-legally-recognized families ought not be celebrated or recognized by law? Or does it just apply to this case?
Women are willing to share a man, and the man is unwilling to share his women.
Ah, I see. (nods) That makes sense.