Polygamy Liberation: do you support it as well?

[bignavigator]

The entire global North is not currently recognizing polygamous marriages. Depending on where you live, polygamy has been banned for 1.5 millenium to a few decades. Monogamy-supremacist braindead mindset was enforced in different times by Roman officials, Christian priests, communist politicians (Vietnam is a perfect example when the culture has been polygamy-friendly traditionally for milleniums, but then people in power basically followed Carl Marx's trash-talking against polygamy and criminalized it).

However, no matter how long the night is, I know it's just a short time compared to polygamy-friendly parts of human history (I'd also count the prehistoric period where while marriage institution and laws in general didn't exist, polygamy was pretty much common in a sense that polygamous men of that time didn't care how many women they have intimacy with as long as they get offspings to continue on their legacy — just like most of mammal species).

While polygamy is on its separate mating system spectrum and as such doesn't stick in the same category with various sexualities and paraphilias, monogamy-supremacists sometimes accuse polygamists to be MAPs in a negative way simply because they choose significantly younger wives. If polygamy were liberated in the most of the "well-fed" world, would it indirectly help on the MAP cause by expanding the mainstream definition of marriage (which for normies is just two people, or one man + one woman in most Eastern European counties)?

[Learning to undeny]

I think it's a way to challenge the institution of marriage in a way that is more radical than extending the concept to include new types of couples. Maybe not just polygamy, but also group marriage.

I only said I slightly support because I don't really know the consequences of normalising these types of marriage. Certainly, it would have to be founded on gender equality, the right to escape from the marriage at any time without worrying about losing means of subsistence, and so on. So not the form of polygamy that was common in several cultures.

[Not Forever]

I’ve always been of the opinion that individuals in life should do what they want. If someone wants to enter into a polygamous relationship, they should have the right to do so without anyone saying anything—although personally, given my character, I would absolutely stay away from something like that. It would make me anxious and I would handle it very poorly, even just because of the social dynamics involved.

I honestly don’t think it would help the MAP cause, though. I think the foundations are already there. In the sense that we already live in societies where sex outside of marriage is allowed and where divorce is permitted. We currently live in a society with a form of monogamy where people constantly change partners.

In itself, I don’t even have an issue with how this polygamy presents itself—whether it’s a male harem or some kind of 50/50 equality. Toxic relationships already exist within monogamy; I don’t think polygamy needs special attention from that perspective. In the end, it’s always an individual choice—even entering into a bad marriage.

[DANAT4T]

I voted neutral. I personally have no desire to engage in the practice but I support your right to do so. I am like our government in WWII.

[Scorchingwilde]

I would say strongly support, but I prefer the term polyamory as it's gender neutral and encompasses all relationships with 3+ members, although it doesn't necessarily suggest a marriage tie. Polygamy is usually 1 man and many women or girls, and polyandry the same with inverted genders.

[John_Doe]

-Even though the topic doesn't really interest me and it will never be personally relevant (it's the abstract principles involved that I care about, sex is just one of the areas in which those principles apply) sexual non-exclusivity, as an ethical principle, is important to me. I support sexual non-exclusivity (as in rejecting contractual exclusivity) for the same reason that I oppose the stigmatization of pedophilia/age-gap attraction and the idea that child/minor-adult or age-gap sex is bad on principle, above and beyond psychological harm caused. The stigmatization of pedophilia/age-gap attraction on principle de-values the sexual pleasure of children/minors and MAPs alike (although, as I've often said before, I'm convinced that all teleiophiles are attracted to teenagers who look as though they are fertile and could reproduce) and contractual sexual non-monogamy, likewise, also devalues the sexual happiness of one's partner and the other people they might be interested in being intimate with. Now that I think about it, I remember reading a kindle excerpt of some book on swinging and the authors were joking that some celebrity was 'unf***able' or who would want to sleep with him or something like that and it turned me off because my whole interest in non-monogamy is rooted unironically in the concept of sharing and reducing competition for mates and sympathizing with your partner's needs and trying to set up an arrangement where as many people as is possible can benefit from something (i.e. an intimate relationship with any given person) so the fact that pro-non-monogamy people don't necessarily share the same underlying ideals is kind of disappointing (not really emotionally because I'm not sure I've ever consciously thought about this before, and I've always realized that people are interested in non-monogamy for different reasons. Some people try to connect it to anarchism or other beliefs that they have, I've always thought that the connection with 'communism' was obvious. It has always bothered me that people who claim to be for inclusivity, 'egalitarianism,' etc. don't seem to realize the implications of that when it comes to monogamy vs. non-monogamy and that's part of why the topic hasn't really interested me in a while. In fact, a lot of people will try to equate polygamy with polygyny so they can present monogamy as the gender egalitarian alternative as if polygamy proper; where women can also have multiple partners, isn't an option. I've always suspected that many pro-non-monogamy people downplay the implications of non-monogamy when it comes to competition to avoid appearing competition-averse or as though their interest in open relationships is 'unhealthy,' i.e. rooted in insecurity and a desperate/low-self esteem attempt to avoid losing their partner by allowing them other partners).

-I can't relate to polyamory culture at all. Even if I wasn't a loner, the thought of a group marriage does not appeal to me at all (although I realize that there are different forms of polyamory. The most appealing for me would be 'solo polyamory'). For years I was searching for some 'label' to make my home and accurately describe my preference and I could never find one. I'm not interested in structured/formal romantic relationships and all the 'complexity' that they apparently involve (I've heard that, unlike friendships, they are 'work work work' and increasing the number of them only makes them more of a chore and a burden) but sex without affection and emotional intimacy doesn't interest me at all (if I'd have sex with a woman, I'd be open to cuddling and making out with her as after-play or some kind of intimacy that would look 'romantic') so 'aromantic' never really fit me (I can't relate to people who say that they're turned off by kissing. I've even come across incredibly stupid articles online advising people to not kiss their one night stands or cuddle with them afterward as the so-they-seem-to-presume only possible way to avoid 'confusion' about the status of the relationship and I could never enjoy sex without the option of kissing or post-coital cuddling. I would never knowingly have sex with a woman who had a no-kissing policy) but 'polyamourous' doesn't either. Even if I was more outgoing/socially confident, physically attractive, didn't have erectile dysfunction and we didn't live in a dystopian world with no privacy where people will just gaslight you about not having you under 24/7 surveillance 'relationships' just wouldn't be my personality (like I said in another thread, it's different in fantasy because you're structuring a world in the 'abstract' based on current transient feelings. That probably sounds ridiculous and I don't want to spend too much time trying to explain. You control the environment and narrative and can skip mundane details that could be real life issues, etc. If I'm daydreaming about an indefinitely long exclusive relationship with a fictional queen I had a crush on I can ignore the fact that infatuation doesn't last long for me, that I'm only interested in 'romance' when I'm in a good enough mood, that you eventually become desensitized to someone even when they're appearance doesn't change and start yearning for a new partner, etc. It's almost like a love scene in a movie that centers around some disaster or crisis; in real life when people know there's real danger and it's not just pretend they will probably be running on anxiety, sleep deprivation, adrenaline, etc. that will probably make romance the last thing on their minds even if they really care about and would die for the other person. Those don't have to be issues in fantasy). What I would want in an unrealistic but theoretically possible outside of my own head world would be emotionally intimate casual sexual, preferably with close friends but one-night-stands with strangers would also be fine. Just the idea of casual promiscuous recreational sex turns me on (in the sense that that's what I find appealing, I have no sexual interest at all at the moment).

-I think the idea of polygamous marriage undermines the concept of marriage itself. Gay marriage doesn't; not under what's been the modern Western ideal since the 18th century, if I'm not mistaken (i.e. marrying for love, not as a calculated effort to join families or as an economic transaction etc.) but it's not prejudice that leads me to believe that polyamorous marriage really would. If you can marry multiple people and your partners can each marry multiple people (2, 5, 12, 100? Will there be a limit? If there is, the new limit might become the new revolutionary cause) what warrants giving marriage its special legal status? Why not give the same legal benefits to friends or have legally binding ceremonies where the community or state validates your friendship with someone? The debate around whether or not romantic love is inherently monogamously will probably always be unproductive considering how vague and nebulous the term is so we're never going to prove it one way or the other (introspection can clarify things but only after we're on the same page about what specifically/exactly the term means). A more solid argument is that there is a such thing as a monogamous attachment that loses its character when you try to extend it to other people (I can feel very intense affection for two or more women I'm sexually attracted to simultaneously, although I've never really liked the multi-tasking that threesomes can require, but if I have a crush on a woman I can't include someone else in that and have a crush on both of them at the exact same time. If I have a 'crush' on someone I'm 'obsessed' with them, they are 'special' to me. I think of 'infatuation' as attraction + affection + obsession, obsession implies exclusivity because it only makes sense to say that someone is 'obsessed' with something relative to how much attention they give to other basically comparable things. One is 'obsessed' with science fiction because they are more interested in it than they are in other genres, or even other recreational activities. The more obsessed you are with one person, the less interested you are in other people. I think I could better elaborate on this but this whole last paragraph especially is rushed).

So if there's a fundamentally monogamous attachment that we may or may not be calling 'romantic,' what does it have in common with polyamorous love that differentiates polyamourous love from platonic love that just so happens to coincide with sexual attraction or intimacy? You could make Rose in Titanic black and the basic love story remains the same, same thing if you made it about a gay couple (it wouldn't be the same actual love story, but it would be a basically comparable love story), especially if one partner plays the stereotypically 'masculine' role and the other the 'feminine' (.e.g. Jack having to win Rose; to persuade her to give him a chance even though he's the underdog as a poor man, introducing her to a new world and broadening her horizons, letting her stay on the piece of drifting wood, being protective of her, etc.). If instead of Jack and Rose it was Jack, John and Rose or Jack, Abigail and Rose or all four in a poly quad it just wouldn't be a 'romance' film anymore, it would be about close friends who slept with each other (if you're making a movie about friendship, like Stand By Me, you can include more than two people and it's still about friendship). Same thing with Romeo and Juliet, these stories represent the kind of attachment that's described in "I only have eyes for you." This is why I personally think that the very concept of 'polyamory' is kind of off as much as people will insist that 'it's not about sex' (which seems, to me, to be an attempt to validate it since sex has to be justified in order to not be perverse) but some people seem to think that the alternative is sex without friendship or affection. I also think this is why people get 'jealous,' it's not necessarily just insecurity about losing one's partner or not measuring up to another possible partner, I think they want to be special to their partners; for them to be infatuated with them the way they are with them.