What are your thoughts on a bisexual person being able to marry 2 people?

[Elspeth]

Personally, I prefer a single-person relationship. It's all moot to me.

Just because it's not your personal taste or preference, though, isn't sufficient reason to reject it.

The case you make against it seems to be based on a lot of conjecture about how a polygamist marriage tends to work in those sub-cultures that endorse them. In practice, there are often social conventions in place to address many of those sources of conflict and envy. And your case seems to be biased to show only the negative sides of the practice.

Even without polygamy, Mormon social structures that are basically female-exclusive -- Relief Society and the general nature of women's friendships and mutual supports create something of a protective screen for same-sex relationships that are often very intimate and supportive, many of which always looked to me like they probably managed to mask some activity that was probably sexual in nature, but even if they didn't, for many women these were bonds and structures that provided them with mutual power and protection against men who might otherwise have been enabled to be far more abusive than some of them turned out to be.

It also created a lot of built-in structures for supporting gender-nonconforming children (like myself) to exist free of some of the harassment that might have led to a greater risk of suicide, had I been raised in a smaller family, or a more isolated community. As it was, my talents as a babysitter (and my other non-conforming talents, like sewing) were appreciated and in fairly high demand, at least in one of the communities where we lived. In my midteens I was making enough from babysitting, mainly for some of my teachers and other school staff, that my parents were often borrowing money from me at the end of the month when money was short.  And I much preferred babysitting cute little babies and toddlers to the other sorts of jobs available to me at the time.

It wasn't all roses and kittens, but it was more accepting than the stories I hear from many others. Possibly it was just luck, though. And certainly, growing up with the looming expectation that I should take on a male role in that culture was disturbing to me, to say the least, and much of the reason I left, and cut off ties from it by my mid-teens.

Seems to me you have been framing an argument based mainly on supposition, rather than looking at how those who manage to make this work actually do make it work. Maybe they are rare and are exceptions. I can't be sure of that without some actual statistical studies that are a little hard to come by when most of the communities that support polygamy do so under the radar, and would not be willing to have their practices studied openly.

Seems to me there are similarities there to why so little research on transwomen and transmen is worth the paper it's printed on. Cultures that exist in hiding are very hard to study without bias entering into the picture.

[Elspeth]

Possibly my view is that if I have multiple partners one at least may get me off before they get off and lay in contented bliss while I'm  thinking 'I could really use a good lover'

The women who consent to polygamous relationships in my experience are rarely doing it for sexual gratification. The appeal is often more practical. In the video shown, there's definitely a much more intimate relationship in many ways between the two wives than exists between either of the wives and their single husband. Having only one man to clean up after and cater to is also a bit easier if you have a friend to help with it. Not that I'm endorsing that kind of relationship... though there were elements of that in what I was looking for out of marriage and raising my children... elements that I deeply missed because I was doing so outside of the culture I'd grown up in.

When I first sought therapy, it had more to do with the social isolation I was feeling, which I would have felt even had I been a more conventional, cisgendered mom, in the community where I was raising two small children, with only limited support from other women, most of if lip service or mutual griping rather than anything more practical. I sensed I wasn't the only one not contented with that situation, and feeling something was missing. In fact, at least one of the other moms I knew at our coop nursery school and from playdates was also someone who grew up Mormon, but was no longer active in the religion or the community (and Mormon communities in New Jersey, such as they are, tend to be spread a bit thin, though maybe not so thin for those like one of my cousins, who raised her family within about 30 miles from where I was raising mine).  I did envy her the community she shared because she could more easily integrate into her local ward than I would have been allowed to, had I remained active.

Also, Mormon weirdness around sex tends to make for fairly boring lovers. On that score I considered my own choices far preferable, as my ex was both assertive and inventive in that area, though I did eventually feel she was not coming out about some of her own desires, at least not in an open and direct way that I might have preferred, mainly because of my own concerns about consent and safety. Maybe I'll go into that in a less cryptic way at some point... since so much if it remains unknown to me, I'm hesitant to describe things that never got much above vague feelings about aspects of her desire that she felt unable to express clearly.

[~RoadToTrista~]

My mom had 14 siblings, not counting herself. And that was in a monogamous household.

Yeah, one woman can have a lot of kids. My grandma gave birth 11 times! (Only 8 survived to adulthood)

[Elspeth]

Yeah, one woman can have a lot of kids. My grandma gave birth 11 times! (Only 8 survived to adulthood)

The 14 were those who lived into adulthood. I'm not sure I know the total count of live births.

Some used to joke she was nominated for Utah Mother of the Year on volume.

[Kelly J. P.]

Just because it's not your personal taste or preference, though, isn't sufficient reason to reject it.

I don't reject it. It's just my opinion that three or more person relationships fail more often than two or one person relationships. In my first post in this thread, I very clearly said that as long as there as consenting individuals who aren't hurting anyone by doing so, they should feel perfectly free to engage in this kind of relationship. It doesn't matter to me.

The case you make against it seems to be based on a lot of conjecture about how a polygamist marriage tends to work in those sub-cultures that endorse them. In practice, there are often social conventions in place to address many of those sources of conflict and envy. And your case seems to be biased to show only the negative sides of the practice.

The case I make is certainly based on lots of conjecture. I have never studied this subject, and it's not exactly on my list of things-to-study-any-time-soon. Neither have I much personal experience with it... And yes, it is negatively biased. I have no reason to show the positives of this relationship style - especially not when you are so graciously doing so.

Even without polygamy, Mormon social structures that are basically female-exclusive -- Relief Society and the general nature of women's friendships and mutual supports create something of a protective screen for same-sex relationships ... protection against men who might otherwise have been enabled to be far more abusive than some of them turned out to be.

I agree that multiple women would be less susceptible to abuse than a single woman living with an abusive man.

It also created a lot of built-in structures for supporting gender-nonconforming children (like myself) to exist free of some of the harassment that might have led to a greater risk of suicide ... And I much preferred babysitting cute little babies and toddlers to the other sorts of jobs available to me at the time.

I'm glad that your childhood went as well as it did.

It wasn't all roses and kittens, but it was more accepting than the stories I hear from many others. Possibly it was just luck, though. And certainly, growing up with the looming expectation that I should take on a male role in that culture was disturbing to me, to say the least, and much of the reason I left, and cut off ties from it by my mid-teens.

Many of us certainly had a hard time of things. I was lucky, too, in that my single mother only required three years of denial before she let me take hormones at the ripe old age of seventeen. It could have been better, since puberty began at seven years old, but I have enough reasons to keep my mouth from uttering complaints.

Seems to me you have been framing an argument based mainly on supposition, rather than looking at how those who manage to make this work actually do make it work. Maybe they are rare and are exceptions. I can't be sure of that without some actual statistical studies that are a little hard to come by when most of the communities that support polygamy do so under the radar, and would not be willing to have their practices studied openly.

Precisely. As I said above, I have very little knowledge of the dynamics polygamist relationships. These relationships may be more or less successful than the usual coupling of people, and my part in this topic is to say that they are less so. My experience with these types of relationships is just what I've seen of other teenagers trying to make three-person relationships work. Usually, it's just a fun experiment that ends in drama or falls apart because the people involved didn't have any serious commitment to making the relationship work in the long-term.

Seems to me there are similarities there to why so little research on transwomen and transmen is worth the paper it's printed on. Cultures that exist in hiding are very hard to study without bias entering into the picture.

It's the unfortunate nature of the transgender people. Since our goal is usually to assimilate, little research and news can be brought to the public media in order to make us more mainstream and accepted. In hiding, we make it more difficult for us to come into the open.

I removed some lines from these quotes to shorten the physical length of this post.

[Elspeth]

You can't really prevent abuse 100%, and letting people voluntarily enter relationships that they desire wouldn't necessarily lead to abuse. Although, your last comment made it sound like you thought that abuse was okay as long as there was consent, which would be impossible if it was abuse.

You're deeply misreading me if that is your impression. My mom spent most of my teens and twenties working with women's shelters, so in addition to the biased police reports that often gave distorted views of the violence and abuse that the police did anything about, I got plenty of stories from my mom of what was going on from the perspective of the victims.

The radio job was something that happened because the news director at the station was fired for drug use, and I was available, and would work for peanuts. That the police reports were embargoed (and this was done with an actual rubber stamp, it was not merely some "gentleman's agreement") was something I found deeply disturbing at the time.

But I was already facing conflict with local community leaders (and the editor of the local newspaper) because I had already reported other things that the boys club considered "family matters" or "confidential" or otherwise private matters, as well as stories that did not serve the interests of the local community boosters.

By the time I started thinking about ways to work around the restrictions on reporting domestic abuse, I was already being pushed to take a more "creative job" where I wouldn't be dealing with those matters and making the station owner's relationships in the community "uncomfortable."

It was an eye-opener, but it was also a job I had taken hoping to return to college after a few months, and most of my failures in it were a result of little time to find workarounds, and a general lack of support by bosses and advertisers for any kind of news that might alter people's delusions that they lived in a safe and friendly community.

[Elspeth]

Precisely. As I said above, I have very little knowledge of the dynamics polygamist relationships. These relationships may be more or less successful than the usual coupling of people, and my part in this topic is to say that they are less so. My experience with these types of relationships is just what I've seen of other teenagers trying to make three-person relationships work. Usually, it's just a fun experiment that ends in drama or falls apart because the people involved didn't have any serious commitment to making the relationship work in the long-term.

Great points in this post, all well taken. It's certainly not without problems. However, if your sample of direct experience is mainly based on teenagers trying to make relationships work, I'd have to say there's already a significant bias at work there. Teens rarely do anything without drama. The radio news job I've described in other comments, for instance, was a masterpiece of an overenthusiastic teenager jumping into a pretty dirty adult world with both feet, all my weight, and no idea what I was getting myself into.

[Kelly J. P.]

Great points in this post, all well taken. It's certainly not without problems. However, if your sample of direct experience is mainly based on teenagers trying to make relationships work, I'd have to say there's already a significant bias at work there. Teens rarely do anything without drama. The radio news job I've described in other comments, for instance, was a masterpiece of an overenthusiastic teenager jumping into a pretty dirty adult world with both feet, all my weight, and no idea what I was getting myself into.

Well, I can only write based on my experience. I'm still quite young, so hopefully I have much more to experience.

I don't think I'd call it bias so much as I would call it, "another teenager talking about something she knows little about". It's not in any way pointless, since I get to learn, and I hopefully stimulate some conversation, but doing this often comes with the drawback of others taking me more seriously than they should.

My writing style probably comes across too arrogantly, as it always has.

In any case, thanks for the knowledge. Learning is the only thing that interests me any more. Going through life without passion is really no fun at all.

[Padma]

I know plenty of successful long-term polyamorous relationship groupings that are happier and less dysfunctional than many monamorous couples I know. But this is just observation, not data. But just because a setup is more complex doesn't automatically make it more "complicated" - polyamorous relationships are often more clear and stable because the people in them keep in good communication about how it's working, because they're aware of the complexity. Whereas many people in "default setting" coupledom get complacent and then suddenly realise they've drifted into the rocks.

It does fascinate me how many people assume that Bisexual means "needs both" when it actually just means "likes both". This is presumably why bisexuals are given no mention in all the discussion of equal marriage (which the media still loves to call "gay marriage") - because it's sort of assumed that nobody bisexual wants to commit to one person. And it's also therefore assumed that anyone bisexual who enters a committed monamorous relationship is suddenly either gay or straight. Weird.

And how many people assume that polyamorous groupings must (a) have a "head" and (b) must involve more than one gender. There are infinite possible permutations, and polyamorous relationships virtually never have anything to do with dodgy old religious models of polygamy/polyandry, they have their basis in love and commitment - just without assuming you can only love and commit consensually to one person.

As far as I can tell, the western religious "horror" of polyamory has its basis in fears of not knowing who is whose child (from a patrimony point of view). Outdated and irrelevant.

[Elspeth]

It does fascinate me how many people assume that Bisexual means "needs both" when it actually just means "likes both". This is presumably why bisexuals are given no mention in all the discussion of equal marriage (which the media still loves to call "gay marriage") - because it's sort of assumed that nobody bisexual wants to commit to one person. And it's also therefore assumed that anyone bisexual who enters a committed monamorous relationship is suddenly either gay or straight. Weird.

It even gets weird when you try to discuss this in a one-on-one conversation with a longtime lover who doesn't seem to be bisexual. I felt, a little too late in our relationship, that I needed to come clean with my soon-to-be-ex at the time about my bisexual nature. It was never meant as a request to open up the relationship, but her own insecurities quickly turned it into that discussion. My own stung sense of integrity and devotion left me resistant to clearing that part up, and instead I shut down... a bad habit of mine at the time whenever I would get into a conversation where the other party was jumping to unfounded conclusions about why I was bringing things up.

My intention had been to have an open discussion of why my one fully sexual experience with a man, and a long history of recognizing that quite a few men tended to look at me in a sexual way were problematic for me -- mainly having to do with my sense of myself as primarily lesbian, and what all of that meant for me in our relationship. It has taken her years of workshops at women's retreats to come to the realization that she was making it all about her and her own insecurities, something so obvious to me at the time that I didn't imagine it needed to be said.

But it really did.  Need to be said. Much more clearly than I managed at the time.

Therapy for me created a lot of crazy triangulation, because things I said also tended to push my gay male therapist's buttons a lot, and we tended to get into frustratingly pointless conversations that usually ended in him talking about himself, his boyfriend and their antique Rolls Royce. Bleh.

Never accept a male therapist if you identify with lesbian separatists.

[Padma]

Never accept a therapist who talks much about themselves, regardless . It's your hour.

Most of my committed partners (they've all been cis women, so far) have been uncomfortable with my polysexuality, expecting that it would lead to me straying. This is so bizarre to me. It's like being a brunette who's with someone who likes blondes and brunettes, and then being afraid of them running off with a blonde. I'm sure it has its roots in cultural homophobia.

Of course, in my case my relationships were never comfortable because everyone involved (including me) was expecting me to be happy being a man in them. I can't wait to be an undisputed woman in a relationship (sexual or asexual). It's going to be such a relief.

[Elspeth]

I don't think I'd call it bias so much as I would call it, "another teenager talking about something she knows little about". It's not in any way pointless, since I get to learn, and I hopefully stimulate some conversation, but doing this often comes with the drawback of others taking me more seriously than they should.

I don't mean to use "bias" as a judgment call or put down.

To me, it's just a shorter word for subjective point of view, in the way I'm using it, at least.

I realize, though, there's a tendency to think that it implies some sort of devaluing of what's expressed. I think you point out here fairly clearly where the issue is, almost inevitably. We each have our own biases, especially when we're discussing things based on personal experience, which is often the only thing we can rely on and be fairly certain is real to us.

While personal POV is often the best place to start, to be sure we're talking from the heart, it is sometimes useful to make it clear when we are doing that, so that comments made are not misread as broad statements meant to apply to everyone else who might have other experiences, and a very different combination of personal biases.

[Elspeth]

Most of my committed partners (they've all been cis women, so far) have been uncomfortable with my polysexuality, expecting that it would lead to me straying. This is so bizarre to me. It's like being a brunette who's with someone who likes blondes and brunettes, and then being afraid of them running off with a blonde. I'm sure it has its roots in cultural homophobia.

Might it also have something to do with their personal experiences with female socialization, especially the experience of being expected to be passive in some ways? I feel, because I identify as female, that I was often very uncertain myself about my partner's faithfulness. Granted, at least some of that was a result of some nasty phone calls I got from people I was fairly sure were her coworkers at the time, who may have had some issues with my choices and my own public lack of masculine traits?

For all I know, she may have been trying to provoke a jealous reaction, based on some clues that came to me too late to do much about them.

Specific example: I got the impression as we were breaking up, that there were some things she had wanted, such as me taking on or at least roleplaying in some fairly Domme ways, that were well outside my comfort zone. I would have been willing to negotiate on some of those, as long as we were both super clear that it was playacting and that there were necessary safeties in place.

A lot of our conflict did come from struggling over who got to be the bottom. Neither of us were particularly at ease as tops, but we did managed to find ways to work around that. Still, I think there were some things that she wanted, but didn't want to have to ask for.

[Seras]

The thing with this kind of stuff right, and I am not even religious here so bear this in mind. Marriage is a religious institution, it is clearly defined. If you want to break the rules of marriage and have more than one wife or husband then why do you want to get married. In doing this it is by definition not a legitimate marriage.

These things it is clear in the definition of the religious ceremony what it is. If you do it differently it is not what you want it to be and you have by definition now engaged in something different.

[Padma]

...Marriage is a religious institution...

Since many, many countries have had civil marriage for a long time now, that's not really true any more, except when marriages are specifically religious.

[Kelly J. P.]

I don't mean to use "bias" as a judgment call or put down.

To me, it's just a shorter word for subjective point of view, in the way I'm using it, at least.

I realize, though, there's a tendency to think that it implies some sort of devaluing of what's expressed. I think you point out here fairly clearly where the issue is, almost inevitably. We each have our own biases, especially when we're discussing things based on personal experience, which is often the only thing we can rely on and be fairly certain is real to us.

Mm, yes. I was raised and taught that bias was bad, and my teachers put me on the quest to be as objective as possible. While I have since realized that it's important to be subjective in life and conversation, I, of course, still feel that bias in opinion writing is a major flaw, even if the article is extremely casual/conversational.

I haven't had much exposure to people talking about bias in a positive light. Any, to my memory, prior to this topic. I have to thank you for that.

[Kaelin]

The way I feel about a bisexual person marrying two people is the same as a straight/gay/etc person marrying two people -- it is theoretically possible for someone to have a functional relationship in this way, but the legal institution (with the property sharing and next-of-kin rights presently implied in Western societies) is incompatible with such a notion (who gets medical visitation, who inherits an estate by default, etc?)  Making legal polygamy work out would require a new/different type of legal marriage contract, in particular one that confers fewer rights to partners (so you don't have several spouses fighting over medical decisions a person can't make for themselves.)

[Padma]

Sure, it would take some work to make it work, legally - just as the current monogamous system is clearly still a work in progress, legally speaking (or there wouldn't be so many messy, drawn-out disputes).

[Seras]

Legal agreements =/= Marriage

[LilDevilOfPrada]

I HAVE NEVER HEARD of a case of polgamy with the main partner been bisexual, I however know many cases of straight men getting their dream Harem in this world, a good example, my countries president(Jacob Zuma).