I am just curious to hear peoples thoughts on the matter. Some might see that as Polygamy and some may not. Is there any area where that's legal to marry more than 1 person? Do you think that if your bisexual you can instead marry one person and have another as a housemate of sorts? So where does it end though, do you get 50 husbands and wives? I just am wondering , because I don't see many people talking about bisexual marriages.
Sounds good to me. Sign me up for a harem!
well if you want you can add me to your harem, but you have to buy me clothes and food.
Here is an interesting article about the matter:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/bj-epstein/bisexuality-and-marriage_b_1577176.html (http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/bj-epstein/bisexuality-and-marriage_b_1577176.html)
I don't believe laws and marriage are compatible. It's up to individuals to define their interpersonal relationships. However, I should point out that I'm an anarchist and object to most limits on human freedom.
There is nothing stopping a bisexual person from being married to one person and then having an open marriage now. But really, you are assuming that bisexual people aren't monogamous, I'm pretty sure most tend to be.
no but they don't legally recognize marriage to 2 people , sure you can have an open marriage but I think bisexuals should be able to legally say they have a husband and wife if they want.
Kia Ora SS,
::) This would make it a 'tri-sexual' marriage ;)
Metta Zenda :)
So wait could you go to a state where you can legally marry the same sex, get married in Vegas to the opposite sex and then come back to the same state? Or could you still not legally do that.
Quote from: Jaime on January 04, 2013, 10:34:35 PM
There is nothing stopping a bisexual person from being married to one person and then having an open marriage now. But really, you are assuming that bisexual people aren't monogamous, I'm pretty sure most tend to be.
agreed...that is a stereotype many Bisexuals are trying to squash
Well I have met a few bisexuals that have 3 lovers in one house. It's just like any other person really, not everyone is monogamous. But the question would be, does a person have to be monogamous? Should they be limited to be legally married to 1 person?
Most people aren't polygamists, bisexual or not...
So basically, no, I don't agree with this.
Quote from: JasonRX on January 04, 2013, 10:59:00 PM
Most people aren't polygamists, bisexual or not...
So basically, no, I don't agree with this.
So do you think its a sin or a crime? Can you explain further why you don't agree?
Quote from: Shawn Sunshine on January 04, 2013, 10:45:51 PM
Should they be limited to be legally married to 1 person?
Under what legal argument would one advocate that such limits are justified?
As a practical matter, part of me suspects that contemporary polyamory activists might eventual form a "marriage of convenience" in terms of strategy and fundraising, at least, with Mormons. At least when I was growing up the usually unstated implications was that Mormons respected current laws of the state when it came to marriage, at least once they realized they had no real chance of forming their own separate nation that supported polygamy.
While the mainstreaming branch of Mormonism keeps trying to distance itself from those traditions, and demonizes FLDS and other polygamist sects within Mormonism, a good bit of my expects that will change if/when there's sufficient support to bring some landmark case to the Supreme Court and come to some resolution that goes into enough depth to challenge the logic of monogamy. Then again, considering the status of women in the workplace, perhaps many will find changing gender conventions and roles more appealing than trying to just negotiate such changes.
I can't agree with this because I think a marriage is a unit for two.
When two join together, it signifies something much more than emotions bonding them together. It signifies trust. Loyalty. Honor for one another. Devotion. When you take time out of your day to be with someone, it shows that you care for them more than yourselves.
When you're with three or more people in a marital unit, things get complicated. You start choosing favorites. You can become distant from one spouse and chose the other over them. One of the biggest issues I see with multiple people marriages is that you don't have to work out issues with your spouse--you can just rat on them to your other spouse. In a two-person marriage, a huge part about cooperating and getting over hurdles is communication. If something bothers you about what your spouse is doing, you talk to them about it. You discuss how you can change it. You should expect your spouse to keep you accountable in this same way, too. But when another person (or more people) are introduced into a marriage, you don't have the same commitment to help each other; if something goes wrong with one spouse, just give them the silent treatment for a while and leave them in utter confusion and depression while you spend all your other time with your other spouse/s.
I have quite a few more things to say on this subject, Shawn, so if you'd like to stimulate the conversation with me, I'd love that!
Thanks for posing this interesting question.
Quote from: Shawn Sunshine on January 04, 2013, 11:03:27 PM
So do you think its a sin or a crime?
Notions of "sin" are by definition religious in nature. In the eyes of the state, only law and criminal statutes matter, and those can be changed by the will of the people.
Certainly Mormonism in its older form did not see polygamy as a sin, they saw it as a blessing and sometimes even as a duty. Various Muslim nations already support notions of multiple and shared wives... shared husbands? not so much, but they are there in the background and the history, if I can only persuade the Wardens to let me in.
Seems likely we'll continue to see the same icons used in much the same way they did before.
Kia Ora, [The more serious Zenda's thoughts]
::) If three consenting adults decide to marry each other and it was legal for them to do so, I can't see any problem with this...After all, it's their lives, their love triangle...But if you mean 'what's to stop a bisexual person male or female [legally already married to a opposite sex partner] going inter state and legally marrying a person of the same sex'...Wouldn't this be see as bigamy ? Or do bigamy laws differ from state to state ?
Metta Zenda :)
I've always thought that marriage should be open to more than two people. I don't know if that makes me an anarchist or just liberal, but I never understood why "the state" felt they had a right to define 1) religious unions 2) civil unions 3) who you're allowed to love and commit your life to.
I think that once same-sex marriage is legalized throughout the nation the next great leap will be removing the two-person limit on marriage. While I do believe that 98% of people wouldn't be interested in a marriage to more than one person, there's nothing wrong with the other 2% having multiple wives or husbands as long as everyone is aware and in agreement on the situation.
AND... Bigamy, being married to more then one person, always gets a bad rap because it's either done without the other spouses knowing about it or it's some crazy man marrying a woman and her sisters and her 14 year old daughters - that's just wrong. But three or four adults that all agree to live together, love each other, contribute to a common household, and all participate in the raising of children? Nothing wrong with that IMO.
Being married to two people would probably be troublesome because of the enormous potential for drama and envy. It's possible for it to work out, certainly, but I don't tend to think that a three-way marriage working would be the probable outcome. As long as it's consistent with your religious beliefs, or lack thereof, you should do as you please so long as you're not hurting anyone and you have their consent.
It's not really my business. I don't think I could do any such thing, personally, but then again I'm not too sure I could even sustain a long-lasting relationship with a single person in ideal circumstances. I don't do very well outside of casual encounters. People aren't really my thing.
Quote from: Reinhaven on January 04, 2013, 11:11:42 PM
I can't agree with this because I think a marriage is a unit for two.
When two join together, it signifies something much more than emotions bonding them together. It signifies trust. Loyalty. Honor for one another. Devotion. When you take time out of your day to be with someone, it shows that you care for them more than yourselves.
When you're with three or more people in a marital unit, things get complicated. You start choosing favorites. You can become distant from one spouse and chose the other over them. One of the biggest issues I see with multiple people marriages is that you don't have to work out issues with your spouse--you can just rat on them to your other spouse. In a two-person marriage, a huge part about cooperating and getting over hurdles is communication. If something bothers you about what your spouse is doing, you talk to them about it. You discuss how you can change it. You should expect your spouse to keep you accountable in this same way, too. But when another person (or more people) are introduced into a marriage, you don't have the same commitment to help each other; if something goes wrong with one spouse, just give them the silent treatment for a while and leave them in utter confusion and depression while you spend all your other time with your other spouse/s.
I have quite a few more things to say on this subject, Shawn, so if you'd like to stimulate the conversation with me, I'd love that!
Thanks for posing this interesting question.
Eh, but i can see myself being loyal and honest and true to more than 1 person. if we are all in agreement that we keep vows to each other then where is the problem in that?
However you make a good point about becoming distant with one of your spouses and they end up feeling like the 5th wheel and maybe you leave or they leave.
Quote from: JasonRX on January 04, 2013, 10:59:00 PM
Most people aren't polygamists, bisexual or not...
So basically, no, I don't agree with this.
Well, most people aren't Zoroastrians. Does that make that particular faith "wrong?"
Majority views aren't necessarily right. After all, there was a time when the majority view was that racism was okay.
As for my opinion. As long as everyone is in consent, I don't care who, what, or how many you marry. Heck, one lady married the EIFFEL TOWER! She can do that, but polygamy is awful? Sure, let's go with that. ::) If anything, it'll be good for the economy. Florists, caterers, etc. all working on multiple weddings. :laugh:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2074301/Woman-with-objects-fetish-marries-Eiffel-Tower.html (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2074301/Woman-with-objects-fetish-marries-Eiffel-Tower.html)
Quote from: DianaP on January 05, 2013, 12:45:27 AM
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2074301/Woman-with-objects-fetish-marries-Eiffel-Tower.html (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2074301/Woman-with-objects-fetish-marries-Eiffel-Tower.html)
Wow she's..... a weirdo, lulz. But whatever.
Anyways I'm totally cool with polygamy. Live and let live.
Spotlight on a Young Polygamist Family - Our America with Lisa Ling - Oprah Winfrey Network (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tNouIAL-Kg#)
While I am very comfortable with the concept of multiple partners I think the practicalities of the situation tend to get in the way.
There is an assumption also, that hasn't been mentioned is that the 'dominant' male will have several partners, I think this does occur, I'm unsure if it is anywhere as common for a dominant female to have several partners?
Quote from: Cindy James on January 05, 2013, 01:12:32 AM
There is an assumption also, that hasn't been mentioned is that the 'dominant' male will have several partners, I think this does occur, I'm unsure if it is anywhere as common for a dominant female to have several partners?
Or, maybe it's a mix. 3 men, 4 women, and the Taj Mahal. :laugh:
About that video, it seems like the husband is in the background, at least from the 6 minutes that was shown. Also, 25 siblings? Just... how? :o
Quote from: Cindy James on January 05, 2013, 01:12:32 AM
While I am very comfortable with the concept of multiple partners I think the practicalities of the situation tend to get in the way.
There is an assumption also, that hasn't been mentioned is that the 'dominant' male will have several partners, I think this does occur, I'm unsure if it is anywhere as common for a dominant female to have several partners?
Kia Ora Cindy,
[My apologies Sunshine for the slight derailing of your thread :icon_bunch: ]
A few years back I watched an interesting documentary about TOFU [me being a vegetarian and all] and how it was the staple diet for some people, well it didn't just talk about tofu , it also described the way of life of the different tribes that ate it...The Mosuo people were mentioned:
"In the Xiaolianghshan Mountains, Yunnan province (South East China), live the Mosuo people, one of the last living matriarchal societies today. They are closely related to Tibetans. In their social system, paternity and marriage are not the same as in our world. The main pillar of the family is the mother.
But what makes the Mosuo unique is their practice of zuo hun, or "walking marriage". From the age of 13, after being initiated, females may choose to take lovers from men within the tribe, having as many or as few as they please over their lifetime. Male companions are known asaxias and spend their days carrying out jobs such as fishing and animal rearing, and visit the women's homes at night, often secretly; any resulting children are raised by the woman's family. The father and all adult men are known as "uncles" – there is no stigma attached to not knowing who a child's father is.
Sex is practiced freely. They only have to choose a partner to spend the night and only incest is forbidden. Typical marriage and fidelity are something like heresy. Obviously, they don't seem to present signs of jealousy. The western love tragedies of revengeful and victimized lovers make them laugh. They think the visitor is kidding them "How is it possible to end your precious life for something so banal like sex?"
Among the Mosuo, since neither male nor female children will ever leave home, there is no particular preference for one gender over the other. The focus instead tends to be on maintaining some degree of gender balance within a household, even by adoption or "children change"!
Metta Zenda :)
Zenda, you beat me to it! I was going to comment on that same tribe. :)
Quote from: Kelly J. P. on January 04, 2013, 11:24:15 PM
Being married to two people would probably be troublesome because of the enormous potential for drama and envy.
How is this an argument against multiple partners? As if two-partner unions are somehow free of drama and envy?
The Mosuo are awesome! :D
Ah, yes, having multiple women does make it easier. :laugh:
Quote from: Cindy James on January 05, 2013, 01:12:32 AM
While I am very comfortable with the concept of multiple partners I think the practicalities of the situation tend to get in the way.
There is an assumption also, that hasn't been mentioned is that the 'dominant' male will have several partners, I think this does occur, I'm unsure if it is anywhere as common for a dominant female to have several partners?
No question that it does favor a very patriarchal structure in a lot of ways. My family's history has plenty of examples of that. But it also enables and fosters a lot of very strong bonds between women (which the history also illustrates) including subtle forms of collusion. Patriarchy is definitely something I see as a problem, and many of the cultures that support polygamy (which in its etymology is just one almost certainly patriarchy-affirming form of polyamory) do demonstrate many of the negative aspects of patriarchal societies.
Consent issues do present a lot of problems here, but then consent issues are also present with other behaviors that persist, regardless of the laws that exist to discourage them, such as incest and various forms of in-family abuse. Perhaps in time societies will decide that the nuclear family itself is a sickness and will move to ban it altogether? Not something likely to happen now. But in terms of forming a logical and equitable basis for which sorts of relationships society condones or permits, I find it hard to justify prohibiting any of them, as long as they can be proven to have been formed consensually.
Quote from: ~RoadToTrista~ on January 05, 2013, 02:44:44 AM
Polygamy! :D
My mom had 14 siblings, not counting herself. And that was in a monogamous household.
My direct family hasn't practiced polygamy since the 1800s, so far as I know. One of my great-great- grandmothers, in fact, colluded with the wife of a doctor who wanted to marry her, to sidestep his rather transparent attempt to blackmail her into becoming his 5th wife. This happened at a time in the 1850s or 1860s when she was already engaged to my eventual great-great-grandfather, who had yet to arrive in the Salt Lake Valley.
Quote from: Elspeth on January 05, 2013, 02:33:45 AM
How is this an argument against multiple partners? As if two-partner unions are somehow free of drama and envy?
Let's assume that a trio has at its head a male, with two females as his wives. If the male displays that he favours one woman over the other, there arises a probable scenario for jealousy. If both wives are sufficiently mature, then this problem may be mitigated, but the effects of this favouritism are highly individual, so I can't really conjure statistics on how many multiple-partner relationships suffer from this versus how many don't.
There is other, more general, potential for drama in a multiple-partner relationship versus a two-person (or single person) relationship. Specifically, the fact that there are more people in the relationship alone is enough to raise the probability of drama. The personalities involved have a higher probability of clashing because not only are there more people, but more person-to-person relationships (i.e. three to the two-person relationship's one).
It's all probability, of course. A two-person relationship is just more likely to work with less drama over a longer period of time, but this isn't always the case. Theoretically speaking, anyway.
One thing that would affect the statistics in favour of multiple-person relationships is the fact that knowledgeable people [considering] entering multiple-person relationships are more likely to be mature enough to handle these types of relationships than the average unacquainted person, and these people may possibly have a more mature attitude regarding relationships in general.
From that perspective, I believe three-person relationships have not only more potential for drama, but a higher probability of drama. It's my opinion that, before mitigating factors, that point is difficult to debate... but after their consideration, it's probably up to opinion, unless someone has actual statistics.
Also, I am in no way saying two-person relationships are without drama or are not flawed - just that they are probably flawed less often.
Personally, I prefer a single-person relationship. It's all moot to me.
Quote from: Elspeth on January 05, 2013, 03:00:40 AM
Consent issues do present a lot of problems here, but then consent issues are also present with other behaviors that persist, regardless of the laws that exist to discourage them, such as incest and various forms of in-family abuse.
If it's abuse, then it's obviously not consentual, by definition. ???
Quote from: Kelly J. P. on January 05, 2013, 03:05:48 AM
Let's assume that a trio has at its head a male, with two females as his wives. If the male displays that he favours one woman over the other, there arises a probable scenario for jealousy. If both wives are sufficiently mature, then this problem may be mitigated, but the effects of this favouritism are highly individual, so I can't really conjure statistics on how many multiple-partner relationships suffer from this versus how many don't.
There is other, more general, potential for drama in a multiple-partner relationship versus a two-person (or single person) relationship. Specifically, the fact that there are more people in the relationship alone is enough to raise the probability of drama. The personalities involved have a higher probability of clashing because not only are there more people, but more person-to-person relationships (i.e. three to the two-person relationship's one).
It's all probability, of course. A two-person relationship is just more likely to work with less drama over a longer period of time, but this isn't always the case. Theoretically speaking, anyway.
One thing that would affect the statistics in favour of multiple-person relationships is the fact that knowledgeable people [considering] entering multiple-person relationships are more likely to be mature enough to handle these types of relationships than the average unacquainted person, and these people may possibly have a more mature attitude regarding relationships in general.
From that perspective, I believe three-person relationships have not only more potential for drama, but a higher probability of drama. It's my opinion that, before mitigating factors, that point is difficult to debate... but after their consideration, it's probably up to opinion, unless someone has actual statistics.
Also, I am in no way saying two-person relationships are without drama or are not flawed - just that they are probably flawed less often.
Personally, I prefer a single-person relationship. It's all moot to me.
Yeah, that's why over 75% of marriages fail. Note that I said "fail," not "end in divorce." For example, my parents haven't spoken in years and live miles from each other, but are still legally married. ::)
Quote from: Zenda on January 05, 2013, 02:01:31 AM
"In the Xiaolianghshan Mountains, Yunnan province (South East China), live the Mosuo people, one of the last living matriarchal societies today. They are closely related to Tibetans. In their social system, paternity and marriage are not the same as in our world. The main pillar of the family is the mother.
Personally, I do consider matriarchies superior to just about anything I've seen in American societies or subcultures. Let freedom ring! ;)
Nice comment Elspeth, it also started a thought.
This may be wrong but it is a thought. Outside of a traditional two people relationship.
Men seem to have 'problems' with 'their' woman having sex with multiple partners but don't seem to have a personal problem with themselves having multiple partners.
I'm not sure why. Yes I can see the problem on one on one relationships and cheating and infidelity etc. But in general, and using that very broadly, men seem to see a woman having multiple sex partners as some sort of threat to their masculinity.
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'
Quote from: DianaP on January 05, 2013, 03:09:13 AM
Yeah, that's why over 75% of marriages fail. Note that I said "fail," not "end in divorce." For example, my parents haven't spoken in years and live miles from each other, but are still legally married. ::)
Hm. My numbers must be old - I'm still working with the old "over 50%" figure.
My parents have been divorced since my early childhood. I only have one memory involving my father, and it's not even an appropriate or positive one. Wasn't enough time for me to develop any sort of unconditional (or otherwise) love for him, in any case.
With "over 75%" in mind, I must contend that over 76% of three-person relationships fail.
Quote from: DianaP on January 05, 2013, 03:09:13 AM
If it's abuse, then it's obviously not consentual, by definition. ???
Agreed. But the issue remains, how do we effectively prevent it? Does prohibiting people from forming voluntary unions that they do desire necessarily prevent abuse? I think there are power issues that do need to be addressed somehow, but that can only be done if there's a truly open dialogue and some high degree of transparency. And probably some way of providing those within patriarchally structured subcultures some kind of exit or release? How exactly do we get there? It doesn't seem the present system is doing that very well. Silence, secrecy and abusive power relationships seem pretty common to me, but maybe that's only because I used to have free access to all the police reports of domestic abuse in my rural county back when I was in my late teens, doing radio news (and given the understanding by the authorities that those reports were private, and not to be reported on air).
Quote from: Elspeth on January 05, 2013, 03:10:08 AM
Personally, I do consider matriarchies superior to just about anything I've seen in American societies or subcultures. Let freedom ring! ;)
Neither matriarchy nor patriarchy is a good system. Either way, 50% of people won't have freedom. :P
Quote from: Elspeth on January 05, 2013, 03:17:11 AM
Agreed. But the issue remains, how do we effectively prevent it? Does prohibiting people from forming voluntary unions that they do desire necessarily prevent abuse? I think there are power issues that do need to be addressed somehow, but that can only be done if there's a truly open dialogue and some high degree of transparency. And probably some way of providing those within patriarchally structured subcultures some kind of exit or release? How exactly do we get there? It doesn't seem the present system is doing that very well. Silence, secrecy and abusive power relationships seem pretty common to me, but maybe that's only because I used to have free access to all the police reports of domestic abuse in my rural county back when I was in my late teens, doing radio news (and given the understanding by the authorities that those reports were private, and not to be reported on air).
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.
I do not know about other bisexual people but I would prefer to be monogamous.
But I would be ok with my partner wanting to fulfill his/her sexual desires with someone else as long as it doesn't violate or destroy our relationship.
And while I would open to the idea of being in a relationship with more than one person, it just doesn't rock my boat, unless the relationship with the other person is purely sexual and my partner is completely ok with it and is actively involved as well. But this rarely ever happens with anyone.
Quote from: DianaP on January 05, 2013, 01:13:41 AM
Or, maybe it's a mix. 3 men, 4 women, and the Taj Mahal. :laugh:
Also Diana the Taj Mahal is a mausoleum! >.<
Quote from: Alexia6 on January 05, 2013, 03:28:02 AM
Also Diana the Taj Mahal is a mausoleum! >.<
I know. It was an allusion to an earlier point I made about a lady marrying the Eiffel Tower. :P
Quote from: Kelly J. P. on January 05, 2013, 03:05:48 AMPersonally, 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.
Quote from: Cindy James on January 05, 2013, 03:12:04 AMPossibly 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.
Quote from: Elspeth on January 05, 2013, 03:05:18 AM
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)
Quote from: ~RoadToTrista~ on January 05, 2013, 04:09:32 AM
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.
QuoteJust 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.
QuoteThe 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. :)
QuoteEven 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.
QuoteIt 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.
QuoteIt 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.
QuoteSeems 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.
QuoteSeems 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.
Quote from: DianaP on January 05, 2013, 03:24:02 AMYou 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.
Quote from: Kelly J. P. on January 05, 2013, 04:19:05 AMPrecisely. 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. ;)
Quote from: Elspeth on January 05, 2013, 04:49:58 AM
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.
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.
Quote from: Padma on January 05, 2013, 05:01:31 AM
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.
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.
Quote from: Kelly J. P. on January 05, 2013, 04:58:26 AM
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.
Quote from: Padma on January 05, 2013, 05:31:06 AM
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.
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.
Quote from: Seras on January 05, 2013, 06:06:10 AM
...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.
Quote from: Elspeth on January 05, 2013, 05:40:34 AM
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.
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.)
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).
Legal agreements =/= Marriage
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).
Quote from: Seras on January 05, 2013, 06:32:45 AM
Legal agreements =/= Marriage
...and at least half the time, "Marriage" =/= Marriage
Quote from: Kaelin on January 05, 2013, 06:19:59 AM
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.)
A legal system for polygamy...
:icon_idea:
Earliest living spouse gets highest priority for medical decisions? :P
Well My one cousins wife is bisexual, and they are committed to each other, but from what i understand she will occasionally have a fling with a woman, and he knows about it as well.
I know that some bisexual folks decide one partner is enough and don't date or have sex with anyone else. I guess this would be fine for some, but not others.
Quote from: Seras on January 05, 2013, 06:06:10 AM
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.
This really is
not clear. I hate bringing up Mormonism again and again, but it is relevant to this particular claim.
Even though the "mainstream" branch of Mormonism stopped
practicing polygamy in the late 1800s, mainly as a condition of seeking statehood for Utah, in terms of their religious doctrine, most Mormons I grew up with, at least, were taught that it would someday be reinstated, and that some way or another, just like Mormons do baptisms for the dead, those who lived in times when there was no legal way for them to practice polygamy would get their chance in the afterlife, where being in an eternal, polygamous relationship is still the only way to get to the highest rung in their funky version of heaven.
Polygamy, in any case, most certainly IS a religious concept in some religions, and often a central one. 97 virgins, anyone?
Quote from: Shawn Sunshine on January 05, 2013, 09:39:17 AM
Well My one cousins wife is bisexual, and they are committed to each other, but from what i understand she will occasionally have a fling with a woman, and he knows about it as well.
I know that some bisexual folks decide one partner is enough and don't date or have sex with anyone else. I guess this would be fine for some, but not others.
What makes a bisexual different from a normal person? Your cousins wife having flings with women has nothing to do with the fact she is bisexual.
Think of how mamy straight people have flings even when they are comitted to their partners.
A persons sexuality has nothing to do with polgamy its purely a personal choice decided by a person not programmed into them because they bisexual and choose to ingore their polgamy desires.
Look if I am misunderstanding what you are saying then I am sorry however to me it sounds like you are saying Bisexuals are built for polgamy.
So yea I say its not a personals sexuailty its their on multi-lover desire and personal choice that makes them go into polgamy.
yes you are misunderstanding what I am saying, this is about whether or not a person should be able to be legally married to 2 or more people.
Quote from: Shawn Sunshine on January 05, 2013, 10:21:36 AM
yes you are misunderstanding what I am saying, this is about whether or not a person should be able to be legally married to 2 or more people.
Oh lol :P I was just referring to your 1 post anyways sorry about that,
Well I believe they should why not allow people to live how they want to.
I'm just wondering when I can marry my dog. We love each other very much, you know.
*by the way, it is not sexual, just a commitment to be there for each other, I'm not a dog diddler!*
Quote from: LilDevilOfPrada on January 05, 2013, 10:14:11 AM
Look if I am misunderstanding what you are saying then I am sorry however to me it sounds like you are saying Bisexuals are built for polgamy.
Not saying this to be snarky, but, while I can see how this might work for a bisexual woman (one who does want some kind of open relationship, or at least wants a partner of each sex) I don't see where it would be "built for" a biological male. At least if we are using the standard definition of polygamy, which tends to only feature multiple wives, not multiple husbands in a marriage. Polyandry would (perhaps) be built for those, but it's far less common in practice. Not saying that shouldn't change. Just saying I don't really see polygamy as having all that much to do with bisexuality. Others have already pointed out that not every bisexual person wants to have multiple partners, either at the same time or in serial relationships.
I say to each his/her own, everyone has to live their life to be happy with themselves, so as long as all parties involved agree with the 'arrangement' I say go for it. For me PERSONALLY, I would never be able to be in a relationship with more than one person at a time, nor could I share my significant other....I think this would cause jealousies that wouldn't normally have to be there if it were a monogamous relationship. So just for me it wouldn't work...not saying it can't work for other people.
Quote from: spring0721 on January 05, 2013, 10:43:52 AM
I think this would cause jealousies that wouldn't normally have to be there if it were a monogamous relationship.
Tell me about it. I could probably have purely sexual relationships with more than one person at a time, but I couldn't share my spouse.
I can hear it now. "B****, he's mine!" *Hair pulling* :laugh:
Quote from: Jaime on January 05, 2013, 10:32:56 AM
I'm just wondering when I can marry my dog. We love each other very much, you know.
Or how about marrying a corporation? You know, thanks to the
Citizens United SCOTUS case they're people too! (You can do a search on YouTube to find some videos of people trying to do that.)
Personally I don't understand the reason for the question.
Its illegal to have more than one spouse at a time.
Quote from: Sarah Louise on January 05, 2013, 11:00:44 AM
Personally I don't understand the reason for the question.
Its illegal to have more than one spouse at a time.
Well, so's smoking marijuana, but people have opinions on that too. :P
Well if you're keeping secrets from your partner/s and having more than one partner/s is wrong.
It's also wrong if your partner is monogamous and if he/she is forced into being in a polygamy, because of a descision that the other person/s in a relationship make.
Also why can't women be ones with multiple guys or guys and girls in a relationship with them.
It usually just doesn't work.
Quote from: Alexia6 on January 05, 2013, 11:34:56 AM
Also why can't women be ones with multiple guys or guys and girls in a relationship with them.
It usually just doesn't work.
Aren't women allowed to have multiple men in poly relationships?
Plus, I don't think anyone knows enough polygamist people to know whether or not those relationships work. However, I'm sure we've all seen plenty of failed monogamous relationships.
no I meant that I don't think most polygamous relationships work because of a lot of emotions that could get involved
it would take a seriously huge amount of dedication and trust to make it work and this usually tests the mental and emotional strength for a lot of those who try it.
I tried convincing myself that I am polygamous but it turns out I'm not.
sorry for typos - posted this from phone
Quote from: DianaP on January 05, 2013, 11:43:33 AM
Aren't women allowed to have multiple men in poly relationships?
Plus, I don't think anyone knows enough polygamist people to know whether or not those relationships work. However, I'm sure we've all seen plenty of failed monogamous relationships.
They don't generally wear special hats or costumes. How do you know you don't know enough of them? Problem really seems to be that many of them are unlikely to be open with just anyone about this, due to the legal issues and social bias.
Maybe my perspective is just odd, though, since my mom was a huge people watcher and made a point of trying to figure out who were the closeted polygamists in town.
In my son's circle of friends (and he was raised far from Mormon communities where covert polygamy is pretty common) he has expressed an interest, and in his mind has practiced polyamory. I've also had various friends over time who've been open to me about having various open marriages where polyamory was part of what they were about (with varying degrees of success, but I can't say they were any less successful than those I might only have assumed were monogamous. It's a lot more common than I think you may be imagining.
Especially if you factor in how common serial monogamy is as a legal way of expressing the desire to change partners, the commonplace nature of adultery in all its forms and the popularity of a non-safe, non-sane, non-consensual fantasy like
50 Shades of Grey?
I'm pretty sure I'm the freak for still being attached to my own fantasies about a forever monogamous relationship with one person. I know it hasn't done me any favors when it comes to dealing with reality.
Quote from: Elspeth on January 05, 2013, 12:30:05 PM
They don't generally wear special hats or costumes. How do you know you don't know enough of them? Problem really seems to be that many of them are unlikely to be open with just anyone about this, due to the legal issues and social bias.
Maybe my perspective is just odd, though, since my mom was a huge people watcher and made a point of trying to figure out who were the closeted polygamists in town.
I'm pretty sure I'm the freak for still being attached to my own fantasies about a forever monogamous relationship with one person. I know it hasn't done me any favors when it comes to dealing with reality.
I know you can't tell a polygamist by looking at one. Regardless of your "people watching" skills, you don't know who's what. Thus, since polygamists aren't numerously open, you can't tell whether most of them have failed relationships and we have to operate as though we don't know enough polygamists to talk about them from a statistical standpoint. We do, however, have statistics of divorce rates and spousal abuse in monogamous relationships, i.e, failed monogamous marriages.
PS--> You're not a freak for wanting a monogamous relationship. It's perfectly fine to want one. :)
Well, I'm bisexual and I've been in plenty of long-term monogamous relationships - and I've never cheated on my partners. But in all honesty I would prefer to be in a polygamous relationship with both a man and a woman.
However, the only way that a poly relationship would really work is if there is plenty of open and honest communication amongst mature adults that can let go of jealousy. Having a third person that's fully trusted and loved by the other two means that when arguments erupt that there should always be a mediator to help work things out. And it's everyone's responsibility to ensure that no one is excluded. This doesn't mean that two people couldn't have time alone - only that it's done with the knowledge and consent of the third person.
As for ""group marriage" between three or more people - Robert Heinlein wrote about this is more than a few of his novels and I really liked the concept of everyone contributing to a common family during their time in the "marriage". That means everyone contributes financially and otherwise to the common good. Anyone is free to leave when they want to and members could come and go - (ie divorce as in normal marriages). Children are raised by all the adults.
Here's a wiki on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_marriage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_marriage)
Quote from: DianaP on January 05, 2013, 10:48:21 AM
Tell me about it. I could probably have purely sexual relationships with more than one person at a time, but I couldn't share my spouse.
I can hear it now. "B****, he's mine!" *Hair pulling* :laugh:
Diana...I swear you are so funny.....I would pay money to see a fight like that! :)
I don't understand why bisexual people are being singled out in the title.
As for polyamory, to each their own.
Quote from: JasonRX on January 04, 2013, 10:59:00 PM
Most people aren't polygamists, bisexual or not...
So basically, no, I don't agree with this.
That's an argument against it?
Most people don't like Dungeons & Dragons, so I don't agree with people playing Dungeons & Dragons.
I tend to be monogamously-oriented myself. That said, I don't feel it's my place to tell other people what will make them happy or work for them. It seems most of the arguments people make against polyamory has to do with things that are issues for the person making the statement and not necessarily issues for everyone.
There are so many people getting divorced from monogamous marriages. It's so far from being a perfect institution already. I feel a lot of people are getting into relationships for questionable reasons or who have unreasonable expectations of a relationship. One has to have their own head screwed on well first. A relationship shouldn't be looked at as something that's going to fix you or fulfill a deep need. It should be something that enhances your life once you're already healthy and have good self-esteem and so forth. The jealousy, failure of communication, and other things I think have to do with other things than whether you're in a monogamous or a polyamorous relationship.
I see no problem with people trying new things while they try to figure all this complicated stuph out.
Quote from: Edge on January 05, 2013, 01:30:58 PM
I don't understand why bisexual people are being singled out in the title.
As for polyamory, to each their own.
I had the same thought. Bisexual people have more options when it comes to polyamory but gay or straight people can also be in polyamorous relationships. I've even heard a straight man talk about welcoming another man into a relationship because he wanted the camaraderie and even looked forward to sharing some limited physical affection. As long as everyone is clear on their boundaries and communicates well and everything is consensual, I don't see any reason to put arbitrary limits on what people can choose to do.
I'm coming to this rather late, but why focus on bi people? Why shouldn't straight or gay people be able to marry more than one person?
Here is why I am bringing up bisexual people specifically
QuoteBesides challenging people's ideas about sexuality, gender, and love, another issue here is that bisexuals tend to be rather invisible. If they're in same-sex relationships, they're viewed as gay, and if they're in opposite-sex relationships, then they're seen as straight. They have to speak up and label themselves as bi or else adorn themselves with bisexual jewellery if they want to be understood as bisexual. But since it's tiring and impossible to always do this, instead bisexuals get absorbed into other groups (gay or straight), and thereby their own needs and rights are conveniently ignored.
For these reasons and more, bisexuals tend to be left out of the debates and discussions surrounding equal marriage. But as society is slowly but surely moving towards a situation where all people have the right to marry whomever we choose, we must not ignore or fear bisexuals. Rather, we should learn from them.
If people can be attracted to others as more than just a particular set of genitals - and that's clearly the case - then that's a strong argument for allowing everyone the freedom to marry. Bisexuality thus is essential to the marriage debate.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/bj-epstein/bisexuality-and-marriage_b_1577176.html (http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/bj-epstein/bisexuality-and-marriage_b_1577176.html)
Quote from: Arch on January 05, 2013, 01:59:15 PM
I'm coming to this rather late, but why focus on bi people? Why shouldn't straight or gay people be able to marry more than one person?
I think its because of the common misconception that bisexuals can't be satisfied with one person.
No it is not, I am simply stating that bisexuals should be allowed to legally marry 2 people of different genders if they want to do so, equal marriage should not be limited to 1 partner if that's not what they want.
Quote from: Jaime on January 05, 2013, 02:04:23 PM
I think its because of the common misconception that bisexuals can't be satisfied with one person.
Then perhaps this thread should focus on whether gay men should be able to marry in packs. :P
I'm still a little confused about your objective.
Quote from: Shawn Sunshine on January 05, 2013, 02:07:04 PM
No it is not, I am simply stating that bisexuals should be allowed to legally marry 2 people of different genders if they want to do so, equal marriage should not be limited to 1 partner if that's not what they want.
To me, your comment sort of proves my point. You are assuming they want to be married to more than one person because the one kind of genitals aren't enough for them.
The article doesn't really seem to be advocating any sort of multiple partner marriage, its just venting about how bisexuals aren't mentioned in the whole marriage thing, but really, they don't so much need to be. If equality in marriage is achieved, they can marry whichever gender they wish, but only one of them, just like everyone else could. And really, to me, its like a particular crayon complaining about its specific color not being mentioned on the box that is marked assorted colors. Just my view of it. Heck trans people aren't mentioned in most marriage equality debates either.
Quote from: SageFox on January 05, 2013, 12:37:28 PM
Well, I'm bisexual and I've been in plenty of long-term monogamous relationships - and I've never cheated on my partners. But in all honesty I would prefer to be in a polygamous relationship with both a man and a woman.
However, the only way that a poly relationship would really work is if there is plenty of open and honest communication amongst mature adults that can let go of jealousy. Having a third person that's fully trusted and loved by the other two means that when arguments erupt that there should always be a mediator to help work things out. And it's everyone's responsibility to ensure that no one is excluded. This doesn't mean that two people couldn't have time alone - only that it's done with the knowledge and consent of the third person.
As for ""group marriage" between three or more people - Robert Heinlein wrote about this is more than a few of his novels and I really liked the concept of everyone contributing to a common family during their time in the "marriage". That means everyone contributes financially and otherwise to the common good. Anyone is free to leave when they want to and members could come and go - (ie divorce as in normal marriages). Children are raised by all the adults.
Here's a wiki on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_marriage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_marriage)
This is best answer I have heard so far and makes total sense.
The way I see it the government should not be making decisions about who or how many people you can marry. That needs to be left up to you and your value system and how you feel about it. Some states are alllowing for equal marriage now but it is still illegal to be married to 2 people at the same time. Instead they just live together as roomates and what not.
QuoteI've always thought that marriage should be open to more than two people. I don't know if that makes me an anarchist or just liberal, but I never understood why "the state" felt they had a right to define 1) religious unions 2) civil unions 3) who you're allowed to love and commit your life to.
I think that once same-sex marriage is legalized throughout the nation the next great leap will be removing the two-person limit on marriage. While I do believe that 98% of people wouldn't be interested in a marriage to more than one person, there's nothing wrong with the other 2% having multiple wives or husbands as long as everyone is aware and in agreement on the situation.
AND... Bigamy, being married to more then one person, always gets a bad rap because it's either done without the other spouses knowing about it or it's some crazy man marrying a woman and her sisters and her 14 year old daughters - that's just wrong. But three or four adults that all agree to live together, love each other, contribute to a common household, and all participate in the raising of children? Nothing wrong with that IMO.
SageFox has said what I currently see as well with all of this.
I have never understood why the equal-marriage naysayers keep banging on about "it'll lead to (gasp!) more than two people wanting to be married to each other! That's like bestiality!!" etc. ::)
Quote from: dalebert on January 05, 2013, 01:53:30 PM
I had the same thought. Bisexual people have more options when it comes to polyamory but gay or straight people can also be in polyamorous relationships. I've even heard a straight man talk about welcoming another man into a relationship because he wanted the camaraderie and even looked forward to sharing some limited physical affection. As long as everyone is clear on their boundaries and communicates well and everything is consensual, I don't see any reason to put arbitrary limits on what people can choose to do.
Ah, the bromance. ::)
Camaraderie? That makes me think that they'll be pleasuring the same girl at the same time and then... HIGH FIVE! :laugh:
eh what is the female word for "bromance"?
Quote from: Padma on January 05, 2013, 02:28:47 PM
I have never understood why the equal-marriage naysayers keep banging on about "it'll lead to (gasp!) more than two people wanting to be married to each other! That's like bestiality!!" etc. ::)
I don't understand most of those people. They're usually the same ones who claim to be stunned when their spouse gets caught doing something with someone else that strikes me as not being an improvement on bestiality. I just tend to put it all down under the general category of Christian posturers trying to pretend that if you don't look at something, it won't really exist. They're in marriages that have never actually worked to begin with, looking for someone else to take the blame for their own personal failure to deal with the reality that 90% of sex takes place between one or more sets of ears.
Quote from: Shawn Sunshine on January 05, 2013, 02:34:28 PM
eh what is the female word for "bromance"?
There isn't one. It's superceded by the U-Haul phenomenon (http://www.lesbiatopia.com/2008/01/theories-on-lesbian-u-haul-phenomena.html).
Quote from: Shawn Sunshine on January 05, 2013, 02:34:28 PM
eh what is the female word for "bromance"?
A womance.
Also, while looking that up, I came across a funny set of terms.
The female equivalents of cock block are "taco block" or "clam slam." :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.memegenerator.net%2Finstances%2F400x%2F23860666.jpg&hash=917199846f62d7a0fa882177f48c4f05556d8f86)
U-Haul is a lesbian syndrome - presumably a womance, like a bromance, assumes the participants are nominally heterosexual :).
Quote from: Padma on January 05, 2013, 02:52:33 PM
U-Haul is a lesbian syndrome - presumably a womance, like a bromance, assumes the participants are nominally heterosexual :).
I guess at some level I just don't understand bromances then. I think I leapt to the conclusion that they were sort of some kind of softcore gay relationship... a way of acknowledging same-sex attraction without actively labelling it gay? I haven't noticed anyone actively using "womance" as a word so far, and my own limited experience has been, with the exception of my ex, with female friends who generally would describe themselves as bi, and some who considered themselves exclusively lesbian.
There's also the fact that for all practical purposes I did bring a U-Haul to my second date with my ex. 8)
Not that this proves anything, just that I haven't been exposed to anything I'd describe as a womance, unless it was my ex's housemate's jealousy when I practically moved into their apartment within a few days of our starting to date.
Taking this a little more seriously on the second take, and having read the fairly serious Wikipedia article on bromances, I'd have to say, if we're talking about emotionally open friendships without overt sexual components to them, among women that seems to just describe the general nature of any close friendship between two or more women who spend lots of social time together. It doesn't need a special word because women have traditonally always had that kind of friendship as an option, while many seem to suggest it's only emerging for a younger generation of men encouraged to be a bit more emotionally available, and also tending to marry later, if they marry at all.
It does my heart good to see men being intimate and affectionate with each other without it being a relationship or something sexual. I actually find "bromance" as a term to be a pretty matronising put-down of passionate friendship between men.
Needless to say, I'm happy to see men being romantic together too, I just think it's very refreshing to see men allowing themselves intimacy with each other as friends in the way that women have more traditionally been allowed. As you say, for women it doesn't need a word - and enforcing a word on men is just a way of making it seem somehow noteworthy and laughable at the same time.
Men can love each other, and women can love each other, outside the confines of romance. As can men and women. (Speaking in binary terms, for convenience.) And all this terminology is to serve the apparently vital distinction made between love and "romantic love". I think the edges are a lot more artificial than we're encouraged to assume.
Sorry, it's a bit of a bee in my bonnet at the moment.
Quote from: Padma on January 05, 2013, 07:20:04 PM
As you say, for women it doesn't need a word - and enforcing a word on men is just a way of making it seem somehow noteworthy and laughable at the same time....
Sorry, it's a bit of a bee in my bonnet at the moment.
I sympathize completely. Maybe because I had more than a few very close friendships growing up that were given this sort of disdain and suspicion? Granted, I wasn't necessarily seeing them as homosocial relationships back then, they were just the friendships that I could find, and not particularly encouraged, since they tended to be read as vaguely sexual, or that was the impression I got back then. Way too many people were trying to hook me up with people they thought would be "my type" while not appreciating how my reservations about being the "guy" in a relationship complicated things for me.
This all works out a lot differently among my kids and their main circle of friends, where bromance and gender ambiguity are a lot more common and accepted, even encouraged among peers, and to quite an extent among at least some of their mothers that I've gotten to know over time (their friends are mostly around the Woodstock area in the Catskills, which is about a 100 mile drive from where we live, so I wind up spending lots of weekends driving them to house parties and LARP events, and talking to the hostesses and sometimes the hosts about the social dynamics in this particularly fluid and creative group of friends.
Nobody's mentioned compersion yet. It's the opposite of jealousy. It's being happy because your lovers are happy, even if they're with each other and not with you at the moment.
I think it's a fundamental part of all love, mono or poly. It's strange that it's a much newer and lesser known word than jealousy. Maybe because people tend to focus on the negative? I don't know.
+1 for compersion.
Quote from: Padma on January 06, 2013, 04:19:05 AM
+1 for compersion.
First time for me of hearing this term. Thanks for expanding my universe!
A little hesitant to ask this, but in polyamory circles, what seems to be the general take on things like cuckolding fantasies (or humiliation fantasies in general, at least those that center on sharing intimacy between more than two lovers, where each person may be seeking very different kinds of intimacy?
I have pretty mixed feelings about them myself, but I have to admit that (as fantasy) they could be a turn-on... where they tended to be a turn off was in the in-built assumption that someone who was sharing a lover and getting joy from their lover's pleasure (and being involved in that pleasure intimately, perhaps, in other ways) were not things that I felt would have actually been humiliating or shaming... a lot of submissive fantasy stuff contains assumptions about coercion and shaming that tended to be the main reason I was not drawn to exploring them practically, and a reason that I tend to find porn on those subjects a turn off most of the time, even though I recognize some aspects of the fantasies are an attraction for me.
Stereotypical humiliation is a turn-off for me, at least it would be if I thought someone was thinking of it as real. Role-playing could be very different, I suspect, but could never come up with a safe way to explore that in person, outside my own head, that is.
I really need to explore more of the dialogue among polyamorists, it seems.
My thoughts are that it's none of my business. People are free to associate and should be free to marry whomever and however many people they want, provided it is voluntary. In terms of legality, I am opposed to all government (I'm an anarchist), so this aspect is not relevant to me.
Quote from: Elspeth on January 06, 2013, 08:58:40 AM
A little hesitant to ask this, but in polyamory circles, what seems to be the general take on things like cuckolding fantasies (or humiliation fantasies in general, at least those that center on sharing intimacy between more than two lovers, where each person may be seeking very different kinds of intimacy?
I don't think there's a "general take" on stuff like that, because it's not really anything to do with polyamory as such. Polyamory treats of consensual, mutually agreed commitments between multiple people, where everyone knows what the score is together, rules are agreed and abided by. Anything outside of that isn't to do with polyamory, though people who are polyamorous may or may not be into it, or into talking about it, on a fantasy level. At least, this is how I see it.
Quote from: Jaime on January 05, 2013, 02:04:23 PM
I think its because of the common misconception that bisexuals can't be satisfied with one person.
Agreed. This is a ridiculous one. That's as ridiculsous as assuming that, because I'm capable of being attracted to many types of men (from muscular hunky types to cute twinky types to nerdy intellectual types), that I must therefore have one of each or I will be eternally unsatisfied.
Quote from: DianaP on January 05, 2013, 02:32:32 PM
Ah, the bromance. ::)
Camaraderie? That makes me think that they'll be pleasuring the same girl at the same time and then... HIGH FIVE! :laugh:
Marriage isn't about sex. People can have sex without marriage. Marriage is about becoming a family that supports each other to the end. Thinking marriage is about sex is extra fuel for the fire for social conservatives fighting same-sex marriage. There are plenty of open marriages that are still valid. There are sexless marriages. Asexual people sometimes get married for very valid reasons. I don't know why this particular case should be mocked.
Quote from: Padma on January 06, 2013, 10:41:02 AM
I don't think there's a "general take" on stuff like that, because it's not really anything to do with polyamory as such. Polyamory treats of consensual, mutually agreed commitments between multiple people, where everyone knows what the score is together, rules are agreed and abided by. Anything outside of that isn't to do with polyamory, though people who are polyamorous may or may not be into it, or into talking about it, on a fantasy level. At least, this is how I see it.
I understand the perspective is completely different. It's more that I'm wondering because I'd like to see that critique echoed somewhere, in part because I do find the stuff that focuses on such fantasies more than a bit disquieting. I see more than I want to of it, though, because I think what I am looking for are personal accounts of more consensual stuff, some of which might wind up under some polyamory-related tags?
I'm referring here mainly, I guess, to the way one can come across a shock of recogition while following links around Tumblr, for instance, where I tend to find most things that don't fit with the prevailing stereotypes that seem to colonize so much of what gets promoted as porn or erotica?
I am bisexual - and I would be happy with just one person for the rest of my life.
And yes I don't care if there is no sex in our relationship as long we love each other and care for each other.
Quote from: Alexia6 on January 06, 2013, 11:41:53 AM
I am bisexual - and I would be happy with just one person for the rest of my life.
And yes I don't care if there is no sex in our relationship as long we love each other and care for each other.
Shes got a great view on life!!! (https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fonion001.gif&hash=71a9f0af2bfe1e8c3a584e6d278de584f71fa6b4)
Wow that was a lot of posts to read through. Now for my two cents. I am bi and while I don't think I could ever be in a marriage with both a woman and a man, I believe consenting adults should be allowed to. I have never understood why government needs to involve itself in the love life of it's citizens. Marriage a legal contract. In reality they don't even need to be in love to get married...As long as it's 1 man and 1 woman. What's better?...a man and woman married for convenience or 2 men, 2 women, or any other combination of men and women married because they genuinely love one another.
I'm really tired of having to see this thread and then see how several people are miscontruing a brief post I made. There's two separate thoughts in the post. That's why they're divided into two separate paragraphs. I really don't think polygamy is necessary nor can I say I agree with it, but in my post I never said why, just to clear that up. I didn't really think I needed to since actually the point of my post was to highlight more so how Shawn seems to assume that bisexuals are more likely to be polyamorous compared to other people.
I would have quoted someone who replied to my post, but it's really hard to scroll when through extremely long posts when I'm on my phone. Honestly, it surprises me how two sentences were able to simulate so much conversation multiple times. Seriously?
QuoteShawn seems to assume that bisexuals are more likely to be polyamorous compared to other people.
You are wrong about that and that if your tired of seeing the thread, don't look at it then.
Quote from: Shawn Sunshine on January 06, 2013, 02:50:39 PM
You are wrong about that and that if your tired of seeing the thread, don't look at it then.
To clarify: your thread topic title is "What are your thoughts on a bisexual person being able to marry 2 people?"
That can be seen as what are your thought on bisexual people being able to marry 2 people; which can have a type of stereotype that bisexuals would even want to marry 2 people. Bisexuals have been struggling against that stereotype for decades. Some Gays, Lesbians, Transenders, and Straight people have all been guilty of this thinking that bisexual people will "bounce around."
You may have had no intention of meaning it that way..I am just pointing out how someone can see that in your thread title.
Perhaps this debate would have been more fruitful if the initial question was, "Should marriage be open to more than two people?" Sexual orientation is largely irrelevant to the question of whether or not codified polyamory should be permitted.
That is true i could have picked a different title, its just that i am still wondering If "I" am Pansexual or Bisexual and then if i could legally marry 2 people of different genders. I had had a dream about being with 2 people the other night and so well, it just rolled off the top of my head that way.
Quote from: EmmaMcAllister on January 06, 2013, 02:58:13 PM
Perhaps this debate would have been more fruitful if the initial question was, "Should marriage be open to more than two people?" Sexual orientation is largely irrelevant to the question of whether or not codified polyamory should be permitted.
this. Wording can change a whole lot in meaning and context.
Well as it stands now , there is no law against having a boyfriend and a girlfriend. But marriage laws for wanting to be with both are probably a long ways off still.
Quote from: dalebert on January 06, 2013, 10:58:33 AM
Marriage isn't about sex. People can have sex without marriage. Marriage is about becoming a family that supports each other to the end. Thinking marriage is about sex is extra fuel for the fire for social conservatives fighting same-sex marriage. There are plenty of open marriages that are still valid. There are sexless marriages. Asexual people sometimes get married for very valid reasons. I don't know why this particular case should be mocked.
I'm aware that marriage isn't just sex. It's actually a commitment between two people who love each other very much and want to share that love with the rest of the world. ;)
However, considering that this isn't going to change the minds of, let alone be seen by anyone who can change law, I can make all of the jokes I want. :P
I think one of the marriages should be legally recognized while the others would just be spiritual/just a strong relationship. With more than one legal marriage, you run into problems with filing taxes and such. It gets confusing and can cause a whole bunch of issues.
Either way, enter a polyamourous relationship if it's for you. I see no reason to limit consenting adults.
Quote from: kyh on January 07, 2013, 08:45:24 PM
Because I think it would be difficult to give both partners, your wife and husband, the love and attention they deserve.
By that logic, no one can love both of their parents deeply. :P
Quote from: DianaP on January 07, 2013, 09:11:56 PM
By that logic, no one can love both of their parents deeply. :P
ooo good point. I think that sums it up nicely.
Ew, Black Lantern Supergirl. :icon_blah:
EDIT: I'm not offended; I just don't like heroes being evil due to stupid black lantern rings. I read comics and watch cartoons too, Shawn.
The Blackest Night falls from the skies,
The darkness grows as all light dies,
We crave your hearts and your demise,
By my black hand, the dead shall rise!
I'm... a... nerd! :'(
Quote from: kyh on January 07, 2013, 08:45:24 PM
Because I think it would be difficult to give both partners, your wife and husband, the love and attention they deserve.
I've heard that before. I like to point those people in the direction of someone I know who has been in a loving, committed polyamorous relationship for over 15 years. I'd also like to point them out to a friend of mine who has been in a loving, committed polyamorous relationship for 25+ years.
Some people just aren't wired for monogamy. I'm not though I can try very hard for the right person. I'm wired to love more than one person romantically and I will be there for them no matter what. I would probably never enter a polyamorous relationship that involved more than two or three consenting adults as that seems more than I could handle, but two is a.ok by me. No, I'm not a whore and I would prefer to keep sex out of the equation, but my emotional needs are not necessarily filled by one person. [I've tried multiple times, but it always fails even when I didn't realize polyamory was a thing.]
Anyway, people are sometimes just wired differently. Some people are wired to be monogamous and are comfortable with that while other people aren't.
Quote from: Elspeth on January 05, 2013, 03:10:08 AM
Personally, I do consider matriarchies superior to just about anything I've seen in American societies or subcultures. Let freedom ring! ;)
Just a comment here, but I think if early matriarchal/egalitarian societies were truly superior then there would not be so few of them remaining.
Quote from: Ave on January 07, 2013, 10:08:23 PM
Just a comment here, but I think if early matriarchal/egalitarian societies were truly superior then there would not be so few of them remaining.
Oh snap! :P
I think that the reason why so many monogamous marriages fail is because the myth that you can (and should) get all of your needs met by one other person is... a myth. So for me, the idea that in a polyamorous marriage your husband and wife (or husbands, or wives, or whatever the combo) wouldn't get enough attention is based on the assumption that the most loving you can possibly get is from just one other person, and I think that assumption is wrong. In a polyamorous relationship, depending on the setup, you may have the devoted love of more than one person. Yes please! And give your devoted love to more than one person. Yes please!
Quote from: Ave on January 07, 2013, 10:08:23 PM
Just a comment here, but I think if early matriarchal/egalitarian societies were truly superior then there would not be so few of them remaining.
That they had the disadvantage of not being prone to the use of force, brutality, and rape as means of control and intimidation, along with other "strengths" of patriarchy is almost certainly part of the reason they are not prevalent today.
On the other hand, one can hope that Marx was right about how "The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope." -- granted, that quote strikes me as yet more patriarchal bluster, so something will still need to subvert that form of patriarchy too, no doubt. I may be a hopeless Pollyanna, but there do seem to be at least some signs that matriarchy might "win" in the long run, by a kind of subversive influence, if only because patriarchy and capitalism seem to contain the seeds of their own eventual collapse.
At some level, in fact, I think that there is a (far from perfect) underground matriarchy in place that allows those who choose to find ways of living in relative peace even while patriarchy continues to do its damage to those who are not able to avoid it. A girl can dream, at least. One thing seems clear, for matriarchy to prevail it needs to happen without force and direct coercion.
There's a problem here in defining what we each mean by "superior" -- my definition had to do with moral suasion and other factors that don't necessarily fit with prevailing notions of "winning" as seen by patriarchs or Charlie Sheen.
...and most of our existing societies haven't been around for very long anyway.
Quote from: Padma on January 08, 2013, 01:31:45 AM
I think that the reason why so many monogamous marriages fail is because the myth that you can (and should) get all of your needs met by one other person is... a myth.
I find myself in agreement with all or nearly all of your premises. What I do find interesting in this thread about the cases being made to defend monogamy, is the observation that a polyamorous marriage contract that was workable would probably have to be
very different in its details from the prevailing model of the monogamous contract.
For polyamorous relationships to receive equal legal protection (which it seems to me is something hard to argue as a social ill) it seems like there would need to be some major rethinking of what is entailed in a marriage contract in general. Seems to me that one of the key issues (one I know is shared by some of those who have reservations about spending time and effort seeking equal marriage rights) is that the institution itself is deeply flawed, and even when people think it's working, often time and personal sorrow demonstrates that it wasn't working, or at least not working very well.
Many of the best arguments against polygamy tend to center on how similar a polygamist marriage tends to be to a form of slavery. What seems to be sidestepped is that the same has been true, historically, of many of the basic tenets of monogamy as well. It takes some clever legal thinking to reframe things in a way that makes something that looks like slavery into a voluntary contract, though I suppose many BDSM folk actually come close to finding ways of doing that more consciously than most. The popularity of
Fifty Shades of Grey, however, seems to demonstrate (at least to me and my kids) how little influence the ethical thinking in BDSM circles has had on mainstream society and those who romanticize marriage and other forms of non-consensual bondage.
One thing that distinguishes most polyamorous relationships from most monamorous ones is that they're a lot more conscious, because a lot more discussion has to take place.
Most of marriage law is there to deal with the consequences of marriage breakdown (or death). It's pretty much all about "ownership" when it comes down to it, including the iffy concept of who "owns" any children.
Something that intrigues me about the discussion of polyamorous marriage (I'm deliberately not using the word polygamy, as that's something else), and also the discussion of equal marriage, is that people keep saying things along the lines of "it will require a lot of work to update the laws" as if that's a valid reason not to do anything. I'm sure there are people willing to do that work. (Note: this is not a response to anything anyone's specifically said here - it's just been a general observation of mine over time.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyamory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyamory)
QuotePolyamory in a same-sex setting
Gay psychotherapist Michael Shernoff wrote that non-monogamy is "a well-accepted part of gay subculture," although "often viewed by some therapists as problematic,"[41] and that somewhere between 30%[42] and 67%[43] of men in male couples reported being in a sexually non-monogamous relationship. According to Eli Coleman & B. R. Simon Rosser (1996), "although a majority of male couples are not sexually exclusive, they are in fact emotionally monogamous."[44] Shernoff states that:
One of the biggest differences between male couples and mixed-sex couples is that many, but by no means all, within the gay community have an easier acceptance of sexual nonexclusivity than does heterosexual society in general. ... Research confirms that nonmonogamy in and of itself does not create a problem for male couples when it has been openly negotiated.[45]
In practice, most discussion of lesbian and gay polyamory occurs primarily within the context of relationship ethics. It should be noted that there is a broad spectrum of partner numerical and frequency profiles amongst lesbians and gay men, so that polyamorous ethical debates may be undertaken, but most legislative effort is expended on legal recognition of same-sex couples, whether through civil unions, registered partnerships or same-sex marriage proper. As yet, there is no movement for lesbian/gay 'polyamorists rights' akin to that for same-sex marriage or alternative forms of legal relationship recognition.[46]
Found some more interesting things on wiki about Polyamory, has quite a bit of info
Quote from: Padma on January 08, 2013, 07:18:10 AM(I'm deliberately not using the word polygamy, as that's something else),
I realize that by referring to polygamy I may have added to confusion here.
As you point out (and I overassumed others here might also realize) polygamy and polyamory are not synonyms. And when I've referred to polygamy, it has been specific to polygamy and should not be assumed to have much to do with polyamory.
This is a byproduct of the historic fact that polygamy in specific has gotten almost all the attention in general public debate, while, outside of GLBTQ communities, polyamory has gotten almost no attention or substantial debate in the general public or in media aimed at a general audience where heterosexist, cisgendered assumptions tend to be the starting point for any discussions related to polyamory in all it's possible forms.
I've been referring to polyamory here rather than polygamy simply because polyamorous relationships are very intentional and mainly healthy and carefully considered multiple relationships, whereas, as you say, polygamy has the historical stigma of just being a legalised harem/baby factory.
So when the subject of marriage involving more than two people comes up, I like to wave the flag of polyamory because it's such a healthy model compared to polygamy (and compared to much monogamy too). For people who want, it, of course. But most people I know who are in polyamorous relationships weren't looking for one, they just fell in love with the right 2 or 3 people, and voilà :).
Quote from: kyh on January 07, 2013, 08:45:24 PM
Because I think it would be difficult to give both partners, your wife and husband, the love and attention they deserve.
Why can't they give love and attention to each other? They're in a marriage together, shouldn't they do that?
To answer the original question:
Quote
I am just curious to hear peoples thoughts on the matter. Some might see that as Polygamy and some may not. Is there any area where that's legal to marry more than 1 person?
It is polygamy, as polygamy is a well defined term. I am sure there are places or times where it is/was legal. However, in most countries as you file legal documents, you will in legal documents, such as those concerning taxes, you would only list one spouse. There is no law preventing you from referring to multiple people as your husbands or wives, except when it comes to legal documents.
Quote
Do you think that if your bisexual you can instead marry one person and have another as a housemate of sorts? So where does it end though, do you get 50 husbands and wives? I just am wondering , because I don't see many people talking about bisexual marriages.
I have several friends that are polyamorous and they can handle that well enough and so can their partners. I, however, could not. I identify as pansexual (a superset of sexualities of which bisexuality is a subset) and my spouse is also pansexual. Neither of us could manage a polyamorous relationship and we don't want to :) For those that can and want to, that is their choice and is quite possible as I have seen by my friends' examples.
The issue that I have seen, however, is that polyamorous individuals do not tend keep multiple partners for an extended period of time (for example, forever) and they don't desire marriage. The friends that I was referring to really do love their partners, they just don't want to make it a marriage.
I am pretty sure that a polygamous marriage
could work just as easily as a monogamous marriage, but I don't know how much that says. Many people are pessimists when it comes to the divorce rate. If 50% of marriages end in divorce, 50% last forever.
Quote from: Svea on January 14, 2013, 08:52:57 AM
If 50% of marriages end in divorce, 50% last forever.
My parents are still legally married, but they don't even see each other anymore. They live 20 miles from each other and get into a fight whenever they meet.
Being legally married means nothing if you're separated, don't even talk to your spouse anymore, are too busy with work, or are in a generally unhappy marriage, which is most of them. ::)
Quote from: DianaP on January 14, 2013, 02:58:59 PM
Being legally married means nothing if you're separated, don't even talk to your spouse anymore, are too busy with work, or are in a generally unhappy marriage, which is most of them. ::)
^ This.
My parents divorced in the '70s after my Mum caught my Dad having an affair. She sued him for divorce, but before agreeing to it he asked her whether she wanted to give their marriage another try 'for the sake of the kids'. She refused.
She didn't want to be in a marriage that was just keeping up appearances for the sake of the children, with nothing for either spouse. She knew that as soon as we grew up & moved out, they probably wouldn't have any reason to stay together. So she went ahead with the divorce.
A marriage has to be for the benefit of the spouses first and foremost, otherwise there's no point to it IMHO.
My position on sexuality (including marriage) has always been pretty simple: as far as I'm concerned, anything between consenting adults is perfectly acceptable. Notice the two qualifiers there? 'Consenting' and 'adults'? That means that all parties to whatever's happening must consent all the way through to whatever's happening; and all parties must be adults.
Based on this, I have no problem whatsoever with polyamory/polygamy, monogamy, whatever. As long as everyone involved agrees to whatever's happening, it's all good.
That doesn't mean that I'd personally participate in some of those things. There's no way I could be polyamorous; I don't have the social skills to deal with more than one person at a time. But I fully recognise and support it for those people who know it's right for them. So a bisexual person wanting to marry a man and a woman would have my congratulations and my support, provided they are all consenting adults.
Quote from: FTMDiaries on January 15, 2013, 08:55:16 AM
That doesn't mean that I'd personally participate in some of those things. There's no way I could be polyamorous; I don't have the social skills to deal with more than one person at a time. But I fully recognise and support it for those people who know it's right for them. So a bisexual person wanting to marry a man and a woman would have my congratulations and my support, provided they are all consenting adults.
That is precisely how I wish I could have said it o.o Being with one person is about the capacity of my social ability, but not everybody is like that.
Also, off topic, you hav 14
2 posts o.o
I am monogamous meaning I will only have one partner, but really wont discriminate.
More so than marriage is the relationship. Marriage as an institution is just officially recognizing your relationship by law.
I find the question begging the definition of marriage, and the legal ramifications. If the three people wish to be together, so be it, but legally they will not, and i believe they should not, receive all the societal rewards of "marriage." Any two people who wish to enter "marriage" should be able to do so and derive all the legal privileges and protections. Another person entering that relationship would not. This would make for a very unequal partnership, not at all what marriage is intended to be (we humans screw it up royally, I know)
Barbara