I Do Not Marry a Married Man | Hacker News Reader

I Do Not Marry a Married Man

laphamsquarterly.org

61 pointsThevet66 comments

This is an interesting interpretation of polygamy. The usual interpretation is along the lines of "to the rich go the spoils".

But sex imbalances would have occurred throughout history and, questions of morality aside, polygamy seems like a reasonable solution, at least if women outnumber men.

I wonder if anyone has tried to investigate a possible correlation between polygamy and imbalanced sex ratios throughout history.

I haven't found a good online source for this, but it's common knowledge that Paraguay allowed polygamy after a war killed a large proportion of men.

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poligamia#El_caso_del_Paraguay

Heck a few years back a bill was almost passed that would make merrying a second wife mandatory in Iraq . The government would give financial incentives and ignore the first wife's wish of not allowing her husband a second wife . It was revoked after extreme criticism.

So this is primarily about polygamy in Indigenous people's of North America. It is secondarily commentary on women's rights in those peoples, where women apparently had more agency, choice and personhood than was typical for women in Europe at the time. The Jesuits, so keen to spread their faith, often didn't so much as bother to record the names of the wives because they so did nit view women as actual people.

Even in developed countries, women continue to struggle towards equal treatment as full human beings while their complaints often fall on deaf ears and become some new excuse to heap abuse upon them.

Perhaps I'm saying that wrong. Perhaps my statement merely reflects my own prejudice at the presumed superiority of developed nations. Maybe we would have a better world if some of these other peoples had more influence, people with apparently a better track record of treating women like human beings and giving them a say in their own lives.

Having only one wife wasn’t a commandment and the biblical patriarchs had multiple wives. This is more about Jesuits and the Catholic church trying to enforce their own belief systems on someone.

Even if it were a commandment and the biblical patriarchs hadn't had multiple wives, it would still be the christians trying to enforce their own belief system on someone.

Taught, yes, but imposed? In any case, you're ignoring important facts, many of them addressed in a broad view of the Old Testament and the Gospel of Matthew.

First, in Genesis, the ideal, created union is given as monogamous. Second, none of the prophets were polygamous. Third, polygamy is usually spoken of disparagingly and as something having disastrous consequences. Fourth, Mosaic law also permitted divorce, but that was a divine dispensation that Jesus lifted and that one existed in the first place because "your hearts were hard". He goes on to say that "it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, unless the marriage is unlawful, and marries another woman commits adultery" (Matt 19:8-9).

Thus, polygamy may have been tolerated for similar reasons, that is, as a concession to the times, as it were. Furthermore, Maimonides argues that while the Torah may permit certain behaviors, a synoptic reading would show that it establishes rules that show these behaviors are wrong.

I’m not arguing from a religious standpoint or whether the Bible should decide what other people do. I’m just making factual statements....

The biblical great grandfather of the Jews - Abraham - had multiple wives. As did King David who was put forth as a great, but flawed king.

The Bible does record the fact that historical figures had multiple wives, but it also records the fact that this was an endless source of trouble. The law recorded in the Bible prohibits kings from multiple wives, and also records that they put themselves above this law and the problems this caused. It's more that this practice was tolerated than endorsed. It was certainly not lauded. In Proverbs, the assumption is monogamy.

By the time you get to New Testament times, elders in the church could only have one wife, and the admonition of Galatians 3:28 (and others) eventually led to the phase out of these practices - not based on law, but based on love for one another and looking out for one another.

What the Bible shows is God meeting people where they were at and guiding them to a better way over time. These priests should have paid attention to that.

Why I am seeing this on HN?

Because hackers have a wide variety of interests and often love learning about things they never heard of before.

The parent comment reminds me of how often commenters on articles posted by The Economist wonder why the article wasn't about economics. https://www.economist.com/unknown/1843/08/05/prospectus

Because someone submitted it, and interested hackers upvoted it.

If you don't believe this should be on HN, flagging the post would be a better use of your time and a more clear adherence to the guidelines that you appear to think are not being followed by this submission.

Fry: Everything was going great! Then all out of a sudden, she’s talking about hanging out. Hanging out?! She's getting way too serious. I’m not a one-woman man, Leela.

Leela: You’ll be back to zero soon enough.

Polygamy encourages the objectification of women. Marriage ceases to be a union of equals in which there is a total self-giving of spouses to one another. While we has become dull to and ignorant of an understanding of the essence and purpose of marriage (years before the last two decades, I might add), it is a union which is unitive and procreative in principle. The unitive and the procreative are not separable. The unitive is ordered toward the good of the family (and, of course, by extension society).

While monogamous marriages can be defective in practice, they are not so in principle. Polygamous marriages, on the other hand, impose these defects in principle.

There may be a similarity here with hookup culture, that is, a polygamous culture seems to likewise, though perhaps to a lesser degree, encourage men to view women as mere instruments of sexual gratification. Harvey Weinstein is in essence not some exception, but the poster child for our age.

Far from denigrating women as has been falsely claimed by some, the Christian (specifically Catholic) defense of insoluble, monogamous marriages was one of many ways in which woman was saved from the disordered predations common in human societies throughout history.

(P.S. A relatively recent philosophical tract worth reading is the late Karol Wojtyla's "Love and Responsibility".)

There are many women who would take the trade off of being loved by a man who loves multiple women over never being loved.

The reverse is not so true though.

Would you be ok with form of polygamy where a woman has multiple husbands ?

That's polyandry, but terminology aside, the same problem vis-a-vis what I've written still exists. There may be sex-specific problems that result from polyandry vs. polygamy, but the same problems mentioned above remain.

> but the same problems mentioned above remain.

Polyandry also objectifies women? how?

> That's polyandry,

polygamy is a superset of polyandry per dictionary. Your original comment was about polygamy.

W.r.t. polyandry, yes, you're right. I was thinking polygyny. My mistake.

In terms of polyandry, I meant the non-sex specific, general defects still hold. Certainly, polyandry specifically inflicts a defective relationship on the males, but given the asymmetrical responsibilities between the sexes, the result would likewise be detrimental to women. (Of course, where the latter point is concerned, it is the same with polygyny vis-a-vis men. It's not as if a man is honoring his nature by being a polygamist. It is to his detriment as well.)

From a moral standpoint no.

I don’t think this would work out as well from an evolutionary standpoint, if you believe that men are driven to have as many children as possible, a woman can only have one man’s child at a time. A man can get multiple women pregnant.

You understand neither morality nor evolution.

I’m not arguing morality I really don’t care what two or more consenting adults do. I think the most “moral” thing we can do as a society is to leave other people the hell alone to live their own life.

In case you hadn't noticed: All you are making is assertions. Some of those assertions probably have a tradition behind them, but they aren't any more insightful than "people who choose nicknames beginning with 'b' are stupid in principle". We understand you believe that, but that doesn't make those assertions any more sensible.

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