(no subject)

[theweaselking]

Mormons: once again, ruining things for everyone.

(Short version: Plural marriage remains illegal among consenting-adults-as-equals because Mormons insist that trafficking children for sexual purposes is a religious obligation *and* that it's the same as plural marriage, and the Mormons themselves were the test case before the court.)

Comments

[torrain.livejournal.com]

> Historically and anthropologically, he's got a point: polygamy is very
> strongly correlated with great harm to the status of women and children.

Should that maybe be polygyny specifically? I realize polyandry might also have some bad effect (fraternal polyandry comes to mind, although I couldn't point to a study to say that's fair), but I'm pretty sure that there've been studies showing that children of a poly marriage in a culture that operates with the concept of partible paternity actually tend to do better.

(I may be bogging down in specifics here.)

[tisiphone.livejournal.com]

lol @me commenting a month late, but actual examples of culturally practiced fraternal polyandry (such as in Tibetan mountain peoples) aren't all that kind to women and children. For one thing, it reverses the gender-balance dynamic of polygyny, leaving many women without husbands. For another, women aren't actually granted more rights; it's a patriarchal property rights relationship, not a matriarchal relationship. The net effect of fraternal polyandry is that women are stuck caring for the domestic and sexual needs of a large number of men, only some of whom (if any) they may actually have an emotional relationship with, and some of whom will be highly inappropriate in terms of domestic partnership due to being far too young or too old. In return, women aren't granted any additional rights and don't gain status in society. In one article I've read on the subject, women that don't marry actually consider themselves superior to their married sisters because they have significantly more freedom. Basically, it's not really much better for the position of women or children than polygyny is, it's just (slightly) differently sucky.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

I did say that yes, I suspected fraternal polyandry might have a bad effect. :) But that's one example of polyandry, and specifically the effects of it on women; children aren't mentioned. I'd want to see more examples and more studies before I was comfortable saying that polyandry was close to as strongly correlated with harm to the status of women and children as polygyny; and to say it's close to as bad for both groups strikes me as a prerequisite for being comfortable with the statement that polygamy (as a whole) is very strongly correlated with etc.

[tisiphone.livejournal.com]

The number of studies related to polyandry generally is limited because it's exceptionally rare.