My mum told me that with the arrival of the missionaries into Tanzania, many tribal practices were stamped out.Yet, polygamy is one that has always stuck. In developing countries, Polygamy tends to always refer to men having multiple wives as opposed to the other way around.
Polygamy is allowed in Tanzania with the conset of the first wife and apparently the marriage must be declared to be polygamous. Could you be in a polygamous marriage and do you think it is part of modern society? Lol, I know my answer: my jealousy would end any dreams a prospective husband had of having multiple wives.
What exactly is the beauty of polygamy? Does having multiple wives signal that a man is one of status? What would it mean to have wives as rivals or sisters? I think perhaps a wife who is in a polygamous marriage is an interesting symbol of a woman who could be seen as a trophy OR a woman who is a symbol of her culture. However, it appears there are downsides to polygamy as this interesting story notes: a man with 11 wives and 77 children urges people not to follow his example. The Sudanese government is also encouraging polygamy as a reason to populate the nation. However, a by-product of this that women will be made to look like baby-making machines, solely to pop babies out. Is that fair when women in fact should have the choice not to have children?
It is a subject that fascinates me because it is one I ultimately do not think I could take part of. Furthermore, does polygamy prove that men and women are not made to just be with one person?
–Aulelia
(This is my last post for the week of my guest-blogging for this month. Thanks to everyone who has commented on my posts >> it has been interesting and fun. And especially thanks to Jill for the opportunity)
Historically, an acceptance of polygamy has indicated an imbalance of power favoring males, however many people now are interested in polyamorous arrangements, in which no (or limited) restrictions are placed on any of the people in a relationship. I’ve found the communities devoted to polyamory to be largely egalitarian and, while jealousy is definitely an issue, it seems less based on any idea of ownership or control. There was just an article on “modern” polygamy last week on HuffPo:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-weigant/gay-marriage-and-polygamy_b_49928.html
One of the best posts I’ve read on the appeal of such a relationships was written by a feminist, Bitch PhD:
http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/2005/05/feminism-open-marriage-and-fucking.html
She has a series of posts on how it works in her own life, all organized here:
http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/2006/04/so-wait-you-have-boyfriend.html
Don’t we encourage women to have children in the US too? Children are talked up as being great (not that they aren’t, but still). Tax credits are awarded on a per-child basis. Totally free schooling is provided regardless of the number of children one has. So we like babies, which necessarily means that we must like that women pop them out. I think it’s possible that a lot of people would go ahead and agree that that *is* the way women are predominantly viewed in the US. However, it seems a little restrictive to say we can’t encourage child-production without also automatically viewing women as baby-making machines.
I’m trying to have some vague sense of sympathy for the now virtually bankrupt man with 11 wives; and I’m failing utterly.
I’m all for social services, but this just seems ridiculous.
Hmmm…
I’m not overkeen on polygamy, as it does tend to involve a man with a group of subservient women. Polyamory however, while not for me, seems far better. A polyamorous relationship may involve 1 man and 1+ women, 1 woman and 1+ men, or a family group of multiple men and women and their children. I’ve heard of families where Mr A sleeps mainly with Miss B, but also with Miss C who sleeps primarily with Miss B and Mr D, and they all have kids and live perfectly happy, jealousy-free lives. Everyone consents, every one is entitled to the same freedom should they desire it, and it’s an interesting non-conventional approach to having a family.
If everyone in the relationship is for it, I see no reason why anyone else should stick their nose into it. I have a polyamorous friend who has like 8 girlfriends some of whom have other boyfriends (or husbands) and they are among the most happiest, well-adjusted people I know.
{Pedantry}
There are specific alternatives to the word “polygamy:” the word polygyny is used to refer to a man with multiple female partners, whereas polyandry refers to a women with multiple male partners.
{/Pedantry}
But even in a world where women had perfect and unilateral access to birth control, polygyny would still be problematic–it ends up framing the man as the provider in any partnership. (It also seems fairly heteronormative, which might not be a fair attack on a practice that’s more the symptom than the cause, but still).
And having women be a “symbol of their culture” is all well and good, but that doesn’t make it fair or good for the women. Single women and queers getting targeted for witch-burnings probably made them a symbol of Renaissance culture: I wouldn’t want to be a single woman or queer in the early Renaissance.
Bunny’s alternative sounds good to me. People who want multiple partners get them, in whatever permutation they want.
This all raises another question for me: what about the “all-important “family?” What effects do polygyny and polyamory have on it? Is it another example of those foreigners destroying freedom and those sex-positive kids destroying “family values?” Do we sex-positive kids care?
This is just not somewhere my mind can go AT ALL. Fidelity within my relationship has always been of the utmost importance and that means (for me) 2 people- my partner and I only…
I once immediately set down the keys he had given me and without words turned and walked out when I stopped in unannounced to find my 20 year older boyfriend in his boxers and another woman in the other room. I did not speak to either, although he tried to apologize- and I wasn’t angry. Just disconnected myself from the situation. (and cried on the way home) When he asked me to marry him months later, I politely declined. No fighting- no arguing. And no “second chance”.
But that’s MY culture and belief system- others certainly have and SHOULD have the right to do as they wish. It would be wrong of me to try to push my own personal views onto others, as I would hope they would not do to ME. So I agree 100% with Farhat’s comments.
The cultural origins of polygyny, as I understand them, are two-fold. Firstly, as suggested, there is the status symbol, because in general in order to have many wives, a man must also have the means to support those wives (the quoted example from Ethiopia explains what happens if a man over-estimates his ability!)
Secondly, in ancient cultures, in particular, ancient warlike cultures, fertility was deemed very important but there were proportionately more women than men, because men went out to fight in wars and battles, or got killed while out hunting – leaving fertile women who were unable to find partners. There was a practical desire to want those women to be baby-making machines as well.
I’ve been aware of feminist (or at least, women’s issues) debate in Islam, which is famously polygynous about the matter. The relevant passage from the Qu’ran says, “A man shall have as many wives as he chooses, two or three or four, but if he is not able to treat them equally, he shall have only one”. From the few sources I have seen, it appears that Muslim women tend to feel that if their husband took a second wife, that would feel like competition, it would also in their minds imply that he was no longer interested in them. They use that final clause to explain that they do not feel that it would be possible for anyone to fulfil that clause, and they would expect to be pushed aside in favour of the second wife.
I am not certain that polygyny necessarily casts the man in the role of provider, but it does place him at the centre, the one who determines the roles of everyone in the relationship. I have seen fiction that posits several women sharing one subservient man, but in practice, I do not see how that works (the fiction also seemed to suggest that the women formed a pre-existing group). I think unilateral polygamy of either type as an expected cultural phenomenon (as opposed to a personal choice of the participants) is always going to be a concern. Multilateral polygamy (i.e. polyamory) is much harder to envisage as a functional culturally-expected norm, although there have been one or two communes that experimented with it.
I’ll even go a little further and say that culturally enforced monogamy is a source of a lot of problems in relationships. It forces people to try to get everything they need from a relationship from a single person. It turns relationships into codependent situations which is what most long term relationships seem to approach. I would like to emphasize the “culturally enforced” part. There are people and couples well-suited for monogamy and it works best for them. There are others it is not so great for and they end up miserable trying to fit a round peg into a square hole.
I’m of the opinion we’re socialised into one or the other, more than anything else.
I like the idea of polyamory, but I’m not sure I could practice it. For a start, I wouldn’t be comfortable with my boy dating someone unless I was dating them as well, and vice versa. But then, I’d need a guarantee I wouldn’t be left behind, and that I’m the primary person to him, which would be unfair on the third person. Jealousy tends to be rooted in insecurity, and lord knows I can be insecure at times. >
While I like the idea of having a main guy and a secondary one, in practice, I’m not sure I could pull it off. I have enough drama trying to relate to one person, much less two. As far as being with a man who wanted me and another woman. I would not accept that, ESPECIALLY if we are married. Nevermind the emotional/sexual side for a minute, from a financial standpoint it sounds like the worst possible thing in the world to me. Actually, marriage between just two people and be a financial trainwreck. So yeah, personally I wouldn’t get involved either way. However I would not stop anyone else for seeking out those types of relationships.
Well, in a properly egalitarian society where women’s wants are actually respected, it could be used to relieve the burden or responsibility of childbirth from women who don’t want children . . . in cases where a man wants children but a woman does not want to be pregnant, a second wife who does want children could be the one to provide them. Of course, this being patriarchy, they’ll probably turn it around into some or other obligation more often than not.
I don’t quite get how polygamy could help increase the birth rate that much. Whether five women’s babies are being fathered by one man or by five men . . . honestly doesn’t seem to be a significant detail in that respect.
Recently, I was brooding over bossy people who are horrified when I say that my two year old will be an only child. One is plenty for me, and frankly, I’m taking myself into account when I think of the future of our family. I often hear that he’ll be so lonely, who will he play with, he won’t be properly socialized, etc., and I was thinking, Hey I have all those issues too! Maybe if my husband married another wife, she could have kids to keep my son company, and she could keep me company! It’ll never happen in my family, but it gave me a sudden insight into the benefits of polygamy.
Maybe if the Sudanese government hadn’t have killed everyone, they wouldn’t need polygamy to repopulate the country. Just sayin’.
This is a coded message to Arab Sudanese to consolidate what their ethnic cleansing of black Sudanese in Darfur has accomplished. Perhaps it’s not the best example.
– ACS
Has anyone here watched Big Love? I really like it, and I think it does a good job of imagining the challenges – including social castigation – that a polygamist family would face. I expected the show to be some sort of hokey comedy about some dude getting a lot of sex, but I actually think it’s really touching. The members of the family have to bend over backwards to make their lives function, but they make a conscious choice to love each other unconditionally (so far…), and I think it’s a nice ode to the way a family’s love is consciously and unconsciously engineered by the people in it.
Personally, I’d love to have space to have another spouse, male or female. It would do wonders for the household economy.
But I think there’s people who can do polyamory and people who can’t, and it’s a bad thing to try to make people do polyamory if it’s not their bent.
I find this kind of cultural relativism really frustrating. Yes, it’s “their culture” — a culture that has been built and enforced by a powerful male elite. When women have no rights to challenge that culture, and when any challenge means that they and their children will be destitute or that they’ll be abused or killed, it isn’t as simple as “others certainly have and SHOULD have the right to do as they wish.” Women aren’t, and have rarely been, part of any group that has had the right to do simply as they wished.
Polyamory in a social context where women have greater autonomy, economic stability and equal legal rights is pretty different than traditional polygamous practices, so let me be clear that I’m talking about how polygamy (generally polygyny) has been practiced for centuries, and how it continues to be practiced. The vast majority of the time, women in polygamous relationships have absolutely no power to negotiate or consent within those relationships, and simply saying “well it’s their choice” is not good enough.
That’s fair, Jill; I was not thinking it through and you’re right. I cannot imagine how it feels to be utterly powerless and without viable options for myself or my children. My response DID come off as dismissive, and I’m sorry.
Farhat, what you’re describing isn’t the result of monogamy. Monogamy doesn’t make a person abandon all their other friends and acquaintences, and if it does, it’s completely dysfunctional monogamy. Even with polygamy, if the only people you hung out with were the people you were married to, I imagine it would be confining and unhealthy.
I happen to really enjoy my monogamous lifestyle, a lot more than I would have even imagined. But I rely on my husband to be my husband – to be my lover and my partner and my confidant. He’s only one person, though, and there’s nothing attractive to me about the idea of only having a connection with one other person in the world. I think there’s a lot of perverse, superlative and dysfunctional ideals about romance out there, but that doesn’t mean monogamy can’t work.
I don’t see anything wrong with a man having several wives — as long as women are allowed to have several husbands, as well. Funny how we don’t see that often, hmm?
I really suggest that you read up on issues of polygamy and polyamory. In addition to the links that Susan gave, I would recommend my article Reframing the Poly Debate and the site Polyamory in the News for starters. Wikipedia, though often a dubious resource, isn’t bad for basic information on the issues and offers up some good links to other sites.
Also, a not-so-bad primer, as far as books go is The Ethical Slut. It’s a really easy read; I finished it only after a few hours of reading.
The issues surrounding multiple-partner relationships — whether polygynous, polyandrous, polyamorous, swinging, etc — are complicated, and if you have an interest in it I think that the best favour you can do yourself is to start with getting some solid research under your belt.
Best of luck!
I know, historically, why the man is in charge in most societies, but why in polygamy is it him ruling over all the wives? Seems like they’d be more likely to take over, majority rule and all. I guess it seems strange that it’s never worked out that way in any polygynous society that the women are in charge, sort of like a group of women who want to be together keeping a man around.
How could they take over? So what if they’re a majority — if he divorces them, they’re out on their asses. “Majority rules” doesn’t mean anything when only one person has the power in the relationship, and when you have no leverage in the relationship to demand anything. And under many interpretations of Sharia law (to give one example) women lose their kids in the divorce. They have less access to employment, and in some places divorced women have a very difficult time re-marrying. Many landlords won’t sell or rent homes to single women. If their fathers won’t accept them back, they may very well be out on the street, with no home, no resources, no family and no way of making money. Men never have as much to lose, and men almost never depend on their wives for basic economic security. In many patriarchal societies, polygyny has thrived exactly because men hold all the cards and can demand whatever they want.
Oh, come to think of it, I wrote a post a while back about the possible benefits to legalizing polygamy in the US. Also, Muslim Hedonist has had some unhappy first-hand experience with polygamy.
I think it’s important to point out that it’s very hard to separate polygamy from the institutional framework on which its based. Meaning, the religious and cultural motivations, which are strongly flavored and motivated by patriarchy, are a huge factor in influencing young men/women into accepting and seeking out these kinds of relationships.
That’s not to suggest that consenting adults should not be able to engage in the kinds of relationships that they want, so in that sense I think that the legality of the issue, and the “desirability” of polygamy, are also separate questions.
In general, as anyone who reads Muslim Hedonist will attest, there are a lot of unfavorable issues that go along with polygamy that deal with whether a person can find fulfillment in that kind of a relationship. But should it be criminalized? Different question.
One could say the same about our culture of monogamy. Polygamy as currently practiced doesn’t prove jack about whether men or women are made to be with one person, two people, or the whole freaking village. Neither does monogamy. Neither does polyamory.
Right, I wasn’t trying to imply that our culture wasn’t built and enforced by a powerful male elite. And I wasn’t making any argument about what men and women are made to do, or who or how many we’re made to be with. I don’t think monogamy, polygamy, or polyamory prove anything. I’m just pointing out that polygamy, as it has been practiced and as it’s currently practiced, is overwhelmingly bad for women. Yes, there are exceptions — there’s the example of the wealthier man taking on multiple widowed women and providing for them as wives. There are the polyamorous people who have perfectly functional, healthy relationships. But generally, culturally-enforced polygamy has been devastating for women, and has only served men.
That does not mean I’m arguing that culturally-enforced monogamy is the direct opposite and is great for women. I’m definitely not saying that.
Jill – I know, that was what I meant about knowing why it’s not like that. I was just wondering why no cultures ever developed the other way round right from the beginning, why even in the (few) more matriarchal societies there wasn’t polygyny with women controlling the transactions.
I hear ya, Car. Sorry I’m a little touchy about this… in my real life I’m doing some work with women who are trying to escape these kinds of situations and it’s really depressing, so conversations around the issue are always a bit sensitive for me — especially when I feel like they’re turning apologist. Which I know your comment wasn’t. Sorry if I responded a bit tersely.
How I wish I could have 2 or 3 husbands! As it is, I’ll just have to keep dating them all, and not marrying any of them.
I had a Muslim teacher – a woman at that! – telling me that, “It’s lawful and right for men to have more than 1 wife but not the other way around because you can detect the who is the father in a polygamy (in reality it’s polyandry) but not when a woman has several husbands.”
That’s a lame excuse.
If the men are preaching fairness, then women should be allowed the same rights as polyandry.
Ops.
“(in reality it’s polyandry) ”
Not polyandry. po·lyg·y·ny.
You guys really need to read some of the comments in my polygamy post. The post is good too and it was linked to by Feministe a while back.
But read the comments this time around.
http://eteraz.wordpress.com/2006/07/23/muslim-polygamy-in-america/
Also, here is a textual islamic analysis for why polygamy is probably outdated – looking at the Quran
http://eteraz.wordpress.com/2007/05/19/part-two-of-debate-with-umar-lee-polygamy/
[...] A Psalm update by an old friend Blogwatch Tanzanian-born Aulelia discusses polygamy. A defendant suggests the Beatles’ song “Let It Be [...]
A couple of points:
Polygyny (one man, more than one woman) is practiced under a huge variety of conditions. Most cultures in the world practice it, ranging from encouragement to toleration. Societies that practice only monogamy or polyandry (one woman, more than one husband) are fairly rare (though their members are more numerous — e.g the US with 300 million folk, mostly monogamous, vs. the less populous Igbo or Pakhtun). In some societies, having more than one wife is a status symbol — it takes a lot of work and wealth to sustain them, so they act as markers of wealth. In other societies, having many wives is what allows men to become wealthy — remember the chief in “Things Fall Apart”, who had several wives, each working to produce wealth for him? In particularly warlike societies, polygyny serves to absorbe “surplus” women who would otherhwise go unmarried due to the lack of men — this is, of course, associated with a male monopoly on food production, where unmarried women are left with few options to support themselves.
It’s important to look at the total cultural context, though. For instance, among the Pakhtun — the people who gave us the Taliban — women assume greater and greater strength as they get older, especially if they have sons. Meanwhile, the husband loses power, becoming somewhat impotent (figuratively speaking) in the face of his son-backed wife. Obviously power flows from manhood, but it’s a little more complex than we tend to think of — and I’ve deliberately chosen a society that most of us think of as among the world’s most male-dominated societies.
It’s important, too, to look at historical context. Among the Pakhtun, veiling and seclusion of women is a relatively new practice — anthropologists working in Pakistan in the ’50s found women working bare-headed in the fields while their husbands were away herding goats all summer. The change to a market-based economy and commercial production has shifted control to men, leaving women with little to contribute to the local economy, and thus with less power.
Also, it’s important to look at local experience. Lila Abu-Lughod’s _Writing Women’s Worlds_ shows a whole range of local responses to polygyny among the Egyptian Bedouin women she worked with. Some viewed the arrival of a new (younger, prettier) wife with jealousy — and then proceeded to use their position as senior wives to make life hell for the newcomers. Others demanded second, third, and fourth wives of their husbands, to help spread the work of maintaining a household around, as well as to show off their family’s status.
Finally, it’s important to think about the role of marriage within the local family structire. In many societies where polygyny is common, marriage is viewed less as the union of two people and more as the union of two families. A woman’s closest relationships are often with the members of her own (birth-)family, and secondarily with her co-wives and theri families, and only lastly with her husband. Much of the “work” that marraige does in our society — like providing emotional support and advice — is kept within the family; one doesn’t rely on one’s husband or wife (or wives) for that sort of thing.
None of this is to imply that polygyny doesn’t come with a healthy dose of patriarchy — just like polyandry and monogamy. My point is that it doesn’t do much good to think of “polygyny” as if it were a monolithic practice — it’s thousands of different things, often even within the same society. The issue isn’t so much polygyny as the owner/property relationship that defines relationships in patriarchal societies.
i personally wouldn’t want to be in a polygamous marriage….. however- often in countries where this takes places marriages are arranged and so not so much based on love but the benefit of the overall community. if i were to be forced to marry a husband whom i was not in love with i think i would likely be appreciative of another soul in the same position to befriend. i recently watched a documentary on polygamy and many of the women loved the other wives greatly and were happy that their tasks could be shared out. in these cases i guess jealousy has less hold.
just to clarify- i’m against polygamy as well as arranged marriages even though i think sometimes it doesnt worsen the bad situation…
[...] g signs of a stroke Polygamy and the law, a follow up Most of the recent polygamy discussion at Feministe concerned polygamy in other cultures. But one [...]