Multiple Cheers For Polygamy!
Jul 20th, 2009 | 3 responses
My cultural intake the past couple of weeks has provided me with a strong dose of polygamy. Courtesy of Netflix, I am about to finish season two of Big Love, the HBO drama about a forward-thinking polygamist family in Utah. On the literary side of the house, I just finished A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, which recounts the story of two Afghan women who find themselves married to the same brutal man.
Hosseini’s novel is relentlessly critical of the violent sexism that passes for culture, tradition and faith in much of Afghanistan. Yet polygamy itself is never a target of that criticism. In fact, the great solace in the life of Hosseini’s protagonists, Laila and Maryam, is the close friendship they share in spite (or because) of the suffering inflicted on both women by their husband Rasheed. Nor does Hosseini suggest that Rasheed’s brutality has anything to do with polygamy. He is equally brutally toward Maryam for several years before his marriage to Laila. One almost gets the sense that sexism is what ruins polygamy, which might otherwise be a dignified lifestyle. Briefly, the novel does introduce us to the multiple wives of Maryam’s wealthy father Jalil, all three of whom seem quite content.
Big Love premiered in 2006, before the publication of Hosseini’s novel in 2007. It also seems to suggest that polygamy wouldn’t be such a bad thing if practiced by modern, self-conscious adults. The show focuses constantly on the profound contrast between the loving (although imperfect) family of the protagonists and the brutal, demented behavior of the polygamous cults who live on isolated compounds. As a result of family ties, the protagonists Bill, Barb, Nicky and Margene cannot escape the influence of the compound.
Although generous and loving, Bill is often consumed by business affairs to the point where he cannot give his wives the attention they need. Instead, their friendship with each other emerges as the saving grace of the polygamous lifestyle. Whereas Maryam and Laila seems to enjoy an impossibly perfect relationship, Barb, Nicky and Margene often squabble as a result of their petty jealousies, insecurities, and thirst for recognition. Yet their conflicts never seems any worse than what all of us have probably seen in our own families.
Although you won’t see me protesting on behalf of polygamy anytime soon, there are some interesting policy questions here. Implicitly or explicitly, the Taliban’s brutality toward women often serves as a justification for our military intervention in Afghanistan. Both Democrats and Republicans have celebrated the new freedom of women in Afghanistan.
Should we be embarrassed then, by the persistence of polygamy? Or can we celebrate our enlightened approach to gender issues while tolerating plural marriage in the name of cultural diversity? If we can tolerate it in Afghanistan, why is it unacceptable here in the United States?
My personal suspicion is that it is simply impossible to separate sexism from polygamy. Or to put it slightly differently, I seriously doubt whether a husband and a wife can truly be equals if there is another wife in the equation (or another husband, for that matter). Yet I won’t take a more definitive position since I haven’t studied polygamy as it is actually practiced. Moreover, can there be a fair test of polygamy if it is only studied in the profoundly sexist regions of the world where it is currently practiced?
If our efforts to promote women’s education in Afghanistan turn out to be a success, we may soon find ourselves confronted with doctors, lawyers and professors who eloquently assert that they are glad to be one of many wives and wouldn’t have it any other way.
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3 Responses to “Multiple Cheers For Polygamy!”
Having just finished S02 of Big Love as well (like 30 minutes ago), I think you are on to something. The part I remember most about 1k Splendid Suns was the scene where one of the two (or maybe both, I don't recall) had just gotten a beating from the husband, and he told her 'there are thousands of women out there who would take your place in a heartbeat.' Kinda shows how brutal things really were over there under the Taliban (not that the Muj before them were much better).
Part of me sees Polygamy as a pragmatic/honorable practice – there are vast portions of the population of the world where the husband/wife is intimate with a third party (or fourth or fifth in some cases), but that's just an 'affair.' Polygamists actually have the cojones to carry through with it and make it legit, binding, and long lasting.
On the flip side though, there is so much potential for abuse (pimp marrying his 'hos' so that they can't be compelled to testify against him; Juniper Creek type cults, etc) that would turn a lot of voters off at the polls if even mentioned by a politician.
While there's a certain small amount of activism (typically US-centred, from what I've seen) from the segment of the polyamorous community that's interested in multiple marriage, I have come to the opinion that it's probably an exercise in futility right now. When simply suggesting that polygamy might be nice as an option is a felony in Michigan, navigating the complexities of marriage law to make them even more complicated is an implausibility.
The studies that have been made on the subject are extremely limited at best; a little psychology here, a little demographics there. (The demographic study I know of is hopelessly biased by being based on the demographics of the readership of one particularly crystal-waving free-love open relationships magazine.) On top of that, news coverage tends to be spun for titillation rather than information, and popular awareness is settled on exploitative polygynous religious models; those modern self-aware adults (to the extent that anyone is, and I'm having a cynical day) are dismissed as either fictional or too uncommon to be relevant.
But really, as to 'in the profoundly sexist regions of the world where it is currently practiced', I would amend that to 'commonly and publically practiced', as there are people living in multiple-spouse situations all over the world, though not, typically, with the benefits of legal marriage – which makes us hard to find and officially catalogue unless we post comments like this one.
You seem to be closing in on the problem as I see it. Demonizing polygamy requires no particular genius, but neither does demonizing monogamy, using plenty of readily available real-world examples. Many of the issues are identical (i.e. gender politics) but where the issues are exclusive there are of course benefits and dangers under both models.
The book “The Importance of Being Monogamous – Marriage and Nation Building in Western Canada to 1915″ By Sarah Carter looks closely at the structural use of monogamy as a cornerstone of cultural domination by whites and looks comparatively at the position of women in polygamy v. in monogamy:
“There were no single mothers, and concepts such as ‘illegitimate’ children were unknown.”
This idea has so much resonance with me. What I'm saying is I don't think “we” have it right either, and that there is a definite cost to those who find themselves on the rubbish heap produced under the current legalistic monogamy structure.
In my view, monogamy enforcement is about property, control and ownership, while polygamy could be about recognizing those non-nuclear family impulses and thinking bigger, for humanity's sake.