Friday, July 22, 2022

Lies and Damned Lies About Polygamy

[Note: I am bumping up this previous entry because it is as relevant as ever. Polygamy is not something to escape from, fear, or prosecute. Abusive people are. Polygamy doesn't harm women, children, or teen boys, abusers do. The same goes for monogamy.]

Good ol’ tool of anti-equality forces, Professor Joe Henrich of the University of B.C., is back in the news. This article comes with a picture of Bountiful, B.C. (which is NOT the picture shown here) along with this text…

New research says that polygamy, which is practiced in Bountiful, B.C., leads to increased crime.

Right. Everyone avoids driving near Bountiful because of the high crime rate.

Prof. Joe Henrich found that when rich men take more than one wife, it leaves a deficit of women leading to increased fighting and competition for the remaining women.

Got that? You non-wealthy or unmarried guys are just a bunch of criminals.

Henrich is taking about women as though they have no minds of their own and are nothing but property, akin to cars.

Rich men can “take” more than one woman, marriage or not. Shall we ban all nonmonogamy? Or, since it might lower the crime rate according to this line of thinking, shall we require a woman to find an unmarried man and keep him busy so he won’t go around being a violent criminal?

"You have low-status men who are desperate for resources," said Henrich, a professor in the departments of psychology and economics. "More polygamy leads to a greater proportion of unmarried men, which leads to increased crime."

How does Henrich explain “low status” men who marry a woman and support her decision to not earn income as she tends to the children or earn less income than she and their children will spend? Wouldn’t it make sense, in Henrich’s view, for such men to never marry and have children, so as to be less “desperate for resources?”

Henrich and his co-authors studied societies where polygamy is prevalent, trying to discover the consequences.

Did they also conclude that polygamy causes high amounts of melanin?
"The scarcity of marriageable women in polygamous cultures increases competition among men for the remaining unmarried women," said Henrich. "The greater competition increases the likelihood men in polygamous communities will resort to criminal behaviour to gain resources and women."

I wonder why the article doesn’t cite examples?

I also wonder how much funding for this, or how much of Henrich’s pay, comes from the very government that has banned the polygamous freedom to marry and is actively attacking polygynous families?

We’ve already debunked all of this here, here, here, here, here, and here. We will need many more dung beetles to clear this pile up.

An adult should be free to share love, sex, residence, and marriage with any and all consenting adults. These excuses to deny full marriage equality are flimsy masks that fail to hide festering bigotry.

13 comments:

  1. "Did they also conclude that polygamy causes high amounts of melanin?"
    Ahahahahahahahah xD
    -Cornelius

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  2. The melanin comment seemed quite racist for a site woking towards equality. Care to explain?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Especially if you check my previous entries I linked to in the body of this post, you'll see what I mean. Those who want to deny the polygamous freedom argue like this:

      1. Community or country X has polygyny.
      2. The same community mistreats women and girls.
      So polygyny causes the mistreatment of women and girls.

      It is a faulty argument. My point is that someone could just as easily say:

      1. An African country has polygyny.
      2. People in that African country have high amounts of melanin.
      So polygyny causes high amounts of melanin.

      See what I mean? Polygamy is is not causing the mistreatment of women and girls. What is causing the mistreatment of women and girls is gender inequality.

      Delete
    2. And that, my dear friend, is what we call a fallacy. Or, in a more common language, how bigots twist and turn the truth to their liking.

      Delete
  3. I had someone (a misogynist) point out to me that men don't pay prostitutes for sex, they pay them to leave afterwards. The fact is that there is a significant number of men who prefer not to marry and another percentage that are unhappy in marriage. The percent of women who endure unhappy marriages is even higher.

    Some people are better suited to marriage and parenting, and the State has no legitimate interest in preventing more of these people from forming loving and supportive relationships. -Tom

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  4. please look into why the polygamists in Texas were shut down and their leader jailed.

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    Replies
    1. Are you asking me to actually investigate? What is your point?

      Delete
    2. The , I believe, is to investigate your point. These places are shut down for several reasons, including child rape. What I don't personally understand, is why are the men allowed more than one

      Delete
    3. This blog is against child rape. Prosecuting child rapists would actually be easier if consenting adults didn't have their relationships criminalized, as they would be more willing to cooperate with law enforcement. Other than that, child rape has nothing to do with consenting adult relationships. As far as why any given religious sect has polygyny but not per forms of polygamy, such as polyandry, well that is up to them. As long as everyone involved is an adult who truly consents, then that should not be discriminated against.

      Delete
  5. "Prof. Joe Henrich found that when rich men take more than one wife, it leaves a deficit of women leading to increased fighting and competition for the remaining women."

    Oh DAMN, that's a knee-slapper! It also leaves a deficit of women available to remaining men, and opens a huge door to jealousy and rage among the wifeys. Read Ann Eliza Young's book, these women would end up shooting at each other! LOL

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  6. Citing correlations always involves relating 2 or more concepts to one another. I have not read the paper, but it does not sound like it is presenting false information.
    Obviously reasons behind any valid findings, and what exactly is being related, how that applies, is always in question when it comes to psychological studies.
    I generally saw nothing 'wrong' with quotes lifted. There seems to be an assumption that the findings of this paper somehow supports monogamy as a way of preventing crime; it does not (at least again, what is quoted in this page here).
    Reporting relationships between concepts is not a suggestion that the concepts are wrong. In fact one could easily take the same facts as presented and say they indicate that support for polyamory could reduce crime, or at least one could make that argument.

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  7. they allow romantic relationships outside of the family known as non-consanguinamory but not consanguinamory? this is nonsense! we need to help stop this stupid man-law and have natural law to have a romantic relationship with your family or not!

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  8. The problem is not inherently polygamy. It's the FLDS church which has a double standard between polygyny and polyandry. Encouraging polygyny even if people don't want it and prohibiting polyandry. I suspect this would skew the sex ratio much more than organic polygamy would. And they have this belief that women need men in order to enter the highest degree of heaven but everyone needs to marry in order to enter the highest degree of heaven so that means that being unmarried, which is inevitable for some in this skewed sex ratio, is a spiritual barrier. This leads to higher amounts of men being excommunicated and abandoned by the church.
    Funnily enough. There's also a quote where an LDS prophet blames poor men for the need of polygamy, insisting that there are a bunch of evil single men who would never marry and that polygyny protects women somehow. https://archive.org/details/JoDV20/page/n207 Talk about blaming other people for your own problems.
    The author is talking about the horrible dynamics of FLDS polygamy but is not using language to differentiate between this horrible polygamy and healthy polygamy.

    ReplyDelete

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