Mating as a group activity instead of a pair bonding one?

[Ethel mermania]

People aren’t choosing being on a web forum as an alternative to having sex. There are several married couples who met here.

But they’re married, so they’re not getting laid anyway.

That stops after kids.

Children truly are the best form of birth control

[The Blaatschapen]

But they’re married, so they’re not getting laid anyway.

That stops after kids.

Children truly are the best form of birth control

You say that, but

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-new ... s-25307506

They're at 13 now

[Ethel mermania]

That stops after kids.

Children truly are the best form of birth control

You say that, but

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-new ... s-25307506

They're at 13 now

Not everyone can take a hint

[Juristonia]

You say that, but

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-new ... s-25307506

They're at 13 now

My favourite part is that they called the 13th one a surprise.
Like, at some point surely you understand how this stuff works?

Also, no one who turns their kids names in to fun little word puzzles should be allowed to breed.

[Ifreann]

But they’re married, so they’re not getting laid anyway.

That stops after kids.

Children truly are the best form of birth control

Can't be that effective, or there'd be a lot more only-children.

[Fahran]

But they’re married, so they’re not getting laid anyway.

Statistics suggest the married couples have more regular sex than single people on average. Which makes sense given the relative health risks and low rates of success when it comes to hooking up with strangers.

[Fahran]

That's another factor, by the way. What is the outlook or goal that people like Fahran have in mind? Is it the same as other, more progressive folks? Or is it a far more conservative, traditionalist society, in spite of her occasional assertions of some progressive ideals on certain issues or whatever?

I just want people to enjoy wholesome family lives, honey. It's not that deep.

The absolute freedom that has been promoted here, at great length, by some others has been a cold, vacuous thing. People are, as often as not, less happy than they were in their social interactions and life prospects. People are more lonesome. People are more likely not to achieve things that their grandparents achieved. I've written on these subjects at great length from liberal, conservative, and feminist perspectives. The one thing that I have not been in an exceedingly long time has been a libertarian or a nihilist in these matters, and I have stated plainly why I cannot bring myself to hold such perspectives or articulate such positions.

I have to wonder. It's a very real, valid question that kept coming back up, even if I forgot for a bit to ask that aloud. Not attempting to malign her sincerity. I'm sure that she earnestly adheres to these beliefs and considers herself more progressive than other conservatives, which she might be on some issues. Just as I'm sure that she both trusts her sources implicitly as well as her interpretation of their findings in all sincerity. I simply lack the same confidence in her conclusions, of course, especially given my understanding of the basics of human nature in particular and the ordo natura (natural order of things) in general.

It's not necessarily that I perceive myself as uniquely progressive. I'm really not in most respects. It's that polygamy, as an institution, is an important factor in shaping the values and material conditions of far more restrictive and authoritarian societies than my own. To move towards a public policy that has been shown to exacerbate inequality, contribute to violence, and disenfranchise women and younger and poorer men feels simultaneously radical, such that it appalls my conservative sensibilities, and profoundly illiberal, such that anyone who professes affection and regard for human freedom should quake in terror at the notion.

Again, the sociological and anthropological consensus on these matters is fairly well-defined. I've never hesitated to invite a critical approach towards my sources and rigorous debate as to their merits. The issue I've found is that fairly few advocates of polygamy actually understand what they're supporting as a matter of policy and even fewer are willing to actually engage in a serious debate in contemplation of the research available on the topic. Celrit has actually made a point of arguing in good faith as an example, even if we disagree, but simply questioning the sources in a vague and non-committal way isn't something that can be discussed or debated.

If I said, for instance, "I don't really trust the studies bolstering evolutionary theory" and refuse to elaborate on why, there's not much any reasonable person can say to persuade me of the validity of the research. It's a tactic designed to legitimize ignorance, and I've been fairly patient in not pointing that out at every turn.

And there I go again, getting sucked into the vortex. I really need to stay away and toss back a brewski or two.

I invite you to speculate on the motivations of those engaged in debate on the other side. Are they truly as progressive as they claim to be? What motivates them?

[Fahran]

Maybe what you want our society to look like but others have different outlooks on what society should look like.

I'll bite. What would you like society to look like? And how would your policy decisions and shaping of institutions bring that to fruition?

And Ancient Samaria is right about the hypocrisy just looking at the politicians here in the US they say happy positive things just to get your vote and then they stab you in the back. Or they say they're for one thing but actually do the exact opposite and our politics is embarrassing enough as is with the entire administration doing whatever they want.

That's not really a very... sensible definition of hypocrisy and has minimal relevance in the context of the discussion we were having. If you're going to claim monogamous people and monogamous societies are hypocritical, I would actually like a more well-articulated argument to that effect. I've mentioned that the existence of infidelity and swinging don't really meet that standard because we're discussing institutions and public policy, not human inclinations, habits, subcultures, and behaviors in general. Beyond that, infidelity still exists in polyamorous and polygamous relationships. And the abolition of relationships in favor of libertinism and radical individualism is arguably even less in tune with human behavior.

[Fahran]

I see a lot of assertions here, but given the dearth of evidence of past, historical societies, little else as to which is the cause, which the effect, and which mere correlation or coincidence. None of us lived in ancient and medieval times, barring reincarnation, so none of us can speak authoritatively about matters with such little documentation.

We have fairly good documentation concerning certain past societies and certain current societies. The benefit of employing statistical data is that we do not need to rely on personal experience, which I often refer to as anecdotes, to support our arguments.

We argue in this article that the type of marriage institution practiced by an ethnic group, monogamy or polygyny, affects the likelihood of members of that group attacking neighboring groups. By definition, polygyny creates a social imbalance: while some men marry several wives, rear many children, and have large families, other men marry late in life or not at all. A common pattern is that marriage is confined to economically well-off men in the highest tiers of society, leaving economically deprived men unwed (Irons 1983; Mesquida and Wiener 1999; McDermott 2018). We refer to the latter as excess men. In traditional rural societies where social norms make a man’s reputation dependent on, among other things, the size of his family, excess men fail to meet basic criteria for attaining social prestige (Henrich, Boyd, and Richerson 2012, 657; Hudson and Matfess 2017, 12).

However, in our understanding, excess men will not accept the fate of remaining bachelors. According to Hans Morgenthau, propagation is one of the main drivers of any political action ([1948] 1985, 39). Since economic resources are key to getting married and starting a family, excess men have incentives to acquire these resources. When legitimate sources of income are unavailable or insufficient, excess men become “risk-takers” (Barash 2016, 30): crime, theft, violence, and raids become viable options. Excess men in rural areas who strive to conform to the social norms that derive from marriage and family therefore have two basic choices: to steal from, plunder, and raid one’s own group or to do the same to another group.

Since ethnic groups often function as extended families and have established mechanisms to monitor and sanction misbehavior (cf. Fearon and Laitin 1996), excess men will be more likely to raid other groups than their own. Following this reasoning, we expect that polygyny does not necessarily increase intragroup violence but rather heightens the risk of violence for neighboring ethnic groups.

In our analysis, we examine whether the extent of borders shared with polygynous ethnic groups increases a group’s risk of experiencing intergroup violence. Specifically, we create a risk profile for each ethnic group that measures the percentage of total border shared with polygynous neighbors. Building on the growing literature that analyses the long-term effect of historical institutions and politics (e.g., De Juan and Koos 2019; Wig 2016; Michalopoulos and Papaioannou 2016; Nunn and Wantchekon 2011; Nunn 2008), we rely on precolonial data on ethnic groups’ mode of marriage—which has been shown to correlate with current polygyny rates (Dalton and Leung 2014)—to predict contemporary violent conflict events between ethnic groups in rural Africa. Using a set of pretreatment exogenous geographical and historical variables that could have affected both the prevalence of polygyny and intergroup conflict (e.g., ancient wars, slave trade, and malaria prevalence), we show robust evidence that for groups with higher percentages of shared boundaries with polygynous groups, the number of violent events increases substantively, a finding which supports our hypothesis.

In a second step, we employ a pooled sample of Afrobarometer survey data to better understand the underlying mechanisms of this relationship. We are able to demonstrate that childless young men who belong to polygynous ethnic groups feel that they are treated more unequally and regard violence more frequently as a justified means to achieve their goals in comparison to their peers in monogamous groups. This lends support for our proposed mechanism, which suggests that excess men are the linkage between polygyny and intergroup violence.

In addition to our contribution to the literature on the long-term effects of historical institutions, we provide a substantially refined theoretical argument and improved empirical test to the literature on family institutions and violent conflict, an aspect that has not received adequate attention. Additionally, we complement the literature on local-level and communal conflicts (e.g., Eck 2014; Fjelde and von Uexkull 2012; Varshney 2003; Tajima 2013; Fearon and Laitin 2000).

Source

At the level of human security, let’s be clear: Polygyny is the cause, not the consequence, of a vast array of negative outcomes for women and their children, research has shown. For example, greater sexual freedom for men to marry multiple women typically exists side-by-side with extreme coercion of adolescent women to become brides. These young brides, in turn, have higher fertility rates, and thus bear more children when they are younger. As a result, maternal mortality rates are five times higher in societies with the highest rates of polygyny compared to those with the lowest rates. At least partly as a result of increased risk of death in childbirth, women in societies with the highest rates of polygyny also have reduced life expectancies—rarely above age 60, compared to expectancies in the high 70s for women in societies with the lowest rates of polygyny. Not surprisingly, violence toward women appears endemic within the context of polygynous societies: Such cultures show rates of sex trafficking and domestic violence toward women that are twice as high as the rates in low-polygyny societies, while the risk of female genital mutilation in highly polygynous societies increases a hundred fold. And when it comes to children, both boys and girls in polygynous societies are at higher risk of malnutrition and also receive less education, making social mobility challenging.

But if women’s safety and health isn’t reason enough to oppose polygyny (we’re looking at you, Vladimir Putin), it must be noted that the practice has real security ramifications. Let’s do some “polygyny math” to see how this works. When each man in a society is wed to multiple women, this produces an imbalanced sex ratio in the marriage market: If each man takes more than one wife, it leaves other men, most likely poor men, without any wives at all. As a result, approximately half the boys in polygynous cultures need to be ejected from their primary community at puberty in order to sustain this imbalance whereby few—usually older, wealthier, more powerful men—claim a disproportionate share of women for themselves. Because these “lost” boys tend to come from the poorer segments of society and are often left with less education and little social support, few options are available to them, short of violence, to make their way in the world. No wonder researchers have recently found a significant association between the prevalence of polygyny and the ease of recruitment into terrorist groups. In fact, the U.S. Department of Defense is funding research by one of us (Hudson) and her colleagues on this very linkage.

Polygyny produces especially unstable societies because it creates competition among males looking for partners, thus undermining male solidarity and, in many cases, necessitating a more authoritarian style of governance. As Robert Wright, author of The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology, puts it, “Extreme polygyny often goes hand in hand with extreme political hierarchy, and reaches its zenith under the most despotic regimes.” Several years ago, the anthropologist and historian Laura Betzig conducted an empirical study of 186 societies around the world and found a tight correlation between polygyny and despotism. Buttressing this, the other of us (McDermott) also found in a new cross-national statistical analysis that countries with higher rates of polygyny, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya and Nigeria, grant far fewer political rights and civil liberties to their citizens, both male and female, than non-polygynous societies.

Governance is not the only national-level phenomenon affected by polygyny. Anthropologists have long found a significant correlation between polygyny and the amount of warfare in which societies engage. The London School of Economics’ Satoshi Kanazawa’s aggregate statistical analysis supports this finding, suggesting that “polygyny may be the first law of intergroup conflict (civil wars)”; polygyny appears to encourage increased conflict between men who are seeking reproductive access that is otherwise denied to them. Sociologist James Boone even suggests that polygynous societies are more likely to engage in expansionist warfare as a means of distracting low-status males who may be left without mates. It is noteworthy, then, that McDermott also found that states with higher rates of polygyny spend significantly more money on weapons. In studies examining more than 140 states, Hudson and her colleagues similarly found that polygyny is highly and significantly associated with decreases in indicators of national security and stability. Negative outcomes in terms of violence and instability have been found by many others across social science disciplines who have investigated the relationship between polygyny and intra- and inter-group violence. This is one topic about which a true academic consensus exists.

Importantly, these associations hold regardless of region, religion or culture, which strongly suggests that they emerge as a result of the dynamic of polygyny itself. Polygamy’s math never adds up to stability; rather, it produces a standing pool of aggrieved young adult men opposed to the status quo. And with high fertility rates, that pool can become quite considerable indeed within the society. Furthermore, when the female side of the marital union suffers from structural inequality and subjugation relative to the male side, and when such inequalities are built into families from the outset, it should not be surprising that men who grow up under such conditions come to view women as second-class citizens against whom violence can be used with impunity. When violent dominance and subjugation become the default male script, it should be not surprising, then, that such tendencies become the modus operandi for treating larger societal and international group conflicts as well. In this way, polygyny generates ever-widening cycles of violence within and between individuals and societies.

Source

This Essay examines the link between polygyny, or one man who is married to multiple woman, and the physical security of women and children, and political rights and civil liberties using a unique dataset of 171 countries drawn from the WomanStats project. Controlling for the independent effects of Gross Domestic Product and sex ratio, we find statistically significant relationships between polygyny and an entire downstream suite of negative consequences for men, women, children, and the nation-state, including the following outcomes: discrepancy between law and practice concerning women¿s equality, birth rate, rates of primary and secondary education for male and female children, difference between males and females in HIV infection, age of marriage, maternal mortality, life expectancy, sex trafficking, female genital mutilation, domestic violence, inequity in the treatment of males and females before the law, defense expenditures, and political rights and civil liberties. Elevated frequency of polygynous marriage thus tends to be associated with increases in behavioral constraints and physical costs experienced by women and children in particular but also exerts effects that redound poorly to the majority of poor men as well

Source

Despite the abounding assertions that I have not provided evidence, I'd argue that I've been perhaps the only person to consistently do so in this thread. There's very strong evidence that polygamy is largely polygynous on a localized and global scale. There's very strong evidence that polygyny leads to violence and social inequality. This evidence holds regardless of religion, socioeconomic factors, and time period. We can observe the disparity both within the same country over time and between countries at the same time, even when accounting for other variables.

There's no real argument to be had about the broad trends here. The best supporters of polygamy can manage has been assertions that "correlation does not equal causation" and, as I've mentioned, that doesn't hold water here. Because we know it's causation.

What is known is human nature, which indicates very strongly that historically, people were no more functionally monogamous then than they are today. I see nothing to indicate that feigned monogamy produced or produces any societal benefits, especially when men for instance have valid reasons to doubt paternity.

I'd suggest reading the above sources then.

A community, particularly a voluntary community, where people honestly socialize some familial obligations and understand that any paternity must be proven before conferring rights and duties, makes a lot more sense than living in constant apprehension and mistrust produced by social hypocrisy.

Paternity tests make no sense in a context where sexual exclusivity is not a social expectation. And the weird focus on paternity that has been brought up multiple times in this thread makes me itch my head and wonder what point you're even attempting to make.

[Incelastan]

I’ll credit some of your sources with the honesty required to accept that widespread polygyny grew more as a result of continued gender ratio disparities caused by wartime fatalities. Yet when they assert that polygyny endures simply as an institution and in turn is the primary cause of more external violence, I question whether or not it endured more because the gender ratios didn’t return to normal for lengthy periods of time. Also, one could argue that such phenomena as monasticism, despite the tendency of many monks to breach their vows of chastity and poverty, were significant factors in reducing the number of “excess men” in nominally monogamous Europe. I keep saying “nominally monogamous,” largely because a society where monogamy is only honored in the breach is indeed nothing more than nominal. The monogamy is an illusion, a public facade. That is the hypocrisy that I assert.

I would be curious about the impact of Gallic polygamy, especially with different degrees or ranks of marriage. It’s certainly true that many Gauls served as Roman auxiliaries, just as Germans did. Yet many of these cultures were arguably already bellicose on principle. Ditto for the Norse, of course. I will grant you that whenever these polygamous marriages were rigidly unequal, that would have some of that impact as you suggested. Even so, there were safety valves, such as prostitution. I would still maintain that monogamy has only ever been honored in the breach, though it was not coincidentally honored more often during the long Victorian peace after Waterloo so as to actually become a superficial social norm.

Ultimately, I don’t believe that legal polygamy will emerge in the same fashion as in elsewhere, as those communities drawn to it would include the very egalitarian polyamorous community, full of conscious rejection of privilege and eager efforts to preserve more enlightened practices. The general public probably won’t abandon nominal and serial monogamy, particularly with the current divorce laws. The continued trend toward hypocrisy, infidelity, celibacy (in some niche quarters), and confirmed bachelorhood will not abate. Still, not being an underground lifestyle would do wonders for polygamy. The decline of monogamous marriage, an institution that allows a lot of women to weaponize sex to control men and use paternity fraud to fleece them, is unlikely to reverse itself in my lifetime.

And I don’t see anything wholesome about someone trying to dominate and manipulate me through conformity to a warped and inequitable social order. I would prefer a wholly consensual relationship or two or three not twisted by the constant threat of financial ruin. But then I’m mostly a cynic and the eternal pessimist, not one favorable to deep, abiding faith in tradition for its own.

And in any case, this will all be moot after imminent societal collapse.

[Land of The Furries]

Maybe what you want our society to look like but others have different outlooks on what society should look like.

I'll bite. What would you like society to look like? And how would your policy decisions and shaping of institutions bring that to fruition?

And Ancient Samaria is right about the hypocrisy just looking at the politicians here in the US they say happy positive things just to get your vote and then they stab you in the back. Or they say they're for one thing but actually do the exact opposite and our politics is embarrassing enough as is with the entire administration doing whatever they want.

That's not really a very... sensible definition of hypocrisy and has minimal relevance in the context of the discussion we were having. If you're going to claim monogamous people and monogamous societies are hypocritical, I would actually like a more well-articulated argument to that effect. I've mentioned that the existence of infidelity and swinging don't really meet that standard because we're discussing institutions and public policy, not human inclinations, habits, subcultures, and behaviors in general. Beyond that, infidelity still exists in polyamorous and polygamous relationships. And the abolition of relationships in favor of libertinism and radical individualism is arguably even less in tune with human behavior.

Oh honey, you don't have to deal with the hypocrisy of which I speak of here in the US trust me it don't seem like much to go off of but trust me it speaks for itself. If you only could actually know what it's like to live here you'd have the same thought process as every other American. Plus I really don't have any policies to influence said institutions cuz for one there's really no need for one since society is actually working itself out on its own into what I want in a society.

[Fahran]

I'll bite. What would you like society to look like? And how would your policy decisions and shaping of institutions bring that to fruition?


That's not really a very... sensible definition of hypocrisy and has minimal relevance in the context of the discussion we were having. If you're going to claim monogamous people and monogamous societies are hypocritical, I would actually like a more well-articulated argument to that effect. I've mentioned that the existence of infidelity and swinging don't really meet that standard because we're discussing institutions and public policy, not human inclinations, habits, subcultures, and behaviors in general. Beyond that, infidelity still exists in polyamorous and polygamous relationships. And the abolition of relationships in favor of libertinism and radical individualism is arguably even less in tune with human behavior.

Oh honey, you don't have to deal with the hypocrisy of which I speak of here in the US trust me it don't seem like much to go off of but trust me it speaks for itself. If you only could actually know what it's like to live here you'd have the same thought process as every other American. Plus I really don't have any policies to influence said institutions cuz for one there's really no need for one since society is actually working itself out on its own into what I want in a society.

I’m American…

That’s a bit disheartening to say the least. But it also rather validates the points I made above.

[Incelastan]

I'll bite. What would you like society to look like? And how would your policy decisions and shaping of institutions bring that to fruition?


That's not really a very... sensible definition of hypocrisy and has minimal relevance in the context of the discussion we were having. If you're going to claim monogamous people and monogamous societies are hypocritical, I would actually like a more well-articulated argument to that effect. I've mentioned that the existence of infidelity and swinging don't really meet that standard because we're discussing institutions and public policy, not human inclinations, habits, subcultures, and behaviors in general. Beyond that, infidelity still exists in polyamorous and polygamous relationships. And the abolition of relationships in favor of libertinism and radical individualism is arguably even less in tune with human behavior.

Oh honey, you don't have to deal with the hypocrisy of which I speak of here in the US trust me it don't seem like much to go off of but trust me it speaks for itself. If you only could actually know what it's like to live here you'd have the same thought process as every other American. Plus I really don't have any policies to influence said institutions cuz for one there's really no need for one since society is actually working itself out on its own into what I want in a society.

Well, there are already ways in which polygyny is emerging in more harmful ways, largely caused by hypergamy going on steroids and the economy going through structural changes as part of general societal shifts. Nevertheless, there are also beneficial trends such as the small, but nascent egalitarian polyamorous community, that is built upon a more deliberate push toward consent, communication, understanding, etc. I also believe that more social justice and particularly redistribution of the wealth will contribute in a major fashion in reducing or blunting the effects of hypergamy. That will probably also shrink the areas where polygyny is so dominant beneath the monogamous facade of our society.

Let’s not forget also that the Drug War and mass incarceration have mimicked the past effects of particularly brutal wars in terms of removing many men from the larger community, especially among minorities. Some polygyny exists heavily in those quarters due to a surplus of women and scarcity of available men, though a lot of other minority women are turning to interracial relationships in response. Suffice it to say that the Drug War has also expanded the underclass right at the moment that hypergamy has intensified, especially among minority communities. We have plenty of “excess men” who are invisible to many women, especially if their financial futures are precarious.

Ultimately, this is all temporary and moot, as massive societal collapse will create a level of attrition that makes anything in my lifetime seem calm and peaceful by comparison. The effects of environmental apocalypse are imminent by now, just five to seven years from the point of no return. The global temperature spike by one to two degrees Celsius will so destabilize human civilization that its outcome will be colossal destruction, outright catastrophe.

[GuessTheAltAccount]

Clearly you're not a parent. I however am one and no I'm not in the category of poverty because of my bad decisions. I'm in poverty because of the area I live in and the only way to actually make it big in my area is either work in the medical field which I actually have no desire to do or I can work in the factories/warehouses which is what I'm doing now and I'm still in poverty not because of the choices I have made but because of how our economy is.

A. If you went to college and got a degree, there are plenty of foreign workplaces that would have hired you, probably with a higher salary than a factory or warehouse in the sort of town that has so few job options available. No one's holding a gun to your head to tell you to stay in your home town. Or if they are, that's unlawful confinement and needs to be reported.

B. If you genuinely prioritize "stay in your home town" over "make a decent living," why didn't you say that the first time? The OP revolves around the assumption that every teenage boy knows he could make it in this world if he got a degree and was willing to go where the jobs are. It was pretty obviously implied that all factors, including any and all attachment to home towns, home provinces, and home countries were being dismissed in the OP as negligible factors, at least compared to primal animal lust, in the decision making of normal people. If you disagreed, why didn't you say that the first time?

You think that it's the lack of willpower or being in denial that's the problem buddy I can tell you one thing I was ready to have kids at young age like in my late teen years to my early 20's it's not that I wasn't ready it was that my ex wife who wasn't ready and really didn't want to have kids but I did.

Where are these ladies who genuinely don't want kids and why didn't you recommend to her the names of guys you know who also don't want kids?

But also, doesn't the same public that condemns guys for abandoning their kids also make fun of guys who happen to be poor? I'd rather not be in either of those situations, obviously, but you already know what people other than myself think of you, so why do you assume everyone else would have been just as willing to cling to their forgotten hometown when they could've gone anywhere and been anything?

So in what you said is in fact not accurate.

Not for everyone, strictly speaking, but still likely true for the average person.

[GuessTheAltAccount]

I missed this post earlier.

Not everyone partakes in webforums, let alone one as especially nerdy as politics ones. It stands to reason that people choosing this as an alternative to sex are either risk-averse enough to hold off on dating until they can afford kids (in which case, they don't get to feign incredulity that people with different opinions than themselves couldn't possibly have the same reason) or think dating is a lost cause at that point in their life (in which case, they don't get to single out people with negative stereotypes of cheerleaders or a "girls prefer macho guys" narrative to tout for doing the same).

And frankly, regardless of what the alternatives are, participating in a site like this in one's highly impressionable teen years sounds like a mistake too, if a less serious one. At least adults have enough of a sense of skepticism to... hopefully gain more than they lose from here, though even then it's never a guarantee. :/

People aren’t choosing being on a web forum as an alternative to having sex. There are several married couples who met here.

Maybe, maybe not. This is the same site wherein people who claim to value evidence have no qualms speculating about my life without evidence, so take anything people here say with a grain of salt.

And yeah, as noted by others, just because a couple is married on paper, doesn't mean they're intimate (or even otherwise happily married) in practice. We live in a world full of sham weddings and shotgun weddings. Don't put anything past anyone. No one looks around while on campus and says "d'aww, that ripped guy who does archery is kissing his fat girlfriend! Clearly guys don't mind if she's overweight!" No. They assume guys do mind if their girlfriends are overweight, which means they are still saying the guy's affection for his girlfriend is just for show, however indirectly they are saying it.

And if there are people who have their lives in order well enough to be happily married, yet still choose to spend a portion of said lives on webforums, then their opinions of webforums is drastically more positive than that of the opinions of everyone else, who tend to regard them as wastes of time.

[Aghwank]

There is drama over infidelity that gets caught.

There is drama over infidelity that is suspected; rightly or wrongly; but never caught.

Beyond infidelity concerns, there is drama over those who feel left out of sex and dating altogether. Mostly men / boys (more of them claim than women / girls to identify as single, suggesting either polyamory or respondent dishonesty) but not exclusively. Even women have supposedly been rejected, at least from monogamous relationships. I wasn't there, nor have both sides of the story, so I would never claim to know.

But in case it's true, ask yourself this; if there were no expectation of monogamy in the first place, would these women have been just as likely to be rejected from casual sex in that circumstance as from monogamous relationships now? Would that not double as a means of cutting down on drama over infidelity, by giving everyone expectations that are easier to meet?

The average male's sex drive is so intense, so extremely overwhelming against all capacity for rational thought, that in their teen years most boys risk impoverishing themselves for life; much less their female sex partners; by having sex before they could afford children, with nothing to go on but her word of knowing what she would do if she fell pregnant. (Obviously mine is milder, as evidenced by the fact that I am typing this instead of, let's say, watching pornography.) It is absurd to expect them to go from that to having the self-control to spurn the advances of every would-be mistress, unless you think pollution somehow reduces sex drive that much between one's teen years and one's 20s.

As such, with men/boys not having the self-control to uphold monogamy, it's either up to women or a lost cause. And by the aforementioned "more men/boys claim to be single than women/girls" statistic cited earlier, I'm going to go with monogamy being a lost cause.

So why not just drop the facade, and embrace what our evolutionary cousins, the bonobos, did, by making this sort of thing a group activity instead of a pair bonding one? No more drama over infidelity if you never expected exclusivity in the first place. Fewer reasons for anyone of either sex to feel left out, if people have enough variety of partners to not care about any flaws, be they significant flaws or superficial ones. As well, people would be less complacent about the need to wear protection if they did not have the illusion of a monogamous partner. If people were always wearing protection (with the exception of when procreation was intended, of couse), many STDs could be eradicated in just a few generations.

my god this is cringe

[Incelastan]

People aren’t choosing being on a web forum as an alternative to having sex. There are several married couples who met here.

Maybe, maybe not. This is the same site wherein people who claim to value evidence have no qualms speculating about my life without evidence, so take anything people here say with a grain of salt.

And yeah, as noted by others, just because a couple is married on paper, doesn't mean they're intimate (or even otherwise happily married) in practice. We live in a world full of sham weddings and shotgun weddings. Don't put anything past anyone. No one looks around while on campus and says "d'aww, that ripped guy who does archery is kissing his fat girlfriend! Clearly guys don't mind if she's overweight!" No. They assume guys do mind if their girlfriends are overweight, which means they are still saying the guy's affection for his girlfriend is just for show, however indirectly they are saying it.

And if there are people who have their lives in order well enough to be happily married, yet still choose to spend a portion of said lives on webforums, then their opinions of webforums is drastically more positive than that of the opinions of everyone else, who tend to regard them as wastes of time.

While I don't agree with a lot of your conclusions on a number of issues, I share your skepticism that marriage is so often the happy, "wholesome" life that certain posters here seem to believe. Of all of her sources and studies that Fahran cites, the ones that I doubt and question most are those that assert or claim that modern, or perhaps postmodern, marriage is this Normal Rockwell idyll compared to single life. My own marriage, sure, not bad, but I haven seen plenty of miserable husbands and wives, enough to know that all is not well in normie land.

[The Black Forrest]

That stops after kids.

Children truly are the best form of birth control

Can't be that effective, or there'd be a lot more only-children.

I have an only child. For different reasons. Mrs. Bumi was an only child.

Still it’s not absolute though. I had a coworker who was without argument an “oops”. I would say she was early 30’s at the time. She told me about her family. She has 4 other siblings. The next one in the age line was 62.

Another gal was the result of a drunken bet. Her father and three friends bet to see who could knock up their wives first. He won.

I know interesting people.

[Incelastan]

Society really is screwed.

[The Black Forrest]

Society really is screwed.

Nahhh it’s fine.

[Trans-Mississippi]

There is drama over infidelity that gets caught.

There is drama over infidelity that is suspected; rightly or wrongly; but never caught.

Beyond infidelity concerns, there is drama over those who feel left out of sex and dating altogether. Mostly men / boys (more of them claim than women / girls to identify as single, suggesting either polyamory or respondent dishonesty) but not exclusively. Even women have supposedly been rejected, at least from monogamous relationships. I wasn't there, nor have both sides of the story, so I would never claim to know.

But in case it's true, ask yourself this; if there were no expectation of monogamy in the first place, would these women have been just as likely to be rejected from casual sex in that circumstance as from monogamous relationships now? Would that not double as a means of cutting down on drama over infidelity, by giving everyone expectations that are easier to meet?

The average male's sex drive is so intense, so extremely overwhelming against all capacity for rational thought, that in their teen years most boys risk impoverishing themselves for life; much less their female sex partners; by having sex before they could afford children, with nothing to go on but her word of knowing what she would do if she fell pregnant. (Obviously mine is milder, as evidenced by the fact that I am typing this instead of, let's say, watching pornography.) It is absurd to expect them to go from that to having the self-control to spurn the advances of every would-be mistress, unless you think pollution somehow reduces sex drive that much between one's teen years and one's 20s.

As such, with men/boys not having the self-control to uphold monogamy, it's either up to women or a lost cause. And by the aforementioned "more men/boys claim to be single than women/girls" statistic cited earlier, I'm going to go with monogamy being a lost cause.

So why not just drop the facade, and embrace what our evolutionary cousins, the bonobos, did, by making this sort of thing a group activity instead of a pair bonding one? No more drama over infidelity if you never expected exclusivity in the first place. Fewer reasons for anyone of either sex to feel left out, if people have enough variety of partners to not care about any flaws, be they significant flaws or superficial ones. As well, people would be less complacent about the need to wear protection if they did not have the illusion of a monogamous partner. If people were always wearing protection (with the exception of when procreation was intended, of couse), many STDs could be eradicated in just a few generations.

my god this is cringe

Yeah I agree

[Hurdergaryp]

Can't be that effective, or there'd be a lot more only-children.

I have an only child. For different reasons. Mrs. Bumi was an only child.

Still it’s not absolute though. I had a coworker who was without argument an “oops”. I would say she was early 30’s at the time. She told me about her family. She has 4 other siblings. The next one in the age line was 62.

Another gal was the result of a drunken bet. Her father and three friends bet to see who could knock up their wives first. He won.

I know interesting people.

Apparently you attract them.

[The Black Forrest]

I have an only child. For different reasons. Mrs. Bumi was an only child.

Still it’s not absolute though. I had a coworker who was without argument an “oops”. I would say she was early 30’s at the time. She told me about her family. She has 4 other siblings. The next one in the age line was 62.

Another gal was the result of a drunken bet. Her father and three friends bet to see who could knock up their wives first. He won.

I know interesting people.

Apparently you attract them.

Heh. More true then you know. Those two are the most sane of the lot.

[Ethel mermania]

Can't be that effective, or there'd be a lot more only-children.

I have an only child. For different reasons. Mrs. Bumi was an only child.

Still it’s not absolute though. I had a coworker who was without argument an “oops”. I would say she was early 30’s at the time. She told me about her family. She has 4 other siblings. The next one in the age line was 62.

Another gal was the result of a drunken bet. Her father and three friends bet to see who could knock up their wives first. He won.

I know interesting people.

I always loved the baby onesie that said
" daddy only wanted a blow job"

[The Holy Therns]

Can't be that effective, or there'd be a lot more only-children.

I have an only child. For different reasons. Mrs. Bumi was an only child.

Still it’s not absolute though. I had a coworker who was without argument an “oops”. I would say she was early 30’s at the time. She told me about her family. She has 4 other siblings. The next one in the age line was 62.

Another gal was the result of a drunken bet. Her father and three friends bet to see who could knock up their wives first. He won.

I know interesting people.

I was born last, and nine months after Sweden's drunkest holiday. I can do the math, I'm an oopsie-daisy.