quote:So he admits that stability is important for children while describing his utterly UNstable love life. And admits lying to his son because "that's what he needed to hear."
The article freely admits that polyamory hasn't been studied long enough to ascertain long-term effects on children. I, for one, hope that we can learn from the research done on children in other similar unstable life situations such as divorce, and extrapolate that to realize that children are not going to be healthy if the adults in their lives are performing social sexual experiments on their home environments.
I don't care how happy or fulfilled you and your consenting friends claim to be. When you're normalizing a social behavior that's harmful to children and publicizing it, thus influencing even more people to try it out, that is something that is no longer confined behind closed doors and I have the right to say something about it.
I think this is a valid point. I don't have time to really discuss it in detail right now, but the bottom line is that more research needs to be done (or I need to be better educated on it) before I can develop an informed opinion.
I do think there it's (in general) possible for adults to do things that kids can't or shouldn't have to understand.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: ... But wouldn't that have just been an expectation of sexual fidelity on the part of the woman? The man could be having sex with as many wives or concubines as he could afford. And no permission from those women was required.
Yep. I think fidelity as defined as "be faithful unless you can responsibly afford second wifes, concubines, or courtesans" is a fairly different concept from the monogamous sort of fidelity that is being discussed by social conservatives here. (Toss in the expectation that love and reproduction were somewhat independent)
If you add in the fact that it took the Communists to finally stamp out polygamy (and foot-binding), aided by the Republicans (encouraged by missionaries), in a "non-partisan" sense as we might call it today, the whole Chinese example I think becomes a bit orthogonal to the debate about same-sex marriage in the West.
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quote:Originally posted by MightyCow: Sterling: I guess what is tripping me up most is what makes you believe that a large population of gay men want to somehow institutionalize open marriages. I am unaware that shuch a movement exists.
What he's saying, at least as I understand it, is that it is his business when someone tries to change how marriages are handled legally.
Nothing to do specifically with Savage or SSM.
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Sexual fidelty for women is pretty common expectation- mostly I would think because you want to know who the daddy is. For poor men, I would think the issue would be that some poor loser took away the potential value of the girl and possibly impregnated her, without being able to support baby. If a man had enough money, the cheating was acceptable (though I think in many places even without supporting babies, it was still fine for the man to cheat). It wasn't a moral fortitude question, or a love/respect wife issue. Until recently, the whose the baby question hasn't been resolvable. Now, with DNA testing and birth control, both these issues are ressolved, so, it isn't surprising to see some changes in society.
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Also, wasn't gay sex in China all good, provided you were still making babies with your wife? Like as long as it was just good fun, go for it? It only was a negative if your desire for men interfered with your ability to get your wife pregnant and make heirs.
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quote:Originally posted by T:man: What he's saying, at least as I understand it, is that it is his business when someone tries to change how marriages are handled legally.
Nothing to do specifically with Savage or SSM.
My point is that nobody is trying to make marriage legally allow cheating or multiple partners.
I'd sure hate it if people tried to make marriage about kicking puppies, but that isn't happening, so it's pretty silly to argue about it, especially somehow elbowing it into the same-sex marriage debate.
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quote:Originally posted by scholarette: Also, wasn't gay sex in China all good, provided you were still making babies with your wife? Like as long as it was just good fun, go for it? It only was a negative if your desire for men interfered with your ability to get your wife pregnant and make heirs.
Mostly. Here's a good summary:
quote:Mr. Palmer feels the same and he wrote a bit about homosexuality’s (especially male homosexuality) place in Chinese culture and history, something him and I both seem to have an interest in. He brings up the eminent Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), a man more fascinating and game-changing than Marco Polo ever was, who, in his quest to convert the Chinese masses, looked the other way when it came to ancestor worship but could never understand the Chinese people’s acceptance of homosexuality. He wrote of homosexuality: “It is spoken of in public and practised everywhere without there being anyone to prevent it.”
European societies, as Mr. Palmer points out, were cultures where homosexuality was, “condemned by religion, law and custom, and vicious punishments, even including death, were handed down to gay men.” In contrast, China had long viewed homosexuality not in such black and white terms. Many Chinese Emperors were bisexual (all but one in the Han dynasty), male concubines were allowed and often common among the wealthy, and male poets would write romantic lines about their same sex lovers. While ancient China was never a homosexual paradise, it was also not the judgmental nightmare than Christian Europe used to be.
It was only with the Self-Strengthening Movement, the fall of the Qing dynasty, and the adoption of Western political and cultural ideas that allowed Western ideas towards homosexuality to become the norm in China. Mr. Palmer points out that during Mao’s reign homosexuality was considered a “Western bourgeois vice,” a line of thinking that some still believe today. Go figure, the ancient country with a long history of open homosexuality calls homosexuality a Western trend.
quote:Originally posted by Annie: The article freely admits that polyamory hasn't been studied long enough to ascertain long-term effects on children. I, for one, hope that we can learn from the research done on children in other similar unstable life situations such as divorce, and extrapolate that to realize that children are not going to be healthy if the adults in their lives are performing social sexual experiments on their home environments.
I don't care how happy or fulfilled you and your consenting friends claim to be. When you're normalizing a social behavior that's harmful to children and publicizing it, thus influencing even more people to try it out, that is something that is no longer confined behind closed doors and I have the right to say something about it.
In this, you bounced through three quantum states on whether or not polyamory is necessarily inherently harmful to children.
1. We don't know the long term effects of polyamory on children
to
2. I hope we can prove that polyamory is harmful to children
to
3. It is harmful to children
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It seems to me the guy in the story didn't have to lie to his kids. I mean, when I asked my mom who she loved best with different variations (my brother or me, my sister or my brother, etc), she managed to answer without stating a preference. Divorced parents remarry and navigate the do you love mommy conversation as well, without lying. So, this story seems more a father who made a mistake, not an indictment of polyamory.
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quote:Originally posted by Geraine: While I pray my wife never cheats on me, I have already given her permission to sleep with any of the following with my blessing:
1) Chuck Norris (Its Chuck Norris..Who could turn him down?)
2) Gerard Butler (Pretty sure I'd actually go gay for him)
3) Michael Balak, Close, Muller, or any other member of Germany's World Cup team (I want me a soccer player child.)
4) Josh Duhamel
Likewise, I have permission from her to sleep with the following:
1) Scarlett Johansson 2) Jessica Alba 3) Ashley Greene
Since none of those really have the possibility of ever happening, I think I'm pretty safe.
Dude, you've given her the entire national German football team. While the possibility of her ever coming across any of them is slight, she definitely has a better chance than you do of getting something on the side.
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So when I asked my mom if she loved my brother or my sister best, that was an indictment against having more than one child?
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quote:Don't ever try to quote me, kmboots. I want nothing to do with your brand of "discussion".
As opposed to your brand of 'discussion', in which things that seem uncertain or even controversial to many are supposedly self-evident, and disputing that is met with chilly hostility?
Well, I know which kind of 'discussion' I prefer, katharina. It's pretty unpleasant how often hostility seems to be your default position these days.
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I hope that if people wish to discuss individual poster nuance that they will take it to email with those respective posters.
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Kat, you are free to discuss with me or not as you please. Within the bounds of the TOS, I am free to post as I please.
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quote:Originally posted by scholarette: So when I asked my mom if she loved my brother or my sister best, that was an indictment against having more than one child?
There is a difference between competition between siblings in a family and the insecurity caused by parents that have competing loyalties outside the family.
Unless you're trying to claim that all those adults have committed themselves to be that kid's parents. I don't believe it - there was no indication of such in the article. The father's admission to lying means he knows that the truth would be damaging. The kid knows it, too - kids aren't stupid. They can most certainly tell when things are unstable. So on top of being unstable, the father's now a liar.
And you know there is a major difference. How could you possibly be confused?
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quote:There is a difference between competition between siblings in a family and the insecurity caused by parents that have competing loyalties outside the family.
You're begging the question again when you apply this statement to all cases of polyamory.
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You have fundamentally misunderstood what I said, probably deliberately. I won't address your confusion until your comments are relevant.
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quote:To me, the point of the faithfulness is that your goal is now to make that person and the family you create together the center of your life, that you are going to try to always be someone that they can trust and rely on. If that's something that you can achieve while having sex with other people, then I don't see a problem with it.
It seems to me that kat and Annie are arguing their conclusion. What I'm taking away is that they have a problem with polyamory per se and are frustrated that other people do not.
To make any headway, I think you'd need to show how it intrinsically does bad things like violate what I said above.
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: No. That is a poor, innacurate summary.
You are welcome to challenge it with a response of substance, if you wish, because this will only count as a further general invalidation of tone by people who might disagree with me.
So, if you opt to stick with the one-liner, then ... thanks! I appreciate the help in furthering the cause of acceptance, grudging or otherwise, with my analyses.
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But you have not made your reasons clear. You just noted on Facebook that simply saying something's stupid won't win your admiration. Do you not seek to behave in ways that you would, yourself, admire?
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Also it would be super nice if when you don't present clear reasoning, don't jump to saying that you are probably being 'deliberately misunderstood' by people who are actually still in good faith trying to get answers and clarifications/assertions/proof of concept from you.
Hell freezing over not required.
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quote:Originally posted by jebus202: Dude, you've given her the entire national German football team. While the possibility of her ever coming across any of them is slight, she definitely has a better chance than you do of getting something on the side.
I'm fine with that. If she does I told her she better get pregnant. I want a soccer player in my family. If he looks like Muller or Balak, I'm cool with that.
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: When someone says something interesting or relevant, I'll respond.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you don't consider your own behavior and standards to be relevant to any discussion, especially when they turn into double standards, but, oh well!
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Talk about the thing. Don't talk about the talk about the thing.
I'm really not that fascinating. Quit focusing on me, and go back to saying how absolutely fabulous it is for kids to be surrounded by adults that lie to them and can't be counted on, and how relationships don't have to be sexually exclusive to be good, even though YOUR relationship is definitely sexually exclusive because you respect your spouse.
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As soon as you stop saying blatantly provocative things that suggest extreme doublestandards in how other people talk vs how you talk, people will stop focusing on how you communicate and how hypocritical it is.
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quote:I'm really not that fascinating. Quit focusing on me,
You as an individual are completely interchangeable. We're focusing on 'you' only insofar as the arguments and the tone and the statements you have made — the position you are taking in sum! — are filled with holes you refuse to clarify and you become more bitter and defensive when people point out to you ways in which they find it to be clearly wrong.
For instance, this post is a perfect example of you biting back with a wholly useless mistranslation of a counterargument presented to you. A defensive mechanism that leaves you basically saying to everyone else here that you're not really interested in confronting other people's arguments, but would instead like to invent them FOR them so that you can continue to refuse to budge from an originally erroneous stance.
Then, you go through a pattern of having an ever larger percentage of your posts being "I am responding to say I refuse to respond, take that."
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quote:how relationships don't have to be sexually exclusive to be good, even though YOUR relationship is definitely sexually exclusive because you respect your spouse
My relationship is sexually exclusive not merely because I respect my spouse, but because my spouse would like our relationship to be sexually exclusive and I respect my spouse. I have had, in the past, relationships which were not sexually exclusive and yet which I feel were conducted with respect.
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So nothing to say about the topic? Can only focus on me? Take it off the boards. You're being boring.
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Several people made it clear earlier that they agree with you on the one element of the topic that you seem eager to discuss (the fact that people who use poly as an excuse to be jerks are, in fact, jerks). So no, there is nothing to say on that topic. If that is all you are interested in discussing than the conversation is indeed over.
Things that (I, at least) still consider worth discussing that I can recall off the top of my head from the past few pages:
1) what the actual statistics are regarding various types of poly relationships and their successs
2) how society should respond to poly relationships, both as a whole and individually
3) various ways poly relationships might or might not be executed healthily (these relationships are NOT including people who claim the "poly" label solely as an excuse to be jerks or because they have no self esteem. Whether or not they are successful overall, these people absolutely exist).
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quote:how relationships don't have to be sexually exclusive to be good, even though YOUR relationship is definitely sexually exclusive because you respect your spouse
My relationship is sexually exclusive not merely because I respect my spouse, but because my spouse would like our relationship to be sexually exclusive and I respect my spouse. I have had, in the past, relationships which were not sexually exclusive and yet which I feel were conducted with respect.
There are a great number of ways to construct a marriage that I would not do myself but don't see a problem with if they work for other people.
For example, I'd never want to be in a relationship where the primary expected role of the woman is take care of the home and kids. It's quite possible that when I have kids, I will be the primary care giver for at least some of their lives. But I'm certainly not going to assume that this couldn't work for other people.
I have no desire to be in a gay relationship, but I'm very supportive of same sex marriage.
The idea of a S&M sexual relationship sort of baffles me, but this seems to work for some people.
The trick here is that these things don't work for me because of who I and my wife are, not because those things just don't work.
You seem to have this magical view of sex that I don't share. It probably does make sense to you that relationships that are not sexually exclusive must intrinsically involve disrespect of your partner, because that's how it would be for you. That is not, however, how it was for me when I was in relationships like that, nor it is how it is for many, many other people.
The ability to separate how things are for you from how things are for everyone is a very important thing to be able to do.
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quote:Originally posted by Raymond Arnold: 1) what the actual statistics are regarding various types of poly relationships and their successs
They basically don't exist. Quoting Taormino's Opening Up, "There has not been enough research on polyamorous people to produce many meaningful statistics about the number of people currently or formerly involved in some kind of consensual nonmonogamous relationship." The handful of studies she does cite include Blumstein and Schwartz, 1983 (15 percent of married couples in a sample of 3,574 have "an understanding that allows nonmonogamy under some circumstances"); Janus and Janus, 1993 (21 percent in a sample of 1,800 people say they participate in an open marriage); and Page, 2004 (33 percent of a sample of 217 bisexual people claim to currently be involved in a polyamorous relationship). But none of these really answer any of the questions raised above.
Taormino's book is based on interviews with 126 individuals in consensual nonmonogamous relationships. It provides demographics about her interviewees, but she makes no claims that they represent a statistically valid sample of, well, anything. You might find it interesting anyway.
Every poly person I know is fully aware they're part of a really small minority (note "consensual nonmonogamy," above, includes a much broader range of identifications than polyamory). Very, very few anticipate or desire that fact ever changing.
quote:Originally posted by Raymond Arnold: 3) various ways poly relationships might or might not be executed healthily (these relationships are NOT including people who claim the "poly" label solely as an excuse to be jerks or because they have no self esteem. Whether or not they are successful overall, these people absolutely exist).
In all honesty, discussing this with a group of mostly monogamous people strikes me as about as useful as if some poly friends and I sat around discussing "various ways monogamous relationships might or might not be executed healthily (these relationships are NOT including people who claim the "monogamous" label but then cheat)"--that is to say, not very.
The thread in general makes me feel rather like an animal in a zoo: "Let us observe that rare, possibly mythical creature, the polyamorous person. Does it really exist? What are its mating habits?" It's not an atmosphere that makes me particularly comfortable joining in. No one expects the panda to talk back, after all.
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Well, this is certainly easy for me to say (though bear in mind that I'm more of a nogamist than a monogamist at present) but I think there is value to speaking up, period, to dispel the notion that you are a rare an exotic animal as opposed to a regular person who hangs out on the forum like the rest of us.
As for discussing private aspects of your life that aren't our business... well, obvious they aren't our business so I don't expect you to. But I think that katherina (and, perhaps more relevantly, Annie) are generating part of their worldview from the simple fact that they don't know any practicing polyamorous people, and they assume that there aren't any in this thread.
I do apologize if I've made you uncomfortable/offended you, and I generally agree that there isn't much left to actually discuss here unless some actual facts are brought up.
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quote:Quit focusing on me, and go back to saying how absolutely fabulous it is for kids to be surrounded by adults that lie to them and can't be counted on...
It doesn't make much sense to ask that people stop focusing on you and then go on to tell such a falsehood, katharina. And I'm using a pretty gentle term for the words I just quoted.
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quote:Originally posted by Raymond Arnold: As for discussing private aspects of your life that aren't our business... well, obvious they aren't our business so I don't expect you to. But I think that katherina (and, perhaps more relevantly, Annie) are generating part of their worldview from the simple fact that they don't know any practicing polyamorous people, and they assume that there aren't any in this thread.
I don't really expect a change in tone for virtue of being 'outed' or present when we get attitudes like the ones presented here. But that comes with the caveat that prior to annie's contribution, the primary hijacking con argument against poly hasn't reached a point more coherent than visceral personal distaste and the biases kept in place to keep moral dissonance at bay.
Generally, most people trend towards one of two positions, and it's relevant mostly to one factor. That factor is "Do you believe there are a strict set of rules set in place by God about what kind of sexual relations you can have?"
If the answer is no, then people will usually say, essentially, "it's not for me, but I suppose it works for some people"
If the answer is yes, then arguments will crop up to sustain the religious underpinning, much in the same way that people will come up with all manner of poor arguments against gay parentage when their religion believes homosexual union to be a state of living in abominable sin (a favorite of mine: 'children suffer when they do not live in a family with a mother and father figure of the appropriate gender!') They will also, usually, be equally poor as in their anti-homosexuality analogues. We got a bit of this here, but, again, I can't even use the arguments here as a good example of that yet, since it's been mostly prickly nonarguments.
posted
The other problem with that idea is that there is another member or possibly now former member of the forum who openly practices poly and has in the past been in a poly marriage who kat has met in person at a forum gathering. So she, at least, knows a practicing poly person. I guess it could be a question of critical mass, but I doubt it.
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Sam- I believe God has a strict set of rules in place about sexual relations, but if someone else wants to have a polyamorous relationship, I fail to see how this affects me. Same with gay marriage. That stuff is all between you, your partner and God. Unless you are trying to get me to engage in a relationship, I don't see why my opinion matters. To be fair though, I was fairly judgemental of the one couple I actually knew, but that was more of the female saying I am sleeping with other people, deal. And he said, well, I don't believe in divorce (Catholic) so don't see what I can do other than pretend this is ok and he was pretty miserable. But that is a specific case and not really what we are talking about.
That being said, I can see why making it legal might be a bit more complicated. Assume one member of a threesome is in a persistant vegetative state. Which spouse gets to make the call? Can I divorce one person but not the other? If so, how does custody work? Insurance- can I count them all as spouses for family plan (potential scam there)? This isn't to say those issues can not be worked out, but before I would vote to legally support polyamorous situations, I really would need to know how those issues will all play out.
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quote:If the answer is no, then people will usually say, essentially, "it's not for me, but I suppose it works for some people"
It's sort of like that, but for me, at least, it's that 1) it's not my place to say and 2) I don't see any reliable evidence that it is intrinsically harmful.
For example, I am strongly against abusive relationships. That's not a case of live and let live for me.
Gay adoption is another example where I could feel more of a call to interfere. I've said multiple times here that if the evidence showed that children raised by same sex parents were seriously disadvantaged because of this, I'd advocate against gay adoption. This isn't the case and thus I fully support it, but I think there's an important distinction between saying it's none of my business and relying on the evidence.
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quote:"It exists" does not mean "it is a favorable behavior." The natural world is full of maladaptive behaviors. They might survive in little lingering eddies for a while but guess what ultimately happens to them?
One thing that, in my opinion, may confound this type of analysis is that historical adaptive value of behaviors might have little to do with whether people are happy (and whether their children are happy, too).
I think there are a few modern factors that are combining in relatively novel ways: 1) Huge increases in the standard of living for a large middle class 2) Decoupling of the inculcation of ethics and social safety nets from religious authority 3) Increased physical mobility and online virtual communities; norms of the local community are less dominant 4) Progressive study of child development with a focus on emotional health 5) STD and pregnancy prevention mechanisms other than abstinence and fidelity
...really, there are a lot of reasons to think that even if something was maladaptive in the past, it could be accommodated now. Plus devoting a lot of effort directly to ones own emotional health and happiness is an unprecedented mass luxury.
I see no reason to deny the very possibility that anyone who chooses to experiment with their own happiness (in any way they choose) could have the capacity to manage parallel concerns such as home life stability, honest respect for a spouse, etc.
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