Enjoyable read. I've long since been wondering whether the low birth rates have something to do with the insecurity that surrounds modern day marriages. If you're a woman you don't want to invest in children, only to be divorced and left to raise the child of your now No.1 enemy. If you're a man, the insecurity is around whether the child is yours and also whether your wife will later divorce you and your child be taken away from you (sure visitation rights, but pratically the child grows up in the household of another man, if she remarries).
75% of divorces are initiated by women in the US. If college educated that number jumps to 90%. Divorce as an mechanism, is almost entirely used by women.
> So how does one explain the parts of the world, like Europe and large parts of Asia, that are unequal yet predominantly monogamous?
Note that when we talk about polygamy in the past, it's about, like in TFA, a man with many wives. Not a woman with many men.
How does the modern "free" and "liberated" world reconcile that with feminism? When we talk about modern-day polygamous societies, it's basically islam. And islam is a highly patriarcal society.
Polyandry exists mainly in isolated, agrarian, or mountainous regions like Tibet, Nepal, and parts of India to preserve land and family resources. It is also found in some African communities and among indigenous groups.
The most common form is where a woman marries a group of brothers to keep family land and assets united. It is often a strategic economic decision for survival in difficult conditions, rather than just a cultural preference.
Polyandry also exists, but it tends to be bottom of the barrel loser men who let themselves be governed by an equally bottom of the barrel woman for a crumb of pussy. There's quite a few crime reports with such conregation of people.
Not an anthropologist - but instead of "How farming promotes inequality", I'd frame it as "How resource-producing capital promotes inequality". It could be livestock in a migratory herding society, or boats and nets when those were critical for fishing, or whatever.
> In contemporary Western societies, unigeniture is either considered wrong or is illegal; we no longer differentiate between legitimate and illegitimate offspring...
At best, those are common ideals in Western society. Try talking to an old attorney who does family law.
Also worth a mention - in primitive conditions, polygamy can speed the spread of highly beneficial genes through the society. The textbook case is immune system genes - historically, disease killed a lot of our ancestors.
> I'd frame it as "How resource-producing capital promotes inequality". It could be livestock in a migratory herding society, or boats and nets when those were critical for fishing, or whatever.
I agree, but nitpick: capital by definition can be put to use to produce or gather something. So resource-producing capital is redundant.
Yes-ish? I'm not a CPA or MBA (ditto most folks here) but looked at a few online dictionaries for "capital". From cases like gold in a hunter-gatherer society - a status-signaling luxury and trade good, but you probably can't get much more than perishable foods or nicer stone tools in exchange - it seemed worth the clarifying/emphasizing redundancy.
> Only virgins could take part in the final initiation ritual, which involved lying open-eyed beneath a waterfall to cleanse themselves of the pollution caused by having seen a woman’s genitals. Nearby, teasing girls would sing: ‘I urinated further up this creek. Where did you purify your eyes?’
Note that when we talk about polygamy in the past, it's about, like in TFA, a man with many wives. Not a woman with many men.
How does the modern "free" and "liberated" world reconcile that with feminism? When we talk about modern-day polygamous societies, it's basically islam. And islam is a highly patriarcal society.
So what's the take of feminists on these facts?
The most common form is where a woman marries a group of brothers to keep family land and assets united. It is often a strategic economic decision for survival in difficult conditions, rather than just a cultural preference.
> In contemporary Western societies, unigeniture is either considered wrong or is illegal; we no longer differentiate between legitimate and illegitimate offspring...
At best, those are common ideals in Western society. Try talking to an old attorney who does family law.
Also worth a mention - in primitive conditions, polygamy can speed the spread of highly beneficial genes through the society. The textbook case is immune system genes - historically, disease killed a lot of our ancestors.
I agree, but nitpick: capital by definition can be put to use to produce or gather something. So resource-producing capital is redundant.
So fucking hot.