Naja's page

Yeah, this would mean that if one person in a polygynous marriage got sick, only one other "spouse" would have visitation rights, but everything else would be a lot easier to sort out.

That's the part I'd have issues with, since hospital visitation rights cost zero dollars to anyone outside the relationship and are horribly cruel to deny to the sick or dying person and to their loved ones.

And with only being able to pick one other person for financial commitments, it would cut down on the mutliple-wives-as-dependent-chattel scenario, because only one of the wives would be financially entitled to anything.

I'm cool with this, since the whole idea of women as dependent chattel who aren't supposed to be educated or work outside the home is something I think we have a vested social interest in discouraging rather than rewarding financially. That would be one of the key points of separation between the modern consenting poly community and the polygyny chattel model.

If it were up to me, the war on drugs would be ancient history, and there would be no such thing as "public indecency" -- you'd be able to walk down the street naked, while smoking a joint, if you wanted to.

Never take on the town guard until you're at least tenth level, dude. It's just a bad idea.

The problem is that written laws have to close loopholes and achieve their intended aims while not providing avenues for worse ends.

I agree that this would be a nontrivial task, and that I am utterly incompetent to even begin to attempt it.

A vague possibility is allowing the social recognition and the no costs attached rights, but with no financial benefits for multiple spouses that aren't being paid for by an additional working partner in the marriage. Eg, for every stay at home partner who is supposed to get benefits, one partner must work. It would be no fair and an eminently abusable situation if one working partner could get benefits for multiple non working partners. One job, one set of benefits. Or capping total benefits from one job at X amount but allowing them to be shared if needed. So in effect you are economically benefit-married to one, and socially married to anyone else you are willing to commit to. Additional legal agreements between parties are up to them.

No idea how to handle inheritance tax, but adopting committed poly partners as family for legal purposes might work. Or the poly family standby of legal incorporation and shared assets.

Basically my premise is that it should be a basic human right to love and marry whom you will, but nobody else should have to pay for the choices you make.

Yes, I'm sure people could figure out ways to abuse this system. If your argument is that we can't allow any social institutions that can be abused or loopholed, I'd have to suggest that marriage itself would need to be abolished.

@Naja - The problem with your definition being that the people who are what you consider chattel polygamy generally think they have a choice.

If they are legal adults, and they firmly believe they have a choice and want to make that choice, then I don't consider it my place to tell them they are not mentally competent to do so. Voluntarily wanting to enter into a power imbalance relationship doesn't necessarily make someone incompetent, regardless of the gender of the people involved.

The state needs to step in when kids rather than consenting adults are actively involved in dynamics they didn't choose. I'm leery of interfering with consenting adults doing their thing, though. Not if all of the adults in question are defending their right to make those choices.

And I can tell you stories of abuse in the latter...time is a fickle thing to a wandering and selfish eye. I'm trying to find studies, but not having a lot of luck, so we are both anecdotal at this point.

I'm sure it happens. People are people, and no group is immune to bad or criminal behavior. I just think there's a somewhat greater barrier to abuse when more people are involved and would have to actively collaborate in doing illegal/nonconsensual things, or at least in not stopping them or reporting them.

I'm willing to consider legal polyamory if solutions to child and spousal abuse are tied with it. We have gender inequality in our society, and I've seen too much evidence of polyamory leading to greater child and spousal abuse to be comfortable supporting it.

I think you're talking about chattel polygyny, not polyamory.

Nonconsensual chattel polygyny typically looks like this: you have one dominant male who "owns" multiple women and their children, with a heavy overtone of cultural belief about how the women are supposed to be property and the man can beat them (and their kids) if they don't bow down to him. Everyone in the relationship is expected/forced to be sexually intimate with the dominant male whether they want to be or not. Very likely the "chattel" females are not educated and not employed or very employable, making them economically dependent.

Consensual polyamory typically looks like this: you have a house full of gamer geeks, nerds, academics and science types. Somebody is probably bisexual, almost everyone has a postgrad degree, and all of them consider each other family of choice and get along well enough to want to share a life, and partners, and a household.

Gender can be all over the spectrum. You are as likely to see FMM groupings as MFF, or all-female or all-male groupings. It's not unlikely that someone in the house may even be transgendered or genderfluid. It's all good; they fit right in and are appreciated the way they are. Gender conformity is not a strongly held value in this lifestyle, as you can probably guess.

In this household, either nobody is dominant and the dynamic is painstakingly egalitarian, or the dominance is consensual and probably has a safeword. The dominant(s) in the relationship are just as likely to be female as male, and nobody is treated as submissive unless this is what floats their boat as a consensual lifestyle choice. Nobody has to be intimate with anyone else in any way they don't want, and not everyone in the group is likely to have that kind of relationship with one another. Honest communication and clear negotiation of personal boundaries is a strongly held value.

Pretty different critters, here. I certainly see lots of potential for child and spousal abuse in the former. I'm just not seeing it so much in the latter.

I don't think any group of people is automatically immune to violence and abuse issues, but egalitarian poly relationships seem to have some fairly decent safeguards built in. Arguably more so than the typical monogamous relationship where there aren't other people around who can function as whistleblowers.

Abuse happens in secret, and in shame. It is exponentially harder to keep a secret if it requires many conspirators. I'm not saying it would be impossible to find multiple adult partners who would be okay with child and spousal abuse happening in their home, but I think it would probably be a slightly tougher find than a one-person abuser situation.

But when you are asking for special benefits and privilege that go to people who do certain things, you have to actually do the things that are required to be eligible for the benefits.

Depends on how you define benefits. I am in complete agreement that the responsibility for benefits that cost money should be borne by the individual.

Stuff like hospital visitation rights and other privileges that do not impose a burden of cost on the government or employers or any person outside the relationship, those I think are fair and reasonable to lobby for.

These benefits are mostly gettable in the American legal system via incorporation and mutual power of attorney. More recognition of this nature would be nice if it could be managed without disadvantaging anyone else or making them pay for benefits they aren't getting. But I don't see it as a pressing need so much as a philosophical ideal that I hope our society eventually gets around to living up to.

Mostly I want the government to stay out of my bedroom and not actively pass laws that prevent me from living with and loving whom I choose and how I choose.

I am very much against treating women as chattel, however -- and I'm agaist any system that legitimizes the ways in which religious fundamentalists seek to impose that end.

I agree that any system that disempowers or disenfranchises people based on their gender is majorly f-ed up and needs to not be legally supported, or strongly legislated against.

Nonconsensual chattel polygyny is a symptom of the underlying disease, not the disease itself. I am unsure that specifically legislating against multiple marriages is an effective legal response. It limits the rights of people who want to be polyamorous by choice, and I'm not convinced it fixes the oppression problem or even helps it all that much.

I think what should be outlawed is forcing ANYONE into ANY marriage that they don't freely choose as an adult. I don't see a material difference between forcing a woman to marry a man who is already married when she doesn't want to be poly, or forcing a young woman to marry an old man when she doesn't want him either. Passing an anti-poly law is not going to have any impact at all on latter situation - we still have someone being forced into a marriage she doesn't want and being treated as chattel. Passing an anti-chattel, anti-discrimination type law would probably help more.

If most polygynous marriages worldwide are in fact systems of master and chattel, then I'm against them, and would be against their perceived "legitimacy" spreading elsewhere.

Er, most marriages in cultures that oppress women are systems of masters and chattel, and nonconsensually so. Does that mean it would be effective to legislate against marriage?

IMO, it's the nonconsensual chattel system itself that is the problem, not any form of marriage or human relationship.

That's the dominant polygamout marriage model in most of the world (Africa, the Middle East) in which it's legal, and in the U.S. (parts of Utah, Texas, etc.) where it's not.

I'm aware of that, and it's a primitive social injustice that denies basic rights to half the human race. Not cool, yo. It also bears no resemblance to what I grew up in or what any of my poly friends are doing.

I have no access to numbers, given that people in polygynous marriages in the U.S. can't very well self-report, but the cool, educated model you're espousing (and which I'd personally have no qualms at all in people adopting, if willing) is a distinct minority compared to the enforced polygamy practiced in places like Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and (until recently) San Angelo, Texas.

Minority, yes. Nontrivial numbers of real people who choose this lifestyle, also yes.

I grew up with some very positive, long term stable role models of healthy egalitarian polyamory. I learned a relationship skill set that emphasized healthy and honest communication and clear negotiation of boundaries, wants and needs. That skill set has served me well in both mono and poly relationships that were clearly negotiated.

I personally see huge benefits and basically no downsides to the "poly family of choice" model as a lifestyle choice for myself. It has added some truly wonderful things (and people) to my life that I value and cherish, and that I would not willingly give up. I respect that it's not for everyone, and that other adults get to make different choices. I also do not expect anyone else, government or employer, to pay for my lifestyle choices. My choice, my responsibility. I do expect others to respect my choices and not try to impose theirs on me any more than I would want to impose mine on someone else.

As to the nonconsensual polygyny chattel model, about all I can say without using unacceptable language is 'yuck' and 'do not want'. But it's no more directly relevant to my life than any other human rights injustices in third world countries. It sucks, but it's not, thank goodness, a place I have to live.

Naja wrote:

telling people that they are brainwashed or hippies with an agenda when neither is true is not respectful.

"Most" =/= "all." In retrospect, I can see that my post was insufficiently clear on this point; I'll try and be more precise in the future. Still, I presume you've heard the phrase "the exception that proves the rule?"

Thank you for clarifying.

I hope you can understand that it's still insulting. I grew up in the modern poly community, and in my experience, there is a large enough overlap with geek culture that the average poly person I meet is more likely than not to have a postgrad degree, one or more geeky hobbies, and a solid income. I suppose you could call that a hippie crowd since about half the dudes also have hair past their ears, but that would really stretching on the demographic.

One of the reasons that I (and 90% of the other poly peeps I know) consider health insurance for multiple spouses (spice?) a non issue is that these demographics apply to everyone in the average poly household, and all of the adults in it are very likely to be employable and employed.

I keep seeing people refer to a polygyny model with one working, educated male provider and multiple uneducated, unemployed or unemployable chattel females, and that is about as far from a modern poly demographic as I can imagine. They're totally different critters.

The general connotation of 'hippie' is 'socially irresponsible'. While I'm sure there are a lot of people who identify as hippies who decide at some time in their lives to do the 'Free Love' thing because it sounds cool and enlightened, it's not our core demographic. I see folks like that drift through now and then, and they generally cause more annoyance than anything else in the process of drifting back out again.

Because, seriously - would you want to buy property, adopt into a family or commit to raising kids with someone who was socially irresponsible and immature? Yeah, me neither. Being poly doesn't change that.

There has been a lot of polygamy over time, and it has generally been crappy for the societies in which it occurred.

The crappy part wasn't actually the polygamy part. It was the nonconsensual part. Treating half the human race as chattel and disallowing them the freedom of choice is always going to lead to misery and unhappiness and messed-up relationships.

You can say "But that isn't what I'm talking about" to which I will reply "So your specific, prescriptive brand of polygamy should be legal, but not others?"

What I am for is consenting adults having free choice, and nobody being forced into any kind of relationship they don't want to be in. That includes both polygamy and monogamy. It's not fair and not cool to force someone into a marriage they didn't choose. It is equally unfair and uncool to keep people from marrying who they love.

I am not, however, for any kind of situation where polygamy costs the government or employers substantially more than monogamy. Same story for gay marriages. One person working, X amount of benefits. It is No Fair to make it cost anyone else more because they have multiple spouses.

Benefits whose costs and risks are entirely shouldered by the adults undertaking the relationships do make sense, as long as they do not impose additional costs on anyone else.

I do not know what a legal system that could truly accommodate completely free adult choice would look like. I am not an expert in this field. I do not know how it might be possible to socially and legally respect free adult relationship choice in a way that avoids imposing unfair economic burdens on the people outside those relationships. There may be a way, but since I don't personally know what it is, I can't reasonably advocate for it.

The current American legal system does allow for LLC partnerships and other forms of incorporation, plus mutual powers of attorney, and that's a pretty solid legal option for poly families wanting to purchase property together and hold assets in common. I'm fine with that personally. The only thing I'd like to see change is social recognition and general respect for other people's consensual adult relationships, but that's not something it's even possible to lobby for. It will happen in time.

A difference between being exclusive to one person or two people...

Yes. Seriously. I don't see a functional difference in commitment and exclusivity between a closed dyad and a closed triad. I don't just mean abstractly, I mean in my own experience. Same dynamic, same agreements. I'm honestly not aware of any major differences, other than the fact that we sit down with three people who love and respect each other when we discuss boundaries and agreements.

I think a lot of monogamous relationships would probably benefit from clear, up front and honest negotiation in painstaking detail of relationship rules and boundaries. In my experience it's much rarer in mono than in poly for people to devote serious time to boundary negotiation and saying what is and isn't okay with them on a clear, constructive and nonjudgmental level. IMO, the fact that this is an entry level requirement in poly gives poly peeps a pretty substantial leg up in communication and relationship skills. I would have to guess that it's the advanced relationship skill set that accounts for the generally greater success I have personally seen in the poly crowd, rather than any inherent qualities of polyamory.

I didn't say the above, Kirth did.

In fact I didn't say any of that post. Edit it or I'm going to flag it.

It was not my intention to maliciously misquote anyone. It was accidental, and I fixed it as soon as I was aware of the mistake. Threatening rather than asking was not necessary.

I chose my words carefully. If you and your family are successful without being exclusive, good for you guys. Unless someone posts evidence otherwise, the studies that have been posted say if you are all successful and well adjusted, you are the exception, not the rule.

I really don't think you can make the sweeping conclusion that "studies" suggest all poly people are neither successful nor well adjusted. That's a pretty broad conclusion.

But yes, we are generally quite successful, thanks. Likewise all of our poly friends, likewise the poly families I grew up around that are still going strong with the same people (the ones who are still alive) thirty years later. Yes, I've seen poly breakups, and some dickish behavior that people tried to excuse by calling it poly. But in general the track record I've personally seen for poly relationships is actually better than my monogamous friends have.

The plural of anecdote is not data, and I'm not offering data or statistics. This is just a look at where I live, because I don't think a lot of people outside that community have really had a chance to have a look.

As to your other points, you believing that having more than two people is not materially different than have two is something that is just fundamentally, factually, incorrect.

Exclusivity in a group of two is not materially different from exclusivity in a group of three. What do you actually think the differences are?

I sort of figure that the only people who would consent to sharing their spouse(s) with a group of other people would be (a) religiously brainwashed or (b) a vanishingly small hippie minority trying to prove how "open" they are.

You are welcome to figure all you like, but I would ask you to respect the choices of others, and to make some effort to understand that their thought processes may be very different from your own. You need not make the same choices, and you need not agree with those choices, but telling people that they are brainwashed or hippies with an agenda when neither is true is not respectful.

There are people involved with various forms of poly for reasons that aren't good or healthy. Some aren't even consensual. But I have very ample personal experience of knowing healthy adults who form long lasting and stable poly relationships, and who believe that love has no limits. Time and energy does, of course, so the number of partners you can have DOES have a limit and has to be managed so that everyone's needs are happily met. But love is not an automatically scarce or limited commodity, and does not need to be treated as one for a relationship to work.

Unless you're personally wired that way, in which case, that's fine for you. But the fact is, not everyone is wired just like you.

[It also maybe that poly behavior is a selection process of sampling possible mates that leads to long term mono relationships.

I suppose it can be, but I certainly wouldn't call it the only reason people choose poly, or even a common one.

Granted I'm on the outside looking in, but I'd call a couple with a years long open marriage a different beast than 5-9 people living in a years long group relationship.

Some people do what is referred to as hierarchical poly, where one or more partners are designated as primary and all others are secondary. That would probably be the closest to what you're thinking of as 'open marriage'. Others do non-hierarchical poly, where all partners are just partners and are considered to either have the same level of emotional and economic commitment, or to simply be unique but not in any kind of hierarchy of importance.

I've known people in both models. I should note that when you see a lasting 5-9 person group relationship, they are not likely to be all intimate with one another since there's generally going to be some conflicting sexual orientations. Though they will generally share other bonds which they may describe as friendship or as sibling-like.

You can't have more than one "Most important".

Really? What in the world are you going to tell your second child when you have one? Or your third?

Committing to a polyamourous relationship, by definition is not committing to sexual, emotional...any kind of exclusivity.

That simply isn't true.

There are many ways to be poly, but relatively few of them involve total openness and non exclusivity. For starters, there are STD concerns which are pretty strong motivators for making sure that everyone is on the same page in terms of what their agreements are for being intimate with anyone outside the relationship. Fairly often, the agreement is that nobody does.

Poly triads, quads and larger groups may be closed or exclusive, eg, no one is intimate with anyone outside the relationship, period. That's a pretty common model. It's not materially different from an exclusivity agreement with two.

A poly relationship may be partly closed and allow only nonsexual fetish type "play" with others, reserving actual sex only for the people in the relationship. This is the single most common model I am personally aware of in the BDSM community, and I hear most of the people who use this model citing safety reasons.

A poly relationship can also be theoretically open IF the absolute right person comes along who is the perfect fit to be 'adopted' into the family as a whole, but the ability to fit gets rarer as the number of people they would have to commit to being with gets larger. In this model no one is dating outside the family so much as it's possible for one person to date the family. That's a rare enough model that it's referred to as "unicorn hunting" within the poly community.

This may be a challenging concept for you, which is kind of the entire point. You are agreeing to sacrifice your personal desires for the greater good of the family you are trying to create.

Yes, that's what all healthy, close-knit families do, whether they are families of blood or choice.

My wife and I love each other very much. However neither of us was going to commit to a 30 year mortgage, along with an 18 to 70 year child raising period with someone else who was not willing to go all in and say "I put your needs and the needs of our future family above anyone else. Period, full stop"

Yes, that's definitely what poly families do.

However I am not sure in what species it takes 70 years to raise a child to maturity. Do these children have wings and scales and breathe fire?

That is the sacrifice you make to become a family. You pick a person and say "I am now we. We go take care of this". I am now legally bound to this person, with major ramifications on me financially and legally (aside from emotionally) if I should not follow through on the commitments I make.

Yes, that's what poly families can do by making legal agreements and buying property together. Unless they decide to go with a different economic model, which they also have the freedom to do.

I could lose custody of my child, for example. Something I am almost certain you are not dealing with, as is changes the equation entirely.

I am childfree by choice, but I grew up close to a poly family that had several children, and I know of many more. I don't, thank goodness, personally know of any custody battles among my poly friends with children. But I imagine they do happen. And no, it doesn't change the equation in terms of the household that wants to raise kids needing to be an absolutely stable and supportive environment.

My poly friends seem to be doing a pretty good job of this. How are your monogamous friends doing?

1. No, it is because it is very, very different to say "I think I may want to be with you forever" and "I will be with you forever."

Because that worked out so well for Kim Kardashian. Her nice, heterosexual, monogamous, till-death-do-us-part lasted what, two months?

Neither monogamy nor heterosexuality, nor any other relationship configuration, is a guarantee of forever. Being poly or LGBT does not mean an inability to commit, nor a lack of relationship length.

The single longest running relationship I personally know is poly. Thirty years does not exactly speak to a lack of commitment. There is only member who was part of this family when I was a child who is no longer with them. That's because he passed away a few years ago. I think that's about as close to forever as we frail mortals get.

The equation changes dramatically when it it is no longer about what you want, but what you promised. Marriage is about when "we" is greater than "I", because "we" actually is more important to you than "I".

How do you think that committing to a poly relationship is different from what you are describing here, please?

2. I'm not making the argument you are making, and I've thrown out statistics above that say otherwise. So if you want to make your argument in any way a viable argument, you have to provide evidence that is contrary to the evidence I provided.

Once again: what argument do you think I'm making? I'm not aware of making an "argument" for or against anything. I'm stating how it actually works in real life on a day to day basis for poly people that I personally know. No, they're not statistics, and I'm not claiming that they are. They're people.

3. Heinlein is fiction. There are lots of real work examples of polygamy, and no one has posted a single one that meets your criteria.

What criteria and what examples are you even talking about? You mean, the one I live in, the one I grew up in, or the ones I have dinner with every other week?

I think you're missing the "switching" part. He's not talking about being pansexual or bisexual, but of changing back and forth.

It's not a bonus if you're randomly not attracted to your partner on some days.

There are days that monogamous heterosexual men and women don't feel all that attracted to their partners. In a healthy relationship, they deal with it, even if it is not okay for them to have other partners.

1. Polyamory is not Polygamy in the same way that dating or even co-habitating is not getting married.

....that would be because the American legal system isn't yet recognizing poly marriages, so that's a bit of a circuitous argument. Canada's getting a little closer.

However, I know a number of poly families that have legally incorporated and/or signed mutual powers of attorney, inheritance and other legal contracts to approximate marriage as best they can. It can be (and is in many cases, by the choice of multiple consenting adults) a legal and economic agreement.

2. Get the statistics if you want to make the argument.

Get them yourself, if you care. I'm not sure I do, not enough to go back and find the studies, anyhow. If it's convenient, I'll pop in with some links at some point. If it's not, I won't. I'm not really here for the purposes of making any particular argument for how it "should" be, so much as describing how it actually is in the poly community. I'm guessing most people here don't know, and that they might actually like to know.

The plural of anecdote is not data; I agree. But I think there is still some value in hearing from someone on the inside, with personal experience of working poly relationship models.

3. Pointing to it working in fiction...REALLY weak argument.

What do you think I'm arguing for, exactly?

I'm pointing to a pretty decent fictional depiction of poly family as legal corporation. Those do exist in the real world, and the Heinlein depiction isn't actually a bad example model of how some of them function.

@ciretose and LazarX: Good points both. I live on the pretty radical edge of poly-LGBT-geek-BDSM culture, because it's how I'm fundamentally wired and who I am. It does tend to make me overly defensive about how mainstream society views my life and my loves, and it's much too easy for me to be dismissive of people who judge me negatively or who try to pass laws that hurt my friends and my community. In my experience, they do this mostly because they don't live that way and don't make the effort to understand why other people want or need to.

Not everyone has to make the same choices I do before I can respect them, but they do have to respect MY choices. If they don't, well, eff'em.

Primates seem to have the "green monkey" instinct built into their brains. If you take a popular monkey from its troupe and dye it green, making it visually different, it will be torn apart by its former peers on re-introduction. There certainly are functional and evolutionary reasons that the in-group/out-group social differentiation mechanism evolved.

I'd just like to be able to think that maybe we're a little bit better than monkeys, or that we can be if we try.

Mehophist:

Well, I wish you success. I thinkg though that when you talk about changing sexuality, you forget a very important option - you assume the homosexual or otherwise un-normal people would prefer to change it, when actualy many people would appreciate the oppurtunity to broaden their sexual orientaiton - out of curiosity or a need for equality.

Ayup. This.

Being cut off from having intimate, loving relationships with half the human race does not strike me as a good thing. In fact it seems like a pretty sad thing to me. If I could push a button and make myself pansexual, I'd be rolling my initiative and jumping for it quicker than a Hasted kender.

I don't give a flying reproductive attempt at a toroidal pastry executing linear circumlocution what the mundanes think. Equality is a good thing. Bigotry is stupidity. I don't live my life out of fear of what others may say or think. So yes, I would absolutely choose equality in my sexuality if I could.

Naja, I think it can be problematic to keep switching if someone is looking for a long term relationship. What do you think?

See my post above, the TMI part.

Brief summary, if you're monogamous and in a relationship with a cisgendered person, sure, it could be a problem.

If you're poly and/or in a relationship with a genderfluid or non cisgendered person, it can actually be a +5 to your happy relationship roll. :)

I'm finding that what I'm attracted to can change, and change frequently and unpredictably. I'm finding the same with my gender.

You are not alone.

My frequent changes in sexual orientation and gender basically destroyed any sense of identity I may've had. I find it difficult to remember how I used to perceive things. These changes have warped my perspective.

It's annoying.

I'm sorry you consider it annoying and warped. My own gender identity is genderfluid/genderqueer, and I'm perfectly happy to say a great big F-U to society's rigid gender roles and norms and simply be me. In fact, I rather like it this way. I'd really hate being stuck in a single gender box for the rest of my life, stereotyped and pigeonholed. Ugh, now THAT would feel annoying and warped to me, and like a Procrustean bed. Actually, it does. My negative gender experiences mostly come from being stereotyped or put in a single gender box, which I am just not comfortable with.

I don't bother visually presenting as other than cisgendered, because aside from doing the drag king circuit once or twice a year for charity, I find it way too much trouble to dress up just so people can be properly confused as to my gender.

I find my own gender fluidity to be a good thing, fuel for my creative processes, and a fundamentally positive part of my human experience. Sadly, I am boringly monosexual. I would change that if I could and be pansexual. I don't actually think it's a good thing for me to be cut off from loving intimate relationships with half the human race, and I wish I wasn't.

I respect that your experience of fluidity is different, and that it is a negative for you. For me, I decided that it didn't have to be, so it's not.

If nothing else, being ambigendered makes playing and writing NPC's of both genders easier. ;) At least it does for me. Take the positives where you can get them!

I don't want the family laws to be completely re-written, and I don't want every future law to have to consider "But this could be applied to multiple spouses..."

Re: the ones that cost taxpayers or employers money, I agree.

Re: the ones that are human rights issues with no price tag, those rights do need to be upheld for multiple partners in adult families of choice.

point me to a polygamous legal system that isn't ridiculously cruel and unfair to the women.

In the real world, no such animule. Unless you mean how it actually tends to work in the modern poly community, which has a definitively egalitarian ethic. It's not a legal system, but it makes do with things like LLC's and mutual power of attorney, much like LGBT folks in states where they can't marry.

But do have a look-see in Robert Heinlein's books sometime. They were a pretty major inspiration for the modern poly community, and they do depict polyamorous marriages run more or less as corporations. Gender isn't a factor at all in the economic or legal aspects as depicted.

Polyandry has been fairly rare, and generally limited to places with very few resources.

Actually, it's the single most common model I am personally aware of in the modern poly community. Off the top of my head, I'd say it's actually the majority model, but I don't have the statistics.

Group Marriage, be it large like the Kerista or small like two couples cohabitation, has generally been either part of social and cultural movements, or just a few people (often in my experience, people who have read to much Ayn Rand...) who decide to be polyamourous.

Google "poly resources" or "poly meetup" and the name of any reasonably sized city, and you will begin to get an idea of just how large the active poly community is. Multiply that a few times by the number of people who are poly and stay home because they aren't activists or don't want to be outed, and you get an even better picture of the numbers.

I'm not saying it's the One Twue Way to have relationships or even the best way for everyone - monogamy is a much better model for people who are wired that way. But for folks who are wired for poly, it works, and it is a legitimate lifestyle and relationship choice that a nontrivial number of people are making. As they have every right to.

Anyhow, I have met a lot of GLB gamers, but not yet a T.

While most of the gamers I know are not trans, most of the transpeople I know are gamers. Which is kind of cool if you think about it.

I should probably add that while I agree that it is an unfair burden for a poly person to be granted greater total financial benefits from an employer or the government due to having multiple adult partners, other spousal rights that don't carry a price tag absolutely do need to apply. Specifically, hospital visitation rights.

I know of gay and transgendered people who were denied access to their beloved long time partners on their deathbeds on the grounds they were not legal family, and that is just not okay. There have been poly families similarly affected. That doesn't cost anyone anything and is not an unfair financial burden. It's just a basic human rights issue, and denying it is criminal.

Smart LGBT and poly folks draw up mutual power of attorney before the fact, but life happens and not everyone is always prepared for the worst.

Naja wrote:

Most of the people in a larger polycule

Please don't introduce legal classifications without defining them. /wink

Polycule = Sort of like a molecule, only substitute people of various genders and orientations for the atoms and various kinds of relationships for the covalent bonds.

There are a whole lot of different ways to be a polycule. You might have Andy and Adam and Alexia as the primary live-in triad, with Alexia's girlfriend Betty spending most of her time in the household as well, while Adam's other boyfriend Carlos lives 75 miles away and they spend about half their weekends together, giving Andy and Alexia time to do the SCA events that Adam isn't really interested in. Carlos has a live-in primary partner, Denny, whom Andy used to date, but is now just good friends with - they raid together most evenings with their WOW guild. They save a lot of money on hotel rooms at gaming conventions when the whole group goes together, even if two king beds do get kind of crowded.

Do they own property together or tie their finances? Some of them do - Carlos and Denny are a financial unit, though they can't be legally married in their state. Andy and Alexia are legally married for tax benefits. Adam works separately and has his own insurance. They split the rent three ways. Betty is still finishing up her postgrad work and doesn't (yet) contribute much to expenses, but doesn't live there full time either. Adam does not share any finances with Carlos and Denny. Betty is friends with Andy and Adam (and Carlos and Denny too, though she rarely sees much of them) but she does not date men. Her sole romantic connection is with Alexia.

You know it's a polycule when you have to start drawing diagrams to explain who's connected to whom. The above is one example, reasonably typical in my experience, of a larger poly group relationship. There are only about eight and a half quadzillion other ways to do it, ranging from "tightly knit trio or quad who date only each other" to "huge, sprawling group", the far ends of which may never actually meet each other.

Lateral gene transmission is a pretty potent argument to Mother Evolution for keeping homosexuality in the gene pool. The presence of a few permanently non reproducing but economically contributing adults in the group improves survivability significantly for that group's offspring.

And no, not a choice. Ideologically I'd prefer to be bisexual. I really don't have any social hangups or inhibitions on the subject as I was raised in a very open and LGBT-friendly household. But I wasn't given any choices about my neural architecture, so how I'm wired is how I'm wired.

The capacity to love someone and be attracted to them regardless of their downstairs configuration is something I find personally admirable and would like to emulate. Except that I can't. I'm just not attracted, and there's nothing I can do to change that. I am boringly, politically incorrectly heterosexual. Which I'm fine with. But if I HAD a choice, I'd pick otherwise for political and ideological reasons.

@BigNorseWolf: “How does a 15 person marriage file a tax return?”

Possibly as a literal corporation, though one that size would be very rare. I don't actually know of any. Legal incorporation is one of the options a poly family can take if they want to do something like buy property together. But it really depends on the state, and on what the individuals in the family want to do. Note that I'm talking about modern consensual/egalitarian polyamory, which is a very different economic model than nonconsensual/forced polygamy.

Most of the people in a larger polycule will not own property in common with everyone else, and are not likely to be closely connected to everyone else - it's generally more of a web of interlocking relationships. They may share finances with one or two or possibly three others, but it would be relatively rare for everyone to buy in or to live in the same place if the poly group is larger than three or four. Shared finances are often not involved in poly relationships at all, as there tends to be a pretty big emphasis on independence and personal choice. Modern polyamory is very much *not* economically driven, as polygamy historically has been.

I have heard about some more creative solutions, including one setup where they literally took turns being married. I think that was a four or five person polycule though, so effectively it functioned as two married couples with co-owned real estate and mutual power of attorney. Who was married to whom switched around depending on who needed to be doing what.

“Employers need to let someone go to look after their wife and kids. Is it fair to ask an employer to let someone go look after 1 of 15 wives?”

Or husbands. As long as we’re talking consensual polyamory and not religiously-mandated polygamy, it tends to be extremely egalitarian and is likely to involve partners of all genders.

In a multi-adult household, it's actually less likely to come up. There is almost always someone handy to pick up the kids or look after someone who is sick. One of the more recent surveys of children growing up in a modern egalitarian poly family had a lot of those kids expressing pity for classmates who have only one or two parents instead of three or four. They couldn’t even fathom how sad it would be not to have extra parents who could always be relied on, plus the advantages of more than one income.

As to what’s fair to the employer of a poly person in terms of health coverage and taxation, that’s a whole different ballpark. I agree it isn’t fair to an employer to be expected to cover more than one additional adult. I don’t actually know of many poly households that have more than one person doing the stay-at-home thing, so it's just as likely that a poly partner will have his or her choice of benefit plans rather than a lack of them.

@ciretose: “The whole point of marriage is to say "I choose this person to become a partner with, and I give them all of the rights and privileges of the position. Much like you can't effectively have two presidents, you can't give two people equal rights over marriage.”

So parents can’t have multiple kids, because you can’t love more than one child or treat them equally? Employers can’t hire more than one employee and give them equal rights? How does that even come close to making sense?

And why does the logic change when we’re talking about adults consciously creating families of choice? Especially when those adults are perfectly well equipped to clearly negotiate the terms and rights of their own relationship? Or are you saying that you are better equipped than they are to decide how their relationships work? That’s a pretty slippery slope right there, just saying.

Please note that I am not talking about messed-up power imbalance situations where women and children are treated as chattel, forced into marriage by older relatives, etc. I’m talking about how multiple-party marriages between fully sensible, clearly communicating, assertively consenting adults of all genders actually work in the real world.

A summary of how I've seen them work is “pretty darn well” and “remarkably egalitarian". It does take exponentially more hard work and good communication/negotiation skills to maintain long term successful relationships with multiple people rather than with just one other person. Yes, poly can go pear-shaped in a hurry if anyone in the relationship fails in those departments. And it happens; poly folks aren't immune to human failings any more than monogamous folks are. However, I am personally acquainted with a number of poly families that have been solid for decades. Possibly you are too. For good reasons, most of them don’t advertise.

If I had to pick whether my poly friends or my mono friends had more stable and lower drama relationships with a higher incidence of calm and mutually supportive breakups where people stay friends, I’d definitely have to go with the poly crowd. Better negotiation and communication skills make a difference, and you generally don’t get into poly at all unless you’re awfully good at those things and pretty well in touch with who you are and what you want. Those are good qualities to go into any relationship with, and they tend to be something of an entry level requirement in poly.

@Uninvited Ghost: “Like Anarchy, I have nothing against Polygamy in theory. I just don't think it works well in practice. Making a single partner happy is often beyond one's means.”

Nonconsensual polygamy doesn’t tend to work well, no. Very few forced relationships do. But in polyamory, we’re talking about fully empowered adults who WANT to form families of choice. Or loosely interconnected polycules where the ends may not meet very closely in the middle, but will wave cheerfully in passing to their wife’s girlfriend’s boyfriend. Yes, there is an etiquette for those relationships. Yes, consenting adults get to have them if they want to. Yes, they do work, and quite happily for the most part for the people who prefer that configuration.

@thejeff: “we have no data on what happens when polygamy is legal in a society that enforces equal rites for women.”

We actually do, albeit for a somewhat imperfect definition of both legal polyamory and equal rights. In American, it is quite legal for triads and quads and polycules to cohabit, to co-own property and to form whatever personal relationships they choose. And they do, in nontrivial numbers. I don’t know the statistics offhand, and I don’t think they’re possible to get really accurately because most poly folk are closeted, and for good reason. But enough are identifiable that researchers have been able to do quite a few interesting studies.

So what happens? Well, speaking as someone who grew up playing D&D in a ridiculously complicated, sprawling poly household that is still going strong after thirty years, mostly good things. The kids tend to be happy and well adjusted – and that’s not just my personal experience, it’s been borne out pretty well by studies. The household has multiple incomes. The kids have a higher standard of living AND a parent who is always around. The women are definitely not oppressed and are equally likely to be the wage earners or to date outside the family if they choose.

How many monogamous marriages do you know that are still going after 30 years, and that have all that? Yeah, me neither. Growing up, poly folks were my most stable role models. And the coolest, too.

@Caineach: “Which is denying the additional spouses the rights. I'm still waiting on a good reason why we should do that.”

Very simple: it’s an unfair burden on the employer, and would very likely lead to employers discriminating against poly folks because they literally couldn’t afford to employ them. It might be reasonable to cap benefits at a certain level and allow them to be split however the employee liked, but I’m not sure that would be an ideal solution either.

Honestly, not very many poly folk seem to consider this a huge issue, mainly because poly household usually equals multiple working adults.