As long as I’m picking fights:
“Actually, attacking LGBTs is one of the single dumbest things SoCons have done, because LGBTs do not actually undermine the nation just by being LGBT. In fact, gay marriage is good because stable family units are good, and we can incentivize the creation of stable queer families with similar methods to straight families.
“(Polygamy, as practiced by people that aren’t autistic-spectrum rationalists, is still bad though.) …
“It isn’t enough that I not marry my cousins and engage in polygamy. For my home to not be terrible, I must stop others from doing so as well. And if they want to make a place where those are the norms, then let them, and not me, suffer the consequences of that. I don’t need dumb social policies banned everywhere, only in the places I live in/am responsible for.”
I can’t bring myself to care about “stable family units.” I just can’t. The only reason I give a crap one way or another about gay marriage is that I know some gay people who want to be married, and I like those gay people and want them to be happy.
I’m not sure if there’s meant to be a distinction between “polygamy” and polyamory in this post, but I know some polyamorous people. I like those people, and I want them to be happy, and that apparently means making polyamory into a thing that is considered acceptable.
Maybe “polygamists” as a class will make your home terrible. But I’ve never met “polygamists” as a class, just as I’ve never met “gay people” as a class. I’ve met individual people, and some of the individual people I have met don’t seem like they make society worse just by being present. Sure, I’ve also met polyamorous people who were assholes, but I think they’d be better covered by a rule against being assholes than a rule against being polyamorous.
To be clear, this is not to say that I don’t like you or don’t want you to be happy. I just feel like if you met some of the polyamorous people I’ve met, you’d have more in common with them than you seem to think.
I can’t bring myself to care about “stable family units.” I just can’t. The only reason I give a crap one way or another about gay marriage is that I know some gay people who want to be married, and I like those gay people and want them to be happy.
Are we immortal yet? No? Then it matters. A lot. Because each generation needs to create and raise the next generation.
The last time I checked, broken families are not good for people, statistically.
You can choose to be single or unattached until you die. It just doesn’t work as a way to structure mortal human societies, unless you are willing to do things that are, hmn… drastic.
I’m not sure if there’s meant to be a distinction between “polygamy” and polyamory in this post, but I know some polyamorous people. I like those people, and I want them to be happy, and that apparently means making polyamory into a thing that is considered acceptable.
Polygamy is bad along multiple axes.
Polyamory, it hasn’t been proven.
Maybe “polygamists” as a class will make your home terrible. But I’ve never met “polygamists” as a class, just as I’ve never met “gay people” as a class. I’ve met individual people, and some of the individual people I have met don’t seem like they make society worse just by being present. Sure, I’ve also met polyamorous people who were assholes, but I think they’d be better covered by a rule against being assholes than a rule against being polyamorous.
1. Polygamy is, generally, really polygyny, and married polygyny is bad for women, it’s bad for children, and it’s bad for men.
2. No one actually has to be trying to be an asshole, so long as most people are straight and men marry multiple wives more than women marry multiple husbands.
3. Not everyone is bisexual.
Alright? So what are we supposed to do with all the “extra” men?
To be clear, this is not to say that I don’t like you or don’t want you to be happy. I just feel like if you met some of the polyamorous people I’ve met, you’d have more in common with them than you seem to think.
This isn’t about whether individual polyamorous people are mean. It’s about the overall effect on society when polygamy is widely practiced, and “the overall effects on society when polygamy is widely practiced” are backwards anti-feminist-as-in-gender-equality societies when it’s a subset (even in developed countries), or the Middle East when it’s most of society.
When weird autistic (lovable!) internet nerds do it, it stays below the threshold necessary to fuck everything up, unless they’re foolish enough to start normalizing it and spreading it among normal people.
And that doesn’t seem at all cold-blooded to you?
When you get right down to it, I kind of suck at this “Utilitarianism” thing that I’ve built my life around. I stumbled ass-backwards into it because I don’t believe in human sacrifice, and “all human happiness has equal value” was the only way I could think of to avoid “some human happiness is worthless and can be freely discarded for the benefit of others.” I could try to build a rational argument for why some people being polyamorous doesn’t automatically lead to a massive spread of male-dominated polygamy that breaks society. But the reality is that after it turned out we don’t actually need to take children away from gay couples so they’ll be raised properly, and it turned out we don’t actually need to take children away from Native Americans so they’ll be raised properly, I’m inherently skeptical that children raised by folks who’re polyamorous will all turn out broken.
Also, someone tell @pervocracy he’s a “weird autistic lovable internet nerd.” You’re speaking about people like they’re overgrown children who aren’t capable of making their own decisions.
And that doesn’t seem at all cold-blooded to you?
I recently made a post about how the tyranny of resource scarcity significantly limits our ability to provide medical care, so in fact, I can be cold-blooded.
I can even be cold-blooded and petty - I agree with Singapore’s decision to ban chewing gum because vandals were using it to disrupt the transit system.
When you get right down to it, I kind of suck at this “Utilitarianism” thing that I’ve built my life around.
You don’t need Utilitarianism to object to this: what have the “extra” “surplus” men done to deserve their situation?
But the reality is that after it turned out we don’t actually need to take children away from gay couples so they’ll be raised properly, and it turned out we don’t actually need to take children away from Native Americans so they’ll be raised properly, I’m inherently skeptical that children raised by folks who’re polyamorous will all turn out broken.
Ah, yes, we had all of those gay countries to compare to as an example. So many of them. And someone like me, who routinely suggests forming city-states to run political experiments, would never have suggested actually testing it on a smaller scale, which would have established just how (relatively) harmless it really was…
Look, we know what polygamy looks like in our countries (cruddy polygynous cults/backwards communities with “extra” “surplus” men). We know what polygamy looks like when it’s the norm in a country (the Middle East). We know single parenthood isn’t great, either.
Hypergamy isn’t perfectly established, but it’s probably true enough to matter. And once a social change has taken place, it’s difficult to put it back without great cruelty.
Also, polygamy is more dangerous than polyamory, but I don’t recommend polyamory to anyone. You’ve got increased risk for STIs (much broader network of sexual contact), you’ve got the risk that they’ll fall in love with someone else and leave you, but without the increased transaction cost/friction of monoamory, you’re not their number one priority and if it comes down to a choice between you and someone else, they may pick someone else, you might just not even be poly, you could end up a single parent begging for money in online groups (okay okay, I wasn’t close to that particular drama, but it happens), etc.
(”But those are all risks in monogamy, too!” Sure, but not ones that are part of the very structure of it.)
It’s not some kind of virtuous, enlightened thing we should all aspire to. It’s just a preference that some people have. It’s not even an orientation.
Also, someone tell @pervocracy he’s a “weird autistic lovable internet nerd.” You’re speaking about people like they’re overgrown children who aren’t capable of making their own decisions.
Oh, you think that’s what I meant by it?
And not the more obvious “actually, because neurodivergents are different from neurotypicals, the outcome of neurodivergents doing something may be different than neurotypicals doing the same thing, particularly if there are fewer of them”?