So I strongly disagree with this. First, what’s the evidence that polyamory has ‘harmful effects… on societies, like encouraging male violence and suppressing womens rights’? Isn’t it more of a suppression of women’s rights to say that they can only have one romantic partner at a time, if they want more?
Second, I don’t think polyamory meaningfully enables predatory men. It seems a bit patronizing to say that vulnerable young women can only understand that something is going wrong if the guy who hits on them is married. A bigger issue is that power dynamics make it hard for victims to speak up.
The point about sexual relations in the workplace is a non-sequitur—people can be poly without dating their co-workers.
Finally, I’m poly and a woman, so if the community became hostile to or suspicious of polaymory per se, it would become less inclusive for me. One of the things I like about this community is the fact that people are open to people who make unusual lifestyle choices, and they’re not (usually!) tempted to mock or scorn something just because it’s weird or unusual. i’d be sad to lose that.
what’s the evidence that polyamory has ‘harmful effects… on societies, like encouraging male violence and suppressing womens rights’?
There is lots—I don’t want to exhaustively list it for you, but you can easily google to find stuff like this economist article about the negative social effects of rampant non-monogamy.
It seems a bit patronizing to say that vulnerable young women can only understand that something is going wrong if the guy who hits on them is married.
It would be patronizing, which is why I didn’t say ‘can only’. Please don’t misrepresent me like this.
What is the case is that some victims don’t understand that something is going wrong, and it is good to make this clearer. Also, bystanders who could intervene often can’t tell something is going wrong—it would be good to make this clearer also. We do this in many other areas—to avoid moral violations that are hard to catch, we insist on easily-observable bright lines even if those bright lines seem less inherently morally noteworthy. As you point out, this can make it easier for victims to speak up, because the violation is more unambiguous.
they’re not (usually!) tempted to mock or scorn something just because it’s weird or unusual
I’m not saying it is bad because ‘just because it is weird or unusual’, nor was I scornful or mocking. Rather, I made specific arguments for why the practice is bad. Just because we tolerate weird and unusual things doesn’t mean that bad things are ok so long as they are also weird and unusual.
Again, polygamy (in the sense of formal polygyny) is very different to egalitarian polyamory as practiced in the EA community, so it’s not clear to me that articles criticizing that practice should be relevant.
The Economist article discusses the practice of widespread polygyny: that is, men who have multiple wives and whose wives are only married to them. As a matter of mathematics, polygyny (without polyandry) means that many men will stay unmarried, which makes them less connected to society and more likely to behave violently. That argument seems true to me.
However, the argument hardly seems applicable to the egalitarian polyamory almost always practiced by effective altruists. Poly female effective altruists can and do date multiple people. Further, many poly effective altruists are in same-gender relationships. If anything, polyamory as practiced by most effective altruists seems to reduce relationship inequality. People who have trouble finding a primary relationship can find a secondary relationship and receive many of the benefits of a romantic relationship. (Although not all, of course—I don’t mean to erase the very real loneliness that comes from having a hard time finding a primary partner, even if you have secondaries you love.)
Further, the article discusses polygyny in cultures where women are literally bought from their families by wealthy men. Both polygamy and monogamy are harmful relationship structures when women are sold by their fathers to strangers three times their age. That doesn’t mean that either is harmful when freely chosen by an individual in a society with much better protections for human rights in general and women’s rights specifically.
You seem to be both arguing that EAs should discourage polyamory because it’s harmful, and that having a norm of monogamy would make it easier to identify predators crossing boundaries—which is closer to your central point (or do you believe them both)?
So I strongly disagree with this. First, what’s the evidence that polyamory has ‘harmful effects… on societies, like encouraging male violence and suppressing womens rights’? Isn’t it more of a suppression of women’s rights to say that they can only have one romantic partner at a time, if they want more?
Second, I don’t think polyamory meaningfully enables predatory men. It seems a bit patronizing to say that vulnerable young women can only understand that something is going wrong if the guy who hits on them is married. A bigger issue is that power dynamics make it hard for victims to speak up.
The point about sexual relations in the workplace is a non-sequitur—people can be poly without dating their co-workers.
Finally, I’m poly and a woman, so if the community became hostile to or suspicious of polaymory per se, it would become less inclusive for me. One of the things I like about this community is the fact that people are open to people who make unusual lifestyle choices, and they’re not (usually!) tempted to mock or scorn something just because it’s weird or unusual. i’d be sad to lose that.
There is lots—I don’t want to exhaustively list it for you, but you can easily google to find stuff like this economist article about the negative social effects of rampant non-monogamy.
It would be patronizing, which is why I didn’t say ‘can only’. Please don’t misrepresent me like this.
What is the case is that some victims don’t understand that something is going wrong, and it is good to make this clearer. Also, bystanders who could intervene often can’t tell something is going wrong—it would be good to make this clearer also. We do this in many other areas—to avoid moral violations that are hard to catch, we insist on easily-observable bright lines even if those bright lines seem less inherently morally noteworthy. As you point out, this can make it easier for victims to speak up, because the violation is more unambiguous.
I’m not saying it is bad because ‘just because it is weird or unusual’, nor was I scornful or mocking. Rather, I made specific arguments for why the practice is bad. Just because we tolerate weird and unusual things doesn’t mean that bad things are ok so long as they are also weird and unusual.
Again, polygamy (in the sense of formal polygyny) is very different to egalitarian polyamory as practiced in the EA community, so it’s not clear to me that articles criticizing that practice should be relevant.
The Economist article discusses the practice of widespread polygyny: that is, men who have multiple wives and whose wives are only married to them. As a matter of mathematics, polygyny (without polyandry) means that many men will stay unmarried, which makes them less connected to society and more likely to behave violently. That argument seems true to me.
However, the argument hardly seems applicable to the egalitarian polyamory almost always practiced by effective altruists. Poly female effective altruists can and do date multiple people. Further, many poly effective altruists are in same-gender relationships. If anything, polyamory as practiced by most effective altruists seems to reduce relationship inequality. People who have trouble finding a primary relationship can find a secondary relationship and receive many of the benefits of a romantic relationship. (Although not all, of course—I don’t mean to erase the very real loneliness that comes from having a hard time finding a primary partner, even if you have secondaries you love.)
Further, the article discusses polygyny in cultures where women are literally bought from their families by wealthy men. Both polygamy and monogamy are harmful relationship structures when women are sold by their fathers to strangers three times their age. That doesn’t mean that either is harmful when freely chosen by an individual in a society with much better protections for human rights in general and women’s rights specifically.
You seem to be both arguing that EAs should discourage polyamory because it’s harmful, and that having a norm of monogamy would make it easier to identify predators crossing boundaries—which is closer to your central point (or do you believe them both)?