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Gay Marriage, Slippery Slope to Polygamy?
Obama and Romney both have grandparents who practiced polygamy, yet both have said (and one’s still saying) that marriage should be between one man and one woman. Some think it odd that they both reject the practice when they’ve each got a family history. But I, too, have grandparents who practiced polygamy yet I don’t like the practice, either. This brings me to the concern that marriage equality is a slippery slope to polygamy.
If you hold marriage to “two consenting adults” the problem goes away.
At the same time, while I have a personal distaste for polygamy, I’m not sure that decriminalization would be a bad thing.
First, the problems with the practice.
Gender inequality can be created by simple supply and demand, with “the one” having more power, whether polygyny (one man, many wives) or polyandry (one wife, many husbands). In the polyandrous Lahaul Valley of the Himalayas women have great say over matters. As one young man in this community explained, “The wife’s voice is the dominant voice in the household.”
Typically, polygamy is practiced under patriarchy (as polygyny) so the power of “the one” man becomes intensified. As one New York Times letter writer observed in response to Jonathan Turley’s insistence that polygamous families should be free to live their religion and values:
(In highly patriarchal families) this is not ‘the right to live your life.’ The men have rights, but not the girls (who are) brainwashed, uneducated and mothers while in their teens.
In polygyny it can seem that women make all the sacrifices so that men may take unlimited pleasure. A Sufi who agreed to be a third wife of her teacher (the article title “My Husband, My Teacher” suggests additional inequality of relationship) described her experience this way:
I went through, as did the other wives, all of the usual feelings of jealousy, fear, and insecurity.
She had to learn to let go of attachment, or seeing her spouse as property. Yet her husband didn’t need to learn any of these lessons, enjoying greater freedom and sexual variety than any of his wives ever will.
The addition of a new wife may even be used as a threat in polygamous cultures. Not surprisingly, 86 percent of Afghani women are against the practice.
Moving to larger societal problems, at marriageable age women and men are in equal number so girls in polygamous communities must be married at younger and younger ages, and are often forced into marriage. Their youth further disempowers them. Meanwhile, teenaged boys may be thrown out of these communities via trivial charges like watching “inappropriate” movies.
Joseph Henrich, a University of British Columbia professor whose expertise lies in psychology, anthropology and economics says higher levels of polygamy are tied to higher crime rates, lower GDP per capita, and worse outcomes for children.
And, fewer available women may mean more frustrated bachelors who support the sex trafficking of girls and women. These young men are also vulnerable to recruitment by extremists in some parts of the world.
There is plenty that is not pretty. So why legalize polygamy?
When the practice is illegal and stigmatized, those who live it end up isolated from the rest of society. That means its practitioners hear few alternate voices, and are less aware of the possibility of living differently. Or, choices become limited as others ostracize them and reject their friendship. In other words, they’re more stuck.
Oddly, adherence to “plural marriage” might actually decrease if it were made legal and destigmatized.
I don’t know if legalization will ever destigmatize polygamy, which is an important step in freeing people to hear different voices and to help them to have more options.
Regardless, I doubt legalization will bring people flocking to the practice. The notion of sharing your husband or wife while being forced to be monogamous, yourself, just isn’t that appealing to most people. In the U.S. polygamy is pretty much only practiced for religious reasons, so it’s not likely to catch on. And where it does, it would be more likely voluntary and not coerced.
If you fear gay marriage because polygamy might come next, I doubt there’s really much to worry about.
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Turning on the Sex Goddess
Naomi Wolf wants women to have better sex lives, and more empowered lives generally. Vagina: A New Biography seeks to light the way.
Wolf began researching this book after she regained her sexual desire, creativity and passion for life — much to her surprise — when her spinal cord was repaired.
I’ll discuss the larger life issues later. For now, let’s look at how her somewhat controversial book might benefit women with low libido, and the partners who love them.
Something she calls “the Goddess Array” consists of “a set of behaviors that activate the autonomic nervous system in women” and turns them on. She describes these as “the-things-that-women-need-that-men-don’t-need,” quoting sex educator Liz Topp, who coined the obese phrase.
So, women need certain things to spark desire that men don’t. And these behaviors actually have biological effects.
As she explained to the Huffington Post, women need to be relaxed and free from bad stress so that heart rate and respiration can increase, engorging what needs to be engorged and lubricating what needs to be lubricated. These processes are heightened when women lie in their lover’s arms and when they are romanced. In fact, dancing is actually seductive, she says.
On the other hand, these arousing physical processes can be interrupted if her lover snaps at her or flirts with someone else.
So foreplay begins way before bed. But we all know that, right?
True, she says, but what’s new is that science actually backs this up.
Plus, she points out that porn — so prevalent today — leads us away from this knowledge. Porn is a sex educator (a poor one) — even if neither men nor pornographers look at it that way. Men go there to get turned on, but then believe what they see: women see a huge penis, quickly get aroused and climax after a very few minutes of friction. Context doesn’t matter.
Even Masters and Johnson can throw us off. Wolf adds,
We’ve got this model from Masters and Johnson that male and female sexual response is kind of the same — there’s arousal, plateau, climax and resolution — and the Cosmo model is that everyone should be racing to the goal together, trying to get there together. This as a model of sexual response (for women) is not true.
And for women and men who do know better, we too often forget or don’t take the time to nurture the good energy that women need for arousal.
This is especially important in long-term relationships. When love is new, “feel-good” oxytocin levels skyrocket. But then they drop. Women also get turned on by feeling chosen, but after being married awhile a woman may feel less like she’s chosen and more like her partner simply has no other choice but her. Wolf continues:
Once you’re in a relationship, you don’t have to woo her, you don’t have to bring her flowers, you don’t have to take her dancing, you don’t have to tell her she’s beautiful, you just cut to the chase. That is a killer for passion for women in long-term relationships, and it’s not a psychological thing, it’s physiological, and a mind-body connection.
Marta Meana, a UNLV psychology professor, would seem to agree. She says women have a lower sex drive (culturally influenced) and need a bigger jolt to spark their libido. As she told a New York Times reporter,
If I don’t love cake as much as you, my cake better be kick-butt to get me excited to eat it.
Turning on the sex goddess, the gospel according to Naomi Wolf. It may be worth a read.
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Can A Small-Breasted Woman Be Sexiest Woman Alive?
We’re such a big-boob obsessed culture you have to wonder whether small breasted women can ever be seen as sexy.
Turns out, they can. Esquire just named sultry Mila Kunis “Sexiest Woman Alive.” This follows Maxim naming her third hottest woman in the world, while FHM put her in the top 10. Gorgeous mate, Ashton Kutcher, is good with her, too.
Other women of petite boobage have also landed on these lists, and a few years back FHM named Kiera Knightley the hottest of the hot. More recently Kate Middleton’s “Boobgate” inspired 311 million searches for “Middleton topless photos.” (The Duchess also made FHM’s “Hottest 100” this year.) Seems many men find smaller-breasted women attractive.
Now, I’m no fan of objectification and ranking women on lists. But so long as they’re doing it, I am glad to see some branching out from a narrow ideal of “skinny + big boobs = attractive.”
Without implants or obesity, B is the average cup size. Since so many women are an A or B cup it’s no wonder that by age seventeen, 78 percent of young women are unhappy with their bodies – worries about weight being another big issue.
007 Breasts – 007b.com, a website devoted to women and their breasts, gets (not surprisingly?) quite a few male readers. Based on comments they receive WOMEN do most of the fussing over breast size, not men. Men most commonly communicate these thoughts:
- Men are happy with any pair of breasts their partner has
- Men often say implants seem unnatural and hard
- A woman who appears secure and confident is attractive
Well, Mila Kunis exudes confidence.
So it looks like women don’t need to mutilate themselves and harm their health to be attractive. And moms don’t need to give their seven-year-old daughters a $10,000 voucher for a future boob job, as one did.
And if your boyfriend thinks you’re boobs are too small, it sounds like he’s a boob — get a better boyfriend!
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High School Girls’ Hygiene, Sex Habits Detailed. It’s Tradition
Each year around the last day of school, junior boys at Ladue Horton Watkins High in Missouri distribute an obscene list detailing the body parts, hygiene and sex habits of 5-10 senior girls.
It’s tradition.
When Ruth Alhemeier’s daughter came home, hysterical about the list, Ruth became outraged: “It’s shocking; it’s obscene; it’s vulgar, and I just couldn’t believe it!”
Alhemeier went to see the principal, Bridget Hermann, who explained, “Well it’s kind of just tradition, it’s been going on for a really long time, there’s not much we can do to stop it.”
Administrators determined no rules had been broken.
No broken rules. Tradition. Whatever could one do?
After a push of letters to the school board Ms. Alhemeier was eventually invited to a meeting. “We have anti-bullying measures in place and there are plans to ramp those up,” she was told. Finally, those responsible were identified and “received immediate and long-term consequences.” No one’s saying what.
So here we have boys judging girls — and from the start of high school girls know it. Boys make the rules and girls are expected to conform. Girls know they’d better be careful, or they might end up on that list.
Judges lord it over the judged, making the boys superior – here, with JUNIOR boys superior to SENIOR girls.
And throughout, these young men invade the young women’s space, verbally touching and invading their bodies, like a rape.
Whether humiliating, judging, or taking over another person, these boys are classic bullies, trying to raise themselves up by bringing others down – and in a way that goes beyond individuals and establishes a gendered pecking order: boys above girls.
All the while the adults are blinded by tradition, and maybe loyalty to traditional gender roles.
I was struck by a report that described Ruth Alhemeier as having no qualms about going public.
Why would she have qualms?
On the contrary, I couldn’t believe that this was the first time the matter had been brought up, or that she would have anything but the outraged support of the entire community.
Interesting that what seems horrifying to one group seems normal to others. Once it’s the status quo, everyone around accepts it.
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Less Sexism Means More Sex
Sexual liberation and women’s liberation seem to go hand in hand.
Cherokee women and men were equals. Each had their own tribal councils and say in decisions. Women may have even had the upper hand since they controlled the staple, corn. If men wanted to go to war but women didn’t, the women could say, “Okay, no corn for you!” Property passed through women and tribes traced families through female lines. (Young women and men enjoyed sex, and married women didn’t always cling to fidelity, so who knew who “daddy” was?) And everyone cared for kids.
These women were also extremely sexual and orgasmic. It probably helped that sex wasn’t thought dirty and neither were sexual women.
Pacific Islanders were similar. No wonder Gauguin loved Tahiti.
Not so much in Victorian-influenced Europe and America. There, women had no means of supporting themselves and needed to stay “pure” to get married. A “bad reputation” could mean the end of the world. Wives weren’t expected to enjoy sex: bad girls liked sex, good girls didn’t. And many “good girls” probably didn’t since sexual repression tends to lead to bad sex.
Western women are still more repressed than their ancient Native American sisters, but less so than women of Victorian times. Thanks to greater equality.
The “first wave” of feminism brought women the vote in 1920, and “a revolution in manners and morals” followed. As single women increasingly entered the workforce and became independent they spent their money in the dance halls and nightclubs that had sprung up. Between their independence, the clubs and the privacy of a Model T, parents couldn’t supervise courtship, while women’s sexual needs and desires were increasingly accepted.
Better condoms helped, too.
The “second wave” of 1960s feminism sparked a second sexual revolution, again buoyed by women’s financial independence, as well as Freudian concerns over the evils of repression. The Pill also opened sexuality and helped women stay in the workforce – and stay independent.
So men, if you want more sex support equality.
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Why Is There A War On Women?
Conservatives insist there is no war on women. They must be willfully ignorant to miss the signs.
In recent years the extreme right has voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, they have refused to protect all women in the U.S. from domestic violence, they have pushed to block cancer screenings and HIV testing for poor women, they have voted against contraception and abortion that could save women’s lives. Five states now require women seeking abortions to endure ultrasounds, which might require intrusive, vaginal probes. Some have made light of rape, narrowing the definition to “forcible” rape (what’s nonforcible rape?) or, as Amanda Marcotte at RH Reality Check points out:
Showing their true colors has been a theme of anti-choicers this campaign season, from Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” comment to Huckabee’s extolling the virtues of rape as a baby delivery system to Paul Ryan minimizing rape by calling it a “method of conception”… They don’t really think rape is a big deal—it’s not like raping uterus vessels is the same as violating people, right?
But what’s behind the war? Here’s one idea: sexist men fear that independent women won’t need them.
Marcotte points out that attempts to control women swell whenever women become more independent. She may have a point. We’ve seen increasing attempts to use government to control women as we become more independent. And the same thing occurs in relationships when some men destroy contraception, hoping their wives or girlfriends will get pregnant and become more dependent.
And the same men who work to limit women’s control over their bodies say things like this, from Rep. Allen West of Florida:
And all of these women that have been neutering American men and bringing us to the point of this incredible weakness. Let them know that we are not going to have our men become subservient.
Or Rush Limbaugh:
The average size of a penis is roughly 10 percent smaller than it was 50 years ago. And the researchers say air pollution is why. Air pollution, global warming, has been shown to negatively impact penis size, say Italian researchers.
I don’t buy this. I think it’s feminism.
Well then, men had better get their control over women back, and soon!
Marcotte sums it up:
Hostility to abortion rights and contraception access is about gender anxiety. It’s about this strange fear that unless women are forced into a subservient, dependent position to men, women will not want anything to do with men. Anti-choicers are reacting to a paranoid belief that if women are totally free to choose our own paths, we won’t choose to have men on our journeys. It’s yet further proof that misogyny has an element of man-hating to it, because the misogynist believes that men are not capable of being true friends and partners to women.
Looks like feminists have a higher opinion of men than these sexist men do, themselves.
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Toys Create Gender
By Jessica Garriga
I work at a toy store. There’s a girl’s side and a boy’s side. The girl’s side is suffocated with pink and purple — with a small section of black and pink for the ‘rebellious’ little girl. This side stocks Barbies, Brats, Maxie dolls, baby dolls, stuffed animals, kitchen and food sets, cleaning sets, accessories, make up kits, pretend hair kits and real beauty products that are child safe.
Some girls hate pink and refuse to buy it. I can understand why. It has nothing to do with the color, really, but that is seems like the only color they are allowed.
The boy’s side has lots of colors – except pink. This side has video games, legos, super hero action figures and masks, toy swords and super hero themed weapons, Nerf guns, sport equipment and balls, army toys and weapons, battle ships, musical instruments, board games and chess. Boy toys celebrate violence and being tough. Even the boxes they come in are drawn with explosive effects.
Science themed toys have only pictures of boys — unless they’re painted pink or purple. A guitar aimed at boys is dark blue and painted with flames. The girl guitar is pink with flowers. Legos for girls are in pink and purple boxes with nice ‘friendship’ themed characters and sets. The action, city, and car themed Legos are for boys.
Parents are funny.
One father insisted the Nerf guns he bought were not for his daughter, but for her male friend. When I told him I did not care if his daughter played with Nerf guns and told him I’d played with them, myself, he insisted the toys were not for his daughter and seemed offended by my playing with Nerf guns.
Another dad wanted a pink science kit with princesses on them. With none available, he settled on a pink princess electric piano.
A mom refused to buy Elmo or music themed toys unless they enforced the socialization she wished to impose on her daughter.
And parents seem to avoid bringing their sons anywhere near the girls’ side. Do they fear their sons might like the baby dolls or the pink makeup sets and don’t want to risk it? One dad told me he only lets his three year old son go to the boy’s side because he likes the pink baby dolls, so dad wants to avoid them.
Toy segregation has consequences. As Katrin Bennhold at the New York Times explained:
Male and female stereotypes are established early: It is not hard to see a connection between girls playing with dolls and boys playing with cars, and the widespread segregation of labor markets into “female” and “male” professions. (Lower-paid, lower-status) nurses, primary school teachers and caregivers of most kinds are overwhelmingly female. Engineers, computer scientists and mechanics tend to be male.
Maybe parents believe that gender is biological and that their children won’t like toys that don’t “fit” the sex. But they’re unwittingly (or wittingly) creating gender through the toys they choose – with a lot of help from society and toy stores.
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Men Guarding My Purity
By Anonymous
Why do some men want to control women’s “purity”?
I was reading about Tara Conner, Miss USA 2006, who was almost stripped of her crown due to:
substance abuse, failing to make Miss USA promotional appearances, chafing at other obligations and nonstop nightclubbing at Big Apple hot spots.
Being dismissed for substance abuse and failing to make obligations, I get. But nonstop nightclubbing? What’s the problem?
Donald Trump, the pageant’s co-owner, eventually came to her rescue, granting her a second chance.
Later, he gave her permission to pose in Playboy.
I read about Tara in The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women by Jessica Valenti. She points out that when Trump determined that Tara could keep her crown despite a fast life, and when he determined that she could appear in Playboy, her immodest ways were not the problem. The problem was that Tara was in charge of herself, instead of Trump being in charge of Tara. Some men just want to be in charge of women’s purity.
Even today men may flaunt their sexuality and make “conquests.” Yet women must still be restrained, and are called ho’s and sluts when they aren’t.
And while there is no argument about whether men should be able to use a little blue pill to enjoy sex, various conservative, male-led legislatures find The Pill morally repugnant.
It comes as no surprise to me that young women can grow to be ashamed, and at times even afraid of sexuality.
I, admittedly, have been a victim of the power of negative connotations of virginity, or the lack thereof. Maybe because I come from a more conservative, Latina background I was hit harder than other girls who were raised in America. But after the first time I had sex I drowned myself in guilt and shame. I doubted everything that had just happened. I thought,
This wasn’t supposed to happen that way; I shouldn’t have done it with him; I won’t be able to marry in a white dress anymore; I wonder what he thinks of me now; the whole school is going to find out…
As these phrases filled my head, there was another thought that would not leave me peace: “My parents are going to think I’m worthless.” The worry was so intense that for several months I literally put my head down when having any sort of conversation with them.
I eventually realized that it wasn’t them setting the “standard of virginity,” but the society they grew up in.
Although my mother and I are of different generations, we share the same experience of oppression when it comes to our sexuality. Only she had it worse. Her teenage years were so squeamish that the word sex was frowned upon even between doctor and patient. I, fortunately, have more tools to overcome the repression.
Why do some men want to regulate a woman’s every move, disciplining her if she gets “out of line”?
I don’t know the answer to that. But it feels oppressive. And I don’t think that celebrating sexual males while shaming females helps anyone.
This post was written by one of my students, who asked to remain anonymous.
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What If Women Ran Rap?
By Rebecca Fierros
If women ran hip hop
the beats and rhymes would be just as dope,
but there would never be a bad vibe when you
walked into the place
That’s what Anay de Leon says. Because right now bad vibes are all too easy to feel if you’re a woman in the middle of a rap.
Or as Bridget Grey declares:
Now unless I’m dreaming I could have swore,
right after you called me a “bitch” you called someone else a whore,
and at this point I’m trying to process a few things…
What were the original words to that song?
and you want me to do what with my thong?
And I’m trippin’ cause nobody is acting like anything is wrong.
Testosterone-fueled hip hop is the air that we breathe. We groove to the put downs. ‘Cause we see women the way men see us. It’s okay. It’s cool. We might grasp – for a second – a spiteful riff aimed at us. And then press “repeat.”
de Leon says:
If women ran hip hop
there would never be shootings
cuz there would be onsite conflict mediators
to help you work through all that negativity &
hostility
If women ran hip hop
men would be relieved because it’s so draining
to keep up that front of toughness & power &
control 24-7
And the men look so cool as women crawl at their feet, to be taken and left. Tough men don’t need a woman ‘cause they can always get another. Women are bereft
… and disposable.
Women in rap materialize hyper-sexualized because “sex sells.” Strong women rappers — Salt-n-Pepa, Roxanne Shante, Queen Latifa, MC Lyte — know it ain’t what you look like, it’s how you spit (rhyme).
If women ran rap, says de Leon,
& females would dress sexy if we wanted to
celebrate our bodies
but it wouldn’t be that important because
everyone would be paying attention to our minds,
anyway
In my own vision:
If women ran hip hop
the verses would flow perfectly
and they’d make you think better of yourself as a woman.
Women would have a voice and speak for themselves
and speak about what we want without the approval of a man.
No ho’s or bitches here because we wouldn’t be brainwashed
into thinking that any women was one, or that it’s okay to be one.
Women would be uplifted and not degraded.
Men and women would respect themselves and each other.
No one would need to feel superior.
So no one would look down on another
because of some clichéd version of who we think they are.
Rebecca Fierros is a student of mine who wrote this piece and gave permission to post it.
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Spoon-Fed Barbie
Spoon Fed Barbie
Surface appearances can be deceiving, says artist, Yvonne Escalante.
“From the day we are born, our behavior and tastes are controlled by the social status quo. Little girls are fed an idealized image. Barbie has been deconstructed and reassembled for even easier consumption.”
As a first generation American, Escalante’s father had stressed American identity over cultural ties. Today, her work explores the conflict she feels, caught in the kaleidoscope of identity, gender roles, and societal norms.
Here’s what her art says to me.
Like most little girls, I grew up spoon-fed on Barbie. But not just Barbie. She was an emblem of all that mass media, friends and schoolmates, told me to be. A good shopper. Paired with Ken. Skinny and curvy all at once. The emblem of perfect womanhood, where body defines us.
Oddly, all this spoon feeding can lead to a dearth of feeding of any sort. I’ve gone through phases of not eating like I should, hoping to look like what turn out to be phony photoshopped images that don’t even resemble the starving models who posed for the pics.
What did I know?
Of course, skinny isn’t enough. We must be buxom, too. Which leads to unnecessary, and sometimes life-threatening, surgeries in pursuit of Barbie breasts. At least that’s what happens when boobs define us, creating our worth. For too many women and men, surface is all.
When women are told they must acquire surreal measurements, and when obtaining them is the source of self-worth, the pursuit takes unending time and energy.
Obsessed with diet and exercise, women can become distracted from the rest of life; so much so that (as Naomi Wolf can tell you) advances of the women’s movement wane. Frantic pursuit of the perfect body removes agitation for power of greater substance.
Hence, the pacifier. Here, called “Sucker.”
For more on Yvonne Escalante’s work go to ARTslant.
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