What does the future look like for romantic relationships? Louise Perry, author of The case against the sexual revolution, explores the possibilities of polyamory as the next movement for sexual minority rights. While some advocates argue for legal recognition of their relationships, Perry cautions against completely rejecting the monogamous model.
Despite the commonality of polygynous mating patterns throughout human history, Perry argues that monogamy has proven to be a more stable and peaceful system in society. She cites the “Cinderella effect,” where households with multiple wives are more likely to be conflicted, and stepparents are more likely to abuse their stepchildren. Perry also traces the historical roots of monogamy to ancient Rome, where sexual ethics were very different and cruel, and to the advent of Christianity, which introduced radical and revolutionary ideas about sexuality.
Despite the downsides of Christian views on sexuality, Perry argues that their basic principle of protecting the weak and restraining the strong is still relevant today.
LOUISE PERRY: It seems quite plausible that polyamory will be the next movement for sexual minority rights. Currently, of course, marriage is defined in strictly monogamous terms, and there are some polyamorous who said that this is unfair, and that their relationships should be legally recognized in the same way that monogamous people’s relationships are recognized.
It seems quite plausible that polyamory will be the next movement for sexual minority rights. Currently, of course, marriage is defined in strictly monogamous terms, and there are some polyamorous who said that this is unfair, and that their relationships should be legally recognized in the same way that monogamous people’s relationships are recognized.
But I think there is a risk of rejecting the monogamous model. Proponents of polyamory would say that in our species history the most common mating model has been the polygynous model: So when you have a man who has multiple female partners – that’s about 80% of the cultures in the anthropological record have been polygynous, and then the remaining 20% have been monogamous. The monogamous model is the unusual one.
We now have very different material conditions in every possible way. We have birth control pills, we have ways to treat sexually transmitted diseases, we have technologies like the internet, so why should we be grateful for the mating structures of the past? This is a brave new world with all sorts of new possibilities.
I think the problem with that defense of polyamory is that it overstates the extent to which we are truly capable of controlling our Stone Age brains. Our brains have not kept up with the technological change we have seen. We are still fundamentally adapted to the life of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. That puts a pretty hard limit on the extent to which we can completely design utopia on the back of an envelope.
PROGRAM MANAGER: “Salt Lake City, Utah, and the home of Dr. RC Allred, fundamentalist belief in plural marriage, the practice and preaching of plural marriage.”
PERRY: Humans are free to experiment with all sorts of mating patterns, including polyamory. For some individuals, that’s fine. But in terms of society as a whole, women and children in particular, the monogamous system is much preferable, for all its faults.
PROGRAM MANAGER: “Monogamous America Awaits the Answer to the Question: How Many Wives?”
PERRY: Monogamy makes societies more stable, more peaceful, more prosperous. You can compare this quite directly by looking at some countries that have both monogamous and polygynous systems working in tandem, and you can see that there are these differences. Households with multiple wives are much more prone to conflict. Stepchildren in particular are much more vulnerable to abuse from their stepparents. It’s a phenomenon evolutionary biologists call the “Cinderella effect,” described by Stephen Pinker as the single greatest risk factor for child abuse ever identified.
We have inherited our monogamous marriage system from ancient Rome, which is unusual with a monogamous model. But Roman sexual ethics were very different: Roman culture, including sexual culture, was quite cruel and shocking. In the Roman world, Harvey Weinstein would have been completely unremarkable.
The idea that a rich man of high status would have sexual access to his social inferiors, especially his slaves, was completely unchallenged in the pre-Christian era. Prostitution was completely allowed. The sexual double standard was alive and well, and men were basically allowed to be as promiscuous and unfaithful as they wanted, while women were expected to protect their chastity fiercely and so on.
And into this world, in the 1st century AD, comes Christianity with some very radical, very shocking ideas about sexuality. The idea that, yes, women should expect to be chaste, but so should men. The expectation that women should not have sex before marriage – this is also being applied to men for the first time ever. Often this was a most unwelcome message to men of the 1st century AD, but for all sorts of complex historical reasons, it struck a chord. And Christian sexual ethics became the dominant force in Europe and the colonies for 2,000 years.
And then in the 1960s and on, we end up slowly unraveling the embedded Christian ideas—and we’re still on that kind of de-Christianization course.
I think feminists often make a mistake in assuming that there is a binary between feminist ideas on the one hand and Christian ideas on the other, and that they necessarily conflict. For all the flip sides of the Christian view of men and women and sexuality, there is also this basic idea that the weak should be cherished and protected, and the strong should restrain themselves; which was radical then, and indeed remains radical now.
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