Bullish Q&A: When You’ve Been Cheated On and Now Hate Everyone

Monogamy is actually one of the many things that the wide variety of people on Earth are into. Polygamy is cool, too.

Just because religion has been used to enforce monogamy doesn’t negate the fact that a lot of people are really oriented towards it, and a lot of people aren’t. I’m all about telling people upfront what you’re into.

I am an atheist, as I imagine you are, and I think the appropriate response to religious autocracy is not to do exactly the opposite of everything religion says, but to treat religion as irrelevant, and consider the data from there.

Animals don’t get married, no, but plenty form lifelong partnerships that are monogamous in nature.

Evolution may be heterosexual, but that does not mean that all of mammalian sexual contact is heterosexual. Many animals–including humans–enjoy homosexual contact.

Religion has very little to do with it. Some people find monogamy to be a natural state. You can’t really say “…are more the natural state” unless you have some scientific evidence that no one else has access to. And if you do, you should really share that out.

“If four women freely choose the same man, who should complain but the man?”

Well feminists for a start – you’re assuming they’re ‘freely’ choosing to marry the same bloke but actually there could be major familial, social, cultural and economic pressures to do so. In case you hadn’t noticed, Muslim society is ooh just a little bit patriarchal? (As well as homphobic, in which you seem to want to join them.) It’s a lot easier to attach yourself to a well-off man – and they generally are the more well-off who can afford four wives – than to try to survive as a single or widowed woman in those societies.

I don’t call myself a feminist as I define feminism as a “movement for women by women”, and I am a man, but I certainly agree with and support this view from an anti-sexist point of view. I want to see a society in which all are not only equal in value irrespective of gender but equally empowered to maintain their own livelihood without depending on a relationship to a particular individual. I would prefer for instance if everyone’s economic security was safeguarded by their community, rather than spouse, the state or the market. Let’s see how much of this ‘natural’ polygamy happens then.

And BTW marriage to more than one wife is still actually a minority in the Muslim world, the massive majority of Muslim men want an single wife (and thus monogamy officially at any rate – however much some of them might be cheating).

“I have a somewhat Hindu philosophy… If you have intercourse with someone’s anus, you will be reincarnated as a pile of dung.”

Following that thinking, if you just have ‘normal’ heterosexual sex do you end up reincarnated as a cat?

:/

Marriage is not the only form of monogamy… hey I’m just reiterating what other repliers have said again.

“Mammalian evolution is heterosexual” is a bit problematic. Heterosexual sex is the natural biological way procreation has happened, but this does not mean homosexuality has not arisen within evolution. Many are now thinking it has. Certainly there is abundant evidence of it in contemporary animals. There is no need for 100% heterosexuality to keep a species going, there are even some theories that explain how a minority of homosexuality may help a species’ survival.

As the slogan has it: “Homosexuality is found in over 450 species. Homophobia is found in one.” Homosexuality is natural, homophobia is unnatural.

In fact I think homophobia is an artificial creation of religion. I therefore find it ironic when atheist opponents of religion oppose something like monogamy on grounds of its creation by religion, and then turn out to be homophobic.

As for “Polyandry and polygyny are more the natural state”, I find it interesting you say “more”. If “Monogamy is an artificial creation of religion” then it is *never* the natural state, and polygamy is *always* the natural state, yes? Yet you seem to be backsliding a little on your feelings about monogamy with that “more”.

What does that have to do with lying? There are plenty of women open to casual dating or polyamory, situations in which the man could have more than one sex partner.

I’d say enforced monogamy originated with religion, but this doesn’t mean people don’t sometimes want it anyway. You know what, this is pretty much what Jen said in reply, I had an idea I was going to say something distinctive but I guess not. :)