Professor Gary Becker has some interesting comments on the illegality of polygamy and the likely effects of its legalisation. In part, he writes:
The claim that polygyny is unfair to women is strange since polygyny increases the demand for women as spouses in the same way that polyandry would increase the demand for men. If men were to take multiple wives, that increases the overall competition for women compared to a situation where each man can have at most one wife. This argument against polygyny is like arguing that a way to increase the economic prospects of minorities is to place an upper bound on how many members of these groups a company can employ. Of course, actual laws that try to improve the economic circumstances of minorities often in effect take the opposite form by placing lower, not upper, bounds on their employment in different companies. That too is not sensible but I save that for another day.
The entire article makes a number of worthwhile points. For example, as more and more societies move towards the recognition of civil unions between homosexuals as contracts equivalent to marriage, the traditional arguments against polygamy seem to be weakening.
11 comments ↓
Yuk.
This smells like the shit the boys used to say at school, “Prevent rape: say yes”
Polygyny is such a great idea that women everywhere are clamouring for it.
Of course it is good for women. If you look at the societies in which polygny occurs, women enjoy the highest status. They are such princesses they may not even drive, in some cases. Certainly, none of them has the vote.
Also, why may one penis enter many vaginas and but vice versa will probably end in an honour killing?
I am uninterested in the Islamist response to that, BTW. Your religious persuasion is insufficient to convince the ladies who are either not Muslim, not religious Muslims, or religious Muslim women who value their position in liberal democracies that the good professor is on to something.
Just a little aside from a person who used to be in academia but decided she preferred filthy lucre and the company of anyone but left-wingers: in the humanites, there is usually a limit to the potential innovations any one scholar can come up with. This is particularly true of mediocre scholars in mediocre institutions. So the fastest way to get yourself published (publish or perish in academia) if you lack genuine creativity is to court controversy and to have a go at defending the indefensible.
Our friend Becker seems to be a good example of this. The correlation between poor human rights for women and life in polygynous societies is so strong as to be inarguable.
Jesus, Amir. I thought Baybers was the sad sak undie around here. Maybe I misjudged the authors on this site altogether.
Lala: A correlation doesn’t prove causation. It may be true that many societies that allow such marriages also suffer from the problems you describe, but that doesn’t mean that polygamy is the empirical cause of those problems or, if it was legalised in the West, those problems would manifest themselves here.
As Becker and other economists have pointed out, if women’s property rights are protected and dowry is paid by the man, the allowance of polygny would lead to an increase in the ‘value’ of women. That is, it would lead to an increase in the dowry that is paid to them and also an overall increase in the net benefits that each prospective suitor would need to offer in order to be ‘competitive’.
Obviously, I’m not posting this to convince people to accept the permissability of polygamy under Islamic law. However, I do find these arguments interesting and, given the liklihood that the push for gay civil unions could lead to an eventual privatisation of marriage contracts, it is possible that such relationships might end up legal in some Western societies.
I hope you mean fundie rather than undie.
Heh heh. Yes. I meant, “fundie.”
You know, it’s funny: I wrote and deleted a little caveat in the first post about causation not equalling corellation. And sure, it is a fundamental error to onflate the two. Equally, though, I think it’s problematic to dismiss correlaions that are as strong as the one regarding polygyny.
The thing about polyguny is that it is the product of certain evolutionary pressures, brilliantly described by Jarod Diamond before he became a whinging environmental catastrophist. I won’t go into the minutiae here, but polygyny’s causes are very much a product of the “natsy, brutish, and short” evolutionary pressures that no longer exist in developed countries – or, inded, in countries like Saudia. What they do do is institutionalise a very dangerous sexual double standard that sanctions multiple partners for one while forbidding that to the other. Such double standards are perfectly in tune with the miserable status of women in places such as Saudia. So we have correlation. That’s clear. Where causation comes into it is that the very same eveolutionary pressures that CAUSE men to rape and otherwise mistreat women in porder to ensure that the men are not cuckolded also CAUSED the possibility that multiple female partners are permissible while multiple males for women are not.
That’s pretty messy, but for 2am, it’s all I got.
As for marriage privatisation… HUH? Whatchoo talkin’ ’bout Willis? In fact gay marriage is the exact opposite of privatisation: it is the bringing into the public realm what used to be a private agreement only.
The thing is, gay unions in no way are linked to subjugation or double standards. The only violence that has ever been associated wth gay men’s sexuality has been homophobic bashing. So comparisons are spurious when you’re trying to win over social liberals like me. And I’m not even that liberal. Feminism, abortion and gay marriage put me in the liberal camp, but othetwise I am somewhere to the right of… er… Alan Jones, I guess.
One more thing: don’t we have a f***load more things to be worries about? When Muslims are screeching about discrimination and certain neanderthal non-Muslims are telling us that the west needs a RE-reconqistador-style routing of Muslims, bringing up your ability to pork more than one lady legally (religiously speaking) seems a bit self-indulgent.
But kudos to you for not being good humoured about it all.
Hopefully, I’ll get to your other points tomorrow but let me just clarify something.
Marriage is now regulated by the state. It is illegal for two men, two men and a woman, or three men and one woman to register a marriage as the state, in most Western societies, recognises marriage as only being between a man and a woman. Therefore, by privatisation, I was refering to the idea that the regulation of such contracts could be taken away from the state and ‘privatised’. That is to say, a marriage contract becomes like any other legally binding contract between two or more people.
As Umar (RA) put an end to Mut’ah marriage, Muslims of today should put a formal end to polygyny.
Ahhh yes. Good ole Shiite propaganda. When it’s not the Jews causing prolems, it’s the Shiites! Maye they’re working together!
Anyway, Hamed, this crisis you speak of in the west: care to put forward any comparative figures. You can’t? You know why? Because smacking the wife around is accepted in many – if not most – non western countries. The laziest person in the world can find a fatwa online that contends that Mohammad himself supported a light beating when your wife was irreligious or didn’t put out.
So this “crisis” you speak of is a crisis of REPORTED beatings.
Honestly! This is why the Ummah is so fucked. Too many believers are utterly delusional and will twist any fact they can find, or just make one up, to support the contention that Muslims are not inferior to non-Muslims or that dar el-harb is inferior to dar el-Islam… even when said Muslim is TYPING from deep inside dar el-harb. There is such a profound inferiority complex!
Mut’a was forbidden on the Day of Khaibar according to a hadith narrated by ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib and found in Sahih Muslim (4763).
Law Student-
Prophet Muhammad ended mutah marriage, contrary to Shia propoganda. And I don’t see why we should end polygamy. Monogomous relationships can and many times are more abusive than many polygynous marriages. Domestic violence is a crises in many Western countries. There are many non-abusive polygynous relationships, but you people only see the bad ones.
Mohammed (SAW) put an end to it?
Yes, he put an end to it. It’s narrated by ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib in Sahih Muslim that the Prophet (saw) forbade mut’a on the Day of Khaibar.
lala-
I am not denying the fact that there is a lot of misogyny in the Muslim (as wel as non-Muslim) world. I strongly believe that things like FGM and ‘honor’ killings are barbaric and unislamic practices that have plagued the Muslim world and must be stopped. However, I know that in the West isn’ t much better. Just look at all those domestic abuse crises centers throught America.
If you want some statistics, look at these websites:
-http://www.actabuse.com/dvstats.html
-http://home.cybergrrl.com/dv/body.html
-http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/fvs.htm
Also, while you are correct that in Islam, it is permitted for one to physically discipline his wife, this is not permission to brutally assault or kill one’s wife. And just so you know, I was raised in a matriarchial household, with my mom being the head of the house.
As for the Shias, I was raised as a shia, though for a period in high school I was agnostic/deist. I do not blame everything on the Jews, and Shias are one of the most anti-semetic people on earth. Just look at the president of Iran, wanting to nuke Israel.
Not all non-muslim countries are part of the darul-harb. Only countries that are hostile to Islam are. I am a patroitic American, and I hate the guts out of Bin Laden or any other Anti-American retard.
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