Women As Incubators! And Nothing More!

Over on Jane Galt, I have been engaged in a discussion about why, precisely, polygamy is a bad idea.

Being the shit-stirrer I am, I opened the discussion a bit further to include polyamory.

This of course, was at first ignored, then targeted.

I was asked: What possible reason would a woman have to marry many men?

Slut-shaming is then brought into the equation:

Men dislike sluts for cuckoldry reasons - the possibility that they may marry a woman who carries children not of his own genes, which imposes a huge fitness cost on him. Cuckoldry factors would expand exponentially in a Woman-man-man-man relationship. In such a relationship men would not know if the children they were raising were their own, in a man-woman-woman relationship each woman would know that their own child IS THEIR OWN. So which is more likely?

This is clearly a man who doesn't even want to try and understand the dynamics of polyamorous situations.

My favorite part of the comment, however, was this:

Read some evo-bio.

Ok, so because animals operate on a purely procreative basis, humans do, too? Because in the animal world, only the Alpha Male gets to have multiple partners, it has to be the same for us?

I beg to differ.

The "because it's that way in the animal world" argument really makes me mad. I've seen many arguments in discussions that hinge on being "civilized" and how evolved the human race is, and all sorts of other things.

However.

You do not get to say we're better than the animals in one argument, and then use it against women in another.

Ah, he just replied to me again.

My point was - why would a man want a woman who has multiple partners? Ie. why would a man voluntarily participate in the raising of a child not of his own genes?

Wow. What an unenlightened view.

I like how he also assumes that children will be involved. Though, given the assumption of children, I guess I shouldn't tell him about the polyamorous family I know, and the children they're raising together.

His arguments are so based in pure base instinct, and have nothing to do with the real world or real situations, or even, I'd wager, real women.

And all this was because I asked:
The only conceivable legitimate argument against legally-bound unions of polyamory is the burden of insuring more than one spouse of the insurance holder.

If anyone can name another one- that's not based in religion or "that's icky"- I look forward to reading it.