Polyamory is not harems. What you are thinking of is a form of polygamy, which has a distinct power imbalance. You are falling into the JBP pitfall of not actually understanding what you are talking about. Polyamory, of both the ancient and the modern kind means sexual and relationship freedom for both men and women — not just for men. In fact, of the couples I’ve known who started off as monogamous, it is invariably the woman who first indicates that she’d like to open the relationship. This was true for my relationship as well.
Recent research indicates that women actually get bored with monogamy before men do. It’s just that they’ve been socially programmed to believe that it’s what they should want; that it’s what is moral and acceptable and in their best interests. That’s a 10,000 year old story, but it is just a story.
I’ve already cited you research and analysis that indicates that women initiate most divorces and that college educated women initiate an even higher percentage. The male researcher indicated that this is because married women feel constrained and oppressed in a way that dating women do not by their relationships. Did you miss that?
Most of what goes on in people’s heads is subconscious. There is not a whole lot of intention happening. Just as for the most part men are not lying awake at night hatching plans to harass and marginalize women, women are not sitting around thinking about how they are sabotoging their own interests. We are all products of our culture, and although people buy into that at different levels, unconscious bias and societal programming run most people pretty heavily. See comments above about how women are programmed to believe they desire monogamy.
How do I know if what theory is wrong? Everything I’ve said comes out of well established scholarship and anthropological research that’s at least 30 years old. It comes from a wide variety of sources, from men and women, from different countries and institutions of higher learning. When theories are widely held by a large and diverse body of experts, it’s unlikely that they have been falsified. I’ve already linked you a bunch of books and articles that support what I’ve said. Did you miss that too?
What I’d like to ask you is why in the face of new information which comes from a variety of reputable sources do you double down on your position instead of saying, “Huh, I hadn’t really considered that before, or I wasn’t aware of that — interesting.” That’s what I’d like to know. 😉
