Is monogamy good for society? | Louise Perry — Transcript

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1. 0:10- It seems quite plausible
2. 0:11that polyamory is gonna be
3. 0:12the next sexual minority rights movement.
4. 0:15Currently, of course,
5. 0:16marriage is defined in strictly monogamous terms,
6. 0:19and there are some polyamorous who said
7. 0:20that this is unjust,
8. 0:22and that their relationships
9. 0:23should be legally acknowledged in the same way
10. 0:25that monogamous people's relationships are acknowledged.
11. 0:28But, I think that there is a risk
12. 0:31of rejecting the monogamous model.
13. 0:35Proponents of polyamory
14. 0:36would say that in our species history,
15. 0:39the most common mating model has been the polygynous model:
16. 0:44So when you have one male
17. 0:45having multiple female partners-
18. 0:48that's about 80% of cultures
19. 0:50on the anthropological record have been polygynous,
20. 0:53and then the remaining 20% have been monogamous.
21. 0:56The monogamous model is the unusual one.
22. 0:59We now have very different material conditions
23. 1:02in all sorts of ways.
24. 1:03We have the pill,
25. 1:04we have ways of treating sexually transmitted diseases,
26. 1:07we have technologies like the internet,
27. 1:09and therefore, why should we be beholden
28. 1:11to the mating structures of the past?
29. 1:14This is a brave new world
30. 1:15with all sorts of new possibilities.
31. 1:17I think the problem with that defense of polyamory
32. 1:20is that it overestimates the extent
33. 1:22to which we are really capable
34. 1:24of controlling our Stone Age brains.
35. 1:29Our brains have not kept pace
36. 1:31with the technological change that we've seen.
37. 1:34We still are basically adapted
38. 1:35to the lives of our hunter-gatherer ancestors.
39. 1:37That puts a fairly hard limit
40. 1:40on the extent to which we can completely design utopia
41. 1:42on the back of an envelope.
42. 1:48- 'Salt Lake City, Utah,
43. 1:49and the home of Dr. R.C. Allred,
44. 1:51fundamentalist believer in plural marriage,
45. 1:54the practice and preachment of polygamy.'
46. 1:56- People are free to experiment
47. 1:58with all sorts of mating patterns,
48. 1:59including polyamory.
49. 2:01For some individuals,
50. 2:03that's good.
51. 2:04In terms of the whole society, though,
52. 2:06women and children in particular,
53. 2:08the monogamous system is much preferable,
54. 2:10for all of its flaws.
55. 2:11- 'Monogamous America waits for the answer
56. 2:13to the question:
57. 2:15How many wives?'
58. 2:19- Monogamy makes societies more stable,
59. 2:22more peaceful, more prosperous.
60. 2:24You can compare this quite directly
61. 2:26by looking at certain countries
62. 2:28which have both monogamous and polygynous systems
63. 2:30operating in tandem,
64. 2:32and you can see that there are these differences.
65. 2:34Households with multiple wives
66. 2:36are much more prone to conflict.
67. 2:39Stepchildren, in particular, are much more vulnerable
68. 2:42to abuse by their stepparents.
69. 2:44It's a phenomenon that evolutionary biologists
70. 2:46call the "Cinderella effect,"
71. 2:47described by Stephen Pinker
72. 2:48as the single greatest risk factor in child abuse
73. 2:51ever identified.
74. 2:56We've inherited our monogamous marriage system
75. 2:59from ancient Rome,
76. 3:00which is unusual in having a monogamous model.
77. 3:03But Roman sexual ethics were wildly different:
78. 3:06Roman culture, including sexual culture,
79. 3:08were fairly cruel and shocking.
80. 3:11In the Roman world,
81. 3:12Harvey Weinstein would've been completely unremarkable.
82. 3:14The idea that a rich, high-status man
83. 3:17should have sexual access
84. 3:18to his social inferiors,
85. 3:20in particular his slaves,
86. 3:21was completely unquestioned
87. 3:23in the era before Christianity.
88. 3:25Prostitution was completely permissible.
89. 3:27The sexual double-standard was alive and well,
90. 3:29and the men were basically allowed
91. 3:31to be as promiscuous and unfaithful as they wanted,
92. 3:34whereas women were expected
93. 3:36to protect their chastity fiercely, and so on.
94. 3:38And into this world, in the A.D. 1st century,
95. 3:41comes Christianity
96. 3:43with some very radical, very shocking ideas about sexuality.
97. 3:50The idea that, yes, women should expect to be chaste
98. 3:54but so should men.
99. 3:56The expectation that women shouldn't have pre-marital sex-
100. 3:59this is also applied to men for the first time ever.
101. 4:02Often this was a most unwelcome message
102. 4:04to men of the A.D. 1st century,
103. 4:07but for all sorts of complex historical reasons,
104. 4:09it caught on.
105. 4:11And Christian sexual ethics became the dominant force
106. 4:14in Europe and the colonies for 2,000 years.
107. 4:17And then in the 1960s and onwards,
108. 4:19we end up slowly unraveling the embedded Christian ideas-
109. 4:23and we're still on that kind of de-Christianization course.
110. 4:26I think that often feminists make a mistake
111. 4:28in assuming that there's a binary
112. 4:30between feminist ideas on the one hand
113. 4:33and Christian ideas on the other one,
114. 4:34and that they are necessarily in conflict.
115. 4:35For all of the downsides
116. 4:37of the Christian view of men and women and sexuality,
117. 4:40also there is this fundamental idea
118. 4:43that the weak should be prized and protected,
119. 4:46and the strong should restrain themselves;
120. 4:48which was radical then, and really remains radical now.
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