Monday, May 15, 2017

Still Getting More Liberal

Gallup finds that Americans have gotten more liberal about several social issues since the last time they polled these questions:

 I am surprised that 17% think polygamy is ok; I would have thought much less.

3 comments:

  1. The 17% figure might be accurate if they're using the wrong term "polygamy", when in reality what was being measured was "polyamory". Two very different things.

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  2. and the really interesting figure would be what percent feel that polyandry is acceptable. if it's anything different than polygamy, yet another double-standard.

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  3. @leif

    Well, to my knowledge polyandry is pretty rare historically. The one example I know off the top of my head is traditional Tibetan nomads practicing it occasionally, almost always in the context of a woman marrying multiple brothers, largely to preserve family bonds and not force the brothers to split up and move into separate households.

    As far as I'm aware, it's basically unheard of in the Western patriarchal traditions, where only men were allowed to have multiple spouses or concubines. See notable examples such as various Muslim denominations, Mormons, and technically most other Christians too throughout history (although ostensibly verboten, in practice it happened all the time unofficially and was taken for granted).

    It's worth noting that this could be a case of the masculine form of something being used to refer to the neutral collective - similar to, say, taking what would technically be a "gynoid" and referring to it as an "android". It's not technically correct, but it is accepted in common usage as it is less confusing.

    Of course, that all assumes they actually are talking about polygamy/polyandry, as opposed to the alternative I proposed of poly-"amory", which I want to reiterate is a very different beast.

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