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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   1962 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 4, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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My take is that relationships that would be polygamous under a different legal regime just retitle themselves as polyamorous and go without the official legal imprimatur of marriage despite being long-term mutual households, and being essentially patriarchal “one dude, multiple women” setups.

I suppose that is possible, but I haven't really encountered it. Generally where you have the rich man keeping a harem on hand, they make no bones about not liking each other and being unhappy about the arrangement, even if Mahomet said it was ok, accepting it as their lot only for lack of a better option. Polyamory is defined by the multiple women having positive, if not necessarily Sapphic, feelings for one another.

What polyamory has largely replaced is old fashioned adultery.

...It's still adultery, though, in the completely literal sense of 'having sex with people other than your spouse'. Plenty of historical wives understood that their husbands would have mistresses, too(after all, it beats having a husband who's poor).

I think the good old fashioned affair has gone into decline.

When my dad and I drive down a certain highway about 50 minutes south of me, he always points out a house and says "That's where used to put up his mistress and their secret kids."

You don't see that much these days at the small town Pennsylvania level.

Secrets of that magnitude are somewhat more difficult to keep these days.

In some ways yes, in others no.

I mean, yes, social media and all.

But there's other recompense. It's a lot socially easier and more common to be a single mother without a husband and simply offer no explanation for where the kids came from.

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