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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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Oh, it's pretty obvious that western society is currently in a transition state from monogamy to polygamy where desirable/powerful men will have multiple female partners while a large portion of men will have to do without.

In the end such a state only benefits these powerful men, women are by and large hurt by polygamy (bigamy laws are generally seen as a way to protect women) because it means the moment her partner gets successful enough he's gonna take on a second/third wife (or rather a concubine these days, no need to marry and risk losing assets in a divorce when you can discard them like a used condom when you're tired of them) because the societal taboo against it has been dropped. Naturally this limits how successful a woman can become through marrying well, because if her choice ends up doing really well she now has to spilt the rewards between other women too.

And all I can say, after seeing the state of modern western women, is that they absolutely, 100% deserve it.

In the end such a state only benefits these powerful men, women are by and large hurt by polygamy (bigamy laws are generally seen as a way to protect women) because it means the moment her partner gets successful enough he's gonna take on a second/third wife (or rather a concubine these days, no need to marry and risk losing assets in a divorce when you can discard them like a used condom when you're tired of them) because the societal taboo against it has been dropped.

That sounds like France for generations. I sometimes wonder if it would be a scandal for a French president to NOT have a mistress, but I doubt that we'll ever know.

Moral acceptance of polygamy is going up in the US (bolding mine):

https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/313112/understanding-increase-moral-acceptability-polygamy.aspx

But what fascinates me as much as anything else is the trend on polygamy. When Gallup first included polygamy on the list in 2003, 7% of Americans said it was morally acceptable, and that fell to 5% in 2006. But over the past decade, this percentage has gradually increased -- moving into double digits in 2011, reaching 16% in 2015, and this year, at 20%, the highest in our history. In short, there has been a fourfold increase in the American public's acceptance of polygamy in about a decade and a half.

Notably from the graph in the post you can see almost all of this increase happened in the 2010s, the time when cultural shifts really started accelerating.

Now this still isn't much, and there is natural variance in polls and just because something is seen as more acceptable doesn't mean more of it is actually happening, but equally I didn't say that we're having lots of polygamy right and now, just that we're transitioning from a state where it was very taboo to one where it is little more of an eye raiser than performing fellatio (something that was also taboo many decades ago but is now accepted).

That'd be my guess too (although I'd argue "rural", as they spent most of that time living in Vegas and Flagstaff, unless you're thinking of a different reality show/polygamist family than I am). One wonders if the sentiment will shift now that 3/4ths of said polygamist family relationship has now been loudly detonating, catching fire and leaking radiation all over the tabloid press...