Comments interspersed.

On 4/4/24 10:24, Jim Vassilakos - jim.vassilakos at gmail.com (via tml
list) wrote:

> I'm still running the Plankwell campaign
> (https://jimvassilakos.com/dos-programs/plank30.pdf), and the player
> has suggested that one of the NPCs have her origin story within a
> polyamorous society
> (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/polyamorous).
>
> I looked on the Traveller Wiki, and I found a few polygamous worlds as
> well as a mention of the Amindii of Regina
> (https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Amindii) as having a polyamorous mating
> system. And there was a mention of the Enterprise Federation
> (https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Enterprise_Federation), which comprises
> a good chunk of the Spinward Marches, being encouraging of "footloose
> and free polyamory". Also, the write-up on Roethoeegaeaegz makes some
> mention of polyandry and goes into some detail about how it works
> there. See https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Roethoeegaeaegz_(world)
>
> I can't help but wonder what sort of societies polygamy vs polyandry
> vs polyamory might produce over the long run. For example, there's
> still polygamy in Saudi Arabia. I've only known two Saudis, both young
> men. One was what you'd call a good boy, and the other was what you
> might call a bad boy, but the bad boy only went so far as alcohol, at
> least as far as I know, and he seemed to be a really nice
> guy, although I was told by his roommate (she already had an American
> boyfriend) that he seemed to be trying to cajole her into some sort of
> relationship. In any case, his efforts never proceeded beyond mere
> cajoling. So here's a question. Are polygamous societies naturally
> more strict than their monogamous counterparts? Do they have any
> advantages or disadvantages when it comes to raising children?

I take it you're broadly assuming _human_ societies?  If so, perusing
the third edition of "The Ethical Slut" may be enlightening.

You missed polygyny, where one husband has multiple wives.

Why are you assuming the grouping's sexual graph is complete?

Marriages tend to evolve in response to _economic_ factors, and
strictness as you're talking about would be a reaction to the society
around them.  Why are you assuming monogamy would automatically be
precluded?

Frinstance, Heinlein had the viewpoint character, Mannie Davis, in a
line marriage (multiple husbands _and_ multiple wives) in "The Moon Is A
Harsh Mistress", in a society where sexual fidelity to your co-spouses
was nice to have, but not a deal-breaker. Part of the economic
background was that Luna was an open prison, with a male:female ratio of
2:1 - women had notably higher status than men.

I knocked Davis marriage off wholesale and took a file to the serial
numbers for my first GT game, where the skipper's family by marriage
lived in Glisten. Two co-husbands (including him) and one co-wife each
ran their own, independent, tramp ships.  As most of my players in that
game were Yanks (the Brazilian didn't bother breaking stride), I imagine
there was a lot of record scratching when the truth sunk in:

- "Y'know, that's the first time in nearly twenty years that Ace has
managed to puke _into_ the toilet." (Ace being the co-wife who ran her
own tramp ship)

- "What of it?  I'm married to him." (referring to the senior husband,
Commodore Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, IN, (ret) ).   "W..What
about Ace?  Boris?  Shana?" (the other two spouses who ran their own
ships, and senior wife, respectively)  "I'm married to them, too."  The
marriage's response to a spouse's gender transition?  The transitionee
switches to the appropriate list, keeping their seniority.

On the flip side, consider a non-contacted society that had been
battered by nuclear war a couple of centuries ago, which resulted in a
swing the other way. Those groups who _didn't_ restrict fertile women to
domestic activities and child-rearing simply did not survive the
aftermath - outright polygyny, or at least group marriages with
significantly more women than men, being the norm. I doubt women would
have similar elevated social status in that society as they would on
Heinlein's Luna.

In Trav itself, I believe Aslan and K'kree marriages tend towards
polygyny, for similar (IIRC) reasons of biology.

There are _how_ many variant human races in Trav canon, again?

I'm not sure you necessarily _could_ generalise across all sorts of
non-monogamous societies, given the local dependencies mentioned above.

Your society's mileage may vary.

>
> Looking at western society, which is ostensibly monogamous, I get the
> sense that young people are eschewing marriage. The birth rate has
> certainly fallen across the west. I'd be curious to learn what it's
> doing in polygamist countries like Saudi Arabia. Judging from the sex
> ratios (see
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Saudi_Arabia), it looks
> like there's been a lot of female abortion and/or infanticide going on
> there, unless the statistics are skewed. They have a very strange
> looking population pyramid. But it's not terminal, like in much of the
> west. I don't know what the consensus explanation is behind this or if
> there even is one.
Are you sure the reason isn't economic - it's getting _too damn
expensive_ to have/raise kids?
>
> My thinking is that polygamy as a social trait tends to co-evolve with
> an imbalance of political and social authority in favor of the male.
> So it seems to me that polyandrous societies would be a mirror image
> of their polygamous cousins, except that, of course, children would be
> raised by males and so potentially be influenced by a more male
> parenting style, if that makes any sense. I'm not sure it does or even
> follows, because males within such a social framework might change
> psychologically, adopting a more subservient role in order to market
> themselves to the superior gender. How the ladies would react to this,
> I can only wonder.
s/polygamy/polygyny/ - definitely.  Again, as Marc Miller said wrt the
Zhodani Core Routes, "all is economics".  YSMMV.
>
> As for polyamorous societies where the genders are presumably equal
> and anyone/everyone can form whatever relationship frameworks they can
> dream up, my mind naturally boggles just a bit. I imagine high-status
> men would take advantage of the female tendency toward hypergamy to
> accumulate a harem. Would beautiful and/or high-status women attract a
> reverse harem? (It's a term mentioned in the Roethoeegaeaegz
> write-up.) And would middling-status men in polyamorous societies
> accept polyandrous arrangements as readily as women have in polygamous
> cultures? (The Roethoeegaeaegz write-up suggests there is social
> pressure for males to serve as a consort to one or more females.)

I think most of your suppositions here would tend to hold, probably with
polygynous and polyandrous pockets here and there. Especially over time,
experience would highlight which types of grouping work.

There may also be an element of kin selection here - frinstance, two
brothers marrying one woman, with one of the brothers lacking sexual and
romantic interest in women (he's not necessarily homosexual).  YSMMV.

>
> Okay, I'm obviously amused, perhaps even aroused. But I can't help but
> wonder what would be the inter-sexual dynamics within a polyamorous
> society, and would one gender tend to have an upper hand, either
> generally or within certain categories? I'm picturing a sexual
> marketplace where billionaires and famous female models have
> substantial harems, and there might be a lot more connectedness
> because people wouldn't have to choose just one mate, so it could
> relieve a lot of the pressures. But it could create a lot of other
> pressures.
Again, I think you're too hastily generalising.  What sort of
ostensible, and _actual_, value is put on sexual fidelity to the
person/people you're married to, and how does that _vary_ with
socioeconomics?  How about emotional fidelity?  Economic?  YSMMV.
>
> Would monogamy go largely by the wayside, if people had the freedom to
> choose non-monogamous arrangements? Would high-status men be willing
> to trade having numerous middling partners in exchange for an
> exceptional one? Or would the only (in his mind) exceptional women be
> unlikely to want to be with him on a permanent basis unless he were
> exceedingly rich and her continued access to his money was made
> legally binding? Because otherwise, I think, she would have and likely
> exercise the option of having multiple men as her partners, all of
> whom could contribute their earnings and/or government stipend to
> enhance her standard of living, their sheer number providing her with
> enhanced security, as if one were to end the relationship, the others
> would likely remain. Or am I being too transactional in my analysis?
I'm not sure monogamy would completely drop by the wayside, it'd just be
another choice, especially for first-generation immigrants - which way
would _you_ jump upon immigrating to such a society? There would
probably be some societies where your transactional analysis would be
bang on - but not all of them (see my example post-nuclear-war society
above).
>
> It's difficult to fully imagine what it would evolve into over the
> long term, because there are so many variables and potential feedback
> loops. For example, I fully expect that all sorts of "family units" of
> various types would end up existing side-by-side, but I think in a
> free-for-all such as this, relationships would tend to be relatively
> short-lived to the extent that people are legally able to jump ship or
> monkey-swing from one arrangement to another, particularly since the
> complexity of the interrelational dynamics would likely increase
> substantially with the number of people in a family unit (I suspect
> this could be expressed mathematically).
Again, YSMMV.  Why are you convolving "polyamorous relationships are
socially/legally sanctioned' with "it's easy to enter/leave them" ?
>
> Now what does that mean for the raising of children? Most likely, I
> think, that function would eventually get taken over by government,
> and that might subdue the whole intergenerational component to this
> question. Otherwise, I suspect children might be subjected to a lot of
> chaos, and that could have a whole slew of downstream effects. But, on
> the other hand, they might have even more access to parenting, since
> the family units would be larger. The proverb "It takes a village to
> raise a child" comes to mind.

How does government taking over child-rearing _automatically_ follow,
especially in {min,an}archistic societies?

How/why would the children resulting from the marriage be automatically
subject to a lot of chaos?  Growing up in a Heinlein-style line marriage
might work out to be _more_ stable for the kids than a monogamous one,
especially if one or both of their biological parents keel over.

Heinlein, in MIAHM, spent time spruiking the benefits of line marriage
through the mouthpiece of lifelong bachelor, Bernardo de la Paz:

- marriage's prime economic goals being to preserve capital and raise
children - in absence of government, those jobs fall to individuals and
what they can scheme up;

- one spouse kicking it doesn't fatally gum up the works;

- line marriage is akin to a corporation, easily able to outlive the
initial spouses;

- all spouses involved gain a _lot_ of practice in getting along;

>
> What are your thoughts?

Interspersed.

Alex