SO wants to open relationship, i don't - and feel guilty about it

Thank you for posting this. And I really do mean this and I promise you that I am not taking the piss out of you. :)

This series of questions that you raised has had me looking various things up online this weekend as I know next to nothing in regards to how we lived as humans prior to the invention of the domicile. It's been very interesting research and I have quite enjoyed researching this topic. :)
I'm not sure what you mean by "invention of the domicile." A domicile is a home. People have always had homes. Do you mean a permanent structure, as opposed to a tree nest such as a chimpanzee would construct, a time when our ancestor primates came down from the trees and started to live in caves, or build huts or multi-generational longhouses?
 
I was speaking of pre-patriarchal "civilization." I thought that was obvious. Of course it mattered and matters under the patriarchy. Try to imagine a time when men were not in charge and owners of women. We are not in disagreement; I quite concur with you.


The question of a bio-dad did not "plague" anyone. Children belonged to the tribe, were raised by the collective. If a father or mother died, the child was guaranteed care. The children belonged to the tribe or its matron goddess.


You're serious with this? My dear lady, we could not be more diametrically opposed to this, even if we were standing on opposite poles of the Earth.

I don't think it's appropriate to go into this in more detail here. You can PM me for my resources if you wish.


Well, I do not know how @Inaniel feels about it, and I will not speak for him, however, I personally feel that if you have any sort of verifiable and conclusive proof of any of your claims, that it would benefit everyone in the class if you posted it directly in this thread so that they can see and review it for themselves. Until then, I will not be engaging you further on this topic as it is patently obvious that "the patriarchy" is your dogma and further discussion will not prove to be fruitful and/or provide any further insight into the topic.
 
You're serious with this? My dear lady, we could not be more diametrically opposed to this, even if we were standing on opposite poles of the Earth.




Well, I do not know how @Inaniel feels about it, and I will not speak for him, however, I personally feel that if you have any sort of verifiable and conclusive proof of any of your claims, that it would benefit everyone in the class if you posted it directly in this thread so that they can see and review it for themselves. Until then, I will not be engaging you further on this topic as it is patently obvious that "the patriarchy" is your dogma and further discussion will not prove to be fruitful and/or provide any further insight into the topic.

HaloOnFire, you are being incredibly rude to Magdlyn. I don't think this is the right thread to debate this topic, but I don't understand why you're so hostile to what she is saying. The idea that patriarchal social structures developed fairly recently in human history is a pretty standard theory in anthropology. Most human cultures were matrilineal, counting descent through the female line, before a shift to patrilineal inheritance accompanied by a preoccupation with controlling women's sexuality so that men could be sure they were passing things on to their own sons.

For a long time, evolutionary biologists tried to argue that patriarchal social structures have a biological/evolutionary basis and it's just inherent in human nature for men to want to rule over women. Like, it's just biology that men want to have lots of children with different women while preventing those women from having other male partners. Feminist scholars have been criticizing these theories for a long time.

A book Magdlyn references often is Sex at Dawn, which takes a different approach to evolutionary biology and argues that humans evolved in cooperative groups sharing sex more freely, more like bonobo chimps than like male-dominated gorillas. While I think Sex at Dawn is a flawed book, I think that part of its argument is pretty solid.
 
A book Magdlyn references often is Sex at Dawn, which takes a different approach to evolutionary biology and argues that humans evolved in cooperative groups sharing sex more freely, more like bonobo chimps than like male-dominated gorillas. While I think Sex at Dawn is a flawed book, I think that part of its argument is pretty solid.


Then why not simply post this? Most of this could have been avoided had she posted actual facts instead of vague references and insinuations that we as humans lived in some sort of hunter/gatherer utopia where we all got along and were singing Kumbaya around the campfire after The Great Hunt.
 
From what I understand from having read about the evidence we had of social structures and religious observances in prehistorical times, the sexes had more equality. Men were not ruling over women. In the rare cultures today that are not patriarchal, women get to choose who to have sex with, and no one is "forced" to take part in the orgy aspect of seasonal festivals. Surely children and the elderly, and anyone who is ill or just not in the mood would be exempt. As in any culture, it's the young or younger folk who would engage in sexual rituals (as in any nightclub today).

I'm not sure whom you thought was forcing women to engage in sex with Grandpa Timberskin. Women were and are forced into sex in the patriarchy. But women had more power in pre-patriarchal times. Women were valued as life-bringers and sustainers, as representatives of the great god, who was always female. I am not saying rape was non-existent, but rape would have been less necessary since there was a lesser degree of sexual exclusivity.

Women were not commodities to be traded. That happened in patriarchal times, and still does. Women could choose to go have sex with an attractive person in another tribe, at certain times of commingling and cooperation.

I don't think it's appropriate to go into this in more detail here. You can PM me for my resources if you wish.

Yeah... I have read Sex at Dawn as well.

I think it is important to acknowledge that evolutionary biology is a bit of a sketchy science. By that I mean that even as a community none of them can agree on anything... That in of itself makes it difficult for someone like me to navigate because I work in a field of absolute science. In my mind, thesis does not become a fact unless a correlation coefficient of something like 0.9998 is achieved. The likes of evolutionary biology and social sciences do not work that way...

I agree it unlikely that tribal communities would be obsessed with a woman's chastity the way the church/patriarchy is. If we can make any assertions from the study of tribal communities that lived into the 19th and 20th centuries it would be that sex rituals are about as varied as tribes themselves. Humans seem to be fairly flexible when it comes to mating practices and social orders...

Concepts like "consent" and "equality" get blurry in tribal life. Ryan & Jetha presented evidence in there book by describing studies conducted of tribes un-touched by the patriarchy. They wrote of ceremonies where a young woman would be expected to please all of the men in a tribe as a sort of puberty ceremony. In another example they wrote about a tribe that supported partnered relationships, where the women was expected to have sex with every man in the family linage (brother's, father, ect..) They also wrote about women who would provide sex as a reward for men who where successful in the days hunt.

Do you really think that *every pubescent young woman wanted to provide sexual pleasure to every man in the tribe?
Do you really think that *every woman who was expected to have sex with a hunter in reward for his catch of the day, desired to do so?

All of these examples fly in the face of monogamy. No doubt. But are they describing equality and egalitarianism? As I read Sex at Dawn I found myself asking "what happened to the women who didn't want to partake in puberty ritual, or have sex with the partners father???" The text conveniently did not cover how such cultural practices were enforced. In a tribe, where everything including ones self, ones own flesh, belongs to the tribe, perhaps the indoctrination was such that they simply weren't plagued with rebels daring to want something different.

Even if that were the case though, that doesn't sound like equality to me... Men may not have ruled with an iron fist as in patriarchal societies, but I haven't read anything suggesting that women had a high level of rights over there own bodies in tribal culture. Nor have I read that tribes transcended gender rolls; for example game hunters are typically portrayed as men in text; and they are even rewarded with prepared food and sex for daily hunting efforts. I think we can certainly look to tribal cultures for examples of non-monogamy, but equality? Egalitarianism? I think that might be stretching the facts a bit.

Perhaps it gets postulated for political reasons. One can make the patriarchy look even worse than it does already if we can make people believe that pre-patriarchy life was something of a free for all egalitarian utopia....
 
Concepts like "consent" and "equality" get blurry in tribal life. Ryan & Jetha presented evidence in there book by describing studies conducted of tribes un-touched by the patriarchy. They wrote of ceremonies where a young woman would be expected to please all of the men in a tribe as a sort of puberty ceremony. In another example they wrote about a tribe that supported partnered relationships, where the women was expected to have sex with every man in the family linage (brother's, father, ect..) They also wrote about women who would provide sex as a reward for men who where successful in the days hunt.

All of these examples fly in the face of monogamy. No doubt. But are they describing equality and egalitarianism? As I read Sex at Dawn I found myself asking "what happened to the women who didn't want to partake in puberty ritual, or have sex with the partners father???" The text conveniently did not cover how such cultural practices were enforced. In a tribe, where everything including ones self, ones own flesh, belongs to the tribe, perhaps the indoctrination was such that they simply weren't plagued with rebels daring to want something different.

Even if that were the case though, that doesn't sound like equality to me... Men may not have ruled with an iron fist as in patriarchal societies, but I haven't read anything suggesting that women had a high level of rights over there own bodies in tribal culture. Nor have I read that tribes transcended gender rolls; for example game hunters are typically portrayed as men in text; and they are even rewarded with prepared food and sex for daily hunting efforts. I think we can certainly look to tribal cultures for examples of non-monogamy, but equality? Egalitarianism? I think that might be stretching the facts a bit.




My dear sir, I sincerely thank you for this. I have not read this book, but I will now do so on account of your post. It is reasoned and rational and provides me with the opportunity to delve further into this topic And for that, I am grateful to you. :)
 
Thank you, Meera. I have far more references than just Sex at Dawn. The history of human mating is understandably vague before the invention of written records. There is evidence that hangs together though. And there are plenty of vestiges of practices of the former matriarchy in written records such as in many books of the Hebrew Testament of the Bible, just to name one. I recommend the beginning of Genesis, the Book of Kings, and the Song of Songs. I recommend modern feminist theory on this, and not depending on outdated male-dominated sexist scholarship. Wake up. Women matter. Women, and their victories and roles, were never given enough credit. They were extremely rarely named in antique written records, or in scholarship up until the late 19th century, at least.

If you insist on discussing this here: just a few books that I have found informative are, "When God Was a Woman," "The Hebrew Goddess," and "The Golden Bough" by James Frazer. There are many more. I was first introduced to this subject as a mere child when I read the fiction book, "The Clan of the Cave Bear," and the historical tome, "The Epic of Man."
 
Halo on Fire,

"My dear sir," "my dear lady..." !! We are not in a scholarly symposium. This is just a board about polyamory. I feel bad for the OP to be subjected to this debate. I mean no malice and I am nowhere describing a utopia. Please do not put words into my mouth, build strawmen or move the goalposts. Thank you, my dear sir/lady.
 
Nor do I. I am genuinely interested in this topic and respect your interest in it as well... I am not trying to be unfriendly about it. I approach written works with a natural skepticism as I tend to with everything... I was not putting words in your mouth, rather I was speaking to the narrative of Sex at Dawn...
 
"My dear sir," "my dear lady..." !! We are not in a scholarly symposium. This is just a board about polyamory. I feel bad for the OP to be subjected to this debate. I mean no malice and I am nowhere describing a utopia. Please do not put words into my mouth, build strawmen or move the goalposts. Thank you, my dear sir/lady.

The post was worded in that manner in order to be respectful to both @Inaniel and his post. That is all. :)


ETA: . Please do not put words into my mouth, build strawmen or move the goalposts. Thank you, my dear sir/lady.

Well, they are YOUR words, soooo....🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️
 
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Please keep comments on topic. If your comment doesn't address the original post content, you can take the discussion to private messaging or start a new thread in the General Discussions or Blogs. Thanks, all you fabulous peeps!
 
Then why not simply post this? Most of this could have been avoided had she posted actual facts instead of vague references and insinuations that we as humans lived in some sort of hunter/gatherer utopia where we all got along and were singing Kumbaya around the campfire after The Great Hunt.
These are YOUR words. I didn't present "facts." Rather, I shared "evidence," which I kept vague out of respect for the OP. I requested PMs.

Thanks, ref, I'm done.
 
Hello teselef,

My advice is to say to your Significant Other, "Honey, I don't want to practice open/poly at this time. That might change in the future, or it might not. It depends on whether over the course of my studies and ruminations I start to feel better about it. Right now it just makes me feel too awful, even just to think about it." Then check out the following links, films, and books:
And I encourage you to keep reading and posting in general on this forum. Keep asking questions, and voicing concerns, as they arise for you. You will get a variety of answers from quite a few members on this board. If open/poly is something you want to be okay with, don't lose hope and think it's not possible. It just may take some time (and research). Hang in there.

Sincerely,
Kevin T.
 
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