Yesterday I discovered the existence of a tribe in the Chinese Himalayas called “Mosuo”. They are probably one of the only Matriarchal tribes left in the world. What caught my attention most was what they call “Walking Marriages” where the women sleep with partners when they want and with whoever they want. If she becomes pregnant the child is hers. A family is not created around a mother-father union, rather the family is created through the mother line, everyone born from that mother lives with their mother and if the daughters have children the family gets bigger. The men live at home with their mothers the women live at their homes. Everyone is free.
One of the most striking lines from the documentary was “when the love finishes it’s time to move on”. It’s exactly how I’d live. Exactly how I think I’d be if society didn’t force women into certain roles. What would society think if a woman just slept with different partners all her life so that she could feel in love all the time? She would be considered promiscuous. But with the Mosuos it’s just the way it is, it’s the natural evolution of things. The whole goal of the women in that tribe is to feel constantly in love. Isn’t that just amazing?
Society today is based on an antique Patriarchal system where men owned their women, daughters were sold into marriage. Maybe it’s time to start changing things.
To top it all off the tribe doesn’t even have a word for war or conflict.
So the impact of this on me was simply a huge sigh of relief, understanding that what I feel is right for me is actually just part of my nature. I’m not crazy to want to be in love all the time. I’m not crazy to not want a lifelong partner. Serial Monogamy is the ‘technical’ anthropological term. This is how I could definitely live.
Exactly how I think I’d be if society didn’t force women into certain roles.
Victimology at its finest. Everyone if “forced”. We have not choices.
What would society think if a woman just slept with different partners all her life so that she could feel in love all the time?
Feel loved all the time? Quite an adolescent fantasy.
Society today is based on an antique Patriarchal system where men owned their women, daughters were sold into marriage. Maybe it’s time to start changing things.
I suppose the Mosuo system isn’t antique? Did it just pop up recently. Interesting. Things have changed, if you haven’t noticed. Are you a female Rip Van Winkle who’s been asleep for the past 200 years?
I’m not crazy to want to be in love all the time. I’m not crazy to not want a lifelong partner.
No, just crazy.
Wikepedia gives a little different light: The Mosuo men practice tisese which misleadingly translates as walking marriage in Chinese. However, the Mosuo term literally means “goes back and forth.”
Women have the choice to invite men of interest to their private sleeping room. If the man does not reciprocate this desire, he may simply never visit the woman’s household. Men perform tisese in the true sense of the word. They can seek entry into the sleeping chambers of any woman they desire who also desires them. When feelings are reciprocal, a man will be allowed into a woman’s private sleeping area (Hua, C.) There he will spend the night and walk back to his mother’s home in the early morning.
Anthropologist Cai Hua termed tisese as “furtive” or “closed” visiting, meaning no public aknowledgement or obligations are required between parties. At night Mosuo adults are free to experience sexuality with as many or as few partners as they wished.
Though a Mosuo women is allowed to change partners whenever she likes, having only one sexual partner is not uncommon. Typically walking marriages are long term. During these unions a woman may become pregnant by the same man multiple times. But when children are born, they become a responsibility of the woman’s family. Instead of marrying and sharing family life with spouses, adult Mosuo children remain in extended, multigenerational households with their mother and her blood relatives.
Sounds pretty nice to me too. I can have sex with various women. Leave in the morning with no obligation. Can’t be forced to pay child support, etc because the kids re the woman’s responsibility, period. No wife nagging me in the morning. No crying babies. Sounds pretty sweet. I used to fantasize about just such a world where I could go around screwing different women freely.
Sounds pretty nice to me too. I can have sex with various women. Leave in the morning with no obligation. Can’t be forced to pay child support, etc because the kids re the woman’s responsibility, period. No wife nagging me in the morning. No crying babies. Sounds pretty sweet. I used to fantasize about just such a world where I could go around screwing different women freely.
I read a different article about Mosuo recently; sorry I don’t have the source. It said that men are involved in child-rearing and family life – they take on the father-role for their sisters’ children (or cousins presumably if someone doesn’t have a brother). So even if a romantic relationship goes sour, the children’s relationship with their “father” remains constant.
I’m pretty sure that this aspect is mentioned in the Wiki article. I think that the word father to them is somewhat alien… I think they have a word for father but that it’s not seen in the same way. As you point out the “father figure” is actually just a dominant male figure in a child’s life.
I am fascinated by Mosuo and by any society that does the opposite of what most societies have become.
Definitely! It’s entirely fascinating. I’m surprised at how culturally blind I was, I didn’t even know other structures existed.
Yes, I think this mother’s brother role is why the system works. What I mean is, in any community where men as a group aren’t much involved in children’s upbringing and support (whether by being tied to children as father, or as mother’s brother), the kids are going to be losing half their potential support, and won’t fare as well. But I can see where having kids who can count on both mother and uncle could, anthropologically, work perhaps about as well as having kids who can count on both mother and father.
Perhaps even better given the tendency of romantic relationships to break down. On the other hand you don’t get to choose your siblings.
Sounds pretty sweet. I used to fantasize about just such a world where I could go around screwing different women freely.”
Exactly! (And I’m guessing you’re being facetious but I’m not) so why have we ended up with the other end of the ‘antique spectrum’ staying in lifelong relationships?
“No, just crazy.”
Do you honestly think it’s a crazy idea? Wouldn’t you prefer to live at home with mom where she cooks and cleans for you, where you don’t have to deal with anyone telling you that you shouldn’t sleep with Barbie because it’s immoral, even if you have fallen in love with her while you are still in a relationship with your wife? If the love is over, it’s over. Problem is people stay in relationships even if there is no love. Why force a situation just for Society’s sake?
“Victimology at its finest. Everyone if “forced”. We have not choices.”
I don’t think most people in society have much of a choice. If you’re not married or in a long-term relationship people consider you a slut or that there’s ‘something wrong with you’. I think this is especially true for older women.
“I suppose the Mosuo system isn’t antique? Did it just pop up recently. Interesting. Things have changed, if you haven’t noticed. Are you a female Rip Van Winkle who’s been asleep for the past 200 years?”
No, you’re right, things have changed. But I still see a huge importance being set upon the “long-term” relationship and the Western idea of “family” with a father a mother and children. Are single mothers considered well in western society? I personally think they tend to border on the edge of things. And yes it is an antique system just as patriarchy is, my bad. What I meant to convey was that it would be interesting to try to bring more of this reasoning into modern day: taking antique teachings and using them in modern context.
“Feel loved all the time? Quite an adolescent fantasy.”
I honestly don’t think it is adolescent. I can see why you might see it that way though. I really, honestly think it’s part of human nature to fall in and out of love. Are you married? Do you still love your wife as passionately as you did when you met her? Be honest with yourself. If you don’t, then why stay in the relationship, for the kids, for society? I’m not talking just about loving a person. It’s normal to feel love towards your wife. I’m talking the same intensity and feelings you had at the beginning of the relationship.
Wouldn’t you prefer to live at home with mom where she cooks and cleans for you,>/em>
I think that’s unfairly infantilizing of men. Also, I doubt it is an accurate characterization of happens in multi-generational Mosuon households.
True. It was a low blow on my part…. but to be honest, where I live (Italy) most men would jump at the opportunity to live with mom. Let’s say I got carried away on this one ;) I must have been sore from the “crazy” remark…
My husband definitely wouldn’t have preferred living at home with mom to living with me :-). Even though his mother cleaned way better than I do.
It’s funny even how within the Western world there are such huge differences between family life. In North America children tend to want to get away from home and become independent as soon as they can whereas Italians tend to cling to their parents, even well into their 30s. If a man divorces from his wife he’ll generally go back to mom.
Sounds pretty sweet. I used to fantasize about just such a world where I could go around screwing different women freely.”
No, I’m serious. I used to have this fantasy. Maybe I was inspired by this song.
It’s knowing that your door is always open
and your path is free to walk
That makes me tend to leave my
sleeping bag rolled up and stashed
behind your couch
And it’s knowing I’m not shackled by
forgotten words and bonds
And the ink stains that have
dried upon some line
That keeps you in the backroads
by the rivers of my memory
That keeps you ever gentle on my mind
Crazy’s strong word, I guess, but I truly wonder about your expectations in relationships, not that serial monogamy is completely bad. I’ve practiced it a little myself and my kids seem to be dong quite well. Our extended life spans, including the huge drop of women dying giving birht, make long term relationships extremely long term. My great great (great?) grandfather lived to by 113 and had 4 wives, but at least two died in child birth.
If you’re not married or in a long-term relationship people consider you a slut or that there’s ‘something wrong with you’. I think this is especially true for older women.
Obviously, some people do. Any person, male or female, I know that has multiple sex partners over short periods of time, I consider to have a psychological problem. “Slut” rarely comes into the equation although I think the term is used regarding young women more than older. My older sister married for the 3rd time 3 years ago. She wasn’t married for several years. I doubt anyone thought of her as a slut, just difficult to get along with.
I’m just not big on “feeling” loved. I like feeling loved. But, I find this a little hard to describe, I love that actions that go with loving, the work of maintaining a partner ship, of working together towards a common goal and reaching compromises where necessary. For me, the work that goes into truly loving makes much more of a difference than the feeling and makes the feeling deeper and stronger.
Lastly, while far from perfect, Western society has contributed an enormous amount to the world, medical advances, technology of other sorts, music (I like Mozart and Beethoven more than any music I’ve heard from any other culture), art, etc. When you start complaining about the “Patriarchal system”, you sound like a man-hater. We didn’t have any more choice to be born at this time and place than you. Most of us are just doing the best we can.
“When you start complaining about the “Patriarchal system”, you sound like a man-hater.”
Do you really think that complaining about a Patriarchal system means that I’m a man hater? Especially when I say that I’d feel better having more than one relationship with men? that’s a bit contradictory. I love men, I love everything about men. I just don’t totally agree with marriage and family in a world that is based on a patriarchal system, where marriage comes from an archaic system that didn’t make sense. Why continue with that system when, quite honestly, I don’t see how much it makes sense even now. I never said that those who want long-term relationships and are capable of maintaining them are wrong. I was simply trying to state that I feel better about my own feelings and my own tendency to look outside my long-term relationship, as well as point out that Western society as a whole has got HUGE expectations on individuals and how they carry out their relationships. Just because the word “Patriarchal” has the word father in it doesn’t mean you have to take it personally. I have nothing against men.
Your older sister story has little to do with this topic as far as I can tell. Was it her choice to leave the marriages? Or was it the men leaving her because she was hard to get along with? Was it her choice to live without a long-term relationship? Because THAT is what I’m trying to get at. Not someone who is actually difficult to live with. I’m talking about how people perceive others who make specific choices to have a series of partners.
You’re not big on feeling loved. I guess that’s your choice. People are different and men and women are different. Ask your wife what her views are. I agree it can be fulfilling to reach goals together, have children, raise them together and create a family. But I don’t think that it is enough in life. I think the average person will always hunger for the passion and the love. However, maybe my mind will change once/if I have children…. it’s unlikely though because I’m pretty sure that my mother came to the same conclusion in her diaries before she passed away.
Why bring up music and medicine? I have nothing against the advancement of Western society. We have all benefited from it in some way or other. I never put that into discussion.
“When you start complaining about the “Patriarchal system”, you sound like a man-hater.”
Do you really think that complaining about a Patriarchal system means that I’m a man hater?
I think part of the problem is that when men-people hear the word Patriarchy it makes them immediately defensive, justly so as it doesn’t accurately describe the society we now live in (although, that’s not what Candegina said. She said, “based on an antique Patriarchal system” which I think is accurate.)
I like this definition of Patriarchy: “Somewhat outdated term for the system of gendered oppression in society that defines gender roles and punishes those who fail to conform. Referring to the male-dominated nature of society when it was coined, it has since been criticized for implying a unidirectional oppression that fails to accurately describe the complex nature of the problem.”
I am trying to use Kyriarchy in its place:
“Somewhat newer term for the system of interlocking oppressions, both gendered and otherwise, in society. It is intended to acknowledge that different forms of oppression interact in a wide and complex system of interactions, in which a person can simultaneously be privileged in some dimensions and oppressed in others. Sometimes abbreviated as “the system of everyone oppressing everyone.”
So I can experience disadvantages because of being female, but have to acknowledge that I experience many other advantages by being white, hetero, able-bodied and attractive (I suppose that last one’s up for debate). Kyriarchy also better encompasses the idea that any gender stereotype creates damaging stereotypes for both sides.
I know I’m off topic a little here. Basically what I’m saying is that being against the Patriarchy is so 20th century. It’s 2012 baby. We can all fight the Kyriarchy together.
I believe that what you ladies will find is that patriarchal systems have survived as dominant today because they have been most successful at killing off all other systems not stronger or equally strong.
A tribe is as strong as the biological hormones which animate its values and thus direct it. When tribes can create themselves around values greater than life itself (what it means to sacrifice self and family for country), they have an advantage over tribes which cling to life as their highest value.
However, ongoing history shows us that cultures evolve into entities driven by values far removed from their immediate roots in testosterone and estrogen, often neutralizing or rendering obsolescent those prior biologically based values in the process, as well as the prior, underlying motive biologies themselves.
In such more historically advanced or contemporary values cultures it is entirely possible to imagine cultures organized around values mandating the incorporation of all humans into one common, maternally loved whole, where their existence and their incorporation into the whole become an indistinguishable common value, where the maternal loving emanates not from some selected individual but from the incorporating system itself, and where interference from dissenters within or without is dealt with, not through atavistic, hormone-rooted biological urges, but by the post-biological, all-embracing, all-loving system itself.
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria
It is easy to imagine peaceful societies that “cling to life as their highest value” flourishing throughout the world if the world’s resources were evenly distributed. But throw in a famine and the war-mongering aspects of our humanity take over.
My good Sara,
Not only is life unfair in a universe of resources unfairly distributed, life clearly thrives on ever-advancing instabilities – “unfairnesses” – within itself as a means of ultimately achieving more advanced control over alternatives to itself (not being alive), the case of the introduction of the relatively far more frail biological innovation we know as maleness (alas, yes, we males are genetically the weaker, more unstable, more genetically dependent sex) and the resulting advance of sexuality over parthenogenesis as a case in point.
On the one hand, the Mosuo might very well be a superior place for those inclined to its mores to find the type of love it proves superior in offering.
On the other hand, the 20th+ Century West (and as opposed to less dialectically libertarian patriarchies such as tribal Afghanistan, or even Saudi Arabia) might very well be a superior place from which to deflect the next planet killing asteroid – notwithstanding that we must always take care to practice good gun safety and not extinguish ourselves in the meantime.
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria
Some of these thoughts have crossed my mind. Especially those regarding why Patriarchal systems dominated over the Matriarchal ones, as H.M. states it is purely that the Patriarchal systems were generally more violent and the Matriarchal non violent systems just didn’t fight back when attacked or threatened.
Sarah: I wonder whether the war-mongering aspects of civilization would have ever been present if the history of humanity had evolved differently. Evenly distributed resources is a problem but not one that can’t be overcome if there isn’t greed.
One of my most persistent thoughts, on the other hand, is the internal workings of the gossip factor and jealousy internal to the Mosuo system. I wonder how much talking goes on. I wonder if anyone has lived with them for a time to understand the inner workings of the culture. I haven’t done any research into it, but I honestly find it fascinating. If no-one has lived with them for a year or two I would definitely offer my services to do a little research. I would give anything to abandon everything to go live with them.
One of my most persistent thoughts, on the other hand, is the internal workings of the gossip factor and jealousy internal to the Mosuo system.
Candegina -
This made me laugh.
I don’t want to enforce stereotypes, but… I will anyway… as I’ve said work in a male-heavy industry, but have occasionally worked in the wardrobe department which is exclusively female (plus the occasional gay guy). God save me! I always run back to the male side of the building thanking my lucky stars. Pick-a-little-talk-a-little-pick-a-little-talk-a-little-cheep-cheep-cheep. Everything is a fucking discussion and I have to spend half my energy avoiding the potluck dinner and group sewing project. The ideal work environment and government involves a combination of women and men.
Sara -
“I don’t want to enforce stereotypes, but… I will anyway…” is just too funny.
I have to admit that over the years, at least here in Italy, I have realized that men are just as terrible with gossip as women are. I live in a condo where there are two or three men who barely work, they spend a lot of time hanging around the building and they are such little gossipers about who is doing what and with who.
I’m ALL with you on the Kyriarchy front then! Where do we start? lol
It’s all so very complicated. Gender oppression and advantages and the definition of Patriarchy is a bit beyond what I was trying to communicate but totally valid for the points that have been brought up during the following discussions. I wasn’t really expecting this to become a huge debate. But Bring it on!
Kyriarchy is hilarious is so many ways. Making everybody oppressed is funny and ridiculous in so many ways, good and bad.
There have been so many criticisms over the past 50 years of the patriarchal system and old white men mostly by feminists and their Uncle Tims , that whenever I hear it brought up I immediately think man hater. More specifically, hater of masculine men, as opposed to metrosexuals.
Personally, I don’t see all the “oppression” others seem to see so much of. Every society needs people to fill all the various roles that make a society successful. Never before in history have people been able to move from one role to another as readily as then can today in our society. I’ve seen people the argue for acceptance of homosexuality due to that it can be found in nature. (I saw this on some TV show years ago and it showed sea gulls on a beach just being sea gulls.) But, undoubtedly, you can find animals performing apparent homosexual acts (and little dogs humping legs).
In nature you also find hierarchical systems be it bears, wolves, deer, chickens (pecking order has real meaning in the hen house), dogs, bees, etc. Humans aren’t immune from this. We got to this point via evolution. I find it funny that people that readily ridicule those who doubt evolution often complain about the outcome of evolution and its present state. (Not saying you’re one of these. I don’t know.) Keep evolving and quit complaining. Remember, evolution is a constructive process. It always builds something stronger. If you don’t like where it’s at, make something better and stronger. But, you bettter be damn sure, because, if you’re wrong, you and those with you are not among the fittest that will survive.
Cande, have you given “The Ethical Slut” a read?
John E., Nope but I’ll definitely look into it. Someone mentioned another book to me called “Sex at Dawn”. It also looks very interesting.
I haven’t read it yet, but Sex at Dawn is on my list. They were all checked out at the library.
Re: One of the most striking lines from the documentary was “when the love finishes it’s time to move on”.
What a depressing commentary on the values of our time. Yes, relationships fail, and that’s an unfortunate feature of our world, but it’s certainly not something to be celebrated. The ideal should be lifelong, permanent monogamy. When a relationship ends it’s to be mourned as a failure to love, not to be embraced as an expression of freedom.
I am not a supporter of traditional Catholic/Orthodox sexual teachings, necessarily, and I think the sexual revolution had much good as well as some ill. But one thing the church was write about: ‘free love’ is a contradiction in terms. The one thing love isn’t, is free. On the contrast, love means surrendering one’s freedom to the will of the beloved.
Hector, if I might inquire – have you ever experienced a multi-year intimate sexual relationship that ended in a breakup?
The emotions most folks feel at that time are complicated mixes.
Hector, Why is the “ideal relationship” lifelong?? I don’t think we’re hardwired for it. Why go against nature? And I don’t understand why love shouldn’t be free. Why should love mean surrendering your freedom? That sounds like slavery to me.
These are the things I refer to. These are exactly what the “patriarchal” or “Kyriarchal” (whichever you’d like to use) systems are built upon. I think it’s time to start seeing things from a different angle.
Allow me to offer myself as a guinea pig for both Cande and Hector to test their values theories upon since I seem to slop over into both camps. I am hardly unique, though, I am simply unable to summon any of my peers to post what would undoubtedly be their virtually identical experiences.
From my mid teens to my early twenties I had sexual relationships, almost always romantic, with somewhere between forty and fifty women; more than a few involved extended relationships, including cohabitation over many months.
And then I met and several years later married Madame Stuart, with whom I recently celebrated our thirty-fourth faithfully monogamous wedding anniversary. Within our marriage love has been most akin to a musical arpeggio – is that the right term? – or to a mockingbird’s song, rising, falling, slowing, speeding, never ending, always different.
To be sure, my relationship is humanistic: Madame Stuart is the Archimedean point with respect to whom I measure gods and universes, not vice versa.
But in my life, and I am not really that old, really, I seem to have partaken of both visions: a celebration of many women who ultimately proved to be not quite right for me nor me for them, and a lifetime mate.
Sometimes it may be that one’s perspectives can be as much as anything a function of the scope of one’s horizons; and, interestingly enough, if I am not terribly mistaken, I believe both good Cande’s and good Hector’s horizon’s to be relatively on a par. I would be immensely interested in the evolving perspectives of each as their respective horizons of life experience grow necessarily ever larger.
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria
I’m not sure we need a guinea pig. Although your life experiences are perfect for consideration as would be anyone else’s, I think the matter at hand is simply one of understanding other people’s needs and instincts rather than “deciding” what is a better value. I think that most people in society today go through anywhere from none to many partners before settling down with one and there is nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is that Western civilization tends to EXPECT that behavior when I think that it is also in our nature to change partners more than society lets us. Perhaps I am speaking only for some of us, but most likely more of us than we’re willing to admit.
I would rather ask any readers to do a little survey: ask your partners, sisters, brothers, friends, married or not, what their preference would be if they had the freedom. If they lived with the musuos would they settle with one or would they instinctually have more than one partner. In other words, does the love and especially passion finish in a long term relationship?
Problem with this little game is that people have been conditioned to think that a “lifelong” partner is “ideal” just as Hector states, therefore it is unlikely that doing otherwise will cross their minds and if it does they are unlikely to admit it because adultery is taboo.
The other fact that Hector states about surrendering your freedom for love sounds very much like a fairy tale to me. This is where (especially) women are taught to wait for prince charming or, vice versa, men are told to save the princess and that the two are “made for each other” or “soul mates” and live happily ever after. I am absolutely convinced that it is rare for someone to find their “soul mate”. I think that fairy tales are destructive stories told to children and while they may teach some important values they also teach little girls to expect perfect men as their saviors. Perfect men do not exist and I think many women have unreasonably high expectations of who they will marry or settle down with.
What is wrong is that Western civilization tends to EXPECT that behavior when I think that it is also in our nature to change partners more than society lets us.
My good Cande,
My own perception is that norms become norms because that is what most people do – until most people do something else.
In this day and age is it Western Civilization which is preventing you from doing whatever you wish, or is it something or someone else – including you?
Certainly the mass approval of others thinking and behaving just like you (at any given time) – let us dub that Cande Civilization – might very well make it much easier emotionally or psychologically to pursue whatever paths in life you choose, but then by that very same token Cande Civilization would end up just as much alienating those not naturally conforming to its norms as you now appear to find yourself alienated from the ostensible norms of Western Civilization.
The point of my problematically-related autobiographical revelation above is that the progress of one’s life may very well reveal it to be not at all necessarily an either/or, but rather just as easily a both/and, and to carry that further, I could also just as easily have been a divorced or widowed woman reciting a timeline precisely the opposite of mine. There are millions of such women currently afoot.
Finally, why do you say above (February 18, 2012 at 7:34 pm) “I would give anything to abandon everything to go live with them.”?
Why not, instead, abandon everything except doing precisely what you in fact want to do, whether it be serial relationships, long term monogamy, or any combination thereof? Why instead this tangential quest to have others give your life choices an imprimatur of proprietary you have yet to decide to bestow upon them yourself?
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria
I don’t think that civilization is where it is today because people did what they wanted and that’s it. I think that people spoke out for what they wanted, fought for it and have done very verbal and public things to support what they want. Gay relationships have been around since the dawn of civilization but only when people started publicly “fighting” for the right to have gay relationships did it become socially acceptable, and this is just one example of many.
I could in effect certainly do what I wish. I could break off my 14 year relationship (as I have tried to do) and have a series of monogamous relations, but that would not change the fact that it would not be totally socially accepted or the fact that I’ve been conditioned to want a long term relationship with marriage, a fabulous wedding dress, a diamond ring and the whole nine yards.
The point of my problematically-related autobiographical revelation above is that the progress of one’s life may very well reveal it to be not at all necessarily an either/or, but rather just as easily a both/and, and to carry that further, I could also just as easily have been a divorced or widowed woman reciting a timeline precisely the opposite of mine. There are millions of such women currently afoot.
You’re absolutely right you could have been anyone, and that was exactly my point as well. A guinea pig in the debate was rather useless, but I’m guessing that this was exactly your point and I may have misinterpreted your intervention.
About my statement of wanting to go live with the Mosuos: The statement was purely related to understanding their culture better especially in terms of the internal workings of the gossip and talk if any in these villages. As well as my underlying joke/non-joke about wanting this lifestyle.
Why instead this tangential quest to have others give your life choices an imprimatur of proprietary you have yet to decide to bestow upon them yourself?
Although I don’t understand what “an imprimatur of proprietary” means here (I fail to find the noun) I think I have understood the gist. I feel that I should, let’s say in simple comprehensible English, inform and awaken people. I found the Mosuo system a revelation, of sorts, and the spread of this information may possibly be useful for those who find themselves feeling socially contradictory as I have felt for years. The more people understand their instincts and stop hating themselves for feeling attracted to others while in a long-term relationship, the more may in fact “do as they want”, and therefore society may start to change views on such behavior.
Good grief almighty, this is timely and coincidental to your explorations:
http://www.kera.org/2012/02/22/the-monogamy-gap/
A downloadable podcast will be available some time after the segment concludes.
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria
Looks interesting. I will keep an eye on that upcoming podcast. I think that many people are coming to my same conclusions. I have already been suggested two books on the topic. I haven’t, however, done any web research on the topic. Perhaps I should.
Although I don’t understand what “an imprimatur of proprietary” means here
My mistake. I intended to type “propriety”, and as soon as you become the first, not the last, to decide that what you claim you want is right and proper and so start actually living it, perhaps others will follow your example. This is how new norms come to replace old norms.
Eric Anderson in the KERA link I recommend you download seems to feel exactly as you do, albeit from a male perspective of having a relationship with additional sex at will on the side, and he apparently also (I picked up the segment 20 minutes in) purports to back his proposal – that faithful monogamy is now a provable historical failure – up with a great deal of sociological research.
Because everything he proposes – in effect, open marriage – is now already perfectly available and legal, all he seems to lack (which absence forms the whole of his complaint) is other people telling him and those with similar interests that it is okay for him to proceed.
Whoever you enjoy your life with, good Cande, let us hope it is with individuals with at least that minimal level of personal courage of his own convictions Mr. Anderson, or at least his thesis, clearly seems to lack.
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria
My mistake. I intended to type “propriety”, and as soon as you become the first, not the last, to decide that what you claim you want is right and proper and so start actually living it, perhaps others will follow your example. This is how new norms come to replace old norms.
Indeed this is very true. I agree wholeheartedly. This doesn’t, however, make it easy to do. But I will definitely try.
As for Eric Anderson, I have only know what was on the link you sent and what you have written here. I admire his wanting to publicize and inform as I have done here, but his style of marriage is not my own. Having a long-term relationship with “sex on the side” is not my final goal. But it is another “open” point of view that I consider useful in the “fight for new views on relationships”.
Unfortunately I again have difficulty understanding your last sentence:
Whoever you enjoy your life with, good Cande, let us hope it is with individuals with at least that minimal level of personal courage of his own convictions Mr. Anderson, or alt least his thesis, clearly seems to lack.
I’m afraid I’ve lost what “seems to lack”, and therefore can’t be sure if I should be grateful or not for this last phrase. The only thing I can guess at is that you are wishing that I enjoy my life with individuals with some sort of personal courage.
Whoever you enjoy your life with, good Cande, let us hope it is with individuals with at least that minimal level of personal courage of their own convictions not to first require the approval of others or of society at large before proceeding with and then sticking with their relationship with you, whatever that relationship turns out to be.
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria
Thank you for the clarification, and for the wishes and I wish the same for you.