Harems and Monogamy as Damage Control (not sordid, honest)

Hey guys,

I would not normally ask this sort of question on a car forum, but you guys are generally really smart and this requires brain power.

I'm writing the next novel and it's going to be heavy on issues of feminity and masculinity. I'm especially interested in how these roles function in different social classes.

So I was listening to a really fun podcast about the history of China and it dawned on me that, no matter how terrible the emperor or dukes were, no matter how sick or fat or psychotic, they always had a harem of beautiful young ladies competing (often ruthlessly) for their attention.

I then read the ethics of Confucius and saw that, just like in most of the West, monogamy was the prescription for men UNLESS they could afford to support a harem.

So, here's something I'm playing with for the book - what if the harem is preferable to those women because it represents greater security, prosperity and opportunity than being the one and only love of farmer Bob?

If this is true, it begs the question of why most women didn't end up in harems?

The search for this answer leads me to ISIS, inner cities and modern China. These societies have violence problems, unstable institutions and general unrest. They also have a surplus of unmarried men.

This makes me wonder if monogamous marriage isn't, structurally, a form of damage control. Damage control for women in the sense that each lower class man can only ruin the prospects of one woman and damage control for society in the sense that it prevents the instability endemic to areas with lots of single men.

Am I full of it? Is this at least interesting enough to explore in a book? Any things I'm missing?

Institutional monogamy can help strengthen your fighting force, particularly if you want to engage in imperialism. It often promotes social cohesion for a larger population.

It is a strong motivator to get common men to be willing to fight for honor, treasure, and status if they know they'll be able to marry. If a powerful warlord keeps most of the women to himself and maybe his highest ranking officers, why would Farmer Bob's son want to join up with him? He's going to side with the ruler who guarantees there will be a wife available for every man who follows him; so that ruler gets more men who can fight wars and pay taxes to fund them.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/darwin-eternity/201109/why-we-think-monogamy-is-normal

Interesting topic. I suspect that the 10s of old (given their relative lack of political power) recognized that being the voice behind the throne was their surest way to power. If that meant competing amongst the harem members to be the best then that's what it took.

The less attractive/connected women were steered toward a life of monogamy (breeding stock for the civilization).

Beer Baron wrote: Institutional monogamy can help strengthen your fighting force, particularly if you want to engage in imperialism. It often promotes social cohesion for a larger population. It is a strong motivator to get common men to be willing to fight for honor, treasure, and status if they know they'll be able to marry. If a powerful warlord keeps most of the women to himself and maybe his highest ranking officers, why would Farmer Bob's son want to join up with him? He's going to side with the ruler who guarantees there will be a wife available for every man who follows him; so that ruler gets more men who can fight wars and pay taxes to fund them. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/darwin-eternity/201109/why-we-think-monogamy-is-normal

Very interesting point. It seems like this would also be a good way to tamp down that pesky social mobility, especially for women.

There is a biological drive in women to seek shelter and provisions from the male. This drive pushes women to (unknowingly) pursue men for reasons of survival with little regard for how 'nice' the man may actually be. This results in women being attracted to the Bad Boy (strong, good breeding stock, good provider) while the Nice Guy is bewildered why she hasn't chosen him (weaker, less physically attractive, less likely to provide for her and protect her offspring when bad stuff goes down). These are biological imperatives, programming received at our core of being animals of a sort. Knowing about this doesn't allow you to accept the Disney fantasy of marriage and interaction with the opposite sex. It also makes most religions difficult to accept (humans being made in God's image vs just an evolved animal) despite what the various holy books preach (women are to be led by men because they are the weaker sex).

Its a fascinating subject should you choose to delve into it but will lead you to the Red Pill world and the manosphere. I recommend the book The Rational Male as an introduction to what drives women. I think if you understand the drive (watch what they do, not what they say) you'll be able to generate an accurate depiction in your book.

Those who deny the biological pull programmed into the sexes will scream "Misogynist!" but like political extremes that is only a fringe of any group who believe something outside the accepted norm.

Can I read your book when it comes out?

ddavidv wrote: (women are to be led by men because they are the weaker sex).

Though practiced frequently, this is a poor summary of gender roles as they are presented in Christianity and the Bible. People who believe this and pursue this lack understanding of their own faith.

In reply to DaewooOfDeath:

I was raised by a liberal (militant) feminist, married a "liberated" girl who later grew into a rather conservative woman. I have swung through many points on the scale for a long time.

My perspectives on the subject were quite black and white when I was young, but are now much more nuanced. I now find myself an advocate of women, but also pretty convinced that what our society pushes on them as "freedom" or "rights" are not in their best interests- in fact it subjugates them more.

Let me think a bit and see if I can give you better feedback.

Interesting subject.

In reply to ddavidv:

The Rational Male. Well, there's another book I need to read... and maybe I'll figure out women before I die.

In reply to ddavidv:

Well, mate selection is a balancing act. A female wants a partner who will provide strong, healthy babies. But it is also highly advantageous to have a partner that will invest time and attention to raising that child.

The uber alpha guy may produce the strongest offspring, but will he stick around to raise them? The sensitive guy will stick around, but will he stick too close to home and not take enough risks to get big food?

It's a balancing game. Often the best bet is to be the only wife of a second or third rung guy. Someone who is not the very best provider, but solid, and will devote all his resources to you and your children.

DaewooOfDeath wrote: Hey guys, I would not normally ask this sort of question on a car forum, but you guys are generally really smart and this requires brain power. I'm writing the next novel and it's going to be heavy on issues of feminity and masculinity. I'm especially interested in how these roles function in different social classes. So I was listening to a really fun podcast about the history of China and it dawned on me that, no matter how terrible the emperor or dukes were, no matter how sick or fat or psychotic, they always had a harem of beautiful young ladies competing (often ruthlessly) for their attention. I then read the ethics of Confucius and saw that, just like in most of the West, monogamy was the prescription for men UNLESS they could afford to support a harem. So, here's something I'm playing with for the book - what if the harem is preferable to those women because it represents greater security, prosperity and opportunity than being the one and only love of farmer Bob? If this is true, it begs the question of why most women didn't end up in harems? The search for this answer leads me to ISIS, inner cities and modern China. These societies have violence problems, unstable institutions and general unrest. They also have a surplus of unmarried men. This makes me wonder if monogamous marriage isn't, structurally, a form of damage control. Damage control for women in the sense that each lower class man can only ruin the prospects of one woman and damage control for society in the sense that it prevents the instability endemic to areas with lots of single men. Am I full of it? Is this at least interesting enough to explore in a book? Any things I'm missing?

You are channeling Mr Heinlein. I assume you have read "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress?

DaewooOfDeath wrote: Very interesting point. It seems like this would also be a good way to tamp down that pesky social mobility, especially for women.

Sort of... not really.

Alpha men (especially ones in more tribal, hazardous society) don't really care about the "social mobility" of women one way or the other. They are not competing against women. They are competing for women. They are perfectly happy to marry a gorgeous (aka fertile and high value) woman from the lower class. It's only fairly recently that men have been bothered because they now have to compete against women in the workplace. That's why the most capable men tend not to be bothered by women, but the ones whose position is weaker tend to be the ones to throw around sexist rhetoric as a way to maybe protect their status.

Institutional monogamy means that men in power are more secure in that power. They are at less risk of being overthrown by the people right below them. Men want mates. If the leader has all the mates, the only way for anyone else to have any, is to defeat him and take his place. This sets up leadership as high-risk, high-reward.

If a leader institutionalizes monogamy and only has one wife (never mind all the mistresses) people aren't going to try to kill him just to get his one wife. Similarly, your working class is happier. They have wives.

Men do not need to leave the tribe or fight within the tribe in order to get wives. They can compete to figure out who gets the best pick, but it doesn't need to be lethal. This means you have more warriors.

Sure, another tribe can come by and attack to try to capture women, but they're likely to lose, because they've thinned out their own ranks. After they're rebuffed and weakened, the leader of the strong, monogamous tribe can roll in with his stronger military and say "You are now my subjects. You will pay me taxes and be willing to fight for me. BUT, you all get to have a wife." The leader and his generals do not get any extra wives, but they may end up with some more mistresses.

KyAllroad wrote: Interesting topic. I suspect that the 10s of old

The what?

This is the second time I've heard this used in a context other than numbers, and the first was the title of a Pantera song so I paid it little attention.

Humans are tribal/pack animals with the constant competition for position within the tribe or in creating a tribe and competing between tribes for, well, whatever, food, resources, a bigger gene pool... Marriage has historically been a mechanism for consolidating, transferring or unifying power or resources. The monogamy thing helps keep that order (no pesky, errant heirs showing up).

I can't say that I follow the lines of logic for this books premise but since you mention China, I think there is something worth mentioning.

I am paraphrasing a story that I heard on NPR Radio some time ago.
In China, Homosexuality is on the rampant rise. Less so out of "choice" and more so out of "necessity" or really lack of other options.
The story went on to highlight the Chinese policy of "one child". Because of this, the culture saw a Male Child as the desirable option, often aborting females. What that has left is a culture that is disproportionately male. The surprise now is that females "of the marrying age" are in short supply. As such, if you are the father of a female, the dowry expected for your daughter's hand in marriage is quite high.
If you are a poor, village male, prospects to get your kicks with another female are almost nonexistent. So, like prison, the males are turning to other males because the kicks must be gotten on way or another.

I could not find the exact article but google did bring up these similar quotes:
As a result, approximately 30 million more men than women will reach adulthood and enter China's mating market by 2020.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/14/opinion/china-challenges-one-child-brooks/

"The gender ratio at birth is still dangerously high, with 115.88 boys born to every 100 girls in 2014," the official Xinhua news agency reported. The figures compare with a global average of 103 to 107 boys to every 100 girls.

...peaked in 2004 at 121.18 males (to 100 girls), and fell to 115.8 in 2014.

http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/gender-01222015125826.html

In reply to JohnRW1621:

Wonder if that evens out a bit with a higher mortality rate for young males?

In reply to oldtin:

China could stand a significant ground war to help increase the male mortality rate.
Scary thoughts once you realize that they have significant amounts of male lives to spare which actually could be for the good of the society as a whole???

JohnRW1621 wrote: In reply to oldtin: China could stand a significant ground war to help increase the male mortality rate. Scary thoughts once you realize that they have significant amounts of male lives to spare which actually could be for the good of the society as a whole???

Sort of explains their foreign policy.

The number of territorial disputes are ... extensive.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/china/territorial-disputes/index.html

Beer Baron wrote:

DaewooOfDeath wrote: Very interesting point. It seems like this would also be a good way to tamp down that pesky social mobility, especially for women.

Sort of... not really. Alpha men (especially ones in more tribal, hazardous society) don't really care about the "social mobility" of women one way or the other. They are not competing against women. They are competing *for* women. They are perfectly happy to marry a gorgeous (aka fertile and high value) woman from the lower class. It's only fairly recently that men have been bothered because they now have to compete *against* women in the workplace. That's why the most capable men tend not to be bothered by women, but the ones whose position is weaker tend to be the ones to throw around sexist rhetoric as a way to maybe protect their status. Institutional monogamy means that men in power are more secure in that power. They are at less risk of being overthrown by the people right below them. Men want mates. If the leader has all the mates, the only way for anyone else to have any, is to defeat him and take his place. This sets up leadership as high-risk, high-reward. If a leader institutionalizes monogamy and only has one wife (never mind all the mistresses) people aren't going to try to kill him just to get his one wife. Similarly, your working class is happier. They have wives. Men do not need to leave the tribe or fight within the tribe in order to get wives. They can compete to figure out who gets the best pick, but it doesn't need to be lethal. This means you have more warriors. Sure, another tribe can come by and attack to try to capture women, but they're likely to lose, because they've thinned out their own ranks. After they're rebuffed and weakened, the leader of the strong, monogamous tribe can roll in with his stronger military and say "You are now my subjects. You will pay me taxes and be willing to fight for me. BUT, you all get to have a wife." The leader and his generals do not get any extra wives, but they may end up with some more mistresses.

I was thinking more in the context of medieval or iron age societies. I'm doing entirely too much reading on ancient China right now and it's getting into everything ...

What I was thinking is that if the King can have 100 wives, that is, from the woman's perspective, 100 extra opportunities to be rich, potentially influential and to upgrade your descendants to royalty. From the poor man's perspective, you're absolutely right, this is 100 extra reasons to join the next kingdom over. From the king's perspectives, this is 99 extra heirs (and however many kids) to dilute your household power AND an opportunity for lower class people to achieve social standing.

So, monogamous marriage could be, in this context anyway, a way to take power away from socially mobile women and give it to poor men. Your point on the lower class men being happier is well taken, btw. I think it might also explain why the societies that often produce polygamy are also usually the sorts of societies where the average male's life expectancy is pretty low. Ghengis Khan, for example, probably didn't need to steal anybody's wife since the nature of his culture and the progress of his wars ensured there would always be a surplus of women.

Thanks very much for the feedback, by the way. This is giving me all sorts of ideas.

NOHOME wrote:

DaewooOfDeath wrote: Hey guys, I would not normally ask this sort of question on a car forum, but you guys are generally really smart and this requires brain power. I'm writing the next novel and it's going to be heavy on issues of feminity and masculinity. I'm especially interested in how these roles function in different social classes. So I was listening to a really fun podcast about the history of China and it dawned on me that, no matter how terrible the emperor or dukes were, no matter how sick or fat or psychotic, they always had a harem of beautiful young ladies competing (often ruthlessly) for their attention. I then read the ethics of Confucius and saw that, just like in most of the West, monogamy was the prescription for men UNLESS they could afford to support a harem. So, here's something I'm playing with for the book - what if the harem is preferable to those women because it represents greater security, prosperity and opportunity than being the one and only love of farmer Bob? If this is true, it begs the question of why most women didn't end up in harems? The search for this answer leads me to ISIS, inner cities and modern China. These societies have violence problems, unstable institutions and general unrest. They also have a surplus of unmarried men. This makes me wonder if monogamous marriage isn't, structurally, a form of damage control. Damage control for women in the sense that each lower class man can only ruin the prospects of one woman and damage control for society in the sense that it prevents the instability endemic to areas with lots of single men. Am I full of it? Is this at least interesting enough to explore in a book? Any things I'm missing?

You are channeling Mr Heinlein. I assume you have read "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress?

I've actually never read any Heinlein. Perhaps I should.

SVreX wrote: In reply to DaewooOfDeath: Can I read your book when it comes out? ... I was raised by a liberal (militant) feminist, married a "liberated" girl who later grew into a rather conservative woman. I have swung through many points on the scale for a long time. My perspectives on the subject were quite black and white when I was young, but are now much more nuanced. I now find myself an advocate of women, but also pretty convinced that what our society pushes on them as "freedom" or "rights" are not in their best interests- in fact it subjugates them more. Let me think a bit and see if I can give you better feedback. Interesting subject.

You can absolutely read my book. Hahaha, but it might be a while. This one is shaping up to be 700 pages long and I'm only about 10% there.

The older books are done though. The Blackguard is a thriller about a group of white supremacists getting run over by urban sprawl and . That one's been published.

I've got two others that are being edited/prepped at the publisher. One's a historical fiction about Joshua (Moses' successor) being a very nice man but leading a genocide against the pagans anyway. The other is about two dudes traveling the world trying to take revenge on a deity who made fun of their patriotic symbols.

So yeah, race, religion and nationalism. Next project is gender relations.

In reply to DaewooOfDeath:

Keep in mind that a Harem is not necessarily the same thing as wives. If a king has too many wives, he dilutes his power to use marriage to cement alliances. Are the women in the Harem wives or concubines? Generally the children a concubine bears aren't legitimate heirs with any claim to the throne, title, or inheritance. Daughters generally have little to no claim anyway. Sons will probably just get fast tracked to the clergy or decent positions in the military.

What could be interesting is if you have a king whose legitimate wife only bears daughters, but one or two concubines in a harem have sons.

In reply to ddavidv:

I'll have to read that book. I can definitely see your point, though. Have you ever heard of the Dark Triad?

One of the things that I've done, and I've seen a lot of my male friends do, is initially present to a woman as a moderate shiny happy person. Imply you might impregnate her and then run away to Venezuela, make her get the door, be generally arrogant. Then of course stress all the dangerous and "bad" things you like to do.

This creates attraction and then once the attraction sets in, I drop the act and go bad to being nice for the sake of domestic tranquility. Funny thing is, you can even explain what you're doing as you're doing it ...

In the terms your describing, it sounds like we were being "bad boys" for the sake of getting laid and then being "nice guys" once the getting laid part was taken care of.

Beer Baron wrote: In reply to DaewooOfDeath: Keep in mind that a Harem is not necessarily the same thing as wives. If a king has too many wives, he dilutes his power to use marriage to cement alliances. Are the women in the Harem wives or concubines? Generally the children a concubine bears aren't legitimate heirs with any claim to the throne, title, or inheritance. Daughters generally have little to no claim anyway. Sons will probably just get fast tracked to the clergy or decent positions in the military. What could be interesting is if you have a king whose legitimate wife only bears daughters, but one or two concubines in a harem have sons.

This has happened so many times. Henry the 8th is probably the most famous example, but there are lots. It's always about the culture what happens next. Sometimes they just pick a concubine's son and it's no big deal. Sometimes the kingdom dissolves and 30% of the population dies.

In the book, I'm probably going to go with the 30% of the population dies thing because, well, books are better with conflict. However, instead of only having daughters, I'm going to run with a single son who is gay and unwilling/unable to procreate.

DaewooOfDeath wrote: In reply to ddavidv: I'll have to read that book. I can definitely see your point, though. Have you ever heard of the Dark Triad? One of the things that I've done, and I've seen a lot of my male friends do, is initially present to a woman as a moderate shiny happy person. Imply you might impregnate her and then run away to Venezuela, make her get the door, be generally arrogant. Then of course stress all the dangerous and "bad" things you like to do. This creates attraction and then once the attraction sets in, I drop the act and go bad to being nice for the sake of domestic tranquility. Funny thing is, you can even explain what you're doing as you're doing it ... In the terms your describing, it sounds like we were being "bad boys" for the sake of getting laid and then being "nice guys" once the getting laid part was taken care of.

I know of The Dark Triad but haven't read it.

As I continue my study of the biological factor in gender relations your description above is pretty common. Most guys will 'peacock' to get the attention of a female. After they have snagged the woman (marriage) they often will drop much of the effort. A lot of the blame for this goes beyond simple complacency; society/religion has directed that men should 'settle down' with a woman. Feminism preaches equality in all things and often even goes beyond (women don't need a man--single moms are 'strong, independent women'). The man fails to maintain his masculinity in the relationship by doing what society preaches is 'right'. His attractiveness flounders. The woman loses interest, decides she's not haaaaaaaapy and starts flirting with Chad BadBoy on Facebook. By the time our original hero realizes what happened he's in a bad place with a marriage that may not be saveable.

There is a lot to a successful marriage/LTR but the biological factor is often overlooked. Attraction can't be faked. Looks, stability, income and attitude are all important parts of keeping a woman's interest (the reverse is also true but in a different way).

Women are programmed to want an alpha male type leader in their lives. The wisest male will bring this but also mix in enough 'beta' to not be an arrogant, abusive a$$hole. A good alpha is respectful but also doesn't let a female walk all over him. This delicate balance is at the core of Red Pill Theory.