The more the merrier?

Okin argues that the cultural message in all these cases is gender-biased: women (and children, in the case of the mother-child suicide cases) are ancillary to men, and should bear the blame for any departure from monogamy. Whether it is the man or the woman who is guilty of infidelity, Okin argues it is the woman who suffers. This propogates the idea that women are first and foremost sexual servants of men whose only real worth comes from their virginity before marriage and their fidelity within marriage. As a result, Okin argues that minority group rights should be treated with care by feminists, and care should be taken to ensure that there is gender equality within groups and that women have adequate say.

Okin was criticised by a number of other feminist theorists, who argued that her approach was inappropriately oppositional, that she did not consider how women in minority cultures may resist patriarchy, and that human rights law contributed to the problem by seeing religion as “other”. (See e.g., Leti Volpp and Madhavi Sunder mentioned here (PDF 97KB)).

Cultural relativism is a problem for liberals such as myself. I like to think myself tolerant of others, but to what extent should I tolerate someone else’s illiberal practices? These questions come to the fore with arguments about polygamy and polygyny.

From my perspective as a feminist, polygyny and polygamy can only work if the women involved in such relationships choose freely to enter into it. Also, women in polygynous relationships must also have a right of divorce which is equal to the man’s right. Unfortunately, in many polygynous societies, men are free to divorce their wives, whereas women cannot divorce their husband. And women in such polygynous relationships say that there is always a threat - “If you don’t behave, I’ll get another wife.”

It’s a very difficult question. On the one hand, I tend to think that what people do in the bedroom is up to them, and the State should intervene as little as possible. I find the concept of polygamy abhorrent, but why should I stop others from doing what they want? On the other hand, when a particular practice tends to generally harm women and suggest that they should be relegated to a secondary status as a sexual object, I cannot feel comfortable with it.

Ultimately, I think bigamy should be decriminalised because it is not enforced or workable, and if it is enforced, the prosecution of bigamy as a crime may end up harming women and children who are made vulnerable by the practice. But I’d rather not promote it or offer it as an alternative form of marriage.

Nonetheless, as Trad notes, perhaps we’re not too far off. As a result of the amendments to the new s 4AA of the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) (which I’ve discussed previously here) a mistress is almost a “constructive concubine”. Those provisions worry me, because there is no formal act of “entry” into a relationship, no moment of “choice” where the parties are forced to say what they want out of the relationship. A person might be in a de facto relationship without realising it, or vice versa. Perhaps we would be better off looking to the Roman laws as to concubines than enacting s 4AA. I seem to recall one rule about residing together for a year and a day for a certain relationship to be recognised - so if your partner moved out the day before D-Day, you knew where you stood.