Polygamy?? Is it right?

[Azania 7]

Greetings

I am very interested in and appreciate Rasta life but one thing that i have not been able to understand is polygamy.. I have come across several Azania (south african) brothas who strongly believe in polygamous way of life and have often used both the Bible and African culture to justify it.

I would just like to get some views on it from both the brothas and sistahs in this forum... Also do you believe that polygamy is only seen as sinful because of the entrance of "western" culture into African society or is it unnatural under God law?

Bless

[siger]

sema,

first i would like to say i appreciate your interest in all things rasta, and african. i have learnt my share of values here, and hope the experience is the same for you.

from an african's point of view....
polygamy is as old as all cultures, even the western and religious cultures that have now branded it a sin were once pro-polygamy.

whereas foreign cultures tend to enforce changes in values (from-the-top), africa has allowed values to be tested and dropped when deemed by the people to be counter-productive (hence they call us primitive and backward).

a man who took more than one wife was not condemned, but would evoke keen interest from the community and elders. he would have to treat both wives with utmost respect, lest he fall out of favour with the community. an uncle of mine told me once how a friend of his was shamed in front of the elders by two of his wives, who said he was incapable of satisfying both!

another aspect to note is that africa has more sistahs than it has men. good men are even fewer; so lineages would die off but for the inconvenience of polygamy.

my point of view....
i do not practice polygamy; but i will never condemn it. as it is it is phasing out, having been tested and found wanting by the people.
i, however, disagree with branding it as sin or unnatural, especially by western culture. time alone can brand it sin; not these heralders of doom.
like time (for us) branded homosexuality and child-molestation.... things that appear to be in vogue in the west.

..... a qn.  does anyone think polygamy encourages domestic violence?

[Makini]

why is it that the male to female ratio is in such a disparity, i keep getting that feedback? why is it that there are more women and thus its logical in polygamous societies? because as i understand it, you have an egg and a sperm and from that a chance of a male offspring and a chance of a female offspring.

there are of course reasons for this to skew like in Chinese and Indian cultures where girls are not so wanted. and when there have been wars and the male resource has been depleted. or perhaps even genetic reasons, none i am so familiar with, but there may be some interesting disease or defect that would increase the chances of survival for one sex. here are two things i thought of and see nicely articulated here...


http://psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20070622-000002.xml

In societies where rich men are much richer than poor men, women (and their children) are better off sharing the few wealthy men; one-half, one-quarter, or even one-tenth of a wealthy man is still better than an entire poor man. As George Bernard Shaw puts it, "The maternal instinct leads a woman to prefer a tenth share in a first-rate man to the exclusive possession of a third-rate one." Despite the fact that humans are naturally polygynous, most industrial societies are monogamous because men tend to be more or less equal in their resources compared with their ancestors in medieval times. (Inequality tends to increase as society advances in complexity from hunter-gatherer to advanced agrarian societies. Industrialization tends to decrease the level of inequality.)

...........


http://www.futurepundit.com/mt/mt-altcomments.cgi?entry_id=2075

Islam is the only major world religion that sanctions polygamy. Mohammad allowed his followers to have four wives (the same number he had). About 12 percent of marriages in Moslem countries are polygamous. This is not as bad as East and West Africa, where successful men often take more than a hundred wives and where almost 30 percent of marriages can be polygamous. But the solid core of polygamy at the heart of Islamic culture is enough to produce its menacing social effects.

What are those effects? Do the math. Into every society is born approximately the same number of boys and girls. If they pair off in monogamous fashion, then each one will have a mate -- "a girl for every boy and a boy for every girl." In polygamous societies this does not occur. When successful men can accumulate more than one wife, that means some other man gets none. As a result, the unavoidable outcome is a hard-core residue of unattached men who have little or no prospect of achieving a family life.

The inevitable outcome is that competition among males becomes much more fierce and intense. Mating is an all-or-nothing proposition. Women become a scarce resource that must be hoarded and veiled and banned from public places so they cannot drift away through spontaneous romances. Men who are denied access to these hoarded women have only one option -- they can band together and try to fight their way into the seats of power."

............

when you say polygamy, you mean within marriage or the range of ways it happens that one man has many women as opposed to many wives. because while it is not common, its illegal actually if i recall correctly for a man to have more than one wife, extramarital affairs or simply maintaining more than one relationship is a common enough occurrence where i am from, above and beyond the 'Rasta life' as Azania puts it. how is it that you mean?


-M-

 

[siger]

i disagree still,...

i believe the argument that numbers count is valid. to say that there is one boy for one girl would not define the african reality. fact for fact, the men are scarce....

of the rich and poor, materialism does play a role.... but remeber that the african measure of wealth is slightly changed. so many of the polygamous men are actually subsistence farmers. note also that it is nature's way for species to seek forward motion... every female of every species  will search for the best possible mate to bear her offspring. this is not primitve of animalistic, it is simply nature. the only difference with the west is the criteria of choosing has changed. where here it is more about the lad, there, it is about his cars and houses.
in the same thread of thought, i agree with the hypo- that inequality and societal placing are linked... but do not forget that "industrial monogamy" and the large numbers of unmarrieds correlate.

on a happier note....

why is it that the male to female ratio is in such a disparity, i keep getting that feedback? why is it that there are more women ... 

SEX! thats why,see; the male spermies are not too clever, they are all brut and no brains. now, like it or not ( bet u r going to smirk) africans know what they are doing when it comes to sex,.... at most times of climax, the female is usually  making rivers.
enter the crazy tadiies, and the male spermies will be swimming against the current, trying to prove a point.

in the end, mostly the lassies make it to the egg (except this one, of course; i piggy-backed!!)

[Boogieman]

I read somewhere, that the sperm of man is 2% for fertilizing a female and other 98% porpoise is to kill other male semen...
The point of all the mating is natural it occurs everywhere in nature as JAH intended to... Females and males pick their partners on some criteria (successfulness, attractiveness) meaning that subconsciously they are thinking of their offspring... Better genes.
 And polygamy is just a moral issue now...

[Makini]

what's the point of killing that which is a modification of yourself...Boogieman where did you read that, i am very interested in that. i heard of in cases where there is copulation by more than one male that semen 'suicide' is a valid option. but you're saying the sperm are friends in the epididymis and then run coup d'etat on the way up the passage...hmmm not so far fetched if you compare to politics...

yes, i agree that some criteria is used, quite often a farce i have also realised and within polygamy lies some considerations for morality.

i can't say much for richer verses poorer and the trend of choice because it is not something around me. i know of one well acomplished and travelled person who says he has 8 wives and then a person who knows of him noted to me that most are concubines...how i would feel knowing i am one classed as such? i will and do think i would rather not subject myself to that. but that is just one person amongst millions.

siger, i can't smirk cuz that would not be kind to you, but just a point to note sperms don't have gender per se, every single one constitutes a component that can create a male and a female...so the lads and lassies bit, they're all the same essentially. glad for you that that half of you(the spermie) piggied back to help make the you that you are...

i still haven't gotten why males are scare...

-M-

[Boogieman]

Kind of sperm:
An average man produces 3 kind of sperm:
    (1) Killer Sperm constitute about 83% of all the sperm -- these are sperm that attack any sperm from another man that may be in the woman. These sperm carry a lethal dose of poison in their head, seek out foreign sperm and inject it with this poison, killing it.  Apparently after a few injections the Killer Sperm has spent all it's energy and also dies.

    (2) Blocker Sperm constitute about 16% of all the sperm -- these try to block entrances and storage places so that any sperm from another man cannot reach the woman's egg.

    (3) Egg Getter Sperm constitute about1% of all the sperm -- these are the sperm that can possibly fertilize the woman's egg if they ever get there.

So 99% of sperm make war on other men's sperm to  annihilate them so that they won't fertilize the woman's egg, and 1% have the potential to fertilize the woman's egg.

http://members.shaw.ca/tfrisen/chances_of_you_existing.htm

[Azania 7]

Greetings

Many thanks to all who have responded..
In response to Makini: I state polygamy as the concept of having more than one wife, e.g chiefs and all , and also the idea of "concubines" or simply maintaining more than one relationship at a time- basically all that does not follow a 'monogomous' relationship...

Well according to genetics the female DNA is composed of an X and X chromosome in terms of gender- determination while the male has one X and one Y chromosome. The 'child' gets one chromosome from the 'mother' and one from the 'father'. In reproduction the 'mother' will always hold/produce an X chromosome and the father either an X or a Y chromosome....

Now I don't know how true this is as i have not been able to find proper evidence of it (and it tends to sound a little far fetched): But i've heard that the sperm carrying the X chromosome (female) is a better long distance swimmer than the one carrying the Y chromosome(male) so gender-determination would therefore have to depend on strength of the 'swimmers' and performance of the man (and since its quite a journey; the result is a higher female to male ratio in some parts of the world)?? 

somehow though i dont think this hypothesis is to be taken seriously...but who knows...

Bless

[Makini]

Thanks Boogieman, the stats made me a little giddy there. What assumption I made was that for the kinds of sperms there I assume that there really isn't another's man sperm involved. Remember the male is the limited resource, am I naive to believe that women in polygamous relationships are promiscuous, to what extent exactly...? But cool.

Well that explanation there Azania is something to gnaw at or if nothing else...

World Fact book
South Africa - at birth: 1.02 male(s)/female
Uganda - at birth: 1.03 male(s)/female
Nigeria - at birth: 1.03 male(s)/female
Trinidad & Tobago - at birth: 1.05 male(s)/female
Congo - at birth: 1.03 male(s)/female
Kenya - at birth: 1.02 male(s)/female
China - at birth: 1.11 male(s)/female
India - at birth: 1.12 male(s)/female

Taking into consideration your hypothesis, if you want to believe the stats that are done up and compare them, the male to female ratio starts off kinda close actually showing the male to be higher in all the countries that I checked. There is no quick fix way of assessing something like this, but I am sure enjoying reading all these bits of stats. Nice post topic...though we straying from the polygamy thing a bit.


-M-

[Boogieman]

Makini ,the point of those 99% of sperm fighters is that women are polygamous, why else would man have so many sperm killing sperm ,I suppose men are polygamous too ,thats how JAH intended to, for us to procreate . But  InI still believe that marriage is an unbreakable bond shared between two, a man and a woman.
Most High.

[siger]

.... but just a point to note sperms don't have gender per se,

-M-

you had to go and burst my balls, eh? here i was, envisioning my crusade in turpid waters.....


WARNING : the fellow behind this is currently blazed, and should note be taken seriously!!