How Many Husbands Would Be Too Many?

( Originally published on Open Salon 5/12/2010)

By Mary Ann Sorrentino

 "ONE MAN, 5 WIVES, 46 CHILDREN" screamed the cover of the National Geographic magazine in the waiting room holding me captive. I hadn't read a National Geographic since puberty, when teens would fumble through copies in their parents' libraries, hoping for a glimpse of naked people around the globe. With less than that youthful enthusiasm (and with only Sports Illustrated or Family Circle as reading options) I read the polygamy article.

It described the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) which split from the Mormons in 1935 after rejecting the mother church's ultimatum to renounce polygamy. Today the FLDS has more than 38,000 members mostly on the Utah-Arizona border and in other parts of America's West.

 

The guy on the cover with the 5 wives and 46 kids is Joe Jessop, a church elder aged 88.Jessop also has 239 grandchildren. (I'm thinking Joe and the wives ought to be sitting in 6 bathtubs watching a sunset behind the mountains in their own Cialis ad.)

There's probably not much passion in places like the FLDS Yearning for Zion Ranch in El Paso, Texas. The scriptural basis for the sect's clinging to polygamy--"Go forth and multiply--" doesn't conjure images of sex toys, black lingerie, saxophones in the background or a lovers talking "dirty." It's a slam, bam, thank you m'am and call me after you deliver this one type of ethic. Plus, if a guy has a half dozen wives to service, 50 kids and a couple hundred grandkids, you might as well take-a-number like you do in the deli and just wait your turn. 

 

FLDS women admit they sometimes feel hurt, rejection and jealousy about competing with other women (sometimes their biological sisters.) This happens in monogamy too, so get over it.

 

The article made me wonder if there were societies where women take multiple husbands. My immediate response was that women are smarter than to do anything that dumb. By observation, if not experience, women understand that most husbands demand so much attention no one would want more than one. And 46 children! The thought alone would send most women-- usually the primary caregivers-- scrambling for a tubal ligation.

 

In fact, there are virtually no polyandrous societies on this planet (polyandry being the term describing women with multiple husbands.) Polygyny is the accurate term for men with multiple wives. The more commonly used polygamy is actually a non-specific term describing those of either gender with multiple spouses.

  Another issue of National Geographic described the only remaining society where women may have several husbands-- all brothers--in a remote area in the Himalayas. Acquiring fraternal husbands, however, is different from men picking their own wives.  In the Himalayas it's, "marry one get 2 or 3 more free."

 

 The brothers may (but are not compelled to) take the same wife. They live together, with common children. The men help with the housework (or hut-work) so it's not all bad. Not surprisingly, Psychology Today's examination of polyandry attributed to it more sexual motives. The shrink journal also had an accusatory subtext warning men in monogamous situations not to be fooled by wives likely to sleep around. So Psychology Today basically concludes women are naturally sluts and it shouldn't matter if they service multiple husbands. (No professional in-depth scientific analysis, though, of the roving eyes, hands and other body parts of "monogamous" husbands like Tiger Woods, David Duchovny, or Bill Clinton.)

 

I see the fact that women do not choose multiple husbands as one of the few gender-based advantages females can claim. Women should just continue to play "dumb like a fox" in societies where they are not allowed to have more than one husband, for whatever reason. It is a gift to be spared several more mates to pick up after. Just think about all the nagging time women save by having only one guy to remind to take out the trash, pick the kids up after Little League, call his mother on her birthday, keep the doctor's appointment on Friday, feed the dog, put those in the hamper, or look in the second drawer-- where they have ALWAYS been.

 

 So the absence of polyandry in the world may not be an accident at all, but testimony to the superior wisdom, practicality and self-preservation instinct of the females of our  species. An old feminist adage cautions that, "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle." (now click on this last sentence)

 So a fish that doesn't need Lance Armstrong can probably do without the whole Tour de France.                                    

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To learn more, click link below for video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h22-wHytFF0

Bats and Balls

By Mary Ann Sorrentino  (orig. pub. In the Keene Sentinel)

An article in the British magazine The Economist tells us about a scientific study done at Syracuse University in New York by Professor Scott Pitnick. Interestingly, researcher Pitnick was studying bats and the biological relationship between their testicles and their brains. ( Some readers are now asking, “Why?”)

Since many women have maintained for generations that men actually think with their, uhhh, testicles, the article had my attention. The premise of the research team is that a bat’s testicles would be larger in species where the females of that group were more promiscuous, and smaller when the females tended to limit their couplings.

The article went on to mention casually, as if we all knew a lot about such things, that:
“Greater promiscuity does, indeed, lead to bigger testes presumably because a male needs to make more sperm to have a fighting chance of fathering offspring, if those sperm are competing with a lot of other males.” This is fascinating since women are so often accused of ripping off those particular body parts, or “busting” them, as they say. Now we find out there is a legitimate scientific study that shows that we actually give men those things they love! More interesting, the naughtier we are, the bigger theirs get! It is only if we are prudish that they “shrink” to embarrassing miniatures.

Again from the article:
“Gorillas which discourage dalliances between other males and the females of their harems, have small testes. Chimpanzees, among whom females mate widely, have large ones.”

Then the addenda our curiosity has been waiting for:
“Human testes lie between these two extremes.”

This conjures a spectrum with King Kong on one end, J. Fred Muggs on the other, and your husband or boyfriend(s) -or both- somewhere in the middle.

The smallest bat testes were found among those whose females were monogamous.

Finally, the kicker:
“Brain size, by contrast…varied in the opposite direction.”

This means the bigger the testes, the smaller the brains. (Many women reading this column are now resting their case.)

This study is not likely to be nominated for a Nobel Prize, but it does give us something to ponder. The conclusion of the article said much more than anything I might add in summarizing the results of all this research referred to in the title as, “Bats and Balls”.

As the article ended, simply:
“…it is better to be virile and dim, than impotent and smart.”

But then again, a lot of us already knew that. Sleep tight King Kong: we now know you are much smarter than you look in those frontal nudity shots.

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