Andrew over at Evolvify just linked to a new review of Sex at Dawn, a book that challenges our cultural standard of monogamy. The review has been submitted to the journal Evolutionary Psychology:
Although Andrew's post and the review itself inspired me to write this post, this post is not a response to the review or to Sex at Dawn. I haven't read the book and I'm not familiar enough with the relevant literature to critique the book or assess the strength of the review. Since I've been studying the Masai, however, I have a few thoughts to share about this non-monogamous culture.First, I owe an apology to the authors of Sex at Dawn because when I had initially written this post last night I included some unnecessarily snarky remarks that could easily be construed as dismissive of or disparaging towards the book, and I gave the post a title that could at best be described as a headline grasping for attention at the expense of treating the authors and the book with charity and decency. I intend my re-posting this with a new title and introduction to constitute a formal apology in that respect.
In any case, I think when we consider challenges to monogamy we have to acknowledge that just as a cultural standard of monogamy requires the imposition of certain sanctions and the inculcation with certain ideas, polygamy and polyamory come with analogous but different requirements.
Some may see the prospect of a polyamorous cultural standard as one that would encourage carefree relations between men and women, a minimum of jealousy, and a broader network of support for children as they become children of the society at large rather than of a nuclear family. I won't claim that the Masai represent all non-monogamous societies, and I won't claim that it is impossible for non-monogamous arrangements to produce this type of result, but I will at least say that to describe the Masai in this way would certainly be a fantasy. Non-monogamous culture at least in this case doesn't come without its price.
Among the Masai, most men at any given time have only one wife, but the ideal is polygyny, a form of polygamy wherein men have more than one wife. Men obtain more wives as they grow older. Men who live very long and prosperous lives may accumulate four to eight wives, but this is rare. The legendary 19th century prophet Mbatyan is said to have had over 200 wives, but he is also said to have been able to summon wind and fell trees without lifting a finger, so he was exceptional.
Marriage binds the husband to provide for and protect his wives and their children and to be a generous friend to his in-laws. It entitles the wife to use her husband's cattle and to obtain ownership over their milk and hides. But it does not define the boundaries of appropriate sexuality.
Men are required to share their wives with any other men of their age-set. Women insist that they only feel obligated to accept the sexual advances of their husband and that any other sex is entirely consensual. In some early accounts, women even had the right to initiate sex with other married men.
The expectation to share spouses is part of the collectivist social organization of the Masai that demands extensive sharing. While the pursuit of cattle and large families is an individualist pursuit, it is only possible to Masai men who voluntarily submit to these collective expectations. As Paul Spencer noted in Time, Space, and the Unknown: Maasai configurations of power and providence, “[a]ccording to the Maasai stereotype, a sorcerer is a nefarious individualist, creeping through the bush and bent on his own eccentric course in a society that constantly demands gregarious sharing.” The sorcerer, of course, is generally an unobserved bogey-man, but this stereotype demonstrates how Masai view men who aren't interested in conforming to social expectations of sharing. They certainly aren't going to give away their daughters in marriage to such a man.
Is this spouse-sharing carefree, unencumbered by any jealousy? Hardly.
Masai women suppress sexual jealousy by telling and retelling stories of women who have gone insane because of their sexual jealousy. The women in these stories are invariably foreigners, because no Masai woman could be so unwise as to let herself be overcome by such jealousy. For men, the expectations are more stringent. If a man complains that his wife has had sex with another man, his age-mates will collectively punish him with a fine of nine head of cattle.
In installment two of part 1 of my ongoing Masai series over at Mother Nature Obeyed, I described a situation in which a man beat his three wives. One of his wives, Kisaru, explained that he accused them of beating the children, but used this as a cover for his suspicion that they had slept with other men while he'd been away on a long trip. Why would he use this as a cover? Because the fine for complaining that they'd slept with other men would be nine head of cattle. It was much cheaper for him to come up with some other lame excuse to beat his wives.
Thankfully, there are a number of social factors that mitigate wife-beating in Masai society, including strict limitations of when it is allowed that would theoretically preclude a husband from beating his wife during a fit of anger, the right of women to collectively fine husbands that mistreat their wives during the organization of their fertility rituals, and the tight social cohesion that allows in-laws to intervene. Indeed, in the case above, the man stopped beating his wives as soon as his in-law told him to.
All anthropologists I have read thus far have concluded that severe wife-beating is quite rare. When it does occur, it is probably over married women having sex with moran, the young warriors, singers, and dancers with whom sex is considered adultery. Anthropologists debate how often this occurs, but when it does, the woman is subjected to forty lashes with a long stick. The husband has license to do much worse to the offending moran, but the moran has license to run for his life. If he escapes — which is likely, given that he is in his physical prime — he must go through a very elaborate ceremonial process of formal apology.
In her contribution to the book Women United, Women Divided, Melissa Llewelyn-Davies maintained that such adultery is ubiquitous. She reported that women brag of purchasing their moran with forty lashes, and that they select them based on their fashion, good looks, sexual prowess, and willingness to stay up all night long sweet-talking them. She further claimed that women maintain strict networks of secrecy about these affairs and form friendships with other women based on common moran lovers. Paul Spencer initially disputed this with great vigor, considering this extremely unrealistic and believing instead that the women were just fantasizing. In Time, Space, and the Unknown, he took a more agnostic view:
The boundary between truth and fantasy in these extramarital affairs is unknowable, but the popular image depicts elders as disgruntled cuckolds who have lost control over moran as well as over their young wives.
Llewelyn-Davies may have been quick to believe some of the women's fantasies and accept them as literal truth, since one of her main purposes was to show that women do rebel against men, only in ways that don't challenge “male hegemony.” As Paul Spencer accurately pointed out, such adultery is obviously a rebellion of youth against elders and not of women against men. Regardless, even Llewelyn-Davies believed that women were only beaten severely once in their lives.
In our society, of course, we have police, courts, and jails that, while far from perfect, do largely prevent husbands from physically beating their wives if they have extramarital affairs.
What about those affectionate bonds with children?
Masai men do show affection for children. We can see this in Llewelyn-Davies' videos, which show men expressing affection even for cattle.
Nevertheless, the expectation of sharing leads to strict “avoidance of daughters.” Men must avoid even the most remote suggestion that they might have sex with their daughters. A young girl must never do any work for her father. She must never so much as cook for him or bring him a calabash of milk. Once she reaches the age of seven or eight, when she would be expected to begin having legally acceptable and consensual sex with moran in order to cause her breasts to begin developing, her father must never even sleep under the same roof as she does.
Since virtually any man in a father's age-set could be the biological father of his daughter, any young girl is a daughter of the whole age-set. Thus, a father must strictly avoid most contact with any daughters of his age-mates.
Fathers avoid age-set daughters so strictly that a father is rarely accused of having sex with such a daughter, which would be considered incest. When he is, however, the women form an angry mob and hunt him down. They at least steal an ox but if they catch him they'll beat him up too. They may subject him to a grotesque ritual of dishonor. He will forever be a social outcast.
The avoidance of daughters is important not only to prevent incest, but also to prevent marriage demands from a father's age-mates. A father instead gives his daughter to men of age-sets below him. Since the father is expected to submit to extensive demands for sharing, expectations to give his daughters away in marriage to his age-mates could prove overwhelming if such marriages were not illegal. Old men would accumulate large numbers of wives while younger men would find difficulty so much as marrying, let alone generating daughters to give away as wives to their own age mates. By prohibiting these marital arrangements, a sufficient number of young girls are available for young men to marry as soon as they graduate from moranhood to elderhood. Thus, the “avoidance of daughters” is essential to maintaining the basic structure of polygyny.
There are many beautiful and respectable things about Masai life, but the sexual promiscuity encouraged by the society's expectations of extensive sharing requires a great deal of social and legal pressure. While the Masai have substantial social pressures that limit a man's ability to beat his wife, they have a less developed concept of women's rights and a less developed system of enforcing them, so men do sometimes take their sexual jealousy out on their wives in physical ways. Far from creating a web of affection and affiliation that lavishes children with the investments of multiple fathers, the liberal sexual mores break the bonds between fathers and their daughters.
The Masai are not hunter-gatherers, and other non-monogamous arrangements may have different societal effects. Nevertheless, I think Masai society can inform our view of what non-monogamous social mores could potentially produce.
In monogamous cultures we find that people cheat. In polygamous or polyamorous cultures we find that people get jealous. An expectation of either norm requires a significant amount of culturally imposed restraint. If we're going to peer into the depths of human nature in order to understand which norm we should support, or to which norm we should choose to adhere, I don't think we're going to find any quick and obvious answers.