#polygyny

Because there are two things that definitely existed. We know of hunter-gatherer societies and other small-scale societies that have highly unstructured relationship structures, where you talk about every man in the village being a father to every child in the village or whatever.

But those aren't states, in the sense where we draw distinctions between states and less-hierarchically-organized non-state polities. E.g. ACOUP gives the definition

“a society with marked social stratification, with a centralized and internally specialized government capable of extending bureaucratic control out into a settlement hierarchy” consisting of multiple (at least usually three; center, regional centers and subordinate communities below them) tiers.

And then we have plenty of states that have normalized polygyny, in the sense that powerful men will have multiple wives (or wives plus formally acknowledged concubines). In this sequence of posts I was curious how Greece, Rome, and Europe developed the norm of formal official monogamy even for the most elite men, since as far as I know most state systems have not had that expectation—though of course in no society has the typical man ever had multiple wives, because counting.

But I can't think of any state system where there was any sort of formally accepted institution of a woman taking multiple male partners. Which would make sense since I don't think I know of any pre-modern states that weren't fundamentally patriarchal. (Again, a lot of anthropology on some small-scale nonpatriarchal polities but I don't know of any actual states that formed nonpatriarchally.)

One thing that's inexplicably on my mind right now is that East Asian royal families were generally historically polygamous, so if you wanted to have Azula or Zuko or King Kuei or some other Fire Nation or Earth Kingdom royal or noble take multiple partners, that would actually be reasonably historically accurate. It seems like the Fire Nation royalty has avoided polygamy in recent decades (or you would expect the royal family to be much, much bigger), but isn't the point at the end of the series that they are supposed to return to old ways?

Interestingly, some of this applies to the Water Tribes as well. Although I don't know nearly as much about this subject as I know about East Asian royalty and I don't want to say anything too confidentially, I know some Inuit groups sometimes practiced polygamy. I also know that some groups sometimes practiced "spouse exchanges" where two couples would temporarily exchange spouses in order to create fictive kinship between them. Although the SWT is not identical to historical Inuit groups and the NWT in particular seems very, very different with it's city and state, I think you could definitely justify polyamory being in the tradition of both Water Tribes.

While the Earth Kingdom, the Fire Nation, and the Water Tribes might have traditions of polygyny (where one man marries multiple women), the Air Nomads might have a very different traditions. They are inspired at least in part by Tibetan Buddhism, and Tibet has it's own traditions of plural marriage. Historically, the most common type was fraternal polyandry, in which two or more brothers would take the same wife. However, apparently polygyny, conjoint marriages, and of course monogamous marriages were also historically acceptable in Tibetan society. Of course, there were specific economic reasons why fraternal polyandry made sense in Tibet, which might not apply to the Air Nomads and we really don't get a sense of how their marriages and family life might look like, but it's another reminder not to force their culture into "Western marriage norms, circa 2007."

triple baka but theyre actually bakas (except for starscream) and males :

whenever i delude myself with demolishor (ironhide) x cyclonus (sandstorm) x starscream i constantly giggle cuz APPARENTLY ?!?! i always think of starscream as a third wheeler + hes occasionally feels awkward cuz he doesnt understand what is even happening between himself and them and hes kinda sexually oblivious of their flirting

megatronsama x overly loyal subordinate x overly loyal subordinate's reckless and chaotic malewifei gues:

ok normally as the leader of brainwashing people to believe that the armada decepticons are a dysfunctional poly i usually think that this poly is abit like a triangle ship except megatronsama and cyclonus are the girls that are fighting over the guy and the guy is demolishor (yeah sherlock jeni) AND DEMOLISHORS CONSTANTLY EMOTIONALLY CONFUSED CUZ THEYRE (probably) TRYING TO COME UP WITH FLIRTS THAT ARE BETTER THAN EACH OTHER AND MEGATRONSAMA AND CYCLONUS ENDS UP HAVING A SMALL QUARREL then they get back together healthy yyaaayyy

i maybe should start writing a fic w 1 of those ships (i have dozens of other ships that i invented but im doubting whether i should write it tiktok traumatised me)

another useless chunk of info except i get confused with types of poly (optional to read) :

megatron : polyandrous, polygamous, pansexual (maybe), omnisexual

demolishor : polyamorus, polygynyous, gay

cyclonus : polyamorus, polygynyous, gay

Two things we already established make that gap likely:

**Marriage wasn't primarily women's choice to begin with.** The bride-price mechanism we looked at a few turns back put the actual decision in fathers' hands, negotiating with grooms or grooms' families over payment — a daughter's stated aversion to large, potentially violent men wouldn't necessarily override her father's calculation about who could pay the largest bride price, and successful, high-status "winner" men in a raiding/status economy would generally be exactly the men with the most livestock to offer. So the women expressing that aversion to researchers may have had limited power to act on it within their own marriages.

**The "winning" men's status is self-reinforcing in exactly the way that overrides individual preference.** If large, aggressive, successful raiders accumulate more wealth and therefore more capacity to pay bride price, and pay it to fathers rather than courting the woman's personal consent, then the competitive system selects for those men marrying more, regardless of whether individual women found them desirable — the selection pressure (if there is one) would be operating through male-male competition for resources translated into paternal transactions, not through female mate choice at all. That's actually a cleaner and more damning explanation for any correlation Frost might point to between "bigger men" and higher reproductive success in polygynous systems: it doesn't require positing any female preference for large or aggressive men, stated or revealed. It only requires large/aggressive men out-competing other men economically and militarily, then fathers selling daughters to whoever can pay most.

Polygyny is the marriage of a man to multiple women, though it takes many forms throughout history and the world. There have been, and still are, many reasons for polygyny, as well as customs surrounding the practice, and it was far more widespread than polyandry. Studies of mitochondrial DNA suggest that 'there have been more mothers than fathers in the genetic record of the human species, meaning that the proportion of females that have reproduced each generation has generally been greater than the proportion of men that reproduced', suggesting that polygyny was widespread in the past.

In cultures where agricultural labor is primarily done by women, having multiple wives allows for a larger workforce without the expense of paying for labor through not only the wives but also their children, as well as allowing women to perform other tasks deemed 'women's work' by the society. Another factor contributing to polygyny could be the high rate of child mortality, up to 50% before the age of 5 in the past. By increasing the number of children that could be produced that were legitimately part of the household, it was possible to ensure that the household would grow, increasing the workforce of the household and its prestige through wealth production.

In cultures where a dowry was expected for a bride, it was, and still is, common for only the more well off men would be able to afford to marry, thus allowing them to marry more women than those who were poorer, a form of polygyny known as resource polygyny. Polygyny was, and is, more common in cultures that were also engaged in war more frequently, leaving fewer men to marry as the women did not participate in war, and allowing the survivors to marry more than one woman. As men who survive war tend to have more wealth, this is also related to resource polygyny.