I keep seeing people use the word "polyandry" to describe JS (and others) "marrying" women who were already married to someone else, without benefit of divorce.

Did those women continue to live and have sex with their first husbands as well? Polyandry implies a woman having sexual relations with the men who are her husbands.

Polyandry is a recognized mating pattern. Using that term gives the practice legitimacy. It also implies that the women were not only willing, but did the choosing.

Otherwise, why not just call it what it is -- adultery? Of course, that doesn't convey the sense that the women were being treated as property, but neither does polyandry.

And if you're going to use polyandry, then you need to use polygyny, not polygamy, to describe one man with multiple wives.

Personally, I have no problem with polygamy of any kind, including polyamory, as long as everyone is a consenting adult. Not something I'd be interested in, but that doesn't give me the right to dictate to others.

drq Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Did those women continue to live and have sex with
> their first husbands as well? Polyandry implies a
> woman having sexual relations with the men who are
> her husbands.

Yes, they did and some in their later years claimed as much.

The term is correctly used when speaking of the eleven married women who were "sealed as celestial wives" to Horny Joe during his lifetime. The women considered both Joseph and their married partner as husbands - one for life and one for eternity.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/28/2015 10:48AM by Templar.

My question is really whether the women were having sex with both their legal husband and their (ahem) celestial husband on this earth.

I knew that they considered JS their ticket to the celestial kingdom.

It reminds me of a woman convert I knew in Spain. The whole family had converted, but she refused to even talk about a temple recommend. I finally asked her, "Don't you want to be sealed to your husband for eternity?" She just looked at me and then said, "No." Apparently, she could think of no greater hell. She didn't believe in divorce, but was looking forward to the "death do us part" bit.

But I'll bet she'd have been happy to have been sealed to one of the "prophets."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/28/2015 10:56AM by drq.

Yes. Joe bedded them and then they continued to live with and have children with their real husbands. Joe didn't support them. I doubt he even spoke to most of them on a regular basis. They were flings, not marriages. Read "In Sacred Lonliness".

The things they didn't teach us in Sunday School! ;-)

Thanks. I think I need a shower.

drq Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> My question is really whether the women were
> having sex with both their legal husband and their
> (ahem) celestial husband on this earth.

I answered your question ("Yes, they did and some in their later years claimed as much.").

TSCC, for obvious reasons, wants members to believe that these were merely "spiritual sealings for eternity", but the very fact that Joseph swore the women to secrecy and publicly denied these relationships even keeping them from his first wife Emma is proof that much more was taking place.

But they don't appear to have lived with JS for any period of time -- only with their legal husband, as Shinehshbeam wrote. Whether JS bedded them once or several times, it was nothing but a fling from his perspective.

Polyandry would mean that the woman lived with both of her husbands for the long-term and that she was publicly known as their wife. The women would not have had to claim it years later; everyone would have known.

It was nothing more nor less than adultery with a man who used his power to satisfy his lusts. The women may have believed that they were ensuring their eternal salvation, of course, but that does not change the facts.

Why do you assert that arrangement is only official if people are all living under the same roof?

I don't. Why did you think that I did?

They could live under two or three or a dozen different roofs, just as they did under polygyny in Utah.

Polyandry would mean that the woman lived with her husbands for the long-term and that she was publicly known as their wife. Whether she lived with all of her husbands in one house or with each of them in turn in separates houses is irrelevant. The point is that they were living together as husband and wife and were publicly acknowledged as such.

It would not mean that the woman had sex with another man once or a handful of times in secret, then continued to live with her original husband for the rest of her life.

That's called adultery. It might even be called rape. But it is not polyandry.

pol·y·an·dry
ˈpälēˌandrē,ˌpälēˈandrē/Submit
noun

polygamy in which a woman has more than one husband.
ZOOLOGY

a pattern of mating in which a female animal has more than one male mate.



The above definition says nothing about public recognition. It just says something about a female mating with more than one male mate. By law, they were committing adultery, but it still fits the definition of polyandry.

You're seriously using a brief online dictionary definition as the last, final word on a subject? Take a course in anthropology.

If it's illegal -- it's not polyandry. Polyandry is a system whereby a woman has more than one LEGAL husband. Legal means recognized by law -- which also means recognized by society.

I've had many courses in Anthropology. In the course of human history there have been many types of sexual arrangements but not many years where there were laws regulating such things.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/28/2015 01:39PM by Devoted Exmo.

Even under common law, a marriage means you have to live together and hold yourselves out to the community as married.

No, they were not legal marriages for Joseph Smith. Polyandry doesn't necessarily have to be legal to be defined as such. However, his arrangements certainly qualifies as adultery.

I also don't have a problem with polygamous relationships between consenting adults. However, I do have a problem if the relationships are based on religious beliefs. Most of Joe's "wives" were initially repulsed by the idea. They only consented based on threats, promises, etc... Polyamory is a lot different than polygamy when those involved only consent because a conman told them it was god's will.

I agree -- which is why I hate to see these relationships given a legitimate term (polyandry), rather than called what they were. They were, at best, adultery, and at worst, abuse. I'd even go so far as to say rape, in that at least some of them were coerced.

two or more men -- when SHE has multiple husbands.
It does not mean that a man is marrying a bunch of women (polygyny) who may already be married.
He was really just using this as a way to have sex with whatever women he wanted to.

Shinehahbeam Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Most of Joe's "wives" were
> initially repulsed by the idea. They only
> consented based on threats, promises, etc...

Yes, in a very limited number cases of which we are aware and is Mormonisms sorry explanation for the affairs. However, the exact circumstances of these so-called "celestial sealings" (marriages) will never be known since they were done in absolute secrecy and the women said very little about what actually took place.

Apparently, Joe gave them the line that since their legal marriages had not been done with the sealing power of the restored priesthood, they were never really married and, therefore, sexual intercourse with Joseph would not be adultery in the eyes of god. Their relationship would especially be blessed since it was sealed by the power of the priesthood. After Joseph Smith's death the women were, in fact, sealed in the Nauvoo temple for time to their legal husbands and for eternity to Joseph Smith to make everything proper.

Many of these relationships only became publicly known many, many years later when the women signed affidavits attesting to being sealed (by then referred to as married) to Joseph Smith to counter the Reorganized LDS claim that Joseph Smith was never a polygamist.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/28/2015 12:00PM by Templar.

I agree that the ex Mormon community needs to readdress the habit of referring to JS as a polygamist. He was an adulterer, as none of his extra women were married to him, supported by him, or presented to society as his wives.

I suppose we do it as a habit, and because it would cause our TBM friends and family to run screaming if we dared insult their philandering hero.

The women had sex with him while husbands were away but didn't live in the same house with Joe.

That's adultery, not polyandry.

Well I am a child of both polyandry and polygamy, thanks to Brigham Young and his ability to bend the marriage laws.

My great grandfather joined the church after he had been sterilized due to his membership in a prior cult. BY deftly unmarried him from my g-grandmother so that she could marry a local plyg man long enough to give birth to my grandfather before she then re-married my g-grandfather.

My grandfather grew up in Utah, entered into polygamy, moved to Mexico, where he fathered my Mom.

All quite bizzare admittedly but all true.

Such is the convoluted world of Mormon polygyny.

Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to conceive.

Get a job, buddy.

Jealousy is such an ugly thing...

I weep.

Salty, salty tears

Unless she was married to both men at the same time, it was not polyandry.

It was some weird machinations by BY, but it was no different from what happens today by choice. I've known more than one couple to divorce, marry other people, divorce them, and remarry each other.

Actually, if you think about it, it was the 19th-century equivalent of using a sperm bank.

I think we are beginning to strain on a gnat here. What is clear is that Joseph Smith was "much too generous with his dick" and Mormonism needs fest up to the fact regardless of what it's called! Clearly, none of these female relationships (other than Emma) could in ones wildest imagination be considered proper - then, or now.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/28/2015 01:04PM by Templar.

Personally, I think that words matter. Calling it "polyandry" either gives it a legitimacy it does not merit or it slanders legitimate polyandrous relationships.

Either way, it continues to obscure the fact that it was sex through coercion, which today, we'd call rape.

^^^^^^^^^

I agree completely..."polyandry" has nothing to do with what Joseph Smith was involved in...

...and applying the word "polyandry" to those events minimizes, and simultaneously attempts to legitimize, the real and lasting harm that was inflicted on everyone concerned back then.

"Polyandry (/ˈpɒliˌændri, ˌpɒliˈæn-/; from Greek: πολυ- poly-, "many" and ἀνήρ anēr, "man") involves marriage that includes more than two partners and can fall under the broader category of polyamory. More specifically, it is a form of polygamy whereby a woman takes two or more husbands at the same time."


A few years ago, while reading a sci/fi novel whose title or plot I no longer remember, I became an intellectual fan of the polyandry definition in which a woman has more than one wife. What I remember is that it was one of those 'newly colonized' planet books and it was basically four men for every woman, and each woman had multiple husbands.

I took that basic notion and thought about the power in that unit. Based on the brute strength available, polyandry beats the crap out of polygamy. Imagine, at any level of culture/society, the advantage a child would have in competition with his/her peers, if he/she had four reasonably stable, intelligent and caring father figures! Well, naturally, I imagined only good things.

Positing that all involved were of sterling character, of all the combinations possible, I think I'd like my mother to have four husbands, over all the other possibilities.

Would it work? Given the track record of one man/one woman unions, the competition wouldn't be that challenging.

Several years ago my wife and I watched a National Geographic type documentary about a "stone age" tribe they found somewhere in the Congo. When a female was ovulating all the men (there were more than a dozen) engaged in sexual intercourse with her - one after another. The thought was that the strongest and best sperm would first reach and fertilize her egg. The resultant child was considered the child of the tribe and was raised by everyone.

My question is this: If these women did have sex with JS, it is possible that he fathered children who would never be claimed as his...the women would bear them and raise them within the marriage to their legal husband. Makes me wonder how many offspring he may have fathered.