March 7, 2012

Polygamy: Less fun than it sounds

From the NYT:
He also heard of poisonous mistrust between [Osama] Bin Laden’s wives. In the cramped Abbottabad house, he was told, tensions erupted between Ms. Sadah, described as “the favored wife,” and Khairiah Saber, an older woman who occupied a separate floor. In interrogation, Ms. Sadah accused her rival of having betrayed their husband to American intelligence.

Here you are, the world's all-time top terrorist, and all you want is a little peace and quiet around your own damn house. Is that too much to ask? Why can't we all just get along?

My old articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

45 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sure, this doesn't sound fun for normal guys.

But girls love this kind of crap.

Maya said...

Well, that's the Muslim harem type polygamy- forced and unnatural.

They are all supposed to have their own huts and tend their own gardens while caring for the children of the man who they like better than the men whose children they aren't bearing , not be sold by their fathers to be stuffed in one mansion.

Anonymous said...

The sort of woman who can pull it off would rather have a 1% claim on a king, billionaire, rock star or champ (though for some Asian women even a genius would apparently do), than a 100% claim on a loser. And why should we blame them?

Anonymous said...

They found a bunch of porn in Osama's house. He needs porn even with 5 wives?

Exuberance is Beauty. said...

You know on that porn claim, that would be such an easy, and un-disprovable claim to make to try to humanize and discredit OBL. It's quite possible he did have some of course but really, if they didn't say that it'd almost be slacking; it would be part of Getting Him Out of the Way in all senses.

Anonymous said...

>They found a bunch of porn in Osama's house.

Maybe they did, or maybe they did not.

They did or did not find human meat in Idi Amin's fridge. They said they did.

BrokenSymmetry said...

"They found a bunch of porn in Osama's house"

I'd be dumbfounded if they find any porn in Dennis Kucinich's house.

Maya said...

"They found a bunch of porn in Osama's house. He needs porn even with 5 wives?"

What are the rules for religious Muslims? Is it that anything goes in the bedroom, as long as the husband wishes it, or are there things that good Muslim wives just can't be expected to do? Maybe all Osama ever wanted was a bj?

Theory #2. Maybe it was the wives' porn. Perhaps the younger ones needed some mental lubricating before going to bed with an old sickly dude.

Anonymous said...

Reminds me of the ancient, original Chinese pictograms. The base of the pictogram for 'argument' is the pictogram for house but containing the pictograms of two women.

Anonymous said...

In response to the question regarding Islam's rules for pornography- I am a devout Muslim and the Holy Koran clearly states on page 37 that you can have 3 smutty magazines and 2 porno tapes.

Have a blessed day,

Dan in DC

Hunsdon said...

Ms. Sadeh, the favored wife? I hate to pick stylistic nits, but wouldn't that be Mrs.?

Gene Berman said...

Hunsdon:

I'd say you're overpicking nits.
One may be Ms. This and the other
Ms. That but, as far as "Mrs." goes, they'd each be a Mrs. bin- Laden (and that's why they've been described as they have--in order to differentiate).

(Makes our system look downright appealing on the basis of simplicity, ain't?)

Anonymous said...

In the run-up to the Abbottabad raid, US intelligence (via satellite imagery) noted a tall guy who spent a lot of time walking around the Bin Laden compound, they called him "the Pacer." Wonder why he wanted time alone with his thoughts?

Marlowe said...

He needed some young fat eunuchs to keep order.

Anonymous said...

Great, now I'm picturing OBL as a middle eastern Archie Bunker, screaming from his chair, "Khairiah, you dingbat, will you get back in the kitchen and get me a beer? I'm trying to plot here!"

DCThrowback said...

The Mormons in Colorado City, Arizona, seem to do polygamy just fine.

rightsaidfred said...

Sounds like this might be good for one season of reality TV.

Anonymous said...

.... and next up on the liberal agenda....

Anonymous said...

"to try to humanize and discredit OBL"

'Oh look, it's a hypocrite.'
The sweetest liberal revenge.

"They found a bunch of porn in Osama's house. He needs porn even with 5 wives?"

Better to have a gun and not need it,

and,

ALPHA!!

Anonymous said...

"The sort of woman who can pull it off would rather have a 1% claim on a king, billionaire, rock star or champ (though for some Asian women even a genius would apparently do), than a 100% claim on a loser. And why should we blame them?"

Even assuming any kings, etc. have 100 wives/mistresses, it's much more than 1 percent for the most recently acquire consort. The benefits are front loaded. Wife N gets the highest status, most attention, most luxuries, for a while. Wives N minus 1 through N minus 99 don't have it so easy. Maybe some of them would trade 0.1% of a king's resources for 100% of some "loser's".

Cennbeorc

Kylie said...

I have yet to meet any good reason for fighting another woman. There is nothing more tiresome than a woman in full battle cry, especially if, like me, you're too civilized to shut her up manually.

As for OBL, he had probably elevated the husbandly talent of selective hearing to the level of an art form.

Anonymous said...

The sort of woman who can pull it off would rather have a 1% claim on a king, billionaire, rock star or champ (though for some Asian women even a genius would apparently do), than a 100% claim on a loser. And why should we blame them?



Because such behavior is stupid and destructive?

I've never understood why the game boys feel this need to bow down and worship women's choices.

Anonymous said...

"I'd be dumbfounded if they find any porn in Dennis Kucinich's house."

I'd be dumbfounded if they didn't--for *her* use. God, a woman would need some help in that guy's bed.

MQ said...

all three were married to very cute Paki women, who they treated pretty poorly and replaced when the wives saw how other women were treated in America and "acted up", as they put it

Cue some 'pick up artists' to talk about how beautiful foreign women are RUINED by American feminism.

I wonder if any porn was for OBL's bodyguards or adult sons, who also lived in the compound.

Anonymous said...

@Hundson

"Ms. Sadeh, the favored wife? I hate to pick stylistic nits, but wouldn't that be Mrs.?"

If you're going to use Mrs., would they all be "Mrs. Bin Laden"?

Truth said...

Hey, I caught Breitbart's "Bombshell" Obama video today, that one's going to TEAR THE WHOLE COVER off the administration!

(chortle, snort)

corvinus said...

Great, now I'm picturing OBL as a middle eastern Archie Bunker, screaming from his chair, "Khairiah, you dingbat, will you get back in the kitchen and get me a beer? I'm trying to plot here!"

Courtesy of Google Translate (note: I used "Khadijah" instead):
خديجة، أنت الشخص السخيف، تذهب إلى المطبخ وأحضرت لي بيرة! أنا أحاول أن نخطط هنا!

Paul Mendez said...

What are the rules for religious Muslims? Is it that anything goes in the bedroom, as long as the husband wishes it, or are there things that good Muslim wives just can't be expected to do? Maybe all Osama ever wanted was a bj?

Depends on if you are Sunni, Shia or something else. Here are the teaching of the Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Husaini Sistani:

ON MASTURBATION:
Question: When I am unable to do Muta’h (temporary marriage), am I allowed to masturbate?

Answer: Masturbation is not permissible under any circumstances.

ON ANAL INTERCOURSE:
Question: My question is, what does the holy book Quran and prophet Mohammad (pbuh) say about anal sex even if the wife agrees to experience this with her husband?

Answer: As deduced from narration anal sex is permissible; but it is strongly undesirable. Permission is bound to wife’s agreement and consent to anal sex. If she is not consenting, it would be impermissible.

ON ORAL SEX:
Question: I am really sorry that I have to ask this type of Question. But Since I grew up in a western country; I rally don't much about our religion. And I can't ask this Question to my parents due to subject matter. Brother my question is, can we have an oral sex before or after the sexual intercourse or can we have oral sex at all? Is it haram?

Answer: Oral sex act is permissible with the consent of both husband and wife provided that no liquid gets into the mouth.

Fellatrix Fellatricum said...

Answer: Oral sex act is permissible with the consent of both husband and wife provided that no liquid gets into the mouth.

What, no spit??

Hunsdon said...

Gene Berman said: One may be Ms. This and the other Ms. That but, as far as "Mrs." goes, they'd each be a Mrs. bin- Laden (and that's why they've been described as they have--in order to differentiate).

Hunsdon replied: Perhaps, Mrs. Bin-Laden (Sadeh) for purposes of clarity, or in a more Seussian vein, "Miz Laden One and Miz Laden Two"?

Whiskey said...

As far as proponents of Game go, they note that women are the sellers and men the buyers. If you want sex, you better make women happy. Male-dominated societies like the Muslim world don't care what women think, and the results are in. Where would you rather live? The West or say, Pakistan?

A Chinese woman on a dating show in the PRC recently noted that she would rather cry in the back of a limo than be happy with a guy on the back of a motorcycle. Openly mocking most Chinese guys. The show was quickly canceled thereafter. All those Chinese guys with no women are a ticking bomb.

Anonymous said...

A Chinese woman on a dating show in the PRC recently noted that she would rather cry in the back of a limo than be happy with a guy on the back of a motorcycle. Openly mocking most Chinese guys.


Eh? I don't get it. Sounds like the women in question was disinterested in either guys (meaning all guys) or guys on motorcycles. Not "most Chinese guys" though.

Maya said...

"Because such behavior is stupid and destructive?

I've never understood why the game boys feel this need to bow down and worship women's choices."

1. There is nothing stupid about choosing to bear children with the best possible genes available. It will give the woman's own genes the best chance of making it into the next millennium. When humans evolved to be polygamous animals, the environment allowed fit children to thrive with one full time devoted parent and minor cooperation from the rest of the tribe. As for destructive... It's only destructive to the inferior members of the gender with the unlimited reproductive resources, not to the gender with the limited resources, the superior members of both genders and the new generations.

2. I'm not a game boy, myself, but I imagine that they feel the need to bow down to the women's choices because if they fail to do so... they'll end up in prison where somebody a bit more "alpha" might fail to bow down to THEIR choices. You dig?

Maya said...

"A Chinese woman on a dating show in the PRC recently noted that she would rather cry in the back of a limo than be happy with a guy on the back of a motorcycle. Openly mocking most Chinese guys. The show was quickly canceled thereafter. All those Chinese guys with no women are a ticking bomb."

I think that woman was admitting that money is more important to her than love, not mocking poor guys. Perhaps she had a very hard childhood wrecked by poverty... or maybe she is just extremely materialistic. Notice how she didn't say that women are happier in limos than on bikes. For what it's worth, I'd rather be walking with a man that I love than be pretending to love a man on a private jet.


As for the problem of the too numerous Chinese boys... I used to muse about them a lot and wonder if anything will come of it. Here's my latest thought: The reason they don't have enough girls in China is that women are severely undervalued in the region. The reasons are both cultural (boys are just better) and practical (girls don't take care of their elderly parents, but of their husbands' parents). I think that those boys who'll grow up without brides available to them will push for an extreme overturn of practices. They might promote the symbols of femininity as those of life force, wisdom, ultimate beauty, whatever, to encourage the birthing of girls. They might start portraying mothers of daughters and potential mothers as heroes. They might start a tradition of offering the parents of the bride a large financial compensation or start including them on holidays, as honored guests. (When I lived in East Asia, the whole family ALWAYS went to the paternal grandparents for holidays. The elderly with no sons spent the holidays alone.) In the end, those Chinese men who are boys today might, indeed, get married, but much later in life, to the young women for whose births, value in society and better treatment they will have lobbied.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

More wives for terrorists.

It could work.

Anonymous said...

Polygamy is usually deemed a responsiiity that only a minority of the males in a society can meet.
It's not a democratic notion. It's main yield is a wide number of
children with shared genes, obviously most of whom have a number of full sibs and a very large number of half sibs. I don't advocate it nor think about it much, but the topic touches upon something I do think of--namely the built-in biases in our
information flow in contemporary American society. If 99% of what we conveniently can reference about polygamy were the full story, the institution would not have been as widespread throughout many areas of the world. It was abandoned by Mormons in Utah as an overt practice only in conformity to U.S. laws against it. It's a question of what the whole truth is--not cookie cut arrangements masquerading as the whole truth.

Hell_Is_Like_Newark said...

The punishment for polygamy is more than one wife.

Montana said...

Mitt Romney’s Mexican father, hmmmmm…….Are the simple minded “BIRTHERS”, going to ask Romney for his birth certificate? We all know this was never about a birth certificate, if it was then these same people would be asking Romney for his. It’s about small minded people who hate African Americans and do not have the brains to review a President’s policy so they make something up.

Lets be clear none of these dullards have won a case in the “U.S. Courts”, maybe in their simple minds (if they have any) but not in our “U.S. Courts”, so unless Birthers/ teabaggers, whatever you want to be called, win a court case, we will continue to see as dullards, liars or racist or maybe all three. Deal with that baby!

Beecher Asbury said...

Whiskey said...
A Chinese woman on a dating show in the PRC recently noted that she would rather cry in the back of a limo than be happy with a guy on the back of a motorcycle. Openly mocking most Chinese guys. The show was quickly canceled thereafter. All those Chinese guys with no women are a ticking bomb.


What is your source? Do you actually watch Chinese TV on satellite and understand the language?

Please provide a link to this reference.

Conquistador said...

"If 99% of what we conveniently can reference about polygamy were the full story, the institution would not have been as widespread throughout many areas of the world." - Anon


Who gives a shit about how popular a practice is worldwide? It was a monogamous civilization that conquered the planet. Monogamy is powerful and unique to the west. It's part of the secret sauce of our success that rarely if ever gets acknowledged.

Anonymous said...

Mitt Romney’s Mexican father, hmmmmm…….Are the simple minded “BIRTHERS”, going to ask Romney for his birth certificate?



Talk about "simple minded" ... nobody disputes the fact that Mitt Romney was born here in the US, to two US citizen parents.

Unlike Barack Obama ...

Maya said...

"Who gives a shit about how popular a practice is worldwide? It was a monogamous civilization that conquered the planet. Monogamy is powerful and unique to the west. It's part of the secret sauce of our success that rarely if ever gets acknowledged."

That's a good point. We shouldn't discount our biology, but we shouldn't discount our cultural heritage either. They are, probably, equally important.

I get why natural polygamy is an attractive system for women, on a primal level. They get to mate with the exact guy that they want, unless they are severely below average. Being able to physically connect and create children with a man who is pointed out by one's primal instincts is a very important ingredient in the overall success and satisfaction both for the individual and the collective.

However, our culture provided us with precious things that no one has had before. The invention of real fatherhood, most likely, had a tremendous effect on the way we developed as a people. In polygamous societies, only the few favored children get a father, while the rest get a chief to look up to, but not a personal male caregiver, provider and guide. I can't imagine growing up without my dad. His presence was so fundamental in my becoming an adult woman. There is also something deeply gratifying in creating a father through a child. When puberty hit, I think I spent equal amount of time fantasizing about touching boys, rocking babies and things like having a man's hand lie protectively on my pregnant belly.

Maybe it's like complex melodic music. We didn't inherit it, and we don't need it for basic survival. But it sure does seem to fill a real void and make things better.

CJ said...

What is your source? Do you actually watch Chinese TV on satellite and understand the language? Please provide a link to this reference.

I'm not Whiskey and I don't even do parodies of him, but because you said please here's your reference.

http://english.cri.cn/7146/2010/04/14/1481s563019.htm

From that linked page:

To professor Lei Weizhen, "Fei Cheng Wu Rao" is a powerful and domestically-conceived competitor for these imported programs.

"China has a long way to go to catch up with the leading countries in the TV industry, due to the limits on funding. Meanwhile, government censorship of media content is relatively harsh in China. So China's domestic TV shows have always appeared flat and safe. That's why I'm excited to see that now we have such a controversial reality show that appeals to the majority of young people."

Yu Hong, a professor with Peking University's Art School, agrees with this opinion.

"I saw young people talking about their values and opinions frankly and openly on the show. That's something I have not seen in other shows, and that makes this show stand out. Think about it this way, the voice of the young people is the voice of the future mainstream society. So in that sense, 'Fei Cheng Wu Rao' is a precious channel through which China's youth speak out."

The social commentary is definitely a highlight of the show.

For instance, the most talked-about and controversial panelist on the show is a girl named Ma Nuo, who is tagged as shamelessly chasing after money and is widely condemned for being condescending to candidates she thinks are not successful enough.

Girl A: "I'd rather cry in a BMW limo than smile on a second-hand bicycle."

"What? You hope I can let you have fun with the first half of your life, and then keep you company and take care of you for the latter half of your life? No way. Absolutely no way."

Anonymous said...

"Who gives a (care) about how popular a practice (polygamy) is
worldwide...?" The point is that
the practice appears to have appeals that are lost to the perception of those of us who are
disinclined toward it. I'ts illegal in the US. My hunch is that those who practice it and are
content with it, have little rational reason to comment at all.
Thus, "our" media give forth a badly cookie cut version as though it were comprehensive and even lack cognizance of an omitted "rest of the story".

Crawfurdmuir said...

This aspect of polygamy was the subject of a popular English song in 1873, when the Shah of what was then called Persia visited Great Britain:

"Have you seen the Shah,
Smoking his cigar?
Twenty wives and two black eyes,
Have you seen the Shah?"

I'm reminded of the Q&A joke: "Q. Why don't Mormons believe in purgatory? A. With several mothers-in-law and no booze, they don't need it." The same could be said for Muslims.