Althouse: "If low-wage men don’t present women with much of a good deal, why not double, or triple, or quadruple them up?"

January 21, 2014

"If low-wage men don’t present women with much of a good deal, why not double, or triple, or quadruple them up?"

"Pool resources, boost household income, and promote family values at the same time?" writes Judith Warner at Time Magazine, quoted at Weekly Standard under the headline "Time Magazine Endorses 'Polyandry.'"

Well, Warner is employing humor to critique the conservative argument that marriage is the solution to poverty and to highlight the problem of low wages. I guess her use of the word "seriously" threw some readers off. Noting something Barbara Ehrenreich said that made an audience laugh, Warner wrote: "But I think we should take Ehrenreich seriously." Like you never heard a comedian, upon getting one laugh, set up the next joke with "But seriously...."

I know, it's difficult to perceive humor coming from women. You don't expect it, and then it's a little subtle sometimes. Maybe if a woman has multiple husbands, at least one of them will get each of her jokes. I'm serious.

51 comments:

John henry said...: There sure is a lot more historical and cultural justification for polyandry or polygamy than there is for gay marriage.

So why is one sort of legal in much of the US and the other not?

Isn't it all about the right to be free to marry who you wish?

John Henry; 1/21/14, 12:06 PM
donald said...: The funniest person I know is a woman who was born IN a trailer park, was raised in hell basically and now travels the world for ATT taking care of their serious customers relations problems.

She's gorgeous to a level she has no idea of.

Yeah, I kinda dig her.; 1/21/14, 12:10 PM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: TIME magazine still exists? Learn something new ( and useless ) every day.; 1/21/14, 12:12 PM
Fen said...: Guess it depends on her target audience. As a male, my first thoughts were:

1) gold diggers wanting more wage slaves.

2) Women bitch about trophy wives but treat a man's paycheck as the primary desirable trait.

3) 3 husbands? Good luck with that. The single girls I know are struggling to find just *one* male willing to put up with their bs on a daily basis.; 1/21/14, 12:12 PM
rhhardin said...: It would be perfect for a feminist.

They like to nag more broadly than just a particular man.; 1/21/14, 12:16 PM
Peter said...: Timeshare comes to marriage!

But how will the men work out timesharing the wife?

(Yes, I know: men are such jealous beasts that for this to work the men would really have to have a sexual interest in each other. O brave new world, that has such people in it!); 1/21/14, 12:16 PM
Michael K said...: Thin gruel today so far.; 1/21/14, 12:17 PM
Nonapod said...: I wonder if polyandry might become more common in China. Over the past generation in China the ratio of men to women has been skewed due to convergence of government population control policy and cultural gender preference.; 1/21/14, 12:20 PM
Henry said...: I guess it worked for Jean Seberg in Paint Your Wagon.

Gotta dream boy
Gotta song
Paint your wagon
And come along!; 1/21/14, 12:20 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: “Success is going from failure to failure, without loss of enthusiasm.” - Winston Churchill; 1/21/14, 12:25 PM
MattL said...: Isn't the low wage man the perfect candidate for a house husband? Could be his non-paid labor is much more valuable than his paltry paid labor.

What sort of a "deal" are these women looking for, anyway? Does it make them feminist traitors if they need a high wage man?; 1/21/14, 12:32 PM
Hagar said...: Dr. Johnson's dog.; 1/21/14, 12:33 PM
jr565 said...: Fen wrote:
3) 3 husbands? Good luck with that. The single girls I know are struggling to find just *one* male willing to put up with their bs on a daily basis.

but I can see the benefit of the arrangement for guys. They only have to put up with her bs 1/3rd of the time.

"Sorry honey, no bs today. Today is Roger's day. I'll be in the basement watching sports and porn".; 1/21/14, 12:34 PM
Naked Surfer said...: “ ... I was in the Virgin Islands once. I met a girl. We ate lobster, drank piña coladas. At sunset, we made love like sea otters. That was a pretty good day. Why couldn't I get that day over, and over, and over ...”

Who needs multiple partners when you have lots of time? Why is it that until now, I’ve never – seriously – known the female version of "Groundhog Day"? Why do I feel for all the multiple men who do not get the jokes regardless of their income, that, “It's gonna be cold, it's gonna be grey, and it's gonna last you for the rest of your life.”; 1/21/14, 12:35 PM
Anonymous said...: Sadly, due to women's hypergamy, they wouldn't marry one low wage loser, let alone several.

But the point has already been made. What is the magic number of 2? Has anyone yet put forward the argument that we'll stop at this re-definition?

Good luck with that.; 1/21/14, 12:37 PM
YoungHegelian said...: Marrying a 10-dollar-an-hour man gets you nowhere, so you’d really have to marry three or four.”

How can adding more income to a household not get one in a better situation, almost no matter how little the addition might be? Even if a job is low-wage, think of the long term advantages to a family from a predictable income & the discipline of long term employment.

Contained in that sentence are some really nasty assumptions about modern pair-bonding by the upper middle class women who make up Ehrenreich's audience: a man's not only has to have a job, but a much better job than his wife for him to be a "catch".; 1/21/14, 12:39 PM
Henry said...: Setting aside the marriage and family values assertions, the economic validity of the one woman-multiple men arrangement is well established. It's even legal in Nevada. Seriously.; 1/21/14, 12:41 PM
Anonymous said...: Are these [i]Boogie Nights[/i] family values?; 1/21/14, 12:44 PM
YoungHegelian said...: @Henry,

the economic validity of the one woman-multiple men arrangement is well established.

Well, the validity of the polygamous variety is well known out West: one guy has a bunch of women with children each on the dole. Add up all the doles together under one roof & -- voila -- enough money to make a go of it! All thanks to the taxpayers of Utah, Nevada, etc.

I can't see why it wouldn't work for the guys....; 1/21/14, 12:45 PM
Ann Althouse said...: "Yes, I know: men are such jealous beasts that for this to work the men would really have to have a sexual interest in each other."

The main problem I see is that if you have "low-wage men" together in a household, what's to keep the individual men from slacking off and free-riding? Let the other men support him. Then if they all start thinking like that, the whole thing collapses.; 1/21/14, 12:50 PM
jr565 said...: 3) 3 husbands? Good luck with that. The single girls I know are struggling to find just *one* male willing to put up with their bs on a daily basis.

What is the woman offering the three guys? Is she fabulously wealthy or is she relying on their salaries to get by? How is she a catch?; 1/21/14, 12:53 PM
jr565 said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 1/21/14, 12:56 PM
jr565 said...: How about a pimp hoe marriage? The guy is the pimp and the women are his hoes who go out and prostitute themselves out and give him his cut. And he offers them protection like a good pimp does.
In terms of economics it works well for all involved.; 1/21/14, 12:57 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: Problem is that guys don't like sharing their women. And, the evolutionary reason for that is that it reduces the chances for paternity.

And, again, the left seems to have it backwards. The middle class didn't do better than the lower class because they owned houses, but they owned houses because they were in the middle class. Giving the lower classes their own houses just caused a financial meltdown, and didn't instill middle class values.

A lot of the women who ultimately cannot tie down a male are in that position because they never learned that men greatly prefer women who can guarantee them their paternity by not sleeping around. The surprise in the Sluts in the City TV series is that any of the women there ever found love - but then, it is TV.

Finally, women marry up, and men marry down. It doesn't work well the other way around. I think that we have some hard wiring that way, and a lot of time, it doesn't work well. Male harems just won't work - for one thing, the men would likely kill each other first.; 1/21/14, 12:58 PM
Anonymous said...: New Class insularity in action: Low-wage men don't have anything to offer Barbara Ehrenreich or Judith Warner, therefore low-wage men don't have anything to offer women. Just because we use low-wage single mothers as mascots, that doesn't mean we have to adopt their delusions about the desirability of a second paycheck in the household!; 1/21/14, 12:58 PM
Henry said...: @YoungHegelian -- I'm alluding to the world's oldest profession. Perhaps my Nevada reference was too subtle.

Since for Judith Warner the key issue is how to tap men to economically benefit women, why isn't she all for legalizing prostitution?; 1/21/14, 12:58 PM
Heather said...: I sort a of see this as a serious problem with feminist. The demeaning of what a man brings to a family. A man to such a feminist is only worth the pay check he brings in.

A "low-wage" husband is still there when you are sick or when you want to sleep in. Is there when you want a girls night out.

It was a joke but it was an unfunny joke. If a Rush made such a joke about women do you think the writer would find it funny?; 1/21/14, 1:00 PM
mccullough said...: As long as the three of them can get a new, younger wife when they want, this might work.; 1/21/14, 1:12 PM
Larry J said...: jr565 said...

What is the woman offering the three guys? Is she fabulously wealthy or is she relying on their salaries to get by? How is she a catch?

That's the fundamental question, isn't it? What's in it for the men?; 1/21/14, 1:13 PM
n.n said...: Why not affirmative action for men? To compensate for affirmative action for women.; 1/21/14, 1:37 PM
damikesc said...: Maybe if the piece was funny, it might not have been "missed".

Q: How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb?

A: THAT'S NOT FUNNY!; 1/21/14, 1:43 PM
Wince said...: Newsweek Headline: "Judith Warner Seeks Triple Penetration Gang-Bang from Three Under-Paid Men"!; 1/21/14, 2:04 PM
YoungHegelian said...: @Henry,

I'm alluding to the world's oldest profession. Perhaps my Nevada reference was too subtle.

Well, it was for me in my present plane-flight addled state. Now that you point it out, it's a big, well, duh. My apologies.

As penance, let me add one more to damikesc's repertoire of feminist jokes:

Q: How many feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: 100. One to screw in the bulb & 99 to write about how the bulb is exploiting the socket.; 1/21/14, 2:19 PM
Fen said...: "How can adding more income to a household not get one in a better situation, almost no matter how little the addition might be"

Because despite what feminists say, they don't want to be the primary breadwinners.

Clinging to the privilege of being able to take 3 years off to write "Climate Change Affects On Critical Feminist Theory"; 1/21/14, 2:19 PM
Original Mike said...: You can never have too many bicycles.; 1/21/14, 2:23 PM
Fen said...: if you have "low-wage men" together in a household, what's to keep the individual men from slacking off and free-riding? Let the other men support him.

You appear to be implying that "low-wage men" are prone to slacking off?

OTOH, socialism tells us that if the 3 men had their wages pooled for the household, each of them would start to slack off.; 1/21/14, 2:23 PM
Fen said...: meh Effects not Affects. I hate it when others do that... facepalm; 1/21/14, 2:23 PM
Fen said...: wait, I'm quoting feminists who took the easy majors, so it works...

yah thats it.; 1/21/14, 2:25 PM
Peter said...: "What is the woman offering the three guys?"

I think the assumption is that the men are such loser that this is the only way they could enjoy the personal and sexual attention of a woman- they buy a timeshare instead of the whole deal because that's all they can afford, so to speak.; 1/21/14, 2:26 PM
n.n said...: Peter: Women are commodities, which are to be parceled into affordable parts. Well, that's what they wanted. That's what too many considered "progress", for themselves, and their children.; 1/21/14, 2:49 PM
Ann Althouse said...: "Isn't the low wage man the perfect candidate for a house husband? Could be his non-paid labor is much more valuable than his paltry paid labor."

The lower wage spouse in any couple should be considered a candidate for taking the non-income-earning side in a single-earner household. Do the math, including the tax calculations. Especially if there is childcare to be done, but even without it, the division of labor couple may be better off than the dual income couple, even before you take into account what kind of work each spouse wants to do and is good at.

Every household task that's done without paying an outsider saves some of the income that the salary-earner makes, and the outsider would have to be paid with after-tax earnings.

Then consider the social function the at-home spouse can provide and the volunteer work in the community that can be done (such as writing a blog, campaigning for political candidates, ministering to the poor, etc.).

Now that women have high-earning work, there's no reason not to consider having the husband as the non-income-producing half of household economics. There are many things that the husband might do better, including, in some cases, taking care of babies.; 1/21/14, 3:16 PM
Carl said...: to highlight the problem of low wages

There is no problem of low wages. There is no great conspiracy of Scrooge McDucks sitting on huge piles of cash that they refuse to invest in higher wages to attract better employees to ultimately multiply their piles of cash by three or four. Because, you know, one thing you can count on when it comes to greedy Scrooge McDucks is that they love to increase their stash. If they could do so by wooing better employees with the simple tool of higher wages, they would, in a flash.

What we have is a problem of low productivity. The evil fact is, the labor of a shockingly large fraction of our population isn't worth very much.

Why is that? Who knows? But we might consider the problem represented by 50 years of failing to understand that price is only a signal, as Thomas Sowell never tires of explaining. It tells you how the rest of the world values something -- in this case your labor. Attacking the price because it doesn't reflect the world you wish you lived in is like adjusting your scale because it says you weigh more than you wish you did.

And saying the price is the problem, rather than the underlying reality of what labor is worth, is like saying we have a serious scale problem in the United States, because OMG those evil scales are telling us we're getting fatter...!

So what would be the effect on fat people if all the pundits went around somberly saying it's time to do something about this cruel scale problem, and all the politicians went around promising to fix those damn scales if you only give them your vote and $3 a month when they e-mail you? Do you think it's just a little possible that it might have some deleterious effects on levels of obesity?

Is it possible, then, that 50 years of ignorant self-serving asshattery on the nature of work and wage has had some deleterious effects on the way people manage to prepare themselves for, and manage, their own working careers?

Of course not! It's the 1%, the rich who won't pay their fair share, the banksters, the media, the Republicans, teabaggers, wreckers, the Illuminati, International Jewry...; 1/21/14, 3:25 PM
Carol said...: Huh. What's more likely is one guy living off of multiple minimum-wage earners. Fat girls can be incredibly tolerant.; 1/21/14, 3:34 PM
Gospace said...: "The main problem I see is that if you have "low-wage men" together in a household, what's to keep the individual men from slacking off and free-riding? Let the other men support him. Then if they all start thinking like that, the whole thing collapses."

You do realize, of course, that you have just described the problem with welfare, AFDC, Food Stamps, and the fact that an increasing percent of the population is suddenly to disabled to work?

There's a wildlife sign often used ironically to describe this. Goes somewhat like "Don't feed the wild animals, or they will become dependent on handouts and won't be able to survive on their own..."; 1/21/14, 4:19 PM
paul a'barge said...: I know, it's difficult to perceive humor coming from women

Yeah, that humor just rolling off Wendy Davis is incredible. Stop. My sides are hurting.; 1/21/14, 4:44 PM
jr565 said...: If Martha Stewart wanted me to be husband number 3 and at the end of the day I got 1/3 of her inheritance I might do it. So long as I only had to put in 1/3 of the effort.; 1/21/14, 5:19 PM
Known Unknown said...: I don't see why you would need marriage for this arrangement. Just 3 male roommates with benefits.

Also, I'd venture the average $10/hour man isn't what many would call "marriage material." So three of them just compounds the problem, not solve it.; 1/21/14, 6:49 PM
Big Mike said...: I hope at least one of your husbands gets your jokes, Professor.; 1/21/14, 6:56 PM
Ann Althouse said...: @big mike

This post made him LOL.; 1/21/14, 7:28 PM
ALP said...: There are many things that the husband might do better, including, in some cases, taking care of babies.
********
No kidding! My BF of 20 years is a neat freak and an outstanding cook - he is better at domestic stuff than I am. As the female "slob" half of the relationship, I have tons of sympathy for men nagged about housework! I am much better at dealing with some of the bullshit that comes with dealing with bosses/clients.

If I could get back to the income I had prior to the recession - we would adopt this arrangement in a heartbeat.; 1/21/14, 9:43 PM
Mitch H. said...: Male harems just won't work - for one thing, the men would likely kill each other first.

And yet the fujoshi just keep buying those otome games. Sadly for this post's thesis, otome games, especially the reverse-harem ones, are generally paeans to feminine hypergamy, red in tooth and claw.; 1/22/14, 8:50 AM