Polygamy Club!

[NGONGE]

From The Times November 4, 2009

 

All that polygamy needs is a better name

 

Egotistical, aggressive, unfaithful and unable to control their libidos: that’s men

 

Leo Lewis

 

There’s no escaping it: polygamy has an image crisis. Try as it might, it cannot help sounding barbaric and biblical. A big part of the problem — beyond the twinge of human rights abuse — is the word itself: it’s just too clinical to convey any real sense of fun. The adjective in particular has a veterinary tone that rips all residual appeal from the whole idea (as in, “I’m sorry, guv, the flock’ll have to be culled — you can see by their festering hooves that half of them have already turned polygamous”). Even the addition of a jaunty prefix to make it “roly-poly-gamy” fails to haul the concept of “one man, multiple mothers-in-law” from either the Dark Ages or Utah.

 

What polygamy needs, especially in the sultry heat of Malaysia and Indonesia, is an ice-cool rebranding. Strip “polygamy” from the dictionaries and give the noble old institution that served Solomon and Krishna so well a swish, net-ready handle for the digital 21st century.

 

Something along the lines of H@rem, Maxi-Nup or iWed6.0 should do the trick.

 

Here on the Equator, the debate about polygamy’s future is exactly the sort of domestic ding-dong I imagine breakfast to be like in a polygamous household: a lot of righteous, cliquey screaming as the toast quietly burns in the corner. But as the debate slowly unfolds, we should end up with two useful things: a view on where mainstream public opinion in the world’s largest population of Muslims is tending and a dollop of loony rhetoric from a part of the world where it’s always too hot to think straight.

 

The latest twist came earlier this week with the creation of a jolly crew in Jakarta calling itself the Men’s Coalition against Polygamy. It joins an alliance of enraged housewives and other snarling activists who see Indonesia’s marriage laws, which allow men to have multiple wives, as unbalanced and a recipe for domestic violence. That line, though, is not the coalition’s central argument: their rather flimsy charge is that the existence of polygamy “labels men as egotistical, aggressive, unfaithful and unable to control their libidos”. Maybe so, but most of us merrily tick all those boxes by simply sitting in the boozer, watching the football, bellowing at the ref and chatting up the barmaid.

 

The creation of the Men’s Coalition against Polygamy is a direct response to the emergence last month of the Bandung chapter of the Global Ikhwan, or Polygamy Club — an originally Malaysian group chaired by a woman and dedicated to evangelising “the beautiful side of polygamy”.

 

The most impressive feature of this weird guild is the traction it has achieved in Malaysian politics. Taking its cue from the manifesto of the Polygamy Club, a legislator in the northeastern state of Kelantan has formally proposed that MPs help to reduce the country’s (very limited) ranks of single mothers by marrying lots of them. Prizes should be awarded, she said, for politicians who wed their way to a large, socially responsible “quota” of wives and pay for their children to be educated.

 

It’s a brilliant plan, sure to be embraced heartily by male MPs in Britain as soon as they get wind of it. The benefits are obvious: a half-dozen wives a mere handclap away, and an expenses labyrinth that God himself could never unravel.

[SeeKer]

Originally posted by NGONGE:

That line, though, is not the coalition’s central argument: their rather flimsy charge is that the existence of polygamy “labels men as egotistical, aggressive, unfaithful and unable to control their libidos”. Maybe so, but

most of us merrily tick all those boxes by simply sitting in the boozer, watching the football, bellowing at the ref and chatting up the barmaid.

 

Are you planning to start a similar party/club in UK?

[NGONGE]

^^ I think there is some money to be made here.

[SeeKer]

I am guessing you have a name thought up. U better hurry and copywrite that name

[NGONGE]

^^ I was thinking 'Marry The Mistress' but I don't think many Westerners would admit to having a mistress to start with. Then I thought 'The Pull-A-Gem Club' but thought that is all about the early courting process. I think the only one that would work is 'The Harem Club'. It sounds exotic (therefore not dirty) and does it exactly what it says on the tin.

[Malika]

^ ,no room for gimmicks huh?

 

Men have all the fun!

[SeeKer]

^ Don't you think it would be disastrous if a woman had a harem of men? :eek: Think of the whining that will occur.

[Malika]

^So possessive they are,uff!..LOL