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Students share honest dialogue about love, relationships, dating, and sex on Michigan State University's campus.
(Anthony) When conversations about love and sex arise. Sometimes people only hit the surface
(Elle) with us, we're gonna dive deeper.
(Anthony) I'm Anthony Brinson.
(Elle) I'm Elle fromm
(Both hosts) and this is going to be a Podcast
(Both hosts) episode three.
(Elle) And we have haters now. So this is the first episode that we are recording after the first episode has dropped. And yeah, I'm going to talk a little bit about my family and friends reaction first star positive. So I've been really fortunate, all of my family members who have reacted have said, Really, they've all been very kind. So like my aunt, my aunts, plural, like cousins, or my first cousin once removed was my mom's cousin. They've all said really kind of things, you know that I sound confident that they're proud of me. And that really means a lot to me as somebody who parentally was raised pretty strict. But my extended family includes a great deal of women who I've always been so inspired by, and even people who weren't as thrilled like some of my older family members, they were still nice, like they weren't like, this is wrong, they were like, You should be careful what you say, you know, this is going to be on the internet forever. Sometimes these things can come back and like haunt you, I guess. So. Even though it wasn't as supportive, it was still nice. They still had my best interests at heart. And that really means a lot to me.
(Anthony) Yeah. And I loved one of the things I forget who said it, but there was saying like you're very well spoken is perfect for you. And whichever one of your family members said that I completely agree. Because, like just recording with you and like hear you speak. I just I'm very honored and happy to have you as a co host for like topics like this, because we've always had the connection to talk about it just like off the mic. And now we can provide a source of knowledge and education and just light hearted conversation for people who want this type of content. And one of the biggest, I guess, forms of criticism was like our design, which it was crazy. It wasn't even about the material we talked about.
(Elle) Yeah, a few. Yeah. So moving on. And my friends have been wonderfully supportive as well. But moving on to strangers on the internet. So I didn't see anything on Facebook or Twitter. Oh, I'm sorry, x. But on Instagram is where most of most of the reactions were. So a few people said like, why is this news? And I mean, that is a point. It's not a good point. But it's a point. But what is considered news, it varies like there is fashion journalism, entertainment journalism. So stuff like this is still news because it is relevant to MSU campus people on this campus fall in love people on this campus have sex like that's not that that clearly exists. So if there is an interest from the student body, then of course, it's news. And nobody's making you listen to this. And I mean, even talking about this stuff, the people who have problems are not the people who are going to listen to this podcast. That's just not how it works. But yeah, we have four other podcasts. If you want serious journalism, go listen to the 1909 like Nobody is stopping you. They do wonderful work over there. If you all pop culture listen to Houselights Right, or sports sports roundtable or y'all got all shades of chocolate. Nobody's making you listen to this.
(Anthony) Yeah. And with the people that do listen, I'm honestly very grateful. Like I checked some of the analytics we got like the day we posted about it that same day, a lot of criticism. We got like 40 listeners that day. Listen to the whole hour, as I don't know how to look at that. I'm trying to figure that out. But with the people that do want to listen, shout out to y'all and shout out to Zack who made the logo I mean,
(Elle) yes, that bow cough is the graphic art bow cough I think this is season
(Anthony) shadows I'm not sure but hopefully we're pronouncing it wrong but one of the most
interesting things was mattify before I even say the issue I'm gonna reference a conversation I had with Zack so
(Elle) before because yeah, this is before any any final design was made.
(Anthony) He showed me a draft and we had like Okay, first of all, I was blown away. He's an incredible designers
(Elle) remarkable shading. He's talented. The shading isn't as clear in the final design. It is impressive.
(Anthony) Like shoutout him and when making the first draft I looked down okay, this is really dope. And with the underwear part I asked I'm like okay, instead of it being all one form of underwear could half of it be like one Shea like all black and then the other half be the lingerie so we can kind of symbolize underwear and lingerie because we're not we're trying to have it symbolizes no one like we're not trying to have a beat guy girl. Just a design.
(Elle) Exactly. Because most of the hate or just the greatest pleasure. Yeah. Was was about the graphic. It wasn't actually about the content of the pod Test. And I think it is very fascinating the way that people project their own ideas onto an existing graphic, because I did assume it was a woman. But like Anthony pointed out to me, it's not it's just a person. And that's not even something we're saying after the fact, like that was in the original thoughts. Because like, I was a little hesitant about having a person on the cover, because I don't, I didn't want anyone to feel like it couldn't be for them. So like in the original design, I've been calling the person Alex in my head, because that's kind of a gender neutral name. And the original design, Alex was very, very pale. And there's nothing wrong with that. But I was like, Oh, I don't want anybody to think that this couldn't be about them. So the the person is in shadow on the on the final design. But yeah, it's just like, so there was a comment or that said, this is an exact words, or their exact words entirely suggestive of a man going deeper with a woman? There's no second
(Both hosts) person. Oh, that's a usually region. Yeah. webinar and a region. Yeah,
(Elle) to be entirely suggest Absolutely not. People said like, this could be triggering, or it's just people see what they want to see. So when you see a person wearing lace, as a symbol for a sex and love podcast, what did you think it was going to look like? Then they just make these kind of wild assumptions that aren't really there.
(Anthony) Yeah. And that was one of the difficulties when making the design. It's like, we don't want to go too far, especially since this is a news organization, but it's also a second live podcast. So it's not, there's only so much appropriateness, quote, unquote, we can have. But I do want to also say like, aren't sent, even if we're discussing the haters, like our intent was not to offend no one nor trigger anyone. But intent of this podcast is to have an open conversation and hopefully learn something especially just like opened up with a few things about, like being ignorant to a lot of things like hopefully, we can reach an audience that wants to consume this content, one, but also be able to learn new things about whether you'd like your own body, someone else's or like about relationships, like today, we're starting our polygamy series. And we're not intending to offend anyone. And if we do, we'll, obviously if it ever happens, God forbid, it will give an apology if it happens. But just to put it out there now, like, if we say something that may come off harsh, or like you feel we don't know enough about it, we do apologize. And we especially ale tries to put a lot of work into researching these topics, so she can know like what we're talking about.
(Elle) So yeah, I don't want to walk anything back before I've said it. But Anthony is correct. And then our intent is not to injure anybody. And again, if you don't like it, turn it off. If you can't make it through the whole first episode, because it was an hour on our back, turn it off. But before we talk about today's topic, there was some person who said what if somebody blurts something else, so he was like, you have to understand, I write outlines for the podcast. And Anthony does the editing. We are not going to blurt something out. Like if we were to say something like, like I said, I'm we're following an outline like it's free flowing. Obviously. We don't like there's no script. But yeah, nobody is going to blurt anything out. And if they were to do that, then it would be removed within the editing process. onto today's topic. Today, we start our polyamory series. So this is going to be two episodes. The first part is going to be what I would call historical or anthropological polyamory. And the second episode is going to feature like modern polyamory or what polyamory looks like today. So to start out, we're going to go over some vocab, because there's a lot of complicated terminology in conversations like these. So we've got polygamy, bigamy, plural, marriage, polyamory, open relationships, polygamy, and polyandry. So to run that back, today, we're mostly going to be talking about polygamy and polygamy, because it is a historical sense. So we are talking about marriages here, for the most part, whereas next week, we'll be talking about open relationships or polyamory, which is dating more than one person that's polyamory. And sometimes that can look like an open relationship. Sometimes that can be three or more people taking each other like it has many forms that we'll go into next week. But this week, so bigamy refers to marrying somebody else while simultaneously being married to a spouse who is still living. Polygamy refers to the practice of having more than one spouse, especially a wife and once both practices are legal in many places shut out dictionary account for that. Yeah, so polygamy is comprised of two things. There's public and me hope. I hope I'm saying that right? Where which is more than one wife, and then polyandry. Which is more than one husband. So, for the majority of this conversation, I'm going to use polygamy and polygamy interchangeably. Show Merriam Webster. So is a god comments on vocab.
(Anthony) One, just the fact that when you research these type of things, you can find out like all these different terms like we'll get into this in the more in the second part, just a moderate episode. But I've been in a polyamorous relationship, and I didn't know all those terms. So just the fact that this is such a broad topic. It's very interesting to me, especially since being in one in the past and not knowing one in the middle of it didn't really know what it was, and then learning what it really was. But going back years now, four years later now and hearing that there's like different terms for if you've got multiple wives, multiple husbands, and you'll get into that, but it's just so interesting.
(Elle) Yeah. So the origins of like I said, I'm going to be using polygamy. So I found this book by a woman, her name is Sarah, and I think it's Pearsall or Piersol. I'm going to be saying parasol like the fruit. Okay. Hopefully, that's right. I couldn't find any record of her saying her name. So it's the book is called polygamy A Very Short Introduction. So even this book is isn't introduction, like, because we do deep dives here. But we don't do. There are no submarines. I made the joke earlier. So here's some Here's a quote from her book. Overall, though, polygamy allowed for resource building diplomatic links, and the creation of significant networks. So here we're talking the origin. So the first written this is another quote from her. The first written law code in the world, that of camaraderie around 1780 BCE, allowed a man with a barren or diseased wife to take a second wife. At the same time, it mandated that the second wife should not be seen as equal to the first. Wow. So it stemmed from infertility or disease. That that was the first as many as some some of you may know, the first law code was the code of Hammurabi would write widely regarded as the first law code. So yeah, that's kind of the origin of it. And polygamy takes place all over the world. And there are so many different interpretations of it, and ways that it exists. So we're kind of we're going to be talking a little more specifically about it in the Western world, because that's where we live. But it's a fascinating topic. Like I the book was accessible to us through the MSU library. Yeah, I read a little bit about it. It just seems fascinating. And well, I'll probably use it more next week. But what's interesting about polygamy the next the next point, I want to address or Wait, did you have anything to say about the origins? Not you? Okay. What's interesting is the religious aspect. So people who are raised Christian or this is the Old Testament, so Jewish as well. I think Muslim as well, I am not I'm not very familiar with Islam. I'll be fully honest with you guys. But there's a biblical reference to King Solomon. And I've got a very long quote that I will use some of here this is from the Catholic Bible, because I was raised Catholic. So that's the one I'm familiar with. The Book of Kings, chapter 11, verses one through three, I said, I'll say a few of it. But King Solomon loved many foreign wives. These were from the nations about which the Lord had said to the Israelites, you are not to go near them, nor will they come to you. For they will surely turn your heart away to follow their gods. Okay. He had 700 wives and 300 concubines and his wife, his wives perverted his heart. So I have always known about King Solomon having a lot of wives. But I did not know that it was a cautionary tale of sorts. Because what's interesting in there is a you know, a little bit goes into the idea of interfaith marriages, which we're not going to get into. Obviously, I had no problem with interfaith marriages. I'm sure you don't either. I don't even know if you're talking about when people have two different religions marrying each other. But what was it against your faith marriages?
(Anthony) Yeah, oh, no, no, no matter to me.
(Elle) Yeah, it I mean, I think it does. If your religion is extremely important to you, it's unlikely you'd marry outside of it. It's like you want your kids when he's a certain way, but people of different faiths marry all the time. There's nothing wrong with that.
(Anthony) I've always wondered how that dynamic goes where like raising kids and like being in the relationship because I've heard like you mentioned, like, if it's very serious to them, then they wouldn't tend to date out their religion, but it's pretty interesting. I don't even know it was wonderful.
(Elle) Usually people they talk about things before they get married to talk about a lot of stuff before they get married. Definitely hold them accountable. Yeah, but the part about King Solomon having 700 wives and 300 concubines, I didn't know it was a cautionary tale. Real quick question what took occupied? Do you know? It is like kind of a sex slave? Wow. Okay, so like a harem They have varying degrees of rights across the world. But yeah, that is what I'm talking about is because you know, the 700 wives weren't enough. You need 300 Yeah, exactly. So that is from the Catholic Bible. And then the book I was mentioning by parasol, says the Old Testament is filled with stories of kings who gained power through the reproductive and domestic labor of multiple wives. In such systems however, power rarely approved the wives themselves. Despite all they did instead it was the word of mothers of kings who claimed the greatest feminine authority. So I don't know if you are familiar with have set have set shut out of seeing the puppet history. That's watcher, the Watchtower entertainment networks puppet history show, which I enjoy. They've got a little song I have to sing in my head to say her name correctly. She was an Egyptian pharaoh. She was one of the I believe the first female pharaohs and that's that's an interesting story within itself. But yeah, power rarely accrued to the wives themselves. Instead, it was a word of mothers of kings who claimed the authority. Yeah, so that's, that's sort of biblical, or religious. polyamory polygamy, which is it's a very interesting concept because poly polyamory may be on the rise, but it is not new. But speaking of religion, by far, at least in our Western society, the most what people think of most when they hear polygamy or bigamy in particular, is Mormons. So Mormons are the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And I want to start by saying that most Mormons are not polygamous. So Mormons outlawed polygamy and bigamy in within their church in 1890. So one term that I've heard used a lot is plural marriage. Because it with regards to almost everything we're talking about today. These were marriages where the husband married multiple wives, but the wives were not married to one another. Okay, so that is an important distinction. Because then you get into a question of sexuality. So this is just a husband having more than one wife. Okay. Yeah, so Mormons, most of them are not polygamous. And I was able to find this document. This sort of book or article was originally written published in 1982, and received substantial backlash by oh my goodness, I cannot believe I did not write down the name of the author How rude of me. Oops. Apologies. But it's called the origin of Mormon polygamy and the rld s response, a prenup preliminary analysis, and I read a little bit of it, like I said, published in 1982. And it received quite a bit of backlash. And it was basically trying to outline the history of polygamy within Mormonism. And I think a lot of the backlash so the founder, Mormonism was founded in 1830, by a man named Joseph Smith Jr. A lot of it seemed to be trying to distance him from politically. So his son, Joseph Smith, a third said that, like his father never took multiple wives. So not only is it establishing the history, it's kind of like retconning it in a way. So his wife's name was Emma. And there's a lot of debate within the Jews, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, whether or not Emma was his only wife. So that kind of remains a little unknown. But it's a very interesting concept, where most people know Mormonism and plural marriage is from the TV show Sister Wives, which we're going to talk about more next week. Okay. But I think it is again important to restate that most Mormons are not polygamist. It's really like a sect of them. And that's section on it like fundamentalist Mormons who believe in plural marriage. So, yeah, any any thoughts on Mormonism Anthony?
(Anthony) The first thought I had was shadow Eminem was first on Renegade. But it's very interesting. Because when I first my first experience with knowing about Mormonism, there was a that is that a word Mormonism is so cool, but um, my mom had me, her and my dad watch a movie. And we thought it was like Christian like nondenominational where we believe in and then the end of the movie pretty much like saying that they were Mormons. And it was a shock to us, because, especially me, there's about few years ago, so I didn't really know the difference. And then they were like, Oh, wow, we didn't, like no, this was this type of film. And it's interesting and weird to not really know the difference do I like I still kind of don't get it, but I just, I know it's different. But it's just interesting to have it kind of called back to the conversation we're having now because I hadn't really heard an entire my list. And then we're gonna go. I really heard of the term or like thought about the religion until or ever since we watched that movie autumn years ago. So it's kind of cool to have it all come back full circle.
(Elle) Well, what's fascinating is that some people don't consider Mormons Christians at all. Interesting. So this is not a great source. I just looked this up, so forgive me, but Wikipedia says that nearly all Mormons self identify as Christian. So they do or don't do self self identify. But Mormons do not believe, Oh, this is a more better source Luther College, but you can do it Mormons do not believe in the Trinity. Like the Father, Son in the spirit. Okay, so I think that is probably but I mean, Christianity is a complicated topic.
(Anthony) Do they say what they believe in if they don't believe in the Trinity?
(Elle) So Mormons believe in a third book, like the way and this is an elementary understanding, I understand that. Um, that was a fun sentence. I'm aware of that. You know, Jews believe in the Old Testament, or the Torah, which I think the Torah is specifically the first five books of the Bible, but I could be wrong. Christians believe in the New Testament. And Muslims believe in the Quran, which is a Quran, which is different. And then Mormons believe in, in they have their own book called The Book of Mormon, like the musical, which is probably not the most accurate depiction, but it is a good musical. And it is funny, and turn it off is a hilarious song. So there's that. Yeah, so they believe they have they believe that, like, Christians came to America, and that the Garden of Eden was in Jackson, Missouri. It's a fascinating, it's a fascinating thing to think about, because this is true for all religions. But a lot of times when people talk about when people talk about religion, they tend to pull the most controversial parts forward. So when people talk about, for example, baptism, they will talk about how homophobia is kind of prevalent within the Baptist Church. When people talk about Catholicism, they talk about the scandals involving the Urban Assault of children. When people talk about Islam, they talk about fundamentalists, you know what I mean? And that's, that's not most of the religion. So when people talk about Mormons, they talk about polygamy despite the fact that most Mormons are polygamous. You know, most most Mormons are I'm sure wonderful people. They have interesting rules about out like about alcohol and tattoos, but a lot of Christians have don't don't drink or don't believe in tattoos, you know. So, yes, that is that is Mormonism and polygamy a brief history. So I mentioned this earlier, but polygamy is a thing all across the world. It is It looks different everywhere. It's practiced, like I was reading about how some Pacific Islanders, having focal according to this author of parasol, have a more not loving but more positive view of polygamy where like a man would marry sisters like actual sisters, and then it helps sustain generational bonds and it provides like that, you know, it helps women raise their children, that kind of thing. Where as other other forms of polygamy like European polygamy aren't As aren't always as positive. So it's just an interesting thing. Yeah, we're going to be talking specifically about Western society. I know we've talked about biblical references but going forward. So American society. I learned about this in a sociology class from a woman Her name is Teresa see of Atari. She has a book called sociology of families change, continuity and diversity. She talks about the difference between institutional companionate and individualist, individualist marriage. So polygamy would probably fall would definitely fall into the first one, which is institutional marriage, which is women being married off usually by their fathers, to a man for strategic reasons for land ownership, political alliances, things like that. And usually, these communities would live together. So you would live with your, like, if you were if, if I were married to a man, I might live with my sister in law, and it was quite common for the closest relationships to be between female friends. And, Yep, let's hop platonically. So it's institutional marriage is often looked down upon. But that's not to say that it didn't have its merits. Whereas then in the 1950s, this idea of companionate marriage came forward, which is like it's the romance of it, the high school sweethearts, you know, like, You're my one and only you're my best friend, that kind of marriage came forward. And that can be very, I mean, it probably allows them for women to have a lot more freedom. But it can also be very toxic. But this was before the note no fault divorce was established. So, so no fault divorce was this law passed, I think by Kennedy. Yes, Kennedy, saying that you didn't have a you didn't need a reason to get divorced. So in the United States before, then somebody had to cheat, or, obviously death, but somebody had to cheat. They're like bigamy was another example. They were married to somebody before that. But no fault divorce allowed for, you could just get divorced because it wasn't working out. After a no fault. Divorce was instituted domestic violence rates went down. Wow. Because people could, I mean, the majority of divorces are initiated by women. And that's an interesting statistic. Because often in marriage, it falls on the woman to do like the paperwork. So even if the woman isn't the one who like initiates it, she might be expected to carry that task out. Why? Because people, husband and heterosexual marriages, the division of labor, and gender roles will dictate that the woman like manages the household and manages like the people.
(Anthony) And by the way, just to give a bit context, on my end is why I'm like, more so quiet, literally learning as, as she goes, like with y'all, I'm learning so I don't have no, I don't have much input that I don't know about a lot of this, but I'm gonna listen as much as I can and let let her cook. So
(Elle) okay. So then this gave rise to individualist marriage, which is what we see now, which is, you expect one person to fulfill you entitled in every aspect. So that is your best friend, that is your soulmate. They're expected to fulfill you sexually, mentally, emotionally. Physically. I'll be like your medicine, you take your dose. As I was saying, that can be me. Remember, that's all Yeah, so individuals marriage is the idea that one person is your one. Mm. So polygamy would fall under institutional management in Western society. Okay. So the next thing and our final topic here is polygamy is role in oppressing women.
(Anthony) And when she brought this to me, I was like, Well, wait a minute, what we might do so
(Elle) because I found an interesting article by a Susan von stridency. I'm gonna just call her Susan from July of 2004, that I initially thought it was 102 pages, but it just included references called the contribution of polygamy to women's oppression and impoverishment and argument for its prohibition. So this is where we get into that polygamy, and how polygamy is usually used in terms of a man taking multiple wives. Although the reverse polyandry I read was prevalent in the Himalayas, there was a book about women taking multiple husbands in Nepal and the Himalayas. Tragically, the book was not available to MSU students online. So it would have had to be broken to the library and check it out. Yeah. But the quote from Susan is public, polygamy exacerbates the impoverishment of women by limiting your access to financial resources during the marriage and upon divorce, or death of the husband. So, yeah, it's a very interesting concept because polygamy can mean so many different things across the world. But it is, in my opinion, it is definitely a tool to oppress women. Because otherwise, we would see the reverse is more common. And she makes a point there about if you are not legally married to somebody, when they die, you might not get a portion of their estate. You know, I know that was a big argument. That is actually how gay marriage became legalized was there was a couple. And one of them died. And because of that, they were married in another state and moved and it was like, you don't have access to his estate. And he's like, that's my husband. So that is the case that legalized gay marriage in the United States and 2015. And forgive me, I don't know the the name of the case. But yeah, so So when you think about polygamy and access financial access, it's a very interesting concept. And this got brought up a lot on SR wives more so in recent years, so I'm gonna have to show Yes, it's a show with DLC or, at the start of the show features a guy named Cody, yes, they're fundamentalist Mormons. That's what he says at the beginning of the show, and his three wives, and then he takes a fourth. So the show has been on for a number of years, and the family is not all entirely together anymore. But a few of them have spoken out after the fact talking about money was really tight growing up. Because it is hard to support. I mean, some of them worked. I think one of them didn't, but it's hard to support children and multiple wives. Like if you have a ton of do because children is a whole other concept. Because like we were talking earlier about historical context, it was needed often to produce a lot of children. And especially if you were in a position of power, if you weren't loyal, you needed. You needed children to carry on our line to carry on your lineage. So that is one of the reasons that additional wives or concubines were introduced, so that a man's of line would stay in power. Wow. So anything you want to add about women or anything I've discussed?
(Anthony) Not necessarily only because like I mentioned earlier, this was a lot of very new information to me. So it's a lot of is still kind of processing. But yeah, to kind of allude to next week, next week, there's something I want to mention to you off the mic just so we can keep it another Sneak Peek for next episode. But something you mentioned relates heavily to my experience in my polyamorous relationships. But to find out about that guy's got Tune in next week. Absolutely. With that being said
(Elle) Hang on. All right. Oh, one one more thing. I am not entirely sure of how to correctly cite sources within a podcast format. So I'm familiar with APA style, and also MLA and AP, obviously, but I'm not quite sure how to cite things in a podcast format. So I did my best to mention the full titles of stuff and the author's. But if I missed anything, I will address it next week, when we talk about polyamory in the modern age and what that looks like.
(Anthony) Definitely, and with that being said, we're always going to take a deep dive but sometimes good to come up for air.
(Elle) This has been the going deeper podcast