Mononormativity

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Analysis of monogamy as a social institution dates back to the Nineteenth Century, when works like Lewis H. Morgan's Ancient Society or Frederich Engels' response to the same, titled The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, argued that the difficulty of determining patrilineal descent meant that societies under primitive communism likely developed under a matriarchal, non-monogamous social order that was only overturned with the rise of private property and the consequent enforcement of monandry as part of the "world-historic defeat of the female sex".Frederich Engels. The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, 1884. (Wikisource)

Morgan's research contrasted the more patriarchal West against indigenous societies like the matrilocal and matrifocal Iroquois, citing the inequality of the former as a consequence of societal developments which "thus reversed the position of the wife and mother in the household; she was of a different gens from her children, as well as her husband; and under monogamy was now isolated from her gentile kindred, living in the separate and exclusive house of her husband."{{cite book |last=Morgan |first=Lewis H. |author-link=Lewis H. Morgan |year=1881 |title=Houses and house-life of the American Aborigines |location=Chicago and London |publisher=University of Chicago Press |page=128}}

Polygyny is instead largely culturally unopposed in many regions of Africa and the Muslim world, with the Qur'an providing scriptural basis for a man marrying up to four wives at once as long as he is capable of supporting them.{{cite web |last1=Kramer |first1=Stephanie |title=Polygamy is rare around the world and mostly confined to a few regions |url=https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/12/07/polygamy-is-rare-around-the-world-and-mostly-confined-to-a-few-regions/ |website=Pew Research Center |date=December 7, 2020}}"Polygamy in Context." Common Grounds News Services. Alia Hogben. 02-Mar-2010. .

In the contemporary era non-monogamous couplings are reported to constitute an increasingly significant sexual minority in the developed world. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction estimated that there were half-a-million "openly polyamorous families" in the United States in July 2009.{{cite web |url=https://www.newsweek.com/polyamory-next-sexual-revolution-82053 |title=Polyamory: The Next Sexual Revolution? |last=Bennett |first=Jessica |date=July 29, 2009 |website=Newsweek |access-date=December 23, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201104142851/https://www.newsweek.com/polyamory-next-sexual-revolution-82053 |archive-date=November 4, 2020 |url-status=live}}{{cite web |url=https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19125591-800-love-unlimited-the-polyamorists/ |title=Love Unlimited: The Polyamorists |author=Newitz, Annalee |date=July 7, 2006 |website=New Scientist |access-date=December 23, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201109025921/https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19125591-800-love-unlimited-the-polyamorists/ |archive-date=November 9, 2020 |url-status=live}} Additionally, 15–28% of heterosexual couples and about half of gay and bisexual people have a "non-traditional" arrangement of some kind as reported in The Guardian in August 2013.{{cite web |url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/20/polyamorous-shows-no-traditional-way-live |title=Being polyamorous shows there's no 'traditional' way to live |last=Penny |first=Laurie |date=August 20, 2013 |website=The Guardian |access-date=December 23, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201112015040/https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/20/polyamorous-shows-no-traditional-way-live |archive-date=November 12, 2020 |url-status=live }}

A large majority of the Western world can be thought of as legally or socially biased towards monogamous ways of living. Feminist scholars Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy explored the consequences of sex-negative, monogamy-centric socialization in their work The Ethical Slut, writing:

How do you dig up and examine a belief that you don’t even know you hold? The idea of lifelong monogamy as the only proper goal for relationships is so deeply buried in our culture that it’s almost invisible, we operate on these beliefs without even knowing we believe them. They are under our feet all the time, the foundation of our assumptions, our values, our desires, our myths, our expectationsEaston and Hardy, The Ethical Slut

"Mononormativity" in the sense of opposition to sexual monogamy was used as early as 1982, defined as "the idea that sexual relations are acceptable when only two people take part, preferably within the confines of a monogamous relationship" in a critique of normative phrasing in the Canadian decriminalization of homosexuality by scholar Thomas Hooper."More Than Two Is a Crowd": Mononormativity and Gross Indecency in the Criminal Code, 1981–82.

"Mono-normativity" in the modern understanding has instead been described as originating in 2005 with German queer studies scholars Marianne Pieper and Robin Bauer, later defined by Bauer as the assumption that "couple-shaped arranged relationships are the principle of social relations per se, an essential foundation of human existence and the elementary, almost natural pattern of living together."Quoted by Gordon-Orr, Rose. "Mononormativity and Related Normative Bias in the UK Immigration System: The Experience of LGBTIQ+ Asylum Seekers". via [https://doi.org/10.3389/fhumd.2021.659003 Frontiers in Human Dynamics], Volume 3, MCCS Goldsmiths University of London, 23 July 2021. The concept has been increasingly cited by psychiatrists and other professionals as a point of concern when countering systemic discrimination and improving legal or social representation for polyamorous people. University of British Columbia professor Carrie Jenkins explored the impacts of mononormativity in a book titled What Love Is: And What It Could Be, later discussing her own identity as polyamorous and drawing a distinction between "pro-polyamory" and "anti-monogamy".Interviewed by Sean Illing; [https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/2/23/14684236/monogamy-valentines-day-polyamory-marriage-love A philosopher makes the case for polyamory], Vox.com, 18 February 2018. Retrieved 20 October 2023.

{{Wiktionary|mononormativity|mononormative}}

• {{annotated link|Amatonormativity}}
• {{annotated link|Heteronormativity}}
• {{annotated link|Cisnormativity}}
• {{annotated link|Abstinence}}
• {{annotated link|Fourth-wave feminism}}

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Category:Intimate relationships

Category:Romance

Category:Polyamorous terminology