Monogamy and Control

One of the main points Leo Bersani emphasizes against monogamy institutionalizes monogamy as a societal pressure enforced to control. Bersani gives many examples of scholars and texts in compliance with this point of view one of which I found appealing brought forth in "The Taboo of Virginity," which describes the control monogamy enforces on women through her husbands exclusive possession of her virginity. In this way the female is objectified similar to private property. It's interesting how societal norms use monogamy as a control to block the natural circuits of desire. This argument is concise, yet focusing on societal control through monogamy is flawed because it only shows one side. The book "Brave New World," by Aldous Huxley presents sexual liberation and pleasure as an easier way to control a population. In Huxley's futurist world the concept of marriage does not exist and because of this individuals are unable to create personal attachments to one another and are blinded through pleasure, ensuring that they could never band together in revolution.

Bersani continues his argument against monogamy by presenting monogamy as a societal norm programmed in the psychology of developing infants. The sense of female male paring engrained through infantile Oedipal complex experiences furthers the mental connection of what society has deemed as normal, yet the construct of this theory may not play out in the same way for children born with single mothers or children adopted from infancy to homosexual couples. According to Bersani's theory children born into homosexual couples would only have one gender to identify with and form their sexuality with, yet the sexuality of children raised by same sex couples can not be generalized and determined in this way.

- Mandi Brooksbank