Meat Patriarchal wannabe catfishers

[Paulsen]

I see. Sometimes prose doesn't come out the way it would in conversation. I mean to say I think, from the prospective sister wive's perspective it's especially worth your time to befriend the first wife. If the long term consideration is to possibly become the helpmate of the man I don't see how it would help him for you to not be friends with his first wife as soon and as thoroughly as possible.

 

[steve]

I see. Sometimes prose doesn't come out the way it would in conversation. I mean to say I think, from the prospective sister wive's perspective it's especially worth your time to befriend the first wife. If the long term consideration is to possibly become the helpmate of the man I don't see how it would help him for you to not be friends with his first wife as soon and as thoroughly as possible.

In your opinion, what is the difference between befriending the first wife or the second wife? Or the third wife?

 

[Verifyveritas76]

I’ve found it interesting that the initial process of discovery has initiated essential growth and change in both of us, even if it turned out to be someone that wouldn’t have fit in our home.

I’d confess at this point, I’ve never made it past discovery to what I’d consider courtship. The one gal I thought might fit turned out to be not quite as truthful as she claimed to be right as we were considering moving to the courting stage.

One thing I’ve noticed is that many mistake discovery for courtship, and many have no clear vision of what they want long term out of an addition to the family, and have no clear vision of what they are offering to an addition to the family, or what exactly her role and function will be in the expanded family beyond certain (preferably) unmentionable benefits. How exactly can any potential agree to join a family without a clear understanding of the husbands vision and mission for his family?

Right? And yet it is so common in our culture because virtually every monogamous marriage begins the same way. Somehow romance and tingly feelings have become adequate substitutions for long term compatibility and common goals and vision.

 

[steve]

Somehow romance and tingly feelings have become adequate substitutions for long term compatibility and common goals and vision.

Extremely, sadly true

 

[Keith Martin]

How exactly can any potential agree to join a family without a clear understanding of the husbands vision and mission for his family?

Right? And yet it is so common in our culture because virtually every monogamous marriage begins the same way. Somehow romance and tingly feelings have become adequate substitutions for long term compatibility and common goals and vision.

Very excellent points, @Verifyveritas! Thank you again for your session on family vision at last month's retreat.

 

[Keith Martin]

Wait.......slink away into the night sky????
Is there something that I need to know about you?!?!

Well, my original posting was predominantly hypothetical. The slinking away into the night sky (a mixed metaphor, at best) was what I might have hypothetically done had you presented me with evidence that I have been guilty of or creating the impression that I have been guilty of serial courting with no intention of following through on forming a plural family.

As far as something you or anyone else needs to know about me, I would say I've probably been quite transparent in my participation both here on the forum threads and in person at retreats. Whatever else you might learn about me can be had simply by asking the right questions! I've led an adventurous life congruent with being a spiritually-oriented high sensation seeker who formerly was willing to take just about any dare. Suffice it to say that others may be shocked by some of what they could learn about me, but it is now a very rare instance indeed that has the potential to produce shock in me. [File all this under TMI. ]

 

[Keith Martin]

So in our poly context, do you think a lot of this comes down to men who are eager for another women, who are flirting with the idea of this, but can't get their wife on board or don't have the guts to upturn their lives to make it happen?

Or do you think it is more just typical attention and validation seeking?

These are great questions, @rockfox.

It would be interesting to know how many people contact the new single girls in the first few days.

No doubt, but aside from violating privacy, we are going to have no way of officially verifying this. I believe, though, that, if we're paying attention, we have no problem creating pretty good educated guesses about (a) which men are privately contacting nearly every single woman who shows up, (b) which men never privately contact the single women, and (c) which men respectfully only privately contact the women they discriminatingly have reason to believe they may truly want to pursue. I further believe that what @FollowingHim is suggesting is happening along the lines of unsuitable men turning off suitable women from everyone (including suitable men) is related most especially with the men in group (a).

 

[Keith Martin]

I have long had a strong suspicion that the unsuitable men do the bulk of the approaching of women, while the suitable men are busy living life waiting for the right woman to turn up. If so, this is a serious problem statistically. Let's assume that half the men are "suitable" - decent themselves, and with families at least somewhat prepared for polygamy. And let's assume that the "suitable" men approach 0-1 women in a period of time, but the "unsuitable" approach 4 in the same time period. This would mean that for every woman being approached by a man, there's an 80-100% chance he's unsuitable, and only 0-20% chance he's suitable. And that's assuming half the men are suitable, which is probably very generous. Disclaimer - I invented all of these numbers as I have no data to base any of this on, I'm illustrating a point.

Based on my professional clinical experience, my tendency to be an intense observer of human behavior, and my unfortunately vast experience on dating sites, I think your estimates, @FollowingHim, are, if anything, conservative and thus likely underestimate what happens to women. I'll speak to this in a subsequent post, but the converse is also true: good men are also much more likely to be approached by unsuitable women than they are to be approached by suitable women. I think it's safe to estimate that 25% of the women and women on dating sites are scammers (although most scammer men are pretending to be unattached when they're really attached, and most scammer women are either looking for money or catfishing [the majority of which are bitter because of past experiences with men and are therefore taking it out on any man they can punish for the deeds of others]), and another 50% are unavailable due to entirely unrealistic opinions about what should be available to them in life, so at most 25% are worth considering. What I've just asserted, though, is not specific to those looking to be polygamous. However, the lessons are worth keeping in mind, because the general principle of women being turned off by the overactive unsuitable is certainly operative.

So if this is going on, it is a serious problem for not only women looking for husbands, but for decent men looking for a wife. Because there's a good chance the good women will be put off by multiple bad interactions with unsuitable men, and give up on polygamy before they ever meet a decent one - even if there are many decent men out there.

This discussion tempts me to post the bulk of my previous profile that was up on Ashley Madison (don't laugh; I was treated with more respect there than I was on any of the so-called legitimate dating sites), POF, Kwink and OK Cupid. It was something that expanded over time in response to the interest, the criticism, the hatred and the common questions I fielded due to being a married man who was openly seeking an additional wife for a plural family. One major topic was the disparity between the number of unmarried men and unmarried women -- and even more relevant, the even greater comparative number of marriageable unmarried women and marriageable unmarried men. There are catfishers and scammers and slackers and various other losers among both genders, but, other than the catfishers, those bad apples are far more likely to be male than to be female, and, even including the catfishers, if one is to realistically assess the dating pool, one has to recognize that the pool of unsuitable men among the unmarried far outnumbers the pool of unsuitable women. However, because those people are fairly unsuccessful in their efforts to find mates or even casual sex, until they give up altogether their desperation fuels higher levels of approaching the opposite sex, creating the situation @FollowingHim has described.

Women, if that is going on, the best way to not get caught by it is to do the approaching yourself. Don't advertise that you're available and then [wait to] talk to the men that approach you. Rather, seek out decent men and approach them yourself. If you're unclear if the man is decent, ask someone else who knows them first.
This then puts the responsibility on the man to figure out if you're real. That's still an important step, but at least if you know you're real, and you know they're decent, then it's a minor formality rather than a massive worry.

That is why I applaud his prescription. I have a friend in the BF community whom I've been actively encouraging to get outside of her comfort zone to be assertive about approaching men and women in families that either are already or desire to become plural families. Here's the problem, though, and it's one worth us brainstorming a solution for: the average man in the BF community tends to be not only more legalism-based than the average American but significantly more legalism-based than the average monogamy-only Christian American. Even setting aside the preference for patriarchy which most all of us have in common, the legalism to which I'm pointing tends to be heavily correlated/associated with a belief that men are supposed to take the lead in everything, that women are supposed to be demure and submissive, and that any woman who is straightforward about what she wants is undesirable.

When you add to this that almost all the women looking to become part of already-established families are seeking patriarchal men, such women have already been programmed to believe that they're supposed to wait for men to take the lead in all important aspects of life, which certainly includes courting.

Therefore, to encourage women to do the approaching is to give them the message that they should be willing to risk not only rejection but getting a reputation that will be shared among Biblical Families that could rule them out as a mate for anyone!

Believe me -- and if you've been paying attention, you know I'm not one to color within the lines -- I applaud any woman who steps forward to identify herself as not only possessed of an appreciation for why marrying an already-tested man is an advantage (if you haven't read this thread, I invite you to do so now: https://biblicalfamilies.org/forum/...nerally-be-better-off-seeking-polygamy.14922/) but also to identify her specific preferences about which family she'd like to be a part of. I personally welcome any woman who wants to take me aside and tell me that she would like to consider specifically being married to me and Kristin. But for women to feel comfortable enough to take that kind of risk -- a behavior set that has been drummed out of them since birth -- we patriarchal men who desire polygyny are of necessity going to have to develop an entirely different atmosphere among our ranks.

To begin with, we're going to have to create some congruency that doesn't exist yet between wanting good women to make themselves known to us and espousing positions like that, once married, wives are supposed to just recognize that they have little or no say in how things proceed in the household. I would also assert quite strongly that it is unreasonable to expect women to step up to the plate in an atmosphere in which any significant number of men baldly promote the idea that masculinity is measured by how many children they generate. Hear me clearly: I am NOT denigrating being the father of many children. I'm the biological father of five and in favor of families being as large as people are willing to be responsible for. However, sometimes on these threads men become guilty of limiting their praise for other men to impregnation rates with little attention given to the myriad of other traits that should characterize patriarchs. If we want women to behave in a non-feministic assertive manner that helps us identify their interest in us, we have to also reward them for wanting to be collaborators in our marriages, and that slap-the-good-old-boy-for-getting-his-dick-out-and-demonstrate-that-it's-not-shooting-blanks attitude seriously works against creating confidence that a woman won't be told to shut up and limit herself to being barefoot and pregnant once she's tied the knot.

 

[Keith Martin]

I would love the opportunity to do this. But there are so many factors. I see Godly men with one wife, there is no way to know if they believe in this biblical lifestyle. Secondly, I believe it is important to make a connection to the present wife first or at the same time. I am on the hunt for a group here in NYC that believes the same as I.

Having spent some significant time in NYC, my heart goes out to you. If anyone in the Heartland thinks it's difficult to find like-minded folk, try doing it in the Boston-to-DC corridor or on the Left Coast.

Maybe the best approach is to do just that. Befriend the family especially the first wife and see where God leads you from there.

That could be labor intensive, with more error than trial. I do recommend to all of us that we make a habit of casually working the topic of the legitimacy of Biblical polygamy into our random discussions with mainstream Christians, but it is the case at this point in history that almost everyone is drunk on the Koolaid of monogamy-only brainwashing, so experiencing receptive audiences will be heavily outweighed by people who will treat one with disdain for even broaching the subject. And even among the receptive audiences, those who are at all open to actualizing it in their own lives will be few and far between. So asking women to embark on the project of getting to know godly couples for the purpose of maybe eventually finding a potential match isn't really all that kind.

I think we're going to have to first work on making our Biblical Families community a more receptive one, and then maybe we can start promoting that in a modeling sense, gradually, out into the world at large.

 

[steve]

Well, my original posting was predominantly hypothetical. The slinking away into the night sky (a mixed metaphor, at best) was what I might have hypothetically done had you presented me with evidence that I have been guilty.......

I was reacting to the into the night sky phrase, just teasing you because nobody that I know can accomplish that without an airplane.

 

[FollowingHim]

I have experienced this twice. Since this is public I can't go into details, but I have been deeply hurt by both men that lead me on in fake marriages.

Thankyou for sharing this.

If anybody has had serious problems with any member of this forum, and they fear that person could go on and hurt someone else in the same way, please do let the staff know by private message. If we are aware of what is going on, there are things we can do to at least make sure someone is unable to use this particular website to initiate relationships.

In your opinion, what is the difference between befriending the first wife or the second wife? Or the third wife?

It sounded to me like Paulsen was simply assuming the family being approached was monogamous, which will usually be the case, and used "first wife" to refer to the existing wife. Obviously if there are already multiple wives it's important to get to know them all, but that will be much rarer (statistically most polygamists stop at 2 wives).

 

[FollowingHim]

Here's the problem, though, and it's one worth us brainstorming a solution for: the average man in the BF community tends to be not only more legalism-based than the average American but significantly more legalism-based than the average monogamy-only Christian American. Even setting aside the preference for patriarchy which most all of us have in common, the legalism to which I'm pointing tends to be heavily correlated/associated with a belief that men are supposed to take the lead in everything, that women are supposed to be demure and submissive, and that any woman who is straightforward about what she wants is undesirable.

These traits may appear to all go together, but they need to be picked apart a bit. The discussions on here are often very misleading.

Patriarchy is discussed at length on this forum, and often to the extremes. This is because people ask extreme questions, and get honest answers. The way men talk here does NOT necessarily reflect how they actually live their lives from day to day. For instance, someone might ask "if a man orders his wife to commit a crime, should she obey him?", and we might discuss it for 10 pages with many people saying "yes, she should obey him". But it's entirely theoretical. None of the people involved are actually in the habit of ordering their wives to become criminals. It's very misleading.

If by "Legalism" you are referring to Torah-following or head coverings, that is very varied. The men here run the entire range from standard Protestantism to hard-line Hebrew Roots, and everywhere in-between. However, once you start looking at polygamy in scripture and questioning that, you start questioning everything. One very obvious next thing to question is "if polygamy is ok, what else from the Old Testament is relevant to us today that we had previously dismissed?". So we start discussing Torah - and these discussions go on at great length, with the Torah-followers being more vocal than others because they're more interested in the topic. But that doesn't mean everybody follows Torah.

Head coverings too - they're discussed occasionally, many people talk very positively about them, once again the men who feel most strongly on head coverings are most vocal in such discussions - but only a portion of the men here actually expect their women to wear them.

Wifely submission - yes, we'll talk at length about the fact that wives should submit to their husbands. But what that actually means in real life might be very different to how it looks to someone reading the discussion. One man might constantly order his wife around - another might run the home on an essentially democratic basis, but just retain the "casting vote" to ensure a clear outcome to major disagreements. Both wives obey their husbands - but it works completely differently in practice. But in a discussion on the forum, it might sound the same because both men use the same word to describe it.

To begin with, we're going to have to create some congruency that doesn't exist yet between wanting good women to make themselves known to us and espousing positions like that, once married, wives are supposed to just recognize that they have little or no say in how things proceed in the household.

Again, this is likely a poor impression. Just because someone says that a woman must obey her husband, does NOT mean that she has "little to no say in how things proceed in the household". Spouses who are communicating well will agree more often than not once the situation is fully understood by all, and where there is disagreement but the issue is unimportant a good husband will often choose to run with his wife's preference, out of love. And it is this large amount of say that she DOES have in the household, that make it easier for her to submit to his decision on those few matters where he does decide to "pull rank" and make an executive decision she disagrees with.

Having said this, there will be a vast range in how we all run our households. Some wives here may have "little to no say" - but as some wives might like it that way, that too is a good thing as it means there is choice of men!

The only problem is if women don't see these differences, and think we're all the same as a caricature they've built in their minds of a Me-Tarzan-You-Jane bible-thumping caveman...

I'd be very interested in hearing what impression the women get of the men here, and how closely this reflects the reality.

 

[steve]

but aside from violating privacy, we are going to have no way of officially verifying this.

It would probably be too complicated, but it would violate no ones privacy if a program simply kept track of the number of private messages that each person receives.

This would actually be a useful tool for the admins to know if there are people who are inactive other than messaging every unattached female.

It has been discussed in the past that a woman had faked an underaged account and was appalled by some of the incredibly inappropriate messages that she received. Let me just use this occasion to encourage the ladies to report problematic contact.
We will not allow that.

 

[FollowingHim]

I would love the opportunity to do this. But there are so many factors. I see Godly men with one wife, there is no way to know if they believe in this biblical lifestyle. Secondly, I believe it is important to make a connection to the present wife first or at the same time. I am on the hunt for a group here in NYC that believes the same as I.

I agree this is a big ask. And it does sound a bit like I'm chickening out, and saying this is too hard for the men so let's just expect the women to do it instead...

Pray about it and do whatever you feel God is leading you to do.

Godly men with one wife almost always won't believe in polygamy - yet. But if God intends for them to become polygamous, He will make sure that they come around to the idea at the right time. It's the Holy Spirit that does the persuading and teaching, you don't have to. God might use you to bring up the idea for discussion, but He will do the work. You could always inject the topic into their discussions by dropping a suitable book or article in their mailbox anonymously, and praying that God uses it... If it's God's will that you and they are to get together, He can arrange for suitable discussions to occur after that.

 

[FollowingHim]

It would probably be too complicated, but it would violate no ones privacy if a program simply kept track of the number of private messages that each person receives.

This would actually be a useful tool for the admins to know if there are people who are inactive other than messaging every unattached female.

I agree that would be great. If anyone knows of a XenForo addon that would do that, let us know. I have only found addons that will allow admins to read private conversations (which we do NOT want to install), I cannot find one that will just give statistics without breaching privacy.

 

[PeteR]

^^ Double like ^^ (okay, so two posts jumped in here while I was typing.... I was referring to @FollowingHim 's respons to @Keith Martin )

GREAT discussion here. @Keith Martin does identify some easy perceptions casual observers may get from thus forum, but this brings us again to the huge value of retreats or meatspace where members can get to know the hearts of others and better interpret what otherwise are simply words on a screen.

 

[Cap]

I would think that a man who does not have the time to look for a wife is not ready to have one. In a world of competition for mates whether in monogamy or pologamy, not upping your game to overcome the undesirables just lets them win and hurt women. I don't think God gave the idea of plural marriage so that men, families will just wait for someone to show up. Or, single ladies to expect a family to just come knocking on her door. I believe He gave PM to change lives, to make people step out in faith. I think being too busy to pursue for anyone, family or single is a cop out. Go after what you want, trust God that he will guide you. I have also found that heart break is part of the process. Trying is part of the process too. How would you know that you have found the right family or woman unless you have experienced bad ones? God may have a relationship for us in the least likely way we expect it, but we will never know unless we try to see what's possible.

 

[Cap]

These traits may appear to all go together, but they need to be picked apart a bit. The discussions on here are often very misleading.

Patriarchy is discussed at length on this forum, and often to the extremes. This is because people ask extreme questions, and get honest answers. The way men talk here does NOT necessarily reflect how they actually live their lives from day to day. For instance, someone might ask "if a man orders his wife to commit a crime, should she obey him?", and we might discuss it for 10 pages with many people saying "yes, she should obey him". But it's entirely theoretical. None of the people involved are actually in the habit of ordering their wives to become criminals. It's very misleading.

If by "Legalism" you are referring to Torah-following or head coverings, that is very varied. The men here run the entire range from standard Protestantism to hard-line Hebrew Roots, and everywhere in-between. However, once you start looking at polygamy in scripture and questioning that, you start questioning everything. One very obvious next thing to question is "if polygamy is ok, what else from the Old Testament is relevant to us today that we had previously dismissed?". So we start discussing Torah - and these discussions go on at great length, with the Torah-followers being more vocal than others because they're more interested in the topic. But that doesn't mean everybody follows Torah.

Head coverings too - they're discussed occasionally, many people talk very positively about them, once again the men who feel most strongly on head coverings are most vocal in such discussions - but only a portion of the men here actually expect their women to wear them.

Wifely submission - yes, we'll talk at length about the fact that wives should submit to their husbands. But what that actually means in real life might be very different to how it looks to someone reading the discussion. One man might constantly order his wife around - another might run the home on an essentially democratic basis, but just retain the "casting vote" to ensure a clear outcome to major disagreements. Both wives obey their husbands - but it works completely differently in practice. But in a discussion on the forum, it might sound the same because both men use the same word to describe it.

Again, this is likely a poor impression. Just because someone says that a woman must obey her husband, does NOT mean that she has "little to no say in how things proceed in the household". Spouses who are communicating well will agree more often than not once the situation is fully understood by all, and where there is disagreement but the issue is unimportant a good husband will often choose to run with his wife's preference, out of love. And it is this large amount of say that she DOES have in the household, that make it easier for her to submit to his decision on those few matters where he does decide to "pull rank" and make an executive decision she disagrees with.

Having said this, there will be a vast range in how we all run our households. Some wives here may have "little to no say" - but as some wives might like it that way, that too is a good thing as it means there is choice of men!

The only problem is if women don't see these differences, and think we're all the same as a caricature they've built in their minds of a Me-Tarzan-You-Jane bible-thumping caveman...

I'd be very interested in hearing what impression the women get of the men here, and how closely this reflects the reality.

The only problem with all this is that in a forum setting the loudest voices dictate the perception from the outside world, particularly from those who are lost and trying to find their purpose. We all need to be aware of those who are looking in because discussions in theory can appear to some as requirements if it's proclaimed louder than others and they, those looking in, truly don't understand what is really going on.

Some things are best left for individual families to discuss privately amongst themselves.

 

[steve]

Here's the problem, though, and it's one worth us brainstorming a solution for: the average man in the BF community tends to be not only more legalism-based than the average American but significantly more legalism-based than the average monogamy-only Christian American. Even setting aside the preference for patriarchy which most all of us have in common, the legalism to which I'm pointing tends to be heavily correlated/associated with a belief that men are supposed to take the lead in everything, that women are supposed to be demure and submissive, and that any woman who is straightforward about what she wants is undesirable.

When you add to this that almost all the women looking to become part of already-established families are seeking patriarchal men, such women have already been programmed to believe that they're supposed to wait for men to take the lead in all important aspects of life, which certainly includes courting.

Therefore, to encourage women to do the approaching is to give them the message that they should be willing to risk not only rejection but getting a reputation that will be shared among Biblical Families that could rule them out as a mate for anyone!

Believe me -- and if you've been paying attention, you know I'm not one to color within the lines -- I applaud any woman who steps forward to identify herself as not only possessed of an appreciation for why marrying an already-tested man is an advantage (if you haven't read this thread, I invite you to do so now: https://biblicalfamilies.org/forum/...nerally-be-better-off-seeking-polygamy.14922/) but also to identify her specific preferences about which family she'd like to be a part of. I personally welcome any woman who wants to take me aside and tell me that she would like to consider specifically being married to me and Kristin. But for women to feel comfortable enough to take that kind of risk -- a behavior set that has been drummed out of them since birth -- we patriarchal men who desire polygyny are of necessity going to have to develop an entirely different atmosphere among our ranks.

To begin with, we're going to have to create some congruency that doesn't exist yet between wanting good women to make themselves known to us and espousing positions like that, once married, wives are supposed to just recognize that they have little or no say in how things proceed in the household. I would also assert quite strongly that it is unreasonable to expect women to step up to the plate in an atmosphere in which any significant number of men baldly promote the idea that masculinity is measured by how many children they generate. Hear me clearly: I am NOT denigrating being the father of many children. I'm the biological father of five and in favor of families being as large as people are willing to be responsible for. However, sometimes on these threads men become guilty of limiting their praise for other men to impregnation rates with little attention given to the myriad of other traits that should characterize patriarchs. If we want women to behave in a non-feministic assertive manner that helps us identify their interest in us, we have to also reward them for wanting to be collaborators in our marriages, and that slap-the-good-old-boy-for-getting-his-dick-out-and-demonstrate-that-it's-not-shooting-blanks attitude seriously works against creating confidence that a woman won't be told to shut up and limit herself to being barefoot and pregnant once she's tied the knot.

My friend, I don’t know what you are reacting to, but this is an extremely unreasonable way to describe people like myself. How can you not mean me? I am definitely on the “control” end of the spectrum.
You don’t mean me?
1). There aren’t that many to the wrong of me (as opposed to the right of me) for you to over-characterize our fellow members that way.
2). If a man is truly perceived to be the way that you describe, why in the Heckle and Jeckle would any woman ever want to approach that family?

You conveniently leave out the only reasonable option, one that I have advocated in the past.
That a woman would ask a friend to make contact and see if there be mutual interest. It worked pretty darn good in the 6th grade. ( ok, I was pretty slow by today’s standards)

Love you brother, just had to brace you on this one.

 

[Keith Martin]

If by "Legalism" you are referring to Torah-following or head coverings

Clarification: When using the term 'legalism,' I am not (as in NO WAY) referring to Keeping Torah or anything related to head coverings. I'm using it in a much more broad general sense to refer to fundamentalist and/or Romanist emphasis on judging one's faith based on behavior and special rules for Christians (especially when even hinting at philosophies that tie ultimate salvation to these following these rules) -- and in a specific sense to rules along the lines of (a) expecting females to refrain from asking men out on dates, (b) expecting females to be deferential to men when it comes to stating preferences, (c) expecting females to be relatively silent when religious or other important topics are discussed, (d) expecting females to leave all leadership positions to males, or even (e) expecting females to always wait for males to initiate sexual behavior. I recoil in general in response to feminism and specifically to someone like Hillary Clinton yapping about the glass ceiling, but at the same time it's pretty unavoidable to notice that the fundamentalist sector of our overall culture does generally promote the message that females are supposed to be in the background, carefully avoiding the impression that they are being "too aggressive" lest they get the reputation of being "ballbusters" or just "too masculine," and, to the extent that females have internalized this message out of fear of being ostracized or overlooked when it comes to finding a mate, all I'm saying is that it's going to be hard to persuade them at an emotional level to be so forward as to directly indicate that they're interested in a particular family.

GREAT discussion here. @Keith Martin does identify some easy perceptions casual observers may get from thus forum, but this brings us again to the huge value of retreats or meatspace where members can get to know the hearts of others and better interpret what otherwise are simply words on a screen.

At the risk of being contentious, I'm just going to emphasize this: I believe we are missing the point if we minimize what I'm pointing to by thinking it's just a matter of people getting the wrong impression. I'm talking about a very real and very accurate assessment that our group tends toward being more legalistic than not only the culture at large but the average Christian mindset. I don't think it sufficiently articulates the distinction I'm pointing to, but this could to a certain extent be spoken of as simply acknowledging that, even though as a group we're all stepping out on a libertarian limb by promoting polygamy, otherwise as a group we tend to be more religiously conservative than most other folks. I'm not even saying that that's a bad thing. It's just the way it is. I, for example, in an ongoing sense, feel grateful, given how libertarian in general that I am, that I'm welcomed among y'all, because I recognize that my general approach to life and my specific approach to polygamy are well outside the mainstream of Biblical Families as a group. I'm not in any way attempting to change that. I'm just pointing to something that may not be obvious to the rest of you (because it's the water you swim in) but that is true nonetheless: this is a more legalistic group, and perhaps even just because of being so appropriately promoting of patriarchy it is a group that expects women to follow rather than lead.

Therefore, unless that is not only acknowledged but addressed and in some formal sense modified in some ways, it's entirely unrealistic and downright unfair to expect females to start doing the approaching, because they know in their bones that they will be punished for it in general.

And it's not just a matter of females getting the wrong impression because of a small number of men who are more vocal and who express particularly dominating viewpoints, although that does play into it to a degree . . .

The only problem with all this is that in a forum setting the loudest voices dictate the perception from the outside world, particularly from those who are lost and trying to find their purpose. We all need to be aware of those who are looking in because discussions in theory can appear to some as requirements if it's proclaimed louder than others and they, those looking in, truly don't understand what is really going on.

. . . and to the extent that this is true, it's a significant issue, because it's a correlative parallel issue to the one about unsuitable males figuratively drowning out the suitable males in the minds of suitable females who seek to be courted by suitable males.

If we discount the dynamic by justifying in our own minds that women are simply getting the wrong impression (whether it be because of over-active unsuitable males making inappropriate propositions or because of over-active chest-beating forum posters), then we will continue to pay the price of women concluding that we're, in general, a big waste of time.