It’s old news that compulsory monogamy is the mating system of the capitalist patriarchy. Friedrich Engels and Bertrand Russell both made the case for this connection between economics and the way we arrange our intimate relationships. So have many others, myself included.
Under patriarchy, the inheritance of private property demands that men be sure of paternity. This in turn means that women’s sexuality – and correspondingly their care, love, and attention – must be tightly monitored and controlled. It’s unsurprising that women themselves eventually became private property within this worldview, as much as gold, food, or land. Later socio-political movements rejected the idea that women could be literally owned, and eventually monogamous control began to be exercised more symmetrically, with men also –
