My favorite show right now is HBO's Big Love. No doubt about it -- I'm deeply, unhealthfully, addicted. But do read Jill for a look into what a genuine polygamous community looks like. What's pictured in HBO's creation is wildly implausible -- upper middle-class, fully modern polygamy. Bill can support three wives at high levels of middle-class luxury. The women enjoy full access to wider society, and since the actual structure is confined to the four of them, the gender imbalances don't ripple outward in any obvious way. That's not quite the case when you extend it across a closed community. In such a situation, young men are ejected in order to ensure increased access and security for older men, while young women are appropriated long before they could think of saying no. it creates a world in which the boys are competitors and the girls are property, and neither groups is treated with any semblance of humanity.
