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polygynous family in this way: the former knows their livelihoods
and fortunes are dependent upon the goodwill of the latter.
Dependency, as Quentin Skinner explains, need not be trafficked
under the guise of protection, but the mere knowledge that we are
at someone’s mercy is enough: “Knowing that we are free to do or
forbear only because someone else has chosen not to stop us is what
reduces us to
servitude
” (2002: 248; emphasis added).
Furthermore, completely obscured by the democratic
deliberations is the phenomenon of adaptive preferences:
rationalization and internalization of the destructive norms and the
injustices of patriarchal family system.
39
It is one thing for women
as wives to submit to the husband and acquiesce in the material and
epistemic
40
barriers designed to maintain polygyny. It is quite
another to do this when the individuals in question are children. In
spite of the all-inclusive nature of democratic deliberation, the
outcome tends to be biased toward the claims and desires of the
present generation: the welfare of the next generation is largely
neglected. However short-lived the protection for polygyny turns
out to be, the effect looms large over the children’s “right to an
open future” (Feinberg, 1992). Cumulatively, then, tallying up the
limitations and weaknesses discussed thus far, the picture that
comes into focus suggests that polygyny might be a form of
VAW
—
perhaps the most insidious yet! The reason is: the mantle of
legitimacy is conferred upon the protection for it, as emergent from
democratic deliberations that attend to the embedded details of the
case. All this makes the practice of polygyny even more intractable.
39
“Overrid[ing] the voluntary preferences of many actual women and men” may be
justified (Levey, 2005: 141). See also Chambers (2008: chap. 5); Friedman (2003:
chap. 7).
40
Epistemic barrier may include “false consciousness” in which people, for example,
members of a polygynous family lack awareness of their own dignity. “People can
be manipulated, controlled, or conditioned softly and subtly, or even invisibly . . .
[to the point where] they may even find pleasure or numerous benefits in their
situation, and feel grateful to those who rule them paternalistically” (Kateb, 2011:
19).
