Polyg-infamy

Social Snapshot - Polygamists

Polygamists are weird, mysterious, and disgusting. That is the single story presented of polygamists to our society. Unfortunately, we have the tendency to shun anything that is different, preferring to remain in our comfortable bubbles. For my analysis, the first place I went was Twitter. I believe Twitter has the ability to become the uninhibited, cumulative voice of the general public. Trending topics are those things that people want to talk about, the things that are on our minds.

A quick search of the term "polygamist" on Twitter gave a lot of insight to the single story of polygamists in our society. One tweeter quoted a friend that said, "You saw polygamists? Why didn't you call me?" Another simply said, "I actually find polygamists to be disgusting."

I noticed that polygamists are often the punch line of jokes, like other things we humorize because they make us feel uncomfortable i.e. Nazis, slavery, etc. People definitely do not understand polygamy. Newspapers include snapshots of polygamists as something "noteworthy" when all they are doing is walking down the street. Women's rights give speeches about how polygamy is merely normalized cheating that is selfish and hurts women and children.

This story definitely limits polygamists and relegates them to their position as weird and indecent. I think it is limiting to the fact that were a man or woman to make their practice of polygamy publicly known, they would be discriminated against in the workplace. The show, "Sister Wives" reveals that the misunderstanding adults have about polygamy has been passed to their children who make fun of polygamist children. Those children are then limited in their right to a normal childhood.

In conclusion, tweets, public speeches, journalism, and narrowly-focused documentaries have painted polygamists as strange, mysterious, and indecent. They are a novelty that has become the punch line in jokes because we don't know how else to deal with the fact that they exist. This stereotype limits them and potentially infringes on the religious freedoms granted all Americans by the Bill of Rights. Though polygamists are fighting back by opening their doors for productions like Nat Geo's "Polygamy USA" and "Sister Wives" and giving people a look into their otherwise normal lives, people only tune in to watch the freak show.