Since you were the only one that was offended by my post, I'll address this to you (and also to those that were silently offended.)
Key point: I was responding to a post justifying polygamy in terms of the complete objectification of women. So the real issue here is how various cultures prevent women from seeing themselves/ from being seen as sexual subjects rather than sexual objects. Now, with Islam, as the post specified and as Hakki attested, woman as sexual subject simply does not compute. She is not, in fact, any kind of subject.
The situation is more complicated in the US. In the US she can vote, own property, get custody of her children, work, etc. The problem in the US is that the culture as a whole does not recognize the possiblity of the Other. In the US, one is either American, or one wants to be an American, or one is on the way of becoming American. And American means white male. Now for a man to be able to make love to a woman, he has to be able to conceive of the possiblity of the Other. He has to conceive and to experience the Other and to accept the paradox that a meeting between self and other is possible without one being turned into the other. There is absolutely nothing in a culture based on commodity exchange that can support such an experience.
So a woman's experience with American men is that of being some kind of prize, some kind of counter in a larger game that is played by men with men: a notch on the bed post, a race that is won, a status symbol that can be publicly displayed. Compare this with the experience of being enjoyed and explored as woman --- compare this with sex as a necessarily reciprocal definition. (Please hold the flames; none of this should be interpreted as a condemnation of homosexuality. I focus on Americans because this is where I live and also because the illusion of freedom is strongest here.)
It is not a question of evil men and victimized women. My experience making love to women was shocking and overwhelming. When a woman is in the throes of lovemaking she becomes ---oh...so beautiful, she is translucent, and the effect on the lover is something nearing madness (or as Propertius put it "why is mortal woman so inhumanly beautiful?). So I am siezed by this intoxication, feeling like I could literally lose my sanity, and I ask myself (hours later) how could it be? How could it be that making love to a woman can have this effect (when I am not even hard-wired for it) and how could men experience this ....and continue to treat women the way they do? How could a man experience this and still continue to think and act like a boy? How could a man prefer the experience of woman as passive object to this? How could power make up for this?
It is a poisonous culture that prevents this possiblity and defers it to some future paradise. That's all I meant to say.
(Thank you Hakki and Chuck G. for the support.)
Joanna B.