Do you think primitive tribes would have wanted lots of unattached pregnant woman around, kids of unknown parentage, ciods? Once humans settled in big towns, then the sex got primitive, because people could disappear, and not take any responsibility for their offspring.
Because of our long childhoods, humans have had to live by some stability rules, they have adapted these rules, across time and cultures, to suit themselves.

EmmaLiz said it, this is a very unique time in human existence. Sex and procreation have been unhooked, and the women can now act with the same freedom as the men have had. Given the letters Dan gets, it’s confusing out there for a lot of people.

@113 LavaGirl: I just finished reading Stephen King's 2017 collaboration with his youngest son, Owen, "Sleeping Beauties" (all 700 pages). Refreshingly, it appears that a lot of people---men and boys included---are starting to wake up.

@Lava @112: I think that in (early) tribal situations, it's completely possible that children were cared for by the group. Somewhat like a commune these days. We have some evidence arguing that hunter/gatherer societies were very fair, sharing resources equally, distributing work equally; I expect that went for childcare as well. As for parentage, you certainly always know who the mom is. And although so far as I know, it was mostly men who hunted, women contributed as much or more caloric value by gathering (a more reliable operation), and therefore had no need to "attach" themselves to any man; they were just as valuable to the group as men. (This is all from my vague memories of what I've read on the subject, Jared Diamond books and the like.) There's no reason such a system should be unstable.

If the standard story says "Men care a lot who their children are, so they can spend resources on them; thus, they demand monogamy from their partners" there's an easy flip which is "If no one knows who exactly their children are, they will care for all of them." Plus, the idea that any one person has spare resources to spend on their kids--but not other kids--goes against the hard-core sharing culture that we know is basic to a lot of such groups. Nobody has extra resources to begin with, all stuff is shared out as soon as it is acquired.

When I look at Joe Newton's graphic illustration of "Liked Boys" for this week's Savage Love installation, why do I see the boys of South Park? eek!

@Dadddy @117: "It seems female selectivity would be more problematic for their hypothesis, not to mention the assumption that (early) women (in large numbers) would trade in their substantial sexual power over individual men for group sex. Do they address the female side of the equation in the book? Or do they assume female consent wasn't relevant?"

Well, it's been long enough since I've read the book that I'm afraid of misrepresenting it now. But here's what I remember. First, with bonobos, the deal is that that when females are in heat, they have sex with (pretty much) all comers. (I didn't intend that pun but am leaving it in because now I find it hilarious.) This isn't a big group rape, the female definitely is happily involved. Critically, she may also have sex at other times, as a bonding mechanism--e.g., if a male bonobo is having a bad day or something (I sound glib, but I'm pretty sure I've got this right).

I think this does two distinct things which are different from our (current) system and which replace the supposed pros of ours, namely 1) it moves the selection through sexual competition to a different level, i.e., sperm competition. The fitness selection that we all think of as assisting evolution or whatever is still happening, it's just happening differently; among other things this changes the way the males have to be competitive or aggressive with each other (they don't, not so much). Similarly female selectivity in the way we think of it doesn't have to be a thing. 2) It eliminates jealousy and increases group bonding. The danger of violence from some angry male goes down. There's no incel community in bonobos.

So if we assume for a second that that's also how humans worked, way back in the day, then I think it's not that women are trading in sexual power; rather, it's wielded differently, as something which unites and protects the group as a whole (including all children).

I mean, think how much we could all get done if all the men were happy and content and didn't have to expend energy getting laid because they got laid regularly by lots of women by default.

The book cites a fair number of reasons this might have been the way we started out. I remember two in particular that I'll share for amusement purposes. One I had read about before, namely the ratio of testicle size to overall body mass is an indicator of the expectation that the females in a mammal group are truly monogamous--gorillas (who run harems) have teeny tiny balls, for instance. This is that exact sperm competition thing--if you know your woman is screwing lots of other guys, you want to make lots and lots of sperm to out-swim the other dudes'. Anyway, human balls lie nicely in the middle range, a long way from the "one dude, one chick" ratio.

The other reason I remember--and this doesn't feel super scientific, but it sure stuck in my head--is the prevalence of gang-bang porn. In particular, if we're so wired up to have guys screwing around but not girls, why is there relatively little porn featuring one guy and lots of girls? They argue that one girl and lots of guys works for us because it lines up with what we evolved doing.

Dadddy @99, I went to read the article you linked: https://www.pnas.org/content/101/30/10895

I found it interesting that even though the researchers were originally interested in the "grandmother hypothesis" (which apparently posits that "increased longevity is important in enhancing the inclusive fitness of grandmothers who, perhaps as early as the first Homo populations, invested in their reproductive-age daughters and their offspring"), the actual report seemed to ignore gender in its findings.

I would think that women would be at increased risk of death during their fertile years (due to death from childbirth), so that the elderly would be predominantly men. Of course, maybe grandfathers were able to "invest in their reproductive-age daughters and their offspring"! Just because we have certain gender roles doesn't mean those roles go back to the Paleolithic!

Ms Ods @115 - Gee, no thanks. This entire thread seems to have done a superb job of MM-erasing. If this were Daria, about seven people would be sharing the role of Tiffany.

Ms Lava @103 - I think I lived just inside the zone of not being on the bus; I walked alone about half a mile to and from school at age five. Thankfully, I got in just under the wire. My brother, three years younger, was driven to and from the same school at age twelve.

So the debate is, are men attracted to more fertile, round and stretch marked women? Or are men more reliant on monopolizing a woman's sexuality when she's young?

I think that if women were naturally inclined to monogamy there wouldn't have to be such harsh historical punishments for fornication and adultery. So it seems like the former would make more sense evolutionarily speaking.

@Hunter @121: "but the positive ones win out in the long run." I wish I believed that!

@Venn @122: I can see how a thread about evolutionary pressure on sexual relationships is going to feel gay-erasing to you, but I honestly can't see what about the post @115 you found off-putting.

@Philo @124: "I think that if women were naturally inclined to monogamy there wouldn't have to be such harsh historical punishments for fornication and adultery."

Amen!

@122 vennominon: Daria---wow, now there's a blast from the MTV past. If we're all role playing, could I be a hybrid of Daria Morgandorffer and Jane Lane? I could go as Jaria, plainjane artist wearing glasses, with attitude.

Women are naturally inclined not to be single mothers.
Yes D @129, some women are competitive, do you think you are voicing a surprising observation? Some men are competitive too. Non binary people as well.
The reason a lot of women are on about sex workers is because of the link to forced sex work.
Most of those women would have had multiple lovers. Gloria Steinem is one of them. Confused feminists.
Some women lean towards monogamy some don’t. Child rearing sets the tone for many people, no matter their sex or gender. As we see from the non parent women who either write in or comment here, it’s a mixed bag of some happy with monogamy and some happy being poly.

Correction; Some non binary people as well.
Not all of humanity is stupid enough to compete with others.

Lots of mothers also seem to be working the poly lifestyle, thinking of Erica I remembered others.

Dadddy, I'm sure that as a het man you have mostly been attuned to women who are monogamy shaming. But as a het woman, 99% of monogamy righteousness and guilt tripping in my life has been from men. And the harshest from men. Including the stuff I remember from the internet oddly enough. I'm sure that has to do with our default gendering of a monogamy shamer too, Commie/Seattle Blues I've typed as male.

Yes if one gender were naturally inclined to monogamy and the other gender were not, I can see how harsh punishments could be used to influence the latter. But men weren't the ones getting stoned.

And this thing that you're writing off as a utopian fantasy is actually how bonobos work currently. Orgiastic sex governed sharing. Maybe civilization kind of sucks.

Delayed maturation means our sex will be very involved and social. Hidden estrus means that sex will happen independently of fertility, something else must give us horniness and pleasure. Also I think that evolution can take place on relatively short timescales, I remember moths in England only took a few years to change color to match the effects of the Industrial Revolution (cultural evolution), although I'm not sure how many generations that was.

To clarify, I did not mean to single out Ms Ods; it was just that, as the thread became increasingly heterocentrically evo-psych-y, the idea of taking a share in communal child-raising was what pushed it into reaching full Fifth Columnist LMB levels.

I was relatively quiet in this thread because, as someone who has dated intergenerational in both directions, I know I'd be dismissed as a biased witness, and probably accused of an agenda. I could have said a good deal about such things as how interesting it is that the accusations of pedophilia that were thrown at Call Me By Your Name came primarily from two sources - post-prime straight men such as Mr Woods, J of a conservative stripe, and pre-prime young women of the SJW variety, who, entertainingly enough, are Mr Woods' target conquests.

I believe that was my misunderstanding. I believe that humans are programmed through the process of socialization.

Raise a population of children to believe that sex in response to conflict is a good thing and women must work together to keep the men happy, stick them on an island together and you get bonobo culture imo. The big problem is that in dense human populations promiscuity isn't the greatest thing.

Venn @136: I still don't quite get your specific objection, although if your unhappiness centers on not wanting to be forced to be involved in child-raising, I don't think that need be specific to gays (or you). I mean, if it's any consolation, I have zero interest in raising a child or interacting with children, but I bet in a small tribal group I'd have to anyway >.< (And if that's not what you meant, I apologize for misunderstanding.)

Anyway, we're all heavily biased witnesses. Doesn't mean we don't enjoy hearing each other's thoughts on a matter.

I'll add one more interesting tidbit to the overall evo-psych conversation, which I read a while ago--I think also in Sex at Dawn, and then I looked it up elsewhere to confirm.

We all know about Jane Goodall, and a lot of her observations of chimps echoed through human psychology, including their extreme violence, their territorial nature, and so on. However, one thing most of us don't know is that none of those behaviors were observed in the first year of her studies. They were observed later--AFTER the scientists started putting out a supply of bananas for the chimps. This was done to attract the chimps closer, for better observation--before they put out fruit, the chimps moved around a lot and didn't get super close. So the reasoning was to get a better, more stable look. But think about it: if you introduce a finite supply of a valuable resource into a population, that will absolutely change their behavior. I live in a great little town, friendly, helpful, all that. If somebody put a box with ten gold nuggets at the edge of town and announced that, I'm sure shit would go south real fast.

My point is not to criticize; this was 50, 60 years ago? We knew a lot less then about how small changes can propagate into large effects. It was a fair idea. My point is that a lot of the stuff we concluded was "natural" behavior in chimps--and thereby justified some of our own nastier behaviors--maybe wasn't. Probably wasn't.

To my mind, agriculture is the box of bananas, and everything after that is likely to include a lot of the worst behaviors in mankind.

Sexuality is a curious although powerful turn. It's much more efficient to reproduce through mitosis or hermaphroditicly. It takes extra energy to make men and women different. But it allows for more variety and faster evolution, it is generally all about selection and competition, except in the species that don't have sex and just fertilize and lay as many eggs as possible like turtles..

The genders of sexual species constantly adapt their mating strategy to changes in the others'. I thought most often this happened physically, like vaginas get more corkscrewy and then male penises get more corkscrewy. If one gender learns to interrupt copulation the other gender grows barbs on their genitals to ensure successful copulation, etc. Hidden estrus allows a lot more female choice.

Monogamy doesn't seem to make much sense as a mating strategy in small communities with communal child raising like tribes. After that I'm not sure feeling monogamous was as common as mate guarding/enforcing monogamy. And now that men can reliably determine paternity they seem to care maybe less about monogamy, I see monogamy shaming/mate guarding more from older men I think.

It doesn't seem to make any sense for men who have comparatively negligible reproductive cost, to fight off a randy non-monogamous woman as part of a mating strategy. But some will. And it probably ends up working for them and resulting in children who reproduce, because many women mate guard too.

I don't believe that humans have a single mating strategy. I've seen promiscuity, monogamy, mate guarding, extended family or church communities, we have schools to offer some communal raising of children right now, division or merging of parental responsibilities among 2+ people, single co-parents, divorced co-parents, married but separated co-parents, and the traditional married parents. All are biologically trying to have children who survive to reproduce and continue the strategy and all are sometimes successful.

And I can see how you would prefer to think of women as the primary mate guarders and "bad guys". That doesn't erase the stonings but stonings aren't current anyway. I don't generally see the point of passing judgment on history, only learning about it to influence the present and future.

Do any other species besides humans and bonobos have hidden estrus?

Mate guarding seems like just as logical of a response to hidden estrus as promiscuity and orgiastic sharing.

Reproduce without any costs, D @145? There are laws about that, and if you can find the bastard, he pays maintenance. That is a cost. And what of the cost to children? Fatherless children. That’s the real cost.
Then, you only think with your dick eh, costs to others is not on your radar.
Women mating with higher status men, with their little brood of babies you mean. Doubt higher status men want to rear children of lower status men, the ones who think they can reproduce without any costs.

Human beings are capable of higher level thought and self reflection, and self control.
No chimp sits by the road contemplating Plato.

Lava, Dadddy was saying that cheating helps both men.. and women.. produce either more or more varied children than you can get with one mate. I think this makes sense. No one said it was ethical though..

I think that pair bonding is fascinating, I think it happens in some species without mate guarding but I'm not sure. I thought some species of turtles laid unfertilized eggs to be fertilized later without population. Maybe I was thinking of some fish or misremembering it completely.

Oppression happens. I don't believe it's some static thing or that it primarily effects genders or genders effect each other primarily through oppression. I thought we were arguing cause/effect, not ethics.

Evolutionary arguments are largely unprovable and easy to manipulate in favor of any of the strategies that humans use or in favor of either gender etc

"Attraction to underage teens — boys or girls — is more common," said Seto.

Little bit of an understatement. Teenage girls are considered the most attractive all around the world. He probably thinks most men prefer adult women because they're "fully developed" or "most fertile" or some naive crap, but this is not how the biology works. Teenage girls are the most sought after because they have the highest long-term reproductive potential.

I think he's a bit of an idiot and the whole field of sexology is a joke.

Just like teenage boys are sought after because the have many more years they can help to raise the kids. :D

Ha! Excellent @150, Philo.