The Sexual Cartel

alyssum wrote: »

I disagree i think it is pretty weak counter argument

It's not meant to be a counter-argument, it's meant to show up how utterly ludicrous what the site-banned OP has said (a global cartel between women - really?) is.

In a nutshell, the post translates as "Women are bitches for not fancying me and giving me the sex I'm entitled to, therefore I'll come up with some outlandish theory rather than accepting they don't fancy me and working on my self confidence and improving where I'm going wrong."

alyssum wrote: »

he is site banned?

Yeh. Probably because of all the thinly-veiled misogynistic stuff he was posting. It's hard seeing that stuff being posted if you're a woman. I know you can avoid it, but it's only avoidable to a point.

Someone (male or female) being comfortable in their own skin is attractive.

alyssum wrote: »

in case there is any truth?

No, because hatred and making baseless assumptions and stating notions/feelings as fact isn't the way to go about things. If a person has a controversial opinion, it's not what they say, it's the way they say it.

I would say it's more that there isn't any truth to it that gets women's backs up.

Wibbs wrote: »

One might argue that such patriarchal societies are controlling women's reproductive options precisely because they believe much of what the OP was suggesting.

For me it's the most frightening aspect of suspicion and hostility towards women as a whole.

Splitting this into another post, as it's a whole separate point in its own right:
I think a lot of that suspicion/hostility is more caused by prevailing attitudes/traditions in society (which are on their way out), than much else.
What is interesting about that, is I think it probably has less to do with sex overall, and more to do with social/political/economic power over other people (and that affecting specific genders, is only a secondary consequence of it, with the primary goal being power).

The more I read about it, the more the thought buds in my mind, that women may be held down as just another 'divide and conquer' type strategy, to allow greater power/control over society (make females more dependent on men - create a divide in power in society, make sex/reproduction an issue of 'haves and have nots' that has to be competed over more - create a divide in power in society, this time affecting men more).

People benefiting from these power divides now, probably aren't even specifically aware of this (though if you look at some of the politically-right in the US, I'm sure some are...), it's just another lingering bit of history waiting to die out.

When you think about it, this whole 'Men vs Women' nonsense, and the fact that it is still perpetuated in society in various different (and sometimes subtle) ways, can actually be interpreted as promoting still, an 'Us vs Them' type attitude that benefits the division of power (and thus concentration of greater power in fewer hands) in society.

Wibbs wrote: »

Oh of course it's not conscious/deliberate.

It also suggests men are too, otherwise where would all these "promiscuous" women be going? It's not that based on culture or time. Partner fidelity is a very strong undercurrent going through pretty much any culture, past or present you can think of and since the male of the species couldn't be sure(until very recently) if any offspring were definitely his, this undercurrent of trust was usually more aimed at women.

Though men considered promiscuous didn't escape. Suspicion of cuckolding another man could result in societal exclusion, even death.

Well, the issue of 'paternity certainty', i.e. caring whether or not you are the father of a child, is itself a societal creation - there is precedent of society in the past and present (such as the Mosuo in China/Tibet) who were not concerned about this, with the entire community raising the children (there's a great, albeit controversial, book about this whole related issue, called Sex at Dawn, which I just read recently).

I think that paternity certainty is primarily only an issue forced upon society, when resources like food or other things necessary for survival, are made scarce or artificially scarce (because then the family, particularly father, has to put more effort into taking care of the children - more children meaning more work/poverty/scarcity).

The agricultural revolution arguably helped create a lot of this scarcity, by ballooning population levels and politicizing both land and access to food as a result.
Interestingly, this is arguably much the same today: we still have to work our asses off to get by for the most part, but there is no scarcity anymore, so there is no logical reason left for people being forced to work so much, or for society to be structured in a way that makes 'paternity certainty' important in any way (I think it is still that way, to provide a minority of people with power over the rest of society).

So yes...sorry to go on. This is quite an interesting topic the more I think about it, and it seems to tie into a crapload of other political/economic/power issues in society; I wonder if part of the reason these issues are still controversial, is because they reveal so much about how backwards/unfair the power structure is in society (between the wealthy vs poor, not between genders, which looks to be maintained more as a distraction or 'divide and conquer' strategy).

Wibbs wrote: »

It was always there, as can be seen among tribal cultures today, it was more codified after the agricultural revolution alright.

That isn't true though, because there are plenty of promiscuous tribal cultures, such as the !Kung San and many Amazonian tribes, plus more I could probably find (just is hard to read up on them all at the same place).

Wibbs wrote: »

Great in theory, but not really. Sex didn't always have to result in pregnancy. Indeed of all the great apes save for the Bonobo, humans have sex the most for purposes beyond reproduction. Other apes only have sex when females are displaying signs of fertility. If anything sex in humans has always led to reproduction in the minority of cases of sexual contact. Plus while we have many choices today of reliable contraception, contraception itself is a very old practice. Some tribal cultures embed a pebble in the penis(yea :eek:) that closes off the urethra, except when deliberately opened up for voiding and reproduction. The Roman and Greeks actually caused a plant to go extinct because they thought it had contraceptive uses(among others uses), so the sheer demand doomed it's fate. So the notion, however popular, that somehow there is about to be a complete shakeup in sexual matters is a tad premature. A reset of the mechanism to pre uptight christian mores in christian cultures yes, but that's but one culture in the world today. EG the Islamic world mentioned earlier, is made up of over a billion and a half Muslims who would have a different angle on the whole thing.

As you say, except for the Bonobo Bonobo's are far more closely related to humans genetically, than Gorilla's are.

What is there left to stop such a disintegration/shakeup of monogamous sexual standards though?

I agree there are a lot of societal/religious hangovers in various parts of the world, and I am (slowly) getting the budding impression that it's a big part of power-politics in society (not one between mens and women either, but it gets portrayed that way to distract from the bigger inequalities/issues), but as those issues get resolved, I don't see what there is to stop a complete transformation.

Wibbs wrote: »

Oh do not get me started on what passes for research and conclusions in that book.

The Musuo are often dragged into discussions on this topic(and some branches of feminism), but with the usual inaccuracies. 1) the entire community don't raise the kids. Children most often reside with their mothers. 2) paternity is of no concern. Not to the degree of some societies, however children usually know who their father is and for a woman to not know who the father of her various children is is considered well dodgy. 3) they're not a matriarchal society as some would suggest, more a matrilineal(sp) one(in pre christian Ireland it was matrilineal at times too, but no way was it matriarchal). Inheritance and names pass through the female line, but the men wield the political power. Some have even suggested that this entire way of life was a way of the patriarchal rulling classes keeping control of the peasant class, the Musuo, by imposing a matrilineal construct from above. That way no line of males would arise to oppose them.

True, it does come across more as an entertaining rather than academic read an interesting alternate perspective to test out in debate though.

True yes, the children are raised with the mothers family (which is kind of natural I guess), though (from what I read) usually with help from immediate family and the wider community; the wider history you mention of the Mosuo is quite interesting there, didn't know about much of that.

I may have to read up on this more to get a better idea of other non-monogamous societies.

Wibbs wrote: »

The San are not "promiscuous". They have a healthier attitude to pre marriage age sexual play and divorce was open to both genders, however playing the field by either gender when still married is frowned upon. Amazonian tribes again can vary. In some rape, even gang rape is accepted without much ado, as is bride stealing, but again adultery is frowned upon and can even lead to death. There have been remarkably few cultures in human history where adultery even promiscuity is tolerated.

I'll bow to greater knowledge here, as I just don't know enough about the topic yet; that's definitely true of a lot of Amazonian tribes, though I'm still curious about those few exceptions to the standard knowledge on the subject.

Wibbs wrote: »

Pretty much the same as our distance from chimps. Still very different to humans though. The Bonobo/human connection gained favour over the chimp/human connection in the 60/70's. They were considered a better, more dare I say it politically correct(and even feminist) close relative compared to the patriarchal violent chimps. And of course they had sex all over the place and were caring and sharing. We preferred that particular mirror being held up. However the real concrete research shows just as many diffs between them and us and chimps and us. We're a very different great ape to the rest. Indeed wild canid family groups show more similarities to hunter gatherer groups than any great ape(and we understand canid communication and they understand human communication better than we understand ape communications). Humans are actually far more like wolves with knives than chimps with knives.

True - to be honest anthropology, evolutionary biology/psychology and the like, seem a bit of a minefield for drawing almost any kind of accurate conclusions about human behavior/society and what is 'natural' or not, as any claims that are made seem like they would be infinitely debatable.

Wibbs wrote: »

Our basic evolutionary makeup. IE we're serial quasi long term monogamists who are adaptable enough to embrace other practices if the environment requires it. EG life monogamy, Polygyny and even Polyandry though the latter is the rarest.

Transformation into what though?

Transform into a society where monogamy (serial or not) doesn't have that much of a primary role anymore.

Trouble with making any claims one way or the other about this (especially using evolution as a base) is that it's human psychology and behavior which determines whether or not society can transform into a more non-monogamous one, and evolution can only say a limited amount about this.

Until we get a more scientific understanding of human psychology (based on actually being able to model the brain, instead of just building theories/guesses as to how our psychology works), it's hard to make claims on way or the other about how manageable this is.

Wibbs wrote: »

IE is there an inbuilt evolution selected benefit for women to restrict reproductive access? Clearly there are differences in reproductive strategies between the sexes. Women have a limited number of offspring they can have compared to men. They also have far more to lose in the very real dangers of pregnancy and birth(in the past it was by far the commonest cause of death for women of reproductive age). Plus they require resources while in the late stages of pregnancy and until offspring are weaned(or at least have done for the vast majority of time humans have been around). A man can get a woman pregnant and walk away, a woman who is pregnant can't walk away. It makes good sense for women to be more sexually "fussy" and to restrict sexual access to "suitable" men and even to keep said man guessing/interested until the child is weaned*.

Very good post.

People tend to forget that our particular subspecies, Homo Sapien Sapien, has been around for about 200,000 years (the overall Homo Sapien group for about 500,000 years). Civilization, as we call it, where we went from being hunter-gatherers to developing permanent settlements, underpinned by agriculture and leading to law, writing, organized religion, government and so on, only occurred with the Neolithic Revolution, which began only about 10,000 years ago.

So when we look at human evolution, it's important to remember that it was formed in the context of a hunter-gatherer paradigm, which made up 95% of our history.

And what you describe is perfectly correct (at least as far as evolutionary biologists and anthropologists are concerned). Females of the species were highly disadvantaged by how we reproduce, which greatly limited their ability to provide food for themselves or their offspring. And naturally this led to a series of evolutionary strategies to allow the female to manage or control the male so that he would provide and protect her - hardly unique, as you'll find it in many other animal species, such as many species of birds and even primates, such as the bonobo.

A key piece of evidence of this is where it comes to sexual dimorphism in humans. In humans it's much greater than most other species and female physiology has evolved to accentuate sexual characteristics - we're one of the few (if not the only) mammals to develop breasts before pregnancy, specifically for sexual reasons. Think about it; what use are breasts prior to child baring?

So it's hardly surprising that psychologically men and women retain certain evolutionary strategies buried deep in our subconscious. While retaining the services of a providing male (a.k.a. 'commitment') remains the best recognised of these instincts in women, we can't forget that some of it is directed against other women too - personally, I've long had a suspicion that part of the reason that far more women than men tend to oppose prostitution is because it represents competition.

Nonetheless, none of this is concious. None of this is planned. Both men and women are hard-wired this way thanks to the 95% of our evolutionary history that overshadows our recent dalliance with civilization. So to suggest a conspiracy, some sort of organized effort by women is to ignore these biological facts and instead replace them with a fanciful theory which has absolutely no evidence supporting it. In my experience, jumping to such theories does tend to be misogynistic, as it presumes some form of premeditated malice on the part of women.

*Some have even suggested that humans have a reproductive cycle of about 3-4 years. A "honeymoon period" which ensures interest in both sexes to keep high long enough for any offspring to be weaned.

I've read 7 years myself, but it amounts to the same thing - we're built to be serial monogamists, with relationships being designed to last long enough for the offspring to be largely independent, before the female can move to find a new mate (the diversity of different children by different fathers also brings evolutionary advantages, after all).

Another evolutionary trait that's been examined has been the cuckold syndrome; when choosing a mate, evolution will cause a female to seek two things - good genetics and good provision. Sometimes you can't get both in one man, which leads to the old scenario whereby a woman is with a good provider, yet having sex (and children) with a handsome 'bad boy', on the side.

Wibbs wrote: »

What's scary and what history has shown us that even the most reprehensible ideology can be made to have it's own quite logical rationale. Even among otherwise very intelligent people.

Depends on what you consider 'racist'.

The pseudo-science of nineteenth century race theory, and it's modern incarnation racialism, is one end of the scale, in that it takes superficial racial observations and extrapolates often ridiculous conclusions that invariably have social and political motivations.

On the other side of the scale, you can have a simple fact; such as that Asians are far less able, as a whole, to process alcohol than Europeans (a product of how both regions developed water purification differently over 10,000 years). While both factual and lacking any social or political agenda, such a statement would be considered racist by many.

Wibbs wrote: »

The Abrahamic type is but one theology and but one philosophy on sexual and gender relations.Great in theory, but not really.

This was a major issue during the early conversions to Christianity in the Roman empire. Pagan Roman sexual morality was far more liberal than Christian (effectively Abrahamic) sexual morality - this is not to say that there was little Pagan Roman sexual morality - and this resulted in situations whereby converted Roman wives would refuse sex to their husbands on religious grounds. I remember reading that this was something that let to a fair bit of antipathy twoards Christianity.

KyussBishop wrote: »

All of that makes perfect sense anthropologically and in an evolutionary way, the bit where it snags for me though, are the implicit claims about limitations in human behaviour/psychology in society.

The history and the logic of it is all solid, but I don't see a non-speculative way to apply it to the present and future/near-future; claims like this behaviour being 'buried in our subconscious' I think is a step too far, given that our understanding of human psychology doesn't yet allow for solid/objective claims like that (not until we can physically map/understand the brain better).

I think you're looking at it a bit simplistically. Where it comes to nature versus nurture, it's not all black and white. Sure, we can be 'hard-wired' to behave in a certain way, but we're not doomed to do so - our brains don't work the same way as a computer where we must follow binary logic gates.

Instead we're more analogue and we can and do overcome this 'hard-wired' thinking too; not always, but more often than we realize.