how many bastards are there, anyway?
Lee Rudolph
In May, 1994, I posted to AFU the lengthy extract from Jared
Diamond's _The Third Chimpanzee_ which follows below as Appendix 2.
In brief, Diamond's claims are that "between 5 and 30 percent of
American and British babies [have been] adulterously conceived",
that this was first discovered--but not published--by "a
distinguished medical scientist" (who he calls Dr. X)
investigating blood types in the 1940s, and that "several
similar genetic studies which did get published" (but to
which he does not give citations) "later confirmed" Dr. X's
results. No discussion followed this post to AFU, alas.
Yesterday I was talking to a bioethicist who studies genetic
counseling, and when the conversation turned to folklore, she
brought up an issue she'd recently investigated. She told me
that essentially all genetic counselors believe that there is a
"false paternity" rate of about 5 percent--yet few if any
counselors encounter a rate nearly that high in their own
practices. This discrepancy having piqued her curiosity, my
friend had tried to track down just why the rate is believed
to be 5 percent. One source after another said the scientific
equivalent of "it was published by a friend of a friend".
Eventually the FOAF-chain terminated, in a single paper whose
author does not think it supports the interpretation it is
popularly given! Appendix 1, immediately below, represents the
present state of her research into this possible piece of genetic
folklore.
I'm posting this to sci.anthropology and alt.folklore.science
as well as AFU, with followups set back to AFU only.
I (and I am sure my friend) would be very interested to
have citations to Diamond's supposed "several similar genetic
studies".
Lee Rudolph
---begin Appendix 1---
(found at http://www.shriver.org/geneletter_pages/geneletter.html;
author is Dorothy Wertz, PhD, ``a bioethicist who has written
extensively about international aspects of genetic counseling'')
VOLUME 1, ISSUE 1, JULY 1996
False Paternity
At the beginning of this century, as scientists began to understand
the idea of blood types, it became possible in some cases to prove
that a particular man was not the father of a particular child. Only
very recently have we acquired the means to establish with a very high
degree of certainty that a particular man is the father of a
particular child. If DNA based paternity testing had been available in
the nineteeenth century August Strindberg, the great Swedish
playwright, would probably not have written The Father, the plot of
which develops around a woman's decision to create doubts in her
husband's mind about whether he really is the father of their
daughter.
False paternity is one of the most difficult problems that can arise
in the genetics clinic. If paternity is not correctly attributed, then
the calculation of recurrence risk in future pregnancies for a couple
who have a child with a single gene disorder will be wildly
inaccurate. In general clinical geneticists perform this calculation
without actually checking paternity; they rely on what they are told.
But, what is the "background false paternity rate" - the chance that a
randomly selected trio of couple and child who assert true paternity
will, if studied, yield a finding that the husband is not the
biological father? For decades many clinical geneticists have
suggested figures ranging from 2% to 5%. Using the high figure, this
would mean that 1 in 20 Americans have a biological father who,
unbeknownst to them, is different from their social father.
Conversely, in 5% of cases a child that a man regards as his is
actually the biological child of someone else.
When we tried to track down the scientific studies that support using
this range of estimates, we could not find them. Every clinician to
whom we talked seemed to know somebody who knew the scientific basis
for the data, but each query led to a dead end. Had we stumbled onto a
bit of genetic folklore?
A historical search and a conversation with Dr. James Neel, one of the
deans of human genetics, led us to what may be the source for the high
estimate: a 1962-65 study of blood typing in a small Michigan town
(1). That study found discrepancies between biological and stated
parentage in 109 of 2507 nuclear familes. Many of these may have been
unacknowledged adoptions, including step-parent adoptions.
We would be very interested to learn of other studies that support or
challenge assumptions about background false paternity rate. We would
also be interested in learning about any other examples of genetic
folklore.
DW
(1) Sing, CF et al (1971) Studies on genetic selection in a completely
ascertained Caucasian population II. Family analysis of 11 blood group
systems. American Journal of Human Genetics 23(2) 164-198.
/scn
7/96
---begin Appendix 2---
The following four paragraphs are quoted, for purposes of discussion,
from pp. 85-86 of _The Third Chimpanzee_ by Jared Diamond (professor
of physiology at UCLA), ISBN 0-06-018307-1 (Harper-Collins, 1992).
People have many reasons to lie when asked whether they have
committed adultery. That's why it's notoriously difficult
to get accurate scientific information about this important
subject. One of the few existing sets of hard facts emerged
as a totally unexpected by-product of a medical study, per-
formed nearly half a century ago for a different reason. That
study's findings have never been revealed until now.
I recently learned these facts from the distinguished medical
scientist who ran the study. (Since he does not wish to be
identified in this connection, I shall refer to him as Dr. X.)
In the 1940s Dr. X. was studying the genetics of human blood
groups, which are molecules that we acquire only by inertness.
Each of us has dozens of blood-group substances on our red blood
cells, and we inherit each substance either from our mother or
from our father. The study's research plan was straightforward:
go to the obstetrics ward of a highly respectable U.S. hospital;
collect blood samples from one thousand newborn babies and their
mothers and fathers; identify the blood groups in all the samples;
and then use standard genetic reasoning to deduce the inheritance
patterns.
To Dr. X's shock, the blood groups revealed nearly 10 percent of
these babies to be the fruits of adultery! Proof of the babies'
illegitimate origin was that they had one or more blood groups
lacking in both alleged parents. There could be no question of
mistaken maternity: the blood samples were drawn from an infant
and its mother soon after the infant emerged from the mother.
A blood group present in a baby but absent in its undoubted mother
could only have come from its father. Absence of the blood group
from the mother's husband as well showed conclusively that the
baby had been sired by some other man, extramaritally. The true
incidence of extramarital sex must have been considerably higher
than 10 percent, since many other blood-group substances now
being used in paternity tests were not yet known in the 1940s,
and since most bouts of intercourse do not result in conception.
At the time that Dr.X made his discovery, research on American
sexual habits was virtually taboo. He decided to maintain a
prudent silence, never published his findings, and it was only
with difficulty that I got his permission to mention his results
without betraying his name. However, his results were later
confirmed by several similar genetic studies whose results did get
published. Those studies variously showed between about 5 and 30
percent of American and British babies to have been adulterously
conceived. Again, the proportion of the tested couples of whom
at least the wife had practiced adultery must have been higher,
for the same two reasons as in Dr. X's study.
---end Appendix 2---
John Savage
lrud...@panix.com (Lee Rudolph) writes:
>In brief, Diamond's claims are that "between 5 and 30 percent of
>American and British babies [have been] adulterously conceived",
This was discussed on a recent episode of the ABC Science Show, but
as so often happens, I'm afraid I paid less attention to the program
than it rightly deserves. Anyway, I think the ballpark figure they used
was that around 10% of children do not belong genetically to the man
they believe to be their father.
It was an incidental issue which arose out of a discussion of the
ramifications around a recent discovery that a boy's intelligence is
inherited from his mother, not from his father ... the gene for
intelligence (but don't ask me to define the term) having now apparently
been established as being carried on the X chromosome.
If I may condense it into a few words, it was basically this: a woman's
childbearing instinct is to successfully raise genetically sound offspring.
To this end, it's advantageous to her and her offspring that she choose a
husband according to criteria such as ability to provide, interest in
assisting with child rearing, reliability, and compatible personality. And
then the separate issue of choosing her child's genetic makeup is made
according to other criteria and values. Often, the two sets of desirable
qualities are, in her estimation, evidently not found in the same male.
It goes without saying that it's advantageous in the raising of her off-
spring that her companion be kept unaware that the child whose upbringing
he is contributing to carries not his genes but those of another. :-(
BTW, am I correct in saying that the only trait known to be carried on the
Y chromosome is a gene for hairy ears? If I'm completely off beam here,
what might I be confusing this with?
--
John Savage ko...@sydney.dialix.com.au
Richard Ottolini
In article <4uponn$5vn$1...@sydney.DIALix.oz.au>,
John Savage <ko...@sydney.dialix.com.au> wrote:
>lrud...@panix.com (Lee Rudolph) writes:
>>In brief, Diamond's claims are that "between 5 and 30 percent of
>>American and British babies [have been] adulterously conceived",
>
>as so often happens, I'm afraid I paid less attention to the program
>than it rightly deserves. Anyway, I think the ballpark figure they used
>was that around 10% of children do not belong genetically to the man
>they believe to be their father.
I'd assume this might be the yield from tissue-typing for transplants
between relatives. Hopefully the hospitals would have the common sense
to just say the match isn't close enough rather than reveal the parentage.
Joe Quellen
In article <4uponn$5vn$1...@sydney.DIALix.oz.au> John Savage <ko...@sydney.dialix.com.au> writes:
>lrud...@panix.com (Lee Rudolph) writes:
>>In brief, Diamond's claims are that "between 5 and 30 percent of
>>American and British babies [have been] adulterously conceived",
>I think the ballpark figure they used
>was that around 10% of children do not belong genetically to the man
>they believe to be their father.
The statistics are covered in a very engrossing book by Jared DIamond, called
*The Third Chimpanzee*, 1992, Harper Perennial, Chapter 4, The Science of
Adultery. He describes a study of blood typing and genetics which had
unexected results and was quashed. It was done in the 1940s at a "highly
respectable" US hospital. The study found that fully 10 percent of babies
were not the biological offspring of their legal fathers.
- Joe "And that was in the 40s way before Jerry Springer" Quellen
Matt Beckwith
>>American and British babies [have been] adulterously conceived",
By the way, the subject line of this thread is mis-stated. Adulterously
conceived children and bastards are not equivalent sets (though they do
overlap).
>This was discussed on a recent episode of the ABC Science Show, but
>as so often happens, I'm afraid I paid less attention to the program
>than it rightly deserves.
You must have been engaged in a somewhat more interesting activity at the
time. Might I speculate as to what that activity was? Did it have
anything to do with the subject of this thread?
>Anyway, I think the ballpark figure they used
>was that around 10% of children do not belong genetically to the man
>they believe to be their father.
Let us be clear about what this horrifying statistic really means. What
is the population which is represented here--the U.S., the civilized
world, or the entire world?
We should also understand that it does not mean that there is a
ten-percent chance that any given person was conceived adulterously.
Contrary to popular belief, statistics do not apply to individuals.
>It was an incidental issue which arose out of a discussion of the
>ramifications around a recent discovery that a boy's intelligence is
>inherited from his mother, not from his father ... the gene for
>intelligence (but don't ask me to define the term) having now apparently
>been established as being carried on the X chromosome.
This I find difficult to believe. Perhaps they found a gene on the
X-chromosome which determines IQ to a certain extent. But I bet there
are others on other chromosomes. It just wouldn't make sense to have a
person's intelligence only determined by inheritance from the mother.
And nature usually evolves life forms that make sense.
>If I may condense it into a few words, it was basically this: a woman's
>childbearing instinct is to successfully raise genetically sound >offspring.
>To this end, it's advantageous to her and her offspring that she choose >a
>husband according to criteria such as ability to provide, interest in
>assisting with child rearing, reliability, and compatible personality. >And
>then the separate issue of choosing her child's genetic makeup is made
>according to other criteria and values. Often, the two sets of desirable
>qualities are, in her estimation, evidently not found in the same male.
Now this actually makes sense. But I doubt that it really applies very
much to women's decisions to have sex outside of marriage. That decision
is more probably based on things like how neglected she feels by her
husband, how sexually fulfilled she feels with her husband, and how
attractive she finds the passing stud.
>BTW, am I correct in saying that the only trait known to be carried on >the
>Y chromosome is a gene for hairy ears? If I'm completely off beam here,
>what might I be confusing this with?
Actually, there's a second trait known to be on that chromosome, but I
forget what it is. Of course, leave us not forget the trait of being
male.
--
Matt Beckwith
http://users.southeast.net/~beckwith/
Stephen Barnard
This whole thread is a hoot. It reminds me of Al Franken's suggestion
that the Republicans stop worrying anout same-sex marriage and start
worrying about same-marriage sex.
Steve Barnard
Thomas L. Billings
In article <4v04vv$l...@hermes.cair.du.edu>, sfo...@odin.cair.du.edu (sgf) wrote:
> In article <4uponn$5vn$1...@sydney.DIALix.oz.au>,
> John Savage <ko...@sydney.dialix.com.au> wrote:
> >lrud...@panix.com (Lee Rudolph) writes:
> >>In brief, Diamond's claims are that "between 5 and 30 percent of
> >>American and British babies [have been] adulterously conceived",
> >
> >This was discussed on a recent episode of the ABC Science Show, but
> >as so often happens, I'm afraid I paid less attention to the program
> >than it rightly deserves. Anyway, I think the ballpark figure they used
> >was that around 10% of children do not belong genetically to the man
> >they believe to be their father.
>
> I just picked up Timothy Taylor's _The Prehistory of Sex: Four Million
> Years of Human Sexual Culture_ (Bantam: 1996). Here's his summarization of
> the subject:
>
> (pp 77-79)
> "...In tests of genetic paternity recently conducted by Robin Baker and
> Mark Bellis [1], they found that around 10 percent of children had been
> sired by someone other than their ostensible fathers -- although the
> fathers consciously believed these children to be their own.
>
<much good discussion snipped to get this past my ISP>
Stephanie,
Thanks for some numbers with recent work behind them. A previous post in
this thread had me believing in an "urban legend" status for this far too
quickly. I'll look for the B&B book.
Does anyone know of any professional evaluations of this work on the net?
D
> --Stephanie
> --
> sfo...@odin.cair.du.edu <*> http://phoebe.cair.du.edu/~sfolse/
> "Assiduous and frequent questioning is indeed the first key to wisdom ...for
> by doubting we come to inquiry; through inquiring we perceive the truth..."
> --Peter Abelard (..........I claim this .sig for Queen Elizabeth)
Nice sig! It warms my heart, and it even seems to be true!
Regards,
Tom Billings
--
Institute for Teleoperated Space Development
it...@teleport.com(Tom Billings)
ITSD's web site is at, http://www.teleport.com/~itsd1/index.html
sgf
In article <4uponn$5vn$1...@sydney.DIALix.oz.au>,
John Savage <ko...@sydney.dialix.com.au> wrote:
>lrud...@panix.com (Lee Rudolph) writes:
>>American and British babies [have been] adulterously conceived",
>
>as so often happens, I'm afraid I paid less attention to the program
>than it rightly deserves. Anyway, I think the ballpark figure they used
>was that around 10% of children do not belong genetically to the man
>they believe to be their father.
I just picked up Timothy Taylor's _The Prehistory of Sex: Four Million
Years of Human Sexual Culture_ (Bantam: 1996). Here's his summarization of
the subject:
(pp 77-79)
"...In tests of genetic paternity recently conducted by Robin Baker and
Mark Bellis [1], they found that around 10 percent of children had been
sired by someone other than their ostensible fathers -- although the
fathers consciously believed these children to be their own.
" Baker and Bellis believe that male biological mechanisms are geared
to the expectation of cuckoldry. Human males have relatively large
testicles and produce far more sperm than they seem to need. In normal
conception a single egg is fertilized by a single sperm. So what are the
other 2,249,999 sperm from an average 2.25-million-sperm ejaculation up
to? Humans (along with other species such as chimpanzees and lion),
Baker and Bellis argue, have evolved a system of sperm competition in
which the majorityof sperm actually make no attempt to find the egg.
Rather, these sperm are on anti-cuckolding duty. Some wait around ready
to attacka lien sperm, while others -- whose tails seem deliberately
deformed -- knot together to form a passive tangled barrier against any
intruders. If a man spends an entire day with his female partner, then
has sexual intercourse with her, he ejaculates far fewer sperm than he
would have had he spent the day apart from her -- a period with
opportunites for her to be unfaithful. Nevertheless, although the man's
sperm may battle it out, it may ultimately be the woman's internal
manipulation of sperm via orgasm during intercourse and subsequent
masturbation that most influences whose baby she will have (see Chapter 2)[1]
" What motivation could the women in B and B's study have for
cuckolding their husbands at arate of one in ten? Matt Ridley interprets
their case in stark sociobiological terms, citing the work of Anders
Moller.[3] Moller, a zoologist, has found that the more physically
attractive a male swallow is, the less parental investment he makes in
his offspring; female swallows are thus encouraged to find a
mediocre-looking but caring partner and to cuckold him. Humans may do
this too, Ridley suggests -- a woman may marry a rich but ugly man but
take a handsome lover. But what he does not explain is why a woman would
wish to concieve by her handsome lover. Surely her children would be
better off, in a society that ultimately values wealth, having the genes
of the rich man. It may be that people and society are inclear about
what they value most; nevertheless, it seems unlikely that B and B's
one-in-ten cuckoo-in-the-nest children can be explained in purely
sociobiological terms.
" Liverpool, where B and B conducted their survey, is an
international seaport that, since the industrial revolution, has seen
hordes of seamen and laborares come and go. Whether Liverpudlian
traditions of marital fidelity and uncertaind paternity closely mirror
those of say, Salt Lake City or Stockholm or even many other parts of
Britain, is debatable. But even accepting the statistics at face value,
the researcher's conclusions are not foolproof. A woman's chances of
concieveing with a lover whom she has actually chosen purely for sexual
pleasure are rather high for a set of rather mundane and practical
reasons: cheating lovers do not want to be caught carrying condoms or
diaphragms, or the sex might be opportunistic or a chance, drunken
encounter."
[1 Baker, R. and M. Bellis. 1993 "Human sperm competition: ejaculate
adjustment by males and the function of masturbation." _Animal Behaviour_
46: 861-65]
[2 Baker and Bellis studied the way women can manipulate sperm within
their bodies, rejecting it ("flowback") when they do not want to concieve
and sucking it up ("up-suck") when they do. B and B are convinced that
fmale masturbation plays and important part in the process, generating
uterine contractions that help a woman to keep a particular man's sperm
in play for several days after intercourse. The control of orgasm and
up-suck also allows a woman with more than one partner to have a
surprising measure of control of whom she concieves by. (pg 61)
Baker and Bellis, 1995. _Human Sperm Competition: Copulation,
Masturbation and Infidelity_. London: Chapman and Hall.]
[3 Ridley, M. _The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature_
London: Viking Penguin]
***************
Anyway, whether or not the 10% figure is accurate, it seems from recent
disocveries in this area that humans are evolved to compete with each
other not just on the macro level, but on the cellular sperm-and-egg
level, which would seem to suggest a propensity for extramarital sex or
sex with multiple partners. Just the other night I watched a show on The
Learning Channel called "Why Sex" (or was it the show the night before?
at any rate, it was about the biology of sexual behavior) that said human
sperm, like that of several other animals, in addition to having
individual sperm cells specialize in blocking and destroying "alien"
sperm, thickens and forms a soft plug in the vaginal tract, which helps
to block any new deposits of sperm made. There is also a biological
adaptation to get around that: the human penis is shaped in such a way
to "ram" through a soft plug and, with the accompanying thrusting
motions, to pull a lot of it away from the opening of the cervix.
Again, not a mention of whther the 10%-children-fathered-extramaritally
figure is correct, but judging by just the biological adaptation humans
have, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the figure was accurate, or even
too low. (Diamond states, I think, that the blood typing done on the
children produced a figure of *at least* 10% fathered extramaritally, but
could not take into account the cases where the child inherited the
mother's blood factor or where the biological father had the same type of
blood factor as the mother's husband, so the true figure was at the time
impossible to calculate.)
Michael Moroney
> Y chromosome is a gene for hairy ears? If I'm completely off beam here,
> what might I be confusing this with?
I remember something about a very rare disorder where the skin is very scaly
was a Y chromosome gene. Don't remember any details.
Of course there is the obvious question as to how maleness is produced.
I guess it's much more complicated than a "male" gene or testosterone
gene on the Y chromosome.
I once saw how individuals with an extra sex chromosome (XXX, XXY or XYY)
were expressed but don't remember.
I do know individuals with just a single X chromosome were small sterile
females so the Y does something.
-Mike
Solomon Taibi
sfo...@odin.cair.du.edu (sgf) wrote:
>Nevertheless, although the man's
>sperm may battle it out, it may ultimately be the woman's internal
>manipulation of sperm via orgasm during intercourse and subsequent
>masturbation that most influences whose baby she will have.
Please forgive the naive question, but what exactly is the
manipulation of sperm via orgasm and how does it affect conception?
Is this a relatively new discovery or am I just out of it?
--
S. Taibi
*****************************************************
***** Write in JULIAN BOND for president in '96 *****
*****************************************************
Scott C DeLancey
In article <4v04vv$l...@hermes.cair.du.edu>,
sgf <sfo...@odin.cair.du.edu> wrote:
>
>" What motivation could the women in B and B's study have for
>cuckolding their husbands at arate of one in ten? Matt Ridley interprets
>their case in stark sociobiological terms, citing the work of Anders
>Moller.[3] Moller, a zoologist, has found that the more physically
>attractive a male swallow is, the less parental investment he makes in
>his offspring; female swallows are thus encouraged to find a
>mediocre-looking but caring partner and to cuckold him. Humans may do
>this too, Ridley suggests -- a woman may marry a rich but ugly man but
>take a handsome lover. But what he does not explain is why a woman would
>wish to concieve by her handsome lover. Surely her children would be
>better off, in a society that ultimately values wealth, having the genes
>of the rich man. It may be that people and society are inclear about
>what they value most; nevertheless, it seems unlikely that B and B's
>one-in-ten cuckoo-in-the-nest children can be explained in purely
>sociobiological terms.
This argument seems to assume more conscious calculation than is
necessarily involved. In evolutionary terms, conceiving by a
sexually attractive mate is its own reward--if your descendants
inherit some of this sexual attractiveness, then they have greater
reproductive fitness, so your genes are hitching a ride on the
attractiveness of your mate.
So we don't have to imagine women thinking through the fitness
calculations, and saying,"Well, my sons and grandsons will be better
off with X feature than with Y"--evolution predisposes each of
us to find certain features sexually attractive, and our response
to that is to be interested in them sexually. If what turns us
on also turns many of our conspecifics on, then our attraction,
if it leads to mating and reproduction, itself increases the
reproductive fitness of our line.
Scott DeLancey
Joe Thompson
Matt Beckwith wrote:
> Actually, there's a second trait known to be on that chromosome, but I
> forget what it is. Of course, leave us not forget the trait of being
> male.
You mean "the lack of the trait of being female."
--
Joe Thompson | Cornerstone Networks | "Mathematics, like chess,
requires
j...@cstone.net | Charlottesville VA | too direct and personal a
confron-
Technical Support | 804.984.5600 | tation to allow graceful
defeat."
Technical Writing | http://www.cstone.net/ | -- Alfred Adler
Bryant
In article <8107cc$102a3a.c4@NEWS>, Solomon Taibi <ta...@inil.com> wrote:
>
>Please forgive the naive question, but what exactly is the
>manipulation of sperm via orgasm and how does it affect conception?
>Is this a relatively new discovery or am I just out of it?
Yes, it's relatively new. Baker & Bellis (I'll chase down a ref) in '90
or so. It appears that female orgasm (masturbatory or copulatory) plays
a large role in sperm retention both of the sperm from the orgasmic
copulation and from subsequent copulations. ("Upsuck.")
Bryant
catherine yronwode
John Varela wrote:
>
> In <4uu00h$9...@jaxnet.southeast.net>, Matt Beckwith <beck...@jaxnet.com> writes:
>
> >>It was an incidental issue which arose out of a discussion of the
> >>ramifications around a recent discovery that a boy's intelligence is
> >>inherited from his mother, not from his father ... the gene for
> >>intelligence (but don't ask me to define the term) having now
> >>apparently been established as being carried on the X chromosome.
> >
> >This I find difficult to believe. Perhaps they found a gene on the
> >X-chromosome which determines IQ to a certain extent. But I bet
> >there are others on other chromosomes. It just wouldn't make sense
> >to have a person's intelligence only determined by inheritance from
> >the mother. And nature usually evolves life forms that make sense.
>
> mother. It caused me to wonder how this interacts with the current
> controversy over whether intelligence can be measured with a single
> number, such as IQ. If intelligence is found on only one or a few
> genes, it would seem to support the single-number advocates.
>
> I saw no discussion of this question in the press reports, nor did I
> see any description of how they defined the "intelligence" that is
> only inherited on the X chromosome. If the definition of intelligence
> is IQ, and IQ is inherited on only one gene, then to say that
> "intelligence" is inherited from one gene looks like circular
> reasoning to me.
The news ran in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, etc. At no time
did anyone (scientists or reporters) claim that there is ONE gene for
intelligence. At no time did anyone claim that this affects the
inheritance of intelligence by WOMEN. One research team claims to have
has identified several genes for intelligence and all are located on the
X chromosome. Thus men would inherit intelligence from the mother only
but women could inherit from the mother or father or both.
This is the sort of information that drives some people into raging
fury, so i will not defend the issue beyond stating that the research
was published in a peer-reviewed journal and was thereafter accurately
reported in the popular press. Accretions of misinformation (the
reduction to "one gene", the idea that women inherit intelligence from
their mother only) and arguments over whether IQ itesting is a
reliable/unreliable measure of intelligence are none pf my business.
catherine "given that these findings are true, any geneticist can help
you plan a breeding program to increase intelligence in your offspring
(in fact, such a breeding program already exists and has existed for
several thousand years among one cultural group of human beings)"
yronwode
catherine yronwode ------------------------- mailto:yron...@sonic.net
news:alt.lucky.w - discussion of folkloric amulets, charms, & talismans
LUCKY W AMULET ARCHIVE ------ http://www.sonic.net/yronwode/LuckyW.html
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John Varela
>>It was an incidental issue which arose out of a discussion of the
>>ramifications around a recent discovery that a boy's intelligence is
>>inherited from his mother, not from his father ... the gene for
>>intelligence (but don't ask me to define the term) having now apparently
>>been established as being carried on the X chromosome.
>
>This I find difficult to believe. Perhaps they found a gene on the
>X-chromosome which determines IQ to a certain extent. But I bet there
>are others on other chromosomes. It just wouldn't make sense to have a
>person's intelligence only determined by inheritance from the mother.
>And nature usually evolves life forms that make sense.
I saw news reports about intelligence being inherited only from the mother. It
caused me to wonder how this interacts with the current controversy over whether
intelligence can be measured with a single number, such as IQ. If intelligence
is found on only one or a few genes, it would seem to support the single-number
advocates.
I saw no discussion of this question in the press reports, nor did I see any
description of how they defined the "intelligence" that is only inherited on the
X chromosome. If the definition of intelligence is IQ, and IQ is inherited on
only one gene, then to say that "intelligence" is inherited from one gene looks
like circular reasoning to me.
--------------------------------------------
----- John Varela j...@os2bbs.com -----
--------------------------------------------
catherine yronwode
Matt Beckwith wrote:
> What is true about X-linked traits, however, is that, if the trait is
> a recessive one, it will show up in all men who have it, and a very
> small minority of women who have it (only those women who have the
> same gene on both of their X-chromosomes). I doubt that intelligence
> genes are recessive genes, but if they are, its presence on the X
> chromosome would explain why men are smarter than women (just kidding,
> just kidding).
Actually, the multiplicity of these genes and the presence of all of
them on the X chromosome was hypothesized by the researchers to account
for the fact that women's intelligences tend to cluster around a
bell-curve average but men have a split-pattern distribution of
intelligence, including more retarded and more genius level minds than
women.
Matt Beckwith
catherine yronwode <yron...@sonic.net> wrote:
>did anyone (scientists or reporters) claim that there is ONE gene for
>intelligence. At no time did anyone claim that this affects the
>inheritance of intelligence by WOMEN. One research team claims to have
>has identified several genes for intelligence and all are located on the
>X chromosome. Thus men would inherit intelligence from the mother only
>but women could inherit from the mother or father or both.
>
>This is the sort of information that drives some people into raging
>fury, so i will not defend the issue beyond stating that the research
>was published in a peer-reviewed journal and was thereafter accurately
>reported in the popular press. Accretions of misinformation (the
>reduction to "one gene", the idea that women inherit intelligence from
>their mother only) and arguments over whether IQ itesting is a
>reliable/unreliable measure of intelligence are none pf my business.
Okay, I was inferring something untrue. As a doctor I should know
better. I was thinking that, because the X chromosome is associated with
femininity, intelligence could only be inherited from the mother. But
this isn't true. Both genders have the X chromosome.
What is true about X-linked traits, however, is that, if the trait is a
recessive one, it will show up in all men who have it, and a very small
minority of women who have it (only those women who have the same gene on
both of their X-chromosomes). I doubt that intelligence genes are
recessive genes, but if they are, its presence on the X chromosome would
explain why men are smarter than women (just kidding, just kidding).
FYI, genes which are only inherited from the mother are those which are
on the mitochondrion (a cellular element whose purpose is manufacturing
energy, and which doesn't get sent over to the egg by the sperm during
fertilization). Anybody know which genes these would be?
Matt Beckwith
catherine yronwode <yron...@sonic.net> wrote:
>Matt Beckwith wrote:
>
>> What is true about X-linked traits, however, is that, if the trait is
>> a recessive one, it will show up in all men who have it, and a very
>> small minority of women who have it (only those women who have the
>> same gene on both of their X-chromosomes). I doubt that intelligence
>> genes are recessive genes, but if they are, its presence on the X
>> chromosome would explain why men are smarter than women (just kidding,
>> just kidding).
>
>them on the X chromosome was hypothesized by the researchers to account
>for the fact that women's intelligences tend to cluster around a
>bell-curve average but men have a split-pattern distribution of
>intelligence, including more retarded and more genius level minds than
>women.
Now, come on, where's the smiley face....?
I resemble that remark! :)
So, if I understand correctly, the fact that women have twice as many
alleles would tend to increase the probability of their distribution
being a normal one. Yeah, that makes sense. So a woman is less likely
to have all high-intelligence genes or all low-intelligence genes.
This pretty well implies that these genes are not recessive, but
co-dominant.
I wonder what the evolutionary advantage is in having these genes on the
X chromosome.
catherine yronwode
Bryant wrote:
>
> catherine yronwode <yron...@sonic.net> wrote:
>
> >Actually, the multiplicity of these genes and the presence of all of
> >them on the X chromosome was hypothesized by the researchers to account
> >for the fact that women's intelligences tend to cluster around a
> >bell-curve average but men have a split-pattern distribution of
> >intelligence, including more retarded and more genius level minds than
> >women.
>
> distributed in men.
Again, my source for that data is the Wall Street Journal article
previously mentioned, quoting the genetics reserachers. I am simply
reporting on a report, okay?
catherine yronwode
Matt Beckwith wrote:
>
> So, if I understand correctly, the fact that women have twice as many
> alleles would tend to increase the probability of their distribution
> being a normal one. Yeah, that makes sense. So a woman is less likely
> to have all high-intelligence genes or all low-intelligence genes.
>
> This pretty well implies that these genes are not recessive, but
> co-dominant.
>
> I wonder what the evolutionary advantage is in having these genes on the
> X chromosome.
I believe it would only be of advantage to a matrilinear culture that
was patriarchal. In such a set-up, if a son "married out," his offspring
would be discarded by the tribe, thus losing some intelligent but
non-ruling females, but also removing from the tribe's gene pool all
potentially-ruling males of unknown intelliegence. If a daughter
"married out," her children would be accepted into the tribe and all the
potentially-ruling men would be of a known intelligence level while the
daughters would be of unknown intelligence but would have no rulership
potential. There is only one culture quite like this that i know of at
the present time, and that is traditional, matrilinear, patriarchal
Judaism. I am unwilling to discuss the relative intelligence of Jews vis
a vis other cultures, merely noting that this is the only culture that
(unconsciously, no doubt) conforms to what i see as the one breeding
plan that would maximize intelligence over the long haul if there were
multiple alleles for intelligence and if they only occured on the X
chromosome.
cat "a boy's best friend is his mother" yronwode
Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters
Matt Beckwith <beck...@jaxnet.com> wrote previously:
*}I wondered how long it would take for somebody to make the point that
*}there really is no such thing as intelligence. How about doing me a
*}favor, folks? Put that particular argument under a different thread
*}title, okay? Otherwise those of us who accept the concept of
*}intelligence and are interested in discussing its presence on the X
*}chromosome will have to wade through debate regarding this other issue.
Those of us who accept the existence of Santa Claus and are interested
in discussing whether he REALLY DOES live at the North Pole...
_/_/_/ THIS MESSAGE WAS BROUGHT TO YOU BY: Postmodern Enterprises _/_/_/
_/_/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~[qui...@philos.umass.edu]~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ _/_/
_/_/ The opinions expressed here must be those of my employer... _/_/
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ Surely you don't think that *I* believe them! _/_/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PGP 2.6 key available by finger <qui...@oitunix.oit.umass.edu>
Ian A. York
In article <4v5mjr$q...@jaxnet.southeast.net>,
Matt Beckwith <beck...@jaxnet.com> wrote:
>
>FYI, genes which are only inherited from the mother are those which are
>on the mitochondrion (a cellular element whose purpose is manufacturing
>energy, and which doesn't get sent over to the egg by the sperm during
>fertilization). Anybody know which genes these would be?
They're mostly pretty dull. There are a bunch of tRNA genes and some
ribosomal protein subunits. As well, there are a bunch of enzymes
involved in cellular respiration and energy metabolism. Total, about 37
genes.
There's a fairly detailed pile 'o' information on the human mitochondrial
genome at <http://infinity.gen.emory.edu/mitomap.html>, including a rather
attractive clickable map of the mitochondrial genome.
Followups set to alt.folklore.science.
Ian
--
Ian York (iay...@panix.com) <http://www.panix.com/~iayork/>
"-but as he was a York, I am rather inclined to suppose him a
very respectable Man." -Jane Austen, The History of England
Bryant
In article <321681...@sonic.net>,
catherine yronwode <yron...@sonic.net> wrote:
>Actually, the multiplicity of these genes and the presence of all of
>them on the X chromosome was hypothesized by the researchers to account
>for the fact that women's intelligences tend to cluster around a
>bell-curve average but men have a split-pattern distribution of
>intelligence, including more retarded and more genius level minds than
>women.
I'm not aware of any study which suggests that IQ is bimodally
distributed in men.
It should be pointed out that there is a lot of doubt about there even
being a "general" intelligence, as such (a general-purpose calculuating
machine model of the brain). Men tend to score lower than women in
verbal intelligence tests, for instance, while men tend to score higher
than women in spatial and quantitative tests.
Bryant
Bryant
In article <4v76hs$4...@jaxnet.southeast.net>,
Matt Beckwith <beck...@jaxnet.com> wrote:
>
>So the man who gives the woman the most pleasure (or allows her to feel
>relaxed enough to give herself pleasure) is the one who will reproduce.
>That's interesting. It means that, it's not just the handsome men who
>are selected for; it's also the ones with the most sexual skill.
>
>This means that, as time goes by, men are going to be more and more
>sexually skilled. (Assuming that there is a genetic component to sexual
>skill.)
Since more attractive men begin sexual activity earlier in life than
other men, it's not surprising that they're more skilled than other men
at any given age--they're more experienced.
However, better looking guys (that is, at least in part, men with high
developmental stability) do not induce more orgasms during foreplay,
etc. They only boast a higher mate orgasm rate during copulation!
Bryant
Matt Beckwith
ta...@inil.com (Solomon Taibi) wrote:
>sfo...@odin.cair.du.edu (sgf) wrote:
>
>>Nevertheless, although the man's
>>sperm may battle it out, it may ultimately be the woman's internal
>>manipulation of sperm via orgasm during intercourse and subsequent
So the man who gives the woman the most pleasure (or allows her to feel
relaxed enough to give herself pleasure) is the one who will reproduce.
That's interesting. It means that, it's not just the handsome men who
are selected for; it's also the ones with the most sexual skill.
This means that, as time goes by, men are going to be more and more
sexually skilled. (Assuming that there is a genetic component to sexual
skill.)
--
Matt Beckwith
http://users.southeast.net/~beckwith/
John Varela
In <32155A...@cstone.net>, Joe Thompson <j...@cstone.net> writes:
>Matt Beckwith wrote:
>> Actually, there's a second trait known to be on that chromosome, but I
>> forget what it is. Of course, leave us not forget the trait of being
>> male.
>
>You mean "the lack of the trait of being female."
Isn't female the default?
John Varela
In <4v7if7$20...@argo.unm.edu>, myc...@unm.edu (Bryant) writes:
>In article <321681...@sonic.net>,
>catherine yronwode <yron...@sonic.net> wrote:
>
>>Actually, the multiplicity of these genes and the presence of all of
>>them on the X chromosome was hypothesized by the researchers to account
>>for the fact that women's intelligences tend to cluster around a
>>bell-curve average but men have a split-pattern distribution of
>>intelligence, including more retarded and more genius level minds than
>>women.
>
>I'm not aware of any study which suggests that IQ is bimodally
>distributed in men.
I don't think it's bimodal. Rather, men have a larger standard deviation of
intelligence. I recall this being taught in introductory psychology 40 years
ago.
Matt Beckwith
myc...@unm.edu (Bryant) wrote:
>It should be pointed out that there is a lot of doubt about there even
>being a "general" intelligence, as such (a general-purpose calculuating
>machine model of the brain). Men tend to score lower than women in
>verbal intelligence tests, for instance, while men tend to score higher
>than women in spatial and quantitative tests.
I wondered how long it would take for somebody to make the point that
there really is no such thing as intelligence. How about doing me a
favor, folks? Put that particular argument under a different thread
title, okay? Otherwise those of us who accept the concept of
intelligence and are interested in discussing its presence on the X
chromosome will have to wade through debate regarding this other issue.
Thanks.
Jim Cummins
In article <4v5mjr$q...@jaxnet.southeast.net>, Matt Beckwith
<beck...@jaxnet.com> wrote:
> FYI, genes which are only inherited from the mother are those which are
> on the mitochondrion (a cellular element whose purpose is manufacturing
> energy, and which doesn't get sent over to the egg by the sperm during
> fertilization). Anybody know which genes these would be?
Wrong, sorry. The sperm DOES carry mtDNA into the egg, but it's diluted
out 10,000 fold by the maternal contribution. Check out
http://numbat.murdoch.edu.au/spermatology/sath01.html. The mtDNA has
about 16K base pairs encoding for a limited subset of the oxidative
phosphorylation pathway proteins. Deletions/mutations account for
maternally inherited mitochondrial diseases.
This is a common error in modern Anthropology text books - seems to have
been started by HG Wells about 50 years ago.
--
URL http://numbat.murdoch.edu.au/spermatology/spermhp.html
Joe Thompson
John Varela wrote:
>
> In <32155A...@cstone.net>, Joe Thompson <j...@cstone.net> writes:
> >Matt Beckwith wrote:
> >> Actually, there's a second trait known to be on that chromosome, but I
> >> forget what it is. Of course, leave us not forget the trait of being
> >> male.
> >
> >You mean "the lack of the trait of being female."
>
> Isn't female the default?
I was given to understand by my high school bio teacher that it takes
two X chromosomes to make a female. However, today I read somewhere
else that people with a lone X chromosome are small, sterile females, so
I could be wrong. -- Joe
.sig undergoing reconstructive surgery. Please pardon our line breaks.
Matt Beckwith
I think you got more of the right kind of X chromosome genes than I did.
After reading your post about fifty times, I'm beginning to get the
drift.
The X chromosomes of a daughter come from both parents. The X chromosome
of a son, however, comes from the mother (only). So a son's intelligence
comes entirely from his mother.
In a patriarchal society, intelligence only has value as a trait in the
males of the tribe (because they're the leaders). The function of the
females is to pass that intelligence genetically on to male inheritors.
But it has to go from the intelligent male through his daughter on to the
intelligent grandson.
So we don't want the leader's daughters leaving the tribe. It doesn't
matter whether he marries within the tribe. It only matters that his
daughters remain within the tribe (whether his wife is of the tribe or
not).
Now, what about the mating of his daughter? She now has the intelligent
gene. It doesn't matter whether she marries within or without the tribe.
But her child--if male--must stay within the tribe. Otherwise the tribe
is giving away a potentially ruling (and therefore competing) male.
So it would seem to me that, in order to keep the intelligent ruling
genes in the tribe, daughters of rulers should stay within the tribe, and
grandsons of rulers should stay within the tribe. Sons of rulers could
do anything they wanted, as could granddaughters of rulers.
In a patriarchal matrilineal society, daughters of rulers who marry out
are lost. So this is not the optimal social structure for optimizing
intelligence when the intelligence genes are on the X chromosome.
On the other hand, there probably would never be a society structured in
this particular way.
The sons of an intelligent man are not getting his intelligence, so we'd
like at least some of those to leave the tribe. If he married outside
the tribe (in a matrilineal society) they would leave the tribe.
In a matrilineal society, all sons of women within the tribe would be
kept within the tribe, whether the women married out or not. These are
the important sons to keep.
Please forgive me for re-iterating what you already said quite
eloquently, but I needed to restate it a bit more simply in order to
understand it.
Getting back to my hypothetical optimal social structure, it would seem
to be best to have the leadership itself transmitted from father to
daughter to grandson. A truly great male leader would want to have
daughters (not sons). Isn't that ironic, considering how many men prefer
sons to daughters. A truly great female leader would want to have sons,
not daughters.
We could extrapolate this to our present society. If you as an
individual want your intelligence to live on, then you should prefer to
have children opposite in gender to your own.
If you're a man, only your daughters will get your intelligence genes.
(Intelligent sons would get their intelligence entirely from their
mother.) Your daughters' sons would get either your intelligence genes
or those of your wife. So there's a fifty fifty chance (ignoring
chromosomal crossovers) that your grandsons through your daughters will
have your intelligence. (Your grandsons through your son won't have
any of it.) Since your intelligence will only be transmitted purely into
male descendents (they're the ones that get the single X chromosome, and
aren't "polluted" by some X chromosome inherited from someone else), you
should really be looking at male grandsons as your ultimate goal for
preserving your own individual intelligence. If you want to not only
preserve your intelligence but enhance it, you should marry an
intelligent woman. That way, if there are crossovers at the X
chromosomes, they'll not detract from your grandsons' intelligence. If
you're not concerned about your great grandsons (perhaps you don't expect
to live that long, for example), then you shouldn't care how dumb your
daughter's husband is. (Isn't that interesting!) In any case, the
intelligence of your daughter's husband will have no bearing on the
intelligence of those male descendents who receive your particular
intelligence genes.
If you're a woman who wants to pass on her intelligence, then first of
all you should realize that your particular mix of intelligence is
probably not going to get passed on as is. Your descendents will none of
them be you. You can't pass both of your X chromosomes down the tree to
the same person without some inbreeding somewhere, and you wouldn't want
that. But let's say you want your X chromosomes to show up in
descendents maximally. They will maximally show up in males (since
they're unpolluted by someone else's X chromosome). So you should also
have as a goal an intelligent male descendent. But in your case, it may
as well be a son, because each of your sons will get one or the other of
your X chromosomes. So you want sons. And when you have sons, you can
take all the credit for their intelligence (or lack of it).
All of this assumes that all of the genes for intelligence are on the X
chromosome, which of course hasn't been established.
I'm intelligent. My mother was intelligent but not as intelligent as I
am. My father was extremely intelligent. I always thought I got my
intelligence from both parents, but mostly from my father. If this
theory about the X chromosome having all of the intelligence genes is
accurate, then my father's intelligence was irrelevant. I'm more
intelligent than my mother because I only got one of her X chromosomes,
and the one I got had the preponderance of the intelligent intelligence
genes. Or there was an advantageous crossover at my mother. Let's say
there were no crossovers anywhere. In that case, my intelligence could
be my maternal grandfather's, or my maternal grandmother's father's, or
my maternal grandmother's mother's father's, etc. In any case, barring
crossovers, there was some male on up the maternal branches of my
ancestral tree who was as intelligent as I. Believing as I do that
intelligence is the most valuable and personality-determining feature of
a human being, that male ancestor was in a sense I.
Hm, I wonder how often X chromosome crossovers occur. Naturally, they'd
only occur in women, so their incidence would be half that of crossovers
in any autosomal chromosome.
Matthew Rabuzzi
sgf <sfo...@odin.cair.du.edu> writes:
:
: Timothy Taylor's _The Prehistory of Sex: Four Million Years of Human
: Sexual Culture_ (Bantam: 1996) [says:]
:
: " Baker and Bellis believe that male biological mechanisms are geared
: to the expectation of cuckoldry. Human males have relatively large
: testicles and produce far more sperm than they seem to need. In normal
: conception a single egg is fertilized by a single sperm. So what are the
: other 2,249,999 sperm from an average 2.25-million-sperm ejaculation up to?
paltry 2.25M sperm at the end of a hard day's night at stud, I suppose,
but a normal average human ejaculation will be two orders of magnitude greater:
According to Anthony Smith (_The Body_, 1968), the avg ejaculation is 2-7 cc
of semen, which is 90% water, containing perhaps 200,000,000 spermatozoa.
The Encyclopedia Britannica ups this estimate to 300-400M per ejaculation.
I can testify -- literally -- to these numbers' reasonableness. I used to
be a sperm donor at California CryoBank in Palo Alto (you get paid for doing
what you'd do anyway, and they have a good selection of magazines and videos).
I remember thinking, after my initial semenalysis, "Wow, that's still enough
left over to populate Japan!" And that's because the analysis is done after
a trial freezing and then returning to testicle temperature, i.e. simulating
a syringe fertilization, and the freeze/thaw typically kills 50-90% of the
sperm cells. In addition to count, they examine motility, by two metrics.
There's divagation -- do they swim straight to the target, or yaw all over
the place, or tend to the left, or what (I don't think Coriolis force is a
factor here). And there's speed, which I recall was 185 microns/second.
Now if a 5-micron-long spermatozoon were scaled to the height of an average
man, that would be equivalent to 215 feet/sec or close to 150 mph.
Slower than a botfly, but heck, this is a *swimming* speed.
Matthew "no sonic booms, but makes lots of noise other ways" Rabuzzi
Bryant
In article <4v8klo$k...@jaxnet.southeast.net>,
Matt Beckwith <beck...@jaxnet.com> wrote:
>I wondered how long it would take for somebody to make the point that
>there really is no such thing as intelligence.
>How about doing me a favor, folks? Put that particular argument under
>a different thread title, okay? Otherwise those of us who accept the
>presence on the X chromosome will have to wade through [other] debate [...]
The sexual dimorphism in the subscale scores, though, makes it
appropriate for consideration here, I think. Doesn't it? I mean,
perhaps some component of IQ was more relevant to ancestral women's fitness,
and some component was more relevant to men, explaining both the dimorphism
and the X-linkage evidence you guys were talking about.
(In other words, my point about multiple intelligences may shed light
rather than confuse matters.)
Cheers,
Bryant
sgf
In article <8107cc$102a3a.c4@NEWS>, Solomon Taibi <ta...@inil.com> wrote:
>sfo...@odin.cair.du.edu (sgf) wrote:
>
>>Nevertheless, although the man's
>>sperm may battle it out, it may ultimately be the woman's internal
>>manipulation of sperm via orgasm during intercourse and subsequent
>>masturbation that most influences whose baby she will have.
>
>manipulation of sperm via orgasm and how does it affect conception?
>Is this a relatively new discovery or am I just out of it?
It's a pretty new discovery. As far as I recall (I'm on campus and the
book is at my house), during the female orgasm, the mouth of the cervix
dips down. If a man has recently ejaculated into the woman, then it dips
into the pool of sperm left there and through the biological mechanism
charmingly named "up-suck," allows sperm to enter, thus increasing the
chances of conception. If the woman climaxes *before* the man, however,
and does not climax again, then the cervix doesn't dip, up-suck doesn't
happen, and conception is not quite as likely (although it is always
possible). Apparently the timing of female masturbation to orgasm is
theorized to help her choose which male's sperm is to conceive, although
the book I read didn't go into any detail or mention if any study had
been done beyond theorizing.
--Stephanie
--
sfo...@odin.cair.du.edu <*> http://phoebe.cair.du.edu/~sfolse/
"Assiduous and frequent questioning is indeed the first key to wisdom ...for
by doubting we come to inquiry; through inquiring we perceive the truth..."
--Peter Abelard (..........I claim this .sig for Queen Elizabeth)
catherine yronwode
Matt Beckwith wrote:
> The X chromosomes of a daughter come from both parents.
Yes, but the (hypotehtical) intelligence genes that are *expressed* may
come from one parent or the other or both (or so the current theory
goes). Remember -- multiple alleles, cross-over, dominance versus
recessiveness, all that stuff.
> The X chromosome
> of a son, however, comes from the mother (only). So a son's intelligence
> comes entirely from his mother.
Right (or so the current theory goes).
> In a patriarchal society, intelligence only has value as a trait in
> the males of the tribe (because they're the leaders). The function of
> the females is to pass that intelligence genetically on to male
> inheritors. But it has to go from the intelligent male through his
> daughter on to the intelligent grandson.
>
> So we don't want the leader's daughters leaving the tribe.
Right.
> It doesn't matter whether he marries within the tribe.
WRONG. If he marries outside the tribe, his children are not "of the
tribe." In traditional patriarchal matrilineal Judaism, for example, a
man who marries a "shikse" (non-Jewish woman) has children who are "not
legally Jewish" according to Jewish law. In other words, using this
model, he has produced children of UNKNOWN intelligence -- the
daughters' intelligence being irrellevant since they can't rule, and the
sons' intellligence being determined by their non-tribal mother, and
hence unknown by the tribe.
> It only matters that his daughters remain within the tribe (whether
> his wife is of the tribe or not).
WRONG. His wife MUST be of the tribe. His daughters may marry ANY man of
ANY tribe because their SONS (daughters don't count as rulers in this
model) will have the intellegence of their mom or dad (the ruler) or
both. In Jewish law, the children of a Jewish woman who martries a goy
(non-Jew) are fully Jewish.
> Now, what about the mating of his daughter? She now has the
> intelligent gene.
NOT NECESSARILY. She may have the intellegence of her mother.
> It doesn't matter whether she marries within or
> without the tribe.
RIGHT. She can be assumed to have the intelligence of her mother or
father (the ruler) or both -- but in any case she (and her sisters) are
the ruler's ONLY chance to pass his intelligence along.
> But her child--if male--must stay within the tribe. Otherwise the
> tribe is giving away a potentially ruling (and therefore competing)
> male.
RIGHT. No matter who her husband is, her son is the ruler's only hope to
pass along his intelligence to a ruler.
> So it would seem to me that, in order to keep the intelligent ruling
> genes in the tribe, daughters of rulers should stay within the tribe,
> and grandsons of rulers should stay within the tribe. Sons of rulers
> could do anything they wanted, as could granddaughters of rulers.
RIGHT, more or less. Sons of rulers might be intelligent too (from their
mothers) so if they marry in the tribe to an intelligent woman, that's
okay. It's when they marry out that their kids must be discarded from
the lineage.
Daughters and granddaughters of rulers make good wives for sons of the
ruler's viziers and stewards, because this gives a chance for
consolidation of the ruler's intelligence in the vizier or steward line.
The daughters of such collaterally-bred viziers' and stewards' offspring
make good wives for the ruler's male grandsons. We don't call it
inbreeding then...
> In a patriarchal matrilineal society, daughters of rulers who marry
> out are lost.
NO. Their kids remain part of the tribe. See above (and below) for my
statements on traditional patriarchal matrilineal Jewish law.
> So this is not the optimal social structure for
> optimizing intelligence when the intelligence genes are on the X
> chromosome.
No -- you've jumped to the wrong conclusion because you've failed to
understand the social structure. Being Jewish myself, perhaps i failed
to make it clear on first posting because i assumed everyone knows the
routine.
Again, for the record: daughters of patriarchal matrilineal rulers who
marry out are NOT lost -- just the opposite! Their kids are part of the
tribe. It's the SONS of patriarchal matrilineal rulers who marry out
whose kids are lost to the tribe.
> On the other hand, there probably would never be a society structured
> in this particular way.
Yes, Judaism is indeed structured as i noted, not as you noted.
For instance:
My mother is Jewish, my father Sicilian Catholic. Legally i am "fully
Jewish" (by Jewish law, not civil law). My co-parent is Jewish on both
sides of his family ("fully Jewish" by Jewish law). Our daughter is
"fully Jewish" by law, even though she is 1/4 Sicilian by genetic rules.
In short, Judiasm does not recognize "half-Jewish" as a classification.
One is either the offspring of a Jewish mother -- in which case one is
"fully Jewish" or one is the offspring of a "non-Jewish" mother -- in
which case one is "non-Jewish."
As an example of this working in the other way, take my step-sister's
case versus the case of my half-sister:
My step-sister's mother is German Protestant on both sides of the family
("non-Jewish"). Her father is born of the marriage of male Jew and a
female Protestant. By genetics, her father is 1/2 Jewish, just like me,
but by Jewish law he is "NON-Jewish." My step-sister is 1/4 Jewish
genetically, but because her mother is "non-jewish" and her father is
"non-Jewish," she is "non-Jewish" by Jewish law. She married a Jew who
is Jewish on both sides of his family ("fully jewish" boith genetically
and by jewish law) and they had two sons. Her sons are "NON-Jewish" by
Jewish law, even though they are 5/8 Jewish genetically -- because she,
their mother, is "non-Jewish" because HER MOTHER was not Jewish.
My half-sister, on the other hand, IS Jewish by Jewish law. Her father
-- the same genetically 1/2 Jewish man who is "non-Jewish" by Jewish
law (see above) -- married my mother, who both "fully Jewish" by Jewish
law (all her maternal ancestors being Jewish) and genetically Jeiwsh on
both sides of her family at least as far back as the early 1700s. My
step sister is thus "fully Jewish" by Jewish law but only 3/4 Jewish by
genetic rules. She has married a man who is English Protestant on both
sides of his family ("non-Jewish" by Jewish law). Any children they have
will be "fully Jewish" by Jewish law although only 3/8 Jewish by genetic
rules.
Now consider our children:
My daughter is 3/4 Jewish genetically and "fully Jewish" legally and all
her children will be Jewish by Jewish law, no matter who the father is.
My step-sister's sons are 5/8 Jewish genetically and "NON-Jewish"
legally -- and only if they marry Jewish women will their children be
Jewish by Jewish law.
My half-sister's unborn children will be 3/8 Jewish genetically and
fully Jewish legally and no matter who they marry, their children will
be fully Jewish by Jewish law.
Why are my step-sister's sons (and my step-sister herself) considered
NON-Jewish even though they have more Jewish gene material than my
half-sister's unborn children will have? Because they have in their
ancestry a Jewish man who married a non-Jewish woman and his son, who
married a non-Jewish woman. Non-Jewish X-chromosome material got into
the mix. That's a no-no.
In other words, Jewish law maximizes conservation of the material on the
X chromosome of the mother.
> The sons of an intelligent man are not getting his intelligence, so
> we'd like at least some of those to leave the tribe.
Well, that could be one way to do it, and if they marry non-tribe
females, we sure will do that, but alternatively, we'd want them to
marry women of the tribe of known high intelligence to consolidate
intelligence back into the ruler's lineage. Those vizier's daughters
look pretty good.
> If he married outside
> the tribe (in a matrilineal society) they would leave the tribe.
RIGHT. If he married an outsider, one whose intelligence was unknown to
us, we'd have no clue as to whether he'd increased or decreased the
intelligence of his children. Hence we'd be willing to discard these
"unknowns" from the tribe.
> In a matrilineal society, all sons of women within the tribe would be
> kept within the tribe, whether the women married out or not. These
> are the important sons to keep.
RIGHT. Preserve that X-chomosome stuff at all costs.
> Getting back to my hypothetical optimal social structure, it would
> seem to be best to have the leadership itself transmitted from father
> to daughter to grandson. A truly great male leader would want to have
> daughters (not sons).
> Isn't that ironic, considering how many men
> prefer sons to daughters.
RIGHT -- becasue having daughters is the ruler's ONLY chance (and not a
sure chance at that) of passing along his intelligence.
> A truly great female leader would want to
> have sons, not daughters.
NOT SO. She could have either.
All her sons would carry her intelligence and would have a chance (say
50%) of passing her intelligence to her granddaughters -- but she'd
worry a lot about who her sons married, because she'd know these sons
were a potential dead-end to her intelligence line (no matter who their
mates were) if they only had sons.
Daughters, on the other hand, might carry some, none, or all of her
intelligence -- but whatever they had, they would carry some of it to
the next generation, no matter who they married and there would never be
dead ends through a female line. So a mother should want a multiplicity
of daughters.
> We could extrapolate this to our present society. If you as an
> individual want your intelligence to live on, then you should prefer
> to have children opposite in gender to your own.
Nit necessarily so. The inheritance of intelligence by females in this
hypotehical model is MIXED. Only in boys is it determined by the mother.
One should want a multiplicity of girls because even if some of them may
not pan out in terms of inheriting one's intellience, some will. All
boys are potential dead ends -- if they only have sons.
> If you're a man, only your daughters will get your intelligence genes.
> (Intelligent sons would get their intelligence entirely from their
> mother.) Your daughters' sons would get either your intelligence
> genes or those of your wife. So there's a fifty fifty chance
> (ignoring chromosomal crossovers) that your grandsons through your
> daughters will have your intelligence. (Your grandsons through your
> son won't have any of it.) Since your intelligence will only be
> transmitted purely into male descendents (they're the ones that get
> the single X chromosome, and aren't "polluted" by some X chromosome
> inherited from someone else), you should really be looking at male
> grandsons as your ultimate goal for preserving your own individual
> intelligence.
RIGHT -- but that's a short-term solution, because those grandsons might
be a dead-end if they only have sons. The ONLY way to proiduce a line of
intelligence with statistical (albeit not specific) confidence of
continuity is through female descendents. Your granddaughters are 50%
likely to carry it on, while your grandsons will carry it on in 50% of
their daughters and 0% of their sons.
> If you want to not only
> preserve your intelligence but enhance it, you should marry an
> intelligent woman.
ABOSLUTELY.
> If you're not concerned about your great grandsons (perhaps you don't
> expect to live that long, for example), then you shouldn't care how
> dumb your daughter's husband is. (Isn't that interesting!)
And, substituting "Jewishness" for "intelligence," this is exactly what
Jewish law does -- it doesn;t care how "jewish" your daughter's hudsband
is. Also, i find it interesting to note how often "the daughter's dumb
husband" is a theme in situation comedy humour. Cf. "All in the Family."
> In any case, the
> intelligence of your daughter's husband will have no bearing on the
> intelligence of those male descendents who receive your particular
> intelligence genes.
Correct.
> If you're a woman who wants to pass on her intelligence, then first of
> all you should realize that your particular mix of intelligence is
> probably not going to get passed on as is.
Correct. You are playing the odds, not going for specifics.
> Your descendents will none of
> them be you.
No -- here you overstate the case. You have to consider the role of
dominance and recessiveness in this multiple allele set-up. Some
daughters of a woman may indeed be complete "intelligence clones" of her
in terms of expression of genes, while some may be a mixed bag of
inheritance from her and her husbanmd -- but none will be "entirely
other" as the son of a man will be. That's why a women should aim for a
multiplicity of daughters -- to give herself the best odds.
> You can't pass both of your X chromosomes down the tree to
> the same person without some inbreeding somewhere, and you wouldn't
> want that. But let's say you want your X chromosomes to show up in
> descendents maximally. They will maximally show up in males (since
> they're unpolluted by someone else's X chromosome). So you should
> also have as a goal an intelligent male descendent. But in your case,
> it may as well be a son, because each of your sons will get one or the
> other of your X chromosomes. So you want sons. And when you have
> sons, you can take all the credit for their intelligence (or lack of
> it).
Sure -- but sons are potentially DEAD ENDS. Unless you get into
inbreeding (a taboo), if they have sons, those sons are lost to
posterity as far as YOUR X-chromosome material is concerned. A
multiplicity of daughters is your best chance to pass along your
intelligence.
If you're a woman and want to preserve your intelligence you should
marry an intelligent man, be prepared to discard from consideration the
male offspring of your sons if they marry unintelligent women ("outside
the tribe"), and instruct your daughters to marry intellgent men and to
tell their children to do as you have done. In short, for a woman to
enhance or preserve intellignece, she should set up a matrilineal
society.
> All of this assumes that all of the genes for intelligence are on the
> X chromosome, which of course hasn't been established.
Sure, this is all hypothesis.
> I'm intelligent. My mother was intelligent but not as intelligent as
> I am. My father was extremely intelligent. I always thought I got my
> intelligence from both parents, but mostly from my father. If this
> theory about the X chromosome having all of the intelligence genes is
> accurate, then my father's intelligence was irrelevant. I'm more
> intelligent than my mother because I only got one of her X
> chromosomes, and the one I got had the preponderance of the
> intelligent intelligence genes. Or there was an advantageous
> crossover at my mother.
Right -- and here we open up further hypotheses concerning dominant and
recessive genes, the expression of genes, etc. which, as you know, go
beyond the simple model so far under discussion.
> Let's say
> there were no crossovers anywhere. In that case, my intelligence could
> be my maternal grandfather's, or my maternal grandmother's father's,
> or my maternal grandmother's mother's father's, etc. In any case,
> barring crossovers, there was some male on up the maternal branches of
> my ancestral tree who was as intelligent as I. Believing as I do that
> intelligence is the most valuable and personality-determining feature
> of a human being, that male ancestor was in a sense I.
Again, this is all based on unspoken theories concerning the dominance
and recessiveness of the multiple-allele intelligence genes -- and while
your description of how this might work is accurate, we can only
theorize here...
> Hm, I wonder how often X chromosome crossovers occur. Naturally,
> they'd only occur in women, so their incidence would be half that of
> crossovers in any autosomal chromosome.
Right -- and if they occured with any great frequency, they'd throw a
corresponding percentage of what's been discussed above into a cocked
hat.
catherine yronwode
Matt Beckwith wrote:
Yes Both sons and daughters of rulers who marry out are lost to the
For instance:
Now consider our children:
Correct.
--
catherine yronwode
Matt Beckwith wrote:
> The X chromosomes of a daughter come from both parents.
Yes, but the (hypotehtical) intelligence genes that are *expressed* may
come from one parent or the other or both (or so the current theory
goes). Remember -- multiple alleles, cross-over, dominance versus
recessiveness, all that stuff.
> The X chromosome
> of a son, however, comes from the mother (only). So a son's intelligence
> comes entirely from his mother.
Right (or so the current theory goes).
> In a patriarchal society, intelligence only has value as a trait in
> the males of the tribe (because they're the leaders). The function of
> the females is to pass that intelligence genetically on to male
> inheritors. But it has to go from the intelligent male through his
> daughter on to the intelligent grandson.
>
> So we don't want the leader's daughters leaving the tribe.
Right.
> It doesn't matter whether he marries within the tribe.
WRONG. If he marries outside the tribe, his children are not "of the
tribe." In traditional patriarchal matrilineal Judaism, for example, a
man who marries a "shikse" (non-Jewish woman) has children who are "not
legally Jewish" according to Jewish law. In other words, using this
model, he has produced children of UNKNOWN intelligence -- the
daughters' intelligence being irrellevant since they can't rule, and the
sons' intellligence being determined by their non-tribal mother, and
hence unknown by the tribe.
> It only matters that his daughters remain within the tribe (whether
> his wife is of the tribe or not).
WRONG. His wife MUST be of the tribe. His daughters may marry ANY man of
ANY tribe because their SONS (daughters don't count as rulers in this
model) will have the intellegence of their mom or dad (the ruler) or
both. In Jewish law, the children of a Jewish woman who martries a goy
(non-Jew) are fully Jewish.
> Now, what about the mating of his daughter? She now has the
> intelligent gene.
NOT NECESSARILY. She may have the intellegence of her mother.
> It doesn't matter whether she marries within or
> without the tribe.
RIGHT. She can be assumed to have the intelligence of her mother or
father (the ruler) or both -- but in any case she (and her sisters) are
the ruler's ONLY chance to pass his intelligence along.
> But her child--if male--must stay within the tribe. Otherwise the
> tribe is giving away a potentially ruling (and therefore competing)
> male.
RIGHT. No matter who her husband is, her son is the ruler's only hope to
pass along his intelligence to a ruler.
> So it would seem to me that, in order to keep the intelligent ruling
> genes in the tribe, daughters of rulers should stay within the tribe,
> and grandsons of rulers should stay within the tribe. Sons of rulers
> could do anything they wanted, as could granddaughters of rulers.
RIGHT, more or less. Sons of rulers might be intelligent too (from their
mothers) so if they marry in the tribe to an intelligent woman, that's
okay. It's when they marry out that their kids must be discarded from
the lineage.
Daughters and granddaughters of rulers make good wives for sons of the
ruler's viziers and stewards, because this gives a chance for
consolidation of the ruler's intelligence in the vizier or steward line.
The daughters of such collaterally-bred viziers' and stewards' offspring
make good wives for the ruler's male grandsons. We don't call it
inbreeding then...
> In a patriarchal matrilineal society, daughters of rulers who marry
> out are lost.
Yes. Both sons and daughters of rulers who marry out are lost to the
tribe. See above (and below) for my statements on traditional
patriarchal matrilineal Jewish law.
> So this is not the optimal social structure for
> optimizing intelligence when the intelligence genes are on the X
> chromosome.
No -- you've jumped to the wrong conclusion because you've failed to
understand the social structure. Being Jewish myself, perhaps i failed
to make it clear on first posting because i assumed everyone knows the
routine.
> On the other hand, there probably would never be a society structured
> in this particular way.
Yes, Judaism is indeed structured thus, as i noted .
For instance:
Now consider our children:
In other words, traditional Jewish law maximizes conservation of the
material on the X chromosome of the mother.
> The sons of an intelligent man are not getting his intelligence, so
> we'd like at least some of those to leave the tribe.
Well, that could be one way to do it, and if they marry non-tribe
females, we sure will do that, but alternatively, we'd want them to
marry women of the tribe of known high intelligence to consolidate
intelligence back into the ruler's lineage. Those vizier's daughters
look pretty good.
> If he married outside
> the tribe (in a matrilineal society) they would leave the tribe.
RIGHT. If he married an outsider, one whose intelligence was unknown to
us, we'd have no clue as to whether he'd increased or decreased the
intelligence of his children. Hence we'd be willing to discard these
"unknowns" from the tribe.
> In a matrilineal society, all sons of women within the tribe would be
> kept within the tribe, whether the women married out or not. These
> are the important sons to keep.
RIGHT. Preserve that X-chomosome stuff at all costs.
> Getting back to my hypothetical optimal social structure, it would
> seem to be best to have the leadership itself transmitted from father
> to daughter to grandson. A truly great male leader would want to have
> daughters (not sons).
> Isn't that ironic, considering how many men
> prefer sons to daughters.
RIGHT -- becasue having daughters is the ruler's ONLY chance (and not a
sure chance at that) of passing along his intelligence.
> A truly great female leader would want to
> have sons, not daughters.
NOT SO. She could have either.
All her sons would carry her intelligence and would have a chance (say
50%) of passing her intelligence to her granddaughters -- but she'd
worry a lot about who her sons married, because she'd know these sons
were a potential dead-end to her intelligence line (no matter who their
mates were) if they only had sons.
Daughters, on the other hand, might carry some, none, or all of her
intelligence -- but whatever they had, they would carry some of it to
the next generation, no matter who they married and there would never be
dead ends through a female line. So a mother should want a multiplicity
of daughters.
> We could extrapolate this to our present society. If you as an
> individual want your intelligence to live on, then you should prefer
> to have children opposite in gender to your own.
Not necessarily so. The inheritance of intelligence by females in this
hypotehical model is MIXED. Only in boys is it determined by the mother.
One should want a multiplicity of girls because even if some of them may
not pan out in terms of inheriting one's intellience, some will. All
boys are potential dead ends -- if they only have sons.
> If you're a man, only your daughters will get your intelligence genes.
> (Intelligent sons would get their intelligence entirely from their
> mother.) Your daughters' sons would get either your intelligence
> genes or those of your wife. So there's a fifty fifty chance
> (ignoring chromosomal crossovers) that your grandsons through your
> daughters will have your intelligence. (Your grandsons through your
> son won't have any of it.)
Right.
> Since your intelligence will only be
> transmitted purely into male descendents (they're the ones that get
> the single X chromosome, and aren't "polluted" by some X chromosome
> inherited from someone else), you should really be looking at male
> grandsons as your ultimate goal for preserving your own individual
> intelligence.
That's a short-term solution, because those grandsons might
be a dead-end if they only have sons. The ONLY way to proiduce a line of
intelligence with statistical (albeit not specific) confidence of
continuity is through female descendents. Your granddaughters are 50%
likely to carry it on, while your grandsons will carry it on in 50% of
their daughters and 0% of their sons.
> If you want to not only
> preserve your intelligence but enhance it, you should marry an
> intelligent woman.
ABOSLUTELY.
> If you're not concerned about your great grandsons (perhaps you don't
> expect to live that long, for example), then you shouldn't care how
> dumb your daughter's husband is. (Isn't that interesting!)
And, substituting "Jewishness" for "intelligence," this is exactly what
Jewish law does -- it doesn't care how "Jewish" your daughter's hudsband
is. Also, i find it interesting to note how often "the daughter's dumb
husband" is a theme in situation comedy humour. Cf. "All in the Family."
> In any case, the
> intelligence of your daughter's husband will have no bearing on the
> intelligence of those male descendents who receive your particular
> intelligence genes.
Correct.
> If you're a woman who wants to pass on her intelligence, then first of
> all you should realize that your particular mix of intelligence is
> probably not going to get passed on as is.
Correct. You are playing the odds, not going for specifics.
> Your descendents will none of
> them be you.
No -- here you overstate the case. You have to consider the role of
dominance and recessiveness in this multiple allele set-up. Some
daughters of a woman may indeed be complete "intelligence clones" of her
in terms of expression of genes, while some may be a mixed bag of
inheritance from her and her husband -- but none will be "entirely
other" as the son of a man will be. That's why a women should aim for a
multiplicity of daughters -- to give herself the best odds.
> You can't pass both of your X chromosomes down the tree to
> the same person without some inbreeding somewhere, and you wouldn't
> want that. But let's say you want your X chromosomes to show up in
> descendents maximally. They will maximally show up in males (since
> they're unpolluted by someone else's X chromosome). So you should
> also have as a goal an intelligent male descendent. But in your case,
> it may as well be a son, because each of your sons will get one or the
> other of your X chromosomes. So you want sons. And when you have
> sons, you can take all the credit for their intelligence (or lack of
> it).
Sure -- but sons are potentially DEAD ENDS. Unless you get into
inbreeding (a taboo) If a woman's sons have sons, those grandsons are
lost to posterity as far as the woman's X-chromosome material is
concerned. A multiplicity of daughters is a woman's best chance to pass
along her intelligence.
If you're a woman and want to preserve your intelligence you should
marry an intelligent man, and discard from consideration the male
offspring of your sons. You should also be prepared to discard even your
female grandchildren if your sons have married unintelligent women
("outside the tribe"). Meanwhile, you should have lots of daughters and
instruct your daughters to marry intellgent men and to tell their
children to do as you have done. In short, for a woman to enhance or
preserve intellignece, she should set up a matrilineal society.
> All of this assumes that all of the genes for intelligence are on the
> X chromosome, which of course hasn't been established.
Sure, this is all hypothesis.
> I'm intelligent. My mother was intelligent but not as intelligent as
> I am. My father was extremely intelligent. I always thought I got my
> intelligence from both parents, but mostly from my father. If this
> theory about the X chromosome having all of the intelligence genes is
> accurate, then my father's intelligence was irrelevant. I'm more
> intelligent than my mother because I only got one of her X
> chromosomes, and the one I got had the preponderance of the
> intelligent intelligence genes. Or there was an advantageous
> crossover at my mother.
Right -- and here we open up further hypotheses concerning dominant and
recessive genes, the expression of genes, etc. which, as you know, go
beyond the simple model so far under discussion.
> Let's say
> there were no crossovers anywhere. In that case, my intelligence could
> be my maternal grandfather's, or my maternal grandmother's father's,
> or my maternal grandmother's mother's father's, etc. In any case,
> barring crossovers, there was some male on up the maternal branches of
> my ancestral tree who was as intelligent as I. Believing as I do that
> intelligence is the most valuable and personality-determining feature
> of a human being, that male ancestor was in a sense I.
Again, this is all based on unspoken theories concerning the dominance
and recessiveness of the multiple-allele intelligence genes -- and while
your description of how this might work is accurate, we can only
theorize here...
> Hm, I wonder how often X chromosome crossovers occur. Naturally,
> they'd only occur in women, so their incidence would be half that of
> crossovers in any autosomal chromosome.
Right -- and if they occured with any great frequency, they'd throw a
Bryant
In article <4v8klv$l...@news1.mnsinc.com>, John Varela <j...@os2bbs.com> wrote:
>>catherine yronwode <yron...@sonic.net> wrote:
>>
>>>Actually, the multiplicity of these genes and the presence of all of
>>>them on the X chromosome was hypothesized by the researchers to account
>>>for the fact that women's intelligences tend to cluster around a
>>>bell-curve average but men have a split-pattern distribution of
>>>intelligence
[and Bryant responded:]
>>I'm not aware of any study which suggests that IQ is bimodally distributed
[...and then John clarified:]
>I don't think it's bimodal. Rather, men have a larger standard deviation of
>intelligence. I recall this being taught in introductory psychology 40 years
>ago.
Fair enough. I read "split-pattern distribution" more literally than was
intended by the author, apparently. Thanks. Congratulations on your
excellent long term memory, by the way! :)
Bryant
John Varela
Well, the professor made the memorable point that most geniuses are men (as any
man will be quick to point out) and so are most village idiots (as any woman
will be quick to point out).
--------------------------------------------
----- John Varela j...@os2bbs.com -----
--------------------------------------------
catherine yronwode
John Varela wrote:
>
> In <4v90rd$33...@argo.unm.edu>, myc...@unm.edu (Bryant) writes:
> >In article <4v8klv$l...@news1.mnsinc.com>, John Varela <j...@os2bbs.com> wrote:
>
> >>I don't think it's bimodal. Rather, men have a larger standard deviation of
> >>intelligence. I recall this being taught in introductory psychology 40 years
> >>ago.
> >
> >Fair enough. I read "split-pattern distribution" more literally than was
> >intended by the author, apparently. Thanks. Congratulations on your
> >excellent long term memory, by the way! :)
>
> Well, the professor made the memorable point that most geniuses are men (as any
> man will be quick to point out) and so are most village idiots (as any woman
> will be quick to point out).
Thanks for the correction -- i am the culprit who introduced the
confusion through being sloppy when i wrote that. No excuse.
John Varela
In <32162E...@sonic.net>, catherine yronwode <yron...@sonic.net> writes:
>John Varela wrote:
>> I saw news reports about intelligence being inherited only from the
>> mother. It caused me to wonder how this interacts with the current
>> controversy over whether intelligence can be measured with a single
>> number, such as IQ. If intelligence is found on only one or a few
>> genes, it would seem to support the single-number advocates.
>>
>> I saw no discussion of this question in the press reports, nor did I
>> see any description of how they defined the "intelligence" that is
>> only inherited on the X chromosome. If the definition of intelligence
>> is IQ, and IQ is inherited on only one gene, then to say that
>> "intelligence" is inherited from one gene looks like circular
>> reasoning to me.
>
>The news ran in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, etc. At no time
>did anyone (scientists or reporters) claim that there is ONE gene for
I said "one or a few" genes in the first paragraph but elided to "one" in
the second. I think my question is valid whether it's one or a half-dozen
genes.
>intelligence. At no time did anyone claim that this affects the
>inheritance of intelligence by WOMEN. One research team claims to have
Yes, they did, as do you yourself, below. The point was made that a
woman's intellegence would have components from both parents, so would
tend more towards average, whereas men would tend more toward extremes.
Another way of saying that is that both sexes would have the same mean
intelligence but men would have a higher standard deviation from the mean.
As I recall, the article explicitly stated that intelligence inherited
only on the X chromosome would explain the long-observed difference in
standard deviations.
>has identified several genes for intelligence and all are located on the
>X chromosome. Thus men would inherit intelligence from the mother only
>but women could inherit from the mother or father or both.
>This is the sort of information that drives some people into raging
>fury, so i will not defend the issue beyond stating that the research
>was published in a peer-reviewed journal and was thereafter accurately
>reported in the popular press. Accretions of misinformation (the
>reduction to "one gene", the idea that women inherit intelligence from
>their mother only) and arguments over whether IQ itesting is a
>reliable/unreliable measure of intelligence are none pf my business.
In any case you missed my point. How did they define the "intelligence"
that they say is inherited on only the X chromosome? Is it IQ? Is it
something else? They didn't say. My guess is they mean IQ.
sgf
In article <4v7im5$r...@argo.unm.edu>, Bryant <myc...@unm.edu> wrote:
>In article <4v76hs$4...@jaxnet.southeast.net>,
>Matt Beckwith <beck...@jaxnet.com> wrote:
>>
>>So the man who gives the woman the most pleasure (or allows her to feel
>>relaxed enough to give herself pleasure) is the one who will reproduce.
>>That's interesting. It means that, it's not just the handsome men who
>>are selected for; it's also the ones with the most sexual skill.
>>
>>This means that, as time goes by, men are going to be more and more
>>sexually skilled. (Assuming that there is a genetic component to sexual
>>skill.)
>
>other men, it's not surprising that they're more skilled than other men
>at any given age--they're more experienced.
>
>However, better looking guys (that is, at least in part, men with high
>developmental stability) do not induce more orgasms during foreplay,
>etc. They only boast a higher mate orgasm rate during copulation!
The research suggests that higher conception rates occur when the woman
climaxes *after* the man does -- before doesn't do anything. So sexually
successful (in the reproductive fitness sense) are the ones who, as it
were, don't fall asleep immediately afterward.
Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters
*}> This means that, as time goes by, men are going to be more and more
*}> sexually skilled. (Assuming that there is a genetic component to sexual
*}> skill.)
*}You know what assuming does, dontcha? This might have been true had
*}non-standard gentic material deployment been developed in the way of
*}reproduction, invitro, etc. Now nearly everyone and their lesbian sister
*}can have kids.
I know there's no point bothering with those of limited mental
capabilities who are swayed by socio-biological arguments... but does it
seem to anyone that maybe if there really were this evolutionary
pressure for men to get more sexually skillful that it might have
already happened during 3 million years of hominoid evolution, and not
only have started in 1995 with a pop-science report on cervixes
distending with orgasm... or even in 1979 with in vitro human
fertilization?
Sorry... that's as good as men will get :-).
Yours, Lulu...
Charles Arthur
> Matt Beckwith wrote:
>
> > The X chromosomes of a daughter come from both parents.
>
> Yes, but the (hypotehtical) intelligence genes that are *expressed* may
> come from one parent or the other or both (or so the current theory
> goes). Remember -- multiple alleles, cross-over, dominance versus
> recessiveness, all that stuff.
And yada yada yada.
Could I throw a small-sized spoke into these tremendously excited wheels?
Someone mused a while back (I paraphrase) "Hmm, intelligence on the X
chromosome, I wonder what evolutionary advantage that confers?"
Which triggered off all this marrying-in marrying-out stuff. However, I
have to say that from where I sit, this is all getting the cart before the
horse. If we assume that intelligence is X-linked (not definitely true,
but fun to use for a hypothesis) then we have to ask: what would the
evolutionary outcome be? How would this affect the species?
It might be that groups which are patriarchal and matrilinear benefit. But
their social structure doesn't impose the genetic position of
intelligence-influencing genes. It's the other way round. I think some
people have been confusing cause and effect a little. Just wanted to be
sure people have their genes on the right way round, if that's OK.
Charles "RNA causes R'n'R" Arthur
--
UK climbing: http://www.eclimb.com/ukclimb/
-----------------------------------------------------
Neutrons for old!
William A Wenrich
The last time I heard an argument on this subject it was a criticism of
Nixen’s Kizinti.
mb
In article <DwJn8...@ranger.daytonoh.ncr.com>, Mike Czaplinski
<mike.cz...@washingtondc.ncr.com> wrote:
> catherine yronwode <yron...@sonic.net> wrote:
> >
> [snip]
> Why did I read this and suddenly hear the Firesign Theatre line:
>
> "Did you remember to carry da bum?"
>
> From (I think) "Don't Crush That Dwarf! Hand Me The Pliers!"
>
> Mike "Half Irish/Half Polish, ALL CATHOLIC" Czaplinski
> mike.cz...@washingtondc.ncr.com
Sorry I didn't catch the original post.
Catherine, why bother discussing fractions of "Jewishness"? As this is
clearly a Jewish category (to my knowledge Jewishness is not a trait
biologists trace), how can one be 1/2 Jewish when according to Jewish law
it's all or nothing. One cannot be half genetically Jewish.
Culture is not genetic (nitpickers need not fry me on this, just roll with it).
mb
--
If it doesn't offend - it's not funny
Mike Czaplinski
Why did I read this and suddenly hear the Firesign Theatre line:
Matt Beckwith
sfo...@odin.cair.du.edu (sgf) wrote:
>In article <4v7im5$r...@argo.unm.edu>, Bryant <myc...@unm.edu> wrote:
>>In article <4v76hs$4...@jaxnet.southeast.net>,
>>Matt Beckwith <beck...@jaxnet.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>So the man who gives the woman the most pleasure (or allows her to feel
>>>relaxed enough to give herself pleasure) is the one who will reproduce.
>>>That's interesting. It means that, it's not just the handsome men who
>>>are selected for; it's also the ones with the most sexual skill.
>>>
>>
>>Since more attractive men begin sexual activity earlier in life than
>>other men, it's not surprising that they're more skilled than other men
>>at any given age--they're more experienced.
>>
>>However, better looking guys (that is, at least in part, men with high
>>developmental stability) do not induce more orgasms during foreplay,
>>etc. They only boast a higher mate orgasm rate during copulation!
>
>The research suggests that higher conception rates occur when the woman
>climaxes *after* the man does -- before doesn't do anything. So sexually
>successful (in the reproductive fitness sense) are the ones who, as it
>were, don't fall asleep immediately afterward.
Somehow this doesn't sound right to me. Higher conception rates may
occur, all other things being equal, when the woman climaxes second. But
if the man climaxes first, the woman isn't likely to climax period.
(This isn't true for me, but I'm 43 years old. When I was younger, it
certainly was true.) So we might say that the greatest reproductive
success occurs when the woman is not motivated by orgasm, but by pleasing
her man; and when the man is not motivated by pleasing his woman, but
simply by having an orgasm as quickly as possible.
But all things are not equal. And reproductive success is simply
reproducing. The genes of those men who impregnate survive, the genes of
those men who don't, don't. The genes of those women who are impregnated
survive, the genes of those women who aren't, don't.
One interesting thing about this thread (aside from the fact that it's
gotten off-topic) is that, in spite of the fact that with modern medicine
we have somewhat usurped the process of natural selection, where sexual
activity is concerned natural selection is alive and well. After all,
the genes of anyone who does not reproduce are being de-selected.
So what qualities in a man determine whether he will impregnate a woman?
Attractiveness, success (which is attractive to women), lack of
discrimination in his sexual partners, unfaithfulness (since then he will
impregnate more women), and sexual skill (after all, if he's a dud, he'll
have less sex).
Qualities in a woman include attractiveness, submissiveness (attractive
to men's fragile egos), lack of discrimination in sexual partners,
unfaithfulness, and sexual skill. (Unfaithfulness used to be de-selected
because a woman's offspring were less likely to survive without a father;
but these days the state takes responsibility for fatherless children.)
catherine yronwode
> >
> > > The X chromosomes of a daughter come from both parents.
> >
> > Yes, but the (hypotehtical) intelligence genes that are *expressed* may
> > come from one parent or the other or both (or so the current theory
> > goes). Remember -- multiple alleles, cross-over, dominance versus
> > recessiveness, all that stuff.
>
>
> Could I throw a small-sized spoke into these tremendously excited wheels?
> Someone mused a while back (I paraphrase) "Hmm, intelligence on the X
> chromosome, I wonder what evolutionary advantage that confers?"
>
> Which triggered off all this marrying-in marrying-out stuff. However, I
> have to say that from where I sit, this is all getting the cart before the
> horse. If we assume that intelligence is X-linked (not definitely true,
> but fun to use for a hypothesis) then we have to ask: what would the
> evolutionary outcome be? How would this affect the species?
>
> It might be that groups which are patriarchal and matrilinear benefit. But
> their social structure doesn't impose the genetic position of
> intelligence-influencing genes. It's the other way round. I think some
> people have been confusing cause and effect a little. Just wanted to be
> sure people have their genes on the right way round, if that's OK.
Right. right, of course. We were not hypothesising a breeding program to
*enhance* intelligence -- we were merely playing around with the idea
that, given a society that rewards intelligence by making rulers of
smart folks, what breeding program -- uh, i mean *social system* --
would best serve the smart ruler's desire to pass along his or her own
intelligence genes? The answer "patriarchal-matrilineal" filled the
bill.
Bryant
In article <4viteb$o...@jaxnet.southeast.net>,
Matt Beckwith <beck...@jaxnet.com> wrote:
>>
>>The research suggests that higher conception rates occur when the woman
>>climaxes *after* the man does -- before doesn't do anything.
Only if it's more than a few minutes before. Any closer than that, and up
to 45 minutes afterward, and you get significantly increased sperm
retention resulting from the female's orgasm. This is interesting: It
suggests a selective advantage (at least in permiscuous mating systems)
for male humans who keep their erection after ejaculation.
>
>Somehow this doesn't sound right to me. Higher conception rates may
>occur, all other things being equal, when the woman climaxes second. But
>if the man climaxes first, the woman isn't likely to climax period.
>Qualities in a woman include attractiveness, submissiveness (attractive
>to men's fragile egos),
I think you might be going too far down the line on the "submissiveness"
one. I suspect that what that really boils down to is evidence of sexual
fidelity. I don't personally have a lot of respect for submissive women,
and wouldn't want one as a mate. But it may have display value.
>unfaithfulness, and sexual skill. (Unfaithfulness used to be de-selected
>because a woman's offspring were less likely to survive without a father;
Cuckoldry seems to have been a rather regular part of the human
experience, though. Getting a fella with resources to raise the offspring
you conceived with a fella with better genes might be a typical female
reproductive strategy. It's interesting that among college students, the
guys who inspire orgasm in women the most invest the least in their
relationships--consistent with female orgasm's "good genes" securing role.
>Matt Beckwith
>http://users.southeast.net/~beckwith/
Bryant
Matt Beckwith
catherine yronwode <yron...@sonic.net> wrote:
>Charles Arthur wrote:
>>
>> In article <3218FB...@sonic.net>, yron...@sonic.net wrote:
>>
>> >
>> > > The X chromosomes of a daughter come from both parents.
>> >
>> > Yes, but the (hypotehtical) intelligence genes that are *expressed* >> > may
Did I say they didn't?
>>
>> And yada yada yada.
>>
>> Could I throw a small-sized spoke into these tremendously excited >> wheels?
You sound rather superior.
>> Someone mused a while back (I paraphrase) "Hmm, intelligence on the X
>> chromosome, I wonder what evolutionary advantage that confers?"
>>
>> Which triggered off all this marrying-in marrying-out stuff. However, >> I
>> have to say that from where I sit, this is all getting the cart before >> the
>> horse. If we assume that intelligence is X-linked (not definitely >> true,
>> but fun to use for a hypothesis) then we have to ask: what would the
>> evolutionary outcome be? How would this affect the species?
>>
>> It might be that groups which are patriarchal and matrilinear benefit. >> But
>> their social structure doesn't impose the genetic position of
>> intelligence-influencing genes. It's the other way round. I think some
>> people have been confusing cause and effect a little. Just wanted to >> be
>> sure people have their genes on the right way round, if that's OK.
I haven't noticed anyone having such a confusion.
>Right. right, of course. We were not hypothesising a breeding program to
>*enhance* intelligence -- we were merely playing around with the idea
>that, given a society that rewards intelligence by making rulers of
>smart folks, what breeding program -- uh, i mean *social system* --
>would best serve the smart ruler's desire to pass along his or her own
>intelligence genes? The answer "patriarchal-matrilineal" filled the
>bill.
Exactly.
Matt Beckwith
myc...@unm.edu (Bryant) wrote:
>Cuckoldry seems to have been a rather regular part of the human
>experience, though. Getting a fella with resources to raise the >offspring
>you conceived with a fella with better genes might be a typical female
>reproductive strategy. It's interesting that among college students, the
>guys who inspire orgasm in women the most invest the least in their
>relationships--consistent with female orgasm's "good genes" securing >role.
What's so good about the genes of a man who has nothing to invest in a
relationship?
Jef Bateman
Forgive if this was already addressed, but to what extent are people
accepting this research in the first place? I have not read any
informed, critical evaluations of the issue itself.
Even if the research were well-done, what they are asking us to
believe is rather implausible. The way I see it, we would have to accept
the following assertions:
1. Intelligence is a single discrete quantity.
2. This quantity can be measured.
3. This quantity is genetically based.
4. The amount of genetic material needed to "code" this quantity
is amazingly small, given the complexity of what we conventionally
term "intelligence."
Anyway, I hope that somebody out there with more knowledge in
this particular area than I have can post a thorough evaluation of the
entire study.
Followups will be posted to "sci.skeptic."
Jeffrey A. Bateman ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Arizona State University \ Perfection of means and \
Religious Studies \ confusion of ends seem \
Graduate Student \ to characterize our age. \
e-mail jef...@asu.edu \ --Albert Einstein\
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bryant
In article <4vlqoe$i...@jaxnet.southeast.net>,
Matt Beckwith <beck...@jaxnet.com> wrote:
>myc...@unm.edu (Bryant) wrote:
>
>>Cuckoldry seems to have been a rather regular part of the human
>>experience, though. Getting a fella with resources to raise the >offspring
>What's so good about the genes of a man who has nothing to invest in a
>relationship?
Excellent question. I'm not sure. It appears that the guys who inspire
female orgasm, because they display high degrees of developmental
stability, were better able than other fellows to overcome parasitic,
nutritional, and other stresses during development. The hypothesis is
that there is a heritable component to this stress resistance, making
female orgasm part of a "good genes" strategy: secure investment from one
guy, secure sperm from another.
Since parasitic resistance is never a forever-constant (because parasites
evolve), what genes afford developmental stability changes through
time.
sgf
In article <4viteb$o...@jaxnet.southeast.net>,
Matt Beckwith <beck...@jaxnet.com> wrote:
>sfo...@odin.cair.du.edu (sgf) wrote:
>>In article <4v7im5$r...@argo.unm.edu>, Bryant <myc...@unm.edu> wrote:
[delete random speculations by several people about sexual skill and
mate selection and reproductive fitness...]
>>>However, better looking guys (that is, at least in part, men with high
>>>developmental stability) do not induce more orgasms during foreplay,
>>>etc. They only boast a higher mate orgasm rate during copulation!
>>
>>The research suggests that higher conception rates occur when the woman
>>climaxes *after* the man does -- before doesn't do anything. So sexually
>>successful (in the reproductive fitness sense) are the ones who, as it
>>were, don't fall asleep immediately afterward.
>
>Somehow this doesn't sound right to me. Higher conception rates may
>occur, all other things being equal, when the woman climaxes second. But
>if the man climaxes first, the woman isn't likely to climax period.
>(This isn't true for me, but I'm 43 years old. When I was younger, it
>certainly was true.) So we might say that the greatest reproductive
>success occurs when the woman is not motivated by orgasm, but by pleasing
>her man; and when the man is not motivated by pleasing his woman, but
>simply by having an orgasm as quickly as possible.
Well, is WAS meant as a joke... But besides that, you yourself seem to
illustrate the current theory that men have developed two strategies for
reproductive success. One is the "scattershot" method in which the
object is to impregnate as many women as possible, without sticking
around to take care of any possible offspring. Yes, many might die due
to lack of adequate care from two parents, but some will survive. This
tends to be seen in younger men (although others display it over a while
lifetime). The other strategy is to invest in care of the mother and
child, to give that child a very good chance to grow up. You might end
up with fewer kids, but they have better chances of surviving to
reproductive age. Giving each other physical pleasure *seems* to be one of
the ways that promotes bonding between couples (I know, there's *lots* of
other ways too, but we're just talking sexual here), which ensures that
both parents stick together and raise that child, so a man who pays
attention to his partner has a better chance of being able to keep his
partner with him, rather than her running back to her family (who also
have a genetic interest in that child growing up, don't forget).
And a man who is known for giving his partners pleasure has a better
chance of getting a partner in the first place, even if it's only for one
night (more on the unfaithfulness thing in a moment). Women *tend* to
look for long-term partners on the basis of resources and
sticking-around, but short-term partners are chosen for a variety of
reasons, including pleasure.
>But all things are not equal. And reproductive success is simply
>reproducing. The genes of those men who impregnate survive, the genes of
>those men who don't, don't. The genes of those women who are impregnated
>survive, the genes of those women who aren't, don't.
Nonono! The genes of those who impregnate/are impregnated, *and* who
successfully raise those children to reproductive age (or have the kids
raised for them) are the ones who survive. Doesn't matter how many times
you impregnate a woman, if she (or anybody else in her social group) uses
abortifacents or passive or active infanticide to ensure that child does
not survive. In times of stress, you have an investment in sticking
around and making sure that kid grows up, otherwise your genes die out.
Child care is a very important human strategy, and reproductive success
is not just *you* reproducing, it means how many offspring survive to
*their* reproductive age.
>One interesting thing about this thread (aside from the fact that it's
>gotten off-topic) is that, in spite of the fact that with modern medicine
>we have somewhat usurped the process of natural selection, where sexual
>activity is concerned natural selection is alive and well. After all,
>the genes of anyone who does not reproduce are being de-selected.
Honestly, how many people do you think use those methods? Just a few
poeple (compared to six billion) in just a few modern countries. Somehow
I don't think we're going to be overrun by a horde of
not-quite-fit-enough-due-to-modern-child-producing-methods babies. And
*most* of those procedures don't work either, we only hear in the media
about the successful ones. Not to mention the cost -- those kid who *do*
get born due to these methods are usually at an economic advatage to
start with, but only a select few (again, compared to six billion) can
eve afford the procedure to start with.
>So what qualities in a man determine whether he will impregnate a woman?
> Attractiveness, success (which is attractive to women), lack of
>discrimination in his sexual partners, unfaithfulness (since then he will
>impregnate more women), and sexual skill (after all, if he's a dud, he'll
>have less sex).
And how many of those qualities ensure his kid will be raised?
Attractiveness, lack of discrimination, unfaithfulness all work best when
he can trick someone else into raising his kid. Success ensures he'll
have the resouces necessary, which attracts women whether or not he
sticks around afterward, but sticking around makes sure the woman doesn't
abandond the kid somewhere or "forget" to feed it (women do a *lot* of
active selection in this sort of thing. We don't all raise whatever kid
happens to pop out, you know. [smiley deleted due to crosspost to a.f.u])
>Qualities in a woman include attractiveness, submissiveness (attractive
>to men's fragile egos), lack of discrimination in sexual partners,
>unfaithfulness, and sexual skill. (Unfaithfulness used to be de-selected
>because a woman's offspring were less likely to survive without a father;
>but these days the state takes responsibility for fatherless children.)
The female strategy seems to be finding a partner with the resources to
help her raise the child. Doesn't matter how attractive or how little
discrimination she has if the kid starves to death because she can't
gather enough food.
And as for unfaithfulness? The sheer amount of physical and cultural
stuff we've developed to ensure that marital infidelity does not cause
conception (see elsewhere in thread) would argue that unfaithfulness is
*both* partners is a major force to be reckoned with. Women (I'm
thinking of specifically Nisa from ?Marjorie Shostak?'s book, who
explains *exactly* why she has a lover in every camp she visits, like
most of her fellow !Kung women) sneak around just as much as men - and
except for the few men who rape their partners, for every man being
unfaithful with a married woman, there is a willing woman being
unfaithful to her husband.
Women play active roles in passing genes on to the next generation -- we
don't just sit around and wait to be impregnated, then passively raise
the kid hoping someone will stick around long enough to help us. Women
choose who they will be impregnated by (unless raped, but if the orgasm
theory is true, there is a small amount of control there too -- not
feeling sexy and avoiding partner sex and masturbation will lessen the
chance of the rapist's sperm reaching the egg), they actively choose
which kids will survive to adulthood (hunter/gatherer women deliberately
space their kids using long-term nursing and infanticide to ensure they
can give enough resources to the kids they choose to keep), and they
actively seek out partners they like.
Men are just as active. They try to impregnante as many women as
possible, they also invest time and paternal care in one woman and her
children, they actively kill kids either because there's not enough
resources to give them or because those kids don't carry their genes
(just chance that stepchildren in the US are more likely to be killed by
parental [often paternal] abuse than are "natural" kids? I think not.
[cite from, I beleive, _Discover's_ latest issue; the article on
infanticide. My copy disappeard in my recent move, so I can't be totally
sure]).
The name of the game is *not* just to impregnate or be impregnated, and
there are a *lot* of factors that go into it. Human sexuality and
reproductive behavior is one of the most complicated systems existing in
animals, and is impossible to reduce very far.
--Stephanie "including inter-name comment in another nod to a.f.u." Folse
Matt Beckwith
myc...@unm.edu (Bryant) wrote:
>Matt Beckwith <beck...@jaxnet.com> wrote:
>>myc...@unm.edu (Bryant) wrote:
>>>Cuckoldry seems to have been a rather regular part of the human
>>>experience, though. Getting a fella with resources to raise the >offspring
>>What's so good about the genes of a man who has nothing to invest in a
>>relationship?
>Excellent question. I'm not sure. It appears that the guys who inspire
>female orgasm, because they display high degrees of developmental
>stability, were better able than other fellows to overcome parasitic,
>nutritional, and other stresses during development. The hypothesis is
>that there is a heritable component to this stress resistance, making
>female orgasm part of a "good genes" strategy: secure investment from >one
>guy, secure sperm from another.
Wow, somebody actually answered a post of mine with something other than
hostility. I think this is going to be a good day!
So it isn't that cuckolds are superior by virtue of being cuckolds, but
that women sleep with men who are attractive to them, and the attractive
men become cuckolds because so many women want them.
So how would we get an attractive, faithful man? The cuckold would have
to finally want more from a relationship, and realize that you can't get
that without commitment.
Bryant
In article <4vs11u$j...@jaxnet.southeast.net>,
Matt Beckwith <beck...@jaxnet.com> wrote:
>
>So it isn't that cuckolds are superior by virtue of being cuckolds, but
>that women sleep with men who are attractive to them, and the attractive
>men become cuckolds because so many women want them.
Think so. Of course, they could be wearing two hats--having secured a
mate, they're seeking sex on the side, like males in all those bird
species we once thought were monogamous.
>So how would we get an attractive, faithful man? The cuckold would have
>to finally want more from a relationship, and realize that you can't get
>that without commitment.
A bitch, ain't it? Well, orgasm ain't necessary to conceive--it just
improves a fellow's odds when many guys' sperm are co-mingling in a gal.
Also, the attractive guys only inspire more *copulatory* orgasms. No
evidence that committed fellows cause fewer female orgasms during
foreplay and posplay than the symmetrical guys. That should seem hopeful
to women.
I think this stuff speaks to the age-old question women ask themselves
about why they're attracted so often to "assholes." The most attractive
guys are least willing to give what most women seem to want--commitment.
Bryant
Robert Warinner
Bryant (myc...@unm.edu) wrote:
: Think so. Of course, they could be wearing two hats--having secured a
: species we once thought were monogamous.
There sure are a lot of rumors about the snopes-Hamel marriage these days.
Andrew "no-fault divorce" Warinner
wari...@xnet.com
wari...@ttd.teradyne.com
http://www.xnet.com/~warinner
Visit the Sphinx's Nose page: http://www.xnet.com/~warinner/sphinx.html
Judy Johnson
Matt Beckwith <beck...@jaxnet.com> wrote:
[quite a bit snipped to get to:]
>Wow, somebody actually answered a post of mine with something other than
>hostility. I think this is going to be a good day!
>So it isn't that cuckolds are superior by virtue of being cuckolds, but
>that women sleep with men who are attractive to them, and the attractive
>men become cuckolds because so many women want them.
Well, I hope this isn't taken as being hostile, but I'd like to
politely point out that you've got your cuckold on the wrong foot.
From my American Heritage dictionary:
[begin quote]
cuckold (kùk´eld, k¢k´-) noun; A man married to an unfaithful wife.
verb, transitive; cuckolded, cuckolding, cuckolds; To make a cuckold
of.
[Middle English cokewald, from Anglo-Norman *cucuald, from cucu, the
cuckoo, from Vulgar Latin *cuccúlus, from Latin cucúlus.]
Word History: In our era of more relaxed sexual mores, the allusion to
the cuckoo on which the word cuckold is based may be little
appreciated. The female of some Old World cuckoos lays its eggs in the
nests of other birds, leaving them to be cared for by the resident
nesters. This parasitic tendency has given the female bird a
figurative reputation for unfaithfulness as well. Hence in Old French
we find the word cucuault, composed of cocu, "cuckoo, cuckold," and
the pejorative suffix -ald and used to designate a husband whose wife
has wandered afield like the female cuckoo. An earlier assumed form of
the Old French word was borrowed into Middle English by way of
Anglo-Norman. Middle English cokewold, the ancestor of Modern English
cuckold, is first recorded in a work written around 1250.
[end quote]
So if the attractive man is not married to the woman, he is not the
cuckold, because that's in the husband's job description.
Judy "at last, my semester of college Shakespear comes in handy"
Johnson
Matt Beckwith
myc...@unm.edu (Bryant) wrote:
>In article <4vs11u$j...@jaxnet.southeast.net>,
>Matt Beckwith <beck...@jaxnet.com> wrote:
>>
>>that women sleep with men who are attractive to them, and the >>attractive
>>men become cuckolds because so many women want them.
>
>mate, they're seeking sex on the side, like males in all those bird
>species we once thought were monogamous.
Women tend to be pragmatic, men idealistic. (Perhaps because women have
had to do all the work, leaving men free to play.) Like the way some
women gain weight once they're married, no longer having the motivation
to stay thin.
>>So how would we get an attractive, faithful man? The cuckold would >>have
>>to finally want more from a relationship, and realize that you can't >>get
>>that without commitment.
>
>A bitch, ain't it?
In what way? The losers here are women looking for faithful, sexy men to
marry.
On the other hand, women bring it upon themselves by being willing to
have sex with men who are incapable of commitment.
The women who do so are probably, in a certain way, on the same level as
the cuckolds. A woman who understands the need for commitment would not
be so indiscriminate with her affections. The woman who marries a man
for security and then has sex with another for the thrill only
understands the need for material security.
>Well, orgasm ain't necessary to conceive--it just
>improves a fellow's odds when many guys' sperm are co-mingling in a gal.
What a repulsive thought. But since sperm can live up to five days
inside the female reproductive tract, you're probably not being
inaccurate.
>Also, the attractive guys only inspire more *copulatory* orgasms. No
>evidence that committed fellows cause fewer female orgasms during
>foreplay and posplay than the symmetrical guys. That should seem >hopeful
>to women.
Now wait just a minute here. You're making so many assumptions that I,
personally, disagree with.
Orgasms are not caused by the man. If this were the case, women would be
machines with buttons, and the skilled man would know which buttons to
push. When I was an adolescent I had such a view of women, but I no
longer think it's accurate. People are much more complex than that, and
each individual is responsible for her own experiences.
Also, there are attractive, committed, faithful men. You make it sound
like women have a choice between sexy cuckolds and dull family men.
>I think this stuff speaks to the age-old question women ask themselves
>about why they're attracted so often to "assholes." The most attractive
>guys are least willing to give what most women seem to want--commitment.
Yes, but there are men who have both qualities. And the women have
brought it upon themselves by giving it up to guys without commitment.
Any woman who does so is no better a person than the cuckold with whom
she's enjoying the cheap thrill. We might say to women who say "Men are
jerks": "Yes, but women are jerkettes."
The answer, it seems to me, is for each woman to decide what she wants.
If she wants both wild and crazy sex and faithfulness, then she should
make sure that the man she drops her drawers for has those same ideals.
To the woman who says she's searched and searched without finding such a
man, I would ask whether she's ever had sex with a man who she knew in
advance was incapable of commitment.
sgf
In article <4vlqoe$i...@jaxnet.southeast.net>,
Matt Beckwith <beck...@jaxnet.com> wrote:
>myc...@unm.edu (Bryant) wrote:
>
>>Cuckoldry seems to have been a rather regular part of the human
>>experience, though. Getting a fella with resources to raise the >offspring
>>reproductive strategy. It's interesting that among college students, the
>>guys who inspire orgasm in women the most invest the least in their
>>relationships--consistent with female orgasm's "good genes" securing >role.
>
>relationship?
Increased resistance to disease, for one possibility. It would seem to
be slightly in the female's favor to get a variety of different genes for
her kids so that *her* genes would have the maximum possible chance to be
passed on successfully. Somehow I don't think that *all* genetic
benefits are correlated with resource-gathering and -holding abilities,
although some might be (i.e., the cleverness to get and keep said
resources).
--Stephanie
Eugenia Horne
In article <4vukuo$8...@jaxnet.southeast.net>,
Matt Beckwith <beck...@jaxnet.com> wrote:
[WHACK....]
For those interested in the source for the beginning of the
thread about the x-chromosome linked genes for intelligence,
that research apparently appeared in an article in "The Lancet"
written by Gillian Turner.
I can't believe a fairly innocent story went this
bezonkers...oh, yes, I can, it's usenet.
[Follow-ups? What follow-ups?]
--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
"We have found what others seek in vain, during all their lives:
the soul of another that is able to understand one, that will
suffer with one, be glad with one..." - Prince Albert (1839)
Bryant
Note: Matt & Bryant both misused "cuckold" in this thread--we meant to refer
to the guy doing the cuckolding (=cuckolder).
In article <4vukuo$8...@jaxnet.southeast.net>,
Matt Beckwith <beck...@jaxnet.com> wrote:
>>>So it isn't that cuckolds are superior by virtue of being cuckolds, but
>>>that women sleep with men who are attractive to them, and the >>attractive
>>>men become cuckolds because so many women want them.
>>[bryant replied:]
>>Think so. Of course, they could be wearing two hats--having secured a
>>mate, they're seeking sex on the side, like males in all those bird
>>species we once thought were monogamous.
>
>Women tend to be pragmatic, men idealistic. (Perhaps because women have
>had to do all the work, leaving men free to play.) Like the way some
>women gain weight once they're married, no longer having the motivation
>to stay thin.
Maybe a tad over-generalized; we're all idealistic as it suits our
needs, at least to some extent. Display is incredibly important in
social species. We're designed, I suspect, to show as many potential
allies as possible just what splendid reciprocators and altruists we are,
just as women are designed, I suspect, to show potential mates was
splendidly fertile mates they would make.
But what happens when we are manipulated and deceived by folks who use
our desire to display/be liked against us? We grow "cynical" and
bitter. What happens to the women who are rejected despite their
investments in pleasingly deceptive make-up? They become contemptuous of
men or the "Beauty Myth/Ethic."
Ideals are not, IMO, arrived at rationally and objectively.
>>>So how would we get an attractive, faithful man? The cuckold would >>have
>>>to finally want more from a relationship, and realize that you can't >>get
>>>that without commitment.
>>
>>A bitch, ain't it?
>
>In what way? The losers here are women looking for faithful, sexy men to
>marry.
And that's a bitch for the nice women who cannot secure such mates and the
nice guys who are not sexy or resource-holding.
>On the other hand, women bring it upon themselves by being willing to
>have sex with men who are incapable of commitment.
There's a whole lot of deception on the guy's side, often. Cues of
commitment, etc... until she copulates.
>>Well, orgasm ain't necessary to conceive--it just
>>improves a fellow's odds when many guys' sperm are co-mingling in a gal.
>
>What a repulsive thought. But since sperm can live up to five days
>inside the female reproductive tract, you're probably not being
>inaccurate.
Sorry, I forget to word things less crudely, sometimes. Baker & Bellis
just wrote a book you may be interested in: Sperm Competition, 1995.
Oxford published it, I think.
>>Also, the attractive guys only inspire more *copulatory* orgasms. No
>>evidence that committed fellows cause fewer female orgasms during
>>foreplay and posplay than the symmetrical guys. That should seem >hopeful
>>to women.
>
>Now wait just a minute here. You're making so many assumptions that I,
>personally, disagree with.
>
>Orgasms are not caused by the man.
Well, they are patterned in a way that suggests (strongly!) that the man
is involved. It may not be what the guy does, exactly, but fellows with
greater developmental stability (disease resistance, etc.) (measured as
fluctuating asymmetry) inspire significantly more copulatory orgasms in
their female mates than less symmetrical guys. That, and the
sperm-retaining characteristics of female orgasm, suggests
that female orgasm is indeed a facultative sperm-retention mechanism.
>Also, there are attractive, committed, faithful men. You make it sound
>like women have a choice between sexy cuckolds and dull family men.
I know, that was an overgeneralization. But women who mess around on
their faithful mates, according to Baker and Bellis' studies, orgasm more
frequently with their illicit lovers than their husbands. So they appear
to be securing sperm from outside their marriages.
>>I think this stuff speaks to the age-old question women ask themselves
>>about why they're attracted so often to "assholes." The most attractive
>>guys are least willing to give what most women seem to want--commitment.
>
>Yes, but there are men who have both qualities.
There are indeed. But they're rare. In their couples study, here at UNM,
Thornhill & Gangestad found that the guys inspiring all those orgasms in
their mates were investing the least in their "relationships" and were
cheating the most on their primary partners. The guys who were most
investing materially were somehow less sexually satisfying to their mates.
Compensation, maybe? Dunno.
>The answer, it seems to me, is for each woman to decide what she wants.
>If she wants both wild and crazy sex and faithfulness, then she should
>make sure that the man she drops her drawers for has those same ideals.
Yep--that seems applicable to all of us, of both sexes.
>To the woman who says she's searched and searched without finding such a
>man, I would ask whether she's ever had sex with a man who she knew in
>advance was incapable of commitment.
Or ask if she's more often dated shallow, selfish but good looking guys, or
thoughtful, kind, but average or unattractive men.
Bryant
Hugh Gibbons
Jef Bateman wrote:
>
> Forgive if this was already addressed, but to what extent are people
> accepting this research in the first place? I have not read any
> informed, critical evaluations of the issue itself.
> Even if the research were well-done, what they are asking us to
> believe is rather implausible. The way I see it, we would have to accept
> the following assertions:
> 1. Intelligence is a single discrete quantity.
> 2. This quantity can be measured.
> 3. This quantity is genetically based.
> 4. The amount of genetic material needed to "code" this quantity
There is, as you point out, not a clear picture of the evidence.
All our measures of intelligence are clouded by such factors as
inaccurate gauges, biases, etc. But it's fair to argue that
such indicators as student achievement scores, IQ tests etc.
are to some degree affected by native intelligence,
among many other factors. If you take at face value that
the scores are to some degree reflective of intelligence
(whatever that is) you have a clear difference that may
be explained by some intelligence-affecting factors could
be on the X-chromosome. I hope that satisfies your first two
objections.
Obviously genes affect intelligence. We're not trying to show
absolute causation, just an influence. Certain genes cause
severe defecits in intelligence. Some minimum collection of
"correct" genes must be necessary to have a normally working
human brain. Any flaw in the genes is likely to show up as
a mental disability (though perhaps small). Certain novel
genes may cause a few people to have extraordinary abilities.
As for #4, the X chromosome is quite large, and contains a
a lot of genes. It would be a great surprise if some of
them did not affect brain development or function.
Hugh Gibbons
Hugh Gibbons
Matt Beckwith wrote:
> Wow, somebody actually answered a post of mine with something other than
> hostility. I think this is going to be a good day!
>
> that women sleep with men who are attractive to them, and the attractive
> men become cuckolds because so many women want them.
>
> to finally want more from a relationship, and realize that you can't get
> that without commitment.
>
> http://users.southeast.net/~beckwith/
I don't like this explanation because it relies on fairly dubious
assumptions.
(That attractive men have genes that make them able to survive better.)
The more conventional and more likely explanation is that females have
orgasm to attract them to the act of sex, which results in procreation.
Since women are intelligent, men would have a hard time persuading them
to engage in sex, knowing the dangers of pregnancy, unless the women
got immediate benefit.
The cuckold takes advantage where he finds it by persuading a female to
mate with him and possibly have his children. This does not interfere
much with his main chance of reproducing, which is with his regular
mate.
His childrearing efforts are spent on kids that are probably his, and he
gets free bonus kids on the side. The female's advantage in the scheme
is that she gets children of the cuckold, whose male offspring
may inherit the very traits that attracted her, increasing their own
reproductive odds.
Hugh Gibbons
Matt Beckwith
sfo...@odin.cair.du.edu (sgf) wrote:
>>...reproductive success is simply
>>reproducing. The genes of those men who impregnate survive, the genes >>of
>>those men who don't, don't. The genes of those women who are >>impregnated
>>survive, the genes of those women who aren't, don't.
>Nonono! The genes of those who impregnate/are impregnated, *and* who
>successfully raise those children to reproductive age (or have the kids
>raised for them) are the ones who survive.
Nonono backatcha. I started out by saying that we no longer have to
worry about survival of our offspring. The state makes sure everyone
survives, these days. Sure, a few don't make it, but they are quite
rare. In the U.S., single-parent children are nearly as likely to
survive as double-parent children, and poor children are nearly as likely
to survive as rich ones. These liberal methods indirectly promote
promiscuity--that's one of the points I was making.
>Child care is a very important human strategy...
Not so much any more.
>>One interesting thing about this thread (aside from the fact that it's
>>gotten off-topic) is that, in spite of the fact that with modern >>medicine
>>we have somewhat usurped the process of natural selection, where sexual
>>activity is concerned natural selection is alive and well. After all,
>>the genes of anyone who does not reproduce are being de-selected.
>Honestly, how many people do you think use those methods?
What methods? To do what? What are you talking about?
>Just a few
>poeple (compared to six billion) in just a few modern countries. >Somehow
>I don't think we're going to be overrun by a horde of
>not-quite-fit-enough-due-to-modern-child-producing-methods babies. And
>*most* of those procedures don't work either, we only hear in the media
>about the successful ones.
What in the world are you talking about?
>Not to mention the cost -- those kid who *do*
>get born due to these methods are usually at an economic advatage to
>start with, but only a select few (again, compared to six billion) can
>eve afford the procedure to start with.
I don't know what you thought I said, but I'm pretty sure it's not what I
said.
>>So what qualities in a man determine whether he will impregnate a >>woman?
>> Attractiveness, success (which is attractive to women), lack of
>>discrimination in his sexual partners, unfaithfulness (since then he >>will
>>impregnate more women), and sexual skill (after all, if he's a dud, >>he'll
>>have less sex).
>And how many of those qualities ensure his kid will be raised?
Doesn't matter these days.
>sticking around makes sure the woman doesn't
>abandond the kid somewhere or "forget" to feed it (women do a *lot* of
>active selection in this sort of thing. We don't all raise whatever kid
>happens to pop out, you know.
Really? I disagree. Women despicable enough to kill their children are
pretty rare in the U.S.
[smiley deleted due to crosspost to a.f.u])
You mean it's true, AFU has banned smileys from their posts? How
pusillanimous. :) :) :) :)
>>Qualities in a woman include attractiveness, submissiveness (attractive
>>to men's fragile egos), lack of discrimination in sexual partners,
>>unfaithfulness, and sexual skill. (Unfaithfulness used to be >>de-selected
>>because a woman's offspring were less likely to survive without a >>father;
>>but these days the state takes responsibility for fatherless children.)
>The female strategy seems to be finding a partner with the resources to
>help her raise the child. Doesn't matter how attractive or how little
>discrimination she has if the kid starves to death because she can't
>gather enough food.
This doesn't happen much any more in the U.S.A.
>And as for unfaithfulness? The sheer amount of physical and cultural
>stuff we've developed to ensure that marital infidelity does not cause
>conception (see elsewhere in thread) would argue that unfaithfulness is
>*both* partners is a major force to be reckoned with. Women (I'm
>thinking of specifically Nisa from ?Marjorie Shostak?'s book, who
>explains *exactly* why she has a lover in every camp she visits, like
>most of her fellow !Kung women) sneak around just as much as men - and
>except for the few men who rape their partners, for every man being
>unfaithful with a married woman, there is a willing woman being
>unfaithful to her husband.
You seem to be making the point that unfaithfulness is common. Okay, so
what? Or that women are as unfaithful as men. So what again.
>Women play active roles in passing genes on to the next generation -- we
>don't just sit around and wait to be impregnated, then passively raise
>the kid hoping someone will stick around long enough to help us. Women
>choose who they will be impregnated by (unless raped, but if the orgasm
>theory is true, there is a small amount of control there too -- not
>feeling sexy and avoiding partner sex and masturbation will lessen the
>chance of the rapist's sperm reaching the egg), they actively choose
>which kids will survive to adulthood (hunter/gatherer women deliberately
>space their kids using long-term nursing and infanticide to ensure they
>can give enough resources to the kids they choose to keep), and they
>actively seek out partners they like.
Did I say women were impotent?
>The name of the game is *not* just to impregnate or be impregnated, and
>there are a *lot* of factors that go into it. Human sexuality and
>reproductive behavior is one of the most complicated systems existing in
>animals, and is impossible to reduce very far.
Well, you haven't convinced me.
The genes of those who don't impregnate or get impregnated are being
de-selected. The vast majority of full-term pregnancies in the U.S.
result in children who live to reproductive age. So the qualities being
selected for are those which maximize the probability of impregnating or
getting impregnated. These qualities include promiscuity, low standards
of attractiveness, a strong sex drive, attractiveness, gregariousness,
and many others. Thus, we can expect a gradual increase, over the years,
in these qualities.
As a matter of fact, I have noticed during my lifetime that there has
been an increase in promiscuity, and an increase in the attractiveness of
women (probably men too, just haven't noticed it). I haven't noticed
people having lower standards of attractiveness (unless it's the teenage
women of today, who find men with underwear hanging out of their pants
attractive). I haven't noticed people having stronger sex drives
(although I wouldn't necessarily notice this one).
Bryant
[Note: cross-posting reduced]
In article <3224D9...@compuserve.com>,
Hugh Gibbons <1033...@compuserve.com> wrote:
>
>I don't like this explanation because it relies on fairly dubious
>assumptions.
>(That attractive men have genes that make them able to survive better.)
I'm not sure it's fair to refer to these studies as "assumptions." In a
thumbnail sketch, here's what empirical study has shown:
*Developmental stability is heritable.
*Developmental instability is related to disease and malnutrition
*More developmentally stable guys inspire more female orgasms while
investing less in relationships before gaining sexual access
*More developmentally stable guys are rated as more attractive by
heterosexual women
*More developmentally stable guys are more physically aggressive with
rivals
*More developmentally stable guys (and gals) have higher IQ
Attraction to and sexual responsivity to developmentally stable men may
have had some considerable fitness benefits for women, evolutionarily.
Like kids better able to resist disease and sons better able to attract
lots of mates.
>The more conventional and more likely explanation is that females have
>orgasm to attract them to the act of sex, which results in procreation.
Then why not orgasm with every fellow? Why the pattern between
developmental stability in mate and incidence of copulatory,
sperm-retaining orgasms?
>Hugh Gibbons
Bryant
David Vanecek
Both previous posters are using 'cuckold' for its opposite.
I have corrected this by substituting the word 'adulterer' where approriate.
'Adulterer' will be kept in quotes, since it is inaccurate; we lack
a good term for "sire of a bastard regardless of dam's marital status."
Hugh Gibbons (1033...@compuserve.com) wrote:
: Matt Beckwith wrote:
: > Wow, somebody actually answered a post of mine with something other than
: > hostility. I think this is going to be a good day!
Please don't let my followups dilute it!
: >
: > So it isn't that 'adulterers' are superior by virtue of being 'adulterers', but
: > that women sleep with men who are attractive to them, and the attractive
: > men become 'adulterers' because so many women want them.
: >
: > So how would we get an attractive, faithful man? The 'adulterer' would have
: > to finally want more from a relationship, and realize that you can't get
: > that without commitment.
Men *very commonly* in *many* societies at *all* levels of economic development
live without significant relationships with women. There is no
human relationship except sex that *requires* a woman. If perversion or
celibacy is allowed, even that vanishes. There is a social necessity
to support children; typically this is the responsibility of the men.
: >
: > Matt Beckwith
: > http://users.southeast.net/~beckwith/
Hugh Gibbons (1033...@compuserve.com) wrote:
: I don't like this explanation because it relies on fairly dubious
: assumptions.
: (That attractive men have genes that make them able to survive better.)
See below on 'survival.' Survival value is: "able to impregnate more
often resulting in survivable offspring." (I.e. nobody smothers the
bastards, somebody feeds them.) It has nothing to do directly, with
"quality of life." The most fecund societies are among the crummiest.
: The more conventional and more likely explanation is that females have
: orgasm to attract them to the act of sex, which results in procreation.
: Since women are intelligent, men would have a hard time persuading them
There are societies of humans who do not correlate copulation with
pregnancy. 'American urban teenager' is one such sub-society.
It is very easy to persuade a woman to engage in sex. It is very
easy to persuade a man to engage in sex. Individuals who are easily
persuaded to have sex do so more often. People who do not have
sex are called 'extinct.' Seen any Shakers lately?
: to engage in sex, knowing the dangers of pregnancy, unless the women
: got immediate benefit.
Payment in cash or kind is the traditional non-orgasmic immediate benefit.
Many prostitutes report almost no erotic pleasure in an act that
nonetheless they indulge compulsively. Many Christian wives report
the same absence of pleasure, yet are famous for their fecundity.
: The 'adulterer' takes advantage where he finds it by persuading a female to
: mate with him and possibly have his children. This does not interfere
: much with his main chance of reproducing, which is with his regular
: mate.
Why would this be his *main* chance? An adulterer can impregnate
scores of females, (credibly reported by certain males), repeatedly.
Most of his children will be bastards.
It also depends on his wife's behavior. It depends on the social consequences
of adultery. If the female is protected by law, a husband or a family,
the adulterer may find himself incapable of any future behavior of any
kind except in the afterlife.
: His childrearing efforts are spent on kids that are probably his, and he
Men do not rear infants, usually. Men support the rearing of children.
In many societies, men have nearly no contact with daughters, and little
with sons until they are sentient. Americans are raised almost exclusively
by females until well after puberty. This, and the horrid practice of
milk drinking (failure to wean), is why American men are weak-willed,
effeminate, violent, and increasingly prone to perversion.
(Explanation and controversial examples on request. Off topic here.)
It depends on the nature of the adultery. If it is with a contract-mistress,
then he will be supporting her kids, presumably his. Since the
contract-mistress is less likely to be chaste, his level of support
is lower. If the adultery is with a fee-for-service prostitute, the
support is probably adequate to the fractional probability that the
prostitute's children are his. Only by impregnating a non-supported
female does the adulterer benefit.
: gets free bonus kids on the side. The female's advantage in the scheme
: is that she gets children of the 'adulterer', whose male offspring
^^^^ also female
: may inherit the very traits that attracted her, increasing their own
: reproductive odds.
Female sex is motivated by support in the long run. If a woman is not
assured of support (either from a husband, or in other ways) she is
unlikely to have children, and such children as she may have will not
thrive; an infant dead of starvation or exposure is nature's way of
saying: "wrong mate, stupid, find one that pays."
A gene with high survival value means a gene that reproduces itself
better, and produces an adult more likely to reproduce. An organism is
a gene's method of making more genes like itself. A society is a gene's
method of setting rules and establishing conditions for its survival.
The goal of every individual in a species is to insure the survival of
his or her OWN genes, i.e. children. When we speak of 'survival of the
fittest' we often forget what 'fittest' means: it means 'most able to
reproduce successfully.' And NOTHING else.
Women marry for money, abstracted into 'support.' Men marry to
guarantee the paternity of their wives' children. If there are other
ways than paternal support to raise a child, bastardry will rise in
proportion. If the primary purpose of marriage be to raise children,
marriage will decline in the face of alternatives.
A woman has no motive for avoiding adultery unless it endangers the
support of her offspring. Since a woman is biologically conditioned
to copulate almost without vacation from menarch to menopause, even
during pregnancy and suckling, some selection process needs to be
in place. In the past, this was support by a mate or family, since
a woman with children cannot survive by her own means in most economies.
BUT If society will support her in producing bastards, she has no reason
to marry, a goal central to feminist politics in all ages. A man has no
motivation to support his own children himself, *if *he *can *trick
*another *man, *called *a '*cuckold', *into *supporting *them*.
The woman seeking to live 'in control of her body' also *must*
demand control of the bodies of others, if she is to reproduce.
These others are called 'cuckolds.'
The *cuckold*, whether he is a betrayed husband or a bamboozled
taxpayer (of either sex), or a casual lover sued at law for a
lifetime of debt, is necessary in a society which tolerates
or (like ours) encourages bastardry. In the extreme practice of
bastardry, even the dam abandons her children, which children are, in
our society, 'adopted.' That adoptees are mistreated by their parents
is another commonplace, particularly if there are genuine children
present. The purpose of adopting is not reproduction, but to gratify
the mothering urges of barren women. When the child stops being
'cute,' it receives less attention; when, with sentience, it exhibits
genetically inherited behaviors at odds with its foster parents,
it may be beaten or abandoned. Men formerly adopted to obtain
farm laborers, but now have no motive except to pacify a barren
wife, whom he is keeping for sexual gratification or sometimes
other reasons (study dowry laws). In this way the sexual urge
motivates male adoption.
An animal that practices 'adopting out' is the cuckoo, which tricks
other birds into raising its young. 'Out' means 'out of its native
genetic milieu.'
English Usage Part: The etymologies of 'cuckoo' and 'cuckold' are,
according to my dictionary, unrelated. But 'cuckold' could be thought
of as a passive construction of a verbed noun *'to cuckoo': to inflict a
child on a stranger. Someone thus afflicted would have been
*'cuckooed', thus be a 'cuckold.'
The cuckold, (not the homosexual), may be thought of as the 'third
sex,' necessary for reproduction in a human society that
practices bastardry. The cuckold must be tricked into believing his
own paternity, (human babies resemble their fathers more than their
mothers, a counterforce to cuckoldry), forced into support (the
taxpayer), or rewarded in some way, say through subsidized access to
prostitutes (welfare). It is not an accident that the silly, daft
phrase "It takes a village to raise a child" is commonly on the lips
of the parents of bastards. "It takes a village to raise a bastard" is
still inaccurate, but closer to the truth: "It takes a cuckold to
raise a bastard." Perhaps the role of the cuckold would be clearer if
we called it the 'host' sex. In a welfare system, the cuckolds might
be collectively called the 'host' subculture.
The welfare system is an etherealization of prostitution: a female is
apportioned support (from virtual cuckolds) on contract, proportional
to the number of her bastards. Support being guaranteed her, she may
then disregard the paternity of the bastards. Strictly speaking,
welfare is a medial form, between the piece-work of prostitution and
the long-term contract of marriage. It may be properly called
"socialized cuckoldry." It is a form of paternity insurance for
adulters, funded by cuckolds.
We should meditate on the processes of natural selection that produced
in us a species with the notion of paternity. We may contrast
ourselves with the chimpanzee, which practices bastardry and is in
danger of extinction. We are not unique; cats (domestic and others)
are aware of paternity, and the males routinely kill cubs not their
own. Since we are not brutes, we use abortion, and establish societies
(Planned Parenthood) to encourage it among the poor and genetically
distant.
Toleration of bastards is a consequence of men's poor sense of smell.
If paternity could be judged by smell, there would be no bastards and
no cuckolds. Successful adultery would be, like suicide, a
once-in-a-lifetime event. Curiously, paternity can now be "smelled"
with laboratory instruments. Advocates of bastardry might profit from
the contemplation of future social evolution.
D.V.
Arne D Halvorsen
dvan...@third-wave.com (David Vanecek) wrote:
>Both previous posters are using 'cuckold' for its opposite.
>I have corrected this by substituting the word 'adulterer' where approriate.
>'Adulterer' will be kept in quotes, since it is inaccurate; we lack
>a good term for "sire of a bastard regardless of dam's marital status."
Philanderer?
Just a suggestion, rest snipped.
Arne D H
David Vanecek
Arne D Halvorsen (a...@cx.dnv.no) wrote:
: dvan...@third-wave.com (David Vanecek) wrote:
: >Both previous posters are using 'cuckold' for its opposite.
: >I have corrected this by substituting the word 'adulterer' where approriate.
: >'Adulterer' will be kept in quotes, since it is inaccurate; we lack
: >a good term for "sire of a bastard regardless of dam's marital status."
: Philanderer?
: Just a suggestion, rest snipped.
A very good one, I had originally used 'rake', but that's too vague.
Thanks.
DV
Rudeboy
[David Vanecek]
>: >Both previous posters are using 'cuckold' for its opposite. I have
>: >corrected this by substituting the word 'adulterer' where approriate.
>: >'Adulterer' will be kept in quotes, since it is inaccurate; we lack a
>: >good term for "sire of a bastard regardless of dam's marital status."
[Arne D Halvorsen]
>: Philanderer?
>: Just a suggestion, rest snipped.
[David Vanecek]
>A very good one, I had originally used 'rake', but that's too vague.
This suggest that, under reversed gender circumstances, one might use
the term 'hoe.'
Humbly yours,
Rudeboy
Kevin Mukhar
> Hugh Gibbons (1033...@compuserve.com) wrote:
> : The more conventional and more likely explanation is that females have
> : orgasm to attract them to the act of sex, which results in procreation.
About two weeks ago, The Learning Channel (Cable TV network here in the
U.S.) broadcast a week of documentaries on sexuality (both human and
non-human). One of the fun facts (or maybe theories) that I remember
from one of the shows was that a woman's orgasm, if it occured at the
appropriate time, increased her ability to keep the sperm within her and
increase her chance of conception. I seem to recall also, on another
show (it may have been a recent one by Desmond Morris) they showed how
the female orgasm acted to 'suck' the sperm into the uterus.
It's amazing what one can find to watch on TV when one doesn't want to
watch a national political convention.
Kevin "Nothing exciting was going to happen at the Republican
Convention" Mukhar
sgf
In article <502n7b$d...@jaxnet.southeast.net>,
Matt Beckwith <beck...@jaxnet.com> wrote:
>sfo...@odin.cair.du.edu (sgf) wrote:
>
>>>...reproductive success is simply
>>>reproducing. The genes of those men who impregnate survive, the genes >>of
>>>those men who don't, don't. The genes of those women who are >>impregnated
>>>survive, the genes of those women who aren't, don't.
>
>>Nonono! The genes of those who impregnate/are impregnated, *and* who
>>successfully raise those children to reproductive age (or have the kids
>>raised for them) are the ones who survive.
>
>Nonono backatcha. I started out by saying that we no longer have to
>worry about survival of our offspring. The state makes sure everyone
>survives, these days. Sure, a few don't make it, but they are quite
>rare. In the U.S., single-parent children are nearly as likely to
>survive as double-parent children, and poor children are nearly as likely
>to survive as rich ones. These liberal methods indirectly promote
>promiscuity--that's one of the points I was making.
I'm not sure at which point you started discussing the U.S.A.
specifically. I am (and have been since I got into this thread waaaaay
back) discussing the human race and its adaptations and strategies for
reproduction.
Humans have been promiscuous since before we can even call them "human".
Promiscuity you see today is the same as it's always been
(EVOLUTIONARILY, that is, I'm not confining myself to just a few
generations), it's just that nowadays, Western culture condemns the choice
to control population, unlike many many past cultures, which consciously
used birth control, abortion and infanticide to control human populations
(see Taylor, _The Prehistory of Sex_, 1996). Promiscuity is not
"encouraged", it just has more consequences that it did before that
evolution has not had time to adapt to.
Anyway, to get back to your complaint:
please, tell me, at which point in the below quoted paragraphs
you explained you had switched the topic under discussion from human
evolution and sexual adaptation to the United States in particular.
Don't complain that someone misunderstood what you said when you didn't
actually say it.
************
>But all things are not equal. And reproductive success is simply
>reproducing. The genes of those men who impregnate survive, the genes of
>those men who don't, don't. The genes of those women who are impregnated
>survive, the genes of those women who aren't, don't.
>
>One interesting thing about this thread (aside from the fact that it's
>gotten off-topic) is that, in spite of the fact that with modern medicine
>we have somewhat usurped the process of natural selection, where sexual
>activity is concerned natural selection is alive and well. After all,
>the genes of anyone who does not reproduce are being de-selected.
************
>>Child care is a very important human strategy...
>
>Not so much any more.
Still is. The state has simply taken the place of the extended family
and resources gathered. Any child not taken care of tends not to live.
We are not in some totally different sytem than has ever been seen before
-- the *same* strategies, the *same* adaptations still work, it's just
that the resource base is no longer confined to what one person or family
can produce with their own labor, since we *all* support each other.
>>>One interesting thing about this thread (aside from the fact that it's
>>>gotten off-topic) is that, in spite of the fact that with modern >>medicine
>>>we have somewhat usurped the process of natural selection, where sexual
>>>activity is concerned natural selection is alive and well. After all,
>>>the genes of anyone who does not reproduce are being de-selected.
>>Honestly, how many people do you think use those methods?
>What methods? To do what? What are you talking about?
Again, please be specific when you refer to "modern medicine". I assumed
that you were talking about fertility treatments and other expensive
procedures that allowed children who would otherwise not be carried to
term due to maldevelopments be born and grow up and reproduce.
Silly me. I thought we were still discussing human evolution and
adaptations instead of culturally-based moral systems. Mind blowing an
air-horn or something when you're about to change lanes from human
strategies of adaptation to a discussion of a moral system that is
entirely culture-centric?
[snip]
>>sticking around makes sure the woman doesn't
>>abandond the kid somewhere or "forget" to feed it (women do a *lot* of
>>active selection in this sort of thing. We don't all raise whatever kid
>>happens to pop out, you know.
>
>Really? I disagree. Women despicable enough to kill their children are
>pretty rare in the U.S.
Are they? Just this past weekend here in Colorado, two unrelated babies
were found dead, drowned in rivers. And how many mothers use neglect to
kill their children or effectively kill their children by not taking them
away from abusive partners, or by not getting them vaccinated or taking
them to the doctor? Infanticide is not always recognized as such, and a
lot of children survive their mothers just because they are taken away.
And how many give the kids to their husband, their mothers, or their
friends to raise? There are a *lot* of women who choose not to raise
their children, who in other cultural systems would either give it away
or kill it. And what do you term abortion? I call it conscious control
of how many children the woman chooses to raise -- infanticide before the
fact, as it were. [Note to anyone: I will *not* discuss the moral issues
in this in these newsgroups. Take it elsewhere.]
What the state has done now is to take the place of extended family. In
previous generations, if a woman was unable or unwilling to take care of
her child, someone from the rest of her family would step in and take
care of it *provided* there were enough resources to do so. In these
enlightened days, the USA tends not to have extended families, and the
state takes the place of them.
However, I don't think the selective pressures you think have that much
of an impact on the US as a whole -- *especially* since the US would have
negative population growth if it weren't for immigration. The
"Generation X" generation and the "Nintendo generation" after it are
*smaller* than the Boomers, which would indicate to me that behavior in
the Boomers' *parents* was more adaptive than behavior in the Boomers and
their offspring, since they are leaving behind fewer and fewer.
You have to look at behavior and population over a number of generations,
not just one, to get an idea of the impact of evolution and adaptation.
There are always temporary blips which are just that, temporary. I
beleive it was Seneca (or a contemporary of his) that complained about
the violence and promiscuity in the younger generation as opposed to his,
apparently more moral, generation. Didn't seem to make a whole lot of
difference over the long run, did it? *Every* generation claims to
notice an increase in the permissiveness and immorality of the next
generation, which, if it were true, would result in the entire planet
being overrun with amoral sex-hungry idiots (Senator Packwood aside...).
>>[smiley deleted due to crosspost to a.f.u])
>
>You mean it's true, AFU has banned smileys from their posts? How
>pusillanimous. :) :) :) :)
No, they assume that if you need a smiley to get your point across, then
you cannot write well enough to indicate humor with context and wording.
They fight quite hard to keep the level of discourse on the newsgroup
higher than the average, something I find quite refreshing in the genral
morass of Usenet.
Please, I encourage you to post to a.f.u. asserting your right to use
smileys. They'll be *really* nice, I promise...
[snip more]
>You seem to be making the point that unfaithfulness is common. Okay, so
>what? Or that women are as unfaithful as men. So what again.
I quote your *exact* paragraph I was answering:
>>>Qualities in a woman include attractiveness, submissiveness (attractive
>>>to men's fragile egos), lack of discrimination in sexual partners,
>>>unfaithfulness, and sexual skill. (Unfaithfulness used to be de-selected
>>>because a woman's offspring were less likely to survive without a father;
>>>but these days the state takes responsibility for fatherless children.)
Are you switching back and forth between woman as the subject and men as
the subject? Without making it clear? And then getting mad because
someone else gets confused? Man, I'd hate to be someone who *doesn't*
speak/read English as a first language trying to figure out what the heck
you're talking about. Usenet is a written medium: either learn to write
well or stop whining when no one can figure out what you're saying.
>>Women play active roles in passing genes on to the next generation -- we
[snip]
>>can give enough resources to the kids they choose to keep), and they
>>actively seek out partners they like.
>
>Did I say women were impotent?
You implied that if a woman was impregnated, then that was that. She
raised the kid. She had no say in whether or not that kid survived. I
was explaining why women are not passive carriers of seed into the next
generation.
>>The name of the game is *not* just to impregnate or be impregnated, and
>>there are a *lot* of factors that go into it. Human sexuality and
>>reproductive behavior is one of the most complicated systems existing in
>>animals, and is impossible to reduce very far.
>
>Well, you haven't convinced me.
May I suggest you read at least one of these?
Fisher, Helen. E.
Anatomy of love : the natural history of monogamy, adultery, and divorce
The sex contract : the evolution of human behavior
Buss, David M.
The evolution of desire : strategies of human mating
Taylor, Timothy
The prehistory of sex : four million years of human sexual culture
Everything I've said about human sexuality, reproduction, marriage
systems, and mating strategies has been backed up and re-backed up in
these books and the papers and research they utilize.
>As a matter of fact, I have noticed during my lifetime that there has
>been an increase in promiscuity, and an increase in the attractiveness of
>women (probably men too, just haven't noticed it). I haven't noticed
Or maybe *your* standards of attractiveness have lowered as you age and
don't become so picky anymore. As long as we're trading anecdotal
evidence instead of hard references, as I've aged, I've noticed that older
men start broadening their interpretations of "attractive." This is
thrown into hard relief daily, since I am a graduate student on
campus and am thrown into contact with men ranging from 18 to 60+ every
day. The trend is for younger men -- freshmen and sophomores, mostly,
although other undergrads do this too -- to be highly critical of women's
appearances while older men have an appreciation for a broader range of
physical features. Makes sense, too, if we consider that the younger men
are following the reproductive strategy of scattering their genes as
widely as possible -- they have to make an evaluation of reproductive
fitness in a very short time and so rely on physical appearance
extensively. As they age and change their strategy to one of investment
in one woman, they can afford to take the time to evaluate fitness at
length during the long courting process, and hence their appreciation of
physical features broadens to include ones they would not have thought of
as "attractive" in their younger days.
And, yes, this *is* mostly unconscious -- driven by selective pressures.
Teens and young men of today don't think "gee, I've got to sleep with
*her* instead of *her* tonight because she's more vivacious, with
brighter eyes and energy, that signify she's probably more free of
parasitic infestation and therefore her immune system is better than her
friend's." However, because men who had a preference for those features
tended to leave behind more offspring *because* the mother's immune
system was better, the tendency was passed down and
is now inherent in that oh-so-socially-desirable young man with underwear
hanging out of his pants who wants to go to bed with Sara instead of her
friend Lisa because she's prettier.
>people having lower standards of attractiveness (unless it's the teenage
>women of today, who find men with underwear hanging out of their pants
>attractive). I haven't noticed people having stronger sex drives
>(although I wouldn't necessarily notice this one).
Actually, that young man may be demonstrating his ability to get along in
the social group -- outcasts don't mate (as all good computer geeks
know...) as much as do men who show they know how to integrate themselves
with the social system. If everyone else has underwear hanging out of
their pants, then so will he. He's not worried about whether it's
attractive by your standards, because he's probably not trying to mate
with you. But that whole paragraph is just speculation on my part...
--Stephanie
David Vanecek
Rudeboy (ez01...@boris.ucdavis.edu) wrote:
: [David Vanecek]
: >: >Both previous posters are using 'cuckold' for its opposite. I have
: >: >corrected this by substituting the word 'adulterer' where approriate.
: >: >'Adulterer' will be kept in quotes, since it is inaccurate; we lack a
: >: >good term for "sire of a bastard regardless of dam's marital status."
: [Arne D Halvorsen]
: >: Philanderer?
: >: Just a suggestion, rest snipped.
: [David Vanecek]
: >A very good one, I had originally used 'rake', but that's too vague.
: This suggest that, under reversed gender circumstances, one might use
: the term 'hoe.'
: Humbly yours,
: Rudeboy
Now that _is_ clever!
DV
Matt Beckwith
dvan...@third-wave.com (David Vanecek) wrote:
>Men *very commonly* in *many* societies at *all* levels of economic >development
>live without significant relationships with women. There is no
>human relationship except sex that *requires* a woman. If perversion or
>celibacy is allowed, even that vanishes. There is a social necessity
>to support children; typically this is the responsibility of the men.
Perhaps you should say "historically" rather than "typically", since in
the U.S. of today it's the women and the government who support and
nurture the children. There is no relationship except sex that requires
a man. The woman is needed to carry the baby for nine months and then
give birth. In primitive societies, she's then needed for the nursing.
>Hugh Gibbons (1033...@compuserve.com) wrote:
>: I don't like this explanation because it relies on fairly dubious
>: assumptions.
>: (That attractive men have genes that make them able to survive >: >: better.)
dvan...@third-wave.com (David Vanecek) responded:
>Survival value is: "able to impregnate more
>often resulting in survivable offspring." (I.e. nobody smothers the
>bastards, somebody feeds them.) It has nothing to do directly, with
>"quality of life." The most fecund societies are among the crummiest.
I agree. Besides, the idea that the genes of attractive men have more
survival value is not an assumption, but a conclusion based on the
obvious fact that attractive men have more frequent sex, and sex with
more women. The same is true for the genes of attractive women. Isn't
it cool that there is a natural force making people more beautiful? I
think so.
>Hugh Gibbons (1033...@compuserve.com) wrote:
>: The more conventional and more likely explanation is that females have
>: orgasm to attract them to the act of sex, which results in
>: procreation.
Same difference, since the men they're going to have sex with are the
attractive men.
dvan...@third-wave.com (David Vanecek) wrote:
>There are societies of humans who do not correlate copulation with
>pregnancy. 'American urban teenager' is one such sub-society.
I think you're thinking of the American suburban teenager. The American
urban teenager has sex with the man she's interested in (without a single
thought of marriage) and understands that she will get pregnant. She is
hoping that he will stick around as a result of the baby. She is
planning to go on AFDC. In a sense, she's married to the U.S.
Government. It's really amazing. I ask these women when I see them in
my office what they do for a living, and they look at me dumbfounded, as
if to ask, "What makes you think I'd have a job?"
In order to truly disengage sex and childbearing, we'll need a really
effective, available, temporary, and one-time-use form of birth control,
so that pubescent teens will be able to make a temporary decision not to
have kids, act on it (perhaps at their neighborhood convenience store),
then not have to give the subject another thought until such time as they
decide to have children. Then we wouldn't have these evolutionary forces
currently under discussion any more. Attractiveness would be less
selected for, for example.
dvan...@third-wave.com (David Vanecek) wrote:
>It is very easy to persuade a woman to engage in sex. It is very
>easy to persuade a man to engage in sex. Individuals who are easily
>persuaded to have sex do so more often. People who do not have
>sex are called 'extinct.' Seen any Shakers lately?
Precisely.
>Hugh Gibbons (1033...@compuserve.com) wrote:
>: His childrearing efforts are spent on kids that are probably his, and >: he
dvan...@third-wave.com (David Vanecek) replied:
>Men do not rear infants, usually. Men support the rearing of children.
>In many societies, men have nearly no contact with daughters, and little
>with sons until they are sentient. Americans are raised almost >exclusively
>by females until well after puberty.
True.
>This, and the horrid practice of
>milk drinking (failure to wean), is why American men are weak-willed,
>effeminate, violent, and increasingly prone to perversion.
What an interesting idea. I can see that only being around women might
make a man weak-willed and effeminate (though the most popular guys among
my friends were the ones raised by women, perhaps because they understood
women well), but I don't see the connection between being raised by women
and violence and perversion.
Also interesting is the idea that drinking milk is tantamount to failure
to wean. I guess that means that we humans associate milk with Mom, and
every time we imbibe we are reverting to infancy. What is the
significance of beer, then?
>Female sex is motivated by support in the long run. If a woman is not
>assured of support (either from a husband, or in other ways) she is
>unlikely to have children, and such children as she may have will not
>thrive; an infant dead of starvation or exposure is nature's way of
>saying: "wrong mate, stupid, find one that pays."
Not any more, not in the U.S. We have AFDC, so support is irrelevant.
I suspect dictionaries are sometimes wrong. Your explanation sounds
pretty good to me.
>D.V.
David, thanks for a fascinating discourse. It's not often you get such
meaty ideas on Usenet. You obviously know a thing or two! Are you an
anthropologist? I'm glad I cross-posted this thread to the other group!
Paul J. Stamler
It's not necessarily so that poor children in American have "nearly
the same" chance of surviving as rich. Remember the statistic a few years
ago that a male child in Harlem has less chance of surviving until the
age of 25 than a male child in Bangla Desh?
Peace.
Paul
Matt Beckwith
Yes, you're right, I was exaggerating. Though the male child in Harlem
is dying from gunfire, not absence of a father. (I guess there could be
a connection, though.) At any rate, he's not dying of starvation (except
in rare instances).
I tend to exaggerate to make points. A more erudite fellow than I posted
earlier today the point I was attempting to make, which is that the
state takes over the fathering role nowadays (in the U.S.). By golly,
that sure does sound like the U.S.S.R.!
Matt Beckwith
>Matt Beckwith <beck...@jaxnet.com> wrote:
>>Nonono backatcha. I started out by saying that we no longer have to
>>worry about survival of our offspring.
sfo...@odin.cair.du.edu (sgf) wrote:
>Anyway, to get back to your complaint:
>please, tell me, at which point in the below quoted paragraphs
>you explained you had switched the topic under discussion from human
>evolution and sexual adaptation to the United States in particular.
>Don't complain that someone misunderstood what you said when you didn't
>actually say it.
You're getting paranoid. There's nothing in the least complaining about
the above paragraph.
The remainder of your post picks apart my points in an effort to show
that you were not in error at any point, that all points I attributed to
you as being erroneous were misconstrued on my part, or that you
misconstrued my points because my points were insufficiently well
written. This isn't a discussion, it's a debate. I'm not interested in
debating, thank-you.
>[Note to anyone: I will *not* discuss the moral issues
>in this in these newsgroups. Take it elsewhere.]
How rude! As if someone were inflicting some sort of discussion on you.
>No, they assume that if you need a smiley to get your point across, then
>you cannot write well enough to indicate humor with context and wording.
Gee, thanks for the insult. What a pleasant person you are.
>They fight quite hard to keep the level of discourse on the newsgroup
>higher than the average, something I find quite refreshing in the genral
>morass of Usenet.
Insults are not on a higher level than smiley faces. They're on a lower
level.
Stephanie G. Folse
(My mail program isn't too good at letting me know whther or not a message
was posted as well as e-mailed; I *think* the original one was both, but
if not, I apologize.)
On Mon, 2 Sep 1996 Ian.Woolla...@bnr.ca wrote:
> In article <507osn$7...@hermes.cair.du.edu> you write:
>
> You're arguing against yourself here. If they are using a pure
> scattering approach they should just sleep with everyone irrespective
> of looks. That isn't the strategy.
I'm going to have to pull out the big guns here: cite, please? I
already provided four books that summarize the research in many many
papers dealing with exactly this subject.
And to continue on with your challenge: the scattershot approach is what
it has been termed, perhaps not very well, by biologists and
anthropologists. It does not mean to have sex with everyone irrespective of
anything else, it means maximizing sexual partners while minimizing
investment. There is almost always investment -- humans rarely see a
total stranger across the room, *immediately* leave with him/her and then
have sex and never see him/her again. (even less so during four million
years of evolution, when you knew everyone in your band and in all the
surrounding bands. Never seeing your partner again was an impossibility
then.)
Let's create a thought experiment. Man A and Man B are equal in status,
attractiveness, wealth, whatever (I'm not throwing female preference into
this), and have the choices of whatever sexual partners they wish. They
each have sex with and impregnate ten women over the course of a month.
The only difference is that Man A chooses sexual partners
indiscriminately (the first ten women who smile at him) while Man B
is a little more careful, choosing who he sees as attractive -- wide
hips, energy, clearer skin, no obvious coughing or tumors, etc...
Kid Man A Man B
1 dies-lack of resources dies-lack of resources
i.e., no dad to help feed it i.e., no dad to help feed it
2 same same
3 same same
4 mother has parasitical mother healthier - fights off
infection - does not parasite - carries to term
carry to term
5 flood -- all in tribe die flood -- all in tribe die
6 mother has too-narrow hips, mother has too-narrow hips,
mother & child die in birth mother & child die in birth
7 mother has too-narrow hips, mother has wide hips,
mother & child die in birth mother & child survive
8 mother dies in birth, mother dies in birth,
child raised by tribe child raised by tribe
9 mother & child fine mother & child fine
10 mother and child fine mother and child fine
Total: 3 kids survive 5 kids survive
They both employ what the bio/anthros call the scattershot approach, but
Man B leaves behind slightly more children. Multiply this over the
generations, and hey presto, Man B's kids out-compete Man A's, thus
passing on his preferences.
I never said the scattershot approach was a "true" one -- I *did* say
that attractiveness preferences evolved to allow a person the opportunity
to make a snap judgement whether or not his/her possible temporary
partner would be a good investment of reproductive resources. Obviously,
this is not conscious -- it doesn't have to be; that's what the
attractiveness preferences are for.
> The aim for both sexes is to sleep
> with the prettiest, youngest mates you can find.
The aim for women is *not* to sleep with the youngest mates they can
find, because the youngest mates are more likely *not* to have the
resources available to take care of resulting offspring.
> Young people of either sex (status, money, looks being equal) are
> usually rated as being more attractive than older people.
If you are *looking* for attractiveness. Attractiveness seems to be a
major factor when looking for *temporary* partners, but not long-term,
and for men more than women.
> So there's no point in an older man chasing hot babes, if they always
> go for the young blades, and leave him in the dust. That's wasted time
> and effort on his part. To compensate for this, and increase his
> likely reproductive success, mens genes become less selective as they
> get older.
No. Older men change their reproducive strategy. They invest their
energy in producing a few children with a higher chance of survival
instead of many children with a lower chance of survival. (They switch
to a K-selective strategy rather than an R-selective strategy.)
You assume that all women go for younger men. This is just plain not
true. Marrige stats across cultures show that women (even when given
free choice, and not just arranged marriages) consistently choose men
older than themselves to marry. In many cultures, men are not allowed to
marry and have kids until they are much older than their intended wives
(i.e., 26 to her 16, or 35 to her 20, and so forth). No. When women
look for men to raise babies with, they look for men who can support
them. This is, almost all the time, a man who is older than themselves.
Look at all the sociological studies that rate what people find
attractive in partners (cites in the bibliographies of the books I cited
-- I'm not gonna write it all down here). Across the board, women do not
rate physical attractiveness as highly as men do. I have never seen a
study in which physical attractiveness came in at number one in women's
preferences.
> But its more complex than that. To a fair degree attractiveness is
> learnt. Most young people have their first experiences with their age
> group, and older people have had experiences with all the age groups
> upto their age. They tend to find attractive types that they have been
> succesful with lately.
I'm not arguing that certain types of attractiveness aren't learnt (although
it's at a *much* earlier age than you seem to assume -- your preferences
are mostly innate by the time you hit five or so; although change and
refinement is always possible). However, humans *do* seem to be
hard-wired to prefer certain things, which signify health and fertility.
(Buss, D., et al. 1990 "International preferences in selecting mates."
_Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology_ 21: 5-47.)
And as for your assertion that people prefer the type they have been
successful with lately, may I suggest reading the chapter on sexual
selection in Jared Diamond's _The Third Chimpanzee_? It summarizes and
explains the research that shows that marriage partners tend to resemble
each other physically in many instances including height, earlobe width,
and middle-finger length. (this is a correlation coefficient -- if you
lined up 100 couples accordig to height, the wife of the husband third
tallest from the end will also tend to be standing really close to the
third tallest from the end position in her line.) People tend to go for
the same type over and over and over again, and their preferences tend
not to change at all, although things like ethnic group, religion and
political affiliation have a much higher correlation than do physical
features (but then again, that's marriage, not temporary partnership).
--Stephanie
JoAnne Schmitz
Matt Beckwith <beck...@jaxnet.com> wrote:
>dvan...@third-wave.com (David Vanecek) wrote:
>>There are societies of humans who do not correlate copulation with
>>pregnancy. 'American urban teenager' is one such sub-society.
>I think you're thinking of the American suburban teenager. The American
>urban teenager has sex with the man she's interested in (without a single
>thought of marriage) and understands that she will get pregnant. She is
>hoping that he will stick around as a result of the baby. She is
>planning to go on AFDC. In a sense, she's married to the U.S.
>Government. It's really amazing. I ask these women when I see them in
>my office what they do for a living, and they look at me dumbfounded, as
>if to ask, "What makes you think I'd have a job?"
As would my mother, if you had asked her when she had me in arms. As
might your mother have.
What is it about being a poor mother, compared to a well-off one, that
makes one less deserving of support? I hope you're not one of those
wankers who bemoans the abandonment of the infant by its horrible
status-hungry mother returning to her lawyering or computering but
expects the maid to show up on time a week after her baby is born.
And what office are you in, anyway? If you're interviewing AFDC
mothers, you're sucking off the public tit just as they are.
>>This, and the horrid practice of
>>milk drinking (failure to wean), is why American men are weak-willed,
>>effeminate, violent, and increasingly prone to perversion.
>What an interesting idea. I can see that only being around women might
>make a man weak-willed and effeminate (though the most popular guys among
>my friends were the ones raised by women, perhaps because they understood
>women well), but I don't see the connection between being raised by women
>and violence and perversion.
I don't even see the connection between only being around women and
being weak-willed and effeminate.
JoAnne "strong-willed and human" Schmitz
-----------------------------------------------------------
There are emergency contraception pills that you can take
after you have had unprotected sex. They work up to three
days after intercourse. You don't have to wait to be sure
you're pregnant and then have an abortion.
For more information you can call 1-800-584-9911. Or check
the web site http://opr.princeton.edu/ec/ec.html.
-----------------------------------------------------------
sgf
Note: this is no longer on-topic for any of these newsgroups, note
follow-ups before posting an answer.
In article <50b5ib$o...@jaxnet.southeast.net>,
Matt Beckwith <beck...@jaxnet.com> wrote:
>>>Nonono backatcha. I started out by saying that we no longer have to
>>>worry about survival of our offspring.
>
>You're getting paranoid. There's nothing in the least complaining about
>the above paragraph.
Paranoid? Because I pointed out that you switched topics without warning
and I blindly assumed that perhaps you were still talking about the
original topic, and I was mildly upset about that? A little strong,
arent' we? Where were "we" and "our," used in your post to refer to the
population of the United States, defined as that? The previous post
discussed the human race in general, not any specific culture, and I
blindly assumed that perhaps you were actually still on-topic. Sorry.
>The remainder of your post picks apart my points in an effort to show
>that you were not in error at any point, that all points I attributed to
>you as being erroneous were misconstrued on my part, or that you
>misconstrued my points because my points were insufficiently well
>written. This isn't a discussion, it's a debate. I'm not interested in
>debating, thank-you.
They were not erroneous. They were done using a different set of
assumptions than what you intended. I arrived at those assumptions based
on teh general topic of the thread. Had I realized your agenda was to
discuss the social problems of the U.S. and not the evolution and
adaptation of the human race, then I would have responded from that
direction.
And are you worried that perhaps your points might be wrong, so you failed
to defend them and instead attacked my "debate", as you see it? Whether
or not the participants are discussing or debating makes no difference to
the truth or not-truth of facts presented.
>>[Note to anyone: I will *not* discuss the moral issues
>>in this in these newsgroups. Take it elsewhere.]
>
>How rude! As if someone were inflicting some sort of discussion on you.
Hello--- preventive measures to avoid an entirely inappropriate
discussion of abortion in this thread. If it seemed strong to you, then
good -- it would perhaps serve as a warning to anyone else whose hot
buttons were pushed and wanted to jump in and spiral the thread off-topic
in these newsgroups. The entire reason behind having separate newsgroups
in the first place is so that each one serves as a forum in which a
specific topic organizes the discussion (and, yes, debate...).
>>No, they assume that if you need a smiley to get your point across, then
>>you cannot write well enough to indicate humor with context and wording.
>Gee, thanks for the insult. What a pleasant person you are.
Insult? You call me paranoid, then try to make *this* into a direct
insult to you? It is to laugh.
>>They fight quite hard to keep the level of discourse on the newsgroup
>>higher than the average, something I find quite refreshing in the genral
>>morass of Usenet.
>
>Insults are not on a higher level than smiley faces. They're on a lower
>level.
Nope. A well-written insult is a pleasure to read, no matter whether you
are the recipient, the sender, or totally unrelated to the matter. A
smiley (which, I point out, I use in other newsgroups) is a shortcut.
Effective, yes. Gets the point across, yes. Still a shortcut, though.
A.f.u. denizens believe that there is still some value attached to the
well-written word, and prefer not to rely on shortcuts when the journey
itself can be much more rewarding.
sgf
In article <3224D9...@compuserve.com>,
Hugh Gibbons <1033...@compuserve.com> wrote:
>I don't like this explanation because it relies on fairly dubious
>assumptions.
>(That attractive men have genes that make them able to survive better.)
>
>The more conventional and more likely explanation is that females have
>orgasm to attract them to the act of sex, which results in procreation.
>Since women are intelligent, men would have a hard time persuading them
>to engage in sex, knowing the dangers of pregnancy, unless the women
>got immediate benefit.
Why do women, then, not orgasm every time? And why is orgasm reachable
on a far more reliable basis by masturbation, oral sex, direct
stimulation rather than by male penetration and ejaculation? Seems that if
the orgasm was the attractive bit, them women would spend far more time
masturbating and engaging in other sexual practices rather than straight
intercourse.
--Stephanie
(removing soc.singles from followups...)
sgf
In article <505u99$n...@news.third-wave.com>,
David Vanecek <dvan...@third-wave.com> wrote:
>Men *very commonly* in *many* societies at *all* levels of economic development
>live without significant relationships with women. There is no
>human relationship except sex that *requires* a woman. If perversion or
>celibacy is allowed, even that vanishes. There is a social necessity
>to support children; typically this is the responsibility of the men.
Um, cites, please? In all the reading I've done for my degree, in most
of the cultures, men almost always marry, or at least form long-term
pair-bonds with women. Even in societies that have no penalty for
illegitimacy (of which there are many).
>: to engage in sex, knowing the dangers of pregnancy, unless the women
>: got immediate benefit.
>
>Payment in cash or kind is the traditional non-orgasmic immediate benefit.
>Many prostitutes report almost no erotic pleasure in an act that
>nonetheless they indulge compulsively. Many Christian wives report
>the same absence of pleasure, yet are famous for their fecundity.
Yep. In Marjorie Shostak's _Nisa_, Nisa (a hunter/gatherer woman)
explains why she has many lovers in other tribes. She says it is so that
when you go to another tribe to visit, this man will give you meat. If
you go to yet another tribe, you lover there will give you beads. And so
on. She enjoys the sex, but when asked why so many lovers, it is the
economic gain she is after. (This does not mean she does not love or at
least feel strongly about her lovers. She is very explicit that she
feels strong emotions for them.)
>It also depends on his wife's behavior. It depends on the social consequences
>of adultery. If the female is protected by law, a husband or a family,
>the adulterer may find himself incapable of any future behavior of any
>kind except in the afterlife.
Human wiliness and cunning as well as the strong pull of sex and love
ensures that a certain measure of adultery happens in all societies,
regardless of the consequences. (Helen Fisher, _The Anatomy of Love_)
>A gene with high survival value means a gene that reproduces itself
>better, and produces an adult more likely to reproduce. An organism is
>a gene's method of making more genes like itself. A society is a gene's
>method of setting rules and establishing conditions for its survival.
>
>The goal of every individual in a species is to insure the survival of
>his or her OWN genes, i.e. children. When we speak of 'survival of the
>fittest' we often forget what 'fittest' means: it means 'most able to
>reproduce successfully.' And NOTHING else.
>
>Women marry for money, abstracted into 'support.' Men marry to
>guarantee the paternity of their wives' children. If there are other
>ways than paternal support to raise a child, bastardry will rise in
>proportion. If the primary purpose of marriage be to raise children,
>marriage will decline in the face of alternatives.
Explain societies in which illegitimacy has no consequences and yet
people still marry (i.e., most hunting and gathering societies). *One*
of the primary purposes of the institution is to raise children. Another
primary purpose includes establishing ties with neighboring groups, in
other words, politics.
>A woman has no motive for avoiding adultery unless it endangers the
>support of her offspring. Since a woman is biologically conditioned
>to copulate almost without vacation from menarch to menopause, even
>during pregnancy and suckling, some selection process needs to be
>in place. In the past, this was support by a mate or family, since
>a woman with children cannot survive by her own means in most economies.
>BUT If society will support her in producing bastards, she has no reason
>to marry, a goal central to feminist politics in all ages. A man has no
Again, "bastardy" is a *cultural* *construct*, to be found in more
complex societies (i.e., more complex than bands and tribes). Many
societies value children because they are children. Why do you place a
value judgement on women being able to support themselves and their
children? Illigitimacy is not a *cause*, it is a *symptom*.
>taxpayer), or rewarded in some way, say through subsidized access to
>prostitutes (welfare). It is not an accident that the silly, daft
>phrase "It takes a village to raise a child" is commonly on the lips
>of the parents of bastards. "It takes a village to raise a bastard" is
>still inaccurate, but closer to the truth: "It takes a cuckold to
Children being raised by only their parents is a recent (i.e., last couple
of thousand years) invention. In the social systems humans lived in for
a million years or more, a woman produces a child, takes the child with
her when she gathers until it is partially weaned and she can no longer
carry it. At that point, the child stays behind in the tribal village
and is watched over by older children and men and women who are older and
nolonger go out hunting and gathering. The extended family was, for most
of human existence, a basic unit of child-rearing. I don't think it is
any coincidence that humans in modern welfare states no longer live in
extended families, and rely on the state as a surrogate family.
>The welfare system is an etherealization of prostitution: a female is
>apportioned support (from virtual cuckolds) on contract, proportional
>to the number of her bastards. Support being guaranteed her, she may
>then disregard the paternity of the bastards. Strictly speaking,
>welfare is a medial form, between the piece-work of prostitution and
>the long-term contract of marriage. It may be properly called
>"socialized cuckoldry." It is a form of paternity insurance for
>adulters, funded by cuckolds.
True or not: women who are married recieve less in welfare benefits than
unmarried women, because it is assumed their husbands are contributing to
their support. If a woman with kids will recieve *in total* more money
without a husband (from welfare) than she will with welfare and a
husband's income, then it makes economic sense (in the short term, at
least, and to her, not society as a whole) not to marry.
Even if that factoid isn't always true (I have no cites or anything; it's
just dredged from my memory), there is an alternate explanation for some
of the long-term-nonbeneficial behavior that goes on in the welfare
state: the continued, heavy use of alcohol. Children born to mothers
who consume alcohol during their pregnancies have been shown to not be
able to calculate long-term costs and benefits. A woman who was born to
a mother that drank while pregnant may not be *able* to forsee that
having another child to bring in more welfare benfits will *not* produce
more money in the long run. (_The Broken Cord_, Michael Dorris, a Lakota
[if I recall correctly] who adopted Adam, a child with Fetal Alcohol
Syndrome, and wrote this book about Adam, FAS, Fetal Alcohol Effect
[milder version of the syndrome] and Native Americans.) And if *she*
drinks while pregnant, then the problem is passed down through the
generations.
>We should meditate on the processes of natural selection that produced
>in us a species with the notion of paternity. We may contrast
>ourselves with the chimpanzee, which practices bastardry and is in
>danger of extinction. We are not unique; cats (domestic and others)
The impending extinction of the chimpanzee has nothing to do with bearing
young out of committed pair-bond relationships, and has everything to do
with their shrinking habitats.
(Hey, they lasted four million years practicing bastardry! What a strong
maladaptive force that must be!)
>Toleration of bastards is a consequence of men's poor sense of smell.
>If paternity could be judged by smell, there would be no bastards and
>no cuckolds. Successful adultery would be, like suicide, a
>once-in-a-lifetime event. Curiously, paternity can now be "smelled"
>with laboratory instruments. Advocates of bastardry might profit from
>the contemplation of future social evolution.
Illegitimacy has been happening in the human race for millions of years.
Somehow I don't think it's going to spell the downfall of the human
race. Social consequences that correlate with the occurence of
illigitimacy on a large scale in societeis with a particular structure
may happen to assist in the downfall of that particular society, but the
human race as a whole is not threatened.
--Stephanie
Matt Beckwith
all...@schools.minedu.govt.nz (Steve Caskey) wrote:
>In Article <50d71e$s...@jaxnet.southeast.net>
>Matt Beckwith <beck...@jaxnet.com> writes:
>>jjoh...@asrr.arsusda.gov (Judy Johnson) wrote:
>>>Matt Beckwith <beck...@jaxnet.com> wrote:
>>>>I stand corrected. I was thinking a cuckold was the promiscuous man.
>>>>It's rather the husband whose wife commits adultery. Anybody know >>>>the
>>>>etymology of this word? Thanks to those who so politely corrected >>>>me.
>>>
>>>Um...did you *read* my post?
>>>
>>>Judy "straight from the dictionary" Johnson
>>
>>This "Um..." is insulting. It's like the currently popular adolescent
>>expression, "Hello-o-o!" as if to say, "Is anybody home?" I suppose it
>>makes you feel superior (or less inferior) to think that someone might
>>not be as smart as you are.
>
>You still didn't answer her question.
>
>She answered yours. Politely, if my memory serves me correctly. Hell, >I
>don't need to rely on anything as flakey as that, thanks to AltaVista...
>
>== begin blast from the past ==
>{This is Matt}
>>Wow, somebody actually answered a post of mine with something other >>than
>>hostility. I think this is going to be a good day!
>
>
>{This is Judy}
>Well, I hope this isn't taken as being hostile, but I'd like to
>politely point out that you've got your cuckold on the wrong foot.
>
>From my American Heritage dictionary:
>
>[begin quote]
>
>
>verb, transitive; cuckolded, cuckolding, cuckolds; To make a cuckold
>of.
>
>[Middle English cokewald, from Anglo-Norman *cucuald, from cucu, the
>cuckoo, from Vulgar Latin *cuccúlus, from Latin cucúlus.]
>
>Word History: In our era of more relaxed sexual mores, the allusion to
>the cuckoo on which the word cuckold is based may be little
>appreciated. The female of some Old World cuckoos lays its eggs in the
>nests of other birds, leaving them to be cared for by the resident
>nesters. This parasitic tendency has given the female bird a
>figurative reputation for unfaithfulness as well. Hence in Old French
>we find the word cucuault, composed of cocu, "cuckoo, cuckold," and
>the pejorative suffix -ald and used to designate a husband whose wife
>has wandered afield like the female cuckoo. An earlier assumed form of
>the Old French word was borrowed into Middle English by way of
>Anglo-Norman. Middle English cokewold, the ancestor of Modern English
>cuckold, is first recorded in a work written around 1250.
>
>[end quote]
>
>So if the attractive man is not married to the woman, he is not the
>cuckold, because that's in the husband's job description.
>
>So if you find the "Um..." insulting, you need to sit down for a bit >with a
>stiff drink and a good book. You know, get away from Usenet for a wee
>while, rediscover a life, that sort of thing. Your perceptions are
>becoming warped.
>
>Or you deserved it.
No one deserves to have his feelings hurt.
There were three posts correcting my use of the word "cuckold". The
first one I read but misunderstood. The second, I finally understood.
So I thanked them both. The one you quoted above I never saw. (I notice
that I miss some posts, perhaps because the Netscape newsreader will mark
posts read which were never displayed, if they were retrieved by your
site between the time that you displayed the threads and the time you
finished reading them.)
You (and some others in this group) seem to think it's okay to hurt
people's feelings, that there are certain things those other people can
do (such as posting without reading the FAQ) which makes them fair game
for maliciousness and hostility. I was raised a bit differently. I
don't think hurtfulness is okay in any circumstance.
There is an insult implied in this practice (common on Usenet) of
starting a post with "Um..." In my last post I was drawing attention to
that insult, for any who are interested. If you don't agree that it's
insulting, that's fine. We don't have to agree on everything. It's just
my opinion.
By the way, Judy, thanks for the information about the word "cuckold".
Have you guys read the post of that guy (I think his name may have been
David) recently on this topic, the long post that talks about how our
society has taken on the cuckold role? That was possibly the most
interesting and heavy-duty post I've ever read on Usenet. I'm still
reeling from that one.
Lars Eighner
In our last episode <50fkqs$4...@hermes.cair.du.edu>,
Broadcast on alt.folklore.urban,sci.anthropology
The lovely and talented sfo...@odin.cair.du.edu (sgf) wrote:
>Um, cites, please? In all the reading I've done for my degree, in most
>of the cultures, men almost always marry, or at least form long-term
>pair-bonds with women. Even in societies that have no penalty for
>illegitimacy (of which there are many).
This is misleading.
In societies in which marriage is universal, marriage is purely a
property arrangement. Romance, if it happens, is expected to occur in
the bush. That people are put the yoke together doesn't mean
they are forming "long-term pair-bonds."
Yes, I know, filtering the facts through the "they lived happily
ever after" fairy-tale and the myth of the "noble savage"
does present a pretty to picture to some. But it just isn't true.
--
=Lars Eighner=4103 Ave D (512)459-6693==_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
= eig...@io.com =Austin TX 78751-4617_/ alt.books.lars-eighner _/
= http://www.io.com/~eighner/ _/ now at better ISPs everywhere _/
="Yes, Lizbeth is fine."==========_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
mcla...@ozemail.com.au
No articles in this article can be accessed so lets get rid of it - or
else why is it still here? - Philip.
Bryant
In article <Et5KyAwZ...@io.com>, Lars Eighner <eig...@io.com> wrote:
>In societies in which marriage is universal, marriage is purely a
>property arrangement. Romance, if it happens, is expected to occur in
>the bush. That people are put the yoke together doesn't mean
>they are forming "long-term pair-bonds."
Um, so if marriages don't represent arrangements of sexual exclusivity,
why are trysts performed "in the bush" ??
What happens in the cultures you have in mind when a husband finds out
about the trysts? What cultures, in fact, are you describing?
>=Lars Eighner=4103 Ave D (512)459-6693==_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
Bryant
Lars Eighner
In our last episode <50hbdp$1e...@argo.unm.edu>,
Broadcast on alt.folklore.urban,sci.anthropology
The lovely and talented myc...@unm.edu (Bryant) wrote:
>In article <Et5KyAwZ...@io.com>, Lars Eighner <eig...@io.com> wrote:
>>In societies in which marriage is universal, marriage is purely a
>>property arrangement. Romance, if it happens, is expected to occur in
>>the bush. That people are put the yoke together doesn't mean
>>they are forming "long-term pair-bonds."
>
>Um, so if marriages don't represent arrangements of sexual exclusivity,
>why are trysts performed "in the bush" ??
I did not mean particularly clandestined. Of course everyone in a
small village knows what is going on.
>
>What happens in the cultures you have in mind when a husband finds out
>about the trysts? What cultures, in fact, are you describing?
He is delighted, especially if there is some prospect of offspring.
The biological father's family will almost certainly attempt to
ransom the child. Most of these societies are 1)chronically
underpopulated and 2) dependent upon a very labor-intensive
economy. The husband gets to keep the child or he gets the offerings
of the biological father's family. In either case, he will be
wealthier and the biological father's family will be poorer.
I say "he," but of course in a number of societies the husband
may be a woman. When her wife has children no one is especially
surprised, just as no one is especially surprise when the
household of an impotent man increases.
That you pose this question as you do shows that you have
not yet learned to remove the most salient of your cultural
biases when you read anthropological literature. Perhaps
you best leave it alone until you know what you are doing.
--
=Lars Eighner=4103 Ave D (512)459-6693==_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
Bryant
In article <LwFLyAwZ...@io.com>, Lars Eighner <eig...@io.com> wrote:
>The lovely and talented myc...@unm.edu (Bryant) wrote:
>>What happens in the cultures you have in mind when a husband finds out
>>about the trysts? What cultures, in fact, are you describing?
>
I have learned of only one culture in which women could play the
role of husbands (Sioux, I recall). What are the others?
>That you pose this question as you do shows that you have
>not yet learned to remove the most salient of your cultural
>biases when you read anthropological literature. Perhaps
>you best leave it alone until you know what you are doing.
That I pose the question shows that I am not familiar with
the cultures you seem to be discussing. Name them, please.
Asking for references or the names of the cultures you're thinking of should
not be taken as some kind of insult. Clarification helps the rest of us
understand your points. Since you appear to have thought my request for
information a challenge of some sort, I forgive your arrogant reply.
Cheers, Bryant
Bryant
culture described by Lars...]
Lars replied:
>He is delighted, especially if there is some prospect of offspring.
>The biological father's family will almost certainly attempt to
>ransom the child. Most of these societies are 1)chronically
>underpopulated and 2) dependent upon a very labor-intensive
>economy. The husband gets to keep the child or he gets the offerings
>of the biological father's family. In either case, he will be
>wealthier and the biological father's family will be poorer.
1. You fail to demonstrate that the emotion of jealousy is absent in this
culture, whatever culture(s) it/they are/may be. Only that men will,
when hard up for resources, pimp their wives and ransom other fellows' sons.
If real, this is, however, a nice potential example of how emotion can be
suppressed. 'Very human ability.
The ransom bit is strange, though; how do the families of the extra-pair
male copulator know the kid is theirs, and not the husbands??
(Again, with feeling: This request for information is not meant as an
insult or challenge. It is just a request for information! Honestly.)
>=Lars Eighner
Bryant
tara nikole armijo-prewitt
>>What happens in the cultures you have in mind when a husband finds out
>>about the trysts? What cultures, in fact, are you describing?
>
>The biological father's family will almost certainly attempt to
This sounds like cool stuff. Can you suggest a few books or articles I
could get to read up on these societies?
Thank you.
Tara Armijo-Prewitt
eig...@io.com
In our last episode <50ht97$35...@argo.unm.edu>,
Broadcast on alt.folklore.urban,sci.anthropology
The lovely and talented myc...@unm.edu (Bryant) wrote:
>In article <LwFLyAwZ...@io.com>, Lars Eighner <eig...@io.com> wrote:
>>[bryant asked how husbands react to their wives' infidelity in an unnamed
>culture described by Lars...]
>
>Lars replied:
>>He is delighted, especially if there is some prospect of offspring.
>>The biological father's family will almost certainly attempt to
>>ransom the child. Most of these societies are 1)chronically
>>underpopulated and 2) dependent upon a very labor-intensive
>>economy. The husband gets to keep the child or he gets the offerings
>>of the biological father's family. In either case, he will be
>>wealthier and the biological father's family will be poorer.
>
>1. You fail to demonstrate that the emotion of jealousy is absent in this
>culture, whatever culture(s) it/they are/may be. Only that men will,
>when hard up for resources, pimp their wives and ransom other fellows' sons.
Of course men are jealous, but of their lovers, not their wives.
Being cuckolded is a bad thing only if children are viewed in the
contemporary urban light, as burdens. Where children are assets, why
should anyone object if some other fellow wants to provide him with
more assets? You fly into a towering rage if you discover someone
has deposited $10,000 in your account?
All of your arguments seem based on this modern perspective of
the woman finding some steady, stick-in-the-mud to marry who
will support the children she has by the hot young stud.
While this may well be an accurate description of heterosexuality
in the American suburb, its universal applicability is highly
dubious.
Where children are not merely progeny, but are very real economic
assets -- where there is chronic underpopulation and complete
dependence on labor for economic production -- it is more the
case that women bestow their procreative potential on the
steady, sticks-in-the-mud and their lineages and give the
good time Charlie's no more or less than what they bargained
for: a good time. After all, they don't know what genes are:
they do know a son is a source of labor and a daughter will
bring a nice bride-price. Charlie's genes may get a boost,
but Charlie is poorer not getting to be pater to his children.
Charlie does have some hot dates, and after all, that is
what he is interested in.
What is it that is bought with the bride-wealth? It is not
sexual services. It is not the woman herself. It is the
right to her procreative potential. Dudly Dull's lineage
will make extreme sacrifices -- they will all go in to hock --
to raise bride-wealth so Dudly can get a wife. They don't
do it because they think it will clear up Dudly's skin
condition. They don't do it out of charity. They don't
do it because they get tired of hearing Dudly whine about
not having a date on Saturday night. They do it so they can
get to call Dudly's wife's children "one of us." If she
is already pregnant, if she already will bring to the
marriage a couple of kids, the price may be very steep indeed.
They aren't worried whether Dudly's genes will survive for
twelve generations. They need help in the fields now and
this is the only way they can get it -- not now, but in
seven or eight years. This is not to mention those societies
in which the women do all the work and the wife will be
an immediate pay off -- those societies in which the men do
essentially nothing but drink beer and talk about cattle --
you know, societies like in East Africa and Texas.
Someone has to raise the millet to make the beer.
The idea that the woman will get this good-providing Dudly
Dull to be her husband does pretty much overlook the fact
that for most women in most societies in most of history
(and one can speculate -- most of prehistory) women chop
the wood, haul the water, grow the millet (sometimes the
men will exert themselves to take charge of brewing the
beer once the millet has been threshed), gather the fruits
and nuts, and so forth. Where men hunt, their sometime
bounty is not the staple that the group survives on.
Oh, okay, the men will defend the women from the wild animals
and the nasty rapists -- which is what all of the
neighboring peoples are. But wait a minute -- if she is
selecting a warrior to protect her, who looks more like
a warrior, who has the Conanesque qualities she desires?
Is it Dudly Dull? Or is it Goodtime Charlie?
>
>If real, this is, however, a nice potential example of how emotion can be
>suppressed. 'Very human ability.
As above, of course, people are jealous of their romantic lovers.
There certainly is no question of any human emotion being suppressed.
The idea that husband and wife are to be expected to have a
romantic interest in each other is a very recent occurrence.
Does the word "ethnocentrism" mean anything to you?
Your question is based on the entirely local assumption that
husband and wife will "love" each other, in your entirely
local definition of "love." So if some husband is not
jealous of his wife, he obviously is some bizarre alien being
who has suppressed normal human emotions. Maybe he is
Mr. Spock or maybe he is some ignorant savage, because of
course the only truly human pattern of human relations is
the familiar one that prevails locally -- you know, among
people like us.
But their lovers are the same as their spouses only coincidentally.
Marriage is too serious a business to leave to something
so fickle as romantic love. It is a business. It is the only
business. The homestead is not just where people eat and sleep
and watch The Simpsons. It is the factory, the school, the
hospital, the old folks homes, the data archives, the storehouse,
the bank, etc., etc.
The whole lineage will have to be
involved in raising the bride-price. Naturally they want some
input into this investment. They take the precaution in many
cases of arranging the marriage -- sometimes before the parties
to it are born.
The very idea that romantic love should be a basis for marriage
is an extremely recent arrival. Sure, it is a sort of plausible
idea in an urban-industrial situation. But it doesn't work very
well. The correlation between divorce rates and belief in
romantic marriage is remarkably strong.
>The ransom bit is strange, though; how do the families of the extra-pair
>male copulator know the kid is theirs, and not the husbands??
Because these societies are not equipped with No-Tel Motels.
Everyone, including the husband, knows who is seeing whom.
Of course they don't know for sure, no more than every women
is always sure herself who the father of her child is. It
doesn't matter. If they are successful in ransoming the child,
it is theirs. That is what counts. That one of their guys
was keeping company with her is the basis of their suit.
But if they sue, the actual paternity of the child is immaterial.
Not all of these groups have a perfect understanding of the
facts of human reproduction anyway. Where the seed is thought
to be entirely of the female and the male part a matter of
cultivation, it is not a question of the child being of either
of the males, but that our guy has been cultivating this other
guy's field and we have to see if we can salvage something of
the situation by buying the crop.
>
>(Again, with feeling: This request for information is not meant as an
>insult or challenge. It is just a request for information! Honestly.)
This stuff is so basic -- my freshman texts are long gone and
that is where these citations are. I can find the citation for
how many spears an Azande might expect to pay as bride-wealth for
his male wife. But as for what bride-wealth is -- who ever expects
to be asked to document that?
At any rate I am typed out for the day. I'll see if there isn't
something around the house that will fit the bill. What text
do they use for the kinship and marriage course at unm, anyway?
--
=Lars Eighner=4103 Ave D (512)459-6693==_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
= eig...@io.com =Austin TX 78751-4617_/ alt.books.lars-eighner _/
= http://www.io.com/~eighner/ _/ now at better ISPs everywhere _/
="Yes, Lizbeth is fine."==========_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
This article was posted to Usenet via the Posting Service at Deja News:
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eig...@io.com
In our last episode <50htqu$t...@argo.unm.edu>,
Broadcast on alt.folklore.urban,sci.anthropology
The lovely and talented dol...@unm.edu (tara nikole armijo-prewitt) wrote:
>In article <LwFLyAwZ...@io.com>, Lars Eighner <eig...@io.com> wrote:
>>><myc...@unm.edu> wrote:
>>>What happens in the cultures you have in mind when a husband finds out
>>>about the trysts? What cultures, in fact, are you describing?
>>
>>He is delighted, especially if there is some prospect of offspring.
>>The biological father's family will almost certainly attempt to
>>ransom the child. [snip]
>
>This sounds like cool stuff. Can you suggest a few books or articles I
>could get to read up on these societies?
You could start with whatever text they use for the kinship and marriage
course at unm. Here are few more basics. I don't endorse them
all in every detail. But for opening yourself to some understanding
of how it is possible that other people have different ways of
organizing themselves, these should give you a start:
(LC=Library of Congress call number; DD=Dewey Decimal call
number; ISBN=International Standard Book Number.)
Colson, Elizabeth (1917- ). Marriage and Family among
the Plateau Tonga of Northern Rhodesia.
(Manchester: 1958).
Driberg, J.M. The Lango: A Nilotic Tribe of Uganda
(London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1923) DD:572.967.615
D831L.
Eighner, Lars (1948- ). Gay Cosmos. (New York: Hard Candy, 1986)
ISBN:156333236.
Evans-Pritchard, Edward Evan (1902-1973) The Azande:
History and Political Institutions (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1971) xviii, 444 p., 6 plates;
illus., geneal. tables, maps, ports. 23 cm.
Bibliography: p. (436)-439 LC:DT 132 E78
Evans-Pritchard, Edward Evan (1902-1973), editor. Man
and Woman Among the Azande. (London: Faber and
Faber, 1974) 197 p. illus. 23 cm. Bibliography:
p. 14-15. LC:DT 132 E79
Evans-Pritchard, Edward Evan (1902-1973) Witchcraft,
Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande. Abridged with
an Intro. by Eva Gillies (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1976) xxix, 265 p.; 22 cm. Includes index.
Bibliography: p. (255)-257. LC:DT 133 A95 E92
1976.
Ford, Clellan Stearns (1909- ) and Frank Ambrose Beach
(1911- ). Patterns of Sexual Behavior With a
foreword by Robert Latou Dickinson (New York:
Harper, 1951) viii, 307 p. map, diagrs. 25 cm.
Bibliography: p. 293-300. LC:GN 484.3 F67
Freud, Sigmund (1856-1939). Three Essays on the Theory
of Sexuality. (New York: Basic Books, 1975,
c1962) xli, 130 p.; 21 cm. LC:HQ 21 F8 1975.
Uniform title: Drei Abhandlungen zur
Sexualtheorie. English. (with an introductory
essay by Steven Marcus; translated and newly
edited by James Strachey).
Gagnon, John H. and William Simon, editors. Sexual
Deviance, (New York: Harper & Row, 1967). pbk.
Gamble, David P. The Wolof of Senegambia, Together with
Notes on the Lebu and the Serer. (London:
International African Institute, 1967, c1957)
Includes bibliographies. LC:DT 549 G3 1967.
Herdt, Gilbert H. (1949- ). Guardians of the Flutes:
Idioms of Masculinity (New York: McGraw-Hill,
c1981) xviii, 382 p.: map (on lining papers); 24
cm. Includes indexes. Bibliography: p. 355-368.
LC:GN 671 N5 H44.
July, Robert William. A History of the African People,
3d ed. (New York: Scribner, c1980) xxii, 794 p.:
ill.; 24 cm. Includes bibliographies and index.
DD:960 J949H. ISBN:0684162911 &:0684164116 (pbk.)
Malinowski, Bronislaw (1884-1942) The Sexual Life of
Savages in North-Western Melanesia: An
Ethnographic Account of Courtship, Marriage, and
Family Life Among the Natives of the Trobriand
Islands, British New Guinea with a preface by
Havelock Ellis, 3d ed., (London: G. Routledge &
Sons, Ltd., 1932) l, 505, (1) p. front., illus.
(plan) plates, maps. 26 cm. LC:HQ 504 M36 1932A.
Robert Mond expedition to New Guinea, 1914-1918.
(With a grain of salt.)
Maquet, Jacques Jerome Pierre (1919- ). The Premise of
Inequality in Ruanda: A Study of Political
Relations in a Central African Kingdom. (London:
Published for the International African Institute
by the Oxford University Press, 1961) vii, 199 p.
ill., ports., maps; 23 cm. Bibliography: p.
(186)-194. LC:GN 654 M3.
Oboler, Regina Smith, (1947- ) Women, Power, and
Economic Change: The Nandi of Kenya. (Stanford,
Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1985) xiv, 348
p.: ill.; 23 cm. Includes index. Bibliography:
p. (329)-337. LC:DT 433.545 N34 O26 1985
ISBN:0804712247.
Radcliffe-Brown, Alfred Reginald (1881-1955) and Daryll
Forde, editors. African Systems of Kinship and
Marriage (London: Published for the International
African Institute by the Oxford University Press,
1960) viii, 399 p. illus., maps. 22 cm.
Bibliographical footnotes. DD:392 R116A.
Schapera, Isaac (1905- ). The Khoisan Peoples of South
Africa: Bushmen and Hottentots. (London: R. & K.
Paul, 1960) xi, 450 p. 26 plates, 2 fold, maps. 23
cm. Bibliographical footnotes. Bibliography: p.
439-445. DD:572.968 SCH16K.
[The following 3 are easy reading but dubious scholarship]
Turnbull, Colin M. The Forest People. (Garden City,
N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1962, c1961). xii, 305 p.,
(7) leaves of plates : ill., maps ; 19 cm. LC:DT
650 B36 T87 1962.
Turnbull, Colin M. The Lonely African. (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1968, c1962). LC:DT 647 T8
1968. 251 p. illus. 22 cm.
Turnbull, Colin M. The Mountain People. (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1972) 309 p. photos. 22 cm.
LC:DT 434 U2 T82. ISBN:671213202.
Ware, Caroline Farrar (1899- ). Greenwich Village
1920-1930. DD:309.97471 W22G 1965.
Williams, F.E., Papuans of the Trans-Fly. (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1936).
[The following is especially good.]
Wilson, Monica Hunter. Good Company: A Study of
Nyakyusa Age-Villages. (Boston: Beacon Press,
1963) 278 p., (17) p. of plates: ill., maps; 21
cm. Includes index. Bibliography: p. (275)-276.
DD:572.9678 W695G. (=HRAF FN17 NGONDE 1:WILSON.)
eig...@io.com
Message 1 of news:
In our last episode <50hsqp$20...@argo.unm.edu>,
Broadcast on alt.folklore.urban,sci.anthropology
The lovely and talented myc...@unm.edu (Bryant) wrote:
>In article <LwFLyAwZ...@io.com>, Lars Eighner <eig...@io.com> wrote:
>>The lovely and talented myc...@unm.edu (Bryant) wrote:
>>>What happens in the cultures you have in mind when a husband finds out
>>>about the trysts? What cultures, in fact, are you describing?
>>
>>I say "he," but of course in a number of societies the husband
>>may be a woman. [...]
>
>I have learned of only one culture in which women could play the
>role of husbands (Sioux, I recall). What are the others?
Many of the Bantu-speaking peoples have these customs.
Female-female marriage was very widespread in sub-Saharan Africa.
>
>>That you pose this question as you do shows that you have
>>not yet learned to remove the most salient of your cultural
>>biases when you read anthropological literature. Perhaps
>>you best leave it alone until you know what you are doing.
>
>That I pose the question shows that I am not familiar with
>the cultures you seem to be discussing. Name them, please.
>
>Asking for references or the names of the cultures you're thinking of should
>not be taken as some kind of insult. Clarification helps the rest of us
>understand your points. Since you appear to have thought my request for
>information a challenge of some sort, I forgive your arrogant reply.
It was not that request, but the prejudicial way in which you
frame your questions. Your reputation has preceded you in any
event. Moreover, requesting information on matters that are
common knowledge and so widely discussed suggest
disingenuousness, since this is all pretty much Into to Cultural
Anthropology stuff--and I'm pretty sure most of it must be in
sections for non-majors too.
In the Americas same-sex marriage *USUALLY* occurs in the
context of one of the parties being differently gendered.
Whether this is an intermediate gender or a gender off of
the male-female axis is a matter of considerable controversy.
Blackwood has prefered the term "cross-gendered" female
and has identified the phenomenon in some 33 American groups.
In theory any cross-gender female may be a husband,
at least of a female wife. And actual occurrences of such
marriages are recorded for almost all of these groups,
since "being the husband of a woman" is the main way of
identifying cross-gendered females. Quite a few specific
observations and a number of societies not covered in Blackwood
can be found in Williams' chapter on Woman-Woman marriages.
In *GENERAL* the African pattern for female-female marriage
is very different in that women who are husbands are not
differently gendered. "Husband" and "father" (=pater)
are merely roles that women may adopt while being of the
same gender as their wifes and as of women who are wives of
men. The female husband is pater to the children of her
wife. Perhaps it would be best to begin with Oboler
(below) for an overview of the basic Bantu pattern of
female-female marriage.
Allen, Paula Gunn. "Lesbians in American Indian
Cultures," Conditions 7 (1981), pp. 67-87.
Bass-Hass, Rita. "The Lesbian Dyad," Journal of Sex
Research 9 (1968), pp. 108-126.
Dorsey, James O. "A Study of the Siouan Cults," Bureau
of American Ethnology Annual Report 11
(1889-1890): 378-467
Evans-Pritchard, Edward Evan. (1902-1973) Kinship and
Marriage Among the Nuer. (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1960) xi, 183 p. illus. 23 cm. DD:572.9624 EV16K.
Evans-Pritchard, Edward Evan. "Kinship and Local
Community Among the Nuer," in Radcliffe-Brown.
Gluckman, Max. "Kinship and Marriage among the Lozi of
Northern Rhodesia and the Zulu of Natal" in
Radcliffe-Brown.
Huntingford, George Wynn Brereton. The Nandi of Kenya:
Tribal Control in a Pastoral Society. With a
Foreword by Sir Claud Hollis (London: Routledge &
Paul, 1953) xiii, 169 p. illus., maps (part fold.)
23 cm. Bibliography: p. 159-160. DD:572.96762
H92N. (p. 19)
Oboler, Regina Smith (1947- ). "Is the Female Husband a
Man? Woman/Woman Marriage among the Nandi of
Kenya," Ethnology 19 (1980), pp. 69-88.
O'Brien, Denise. "Female Husbands in Southern Bantu
Societies," in Schlegel, Alice, editor.
Sexual Stratification: A
Cross-cultural View. (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1977) xix, 371 p.; 24 cm.
Includes bibliographies and indexes. LC:GN 479.7
S48.
Schapera, Isaac (1905- ) A Handbook of Tswana Law and
Custom. (London: 1938).
Uchendu, Victor Chikezie. The Igbo of Southeast
Nigeria. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
1965) xiii, 111 p. illus., map, port. 24 cm.
Includes bibliographies. DD:309.9669 UC4I
Of course male-male marriage (either very much more common
or one suspects, very much better reported) follows somewhat
different patterns, for there is only one clear-cut example
that is know in which males may become wifes while remaining
in the masculine gender. In Africa *GENERAL* they must adopt
the feminine gender to be wives (their husbands, of course,
are males in the masculine gender), where as in America
they must be differently gender (in general).
Mentioned above:
Blackwood, Evelyn. "Sexuality and Gender in Certain
Native American Tribes: The Case of Cross-Gender
Females," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and
Society 10 (1984), pp. 27-42.
Radcliffe-Brown, Alfred Reginald (1881-1955) and Daryll
Forde, editors. African Systems of Kinship and
Marriage (London: Published for the International
African Institute by the Oxford University Press,
1960) viii, 399 p. illus., maps. 22 cm.
Bibliographical footnotes. DD:392 R116A.
Williams, Walter L. (1948- ). The Spirit and the Flesh:
Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture.
(Boston: Beacon Press, c1986) xi, 344 p., (8) p.
of plates: ill.; 24 cm. Includes index.
Bibliography: p. 317-333. LC:E 98 S48 W55 1986.
ISBN: 0807046027.
Lars Eighner
In our last episode <50ht97$35...@argo.unm.edu>,
Broadcast on alt.folklore.urban,sci.anthropology
The lovely and talented myc...@unm.edu (Bryant) wrote:
>In article <LwFLyAwZ...@io.com>, Lars Eighner <eig...@io.com> wrote:
>>[bryant asked how husbands react to their wives' infidelity in an unnamed
>culture described by Lars...]
>
>Lars replied:
>>He is delighted, especially if there is some prospect of offspring.
>>The biological father's family will almost certainly attempt to
do they use for the kinship and marriage course at unm, anyway?
Lars Eighner
In our last episode <50htqu$t...@argo.unm.edu>,
Broadcast on alt.folklore.urban,sci.anthropology
The lovely and talented dol...@unm.edu (tara nikole armijo-prewitt) wrote:
>In article <LwFLyAwZ...@io.com>, Lars Eighner <eig...@io.com> wrote:
>>><myc...@unm.edu> wrote:
>>>What happens in the cultures you have in mind when a husband finds out
>>>about the trysts? What cultures, in fact, are you describing?
>>
>>He is delighted, especially if there is some prospect of offspring.
>>The biological father's family will almost certainly attempt to
Relations in a Central African Kingdom. (London:
Published for the International African Institute
by the Oxford University Press, 1961) vii, 199 p.
ill., ports., maps; 23 cm. Bibliography: p.
(186)-194. LC:GN 654 M3.
Oboler, Regina Smith, (1947- ) Women, Power, and
Economic Change: The Nandi of Kenya. (Stanford,
Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1985) xiv, 348
p.: ill.; 23 cm. Includes index. Bibliography:
p. (329)-337. LC:DT 433.545 N34 O26 1985
ISBN:0804712247.
Radcliffe-Brown, Alfred Reginald (1881-1955) and Daryll
Forde, editors. African Systems of Kinship and
Marriage (London: Published for the International
African Institute by the Oxford University Press,
1960) viii, 399 p. illus., maps. 22 cm.
Bibliographical footnotes. DD:392 R116A.
--
Derek Tearne
In article <50gbm5$3...@jaxnet.southeast.net>,
Matt Beckwith <beck...@jaxnet.com> wrote:
What, even if they are asking for it? Usually
>
>There were three posts correcting my use of the word "cuckold". The
>first one I read but misunderstood. The second, I finally understood.
>So I thanked them both.
What about the third?
Now you assume that the 'um... did you read my post' was intended as
a slur.
Consider for a moment that someone has spent probably half an hour
crafting a polite and informative answer to your post including the
derivation. They then discover later in the same thread that you
thank people for their polite response and ask if anyone knows the
etymology.
Remember that this person has spent a lot of time trying to help
you and yet you post this later in the same sub-tree.
Have you considered that this person has had their feelings hurt.
At best you have software so crummy that their efforts were wasted.
At worst you are deliberately insulting them by ignoring their post, or
implying that the derivation they supplied in a post you followed up
to, was incorrect.
I would say they have as much right and likelyhood of hurt feelings as
you.
In the circumstances 'Um... did you read my post?' is a reasonable and
polite response, giving you the opportunity to either say 'it didn't
turn up here' or 'thanks I've found it now'.
What did you want them to do, post the while lot again?
Would that be reasonable?
Remember in all this that just about everyone else reading the thread
is quite likely to have seen the response with the derivation and wouldn't
bother duplicating the post.
>You (and some others in this group) seem to think it's okay to hurt
>people's feelings, [...] I was raised a bit differently. I
>don't think hurtfulness is okay in any circumstance.
Nevertheless, I think you very likely offended the helpful person who
spent some valuable time posting the answer to your question politely
and succinctly. All they got in return is slammed by you.
I sincerely hope they don't get put off from contributing to the group in
the future.
>There is an insult implied in this practice (common on Usenet) of
>starting a post with "Um..."
Imagine someone makes a realy embarrasing statement or asks a stupid
question, such as 'where is my umbrella' while holding it, or 'all
[insert ethnic group] people are ...' while standing next to one.
Most people will shrug their shoulders and sheepishly - in an attempt
not to give too much offense - point out the placement of umbrella
etc.
Would you take offense at this?
If not why take offense on Usenet?
--
Derek Tearne. -- Ruapehu Eruption Information at http://url.co.nz/ruapehu.html
Some of the more environmentally aware dinosaurs were worried about the
consequences of an eruption at Ruapehu "If it goes off no one will be skiing
there this year" - they said.
Lars Eighner
In our last episode <50hsqp$20...@argo.unm.edu>,
Broadcast on alt.folklore.urban,sci.anthropology
The lovely and talented myc...@unm.edu (Bryant) wrote:
>In article <LwFLyAwZ...@io.com>, Lars Eighner <eig...@io.com> wrote:
>>The lovely and talented myc...@unm.edu (Bryant) wrote:
>>>What happens in the cultures you have in mind when a husband finds out
>>>about the trysts? What cultures, in fact, are you describing?
>>
Mentioned above:
Radcliffe-Brown, Alfred Reginald (1881-1955) and Daryll
Forde, editors. African Systems of Kinship and
Marriage (London: Published for the International
African Institute by the Oxford University Press,
1960) viii, 399 p. illus., maps. 22 cm.
Bibliographical footnotes. DD:392 R116A.
Williams, Walter L. (1948- ). The Spirit and the Flesh:
Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture.
(Boston: Beacon Press, c1986) xi, 344 p., (8) p.
of plates: ill.; 24 cm. Includes index.
Bibliography: p. 317-333. LC:E 98 S48 W55 1986.
ISBN: 0807046027.
Lars Eighner
In our last episode <50hsqp$20...@argo.unm.edu>,
Broadcast on alt.folklore.urban,sci.anthropology
The lovely and talented myc...@unm.edu (Bryant) wrote:
>In article <LwFLyAwZ...@io.com>, Lars Eighner <eig...@io.com> wrote:
>>The lovely and talented myc...@unm.edu (Bryant) wrote:
>>>What happens in the cultures you have in mind when a husband finds out
>>>about the trysts? What cultures, in fact, are you describing?
>>
>>I say "he," but of course in a number of societies the husband
>>may be a woman. [...]
>
>I have learned of only one culture in which women could play the
>role of husbands (Sioux, I recall). What are the others?
Many of the Bantu-speaking peoples have these customs.
Female-female marriage was very widespread in sub-Saharan Africa.
>
>That I pose the question shows that I am not familiar with
>the cultures you seem to be discussing. Name them, please.
>
>Asking for references or the names of the cultures you're thinking of should
>not be taken as some kind of insult. Clarification helps the rest of us
>understand your points. Since you appear to have thought my request for
>information a challenge of some sort, I forgive your arrogant reply.
It was not that request, but the prejudicial way in which you
frame your questions. Moreover, requesting information on matters that are
that is known in which males may become wifes while remaining
in the masculine gender. In Africa *GENERALLY* they must adopt
Steve Hutton
Lars Eighner (eig...@io.com) wrote:
: In our last episode <50hbdp$1e...@argo.unm.edu>,
: Broadcast on alt.folklore.urban,sci.anthropology
: The lovely and talented myc...@unm.edu (Bryant) wrote:
: >What happens in the cultures you have in mind when a husband finds out
: >about the trysts? What cultures, in fact, are you describing?
: He is delighted, especially if there is some prospect of offspring.
: The biological father's family will almost certainly attempt to
: ransom the child. Most of these societies are 1)chronically
: underpopulated and 2) dependent upon a very labor-intensive
: economy. The husband gets to keep the child or he gets the offerings
: of the biological father's family. In either case, he will be
: wealthier and the biological father's family will be poorer.
There are certainly cases where a man wants to be a father but can't
become one because of infertility, impotence, or lack of sexual interest
in women. (I'll leave it to others to decide whether any of these traits
are correlated with milk drinking.)
In ancient Rome, they had:
- legal penalties for being childless and benefits for having 3 or more
children
- a wide variety of sexual options
- writers who loved scandal
This combination gives us, in Juvenal's ninth satire, the lament of a male
prostitute whose peak-earning years are past:
You can hedge if you like, discount all the rest, but don't you
Think it worth something, Virro, that if I hadn't displayed
True dedication to duty, your wife would be virgin still?
... Often enough she'd be on the point of bolting
When I finally got her to bed, she'd have torn up her marriage-vows
And be leaving for good. ... There's many a household
Just on the point of break-up that's been saved by adultery.
... I sired you a son and a daughter: doesn't that mean
Anything to you at all? ... You've got
Something - from me - to shut up the gossip-mongers.
... But just think of the added benefits if I provide you with
Another child, and bring the score up to three!
The Sixteen Satires, Juvenal, translated by Peter Green, Penguin, 1974
--
Steve Hutton [speaking only for himself]