TEEN MOM'S OBVIOUSLY NOT READING THIS BLOG, Y'ALL. DOLLY, I'LL EXPLAIN TO YOU WHY IT'S MORE DIFFICULT FOR MALES TO REMAIN SEXUALLY MONOGAMOUS THAN IT IS FOR FEMALES AND WHY, FROM A FEMALE MIND, IT'S DIFFICULT TO FATHOM WHY A PERSON CAN'T REMAIN SEXUALLY MONOGAMOUS (FAITHFUL). FOR INSTANCE, YOUR FEMALE BRAIN REASONS "Why is it so hard for people to be faithful? I can do it. Why can't you?" Your Psychology And Physiology (e.g. Hormones) As A Female Make You More Inclined To Be Sexually Faithful. That's Why.
"HAREM MAKING COMES TO US NATURALLY. IT COMES TO US LIKE A GOD GIVEN GIFT." - HIRAM BINGHAM (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/156085085X/)
"Imma Window Shopper MADD At Him And He Don't N0 Y!...Imma Window Shopper!"
SUGA BUGA - Behind The Scenes
Because marriage is closely related to sex and mating, this is another area where evolutionary psychology has produced a large number of fascinating studies. Perhaps two of the most surprising findings of evolutionary psychology and biology (to be discussed in greater detail in this chapter) are about polygyny (marriage of one man to many women). First, despite the impression you might get from the history of Western civilization in the last millennium, humans are naturally polygynous, not monogamous, and as a result, all human societies (including the United States) are polygynous to various degrees. Second, contrary to what you might think, most women benefit from polygyny, while, conversely, most men benefit from monogamy.
...
First, let's get the terminology straight. As we discussed before, monogamy is the marriage of one man to one woman, polygyny is the marriage of one man to more than one woman, and polyandry is the marriage of one woman to more than one man. Polygamy, even though it is often used in common discourse as a synonym for polygyny, refers to both polygyny and polyandry...
A comprehensive survey of traditional societies in the world shows that 83.39 percent of them practice polygyny, 16.14 percent practice monogamy, and 0.47 percent practice polyandry. Almost all of the few polyandrous societies practice what anthropologists call fraternal polyandry, where a group of brothers share a wife. Non-fraternal polyandry, where a group of unrelated men share a wife, is virtually nonexistent in human society. Why is nonfraternal polyandry so rare?
As we discussed in chapter 2, paternity certainty is low enough in a monogamous marriage with only one man; the estimates of cuckoldry (where the man unknowingly raises another man's genetic child) in monogamous societies range from 13-20 percent in the United States, 10-14 percent in Mexico, and 9-17 percent in Germany. When multiple men are officially married to one woman, who is "supposed to" mate with all of them, the co-husbands have very little reason to believe that a given child of hers is genetically his, and will therefore not be very motivated to invest in it. If the children receive insufficient paternal investment, they will not survive long enough to become adults and continue the society. Nonfraternal polyandry therefore contains the seeds of its own extinction.
In contrast, fraternal polyandry, where the co-husbands are brothers, can survive as a marriage institution because even when a given husband is not the genetic father of a given child (sharing half of his genes), he is at least the genetic uncle (sharing a quarter of his genes). The child of a fraternal polyandrous marriage could never be completely genetically unrelated to any of the co-husbands (assuming, of course, that the wife has not mated with anyone outside of the polyandrous marriage), so all the co-husbands are motivated to invest in all the children.
"And All My Bitchez LOVE ME Even Though I'm Chubbie, A Fat Fly Nigga!" - Da Gunman
 "MAKE YOUR SISTER THINK I LOVE HER!" - SLEAZY E |
Polyandry (a marriage of one woman to many men) is very rare in human society...This means that almost all human societies practice either monogamy or polygyny, which is the reason why the term polygamy is often used synonymously with polygyny. Polygyny is the only form of polygamy widely practiced in human societies, and a vast majority of human societies practice polygyny. Even though those of us in Western industrial societies tend to think of monogamy as both natural and normal, and even though Judeo-Christian religious traditions tell us that monogamy is the only natural form of marriage, monogamous societies are a small minority throughout the world. Why is this?
This is because, contrary to the Judeo-Christian tradition, humans are naturally polygynous. By naturally, we mean that humans have been polygynous throughout most of their evolutionary history...Strict and socially imposed monogamy is a recent invention in human evolutionary history. Unlike physical artifacts, however, human practices (like the institution of marriage) do not leave fossil records. How, then, do we know that our ancestors practiced polygyny more than thousand years ago in the ancestral environment?
It turns out that the clear evidence of our ancestors' polygyny is embodied in each of us. Both among primate and nonprimate species, the species-typical degree of polygyny (how polygynous members of a given species are on average) highly correlates with the degree of sexual dimorphism in size (the extent to which males of a species are larger than females). The more polygynous the species, the greater the size disparity between the sexes. For example, among the completely monogamous gibbons, there is no sexual dimorphism in size; both by height and by weight males are about the same size as females. In contrast, among the extremely polygynous gorillas, males are 1.3 times as large by height and twice as large by weight as females.
On this scale, humans are somewhere in the middle, but closer to the gibbons' end than that of the gorillas. Typically, human males are 1.1 times as large by height and 1.2 times as large by weight as human females. This suggests that, throughout evolutionary history, humans have been mildly polygynous, not as polygynous as gorillas but not completely monogamous like gibbons either. This is how we know that humans are naturally polygamous.
However, this begs the question: Why does the degree of sexual dimorphism in size correlate with the degree of polygyny? There are two possible explanations of this correlation. The first, more established theory posits that males have become larger throughout evolutionary history...
The proponents of the first theory point out that relative to monogamy, polygyny creates greater fitness variance (the distance between the "winners" and the "losers" in the reproductive game) among males than among females by allowing a few males to monopolize all females in the group...The greater fitness variance among males creates greater pressure for men to compete with each other for mates. Under such sever physical competition, only big and tall males can emerge victorious and get mating opportunities, while small and short males are left out of the reproductive opportunities altogether. At the same time, among pair-bonding species like humans, where males and females stay together to raise their children, females prefer to mate with big and tall males who can provide better physical protection for themselves and for their children against predators and other males. Thus, through both competition among men and preference by women, only big and tall males can reproduce and pass on their "big and tall" genes to their sons, while most or all females of all sizes reproduce and pass on their full range of sizes to their daughters...Over many generations, males will get bigger and taller, while females will retain the same distributions of height and weight in each generation.
.jpg)
If humans are naturally polygynous, why, then, do many human societies in the world practice monogamy (even though a large majority still practice polygyny)? One theory suggests that it is because that is what women want. In any species for which the female makes a greater investment in children than does the male (including humans), sex and mating is a female choice. Sexual intercourse occurs if and when the female wants it; the male has very little choice (outside of forcible rape)...Humans are no exception. Monogamy emerges as the institution of marriage in the society when many or most women choose to marry monogamously, and polygyny similarly emerges as the institution of marriage when many or most women choose to marry polygynously.
What, then, would lead women to choose to marry monogamously or polygynously? One important determinant of the institution of marriage is the degree of resource inequality among men (the difference between the richest men and the poorest men). In societies with a high degree of resource inequality, where rich men are very much richer than poor men, women (and their children) are better off sharing the few wealthy men, because one-half, one-quarter, or even one-tenth of a wealthy man is still better than a whole of a poor man when resource inequality is extreme. Or, as George Bernard shaw puts its, "the maternal instinct leads a woman to prefer a tenth share in a first rate man to the exclusive possession of a third rate one."
In contrast, in societies with a low degree of resource inequality, where rich men are not much richer than poor men, women (and their children) are better off monopolizing a poor man than sharing a rich man, because one-half of a rich man will not be as good as a whole of a poor man. Thus, polygyny emerges as the institution of marriage in societies characterized by greater resource inequality among men, while monogamy emerges in societies characterized by lesser resource inequality. This theory is an extension to human society of what is known as the polygyny threshold model in biology, originally formulated to explain the mating systems of birds, thus once again illustrating the fundamental principle of evolutionary psychology that humans are no different from other species...
The reason most Western industrial societies are monogamous, despite the fact that humans are naturally polygynous, is that men in such societies tend to be more or less equal in their resources, compared to their ancestors in medieval times.The degree of inequality tends to increase as societies become more complex, from hunter-gatherer and pastoral societies, to horticultural and agrarian societies, and typically reaches its maximum in advance agrarian societies. Industrialization tends to decrease the level of inequality in society.
Individual decisions of women to marry monogamously rather than polygynously combine to produce social institution and norms. If many or most women choose to marry monogamously, then the society becomes monogamous. However, the true polygynous nature of humans is never too far beneath the surface, even in nominally monogamous societies such as ours.
ANSWER THE BELL!
Wealthy and powerful men throughout history, even while monogamously married, have always mated polygynously by having mistresses, concubines, and other extramarital affairs...And it is true even today. Whether married or not, wealthier men in the United States and Canada have more sex partners and have sex more frequently than less wealthy men. This is not because wealthy men can afford the services of prostitutes; wealthy men are no more likely to have sex with a prostitute than are poorer men. They do not have to. Wealthy men have more sex partners and have sex more frequently because women seek them out.
Most nominally monogamous societies also allow people to get a divorce, and in many societies, such as the United States, divorce is both very easy and very common. Liberal divorce laws allow men in these societies to practice serial polygyny (a man having multiple wives, not simultaneously but sequentially, through a series of divorce and remarriage). In the United States, the strongest predictor of remarriage after divorce is sex (male vs. female): men typically remarry, women typically do not...this is because men become more desirable with age to potential mates (thanks to the greater income and higher status that typically accompany age), while women become less desirable with age due to declining reproductive value and fertility. While some women do remarry after divorce and thus practice serial polyandry, a far greater number of men practice serial polygyny through divorce and remarriage. Contemporary Westerners who live in nominally monogamous societies that nonetheless permit divorce are therefore in effect polygynous; they practice serial polygyny.
When there is resource inequality among men (which there always is in every human society), most women benefit from polygyny. This is because under polygyny, women can share a wealthy man, whereas under monogamy, they are stuck with marrying a poorer man. If the resource inequality is large enough, then a fraction of a wealthy man is bigger and thus better than a whole of a poor man.
The only exceptions are extremely desirable women. These women can marry the most desirable, wealthiest men under any circumstance (polygyny or monogamy). Under monogamy, they can monopolize the wealthiest men, whereas under polygyny, they must share them with other, less desirable women. So the most desirable women benefit from monogamy, but all other women benefit from polygyny.
The situation is exactly opposite for men. Most men benefit from monogamy, because it guarantees that every man can find a wife. True, less desirable men can only marry less desirable women, but marrying a less desirable woman is much better than not marrying anyone at all.
Once again, extremely desirable men are the exceptions. Such men can have multiple wives under polygyny, whereas they are limited to only one wife (albeit an extremely desirable one) under monogamy. So extremely desirable men benefit from polygyny, but all other men benefit from monogamy.
When men in monogamous societies imagine what their life might be like under polygyny, they imagine themselves with multiple wives. So they may think they would be better off under polygyny. What they don't realize is that for most men, who are not extremely desirable, polygyny means no wife at all, or, if they are lucky, one wife who is much less desirable than one they could get under monogamy (because under polygyny, more desirable wives are taken by men who are more desirable than them). If they do the math, they will come to the right conclusion that most of them are better off under monogamy than under polygyny.
Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters: From Dating, Shopping, and Praying to Going to War and Becoming a Billionaire - Two Evolutionary Psychologists Explain Why We Do What We Do. Miller, Kanazawa, p. 80-83, 85-88, 89-93.
MAYBE POLYGYNY ISN'T SO GOOD FOR US AFTER ALL.
No comments:
Post a Comment