Started By
Message

re: Shortage of economically attractive partners for unmarried women to marry

Posted on 12/6/19 at 9:13 am to
Posted by crazy4lsu
Member since May 2005
37024 posts
Posted on 12/6/19 at 9:13 am to
quote:

I do think it is funny however that women bitch incessantly about the shite men "judge" them for when evaluating potential mates and then, act like all the things women judge men for are completely valid.



The rhetoric is odd. People will use insane justifications to rationalize their emotions, or how they feel, but there is a segment of women who seem to feel as though those justifications cannot be criticized. It generally starts with "I was young, I came out of an abusive relationship, I was on drugs" as though those things matter. It's an entirely solipsistic way of looking at the world, and one, I would argue, that is extremely common in women, and somewhat less common in men. I generally think, in terms of matters of love and marriage, society promotes a view that is specifically emotional, rather than biological or economic.

A biological view would admit that humans want to pair-bond but still possess the desire to be polyamorous, but it also falls short of understanding the economics of evolution. To put it another way, our biology and evolutionary course was determined in large part due to the social structure of during evolution, which was small clans not more than 200 members. Bipedalism made it more advantageous to have a more centrally situated birth canal with wider hips in females, and that also necessitated a longer penis in males (which is the longest of our near ancestors). The fact that we developed menstrual cycles rather than estrous cycles meant that a complicated system of signals of reciprocity developed.

That along with the relatively long fertile period meant that it was advantageous for the group as a whole if there was lots of mating, lots of searching for new mates (which is a good explanation for human violence), and the concealed parentage meant tighter group bonds. This necessitated the need for certain sexual developments, like larger testes than near primates, larger ejaculatory volume, and prolonged copulation. This need for both short-term and long-term interests led to what's called strategic pluralism, also known as a dual-mating strategy, which I think what is at the heart of the issue.

Judging gene quality in a robust environment, where nearly everyone who is living is the result of repeated selection of "high-quality" genes is extremely difficult. Judging reliability is somewhat easier, but still fairly difficult. Added to this that institutions developed after agriculture which promoted monogamy as the best method of preserving social harmony, has led to a sexual situation which is schizophrenic, and has arguably been schizophrenic since humans became sedentary.

The groups we have studied who still represent the hunter-gatherer way of life suggest that early tribal structure, absent of outside interaction, would have developed a culture to account for the biology. That sort of cultural accounting is near impossible in modern settings.

In that sense, I can't exactly blame the rhetoric, though I do find it grating. It's just difficult, if not impossible, to develop cultural norms that account for the multifaceted biological, economic, and emotional reasons for mate selection.

first pageprev pagePage 1 of 1Next pagelast page
refresh

Back to top
logoFollow TigerDroppings for LSU Football News
Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to get the latest updates on LSU Football and Recruiting.

FacebookTwitterInstagram