for 29 May 2000. Updated every WEEKDAY.
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The Rape of the Log I agree with a lot of what your article implies, but come on, you make a lot of assumptions that I don't know if we can necessarily back up. I'm not so sure that there is that much evidence that we are "hard wired" for monogamy. Granted that (until the past millennium or so) it is clearly the best possible survival strategy. However, one need look no further than evidence of human sexual dimorphism as well as testicle size, to deduce that promiscuity, and serious competition for mates, is not sooo far back in evolutionary history. Testicle size, as observed is apes, is directly correlative with promiscuity, we don't exactly fit in the faithful slot, far from it. Situations in which physical competition between males for mates suggest that a female might not always be paired with her "choice," suggesting that in early humans, big males may have impregnated whom they wanted. Which is rape, assuming that the females gave a damn. There is undeniably a biological incentive implicit in rape, just as in murder and many other human acts. I'll agree, though, that not only do those incentives not excuse these acts, but are probably not anywhere near the primary motivation behind them anymore. Evolution marks a change, and what we are is not necessarily a direct reflection of what we were. I'd expect that feminist theory on "why" is probably closer to explaining rape today than anything Thornhill has published. But it seems your article downplays the fact that there is a biologic argument behind the event and I don't know which evolutionary theorists you talk with, but the simple fact: there is (or was). One more thing, your contention that this is all "nonsense" centers around the idea that it takes huge investment to raise human children, and that two parents, with a male taking an active role, is essential. I'd argue that you fail to consider the diverse social structures that exist in primate societies. There is no reason to assume early humans didn't live in packs, where parenting duties were a collective task, shared among many, none of whom need be the father. Also, even allowing your vision of essentially monogamous society, it is feasible that the progeny being raised by a couple might be a product of rape. The existence of the act of rape does not negate these pair-bonds. For instance, in your duck example, that 25% of eggs not associated with the male could possibly have been the product of rape, the implications are transferable to our species. What you get is perpetuation of your genes with no investment, a biologically strong strategy (I'm not making a moral judgment here) Anyway, interesting subject, I just don't think the evidence presented really goes very far towards proving the article's thesis, of course, it's a large, contentious, and complex subject, so it goes at least as far as does this letter towards proving anything at all. Regards, Michael Brewer <mikebr@enol.com> Reasonable enough, since I wasn't there and neither were you. Sure, I'm making it all up ... but then, this is Suck.com, not a peer-reviewed journal. I did consider most of your points. I'm not in love with the entire testicle size = promiscuity correlation. As far as I'm concerned, if the logic does hold (and it's not unreasonable), all that proves is that our simian ancestors were moderately promiscuous and there hasn't been strong evolutionary pressure in the past 100,000 years for major reduction in testicular size. Evolution does tend to be pretty poor on backtracking, as I'm sure you know. It doesn't say much about human promiscuity. And yes, I carefully considered the "it takes a troop of monkeys to raise a child" theory and rejected it. For this assumption to work there have to be a fairly large number of female primates around with extra time on their paws ... and I don't believe it. I'm not saying it doesn't make perfectly good evolutionary sense for the uncles and the cousins and the sisters and the aunts to help raise a child; I'm just saying that given the incredibly long period of human helplessness and the enormous amount of attention and resources needed to raise a child, I don't think a tribe of proto-humans would contain enough such individuals who didn't have their own children to make it work. Don't forget, childless female primates are not always benevolent: Jane Goodall reports a murderous female chimp that came close all by herself to exterminating her entire troop. Agreed, the fathers might be working as a team. However, there are NO animal models for that at all, and it's easy to see why - the tendency to "cheat" is too great; a classic "prisoner's dilemma" model. I don't believe it makes biological sense. What I like about the theory is that it explains why no human society has ever, as far as we know, developed a working system for its sexuality. Our fiction is full of novels pointing out how idiotically badly we handle things, and every so often somebody comes up with a utopian scheme to fix it all, but they all founder. Given the amount of time we've had to work something out, and our total failure to do so, I kinda like the idea of original sin. Go and look at that Cranach painting, or — better — do a search for it. He painted several versions, all a little different. Just look at Eve, look at Adam, look at that neat serpent. Original sin, baby. Believe it. Thanks for the close attention. Nice to know somebody cares. Remind me to prove to you some time that beer is the basis for all human civilization. The Doctor  Subject: Close, But No Cigar "Freed of the need to perform the interplanetary refueling operation that these days constitutes heterosexual relations, gay men are strikingly more promiscuous than lesbians." While not disputed, this statement in no way supports Thornhill and Palmer's argument, as gay promiscuity has nothing to do with passing on genes. Unless you know something I don't know about where babies come from. Also, can you please cite supporting evidence that "child abuse is overwhelmingly a function of step-parents"? Not that I don't believe you, but this is quite a sweeping statement to be made without citation. Alexia Henke <alexia_henke@exchangeny. deutschinc.com> Nice to know that somebody is paying close attention. The differences in sexual frequency between male and female homosexuals were cited as proof that there really are genetic differences in sexual desire between men and women. (Old joke: What does a lesbian bring on a second date? A moving van.) So, if these differences, why not others? We were building a straw man, all the better to knock him down. (Although gay men and lesbians certainly do have children, just like breeders. Just ask dear Mr. Wilde's wife). However, in retrospect, there was a more amusing way to make the same point: Pornography is best understood as a form of genre entertainment, much like mysteries, gothics, science fiction, and westerns. Like all genres, it is characterized by (among other things) stereotypical plots and at least one obviously incorrect assumption about the universe. For pornography, that assumption is that men and women have similar sexual appetites. Consider the stock scene in a pornographic movie: a number of women are bathing and are being observed, unknown to them, by a number of men. The men are discovered but the women, rather than running away or defending themselves, greet the men with sexual enthusiasm. Not, you'll agree, a plausible scenario in the real world. However, were the sexes reversed, and the men were to be observed and then approached by eager women, one might expect - in the real world — enthusiasm from the men ... even though the trespass and the intrusion were identical. That pornography, by assuming equivalent behavior in men and women, becomes totally implausible is proof of ... well, it's proof of something. Thanks for writing. The Doctor I've always found it strange that no one writing on these interesting matters ever mentions why females, too, have an evolutionary interest in multiple partners. Why should a female put all her eggs in one basket (so to speak) in terms of a single partner's genetic material? What if that one male were sterile, or his genes were flawed or even just mediocre? Why not try to produce offspring with several males, thus increasing the chances that they would turn out well, survive, and reproduce? It really doesn't make sense to say that females have a biological interest in finding only a single mate. Kirstin Peterson <kirstin@villagemail.net> Good question. The short answer is that most biologists have been men. The longer answer is that while multiple mates do make sense, males will stay around only to protect their own offspring. Accordingly, while women may indeed have multiple mates, they've learned — or their genes have "learned" — not to talk about it. The useful analogy is with dolphins. Apparently, dolphins have never been known to harm humans. This is commonly taken as proof that dolphins are friendly; it's actually, of course, proof that dolphins are smart enough only to harm humans where nobody can see them. The Doctor Dude: "rape is an effective strategy for men to use to spread their genes" Not if it is done by the isolated lunatic. It is only effective in a more massive context, as in war. Ask the Serbian military. "Because 'selfish genes' want to spread themselves as widely as possible, men are driven to have as many children with as many women as possible and to destroy other males' children so as to give their genes a further head start." The conventional "Selfish Gene" argument greatly exaggerates this. There is a great difference in both substance and consequence between "to have as many children with as many women as possible and to destroy other males' children" and "to fuck whenever the opportunity presents itself, and let the women worry about the progeny." Many phenomena can be explained just as well by either approach. The killing of others' progeny is not widespread enough in either humans or animals to reach any definitive all-encompassing conclusion. "People evolved as couples. Males who fucked and ran didn't spread their genes, since their children didn't live long enough to reproduce...But those males whose genes survived were those who stayed to raise their children. " Unless they were raised by a village or other extended group. No particular gender-mix is required in the village. Try: "But those males whose genes survived were those who stayed to support their community." "All sorts and kinds of weird and wonderful things flowed out of this need to maintain pairs. Women lost their body and facial hair, developed all sorts of interesting secondary characteristics..." Many other species have features that are more varied in size or brightly colored than humans. We're actually a rather tame lot. "...women developed year-round sexual interest. (Nothing else has this.)"Human oestrus is cyclical, just as it is in other mammalian species, and it is common for women to have their sexual urges vary considerably during the cycle. "all human societies, revolves around keeping pairs together in order to raise children successfully" This is such an ex recto remark, it hardly merits mention. Many communities, even within the US, do not follow this pattern very closely. "...as any real evolutionary biologist will thus tell you, is that we really are programmed to be monogamous, and faithful, and pair off two by two ... just like swans and eagles and all those other birds that also need pair bonds..." If a person tells you that 1) he is an evolutionary biologist, and 2) we are more closely related to birds than to mammals, this should tip you off that he may actually be a cab driver or a guy who just kind of hangs out on the corner. "We're hardwired for monogamy, all right, but we're also hardwired for adultery, and we're hardwired to be good at both of them." More succinctly, we are hard wired to fuck as much as is convenient under the circumstances and as befits our individual temperament. The details are not that important. "Accordingly, there's a reason all human societies, even those that don't really wear clothes, have nudity taboos. We're stuck with them; if you can't send out pheromones you need some way to signal sexual availability and unavailability." Beaches in the western world are saturated with scantily-clad people of a broad cross-section of age, gender role, appearance, temperament, etc. An astoundingly low level of sex and rape occur in those contexts, for practical purposes nearly zero overall. Nudity is a non-issue. Women are quite adept at indicating unavailability, even as men are often only modestly able to read the signals. Body taboos in general may have a variety of health-related, esthetic, and sexual causes. It's not hard to see why the discussion didn't make it into Science, or the other reputable journals. This is more like the kind of entertaining drivel that can be found in Harper's. It's plain to see that everyone twists and contorts the data to fit whatever preconceived notion they wish to promote, with no more interest in logic, consistency with observation, or consideration of alternate explanations than the archetypical beastly male gives to its own or others' offspring. There's an old Mexican saying: "Lo que caiga es bueno." Roughly: "Whatever presents itself [as in 'sexual opportunity'] is good." That summarizes it far better. Heinz Hemken Kiva Genetics Mountain View, CA www.kivagen.com Dear Dude: I think you might profitably distinguish between the arguments I'm defending and those I'm attacking. But never mind.... Human beings are actually quite bimorphic. We're not at the top, by any means, but as a species we're in the top 10%, which is pretty good considering what a very young species Homo Sapiens Sapiens really is. More interestingly, the type of bimorphism we have is quite remarkable. Men are still pretty apelike; it's the women who have lost body hair, especially facial hair, have converted lactational glands into breasts, have minimized the correlation between ovulation and desire, and have generally changed in a way close to unique among primates and all in a way designed to attract males and to identify themselves as unique to a vision-oriented primate. Then again, I'm a heterosexual male, so maybe I'm biased. I can deal with that. The Doctor Dr, Having spent years studying Anthropology (both on my own and in university), I consider myself fairly knowledgeable regarding the various theories on human evolution. This said, I did want to present you with one alternative perspective on your main point that humans are "hard wired" for monogamy (with a strong helping of "adultery" - that's a good one!). While I agree that the impetus for this reasoning (the human infant's requirement for extended attention after gestation) is on the money, there is a widely circulated THEORY of human "societal" evolution to account for this need, while still allowing the ever predatory male half the freedom to roam. This view maintains that long ago human females essentially laid the groundwork for most of our modern societal rules by bonding together into strict reproductively active female groups. This would serve a myriad of purposes to its member sisters: friends and relatives to take care of young while foraging, protection from invading males (both in and outside of the species), not to mention a purposeful existence for those rare females who - for some reason or another - did not successfully reproduce. This theory also allows for the continuation of a separate "male clique" to develop. One which favored an individual strong and smart enough to overcome a large group of finicky females, bringing them tasty morsels of sustenance not available in the immediate vicinity of the group's normal range, physically overcoming the resistance of the older, larger and stronger female primary mothers (I believe in that way you are correct) to get a 'shot in' at the younger, reproductively more viable females. The archeological record indicates that somewhere around 250k years ago humans (presumably men, but women certainly used the same ingenious new cognitive abilities to create tools of their own) began to invent useful tools. The single most important (and most often overlooked) benefit to this development was our ability to sustain an ever increasing population. Before, infant mortality, famine, and predatory killings (by the other animals outnumbering, and out-toothing/clawing us) kept our population on the scary edge of extinction for millions of years of evolution (a situation all those other animals now face because of us and our tools). Well, jumping ahead a bit, this new, first wave of population explosion took the primate "troop" dynamic explained above and gave it a new home - literally. Groups of successful males, with even larger (numbered)groups of females formed what would become referred to as 'clans.' Now for the next few sentences I must admit that I'm stretching out the theory on my own here, but I believe that the female dominated and CREATED beginnings of society took root in this first lithic-technology age and gave rise to a general cultural mode exhibiting the closest thing to male/female 'equality' our species will ever see. One in which the curvaceous, permanent estrus, life nurturing female was revered, worshipped, and ruled with equal power to the muscled, foraging, out on the savanna on a business trip male. This went on for the last 100-50k years or so. Leaving behind the pagan (and it could be easily argued largely feminine) religious traditions, changing the female of the species rapidly towards physical "inequality" (stressing its propensity towards storage, selecting FOR the benefits of a relatively smaller - lower center of gravity, and wider hipped - body type), and giving the men the advantage simply by their determined tasks: range rovers, fighters, and eventually diplomats by necessity. While the female traits were first and foremost in regards to the eventual staggering success of our species, the male's place in this task list put him at the front of the new benefits of this transformation. One of the first areas of major civilization - and the one with the most extensive archaeological record: Mesopotamia and the Nile river valley societies, show glimpses of this distant past and its violent evolutionary transition into 'male dominated' society. But this note is too long already. I think I've briefly outlined my point and how/why it changed over the last, crucial 100k years. The utopia of "Eden" did perhaps exist for a few moments of human evolution, and it consisted of the coexistence of the female dominated home/hearth troop concept with the male dominated traveling hunter-gatherer/free-fucker troop concept. Camille Paglia is correct in one respect: our modern societies (and I would argue that it's increasingly both west and east - the eastern philosophies don't have a handle on sexual equality at all) are all about the male of the species forcibly building his own stature in the home by rewarding a psyche geared towards the destruction of things 'other.' Sadly nature is imperfect, and this propensity rears its ugly head towards home, family and self (hence the male's dominance of the suicide category) more often than we would like to believe. Rape is sick, sad, and most importantly, forever. It is violence, it is sex, and it is part of that essential system BIOS that drove our species to ultimate success, and - in the grand tradition of nature - will most CERTAINLY bring about our eventual extinction. We can only hope we do so much more, better, and for a few billion years. Take care, Todd <mentcht@yahoo.com> I'd like to believe in a pastoral Eden of our lost ancestors, in which the female was worshipped and equality ruled. I'd also like to be tall and blonde. Anthropologists studying non-Western cultures invariably seem first to imagine them as peaceful and sexually open. Somehow, whenever real fieldwork finally gets done, the actual society turns out to be a bit less pleasant. The gentle Polynesians turn out to engage in constant horrible warfare with each other, necessary since their ancestors exterminated all wildlife on their small islands and without warfare to control population everyone would starve. The gentle Mayans turn out to have their entire society focused on human sacrifice. The current love-generation society is one the archeologists have recently discovered on the Indian flood plains a few millennia back; no signs of weapons or of city walls, so these are finally the peace-loving Edenists. Or not. I'm waiting, confidently, for the art historians to find a mural or two of Kali's predecessor ripping the spleen out of a prisoner. Sorry 'bout that. Although the battle is not always to the strong nor the race to the swift, that's the way to handicap it. The Doctor Analyze us like the animals that we are! <Trevor_Cavanagh@hc-sc.gc.ca> Love has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement And nothing can be whole that once has not been rent. Does that do it for you? The Doctor Hit & Run Another fine Hit and Run today. The rarest and most exquisite pleasure of following Suck's exploits regularly is the bit that's as funny as Filler, and the Who's-On-First torture of reader John Mihelic was that in spades. I'm still cracking up over it, and I read it three hours ago. The bonus is that I laughed out loud at the Leone joke in the first place. So I get to be smug, too! Many thanks. Oh, you're going to hire Barney, aren't you? Randy Ratliff <rratliff@acgtech.com> Barney will be bringing his particular kind of expertise to Suck regularly. The fact checker's job is a thankless one, and we were happy to give Barney this chance to shine. Sucksters Not to come off as a latter-day John Mihelic, but perhaps you guys need to lighten up about Road Trip. The piece in Hit & Run left me scratching my head; when did Suck go politically correct? It doesn't seem as if you've actually even seen the movie yet. Relying on a film trailer for information on the content of the film can be dangerous. For example, the trailer for Ian McKellan's Richard III was dreadful, but the film was fantastic. Not that I would compare Road Trip to Richard III, but it's an argument. I, for one, am very interested in renting Road Trip when it comes out on video; say, in a couple of weeks. I miss movies like Animal House and Porky's, and hope this one can live up to the old masters. Thanks for continuing to slam "the Pope", Alexia Henke <alexia_henke@exchangeny. deutschinc.com> If Liz Claiborne and Tommy Hilfiger have to get tortured for racist comments they didn't even make, we see no reason to lighten up on Dreamworks SKG. And the argument that we shouldn't comment on the trailer — which will be seen by multitudes more people than will see the actual film — doesn't make a lot of sense. And finally, what's more politically correct than slamming the pope? Sucksters now, *i'm* really confused. is sierra related to tŽa leone, wife of david duchovny? is she african? she doesn't look very african. also, and this is really weird, there's a movie called "Leone di Amalfi, Il," which stars a guy named _sergio_ fantoni! whoa! i think the movie's about hiking, or something. i was wondering if you could straighten me out on a few other things. like: did jonathan swift *really* think he could get away with selling poor irish kids as food for the rich? doesn't seem very modest to me. ouch, now my head hurts. y.t., gene <whats.yer.deal.anyway@gknow.com> And another thing: Who do these TV comedians think they are making fun of President Clinton? Isn't it against the Constitution to make fun of the President? Sucksters Sucksters, Not to play the spoiler, but the scene you describe from "Road Trip" has nothing to do with that favorite malady of Bobby Dole. In a scene very reminiscent of the visit to the black club in "Animal House" (produced, of course, by Ivan Reitman, the executive producer of "RT"), our white road-trippers spend the night at a black fraternity house. This time around, though, the ending is happier, including the bedroom scene you describe with the skinny white boy and the big black girl. But skinny boy performs just fine, despite his inexperience, and race really wasn't an issue either. The biggest source of humor was simply the whole "Jack Sprat" aesthetic of the scene. But maybe I should be reading deeper... Always, Mark Schofield <schofield@chipar.com> Never miss an opportunity to take umbrage. Whole empires have been built that way. Sucksters |
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