a_theory_on_the_double_standard stork daddy first of all, in no way does this mean i endorse the double standard or think women should not seek out their own interests. i merely observe that, though more subtle now, it still exists, both within the minds of men and women, and from a certain perspective this makes sense. evolutionarily speaking, competition favors women more than it does men. women must be far choosier with their exspensive eggs than men with their cheap sperm. a man loses nothing by sleeping with whomever crosses his path so long as he does not have to fufill any further duties in raising whatever children may result in face a man only needs to ensure that some of his offspring survive. this allows him to pay attention to some main family while dallying on the side. a woman on the other hand is stuck with the kid. not only that, a woman can't spread it around like a man can and so benefits greatly by picking the best male available. in any circle, this could be one male. the male, remember, loses nothing by sleeping with every female who wants to sleep with him, and the female gains by sleeping with the best qualified male. this could easily lead to harems, and in earlier human power structures did. the best qualified male was desired by all of the females, and so fathered all of their children. women of course still favored their own children, but the man had a fairly equal interest in all of them, and so couldn't really lose. still, even in this envoirment, faithfulness was expected. The mate guarding behavior this demanded is probably at the root of all double standards (since a man can be tricked as to his hand in the conception, but a woman cannot, a woman is traditionally more restrained and more restricted in her sexuality) all of the women who took the best man at the cost of full investment from the father eliminated those men who remained at the bottom of the ladder. but they hung in their by the "virtue" of women who by whatever circumstance went for full investment from a less powerful male. it was the increase in numbers of these males that led to the downfall of the harem. not only that, but amongst the males born within the harem, the logic follows that only one could be at the top of the pecking order if the same power structure was kept intact. but the males who weren't at the top saw this and joined forces. together they evened out their chances by agreeing to not compete with each other once biological "ownership" of a fertile woman was founded. of course, there would always be cheating at this game. monogamy formed because these men saw that to overthrow the most powerful males, they had to band together and not compete with one another. so for everyone to insure their participation in mating, they decided to limit the number of women availalbe to the best and brightest. there was enough of them concerned for the benefit of getting a shot at all to outweigh the cost of not getting the most you could. this explains monogamy from a male perspective. both the most powerful males and the least powerful males didn't look at female interest at all when making this compromise, probably because that would complicate it, and also it was something they must've felt they had power over already, and therefore could trade as if inanimate. why females didn't assert their interests is probably more interesting or perhaps they did, in more subtle ways than people have seen. the traditional explanation could come down to the necessary protective role of men. or fearing for their own or their children's lives. still, their powerful stake in reproduction would give them some power of boycott it would seem. or perhaps since it is the men competing, any agreement by the men can only be met by them with a passive acceptance of a new type of field of competitors. even this passive role though could be a traditional misnomer. women might've not demanded more power in their decisions because of a combination of these reasons. because of men's strength and protective role, perhaps they did value life and the ability to procreate some rather than none at all over absolute power. perhaps desperate men's power bid forced most women into a "desperation" and the less discriminate standard that men had known for a while. or rather still, perhaps it was women's cooperation that stopped the qualities of rape and such from being overly selected. either way, there is more power in the position than previously appreciated. because of women's hidden menstruation and hidden conception as well as pregnancy, it was often probably well within a woman's ability to secure the trust of the best man she could find who saw her as worth his time as well as his sperm, who saw her as his best shot, while actually being impregnated by a more "fit" or healthier individual who perhaps was more handsome or less sickly than the mate she now had to help her raise her children. perhaps as in so many other ventures, the woman's strategy was not direct force but rather a quiet and wise understanding of when and where the power really lies. some would say the battle of the sexes goes on to this day in the social strategies concerning sexuality. i myself feel that love itself is an evolutionary strategy that offers the best compromise to all parties in a world where no one's power is infinite. any emotion that fosters beneficial cooperation should not be looked at as an accident or an impedement in a social animal such as humans. though with the current abilities we have to, by separating our tasks, empower any individual without coming into their direct social sphere in any other way, the compromises between people may break down. but just because the necessity is less apparent, does not mean it's not there. i realize this is cryptic. but that's why this is blather and not something else. 031006 ... stork daddy i realize this isn't really a theory. also, it's more of a freewrite. i guess i could make it more logically flowing if anyone wanted me too. also, is there any info anyone has on societies that practiced whatever the opposite of polygamy is? polgyny i guess? where one woman had multiple husbands? 031006 ... misstree i agree with much of what you said, and would like to add a couple of points and comments to it: i believe that cooperative monogamy runs a bit stronger in humans than you gave credit to; back in hunter/gatherer days, it very much took two primary mates to raise a child, as well as the cooperation of a larger social unit (tribe). men, being physically stronger, were more suited to the far-ranging and demanding tasks of securing meat and defending the social unit, whereas women, being both geographically bound by the limits of our exceedingly frail offspring and their own frailty while in gestation, took over gathering and housekeeping. there's a book called the_naked_ape that i've been thinking of a lot lately, that shows a lot of very strong connections of how patterns set this far back in our evolution (not very long by other standards) are still with us today. women have always had power, but it was more of a cooperative power, whereas men do indeed rise through competition. as society evolved and men became more of the "breadwinners" (more responsible for bringing in outside resources, with women more responsible for raising larger herds as more children survived past year one), these factors evolved patriarchal rule. competitive and destructive urges are much better for setting up power structures than sharing and nurturing urges. i had somewhere else i was going to go with this, but i saw something pretty and shiny and forgot. it happens. 031006 ... stork daddy i totally agree with the hunter/gatherer bit. i was just trying to see how harems came and went in some socities. i can see how monogamy would be a pretty elementary strategy. i also like how shows of power and health came to be. how athletics and courtship could have evolved as ways to keep fatal in-fighting to a minimum (much in the way wolves stare each other down or wrestle to avoid diminishing the group numbers by actual combat). 031006 ... oldephebe now THIS was illuminating and sagacious thankyou stork and mistree any one else who contributed to this page 031006 ... misstree true. also interesting how you drew the line from mating power struggles to heircarchical power, even going through generations to preserve the precious genes. royal inbreeding, wot? and polygyny is multiple wives, polyandry is multiple husbands, polygyny is just multiple mates. i know that there have been some ployandrous societies, but they're rare, and i don't remember anything about them at the moment. :/ and, indeed, quite a fine piece of writing, stork_daddy. 031006 ... misstree er, polygamy = multiple whatever. 031006 ... mon nice writing stork i've heard of polygamy and polyandry as a common traditional practice among some of the tribes of the Himalayas. The Sherdukpen for instance. there are others as well in different parts of the globe but i have to search my brain (or google) first. 031006 ... stork daddy oh thank you. i wish i had put it together more formally and not had as many run on sentences...but i'm bored in the computer lab and blather is apt to happen 031006 ... Death of a Rose good on ya stork. Quick question for your mind then; Does monogamy become an evolutionary step? 031010 ... Lemon_Soda Only if you reduce human kind to a productivity statistic. But then, that wouldn't work because there are more women in the world then men. Please don't rise up and inflict a spider goddess slave society on us outnumbered male types. 031010 ... stork daddy i think the common notion of evolutionary "steps" doesn't quite capture what evolution is about. step implies an advance, something that "should" happen, whereas evolution's only should is what success in the envoirment mandates or suggests. as far as whether or not i think it is evolutionary, the answer is yes and no. monogamy is our pattern finding rule making minds (which were also an evolutionary "step") wat if dealing with inherent human tendencies. a social constraint on an individual tendency that caused social problems. i do not think that monogamy is an instinct, though many of the pair bonding feelings we associate with it most likely are. it is much better to love and therefore protect your interests and progeny than to only do the bare minimum protection and mistake it. love could be a useful overshot. however much of our social negotiation takes place on a matrix of emotion and logic, so it can't really be said to be evolutionary if what is meant by that is instinctual. we have our leanings and we try to serve them. i feel monogamy was the best way to serve both our need for sex and our need for social cooperation and stability. those that worked together did not perish. that kind of thinking paid off, was selected. or rather, the kind of brain that could see such possibilities, that could temper its passions to an appropriate compromise would be one that would survive. 031010 ... stork daddy substitute way of for wat if and that should go okay 031010 ... stork daddy also i should point out, our need for love is just as real as any other need and just as respectable. a person who didn't seek out others, who didn't seek to have at least one person value them as essential, probably wouldn't stand much of a chance in the world. it always has made sense to have someone who would take the long view of you and give to you even if it didn't help them and was to their detriment in the long run, even if the cost was the same promise on your behalf. and so it would make sense to have an understanding of this kind from the get go, a feeling that enforces the contract. love really is the answer (to a certain question). 031010 ... stork daddy sorry i meant to their detriment in the meanwhile. stupid no sleep. let's talk about why we need sleep. 031010 ... Death of a Rose Hmmmm...interesting.... Sleep....okay...you asked for it....Sleep is our breathing space, our brain scrambles and fries up omelettes for us to chew on and digest. Those who don't have that breathing space (et toi & moi) tend to starve our discord thoughts and let them become flotsam still washing up on our shores. That's my blather. I would go on....but I need sleep. 031011 ... bandersnatch there is a group of primitive people in south america (i believe) that have a form of pologomy (sp?) in which the female has multipul parteners. it works by during pregenancy a second male (usually a brother or good friend of the first) has intercourse with the female, and takes on the role of father, giving the child 2 fathers and a mother. both fathers share responcability and care for the child. it is beneficial to the child because there are more people to provide for it, it is beneficial to the biological father because he has help with the male roles of raising a child, and it is benefecial to the "2nd father" for 2 reasons, if he can show that he has the rescourses to help raise his own childern and these others (even though the tribe makes no destiction between the sets) then that is a display of wealth (and therefor power), and it also gives steral males a chance to father offspring. it is also beneficial to the female because if something hapens to one of the babies fathers she can rely on the other one to be there. 031011 ... celestias shadow this is a fascinating blathe. it's practically a scientific look on how the double standard formed. thank you. i found it most enlightening. i believe the amazons (ancient Greek) were, if not married to more than one man, certainly in possession of what most other societies considered 'male' roles. i've always found this particularly interesting, too. how did that happen in the middle of an ancient society? perhaps i should read more mythology. anyone wanna do a blathe analyzing that? :) 031124 ... marked . 031230 what's it to you? who go blather from