B.C. courts questioning polygamy laws

[Alyrium Denryle]

I have one argument against polygamy. Well, two.

The first is that it will change the operational sex ratio of the population. Polyandry is very very uncommon. Humans are not generally inclined to do it, with a few notable exceptions in a few small isolated cultures do to strange ecological conditions.

The problem here is that the operational sex ratio will become skewed, and young low status males will be unable to find mates. This is the reason why in those polygamous mormon communities young men get expelled, so they dont compete with higher status males, and dont cause problems

How would a western culture deal with say, three percent of the male population (throwing a number out) being the equivalent of Lost Boys?

The other argument is that polygynous marriages tend to be unstable unless divorce is proscribed (because at the end of the day, no female wants to share the parental investment a male provides with another woman and her offspring unless the alternative is worse), and they tend to be abusive toward the females.

[Formless]

The problem here is that the operational sex ratio will become skewed, and young low status males will be unable to find mates. This is the reason why in those polygamous mormon communities young men get expelled, so they dont compete with higher status males, and dont cause problems

How would a western culture deal with say, three percent of the male population (throwing a number out) being the equivalent of Lost Boys?

Polyamory =! polygamy. Polyamory includes relationships where there are multiple men marrying one woman, ones where there are equal number of men and women in the marriage, and so forth. Polygamy is specifically where one man marries multiple women, usually because the religions that spawned it were patriarchical not friendly to women. Looks like your argument just got sucked right out the airlock.

The other argument is that polygynous marriages tend to be unstable unless divorce is proscribed (because at the end of the day, no female wants to share the parental investment a male provides with another woman and her offspring unless the alternative is worse), and they tend to be abusive toward the females.

First, learn how to spell the damn word. Its POLYAMORY. Ten seconds on google would tell you what is being talked about here. Second, the only data you have on this comes from polygamous societies that... weren't friendly to women to begin with. Oops.

[Simon_Jester]

The problem here is that the operational sex ratio will become skewed, and young low status males will be unable to find mates. This is the reason why in those polygamous mormon communities young men get expelled, so they dont compete with higher status males, and dont cause problems

How would a western culture deal with say, three percent of the male population (throwing a number out) being the equivalent of Lost Boys?

Polyamory =! polygamy. Polyamory includes relationships where there are multiple men marrying one woman, ones where there are equal number of men and women in the marriage, and so forth. Polygamy is specifically where one man marries multiple women, usually because the religions that spawned it were patriarchical not friendly to women. Looks like your argument just got sucked right out the airlock.

Ah... technically, one man with multiple wives is polygyny, not polygamy...

Polygyny causes social problems if it is practiced on a large scale compared to the size of the community that's practicing it. Polygamy might or might not depending on the population demographics, and since we don't have information on the sex ratios among the would-be-polygamous marriages in Western society as a whole, it's hard to say.

The other argument is that polygynous marriages tend to be unstable unless divorce is proscribed (because at the end of the day, no female wants to share the parental investment a male provides with another woman and her offspring unless the alternative is worse), and they tend to be abusive toward the females.

First, learn how to spell the damn word. Its POLYAMORY. Ten seconds on google would tell you what is being talked about here. Second, the only data you have on this comes from polygamous societies that... weren't friendly to women to begin with. Oops.

No, Formless, you're using words wrong.

Polyamory means three or more people in love. Polygamy means three or more people getting married. Polygyny means one man marrying multiple women; polyandry means one woman marrying multiple men.

[Formless]

Ah... technically, one man with multiple wives is polygyny, not polygamy...

Polygyny causes social problems if it is practiced on a large scale compared to the size of the community that's practicing it. Polygamy might or might not depending on the population demographics, and since we don't have information on the sex ratios among the would-be-polygamous marriages in Western society as a whole, it's hard to say.

People are still falsely conflating the two in this thread no less. My argument stands.

First, learn how to spell the damn word. Its POLYAMORY. Ten seconds on google would tell you what is being talked about here. Second, the only data you have on this comes from polygamous societies that... weren't friendly to women to begin with. Oops.

No, Formless, you're using words wrong.

Polyamory means three or more people in love. Polygamy means three or more people getting married. Polygyny means one man marrying multiple women; polyandry means one woman marrying multiple men.

People (especially Alyrium) are still falsely conflating the two. My argument stands.

Besides, if only men were allowed to marry multiple wives but not women allowed to marry multiple husbands, you know people would (rightfully) complain about the double standard. Alyrium's argument is bogus, and reflects only his cultural bias, not the facts.

[Norade]

Assuming that a significant percentage of woman prefer to be second or third, or n wife to a rich man wouldn't polygamy then lead to the rich taking all the 'best' women for themselves and leaving the ratio of men to women among the lower classes skewed? For those who have one, imagine if you never met your partner because somebody born into money basically bought her for a little extra spice in bed, or because she's a new type of tax shelter due to her relative earnings compared to his vast wealth. I'm not saying that this will happen, but opening this up does lead to the possibility of this occurring and honestly why take the risk when the vast majority don't currently care. i would support a law being passed allowing for exceptions in cases where the above clearly isn't an issue.

EDIT: Missed that this came up above.

Still simply due to our culture I get the feeling that more woman would rather be second wife to a rich man than men wanting to become second husband to a rich woman.

[DPDarkPrimus]

So if polygamy is found to be a "sacred religious practice" does that mean only members of that religion get to have polygamous marriages?

Until someone in a polyamorous relationship sues, if Canada has any kind of equal protection clause legally or constitutionally. That would be a Very short period.

I find it ironic that if it was found to be specially protected due to religious significance, said "religious significance" will be rendered moot by it being transformed into a secular practice.

[Chaotic Neutral]

Still simply due to our culture I get the feeling that more woman would rather be second wife to a rich man than men wanting to become second husband to a rich woman.

I'd marry someone for money and I'm male. There is no need for sexism.

[Broomstick]

I have one argument against polygamy. Well, two.

The first is that it will change the operational sex ratio of the population. Polyandry is very very uncommon. Humans are not generally inclined to do it, with a few notable exceptions in a few small isolated cultures do to strange ecological conditions.

The problem here is that the operational sex ratio will become skewed, and young low status males will be unable to find mates. This is the reason why in those polygamous mormon communities young men get expelled, so they dont compete with higher status males, and dont cause problems

How would a western culture deal with say, three percent of the male population (throwing a number out) being the equivalent of Lost Boys?

That would hold true only if the sex ratios remained constant throughout life. In fact, among humans it starts out something like 105:100 boys to girls (I forget the exact number, but it does favor the boys) and the male death rate at all ages exceeds that of the females slightly, until at some point (which I also forget, exactly) they become 50/50 and the start favoring the females. By age 60 or 70 women definitely outnumber me, and that becomes only more true as people continue to age. Among the 70 and up crowd, between lowered incomes and cost of living, groups of senior citizens might want to join in group marriages for very practical reasons (essentially forming a new family unit for those who have lost much of their family, for example) and the odds favor those groups having multiple women for each man. I know of at least one marriage of senior citizens that was performed more for assured companionship than sex, as the man in the couple had been rendered permanently impotent by prostate cancer, so it's not even always a matter of who is having sex with whom. Group marriage can also be a means of adults pooling resources.

The other argument is that polygynous marriages tend to be unstable unless divorce is proscribed (because at the end of the day, no female wants to share the parental investment a male provides with another woman and her offspring unless the alternative is worse), and they tend to be abusive toward the females.

Uh... Alyrium... this may come as a shock to you but not every women in interested in having kids. Even among those who have kids, a later marriage may not involve reproduction.

And, once you get the religious horseshit out of the picture, in situations where women really are free to leave at any time, the situation is no more likely to be abuse than monogamous marriage.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Polyamory =! polygamy. Polyamory includes relationships where there are multiple men marrying one woman, ones where there are equal number of men and women in the marriage, and so forth. Polygamy is specifically where one man marries multiple women, usually because the religions that spawned it were patriarchical not friendly to women. Looks like your argument just got sucked right out the airlock.

Hey asshole, I addressed this. Namely when I specified that polyandry was going to be negligible in terms of population demographics. Statistically, almost the only form of polyamory, polygamy etc that you will see will be one male, multiple females.

I was not talking to any specific person in order to conflate to two. I was responding the Thread Gestalt, which if you read through the whole thing, talks about both polyamy and polyamory. The thread subject is also specifically about polygyny. Your argument does not in fact stand.

Polygamy is specifically where one man marries multiple women, usually because the religions that spawned it were patriarchical not friendly to women.

As yourself a question:

Why? Why do patriarchal societies form? Why would females culturally consent to sharing a mate? The answer is the same reason most other females in every other species do.

1) In cases where there is no parental care by males, sperm is cheap. Oocytes are not. As a result there is high variance around the mean for number of matings by males. This variance in mating is determined almost entirely by sexual selection once a male has reached sexual maturity (Read: does not die first. We exclude the ones that die)

2) In cases where there is male parental care, males tend to be socially monogamous because the females will not tolerate mate sharing. However, it can arise under a few conditions--conditions human cultures have had a tendency to meet historically. These conditions are that there is a large amount of variance in the ability of males to dominate resources, and that this ability is superior to the same ability on the part of a female--thus making it necessary for a female to make a tradeoff. She can either pair with a low status male who does not have resources to speak of and get him all to herself, or she can mate with a high status male and get the resources she needs, but have to share.

This gives the male a huge amount of power. The mating system creates patriarchy. Patriarchy does not create the mating system.

First, learn how to spell the damn word. Its POLYAMORY

Not when I am talking about polygyny...

You do not get to dictate what aspect of a multifaceted thread that I discuss. If you want me to talk about Polyamory I can do that though... later.

Ah... technically, one man with multiple wives is polygyny, not polygamy...

Polygyny causes social problems if it is practiced on a large scale compared to the size of the community that's practicing it. Polygamy might or might not depending on the population demographics, and since we don't have information on the sex ratios among the would-be-polygamous marriages in Western society as a whole, it's hard to say.

I have calculated it out using a null model at one point using median household income etc. Someone making double median household income might have two wives, triple could afford three etc. It got bad.

In societies where it is practiced, well... there is a reason those societies have a tendency to engage in wars of expansion. If they dont, they degenerate into internecine warfare between males over mates. I have written long treatise on how this may actually account for gang warfare... Males in an inner-city environment will take extra-ordinary risks to attain the wealth and social status necessary to attract a mate. Especially given the low life expectancy.

Besides, if only men were allowed to marry multiple wives but not women allowed to marry multiple husbands, you know people would (rightfully) complain about the double standard. Alyrium's argument is bogus, and reflects only his cultural bias, not the facts.

When the fuck did I say anything about only one being allowed? I didn't. Go burn your strawmen elsewhere. I said that only one would occr with regularity. Those are two different arguments.

People (especially Alyrium) are still falsely conflating the two. My argument stands.

Considering that this thread talks about both, no, it does not.

Now, kindly fuck yourself.

Uh... Alyrium... this may come as a shock to you but not every women in interested in having kids. Even among those who have kids, a later marriage may not involve reproduction.

What is your point? Does the fact that a woman does not want kids suddenly change the mate-selection criteria hard-wired into their brains? Are they magically less prone to insecurity regarding who hubby loves more? I dont know how many times across this board I have to repeat myself. Only biologists sit around and think about their fitness and how best to maximize it. Everyone else maximizes their fitness through other less direct means. Females do it through strategic mate selection. Trading off between resource availability and genetic suitability, cheating on better fathers with more suitable baby-daddies while they are ovulating (not that they know they are doing this of course), carefully making sure that the father of their children is not investing in another female's offspring etc.

Males do the same thing, they just do it differently. Ever wondered why there is a stigma associated with single parenting, and why step children are more likely to be abused and neglected than a male's biological kids? Just like lions on the Savannah. Daddy just cant away with killing the little ankle biters in human society...now. They used to. Especially if the kid was the product of adultery.

And, once you get the religious horseshit out of the picture, in situations where women really are free to leave at any time, the situation is no more likely to be abuse than monogamous marriage.

My point there was that the relationships are unstable. Females will jump ship as soon as better options come along. The abuse... well... spousal abuse is damn common as it is. It is the primary method males have had throughout history (and across vertebrates with polygynous mating systems really) of making sure that the female does not, in fact, leave.

Humans are not so advanced that we are immune to intersexual reproductive conflict.

That would hold true only if the sex ratios remained constant throughout life. In fact, among humans it starts out something like 105:100 boys to girls (I forget the exact number, but it does favor the boys) and the male death rate at all ages exceeds that of the females slightly, until at some point (which I also forget, exactly) they become 50/50 and the start favoring the females. By age 60 or 70 women definitely outnumber me, and that becomes only more true as people continue to age. Among the 70 and up crowd, between lowered incomes and cost of living, groups of senior citizens might want to join in group marriages for very practical reasons (essentially forming a new family unit for those who have lost much of their family, for example) and the odds favor those groups having multiple women for each man. I know of at least one marriage of senior citizens that was performed more for assured companionship than sex, as the man in the couple had been rendered permanently impotent by prostate cancer, so it's not even always a matter of who is having sex with whom. Group marriage can also be a means of adults pooling resources.

Bluntly, post-reproductive individuals do not count toward the operational sex ratio. My argument would stop applying if and only if the sex ratio among reproductive individuals was sufficiently female biased as to outweigh the results of polygyny.

The question is also not "Will marriage type X occur" I will readily stipulate that every variation on sexual, companionate, and romantic groupings under the sun WILL occur. The question is how common they will be. Polygyny among reproductive individuals will be the most common... as it has been for the sum total of human history, and across all social vertebrates.

[FTeik]

The thing is, even in the most polygamous friendly societies most people never have more than one spouse at a time. While we are capable of such arrangement they are not the statistical norm, even where permitted. So I don't see where legalizing such arrangements will lead to widespread use of the liberty, much less widespread abuse.

Especially in Canada, where most people are non-Mormon Christians and, even if they aren't crazy Fundies, will still listen to their pastors/reverends/clergy when they say "Jesus only wants you to marry one other person."

And there is the whole 'our women are actually smart, and would note want to share a husband'.

Turn that around and you get "men are egotistical pricks, who wouldn't want to share a wife".

If consenting, rational adults want to live in a relationship with more than one partner, why not let them. I would think they participants would have to think a lot and very carefully about every aspect of their future life and having a third person involved might have a moderating effect, so such a relationship might work better and be more stable.

[Broomstick]

Uh... Alyrium... this may come as a shock to you but not every women in interested in having kids. Even among those who have kids, a later marriage may not involve reproduction.

What is your point? Does the fact that a woman does not want kids suddenly change the mate-selection criteria hard-wired into their brains? Are they magically less prone to insecurity regarding who hubby loves more? I dont know how many times across this board I have to repeat myself. Only biologists sit around and think about their fitness and how best to maximize it. Everyone else maximizes their fitness through other less direct means. Females do it through strategic mate selection. Trading off between resource availability and genetic suitability, cheating on better fathers with more suitable baby-daddies while they are ovulating (not that they know they are doing this of course), carefully making sure that the father of their children is not investing in another female's offspring etc.

My point is that while humans have some mating patterns "hard-wired" as you put it, our inherent biology allows for more flexibility than some other species.

Truth is, some female humans today control sufficient resources on their own they don't need a mate to successful raise a child, only to conceive one. And that mate might be reduced to simply a vial of sperm. If things truly ran as you portray them no woman would ever marry a lower status or lower income male, no woman would ever be single by choice. Although on average things run in one manner, and will continue to do so due to the biological underpinning of human reproduction, not everyone is going to make the typical choices. And for fuck's sake, no one would ever adopt a child, right? Except... they do. Humans are rather odd in how willing they are to adopt and raise unrelated children. Yes, adopted children are more at risk for abuse, as are step children, but the fact remains than many adopted/step children are raised without abuse. Maybe you'll argue that contributing towards step children is a way in which men can demonstrate they are such superior mates they'll care for even unrelated children - so how much more will they do for their biological children, right?

Males do the same thing, they just do it differently. Ever wondered why there is a stigma associated with single parenting, and why step children are more likely to be abused and neglected than a male's biological kids? Just like lions on the Savannah. Daddy just cant away with killing the little ankle biters in human society...now. They used to. Especially if the kid was the product of adultery.

Except... they didn't always. Even in circumstances where they COULD get away with murdering competitors' children human males don't always do so. So how do you explain that? Step parenting and adoption occurs in all human cultures that I've heard of, even those that condone infanticide.

And, once you get the religious horseshit out of the picture, in situations where women really are free to leave at any time, the situation is no more likely to be abuse than monogamous marriage.

My point there was that the relationships are unstable.

So is monogamy.

Females will jump ship as soon as better options come along.

Uh, right, that's why I abandoned my sterile, disabled spouse when he could no longer support me... oh, wait, I didn't. Yes, SOME women will jump ship, as will some men, but not all. There really are people who mate for life, come hell or high water, and it's not alway religiously motivated.

Maybe, since humans are a long-lived and social species, we'll buddy-up for reasons other than mere reproduction.

The abuse... well... spousal abuse is damn common as it is. It is the primary method males have had throughout history (and across vertebrates with polygynous mating systems really) of making sure that the female does not, in fact, leave.

Except your explanation does not account for husband-abusing wives, which certainly do exist. I don't think domestic violence is JUST about preventing cheating, although it's certianly a factor. I think it has at least as much to do with dominance within a group, as that would explain some child abuse since, of course, the parents aren't worried about the kids "cheating" on them with other parents.

Humans are not so advanced that we are immune to intersexual reproductive conflict.

Nope - but it's not the ONLY reason for conflict. And our behavior is much more flexible than that of many other species.

That would hold true only if the sex ratios remained constant throughout life. In fact, among humans it starts out something like 105:100 boys to girls (I forget the exact number, but it does favor the boys) and the male death rate at all ages exceeds that of the females slightly, until at some point (which I also forget, exactly) they become 50/50 and the start favoring the females. By age 60 or 70 women definitely outnumber me, and that becomes only more true as people continue to age. Among the 70 and up crowd, between lowered incomes and cost of living, groups of senior citizens might want to join in group marriages for very practical reasons (essentially forming a new family unit for those who have lost much of their family, for example) and the odds favor those groups having multiple women for each man. I know of at least one marriage of senior citizens that was performed more for assured companionship than sex, as the man in the couple had been rendered permanently impotent by prostate cancer, so it's not even always a matter of who is having sex with whom. Group marriage can also be a means of adults pooling resources.

Bluntly, post-reproductive individuals do not count toward the operational sex ratio.

Except that people don't stop having sex when their reproductive years are over. We are unusual in that we do out live our capacity to reproduce (well, at least half of us do). By your reasoning no marriage should last past the last child leaving home, and no one should be having sex with menopausal women - but they do.

Clearly, some old women still want sex and/or male companionship. While most of them would probably prefer a man giving all that attention to them, if they're faced with a severe shortage of available men (which would be the case past about 75 years of age) then they may well opt for sharing a man - as women have done when faced with such shortages thought the ages.

And, as I also pointed out, humans form groups for reasons other than just reproduction. Group marriages allow adults to pool resources in a way simply living together does not, which is advantageous to the individuals involved. Or are you saying marriages of convenience don't exist?

My argument would stop applying if and only if the sex ratio among reproductive individuals was sufficiently female biased as to outweigh the results of polygyny.

Which is potentially the case among the elderly, as I pointed out, since the sex ratios get really skewed late in life. If I recall, you're a homosexual male so perhaps you have never considered this or, it being outside of an area of interest or study for you, you are unaware of this. An elderly heterosexual male in a "senior citizen residence" who is of sound mind and body has his pick of the local females, with 5:1 and even 10:1 sex ratios of female:male occuring. Competition among elderly women can be extremely fierce as not only are they competing with other women in their age groups, but women 10-20 years younger (maybe even younger than that) since men have less trouble attracting younger mates than women do. The idea that the elderly don't count because they aren't "reproductive individuals" is bullshit - old people fuck. They enjoy fucking. Old women sometimes enjoy fucking more than they did when young because they no longer have to worry about pregnancy. Hell, YOU like to fuck, don't you? Even though your mates and you are absolutely not going to generate offspring while fucking.

[The question is also not "Will marriage type X occur" I will readily stipulate that every variation on sexual, companionate, and romantic groupings under the sun WILL occur. The question is how common they will be. Polygyny among reproductive individuals will be the most common... as it has been for the sum total of human history, and across all social vertebrates.

Sure. Actually, monogamy will continue to be most common even if you allow anything and everything, and especially since more and more women don't need a mate to ensure their children survive. Yes, having a monogamous mate still gives the offspring benefits, but it's not necessary. When women are free to leave an unfaithful mate then the penalties for cheating go up, as opposed to situations where a man has a faithful mate but also fucks around. When women aren't desparate for a mate then they are less likely to put up with being the "other woman" on the side, who usually gets considerably less benefit from the male involved. When women are able to control conception, and able to get abortions, then the man has more incentive to "behave" if he wants the product of his fucking to reach birth, much less adulthood and reproduction. For most of the world, the playing field has changed.

So where do we usually find polygny? In religous enclaves where women are denied birth control, abortion, and the education to make them indepenent adults.

So... where you find mainstream women who do have access to birth control, abortion, and education/independent wealth AND they are in group marriages then MAYBE we should consider the possibility that there is a factor other than just reproduction at work here. Because, as I said, humans form groups for reasons other than just reproduction.

[Formless]

For fucks sake, Aly, if you are going to quote more than one person in the same post (or, hell, if you're going to quote someone at all) mark who the goddamn quotes come from!

Namely when I specified that polyandry was going to be negligible in terms of population demographics. Statistically, almost the only form of polyamory, polygamy etc that you will see will be one male, multiple females.

And that statistic proves jack shit because all the societies that we have to study were biased towards men to a degree that ours is not. What part of that is so hard to understand?

[quoteWhy? Why do patriarchal societies form? Why would females culturally consent to sharing a mate? The answer is the same reason most other females in every other species do.[/quote]
You realize that there are matriarchal human societyies, right? Ohhhh, but noooooo, biological determinism therefor I'm right!

Coming from you, this is sad, Aly. Just sad. Humans are not goddamn frogs!

I said that only one would occr with regularity. Those are two different arguments.

Except you never provided any credible evidence of this claim that would actually apply to humans. Especially considering how weird our sexual/social behavior really can be. As a gay man, you should fucking know better.

[Alyrium Denryle]

And that statistic proves jack shit because all the societies that we have to study were biased towards men to a degree that ours is not. What part of that is so hard to understand?

And I addressed why that occurred.

You realize that there are matriarchal human societyies, right? Ohhhh, but noooooo, biological determinism therefor I'm right!

Yes. I mentioned them dumbfuck. They tend to be the ones engaging in polyandry. They are also very rare when compared to polygynous societies. It is not that such a situation cannot occur. It can. I have explicitly stated that it can. It did however require a specific set of circumstances to occur with any sort of regularity.

I am also not invoking biological determinism. More like biological evolution+cultural. It just so happens that cultural evolution works in largely the same way. It allows humans to optimize--in this case--their mating system a bit faster than the mutation rate and selection coefficient permit. It still has to work with an ape brain though.

What, do you think we have risen up above our ape brains? You think the polygynous mating system common to all of the great apes went blank slate in our brains when we started developing a larger neocortex? No. At the very least that will bias what mating systems crop up, and the ecological conditions under which a human society lives

Coming from you, this is sad, Aly. Just sad. Humans are not goddamn frogs!

No. They do not however magically follow different rules. They just follow them in a more flexible way, so that under some conditions, mating system X will develop and be culturally reinforced--while under another set mating system Y will develop and be culturally reinforced.

Polyandry tends to occur under a few conditions:

1) Low resource availability, where more than one male is needed to obtain the necessary resources
2) In order to maintain land within families--particularly when it is poorly available or poor quality
3) The operational sex ratio is strongly male biased. Some tribal cultures the sex ratio is 1.3:1, because they cull females at birth. There are a variety of reasons for that I can go into if you ask.

The most common form is fraternal polyandry, where one female marries a set of brothers. This gets around the whole "Men dont want to share mates or take care of kids that are not theirs" thing. You know, because no matter what, the kids are related.

Now for Broomstick. HI BROOMSTICK!

Truth is, some female humans today control sufficient resources on their own they don't need a mate to successful raise a child, only to conceive one.

Yes they do. They are not very common though. I need not go into the issues with single parents.

And that mate might be reduced to simply a vial of sperm. If things truly ran as you portray them no woman would ever marry a lower status or lower income male, no woman would ever be single by choice. Although on average things run in one manner, and will continue to do so due to the biological underpinning of human reproduction, not everyone is going to make the typical choices.

There are trade-offs that women make. Even a resource poor male can be a devoted mate and father. Sexual selection in humans is fairly complicated. I lumped both the resource and child care etc into one category, but they can be partitioned.

And for fuck's sake, no one would ever adopt a child, right? Except... they do.

So do penguins... There is a reason why ALL step children are not abused... Humans do not recognize kin very well. One of the nice side effects of living in large social groups held together by external competition. Kin recognition gets co-opted, and some of the strength of various forms of sexual conflicts gets reduced. Still there though.

Maybe you'll argue that contributing towards step children is a way in which men can demonstrate they are such superior mates they'll care for even unrelated children - so how much more will they do for their biological children, right?

A little bit of that, a little bit of benign neglect etc. Even if they dont abuse the stepkids, natural kids tend to get bigger slices of the pie. They dont get kicked out at 18, they get help with college... step kids get the short stick. What happens all depends on how vigorously mom stands up for her kids. If she doesn't, the kid is likely to be abused or neglected. If she does... well, the step kid has it fine.

Pregnant rats will spontaneously abort fetuses if they come across a better male than the one who fathered the current little. Just saying.

In other words, just like everything in biology--particularly when you get to humans--it is complicated.

Except... they didn't always. Even in circumstances where they COULD get away with murdering competitors' children human males don't always do so. So how do you explain that? Step parenting and adoption occurs in all human cultures that I've heard of, even those that condone infanticide.

I would need a historical instance for that one. Adoption of unrelated individuals is historically rare IIRC, step kids more common. There is the sexual selection "Look if you mate with me, I wont even kill your current kid, I am awesome" angle.

Sexual conflict is not one sided. Otherwise it would not be a conflict really. It is a series of trade-offs made by both (or more than both) individuals. You can really only generalize broadly, unless you can deal with one population and know what is going on there. Or, you know, experiment on people. Unfortunately there are Institutional Review Boards now, and selective breeding is no longer in vogue.

So is monogamy.

Yes. Yes it is. Less so, however. At least in western cultures. Think for a second. What--other than patriarchy--holds a polygynous marriage together? What holds them together in species where there is no patriarchy, or in cultures prior to the evolution of patriarchal systems of female domination? Reproductive necessity. Even if there are no kids, the same processes apply. The female is better off sharing a mate than only having one or none. This is no longer true (as much), which is why abuse will be more common--and is more common in sub-cultures where there is polygyny. Daddy has to mate guard.

Uh, right, that's why I abandoned my sterile, disabled spouse when he could no longer support me... oh, wait, I didn't.

You are one person. Anecdote=!data. Guess what the biggest causes for divorce are? Extra-marital affairs, spousal abuse, and money issues. Not necessarily in that order. In a polygynous marriage, you have the extra-marrital affair built in, spousal abuse tends to be male on female, and stems from the male's mate guarding (Dont worry, I have not forgotten about women abusing men. It does happen, and actually for the same reason), and monetary issues... well... how to put it... those will be more common because the family resources are being divided between spouses.

The reason extra-marital affairs are built in is because women tend to care more about emotional betrayal than sex. "Who does hubby love more?". The same root cause is the stem of financial disagreements in polygynous marriages. These issues give females an active incentive to leave, so males must keep them around... through mate guarding. That is why in western cultures where the woman CAN leave, subcultures such as the FLDS have a tendency to arrange marriages, expel other males, and marry the girls off relatively young. It is how the men hold on to the women. It is not the divorce rate that is the problem, but the problems that cause--and prevent--divorce that are the problem irrespective of how easy divorce is.




Yes, SOME women will jump ship, as will some men, but not all. There really are people who mate for life, come hell or high water, and it's not alway religiously motivated.

Maybe, since humans are a long-lived and social species, we'll buddy-up for reasons other than mere reproduction.

Of course it is. The question is, how common is it? The answer is, not very, when compared to marriage for reproductive purposes... or more to the point, romantic affection, which generally leads to reproduction. It is not the ONLY reason to do it, but it is the reason the vast vast majority do it. The exceptions do not disprove the general rule, or impact what will occur population wide to any meaningful degree.

Except your explanation does not account for husband-abusing wives, which certainly do exist. I don't think domestic violence is JUST about preventing cheating, although it's certianly a factor.

It is about dominance, insecurity, and control. What do those mediate? Reproductive control. It is not 100% because the same pathways in the brain will mediate other social interactions, but you are confusing ultimate vs proximate causes.

Females are less likely to abuse, but some do. They also do it for the same reasons. To control their mate and keep them from leaving.

I think it has at least as much to do with dominance within a group, as that would explain some child abuse since, of course, the parents aren't worried about the kids "cheating" on them with other parents.

See above. Dominance within a group mediates what? What is the best way to control a mate? Threaten their kids. It is classic abuse behavior.

Except that people don't stop having sex when their reproductive years are over.

It still does not matter. They still dont count toward the operational sex ratio, nor will polygamy/polyamory among the elderly impact what occurs in the rest of the population, barring statistical outliers.

An old guy with three old wives has no impact on a 26 year old's mating chances.

By your reasoning no marriage should last past the last child leaving home, and no one should be having sex with menopausal women - but they do.

Social bonding does not end at senescence, and very few marriages last that long. In fact, the divorce rate spikes at 4 years. It was only recently that individuals started to live to post-reproductive age. It is not as if their sex drive dies, or they dont crave companionship in their elderly years.

A young male does not know if someone is post-menopausal unless they are very old.

Clearly, some old women still want sex and/or male companionship. While most of them would probably prefer a man giving all that attention to them, if they're faced with a severe shortage of available men (which would be the case past about 75 years of age) then they may well opt for sharing a man - as women have done when faced with such shortages thought the ages.

Not disputing that. Simply saying that you can exclude the elderly when talking about problems with the operational sex ratio.

Which is potentially the case among the elderly, as I pointed out, since the sex ratios get really skewed late in life. If I recall, you're a homosexual male so perhaps you have never considered this or, it being outside of an area of interest or study for you, you are unaware of this. An elderly heterosexual male in a "senior citizen residence" who is of sound mind and body has his pick of the local females, with 5:1 and even 10:1 sex ratios of female:male occuring.

See above.

The problems come when the sex ratio is NOT so strongly female biased. The elderly do not count toward the operational sex ratio in the rest of the population because barring statistical outliers, the elderly are not in the mating pool in the age-categories where problems will occur.

Old men wont engage in internecine warfare over mates--even with an even sex ratio, and an operational ratio skewed by polygyny. Inner city youths will, and do. Granted it is not over mates directly. It is over money territory and social status--and thus mates.

Hell, YOU like to fuck, don't you? Even though your mates and you are absolutely not going to generate offspring while fucking.

And my mate selection criteria is that of a female.

See above. The reason they dont count toward the operational sex ratio (and the reason I dont) is not because they dont have sex. It is because when they have sex it does not matter, because the wild orgies they have do not affect the rest of the population.

Actually, monogamy will continue to be most common even if you allow anything and everything, and especially since more and more women don't need a mate to ensure their children survive.

I meant most common among polygamus situations. Sorry I was not more clear.

The problem is, we are not actually there yet. There are negative consequences for single parenting. Check the child development lit.

When women are able to control conception, and able to get abortions, then the man has more incentive to "behave" if he wants the product of his fucking to reach birth, much less adulthood and reproduction. For most of the world, the playing field has changed.

Which is why I support those things. Vigorously.

However what is legal and what actually happens are different things. Abortion and birth control are legal in Colorado City, but that do not prevent expulsion of males or child marriages. They dont stop men from abusing women either. Especially with youth. Even with routine access to birth control like we have now, women still get abused. Remember, people are not actually rational. The methods by which people can be abused and controlled do not really respond to rational incentives. They are the product of an evolutionary history where those things were not present. This is true for both males and females.

There is a beneficial effect. Whether or not that effect size is sufficient to compensate for permissible polygamy is another story. I would love to see comparative studies of societies in africa to evaluate these things in a semi-controlled way, instead of across an entire continent with a shit load of uncontrolled variables.

So where do we usually find polygny? In religous enclaves where women are denied birth control, abortion, and the education to make them indepenent adults.

This is true, though you may be putting the cart before the horse. Or they may be mutually reinforcing. Positive feedback loops are a bitch.

[Formless]

Yes. I mentioned them dumbfuck. They tend to be the ones engaging in polyandry. They are also very rare when compared to polygynous societies. It is not that such a situation cannot occur. It can. I have explicitly stated that it can. It did however require a specific set of circumstances to occur with any sort of regularity.

The bolded part is why your argument is worth less than the paper its printed on. It shows that something other than biology determines whether or not the society will engage in polygamy or polyandry. Now, you later say what things are correlated with polyandry, but note also that its entirely possible that other factors are involved that you've missed or ignored (I won't speculate which). Our society is NOT some dumbfuckistan religious shithole calling from the bronze age, so we cannot simply assume that the results of legalizing non-monogamous marriages will result in a sex ratio imbalance with polygamy being the dominant form of multiple marriage just because its happened before in such societies. Nor can we assume that just because it is rare amongst other species that we will follow the same course, because humans do not currently live in the environment we evolved in. We live in one largely of our own making.

I must also add that our society already practices serial-monogamy, yet nevertheless both women and men remarry new spouses with regularity. I've seen it among my own relatives. How do you explain that? Yes, its technically monogamy... but the same issues apply (especially with regards to children) and our society hasn't fallen apart yet. Mind explaining that?

I am also not invoking biological determinism. More like biological evolution+cultural.

I know you already know my thoughts on evolutionary psychology, so I won't restate them here. The problem is, your argument left no room for cultural influence-- it ignored it. It could be summarized as "most humans will follow mating patterns seen in the animal kingdom, therefor we will see more polygamy than polyandry or polyginy". This is a non-sequitor, because we know that human social/sexual behavior is more complicated than that. For starts, we have sex for fun even when we know for a fact that no child will result because we're either using a condom or doing it with our own sex. Thus, we cannot rely on sexual behavior to say who wants to have kids or not, as we could with most other species.

And the other way around as well: as Broomstick observes, humans marry for fun and profit almost as much (if not more so historically) as they do to have children. In fact, I would argue that marriage is more a cultural/social institution than a fact of our biology * . You can look around the world and see this: arranged marriages in Asia, for example, follow none of the rules of biology because the families of the couples are calling the shots, not the individuals.

* This is by the way one of the issues I happen to have with evo-psych that I've not mentioned in the past-- the observation that other species have life long mating partners does not mean their behavior reflects human marriages. I've seen that idea before, and it frankly strikes me of Christians and westerners in general trying to project their values onto nature.

What, do you think we have risen up above our ape brains?

No, I just think that you can't say that "other ape brains work like x therefor human brains work like x". That is an observable error regardless of what species you want to talk about, not just humans/hominids. Look at Bonobos and chimps. Massive differences in social/sexual behavior between those two species. Its the same issue, and yeah neither of those have "risen above their ape brains". You know I'm not that kind of dumb.

Polyandry tends to occur under a few conditions:

1) females in our society obtain resources as well. How do you think that effects things?

2) land is no longer the primary resource/property/capital of importance in our society. How does this effect things?

3) our society is overpopulated (at least in some places, certainly), and we have a visible minority of homosexuals. How does this effect things?

Again, we aren't living in the same environment we evolved in. We are living in one of our own creation (whether wholly or partially), and this must be taken into account.

Edit: P.S. sorry if my last post seemed rushed and unpolished. I was in a hurry this morning.

[Alyrium Denryle]

The bolded part is why your argument is worth less than the paper its printed on. It shows that something other than biology determines whether or not the society will engage in polygamy or polyandry.

Are you literate? I am starting to wonder. Maybe you just have a strange psychological compulsion to build scarecrows, animate them using poorly performed logomancy, and then burn them alive. I have not said at all that polygyny is the only one that will exist, or that the environment has no influence. In fact, I specifically stated multiple times that mating system is determined by ecological conditions. Read: The environment. Dumbfuck.

Our society is NOT some dumbfuckistan religious shithole calling from the bronze age, so we cannot simply assume that the results of legalizing non-monogamous marriages will result in a sex ratio imbalance with polygamy being the dominant form of multiple marriage just because its happened before in such societies.

And the thrust of my argument has nothing to do with religion. My contention is that ecologically driven polygyny CAUSED patriarchy. Not the other way around, save in odd cases like the FLDS. The primitive condition for humanity is polygyny. It is the basal character state, and pre-dates all religion. It is silly to claim that patriarchy causes polygyny.

And will you stop using polygamy. Would you like me to break down the word for you?

Poly=many. Gamy=gametes. Polygamy=multiple gametes. It is not a word specific as to which set. Polygyny and polyandry are more appropriate unless you are talking about a marriage between multiple males AND multiple females--which will be vanishingly rare in all cases if only because you wont be able to find enough bisexuals of the proper temperament for it to work out except in vanishingly rare instances. Unless you have a problem with understanding probability, which I suspect you may.

Nor can we assume that just because it is rare amongst other species that we will follow the same course, because humans do not currently live in the environment we evolved in. We live in one largely of our own making.

Unless the environment we evolved in is the same--functionally--as the one we created. That boils down to the numbers. What is the mean resource availability, what is the variance around that mean.

Humans evolved in an unpredictable spread in these two parameters. Therefore our responses are phenotypically plastic. We exhibit a set of possible phenotypes, each one optimized for the set of environments we evolved within. Our current environment will approximate one of these--and you may need to partition that by socio-economic class. Our response will be the one optimized for the environment in which we evolved, not necessarily to the one we live in. It will depend on how close the approximation between historical and current environmental condition is. We no longer live in a tribal environment, but we are still tribal, somewhat hairless apes with the ability to do math.

I've seen it among my own relatives. How do you explain that? Yes, its technically monogamy... but the same issues apply (especially with regards to children) and our society hasn't fallen apart yet. Mind explaining that?

It is irrelevant. No one ever said that there was no turnover. In fact, most monogamous species dont mate for life, and practice serial monogamy. Only a few are actually monogamous. A few birds, angler fish, and things that breed and then die.

Lets make this simple. You have a population of 100 males and 100 females. Lets assume there is low variance on the part of males in their ability to attract a mate or that only one mate is allowed at one time. Everyone has a mate, though there may be some turnover with individuals being single over some period of time before they re-mate. With the low variance present, there may be some variability in the length of singleness. In other words, there is no issue.

Now, change the rules. Same sex ratio, but 2% of males have at least two mates, half of them have three. Assume this is because of higher variance in ability to attract mates. This leaves three percent of the male population unmated at any given time. In the event of divorces, those males at the low end are more likely to stay unmated, while the ones at the higher end will have their mate number reduced for a shorter period of time.

Accounting for turnover is not hard.

The problem is, your argument left no room for cultural influence-- it ignored it. It could be summarized as "most humans will follow mating patterns seen in the animal kingdom, therefor we will see more polygamy than polyandry or polyginy".

Noooooo. I said the rules are the same. The conditions leading to polygyny are more common across all vertebrates. We just so happen to follow the same pattern in cases where monogamy is counter-indicated.

This happens for a variety of reasons. It just so happens that culture responds to biology as much as the other way around. Oh hell, images are better



hash marks indicate an indirect or weak interaction. How best to explain that... Draining a river does not necessarily impact the aspects of the environment that shape a behavior under examination, at least not directly.

And the other way around as well: as Broomstick observes, humans marry for fun and profit almost as much (if not more so historically) as they do to have children.

If they are having sex and are not post-reproductive, this almost invariably leads to offspring unless there are medical problems involved. No one sits around and thinks about fitness. Fitness maximization is almost always mediated by other emotions and drives. It is always present though. Even an arranged marriage for family mergers necessarily imply someone a part of both families born who will inherit...

For starts, we have sex for fun even when we know for a fact that no child will result because we're either using a condom or doing it with our own sex. Thus, we cannot rely on sexual behavior to say who wants to have kids or not, as we could with most other species.

So, you think that someone who knows they wont have kids will just... change their mate selection criteria? That all of the sudden all of the emotions that mediate mate choice in humans just go away?

Are you high?

Here is a hint: If you find someone fun and attractive enough to have sex with them, that is your mating drive that in your evolutionary past made you have kids sending you a message. The fact that we have figured out an end-run around that because we figured out how to make latex tubes is irrelevant.

No, I just think that you can't say that "other ape brains work like x therefor human brains work like x".

Good thing that is not the whole of my argument then.

1) females in our society obtain resources as well. How do you think that effects things?

They did in the past too. That does not mean they could or can get enough to raise a child successfully, or they can that the kid wont have problems. Even if that is no longer the case, jealousy, which is the emotion mediating a female non-acceptance of polygyny is still there. It just tends to be weaker than it is for males. Why? Because in our evolutionary past, sharing a male with one of more other females may not necessarily be bad for your fitness. In males, it almost always was to share one female with other males. Paternal uncertainty and all that. Again, mediated by jealousy. That emotion is not going away just because the conditions under which it evolved no longer exist--even if I were to concede that they dont, which I dont. The rare human cases of polyandry are almost uniformly cases of male siblings forming an alliance to help raise eachothers kids in resource poor environments.

2) land is no longer the primary resource/property/capital of importance in our society. How does this effect things?

The form the resource takes is irrelevant. Only the mean, variance in distribution between males, and relative quality matter. It could be available per capita work hours, GINI, and Median Wage for all I care

3) our society is overpopulated (at least in some places, certainly), and we have a visible minority of homosexuals. How does this effect things?

Depends on the operational sex ratio. Population size is irrelevant. Homosexuals do not count toward operational sex ratio.

Again, we aren't living in the same environment we evolved in. We are living in one of our own creation (whether wholly or partially), and this must be taken into account.

We will take on the phenotype for the condition that most closely approximates a condition in our evolutionary past because the evolution of our brains and what said brain can handle is optimized for that, not what we currently live in.

Would you like a breakdown of how allowing multiple simultaneous legal mating will affect operational sex ratio? I can do that if you like. At least an approximation.

[Broomstick]

You realize that there are matriarchal human societyies, right? Ohhhh, but noooooo, biological determinism therefor I'm right!

Yes. I mentioned them dumbfuck. They tend to be the ones engaging in polyandry.

Although, if I recall correctly, polyandry also occurs in Tibet and Nepal in patriarchal societies (Fraternal polyandry). Not sure what motivates it there.

Polyandry tends to occur under a few conditions:

1) Low resource availability, where more than one male is needed to obtain the necessary resources
2) In order to maintain land within families--particularly when it is poorly available or poor quality
3) The operational sex ratio is strongly male biased. Some tribal cultures the sex ratio is 1.3:1, because they cull females at birth. There are a variety of reasons for that I can go into if you ask.

The most common form is fraternal polyandry, where one female marries a set of brothers. This gets around the whole "Men dont want to share mates or take care of kids that are not theirs" thing. You know, because no matter what, the kids are related.

I think among some of the North American arctic people they get around some of the male jealousy issues by having the husbands live with the wife in shifts - one man is off hunting for 4-6 weeks, then stays home while the second husband goes out for a like amount of time. This keeps the men from spending too much time together, which I'm guessing mitigates some of the jealousy issues (while the man is the sole man at home he isn't in immediate competition). The other thing is, since the children of both men are dependent half the time on the other man it provides some incentive not to be a shithead about the kids as, given the nature of the environment, in order for any children to survive it requires cooperation between three adults. On top of that, the tribes who do this aren't very big, so everyone is somewhat related anyway.

Truth is, some female humans today control sufficient resources on their own they don't need a mate to successful raise a child, only to conceive one.

Yes they do. They are not very common though. I need not go into the issues with single parents.

Not common - but becoming more so.

Really, in the hunter-gatherer societies a kid has a hard enough time surviving even with two parents. One reason humans are arguably more monogamous than the other apes is because fathers who pour their resources into one mate and her children left more descendants than men who spread their resources around too much, at least at some points in our history. Until the advent of agricultural even the best provider had a hard time feeding and defending a large family, much less multiple families.

There are trade-offs that women make. Even a resource poor male can be a devoted mate and father. Sexual selection in humans is fairly complicated. I lumped both the resource and child care etc into one category, but they can be partitioned.

Correct. The reasons humans form social groups are complicated. Women - and men - make trade offs. A woman with significant resources might choose devotion over a wealthy male. Wealthy males worry women are taking advantage of their resources. And so on. Again, while monogamy may be the most common option for humans, and polygyny the next most common, there are certainly valid reasons people might choose other combinations. That is, after all, one of the way in which humans behavior is very flexible - humans can mate in highly unusual ways if that is a viable adaption to unusual circumstances.

And for fuck's sake, no one would ever adopt a child, right? Except... they do.

So do penguins... There is a reason why ALL step children are not abused... Humans do not recognize kin very well. One of the nice side effects of living in large social groups held together by external competition. Kin recognition gets co-opted, and some of the strength of various forms of sexual conflicts gets reduced. Still there though.

I also suspect the fact humans went through a genetic bottleneck, so that in reality we're much more closely related than individuals of some other species, might also tie into this. I've heard that the most distantly related human being are more genetically similar than randomly chosen chimpanzees are, on average, despite the fact there are many more humans than chimps. If true, that might also tie into the willingness of humans to adopt children.

Maybe you'll argue that contributing towards step children is a way in which men can demonstrate they are such superior mates they'll care for even unrelated children - so how much more will they do for their biological children, right?

A little bit of that, a little bit of benign neglect etc. Even if they dont abuse the stepkids, natural kids tend to get bigger slices of the pie. They dont get kicked out at 18, they get help with college... step kids get the short stick. What happens all depends on how vigorously mom stands up for her kids. If she doesn't, the kid is likely to be abused or neglected. If she does... well, the step kid has it fine.

Well, that applies to women... but men also adopt. Even single men have been known to adopt children. How do you explain that?. An overexpression of the human male's capacity to parent? Men with a capacity to adopt on their own would probably make very fine mates in a species that usually requires two parents for optimum outcome. I could see such traits being selected for, even if the potential isn't frequently realized.

Except... they didn't always. Even in circumstances where they COULD get away with murdering competitors' children human males don't always do so. So how do you explain that? Step parenting and adoption occurs in all human cultures that I've heard of, even those that condone infanticide.

I would need a historical instance for that one. Adoption of unrelated individuals is historically rare IIRC, step kids more common. There is the sexual selection "Look if you mate with me, I wont even kill your current kid, I am awesome" angle.

Well, yes, adoption of relatives is more common than non-relatives, but both occur. The Code of Hammurabi covered adoption law. The Codex Justinianus covered it for Ancient Rome. The concern in ancient societies seemed to be primarially providing heirs of some sort and, not surprisingly, usually involved close relatives but not always. In India and China a family without a male heir might adopt one so there would be someone to perform certain roles in funery rites, or to provide ancestor worship. There is some evidence that childless people might adopt as a form of old age pension plan - an arrangement where the adopters raise the adoptees, and in return the law holds the adoptees to caring for their parents in old age.

So is monogamy.

Yes. Yes it is. Less so, however. At least in western cultures. Think for a second. What--other than patriarchy--holds a polygynous marriage together? What holds them together in species where there is no patriarchy, or in cultures prior to the evolution of patriarchal systems of female domination? Reproductive necessity.

Basically, a situation where a man is such a super-provider than half his attention is equal to or greater than the average man in the tribe. Which is consistent with humans being only mildly polygamous, and usually limited to leaders in the prime of life.

The reason extra-marital affairs are built in is because women tend to care more about emotional betrayal than sex. "Who does hubby love more?". The same root cause is the stem of financial disagreements in polygynous marriages.

This is probably the reason the Koran mandates equal treatment among a man's wives... which I'm sure is far from universally observed. However, if a society is going to allow polygyny it is probably better for the group as a whole if resources are distributed equitably between multiple wives. I've also found it interesting that in most "traditional" society that allow polygamy the conventional wisdom is that the wives get separate houses unless they are sisters. I've long thought that that would cut down on the inter-family friction.

Now, the FLDS doesn't do it that way.. and those who leave the church do mention the problems of "sister-wives" under the same roof, and battles for family resources for the benefit of their children among the women.

Maybe, since humans are a long-lived and social species, we'll buddy-up for reasons other than mere reproduction.

Of course it is. The question is, how common is it? The answer is, not very, when compared to marriage for reproductive purposes... or more to the point, romantic affection, which generally leads to reproduction. It is not the ONLY reason to do it, but it is the reason the vast vast majority do it. The exceptions do not disprove the general rule, or impact what will occur population wide to any meaningful degree.

While reproduction is, unquestionably, part of the role of marriage I think that in humans other things factor in much more often than people think. Two humans teaming up it a better strategy than attempting to go it alone, which is likely one reason human marriages can last far past mating and reproductive years. Humans that don't marry have been known to "buddy up" with another of the same gender, even when both are heterosexual, for those reasons. Sometimes, it's with a relative - after my paternal grandmother and her sister no long had husbands around (one being killed, the other disappearing for a few decades) they moved in together and jointly raised the kids, with one taking the housekeeper role and the other getting a job. While possibly more rare for unrelated people to do this, such pairing certainly have occurred through history. That would cover the motivation of assisting your relatives, and of taking care of oneself. It's not uncommon for people to have unrelated roommates because it provides a bettter living situation than two going it alone, and it happens both before and after reproductive years. For a lot of cultures, the only way a man and a woman could buddy up in that manner was marriage, and it's probably accounted for a lot of late marriages. Some people frankly just marry as a way to have steady sex, whether or not that will result in children because sex and reproduction, while linked, do not always occur together. I think a lot of marriages have multiple motivations - of course, as someone in a marriage where, from the start, we knew natural reproduction wouldn't happen maybe I'm clearer on my motivations outside of reproduction. If I had had kids I might have discounted the companionship-steady sex-two against the world is better than one aspects to the relationship. I think those three motivations are as common as "I want to have kids" and most marriages, particuarly most long-term successful marriages, combine several motivations.

Except your explanation does not account for husband-abusing wives, which certainly do exist. I don't think domestic violence is JUST about preventing cheating, although it's certianly a factor.

It is about dominance, insecurity, and control. What do those mediate? Reproductive control. It is not 100% because the same pathways in the brain will mediate other social interactions, but you are confusing ultimate vs proximate causes.

I think it also involves control beyond just reproduction - if times get hard and food gets short, who is going to get enough to eat? Personal survival is a factor, too, even to the point of adults abandoning children rather than sacrificing for them. People don't just want to have offspring, they also want personal survival. Obviously, those two impulses can come into conflict with each other, too.

Except that people don't stop having sex when their reproductive years are over.

It still does not matter. They still dont count toward the operational sex ratio, nor will polygamy/polyamory among the elderly impact what occurs in the rest of the population, barring statistical outliers.

Are you so sure about that? Humans live a long time, and human women can and do live past the ability to reproduce - why is that? One theory is that grandmothers contribute significantly to the survival of children in hunter-gatherer societies. Grandma has incentive to care for her grandchildren on a biological/genetic level, she knows how to gather foods and in some environments could significantly supplement the food supply, she can help her daughters with childcare, potentially finish raising a child that has lost one or even both parents... If human lineages with grandmothers tend to leave more descendants than those where women die before reaching grandmotherhood then there could be selection for long life. So long-lived women might impact descendent survival. Old man survival might as well, if grandfathers are still contributing to child raising via hunting or defense. For both genders, old people might also impart value if they play a role in education of the young. Given the importance of education and culture in human survival this could be very important.

OK, ok - so how does old people sex factor into this? Primates have been known to trade food for sex. Usually it seems to involve men providing meat to women, but cooking for one's man is a common theme among women as well. If an old lady fucking an old man helps her obtain more high quality food for the grandkids, or sufficient quantity for food... well, there you go. Hey, there's a reason making breakfast for one's mate after sex the night before is a meme.

In other words - the old folks might still factor into reproductive success, even if not directly. A married grandparent might be more effective at helping descendants than an unmarried grandparent. I don't know if anyone has looked into that. If that is so, then an eldelry woman in a polygynous relationship might be better off, and her grandkids better off, than if she was single. It would probably not be the biggest factor at work, but it could be significant enough to make a difference over numerous generations.

Consider that single parent households where the grandparents are involved in childcare tend to have better outcomes than such households that lack grandparents. I would expect that having two grandparents involved with the kids would be even better... which becomes a situation where the mating habits of post-reproductive adults might still impact the descendants of those adults.

Given as food for thought.

By your reasoning no marriage should last past the last child leaving home, and no one should be having sex with menopausal women - but they do.

Social bonding does not end at senescence, and very few marriages last that long. In fact, the divorce rate spikes at 4 years. It was only recently that individuals started to live to post-reproductive age. It is not as if their sex drive dies, or they dont crave companionship in their elderly years.

You mean only recently that adults commonly live past reproductive age. Clearly, there must have been both enough females living into old age to prompt us to evolve menopause - a trait very rare in the animal kingdom. It's been observed in elephants and cetaceans... species where elderly females play a vital role in guiding young members of the group and in educating them. It seems to crop up in long-lived species with long childhoods that require extensive education. Which category humans fall into. Apparently the great apes can live long enough to experience this, too, although it's not been well studied. You just need to have enough old farts living long enough to improve success for their descendants, that may not require that even half of people live so long. If just one grandparent is sufficient to make a difference than only 1/4 of people living into old age would be sufficient to create selective pressure.

A young male does not know if someone is post-menopausal unless they are very old.

If young heterosexual males can't find young women they'll have sex with old women in preference to no sex at all, or sex with each other (usually). But I think we may be getting a little off track with that.

Actually, monogamy will continue to be most common even if you allow anything and everything, and especially since more and more women don't need a mate to ensure their children survive.

I meant most common among polygamus situations. Sorry I was not more clear.

Well, agreed - multiple wives for one man is the most common group marriage pattern, for several reasons, most of them getting back to human reproduction patterns. But when the group is other than that, assume that reasons outside pure reproduction are exerting themselves.

However what is legal and what actually happens are different things. Abortion and birth control are legal in Colorado City

But, even if legal, effectivley unobtainable due to culture.

There is a beneficial effect. Whether or not that effect size is sufficient to compensate for permissible polygamy is another story. I would love to see comparative studies of societies in africa to evaluate these things in a semi-controlled way, instead of across an entire continent with a shit load of uncontrolled variables.

Or comparing cultures from around the world, to find both what contributes to that pattern, and what leads to different patterns.

[Broomstick]

Yes. I mentioned them dumbfuck. They tend to be the ones engaging in polyandry. They are also very rare when compared to polygynous societies. It is not that such a situation cannot occur. It can. I have explicitly stated that it can. It did however require a specific set of circumstances to occur with any sort of regularity.

The bolded part is why your argument is worth less than the paper its printed on. It shows that something other than biology determines whether or not the society will engage in polygamy or polyandry.

Actually, it could just as easily mean that environment affects our mating habits - there are a number of species where different environments affect mating behavior, from insects that engage in either sexual or parthenogenic reproduction based on conditions, to birds where, when there is overcrowding the young of prior breeding seasons help their parents raise more chicks instead of going off to mate immediately upon reaching adulthood but when not crowded set off to create their own families almost immediately. Biology can and does allow for the environment to impact how animals behave be selecting between biological programs (for lack of a better word).

It could be that a shortage of men prompts humans to opt for polygyny, and a shortage of women prompts humans to opt for polyandry - or for mate hoarding - and that this may not be based in logic or reason but rather biology in action.

[Broomstick]

Depends on the operational sex ratio. Population size is irrelevant. Homosexuals do not count toward operational sex ratio.

But if common enough they might affect the operational sex ratio. If the percentage of homosexuals rises high enough it reduces the available men for breeding. Or, if there is an excess of males, if enough of them are homosexual it might balance things out to a 1:1 ratio of breeding individuals.

Whether or not that ever occurs in real life is another question.

[Formless]

And will you stop using polygamy. Would you like me to break down the word for you?

Poly=many. Gamy=gametes. Polygamy=multiple gametes. It is not a word specific as to which set. Polygyny and polyandry are more appropriate unless you are talking about a marriage between multiple males AND multiple females--which will be vanishingly rare in all cases if only because you wont be able to find enough bisexuals of the proper temperament for it to work out except in vanishingly rare instances. Unless you have a problem with understanding probability, which I suspect you may.

1)marriage in which a spouse of either sex may have more than one mate at the same time

2) the state of being polygamous

My apologies. It seems for once *I* am the one succumbing to cultural bias-- I honestly had polygamy and polygyny mixed up.

Are you literate? I am starting to wonder. Maybe you just have a strange psychological compulsion to build scarecrows, animate them using poorly performed logomancy, and then burn them alive. I have not said at all that polygyny is the only one that will exist, or that the environment has no influence. In fact, I specifically stated multiple times that mating system is determined by ecological conditions. Read: The environment. Dumbfuck.

Now you are backpedaling. Your original argument against legalizing polygamy ignored cultural influences on our behavior. Re-read what you wrote in that first post before accusing me of strawmanning, asshole.

And the thrust of my argument has nothing to do with religion. My contention is that ecologically driven polygyny CAUSED patriarchy. Not the other way around, save in odd cases like the FLDS. The primitive condition for humanity is polygyny. It is the basal character state, and pre-dates all religion. It is silly to claim that patriarchy causes polygyny.

You are missing the point. I'm saying that all the data points you have alluded to are biased towards examples where religion played an unarguable role in the how things played out. Dear god, are you fucking dense or something? When presented with a chicken or egg scenario, give the other party some evidence for your position before saying "the chicken came first!"

Unless the environment we evolved in is the same--functionally--as the one we created. That boils down to the numbers. What is the mean resource availability, what is the variance around that mean.

Humans evolved in an unpredictable spread in these two parameters. Therefore our responses are phenotypically plastic. We exhibit a set of possible phenotypes, each one optimized for the set of environments we evolved within. Our current environment will approximate one of these--and you may need to partition that by socio-economic class. Our response will be the one optimized for the environment in which we evolved, not necessarily to the one we live in. It will depend on how close the approximation between historical and current environmental condition is. We no longer live in a tribal environment, but we are still tribal, somewhat hairless apes with the ability to do math.

Unfortunately, you misunderstand what I mean by our current environment. I wasn't talking about our social structures, I really was talking about our environment. As in, the physical world we live in. Our ancestors lived in an environment where it was make lots of babies if you want one or two of them to live, because the rest could easily starve to death. Nowadays, that doesn't happen, and we know it. At least in the first world (the place where the hypothetical changes in law are assumed to be taking place in this thread) we live like kings, and we have this novel thing called "free time" where we can waste resources playing or fucking for no other reason than to enjoy ourselves. Those needs that we do still have don't even always present themselves in a form that would be recognizable to our savanna ancestors, like legal documents and money. They do not invoke the same responses, because they are so different in actual appearance and nature to the ones we evolved with like food and land. So we take advantage of old institutions in new ways, that cannot necessarily be predicted by biological forces. Like marrying people out of convenience because you need someone you can trust to make medical decisions when you're unconscious and on the operating table and the doctors have hit "complications".

Do you really think this kind of world is similar enough to the one we lived in to make such predictions based on our biology? Really?

Accounting for turnover is not hard.

Alright, fair enough. But lets change the rules once again: lets say that we institute multiple marriages the way Simon proposed: everyone in the group must sign off on it. How many wives will refuse to do so? How many will refuse to allow new women into an existing relationship? How long before it devolves back into monogamy? How will it change the sex ratio when the society is balanced towards women having as much power as men?

Lets ignore for a moment that reality is skewed such that there are more women than men alive today (the difference is small, but measurable).

hash marks indicate an indirect or weak interaction. [the image indicates only weak feedback from culture back into the environment] How best to explain that... Draining a river does not necessarily impact the aspects of the environment that shape a behavior under examination, at least not directly.

I dispute this. Our culture DIRECTLY influences the environment. Just to take a couple of examples, we create industries that put out junk on a scale unimaginable to other animals because our culture allowed us to exploit resources on that kind of scale. It even necessitates us to resort to an abstraction (money) to even comprehend it ourselves. Our technology is a direct artifact of our culture rather than our biology, and yet we must learn numerous skills and motives that deal exclusively with technology. These things directly impact our governments and social institutions, creating laws (and layers of bureaucracy) that change how we interact with one another. And you say the interaction between culture and our environment is weak? Really?

If they are having sex and are not post-reproductive, this almost invariably leads to offspring unless there are medical problems involved. No one sits around and thinks about fitness. Fitness maximization is almost always mediated by other emotions and drives. It is always present though.

Bullshit. Think of it this way: we have a drive for social bonds, we have a drive for sex, and we have a drive to raise kids. But these drives exist in parallel. That's why you see people in western societies who stay bachelors for ages, moving from partner to partner before finally "settling down" to have kids. That's why you see perfectly happy couples with two and fewer kids and no more coming, even though evolution favors those who proliferate. In the past it would have been hard to identify this because sex always came with the risk of pregnancy, so marriage was only condoned when the motive for sex and the motive to raise kids coincided (or at least when the couple claimed they did). But they are not the same, as birth control evidenced. No one gives a shit about fitness maximization (most people can't even comprehend the concept, FFS!), they want sex and they want healthy kids. That's not the same thing at all. If evolution were so precise in its designs, I wouldn't be an atheist.

And that, since you obviously forgot, is why I think evolutionary psychology is such a steaming pile of dog turds.

Even an arranged marriage for family mergers necessarily imply someone a part of both families born who will inherit...

No, its a way of keeping social classes stratified, so that the money does not flow downhill to the unclean lower casts/classes. It does NOT lead to increased fitness, and arguably its unsustainable because it will inevitably lead to inbreeding (see: European nobility in the middle ages, who did similar things and had some really fucked up genetic disorders for their troubles). The only thing it increases is the concentration of wealth, a cultural artifact. To claim that it increases fitness is bizarre.

So, you think that someone who knows they wont have kids will just... change their mate selection criteria? That all of the sudden all of the emotions that mediate mate choice in humans just go away?

Are you high?

Are you done appealing to personal incredulity? How about missing the point? That point being that our sexual behavior does not necessarily indicate a desire to raise children? That has absolutely nothing to do with mate preferences and everything to do with what motives for getting a mate in the first place are, you imbecile! Because once again, you should fucking know better than to conflate marriage with mating behavior, mating behavior with sexual behavior, and every other social aspect of marriage with fitness maximization in general.

Here is a hint: If you find someone fun and attractive enough to have sex with them, that is your mating drive that in your evolutionary past made you have kids sending you a message. The fact that we have figured out an end-run around that because we figured out how to make latex tubes is irrelevant.

By your own fiat, because you say so, etc. etc. etc.. Enough with the wall of ignorance tactics, asshole, they have no place in intelligent discussions. I know you hate hearing people attack the evo-psych dogma you've obviously bitten into, but frankly I don't give a shit.

P.S. by the way, do you have to cut up my arguments into little fucking slices? I was editing this and I noticed at this point there was stuff you had written that was just there to fill out the page with bluster, even though the stuff it was in response to was out of context the way you presented it. That's just obnoxious.

They did in the past too. That does not mean they could or can get enough to raise a child successfully, or they can that the kid wont have problems. Even if that is no longer the case, jealousy, which is the emotion mediating a female non-acceptance of polygyny is still there. It just tends to be weaker than it is for males. Why? Because in our evolutionary past, sharing a male with one of more other females may not necessarily be bad for your fitness. In males, it almost always was to share one female with other males. Paternal uncertainty and all that. Again, mediated by jealousy. That emotion is not going away just because the conditions under which it evolved no longer exist--even if I were to concede that they dont, which I dont. The rare human cases of polyandry are almost uniformly cases of male siblings forming an alliance to help raise eachothers kids in resource poor environments.

That's a nice fable you've constructed. Mind giving us some actual facts for a change rather than making shit up as you go along? Granted, you're a good storyteller, consistent and all that, but its not really an argument to just throw out an origin story for a behavior you have yet to establish exists. That being "women are less jelous than men." So says the (gay) man.

The form the resource takes is irrelevant. Only the mean, variance in distribution between males, and relative quality matter. It could be available per capita work hours, GINI, and Median Wage for all I care

Fair enough.

Depends on the operational sex ratio. Population size is irrelevant. Homosexuals do not count toward operational sex ratio.

But you do count, as far as the law is concerned, as part of the population. Just my suspicion, but it sounds a lot like polygamy would work out quite well for people who don't care about sex ratios in the first place because they are all the same sex anyway.

Anyway, it very well may matter more than you think. If people cannot even perceive the sex ratio imbalance due to the population being so large you need polls and statisticians to tell you its there, then the effect on their behavior should be negligible.

Actually, it could just as easily mean that environment affects our mating habits - there are a number of species where different environments affect mating behavior, from insects that engage in either sexual or parthenogenic reproduction based on conditions, to birds where, when there is overcrowding the young of prior breeding seasons help their parents raise more chicks instead of going off to mate immediately upon reaching adulthood but when not crowded set off to create their own families almost immediately. Biology can and does allow for the environment to impact how animals behave be selecting between biological programs (for lack of a better word).

Well, yeah, but then I never said that only culture could be the influencer, just that something other than biology could be at work. Environment counts.

Actually, that reminds me of something I had heard-- that in cultures where food is scarce being fat suddenly becomes attractive, but when putting food on the table is no longer a concern its the other way around. One more reason not to buy Aly's assertion that the environment and culture interact only weakly.

[Formless]

Ghetto Edit:

That's a nice fable you've constructed. Mind giving us some actual facts for a change rather than making shit up as you go along? Granted, you're a good storyteller, consistent and all that, but its not really an argument to just throw out an origin story for a behavior you have yet to establish exists. That being "women are less jelous than men." So says the (gay) man women can't get enough resources to raise a child on her own without screwing them up.

Sorry, sometimes I get ahead of myself and forget which part of the argument presented tipped my bullshit detector.