Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Status:
"I don't understand. But I don't care, so it works out."
(set 7 days ago)
35,630 posts, read 17,968,125 times
Reputation: 50653
I could write an essay in response to your OP, OP.
But here are two points:
Some mammal males compete for the privilege of mating, and have to prove by their health and stamina and attractiveness and intelligence that they are the ones the female wants to mate with, to ensure the best outcome for her offspring. Deer come to mind. Bucks don't participate in raising the fawns, but the offspring are genetically a step ahead because the males have competed with each other and winnowed out the weaker genes.
Humans pair, instead, at least for awhile, to raise their young together. That's why humans "fall in love". That creates monogamy, at least for a few years, until the little baby human is up and walking and not so completely dependent on a mother who must full time care for the baby until the baby is at least 4 or so.
So no. Human males, by nature, should mostly all be able to mate and pair off, because we pair, rather than compete for breeding.
(Sadly, this isn't true for the least desirable 10% of males, who won't have the opportunity to mate, because there are at least 10% of women who aren't interested in pairing off).
Honestly, OP. This appears to be written from a completely unsuccessful male perspective, in that you appear to need a balance of very few male competitors and many female options.
Our species has a problem: too many men and too few women.
At first glance, you would see the 50/50 ratio of men to women and think, that makes sense. One man for one woman.
But if you dig deeper you realize it's actually a disaster.
Female mammals are typically in estrus a fraction of the time. For humans, it's 3-4 days a month. The rest of the time, a woman is not sexually viable. And if a woman becomes pregnant, she is not sexually viable for at least a year, owing to pregnancy and postpartum recovery.
(We'll ignore menopause as older men are more likely to pass on birth defects, so older people in general should have fewer children.)
Meanwhile a man's sexual refractory period is on the order of hours.
All this means is that, sexually speaking, there are many more men than women.
This produces a number of negative consequences. The most direct being that typically a fraction of each cohort of men dies without reproducing, and often they are killed. That's inevitable with natural selection for both sexes, but the destruction of human males is wanton because of the mismatch between the 50/50 sex selection mechanism and the not-50/50 mammalian reproductive mechanism.
Another negative consequences is this encourages violent behavior among men and patriarchy. If total fitness is improved by killing other men, then that's what will happen. Patriarchy occurs because men, under greater selective pressure, evolved to be physically stronger and slightly smarter than women. (If you doubt the last part, look up sexual bimaturism and notice that pubescent girls develop faster than boys.)
This is all because of the mismatch between sex selection and reproduction within our species. Can we fix this?
We have a track record of fixing ancient problems with science in the pill. Thousands of years of (mostly ineffective) sexual morality were rendered obsolete when the pill was invented.
So my modest proposal for world peace and harmony is to invent a pill that skews sex ratios more towards women than men. Men would have to take it. Fewer men would be born, polygamy would be accepted as the biological norm for mammals, and peace would break out across the land.
I could write an essay in response to your OP, OP.
But here are two points:
Some mammal males compete for the privilege of mating, and have to prove by their health and stamina and attractiveness and intelligence that they are the ones the female wants to mate with, to ensure the best outcome for her offspring. Deer come to mind. Bucks don't participate in raising the fawns, but the offspring are genetically a step ahead by the males have competed with each other and winnowed out the weaker genes.
Humans pair, instead, at least for awhile, to raise their young together. That's why humans "fall in love". That creates monogamy, at least for a few years, until the little baby human is up and walking and not so completely dependent on a mother who must full time care for the baby until the baby is at least 4 or so.
So no. Human males, by nature, should pretty much all be able to mate and pair off, because we pair, rather than compete for breeding.
(This isn't true for the least desirable 10% of males, who won't have the opportunity to mate).
This is not historically correct.
Scientists can look at the prevalence of mitochondrial DNA, which is entirely inherited from the mother, and have concluded that more individual women have reproduced than men. This means our species is naturally polygamous to some extent. Monogamy is a behavioral adaptation that requires reprogramming.
The ideal sex ratio is debatable, and I do think that a period of some years of coparenting may be natural for newborns. But it brings along a lot of problems, which have been with us for so long people do not even notice them.
There are already 6 million more women than men in the US. In a few years it will be 7 million more women than men. Our country doesn't seem to be getting more peaceful.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
