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ShaktiSama -> RE: The secret to life after menopause - Older men/younger women ... (12/20/2007 5:44:56 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY
Skati,
All of your points were addressed in the actual study, to one extent or the other, I think. Did you click on the link and read, or just go into "feminst rant mode"? [:D]
Firm
I would not bother reading an "actual study" which was summarized by the OP by multiple statements about human evolution and biology which are simply, utterly false.
For example: your reference to human sexual dimorphism is completely wrong. Human sexual dimorphism is actually very limited, even relative to other members of the great ape line: in any given human population, the variation between males of different sizes is actually much greater than the average difference between males and females. The latter amounts to 1-2 inches in stature and a few kilograms in mass at most--along with a millimeter or two of length on the canines, especially the lower.
Contrast this to the dimorphism of a real polygynous species, like the gorilla or even a semi-polygynous species like the orangutan, and you can see it's a joke. Humans are actually much more analogous to our closest cousins, in the genus Pan--the chimpanzees and bonobos. Both species of Pan live in multi-male, multi-female groups, like humans. Fancy that.
There's another aspect of human morphology which argues strongly against the idea that our ancestors were living in polygynous groups--your own cock. Human males actually have a very large penis versus total body size, compared to many other species of primate. They also have large testes that produce a lot of semen. Having a larger, longer penis and bigger testes that produce copious fluid is not necessary...unless you have to actually compete for reproductive success within the vagina itself. In other words, a species doesn't develope a big wang unless a female ready to be fertilized will have access to multiple males! [;)]
You can call a reference to these inconvenient facts a "feminist rant" if you like. I simply do not like people to post nonsense and call it science--or to publish nonsense and call it science, for that matter.
I do not personally care who you have sex with, so long as she is old enough to consent to it. Ageplay is fun for dominants and submissives in all gender combinations. But polygyny and "May December" romances are cultural phenomena--not biological phenomena. And your own body argues against both as being "natural" or somehow biologically correct for your species.
P.S. Having now read the article posted, I can easily see multiple flaws in the reasoning of the authors. Namely, they have no conception whatsoever of the concept of "social survival"--evolutionary forces that causesone's genes to survive due to non-mating events like infant care or group defense. The survival of humans of both sexes into old age is easily explained by social survival--older humans are often very valuable to their younger kin. The productivity of older women in particular, in hunter-gatherer societies, has been studied in terms of calories they produce per hour of labor. Their productivity is off the charts, compared to younger women in the child-bearing years--grandmothers work harder, longer, and much more efficiently, and "bring in the bacon" for their sons/daughters and grandchildren much more effectively than a woman still carrying her offspring.
The majority of effective hunting and fishing in many such societies is also done by men in their mid-thirties or older. Grampa is damned useful too! [;)]
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