LadyNTrainer
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quote:
ORIGINAL: cloudboy
The project here is to characterize groups, not individuals. Its always relevant to consider individuals who don't fit the mold, or to have an observation's accuracy whittled down. So, thanks for your observations.
I am characterizing groups and discussing the differences that can be observed between them. Where you will find a more or less random scattering of individuals in both groups along the entire spectrum, with no meaningful groupings by gender at any given point on the spectrum, then you can't characterize. On most of the questions stated, this is in fact the case.
quote:
Your comments about genetic variance are logical ones, but one fact still stands out to me:
"On average, men have 40% more fat-free mass than women, which is similar to the difference in gorillas, a species in which males unquestionably compete with other males for exclusive sexual access to females. In species whose males do not fight for access to females, males are generally the same size as, or smaller than, females."
Still quoting from lay publications that ignore the wider range of prevalent theories in favor of current buzzwords and a one-page sound byte inadequately summarizing a complex issue? Physical sexual dimorphism in humans and other species is not monolithic. Multiple evolutionary pressures, including but certainly not limited to intraspecies as well as interspecies competition, is likely to shape it.
Homo sapiens is one of the few species extant to have developed strongly specialized food gathering and resource production roles which are generally separated by gender as well as skill in later examples of specialization. In a species where one gender hunts and the other gathers, the evolutionary consequence should be reasonably obvious. The substantial lengthening of both gestation period and neonatal/childhood learning and development in hominids, both a consequence of evolving larger brains, necessitated gender role specialization in food production to facilitate the much longer periods of pregnancy and child care. Along with sentience, you also get sex-linked food seeking specialization adaptations for hunting versus gathering.
Sentience, tool use, verbal language, etc, are rather significant driving forces in hominid evolution. Let's not utterly ignore them in favor of what sounds sexy to us kinksters. That is very bad science, and it gives me a deep ache in the large brain my species evolved in order to have these things. :/
Beware of dumbed down statements from pop culture sources predigested for the layperson with a short attention span. Generally by the time you finish dumbing things down that far, they aren't actually true any more, even if they had some of truth in them to start with.
Male intraspecies reproductive competition where the male fights off rivals to control either a territory that is for use by females, physical access to the females, or the females themselves, is one strategy of male gene transmission. It cannot properly be regarded as "male dominance" in the sense that the male dominates the females when the battles are for territory, or for the purposes of displaying fitness to the female, or for the purpose of disallowing rival males courting access. It can be regarded as male to female dominance when there are behavioral interactions of this nature between the genders, but this is not always the case. In any case, let's just call this entire range of strategy "male dominance" for convenience and with the understanding that it may in fact be confined exclusively to same-sex dominance interactions while the male to female interactions may or may not be characterized as male dominant behavior.
Male dominance strategies for reproductive success are effective; high ranking "alpha" males gain more mating opportunities. However, younger males and lower ranking males who are social pleasers, who groom and befriend females and who make alliances easily, mate almost as often, and sometimes with greater effectiveness. The resources and risks of the dominant male are largely spent in fighting and guarding, and healing injuries from fighting; he has less time to forge crucial alliances. In the end, his gene transmission to the next generation may be only slightly more than that of the individual nondominant males who used other strategies, and in total, nondominant males using alternative strategies are likely to sire more offspring. In addition, there are commonly used "social pleaser" male strategies for gaining alpha rank that involve more social skills and alliance forming, primarily with dominant high-influence females, than physical fighting with males. Even "male dominance" as a reproductive strategy doesn't always look much like male dominance, certainly not as we understand it in this community.
Human evolution is just not simple enough to summarize in a page or a sound byte. I have to chuckle a little at the Gor novels that focus on seriously outdated primatology research viewed through the cultural lens of the 1950's to "prove" their conjectures that men are supposed to be dominant over women. It doesn't work that simply in real life, not even in the animal kingdom. So what you get is bits of actually true and relevant information mingled with stuff that was disproven years ago, with all the inconvenient bits of science utterly ignored or dismissed if it doesn't fit into the hot sexy theory.
Focusing narrowly on one fact of human physiology leading to one conjecture about its evolution is kind of like staring at a single shard of pottery from a rich archeological dig site and completely ignoring the rest of the vase and the rest of the dig site. You can't use one shard of pottery to prove much of anything. You could always decide to base your entire theory of Minoan civilization on one pottery shard and publish a paper on it. But however interesting or important that shard may be, if you ignore the context the shard was found in and don't even bother looking at everything else on the dig site or even the rest of the vase, it's not going to be a very good paper. Your shard may well be genuine, but it's still a shard. Look farther and harder and more comprehensively before you finish writing your paper.
< Message edited by LadyNTrainer -- 5/24/2010 9:43:50 AM >
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