[lbo-talk] Why think anthropologically (at least sometimes)

Bill Bartlett billbartlett at dodo.com.au
Fri Jun 3 17:00:13 PDT 2005


At 11:46 AM -0400 3/6/05, Charles Brown wrote:


>Long, long ago, in a land before time, human women were the first
>beings of any species to discover and to know that sex can cause
>pregnancy.
>
>However, they also knew like nobody else that their pregnancy
>and labor are an extraordiarily painful and miserable experience in
>many ways.
>
>The clitoris and vaginal orgasm were selected for , as only women
>who had these traits were capable of having enough pleasure from sex
>with men and vaginal sex with men to overlook the inevitable dreaded
>pregnancy and labor pains.

An implausible theory. It would have been much more efficient to evolve non-sentient human females. Large brains are quite expensive in terms of the food required to sustain them, so natural selection already has a prejudice against intelligence. Evolution would have strongly selected against sentient females if comprehension that sex leads to pregnancy was any kind of disadvantage.

In reality, the desire to have children is far more powerful than any concern about the risks or pain involved. The female orgasm is quite irrelevant.

So you are talking total codswallop. I gather that the real reason you refuse to accept the obvious explanation is that, for misplaced ideological reasons, you cannot bring yourself to acknowledge that human fathers play an important supportive role in child-rearing. Something to do with a romantic conception of primitive communism. Get over it.

Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas



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