In short, women discovered and developed their capacity for orgasm on their own, for their own pleasure rather than reproduction, in spite of men who either have neglected it or sought to curtail or destroy it (as in the case of female genital cutting).
If two parents are more advantageous than one parent, three, four, or more parents are even more advantageous than two. As a matter of fact, the practice of making the entire community responsible for each and every child would be the most advantageous. Given likely much lower survival rates of children, higher rates of maternal deaths during childbirth, and lower life expectancies of both men and women at the dawn of humanity than at present, it would make more sense to expect a communal approach to child rearing than a nuclear family model, as the latter would have likely left many children without parents back then. -- Mike B) responds:
This makes a lot of sense to me. Humans have brains and cultures and as Charles pointed out, they tend to pass knowledge of the wheel down to the following generations. So, women found out about sexual pleasure and passed the knowledge down to others. Why not?
And as far as I have been able to determine, men used to worship women as THE child producers--little fat/pregnant Venus statues all over the place. Then, when animal husbandry, agriculture and classes came into being, they seemed to have begun to notice that the male had something to do with procreation. "Hey, when I fence the female sheep off from the males, no spring lambs? What da ya make of that Samson?"
Of course, because men were usually the ones in positions of class and familial power at that point in history, they turned the whole worship thing around (no more Venus statues) and began abusing women (cutting the clit off) and/or just plain putting them into secondary positions of power, queen as opposed to king and so on down the hierarchical line.
****************************************************************** "You have deep-seated survival anxieties. And you don't like bigots, bullies, snobs or hypocrites. Subconsciously there are many people you hate."
"Consciously, sir, consciously," Yossarian corrected in an effort to help. "I hate them consciously." from CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller
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