>Has there been any period in history when a majority
of men had the
power to select their partners for sexual and
procreative purposes?
For the longest time in history, a majority of
societies vested that
power in parents.
Yoshie's suggestion is that sociobiological exaplantion that depends on male selection of fertile-appearinfg or younger women is inadequate because men didn't do their own selection.
But first, the SB explanation will have created any propensities of the sort we are talking about during the pre-historic era. History, understood as the last 10-15,000 yrs of civilized life based on agriculture or industry, is way too short a period to be evolutionarily significant.
Second, the pattern of a preference for fertile-appearing and younger women doesn't depend on the supposition that men necessarily choose their own mates. Even if the family, i.e., in patriarchical sociry, dad, chooses for junior, he's likely to choose someone fertile-appearing and younger. As is the norm in most actual and historical societies (i.e., the nature of the choice, regardless of who makes it). dad's SB interest in the matter is half as strong as junior's, but still significant.
I also wonder whether it's true that this arrangement was done by the families for most of even history outside the small class of cases where property was involved. According to most writers on the family in hiostory I have read, in Europe most people didn't even bother to get officially married until marriage was formalized as a sacrement a thousand years ago, and even then it probably took a long time to impose that pattern on folkways. This is reflected in the ancient institutionof common law marriage, which occurs,w here it has not been abolished, simply by holding yourself out as man and wife.
Third, sexual activity, procreation, and partnership are all distinct activities. In ancient Greece and Rome, women were for making babies; men normally went for sex to teenage boys or heteiras and for partnership to their friends. The relevant point is is procreation, although the explanation would cover sexual attraction too, but I think you'll find that there has been a preference by men for fertile appearing (which generally includes younger) women as both sex partners and mothers.
Yoshie continues:
> After the sexual revolution, that power got
transfered from parents to women (and a few super-rich
men).
Biologically irrelevant. Though I have encountered some anthropology and sociobiology which speculates that pre-historically, when it mattered, sexual selection was done by women among their suitors -- so you'd have men who were attracted to fertile-looking women competing for the favors of desirable women. This seems plausible, actually -- not only is this not untypical among mammals, but simple rape of unwilling women is not necessarily likely to be a successful technique for propagation of one's progeny. You might get a women, or many, preganant that way, but if you weren't there to care for her and the children, their odds of survival, low in prehiostorical times to start with, would be even lower compared to men who stayed around; and a relationship based on mere male physical power would require a lot of energy to police compared to one based some degree of mutual attraction.
>Most
working-class men (excepting a few pretty boys) are
out of luck --
they feel lucky if they get chosen by some women --
_any_ women --
and get laid at all,
This is just silly, even for today. People tend to pair up within their own social class, so more affluent people aren't real competitors with working class men for working class women, and only especially lucky or (by prevailing standards) attractive working class women have the hope of marrying up.
Speaking anecdotally, my own experience among the upper classes, e.g., at Princeton, was not that people in that group who were not attractive, charming, in good shape, etc. had an especially easy time finding sex partners.
> whereas lusty ladies of any class have no
problem getting laid if they so desire -- but most of
the time, women
have better things to do. :->
This is almost certainly true, and it supports the idea that women are involved in sexual selection quite as much as men.
--- joanna <123hop at comcast.net> wrote (in response to me:
>
> >>If the basic expalantion for patriarchy is
> >>merely the psychic charge or economic advantage
> men as
> >>a group get by keeping women subordinate, that
> doesn't
> >>explain why would there be a male preference for
> women
> >>who appear fertile or are younger.
> A pregnant woman is easier to control; a younger
> woman might be more
> inclined to defer to an older man.
>
> Joanna
This doesn't strike me as plausible: that men prefer fertile looking women because they will be able get them pregnant and control them more easily? Why the extra step? And why do you think that pregant women are easier to control? Btw even if this theory were true would still produce sexual selection, sociobiologically, for fertile appearing women. You may be right that part of the apperal of younger women is that they are more docile, though why should that be, actually? Teenager girls aren't, in my experience, particularly docile.
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