[lbo-talk] Re: language of contempt

andie nachgeborenen andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com
Wed Jun 7 10:44:00 PDT 2006



>
> Anyway, funny thing is: I was reading some paper
> about four or five weeks
> ago in which the argument was that enforced
> restrictions on women's
> sexuality was a way to spread the babes around so
> that all men got a piece
> of some action. Can't find it now, or I'd send it
> along, but the author (a
> feminist) was reciting the major themes of Sb in
> order to argue that it
> wasn't necess. hostile to feminist theory and
> research.

In polygamous groups and societies, the "alpha" males do tend to en d up with a dispropotionate share of the women and lots of males end up with no female partnership (including sex) at all. Taking this as freestanding matter, the purely cultural explanation that first comes to my mind of is that the dominant males would make the concession of monogamy to prevent discontent among the subordinate males. The problem with this is that lots of polygamous (human) societies have been stable for centuries, and I am not sure that Gramscian considerations about rule by consent rather than coercion appliy to nonhuman groups at all.

A sociobiological explanation -- naturally a speculative just so story like almost all evo bio stories -- is that non-alpha males have partially genetically based characteristics that it would bne useful to the survival of the group, thus of the alpha males themselves, and maybe the females, to pass along, so there may be a partially genetically based dispositions to adopt arrangements where the alpha males do not monopolize all or almost all the females.

The disposition must be pretty weak, since polygamous groups and societies are not uncommon, however.


>
> still and all, I wouldn't recommend that Guest use
> this approach as a
> pickup line. A surefire way to keep you in need of
> giant jars of boy butter
> for the foreseeable future.
>
>
> Bitch | Lab
> http://blog.pulpculture.org
>
> ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>

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