Last Man Standing said:
And RT, I stop reading your post when you said "selfish gene" - WTF!!!!!!! Is there anything that we are responsible for due to our own decisions and not some biological genetic trait?
Since home-schoolers such as yourself weren't encouraged to think any more critically than to skim over paragraphs for terms or phrases they were told were offensive, I'll quote myself here in the interests of catching you up with the rest of the class:
Rollo Tomassi said:
As if a man or woman should be excused from the consequences of their actions - this is what pisses off the moralists - that a cheater should get away with their crimes because, biologically, they're blameless.
Let me emphatically say right now, they're NOT. There are and should be consequences for indiscretions as well as appreciation and reward (reinforcement) for virtues. But all this doesn't negate any of the root, biological, evolutionary motivators that prompt the behavior. In fact all the moral absolutes that would make us love to cast the first stone are EXACTLY the results of our own biological propensities. It's not an excuse for anti-social behaviors - it is the motivator for them.
Now then,..
Rollo Tomassi said:
If a man marries a single mother of 3 children by 2 different fathers and shares the parental investment for progeny that aren't his does this count as monogamy or her "cheating"?
Colossus said:
Neither. Cuckoldry (sp?) is an unnatural behavior for both man and beast.
You'd be surprised to find then that cuckoldry is a very common mating methodology in animals - birds in particular because of the relatively small clutch of progeny and the long gestation time. With a few notable exceptions, it's males that provide warmth for eggs that were never sired by him. Cuckoldry is also common amongst higher order animals as well, though we don't call it such. Bonobos and great apes live in communal groupings where cuckoldry is rampant. In fact alpha gorillas have the tendency to kill the young of females who've bred with other males before he'll mate with her as one of his "harem".
Where we run into problems is when we decide what is or isn't "natural" behavior. Masturbation is a "natural" unlearned behavior, yet we think of it as deviant. The latent cause for this may be because it's self-pleasuring, and defeats a productive purpose, but the social convention of using shame for it is what we tend to focus on. Still, you cannot deny the behavior as innate.
Sexual methodologies will always be a combination of nature vs. nurture, unlearned, innate, biological behaviors vs. modeled and taught, socially acquired behaviors. Cuckoldry is still a reality regardless of the origins of the behavior. It's a methodology that has been a proven boon genetically (assuming the one employing it doesn't get found out) for women for centuries. I've covered this topic several times in past posts; it has a social stigma because it blatantly favors a woman's genetic imperative above a man's. We may think of this as unjust or despicable (and rightly so), but it is only one of hundreds of social conventions socially established that favor a woman's genetic priorities. Marriage, monogamy, pair-bonded sexual relations, are feminine methodologies used to ensure her long term security and parental investment requirements. Thus, these methodologies become accepted social conventions - they are the 'good' behaviors. Society as a whole standardizes these conventions and the frame of ALL gender relations is framed in the feminine to the point of it being taken for granted and anyone attempting to peer into the latent function of these conventions is ostracized - and often for just having asked the question.
For some, just turning the TV on is enough that it works, but ask HOW or WHY it works and people shrug their shoulders or say "who cares?" Cuckoldry is complicated because by nature it's had to be a covert breeding methodology. My beef with the original article is that it presumes marriage (a feminine social construct) is the only arena for cuckoldry. Modern convenience and changing social norms make cuckoldry not only easily available, but now, socially acceptable. As I've stated in may
Schedules of Mating post:
For this dynamic and the practicality of enjoying the best of both genetic worlds, women find it necessary to 'cheat'. This cheating can be done proactively or reactively.
In the reactive model, a woman who has already paired with her long term partner choice, engages in an extramarital or pairing, sexual intercourse with a short term partner (i.e. the classic cheating wife or girlfriend). That's not to say this short term opportunity cannot develop into a 2nd, long term mate, but the action itself is a method for securing better genetic stock (by her perception) than the committed male provider is capable of supplying.
Proactive cheating is the single Mommy dillema. This form of 'cheating' relies on the woman breeding with a Good Genes male, bearing his children and then abandoning him, or having him abandon her, (again through invented social conventions) in order to find a Good Dad male to provide for her and the children of her Good Genes partner to ensure their security. The feminine facilitates this through invented social mores that positively affirm a man for "stepping up to the plate" and helping the "poor woman victimized by the villainous ex" share in a parental investment that was never his burden.
I want to stress again that (most) women do not have some consciously recognized, master plan to enact this cycle and deliberately trap men into it. Rather the motivations for this behavior and the accompanying rationales invented to justify it are an unconscious process. I fervently believe that for the most part, women are unaware of this dynamic, but are nonetheless subject to it's influence. For a female of any species to facilitate a methodology for breeding with the best genetic partner she's able to attract AND to ensure her own and her offspring's survival with the best provisioning partner; this is an evolutionary jackpot.
Just to elaborate on this, it's the proactive cheating model here that's become the societal norm now. The AFC who willingly, voluntarily, shares in the parental investment of a single mother and sires what should be another man's genetic responsibility is counted as a Hero for doing so. It's become this martyrdom scenario for rescuing the poor woman from sure destitution and proves his "quality", but the net result is he is a retroactive cuckold. Why would this man be upheld socially as a bastion of virtue for doing so? Because it serves the feminine genetic imperative for having him do it. Turn the social scale to make him a Hero-Cuckold and the methodology isn't just perpetuated, it's socially approved and reinforced.