sprite wrote:Well, perhaps then everyone on facebook should be rated on their physical attractiveness. We could all have ratings, perhaps, on our profiles so we all know just where we stand re. our physical attractiveness to the opposite sex? And everyone else can know our 'score' too. It could be something we fill in on forms etc like we do our age. And it must be great fun being able to observe groups of people who know us in whatever capacity, discussing and debating how attractive we are.
I can picture hunter-gatherers doing the same around the fire in the evenings - yes, certainly it is in our nature not only to do this but also to be fine watching and hearing others debating our 'score'.

Interesting idea, but probably too difficult to do. The technology yet exists that could clearly articulate our judgemenntal opinions of the looks of others to reflect reality. There is no doubt that these judgements already exist in peoples minds and are shared in small, informal groups, the fact that it went on FB does not mean that the opinions did not exist before, or had not even been shared, just that there was no tangible record that we could latch onto and take action. Its one of the interesting features we face with technology that we can record and freeze reality, allowing us to take very specific action against people who violate social rules, and also to manage our population quite differently. Imagine the life of a celebrity without any technology. Not only would they have a very limited audience, and limited status, they would also not have the negative aspects of lacking privacy etc.

I was just intrigued that the content of the FB happens every day in every community where young boys look at their female teachers and judge their looks, just as women and girls also judge the looks of surrounding males. This is in our very nature, yet as soon as we make formal statement about what everyone does, every day, there is a meltdown.

TMB wrote:

sprite wrote:Well, perhaps then everyone on facebook should be rated on their physical attractiveness. We could all have ratings, perhaps, on our profiles so we all know just where we stand re. our physical attractiveness to the opposite sex? And everyone else can know our 'score' too. It could be something we fill in on forms etc like we do our age. And it must be great fun being able to observe groups of people who know us in whatever capacity, discussing and debating how attractive we are.
I can picture hunter-gatherers doing the same around the fire in the evenings - yes, certainly it is in our nature not only to do this but also to be fine watching and hearing others debating our 'score'.

Interesting idea, but probably too difficult to do. The technology yet exists that could clearly articulate our judgemenntal opinions of the looks of others to reflect reality. There is no doubt that these judgements already exist in peoples minds and are shared in small, informal groups, the fact that it went on FB does not mean that the opinions did not exist before, or had not even been shared, just that there was no tangible record that we could latch onto and take action. Its one of the interesting features we face with technology that we can record and freeze reality, allowing us to take very specific action against people who violate social rules, and also to manage our population quite differently. Imagine the life of a celebrity without any technology. Not only would they have a very limited audience, and limited status, they would also not have the negative aspects of lacking privacy etc.

I was just intrigued that the content of the FB happens every day in every community where young boys look at their female teachers and judge their looks, just as women and girls also judge the looks of surrounding males. This is in our very nature, yet as soon as we make formal statement about what everyone does, every day, there is a meltdown.

People hate others too, they might not like others,they might be prejudiced and they will discuss this in informal groups,then they might express this on FB and public places also, this is in our very nature,yet as soon as they make formal statement about what everyone does,every day, there is a meltdown.

TMB wrote:I was just intrigued that the content of the FB happens every day in every community where young boys look at their female teachers and judge their looks, just as women and girls also judge the looks of surrounding males. This is in our very nature, yet as soon as we make formal statement about what everyone does, every day, there is a meltdown.

If we didn't maintain some form of public decency, then "indecent" behaviour might become less intensely interesting. Now, we wouldn't want that, would we?

Sprite, you said,

I expect these women would be quite happy to have their intellect and teaching skills evaluated - no doubt that is what they have been through in their training and employment.

I disagree, I have 4 teenagers and they judge their teachers skills, as I do, and some of them are wanting. I suggest that people are usually not impressed with negative judgements on many traits, and happy with positive judgement, and when it comes to looks this also holds. The issue is that it was made public and positioned as commodity body parts.

But they did not offer themselves to be publicly evaluated as sex objects or they would have entered beauty contests.

Regardless of what we want we are on display anytime we are in public. The fact that anyone pays attention to their looks when going into public means they are working to get as positive a judgement as possible. The fact that we wear clothes is also part of this – we care what others think about our looks and we work to look our best. We might not always be happy when we hear opinions, but we do not need beauty contests to be on show.

As these boys were short of females to objectify in this way, would it have been as acceptable to them to have done the same with their mothers and sisters? Or for others to have done so with the boys' mothers and sisters?

The reality is that it does happen to their mothers and sisters, it also happens to them, their fathers and brothers. As I have teenage children I get exposed to the gossip from girls and boys and they are all pretty basic and have plenty to say about male and female body parts The girls are just not likely to do it as overtly as the boys.

Anyone with any sense knows that this is anti-social behaviour.

I agree, however teenagers do not have a lot of sense, and very little social sense of what is acceptable or not.

I just happened to have been reading a blog on'Psychology Today' Sexy Women are Seen as Objects, Studies Find
Male Brain Sees Sexy Women as Non-Human
Other research has found that merely focusing on a woman's appearance (fully dressed) is enough for people (men and women) to dehumanize a woman. Specifically, we found that people assign female targets less "human nature traits" when focus is on their appearance. These traits are perceived by humans to separate people from machines, automata and objects.Another study found that these women are seen as less moral (sincere, trusting) and less emotionally warm (likable, warm).

These findings are also consistent with a wide range of work showing that objectified women are perceived as less competent. Interestingly, research even finds that when men view sexualized pictures of women, they subsequently view a female experimenter as doing a worse job. In other words, men "carried over" their views of the sexualized women to another woman, who was not scantily dressed.

And lastly, research shows that men and women view sexualized images (of both men and women) as lacking "mind," which is basically a denial of thoughts and emotions. In this work, people even had less concern for the sexualized people's pain, compared to when they were fully dressed.

The picture truly is bleak when women (and in some cases men) are evaluated solely on their looks and/or sexualized.

I agree, however it is not as simple as this. Women also see themselves and other women in the same way. They are strongly affected by the fatness/thinness, their lips, their eyes, their breasts, their hair, their body hair, and do this very specifically. They spend a lot of time, money and emotion working with their body in specific parts. They also judge other womens body parts, often more harshly than men do. The difference appears to be the lack of moral judgement when they do this, when men are regarded as objectifying women, and this is bad. Women when doing the same to themselves might be accused of being trivial, but not as morally lacking for doing so. Once again, I see plenty of teenage behaviour, and the girls are very focussed on how boys look, how big their biceps are, etc.

Objectifying other people is a lot broader than sexual objectification. My children see me as a money object, a taxi object, a discipline object, a love object, and so on. For my children, underlying all the soft fluffy parental stuff, they are mostly focussed upon their selfish needs (this is most obvious with teenagers), and their parents are the means to get these. This makes us a resource for many things including love and caring. The difference is we have not assigned moral value to these things as we have to sexual objectification, but both men and women are seen as resources and objects for many things. Prince William and Kate are romance objects for many people, as well as probably sexual objects and when they start getting pregnant they are reproduction objects. You might say that I am taking the reduction to extremes, but William and Kate are about as unreal as human beings as you get. They are nothing but celluloid images to most of us, even those who have seen them in the flesh only see their physical and imagined other characteristics and many women seem to be obsessed with what Kate looks like, what she wears, what engagement ring she will get – all these are very much objects.

I am not morally judging people for doing these things, just noting that our interactions with all people are done for some benefit to ourselves and this means we see them in terms of meting our needs in specific ways. If a woman wants to have children and fine things in life she might seek a wealthy man to provide this 0- effectively a resource for herself and her children. If this includes romance and love, then he is also a love/romance object and there are certain unwritten requirements on how this should be done. Men see women as a sexual resource, as well as someone to raise their children, to share life with, to work as another breadwinner. Whatever it is we are defining others in some way as they meet our needs.

I am curious to see just how much attention the whole topic of sexual objectification of women gets, when women are pretty good at doing the same to men, themselves, each other, and also see men in terms of other objects, yet this gets no fanfare. Is this just a case of double standards or am I missing something?

Consider the content of a woman magazine. It breaks women up into parts articles and adverts on eyes, on hair, on body hair, breasts, skin, cellulite, romance, love, sex, etc. Although women do have an issue with being unable to meet the unreal standard that these commercials drive, they do not seem to mrally judge or blame themselves for meeting the very interrests of men in body parts. If its an issue that men like large firm breasts, then deny them this and let gravity and breastfeeding take its course and achieve breasts that will not attract the attention of men? Its because women are competing for men, and using their looks to do so - but then either to step outside this or accept responsibility for your actions?

Haven't looked at the actual research yet but I think people, or at least women, kind of know this is true - that's what we struggle with.

Everyone struggles – humans are highly competitive. I watch teenage girls (my daughter is 15), and the struggle between the girls is far more destructive than between the boys. It exists between the generations. Boys have their own struggles to gain status. Looks is certainly important to boys as well, but some significant status achievement can easily offset this. They take part in much high risk activity and adventure sports, all in an apparent attempt to impress the girls. These are also relevant to girls, but boys are unlikely to choose a girl based upon her sporting ability, or job achievement, but yes on looks. Women certainly take exception to this, yet still pursue their looks unabated. This is hand in glove behaviour, womens looks and mens interest in them are sides of the same coin, I see that we can look into the mechanisms, but attaching blame and getting political is not the way to know reality.

And yes, there are likely 'evolutionary' reasons for it but that certainly does not mean that it is acceptable anymore than the evolutionary reasons for infanticide or rape or siblicide etc etc makes them acceptable.

Here we agree, social rules are required to temper the behaviour of individuals. Regardless of how natural, or how human, if the group decides these violate the social rules, either obey the rules or leave the society. Yet even this is not easy. My children do not obey all my home rules, yet it is my house, and when they grow up they will probably attempt to apply similar rules in their homes, just as my parents did. I am obliged to tolerate a level of insubordination from my children because society limits how much of their behavior I can control, and because I love them I also allow them some leeway even sometimes when I think it is the best for them. As teenagers they just dont have the perspective to understand, yet htere are limits to parenting once they become teenagers (or perhaps I should say, once needs to use more finesse and subtlety to achieve what we think is best for them)

So if we have an anti social issue with men regarding women as sexual objects and seeing them in terms of body parts, why is it not also an issue that they do the same to men, to each other and to themselves? Is sauce for the gander not also sauce for the goose?

TMB wrote:

sprite wrote:Well, perhaps then everyone on facebook should be rated on their physical attractiveness. We could all have ratings, perhaps, on our profiles so we all know just where we stand re. our physical attractiveness to the opposite sex? And everyone else can know our 'score' too. It could be something we fill in on forms etc like we do our age. And it must be great fun being able to observe groups of people who know us in whatever capacity, discussing and debating how attractive we are.
I can picture hunter-gatherers doing the same around the fire in the evenings - yes, certainly it is in our nature not only to do this but also to be fine watching and hearing others debating our 'score'.

Interesting idea, but probably too difficult to do. The technology yet exists that could clearly articulate our judgemenntal opinions of the looks of others to reflect reality. There is no doubt that these judgements already exist in peoples minds and are shared in small, informal groups, the fact that it went on FB does not mean that the opinions did not exist before, or had not even been shared, just that there was no tangible record that we could latch onto and take action. Its one of the interesting features we face with technology that we can record and freeze reality, allowing us to take very specific action against people who violate social rules, and also to manage our population quite differently. Imagine the life of a celebrity without any technology. Not only would they have a very limited audience, and limited status, they would also not have the negative aspects of lacking privacy etc.

I was just intrigued that the content of the FB happens every day in every community where young boys look at their female teachers and judge their looks, just as women and girls also judge the looks of surrounding males. This is in our very nature, yet as soon as we make formal statement about what everyone does, every day, there is a meltdown.

I was being sarcastic - trying to show how this public evaluation of group members would destroy the group.

Mr.Samsa wrote:Psychology Today is known for its poor reporting and biased opinions - its essentially the Fox News of the psychology world, so it's best to take their descriptions of studies with a grain of salt. Some bloggers on there actually are well-respected scientists who write brilliant articles and are worth reading, but unfortunately most of the bloggers are like Satoshi Kanazawa...

I wouldn't disagree there.

Mr.Samsa wrote:The original study that is discussed above can be found here: http://www.princeton.edu/~mcikara/Cikara2010JOCN.pdf

Even if the blogger were to just quickly skim the article, an important point would be realised: It is absolutely and unequivocally untrue that male brains see sexy women as objects. Why are we forced to reject this claim? A few reasons:

1) This effect was only found in sexist males.
2) The authors argue that related research leads us to strongly expect the result to be present in sexist women also.
3) It's debatable whether we can conclude that sexist people view sexualised women as objects on the basis on an implicit association test that examines that form of verb which is most often correlated with certain images.

The blogger says about this study:

A study by Princeton psychologists hooked up men to an fMRI machine. After being hooked up, these men were shown pictures of both men and women. Some were scantily clothed; some were not.

The results showed that images of people activated the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), which is highly involved in social cognition (e.g., recognizing human faces, when separating one person from another).

The exception was when men high in sexism viewed pictures of sexually dressed women. These pictures did not activate the mPFC for sexist males. This suggests that these men's brains did not perceive these women as fully human.

He then discusses a number of other studies not specifically about sexist men but men (and women) in general from what I can tell so far.

TMB wrote:Sprite, you said,

I expect these women would be quite happy to have their intellect and teaching skills evaluated - no doubt that is what they have been through in their training and employment.

I disagree, I have 4 teenagers and they judge their teachers skills, as I do, and some of them are wanting. I suggest that people are usually not impressed with negative judgements on many traits, and happy with positive judgement, and when it comes to looks this also holds. The issue is that it was made public and positioned as commodity body parts.

My partner is a teacher and his teaching is evaluated by people whose job is to do the evaluating. Should students set up a website to publicly evaluate the physical attractiveness of him and the other teachers, or their teaching etc, it would certainly be wrong. We have, IIRC, recently had some issues about schoolchildren and their parents doing something like this and being abusive and ridiculing those they have grievances towards etc. It is completely disrespectful. The same re. personal comments about attractiveness. Totally inappropriate to carry out a collective, public and potentially humiliating discussion of teachers by children.

TMB wrote:

But they did not offer themselves to be publicly evaluated as sex objects or they would have entered beauty contests.

Regardless of what we want we are on display anytime we are in public. The fact that anyone pays attention to their looks when going into public means they are working to get as positive a judgement as possible. The fact that we wear clothes is also part of this – we care what others think about our looks and we work to look our best. We might not always be happy when we hear opinions, but we do not need beauty contests to be on show.

So you think that everytime we interact with someone - and we will have a fleeting evaluation of them - we should state it out loud? That is absolutely unnecessary and certainly something that will harm social relations.
I've just thought of Basil Fawlty when he is in the hospital bed after a knock on the head and comes round and the first thing he says to the nurse by the bed is 'God, you're ugly'.
Is this what we should be doing?

TMB wrote:

As these boys were short of females to objectify in this way, would it have been as acceptable to them to have done the same with their mothers and sisters? Or for others to have done so with the boys' mothers and sisters?

The reality is that it does happen to their mothers and sisters, it also happens to them, their fathers and brothers. As I have teenage children I get exposed to the gossip from girls and boys and they are all pretty basic and have plenty to say about male and female body parts The girls are just not likely to do it as overtly as the boys.

And none of this is on a publicly viewable website dedicated to the purpose of evaluating a specific group of others without being evaluated themselves. It is completely different.

TMB wrote:I am curious to see just how much attention the whole topic of sexual objectification of women gets, when women are pretty good at doing the same to men, themselves, each other, and also see men in terms of other objects, yet this gets no fanfare. Is this just a case of double standards or am I missing something?

Consider the content of a woman magazine. It breaks women up into parts articles and adverts on eyes, on hair, on body hair, breasts, skin, cellulite, romance, love, sex, etc. Although women do have an issue with being unable to meet the unreal standard that these commercials drive, they do not seem to mrally judge or blame themselves for meeting the very interrests of men in body parts. If its an issue that men like large firm breasts, then deny them this and let gravity and breastfeeding take its course and achieve breasts that will not attract the attention of men? Its because women are competing for men, and using their looks to do so - but then either to step outside this or accept responsibility for your actions?

Ummmm......
There certainly is something about women as sex objects that seems to be different from men as sex objects or men as other resource objects.
Trying to think why this is so I'm trying to consider evolution and other species.
So.....females have the rare eggs, the uterus etc etc and in many species are otherwise quite plain while the males competing for the females eggs etc end up impressive with 'weapons' or 'ornaments'. If you want an impressive picture of a bird of paradise or a peafowl or a deer or a lion it is the picture of the male that impresses the most.
We have a bit of that - the impressive males with the impressive resources and/or displays of worth.

But we also have a large degree of monogamy so we also get females competing. In other monogamous species the two sexes are much the same. Think of the macaw and both male and female are equally impressive. But in humans though we have this degree of competition and selection on both sexes we do not have males and females who look, act, and display in the same way. It is very different. The males are still largely public displayers and impressive. For females it is more about quite rigid signals of youth and beauty - the kinds of traits that first attract a male, 'nulliparous' traits, traits that decline when actual reproduction happens.
We have this kind of monogamy but with a division of labour and a position in society of females which is/has been one of inferiority to males. Plus the greatest value of females is the paradox that it is looks which decline when motherhood occurs. Traits that are used by a male to first acquire his mate before keeping her indoors to look after him and his kids.
The access a female has/had to reources is largely through looking like she is forever young and never had children and then, today, staying that way. That's mighty tough.

The best way a female can free herself from this paradox and her inferiority is to gain direct access to resources. This is not for the good of males who have the resources who then are less able to use their ownership of these resources to obtain sex and control over reproduction. If females can get direct access to resources they can also gain more control over reproduction - which is what sexual conflict throughout species is all about.
So to keep reminding (especialy) young women that no matter what they try to do it is only their looks which matter is an excellent way to keep women in their place.

Just my first thoughts but I think they are on the right track.

TMB wrote:Everyone struggles – humans are highly competitive. I watch teenage girls (my daughter is 15), and the struggle between the girls is far more destructive than between the boys. It exists between the generations. Boys have their own struggles to gain status. Looks is certainly important to boys as well, but some significant status achievement can easily offset this. They take part in much high risk activity and adventure sports, all in an apparent attempt to impress the girls. These are also relevant to girls, but boys are unlikely to choose a girl based upon her sporting ability, or job achievement, but yes on looks. Women certainly take exception to this, yet still pursue their looks unabated. This is hand in glove behaviour, womens looks and mens interest in them are sides of the same coin, I see that we can look into the mechanisms, but attaching blame and getting political is not the way to know reality.

I have a son and a daughter in their early twenties now so I know this too. And just how difficult it can be for boys too, even regarding looks alone but usually other achievements. I also know the misery that girls go through about their looks is greater now than it has ever been.
As Deirdre Barrett says in 'Supernormal Stimuli': "What is different now is the pool of people for potential comparisons has grown phenominally - only the unusually attractive are conveyed by media around the world.If a Stone Age girl wasn't the prettiest in her small tribe, the difference wasn't likely to be dramatic. Everyone had opportunities to see others looking their worst - tired, bedraggled,sick - as well as on their best days. Now society culls from millions of young women to select the best faces and bodies, then perfects these with Adobe Photshop. The difference between the resulting magazine cover and the average modern girl is staggering.There was a huge outcry when the NBC Today Show digitally shaved off Katie Couric's waist in publicity stills and CBS's The View did the same with Barbara Walters. But the industry was mystified over the flap: almost all images in our magazines are now digitally manipuated one way or another."(Emphasis mine)
We did not evolve to compete with images of female perfection that are 'man-made' and do not even exist in reality. Or to compete with more than a handful of others who are not that much different from ourselves.
I'm not sure if male-male competition has changed to the same degree of trying to achieve 'woman-made' creations of perfect men? I can't even imagine what that would be. For it just to be physical beauty mothers would have to be assured of resources for offspring then they could just concern themselves with the physical in men too. We could then, perhaps, be equal like macaws?

TMB wrote:So if we have an anti social issue with men regarding women as sexual objects and seeing them in terms of body parts, why is it not also an issue that they do the same to men, to each other and to themselves? Is sauce for the gander not also sauce for the goose?

Generally no. The sexes are too different with very different histories and under very different pressures. (Though I have no illusions that it can really be any other way).
But in terms of male-male competition there have been movements through all of history where the low-resource men have bandied together and sometimes become the high-resource men. I suppose cosmetic surgery can alter a female's rating to some degree.

We have also had fathers and brothers doing the mate-choice for sisters and daughters - impress the brother or father and get the pretty girl. Women often have been and often still are across many cultures resources that are exchanged between men.
This does not happen in any other species.
Human females have had, and often still have, the least control over their own bodies and reproduction compared to the female of any other species.
And the paradox today is that never having had children - looking like she is in a perpetual state of not-a-mother - is what makes the modern female most valued and most highly rated. Which may well be connected to the polygynous nature of men in fantasy if not reality. Which again is what concerns women who might be mothers - if an unlimited supply of nulliparous females is made to appear as being constantly available to men and it is what men really want then motherhood becomes the most dangerous and insecure and risky venture for any female in a world where a paternal presence and paternal investment still matters.

Mr.Samsa wrote:

sprite wrote:I just happened to have been reading a blog on'Psychology Today' Sexy Women are Seen as Objects, Studies Find
Male Brain Sees Sexy Women as Non-Human

Other research has found that merely focusing on a woman's appearance (fully dressed) is enough for people (men and women) to dehumanize a woman. Specifically, we found that people assign female targets less "human nature traits" when focus is on their appearance. These traits are perceived by humans to separate people from machines, automata and objects.Another study found that these women are seen as less moral (sincere, trusting) and less emotionally warm (likable, warm).

These findings are also consistent with a wide range of work showing that objectified women are perceived as less competent. Interestingly, research even finds that when men view sexualized pictures of women, they subsequently view a female experimenter as doing a worse job. In other words, men "carried over" their views of the sexualized women to another woman, who was not scantily dressed.

And lastly, research shows that men and women view sexualized images (of both men and women) as lacking "mind," which is basically a denial of thoughts and emotions. In this work, people even had less concern for the sexualized people's pain, compared to when they were fully dressed.

The picture truly is bleak when women (and in some cases men) are evaluated solely on their looks and/or sexualized.

Haven't looked at the actual research yet but I think people, or at least women, kind of know this is true - that's what we struggle with.
And yes, there are likely 'evolutionary' reasons for it but that certainly does not mean that it is acceptable anymore than the evolutionary reasons for infanticide or rape or siblicide etc etc makes them acceptable.

Psychology Today is known for its poor reporting and biased opinions - its essentially the Fox News of the psychology world, so it's best to take their descriptions of studies with a grain of salt. Some bloggers on there actually are well-respected scientists who write brilliant articles and are worth reading, but unfortunately most of the bloggers are like Satoshi Kanazawa...

The original study that is discussed above can be found here: http://www.princeton.edu/~mcikara/Cikara2010JOCN.pdf

Even if the blogger were to just quickly skim the article, an important point would be realised: It is absolutely and unequivocally untrue that male brains see sexy women as objects. Why are we forced to reject this claim? A few reasons:

1) This effect was only found in sexist males.
2) The authors argue that related research leads us to strongly expect the result to be present in sexist women also.
3) It's debatable whether we can conclude that sexist people view sexualised women as objects on the basis on an implicit association test that examines that form of verb which is most often correlated with certain images.

The last one is perhaps something that needs a more detailed discussion and more research, but the first two necessarily rule out the title: "Male Brain Sees Sexy Women as Non-Human", as the strongest claim we could make is: "Sexist people more likely to focus on physical aspects of a person when they are highly sexualised and no information on their personality is available".

cavarka9 wrote:well, I got caught by a misattributed quote to george orwell, since then , I am careful.
I havent read kafka, havent read much either. But if the quote is his or similar to his work, then, I am going to read him.

I can't find the quote in relation to his work, but I imagine that (if it is his) then it would have probably been written in his own language from a more obscure source (e.g. a letter to a friend) and so searching for the quote turns up with very little. Kafka is an excellent read though, you can download his "Metamorphosis" for free here: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5200, and you can follow it with his "The Trial", here: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7849 (this one is quite Orwellian, so if you're a fan of him then you might like this one). My username comes from the Metamorphosis, so it has to be good, right?

Thanks

cavarka9 wrote:

TMB wrote:

sprite wrote:Well, perhaps then everyone on facebook should be rated on their physical attractiveness. We could all have ratings, perhaps, on our profiles so we all know just where we stand re. our physical attractiveness to the opposite sex? And everyone else can know our 'score' too. It could be something we fill in on forms etc like we do our age. And it must be great fun being able to observe groups of people who know us in whatever capacity, discussing and debating how attractive we are.
I can picture hunter-gatherers doing the same around the fire in the evenings - yes, certainly it is in our nature not only to do this but also to be fine watching and hearing others debating our 'score'.

Interesting idea, but probably too difficult to do. The technology yet exists that could clearly articulate our judgemenntal opinions of the looks of others to reflect reality. There is no doubt that these judgements already exist in peoples minds and are shared in small, informal groups, the fact that it went on FB does not mean that the opinions did not exist before, or had not even been shared, just that there was no tangible record that we could latch onto and take action. Its one of the interesting features we face with technology that we can record and freeze reality, allowing us to take very specific action against people who violate social rules, and also to manage our population quite differently. Imagine the life of a celebrity without any technology. Not only would they have a very limited audience, and limited status, they would also not have the negative aspects of lacking privacy etc.

I was just intrigued that the content of the FB happens every day in every community where young boys look at their female teachers and judge their looks, just as women and girls also judge the looks of surrounding males. This is in our very nature, yet as soon as we make formal statement about what everyone does, every day, there is a meltdown.

People hate others too, they might not like others,they might be prejudiced and they will discuss this in informal groups,then they might express this on FB and public places also, this is in our very nature,yet as soon as they make formal statement about what everyone does,every day, there is a meltdown.

Ignored, but it still counts.

First, I was wondering where TMB was heading with this thread. Now, I am inclined to rate is as yet another 'Muslim girl burns Western dog' thread. *yawns*

Is this a formal statement?

My partner is a teacher and his teaching is evaluated by people whose job is to do the evaluating. Should students set up a website to publicly evaluate the physical attractiveness of him and the other teachers, or their teaching etc, it would certainly be wrong. We have, IIRC, recently had some issues about schoolchildren and their parents doing something like this and being abusive and ridiculing those they have grievances towards etc. It is completely disrespectful. The same re. personal comments about attractiveness. Totally inappropriate to carry out a collective, public and potentially humiliating discussion of teachers by children.

My personal bias agrees with yours, my post on this is trying to look at the rational aspects rather than a subjective morality. I am noting that the attitudes and judgment are nothing new, just that the technology media create an issue with something inherent in humans, ie. We judge others.

So you think that everytime we interact with someone - and we will have a fleeting evaluation of them - we should state it out loud? That is absolutely unnecessary and certainly something that will harm social relationsI've just thought of Basil Fawlty when he is in the hospital bed after a knock on the head and comes round and the first thing he says to the nurse by the bed is 'God, you're ugly'.
Is this what we should be doing? .

Not at all, just noting that we are living politically correctly, and as you say without these social structure might well collapse. Its interesting to note just how funny we can find it when it is done in the relatively safe confines of satire. Even here there are some boundaries.
Also note that our behaviour is designed to get the best judgement from others on our looks, even if we are prescriptive on how they are broadcast. Consider the issues with celebrity dressup, here it is far more acceptable to be negative with a celebrity, partly because they formally sell their looks for judgement as well as the distance between the commentator and target.

And none of this is on a publicly viewable website dedicated to the purpose of evaluating a specific group of others without being evaluated themselves. It is completely different.

You are I are in violent agreement. I agree it is different to broadcast, so it means we are happy to live in this cooperative lie. How are we able to operate under such obvious self-deception?

There certainly is something about women as sex objects that seems to be different from men as sex objects or men as other resource objects.

Aside from the obvious differences, in what way is it different in principle?

So.....females have the rare eggs, the uterus etc etc and in many species are otherwise quite plain while the males competing for the females eggs etc end up impressive with 'weapons' or 'ornaments'. If you want an impressive picture of a bird of paradise or a peafowl or a deer or a lion it is the picture of the male that impresses the most.
We have a bit of that - the impressive males with the impressive resources and/or displays of worth.

Agreed eggs are scarce resources and sperm are not, therefore women are more valuable, how does this provide a step to the way we judge them as sexual objects relative to men?

But we also have a large degree of monogamy so we also get females competing.

Its not just about monogamy it is about male parental investment, even in monogamy if the male does not invest there is little incentive to compete.

In other monogamous species the two sexes are much the same. Think of the macaw and both male and female are equally impressive. But in humans though we have this degree of competition and selection on both sexes we do not have males and females who look, act, and display in the same way. It is very different. The males are still largely public displayers and impressive. For females it is more about quite rigid signals of youth and beauty - the kinds of traits that first attract a male, 'nulliparous' traits, traits that decline when actual reproduction happens.

I agree males strive for status and females youth the ‘health’. Ie beauty.

We have this kind of monogamy but with a division of labour and a position in society of females which is/has been one of inferiority to males.

I disagree that women have been placed in inferior position in all cases, but this might depend upon how you define it. I would say that women have been in less responsible positions, but in many cases still get equal or greater benefit. Being responsible is not a good place to be, unless you get enough power to overcome the responsibility. Western women in particular, they live longer than men, have many enshrined rights, are protected from competing with males when its to their benefit, and are allowed to compete with males when its to their benefit. They have far lower suicide rates than men, which indicates better quality lives and better assistance. Now that society has overcome many issues around childbirth for western women, they are arguably the most privileged group on the planet. In past generations the great responsibility of pregnancy and child rearing imposed upon women, was offset by males being resources and responsible for maintaining and competing to get the best resources.

Plus the greatest value of females is the paradox that it is looks which decline when motherhood occurs.

Why is this a paradox? If you have successfully reproduced, from a biological perspective, your looks are of less importance.

The access a female has/had to reources is largely through looking like she is forever young and never had children and then, today, staying that way. That's mighty tough.

Or else you find ways to improve your position, if you risk the male straying after more fertile females. One way is to lie about your age, but the use of clothes, cosmetics and cosmetic surgery, airbrush pics etc. Another way is to construct institutions like marriage to impose penalties upon the males. Another is to try and compete with men on their terms, to try and access the power in formal positions without taking the responsibility, etc Its certainly tough because women are competing with other women to do this, so they are doing this part of life on a level playing field.

The best way a female can free herself from this paradox and her inferiority is to gain direct access to resources.

I accept that in some socities women are certainly imposed upon by males in terms of social structures but they still carry very little responsibility but often achieve the same standard of living as their partner. This is a great benefit to be able to live the same standard as the male without being responsible for what he is doing. However, you might not be able to win over a high status male, as you are outcompeted by other females .

This is not for the good of males who have the resources who then are less able to use their ownership of these resources to obtain sex and control over reproduction. If females can get direct access to resources they can also gain more control over reproduction - which is what sexual conflict throughout species is all about.

Controlling resources means responsibility. If you are in charge of firefighting or logging, or truck driving across the Arctic, or catching deep sea fish in Antarctica, (all mostly done by males), you expose yourself to high personal risk and responsibility. In Australia last year around 60 of bravery medals were awarded to people, and only about 10% to women. Women also make use of males to execute murder for them, whereas men with do it themselves to get another man to do it. There are plenty of examples that show women prefer to be able to leverage men to harvest the resources, as you would expect if they are carry the risk of a child/pregnancy, and are more valuable resources than men. The conflict arises because women want the benefits of being able to leverage males to get resources, and also want direct control as formal male positions have been sold very well as being about power, rather than responsibility.

So to keep reminding (especialy) young women that no matter what they try to do it is only their looks which matter is an excellent way to keep women in their place.

I think the issue here is competition between females, and those that have the looks wield plenty of power, however if they are not careful it can also be a very high risk. In simple terms, using sex a woman can earn an excellent living doing nothing but having sex with men, but this has a downside. Her looks need to be good, they will not last for very long and both men and women will disempower her in terms of offspring and social status. The women will do this because they are risking their men being unfaithful and diverting resources to sex workers. Men face similar challenges in sport where their strength makes them good entertainment and status resources as they play high risk sport. After 10-15 years of high grade sport, most will have had extensive surgery and probably severe issues with arthritis, neurological damage later in life, all because they wanted the status of an elite sportsman. Its not much different to a womans looks, very useful for a few years, then fading fast.

I have a son and a daughter in their early twenties now so I know this too. And just how difficult it can be for boys too, even regarding looks alone but usually other achievements. I also know the misery that girls go through about their looks is greater now than it has ever been.

Once again this is primarily an issue between girls, much of the concern around this goes unnoticed by males, but pressure from female peers, and technology means this is now 24x7 makes this a very tough gig.

As Deirdre Barrett says in 'Supernormal Stimuli': "What is different now is the pool of people for potential comparisons has grown phenominally - only the unusually attractive are conveyed by media around the world.If a Stone Age girl wasn't the prettiest in her small tribe, the difference wasn't likely to be dramatic. Everyone had opportunities to see others looking their worst - tired, bedraggled,sick - as well as on their best days. Now society culls from millions of young women to select the best faces and bodies, then perfects these with Adobe Photshop. The difference between the resulting magazine cover and the average modern girl is staggering.There was a huge outcry when the NBC Today Show digitally shaved off Katie Couric's waist in publicity stills and CBS's The View did the same with Barbara Walters. But the industry was mystified over the flap: almost all images in our magazines are now digitally manipuated one way or another."(Emphasis mine)
We did not evolve to compete with images of female perfection that are 'man-made' and do not even exist in reality. Or to compete with more than a handful of others who are not that much different from ourselves.

Great point. Technology has increased the looks arms race exponentially, and note that almost no-one presents themselves as they really are. All of us use clothes as social defence, makeup is ubiquitous, in western society not many young girls are able to cope without cosmetic assistance in many public situations.

I'm not sure if male-male competition has changed to the same degree of trying to achieve 'woman-made' creations of perfect men? I can't even imagine what that would be.

It sure has, the lengths that males go in sport and high risk pursuits is escalating. Base jumping, rock climbing, you name it, these are mostly dominated by men and the pressure to push the limits (look at skateboarding injuries). Sportsmen in the rugby codes ahev usually had shoulder and knee reconstructions by the time they are 30, many simply drop out. I do not think we have yet realised the long term damage we are doing to the top athletes men and women, but mostly men) in the past 2-3 decades when they hit middle age.

For it just to be physical beauty mothers would have to be assured of resources for offspring then they could just concern themselves with the physical in men too. We could then, perhaps, be equal like macaws?

Dont see this happening, despite womens interest in mens looks status speaks louder. As a female work colleague said, “for a man to be that attractive he is either cute looking, has loads of money, or a big willie”. For men its just womens looks.

Generally no. The sexes are too different with very different histories and under very different pressures. (Though I have no illusions that it can really be any other way).
But in terms of male-male competition there have been movements through all of history where the low-resource men have bandied together and sometimes become the high-resource men. I suppose cosmetic surgery can alter a female's rating to some degree.

Sure this is what power politics is all about, for men although they usually accept their place in the pecking order quite fatalistically, there are some who will strive to end to be dominant. Looks in women is only one part, they also need to ambitious. This is something we often overlook in arenas like beauty contests (note only women really get into these, men just don’t get the benefits), the women who win and very driven and trample on others to get there, assuming they have the looks to begin with.

We have also had fathers and brothers doing the mate-choice for sisters and daughters - impress the brother or father and get the pretty girl. Women often have been and often still are across many cultures resources that are exchanged between men.

Agreed, power in any social dynamic is never onesided. Men have worked hard to control reproductive rights, however it has its negatives and imposes responsibility. The limitation of mens physical abuse of women has reduced the impact upon women, especially in the west. Men have not had to develop subtle means to control women because of this, now that physical dominance is out-of-bounds, men don’t have the social skills and manipulative powers of women, so western men really do not have much going for them. The cases where western males are in positions of high status and responsibility, their partners reap most benefit. Much less responsibility, even for childrearing, unlikely to work 18 hours days and die from heart attacks, in fact they might live another 10 years beyond their partner and have one fourth the suicide rate. Feminism does not point out that for every man who sits in a high political or business position, there is almost always a woman who benefits with minimal cost.

Human females have had, and often still have, the least control over their own bodies and reproduction compared to the female of any other species.

I disagree, just the fact that humans have concealed ovulation means unlike other species they can control males though their sexual desire almost continually.

And the paradox today is that never having had children - looking like she is in a perpetual state of not-a-mother - is what makes the modern female most valued and most highly rated. Which may well be connected to the polygynous nature of men in fantasy if not reality. Which again is what concerns women who might be mothers - if an unlimited supply of nulliparous females is made to appear as being constantly available to men and it is what men really want then motherhood becomes the most dangerous and insecure and risky venture for any female in a world where a paternal presence and paternal investment still matters.

I think you would need to compare mothers with non-mothers. Aside from the physical toll that pregnancy takes on a womans body, in my experience women with kids are placed in a situation where someone else life is of more value than their own. This means that obsession with their own bodies is blunted. A woman without children is basically still more concerned about herself than anyone else and if we accept that we are driven to reproduce will be driving toward fulfilling this. There are plenty of cases of women getting divorced and then taking a great deal more care about their looks because they need to tune them in to compete with other women, often younger than themselves.
I agree that mothers face the risk of predatory unattached females who are looking for likely males, and this is one reason why womens lives are very challenging when compared to mens lives. This is because they compete with other women. Competing man to man men is a piece of cake in comparison. Pecking orders are simple and binary, and being good mates is easy and once they accept some sexual boundaries wrt to their partners, men can go off and enjoy some fishing or sport, whereas women never seem to be able to let go. Female friendships are often inconsistent, stressful, and they egg each other on wrt to looks etc. (men also egg each other on to strive for Mt Neverest, but after a few years most men get over this, recognise their limitations and try to enjoy life.). My teenage daughters sure do have nasty girl politics at school, the teenage boys are dirty minded and awkward and are like puppets to the girls.

They're also socially repressed as they go to an all boys school. These schools turn out a lot of sexist and bigoted twats.

TMB wrote:

And none of this is on a publicly viewable website dedicated to the purpose of evaluating a specific group of others without being evaluated themselves. It is completely different.

You are I are in violent agreement. I agree it is different to broadcast, so it means we are happy to live in this cooperative lie. How are we able to operate under such obvious self-deception?

All cultures do it.
I've just been reading about the Canela where they have the system that some other cultures have where they are not allowed to speak to or even to look at certain relatives. It looks like it applies to those relationships where familiarity could cause (sexual jealousy) problems eg mother-in-law and son in law, father-in-law and daughter-in-law.
We are social animals and we depend on our group so we generally want cooperation which means avoiding offence. The people we most care about we try to boost their self-confidence, not destroy it. We probably also try to avoid retaliation from others. Being generally offensive to others on a day-to-day basis would serve no useful purpose at all and would simply hinder our own well-being. What actually would be the point?

TMB wrote:

But we also have a large degree of monogamy so we also get females competing.

Its not just about monogamy it is about male parental investment, even in monogamy if the male does not invest there is little incentive to compete.

Example please of a monogamous species where the males are all the same and therefore not worth competing over and mate-guarding?
If the male is staying with just one female then there must be something he is useful for - protection, defense. These are still paternal resources.
Where do we have mongamous males that do nothing?

TMB wrote:

We have this kind of monogamy but with a division of labour and a position in society of females which is/has been one of inferiority to males.

I disagree that women have been placed in inferior position in all cases, but this might depend upon how you define it. I would say that women have been in less responsible positions, but in many cases still get equal or greater benefit. Being responsible is not a good place to be, unless you get enough power to overcome the responsibility. Western women in particular, they live longer than men, have many enshrined rights, are protected from competing with males when its to their benefit, and are allowed to compete with males when its to their benefit. They have far lower suicide rates than men, which indicates better quality lives and better assistance. Now that society has overcome many issues around childbirth for western women, they are arguably the most privileged group on the planet. In past generations the great responsibility of pregnancy and child rearing imposed upon women, was offset by males being resources and responsible for maintaining and competing to get the best resources.

Many of these things apply to males and females of other species too re. lifespan, male-male territorial war not involving females, more injury and death, sexual rejection, social outsiders etc etc. But in other species females do compete with males for food/resources and especially control over reproduction (linked to control of resources) which is what human females have been gaining in the last few decades in the West. We have almost gained the same status as females in other species. Well-done us.

TMB wrote:

Plus the greatest value of females is the paradox that it is looks which decline when motherhood occurs.

Why is this a paradox? If you have successfully reproduced, from a biological perspective, your looks are of less importance.

So a woman's reproductive work is complete in her late teens and early twenties and then she no longer needs a man around/keep the father of the children investing too???????
You forget that successful reproduction for a female is something that goes on as she ages and, in humans, becomes less desirable unlike in other species where a female is more desirable as she gains in age and in number of offspring and the experience that goes with it.

TMB wrote:

This is not for the good of males who have the resources who then are less able to use their ownership of these resources to obtain sex and control over reproduction. If females can get direct access to resources they can also gain more control over reproduction - which is what sexual conflict throughout species is all about.

Controlling resources means responsibility. If you are in charge of firefighting or logging, or truck driving across the Arctic, or catching deep sea fish in Antarctica, (all mostly done by males), you expose yourself to high personal risk and responsibility. In Australia last year around 60 of bravery medals were awarded to people, and only about 10% to women. Women also make use of males to execute murder for them, whereas men with do it themselves to get another man to do it. There are plenty of examples that show women prefer to be able to leverage men to harvest the resources, as you would expect if they are carry the risk of a child/pregnancy, and are more valuable resources than men. The conflict arises because women want the benefits of being able to leverage males to get resources, and also want direct control as formal male positions have been sold very well as being about power, rather than responsibility.

[There was a bit too much word salad in the previous points so I'll move onto this.]
OK.
So how are women seen as powerful? In the way they can manipulate men with their sexuality? But this is not power. This is responsibility - the responsibility of taking the best genes into the future. And do they get positive recognition for this? Where are the women's medals for 'sperm sorting'. It's also pretty risky and dangerous - sexual violence, abuse, trying to avoid being duped. There's a lot of risk and danger involved in dating males.
Women's sexuality has been sold very well as being about power, rather than responsibility.

TMB wrote:

So to keep reminding (especialy) young women that no matter what they try to do it is only their looks which matter is an excellent way to keep women in their place.

I think the issue here is competition between females, and those that have the looks wield plenty of power

You mean responsibility

TMB wrote: however if they are not careful it can also be a very high risk.

Yes, it is very high risk being female especially when young and attractive as probably all of us have experinced. Men can be extremely dangerous to women, just like males across most species.

TMB wrote: In simple terms, using sex a woman can earn an excellent living doing nothing but having sex with men, but this has a downside. Her looks need to be good, they will not last for very long and both men and women will disempower her in terms of offspring and social status. The women will do this because they are risking their men being unfaithful and diverting resources to sex workers.

But they are sex workers. Do you mean diverting reources to other sex workers?

TMB wrote:Men face similar challenges in sport where their strength makes them good entertainment and status resources as they play high risk sport. After 10-15 years of high grade sport, most will have had extensive surgery and probably severe issues with arthritis, neurological damage later in life, all because they wanted the status of an elite sportsman. Its not much different to a womans looks, very useful for a few years, then fading fast.

Except that sportsmen tend to be highly regarded for life and acquire high quality females for the genes.
Sex workers tend to have short lives and very poor reproductive success and no one remembers them.

TMB wrote:

For it just to be physical beauty mothers would have to be assured of resources for offspring then they could just concern themselves with the physical in men too. We could then, perhaps, be equal like macaws?

Dont see this happening, despite womens interest in mens looks status speaks louder. As a female work colleague said, “for a man to be that attractive he is either cute looking, has loads of money, or a big willie”. For men its just womens looks.

Actually, I must butt in here. All men are not like that. Some actually are capable of loving a woman - I know. No need for cosmetics etc in my house. I am adored and I know it. And I have been solidly for almost 25years straight.
I think what is happening today is the same as consumerism. Just as most people now have poor attention spans and there is always a new product to try and life is increasingly superficial and about quick fixes etc etc so we treat our relationships. Thousands and thousands of female bodies are presented to men with new ones added on a daily basis and sex can be the same quick fix as any drug.
While in our ancestry getting sex for a male was very very difficult and the number of 'sexy' females he would ever see would be very few. So he was adapted to take advantage of what he perceived as a sexual opportunity. Now he is hoodwinked into thinking that there are literally thousands of these opportunities available to him. His 'selfish genes' react.
Sex is a 'supernormal stimulus' today and just like these with other species where we get a male preferring an artificial model of a female over the real thing because it has an artificially increased large belly or whatever, or a female may brood artificially large false eggs over her own, real, normal-sized eggs, so we get those rare traits and situations that were very useful in our ancestry now saturating our lives and no longer serving their adaptive purpose.

TMB wrote:

We have also had fathers and brothers doing the mate-choice for sisters and daughters - impress the brother or father and get the pretty girl. Women often have been and often still are across many cultures resources that are exchanged between men.

Agreed, power in any social dynamic is never onesided. Men have worked hard to control reproductive rights

They sure have worked hard to control the reproductive resources, also known as human females, and remove female mate choice completely, ie, that enormous responsibility females of other species are lumbered with, poor things [sarcasm].

TMB wrote:, however it has its negatives and imposes responsibility. The limitation of mens physical abuse of women has reduced the impact upon women, especially in the west. Men have not had to develop subtle means to control women because of this, now that physical dominance is out-of-bounds, men don’t have the social skills and manipulative powers of women,

you mean responsibility regarding sperm-sorting

TMB wrote: so western men really do not have much going for them.

Though of all the men and women I know the men are certainly not doing any worse than the women, and certainly some a lot better.

TMB wrote: The cases where western males are in positions of high status and responsibility, their partners reap most benefit. Much less responsibility, even for childrearing, unlikely to work 18 hours days and die from heart attacks, in fact they might live another 10 years beyond their partner and have one fourth the suicide rate.

Yet it is much the same for males in other species even where control over reproduction is not held by them but is a dynamic of adaptation and counter-adaptation in the sexes.

TMB wrote:

Human females have had, and often still have, the least control over their own bodies and reproduction compared to the female of any other species.

I disagree, just the fact that humans have concealed ovulation means unlike other species they can control males though their sexual desire almost continually.

Absolutely wrong. For most human females over time their mate was chosen for them and their sexual behaviour has been strictly controlled. Even menstrual huts have been used to track their fertility.
Again, you are mistaking female sexuality as female power rather than responsibility and all the strain that goes with it.
Chimpanzees have a lesser form of concealed ovulation by having extended periods of sexual attractiveness beyond ovulation yet they are pretty much completely dominated by males, beaten and sexually coerced.

Let's face it, females do no better from any of this than do males. Think about whose benefit all this is really for - the offspring. It is offspring survival that selects for the traits that spread, and beyond that it is the genes. The survival of genes through generations is not about the well-being of the male or the female bodies that produce the gametes that need each other.
If you want to blame anything it should at least be the babies whose survival demanded these traits or if they seem too sweet then blame the genes that are travelling in them.

And as you have said, that sexual desire of the males is only for certain sexy young, childless females, and often for many many of them rather than one. How is that female control? Female control of what, exactly? Group female control? Are you arguing now that females as a group benefit from male sexual desire for young female bodies? How, exactly, does that work for them?

TMB wrote:

And the paradox today is that never having had children - looking like she is in a perpetual state of not-a-mother - is what makes the modern female most valued and most highly rated. Which may well be connected to the polygynous nature of men in fantasy if not reality. Which again is what concerns women who might be mothers - if an unlimited supply of nulliparous females is made to appear as being constantly available to men and it is what men really want then motherhood becomes the most dangerous and insecure and risky venture for any female in a world where a paternal presence and paternal investment still matters.

I think you would need to compare mothers with non-mothers. Aside from the physical toll that pregnancy takes on a womans body, in my experience women with kids are placed in a situation where someone else life is of more value than their own. This means that obsession with their own bodies is blunted. A woman without children is basically still more concerned about herself than anyone else and if we accept that we are driven to reproduce will be driving toward fulfilling this. There are plenty of cases of women getting divorced and then taking a great deal more care about their looks because they need to tune them in to compete with other women, often younger than themselves.
I agree that mothers face the risk of predatory unattached females who are looking for likely males, and this is one reason why womens lives are very challenging when compared to mens lives. This is because they compete with other women. Competing man to man men is a piece of cake in comparison. Pecking orders are simple and binary, and being good mates is easy and once they accept some sexual boundaries wrt to their partners, men can go off and enjoy some fishing or sport, whereas women never seem to be able to let go. Female friendships are often inconsistent, stressful, and they egg each other on wrt to looks etc. (men also egg each other on to strive for Mt Neverest, but after a few years most men get over this, recognise their limitations and try to enjoy life.). My teenage daughters sure do have nasty girl politics at school, the teenage boys are dirty minded and awkward and are like puppets to the girls.

Well, there you go. The females have all the responsibility of sperm-sorting and therefore the most challenging lives. Their lives may not be short but they are nasty and brutish. And their 'mate-value' life is very short.
In societies where the father or brother arranges the girl's sperm for her the girls can be treated very badly by their families too. They can be shut away, sometimes to be fattened up and for their skin to become lighter. Some girls have their genitalia cut off and sewn up. There is plenty of evidence that parents and other family members can be more brutal to their young females than any comparatively independent female is to herself. It must have something to do with what men want.

Being the most valuable and rare reproductive resource leads to all sorts of nasty things across all species and across all human cultures. Males battle for control over female bodies and females battle for control over their own bodies.
It's a shame we ever evolved internal fertilization and have to have the battle going on inside the female body too. What with chemicals in semen and imprinted genes from fathers causing the foetus to grow bigger than is good for the female (sometimes leading to cancer) and countered by her own genes holding back its growth, and genes for the father causing the infant to nurse more than is good for the mother.
Egg-laying would certainly remove a lot of this exploitation of the female body itself by the male and the offspring. And it would remove a lot of the division of labour which men resent so much and want compensated by female submission.

But it happened. Fertile females are the most fought over resource on the planet and across species. It is almost as if, as a female, our bodies are not our own. But then they're not, not really, they're our genes way of getting into the next generation. And what genes in a female want more than anything else is control over the reproduction that goes on with that body.
We want our bodies to be our own. Men want them to be theirs - at least briefly and/or in bulk. So the battle goes on.

Sprite, you said

All cultures do it.
I've just been reading about the Canela where they have the system that some other cultures have where they are not allowed to speak to or even to look at certain relatives. It looks like it applies to those relationships where familiarity could cause (sexual jealousy) problems eg mother-in-law and son in law, father-in-law and daughter-in-law.
We are social animals and we depend on our group so we generally want cooperation which means avoiding offence. The people we most care about we try to boost their self-confidence, not destroy it. We probably also try to avoid retaliation from others. Being generally offensive to others on a day-to-day basis would serve no useful purpose at all and would simply hinder our own well-being. What actually would be the point?

I understand what it is and why we do it. I am interested in the actual mechanism that exists to make it possible for us to do it so effectively.

Example please of a monogamous species where the males are all the same and therefore not worth competing over and mate-guarding?

I am not clear what you saying here. That males are the same as females (or other males), and if they are the same as the females therefore not worth competing for? I don’t see the link.
I was not suggesting an either/or here, for me the issue is around the male parental investment as the driver rather than monogamy. Sexual dimorphism in size is an indicator of monogamy/polygamy however there are plenty of examples of sexual dimorphism for features other than size that do have monogamous relationships. especially in birds.

If the male is staying with just one female then there must be something he is useful for - protection, defense. These are still paternal resources.
Where do we have mongamous males that do nothing?

Not sure, this is not the line of my argument.

Many of these things apply to males and females of other species too re. lifespan, male-male territorial war not involving females, more injury and death, sexual rejection, social outsiders etc etc. But in other species females do compete with males for food/resources and especially control over reproduction (linked to control of resources) which is what human females have been gaining in the last few decades in the West. We have almost gained the same status as females in other species. Well-done us.

Control implies responsibility, and you are suggesting that women are only now in a position to control reproduction for the past few decades. The introduction of the contraceptive pill has certainly changed a womans ability control pregnancy outcomes, since males are motivated to have sex (and this tendency has taken care of the reproduction of the species.
I do not agree that the link between control of reproduction and resources is strongly linked, in some cases it is simply sex. Resources that high status males hold does not mean reproduction in the modern day, it means they have better access to young females, primarily for sex, in some cases little of no reproductionAre you liking the formal legislative stuff, I assume, vote, workplace, equal rights etc to the ability to control sexual reproduction.
You say that we have gained the same status as females in other species. Which species did you have in mind and how have the evaluated the status. I cannot see how (except at a high level of biology) is it possible to compare us culturally to other species.

So a woman's reproductive work is complete in her late teens and early twenties and then she no longer needs a man around/keep the father of the children investing too???????

You forget that successful reproduction for a female is something that goes on as she ages and, in humans, becomes less desirable unlike in other species where a female is more desirable as she gains in age and in number of offspring and the experience that goes with it.

You have suggested that a womans looks decline with motherhood as being a paradox. Your answer does not explain why this should be a paradox, instead you have posed another question. Womens looks are required to attract males (relative to other females) for sex. The fact that they then raise the result of that sex over the next 2 decades does not require the same looks, but it does require resources (male and female). Looks are used to attract sexual partners, once you have the offspring, you might still hanker after the looks but they are not required as much as before children. This is not a paradox, its simple logic.

Controlling resources means responsibility. If you are in charge of firefighting or logging, or truck driving across the Arctic, or catching deep sea fish in Antarctica, (all mostly done by males), you expose yourself to high personal risk and responsibility. In Australia last year around 60 of bravery medals were awarded to people, and only about 10% to women. Women also make use of males to execute murder for them, whereas men with do it themselves to get another man to do it. There are plenty of examples that show women prefer to be able to leverage men to harvest the resources, as you would expect if they are carry the risk of a child/pregnancy, and are more valuable resources than men. The conflict arises because women want the benefits of being able to leverage males to get resources, and also want direct control as formal male positions have been sold very well as being about power, rather than responsibility.

So how are women seen as powerful? In the way they can manipulate men with their sexuality? But this is not power. This is responsibility - the responsibility of taking the best genes into the future. And do they get positive recognition for this? Where are the women's medals for 'sperm sorting'. It's also pretty risky and dangerous - sexual violence, abuse, trying to avoid being duped. There's a lot of risk and danger involved in dating males.
Women's sexuality has been sold very well as being about power, rather than responsibility.

I agree that risking pregnancy and being saddled with offspring is responsibility, however they do not carry responsibility to select sperm, the sperm and their carriers select themselves by establishing a pecking order. The woman needs to ensure she is chosen by the mate with the best genes. This does present a conflict, as they are often not the best providers, so being duplicit in their dealings with men, getting the best genes and getting the best provider to raise the offspring makes biological sense and would have developed a very subtle subterfuge to achieve.
I am not suggesting that womens roles do not carry risk, there is no question that the risk and responsibility of being pregnant is without parallel, but to do this she must have some way of controlling, of having power, to influence the males that can provide resources. Even if you do consider ‘sperm sorting’ as a responsibility and I would have to see some arguments to support this assertion, the fact that women have been burdened with the responsibility and risk of pregnancy and rearing, is precisely why they are effective at finding mechanism to place other responsibilities upon men. There is a sense that men are mostly responsible for the state of the world, with all its issues, wars, overpopulation, famines, diseases etc, yet what responsibility do women take for all the issues with human institutions? I suggest not very much, because biologically they have had to work hard to overcome their biological responsibility, men take on the other responsibility to get the necessary status to chose the best genes in the females. Womens sexuality is indeed a double edged sword simply because in all social dynamics, especially one that has been around in our species for a few hundred thousand years means there is plenty of contention around power.
You appear to cherry picked quite a bit of my post, dropping context and answering with very little substantive. What it this about? For example

Yes, it is very high risk being female especially when young and attractive as probably all of us have experinced. Men can be extremely dangerous to women, just like males across most species.

No doubt about this, just as females are the reason that men/males fight each other, does this mean we should hold women responsible for war? Are the male casualties not just the result of womens means of getting men to compete and provide the best genes and resources to support offspring?

But they are sex workers. Do you mean diverting reources to other sex workers?

No I am saying that women who are professional sex workers are a risk to women who want monogamous and faithful partners. Womens who sexuality is more available at a price as prostitutes, pornography pose a risk to the women who want to keep the value of their sexuality high. Its similar to the artificially high price of gem diamonds, this is done by controlling the supply to the market.

Except that sportsmen tend to be highly regarded for life and acquire high quality females for the genes.

I disagree, most professional athletes disappear from view, they burn quite bright for a decade or so and then never get to the same level. There are very well known exceptions, but they are not the rule. In many sports there are a few names that live on, but the majority, usually those who were not at the top, simply battered professionals, suffer from many of the excesses of a celebrity, and were never good or stable enough to make it carry through.

Sex workers tend to have short lives and very poor reproductive success and no one remembers them.

Agreed, and just like sportsmen, for those who can navigate their way through the perils, a minority of them will be able to convert their brief time with power, to something more sustaining.

Actually, I must butt in here. All men are not like that. Some actually are capable of loving a woman - I know. No need for cosmetics etc in my house. I am adored and I know it. And I have been solidly for almost 25years straight.

Not sure your anecdote counts as credible evidence. I am not suggesting that all men are like this or all women like something else. These are general traits, however as a man let me assure you that womens looks are a very potent stimulant to men. Let me also say that sex is also a very high motivator for men. Gay male sexual promiscuity is one way we see the evidence. Gay mens interest in casual sex, pickups etc is quite different to women, in this case both partners have the same inclination for sex, are OK with casual, frequent liaisons, this does not mean that every gale male is like this, or that no gay females are the same, just that each gender has these tendencies.

I think what is happening today is the same as consumerism. Just as most people now have poor attention spans and there is always a new product to try and life is increasingly superficial and about quick fixes etc etc so we treat our relationships. Thousands and thousands of female bodies are presented to men with new ones added on a daily basis and sex can be the same quick fix as any drug.

Agreed, but note there needs to be some underlying need that is being exploited. Consumerism does seem to be able to peddle a remarkable amount of crap to both genders, but there are patterns. I don’t see women getting too much into the different kinds of fishing tackle to the same degree as men, or men getting driven to wear lipstick as much as women do. Consumerism just reflects our nature and exaggerates it, but it does invent too much new.

While in our ancestry getting sex for a male was very very difficult and the number of 'sexy' females he would ever see would be very few.

Disagree, its relative. Without the variety we have to day for comparison, it would not take much for a stone age man to consider sexy because he was seeing the best of a limited population, so young and healthy would be good enough.

So he was adapted to take advantage of what he perceived as a sexual opportunity. Now he is hoodwinked into thinking that there are literally thousands of these opportunities available to him. His 'selfish genes' react.

Today people also take advantage of their opportunity because they are also pragmatic and will take what they can get, however as you say there is overstimulation and technology makes them even more unreal than they are in the flesh. Status seeking is no different, the drive for superstatus males is extreme, males who head up nations of a billion people, who amass fortunes of tens of billions of dollars, when hone their game of golf to a superhuman degree. None of these are actually practical except that with all the competition there is no limit, and being the best means it is always a Mt Neverest you are climbing.

Sex is a 'supernormal stimulus' today and just like these with other species where we get a male preferring an artificial model of a female over the real thing because it has an artificially increased large belly or whatever, or a female may brood artificially large false eggs over her own, real, normal-sized eggs, so we get those rare traits and situations that were very useful in our ancestry now saturating our lives and no longer serving their adaptive purpose.

Agreed.

They sure have worked hard to control the reproductive resources, also known as human females, and remove female mate choice completely, ie, that enormous responsibility females of other species are lumbered with, poor things [sarcasm].

I don’t think it is just male driven though, the mothers are also defending their hard-earned resources and will impose the rules upon their daughters. Men might carry the responsibility and are driven to enforce the penalties, but their females are often the power behind the throne. Do not forget that in some societies, even in the modern west the male gets plenty of parental pressure to marry the ‘right’ girl. I would see this process as more a parental power play that specifically with one sex. Its almost like the parents are saying, “these are our genes and we will make sure they are invested well”.

Though of all the men and women I know the men are certainly not doing any worse than the women, and certainly some a lot better.

I suppose it depends upon what you consider better, and perhaps you should rely upon statistics rather than anecdotal. If we value life, its quality (aka happiness) and liberty, then in the west, women will live 10 years more than men, men will have 4x the suicide rate, and will be 80-90% of the prison populations. If we do think that life, liberty and happiness are things of value, then for a gender that is supposed to have all the power they have done a very poor job of reaping the benefits for all these.

Yet it is much the same for males in other species even where control over reproduction is not held by them but is a dynamic of adaptation and counter-adaptation in the sexes.

And based upon the above comment we should be able to draw conclusions about what we see in human society, wrt to the balance between genders?

Absolutely wrong. For most human females over time their mate was chosen for them and their sexual behaviour has been strictly controlled. Even menstrual huts have been used to track their fertility.

I accept that in many cultures over the past few thousand years this has happened, just as there has been mate choice for some males, however this is no indication that it has been this way for the past few hundred thousand years. I am trying to establish evolved traits as well as cultural expression. I would say the menstrual huts are a modern (past 10,000 years) reaction to consciously assert some control over this process, also note that choices were often made for
In addition it does not seem that you think concealed ovulation provides women with any control over the behaviour for others (men or women). I can see the logic of being able to hide your true nature from others in that it gives you some control, I cannot see that it compromises your power, unless others are better at detecting that you are at deception.
If women did NOThave concealed ovulation it would mean that for a period they would be fertile and attractive to mate with. This would mean their ability to influence high status males would be limited (say 1 week per month), however with concealed ovulation she is able to attract males for a greater time and they will also be less sure of their paternity. A mechanism like this would allow women to better balance their need for good genes and a good provider from two different males, and perhaps get away with it.

Again, you are mistaking female sexuality as female power rather than responsibility and all the strain that goes with it.

If power is the ability to achieve outcomes in ones favour by influencing the behaviour of others, tell me how a womens sexuality (relative to males) is responsibility and not power. I accept that there will be stress in competing with other females, and there is also risk from physical abuse from males, and there are risks and large investments from being pregnant, but there are also stages in the sexual cycle where her sexuality is power.
There are certainly aspects of female sexuality that carry responsibility but attracting the high status males is not logically one of these. Females can be used to draw hordes of males, think domestic dogs at appropriate times. While it is a difficult power to control, just as a person with oodles of money can destroy themselves, correctly used a womens sexuality can be powerful, but not all aspects carry responsibility in the same way as males are endowed with most of the formal responsibility in society.

Chimpanzees have a lesser form of concealed ovulation by having extended periods of sexual attractiveness beyond ovulation yet they are pretty much completely dominated by males, beaten and sexually coerced.

I was not aware of this, please elaborate and explain how it provides support for you assertions on power and control in humans. Power between two players in a roles as intimate as men and women, or any sexually pairing is hardly likely to present a binary scenario of power, there will be swings and roundabouts as we juggle for control.

Let's face it, females do no better from any of this than do males. Think about whose benefit all this is really for - the offspring. It is offspring survival that selects for the traits that spread, and beyond that it is the genes. The survival of genes through generations is not about the well-being of the male or the female bodies that produce the gametes that need each other.
If you want to blame anything it should at least be the babies whose survival demanded these traits or if they seem too sweet then blame the genes that are travelling in them.

I am not looking to blame, as this is more a moral position, just trying to understand how the mechanisms work without taking sides. I do not discount the role that offspring play in influencing their parents, however parents and non parental adults are still driven to try and maximise their own selfish utility through controlling others etc, so it stands to reason that male and females will be engaged in a complex power negotiation. Just look at modern courting, something I watch my children do, There is a complex and highly emotional time filled with desires, deceptions, pain, confusion. One would imagine to read Cinderella is would all be far more magical. The argument about the role children play does not negate any arguments in the balance between men and women, Do you think it can discount these differences?

And as you have said, that sexual desire of the males is only for certain sexy young, childless females, and often for many of them rather than one.

That is the preference, but men are not very choosy, so will take pretty much anything that is available (unlike women who are far more discriminating) – do not forget regardless of our desire to look like Brad and Angelina, most people will get a partner and will get plenty of sex, almost regardless of how they look, but they are pragmatic about their ambitions. Many women also work hardto look childless and young, if not in real terms then in a skin deep way

How is that female control? Female control of what, exactly? Group female control? Are you arguing now that females as a group benefit from male sexual desire for young female bodies? How, exactly, does that work for them?

This is the conflict between women. If there were just one woman available, she would not have an issue competing for males attention (she would have other problems though), in this way unlimited power to influence the males. In groups the issue is how effective a womans power is relative to other , younger women. If everyone is selling diamonds, then they lose their value. Keep the market artificially scarce and the value goes up, but women are not very good at these sort of cartels and cut each others throats.

And the paradox today is that never having had children - looking like she is in a perpetual state of not-a-mother - is what makes the modern female most valued and most highly rated. Which may well be connected to the polygynous nature of men in fantasy if not reality. Which again is what concerns women who might be mothers - if an unlimited supply of nulliparous females is made to appear as being constantly available to men and it is what men really want then motherhood becomes the most dangerous and insecure and risky venture for any female in a world where a paternal presence and paternal investment still matters.

I think you would need to compare mothers with non-mothers. However I do not see why this is a paradox. Males are interested in young healthy mates. If ther are pregnant already, nursing, old unhealthy etc, they are less appealing as mates. Its logical. not potential mates Aside from the physical toll that pregnancy takes on a womans body, in my experience women with kids are placed in a situation where someone else life is of more value than their own. This means that obsession with their own bodies is blunted. A woman without children is basically still more concerned about herself than anyone else and if we accept that we are driven to reproduce will be driving toward fulfilling this. There are plenty of cases of women getting divorced and then taking a great deal more care about their looks because they need to tune them in to compete with other women, often younger than themselves.
I agree that mothers face the risk of predatory unattached females who are looking for likely males, and this is one reason why womens lives are very challenging when compared to mens lives. This is because they compete with other women. Competing man to man men is a piece of cake in comparison. Pecking orders are simple and binary, and being good mates is easy and once they accept some sexual boundaries wrt to their partners, men can go off and enjoy some fishing or sport, whereas women never seem to be able to let go. Female friendships are often inconsistent, stressful, and they egg each other on wrt to looks etc. (men also egg each other on to strive for Mt Neverest, but after a few years most men get over this, recognise their limitations and try to enjoy life.). My teenage daughters sure do have nasty girl politics at school, the teenage boys are dirty minded and awkward and are like puppets to the girls.

Well, there you go. The females have all the responsibility of sperm-sorting and therefore the most challenging lives. Their lives may not be short but they are nasty and brutish. And their 'mate-value' life is very short.

I see pregnancy as high responsibility, but not sperm sorting, how does this work? If womens lives were more nasty and brutish than men surely you would see more of them opting for suicide, which is not the case. How does your response answer my question. These things are relative, it appears you are conceding the point, by going off at a tangent before you are prepared to. If men were living the high life (even if a shorter one), then surely they would not be such a high rate of suicide. Granted this is competition with other males, and life behind bars is surely one of the many brutish places to be, and this is dominated by males

In societies where the father or brother arranges the girl's sperm for her the girls can be treated very badly by their families too. They can be shut away, sometimes to be fattened up and for their skin to become lighter. Some girls have their genitalia cut off and sewn up. There is plenty of evidence that parents and other family members can be more brutal to their young females than any comparatively independent female is to herself. It must have something to do with what men want.

It does, however adult females are also complicit in this process as well, they might not be getting their hands dirty in some cases but getting the males to execute for them. Much of our behaviour is not the result of conscious thought, because nature does not need us to even be aware of what we do and why we do it. There is no doubt that girls get abused, injured etc in these processes, just as young girls also get duped into issues with weight control, self mutilation of piercings, back damage from high heels, cosmetic surgery. Very little of this is within the control of individuals, or even their awareness of how they are being manipulated, and it also happens to males. Bottom line is how does each side end up? Longer, better lives with more liberty or not?

Being the most valuable and rare reproductive resource leads to all sorts of nasty things across all species and across all human cultures. Males battle for control over female bodies and females battle for control over their own bodies.

All this is not in dispute, you appear to offer red herrings on these points as a means to avoid concessions. Males battle to control their own bodies too, how fast they run, how well they stand corporate pressure, how fast they can drive the car before it crashes. Women battle with each other, just as do men, they do it differently.

It's a shame we ever evolved internal fertilization and have to have the battle going on inside the female body too. What with chemicals in semen and imprinted genes from fathers causing the foetus to grow bigger than is good for the female (sometimes leading to cancer) and countered by her own genes holding back its growth, and genes for the father causing the infant to nurse more than is good for the mother.

Another tangent, so you should throw in the fact that at egg/sperm fertilisation, the mitochondrial DNA of the sperm is cut off by the egg, thus ensuring that only the female passes on their m-DNA. This first contest between the sexes gives a win to females. I suppose given the risk the incubation and rearing will entail that seems reasonable.

Egg-laying would certainly remove a lot of this exploitation of the female body itself by the male and the offspring. And it would remove a lot of the division of labour which men resent so much and want compensated by female submission.

Not sure what you are asserting here about the division of labor without providing any detail, but you seem to be wishing the world to be different to what it really is, and its reflected in a few of your comments. I have no issues fantasising about what life could be like, but not if I am trying to understand what it really is like.

But it happened. Fertile females are the most fought over resource on the planet and across species. It is almost as if, as a female, our bodies are not our own. But then they're not, not really, they're our genes way of getting into the next generation. And what genes in a female want more than anything else is control over the reproduction that goes on with that body.
We want our bodies to be our own. Men want them to be theirs - at least briefly and/or in bulk. So the battle goes on.

don’t see that its an autonomous world for either gender, or in fact for any form of life. Males are drawn into scenarios to try and select the best, so that females may chose, and as you say its all rather inevitable in some form for us all. I am not sure how this becomes a process of trying to know reality by seeing only the issues that affect females and somehow placing the responsibility at mens feet.

TMB wrote:

Example please of a monogamous species where the males are all the same and therefore not worth competing over and mate-guarding?

I am not clear what you saying here. That males are the same as females (or other males), and if they are the same as the females therefore not worth competing for? I don’t see the link.

No, that there is no variation between the males.
I said "But we also have a large degree of monogamy so we also get females competing."
You said "Its not just about monogamy it is about male parental investment, even in monogamy if the male does not invest there is little incentive to compete."
So I was saying that there is no monogamy where males do not invest - whether food or protection or defense.
There can be some sexual dimorphism such as in raptors where the females are bigger probably to do with the resource needs of eggs in the female. You were saying that there is monogamy without male investment.

TMB wrote:You say that we have gained the same status as females in other species. Which species did you have in mind and how have the evaluated the status. I cannot see how (except at a high level of biology) is it possible to compare us culturally to other species.

This takes a much longer explanation than there is room for here.
I am specifically talking about female mate choice. In no other species have (usually male) relatives chosen the mate or mates of their female relatives. In no other species have males exchanged their daughters as mates. In no other species has female sexuality been a resource for exchange. Even in the chimpanzee where the females are dominated etc by the males, when the female reaches puberty she chooses which new community she moves to.
Darwin strongly believed in 'female mate choice' but it took 100 years for it to be taken seriously not least because as humans female mate choice was seen as something that did not exist.

TMB wrote:

So a woman's reproductive work is complete in her late teens and early twenties and then she no longer needs a man around/keep the father of the children investing too???????

You forget that successful reproduction for a female is something that goes on as she ages and, in humans, becomes less desirable unlike in other species where a female is more desirable as she gains in age and in number of offspring and the experience that goes with it.

You have suggested that a womans looks decline with motherhood as being a paradox. Your answer does not explain why this should be a paradox, instead you have posed another question. Womens looks are required to attract males (relative to other females) for sex. The fact that they then raise the result of that sex over the next 2 decades does not require the same looks, but it does require resources (male and female). Looks are used to attract sexual partners, once you have the offspring, you might still hanker after the looks but they are not required as much as before children. This is not a paradox, its simple logic.

So throughout our evolution when the females were producing offspring from 18 to 50 how did they attract sperm from men for the third/fourth.../eigth conception when the men were seeking sex with young females in the teens and twenties? You said they need to be able to attract men for sex. They also needed to attract them for resources.
You say the looks are not required as much 'after the children' which until recently is near 50. So you must really mean women keep their looks till 50? OooooKkkkkkk
Or you are saying they get a high status male for first offspring, lower for second, lower again for third until the lowest for the last? But that's not what the evidence supports. Though there can be re-marriages in hunter-gatherers it can be the woman who divorces as much as the man, and often some men acquiring multiple wives (excluding some men from marriage altogether) and long-term pair-bonds. Having the actual father there long-term is the best outcome for offspring, not having new fathers around of decreasing quality with each offspring.

What is this 'before children' and 'after children'. For human females for most of a our ancestry it was always children. There is no 'after children' for human females - or females as most other species. There is only motherhood post-puberty/first conception.
This is simple logic.

The attraction for young nulliparous females is unusual in humans and it is so the male acquires the full reproductive life of the female, not just her first pregnancy which will likely be the least successful. He is not mating for a single offspring with a pretty young inexperienced female but a female who has her whole reproductive life ahead of her for him to use it all.

TMB wrote:

So how are women seen as powerful? In the way they can manipulate men with their sexuality? But this is not power. This is responsibility - the responsibility of taking the best genes into the future. And do they get positive recognition for this? Where are the women's medals for 'sperm sorting'. It's also pretty risky and dangerous - sexual violence, abuse, trying to avoid being duped. There's a lot of risk and danger involved in dating males.
Women's sexuality has been sold very well as being about power, rather than responsibility.

I agree that risking pregnancy and being saddled with offspring is responsibility, however they do not carry responsibility to select sperm, the sperm and their carriers select themselves by establishing a pecking order. The woman needs to ensure she is chosen by the mate with the best genes. This does present a conflict, as they are often not the best providers, so being duplicit in their dealings with men, getting the best genes and getting the best provider to raise the offspring makes biological sense and would have developed a very subtle subterfuge to achieve.

What do the females do when they are being chosen by men they don't want to be chosen by?
In much of human history girls are married very young to a man chosen by their family for family connections and the benefit of the family.
Females of other species just go off their own attractions to males.
When females need access to resources held by males they will make their choices based on resources held by males. If they have direct access to resources they will use other criteria. No resources at all needed and it will just be genes.

In monogamy the logical outcome is assortative mating where the top male and female mate, then the second, and so on down to the bottom. But what actually happens is that the top male will get the next female down too, and maybe a third and fourth so that all females mate up and it is only at the bottom where the males end up without a mate.

TMB wrote:You appear to cherry picked quite a bit of my post, dropping context and answering with very little substantive. What it this about? For example

Yes, it is very high risk being female especially when young and attractive as probably all of us have experinced. Men can be extremely dangerous to women, just like males across most species.

No doubt about this, just as females are the reason that men/males fight each other, does this mean we should hold women responsible for war? Are the male casualties not just the result of womens means of getting men to compete and provide the best genes and resources to support offspring?

Whose offspring? Are they just the women's? How do males pass on their genes.
Men are not doing this for women they are doing it for their own genes.

TMB wrote:

But they are sex workers. Do you mean diverting reources to other sex workers?

No I am saying that women who are professional sex workers are a risk to women who want monogamous and faithful partners. Womens who sexuality is more available at a price as prostitutes, pornography pose a risk to the women who want to keep the value of their sexuality high. Its similar to the artificially high price of gem diamonds, this is done by controlling the supply to the market.

You could look at it that way but it is the needs of offspring that are ultimately being served - it is resources being diverted from already made offspring potentially to the offspring of other women, even through casual sex.

It is the asymmetry of sex that is the problem. Men can impregnate a female and once she is therefore 'hooked' on his offspring he can renege on his investment and start to divert his resources into offspring with other women too, thereby reducing his otherwise joint committment to the original offspring.

Only when true monogamy exists (very rare) do we have a convergence of interests between the two parents in the same offspring. When we don't have monogamy we have conflict between the sexes.

TMB wrote:

Sex workers tend to have short lives and very poor reproductive success and no one remembers them.

Agreed, and just like sportsmen, for those who can navigate their way through the perils, a minority of them will be able to convert their brief time with power, to something more sustaining.

Only in monogamy do the sexes coincide in lifespan, health, etc.
We have offspring that constrain both sexes to be largely monogamous. But we are not truly monogamous so we have males behaving 'polygynously', including the live fast die young or brief peak lifestyles.
But females in monogamy and polygyny need to breed longterm because they cannot produce offspring in a single burst as males can.

TMB wrote:

While in our ancestry getting sex for a male was very very difficult and the number of 'sexy' females he would ever see would be very few.

Disagree, its relative. Without the variety we have to day for comparison, it would not take much for a stone age man to consider sexy because he was seeing the best of a limited population, so young and healthy would be good enough.

So, you are saying all men of all ages are competing over the new young female teens as they reach puberty and once past 25 or so and two or three kids the men are all back in the pool of potential sperm-donor. How would relations between the vast numbers of men competing over the small number of females with their very brief period of attractivity work? How do offspring of these males survive when always abandoned?

TMB wrote:

Though of all the men and women I know the men are certainly not doing any worse than the women, and certainly some a lot better.

I suppose it depends upon what you consider better, and perhaps you should rely upon statistics rather than anecdotal. If we value life, its quality (aka happiness) and liberty, then in the west, women will live 10 years more than men, men will have 4x the suicide rate, and will be 80-90% of the prison populations. If we do think that life, liberty and happiness are things of value, then for a gender that is supposed to have all the power they have done a very poor job of reaping the benefits for all these.

But they are subject to the male-male competition for a tiny proportion of available females as above. With 'true' monogamy this would not be so.

TMB wrote:

Yet it is much the same for males in other species even where control over reproduction is not held by them but is a dynamic of adaptation and counter-adaptation in the sexes.

And based upon the above comment we should be able to draw conclusions about what we see in human society, wrt to the balance between genders?

That in species that are not monogamous and the female and male are 'freely' evolving strategies and counter-strategies in the fight for control over reproduciton the males also have shorter and more brutal lives.

TMB wrote:If women did NOThave concealed ovulation it would mean that for a period they would be fertile and attractive to mate with. This would mean their ability to influence high status males would be limited (say 1 week per month), however with concealed ovulation she is able to attract males for a greater time and they will also be less sure of their paternity. A mechanism like this would allow women to better balance their need for good genes and a good provider from two different males, and perhaps get away with it.

'Concealed' ovulation and paternity confusion - the greatest evidence to explain its evolution is to avoid infanticide by males.

TMB wrote:

Chimpanzees have a lesser form of concealed ovulation by having extended periods of sexual attractiveness beyond ovulation yet they are pretty much completely dominated by males, beaten and sexually coerced.

I was not aware of this, please elaborate and explain how it provides support for you assertions on power and control in humans. Power between two players in a roles as intimate as men and women, or any sexually pairing is hardly likely to present a binary scenario of power, there will be swings and roundabouts as we juggle for control.

Jane Goodall wrote a lot about how males rise up the ranks by beating on each female in turn until all are dominated. The females are generally beaten so that when they are fertile they dare not refuse a mating. Female chimpanzees get their worst injuries when they have sexual swellings. They normally travel alone with their offspring.
It is believed that the common ancestor did not have sexual swelling. But there would have been signs of fertility.What we share with the other African apes is male philopatry. Males stay in their birth groups and females move to a new group to breed. So males spend their whole lives together. In most social species it is the male who moves to breed. Males may have brief alliances but nothing like the male-male bonding of our ape ancestry.
Males are also bigger than females.
Females do not bond (apart from bonobos which would need a separate discussion) whereas in matrilocal species (most others) females have their relatives for support against the bigger males.
Confusing paternity remains important in these apes too but the males are also strongly bonded for life-time mutual defense etc.
So our evolution is quite unusual in having unrelated females breeding in groups of life-long bonded males.
Once (in our evolution) which group the female moves to is controlled by those males with female exchange then the human female lost even that control.
Then we had the offspring needing paternal investment so long-term pair-bonds enabled greater offspring survival. Men controlled their own competition for access to females within the group to keep male-male bonding strong for mutual defense - and raiding for females from other groups is the most basic warfare.

TMB wrote: The argument about the role children play does not negate any arguments in the balance between men and women, Do you think it can discount these differences?

I think it is only by understanding sexual conflict across species, starting with anisogamy on through selection acting differently on two different phenotypes within the same species, one producing eggs and the other sperm - basically why the 'needs' of sperm are different from the 'needs' of eggs in terms of potential reproductive succes. But for us our massively resource-hungry offspring put constraints on both sexes. Neither sex is able to do what they would prefer because we would go extinct. But we have also evolved, still with great variation, male bonding with children and male-female bonding which for a significant proportion of us means we can better match the needs of offspring with our own behaviour, gaining pleasure from monogamy and male committment to offspring.

TMB wrote: Males are interested in young healthy mates. If ther are pregnant already, nursing, old unhealthy etc, they are less appealing as mates.

It is really amazing that our female ancestors, baby at the breast (literally sucking the food out of her), didn't die of starvation or if they scraped through ever had another offspring.
Hell, if I'd have believed this I'd not have had children.
Didn't know that evolution acts against infant survival due to acting in favour of males mating only with childless women.

TMB wrote:

Well, there you go. The females have all the responsibility of sperm-sorting and therefore the most challenging lives. Their lives may not be short but they are nasty and brutish. And their 'mate-value' life is very short.

I see pregnancy as high responsibility, but not sperm sorting, how does this work? If womens lives were more nasty and brutish than men surely you would see more of them opting for suicide, which is not the case.How does your response answer my question. These things are relative, it appears you are conceding the point, by going off at a tangent before you are prepared to. If men were living the high life (even if a shorter one), then surely they would not be such a high rate of suicide. Granted this is competition with other males, and life behind bars is surely one of the many brutish places to be, and this is dominated by males

You just said girls lives are more nasty and the men recogize their limitations and try to enjoy life.

TMB wrote:

It's a shame we ever evolved internal fertilization and have to have the battle going on inside the female body too. What with chemicals in semen and imprinted genes from fathers causing the foetus to grow bigger than is good for the female (sometimes leading to cancer) and countered by her own genes holding back its growth, and genes for the father causing the infant to nurse more than is good for the mother.

Another tangent, so you should throw in the fact that at egg/sperm fertilisation, the mitochondrial DNA of the sperm is cut off by the egg, thus ensuring that only the female passes on their m-DNA. This first contest between the sexes gives a win to females. I suppose given the risk the incubation and rearing will entail that seems reasonable.

These are not tangents but doing what you sometimes appear to be doing which is showing how both sexes are affected negatively by the 'selfish' genes.
The losing mtDNA is not the first battle of the sexes but the origin of the sexes. It is usually males/sperm who have been argued as benefitting (Parker et al etc) and exploiting the female from the start. By reducing investment in each gamete many more could be produced and 'females' were forced to invest more in each gamete. Hence the start of increased competition between males, desperate to avoid zero fertilizations, but potentially vastly out-reproducing other males.
And there begins the battle between the sexes over those ferilizations. It's not a case of males 'sperm-sorting' themselves in the benign or self-sacrificing 'good for the group 'way you seem to be suggesting. And it is not a case of females accepting the outcome of male-male competition. We have, across species, the evolution of the female reproductive tract to select between sperm internally sometimes sperm being ingested rather than used for fertilization, males evolving intromittent organs to get closer to the eggs, females evolving obstacles to this and to sperm. The ways females pre-copulation and females post-copulation choose between males/sperm is only recently coming to light.

TMB wrote:

Egg-laying would certainly remove a lot of this exploitation of the female body itself by the male and the offspring. And it would remove a lot of the division of labour which men resent so much and want compensated by female submission.

Not sure what you are asserting here about the division of labor without providing any detail, but you seem to be wishing the world to be different to what it really is, and its reflected in a few of your comments. I have no issues fantasising about what life could be like, but not if I am trying to understand what it really is like.

God no - purely understanding the world as it is. I'm working at understanding sexual conflict. It is everywhere. It exists where monogamy does not (and monogamy is really just mutually successful mate-guarding). Two 'strangers' reproducing only have the same reproductive interests - and therefore mutual concern for each others current and future lives - when they share the very same offspring.

TMB wrote: don’t see that its an autonomous world for either gender, or in fact for any form of life. Males are drawn into scenarios to try and select the best, so that females may chose, and as you say its all rather inevitable in some form for us all. I am not sure how this becomes a process of trying to know reality by seeing only the issues that affect females and somehow placing the responsibility at mens feet.

"Males are drawn into scenarios to try to select the best, so that females can choose" - and how are you not presenting males as some sort of group working for the best of all or simply helpless victims of female wiles.
Come on!!!!!!!!! Have you actually heard yourself?

The role of females in evolution has been largely not considered as females, of all species, were seen as passive.
Of course females are not.
You still seem stuck in that old view of female passivity. That has just been a passivity enforced on human females and then mistaken to be 'natural'.
Read Cronin's 'The Ant and The Peacock' to get a thorough understanding of the antagonism to anything but female passivity across nature and the attacks on Darwin's 'female mate choice'. - not the part that is accepting the winner of male-male competition but the part about females actually choosing.
Also see Eberhard's 'Female Cryptic Choice'.

Men used to love their 'responsibility' when it went with social and political and sexual dominance etc. Even the loser males only wanted to change place with the winners, not change the playing field. Now that that has been undermined suddenly it becomes a great burden. Or an argument for female submission to male authority because of the selfless sacrifices some men like to paint themselves as making. Two words: selfish genes.

TMB, I wasn't born yesterday.
I have a very deep understanding of the evolution of sex and the sexes and I know more than most about primates and female sexuality.

Perhaps you think you are arguing against someone who does not believe in differences between the sexes? The full story is difficult to get across in brief posts but you will never understand if you just keep making the old (and often current) feminist mistake of thinking we have nothing to learn from understanding the evolution of sex and the sexes. And the biggest mistake everyone makes is that 'sex' and 'conflict' are not meant to go together. No two subjects could be more intimately connected.

To sum up everything in one phrase: Conflict over the control of reproduction.

Sprite you said,

This takes a much longer explanation than there is room for here.
I am specifically talking about female mate choice. In no other species have (usually male) relatives chosen the mate or mates of their female relatives. In no other species have males exchanged their daughters as mates. In no other species has female sexuality been a resource for exchange. Even in the chimpanzee where the females are dominated etc by the males, when the female reaches puberty she chooses which new community she moves to.
Darwin strongly believed in 'female mate choice' but it took 100 years for it to be taken seriously not least because as humans female mate choice was seen as something that did not exist.

I do not see how this answers my question of which other species from humans have females gained the same status as we have achieved in humans. Your answer actually argues human unique rather than how we are similar/same as other species. How is this relevant to the original question?

So throughout our evolution when the females were producing offspring from 18 to 50 how did they attract sperm from men for the third/fourth.../eigth conception when the men were seeking sex with young females in the teens and twenties? You said they need to be able to attract men for sex. They also needed to attract them for resources.
You say the looks are not required as much 'after the children' which until recently is near 50. So you must really mean women keep their looks till 50? OooooKkkkkkk

Your position is too binary and absolute. We operate on a relative scale. Consider that there is no specific day when we stop being young and become old, and given the availability of other younger/older females and competing males, we are pragmatic and there are degrees of attraction. Specifically this means that women are able to have children until their 3/4/5th decade but it is declining and for most women, they are far more attractive to males and fertile in their 20’s than in their 50’s. Lower status males might want to mate with more young females, but are unable to, cultural as well as biological pressures enforce this to some degree. However, as with many things this is not an absolute either/or scenario but a continuum.

Or you are saying they get a high status male for first offspring, lower for second, lower again for third until the lowest for the last? But that's not what the evidence supports.

No, once again a female might be attractive enough and ambitious enough to retain the alpha male for several offspring (sometimes to the exclusion of matings with other females). In other cases it might vary for a number of reasons. Availability, other male competition, the quality of available females etc. Overall, however, you would see higher status males and more attractive,(younger and healthier) females being more successful in the matings. To some degree this has been moderated by cultural forces, themselves driven by biological drives

Though there can be re-marriages in hunter-gatherers it can be the woman who divorces as much as the man, and often some men acquiring multiple wives (excluding some men from marriage altogether) and long-term pair-bonds. Having the actual father there long-term is the best outcome for offspring, not having new fathers around of decreasing quality with each offspring.

It depends upon the father, mother and child knowing if it is the actual father. There are controversial stats on how step children suffer more, however I would say that a more likely outcome was a female mating with a high status male to get good genes and pairing with a lower status male as a better nurturer.

What is this 'before children' and 'after children'. For human females for most of a our ancestry it was always children. There is no 'after children' for human females - or females as most other species. There is only motherhood post-puberty/first conception.
This is simple logic.

Let me be clearer. I meant by this that prior to any pregnancy/birth and post pregnancy/birth to the point where the female becomes barren. Also note that having offspring requires resources that hinder/prevents having more offspring. Its matched with a degradation in looks and interest in looking for additional matings. Once again this is not binary and some females keep breeding for many years with many children, and others stop after one child. Other women also drive very hard to maintain their appearance of youth etc through surgery and exercise, while others allow the decline. Its more a general trend than fixed absolutes.

The attraction for young nulliparous females is unusual in humans and it is so the male acquires the full reproductive life of the female, not just her first pregnancy which will likely be the least successful.

Have you said that men are NOT attracted to young women/girls (but presumably post pubertal, who have never had children?) Does this imply that males are more likely to seek one that has already had a child and therefore more likely to be fertile and better for future children. If you are saying this, can you support this position. I would say than males are attracted to any young, healthy, sexually mature female, and while they might not pursue them, I would say this is due to social pressures not biology.

He is not mating for a single offspring with a pretty young inexperienced female but a female who has her whole reproductive life ahead of her for him to use it all.

I do not understand your point. Biologically a male (pre cultural days) would be served by performing as many matings as possible, and pretty much this reflects the behaviour of modern young males. Adaptively it might have produced enough viable offspring even without significant MPI, and even today many children mature and reproduce successfully without much MPI because the state now provides much of this. Surely a ‘pretty young inexperienced female” DOES have her “whole reproductive life ahead of her?” How do you distinguish the inexperienced youngster from another who also has their whole reproductive life head of her?

What do the females do when they are being chosen by men they don't want to be chosen by?
In much of human history girls are married very young to a man chosen by their family for family connections and the benefit of the family.

Not sure that this means it has been this way for all homo sapiens or proto-humans so this is affected by cultural drives. There has also been much selection of the young males to reinforce family power by the parents, this still happens in parts of Asia today, so its not just females that have their choices made for them. Also note that biologically females are choosy, and males are much less choosy, so its logically possible that males were better able to have their choices made for them while females were not.

Females of other species just go off their own attractions to males.

I disagree, for example when lion prides are taken over by males the females accept the new males, their cubs are often killed by the new males so they can provide their own genes. The females by accepting this are choosing better genes for the next generation. What species did you have in mind where this happens? Your general comment indicates it as being universal?

When females need access to resources held by males they will make their choices based on resources held by males. If they have direct access to resources they will use other criteria. No resources at all needed and it will just be genes.

This certainly happens in some species, many birds for example females check out the various nests built and make their choice, but its not universal. Note that ultimately it still does provide access to the resources. The lioness who accepts the killing of her cubs and the new head of the pride is in effect getting access to the resources of the male, but it appears to be a choice made by her genes rather than her individual choice (ie. As a lioness mother she will choose to keep existing young, but still accepts their death, moves on, remates)

In monogamy the logical outcome is assortative mating where the top male and female mate, then the second, and so on down to the bottom. But what actually happens is that the top male will get the next female down too, and maybe a third and fourth so that all females mate up and it is only at the bottom where the males end up without a mate.

This is because we do not operate under pure monogamy or even pure serial monogamy, but a mix with polygamy. I agree that low status males are the real losers in a polygamy or partial polygamy environment.

Whose offspring? Are they just the women's? How do males pass on their genes.
Men are not doing this for women they are doing it for their own genes.

Agreed, but this does not answer the question of where we politically place the blame and does. I get the sense that men are held responsible for the parlous state of the world, even to the degree that society is considered patriarchal as if men are controlling things. I would say the reality is very different with male and female manipulating as much as they are able, and as you say the genes underlie it all. This does not stop us from judging and finding a group or individual to scapegoat. Recall that my point was made to your comment that males can be “extremely dangerous to women, just like males across most species”. I see this as ascribing blame to men for their behaviour which overlooks the fact that both genders are equally culpable.

You could look at it that way but it is the needs of offspring that are ultimately being served - it is resources being diverted from already made offspring potentially to the offspring of other women, even through casual sex.

Agreed

It is the asymmetry of sex that is the problem. Men can impregnate a female and once she is therefore 'hooked' on his offspring he can renege on his investment and start to divert his resources into offspring with other women too, thereby reducing his otherwise joint committment to the original offspring.

This is the ultimate responsibility carried by women. In order to dilute this, I contend that women have argued a strong case that men should be (and mostly are) responsible for the formal world, while women pull the strings in the background. The case for women to acquire more formal position has not been very successful and I suspect for many women it is not to their advantage to take more formal responsibility if they can still reap the benefits of the males they choose.

Only when true monogamy exists (very rare) do we have a convergence of interests between the two parents in the same offspring. When we don't have monogamy we have conflict between the sexes.

So since we do not consider humans to be good monogamists, even good serial ones, then can we assume that we are stuck with conflict between the sexes. I would imagine that it does not take too much to realise that there certainly is [plenty of conflict between the sexes, the more relevant question is to try and break it down and understand the dynamics. So while I take you point I do not see how it progresses the discussion.

So, you are saying all men of all ages are competing over the new young female teens as they reach puberty and once past 25 or so and two or three kids the men are all back in the pool of potential sperm-donor.

Once again too extreme and too absolute a position. Much is relative, so women strive to appear youthful and both men and women will take the best they can get. Social pressures to conform (or appear to do so), means there is some degree of fidelity (although there is plenty of infidelity). A male of 50 in low or middle status in terms of looks, $, etc will probably not have much hope of playing the field with young women, however even an ageing rockstar will get plenty of offers from young females simply because his status makes him attractive. Also note that your own comment about the difficulty of lower status men getting access to many females will limit the competition in our ancestors, so the competition is limited. However if you look at the high risk behaviours of teenage males and 20’s trying to establish their status, we can see this competition in progress. It seems to settle down once they reach their 3rd decade, however modern society has moderated the pecking order and quite a few males do get access to females.

How would relations between the vast numbers of men competing over the small number of females with their very brief period of attractivity work?

Once again your position is too binary and too absolute. Attraction is relative and men will find women attractive for at least several decades, however it will decline depending upon the age and the individual and availability of other relatively young females. Relations between males does show this stress, however cultural factors manage how these manifest and are expressed. For males that are not exposed to a partners infidelity from numerous other males they will operate with les conflict than those whose partners are constantly being approached and succumbing to other males.

How do offspring of these males survive when always abandoned?

The process does not work in these absolute terms. “always” you should replace with ‘sometimes’ or tendency and note that socially we are adjusting to these factors. It means that there are families where the farther is absent or not contributing, the women and society backfill this to some degree but there are still plenty of young casualties. Going back 50thouand years the mechanism might have been more obvious where males that did operate purely like this might have been removed from the gene pool as this is not a successful adaptive behaviour. However many other factors modify this.

But they are subject to the male-male competition for a tiny proportion of available females as above. With 'true' monogamy this would not be so.

How does this answer my comment in response to yours that “Though of all the men and women I know the men are certainly not doing any worse than the women, and certainly some a lot better.”, where I respond with “If we value life, its quality (aka happiness) and liberty, then in the west, women will live 10 years more than men, men will have 4x the suicide rate, and will be 80-90% of the prison populations.”?

That in species that are not monogamous and the female and male are 'freely' evolving strategies and counter-strategies in the fight for control over reproduciton the males also have shorter and more brutal lives.

Not sure where this answer came from as I asked what conclusions we could draw from human society, yet you have given an answer for other (presumably non human) non monogamous species. Can you answer the question about conclusions in humans or have we gone to far off the original point with this tangent?

'Concealed' ovulation and paternity confusion - the greatest evidence to explain its evolution is to avoid infanticide by males.

By your answer I would say you are rejecting my argument in favour of reduced infanticide but you are not offering any logic or evidence to support this. In fact MPI, infanticide and a few other theories are offered to support concealed ovulation. My suggestion above of cuckoldry does not mean that infanticide and MPI are also factors. I would suggest that increased MPI is another strong contender for its existence. Note than one argument for the cuckoldry hypothesis is based upon experiment to see what males women are attracted to during various stages in their cycle, showing that they are more attracted to huskier males when ovulating and softer more nurturing in appearance when not nurturing.
I asked you to elaborate on the concealed ovulation in chimps and how it supports your assertion of power and control in humans, and this is what you have responded with. Nothing you have said indicates anything about partially concealed ovulation in chimps.

Jane Goodall wrote a lot about how males rise up the ranks by beating on each female in turn until all are dominated. The females are generally beaten so that when they are fertile they dare not refuse a mating. Female chimpanzees get their worst injuries when they have sexual swellings. They normally travel alone with their offspring.
It is believed that the common ancestor did not have sexual swelling. But there would have been signs of fertility. What we share with the other African apes is male philopatry. Males stay in their birth groups and females move to a new group to breed. So males spend their whole lives together. In most social species it is the male who moves to breed. Males may have brief alliances but nothing like the male-male bonding of our ape ancestry.
Males are also bigger than females.
Females do not bond (apart from bonobos which would need a separate discussion) whereas in matrilocal species (most others) females have their relatives for support against the bigger males.
Confusing paternity remains important in these apes too but the males are also strongly bonded for life-time mutual defense etc.
So our evolution is quite unusual in having unrelated females breeding in groups of life-long bonded males.
Once (in our evolution) which group the female moves to is controlled by those males with female exchange then the human female lost even that control.
Then we had the offspring needing paternal investment so long-term pair-bonds enabled greater offspring survival. Men controlled their own competition for access to females within the group to keep male-male bonding strong for mutual defense - and raiding for females from other groups is the most basic warfare.

I see nothing in the above indicating that chimps have partially concealed ovulation. Does Jane Goodall argue this exists?
TMB wrote: Males are interested in young healthy mates. If ther are pregnant already, nursing, old unhealthy etc, they are less appealing as mates.

It is really amazing that our female ancestors, baby at the breast (literally sucking the food out of her), didn't die of starvation or if they scraped through ever had another offspring.
Hell, if I'd have believed this I'd not have had children.
Didn't know that evolution acts against infant survival due to acting in favour of males mating only with childless women.

This is to extreme a position to take based upon my comment above. The black/white divides do not exist, they are graduated, and plenty of our ancestors did not survive to have children. You have made this statement as if what I said implies this.

Didn't know that evolution acts against infant survival due to acting in favour of males mating only with childless women.

What have I said that makes you think this is my position? I cannot even unravel the logic of your statement.

You just said girls lives are more nasty and the men recogize their limitations and try to enjoy life.

This is a broad and complex topic. On the face of it women live longer and are more protected (as evidenced by greater longevity and lower suicide rates), however women also appear far less fulfilled than men (evidenced by the strong lobby that women require more of many things). I would say that women require more than men in order to be fulfilled, probably driven by the greater biological responsibility and more subtle and less defined competition between women (as opposed to that between men being fairly simple and binary). This means that women do indeed live in a tougher environment than men do, have greater aspirations and needs than men do, but are better suited to survive and deal with these. It means that women will continue striving to fulfil unachievable outcomes and be less satisfied while men have lower aspirations and are fulfilled by far simpler things – in effect more easily accepting of their lot of shorter lives, higher suicides etc. And despite them enjoying the simpler things of life.

The losing mtDNA is not the first battle of the sexes but the origin of the sexes.

I do not understand this. Sperm fuses with egg and loses tail (mDNA) in the process and this is the ORIGIN of the sexes? The fact that the egg is able to deselect the sperm mDNA is a point of contention and selection and eliminating the sperm mDNA is a loss for the sperm. How do you translate this process into the origin of the sexes? By the time you have gametes from different points of male and female, the sexes already exist.

It is usually males/sperm who have been argued as benefitting (Parker et al etc) and exploiting the female from the start. By reducing investment in each gamete many more could be produced and 'females' were forced to invest more in each gamete. Hence the start of increased competition between males, desperate to avoid zero fertilizations, but potentially vastly out-reproducing other males.

I think we are agreed that the female investment being greater than the male, and hence higher risk which I noted earlier in this debate. However this does not answer the point that the male sperm is prevented from introducing it mDNA, something that goes against the ‘intent’ of selfish genes. is a given

And there begins the battle between the sexes over those ferilizations. It's not a case of males 'sperm-sorting' themselves in the benign or self-sacrificing 'good for the group 'way you seem to be suggesting.

I am not suggesting this.

And it is not a case of females accepting the outcome of male-male competition.

I agree it is more a case of females mediating in this to ensure they get the highest status male possible (given they compete with other females)

We have, across species, the evolution of the female reproductive tract to select between sperm internally sometimes sperm being ingested rather than used for fertilization, males evolving intromittent organs to get closer to the eggs, females evolving obstacles to this and to sperm. The ways females pre-copulation and females post-copulation choose between males/sperm is only recently coming to light.

While I agree with this, I cannot see what point you are making relevant to the original point, now lost.

"Males are drawn into scenarios to try to select the best, so that females can choose" - and how are you not presenting males as some sort of group working for the best of all or simply helpless victims of female wiles.
Come on!!!!!!!!! Have you actually heard yourself?

I am not saying that males are working for the good of anyone but themselves and their genes. My point is that women carry the burden of biological responsibility and in order to be successful they need to make best use of available resources. This means that rather than our society being run by men, it is run by women by using men in the most effective way. Men are in most positions of non biological responsibility as they compete for status and provide best for offspring and mother, exposed to most risk of death through injury etc. I am not suggesting that men are totally helpless in all of this, and for a long time, men used their superior physical strength to counter womens more subtle ways of control. Today the use of overt force to control others is becoming less culturally acceptable, and men are not as good as women as more subtle ways of manipulation. Simply look at the evidence. If men truly controlled things and benefitted the most, as it is often argued, then they surely would be living longer than women, and committing less suicide. It makes no sense for men to have all this power, yet unable to achieve better in our most valued state – that of life, and its quality. They also hold the most positions of formal responsibility, and while these do convey some power, most of the benefits from these positions accrue to their offspring and (mostly) female partners.
When we consider the political ability of men and women, just watching the interaction between teenage boys and girls, its easy to see that the girls are way ahead of the boys, and have a much better idea of what is really going on. However, the girls have serious conflict between themselves and are still maturing and establishing their identity, so they are not necessarily happy in this state. Just ahead of the boys, who needing far less, and having simpler conflict with other boys, in some ways are better off.

The role of females in evolution has been largely not considered as females, of all species, were seen as passive.
Of course females are not.
You still seem stuck in that old view of female passivity. That has just been a passivity enforced on human females and then mistaken to be 'natural'.

I am not sure why you think I consider females to be passive, most definitely not. Women operate actively at different levels to male and far harder to read (for males), but they are anything but passive.

Read Cronin's 'The Ant and The Peacock' to get a thorough understanding of the antagonism to anything but female passivity across nature and the attacks on Darwin's 'female mate choice'. - not the part that is accepting the winner of male-male competition but the part about females actually choosing.
Also see Eberhard's 'Female Cryptic Choice'.

Your comments above are contradictory. You say that I make a position that men are victims of female wiles, in the next breath that I consider females to be passive. Which one is it?
I have no issue with Cronins work, not familiar with Eberhards.

Men used to love their 'responsibility' when it went with social and political and sexual dominance etc.

I disagree. Men are not encouraged to complain about their lot, yet most males are not that enamoured with the current profile of being cogs in some faceless corporate, working 60 hours a week, risk losing their jobs, yet working for a retirement that many do not live long enough to enjoy. Complaining is seen as weakness, by other males and by women, so men are not likely to portray themselves as victims, whereas women can benefit as victims and do so.

Even the loser males only wanted to change place with the winners, not change the playing field. Now that that has been undermined suddenly it becomes a great burden.

Again I disagree, and I have been in the corporate business world for 30 years. Men certainly do not want more competition in the workplace, either from men or women, but women also compete differently here. There is significant use of females sexual advantages, that men do not have, as well as the traditional male ‘business’ process. Women often take the best of both of these. Also note that many women are not finding corporate or business life as much fun or as powerful as they expected, and many vote with their feet and still leave the major breadwinning to their men.

Or an argument for female submission to male authority because of the selfless sacrifices some men like to paint themselves as making. Two words: selfish genes.

Both men and women will take any position that presents them in the best light and advantage. Submission to authority is an interesting choice, because in many cases this can be the best outcome. There are plenty of examples where children and women ride under the mantel of a patriarch, avoid the responsibility and still reap the benefits. If one has to play subtle games to do this, thats a small price to pay.

TMB, I wasn't born yesterday.
I have a very deep understanding of the evolution of sex and the sexes and I know more than most about primates and female sexuality.

If you say so. I would suggest that rather than telling me, offer the arguments and counters that support this. That way I wont have to take your assertion on face value.

Perhaps you think you are arguing against someone who does not believe in differences between the sexes?

I do not think this.

The full story is difficult to get across in brief posts but you will never understand if you just keep making the old (and often current) feminist mistake of thinking we have nothing to learn from understanding the evolution of sex and the sexes.

You are suggesting I belong to the feminist camp, I doubt any feminist camp would support my ideas, but feminist positions do vary widely, which one did you have in mind?

And the biggest mistake everyone makes is that 'sex' and 'conflict' are not meant to go together. No two subjects could be more intimately connected.

Agreed, not sure why you think this was what I thought.

To sum up everything in one phrase: Conflict over the control of reproduction

Reduce it to a single word – control.