Ryan: Sex at Dawn
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The authors are on strong ground where they take on the so-called standard narrative of evolutionary biology: that human males are profligate and human females selective in choosing breeding partners. According to the standard narrative, biological imperatives lead inevitably to concealed ovulation, continuous female receptivity, and ultimately a society based on long-term male-female pairs. | The authors are on strong ground where they take on the so-called standard narrative of evolutionary biology: that human males are profligate and human females selective in choosing breeding partners. According to the standard narrative, biological imperatives lead inevitably to concealed ovulation, continuous female receptivity, and ultimately a society based on long-term male-female pairs. | ||
| - | Looking to both other primates and at other human societies, Ryan and Jethá find plenty of evidence for other forms of societal organization that provide the same or better benefits to its members, but are not pair-based. As one example, they cite the Mosou people in China, whose society is matriarchal and matrilineal. Sons and daughters live together in extended families, raising children communally, the women taking temporary (and anonymous) lovers from other houses. Ryan and | + | Looking to both other primates and at other human societies, Ryan and Jethá find plenty of evidence for other forms of societal organization that provide the same or better benefits to its members, but are not pair-based. As one example, they cite the Mosou people in China, whose society is matriarchal and matrilineal. Sons and daughters live together in extended families, raising children communally, the women taking temporary (and anonymous) lovers from other houses. Ryan and Jethá also talk about Bonobos a lot. Their purpose in gathering these examples together is to suggest that primitive human society may have been organized more along Bonobo frequent-group-sex lines than into stable pairs. Here they use sexual dimorphism, relative penis sizes, female vocalizations during sex and so on to support their case. |
They make a persuasive argument for their first thesis, that anthropologists and sociologists are biased towards the standard narrative because it supports the status quo. It is with their second thesis that they fail to win me over. They argue that traditional marriage is ill-suited to modern society because it is "unnatural." As evidence, they cite the usual societal ills: high divorce rates, single-sex parents, lack of interest in one's long-term partner, and so on. They fail to win me over, and what's worse, the way they push their point of view diminishes their other argument. Are they presenting their evidence selectively? It makes me wonder. | They make a persuasive argument for their first thesis, that anthropologists and sociologists are biased towards the standard narrative because it supports the status quo. It is with their second thesis that they fail to win me over. They argue that traditional marriage is ill-suited to modern society because it is "unnatural." As evidence, they cite the usual societal ills: high divorce rates, single-sex parents, lack of interest in one's long-term partner, and so on. They fail to win me over, and what's worse, the way they push their point of view diminishes their other argument. Are they presenting their evidence selectively? It makes me wonder. | ||
