Woman wants monogamy;
Man delights in novelty.
Love is woman's moon and sun;
Man has other forms of fun.
Woman lives but in her Lord;
Count to ten, man is bored.
With this gist and sum of it,
What earthly good can come of it?
Dorothy Parker
People are monogamous - right? It is accepted here in the United States and even our laws reflect our point of view that people are monogamous. As Marshall MacLuhan said, "A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding."
In my Sacred Cows page I talk about the ways in which some subjects become 'sacred' meaning you are only allowed to have the socially accepted view. Monogamy is one of those topics. Everyone is monogamous, right? Well, Bertrand Russell says no and the facts say so. So I wanted to take a few moments, alright more than a few, to tell the real story, monogamy is a myth.
The Kinsey study of 1948, the granddaddy of sex studies, used face to face interviews with five thousand men and six thousand women. The study found that by age 40 approximately half of all married men and more than a quarter of married women had an extra-pair copulation, an EPC. Isn't that a nice scientific way of referring to adultery? For the next twenty years, Kinsey was accepted as gospel when it came to sexual behavior in America. Most people went on pretending that it wasn't so.
In the 1960s the sexual revolution was in full swing, pardon the pun, and researchers wondered if the attitudes and behavior of Americans had changed with the times. Hite found a dramatic increase in the percentage of extramarital affairs from Kinsey's findings. Her study found 72 percent of men married two years or more and 70 percent of women married five years or more had an EPC. The differences between Hite's and Kinsey's results have been attributed to a shift in the culture and the different methodology of the two studies. Hite believed she obtained more accurate results because of the anonymity of her questionnaire compared to Kinsey's face to face interviews. Other researchers conjectured that the anonymity resulted in self-selection of respondents and therefore did not have a valid sample population. In other words, the people drawn to answering the Hite survey were more likely to have committed adultery than the general population. They accused Hite of being unscientific for challenging their long-held beliefs. After all, they knew Kinsey was right. Actually they should have known that Kinsey had to be wrong. The single largest reason people refused to participate in Kinsey's study was the question on extra-marital sex. In other words, Kinsey’s method had to result in self-selection of non-adulterers and an undercounting of adultery because that question is what caused people to drop from the study.
Hite's work stirred the academic pot. Many academically rigorous studies have since found similar high rates of EPCs. The study by Glass & Wright found that adultery occurs in 80 percent of all marriages. Sexual Health Australia says 70% of all marriages experience an affair so the number is high, higher than most want to admit. One study found the male adultery level by itself at 80%. The problem is we know people lie about cheating and they always lie the same way, down, so we are always undercounting the amount of adultry. The problem is how much. At 80% it isn't too far to get to 100% though that probably isn't attainable. There has to be one person who's sexual drive is so low they don't cheat.
Higamous hogamous, woman monogamous
Hogamous higamous, man is polygamous.
William James
Many have accepted James' view of the duality of sex in mankind. But is it true? Historically, adultery studies have concluded that men are nearly twice as likely to cheat as women. But there is a growing body of evidence indicating women are no more monogamous than men. Several modern studies found that women under 30 are about as adulterous as men. Is it possible the incidence of adultery for women has always been as high as that of men; they have simply lied about it? If men have been having affairs they have been having them with women. It does take two to tango. Stephen Beckerman, co-editor of the book Cultures of Multiple Fathers, cites numerous instances of cultures in which women would proudly list all of the ‘fathers’ of their new baby, sometimes as many as forty different men. "This model of the death-do-us-part, missionary-position couple is just a tiny part of human history," says anthropologist Kristen Hawkes. "The patterns of human sexuality are so much more variable."
An interesting study was done by Michelle Alexander at the University of Maine. In her study one group was promised absolute anonymity. The other group was told that their answers would be checked with a lie detector. The women who answered thinking their answers would be verified admitted to twice as much sexual activity. Now that 50-25% split goes away and women are just as randy as men. The math works one for one, a man and a woman. In other words, women lied even when the answers were anonymous.
Extramarital trysts were a way of life for the Canela men and women -- until the encroachment of outsiders. "Multiple lovers, that's just part of the life. It's recreation, just like races and running. It's all done in the spirit of joy and fun," says William Crocker of the Smithsonian Institution. Crocker says the sexual customs began to disappear after the arrival of missionaries and evangelical Christians bringing with them shame and prudery. Sex as sin never existed before Christianity. It is undeniable that monogamy is a recent, evolutionarily speaking, invention and does not correspond with male or female desires. Monogamy is a socially imposed pattern of behavior that is in opposition to our nature.
Do women feel so much social pressure, even anonymously, that they cut the reported adultery numbers in half? A recent study found that men averaged eight lifetime sexual partners and women four. Is that possible? After all, every time a man had a sexual partner there must have been a woman involved. Or is there a deeper reason why women hide sexual activity? There is certainly persuasive evidence that they do. In Alexander's study the men's answers were the same in both groups, verified and anonymous. Men don't seem to have this need to lie about sex, except if their partner might find out.
Anthropologist Helen Fisher, author of The Anatomy of Love: The Natural History of Monogamy, Adultery, and Divorce states it succinctly, "The bottom line is that the human animal is promiscuous, and it lies about sex." The inescapable conclusion from the studies over the last 50 years is that man and woman are not in the least monogamous. Some people, maybe as few as 20% will behave monogamously, but even they feel the urges. Why?
Blame it on biology. Barash and Lipton, the authors of The Myth of Monogamy, have found that monogamy in the animal kingdom is so rare that those romantic Hallmark cards with pictures of swans or other types of lovebirds should really feature a flatworm. Swans may mate for life, but they are not faithful to their mate. The proof is in the DNA. Researchers tested the offspring of birds and found that the mother bird's offspring weren't always the father's. About 40 percent of the offspring were fathered by a male other than the female's mate. In one clutch of six eggs, researchers found DNA from five different fathers. Faced with these surprising DNA results, researchers put radio transmitters on the females and found out they were sneaking off to a neighboring nest for a tryst then slipping back home. It wasn't the males who were gallivanting around. It was the females, doing it secretly.
Study after study has found that the females have a higher rate of EPCs than males. Males have to get lucky; females simply choose which male they want. Studies using genetic testing techniques show that even the most apparently devoted of partners often stray enjoying the sexual company of strangers. In one DNA study, 7 of 13 Chimp babies were found to be fathered by males outside the group. All of these females had been gone from the troop for one day during their fertile period. In all cases, the females were extremely secretive. Researchers, such as the Goodall team who almost lived with their chimp subjects, have never witnessed even one case of an extra-group copulation by any chimp but the DNA doesn't lie. Half of the offspring were fathered outside the group. Researchers have noticed the females disappearing but they've never seen, or even suspected, the copulations. Mother Nature wants a mixed up muddled up gene pool and women's behavior is driven to get that gene pool mixing.
Other recent studies have shown that female unfaithfulness in humans is just as natural as men's. Baker and Bellis found that EPCs generally occurred at the woman's most fertile period. One study found that monogamously paired women walked more and further during their fertile period than unpaired women. Women at the height of fertility have been found to wear tighter clothing and expose more skin. Are these women seeking EPCs even unknowingly? Women are apparently hormonally driven to seek the mixing of genes, Nature's way of achieving the best genetic combinations. DNA testing found, that for two separate populations in northern and southern England, more than 20% of children the social father was not the genetic father. If you ever wondered why those siblings look so different, there is a reason. Now that genetic testing is becoming common to trace ancestry, there are going to be a lot of surprises for brothers and sisters finding out they are half siblings. Mommy's babies - Daddy's maybes.
If you look at our closest genetic relatives their sexual behavior would make a Las Vegas hooker blush. The Bonobos, who share 98% of our genetics, engage in a non-stop sexual free-for-all including incest and same gender sex. Bonobos fuck instead of fight. And we are made of the same genetic cloth. Experts used to point to the gibbons as monogamous animal kingdom relatives until they did genetic studies. Even in supposedly monogamous gibbons a large percentage of offspring are not related to the social father. Females stray to gather the best possible genes for their offspring, while males are driven to father as many offspring by as many females as often as possible. Most mammal and avian species are socially monogamous, sharing the burden of raising the young but sex occurs with many partners.
A powerful indictor of human promiscuous mating in biology is sexual dimorphism, the biology of male and female sex differences, and sexual bimaturism, the later sexual maturity of males. In monogamous species there is generally little difference in the size, shape or maturity rates of the two genders. Sexual dimorphism is strongly correlated with sexual promiscuity. The colorful or larger males are competing to mate with females. The existence of Secondary Sexual Characteristics is strong evidence of non-monogamy through natural selection in humans. It is only by many females selecting the males with those characteristics that they come to be expressed in the entire population. The greater the difference, the more powerful the competition and therefore, the more powerful the urge toward promiscuity. Do you think men and women look very different? Do you notice those mammaries? Why should you care? You aren't a suckling infant. These differences are enticements to the competition for mating. Sexual bimaturism, the later maturity of the male, allows the male to grow larger and stronger before beginning to compete for females and is only seen in species where polygyny, one male-many females is common. In our evolutionary history, polygyny and sexual competition must have been routine for these genetic traits to become universal.
Biology certainly can override social factors in the mating game. A recent study found that women prefer a certain face in men when they are fertile but a different face in men when they are not. The choices were consistent in women of all cultures, races and ages. They preferred a chiseled look when fertile but a softer look when not. This preference was so invariant that only deep seated biology can account for it. In other words, women wanted to mate with one type but socially bond with a different male. Another study found that women, and females of many other species, preferred males who are symmetrical, that is both sides of the body are the same, even if they were in a relationship with another and in preference to factors such as wealth, age, even physical attractiveness. This preference in humans is so great that women report more orgasms with 'symmetrical' men. Not surprisingly, the study also found that symmetrical men had a much higher rate of EPCs than asymmetrical men. The biological urge trumps even strong social factors such as wealth and age.
A study in Evolution and Human Behavior, found that men and women with more 'attractive' voices as rated by the opposite sex had more sexual partners, began sex earlier, and had a greater frequency of EPCs. Once again biology trumps social factors. The authors speculate that an attractive voice played a role in finding sexual partners especially at night when women were out seeking that special partner. Women choose, men cooperate.
This is a little off track but it does demonstrate how powerful these biological imperatives are and how they override our perceived control in the game of mating. I include it partly for interest and partly because it explained what was to me, the completely inexplicable behavior of women.
In a recent study, researchers found that both men and women picked potential mates using looks, not the list of things people normally say they are looking for: sense of humor, intelligence, etc. Men selected based on bottom line looks. Every women better looking than that man’s bottom line, he was willing to date no matter what her personality was like. I called this the doable - not doable test. All women fall into one or the other category. Aunt Gertrude with the mustache, NOT doable. The cute receptionist, definitely doable. It appears all men have those same two lists.
Women also selected based on looks but in a much more complex way. They assessed their own looks and chose men who looked approximately the same level of attractiveness. Good looking women selected good looking men. Moderately attractive women selected moderately attractive men and so on. A man could be too good looking, some more attractive woman could steal him, or not good enough, I can do better. Women were selective but it was based entirely on looks, not at all on the characteristics they had listed as important, e.g. sense of humor. So guys, the girls might pass on you because you aren't good looking enough or she might pass because you are too good looking and there's nothing you can do either way.
Once I understood the way women pick men, I understood two things that had previously mystified me. First, why do women seem to compulsively check out other women and dress like it is a competitive sport? If they wanted to attract men, why would they care what other women think about how they dress? Once you understand the mating game above, it is clear that women constantly check their own standing among women as they jockey for position. Men don’t care about the style of that blue dress, but other women do which is why women care.
From a study in the Brisbane Times -- Sorry men - size really does matter. And bigger is immeasurably better. The long and the short of it is women display a clear preference for penises in excess of 13 centimeters in their flaccid state. This is bigger than 95 per cent of men. Sorry guys. Women want that exceptional man, the last 5%. Professor Jennions recruited 105 Canberra women in their prime reproductive years – aged between 20 and 40 – and asked them to assess 53 fully life-sized, 3D video images of naked men. And how big was too big for the women? One of the most surprising aspects of the study was it could not find a point at which women found any penis too large. “Our curve wasn’t going down at 13 centimeters so we did not reach the most attractiveness in terms of size. The concept of a penis that was ‘too big’ was outside the range that we tested and we simply didn’t find an absolute maximum size, even though it strikes me that it is going to start to look ridiculous and actually quite painful.’’ The women were also brutal in their judgments – sizing up a naked man and rejecting him as unattractive in three seconds flat; and they were even quicker when the penis was small. “That’s so quick that you can’t really, in that short space of time, consciously go through the pros and cons of each character; that rating is an overall impression of attractiveness based on penis size. “We may debate whether a man is attractive when he has kind eyes or a good sense of humour, but now, at least, we know the truth.’’
This certainly explains something I have never understood about how women I knew would describe their preferred mate, intelligent, humorous, caring, then go pick guys completely opposite of their description. Suddenly, it all made sense if women are not picking based on what they say but instead on the biological imperative, get the best looking genes you can for how good looking you are and pick the big dick.
An aside about orgasms here since we are talking biology and its effect on the mating game. Biologists have wondered why human females have orgasms. They don't seem necessary, evolutionarily speaking. But if women have more orgasms with genetically preferred men, as above, then maybe orgasms are nature's way of rewarding women for mating in the most genetically advantageous way. Pick the best genes, get the best baby and an orgasm to boot. Maybe all of those frigid women are simply women who have settled for perceived genetically disadvantaged men. These women don't have orgasms because their men do not excite their deep-seated biologic desires for symmetry, big dicks, and social dominance.
If there were any doubt that women choose while men cooperate this study should put it to rest. Men and women were randomly asked one of three questions on a college campus. As an introduction the researcher would say they had seen the other person around campus and thought they were attractive. Then they would ask: Would you go on a date with me tonight? Would you come to my apartment tonight? or third, Would you go to bed with me tonight? 50% of women accepted the date. 6% agreed to go to the apartment. 0% agreed to go to bed. Among men, 50% accepted the date, the same percentage as women, 69% agreed to go to the woman's apartment and 75% agreed to go to bed. Of the 25% of men who declined the sex, most offered some excuse, e.g. an existing date with a girlfriend, maybe in the hopes of a rain check. Without the likelihood of their social partner finding out, the percentage of males accepting sex with a complete stranger would have been much higher. Whether she is choosing forty or one to help her get the best genetics, it is the woman who chooses and all men want to say yes to that invitation to pass on their DNA as long as they won't get caught.
There are several interesting evolutionary confirmations of female promiscuity. The most convincing might be sperm competition. The racing behavior of human sperm has never made sense in a monogamous mating. After all, any sperm which found the egg would pass on the male's genetic material, not just the fastest. Having sperm which waited for a longer period for an egg to descend would increase the likelihood of conception in monogamy. Queen bees hold the sperm for years before using it. But if the sperm were competing with another male's sperm, then speed is critical. Men have also developed sperm which is spermicidal toward other men's sperm. Both of these adaptations would only be an evolutionary advantage if women regularly mated with more than one man during her fertile period. They make no sense in monogamous mating and only continuous selection over a long period would lead to them becoming inherent in all men. That's theory. The facts - the Baker and Bellis study found that 30% of women had sex with two different men within 24 hours of each other. (The gang bang may actually be an evolutionary preference of women inviting strong sperm competition to fertilize her precious egg.) Anthropologists are starting to conclude that ‘slutty’ behavior by women may be entirely natural and pro-survival. As mentioned, studies found that over 20% of children were fathered by another male than the social mate by actual genetic testing. You do the math.
I just watched a little program on TV the other day about a research project at the University in Vienna. They did a study on single and married women out with the girls at night clubs. They measured how much skin the women exposed, they took film of the women dancing and used computer models to rate the 'sexiness' of the movements, and rated their flirting. They also asked the women to provide a saliva sample to figure out when the women were ovulating, that is able to get pregnant. The result of the study was women who were ovulating dressed sexier, danced sexier, and flirted more. The 'shock' according to the researchers was that the married women were 'sexier' and flirted more than the single women. Women are by nature no more monogamous than men.
Another factor leading us to believe monogamy is a myth is mate-guarding. Mate-guarding only exists when there is a chance of female EPCs. Truly monogamous species do not exhibit mate guarding, no need. But mate guarding is common among bird and mammal species and almost universal among Homo sapiens. An anthropological review recorded that only 4 of 849 human societies studied did not show mate-guarding. The wide spread male preoccupation with mate-guarding fits the expectation of females sneaking off for an EPC and only if such female behavior was real would it exist in virtually all human societies. Such concern is not without foundation: one British study found the less time a woman spent with her male partner the more likely she was to have copulated with another male. An interesting side note. Female menstrual synchrony, that is females living closely together become fertile at the same time, might be an evolutionary answer to mate guarding preventing a male from guarding all of the fertile females and thus allowing some females to seek EPCs while the male is busy guarding elsewhere. This is another piece of evidence that polygyny, one male many females, has been common enough historically that women have evolutionarily adapted to that pattern.
Many species advertise their sexual fertility, either visually or through scent. Concealed ovulation is common among primates whose females have multiple partners. Human ovulation is concealed. Concealed ovulation probably developed for several reasons. It prevents mate guarding allowing a female to obtain EPCs during her fertile period without her mate knowing. It would allow mating with multiple males thereby enhancing sperm competition as well as the enhanced opportunity to spread the fatherhood and obtain support and assistance from the would-be fathers. It is not uncommon in some species for a female to convince several males they are the father in order to obtain support and resources from multiple males.
Male preference, in many different species for virgins or very young females has a basis in the desire to mate with females that have not already mated guaranteeing the paternity of subsequent offspring. This is a way to circumvent female extra-curricular mating; a female virgin is guaranteed to not have any other EPCs. Mate guarding is associated with virgin preference for obvious reasons. Physicians in Japan and covertly in the Middle East have long had a booming business in re-creating virgins.
Many penile structures in male animals are built to flush out sperm from competitors. The human male glans is structured to penetrate easily and has a ring which serves to scrape the vagina on the back stroke which would flush out competing male's sperm. Testicle size is correlated with sperm competition. Human males have a relatively large testicles compared to body size. They are nowhere as large as chimps but human don't appear to be as promiscuous as chimps. Goodall observed one female chimp mate 84 times with seven different males during one estrous cycle. British researchers have documented a direct correlation between testicle size and individual behavior in humans. Working with about 100 subjects, scientists found that males with larger testicles reported higher rates of promiscuity. The only conclusion is that biology is overriding social factors in the sexual behavior of males.
Just like most birds and mammals, human evolution has adapted mankind to female multiple mating strategies for reproductive success. Don't blame men because they act like they do sexually. Females control the breeding dynamics and men have simply adapted to women's behavior. Females mate promiscuously during their fertile period and the best sperm wins the race to the egg. Then the female mates repeatedly with her 'social' partner to convince him of the parentage of the offspring and tying him to help her with the raising of the offspring. It is a very common strategy in birds and mammals, including humans. So, the female will mate promiscuously in order to obtain the best genetics for her offspring. For instance, females almost never have EPCs with bachelors, who are already rejects, but will compete for already mated males, usually those with the best genetics whatever that is for that species. Many studies have shown that a multi-mating female produces healthier, stronger, larger offspring. Genetics favors non-monogamy. But once pregnant, she will mate with her social mate exclusively in order to tie him to her during the period of pregnancy and offspring rearing. Females are periodic cheaters. Most of the time, they crave attachment to a supportive male even if they stray while fertile bringing back another male's offspring.
Even in those societies which encourage many men to ‘help’ the father produce the baby, the parents are attached to each other in strong bonds. Women have an enormous investment involved with a pregnancy and have more at risk without support. Among the Ache Indians of South America a child with a father has a .6% chance of death before age 15 but a fatherless child has a 9.1% chance. A female human needs three factors to be present in order to cheat: she is fertile, she is away from her social mate, and the new male is perceived to have a greater genetic and dominance preference than her usual mate. A British study found that the more a female was separated from her mate the more likely she was to have an EPC. Males of course, are always capable of sperm competition. Men have little invested beyond five minutes, ten if the woman is lucky, and a few spurts of semen quickly replaced. There is no genetic advantage to monogamy. Males are ever-ready cheaters, and the more the merrier, or at least, the better chance they have to win the sperm derby and pass on their DNA. It takes two to do the EPC tango, and humans love to dance.
All of this might explain the older man younger woman relationships which are common and yet highly despised by older women. Women seek resources and good genes from their mate. It is probable that the grey hair which makes a man distinguished looking is simply genetic proof that his genes have longevity and his relative dominance standing is proof of his ability to supply resources. Diamonds are a girl's best friend. Men prefer young women who are in the prime of their breeding abilities as being more likely to last long enough to raise their young. Remember, these biologic preferences have been bred into humans over the past five million years when the average life span was 35 years or so. A grey haired man was a real survivor and a thirty-year-old woman might not last long enough to raise her young successfully. Again, our genes trump our social surroundings.
Isn't it interesting how all of these facts seem to tie together? Women's reproductive strategy is to seek dominant symmetric partners with big dicks especially while fertile, enhancing the chances of getting the best offspring. Men have adapted to this by being ever-ready, they never know when the chance to copulate will appear and by evolving to better their chances in sperm competition. Then women tie their social partner to them with monogamous mating to convince him of the parentage of the offspring and co-opt him in their upbringing. It would sound like a soap opera except that it is all backed with solid science. No wonder those crazy soap opera plots appeal to women. Infants have infancy, adults have adultery.
New research has revealed a surprising risk factor for extinction: monogamy. Brashares found two factors studied correlated with local extinctions in the Ghanaian reserves. The first is population isolation. The second is harem size: mammals that were monogamous or had small harems were more prone to extinction. It is possible that Somerset Maugham was correct when he commented, "You know of course that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct." Monogamy appears to be an evolutionary reject, especially for large bodied species. Is it any wonder that humans mate promiscuously? Monogamy is contra-survival.
All of this leads to the inescapable conclusion that mankind is by biology and evolutionary design sexually promiscuous. Both genders are promiscuous, in different ways. Men and women can no more control these impulses than they can the impulses of hunger or pain. The impulse to promiscuity is as powerful as hunger. Some people consider monogamy to be beautiful and moral. But some people consider a hunger strike in which a person starves themselves to death to a beautiful and moral gesture. I'm not sure I agree. Why are we starving ourselves?
Then why does the myth of monogamy exist at all? Women would appear to prefer dominant, genetically superior men. That would lead to polygyny, one man, many women. When a man commanded the resources to provide for those women, historically, this is exactly what happened. Polygyny grew as agriculture created a surplus of resources. But polygyny is extremely hard on males. Wise Solomon's 700 wives and 300 concubines would have left nearly a thousand men jerking off in the desert; not a stable social situation. As civilization prospered more men became capable of supporting a family, the conflict would have become sharper between the 'superior' men monopolizing the females and the men without. One strong possibility is that monogamy was a compromise created by males to avoid bloodshed in the competition for women. Monogamy may in fact be male imposed rather than female imposed on our society. Non-agrarian societies generally are much less likely to practice monogamy and often have quite free sexual mores. But certainly, males who possess the resources continue to possess extra females usually in the form of unofficial wives, mistresses. This phenomenon is widely accepted. Males still desire the freedom of seeking EPCs even though they support the structure which guarantees accessibility to at least one female to all but the bottom feeders.
One theory has female preference for monogamy related to mate stealing. If another female convinces the male of parentage he may abandon his mate for the new female with ‘his’ offspring. Mate stealing is common in many species. In human societies in which mate stealing isn’t allowed, female acceptance of non-monogamy has been more common.
I have to laugh when people talk about women should be virgins at marriage. Like they have ever been! I just read a recent study in late Eighteenth Century America where they compared dates of wedding with dates of first births. Guess what? 30 to 40 percent of all brides were preggers when they married. That's an awful lot of shotgun marriages. Like they say, an eager bride can do in 5 months what it takes a married woman nine months. And you have to figure that not all the girls were knocked up by the boys before they married so there was a lot of sweaty boy-girl exercise before marriage. Virginity has always been observed more in the idea than the reality. Researchers at the University of North Carolina found that 1 in 200 women claimed to be still virgins even though they were pregnant!
Why then do we think we are monogamous when it is obvious we aren't? At the same time the studies were finding up to 80 percent of the respondents had been party to adultery, 85 percent of respondents stated that monogamy was their ideal. When it comes to all aspects of sex, you see in America this complete disconnect between our real behavior and our stated views. The ideal of monogamy is so deeply ingrained in our current society that people don’t even question the basic assumption, is it right? Even though 80 percent of marriages fail to meet this minimum standard it is still held out as a valid standard. How in the world can any standard which fails in 4 out of 5 marriages be considered a valid minimum standard of behavior? Talk about setting people up to fail. Even the experts, who have their faces rubbed in these facts, utter at the end of their studies pious platitudes about learning to control our impulses. After spending their entire book showing that monogamy simply doesn't exist in humans, Barash and Lipton spend the last three pages arguing for monogamy. Their argument is along these lines: Monogamy is not natural to humans. There is no evidence that society is better off when monogamy is the sole accepted pattern. In fact, most societies have permitted polygamy and they seem happier. But, since our society has decided monogamy is better, and civilization is the process of overcoming our brutish behaviors (They make no argument to show why non-monogamy is brutish. This is thrown in without proof and in contradiction to all of the evidence already presented in the book, and is frankly just that Western, we are more advanced which justifies us stealing your country, attitude) then we should just accept it and be monogamous. What an exemplar of logic that argument is...
One woman responded to this article and argued that it was all wrong. She felt that humans had to find a 'higher' type of sex which would bond us monogamously. She supported this view with nascent brain chemistry experiments showing that men were really pleased by an EPC and then felt 'down' for two weeks afterwards. She argued that the two week downer adversely affected the primary relationship. I see several problems with her line of reasoning. Why is monogamous sex somehow higher? She assumes it to be true and then finds dubious support in brain chemistry. In fact, studies of real behavior shows that men and women both like EPCs. Many men and women report feeling more loving towards their partner afterwards. There is no 'let down.' And if there is a reaction isn't it more likely that it results from failing to meet that impossible Christian imposed view that only monogamy is acceptable. After all, the Christian religions need men to be sinners to exert control over them, 'You sinner, repent or go to Hell. Oh yeah, give us the money for forgivness.' Monogamy is not a higher type of sex or a better type of sex. It is simply one possible way. Anthropological studies strongly support the view that in societies encouraging polygamy, both men and women are happier in their sexual relations. Many of our societal sexual problems are because of monogamy, not the other way round.
The human species is preferentially and biologically polygynous, but socially monogamous and when conditions are ripe, avidly adulterous, all at once. The question our current society should confront but refuses to is, what can we really expect of marriage? 85 percent of women say they expect their spouse to not cheat. But up to 80 percent of those men will cheat. This gap between expectation and performance creates a situation in which too many marriages break up under the exposure of the infidelity, again, a situation not uncommon in other animals. Of those people who divorce because of adultery, 80 percent of both adulterers and spouses say they regret the divorce. 10 percent of those adulterous liaisons wind up in marriage. 70 percent of these marriages end in divorce. In other words, most people would be much better off continuing a marriage than ending it because of adultery. In a historical context this makes sense since mankind is suited to promiscuous reproduction. Yet families continue to break up because one person was a philanderer, or more accurately, one person got caught.
While men are always on the prowl, we can't help it, our foremothers genetically trained men that way, women usually aren't on the prowl and therefore they don't think of themselves as polygamous. They are attached to one male most of the time. But it kills me when women claim they are monogamous because of this. They are either lying (70% according to Hite) or they simply haven't be given the right opportunity. Because the real truth is, given the right temptation, anyone will cheat. All those dreams of sexy guys with tight butts aren't because she is monogamous, now are they? She will claim, 'Dreams are okay, I didn't DO it.' All women have round heels given the right opportunity. Women are actually much more likely to be successful in cheating since men, despite being ever ready, men have to get lucky. A woman given the right circumstances, her mate not present, a perceived genetically superior male, and her body ovulating, will be on her back in no time and a man won't turn her down.
The Semitic religions have indoctrinated people to believe that only monogamy is right. Men want their women to be monogamous while the men seek those EPCs. Women want their men to be monogamous while they mate for the best genetics. The human animal is promiscuous. All of the moralizing, preaching and ranting won't change that. It isn't bad men or women who stray; it is your neighbor, your teacher, your president, your preacher, your spouse. It is going to happen to the majority of us. We might as well rail against gravity as against the nature of man and woman. We should allow our partners the freedom their nature demands and give them the acceptance of their humanity so that they can come home and tell the truth. It is the lies that are harmful, not the sexual act. But with our current unrealistic views the lies are inevitable. It doesn't have to be this way. Nearly 1,000 of the 1,154 past or present human societies studied have accepted polygamy in one form or another. Ours could as well.
The man who resides in a large urban area and who never once, during thirty years or more of married life, is sorely tempted to engage in adultery for purposes of sexual variety is to be suspected of being biologically and or psychologically abnormal: and he who frequently has such desires and who occasionally and unobtrusively carries them into practice is well within the normal healthy range. - Havelock Ellis
Isn't it funny that when a person resists their basic biological instincts, such as hunger in anorexia, we consider it a mental illness? But when we cooperate with our normal biological sexual instincts the moral authorities have taught that it is a human failing.
What we can change is our expectations. We don't need to continue punishing people and breaking up families for normal behavior, normal as in 83 percent of societies. Bernard Chapais writing in Evolutionary Anthropology said only 17 percent of human societies have been strictly monogamous. “The human mating system is extremely flexible.” Other societies at other times have been able to reconcile the wandering eye with the demands of family life. Ford and Beach found that 39% of studied societies not only accepted, they approved of extramarital sexual liaisons. Most of the world's people's around the globe have arranged things so that marriage and sexual exclusivity are not the same thing. Among the Lepcha of the Himalayas a man is expected to object only if his wife has sex with another man in his presence. Monogamy simply doesn’t serve mankind well historically or currently. Maybe the brain chemists will find a way to turn off man’s desires or channel them towards monogamy. But why? Polygamous relationship can be just as fulfilling as monogamous. This is the flaw in the current thinking about monogamy/polygamy. Our current thinking starts with the unfounded Judeo-Christian assumption that monogamy is better. That simply isn’t true. Polygamous relationships, in societies that accept them, have been just as pleasurable and just as fulfilling as monogamous, and a lot more fun. They have been more natural to human desires and therefore, easier to maintain. If we start from the viewpoint that 83% of human societies have been polygamous, happily so, and then look at the data, it quickly becomes apparent that polygamy is better. It is only our current ingrained Religious prejudice against polygamy that skews our thinking.
The Laws of Monogamy
1. Humans are not in the least way monogamous
2. Humans lie about being monogamous, even to themselves
Everything else is false supported by fairy tales.
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