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[–]Anonymous_Browser_ 101 points102 points103 points (10 children) | Copy Link
[–]NotherThrowaway2842 points [recovered] (6 children) | Copy Link
It's the only way feminists allow. To do otherwise is a thought crime, comrade.
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[–]skellious 5 points6 points7 points (5 children) | Copy Link
[+]Cachalot_Rouge1 points [recovered] (4 children) | Copy Link
There are no societies where the average man impregnates hundreds of women. A man impregnating hundreds of women is likely doing it by stealth and being a reproductive parasite on the parental and communal investment of all the other men who have to support those kids. Humans don't work like that. We are not a tournament species. This whole "whichever tribe has most women pregnant at any given time wins" is an argument mostly pushed by people who don't know much about biology or sociology or history.
[–]skellious -3 points-2 points-1 points (3 children) | Copy Link
[+]Cachalot_Rouge3 points [recovered] (1 child) | Copy Link
No, this is false. Forget this idea, it's utterly stupid. It doesn't happen, for several reasons:
a. Genetic bottlenecks. Let's first establish that humans are a social species, and to speak of an individual human's survival is pointless. We survive as groups. That's our evolutionary strategy. Let's call those groups "tribes" - now, an isolated and largely endogamous "tribe" with 1 man for 9 women will enter a fatal inbreeding depression spiral in two generations unless it's a "tribe" of millions. So, in the context of evolutionary timescales and small human bands, this is just as deadly long-term as having 1 woman for 9 men.
b. Provision of resources. Now that we know that your 10% man tribe is doomed long-term anyway, let's look at short-term survival prospects. A tribe of 9 men and 1 woman will do much better than the reverse, just because of the ability of men to extract things from difficult environments. In fact, fraternal polyandry is a rare family strategy humans choose precisely in the most difficult environments, such as Himalayan tundra. Having "too many" men is very rarely a bad thing for short term survival of the group.
c. Child survival. What really is Total Fertility? Today it's live births per woman. But historically, that meant nothing. Around the world, the majority of children didn't make it to adulthood. So, on "evolutionary" scales, total fertility should be total adult children of reproductive age, who ideally then reproduce themselves. A tribe with 10% men and all the women pregnant and unable to work will simply starve.
In fact, a tribe with enough men working to ensure 50% more children make it to reproductive age will easily compensate for having an extra woman always pregnant. Chances are, absent the men in this isolated setting, women will simply work more and have less babies as a result (this has happened repeatedly all over the world throughout history and can be observed in other species). A regular tribe with more men and fewer women, provided it results in better child survival, will outcompete the min-maxing tribe with lots of women and fewer men in just a few generations at most.
d. So, in fact, humans work best with sexual reproduction when our sex ratios are close to 1:1. This should be obvious to anyone who appreciates what sexual dimorphism is like in mammals. On that scale, we, humans, fall somewhere between a chimp and a bonobo. Our mating strategies are therefore also intermediate between the two. A totally surprising notion, I know.
Now let's add other tribes into the mix.
a. The tribe with 1 man for 9 women will simply get raided by other tribes who have the usual distribution of 11 men for 10 women or an even bigger excess of men, and that 10% of men will either be absorbed into a new tribe or slaughtered. The periodic slaughters is what explains best the greater amount of female deep ancestors vs. male deep ancestors, much better than the idea of having every man make kids with multiple women every generation. Game over for this tribe.
b. The tribe with 1 man for every 9 women (Tribe S, for Sacrifice) is as we established above, is struggling, poor, and starving; the 10% of men are either overworked or perhaps quite happy with the abundance of women and attention and not working all that hard. Both are possible. But who is unhappy? The women. Fortunately, we have other tribes that either sacrifice baby girls to infanticide around, or even just the regular 11:10 ratio tribes. Women simply leave Tribe S and join the others to balance out the ratios, providing a working adult of reproductive age for free (as opposed to a child, who is always a gamble). This is called exogamy. This is how things actually work. Tribe S is soon reduced to maybe 10% or a bit more of its original, pre-sacrifice size. The neighboring tribes swell. In the long term, game over for this tribe.
c. But let's say it's such a huge, huge tribe that the above is just not possible. Too big to fail, too big to absorb. Now let's look at historical societies with incredibly skewed sex ratios.
In the corner of men outnumbering women (a paltry 2.7 to 1, not 9 to 1, mind), we have Qing China (due to female infanticide), and the present-day Gulf Arab states (due heavily to guest workers). Did those states survive? Yes. Did they have population issues? No. China had to introduce a one child policy to slow the growth. Are they prosperous? Given the baselines they began at 200 years ago, they are doing well. Having 3:1 men: women isn't a problem for survival.
In the corner of women heavily outnumbering men, we have post-WW2 Eastern Europe. Again, a modest 5:4 kind of skew, not 9:1. Did they handle it well? Yes, sort of. Did it result in massive polygyny, though? No, it resulted in lots of widows living on state pensions. Did it lead to a baby boom? Yes, but smaller than countries where less men died. Did the population pyramid balance itself out? Sort of, but the lag 2 generations down is still incredibly noticeable. Did they do well economically? Also, a mixed bag. They could have done better given the baseline start.
However, for a real approximation of what the weird evo psych notion of 9 women for 1 man is trying to claim, let's look at the 19th c. war of the Triple Alliance, where Paraguay fought Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. They lost so many men that polygamy was unofficially permitted to restore the population. The ratio at its worst was a very extreme 3:1.
Did it result in destruction of the country? No, but we're talking about big nations here exactly for that reason. Did it lead to baby boom? Yes, but once again, lagging its neighbours (remember, the babies have to survive!). Did it lead to successful establishment of polygamy socially? Of course not. It resulted in lots of widows and lots of mistresses for a short time. Is there population pyramid lag? Yes there is. Is it doing well economically? No, it's the poorest of the southern countries. If you shrank Paraguay after the war to the size of a small tribe, would it have survived? Doubtful.
So, in short, this scenario beloved of "male disposability" theorists does not happen in real life, and where it does, the consequences aren't great. The reverse, having too many men, is if anything a less severe situation.
[–]FafaRifaFansi 19 points20 points21 points (0 children) | Copy Link
[+]Doctor_Curmudgeon1 points [recovered] (1 child) | Copy Link
Not trying hard enough if you have to try four times.
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