Why does "sperm = cheap and egg = expensive" still apply today?

CreightonWAbrams · 2019-06-01T02:29:34+00:00

Women have a higher cost of reproduction, but birth control essentially eliminates that cost.

If women still have children, how does birth control eliminate that cost?

Mr. Abrams and I have three children. His body and his health are exactly the same now as they were before our first children were born. Mine are very very different.

Do you think that because women are no longer dying in childbirth (as much) or having 19 children, they no longer pay any physical price for pregnancy? Do you think that women punch children out like Pez?

poppy_blu · 2019-06-01T02:42:48+00:00

They will always be “expensive”’ because we have a limited supply. We’re born with all the eggs we will ever have whereas sperm production is unlimited. And we don’t get to save them up. You lose them every month until menopause. Sex Ed 101.

So while BC is available, if you want children eventually your window to have them will keep dwindling regardless.

sadomasochrist · 2019-06-01T02:07:33+00:00

Because women do not have male sex drives.

crumblesnatch · 2019-06-01T02:25:59+00:00

A small point of biology:

One egg takes nine months to cook.

The average cumshot takes seconds and contains up to 500 million sperm.

Aren't we all nerds here? Have none of you played an RTS game? Lanchester's linear law?

Barely-moral · 2019-06-01T02:13:34+00:00

Because society advances too fast for evolution to remove all the instincts that rule the way we humans behave.

Even if an instinct is completely useless in our current world, evolution doesn't know, our bodies don't know. We are still just apes. Apes with nuclear weapons and internet... but apes.

TheLandEel · 2019-06-01T08:40:27+00:00

No matter what, a man can leave a woman after knocking her up if he decides he doesn't want the child. But women's right to decide that they don't want the child is always contingent on changing values and politics, as we're seeing in several red states in America today.

the_calibre_cat · 2019-06-01T20:50:50+00:00

Because biotroofs, as they are pejoratively dismissed, are real.

oneprettycoolcat · 2019-06-01T02:53:02+00:00

Why do women still sexually select as if the cost is still there?

Because market forces allow them to do so.

Why haven't we descended into full blown indiscriminate orgies?

Because women find 90% of men sexually repulsive.

FlavFal · 2019-06-01T02:13:52+00:00

Because our lizard brain (and reptilians) still controls us.

LeJacquelope · 2019-06-01T02:42:42+00:00

I'm still terribly amused at the idea that this "natural order of things" is in any way optimal, as if nature is sentient and somehow knows what works best. The "sperm=cheap, eggs=expensive" move is exactly what is going to make us extinct if we don't stop worshipping it as a necessary evil.

TheBookOfSeil · 2019-06-01T03:33:26+00:00

Supply and demand rules. Eggs are in limited quantites. Once a woman runs out of eggs, she has no more eggs. Men can make sperm well into old age (save for the ones who become impotent). That is why eggs are still more valuable than sperm.

Women have a higher cost of reproduction, but birth control essentially eliminates that cost.

That doesn't have much to do with the question you're asking, unless you misworded your question.

Why do women still sexually select as if the cost is still there?

Because they are biologically programmed to select for certain things. Duh. That's like asking a man who has had a vasectomy why he isn't trying to bang every woman above the legal age of consent. Some people are not sexually attractive.

Are eggs truly expensive today?

Yes. I'm quite sure that sperm banks pay considerably less for sperm than for an egg.

Why haven't we descended into full blown indiscriminate orgies?

Because, despite everyone's apparent confusion, pregnancy is still a risk of sex.

15% =/= 0%

1% =/= 0%.

0.01% =/= 0%.

Unless you're not having PIV sex, pregnancy is always on the table as a possibility, and the goal is to avoid that altogether.

[deleted] · 2019-06-01T11:08:11+00:00

Because women have been given money, cash and prizes historically to overcome that cost.

The fact that that cost disappears simply means that the position women are in is just more profitable.

ifelsedowhile · 2019-06-01T22:48:18+00:00

it's not a conscious decision, it's an instinct.

lionhart280 · 2019-06-02T07:11:20+00:00

Great question!

Female apes primarily exist in non monagomous colonies, actually this even extends often to most mammals.

To maximize fertility health, mammals evolved a cleaning process to maximize average fertility which we know to be the Menstrual Cycle.

Regular flushing of the menstrual lining, of course, substantially increases successful fertility.

During the menstrual period, however, females are unavailable to mate. To simplify things and maximize sperm usage, apes have evolved to reject sex during the periods when it wouldn't be worthwhile doing anyways, to conserve energy.

Because we are non monagomous from descent, our ancestors however evolved a clever trick for this.

Females in a community can sexually satisfy multiple males, but none during menstrual cycling. So, you can mathematically determine how often a female needs to actually be available on average as m / f*n, where f is how many females are in the colony, and n is how many males a female can comfortably have sex with in a day, and m is how many males are in the colony.

So, lets say one human female can comfortably have sex with 3 men a day, and there are 8 females and 8 males.

8 / (8*3) = 1/3, so any single female only actually needs to be sexually available 33% of any given time, on average.

This will then apply on a bell curve of sorts, so on average 33% of the females are available.

This is an optimal system for a colony of animals, because it maximizes fertility, without wasting energy unnecessarily (from an evolution standpoint)

Males on the other hand evolved to maximize how many females they can impregnate, so instead you see male mammals evolve all sorts of mechanisms to maximize impregnation success rates instead.

These kinds of things simply stuck around in humans, since it takes a really long time for such processes to evolve out.

But because our monogamy isn't entirely conflicted with female cycles, and instead we as humans just 'deal with it' and have developed a variety of sciences to circumvent this whole ordeal (contraception), there aren't any pressures on us to evolve off these traits.

So they just stay around.

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shipiaozi · 2019-06-01T02:43:07+00:00

It would change after millions of years of evolution, we just need to wait.

NockerJoe · 2019-06-01T04:35:07+00:00

Women lost like 80% of their value when they stopped dying in childbirth but men lost 80% of ours too when we stopped dying in order to clear out the injuns, europeans, gooks, and germans.

The value ratio hasnt changed between the genders

diffdedbed · 2019-06-01T05:14:50+00:00

Why do women still sexually select as if the cost is still there?

4 billion years of evolution > 50 years of effective birth control

rus9384 · 2019-06-01T06:53:20+00:00

A woman can only have a very limited amount of children. Therefore, she focuses on quality of sperm getting inside her.

A man in theory can have a fuckton of offsprings. In practice this happened too rarely to affect evolution, though.

The amount of offsprings a man can have is limited by amount of women he can impregnate. In most cases the limits are placed by women, not sperm. Men produce more sperm because that makes the best sperm a higher quality one.

And women want higher quality sperm.

However, your question is why does it apply today with BC even when people don't want children? Well, instincts. Even if you don't want children you still only find women having signs of fertility attractive. I guess...

Talkytalktalk · 2019-06-01T13:55:33+00:00

because rationality can't undo millions of years of evolution.

czerdec · 2019-06-01T14:19:07+00:00

They consciously know the cost is gone.

The conscious mind doesn't play much of a role here. The automatic processes (what Freud called the unconscious) calls the shots, and they are hardwired to consider reproduction a high-cost matter.

PeppercornPrions · 2019-06-01T16:16:28+00:00

It’s more expensive to extract an egg from an ovary cause it’s an actual surgical procedure. Sperm donations are just cumming in a cup.

Pope_Lucious · 2019-06-01T20:12:52+00:00

Sexuality is pre-rational

Ezaar · 2019-06-03T00:04:51+00:00

Living is expensive.

Title	Why does "sperm = cheap and egg = expensive" still apply today?
Author	eyewant
Upvotes	5
Comments	137
Date	June 1, 2019 1:12 AM UTC (7 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/bvfe3l/why_does_sperm_cheap_and_egg_expensive_still/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/why-does-sperm-cheap-and-egg-expensive-still-apply.255506 https://theredarchive.com/post/255506

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