Woo-hoo I’m a happy man!
I happen to have nothing but respect for the scientist E. O. Wilson, who originated the strict biological/behavioralist idea called “sociobiology.” But then I have nothing but respect for Charles Darwin who originated the strict biological/taxonomic theory of evolution. The social gadflies and politicians who tried to cash in on those respective ideas by applying them in order to explain… whatever social structure benefits (or at least comforts) them best? I have nothing but lack of respect for them.
And so it gives me great pleasure to articulate a sociobiological basis for men’s ridiculous (but ridiculously pervasive) idea that women “no-sex” class. It’ll only take a second (like most sociobiologists.)
Now as pretty much everybody who’s had children has probably noticed, it’s very common for women to experience a pronounced drop in libido after giving birth and while nursing. Not everybody, no, of course not, but this is one of those areas where I’m comfortable saying it’s not a stereotype. (In fact it’s precisely not a stereotype in the sense that most women, like Heidi Raykeil buck it pretty hard.
As do their partners.
Yup. If, as sociobiologists claim (almost… as if… they were *genetically compelled to!!!) women have “cryptic ovulation” and all sorts of other cunning heritable traits oriented around giving men lots of pussy so they’ll stick around to help raise their offspring then… this big, roughly-two-years-long post-birth libido plummet really shouldn’t be there.
Think about it — women are supposed to evolve all these astonishingly subtle behavioral “tricks” and then, right when theory and practice would say it would be most convenient in a primitive state-of-nature nuclear family to have the dad sticking around the house (in order to stick his dick around… or something), I mean right when all that pussy-evolving ought to be needed the most… the bottom falls right out of dad’s sexual gravy train.
How the one is supposed to be enough to coax an otherwise utterly feckless (quoth the Sociobiologists) guy to stick around while the other isn’t supposed to send him packing is a question that’s been largely…. um… completely ignored by sociobiologists because it would make their theories that women evolved to put out to pencil-necked, pimply-faced beta males wrong.
But take heart. I’ve got a suggestion. Admittedly it’s probably not a real sociobiological hypothesis since those guys seem to pin all the behavioral evolving on women ( hypothesizing, for instance, that women evolved big, buttocks-resembling boobs so that men could handle face-to-face intercourse… instead of more “animal-like” and… what?... less feminine rear-entry intercourse? I dunno.) Anyway, they pin it all on women and leave men to be hale, hearty, completely evolved… um… suckers while my hypothesis requires men to be no less capable of evolution than women.
Here goes: men who hang around women who’ve had their children instead of high-tailing it off after, I dunno, high tail, have more offspring survive to reproduce. (Offspring surviving to reproduce being the big metric of evolution.) So guys (being so dumb they can’t tell boobs from butts) evolve to believe women who don’t put out must be parents of their children and help provide “for the family.” And them wily women (who, after all, evolved the use of red lipstick so men would think there labia somewhere near those pseudo-buttockial breasts? sigh!) would evolve to behave as if they didn’t enjoy sex even when they did in order to get men to provide for them even when they aren’t the mothers of the men’s children.
Yes, yes it all sounds stupid. Precarious. Unlikely. Insufficient.
In other words exactly like the typical socio-sociobiological explanation for human gender relations. :-)
@!_(*~@
Submitted by 1466 (not verified) on Mon, 2007-07-16 14:20.
According to what I read, lips have increased blood flow and get darker when a person is sexually aroused. Lipstick looks good on a woman because it sends the signal "I'm horny! Come hit on me." Red cheek makeup imitates the "sex flush" which is another observable sign of female arousal. (When watching porn, I've noticed that women with makeup-provided rosy cheeks feel less like they're faking their sexual desire.)
Also, regarding evolution, I've also read that human males have (relatively) large penises in order to remove the sperm of other males from a vagina during intercourse - and that circumcised penises are more effective at this than uncircumcised penises.
[We have larger penises than comparable primates and among other primates there does seem to be a correlation between size and "promiscuity." Whether that carries over to humans is kind of hard to pin down because we have an awful lot of cultural behaviors that sometimes simultaneously amplify and dampen our "natural" biological behavior. Thanks, Doug. --fl]
Submitted by 1466 (not verified) on Sat, 2007-06-30 09:24.
The gulf between real socio-biology, which we can't do much of because we just don't know enough about early hominid environments, and just-so stories is vast. Human beings like just-so stories though ... perhaps there is an evolutionary explanation for that. ;)
[Well, we are *very* good at stories. Enough so that you'd expect a sociobiologist or two to dig into that. (Nobel prizewinner Jacques Monod, not a Sociobiologist, suggested there might be reproductive advantages to common ancestral beliefs.) My own strong belief is that humans absolutely do have biologically-driven behaviors... but that they tend to be overshadowed and/or finessed by more complex cultural diversities. Enough so that our "most logical answer" stories are often highly suspect, especially when they require long causal chains. (See, for instance, 70's-era American beliefs that Chinese acupuncture must have gotten started when people were shot with arrows and "got better" instead of dying. It made sense since they couldn't think of any other reason to start needling people, but in fact it could have derived from other practices consistent with Chinese medical philosophy. We didn't know about that so we had to make something up... that revealed more about us, perhaps, than it did about acupuncture. Thanks, E. --fl]
Submitted by 1466 (not verified) on Fri, 2007-06-29 17:35.
This post doesn't show on the main page, only in previous post|main|next post.
[Thanks, Five. I'd mixed up the dates. I think it displays correctly now. --fl]
Submitted by 1466 (not verified) on Sat, 2007-06-30 01:59.
I hate to be a killjoy, & I'm neither a sociobiologist nor a parent; but it seems you've overlooked an obvious hypothesis.
A decrease in libido after giving birth would tend to prevent women from immediately getting pregnant again. Baby could probably benefit from any extra attention (I'm told even a single infant can be quite a handful). No doubt nursing proves less of a hardship when there's only one infant about. And even if we don't want to think of the lack of competition in infancy as an aid to the slow human development process, it's worth considering that the infant mortality rate isn't the only factor--childbirth is pretty traumatic to a woman's body, and a few extra months to recover from any damage might mean the difference between a (relatively) easy birth and a death in childbed.
I'm awfully reluctant to project the Victorian "close your eyes & think of England" mentality into prehistory. If a reduced libido actually caused widespread rape or abandonment, presumably it would have been bred out. So how did our ingeniously social ancestors overcome this obstacle?
If you'll pardon a flight of fancy: perhaps you have identified the birthplace (if I may) of pornography. "I know, sweetie. It seems like we never get it on these days like we did before Og. But soon he'll be old enough to sleep on his own...and then we'll [insert lush fantasy incomprehensible to infant here] like crazed weasels."
["A decrease in libido after giving birth would tend to prevent women from immediately getting pregnant again." Agreed, but that would still be counter to the assumptions in a lot of sociobiology. "perhaps you have identified the birthplace ... of pornography." Interesting insight, Rah. It *is* worth pointing out that while fantasies of infidelity are pretty common they're carried out far, far less frequently. Thanks! --fl]