--- doctordumbass@... <no_reply@...> wrote: > > I think absent any social codes, the difference in sexual promiscuity between males and females comes down to consequences. Prior to birth control, if a female had sex with a male, she could be literally burdened with offspring. Not so for the male. Add in the greater physical strength of the male, and you have all the seeds for the difference in attitudes. > "The Pill" greatly eliminated the risk factor of pregnancy, for women, and certainly in the West, physical strength is no longer a guarantee of greater economic power. So attitudes are changing too. Regarding the 60's, I saw a lot of sexual expression, but also a lot of conventional sex roles between men and women, simply dressed up in strange clothing and fashion. >
--- <s3raphita@...> wrote: > > "Marriage is for women the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution." - Bertrand Russell > > > The human race has emerged from prehistory and has developed its culture for millennia but we're still confused about sex. I mean what could be simpler? Boy meets girl. Then . . . well you know what. > Why is something as elementary and essential as the attraction between the sexes still a battlefield and the source of constant disputes (the "War of the Sexes")? I've sometimes wondered if the problem is "equality" - the idea that men and women must be regarded as equal in all respects. If we allow ourselves to generalise, men do *seem* to be more promiscuous than women; women do *seem* to be looking for a permanent partner. (Proof? Gay males have far more partners and far more sex than straight men. Lesbians have far less sex than any other group. Heterosexuals lie between those two figures.) This difference was recognised in the Victorian period when a marriage between a man and woman was assumed to be permanent (and divorces were regarded as scandalous) but at the same time there was an army of prostitutes to satisfy the novelty-seeking desires of the male population. I don't have an answer to the discrepancy - I just think we should look at the issue with wide-open eyes. > Maybe it is just a result of women having being controlled by men for centuries; men who had their supremacy recognised by law. Now that that patriarchy is breaking down the differences between the sexual habits of men and women *may* vanish completely. But I certainly don't rule out the idea that such differences are rooted in biology. > There are some wonderful ironies here. Is putting women on a pedestal (as happened in the 19th century with the "cult of the lady" an acknowledgment of women's superiority (or at least equality) or is it a cunning (probably subconscious) put down? > I've quoted Malcolm Muggeridge twice before on FFL. Here it is again: "It's impossible to string together three consecutive sentences about sex without making a complete hypocrite of yourself." This post must make me guilty as charged. One thing is for sure: the sexual utopia envisaged by the sixties revolutionaries has failed to materialise. On the other hand the days when a woman could die from "sexual hysteria" (it really did happen - see Ruskin's infatuation with Rose La Touche) are long gone! > The difference in physical size in genders is called dimorphism. In gorrilas where male is almost twice the size of the female, the male is highly polygamus. In species where there is no dimorphism at all, ie male and female look identical, the male is monogamus. We humans are slightly dimorphic. So the human male has some polygamic tendencies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_dimorphism <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_dimorphism>
