File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9804, message 103


Date: Wed, 1 Apr 98 19:12:22 EST
From: boddhisatva <kbevans-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Re: Sociobiology








		C. Heartfield,



	It's not a lot of claptrap that bonobos engage in homosexual
sexual activity, it's true and it's fairly rare among species.  Neither is
it true that promiscuity is a product of the modern age.  Lou Proyect's
beloved Yanomami engage multiple partners on days when hunting parties
return, etc.. And it is between the hunter-gatherer epoch in human history
and the primate epoch that the bulk of our evolution occurred.  We are a
low-fecundity species because we generally have single births and we are
vulnerable (in the wild) to predation and infant mortality.  Because
primates don't have the physical skills that other animals do, they
survive best as social animals.  Frequent sex serves both to raise
fecundity and cement social ties. 



	The epochs that J. Heartfield is referring to have completely
different economic realities compared to the time that we evolved.  They
have, therefore, different social relations, even and especially when it
comes to sex.  Because we *learn* our sexual behavior as well as
inheriting some instinct for it, it makes perfect sense that our behavior
should mirror the predominant social relations but always tend towards
promiscuous heterosexuality as it clearly always has.  Remember that from
a biological standpoint we are comparing our behavior to pair-for-life,
breed-when-fertile strategies as well as the breed-when-fertile, with
multiple partners strategy.  We attempt to breed when infertile as well as
having multiple partners making us rather horny compared to the rest of
the animal kingdom. It also does well to remember that people died far
more often in centuries past (especially women in childbirth), thereby
allowing even the most pious people to have multiple partners or die
trying.




	peace




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