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 --- from list marxism-thaxis-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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