File spoon-archives/nietzsche.archive/nietzsche_2000/nietzsche.0009, message 133


From: zatavu-AT-excite.com
Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 18:19:07 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: God Bless Us, Mr Rosewater


SOme interesting comments, though the feminist reading of the male penis is
a bit off kilter, I would say. For the purporses of rape? Everything comes
down to rape for some feminists, until rape becomes meaningless. Though
equating it to the antlers on deer is closer, I think, to the truth. It was
a sexual adaptation to an upright stance. The same with women's breasts,
which have more than a fleeting resemblance to the buttocks - which our
other primate relatives are known to find seuxally exciting. The penis works
in the same way. Longer, and you intimidate other males (as we know still
happens), and you also attract females.

Now, as to how useful this sort of information is, I can give you anecdotal
evidence as to how useful I have found it to be. An example: men release a
pheromone that women find repulsive, except preceeding and during ovulation,
when the pheromone becomes undetectable by women. So women quite literally
find men repulsive (the radical feminists should be saying now: see, we told
you so!) except during a certain time of the month. Women are most sensitive
to this during their periods. Knowing this, I realize that there will be
times when my girlfriend will have a hard time being around me, because she
will be more sensitive to this pheromone I am giving off. Previous to this
knowledge, I did not understand why my previous girlfriend would be
affectionate sometimes andact as though she were repulsed. Between that
girlfriend and this one, I have learned about the pheromones. Now I
understand and do not get upset when she acts like she doesn't want to be
around me. I realize she cannot help the way she is acting - it is a
biological response and has nothing to do with her feelings otherwise. Of
course, now she can't understand why I'm always nice to her, even when she's
"being mean" to me, as she puts it, but since i know why she is acting the
way she is, how can I hold it against her, since she can't help it? Thus, I
am in the best relationship I have ever been in. We don't fight over
trivialities, which means we essentially don't fight (fuss occassionally,
but we have never been in a real fight or argument). SInce I understand why
she acts in certain ways (the issue with the pheromones, and other
hormone/pheromone/biological differences) that are different from me
(because I'm a male and she's a female - which is not to say that the way I
act is any better or worse, just different), we are more able to get along.
Which makes me happier and makes my life better overall. That's how this
kind of information can help you in life. 

Troy Camplin

>  Extremely interesting points. But sexual selection too is a Darwinian
premise. It is a show of strength - not to the predator, but to the
mate...Like, why do male testicles hang outside the body? The brain has the
skull, the heart and lungs have the ribcage; but the testes make us `an
armoured tank driven by a driver in a balloon on the roof.' Richard Dawkins
negates the temperature argument - the management of heat for sperm
production, since sperm cannot survive for long at body temperature - and
contends that chances are that we could easily have evolved a different body
temperature that was appropriate to the process. He digs out maverick
Israeli naturalist Aaron Zahavi's 1975 `vulnerability argument,' that
advertisement is very important and than an ad is only believed if its is
validated by being costly. "Look how powerful a male I am because I can
afford to wear my balls outside my body. You'd better not mess with me
because I'm proving my strength and my ability as a f!
>  ighter." 
>  
>  Likewise with a seven inch dick. Why is it so long> Feminist Susan
Brownmiller argues that a long penis is required in a society that routinely
rapes women (remember, we are talking caveman here - our culture of the past
5000 years is a microsecond in evolutionary terms). She contends that man's
discovery that his genitalia could serve as a weapon to generate fear was
one of the most important discoveries of prehistoric times. Rape is nothing
more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep
all women in a state of fear - an act carried out by a few men on behalf of
many, a male protection racket. A man could argue, a woman needed to be
protected (by him) from every other man, and thereby monopolise her
reproduction, thus conferring evolutionary benefits on himself. In modern
times, this view finds support in widespread incidents of confinement,
domestic violence, ritualised clitoridectomies in which even the labia
minora are excised, and the middle c!
>  lass male's `keep her barefoot and pregnant' philosophy of exercising
male control!
>  
>  A possible solution to the riddle lies in understanding male aggression,
firmly rooted in the behavioral patterns of primates in general, not just
for survival benefits but also for the pursuit of females. Male gorillas
have evolved to twice the size of female gorillas, and in their world brute
strength alone wins the fair maiden. Humans, on the other hand, aren't quite
so aggressive, and statistics show that the incidence of murder and
infanticide among primates is several hundred times the homicide rate in
even Los Angeles!
>  
>  Man's capacity for peaceful cooperation with his fellows, while not quite
Utopian yet, combined with the extreme dependency of the young, have ensured
the need for a strong family bond. The development of the stable pair bond
that solved a number of problems at one stroke: the females remained
faithful to men while they were away on the hunt; serious sexual rivalries
between males were reduced. One hypothesis therefore is that the aggressive
brutality of the males of other primates is sublimated in the human male by
a show of domination via penile length (gorillas don't require such an
adaptation because they live in harems, not communes). The wastefully long
penis could well be a peaceful mnemonic (along with another testosterone
manifestation - muscle mass) for one man's sexual dominance over the other,
just like the gaudiest feathers give a profound sexual edge to the parading
peacock? Zoologists do recognise that most sexual ornaments (for eg, deer
antlers) serve the dual !
>  function of attracting mates and establishing dominance over same-sex
rivals. Isn't that why penis envy is not so rampant among women as it is
among men? 
>  
>  To a large extent, these common sense explanations -  even though they
are often wrong - alone can provide a basis for deconstructing our motives.
Nz did the same in his brilliant deconstruction of the ego. My question is
does it help understanding ourselves this way? Does sugar taste any less
sweet once we know that sweet's just a taste we developed to choose the
ripest, most calorie-laden papayas? Does Nz's brilliant psychology, by
providing us insights into our own actions, actually make us better people?
Does evolutionary theory actually provide us with the possibility of a
workable ethic? I think not. Courage, grace and authenticity, I have
observed, come about in their own subterranean ways, not via insight and
definitely not via pedantic or "logical" interpretations of what Nietzsche
meant. 





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