Newsgroups: sci.bio
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!alternat
From: alternat@watserv1.waterloo.edu (Ann Hodgins)
Subject: Re: Are Humans Naturally Monogamous?
Message-ID: <1990Nov29.171325.8319@watserv1.waterloo.edu>
Organization: University of Waterloo
References: <1990Oct24.175532.9407@pmafire.UUCP> <15490@netcom.UUCP> <1990Oct26.000754.24765@odin.corp.sgi.com> <4836@lure.latrobe.edu.au> <1990Nov22.191009.20772@watserv1.waterloo.edu> <3343@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: Thu, 29 Nov 90 17:13:25 GMT
Lines: 30

There has been so much interchange on monogamy that I am not sure who said: 
>
>I think it's more of a power thing among humans than anything genetic.
>In most of society; men hold the cards and use that power to keep women
>from sleeping with other men ("sleep around and I'll divorce you and
>you'll starve.")
  
No question.  History shows vividly how men have foreced women into
monogamy and tried to control their sexual choice. Witness the chastity
belt of the middle ages which was so torturous that women actually died
of health complications resulting from being imprisoned in that iron cage.
 
Evidence from before the time of written records strongly suggests that 
women were much freer. For instance, before the time of the monotheistic
father gods, desert women could dismiss a lover or husband by simply
closing the flap or her personal tent to him three nights in a row.

>
>Sometimes the situation is reversed.  Where I went to school, there
>were very few women and they held the cards.  It was not at all unusual
>for a woman to be sleeping with several men and insist that some or all
>of those men to be monogamous.
 
      But mind you, life is now very complicated.  There are various reasons
why women might feel that it is to their advantage to be monogamous.
Women will take an advantage just as men will, and you can hardly blame them
for that in a world where they have so little power politically, religiously
or financially.
 
ann hodgins