Thought For The Soul

The Slightly Gruesome Conclusion Now for about hundred years or so, women have been able to use Darwinism to beat men around the head with. Their argument has generally gone along these lines: Men can have thousands of children, the number of their descendants being limited only by how many women they can sleep with. Therefore, the best behaviour evolutionary-wise for a man is to be promiscuous. The more children he has, the more his genes will go into the next generation of the human race. Thus, by the means of natural selection, men have evolved to be promiscuous, unfaithful, lying bastards. Women, however, can only have a set number of children, perhaps 10. The number of their descendants is limited by the number of pregnancies they can have. Unlike men, they cannot succeed in evolutionary terms by quantity of offspring. They must go for quality. They must select the best man they can possibly find, and get pregnant by him. So, natural selection has caused women to evolve to be faithful, honest companions. This was always a pretty good argument, and all we've been able to do is concede the basic point, whilst pointing out that we are intelligent creatures who are not controlled by instinct. E.g. just because we have the instincts of a bastard doesn't necessarily mean we will act like one. But women always occupied the Darwinian high ground. Until now. See it turns out that Mother Nature is clever. Mother Nature is very clever. She's not going to say: "oh dear, you can only have ten pregnancies, well I suppose you'd better just find a nice man and hope for the best." No. No. No. Mother Nature's got a load more tricks up her sleeve. See it's all very well saying that a women has to select a man to be the best father for her child, but this is a decision full of dilemmas (in evolutionary terms). Does she: a) Go for the George, the strong, tough masculine bastard, who will give her sons who are strong masculine bastards, or; b) Go for Leo, the caring, considerate wimp, who will give her sons who are caring, considerate wimps. Choosing George will give her sons who as adults will thrive. They will be strong, tough and will probably get to shag half the women in the tribe. There's just one problem - they have to survive to adulthood, which is pretty unlikely considering that George will have pissed off shortly after the shag, never to be seen again. (Feminism aside, single pregnancy and motherhood in the stone age was not a particularly viable option). Leo will be much more help. He will support and care for her during the pregnancy and the difficult period after birth. He will help to raise their children, and they will likely survive to adulthood, and then probably get killed on their first buffalo hunt. Because they're WIMPS! A dilemma indeed. But Mother Nature has a solution. During the twenty-something days each month that she is not fertile a women is sexually attracted to Leo. But on the handful of days that she is fertile, she is sexually attracted to George. The Upshot She falls in love with Leo, and forms a long term relationship with him. But then she screws George behind his back and falls pregnant by him. Then nice caring Leo, thinking the child is his, helps raise George's child to adulthood. Best of both worlds. So if ever a women tells you that "Darwin says you're a faithless bastard" point out that since "Darwin says she's a lying, manipulative slag" you'd keep quiet if you were her. Am I Getting Misogynistic? Hope not. Actually, what I believe is this: All of us, men and women have instincts to do certain things. Those things are often not what we would consider morally correct. We are intelligent beings and should be able to transcend those instincts. Some men can't. Some women can't. Neither sex can use Darwinism to claim a superiority over the other. Still Not Convinced? Well there's two other points I can throw your way. The first is another article on another piece of research which I read somewhere (can't remember where). Basically, they had tried to find out when women were unfaithful, and had found out that a women is MOST likely to be unfaithful when she is MOST fertile. The universe can be pretty horrible sometimes can't it? The second was some little facts that were mentioned in a recent documentary on Channel 4 (UK TV station) about paternity testing. Apparently, paternity researchers in the UK think that in the case of 10% of children in the UK, the actual biological father is not the person whose name is on the birth certificate. (E.g. mum had an affair behind hubby's back and got pregnant). And researchers in the US put the figure at 20%. Which is pretty much an all round bummer, unless you work in the paternity testing industry.

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