I don't get 'The Patriarchy'

Going back to what you said about the selfish gene, Himalaya - and emphasising the point in Milly's reply - of course strategies for ensuring healthy young are pivotal to genetic success. Species that do not prioritise nuturance of their young have large & frequent litters. Ours is a nurturing species (a point you seem to be missing on many levels).

I am bringing in fat because the body converts energy to muscle or fat. Women's bodies convert more of the energy to fat, because fat is more useful to their bodies. So to ask questions about why we are more or less muscular, we have to discuss why the body would opt to convert that energy to fat instead. In women, it is very useful for child rearing.

Yes, sumo wrestlers can have lots of fat and muscle, but most humans (especially those in an environment of evolutionary adaptation) live in a time of scarcity. The energy costs of collecting the food are high compared to the energy gain from consuming it. So the body has to have preferences as to whether it converts limited energy to muscle or fat, and women need more fat.

Just want to thank you for your advice, Himalaya: it really is wroth reading a book. Hmm, I've heard about those "books". Are they any good, then?

Dittany, again that is not the case. Female deer have a higher proportion of fat than male deers because of the requirements to nurse young. Female deer have a higher amount of muscle to fat after their last young is born because they no longer require that fat composition as they will have no more.

But Dittany, we have know reason to think that women did sit around. About 80% of food in hunter-gatherer society is gathered by women.

Women do have a different body composition to men; that is true across all cultures. It is down to the demands of pregnancy and breastfeeding. It doesn't mean that women cannot hunt or are not strong.

Dittany, of course women do hunt, but it is less common in contemporary hunter gatherer societies when women are of child bearing age. A large part of this is to do with pregnancy. It is not to say that women would not hunt at all. Hunting parties often travel long distances and are away from the tribe for days.

The reason we are discussing evolution is because that was in Himalaya's OP.

Himalaya, while evolution does operate at the level of the gene, clearly how that gene is selected is connected to the expression in the phenotype. Of course child rearing strategies are essential to the selection of certain genes; that is the basis of natural selection. No, you can't advance evolution, but some genes are selected rather than others on the basis of child rearing strategies.

It is really quite bizarre that you do not recognise that strategies for rearing young are essential to understanding evolution - it is central to an understanding of evolution and is the primary factor in defining species as K or r strategists and their place in the ecological cycle. It is the most basic of evolutionary concepts and can be found in any undergraduate text book.

It is also odd to suggest that there is no moral aspects to human impact on evolution - of course there is, in just the same way that there are moral aspects to human impact on cliff erosion or any other aspect of nature. Humans dominate the planet - outside of Antarctica there is no wilderness left. What we do has consequences for our own evolution and the evolutionary fate of many other species. We can make moral decisions about that.

Your argument about morphology is making an enormous leap by claiming it is about dominance. Sexual dimorphism is quite low in humans, and could be connected to a number of the common reasons for these variations. We can only speculate about which apply to humans. I would speculate that there was a division of labour between men and women. The likely reason for this is that due to the development of human infants, they have to be carried and nursed for a long period of time. This would change the nature of the food collection options done by men and women. Men, not transporting a baby, would be more likely to hunt over the whole course of their lives. Women would not hunt during child rearing periods because they were carrying an infant. Hunting requires some speed and athleticism - hence more muscle. Women (or at least mothers) would be gathering, which requires sustained work but does not have to be done at speed, so would not need to be particularly muscular. There is also the issue of bipedalism itself, which means that there are competing demands on the pelvis (you'd never design the pelvis in such a way, it is rather a poor design) between walking upright and carrying a foetus. This would require women to store fat differently on their bodies. Of course women have to store more fat than men because they need it to breastfeed.

We can be certain that part of the different musculature and fat composition of men and women is due to breastfeeding and pregnancy. We can speculate that some of the difference is down to different food collecting strategies between the sexes. We certainly cannot do more than speculate that sexual dimorphism is down to male dominance. And it isn't a particularly plausible, when species where males are dominant have high levels of sexual dimorphism, and humans don't, and our sexual dimorphism has decreased.

Delurking in the hope of moving the thread beyond this circular argument.

Himalaya: as Dittany is trying to pint out to you, much of what you're proposing is speculation, not hard fact. This comment of yours is a great case in point: 'Like the example of cooking, allowing jaw size and musculature to change, which allowed mouths to develop the agility and mobility for complex speech.' What you're describing there is a partcular speculative hypothesis that may or may not be true. The evidence for that theory is circumstantial at best, and is certainly not settled science.

Likewise, much of your speculation on the origins and importance of sexual dimorphism in humans. IIRC hoimind species have less sexual dimorphism then their ancestors. What have been the drivers for that decrease? No-one knows for sure, because the hard evidence mostly isn't there. All we have are hypotheses.

This is why it's a mistake to present the theories of evolutionary psychology as fact. The evidence we have on human evolution is patchy to say the least, and what we're left with is at best interesting speculation, and at worst 'just so' stories that are merely an appeal to evolutionary theory in order to 'naturalise' the status quo.

Himalaya - there is a virulent strain of victim mentality rampaging through the feminism topic .

I just love these post facto, science-lite evo psych justifications explanations of patriarchy, it's like Tinga Tinga tales for adults!!