do you believe in the patriarchy?

Goodnight

Eh? No, I don't know anything about your body Himalaya!

Yeah, some circles are becoming obvious in our discussion. I need to take a break, anyway, so shall bid you a tall but lardy (me) goodnight :)

garlicbum

No I don't mean shut up at all.

I do think you've got the wrong end of the stick though. Its not Victorian or patriarchal to notice that there are differences between male and female bodies that have nothing to do with having babies or not - hairiness, facial differences, voice, fat:muscle, foot size, height etc...

Male bodies are bigger and stronger (not better or more entitled or closer to god or whatever...) just bigger and stronger - better able to do push ups, pull ups what have you.

"A fit woman and an inactive man have about the same fat-muscle ratio." - but why would you compare a fit woman and an inactive man? If you want to look at whether there is a difference between male and female fat-muscle you would have to look at a fit man vs a fit woman or an inactive man vs inactive woman.

(I don't know if you meant to say you're meaning me by the way?)

Given that this muscle is expensive for bodies to grow there has to be some reason for it.

(have we had this discussion before?)

Yes, I get your point

You also seem to be agreeing that there's no evidence of an evolutionary advantage to male humans being much bigger than females!

I don't think you can discount the importance of birthing to evolution - there wouldn't be any evolution without effective birthing!

Also: I believe the development of the bigger human brain is due to the split fontanelle, which allows for brain expansion post-birth, and which occurred in response to the elongation & narrowing of the birth canal due to walking upright all the time. You couldn't get a human head out of a 'sapiens' birth canal without the split, which allows the two halves of the brain to slide past one another on descent.

If your peculiar statement that "Male bodies are not just like female bodies but with different reproductive bits" is supposed to mean "Men are bigger and stronger, shut up", then I do dispute that and suggest it's an unfounded patriarchal view of human evolutionary development. When I look at the actual evidence, instead of blindly accepting Victorian interpretations of limited data, then I don't find any material differences that cannot be more logically explained by improved birthing efficiency.

Garlicbum-

You have a strange idea of how evolution works. It's like saying we've been evolving for the same amount of time as birds, you'd think we would have wings by now. (by the way we've all been evolving for the same amount of time - humans, millepedes, bacteria)

Every organisms evolution has been shaped by it's environment (including it's social environment) there is no particular target for sexual diamorphism or number of legs or whatever.

There are differences between men and women that are not due to the physiology of having babies or not. Male bodies are not just like female bodies but with different reproductive bits. The differences have an evolutionary basis. That is really uncontroversial.

YY, evolution happens by tiny steps but other mammals, which have been evolving for about as long as we have or for less time, have 50% dimorphism. Surely we'd have managed more than 6% if it actually mattered.

You're not all that more muscular, I'm sorry to say. A fit woman and an inactive man have about the same fat-muscle ratio.

It's just more logical to put the difference down to childbearing. What you say about children gaining fat is irrelevant - both sexes change a lot, hormonally, during puberty and growth is regulated by hormones. Both genders of children put on fat in preparation for growth.

Oh, Himalaya, you're so wedded to your big & strong masculinity! Bless

garlicbum "You're really not going to win the old "men are big & strong to protect poor ickle women" argument, chaps. "

That is not what i am saying at all.

Men evolved big and strong to fight each other over women. Quite a different thing!

garlicbum

The gender dimorphism is only 6%. That is not a big enough difference to be explained by evolutionary selection.

...how do you know? Evolution of everything happens by tiny, tiny steps - a cluster of cells that can distinguish light and dark develops into an eye etc...

To fetch water, build houses, hunt and farm etc... you don't have to have the pecs and arms of a man. Women are perfectly capable of doing these things, and are strong but don't have the explosive strength and upper body muscles of men (even when they have the same calories and do the same work).

The question is what explains why men get muscley at puberty. It isn't because they don' have babies. Otherwise children with excess calories would put on muscle. They don't.

Peacocks tails and stag's antlers as PlentyofPubes says both evolved from sexual selection - but in different ways. Men's muscles evolved more like stags antlers than peacock's tails I would say.

"Bonobos are sometimes called pygmy chimpanzees even though they are about the same size as chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Overall, they have a more gracile, or slender, build than chimpanzees. They exhibit moderate sexual dimorphism with adult males weighing about 39 kg (86.0 lb) and, on average, measuring 730 to 830 mm (2.40 to 2.72 ft) tall while adult females weigh about 31 kg (68.3 lb) and are about 700 to 760 mm (2.3 to 2.49 ft) tall (Rowe 1996)."
pin.primate.wisc.edu/factsheets/entry/bonobo

As Plenty says, sexual display is no indicator of anything except strange preferences by species! The female bonobo's bottom swells during ovulation. So what

You're really not going to win the old "men are big & strong to protect poor ickle women" argument, chaps. Really! We are not a height-dimorphic species. The fat/muscle difference is explained entirely by childbearing. Men don't protect women anyhow, and never have.

Patriarchy exists, all right, but it's not a natural necessity. Can we get on with discussing what it is, after all?

are you sure garlic?
i was sure they were the same size, whats more i think david attembourgh told me !
they also have enormous testicles, thats also sexual selection, if you mate with one female, you only need a small amount, if everyone is mateing with her the more semen you produce the more chance of the offspring being your own

Sexual selection can result in really daft things like the peacock's tail or the stag's antlers. There doesn't have to be any logical advantage to it at all, unlike natural selection.

For females being more than averagely tall or muscley is not such an advantage.

This is just a ridiculous statement, looking at the majority of humans today, never mind our much harder past. To fetch water, build houses, fight, hunt and farm by had, you need to be tough!

You're applying contemporary 'western' values to the whole of humanity. that's insane.

The gender dimorphism is only 6%. That is not a big enough difference to be explained by evolutionary selection.

Re: fat/muscle. Let's say all post-pubertal humans in a given tribe have an average 2,000 calories a day available to them. The females need to lay down fat in order to have healthy babies. So they do. The males don't need to lay down fat, so they gain muscle and an extra 9cm height.

It's not rocket science.

THERE IS NO DEMONSTRABLE MALE PREFERENCE FOR SMALL FEMALES, Himalaya. Except in very recent times, in organised human cultures.

Even today, in the industrially-developed world, we hold tall women up as the beauty ideal - which is what 'model' is supposed to mean.

I suspect small is evolutionary 'normal' i.e. in a variable and low nutrient environment it biologically 'cheaper' and less risky not to grow too big, and to store extra calories as fat rather than expensive muscle.

i.e. boys and girls are the same size roughly till puberty, then boys get a bigger growth spurt and put on upper body muscle much more easily.

The muscle and size is a high risk strategy to beat other males, and could make the difference between having 0 and 100 offspring.

For females being more than averagely tall or muscley is not such an advantage.

The male preference for 'small and pretty/young' could well be related to seeking out mates who are not pregnant already.

Sorry, 5.4%. Same as humans and trog chimps, basically. Only nicer.

No, bonobo females are averagely 6.4% shorter than males. And they mate with anybody all the time, regardless of gender. They are very cheerful apes with highly developed social skills and are faster learners than 'troglodites' chimps.

It's cultural, meow, innit.

Models still have to be 173cm or taller. So it's not even a beauty ideal, really. It's just women responding to all the "tall, dark & handsome" bollocks we've been fed since nursery.

as a sidenote.
male chimpanzees compete for the females and the males are bigger and stronger.
there is a speices of chimp called benobos however. sometimes thought of as the sexy ape. they have sex like other apes would say hello, when a female comes into eastrious ( wish i could spell) all the males in that troup will mate with her.
the comunities are much more peaceful and to the males every infant in the trope is potentialy his own.

male and female benobos are the same size and height.

We still have no evolutionary justification for men to select smaller women. I suspect, therefore, that it's a patriarchal phenomenon of fairly recent origin.
(Kylie notwithstanding.)

As a Palaeolithic farmer, you bloody wouldn't select a delicate little flower for your mate. You'd want a sturdy, strong woman.

Telling us that little women are prettier is yet another way of subtly encouraging us to be weak & subservient. So is telling us that starving women are more attractive.
This is a very recent phenomenon, so I reckon it's a backlash effect. Well, thank goodness there's enough to 'lash back' at

garlic

i think the females are doing the selection actually, how many times have you heard a woman say they couldnt date a man who was smaller then themselves?

I blame Kylie Minogue - 157cm of pure....actually, never mind.....

a purely social phenomenon - sorry, I meant a cultural phenomenon, not 'social' in the evolutionary sense.

I've just looked up worldwide data for the first time. Average man height: 165cm. Average woman height: 154cm. Ratio: 93.3%.
Chimps (both kinds) ratio: 94%.

It's only a slight difference. Interesting, of course, and there must be a reason. But looks like a total red herring wrt gendered supremacy.

Males have greater muscle density, while females have higher fat content. The fat content is more conducive to pregnancy and breast feeding, so that pretty much explains that.

We still have no evolutionary justification for men to select smaller women. I suspect, therefore, that it's a purely social phenomenon of fairly recent origin.

Well, as you say, ncg, pretty's in the eye of the beholder. It's not an absolute value. If the males fancy little females more, it's because littleness bestows some quality the male finds attractive. So he'd have to have some reason for wanting smaller mates.