"Intercourse/PIV is always rape, plain and simple."

I am not sure that would work.
If you look at groups where men have several wives and you need a lot of women (and they deal with it by casting out teenage and adult men so reserve the women for a few of the men only) they tend to exploit women more not less. However I suppose if the women could be in charge it might be fine.

I suspect we'd get further with what we're doing now - moving to more equal societies across the globe with gender equality at home and at work.

I thought consistently there had always tended to be about 103 boys per 100 girls because boys die in battle more.

How does evolution know that men kill each other in battle? Is it not more likely that, because there is (maybe by mere coincidence) a surplus of males, they feel driven to kill each other to reduce competition?

Okay, provocative thought-experiment ahead, get ready to clutch your pearls:

What about we use modern medicine to change human birth ratio to more females?

Wouldn't that enable us to make human society more equal?

I thought consistently there had always tended to be about 103 boys per 100 girls because boys die in battle more. (obviously totalyl skewed in some parts of India where in one hospital they found 250 girls for every 700 boys due to abortion of girls or IVF only of males).

I mentioned reasons men and women like PiV sex first - that it incentivises us to have babies. I don't think that's particularly controversial. That doesn't mean people have to have it or want it or only be straight but it is certainly the case that most people are heterosexual and most like PiV sex. I don't think women are being conned or conditioned into liking it although if you go to any group of women with children under 5 you will always find discussion after discussion of no desire for sex and husbands wanting a lot more whcih might explain why I've not yet found a religion which gives me 3 or 4 husbands and stops men doing that and plenty the other way round.

Garlick, I don't meant PiV when I write "sex" ... frotting and petting with strangers is also not for me.

But we could introduce the 3:2 sex ratio and make laws about consent, so that no one has to participate in the sexual activity.

That'd be okay for me.

Actually, they don't do PIV any more than chimps or humans. They do vast amounts of snogging, petting and frotting.

It might make long queues more interesting ...

I wonder whether, subliminally, traditions of murdering girl babies exist to perpetuate male competition for mates?

I think they are more straightforward about keeping women from outnumbering males, in order to keep women oppressed. Perpetuating male competition for mates is a side-effect of this.

That's one of the reasons why I am so worried about the female infanticide in China and India.

I don't really want to be like a bonobo, sex with strangers is not for me, but I could get behind their sex ratio.

I think the writers I consulted - very quickly, I admit - proposed the f/m ratio is an evolved circumstance that enables their peaceful lifestyle, VV. Males don't have to compete for females; they get plenty of sex opportunities. They don't care which children are theirs.

I wonder whether, subliminally, traditions of murdering girl babies exist to perpetuate male competition for mates?

We should be a lot more like bonobos!

pear, really sorry that happened to you.

Partial, it's a real shame your thread title has upset pear. Surprised you haven't been back to the thread, TBH.

@Garlick: Bonobos are very close to humans and chimpanzees, genetically. How could they have completely different offspring sex ratios?

I suppose it is theoretically possible. Though that would still put us in a situation of having to change our sex ratio if we want human society to work like bonobo social structure. (Which would be a feminist scheme many men could get behind. )

@slugs: Bonobos. Everyone has sex with everyone, so the males protect and feed all the young ones, as they could be theirs.

Also, birds. Peacocks and other beautiful male birds have a strategy of impressing females with their beauty, so that they get to mate with as many females as possible. They are not worried about females also mating with less pretty males, as this would not be logical for the females to do.

Ravens, on the other hand, are monogamous, thus maximizing the number of males that get to reproduce. Male ravens do their fair share of parenting the young.

Human men want to have their cake and eat it. They want to be ugly and do no parenting work, and still get to reproduce.

It is a strategy that has worked so far for them, evolution-wise, but I don't think it is a good or fair one. I also don't think it is the only possible one.

I didn't mean to turn this into a thread about bonobos. It's just that I like to present them as alternative evo-psych sources, particularly as the evidence says humans, chimps and bonobos evolved from the same common ancestor. We're as much like bonobos as like chimps.

Haven't RTFT. I've been raped. I've had sex. I am really fucking annoyed that anyone thinks they're the same thing.

Consensual sex doesn't result in the special form of PTSD that is rape trauma syndrome. I just really needed to say that. Hiding thread now.

Hmm, VV. It doesn't actually say that. It says females out number males in a 3:2 ratio. There's no reason to assume they have equal numbers of m/f children. Their societies are female-dominated and adult males, having no way of knowing which children are theirs, protect all children.

I found this: The lower operational sex ratio in bonobos means that there will be less intrasexual competition among males for access to females. Female mate choice, therefore, becomes the most important factor in determining whether a male's genes are passed. Perhaps for this reason, there have been no reports of forced copulation among bonobos.

@Garlick: Someone told me about a documentary movie in which this was mentioned. The only thing I have been able to find online was this:

soa111.wordpress.com/2010/09/26/bonobos/

It mentions that females outnumber males. Logically, this has to be caused by something. The documentary only mentioned that the adolescent males vanish - to where, the researchers were not able to determine.

"I'm saying people who find an evolutionary reason for everything that sucks for women are cultural tone policing. They assume they're being scientific, drawing on the power of assumed objectivity, when actually the ideas that occur to them are culturally and historically contingent - of their own time and culture. They start at the end, and construct a plausible sounding explanation based on their life experiences and beliefs. "

Well put.

Sex at Dawn is a really interesting book about evolution and human sexuality. It deals mainly with the question of how/why is monogamy a cultural norm but has lots of interesting things to say about female sexuality.

So in conclusion, not saying evolution doesn't happen, saying the discourse of evolution is often used to justify women's oppression.

It is also very often utterly unscientific. Evolution theory is not meant to be used to justify things. Just to explain them.

Also, evolution still happens today. Therefore "This is so because of evolution, don't dare to try and change it!" is nonsensical.

We are all part of nature. Feminism is part of nature. If feminism leads to men evolving to be more compassionate and less violent, because women prefer that kind of man, then that is evolution, too.

Except bonobos, a fifth of whose male offspring vanishes without a trace during puberty. Really? Where did you get that from?

I like this quote from one of the bonobo experts: Some anthropologists, however, are reluctant to include the details of bonobo life, such as wide-ranging sexuality and a strong sisterhood, into scenarios of human evolution. "The researchers have all these commitments to male dominance [as in chimpanzees], and yet bonobos have egalitarian relationships," says De Waal.