Just feeling really angry at all the murder, assault, rape of females that goes on

[BornStroppy]

I told my husband how horrible it is being part of a gender that is constantly attacked, murdered, etc. He had never thought about it. He doesn´t need to. So we have Tia Sharp, the lady who disappeard in London, an old lady in Scotland murdered by son´s friend, another one murdered in a taxi in Birmingham - this is just over two weeks.

I have one son, pregnant again and just hope its another boy to be honest.

Why is it OK? Apart from raising gentlemen, what the hell can we do? As a gender, we give birth, nurture, raise, care for them, and as a gender we are the ones who suffer at their hands.

its so depressing.

What messy said. Conscious sexual selection based on perceived attractive traits is not necessary for evolution to occur. No arranged marriages in the single celled organism community.

Whatmeworry, the last line of your post is very ambiguous in its phrasing. It reads on first pass as though you are saying SGM argued that all men are rapists. I'm sure you didn't intend to give such a false impression.

Messy, Hester,

But we are not single celled organisms.

I think it is fair enough to say that sexual selection is in the middle of human evolution. Not the only mechanism of course. But the idea of understanding human evolution without sexual selection doesn't make sense.

Himilaya, why are you directing that at me? I never said we were single celled organisms! Lordy.

I simply pointed out how sexual selection is not the only way in which evolution occurs, whilst also acknowledging that it is a huge part of it. Which is what you're also saying, so I'm not sure why you're disagreeing.

My point is re. the selection of mates and its relevance to thread is that whilst one may choose a mate based on certain criteria one can only choose from what's on offer and what's on offer can be determined by other factors such as vulnerability of certain characterics to predation, or to a specific aspect of the environment.

I brought in single called organisms because evolution is not just about humans, it applies to all species. Sex selection in the way that you are framing it is not a requirement of evolution.

There's a lot of blending of evolution and evolutionary psychology in this thread.

Messy - sorry wasnt meaning to put words in your mouth or anything like that.

You and Hester seem to be arguing from examples of peppered moths and single celled organisms that....

Plentyofpubegardens "This is all true, but you could make a similar argument about cattle. They are extremely successful in terms of reproduction and survival, more especially those cattle which carry genes for growing really fast, producing big juicy steaks or ridiculously large milk yields. It doesn't mean those are traits the cows have chosen."

POPG - domestic cattle have not evolved through natural selection, they have evolved through artificial selection (Selective breeding).

Himalaya, I wouldn't call selective breeding any form of evolution though. We have selected cattle to make juicy steaks - such cattle might actually be reproductively less successful (ie require artificial insemination etc) but they suit our social purposes of yummy meat much better.

Similarly a family could make a decision about an arranged marriage for example that didn't actually optimise the reproductive chances of their genes. Parents past the age of reproduction with only one surviving daughter might chose an old rich man (with poor sperm quality) for her to marry in order to ensure their own survival. That would seem a sound psychOlogical decision, an unsound evolutionary decision.

So you know, I'm coming from the perspective of someone querying if evolution in the Darwinian sense applies to humans (and various other animals eg domestic cats) any more as environmental and social changes caused by humans are far quicker than evolutionary timescales but each individual is socialised by the changes which is a greater "force" than evolution.

Thedoctrineofennis -

That's kinda my point. Selective breeding isnt natural selection (although it can be a force driving evolution).

So drawing a parallel between domestic cattle (and other livestock) and humans isn't all that useful, since we are not domestic animals bred by another species for a their gain (although maybe the bacteria that live in our guts might argue otherwise )

There is a political, legal and social parallel - where women have in some times and places been treated as chattel and valued as 'breeding stock', this has been an important feminist insight and something to challenge - but it doesn't follow that it makes sense in biological/evolutionary terms to use that same thinking to analyse what was going on, if you see what I mean?

I think it is really uncontroversial and a central part of evolutionary theory to say that if there are characteristics that are inherited as part of "human nature" then it is likely that they at some point in evolutionary history they gave our ancestors (or their kin carrying the same genes) an advantage over others whose genetic lines died out. (they could be other explanations -genetic drift, mutation, spandrels etc.., but "no explanation" doesn't cut it).

So if the question "why are men more aggressive/violent in general than women" has in any part a biological answer and not simply "culture" then this answer has to be that men who had the capacity to be more aggressive, and women who had children with them and who had sons who were able to be more aggressive did better at producing surviving offspring than others.

Ok I will think about that. But is it conscious selection or is it more "the more aggressive man punches his hunting partner to get the meat/ berries and therefore survives to reproduce" because if women were part of the food collection as I believe they were, wouldn't the same apply?

Himalaya, I am not saying this is what you are advocating but in my head it is evolutionary psychOlogists who came up with the "women like pink because berries are pink" stuff which sounds like a heap of crap.

DoE - I don't think it is necessarily about conscious choice. But it isn't about competing for food supply either. As you say these evolutionary pressures apply to men & women equally.

The fundamental difference between men and women in evolutionary terms is that women can have up to around 12 children in their lifetime, they can be certain about parentage, and can only have one episode of pregnancy/breastfeeding at a time. Most women throughout evolutionary history (around 80% I think) have had a least one child.

Men can have 100s of children, but are never sure of parentage. Throughout our history only around 40% of men became fathers at all. The rest were the end of the line.

It is these different reproductive odds that shape sexual selection.