From: quilty@titan.ucc.umass.edu (Humberto Humbertoldi)
Subject: Sex [patterns] (was: Sophie Germain - Gender Differences)
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1992 17:28:41 GMT

In article <1992Dec11.052317.22155@msc.cornell.edu> hillyard@msc.cornell.edu writes:
>From article <Bz2MM6.79w@nic.umass.edu>, by quilty@titan.ucc.umass.edu (Humberto Humbertoldi):
>[...]
 
>> I just meant "rule" in the sense of statistical norm; I didn't mean
>> anything either about how it was actually legislated, nor any moral or
>> other judgement about what was preferable.
>
>What is your statistiscal norm for monogamy?  Number of partners close to
>one with a small standard deviation?  I'm rather doubtful that this was very 
>common, or even if it has ever occured at all.

Actually I think of "norm" in terms of MODE, not necessarily MEAN.
Also, I probably should have clarified that I meant SERIAL monogamy,
i.e. one partner for some stretch of time, followed by another for
another stretch of time (though I know plenty of people for whom this
stretch of time is a whole lifetime -- at any rate, an average
marriage last several YEARS).  Here the remarkable thing is that
nearly 50% of all married people DO NOT have a single affair.  From
there the distribution tapers off over the various numbers of other
partners (e.g. 25% one affair; 12% two affairs; 6% three affairs... or
something along this line, I'm making up the particular numbers).

>[...]
>No, I don't.  It would be pretty tough data to get, don't you think.  I would
>be skeptical of any surveys that just asked 'have you had an affair' 'what's
>you income'.

The methodology you mention doesn't seem that bad to me, if anonymity
is assurred; but I don't have any data either way anyway.

.......Deletiae.......> 
>> Chimp behavior tells us very little about human behavior.  Amongst our
>> three closest animal relations, chimps, gorillas, and orangautangs one
>> finds three completely different sexual patterns... the relation
>> genetically to all three is EXTREMELY close, so it's pretty much just
>> a question of picking the one that best matches what you WANT to be
>> the human pattern.
>
>However, I believe that in all of them (I could be wrong), those males higher 
>in the hierarchy have more partners.  So in this area its not a matter of
>picking.

Nope.  What you say is only true of gorillas.  With chimps, it is very
clearly females who choose their partners during estrous.  They choose
quite a few, btw., like a hundred or more A DAY (some repeats,
however).  Generally, primatologists see this as a way of making
paternaty uncertain so that every male has a potential biological
interest in a given infant.  The presumption is that every male in a
band would have mated with a female during her estrous (or at very
least not remember otherwise after however many months the gestation
is).  Androcentric primatologists tried to impose the male-hierarchy
pattern on orangs for many years, but more recent observation
relatively free of this bias shows that *sexual* hierarchies exist
mainly among femals, though a certain defensive hierarchy for
protection of the band exists among males.  Though in any event,
hierarchy amongst orangs is much more flexible than was thought by
earlier primatologists seeking to impose models of hierarchical human
society upon apes.

>[...]
>[figure is inverse correlation between income and children]
>> 
>> Actually, the figure I mentioned, number of offspring was EXACTLY the
>> right figure to look at! 
>
>If its _exactly_ the number to look at then why would you be interested in
>seeing data on # of partners?

Just Idle Curiosity.  And perhaps an obsession with sexual matters.
	:-) 	On the other hand, I do admit there is probably a
correlation between number of partners and number of offspring

>Mostly, I just think its not the number to look at because 99.99% of our 
>evolution has occured as hunter gatherers with the level of technology a 
>chipped stone.  The motivator is generally not to have kids, but to have sex, 
>which is why # of partners is better in a society with birth control 
>and abortion.

This stuff about hunter-gatherers occupying nearly all of human
evolution is probably a eurocentric myth used ideologically to
distinguish us Civilized from the Primatives.  For a more interesting
view that agrarian and hierarchical societies have ALWAYS existed
alongside hunter-gatherer ones, see Pierre Clastres, _Society Against
the State_... a wonderful book (Zone Books, 1989).

>I don't think data on modern society would be of much use, which is what
>you seem to be asking for.  An Anthropologist's comments (ie someone more
>knowledgable than me on how early humans likely behaved) would be better 
>I think.  And, by the way, Chamberlain wasn't really rich, what he was was 
>successful at what he did, correlated, but not the same.

Somehow I consider anybody making more than twenty times what I do
RICH (like Chamberlain did/does)... but I'll admit he was no Kennedy
in terms of income.


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