Talk:Menstruation and the origins of culture/Archive 1

message: The traditional view that it is in female interest to be monogamous, and male interest to be promiscuous (Bateman's principle), is highly relied on by this theory.  Modern evidence that promiscuity benefits females (presented very accessibly in Dr Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex by evolutionary biologist Olivia Judson) should also be presented. She particularly discusses evidence for human female promiscuity by pointing out how testical size in other apes is related to the sexual habits of females: in chimpanzees, where males have a lot of sperm competition from other males, their testicles are very large (and produce high numbers of sperm) in relation to their body size.  In gorillas, where dominant males have exclusive sexual access to females, their testicles are very small (and produce much lower numbers of sperm) in relation to body size.  Human relative testicle is somewhere in between, strongly implying that there is some (though not as strong as in chimps) evolutionary benefit to promiscuous human females. 
The flip side of this promiscuity-benefits-females theory is that males must spend time trying to ensure female faithfullness (thus increasing their chances of father children) rather than going philandering (where they are competing with other male's sperm to try to impregnate the woman). Lyrl    Talk     Contribs   17:04, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: one obvious benefit of concealment is that it denies males information that would allow male philanderers to ‘hit and run’ - I disagree.  One "obvious" benefit of advertised ovulation is that it allows a female to have sex with multiple males during her fertile period, thus a)increasing her chances of becoming pregnant and b)confusing the issue of paternity so that multiple males are obligated to support her offspring in the hopes of continuing their own genetic line.  Males that "hit and run" are significantly less likely to have offspring survive to adulthood; in a species like humans that requires significant parental investment in offspring, there is not an obvious evolutionary benefit to the "hit and run" strategy.  The stated argument is only one that can be made, and is not "obviously" true. Lyrl    Talk     Contribs   23:21, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Promiscuity deleterious to females?

message: Please provide some sort of reference that most men find menstruating women to be more sexually attractive than women not currently experiencing vaginal bleeding. Or change the wording of this sentence. Lyrl    Talk     Contribs   17:04, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: "The promise of imminent fertility is very interesting to males"

message: Beginning with the second paragraph in the Sexual signals section, the verb 'argue' is used a little excessively:
Some Darwinian palaeoanthropologists argue... Knight, Power and Watts argue... They argue... It is argued...
I had changed one of those verbs to 'assert' to try to alleviate some of the repetition.  It was changed back in a recent edit - I was just curious as to why. Lyrl    Talk     Contribs   23:25, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Style question 

message: I stumbled across this article while on vandal watch and noticed some of the text was very POV. Reading further also leads me to believe that this article contains original research. Though some of the facts may be true, it's still written with heavy POV and original research with suspicion that the editors may be citing their own original work.--I already forgot 09:51, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: They are citing their own original work, but it's published, so it doesn't violate Wikipedia's NOR rule.  I agree, however, that the article is POV, and I have strong suspicions that it is factually inaccurate, but have not had the time to do the research to effectively argue my case. Lyrl    Talk     Contribs   20:54, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you both have a problem: 'leading you to believe' and having 'strong suspicions' does not, unfortunately, constitute real engagement. It does not make sense to accuse authors of a very heavily referenced article of POV when your own suspicions are not even well-evidenced. Otherwise accusations of bias etc. are simply a symptom of the malaise they are trying to address. Can we agree that the banners at the top of the article remain removed until such a time as you have actual evidence that POV is involved?86.132.127.123 18:46, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Having a heavily referenced article doesnt mean its written without a NPOV. The tags are added to invite other wikipedians into the disucssion of POV and OR for this article.--I already forgot 18:56, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree - lots of references don´t prove neutrality. However, you have so far not provided any substantial reasons for POV. Until you do, I will remove the tags. Otherwise you could simply put tags on all articles. I don´t think that just having a suspicion is enough of a reason to doubt neutrality. Put the effort in to provide some proof - or get someone else to do it. I think that is the minimum level of engagement required here.80.133.115.41 17:00, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not interested in engagement, only keeping up the quality of standards at wikipedia. So instead of niggling over what constitutes pov and a tag rv war, I have edited the intro to provide an example. You can see I have no interest in the topic (though interesting), just the encyclopedic presentation.--I already forgot 18:34, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Original Reasearch